Indian Country

by Kurt A Schlichter

  Wohl was already breaking down one of the other assault rifles, as was Mayor Silver. Lee Rogers was working on a fourth. She did logistics for the big Walmart at the north side of town. The company was now the town’s biggest employer, having made its peace with the Elizabeth Warren administration and received a government-chartered monopoly on big box stores outside urban areas. For the people, so the President said.

  “Let’s just get these all at least basically functional,” Turnbull said, taking a cloth to the filthy innards of the Chinese-made Kalashnikov knock-off. “I’m taking one and five mags. We need to secure the rest somewhere. That’s on you, Lee. Keep them out of houses in case the PSF decides to do a sweep looking for them. Mr. Mayor, you need to organize a watch on the town, so we know who’s coming and who’s going. We need to cover People’s Route 231 both ways. We need to know if they’re bringing in reinforcements. And we need eyes on the PSF station 24/7.”

  The Mayor nodded. “I know everybody. I’ll get it done.”

  “Be careful,” Turnbull said. “You know everybody under normal conditions. It’s about to get stressful. Make sure you don’t trust anyone who isn’t going to hold up under what’s coming.”

  Pastor Bellman came in through the door to the house, shown to the closed garage by Davey Wohl’s wife.

  “Hi to you too,” he said, staring down the barrel of the .45.

  “Sorry, habit.” Turnbull put the pistol away and went back to cleaning the rifle. Bellman surveyed the scene.

  “Kelly, I hope you haven’t brought us a war.”

  “I think that’s out of our control,” Turnbull replied, rodding the weapon’s sooty barrel.

  “Not adding fuel to the fire is firmly within our control,” the pastor observed. “So what do you think their next move is?”

  “They’re going to increase the police presence, maybe by a lot. There will be roadblocks and checkpoints, ID checks on the street, maybe some raids. We need to set up some sort of informal communication system to get the word out within the town.”

  The pastor smiled. “You’ve never been in a small town, apparently. Information moves pretty damn fast all on its own around here. There aren’t a lot of secrets in a small town.”

  “Am I still a secret? What do the cops have as far as informants?”

  “They have a problem,” said the pastor. “There are still a few hometown deputies left, local folks who haven’t been fully integrated into the PSF yet. No one will talk to the regular PSF officers. They’re all from out of town and they don’t mix much with us anyway. We see them around, getting coffee or whatever, but people are afraid of them.”

  “If they’re smart, they’ll start being friendly, cultivating the people. But then, I don’t see smart as one of their go-to moves. What about the guys on the inside? What about that deputy the other day?”

  “Ted Cannon? Dedicated guy. Community oriented. Probably doesn’t want to take sides. That’s not his style.”

  “Cannon’s not gonna have much choice about taking sides. It’s them or us. So is he going to rat me out?”

  “I don’t think so, and I’d kinda worry about his health if you thought so.”

  “Yeah, that would be a good thing to worry about if I thought he was going to go supergrass on us.”

  “Supergrass? I like the IRA terminology.”

  “You like that, huh? We can learn a lot about insurgencies from those Fenian boys,” Turnbull said.

  “We’re going to blow up bars now?”

  “I was talking old school IRA, not those commie provo punks in the Seventies. Still, we do need to establish a few things with in town.”

  “Such as?” asked the pastor.

  “Establishing the standard that you don’t rat out the resistance, that you help, that you report to us what you see and hear. That you do what you have to do to help.”

  “These people just want to be left alone.”

  Yeah, well history had another idea about them being left alone. Call it the curse of living in interesting times. Anyway, they aren’t spectators anymore. That’s a luxury they can’t afford.”

  “Kelly, like I keep saying, I’m not gonna let you turn my town into a battlefield.”

  “Like I keep saying, I don’t intend to start a fight, but I’m not running from one either. We both have jobs to do. And we don’t have to get in each other’s way.”

  “I’ve got somebody who wants to meet you.”

  “Oh yeah?” said Turnbull, as he finished rodding the barrel.

