Phoenix Rising:

by William W. Johnstone

  “You’re sure it isn’t simply an accounting mistake—that you didn’t transfer them out and lose track of them?”

  “Uncle Aleks, you lose track of your billfold, your fountain pen, your car keys—you do not lose track of nuclear warheads.”

  “What did Basov say?”

  “He demanded that I surrender the property book and all hard copy records to him. He also told me that I was dealing with something that was none of my business. When I told him that I was responsible for the nuclear weapons under my command, and that it definitely was my business, he told me that this involved something that was way above me, and that I should forget about it—including the conversation we had.”

  “How big is a three kiloton weapon? I mean, how much damage could it do?”

  “It’s about one-fourth the size of the bomb that destroyed Hiroshima,” Vladimir said. “It would larger than any nonnuclear blast in history—with the heat and radiation of a nuclear weapon. Believe me, uncle, this is not something you would want to fall into the wrong hands.”

  “Who else have you told about this?” Mironov asked.

  “Only my deputy commander,” Vladimir replied.

  The waiter brought the hamburgers, fried onion rings, and milkshakes to the table at that moment. Mironov thanked him, then, smiling, picked up the hamburger and took a big bite.

  “Oh, my,” he said. “Try this, Vladimir. You will think you have died and gone to heaven.”

  “Uncle, did you hear one word I said to you?” Vladimir asked.

  “I heard,” Mironov said. “And I will look into it, nephew. I promise you, I will look into it.”

  Ultimate Resolution Camp 35

  Two hundred and fifty had arrived at the camp, now there were only one hundred and eighty-seven left.

  “Our experiment of keeping men and women together has not worked,” the camp commandant told them, when he assembled them for the daily announcements. “Tomorrow, you are to be separated, and the women will be taken to another camp.”

  “No!” someone shouted. “No, please, don’t do this!”

  “Enjoy your last night together,” the commandant said with a sardonic smile.

  Those nights in the barracks the women, and many of the men, were crying.

  “David,” Leah said. “Do you remember what you said when we arrived at this place?”

  “What?”

  “You remember. You just don’t want to say it, because you think I don’t want to hear it again.”

  “You say it,” David said.

  “You said that we would either live together, or die together.”

  “Yes, I did say that.”

  “Then let us die together.”

  David took Leah’s hand in his. “Is that really what you want?”

  “Yes, my darling,” Leah said, holding David’s eyes with a steady gaze. “If we are to be separated tomorrow, I want us to die together tonight.”

  “Wait here,” David said. “I’ll be right back.”

  Leaving Leah on the single bed they had shared ever since arriving at the camp, David sought out one of the other prisoners that he knew was a doctor. The doctor, who was 75, was the oldest of all the prisoners. He was a widower, his wife having died even before they were all rounded up.

  “Doctor Solomon,” David began, but Solomon held up his hand. “I know what you are going to ask, nearly everyone here has asked the same thing. If you’ll return to your wife, I’ll address the subject for all of you.”

  David returned to the bunk.

  “Did Doctor Solomon have a suggestion?”

  “He’s going to talk to us now,” David said.

  “People, please, pay attention,” Doctor Solomon said. “I want to tell you a story, then, as a result of that story, offer a suggestion.

  “The story I will tell you is the story of the Masada, as told by Josephus. For many years scholars believed it was fiction, but archeologists later proved the authenticity of the story.

  “Jerusalem fell to the Romans in 70 A.D. but there were many Jewish zealots on Masada, a mountain top fortress, who refused to surrender, and Rome was unable to subdue them.

  “But the Romans were determined to do this, so they surrounded the mountain with as many as 15,000 soldiers. They built siege camps and an earthen ramp so Roman battering rams could ascend to one of the gates. The siege lasted seven months, then the walls were breached. But when the Romans entered there was no resistance. There was no resistance because all but two women and five children were dead.

