White Wasteland by Jeff Kirkham (best color ebook reader .txt) 📕

out gravel for roadwork. A hundred years later, that little excavation became a gravel yard, which then became a gravel plain, that then became an encampment for a toy soldier army, made in the vague image of the Boy Scouts.

Men milled up and down the road grids of the encampment like scouts at a jamboree, laughing and trading stories. With two or three hundred men positioned properly, they could defend against any incursion from Salt Lake, given the ridges and the choke point canyon carved out by the river. A single road—the I-15 freeway, cut through the same gap as the Jordan.

But against artillery, the southern guys would get shredded, since high ground towered over the camp on both sides of the gap. But against a ground force moving up the I-15 freeway—Chad figured it would be easy ground to defend. The Redwood Road entry point into Utah Valley was only 350 yards across the Jordan River, which meant the entrance to the valley, ridge to ridge, was less than two rifle shots across.

Chad began to see the symmetry in the Mormon’s naming schema for their bodies of water. He’d studied the Bible enough to understand that the Mormon pioneers wanted this place to sound like the holy land of Israel.

Like the Sea of Galilee, Utah Lake was a freshwater lake, filled by a half-dozen burbling brooks from the snow-dappled peaks of the southern Wasatch Mountain range. Like the River Jordan in Israel, Utah’s “River Jordan” drained the freshwater Utah lake into a “dead sea”—in this case the Great Salt Lake. Like the Dead Sea in Israel, water that went into the Salt Lake never came out, except to seep into the ground and leave a salt crust and a hearty stink.

The similarities between the Mormon promised land and the Jewish promised land probably lent the aura of destiny to Brigham Young’s choice of Utah for a home. Mormons, Chad had begun to learn, took every opportunity to call dibs on the hand of God.

Chad waited in a camp chair under a shade fly for “the big boss” to arrive. Given that the daytime temperature hovered around 40 degrees, and given that the sun was quickly disappearing behind the hills to the west, a shade fly probably did more to make the encampment appear military than it did to provide actual protection from the sun. He had no problem with that. The more these guys play-acted, the more they would need him. The more they needed him, the quicker he would rise.

Anyone with military experience would see that the fundamentalist army were ass clowns—extremely nice people who were being told to make war. To Chad, it looked like they’d built a movie set of what a military base should look like, and tied it all together with tailgate camping supplies. Nobody seemed particularly prepared to camp in the snow either. One stiff storm would make pea soup of the entire encampment.

The commander’s tent was a “Springbar,” whatever that was. Why they used tents, Chad couldn’t imagine. There had to be a thousand recreational vehicles abandoned in Utah Valley. Why would they camp in tents? Chad had seen the RVs parked outside the encampment, with everyone inside the encampment living in tents. Tents were less comfortable than RVs. Eventually, comfort won wars. Discomfort cost lives. It didn’t take long in the sandbox to learn that lesson. That’s why the U.S. forward operating bases in Afghanistan and Iraq built a Taco Bell as soon as humanly possible.

Chad guessed that the Mormon leader didn’t want RVs parked higgly-piggly inside their encampment because it would look messy. Pitching tents in straight lines probably conformed to his sense of order and aesthetics.

But that orderliness apparently collapsed when it came to uniforms. Everyone walking around the camp wore different camo. Chad understood the challenge: there was no single source of camouflage in southern Utah sufficient to outfit an army. Camp Williams had burned to the ground and Tooele Army Depot probably didn’t stock fatigues. For the most part, the men in camp wore hunting camo, because that’s what they had in their closets. The Lehi, Utah Cabela’s was a stone’s throw from the encampment and they’d probably pillaged half the camo from there. A mishmash of camo in a war would definitely cost lives, though. Knowing who to shoot and who not to shoot started to matter fast when the bullets flew.

He’d seen all he needed to see to get the big picture: it was Amateur Hour. Somewhere at the tippy top of the org chart, a control freak was making the calls. Chad had seen it before. But he didn’t mind It’d do just fine for what he had in mind.

“Good afternoon, Mister Wade.” An athletic gentlemen in his fifties with salt and pepper hair and silver sideburns approached with hand outstretched. “My name is Elder Mitchell Clawson. I’m told you served as a Navy SEAL.”

“Yes sir,” Chad returned the handshake. “I completed my service in 2015 after two deployments with SEAL Team Three. Are you in charge?”

The man shook his head. “I’m just another cog in the machine—just here to serve. We all answer to the prophet and he answers to God. I don’t mean to be rude, but if you could confirm your military credentials with my staff, it would mean a great deal to me.”

“Roger that, sir.” Chad went for his backpack.

“Later,” Elder Clawson waved Chad back to his camp chair. “I’d like to hear your story first.”

Chad took that to mean the commander wanted to know more about the northern Mormon church, probably from a military perspective.

The commander pulled up his own chair and Chad began his tale from the moment of his arrival in Salt Lake City by prop airplane on the day the gangbanger attack. He kept details about the Homestead vague, focusing instead on how the northern Mormons had raised an army and defeated the gangbangers near Temple Square. Chad wanted the fundamentalists to take the northern Mormon