299 Days VIII: The War (25 page)

Nineteen Delta was in the little lead car, the “scout car,” with two other soldiers,
Jake “Meerkat” Herman and Corporal DeShante Anderson. Meerkat grew up a poor white
kid in Nashville. Anderson, who was black, grew up in Chicago. He had invented the
“1-7” “gang sign” for the unit.

These two guys knew how to fight in urban settings. They’d had to do it all their
lives; they just refined their skills and got better gear in the Army.

Nineteen Delta, Meerkat, and Anderson were called the “Clear Out Crew” because the
three of them would work together to clear out any obstacles, like enemy guards.

The Clear Out Crew dressed in civilian clothes so they could blend in, if necessary.
Their civilian car even had a “We Support the Recovery!” bumper sticker. They had
a set of fake identities supplied by HQ and they could operate independently in Lima-controlled
areas for several days, if necessary. The Clear Out Crew was one of the prizes of
the 17th. Most irregular units didn’t have guys like that.

It was silent in Mark’s truck. Bobby was driving and Scotty was in the front cab working
the radios. Grant and Pow were in the rear cab, which also had loads of gear. Ryan
and Wes were under a tarp in the back of the truck with additional supplies.

Everyone was silent because they wanted to listen to the radio and pay attention.
They were constantly scanning their surroundings. It was like hunting. Serious hunters
focus on their surroundings. Bad ones relax and talk. The price for being a bad hunter
was not getting a deer. The price for relaxing and talking out here was dying.

So far, so good, Ted thought. They’d only gone two miles, but the roads were totally
clear. It was eight more miles to the Blue Ribbon Boys’ gate at the entrance to Frederickson,
which would be the first battle, unless Bennington had taken care of things.

Nineteen Delta gave “all clear” reports at each mile marker all the way up to mile
post nine.

“Going on foot,” Nineteen Delta said as they were approaching mile post ten and the
Frederickson gate manned by the Blue Ribbon Boys. Nineteen Delta grew up on a Montana
ranch and had hunted since he was seven years old. He knew how to move silently quite
well.

All the 17th’s convoy vehicles pulled off the road to wait. They were sitting ducks
there, so the troops in pickups and utility vehicles got out and patrolled around.
Grant would have joined them but, as the commanding officer, he wasn’t supposed to
unnecessarily expose himself to fire. Bobby was driving, so he wasn’t supposed to
leave the truck except in an emergency. Scotty was doing comms for Grant, so he needed
to stay put. And Ryan and Wes were under the tarp, so they weren’t going anywhere.
This left Pow to be the one to get out and check things over.

A few minutes went by, which seemed like a few hours. Grant rolled down the window
in Mark’s truck so he could hear anything, and sure enough, he heard something.

The soft sound of gunfire in the distance. Faint “pop, pop, pops.” It sounded like
a few fire fights in Frederickson. Good. Probably.

“Two guards at the gate,” Nineteen Delta whispered into the radio. “Clear Out Crew,
link up with me.” His voice was very calm, which reassured everyone else in the unit
who was listening on the radio.

Grant was gung ho, but he could not do what the Clear Out Crew did. Because they had
to be so silent, their primary weapon was a knife. When Grant watched them training,
he realized that the one thing he couldn’t do was sneak up on a guy and slit his throat.
He just couldn’t do it. But the Clear Out Crew could. And they could do it extremely
well.

After a few minutes, Nineteen Bravo came on the radio. “Objective secure. No further
guards. Just two. Go ahead and roll in.”

Bobby put the truck in gear. They kept the engine idling so they could quickly take
off, if necessary. Besides, it was a diesel. It needed to idle.

Grant was glad to be moving. It was better than being a sitting duck. But, then again,
maybe they were heading closer to an ambush, he thought. Sitting somewhere relatively
safe or moving forward? Grant would pick moving because that put them closer to Olympia,
and getting there was their job. Everything they’d done for months was about getting
to Olympia.

