299 Days VIII: The War (29 page)

It took an hour and a half to get out of Frederickson. The troops were quietly talking
to pass the time. They weren’t goofing around—there was still a serious mood—but they
were keeping the mood light as they crept through the dark and seemingly empty town.
There were probably people in town, but it was impossible to tell. There were no lights
on, no activity. Everyone was probably hiding under their beds.

A few minutes outside of Frederickson, Nineteen Delta came on the radio. “Roadblock.
Halt. Take cover. We’ll check it out.”

Things got tense again. After a few minutes, Nineteen Delta came back on the radio.
“They claim to be friendlies and want to join up.”

Grant and Pow looked at each other. Pow mouthed, “What the fuck?” They had a plan
for this. Sort of.

“Tell him to have their CO,” meaning commanding officer, “at the roadblock and I’ll
talk to him,” Grant said to Scotty. This involved political stuff, which was his thing.
Grant wanted to ask Ted what he thought, but Scotty telling Nineteen Delta on the
intra-unit radios that Grant was getting out to talk to the guards would tell Ted
what was going on. If Ted thought it was a terrible idea, he could say so on the radio.

“No need to handcuff them all,” Grant said to Scotty. “Just have the Clean Up Crew
cover them extra well. This could be an ambush.” Scotty relayed that through the intra-unit
radio to Nineteen Delta, but didn’t use the word “ambush.” There was no need to alarm
the rest of the unit.

Meerkat and Anderson had the handful of guards covered while Nineteen Delta was searching
a wide radius around the roadblock for an ambush. There didn’t appear to be one. It
was dark, so Nineteen Delta couldn’t be sure that there weren’t mines or IEDs there,
but he wasn’t too concerned. The guards, four of them, looked pretty ragtag. He doubted
they were sophisticated bomb makers. They were “duck hunter” guards, typical guys
with hunting rifles and shotguns wearing hunting clothes. Their roadblock was very
crude: two cars across the road. But it was effective; it caused the 17th to stop.

When the area around the roadblock was secure, Nineteen Delta radioed it in. Ted got
on the radio. “Have the flank checkers get out.”

They had a plan for being stopped. They would have the flank checkers—two members
of the Team in the lead truck and the six or so men in the chase truck—get out and
check the right and left flanks of the convoy and the rear.

This meant Pow and Scotty in the lead truck. Bobby, the driver, stayed in the truck,
as did Grant, since losing the CO in a routine flank check made no sense. Ryan and
Wes would stay under the tarp since it was so hard to get in and out.

Grant was embarrassed that he hadn’t immediately thought of doing the flank check
the moment the convoy stopped at a blockage. Oh well, he thought. Ted thought of it.
That was why he was around.

Besides, Grant had been analyzing what to do with these unknown roadblock guards.
Solving this political problem was Grant’s job; the flank check was Ted’s. Things
worked better when people had well defined roles.

“I want to talk to these guys,” he said to Bobby as Grant got out of the rear cab.
Bobby nodded, and kept his attention focused on punching the gas pedal and getting
the hell out of there if an ambush started.

As Pow and Scotty got out, Pow pointed to a clump of trees about a hundred yards ahead
and said to Bobby, “Rally point.” If possible, that would be where Bobby would go,
in an emergency to wait for Pow, Scotty, and Grant before Bobby took off. It was critical
that everyone knew where to get back into the convoy so no one got left behind. Then
again, anyone left behind by their own vehicle could grab a ride with another vehicle.

This would not be ideal, though, because there would be confusion whether that person
made it back to the convoy. The driver of each vehicle (other than the semi) was responsible
for making sure all of his men were accounted for. The squad leaders in the back of
the semi would account for each of their troops and report to Sap, who was ultimately
responsible for making sure all eighty-four troops in the semi were accounted for.
This was the kind of thing they had gone over for hours in meetings and had practiced
for days, which was why Grant didn’t want to have these roadblock guys join up. There
were way too many moving pieces to that. Four random guys would get confused and throw
the plans off. There wasn’t much room for them in the back of the semi, anyway. They
had a little room back there, but it was for other things. Besides, they really didn’t
need four duck hunters.

