Liberty's Last Stand

by Stephen Coonts

  Jack Hays was a good working politician. All he wanted was to move the needle in his direction. He well knew that every political question is not black or white, but some shade of gray. He still believed that most Americans were well-meaning people, not ideological crazies, and that compromise was possible.

  The telephone rang again. He looked at the number and saw that it was the state director of the Department of Public Safety, Colonel Frank Tenney. The man wanted to talk about the riot in Houston. Hays listened carefully, grunted twice, said yes three times, then hung up.

  After he finished his drink, he turned off the lights in the living room and stretched out on the couch.

  Jake Grafton was wide awake at four in the morning. The camp was lit only by floodlights on the perimeter fences, yet there was just enough illumination leaking through the front flap of the tent to see by. All the cots were occupied. It was August and hot and the cicadas outside, and the farting, snoring, deep-breathing sleepers inside made it anything but silent.

  Grafton had spent the evening talking to his fellow detainees. They were almost all white and perhaps forty years old or older. Some had been arrested at home and allowed to bring their medications; others had been arrested at their places of business or in restaurants or golf clubs or bars. The police or federal agents knew whom they wanted, and they came and cuffed them and led them away without much fuss or bother. Several said they were pretty liquored up and loudly denouncing Soetoro and the feds, but the cops treated them decently anyway. Maybe the fact that they were spouting anti-government sentiments when arrested made a deeper impression on the witnesses.

  The detainees were small-business men, middle or senior managers or officers in major enterprises, civil servants, state or county politicians, a few preachers, a lot of military and civil retirees. A couple of sheriffs. Basically, the feds had taken a large sample of white America. Apparently federal officers had taken a similar sample from the female population; the women were housed in other tents at Camp Dawson, and males and females mingled inside the compound until lights out was called. The detainees were a talkative bunch, gathering in ever-shifting groups, talking, talking, talking. They also gabbled endlessly on cell phones to the folks at home.

  A lot of these people needed medications, and they didn’t have them. Grafton thought this meant the detention was intended to be only for a short period, or whoever had planned it had planned it poorly. After many years spent in large bureaucracies, he suspected the latter was the case.

  Grafton got up from his cot and headed for the latrine. Once outside the tent, he pulled the cell phone from his pocket and turned it on. In a moment the device locked onto the network. Still had a charge.

  He pushed the buttons and held it to his ear. He could hear the ring signal.

  “Jake, is that you?” Callie’s voice.

  “Yes. I—”

  “Where are you?”

  “Camp Dawson. It’s a detention facility in West Virginia.”

  “Are you okay?”

  “Oh, sure, Hon. Got a cot in a tent and they feed us three times a day, all the food anyone wants.”

  “Jake, your name was in the paper this morning. The government said you are being investigated to see if you were a member of the conspiracy that planned to assassinate the president.”

  “Who said that?”

  “Some spokesperson for the FBI.”

  So Sal Molina was correct. Jake changed the subject. “Are you doing okay?”

  “Oh, sure. Missing you and worried stiff. Why didn’t you call sooner?”

  “They are monitoring and recording all telephone calls. All of them.”

  “Oh,” Callie said, and fell silent.

  “Talk to me,” Jake said. “I need to hear your voice. Talk about Amy and the grandbaby.”

  He leaned against the cinderblock latrine, closed his eyes, and listened to Callie’s voice. She had been his rock for so many years. He was damned lucky to have had her to share his life with, and he knew it.

  When they finally broke the connection, Jake Grafton stood looking at the ten-foot chain-link fence topped by three strands of barbed wire, with guard towers at the corners. This thing wasn’t built overnight. Fence, latrines, sewage and water lines, showers, kitchens with natural gas stoves, electric refrigerators, concrete pads for the tents…construction must have taken months. The phone in his hand rang. He looked at the number. Tommy Carmellini.

  “Hey, Tommy.”

  “I heard you are now famous, Admiral. Saw the news on television last night when I was eating dinner. Been trying to call you.”

  “My fifteen minutes.”

  “Where are you?”

  “Camp Dawson, West Virginia.”

  “You got a charger for that phone?”

  “I can get one. Why?”

  “Keep it charged and on. I may want some investment advice. The stock market has the giggling shits, and you know how I am about bargains.”

  “Sure.”

  “Don’t bend over to pick up the soap.” And Tommy was gone.

  Jake snorted, smiled, and put the phone in his pocket. Tommy Carmellini was one of the good guys he had known through the years. Amazing that there had been so many.

