Against All Enemies

by John Gilstrap

  Ian didn’t wait to find out. “I think we need to shift the strategy to larger shooter teams.” He was talking eight-man teams who would be organized and trained as stand-alone operating units. They’d be cross-trained, but every operator would have a primary job and a secondary job. All would have combat medic training—or, in this case, advanced first aid, because that was the most advanced level of instructor they could field.

  “We need to make these teams cohesive, dependent upon each other. If the shit hits the fan—when the shit hits the fan—even if they lose sight of the larger mission in all the mud and blood, they’ll at least fight for each other. And when it comes time to take the important shot—that history-making twitch of a finger that sends the bullet downrange—they’ll have the emotional support of their team to give them that last dose of courage.”

  “Doesn’t a larger team sacrifice some element of security?” Karras asked. “There’s that many more people who’ll know the mission upfront, and that many more people to be caught and turned.”

  Ian acknowledged, “That’s one way to look at it, but as I see it, those concerns are outweighed by their converse. There’s that many more operators to defend each other if the police get too close. That many more people to keep their buddies from yapping. Call it a wash, security-wise, but operationally, I think it’s hands-down the best way to go.”

  Karras leaned back in his chair and tented his fingers over his chest. He looked at Ian the way a chess player tries to read his opponent’s mind—pursed lips, squinted eyes. After maybe thirty seconds, he said, “What’s the operational impact of this change? Are we talking a small modification of the training regimen, or something bigger? If you’re thinking that everything we’ve been doing so far is a wasted effort and we have to start over again, I’ll tell you right now that I can’t sell that.”

  “That’s not it at all,” Ian assured. “It’s more an organizational change than anything else. I want to reorganize the troops into squads, and I want to make them autonomous. They eat together, they train together, but they do not interact with the other teams in these capacities. I want to pit the teams against each other in ways that make them compete for everything.”

  “Won’t that destroy morale?” Karras asked. “Life is lonely enough up here on the mountaintop. Why make them feel even more isolated? Friendships have already been formed. You can’t accomplish what you’re talking about without pulling those apart. At least some of them.”

  Ian fought to suppress his satisfaction. It was exactly where he’d hoped Karras would go. “General, with all respect, this is not a social experiment. The Patriots’ Army is not about comradery or ideology or shared social experimentation. It is about accomplishing a mission that is dangerous and bloody and will likely leave us with no friends among those who will not understand the need for change. If we fail, we face charges of treason. I can imagine no lonelier position than that. Individual soldiers will have virtually no chance for survival when the hunt for them starts. But well-organized teams will have a better chance.”

  “I understand that,” Karras said, “but why isolate the teams from each other?”

  “To build dependence within the team and independence from others.”

  Karras’s eyes narrowed again as he considered what he’d heard. Ian had zero respect for the man as a military mind, but he’d come to admire his management skills. He was smart in a way that Ian imagined would have made him a rich man if he’d applied his skills to his stepfather’s business.

  “Where does that leave us?” Karras asked.

  “I don’t understand the question.”

  “As you say, if things go wrong, life is likely to get ugly. I hear your point about these coherent units fighting and dying for each other, but won’t that be their primary loyalty? To each other, I mean? What about loyalty to the rest of the army?”

  “You can’t get that,” Ian said, opening the door to another point he’d been wanting to make. “You and I are ideologues. I believe that General Brock is as well, along with your father and any other benefactors of this place. But the soldiers—that group of two hundred young men who are so gung ho to fight—are nothing of the sort. Some are, I suppose, but not on average. I see it in the lack of military discipline among the majority, the lack of respect for rank. For the most part, those boys are angry men, adventurous men, bored men who are anxious for a fight. They want to shoot people, and they’re willing to shoot anyone we identify to be the enemy.”

  Karras formed a T in the air with the fingertips of one hand, and the palm of another. “Time out, there, Colonel. I’ve known these men for longer than you, and I think you’re selling them short.”

