I turned to the Major and asked, “Whiskey Tango Foxtrot.” The universal military question of What The Fuck.
“Looks like two ten man, well trained, fire teams. They took out the Black’s house, Amy’s house, Gomez who was on perimeter patrol and our two house guards. This was a well-coordinated attack and if it weren’t for your dogs and lights we’d probably all be dead. The attackers were all armed with incendiary devices and their plan was to take out the guards and burn down your house with everyone in it. These were professionals based on their tactics and their gear. I’d say SWAT. We have been hearing rumors that one of the Tacoma crews had a SWAT team as their muscle but I wouldn’t have believed it until I saw it.”
“The Blacks and Amy?” I asked with a trembling voice.
The Major shook his head. “They used knives sir. It isn’t pretty. I am sorry I failed you, sir. I underestimated our adversary and almost paid the price with both our families’ lives.”
The Major turned with tears in his eyes but perked up when a new voice came into his headset. All I heard was “Yes sir. No sir. No sir and 0600, yes sir, over and out.”
“It looks like we lost the Fire Chief, sir. This crew came here directly from downtown. They are based out of Tacoma and were planning on taking out all four community leaders. They have maps and layouts for Mr. Stutz, Bujacich, the Chief and you sir. They were planning on decapitating the entire command and control of your community. They were coordinating with the Olympia capital gangs and it appears the Governor’s bunker was breached and all hands were lost. The General would like to see you, the Captain and Mr. Stutz and will be sending a boat to Mr. Bujacich’s compound at 0600 this morning sir. The Bravo team from downtown is coming here to protect your family and home.”
“Will you bet your family’s lives on Bravo team Major?” I asked, looking him straight in the eye.
“Yes sir I am and will,” said the Major with confidence.
Doctor Reynolds came up to me to inspect my arm after he had checked out the wounded soldier, Randy and set Marcus’s leg fracture. I looked at him with a raised eyebrow. He replied, “The soldier took a shot to the wrist and will need some extensive surgery to repair it. He is stable. Randy had a blunt force trauma to the chest that stopped his heart. He has one hell of a bruise and three cracked ribs but no internal bleeding. He’s damn lucky he had a vest on, you know CPR and the firefight was over quickly. Marcus has a compound open fracture to his tibia and fibula but there is good circulation to his toes. He will need a cast. Your arm is going to hurt like all hell for the next six weeks since it went right through your bicep muscles but it missed the bone and just missed your brachial artery. I’ll sew it up and if you promise to keep it immobile, I’ll put it in a sling instead of a cast.”
“Thanks Doc,” I said. “Just use a local if you have it. I need to take a walk in the woods and need my head clear in case there are any more of these bandits out there.”
My wife came over to inspect the doctor’s work. “Amy and the kids, the Blacks, the Chief and Gomez?” she asked with tears in her eyes.
“Yes honey. I’m so sorry,” I said while giving her a big hug with tears streaming down my own cheeks. “I need to take a trip with the Major here. I should be home for dinner.”
“The hell you are. You’ve been shot for god’s sake and there are thirty bodies lying around our yard and my house is all shot up.”
“I need to do this sweetheart. Bravo team is coming over to keep the house safe and I’m sure they will help put it all back together until I return. You’ve always been busting my chops to remodel so get after it. Please see to Amy and the Black’s arrangements. The shitheads that did this know where we live so we can wait here for them to come again or we can take the fight to them.”
“You two better go find those shit birds and carve out their hearts with a rusty spoon and don’t bother coming back until you do. You keep him safe Major. I don’t want you two out there doing something stupid, playing cowboy. Copy that?”
“Yes, ma’am,” was both our replies. My wife gave me a hug and a kiss. She went over to the Major and gave him a peck on the cheek and pointed her finger at his nose. “Copy that,” was all he said with a nod in her direction.
The Major went through my gear and asked where my spare night vision goggle batteries were.
“I just replaced the one in there Major,” I replied with a whine.
“Two is one and one is none,” he replied.
