Liberty's Last Stand

TWENTY-SEVEN

The interview with the Texas president Jack Hays was broadcast via satellite to those stations and networks still broadcasting in an America with limited electrical assets. It also was soon on the internet. Yet it was on clandestine radio stations that it was picked up by the refugees hidden in the CIA safe farm in the Allegheny Mountains.

I was there when it was played on the recorder that Friday night to the assembled audience in the cabin on the mountainside. I had spent the evening worrying about what would happen when we were discovered, which was bound to happen in the near future. I inspected the machine-gun pits, strategically located around a kill zone in front of the house where any vehicles would have to come to a stop, and inspected each and every rifle and pistol and AT4. I was a worried man, and tired of waiting.

Sarah Houston watched me fret and said nothing. Perhaps she was becoming fatalistic. It would be a miracle if any of us got out of this mess alive. I wondered if she was resigned to the inevitable.

Yet she was at my side when the tape played, and Jack Hays’ clear, confident baritone voice spoke of the problems of the United States and the future of Texas. I watched Jake Grafton’s face — the man should have been a poker master in Vegas — and the much more expressive faces of Sal Molina and Jack Yocke. And, I confess, cynic that I was, I wondered how all this squared with the White House plotting that Grafton had overheard. I had quizzed Sarah about that — she said she had listened to little of it. Grafton kept her too busy with other things. But, she said, Jake Grafton had listened. By the hour. Night after night. He knew!

He knew what?

When the tape was over, Sal Molina spoke first. “When Puerto Rico and Illinois melt down, America has two choices. We can let those two go bankrupt and default on their bonds, or the federal government can take over their debts. If the latter, the states as we know them are doomed: They will cease to exist as sovereign entities. The federal government — actually the executive — will be the ruler of America, able to dictate the smallest decisions, the minutiae of American life, dictate how it will be for his allies and his enemies, of whom he has a great many.”

Yocke snorted. “It will never happen,” he declared.

Molina merely gave him a derisive glance, stood, and went up the stairs to bed. Yocke piddled and diddled, looked out the window a bit, then followed Molina upstairs.

Grafton and I were the only two left in the room. I decided to brace him. “How long are we going to hide here?”

He looked at me with two raised eyebrows. “Are you getting impatient?”

“Yes, sir.”

He nodded, readjusted his fanny without wincing, and sipped at a cup of cold coffee that rested on the stand beside him. After all his years in the navy, it seemed that he was impervious to caffeine.

“The whole country is going to hell,” I said, “and I feel like a tit on a boar sitting around here. I’m ready to shoot somebody.”

“I thought you did that earlier today.”

“It wasn’t enough. I want to shoot some of those Soetoro sons of bitches, the assholes who decided to rule America and everyone in it. I want to kill those bastards for what they did to my country.”

He grunted.

“We can’t just sit here! What about your wife? Your daughter and her husband? What about America?”

He smiled at me, which drove my blood pressure up another ten points. “Tommy, there is a time for everything. This pot has to simmer before the country is ready to throw Soetoro out. We’re almost there, I suspect, but not quite. Another day or two, then we’ll hit the road. We’ll have lots of help.”

“Oh,” I said, less than enthusiastically. “And where the hell are we going?” I wanted to be sure the old fart had a plan.

“Why, to Washington of course.”

“And this help? Like who?”

“We’ll pick them up on the way.”

“You hope!”

Grafton looked at me askance. “You don’t really believe in the American people, do you?”

“I’ve killed too many of ’em.” He didn’t say anything, so I added, “They voted for Soetoro twice. They’ve sat on their collective thumbs watching the bastard pervert the Constitution, lie like a dog, and poison race relations, and they haven’t done anything about it other than elect some gutless Republicans who refuse to stand up to Soetoro. The American people don’t seem to give a damn about their country or the future that their kids are going to have to live in. Americans just don’t care anymore. Naw, I don’t think much of the American people. I wish I’d gotten out years ago.”

When I wound down he cocked his head and looked me in the eyes as he said, “These are the descendants of the people who hacked out homes in the wilderness. They fought Indians, the British, the Mexicans, and each other. Over a half million Americans died in the Civil War. They peopled a continent and built a nation. They helped win two wars in Europe and defeated Japan. They fought in Vietnam to help a poor people resist communism. They’ve done their best to fight terrorism and help people in the third world get a leg up. You grossly underestimate them.

“True, they voted for Soetoro, and a lot of them did it because they naively thought Soetoro would be good for race relations in America, and they thought that was a larger good. This race thing…,” he shook his head, “… people want America to include everybody. Martin Luther King left a huge legacy, and America wants his vision, wants an American to be judged by his character rather than the color of his skin. That is the society we want to live in, but we’re not there yet. Our first black president got into office not because of his character or his politics, but because he’s half-black — or in the parlance of today, black. He gets away with pissing on the Constitution because he’s black. He gets away with lying because he’s black. He gets away with poisoning race relations because he’s black. Even the liberals on the Supreme Court have given him pass after pass.”

