“Who’d you shoot?” I asked Sarah.
“A couple of men who thought I wouldn’t.”
“Good.”
“This pistol doesn’t kick as much as I thought it would.” Oh, man! I glanced at her, but she was looking straight ahead at the road.
The breeze coming in the open windows felt good.
“Where are we going, Tommy?” Grafton asked.
“A place I know. You need a vacation and Sarah needs access to a real bathroom.”
“Where?” he said. That was Jake Grafton. No nonsense at all.
“The CIA safe farm near Greenbank.”
He grunted. Then his head tilted back onto the headrest and he was asleep, or maybe passed out. He had had a really bad time.
NINETEEN
Congressman Jerry Marquart was one of the civilians who watched Tommy Carmellini and the gunmen depart through the gate and down the road into the night. He recognized Jake Grafton, former CIA director, and Sal Molina, who was presumably no longer employed at the White House. The fashionably grizzled younger man who climbed into the back of the pickup with Molina he didn’t know.
Jerry was in his late thirties. He was an ROTC grad, had spent six years in the Marines, had done the Afghanistan gig twice, and then had gotten out and gone into politics in Iowa. He was in his second term in the House of Representatives when FBI agents arrested him and brought him here. He didn’t even bother to ask why. He was no friend of the Soetoro administration and denounced their policies at every opportunity. He actually had a lot of opportunities, because he was one of the very few members of congress with recent military experience. Or any military experience, for that matter.
He looked at the pile of carbines the attackers had left behind, walked over, and picked one up. Worked the action, checked the magazine, then went over to one of the bodies and helped himself to several full magazines.
Another man came over and asked him, “You know anything about guns?”
“A little.”
“I’m from New Jersey, and I don’t know shit about guns.” He was about twenty-five pounds overweight, had saggy jowls, and combed his hair over his bald spot. He picked up a carbine and hefted it. “But I don’t think I want to stay here.”
“Don’t take one unless you’re willing to use it.”
“I’m getting there. Name’s Evan Bjerki.”
“Help yourself to some ammo,” Marquart advised. “The price is right.”
Jerry Marquart went into the admin building and spent two seconds looking at the remains of Sluggo Sweatt. He had seen a lot of corpses so Sluggo’s didn’t affect him one way or the other. Nor did the two dead men sprawled on the floor of a room with cots and porn mags scattered around. He helped himself to a pistol belt that he had to pull off one of them, strapped it around his middle. He checked the pistol, a Beretta, made sure it was loaded, then moved on. The cell gave him pause. He smelled the feces, saw the jump suit on the floor, connected it to the naked Grafton, and walked back through the building and out into the compound. Knots of people, maybe a hundred by now, were talking earnestly and loudly to each other and gesturing. Bjerki trailed along behind Marquart.
Marquart went back through the camp, taking his time. There might be some guards still around, and they would undoubtedly be in a pissy mood.
The back gate of the compound was standing open. More bodies lying round. He surmised this was from the machine-gun fire he had heard. Six more bodies lay on the porch and dirt in front of the guards’ barracks. One of the men wasn’t dead; he was groaning and his legs worked back and forth in the dirt. Marquart didn’t get near him.
The wooden sides of the building had been raked by machine-gun fire. Maybe there were more dead or wounded in there, but Marquart wasn’t curious enough to go inside to find out.
He examined the vehicles. One car with a body lying beside it seemed undamaged. As he checked the pockets of the corpse, which hadn’t bled much, he noted the man had taken four rounds in the chest, any one of which would probably have been fatal. He found a set of keys. They fit in the ignition. He started the engine, which seemed to run okay. Half a tank of gas. Bjerki stood by the driver’s door. Marquart ran the window down. “I’m leaving,” he said. “You want to come, get in.”
Bjerki walked around the front of the car and climbed into the passenger’s seat. He held his M4 between his knees. “Where are you going?”
“To the revolution.”
“Be a shame if they had one without us,” New Jersey Bjerki said.
