Liberty's Last Stand

FIVE

After the crowd filed out of Jack Hays’ office, Ben Steiner stayed behind and closed the door. He dropped into a chair and lit a foul little cigar. Jack Hays sat in his executive chair, which his wife had bought from Office Depot and he had assembled in his garage.

“Looks like you’ve crossed the Rubicon, Jack. Ain’t no going back from here.” Steiner blew smoke around, then looked for an ashtray. There wasn’t one. “You’re sort of in the position of the fellow that found himself astride a fence when the ladder gave way and he came down with one leg on either side.”

“If you introduce a declaration of independence in the legislature,” Hays asked, “will it pass?”

“That’s the question, isn’t it?” Ben Steiner said, puffing lazily. “And damn, I don’t know. It might. Just might.”

“Or it might not,” Jack Hays said disgustedly. “Don’t you think you ought to start counting noses? If it’s DOA, I’d like to know it before I manage to piss off every federal employee from the postman to Soetoro.”

“I’m all for it,” Steiner declared, “but it’s a big step. Soetoro is arresting everybody in Texas he can get his hands on — whoever intimated, hinted, or told his wife that he didn’t like Soetoro. FEMA has a camp for them up in Hall County. They got a list and are rounding ’em up.”

“How come you aren’t on it?”

“Oh, I am, but my wife told them I was in Argentina fishing for a couple of weeks.”

“Ben, it would be silly to introduce such a resolution, or bill, unless we knew it was going to pass.”

“By how much?”

“Simple majority.”

“That isn’t much.”

“We’ll be lucky to get that,” Jack Hays said. “We must have something to paper our ass with. Unlike Soetoro, I want to hear the people’s representatives speak. One way or the other. Yea or nay.”

“It’s that ‘lives, fortunes, and sacred honor’ thing that has them worried.”

The governor took his time answering. “I think everyone would like to wake up and find this is just a nightmare. But it’s real. None of us are going to be able to bury our head in the sand and hope the wolves don’t bite our asses. The revolution has started. Soetoro has suspended the United States Constitution and the Bill of Rights. Lincoln did it under his war powers. Unfortunately for Soetoro, we aren’t in a war. A rebellion, or revolution, will change the life of everyone in America. Indeed, perhaps everyone on the planet. We can’t start it — and the Texas legislature can’t — because Barry Soetoro already did.”

“That wasn’t what you told me yesterday.”

“I’ve changed my mind.”

Ben Steiner took a deep drag on his cigar and let the smoke out slowly. “Our people need a little time,” he said. “They gotta work up to being brave. They gotta examine all the options before they can screw up their courage for this one.”

“How much time? The Soetoro administration has been planning martial law for years.”

“Tomorrow or the next day.”

“We better not have the vote if we aren’t going to win. Barry Soetoro is too much of an egotist to ignore an independence vote, win or lose.”

“We’ll win,” Steiner said grandly. In his fifties, with a booming voice, he knew how to sway people, persuade them. Jack Hays was a more difficult sell than the average juror, however.

“When you’re sure you know how the vote will go, after you’ve talked to every member, come back and see me.”

Ben Steiner leaned forward. “Jack, as we sit here Luwanda Harris and some of her friends are burning up the wires to Washington. If you don’t want the capitol surrounded by tanks and army troopers from all over, you had better start talking to people, tell them what’s at stake. We must get this done, and soon. If you don’t, my best guess is the government of Texas is going to get arrested en masse and accused of treason. In the interim, let’s cut off access to Washington.”

“Can we take down the telephone system and the internet?”

“Of course. The only question is how fast.”

“Let’s do it,” Jack Hays said. “Who do we call?”

“The state director of disaster response, Billy Rob Smith.”

The governor picked up the phone and made the call.

Billy Rob Smith heard the governor out, then asked, “Are you nuts? Every business in America bigger than a lemonade stand relies on telephones, landline and cell, and the internet. Millions of people use the system to send or get business information and to buy and sell securities. Medical records are transmitted via fax or over the internet. The feds have been working like beavers to digitize every medical record in the nation — shutting off the internet may mean people can’t get proper medical care. And the telephone system — you can’t shut one system down without turning off the other. In a lot of places, voice and digital use the same wires. In some places the telephone system is completely digital. Turning off cellular and landline telephones will drop us right smack dab back into the nineteenth century. Shutting those systems down is insanity.”

