by Glen Tate
Gen. Roswell looked like a general. He had a slight limp. He never described how it happened, but Ben knew it involved a helicopter crash during the war. He had refused a Purple Heart for it, instead insisting that the pilot, who was killed, be given a much higher medal.
The General was smiling. He didn’t usually smile; it was unprofessional. He was a serious man in a serious business and ordering men and women to do serious things, but today was different. He was being honored and was thrilled to be recognized for what he’d done. He was humble, but couldn’t help repeatedly thinking about how amazing his life had been. He had been in the right place at the right time.
“At ease,” he commanded to the audience, jokingly. He was smiling and kidding around. His subordinates had never seen that, though Ben had.
“I’ll be brief about this because that’s what I’m used to,” he said. “I spent the last few days thinking about what I would say. Besides ‘thank you very much’ for honoring me, I kept coming to one thought: I was in the right place at the right time. Let me explain.”
“When the Collapse hit, I was a one-star general at JBLM. It was my last assignment before I retired. Lt. Col. Hammond aptly described the last few days before the Collapse on base. Units were bailing out and some were even arresting their generals.” He pointed to Hammond and gave him the thumbs-up. “That guy deserved it.” The audience laughed.
“I was one of the last 'real' generals, I’ll call them,” he began to explain. “I got my star right at the tail end of the merit period,” he said, and quickly added, “if you don’t mind me characterizing my promotion as merit.” He continued, “What I mean by that is, right after I got my star, promotions to general, and admiral in the Navy, became purely political and I mean, one hundred percent political. Now, let’s be honest, there had always been a little politics involved in getting promoted to general or admiral, but a few years before the Collapse, politics became everything.”
“Right after the merit period ended, my friends who were being considered for general would tell me that they were asked, directly, if they would fire on Americans. This wasn’t one question in a four-hour interview; it was the entire topic of the interview to get your star. A potential general was directly asked for whom he voted in the last election. This was an outrageous breach of military tradition, but the people running the federal government despised American traditions.”
“I won’t go into the details, but suffice it to say any general or admiral after my time was there to carry out orders of political hacks. Unconstitutional orders, in my opinion. We saw that with the arrest Lt. Col. Hammond made. That general was exactly what we had to deal with.”
“Well, the new generals were that way. The old ones like me were not necessarily political, although some were. My point is that there some good, as in non-political, generals left when the Collapse hit and that’s where we pick up the story,” he said with a smile.
“I knew who the good ones were, and the good colonels, and,” he said pointing to Lt. Col. Hammond, “the good lieutenant colonels at JBLM and nearby bases.” He paused.
“This proved to be valuable information,” he said. “Not only did I know who the good ones were, I was in the ‘club’; I had a star. Generals don’t typically listen to anyone who doesn’t have a star.”
“The first thing I did when the Collapse hit was have one-on-one meetings, off the record, with senior officers. I told them that I would not follow unconstitutional orders and I expected them to similarly decline to follow them.”
“I knew I was putting myself at risk of arrest and court martial, but I had a personal security detail of enlisted men I trusted. They’re still with me today.”
“My PSD, or personal security detail, were on orders to evacuate me to a pre-arranged location off-base the moment they detected a threat to me. I couldn’t have had these conversations with senior officers without knowing that I could escape arrest. So, without my PSD, none of this could have happened.” He looked in the gallery, pointed at some soldiers, and said, “Thank you, gentlemen.”
“After I had one face-to-face meeting with each of the senior officers, I knew I had to leave, and I did. I kept in radio contact with some of them on secure communication devices that my PSD helpfully provided.”
“I’m not sure I was persuasive, but many of the officers I spoke with eventually brought their units, or what was left of them, over to the Patriots or sat out the war. They didn’t do it instantaneously. Getting several thousand, or even a few hundred, men and women to commit treason and get them off a heavily-fortified military base is not an easy thing to do.”
“While we loved having military units come over to our side, it is easy to underestimate the value of having units just sit out. Every potential enemy soldier that sits out a war is neutralized and is no longer a threat. It’s the same as killing him—except, in this case, it’s far better because that soldier on the other side is an American and no one wants to kill him or her.”
“I have to admit, we cheated a little bit,” Gen. Roswell said with a smile. “But it’s okay to cheat in war. We knew from the intelligence we were receiving which units were leaning our way, the other side’s way, and which ones wanted things. Sometimes we could provide those things, and ended up scooping up several great units.”
“By the way, it would be easy to conclude that we engaged in bidding wars for units, but that’s not correct. When I say some units wanted various things, it might be relocation or to fight in particular areas. We weren’t buying off units. Besides, we were the underdogs; we didn’t have stuff to bribe anyone with.”
“As most of the units that were still effective picked sides or sat out, my role evolved from persuading units to leading the units we had. I formed my staff and we went into the war-fighting business. I picked fine officers like Lt. Col. Hammond and we all know what he did.”
“Your New Washington State Guard did a magnificent job during the war. I will not take any credit for their work. I understand that I get some of the credit for them, just because I would get the blame if it didn’t work out. That’s the nature of this job.”
