299 Days VIII: The War (31 page)

Grant ran up to the crash, which took a while given that it was about three hundred
yards away and he was running between cover the whole time. Scotty was right behind
him.

It was horrible. The little car was not built to withstand a crash, and it didn’t.

Grant realized that the term “twisted” metal was not a car accident cliché. It was
real. Everything was twisted and smashed, strewn all over. The “We Support the Recovery!”
bumper sticker was still intact.

This was the most scared Grant had been, so far. Some of his men were dead or about
to die in that crushed car. He had known that this would probably happen at some point
in the march to Olympia. But now that it had, he was scared. He didn’t know what he
was scared of. He was just scared.

Grant heard Scotty radioing in. “Crash site. Scout car. Looks bad.”

It was. It was dark, but the highway lights illuminated parts of the crash site. Grant
could see someone. It was Anderson. He was wrapped around the steering wheel; literally
wrapped around it. The top of his head was gone.. All that was left was his face,
which was soaked in blood with bits of broken glass stuck to it.

Grant and Scotty searched for Nineteen Delta, who was on the other side of the crash,
the side that wasn’t in the highway light. They found him outside of the car. He must
have been flung from the car, which made sense. The scouts didn’t wear seatbelts when
they had to be able to get out of the car on a moment’s notice. Traffic safety wasn’t
their highest concern.

Nineteen Delta was dead, too. His blood was everywhere. Grant shined the flashlight
all over the area; it looked like he had bled out. Grant immediately started feeling
guilty that they hadn’t rushed in to help, despite the sniper and possible ambush.
Maybe he should have not worried about the sniper, who turned out to be a shitty shot,
and just rushed to the scene of the crash. Maybe Nineteen Delta wouldn’t have bled
out.

Grant quickly snapped out of feeling guilty. He had to make sure this wasn’t an ambush.
He and Scotty kept looking around with their flashlights. At first, Grant was worried
that any enemy about to ambush them would zero in on the flashlights. Then he realized
that the odds of an ambush were getting smaller and smaller. He also realized that
Pow and Donnie would know the flashlights were him and Scotty. Hopefully. Friendly
fire was almost as big a concern as enemy fire.

They heard some groaning. Thank God. It was Meerkat, who was under a car door. He,
too, must have been thrown from the car.

“Medic!” Scotty yelled into the radio, which Ted had already thought of and had told
Nick to take the chase truck up to the crash site. Right as he called in for the medic,
Scotty saw the headlights of a truck coming. He assumed, and hoped, it was the chase
truck.

“Medic on the way in the chase truck,” Jim Q. said into the intra-unit radio just
before Scotty decided to take up a kneeling position and potentially engage the truck
speeding toward him. “Flashing headlights now,” Jim Q. said right before the truck
flashed its headlights, which allowed Scotty to return to treating Meerkat.

“Can you hear me, man?” Grant yelled to Meerkat. Grant noticed that his fear showed
in his voice. He sounded terrified and knew that he needed to be more calm so his
men didn’t get scared, especially Meerkat, who needed to think everything was okay.

“Over here,” Meerkat managed to get out. Right then, the headlights of a truck appeared
and lit up everything. Nick jumped out.

“Nick’s here, bro,” Grant said to Meerkat as he and Scotty were getting the car door
off him. “You’ll be fine. Things don’t look too bad.”

This was kind of true. Meerkat had all his limbs and there wasn’t a ton of blood.
It could have been much worse.

Nick got to work with Grant’s assistance.

“Some broken bones, but basically okay,” Nick said after a quick assessment.

Grant felt a surge of relief. He immediately started to think of the plan for getting
the wounded out.

“Get the utility truck here,” Grant said to Scotty, who started to call it in.

“Car,” Meerkat said. “Take the utility car. I’ll be okay in it. Save the truck for
hauling.”

Amazing. Meerkat was seriously wounded and he was thinking more clearly than Grant.
What a soldier.

“Yeah, that makes sense,” Grant said and pointed to Scotty, who nodded. Grant looked
at Nick, who looked up and nodded.

“Car will work,” Nick said.

Scotty got on the radio. “Get the utility car here. Utility truck can sit tight. We’re
taking a man back.”

Back where? Pierce Point?

“Tell the Frederickson hospital we’ve got a car crash coming in,” Nick said to Scotty.

Frederickson hospital. Of course, Grant thought. He had forgotten it existed. Luckily,
Nick always knew the location and general direction to the nearest hospital. He was
good at what he did.

Scotty radioed it in. A few minutes later, word came that Frederickson hospital was
back in operation. They had lots of wounded of their own from “Code Orange,” but they
had room for one more. Thank God Frederickson was in Patriot hands.

“You’re going to the hospital; a real hospital,” Nick said to Meerkat. “You’ll be
fine.”

“Thanks, man,” Meerkat said, with a pained wince.

“Don’t talk,” Nick said. He knew Meerkat had broken ribs.

Meerkat was quickly stabilized and in the back of the utility car heading off. Now
the work began.

(January 1)

Bodies. Grant had to deal with bodies of Anderson and Nineteen Delta. These weren’t
the bodies of strangers. They were his guys. Guys he knew and liked. Brothers, actually.

Grant looked over at Anderson. There was the fun-loving guy who invented the 17th’s
“gang sign.” He was dead. Mangled. In pieces. A guy who was so alive, so animated,
always smiling and joking was now crumpled up and missing the top of his head. Grant
thought about his missing forehead. That’s where Anderson’s smiles and jokes came
from: his brain. Now his brain was splattered all over the dash and windshield of
that stupid little car. Anderson’s joking and smiling was gone. It went away when
his head did.

