by Glen Tate
“The ATF and other federal agencies had almost no presence in Idaho and other free states in the Mountain West. They couldn’t possibly inspect the Idaho plant to see if lower receivers were being made with all the necessary permits.”
“And they were being made—by the tens of thousands. Olympus Arms brought in special manufacturing machines from the Seattle plant for lower receivers that sat idle until the Collapse. When Col. Schultz fired up the lower receiver machines, and all the other machines they had for making the rest of the parts necessary to assemble a rifle, Olympus Arms was making enough rifles to supply plenty of Patriots.”
“Col. Schultz had already made enough money and was living comfortably in Idaho. He made a deal with the Patriots there: if they got him all the parts and materials he needed, and if they took care of his employees by feeding and housing them, he would make all the guns for free. They accepted the offer without hesitation.”
“The Patriots in this region and beyond started buying up AR-15 parts from the small companies that made them. Many of these small companies were volunteering their products at cost like Brian. The Patriots got the parts and materials, like a very particular kind of steel for making the barrels, to Olympus Arms.”
“Once Olympus Arms made the guns, the hard part was getting them out to Patriot forces. Many of the guns went back into the Mountain West states. They were used by the Patriots as payments for the parts and materials they obtained and sent to Olympus Arms. For example, a Utah foundry might send ten tons of specialized barrel steel to Olympus Arms, which was used to make 1,000 rifles. The foundry got 500 finished rifles to sell—and the market was booming for them during the Collapse—and the Patriots got to keep 500. The Patriots might use the rifles for their own forces in Mountain West states, or they might smuggle them into areas where there was more fighting, such as rural Washington State and Oregon.”
Ben pointed to another honoree waiting to be introduced and said, “One of the ways they got the rifles to western Washington will surprise you. We’ll be honoring him, too, shortly.”
“Between the start of the Collapse and the time the war ended for us, here in New Washington, Olympus Arms produced 102,556 AR-15s. And none of that could have happened if Brian Schultz hadn’t had the foresight to set up his plant to do this. But more than just setting up a plant, Col. Schultz was a Patriot and put supplying weapons to our forces above making money. For that, we honor Col. Brian Schultz.”
Chapter 346
Col. James McDonahue
(The Water Boy)
“It takes guns and intelligence to fight a war,” Ben said after the crowd finished applauding for Col. Schultz.
“One of our best sources of intelligence—and one who made a big sacrifice—is Col. James McDonahue, who went by the code name ‘Leprechaun.’ He exemplifies the attributes of the honorary colonelships we’re granting. He had a significant impact on the war effort, made a big sacrifice, and he was just a regular person.” Ben motioned for him stand and he did. He was about five feet tall and had red hair. He looked like a leprechaun or the “Fightin’ Irish” mascot for Notre Dame.
“James said he isn’t much of a public speaker, and some of the things in his story are very emotional, so he didn’t want to tell his story,” Ben said. “It is an honor that I can do so.”
“The first part about his story is that he’s a regular person. He grew up in rural eastern Washington, served in the Army for eight years as a mechanic, and then put in twelve years in the National Guard. He loved the Army, but realized a few years before the Collapse that the brass seemed to be gearing up not to fight foreign enemies, but rather domestic ones. He couldn’t be part of that.”
“When he left the Army, he became a personal trainer at the Valley, the largest gym in Olympia. It was where all the politicians and bureaucrats worked out—and did a tremendous amount of business. I know this firsthand because I worked out there and remember how deals were made in the locker room. ‘I’ll vote for your bill, if you agree to approve my budget request’ was a common discussion topic at the Valley.”
“James didn’t care about politics. He did his job and got people in shape, which he enjoyed. He talked with everyone and they all liked him. But with the economy slowly tanking, the Valley cut almost half the employees. He was really good at being a trainer, but had to take a position as the water boy.”
