Liberty's Last Stand

SIXTEEN

The riots continued in inner cities around the country. Baltimore was probably the worst: it had been racked by riots the previous year, and this time the mob at the core expanded across downtown and into the suburbs.

Police and National Guardsmen had disappeared. Much of their leadership had already been imprisoned by the feds. Many of those left on duty went home to protect or move their families. Others just threw up their hands. Why try to bring a mob under control when the physical risks were high and the politicians were frightened that they might lose some votes, so none of the political elite or police brass would back the men and women in uniform on the streets? Police and guardsmen went into bars, had a few, then found their cars and went home.

In the suburbs, people were getting into a state of near panic. Rumors were rampant. In subdivisions and neighborhoods, mothers and fathers surrounded by children met in front yards and culs-de-sac, exchanging rumors and fears. People talked about blocking off streets as they faced the prospect of having to defend their homes against marauders. It seemed as if much of America now had two ravenous domestic enemies — rioting, looting mobs, and the federal government. Many of the suburbanites had an old lever-action Winchester or Marlin, or a bolt-action Winchester, Remington, or Ruger in the closet, and a couple boxes of ammunition for it. They decided what they were going to do if the mobs invaded their neighborhoods to rob, loot, rape, and burn.

In Detroit, Chicago, Philadelphia, St. Louis, and Los Angeles, the mobs were still in the ghetto, but as in Baltimore, those who lived in the riot-torn area and were not a part of it were trying to flee. People left on foot and in cars, streams of refugees, some with the contents of looted stores on their backs, but all convinced they had had enough.

Local and network television were showing some of this, where censors would allow it, and radio stations were on the spot with breathless reporting. Social media filled in with some truth, rumor, and wild speculation. As usual on social media, budding writers of sardonic fiction posted absurd tales they thought only fools would believe; of course the fools did believe, but so did many frightened people who were definitely not foolish.

Everyone had someone they needed to talk to desperately: Telephone networks were at maximum capacity. Calls, e-mails, and text messages inundated city and state officials high and low, all those remaining after the FBI, FEMA, Homeland Security, and cooperating county sheriffs had carried off the disloyal for incarceration. Some of the less cooperative sheriffs and police chiefs had also been arrested, decapitating their law enforcement departments. The only thing observers could agree on was that the situation was getting worse. In the White House and congressional offices, staffers stopped answering telephones and e-mail servers crashed. Monday night, August 29, was another wild one in America.

They came for Jake Grafton at Camp Dawson at three in the morning, Tuesday, August 30. Four of them, in green coveralls with FEMA badges on the right shoulder. They woke him up by dragging him from his cot, slamming him to the floor, and kicking him.

Then they cuffed his hands behind his back and dragged him from the tent, across the common area, by the mess tents, to the building Sluggo Sweatt used as headquarters. Up the stairs into Sluggo’s lair. He was up, with a light on, waiting. The four thugs lifted Grafton bodily from the floor and threw him into a chair. Another man came in and dropped Grafton’s watch and cell phone on Sluggo’s desk.

“Good morning, Grafton,” Sluggo said pleasantly. “I decided it was time to take the gloves off and confront you with the reality of your situation.”

Grafton tried to ease himself in the chair. It felt as if one of his ribs on the left side was broken. Sharp pain with every breath.

“My conscience requires me to tell you in advance that the road ahead for you is filled with pain. I need you to sign a confession of complicity in the attempted assassination of President Soetoro. Of course, there will be television cameras. You will need to speak slowly and coherently about your crimes.”

Jake Grafton looked around the room, the same one he had visited twice before.

One of the men on his right used a fist into his side. He gasped at the blow and almost fell from the chair.

“Be polite and pay attention,” Sluggo said. “I told my colleagues that you would undoubtedly need a lot of persuading, and they thought it would be fun to do it. There isn’t much to do to pass the time here in the boonies.” With that, Sluggo nodded.