Grant realized how much his thinking had changed since the Collapse began. A year
ago, if Grant had been approached because four armed men wanted to join the Patriots
in an armed battle, he would have said, “Sure, the more the merrier.” Grant would
have thought of them wanting to join as a validation of how right the Patriots were
and how wrong the Loyalists were, of how triumphant the Patriot cause was. Sort of
like some children’s book where the good citizens out in the country enthusiastically
join George Washington’s army, with drums, flutes and waving flags.

Now Grant realized that these guys would be a liability, a distraction, a monkey wrench.
He had gone from an idealist to a manager of military details, but that didn’t mean
these guys were useless. Far from it. Grant approached them with his right thumb on
the safety of his AR. He could click it off and fire in a split second. He treated
these guys as hostile until he had reason to think otherwise.

As Grant approached them, he could see that there were four of them and their weapons
were leaning up against their truck. Meerkat and Anderson were covering them while
Nineteen Delta was talking to them with a flashlight in his left hand and his Glock
in his right hand, lowered, but ready to go.

“Good evening, gentlemen,” Grant said. “I’m … well, it doesn’t matter who I am. I
understand you guys want to join up. I have a few questions, but I’ll make this quick
because I don’t like having my guys sitting here for long. No offense.”

They nodded. These guys were happy and excited. They didn’t seem like they were setting
up an ambush. They appeared interested in helping.

“You guys know which side we’re on, right?” Grant asked.

“Yep,” replied the oldest one, who was in his mid-forties. “Patriots. Just like us.”

“We are, indeed, Patriots,” Grant said. “But we don’t know whether you are or not.
It’s not like we get official membership cards.”

They nodded again. They thought this might happen where they’d have to prove that
they were the good guys.

“Here’s the deal, gentlemen,” Grant said. “You’re more valuable to the cause doing
what you’re doing. Making sure no bad guys come into or out of Frederickson. Manning
this roadblock.”

“Like blocking the passage of the gangs that have been speeding out of there all night?”
the youngest one said with great enthusiasm. “We got here too late to stop them …
and there’s only four of us,” he said with some embarrassment.

“Don’t apologize,” Grant said. “We need you to stop gangs. Or Limas.”

“What are Limas?” the oldest one asked. Grant remembered that these guys had probably
been hunkered down for the past several months trying to feed their families and protect
themselves from gangs and corrupt cops. They didn’t sit around making military plans
or using slang like the 17th did, so Grant explained what a Lima was.

They smiled. They liked this kind of talk. They had been whispering among themselves
for months about how much they hated the Loyalists, but they couldn’t do much about
it. Now there were all these Patriot military guys who were out in the open and about
to kick somebody’s ass. The good guys were out and fighting. Finally. These four had
been dreaming for months that this would happen, and now it was.

“We also need you guys to make sure no Limas come up from Frederickson to chase us,”
Grant said. He smiled and said, “As unlikely as that is.”

The four nodded again. They were mesmerized by Grant and the others. Real live Patriot
military was here. Well, little did they know, Patriot irregulars, but, from the perspective
of a good ole’ boy out there in the country just trying to survive, the 17th Irregulars
seemed like Green Berets. They kind of were. Kind of, but not really. They were trained
by Green Berets, which was better than nothing.

“What can we do to help?” the oldest one, and apparent leader, asked.

“Tell us everything you know about any obstacles or enemy up the road,” Grant said
pointing toward Olympia. He would not tell these four the 17th’s objective, but they
had probably figured it out.

“None, at least that we know of,” the oldest one said. “But we don’t get out on the
road much. Gas is impossible to get out here.”

“Okay, here’s another thing you can do,” Grant said. “There’s a new Sheriff in Frederickson.
He has a posse. You can link up with them and do whatever they need. They’re the new
cops, not the old ones you’ve been dealing with. The old ones are in jail,” Grant
said with a grin. “You’ll know the posse is the real posse if you ask whether they’re
with the ‘gall bladder surgeon.’”

