299 Days: The 43 Colonels

by Glen Tate

  “During the rioting and crime, many parts of Tacoma were ravaged. Not our part of town,” Sergei said with pride. “We let intruders know that we would not tolerate anyone hurting us or our part of the city.”

  “You know,” Sergei said, very conversationally, “Many people think a gang is always bad. And, okay, my fellow bizness men were what you call a ‘gang.’ But a gang takes care of its own. We were Russians and we would take care of Russians. We used some of our strong young men to protect our community. Is that so wrong?”

  “We were no different than your suburban dads protecting their subdivisions. It’s just that we spoke a funny language.” And, Sergei thought to himself, we were much tougher.

  “Another advantage we had over typical Americans,” Sergei said, “was that we could quickly adapt our businesses to the conditions of the Collapse because we knew what to expect during such times. We understood how to run a gas station selling,” he paused, “perhaps, technically 'illegal' gasoline. We understood how people crave cigarettes and the prices they’ll pay. The same goes for vodka, too. We were not afraid to sell things that might be illegal, to do things without getting all the proper paperwork. We weren’t afraid to do all things necessary to survive in a collapse because we’d done it before.”

  “Things were going fairly well for us in the Russian section of Tacoma about a month after May Day,” Sergei said. “That meant other people wanted to take what was ours. We are used to that, too. First, it was the Mexican gangs, then the Vietnamese. Then it was the Tacoma Police Department and some of their FCorps friends. We handled all of these incursions.” Sergei didn’t elaborate because he knew that this proper audience of nice Americans couldn’t comprehend what it took to fight off rival gangs.

  “Apparently,” Sergei explained, “the Tacoma Police and FCorps were not happy with how we handled some of their people who tried to steal from us.” Sergei’s men had handcuffed eight of them, shot them in the back of the head execution—style and then dumped them at the entrance to a police station. “They decided to try to take our part of the city and punish us.”

  “I knew they were coming because one of our contacts in that police department—I called him ‘Brezhnev’ because he had bushy eyebrows like the former Soviet leader—was what you call a ‘para.’ He was a police officer who didn’t like the corruption and used his police resources to fight it, even when that meant going against his colleagues. But Brezhnev didn’t like the rogue Tacoma police officers and knew that he could get rid of them by working with us.”“Brezhnev told us everything we needed to know about the raid that was coming. It wasn’t even a fair fight. My young men are very familiar with a Kalashnikov,” Sergei said, referring to the AK-47, “and we successfully defended our neighborhoods. They never tried to aggravate us again.”

  “My community’s relationship with Brezhnev was very beneficial to both sides. A bizness man realizes a relationship only works when both sides benefit. We gave information to Brezhnev about rival gangs so he could arrest them and get promoted. This not only got rid of rival gangs, but it increased Brezhnev’s strength in his department. This strengthened our ally.”

  “About six weeks after the Collapse, Brezhnev said he might be asking my community to assist him more. He said he was on the Patriot side and that the Patriots seemed to be winning. He said he wanted us to be on the side that won. And we did, too. We liked the Patriots better than the Limas, but we are a practical people. We had to be to survive all we had been through back in Russia.”

  “I asked Brezhnev what he needed from my community. ‘Information’ he said. He wanted to know everything we knew about the corrupt officials, where they lived and worked, all about the other gangs, and all the people we knew who could help when the Patriots decided to wipe out the Limas in Tacoma.”

  “‘Nichevo,’ I said, which is ‘not a problem’ in Russian. We had all that information.”

  “We met with Brezhnev and he said the Patriots would raid some place in Tacoma on July Fourth. We now know that this was daytime raid on the Tacoma TDF.”

  “Brezhnev said that at noon on the Fourth of July, he needed my young men to go to the houses of all the corrupt officials we could. He said that would be our chance to get them and that there would be no police or FCorps to stop us. He would make sure of it.”

  “I told him that it sounded like we were a diversion for something bigger the Patriots had planned for that day. He smiled.”

