Liberty's Last Stand

EIGHTEEN

The Blackhawk helicopter settled onto the tarmac at the Longview, Texas, airport, shut down, and JR Hays went forward to speak to the pilots. CWO4 Erik Sabiston was in the right seat.

“Wait for me,” JR said. “Be back late this evening. Fuel the chopper and get something to eat.”

“Yes, sir.”

JR climbed out and walked across the tarmac into the FBO. “I need a car,” he said to the lady on the desk.

“We have a courtesy car, sir. It’s kinda old and wrinkled, like me, but it’ll probably get you there and back again. Always has so far, anyway.”

She handed him the keys and he made a pit stop, then went outside and climbed in. It was an old Ford with sun-scorched paint and more than a hundred fifty thousand miles on the odometer. It started on the first crank.

He had gotten the address from the Texas Department of Motor Vehicles. It took him a while to find it that afternoon. There were high cirrus clouds up there, making the afternoon light gauzy. It didn’t do much to soften the heat, though.

JR found his address in a newer subdivision, parked on the street, and walked up the driveway. Inside he heard a dog barking, a little one from the sound of it. Rang the doorbell.

In a moment a man in shorts and an old army T-shirt opened the door, a man in his mid-fifties.

“JR Hays! As I live and breathe!”

“Hello, Nate. May I come in?”

“Of course.” The man threw the door wide, then closed it behind JR. His name was Nathaniel Danaher, and he was a retired army colonel with thirty years service. JR had served under him on his last combat tour in Afghanistan. Danaher was from Connecticut originally, but he hadn’t lived there since he went away to VMI for college. He hadn’t been able to score a West Point appointment so he joined the VMI corps of cadets, got a reserve commission, which, after a few years of outstanding service, the army transformed into a regular commission.

“I like the gleam of those stars on your blouse, JR. Somehow they look exactly right on you. Want a beer?”

“Sure.”

With beers in hand, they sat on the covered porch in the backyard, a ramada as the old Texans called it. It kept the sun off and allowed the people sheltered under it to savor any breeze. The dog, some kind of terrier, was friendly enough. He did some exploratory sniffing and then found a shady spot to lie down.

Danaher was still lean and fit. He looked, JR thought, exactly as he had when he was in Afghanistan, only a little older and grayer. JR remarked on it.

“Still get up at five o’clock every morning and run five miles,” Danaher said. “Might as well; can’t sleep past five anyway. Heard your cousin put you in charge. He couldn’t have found a better man.”

“That remains to be seen. Where do you stand on independence?”

“Well, when I first heard about it, I thought, there goes my fucking pension and health benefits unless I get the hell out of Texas. That was pretty small of me, I suppose, but then I heard on TV that Texas is taking over all the federal government’s obligations to military and Social Security retirees, so that was a relief. I’ve got some money saved up but nowhere near enough without a pension. I despise that son of a bitch Soetoro and everything he stands for. It’s a big club so I have lots of friends. Independence is great if you folks can make it stick, because the country that elected that bastard twice is going somewhere most people in Texas don’t want to go.”

“I need some help,” JR said. “I need some civilian duds, and then if you are willing, let’s the two of us drive over to Louisiana and take a look around.”

“You mean it?”

“I do.”

“My wife is playing bridge this afternoon. Went over after lunch. I’ll leave her a note. We’ll be back tonight?”

“I hope.”

“I think I may have some clothes that will fit you. If you haven’t had lunch, mine the refrigerator while I root around. Make yourself a sandwich or something. Last night’s meat loaf was pretty good.”

JR was halfway through a cold meat loaf sandwich when Nate returned with a pair of baggy shorts, an ancient VMI T-shirt, and a set of worn tennis shoes. He also handed JR a pistol, an old double-action revolver, small and trim. “If you’re going to Louisiana you better take this, stick it in your pocket, just in case. It’s loaded.”