The thugs dragged him from the chair and took him along a hallway to a jail cell, complete with bars and a cot and a honey bucket. There they started pounding on his ribs. One of them stomped on his scrotum. At some point he passed out.

When he came to, the lights were on, but he had no idea whether it was day or night or how long he had been unconscious.

Television. That was why they hadn’t touched his face.

The good news was that he was still alive. The bad news was that Sluggo’s men were going to beat him to death by inches.

Loren Snyder had been busy. He used the Houston telephone book to find the address of a former naval officer, Julie Aranado, also known as Jugs. Apparently the Aranado men of prior generations had favored big-bosomed women, so Julie was awesomely endowed. Lots of exercise kept the rest of her figure slim and trim, showing off the trophies. She had acquired her nickname at the Naval Academy and, although it reeked of political incorrectness and sexism, she liked it, so it stuck. “If you got ’em, be proud,” she had been heard to remark when questioned about the appellation.

After eleven years of active duty, she decided the GI Bill’s offer of a free advanced education beat the navy’s retention bonuses. So she quit the navy and was earning a PhD in physics at the University of Houston. She returned to her apartment on Sunday evening, after watching Jack Hays’ speech at a girlfriend’s house, and found Loren Snyder sitting on the front stoop waiting for her.

“Hey, Jugs. You’re looking good.”

“Mr. Snyder! I haven’t seen you in what, two or three years?”

“About that. And it’s Loren. Hey, I need some help and you were the first person I thought of.”

“I heard you were in law school at UT.”

“Yep.”

“What kind of help?” she asked as she unlocked the door. Snyder was at least ten years her senior, and she had served with him aboard an attack sub. Romance hadn’t been on the agenda then, and she knew it wasn’t now. The Loren Snyder she had known was all business.

“The Republic of Texas is now the proud owner of a Virginia-class sub, USS Texas. She’s lying in Galveston. I’m the new skipper and you are now my XO.”

She snorted. “Don’t bullshit me, Snyder. School starts again next week and I need to study. What do you want?”

He told it as he had gotten it, then added, “I went aboard her yesterday evening. The crew scrammed the reactor, secured the batteries, and left, arrested by the county sheriff, who doesn’t know jack about ships, boats, or submarines. I inspected everything I could see and couldn’t find any sign of sabotage. All Texas needs is a crew.”

Jugs snorted. “Where, pray tell, are you going to find sixty people to man her?”

“I’m not. I figure with five people who know what they are doing, I can get her under way. We can’t leave her lying at the pier. I figure there is probably one chance in five the navy will destroy her with Tomahawks, and four chances in five the navy will send a SEAL team to take her.”

“SEALs couldn’t get her under way,” Jugs objected with a frown. “They don’t have that kind of training.”

“They could if they brought five or six certified people with them. And you know they can do that.” Both these former naval officers had a very healthy respect for the navy’s special operations warriors, arguably the best in the world. If anyone could steal a submarine, they could.

“They’re probably planning a mission right now,” she said thoughtfully.

“If we are going to save that boat for Texas, we have to get in gear. Are you for independence?”

“Hell, yes. I’m from San Antone. I’ve had more than enough of Soetoro pissing on the Constitution. It’s high time we went our own way.” Although Aranado didn’t say it, like many Mexican American Catholics, she was socially conservative. Same-sex marriages, she believed, were an insult to the sanctity of that institution. Abortion horrified her — especially late-term abortions, doctors sucking the brains from viable infants — and Soetoro’s and his party’s fervid support of the practice had cost them her vote years ago. In fact, she had sworn in church at the altar of God she would never vote for one of those baby-butchering sons of bitches as long as she lived.

Jugs always was blunt, Snyder reflected. “I need three more qualified people,” he said. “Who do you know that we can get?” Then he added, “In Texas?”

