299 Days VIII: The War (3 page)

The sergeant checked his clipboard. “Yes, sir,” he said, saluting Grant. Grant wasn’t
used to saluting since they were under battlefield rules out at Marion Farm even though
no one was actively shooting at them. But it must be okay to salute here at HQ since
the sergeant saluted first. Grant returned the salute.

The sergeant told them to go to the building where they met the first time he was
out there. The Chief took off from the slip to make room for the next boatload of
meeting attendees. Grant and Ted started walking toward the meeting building. Grant
was amazed at how … “military” the place was. Everyone had uniforms – actual uniforms.
Grant felt a little out of place in civilian clothes, albeit contractor clothes, and
his tactical vest. Ted was a little more in place with his Army fatigues, but also
with a tactical vest and a baseball cap. Grant and Ted had their rifles, which made
them stand out. Except for the guards, most of the uniformed troops at Boston Harbor
did not have rifles.

There were several other contractor-looking guys among the much larger number of men
and women in actual uniforms. Grant assumed that the contractor-looking guys, who
all had beards, must be from guerilla units, like Grant and Ted.

The closer Grant and Ted got to the well-lit meeting building, the more they could
see people’s faces. There was a seriousness on most faces, not worry or stress. People
had their game faces on. It was go time. They were serious people about to perform
serious business. There was a slight air of nervousness. It wasn’t a lack of confidence,
rather an air of “this is really going to happen – and soon.”

At the door to the building, a soldier was checking rifles to make sure the safeties
were on, which Grant thought was odd. Of course Grant’s and Ted’s safeties were on,
but maybe there were some guerillas attending who had only recently learned how to
handle guns.

A second soldier, actually, an airman in Air Force fatigues with the State Guard name
tape, was at a card table at the entrance asking for each person’s unit and once again
verifying call signs.

“Take a seat wherever you’d like, Lieutenant and Sergeant,” the airman said.

Ted’s eyes lit up and he ran over to some guys and gave them a “bro hug,” the kind
of mild hug and pat on the back guys do. Ted introduced them to Grant. They were former
colleagues of Ted’s from his Ft. Lewis Special Forces unit.

They chatted for a while. Ted’s colleagues were doing the same as Ted, leading and
training guerilla units nearby. Some units were out in the rural areas even farther
away from Olympia and the Seattle metro area than Pierce Point. Quite a few were located
on or near the water, like Pierce Point. Some units were surprisingly close to the
Seattle metro area. One of Ted’s colleagues, unarmed in jeans and looking like a non-descript
civilian, just said, “I’m with some guys behind the JBLM line,” referring to the ring
of fortifications surrounding Joint Base Lewis McChord. “That’s about all I’ll say.”
Fair enough.

Ted’s colleagues talked about how they got from their areas to Boston Harbor. For
many, it was quite a journey. For the ones from rural areas, they had to take back
roads because I-5 was sealed off. Some had to walk from a drop-off point to a beach
where they were picked up by a boat from Boston Harbor. For the guy in jeans who was
operating from behind the JBLM line, it took two days and two fake IDs to get there.
Grant and Ted realized how easy they had it, just taking a short boat trip there.

Grant was reminded how strategically located Pierce Point was, especially with its
proximity to Olympia. No wonder Lt. Col. Hammond had been so excited to have a unit
out there, especially one built around personal friends of Ted’s. And one that was
running its local community so well.

The meeting started right at midnight. These military personnel were very precise
about time. No one strolled in late. “Early is on time and on time is late,” was their
saying.

The captain from the first meeting took the podium. Grant recalled that his name was
Morris.

“I need each irregular unit to count off,” Morris said.

The highest ranking person from each unit stood up and gave their unit’s number. There
were two units missing, the Fourth and Fifteenth. Quite a few of the commanders were
women, more than had been assigned as commanders at the first meeting. Grant wondered
why.

