Glen Tate: 299 Days: The 17th Irregulars

Glen Tate has a front row seat to the corruption in government and writes the 299 Days series from his first-hand observations of why a collapse is coming and predictions on how it will unfold. Much like the main character in the series, Grant Matson, the author grew up in a rural and remote part of Washington State. He is now a forty-something resident of Olympia, Washington, and is a very active prepper. “Glen” keeps his real identity a secret so he won’t lose his job because, in his line of work, being a prepper and questioning the motives of the government is not appreciated.

The helicopter engine started up with its distinctive high-pitch whine. Slowly, the blades began turning, adding a second distinctive sound. There is no sound like that in the world, thought Tom Kirkland. He got excited every time he heard it. His blood pumped. He loved that sound, which made him feel fully alive when he heard it.

He’d heard that sound plenty of times. He was a Special Forces soldier in the First Special Forces Group at Ft. Lewis. Most of his fellow Green Berets joined the Patriots. Not Tom, though. He had a job to do and he was only able to do that job by not joining the Patriots. It was complicated, but it was just the way it was.

“We have a credible report of a teabagger position outside of Olympia,” Joe Brown, the military intelligence, or MI, officer told Tom. “It should be a cake walk. No anti-aircraft defenses, of course,” the MI officer said to Tom and rolled his eyes. “Just some dumb ass hillbillies. A cake walk.”

Tom nodded. He was in charge of the TOC, the Tactical Operations Center, at Camp Murray. It was a military base and seat of the legitimate government of Washington State. He managed the raids that went out. He couldn’t go out on them because of his left hand, which was severely burned a few weeks before the Collapse and was put on medical leave from his unit.

Tom heard the sound of helicopters warming up several times a day at Camp Murray. Intelligence reports were now streaming in about so-called Patriot positions throughout Washington State. Well, western Washington State, Tom corrected himself, the half of the state with Seattle and most of the population.

The Patriots were becoming bolder — and effective, Tom had to admit. When the Collapse first happened in May, the Patriots weren’t much of a factor, and they especially weren’t a threat. May had been the month of chaos; neither side could organize much of anything.

In June, the mayhem of the situation calmed down quite a bit for civilians. They were getting fed under the hastily created FCard system. It seemed as if everyone — the government, the Patriots, and especially the population — was settling into a new and very different routine. Not that people were adapting easily, just that they were adapting.

Political killings became part of that new routine that developed in June. The assassinations started on the very first day of that month. It wasn’t full-scale military action; it was a string of assassinations with rifles, pistols, even knives, and an occasional small bomb. The number of assassinations was actually small — a dozen or so state legislators, some mid-level federal officials, and about a hundred local elected officials, like county commissioners and city mayors. Despite these seemingly small numbers, the assassinations still shocked everyone. Political killings were not something that had ever been part of the American landscape. It was both frightening and hard to wrap their heads around. In the beginning, the media ran huge stories on the first few assassinations, but as they continued and became more common, the media quit covering them. Why continue to scare the population and contribute to additional anxiety and chaos?

Tom got the daily briefings at the TOC during the month of June. Because of that, he knew that the Patriots were popping up everywhere and it was way beyond a law enforcement issue where individual assassins could be caught and the problem would stop. This was a much larger, and well organized, problem for the legitimate authorities.

Knowing a war was inevitable, both sides tried to organize militarily during the month of June. While a war might not have seemed inevitable to the general population, Tom and the Loyalist military planners knew what was coming. Their intelligence reports showed the formation of hundreds of small and large Patriot regular and irregular units. Most of the military had defected and now they were getting ready to finish off what was left of the old government.

During the wave of political killings, at Camp Murray there was a tremendous sense of urgency to plan a military solution to stop the Patriots because the assassinations really hit home for the officials there. Tom found that the military planning was very difficult. He was accustomed to having high-tech assets like aircraft, communications, satellite intelligence, the ability to listen in on cell phones and read emails, and an almost unlimited supply of special operations personnel to strike anywhere at any time. That was no longer the case. Almost all the high-tech gadgets Tom formerly had at his disposal were inoperable, needing parts and personnel that were no longer around.

By the beginning of July, the rudimentary military planning on both sides was done and the skirmishes started. They were small at first. Both sides were probing each other. The battles started getting bigger and more sophisticated. But they were still low-tech, basically small infantry units with light weapons and some explosives fighting it out.

The Patriots were doing this primarily with regular military units that had defected. While the exact figures were classified, Tom knew from chatter at the TOC that about eighty-five percent of the active duty military forces in Washington State were no longer reporting for duty. Of this figure, over half were AWOL. They just packed up and left. They weren’t getting paid after the government officially ran out of money on May Day. Before the checks stopped coming altogether, the preceding budget cuts meant that pay was delayed and there was absolutely no money for training or even fuel to get from one end of the base to the other. They were shut down, stuck in their barracks or, if they lived off-base, told to just not come to work.

Nearly half of the military who took off joined the Patriots. Whole units packed up, often with most of their unit’s weapons and gear, and just walked out. They left the heavy equipment behind because it took too much fuel to move it. And, besides, with how broken down things were, who really needed a tank? They required constant maintenance and complex parts that no one had.

Some of the AWOL military units formed gangs and went into business for themselves, but this was the exception. No one talked much about them; the legitimate authorities didn’t want to publicize that military units defected and the Patriots didn’t want to highlight that some of the defectors were basically criminal gangs.

Tom was not happy with the quality of his troops. The legitimate authorities had mostly support troops — cooks, administrative, and equipment technicians — and National Guardsmen hastily trained up into combat units. Pretty shitty ones, Tom had to admit; nothing like the active duty combat units in the past, but combat units nonetheless. They were mostly the people who did what they were told and stuck around base while everyone else was leaving. They weren’t really fighters; they were government employees doing their jobs.