Brett "Sparkie" Books - Communications Sergeant, Lone Wolf, Oklahoma. He is the geek in the group. He stands out more than anyone else. Sparkie graduated from the University of Central Oklahoma with a degree in General Engineering. He has the thinnest frame and because of that, is the best runner out of all of us. He wears thick glasses and a red bandana around his head when we are training. Sparkie loves to tell jokes. But they are not funny because they are any good, they are funny because he has to follow up and explain the joke. Just looking at him, you know he was born to operate a radio.
Frank "Preacher" Compton - Engineer Sergeant, Tishimingo, Oklahoma. Preacher is the moral conscience of the group. He is the calmest. Because of his background, we send him to churches to get a feel for each of the towns. He graduated with an Electrical Engineering Degree from Oklahoma Christian.
Salvador Martinez - Assistant Team Leader, Boise City, Oklahoma. Tough, hardworking individual. I am big into the concepts…I am a big picture guy, and he is fantastic at the details of the job. I am probably the closest to Martinez. He had been in the National Guard throughout college and was planning to go to Officer Candidate School after getting his bachelor's degree. He graduated with an Education degree from Northwestern University.
Bill "Q" Picket III - Team Medic, Spencer, Oklahoma. Probably the most intriguing guy on the team. Q’s dad was a Green Beret and had trained foreign troops in southern Africa. Later in life, the dad married a woman from a tribe in South Africa. He had to go through new customs to win the Zulu's approval. After retiring from the Army, his parents moved back to Spencer, Oklahoma. Bill Pickett spent the year with his family in Spencer but then would visit KwaZulu Natal (KZN) in the summer. He would do rodeos in Oklahoma and then go through Zulu rituals in the summer.
Bill is in a similar boat with me. We did ROTC together. He had an ROTC Nursing scholarship through Langston University before he was lured away by the Governor's offer.
Kelsey McNally - Operations Sergeant, Medicine Park, Oklahoma. Excellent at planning. Definitely the smartest guy in our group. Kelsey is a prodigy when it comes to maps. He is an avid rock climber and frequents the Wichita Mountains and Arbuckle Mountain. From driving in between Oklahoma mountain ranges, he has quite a bit of geographical knowledge of Oklahoma that will be of great value. He graduated from Oklahoma State with a degree in Geographic Information Systems.
Aldridge Blois - Legal Expert, Eufala, Oklahoma. Unique to our mission is the fact that we are technically a law enforcement agency and not a military unit, and because of this, we needed a legal expert Aldridge is the son of an Anglican Priest. He graduated from Oklahoma City University with a Bachelor's degree in Religion, with the intent to follow his father's path. This was before he decided to become an attorney and going on to graduate from the University of Tulsa's Law School. After graduating from Law School, Aldridge intended to enlist in the Army in the 18X program. When this opportunity came up, he gladly accepted. He passed the bar and will know how to keep us clean.
***
Chance's journal
October 201-
Our nine-man squad is fantastic! I look forward to working with these men. We are all about the same age and technical ability. Also, we all have an excellent level of physical fitness. Today, we spent a solid three hours at the gym. We did an hour of cardio, then slowed it down, before hitting the weights. I can barely lift my arms to type this.
Oh, yeah, I remember the name of the town the Governor mentioned earlier. It is called Ragnog.
CHAPTER 4: THE FRAT SQUAD
Gavan- Oklahoma
Disposition of Hugo Sheriff, Elfego Baca V
You know before the Death Squad, they were called the Frat Squad. I had a buddy in one of the towns who gave me the scoop. The rumor was that Governor Cass Masterson had selected nine young men who had successfully gone through rigorous testing in the Glass Mountains. The Governor was able to circumvent Posse Comitatus by hiring them as civilians and in a law enforcement capacity. They were young soldiers who had dedicated the past three-four years of their life to a strict training regime. When the Governor hired them, these young men suddenly had money, perceived prestige, confidence, freedom, and most of all, unchecked power.
The Frat Squad was not lazy. When they were in my town, they worked hard. In the early morning, I saw them running at least five miles, before heading to the local gym. For those not accustomed to being around infantryman, it was a sight to behold. These men ran their guts out before getting under the bar and lifting heavy weights. People always say you can't do both, that you have to focus on cardio or strength. These guys did it. I had another buddy, a serious power lifter, tell me that their workouts were slow, bodybuilder type workouts, and he was not impressed. I was.
The intent of their training to be clandestine was made vulnerable by their gym routines. The average citizen would not have looked at them and assumed they were part of some state-level secret operation, but their actions still made people take notice of them. People took note when they saw them and believe me, not everyone was happy with the attention they got. While they did nothing inappropriate, high school girls began flocking the local gym to watch them work out. My town is a small town with good people. They were not happy with their teenage daughters gawking at these obnoxious, boisterous, bare-chested men.