“The third thing I did,” Gen. Roswell continued, “is set the foundation for the New Washington State Guard now and into the future. My mission is to give New Washington the best military possible. I plan on doing that two ways. First, I am a strong advocate, with the Governor’s support, of a militia-based military. We need constitutional militias, as in ones called for in the constitution and accountable to elected civil authorities, to be the backbone of our military, in my opinion. We saw what happens when we have large standing armies. Also, let’s be honest, we don’t presently have the resources to buy a fancy army with whiz-bang gadgets.”
“There is another thing I’m doing to form the foundation of the New Washington State Guard and, pardon me for saying it, I’m very proud of it. I’m leading by example. I’m setting precedents. I’m creating the army I wish we had back in the FUSA by showing everyone how that army would look. The professionalism, the strong ethical standards, and the biggest thing of all: we will never, ever follow unconstitutional orders.”
Chapter 364
Col. Stewart Glenn
(Teen Rebel)
When Gen. Roswell was done speaking, Ben went up to the rostrum to shake his hand. He wanted to thank him for all he’d done. He whispered in the General’s ear, “Thank God for you being in my state when all of this happened.”
“Yes,” Gen. Roswell replied in a whisper, “Thank Him.”
“Thank you, General Roswell,” Ben said into the microphone. “Our next colonel shows, once again, that it takes a blend of all kinds of heroes to beat tyranny. We have military leaders like General Roswell and now a self-described ‘computer geeks’ like our next honoree.”
“Col. Stewart Glenn is a shy young man and would rather not give a speech. We respect that. It just means that a politician like me gets to talk more, which I appreciate. Hopefully, you will
bear with me as I tell Col. Glenn’s story. He brings a new twist to the stories you’ve heard today.”
“Stewart is a teenager. He calls himself a ‘computer geek.’ He’s always felt more comfortable with computers than people because, as he said, ‘Computers are logical and predictable.’ He has a point.”
“From as early as he can remember, he was playing with computers. He grew up in a golden age for that. Computers were everywhere. Most kids’ toys had a computer of some kind in them. Stewart was born in the right era.”
“His passion was computer networks. He designed a simple one when he was ten and linked his several home computers together. This was the start of his network designs. At the ripe old age of ten.”
“He went into the gifted program in middle school and by the time he was fourteen, he had technically graduated from high school. He actually never attended college because, quite honestly, there was nothing in college he needed to know. He got a job at the former State of Washington’s Department of Information Systems in Olympia. He had his ideal job designing computer networks. What more did he need?”
“He had to take the bus to his job at the state computer department in Olympia because he wasn’t old enough to drive. He had numerous job offers from all over the place, but wanted to stay close to home because he didn’t have his license and the thought of living on his own was stressful.”
“Stewart didn’t have any human friends,” Ben said, not wanting to hurt his feelings. “Well, he had human friends, just not face-to-face ones. His friends were all online. They were hackers.”
“Usually, the word ‘hacker’ creates a negative image. They are the people who try to steal a person’s credit card information. Not Stewart. He and his friends hacked networks just to pull pranks. One time, they hacked a Department of Defense lower-security network to post a peace sign on the login screen. They thought it was funny. They were all young teenagers, after all.”
“People find it amazing, but it’s true: a teenager was operating the old state’s computer networks. He wasn’t managing them and wasn’t in charge of them; a bunch of technocrats were doing that. But Stewart designed them. He was the one who had a gigantic white board in his office with the state’s IT infrastructure sketched out on it.
“Stewart didn’t notice much when the Collapse hit, except that much of the internet was down during the first few days. Then it was back up and life for Stewart was pretty much normal. Stewart needed his daily routine to remain the same or he got agitated, and when the Collapse hit, there was one change in his daily routine-–his bus ride in to work. The buses quit running and, not only that, but one of the state’s most valuable employees couldn’t exactly be navigating through roving bands of thugs and rioting crowds to get to work, especially at a time when the state needed him most. An unmarked State Patrol car began to pick Stewart up at his house and bring him to work. The car stayed at this house to protect his home computers and him. He wouldn’t move into the secure housing on the capitol campus because it disrupted his routine. They told him he had to, but he had a meltdown and they realized that they needed to accommodate their computer network wizard.”
“Stewart still kept in touch with his hacker friends via the internet. One of these friends’ online name was Dark1776. ‘Dark,’ as I’ll call him, was, you guessed it, a Patriot. He was as fascinated with the Constitution as he was with computers.”
“Dark was chatting, via the internet of course, with Stewart about all that happened. Dark dared Stewart to start hacking the state computers and give the information to him. Stewart, who was fifteen at the time, accepted the dare. Remember: we’re dealing with teenagers here. The next time he was at work, Stewart provided the information to Dark.”
“Stewart knew what he was doing was highly illegal. He had long ago decided that he would never use his computer skills to steal from anyone or hurt people.”
“Stewart had never experienced the thrill of doing something against the rules. His whole life was about following rules: getting up at the same time, going to work at the same time, and eating the same things. He wanted to do something against the rules. You need to remember that Stewart was, and still is, a teenager. That helps explain what he did.”
