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Office furniture had been left, as well as most of the furniture for the squad bays, but the bunk beds had been disassembled and the mattresses shipped out.  You don’t leave a bed behind if you can help it.  God gave you a padded butt so you could sit just about anywhere and be reasonably comfortable for a short period of time.  He also gave us mattresses so we could be reasonably comfortable when we slept.  You thank him for the food, and then show your gratitude by not turning your nose up at a bed, especially when you were going to be living in a tent!

And then there’d been the ordinance and heavy weaponry, which didn’t necessarily go together.  There were towed howitzer field guns and mortars that Mallory was not going to leave behind, even if it had meant leaving the beds.  God would understand.  They didn’t have munitions for them, but that didn’t mean that someone else didn’t, or couldn’t find some.  For that matter Mallory knew exactly where to get it; they just hadn’t gotten to that stage of the plans yet.

Then there were all of the personal weapons, rifles, handguns, bayonets, boot knives, tazers (yes, they had tazers), night sticks and the like, and all the ammunition that goes along with all of those firearms.  Cases and cases and cases of ammunition, on pallet after pallet--literally tons of it.  Small amounts of high explosive, C4, Willie Pete (White Phosphorous)--none of which would be left behind, period.

Ordering the egress out of the Armory had been as close to an exercise in futility as Mallory had ever experienced.  It seemed that every time she began to get one thing under control or wrapped up, another area came completely unglued.  What needed to be moved out to the AA first, and how quickly could it be moved out?  Was the AA ready?  If we move too much at first, do we leave the Armory vulnerable?

There was some radio chatter as everyone pulled out of the Armory in single file, every vehicle mounting either a .50 or an M60, loaded and manned.  So far there hadn’t been a single incident reported by any Armory convoy meeting with any resistance or dealing with any problems along the way, but there was an SOP for a reason, and it didn’t cost anything to follow it and be prepared just in case.

It was almost an hour and a half to the new base, and she would be coming up with questions with no real answers the entire time.  She really needed to sit down face to face with some people, instead of over the radio, and hash some things out.  It had been less than a week, but it felt like much longer, and she hoped that Karen, Rachael and Sheri had been able to put some time into the task she’d set them to.  She also hoped that Joel had been using that frightening intellect of his to not only come up with worst case scenarios, but hopefully some solutions, or at least workarounds.

Chapter Twenty-Five

She knew that Ramirez had been holding back, not in a bad way, but not really ‘being all that he could be’, as it were.  He was an excellent Staff Sergeant, probably one of the best she’d ever worked with, and she liked him on a personal level as well.  She knew that he was capable of motivating his men and practically working miracles, sometimes with a crew of some of the biggest screw-ups she’d ever seen--but this was impressive even for him.

Some things in life you simply took for granted and a decent place to park was one of them.  She’d heard the reports about not only the parking lot, but the AA, and then the base, and run them through her personal filter, as she usually did for things that got reported up the chain of command.  Things got embellished, good and bad, every step of the way, and the more amazing the individual was made out to be, the bigger a dirt bag they probably were--or vice versa.

She’d figured, based on the reports, that the base and everything that went along with it would be nice.  Better than usable, because Ramirez wasn’t a slouch and he’d be living here too after all; but it wouldn’t be, couldn’t be, as nice as everyone was making it out to be.  If the parking lot was any indication, she was about to be pleasantly surprised.  “I can’t believe I’m getting the warm fuzzies because of a freaking parking lot. ” Mallory muttered to herself.

“I’m sorry, First Sergeant, I missed that,” her driver said, ,wondering if he’d missed something important.

“Nothing, really, just chastising myself.  Nice lot, huh?”

“Looks like it.  I’d heard Sergeant Ramirez outdid himself on it, but then I’ve also heard the entire base is pretty well squared away too.”

“Certainly looks that way.  Let’s get parked and see what home’s going to look like for the foreseeable future, shall we, son?”

“Roger that, Top.”