  “Yeah, somebody you probably want to meet.”

  “Sounds covert. I like it. Intriguing. Who is it?”

  “Tell you when we’re alone. But you need to make the meeting tomorrow morning.”

  “I thought I was going to come to church tomorrow.”

  “You don’t strike me as a churchy kinda guy, Kelly.”

  “Let’s just say I respect the holy chain of command. Where is this meet?”

  “Out in the woods. I’ll give you an azimuth and you can relive the Fort Benning compass course.”

  “Delightful. Nothing like a little land nav on a Sunday morning. You’re on. In the meantime, I think it’s a little dangerous to stay at the church. I’ll come get my stuff.”

  “Got somewhere else to stay?”

  “Yeah. I got a bag, so I can stay wherever it’s relatively flat. If people don’t know where I am, there won’t be a problem.”

  “You seem to think through all the angles,” Bellman observed.

  Turnbull smiled as he polished the action of his AK-47.

  “Well, I was taught by the best.”

  Colonel Jeff Deloitte sighed, pulled up his left camo sleeve, and looked at the cheap Seiko on his wrist. 1348 hours – that meant 48 minutes of priceless time wasted waiting for the Southern Indiana Security Region Fusion Cell meeting to actually get underway.

  “There are unacceptable levels of transphobic normative bias within our security apparatus,” said Xeno, pounding on the table. Xeno was the civilian security advisor to the governor of Indiana. Xeno used only one name, and leaned slightly toward male identity stereotypes in appearance while tending generic for xis pronouns. Deloitte’s S2, the brigade intel officer, had provided a bio of each of the participants for his commander; according to the report, before the Split, Xeno had been named Phil and worked for the IRS.

  “I agree, eliminating anti-trans bias must remain a key priority in everything we do,” responded Chief Roberta Clemens, who commanded the People Security Forces for the region. She was in uniform; a female lieutenant sat uncomfortably at the chief’s side. Unlike everyone else at the table, the lieutenant did not have a nameplate listing her name, organization and preferred pronouns in front of her.

  The one before Deloitte read:

  Colonel Jeff Deloitte

  Commander, Military District of Southern Indiana and 172nd Brigade.

  Pronouns: “He,” “His” and “Him.”

  Deloitte sullenly looked over the cast of characters sitting around the table. Also in attendance was Franco X, the head of the region’s People’s Volunteers. He was about 25, and he was decked out in the usual PV coverall uniform, which looked hamper-fresh and had a mustard stain on the belly. Franco X, who the S2 reported had been a petty thief before the Split, was drawing what looked like stick figures with exaggerated genitals on his note paper and barely paying attention.

  Only one of them impressed Deloitte – Senior Inspector Darin Kunstler from the People’s Bureau of Investigation. He sat quietly, watching, listening – which in Deloitte’s eyes made him potentially formidable.

  At 1355, Deloitte decided that his patience was fully expended. Xeno had moved on to discussing South Pacific Islanders’ Day events and had just inquired how many tanks Deloitte would be sending for the parade in Indianapolis when the colonel spoke up.

  “You are wasting my time,” he said, and the eyes all went to him.

  “I work for Governor Bayh!” Xeno sn
apped.

  “And I work for President Warren. If we aren’t going to talk about security, I’m going to go train my soldiers.”

  “Well, if you don’t think racism against South Sea Islanders is an important problem…,” began Clemens.

  “They prefer ‘South Pacific Islanders,’” corrected Xeno.

  “Sorry,” said Chief Clemens, chastened.

  “Stop,” said Deloitte. “I think the only problem that matters is security in this region, and how you are losing control of it. I assumed that was the purpose of this meeting, which is why I took time away from doing my job to come here to Indianapolis to attend this circle jerk.”

  “Security is only one piece of the puzzle” Xeno said. “We in the People’ Republic are about disrupting paradigms of oppression.”

