Liberty's Last Stand

THIRTY-ONE

“You could have confided in me,” I told Grafton.

He looked surprised. “I told Sarah to tell you about the eavesdropping scheme. Did she tell you?”

“Well, yes, but not about all this other stuff.”

“Tommy, you have a good brain between those ears and you had better start using it.”

You would think that after all these years around Grafton I would know how to keep my mouth shut. One of these days I am going to get that trick down.

“The local radio station is back on the air,” Sarah told the boss. That female could read minds. “I don’t know if the power is on or if they are using a generator.”

“Okay,” Grafton said. “Tommy, take Sarah over there. She is going to put some of that stuff from the White House on the air. She has winnowed it down to about sixty hours. Convince the radio staff to do it, and then set up an ambush around the station and transmission tower. Use Travis and Willis Coffee. Take whatever weapons you need. If the military is still in the game, they’ll take the tower out with a Hellfire or commandos. If it’s FEMA or Homeland, expect a few truckloads of thugs. Don’t take any prisoners — we don’t have anywhere to keep them. The beds in the concentration camp are being used as barracks.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Sarah, you know what to do.”

“This will set off an explosion in the White House,” she said flatly.

“I hope. Infuriated, frightened men don’t think very well. Go.”

Sarah repacked her computer and we left, with Willis Coffee trailing along behind. We picked up Travis ten minutes later and took my stolen FEMA pickup truck.

Downtown Kingwood was a typical American small town, in my opinion. A Walmart on the edge of town had pretty much turned the old downtown into a wasteland of vacant stores interspersed with insurance agencies, lawyers’ offices, gift and craft shops. All of them looked closed, and there were no parked cars.

The radio station’s offices were in one of the old storefronts on the east side of the street in the middle of the block. The transmission tower was obviously offsite, probably on a nearby hill. I parked right in front, and Sarah and I strolled in while Willis and Travis, each with an M4 in their hands, walked to the adjacent corners.

The lady at the front desk was still on the right side of forty and had a cute hairdo and a ready smile. She even had on a plastic name tag: “Sue.”

“Good afternoon,” she said brightly. The studio was right behind her, visible through a double-pane window. A woman was in there talking into a boom mike, and a young guy in a ponytail was fielding telephone calls. We could hear the station feed over a hidden loudspeaker system, background noise. Above the window was a large clock with a sweep second hand.

“Are you with the government?”

“Not anymore. We were federal employees and left under a cloud.” I smiled.

“Really!” she said, her eyes widening.

I confided in a low voice, “I stole our truck.” Then I introduced Sarah and myself.

The desk lady stared. I continued smoothly, as if stealing a government vehicle needs no explanation. “How long has the power been back on?”

“Since yesterday morning. We got back on the air as quickly as we could.”

“Don’t you have an emergency generator?”

“We ran out of gas for it. The station manager is down waiting in line at the filling station to fill some cans now.” With only a little prompting from us, she chattered on. The station was licensed at one thousand watts, sunrise to sunset. The transmitter was outside town on Mount Morgan, named after a local farmer who leased the site to the station. “He’s such a nice gentleman,” she added.

“We should probably wait for the manager,” Sarah said, glancing at me. “When do you expect him back?”

“In a little while, certainly, unless the line is too long or the filling station runs out of gasoline. We close the office here at five.” It was ten till. “And go off the air at…” she glanced at her calendar. “… seven thirty-two.”

There was a hallway that looked as if it went all the way through the building, and a door at the end of it. The door opened and a portly man of medium height with a fringe of gray hair around a white pate came bustling through it. He opened the door to the studio and went in. In less than a minute, he came out. He addressed Sue. “I got the last of the gas at Plunkett’s. I just told Jan. She’ll put it on the air immediately.”

“These folks want to talk to you,” Sue told him. She said his name, Howard Shinaberry. He glanced at us, at our web belts and holsters, and waited.

