299 Days VIII: The War (12 page)

After they opened gifts, they had their traditional Christmas morning breakfast—kind
of. In previous years, Grant would go out on Christmas Eve and get donuts and they’d
have them for breakfast on Christmas morning. It was the only morning in the year
they’d have donuts for breakfast.

There were no donuts this year, so Grant got some of the MRE desserts he saved from
the meals he ate out in the field. He stashed them away all year long for just an
occasion like this. So, in lieu of donuts, Grant handed out MRE desserts, a fudge
brownie, cinnamon scone, chocolate banana muffin top, vanilla pound cake (Grant’s
favorite), shortbread (his second favorite), cherry blueberry cobbler, raisin nut
mix with chocolate candies, and Chips Ahoy-like cookies.

The Matson family loved the unorthodox Christmas morning “donuts.” It seemed fitting
for this Collapse Christmas.

Grant knew that next Christmas he would either be eating real donuts, prison food,
or be dead. He just hoped that if he were eating donuts, it would be with his family,
though he suspected it wouldn’t be.

The family Christmas dinner was largely a continuation of the Christmas Eve dinner.
They had the same great food. They talked about the past year and all they’d accomplished.
It was a marvelous, marvelous dinner. Grant had never felt as close to his family
as he did right then.

Before he knew it, it was getting dark and time for Grant to go. After dinner, Grant
excused himself and got his kit, AR, and his new Swiss Army knife.

“Gotta run out and do some morale stuff with the rental team,” Grant said to Lisa.
“I’ll be back in the morning, or thereabouts.”

Lisa nodded. She understood, but only because she didn’t know where he was really
going.

Grant went over to the yellow cabin where the Team, Team Chicks, Gideon, and Chip
and Liz were finishing up their Christmas dinner. It was getting dark.

The Team kissed their women goodbye, because they’d be staying the night “out in the
field,” as they called it. They told their girlfriends that, in the next few days,
they would be going away for a while. The goodbye kisses were long and difficult.
Some of the girls were crying.

Grant could feel a definite change. Things had been so magical for the past day or
two with all the Christmas celebrations. Now things were going to get grim. It was
like a Monday morning after a great weekend.

This was the first time Grant wasn’t thrilled to go to Marion Farm. He could sense
that all the camaraderie and adventure of the 17th Irregulars was about to turn into
some very nasty business. He was glad they had the good times of Christmas, but he
knew that bad times were ahead.

The Team got into Mark’s truck. Bobby was driving it while Mark was … gone. Seeing
Mark’s truck without Mark in it reminded everyone about the tragedy of Mark and Paul.
And Missy. And Tammy.

The rest of the Team was feeling like Grant, like they were heading into a very serious
time in their lives, a time to do what they had been training to do for months, to
do what they needed to do. They were doing a job very few were capable of doing, a
job that desperately needed to be done. They were glad that they got to do it, but
they were anxious about the bad things they knew lay ahead. Each of them had been
thinking a lot lately about dying and how to deal with their friends dying.

As they piled in the back of Mark’s truck, it was one of the only times Grant didn’t
say, “This never gets old.” And Pow didn’t say, “Beats the shit out of selling insurance.”
They were silent on the way to Marion Farm. Not depressed, just thoughtful. It reminded
Grant of scenes in WWII movies where troops were heading out on landing craft to D
Day.

It was cold and pouring rain. It was an unpleasant ride, but the Team didn’t notice
that. They were thinking about what lay ahead in the next few days.

They pulled into Marion Farm and headed to the equipment shed for yet another Christmas
dinner followed by one of Pastor Pete’s services. They had planned the unit dinner
and service for the evening on Christmas Day because Pastor Pete was giving the Christmas
Eve and Christmas morning services in Pierce Point. The evening of Christmas day was
the only time he had to come out to Marion Farm.

The equipment shed was a happy place. It was decorated, brightly lit, and warm. Everything
was genuine there. The decorations were homemade: tin foil stars, strings of popcorn,
and a deer archery target with a red nose and a Rudolph sign. There were a few Christmas
lights that someone had found in the attic of the farmhouse. They had a Christmas
tree that was sparsely, but very tastefully, decorated.

The troops were energized. They had been taking it easy on Christmas Eve and Christmas
day. They were relaxed and had been exchanging gifts and hanging out with their new
family. The joyous atmosphere of Christmas dinner perked up the Team. They realized
how lucky they were to have a second Christmas out there with their comrades.

Pastor Pete arrived and started the service. Nearly everyone attended. Only about
a quarter of the troops attended his first service a few months ago.

Everyone could sense that something serious would be happening in the next few days.
Many people who weren’t religious were thinking that it couldn’t hurt to try it out.
Just in case.

Pastor Pete, as usual, kept the theology generic. He had Evangelicals, mainstream
Protestants, Catholics, Mormons, and a bunch of Agnostics. And he had lots of “sprinklers,”
which was his term for people who rarely attended church. Their only time in church
was when they got water sprinkled on them when they were born, rice sprinkled on them
when they got married, and dirt sprinkled on them when they died. “Sprinklers” were
warmly welcomed at this service, the last one for some of them.

Pastor Pete tried to make each person feel welcome. He even arranged with Rich on
one of Rich’s runs into town to get some of the candles with the Virgin Mary for the
Hispanic Catholics in the unit, which was a huge spiritual boost for them. They felt
like folks were trying to help them have their own “normal” Christmas Mass with that
special effort. Pastor Pete even learned a few lines of Spanish and read a small portion
of the Christmas Mass prayers in Spanish. While it wasn’t the same, they appreciated
the effort.

Soldiers took turns reading the familiar Christmas story from the Bible. It was amazing
to see a soldier who normally carried a rifle now unarmed and reading from the Bible.
It showed two sides of human beings.

