299 Days VIII: The War (13 page)

“Okay,” Grant said. He looked for his boots, which were already on his feet. He had
fallen asleep with his boots on. He found his kit and AR on the rack where the Team
stowed their gear the night before. He always had to know where his kit and AR were.
It was crucial to be ready to run out of the house with them at a moment’s notice.

Grant wiped the sleep from his eyes and headed to the kitchen. He wanted a cup of
coffee, but they only got coffee on Sunday mornings. A cup of water would do. He had
a caffeine pill on him, and he knew he’d need it. He needed to be fully alert at this
meeting. He took the pill and headed to the den where he found Ted and Sap with a
highway map on the desk. In the movies, military personnel planning a mission always
had a detailed topographical map or a huge computer screen. Not this time. All that
the rag-tag 17th Irregulars had was a standard highway map, the kind most people have
in their car. That would have to do.

Ted was telling Sap about Grant fighting him in his dream when Grant walked in. “Glad
no one got shot this morning,” Sap said. “We need every man for what’s ahead.”

Ted and Sap went over the plan with Grant, and it was obvious that they knew what
they were doing. Over the next few days, they would make sure every single person
in the unit was ready to go. This meant, ready physically, mentally, and emotionally.

They discussed the vehicles they’d need, what to pack in them, and how they’d carry
fuel. They went over comms for each squad. They didn’t have enough radios for each
squad, so they’d double up.

“Not ideal, but …” Ted and Sap kept saying. Grant was getting a little concerned about
how many times they said that.

They went over organizational structure. Who each squad leader was, which they all
knew by now. Who the medic was for each squad; not a fully trained medic, of course,
but the best trained and equipped one for that squad. They went over the three specialty
squads.

The first specialty squad was the 11B squad of infantrymen. In addition to the full
squad of ten 11Bs, there were six others with infantry experience. They went to the
other squads to beef them up. Most of the six were squad leaders of the regular squads.

The second specialty squad was called the HQ/Team. They were the HQ people: Grant,
Ted, Sap, and Jim Q., and then the Team, and Nick, the medic. Nick roamed around among
all squads, but was technically assigned to the HQ/Team squad. If this were a real
unit, the commanding officer and the NCOs would not technically be in a squad, but
this was an irregular unit, so they broke many standards.

Just as Ted and Lt. Col. Hammond had originally thought, the Team would serve as an
MP SWAT team and help with the civil affair things Grant would be doing. The Team
would also serve as the PSD(Personal Security Detail) for the unit’s leadership. If
things were calmed down enough in Olympia, the Team could be loaned out to be the
PSD for other vital personnel.

The third specialty squad was the “chairborne” squad, a play on the term “airborne,”
which referred to paratroopers. The chairborne squad were the administrative soldiers
who sat in chairs (not really, but that’s where the joke came from). They performed
supply and food service tasks. They were the least combat capable. This didn’t mean
that they were combat incapable; they could still kick ass on the average gang banger,
but compared to the other squads in the 17th, the chairborne unit was less capable.

This did not mean the chairborne squad was not valuable. An army travels on its stomach,
as Napoleon once said. The 11B squad, or the Team, could not perform well things when
they hadn’t eaten for two days. Similarly, they could not accomplish their mission
when there was plenty of food but no one to get it out to the hungry troops, or when
they need ammo but no one knows where it is and how to get it to them.

“The night of New Year’s Eve,” Ted said, “We’ll be ready to move out. We’ll need Rich
to activate Bennington and have Bennington take down the Frederickson Limas.”

“I’ll tell him,” Grant said.

“I’d rather have Rich come out here and get the whole plan,” Ted said. “I also want
him to see all of us so we can impress upon him that activating Bennington is more
than just an errand. It’s a vital part of this mission, and all these guys,” Ted said
pointing toward the troops, “are dead if Bennington doesn’t do his job.”
“If Frederickson isn’t cleared out,” Sap said, “we’re done for. We won’t get past
Frederickson,” he said pointing to the map, “which means we won’t get to Olympia to
help, or we’ll get there too late or too shot up to be any good.”

“We didn’t train this hard and suck up this many vital supplies,” Ted said, “just
to liberate some little hick town from a corrupt political boss. Nope, the Frederickson
part of this is too important to be handled by just telling Rich to talk to Bennington.”

They had a point, Grant thought.

“I’ll get Rich out here whenever you need him,” Grant said.

“We’ll let you know when we need to talk to him,” Sap said.

Next, they went over, in great detail, the path they would take to Olympia. It was
pretty much straight down Highway 101.

The plan, which they had come up with weeks ago, was to take a semi-truck full of
soldiers and a few pickup trucks.

The idea to use semis came from one of the guys in Ted and Sap’s former Special
Forces unit at Ft. Lewis. Semis blend in and hold an enormous amount of cargo, almost
100 soldiers, in fact. The Limas would be reluctant to fire on a semi because it could
contain a huge quantity of food that their civilians needed. This was not because
the Limas were humanitarians, they just didn’t want to deal with the rioting that
would come from blowing up a load of food that hungry people had been waiting for.
And the Limas would want to take a cut of the food, so they didn’t want to shoot up
their loot.

A few weeks earlier, Grant had told Ted and Sap that he knew just where to get a semi.
Grant would get one from Doug Smithson, the Pierce Point “postman” who ran the parcel
delivery system and owned a couple of semis. He was the one who donated the semi-trailer
to show the cops when Gideon brought the load of food in. Smithson was a solid Patriot
and could be trusted. He even had a few hundred gallons of diesel in his underground
tank.

Ted devised a back-up plan in case Smithson didn’t loan them a semi. He didn’t tell
Grant about the plan because it involved “persuading” Smithson to give up the keys
or just outright stealing the semi. He hoped it wouldn’t be necessary, but as Ted
often said, “This ain’t tiddlie winks.” Ted would kill to get that semi.