Grafton sighed. “His time has run out. The American people have gotten a good look at Soetoro this past week, and I don’t think they like what they saw. I thank my stars that I’m not Barry Soetoro. He won’t like his future.”

I wanted to believe him, but I didn’t. For once I did the smart thing: I kept my mouth shut.

“Help me to bed,” Jake Grafton said.

As I hoisted him, my resolve melted. I asked, “Do you really think Joe Six-Pack and the missus will shoot at Soetoro’s thugs?”

“This republic is their heritage,” he said. “If they don’t value it enough to fight for it, a great many men have wasted their lives fighting for them.”

The next morning, Saturday, the first day of the three-day Labor Day weekend, the radio gave us the news that seven more states — Kansas, Nebraska, South and North Dakota, Wyoming, Idaho, and New Mexico — had declared their independence. Georgia had tried to, but federal paramilitary police broke up the legislature and arrested half the politicians. In South Carolina, a gun battle had broken out in the statehouse and at least ten people had died.

The governor of New Mexico read a statement to the press after the Declaration of Independence was read. “The proud citizens of New Mexico will never escape poverty unless the flood of illegal immigrants from Mexico and Central America is drastically curtailed. New Mexicans are being robbed of the American dream, the dream that by hard work and thrift they can improve their lot in life and provide a better life for their children. We have taken a stand here tonight. Let history be our judge.”

“The liberals are going down hard,” Jake Grafton remarked.

“You knew they wouldn’t go easy,” Sal Molina shot back.

“Yes. I did know that,” Grafton replied, glancing at Molina’s face. I was watching him. No doubt that is why he kept his mouth so firmly shut about Soetoro’s plans, which he had overheard on Sarah Houston’s White House bugging operation. I wondered what Molina’s reaction would be when he learned — if he ever did — that Grafton had been listening to all the White House bullshit and plotting for the last six months, including Molina’s.

That Saturday was the day the Mexican army invaded Southern California. Maybe the Mexicans thought they could carve off a chunk for themselves, or maybe the troops were funded by the drug cartels that wanted their own country.

As the day wore on, we heard that the Marines at Camp Pendleton were fighting back. All up and down the west coast, U.S. military units raced south to engage. Two carriers left San Diego and began launching strikes against the invading troops and fighting to maintain air superiority.

When I had had all of the news I could stand, I went out onto the porch, carrying my M4. Sarah joined me and we climbed the hill and sat under a tree. A breeze whispered in the pines, and we sat for so long and so quietly that a doe and her two fawns eventually wandered by.

When they were out of sight, she whispered, “Life goes on.”

“With or without us,” I said.

Ten or so minutes later an airplane broke the silence, flying low, just above the trees. A piston-engine plane. Then I got a glimpse of it through the forest canopy. A tail-dragger. A little Cessna by the look of it. It circled the safe house twice, and the pilot probably got a look at the trucks, even though they were parked under the trees.

I was up and running, searching for a hole in the canopy so I could track the plane, which was still humming pleasantly. The sound was fading though. Then and I saw it in the distance, to the south, apparently circling to land on the grass runway in the valley.

“Come on,” I shouted at Sarah. We trotted down the hill, jumped into a pickup, and raced down the road toward the valley.

The little plane was sitting by the hangar when we arrived. It looked like a Cessna 170, all polished aluminum. I took the carbine as I got out of the truck. A man was helping a woman and two small boys. I didn’t see any weapons on them.

“Hey,” I said as I walked up.

“Hello. Is this your place?”

“It’s private property, but I don’t own it.”

“The thugs from Philly are looting and burning houses in our neighborhood. We got to the airport and I got my plane. I didn’t know where to go, and when I saw this runway, I said, ‘Guess we’ll try our luck here.’” He had been eyeing my carbine and the pistol on my web belt. Then his eyes shifted to Sarah, who walked by us over to the woman.

“My name’s Johnson. That’s my wife,” he told me. “We had to get out. I think thugs killed the woman next door and left her body in the house when they burned it down.”

We opened the hangar and shoved his plane in tail-first, chocked it, and closed the doors. I loaded everyone in the truck and took them to the safe house.

Jake Grafton was sitting in an easy chair in the main room. He perked right up when I told him about the plane. He skipped the social pleasantries with Johnson. “How much fuel is in it?”

“Both tanks are about half full.”

“Tommy, go back to the hangar and see if there is any avgas there.”

As I left, Grafton was asking Johnson about bridges and roadblocks he might have seen from the air. Maybe this will galvanize Grafton, I thought. Get him moving. God, I was tired of sitting doing nothing while America went back to the stone age.