“I didn’t ask for your opinion — I am giving you an order.”

“And I’m telling you that you’re crazy. Hell, I don’t even know that you are the governor. You sound like an idiot jabbering on the telephone.”

What ended the argument and decided the matter was an announcement at precisely that moment that was carried on television networks nationwide: The president had directed the military to work with civilian law enforcement agencies to confiscate all the guns in America in private hands. In the future, only the military and law enforcement officers would have guns.

Billy Rob Smith had a television in his office airing a twenty-four-hour news channel, which was limiting itself to government press releases these days, and he paused his conversation with the governor while an aide told him the news as rapidly as possible and pointed at the television set.

Smith was not stupid. “Did you hear that?” he demanded of Jack Hays.

“Yes.”

“Holy damn. It’s like the British marching to Lexington and Concord. This tears it. Americans won’t stand for it. Hell, the people of Texas won’t stand for it.”

Jack Hays took a deep breath. He had other things to attend to. “Smith, I want you to shut off the telephone and internet systems in east Texas. Start right here in Austin, right now. Then Houston. Get busy.”

A very subdued Billy Rob Smith said, “Yes, sir,” and hung up.

Jack Hays repeated the news to Ben Steiner, who was taking a last puff of his little cigar. Steiner stared, slack-jawed. Finally he said, “Soetoro isn’t just temporarily suspending the Constitution, he’s tearing it up.”

Jack Hays rubbed his forehead.

Steiner said, “Luwanda Harris will never change her mind, but this will get us Smokey Bryan and a whole lot of others who were on the fence. Of course, a lot of liberals will have a spontaneous orgasm when they hear Soetoro has repealed the Second Amendment, people like Melissa McKinley, but they weren’t going to vote for independence no how, no way. They don’t mind a dictator repealing the Second Amendment as long as they think he’s on the side of social justice and the planet, like they are.”

“Ben, if you are going to introduce a declaration of independence, and I don’t mean an ordnance of secession, hadn’t you better write one? After you count noses.”

Ben Steiner rushed from the room, taking his cigar butt with him.

Trust Jack Yocke to know when something was going on, Jake Grafton thought. He was standing under a tree watching it rain from a low overcast sky when the Washington Post columnist found him.

“I saw them take you into the admin building, Admiral,” Yocke said. “Rumor has it you are now part of the conspiracy that planned a coup d’état.”

“Where did you hear that?”

“It’s being whispered around.”

“They wanted me to sign a confession.”

“Did you?”

“I am not going to confess to anything I didn’t do. Ever. Once you start that, there’s no end to it.”

“No matter how bad you think the Soetoro White House gang is,” Yocke said, “you’re wrong. They’re worse.”

“They certainly think they are on the side of righteousness and history.”

“Hitler and Stalin were sure of it too — didn’t work out so well for them.”

“Now I feel better.”

Jake Grafton had his hands in his pockets. He looked around. No place to sit that wasn’t wet. He leaned against the tree trunk, which wasn’t wet yet. The rain was falling in greater volume.

“So what are your politics, Admiral? In all the years I’ve known you, I never got an inkling.”

Grafton snorted. “Long ago, when I was very young, I learned that all political points of view were valid for the people who held them, except for the fanatics on the fringes who are usually incapable of rational thought. Think about the blind men and the elephant. Honorable people can hold very different opinions because they have very different life experiences. Liberals, conservatives, middle-of-the-roaders, big-government types, libertarians, old, young, middle-aged, highly educated or average or uneducated, skilled or unskilled, stupid, average smarts, or genius, they all see a little bit of how the world works and process it into a worldview, and they are all correct. The genius of representative democracy is that it takes all these viewpoints and grinds them up and arrives at some kind of resolution, most of the time. Look at the federal tax code: government policy has tried to accommodate all major and many minor concerns and still raise revenue. Any dictator with half a brain could put a tax code together that is simpler and more efficient and raises more revenue. But the United States still has one of the highest, if not the highest, rate of voluntary tax compliance of any country in the world. So something must be working right.”

“Democracy can’t handle every problem; you have to admit that.”