“Stewart decided to have some fun and hack the state’s computers. He decided to give all that information to Dark. His motive: have some fun, break some rules, and accept a dare.”
“Today we’ve heard of many of the colonels who had deep moral, political, and religious convictions that led them to risk it all for the Patriots. Others had experiences with the Limas, tragic ones that drove them to our side. These are the traditional motivations for heroes who help us.”
“But life isn’t always that simple or predictable. People have different motives. Col. Rogers risked his life, in part, because of his materialistic wife. Adrienne was a party girl. Stewart was a teenager rebelling. These are not the traditional and, some would say, ‘pure’ motives to help our side.”
Ben looked at Stewart in the audience and said, “We’ll take them, though. Gladly. Thankfully. Joyfully. We’ll take any sacrifice, no matter the motive as long as it isn’t an evil one. And there is not an evil bone in Stewart’s body. He is a nice kid, who did some very important things for us.”
“The information Stewart collected and gave to Dark was absolutely invaluable. Patriot IT people at the national level were brought in and soon Gen. Roswell’s people and our intelligence people were reading Lima communications and data in real time. It was like we were sitting in their offices, watching everything on a computer there in the Governor’s Mansion. Not only could we see almost everything, but we could log in remotely to their computers. We could send fake messages that looked authentic, we could download and transfer data, and we could plant viruses to disable the state’s computers. All of it. We could do all of it, because of Stewart.”
“Stewart may not realize it, because he was just a teenager doing some pranks, but he put himself in enormous danger. He wasn’t the only brilliant computer geek at the Department of Information Systems. They realized they had a huge hole in their security. Stewart knew this, too, and purposefully planted decoys into his activities so it looked like the breaches were coming from elsewhere. Where? From Texas. This made the Limas think it was a national Patriot attack on their computers, instead of an inside job from the harmless teenage computer geek.”
“Stewart was briefly detained because the Limas wanted to see if the breaches occurred without him. They did. Dark continued the attacks from his location, leading the Limas to believe it couldn’t be Stewart. Besides, Stewart was the most non-political person in the entire office and he had no need for bribes because he lived at home with his parents. He was the very last person the Limas suspected. He was a sweet teenage boy, not a spy. Right?”
“As I said, we’ll take Patriots no matter what their motives, as long as they aren’t evil. Stewart made an enormous contribution to the war effort and put himself in danger, which is the quintessential criteria for receiving a colonelship.”
“Oh, and rebuilding. Will we utilize Stewart’s skills to build our New Washington computer system? No, we’ll pass. We don’t want someone to dare him to hack our system. Col. Stewart Glenn has earned our respect and we’ll make sure he can safely live at home and goof around on the computer all day long.”
Chapter 365
Col. Ruthie Wilkins
(Forward Operating Base Liberty)
“We have been jumping around with our colonels,” Ben said. “We purposefully mixed up the types of honorees to emphasize the point that it took all kinds of people for us to win and rebuild.”
“We move from something non-traditional, like a self-described ‘computer geek’ who essentially spied for the Patriots on a dare, to a more traditional hero, Col. Ruthie Wilkins, who started a Patriot military compound and airfield in eastern Washington… at her house.”
“She is quite an adept speaker, so I will let her de
scribe what happened. Take it away, Col. Wilkins.” The audience applauded.
A very attractive woman, a successful-looking mom in her forties, stood up and came to the rostrum.
“The Legislature told me,” she began, “that a colonelship only went to one person. There were no ‘Colonel couples,’ which is too bad because my husband deserves this with me. We are a team. But I understand why the Legislature had to pick one of us for this. I can explain.”
“My husband and I built up a reasonably successful business,” she said, understating the level of success of their very substantial real estate company. “We started with nothing and worked our tails off, sacrificing the whole way until, right before the Collapse, we had some resources. We thank God for this, for reasons you’ll realize in a moment.”
“We lived in Yakima, in eastern Washington. It’s actually in central Washington, but we’re right over the Cascade Mountains from western Washington. This is a key fact as, once again, you’ll realize in a moment.”
“We had this gigantic house that we built on one of our properties,” she paused, “which just happened to have a long airfield.” People in the audience were starting to realize why she was being honored with a colonelship.
“Not just a little runway for a small plane,” Ruthie said, “but a really long, commercial-grade airfield. My husband, Aaron, had a pilot’s license and thought it would be neat to have an airfield right at home. We always thought of it as a nice feature to the house, but we never realized how it could serve other purposes in the future.”
“My husband and I are Christians, and in the years leading up to the Collapse, could see very clearly what was coming. We knew we needed to prepare for our family and help others. We decided to focus a good portion of our charitable giving to building up our home as a prepper haven for other families. We built a bunkhouse, and then a second one, and stocked our home with supplies for several families. This would be our ‘glorify God’ project. We felt guided by God to have a place ready for visitors and to have that airfield. We had this sense that having a place for visitors and an airfield would later glorify Him. People hearing about how we planned for this would look back and realize that He was calling all the shots. The fact that you are listening to me today is the glory to Him that we knew would happen, we just didn’t know how it would play out.”