“I’m sure at some point it occurred to you we knew far too much about your home and your routines to be casual observers. We knew about the raid days in advance. We have a man on the inside, but that is all I can say. We did not know the time, only a window during which it was supposed to happen, so we quickly moved one of our drones into position to observe you and figure out what their response time would be. Once our other drone saw them depart their HQ this morning, we knew how long you had before they showed, and were able to give you details about their raid. We could not have anticipated your…response. So, to answer your concern, we have every bit of evidence. Our only issue is IF we proceed ahead with this, we are handing that same evidence to the state. If they catch you, they have ironclad evidence of what you did.”
John took it all in. He had been keeping an eye out for suspicious vehicles, but had not even considered a drone and silently kicked himself for that oversight. “Are we sure they don’t have active drones too? One could have spotted my departure and tracked me here.”
“We saw no evidence of drones. Satellite reconnaissance is something we have far less control over. It’s a risk we have to take,” Mark said.
“So what you’re saying is,” John started, “the only way to pull this bad tooth is to stick our head in the lion’s mouth and hope he isn’t hungry today.”
Mark smiled ruefully. “I think that’s a fair way to put it. But if you want to commit and want to start right now, let’s sit down and figure this out.”
With Me, or Against Me
“Do you think they’ll go for it, Mark?” John asked. It was impossible for that normally stoic voice not to betray a note of worry.
The two of them had argued endlessly throughout the evening on how to handle the information. Mark argued for condensing and editing everything, and John wanted full disclosure. In the end a compromise was reached. Now to disseminate it, they surveyed their options. Mark had enough radio equipment, made more frequency flexible than was legal under normal circumstances, to pirate several bandwidths in the AM and FM bands. The transmissions came with a danger that they could always be tracked back to the source, but short transmissions would narrow the window for the local agencies to accomplish such a feat.
It was a foregone conclusion that they would blast their content through social media using all available platforms, and an equally foregone conclusion that this content would be relentlessly scrubbed as it went viral. It was a necessary expenditure of energy to attempt, if only to get it into the hands of the public and get the rumor mills stirred up. Also, the risk was minimal due to Mark and Kevin’s reliance on VPNs, so-called virtual private networks, which shielded their IP address from those who would attempt to discover their whereabouts. No security measure was perfect, but this one proved fairly robust.
John had also recommended utilizing P2P, or peer-to-peer data transmission using torrent files. These would not depend on any server or singular storage to maintain their viability. Once released into the wild of the internet, and once it found its way into enough hard drives, it would be nearly impossible for the federal agencies to remove. Best of all, any attempt to remove these files from private hard drives would send the operators and the media itself into histrionics at the obvious infringement on the right to free speech. The federal government probably still remembered the stinging rebuke they received in the court of public opinion for their attempts to regulate and banish 3-D printable guns and the other intellectual property of Defense Distributed years earlier. The Streisand effect was obvious then, as the more agencies and states attempted to crack down on the transmission of these files, the more they traded hands. John believed they could leverage a similar effect now, which Mark and Kevin agreed was likely.
The real question mark was the Minutemen themselves. Each cell operated independently, without cohesive overall leadership. This made it incredibly difficult to root out the entire organization, as you had to destroy each cell individually, but also made cooperation among different cells voluntary. John was the first one to point out that, just as he had fought against those who claimed to support the Second Amendment yet gave ground on every issue, a similar battle might be on the horizon among the various cells of the Minutemen. Certainly, it was likely that at least some, and possibly many, of these cells might not be enthusiastic about extending their mission statement beyond simple passive resistance to aiding and abetting a fugitive and advocating outright insurrection against a nation-state.
“John, I have to believe these people will see what we are doing here and join us. If I’m wrong, then we are all in a lot deeper trouble than I originally thought.” Mark sighed.
“I hear you, Mark. I’m just saying be prepared for that pushback. These are your people, not mine. None of them wanted to reenact Lexington and Concord on my front lawn before I did it; none of them stood in front of these agents while they hauled people off to prison and tore their homes apart. They didn’t want to get their hands bloody or their boots muddy, and now you are about to tell them to ruck up and get ready for a war. I would be amazed if at least some of them didn’t balk. The real question is, do any of them know your full name or location? Can they turn on us to save their own skins? Because once you and I let this missile out of the silo, there is no calling it back, and the state is going to put incredible pressure on everyone and anyone they have to in order to bring us to heel,” John said emphatically.
Mark glanced at him and nodded. They had bought themselves into this table, and win lose or draw, they were going to play the game.
“Kevin,” Mark said, “send this to our other cells. Eyes only, not for immediate retransmission. Indicate we intend a full release eight hours after this is transmitted, and we ask them each to match our release simultaneously. Even I’m not positive how many cells are out there today, but we were well over a hundred two years ago, and growth was always part of the mission statement. Let the government try to shut us all down and see how far they get. Once our statement is out in the public eye, we’ll figure out our next move. Step one is just to get this out before the agency starts feeding the media its version of the events.”
