“Seriously,” he said. “Each of you is smarter than average. You all have very valuable skills. Quite a few of you are military and could be in command of some hollowed-out FUSA unit and livin’ large on some base where you have plenty of everything you want. People calling you ‘sir’ or ‘ma’am’ all day long and kissing your ass,” he said.
“Why are you here, starting the mission that you’re starting?” Hammond asked. “I want every one of you to think about that question. Why are you here?”
It was silent.
“What did you come up with?” Hammond asked the audience. “I bet I know.”
Hammond started to get animated. He had been like a very controlled CEO running a meeting up until this point. Now it was time to get fired up.
“You’re doing this to make things right,” Hammond said emphatically. “You’re doing this to protect the innocent. To save your families from what’s ahead, if these bastards keep screwing things up.”
Hammond looked into the audience. He seemed to make eye contact with every single person in the room. “You know you’re supposed to do this. You know it. You are supposed to do this. Consider me standing here saying this to be your official sign. You are supposed to do this.”
Grant wondered if his statement to Hammond a few minutes earlier about how they were both supposed to do this had made its way into Hammond’s speech.
“You have skills,” Hammond said. “Every single one of you,” he said holding up a file. “Each and every one of you has some skill that got our attention. We looked into each one of you. We chose you…you,” he said looking at the whole audience. It felt like Hammond was speaking to each person personally. Grant certainly felt like Hammond was speaking directly to him.
“But, us choosing you is only half of it,” Hammond said. “The other half is that you chose us. You agreed to do this. Again, I ask: why?”
Hammond looked at Ashur. “You want to restore the ‘land of the free.’ You want to avenge an injustice to your family that never should have happened.”
Hammond looked at one of the new lieutenants in the front row. “Or, like Tadman here, those bastards killed your family. Trying to get you. But they settled for your family.”
“They are animals wasting our oxygen!” Hammond yelled out of the blue. For the first time, he was showing his real emotions.
“Animals,” Hammond thundered. “Animals that need to be put down. Animals that need to no longer hurt us. Animals that need to be dealt with, so they’re just a memory. So you can tell your kids and grandkids about how, way back when, there were some animals that hurt people, but you and a group of very decent people made the animals go away. Now they’re gone and everyone can live their lives. In peace.”
“Peace,” Hammond said nodding his head. “Peace is what a soldier wants. Trust me, with what I’ve seen and done, and what many of you have seen and done, too, no one wants peace more than us.”
“You know what I want?” Hammond asked in a very conversational, not military commander, tone. “I want to retire. I want to get an RV and travel around with my wife and kids. I barely know my kids.” Saying that hurt Hammond. He had sacrificed a lot to do all those deployments.
“And my lovely wife,” Hammond said. “Who I really haven’t seen for several years. Who I wonder sometimes if she really still is my wife. I mean, is someone your wife when you’ve seen them two weeks in two years? I want my wife back. I want to get her and the kids in that RV and go sit under the stars talking about nothing in particular. I want that.” Hammond was bearing his soul.
“But guess what?” Hammond said, back in his military commander tone. “Life ain’t sunshine and lollipops. I am supposed to be here, doing this. I know I am supposed to be doing this—just like each of you know you’re supposed to be doing this. Each of you has made similar sacrifices, and,” he said looking at Tadman, “some of you have made bigger ones. Much bigger than the RV.”
Hammond let that sink in. Tadman looked eerily forward without any emotion.
“So,” Hammond said, “I asked why you’re doing this and you probably said to yourself that you’re supposed to do this. That’s a good enough reason, but…,” he paused for effect. “I have one more reason for you.”
“Because we’ll win!” Hammond yelled.
“Ladies and gentlemen,” Hammond said emphatically, “we’re all brave, but this isn’t some suicide club. Remember: I want some RV time. I got somethin’ to live for.”
Hammond motioned to the whole crowd, “Most of us will be back together for a hell of a party when we beat these bastards. They’re running on fumes. You know it. You’ve seen it. They’re running out of other people’s money to steal and hand out to their buddies. The people are figuring this out. Their military units are a joke. Hollowed out paper tigers, manned by the paper-pusher boot lickers who want to boss people around and still think they’re getting some fat military retirement. The real warriors got out and joined up with us. We have the real warriors. We have you.”
“Name one thing they’re doing right that will lead to long-term success for them?” Hammond asked the crowd. “Name one. Is it treating the population fairly and getting their support? Ask Lt. Tadman about that. Ask Ashur that.”
Hammond started walking from the podium to the first row as if he were quizzing each one of them. “Are they feeding the people?” he asked the first person, who shook his head.
“Well, kind of,” Hammond said to the next person. “But not for long. Those FCards—which are easily counterfeited by us, I might add—are drawn on seized bank accounts. Those accounts are running dry, friends. The foreign countries those funds are going to are about to cut us off. Besides, they want their investments back. You know, the trillions of dollars we borrowed from them to pay for all the pre-Collapse crap we voted for ourselves. The Chinese are just softening the blow of a total collapse. They want their collateral, which is what America is to them, to stay as intact as possible, so it will be more valuable when they repo it.”
Hammond went back up to the podium and shook his head, “Ain’t gonna happen.” He looked out at the audience again and said, “Repo America? Are you kidding me? They ain’t getting’ in boats and comin’ here. So what does that mean? It means the FCards will start to go dry soon, just like the EBT cards went dry.”
“No more FCards,” Hammond said. “Soon. About six months, tops, according to our intel analysts. And, believe me, we have some highly placed sources on that.”
“What happens then?” Hammond asked the audience. “You know. You know exactly what happens then. You’ve seen what happens when the shelves go bare. You saw it on May Day, but this time there won’t be any FCards and commandeered semis to roll in and save the day.”
Hammond put up his hands for emphasis and said, “You think the May Day riots were bad? You ain’t seen nothin’ yet. You know, we’ve had semi-functioning government services up until now. And, to be very honest, this is not how the collapse scenario was expected to play out.”
“Everyone,” Hammond said, pointing to himself, “including me, assumed the ‘Mad Max’ scenario of total anarchy and chaos. Like in the book ‘Patriots.’ Well, it was a slower descent than we thought. A car wreck in slow motion, not at full speed, but a car wreck just the same. It took a matter of months, not days, but the ultimate result is the same. When the FCards dry up, everything that resembles order goes away.” Hammond snapped his fingers for emphasis. The snapping was loud enough for everyone in the whole hall to hear it.
“The utilities, which are still on, to my surprise, can’t stay on when there’s nothing to feed the utility workers,” Hammond continued. “What’s going to happen when the electricity goes off for good? How will people react when there is no water coming out of the faucet?”