Liberty's Last Stand

TWENTY-FOUR

Texas Ranger Parker Konczyk went to see Colonel Tenney of the TxDPS. “We think there’s a sniper casing the roofs of buildings around the capitol,” he said. “He’s dressed in a jumpsuit that bears the logo of an air conditioning company. We spotted him with a drone.”

“What air conditioning company?”

Konczyk told him. “We talked to the owner. He had the van for sale and an Anglo came along, paid him ten grand for it. He wanted fifteen, but the most the guy would pay was ten, cash, and the owner was way behind on his child support, so he took it. He signed the title and never even got the guy’s name.”

Konczyk used an iPad to show Colonel Tenney video from the drone. The man in a jumpsuit on the roof of a bank three hundred yards from the capitol didn’t even bother looking at the rooftop-mounted HVAC units, but inspected the roof and lased the capitol and some other buildings, including the hotel with the underground parking garage that was being used by the Texas government as a bomb-proof bunker. “That location hasn’t been published, but half the people in Austin know the government is down there.”

“A rangefinder?”

“It looks like a laser rangefinder, a small unit that he holds in both hands up to his eye.”

The picture on the iPad went to another building and apparently the same man scouted out that roof. Finally, pictures from the drone of the van parked by the curb.

“So what is your recommendation?”

“Right now all we have this guy for is not registering the van in his own name, and a few trespass charges. If we arrest him he’ll be out on bail in an hour. And he might not be a sniper; he might be a scout.”

“Go on.”

“Or we can wait until someone appears on the roof with a rifle.”

They discussed it, and decided that the best course was to keep the van under constant surveillance, and the best way to do that and not spook the suspect was to use drones. Konczyk only had access to one.

“Get a couple more from the National Guard,” Colonel Tenney said. “Let’s just watch this guy for a while, find out where he is staying and who he sees, and try to figure out how big this conspiracy really is, if there is one.”

Chairman of the JCS General Martin L. Wynette was working late at his office in the Pentagon. The problem he faced was the disintegration of the United States armed forces, all of them, Army, Navy, Air Force, and Marines. The reports from commanders all over the nation were appalling: huge numbers of troops were not available for duty. In some major commands the AWOL rate approached forty percent. Another thirty or forty percent refused to bear arms against Americans, or as they phrased it, to fight for that son of a bitch Soetoro. Sailors on navy ships were refusing to go to sea. Commandos and paratroopers were refusing to go to Texas, Oklahoma, or Alabama, which had just declared its independence. Pilots were refusing to fly, which made it impossible to get fighters aloft to protect military targets or to attack targets in Texas. The most powerful military force on the planet was shattering like old crystal right before his eyes.

Maybe Soetoro was right, Wynette mused. Maybe it was time to start standing some people against the wall and shooting them to inspire the rest.

Wynette and several senior members of the JCS staff were trying to figure out just how many willing fighters Barry Soetoro actually had and how to get the willing to where they could fight when the news came in that the interstate and railroad bridges over the Mississippi at Vicksburg had been bombed and were impassable. Even as he tried to digest this information, he learned that bridges were being bombed from Baton Rouge to well above Memphis. Four bridges in Memphis had gone into the river. It was thought that the bombers were B-52s from Barksdale, but of course that was merely speculation.

On top of all of this were the plights of cities such as Washington, Baltimore, Philadelphia, metropolitan New York, and Boston. And Pittsburgh, Cleveland, Chicago, Milwaukee, Detroit, St. Louis, and Los Angeles. For seventy-five years architects had created urban buildings that were sealed units and uninhabitable without electrical power. Millions of city dwellers were abandoning the cities for the supposedly better life in the countryside, where some planned to throw themselves on the mercy of the rustics while others planned to rob, steal, and kill their way to a better life.

