A Thousand Years of Darkness: a Thriller
Page 37
“Dude, my game’s cricket.”
“Say what? You some kind of big pussy?”
Big C chuckled. At the same time, using the chuckle as diversion, he took a quick side step to grab the SAW gunner by the raised neck rib of his battle rattle vest. He yanked back violently and slammed the guy to the ground while relieving him of his weapon. He sprang back and thumbed the SAW’s Safe lever to Fire. The Green Shirts gaped at him.
“Some a us pussies play rough,” Big C gibed.
The three prisoners were soon stripped, bound, gagged and stowed with the other captives in the woods. The commandeered Humvee was a valuable added asset. Big C assigned Bias, Turner and two of the Colorado fighters to man the armored truck. He huddled with his small band to amend their plans.
“Bias, follow the buses to the gate but stay back out of sight. We going on through the gate. Give us five minutes to roll in the tunnel under the hospital. Then you come up on foot, else Campione might open up on ya’all with the .50-cal. Take out the gate and disable the power shack to cut electric to the fence so Fullbright and his bunch can get in. Us on the buses will break out Lieutenant Ross and as many others we got time for. You cover us again with the hummer while we pick up the men from our other two elements. All vehicles rendezvous back here at the rock where we get on the highway and haul back across Wolf Creek Pass. Take out anybody that get in the way. We have one hour from when shooting starts to get across the pass before Apaches come on us like flies. Got any questions, better ask ’em now. This thing is going down fast and furious.”
“What happens if the Trojan Horse don’t work and they smell a rat?” Bias asked.
“You got the Two-Forty on the Humvee. Use it you got to.”
One of the Sons of Liberty jerked a thumb toward the buses. “What are we going to do with them folks? They already got the buses filled.”
“We need people who know what went down inside that camp,” Big C said. Those already in the buses, drugged to the point of helplessness, would have to be exchanged and left inside the compound. In war, things sometimes had to be done that weren’t pleasant.
“Let’s get this operation on the road,” Big C concluded when all questions had been answered.
Big C and a Coloradan named Jones took over the lead bus, with Headshot driving. Delbert, Roscoe and another Son of Liberty brought along the other bus, trailed by the Humvee back in the dark with its lights off. The tandem twin pools of headlights inched across the vast black landscape. The government had treated the raid on the Arkansas AmeriCorps’ training camp as a “criminal action.” Tonight’s coordinated attack by militia against a federal installation could be considered only one way—as the beginning of the second American Revolution.
Armed revolt was not something Big C took lightly as he swayed with the movement of the bus, cradling the SAW in his elbow. He had devoted a lot of time over the past weeks mining his motivation and justification for the bloodshed that lay ahead.
In his mind, revolution was no longer merely an option, a topic of hypothetical discussion around the table in the Safe House. The line had been drawn “after a long train of abuses.” As Thomas Jefferson so famously uttered: Freedom must be periodically renewed by the blood of tyrants and patriots. The watchman Paul Revere was once more riding across the land with his call to arms. To not resist at this point was to support a corrupt government and its illegal agenda, to bow to masters.
They would be relatively few, those who fought back, as they had been few who struggled through the Valley Forge Winter or crossed the Potomac with General Washington. Most of the population would take the easy way and go along with whatever the government did. Even most cops and soldiers would follow orders to fire upon and kill fellow citizens or incarcerate them in detention camps.
Desperate times lay ahead. Nonetheless, there came a time when men, in order to claim themselves men, must possess the courage to muster with the free and the brave, to either be counted among those who stood and fought with their countrymen or to live as penned cowards unworthy of a more noble existence.
Big C spotted the light from the compound ahead. They were coming upon the gate.
“Steady,” he encouraged Headshot at the wheel. “This night will be long remembered.”
President Anastos On Top Of Crisis
(Washington)—No U.S. President in the history of the nation has had to deal with so many tough issues as has President Anastos during his first years in office.
He inherited from the previous administration a declining economy, continuing Middle East tensions between belligerent Israel and her Arab neighbors, Iran’s nuclear threat, border problems with Mexico, kinetic overseas contingencies in Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya and Yemen, deteriorating American prestige abroad...
In spite of the challenges, however, public confidence in his intelligence, wisdom, experience and grasp of affairs continues to grow. Americans haven’t felt this much confidence in their leaders in recent years. America is no longer just parochial, not just chauvinistic, not just provincial. America now stands for something. In a way, it’s like the President is standing above the country, above the world. He’s sort of God...
