Liberty's Last Stand

by Stephen Coonts

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

  Ben Steiner turned on his computer and began.

  SIX

  JR Hays dug his hide at noon. Before he turned over the first shovelful of earth he rigged up a listening device with an eighteen-inch parabolic dish. The dish picked up sound that was too faint for the human ear to detect, magnified it, and delivered it to the operator via earphones or on a speaker.

  JR laid the dish antenna on the ground so he was listening to the sky. He heard jets come and go and birds flapping their wings. He began digging. The hide was on the side of the arroyo in hardpan. He had to use the pick to break it up enough to shovel. The dirt had to go in a wheelbarrow. He dumped the wheelbarrow fifty yards back where the dirt was fairly well concealed.

  With the hide finished and bottles of water and weapons put inside, he installed a night-vision periscope. Twice he thought he heard piston engine sounds from the sky, so he quickly covered the hide with a green tarp. Then he lay on the ground and used night-vision goggles set for infrared. He saw the drone going northwest up the Rio Grande. When it was gone, he removed the tarp and got busy. An hour later the drone came back, so he did it all again.

  When he had the hide finished, JR installed his homemade mines on both sides of the arroyo. He got them in by ten in the evening. He could clean up the sites in the morning, but they were concealed well enough to not be seen at night.

  He went to his hide, checked that the parabolic dish antenna for the audio device was well concealed thirty feet away in a bush and aimed right where he wanted it, then climbed in and pulled the tarp over the hole. He donned the headset and scanned with the night-vision periscope he had borrowed from his employer.

  He was tired. He ate a few energy bars, drank water, and waited.

  He doubted they would come tonight. Or tomorrow night. But eventually they would. And he had an unlimited quantity of time. The rest of his life, actually.

  Ambushes aren’t for everyone. Few people have the patience to wait, and wait, and wait some more on the off chance that the opportunity you prepared for will actually happen. Snipers have that kind of patience, but most people don’t. Most people want to attack right now. Or sooner. Yesterday would be preferable. Do it and get it over with.

  Revenge isn’t that way. The juice in revenge, JR knew, is in the anticipation. The longer you wait the sweeter it will be.

  When he had repaired the fence that morning, he had attached a thin bare wire to it and run it to the hide. Now he twisted the end of the wire around one finger. Maybe he would feel it. His dad, he knew, had tried tin cans with rocks on the fence, but when the smugglers saw them, they knew he was nearby. JR doubted that they would see the wire. From his position near the fence, he should be able to count how many came through—and he could make sure that none got back.

  So what could go wrong? Well, despite his precautions a drone might have spotted him digging the hide or planting the mines. Federal agents might be on their way here right now.

  There was nothing he could do about that contingency, so he dismissed it. Never worry about things you cannot control. That was one of the hard lessons he had learned in the army. He had taken all the precautions he could, and that would have to do.

  As he sat in the hide with the periscope, listening to the audio on the earphones, he reviewed the timetable again. If they didn’t come by two hours before dawn, they weren’t coming. They needed at least an hour to hike to the paved road on the north side of the ranch and an hour to get back here. He thought they would want to be back across the river in Mexico by dawn. Maybe.

  But if they didn’t come or he missed them, he could get them some other night. They would keep coming as long as this delivery route worked. As the hours passed he consoled himself with the thought that the smugglers were dead men walking.

  By midnight he was having a devil of a time staying awake. Ten hours of hard manual labor in the heat of the west Texas summer had about done him in. That’s what you get for not staying in shape, he thought, for letting yourself get soft.

  He dozed off finally, wearing the earphones. Awoke with a start. Thought about giving up on tonight and heading back to the ranch house. But if he did that, they would come tonight. That was the way God rolled the dice.

  JR checked his watch. Almost one in the morning. He decided he would give himself one more hour, and if they didn’t come, go home to sleep. That decision made, he scanned with the periscope, saw nothing, and waited.

  And dozed. When he awoke again with a start, he found that it was almost two. Something woke him up.

  What?

  Now he felt it again. A tug on the wire wrapped around his finger. Something was brushing against the fence. An animal? He unwrapped the wire and let it dangle.

  He listened on the parabolic dish, adjusted the volume in the earphones. Looked through the periscope and saw three men operating with wire cutters on the fence.

  They were here!

  The internet and telephone service in the Austin area went down at ten that evening. Ben Steiner knew the system was dead because he saw legislators fiddling with their cell phones and pocketing them in disgust.

  The legislature was in joint session, considering a declaration of independence for Texas. The balconies were packed, standing room only.

  Steiner thought the declaration would pass, but figured it would take all night. Everyone, pro or con, had something to say.

  Those for independence were outraged at the president’s announcement that he was stopping all gun sales and confiscating firearms from Americans nationwide. Was he afraid of armed, law-biding American citizens? Hell yes. And what further destruction of the American way of life was in the works? Freedom of speech was already gone. Freedom from arbitrary arrest was gone. Was freedom of religion next? Federal officers were arresting people and incarcerating them for no crime other than the fact that they had been political opponents of the administration. That was deeply troubling. Even worse was the fact that no one had a clue when martial law would be over, when the country could get back to normal, or if it ever would.

