Homeland Security

by William L Casselman

  “Well, now you know why we want you up there,” Tom said in a weary voice. This has become a priority operation. The last thing the government needs right now is the UN Security Council hearing about us not being able to control our domestic issues… especially after the way we’ve been going after Russia, Iran, and China over their own inner problems. It sure wouldn’t help if the native corporations provide evidence that the 1959 election was done illegally. That would be really embarrassing.”

  “Okay, that’s a wrap for tonight. We’ll begin our formal briefing sessions here tomorrow at 10 a.m.,” Brad said. He then handed a thick manila envelope to Clay. “That’s got Tom’s business card and my own, plus an emergency card for FBI purposes only and a cell phone with recharger. Our emergency numbers and office numbers are programmed in it, along with the FBI Emergency Command Center…You’ll give those back before returning to Alaska. It also contains a lot of cash, approximately what you’d get for cashing out upon discharge from the Army. There is a map to your hotel here in DC and your hotel key card, so don’t lose it. A driver will take you to the hotel and pick you up at 9:45 a.m. outside your hotel, but you will be under surveillance twenty-four seven, and that means even in Alaska. You’ll be set up with an emergency number and some kind of hand gesture you’ll use to show you’re in trouble, but you’ll also be on your own a lot…except for satellite surveillance. We’ll be devoting special satellite service twenty-four seven, just for this operation. It may be a drone at times or a satellite. But, you’ll never be without a Big Brother watching you.”

  “You must’ve been pretty sure I’d take this assignment,” Clay said with a raised right eyebrow.

  “Colonel Jessup said you were one of his best, so we didn’t feel you’d turn us down,” Brad replied.

  “Is that it then?” Clay asked. His back was getting sore, and the creaks in his neck were getting noisy; side effect from being Airborne.

  “I think so, Clay,” Tom answered. “Just make sure you get a good breakfast in the morning, you’ve got a long day ahead of you, and your brain needs to be working.”

  “How many days before I leave this wonderful school, teacher?”

  “Don’t knock it, we could’ve done this at the FBI academy and had you workin’ out with the recruits to make sure you were in shape.” Tom then glanced around the room as he figured out his response to Clay’s questions and then replied, “Our boss’s want you back in Alaska in five days…you still have to find a job and move into the service clubs…Veterans of Foreign Wars and American Legion…might also be an AMVETS club…but, do it all subtle like…Oh, your DD Form 214 will give you a 100-percent disability rating to cover your wounds and PTSD, and we’ll have a new Military ID Card for you before you leave. This will allow you to come on to Fort Wainwright and visit Basset Hospital for doctor’s visits, but you’ll be visiting our doctor.”

  “Subtle like. And you picked me?” Clay shook his head. “You’re people have to realize I’m known as a half-breed up there? My Indian brothers have little love for me and the whites… well, at least they don’t spit on me anymore.

  “Tom, did you know Fairbanks still had ‘Indian Only’ restrooms and drinking fountains in the 1960’s. There were bars where the Indians or even the Eskimos were not allowed in. Civil rights were a bit slower up there, but no one in Congress seemed to have really taken notice. ”

  “No, I didn’t realize how bad it used to be, but now you’re coming home a highly decorated war veteran, with a college degree. We hope those citations for bravery well help make you welcome in the off-post service clubs. A lot of Alaska Defense Force recruits get picked up there, and we know the ADF is a mixture of Alaskan ethnic groups,” Tom said. He lifted his briefcase and placed it on the table top to place some of his papers into it.

  “Gentlemen, natives don’t like the word ‘Eskimo’ anymore. This is used for the coastal native people from the north to the Southwest, and the name actually is derogatory, for most it means ‘fish eater’ and not intended to be nice. Sort of like using the word ‘honky’ or using the ‘N’ word for Blacks.

  “I never knew that Clay, but I’ll stop using it,” Tom said in a serious tone of voice.

  “What about the trials for my last assignment? Won’t I be needed to testify?”