Chapter Eight-Six
Watertown, New York
A thousand miles away from where Big C approached the gates of the “mental health facility” with his commandeered buses, James Nail stood in the rain by the side of the logging road, pistol still in hand, chin resting on his chest. He remained frozen in place, like the saddest statue in the saddest park in the world, when the limo crept back down the rough road and its headlights washed over him. Judy jumped out and rushed to his side, calling out his name as though to summon him back from a bottomless pit.
She looked around for Wiedersham. Not seeing him, her gaze settled on the gun in Nail’s hand. Her face drained of blood. She suddenly had trouble catching her breath. Nail slowly lifted his head.
“Can we get out of the rain?” she gasped.
He let the cold dampness wash his face. “It does no good to make wishes on stars,” he said.
She took his free hand. He followed and got into the limo’s front passenger’s seat. She closed his door, went around to the other side, slid underneath the wheel and started the engine. Rain drummed a muffled beat on the roof.
“Take me to the Butterfield Mansion,” he instructed.
“Homies and police is as thick as ticks on a houn’ dog. I don’t see how we can get Sharon outa there—”
“She’s not there,” Nail said in a voice as thin and hard as a knife blade.
That shook Judy visibly. “What did he tell you?”
“Take me as close as you can,” Nail said.
Without further question, her face still pale, she turned the limo around and proceeded to return to Watertown. She kept glancing at Nail. Rain had plastered his black hair to his scalp. Those cold blue eyes that always made her shiver stared straight ahead. Wipers hissed. Judy’s headlights forced back the night. She turned up the heater.
Just before they arrived in Watertown, Nail took the digital recorder from his jacket pocket and placed it on the seat next to Judy.
“Take that and Trout’s notebook,” he said. “It’s probably too late to stop what’s happening. But maybe we can slow it down a little.”
“They’re looking for us, James.”
“They’re looking for me, not you. After you drop me off, I want you to go back to Washington and take the police to the motel where we left Cobb and the limo driver. Tell the police I kidnapped you—”
“I can’t do that, James.”
“I kidnapped you,” he repeated harshly. “I threatened to kill you if you didn’t do what I told you. The police will believe you. Then you get the hell out of D.C. with this tape and the notebook until you can turn them over to either Big C or Carl Patton at Zenergy News. They’ll know what to do with them. There’s going to be chaos for a long time when the decent people start to rise up.”
He re
called a quote Sharon read to him at the Safe House, by someone with initials and the last name of Lawrence: Men fight for liberty and win it with hard knocks. Their children, brought up easy, let it slip away again, poor fools. And their grandchildren are once more slaves.
He wondered what Jamie would think about Hope ’n Change now if she were still alive. He thought about Connie and regretted all that had happened between them. He tried not to think about Sharon. He rode in cold silence.
“James, what are you going to do?” Judy finally asked.
“Evil is congregating in the Butterfield Mansion,” he said in a voice edged so hard and sharp that it made Judy tremble. “It’s the evil behind what happened at ORU and what’s happening all across the country. There has to be a first shot fired to let them know Americans will fight when they’re cornered. I don’t know how it’s all going to end. All I know is that if we give up now, there’s no place to escape to.”
He lapsed into another silence. Judy glanced sideways and choked up at sight of the tear—or was it a drop of rainwater?—reflected in the dashboard lights as it rolled down his thorny cheek.
“James? If Sharon’s not…?” She couldn’t complete the question.
The stony expression on Nail’s face remained unchanged. “Wiedersham told me she had been picked up and executed for sedition.”
“You believe him?”
“He had no reason to lie. At the end.”
Both traveled without speaking.
It was full dark beneath low cloud cover when they entered Watertown and drove slowly through, past the city center. A sleepy little Main Street USA, except for black-clad Homies and Green Shirts patrolling the streets with automatic weapons and making the town look occupied. Soldiers in a Humvee made a U-turn and fell in behind the limo. Nail pointed to a gas station open ahead on the right.
“Pull in there.”
Judy did, stopping at a pump. The Humvee slowed but kept going, apparently assuming the limo to be delivering more dignitaries to the Butterfield Mansion. Judy eased back onto the road as soon as it disappeared at the next intersection. A few minutes more and they were in darkness again, the lights of the town behind them.
“The mansion’s about ten miles ahead,” Judy said.
“Describe it to me,” Nail requested. “Everything you can remember.”
He debriefed her thoroughly for the next few miles. They approached timber that furred down from a hilltop toward the road. From her description, he knew the forest extended all the way to the back side of the Butterfield Mansion.
