Chapter 29

Everything I knew about Sheila told me she was a gifted gamer with the skills of a chess master. She did not offer me a job to alleviate unemployment; instead, she appeared to be working a gambit of some sort. The uncertainty of purpose generated a wave of anxious observation while I awaited developments. The pawns on the board were changing positions of their own accord.

“She wants you to be her what?” Darlene giggled in bemused amazement at my news.

“Administrative assistant. She thinks I should be her number one gopher. I start tomorrow.”

I am, by nature, curious. I wanted to learn Darlene’s thoughts on Sheila’s proposal.

“That sounds like the boss. She’s got an excellent eye for people, and has the knack of putting them where they do the most good or the least amount of damage,” Darlene explained as she flipped a strand of hair out of her eyes.

“What time do you start work?”

“I’m not sure. She says her day begins at 5:30 in the AM. I’m supposed to do the math and figure out when to report. What time do you suggest?”

“If she told you 5:30, then I recommend you be there no later than 5:25,” Darlene advised.

“In any case, I need to crash and go to sleep. I’m dead on my feet.”

I yawned and stretched. The drug of choice from Colombia and the adrenaline high for my new job both ran out of steam. My get up and go had got up and gone.

At 5:15 sharp, I stood outside the door of Sheila’s office with two steaming cups of coffee. Martha from the kitchen prepared the commander’s coffee to the leader’s liking. I noted the recipe, black with a splash of cream and a dash of sugar.

“Here goes nothing,” I mumbled under my breath as I rapped on her door to the beat of shave-and-a-haircut two-bits.

“Very cute, come in and take a seat,” a naked Sheila said as she motioned me to enter and waved to the chair by her desk.

“I’m taking a shower, and I’ll be back in a few minutes. In the meantime, please familiarize yourself with our tables of organization.” Sheila said as she leaned over my shoulder to fetch a manilla folder from the corner of her desk.

The side of her soft breast brushed my cheek with warmth as she extended her body past mine to retrieve the paperwork. There were no accidents in Sheila’s world. The physical contact was deliberate. She was either playing with me or testing me, not that it made any difference. She was the chief.

Titillating as her touch was, I shook my head and studied the multitude of organizational charts for the colony. Thirty-seven black boxes representing each member of the Sisterhood and one grey box labeled “SkyWolf” adorned each page; my little box attached directly to Sheila’s.

The Sisterhood’s Tables of Organization were terrific. Sheila ran the show but served at the pleasure of the membership. Mostly, the Sisterhood operated like the pirates and buccaneers back in the age of sail. Piracy, despite its savage reputation, was a remarkably democratic institution. A pirate captain served at the pleasure of his or her crew.

Within the folder were scores of different organizational structures designed to meet every conceivable apocalyptic scenario. If the end came from war, the society plans were ready. Several of the women within the clan held degrees or training in radiation or nuclear medicine. Pandemic? Three tables of organizations stood prepared for deployment.

Organizationally, the Society of Sisters was a bureaucratic Rubik’s cube with the ability to morph and adapt to ever-changing circumstances. Like the Marines, every sister was first a rifleman. Riflewoman? Whatever. They knew how to shoot. About fifteen of Sheila’s kittens had the claws of expert marksmen.

While serving in the United States Air Force, I worked as a staff member in several command wide conference rooms. I was a classic REMF (Rear Echelon Mother Fucker) with the privilege of sitting in on countless high-level gatherings and briefings. I was assigned to the 5th Air Force’s operations center the day the North Koreans captured the USS Pueblo on January 23, 1968. It was a total cluster-fuck.

We stripped our fighting men of virtually all weapons to feed the war in Vietnam. The only airpower available were equipped with nukes. We had two armed responses: either start World War III or grit our teeth. We clinched our jaws and did nothing.

When it came to rank, I was an enlisted cellar-dweller with three stripes and an attitude. Nonetheless, I got to be a wallpaper witness in headquarters 5th and 7th Air Forces. I had the easy job of running the audiovisual equipment in the projection booth while generals with more stars on their lapels than the night sky planned and conducted top-secret meetings and strategic planning sessions.

Yeah, I get this. Sheila’s batch of mix-and-match scenarios was nothing more than the Sisterhood’s version of the Pentagon’s never-ending contingency planning. The brass developed plans for almost any imaginable situation. Want to invade Mexico or Canada? The plans were on file.

I got a thrill from reviewing Sheila’s tables. I loved strategy and tactics and had been an avid wargamer in my day. I shuddered to think of the hundreds of hours I squandered playing the games published by Avalon Hill and other war game publishers. Little squares of cardboard represented combat units from platoons to brigades to divisions and even army corps.

The appropriate unit symbol adorned each of the cardboard squares along with a set of numerical factors representing attack, defense, and movement. Our battlefields were map covered in a hexagonal “grid.” Each hex-square of terrain added or detracted from a unit’s movement and combat capabilities. The actual gameplay was a mind-war between equally determined fanatics.