“And what then?” John asked.
“And then we wait,” Mark answered. “It is impossible to predict what the exact response of these agencies is going to be, much less our cells or the populace. If I had to levy a guess, I would assume the immediate response will be an attempt to silence our transmissions followed by some fairly draconian curtailment of freedoms, at least in this immediate area. That will not be viewed favorably by the populace, and it may be something we can use to sway public sentiment to us. The battle is going to be fought for public opinion, not with bullets just yet. The state has tried their very best to do to us what they did with the Weaver family and Mount Carmel, to smear our reputations and mischaracterize us. And just as then, many people bought their lies rather than investigate the claims for themselves.”
John had made these same references years ago. It didn’t take a rocket scientist to figure out Randy Weaver and his family were assaulted by the government, not because they were mass murderers and violent felons, but because they were accused of possessing a shotgun shorter than the legal length without having paid the ATF the requisite two-hundred-dollar tax stamp. Mount Carmel and David Koresh were demonized quite thoroughly, called religious cooks and Koresh accused of child molestation, but no one bothered to wonder WHY THE ATF was the agency that discharged that initial search warrant and conducted the raid. If the charge was statutory rape and child abuse, why weren’t the local or state police tasked with snatching Koresh right out of his chair at the local coffee shop and bringing him in for questioning? Why was this department involved in shooting and burning these people out of their building? And why were the allegations of child abuse only brought up AFTER the disastrously mishandled raid to justify such heavy-handed tactics.
The Minutemen were about to fight a similar war against disinformation. The state h
ad similarly demonized them thus far, and their newly found affiliation with a family accused of murdering four government agents in cold blood was going to make the entire organization the focus of an intense public smear campaign, to say nothing of the countryside being torn apart looking for their cells. John only hoped these men were prepared for the long row that needed to be hoed, because he suspected none of them would make it out of this without getting a little dirty.
Out back by the garden, Kay made friends with Mark’s son, George, while the mothers stood quietly off to the side. Rachel regarded Mark’s wife, Vicky. They had introduced themselves, but said little since Rachel had spoken with her husband. The silence was deafening as she waited for news of what was being discussed inside, and just as she was preparing to break the silence, Vicky did just that.
“Your daughter is beautiful. George doesn’t have many friends since we live so far out of town. I haven’t seen him come this far out of his shell in a long time,” Vicky said, as if oblivious to what Rachel and her family had been through that morning.
The absolute normality of this polite chitchat astounded Rachel. “I don’t want my family to be a bother in your home, but I believe my husband intends to take Mark up on his invitation to stay on for a while.”
Vicky smiled and shook her head. “Rachel, you and your family are no bother. I have supported my husband’s work for years. I knew who you were and what was about to happen to you before you did. I was in the room when I heard your husband announce his intention to fight back, and saw the question in my husband’s eyes. I nodded immediately; how could we not lend you our help? If the roles were reversed, I would hope someone would come to my family’s rescue.”
And suddenly Rachel had a new perspective of her quiet host. Vicky well knew the perilous situation around her family, but had the mental fortitude not to let it rule her daily life. Instead, she focused on her husband and her son, just as Rachel had for years even as she knew the great danger that could come to their door at any moment.
“I appreciate that, Vicky. Still, I want to earn our keep around here, so any help you need around the house or property, please let us know. My Sicilian grandmother would be ashamed if you didn’t at least let me help out with a meal here and there. And John is a fair hand at carpentry and mechanics work.”
Vicky nodded politely. “I accept. Just know that you aren’t a burden to us. You are either a guest or you are a member of this household, depending on whether you intend to stay on temporarily or permanently. Either way, your company and help are welcome.”
And so the ladies sat and watched their children play and get to know each other, and Rachel felt a sense of warmth and belonging. No longer was her family hiding from their neighbors; no longer were she and her husband disguising themselves. They were among kindred spirits, men and women who saw their mission as a righteous one to restore the country they loved to its true path. Rachel felt at home, yet felt unease. While this might be a place they belonged, she felt the impending hostility that was sure to come their way looming on the horizon. She felt just like she had that morning, holding her rifle, watching her husband’s face harden and his eyes darken, waiting for the sound that would tell her it was time to fight or die…
I hate this damned armor, Rachel thought for not the first time. At the expense of sounding crass, it chafed nipples like it was made of sandpaper, and did its best to crush her feminine figure into a decidedly flatter profile. It dug into her shoulders, into her armpits, and if she did not stand absolutely straight up, it would pinch on her belly and waist. It was, aptly described by her, a medieval torture device. It was also the only thing that might be standing between her life and death, so she tolerated it. She looked down the hallway and into the kitchen at her husband.
