The Last Marine

by T. S. Ransdell

  “You see, Joel, I know you’re tired of hearing me carry on like this all the time, but this is why it is important to remember that we are a republic: a nation ruled by law, but good laws do absolutely no good without good, strong men to enforce them! What Leakey did was illegal! A president does not have that kind of power, but no one stopped him! It was that same kind of altruistic reform bullshit that brought down the Roman Republic; it gave us Mussolini, Hitler, Castro. Sons of bitches all of them. Our Constitution is a beautiful thing; it is government based on the foundation of the importance and liberty of the individual. But it is nothing more than an old piece of paper if we don’t stand up for it, enforce it, and defend it with our lives if necessary. That’s what Clark ran on. That’s what his presidency was about. He put an end to Leakey’s policy of tribute to the Chinese, and that’s why they hit us. Like a schoolyard bully that roughs you up a bit and says he’ll do more if you don’t give him your milk money. The ChiComs thought they could scare us back into compliance, but they thought wrong. Clark led us into war!”

  His grandfather had always made it sound so romantic. It broke Joel’s heart when he learned in school that it was all a lie. Clark had talked about going back to the Constitution, but then broke from precedence and did things without concern for the environment, social justice, or even the collective emotional welfare of the American people. Clark had allowed the states to form their own armies. Businesses were allowed to run without federal oversight. Ironically, through executive orders, Clark did away with federal regulations and oversight on industries that were deemed “vital” to the war effort. He took funding away from bureaus that he thought did not contribute to the war effort, and spent it on the military and war materiel. His grandfather complained about the Labor Tax as slavery, yet millions of Americans were deprived of federal assistance and expected to serve in the armed forces or work in factories that produced war goods. The physical and emotional toll of these policies were something modern academia still studied and debated. Intellectuals were always discovering damage that was done during those years that no one had even realized at the time.

  However, despite his sense of national shame, Joel secretly admired his grandfather for his service during the war. While not a young man, thirty-one, when the war started, Abe Levine had joined the Washington State Militia as a doctor. When the People’s Liberation Army of China had been defeated in North America, Abe Levine joined the United States Navy to serve overseas. Joel took some solace in that his grandfather had saved lives, but it was shallow. The lives his grandfather saved took the lives of other human beings during the war; so Abe, too, was a guilty participant in the American Renaissance. No, his grandfather was waist deep in national guilt, but he had shown a courage and passion that appealed to Joel on some level; it was his own guilty pleasure.

  “Boarding papers! What’s wrong with you, moron?” a FedAPS agent barked. “You think I got nothing to do but wait on you all day?”

  Snapped out of his reminiscence of his grandfather, Joel handed the agent his boarding pass, driver’s license, and federal passport needed for interstate travel.

  “So—” the agent glanced through the paperwork “—478F, you like to make me repeat myself, do you?”

  “Sorry, I…I’m off to a big interview and just have a lot on my mind.” Joel attempted to explain as his voice cracked and stammered.

  “I see. You’ve got all this important stuff to do and us pissants just have to wait on you, huh?”

  “No. I’m…I’m sorry. Just a lot is on my mind. I—”

  “You seem nervous, 478F,” the agent interrupted after he glanced again at Joel’s paperwork. “Do you have something you’re hiding?” he said with a mischievous grin. The agent keyed his mic. “Section A6, Section A6, internal security, please.”

  Joel shuffled onto his flight to DC six hours later than he had originally planned. Security delays had caused him to miss his originally scheduled flight. Fortunately, there was a red-eye flight to Washington, DC. It came with a hefty rescheduling/security fee to cover the expense of federal paperwork and protocols. Joel was skeptical of the fee. He thought an additional five hundred dollars to hit a few taps on a keyboard seemed excessive to him.

  Never mind that now, he thought, at least I’ll be in DC with eight hours to play with before my interview.

  His rectal pain from the cavity search caused him to slowly ease himself down into his window seat. He was the first one in his aisle and hoped no one else would show. However, this hope was shattered five minutes later when a heavyset man, expelling many grunts and sighs, took the middle seat. The man needed to wear more cologne than he already was and breathed way too loudly. Five minutes after that a very thin, petite woman with long straight brown hair and a pale, frightened look on her face sat down in the aisle seat.

  Fucking brilliant, Joel thought, but did not say aloud.

  It seemed to him that this whole scenario was just way too clichéd to be coincidence. Could some perverted mind really be pulling some kind of sick joke? Of course, it was a ridiculous thought. Joel recognized that he was tired and irritated and thus prone to a little paranoia. He adjusted in his seat, trying to get comfortable, but he could not. He was too sore. Joel slipped his FedAPS-approved entertainment headphones over his eyes and ears to listen to music, to block out the plane, to block out his pain, and hopefully go to sleep.

  The Price of Security is a bleeding pain in the ass! Joel laughed at his own joke, but he would never say it aloud. Never.

  National security issues aside, Joel hated airports.

  Chapter Two

  In the office of the Supreme Commander of the Federal Agency of Public Safety, Nina Maria Perro was ready to have an alcoholic drink and end her day. It had been a long and frustrating week for her. It appeared that several more long days were guaranteed for the immediate future since the Russian Federation publicly threatened a nuclear attack on American soil.