“Put on your seatbelt.”
Marquart pulled the lever to get the car into drive, and they rolled.
On their way back to Longview, Nate Danaher said to JR Hays, “You understand that if we attack Barksdale, the gloves will be off.”
“Sure.”
“You’ve talked this over with your cousin?”
“Yes.”
“He understands that this is not a declaration of independence; it’s a declaration of war?”
“Nate, you and I know Barry Soetoro isn’t going to let Texas go without a fight. For us, the only decision to be made is whether we let Soetoro strike the first blow. Politically, it would be wise to let him be the aggressor. Militarily, not so wise. If Texas is going to win its independence, it must seize the military initiative and never let it go.”
Danaher nodded.
“If we let Soetoro pick and choose his points of attack, we will ultimately lose our organized military forces and be reduced to years of guerilla warfare. In the long run, I think we could win a guerilla war, but it will destroy Texas and ultimately cost more lives than an offensive that takes the fight out of Texas and into Soetoro’s territory. Jack thought that a Texas offensive would, in the long run, cause Soetoro to lose political control of the country. Soetoro must show his supporters he can win the battles, or else he will lose the war. He’s already on record as saying that he will crush Texas. I don’t think he thought that statement through very well, because Jack can say we are responding to an imminent threat, and everyone south of Canada will believe him. Barry Soetoro doesn’t want to negotiate: he wants war. We must give it to him in spades.”
“An assault on the base really ought to happen at night. Tonight would have been ideal. Tomorrow night would be the next choice.”
“We can’t wait. By tomorrow night they may have flown those B-52s out of here or arranged AAA and SAMs, plus a reception committee on the ground. In addition to air police, they can fly some troops up from Fort Polk. By tomorrow night they might be ready to kick our butts. So we must go as soon as we can get ready. The C-130s are already at Hood, and the troops, all volunteers, are getting ready. We just need you to brief them, set it up, and go. Tomorrow morning at perhaps nine o’clock is about the earliest possible time. In my judgment, we dare not wait. We cannot wait.”
“What are you going to do about that brigade combat team from Fort Polk? And those paratroops? They could push us right off Barksdale and back into Texas.”
“I’m going to bomb them while you are taking Barksdale.”
Danaher thought for a few minutes as the miles rolled by. Finally he said, “Okay, I’ll do it. Gina can stay with our daughter. Let’s saddle up.”
“Welcome to the Texas Guard.”
“Welcome to the war, you mean.”
“Yeah, that too.”
“I don’t know if I have another war in me, but I guess we’ll all find out,” Nate Danaher said softly.
The CIA safe house was in the woods of a large farm that the locals thought belonged to an eccentric novelist. That was the agency’s cover story, anyway. It was midnight when we entered by a gravel driveway, passing by signs that announced “Private Property, No Trespassing” and “Trespassers Will Be Persecuted and Prosecuted, This Means You.” The one-lane road led across a large meadow, passing a wooden hangar and a barn, and crossed a grass runway and then a bridge across a creek. Security cameras were mounted unobtrusively on trees and un
der the eaves of the hangar and barn. I led the way.
The safe house was used for interrogating defectors, Russians and Eastern Europeans back in the day, and now Islamic jihadists. I doubted if there was anyone there just now due to the current state of national affairs, but I was ready in case we met anyone. We didn’t. No one was at the guard’s cottage, and the gate was locked. Willie the Wire worked on it awhile and couldn’t get it open, so we used a tow chain to pull the gate down and off the road. Willie’s one skill in life is opening any lock without a key, yet he had just had his first taste of combat so he was a little shook up.
There was no one at the main house. After an incident a couple years ago when some bent FBI agents and former cops burned the house down, the place had been rebuilt. I was involved in that fracas, and hadn’t been here since.
Willie opened the front door for us, partially redeeming himself. While the guys fired up a gasoline generator out back, I explored the layout and found that the new building had a small medical room. It contained an X-ray machine and one that I thought was probably an EKG machine. Some other equipment that I couldn’t identify. I had the guys take Jake Grafton in there and put him on the gurney.