JR checked the cylinder, snapped it back in place. The gun was an old Smith & Wesson in .38 Special with about half its bluing remaining. “That thing’s about ninety or so years old,” Danaher said. “Used to carry it in my pocket when a service pistol wouldn’t do. Louisiana is enemy territory for you.”

Nate Danaher’s car was a late model sedan. “Where are we going?”

“Barksdale Air Force Base, east of Shreveport and Bossier City.”

“I know where it is. Take Gina to the doctor there on a regular basis. She’s got lymphoma. It’s under control now, we think, but…” he shrugged, “it’s in God’s hands. I shop at the PX while she’s getting examined.”

“Stay off the interstate tonight. Take the back roads. We don’t need to run into a roadblock.”

“Sure.”

“Got that postcard from you a while back,” JR explained. “So I knew you were in Texas. Why here?”

“Our daughter is here. Her husband is an engineer in the oil business. Gina wanted to be near the grandson, Little Nate, who just turned seven. He’s a pistol.”

“I seem to recall you had a son, too.”

“Yep. Got on drugs in high school and dropped out. Pot at first, then crack, then heroin and meth. We put him in rehab twice, but it didn’t take. Haven’t seen him in… well, it’s been twelve years now. A few years ago someone said they saw him in New Orleans, living on the street. For all I know he may be dead now. All those drugs — it figures he won’t last too long.”

JR changed the subject. “So how is Longview taking to independence?”

“Was out at Walmart today. The place was packed. People on welfare were cashing their last checks, loading up their cars, and getting out of Texas. They heard Texas isn’t paying welfare anymore, so a lot of them are heading for greener pastures. Everyone else is stocking up. Everything they can get, food, toilet paper, everything. People in line said the liquor stores were mobbed. I wanted to buy a little generator — figured I could wire it into the house circuits some way — but Walmart was out of them. None in the hardware stores. People sense that times are going to get hard.”

“Yeah,” JR said dryly.

Sarah and I drove the van along the road by Camp Dawson and sure enough, there was the compound that held the detainees, though we didn’t see any. The compound, surrounded by a chain-link fence topped by barbed wire, with guard towers about ten feet above the ground on all four corners, was about a hundred yards on each side. It was lit up in the late afternoon like Macy’s on Christmas Eve, so obviously they had generators going. All the comforts…

The gate was manned by four guys in FEMA dark-green coveralls carrying carbines and wearing green caps. They weren’t soldiers, lounging around like that, smoking, laughing, and grab-assing. And, I suspected, they were not well disciplined. No army sergeant I ever met would allow his troops to goof off on guard duty. They were armed thugs.

I got all this on one slow drive-by. The gate guards paid no attention to us. The guy on the last guard tower was leaning on the rails of his perch, smoking a cigarette, looking into the compound.

Which made me suspect that they weren’t worried about people breaking in, but their prisoners breaking out. The thought that someone might assault them with intent to kill apparently had not entered their hard little heads. When the shooting started in earnest, many would probably boogie. No one wants to be dead any time soon, which can happen when people shoot at you.

Across the road from the compound was an up-sloping pasture, maybe fifty yards wide, with what looked to me like yearling steers in there munching grass. Maybe dreaming of the girlfriends they would never have. Perhaps those were the virgins the jihadists would find in Paradise. Beyond the pasture and higher was a strip of forest on a low ridge. Over the top of the ridge I got a glimpse of a green mountain.

I kept on driving, thinking about how we could pop Jake Grafton out of that compound. Since we had no idea where in there he was, we were going to have to ask someone. That would be my job. I am pretty good at getting answers in a hurry from people who initially thought they didn’t want to be bothered.

The designated rendezvous was a crossroads about eight more miles along. I pulled over to the side of the road and turned off the engine. The sun was just setting, so we had at least another half hour of evening, then maybe another fifteen minutes of twilight.

All I needed were my troops.

“You know how to use that pistol?” I asked Sarah.

“Never fired one in my life.”

