Glen Tate - 299 Days - The Preparation

Others would be in-between. Some in the military and law enforcement would go along with the politicians at first; there would probably some genuine crises to protect people against. But after a while, they would increasingly refuse to shoot and imprison Americans if that’s what they were ordered to do. Therefore, eventually most in the military and law enforcement would probably not be part of an attempted takeover. In fact, a good portion of them would actively fight against the politicians trying it.

Special Forces Ted was one of them. He was a member of Oath Keepers, as were many of his Special Forces buddies.

It would be safe to assume that something as simple as pledging to keep an oath to uphold the Constitution wouldn’t be too controversial. But it was. The progressive politicians hated Oath Keepers. They thought Oath Keepers were violent right-wing militia nut jobs bent on taking over America via a coup.

One day, Grant went to Capitol City and found Chip and Special Forces Ted in the shop making some ARs. Now that Ted was retired and divorced, he spent most of his time there. Grant had apparently interrupted them in some deep conversation. Ted wanted to change the subject but Chip wanted to continue with it in front of Grant.

Chip said to Ted, “Go ahead, man, you can trust Grant. Tell him what you were telling me.”

Ted paused. He didn’t want to keep talking. Finally, he reluctantly said, “I’m organizing an Oath Keepers group in my old unit. There are lots of us who think something bad is going to happen.” Ted paused and chose his words carefully, “We didn’t sign up to take over our own country. We signed up to protect it. We will. Enemies foreign and domestic. Domestic.”

Grant was stunned to hear this. An American soldier saying out loud that he was concerned that the government was thinking of taking over by force and other soldiers would have to get involved to stop it. The part that wasn’t surprising, at least to Grant, was that soldiers had to think about this. Grant knew things were collapsing. Those Green Berets knew it, too. They received the briefings on what was happening.

Now that Ted was warming up to the idea of trusting Grant, he got on a roll about Oath Keepers. He explained to Grant that at least half of the guys in his old unit were Oath Keepers, or wanted to join. The other half were either “not into politics” or were so young that they didn’t fully appreciate what an unlawful order was. The young guys hadn’t been deployed to hellholes around the world, like the older guys had, where it was the norm for power-hungry politicians to use force against the civilian population. Of the half not immediately interested in Oath Keepers, Ted figured about half of them (about a quarter of the unit) would be open to it, especially if the rest of the unit was. The remaining men in the unit were either not interested or, in a few cases, were “ladder climbers” who would follow just about any order to advance in rank. Ted couldn’t think of any ladder climbers in his former unit, but he had to admit that when times got tough some guys would just follow orders. Ted explained that the more elite a unit was, and Special Forces was certainly at the top of that list, the more open the unit was to Oath Keepers. Mid-level infantry units would have many good Oath Keepers, but also had a higher percentage of guys who joined for a free college education. The lower level units, especially the non-combat support units, had a majority of guys who treated the Army as just another job. Guys like that would probably follow orders just to keep their jobs. But, a unit full of Army administrative specialists isn’t too fearsome compared to a couple of Green Berets.

Besides, Ted explained, America’s high-tech military was extremely dependent on supplies and logistics. If semi-trucks quit rolling, the Army would face shortages of fuel, ammo, and spare parts just like everyone else. They had stockpiles but they, too, had fallen for just-in-time inventory. Cost-cutting wizards at the Pentagon had decided to go with just-in-time inventory to save money. Oh, how shortsighted that would be. Just like almost everything else in America. Shortsighted and disastrous.

“Another big problem a unit will face in a domestic crisis is that most guys will want to get back home to their families,” Ted explained. “Especially the lower level units. But, with the more elite units, we are each other’s family so we’ll fight as group. And most of those units will be Oath Keeper units.”

“What about cops?” Chip asked. “Those guys come in here all day to buy guns and hang out. They seem pretty solid to me.” Ted and Chip talked about law enforcement and how they thought a good chunk of them would choose the Oath Keeper side, either at the outset of a collapse or a little bit into it.

Grant didn’t know what it was like to be a Green Beret, but he knew a little about cops. “Hey, I don’t claim to be an expert here,” he said, “but aren’t cops a little more prone to corruption than, say, Army units? I mean, I see a little cop corruption in the cases I work on.”

Ted and Chip agreed that cops would be more likely to be corrupt just because cops were in constant contact with criminals, whereas soldiers weren’t. The consensus among Ted, Chip, and Grant was that some cops would go bad and maybe steal from people, but that the majority would not.

“Cops are local,” Ted said. “They don’t move around to a new base every few years like we do. That means they’ll think twice about shooting people in their own towns who are their neighbors and relatives, in some cases.”

Most cops would probably just quit their jobs. The current round of budget cuts would mean even fewer cops would be around. Those that were might decide that a collapse was a good time to quit, especially when it meant getting killed, or having to kill their neighbors.

Grant was soaking all of this in. He still couldn’t believe what he was hearing. It was reassuring. No, actually, it was a huge relief to hear, straight from the horse’s mouth, that the military and lots of law enforcement would not turn into an anti-civilian thug force. It sounded like there would be plenty of good military and law enforcement people to keep the bad ones under control. But there would still be plenty of bad military and law enforcement units.

As much Grant had improved his tactical skills, he always knew that his little Team was no match for any competent military or law enforcement opponent. Not even close. He remembered the day at the range with the Team when some Rangers from Ft. Lewis showed up to shoot. The Team was glad to let them use the range to learn from them. Those Rangers were amazing; ten times better than the civilians on the Team. Right then and there Grant and the rest of the Team knew their limitations. They were only able to defend themselves against civilian criminals, maybe up to the sophisticated gang level of civilian criminals. But that was it. Now he realized that his side would have some military and law enforcement backup with the Oath Keepers.

Grant had to head home, which was a short drive from the gun store. He would have stayed and listened to Ted for hours if he could. On the way home, he tried to “normalize” himself by getting back into the suburban world he was returning to. He struggled with making the mental switch from hearing a former Green Beret talk about which of the guys in his unit would fight against the U.S. Government in a coup, to hearing about how ballet practice went and what homework the kids had that night.

When Grant got into the driveway, he hit the garage door button. Hitting that button had become a symbol to him that he needed to go from thinking about the end of the world to thinking about being a suburban dad and husband. It was a hard transition on evenings like this one. Very hard.