“James now filled up the water bottles for members of the gym, many of whom were important politicians and agency heads. Everyone loved him. They felt comfortable around him. I know I did,” Ben said.
“The big shots at the Valley got used to having James around all the time. He was just the water boy to most of them, so they didn’t think he was listening to what they were saying. They would be talking about some sensitive topic—maybe about how the state was running out of money—and keep right on talking when the lowly water boy came around to top off their water bottles.”
“James was pretty good at making people believe he was just a simple guy, but he was smart. Really smart. He kept up on current events, reading three newspapers a day, so he could make sense of the fragments of information he was overhearing. Over a few years, he was assembling a very comprehensive picture of what was going on in the state, and how bad things were really getting.”
“James had several contacts in Oath Keepers from his Army and National Guard days. He started to get political and economic intelligence to them. They, in turn, got the information to the Patriots who ended up forming the Think Farm.”
“At this stage, which was before the Collapse, the information James was getting wasn’t classified. It was just the juiciest political insider information the Patriots had.”
“As things deteriorated right before the Collapse, the topics being discussed at the Valley increasingly turned to things like investigations of ‘teabaggers’—James told me my name came up several times,” Ben said with pride. “The information James was getting was now more than just political.”
“With all the new laws being passed to combat ‘right-wing terrorism,’ it became a crime for James to pass along all this sensitive information. He had a choice to make: risk going to jail or stop feeding the Patriots important information.”
“But,” Ben said, “James was in an odd position because he heard, firsthand, all the plans they had and many of the horrible things they were doing. So he, perhaps more than any other Patriots at this stage, knew exactly what the threat was, what needed to be stopped.”
“This made his choice easy. He decided to become a spy. A water boy and a spy. He arranged a meeting with his Oath Keeper contact and a representative of the Think Farm, who was a Patriot intelligence agent and would become his handler. They came up with his code name of Leprechaun and made plans for how he would get information to his handler.”
“The methods they came up with for getting information out weren’t elaborate; they used good, old-fashioned field craft, as people in that business call it. A drop location on his way home, for example. They also gave James the numbers for a series of ‘burner phones,’ which were pre-paid contract cell phones that weren’t linked to a real person and could be thrown away if necessary. James could text to the burner phones. They worked out code phrases so his texts would not seem suspicious.”
“When the Collapse hit, most of the government people at the Valley stopped coming to work out. They had riots to put down and teabagger terrorist attacks to thwart. Many of them went into hiding. It was pretty lonely at the Valley for a few weeks.”
“James was disappointed because he wanted to get intelligence to the Patriots. But he put that out of his mind and kept filling up water bottles for the few remaining members at the gym.”
“But a month or two into the Collapse, the government people started to slowly return to the Valley. They felt Olympia was safe enough and life turned into a routine again—a routine of combatting the teabaggers, supplying Loyalist territories with supplies, and getting out pr
opaganda.”
“The Limas, realizing what a gold mine of VIPs were in the Valley at any given time, closed off the gym to the general public. Only high-ranking officials were allowed in and security was tightened to protect them. But no one ever thought to watch James.”
“Everyone has a touch of normalcy bias,” Ben said, “including the Lima officials at the Valley. They wanted desperately to get back ‘normal,’ and that meant working out and having James fill their water bottles. They came back and, just like the old days, started talking about which suspected teabaggers would be arrested, whether resupply from the feds would be coming in, along with when and where. A particularly golden source of intelligence were the discussions about which military and law enforcement units were staying loyal, on the fence, or defecting. All of this was discussed out in the open around the water boy everyone ignored.”
“James would remember all he could and then, during breaks or when he could slip away, make some quick notes. He didn’t bother to write his notes in code because his handwriting was so bad, only he could read it.”
“As the Collapse went on and Lima officials were increasingly being captured and assassinated, security clamped down tighter and tighter at the Valley. The new security chief there could not believe that a water boy—especially a military veteran—was allowed to roam around all day among the VIPs. The security staff started watching James on video cameras in the gym. It was boring most of the time because in an eight-hour day, he only spent a minute or two scribbling notes.”