  “The women told the story of how ten men were chosen by lot to kill all of the others, then one was selected to kill the remaining nine, then kill himself. In that way, only one person had to take upon himself the sin of suicide.

  “According to Josephus, the Jewish leader said something that might apply here. He said, let us die un-enslaved by our enemies and leave this world as free men in company with our wives and children.

  “I know that many of you have chosen to die tonight, rather than be separated from your wives. Those of you who have made such a choice, stand by your bed. Those of you who do not wish to participate, go to the back of the room. I will take the sin upon myself to kill you, so that you not leave this world as a suicide.”

  “How will you do it?” someone asked.

  “By ligature strangulation,” Dr. Solomon said. “I will use an article of clothing as a garrote. It isn’t exceptionally painful, and at any rate, it generally brings on unconsciousness within five to ten seconds, so you will be unaware of what is happening to you.”

  “What will happen to you, Doc?”

  “I’ll hang myself. Now, those who want to participate, stand by your bed. Those who don’t, move to the back of the room.”

  Not one person moved.

  “All right,” Solomon said. “I’ll get started.”

  David and Leah stood in an embrace as Doctor Solomon began his terrible task. There was no sound, neither from the victims, nor from the witnesses who were waiting for their own fate. After about five minutes, Dr. Solomon approached them. Solomon was sweating profusely, and there was an expression on his face that was unlike anything David had ever seen before.

  “It isn’t too late for you two to back out,” Doctor Solomon said.

  “We will live together, or die together,” Leah said.

  “Which of you shall go first?”

  “I will,” Leah said.

  “Wait,” David said. He embraced and kissed his wife. “Principle eleven of Maimonides tells us that our great reward will be life in the world to come. I will see you, my beloved, in the world to come.”

  CHAPTER FIVE

  Dallas

  Grand Ayatollah Amar Shihad was on the telephone, speaking with the commandant of the Ultimate Resolution Camp 35.

  “How many of them committed suicide?” he asked.

  “One hundred and four, Grand Ayatollah,” the commandant said.

  “And how many did that leave you to deal with?”

  “Eighty-three.”

  “How soon will you apply the ultimate solution?”

  “It is being applied now, Grand Ayatollah, even as we speak,” the commandant said.

  Shihad smiled, and nodded. “You are doing good work, and are truly walking the holy path,” he said.

  “I do this for the glory of Allah, and Moqaddas Sirata. Obey Ohmshidi, Imam.”

  “Obey Ohmshidi,” Shihad replied.

  Rosewell Apparel, Inc. manufactures, distributes, and retails branded fashion apparel. The Company also wholesales t-shirts and other casual wear to distributors and screen printers, as well as operates a retail e-commerce website.

  That was the business statement of the company that David Rosewell had started, and owned. Buck Tinsley had driven a delivery truck for Rosewell Apparel for twenty years, and he thought Rosewell was as fine a man as he had ever known. When the Janissaries of the Moqaddas Sirata came for Rosewell and his wife, Buck was infuriated.
/>   “Nothing will change for you and the other employees,” Fahad Farran said. This company has been nationalized, and will now manufacture only clothes that are suitable for Muslim wear. It shall be known as the Way of the Enlightened Clothing Company. You will continue to drive as before, but now you will be able to drive, content in the knowledge that you are no longer working for a Jew.”

  “Nothing will change for us, the son of a bitch said,” Buck said to Carter Davis, his brother-in-law. “But can I have a beer and pork skins while I watch football on the weekends? Well, let’s examine that. No alcohol, so there goes my beer. No pork, so there goes my pork skins. Oops, and no football. Also, no basketball or baseball. But the son of a bitch says nothing will change.”

  “Do you know where the old Mary Kay building is in Addison?” Carter asked.

  “Yeah, I know where it is. Why?”

  “You want beer and football? I’ll come pick you up Wednesday at six.”

  “What’s going on, Carter. What’s this about?”

  “You just be ready by six, on Wednesday.”

