299 Days VIII: The War (35 page)

Ryan nodded. Good idea.

After getting some pent-up aggression out on that SUV, they all went back to Mark’s
truck.

“Have fun?” Pow asked.

“Yep,” said Wes. “We’ll let you break stuff next time.”

They all got back in the truck. “Safe to proceed,” Scotty said into the radio. “Vehicle
abandoned and neutralized.”

The Team took off, a little faster than they had before. Everyone felt like they were
going quicker and quicker, and conditions were becoming safer and safer.

They were heading toward the next overpass when raindrops started to hit the windshield.

“Great,” Bobby said. “It’s fucking raining.”

“This actually
is
great,” Grant said.

“Why?”

“Politics.”

“Politics?”

“Yep,” Grant answered. “We’re motivated. They’re not. They won’t stay out in the rain.
We will.”

“Are you serious?” Pow asked. “You don’t think they’ll fight just because it’s raining?”

“No, I don’t think they’ll fight nearly as hard now,” Grant said. “I think these National
Guard kids, who have no idea why they’re fighting us, will huddle under overpasses
in the rain and see our convoy as a place to get warm and dry after they surrender.”

They all thought about that.

“Gun fights aren’t just about guns,” Grant said. “They’re about the will to fight,
and politics affects that.” It made sense.

They saw another overpass and slowly came to a stop. They were four hundred seventy-one
yards to the overpass. It was almost light now. That overpass was much less scary
in the light where they could see there were no apparent tank columns waiting for
them.

In a matter of minutes, they had that overpass cleared. They found one of those log
obstruction booby traps, still all bound up with the ropes. Whoever was supposed to
release it, took off. Scotty radioed all this in.

“Proceed at full speed,” Scotty said.

“Wait!” Ryan yelled out.

Everyone froze and quickly turned toward Ryan.

“I got a body here,” Ryan yelled. Everyone took up defensive positions and formed
a hasty perimeter. They were ready for an attack. They weren’t sure why they’d be
attacked for finding a body, but they reflexively got ready for an ambush.

Scotty radioed in for the convoy to stop.

Ryan, who had done this several times, walked up to the body, looked for obvious booby
traps, and put the flash hider of his rifle on one of the dead man’s eyes. If the
apparent dead man was faking it, that would get a reaction out of him. It was physiologically
impossible for a flash hider on an eye to not produce a jerking reaction.

Nothing. The dead man had a gunshot to the back of the head. Nearby, was a yellow
hard hat.

“FCorps!” Ryan yelled. “Some FCorps douche bag.”

“He musta been the one who was supposed to pull the rope on the logs when we came,”
Grant said.

“But the gang bangers must have needed a ride,” Pow said. “His ride.”

“Yep,” said Scotty, who called in that there was an enemy body, but that the convoy
could roll on.

Ryan got the FCorps helmet. “We might be able to use this,” he said.

They all ran back to the truck. The rain was growing steadier. Their fleece jackets
were getting wet and heavy.

Seeing Ryan put his rifle in that man’s eyes was haunting Grant. This war shit was
nasty. There was something sacred about a person’s eyes; it was barbaric to stick
something in a person’s eye, even if he were an enemy soldier. Grant couldn’t remove
the mental image of Ryan jabbing a rifle into that man’s eye. War was different than
normal life. Different things happened in war, and jabbing a man in the eye was one
of them.

They got back in the truck and kept going. Grant got a bottle of water and popped
a caffeine pill. Even with all this excitement, he was getting tired and could feel
his senses were getting dull. He offered caffeine pills to everyone else, and they
gladly took him up on the offer. He made a mental note to get some to Wes and Ryan
in the back of the truck the next time they stopped.

They went along for the next three hours, crawling along and checking out overpasses.
They found another with the log booby traps, but no one to pull the rope. They didn’t
find a body this time. The Lima assigned to pull the rope must have just taken off
or been taken by the gang. Who knew? Who cared? The Lima wasn’t around to attack them
and the convoy could keep rolling. That was all that mattered.