I showed her how the Beretta worked, popped out the magazine, jacked out the shell from the chamber, made her dry fire it, and put everything in and reloaded. “Just disengage the safety, point, and pull the trigger. It will fire thirteen shots, one with every squeeze of the trigger. The gun will kick in your hand, so use both hands. Don’t use it unless the bad guy is very close, and keep shooting until he’s dead on the ground. Not wounded on the ground, but obviously dead, so he can’t hurt you.”

“Okay,” she said, hefting the weapon.

“Never point a gun at a man unless you are willing to shoot, and never shoot unless you are willing to kill. This isn’t Hollywood.”

“Okay,” she repeated, and holstered the weapon.

I felt better. She seemed to be getting into this warrior gig. If I could just keep finding her bathrooms or port-a-potties.

I rooted in my duffel and came up with my Kimber 1911 in a holster. I added it to my web belt and put it on the right side. On the left I put my Marine Corps fighting knife with the eight-inch blade.

The Beretta was a 9-mm: it shot a .357-caliber, 125-grain full-metal-jacket bullet since it was a weapon of war — Geneva Convention and all that — and would make nice holes in people. Magazine capacity was thirteen rounds. The .45 shot a 230-grain bullet, and I used hollow points. Under fifty feet, one of those to the body would kill King Kong. It held eight cartridges, but if eight wasn’t enough, I was probably gonna soon be dead anyway.

I made sure my shooter was cocked and locked, then sat there wondering where my troops were. Civilian cars and pickups came by from time to time, and after a glimpse of my FEMA green, ignored us. Apparently the boys in Soetoro’s army were not yet winning the hearts and minds of the locals. I glanced at my watch from time to time.

“Stop fidgeting,” Sarah said.

I loaded up some M4s, passed one to Sarah, and laid a couple behind the passenger seat where I could reach them. Broke out some grenades and put one in each shirt pocket.

Finally I got a couple of boxes of MREs and dug through them. Sarah took a fruit cup, and I munched a cardboard cookie that had come out of the oven during the first Bush administration. We certainly weren’t in danger of gaining weight on this adventure.

Before they went onto the base, JR Hays and Nate Danaher stopped at a beer joint, which was packed, every stool and booth full, with people standing and drinking beer. The conversations were loud. A television was on up in the corner, showing the devastating effects of the power outage in the northeastern United States. Philadelphia and Baltimore were rioting as usual.

JR kept an eye on the television as he waited for Danaher to work his way to the bar and order beers. There was a short segment about rioting in Watts in LA, then a parade of Soetoro administration officials being interviewed. JR couldn’t hear the audio, but he thought he knew what the officials were saying. Everything was under control. The administration was taking steps, and so on.

Then he heard a snatch of a conversation between two men at the bar. “This place is going to be packed when those soldiers get here… Yeah, I heard the day after tomorrow… Someone said the Fourth Brigade… Gonna come in dribs and drabs, I suppose… Thirty-five hundred men and equipment is a lot to move…”

The Fourth Brigade Combat Team of the 10th Mountain Division. JR knew about them. The fact that they were being deployed from Fort Polk, the massive joint training base further south in Louisiana, to Barksdale was certainly news. There was also a brigade of airborne troops at Fort Polk, JR thought, and he listened intently to see if the garrulous bar buddies knew about them. A brigade of paratroopers dropping into Texas, or Barksdale, could cause massive problems.

He wandered on, listening. Most of the men and women in the bar were talking about the run on grocery stores and Walmarts. The lines were horrendous. One woman said she waited over an hour in line to check out. One gasoline station was completely out of gas and the clerk said they didn’t know when they could get more.

After they drank some of their beer, JR and Danaher left the mugs on the bar and went outside. Their retired military ID cards got them onto the base. They drove over by the flight line and looked at the rows of B-52s parked there. Barksdale was home to the 2nd Bomb Wing, the only outfit in the air force that still had B-52 Stratofortresses.

