by Gavin Reese
“When’s he gonna be back?”
“I don’t know, he’s usually gone for several hours at a time, but I don’t expect to see him until dinner tonight.”
“Oh, okay, well, are you home right now?
“No, I’m at work, at my job, and I think they might be hiring soon. Do you want an application?”
Billy ignored the question. “I gotta run by the house, I think I left some fishing poles and tackle there in the shed I want to take up camping this weekend.”
“Okay, but I think the shed is locked, so you might have to wait for me or Jonathan to get home.”
“No, no need, momma, I’m sure it’s unlocked, I’ll just swing by and grab ‘em. Thanks, love you. Bye-bye.” Billy hung up before his mother could object, dropped the Ford’s transmission into ‘D,’ and proceeded on to the house. With Jonathan and his mother gone, he had time to snoop around without anyone suspecting he wanted more than hooks and lures. After parking in the driveway, Billy climbed out of the old truck and immediately walked around to the back gate. His mother had not allowed him to have a key to her house for years because of his recurring propensity for stealing from his own family. Billy knew Jonathan had brought several large brown duffel bags when he moved in, but hadn’t seen them around the house since. Hoping Jonathan hadn’t found room for them inside, he began his search in the unlocked shed.
After spending thirty minutes searching the shed’s contents, Billy determined the bags weren’t there and focused his efforts on getting into the side-entry garage door. He usually just walked right in through this door, but Jonathan had seen fit to change the broken doorknob when he moved in. Absent a deadbolt, the cheap locking handle presented only a few minutes’ delay before Billy defeated it by sliding his auto parts discount card between the latch and throw. Works every time, he thought.
Inside the garage, Billy searched through the disorganized clutter for only a few minutes before he found the duffels stacked in three columns along the far wall and hidden beneath a tarp and behind two parallel, low bookshelves. My break-ins‘d go a lot quicker if they’d clean this place up, he surmised. He pulled the outside bookshelf away from the second, which gave him enough space to walk between the shelves, reach across the second shelf, and access the matching duffel bags, which opened from a large zippered flap on top of each bag. Billy started with the top row, opened the first bag, and found it almost empty, with only a few sets of BDUs inside. He found the second filled with random pants and shirts. The third had books, unopened mail, and assorted paperwork. Billy felt a growing urgency to be elsewhere when Jonathan came home, well aware from his own past experiences that he couldn’t hear anyone walking through the house while he burglarized the garage.
Putting his fear aside for the moment, Billy lifted the books-and-documents bag, dropped it onto the concrete beside him, and reached down to open the fourth bag’s zippered top flap. Seeing this one filled with books and assorted training manuals, he bent over the second bookshelf, reached down into the bag, and quickly flipped through its contents until he saw “Improvised” on one of the covers. Billy pulled this from the stack and realized he’d hit the jackpot.
“TM 31-210, DEPARTMENT OF THE ARMY TECHNICAL MANUAL, IMPROVISED MUNITIONS HANDBOOK.” Below the title, Billy saw what appeared to be the Presidential Seal. Flipping the book open, he landing on page four:
“Section 0
Introduction
.1 Purpose and Scope
In Unconventional Warfare operations it may be impossible or unwise to use conventional military munitions as tools in the conduct of certain missions. It may be necessary instead to fabricate the required munitions from locally available or unassuming materials. The purpose of this manual is to increase the potential of Special Forces and guerilla troops by describing in detail the manufacture of munitions from seemingly innocuous locally available materials.”
Billy nearly shouted in excitement, knowing full well he had what he needed, the answer to all his most-pressing problems. He could now fulfill his promises to The Chosen Few and save himself from his lies about Jonathan’s willingness to help with Cleveland’s “security problems.” Now he just had to get away from the house before—
click shhkk whhoosshhh
Billy heard the rapid, familiar sequence as the deadbolt of the interior door between the garage and laundry room unlocked, someone forced the elongated door handle down to mechanically retract its cylinder, and the rubberized weather stripping dragging across the laundry room’s tile floor as the heavy door opened. Billy immediately dropped to the ground between the low bookcases, hoping he stayed hidden, and swallowed hard against the metallic adrenaline on his tongue. He looked up and saw one of the duffel bags protruded from between the bookshelves, half visible and plainly opened for his surprise company to see. FUCK!!
