Liberty's Last Stand

TWENTY-NINE

“We leave tomorrow,” Jake Grafton said on Sunday morning.

Boy, that was good news to me!

Sarah Houston was carrying the little girl around, everywhere, and gave me The Look every time she passed me, as if it were my fault the kid got raped. She didn’t even say anything about my neck wound. Mrs. Johnson was a nurse and bandaged me up after she had smeared some sort of antiseptic on it. My neck was so sore I couldn’t turn my head.

Willie Varner said, “Goddamn, Tommy. You keep lettin’ these sons of bitches shoot at you. It’s just a matter of time, dude.”

“Hey, Willie, I—”

“Don’t want to hear it. I done tol’ ya. Just a matter of time. Ain’t goin’ to cry at your funeral, Tommy. Sarah might, or Mizz Grafton, but I ain’t a gonna. See you in Hell, dude, and we’ll catch up then.”

“I can hardly wait. Thanks, asshole.”

“You’re welcome.”

I was fed up to here. I broke out the two sniper rifles from FEMA’s Walmart stash and took them down to the meadow. Put a target out at two hundred yards — measured with one of the laser rangefinders the military had thoughtfully included in the box — and laid down by the hangar. Used a box of MREs as a rest and commenced shooting. The rifles were .308 caliber, actual designation 7.62×51 NATO, and we had plenty of ammo. I played with them a while and got them zeroed. Just in case.

I am not a sniper: I am not good enough with a rifle, and I don’t have the patience for it. However, the concept of whacking bad guys from beyond the effective range of their weapons strongly appeals to me. I have no sporting instinct whatsoever and am a disciple of W. C. Fields: Never give a sucker an even break, and its corollary, do it unto others before they do it unto you.

When I got back to the safe house, the sun was down. In the twilight everyone was sitting around outside eating venison that I had shot, Molina and Yocke had butchered, and Jake Grafton had cooked on the outdoor fire. Burned on the outside, pink in the middle. Everyone but me complimented him on his outdoor culinary skills. To accompany the venison we also had Mrs. Price’s green beans and baked potatoes with margarine and ketchup, for those so inclined. With the smell of wood smoke in the delightful evening air and plenty of good, wholesome food, some of the folks around the fire looked like they were dumping some stress. The meal was filling and a nice change from MREs, but I wasn’t ready to sing Kumbaya.

I figured that there was a lot of shooting and dying coming up in the days ahead. Going to Washington to clean up the government wasn’t on my bucket list.

But what the hell! A man can only die once. That’s a good thing, by the way. We’ve all gotta go sometime, and, truth be told, the sooner you check out, the more shit you miss. That’s the gospel according to Reverend Carmellini. Amen.

The girl spent the evening sitting by Sarah Houston. Armanti was sitting with Mrs. Price. The Johnsons were huddled together, the parents taking care of the kids. Yocke and Molina sat engaged in earnest conversation, solving the nation’s problems, probably. The warriors kept by themselves, although they had included Willie Varner in their little group. They liked Willie’s brand of pessimism, I suspected: I certainly did.

After the fire died down to glowing coals, Sarah Houston picked up the kid and carried her into the house. I waited a moment, then tagged along. I found them upstairs in the bedroom we had been using, and the door was open a crack. I eavesdropped. It’s one of my failings. But, to paraphrase that great American philosopher Yogi Berra, you can learn a lot by listening.

“My name is Sarah too,” the girl said.

“We have a lot in common,” Sarah Houston said warmly.

“I saw that man shoot my parents. He was really mean. He hurt me terrible down there. Then Mister Tommy shot him and his whole head came off. After what he did to me, I was glad.” I knew that Mrs. Johnson, the nurse, gave the kid a vaginal exam and had to do some stitches, after she had numbed her.

“I suppose so,” Sarah Houston said. “Tommy is a good man. Was your father a good man?”

“Oh yes. He wasn’t tall, and he was sort of heavy, not a bit like Mister Tommy. But he loved me very much. So did Mommy.”

After a bit I heard Sarah Houston say, “I am sure you will miss them very much.”

“Mommy and Daddy loved me.”

“I am sure they did.”

“I like Mister Armanti too. He’s a real nice man. Sort of like a bear.”

