299 Days: The Change of Seasons

by Glen Tate

  Brian got in the car and his driver took him back to the gate.

  “What’s going on?” the driver asked Brian as they pulled away from the Prosser Farm.

  “Nothing,” Brian said. “Nothing.” They were silent the rest of the drive to the gate.

  Brian got out at the gate and told Ned that the van could come in.

  Ned was surprised. He had assumed the van was there to pick up someone, not come into the farm.

  “Are you sure?” Ned asked. “There’s no taking this decision back.”

  “We’re sure,” Brian said. “Let them in.”

  Ned thought about it for a moment. A van load of some people who were new to the area. “I’d like to meet the occupants. I need to know who is out here,” Ned said.

  That seemed reasonable. “But you’re the only one who can see them,” Brian said, anticipating that the agents didn’t want everyone out there to see them. For all the agents knew, there were Loyalist spies at the gate.

  “Sure,” Ned said. Brian’s reluctance to let anyone else see the occupants of the van confirmed what Ned was thinking. These were Patriots of some kind. Probably more high-level Patriots needing a place to hide, Ned thought. It never occurred to him that the people in the van were there to protect some very high-level Patriots out at the Prosser Farm.

  Meeting the occupants of the van provided Brian with one final test so he could be reassured that this was safe. He wanted to meet the EPU agents to make sure they seemed OK to him. If they didn’t, he would tell the van to go back. Ned was right: there was no taking this decision back, so Brian knew he’d better get this right.

  Brian motioned for Carly to come out of the van. She obliged and walked up to Brian with her hands up.

  She looked depressed. She expected the worst.

  “I’d like to meet your friends,” Brian said.

  Carly started to jump up again, but remembered she had a lot of guns pointed at her, so sudden movements were a bad idea. She knew this was good news. Brian wouldn’t want to see the agents if he were sending the van away.

  Carly took Brian to the van. She was skipping. She couldn’t contain herself.

  “You’re going to love Brad, you know, Russ’s dad,” Carly said, talking a mile a minute. “And Jerry. He’s great, too. A former Marine. And Mike. He played football for the Huskies,” meaning the University of Washington Huskies. “Oh, and Chrissy. She’s great. Awesome with kids. Somehow manages to keep them calm even when there are people with guns all around.”

  This was the first time Brian got a good look at the van. It was a stretch white van with government license plates.

  Carly opened the driver’s side. There was a man in a suit. Brian hadn’t seen anyone in a suit for months. The driver seemed overdressed for going to a farm.

  “This is Jerry,” Carly said.

  “Pleased to meet you, sir,” Jerry said. From appearances, he seemed like a decent guy, though Brian couldn’t really tell the difference in just a few seconds.

  “What’s with the dress up clothes?” Brian asked. The directness of his question seemed a little rude, but he was entitled to cut to the chase and see if these people were going to murder him and his family. Polite chitchat needed to yield to something more important.

  “Oh,” Jerry laughed, “I’m used to being dressed up on protection details. Besides, we still have our EPU credentials, so we wanted to look the part if any Limas stopped us.”

  Jerry paused and then pointed to the back of the van. “We all brought suits with us for when Governor Trenton is in office.”

  Wow. That sounded weird. “Governor Trenton”? “In office”?

  Why would assassins dress up for a messy slaughter of women and children? Blood doesn’t come out of clothes. Why destroy a perfectly good suit to kill some people? Brian couldn’t believe he was thinking these things.

  Carly opened the van’s sliding side door. There were two men and a woman in the back seat.

  “This is Mike, Chrissy, and Russ’s dad, Brad,” Carly said. They all shook Brian’s hand.

  All three were also in suits. They all had a distinctive pin on their lapels, which was likely a way for EPU agents to identify each other. They looked like Secret Service agents.

  Behind them, were stacks and stacks of things; many were in protective cases.

  “Whatcha got back there?” Brian asked.

