“Contact rear!” one of his team shouted. The counterattack from the remaining agents that John had feared had arrived.
“John, we’re fucked if we stay here!” Andy shouted.
“And they’re fucked if we don’t,” John replied loudly.
John took the lead, holding his position but turning around to engage the three agents who were firing at them from around the corner of a building. He knew they were sitting ducks, but if they did not hold the line, the Humvee would either come forward and burn them out, or return its attention to Kevin’s group, taking the M107 out of the fight. “Andy, take our two guys, go around the back side of that building, and burn those guys down! GO!”
John’s forceful tone left no room to argue, and Andy reluctantly left his friend’s side, taking off running along the east wall towards the other side of the building their assailants were using for cover. John alternated between taking shots at the corner of the building to cover his team, and taking shots at the Humvee to keep them from advancing. “Kevin, any day now!” John bellowed into his microphone.
Andy pumped his legs hard, running for the building with his two teammates working hard to keep up with him. He could feel his legs protesting, and the soreness in his back from the extra weight of his armor, but gritted his teeth and charged onward. He had to stop these guys before John or someone else ended up dead, and he could not afford to slow his pace even for a single step.
He reached the first corner, cautiously angled around to clear the corner, then ran to the next one. As he turned the next corner, he saw the three agents, all huddled against the wall, taking shots at John and the rest of the assault team. They had neglected to post a rear guard. Andy raised his rifle, placing the red dot of his optic on the nearest man, and fired two shots. Then two more. And again, until all three men were down. “John, your ass is clear!” he shouted into his microphone. Then Andy heard the thundering report that only a .50 BMG could make.
Kevin had finally gotten the rifle assembled, remembering he had to hold the bolt retracted in order to close the two halves of the rifle together. He inserted the takedown pin, cycled the rifle, and dry fired it, then yanked two loaded magazines out of the hard case. They were comically large, as was the ammunition. Kevin had never fired a .50 cal before, since they had been so heavily regulated in California and so expensive few people where he lived owned them. It took him a few extra seconds to realize the magazines were a “rock and lock” design rather than inserting straight in like an AR. With the magazine firmly inserted, he pulled back on the bolt handle, compressing the surprisingly stiff recoil spring, and let the rifle cycle to load its first round into the chamber. He left the bipod folded, opting to rest the rifle on the log he was using for cover.
When he flipped up the scope covers and found the turret in his sights, he squeezed the trigger for the first time and briefly wondered if the rifle had malfunctioned and blown up in his hands. The noise, the pressure, the blast, the recoil—everything about firing this weapon was incredible. The .50-caliber armor-piercing incendiary ammunition fired by the M107 was more than four times heavier than Kevin’s 168-grain match bullets he fired from his .308 Winchester, and despite the immense size and weight of the projectile, it had even more muzzle velocity. The first round struck the turret, punching a neat hole in it before the incendiary charge detonated. Kevin paused ever so briefly when he realized the immense recoil of the rifle had driven the optic back into his face, causing the scope to cut his eyebrow. The impact and blood stunned him for a brief moment, just long enough for the turret to start its traverse back towards him, recognizing the greater danger now lay behind the Humvee.
“Oh no you don’t!” Kevin shouted, and quickly pulled the trigger again, sending a shot flying just over the top of the Humvee. The rest of his ten-round magazine all connected with the turret, slicing through the armor and killing the gunner as the turret stopped its traverse. Kevin worked feverishly to find and hit the magazine release, flinging the shoebox-sized magazine out of his way and reaching for the full one as the Humvee throttled up and began to move. Kevin would later wonder what drove him to the emotion he felt, but he was determined not to let the Humvee that had shot one of his snipers and tried to kill them all leave with anyone alive. He rammed the last magazine into the well, yanked the charging handle, and raised the rifle, bringing the optic in front of his eye as he heard John’s voice in his mind. “Aim for the engine block, then the driver.”
Kevin fired once, then twice at the engine block, hearing the satisfying noise of the engine grinding itself to a halt. With the Humvee stationary and the driver’s door facing him broadside, he put his reticle on the door and pulled the trigger eight times, marching his shots back towards the rear of the truck. Anything bigger than a rat in the truck would be hard-pressed to have survived the assault.
John watched Kevin from the wall as he emptied his M107 into the driver’s door of the armored Humvee, satisfied that the API ammo had done its job killing both driver and passenger if there was one. “Good job, Kevin! Everyone check in, casualties or wounded?” John called into his microphone.
“Couple of scratches here, nothing serious,” came Randall’s voice.
“I’ve got one casualty south. He’s gone.” That was Kevin.
The other sniper teams reported no injuries or casualties. John turned around to see Andy jogging forward with his team. “We’re good. Fuck, I need to run more.” Andy puffed.
John pounded his fist on his friend’s shoulder, as close to a hug as he could manage given the present situation. He had anguished over sending his friend off without him towards danger, but in the moment his military mind and instincts had taken over. He saw his close friend as a soldier and ordered him into battle. He would reflect on that decision later and question whether or not he could have lived with his friend’s death if that had come to pass. Right now, he had one more order of business.