  “We spent the next few weeks planning for our Fourth of July visits to various officials. We did this in between operating our businesses, of course.”

  “On the Fourth of July, right before noon, one of our young men who listened to the police scanners found out that the Tacoma Police and FCorps radios weren’t working and that there had been a fire at the main police station parking lot. The authorities were unable to respond to anything.”

  “That’s when I knew that Brezhnev was telling me the truth and that this was not a setup. Our young men went ahead with their assignments. We soon heard gunfire and explosions all over the city. We later heard that the Patriots had raided the TDF and freed many prisoners.”

  “We worked with Brezhnev all summer and into the fall. We gave him information and he gave us information. Together, we accomplished many things that need not be discussed.” This concerned some in the audience, but most understood why the Patriots worked with the bizness men.

  “Around Thanksgiving, Brezhnev asked me if we had any plans for New Year’s. ‘Konyeshna,’ I said, which is Russian for ‘of course.’ New Year’s is a big celebration in the Russian culture, much bigger than Christmas. Brezhnev said he needed another diversion from us on New Year’s Eve because a huge Patriot attack was coming then. I knew my young men would be disappointed because they wanted to be at the parties.”

  “‘The Mexican and Vietnamese gangs are working with the Limas,’ Brezhnev told me. ‘I know you guys don’t get along very well,’ he said, which was true. Those gangs had mistreated my community.”

  “I told him that my young men would hit the Mexican and Vietnamese gangs on New Year’s Eve if he supplied me with information. He did and we hit them.”

  “After New Year’s, we saw all of the Limas and the rival gangs leaving Tacoma. They were going to Seattle, which was good. Recently, they were completely gone from our area of south Tacoma. We have been protecting our neighborhoods with the help of Patriot soldiers, and for that we are thankful.” The audience applauded.

  “Thank you for recognizing me as a colonel,” Sergei said. “This award is really for my whole community, not me.” He paused.

  “I realize that I am not an angel. It would be easy for you to forget the work ethnic communities like mine did for you, but that would also be wrong. Thank you for recognizing the 'bizness men'.”

  Chapter 353

  Col. James Hammond

  (De Oppresso Liber)

  “And now for something completely different, again,” Ben said. “For our next colonel, a colonelship isn’t much of a promotion; he is already a Lieutenant Colonel. Rumor has it he might be promoted to a full Colonel—an actual bird colonel,” Ben said, referring to the insignia for a full colonel, which had an eagle on it. “But I doubt he minds being an honorary colonel, too,” Ben said.

  “One of the first people I met with when I came to Olympia from my hideout on the Prosser Farm was Lt. Col. Hammond, who was then, and still is, the commander of the New Washington State Guard’s Special Operations Command.” To some in the audience, the “New” Washington State Guard sounded odd. During the war, the Patriots called their state “Free Washington” to distinguish it from old Washington. Now that they had a state of their own, they renamed it “New Washington.”

  “Lt. Col. Hammond was in command of those spectacular irregular units that were so instrumental in the New Year’s offensive. He also commanded the traditional special operations units for our side. He commanded our Green Berets, and there were lots of the
m from JBLM, and our Rangers, lots of them, too. He also commanded our Air Force Combat Controllers and even a few small SEAL teams out on the Puget Sound. He had a lot to do during the war, and he, along with the men and women under his command, did them well.”

  “Lt. Col. Hammond’s contributions to the war weren’t just what happened on New Year’s day. Not at all. The reason New Year’s Day turned out so well is that Lt. Col. Hammond and others worked and planned and trained so long in advance.”

  Ben realized he was cutting into Hammond’s material, so he decided to turn it over to the honoree himself. “But Lt. Col. Hammond can tell you all about that as we hear from him next.” A tall, fit man in his dress uniform stood up, waved, and made his way to the rostrum.

  Jim Hammond looked like a special operations commander. He was muscular and even a little tanned, which was unusual in cloudy western Washington, and especially in the winter. He had been in the sun for so long on his deployments around the world, he had a perma-tan.