  Perro initially scoffed at the audacity of the Russians to demand the return of the American southwest to the United Mexican States, but then the demand was sustained unanimously by the United Nations. President Iguwma Swigolamo, of the UN, said it was a matter of “international integrity.” Perro figured everyone in the international community had to have known this was a ruse for Russian imperialism. Mexico was a colony of the Russian Federation in everything but name. Russians were elected to the highest state offices. Russians were the bureaucratic leaders of the United Mexican States. Russians were not only the biggest landowners in Mexico, they were the majority of landowners in Mexico. They owned the resorts, the farms, the ranches, condominiums, the apartments, and the factories. If one went to Mexico, you might hear some Spanish on the streets, but if one did business in Mexico, you would speak Russian. Even Russian organized crime ran the slave and drug trade, along with control of the Mexican-American border.

  She glanced over at the bar, eyeing the decanter of vodka. She badly wanted a drink. She wanted to feel the stress of the day, the stress of the week, slip away with that first sip. However, she had one more meeting today with a low-level, nimrod journalist/historian and wanted to have a clear mind. The journalist, as trivial as a cog in a big machine could be, was still an important part in her scheme. She thought it most important to make just the right first impression; not so much as to successfully enact her plan, but to insure that the journalist would thoroughly be under her control. A well-managed journalist could be a valuable tool indeed. As a leader, Perro understood the value of laws and the power of well-armed federal agents, but to truly control people you had to win their hearts and their minds. Well, at least their hearts, anyway. Perro had made her political career through the emotions she could evoke in others, and when it came to controlling the masses, she found fear to be her most effective weapon. People could never be under your control as much as when they willingly submitted themselves to your authority. General Perro was fully aware that her power, her authority, did not co
me from the president, not Congress, nor even the archaic Constitution. It came from the mob of American people that demanded security and were willing to sacrifice liberty to get it. Security that she could provide if given enough power, and a well-managed journalist could be very instrumental in persuading the mob to give up that power.

  The redheaded receptionist was stunning. She was tall and slender with all the curves men like to see. Joel had noticed that FedAPS uniforms often looked loose and baggy, unless someone was grossly overweight, and at worst, looked unkempt when compared to the memory of how Joel’s grandfather had looked in his military uniform. He thought the uniforms were particularly bad on women and gave them something of an androgynous look. This woman, however, filled her uniform perfectly, as if it had been cut to her exact dimensions. Her appearance was very feminine and very professional. Joel found her to be the perfect complement to this most extraordinary facility. From the moment Joel had entered through the security gates into the walled District of Columbia and traveled the streets to the Federal Headquarters building, he had been in awe. Every building, every green space, every statue and monument, and even the streets themselves displayed the most advanced technology, sophistication, efficiency, and dominance.

  Nor were they in short supply. There was only one green space in all of Seattle. Joel counted eighteen on the way to his interview. Joel had traveled overseas and to many major cities of North America, but he had never seen any city this powerful. He noticed that even the people were cleaner and displayed a wealth and sophistication not seen anywhere else on the continent. The beautiful redhead embodied everything he had seen in the District of Columbia. It was everything that he wanted.

  Joel’s guilt failed to quell his yearning for the attractive FedAPS sergeant. It was demeaning and degrading to women for men to think of them as sexually attractive beings, but it was something he could not help. Joel battled his temptation to stare at the attractive sergeant for over nearly forty-five minutes before she finally approached him.

  “Sir, if you will come with me, General Perro will see you now.”

  Joel felt half numb when he looked into her crystal blue eyes, which popped from the contrast of her red hair and navy blouse with the broad collar opened wide and lower than he could remember seeing on any other FedAPS agent. He quickly averted his eyes and took in the name tag that read MacTaggert.

  Did she just smile at me? Joel wondered. Of course, she’s a receptionist. She’s also a FedAPS agent, they never smile; and there was a certain look in her eyes.

  He watched her hips rhythmically sway back and forth as she walked. Unlike the baggy cargo pants he had seen on most FedAPS personnel, MacTaggert’s skirt was slim fitting and complemented her figure. Joel thought the cut of the garment actually accentuated her femininity, as if it were something to be celebrated. Joel gave in and indulged in MacTaggert’s figure the short distance to the general’s office. His indulgence came to an abrupt end when the sergeant opened the door and introduced him to General Perro.