“Put me out up there ahead in the trees.”
“James, you can’t get to them.”
As though to underscore the point, a helicopter’s running lights bounced up from above the crest of a distant hill.
“Even if you get in,” Judy pleaded, “you can’t get back out again.”
“One way’s enough.”
She broke down in tears. “James, I’m scared. For you...and Corey... and Sharon... For all of us.”
Nonetheless, she swerved to the side of the road and turned off the headlights. She swiped at her eyes. Nail watched the helicopter’s lights fade beyond the hills. He remained seated a moment longer.
“These are scary times, Judy. But I agree with Sharon. You and me, Big C, Sharon, Jerry Baer, Carl Patton, all of us. We were born at this particular time for a purpose. It’s up to us and thousands of others like us to bring us through, to start sweeping up this mess and setting the table for the next generation. Otherwise, like Ronald Reagan said, the lights will dim and mankind will sink into a thousand years of darkness.”
Still sniffling, she popped the trunk at his request and got out in the rain with him. He retrieved his Winchester 30.06 from the trunk and hastily buckled a bandoleer of ammunition around his waist. He checked the bolt and slapped a clip into the rifle.
“Go!” he ordered.
Neither said another word. Judy got into the limo and whipped a U back toward Washington on an alternate route around Watertown. She looked back and, in the reflection of her taillights, saw him standing by the side of the road with the long rifle in his hand and his head bowed as though in prayer. When she looked back again after getting the limo straightened out, the sniper had vanished into the rain and the darkness of the forest.
Author’s Note
This is a work of fiction ripped from today’s headlines and based on actual current events. I have therefore drawn research from numerous public sources such as the media and public statements by public figures. This should not be construed to reflect upon these actual sources one way or another since they are used in a fictional context. However, I should like to acknowledge and pay tribute to these sources and thank them for their contributions. They include, but are not limited to, the following: Associated Press; Reuters; New York Times; Tulsa World; Time; Newsweek; National Review; Human Events; Washington Post; Washington Times; Wall Street Journal; The New Yorker; Harper’s; Atlantic; Fusion; The Limbaugh Letter; Fox Channel; MSNBC; CNN; Rush Limbaugh; Sean Hannity; Mark Steyn…
I should like to especially acknowledge and thank Glenn Beck, who was the inspiration for this novel and upon whom the character Jerry Baer is loosely drawn. A man of integrity and courage, he took it upon himself to ride the countryside to warn people of the dangers posed to human liberty when government runs out of control. He not only inspired this work, but his own novel, THE OVERTON WINDOW, paved the way for the speculative action-adventure political genre. Glenn Beck is truly the Thomas Paine of our times.
Charles W. Sasser
Table of Contents
PART I
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty-One
Chapter Twenty-Two
Chapter Twenty-Three
Chapter Twenty-Four
Chapter Twenty-Five
Chapter Twenty-Six
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Chapter Thirty
Chapter Thirty-One
Chapter Thirty-Two
Chapter Thirty-Three
Chapter Thirty-Four
Chapter Thirty-Five
Chapter Thirty-Six
Chapter Thirty-Seven
Chapter Thirty-Eight
Chapter Thirty-Nine
PART II
Chapter Forty
Chapter Forty-One
Chapter Forty-Two
Chapter Forty-Three
Chapter Forty-Four
Chapter Forty-Five
Chapter Forty-Six
PART III
Chapter Forty-Seven
Chapter Forty-Eight
Chapter Forty-Nine
Chapter Fifty
Chapter Fifty-One
Chapter Fifty-Two
Chapter Fifty-Three
Chapter Fifty-Four
Chapter Fifty-Five
Chapter Fifty-Six
Chapter Fifty-Seven
Chapter Fifty-Eight
PART IV
Chapter Fifty-Nine
CHAPTER SIXTY
Chapter Sixty-One
Chapter Sixty-Two
Chapter Sixty-Three
Chapter Sixty-four
Chapter Sixty-Five
Chapter Sixty-Six
Chapter Sixty-Seven
Chapter Sixty-Eight
Chapter Sixty-Nine
Chapter Seventy
Chapter Seventy-Two
Chapter Seventy-Three
Chapter Seventy-Four
Chapter Seventy-Five
Chapter Seventy-Six
Chapter Seventy-Seven
Chapter Seventy-Eight
Chapter Seventy-Nine
Chapter Eighty
Chapter Eight-One
Chapter Eighty-Two
Chapter Eighty-Three
Chapter Eighty-Four
Chapter Eighty-Five
Chapter Eight-Six