299 Days VIII: The War (16 page)

“Finish up your wine, dear, and then we need to go for a walk,” Grant said.

Lisa could tell something was up, something big. She couldn’t wait to find out what
it was. The relaxation of her glass of wine was ruined so she might as well find out
what was going on.

She got a jacket and went outside. Grant was standing on the deck.

“Let’s walk the beach,” he said.

“Now?” Lisa asked.

Might as well get used to her being pissed, Grant thought. “Yes, now,” he said.

Lisa didn’t know what got into Grant, but she didn’t like it. She walked down the
steps to the beach. Grant didn’t offer to hold her hand, which was unusual. Lisa felt
very nervous about what he was going to tell her.

When they got to the beach, and away from the kids’ hearing, Grant held both of her
hands and looked her in the eye.

“I’m going to war in a few days,” he said.

“What?” Lisa asked. She assumed it was a joke. A stupid joke, but a joke.

“I’m going to war,” Grant said.

“What do you mean?” Lisa asked.

“I am the commanding officer of a Patriot irregular unit and we’re heading out in
a few days,” Grant said. What a relief. He finally got it off his chest.

“Shut up,” Lisa said in a joking way. He was kidding. Right?

Grant just looked at her. He wasn’t crying like he thought he would be.

Slowly it started sinking in to Lisa. The “Lt. Matson” comment from that Tony guy
with the amputated leg. Grant being away all the time.

“The rental team?” Lisa asked. She had suspected this was a fake story and had feared
that Grant was in some insane guerilla army, but she had put it out of her mind.

“A cover story,” Grant said. “There is no rental team. It’s a Patriot military unit.
I’m leaving with them.”

Lisa just stared at Grant. This wasn’t happening. This was some cruel joke he was
playing. Things were going so well out there now. He couldn’t leave.

“I love you so much, honey,” Grant said. “I love the kids. But I have to go.”

“The hell you do!” screamed Lisa. “The hell you do!”

“Yes, I do,” Grant said. “They are counting on me.”

“They? Who the hell are they?” Lisa screamed again. “They’re not your family. They’re
your little political buddies. All this ‘Don’t Tread on Me’ shit.”

Grant wasn’t even going to try to persuade her. His job tonight was merely to get
her to understand that he didn’t hate her or the kids. That was how low he set the
bar. He wanted her to understand that this really wasn’t his choice, and that he had
to go away with the unit. But, Grant thought, without knowing all the things that
he knew, like the meetings at Boston Harbor, how could Lisa possibly understand why
he needed to do this?

“I love you and the kids very much,” Grant said meekly. “I don’t expect you to understand
this. You don’t know all the things I know. I don’t talk about them with you because
you don’t like hearing about them. And they’re classified.”

“Classified?” Lisa screamed. “Listen to you, Mr. Big Spy Man. ‘Classified’? You are
so important, aren’t you? You and your little ‘Don’t Tread on Me’ Army buddies are
more important than your own family. More important than us.”

Grant had nothing to say.

“Instead of being some spy or whatever you’re pretending to be,” Lisa screamed with
a shaking voice, “why don’t you try to be a husband and a father?”

Grant would not take that insult. He would take a lot tonight, but not that.

“I have done a great job of being a husband and father,” Grant said, trying not to
scream at her. “You have this safe place, food, and everything you need. If I would
have listened to you, we’d be rotting away in Olympia.”

Grant instantly wished he hadn’t said that. He didn’t want to re-fight past battles.

“Oh, I’m wrong about everything?” Lisa screamed. “It’s all my fault you decided to
play Army? Yeah, that’s my fault.” She started sobbing uncontrollably.

“No, it’s not your fault,” Grant said. “It’s the government. They did all of this
to us. And there are other people like me who are going to fix it.” He realized how
crazy that must sound to a woman who is finding out her husband is leaving.

Grant just stood there. Lisa was expecting him to say, “I’m sorry. I won’t go away.
I’ll tell them I can’t do it.” But the longer Grant just stood there, the more Lisa
realized he was really going to leave.

Grant decided to give her more details on how well protected she and the kids were
so she wouldn’t think he was a bad husband and father. “Pierce Point will be well
protected,” he said. “The vast majority of the gate guards will stay. So will Gideon.
We made sure that our operations wouldn’t endanger Pierce Point.”

“Are you out of your mind?” Lisa yelled and threw up her arms. “They’ll find out where
you’re from and come and get us. How stupid are you!”

Grant was slipping into argument mode where he had to rebut each point she made. He
told himself he wouldn’t do this, but Lisa was out of her league when it came to military
and political affairs. Grant thought of a dozen detailed reasons why she was wrong
and why they would be worse off if they didn’t go on offense against Olympia. He started
to tell her the first reason, but he held back.

She wanted to get into a big argument about some little detail and then tell herself
she was right about that detail. She needed a little thing to feel right about instead
of acknowledging the reality that they were in a war and her husband was leaving to
fight it.

“There are a lot of things you don’t know,” Grant said calmly, to avoid the debate
on details that she wanted. “Trust me. You are safe.”

“Trust you!” Lisa shrieked. “Yeah, trust the guy who has now left his family twice.”
She put her face in her hands and started crying.

“It was hard enough to trust you after you left the first time!” she sobbed. “Now
this. How stupid am I?”

That was when Grant knew his marriage was over. If Lisa, who was always the smartest
person in the room, thought she’d been fooled, then she would never, ever let that
happen again. She would never trust him again. Period. He knew it.

Suddenly, Grant was cold all over. He got dizzy and started losing his balance. He
regained it. He felt like all the blood had drained out of him. He must be going into
shock.

Lives, fortunes, and sacred honor
, the outside thought said remorsefully.
This is your sacrifice
.

