by Glen Tate
Tet wasn’t perfect for the guerillas. The Viet Cong tried to use the guerillas in Tet against hard targets like regular military units, and got cut to pieces. Hammond and others studying Tet had learned that the soft-target part of Tet worked spectacularly well, but the hard-target part failed. Lesson learned.
But the Vietnamese guerillas ultimately won. Many credited their victory in Vietnam to the bold guerilla attacks during the Tet Offensive.
Grant assumed that was what Hammond was going to do, attack soft targets and get the population behind the Patriots. Olympia must be a “soft target.” That made far more sense that some stupid attack on the Limas’ fortified regular forces. The strategy behind Tet in Vietnam was all about politics, not traditional military victory. Grant was glad Hammond was thinking that way.
Grant could tell that Hammond was a non-traditional warfare guy, not some tank commander who thought that winning was waiting until you had more tanks than your enemy and then having a big battle. Hammond’s non-traditional warfare approach made sense: he was a Special Forces guy. They went out, lightly armed, into the boonies in some far off country and got the population to rally behind their side. They used military force as a way to beat the other side’s forces, but their ultimate goal was for the natives in their area to want to kick out the opposing side. Hammond was applying this philosophy to someplace he never thought he’d be fighting: Olympia, Washington.
“A final thought,” Hammond said. “I know about every single one of you and your units.” Grant knew this was true. In his first trip to Boston Harbor, Grant was stunned at how much Hammond already knew about him and Pierce Point. Hammond put his pointer down and folded his hands. It was like he was about to pay respect to someone.
Hammond nodded to the audience and said slowly, “I am extremely confident that each and every one of you will do a magnificent job during Tet. I wouldn’t send you out if I didn’t know you’ll do great and that we’ll win.” He looked up and then said, “Each of you is supposed to be here and supposed to do what you’re about to do. Go do it. And let’s take Olympia back!”
A cheer went up. It was the kind of cheer that comes from pent-up, raw emotion, a cheer from men and women who had been working hard for months and hadn’t had a room full of like-minded people to cheer with until now.
“Captain Morris will now assign a briefer to each of you,” Hammond said. “Thank you. Every single one of you.”
The audience applauded, with someone yelling to Hammond, “No. Thank YOU!”
After the cheering died down, Captain Morris came to the front of the room and said, “Each unit line up in number order along the wall starting over here,” he said, pointing. The units started to get up and find their places.
After a few minutes, a sergeant came up to Grant and Ted.
“The 17th?” the sergeant asked.
“Yes,” Grant said.
The sergeant opened up a sealed envelope that had “17th” written on it and took a look at the map that was on the inside.
“You guys,” the sergeant said, “Are going through Frederickson first and then down Highway 101 straight into Olympia. Pretty simple. You’ll also be defending 101 against any Limas coming down south from Bremerton trying to reinforce Olympia.” Bremerton was about thirty miles north of Pierce Point. There was a giant Navy base there. The Limas would have forces there guarding the ships and subs. It seemed like a long haul for Limas to come down from Bremerton all the way through ambush country just to reinforce a secondary city like Olympia, but the Limas just might try it.
Grant and Ted nodded. They figured this would be their mission. There was nothing complicated about it, except maybe getting through Frederickson, although Rich had filled him in on Bennington’s offer.
“Your Quadra,” the sergeant said, “will get you more detailed instructions and be able to relay your specific questions to us.”
The sergeant handed Grant the map and then got out his clipboard. “Do you have any specific plans on how to get through your first objective, Frederickson?”
“Yes,” Grant said. “We promised him secrecy, but we have a very highly placed source there that is waiting to be activated and will take out the county government’s leadership.” Ted nodded as if to say, “Seriously.”
The sergeant’s eyes lit up. “That’s awesome, sir.” He made a note on his clipboard. Grant and Ted had previously radioed this in to HQ via Jim Q., but that had only been a couple of days ago; maybe this news hadn’t gotten to the planners charting out the 17th’s mission. As squared away as HQ was, no organization this big, and operating in such semi-primitive conditions, could be perfect.
Then the sergeant looked concerned. “Does this source know about the 17th?” he asked.
“Nope,” Grant said. “The source doesn’t know a thing. Our contact with the source is via someone in our community who, in turn, is working with us.”
The sergeant smiled. “Nice,” he said.
Ted said, “We plan on activating the source a few hours before we head out. That’ll be okay, right? I mean, we don’t want to let people outside of our unit know that an offensive is coming unless we have to. But, in order to take out the county’s command and control, I think it’s worth the risk.”
“A few hours is fine,” the sergeant said. “The Limas will be hit with diversions elsewhere a few hours in advance, so it’s okay that they know the whole state is erupting on them. Just fine.”
That was it for their briefing. Grant and Ted left together and then Grant walked off to learn how to get Paul and Tony a medal. Ted was very glad to see this civilian lawyer lieutenant had the instinct to look after his men in such a way. You can’t teach that, Ted thought. This was all coming together.
Chapter 254
Collapse Christmas at Camp Murray
(December 24)
For the obvious reasons, the “Collapse Christmas” was different than any other Christmas. Very different. Unforgettable.