“Sarah Houston,” I said, nodding at my companion, “and I’m Tommy Carmellini. Sarah wants to talk to you in your office.”

He shrugged and led the way down the hall to another door. Sarah followed with her computer case.

I smiled at Sue, then walked down the hallway and went out back. There was an alley and a parking lot. Three cars and an old Chevy pickup were parked there. I surveyed the alley. All I could see was a cat wandering around and a bunch of garbage cans. The gas cans were in the back of the truck, so I unloaded them and put them in the hallway.

I closed the alley door and waited by the front desk with Sue. “Does Mr. Shinaberry own the station?”

“Oh, no. He’s just the manager. Three doctors own it.”

“Local doctors?”

“They live in Maryland, Bethesda I think.”

Sue chattered on. She was a local and had worked at the station for five years come November. She liked it. She met such interesting people. “Do you have an ad you want us to air?”

“Something like that,” I replied.

She got busy locking the cash register and putting things away. Five o’clock came and went.

“If you want to go home, that’s all right,” I said. “I’ll tell Mr. Shinaberry.”

“I’ll just wait, in case he has something else for me to do.” She was obviously getting nervous. I didn’t blame her. I gave her my best innocent smile that had melted a thousand hearts.

At nine after five, Mr. Shinaberry and Sarah came from the office out to the front desk. She paused beside me and said, “He doesn’t want to do it.”

“Our license is up for renewal in three months,” Shinaberry explained. “That stuff on that computer is dynamite. The FCC—”

I went out the front door to the sidewalk and gave Travis Clay the Hi sign. He came walking back, his M4 cradled in his arms. We went back into the radio station together.

Shinaberry was explaining to Sarah why the owners would fire him if the file on the computer were put out on the air. “I know the president’s voice, and it certainly sounds like him, but if the file is fake, airing it would be libel, and if it’s real I can’t imagine how that recording was obtained legally—”

“You know about the rebels down at Camp Dawson?” I asked as I rubbed my sore neck. I realized I was doing it and stopped.

“The general in charge — at least he said he was a general — was in here and asked us not to mention all the people there over the air. And we haven’t. Haven’t said a peep about Camp Dawson. I gave our staff strict instructions.”

“This gentleman is Travis Clay. Travis, take Mr. Shinaberry over to Dawson and let him talk to Jake Grafton. Use Mr. Shinaberry’s truck. It’s out back.”

“Now, see here—” Shinaberry protested.

Travis put his hand on the guy’s shoulder and smiled. “Don’t be difficult,” he said. “You can drive.”

After they left, I suggested to Sue that it was time for her to go home. “We’ll lock up when we leave, after Mr. Shinaberry gets back.”

She was obviously relieved. She grabbed her purse without saying good-bye, trotted down the hallway, and closed the alley door behind her.

“It’s all yours,” I said to Sarah. “Send Jan out and get that guy in the ponytail to show you how the equipment works.”

Sarah took her computer and went into the studio. After ten minutes the announcer lady came out, frowned at me, and left via the alley door too. Ponytail was busy with a thumb drive Sarah had given him. Then Sarah got on the mike.

“We are going to air segments of a recording that was made at the White House over the previous six months. Not all of it, but segments. The voices you will hear are those of President Soetoro, his staff, and other public officials. There are about sixty hours of recorded material, a small fraction of the whole, and this station will be on the air day and night until the entire sixty hours has played, then we will run it again. Josh, let it rip.”

And he did.

Barry Soetoro’s voice came over the loudspeaker. Three minutes later the telephone rang. I answered it with the station’s call letters.

A man’s voice: “Where in the hell did you guys get that tape?”

“How does it sound?” I asked.

“Holy shit! President Soetoro said that?”

“He did.”

“Jesus Christ!”

“He didn’t have anything to do with it,” I told him and put the phone back in its cradle. It rang again. I figured that we were going to get a lot of calls, so I unplugged the phone. I looked into the studio and saw that Sarah was doing the same thing to the phone in there. I could hear the phone ringing in the manager’s office, so I walked down and unplugged that one too.