They were being directed to their assigned space, which actually had a “6” on the ground, in what looked like toilet paper.  Mallory was trying to decide if she was offended by the fact that Ramirez had used toilet paper to designate her parking space or pleased that he’d used something that could be cleaned up afterwards so as not to identify where her Humvee was parked.  Probably pleased.  At least there wasn’t a sign on a post.

Halstead and Jackson met her at the lot to escort her into the base proper.

“Stewart is trying to explain why it is imperative that everyone read the instructions on how to use the saw mills to a couple of overzealous E4 soon to be E3s.  The fact that he isn’t here is, I’m sure, adding to the exuberance of his explanation,” Halstead apologized for Stewart.

“No apology necessary, but I appreciate it nonetheless.  Not that either of you actually needed to be here to babysit me getting to my tent either.  By the way, where is Ramirez?” Mallory asked.  “I figured he’d want to be front and center for the grand unveiling of his masterpiece.  After all, from what I’ve seen so far--and the further I get into it, it continues to hold up--the reports actually don’t do it justice.”

“Honestly, I think he’s hiding,” Jackson answered.  “Personally, I think he’s afraid that if you see him now, you’ll promote him on the spot, so he’s laying low for the first little while, at least until you catch your breath.”

Mallory shook her head.  “I’ll have to find something to complain about and then call him to the command tent so I can ream him out.  Make him feel better.”  They all chuckled at that as they approached the command tent.

“We all know you don’t micromanage, but we also know you hate going without face-to-face interaction for more than a couple of days.  Nobody’s actually in the command tent right now waiting to have a meeting, but just about everybody that you’ve been on the radio with over the past week is within a stone’s throw for the time being,” Halstead said as he pulled back the tent flap.

“I appreciate that, as I was ruminating about that very thing for at least half the drive.  I don’t want to keep everyone on pins and needles waiting to be called into my August presence, but I do want to get a couple of things settled first, and at least find where I’m going to rack out and where communications are at.  That and the latrines, showers, and the mess hall, though I can probably follow my nose to the latter in the morning.”

“As you’d expect, everybody’s keeping pretty busy for the time being, so take your time Top.  You all actually made a little better time than expected, too.  Not much traffic on the roads?”

“None whatsoever.  I think people are starting to worry in a big way about gasoline and diesel and not driving at all if they don’t have to.  I know we’ve got it made for the time being, but even our supply is severely limited given how many vehicles we’ve got.  How do things look for long term viability here, on this spot?    It’s still only June, but we need to start looking at long term structures because it does get cold here in the winter and I personally do
not
want to camp out in a tent all winter, but I also refuse to be in a house while everyone else is in a tent.  We need to take a look at some type of barracks structure that can have multiple uses--all men, all women, families, etc.  Either all in one building based on floors, or based in multiple buildings, depending on what we can get built.  More like dormitories, I guess.”

“So, here I am, dumping on you two instead of enjoying my guided tour and saving it for the command meeting.”

“And today should be any different than any other day, Top?” Stewart chimed in, as he’d overheard the last little bit while he caught up to the group.

“Point.  Stewart, what’s our total power generating capacity right now?” Mallory asked.

“Total is 9.4MW, but that’s not usable.  Usable is 7.8MW.”  Stewart replied.

“We need to start looking at something other than gasoline or diesel-powered power generation though.  We’ve only got so much of that available in the near term, and yes, if it’s remotely liquid in form and mostly a petro-chemical, the vehicles will run on it, but I’d rather not be forced into a situation where I have to start running the rigs on transmission fluid.”

“Fair enough.” 

“Ok, that goes on the list of ‘Conversations to Have Soonest’ I guess.  Enough shop, time to gloat, and I can see that you’re all three about to rupture.  Who’s first?”

The three Sergeants looked at each other and then made a show of doing ‘Rock, Paper, Scissors’.  “Oh for crying out loud,” Mallory said, “I HAVE left you out here without adult supervision for too long.”