Huge hangars, flood-lit ramps, here and there a security vehicle. Half-full parking lots. Activity at the barracks.

The parking lots at the commissary and PX were packed, with almost every space occupied. A long line waited to get to the fuel pumps at the base filling station.

JR told Danaher about the conversation he had overheard.

“That’s no surprise,” Nate replied.

“I want you to lead an assault team in here tomorrow morning. We need to take this base and be prepared to hold it. If we can’t, we need to destroy those B-52s. Can an assault team arriving on C-130s pull it off?”

“Let’s go back to the flight line and take a look,” Danaher said.

“If it can’t, we can do an air attack tomorrow,” JR explained. “Strafe the flight lines, drop some JDAMs on the hangars and fuel farm, make a royal mess.”

“Hold that thought. I have a small set of binoculars in the glove box. Let’s trade places, and I’ll look while you drive.”

They did so. The only plane in the traffic pattern was a B-52 shooting landings, apparently on a training mission. They could hear the engines roar every time it lifted off and watch it in the pattern, a big dark-green metal cloud.

“They’re not bombing up the BUFFs,” Danaher said after a while. “No missile batteries or missile-control radars or AAA in sight.” AAA was anti-aircraft artillery. Five more minutes of looking, then Danaher said, “Let’s go home. We’ve seen all that there is to see.”

Sluggo Sweatt had Jake Grafton brought to his office that Tuesday evening. Grafton couldn’t walk, so the jailers dragged him. They didn’t bother putting him in a chair. Sluggo came around his desk and rested a hip on the edge of it and looked down at Grafton lying on the floor. Sluggo had a smile on his face.

“How are your ribs?”

Grafton tried to focus. Being dragged here had made him want to scream, so he had bitten his tongue. Now blood was leaking out his lips. He could feel it, warm and slick.

“I think we’ll take you back to your cell and let you sleep through the night. If tomorrow you don’t sign the confession in front of a television camera and read the little script we have prepared — it’s only about a hundred words — we’ll beat you to death tomorrow night. The other prisoners will hear your screams. I’ll be honest, Grafton, I don’t like you. Still, I urge you to be tough. Don’t give us an inch. Then I will have the pleasure of helping the boys work on you.”

Sluggo Sweatt smiled at Grafton. He picked up a sheet of paper from his desk, fluttered it, then handed it to one of the thugs and made a gesture. They dragged Grafton back to the cell. There they threw the sheet of paper on his chest and left him lying on the floor, after one of them had kicked him in the balls.

The overhead lights were on. Although Jake Grafton didn’t know it, the power for the camp was being supplied by several large emergency generators since the grid was down. With the generators snoring away, grid problems didn’t really matter to Sluggo Sweatt. He was the king of his own little empire, and he liked the feeling.

Every breath Grafton drew was agony. When the fierce pain in his testicles finally subsided to a dull ache, exhaustion overcame him and he went to sleep. He dreamed of Callie.

Armanti Hall and Willie the Wire showed up first. I got out of the van and Willie started motormouthing. “Damn, Tommy, did we have fun! You should have seen those towers come down. Man, if someone would pay me for doing this, I’d give up the locksmith business in a heartbeat.”

I didn’t have the heart to tell the fool that he was probably permanently out of the locksmith business unless a meteor hit the White House and all its inhabitants were instantly obliterated.

“How’d it go?” I asked Armanti Hall.

“We dumped towers on two different transmission lines. Just walked up to them, rigged the charges, and went on to the next one. We watched one stretch of them go down. Some of the lines broke, and the others went on the ground.”

“You two get some MREs, take a whiz, and when the other guys get here I’ll brief everyone.”

Ten minutes later Travis Clay rolled in, and five minutes after that Willis Coffee. They had each found a transmission line and put three towers on the ground. Travis, however, had done more. He came across a substation and used an AT4 to put it out of business. “That box blew apart into a thousand pieces, Tommy. It was kinda fun.”

“I’ll bet. You didn’t leave the tube there, did you?”

