Stolen Liberty: Behind the Curtain

by Thomas A. Watson

  “Are you kidding?” she asked, her voice like that of a small child.

  “Well, they wanted to detain me for no other reason than I was a veteran with a history of medical treatment at the VA hospital and a member of the NRA. Here,” Charlie paused, withdrawing the rolled-up document from his rear pocket. “Take a look and tell me what you think.”

  While Joan paused to examine the few pages of the detention order, Charlie prowled through the small apartment. He was fairly certain no one had bothered to bug the place, but he wanted to get a good look outside from all vantage points. By the time he was back near the front door, Joan was regarding him with frightened, tearful eyes.

  “This is all real, isn’t it? I mean, they killed your friends, and then came after you. What is going to happen next?”

  Charlie shrugged. “When the President’s reattempt to implement the Small Arms Bill failed to pass, I thought he was going to pull an Obama and simply try to continue chipping away at things with EOs. But, no, this is a Hail Mary move. Using the Safe Drinking Water Bill as a new tax source, as well as a lightning rod for protest, he might get the disaster he needs.”

  “What are you talking about? How can he need a disaster?”

  “Remember the former mayor of Chicago? Rahm Emanual said, ‘You never let a serious crisis go to waste’. That quote has followed the man around for years now, but what he said next is even scarier. The very next sentence out of the man’s mouth was, ‘What I mean by that, it’s an opportunity to do things you could not do before’. See, if the President can provoke a violent reaction to this bill, which most people don’t even understand, then he can use that violence as an excuse to sign yet another Executive Order. By ordering the police and the Feds to round up the NRA and veterans, he’s almost guaranteeing that violent flare up he needs.”

  Joan followed along and frowned at Charlie’s last sentence.

  “What do you think he is going to do?”

  “Well, apparently, he’s already tossed the Constitution out the window,” Charlie announced grimly, “so my guess is an EO banning sale or private possession of firearms for the duration of the emergency.”

  “An emergency that he masterminded,” Joan whispered, her comprehension dawning. “And the federal courts have already been neutralized. Which means he can simultaneously order the detention of people who the administration feels might pose a threat. People like you.”

  “Yep. So, what about that detention order? Think we can get it overturned?”

  Joan shook her head, her fingers white with tension as she gripped the pages. “If there was an uncompromised judge on the bench, not a problem. This is blatantly, patently illegal. As things stand now? You’d be dismissed without a hearing.”

  “Good thing we are bugging out, right now,” Charlie declared. “I know a place outside town where we can lay low.”

  “The camp you talked about? The one I saw in those pictures at your place?”

  “Yeah, that’s the place,” Charlie replied, pleased he’d taken the time to pack up all those photographs and pull the hard drive for his computer before leaving. “And we need to hit the road now. Since I’m a wanted fugitive and all.”

  “Won’t the cops run your plates?”

  Charlie laughed before answering.

  “That’s what took me so long to get over here. Picked up a set of plates at the long-term parking place over on Mitchell. Same model truck and everything.”

  “You are a sneaky one, Mr. Tucker,” Joan said, nearly purring.

  “You have no idea,” Charlie muttered as Joan threw herself into finishing her packing.

  Chapter Eighteen

  Tampa, FL

  For Bert Travis, life was good. He was standing on the deck of his thirty-four-foot Boston Whaler, Lydia’s Fancy, and returning to the marina after a great day of fishing with three exhausted but still-enthused advertising execs out of Boston. They’d had a great run with Bert’s assistance, and now the cooler fairly bulged with the fish the four of them had managed to wrestle into the boat.

  “Fishing for tarpon is a full contact sport, guys,” Bert had again warned the trio of first-timers, but they’d come to the charter boat operator as the best kind of clients, which was referrals from other satisfied customers. They would be trolling for the big game fish, but strictly as a catch-and-release for the tarpon, as was the custom. They were great fun to fight, but all those bones made for poor eating.

  “We can take it, Bert.” Bennie, the oldest of the admin, had assured their captain they were up to the challenge, and darned if he wasn’t correct.