Wynette wondered what the heck was going to come of all this. According to radio reports, they were partying in Montgomery tonight. The governor had made a speech, a “rant” according to the reporter on the radio, in which he told Barry Soetoro to go to hell and do something anatomically impossible to himself when he got there. The lights were back on in most of Alabama, and the governor vowed they were going to stay on even if the Alabama National Guard had to defend the plants against Soetoro’s troops and thugs. He also vowed that a copy of the Ten Commandments were going up in every courtroom and classroom in Alabama; if the justices of the United States Supreme Court didn’t like it, he said, they could come to Alabama and take them down, if they could.

It was obvious to Martin Wynette that Soetoro’s propaganda campaign to blame the electrical outages on Texans and right-wing fanatics hadn’t moved the needle. Barry Soetoro and his minions were taking the blame.

Wynette was trying to put this mess into perspective when the assistant chairman, a four-star admiral, knocked on the sill of the open door and, when Wynette glanced up, strolled into his office and closed the door behind him. He was the only officer in the navy that outranked the chief of naval operations, Admiral Cart McKiernan.

His name was Hiram Gregory Ray. He was a feisty little cuss, a fighter pilot, and somewhere along the line he had acquired the nickname of Sugar. He was anything but sweet, but the people who worked for him regarded him in awe. Brilliant, technically savvy, aggressive, and competent, he could fire up a room full of sailors and he could kiss a congressman’s ass so subtly and perfectly that the bastard would fart red, white, and blue for months.

Sugar Ray knew Wynette’s peccadillos and usually tried not to fret the boss unnecessarily. After a day spent watching the United States and the armed forces come apart at the seams, he was in no mood tonight to stroke the chairman.

“I think we can wave good-bye to America,” he said, “unless that damned fool in the White House turns the juice back on. New York, Chicago, and LA are in meltdown. Soldiers, sailors, and Marines deserting in droves, refusing to enforce Jade Helm mandates, refusing to fight, refusing to back up the police… Why in the name of God did that idiot turn off the power?”

“He blamed it on the Texans,” Wynette said sourly. “He’s a disciple of Joseph Goebbels. The truth will never catch up to a lie. ‘If you like your doctor, you can keep him. If you like your health insurance, you can keep it.’ He’s that kind of guy.”

Sugar Ray tossed a message on the desk. “Here’s a tidbit that will make your evening. Soldiers at Fort Benning are deserting and taking their weapons with them. They are driving out of the base in trucks. The CG there says all order and discipline are lost. If he tries to arrest people, he is afraid that the MPs will refuse to obey, and if they do obey, he’s afraid the people he wants to arrest will shoot back. He asked the chief of staff for guidance.”

Wynette picked up the message and read it. “A complete breakdown of order and discipline,” he muttered.

“I think it’s high time we arrest Soetoro and take over the government.”

Martin L. Wynette stared at Sugar Ray for several seconds, took a deep breath, and said, “I’ll pretend you didn’t say that.”

“Oh, shove it, Marty! Soetoro is attempting to become a dictator, and he has got to be stopped. We should arrest him or shoot him. Personally, I’d like to shoot him, and I volunteer to pull the trigger, but I’ll settle for arrest and solitary confinement.”

Wynette shook the message at Ray. “And just who the hell do you think we’re going to lead over to Pennsylvania Avenue to do all this arresting? Or will it be just you and me with a couple of pistols and any beggars with signs that we can pick up on street corners along the way?”

Sugar Ray cocked his head as he looked at his boss. “Have you sent any of these numbers—” he gestured at the messages on Wynette’s desk “—over to the White House?”

“Not yet. Tomorrow morning is soon enough.”

“What do you think the reaction will be?”

“By God, I don’t—”

Sugar Ray interrupted and finished the sentence for him. “You don’t know. Civil society in this country is coming apart in the large cities. Old people and babies are dying like flies in un-air-conditioned apartments and tenements; people are fighting for food, looting grocery stores, banks, liquor, and jewelry stores; breaking into ATMs; shooting at police at every opportunity… and the military is collapsing. Man, we went back to the stone age in less than ten days! I hope you appreciate the delicious irony of the fact that Soetoro fucked the very people who voted for him.”

