299 Days IX: The Restoration (20 page)

Joe was on the bridge of the tug with his binoculars. He was stunned to see the lights on at the port but no one around. It was exactly like Dibble said it would be: abandoned. The gunfire and explosions were still far away, about two miles north of them at the capitol campus.

Landing at night was scary, not because of enemy gunfire but just because it was a landing in an unknown port, and barges aren’t easy to steer. The tugboat was manned by an excellent tug crew of volunteers who had landed at the port of Olympia before. They put the barge exactly where it needed to be.

Joe remembered that they had some trouble getting the armored car off the barge and onto the dock. They couldn’t drive the armored car off the barge because it would crush the wooden dock. They needed to use the crane to lift it up and onto the cement staging area onshore. They knew where the keys to the crane were because the tugboat captain had hung out with the crane operators before the Collapse. They went to the control center where the keys were, but it was locked. A special 12 gauge breaching round, which shot metal powder out the barrel, took care of the locked door. A minute later, the tug captain was unloading the armored car. It was an ugly crane job, with the armored car swinging wildly, but it got the job done.

By now, the landing party was out of the shipping containers and doing a final coms and gear check. Once the armored car was operational, the men took up positions behind it. Commercial armored cars were the poor man’s armored personnel carrier.

Joe’s landing party went slowly up the street toward the capitol campus. They first encountered an F Corp checkpoint in downtown Olympia. The FCorps guards, an old man and a young teenager, put up their hands without a word and were zip tied after Joe’s men took their radios.

The next checkpoint, manned by about a dozen FCorps, decided to shoot when the armored car disobeyed their loudspeaker order to halt. Their bullets bounced right off Joe’s armored car, causing the occupants to laugh out loud. The Marines behind the armored car patiently saw where the F Corp muzzle flashes were coming from and demonstrated the marksmanship skills the Marine Corps was known for.

But, as could be expected, the FCorps checkpoint that shot at them had radios.

“There’s an armored car and a bunch of soldiers coming straight up Capitol Boulevard!” one of the FCorps screamed into his radio.

The dispatcher coordinating the response to the gunfire all over the city was overwhelmed. Besides, there was no way an armored car could have driven downtown; all the roads and streets leading to the capitol had checkpoints so it was impossible that an armored car was downtown. The dispatcher assumed this was a mistake or that some teabaggers had stolen a radio and were trying to divert the legitimate authorities, perhaps to an ambush. She disregarded the report of the armored car and moved on to the dozen other emergencies confronting her all at the same time.

Joe remembered how the fire got thicker as they moved toward the capitol campus. Joe’s coms guy, Daniel Briggman, was monitoring the Lima frequencies. The Limas had secure channels, but in the chaos of the attack, many of them, especially the untrained FCorps, were freaking out and talking on the unsecure frequencies. This gave Patriots invaluable information.

Joe and Dibble were in the armored car when Briggman came running up and said, with some concern, “Hey, they now know we’re here, but some of them still can’t believe it. They’re trying to get some armor to engage us.”

Monitoring the Lima radios wasn’t the only source of information Joe’s men had. Some of the Marines were scouting ahead of the armored car. One of them turned a corner and saw a tank sitting in an intersection, fully illuminated by the street lights. The engine wasn’t running, which seemed strange. He used a silent hand signal to tell his fellow scout, who then ran to the armor car to report it.

“I got it,” said Gunnery Sergeant Martin Booth, who was in command of the Marines. He had a plan for this and with a couple of shouts to key personnel, the plan was underway.

Booth pre-determined five Marines to make their way to the corner where the scout had spotted the tank. They had a secret surprise for the tank: a Javelin anti-tank missile. The men made their way to the corner and verified the target was there. It was a block down the street from the corner where the Marines were.

As they were getting ready to fire, the enemy tank crew came running up to the tank, which explained why the engine wasn’t running; it was just sitting there, unmanned. Perhaps the Limas were trying to scare people away, but that didn’t work on Marines.

“Capture them,” the corporal leading the anti-tank party said. “If you can,” he added.

Knowing that the tank couldn’t fire at them without a crew in it made deciding to take it on much easier.

“Freeze!” the Marines yelled as the first of the tank crew members was climbing on the tank to get into it.

The scared National Guard kids threw their hands up in an instant. One by one, they were ordered to walk down the street to be zip tied.

Once the fifth member of the tank crew was secured, the corporal called in the good news.

“Looks like we captured an Abrams,” referring to the M1 tank in the intersection. “Betcha that’ll come in handy.”

Just as those words left the corporal’s mouth, machine gun fire came from the second story of the building just behind the tank.

“Oh, well,” he said, and gave the signal to his two-man Javelin crew. After a few bursts of fire from the Marines, the machine gun stopped. But, to the Marines’ surprise, a new tank crew came running out and started to get into the tank.

The Javelin crew was in place and gave one last look to the corporal in case anything had changed.

“Light ‘em up,” the corporal yelled, and a second later the Javelin exploded out of its launcher and rocked the intersection. The concussion knocked some of the Marines down. The Abrams was still in one piece, but on fire. The secondary explosions from the tank rounds inside started to go off.

The Marine anti-tank crew ran back to the armored car. The corporal reported to Booth about trying to capture the tank. Joe remembered Booth saying, “Shit happens, Corporal” and shrugging.

The Patriot field commanders at the battle of Olympia wondered why one of their biggest problems, a tank in the middle of a key intersection, just exploded. Joe swelled with pride when Briggman got on the radio and told the Patriot commanders that they had taken it out.

