by John Bromley
He was met by General Chambers, Sgt. Hendricks, Peter, Sam and Mike. Many of the soldiers were also milling around the compound. All of them were relaxing after the rigors of battle, enjoying the simple fact that they could stand in the open air without hearing the sounds of warfare or fearing that a stray bullet might end their lives. The only people missing, he quickly realized, were Buck Keller and Dirk Tedeschi.
He raised his binoculars and looked to the east at the enemy encampment. The sight which greeted him almost took his breath away. The three Secret Service tanks which had been assaulting his position all day were now totally destroyed. He directed a questioning look at Sam and Mike.
“Well, Mike had that computer virus working pretty good,” said Sam, “and after your boys changed frequencies, I just added a little code, and the next thing you know, Mike had control of the tanks’ firing systems. He was shooting their tanks for them, and he seemed to be as good with that thing as your boy Peter was with his rifle earlier.”
“I know I heard some kind of blast while I was talking on TV,” Jim commented.
“You couldn’t hardly miss it,” Sam responded. “Mike pointed both of the outside tanks at the one in the middle and fired. That crate took a hit from each side and… well, you can see what’s left of it.”
Jim looked; sure enough, almost nothing remained of the middle tank. That must have been the first explosion I heard, he thought.
“Then, when that one was gone, he had the two outside tanks shoot at each other.”
And, that accounts for the double whammy a few seconds later, Jim realized.
“Excellent job, you guys,” he told them. They shook each other’s hand and, all in all, looked extremely pleased with themselves.
“Now… where are Buck and Dirk?”
“They took a few of the men and went down to the SS camp a few minutes ago,” General Chambers replied.
“Very good—we’ll be joining them presently,” Jim said. He motioned for the men to gather around him. “I’ve been talking to Thompson’s son in the tent. The boy is ready to sell his soul to stay alive, and—hey!”
He pointed to the TV crew, which was preparing to tape some footage of the battlefield, now that the shooting had stopped.
“You don’t do anything with that camera until I tell you to—is that clear?” he shouted.
“We just wanted to—”
“No filming until I say so,” he commanded. “There are a few things I need to do before you turn that thing back on.”
Ignoring their confused expressions, he turned back to his officers.
“Now, based on what young Thompson has told me so far, I’ve got a plan…”
Those last four words lifted everyone’s spirits.
“… and everyone’s got a part to play in it.”
“Even me?” Peter blurted out from behind Jim.
Jim turned and smiled. “Especially you, Peter,” he replied, which caused the former SS man’s face to beam with pleasure.
“Now,” Jim began, “we’ll need a lot of help to make this work. We’re going to need aircraft, we’ll need soldiers, more than we have now… General, anybody out there owe you any favors?”
“Quite a few people, actually,” Chambers responded.
“For this to work, you’ll have to call them all in, and then some,” Jim told him. “Sam and Mike—you guys work great as a team, but I think I’m going to have to split you up for this next part.”
The two men looked at each other and shrugged.
“Mike has his father coming up this way tomorrow, and will have to take care of that, and I have other things in mind for you, Sam.”
“Gotta do what you gotta do,” Sam offered.
“Right,” Jim agreed. “Now, we’re gonna talk to the Thompson boy some more, and then we’re going down to see this SS commander…”
The officers, along with Sam, spent the next few hours listening with a mixture of disbelief and disgust as Jared Thompson laid out all the details of the workings of the Presidency, as his father seemed to understand it. While he spoke, Jim and General Chambers continually refined and reworked details of Jim’s plan.
When young Thompson seemed to have run out of things to say, they were distracted by a sound outside the tent.
“Colonel Parker,” called the voice of Captain Buck Keller, “you have a visitor.”
Parker went over to the entryway and stepped out of the tent. Buck and Dirk were standing before him, side by side. Between them and one step behind them stood the commander of the Secret Service forces, resplendent in what looked like a field marshal’s dress uniform. He was holding a gun.