After the Sixteenth, Grant stood up and said with a strong and confident voice, “Seventeenth.”
They went to the Twenty Fourth and that was it.

Some in the audience, like Ted’s friend in jeans, didn’t count off. They must not
be in irregular units. They were probably “special specials” as Ted called them, meaning
“special special operations.”

“Thank you,” Captain Morris said. “We have representatives of all but two of our irregular
units. I would like to thank the women who are here in particular. Some of the units
could not get their commanders out here given the travel conditions so they sent women
who would look less suspicious to the Limas and could get through the checkpoints.
These ‘nice ladies’ wouldn’t hurt a fly, right?” People laughed.

“Now I give you our commander, Lt. Col. Hammond,” Capt. Morris said.

Ted and the other Special Forces guys clapped. They loved Hammond. Everyone else joined
the applause. That was not military custom, to applaud a speaker about to give a briefing,
but Hammond deserved it.

“Thank you, ladies and gentlemen,” Hammond said. “You know how a speaker will often
thank people for coming. Usually that’s just polite talk. Not tonight. Thank you.
Each of you. You risked your lives to be here. I’ll try to make it worth your while.
We have some important business to discuss.”

Hammond went from the podium to a large map of Western Washington, holding a pointer,
which was all he needed. A microphone was unnecessary with his deep, booming voice.

“We are here,” Hammond said, pointing a few miles from Olympia on the map. “You are
from all over here,” he said pointing to various points in western Washington.

“We’re going to take Olympia,” Hammond said, in a flat, matter-of-fact tone. The crowd
digested that for a moment and then some started to clap and cheer. Pretty soon, the
crowd was whooping and hollering.

“God damned right,” Hammond yelled in response to the cheering. “We’re going to take
the capitol and drive those bastards out.” This was followed by more cheering.

“This is our state and that’s our capitol!” Hammond yelled, accompanied by even more
cheering. This was no typical military briefing which would not include cheering.
But this wasn’t a war in some far off country, either. This was America. This was
a war for
their
country. They had been treated like shit by those bastards in Olympia. The government
and gangs had been taking whatever they wanted. More than one solider in that room
had a wife or daughter taken by the gangs. Nothing made a man fight harder than that.
Most people in the audience had friends or loved ones thrown in jail by the Limas.
Several had their spouses or children killed. Every single person in that room was
there to end it. They had been preparing for a long time to stop it. The hatred and
revenge had been boiling over and over. They had nightmares. They cried uncontrollably
at the kitchen table when they saw the empty seat formerly occupied by their dead
or missing family member. They could not sleep trying to keep out the thoughts about
what the gangs were doing to a wife or daughter. It was time to finally fix the mess
that had been made. It had to end.

Hammond let the cheers die down until it was silent. “Here’s how we’re going to do
it,” he said, with obvious pride. He had been working on this for months. “You’re
all a part of it,” Hammond said. “A big part.” Grant swelled with pride. He felt important,
not in an egotistical way, but in a small part-of-something-big way.

“But before I describe how we’ll do it,” Hammond said, “I will first tell you why
we’re doing it.” It was important for the unit commanders to know why they were doing
this, not just how.

Hammond shrugged and said, “Simple. You already figured it out: Olympia is the state
capitol. It’s symbolic, the seat of state government. I don’t mean symbolic as in
‘just a meaningless symbol.’ It’s hugely important to have the capitol. We will implement
an interim state government—we have one in place already and they’re ready to start
governing—and then we’ll rightly claim to be the ‘legitimate authorities’ in the state.
We’ll have pictures of the new management of the state sitting in the Legislature
and we’ll get it out to the rest of population who are trapped in Seattle and the
suburbs. Us sitting in the House and Senate chambers. That’s a very powerful message.”
Grant pictured that in his mind. It was exhilarating. It was why they were doing all
of this.

