Mike wanted to make the same argument to Colonel Johnson that he’d made to Larry a few minutes before. Paying the militia in script meant that they spent all of their time looting rather than enforcing the law.
By national order, the homes of police and firemen who fled the National Republic of Cali were subject to confiscation. Rather than let that happen, they’d begun setting them ablaze on their way out of town, heading for the border and the United States. Mike knew that Dorris and his cronies wanted the homes for themselves to dole out as favors for personal loyalty on the part of key supporters. So far, it hadn’t worked out as planned.
Larry Marcus stepped in to save Mike, “We don’t have any militia to send, Colonel. They’re busy looting, or hunting down the disloyal and relieving them of their property. There’s a very fine line between the two.”
Dorris cleared his throat, signaling a pronouncement. “How many cops and their families have they brought to work camps?”
Larry smirked only slightly, “The militia is disorganized and the cops all have guns and know how to use them. Our people give them a bit of distance to keep from getting mowed down. We lost two entire squads out by the Barstow checkpoint three days ago. I sent two hundred more men out there, but I don’t think that they’ll last long either. We’re going to need to recruit more militia. Only the new people will go to Barstow, where there’s nothing left to salvage.” Salvage had become the politically correct term for theft by looting.
“Well major, you need to get out there and lead them.” Luther Calder chimed in, focusing back in on Mike. “What good is the militia if they can’t capture the disloyal?”
Mike Sanchez said dryly, “None of them are trained. They were plucked off the street or out of county jail, handed truncheons and sent out to enforce vague regulations. A lot of those people that you pinned badges on can barely read. It might help to deal with training before you send them against police families, who are capable of defending themselves.”
Luther Calder suggested to Colonel Dorris Johnson that an inspection of the militia would be a good idea since his was an official visit as the regional militia chieftain. Mike and Larry were able to round up a dozen men with a blend of official uniforms and gray clothes sporting a disk badge pinned over the heart. Grooming, uniformity and martial bearing were wanting, but they’d all been earning big since assuming the office of Militia Officer. The barter business out in the new nation was brisk.
CALEXIT
D+41
Captain Larry Marcus brushed down the street in the crowd and allowed the chalk in his hand to mark the stone on the side of the bank building. A squad of bodyguards flanked him while he stood off near a platoon of militia who were keeping the peace at an outlet mall as looters stripped the place bare. The chalk on the wall was not noticed and the militia moved on, disgruntled that Captain Marcus had not released them to beat away the looters and to scavenge for themselves.
Two hours later, Gary Simpson, drove past the bank building and noticed the chalk mark and then headed for the drop.
He’d never been the sort who volunteered, he mused, as he drove the old Ford pick- up down a narrow alley to the battered trashcan in the weeds behind a blackened skeleton that had once been a liquor store.
It had become all about Tommy. The something that snapped as he watched the mob kill his brother during the countdown to Cali’s independence from the United States, lead to a calm understanding of what he needed to do.
Hysteria ran high in those days before CALEXIT and people tried to reason with his anger. Everyone he knew wanted him to transfer his hate to the mother country. Outwardly he’d played that game. Inwardly, however, it had been different and he went to the police and volunteered. There had been a shuffle as his handlers changed twice and he’d been thrust into a brief, intense, training course. At D-7, a week before the hand-off, they’d flown him to Luke Air Force Base in Arizona for more detailed training focused on what they wanted him to do.
“All I want to do is to pay back those people who killed my brother.”
The grim and nameless men and women who served as his training cadre assured him that he would be given the opportunity to do just that. Not necessarily the mob itself, but the shot callers and community organizers.
His first pick-up was heavy, taped inside plastic wrap, surrounded by a greasy brown paper bag, and slid into a plastic bag from Target. There was a certain irony to that, and it was not lost on Gary. He put the package into his truck, behind the front bench seat and continued on to work.
CALEXIT
D+42
Gary had been an auto mechanic for the adult portion of his twenty-three years. He understood machines clearly and could tell when they were worn or out of tune. People posed a far more challenging problem. He quit his job after his brother died. When he returned to Cali after the grand secession from the United States, he’d been dropped by parachute. Since the U.S. military had destroyed their bases and had left Cali en-masse, there was no radar to detect the aircraft. He’d been dropped into the desert and found the old Ford pick-up where they told him it would be.
He’d been instructed to apply at the Militia’s motor pool in San Bernardino, east of Los Angeles.
Captain Larry Marcus, whose job included overseeing the vehicles that hauled members of the newly minted militia, interviewed him for the job, approved his hiring, and put him to work.
Captain Marcus had been cut from a different piece of cloth than the other former cops who ran the militia. He seemed organized, thoughtful and had a streak of kindness and thoughtfulness that appealed not only to Gary, but to the rest of the people who worked for him as well.
“Did billeting find you a place to live, Gary?”
“Yes Captain.” He stood and wiped his greasy hands on a rag.
“How is it?” Captain Marcus had an easy way and Gary responded warmly.
“You know, Captain, things have changed. There hasn’t been power there since Cali went on its own but I have running water.”
“You’re eating at the Militia’s commissary, right?”
“Yes, Captain, and it’s a lot better than most of the people out there have. I wanted to thank you for the job.”
“Gary, you were qualified and we’re fortunate to have you.”
You wouldn’t be if you knew what I’m going to do. “Thanks all the same.”
“Don’t you have work to get back to?”
Gary smiled and went back to patching the sheet metal on an armored car that had taken fire. Cleaning the blood out had been a grizzly task, but Gary did it with a chastened, holy, joy. Adding thin metal swatches to the clearly inadequate pierced metal skin did not strike him as odd in any way. The cops that left sabotaged the department’s armored cars and the American military took theirs with them. That left the Calis with the job of putting together patchwork armor. Since none of them knew how to do that, there had been a lot of trial and error that led to a lot of militia personnel being shipped to the crematorium.
CALEXIT
D+43
When Major Sanchez drove up to the home that Larry Marcus lived in, he noted changes. Masonry buttresses had been constructed here and there. Shrubs, dug into the soil didn’t do much to hide them. He opened the chain link gate and walked onto the property and it was only when he came up to the front door that he noticed that the concrete reinforced cinder blocks were backed by Claymore mines. Apparently Larry didn’t want the back blast to rip the skin off his house. He sighed. It had come to this. He hadn’t taken precautions, but he’d been drinking so much lately that often as not, he pissed the bed while he slept these days. The depression that closed in around him felt like a steel net. Southern Cali had fragmented and was coming apart before his eyes.