  “With all the evidence the FBI secured at the camp and everyone trying to burn everyone else to get a better deal, it’s doubtful you’ll be needed.” Tom turned on the lights with the hand control, unlocked the door, and he then said to Clay, “Now get out of here and go get some sleep. I’m an old man, and I need my 8-hours too, or the wife will kill me. And if you ever happen to see me with an attractive older gray-haired lady, never mention you saw me smoking.”

  When Clay got back to his hotel, which was a nice Best Western in the eastern edge of the US Capitol, he double-locked his door and braced it with a wooden chair for added security. Old habits died hard. He got undressed quickly and spent nearly half an hour in a hot shower. Then, with a clean towel wrapped around his waist, he shaved and came out of the bathroom to lay out his clothes for tomorrow on the other bed. His watch told him it was 1:02 a.m., but his body was still feeling the excitement of the day and the thoughts of this new mission. He didn’t want to watch any TV or order up any room service-especially after he looked over the hotel’s menu and saw what their room service prices were; ghastly. The price for a simple roast beef sandwich started at $15.95, and gratuity was expected to be twenty-percent, which would be added on automatically by the hotel. Whatever happened 10% and it was still an option to tip or not?

  He lifted up the phone, left a wake-up call at the front desk through their new robotic computer voice system. Clay wondered if there was a cost for this too. He slept in the raw, and as his practice, he walloped his top pillow a couple times to get it in the right shape. He slept with only the top sheet over him and turned off his nightstand light. He had already stuck his Glock 17 under his bottom pillow, and before he closed his eyes, he whispered his nightly prayers. He was asleep within minutes, but it wasn’t long before the nightmares began. He was back in the streets of Cairo, and his world was about to fall apart.

  At 6:45 a.m., Clay was downstairs to have breakfast in the coffee shop; three eggs over easy, two slices of plain toast, two slices of tomato and a thick breakfast steak cooked well done. The total price was $18.50, and he sincerely hoped the FBI picked up the costs with his per diem. The tomatoes went on top his steak and to complete his meal, as he drank a large glass of low-fat milk. He also ordered a tall glass of orange juice and two glasses of ice water. As far as he could tell, there was no charge for the water, but after this, he’d be checking out the fast food joints for cheaper prices or maybe somewhere he could find a decent curry dish; hotter the better. Clay had taken a liking to the volcanic-like Middle East spices, where a soldier needed to have a quart of water handy to cool things down or some raw vegetables to save the inner lining of the mouth. But, he really relished the initial burst of taste and over time had grown used to the near panic of having one’s mouth on fire.

  Clay was always amazed how the small children over there in the Middle East could chow down so easily on the spiced food, and not be running for the nearest water bag.

  With no driver in sight yet, Clay walked about the lobby and visited the gift shop. Though he didn’t have any girlfriends, a wife or any relatives he liked well enough to send anything to, he saw no need to purchase any postcards of the memorabilia of the nation’s capital. On prior visits he had taken notice of the cutesy stuffed animals, assorted small American flags or fake flowers people were buying to be left at the base of the Viet Nam Memorial and now the newly constructed Martin Luther King Memorial. He glanced at the fake flowers and wondered who had the business of collecting all the old ones at the memorials, washing them off and reselling them to the retailers? Had this been the Middle East or North Africa, it would be a thriving business, and the fake flowers and flags wouldn’t go to waste.
Then there were all the other items, such as uniforms, military rank patches, and unit patches, plus medals and an assortment of things the person leaving it had valued, and they knew the man or women who had their name on the wall would understand why it was left. Something the living and the dead had shared. Clay believed it was all of this that made the big Wall so different than the traveling Wall taken across the country to visit the cities and allow the vets and others to see who couldn’t make it to Washington D.C. and see the real thing. Having seen the Wall, Clay thought they should do the same thing for the Marine Memorial, Korean War Memorial, and possibly some of the other museum pieces. Bring them for all the Americans to see, to help the Americans be proud once again of their country.

  He now wondered what kind of memorial would be left for the Iraqi and Afghanistan wars. He knew the names of the men who had fallen beside him in Libya and Egypt on Black Op assignments and how their names would never appear on any memorial wall, for their family members were told they had all died in training accidents. But, in the Special Warfare families, the parents and especially the wives knew the truth behind what had happened and often or not, a buddy to the fallen comrade would share a bit of the truth with the family member. Black Ops or not, sometimes a wife needed to know how her husband had died and that it was for something more important than a stupid training accident.