“After a few weeks, the security people were noticing James taking notes. They searched his locker and didn’t find anything, which didn’t surprise them because they watched James taking the notes and putting them in his pocket.”
“The Valley’s security chief wanted to search James’ pockets, but the manager was hesitant. Everyone loved James; the manager didn’t want to accuse him of something as preposterous as being a spy. He was just a water boy. There was no way he could be a teabagger operative.”
“The security chief won out, and one day they cornered James and forcibly searched his pockets. They found a note in his handwriting, but couldn’t read it. James said the note was his grocery list, even though it didn’t look like one. They asked him what it said and he listed off some random groceries. A few minutes later, they asked him to read the note and he listed different groceries than the first time.”
“They arrested James and carried him out in handcuffs. He hated to see his friends at the gym staring at him like he was a criminal.”
“They took him to a temporary facility and began the interrogation. It lasted for hours or days; James isn’t really sure. They didn’t feed him or let him sleep. He had to sit in the same folding chair the entire time. He became so sore that the pain was excruciating.”
“He wouldn’t talk. He said that he lied about the grocery list because the note was actually some steamy thoughts he had about some of the female Valley members. This worked until they asked him to repeat the steamy thoughts, but he kept saying a different version of them. He hadn’t slept in days. It was hard to keep his story straight under those conditions.”
“Finally, James decided to go silent. That would tell his interrogators that he was, indeed, a Patriot spy, but they wouldn’t get any information out of him.”
“His interrogators knew that they needed to get the names of James’ handler quickly, before the handler could go into hiding. They started to beat him after he went silent, progressing from punches and kicks to hammer blows and pliers, then moving to box cutters and a nail gun.”
“James wouldn’t talk. Actually, as he confided in me, he couldn’t talk. He was so tired, terrified, and in shock that he couldn’t formulate the words. Besides, as he said, they’d already hurt him bad enough and would kill him soon enough, so he was determined to finish strong and not talk.”
Ben paused and looked down at James in the first row. “James, this is the hard part that we talked about. Is it still okay to tell everyone this?”
James nodded.
Ben continued, “James finally talked. There is no shame in this. He held out for hours, or maybe days, of brutal torture. He was—and still is—a very strong and brave man. But the Limas did something that he couldn’t tolerate. He wanted me to tell everyone why he finally talked.” Ben looked back down at James and said, “You did the right thing, James. Any one of us would have done the same.”
Ben slowly explained what got James to finally talk. “The Limas knew that Patriots were decent people and they used that against our detainees. They put James in a new room with two FCorps men and a young boy. They made James watch. They told him they’d stop if James talked. He did.”
The audience was horrified. It took several seconds for everyone to recover from the thought of what James—and the boy—had endured.
“James told them what he knew, which wasn’t much. He gave them the burner phone numbers, which they already had from seizing his phone. He gave them his handler’s code name, but that wasn’t much use. As it turned out, the handler had received warning from another Patriot spy that James had been arrested.”
“But what the Limas did know was that James was, indeed, a Patriot spy. At first, they wanted to make an example out of him, but they realized that they would embarrass themselves by letting the population know that a water boy at a VIP gym had been gathering crucial intelligence, and had done so for years completely undetected.”
“They had no more use for James. They planned on killing him, but he had befriended several very powerful people at the Valley. They intervened and asked that he be sent to prison instead of being executed. Off he went to the infamous Tacoma Warehouse Prison.”
“Here, he and several hundred other prisoners were thrown into large warehouses. No beds, no food, very little water. Many previous prisoners in the Tacoma Warehouse Prison died from bedsores after lying on the cement floor for weeks.”