  During a break in the action, one of the guys happened to notice Bert’s shirt sleeves rise up when he was wrestling with a mahi-mahi that would be going back home with the guys after being processed. The ragged scar seemed to wrap around the charter captain’s left forearm, almost like a three-dimensional tattoo. Bennie had seemed shocked by the sight, but the youngest of the three men, Dale, had just nodded to himself.

  Later, when Bennie went below to grab another beer and Leon, the third member of their charter group, was occupied fighting a particularly feisty tarpon, Dale Gilford had approached Bert as he’d emerged from the cockpit.

  “If you don’t mind me asking, captain, where’d you serve?”

  Given the polite inquiry, Bert replied, “Iraq and Afghanistan, with the 2nd of the 75th, a long time ago. How about you?”

  “I did four years in the Navy. Did it to help pay for college, you know? I was a machinist mate second on the Iwo Jima, LDH-7. 75th? That’s the Rangers, right?”

  “Yes, sir,” Bert replied with a grin. Despite his wounds and being jacked around by higher ups, Bert Travis was still proud of his service and his old outfit. Rolling up his sleeve, he showed Dale the slightly faded tattoo of his Ranger tab on his upper arm, and further exposed the scars as Dale could now see the puckered divots of gunshot wounds in the charter boat captain’s arm.

  “Jeez, captain, it’s a miracle you kept the arm,” Dale blurted out, then colored when he realized what he’d said.

  “Miracle alright,” Bert replied, not taking offense. He knew the younger man had merely been surprised, and Bert was well past any shyness about the injuries he’d sustained. He’d survived, after all. He might be older now and carrying a bit of extra weight around the midsection, but by God, somewhere inside, he was still Pirate.

  “Got pretty much the same on the other arm. And it was a miracle. I was in the hospital for near on six months and can’t tell you how many surgeries, but here I am, doing what God intended me to do. Reintroducing swabbies to the sea.”

  Dale, taken off guard by Bert’s pronouncement, burst into a fit of laughter that had Bert chuckling as well. Bennie came up in time to see the end of the exchange, but just shook his head and handed Dale a beer.

  Yes, it had been a good day, and despite some rocky points along the way, Bert was pleased with the way life had worked out for him. He had a great family and a job he loved. Not much given to introspection, Bert wondered why he suddenly felt a sense of nostalgia roll over him as he piloted the boat into harbor at the Clearwater Municipal Marina.

  I guess talking to Dale brought up some of the old memories, Bert thought, as he guided the Boston Whaler into its accustomed berth and he saw his wife standing there to catch the rope, tossed quite expertly by Dale. He grinned at his wife, but quickly noted her tight features and firmly set jaw, and instinctively knew something must be troubling her.

  Getting the fishermen off the boat took a few minutes and a hearty round of handshakes and manly fist bumps as Bert’s two hands, Damon and Sam, hustled to unload the gear and the aluminum coolers filled with the mahi-mahi and grouper that made up their catch of the day. Those coolers would go straight to the marina-side processor before being delivered, packed in dry ice, to the hotel where the three clients were staying. It was an extra expense, and one that Bert routinely recommended for the ease of transport offered by the service.

&n
bsp; When Bert finally completed his chores, including making arrangements to get Lydia’s Fancy refueled, he found Lydia waiting in their small charter service office, glued to the television set behind the counter. Most often tuned into the Weather Channel, he noted the CNN logo in the corner and saw his wife’s expression, if anything, had grown more concerned.

  “What’s going on?” Bert asked, and Lydia bolted from her seat to grab her husband in a tight embrace before drawing back to gaze up at him. He read the apprehension there in her beautiful green eyes, and Bert knew something terrible must have happened.

  “Oh, Bert, it’s horrible,” she murmured, burying her face into his salt-encrusted shirt.

  “Was it another terror attack?” he nearly demanded, feeling the room begin to spin at the thought. Not again. “Are the kids okay?”