No one moved. Billy silently and slowly breathed, waiting to see what happened next. Because he had no excuse for rummaging through the bags, he could only hope his mother stood at the door because he felt unable to escape the beating Jonathan would surely dispense for this.
“Billy?” His mother’s voice substantially eased his fears. Even if he left in handcuffs in the back of a cop car, at least he wouldn’t get hurt today. Still, he had no desire to give Jonathan reason to track him down, so he remained still and silent, and hoped his mother stayed at the open doorway. She knows I’m here somewhere, cuz my truck’s out front. Fuck!
click
Billy understood she’d extinguished the light switch, which plunged the garage back into darkness.
whhoosshhh shhkk click
After she closed the interior door and again locked the deadbolt, Billy quickly stood, jammed the training manual in the back of his pants, and covered it with his shirt. He leaned over and felt around in the dark for the open duffel bag for what seemed an extraordinarily long time. “…fuck me, where the fuck did you go...” As soon as he felt the open top, he swung it shut, pulled its zipper closed, and replaced the bag as best he could in nearly complete darkness. He didn’t return the outer bookshelf or replace the tarp atop the rows of stacked duffels. Goddamit, it’s too dark in here for me to fix the tarp, the only light’s comin’ from under the garage door, and I can’t see dick! Momma’s gotta find me somewhere else! Certain his mother would next check the exterior shed, Billy knew he could not get there in time to be discovered rummaging for fishing poles. As he felt his way back to the exterior side door, he stumbled over a few small, unknown items before he reached out for the top of the workbench to regain his balance. As soon as he contacted the plywood surface and tried to tighten his grip, he felt a sharp, piercing pain in his right palm just as his left landed atop a short, odd-shaped cylinder. Unable to grip the bench in time, Billy crashed down onto several small, unknown items before landing hard on the concrete floor. “Fuck!” Gotta go, gotta go! Standing up, Billy felt a sharp tug join the pain in right palm. He stumbled the few remaining steps to reach the interior light switch and held his left hand out to search for it in the dark. There!
click
The restored lighting allowed Billy to examine his right palm, and he almost broke out laughing. A barbed treble hook hung from the middle of his hand, and dragged his old closed-reel fishing pole behind him on the garage floor. Billy paused for a moment to assess the injuries to his hand and left knee, which had struck the concrete floor. After finding no debilitating injuries, Billy pulled the barb from his palm, picked up the fishing pole, and started toward the exterior, side exit into the backyard.
click shhkk whhoosshhh
“Billy!” His mother now stood directly behind him, clearly angry and confused by finding him there. “How did you get in here?!”
“The outside door was open and I needed to get my pole, momma. What’s your problem?” Billy used his historical tactic of reflecting his mother’s accusations with an extra helping of guilt to divert her attention.
“I was just standing here and called f
or you. No one answered and you weren’t in here, which makes me think you’re up to something. You know I don’t like you in my home when I’m not here, and you know why we have that arrangement. What’s going on?”
“I was up the attic getting my pole down, and I didn’t hear you call. I just saw the lights go out and no one answered when I yelled, so I had to jump down here in the dark, and I just stumbled over here to the light switch after I fell on the workbench and got a hook in my hand. Damn, momma, I haven’t done nothing to deserve your distrust for a long time!”
“It’s been, like, maybe six months, Billy.” She saw the fishing pole in his bloody right hand, and it seemed, this time, the evidence appeared to his favor. “I’m sorry, but it takes a lot more than a few good months to earn back trust you’ve lost over years.”
Billy thought she believed his story, and even appeared guilty for having forced him to jump from the attic in the dark. He glanced over, and noticed the overhead attic door was still in place and her old glass end tables stood directly beneath it. Please don’t look over there, please don’t!