  Joel consciously forced his face to smile. He thought that this might very well be the ugliest woman he had ever seen. Not that she was hideously scarred or anything like that, she was ugly and looked like she was trying to make herself look ugly. If MacTaggert was a celebration of femininity, General Perro was an aspersion to it. The woman had the figure of an avocado. Her platinum-bleached hair was cropped short, in a similar fashion to a man’s military haircut, but too long to look that sharp. She wore the formal dress blue uniform of the FedAPS, but it looked like it had been tailored for a short fat man as opposed to a short fat woman. If the cut of the clothing was to disguise the fact that she was a woman, they had failed miserably, yet Joel could not think of what would have helped. Contrary to the masculine character of her clothing and hair, General Perro’s face was smeared in makeup. However, instead of complementing the feminine features of her face, the makeup distorted them. It looked as if her eyebrows had been shaved off and drawn back as high arches on her forehead. The rouge on her cheeks and the lipstick she wore were of a bright shade of red that clashed with her olive complexion. Nothing about her appearance seemed graceful or even natural. She had the look of a sadistic clown wearing a military uniform in a child’s nightmare, yet this was the most powerful person in the Federal Government. She was the top commander of all branches of the military, federal law enforcement, and every agency and bureaucracy in the Federal Government. She even controlled the president’s own security detail. In fact, many said she was more powerful than the president of the United States.

  Joel smiled. His career and his life depended on it.

  “Mr. Levine, please come in and sit down. What a pleasure it is to meet you.” Perro greeted him with her best fake smile.

  “Thank you, Madame General. Truly the honor is all mine.” Joel walked a brisk and steady pace and stopped approximately ten feet in front of Perro. With his heels together and a straight back, Joel bowed to a forty-five-degree angle, as was customary when greeting high-ranking government officials, straightened, and only sat down after the general had taken her seat.

  “Mr. Levine, can my sergeant bring you in some refreshment? Sergeant! Bring us some coffee,” Perro ordered without waiting for a response.

  “Yes, Madame General.” MacTaggert popped to attention and then crossed the large office to the refreshment bar.

  Joel was amazed by the 180-degree view of Washington, DC from the general’s corner office. It was the nerve center of the whole country. Where the best and brightest minds collected for the purpose of evolving mankind. Where decisions were made and actions taken that determined the course of the nation and the daily course of American lives. His gazed fixed on a tall white obelisk in the near distance. The Tower of Progress, it was a marvelous symbol for social justice and equality. Joel had a faint memory of watching the rededication of the structure on television as a very small child. Previously it had been named after a past American president. Joel could not remember his name, just that he had owned slaves and was not willing to pay his fair share of taxes. Joel shook off the thought; this was a time for optimism not cynicism. Joel was in the office of the most powerful woman in North America, at her request! His time had come. Indeed, it was his moment to shine, to join the world’s leading intelligentsia and make a difference. It was the very opportunity he had been working for since he was a college freshman.

  “So, Mr. Levine, may I call you Joel? You’re David’s son.” Perro’s plan was to start this conversation by falsely planting the notion in Levine’s mind that she had known his father. “I’m a fan of his work on LBJ,” she lied again. She was familiar with David Levine’s work only because she had been briefed on it two days before. But she was far from a fan of Levine’s work or any other academic for that matter. In fact, she really found them quite contemptible. She thought they were such arrogant people. Always thinking that they were making a difference, when in fact, they were pawns of those, like her, in power who really did make a difference. Academics, like journalists, could be more useful than the average fool, but ultimately they were still the “useful idiots” that Vladimir Lenin was so legendary at manipulating. Now that was a man who truly made a difference; that was a man she was truly a fan of. Lenin was an audacious, bold thinker. He was a man of political action. He was the opposite of this modern-day castrato who sat before her today.

  Perro’s stress of the last few weeks only added to the anger she felt at having to be not just polite, but warm and inviting to Levine. While she felt this kind of behavior was beneath her, she realized that creating an emotional “connection” with him would ultimately make him that much easier to control. At first she had to give him a reason to make him think that she could like him, and then, at some point, she had to give him a reason to fear her. Then she would truly have him. She would be able to control him, use him, and throw him away when he was no longer useful.

  “Your piece on how the international community can make Ru
ssia feel like ‘part of the family’ was quite good. Your analogy of Russia as the abused adolescent that needs love, not discipline, was most compelling,” Perro said with a well-rehearsed false sincerity.

  “Thank you, Madame General,” Joel gushed. “I’m really quite flattered. I never dreamed that my work would be appreciated by one as esteemed as yourself.”

  You got that right, you sniveling little shit, Perro thought. She made a mental note to have Levine red-flagged to FedAPS for an internal security check on his flight home.

  MacTaggert arrived at Perro’s desk and served coffee to them both. “Cream or sugar, Mr. Levine?” she asked.

  “Oh, both, please. Extra sugar, I like it sweet.” Joel did not realize his entendre until it was too late. He squirmed and cleared his throat. MacTaggert slightly turned her head to look at him and smiled. Not only was Joel relieved, but his optimism for the day skyrocketed.

  I have truly arrived, he thought.

  This moment was not missed by Perro. Instantly, she flushed with a controlled anger and jealousy. She had not handpicked MacTaggert from basic training and given her rank, VIP housing, and tailored uniforms so she could be eye candy for the hired help. Well, in fact, actually she was; but she was not supposed to return the sentiment. She reminded herself that when you flaunted something, people would notice; and, after all, wasn’t that what she was trying to accomplish? What good was the power to have what you wanted, if no one knew you had it? Besides, Perro had learned how to control her passions a long time ago. Before her momentary jealousy had passed, she was calculating how she could use this to her advantage.