People's Republic

by Kurt Schlichter

“Bring my daughter back to me safe, Mr. Turnbull. Please.”

  “I’ll do my best.”

  They went out the door, leaving Turnbull and Clay at the table alone.

  “Why are you involved in this, Clay?”

  “Well, let’s say that Mr. Ryan has a lot of friends in high places and those friends have my phone number. You should be happy. You can retire after this one.”

  “There’s a big empty space I gotta fill between the agreeing to do it part and enjoying the money part.”

  “Just a bit of one. So, what the hell happened in Los Angeles? You’ve always been a shoot first then shoot again kind of guy, but four blue cops?”

  “I deny all knowledge of any violence,” said Turnbull. “But PSF aren’t cops. They’re glorified muscle. All the real cops picked up and left with the rest of the working people after they saw how things were going to go. So you got a few rich people, a lot of poor people, and an army of thugs keeping them apart.”

  “Do you think they made you?”

  “I think it started as a shakedown, but what was weird was that they were mad, Clay. Usually when they shake you down or rip off your stuff it’s just business, but these guys were angry. They saw I had a car and a pretty high privilege level and they got pissed. Everyone’s pissed. It’s falling apart over there.”

  “That’s how we assess it. We always knew the blue model would fail. It was just a matter of time. We kept the farms and the fuel, and they kept the mouths to feed in the big coastal cities. They won’t exploit their resources – they still buy most of their energy and food from foreigners, and they are running out of credit. They picked on the people who did the hard work, and those people came here. We told people here that if you don’t work, you don’t eat and the ones who wanted handouts picked up and went blue. I think we got the better part of that deal.”

  “Yeah, the People’s Republic is what happens when you let movie stars and college professors pick the government. Okay, we all know it sucks and it can’t last. So why me? You have your own network inside the PR. Where do I come in?”

  “Well, for one thing you aren’t in any network, meaning you are hard to compromise. Those socialist bastards may suck at most everything, but they are good at the oppressive arts. Our people keep getting swept up. We aren’t sure who to trust. But there’s not much chance they know you.”

  “Wait, you said they are looking for me.”

  “They are looking for some blurry bourgeois terrorist who capped some local heroes. But they are focused inward – it’s part of a factional power play. The players in the government are trying to use the incident against each other for leverage. They aren’t looking for you to come back and bring something out for us.”

  “Is this girl that important?”

  “No, she’s just a stupid girl who went to college and got stupider. Oldest story in the world. No, there’s something over there we really want and we need you to walk it out.”

  “Can you tell me what this mystery McGuffin is?”

  “Data on a hard drive some of our friends on the other side liberated.”

  “What kind of data?”

  “Classified.”

  “I still have my clearance. You know I’m still in the Reserves like every other citizen who’s too young for a walker.”

  “We got a source inside the PBI HQ and the source tore out a hard drive. It’s got the files on their informers. It’s gold – every narc, weasel and snitch on the West Coast on one little hard drive. If we get it out, we can figure out who they’ve turned and who they haven’t and rebuild our networks.”

  “Okay, but why walk it out? You can plug it in, go online and transmit it to some foreign country, then back here to get around the e-blockade.”

  “Too risky. All of Silicon Valley didn’t pick up and move. It might have protection that would let them detect and block or alter the transmission. Or it might report who we are interested in. Regardless, we need to decrypt it here, on an air-gapped system.”

  “Carrying it out by hand is safer? You thought that through?”

  “Marginally safer. I can trust you’d have sense enough to ditch it if the heat comes around the corner. So, basically, I’ll square you away to go in and all you do is make a quick stop with a contact in LA on your way home, pick up my hard drive and bring it out along with the girl and you get your millions and I get my data and everyone’s happy.”

  “It sounds so simple and easy. So why are there hairs standing up on the back of my neck?”

  “Because you’re not a fool. If it falls apart while you are over there, you could get caught up in the reckoning. Plus, as soon as it goes bad in the blue we’re sealing the borders. Now, you’ll have a primary and supplemental re-entry point and we’ll be waiting for you, but if a couple million blue staters start marching our way determined to leave the nest they shit in to come here and shit in ours, all bets are off.”