The rest of the night, Joe’s men slowly went up the street and probed each intersection in the surrounding area. They encountered heavier and heavier fire as they did so. Finally, it was apparent that one armored car and fifty Marines wasn’t enough to push through the increasingly strong defenses ringing the immediate boundaries of the capitol. Besides, Joe’s men had captured so many Limas it was getting hard to keep moving with all of them in tow. Eventually, Joe’s men linked up with Patriot regular forces and started to run heavy patrols in the areas they’d secured, intercepting fleeing Limas. They captured even more of them, almost of all them were scared National Guard kids, but some nasty FCorps, too. They killed several of them who wouldn’t surrender, having learned from their prisoners that the hardcore Limas were shooting deserters. This might have explained some of the fire the Marines took when capturing enemy soldiers; the Marines had no choice but to fire back.

On the second day – although Joe’s memory was hazy because he hadn’t slept – his armored car was in high demand. It proved to be the perfect way to safely ferry high-value personnel. The armored car was the only armored vehicle the Patriots had; they couldn’t move tanks or armored personnel carriers up and down I-5 to Olympia.

Joe’s Marines were also highly valued; they were assigned to the Delta Company of the Second Battalion of the Washington State Guard. The Marines used their last remaining Javelin on a Lima tank parked at the entrance to the capitol building.

Blowing up the second tank was just about the end for the Limas. After a thunderous tirade of fire from the windows of the capitol buildings, Joe and the others felt and heard an earth-shaking explosion. Joe thought an exploding tank was loud, but this was a hundred times bigger. Later, they found out that this was the Lima’s ammunition bunker that they detonated to prevent the ammunition from falling into Patriot hands.

Joe was given the great honor of having his armored car used to bring the Patriot commanders into the capitol to receive the surrender of the last handful of Limas. Using his car was partially thanks for the fifty Marines and taking out two tanks, but was also because it was the only armored vehicle the Patriots had.

Joe started to cry when he saw a soldier bring the new Patriot flag out of his armored car and hoist it up the flagpole over the capitol. It was silent as the flag flew, except for some of the secondary explosions from the ammunition bunker. As he was looking up at the new flag on the old capitol, Joe noticed his Marines were slowly making their way to his armored car. Once they were there, he went into the vehicle and got out three wooden boxes of cigars they’d captured from pirates a few months ago. He motioned for Booth to come over and told him to hand a cigar to every man in the unit. Once they all had one, Joe lit his cigar and said, “Well done, gentlemen. Well done.”

Chapter 317

Prisoner Herself

(January 3)

It had been twenty-four hours since she was arrested. Nancy Ringman was remembering what happened.

It all started when Otter said to her back at Clover Park, “Nancy, I bet your arms are getting tired, right?”

She nodded. Her arms had been out at her sides for a few minutes and were starting to hurt. She was pleasantly surprised that Otter cared about her comfort. Maybe he wasn’t a teabagger; maybe he had been sent by Linda to rescue her.

“Go ahead and slowly put your arms behind your back, Nancy,” Otter said. “And for everyone’s safety, one of these guys is going to put something on your wrists.”

Nancy nodded slowly, still looking down at the ground. She realized that if they were handcuffing her, they probably hadn’t been sent by Linda. Now she was starting to get really scared, but Otter seemed so nice. Her expectation that all teabaggers were mean assholes was wrong and she felt like she could trust him, even if he was arresting her.

She started to put her arms behind her back, but she couldn’t because they were so sore. Her knees were hurting, too, she noticed. She struggled to get her hands back. They were wobbling.

“Tell you what, Nancy,” Otter said. “One of these guys is going to help you move your arms. First your left one, then your right one, okay?”

Nancy nodded. What a relief. She felt so helpless, not being able to move her arms. She was starting to realize that, on top of all of this, she was still half-drunk from the wine.

Someone came up behind her and gently moved her left arm behind her back and then her right arm. She felt a thin plastic strap go on her wrist. The man tightened it, but not so tight that it hurt.

“Okay, Nancy,” Otter said, “Now I need you to stand up.”

She nodded but started to cry. “I can’t,” she said softly. She was humiliated that she couldn’t even stand up, but she knew she’d be more humiliated if she tried and fell down.

“Okay,” Otter said, “we’ll help you.”

A man came up behind her and each one gently lifted one of her arms until she was standing.

“Can you walk?” Otter asked.

Nancy, now looking up at Otter, nodded. She looked in his eyes. He didn’t look like the monster she expected.

Seeing that she was having a hard time walking, one of the soldiers said, “I’ll have the truck brought over here.” He got on the radio and soon she heard the sound of an approaching truck.

“Now, Nancy,” Otter said, “I’ve been good to you, haven’t I?”

Still looking at him, she nodded.

“Nancy,” he said sincerely, “I need you to tell me if anyone else is here.”

She stared at him.

“Nancy,” he said very seriously, “I really need to know if anyone else is here, okay?”

That made sense to Nancy.

“I’m pretty sure I’m the only one.”

“Pretty sure?” he asked.

“Yes, I don’t know of anyone else who is here.”

“Okay, Nancy,” Otter said, “I believe you.” He actually did, but he wasn’t going to completely rely on it.

The truck came up to them and Otter motioned for her to get inside.

“Where are we going?” she asked.

“To jail, Nancy,” he said. “You did some horrible things.”

Chapter 318

Pancakes II

(January 3)

Grant couldn’t believe what he was seeing. Wes' body was laid out, motionless, in the back of the truck. He ran over hoping to see that it was someone else, but as he ran toward Mark’s truck, he saw Ryan’s face. From his expression, Grant knew that it was Wes in the back of the truck.

Suddenly, Grant stopped running. He didn’t actually want to see Wes. He didn’t want to erase all the memories he had of an alive, active Wes. Of a warrior. Of a kind and gentle man to the innocent, and a skilled fighter to the guilty. Of a quiet man who did what needed to be done like when he announced “Lima down.” Of a strong Patriot.