by Steven Linde
It took the rest of the week to get all of the RV’s and trailers onto post and set up ready to use. The following week the lottery was held and not one family turned it down. There was some grumbling by the wives of the more senior people, they felt that rank had its privileges (even though it wasn’t there rank) and they should get first choice and not the lower enlisted. It didn’t matter the wives could continue to grumble they weren’t getting the trailers or RV’s.
As the families were moving onto post the Soldiers began to secure the big box stores, sporting goods stores, drug stores, basically anything that held value. However, what many of the platoons were finding was that some of the stores had already been looted, after all it has been a week since the event happened and there were no police any place. At one of the largest Walmart’s in town one of the local street gangs had set up shop inside of it. A scouting element held back and watched the Walmart and did their best to get a headcount of how many bad guys there were in the store and how they were armed. They had counted fifteen men meandering around the outside of the store and as far as they could tell they were only carrying handguns. The scouts sent a runner back to the company to let the CO know the situation, it was best right now if the entire company didn’t show up.
The runner returned with the company XO the scouts were correct in warning the CO and stating it was best the company halt in position. The XO came forward to get a clearer picture of the situation and determine a course of action. The big question was what was it like inside the store? There was no way to know how many there really were until they entered the store and that was going to be dangerous. The XO headed back to the company CP and spoke with the CO and told him that all-out assault on the store during the day wasn’t going to work, they may have too many casualties. In the past their night vision equipment would have given them a distinct advantage over their enemy. However, the night vision equipment was a dead as most of the cars, the event had terminated their usefulness.
The CO sent word back to battalion that sent word back to brigade by using runners since they had no working radios. The word that came back from brigade was to keep the scouts out and observing, but the company to remain in place for the time being. Almost two and a half hours later, after sunset a truck turned up with twelve men within it. They pulled up to the company CP and the OIC of the group entered the company CP and spoke with the CO. While the groups OIC was in with the CO the men of the group unpacked their gear. One of the things the enlisted and officer paratroopers noticed was that these men pulled out the night vision equipment that looked to work. As the men worked on unpacking their gear and preparing for something they were very quiet, not one of them spoke.
Their OIC returned to the group followed by the CO, the OIC went ahead and prepared himself and joined his men. The company XO joined the group and led them off into the night towards the Walmart. An hour later several large explosions were heard in the direction of the Walmart followed by small arms and machine gun fire. After no more than five minutes it all stopped as quickly as it had begun. Within twenty minutes the mystery men returned, repacked their gear, loaded it all back up into the truck they arrived in and left. The XO followed them and returned to the CP and updated the CO on the action and that the Walmart was secure.
Chapter Twelve
President Washington was sitting in the oval office at noon, it was Friday afternoon and they were on their second week after the event. Much of Washington D.C. was stable thanks in large part to the 3rd Infantry Regiment; the police had all but disappeared. Those that remained were left with a hollow force at best. In as much as stable meant, people were starving and dying of thirst. Even with the hospitals and clinics secured there was enough medicines to save those that needed it. Most of the medicines need refrigeration, so lots of it went to waste. People that needed life support and or blood transfusions died within the first few days. They had to take to burning the bodies because there wasn’t enough space to bury all of them.
Around the airports there was aircraft debris, there had been hundreds of dead bodies littering the area a few hours after the event where aircraft dropped from the skies. Again, the Soldiers of the 3rd Infantry Regiment took care of the bodies. They found them and moved them to a makeshift morgue the smell was horrendous from all of the rotting. Orders were to burn the bodies once they had collected any identification and personal effects that they had on them. The other grim task the Soldiers performed was collecting all of the luggage that had poured out of the crashed airliners. The civilian and military leadership were collecting what they could and placing it in storage they were planning for the long haul; they knew that there was no quick fix for all of this.
The 3rd Infantry Regiment was able to successfully combat many of the gangs that had been trying to infiltrate or occupy neighborhoods that weren’t their own. The gang members were killing indiscriminately, robbing people and their homes; they were taking the new gold-food and water. The communities around the city started to turn-up at the White House complaining that the federal government wasn’t doing enough. The White House staff did their best to explain local law enforcement wasn’t part of their job it was a city issue, not federal, then they were escorted off the White House grounds. By the middle of the second week there were hundreds of local citizens at the front gate to the White House demanding it do something about the gangs. Finally, President Washington gave in, he ordered 3rd Infantry Regiment into the hardest hit gang infested areas with instructions to clean them out.
It was clear to the President that he would have to declare a state of emergency and then martial law. He hadn’t done it yet because, like everyone else he was hoping the nightmare would end and resolve itself. Even if he had done it earlier no one outside of the immediate vicinity would have known. There was no way to spread the word and he didn’t have enough troops or law enforcement to secure all of Washington D.C. not to mention the entire nation. Thankfully, parts of the Posse Comitatus Act had been modified in 2006 that would let him use military personnel to help restore order. His order allowing the 3rd Infantry Regiment act as local law enforcement should help he hoped.
