299 Days VIII: The War (10 page)

It was hard to comprehend, even though Ben had known for a few weeks that he was the
Patriot’s designated interim governor. But this—actual plans to move into Olympia—seemed
so much more real than the talk about Ben being the governor “someday.”

Ben was no military guy, but he was curious. “How’s this going to work?” he asked
Brad.

“Patriot units from the areas all around Olympia will move in on New Year’s Day,”
Brad said. “While the Limas and gang bangers are hung over,” he added with a smile.

“And there’s political significance,” Ben said, “to a new year. A new year and a new
set of leaders. New, new, new. People want something new. Last year sucked; this year,
with new leaders, things will be better.” Whoever thought of a New Year’s Day attack
understood politics, Ben thought.

“Patriot regular units will concentrate on the north, to prevent Lima regulars at
JBLM from coming down I-5,” Brad explained. “Patriot irregular units …”

“What’s an ‘irregular’ unit?” Ben asked and Brad explained the term.

“Irregular units will be coming from all around here,” Brad said pointing around the
farm. “Some will be coming very close to here, right down Highway 101.”

“Will they come here?” Ben asked.

“Nope,” Brad said. “Not unless we need them to.” Brad hadn’t talked to HQ about having
an irregular unit come to the Prosser Farm, but he knew he could call in to HQ and
have them divert one, if absolutely necessary.

Brad continued, “The most dangerous time for us is when the irregular units are nearby.
The Patriot forces near us will make a big fat target for the Limas, who supposedly
don’t have much in the way of helicopters or aircraft, and their artillery can’t reach
here. But still, the Patriot units will be a target. There could also be some confusion.
You know, the ‘fog of war.’” Brad had been a paratrooper in Desert Storm and had seen
the “fog of war” up close. It was deadly: sleep deprivation, adrenaline, and an overload
of information. Bad things happened.

“What do we do when all this starts?” Ben asked.

“When the Patriot forces,” Brad said—he almost slipped and added “or God forbid, the
Lima forces” but he didn’t—“when the good guys get near us, we’ll activate the evacuation
plan. We’ll take you, Tom, Brian, and Carly and get into one of the vehicles and take
the route. The second vehicle and half of my team will stay here to get the families
out, if that’s necessary. I doubt it will be necessary, they’ll probably stay here
until it’s safe for families to go into Olympia and join you.”

Ben nodded. This was like part of some movie, but it was happening for real.

“We’ll take you slowly and safely,” Brad said, “instead of the mad dash we’ve rehearsed.
We’ll wait near the Delphi guard station until we have confirmation it’s okay to go
there. When the coast is clear, it’ll be okay to go down 101 to Olympia. Then we cruise
there in your first motorcade, Governor.”

Ben, once again, was trying to take all this in.

“What do I need to do to help?” Ben asked.

“Get your family mentally prepared,” Brad answered. “Make sure their head is in the
game, and that they’re not afraid and they trust us to get them through it safely.”

Brad put his finger up in the air like he had forgotten something. “Actually,” he
said, “don’t tell them what’s going on by yourself. We’ll have a big meeting with
my whole team and we’ll use maps to show them what’s happening and let them know about
all our communications and other capabilities. When they’re done listening, they’ll
understand that we’re pros at this.” Brad smiled. He was very proud of this plan and
his team’s abilities. They were good, and they were doing something incredibly important
for the cause. Brad couldn’t wait to get started. He knew it would work. He just knew
it.

“So I just show up and take a ride with you guys?” Ben asked. There had to be more
to it than that.

“Well, you need to pack some suits. Do you have any?” Brad asked.

“Nope,” Ben answered, and Brad took a note. He’d make sure the Think Farm had some
suits for Ben when he got to the capitol. The new governor had to dress well.

“There’s one more thing you need to do,” Brad said.

“Sure,” Ben said, “name it.”

“Study those binders we brought out,” Brad said. Those were the briefing binders the
Think Farm had prepared. They detailed what the Patriot’s plan was for governing.
How the new, interim government would be formed, who the interim legislators would
be, and the political messages the new governor would be giving. And, most importantly,
the Patriot plan for a new state constitution and elections.

“Homework?” Ben asked with a smile. “I have frickin’ homework?”

“Yes, Governor,” Brad said. “The content of those binders is why we’re going to all
this trouble.”

And by “trouble,” Brad meant all the lives that would be lost.

(December 24)

Ron Spencer wasn’t even thinking about Christmas this year. He was completely preoccupied
and busy preparing for a mission.

Leading up to Christmas, Ron had noticed some big changes in the government-employee
enclave of Olympia. Regular people, like him, had been civil to the Loyalists for
months, but that was starting to change. Regular people were not taking it anymore.
They were no longer accepting that some people got more FCard credits than them. They
could sense that the Loyalists wouldn’t be running things much longer and they weren’t
afraid of the Loyalists as much as they used to be. They had seen that the FCorps
were a joke.

Ron could tell that the Loyalists were stunned the “temporary Crisis” was still going
on. With the whole government focused entirely on the recovery, why was it taking
so long? It was almost like government couldn’t solve a problem, which was impossible
in their minds. The Loyalists were dismayed at the news of states and parts of states
joining the Patriots. They were amazed when blacks and Latinos joined, too. How could
minorities possibly be part of the racist teabagger movement? And how could stupid
hillbillies be winning?

The most tangible evidence of Loyalists losing faith in their side was all the families
in Olympia who were abandoning their houses there and getting on buses to go up to
Seattle, where they felt more safe. The Loyalists had tight control of things up there.

But not in Olympia. People could tell—and were betting their own lives and their families’
lives—that Olympia was about to be in Patriot hands.