“Oh, no. It’s in the back of the truck.”

“Good man.”

I addressed my lock shop partner. “Tell me, Willie, now that you are back in the felony business, are you willing to pull a trigger or not?”

“Well…”

“One life sentence, two, three, what does it matter?”

“You’re suckin’ me into a life of crime, Carmellini. I’m not ready to give up pussy. I got a few good years left, dude, me and Viagra, and a couple of women who are countin’ on me to help them find a little joy in this colorless life.”

“Sarah, would you put a first aid box in each truck while I brief these guys?”

We gathered around the hood of one of the FEMA pickups. I spread out the map. “Here is where we are going to rendezvous, this bridge over the Greenbrier at Bartow. Then we’ll go to the CIA’s safe house near Greenbank. I want each of you to go to Bartow by a different route.” We traced routes with fingers in the twilight.

Then I explained the setup at Camp Dawson, how the internment compound was laid out, where the four guard towers were.

“Now, Sarah and I are going to drive in the main gate of the internment compound in a FEMA pickup. We’ll want to find out where Grafton is being held. We’ll ask to see the commandant of the camp. Meanwhile Armanti and Willie Varner, you will go through the main gate of the National Guard base and come around behind the compound. That gate was open when I went by and the Guard looked like it had moved out. Set up an M279 machine gun out back. There is undoubtedly a rear gate through the compound wire, and maybe a barracks where these FEMA dudes are bunking.

“When the shooting starts up front, the guards in the rear towers are going to be trying to see what’s happening, and from the way the camp is laid out, I don’t think they can see. They might get interested in you. If they do, open fire. If the FEMA guys stream out the back gate after the shooting starts, let them all get out. Wait until they are out, then kill them quick and fast, including anyone left in the rear towers. If the fleeing guards go into a barracks, use an AT4 on it. If they get into vehicles, use the machine gun. It is imperative that no one follow us.” I looked at Armanti and asked, “Can you do that?”

“These people aren’t soldiers?”

“Some of them might have some military experience, but now they’re civilians. FEMA paramilitary thugs, Barry Soetoro’s army. What we have going for us is surprise. We want them dead before they can figure out that they oughta shoot back. They aren’t holy warriors: being a martyr for Barry Soetoro isn’t on their bucket list.”

“You’re asking an awful lot of one man with one gun.”

“Willie will help.”

Armanti looked at Willie Varner, who for once kept his mouth shut.

I explained, “I don’t want the guards in the compound taking hostages, and I don’t want them following us. If we can’t take them down quick and fast, we’re going to have to clean that camp building by building.”

“Okay,” Hall said, and shrugged. FEMA’s reputation was going downhill fast.

“Willis and Travis, you guys are the front shooters. You are to wait one minute after Sarah and I go through the gate, exactly sixty seconds, then shoot the guys in the guard towers beside the road. They may have a machine gun in each tower, although I doubt it. But they might. Shoot each of them and toss a grenade up into the tower, then do the guys at the front gate.”

“I’ll take the south tower,” Willis said, and Travis nodded.

“Then come into the compound. Drive through the compound and kill anyone in FEMA green. Try not to shoot any of the detainees. My idea is to let the guards get out of the compound through the back gate before we lower the boom. When the shooting starts out back, go help with the rear towers and anyone in FEMA green still standing. No FEMA people are to be left alive.”

“Got it, Tommy.”

“Wish I had a better plan,” I admitted, “and I wish we had a few days to sniff this out, but we don’t have any more time. It’s tonight or never. Any questions?”

We cleaned up a few details, then mounted up.

Another half-assed plan with insufficient reconnaissance. That was a prescription to get my guys killed, as all of us knew, but it couldn’t be helped. We didn’t have days to set this up.

Sarah and I rolled up to the main gate of the compound in our brand-new stolen FEMA truck and I leaned out the window, which was down. I had my Kimber in my left hand, out of sight behind the door.