Things immediately became clear. Crystal clear.

Everyone was suffering in some way during the Collapse. Most people were becoming
hungrier with each passing day. Most were scared of gangs or the government. Grant
had done extremely well when it came to food and security. He was going to come out
of the Collapse a winner. So he had thought, but he was wrong.

His sacrifice wasn’t being hungry or his family being scared of gangs in their neighborhood.
His sacrifice was having to leave his wife and kids.

Grant thought about all the Revolutionary War heroes and the sacrifices they had to
make. Seventeen of the signers of the Declaration of Independence left their families
and fought for years on the battlefield. Five were captured by the British, one dying
a horrific death while incarcerated. Others lived like animals, constantly being hunted
by the British. Many had children killed or captured. Eleven signers lost their entire
fortunes, many with their homes being burned to ground by the British and their families
captured.

Looking at the sacrifices of those around him, Grant thought about Lt. Col. Hammond.
He was married, but his family was hiding somewhere. He might never see them again.
Gideon’s family was in Philadelphia going through who knows what. Nick, the medic,
was separated from his wife and new baby. Many of the soldiers had wives and girlfriends
that they would never see again.

And these were the only sacrifices Grant knew about. In a few days, many people—including
him—might be dead, maimed, or captured and tortured. The sacrifices were only starting.

This was the price for fixing things. This was the price a society pays for letting
itself fall apart. For getting fat, lazy, and stupid. This was the price for constantly
choosing big government over liberty. Collapse—brutal, painful collapse—was inevitable.
Even the innocent, like Grant, would have to suffer in order to restore things.

“Why do you hate me?” Lisa sobbed. “Why are you doing this to me? And to the kids?”

“I don’t hate you,” Grant said. “I love you and the only way for us to have any kind
of life is to end this situation. I’m ending it. I’m stepping up to end it.” That
seemed pretty reasonable to Grant.

“You’re leaving,” she cried. “You’re trying to fix the government, but you won’t stay
here and fix us. I don’t get it. We need you.”

Grant just listened. He would not try to persuade her. She was taking a war personally.
Grant realized how impossible it was to reason with someone who was taking a war as
a personal insult. He couldn’t help. He couldn’t persuade anyone when emotion was
running this high.

“The only ‘normal’ thing I have anymore is you,” Lisa said. “My job, my house, my
friends … nothing is normal anymore. All I have is you. And the kids. But you are
leaving us.”

Grant let her cry for a while more. Might as well get it all out of her system. She
calmed down after a while.

“Where are you going?” she asked.

“I can’t say,” he answered.

“Classified?” she retorted sarcastically.

“Who are you going with?” she asked. She had to know what was happening to her husband.

“My unit,” he said without emotion.

“You said they aren’t gate guards,” she said. “So who are they?” Grant realized that
she wanted to find out if he was with people who were good soldiers or not; she wanted
to see if he was on some suicide mission. He could reassure her on this point.

“Some extremely good soldiers,” he said. “Special Forces, regular Army infantry, some
Marines, and some Navy and Air Force, then there’s the Team, and … lil’ ole’ me.”
He left out the part about untrained civilians. That would only worry her.

“Wait,” she said, as her razor sharp intellect kicked back in and she re-established
some control over her emotions. “You are the commander or whatever of Special Forces?
You?”

Grant laughed. That broke the tension. “Yep,” he said. “Believe it or not. But only
a couple guys are Special Forces. They tell me what to do.”

Lisa laughed. That was a good sign.

“Why are you the commander?” she asked. Her very logical mind could not leave this
illogical situation alone.

“Because I know how to get communities up and running,” he said with a shrug. “They
call it ‘civil affairs.’ You know, getting people fed, working together, medical
care, a newspaper, postal service, a library … that kind of stuff. They looked at
the success of Pierce Point and said they needed that in the rest of the state.” This
wasn’t exactly true. Grant had not been sought out by Patriots as much as Ted knew
that his young shooting buddies had a basement full of AR-15s in a cabin out near
Olympia. The civil affairs stuff was an afterthought. And Grant had jumped at the
opportunity to join the unit.

“How does this make you a commander?” she asked.

“Our mission is not to fight the bad guys head-on, but to come in after the real troops
beat the bad guys and we will get things back up and running,” he said. That was partially
true. There would be lots of fighting once they occupied the city, but he wouldn’t
worry her with that.

“So you won’t be in combat?” she asked, praying the answer was no.

“Nope, not really,” he said. “We have guns, of course, but we have guns out here at
Pierce Point and nothing big ever happens.”

Lisa’s immediate concern that her husband was going to die had passed. It sounded
like he wouldn’t be in real combat, he’d just be feeding people, or whatever. But
then she wondered, how could she trust him now after months of lying? She couldn’t
possibly believe that he was going off to feed people without any risk to himself,
but she didn’t want to learn more about what he was doing and then worry about how
dangerous it was. She would rather know he was lying about the low risk of what he
was going to do than know exactly what he would be doing.

Now her concern returned to her husband lying to her for months.

“So all the times you told me about the ‘rental team’?” she asked.

“Was a lie,” he admitted. “I’m sorry. We have to keep the unit a secret. We don’t
want to give the Limas any reason to poke around out here.”

“Limas?” she asked.

“Oh,” he said, realizing that she had never heard that term before. He had been living
in another world for months. Not in her world. He explained what “Lima” meant.

She started crying again, but softly this time. “You lied,” she said. “You lied to
me. You made me look stupid by believing you for months.” She was also hurt that he
didn’t believe she could be trusted with the truth about the unit. She would have
never told anyone because that could get her husband hurt. Why didn’t he trust her?