  “Communications gear,” Brad said. “We will be able to keep you and the Think Farm in contact.” Brad pointed at a different spot in the back of the van. “Lots of weapons. Mike’s a sniper. We have a ton of clothes, too. We need to look the part in a wide variety of settings.”

  “You guys know you’re going to a farm, right?” Brian said. They had passed the test. They could come out.

  “Roger that,” Brad said. “But it’s hard to get these guys out of a suit. They feel comfortable in them. It’s what they’re used to.”

  “That will change after they’re constantly stepping in cow crap,” Brian said. He felt that he had earned the qualifications of “farm boy” after his several months out there.

  “OK, you guys can come in,” Brian said. Carly started clapping.

  Brian looked at all of them and said, “Understand that we don’t really know who you are and we’re entrusting our lives to you. Don’t be offended if people are a little suspicious of you. Oh, and I told my kids to kill you if I tell them to. I’m serious.” He was lying, but wanted to leave them with the proper impression.

  They nodded. They’d never had to prove themselves to the people they were protecting before, though this was a very different situation than normal.

  “You got room in there for me so I can guide you in?” Brian asked. Carly hopped into the back so Brian could ride in the passenger seat.

  “Okay, let’s go,” he said. He had no idea if he was about to die in a few minutes or have the greatest adventure of his life.

  Guess we’ll see, he said to himself.

  Chapter 226

  “Embahla”

  (Late October)

  People were increasingly coming to the gate at Pierce Point and wanting in. FCard food was dwindling. It was becoming more and more common for shipments to the stores to be “late,” or not arrive at all. There were glitches with the FCard network system. The government blamed Patriot hackers, though it was probably Loyalist incompetence or corruption. People had heard that Pierce Point had food. And a medical clinic. Word traveled fast. So why weren’t there hordes of people at the gate?

  The problem that the gate visitors faced, and what was saving Pierce Point from being overrun, was that it was so hard to get there. It was a ten mile walk from Frederickson. There weren’t many people coming that far, especially when Frederickson had a somewhat adequate supply of food. The supply was adequate enough to make a ten-mile walk into the unknown a bad decision.

  Occasionally, a few people from Frederickson, hearing that Pierce Point had a medical clinic, would come to the gate and say they had a sick person in Frederickson and ask Pierce Point’s medical personnel to go back into town with them. That request was easy to turn down. Well, not easy, but understandable.

  Hungry people were different. “Spare a little food?” was harder to say no to than going into town to provide medical care. At first, in the summer, the gate guards would give people a little food and some water and then tell them to move along. But now there was less food in Pierce Point, so the guards stopped providing it.

  The exception was kids. The guards always gave them some food. Everyone still got water, but that wasn’t in short supply. There was a big creek right at the gate so people could drink from that. There weren’t so many people using the creek that it was contaminating the water. Yet.

  Al was doing a great job of managing the people coming in and out of Pierce Point. He was screening people who had relatives there or, in a few cases, owned property and were just now making it out to Pierce Point. He was also screening some people with skills.
He managed to get two engineers, a radio operator with equipment, and another EMT. All were let into Pierce Point, along with their families, and put to work.

  Several people appeared at the gate with loads of valuables. Gold, silver, cash, FCards, alcohol, cigars. Al assumed these were stolen. He couldn’t be sure; some people seemed like they had legitimately traded for the gold and silver and now wanted a place to stay in exchange for it, but there was no way of telling if the person was a criminal and got the loot that way. Al was not about to let criminals into Pierce Point, so he turned them away.

  There were increasing numbers of insane people walking down the road from Frederickson. It wasn’t clear if they were off their meds or whether they had cracked under all the pressure of post-Collapse life. The guards persuaded them to move along. Occasionally, it took pointing a rifle at them and using harsh language.