  FOUR

  I turned the iPhone off and looked at the ceiling in the motel room. Since I heard that news broadcast while munching a burger at the bar of a TGI Friday’s at a little town in Ohio, I had tried Grafton’s phone eight times before midnight, and two times since. Then, voila!, he answered.

  Not that he had anything to say. I remembered that classified file that crossed his desk about the NSA going to comprehensive monitoring of all American telephone conversations. And I well knew how good they were at triangulating cell phone signals. They could put you within a few meters, whether you were using the phone or not, just as long as it was logged into a network. I was on teams that used that technique to find wanted terrorists in Pakistan and Syria and Yemen.

  The way to defeat that was to wrap your phone in tinfoil. So I wrapped mine back up and put it in my pocket.

  The thing that bothered me was the announcement by the FBI that former CIA director Jake Grafton—note that “former”—was being detained and investigated for a possible role in the right-wing conspiracy to assassinate the president. They could have just locked him up and thrown away the key, but no, they decided to create a conspiracy to help justify martial law. I had no doubt when the trolls in the White House were finished writing this fiction the guilty bastards would make quite a list. I might even be on one of them. Along with the many enemies of the administration who didn’t believe in global warming or Soetorocare or his give-a-pass-to-terror treaty with the death-to-America regime in Iran. Soetoro’s enemies would be in deep and serious shit that no doubt would ruin them for life. Maybe they would get a show trial before a military commission. And afterward, be put against a wall in front of a firing squad, or permanently locked in a cell somewhere to figure out where they went wrong. Barry Soetoro had that in him. He was the savior of the planet, after all.

  So the question became, what was Mrs. Carmellini’s little boy Tommy going to do about it?

  Well, at least I knew where Grafton was. Tonight. I suspected they would not keep him long at Camp Dawson. They would want him to sign a confession they were busy writing now, so I suspected they would move him soon and go to work on him with torture and drugs.

  Personally, I didn’t give a damn what he signed. I had to get to him before they killed him.

  I crawled out of bed, took a shower, and shaved because I had no idea when I would get another chance, then loaded my stuff into my car. I paused for a good look at the Benz. What an impractical car. I needed a pickup. Tomorrow, maybe.

  I filled the car at an all-night station, got a cup of coffee, and pointed the front bumper east. There wasn’t much traffic. The sky lightened up and the tires hummed on the pavement and I passed some trucks. I left the radio off.

  Normally I don
’t think much about politics. I am like most people, I suppose. I get wrapped up in the business of earning a living, giving pleasure to select members of the opposite sex, spending time with friends, and following the fortunes of my favorite sports teams. I vote for people to represent me at every little meeting from city council to Congress and the White House; they can worry about the public’s business, about filling the potholes in the streets, the state of the sewage treatment plants, and how much, if any, foreign aid we should give to Egypt: I vote for them because I don’t want to do that stuff, and they say they do.

  And yet, they need to stay within certain boundaries. I don’t want them messing with me any more than they absolutely must. I am choosing my path through life: I want to be responsible for my choices and the results.

  Just like most people.

  I sat there driving through America wondering about Barry Soetoro and his disciples. I have never trusted people who think they know how everyone else should live, and demand those other people obey. I am not a good follower.

  Aaugh!

  The highway spun along toward the horizon and the sky got lighter. Another day in America!

  When Jack Hays woke up on his couch that Friday morning, Nadine was leaning over, brushing her lips on his. She liked to wake him with a kiss.

  “The coffee is on,” she said, and went back toward the kitchen, where the cook reigned. Jack padded along behind and found the cook wasn’t in yet.

  With both of them sipping coffee, Nadine said, “You are going to have a hell of a day.”

  He nodded. “I think it’ll come to a boil today, or tonight.”

  “What are you going to do, Jack?”

  “Ask God for the wisdom to make the right decision and for the courage to see it through.”

  She rested her head on his shoulder and they stood holding each other, feeling the warmth of each other’s bodies.

  JR put his Beretta 9-mm in his belt and went for a tour of the ranch in the pickup. He wanted to see the terrain again, to refresh his memory, to see how it had changed through the years. Joe Bob had built some shooting stands here and there, boxes for hunters to stand in fifteen or twenty feet above the ground. The sports would climb up there with their rifles, hunker down, drink beer, and wait for something wonderful to wander into range, where they would assassinate it.

  JR climbed up into several of the stands just to look at the terrain. Shooting at people from one of these things, with people shooting back, would be suicidal.

  So what were the possibilities? Ambush the bad guys as they exited their vans in Mexico, or on the trail to the river, or as they crossed the river, or cutting the Hays fence, or somewhere on the Hays land, or out near the highway as they threw the backpacks over the fence, or anywhere along the return journey.