  Because cosmetics were considered sinful, Mary Kay was no longer in business and, as Moqaddas Sirata had not yet found a use for the building, it was unoccupied.

  On Wednesday nights a growing group of men would meet on the fifth floor of the building. As far as anyone driving by on the Dallas Parkway was concerned, the building looked no different on Wednesday night than it did at any other time. There were no cars parked around the building, and no lights showed from the building. Of course nobody expected to see lights, because there was no electricity connected to the building. Except on Wednesday nights.

  Two of the group of men who met on Wednesday nights were electricians, and they would connect the Mary Kay building to the power grid just before the group would meet, and disconnect it when the meeting was over. The windows of the fifth floor were carefully blocked out so that no light could be seen from outside.

  True to Carter’s promise, there was beer available, and also football, or at least DVD’s of past football games. One of the men, a Texas A&M grad, had a DVD of the Alabama–A&M game where A&M beat the number one ranked team in the country, holding off an Alabama comeback by intercepting a pass in their own end zone in the closing one minute and thirty seconds.

  After the game was over and everyone started to leave, Carter asked Buck to stay a few minutes longer.

  “All right,” Buck said.

  Carter introduced Buck to two other men from the group; Frazier Nelson and Dean Pollard.

  “Buck,” Frazier said, “before we go any further in this discussion I have to know two things. One, what is your level of frustration with the way things are and two, how far are you willing to go to change things?”

  “I don’t have the vocabulary to tell you how much I hate the way things are now, and I’m not sure I can do anything to change things. But if there was anything I could do to change it, I would.”

  “Even at the risk of your own life?”

  “What do you have in mind?”

  “Nothing unless I have a commitment from you.”

  “Yeah. After what these sons of bitches did to Mr. and Mrs. Rosewell, yeah, I would risk my life.

  “David and Leah Rosewell were also good friends of mine. I don’t know whether they are dead or alive, but I don’t intend to stand by and let this go without response of any kind. How do you feel about that?”

  “Whatever you have in mind, I want to be a part of it.”

  “Good,” Frazier said. “Two days from now, Farran is going to send you out on a job. You’ll be deadheading out to Houston. But first you are going to go to just beyond the Addison Airport. Do you know Dooley Road?

  “Yes, I know the road. It comes off Keller Springs.”

  “Go about one hundred yards south on Dooley Road and you’ll see an orange traffic cone. When you get there, stop. At exactly ten fifteen, open your trailer door, then get back in the cab and wait.”

  “Wait for what?”

  “Wait for a signal to proceed. When you get the signal, proceed on to Midway Road, then down to 635, then on to Houston.”

  Buck shook his head. “I don’t know what you have in mind, but it won’t work. My truck has a GPS; Farran will know where I am.”

  “Ron Bannister does the maintenance on your truck, doesn’t he?” Frazier asked.

  “Yes.”

  Frazier smiled. “Don’t worry about the GPS.”

  “Bannister is one of us?”

  “Yes, but don’t acknowledge it, not even to him,” Frazier cautioned.

  “All right.”

  “What do you know about Amar Shihad?” Frazier asked.

  “I don’t know much about him. I know he is the Grand Ayatollah of Dallas.”

  “He is the one who put the Jews into the concentration camps, including David and Leah Rosewell.” Frazier paused before he spoke again. “He is also the one who is responsible for the murder of way over a thousand men, women, and children at the Dallas–Fort Worth Metroplex.”

  Buck whistled. “Damn, I knew he was an evil bastard, I guess I just didn’t know how evil.”

  “Day after tomorrow the Grand Ayatollah is going to the Addison airport to take a business jet to Washington, D.C. where he is to be given some sort of award by Ohmshidi.”

  “What’s he being awarded for?”

  “It doesn’t matter,” Frazier said. “He’ll never get the award because we are going to kill the son of a bitch just before he gets to the airport.”

  “How are you going to get to him? Isn’t he always surrounded by bodyguards?” Buck asked.