  He was in his early fifties and had gray in the half-head of hair he still had. He looked very calm and confident; not cocky, but confident. He had delivered some very important presentations and this one wouldn’t be nearly as hard as motivating troops.

  “Thank you, Governor,” Hammond said, always mindful of protocol and giving proper respect to superiors. “And thank you, Gen. Roswell,” who was his commanding officer, “for recommending me for this truly humbling honor.”

  “Governor Trenton described a little of what I did in the war, but I wanted to describe why I did it. Like so many others we’ve heard from today, I miss America.” The audience started applauding when they heard this Patriot phrase. “Like some of the colonels today who were not born in this country, I’ve seen how things work in the rest of the world. I’ve seen it all, and it always made me love and appreciate America even more.”

  “But each time I’d come back to the states after my last few deployments, I’d notice this country had slipped even more. Little things, like trash blowing around, or more fat, lazy, and pathetic people demanding handouts. I guess that last one isn’t so little, because it explains so much about why the Collapse happened and why we had to fight the war.”

  “I really noticed that things changed when I came back to JBLM as the Executive Officer of the First Special Forces Group. A general told us that our new mission, now that Afghanistan was just about done, was to train for domestic ‘insurrection.’ This particular general was not known for his sense of humor, so I couldn’t imagine that he was kidding around.”

  “He also told us that the ‘teabaggers’ were recruiting heavily from the special operations units. He said that First Group at JBLM had been ‘infiltrated’ by Oath Keepers. I thought this kind of talk was odd because no one under the rank of general ever said these things. At that point, a bird colonel, who I knew to be a good guy, spoke up and said that he would be on the lookout for any ‘teabaggers’ in the unit. That’s when it was clear to me that this formerly decent bird colonel was saying this because he wanted to be promoted to general, too.”

  “But the general and bird colonel were the only ones using the term ‘teabaggers.’ The rest of us just listened, saluted crisply, and carried on. I was seeing that the very top levels of the command were the only ones who seemed to be worried about ‘teabagger’ ‘insurrectionists.’ The rest of us were still concerned with the very real foreign threats, and domestic threats from Islamic terrorists, not NRA members.”

  “But I noticed that quite a few of the younger enlisted men, especially the ones in less elite units, had an entitlement mentality and seemed to go along with whatever political direction they were told. I remember during one of the government shutdowns—I forget which one—I heard a young private saying that it was the Republicans’ fault that his paycheck would be a few days late and that he had a tattoo he needed to pay for. He also used the term ‘teabagger’. That was the only time I’d heard it, other than the general and bird colonel.”

  “I was disappointed because it seemed like the split in the country had even entered the military. We pride ourselves on not being political, but just following orders—constitutional orders, that is.”

  “I’m a Green Beret. I’m trained for unconventional warfare, which is going into another country and working with indigenous forces. One of the things we’re trained in is politics. We need to persuade indigenous forces, but we also need to spot political problems brewing and head them off.”

  “What I was seeing from the general and the private, and from my special ops guys who were Patriots, was a political problem brewing. For the first time in my life, I was genuinely worried, scared, actually, that a civil war was coming to America.”

  “I talked to my senior officers and NCOs about this. They were strangely quiet. I knew why: they were ‘teabagger’ Oath Keepers themselves. I didn’t tell them this, because it would be unprofessional, but I was one, too. I could see where this was heading and it wasn’t good. And by that, I mean a fight was coming and, as a soldier who’s seen far too much war, I didn’t want a fight. Especially not here in America.”

  “The idea of an American civil war—I hate to even put those three words together in a sentence—was particularly disturbing because of what we Green Berets are so good at doing,” Hammond said, quickly adding, “if you don’t mind me saying so.” He continued, “We train indigenous forces how to fight, particularly as guerillas. That’s exactly what the Patriots needed, and we were right there to do it.”