Wynette grunted. He thought political loyalty was an oxymoron.

Sugar Ray wasn’t done. He said to the general, “Tomorrow morning Soetoro will probably want some heads, and yours is first on the block.”

Wynette didn’t reply to that comment.

“But that’s in the short term,” the admiral said, dismissed that little problem with a flip of his hand. “Eventually Soetoro is going down hard, and anyone who saluted and said, ‘Yes, sir,’ may go on the gallows with him. Hitler’s and Mussolini’s generals didn’t fare so well.”

Admiral Ray stood and leaned toward Wynette, braced himself with his fingertips on the general’s desk, and said, “My assessment is that this situation is completely out of Soetoro’s control. If we lock up Soetoro and everyone else in the White House we can lay hands on, maybe we can stop a humanitarian disaster and save millions of lives. Maybe we can even save our miserable country and some of those morons who voted for Soetoro… twice.”

Wynette looked at Sugar Ray for a long moment, then asked softly, “Who have you talked to about this?”

Ray straightened up and took a deep breath. “All the other chiefs. I was hoping it would be unanimous, but it isn’t. The commandant and army chief are with me, but CNO and the air force want to think about things.”

“Well,” Wynette said dryly, “treason is a big step.”

“Yeah — and Barry Soetoro is striding out. How long are we going to wait, Marty, before we call him on it? In a better day to come, Americans are going to ask that question of us.”

Wynette sat stolidly, eyes focused on infinity.

Sugar Ray shrugged, then headed for the door. “I’m going home and getting some sleep,” he tossed over his shoulder, and pulled the door shut behind him.

Walter Ohnigian actually flew two flights that night, and landed as dawn streaked the eastern sky. The B-52s were safely back on the ground at Barksdale and the Mississippi bridges all had at least one span in the river, from Baton Rouge to Memphis.

Ohnigian was numb. He let his wingman do the debrief while he stretched out on a couch in the ops building.

So Johnny O’Day was dead and he had killed him. Holy mother…

What was he going to say to Johnny’s wife, Ruby? Two little kids…

How was he going to tell Susie, his wife, about this? She and Ruby had double-dated the roommates. The marriages were just a year apart.

Staring at the ceiling, he decided that Ruby and Susie might forgive him, someday. The real problem was how he was going to forgive himself.

At Fort Carson in Colorado Springs, Major General Douglas Seuss was trying to figure out how to comply with Pentagon demands that he send an armored column from the 4th Infantry Division to fight the rebels in Texas. Most of his soldiers were refusing to fight fellow Americans, and Washington was demanding court-martials. That didn’t strike Doug Seuss as a productive idea. He needed soldiers who would fight, not people looking for an opportunity to desert to avoid a combat they thought morally wrong.

Seuss had been trading messages with the Pentagon. West Texas was the finest terrain on this side of the Atlantic for tank operations, but he was unwilling to commit his tanks without air protection. There was no place on the naked plains for tanks to hide if they were attacked from the air. Seuss told the generals in the Pentagon that he was unwilling to sacrifice his troops needlessly to make political points. “You must guarantee me air cover for my tanks or they will not be committed,” he said flatly. His worry was that he would get the promise of air cover, commit the tanks, and friendly fighters would never appear while Texas fighters would. That, he thought, was the way the wind was blowing.

Sifting through the readiness reports and the results of interviews with his soldiers, he found a company of the 10th Special Forces Group had sixty percent of their troops willing to fight. He called the colonel in command of the group, Colonel Kevin Crislip, into his office. After a heart-to-heart talk, he decided to send the colonel and his volunteers to Texas to blow up some highway and railroad bridges.