  “Well, let’s just hope that they can hold their shit together for a week or two so I can get paid.”

  Clay sat back and smiled. “Try not to get killed, Kelly. You’re extremely useful.”

  “Useful, huh? Carve that on my tombstone.”

  3.

  Kelly Turnbull’s ranch was about 500 acres in the dry hills some 90 miles southwest of Dallas, far away from annoyance and inconveniences like cities and highways and other people. To call it a ranch would be a misnomer; there were old stables, but he had no horses or livestock. They were too much trouble, and he was often away regardless. The only occupied structure was the white one-story house, small but sturdy, and he had done much of the renovations himself. He liked working with his hands, finding it relaxing. He could set his mind on auto-pilot and simply build; when he was on the job, every second he was on edge, planning and evaluating, thinking through scenarios, preparing for threats.

  Best of all, he liked not having to check behind him.

  He sat on the porch, drinking coffee, his stupid dog curled up beside him. It was nearly useless, that dog, a light brown mix who had no real purpose except to mooch food and demand attention. It had followed him home one day and he had never bothered to chase it away. Maybe his time in cities had made him soft, he reflected. A real rancher would have gotten rid of it long ago. The damn thing couldn’t even be bothered to kill rats.

  His smartphone pinged; a vehicle had entered the property and was coming down the driveway. The time was 0845 hours. A good sign. Somewhere along the line, some NCO had taught Lieutenant Ryan that if you weren’t fifteen minutes early you were already late.

  Junior pulled up in a tan late-model BMW 6-series. Pricey. You had to get it from Cuba, because of the EU boycott of the racist, imperialist, and insufficiently Islamacist-subservient United States. Cuba, having finally tossed out its communist government (with just a little bit of help from the United States – Turnbull savored the memory of the rum), was now growing rich selling to the Americans what the Europeans refused to sell them directly. The Caribbean island was the world’s second largest buyer of German cars, right after Germany itself.

  The dog looked over, bored, and then put his head back down. Not a bark, not even a growl. Sheesh, sighed Turnbull.

  Junior wore tan combat boots, khaki tactical slacks with a checked shirt, and he looked remarkably crisp in the wilting 90 degree heat. He carried an HK-style USP in .45 – perhaps likewise bought through Cuba, but more likely built at one of the weapons plants dotting the Southern states. The few gun makers left in blue states at the start of the Crisis had been among the first to depart after the Split.

  “So, I’m here.”

  “Let’s go shoot. Follow me.” The dog watched them go; there was no way he was leaving the shade.

  Turnbull had set up a range behind his house. A table held a pair of modified M4 carbines; they were accessorized with close quarter battle sights, fore grip handles and suppressors.

  The table also held a pair of Glocks, plus eye and ear protection. There were doze
ns of boxes of ammo and a stack of empty magazines that they proceeded to fill.

  “The Glocks are simple, reliable, and shoot 9 mm, probably the easiest round to find on the black market over there. Clay used his intel connections to get us a couple modified ones from the special ops guy’s secret stash, sixth generation, special handgrips, improved slide. We’ll each take ten mags plus one in the gun. They aren’t flashy on the outside, and some cops still carry them, so it’s a good relatively inconspicuous choice. The M4s are an improved version of a time-tested weapon. You guys on active duty still use them. Full auto, of course. Clay dropped them off yesterday afternoon. They’re clean – they can’t be traced to the US. Neither can the Glocks.”

  “So why are we using the M4 platform? There are a lot of others we could choose from.”

  “Familiarity. We both used it in the service. The bad guys sometimes use AK series rifles bought from China or wherever whenever they can, but there are enough M4s still over there that they won’t draw special attention in and of themselves. Plus, the four provides good firepower – these are full auto. The suppressors won’t make them silent, but will quiet them down a little. Think of these carbines as a last resort – they only come out to rock and roll if we have to.”