  “I didn’t have the dubious benefits of going to a college where they taught us about paradigms and made fine distinctions between South Pacific Islanders and South Seas Islanders. Sadly, my West Point education focused on soldiering, as has my career, and I’m at this meeting because if you people don’t get your shit together, then I’m going to have to deploy my brigade to practice that skill right here in my own country and I don’t want that. You don’t want that.”

  “Maybe we should move on to the matter at hand,” suggested Kunstler of the PBI, though the way he said it did not make it seem like a suggestion at all.

  “The problem is,” said Franco X, looking up from his etchings, “that some country motherfuckers drew down on one of my boys in Jasper the other night. My boys deescalated though, but they could have had to regulate. And we need some payback.”

  “I debriefed your men,” Kunstler said evenly. “One man pulled a pistol on eight of them and they ran. They dropped their weapons and ran.”

  Deloitte laughed, disgusted; Franco X glared.

  “You got a problem?” challenged Franco X.

  “Yes,” said Deloitte. “You and your untrained, undisciplined punks are a joke.”

  “The People’s Volunteers are an important expression of the people’s anger against racist fascism!” shouted Xeno.

  “Uh huh. We’ll just have to agree to disagree then, Xeno. In the meantime, we seem to have a more tangible problem – Jasper. Maybe we can talk about that.”

  “That’s a typical linear military response,” Xeno sneered.

  “Well, that’s the problem with being a military leader, xir. I’m forced to deal with tangible reality instead of college campus bullshit.”

  “Colonel, we all appreciate your input,” Kunstler said. “And your point of view. Your region is critical. It supplies a significant amount of the Republic’s agricultural output and it contains key transport routes. And we know that the red states want it.”

  “Inspector, I have a brigade to command. It has to be trained and ready. I have a lot of things to do and a lot of restrictions put on me that keep me from attaining the kind of combat readiness I need to do whatever President Warren might have me do. And sitting in here listening to this nonsense is not helping me get the mission done.”

  “That’s a patriarchal –,” Clemens began.

  “Sorry that five thousand years of military leadership and experience don’t fit into the paradigm you learned at Wellesley.” Deloitte knew the PSF chief’s pre-Split law enforcement experience had consisted of getting tear gassed by D.C. cops while protesting Donald Trump’s election back in 2016.

  Kunstler sat back and watched Deloitte engage. He knew the colonel’s record well, and the Command Diversity Officer reported directly to him regarding the commander’s loyalty to the Republic. Deloitte was a holdover from the old United States Army. His family was from Vermont, so when the country split in two he stayed with the blue and in its army. Tactically, his ratings were near the top: Special Forces with a focus on counterinsurgency. But his loyalty ratings were iffy at best – no outright treason, no contacts with the red states, just a refusal to go along and understand that considerations of form often outweighed considerations of substance.

  Kunstler assessed him as a skilled professional soldier, which meant he probably did not understand that military competence was far less of a consideration to those in power than reliability. Stalin had gutted the Red Army of its most talented officers even as the Nazi menace loomed, prioritizing loyalty over skill. And Kunstler fully understood and appreciated that cruel logic.

  But when push came to shove, what would the colonel choose? That was the question, and the fact that it was a question made him a potential liability. For now, though, he was useful.

  “Lieutenant Kessler is here from Jasper. Maybe we should hear from her,” Kunstler said. The group’s attention fell onto the uncomfortable officer.

  “Well, we had a problem with a revanchist family,” said the lieutenant. “They had retained firearms, they had flouted other laws. We moved to apprehend them and there was a shootout. We lost three and killed several of them. The main perpetrator is still in the wind, but we will find him. There were rumblings in the town after our operation, so I called for support from the People Volunteers, who patrolled twice. On the second time, they were met by armed resistance.”

  “Who was this resistance?” asked Kunstler.

  The lieutenant shifted uncomfortably. “We think it was outsiders.”

  “Outside of where?” asked Deloitte. “Of Jasper, or the country?”

  “We are engaging our sources in the town. If there’s someone there, someone new, we will find out who and from where.”

