Patriots

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Chapter 1: The Crunch

“… nuclear warfare is not necessary to cause a breakdown of our society. You take a large city like Los Angeles, New York, Chicago—their water supply comes from hundreds of miles away and any interruption of that, or food, or power for any period of time you’re going to have riots in the streets. Our society is so fragile, so dependent on the interworking of things to provide us with goods and services, that you don’t need nuclear warfare to fragment us anymore than the Romans needed it to cause their eventual downfall.” —Gene Roddenberry

When the landing gear came down, Todd Gray gave an audible sigh of relief. He was almost home. The seventy-seat Horizon Airlines Bombardier CRJ-700 commuter jet started its downwind leg, with its engines throttled back to low thrust.Todd looked out his window at the familiar rolling Palouse Hills, a neat patchwork of wheat fields. This time of year they were shorn to a short golden stubble.By early October even the straw had been hauled out.Just after the plane touched down, the air brakes flipped up, and the engines reversed with a roar. The plane wheeled to a stop at the tiny Pullman-Moscow air terminal, just west of the state line dividing Washington and Idaho.When the plane switched to external power, Todd unbuckled his seat belt, but didn’t get up.He hated standing in the aisle, waiting for everyone to pull out their carry-on bags, and waiting for what always seemed like an eternity for the cabin door to open and for the passengers to shuffle out. So he sat and waited for the aisle to clear. He closed his eyes, said a prayer, and considered what had gone on in the last seventy-two hours.