The Frederickson gate was well lit. As Mark’s truck came up on the guards, Grant could
see the lead car and the Clear Out Crew. They had face masks on and they looked terrifying.
Nineteen Delta came over to Mark’s truck. Bobby rolled the window down.

“Got two prisoners,” Nineteen Delta said. “A couple teenage punks were taking a piss
when we took out their two colleagues. They came back to their posts, saw us, and
instantly surrendered. Hammer and tag?”

“Yep,” Grant said. “Hammer and tag.” This was the phrase they had come up with for
how they would take care of prisoners they didn’t want to take with them because they
didn’t have the transport space, the resources to guard them, or food to feed them.
They wouldn’t have any of those things for prisoners, except maybe high-value ones,
on the ride into Olympia. Once they got to Olympia, they would have temporary facilities
to house prisoners, but not now.

“Hammer and tag” meant the unit would take a hammer or other heavy object, like a
pistol, and smash the hands of the prisoner. They wouldn’t count on zip ties to handcuff
them because unattended prisoners could wriggle out of them after a few hours. Smashing
the prisoner’s hands meant they couldn’t fight for a few weeks or maybe months while
they healed. Smashing their hands was more humane than shooting them. The unit would
then “tag” the prisoner by marking his face in permanent marker with an “L” for Lima.
That way, others could know that the prisoner was a Lima. And, with broken or severely
bruised hands, the prisoner wasn’t a threat.

Grant had no moral problem with hammer and tagging enemy prisoners. If Lima combatants
got out of this fight with just smashed hands, they were getting off easy. Under any
set of morals, Lima combatants deserved to die. Most armies would have shot them without
even thinking about it. So, as harsh as smashing their hands was, it was still far
more humane than shooting them. And it solved the Patriot’s problem of transporting,
guarding, and feeding the prisoners.

Nineteen Delta whispered “hammer and tag” to the Clear Out Crew. Anderson put the
hands of the two terrified guards on the metal gate while Nineteen Delta held Scotty’s
silenced .22 pistol, the “Hush Puppy,” to the guards’ heads.

The guards had a piece of duct tape on their mouths so they couldn’t scream. Meerkat
took out his pistol. The guards started to scream into the duct tape. They were screaming
for their lives, but no one else could hear them. It sounded pathetic. They were so
helpless.

Meerkat used the butt of his pistol, a heavy 1911, to smash the hands of the first
guard. He screamed out in pain, muffled by the tape. Meerkat smashed the hands of
the second guard. He then took out a Sharpie pen and wrote a huge “L” on the guards’
faces. The Clear Out Crew walked away, opened up the gate, and got in the lead car.
The guards rolled around on the ground screaming into their duct tape gags, like squealing
pigs.

That was it? Grant thought. The Frederickson gate was taken? It couldn’t be that easy.

Things were going to become harder now that they were in Frederickson, Grant realized.
They could roll down a country road on the way into town, but now they were in town,
where every block had a dozen possible ambush points, full of people. More people
meant more Lima sympathizers calling in to the authorities that a strange convoy was
there. It also meant more people shooting at them. And it meant more innocent civilians
to navigate.

Moving through town took forever. They spent more time idling than moving. Ted had
made a calculated decision to do it this way and Grant had agreed. They could just
ram through Frederickson and keep going, but if they left Frederickson in Lima hands,
they would have their escape route back to Pierce Point cut off. And Pierce Point
would be exposed to a strong Lima force that could roll down the road and take on
the Pierce Point guards; guards who were weakened without the Team with eight guards,
now in the 17th. By blowing through an unsecured Frederickson and racing to Olympia,
the 17th would have effectively divided themselves and Pierce Point. Besides, the
17th was merely an irregular unit sent in behind the regular forces taking Olympia.
They weren’t in a rush to get there.

Bennington was the other reason Ted and Grant decided to go slowly through Frederickson
and make sure it was secured. If Bennington had taken out the town’s leadership and
successfully created chaos right when the 17th was rolling through, then it would
be much easier to take Frederickson. Maybe even possible for an irregular unit of
just one hundred troops. Maybe.

