“Why the hell aren’t you firing, Kampbell?” Even over all the shooting, he was loud and clear.
“Out of ammo, Sergeant!” That clearly wasn’t the answer he wanted to hear. “Also out of targets, Sergeant!”
For a wonder, she caught him off guard. He straddled her firing pit, waved his red paddle at the range control tower and pointed down at her. A second later, all the targets in her lane flipped up, but then all went back down. The instructor looked as close to impressed as that scowling, jagged face ever could.
He blew a whistle. “Check fire! Clear and safe your weapons!”
Range control recocked everyone’s lanes but left up the plastic army men each missed.
“I’ll be damned. 40 out of 40 and finished 10 seconds before anyone else. Where did you learn how to shoot so well?”
Sophie licked her thin lips, but tried not to look too confused. “From you, Sergeant!”
What type of trick question was that? The instructors loved to trip trainees up with logic traps that had no correct answers. The truth made her look like a kiss ass and he’d sniff out a lie immediately.
Well, the right answer wasn’t the point. The whole game is a test to see if you hesitate. Right or wrong, so long as you sounded off good and strong they’d leave you alone. Show the slightest indecision though… Well, then you’d be doing pushups until the instructor grew tired.
He studied her with something verging on respect while preaching to the assembled squad. “You know what’s special about this soldier, eh? She actually listens! See what you can accomplish when you shut your cock holsters and open your minds?”
He smiled wide…something you never want to see a drill instructor do. “Listen up, all you good ‘ole boys out there who think you know everything there is to know about shooting, because your ‘grandiddy’ taught you. Look at these scores. Not one of you shot over 30 out of 40. You don’t want to listen to me when I show you the four fundamentals of marksmanship, fine. Maybe you’ll listen to her.”
He waved his painted ping-pong paddle at the tower. “Reload, we’re going again. Anyone who misses a single target will be personally coached by this little soldier until you’re less of a fuckup. What are you waiting on? Let’s go, let’s go! Move with a sense of fucking purpose!”
Sophie just received her first promotion. In her NCO’s eyes, she moved up from unidentifiable animal shit under your boot to a real human being. After only three weeks in this program, she was amazed at how much that respect meant to her. Her heart fluttered at what he called her as much as any of Ben’s pet names. It was a word she hated, until applied to her: soldier.
With colleges across the state temporarily closed, unemployment approaching 12 % and, frankly, so many people pissed off, this private camp bustled. Their free curriculum helped. The shadowy organizers — some new non-profit foundation primarily funded by a LLC, which was itself a daughter firm of a shell corporation of an offshore holding company — hired only the best instructors. They even worked out an arrangement with some schools to provide “professional learning credits” to anyone who successfully completed a “proactive defense” program.
Everyone started in a weeklong dynamic self-defense class. Despite the hype, these classes trained people in a type of civil disobedience closer in spirit and practice to Che Guevara than Martin Luther King and Gandhi. However, since the BDU-clad teachers stopped short of issuing firearms, they could still play the non-violence card.
The real purpose of the course was far more than just teaching people how to protest more effectively. Each class was a large-scale recruiting event and actually cheaper, per head, than the US Army’s recruiting efforts. Less than 5 % of attendees proved enough passion and drive to be invited to join “advanced lessons.” The ultimate reward being eventually able to join one of the hip, still-evolving Freedom Brigades. Recruits were also paid, and paid well, to volunteer for these non-profit “Constitutional Clubs.” At least that was the name on the tax forms and in friendly media coverage. Everyone else just called them “The Militia.”
A pair of National Guard observers conferred off to the side and critiqued them every step of the way. Originally, those uniforms represented the enemy, but my how things had changed over the last month! Acting Governor Salazar took a more contrarian position to the Federal Government every week. The hotter her rhetoric, the higher she climbed in the opinion polls. Which meant she gave the people more of what they wanted. A strange cycle, but not terribly interesting to Sophie.
Sophie didn’t know who paid for all this, nor did she care. In all the clubs and causes she’d ever participated in, none gave her half the motivation as “The Brigades.” The friendships she forged out here in the woods would be lifelong. The memories of their hardships still fresh 50 years from now. She was part of something truly important, something bigger than herself.
These freedom fighters had no such impotent goals as “raising awareness.” No, their mission was to evoke real change. At the point of a gun, if need be. Not just to protect, but create freedom. Next to that sense of purpose, everything else in life had the volume turned down.
She hadn’t had contact with anyone outside the program in over three weeks. Some of the other guys were homesick, but she couldn’t feel more at home. Her friends back in L.A. thought it crazy that someone so socially conscious would join a paramilitary organization.
Sophie couldn’t understand why her civilian friends didn’t. Putting on the uniform was just another version of civic virtue. A semi-automatic rifle solves more problems than a picket sign. Those 5.56mm rounds deliver a lot more permanent social justice than any lawsuit. This girl, not even old enough to drink legally yet, wondered how you could expect a civilian to understand something like that?
Ocala, Florida
Even with the Feds temporarily thrown out of North Florida, the rebels had no chance to celebrate or take a load off. Despite the near hysterical excitement out West, they were far from happy. Everyone in uniform looked around at their shattered, bloodied units and wondered how they were supposed to stop the next attack.
There was too much cleanup and prep work for the next fight to be done. Too much work and, after that disastrous fight yesterday, too few survivors to do it all. In all this crap, Congressman Eliot was just a neat trophy.
The Florida Defense Forces didn’t have a detention center setup for high value prisoners. Such a need was pure fantasy at the start of the invasion. Most of the enemy soldiers they still held were severely wounded. They wouldn’t be leaving the crowded hospitals anytime soon. Those few hundred captured up in Lake City were crammed into a football stadium in Tampa. It didn’t seem appropriate to shove a politician in with them. None of the militiamen really knew what to do with a captured congressman.
Eliot’s almost comical “take me to your leader” demands eventually paid off. He and Jessica bounced around from one field headquarters to another before finally landing at the head command post in Ocala. Getting there was one thing. Getting someone to pay attention to her was much harder. Jessica wasn’t zip-tied like the congressman, but she sure wasn’t free to move around.