299 Days: The Visitors

Chapter 166 Boston Harbor (July 3)

Seeing the Team reminded Ted of how much had happened so quickly. Wow. After evacuating the gun store, he hid the guns at his place and quickly got in touch with some trusted Oath Keeper colleagues. That was how he found out his old unit commander, Lt. Col. Hammond, was commanding the special operations part of the Patriot’s new army, the Washington State Guard. Ted met up with Lt. Col. Hammond in a safe house out at Boston Harbor, which was a Patriot stronghold right outside Olympia where the Patriot’s Special Operations Command was quietly setting up.

A few weeks ago, Lt. Col. Hammond arranged to have two new arrivals, an Air Force guy named Tom, and a Navy guy named Travis, come out to Ted’s house in Olympia and help them move the guns back to Boston Harbor. Ted linked up with two civilians from the gun store, Carl and his buddy Stan. The four of them and Ted ended up moving the guns at night around checkpoints. It took ten days to go fifteen miles. It was hard and dangerous work, and totally unglamorous, like most of the work in this project. That was most civilians’ biggest misconception about war: that it was all about gun fighting. Nope. It was mostly about slowly moving supplies around checkpoints.

After Ted got the guns to Boston Harbor, he spent the next few weeks working on the plans for training a guerilla group near Olympia. During the planning, he got Sap assigned to him. He knew Sap a little from back at Ft. Lewis.

Ted thought Sap was a great young Green Beret. He spoke Urdu fluently and could communicate in about a dozen other languages. He had a photographic memory. When Ted got to see Sap’s old Army personnel file, he thought the IQ listed for Sap was a typo. It said 146, putting him in the top 0.1%. That was better than Ted’s, which was saying something.

Sap was the most down-to-earth Wisconsin kid anyone would ever meet, but he was calculating algorithms in his head as he was talking to you about ice fishing. And he could do all this after forty-eight hours of hauling heavy gear without sleep.

As Ted and Sap worked on a plan to start a guerilla unit near Olympia, Chip’s radio reports to Ted made it clear that Pierce Point was more than just a place where some guns were stashed. Chip’s reports about the services springing up at Pierce Point led the command staff to think maybe Pierce Point could do civil affairs for other places. That’s when it became time for Ted and Sap to go out to Pierce Point and see if the civilians Ted knew out there wanted to join up.

“That went well,” Sap said to Ted as they were walking back down to the beach.

“Uh huh,” Ted said, not wanting to discuss operations until they got back into the boat and away from any ears that might be lurking on the beach.

They got back down to the beach where Paul was guarding the boat. The Chief had gone out patrolling.

“Come back and see us real soon,” Paul said.

“We probably won’t get back out to these parts,” Sap said, trying to throw off Paul. “So, what’d you see this evening?”

“Nothin’,” Paul said with a smile. Sap had a good feeling about Paul.

Ted and Sap put their rifles and kit into the boat. They talked to Paul about the tide and the winds. He told them about a rock pile near in the water that might be submerged in this tide and then got on the radio to the Chief and said, “Green team out for a cruise. Brown team out.” Paul implied he was the “brown team” to make it sound like they were using colors to differentiate their own teams. That would lessen any meaning from “green”—as in green beret—that someone listening might notice.

The Chief’s voice came on the radio and said, “All beach patrol will allow a small vessel to pass out of the inlet and into the sound. Training craft.” That was as good of a story as any. No one listening to the radio would find this remarkable. It was a beautiful evening. Warm, with clear skies. At 8:30 p.m. it was just starting to get dark. They wanted to get back to Boston Harbor before it got pitch black. It was a short ride, about twenty-five minutes.

“So what did you think of those guys,” Ted asked, as Sap steered the boat just like he was on a Wisconsin fishing lake. Ted hadn’t talked the Pierce Point guys up too much in case they turned out to be a disappointment. He had only said that he knew them well and they seemed like very good initial candidates for an indigenous fighter unit. But that was it.

“Very impressed,” Sap said. “Better than a tribe of totally untrained goat herders like we’ve worked with before,” he said referring to the last overseas mission he and Ted were on. “They speak English, which is a nice change from our usual situation,” he added.

“Who do you think the leader is?” Ted asked, already knowing the answer but looking for input.