Another group, five young men in their late twenties or early thirties, was also busy that Monday night. They were unemployed coal miners in southern West Virginia. They had been following Soetoro’s declaration of martial law and Texas’ reaction to it on television, in bits and pieces. They were nonpolitical high school grads who had become certified underground miners and worked in the mines since their early twenties. Their mines had laid them off some months back when demand for coal forced mines to lay off shifts. Their fathers had been miners, and their fathers before them. Underground mines were the last remaining sources of good jobs in southern West Virginia since NAFTA had sent factory jobs to Mexico twenty years before. They believed Barry Soetoro’s EPA was killing coal, and with it, their way of life, and they were bitter. They still had fishing, hunting, riding their ATVs, and chasing girls, but without a decent paycheck, their futures looked bleak. None wanted to leave the hills to look for work elsewhere. Here was where they had spent their lives, here was where their friends were, here was where their relatives had been buried for over two centuries in the little graveyards surrounding the one-room white churches that dotted the hills. This was their place.

Now evil politicians, rich environmentalists, and Washington bureaucrats had robbed them of it, they believed. They had never thought of themselves as terrorists, but for months now they had been talking about getting even with those distant bastards who had taken everything they had. These young men despised Barry Soetoro and everything he stood for and admired the Texans. Unlike the miners in West Virginia, those Texans hadn’t just hunkered down and let the big shits fuck them. They were fighting back.

Harlan Greathouse was the natural leader of this little group, and the biggest talker. Sunday, while they were fishing the eddies in a quiet little river shaded with verdant sycamores and drinking beer, Greathouse prodded them into action.

One of them still had a key to the explosives locker at the mine where he used to work. The padlocks on the locker were supposed to be changed periodically, but who knew when the mine foreman would get around to it. The key still worked, and for that they were grateful. The locker was a grounded steel building as far away from structures and dwellings as was practical. Sunday night they used that key, opened the locker, and helped themselves to three cases of dynamite, blasting caps, a roll of wire, and three detonators that passed their battery checks. The roll contained about a thousand feet of wire. They really needed three rolls, so they could plant three charges, but they decided to make do with one.

Harlan Greathouse led in his pickup, and his friends in two more pickups followed him to the interstate. They stopped at a convenience store on a freeway exit, gassed up, and bought more 3.2 percent beer, the so-called non-alcoholic beer, then got back onto the highway. As they finished each can of beer, they crushed it and with a practiced flip of the wrist, tossed it into the beds of their pickups. They drove into the great valley of Virginia and across the Blue Ridge to the rolling countryside cut by old rivers that ran into the Chesapeake.

On a two-lane asphalt road that ran through bucolic countryside they found a pumping station on one of the natural-gas trunk lines that ran from Louisiana northeastward all the way to Boston. Anyone could see it was a pipeline right-of-way because the tree-less terrain covered in low weeds ran from one horizon to another and was about a hundred feet wide. This line serviced a myriad of smaller feeder lines that supplied natural gas to factories, cities, towns, and gas-fed power plants.

None of the miners had the slightest idea how big the explosion would be when they blew the pumping station. Big, they figured, big enough to perhaps ignite this stand of dry pines that stood on either side of the right-of-way. They saw in the moonlight — it was four in the morning — that each stand consisted of about five acres of trees. A quick reconnaissance revealed that these two stands were surrounded by pastures and meadows as far as the eye could see, with here and there a modest house and its associated barn. Cattle grazed in the pastures. The nearest house was perhaps five hundred yards beyond the edge of the trees, so they figured no one there would be injured by the blast.

Harlan thought this a good place. They could set one case of dynamite, unroll perhaps four hundred feet of wire off the roll, cut it, and rig it to a detonator. The loss of line pressure after the explosion would cause emergency shutoff valves farther up and down the line to secure the flow of gas. Those power plants to the northeast that depended on this line would be down until gas from other, interconnecting lines, could be routed to them. The explosion would no doubt obliterate this pumping station, and it would eventually need to be rebuilt.

“They should have stayed with coal,” one of the miners said, chuckling, just loud enough to be heard.