  “He never has guards, he rides alone in an open car with just his driver,” Novotny said.

  “Shihad isn’t that stupid, is he?” Buck asked. “To travel around without body guards? Why would he do such a foolish thing?”

  “He’s not stupid, but he is foolish. He has become arrogant with his absolute power, and he likes to demonstrate his complete control of the city by riding around in his open-topped green Mercedes, with no guard,” Frazier said. “He can’t believe that anyone would actually make an attempt on his life.” Frazier opened another beer. “Only we aren’t just making an attempt, we’re going to do it. And you are a part of the plan.”

  “You mean just by sitting on Dooley Road with the doors open to my trailer?”

  “Yes.”

  Buck smiled. “I don’t know how that makes me a part of the plan, but if it winds up getting that bastard killed, I’m all for it.”

  Addison, Texas

  There were two cars in the road at the corner of Jimmy Doolittle Drive and Keller Springs. From the position of the two cars it appeared as if there had been a minor collision and they had the road effectively blocked. Frazier Nelson and Dean Pollard were standing in the road between the two cars, yelling at each other, gesticulating wildly.

  That was what greeted Amar Shihad and his driver as they approached.

  “Grand Ayatollah,” the driver said. “Our way is blocked.”

  “Well, get out and tell the fools who I am,” Shihad said. “Tell them to make way.”

  “Yes, Grand Ayatollah,” the driver said.

  When the driver opened the door, Frazier and Dean could be heard yelling at each other.

  “You dumbass!” Frazier was shouting. “Where did you learn to drive? Haven’t you ever heard of a turn signal?”

  “Well if you hadn’t been going so fast, you would have seen that I was turning. I had plenty of time to turn in front of you, if you hadn’t been speeding.”

  “Driver,” Shihad called. “Tell them I’ve no wish to listen to their foolish quarrels. I am an important man and I have business to attend to.”

  The driver looked back toward Frazier and David, and an imperceptible nod of acknowledgement passed between them. The driver turned and suddenly ran to the side of the road.

  “What are you doing? Get back here at once!” Shihad shouted angrily.


  With Shihad’s attention diverted Frazier and Dean reached through the open windows of the two cars and grabbed AK-47s.

  “What? What are you—?” Shihad shouted, but his shout was cut off by the staccato bark of automatic weapons fire. Bullets crashed through the windshield of the Mercedes, punched holes in the side, and slammed into Shihad, leaving his body a bloody mess in the back seat.

  Frazier and Dean left the two weapons in one of the cars, then drove off in the other. Driving quickly through the Addison tunnel, they turned onto Dooley where the saw Buck’s truck sitting about a hundred yards up from the corner. The doors to the trailer were open, and there were two ramps leading up into the trailer.

  Frazier, who was driving, drove up the ramp into the trailer. He and Dean got out of the car and pulled the ramps up as Carter Davis, who was waiting on the side of the road, hurried up to close the trailer doors. That done, he walked up to the front of the truck.

  “Drive away,” he said.

  Buck nodded, put the truck in gear, then drove away. After he turned onto Midway, before he reached the LBJ Freeway, he was met by three SPS cars, their red and blue lights flashing, the warning sirens blaring.

  Fort Morgan

  There were, by now, several groups of freedom fighters around the country, most of them in the South. Fort Benning, Georgia, Pensacola Naval Air Station in Florida, Fort Rucker in Alabama, Keesler Air Force Base in Mississippi, and Barksdale Air Force Base in Louisiana were now in control of the patriots, occupied in the main by many of the men and women had had been stationed there in the pre-O time.

  Even though Jake Lantz and the Phoenix Rising group had taken over Mobile, the capital of what they were now calling United Free America was still located at Fort Morgan.

  “Why shouldn’t we stay here?” Jake replied when he asked why they didn’t move the capital to Mobile. “We have everything we need at the fort, it is easily defended, and it has probably gone through a hundred or more hurricanes without damage. I see no reason why we shouldn’t stay right where we are.