  “No.” Ian said it with percussive finality. “I don’t sell them short, you sell them long. You want them to be loyal to something greater than themselves, but I’m telling you that that’s simply not the case here. More to the point, that lack of loyalty is not necessarily a bad thing. We are going to dispatch them on missions to kill. There’s no way to put some shiny cloak of morality around taking a life. The fact that the killings are necessary in order to put the country back on the right track matters in real time only to people whose fingers are not on the trigger or the knife. In that moment immediately before the life is taken, in the moment when it is being taken, all that matters is getting it done and living through the ordeal. Morality issues come into play only after the fact, and then only for those who have difficulty living with what they’ve done.”

  “I’m talking loyalty, Colonel. Why are you talking about morality?”

  “Because they’re the same thing,” Ian said in a raised voice that he quickly modulated. How could Karras be so dense? “Pick any war you can think of. Pick one where the other side was clearly the bad guys. Those bad guys didn’t think they were being immoral in killing our kids in uniform. They were merely being loyal to the cause that sent them to war. To those bad guys, our boys—the ones who were loyal to God and country and to the National Command Authority—were immoral monsters.”

  Karras raised his voice, too. “How does—”

  “It doesn’t matter,” Ian said, cutting him off. “As long as our Patriots’ Army soldiers do their jobs and accomplish what we ask them to do, it doesn’t matter what their loyalties are. You and I and the Uprising and all the rest are irrelevant to them, and it’s unreasonable for us to expect it to be any other way. If we reorganize them into the small operating teams I’m talking about, they’ll at least be loyal to each other, which will make them dedicated to their missions.”

  “But where does that leave us?” Karras asked. He emphasized his frustration with a slap on the desk. “Literally us? You and me and the rest of the command structure?”

  Ian reared back in his chair. Was the general really so clueless that he couldn’t see something so obvious? “If we prevail, General—if everything goes right with nothing going wrong, if the public hears our battle cry and rise higher and faster than the police and the FBI and every other alphabet group can stop them—then we’ll be leaders of the new American order. If, however, any of that does not happen—and I suspect that much of it won’t—then we die.”

  Karras paled. “For God’s sake, Colonel, you’re a leader. That kind of pessimism—”

  “Never confuse pessimism with realism, General. I am one hundred percent behind the mission. One thousand percent behind doing what is necessary to undo everything that Darmond and his clowns have done. That is the mission and I believe that is achievable. But the rest—the part where the people rise—is a pipe dream. The American people aren’t risers anymore. They’re lazy, and half of them love the handouts and the Socialist agenda. They value uninterrupted cable television service over liberty. So, we will die for our cause. In the short term, we’ll be labeled as monsters, but in the longer term, I have faith that we’ll become known as heroes.”

  “As martyrs,” Karras said. It was hard to tell whether the thought pleased or repulsed.
/>   “If you’d prefer,” Ian said. “In the longer term, we’ll become known as martyrs.”

  Chapter Eighteen

  Jonathan smelled bacon. It was 8:45 the next morning, and he felt hungover, despite the fact that he hadn’t had a drop to drink last night. Rough mornings were just one of the list of fines that were due after many years of abusing his body.

  But bacon? What the hell?

  He rolled out of bed naked and pulled on yesterday’s jeans, slipping a shirt over his shoulders and his Colt into his waistband at the small of his back. He couldn’t imagine that an attacker would invade the place and then cook breakfast, but almost all of Jonathan’s todays were built on the shoulders of yesterday’s caution.

  He padded barefoot out of his bedroom on the second floor, and down the hall to the open stairway that led in a long spiral down to the living area. None of the boards creaked because he had paid an enormous premium for the quality of construction that prevented creaking. It wasn’t a stealth thing, it was a quality thing.

  While he didn’t know who had gathered in his kitchen, the fact that no alarms had gone off and no shots had been fired clued him in to the fact that the threat was minimal.