The pumping station, about a half-acre in size, was surrounded by a ten-foot-high chain-link fence topped with three strands of barbed wire and was lit by floodlights on poles. There was a gate, of course, and it was padlocked.

The gate wasn’t a problem. The miners hooked a tow chain around one of the fence posts, hooked the other end to a tow-hitch, and pulled it down.

They all knew how to handle dynamite. In less than five minutes they had divided a case of dynamite into three charges, one of which was set on the main inlet line — about three feet in diameter — another on the line out, and one on the main pump itself. Between the pump and the charges on the lines were the safety cutoff valves, which were going to be destroyed too. One car went by without slowing while they worked. They inserted the blasting caps, wired up a harness that they mated to the caps, then unrolled an estimated four hundred feet of wire, cut it, and turned the pickups around.

Harlan Greathouse thought he should be the one to trigger the blast. The other two pickups went on west a half mile or so to the crest of a low hill as he wired up the detonator. He took cover behind his pickup and lifted the safety lever. Took a deep breath and pushed the button.

The resulting explosion wasn’t really that bad. But it was followed by a hurricane of noise as natural gas under pressure hissed from the ruptured line. That lasted just long enough to register on Harlan’s ears, then the gas was ignited by molten hotspots in the steel. A giant explosion resulted. Trees were flattened to the east and west. The stupendous fireball from the blast rose in a monstrous flaming mushroom cloud.

The pickup truck absorbed the peak pressure of the shockwave from the concussion of the gas explosion, thereby saving Harlan from being crushed. However, even with the dubious shelter of his shattered truck, he perished within a second or so as the pulse of superheated air scorched and fried him to blackened gristle. The heat pulse also set the ten acres of now-flattened pines instantly aflame.

Within a minute the gas flowing from the ruptured lines slowed as pressure bled off. Air rushing back into the blast area and escaping gas fed a blowtorch flame that rose at least three hundred feet in the air. The initial fireball, now expanding into a mushroom cloud and turning from yellow to red and orange, rose and rose into the sky, lighting the countryside as bright as day.

Harlan Greathouse’s friends came driving madly back, but one look in the light of the burning gas told the story. They turned their pickups around in the road and roared away to the west toward the distant mountains.

As dawn was breaking Tuesday in Galveston, Snyder, Aranado, and three men, all of whom Jugs knew from her naval reserve weekends, were aboard Texas checking her out. Speedy Gonzales was a nuclear engineer, Mouse Moore was a first-class petty officer with twelve years in attack subs, and Junior Smith was a third-class who had served aboard Polaris boats. All Texans, all foursquare for independence, they had volunteered immediately.

Using flashlights, they inspected everything they could see, opened panels and examined wiring and fittings, checked the galley for provisions, and all came to the same conclusion. Texas was ready for sea. The former crew’s personal effects were still aboard, uniforms, underwear, hygiene items, letters from wives and girlfriends. The batteries had a good charge on them. It was as if the crew had mustered on the pier and marched off, leaving everything. Although Snyder and his crew didn’t know it, that was pretty much what had happened.

All five gathered in the control room and discussed their inspections. “She’s ready to go, I believe,” Speedy said. “A full load of Tomahawks and torpedoes, plenty of food and water, more than ample for five people. The batteries seem okay, the checklists are in place and apparently complete.” He spoke like a judge, weighing every word before he uttered it because it would appear on the court reporter’s transcript.

“Mouse?” Loren asked.

“She’s ready to go, Mr. Snyder.” Snyder was an officer, and under no conceivable circumstances would Mouse Moore address him familiarly. He had spent too many years in uniform. In his bunkroom he might tell his shipmates his opinion of Loren or Jugs, but he would never address either of them that way to their faces. It was a mark in his favor: Mouse was a good sailor who would always obey orders.

Junior Smith was cut from a slightly different pattern. He had been doused in naval tradition and most of it had washed off. He was a civilian at heart, and so he said, “Loren, I’m willing to go to sea in her.”