CHAPTER 38
The passengers waiting to board the morning flight looked around in surprise when they saw the late arrivals. Three men, all wearing the seldom-seen uniforms of the mechanized Secret Service, had arrived at the security checkpoint, and were waved through with salutes but with no questions asked. None of them went through the metal detector. The three bags they had brought, one carried by each man, were not scanned. This was a good thing—none of the other passengers would have wanted to know what was in those cases.
They took seats near the side of the waiting area and talked quietly among themselves, until the youngest one indicated the TV monitor suspended on the wall above them. A quick glance around the terminal indicated that all the other passengers were engrossed in the images being shown, and even though the three SS men knew the story, they found themselves watching anyway.
The anchorman, “Rocko” Stanton was introducing “the latest developments from the ‘Battle by the Wall’,” and continued speaking as the network began playing some footage shot during the wee hours of the morning. It showed Colonel Jim Parker with his back to the camera, seated before a table on which a document was spread out. Facing him and the camera was a member of the mechanized Secret Service, resplendent in what looked like a field marshal’s dress uniform. He wore a pistol in its holster on his hip. No other men were visible in the camera’s field of view. “Rocko” stopped his narrative so the audience could hear the officer’s words to Parker.
“…stand convicted by the highest Authority in the land of treason, conspiracy, and committing breaches of national security. For these crimes, you have been sentenced to death by firing squad. Further, it is hereby ordered that said firing squad will be under your command, General Chambers.”
The camera turned slightly and photographed the general, who had been standing off to one side. His expression changed in a second from one of defeated despair to one of surprise at hearing his name mentioned, to one of righteous indignation.
“I’ll do no such thing,” he shouted. “I will not be the agent for the unjust death of my fellow officer, and my friend.”
“In that case,” the Secret Service man continued placidly, “our Supreme Commander has ordered that you be executed alongside Colonel Parker as his accomplice.”
“That’s ridiculous,” Chambers snorted. “Only the President himself has the authority to order an action like this.”
“By Presidential decree, our Supreme Commander has complete freedom of action in this matter.”
“Well, why not?” Jim interjected angrily. “Doesn’t this Billings guy call all the shots in Washington anyway? Why not this as well?”
“What is your answer, General?” the SS man pretended not to hear Jim’s outburst, and looked at Chambers. The general glanced at Jim, and it seemed to him and the TV audience that Parker gave a slight nod. The look of resignation returned to the general’s face as he met the eyes of the SS commander.
“Very well—I’ll do it, provided that Colonel Parker is the only victim of this outrage.”
“Our Supreme Commander gives no guarantees on that point.”
“Neither do we,” Chambers snarled, and the SS man actually seemed to cringe.
He seemed to recover in a moment, and spoke to Parker again. “You will now sign this document before you as an admi
ssion of guilt, and thereafter you will immediately be taken from here to the place of execution.” He handed Parker a pen.
The people in the crowded terminal seemed to all be holding their breath, waiting for Parker to come up with yet another miraculous escape from his latest predicament, but to their sheer disbelief, he calmly reached for the pen, and signed the document. He then rose and turned to leave, followed by the SS officer with his gun now drawn. At this point everyone could see that it was indeed the Jim Parker, national hero, being taken away for execution. The reporter, Miguel Johnson, who seemed to have developed some sort of rapport with the colonel, tried to inject some levity into the proceedings, as Colonel Parker himself often did. He shoved his microphone into Jim’s face as he passed and asked, “Didn’t you say you had a battle to win?” It must have worked, because Parker paused for a moment, smiled at Johnson and replied, “I may have spoken a little prematurely.” His smile faded, he left the tent with his Secret Service escort, and the remote transmission ended.