  “Like you did in Los Angeles last week.”

  “I never admit anything. But yeah.”

  “You took on four armed PSF officers all alone. That seems a little crazy.”

  “I wasn’t alone. I had two powerful allies, surprise and aggression. The People’s Security Force are really just security guards with a license to kill. Don’t think of them as cops; cops are professionals and have a code. These guys have greed and an attitude; they don’t help people, they only help themselves. They aren’t picked because they’re smart and they aren’t trained to do much more than bully people who can’t fight back. Our edge is that they think they’ve broken the populace, that no one will resist. When someone does, there are a critical few moments when they are mentally resetting into a combat mindset. You need to take advantage of it. That’s where the aggression comes in. They expect you to run away. Instead, you charge. They aren’t trained to fight even odds or without the initiative. So when you attack, it throws them off balance. At Ft. Benning, what did they train you to do in an ambush?”

  “Turn and attack into it.”

  “Right. See, we think like soldiers, not sheep. These guys aren’t used to soldiers. They assume we’re sheep. So when we battle instead of baa, we have an edge,” he said. Then, “So how did you get wounded?”

  “I was in the 36th Division along the border in Kentucky. My platoon was running a security op in the DMZ with Ohio and we ran into some traffickers. We got six of them. I took a round in the thigh. They had AKs.”

  “The proudly gun-free Peoples Republic. Yeah, the PR hates armed citizens, but if you’re a criminal you’re good to go. Or if you’re one of their PBI stormtroopers. Or guarding the rich folks. Then guns are great.”

  “What’s that one?” Junior asked, pointing to a pistol on the table that looked like a high-tech Luger.

  “That’s a present from Clay, too. It’s a Ruger 22/45 .22 semi-auto pistol, and it comes with this suppressor. I’m going to use subsonic, frangible rounds. Silent but deadly on an unarmored target. They won’t penetrate for shit, except through a skull.”

  “How silent?”

  “Well, let’s find out.” Turnbull loaded a 10 round magazine and screwed the silencer onto the end of the barrel. Inserting the mag, he cocked it and quickly brought it up to his dominant right eye and squeezed off six rapid rounds, two each at three metal targets. The dings of the hits echoed across the range, but that was it – the action made a little noise, but other than that, the only sound was a dull thuft.

  “Okay, that’s useful,” said Turnbull. “Now, I want you to forget everything they taught you about shooting in Army school. Pick up your four and follow me.”

  They shot all day, going through various engagement scenarios with the pistols and the carbines until Turnbull was satisfied that he had broken at least the worst of Junior’s shooting habits. The Glocks and the M4s were just as Clay had promised – top of the line. Except you could take the best weapon and turn it into a brick by putting it in an untrained shooter’s paws. Luckily, the kid learned fast, took correction, and he generally kept his mouth shut and listened. That was a good sign too.

  “You ever been on the other side?” Turnbull asked as they cleaned the weapons on the porch. Bottles of Shiner Bock sat beside them, glistening with moisture in the hot, thick air. The dog came over and demanded attention from Junior, who petted him.

  “Hey, don’t encourage that mutt,” said Turnbull as he wiped grime out of the lower receiver. “He’s useless. He’s a welfare cheat and I’m Uncle Sucker.”

  Junior scratched the terrier’s head anyway. “When I was a kid we went to California and New York a few times before they seceded. I don’t remember much. Of course, I wasn’t of age when the Split happened so I had to earn my citizenship.”

  “How about after the Split, but before they blockaded us?”

  “No. Dad was really busy as part of the transition, setting up the government here after the Split. It was a weird time.”

  “You’re telling me.”

  “You fought in it, right?” Junior asked. The dog, bored of the attention, turned and walked to the corner of the porch and plopped himself down.

  “There actually wasn’t that much real fighting before the Split, but when there was I always seemed to draw the short straw and end up right in the middle.”

  “Like getting sent into Indian Country? How bad was Indiana?”