“Just precisely what do you plan, Mr. Snyder?” Jugs asked, preferring to address Loren formally.

“I want to get the reactor cooking again, check that every system is working properly, run some drills to ensure we don’t entomb ourselves, and if we’re all cool, cast off and get the hell out of Dodge before the SEALs show up. They can’t get at us if we’re submerged.”

“We have no secure way to communicate with JR Hays,” Jugs objected.

“After a while we can poke up the mast, listen to the radio, and learn what’s happening. Right now, I think it imperative we get gone before the SEALs come, and you all know they will.”

“Sure as God made little green apples,” Junior agreed.

“So let’s check all the circuit breakers and emergency alarms, then fire off the tea kettle. Stations everyone.”

“Your first command,” Speedy said with a grin.

“And probably my last,” Loren Snyder admitted. “Miz Aranado, you and Speedy bring the batteries online and let’s do it.”

Four minutes later the batteries brought the boat to life. Lights came on, air began circulating, computer displays came to standby. Back aft Speedy Gonzales checked the emergency alarms one by one. Loren Snyder snapped off his flashlight and smiled. It was as if he had returned to something he had loved and missed. He thought for three seconds about law school, and snorted. Someday, maybe.

General Martin L. Wynette, the Joint Chiefs, and their staff were having a terrible morning. The news of the surrender of Fort Bliss, after a mutiny, cast a pall on their planning to invade Texas. Large numbers of troops that refused to obey orders, or refused to fight, or went AWOL was a nightmare that the U.S. armed forces had never before dealt with. It raised the question of whether any troops ordered to attack Texas could actually be relied upon to do so. It seemed to the planners that the answer to that question would determine what could be done, and when. Of course, the White House staff was outraged and said the military was dragging its feet in the face of treason. That comment was grossly unfair, and even Martin Wynette was severely irritated by it. Everyone in the E-Ring offices of the Pentagon knew that imprudent action would lead to even more severe condemnation of the military.

The loss of USS Texas gave the navy serious heartburn. Some advocated launching Tomahawk cruise missiles at the attack submarine while she lay at the Galveston pier, but the chief of naval operations, the CNO, Admiral Cart McKiernan, was having none of it. “We spent 2.6 billion dollars for that boat that we had to squeeze out of Congress like it was blood,” he roared to the Joint Staff. “I’ll be damned if I’m going to order her destroyed until we’ve tried every other option. We may desperately need her if Iran and China get feisty. Those rodeo cowboys in Galveston are going nowhere in that boat; the very idea is ludicrous. Now you people get a SEAL team saddled up to go down there and get her. Have them take some submariners with them. I don’t give a damn who the SEALs have to kill or how they do it, but I want that submarine back in one piece. Understand?”

That was yesterday. In the wee hours of this morning it looked as if the SEAL team needed at least another twenty-four hours to get ready. People and equipment had to be moved into position and it all took time, a fact that infuriated the White House staffers sitting in on the pre-dawn meeting, who knew absolutely nothing about logistics. While they ranted, the lights and computers in the Pentagon flickered and went out for a few seconds until the building’s massive emergency power system automatically came online.

The sabotage of the natural gas trunk line from Louisiana had forced several natural gas power plants in the area to shut down until gas could be rerouted over the network. The shutdowns of the power plants blacked out cities in northern Virginia and Maryland. Then the problems began to cascade. The computer system that controlled the electrical grid, automatically rerouting electrical power to restore it to deprived areas, began to do precisely the opposite. It demanded power from the stricken plants, and when there was none to be had, began shutting down the grid across the northeastern United States. In seconds, the power was off from Chicago to Boston and south all the way to Richmond. Air conditioners quit, elevators jammed, computers died, the telephone system went down, water and sewage pumps failed.