“Andy, hold this. Everyone else, circle around and make sure you leave no one behind breathing,” John remarked, unslinging his rifle and handing it to his friend.
“Fuck are you going?” Andy shouted, exasperated.
“I’m going to see that little asshole Shorts, and I’m going to end this,” John said, a dark smile spreading on his face. He drew his CZ from his holster and marched off towards the camp’s TOC.
Shorts was in his office, rifling through his desk drawer, looking for his agency-issued sidearm, and sweating profusely. The radio chatter had died down substantially, then stopped altogether. Whoever these people were, they seemed to have killed all of his agents and even managed to disable the Humvee that had arrived late from its nighttime patrol. Shorts was still fumbling through drawers and shuffling paperwork when he heard the door to the TOC slam against the wall.
He heard the sharp thudding of bootheels striking the polished floor, stopping occasionally, then resuming their travel. He was still looking for his Glock when a man wearing jeans and body armor turned the corner. Shorts looked up, from the hiking boots, the dirty jeans, the green-colored plate carrier, up past the handgun levelled at him, to the bearded face and angry eyes of John Arceneaux. The revelation dawned on him just as the gun fired, striking him in the shoulder. Shorts was rocked back away from his desk into his chair by the 9 mm slug that shattered his shoulder, dropping his arm limply down to his side.
“Do you know who I am?” John spat. He made no attempt to conceal his anger and indignation. John was seeing the faces of the men and women whose lives had been torn apart, the children traumatized by watching their parents beaten and killed. He saw the terror in his daughter’s eyes. He saw the look in his wife’s eyes when he killed those first four agents. He saw his friend lying on the ground, shot by one of these agents.
Shorts nodded his head, too frightened to speak. He recognized the face of the man, the one who had turned up missing after his first failed raid and lost team. The face of the man who had killed the second team, minus Agent John
s. The face he suspected was responsible for the sniper attacks and all the ill that had befallen his agents for weeks. The pictures he had pulled from John’s DMV record and social media showed a sometimes serious, but happy family man playing with his daughter or hugging his wife. The man who stood in front of him today was none of those things. Shorts saw the anger, the contempt, and the pure murderous intent in his eyes, like Death itself come to collect a soul on his list.
“Good, then we can skip the introductions, you little bastard. Pick up the phone and call your boss.”
In Washington, DC, rather late for official business, a phone rang in the Secretary’s home office. He grumbled loudly, looking at the caller ID and wondering what that little idiot wanted to talk about at this hour. “Shorts, this had better be damned important for you to call me this late,” the man shouted.
“Shut up and listen,” a gruff voice that did not belong to Gary Shorts barked, silencing the Secretary.
“Sir,” Gary Shorts’s voice started, “I am sitting here with a man by the name of John Arceneaux. He is holding me at gunpoint and wants me to give you a situation report on the New Orleans area operation. Are you ready to take that report?”
The Secretary was shocked and fumbled for his words. “Go ahead.”
Shorts’s voice sighed into the phone. “Sir, all agency personnel but myself are dead. I have been assured that if that is not a fact at this exact moment, it will be within a few minutes as Mr. Arceneaux’s team continues to check the facility. Our prisoners have been freed, our camp is in ruins, and all of our men are dead. All but me.”
The Secretary’s mind reeled at the news. How had an entire detention camp, two hundred men strong, been destroyed? Shorts had made mention of several casualties and more people quitting, but this was beyond comprehension. “Do you have anything else to report, Shorts?” the Secretary questioned.
“No, sir.” Shorts sobbed. Then the gunshot sounded, followed by several more as John emptied most of his magazine into the former chief LEO of the New Orleans detention camp. He replaced the empty magazine with a fresh one, falling back to his old habits, and replaced the CZ in his holster before picking up the bloody receiver.
“Now,” the voice of John Arceneaux snarled into the phone, “let me be frank with you, sir. This man and his agents and your agency are responsible for gross violations of the civil rights of US citizens, not the least of which was breaking into my own home with the intent of harming my family and me. I am putting you on notice, personally, that if these hostilities continue, the cost in human suffering will be both immense and on your head. Louisiana is, as of right now, a US Constitution zone. We will have our free speech, and we will have our gun rights and every other right you jackbooted hoodlums have seen fit to try to take from us. And we will fight to keep them. You and your men stay out of my AO, sir, or come here at your own peril.”
The line went dead. The Secretary stared, with his mouth hanging open, at the phone. He struggled to force his mind to make sense of the events that had just been brought to light. An outright insurrection had just been sparked in Louisiana and had openly challenged the authority of his agency and indeed the entire US government. He slapped the receiver and dialed the president’s Secret Service detail, hoping to reach someone at this late hour to inform his boss about what he had just learned.
Curtain Call
The flurry of activity that followed the next morning sent shock waves through the United States political apparatus and its various agencies. News of the destruction of the detention camp, the murder of more than thirty agents, and the beginning of outright hostilities between US citizens and their own government were alarming to say the least. Not since 1861 had the country been in the precarious situation it found itself, in which it was now faced with having to use its own military and national police forces to subdue not a single man, not a handful, but potentially thousands of people as the insurgency grew. Unlike the American Civil War, which was largely fought along geographic lines, the reality of the Minutemen was that the decentralized nature of their cells meant this conflict could potentially be fought nationwide, with hostilities boiling over across the nation. It was a situation the president and his advisors argued over mightily, deciding how to respond.