The two sat in silence for a while, then the big Sarah said, “You and I are going to sleep right here. If you have a nightmare, you wake me up. Will you do that?”

“Daddy always read me a book before bed.”

“I don’t have any books. Maybe I can tell you a story, after you get in bed.”

Five minutes later Sarah began, “Once upon a time…”

A half hour later, Sarah came out. I was sitting on the top of the stairs. She sat down beside me.

“That kid has been through a hell of a lot.”

“I guess.”

“She’s in denial right now. Sooner or later the implications of the murder of her parents, rape, all that is going to hit her hard. She is only eight years old and she saw all that mayhem.”

“God help her,” I murmured.

“You can sleep on the couch downstairs.”

“Okay.”

“Oh, Tommy. What a disaster… for all of us.”

“Yes.”

I put my arm around her. After a while she said, “I’m staying here when you leave tomorrow. Someone has to take care of this child.”

“Okay.”

“Will you come back? Afterward?”

“You can bet your life on it.”

Sunday evening two Muslim male refugees from Syria, ages nineteen and twenty, raped a thirteen-year-old black girl in St. Louis. She screamed and they beat her. Despite the perilous state of law enforcement in St. Louis after a week of rioting in the black neighborhoods, the police apprehended the pair. They were taken to a police lockup.

That night a crowd of almost eight hundred people, mostly black, surrounded the police station. These were not ghetto dwellers, but middle-class suburbanites, and many were armed. They held the police at gunpoint and removed the two rapists from the cells. The two were taken outside and hanged by their necks from a nearby tree with ropes some members of the crowd had thoughtfully brought along.

Then the crowd, now containing about 1,500 people, walked in a body to the downtown mosque that the imam had made infamous by preaching jihad from the pulpit; the mosque, incidentally, where the two rapists had worshiped. The crowd found the cleric cowering in a closet in a nearby house, dragged him outside, and hanged him too. The mosque was set on fire.

While the imam dangled and strangled, a few people in the crowd fired some shots in the air and shouted catcalls, but mainly the crowd was quiet. Some police officers sat on the hoods of their cruisers, watching and smoking. An intrepid television cameraman filmed the holy man swinging in the wind for broadcast whenever. An hour or so later, the crowd began to dissipate and trudge away into the night.

Amazingly, the energy seemed to go out of the rioters in other sections of town, many of whom actually went home. For the first time since Barry Soetoro declared martial law, the hours from midnight to dawn on Labor Day were quiet in St. Louis.

At nine o’clock that Labor Day morning, a convoy of two companies of Marines from Quantico arrived at the Pentagon. A colonel was there to meet the company commanders, both captains. After a short conversation, the troops set up machine guns inside sandbagged positions at the entrances to the Pentagon, other Marines were sent to guard the Metro station downstairs (even though it wasn’t running) and to guard the entrances to the parking lots. They set up a bivouac on an empty section of the vast parking lot on the western side of the massive building, a lot that looked relatively empty because, despite the crisis engulfing the nation, many of the civilians had Labor Day off.

The chairman of the Joint Chiefs, General Martin Wynette, knew nothing about the Marines’ arrival. He was upstairs in his office on the E-Ring going over readiness reports from the U.S. armed forces around the world, with special attention to those units in the United States. The United States armed forces were in full mutiny, he said to his staff after a quick perusal of the reports. People in uniform willing to fight for Barry Soetoro against Americans were a rare commodity. The only bright spot was the Marines in Southern California, who had strapped on the Mexican military as though they were God’s gift to starving men. At last, an enemy to shoot at. The crews of the navy’s two carriers now cruising off the coast of San Diego were apparently happy as pigs in slop launching strikes at the Mexican invaders. They had achieved complete control of the air, left Mexican armor burned-out wrecks, destroyed Mexican staging areas on the American side of the border, and flown support missions for the Marines. It was a proverbial turkey shoot.

The rioting Mexicans in the slums of LA weren’t the military’s problem. What the civil authorities were going to do about them was up to Barry Soetoro and the politicians in LA and Sacramento who wanted those Hispanic votes more than they wanted salvation. If they wanted salvation, which was doubtful.

