“Many of you came from long distances,” Hammond said. His voice was loud enough to be heard in the hall without a microphone but he wasn’t yelling. His voice projected strength and competent leadership.
“You came through dangerous territory to get here,” Hammond said, “so I’ll be as brief as possible and get you back on the road or water, or in one case, air, so you can travel back in the dark.”
“The purpose of this meeting tonight is to get all the irregular units together, get some basic briefing, let you meet each other, and get your quadra,” Hammond said.
Quadra? What was that? Grant wondered.
“This will probably be the first and last time we’re in the same room for the whole war,” Hammond said. Then he smiled and said, “Don’t worry, we’ll have a nice party when we win. One hell of a blowout.” Most people smiled at that.
Hammond turned to a subordinate and said, “Captain, have them count off.”
The captain said, “I need a representative of each irregular unit to come up to the podium and form a line from left” he pointed, “to right.”
Grant looked at Ted who said, “You’re the representative, Lt. Matson.” Ted motioned for Grant to get up and go to the podium.
Grant reluctantly did so. As he was standing up and looking clueless, he realized that he still thought of Ted as being in command of the unit.
That needed to change, at least for things like this meeting. Grant needed to accept that he was the officer for the unit, but that Ted was the day-to-day and battlefield commander. Grant needed to start working on his command presence. He was being properly humble by acknowledging that Ted was the real commander, but he needed to have the rest of the world know that he was the lieutenant. It was understood that a lieutenant, while technically in command, wouldn’t know everything; the highest ranking sergeant would. In the two seconds it took him to finish standing, Grant became confident about his new role. He strode up to the podium with command presence.
Grant walked up the front of the room and stood next to some others. There were about two dozen, including two women. Nearly half were in military uniforms, two others were apparent civilians in tactical clothes like him, and the remaining half or so were civilians in purely civilian clothes.
Grant looked into the audience and saw Ted and Sap and similar FUSA military-looking guys. Most of the audience seemed to be Special Forces trainers, like Ted and Sap, with some regular military walk-on guys sprinkled in. The audience was smiling, like they knew the people at the podium were about to get an award or something.
Once all the representatives of the various units formed into a line at the front of the room facing the audience, the captain said to the first person, “Count off.” The first person said, “One.” The second said, “Two” and so on. By the time it got to Grant, he said, “Seventeen.” The counting ended at twenty three.
Hammond looked at the men and women in the line at the podium and smiled. “Welcome to the Special Operations Command, ladies and gentlemen.”
The audience clapped. They seemed to know what was going on.
Hammond said, “The number you have is your unit number.” He let that sink in. “So you, Lt. Shaddock” he said pointing at the person who said “one” “are the First Irregulars. You, Lt. Potach,” Hammond said pointing at the person who said “two,” “are the Second Irregulars.”
Grant had called out “seventeen” so he must be…the 17th Irregulars. Grant thought about it. He was the commander of the 17th Irregulars. Wow. This was for real. Commander of the 17th Irregulars. He let that sink in.
Grant looked out at the audience. Everyone was smiling and clapping. Now he understood why. This was a big moment. These would be the unit numbers described in the history books…if the Patriots won and got to write the history books. If they didn’t, then these unit numbers would be used in indictments and military tribunals for treason. That was a dark thought. Grant felt, when he first told Ted and Sap at the yellow cabin “I’m in,” that he had committed to the cause. Now he really felt like he’d committed, in a very no-going-back way.
Grant looked side to side and saw his fellow commanders. They started shaking hands and grinning. This was something to be proud of.
Hammond let the commanders shake hands and exchange pleasantries, but needed to keep this meeting moving. They had to be out of there soon to get back home by dawn.
Hammond looked into the audience and said, “Now I have something to tell you that none of you saw coming.”
Chapter 201
Quadra
“Ashur, could you come up here?” Hammond said to the Arabs in the back of the room. One of the Arabs, the oldest one of the group, came up to the podium. He looked like an elder and was dressed in American clothes, but he looked like he should be dressed like a Saudi prince.
“Everyone,” Hammond said, “I’d like you to welcome Ashur and his family.” Hammond pointed to the back of the room and said to the Arabs, “Please stand up gentlemen.” They did. The audience started applauding. The new lieutenants at the podium had no idea why, so they politely clapped, too.
“Ashur and his family are very special people and will help us a lot,” Hammond said. “A whole lot.” He looked at the group of Arab men and smiled. He was obviously very happy they were there, like it was a triumph that they were in this room.
Hammond continued, “I can’t provide the details, but suffice it to say Ashur and his family speak a very, very rare language. No one else in this state other than his extended family speak it. One of his family members will be assigned to each of the irregular units as a code talker.”
Grant remembered that phrase from World War II. Code talkers were Navajo Indians in front line combat units in the Pacific who spoke Navajo on radios. The Japanese had no idea what language it was and thought it was an extremely complex code. This allowed the code talkers to talk on regular, non-encrypted radios and did not require time-consuming conversions of the messages back into non-encrypted text. It was brilliant.
Hammond went on, “Ashur and his family are taking extreme risks by helping us this way. Let me be candid. There are some Muslim terrorists out there. Ashur, please explain to everyone why we can trust you.”
Ashur said in a thick Arabic accent, “First of all, we are Christians, not Muslim. My people have been Christians for about two thousand years. The Muslim terrorists want to kill Christians like us and already have destroyed several of our cities and villages back home.”
Ashur continued, “We came to America several years ago when things were going badly in…”
Hammond held his hand up, “Sorry, Ashur, please don’t describe the country or the language. We’ll keep that a secret. Sorry to interrupt you, sir,” Hammond said. It was apparent that Hammond genuinely respected Ashur.
“Things were going badly in my home country,” Ashur said, “and we came to the ‘land of the free.’ But guess what? It wasn’t free. It was when we got here, but it changed. Now America is like my home country. Bribes, corruption, no freedom. The authorities in Seattle targeted my business because I had a cross up in my store that was ‘offending’ to people.”
Ashur continued, “People were robbing my store—pointing guns at my sons—all the time and the police wouldn’t do anything about it. Then my son was jailed after shooting a robber. The police knew my son was innocent, but no one cared and he went to jail. The police wanted bribes to let him out. I decided that we needed to leave Seattle. The authorities made me give up the store to them, along with all of our inventory, in order to leave. One of my sons knew one of your ‘Oath Keepers’ and here we are.”