“Any questions?” Grant asked.
There weren’t any.
“OK,” Grant said, “now to introduce the newest member of the unit, Jim Q.” Grant pointed at him, and he waved to the group.
“He’s our Quadra,” Grant said, “which is HQ’s term for these very unique radio crypto guys.” Crypto was short for “cryptographer,” which meant a code expert. Grant didn’t want to give out the details of the code talkers just yet. “Jim Q., why don’t you tell everyone about yourself?”
Jim Q. smiled. He wasn’t nervous about meeting a bunch of strangers. “I’m Jim and since I’m a Quadra, I’m going by Jim Q. I know a very, very unique code that I can use on the radio to talk to HQ and other irregular units. I can also use this code to write notes for HQ and read their notes that come in. They’re written in a code that the Limas absolutely cannot break. They’ve never seen or heard anything like this before.”
The soldiers were very impressed that HQ had cryptos out here, and felt special, like HQ cared by sending them a code guy. They were reassured that their communications would be encoded.
“I’m Arab, but Christian,” Jim Q. said, addressing what he knew most of the guys were likely thinking. “I’m not some terrorist.” He’d been explaining this since he was a kid. After September 11th, people got nervous at just the sight of him. He understood. He got nervous at the sight of young Arab men, too. “In fact, the terrorists love to kill Christians like me, and often do, especially in the country my family came from.”
“An Arab working the codes?” Grant said. “You’re probably wondering if we’ve lost our minds. Fair enough. But there are things you don’t know about that give me absolute trust in Jim Q. and the other Quadras. Here’s one: all of the Quadras’ families are in Patriot ‘safekeeping.’ One little incident and they’ll never see their families. And this ‘safekeeping’ was their idea.”
Grant looked at each soldier and said, “Here’s the bottom line: Jim Q. is our code guy, HQ extensively vetted him and all the others like him, and I trust him with my life and yours. Anyone have a problem with Jim Q.?”
It was silent and a few heads were shaking. “That’s what I thought,” Grant said, sounding a bit like a dick, but he needed to make this point in his command voice. He couldn’t have people distrusting any member of the unit, especially not the very crucial code guy. It was more important for everyone to trust Jim Q. than for Grant to not be a slight dick for a few seconds.
Anderson, one of the Army infantrymen out there, who was black, said, “Don’t worry, Jim Q. I’ll keep these cracker-asses away from you.” He laughed, letting everyone know he was kidding. Anderson had a great sense of humor and wanted to show everyone that the unit was cool with Jim Q. Grant appreciated the humor. It was a great way to put people at ease.
Ted said, also jokingly, “What Corporal Anderson means is that we have a diverse workplace and all are welcomed.”
Jim Q., not missing a beat, said, “A diverse workplace? That’s fine. Just keep the cracker-asses away from me.” Everyone laughed. Humor was a social lubricant. It made otherwise sticky situations flow smoothly.
“One more thing, Lieutenant,” Anderson said. He was on a roll and wanted to get another laugh. He made the number one with his thumb. Then he folded in his next two fingers, so just his right ring finger and pinkie were out. Then he held up all five fingers on his left hand.
“See,” he said looking at his thumb. “That’s a one.” Then he looked at the remaining two fingers, and the five on the other hand, and said, “That’s a seven.”
He looked up and smiled, “The 1-7, y’all. The 1-7.”
“That’s our gang sign,” Grant said. Some people were stunned. A Patriot guerilla unit with a “gang sign”?
“That’s right: our gang sign,” Grant said. “We’re a gang here at the 17th. A good gang.”
Everyone was smiling and nodding while flashing each other the “1-7” sign.
Grant sat back and watched his unit bond. They were a good gang, indeed.
Chapter 205
This Can’t Go on Much Longer
Steve Briggs got up at 4:30 a.m. as usual. He didn’t even need an alarm clock anymore. He went to bed early because there was nothing else to do in the evening. No TV. Well, there was TV on the air, but it was all propaganda and truly mindless sitcoms and reality shows, with all the “commercials” being “public service announcements” from the government containing more propaganda. Steve couldn’t watch TV anymore. Even when he would lose himself in some classic sitcom from the past, he would be jolted back to reality by the obnoxious propaganda ads that interrupted the show. That wasn’t relaxing.
“Same ole’, same ole’,” Steve said to himself as he got dressed for work. “Work” was solving problems all day in Forks.
They still hadn’t seen any semis roll into town. It was a hundred miles to the closest town and no one was surprised that the authorities hadn’t made little, isolated Forks a high priority.
People in Forks were living on fish and game, mostly elk and deer. It seemed like everyone had a garden by now. Most people were sharing and trading food.
Most people. There were still some loners who didn’t. They tried to live off of their own food, and some of them stole from others. The town’s deputized civilian police force kept that down to a minimum. Actually, the fact that almost everyone in town was armed kept it to a minimum. There had been over two dozen burglars shot by homeowners since the Collapse, out of a town of about three thousand.
But things had become “normal” in Forks. It was a new normal, granted, but Steve was worried about what was coming. Winter. Summer was easy living, but that wouldn’t be true in a few short months.
Things were different, but somewhat the same, two hundred miles away in Olympia. Back in the Cedars subdivision, Ron Spencer was a “gray man,” a saboteur against the government who kept to himself. He stayed under the radar. He didn’t even tell his wife he was doing it. Ron’s contribution to the cause was to spray paint graffiti messages at night. His favorite was “I miss America.”
His “job” — the thing that put food on the table — was operating an underground taxi service running on barter, driving people around to important things. Ron had some silver he’d squirreled away before the Collapse which he used to buy gas from the “gang gas” station. He would then drive people who had no gas and, in return, would get food and other things.
And, in all this driving around, Ron would observe things that might be helpful to the Patriots. He learned when the shift changes were for the pathetic FCorps guards at the police station. Ron had made contact with Matt Collins who was a Patriot and would pass along things to him, like the shift change and other tidbits. Ron laughed at the pre-Collapse Homeland Security slogan of “See something. Say something.” He was doing that alright, but not for the side Homeland Security had been talking about.
Ron’s other “job” was volunteering as an FCorps accountant because he had been a CPA before the Collapse. His FCorps accounting job was a joke because the FCorps was corrupt as hell and didn’t exactly keep good records of its corruption. Ron didn’t care. In fact, he used the volunteer job to get his family a decent FCard allowance, although food shipments were pretty unpredictable to the “regular” stores that the little people like him could shop at. The politically connected people got to go to special stores that were always well stocked.
Ron supplemented the FCard food and the taxi service barter items with the small amount of food his family had stored. They were Mormon, after all. People assumed they had lots of stored food, but they didn’t. They had some, though. Far more than most, especially in “commieville,” as Ron called ultra-liberal—and thoroughly dependent—Olympia.