by Eric Gurr
Hartwick just shook his head. “Sheesh. I don’t think some of these folks are right in the head.”
He started to talk about the containment plan. Someone had a pen and a notepad and they counted people, and figured out how many could be at each highway. And then someone was yelling. The group turned to see two men running from their cars towards them. “They’re attacking the sporting goods store!”
When they got closer they were able to talk. A large group, over a hundred, was attacking a sporting goods store the next exit up. They were trying to take all of the guns. Someone looked at Hartwick.
“We gotta stop this don’t we?”
“Is it that Tanner Ritchie and his group?” Hartwick asked. “No, it’s the protesters from the city. The left wingers.”
“Yeah, I think we need to stop this.” Hartwick said.
Hartwick screamed out orders. He had no idea how he had ended up in this position. Perhaps it was just luck he figured. He’d spoken up against Tanner Ritchie and that had earned him at least a temporary leadership position. He told them to get there fast and make sure they didn’t get out with those guns. He was determined to end this occupation of Indianapolis so he could get back to work and feed his family. He vowed he wouldn’t be moved around the country a third time.
He jumped in the front passenger seat of an SUV with a few other men he did not know. They introduced themselves on the ride to the sporting goods store.
They could see the chaos even before they got off the exit. People were running out of the stores with rifles in their hands, and bags that they guessed were ammunition.
They were all running away from the store towards the back of the parking lot where several dozen cars were parked haphazardly.
“Stop here!” Hartwick screamed. “We can look down on them from the overpass and stop them.”
Others ahead of them were already pulling into the lot. The rest soon understood the plan.
John ran as fast as he could with his pistol in his hand, yelling at the resistance group to stop. He yelled that they were surrounded.
He heard a shot and felt a bullet whizz past his head. He fell to the ground to take cover.
He was laying on the ground trying to fumble for his pistol that he had dropped. He realized it wasn’t even loaded. But as he reached for the bullets in his other pocket the sound of gunfire became deafening. All around him the men he had come with were firing into the group below.
He stopped trying to load his gun and slowly raised his head to witness the carnage. Bodies were dropping everywhere. The people stealing the guns had not bothered to stop and load them. John saw no return fire at all.
After a few long minutes, he could hear people yelling ‘cease-fire’. Finally, all was quiet. A few lone people in the parking lot below stood slowly with their hands raised high.
John stood up and made his way down the hill into the parking lot. After just a couple of steps, he looked behind.
Most of the men were following. Their guns were still aimed. John became aware of how fast and hard his heart was beating. His entire body was slick with sweat and he was shaking violently. He had never been more terrified.
As he walked, he started to calm down. He kept his eyes on the people with their hands raised. They were completely still. All around them lay the dead and dying.
As others started to get closer John held his right hand up. “Get these guys into the back of a truck. Do we have anything to tie their hands?”
“We should line them up and shoot them. Just like they did our guys.” One of the men said.
John turned to see who had said it. A burly six foot four man with a full beard and his gun over his shoulder walked up to Hartwick.
“Don’t you think they deserve it?”
“I don’t know. Probably. But do we really want to be like them?”
“I’m an electrician. Someone else said. I got cable ties in my van. I’ll use those as handcuffs. Where are we going to take them?”
John was happy that the brief tense moment was diffused. “I don’t know, let’s just take them back to the parking lot we came from for now.” He said.
The burly man just shrugged. “Well, at least gather up all of these guns and take them too. It’s looking like we’re going to need them.”
Hartwick had a clear but somewhat disturbing thought. He looked at the big man. “What about the rest of them in that store?” Hartwick asked.
“You mean steal them all?” He said.
“Well, if we don’t, aren’t we risking another attack like this? I don’t want them to get the guns.”
“Take ‘em all boys. Go into the store and get every gun and every bit of ammunition and bring it back to our rally point.”
The burly man, Jake Stahl was his name, walked off towards the store. A few other men grabbed the resistance fighters who had not been wounded and quickly led them up the hill towards the highway and into the back of a truck.
Just moments later police cars started to pull into the parking lot. A small crowd had gathered and Hartwick found himself at the center of attention again.
Some of Hartwick’s group were tending to the wounded. The scene was calm but the police quickly jumped out of their cars with guns drawn.
Hartwick raised his hands, as did most of the others. “Whoah, whoah. We were the ones attacked.” He protested.
“Keep your hands up and those of you with guns drop them and raise your hands!”
The thirty or so men did as told. But a voice from up on the hill yelled out.
“Officer you better drop your guns. You are surrounded by about five-thousand guns aimed at you and those men are with us and we were attacked!”
All of the officers heard this and started scanning the surrounding area. There were men and guns aimed from everywhere. A long moment passed and no one said a word as the tension built. Hartwick walked slowly towards the police with his hands raised.
“Easy officer, easy. I’m just trying to diffuse this.”