A few days before Christmas, Ron received word that he and his fellow “gray men” had
a mission. Finally! A mission. Ron was so excited he couldn’t sleep.

Their weapons? Cans of spray paint. But not for the graffiti Ron had been doing.

Matt Collins, Ron’s friend who was the gray man organizer in the area and got spray
paint to Ron, told him before he got arrested that something big was coming up in
a while. They were tasked with some “preparations” for the big event.

Matt explained a few weeks before that each gray man would go into his or her neighborhood
and spray paint a huge “L” on the houses of people they knew were Loyalists. To get
an “L” spray painted on their house, a person had to be more than just a person who
went through the motions of supporting the government. A person had to be a hardcore
Loyalist to get an “L.” This had several purposes.

First, it would inform the Loyalists that the Patriots knew who they were and could
strike anytime. This time it would be some spray paint. Next time, it might be a shotgun
or a Molotov cocktail. Ron remembered how terrifying it was when Nancy Ringman spray-painted
“POI” on the Matson house. Well, it was time for the Loyalists to be terrified. Every
day, when Ron walked by the Matson house, he saw that “POI” and was afraid for them.
He wondered what happened to them. He figured there was a good chance Grant was dead
by now. He hoped Grant’s family was still okay.

The second purpose of painting an “L” on Loyalist houses was to allow Patriot forces,
who were rumored to be coming into Olympia, to know which houses were safe and which
could be trouble.

The third purpose was to let all the people who just pretended to be Loyalists know
that they were okay and that Patriots would not harm them. The masses—the “Undecideds”—living
in government-controlled areas, like Olympia, were superficially supporting the government.
Many Undecideds had “We support the Recovery!” signs in their yards, for example.
But they really didn’t care about the government—they just wanted their FCards to
stay full of credits.

The Patriots would need the support of the Undecideds. They were, after all, the majority
of the population. But the Undecideds were scared of the Patriots. They had been told
all kinds of wild tales about how the teabaggers were racist, right-wing whackos.
The Patriots needed to demonstrate to the Undecideds that they would not harm them,
just the Loyalists. When the Undecideds woke up and found their door wasn’t tagged
but the hardcore Loyalists’ were, they would know they were being spared.

A final, and grisly, purpose was to let the population know which houses to loot and
whom to drag out of their houses and … Ron tried not to think about that. Reprisals
were part of every collapse and war everywhere in the world throughout history; modern-day
America was no exception. It was human nature to hurt those who brutalized a person
and their loved ones. It was human DNA.

However, Ron fervently hoped the reprisals would be as limited as possible. He didn’t
want to be part of revenge killings, but he couldn’t deny that the Loyalist bastards—who
had taken everything from people—deserved to at least have people know who they were.
The decent people who had everything stolen from them and had been put down for so
long would have to make up their own minds about whether they’d go over to their neighbor’s
house, now painted with a big “L,” and settle the score. It was up to them; Ron couldn’t
control that.

He wondered if the Patriots would be coming tomorrow. He knew it would be soon. They
wouldn’t show their hand by tagging the houses and then waiting too long to follow
through on the tagging. So the liberation of Olympia would be coming soon … very soon.

Ron started to think about people in his neighborhood, former friends in some cases,
whom he wanted to kill. He thought about how he would do it, in great detail. Then
he’d catch himself. He was supposed to be better than that. They were the bad guys;
he couldn’t stoop to their level, but he couldn’t deny that he wanted revenge. He
prayed for forgiveness, for the sin of thinking about what he’d do to them if he couldn’t
control himself – and for forgiveness if he carried out what he was thinking about
doing to them.

A few days before Christmas, an envelope appeared on Ron’s front porch. It contained
the code phrase, “The chair is against the wall,” which was a line from the movie
Red Dawn
. It meant that it was time to tag houses that night. There was a handwritten note
on it, “This is for Matt Collins, RIP. Clover Park massacre.” Ron closed his eyes
and prayed that this was a mistake, but he knew in his heart that Matt was now gone.

After pacing around the house all night, it was finally “go” time. Ron snuck out of
the house at 2:00 a.m. He had to have personal knowledge that each house he tagged
was definitely a Loyalist. The Patriots wouldn’t leave this up to making a map and
having someone else do it, which could lead to mistaken taggings. That would show
that the Patriots had faulty intelligence or faulty execution, and could get innocent
people killed. Therefore, a tagger had to know, firsthand, that the occupant was a
Loyalist who had committed crimes against the population.

Ron selected three houses in his neighborhood to tag. The first was Carlos Cuevas,
a former state Department of Labor official. He had taken over as the FCorps organizer
for the Cedars and was a real prick. He went around to people’s houses having “impromptu”
conversations about politics and taking notes. He wasn’t even subtle about it. Carlos
thought all Patriots were bigots out to get him. He and his family had an FCard chock
full of credits.

Carlos had arranged for some FCorps goons to “visit” Len Isaacson, one of Ron’s good
neighbors, after Len gave Carlos some “wrong” answers in a political conversation.
Len didn’t get sent away to prison, but he might have. Len’s FCard suddenly had zero
credits on it. People in the neighborhood, like Ron, gave scarce food to Len’s family.
Carlos mocked Len by saying there must be a “glitch” with Len’s FCard and he “would
get right on that.” That was such classic, passive-aggressive behavior of a weak bully
who temporarily had power. Carlos loved the power. He was about to find out the other
side of that coin.

The second house was Rex Maldonado’s. He was a former hippie who became Assistant
Director of the State Unemployment Agency. He was Carlos’s right hand man. Rex wore
Che Guevara t-shirts and, with his gray pony tail, lectured everyone about “social
justice.” He was all about “peace and freedom,” but would send the FCorps to your
house if you disagreed with his version of “peace and freedom.”