Tobe Baha, the Secret Service sniper, was having dinner that evening at his hotel on Congress Avenue in Austin. It was a nice hotel, perfect for expense-account executives and rich oilmen bringing their wives or girlfriends to see the bright lights of the big city. Tobe thought his odd hours would bring less notice here and he would have to answer fewer well-meaning questions than he would have at some cheap motel on the interstate where guests rarely stayed more than a night or two.

So he was studying the menu and contemplating ordering a steak when three men entered the dining room, looked around, and seeing him, walked purposefully toward his table. They were in civilian clothes wearing sports coats, and from the slight bulges he could see that they were packing pistols in their armpits. After years in the Secret Service, he could spot an armed man at fifty yards.

The man in front seated himself on Tobe’s left and put an iPad on the table. The other two took the remaining chairs.

“Good evening, Mr. Baha,” the man on his left said. He was the older of the three, in his mid-fifties, with salt-and-pepper hair getting thin on top. “I’m Colonel Frank Tenney. I’m the head of the Texas Department of Public Safety. These gentlemen are colleagues of mine.”

Tobe tried to hide his surprise, and did fairly well, he thought. He was registered at this hotel under a false name, so the use of his real name put him on notice.

“Are you carrying this evening?” Tenney asked, just making conversation.

Tobe tried to look surprised. “Of course not.”

Tenney just nodded. The waitress came over, delivered Tobe’s Scotch on the rocks, passed out menus to the new arrivals, and inquired about drinks. The lawmen all ordered iced tea.

“I have some video on my iPad I’d like to show you,” Tenney said, then picked up the tablet and began playing with it. In a few seconds, he placed it so Tobe could see it.

The screen began showing aerial shots. Tobe Baha instantly knew what he was looking at: drone surveillance video. And there he was, in the van, parking it, getting out, looking around, strolling the street. Then there were shots of Tobe up on roofs, using the laser rangefinder, back on the street, driving through the city, going into stores and public places…

After three or so minutes, Tenney picked up the iPad and shut it off. He put it on his left.

Tenney smiled at Baha. The waitress came back with the drinks. Tenney told her that they would not be staying for dinner. She looked at Tobe, who told her, “Later.”

When she had moved off, Tenney said, “We were surprised when you showed up in Austin, since Texas is no longer a part of the United States and Barry Soetoro isn’t planning a visit, at least to the best of my knowledge.”

Tobe picked up the Scotch and sipped it. His hand was steady, and he hoped that the colonel noticed that. If he did, he gave no sign.

“We thought that perhaps you were here to use your sniper skills on someone in Austin. Of course, we haven’t yet seen you with your rifle. No doubt it is somewhere in Austin, and if necessary we could arrest you and search and find it. It will probably have your fingerprints on it and so forth. But President Hays thought that an arrest and trial would not be good for future relations between Texas and the United States.”

Colonel Tenney leaned toward Tobe Baha. He was speaking softly, and his eyes were impossible to avoid. “I also thought about disappearing you. That would solve any diplomatic problems, and the justice system wouldn’t have the expense of fooling with you. Do you understand?”

Those eyes boring into his made evasion impossible. “Yes,” Tobe said.

“That’s good. We’re tying up a lot of people flying these drones and keeping tabs on you, and enough is enough. So I stopped by this evening to let you know. If a sniper fires a shot anywhere in Austin and you’re still around, we’ll come for you. You will be killed resisting arrest and be buried somewhere in west Texas in an unmarked grave. Have I made myself clear?”

“Yes.”

“Barry Soetoro or your Secret Service colleagues may decide that you have lived long enough, so you may want to rethink your return to the States. Be that as it may, you may reside in Texas as long as you never again show your face in Austin. If someone fires a rifle in Austin and you are around after this evening, you are a walking dead man.”

Tenney stood and picked up his iPad. “Just a friendly warning. You can pay for our tea.”