“Slavery was too big for representative government,” Grafton acknowledged. “The story of this century is the haves versus the have nots, and illegal immigration is one aspect of that. Drugs are another piece of that problem. The disintegration of the black family is a piece. The desire of Barry Soetoro to drastically increase the number of non-white voters in America as quickly as possible to enhance the political power of blacks and Hispanics and Muslims and dilute the power of the whites is another. Representative democracy hasn’t figured these problems out and may not be able to do so. Still, no other form of government has a better chance.”

Lightning flashed, then two seconds later came the clap of thunder. The wind picked up.

“So how will the story turn out?” Yocke asked.

“I don’t know, Jack. I really don’t.”

“I’m getting wet,” the Post’s man complained, and brushed wind-driven raindrops from his hair.

“See you later,” Grafton said.

“Good luck, Admiral.”

“Thanks. You too.” Grafton moved a few degrees around the tree and stood watching the rain.

I parked in front of the lock shop and went in to see Willie Varner, my partner. He knew more about locks than I ever hoped to know, and much of that knowledge was acquired in prison. They say prison will broaden a man; I couldn’t testify to that, but the experience seemed to have stretched Willie’s mind somewhat, even if it didn’t do anything for his morals or ethics.

“Damn, Carmellini,” he said, “I thought you was gone out west somewhere on the lone prairie learnin’ to rope and ride and sing to the dogies, whatever they are.”

“I’ve only been gone three days, Willie.”

“Come back to reenlist in the CIA, have you?”

“Nope. Come back to break Jake Grafton out of prison.”

“I saw the Post. And heard about him on TV. He’s famous now. Arrested and all for tryin’ to kick Barry Soetoro outta the White House and get him started on his way to Hell. You ain’t serious about bustin’ him out, are you?”

“I am.”

He made a rude noise. “You are a real damn fool, Tommy. I’ve known some real losers in my day, people so damn stupid they needed help to pee, but you take the prize. Where they got ’im?”

“Camp Dawson.”

“Never heard of it.”

“It’s a National Guard camp over in West Virginia.”

“Ahh, the beatin’ heart of civilization. I should of heard of it, cultured as I am. And after you get him outta there, where pray tell are you two gonna go? Yemen? You can share a goat herder’s hut with some holy warriors. I heard the summers are kinda warm there. Maybe you can summer up at the North Pole in an igloo.”

That was Willie, always asking the tough questions. “I don’t know. Haven’t thought that far ahead.”

“Better get that figured out before you cross the line, Tommy. Send me your address in a year or two when you’re settled so I can send you birthday cards.”

“How do you like living in a dictatorship? Transition going okay?”

“So far so good. There’s a kid down the street teachin’ me the Sieg Heil salute. Want a beer?”

“Why not?”

We settled down with longnecks in the back room of the shop. That was where I broke the news that I needed some help.

“Oh, no!” Willie roared. “Forget that! Wash out your filthy mouth, Carmellini. I ain’t ever goin’ back to the joint, and how I know that is because I ain’t ever goin’ to do anythin’ that would get me sent back there. Livin’ in the joint with a bunch of losers who would as soon kill you as look at you, eatin’ mac and cheese, no liquor or beer or women, jackin’ off under the sheets… nope. Ain’t gonna do it again, Tommy, so you just forget whatever shit is in your twisted head.”

“I know you’re a patriot.”

“The hell I am! Who told you that? You go wave the fuckin’ flag somewheres else.”

“One of the sons of liberty.”

He said a crude word that is illegal to say on the television or radio. Maybe even on the telephone. I knew I could talk him around, so we each had another beer and talked about Barry Soetoro and martial law and all that.

That evening I stopped in to see if Mrs. Grafton was home. I buzzed the door in the front lobby, told her who I was, and she let me in. Rode the elevator up.

Callie Grafton looked tired and out of sorts. She offered me something to drink and I chose bourbon. She poured me a healthy drink over ice.

She knew all about what the government spokesmen were saying to the press about her husband. “None of it is true. He has devoted his life to serving America. I can’t believe that anyone could say these things about him with a straight face. Tonight on television they named two other men they said were coconspirators. I’ve never even heard their names before.”

“They’re sacrificial goats,” I said, and watched her face.