Martin Wynette was trying to figure out what he was going to tell the president and his disciples when he went over to the White House to brief them at eleven o’clock when a group of flag officers led by CNO Admiral Cart McKiernan came into his office unannounced and closed the door. The commandant of the Marine Corps was there, as well as the deputy chiefs of staff of the army and air force. The four officers stood in front of the desk looking down on Wynette.

“Marty,” said the commandant, Morton Runyon, “tell us why you threw Sugar Ray, Jack Williams (the army chief of staff), and Harry Miller (the air force chief) to the wolves.”

Wynette stood up. “You don’t know what you are talking about.”

“We’ve talked to Major General Stout, who was there at the White House with you. Remember?”

“Now, listen, people. Someone told Soetoro that a coup was being planned over here in the Pentagon. He already knew. What could I say?”

“He didn’t know shit, Marty. Schanck tried a shot in the dark and you spilled your guts. You pulled the trigger on Sugar, Jack, and Harry.”

“Well, Jesus, they were planning a coup! Talking about it, anyway. For Christ’s sake, he’s the commander-in-chief. He’s the president!”

“And you took an oath to support and defend the Constitution of the United States. Soetoro has become a dictator. He’s ripped up the Constitution.”

“These are perilous times,” Wynette explained. “The president has a right to do whatever is required to maintain the government. You know that.”

“He doesn’t have the right to convert the country into a dictatorship,” Cart McKiernan said, and made an angry gesture. “But we aren’t here to debate politics. This has gone too damned far. Three senior officers were executed without a trial in the courtyard downstairs. This isn’t Nazi Germany or Soviet Russia. Get your head out of your ass, Marty.”

Wynette sank into his chair and his gaze went from face to face.

“What do you want of me?” he said softly.

The CNO, who was in short-sleeve summer whites, nodded to the commandant, who was in greens. He lifted his blouse and pulled out a pistol. “This is yours, Marty. I stopped by your quarters and your wife let me in. I got this from the desk in your study.”

Martin Wynette stared at the faces. “I’m not going to shoot myself, if that is what you are implying.”

“We’ll call Mrs. Ray. What is her name? Naomi, I think. Maybe she’ll do it for you. Or Barry Soetoro can send his goons over to do you in the courtyard.”

Wynette said nothing. He was sweating and licking his lips.

Morton Runyon walked around the desk and fooled around with the pistol. Then, quick as a flash, as Wynette looked at the other officers, he put it to the right side of Wynette’s head and pulled the trigger. Blood, tissue, and little pieces of skull spurted out the other side. Wynette slumped in the chair.

Runyon picked up Wynette’s dead hand, put it around the pistol, got fingerprints all over it, then dropped the gun on the floor.

“Damn,” said Cart McKiernan. “I think he shot himself. Get the staff in here for the bad news.”

Jake Grafton sat everyone down after breakfast and announced that Mr. and Mrs. Johnson and their children were staying at the safe house, along with Mrs. Price and the young Sarah. “Armanti, would you be willing to stay here with them and keep an eye on things?”

“Yes, sir,” Armanti Hall said.

“I’m staying too,” Sarah Houston announced.

“No, you’re not,” Jake Grafton said, eyeing her. “Too much is at stake.”

Sarah looked at me, then shrugged.

“Uh, Admiral,” said Willie Varner. “Maybe I could stay too. I ain’t much of a shooter and all, and—”

“We may need your lock skills,” Grafton said crisply. “Tommy, load the trucks. Leave what you can for the people who are staying, and let Armanti keep whatever weapons he might need. Pistols for all the adults who want one.”

“What about the plane?” I asked.

“I’ll fly it. Mr. Johnson has given me his permission and the ignition key. Take me down to the hangar and let’s get it out.”

We pulled the plane from the hangar, spun it around, and I helped Grafton in. He wasn’t spry and obviously had some discomfort, but he seemed able to move without pain.

He looked over a sectional chart that Johnson had used to get here, and said, “You get everything loaded up. I’ll be back in about an hour.”

He started the engine, taxied down to the far end of the runway, swung the plane around, and ran the engine up to a pleasant hum. I looked at the sky: clear above, hazy, only a couple of knots from the north, just enough to stir the wind sock a little. The morning dew hadn’t yet burned off in the sunny places, so people and the plane left tracks in the grass. If you didn’t know any better you’d think it was just another late summer day in paradise.