Three guys were lounging around, two sucking cigarettes and one arranging a pinch of Skoal in his mouth. One of the smokers looked inquisitive.

“The guy who runs this place?”

“Sluggo Sweatt.” He pointed. “That building on the left.”

“Thanks.”

I rolled on over and parked in front. I holstered the Kimber.

“Sluggo Sweatt is on the White House staff,” Sarah said.

“I’ve heard the name. Are you ready?”

“Let’s go in.”

We turned off the engine, left the keys in the ignition, walked up the three steps to the porch and went inside. The receptionist’s desk was empty, but the next room had a window and a desk with Sweatt seated behind it in an executive chair that he had apparently liberated from Office Depot. Sarah and I pulled our pistols and pointed them at him.

“See who else is in here,” I told Sarah. As she went down the hallway looking in offices I scanned the room.

“You have precisely ten seconds to tell me where Jake Grafton is, or I’m going to shoot you.” The words were no more out of my mouth than I heard M4s begin to fire bursts.

Sweatt looked startled. His eyes went to the windows. I fired a shot into his computer, and the bits of glass flew out. “Pay attention,” I said.

I heard a shot from down the hallway. Then another.

His eyes were frozen on the pistol in my hand now. One of the interesting things about a .45 is how big the muzzle looks when it is pointed right at your eyes. Only a half inch in diameter, the hole in the barrel looks like a howitzer at close range. I lined up the sights and shot his right ear off.

He jerked and blood flew all over the wall behind him as a fusillade of M4 fire behind me filled the room with noise. Then a hand grenade went off. And another.

Sluggo got the message. “He’s in a cell, down the hallway.”

Sarah came trotting back. I gave her the news.

“The keys?”

They were on Sluggo’s desk. Sarah grabbed them and ran. “If he isn’t there,” I told Sweatt, “I’m going to start shooting parts off.”

More M4 bursts, a cacophony. Blood ran down Sluggo’s neck and his face looked pasty.

In a moment Sarah was back. “He’s in terrible shape. A lot of broken ribs.”

“You keep Mr. Sweatt occupied. If he twitches, empty your pistol into him.”

She stood precisely in front of the desk and used both hands to steady the gun on his chest.

I ran outside, grabbed a medic’s pack from the bed of the truck, glanced at the gate and saw all three guards sprawled there. I ran back inside. If anyone shot at me they missed. Still some shooting going on. It would have been nice to know how many FEMA dudes we had strapped on, but we hadn’t had time for an extended recon.

I found Grafton lying on the floor in a cell, the door of which was standing open.

“Tommy,” he whispered. “Lots of broken ribs on both sides, I think.”

I cut his shirt off with my fighting knife. His sides were black and blue. Digging into the medic pack, I got out several rolls of gauze. “I gotta sit you up, sir.”

“Do it.”

I took his arms, which were bruised badly where he’d tried to cover up, and pulled him into a sitting position. He groaned. Working as quickly as possible, I wrapped him in gauze from his armpits down to his belly button. Needed three rolls to do it. Then I began wrapping him with surgical tape, as tightly as I could.

A few more shots. I was listening for the sound of a machine gun, but I hadn’t heard it yet. “Who did this?” I asked.

“Sweatt had it done. Wanted a confession. Said if I didn’t sign, he was going to personally help beat me to death tomorrow.”

“So we’re right in the nick. You lucky dog.”

Now I heard the stutters of a machine gun.

Armanti Hall had set up the M279 beside a small wooden building with a good view of the guard towers and the barracks. The fact that the only lights were in the compound and the towers were backlit probably helped. The guards, one in each tower, were looking into the light, watching the people in the compound and smoking. Armanti got the belt arranged in the gun and chambered a cartridge. When he had that attended to, he gave Willie Varner four hand grenades.

