James Rawles - Founders

Later that week, wearing a fresh OCP uniform and a new pair of tan boots, Andy walked into the dayroom of the 1st Composite Mechanized Infantry Brigade headquarters. “Captain Laine to see General Olds, if he is available,” he announced.

A gruff voice from behind him shouted, “ You bet I’m available. Good to see you, Andrew!”

Ed Olds, wearing starched MultiCams, took two steps forward and clasped Andy around the shoulder. “I always knew that we’d cross paths again. So you’re back on active duty?”

“That’s right, sir.”

Olds looked much the same as Laine remembered him in Germany, except that he had gone completely gray and now had a livid scar running up half the length of his left jaw, starting from just behind his chin. The single star of a brigadier general punctuated the front of his uniform. Olds motioned Andy into his office and he shut the door behind them. He pointed to the chair in front of his desk, and took his own—a massive leather swivel chair that looked antique. He glanced at Andy’s upper arm, and noticed the lack of a unit patch.

Olds asked, “Do you have a duty assignment?”

“Not yet, sir.”

“Well, I already have a good Loggy, but I could use someone in Plans and Operations, since my S3 is about to go out on maternity leave. Are you interested?”

“It would be an honor to work for you again, sir.”

Olds reached across his desk and unplugged the cord from his telephone and the ethernet cable from his closed Dell laptop. Then, in a quieter voice, he said, “I have to ask you this BLUF—bottom line, up front: What are your feelings about the ProvGov?”

“Frankly, sir, my feelings are mixed. I want to see law and order restored, but I don’t like seeing people’s rights get trampled. Maybe I’m too much of a freedom lover to fit in, in the New Army.”

Olds gave an almost imperceptible nod. “I’m glad to hear you say that. If you hadn’t, I would’ve had doubts about you. You’ll find that there are a lot of ruthless bastards in the New Army and in the coalition forces. We are going to face some tough issues in the months to come. And just between you and me, I want to let you know that my first and highest loyalty is to the Constitution, not to some buffoon from Mayberry named Maynard.”

Laine whispered, “Likewise, sir.”

Olds opened his desk drawer. After rifling through it, he pulled out a handful of Velcro-backed divisional patches and then a bundle of small gold Oak Leaf patches—insignia for the rank of major. He slid them all across the desk toward Andy and said in a louder voice, “The job comes with a bump to O-4.” After a pause, he added with a nod and his characteristic squint, “‘Commander’s Discretion.’”

Fort Knox, Kentucky

August, the Third Year

The brigade had just one company of Stryker IFVs. All the rest of the vehicles were German Boxer wheeled APCs. Outwardly, they looked similar to the Stryker, but they differed substantially, mechanically. Built by Krauss-Maffei Wegmann & Rheinmetall, the thirty-three-ton eight-wheeled German APCs had a mix of 40mm grenade launchers and .50 caliber machineguns for their primary armament.

The Boxers dwarfed the eighteen-ton Strykers. But since the brigade’s Strykers all had slat armor appliqués, they looked nearly as big as the Boxers.

The brigade had a “fluid” Table of Organization and Equipment (TO&E) and a polyglot of troops: roughly one third American, one third German, and an odd mix of Dutch, Belgians, Lithuanians, Estonians, Bulgarians, and Britons. A few of them wore beards. Most carried either M4s or AK-74s, although a few had FN P90 bullpup carbines. There was an assortment of handguns carried in hip or shoulder holsters, mostly Beretta M9s, Glocks, HKs, and SIGs. But there were also a few ostensibly “civilian” pistols like FN FiveSevens, FN FNPs, Springfield Armory XDs, HK USP Compacts, and a Taurus 24/7. Andy was dismayed to see that there was no standardization of uniforms or web gear, either. The net effect was that they looked like a band of mercenaries rather than a professional army. And, as Andy later described the scene to Kaylee, that is exactly what they were: mercenaries.

Andy’s first walk-around in the motor pool meeting the troops and seeing the mix of vehicles and equipment was enlightening. Andy was led by the brigade’s Belgian Adjudant —the equivalent of a U.S. Army first sergeant (E-8). The Adjudant was also called a Stabsfeldwebel by the brigade’s German troops, since that was the equivalent rank in the Bundeswehr.

The vehicles were in a mix of paint schemes: Woodland CARC, desert tan, flat olive drab, and the Bundeswehr’s desert camouflage. Andy was surprised to see the interiors of the IFVs were crowded by a large number of locking Hardigg boxes. They looked similar to the cases used for storing M4 carbines that Andy had seen at remote outposts in Afghanistan. But each of these was stenciled with the name and service number of an NCO or officer. And each of these cases was chained to the floor down the center aisle of each Boxer and Stryker vehicle, and secured with an assortment of padlocks. These boxes were each slightly larger than a standard footlocker. When he asked the Adjudant about the Hardigg boxes, Andy was told, “The ProvGov got those when they first went in to try to pacify Massachusetts. That’s in the depopulated region on the East Coast—where they got hit worst with the flu and the arson riots. They cleaned out the abandoned Hardigg factory in Deerfield, Massachusetts, and came back with truckloads of those cases. The Hardigg box is one of the perks for everyone that’s pay grade E-6 and higher, for personal property.” He added with a wink, “We are promised that they are never subject to inspection.” Laine concluded that seventeenth-century-style piracy had been revived in the New Army.

Seeing the AK-74s as well as a few Russian GAZ-3308 trucks in the motor pool, Andy asked if there were any Russian troops in the North American UN peacekeeping force. He was told that there were only a handful of Russian technical advisors. These were mainly “he comes with the equipment” types that accompanied specialized vehicles and electronics. Later, in reading some strategy papers, Andy learned that there were no Russian troop units because their army was badly bogged down in fighting rebels in Ukraine and the Stans. But there was a substantial quantity of Russian and former Soviet Bloc equipment brought in from Europe via Roll-on, Roll-off (RORO) ships. Most of these were older-generation second-line vehicles, including a large number of Russian and Ukrainian BTR-70 APCs, as well as the German equivalent—the SPW 70 ( Schützenpanzerwagen ).

Andy was caught up in a blur of activity as he settled into his new job. The major whom he was relieving was anxious to start her maternity leave, so she was briefing Andy nearly nonstop. He furiously took notes on a yellow legal pad. Late in the afternoon of the first day, Ed Olds rapped his West Point ring on Andy’s open office door and said, “For most of my PT sessions, I run out to Heard Park and back, four days a week. Meet me in your sweats in front of my quarters tomorrow morning at 0600.”