299 Days: The 43 Colonels

by Glen Tate

  “I decided to do something about this. I became a ‘prepper,’ in secret, of course. This led me to websites about the Patriot movement. I am highly analytical, and I found the Patriot approach far more logical. Self-reliance just made sense. Dependence, whether on packages arriving in time or on people needing welfare to buy food, didn’t.”

  “In the weeks leading up to the Collapse, I could tell that something was coming. The activity we saw in deliveries to the military and government agencies was alarming. I knew what they were shipping, most of the time, and could easily figure out why they needed those things in particular places as fast possible. It was actually anti-climactic when the Collapse hit. My only thought was, ‘What took so long?’”

  “Just like most other industries, my company was taken over by the government when the Collapse started. The government wanted to use our massive fleet of planes and trucks, and especially our computers, to deliver supplies. Civilian deliveries stopped. The federal government became our one and only customer.”

  “At first, we couldn’t get planes up or trucks driving. We didn’t have any fuel and most of our crews weren’t coming in. Finally, about a week into it, we started to get fuel. Some of the crews came back to work. We had several National Guard soldiers filling in for the absent drivers. The military also provided mechanics who could service our vehicles, and they used their trucks. Most of our crews went out with military or law enforcement escorts because the cargo—fuel, ammunition, medicine, food—was so valuable. Quite a few of drivers weren’t coming back, either getting robbed, ambushed, or taking off with the cargo themselves, when they could get away from the escorts. It was chaos.”

  “One of the things I did when I became a prepper was form a small prepping group. One of the guys in my group was an active Patriot. I approached him about two weeks into the Collapse. He asked if I wanted to bug out and I said that my shipping facility was now an armed compound and we had everything we needed. We got first pick of just about everything. I was actually doing quite well. I was considered ‘necessary personnel’ because I made the computers work. I had a big hand in whether things got to where they were supposed to go. Then it hit me.”

  “Amazingly, my communications weren’t being monitored, at least not in the beginning of the Collapse. There were too many fires for the authorities to put out. So I could talk freely, even at the FedEx compound, to my Patriot friend. We came up with a plan.”

  “I am a systems engineer, so I like to test things. I overrode the computers and sent a harmless package—I think it was bolts or something—to an address given to me by my Patriot friend. Magically, the package appeared there. Hmmm, I thought, 'think what I could do with this'.”

  “I started getting a daily call with a ‘wish list’ of what the Patriots needed and where they needed it delivered. I could look in the computers at the description of most of the deliveries. I would look at the wish list and see that the Patriots needed a particular kind of combat radio, then I would find those radios in the system and reroute them to the correct location.”

  “I sort of hacked the password system, which was surprisingly easy because no one ever thought FedEx would be responsible for the logistics of keeping the government functioning during a war. I got the passwords of all the absent employees. I’d use their password for a few deliveries and then switch to another one. This would lead any investigators, and there weren’t any for months because of all the confusion and understaffing, to think some AWOL employees were logging in or that the system had been hacked by an outsider.”

  “I was risking my life by doing this, so I wanted to be as careful as possible. My Patriot friend and I decided to stop the daily calls. I gave him the login information of a few absent FedEx employees. We came up with some code words and he, or any Patriot operatives, could send me an email with a wish list order and it looked like an email from a FedEx employee. The Patriots eventually supplied me a few undercover drivers who brought hard copies of the daily wish list in with them to work and physically handed them to me.”

  “I got some pretty ambitious wish lists. I mean, 500 machine guns? I’m just supposed to make those go to the wrong place and no one will notice? There were limits to the confusion. There was plenty of corruption, too, and FedEx employees were working with gangs to do things similar to what I was doing. But I didn’t need any scrutiny.”

  “So I scaled back the wish list items I was delivering for a while. I tried hard to deliver things that didn’t have obvious street value, but were still valuable to the Patriots. Things like parts for water systems or spare parts for other items. I tried to stay away from fuel, ammunition, and medical shipments, although I did misroute those on occasion.”

  “One idea I came up with to prevent scrutiny on me, but still mess up the Limas, was to deliver supplies to them late, or to the wrong address, or to only ship half an order. This cost them time and confusion and often resulted in Limas not getting what they needed, or getting it late, or not getting all of it. This also contributed to the confusion and general despair among the Limas. ‘Nothing works!’ they would scream. I would shrug and agree.”

  “I worked on the daily wish list until about Christmas when I got word something big was happening around New Year’s. My handler told me that Seattle would be a very dangerous place to be if the Patriots decided to continue on from Olympia and go up to Seattle. I had done plenty for the cause and every time I worked on the wish list, I increased my chances of getting arrested. They would torture me for sure because I knew so much. I decided to end my career as the ‘wish list guy.’ The day after Christmas, I misdirected one massive shipment, a tanker of gasoline, and sent a virus through the computer system. The Limas wouldn’t be able to ship anything for several days until they fixed the virus that had just taken down the northwest regional computer system.”