He and his colleagues walked out of the restaurant.

Tobe Baha drained his Scotch. He glanced at the menu, decided he wasn’t hungry, and ordered another drink.

About ten after six, Travis Clay came through the alley door of the radio station with four buffed-up guys. “Grafton sent Mr. Shinaberry home. The sheriff and city police chief were there and we won’t have any trouble with them.”

“Patriots are they?”

“With twenty-five hundred armed people at Dawson, they saw the light, whether they are patriots or Soetoro loyalists.” He gestured to the other men. “Grafton thought we could use more help.”

“Get Willis in here.”

The ex-soldiers, for that is what they were, stood listening to the radio feed on the loudspeakers, shaking their heads. One of them muttered, “That son of a bitch.”

I briefed the troops. Two of them at each end of the alley. I sent Willis across the street and asked him to put an M240 machine gun on the roof of the old bank building on the corner; the false brick front would give him a little protection. Travis was to be on the roof on the other corner with another M240. These were belt-fed guns that fired the 7.62×51 NATO cartridges. I would have our third machine gun, an M249 that was fed by a belt of 5.56x45 NATO cartridges, inside here on the counter. “Lots of grenades and AT4s. We’ll make the street in front our killing zone.”

Everyone trooped out to the FEMA truck, where Willis passed out weapons and ammo. We carried some MREs into the station, and I drove the truck around back and backed in up to the alley door. We carried stuff in. I brought in two boxes of ammo for my machine gun, an M4 carbine, a dozen grenades, and a couple of AT4s.

I was feeding a belt of ammo into the M249 when Josh came out. He looked at the weapons and ammo and at me. “Where did you people get that recording?”

“What did Sarah tell you?”

“That a little bird gave it to her.”

“There you are.”

“I’m getting the hell outta here,” he said, and marched for the alley door. I heard his old ride fire up. Josh needed new mufflers. Then it went away down the alley.

After a while Sarah came out. “It’s all automatic,” she said. “I don’t need to sit there and watch it.”

“Want some dinner?”

She gave me The Look.

“I put some MREs in the break room. There’s a microwave. I’d like meatloaf, some potatoes, and corn.”

“Yes, General,” she said, and marched away.

As I dug into my gourmet repast — Sarah could do MREs, let me tell you — individual cars and pickups, each full of people, kept creeping down the street and looking into the radio station. Finally I wised up and turned off the lights in the office.

It was after nine o’clock and Soetoro was plotting with Al Grantham and Sulana Schanck on how they would turn off the power and blame it on the right-wing constitutionalists, when a van pulling an army generator drifted to a stop at the curb outside. The van had a big, flexible aerial mounted on the rear bumper.

I cradled the M4 and waited. A woman walked around the van, tried the door to the station, found it unlocked, and came in. I could see a guy still in the van.

The woman looked at the machine gun, the grenades on the counter, and me. “I’m Dixie Cotton,” she said. She couldn’t have been a day over thirty, with a sexy bedroom voice and a figure to match. She was wearing tight jeans and a T-shirt that revealed everything she had, which was a lot.

“Tommy Carmellini.”

Sarah came from the hallway. I introduced the two.

“I’ve heard of you,” Sarah said. “Aren’t you ‘The Mouth of the South’?”

“It’s been said,” she admitted modestly. It sure had. She had a talk show on an Atlanta radio station and thrived on controversy, which she created by trashing everyone who disagreed with her, which was practically everybody.

“I thought Soetoro had FEMA lock you up as a dangerous subversive. How did you get out?”

“A doctor certified that I was crazy and some of my friends paid a few bribes, so they turned me loose.”

“Could I get a certification like that?” I asked hopefully.

“So where did you people get that recording?”

“You know the old story: if I told you I’d have to kill you,” I said deadpan.

“Bullshit,” she said dismissively. “Is it real?”

“Of course.”