My area is not a town of tea-totters, we have bars and other drinking establishments. Still, we are not accustomed to the loud, raucous that a college town would be. The frat squad earned their moniker with their ability to drink until the bar closed. Plenty of fraternities drink but they drink a little. Afterwards, they still get up at 4 am and run five miles. Anyone who was a veteran guessed they were a conglomeration of marines and soldiers, and anyone who donned a set of ACU's knew they were grunts. After their workouts, they were less visible, but still easy to find.
Finally, after three weeks of being in our town, with a display of unchecked masculinity and immaturity, they made their offer to train my deputies and me. Before accepting, I went and observed their training. They read doctrine on training and counter-insurgency, but none of their passion for training had any real-world experience. There was no tactical patience in their movements, only a youthful rush for everything. I was impressed with their zeal and dedication to training, but what they needed was an old man.
They needed the old Platoon Sergeant, like Clint Eastwood’s character in Heartbreak Ridge. They needed an old man to take their passion and their knowledge and groom them. They needed a good kick in the pants, but they never got that. We trained with them, but in the end, I felt we needed to mentor them. Their tactics were excellent, and we did learn some small-unit tactics from them. When one of the members of the squad became involved with the county commissioner's daughter, the relationship quickly soured. The commissioner personally brought me into his office and told me to tail them and arrest them for a DUI, or anything else I could find.
The frat squad was supposed to be an organization that the rest of the state was ignorant of, but all bets were off when one of them got involved with the commissioner's daughter. I guess that it was the commissioner's daughter who alerted the group because they left town before we could successfully arrest any of them.
They left our town and continued their training. From what I heard, for a solid two months, they trained department, in various small incorporated areas and municipalities across Oklahoma.
The reader of this will be incredulous of what I saw, but it is the truth. When they were still in our town, I saw a man on a motorcycle. He had a clipboard and was taking notes on things he observed. This man wore no shirt but instead covered his upper body with a black leather vest only. He wore pants and had a black bandana on to hold his long hair in place. His arms, chest and neck were covered with an assortment of tattoos. I could see the look of suspicion and the self-awareness about him. From my experience, I immediately knew he was a criminal. However, at that moment, I had no probable cause to tell him to le
ave. A citizen was walking by this biker, and the biker stopped the man. The two had a conversation while he took down some notes. It appeared that, though physically intimidating, the biker spoke in such a manner that the Hugo resident did not feel uncomfortable chatting with him. Finally, the biker looked in my direction, and seeing my car and lights, he started his bike and drove off.
After he drove off, I went up to the individual and asked him what the biker wanted from him.
He told me that I should not worry because the polite biker was only enquiring about the nine men who had come into town. The man said the biker had seen them working out, and was curious about the workout routine. Telling him he had no idea what type of workout they performed, he proceeded to tell him everything that he knew about them. I do not believe that the Hugoian understood that the Frat Squat was a secret state agency, but he still described them to the biker to the best of his abilities.
I was alarmed, but not shocked. While it was strange that this Hugo-resident had a more respectful view of what appeared to be an outlaw biker than he did the squad of state agents, it was not surprising because of the way they presented themselves to the town. It was strange that a potential outlaw gang biker could, according to my resident, speak so eloquently. But it only makes sense that criminal enterprises would send out their scouts to gather intelligence on potential threats. My frustration with the Frat Squad evolved into an old man's concern for a group of stupid, young men.
Soon the squad began to move from re-training, after their failed attempt in our town, to their operations. The problem is, I don't think they learned their lesson. They did everything in almost the same way as they had in our town. They did, however, avoid the daughters of mayors in locations, so that allowed them to stay longer. The Frat Squad did something else that showed their lack of professionalism, they forgot their mission. Initially, they were supposed to go into small towns and teach local law enforcement small-unit tactics, so that a little town could combat the growing threat of the Sons and other cartel-like organizations. Initially, they did this, but in building their relationships, they also discovered they were great at developing intelligence. So for the first few months, they trained departments and gathered information on the enemies of Oklahoma all across the state. Then, with the freedom they were given by the Governor and a complete understanding of his intent, they decided to take direct action.
Governor Masterson was a politically smart man. He knew that by empowering local law enforcement, he would not be politically liable to any protests against law enforcement and that he would still be able to gather intelligence on the criminal elements in the state.
The Governor's course of action would have helped small towns, but his motives were not good. Masterson's purposes were made visible by the fact that, in a televised statement, he criticized one of the small town departments where he had sent the Frat Squad to train. Masterson was the one who had authorized the departments’ training, and then when they used those very techniques, he criticized them. He demanded an investigation which conveniently never happened. I don't know what the Frat Squad thought about this, but I honestly don't think they cared.