  “I walked out of the facility with a driver who was my Patriot handler. We got to a safe house in eastern Washington right before New Year’s and watched the fireworks.”

  “I hope no one considers just-in-time inventory for the rebuilding. Don’t let accountants convince you that you can save inventory costs by having overnight shipments every day from thousands of miles away. It means one Patriot, a little computer nerd, can use that complicated system to do a lot of damage. One little ‘wish list guy.’”

  Chapter 360

  Col. Pam Angelo

  (Homeschooling Mom)

  “Wow!” Ben said as the applause for Col. Mick Burke died down. “I love that story about how a ‘computer nerd,’ as the good Colonel described himself, can simultaneously help our side and hurt the other side. We found, over and over, that the complicated systems the old government built were their greatest weakness. Simple and dedicated fighters, who are on the right side, can take down numerically superior tyrants relying on complex systems operated by people who are just doing their jobs. Over and over again we see that.”

  “How did Col. Mick Burke learn about computers?” Ben asked. “School, of course. Education is important. None of us could have done what we did for the Patriots if we weren’t educated.”

  “Does that mean we rely on the government schools?” Ben asked rhetorically. “No, it means we educate people well and skip the indoctrination. Col. Pam Angelo has made this her mission, and she has contributed mightily to New Washington. Please welcome Col. Pam Angelo.”

  The audience applauded for a pleasant-looking blond woman in her forties who was wearing a pretty blue dress. She walked up to the rostrum slowly because she was in heels, which she was unaccustomed to wearing.

  “Good morning, class,” she said with a smile. The audience chuckled. “This is the biggest class I’ve ever taught,” she said. “Actually not,” she corrected herself. “I’m helping to teach most of the kids in New Washington,” she said, “And I’m proud of that.”

  She paused and said, “I’m not proud of it in the sense that I’m so wonderful. I’m proud because little homeschoolin
g moms like me finally have a chance to help educate people, and we don’t have to go through the public school indoctrination system to teach kids. I guess what I’m saying is, we won, we don’t have to be in their monopolistic education system, and the fact that I’m standing up here talking about this is proof that we won.” The audience applauded.

  “I’m not a Green Beret or a computer person rerouting supplies or anything interesting. I’m just a mom. Years ago, when I read the textbooks my kids were bringing home, I started homeschooling. The government schools taught consensus-building, which meant agreeing with them, over critical thought. They taught every leftist agenda imaginable, and passed it off as ‘fact.’ I decided I could do better.”

  “I was lucky to begin homeschooling when I did. There are so many great resources out there for it. Homeschooling really took off before the Collapse because so many people realized the same thing that I did about the government schools.”

  “Which is why they fought us so hard. They knew that kids wouldn’t believe the government line later in life if they didn’t have it shoved into their heads repeatedly at an early age in public schools. So they had to make homeschooling difficult, which they did. But it wasn’t anything we couldn’t handle.”

  “Then they made homeschooling illegal. It started in California and moved out from there, as all bad ideas seem to do.”

  Pam paused. “This left me with the same choice Col. Hadian talked about. Do I obey an unjust law or do I resist tyranny? Do I do what’s best for me legally or do I do what’s best for my children? I’m a mom. That pretty much answered that question for me.”

  “I knew they’d harass me, sue me, threaten to fine me, put me in jail, and maybe take my kids. I also knew that it would take them quite a while for their gigantic process to do this to me. I thought the Collapse would hit before they could get serious with me, which is what happened. Besides, I had a safe house somewhere in the American Redoubt, Wyoming to be specific, where I could go if their legal process got to me before the Collapse.”

  “I guess I became a ‘leader’ of the homeschool movement, but I don’t really think of myself that way. I think I was just the loudest person fighting back against them; I don’t know if being loud is leadership, but it’s what I did.” She was being modest. She had inspired thousands of other moms to homeschool in former Washington. Her direct defiance of their authority, with the prize being the minds of children, was a threat to them, and they acted accordingly.

  “They sternly lectured me at all the public hearings on what a terrible mother I was. They told me that my kids wouldn’t ‘socially integrate’ with other kids. I asked them to use the term they really meant: ‘socialize.’ As in, become good little socialists. A few left-wing wackos threatened me at this stage. They usually said they hoped nothing happened to my kids. Stay classy, Limas.”

  “Then came the ‘Administrative Statement of Charges.’ That’s actually what it was called. They had a police officer come to my house to serve me with the papers. They could have mailed them, but having a police officer show up to scare my kids, and get the neighbors talking, was how they did it.”

  “I went to the administrative hearing, which was a kangaroo court, and told them what I said in the public hearings: my kids are mine, not the state’s. I can do a better job of educating them. The government only has limited powers, and forcing me to send my children to their indoctrination centers was not one of the powers delegated to them by the people in the Constitution.”