  While others stood in front of the hotel’s big street-side windows to observe pedestrian and vehicle traffic, waiting for a taxi or a ‘special ride,’ Clay rested in an overstuffed black leather chair until he spotted his driver, with the shiny black government Suburban pull-up into the fire lane. Once inside, the driver handed Clay an official Visitors VIP pass for the FBI building. “The VIP part allows for you to bypass the weapons detector and remain armed inside the building. You must carry some pretty heavy weight to get one of these.”

  Clay didn’t reply and pulled the beaded chain over his head and stuck the plastic pass inside his sports coat. He didn’t want it to be seen until he was ready to enter the FBI building. He carried his newly issued cell phone inside his coat and knowing the Feds; he wondered if the phone had a chip in it to allow them twenty-four seven satellite location of him. Not that it mattered. He didn’t have any romantic rendezvous planned for this week.

  The training began in the same conference room he was in the night before, except there were no agents standing guard outside and only Brad and a technician were present. To begin with, Clay was shown photographs of the senior staff members for the Alaska Defense Force on the72-inch television screen, followed by known locations for the various Alaska Defense Force Units.

  Brad stood up and used a yellow number-two pencil in his left hand for a pointer to show the locations on the diagram of the state, only this one had more detail and included the rail and road networks. A voice from the wall speaker then spoke, “As of right now, the ADF has its headquarters in Anchorage. But, they have training units in Juneau to handle the Southeast Alaska personnel from as far south as Ketchikan to as far north as Skagway. We estimate they have one hundred and twenty-five men and women in the Juneau unit, but they continue to actively recruit recently discharged veterans.

  “The Fairbanks Unit takes in the whole Tanana Valley. We believe they have personnel from several of the villages and smaller townships, such as Glennallen, Tok, Delta Junction and Chicken, Eagle and Copper Center. Former service personnel from Eielson and Fort Wainwright are sought after, and our records show over five hundred and fifty personnel training with them. But those numbers could be confusing, as to how many show up all the time or only once in a while.”

  “Wow!” Clay exclaimed. “I had no idea the ADF had gotten that big. I thought it was just a bunch of wanna-be soldiers who couldn’t make it in the National Guard.”

  “Might’ve been at one time, but a lot of people upset with the current government are coming out of the woodwork to join our country’s various militias, and the ADF has quadrupled in size in the last two years. We have prior servicemen and women who won’t join the guard because they don’t want to be sent back over to Afghanistan or the next place the US Military decides it can send state guard units too. So, they’ll join a militia to keep their skills in line, hang out with fellow vets, and remember the most exciting time of their life. At least this way they don’t get killed.

  “Because they support the Alaska Army and Air National Guard, we’re able to keep an eye on their numbers. The only thing that keeps a man or woman from joining up is a felony record or mental impairment, but the word is the ADF doesn’t want a bunch of drunks, trouble makers or drug heads either.”

  “Where are they getting their uniforms from?” Clay asked, while he looked over the photographs of the ADF training exercises and saw how they were wearing the latest in desert and woodland camouflage. The woodland camouflage was, of course, preferred in Alaska operations, simply because the desert and urban camouflage stuck out.

  The Technician, a young woman with shoulder length blonde hair and brown eyes, answered this question, “Alaska National Guard will issue some of the uniforms, but most of the people order their uniforms from one of any number of army surplus retailers, and they can buy new uniforms from the same companies who sell to the US Government. Meantime some of the veterans will wear the uniforms the brought home with them from the Sandbox.”

  Clay nodded his head and then said, “I used to hear stories of how some of the Viet Nam troops had to purchase their uniforms on the black market because they couldn’t get their camouflaged uniforms issued.” Clay stood up and walked over to the coffee cart for a white ceramic mug of hot tea.

  Brad had entered at this point and picked up his own cup of coffee, “It happened.”

