Phil and Malorie greatly enjoyed attending the wedding and catching up with acquaintances. They were amazed at how quickly all of the children had grown up. As soon as they arrived, they immediately found Ray McGregor and his wife, Sylvia.
Ray was wearing a red-and-green Clan McGregor kilt. Sylvia was one of Stan Leaman’s second cousins. She was just sixteen years old at the onset of the Crunch and had come to live at the Leaman ranch after her parents had been killed by a Chinese drone strike when she was nineteen. She and Ray had married fourteen years after the Crunch. Ray and Sylvia had a son and a daughter, who were now ages four and six, and Sylvia was pregnant with their third child. Their son was named Alan Leaman McGregor and their daughter was named Claire Malorie McGregor.
Other guests from Canada included Stan Leaman; his wife, Katie; their grade-school-aged children, Philip Alan Leaman and Claire Malorie Leaman; and their infant son, Terrence Billy Leaman. Of their three children, Philip showed the most First Nations traits, with jet-black hair and dark-brown eyes.
Also attending were Ken and Terry Layton, and their sons, Dan, Thomas, and Gray.
Todd and Mary Gray were also there with their four children. There were also three generations of the Altmiller family, who had traveled from Florida.
The guests that were the least well-known by the wedding party were Dustin Hodges and his wife, Sheila. Sheila’s son, Tyree, wasn’t with them. He was a U.S. Army aviation warrant officer, deployed in the Africa campaign. It was hoped that the Chinese would be pushed out of Africa in the next few years.
Joshua and Megan Kim were there, but could be in Idaho for only three days. They were both working at Field Station (FS) Kunia, Hawaii, operated by the recently reestablished Army Security Agency. Joshua was the site manager and Megan wore two hats as both senior analyst and constitutional protection oversight manager. (The NSA and the military SIGINT agencies now had strict rules that precluded recording the conversations or intercepting the e-mails of American citizens.)
The wedding ceremony had a strong gospel message, and some great old hymns, which pleased Phil and Malorie. The decorations and place cards were all readied in the reception hall. The wedding cake had been made from two full sheet cakes that were cut and pieced together in the shape of North America and then frosted white. “Leo” was written in icing across Canada and “Chantal” was written across the United States. A red line of icing marked the Forty-ninth Parallel, bisected by the shape of a heart.
There was an enormous pile of wrapped wedding gifts on two tables in the back of the reception hall. Phil got a chuckle seeing the large number of distinctively long rectangular boxes. Ever since the ouster of the UN occupiers, guns and ammunition had become standard wedding gifts in both Canada and the United States. Just like giving gold as wedding gifts in India, guns were seen as a lasting store of wealth. They were also considered “invasion insurance.” Phil and Malorie added their own large, heavy gift boxes to the pile. They contained a full-auto German MG4; another box with a tripod, links, and small accessories for the same gun; a full-auto QBZ-95 bullpup and six magazines; an ammo can full of 5.8x42mm cartridges; and a pair of Glock 30S pistols.
Everyone was having a wonderful time at the reception. There was a lot of mingling between the tables, embraces, and laughter. As Ray was returning to their table with two cups of punch, he overheard his wife, Sylvia, saying to the bride’s father, “Ray has killed dozens of enemy soldiers—mostly with IEDs—but I’ve only seen him hit one man.”
“Oh, not that story again!” Ray objected.
“No, let her tell it,” Mr. Tolliver said.
Sylvia continued. “It’s true. You hush now, Ray, and let me tell this. We were at an RVCA meeting in Kamloops last summer. And there was a roly-poly young man there, bragging his tail off. Based on his age, I thought that he must have been in the resistance to the Chinese occupation. But he was claiming to have resisted the French, too. With Ray and me both standing there, this fellow launched into a cock-and-bull story about how he was with ‘a nine-man team that had destroyed eight French helicopters at the Williams Lake helibase.’ So Ray played along with him, and said, ‘Tell me more. How did you do it?’ And this poseur says, ‘I’ll tell you. We used compound bows to silently take out the three sentries, and then we used TH3 incendiary grenades that had been smuggled to us by a U.S. Special Forces team.’”
Mr. Tolliver cocked his head, and Sylvia went on. “So Ray says to him, ‘That was one fine bit of work, sir. I’d like to shake your hand!’ So when this fellow reached out his hand, quick as lightning, Ray punched him in the nose.”
Mr. Tolliver roared with laughter.
Ray looked sheepish. “Yep, I couldn’t control the urge, so I hit him. I’m afraid I made quite a scene that evening. There was blood going down the front of his nice white shirt. I said to him, ‘For your information, it was just me and my two friends who were there that night, not you and that mythical nine-man team. And by the way, we didn’t use archery equipment on the sentries, nor did we use thermite on the helicopters. But I’ll spare you the actual details because I don’t want you incorporating them into your own story, if you ever dare repeat it.’”
GLOSSARY
10/22: A semiautomatic .22-rimfire rifle made by Ruger.
1911:See M1911.
5Ws: Who, What, When Where, Why. (Intelligence report format.)
9/11: The terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001.
AAA: Depending on context, American Automobile Association or Anti-Aircraft Artillery.
Accredited/Accreditation: The formal approval of a Sensitive Compartmented Information Facility (SCIF) that meets prescribed physical, technical, and personnel security standards.
Acoustic Security: Security measures designed and used to deny aural access to classified information. See also SCIF.
ACP: Automatic Colt Pistol.
ACU: Army Combat Uniform. The U.S. Army’s predominantly gray “digital” pattern camouflage uniform that replaced the BDU.
AFB: Air Force Base.
AFCENT: Allied Forces Central Europe. (A military command.)
AGL: Above Ground Level.
AI: Artificial Intelligence.
Air Gap:See High Side and Low Side.
AK: Avtomat Kalashnikov. The gas-operated weapons family invented by Mikhail Timofeyevitch Kalashnikov, a Red Army sergeant. AKs are known for their robustness and were made in huge numbers, so that they are ubiquitous in much of Asia and the Third World. The best of the Kalashnikov variants are the Valmets that were made in Finland, the Galils that were made in Israel, and the R4s that are made in South Africa.
AK-47: The early generation Kalashnikov carbine with a milled receiver that shoots the intermediate 7.62x39mm cartridge. See also AKM.
AK-74: The later generation AK carbine that shoots the 5.45x39mm cartridge.
AKM:Avtomat Kalashnikova Modernizirovanniy. The later generation 7.62x39 AK with a stamped receiver.
ALAT:Aviation Légère de l’Armée de Terre. (Light Aviation of the Land Army.)
AM: Amplitude Modulation.
Ammo: Slang for ammunition.
AO: Area of Operations.
AP: Armor Piercing.
APC: Armored Personnel Carrier.
AR: Automatic Rifle. This is the generic term for semiauto variants of the Armalite family of rifles designed by Eugene Stoner (AR-10, AR-15, AR-180, etc.).