I found out about the power failure about seven that morning when I sneaked from Sarah Houston’s bed and padded into her kitchen to make coffee. The kitchen lights wouldn’t illuminate. Suspecting the worst, I opened the door of a very quiet refrigerator. No light inside. Oh boy. I jabbed the remote to turn on the television, just in case, but no soap. I thought maybe it was the circuit breakers, but I didn’t know where her panel was. I tried my cell phone: no service. So it wasn’t the circuit breakers.

I went back to the bedroom, woke Sarah, and told her the news.

“Perhaps my little program worked,” she chirped, pleased with herself.

“Maybe the juice is only off in this neighborhood.”

“You are always so cheerful, Tommy. And at this hour of the morning.”

“I’m a natural-born optimist,” I objected. “In fact, I’m so optimistic that I think we should throw on some clothes and hot foot it over to the lock shop. If the outage is regional, we don’t have to wait until tonight to hit that warehouse. We can do it as soon as we can get there, and should.”

“But I’m not packed.”

I was already dressing and didn’t reply. Sure enough, forty-five minutes later we were in my car on our way. Sarah’s a trooper.

And the power was off everywhere. Traffic was light. Why go to work if nothing at the office or factory will function, if the malls, grocery and convenience stores, and gas stations are closed?

The guys were waiting at the lock shop. “How’d you do it, Sarah? How did you kill the power?”

“I waved a wand,” she said.

In addition to the Wire, Willis Coffee, and Travis Clay, there was one other guy there, a big black guy, really buff, who hadn’t had a haircut or shaved in months. His name was Armanti Hall, and I knew him, although not very well, because he and I had done some training together a few years back. He was in a sour mood, didn’t say a word.

“Armanti was waiting for me last night at my place,” Travis said. “He wants to go with us, and he has a pickup with a bed cover.”

“Did you brief him?”

“No. He doesn’t give a damn what we’re up to. I’ll tell you about it later.”

We unloaded the lock shop stuff from the van and began packing it with stuff we thought we might need in our war on FEMA and Barry Soetoro. Took some propane bottles and a torch, a box of tools, two crowbars, and some other things. I took my bag of cash and my weapons and ammo from the car and packed them in the van. The other guys had some small duffle bags of personal items, so we threw them in too.

Armanti and Willis muttered to each other while we loaded up. They decided to ride in Armanti’s pickup together. We locked up the shop and my car and saddled up. Willie Varner and Travis rode in the back of the van and I drove, with Sarah Houston in the right seat.

After we were off the Beltway headed for Leesburg, I asked Travis what the story was on Armanti.

“He just got back from Syria a couple days ago. He thinks the agency will be looking for him soon, maybe to turn him over to civilian prosecutors.”

“Lovely. Want to tell us about it?”

“They had him working with the Brits, trying to find the executioner. Last week sometime he went into a building to drag out a guy they wanted to question, guy who they thought was a big dog in ISIS. Hall is an expert in unarmed combat and he thought he could put him down quick, minimum fuss, minimum time, and carry him out.”

Travis glanced at Sarah and stopped talking. I prompted him.

“Anyway, he got in okay and started searching the house. Couldn’t find his guy. He went up the stairs to the third floor and walked in on the guy. The shit was trying to get his dick into a six-year-old girl. You know those guys are pedophiles, child-fuckers?”

“Yeah. I know.”

“The kid was sobbing and had been hit a couple of times. Naked from the waist down. Armanti didn’t hesitate, just came up behind the guy, grabbed him, and broke his neck. Crack. So with the guy there dead and the kid sobbing, Armanti castrated the corpse and stuffed his genitals into his mouth. That took just seconds.

“He had the kid under his left arm and was on his way out when a woman walked in. She took one look at the corpse and started to scream. He hit her once in the chest as hard as he could. Maybe he wasn’t trying to kill her, just wind her good so she couldn’t scream, but… anyway, the way he told it to me, her heart stopped dead. Probably burst like a balloon. He’s a strong man and was all pumped on adrenaline…”

Travis took a few seconds, then continued, “Met a man coming up the stairs as he and the kid went down. The guy decided to shoot Armanti, but he was a hair slow. I think Armanti actually stuck his pistol in the guy’s mouth and blew his head off.”