“I want you to go around on the other side of this building,” Armanti said, “where you can see the front of the barracks. Then put all four of your hand grenades on the ground. Wait until I fire, then pick up one grenade. See this pin on each one — hold the lever, pull the pin, then wind up and throw it in from the outfield. Pick up another, pull the pin, and throw it. Do it until you have thrown all four. Then lay down, right where you are, and don’t move a muscle until you hear me call your name. I don’t want you running around out here in the dark. I’ll be shooting at everything that moves. If anyone comes up on you, play dead.”

“Okay, man.”

“Can you do it?”

“I guess.” Willie Varner took a deep breath and exhaled explosively.

Five minutes later the shooting started, and to Armanti’s amazement, the man in the north tower climbed down and ran for the barracks. The man in the south tower wasn’t far behind. Thirty seconds later, as gunfire popped in the front of the compound, guards in FEMA green came running through the compound toward the back gate, jerked it open — apparently it wasn’t locked — and ran for their cars or the barracks.

Armanti waited until no one wearing green wanted out of the compound, then opened fire.

I heard the M279 open up, followed by grenade blasts. I hoped that was Armanti Hall behind the compound gunning every FEMA guard who had came out the back gate and jumped in a car or pickup. Or anyone who wanted out of the barracks to join in the fray, if there was a barracks back there.

When I finished with the tape, Grafton said, “Cut this jumpsuit off. I shit in it.”

I knew that by the smell, but was too polite to mention it. After I used my knife and he was naked except for the tape, I got a look at his swollen balls. They were bruised almost black. I helped Grafton to his feet. “You’re going to have to walk, Admiral.”

“Give me a shoulder to hang on to.” I put the medic bag over my shoulder, put my left arm around Grafton, and took an experimental step. He wasn’t going to go down; that was one tough man. I drew the Kimber and led him down the hall.

Silence had descended on the compound. Sweatt was still in his chair, holding his ear. Blood was oozing through his fingers and running down his neck, staining his collared shirt.

Grafton paused in front of the desk and picked up a watch, put it on. Then he reached for a cell phone and handed it to me. He put a hand on my Kimber and I gave it to him.

“Sluggo, you were born eighty years too late,” Jake Grafton said as he looked down to check the safety on the .45. “You should have been an SS colonel in charge of Auschwitz or Dachau.”

He pointed the pistol and shot Sluggo in the center of his forehead. The back of the man’s head exploded onto the wall and his body rocked back in the chair. The corpse stayed in the chair, its arms dangling, its eyes pointed at the ceiling.

Grafton handed me back my gun.

“Let’s go, Tommy. Sarah.”

We both helped him down the steps and into the right seat of the pickup. Then Sarah ran around and entered through the driver’s door and scooted over.

A knot of civilians was standing there. Willis and Travis were policing up weapons and tossing them into a stack in the yard.

Jack Yocke and Sal Molina came over to the right-side window, which was down. “We want to go with you, Admiral.”

“Get in the back.”

I addressed the crowd while Yocke and Molina climbed over the tailgate. “Folks, your guards have skedaddled or died, I am not sure which. Help yourselves to the weapons. You must decide if you wish to remain here or take your chances outside. We can’t stay, and you know they’ll be back, sooner or later, when they figure out what went down here. All I can tell you is, good luck.”

I got in the pickup, carefully backed up, then put it in drive and steered toward the gate. I ran over a body of a FEMA warrior sprawled there because I was in no mood to get out and move the corpse or wait for someone else to do it.

“Who’d you shoot?” I asked Sarah.

“A couple of men who thought I wouldn’t.”

“Good.”

“This pistol doesn’t kick as much as I thought it would.” Oh, man! I glanced at her, but she was looking straight ahead at the road.

The breeze coming in the open windows felt good.

“Where are we going, Tommy?” Grafton asked.

“A place I know. You need a vacation and Sarah needs access to a real bathroom.”

“Where?” he said. That was Jake Grafton. No nonsense at all.

“The CIA safe farm near Greenbank.”

He grunted. Then his head tilted back onto the headrest and he was asleep, or maybe passed out. He had had a really bad time.