  Then Clay saw Tom coming through the door, and he replied, “My youngest brother bought his camouflage utilities from the Black Market and then after the war ended, he got assigned to Thailand and found a warehouse stocked full of the camouflaged uniforms. A check showed that they were supposed to go to Nam more than two years earlier. He was pretty angry, and he and a couple others happened to each secure five sets of camouflage fatigues before they left the warehouse. No one said a thing, not even the sergeant in charge of the detail.”

  “I don’t blame them,” Clay said, shaking his head and stirring a spoonful of sugar into his tea.

  “Okay, let’s get back to the ADF… the Anchorage Unit has by far the largest unit with an estimated seven hundred and sixty troops, and we have rumors they even have a heavy weapons platoon. The Alcohol Tobacco and Firearms people provided us with a list of all the Class III arms dealers in Alaska, and I was actually amazed to see the number. We have a lot of legally owned automatic weapons up there… anything from World War 1 machine guns through World War II and over a hundred M-60’s from the Viet Nam era. You’ve got your BARs, M-16’s and M-4’s and all fully automatic, along with dozens of AK-47’s. Our paperwork copies show European and Japanese machine guns, Russian automatic pistols and now we have people up there with those fifty caliber sniper rifles and a truckload of suppressors or what in my day we referred to as silencers. Your Alaska now has got to be the best-armed state in the union.”

  “Now I can see why you people are so worried,” Clay said.

  “Well, to finish this part off, we have another smaller unit on the Kenai Peninsula, which takes in Kenai, Soldotna, Seward and Homer, and a few smaller communities and their personnel number less than one hundred. We have a small unit in Nome, about squad sized and another in Kotzebue, about squad sized. I think they’re the grandchildren of the old Eskimo Scouts from World War II…Sorry, I forgot what you said about the word ‘Eskimo.’ But, this means all together we have roughly a total of one thousand, five hundred and fifty personnel on paper and this is a mixture of women and men, most of them with previous service duty. They also have a small fleet of retired military service vehicles. At last count, we have confirmed five amphibious 706 APC’s from the Nam era, a few APC 113’s on trac
ks, four three-quarter ton armored personnel carriers, with either fifty cals or thirty cals mounted on them. There is also assorted military jeeps and five recently purchased older model HMMWV’s from Iraq.”

  “Brad, growing up, I heard stories of how Alaska has more Viet Nam veterans per capita than any other state.” Clay hesitated, thinking of a couple of his older cousins who fit into this classification and how they would never discuss the war. “They’re a bunch of mostly men coming up here to hide in a state where the population still sits at less than a million people, has few roads and most people mind their own business. They also wish to avoid the US government. Do you feel these veterans could be involved in this… suspected act of terrorism?”

  “At this point, we don’t even know if we have anything to seriously worry about. However, we don’t want to be caught unaware like we did on 9-11 or the Oklahoma bombing, even further back to Pearl Harbor. We just need for you to go deep cover and see if there is a threat and then report to us with what you’ve learned. It may be nothing, and you can enjoy that 30-day leave you’re owed, or…we have a problem to deal with, and you’re our eyes and ears on the ground.”

  Clay felt edgy. He honestly didn’t like the idea of going undercover against his fellow Alaskans and possibly some of his own tribal people. The whole set up felt rotten, but he also knew he was the best man for the operation. He only hoped the rumors of trouble were false. He could support his people and the other native corporations filing court challenges against the state compact decision, but domestic terrorism he was totally against and long ago he had sworn an oath to his country and his fellow Americans.

  For the next several hours, Brad briefed Clay on the Alaska Defense Force and their mission in support of the Alaska National Guard. They then took a lengthy coffee break, and Tom took over, briefing Clay on the FBI agents in Alaska, the information they had picked up so far from their sources concerning this radical unit inside the ADF and possible targets, in the event an attack was to be made inside Alaska. One of the questions being asked is whether or not there is a kidnapping plan for the Alaskan governor or some other state officer. Possibly a military base being bombed, or bridges being taken out. They were also concerned as to possible foreign influence by China or Russia. Were the initial stages being checked out for a forthcoming invasion?