A plane would be a good thing to have if we could keep it fueled. Our own air force. I opened a panel of the sliding hangar door and went inside. And Lady Luck smiled. I found a fifty-five-gallon plastic drum full of fuel in the hangar. The drum had a hand-crank pump mounted on top and a hose. I was maneuvering the drum under the left wing when I heard a pickup truck drive up. I figured it was Armanti and I needed him to crank the pump while I stood on the ladder with the hose.

I turned. Two scraggly faced locals in filthy jeans and T-shirts stood at the door of the hangar and had me covered with scoped deer rifles. Both were grinning at me with yellow teeth.

“Well, well, well! By God, we heard it and here it is,” said one of them.

“Just shuck that pistol, asshole, and maybe we won’t shoot you,” said the other.

I pulled out the Kimber and tossed it in the dirt.

“Look the plane over, Benny. You, get over here against the wall.” He waggled the barrel of his rifle and I went.

The one called Benny picked up my shooter, examined it, and tucked it into his pants. The other kept his rifle pointed at my belt buckle while Benny opened the door to the plane and looked around inside.

“Jearl, that kid is gettin’ away!” A call from outside. So there were more of them out there.

Jearl must have been the stalwart guarding me, because he forgot me and ran back to the open panel in the door. “Hey!” Jearl went dashing out of sight, shouting, “Get off your asses and catch her!”

I grabbed a heavy wrench off the shelf and stuck it up my sleeve. Benny strolled over from the plane, pulling my Kimber from his waistband. He had a big wad of snuff under his lower lip. “You’re a big one, ain’t you?”

“Your mom know you boys are out causing trouble?” I asked.

“Man, the country has gone to hell. We can be just as bad as we wanna be and ain’t nobody to say we can’t.”

“And how bad is that?”

I heard the sound of another truck. So did Benny, and he turned his head to his right toward the door. I let the wrench slide down into my hand; as he turned back toward me I hit him in the jaw with it with everything I had, right on top of his snuff wad. The blow put him down hard and I was all over him. Got my pistol and his rifle. He was only partially conscious. His jaw was obviously broken. Blood, saliva, and brown tobacco juice dribbled from his open mouth.

The rifle was some cheap piece of Walmart crap with a plastic stock, but it had brass in the chamber when I pulled the bolt back for a peek.

I stepped to the left edge of the hangar door and looked around. Jearl was on the runway, about fifty yards from me, pulling a girl about nine or ten years old along by the arm. There were two men in the back of their pickup, and they had rifles pointed at Armanti, who was stepping from his truck with his hands up.

I braced the rifle against the door and shot the man on the right in the bed of the truck. Worked the bolt. The other one was quick as a cat. He spun toward me, leveled his rifle, and fired. Something burned my neck and my shot went wild. I worked the bolt again and got on him, but he was already going down. Armanti had shot him in the back.

Jearl, the guy in the meadow, held the girl against him with his left hand and pointed his rifle toward me with his right. I didn’t figure he could even hit the hangar with that rifle shooting one-handed from the waist. I rested the rifle against the edge of the hangar door again and looked through the scope. Steadied the crosshairs on Jearl’s head and squeezed one off. He went over backward.

I walked out for a look. The bullet had taken his head clean off. Above his neck only his lower jaw remained.

The girl was sobbing. I picked her up and walked back to the hangar. Armanti was standing, pistol in hand, over the guy I had tamed with a wrench. The guy was coming around.

“You want me to finish him?” Armanti asked me.

“Be as bad as you wanna be,” I told him flippantly.

“Who is this kid?” Armanti asked Benny, who was now moaning and writhing in the dirt.

Benny mumbled something, holding his mouth. Armanti kicked him, and he squirmed and moaned louder.

“I asked you a question, Jack,” Armanti said, “and if you don’t tell it to me straight, things could get really iffy for you. Hold your jaw together and answer me! Who is she?”

With a supreme effort, holding his jaw with both hands, Benny said, “Some kid we picked up. Jearl was porkin’ her.”

“Where’s her folks?”

“Jearl killed ’em.”

I didn’t even see it coming. Bang. The pistol in Armanti’s hand went off, and the guy lying in the dirt was instantly dead with a 9-mm bullet through his head.

Armanti Hall holstered his pistol and came over to me, looked at the girl’s face streaked with dirt and tears. “It’s gonna be all right,” he said softly.

“Take her up to the house,” I said, “then come back and help me fuel this plane.”

He carried the child out to his truck, and I got busy tossing bodies into the back of the junky pickup they had arrived in. The corpses had almost stopped oozing blood, but I got some blood and brains on my shirt anyway. I figured the stuff would wash off. The key was still in the ignition of the truck, so I didn’t have to go through their pockets.

My neck burned like fire and I could feel blood trickling down into my shirt. Another fucking scar! Welcome to the revolution.