“The what?” the oldest asked.

“Gall bladder surgeon,” Grant said. “Just roll with it.”

“Which reminds me,” Grant added, “you guys need a call sign. It’s how we know people
are good guys. Pick one.”

“Lake Isabella,” the young one said. “That’s right over there. It’s where we live.”

“Okay,” Grant said. “You’re now the Lake Isabella Boys. I’ll call that into HQ and
tell them that there is a Patriot roadblock here going by the call sign ‘Lake Isabella
Boys.’”

Grant looked at the Lake Isabella Boys’ gear. They had obviously just thrown their
guns into the truck and headed over here with the two blocking cars. That’s all they
had.

“Let me guess,” Grant said, “you don’t have a radio.”

“Nope,” said the oldest one.

“Can you get a CB?” Grant asked.

“Yep,” one of them said. “I got an old one. It’s at home.”

“Get it fired up and at your post here,” Grant said. He was consciously trying to
use military terms like “post” so these guys would feel like they were part of a military
unit. That would make them take this … war, that’s the word, more seriously. Feeling
like they were part of a military operation would also make them more likely to take
orders, which was key.

“Use channel 11,” Grant continued, “and talk to the new cops on it. That’ll get you
squared away. Remember to mention the gall bladder surgeon on channel 11 so the new
cops know you’re on the team. Don’t use the gall bladder thing after that. Just once.
We don’t want anyone listening to know our codes, okay?”

They all nodded. This was the most exciting thing, by far, that had happened since
this whole Collapse thing started. They even had a code name!

Grant basically trusted these Lake Isabella Boys, but he needed to make absolute sure.
He thought of a way to test their loyalty.

“Any of you got little kids?” Grant asked. Two of them raised their hands.

“Good,” Grant said. “We might need them. We have a special operation to perform that
requires a couple of little kids as decoys. Can we borrow your kids for a couple of
weeks?”

What an outlandish request. “Borrow” kids for a few weeks? To be decoys in a special
operations military mission? Insane.

“Is thirteen too young?” one of the guys asked. “My boy would love to help.”

“Would you go get him?” Grant asked. The guy started walking toward the truck to drive
back home to get his son.

“Okay, okay,” Grant said and stopped the man. “You passed the test.” The Lake Isabella
Boys looked stunned. So did Meerkat and Anderson who were covering them.

“We don’t need your kids,” Grant said. “I just wanted to see if you’d give them up.
That shows you are Patriots.”

The men smiled. They had just been fooled. But in a good way.

“You guys are officially fighting for the good guys now,” Grant said to the Lake Isabella
Boys. “Welcome to the Patriots. And have a happy New Year.”

Grant shook their hands and then realized he was wasting precious time. He saluted
them, which was part of his effort to impress upon them that this was a real live
military operation and they were now part of it. They saluted back. Their salutes
weren’t official military ones since they had no military training, but were the kind
of salutes they’d seen in movies, which was fine. They’d be a great roadblock and,
once they got their CB, an observation point. Both of these would be a big help. It
would at least slow down any Limas who would be coming from Frederickson to attack
the 17th from the rear.

As he walked back to Mark’s truck, Grant realized that Ted needed to know what was
going on, so he went up to the semi cab and motioned for Ted to get out. Grant told
him what had happened and that Jim Q. should call into HQ and tell them that some
friendlies at Lake Isabella were manning a roadblock and what their code name was.

“How did you know they were Patriots?” Ted asked.

Grant told the story about asking them for a kid.

“King Solomon,” Ted said, “Nice one.” He was referring to the story in the Bible of
King Solomon who used a similar trick . The king was asked to judge which of two women
was the real mother of a child. He said the baby would be cut in half and each woman
given a piece. The real mother cried out that the other woman should have the baby
just so he could live. This revealed that she was the real mother, because the real
mother would not want her child cut in half.