  The delegates and senators opposed to the declaration were equally passionate. A Texas declaration of independence was a declaration of war. It was a bold step into the unknown. War. With all the power and might of the federal government against them. Several delegates argued that the threat from terrorism justified martial law, and others pointed out that it was Soetoro himself who demanded that some of the terrorists be admitted as refugees. “He manufactured a bloody crisis and now he’s using it to take the country where he wants it to go,” a senator shouted acidly.

  “Are you ready to lay down your life in opposition to the federal government?” one representative demanded. “Are you ready to lose everything, your family, your home, your savings, your means of making a living? Make no mistake; all those things are on the table. Are you ready to watch your children be killed in the violence? What will you say when your sons and daughters lie dead at your feet? Are you ready to turn your back on the American flag, the flag so many Texans have given their lives to defend? What the hell kind of people are you?”

  Another representative wanted to argue about the process. “This question is so important that it should be voted on by the people of Texas, not passed here by majority vote. This isn’t a convention of delegates elected to consider independence and draft a declaration—it’s the state legislature, for God’s sake.”

  “Texas voters will get their chance,” someone shouted. “We’re here to ensure that they do.”

  “Freedom isn’t free,” another speaker pointed out. “Freedom in America has been bought with blood. And that freedom purchased at such a precious price has been taken from us, ripped from our hands. The feds didn’t declare martial law after Lincoln, Garfield, or JFK were assassinated. Are our institutions so flawed that a dictator can destroy them before our eyes, yet we lack the moral and physical courage to fight for our he
ritage? Mr. Speaker, if we won’t fight to preserve our freedom, we don’t deserve it. And Barry Soetoro will take it from us. He’s trying to do that as we sit here this evening. There is only one thing for an American patriot to do, and that is vote to remove Texas from the tyranny of Barry Soetoro and the federal government.” A roar went up from the audience.

  Ben Steiner went into the governor’s office and found him conferring with several senior National Guard officers. A glance out the window showed troops in the yard, a lot of them. Two tanks were visible, and three armored personnel carriers. Jack Hays had called out the Guard.

  Finally Hays came over to Steiner and whispered, “How is it going over there?” He meant on the other side of the capitol building, in the House chamber.

  “They’re debating.”

  “Will we win?”

  “I think so, but I guarantee nothing. Think of them as a large jury. Soetoro is on trial.”

  “They’d better get it done tonight. Federal agents are out there with some regular army troops, and they sent word in that everyone in this building is under arrest.”

  “Will the Guard hold?”

  “I don’t know, Ben.” The skin of Jack Hays’ face was drawn tightly over his cheekbones and his eyes seemed to have sunk back into his skull. “I suspect that if the legislature decides to surrender, the guardsmen will go back to their armory, turn in their weapons, and go home. What else is there for them to do?”

  “I’ll go tell the legislature,” Steiner said.

  Hays stopped him with a tug at his sleeve. “Make damned sure every person in that chamber understands that if they declare independence, their necks are on the line.”

  “I think they know that.”

  “If we can’t win our independence, we’re all dead, including you and me. Once they vote for independence, we’ve crossed the river of fire and burned our boats.”

  “Jesus carried his cross,” Ben Steiner said gently. “We have to stand for something or the gift of life was wasted on us.” He walked out the door and along the hallway through lines of state troopers.

  The peons laden with backpacks full of narcotics trudged along in the darkness about six feet apart. There was starlight and a sliver of moon, but the old Indian trail up from Mexico would have been easy to follow regardless.

  With the periscope, JR saw the lead man with a backpack and started counting. One…two…he quit at eight. Eight mules. No doubt there were armed guards, perhaps even the same ones who had killed his father, but they weren’t on the trail. One was probably behind him, paralleling the trail.

  JR glanced at the luminescent hands of his watch when the last man went by. At the speed the peons were walking, he thought it would take about a minute and a half for all of them to get into the kill zone. He had walked it himself that morning, timing it.

  Carefully, ever so carefully, he rotated the periscope. If he hadn’t already passed the hide, the man or men on this side of the arroyo guarding the column must be close. JR had to get them first.

  The second hand of his watch was swinging, past forty-five seconds. Come on, man, where are you?

  Ah, there, moving slowly and carefully. JR zoomed in on his head, which was partially obscured by brush. But for an instant he got a good look. Yep, he was wearing a night-vision headset. But there was only the one man. A quick sweep revealed no others.

  JR lifted the edge of the tarp an inch or so, located the man. He was about forty feet away, moving right along so as to keep up with the mules. He was relying on the goggles, so he wasn’t situationally alert. JR poked his AR-15 with the night-vision scope out under the tarp. He flicked off the safety, aimed it, and squeezed the trigger. The man went down.