Grafton was conscious and obviously hurting. “He needs a doctor,” Sarah said with a frown.
“I’ll go get one.”
I drove back to the hard road and went into Greenbank, and found a small white cinderblock building that said “Clinic” on the sign. It was closed of course, but a sign by the door gave a number to call in case of medical emergencies.
Back in the FEMA truck, I fired up the GPS, played with the options, and found one labeled “phone number.” I clicked on it and a prompt appeared. I put in the area code, which was 304, and the number. In about two seconds a red pin appeared. Five more seconds, and the computer filled in a map with directions from my present position to the pin.
It was eight miles away. I rolled.
The doctor’s house was on a secondary road at the top of the grade, in a saddle where there was a nice view. I went up his drive and, late as it was, found a man and woman sitting beside an outdoor fireplace with drinks in their hands. I got out and went over.
“Doctor?”
“Yes. Nathan Proudfoot.” He was about six feet, thin, perhaps sixty years old, with cropped hair and a mustache.
“My name is Tommy Carmellini. I’m with FEMA. We have a medical emergency down the road a little ways and could certainly use your services. Could you come with me?”
To his credit, he didn’t hesitate. “I’ll get my bag.” He charged into the house. There was a lighted kerosene lamp on the porch and apparently at least one in the house.
“Sorry to ruin your evening, ma’am,” I told the lady.
“Goes with the territory,” she said. “What happened?”
“Car wreck. One hurt.”
Dr. Proudfoot came trotting out with his black medical bag. He got into the passenger seat of the truck, and we headed back for the safe house. I told him about the fictitious wreck.
“How did you find me?”
I gestured to the GPS. “FEMA can find anyone,” I said, which was true.
“How are you making out without electricity?” I asked.
“Fine,” he said confidently. “Rural nets occasionally go down when there are thunderstorms or someone knocks down a pole with a car, but only for a few hours or overnight. That’s just a nuisance. Still, a few years ago we had a blizzard that took a lot of lines down and left us without power for eight days. That was a real pain, so I’m set up now. Even have a little generator that keeps the refrigerator and water pump running. We’ll be fine.”
As we drove up the road I told him about the patient. “He’s a little over sixty-five, I think, six feet, not obese, in fairly good health as far as I know, but he has a bunch of cracked or broken ribs on each side. I taped him up as best I could; he’s in a lot of pain and needs a doctor.”
“He got busted ribs in a car wreck?”
“I confess, I lied to your wife. Some men beat him badly with fists and shoes. Kicked him in the balls too.”
“FEMA sounds like tough duty to me,” he said acidly. I didn’t argue.
If he didn’t know about the safe house in the woods, he didn’t show surprise. I guess in his practice he gave up surprise some years back.
Dr. Proudfoot glanced at Grafton, looked around at the equipment in the room, then went to work. He cut off the tape I put on his ribs, X-rayed the admiral, asked him about his general health and how he was feeling, checked his heart and vitals. After a careful exam and a study of the X-rays on a computer screen, he taped him again, a much better job than I did. He also gave Grafton a shot to make him sleep. “Six ribs are cracked on the right side, five on the left,” he told Sarah and me, “but none are severed, as far as I can determine. I think he’ll heal okay, but he should be in a hospital where he can be observed.”
“We’ll try to get him there as soon as possible,” Sarah assured him.
“Used to be I’d give him some pain pills, but the government is so tight on pain pills now I don’t carry any. The good news is that the damned pill-billies aren’t tempted to rob me. It’s a hell of a world.”
“Isn’t it though,” I remarked.
“If he’s hurting when he wakes up, he can have a shot of whiskey. No aspirin. Keep him as inactive as possible. Now, I need all his information so I can get paid for this house call.”
“I’ll give you cash. Is two hundred dollars enough?”
“That’s more than the government would pay me.”