“I run a mobile pirate radio station these days, during the current difficulty, while my station in Atlanta is up to its armpits in federal censors. I’d like a copy of that recording. I’ll cruise Washington and broadcast it.”

“They’ll kill you if they catch you,” I told her, “tits, mouth, and all.”

“Not the way I work it, they won’t. They’ve been trying for four days and haven’t caught me yet.”

“You’re living on borrowed time.”

“That’s my lookout.”

“Sarah, what do you think?”

She shrugged. “Can you use thumb drives?”

“Sure.”

“Let’s make you some.” And Sarah led her into the studio.

Cars and pickups crept by at random intervals all evening. The locals were getting an earful and they were curious.

About midnight, an army truck pulled up outside and soldiers piled out of the back. Jake Grafton climbed down from the cab, carefully, and led the soldiers, six of them, inside. The soldiers were in full combat gear, with helmets, weapons, and body armor. Grafton was wearing a camo shirt and trousers. Willie Varner was the only one in civilian duds, and he was carrying an M4.

Grafton introduced the soldiers. Two army officers and four senior sergeants, all with combat experience. “They came to Dawson with General Netherton,” he explained. “Where do you want them?”

“On the roofs on this side of the street,” I said to them. “The street is the kill zone. Don’t let any of the bad guys get into this office.”

We talked about frequencies, because they all had handheld radios, and they trooped out.

“FEMA and Homeland have at least a dozen people on the way,” he said. “They’re on the clear-voice radio. Soetoro is raving mad.”

I told him about Dixie Cotton. “She’s nuts,” I added. “Literally and figuratively. Certified even. They’ll execute her.”

“That’s her problem,” Jake Grafton said. He looked around. “Break out those windows. You want the glass on the sidewalk, not flying around in here.”

“I’m worried about the radio tower, which is out on some knoll called Mount Morgan.”

“We have it covered,” he said. He glanced at the machine gun on the counter. “Is that where you want it?”

“I doubt if they’ll be stupid enough to drive up in front of the joint, but if they do…”

“A man can always hope,” he said.

“You could ambush these dudes on the way into town,” I pointed out.

“It’ll take most of the night to get ambushes set up. We’ll whack the second wave. You deal with the first bunch.”

“If they get a bullet into the equipment in the studio we are well and truly fucked,” I remarked.

“Make sure they don’t.”

I almost said something I would probably have regretted later, but I managed to stifle myself.

“What are you doing here?” I asked Willie.

“I’m your bodyguard.”

As if I needed something else to worry about.

“You had dinner?”

“Oh, yeah. They’re good feeders over at that camp.”

“You should have joined the army when you were a kid.”

“Maybe you’re right.”

Grafton, Sarah, and I chatted for a bit, the admiral shook Sarah’s hand and mine, then went back out and climbed into the army truck, which got under way in a cloud of diesel exhaust.

“There goes the next president of the United States,” Sarah said.

“Not after Jack Yocke gets through with him,” I replied.

“Screw Jack Yocke,” Sarah said.

Sarah went into the break room, which had a cot, and sacked out. I broke out the office windows, as Grafton had suggested.

Willie was in a talkative mood. He carefully laid his M4 on the counter. “Nice shooter,” he said with feeling.

“You know which end the bullet comes out of?”

“The little tiny round end with the asshole. I shot that thing this evenin’ at the range and the guy in charge said I was a natural-born marksman.”

“Was coming over here your idea?”

“Yeah. I was sittin’ beside Grafton participatin’ in a high strategy session when a radio dude came runnin’ in and told him all about these Soetoro dudes coming to shut this radio station down. I volunteered to come help. Knowin’ you, I figured you’d need all the help you could get.”

That must have been the first time in his life Willie ever volunteered for anything but beer. “It’s good to see you, shipmate. You can stay in here with me, but why don’t you lay down in the corner and try to catch some Zs.”

He did so, after bitching about how hard the floor was and having to use his jacket for a pillow. “Turn off that damn radio noise out here,” he said. “I’ve had enuffa Soetoro to last me a lifetime.”