“We’ve got to do something,” Seuss said. They looked at maps and decided to blow some bridges on U.S. Route 287 north of Amarillo and several bridges on the nearby railroad. Route 287 was a major truck route between the Pacific Northwest via Denver and Dallas and east Texas. The railroad carried a lot of freight. Bridges were good targets for tactical air, yet the Pentagon was demanding action from the Carson troops, so the ball was in Seuss’ court.

Crislip wanted to use CH-47 Chinooks to insert and extract his men, and Seuss agreed. In at dusk, out at dawn was a tactic that would minimize the chance of air attack while the commandos were on the ground. Both officers thought the chances of the Special Forces troopers running into Texas ground forces were slim or none at all, but just to be sure Predators would be launched tomorrow at dawn and reconnoiter. Tomorrow the Green Berets would ride Chinooks to the Army’s Pinon Canyon Maneuver Site on the Purgatoire River, and launch from there for Texas at dusk.

As Colonel Crislip was leaving, Seuss said, “And colonel — I never dreamed I’d have to say this — make sure the men you take are politically reliable.” That was the jargon of the latest Pentagon directive. General Seuss found that phrase offensive in the extreme, smacking as it did of the old soviet military and their political commissars, but what could one do?

General Martin L. Wynette was a worried man when he rode to the White House that Friday morning, the second day of September, in his limousine. Arizona had declared its independence, the fourth state to do so, along with Texas, Oklahoma, and Alabama. Other states were meeting this afternoon and tonight and no doubt some of them would pass declarations of independence.

The people of the big cities from coast to coast were about out of endurance. Without electricity, there was no way to escape the summer heat, no running water, no way to flush toilets, no way to preserve food. Soon there would be no food to preserve, since trucks couldn’t deliver without fuel, and even if they could, they wouldn’t deliver to looted stores. Calls to police, fire departments, and paramedics went unanswered. Houses burned down with no one there to rescue the kids or fight the blaze. People died from heart attacks because they couldn’t get to the hospital. People ran out of medications and couldn’t get more. Given time, people would learn to cope, those who survived, but in the interim a lot of people were going to die.

In Chicago, the Black Panthers had attacked a police station. It looked as if a race war was about to explode in the city. The mayor was begging the governor for National Guard troops.

Wynette’s aide, Major General Stout, wisely kept his mouth firmly shut that morning as the limo carried them through the streets of the nation’s capital.

Inside the executive mansion, the soldiers found the president flanked by his chief of staff, Al Grantham, and his senior political advisor, Sulana Schanck.

“The Texans bombed the bridges across the lower Mississippi last night, Mr. President,” Wynette said. “The reports we received at the Pentagon said all the highway and rail bridges were down from Baton Rouge to above Memphis. It’s going to take at least a month, perhaps six weeks, before we are ready to mount an invasion.”

“Why not drop paratroopers?”

Wynette explained that lightly armed paratroopers didn’t have the combat power to hold out long without relief. They were shock troops and not equipped to invade and conquer enemy territory.

“And then there is the problem of numbers. We are having extreme difficulty keeping people who will fight. About half the army and air force is AWOL. The navy’s numbers are better only because they have ships at sea. There are dozens of ships on the east coast that are unable to get under way because the crews have abandoned the ships.”

Sulana Schanck’s eyes narrowed and her voice was hard. “It is time you shot some people, General. I think perhaps ten people from every unit, while the rest of them watch.”

Al Grantham seemed inspired. “You’ve got to teach those damned kids that they have no choice. They are in the United States armed forces, and by God, they’ll fight or die.”

“As I’ve said before, I don’t have the authority to issue such an order,” Wynette objected. Indeed he didn’t. The Uniform Code of Military Justice didn’t provide for summary executions. Islamic militaries might do them, Wynette knew, but those of civilized nations didn’t.

“You do now,” Grantham said. “The president has declared martial law and he is the commander in chief.”

Wynette recognized that he was being made the fall guy. “I’ll need a direct order signed by the president,” he insisted.