  He was halfway down the stairs when he heard a familiar laugh. Venice. She’d driven out from Fisherman’s Cove, and of course she’d arrived early. Some things were as reliable as the rising sun. There was another voice, though, a male, that he didn’t immediately recognize. Whoever it was, he seemed to be getting along well with the presumed hostess.

  At the bottom of the stairs, Jonathan button-hooked to the right, and there they were. Venice Alexander and Roleplay Rollins were having a happy conversation across the bar-height kitchen counter. If they heard him approaching, they made no indication.

  “Good morning,” Jonathan said as he crossed the threshold from hardwood to stone floor.

  Venice and Rollins turned in unison, she from her work at the stove, and he from his lazing at the bar. “Good morning,” Venice said. Her voice was three clicks too jovial, telling Jonathan that she probably realized that Rollins’s presence had crossed a line.

  “Hi, Digger,” Rollins said. “I know I’m a surprise, but Venice was nice enough to let me in.”

  “I don’t believe you wouldn’t let him in last night,” Venice scolded. “How juvenile.”

  Jonathan felt a ball of anger in his belly. “Maybe he’s a terrorist and I kept him out for a reason.”

  Rollins recoiled, but Jonathan ignored him.

  “That’s still no reason to be rude,” Venice said.

  “Did it occur to you that I might have reasons for not wanting him to be here?”

  “You know I’m sitting in front of you, right?” Rollins said. “Is this the part where you kick me out?”

  “No, that’s for me to do,” Boxers’ voice rumbled from behind them.

  “He would have me shot,” Rollins said. “Yes, I heard.”

  “As far as I know, it wasn’t a secret,” Boxers said. He nodded toward Venice. “Smells great.”

  She waved. Historically, Big Guy and Mother Hen had not gotten along very well, but recently, Boxers seemed to be trying harder. “How many eggs do you want?”

  “Let’s start with three,” Boxers said. “We’ll negotiate from there.”

  Venice sifted her gaze to Jonathan. “Dig?”

  He held up two fingers, a victory sign. “I’m not sure I’ve seen you be this . . . domestic.”

  “That’s because you’re never up in time for breakfast,” Venice said, turning back to the stove. “I send Roman off every morning with a good meal.” That was her son by an otherwise disastrous marriage. He was a middle-schooler now, with all of the angst and attitude that came with it.

  “He’s with Mama this morning?” Jonathan asked. Venice’s mother had been Jonathan’s default mother after his own had died when he was a kid, and everyone with half a brain treated the woman with equal parts love, respect, and abject terror.

  “And loving every minute of it, I’m sure,” Venice said. That brought a chuckle from both Jonathan and Boxers.

  “Where’s the guest of honor?” Rollins asked. “And don’t tell me he’s not here.”

  Dylan Nasbe emerged from the second guest room from off to the side of the kitchen. “I’m not here,” he said.

  Rollins’s expression hardened. This was not the face of a man who was happy to be reacquainted. “I didn’t think you’d come back.”

  Dylan held out his hand for Venice. “We haven’t met. I’m Dylan. You must be Venice.” He over-pronounced the word as if to show off that he understood.

  “Pleased to meet you. I’ve certainly heard a lot about you. Will two eggs do for you, too?”

  “That’d be great. Thank you.”

  Rollins sighed loudly. “You know, as much as I appreciate this pantomime of domestic bliss, I’d appreciate it if we could get down to—”

  “Shut up, Colonel,” Jonathan said. “This isn’t your meeting. You’re the party crasher, and we will proceed along the lines that I dictate. It’s really important to wrap your head around that.”

  Rollins turned red, but he didn’t say anything.

  Jonathan walked to the coffeepot and poured himself a cup. “Dylan,” he said, “I think it would really help if you caught everyone else up to where we already are.”

