“You mean red, like in ‘red state’?”
“No,” Turnbull said, now even more annoyed.
“You mean like blood?”
Sometimes, I hate civilians, Turnbull thought. “No, not like blood. Look, when you’re doing an insurgency there are three colors on the map. White is where the counterinsurgents hold. That’s cleared of the guerrillas and the troublemakers. Right now, this whole map is white.”
The groups nodded, listening as Turnbull continued. “Next, pink. That’s the at-risk area. That’s where there’s some trouble, but the government has got it sort of under control. Then there is the red. The red is insurgent territory. Our territory. That’s what we are going to make out of all this white territory on this map. First, we make all this white space outside the towns pink, then red. Then we make the towns pink, then red. That’s when we take Jasper itself.
“I thought it meant blood,” said Kyle, disappointed.
“It doesn’t mean blood.”
It had been eight days since the attack on the administrative building and the checkpoint, eight days of organizing and training. True to his word, Dale Chalmers the insurance salesman had identified the likely rebellion’s early adopters and set up the cells. Reliable contacts turned them on to other reliable contacts. Each night, Dale and Turnbull met to assess the new prospects and to analyze the information that was coming in.
They were organizing by cells, and not just in Jasper. There are other towns around, a few miles down each road, small and tight-knit, none with their own PSF station. Turnbull wanted a cell in each dot on the map, and Dale set to it. The cells were made up of neighbors and relatives; Turnbull knew that was the best way to keep them secure. Kind of like the mafia, but with pick-ups and Protestants, as well as the Catholics who settled the region.
There was tension – everyone could feel it. Some wanted to hide their heads. Others wanted a more active role. Turnbull generally left it to the locals to decide who was allowed how deep in the organization. Dale, the Mayor, Lee Rogers and Davey Wohl would sit around at night tossing names back and forth.
“He’s dumb as a box of Illinois rocks,” Wohl declared about one candidate.
“No, she never shuts up,” the Mayor said about a woman he had greeted on the street as a long lost sister earlier that afternoon. “Worst gossip in town. We can’t ever tell her anything, but she’ll tell us everything.”
“Not Jake Cole,” Lee Rogers said. “He’s a meth addict and people saw him talking to some blues. People are saying the PSF is trying to use junkies as snitches.”
“Oh yeah?” said Larry Langer. That night he went out at about 11 p.m. with Lee, and didn’t say where. The next day word spread through town how a moaning Jake Cole had been found with a bullet through his right knee, wearing a tourniquet and tied to the courthouse park’s new statue of Ruth Bader Ginsberg. There was a sign around his neck that said “Rat.”
Langer also paid a visit to Andy Houk out at his remote farmhouse, approaching from the woods and catching Andy on the porch coming out with a satchel of the meth he sold in town.
“Hi Andy,” Langer said, shoving the barrel of his massive .357 into the big, bald man’s multiple chins.
“Hey Larry,” the dealer said, with more composure than was warranted.
“Things are getting a little confrontational with the government, and I wanted to make sure you and your customers weren’t going to get sideways on us. Seems Jake Cole was talking to the blues and, well, his dancing days are done.”
“I don’t have no use for cops either. You know that, Larry.”
“Well, it seems they’re letting you run pretty free in town. I was wondering if you were kind of doing them any favors in return for being let alone.”
“I don’t talk about terrorist stuff to them.”
“You calling me a terrorist, Andy?”
“I mean freedom fighters! The TV—”
“Okay, okay, calm down. I’m just saying, if you help them and not us, I’m going to have to find you and I’m gonna have to shoot ya.”
“I won’t help ‘em, I promise, Larry. Swear to God!”
“That’s good. Now, we’re the ones really in charge now, so here are the rules. You can sell your meth to your regular junkie customers, but you tell them if they ever whisper to a blue you’re cutting them off. You got that?”
“I got that, Larry.”
“Okay. Now, I get if you got that meth demon you gotta feed it, but if I catch ya selling to any kids, I’m shooting you. Starting at the toe and working north. You feel me, Andy?”
“I feel you, Larry.”
“Good. Then you have a nice day.”
Most locals weren’t chosen as fighters, but most tasks did not involve direct fighting. Much of it was observation and intelligence. The PSF noticed that there were always a few locals hanging around outside of the station, watching who went in and went out. They would deny it when confronted – “We’re just hanging out? Why are you hassling me? Is it because I’m part Hispanic?” – but drop-ins by locals with good info dwindled to nothing.
Others contributed in their own way. The first graffiti soon appeared. It was usually obscene suggestions about what the PSF or the PR itself should kiss or suck. When the lazy public workers finally got around to scraping one tag off a wall, the next night two more would appear.
There were other, smaller acts of rebellion. A PSF officer coming into a restaurant could always expect a little something extra in his sandwich. One or two officers a day were usually out with the stomach flu. At the Starbucks favored by PSF leadership, the word passed among the baristas that their lattes should always be prepared with “extra loogie.”
The maids at the former Best Western – that chain and all the others had recently been nationalized and were now simply called “Economy Hotel” – were enlisted to survey the rooms of the out-of-town PBI detectives when they cleaned them. USB sticks often went missing; if confronted and accused of with stealing, the maids were instructed to claim “sexist and classist oppression.”
This same strategy was why Davey Wohl was selected to drive weapons and ammo across town in the trunk of his car – no one expected him to be stopped by the no-notice check points popping up around town. But one evening he was, and when the PSF officer demanded that he open his trunk he flew out of his Buick in a fury, screaming, “I’m not going to stand for this racial profiling bullshit! I am a proud black man and I want my Anti-Racism Representative and I’m going to make a complaint about your cracker ass!” The PSF officer quickly apologized and pleaded with Wohl to just go, please go. He did, laughing hysterically as he drove away with a trunk full of sixteen rifles, six shotguns, twelve pistols and about 5000 rounds of various ammunition.
The reinforced PSF stepped up its patrolling, but for the approximately 60 new PSF officers now assigned to the Jasper sector, there were only about half that number of vehicles. And there were detectives, according to Ted Cannon. He was passing on some information, in bits and pieces, but he was adamant that he would not pass on anything that would get any of his fellow PSF officers hurt. They might be assholes, but they were still his assholes – sort of. Turnbull told Dale to take whatever was given; at some point, Turnbull knew Cannon would need to choose.
The detectives were gathering, collating and examining data. And they were going out and talking to people. In fact, the orders had come down that the People’s Security Force was to go out and mingle too, an idea which the rank and file did not like. They hated the locals, and they feared them. But they did do some walking patrols, trying to show they were not afraid. They were usually not afraid in groups of six or more, all carrying long weapons.