At the same time, the Minutemen revived their old party trick and prepared a full-scale international news release. Unlike the first one, which had detailed the heavy-handed approach US government agents were using to secure those firearms not given freely, this time the release was of drone footage from the attack. With Kevin’s and John’s teams assaulting the camp, Mark and his small army of drone operators had put everything in the sky they could manage, all either live streaming the video to a receiver in Kevin’s van or recorded to be downloaded later. Mark was also glad they had managed to intercept the phone call John had made to the agency’s higher headquarters, the Secretary of the Department of Justice no less. It was self-incriminating to John, but was also an incredible rallying cry for the rest of the Minutemen cells. They saw, finally, the way to win their fight. The detention camps, all of them nationwide, had to be targeted and destroyed. Once that was accomplished, the agency’s ability to conduct operations would be drastically marginalized, and further operations meant to free captured gun owners could commence. John had been right, the insurgency was indeed giving rise to an all-out rebellion.
BBC news: BBC news reporting from on location at the United States Capitol in Washington, DC. Reports are still coming in indicating prior reports regarding isolated hostilities directed towards US government agents and officials may have been severely understated. News has reached us through unofficial sources, only partially corroborated by the White House press secretary, that a US government facility in the vicinity of New Orleans, Louisiana, was attacked last night, suffering severe damage and dozens of casualties. The terrorist group Minutemen has openly claimed responsibility for the attack and has indicated their intent to continue and escalate hostilities towards the US government and its agents unless their demands are met: for the right of citizens to keep and bear arms to be restored, for the censorship of free speech to be suspended, and for the political prisoners of the US government to be immediately released. The White House has not confirmed all of the details and will not confirm or deny that the censorship of the internet is even taking place, though we have been receiving our information from an unnamed and independent source. We will continue to report as details come in, and we await an address from the White House for further information.
The combined assault and sniper team returned to the Minuteman compound in the wee hours of the morning, to treat their wounds and bury their dead. Kevin considered them lucky to have only lost one man, a member of his sniper detail who died barely ten feet away from him when the Humvee’s machine gun cut him down. The elation at reuniting the team with their friends and loved ones was clouded by breaking the news to the new widow, a task John would not allow anyone else to attend to. After scarcely a few moments to hug his own wife and daughter, he walked to the woman with a somber look on his face. Both of their tears started before he even spoke.
“Ma’am, what is your name?” John felt like an ass for not even knowing, though he had scarcely known any of these people long enough to get acquainted.
“Mary,” she huffed out between sobs.
“Mary,” John started, “your husband was a brave man, as brave as any soldier I ever knew. He gave his life trying to change something bigger than him, bigger than all of us, and I’m proud to have known him if only for a short time. I am so sorry we couldn’t bring him back to you.” John struggled hard to keep his voice, even as the tears flowed freely down his cheeks and onto his bloody shirt. He thought back to the moments in time he had to say goodbye to soldiers he had served with, to send them off to the next life. He remembered the widows and the children who would grow up without their father or mother, the families who would miss their sons and daughters and brothers and siste
rs. He did not know the words then, and he did not know the words now, to express his deep remorse that this man had lost his life and this woman had lost her husband. He could only stand there and hold her shoulders while she grieved.
They held an impromptu but reverent burial for the man, whom Kevin identified as Thomas Jameson. Each man and woman present, though they had known him little, felt the loss. He had given his life trying to change the world, and John personally hoped his sacrifice would be remembered one day in the pages of history like great men had been before. John, Mark, Kevin, and Andy all worked to bury the body while many of the others filed inside the house to rest and comfort Mary.
“I still can’t believe we won,” Kevin remarked.
“We haven’t, not yet,” John said simply. “But at least we won the battle.”
John worked the shovel while his mind wandered. He was relieved to be alive, glad to be back in the arms of his wife and daughter, yet he felt incredible guilt for the man they were interring in the earth right at that moment. Had he been right to demand they attack that camp? Should he have just given up in the first place and spared all of these people? What about the families of the men he killed? Hundreds of other women and children besides Mary would not see their husbands come home after what he had done; what of their sorrow? How many families had he shattered? How much suffering could a human being cause and not be forever damned for it?
“Don’t do that, John.” It was Andy’s voice. “You didn’t kill this man. He believed in what we are doing, and he walked the walk right along with us. His death isn’t on your hands, it’s on theirs. It has to be that way.”
“Maybe, but what about all the men’s deaths that are on my head? All the blood? How many more people am I going to kill, how many more families will I destroy? Is this worth it?” John’s words came out like a tortured sigh.
Mark looked up to John. “Do you remember what you told me, John? You said the faster we ended this, the fewer people would have to die. How many people died before you fought back? How many families were destroyed? How many children taken? How many more would have lost everything this past month if you hadn’t done what you did? Don’t fall on your sword because you lost one man trying to save thousands.”
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