“Militias” were even worse. Some of the Patriot SF units would be sent out to make contact with militias. The number of groups calling themselves a “militia” went way up as the Collapse unfolded. Many were good people organized to help the community, but quite a few groups calling themselves a “militia” were total goofballs. Mall ninjas. They knew more about how to fight in video games than in real life. They were worthless.
Ted and other SF units could work with even the greenest civilians and train them, which is what they did all over the world and were now doing in America. But, if the trainees thought they knew it all, there was no use even trying to train them. The mall ninjas would get themselves, and everyone else, killed. Or they’d run at the first sound of gun fire.
Ted realized that he hadn’t fully introduced Sap to Chip and Grant. “Gentlemen, this is Sgt. Brandon Sappenfield. We call him ‘Sap.’” Sap looked a little like Luke Skywalker in the Star Wars movies.
Sap shook Grant’s hand. “Pleased to meet you,” Sap said in a slight upper Midwest accent. Grant thought maybe Minnesota. Sap shook Chip’s hand, too.
“You guys hungry?” Chip asked.
“Yep,” Sap said.
Chip got them some MREs. “Sorry, guys, that’s all we have here. We usually eat at the Grange. Hot meals. Very nice. But you guys can’t just stroll in there.”
“The Grange?” Ted asked.
This was Grant’s moment to shine. He had done a lot to organize functioning governmental services out at Pierce Point. He hadn’t done it all alone, of course. Rich, Dan, and a host of others had made it possible. But Grant was the driving force behind all the services they were developing out there. The fact that they had so many volunteers at the Grange, and could feed them, was a big bragging point for him.
“The Grange is where…” Grant started.
There was a knock at the door.
Gideon’s voice said, “Hey, the Team’s coming and they have some girls. What should I do?”
Chapter 163
Limas
(July 3)
Ted and Sap looked concerned. Who were these people coming to the cabin?
“The Team can come in. The girls can’t,” Grant yelled through the door. “I’ll come out and explain it to them,” he said. Chip motioned to Ted and Sap that things were cool, even though he was wondering if they really were.
Grant ran out the door. He and Gideon went to meet the truck rumbling down the gravel road. Sure enough, there was the Team getting out of Mark’s truck, with some lovely female friends.
Grant had wondered how long it would take for this to happen. The Team was made up of single guys in their mid-twenties. They were the heroes of Pierce Point. Do the math.
Gideon yelled to them, “Hey, sorry, guys, this is a restricted area.” He was harkening back to his MP days using that phrase.
Grant yelled, “Yep. We need your guests to wait in the truck for a minute.”
Scotty yelled back, “What the fuck?” There are few things that get guys more angry at each other, even good friends, than one of them getting in the way of the other’s lovin’.
The young ladies looked confused. They were on their way to the Team’s place for a party and…well, everyone knew how things would end up.
“Pow, I need to see you, man,” Grant said. Pow was not happy about this, either. He got out of the truck and came up to Grant.
“This better be good,” he said softly.
“It is,” Grant whispered back.
When Pow was close and no one else could hear, Grant said, “Ted is here with another SF liaison. They’re in the yellow cabin. We can’t have random people, even hot ones, know they’re here. Sorry, but I’m calling operational security over some hoochie time.”
Grant was softening what he was saying with a word like “hoochie,” but he was in command right now. What he said went. People’s lives literally depended on it. There was a time for palling around and this wasn’t it.
Pow’s eyes got big. “Roger that,” he said.
Pow went back to the truck and said, “Sorry, ladies, but we’ll have to get back with you. Something has come up. It’s probably nothing, but it’s a little dangerous.” He might as well reinforce the hero thing with the girls. “We’ll text you in a little while when it probably calms down. But we’ll text for sure, either way.”
The guys were looking at him like he was insane, but they knew that whatever Grant said to Pow was truly something that needed their attention right then. They were disappointed that business had gotten in the way of their only pleasure in quite some time.
The girls were disappointed, too. They started hugging the guys. One of the girls came up to Wes and they hugged like they knew each other. The other girls were staking out which man was theirs with their departing hugs.
The Team, minus Ryan, who was driving the girls back to the Grange, assembled around Grant and Pow.
“Well?” asked Scotty. “What is it?” He was pissed. His girl was smoking hot.
Grant motioned for them to follow him into the yellow cabin. Gideon was watching the truck the whole time to make sure it was gone and not coming back. He wasn’t going to let anyone discover the SF guys.
The Team walked inside, expecting to meet with Grant. They did not expect to see other people in their cabin, especially not Ted.
Bobby was the first to recognize Ted. “Ted? That you? No way!”
Wes just said in his southern drawl, “Well, I’ll be…”
Scotty and Pow said “Oh shit” at the same time. They knew what this meant.
Everyone on the Team was excited. They lived for this. They idolized Ted. They wanted to be like him. They loved learning from a real Green Beret. They wanted to be a part of whatever Ted was a part of. They wanted to go into battle with Ted. It was how they were wired. They were sheepdogs.
They wondered who the guy with Ted was and he introduced them to Sap.
“Where’s Ryan?” Chip asked.
“He’s driving the girls back,” Pow said.
“Girls?” Ted asked. He had not seen the girls so he didn’t know if they were girlfriends. He was hoping that “girls” meant the men’s daughters. He hoped it didn’t mean girlfriends, but he suspected it did. That was always trouble. Fighters with wives or girlfriends. They complicated everything. But it was common for SF to train fighters with families and, in some parts of the world, multiple wives, and even harems. Wives or girlfriends or whatever were nearly always part of the equation.
“Yep,” Bobby said. “We’re pretty hot shit out here,” he said jokingly. “It was finally time to get a little, but…you guys showed up.” He didn’t want to sound like he was whining, especially at Ted, so he added, “Business comes first. But, I gotta say, when business is done, I want to get back to that.”
“You bet,” Grant said. He wanted to keep his guys happy and dangling some girl time in front of them was a good way to do that.
“We’ll get Ted and Sap squared away,” Grant said, “and then you can text your friends later tonight,” Grant said in his dad voice, like he was telling them to do their homework before they could play video games with their friends.
Everyone took a seat. Ted remained standing, watching out the front window to see if anyone else came by. When everyone was seated, he turned around to face the group and give the briefing.
“We can make this initial meeting short,” Ted said. “I’ll go over why we’re here, what we hope to do, and our next steps.”
Ted paused to collect his thoughts. “Why we’re here. That’s easy. To train you guys and your neighbors to be a guerilla unit. You guys know the drill. This is what Sap and I did in the unit.” The Team started realizing that this was real. It was not a day shooting targets at the range. This wasn’t some L.A. Riot kind of thing that would blow over in a few days. They were part of something huge. Once in a lifetime huge. Tell the story to the grandkids huge. Be a hero for generations to come huge.