I paid him on the spot.
When I was taking him home, the doctor asked, “Is that a government facility?”
“Doctor Proudfoot, you appear to be a good man, and I’d like to answer your question, or questions, because I know you have more than one. But I cannot.” I smiled at him benignly. “I don’t know where you stand on our current national difficulties, nor do I care. What I can say is this: I want you not to tell anyone about the facility you just visited or the patient you saw there. Or me. Or the other men there.”
“It’s a government secret, huh?”
“Indeed it is.” We were on the secondary road by then, about a mile from his house. I stopped the truck in the middle of the road and turned in the driver’s seat to face him. The panel lights made his face quite plain. “If we get visitors of any kind, sheriff, locals, FEMA people, FBI, state police, Homeland Security, anyone at all, I’ll know you told someone the secret. You won’t be prosecuted because you’ll be dead. I’ll find you like I did tonight and kill you. Do you understand?”
He stared at me with fear in his eyes.
“I don’t want to kill you, but I will if you tell anyone at all. Even your wife. Tell me that you understand.”
He nodded.
I took my foot off the brake and drove him the rest of the way home. As he got out of the truck, I said, “I told your wife it was a car wreck. Make her believe it. Good night.”
I felt dirty and ashamed of myself, but I had to put the fear in him. I hoped for our sakes I scared him enough.
Back at the ranch, I sent Willis and Travis to spend the night in the guard cottage by the gate. Told them to drag the gate back across the road.
I put loaded weapons around the house, with a couple of grenades at each window, just in case, checked on Grafton, who was asleep, and Sarah, who was asleep in a bedroom upstairs. Armanti and the Wire, Jack Yocke and Sal Molina were sharing bedrooms. I took off my boots and flaked out on the couch downstairs.
Early that Wednesday morning, while most Americans were in bed, the Oklahoma legislature passed a declaration of independence and the governor signed it. The news had been out all day Tuesday that the legislature had been called into special session to consider the measure. Washington had instructed the FBI and FEMA to arrest the governor and the entire legislature to ensure the declaration wasn’t even debated. The commander at Fort Sill was instructed to send
a thousand troops to assist the federal agents in maintaining order in Oklahoma City.
The general at Fort Sill was willing, but as the evening progressed he found he didn’t have a thousand troops willing to go. He had, at the most, about a hundred, so finally he sent them, armed and wearing battle dress. They went in trucks that convoyed up I-44 from Lawton. They were rolling through the open prairie south of Chickasha when the front tires of the lead truck were shot out. As the truck rolled to the side of the road, more heavy reports were heard and the tires of several following trucks went flat. The final truck had its dual rear wheels shot out while it was almost stopped.
The soldiers piled out and took up formation around the trucks, but there were no more shots. An hour later soldiers searching the prairie found where someone had apparently fired from a low hill three hundred yards from the highway toward the convoy. Not only was dirt scraped away and grass pulled to provide a decent field of fire, a single spent .50 Browning machine-gun cartridge was found in the grass. A little more searching located another firing position about equidistant from the highway on the other side of the interstate, but there were no more cartridges. Nor, apparently, were there any shooters remaining around. Whoever the marksmen were, they had retreated into the darkness with their weapons, undoubtedly bolt-action .50-caliber rifles set up for long-distance target competition.
The officer in charge of the column had already informed his commander of his predicament by radio, so the troops sat alongside the interstate smoking and munching whatever snacks they had in their packs as civilian cars and trucks rolled by. It looked like it was going to be a long evening.
Two hours later four replacement trucks from Fort Sill were fired upon from an overpass. Each truck was hit once in the radiator. The drivers didn’t even walk up onto the overpass to look around. They reported the incident on their radios and settled in to spend the night sleeping in their cabs.
The FBI agents and FEMA troops found an estimated eight hundred armed National Guardsmen in battle dress surrounding the state capitol. The federal officers were disarmed and told to go home or they would be arrested. They went home.
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