And there was Nineteen Delta. A heart of gold. A tough, tough kid. Well, Grant thought,
a man in his late twenties, but still a “kid” to an old guy like Grant. Nineteen Delta
was kind and always looked after the weaker members of the unit. Now he was split
apart, parts of him hanging out of his body. All that kindness was now gone. He was
now just parts of a person, covered in blood.

“Get the utility truck over here to take away their bodies,” Grant said to Scotty.
“Take them to Frederickson. Bennington will make sure they get the burial they deserve.”

“We need the utility truck over here,” Scotty said into the radio. He didn’t want
to say “To pick up two bodies.” The guys, especially back in the semi-trailer, would
be speculating and getting scared. They needed to have their edge now. There was no
use worrying about whose bodies they were. There would be more.

The utility truck came up. The Pierce Point guard driving it got out and, seeing the
bodies in his headlights, threw up. He was embarrassed, but returned to work and did
what needed to be done.

“Don’t worry about barfing,” Grant said. “I’ve done it.”

But not this time, Grant thought. Something had changed in him. He had become less
sensitive to these things. He was still moved by the tragedies, just not as much as
when he was back in Pierce Point. He realized that when he left his family to ship
out with the unit, he mentally transitioned to being a soldier. He was no longer “father,
husband, attorney” Grant Matson. He was simply “soldier” Grant Matson now, and his
mental change was being reflected in his ability to react as such to tragedies.

The convoy was about one hundred yards from the overpass. They were parked on the
side of the highway on one of those nice, wide shoulders designed to fit a semi so
it’s still off the road. They had enough room on the shoulder, especially with the
pickups, to get out and move around. The shoulder was like a long, thin parking lot.

They were parked near a highway light which provided a decent amount of light for
their long convoy on the shoulder. Grant didn’t like that they—a big, fat target—were
illuminated but, so far, it seemed like there was no enemy around, so he appreciated
the light.

The Pierce Point guard driving the chase truck got a chainsaw out. He went over to
the logjam and started up the saw.

During all the craziness, Grant had forgotten all about the obstacle that lay ahead
of them. Oh crap. They were a stalled, sitting duck, he remembered. It was time to
get out of this.

He went over to the guard, who knew how to use a chainsaw.

“We’ll cut this,” he said pointing to logs. “Here, here, and here,” he said. Grant
was glad that this ole’ boy from rural western Washington knew a thing or two about
cutting wood. Grant was extremely grateful that someone had thought to bring the chainsaw.
And the bolt cutters. They’d probably need those later, too.

“How long?” Grant asked.

“A half hour, if we get people to move the pieces,” he said.

Grant ran over to Scotty and told him to have the semi unload the troops. It would
take many, many muscles to get the cut up logs off the highway.

They made short work of the logjam. Thank God they had that chainsaw. Grant was praying
that the chain didn’t break. Then again, they could have someone jump in the utility
truck and go get a chainsaw or two from the Lake Isabella Boys a few miles back.

“Pretty sophisticated,” Ted said as he shined his flashlight on the ropes used to
hold the logs up on the embankment and then release them. “Somebody knows what they’re
doing.”

Grant looked at Ted and started to say that this was not good news.

Ted nodded before Grant could speak. “Yep,” Ted said, as if he were reading Grant’s
mind. “There will be more of these obstacles up the road. And they’d be crazy not
to have an ambush or two attached to each obstacle. We got lucky on this first one.”

Ted looked again at the ropes for the log release. “They were ready for us to come.
Well, not us, per se, but people like us. It might take a couple of days to get Olympia.”
Ted looked down the highway in that direction and just stared. He was calculating
how much time, and how many lives, it would take to get down the damned highway.

Get to Olympia, Grant thought. We have to get to Olympia. He looked at his watch.
It was 6:17 a.m. It was still dark.

Grant looked around. The men were exhausted. They’d slept, most of them at least,
until yesterday afternoon, but they were mentally and emotionally drained.

They’d been keyed up with anxiety and action all night, and it had been a long one.
In the street lights by the overpass, Grant could see his breath. He assumed the temperature
was in the high thirties. Most soldiers had fleece jackets and pants under their fatigues
and civilian clothes. They weren’t freezing, but the cold still burned up lots of
calories.

Grant’s stomach rumbled. He was really hungry. He found Ted and whispered, “Should
we feed these guys?” Grant didn’t trust his judgment on this issue; he needed Ted’s
input. They only had about five MREs per person and they needed to get moving. Then
again, they were hungry and tired and needed a mental break. These guys, including
Grant, were not Special Forces. They were irregular volunteers. They couldn’t be ordered
to march for two days straight without food like a regular Army unit could.

“Just thinkin’ the same thing,” Ted said. “When the highway is clear, we’ll have breakfast.”

When the road was fully clear, he ordered the troops to reassemble by their vehicles.
They knew that this meant they were going back on the road. They were tired and hungry,
but no one whined about going back out, which was what Ted wanted to see. He had lowered
their expectations. They thought they were going back to work.

“Breakfast time, ladies and gentlemen,” he announced. The troops relaxed and felt
relieved. There were a couple fist pumps at this news, but most soldiers didn’t want
to show how glad they were to eat because they didn’t want to look like sissies. But
they were all damned glad to get some chow.

Franny was breaking out the MREs. They were in cases in the back of the utility truck.
The sound of Franny busting into the thick cardboard boxes was a sweet sound. Most
people hadn’t realized how hungry they were until they thought they would actually
be eating. It had been over twelve hours since they last had any food and for the
past half hour or so, they’d been doing hard work clearing the logs off the highway.
They were hungry.

Without being told, the troops lined up by squad on the shoulder of the highway behind
the chase truck, at the very rear of the convoy, where the MREs were.

The military had a reason to organize people the way it did; it wasn’t just to boss
people around. It was a very practical way to have a large group of people do the
same thing at the same time.