We all thought about that for a moment.

Travis went on. “The Brits took the kid and said they would send her to a British charity that is trying to get orphans out of Syria and into the UK. Of course he had to tell the Brits why they didn’t have a prisoner to sweat. They said to forget it, but you know how these things are. Someone will whisper about it, and when the agency gets wind of it, killing the mother and kidnapping the girl, the shit will hit the fan. Armanti just wants to be gone.”

“How does he know the woman was the child’s mother?” Sarah asked.

“She was. He was briefed before he went in. But when she walked into that room, she didn’t care about the child — she was screaming about the holy warrior who was going to do a Muhammad on the kid. So he killed her. Instant justice, I guess.”

“Can he be trusted?” I asked.

“You’ve trained with him, Tommy. I’d trust him with my life, but I don’t do kids.”

We left it there.

As we approached Leesburg I glanced to my left and saw a strip mall with one store all lit up. It was a drugstore. I wheeled the van into the parking lot. We locked it and went inside.

“How come you’re open?” I asked the guy behind the counter.

“We have an emergency generator. We’re open twenty-four/seven, all year around, rain, snow, or power outages. People sometimes need medications in the middle of the night. That’s our edge.”

We stocked up on bandages, antiseptics, needles and thread, surgical tape, aspirin, and a box of surgical gloves. “Be prepared,” my scoutmaster always said.

The warehouse district is on the south side of Leesburg, in an industrial district that looked as if it contained only warehouses and light industry. Without power, there were only a few vehicles there today.

Sarah pointed out the warehouse we wanted. It was a big steel building and the sign said “Walmart. Always low prices. Always.” It was locked up tight, with a steel personnel door and a code pad.

I parked the van so people down the street couldn’t see what we were doing. Armanti parked a block away in the other direction.

We put on surgical gloves, and then used a propane torch and a crowbar. Took about ten minutes but we got that door open. No alarm sounded. The place was dark as King Tut’s tomb. We used flashlights and right in front of us was a deuce and a half and four pickups with FEMA markings, plus a gaggle of big forklifts. I left the Wire outside to warn us if anyone came along, then, using flashlights, the rest of us explored.

The place looked like the hold of a ship heading for D-Day in Normandy. More pickups, trucks, Humvees, electrical generators on trailers, mobile kitchens, tanks for water and fuel, even some weird looking things that Travis said were microwave radar for crowd control, plus mobile radio setups and com units mounted on the backs of trucks. The stuff was painted a dark green and had a white star stenciled on each side. It wasn’t marked U.S. Army. This was FEMA stuff, for Barry Soetoro’s army.

That was one side of the warehouse. On the other side, arranged so there was room for forklifts to go between the stacks, were pallets of ammo, several tractor-trailer loads; more pallets with boxes full of one-piece green coveralls emblazoned with a FEMA badge on the right shoulder and an American flag on the left; tractor-trailer loads of MREs, meals ready to eat; mountains of weapons; crates of M4s, AT4s, heavy belt-fed .30-caliber machine guns and M279 light machine guns, hand grenades, belted ammo, and pistols; and even some small wooden boxes containing two sniper rifles each. There were some industrial-sized coffee pots, a truckload of first aid supplies, including anti-coagulant pads, and medical emergency kits for corpsmen. Basically, it looked to me like enough military supplies to outfit an infantry brigade for a trek across Africa even if they had to fight every step of the way.

“When the revolution comes, these folks planned to come out on the winning side,” Willis Coffee remarked. The rest of us just looked around, stunned.

“Did you know all this was here, Tommy?” Armanti asked.

“Nope. But I was hopeful we’d find some weapons. Our pistols aren’t going to be enough to pry Jake Grafton out of Camp Dawson.”

“So that’s what’s going down.”

“Yeah. You still want in?”

“Why not.”

