299 Days VIII: The War (5 page)

There was another reason why the national Patriot plan was for each state to kick
out the Limas on their own. The basic idea was that if a state had enough political
support for the Patriots to mount up an operation, then it could muster up the strength
to take back its own state. If the Patriots didn’t have the political strength, then
that state was a second priority for the Patriots. The Patriots only wanted to try
to take areas where they had the support of the population. They weren’t interested
in taking an area just to say they won it, and then having to fight the population
for years. Why bother?

There would be states like California that were too far gone and would never have
enough popular support to allow the Patriots to take over. The Patriots would write
those states off. There had been a debate in the national Patriot command whether
to eventually liberate the “hopeless states” as they had become known. The consensus
was to not even try. Most of the Patriots had gotten out of the hopeless states already.
Regardless, the Patriots didn’t have the strength, or the fuel, to go hundreds of
miles and try to take, and then occupy, a place as large as California. The Limas
could have it. Let them have their socialist paradises in California, the Northeast,
and strongholds like Seattle, Denver, Phoenix, Houston, and Chicago. Enjoy your paradise
and stay the hell away from the rest of us.

The Patriots wouldn’t try to unify the whole country. The United States was too long.
That was one of the biggest reasons the states broke away. It took a bloated and oppressive
federal government to make sure the same things that made sense to politicians and
bureaucrats in Washington, D.C. were forcibly imposed on a small Alabama town and
Los Angeles at the same time. The Patriots had no desire to duplicate this mistake
by trying to reunite a country that was too big and diverse to start with. The “United
States” was just a bunch of lines on a map, lines that were too big. Americans had
common cultural ties, but they were not beholden to lines on a map.

A soldier raised her hand.

“Yes?” Hammond said.

“When will this happen?” she asked. It was an obvious question no one had yet asked.

“Soon,” Hammond responded. “Exact date is still being worked out. Be ready to go on
a moment’s notice. Soon. Very soon.” Hammond knew the exact date—New Year’s Day—and
it had been decided long ago. But he didn’t want to say it out loud in case there
was a spy there. Each unit would be told the date in a secure Quadra radio message.
Besides, things might change at the last minute and the date might need to be adjusted.

A second soldier raised his hand. “What’s the name of this operation, sir?”

“Tet.”

(December 21)

Tet. Grant thought about that.

Tet was the surprise offensive by the Viet Cong guerillas during the Vietnam War.
The guerillas had an elaborate system of underground tunnels and the government they
were fighting was corrupt and unpopular. On the Vietnamese New Year holiday called
Tet, guerillas throughout South Vietnam simultaneously attacked. Since it was a holiday,
most of the government forces weren’t at their jobs. The guerillas primarily destroyed
soft targets, like police stations and government buildings, and economic targets.
They focused on political targets by assassinating enemy officials and taking symbolic
facilities, like government buildings. They even attacked the U.S. embassy and blew
a hole in the outer wall of it, which was an unheard of feat for supposedly harmless
little guerillas.

Tet was a gigantic shock to the government and the population. The “ragtag” guerillas
weren’t supposed to be able to do things like that. The population looked at the guerillas
in an entirely different light after that. They looked at them as potential victors.
People on the fence started to take the guerillas seriously. They started to cooperate
with the guerillas, not because they believed in the guerillas’ cause, but because
they feared the guerillas might win because the Tet offensive proved they could pull
of major attacks.

Tet wasn’t perfect for the guerillas. The Viet Cong tried to use the guerillas in
Tet against hard targets like regular military units, and got cut to pieces. Hammond
and others studying Tet had learned that the soft-target part of Tet worked spectacularly
well, but the hard-target part failed. Lesson learned.

But the Vietnamese guerillas ultimately won. Many credited their victory in Vietnam
to the bold guerilla attacks during the Tet Offensive.

Grant assumed that was what Hammond was going to do, attack soft targets and get the
population behind the Patriots. Olympia must be a “soft target.” That made far more
sense that some stupid attack on the Limas’ fortified regular forces. The strategy
behind Tet in Vietnam was all about politics, not traditional military victory. Grant
was glad Hammond was thinking that way.

Grant could tell that Hammond was a non-traditional warfare guy, not some tank commander
who thought that winning was waiting until you had more tanks than your enemy and
then having a big battle. Hammond’s non-traditional warfare approach made sense: he
was a Special Forces guy. They went out, lightly armed, into the boonies in some far
off country and got the population to rally behind their side. They used military
force as a way to beat the other side’s forces, but their ultimate goal was for the
natives in their area to want to kick out the opposing side. Hammond was applying
this philosophy to someplace he never thought he’d be fighting: Olympia, Washington.

“A final thought,” Hammond said. “I know about every single one of you and your units.”
Grant knew this was true. In his first trip to Boston Harbor, Grant was stunned at
how much Hammond already knew about him and Pierce Point. Hammond put his pointer
down and folded his hands. It was like he was about to pay respect to someone.

Hammond nodded to the audience and said slowly, “I am extremely confident that each
and every one of you will do a magnificent job during Tet. I wouldn’t send you out
if I didn’t know you’ll do great and that we’ll win.” He looked up and then said,
“Each of you is supposed to be here and supposed to do what you’re about to do. Go
do it. And let’s take Olympia back!”

A cheer went up. It was the kind of cheer that comes from pent-up, raw emotion, a
cheer from men and women who had been working hard for months and hadn’t had a room
full of like-minded people to cheer with until now.

“Captain Morris will now assign a briefer to each of you,” Hammond said. “Thank you.
Every single one of you.”