  Jonathan ate while Dylan talked, keeping his eyes on Rollins. If, in fact, a coup were in the offing—a wild thought at its base—who better to involve than a leader from the Unit? The colonel possessed many skills, but he’d always been a terrible poker player. Jonathan bet that he’d know if his former commander’s expression of surprise was genuine. As it turned out, there was no expression of surprise at all. There was merely an expression of utter disbelief.

  It seemed genuine, though.

  “You have these drives with you?” Venice asked when he was finished with the first round of the story and the parrying of objections.

  “Actually, your boss has them.”

  Jonathan recognized his cue. He rose from his chair, walked to the wall nearest the stairs, and revealed a safe by sliding a picture out of the way. He spun the dial, turned the lock, and pulled open the rectangular steel door. Inside sat a Glock 23 .40 caliber pistol, five 13-round mags, three fragmentation grenades, and the two hard drives Dylan had given him the day before. He removed the drives then closed the door to the safe.

  “Paranoid much?” Rollins asked.

  “Prepared much,” Jonathan replied.

  He handed the drives to Venice, who walked them into the living room. “The connections are in the coffee table, right?” she asked.

  “Nothing’s changed since last time you were here.” That last time was the occasion for a sleepover-picnic for the Alexander family—Mama, Venice, and Roman—along with Jonathan’s good friend Father Dom D’Angelo and JoeDog, the black Labrador retriever who had adopted Jonathan as her occasional caretaker. After significant debate, Mama had granted Jonathan permission to introduce her grandson to the pleasures of killing targets in the woods. Back then, the camouflaged computer connections had been employed for video games and movies.

  Three minutes later, Venice had a laptop booted up, the images from which were visible to all on the 55-inch flat screen that dominated the space over the fireplace. When everyone was seated, the group looked like they might have been watching a football game together.

  “Okay, Dylan,” she said. “Walk me through it. I know what you think. Now show me why you think it.”

  When you’re working in a vacuum of information, random events can shape themselves into patterns that develop into assumptions that lead to obvious conclusions that, while self-apparent, are also wrong. Given the nature of the work performed by Security Solutions, those incorrect assumptions were the event that Venice dreaded most. Digger Grave depended upon her and her analyses to make judgments that often led to situations resolved by gunfire. The obvious was no more than a wild-ass guess if the
underpinning facts were not correct.

  When starting her analysis with so preposterous a notion that the military structure of the United States was emulating the failed strategies of the Third World, her bull-fritters meter was dialed up to its highest gain. She pushed back against Dylan’s attempts to bully her thorough the step-by-step analysis of the information he’d gleaned, telling him no less than five times that she was not interested in the conclusions he had drawn for himself. “You’re here to answer my questions,” she said at one point, “not to offer your opinion. If I want that, I know exactly where you are sitting, and I will ask for it.”

  After about twenty minutes of sifting through the various random threads of data, though, she reached out and asked Dylan to reveal the connective tissue he saw between websites and e-mails and blog postings. She realized that while she could probably have done it on her own, the sorting effort would have taken hours, if not days.

  Dylan led her through his thought process. It started with a group called The Uprising, which at its surface sounded like any one of a thousand nutjob militia websites that called for the reclamation of lost rights recently seized by the federal government. What set this one apart from the others, it turned out, was the fact that it attracted the attention of the Central Intelligence Agency and the National Security Agency.

  “It can’t be too right wing,” Boxers quipped. “It hasn’t attracted the IRS.” He laughed, but no one else did. Given the fallout, it was just too soon.

  “And here’s where it gets complicated,” Dylan said. “This should have just been accepted as rantings from those who rant. But this one—this one—blog rose to the attention of the CIA. Now if you dig a little deeper . . .” He directed Venice down the communication paths. “Look at all the respondents to what the Commander has written. Read the syntax of the postings. These are educated people, people who know how to construct sentences. If you scroll through these, pay attention to the words and phrases that are used.”