“No, by God, you won’t,” Grantham roared. “You are going to take the responsibility, General. You! You will write the order and sign it. You will have it transmitted to every major command and ship. You will demand that the commanding generals or officers or whoever is in charge find ten people who refuse to fight and have them executed. The names will be reported to you. Have I made myself clear?”

“Write it out, Grantham.”

“No,” Barry Soetoro said in his coldest voice. “You’ll do it, General. That’s a direct order from me. And summary justice for those who disobey orders applies to the Pentagon too, to the E-Ring.”

So there it was. Shoot people or we shoot you.

While Martin Wynette was swallowing that, Sulana Schanck started in. “We hear that there is some talk in the E-Ring about a coup. What have you heard about that, General?”

Wynette’s first impulse was to deny he had heard anything, but under the stares of Soetoro, Grantham, and the bitch Schanck, he decided that answer might get him shot. There was no telling what they had heard, who had whispered, if anyone had. Schanck was probably just shooting in the dark. Perhaps. Or perhaps not.

Soetoro smacked the table with his open palm. “Answer, damn it. Don’t sit there thinking up a lie.”

“The assistant chairman, Admiral Sugar Ray, told me that he, the army chief of staff, and the air force chief of staff did discuss a coup. That is all I know.”

“Did you put him under arrest?”

“No.”

“Ray discusses treason with you and you do not arrest him? Whose side are you on, General?”

For the first time in many years, Martin Wynette felt the cold hand of fear grip him with paralyzing fierceness. He had a powerful urge to urinate and somehow managed to hold it in. But he lost control of his face, and knew it.

Soetoro took obvious pleasure at Wynette’s discomfort. He glanced at Schanck and made a little motion with his head. She got up and left the room.

“Did you order the Tomahawks launched?” Al Grantham demanded.

“Yes. We should have waited for night, but the missiles will be on their way momentarily, as soon as they can be programmed. Two destroyers will shoot fifty each. They will take out the twenty largest power plants in Texas.”

Grantham nodded. Once.

Wynette said, “All of the missiles won’t get through. In the daytime fighters can find cruise missiles and shoot them down.”

“They might get a few,” Barry Soetoro said, “and the people of Texas will hear and see them flying over, on their way to cause havoc.” He smiled. “The missiles will deliver an unmistakable message that we are in charge and that disobedience has its price.”

Martin Wynette was enough of a soldier to know that using military weapons to deliver political messages was a good way to lose a war, but he held his tongue. Hitler had tried delivering messages with V-1 and V-2 rockets and that hadn’t worked so well. Lyndon Johnson tried to send explosive messages to the North Vietnamese and failed rather dismally. Truly, Wynette thought, Soetoro was a fool.

Armanti Hall and I were exploring the roads in his pickup truck when we saw a little house fifty yards or so from the road, a strip of twelve-foot-wide asphalt that wound around over the hills following the contours. It was a nice enough little clapboard house, but the reason it attracted my attention was the large garden beside it. The flora it contained was big and tall.

We parked and strolled over. We didn’t get very far before we realized that lying near the garden gate was a body.

As we walked up I could see it was a man. He had that totally collapsed look of the dead that are in the process of returning to the earth. From ten feet away, I could see the dark mottled color of his skin and the bloating of his abdominal cavity, so I guessed he had been dead at least a day, and perhaps two.

“Don’t go any closer to that gate,” a woman’s voice said.

We turned to face the house. A small old woman with iron-gray hair was sitting in a rocking chair under a roof on a flagstone patio that was just inches above ground level. Across her knees was a lever-action rifle. Her right hand rested on the stock above the trigger.

“Looks like this gent expired suddenly,” I said conversationally.

“It come on him quick,” she acknowledged. “I gave him fair warnin’ and he decided he needed my tomatoes and beans more than I did. Didn’t think I would shoot, I suspect.”

“Did you know him?”