  “I started thinking about how we would train American Patriots to be effective guerillas. If we could whip villagers into shape in countries where the citizens never had access to firearms, just think what we could do among a population that took down elk at 600 yards. My mind raced and I thought about all the ways I, and what appeared to be the majority of my men, could make a huge difference for the Patriots.”

  “I started to have beers and off-the-record conversations with the leaders, both officer and enlisted, in First Group. I started to create a list of guys who were as concerned as I was about a future order to take down ‘teabaggers.’ Almost all the leaders in my unit saw things the way I did.”

  “About two weeks before the Collapse, we were called into a briefing about a new, hastily-called deployment. I hoped it wasn’t what I thought it was. ‘We have been tasked with supporting civilian authorities in the upcoming civil unrest,’ the general told us. ‘Our specific mission is to neutralize weaponry possessed by identified insurrectionists.’”

  “We were stunned. We assumed this was a training exercise and the general was being extra ‘in character’ to convince us of the realism of the training. Someone made the mistake of asking if the general was kidding. He screamed at the officer. The general seemed very defensive, like he knew these orders probably wouldn’t be followed.”

  “I asked for more details about the operation, because I wanted to have my facts straight before I did what I suspected I was about to have to do. The general told us that in about ten days, an event, or series of events, would occur, causing the civilian population to become hysterical. He said there would be runs on grocery stores and crime would spike. He said we couldn’t expect any support from civilian law enforcement because they would be overwhelmed. He said twenty-four hours before the start of the event, civilian law enforcement, mostly federal agencies, would give special operations units lists of homes to raid. We were ordered to arrest the people listed, seize firearms, and take computers.”

  “‘Will we use force?’ one officer asked. ‘What do you think?’ the general yelled. ‘You think teabaggers are just going to give up their guns?’”

  “So that would be a ‘yes,’ then, sir?’ I said very sharply to the general.”

  “He shot back, ‘Yes, your men will use force.’”

  “I paused. I realized that if I resigned my commission right then that I would not be able to prevent this from happening. I would probably spend the ‘event’ and
maybe the rest of my life in the stockade and I’d be no use to anyone.”

  “I just nodded at the general. I didn’t say, ‘Yes, sir,’ because I would not follow that order, and I didn’t want to leave the impression with the other officers that I would. I needed to lead the other officers, and I would do so carefully and with a plan. I wouldn’t get in an argument with a general and then be out of the fight.”

  “After the briefing, my men came up to me. They wanted to see what I would do. ‘Talk to all your officers and senior NCOs,’ I said. ‘See what they plan on doing. Then report back to me.’ They left immediately, eager to find out what their men would do.”

  “Meetings of small numbers of officers and NCOs were taking place all over base, at least among the Special Forces soldiers who knew of the orders that were coming down. There was no way to contain this information. My officers and NCOs reported back to me quickly.”

  “Every single officer and NCO told me that they and their men would not obey these orders. One said, ‘Preventing this is exactly why we’re soldiers.’ Knowing that I had the support of my troops, I finally said, ‘We took an oath to defend the Constitution, not an oath to obey all orders of any kind. Our oath is to protect this nation against all enemies, foreign and domestic. Looks like we’ll be activating the ‘domestic’ part of that oath.’ My men all agreed.”

  “What I planned to do next was highly illegal and could easily get me killed or imprisoned, so I chose my colleagues, also known as co-conspirators, carefully.”

  “We realized that it would take the Army, even a nimble Special Forces unit, days to mobilize for what we internally code named ‘D3’—the ‘disturbing domestic deployment.’ We wanted to wait as long as possible before taking our action.”

  “We waited a week. During that time, we watched, to our amazement, as the Army actually planned to go door-to-door and seize Americans’ weapons. But we didn’t want to leave our soldiers with the impression that their officers and senior NCOs would follow these orders, and we didn’t want to overtly say we wouldn’t because that would make it impossible to carry out our plan. So we let our troops know that mistakes would be tolerated. That is, if people lost equipment, sent paperwork to the wrong place, showed up at the wrong times for briefings, it would all be acceptable. The troops understood exactly what was going on.”