At this point, “Rocko” returned and the three SS men noticed that, while Parker had been on TV, the passengers who had been seated near them had moved to other seats, a clear indication that all the people in the waiting area sided with the colonel. Indeed, the oldest SS officer, a man in his late forties, was able to sense a veiled hostility in the entire waiting area, especially when he actually caught the eye of a civilian traveler. Being quite thick-skinned, he was not bothered by this at all; it actually made him smile a little.
When it came time to board the plane, the men were told that, even though they had paid for seats in coach, their uniforms entitled them to an automatic upgrade. The three had not been expecting this, but they quickly took advantage of this perk. Of course, for them to be upgraded meant that three other people had to be downgraded. The intangible dislike which permeated the room crystallized on the faces of the men who had to settle for the coach section of the plane. They glowered at the Secret Service men, who simply looked at each other, shrugged their shoulders, and went on board.
The two older officers sat together in the first row. Their younger companion was in the window seat behind them, sitting alone because none of the other first-class passengers elected to sit next to him. Once the plane reached altitude and the roar of the engines subsided, they were able to listen to the people speaking quietly around them.
Almost every conversation had something to do with the “Battle by the Wall.” Men who had seen the news reports were comparing notes, and those few who had somehow missed everything until this morning were being briefed by those who had watched from the beginning. Almost to a man, they were protesting the “raw deal” that was given to “Colonel Jim,” as Parker was affectionately known to the masses. They were more than eager to know what the Colonel had meant when he referred to the “people behind the Wall.”
“You mean, they’s people behind that Wall?” one of the non-watchers had asked.
“That’s what Colonel Jim said,” his friend had answered, adding, “he said they’s about ten million guys back there.”
“Ten million? Holy shit… that’s like, about three cities’ worth,” said the first man in awe. “Where did they all come from, did he say?”
“Not yet, but he’s going back on TV tomorrow. Maybe he’ll say then. I’m guessing, them people what go missing all the time is the ones what end up behind the Wall.”
“Yeah,” agreed the first man, “I got a friend that up and vanished ‘bout two weeks ago—maybe that’s where he went… or where they took him.”
The second man dropped his voice as he reminded his friend to do the same, because “they’s three Secret Service… over there who’s probably listening to every word we say.”
“Yeah,” the second man nodded, a look of disgust on his face. “I’m surprised we ain’t been shot yet.”
The oldest SS man received a questioning look from his seat-mate, and replied to it, saying, “He called us ‘three Secret Service assholes’.”
“Oh,” the other man responded, facing forward again. “That’s nice.”
Other men were complimenting Parker, clearly proud of the way he had “out-dueled” the President. One person, noticing the Secret Service officers sitting together, even went so far as to say how “Colonel Jim really showed up that bastard Thompson.” A collective gasp followed that remark; everyone was aware that using “bastard” to describe Thompson was a good way to get yourself killed, no matter who, or where, you were. Consequently, the passengers were surprised when this “blasphemy” drew no apparent reaction from any of the SS officers, and actually elicited a helpless giggle from the youngest man. Rather than take offense at this negative attitude, the officers felt inwardly pleased—it meant that most everyone not only knew about the events near the Wall, but were laying the blame for it precisely where they themselves felt it should go.
The three SS men toasted each other with their glasses of free beer, and settled back into their comfortable first-class seats.
“War is hell,” the oldest man offered. The other two nodded.
The rest of the trip was made without incident, and the plane arrived at Kenneth Thompson airport in Washington, which had once upon a time borne the name of Dulles, precisely on time. When the plane finally parked at the gate, the three Secret Service men were the first to disembark. Carrying their cases, they moved through the airport at a leisurely pace, until they came upon a knot of people who were gathered around another TV monitor to see the latest developments from the area near the Wall. By this hour, Colonel Parker's surrender was old news, and even though the officers had just come from there and knew what had happened next, they stopped, as the oldest of the three put it, “to see how it played on TV.”