He was off to his 1330 Cabinet meeting to get an update on the process of stabilizing the situation. As he entered the conference room everyone there stood, he kindly asked them all to take their seats. The Chief of Staff would take the lead during the briefing and start it off, “Good morning mister president.” Jake Watkins said.
“Morning Jake,” said the President. “Give me some good news will you.”
Jake looked around the room his face solemn, “I’m sorry mister president I don’t have a lot of that right now.”
“Go on.” The Presidents face grimacing and bracing for more bad news.
Jake looking nervous began, “I’ll jump right to it sir. We estimate sir that the D.C. area will run out of food and water given what we believe to be the current population, by the end-of-the-month.” Jake let that sink in.
“Is that it?” asked the President.
Jake took a deep breath, “No sir I’m afraid not.”
“Continue.”
“Yes sir. The 3rd Infantry Regiment is stretched thin their commanders are worried that the Soldiers are going to burn out. Even in Iraq and Afghanistan they had short deployments and each Soldier knew they were going home after a period of time. Each Soldier knows there is no end in sight here. I have contacted Fort Belvoir they have completed their evaluation of their current capabilities. The post Commander feels they are ready and capable to lend a hand. Mister President they have Soldiers there with nothing to do. For instance, you have an entire aviation battalion with no mission since their aircraft is no longer viable to fly. We can re-task some of these units and use them to help secure civilian areas.”
“What’s the troop strength on post?” asked the President.
“The entire Garrison is reporting they are at eighty percent strength, many of the Soldiers are still unaccounted for. The Gar
rison has moved the families on post and they are currently living in tents, the post hotel and any additional housing units that were not filled at the time of the event. Colonel Mitchell, the post Commander states they are stretched thin on food and water and will start to have to dig into their emergency resources at the end of the month.” Stated the Chief of Staff.
The President sat lost in thought for a moment, “This is what I want, any units not engaged in their primary mission such as the Aviation and Engineering Battalions are to be reassigned to the MP units on post. Tell the Garrison Commander they only get to keep enough of the MP’s to keep the post secure, I want the other units on post to share in that responsibility. The remaining MP’s will act as local law enforcement for the surrounding communities to the best of their ability. I want the Military Intelligence people to start meeting with the 3rd Infantry to have them gather intelligence on what’s going on in and around Virginia and Maryland. I want the 129th Infantry to work with the 3rd Infantry and ensure that we are securing all of the civilian resources and then moving them onto base into storage for now.”
Jake was taking notes, he looked up and at the Secretary of Defense, “Joe did you get all of that? You’ve got to get the ball rolling.”
The Secretary of Defense was taking notes too, he looked up at Jake and nodded, “I got it.” He then got up and left the room, presumably to get the proverbial ball rolling.
“Jake what are we doing about the food and water shortages?” asked the President.
“Sir we have quite a bit of food from the stores that the Army collected with a lot of bottled water. Unfortunately we don’t have the exact numbers of people that will need help we based our estimation off of last year’s census numbers. If we are using those numbers we can add an additional three months.”
“What about the Army?”
“Sir are you advocating we give the military’s food away?”
“I’m asking your thoughts on it.”
“In my opinion sir that would be a grave mistake. The Army is already struggling with the influx of families moving on post. Then we have to ask ourselves will the Army allow it?”
“They will if I order it!” Replied the President indignantly.
“I disagree sir.” Said Jake. “The Army’s job is to protect the nation as a whole the Commanders know that without the food and water they have they’re no longer a viable fighting force. It’s possible sir that the military establishment may see you, us, as a threat to the security of the nation.”
The President was staring at his Chief of Staff, “Of course, of course you’re right. They’re the ones providing all of the security now anyway. If we take away what’s sustaining them it’s also a threat to their families, can’t see that going over well.”
“Sir my other suggestions are to hunt, fish and farm. We have enough we believe to get us through the upcoming winter. We are going to need to plow under any available land we can, we need to begin to form teams to hunt for food and we need fisherman.”
It seemed all surreal to the President they were taking a large step back into time and becoming hunter gathers again. He wondered when the next shoe was going to drop and how bad it was going to be.
“What have we got on Fort Meade?” asked President Washington.
The Chief of Staff moved onto his next set of papers, “Yes sir, they have also completed their evaluation. So far they look to be the best suited, meaning troop count is at 90%, and families moved on post and have already begun some involvement with the local community.
“Sir as you know Fort Meade is largely a high tech post with the DISA, NSA, DIA, Cyber Command they have nothing to do. Every single computer is down, all communications are down, and you name it. Basically from what I can tell they’re all sitting over there with their thumbs up their asses.”
