“We got a Navy comms guy,” Ted said. “Very squared away. We have some equipment coming for him, plus a surprise comms asset that will blow your mind.” Ted and Sap smiled at each other.
“So a dozen infantrymen, maybe a half dozen Navy and Air Force guys,” Grant said. “Who else?”
“We’re not exactly sure,” Ted admitted. “Most irregular units have the majority of their unit as volunteers. Raw civilians. Up to 90% of the unit is civilians. In a typical unit.”
“Is this a typical unit?” Rich asked.
“Probably not,” Ted said. “We are so close to all the large former military bases here. That means there are lots of guys like me and Sap near here. Our unit will probably get lots of former regular military. At least that’s what I’m anglin’ for.”
This was very comforting to everyone. They were fine joining up with a unit of civilians, but if they were in a unit with lots of regular military, that would be much better. Way more effective and way safer.
“We’ll take all the good civilians we can, though,” Sap said.
“We’re screening them at HQ,” Ted said, referring to Boston Harbor. “We’re finding out what skills they have, what military experience, if any, they have. We’re checking out their fidelity to our cause, too.”
“How?” Rich asked. He was a curious by nature and being a cop for several years taught him to ask questions in order to fully understand things.
“We try to see if they have anything obvious in their background, like former government employment,” Ted said. “Non-military government employment, that is. But so many people worked for the government right before the Collapse that this is not a very selective criterion. We mostly rely on referrals from people we know are Patriots. We have a little test we do in some cases.”
“What’s the test?” Scotty asked.
“Well, it’s classified but you guys are part of the club,” Ted said with a smile.
Ted explained, “We give a revolver to someone we’re not sure about. They don’t know it, but they’re dummy rounds in the cylinder. We tell them to shoot a captured Lima in the head. The ‘Lima’ is one of our guys pretending to plead for his life. If the recruit pulls the trigger, which makes a ‘click’ sound, then we know he or she is OK.”
“This trick will get out soon and we’ll have to move on to another one,” Sap said. “But it’s useful now. Besides, while we fully expect the Limas to try to infiltrate us, they have better things to do. I mean, they have a full-on war to fight with us—regular units versus regular units. They don’t need to spend their time sending in guys to spend a year trying to infiltrate little guerilla bands like us. We have total control on all communication devices our people have, so it’s not like an infiltrator could send out reports. Well, not without James Bond kind of equipment. And if the Limas have that stuff working properly, they won’t be wasting it on going after 100 irregulars.”
“These kinds of wars are messy,” Ted said, who had spent over twenty years fighting guerilla wars like this one. “You just have to do what you can to screen for infiltrators. We spend a lot of time and energy watching them and making sure they aren’t sending back reports.” What Ted didn’t tell them is that several regular military people, including him and Sap, would constantly be asking recruits the same questions to see if their stories were consistent. If an odd answer was given, the person who gave it would receive further scrutiny, maybe a formal interrogation. Maybe worse, if it turned out they were an infiltrator.
The guys on the Team were a little concerned that an infiltrator might make it into the unit and call in an airstrike on the Marion Farm. In peacetime, this would have been a horrifying thought and scared them away from doing whatever it was that would put them in that danger. But now, in wartime, this was just another risk they encountered in their new-normal daily life. They didn’t exactly shrug off the risk, but it didn’t stop them from doing what they had to do. They just dealt with it. Besides, the Limas were having a hard enough time just keeping the semis rolling.
“I bet one of the reasons to isolate the trainees at the Marion Farm is to keep an eye on them,” Pow said.
“Yep. Very much so,” Sap said.
Grant was thinking about Al, the guy who oversaw the people coming into Pierce Point from the outside…so he asked a question.
Chapter 196
Shanghai
“What about walk-ons?” Grant asked. “You know, people coming to the gate? Could you use any of them?”
“Sure,” Ted said. “If they meet our criteria. Who would screen them?”
“There’s a guy at the gate who does that,” Grant said and explained who Al was. “I have established a relationship with him. I can talk to him about sending us potential military recruits.”
“Whoa,” Ted said. “Who is he and can we trust him? I mean, I don’t want anyone to know what we’re doing out here.”
Grant was a little mad that Ted seemed to be assuming Grant would just blab to Al about what was going on at Marion Farm. “He won’t truly know what’s going on out here,” Grant said. “He’ll be told the ‘rental team’ cover story.”
“Oh, OK,” Ted said, “I guess that’s OK.”
Grant had another question. “What are you looking for in walk-on recruits? So I can tell Al what to be looking out for.”
“Guys with nothing left to lose,” Ted said. “Homeless, hungry, mean. Not psycho mean, but revenge mean. Preferably people who lost everything because of jackass politicians. Maybe they’re looking for a way to get even.” This kind of person had been the backbone of guerilla movements and revolutions for thousands of years.
Ted thought some more. “Single guys. We can’t really take in their families. I mean, we can’t have a daycare at a guerilla camp.” Ted had actually seen that in some of the camps he’d operated throughout the world. “Well, maybe we could take in families, but they’d have to have the right skills. Some really good skills, like a guy whose wife is a nurse. I’d take that family.”
“Do walk-ons need military experience?” Grant asked.
“Not really,” Ted said. “However, it’s a huge plus. If you get some AWOL FUSA guys, I’m interested. AWOL cops would be another good find. But I’m interested in people with engineering, construction, machining, and agricultural backgrounds. Of course medical is always welcomed. We need to have a mini town out at the Marion farm for months before we deploy. We need people with…” Ted searched for the right term.
“Town-running skills,” Grant said. It wasn’t exactly a military term, but Grant wasn’t exactly a military person.
“Yeah,” Ted said, “‘Town-running skills.’ We’re like Pierce Point: we need people who know how to keep a town running. We’ll hand them a rifle before we deploy. We’re an irregular unit, not Delta Force. But we need people with important camp skills or skills we’ll need in the city we’re occupying.”
“People with town-running skills will be assigned to your civil affairs team, Grant, and they can go solve those problems in the city we take,” Ted stated.
It sounded weird to Grant to hear Ted say “your civil affairs team,” but totally normal at the same time. It was weird because now they were the civil affairs team, with no formal training whatsoever. But not weird because it just made sense and serving in the civil affairs role had basically been assumed ever since Ted and Sap arrived that first night on the beach.
“What about fidelity to the cause?” Grant asked. “‘Cause that will be hard to assess with certainty as we’re interviewing them at the gate.”
“That’s a tough one,” Ted said. “You can’t polygraph them at the gate.” Ted paused. “Do the best you can on the fidelity issue. I suspect most people coming to the gate, wondering around with nothing, aren’t exactly thinking about politics. They’re like the homeless dudes the government paid to go out and protest and intimidate people at the beginning of the Collapse. Well, we can do the same. We can say to people ‘Want to be fed and have a mission in life? Come with me.’” Ted felt bad using people who were in a bad situation, but war was a bad situation. Winning it was what counted.