After a moment the Cessna accelerated down the runway with its tail-wheel off the ground and got airborne. It flew away to the north, climbing slowly. The plane got smaller and smaller and more indistinct, then it merged into the haze and the sound of the engine faded completely away.

The guys and I loaded the trucks. Willie the Wire did some bitching. “Hell, he don’t need me to open locks when he’s got you.”

“The only place you know how to rustle grub is in a grocery store,” I said. “You eat too much to leave you here.”

“We get back to Washington, dude, there ain’t gonna be no grocery stores. Not ones with anythin’ in them to eat, anyway. Did you think of that?”

“No liquor stores or beer joints either,” Armanti offered. “Gonna be like Baghdad or Damascus. Nice of you to share the pain, Willie.”

Willie Varner said a crude phrase.

“Look on the bright side,” I suggested, just to buck him up. “It couldn’t be as bad as the sewers of Cairo. Did I ever tell you about the month I—”

“You too, Carmellini.”

Sarah Houston and I got to spend a few minutes with young Sarah before we left. The girl was sobbing, finally letting her emotions out, which was a good thing. The Sarahs put their foreheads together and hugged. Finally Sarah kissed the kid and said, “I’ll be back.”

On the way down the hill, I told her, “You’re optimistic.”

“Live every day until you die,” she retorted. Then she touched the pistol butt in its holster on her web belt. I doubt if she even realized she did it.

“You’re taking your computer along, I see.”

“Yes.”

“When do you suppose you’ll get a chance to use it?”

“You never know.”

When Grafton landed, he said the roads were clear to the airport in Elkins, which looked deserted. “Before we go, run me down to that clinic.”

“Okay.”

In Greenbank Dr. Proudfoot didn’t seem surprised when Grafton and I walked through his door. He and Grafton shook hands.

“Could we have a little talk in your office?” Grafton asked him.

While they were talking, I went into the room where Mrs. Greenwood was. She was still in a coma. The nurse and I chatted.

After about fifteen minutes, Grafton and the doctor came back. “Dr. Proudfoot is going with us. He needs to run up to his house for some things, and he’ll join us at the hangar.”

Back at the hangar, Grafton spread out the sectional chart and our one roadmap on the hood of my pickup, and Travis, Willis Coffee, and I studied them.

“If there are rebels around,” Grafton said, “I suspect we will find them at Camp Dawson, where FEMA had their concentration camp. I want to fly up to Elkins, wait for you there, and then we’ll fuel the plane if we can and I’ll fly up to Dawson and look around. If it’s safe, we can all go.”

“Why Dawson?” Travis asked.

“A National Guard base figures to have an armory. People with deer rifles are guerillas. To turn them into an army you need machine guns, mortars, and artillery, if you can find some.”

Right then I began to suspect that Grafton wasn’t leveling with us. Maybe everyone else thought he was, but I was no virgin. I had worked with him too many times in the past. I kicked myself for not cornering him several days ago and getting the lowdown. If anything happened to Jake Grafton, Sarah and I and all these other fools were going to be up the proverbial creek without a paddle. Too late to brace him now, though.

Grafton got back in the plane and we climbed into the trucks. The doc and Sarah rode with me. As we rolled along he wanted to talk about Jake Grafton. He was obviously star-struck and called him “Admiral” in every sentence, finishing with, “You didn’t tell me he was a retired admiral.”

“I didn’t think it mattered.”

“Or director of the CIA. Why didn’t you say so?”

“Because I didn’t want you telling anyone anything.” I turned my head and locked my eyes on him.

Dr. Proudfoot got uncomfortable and shifted his eyes to the road ahead. “Well, I’m glad he asked me to go along. It’s a great honor.”

I thought he should talk to Willie Varner about that, but I kept my mouth shut and drove. Sarah just sat looking out the window.

The JCS staff was shocked by the suicide of General Martin Wynette. Still, everyone knew he had been under tremendous pressure from the White House, and after the deputy chairman and the army and air force chiefs of staff were summarily executed by Secret Service personnel, his personal choice to end his own life was understandable, if tragic. While his remains were being carried away to a freezer in the cafeteria, to wait for a better day for his funeral and burial, the four surviving heads of their services met in a conference room behind locked doors.