“I thought you were a Soetoro voter.”

“Don’t remind me.”

I cranked the volume of the speaker to zero and settled down to wait. Willie and Sarah were sound asleep when I went into the break room at one a.m. and made a pot of coffee. While it dripped through, I went in to the studio and put on the earphones. The prez was talking about his enemies. I put the earphones down and went back to the break room for a cup. Nothing but that white powdered stuff for creamer, so I silently cussed the Maryland doctors and drank it black.

Waiting was hard. I went out and surveyed the street. Two or three truckloads of them — we would kill them right there.

Waiting has never been my long suit. I must have been at the head of the line for good looks and natural charm; when I got to patience there wasn’t much left — I only got a teaspoon full, if that.

I found myself rubbing my sore neck again. The doctors at Camp Dawson had put more antiseptic on it and a sticky bandage. The muscles were still stiff.

I wondered about Willie, why he was here. A warrior he wasn’t. Growing up in the Washington ghetto and a couple of stretches in the pen had taught him to stay out of the line of fire and keep his head down. Willie was a survivor. That was one of the reasons I liked him. When I had had my fill of agency operators full of bullshit and testosterone, I could visit Willie at the lock shop and come back down to earth.

Musing along those lines, my handheld squawked. The voice was Travis Clay’s. “We have a truck two blocks north, and someone standing beside it looking the situation over with binoculars.”

“Okay.”

I nudged Willie with my foot. He came right awake.

“Uh-oh,” Willis Coffee said. “I hear helicopters… Coming this way. Getting louder.”

Damn!

It was beginning to look like the bleeding wasn’t going to be one-sided at our little party.

I walked to the busted window and listened. I could hear the choppers now, definitely coming this way. If these were paramilitary thugs, from FEMA or Homeland or the IRS or wherever, they were catching on fast. If they were military, oh boy.

“Trucks are moving, at least three. Guys walking along beside them. All armed. Looks like FEMA uniforms.”

The choppers were above us somewhere.

“They stopped in the wrong block! They’re in the next block north.”

“Choppers overhead. Two Blackhawks. Guys rappelling down onto the roofs on the east side of the street. But they’re in the wrong block too.”

I keyed the mike on my hand-held. “Machine gunners, take out the choppers. Everyone else, hit ’em.”

And the world split apart. The hammering of heavy machine guns rolled up and down the street. I grabbed an AT4, fired it up, and stepped right through the empty window onto the sidewalk. The lead truck was in the middle of the next block. Perfect. I didn’t waste time and got the round off within three seconds. It went right into the engine compartment and exploded. Pieces of the truck went flying everywhere.

Bullets were whanging off the concrete sidewalk and brick facade, so I dived right back through the window socket with the empty tube in my hands.

The sound of combat rose to a roar.

Those soldiers — I saw uniforms and helmets — would quickly figure out there was no radio station in that block and be heading this way if the guys on our roofs didn’t manage to keep them pinned.

Then I heard a chopper crash. The explosion was tremendous. The other one was trying to get away, it sounded like.

I grabbed two grenades, pulled the pins, and went over to the window. Risked a quick squint. Guys coming down both sides of the street, shooting up at the roofs. I threw one as far as I could across the street at an angle, then leaned out and tossed the other left-handed up the street.

Willie was hunkered down in the corner, trying to see up the street through the empty window socket.

“Shoot low,” I shouted. “Ricochet the bullets off the walls over there.”

He began squirting bursts.

“More, more,” I urged.

I became aware that Sarah was behind me, and she handed me a couple more grenades. I sent them down the street, and the explosions were gratifying.

This went on for what seemed like an hour, but couldn’t have been more than a couple of minutes, if that. Willie changed magazines twice.

“Keep your goddamn head down,” I told him when he kept bobbing up to squirt off a burst.

I glimpsed a grenade flying into the street in front of our position. “Down! Grenade!”