“I thought ounces equaled pounds and pounds equaled pain?” I said sagely.
“What would you rather have? The ability to see in the dark or your teddy bear to snuggle at night?” he asked, pulling one of Avery’s’s stuffed toys out of my bag that she constantly put in my pack to keep me company.
“I’ll get some more batteries,” I replied with a chuckle.
“Gunny!” the Major said. “Form on me.”
The Sergeant came up to us and stood at attention. “Sir!”
“Gunny, you are in charge while I am away. Everything that is special to me is under your care.”
“I will guard them with my life sir. I would like to apologize for…”
“Stop right there Gunny. We were attacked by twenty highly trained men with surprise on their side and we only lost one man and have three non-critically wounded. They had advance knowledge of our strength and defense, were well armed and executed a textbook take down. It was only our quick reaction and skill that avoided a massacre here today. You and your men performed extremely well resulting in their side dying for their cause rather than us for ours. I want this carnage cleaned up and checked for intelligence before the sun comes up and before the field hands show up for work and get those two dogs the biggest juiciest bones you can find. We owe all our lives to Caymus the ridgeback and that wheezing slobbery Hunter.”
The doctor gave me a bottle of Ibuprofen for after the local wore off and the Major and I began walking toward Fox Island. Fortunately the Major had radioed ahead and his Fox Island squad materialized once we were past the Fox Island bridge barricade with bicycles for the Major and me. My arm was just starting to throb in earnest when we pulled up to Mr. Bujacich’s compound. Mr. Stutz was already there with a stogie stuck between his teeth.
“Those fuckers want to come to our house?” growled Mr. Stutz, chomping on the end of his cigar. “Send the next ones my way and I’ll give them something to cry about. I feed the fuckers alive to my hogs just to hear them scream!”
“We’ll deal with those ass hats,” I said with conviction. “I have a special rusty spoon my wife gave me.”
“Hey, it’s 0600,” said Mr. Bujacich. “Does your Navy not have a working timepiece?”
Just then a small Coast Guard patrol boat came gliding up to the pier.
“Don’t you scratch my pilings you safety Nazis,” yelled Mr. Bujacich to the oncoming vessel.
“Ahoy Captain Bujacich,” was heard from the bridge.
“Smitty, is that you, you asshole?” cried Mr. Bujacich, peering into the wheelhouse. “Now we are truly fucked. This landlubber once wrote me a ticket for having expired fire extinguishers on my boat. Hey Smitty, let me see your fire extinguishers.” As he expertly hopped on the deck before a single line had been attached and made a beeline for the wheelhouse. The rest of us piled onto the deck. The Major started the whole salute and permission to come aboard when Bujacich’s voice came from the bridge. “Stop that nonsense Major. I knew Smitty when he was a twerp tender operator on my boat. I am the senior seaman aboard this vessel and have had my papers since before Smitty was the load his mother should have swallowed was shot. Get this tub of shit moving Smitty. Hey, does you boson have one of those little whistles. Get him to blow that.”
Bujacich was in his element as we made our way over to Steilacoom Harbor. Tacoma was aglow with various fires burning and smoke in the predawn light. We were met at the pier with a full platoon of riflemen and ushered into two electric dune buggies for a silent ride to the army base
and were whisked through two heavily fortified checkpoints on our way to the army base command center. We were ushered into the building and were greeted by a general dressed in fatigues. The general was a tall distinguished looking man in his mid-sixties but did not possess the pony keg that I had strapped around the middle. The general wore two gold stars on the cap he was wearing, his breast name plate read Holcomb, and came up to us giving each of us a warm firm handshake. “As you were Major,” the general said as he ushered us into a large conference room surrounded by monitors with various maps of the state, country and world around it. There was a large weathered face on the live feed of one of the wall monitors and another military man on a different screen.
“Welcome gentlemen,” General Holcomb began the meeting. “With us is Mayor Jackson of Spokane, General Young from Fairchild Air Force base and with me here are Mr. Robertson, Bujacich and Stutz of the Gig Harbor area.”