“Okay, people,” I said. “Let’s get at it. We’ll load two of their pickups, the van, and Armanti’s ride. Use that forklift over there to load up some pallets of MREs. Take four of those ten-gallon jerry cans full of fuel. We want a crate of AT4s, a couple of machine guns with boxes of belted 7.62 for them, a couple of light machine guns, a couple M4s for each of us, lots of ammo, and anything that looks interesting, like those boxes of hand grenades and the medical supplies. I don’t want to die for lack of a Band-Aid. I’d also like a sniper rifle for my personal collection in case I decide to take up groundhog hunting. But what I’d really like to find in here is some C-4, timers, and detonators. Chop chop.”

The good news was that Willis, Travis, Armanti, and I knew how to use all these weapons and keep them in good working order. Sarah didn’t, of course, and neither did Willie the Wire. On one trip to the van with a crate of MREs, I asked Willie, “You want a rifle or pistol for a souvenir?”

“I’m a two-time loser, man, and you know it. If I got a pistol in my pocket when they arrest me for jaywalking while black, it’s mandatory life. Thanks, but no thanks.”

He was going to bet his life on our ability to rescue Grafton, but wanted to do it disarmed. Explain that logic if you can.

Since it was already ninety degrees outside, we threw our jeans and shirts in the van before we stepped into the new duds. Everyone but Willie strapped a web belt and pistol holster on, including Sarah. Beretta nines were the flavor of the day. “You know how to use that shooter?” I asked her.

“No, but it’s the fashion accessory of the season, so I want one.”

There were boxes of army combat boots in the warehouse, so we each took a pair. Sarah, of course, said, “I’m not wearing those.”

“Find a pair that fits, try them on to make sure, then throw them in the van, just in case we have to wade a swamp.”

She nodded and did it.

We spent fifteen minutes opening the overhead door so we could get the pickups out. Using the forklift, they raised me as high as possible and I unlatched it from the opening mechanism, then we used one of the door cables to pull it open. The forklift pulled and up it went. Willis and Travis climbed into the cabs of the pickups. The keys were in them, lying on the dashes.

“Look around and get all the people out of this area. You’re FEMA guys, tough dudes. Government orders. Don’t take any backtalk.”

“You aren’t going to blow this warehouse, Tommy,” Willis Coffee said.

“I thought I would.”

Willis lowered his head onto the steering wheel for a moment. When he raised his head, he said, “And I thought we were just going to burgle and run.”

“Hey, Walmart’s lawyers undoubtedly got FEMA to agree to indemnify them. The surrounding owners can sue in the sweet by and by, if the courts ever get back up and running.”

“I don’t care about that lawyer shit. I would prefer not to be chased. Not anytime soon, anyway.”

“An opportunity like this comes along only once in a lifetime, if that,” I told him.

So they drove through the open door and I walked over to the C-4 pile and got busy. I figured the C-4 would ignite all the ammo in the warehouse, so there would be a pretty good pop. Even if it didn’t, the blast should wreck all this stuff, turn it into junk. Just to make sure, I poured a jerry can of gasoline on the ammo pile and opened three or four others. I gave us twenty minutes on the timer, checked my watch and saw it was two minutes after one o’clock, and pushed the button. The countdown began.

I used the forklift to lower the overhead door, then walked out of the warehouse through the buckled personnel door and pushed it shut. The three or four civilian vehicles that had been in front of other warehouses were now gone. I climbed into the van with Sarah and drove away. The pickups were waiting by the front gate. We headed west.

I was glancing at my watch when the whole thing went off. I saw the top of the mushroom cloud in my rearview mirror.

Sarah saw me looking, twisted her right side mirror, and took a squint.

“Tommy, what if some civilian was killed in that explosion?”

“We all have to die sometime. I’ll pray for ’em.” I wouldn’t, though, if I heard they were Soetoro voters.

It took a little under half a minute for the sound of the blast to reach us. The concussion probably broke windows in Leesburg.