The audience applauded, with someone yelling to Hammond, “No. Thank YOU!”

After the cheering died down, Captain Morris came to the front of the room and said,
“Each unit line up in number order along the wall starting over here,” he said, pointing.
The units started to get up and find their places.

After a few minutes, a sergeant came up to Grant and Ted.

“The 17th?” the sergeant asked.

“Yes,” Grant said.

The sergeant opened up a sealed envelope that had “17th” written on it and took a
look at the map that was on the inside.

“You guys,” the sergeant said, “Are going through Frederickson first and then down
Highway 101 straight into Olympia. Pretty simple. You’ll also be defending 101 against
any Limas coming down south from Bremerton trying to reinforce Olympia.” Bremerton
was about thirty miles north of Pierce Point. There was a giant Navy base there. The
Limas would have forces there guarding the ships and subs. It seemed like a long haul
for Limas to come down from Bremerton all the way through ambush country just to reinforce
a secondary city like Olympia, but the Limas just might try it.

Grant and Ted nodded. They figured this would be their mission. There was nothing
complicated about it, except maybe getting through Frederickson, although Rich had
filled him in on Bennington’s offer.

“Your Quadra,” the sergeant said, “will get you more detailed instructions and be
able to relay your specific questions to us.”

The sergeant handed Grant the map and then got out his clipboard. “Do you have any
specific plans on how to get through your first objective, Frederickson?”

“Yes,” Grant said. “We promised him secrecy, but we have a very highly placed source
there that is waiting to be activated and will take out the county government’s leadership.”
Ted nodded as if to say, “Seriously.”

The sergeant’s eyes lit up. “That’s awesome, sir.” He made a note on his clipboard.
Grant and Ted had previously radioed this in to HQ via Jim Q., but that had only been
a couple of days ago; maybe this news hadn’t gotten to the planners charting out the
17th’s mission. As squared away as HQ was, no organization this big, and operating
in such semi-primitive conditions, could be perfect.

Then the sergeant looked concerned. “Does this source know about the 17th?” he asked.

“Nope,” Grant said. “The source doesn’t know a thing. Our contact with the source
is via someone in our community who, in turn, is working with us.”

The sergeant smiled. “Nice,” he said.

Ted said, “We plan on activating the source a few hours before we head out. That’ll
be okay, right? I mean, we don’t want to let people outside of our unit know that
an offensive is coming unless we have to. But, in order to take out the county’s command
and control, I think it’s worth the risk.”

“A few hours is fine,” the sergeant said. “The Limas will be hit with diversions elsewhere
a few hours in advance, so it’s okay that they know the whole state is erupting on
them. Just fine.”

That was it for their briefing. Grant and Ted left together and then Grant walked
off to learn how to get Paul and Tony a medal. Ted was very glad to see this civilian
lawyer lieutenant had the instinct to look after his men in such a way. You can’t
teach that, Ted thought. This was all coming together.

(December 24)

For the obvious reasons, the “Collapse Christmas” was different than any other Christmas.
Very different. Unforgettable.

Christmas is full of traditions: opening presents, Christmas dinner, wearing a Santa
hat, and going to a Christmas Eve church service. There were countless individual
Christmas traditions.

Those traditions clashed with the reality of the Collapse. Many traditions could not
go on. There were far fewer presents. For some, the cherished Christmas dinner was
going to be oatmeal. Some Christmas Eve church services were cancelled because those
churches were refusing to play ball with the government and it was too dangerous to
leave the house anyway. The football games had been cancelled all season. The government
desperately wanted the teams to play to project a sense of normalcy, but most of the
players, like the AWOL soldiers, had just gone home to be with their families instead
of reporting for work.

Then again, Grant noticed some traditions carried on. Little things seemed to mean
more during the Collapse Christmas. Presents were things like batteries, a deck of
playing cards, and a can of soup. Some weren’t wrapped, and some were wrapped in black
and white newspaper, rather than colorful wrapping paper. Everyone did their best
to keep their chins up and hope that the next Christmas would be better.

With that hope, however, many wondered whether the Collapse would still be going on
next Christmas. They didn’t like the idea that it would, or that every Christmas might
be as bad.

Christmas made people think about kids—whether it was their kids or remembering what
Christmas was like when they were kids themselves. Would kids have more crappy Christmases
in their future? Forever? Was traditional America, and wonderful Christmases, over
forever?

People who had never thought about the “temporary Crisis” really being a war started
to think about it for the first time. Many had been going with the flow up until the
holiday. While they thought the government was inept, what was the alternative? The
government they had was … well, the government. There could only be one government
at a time. It wasn’t like there could be a competing one. Could there?

The thought of competing governments started to make more sense when people heard
about the Southern and mountain West states essentially striking out on their own.
There was no giant civil war with two huge armies, one in blue and one in gray; nothing
like that, but it was pretty clear that there were two competing governments. One
seemed to be working well and the other didn’t.

Jeanie Thompson had come to this conclusion long ago. She got to see how awful the
Loyalist government was. She was in the building where most of the decisions were
being made. She saw everything. They weren’t even trying to hide things from her any
more.

Jeanie was still doing the menial job of giving tours to NSVIPs—Not So Very Important
Persons, as she called them. Not even the mayors and mid-level government officials
who came to Camp Murray to get a “briefing” on how great things were going were upbeat
anymore. What a joke. By now, everyone she was giving the spiel to knew everything
was a lie and she knew that they knew. She kept doing the tours anyway. It was her
job. If she lost her job, she would have to leave Camp Murray. And if that happened,
she’d be dead in ten seconds “outside the wire.”