“Is that you Jerry?” asked Mr. Stutz of Mayor Jackson.
“Sure is Stutz. How they hanging? Remember those dancing girls at the Vegas farmer’s convention?” the man on the video screen answered.
Mr. Stutz laughed.
“If I may gentlemen,” the General began. “As you know the Governor is dead. You four gentlemen represent the only legitimate elected officials we can find in the entire State of Washington. I brought you all together to give you a briefing on the status of the State and the country. As you know we have multiple squads of soldiers deployed in many different parts of the state. They are called angel teams. The President felt that our military would be best deployed as guerilla forces rather than a homogenous unit assisting local groups against roving bands and helping the local populations. All of our strategic nuclear forces have been secured to act as a deterrent against any foreign incursion. Our borders are secure except for a large band currently invading from our southern border with Mexico. The drug cartels have all organized and are trying to infiltrate into border towns. The omnipotent wall seems to be a poor deterrent. We have motorized brigades deployed and have secured the border. We have broken the country into four zones with the Ohio and Columbia rivers demarking the North South Line and the Rocky Mountains the East-West line. In a nutshell the Southeast and Northwest are holding their own. The Northeast and Southwest are struggling. We estimate the entire population of the United States has gone from around 350 million to 150 million. Washington State had around 7.1 million people before the event, we estimate that number is closer to 4 million now. The Governor’s mission was to open a corridor from Eastern to Western Washington and get as much food that could be harvested shipped west. We were running the tonnages we could ship but without a rail line we can’t move enough food west to feed the population.”
“Well,” I said interrupting the General’s presentations. “It looks like the Governor’s single death might have just saved a few million lives.”
“Mr. Robertson?” asked the general. “Would you care to elaborate?”
“I would imagine that without combines Mr. Jackson over there will lose over three quarters of his wheat harvest and without grain the Montana and Wyoming ranchers will lose half their herds. Gentlemen, it is now the first week of October and Mr. Jackson probably has about two weeks before his crops start rotting in the fields. You are wasting assets trying to move the mountain to Mohammed. We need to produce the biggest migration in these parts since the gold rush. Two questions General. How many people are in these FEMA camps and how many unharvested acres does Mr. Jackson have?”
“There are currently almost 100,000 people in this refugee camp Mr. Robertson,” replied General Holcomb.
“We have over 100,000 unharvested acres,” supplied Mr. Jackson.
“General,” I said. “We need to move 100,000 people 200 miles in the next 48 hours.”
“Mr. Robertson, with all due respect, the three mountain passes are impassable due to dead vehicles and fortified blockades. The President of the United States tried a similar maneuver in the Midwest and while some lives were saved, there was no infrastructure to house the migrants, feed the migrants or process the food harvested. We expended considerable assets in moving the population but only 10% of the migrant labor force was able to be saved. You can’t just drop a bus load of people off in a field of wheat and expect a result.”
“Combines,” said Mr. Stutz. “It’s the only way Robertson.”
“That’s where I was going with this. We need every Boeing Engineer, machinist and mechanic on a plane to Spokane in the next hour. If they can design and build a machine that flies, they can fix a harvesting machine. We need to get every piece of machinery up there working even if we have to pull them with Abrams tanks. Talk about turning swords into plowshares. The people will be dropped at every barn and processing plant up there to process and preserve the food produced. We have the smartest people in the world here in Washington and it is time to get the lead out. General, we need you to find, if you can, the nine most qualified people in the following categories: Agriculture, Petroleum Refining, Legal, Transportation, Electrical Engineering, Food Processing, Fisheries, Water, and Livestock. No bureaucrats, we need people with dirt on their hands not lotion. We need to cut this State in half, east and west. The east will continue producing land based food while the west will look to the sea, forests and pacifying the large cities.”
“Sir,” said the general. “We also need to talk about command and consent. The Governor is dead and we need a new one. I have been placed under the command of the Governor. What shall we do?”
“Unanimous consent gentlemen?” I asked the other three leaders.