“Come inside and I’ll get you cleaned up.” She turned her back to him and retreated into the laundry room. Billy took that opportunity to see what evidence he left behind, and immediately saw the tarp misplaced, one of the bottom duffel bags open and moved, and the bag from which he’d taken the IED manual stacked awkwardly on top of another. It’s too goddamned obvious I’ve been in there! He couldn’t reposition the bags and tarp without drawing his mother’s attention, and knew his only choice was to immediately flee before Jonathan got home. Time to go!
“Momma, I’m just gonna go, it’s not a big deal, just a small cut. I think you did enough for one day, don’t you?” Billy learned years ago that maternal guilt effectively prevented her from focusing on his misdeeds, which he now needed to escape her house. Leaving much the same way he came in, Billy had only exchanged his fear and apprehension of failing The Chosen Few for the ominous knowledge that Jonathan, and maybe the cops, would soon be looking for him.
Forty-One
Duke’s residence. Maricopa County, Arizona.
Duke finished the last sentence of the last chapter, satisfied he had finally completed it. I’m sure it can use some editing, but the heavy lifting is done. His manifesto revealed all his political philosophies, aspirations, and hopes for America’s reconstruction as a truly Constitutional Republic. He had refrained from documenting his actual objectives for years, but, with the prize so well in sight, his ego finally got the better of him. Duke arrogantly hoped this journal could serve as his private memoir, to be released later to only a few, exceptionally-trusted followers to strengthen their absolute dedication to him and his leadership. Living in the shadows behind The Chosen Few for years had instilled an insatiable lust for the admiration and accolade of a devoted following; he now desperately sought the credit and respect he so richly deserved. Having sacrificed for his country, yet again, Duke believed himself due another hero’s welcome home, although this one would play out upon a much grander stage from which he could forever alter the course of human history.
Duke flipped through the journal’s pages, reviewing the sections to masturbate his ego. I’ll go through it with a fine-tooth comb later, but let’s make sure I didn’t miss any important highlights. He again read the introduction: “I am what historians identify as a realpolitician, someone willing to do whatever is necessary to achieve their objectives. Modern psychologists would certainly, and inaccurately, label me as a sociopath only because I am absent remorse. To me, that lack of useless emotion is a divine gift from a pure and loving White God. My every thought and emotion exists solely for the pursuit of my goals and objectives. What the rest of our degrading society naively spends on compassion for the weak, degenerate, and incompetent, I instead focus my intellectual gifts on righting our society, on swiftly and justly correcting the wrongs of the recent past. Those cannon fodder certain to be injured, harmed, or killed by my hand; those employed within our various targets, their families who shamelessly profess emotional devastation at the loss of some lowlife wage-earner, or those few false ‘patriots’ whom the government will seek to punish for my actions. These people are necessary sacrifices to renew American liberty to what it once was, and was always intended to be. We cannot restore White Americans to their righteous social place without them; for making themselves available for sacrifice, I suppose I am grateful, but I cannot conceive remorse at their loss. Our nation is immediately made stronger absent the leeches cast by the wayside as appeasement for decades of social decay and ridiculous, one-way racial tolerance.” Duke smiled and stared at that page for several minutes, reinforcing the certainty that he had always been right.
Duke skimmed the first chapter, in which he wrote about his youth and having grown up in an unapologetically racist household. Absent a mother, the three men only ever had each other and, at his father’s direction, Duke’s childhood had been fraught with anti-non-WASP propaganda. Among his earliest memories, he recalled his father gleefully cheering that Alan Berg, a vocal Jewish radio host in Denver, Colorado, had been murdered outside his home on June 18, 1984. Duke remembered his father having called his two boys into their small living room to watch the newscast announcing the prominent host’s brutal homicide.
Duke had next documented his personal involvement in dispensing “death and misery to the lesser, South American semi-negroes” in the Arizona and Nevada deserts over the past twenty-four years, despite having never been accused of crimes related to his conduct. He wrote about how he began his personal fight against anti-white-American sentiment and illegal immigration in the mid-nineties, at a time when even Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio publicly stated that such problems didn’t concern his office. Duke recalled how, despite lethal atrocities committed against anonymous desert walkers, he did not become proficient at killing with his own hands until he fought the Taliban near Kandahar, Afghanistan, and various Al Qaida insurgent groups in Fallujah, Iraq.