Ted also had a back-up plan in case no semis were available. It wasn’t ideal, but
they could use Rich’s short school bus. It didn’t hold nearly as many troops, so they
would supplement the bus with as many civilian cars and trucks as they could get.

During the planning a few weeks back, Ted, Sap, and Grant discussed the details of
moving the unit by semi. A semi-trailer has about four hundred square feet of floor
space, which is four square feet for one soldier. That would be enough standing room
for the unit, and a little room for gear. They would rig up some ropes for the troops
to hold onto during turns, accelerations, and braking. It wouldn’t be comfortable,
but it sure beat walking and getting shot at.

Each of the soldiers would be traveling very, very lightly. A rifle and, for most,
a small civilian backpack. Only a few had kit or military pouches. Most used student
backpacks that Grant scrounged up at the Grange and that some of them brought with
them from Boston Harbor. Grant drew the line at kids’ backpacks with cartoon characters.
He wouldn’t use those because they looked so stupid.

Civilian backpacks were okay with Grant even though they didn’t look “badass.” The
civilian backpacks, coupled with the civilian hunting clothes some had, reinforced
the reality that this was an irregular unit partly made up of civilians. But the civilian
backpacks did what they needed to do: they held a few magazines of ammo, a water bottle,
and a jacket. Not “tacticool,” but they worked. Besides, the soldiers wouldn’t be
marching for miles. Hopefully.

The unit would have a few pickup trucks. There would be one in the lead and one in
the rear, at least. They would split up the supplies among the trucks and the semi.
That way, if one were lost, not all their eggs would have been in one basket. Each
vehicle would have cases of ammo, plenty of diesel in various containers, some water
containers, and some MREs.

They didn’t have enough food for all the days they would likely be out in the field
on the march to Olympia. They only had forty-three cases of MREs, most of which came
in from HQ, so that was about five MREs per soldier. That was five days of food, tops.
They figured it would take at least that long, probably longer, to get to Olympia.
They would try to find some food on the way there—as in steal it, though they hoped
any Patriots along the way would come out and feed them. Franny would pack up a very
basic field kitchen so they could cook any food they acquired. They didn’t have a
solid plan for food; they were “free stylin’” it. This was not like traditional military
operations where Ted could radio in and have a helicopter deliver pallets of food.

The unit had plenty of diesel, but only a few gas cans. Luckily, diesel didn’t melt
regular plastic containers on contact like gasoline does. They could store diesel
in any plastic container, even old milk jugs. So, for the semi, they had diesel and
a way to carry it.

But, what about the pickups? Rich and Dan had diesel pickups and would loan them to
the unit. Problem solved. This way, they would only have to bring one kind of fuel,
and it could go into any plastic container. Thank God they had diesel vehicles and
a bunch of diesel.

Another “coincidence,”
the outside thought said, with some satisfaction.

(December 26)

The rest of the day after Christmas was taken up by more and more planning. Each squad
leader would need to know the details of the plan, so they were brought in and briefed.
This took a few hours. They had good questions and good suggestions, and some of the
final details got ironed out in the squad-leader briefings.

With the squad leaders knowing the date of the Tet operation, the cat was out of the
bag about New Year’s Day. That night at dinner, Grant and Ted would tell the entire
unit about the operation. Franny did some amazing things with the Christmas dinner
leftovers. It was a fabulous day-after-Christmas dinner. The troops were still in
a good mood from Christmas, so t seemed like a good time to tell them about Tet. Grant
stood up and started to talk.

“Well, ladies and gentlemen,” Grant said in his booming “command” voice that he was
getting better and better at using, “you’ve known this was coming. You’ve been waiting
to put your skills to good use. Well, we have a mission.”

It was silent. There was no whooping or bravado. Everyone was focused intently on
Grant.

“Very soon,” Grant explained, “we will be moving out. You’ve probably noticed that
the tempo of training and planning has increased. That’s for a good reason.”

Grant pointed at Ted, “We are supremely confident that you are ready to go. Ready
to fight. Ready to get even with these bastards. Ready to take our state back.” That
got a cheer. Grant gave the troops the basic overview of the plan. They would hit
the Limas on New Year’s at midnight, when they would be hung over and their guard
would be down. They’d move through Frederickson, travel in the semi down Highway 101,
come in behind the regular units into Olympia, occupy the state capitol, and perform
civil affairs functions, like getting basic services back up and running. They would
feed people and provide policing to control the gangs, all with an eye toward showing
the general population in Olympia that the Patriot way works.

Grant didn’t give all the details like the operation name or that Bennington would
take out Winters and the rest of Frederickson’s command and control in advance. They
trusted everyone in camp not to talk to the outside world, but there was no sense
in giving away details that the troops didn’t need to know right then.

“Sgt. Malloy, do you have anything to add?” Grant asked. He wanted to make sure that
Ted was seen as the detail guy. That was fair because he was.

“Nothing further, sir,” Ted replied.

There were questions about food and fuel for the trip, which other units would be
there in Olympia with the 17th, how long they’d be in Olympia, and what kind of resistance
they should expect. Ted answered the questions and emphasized that the Limas were
collapsing in Olympia. He described the intelligence, how people were fleeing Olympia
and heading to Seattle.

“Will we go to Seattle next?” one of the soldiers asked.

“That is not the current plan, but that could change,” Ted answered. He didn’t know
himself whether they would go to Seattle, but he suspected that they would not. It
seemed like the Patriots would let all the Limas gather in Seattle and then starve
them out. The Patriots, while currently stronger than the Limas, would be fools to
waste men and supplies trying to take Seattle. For what? To claim they controlled
some lines on a map? Big deal.