“That photo of Patriots sitting in the Legislature’s seats,” Hammond said, “will prove
to the remaining Limas that we’re winning. It will make it even more obvious to everyone
that Seattle is their only stronghold. More and more of them will go to Seattle, which
is fine with us. We’ll be herding those bastards to a big pen. We can either go take
Seattle when the conditions are right or just leave them in their pen, where they
can’t hurt us and screw things up like they did last time.” More applause exploded
from the room.

“Olympia as an objective makes sense on two more levels,” Hammond said. “First, as
I’ll describe more, Olympia is weakly defended. Most of their beef is up in Seattle.
Second, we have lots of assets south of Seattle, near Olympia. That’s the beauty of
JBLM being nearby. We have lots of Patriot FUSA troops here in the neighborhood.”
He smiled and pointed at members of the audience in military uniforms.

“Here’s the plan in a nutshell,” Hammond said, “We start off with irregular units
north of Seattle, in Seattle itself, and over here in the eastern Washington farms.
These units start diversionary guerilla attacks. We give the Limas a day or two to
move their forces there. Then we have regular units come from here,” he pointed to
several areas on the map, demonstrating that the regular units would be coming from
all over the area. It looked like they were pretty widely disbursed.

Hammond smiled and said, “And here.” He pointed to JBLM. There are Patriot regular
units at Ft. Lewis? What the hell?

“That’s right,” Hammond said pointing again at JBLM, “we have regular units right
under the Limas’ noses.” He let that sink in with the audience.

“I won’t give details,” Hammond said, “but there are bunch of sit-out units.” He was
referring to the term for units sitting out the war. Usually for a price. But apparently,
the Limas couldn’t buy ultimate loyalty from these units. Or the sit-out units were
figuring out that the Limas were losing and the sit-outs wanted to be on the winning
side. Either way, some of the sit-outs would be joining the Patriots, so who cared
what their motivations were. News that some sit-out units would be joining the Patriots
drew some more whooping and hollering.

“The regular units will spearhead the drive to Olympia, but,” Hammond paused, “their
main job will be to fight the Lima regular units rushing down from JBLM to reinforce
Olympia. We want our regular forces facing their regular forces, but that leaves lots
of the street-to-street fighting inside Olympia up to the irregular units. That’s
why you’re here tonight.”

Hammond paused again. He was about to launch into the main message, so he gathered
his thoughts.

“I want to start,” Hammond said, “with a philosophical overview that will explain
the operational details of why we’re going to attack the capitol.”

He put his finger up for emphasis and said, “The philosophical overview is the difference
between chaos and order.” That got some people curious.

“When you’re in control,” Hammond continued, “minimize chaos. When you’re trying to
take control, maximize chaos.” He let that sink in.

“At the beginning of any insurgency,” Hammond said, “the insurgents—by definition—are
not in control of the government. They are the underdogs. The rebels. They need to
maximize chaos. That’s what we do. Maximize chaos. Hit soft targets at first. Make
them divert troops from other battles to protect their soft targets. We also steal
all the shit we can haul away. Blow up fuel supplies. Disrupt communications. Get
their uniforms and, wearing Lima uniforms, go shoot them up close so they never trust
their fellow soldiers in uniform. That’s some powerful chaos. They have to devote
guards to protect themselves from people in their own uniforms. Chaos. Maximize it.”

Hammond paused and continued, “Then, after we’ve dished out all that chaos, we’ll
be winning. We’ll start to be in control. That’s when we’ll switch roles with the
Limas. They’ll be the insurgents and we’ll be the government.”

Hammond put his finger up again and said, “That’s when we switch to minimizing chaos.
When we’ve taken Olympia and occupy it, then we’re about order and stamping out chaos.
That’s when we set up law and order and feed hungry people and get them medical care.
We establish order and then we go after any remnants of Limas who, now that they are
the insurgents for a change, are trying to create chaos for us.”

“So our mission,” Hammond said, “has two halves: chaos first and order second.” He
gave his audience a few seconds to take that in.