It went off and showered the office with shrapnel. I looked at the studio window, which was grazed but intact.

Then I realized the shooting was tapering off. Another burst or two, and a deafening silence descended.

“Willis? Travis?”

“The survivors are running for the trucks,” Willis shouted into his radio. “Don’t let ’em get away!”

About that time the alley door crashed open. Willie Varner spun on his knee, a very athletic move, and fired a burst from the hip. Then another burst that emptied his weapon.

I was there with my M4, waiting, so I cranked my head to see. Two soldiers in uniform down.

With the carbine at the ready, I went down the hallway. One was still alive, a black kid. The other was seriously dead. From the streetlight in the alley I could see the patches on their shoulders. New Jersey National Guard.

Willie was there, kneeling, checking on the wounded man. The guy looked at Willie, gurgled something, then his eyes froze and he stopped breathing.

Willie dropped his weapon and put his hands over his face.

“Hey, man,” I said. “It was them or us.”

Sarah put her hand on his shoulder.

“If you had waited another half second to shoot,” I told Willie, “you’d be the one lying dead.”

Willie straightened up, left his weapon right where it lay, and walked out the alley door and turned right, away from the fight.

“Let him go, Tommy,” Sarah said.

“I just hope there are no more bad guys out there.”

“Let’s check on the broadcasting equipment.”

The radio came to life. It was Willis Coffee. “There was a fire fight over west of town, about where that radio tower should be. Maybe they tried to take it too.”

One of our guys was dead and three more wounded. The soldiers who lay on the floor in the hallway had apparently come south down the alley and gunned the two good guys on guard at the north entrance, then kicked in our door.

Among the attackers on the ground there were nineteen bodies and eight wounded. The rest had gone north running or riding the surviving trucks.

“If they had stopped in the right block, we’d have gotten them all,” Travis Clay said. And they would have destroyed the radio broadcast equipment, I thought, but I managed to bite it off before it came out. “And we have one prisoner, a FEMA guy who surrendered. His name tag says his name is Lambert. What do you want me to do with the wounded and this guy?”

“Put all the wounded on trucks and take them out to the camp. Maybe the doctors can save them.”

“Our guys already left. Grafton said no prisoners.”

“I’m giving the damned orders. Take all the wounded out to the base. And bring that prisoner over here. I want to look at him.”

Three minutes later Travis had him standing in the radio studio with a plastic tie around his wrists. Yep, it was Zag Lambert, whom I had met in Colorado a lifetime or two ago. He was even porkier than he had been in Colorado, with a truly awesome gut jutting out above his belt. I doubted if he had seen his dick in the last ten years unless he used a mirror. It was a wonder he could even reach it. He didn’t look as feisty now as he had in Colorado.

“Take him to Grafton,” I told Travis. “After they interrogate him, lock him up with Sal Molina. Don’t feed him for a few days. Maybe a week. Water only. He needs to lose some weight. His wife will thank us.”

“Yo. Come on, fatso.” And he led Lambert away.

“New Jersey National Guard,” I told Grafton when he called on the radio a few minutes later. “FEMA guys in trucks and two Jersey guard helicopters with grunts who rappelled down. Travis is bringing you a prisoner to interrogate, Zag Lambert, the guy who ran Jade Helm 16.”

“Good work, Tommy,” he said. “We’ll send some people to relieve you when the sun comes up, and you, Sarah, and Willie can get some sleep.”

“Yeah.” I didn’t mention that Willie had bugged out. I figured that I would run into him at Dawson in the chow hall. At least, I hoped so.

One of the choppers had crashed on a baseball diamond, and the other went into a block of old houses a quarter mile away. There were no survivors from the Blackhawks. Someone said six or eight civilians were killed in the crash into the houses; no one knew for sure. The smoke was still rising from the fire at dawn.

Thus ended the battle of Kingwood. Maybe someday they’ll put up a commemorative plaque.

I just hoped that somewhere people were listening to the radio.