  “Kids are fine,” she replied quickly, knowing her husband’s first fear. “They’re with your mom and dad right now. But, Bert, there’s just so many things going on, I’m having a hard time keeping up. This past week has been crazy with all the violence. And the President was on earlier.”

  “Now I’m really worried,” Bert muttered. “Okay, start at the beginning,” he continued, his voice louder now. As he spoke, he picked up his cell phone from the charger on the desk. After losing one expensive phone overboard during a squall, Bert Travis had learned his lesson and left the device behind. He had a perfectly good radio on the Lydia’s Fancy, as well as an emergency satellite phone locked up in the forward compartment, and that was all he needed.

  “Well, there were more protests this morning,” Lydia began, wringing her hands in a nervous habit Bert had noted over the years but had never mentioned. “Something about some new water bill that Congress just passed. I really don’t understand all the fuss, but apparently it got a lot of farmers and special interest groups stirred up.”

  As Lydia spoke, Bert looked over her shoulder to see what looked like a full-scale riot taking place on the television screen. He saw black-uniformed police carrying shields and batons and behind them, other officers in tactical gear bearing what appeared like M4 carbines. “Not good,” he whispered. Then he looked at the bottom of the screen and saw the location listed as Des Moines, Iowa.

  “Why the heck is there rioting in Des Moines?”

  “Not just there,” Lydia continued. “All morning and into the day, the violence has been spreading. I don’t know exactly what has been setting these people off, but the reporters have been talking about white supremacists and other hate groups organizing these protests. The Attorney General was on next, talking about former military members in their ranks.”

  “This is crazy,” Bert said with a scowl. “The Aryan Nation is going out stirring up trouble with farmers? I just don’t see that happening. Are we having trouble around here? I didn’t see any smoke when we were coming back, but then I wasn’t looking for it.”

  “There was a report about trouble in Tallahassee, and then something down in Miami, but not around here yet. But you haven’t heard the latest. Honey, when the President was on, he announced other groups were working with the rioters. He said…he said the NRA was working with them, Bert. He said he had signed orders identifying them as domestic terrorists.”

  “What the hell?!” Bert exclaimed. “He seriously claimed, on national TV, that the NRA was a terrorist organization? That is just insane, Lydia. I know he hates them, but that’s just going too far.”

  “Bert, he didn’t just announce it,” Lydia replied, looking down at the desk as she gathered her thoughts. “They are going around arresting the leadership. There’s already been fighting over that, too. They had video on earlier. It was horrible, honey. It looked like something you’d see in a movie, not in real life.”

  While Lydia spoke, Bert stood trying to take in everything his wife was saying while also watching the changing scenes on the television screen. Glancing down, he absently noted he had a pair of missed calls and two new voicemails. Entering his passcode, the year of his wife’s birth, he recognized both calls had come from the number belonging to his friend, Charlie Tucker. Not one to believe in coincidence, Bert pressed play and speaker, so Lydia could also hear the messages.

  Thirty seconds. He listened to Charlie’s voice, and heard the worry in the man’s voice as he shared what he knew. About the water bill, and the violence and why he thought everything was happening this way. Crazy conspiracy stuff. He looked at Lydia and saw the doubt and fear in her eyes.

  Not waiting to discuss the first message, Bert pressed play for the second, expecting it to be a repeat of the first. Instead, he heard a different one, and he felt his skin crawl.

  “Uncle is listening, but Bert, get your family and get out. They are sending out teams to pick us up. May have already hit your house. Just talked my way out with the local fuzz, but they could be back with more. I’m gone. Get your family, pack your gear and head for Happy Days. Be safe. Out.”

  “What does that all mean? Teams? Why would they want you? Or Charlie?” Lydia cried out. “You aren’t soldiers anymore, and you sure aren’t terrorists.”

  Robert Travis, Jr., Bert to his friends, just shook his head slowly as he felt his world turn into a nightmare. As he processed the message, he realized the voice he’d heard in the second call was different from the first. The first was from his old friend Charlie, and he’d sounded scared. The second though, was from Book, his brother-at-arms. And he’d sounded ice-cold, just like he did on a mission.