She reached for my drink and took a sip. “I think so too.”

“I’m thinking of busting him out of Camp Dawson, or wherever they move him. It can be done, but afterward he’ll be a fugitive.”

“So will you. And anyone who helps you.”

“Can you go visit him? Like tomorrow?”

“I don’t know. I can call him and ask.”

“Please do so. Right now. Don’t tell him that I’m here.”

She went into the master bedroom, I suppose, and I sat at the little kitchen dining nook working on my drink and looking at the lights of Washington. Lots of lights, all the way to the horizon. Thought about being a fugitive in Barry Soetoro’s America.

I also thought about the possibility that the Grafton condo was bugged. It was a very slim chance, I thought. There hadn’t been enough time, and why Grafton? Sure, they were setting him up as a human sacrifice, but why would they care what Callie Grafton said? There was nothing she could do about it.

Finally Callie returned. “I can see him tomorrow afternoon. They are still allowing visitors.”

“Good,” I said. “I doubt if they’ll have the visitor’s rooms wired up already, but they might.” I handed her a watch. “Put this on and wear it. Pushing the stem in turns on a very high pitched sound, too high for human ears, but it will overpower any listening device and mask a conversation.”

“Where did you get this?” she asked.

“Liberated it from the CIA. I thought that someday I might need it more than they did, and darn if that day didn’t come. When your conversation is over, don’t forget to push the stem again to turn the squealer off.”

“How will I know it’s working?”

“The second hand will cease to move when the squealer is on, and resume when it’s off.”

“Okay.”

“You need to ask him if he wants out. That’s the only question, and it’s yes or no. He’ll understand about being a fugitive if we get him out. Maybe they’ve been threatening him, maybe they haven’t, but Jake Grafton will know the score. Yes or no. Can you do it?”

“Of course.” She acted as if that were a silly question.

“On your way home, please call me. I’ll give you my cell number. If his answer is yes, he wants out, you will tell me that he looks good. If the answer is no, tell me he looks tired.”

“He said they were listening to telephone calls.”

“It’s worse than that,” I admitted, and decided to share some classified information. “NSA is recording and data mining every telephone call in America. All of them. Have been for at least six months. Never say anything on any telephone that you don’t want the government to hear.”

She sniffed. “Handling that much information, they couldn’t be very efficient.”

“Computers are marvelous things. Never bet on bureaucratic sloth and incompetence. Just pray for it.”

She stared straight into my eyes. “Tommy, how are you going to get him out?”

“I don’t know just yet,” I said. “I’ll get some help and we’ll put our heads together and see what is possible.”

She started to say something, thought better of it, and examined her hands.

I hoped Jake Grafton would say yes, and I told Mrs. Grafton that.

“Why?” she said.

She was a tough broad, so I looked her straight in the eyes and explained. “Cynic that I am, I suspect if we don’t spring him the Admiral is bound for a maximum security prison. Or a graveyard. Accused, convicted, and executed, he wouldn’t be around to embarrass the crowd that needs him as a scapegoat.”

She kept her eyes on mine. “You may be right,” she said softly.

“Mrs. Grafton, if the White House didn’t need some scapegoats, why did they accuse your husband of something ridiculous?”

She took a deep breath and exhaled slowly. “I’ll call you tomorrow on the way home, Tommy. Thank you for coming.”

“He looks good or he is tired.”

I finished the drink, punched my cell number into her phone, said good-bye, and left. In the elevator down I thought about the fact that Callie Grafton didn’t once mention herself, ask what she would do if her husband escaped custody. In her own way she was as tough as Jake Grafton. If I were Barry Soetoro, I wouldn’t want to share an elevator with her.

When I was out of the parking garage and tooling through the city toward the lock shop, I got back onto the problem of how my helpers — they didn’t yet know they were going to be my helpers — were going to snatch Grafton from the arms of the law. I had an idea or two about how we might evade afterward, for a little while at least, but first things first.

