299 Days: The 17th Irregulars 2d-6

by Glen Tate

  Lately, people were withdrawing into themselves, no longer chatting or hanging out. It was almost like people were afraid to be seen with other people or were afraid they were being plotted against. Every few days, the police would arrest someone at Camp Murray for espionage. Apparently, the Patriots—she caught herself; the “teabaggers”—had spies right there in Camp Murray. Right there, where the Governor was! Jeanie heard that entire military units were getting arrested. They were not following orders to engage in combat. She couldn’t figure out if the units were actively supporting the teabaggers or just sitting out the fight. They had hastily built a military prison at nearby Ft. Lewis. It was a giant outdoor tent city with massive rows of barbed wire and, she had heard, even landmines. But, she also heard, sometimes whole units would just be let out under some kind of deal. It was all very weird and chaotic.

  Jeanie didn’t want to go to one of those prisons, so she was very careful to follow all the rules. She constantly worried about the fact that one of her friends — ex friends — was a POI.

  It was lunch, but Jeanie wasn’t hungry. She was too worried and distracted to eat. She just sat there in the DFAC watching people. They would just silently eat some food and then shuffle off like zombies back to work. Jeanie noticed that people were eating less. The stress was doing that. She also noticed that occasionally, a person would not show up for a few days in the DFAC, and then she would later find out that they were in the base hospital suffering from some stress-related condition. Sometimes they came back, and sometimes they didn’t. She was starting to wonder if the “hospital” really meant prison.

  The longer she was at Camp Murray, the more she was beginning to believe that everything was a lie, and she had been one of the chief salespersons of the lies. At first, she believed everything she was telling the TV news, radio, newspapers, and internet sites. Then she started to question it a little. She’d only talk about the good news, because at that point, there was still some good news to tell. Slowly, though, the good news became more and more scarce.

  A few weeks into the Crisis, she would have to make up the good news a little, then a little more until she was full-on lying about everything. “The Governor asked me to tell you how much she appreciates your work at the (fill in the blank of some stupid little government agency). Things are going well. Excellent, actually. The Recovery is taking off. We’ll have things back to normal in a few months. The Crisis has been an unprecedented event for the United States, but we’ve always bounced back from adversity before. We’re Americans.” Blah, blah, blah. She could recite that crap in her sleep. Sometimes she actually did.

  Jeanie knew things were going badly when they had a meeting with all the staff to go over the evacuation plan. The National Guard colonel who gave the briefing said an evacuation plan was just a formality. They didn’t really expect to evacuate. But just in case.

  Jeanine quickly noticed that there were definite tiers of people who would get out first, like the Governor and her immediate staff, of course. They would go by convoy to Ft. Lewis and then by helicopter to Seattle. No one told her that; she pieced it all together.

  Next out would be the other officials, police, and federal agents. They would take a massive motorcade up Interstate 5 to Seattle. Then, after them, the last to go would be the expendable people, like her. No one told her that; she just knew it. They would get to ride up to Seattle in school buses and were assured they’d have an armed escort, but that was probably a lie like everything else.

  Jeanie looked at her organic fajita wrap and fruit cup. One thing was going well: the food remained top notch. They had the best of everything at Camp Murray. She looked out the window in the DFAC toward the surrounding area outside the wire. “I’m so glad I’m not out there,” she said out loud to herself. It was no longer weird for the exhausted and depressed people in that DFAC to mumble to themselves.

  Jason, the sharp young staffer from the Governor’s Office, was also glad he wasn’t outside the wire. He knew much more about how bad things were. In fact, he knew more than anyone else at Camp Murray. Sometimes his assistant would hand him a note containing a coded phrase that told him he needed to get on the ultra-secure phone or internet connection at Camp Murray. From the secure phone and internet, he would get information and report back to Washington D.C. on what was really happening in Washington State. The federal government, for whom Jason secretly worked, didn’t trust state officials anymore. The Feds only trusted their own people like Jason to give them the straight facts.