  “Get your bugout bag out of your car, honey. Then let’s go get Mom and Dad and the kids.”

  “What are you planning, Bert?” Lydia was better, now. Bert knew from sailing, that his wife was always a steady hand in the worst storms, and he knew a storm was coming.

  “What we should have done last week when these riots started. We’re going to load up all the food and supplies we can access here, then we are taking the Whaler and the Hansen up to that old fishing camp in Waccasassa Bay. You know, the one Dad showed us that time?”

  “What? Are you crazy? We are just going to walk away and leave everything behind? Bert, we’ve got people coming in tomorrow for charters,” Lydia protested, but Bert knew his wife. Her protests lacked conviction and besides, with the violence only continuing to spread, who knew if those people would actually show up? Just to be sure, though…

  “Alright, then. Lydia, call the numbers you have for the charters tomorrow. Cancel them, due to the worsening security conditions. Offer them a refund or to reschedule. I’ll get Mom and Dad and we can start from there, but we are casting off before dark.”

  “What about Bill?”

  Bill was Bert’s younger brother, and another captain with the charter service. He lived twenty minutes away, with a girlfriend and an Irish Setter named Boo. Bert liked the dog. The girlfriend, not so much.

  “I’ll call and extend the invite. See what he says. Either way, Mom and Dad are going with us. Dad’s a Life member of the NRA and before he started having his health problems, you know he was heavily involved in organizing the state shooting competitions.”

  Lydia nodded, then said a little prayer. Lydia believed in the power of prayer, and she had a sudden flash of insight that she needed all the help she could get to keep her family safe.

  For Bert, he thought about the earlier flashback he’d experienced when talking to Dale and wondered how much he would need to bring back that old swashbuckling persona if his family was going to live. His Ranger career might have been cut short by his injuries, but he knew he still had the heart that had gotten him through everything the Army, and the hadjis, could throw at him.

  Chapter Nineteen

  Kenosha, WI

  Robbie had spent the last few days balancing his real estate business with his final preparations. His credit card took a hit, and he intended to pay off his purchases…maybe. The billing cycle for the biggest ticket items would begin the next month. He tossed his bag in the back of Jerome’s truck on top of the mountain of su
pplies he hadn’t dropped at the retreat.

  “With my low interest credit cards, I bet I’ll have my goodies paid off in a thousand years.” Robbie checked the waterproof plastic case and tucked it under his backpack near the rear of the truck bed. “You have to love next day delivery.”

  “You sure about us taking separate vehicles? I mean, what if we get separated or something?” Jerome closed the tailgate and locked the back window of the camper top.

  “They are not looking for you, man. I’m probably a target as far as Charlie knows, but this truck and the company listed on the registration is in your name. I’ll go ahead and look for traffic jams since the bike is more maneuverable.”

  “Yeah, but you are a sitting duck on your Harley.”

  “I’m not leaving my baby behind. I bet the local PD is going to trash my house looking for me, if they don’t torch the place with flashbangs first.” Robbie cranked up the Harley and worked to get the radio in the helmet to connect to the radio strapped to the fuel tank of the bike. “Radio check. Come in, Roadrunner.”

  “Why do I have to be the Roadrunner, Coyote? It’s because I’m black, right?” Jerome jerked his chain over the CB radio.

  “Nope. You are kinda birdlike.” Robbie pulled the garage door transmitter and closed the overhead door and armed the alarm system. “Let’s move, Roadrunner. We have miles to cover.”

  “Roger, Coyote,” Jerome replied into the microphone.

  “No, it’s Coyote, not Roger,” Robbie chuckled into the internal mic in the helmet. He felt the pressure to get to Oak Lawn in the western suburbs and get to the retreat with the kids and Kristi. Jerome’s kids could ride with him in his truck, and Kristi would use her own car. At least that was how he had planned the exodus from the metro area.

  After he got the call to bug out, Robbie had called Kristi multiple times in the next few hours, but she didn’t answer her cell phone. The kids should be home since it was Sunday, and Kristi hadn’t mentioned anything on the schedule when he’d checked in the day before.