299 Days: The 17th Irregulars

Chapter 175 Armed Serenity

The Richardson house was the ideal training location for the Team. It was abandoned and isolated enough that there wouldn’t be anyone watching them. The Team had been trying to get a training day in since after the raid on the tweaker house. There had been a million projects for the Team to do at Pierce Point after the raid like training the gate guards and patrolling. Finally, they had a day when they could all go out and train. This required Grant to participate; he was part of the Team and could be called out with them to take down another house. He had to participate in the training.

The next morning, Grant got ready for work and didn’t tell Lisa what he was going to be doing. He didn’t want to start the day with an argument. Like a coward, he waited until she was in the bathroom and then got his kit and AR and left. It was better to be a coward than to have to spend the entire day worrying about her being mad. He didn’t need to be distracted as he practiced house clearing.

Grant walked out of the cabin into the sunshine and went a few yards down the road toward the yellow cabin. He saw the rest of the Team coming out and heading over to Mark’s black Silverado, which was parked and idling. They piled into the truck, each taking their familiar places in the bed of the truck.

The Team looked at Grant, expecting him to say the phrase he always said as they got into the truck. Grant paused for dramatic effect. Then he smiled and proudly said, “This never gets old.”

They all smiled. Then it was Pow’s turn to say his usual phrase.

“Beats the shit out of selling insurance,” Pow said, right on cue, to another round of big smiles and fist bumps.

This felt good. No, it felt absolutely fantastic. Armed serenity; riding in the back of the truck out to train to save people. They were the sheepdogs for some very nice sheep, and were up against some very bad wolves.

The Team rolled into the Grange for breakfast, without their girlfriends in tow. People noticed that. Grant and Chip were with the Team in full kit. People noticed that, too. They were all eating together like the old days.

Lisa was coming to work at the clinic early and saw Grant at the Grange. She put two and two together.

“You going to be here today?” she asked, referring to the Grange.

“Nope. Training day with the Team,” Grant said, expecting a fight.

“Oh. Cool. Be safe,” she said and smiled. She hugged him.

She knew Grant was going to do this, anyway. She had been surprised at how easily he had just quit working with the Team and started doing office work. She knew he wanted to be out there with them. It was harmless. They were just training today, not getting in any actual gun fights.

Lisa was trying very hard to be understanding of all the new things that were happening. She realized that she had been a little too hardcore on the whole “just be a lawyer and have an office job out here” thing. She had increasingly been admitting to herself that Grant was right about the need to prepare. She also admitted to herself that he had done a good job of getting them out of Olympia and was running things very smoothly out here. She was blessed to have a husband like him. She didn’t want to admit it to him, though; that would give him a big head.

“Will do, dear,” Grant said, signaling by the use of the word “dear” that he appreciated her coolness on the topic.

Wow. This was just like the old days. Grant got to go out shooting with the guys and his wife was cool with it. Oh, wait, he told himself. In the old days, she was “cool with it” only because she never knew what he was doing. This was even better. She was fine with it while even knowing what he was doing.

Grant had to admit that Lisa was working hard at getting over normalcy bias. She still wasn’t fully over it; not at all. She was still hesitant about many aspects of life out at Pierce Point. She never seemed comfortable with the situation out here. She wasn’t complaining, but it was obvious she wasn’t glad to be out here. But it was equally obvious that she was trying hard to accept what was happening.

Grant thought about it for a few minutes. He had to give credit where credit was due. Lisa was adapting to the new conditions of life much better than he thought she would. He remembered back to when she was crying in their Olympia house and screaming at him not to leave. That seemed like a different Lisa. Thank God. He didn’t want to tell her how much better she was being. That would just give her a big head.

After a big breakfast of biscuits and gravy with delicious fresh strawberries on the side—the first berries of the season—the Team was ready to get to work. They headed out to the Richardson house. It felt so good to Grant to be out riding with the guys. It was a beautiful sunny day.

When they got to the Richardson house, Rich and Dan were there. Kyle Lemond, the new dog handler, was also there with the dogs. The “Crew” was there, too.

The Crew consisted of five new guys who worked on securing the perimeter when the Team went into the building. They had tactical shotguns and AKs, and one even had a vest with magazines. All of them had pistols, of course.

The Crew’s job was to make sure no one escaped from the building that was being raided. This role had been the missing piece during the tweaker raid. The occupants of that house could have escaped once the Team flushed them out because there were only enough Team members to go in.

Dan solved this problem by recruiting the five best guards. It was a promotion for them and the possibility of being on the Crew motivated his other guards to work hard. Being on the Crew was a status symbol.

The Crew was made up mostly of guys in their thirties. No teenage boys. Dan wanted mature men for this job. The Crew couldn’t get caught up in the excitement and shoot just anyone running toward them, like innocent civilians being rescued by the Team. They had to have judgment. They couldn’t be rookies who wanted to show the world how tough they were. They needed to be quiet professionals and also needed to have the temperament to detain people who might end up being good guys.