  Jason didn’t know where to start on his list of worries. He figured starting with the ways millions of people could die would work, as he sat in the DFAC eating lunch alone two tables over from Jeanie. The federal government had lost control of dozens of their nuclear weapons. Whole submarines were missing, but they couldn’t launch without a code from the President — at least that was the theory, but in all the chaos of the Collapse, who really knew?. The Russians and Chinese were not reassured. They said they would launch against the U.S. if a “stray” missile came toward them. They were serious. With some of the nukes in the hands of the teabaggers, and others for sale on the black market, who knew what could happen?

  No one was answering at a few of the land-based missile silos left in the U.S. arsenal. One of the Legitimate units tried to investigate a silo in North Dakota and got cut to pieces by the personnel defending it. The silo was either a teabagger unit or they decided to freelance although they couldn’t launch without the codes. They did, however, have a nuclear device, and it was rumored that they could be detonated manually, without the codes. Maybe it was for sale. No one knew.

  Aircrews had “lost” some of their nuclear bombs and air-launched nuclear missiles. They didn’t have the codes to launch them, but they physically had the weapons and, once again, there was the rumor that they could be manually detonated if someone knew what they were doing. And some of the people who had defected to the teabaggers knew how to detonate them. That was the rumor, anyway.

  The scariest nuclear rumor Jason knew of involved the teabagger national military commander, Gen. Warrilow. Jason only got bits and pieces of this from his briefings, but what little he knew was alarming. Gen. Warrilow had informed Washington, D.C. that he had several operable nuclear devices and asked if they needed a test detonation to confirm this. He asked them to pick the location. Of course, they wouldn’t, so he picked a spot off the East Coast where the winds would take the radiation out to sea toward Europe. The Patriots sent the latitude and longitude in the Atlantic to the Feds and an hour later, a satellite picked up a bright ball of fire and steam.

  This changed things. At first, the Feds were convinced that Warrilow would use the nukes on a northern city or somewhere in California, which was the heart of the area still loyal to the federal government. They were getting ready to surrender.

  Then a Loyalist spy in Warrilow’s camp distributed a communication that Warrilow was not prepared to use a nuke on American soil. The feds tested this by daring Warrilow to detonate one in the U.S. He declined, so they knew that he wouldn’t use the nukes—at least not yet. It was a stalemate. A nuclear stalemate on American soil. Great. But at least it was a stalemate.

  Even if a domestic nuclear war were off the table, Jason still worried about other things. Food production was not what it needed to be. They were distributing stored food now and basically living off warehoused quantities of food. They couldn’t get the fuel and fertilizer to the agricultural areas fast enough to grow the next crop. And even if they did, they couldn’t process it fast enough into flour, corn meal, etc. And even if they could process it, they couldn’t distribute it quickly enough. Even if they could distribute it, much of it would be stolen by corrupt officials. The list of “even if” problems went on and on.

  Thank God, Jason thought, that some people were growing their own food. Another relief from the supply problem was that the federal government quit delivering food to the Southern and mountain west states that
“opted out” of the United States. As everyone seemed to know by now, the Feds also quit trying to get much, if any, food to the disloyal parts of the loyal states, like the rural parts of Washington State. Besides, Jason thought, the rednecks in the South and other disloyal areas were good at hunting, fishing, and gardening, right? They better be. It wouldn’t take care of all their food needs, but would lessen the blow of not having federal semis rolling in. The last thing the Feds needed was massive starvation, even in the teabagger areas.

  Things were better in the loyal areas, but not perfect. The people in the cities were in for a very lean winter. They were doing well now, but that would be over soon, just in time for winter.

  The Feds had no plan. Well, no plan for fixing things. They had a plan for themselves: they would hunker down and defend themselves. Officials, and the people they did business with, would get enough food and would build up defenses to keep the regular people out. The regular people were on their own. Jason chuckled at the teabaggers: They didn’t want the government and now they got their wishes. They would be on their own this winter. We’ll see what’s left of the country after that, he thought. That was the federal “plan.” They would feed themselves during the winter and see what’s left of the country in the spring. This wasn’t going well long-term.