It was Pastor Pete’s turn to deliver a message. He needed to boil the Christmas message
down to its most common denominator and he did. He made the point that the Savior
came here for each of them and that it wasn’t too late to accept Him. After the service,
a dozen or so soldiers were huddled around him, which was extremely gratifying to
Grant.

And me
. The outside thought seemed to be smiling. It was more of a warmth than a smiling.
It was satisfaction and joy for people who had found their way home.

Now it was dinner time. The Team was already stuffed from eating the past two days.
They volunteered to serve dinner so everyone, including the KP detail, could all eat
at once together. Grant thought that it was particularly important that he, the commanding
officer, show his appreciation for his troops by serving them dinner.

Grant was walking over to start serving when Ted came up to him. Ted motioned for
Grant to come over and talk out of earshot of everyone else. Grant knew what this
was all about.

“Hey, we’re moving out at midnight on New Year’s Eve. That is, the first minutes of
New Year’s Day,” Ted said.

Grant just nodded. He’d been expecting this. “Figured it would be around New Year’s
if it was named ‘Tet,’” Grant said. Ted was impressed that a civilian knew that Tet
happened on the Vietnamese New Year.

It was anti-climactic. Grant had been worrying for weeks about the day he’d have to
tell his wife about all the lying and that he was leaving. That day would be very
soon.

“I wanted to give you Christmas with your family without knowing this,” Ted said.
“We got word from HQ two days ago.”

“Thanks, man,” Grant said. “I needed those two days.”

Grant and Ted immediately started thinking about all the planning they’d need to do
in the next few days.

“Let’s have a nice Christmas dinner with the unit and then we’ll deal with this,”
Ted said.

Grant nodded. There was nothing else to say so he just went back to serving dinner.
It cheered him up to see each of the soldiers, knowing they were all risking their
lives to make things right again. They all were sacrificing as much as he was and
they were in this together. Grant wished each of them a Merry Christmas as he served
them mashed potatoes. Someone gave Grant a Santa hat that he wore as he plopped mashed
potatoes on everyone’s plates. He felt at home with these men and women.

Well, this is my new home, Grant thought to himself. He’d tell Lisa in a day or two
and he’d be thrown out of his cabin. He’d come here, to his extended family. Oh well.
At least he had a place to go, and a really good reason to be kicked out of his family.
Fighting to restore a decent life for his family and people in his state was better
than the usual reasons for getting kicked out of your house, like booze or cheating.

“Lives, fortunes, and sacred honor,” Grant thought to himself once again as he was
serving up mashed potatoes. He frequently came back to this phrase. Grant had always
revered the Founding Fathers for the sacrifices they had made. And Grant had always
said—words he now regretted—that he wished he could make a similar sacrifice.

Be careful what you wish for.

(December 25)

The 17th Irregulars had a magnificent Christmas dinner. Morale had never been so high.
They were one cohesive group of 104 people, and together, they sang Christmas carols.
Someone handed out candles and they turned off the lights. They sang by candlelight.
It was amazing. Grant had goose bumps, actual goose bumps. Everyone knew they were
about to do something very, very big. This would be the most important thing they
would do in their lives. They would do it together, and would do it well. They would
never be closer to a group of people than they were to each other right then.

“Aren’t you guys heading back?” a soldier asked Grant and Bobby. The soldier knew
that Grant tried to stay at his cabin as much as possible, even though driving him
there and back was a big use of precious gas.

“Nah, I’m staying here tonight,” Grant said. He wasn’t being a devoted commanding
officer;, he was scared to go home. He didn’t want to be anywhere near Lisa. He was
afraid he would blurt out the New Year’s Day plan and blow operational security. He
wanted to put off his announcement of leaving for as long as possible.

As the Team was cleaning up the dishes, Ted came over to Grant.

“We need to go over all the planning that we need to do,” he said.

Grant nodded. It was 11:00 p.m. and he was tired. He was hoarse from talking to so
many people. “Tomorrow morning, okay?” he asked.

Ted would have preferred to talk at that moment with all of the operational details
that were racing through his mind. He could tell Grant was worthless right then, so
he didn’t push it.

“0500,” Ted said, meaning 5:00 a.m. “The den.” That was the little office in the farmhouse
they used when they had to close the door.

“Roger that,” Grant said as he finished scrubbing a pot. He showed it to Franny, who
looked at it carefully and gave the thumbs up for a sufficiently clean pot. Grant’s
hands were red from being in hot water all night. KP duty was hard, hard work.

The Team was dragging, too. They finished at half speed and headed to their cots in
the barn. Grant, as CO, had a few special privileges. One was that he got to sleep
on a couch in the farmhouse instead of the noisy barn. The reason was that the CO
needed to be as rested as possible. The others who got to sleep in the farmhouse were
Ted and Sap and the females, who were in the two bedrooms. Grant fell asleep in thirty
seconds on his “home away from home” couch.

Grant was on patrol outside Marion Farm. It was perfectly silent, except for some
faint, but terrifying, rustling in the bushes. He sensed there were several Limas
nearby. Suddenly, a Lima with a snarling and demonic face jumped out of the bushes
and lunged at him with a bright, almost glowing knife. Grant drew his pistol but the
demon Lima was blocking his arm. Grant fought him but the Lima was strong.

“Wake up!” Ted was yelling. “It’s me, Ted!”

Grant realized he was fighting Ted in his sleep. He was a little embarrassed.

“Did I draw on you?” Grant asked.

“Almost!” Ted said. “This job is dangerous enough without getting shot by my CO. Shot
by a lawyer. I’d be laughed at forever.”

“Sorry, man,” Grant said. He realized others might be around hearing him so he shouldn’t
call Ted “man.” He was a CO, not a drinking buddy.

“0510,” Ted said. “Time to get to work.”