The Crew’s job wasn’t just to grab people who were running out from a building and cuff them with zip ties. They were also in charge of making sure that no new bad guys came to the building trying to help their buddies inside. In a big fight, there was a very real possibility that the Crew would be shooting.

Chip led the Crew, which made sense. Chip was a member of the Team, but wanted to sit out the heavy stuff. Chip had the full confidence of the Team and knew them. He could tell the Crew what the Team would be doing since he knew exactly what they would do.

A final, but very important, piece of the Crew was Kyle Lemond, who ran the dogs. He was in his thirties with black hair and a scar on his chin, but he didn’t look like a criminal. He looked more like a logger. He was a quiet guy who had worked in a motorcycle shop before the Collapse.

The dogs Kyle handled could be used to secure the premises or to go into the house ahead of the Team. The dogs were the Team’s secret weapon.

Grant had a unique role during the training. He would be a member of the Team, but would be a “floater,” an optional add-in guy. He would not be a core member of the Team since there was a good possibility he would be doing office things at any given moment the Team could be called up.

Rich was in charge of the house-clearing training. Ryan assisted because he had done a lot of urban warfare training in the Marine Corps. His knowledge and experience was better than Rich’s somewhat dated law enforcement training. Rich and Ryan went through the process in slow motion, talking out each step. Everyone made suggestions to Rich’s basic plan of how to clear the house and secure the premises. They came up with a better system of communications. They already had been using basic terms like “moving!” that they practiced at the range before the Collapse. Now they expanded on them and came up with a command for everything they would likely run into. It was good to have Grant as the “floater.” When he was taken out of the mix, simulating when he would be away in the Grange and couldn’t’ get on scene with the others, this forced the Team to change up who had various roles like lead entry. This meant each permanent member of the Team had to cross-train. They learned each role better by actually doing it, over and over again, all day.

After a few hours, each man on the Team knew exactly what every other member of the Team was doing at any given moment, and would be doing next. It was like on a basketball team when a player knows who will be where and exactly when. They were truly operating as a team instead of individuals.

It was hard work. They had to stay mentally alert for hours. It was mentally tiring, as well as physically. By the end of the day, they were a pretty good integrated team. The Crew was working out just fine. Kyle and the dogs were working well, too.

That day of training took the Team to the next level. They would need several more days of training to be semi-decent under stressful conditions. Grant heard that in the stress of combat, a person is only able to do 50% of what they are trained to do. So, they needed to train up to a level of double what they wanted to accomplish in real life.

“Whaddya say we call it a day?” Rich finally said. He could see the guys were starting to make mistakes because they were so tired and hungry. Rich didn’t want the training to reinforce the mistakes. They had done an amazing job all day, and he wanted to end the day on a high note.

When they broke for the day, Grant noticed the Team and the Crew talking and laughing. They were getting along just fine, which was not a guaranteed thing. At the beginning of the day, there had been a little tension between the two groups.

Having an elite group and a “junior varsity” can often lead to conflict. The elite group might act like dicks. Not the Team. They appreciated having the Crew back them up. They knew the Crew was risking their lives to make the Team safer. And they knew the Crew was the best of the guards, which was a pretty high level.

A big flatbed truck with wood side boards came by a few minutes after Rich called it a day. The Team, Crew, Rich, and Dan got in. The dogs went into the cab. All together, they rolled down the road. The closer they got to the Grange, the more people saw them. People took note that the Team was expanding to add plenty of local men. This was a relief to some who had worried the Team—who were outsiders—might turn into a gang.

The Team integrating with the local men of the Crew was a clear sign that things were progressing in a good way. Pierce Point was getting a fighting unit together. Grant was glad to see the people witnessing this development. He expected they would be called upon to support a bigger fighting unit in the coming months. He wanted Pierce Point residents to feel pride and see that they could turn some good ole’ boys into real fighters with a little training and equipment. And some help from Special Forces Ted.

When they pulled into the Grange, there was an awkward moment when the Team and Crew needed to pick a table. Grant solved that problem.

“We eat together, gentlemen,” Grant said, motioning for the Crew to join the Team. They all sat down and recounted the day’s events and joked. Dinner came and the men wolfed it down. Salmon and biscuits. No butter, but they were too hungry to care. Desert was heavenly: tons of ripe strawberries and whipped cream. Real cream, from real cows, whipped up with some sugar in it.

They were full and happy. They had done some great work and everyone in the group could see that they would be doing lots more great work together. They had an amazing unit. They felt they could do anything together.

It was almost 7:00 p.m., and people were arriving at the Grange for the nightly meeting. The Team sat with the Crew, and listened to the nights’ meeting, while their taste buds were still remembering the strawberries and biscuits filling up their stomachs.