“So carried,” said Mr. Jackson with Mr. Bujacich and Stutz nodding.
“General. These problems are too big for one man, let alone four. Consider each of us the acting Governor. I trust the gentlemen in this room with my life and Mr. Jackson through Mr. Stutz’s proxy. Most times the worst decision to make is not to make one. We each have different skills to bring to the table. Mr. Bujacich will be running the fishery, has a plan and will need resources and help to pull it off. Mr. Jackson will be running the agriculture, Mr. Stutz will run the livestock while I coordinate public works. We will all need your help in communication and coordination. What I know about all these gentlemen is that none of them want the job but they are all the most capable of doing it. Each of them will need a liaison with a member of your command structure and we will have conference calls on an as needed basis to bring each other up to speed on our progress. I see our priorities as follows:
“Step 1: Get every person who has ever worked at Boeing to wherever the combines are and get them working on fixing them or devising new ones.
“Step 2: Shut down this FEMA camp. Distribute 30 days of rations to each person and load them up on anything that moves. School busses will probably all work since lord knows the State hasn’t invested in education in decades. We will use the Cayuse Pass from Enumclaw to Yakima as nobody ever takes it since it is always closed. Each school bus group will be 30 people. Mayor Jackson will have to distribute the busses to each small town. I think the incentive will be a land grant program of say 20 acres per family where the existing crop is already grown. The crop but not the land will become the property of those sent to work it. The medieval English used a virgate as a land size assuming a tenant farmer needed at least 10 acres of arable land to create a livelihood and survive. Let the combines focus on the grains and the manpower focus on the produce. Washington State growers produce six out of every ten apples eaten in the United States and all those apples will rot on the trees without people to pick them. We can also barge people and goods up the Columbia River, between that and the Snake River we can get clear up to Lewiston Idaho.
“Step 3: Figure out how to transport the grain and feed to Montana in exchange for livestock moving in the other direction.” Mr. Stutz asked if Interstate 90 was open through the panhandle of Idaho and the general nodded his assent. “We need a good old fashioned cattle drive. The
great thing about beef is it is “on the hoof” and can walk. The Interstate is already fenced to keep deer off the roadways.”
“Step 4: Mr. Bujacich needs to get the fishery open and firing on all available cylinders. We will need to set up a large processing facility in Steilacoom using any refugees from the cities or anyone who can’t make the journey east.
“Step 5: For defense, we will have to figure out how to open safety corridors out of the big cities for any of the population that wants out from under the thumbs of the warlords embedded in those cities.
“Step 6: Set up main hubs at Fort Lewis, Spokane, Everett and Yakima and sub hubs in Vancouver, Bellingham, Oroville and Pullman. We will have to figure out how to perform a census and hold elections in the spring.
“Step 7: For energy we will need to figure out how to provide electricity for any food processing plants and get them fired up. We will also have to figure out how to bring the hydroelectric dams online and distributing power to the main hubs and sub hubs. We also need to get oil flowing through the Alaska pipeline and Alberta to the refining facility on Anacortes and hopefully Tacoma.
“Agreed gentlemen?” I asked. Everyone nodded in consent. “Now, who wants to address the FEMA refugee camps? General?”
“The FEMA camp is a civilian population sir so it is more appropriate for one of you gentlemen to address them,” the general replied.
I looked at Bujacich, Stutz and Jackson on the screen. Each of them had their index fingers raised beside their noses and big smiles on their faces.
“Really! Are we back in college all of a sudden?” I asked incredulously. “This isn’t who is buying the next round of beers.”
Mr. Stutz laughed. “Whoever smelt it dealt it. This is your cockamamie plan Robertson, you go tell it from the mountain. Look on the bright side, if more than 10% of them survive you are already ahead of the former most powerful man on earth.”
“Fuck you three chicken shits,” I said. “You three shit birds have people to liaise with so drop your cocks and pick up your socks. General, is the head of the FEMA camp around?”
America: The Eagle has Fallen Page 14