  Al produced a few soldiers for the 17th, or the “rental team,” as he thought it was. He found a former Army logistics soldier from a chemical warfare unit. Al hoped that there was no more need for chemical warfare specialists, but a soldier was a soldier and should have basic skills they needed out there. Al got the soldier’s information and learned that he was in the 23rd Chemical Battalion at Ft. Lewis. He provided this information to Grant who passed it along to Ted, who radioed HQ. They verified that the soldier was, indeed, AWOL from the 23rd Chemical Battalion.

  Vetting walk-ons to the 17th was time consuming, but vital. The 17th had to take all the precautions it could. One spy sending in the GPS coordinates of Marion Farm would mean a visit from a Lima attack helicopter that could kill a hundred troops in fifteen seconds. This was one of the biggest threats to the unit and merited some of the biggest precautions.

  Boston Harbor was loaded with FUSA military intelligence soldiers, who were known as the “MI guys.” Instead of spending a lot of time and resources trying to spy on the enemy (who was right out in the open), the MI guys worked primarily on vetting recruits. Boston Harbor had one of the few copies of the very top secret Oath Keepers membership list and it was invaluable for this work.

  Boston Harbor could only usually vet the walk-ons who claimed to be former military. Civilians, and even law enforcement, were a different story; Boston Harbor had almost no way to verify if they were who they said they were.

  The non-military people walking up to the Pierce Point gate—and that was the vast majority of the walk-ons—could be anybody. The Limas would undoubtedly try to infiltrate guerrilla units. They’d be crazy not to; this was standard counterinsurgency strategy. Then again, the Limas had their hands full trying to keep the population fed and under control; maybe spy-versus-spy games were a luxury for them.

  The Pierce Point gate walk-ons were told they were joining a rental team. This was mainly done to lessen the odds of a walk-on who was a spy getting too much information. They were told that the authorities thought the rental team was illegal so they had to be prepared to be living outside the law and they couldn’t leave the compound once they got there. They all agreed. They just wanted a job. They fully knew they were joining an outlaw group, but not one as outlaw as a guerrilla unit. There was “outlaw,” and then there was “treason.” The Limas didn’t care much about outlaw security contractors, but full-on guerrilla fighters were another matter.

  At this point, the walk-ons couldn’t be trusted with the information about the true nature of what was going on at the Marion Farm. This was very dishonest—asking men and women to join something they weren’t fully informed about—but Ted and Grant didn’t want to risk telling these strangers about the 17th. It is said that truth is the first casualty in war. Grant was learning exactly what that meant.

  Once the walk-ons were in the unit, their vetting had only begun. Just because they had passed Al and Grant’s initial screening, or the vetting by Boston Harbor, didn’t mean that they were good to go. Ensuring the loyalty of personnel took much more time and planning than Grant had expected it would. He had, somewhat naively, thought that Patriots would just swarm to the unit because of the righteousness of their cause, Ted would put a rifle in their hand, and that would be it. But it was more complicated in real life.

  One walk-on posed the biggest security concern. He was Kevin Olson, a former cop from Lakewood, which was near Ft. Lewis. Olson was single, but said he had a girlfriend back in Lakewood. He was about thirty and in great shape. He appeared as someone who could make a good soldier.

  Al had screened Olson as best as he could. Olson said that he had left his police department at the beginning of the Collapse when he refused to follow an order to confiscate guns. Or so he said. There was no way to tell if Olson was telling the truth. Olson had a cop ID card (but not his badge, which he said had been taken from him when he left the force). So half of his story, the part about being a cop, seemed to be true. The other half, the part about being a Patriot, could not be verified.

  Al asked him why he never joined Oath Keepers. Olson said that he didn’t want to risk his job. In the run up to the Collapse, police departments were laying off cops left and right. Any little thing, like being in Oath Keepers, would be used to get you fired, Olson said. He said he generally supported Oath Keepers, but hadn’t been “political.” His father and grandfather had been police officers and he wanted to be one, too. He just wanted his country back so life could be normal. He didn’t really care about politics.