  Jason was working on the Washington State portion of this plan. They would evacuate the key personnel to Seattle from Camp Murray, which was on the very southern end of the Seattle metro area and dangerously close to some teabagger rural areas. They would keep Camp Murray and the surrounding Ft. Lewis in the hands of the Legitimates. They had a massive military facility at Ft. Lewis that was the only place they could house various equipment and personnel; they couldn’t move those assets. They also had a massive prison at Ft. Lewis and couldn’t just let all those teabaggers and criminals go. Besides, the Legitimate military brass insisted on having a big base to defend. They didn’t want everyone else to evacuate to Seattle — and leave them alone to fight off the Patriots. The military would try to literally hold down the fort. They insisted on having a giant “last stand” military base and that was Ft. Lewis.

  As a second priority, the Legitimates would try to build up the defenses for Olympia, the state capitol and a key stronghold. But, try as they might, they all knew they probably couldn’t keep Interstate 5 open all the way from Seattle down to Olympia, which would be the first city they would abandon when the teabaggers started the attack everyone was waiting for.

  Chapter 208

  “Battle Stations!”

  (July 27)

  Up in a remote inlet of the Puget Sound, the waterway surrounding the Seattle metropolitan area, Joe Tantori’s radio crackled very early in the morning. He was in bed, just waking up. Crap. Would he ever get a full night’s sleep?

  “Visitor coming straight at us,” the voice of the dispatcher said. “Armed vessel. High rate of speed.” The dispatcher was trying to be calm, but it was obvious he was nervous.

  “Battle stations!” Joe yelled into his radio. He jumped out of bed, got some pants on, and told his wife to get the kids and go into the safe room. His wife was already out of the bedroom and heading for the kids’ room, just like they’d practiced over and over.

  A second later, a siren went off in Joe’s compound. People were scrambling around, grabbing rifles and donning gear to go out onto the patrol boats. This was the first time they’d had a real “battle stations” call. They’d practiced it, but it was pretty much chaos now that it was for real.

  We might die today, Joe thought. Things had been going so well that it was inevitable that something bad would happen. Joe and his guys had been guarding the new bank in town and making a mint. They got a share of the safe deposit fees and were paid in gold, silver, ammo, food, and other valuables. Morale was sky high. Joe’s Marines, military contractors, and ex-law enforcement guys had just about the best jobs in the whole county.

  But Joe—an Oath Keeper and Patriot—had decided to take the huge risk of being a privateer, making him a person who basically stole Loyalist and pirate goods on the water and gave a portion to the Patriots. Like in the Revolutionary War.

  This obviously made the Loyalists and pirates very mad. And the amount he kept wasn’t much, making it not worth the risk, if business was all he cared about.

  But Joe wasn’t a businessman. He was a Patriot who made an honest profit. Well, “honest” in the sense of stealing from people who stole it from others. The Loyalists and the pirates were the same in Joe’s mind. One might steal from taxpayers via the law, but the other one stole it the old fashioned way.

  “Military vessel!” the dispatcher said. “Heavy machine guns fore and aft!”

  Oh crap, Joe thought. Probably the Loyalist Navy. Probably the first vessel in a wave of attacks. They were hitting at dawn, which made sense.

  “Second vessel,” said the dispatcher. “Civilian vessel with machine guns,” he said calmly. The dispatcher was calming his voice down so he didn’t worry the men, but his voice was the only part of him that wasn’t terrified.

  “Flag?” Joe yelled into the radio. The Loyalists would have the old flag on their ship. Probably.

  “Cannot verify,” said the dispatcher a few seconds later. “No verified flag.”

  By now, Joe was out of the house and in the parade grounds as they called the big common area in the middle of all the buildings. People were running around all over. The Marines seemed fairly calm. This was another drill, right? They’d done this a million times back at Indian Island Naval Magazine and the Bangor sub base where they formerly guarded huge weapon stockpiles before they went AWOL and joined Joe’s company. Joe’s military contractors and ex-law enforcement men seemed less calm. They hadn’t done drills like this nearly as many times.