I decided to call my girlfriend, Sarah Houston. She used to be a dataminer at the NSA, with the world’s biggest and best computer system to play with. It helped that she was also a genius and the most gifted hacker alive on this side of the Pacific. Hacking and selling secrets had gotten her into serious trouble a few years ago and she went to the joint, but Jake Grafton had sprung her to help him. That worked out, so her name was changed and she was given a new identity. Grafton had gotten her transferred to the CIA, and she had an office two floors below mine. I didn’t know what she was doing at the agency, and I hadn’t asked. Not that she would have told me anyway. If there was ever a woman who thrived on secret shit, Sarah Houston was her name.

She and I had an up-and-down relationship. Just now we were down. It was an old, old story: she wanted to get married and I didn’t.

She answered the phone on the third ring. “What is it, Carmellini, you jerk?” I am not a fan of caller ID, and this is why.

“Hey, gorgeous. I was thinking of dropping by in about a half hour to run something—”

“No.” She hung up.

We Carmellini men are made of stern stuff, so I went anyway. I buzzed her apartment from the lobby. No answer. Maybe she had a guy up there tonight, but I didn’t think so. Men who could handle that edgy personality were rare indeed. I was one, sort of, but there is only one Tommy Carmellini.

I pushed the buzzers on three or four apartments, and was rewarded with a click. I was elevated to the fourth floor and marched purposefully to her door and rapped politely.

She must have looked through the security eye. “Get out of here, Carmellini, before I call the police.”

“I’m here to talk about Jake Grafton.”

Ten seconds… then she opened the door and stood there. She was wearing a robe and slippers.

“Well?”

“It would probably be better if we talked inside your place.”

She pulled the door open and headed for her living room. I came in and closed the door.

“Well?” she said again.

“You have probably been reading about Jake Grafton being accused of conspiring to do a coup d’état. I need your help with a jail break.”

She sat down and ran her hand through her hair. “Damn you, Tommy.”

“I had nothing to do with it, and you know damn well Jake Grafton didn’t. You know Jake Grafton. But Soetoro and his staff are going to frame him and either lock him up forever or execute him. If he doesn’t get hanged in his cell while he is awaiting trial.”

“They wouldn’t do that,” she whispered.

“You think?”

She put her face in her hands. Finally she whispered, “Okay. They would.”

“Right now he’s being held in a detention center at Camp Dawson in West Virginia. They’ll move him soon to the federal holding center in Washington. We need to know when they plan to do that, and how many agents will transport him. I assume they will be FBI agents, but I don’t know that for a fact. You could help with that.”

She studied the carpet. After a bit she said, “You know if they catch me getting out of line they’ll send me right back to the women’s prison at Alderson. A knock on the door, handcuffs, and I’m gone for the rest of my life.”

“If they catch me and Willie and the guys, we’re going up the river too. If we’re still alive.”

She went into the kitchen and I heard her knocking around. In a few minutes she was back with two drinks. I sipped mine. Gin. I don’t think much of gin, but I sipped along as if I drank it every day. She sipped hers too.

“So you get him out. Then what?”

I told her my idea.

“That won’t work for long.”

“Soetoro is lighting a fuse on a rebellion. We just need to be out of the blast zone until it blows up in his face, then he will have a great many more pressing problems than you, me, Grafton, and Willie the Wire.”

“And if you are wrong?”

“If I’m wrong, I’ll be dead. The rest of us too, maybe.”

“You would take that chance for Jake Grafton?”

“Yes.”

She took her drink and went to the window. Pulled back the drapes so she could see out. Stood there a while, taking an occasional sip of her drink. Finally she said, without turning around, “You would.”

“I need your help to pull this off,” I told her.

Back in his hotel that night, Ben Steiner went to the business center and used his computer to call up a copy of the U.S. Declaration of Independence of 1776 and the Texas Declaration of Independence of 1836. He printed them out, then logged off and went up to his room.

He read both documents carefully. The authors of the Texas declaration had obviously used the U.S declaration as a format. First there was a statement of their authority, then a list of grievances that justified what was to come, then the declaration itself, which severed the political ties with the mother country. The language of both was stirring, defiant, a political act that could not be undone except by military defeat by the mother country. Both were written for a wide audience, all the people in the nascent new nation and the citizens of the mother country, England and Mexico, respectively, and everyone in the world. The drafters of both knew they were writing a historical political document. They wrote for the people who would fight the battle and for all the generations yet to come.

Writing such a document would require the best that was in him.

Ben Steiner turned on his computer and began.