The Frat Squad was too excited for the job to realize that Masterson was using them. It was for political reasons that he wanted so much distance from this group. Police had become a political liability, and Masterson was not the type of leader to put his career on the line to defend the actions of others. He knew how imperative local law enforcement would be in a fight against cartel-like organizations, and he had also sent out the Frat Squad to see which of the local town governments could be trusted. Through the Frat Squad, he learned about Ragnog.
Ragnog had no industry. There was no oil, gas, or any agricultural practices taking place. It was, like many other towns in the state, a ghost town that once had a population of over 40,000, and then there was nothing. In the last few years, it started to grow. I heard rumors of gross misconduct of local government and business. The town’s level of corruption actually attracted criminals to it. Ragnog seemed to stay off the public radar, but the small towns in Southeastern Oklahoma, near the swamp in the Little River National Wildlife Refuge, knew about Ragnog and were afraid of the wretched micro-city. The town suddenly had money, with improved roads and infrastructure. Suddenly the town had enough resources to build its own academy for both police and firefighters. Ragnog was quickly turning into a dangerous and powerful place.
Governor Masterson knew that Ragnog was dangerous. He knew of the high-level corruption, and he assumed the town had become home to the cartel-like groups he was fighting. But, he did not call the town out. It is very apparent that a shrewd man, like Cass Masterson, would not pursue such a dangerous threat. If Ragnog could afford new roads, he knew that they could afford to send someone to kill him. So, the Governor did nothing. And, Ragnog grew.
The Governor may have ambitions bordering on dictatorship, but he was not a micro-manager. The empowerment of his subordinates gave him political freedom. He could criticize things that he had done himself, but still, maintain distance from it in the public eye.
Masterson did not interfere with the Frat Squad. Because if he had, he would have kept them out of Ragnog.
The Frat Squad may have been misguided, they may have messed up a lot of things, but I pity them and the hell in which they found themselves in that wretched town.
CHAPTER 5: RAGNOG
Gavan - Ragnog, Oklahoma
There have been many questions regarding Ragnog and the events that transpired there. While it is just news to others, to me, it was real life. I feel it is my duty to record the events so others can know what really transpired. These events are still real to me, I can even see these images in my mind and can see certain events as they unfold.
The squad and I had completed training in Black Kettle National Grassland in Western Oklahoma. We were technically and tactically competent. However, on multiple occasions we came up short logistically. Realizing our logistical base was always an issue so we targeted the problem the only way we knew how. We turned our resource preparation into a party.
Nu Metal blared as we prepared our weapons and equipment. Meticulous fingers loaded rounds into their 30-round magazines and then loaded these into the magazine-holders on our kits. We tried our vests on, walked around with them. We had to get a feel of our equipment.
This time we were not going to come up short on ammunition, supplies, or equipment.
Each member carried a large bag, like a hockey player, which contained their weapon and cache of ammo. We loaded it into the squad’s sleek, black SUV. The Frat Squad tried to be subtle, but they had too much flare not to stand out. Someone would not see them and immediately think they were tactical, but they all wore utility jackets and baseball hats, so the average citizen would know something was up. Overall their presence was not excessively tactical but if someone began to notice the details, they would have mentally associated them with law enforcement.
The squad loaded the equipment into their vehicle. It was going to be a long drive. The team had agreed that it was best to have as much space from the objective, Ragnog, as possible. The reason they wanted this much space from the objective, is so they could prepare for the assault, without spies from Ragnog discovering their preparation.
Before the Ragnog incursion, the squad had been training in the west portion of the state; they had been training in the Black Kettle National Grassland. It would be an almost eight-hour drive for them from Black Kettle National Grassland, to Ragnog, which was just outside the Little River Wildlife Refuge. The squad made sure to stock up on energy drinks before the long drive. Too proud to rest before their mission, the men downed as many energy drinks as they could to stay alert as they drove.
The Squad had discovered the existence of a synthetic drug known as Zeta. It was different from other drugs. Drug dealers made Zeta in Oklahoma, and as far as they could tell, it stayed in Oklahoma. It was a dangerous drug that attracted people
from all backgrounds.
Zeta was a strategic drug in the same manner cocaine was to Marxists guerrillas in South America. This drug provided an instant source of income to Ragnog. There were rumors of a motorcycle gang who would travel throughout the Oklahoma delivering the drug to suppliers. The Frat Squad's intelligence believed that the entire town was tied to the drug. The Frat Squad’s intelligence believed that it was drug trafficking that made the entire town so wealthy. The town was so wealthy it started its Ragnog Police academy, and created its certification for its emergency services. Law enforcement agencies complained to state-level leadership, but these concerns fell on deaf ears. Money from Zeta enabled Ragnog to buy friends. Zeta was not just a tool, it was crushing the state of Oklahoma as well.
The Dark Lord of Oklahoma Page 13