  “I was found guilty of educating without a permit or something like that. I had volunteer lawyers appeal the administrative finding to a real court, or so I thought. ‘Real’ court was a stretch. It was just like the administrative hearing. While all these court proceedings were going on, I was being fined $1,000 a day. I had already made arrangements for my kids to live with my parents if the government took everything from me and my husband. A word about him, for a moment. He supported me all the way. I couldn’t have done it without you, honey,” she said as she looked into the gallery.

  “Apparently, while the general population was watching reality TV shows, the government passed all these laws that let them go and seize property without a warrant or even a court order if they said someone owed unpaid fines. I heard stories about people having their bank accounts levied for unpaid library fines, but I thought that was just an internet myth. Turns out it was true. Right before I was scheduled to do a big TV interview, they cleaned out my husband’s and my bank account.”

  “The Collapse hit a few days later,” she said with a sigh. “Gee, with a government treating people so well, who would have thought it couldn’t last,” she said with good-natured sarcasm. “I hate to admit this, but I was actually relieved. Now I wouldn’t have to pay those fines. My family got to an alternate safe house, this one being in eastern Washington. We lost all of our money a few days earlier than everyone else who couldn’t go to the bank after the Collapse. They got FCards, at least, but we didn’t. Oh, well. We were located in a strong Patriot community, the one started by Col. Ruthie Wilkins, in fact. Now I could do what I had always wanted to: homeschool my kids and help others do so.”

  “In the years leading up the Collapse, when I was a homeschooling activist, I collected teaching materials. I had an impressive library of materials. Using the Wilkins compound as a base, I, and a team of volunteers, decided to get our materials out to other moms who needed to homeschool.”

  “This was a bigger deal than just homeschooling as an alternative to government schools before the Collapse. There were no functioning government schools when the Collapse started in the spring of last year and into the summer. They started government schools again, on a limited basis and only in solidly-held Lima areas, like Seattle. The authorities, with rioting, hunger, and a brewing civil war, didn’t put stopping homeschooling at the top of their priority list out in the areas of the state that became New Washington.”

  “Just because no one was trying to arrest us, didn’t mean it would be easy to get homeschooling materials out to people who needed them. We had three projects at the Wilkins compound.”

  “The first was getting our materials out to the free areas of our state and any other state that wanted them. We did this with the internet, when it was working. Again, stopping homeschool materials from getting out wasn’t a top priority for them. They would block our sites, but people could still distribute our materials by email.”

  “Our second project was getting hardcopy homeschool ‘starter packs’ out to the free areas of our state. These were kits teachers could use even if they didn’t have copy machines to make worksheets. If they could make copies, great, but that was pretty rare. The starter packs were essentially lesson plans and limited reading materials for students. Teachers using the starter packs used old-fashioned chalkboards, or more commonly, whiteboards to present the information that would have been on a worksheet or online in the past. It worked remarkably well and it was better than the education kids in New Washington would get last fall without us: no education.”

  “Our third project was to smuggle starter kits into Lima-controlled areas, such as Seattle. This was a limited project because we didn’t want to risk our volunteers being arrested or even killed just to get nice arithmetic tables to kids. But we did get some starter kits into those areas. It was more to show the Limas that the Patriots could operate even within their supposed strongholds, but that was something important.”

  “I’m not stopping now that we’ve won. I was honored when Gov. Trenton asked me to advise his administration on education issues and help the state keep the homeschooling going until another system, if any, takes the place of homeschooling. I think we need to have homeschooling instead of a new version of government schools, but I acknowledge that the new government can help with homeschooling. For example, State Guard vehicles now deliver teaching materials to remote locations, and the state is providing copying machines and printers for the hard copies. They are
not interfering with the content, just helping get the content out. That’s an acceptable level of government involvement, in my opinion. We are working on the hard issue of the long-term solution: how much government, if any, should we have in education? Should we go back to a public school system, but try to put some controls on it so it doesn’t end up like the last one? Can local communities choose how they want to do this, either with public schools, homeschooling, or a mixture of the two?”

  “I feel like I’m doing what I was supposed to do and now I have the opportunity to assist in setting up a new system that will work better. Thank you, Gov. Trenton, but especially thank you, New Washington, for allowing me to help with the Rebuilding this way.”

  She smiled and said, “Class dismissed.”

  Chapter 361

  Col. Jenn Cross

  (Gammy)

  “In many of these descriptions of the colonels, you’ve heard about people getting in and out of checkpoints or posing as people they weren’t. They used false identities. Most of the heroics we’ve heard about couldn’t have happened without false identities. Our next colonel made that happen, and she paid the ultimate price.”

  “Originally, we were going to have Col. Jenn Cross’ husband tell her story, but he found it too difficult. So I’m going to try to give her story the honor it deserves.”

  “Jenn described herself as an ‘average person.’ She worked at the Department of Licensing in Olympia. She lived in an average house, ate average food, and drove an average car. Her grandkids were the greatest joy in her life. They are now five and three. The youngest one keeps asking where ‘Gammy’ is.”