  “Pretty bad. No war is vicious like a civil war. Southern Indiana should have split off with us from the start. The blues wanted to make an example of it, show the rubes who was boss. We helped them resist. And they sure as hell resisted.”

  “They taught us some of you guys’ tactics at Ft. Benning. That must have been a hard mission.”

  “It was,” Turnbull said. “I don’t much like blues. You kill them or they kill you. I learned that in Indian Country.”

  “And before the Split, what were you thinking when she ordered you guys into the streets? What did you think when she sent you against your own people?”

  “Well, I was thinking I’m not going to die for her or her bullshit politics. If she wants to confiscate all the guns, she can suit her sickly ass up in Kevlar and go do it because I’m not going to make war on my own people just because she hates anyone who doesn’t live in a coastal city. That’s pretty much verbatim what I was thinking.”

  “I like to think I’d stand up and say ‘No’ if I got that kind of order too.”

  “Well, we don’t elect people like her here. Her generals were ready to do it. A lot of the colonels too. Careerist cowards. But the rest of us? You know the Army runs on sergeants, and when the sergeants aren’t with you, nothing happens. It was kind of like they had a war and nobody came. Then Texas told her to go to hell and suddenly we had something to rally around. Some bad stuff happened because some folks didn’t walk back from the brink, but the politicians talked it out and we split. They were so happy to see us gone too. We were the hicks, the religious gun nuts, the flyover people, and they didn’t need us or our Constitution. They were going to start all over without us, show us how much smarter they were than those stupid Founders. And you’re about to see how that turned out.”

  4.

  The SUV ride to Utah took about 18 hours. The roads were good – it was simply far away. The driver, supplied by Ryan, said almost nothing as he drove, and both Turnbull and Junior tried to sleep as much as they could. Otherwise, they simply watched the scenery pass – the oil rigs in Texas, the ranches and farms in Colorado, then the crimson desert of southern Utah.

  St. George was a remarkably green and manicured town in a valley surrounded by red rock cliff faces. Straddling the old I-15, which was blocked at the DMZ down i
n the northwest corner of Arizona and no longer ran southwest to Las Vegas, the town was notable for the white spire of the Latter Day Saints chapel – the first in Utah – and for the sprawling Army camp to the east erected after the Split. As they drove into town, Turnbull noted the many American flags everywhere, albeit with far fewer stars than he remembered from his childhood.

  The driver left them at a Best Western near the edge of town, where they checked into their rooms and slept as they waited for a call on the land line. It came at about 10 a.m. Turnbull hung up and called Junior’s room.

  “Pack. They pick us up in 10 minutes.”

  Elijah Meachum was at least 220 pounds and bearded, and he would have still looked ferocious even if he wasn’t wearing a battle rig over his camos and carrying an M4. He nodded at Turnbull and opened the rear door of one of the two dusty brown SUVs idling in the parking lot. Both were marked “USDF – Brigham Young Brigade.” A “Utah Self Defense Force” tape was velcroed across the breast of Meachum’s battle rig, and underneath the black oak leaf of a lieutenant colonel, along with the red star of a citizen.

  “Good to see you, Elijah,” Turnbull said as he tossed his gear into the back. “These all your sons?” Meacham was accompanied by five tough, handsome and similarly equipped men, aged probably 16 to 25 or so. They each wore USDF enlisted rank, while some of the older ones had their red citizenship star showing they had already completed their US Army service.

  “Some of them. They’re all good local boys. Know how to handle themselves. Who’s this, Kelly?”

  “A passenger. You can call him Fred. Hear that, Fred?” Turnbull replied, and Meachum nodded, understanding it was none of his concern who Junior was, only that he got where he was supposed to go. Junior said nothing, and made a mental note to answer if he heard someone say “Fred.”

  They got in the backseats of the first SUV, with Elijah sitting in the front passenger seat beside the driver. The late-model Chevy moved out of the lot and into traffic, going west. “We’ll head to my ranch and spend the day there, then cross tonight. How far in do you want us to take you?”