With that they headed off towards the saw mills, for a couple of reasons.  It hadn’t been Ramirez’s idea, and so he wasn’t likely to be there, and because the men were starting to get into the swing of things, and so they wanted to show them off.  The SFCs were NOT trying to downplay Ramirez and his contribution.  In fact, they all three agreed, to a certain degree, with his assessment, and thought hiding was a good idea.  They were going to try to track him down last, however, for the exact opposite reason.

Kyle had been killing himself, and to a lesser degree his men, for the last five days to get the base ready to take everyone in, and had done a truly amazing job.  The base looked like something that had taken ten times as long to set up.  It kind of rankled him that people mentioned the parking lot so much because, well, it was just a PARKING LOT!  The base, however, looked like a small town, with tents where all the buildings should be.

The streets were narrower, and there wasn’t a bank or a saloon or other such nonsense, but there was housing for everyone with room to spare.  There was a firing range for practice, and hadn’t the bulldozer been nice when it came time to set up the berm for that?  Karen, Rachael, and Sheri, with the help of a number of the other parents, were looking to set up a whole slew of activities to keep the kids, of all ages up to 16, occupied, including school if necessary come the end of August.  There was a mess hall that was large enough to feed two-thirds of the entire current population at once, and another was being constructed (you didn’t erect a mess hall, as that is one of the few tents you do
not
want coming down) since the population was growing.

There was redundant water purification, and multiple latrines and bathing facilities (thank you backhoe, thank you, thank you, thank you).  A number of the tents did have power, as their primary function required an attached generator, so the base was never really quiet or dark.  And a number of tents were being re-erected over raised wood plank floors, thanks to the saw mills.

The point was that all three Sergeants wanted the tour to end with a First Sergeant who was as overwhelmed as she’d ever been and a completely surprised Staff Sergeant.,  The classic unflappable force meeting the imperturbable object, to thoroughly garble an otherwise perfectly good analogy.  No, they didn’t want him promoted on the spot, but they didn’t expect him to be either, because they didn’t think that authority had been handed down from on high, and Top wasn’t like that even if it had been.  They did want him recognized though, and this oughta be good.

The nickel tour took almost a half an hour, and ended almost back where they started.  One of the husbands who’d gotten swept up in the ad hoc activation of the Guard and subsequent migration was a carpenter by trade, specifically cabinets and some smaller furniture.  His wife’s squad hadn’t been shipped out to the Advance Area yet when Joel had had his epiphany about the saw mills, but he’d approved wholeheartedly when he’d seen what was going on. 

He’d also proven invaluable a number of times when it came to identifying different qualities of wood, ages, a couple of diseased trees that they’d ended up burning, and how best to trim, square, plank, or rough cut the wood, depending on the end use.  They’d come close to using some really soft wood for floor planks at first, which would have been really easy to nail into place but would have rotted and splintered and come apart after not a lot of use.

Ramirez was there with Terrence Holcomb, the carpenter, half a dozen others.  When a couple of the guardsmen looked up, Stewart put his finger to his lips and they continued on with what they were doing, which appeared to be some sort of instruction.  When they were close enough, and Mallory could see that nobody would die if Kyle either jumped, dropped, or swung whatever it was he was holding--she struck.

“Sergeant Ramirez,” Mallory barked.

To his credit, Kyle only flinched a little.  He’d been holding a metal file, and he was in the act of setting it down when Mallory called his name. 
Man,
he thought,
I really thought I’d be able to dodge her longer than this.
  With a flick of his wrist, he tossed the file down as he came to attention and did an about face.

“First Sergeant Jensen?”

“Front and center!”

Ramirez was no slouch on the parade ground; he’d been doing this for a long time.  He was filthy dirty, covered in sawdust and, more recently, metal filings from sharpening a chisel, and had been sweating since he woke up.  When he marched over to Mallory, however, he made it look like he’d just stepped out of the Army’s version of GQ.  The top of his head never bobbed, his eyes never moved from three inches above Mallory’s head, he executed the quarter turn necessary to face her at the end flawlessly, and despite what he’d told Eric a week ago he looked like he could hold the perfect attention posture until Hell itself froze over.