“Fine Jake get those all reallocated where they can be useful. If they give you any problems let me know. Many of them are Soldiers and they are Soldiers first, they’re about to get a crash course on what it means to be a Soldier.”
“Yes sir I’ll get everyone concerned moving on it.”
“How about the Navy? What are they doing?”
“Sir, the Navy yard is mostly civilians and most of them never showed up for work after the event. They have also completed their evaluation and they are at thirty-five percent strength. As you know they are very officer heavy centric it’s unlikely that we will be able to convince them to do a lot of the grunt work we need right now.”
“Yeah, like we need a bunch of lawyers right now, by-the-way what is the Judge Advocate Generals Officer over there doing anyway?” asked the President.
“Most of them haven’t shown up sir. The ones that are there, they are sitting around like everyone else wondering what’s next.”
“Alright this is what I want.” The President said. “I want every swinging Officer over there to get with the Army and look at every aspect of the food – water issues. We have the lists of the dead and missing from the air crashes have them start to put that together, eventually people will come looking for them. Get them to start looking at all Government services and what each one is doing now. I want to know the status of all of the local police forces. Let’s get them moving on that I want to see some answers in the next seventy-two hours.”
“Yes sir I’ll get the Secretary right on it.” Jake replied. “Sir we’re putting most of this on the military.”
“Yes, so?” What other resources do we have that can do the job and protect us? In addition, we need to find out what’s going on with the law enforcement agencies. By-the-way what’s going on over at the FBI and CIA?”
The question regarding the FBI and CIA had caught the Chief of Staff off guard, he was hoping the President wouldn’t ask. He’s been trying himself to get a status from each agency, but to date neither one was responding. “Sir I don’t know, I’ve sent a couple of runners over to each and they returned empty handed, essentially they were sent back by the respective agency with no information.”
“Ok Jake you go. Take a company of Soldiers from the 3rd and find out they report to me damn-it regardless of what they think I’m very much in charge. I want their status tomorrow morning is that clear?”
“Yes sir.” Jake said.
Chapter Thirteen
All of the SEAL team families had been brought onto base and like many of the other military posts that were doing the same found they were busting out at the seams. NAS Oceana was a large base, not only home to SEAL various teams, but seventeen fighter strike squadrons, CBU 415 Seabees, Navy and Marine aviation training units, and several other units. Each one of these units also brought families on base which tripled the population on post then another twist was the Navy and Marine retirees that were in the area demands access to the base too.
No single unit on base had enough food and water to support the families the retirees were at first welcomed, but they were a drain on the posts resources. Once they had everyone on post the base was locked down by order of the base commander. The SEALs had not revealed to the rest of the base their underground facilities and wouldn’t anytime soon. The SEAL’s pulled out every tent they had to put the families up in as temporary shelters. Some of the families had travel trailers and RV’s at their homes, which were towed in by Humvees or some of the other trucks that were still running. The SEALs recognized early on that the bases resources would not be enough to sustain them all.
Technically, the SEALs didn’t come under the command of the base they didn’t feel that they had to abide by the base commanders order that no one leaves the base. They had their own ways on and off post and didn’t need his permission. They came under the Special Operations Command and at this time they had no communications with. When that happened the local SEAL commander had the authority to make the decisions and that’s all they needed. There new orders by Captain Rory was to get off post, find food and water and bring it back by any means necessary. Each team going out the wire
would be in full combat load, their rules of engagement were defensive in nature. Although, this was an offensive operation, they were only allowed to defend themselves if threatened.
They were given a list of must have items, first on it was medicines such as insulin, penicillin, Motrin, disinfectants, antibiotics, and simple things such as aspirin. On this list was bottles of butane large and small, camping kerosene, camping stoves and lantern’s that ran off of butane or kerosene. They also gathered sleeping bags, blankets, pillows, anything to help the families to include toys for the kids. They generally left the base in the middle of the night they had working night vision equipment that had been in the underground facility as well as radios that allowed them to speak between team members. They knew that if they were found with this equipment by regular Navy or Marine senior commanders there would be hell-to-pay, Captain Rory would have serious questions to answer.
The SEALs would gather everything on the lists take it down to the bay and load it onto one of their fast boats, replacement engines were also in the underground facilities, all they had to do was switch them out with the bad ones. All-of-this was done in the middle of the night, during the day the SEALs appeared to act like everyone else on base. It wasn’t until two weeks later that the base commander made the decision that he needed to secure all of the big box stores, grocery stores, pharmacies and sporting goods stores. Unfortunately, that decision was made too late what wasn’t taken by the SEALs was taken by looters. As the Sailors made their way out of the wire and into the surrounding community they found the empty stores. This was a lesson that wouldn’t be lost of the base commanders and his subordinate commands.
