Glen Tate - 299 Days - The 17th Irregulars

“We don’t kill women and children,” Grant said, “but we would keep them in ‘protective custody’ if Nick…well, didn’t work out.”

Grant put his arm on Nick’s shoulder for a little dramatic flair and said, “But that won’t be necessary. I’ve talked to Nick a fair amount. He volunteered for this unit before he even knew what we did.”

Nick nodded. Then he asked, “So what do you guys do?” Grant and Ted filled Nick in on the 17th Irregulars. They didn’t mention the ultimate mission, of course. That would come later.

Nick was smiling. “Cool. Looks like I’ll get my CMB now.” Grant and Ted didn’t say anything. They both wanted to say “Hopefully there won’t be any combat” but they knew that wasn’t true.

“Report to Sgt. Sappenfield here and he’ll get you squared away…what was your last name?” Ted asked.

“Folsom,” Nick said.

“Well, Private Folsom, welcome to the 17th,” Ted said. “We’re very glad to have you.”

“Glad to be here,” Folsom said. He walked off with Sap. Grant filled Ted in on Nick’s background.

“Does he know where this place is?” Ted asked.

“Blindfolded him on the way in,” Grant said, with a smile, proud of his foresight. “Not only does it prevent him from seeing how to get here, but it reinforced with Nick from the get-go how important OPSEC is.”

Ted smiled. This lawyer Grant wasn’t as much of a…lawyer as Ted had feared. Grant was not exactly a soldier, but he wasn’t a typical dickhead lawyer either.

Grant told Ted that he had promised Nick that he could see his family on occasion.

“I’d rather keep all the guys here 24/7 for OPSEC,” Ted said, “but I understand why you would let Folsom go home periodically. Normally, if I let one guy go out of camp, I’d need to do that for everyone. But,” Ted said pointing to everyone, “no one here has any family nearby to go see. If that starts to change, if people in the unit have people out in Pierce Point, we’ll need to revisit this.”

“Good point,” Grant said, embarrassed that he hadn’t thought of that. Wait. Of course he hadn’t thought of that. He hadn’t been a Green Beret for twenty-five years. That’s why Ted was there.

Grant spent the rest of the day checking on how things were progressing with the facilities at Marion Farm. He met a few more new arrivals. He chatted with each man or woman out there. He wanted to get to know them and let them know their CO a little better. He was constantly motivating and encouraging them. Not over-the-top, rah-rah motivation, just the subtle and laid back motivation he had been doing his whole life. Several hours went by.

“Joining us for dinner, Lieutenant?” Sap asked.

“Nah,” Grant said. “Love to, but the Grange has no idea where I am.” Grant had his radio on the Grange frequency so he would know if they really needed him. But what he really meant was that his family had no idea where he was. He didn’t want them to worry. Besides, he really wanted to eat dinner with them. He hadn’t had dinner with them in several days, but he couldn’t tell his troops that he needed to go home for dinner with his wife and kids.

“Understood,” Sap said. “I’ll let the guards know you’re coming back and they’ll have your car turned around for you.”

Grant thanked Sap, walked to the gate at the farm, got his car, and drove home. Just like normal. Driving his car home to have dinner with his family. After spending the day with his guerilla unit. Just like normal.

“We got a target near Frederickson,” Joe Brown, the military intelligence officer, said to Tom Kirkland. They were in the briefing room of the Tactical Operations Center, or TOC, at Camp Murray. “An insurgent base at a farm out there.”

Another one? Tom wondered. They’d been seeing them pop up all over the state. Well, they were seeing what appeared to be insurgent camps, but it was hard to tell from the satellites. They could see the outlines of camps, possible camps. But it usually took human intelligence — a person on the ground — to verify a location.

Satellite intelligence was one of the only things that still worked. Well, sort of worked. The satellite technicians were primarily located at various agencies in DC. They were still going to work. DC was solidly in Loyalist hands. Much like the Loyalists focused their resources on Seattle and Olympia in Washington State, they did so on an even more massive scale to protect their capital of Washington, DC.

Even though the satellites could see anything, there was several million square miles of the United States to look at. They needed something to point them at a particular little chunk.

“Some former insurgent named,” Brown said looking at his notes, “Ethan Meecham escaped from their compound. He told the local authorities in Frederickson about a ‘rental team’ the insurgents had out there at a place called,” he looked at his notes again, “Pierce Point.”

Tom looked up. That name sounded familiar. Tom was suddenly very concerned.

“So we asked DC to point the bird,” Brown said, referring to the satellite, “at this little patch of ground and, bam, we saw some interesting things. Then a Navy ship in the Puget Sound that actually had its radar working for a change saw some strange comings and goings of small watercraft in the area. The rare thing is that the Navy actually called it in, and, even rarer, our DC people actually put two and two together.”

“Nice work,” Tom said and high-fived Brown. This was a much more definite target than most of the “missions” that took off from Camp Murray, most of which only happened on paper but, so far, had never actually involved a raid.

Tom leaned back in his comfortable chair at the TOC. “This is a first,” he said to Brown. “We see possible camps all the time, but to piece it all together like this hasn’t happened so far.” What he didn’t say was that they almost never had HUMINT, or human intelligence, because few people seemed to want to risk their lives to infiltrate Patriot groups.

“I’ll put a package together,” Tom said, meaning that he would assemble the landing team. “I got a special one for this Pierce Point place.” Brown smiled.

If they had the normal military resources, Tom would have had several Blackhawk helicopters full of men going in after several Apache helicopter gunships had blown the hell out of the target. But they only had one Blackhawk operational today. They could do quite a bit of damage with that, though. The Blackhawk had plenty of firepower and could destroy a building or two.

Tom got to work. They had to act quickly, not because they thought the camp would pick up and move, but because there were numerous leaks at Camp Murray. They had to hit Pierce Point before the teabagger spies found out they were coming.

“Get me Lt. Mendez,” Tom said to the sergeant at the TOC. Mendez was the co-pilot of one of the helicopter crews. A few minutes later Mendez came in.

“Yeah, Tom,” Mendez said, dispensing with military protocol for an officer like him to address a sergeant like Tom. But the two had been friends for a long time when Mendez flew Tom and the rest of the First Group of Special Forces on various training missions at Ft. Lewis. Special operations personnel often called each other first names; it was a privilege accorded to the very best.

“Paco,” Tom said to Mendez, using Mendez’s nickname, “I got a little job for you.” Tom smiled. So did Mendez. They went outside and talked for a while.

A few minutes later, Tom had his preliminary plan ready to go. He found Brown and told him, “None of the contractors is right for this job. We have just the guys near Olympia. The air crew will pick them up there and then go out to Pierce Point.” Brown nodded. Whatever, he thought.