  “Friendly! Friendly! Friendly!” the dispatcher yelled. He was joyous and relieved. He realized how emotional he was getting and calmed it down. “We have confirmation of friendlies,” he said very calmly.

  “Code blue,” Joe yelled. “Do not fire, though. Do not fire unless fired upon!”

  “Roger that. Code blue,” the dispatcher said. “Code blue” meant a vessel or vehicle that appears to be friendly, but still should be treated as hostile by aiming weapons at it. Don’t fire, though, unless fired upon.

  The siren blaring through Joe’s compound changed from a series of three short blasts signifying “battle stations” to two long blasts, which meant “code blue.” Hearing this change, the troops were relaxing a bit, but they were still ready to destroy whatever was coming into the dock. The Marines were checking the skies for helicopters. If the Limas were coming, it would be a coordinated air/sea and possibly, a land attack.

  “Flag confirmed. Gadsden. Friendly flag,” the dispatcher said, now fully in control of his emotions. The vessel had the yellow “Don’t Tread on Me” flag, which was a very welcomed sign.

  “Code blue,” Joe repeated into the radio, making sure everyone knew this was still a code blue, not a picnic. “The Limas could be flying a Gadsden. Code blue. Copy?”

  “Copy,” the dispatcher said.

  “Copy,” the voices of several squad leaders reported.

  The siren remained at two long blasts. There was no letting up just because of the color of the flag.

  A few tense seconds passed.

  “Radio confirmation,” the dispatcher said. “Confirmation of a friendly. Code used. Finally.”

  “Sirens to code yellow,” Joe said. “Yellow” as in Gadsden yellow, the color of the Patriot flag. A few seconds later, the sirens went to four short blasts. Everyone was relaxing.

  The first boat pulled into the dock. It wasn’t a military vessel as the dispatcher had first reported. Joe knew, first reports—especially when people are scared—are seldom entirely accurate.

  The second vessel, which was a thirty-foot civilian cabin cruiser and likely a transport, came in second. Both boats were seemingly harmless civilian-looking ones that would blend in wit
h the other boats on the water, which would come in handy when FUSA naval forces or pirates came near. The only disadvantage to the civilian boats was that that thin fiberglass in the hull wouldn’t stop a .22 bullet, let alone what was just about to fly from Joe’s compound if those vessels hadn’t properly identified themselves.

  Joe had about ten men behind sand bags with rifles and one M240 light machine gun pointed toward the approaching vessels. He walked up to the first boat in a sign of confidence, wanting to show his guys that he was fearless. He was reasonably certain he wasn’t going to die that day. Guess I’ll find out, he thought.

  “Lieutenant Commander Dibble sends his regards,” yelled out a sailor in FUSA Navy fatigues as he approached Joe. When he got closer, Joe could see the “U.S. Navy” tag was off the fatigues and had been replaced with one saying, “Free Wash. State Guard.”

  He didn’t look like Dibble, the Patriot naval officer who had landed there before and given Joe his “letter of marque” which was a letter from the commander of the Free Washington State Guard allowing Joe to operate as a privateer. The sailor was a younger guy, in his early thirties. When he finally came into the light and Joe could see him, the sailor was tan, suggesting he’d been out on the water a lot that summer.

  So far, so good, Joe thought. He smiled and relaxed. He cinched his AR tight against his chest. He wasn’t going to need it right away. Out of habit, he checked to make sure it was on safe.

  “May I ask why you didn’t radio ahead and let us know not to shoot you?” Joe asked. “You were a few seconds away from being blown out of the water.” He was serious. He was just about to order his men to annihilate the boats. Joe wasn’t pissed, but he was concerned. He didn’t want an incident like this to happen again. Next time, things might go poorly. Dying was bad enough, but dying from friendly fire was even worse. Not only are people dead, but those who kill them feel guilty for the rest of their lives. Besides the human toll, friendly fire destroys morale.