  “Could it be an infiltrator?” pressed Kunstler.

  “That’s what I’d send, if I was in the red,” said Deloitte. “Send outsiders to organize and mobilize and make Southern Indiana a headache for us.”

  “We’re going to find them and arrest them,” promised Lieutenant Kessler.

  “Maybe,” said Deloitte. “If they screw up you might get lucky and get them. But if they did come from the red, then they’re trained and they know how to evade you. I know, because I probably trained them.”

  “Well, then what do we do?” asked Kunstler.

  “Do? If you’re smart, you do nothing.”

  “Nothing?”

  “Nothing. You stop pushing. You stop provoking. Let things cool off and calm down. You’ve already spilled blood. Now the locals are angry.”

  “A bunch of farmers and bourgeois cis-hets!” said Kessler.

  “Who do you think drove out the British? Communications majors? Baristas? Diversity coaches?” said Deloitte. “The goal of insurgents is to mobilize the people against the government. One classic way to do that is to draw down a heavy-handed response from the counter-insurgents and drive the uncommitted to take the rebels’ side.”

  “What specifically do you suggest, Colonel?” asked Kunstler.

  “First, you keep these bums” – he pointed towards the People’s Volunteer commander – “the hell out of town.”

  “Fuck you, man!” shouted Franco X, rising from his chair.

  “Tell me ‘fuck you’ again, punk, and you’re going to have the worst day of your life,” Deloitte said evenly. Franco X sat back down.

  “Enough,” said Kunstler. “Elaborate, Colonel.”

  “You can only push people so far. You’re not leaving them an out. Most people just want to get by, live their lives, and avoid conflict. You want them to be able to do that. But if you get in their faces and you keep pushing, eventually they’re going to push back.”

  “With what?” said Clemens. “We took their weapons.”

  “Yeah, I have your confiscation numbers. When the weapon seizures went down, you gathered up …,” Deloitte consulted his S2’s report. “It looks like you collected 12,312 weapons in all of the Military District of Southern Indiana. There are probably city blocks in Indianapolis that have more than 12,312 weapons. You take a shovel, walk out to the woods and plunge it into the dirt, and you’re going to hit a buried rifle.”

  Clemens fumed; Kunstler’s face was stone
.

  “People don’t want to rebel,” Deloitte continued. “Most people just want to live their own lives being left alone. That’s why to start an insurrection in a place like Southern Indiana – before you started pushing – you would need to send cadre in, to train and motivate the indigenous population to fight. But you don’t need cadre if you provoke them enough. If you push and push and push, they’re eventually going to fight back.”

  “This is ridiculous,” Clement said. “I know how to handle these kinds of racists, these religious nuts. We did it on campus when the fascists tried to speak. You punish them. You crush them. You make them understand that things are different now, that they aren’t in control anymore, that they no longer have privilege and that they are accountable to all the people they shit on before the Split.”

  “Who again were the regular folks in Southern Indiana oppressing ten years ago?” asked Deloitte, disgusted. “I know the area, and I have yet to see much privilege.”

  “They were Trump voters and before that they were for Romney,” Xeno said. “They’ve always resisted progressive change, and they’re never going to change. They have to be broken.”

  “What we need to do is increase our forces in the Jasper area,” said Lieutenant Kessler. “I’ve got an extra twenty PSF officers now and give me maybe twenty more and some detectives from the PBI. Plus some PV support. We will root the infection out.”

  “You’re not hearing me,” Deloitte warned. “And you’re going to force me to come in and clean up your mess with my soldiers.”

  “I think for the time being that this is a civilian matter that we can handle on a civilian basis,” Kunstler said. “But let’s not make any mistake. The region is vital. Tell them why, Xeno.”

  Xeno licked xis lips, nervous. “There are border negotiations coming up, and we believe that this area is going to be one of the regions that the red is going to seek to recover. We don’t want that. We need its agriculture. We need its road network. We have to make it secure so it looks loyal, so they don’t want it. We have to remain in control.”