  Olson’s claim that he refused to follow illegal orders was also impossible to verify. Grant interviewed Olson at the fire station by the gate. Olson didn’t know it, but Grant had Al sitting in the next room, out of sight, with the door open so he could hear everything Olson told Grant. This way, Al could verify if Olson gave the exact same account of the story about refusing the illegal order.

  Olson told Grant the story about the day after May Day when he was told at roll call that due to all the “terrorist” violence, civil unrest, and crime—and the “vigilantism” in response to it—his department would begin to confiscate firearms. At first, they would take firearms whenever they saw them, like during a traffic stop. Phase two would consist of going house-to-house and rounding up guns.

  Olson said there was an audible gasp in the briefing room when his lieutenant was explaining the second phase. The cops, including Olson, knew they were dead if they tried to round up guns. They might last a couple of days out there on the streets. By that point, May2nd, cops across the state were routinely getting shot trying to take guns. And not by clean cut NRA members. They were being murdered by the gangs. Well, at least the gangs that were not protected by the police.

  On top of all this, returning vets and others profiled as possible “terrorists” by Homeland Security—which included people with NRA and Don’t Tread on Me stickers on their vehicles—were reluctantly shooting cops at checkpoints. The vets and others with “right-wing” stickers knew the cops had targeted them and they would rather die in a shootout than get taken in, or “black bagged,” as they called it. That term referred to the authorities putting a black bag over someone’s head and taking them away. To Olson’s knowledge, there were not any “black bag” operations going on, just checkpoints to make the public think everything was safe. But, those checkpoints were leading to dozens of cops getting shot. It was a bloody, ironic mess.

  Olson told Grant that the Lakewood police quickly realized that an order to round up guns or manning a checkpoint was a death sentence. Everyone knew it. Losing his job didn’t seem so bad by comparison. Besides, he could join one of the many “security contractor” firms his former cop buddies were hastily forming.

  During roll call, Olson said, one of his sergeants, Tom Hurley, stood up and said he would not follow the order. The lieutenant, knowing this would probably happen, fired Hurley on the spot and asked for his badge and gun. Sgt. Hurley was not surprised. He had expected it. Hurley complied, handing his gun and badge to the lieutenant. Sgt. Hurley saluted the lieutenant and walked out of the room.

  Olson said he and
about a quarter of his shift did the same. Olson got up, took off his badge, unholstered his pistol, and formed a line with the other officers who were refusing the illegal orders. When Olson got up to the lieutenant, he saluted and handed over his gun and badge. Olson then walked out of the building and called his dad, apologizing that he had broken the family tradition of being a cop. His dad told him he did the right thing.

  Grant thought Olson was either telling the truth or was a very good liar. Olson made eye contact with Grant the whole time, didn’t tense up, and didn’t use his hands or arms to subconsciously shield himself from Grant. He depicted all signs of truthfulness, but a Lima spy would be a very good liar, so Olson’s truthful body language didn’t seal the deal with Grant.

  Grant thanked Olson and told him he could go back outside. A minute later, Al came in.

  “He told me the exact same version,” Al said. “Right down to the name of the sergeant and calling his dad.”

  That gave Grant an idea. He asked Olson to return and Al went back into the next room.

  “Do you have your phone?” Grant asked Olson.

  “Yes, sir,” Olson replied and got his phone out. “Haven’t used it much lately. The system is usually down.”

  Grant looked at the recent calls. They were mostly to “Dad” and “Sherisha”; no obvious calls to the Limas like a Homeland Security/local police “Fusion Center.” And the calls only went back to May 15.

  “So they don’t go back to May 2nd, huh?” Grant asked Olson. “I wanted to see if you had an outgoing call to your dad on that day.”

  Olson smiled. He appreciated some good police work, even if it was being used against him.

  “Sorry, I can’t go back that far on this phone,” Olson said.