Christmas is full of traditions: opening presents, Christmas dinner, wearing a Santa hat, and going to a Christmas Eve church service. There were countless individual Christmas traditions.
Those traditions clashed with the reality of the Collapse. Many traditions could not go on. There were far fewer presents. For some, the cherished Christmas dinner was going to be oatmeal. Some Christmas Eve church services were cancelled because those churches were refusing to play ball with the government and it was too dangerous to leave the house anyway. The football games had been cancelled all season. The government desperately wanted the teams to play to project a sense of normalcy, but most of the players, like the AWOL soldiers, had just gone home to be with their families instead of reporting for work.
Then again, Grant noticed some traditions carried on. Little things seemed to mean more during the Collapse Christmas. Presents were things like batteries, a deck of playing cards, and a can of soup. Some weren’t wrapped, and some were wrapped in black and white newspaper, rather than colorful wrapping paper. Everyone did their best to keep their chins up and hope that the next Christmas would be better.
With that hope, however, many wondered whether the Collapse would still be going on next Christmas. They didn’t like the idea that it would, or that every Christmas might be as bad.
Christmas made people think about kids—whether it was their kids or remembering what Christmas was like when they were kids themselves. Would kids have more crappy Christmases in their future? Forever? Was traditional America, and wonderful Christmases, over forever?
People who had never thought about the “temporary Crisis” really being a war started to think about it for the first time. Many had been going with the flow up until the holiday. While they thought the government was inept, what was the alternative? The government they had was … well, the government. There could only be one government at a time. It wasn’t like there could be a competing one. Could there?
The thought of competing governments started to make m
ore sense when people heard about the Southern and mountain West states essentially striking out on their own. There was no giant civil war with two huge armies, one in blue and one in gray; nothing like that, but it was pretty clear that there were two competing governments. One seemed to be working well and the other didn’t.
Jeanie Thompson had come to this conclusion long ago. She got to see how awful the Loyalist government was. She was in the building where most of the decisions were being made. She saw everything. They weren’t even trying to hide things from her any more.
Jeanie was still doing the menial job of giving tours to NSVIPs—Not So Very Important Persons, as she called them. Not even the mayors and mid-level government officials who came to Camp Murray to get a “briefing” on how great things were going were upbeat anymore. What a joke. By now, everyone she was giving the spiel to knew everything was a lie and she knew that they knew. She kept doing the tours anyway. It was her job. If she lost her job, she would have to leave Camp Murray. And if that happened, she’d be dead in ten seconds “outside the wire.”
Jeanie’s boss, Rick Menlow, had finally realized his dream. He became the Governor. The former Governor resigned for health reasons. She was a wreck and had several nervous breakdowns. At least, that’s what everyone said. But, maybe she was shoved aside for political reasons. Who knew? Who cared?
Jeanie shrugged when she heard the news. Her whole career had been built around the dream of her boss being the Governor and she being the press secretary for him. That was … months ago? Was that all? It seemed like a lifetime ago.
Now Jeanine didn’t care. Her boss was a tool. He would just do whatever D.C. told him. He had gone from the fresh reformer conservative who miraculously got elected as the State Auditor to what he was now – a tool.
Jeanie reflected on her enthusiasm when she and her boss bugged out of Olympia and first came to Camp Murray. Back then, she felt like she was going to help the state in a time of need. She was going to do all these wonderful things to help people.
Now, Jeanie was a prisoner. Everyone in that building was a prisoner, even the people running the state. They couldn’t leave the protections of their government facilities. They had plenty to eat in those facilities, but they couldn’t leave.
Something had to change. People couldn’t live that way much longer.
Jeanie, who was out of the official loop because she had ties to some POIs, still overheard conversations about a war. A “war”? Not the little terrorism stuff or the police rounding up teabaggers. This was an actual war. They were calling it a civil war. That term sounded so outlandish. A “civil war”? C’mon. In America? That was crazy!
There was constant talk around Camp Murray about which military units were still “sit outs” and which ones were going over to the teabaggers. Loyal units were highly sought after. They could have anything they wanted for their services. There were some stories of very nasty behavior by the loyal units.
The rumors Jeanie overheard seemed to be that the teabaggers were about to launch something in Washington State. There were conflicting reports of what it would be. The legitimate authorities had spies in the teabagger army, but they were getting conflicting reports. Jeanie wondered if some of the spies were double agents sending out intentionally conflicting reports. Some said there would be a New Year’s Day limited attack that would bypass Seattle entirely. Others said it would be a full-on attack in February. Others said it would come in the spring and would be from units currently sitting out that would go over to the teabaggers. No one knew for sure.
There was also continuous talk at Camp Murray about how the farms were not producing enough food to feed people. Jeanie learned that, before the Crisis, America had imported over half of its food. Over half! Most people couldn’t believe it. Those supplies were now cut off. The dollar was worthless and there wasn’t enough fuel to ship food. America had the most farmland in the world, right? Well, yes and no. America had the most land capable of farming, but for years, farmers had been living on government subsidies instead of actually growing any significant quantities of food. Before the Crisis, the government actually paid farmers not to farm. That amazed Jeanie.