“James got lucky, if you can call any of this lucky. He arrived there two days before Patriot forces liberated the Warehouse Prison. He was taken to a safe house in Lewis County, where he recovered and was a mechanic for Col. Volz, the Exit 79 Bandit. He has since relocated somewhere in New Washington, and travelled quite a distance to be with us here today.” The audience gave James a standing ovation.
Ben concluded, “James, your colonelship means something to me personally, because I knew you before the Collapse. I saw how kindly you treated everyone when you were the water boy and gym gopher. I’ve spoken with dozens of Patriot military, intelligence, and political people who have described to me in detail how the information you snuck out of the Valley allowed us to win. You are not a water boy. You are Col. James McDonahue.”
Chapter 347
Col. John Jacob Schmidt
(Radio Free Redoubt)
“We go from one regular person to another regular person, Col. John Jacob Schmidt,” Ben said. “He can’t be here today because he’s out somewhere in the Mountain West states transmitting his clandestine news broadcasts.”
“We’ve told the stories of colonels who provided money, medical care, facilities, weapons, computer networks, economics, guerilla fighters, intelligence, and commandos,” Ben said in almost a single breath. “What’s missing?”
“News we could rely on,” Ben said. “It was vital. It encouraged us, informed us, persuaded us, and motivated us.” Ben was speaking from the heart now, “I know from personal experience how uplifting it is to have reliable Patriot news. When I was hiding out on the Prosser Farm, after the EPU agents arrived and brought a shortwave radio, I would crave hearing Radio Free Redoubt and John Jacob Schmidt’s voice. Even though he broadcasted from the Redoubt, he knew about half of listeners were outside the Redoubt, in ‘occupied territory’ as he called it. If anything, the listener in occupied territory needed the information and encouragement more than those safely in the Redoubt.”
Ben realized he needed to explain “Redoubt.” “The
name comes from the redoubt, which is a heavily defended stronghold where the remnant of a people hole up and fight on. It’s a sanctuary. It’s not a hidden place, but a place the enemy dare not try to enter. It’s remote and self-contained. The American Redoubt was Eastern Washington, Idaho, Montana, Wyoming, and Eastern Oregon. That’s where John Jacob Schmidt broadcast from.”
“Oh, ‘John Jacob Schmidt’ isn’t his real name,” Ben said. “When I first heard ‘John Jacob Schmidt,’ I wanted to fill in the rest of the children’s song ‘John Jacob Jingleheimer Schmidt’ and say, ‘His name is my name, too.’ But that’s the brilliance of that name for a clandestine news station: ‘His name is my name, too’ connects the listener to John. The essence of political persuasion is connecting with the listener and letting them know that you’re just like them. John did this just by picking his alias.”
“But John did more than just pick a catchy alias,” Ben explained. “He started Radio Free Redoubt years before the Collapse. He took a lot of risk by broadcasting—he started on the internet and as a podcast—because he was a government contractor with a high security clearance. In fact, and not a lot of people know this, he was a Special Forces soldier before becoming a military contractor. His Special Forces training, where their small teams had to encourage and motivate large indigenous populations to support our side in a guerilla war, is where he learned how important news was. Small guerilla teams, even well-trained and well-equipped ones, still needed a unifying purpose to go out and do what they do. They need to know three things.”
“First, they need to know that they are not alone and are part of something much bigger. It’s easy to become disillusioned when you think you’re just a tiny speck. You need to know that you might be tiny, but you’re a piece of a mosaic that makes a full and beautiful picture.”
“Second, guerillas—and the general population for that matter—need to know the atrocities the other side is committing. A man or woman needs to have a reason to risk their lives, whether as a guerilla or a civilian soft supporter of the Patriots. And nothing motivates people to take risks than knowing that the other side is doing horrible things, and won’t hesitate to do it to them and their family. The laziest and most apathetic civilian will suddenly pick sides when he or she realizes a ruthless band of thugs is close by and ready to kill, rape, and steal—from them, not just from some other people far away.”