“Next overpass is Delphi Road,” Grant said. He remembered that was the exit to Jeff
Prosser’s house and wondered how Jeff was doing on his farm. Was he okay? Was he hiding
any WAB people? Grant hoped he was.

Grant hadn’t thought about his WAB colleagues in a while. They were POI, like Grant.
They didn’t have a cabin to go to. Grant would have offered up his place, but things
moved too quickly when he shot the looters and had to bug out. Besides, Grant remembered
them as the guys who never took him up on his suggestions that they prepare for what
was coming. If he’d invited them to his cabin, they would have shown up without any
supplies. Grant had the room, and the obligation, to have a place at the cabin for
his family and the Team. Co-workers, even close friends, were a second priority. It
was just how it was.

Grant assumed Tom, Ben, and Brian had probably been rounded up in Olympia. God only
knew what had happened to them and their families. Grant tried to put it out of his
mind. Then he thought back to smashing the Escalade’s windows. That felt good. The
reason it felt so good was wondering what the government and the gangs had done to
good people like the Fosters, Trentons, and Jenkins. Killing those Lima bastards who
had done this to good people like them would feel even better.

No. Don’t enjoy that. You need to set an example.

Whoa. That came from nowhere. But Grant thought about it. He could see that path again,
like he had before. He was supposed to stop the killing once the bad guys had been
chased out. He was supposed to make this more like the American Revolution, with reconciliation
and rebuilding, than the French Revolution, with decades of terror and revenge killings.

Yes.

(January 1)

The rain sucked. Those wearing fleece were soaked. A few guys on the Team had Gore-Tex
jackets, which were very common in a rainy place, like the Seattle area. Gore-Tex
kept them dry.

But no one really noticed the rain. They were focused on clearing each overpass, and
in between overpasses, they were in the truck with the heater cranked and the windows
down, joking around and having the time of their lives. It was actually fun. Less
fun for Ryan and Wes in the back without the heater, but still fun.

“HQ reports that the exit after mile marker 32 is held by friendlies,” Jim Q. said
over the intra-unit radio. Delphi Road, Grant thought. That made sense. Grant knew,
from his visits out to Jeff Prosser’s farm before the Collapse, that Delphi Road was
full of self-reliant country people. They were a lot like the Pierce Point people.
And, being this close to Olympia, people on Delphi Road were probably being abused
by gangs and government officials coming out on looting runs.

“We’re about a mile from there,” Grant told Bobby. “We’ll take this overpass slowly.
There will probably be pickets and guards on it. Friendlies. Supposedly. But we’ll
see. So this one isn’t a quickie look-n-cruise like the others.” Everyone nodded.

They saw the sign for the Delphi Road exit. “Go ahead and park here,” Grant said to
Bobby. “We’ll walk it in to the guards up there.”

“You sure they’re friendlies?” Pow asked.

“Pretty sure,” Grant said. “HQ says so and, from what I know about people out here,
they probably are, but we shouldn’t assume. They could shoot at us by mistake. Proceed
accordingly.”

By now, the truck had stopped. Pow and Donnie set up to cover the overpass.

“We don’t need to cover this overpass,” Grant said. “We’ll need cover for the people
at the exit.”

Scotty’s radio crackled. “Standby for runner with code phrases,” Jim Q. said on the
radio. “Utility truck will be coming up on your rear to deliver the message.”

“Roger that,” Scotty said. He turned to Grant in the back seat. “Radios aren’t secure
enough, especially this close to Olympia, for us to relay code phrases.” Everyone
nodded.

“We’ll need Ryan and Wes,” Grant said. Pow was closest to the door so, without a word,
he got out and got them out of the bed of the truck.

In the few minutes it took for the utility truck to arrive, the Team and Donnie established
a perimeter, scanned the overpass, and planned cover points to leapfrog between.