He could see the policemen tense up but they said nothing. He turned and yelled up towards the hill. “Easy boys. I’m just going to talk to the officers here and explain what happened.”
An older officer walked from the back. He would pat the other police on the back as we walked past them towards Hartwick. “Stand down guys. This is a fight we don’t want.”
He walked up to Hartwick and motioned for John to put his hands down. Both men were trying to remain calm. “What happened here?”
The gray-haired cop said, as he waved his arm towards the bodies.
“Well sir, we were meeting just up the road. We’re just a group of men that are sick of what is going on in the city. We need to get back to work. So we were talking about what we could do and someone came running up and told us a bunch of the protesters were up here stealing guns.
So we jumped in our cars and raced here to stop them.
When we got here I came down the hill from the overpass, me and a couple of others, and tried to get them to stop. And they shot at us.
Then all hell broke loose and our guys started firing back.”
The older officer nodded as if he understood. “What’s your name son?”
“I’m John Hartwick.”
“I’m Captain Duane Andrews.” He reached out his hand to shake John’s hands. One of them men behind John reached down for his gun and another officer drew on him and screamed.
“Stay where you are sir!”
A single shot rang out from the hills. Everyone froze. Incredibly, no other shots followed.
Captain Andrews turned to the cop who had drawn his weapon. “Son, what in the absolute hell are you doing?”
John turned to the man who had tried to pick up his gun. “Easy man, just leave it there for a second.
Andrews moved his officers back a bit. “All right guys. Let’s all calm down. Lower your weapons.”
As he talked he walked the police back towards their cars and then turn
ed back to Hartwick.
“Son, none of us want a battle here. But I can’t just let you leave, can I? I mean, I don’t know. Let me get the Chief or maybe the Sheriff on the radio here, and find out what they want me to do. Is that okay?”
Hartwick just shrugged his shoulders. Andrews leaned his head over into the microphone on his right and pressed the button. “This is Captain Andrews, can you get the chief for me?”
“He’s right here.”
The talk was brief. Andrews told the chief what had transpired and asked for direction. Hartwick heard the answer. “Just arrest the leaders and bring them in for questioning.”
Andrews looked at Hartwick. John just shook his head back and forth.
“No. I don’t think we’re going to be able to do that Chief. We’re outnumbered about twenty to one. Sir, I think the best option here is to help with the squads and get the wounded and dead out. I’ll hang out and talk to the leaders and take it from there. Good enough?”
“I can call other forces in if you need Duane.” The chief responded.
“No, let’s not make this worse. I’ll fill you in when I get back.”
When he ended the conversation he asked Hartwick. “That fair enough? You give me the real story and we back out? I don’t want this to get worse, and I don’t think you do either.”
“No sir I don’t.” Hartwick answered.
The police helped load the ambulances. They had kept the reporters out for now. Hartwick’s group on the perimeter held their positions.
Jake Stahl, the big bearded man, had quietly emptied hundreds of guns and all the ammunition he could from the store. But they weren’t able to get nearly all of it. As the police started moving closer to the store, Jake and a few others quietly loaded up a few dozen trucks on the highway and went back to the original shopping center.
“So what can you tell me about all this?” Andrews asked Hartwick.
“It’s just what I told you. After I saw those protesters murder the guys on live TV I came up here. Everyone knew that the rebel group had gathered around here initially.
Then we heard about this, and we all came to stop it.”
“So are you part of that so-called rebel army?”
“No. I mean, I don’t think so.” Hartwick chuckled. “Look, we just need to get back to work. There are a couple of rough ones with us, but for the most part, it’s just us guys that live in the suburbs or rural areas around here that want to get things back to normal.”
“So what’s your plan?”
Hartwick told him about the plan to surround the city and starve them out. They wouldn’t let anyone in, only out. They figured in a week or two the protestors would get hungry, or tied of living in tents and leave.
“Problem you got there is that they’ve taken over the hotels. So they may be able to hold out a bit longer than you think.” Andrews offered.
“But, I gotta be honest, it’s a better plan than going in there with guns blazing trying to drive them out. But what do you think all of the local police and Sheriff’s deputies are going to do when you shut down 465? There are quite a lot of people in those little cities and suburbs close to the cities. What about them?”
John sensed that this was a pivotal moment. If he could get the police to help them, or at least leave them alone, things would move quicker and he could get back to work.
“We really haven’t thought that far ahead I guess. We were just kind of putting the plan together when all hell broke loose here.”
Andrews took out a business card. He wrote something on the back of it.
“This is my card. Try me first on my police phone. If you can’t reach me there, the numbers on the back are my personal phone and my home phone. Call me tonight. I’ll go back and talk to the chief. Then we can call the local PDs and sheriff’s offices around the outside of the city.
I don’t know what they’ll say. But in my mind, it’s a hell of a lot better idea than anything else I’ve heard. Sound like a plan?”