Even the farmers who still farmed didn’t help the situation much. Before the Crisis, Jeanie learned, the government paid them to grow crops, such as corn, to be used for ethanol. The fields to grow corn were still available—but many of the processing plants to turn the corn into food were not. They had been retooled to make ethanol. The processing plants to make cornbread and other things were shut down. Try as they might, the government couldn’t get enough of them back up and running to make cornbread.
Jeanie also found out how devastating America’s pre-Crisis dependence on foreign goods had been. It wasn’t just that over half of the nation’s food came from overseas. It was that a bunch of the domestic food production capabilities had been shut down, much like the corn processing plants. For example, when it was cheaper to grow peaches in China and send them on a ship to Atlanta, all the Georgia peach orchards a few miles outside of Atlanta were plowed under. It takes years to grow a mature peach tree that will produce peaches, so it would take years to bring America’s food production capacity back. If it ever came back.
But the government urgently needed food. The political and military people at Camp Murray constantly talked about food riots. They were all trying to calculate the point at which FCard food would reach such a low level that people would have nothing left to lose and would start rioting. Would the Legitimate troops—they preferred the term “Legitimate” to “Loyalist”—shoot fellow Americans? That was a constant topic of discussion.
It was Christmas Eve. Jeanie sat in her tight barracks room with a little stocking that all the staff got. It looked so pathetic, so small, and so fake. It was nothing like her real stocking at her parent’s house. She wondered if they were okay. Probably. Hopefully. She missed going home each Christmas and going to the Christmas Eve service at her parents’ church. She had so many memories of that, like when they turned off the lights, everyone lit a candle, and they sang Silent Night. She could hear that in her head. It was sweet and warm, wonderful.
But there was no Christmas Eve service at Camp Murray. That would be too divisive. They couldn’t even say the “C” word (Christmas) there. Instead, they had a “winter solstice” event. That wouldn’t offend anyone … except the 99% of people at Camp Murray who weren’t Wiccan.
Jason felt like he was in prison, too. He had gone from being the ultra-cool and confident briefer to be being a terrified liaison with the federal government. He had special communications equipment that let him talk with the intelligence community in D.C. He received their dispatches and told them what was going on in Washington State. He knew just about everything that was happening, which was why he was terrified. The federal government had essentially ceased to operate. Almost all federal resources were devoted to the military, FEMA, and federal law enforcement agencies. No one really knew what the “military” was anymore. There were military units on paper, but most had simply vanished or were sit-outs. Some units were run by seemingly loyal officers but, on occasion, a seemingly loyal unit would just disappear or announce it was sitting out. Some went over to the Patriots. Command and control? The federal government had neither.
Jason didn’t know who he could trust. Was this Washington National Guard unit guarding them secretly a Patriot unit? How could he tell? Were the federal agents who were guarding him secretly paras? Or taking bribes to kill him? He couldn’t sleep at night. He cat napped all day long. And each day was so long. He was up most of the time. He lost track of time. It was like one long blur. He had aged ten years in ten months and lost so much weight that his tailored suits no longer fit.
Jason knew it was over. Whether the Patriots won or not, it was over. There was no way the Legitimates could continue. Food would get dangerously low over the winter. Rioting would ensue and most military and police units would not fire on the crowds.
Some, like the mercenaries and psychos who enjoyed it, would, but most would not.
Despite all of this, there was a strange sense of hope. Seattle was a stronghold, one of the strongest in the country. Things were relatively calm there. The population seemed to actually like the government. Most of the individualists had left, and Loyalists poured in from other parts of the state, even from other states. There were genuine rallies in support of the government there.
Jason had reported this to his superiors in D.C. They came back with a plan: move the Governor and senior staff to Seattle. They would use the ultra-secure federal courthouse in Seattle as a headquarters. This was the first good news Jason had heard in months.
They would move out—secretly, of course—in the middle of the night on Christmas Eve. No one would be paying attention at that time and, according to D.C, something might be happening on New Year’s Day in Washington State. No one could know that the Governor was abandoning Camp Murray, which was supposedly safe behind the super- fortified JBLM ring. If Camp Murray wasn’t safe enough for the Governor…
Jason was one of about ten people who knew the plan. They would go in one of the commercial buses taking people into Seattle. There was no need to have a big motorcade that was a big fat target.
Jason didn’t trust even the FBI or state police EPU unit guarding the Governor, so he arranged for a diversion motorcade to go out first. He let it slip that the Governor was going in a motorcade from Camp Murray to the airfield at McChord Air Base to take a flight to D.C. to meet with the President. If there was a leak, that diversionary motorcade would get hit. Too bad for the guys in that motorcade. Oh well. This was tough business.
Jason was packing up his things for the bus ride to Seattle that night. He realized he didn’t have a single personal item from his months at Camp Murray. Then he saw it. His stocking. His cheesy little stocking. He took it and put it in the inside pocket of his tailored suit jacket. At least he had one souvenir from his time in that God-awful place.