“That Grant guy,” Sap said. “He’s a consensus leader, but he’s clearly the leader. That Pow guy, the Korean, he’s a tactical leader. A sergeant type, but he’s young, so not a father-figure sergeant. The other three young guys are solid. They’re not mall ninjas. That Marine, Ryan, should be good. The old guy, your friend Chip, is good, too. A very decent start out there.”

“How about the government services they seem to have up and running?” Ted asked. Green Berets didn’t just talk about the “gun stuff”; there were lots of other components to an effective indigenous unit. “A library, postal service, and a makeshift court?” Ted said. “A food hall, an Ag department, a couple squads guarding the gate with an Air Force Security Forces guy running that? Taking down a meth house with an amateur SWAT team? A newspaper? A frickin’ newspaper? Called the ‘Patriot’ and everything? What a solid base of operations. You think they will get the Undecideds to come over to our side?”

“Hard to say with certainty,” Sap said, “but I think they have all the foundations laid for at least most of the population to support them. If they can feed and protect people, and the former government can’t—and we know they can’t—then probably people will side with us. I worry about the Loyalists they identified. Grant didn’t want to eliminate them. That’s a sign of a weak leader. He hesitates to do what’s necessary. He’ll need our guidance on that. We can always take care of the threat ourselves,” Sap said.

“Roger that,” Ted agreed. He had been thinking the same thing. Ted would give Grant a chance to do it himself. If Grant choked, the green team would take care of business. They would use that as a teachable moment for Grant, showing him what needed to be done and shaming him for not doing it. This was standard for how they dealt with wavering indigenous leaders and the elimination of collaborators and spies. But, Ted had to admit, they’d never had to do it against Americans. That was new.

“What do you think about Grant doing civil affairs for battalion?” Ted asked Sap. “Battalion” referred to the special operations group at Boston Harbor.

“It’s highly unorthodox,” Sap said. “He’s not trained. But, hell, no one’s trained for these things anymore. All our civil affairs nerds are still back at their Loyalist jobs so we have no choice. He has a track record out here in a little place. Could he replicate that in a bigger place? We could see. But he’s better than nothing.”

Ted decided that he’d recommend to Lt. Col. Hammond that Grant serve as the civil affairs officer. No one had expected to find a civil affairs person in a group of hillbillies. It was an unexpected find.

Ted and Sap were getting near their destination. Boston Harbor was a few miles north of Olympia on the water, a tip jutting out into Puget Sound with a big marina. It was a very strategic location that the Loyalists hadn’t figured out. They never expected the Patriots’ special operations command to be operating semi-openly in a little town so close to their state capitol. But they were; hidden in plain sight.

Boston Harbor was an unusual place in western Washington: it wasn’t full of left-wing kooks. For whatever reason—probably all the military people who retired there from nearby Ft. Lewis—Boston Harbor was actually pretty conservative.

Another factor was that right before the Collapse, the state environmental department declared that most of the homes on the water in Boston Harbor needed to be removed to save some snail. The locals didn’t appreciate that too much. Tensions between the government employees living there and the private sector residents ran very high. Early on in the Collapse, the leaders of Boston Harbor told the Loyalist public employees to leave. They threatened to burn down Loyalists’ houses. The Loyalists got the message and left in droves. They could live safely in nearby Olympia with their government colleagues. There were far too many arsons for the authorities to investigate. The Loyalist authorities didn’t have the time to worry about little Boston Harbor. They would let those right-wing nut jobs run their own little community.

So the Patriots did. Given how close they were to the capitol, which was still firmly held by the Loyalists, the Patriots were careful not to overtly strut around Boston Harbor with Don’t Tread on Me flags. There could be some remaining Loyalists who might rat them out. But the comings and goings of so many military men and women and their civilian friends was an open secret. The other open secret was that the Loyalists lacked the resources to do anything about it. They had big populations to control in the cities. That was all they could do. No one cared about Boston Harbor.

It was almost dark as Ted and Sap were pulling into Boston Harbor. They had left Pierce Point just in time. They slowed down as they got to the floating checkpoint. That was a “fishing vessel” that was really a Patriot naval observation post. Sap got his radio and called in the appropriate code. The response came back that they were cleared to pass. They were going slowly now.

As Ted and Sap pulled into the Boston Harbor marina, Ted said to Sap, “Let’s go tell Lt. Col. Hammond about the good folks at Pierce Point.” Sap smiled.