“Gentlemen,” Cart McKiernan said, “we have some critical decisions to make, and not much time to make them. We must announce Wynette’s demise, and no doubt the White House will have a serious reaction to the news. Either Soetoro will send people over here to take over the Pentagon, or he will think this is the start of a putsch. Your thoughts, please.”

The army deputy chief Franklin Rodriquez said, “I think it would be a terrible precedent if the armed forces were involved in decapitating a president or in assisting a popular uprising to overthrow him. Or in assisting in keeping a hated president in office in the face of a revolution. In my opinion, the best thing for America is for the armed forces to remain neutral.”

“As if we could,” Morton Runyon scoffed. “We’re already up to our necks in this.”

The acting air force chief of staff, Erhard “Bud” Weiss, said, “We can’t win, gentlemen. If we fight for or against Soetoro the people will never trust us again. We must let the American people sort this out.”

Rodriquez tapped his chest. “This isn’t the uniform of Barry Soetoro’s army; it’s the uniform of the United States Army. There’s a big difference. And this afternoon the order is going out to every army commander: we’re not arresting civilians anymore, and we’re releasing the political prisoners from every army-run camp.”

The Marine commandant’s gaze went from face to face. “Well, that’s a start, but I think we should go over to the White House, drag Soetoro and his staff out into the Rose Garden, and execute them. That prick is a traitor! He violated his oath to uphold the Constitution. He ordered officers murdered without trial. He deserves a bullet. I volunteer to take a company of Marines across the river and personally deliver one between that bastard’s eyes.”

“You’re wrong, Mort,” Bud Weiss said. “The military must remain neutral. We must publicly announce it. Confine all our forces to base. Defend ourselves, yes. But not take sides. California is a different story. Southern California has been invaded by the Mexican Army. It’s our job to defend America and shove them back.”

“What about defending America from Soetoro?” grumbled the Marine Corps commandant.

Cart McKiernan took his time before he spoke. “Mort, you know damn well we can’t lead a revolution. But that said, I’m going to start carrying a pistol, and if I ever come face to face with Soetoro, I’m going to exercise my rights as a free American and shoot him dead. Now let’s get the staff in here and get orders drafted. All offensive operations against Texas and other states are to stop immediately. All forces in the United States are confined to base except in Southern California. Bud, you are going to have to use the air force to supply our forces in SoCal. The navy will cooperate fully. Are we in agreement?”

“You understand that if we wash our hands of the Soetoro administration, Barry Soetoro is doomed,” Franklin Rodriquez remarked.

“That’s up to the American people,” McKiernan shot back. “Our problem is to preserve the American armed forces to defend future generations of Americans from foreign threats. I repeat, are we agreed?”

They were. They opened the door and the staff trooped in for orders.

The news that General Martin L. Wynette, chairman of the Joint Chiefs, had committed suicide in his office was merely a footnote to the press release issued by the Pentagon. Henceforth, the release announced, United States armed forces would take no part in or play any role in the political problems the country was enduring. All offensive operations were canceled, all troops confined to base, all ships ordered into port, and all airplanes grounded. Except, however, in Southern California, where United States forces were actively engaged in armed combat with invading forces from Mexico. The statement went further: “Unless the Republic of Mexico desires a wider war with the United States, it will recall its troops from United States soil immediately. If all Mexican forces are not back across the international border within twenty-four hours, United States forces will attack Mexican forces wherever they can be found.”

“Those Pentagon bastards just revolted against the government and issued an ultimatum to the government of Mexico!” Al Grantham roared as he read the press release. “What in hell is going on over there?”

He found out within two minutes. An icy Cart McKiernan told Grantham on the scrambled telephone, “You people at the White House are on your own, Grantham. We won’t obey your orders and we won’t fight rebel forces. We will defend the Pentagon and armed forces bases worldwide, and kick the shit out of Mexico if they don’t wise up fast.”

“This is mutiny, McKiernan. Treason. You know the penalty for treason.”

“Label it anything you like.”

“Are you demanding that President Soetoro resign?”

“I don’t think anyone on this side of the Potomac gives a flying fuck what Barry Soetoro does or doesn’t do. Please tell him I said so.” And Admiral Cart McKiernan hung up on Al Grantham.