The camera was positioned at the side of a grassy area, with tents visible on the opposite side of the field. No tanks or other weapons of war could be seen. The announcer was explaining that this footage was shot at 6:00 that morning, “the customary hour for a military execution.” While he was reminding the audience that “what you are about to see is extremely graphic, and may be disturbing to some viewers,” Jim Parker entered the field from one of the tents. He was led to a wooden stake which had been driven into the ground at the east end of the field, as the announcer identified it. Behind the stake, a number of sandbags had been placed to stop any bullets which might go through the colonel's body from doing any unnecessary damage. Jim was wearing his uniform pants and a white shirt, with no medals or rank insignia. The two officers who had accompanied him to the place of execution tied his arms behind the stake with rope, testing the knots to ensure that they were sufficiently, but not overly, tight. They offered Jim a blindfold, which he refused. Then, in an unexpected gesture of respect, both men stood beside Parker, with their backs to the camera, and rendered crisp military salutes to him. People watching who could read lips would have known that Parker thanked the men before they turned and marched back across the field.
The TV camera had been placed in such a position that it could not show Parker himself and the firing squad in the same frame. At this point, it panned to the right and focused on General Nathan Chambers, and the four men who had been selected for this duty. None of the four were volunteers—they were the ones who had drawn the “short straws.” The general, knowing he had no choice in this matter, was torn between a desire to get this terrible ordeal over with as quickly as he could, while also wanting to delay it as long as possible. Consequently, he quickly ordered the squad to come “ready,” and to “aim,” which they did, with surprising precision.
Ten seconds passed. Chambers did not speak. The soldiers’ aim did not falter.
Fifteen seconds. The general appeared to be mouthing a silent prayer for his fellow officer. The TV announcer did not feel the need to fill this silence with meaningless chatter.
Twenty seconds. Chambers stopped speaking, turned his face away from Parker and gave the soldiers the one-word order, “Fire.”
They did.
CHAPTER 39
The camera turned slowly back to the other end of the field, and the audience could see that the two officers who had escorted Jim Parker to the field had returned. They cut the cords that had bound him to the stake and were now carefully removing his body and placing it on a stretcher. There were two large wet red spots visible against his white shirt, as well as one on his forehead, indicating that the three soldiers who had been equipped with live rounds had all scored hits. Despite this evidence, protocol demanded that the victim be examined and officially pronounced dead. One of the officers produced a stethoscope and listened for any sign of life in the colonel’s body. After several seconds, he looked up, removed the stethoscope from his ears and gave a “thumbs-down” signal. At this point the two officers, still facing away from the camera, carried the stretcher from the field as the TV announcer recapped the events for the public, while doing his best to eulogize the fallen colonel, without making him sound too praise-worthy; after all, he had died as an “enemy of the State.”
In the Thompson airport lounge, the two older Secret Service officers watched all this placidly on the TV monitor. A horrified gasp escaped the lips of some of the civilians, as well as the youngest of the SS men. The middle officer stepped on his colleague’s foot, turning his involuntary cry of anguish into a yelp of pain. He glared at his heavy-footed associate, who responded by wagging his head toward the exit, indicating that it was time to depart.
Had they remained, they would have seen a replay of the other gruesome sight to which they had been live witnesses. No sooner had Jim Parker’s body been carried slowly off the field than another pair of officers were seen leading a second individual to the stake. Unlike the colonel, this person dragged his feet and resisted as hard as he could, like a small boy who was trying to avoid a trip to the doctor’s office. The camera zoomed in and watched unblinkingly as Jared Thompson was quickly bound to the stake, all the while shouting something to his captors which no microphone was around to record. Once his wrists were tied, his face was covered with a black hood. He continued to struggle against his bonds as his escort left the area, rendering no salute to the President’s son. The camera turned back to the armed soldiers and General Chambers, who seemed to be suffering no emotional turmoil now; in fact, he appeared almost eager to proceed with this phase of the operation. The TV camera returned to the young Thompson as Chambers gave the order to fire. The viewing public saw the impact of three bullets, and watched the young man’s struggles against his restraints come to an immediate end.