“Not by name. Seems like I seen him across the mountain at Walmart from time to time, but only to nod to. He was one of the hollow rats, I’m thinkin’, used to sittin’ on his porch drinkin’ beer, waitin’ for the welfare check. That and huntin’ and fishin’ all year ’round. Doubt if he had a garden or much food laid by.”

“So he wanted yours.”

“So he did. He don’t need it now.”

“Where’s his ride? How did he get here?”

“The people he was with drove off after the shot like the hounds of hell were chasin’ them. I thought they’d go get the sheriff, but I ain’t seen hide nor hair of a lawman, unless you’re lawmen.”

“We aren’t. My name is Tommy Carmellini. My friend is Armanti Hall.”

“My name is Angelica Price,” she said. “I see you’re wearing pistols. Are you with the gover’ment?”

“No,” I said. “The pistols are just fashion statements in these troubled times, strictly for social purposes. I’m a peaceful man, myself.”

“We don’t see many black folks up this way. Wasn’t ever ver’ many in these mountains, and after the Civil War most of those few traipsed off for the big cities and bright lights.” She said that as if she could remember it. “Mr. Hall, you’re the first black man I’ve seen in years.”

“I don’t know whether that’s good or bad,” Armanti told her. “If I stay I’ll have to find me a white girl, I suppose.”

Angelica Price supposed so too.

The garden didn’t have a weed in it. Rich dark earth was heaped up along several rows of plants that I thought were probably potatoes. There were several rows of tall plants tied up with strips of rag loaded with green tomatoes, and row after row of beans climbing poles, with cucumbers growing among them. A fence surrounded the whole thing, which was perhaps forty yards wide and sixty or seventy yards long. Above the fence were a couple strands of wire that raised the fence too high for a deer to jump. Just to make sure, strands of wire ran across the top of the garden festooned with strips of cloth that flapped in the breeze. Over it all was fishing line strung from pole to pole to discourage birds.

Beyond the garden was a pasture. Up higher on the hill, right on top, I could see a few headstones sticking up inside a wooden fence, which apparently had been erected to keep cattle away from the stones. Three black cattle grazed on the hillside. To the right, almost behind the house, was a three-sided pole shed containing piles of loose hay inside a fence with an open gate. Chickens and a rooster or two wandered around inside and outside the fence.

“If you’d like, Mrs. Price, we’ll tuck this gent under the sod for you. Say… up there on the hill in that cemetery.”

She turned that offer over, then said, “No. I think we’ll leave him lay right there as a warnin’ to any other fool that happens by. He’s already startin’ to get ripe and I figure he’ll get riper, but I can put up with it. And I don’t want him up there on the hill with my folks and my man.”

“He is getting a little strong,” Armanti remarked, and headed back down the hill toward his truck.

I liked the old lady, who looked to be in her mid-seventies. She was spry and lean, so it wouldn’t have surprised me to learn she was ten years older. It’s a wonder some lonely man didn’t try to marry her years ago. Maybe some did and were refused.

“After he gets rotted down some, I’ll put him on the compost pile,” Angelica Price said.

It took me a moment to get my head around that. Then I asked, “So how are you getting along without electricity?”

“Just fine. Only used it for lights. Got candles and a kerosene lantern, a wood stove and an outhouse, so life is goin’ just the way it has for years, twenty-two since my man died. I got ever’thin’ I need right here, young man. I was born in this house and hope to live out the rest of my days here, on this piece of earth. This is a good place.”

I had to agree. Across the valley I could see clouds building. The breeze, smelling of the land as summer came to an end, was rippling the leaves of the distant trees, making the forest look like the surface of the sea. And it was quiet; the only sound was the whisper of the wind.

“Good luck to you, Mrs. Price,” I said, and walked down the hill to where Armanti was waiting in the pickup.

As we drove off, I told Armanti about Mrs. Price’s remark about the compost pile.

All he said was, “I saw plenty of ’em in Afghanistan and Syria that I would have enjoyed tossing on a compost pile. Killed a few of ’em myself. God bless her.”