As the 17th crept through Frederickson, the sound of gunfire was getting louder and
louder. There was still no contact with the enemy. They got about a mile in when the
inevitable happened.

An FCorps volunteer in Frederickson, Levi Millsaps, saw the convoy. He knew that a
semi with lead and chase cars and trucks wasn’t normal. It was New Year’s Eve. No
one had a reason to be driving at 10:00 p.m. on New Year’s Eve. The only semis that
ever came through town went to the grocery store or courthouse. This convoy wasn’t
going in that direction, besides there was gunfire throughout the city. Something
was going on. He had earlier heard on his FCorps radio that there was a “Code Orange.”
He didn’t know what that meant, but calling out a code, along with the gunfire in
the distance, must mean something was going on.

“County EM dispatch,” he radioed in to County Emergency Management. “This is Levi
Millsaps. Copy?”

“Millsaps, County EM dispatch,” a dispatcher said. “Go ahead.” It wasn’t the voice
of the regular dispatcher, but someone new.

“Yeah, I’m here by the Lions Park and I’m seeing something strange,” Millsaps said.

“What do you see?” crackled the voice.

“A semi-truck with a lead car and pickup and a couple pickups and car behind it. And
the pickup behind the semi has several armed men in the back of the truck.”

“Excellent,” said the dispatcher. “The food semi finally got here. The cars and pickup
are the escorts. Thanks for the report, Millsaps.”

Millsaps felt proud. He had helped. He had observed something and reported it. Millsaps
was a hard core Loyalist, a true believer in the legitimate authorities. He had retired
from the Post Office and volunteered back in 2011 for the Department of Homeland Security’s
“see something, say something” campaign. Millsaps thought it was important to watch
people. There were terrorists everywhere. He wanted to protect his fellow citizens
from them, and keeping a watchful eye on them was the way to do it.

“What’s all the gunfire about?” Millsaps asked.

“Can’t say on the radio,” the dispatcher said. “It’ll be over soon, though.”

“OK,” Millsaps said. “I’m on standby if you need me.”

“Thanks,” the dispatcher said. “Bennington out.”

(December 31)

About a half hour before the Pierce Point convoy descended upon Frederickson, Bennington
had returned from the fighting at the MexiZone and went straight to the courthouse.

He headed to Julie Mather’s room and pounded on the door.

“Julie, it’s John Bennington,” he said. “I need you to come out.”

Julie was terrified. She had heard all those explosions in the courthouse. She had
no idea what was going on, but knew it had to be big … and bad. She had been hurt
by so many men, including plenty in the courthouse. She would never open her door
to one of them pounding on the door.

Except John. He was the one man there who had never hurt her. He never tried to get
her into bed. In fact, he even tried to protect her from Winters and the others. He
was always respectful.

“Julie, you are in danger,” Bennington said. “The explosions were in the conference
room. Who was it that told you to be ‘sick’ tonight?” Bennington hoped no one heard
him say that, but this part of the courthouse was now empty, except for Julie.

That’s right! Julie thought. Bennington had saved her. He must be behind the explosions.
He must be … now she understood what was going on. Bennington had killed all the people
in the conference room. She had no idea why he would risk his own life to kill those
people, but somehow it made sense. Bennington had been the only person to be nice
to her, so it made sense that he would be the only person who would finally do something.

“Winters is dead,” Bennington said through the door, remembering the sound of his
neck bones snapping under his boot. “Lots of the others, too. No one is left to hurt
you. I saved you, Julie, and now I need to help you some more. You are not safe in
this building. Trust me.”

She unlocked, and slowly opened, the door. There he was. He looked so handsome. More
than that, he was there to help her. Unlike all the others. He was there to protect
her. She couldn’t believe how lucky she was.

“Grab any medications or other things you need,” Bennington said. “Right now! I need
to get you out of here. Grab everything you need.”