Hartwick nodded and took the card.
_______________________
When the chaos had settled and the men were back at the shopping center, Hartwick had a quiet moment. He realized that nothing was going to go as planned. But at least they had one.
A reporter was walking around trying to interview people. But they all kept sending him to John Hartwick. John was sitting on the back bed of a pickup truck. Talking to a reporter in front of a camera. He explained what had happened but the reporter kept insisting he was part of the rebel army.
“Look, you keep saying that. But there is no rebel army. We’re just a group of guys that want things back to normal. These protesters can’t keep disrupting our lives and trying to force things on us we don’t want.
I’ve lost two jobs because of legal immigration. These politicians and big businesses for years kept sending manufacturing jobs to China, Mexico and who knows where else. We were told that this was good for the economy. That these trade deals would allow Mexico to do better and people wouldn’t run across the border. That didn’t work, did it?
Then they told us we can ship all these jobs to China and the stuff we would buy would be cheaper.
Well, it is cheaper I guess. But we have to pay more taxes because people are making less money here. So that didn’t work. Then, they started bringing immigrants in and taking jobs or lowering the salaries of the white collar workers. They leave the border wide open and more immigrants come in illegally.
But if we suggest that this may not be good for us, people on television tell everyone we are a bunch of racists or bigots. I get it. The people coming into this country want a better life. But what about the people who are already here? When do get a break? When do we get a chance to catch our breath and build a little something for our future?
Look, I said nothing for years. Because it didn’t affect me. I should have spoken up. And so should all the other people like me. But we didn’t. And now that we have all been affected we still didn’t say anything. We didn’t riot or protest.
But because an election didn’t go the way some people wanted, they protest and shut down cities and make things even worse. I’m not going to shut up anymore. I didn’t want this to happen. All we wanted was for the protesters to leave. That’s it.
And then we found out that they were raiding a gun store! We had to stop it. If they had stolen hundreds of guns we may have never been able to return to work. We just want to work, earn a decent salary, and be left alone.”
“But sir, don’t you realize that the protesters want the same thing? They want a livable minimum wage, a fair national health care system so no one is left bankrupt and, for many of the younger more educated protesters, not to be in debt from college before starting their lives. Don’t you really want the same thing?”
The report asked. The condescension in her tone fairly obvious.
“How? How do they plan to pay for all of this? How is this supposed to work?” Hartwick said.
The reporter, not expecting to be asked a question, turned away from John and towards the camera. “So there you have it. It looks like the protesters and the rebels will continue to disagree. But hopefully, they will both be smart enough to stop the violence.”
By the next day the interview had been shown by all the cable news networks several times. The media were starting to understand that this was more than protests and that things were getting out of hand.
Hartwick and his group settled in for the siege. Every major highway exit into the city had at least three hundred armed men stopping traffic from going in.
Every couple of days they would let a truck delivering food or medicine pass.
There was nothing to do but wait. The police had agreed to let them alone. Most of the politicians had left. Indianapolis, as the capital of the state of Indiana was turned over to the resistance.
John Hartwick, along with a few other men would try to lead the newly designated “Rebel Army”. He didn’t like th
at term.
He knew it was going to cause problems. But the media, having already designated them “Rebels” and “Right-Wingers” would not stop.
He thought about his friend Matt Davis. Matt was black. If he found out John was leading a “rebel” army he knew he would lose him as a friend.
He also knew that if people thought they were a group of racists or white separatists, few would want to join. But there was nothing he could do about. He had to stay with the group and try to drive out the protesters.
Then he could get back to work and get back his life.
Chapter 5
February: A Nation on the Brink
President Johnson met almost every day with Victor Van Driessen. This morning they were watching John Hartwick’s interview and drinking coffee.
“What do you think of that guy?” Johnson asked.
“Who, Hartwick?” Van Driessen answered.
“Yeah. It looks like he is the leader out there in Indy. What do you think?”
“Hartwick is dangerous.”
“Why’s that?”
“Because he’s right. There’s a huge group of Americans that believe they’ve been ignored and abused for too long. Now the economy is in a deep recession and they see the writing on the wall.” Van Driessen said.
“What do you mean? We’re having hearings all this week to increase unemployment benefits.”
“We’ve done that before. It’s just a patch. It’s not going to fix things, and they know it. If we come out of this recession in a few months, what changed for them? They go back to work for a few more years. The ones who lost their houses, their businesses, maybe they rebuild maybe not.
My guess is, just like the last time this happened, a few more will be kicked down a peg on the economic ladder. How many more can we let get kicked down?”
“So tell me, Vic, is this it? Is this the start of the civil war you were worried about?”
“Yes. Yes, it is. Look at it this way. There has been violence and death on both sides. And it’s not getting better. Cooler heads haven’t prevailed have they?”