“Vehicle approaching,” Ryan said as the utility truck was coming down the highway
toward them. “Utility truck,” he said.

The truck pulled up and a soldier got out and ran up to Grant. “Code phrase for friendlies
is ‘pumpkin pie,’” the soldier said. “Response code is ‘whipped cream.’”

“Roger that,” Grant said, “‘Pumpkin pie’ and response ‘whipped cream.’ Got it.” The
soldier got back in the utility truck and it sped back to the rear of the convoy.

Grant was walking to each member of the Team on the perimeter to tell them the code
phrases, and then he heard something alarming, the sound of gunfire and explosions
in the distance. The noise was faint, but unmistakable. It was like the gunfire in
Olympia off in the distance at the beginning of the Collapse, but way more shots were
being fired. Strings of automatic fire. Loud, explosive booms.. There was a full-on
battle going on a few miles away. Grant thought about it. This was a real war. A real
frickin’ war. He knew in his head that this was a war and that he was heading into
it, but now he felt in his heart that it was real. It sounded like a real war, like
some news report from the Middle East. It was much more serious than the small gunfight
between a gang and some police, like he’d experienced in Frederickson. This was a
real war, with real military equipment, including whatever it was that was causing
the loud explosions. For a moment, Grant thought his little irregular unit was no
match for the regular units with the real military equipment. He wondered if the 17th
was up to the task ahead in Olympia, where the explosions were coming from.

Yes, you are.

“Time to get to work,” Grant said, with that surge of relief that came when the outside
thought reassured him.

The Team and Donnie were hearing the battle for themselves. They were focused on the
directions the sounds were coming from and straining to see what was going on. A few
of them looked at each other and nodded slowly, as if to say, “So this is what a real
war sounds like.” The only one who wasn’t reacting at all was Ryan, the Afghanistan
veteran. He realized that everyone else was hearing these sounds for first time and,
just like him the first time, they’d be concerned about what lies ahead.

“Pretty light, actually,” Ryan said. “This ain’t shit,” he said with a shrug. The
shrug was an act. Inside, he was scared that a real war was happening in his own country.
He knew how much killing, maiming, and terrifying those explosions did. But that was
why he was heading into the explosions: to make them stop.

Everyone did a press check. Round chambered, safety on, and optics on. Every gun.
Of course. They checked their magazines. All were full. They hadn’t fired a shot yet.
They checked their magazines on their tac vests. All full. Press check of pistols.

Everyone knew that, while the people on the Delphi overpass were supposedly friendlies,
they were still people, and that meant the possibility of human error like friendly
fire.

“Radios turned down?” Grant asked Scotty and Pow. They checked. Yep. Radio volume
was turned down so only they could hear it.

Grant gave a caffeine pill to Ryan and Wes and then popped another one himself. He
needed it. He could feel his alertness decreasing. It was plummeting, actually. He
needed to be on the top of his game for this overpass.

“Can I take point, LT?” Ryan asked Grant, referring his lieutenant rank by the military
slang for it, “LT.” He whispered, “I’ve done this before.” Grant appreciated the whisper
so the other guys weren’t reminded that Grant had never done this before.

“Yep,” Grant whispered back. “Thanks.” Ryan gave a thumbs up and headed to the front
of the pack.

They fanned out and advanced down Highway 101 toward the beginning of the exit off
ramp. After a while—a long while because they were walking instead of driving—they
were getting close to the exit.

They grabbed all the cover they could, but there wasn’t much on the side of the off
ramp. When they got to the beginning of the exit, they leapfrogged up the off ramp.
They provided cover for those ahead of them and then moved forward themselves. They
moved like professionals; even Donnie.

They got about two thirds of the way up the off ramp when Ryan heard some bushes rustling.
He put up his fist, the hand signal for the group to freeze. They did, some noticing
the signal instantly and others taking a few seconds. Then they scanned around with
their weapons. They could feel that they were being watched.