Jason thought about it for a minute. “Going back to your analogy of the convenience store buried in volcanic ash… do you think Masterson falls in the category of a ‘selfish strong man?’”
“I don’t care where he falls. He’s going to get us all killed. Problem is, that kind of guy never stops. He’ll never step back. We have our own problems right now. We can’t afford to be fighting enemies on multiple fronts.”
“Solutions?”
“We can have him shot.” Jeff got the obvious suggestion out of the way.
“Do you have suggestions that don’t include shooting anyone?”
Jeff thought about it. “Screw those guys. Let’s not use neighborhood men at all. Let’s recruit from the men camping in the tent city outside the barricade on Vista View Boulevard. We could select guys to train and give them food for their families in exchange for serving in our militia. Those new guys could be our first line of defense. Why rely on the locals if we can recruit hand-picked men?”
Jason raised an eyebrow. “That’s definitely an option. My preference would be to draw from the neighborhood and feed the neighborhood since it ensures cooperation and it removes the need to guard the Homestead against our own neighbors. But I don’t see how we can get around Brother Masterson at the moment. I’m not going to agree to share resources, and I’m definitely not going to share military command with neighbors who know nothing about security.”
Jeff wondered if Jason knew that same thing about himself. So far, Jason hadn’t interfered with security decisions, but would that hold? Most smart guys, in Jeff’s experience, assumed they are smart about everything. Jason—not having been in combat—didn’t know a damn thing about running a war. He worried that Jason might labor under the impression that being a “gun guy” before the collapse qualified him to have a military opinion.
Switching back to the question of recruiting men from the barricade, Jason rubbed his chin. “Where would we get the food to pay recruits? I don’t want to feed them our freeze-dried or fresh-grown food. We need good food here to keep up morale.”
“You smell that?” Jeff asked.
“Yeah.” Jason glanced up. “What is it?”
“The ladies figured out how to bake bread en masse. Somebody figured out how to grow yeast off the grape skins. Now they’re baking bread by the dozens of loaves per hour. We have four stoves and we could get them turning out loaves for trade. Baking bread only costs us wheat and a little yeast, plus ramping up production of bread will keep some of the loudmouths around here busy.”
“Hmmm.” Still rubbing his chin stubble, Jason’s thoughts turned to diplomacy. “We could feed the hungry, do some good and increase our security at the same time. The wheat could come out of the reserve we set aside for feeding the neighborhood. Baking bread for the hungry would definitely give our people something to do besides worrying about Homestead politics.”
“You justify it however you need to. I don’t care about making the sensitive souls around here feel better about life.” Jeff found all of this distasteful. He preferred to keep it simple. If folks were too stupid to deal with the threats facing the Homestead, they should leave.
“Fair enough.” Jason seemed to read Jeff’s thoughts, and he didn’t bother pitching him on doing the right thing. “Do you want to handle the selection process down at the Vista View barricade?”
“Yep.” Of course Jeff wanted to control the process. He didn’t want to have to train any more prima donnas. He had already dealt with Homestead and neighborhood guys, and many of them were more trouble than they were worth. A lot of them were totally lost, still unable to get their minds around the fact that they had been thrust back into the eighteen hundreds. Jeff would rather work with men who would be fighting to feed their families and who Jeff could fire when they failed to perform.
Training and leading neighborhood volunteers was like going to war with the cast of Glee. Most of these guys were still up to their eyeballs in emotion.
“You don’t have any chain-link fence and razor wire stashed around here, do you?” Jeff asked.
Jason nodded, obviously proud of himself. “That I do. It’s in the Conex boxes by the pond. I also have razor wire gloves and all the connectors and hardware. Do you need me to show you where?”
“No, I’ll figure it out.” Jeff got up to leave. “This neighborhood thing… this is where you need to produce. This diplomacy is on you. This is where wars are usually won or lost and, if you can’t figure out solutions with the neighborhood, you’re going to need to consider alternatives, maybe violent alternatives.”
“I’m sure it won’t come to that.” Jason slapped Jeff on the back and walked him out of the conference room.
Jeff left the office and Jason sat down hard. He leaned back in his chair and asked himself again, Is it really worth all this?
In the stripped-down mathematics of survival, Masterson added up to more of a threat than any fifty guys trespassing across the Homestead boundary. Masterson had to be removed as a factor or his lust for power would get people hurt. The Homestead needed the neighborhood as a buffer against incursion, plus the extra manpower from the ward would significantly increase their defense. If looters began flooding the neighborhood, it would be better for everyone to mount a coordinated effort. Masterson was slowing that process down, and they might not have time to work through his game. People in town were getting hungrier by the moment.
Masterson must have known in advance that there wasn’t a chance the Homestead would dump all their resources into the neighborhood collective. He must have known that sticking point would kill their chances of working together. Jason concluded that Masterson had come up this morning intent on poisoning the well, keeping the Homestead and the church apart.
If Jason was reading this correctly, Masterson would pay any price to remain in control of the local church leadership. If the Homestead disagreed with his plan, then Masterson would control hundreds, even thousands, of the local faithful. And the stake had way more men than the Homestead.
Of course, not all men were created equal on the field of battle, not by a long shot. One man like Jeff or his SOF guys equaled fifty regular gun guys. And one guy trained and commanded by a man like Jeff, even if that trainee was a civilian, would equal twenty untrained men. Homestead forces could wipe out a larger army, for sure, especially after Jeff added mercenaries from the refugee camp down below the barricade.
But Masterson had no way of knowing that and he might precipitate an armed conflict with the Homestead based on faulty confidence, and the resulting rift between the Homestead and the Mormon Church would be irreparable. The Mormon Church had a deep history with armed conflicts against “Gentiles” and they had a long, long memory.
Jason suspected, long term, the Mormon Church would rise up and take the reins of power in this region. The Homestead must preserve a good relationship with the LDS Church, no matter what. The Church was the one large organization with any hope of holding things together. It might not matter so much right away, since the Mormon Church was still pining for government help. But later, when the Mormon Church took matters into its own hands, being friends with the Mormons would become a survival imperative.