John looked in his element, if you overlooked a bit of beer belly poking out from beneath his armor. John had worn somewhat similar armor when he was deployed to Iraq for Operation Iraqi Freedom and was a firm believer in using this potentially life-saving tool when you expected trouble, like the kind of trouble coming their way. Spare magazines draped across his chest, with more in a bag next to him on the floor with his medkit. His hands tightly gripped his AR-15, with its buttstock firmly in his shoulder and his eye lined up with the rifle’s red dot sight. He had set his wife up in a shooting lane where she would be far from the immediate line of fire, and of course put himself right in the path of potential danger. That was her husband; if someone was going to get shot, he was going to demand he be the one in front rather than someone else. This home-defense plan relied on him being the center of the assailing force’s attention while he attempted to push them back with suppressive fire. Rachel’s .30-06 had more than enough power to drive through most armor their attackers would be wearing, and shooting from the side as she was set up, she would be able to cut them down quickly IF they managed to make it past the foyer. With John in front of them, that was a big if. She knew he intended to cut these men to pieces before they had any opportunity to hurt her family.
The bang on the front door startled her, and she accidentally tightened up on the trigger. Her husband’s endless drilling of weapons handling kicked in, and she let her finger back off, stared down her shooting lane parallel to the hallway, and waited. The eruption of fire from her husband’s rifle made her wince, as did the guttural yell that came from the man she loved. He wasn’t just shooting, he was hurling his very anger and outrage at these men who had just knocked his front door off its hinges. She watched with mingled horror and wonder as the cords in his neck and arms stood out, that usually happy face changed to one of rage, and her husband stood and began to advance. She could not see around the corner of the hallway, but she fired at the doorway through the walls to try to help her husband. She need not have worried, John was advancing because these men expected to find a family cowering in the corner, not a monster in body armor waiting to exact revenge for their disturbing the peace of his home.
She worked to reload her rifle quickly, then stood and advanced slowly to find her husband. She came to the corner of the hallway and turned left to look out the open doorway just as her husband’s foot came down with all his weight on a man’s hand. The sound of shattering bones was hard to miss, as was the cry of pain. John took the man’s rifle from him and surveyed the other three bodies for movement. She watched as her husband slung his rifle, extracted his handgun from its holster, and shot the man in the face. Her own feelings were in turmoil. This man was no threat, lying on his back with several shots in his chest and unarmed, but seconds ago he had tried to hurt her husband. She wrestled with these emotions as her husband looked up at her. His eyes softened; his face changed; whatever he had called forth to take these men’s lives was gone in an instant. “Rachel, go get Kay and get our bug-out bags. We have to get out of here. Right now,” John said.
Rachel nodded and went to go get their daughter. When the door to the panic room opened, she saw Kay sitting on the floor, knees to her chest with her arms wrapped around them and her head down. She slowly looked up, worry giving way to relief. She jumped up and hugged her mother. “Where’s Daddy?” she asked.
“Daddy is coming. We’re all okay,” Rachel answered. “Honey, we have to go right now. Can you help us get our camping bags (Rachel’s euphemism for the family bug-out bags)?”
“Sure, Mom.” It would only be moments later Rachel would curse herself for not thinking that Kay would walk right past the front door, where four dead men lay, in her pursuit of the camping gear. And it would be nearly an hour of holding her daughter’s hand while they drove for their lives before Kay would speak again.
Rachel reflected on this, the longest and most frightening day of her life since the car accident that almost ended it decades before, and she felt a tear slide down her cheek. She knew their daughter’s life, and hers, had been irreparably altered by the events of that morning, and wondered how she would try to provide a normal childhood for a young woman hiding from her govern
ment with two felons for parents. For ever so brief a moment, she questioned the decision she and her husband had made, and then abandoned the thought. She no more wanted to go back to their quiet suburban home without her husband than she liked the situation she was in, but at least here her family was together and their new hosts were welcoming. They would do as they had always done; they would survive until the time came they could thrive again. But they would survive.
Idle Hands
“Where did your guy drop off our gear?” John asked.
Mark replied, “We set you up in one of our spare rooms. Figured the three of you would want to be together, so there’s a king bed and a full in that room, plus closet space. Everything from your car is in there, and your car is out back in our barn under a tarp. We’ll have to check it daily, maybe move it somewhere more permanent to keep the critters from chewing on the wires, but for now it’ll do.”
“I’ve always made a religious habit of cleaning my guns after use. Do you have some space I can tend to that and not ruin your furniture or bedding?” John inquired.
Mark nodded knowingly. “Yeah, I’ll give you a hand bringing everything to our attached garage. We set it up as a workshop years ago when we built the unattached garage. I have a workbench and should have everything we need. Want some company?”
“Only if you don’t mind me smoking a cigar out there. We left in a hurry, but I had the good foresight to snatch my travel humidor. Can’t leave home without the essentials,” John said ruefully, painfully aware he might never see his home again.
Mark led John to his new room and helped him grab up the very firearms he had used to extinguish four human lives that morning. Mark knew guns and immediately recognized John’s AR. He was less familiar with John’s sidearm and was surprised to see a Remington hunting rifle among the guns not in bags or cases. “That’s an odd choice for a defensive weapon,” Mark remarked.
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