His memoir explained how joining the Army after 9/11 had provided the opportunity to legally and effectively take his personal fight to his enemies’ homeland under the guise and advocacy of the American federal government. “If Crips and Bloods,” he had written, “send some of their members through the military to make them more effective street soldiers, why shouldn’t we, with our just cause, use the same opportunity for the same benefit?” The US Army trained him to coordinate and launch tactical assaults, create defensible positions, clear residences, discreetly move in large and small squad units, and to effectively use his rifle’s iron sights to dispatch an enemy from 400 yards. Duke genuinely enjoyed his Army years, despite the chain of command bullshit, rampant faux patriotism, and Big Brother oversight. He truly loved dropping a literal hammer on his enemies without thought of legal consequence or capture, and arrogantly thought of himself as an anonymous super spy who infiltrated one enemy to fight another, all without being caught or exposed for the duration of his mission. Upon his return to the US, Duke received a negotiated general discharge after he assaulted an officer and set about creating The Chosen Few.
The next chapter Duke reviewed began by explaining his pseudonym. Even Cleveland, the simpleton, must know that’s not my Christian name, he thought. He didn’t care what Cleveland thought about the misnomer because his personal security demanded it exist. As far as the rest of The Chosen Few knew, Cleveland, as its presumed founder and self-proclaimed leader, answered to no one. In reality, Duke, not Cleveland, held all those roles and Cleveland served as his second-in-command. Determined not to risk his own freedom in pursuit of his political objectives, Duke had spent more than two years psychologically grooming Cleveland to accept that risk in exchange for the intrinsic pride and extrinsic respect that came from leading dedicated followers. Cleveland didn’t realize he could be primarily responsible if things went awry while Duke would move on, freely, to find another Cleveland and continue the fight elsewhere. Con
sidering what he had in mind, Duke knew the government would pull out all the stops, violate all manner of laws and Constitutional amendments, and spare no expense to apprehend and prosecute everyone they even imagined responsible.
Duke had also used this chapter to document his relationship with New American Reich, and had described how the incredibly active racist, anti-Semitic group unknowingly supported his efforts and ideals. Through their specialized, dramatic, and provocative protests, NAR members first garnered his attention in October, 2005, when they launched a protest march through a black neighborhood in Gary, Indiana, that sparked a violent counter-protest and cost the taxpayers there more than $400,000 in property damages, overtime pay for law enforcement, and emergency medical services for the poor and injured. In the aftermath, NAR’s founder and top leader, Jeff Schneider, had proclaimed, “The interruption of our peaceful march proved the savage negroids and their natural, violent proclivities, their lack of their lesser self-awareness, and insufficient mental ability to engage in intellectual discourse have no place in America.”
Duke had first decided to recruit NAR leadership to his cause because of the organization’s potential for aiding his long-term goals of overtaking the country by ballot box. NAR allowed its followers to concurrently belong to other, similar groups and had grown to be America’s largest and best organized Neo-Nazis with four dozen chapters across the nation. Therefore, the group’s sphere of influence vastly exceeded its leadership’s span of control. Schneider, who lived in infamous Sandpoint, Idaho, kept close watch on local chapters to ensure they remained in line with his goals for America and NAR.
Duke spent several pages documenting his first meeting with Schneider when the leader and a dozen NAR members traveled to Arizona to raise White Awareness about the border crisis. The group had entered the largely uncontrolled Vekol Valley along I-8 between Phoenix and Tucson to conduct patrol operations to “reclaim America for Americans and oppose the dirty Mexicans’ cartels.” Duke had watched the determined men conduct armed patrols of the famed drug trafficking corridor, but, in reality, they accomplished nothing more than storming a few abandoned buildings and claim the unverified apprehension of fifteen illegal aliens. Despite Duke’s disappointment at the group’s sparse turnout, their tactical incompetence, and Schneider’s constant need for media exposure, the man’s dedication and leadership had proven impressive. Schneider had demonstrated his ability to motivate, lead, and control his followers, which Duke knew would later prove invaluable. He’ll bring his own lambs to slaughter, and they’ll gladly follow.