  Abandoning the rifle for a moment, JR located his lighter and the detonator cord by feel. Applied the flame. That cord burned at several thousand feet a second. It seemed to explode, dissolve into ashes. Then he heard the explosions, just one big roar. At least two screams, of men in mortal agony. The blast was followed by a patter on the ground and brush, like rain. JR knew what it was: he had used ten pounds of screws and nails in the mines.

  Now for the shooter or shooters on the other side of the arroyo. JR hadn’t seen any, but he knew someone was there. These guys didn’t take chances.

  He came out of the hide on his belly, wearing the night-vision goggles, with the AR cradled in his arms. He crawled as he scanned around. Black powder smoke oozed through the brush and acted like fog, reducing visibility. Still, the other men might have caught the muzzle flash of the AR or seen the flash of the burning det cord.

  He caught a glimpse of a man, then saw the muzzle flash and heard the bullet strike brush near his head.

  JR shot back, three shots as fast as he could squeeze the trigger, then he rolled sideways away from the spot where he had been.

  Lay in the brush on his face, waiting.

  Silence.

  How much patience would these shooters have? They weren’t trained soldiers and they had no idea how many opponents they faced.

  Raising his head, JR scanned again with the goggles. There was a lot of brush, so he could be sure of nothing, except he didn’t see anyone.

  It occurred to him that the man behind him might be only wounded. So he crawled that way to check on him. The little .223-caliber slug had hit him square in the chest and killed him almost instantly.

  Now for the other man. JR thought anyone on the other side of the arroyo would make for the hole in the fence as quickly as they could get there. They had heard explosions, screams, and shots from two different weapons, and had certainly gotten a good whiff of the stench of that black powder smoke. They knew they had walked into an ambush; they didn’t know how many people they faced; they’d get out of there as fast as they could.

  JR crawled to an old juniper, which screened him from the west side of the gully and allowed him to see where the fence crossed the arroyo. He waited, lying absolutely still.

  Two minutes, and then he saw a man break from the brush and run toward the hole in the fence. JR shot him in the back. Down he went on his face, the rifle falling ten feet away. JR took careful aim and shot the prone man again.

  He waited, listened, scanned with the goggles, felt his heart pounding in his chest.

  He consciously willed his heart to slow, which was ridiculous, but it did, finally. Ten minutes passed…eleven. Now he heard a man. Sounded as if he were in the arroyo, moaning softly, dragging himself along.

  JR tried to become one with the earth. Put his head down and listened.

  Yes, the man was dragging himself along, moaning, “Madre de Dios…”

  He was just to JR’s right, down in the arroyo, crawling for the fence. He couldn’t have been more than twenty-five feet away from where JR lay, but JR didn’t move. Didn’t even twitch. There might be another shooter out there, one with steel nerves, and if there were, to move was to die.

  Finally the man made the gap in the fence and JR saw him with the goggles. Shot him with the rifle, twice. Now the man lay absolutely still, the stillness of death.

  JR leaped to his feet and ran away from the fence, out of the area at an angle.

  He loped along, turned north, and went around the kill zone and finally joined the trail. Jogging along with his rifle at port arms, wearing the goggles; he could do this for hours. Or used to be able to, anyway. Tonight, with his nostrils full of the black powder smell and his ears still ringing from the gunshots, he fell into a rhythm. Only two miles to go, two miles, run, run, run.

  He wanted to see that van, get the license number.

  He got to the fence, ran eastward along it fifty feet, and lay down. The road was empty. Checked his watch. Forty-five minutes had passed since he detonated the mines.

  His breathing returned to normal and he waited.

  Seems like he had spent the major portion of his life waiting. He tried not to think, just became one with the night. The van would come, if the driver wasn’t waiting for a cell phone call
to summon him. Waiting just up the road, around the bend.

  He saw the glare of the headlights in the goggles before he heard the engine.

  It came on, slowing. It wasn’t a van; it was a car. Down to a creep as it approached the spot where the trail and fence met. No doubt the driver was looking for a signal. Didn’t see it, so he began to accelerate on by.

  JR got a good look as the car passed the fence. It had a bank of emergency lights on the roof and on the side it said “Sheriff of Upshur County,” and under that, “To serve and protect.”

  Five minutes later it came slowly back. JR was tempted. Taking out the driver would be an easy shot, but then what? He let it go by. Big man driving. Maybe the sheriff himself, ol’ Manuel Tejada.

  Five or six minutes later the sheriff’s car returned heading east. Five or six minutes after that, it passed again, westbound, and as the taillights went on along the road, JR heard the engine wind up to highway speed and saw the dimly glowing taillights fade into the darkness of the rolling plains.

  In the House, Ben Steiner signaled to the speaker that he would like the floor. The speaker recognized him. The chamber was silent as he approached the podium.

  “My fellow Texans,” he said. “This building is surrounded by federal agents and regular army troops, who have sent in word that everyone in this building is under arrest. Defending us are Texans from our National Guard. There has been no shooting yet, but there might be, at any moment. Armed Texans are trying to defend this building, this seat of Texas government, and defend you, the elected representatives of the people of Texas. And some in this chamber worry that blood might be shed, so they advocate our surrender to tyranny.”