  He saw no people during his tour, but he did spot two kudu. Gorgeous creatures.

  Any ambush site would have to allow him to shoot, move, and survive. The shooting would be easier with his state-of-the-art night-vision equipment.

  What if he got two or three of them? Or five or six? Those who escaped would tell their bosses back in Mexico, and next time he would be facing a company of hired killers, perhaps as many as fifteen or twenty heavily armed gunmen with automatic weapons.

  Late in the afternoon, JR got out his new AR-15, cleaned it thoroughly, and mounted a scope on it, a regular 3 by 9 variable. He suspected the battle might drag on into the morning, and he should be well armed if it did.

  After fifty shots he was sure of the scope’s zero and comfortable with the trigger. He took the rifle into the house and opened all the windows to let the breeze air out some of the heat. He cleaned his rifle thoroughly again. Then he got busy fixing dinner. Poured some bourbon and drank it as he ate out on the ramada with the sun setting.

  While JR was scouting the ranch, Jack Hays was under political siege in Austin. The Texas independence crowd was getting really worked up, especially after they saw copies of the directives—there were four directives, so far—about life in an America ruled by martial law under Barry Soetoro. The press was to be censored; television shows preapproved; news would be government press releases, which would be read without comment; and military courts would replace civilian ones. Gun sales were forbidden, and all guns would be turned in to military arsenals that would be designated in a few weeks.

  The directives said nothing about the upcoming November election, but the feds obviously were planning a long spell of martial law, so pessimists could read between the lines, and did.

  Meanwhile, inner-city riots around the country were getting worse, as the civil authorities let crowds burn and loot. Any persons in the riot zones were fair game for the mobs. The military that now were under federal control, the U.S. Army and National Guard, did nothing. Government spokesmen on television blamed the right-wing conspiracy, evil men who didn’t believe in progressive goals and wanted to use low-wage earners as slaves in the capitalist economy. Translated, that meant evil whites who wanted to exploit semiliterate, unskilled minorities for the minimum wage.

  Jack Hays spoke to the National Guard brigadier in charge of Houston, James Conrad, three times that day. The first call went like this: “What’s happening?”

  “I need orders from Washington, Governor. I was told to await written orders. Until I get them, I can’t do anything.”

  “Washington knows that people are getting murdered in Houston and having their homes and businesses destroyed, right?”

  “Sir, I have sent in reports every hour. I don’t know what else to do. If I go into the riot zone on my own hook in disobedience of orders, I’ll be relieved and court-martialed and they will put someone else in my place, someone who will obey orders.”

  “Are you going to keep the mob inside the riot zone?”

  “No one has said anything to me about that. Governor Hays, I’m just a soldier. I obey orders and I give orders. Right now, I am awaiting orders from the national command authority.”

  “That’s Soetoro, right?”

  “Yes, sir. The president.”

  “Call me when you hear something,” Hays said, and General Conrad promised he would.

  Jack Hays called in Colonel Frank Tenney, director of the Texas Department of Public Safety (TxDPS), who commanded the state police. Hays told him about the call with Brigadier General Conrad of the National Guard. “We can’t let those rioters burn down the city and murder people. I want you to get as many of your men as you can and encircle the area. Let the National Guard do its thing, but don’t let those rioters out of the zone they are in right now. And evacuate anyone willing to leave. You have a copy of the riot plan?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Then use it.”

  “I would, but FEMA’s Texas chief told me I have no authority, except as he gives it to me in obedience to the president.”

  Jack Hays had pretty much had all he was willing to take. Without really thinking through the possible ramifications, he said, “You go get that bastard and take him with you. I want him right up front when I give the order to go in there.”

  “You know there will be trouble. FEMA has their own private army, armed to the teeth.”

  “And they aren’t doing anything about this riot. Go get the bastard. Disarm and arrest anybody that gives you trouble. That office is in Texas, and in Texas we run the show. Texas is ours.”

  “You’re goddamn right it is, Governor.”

  “Then get ready to go into that riot zone and arrest those thugs when I give the order. Get the Houston police to help. Call me when you are ready to do it. Got that?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  When Colonel Tenney left his office, Hays sensed he had crossed the line. He asked the Texas Ranger outside the door to come in and explained the situation. “I need your boss as soon as he can get here. We are coming to a crisis.”

  “Yes, sir.” The ranger was on his cell phone as he walked from the room. Primarily criminal investigators, the Texas Ra
ngers—there were only about 140 of them—were a division of the TxDPS.

  The Constitution of the State of Texas required the governor to maintain public order and enforce the laws—and Jack Hays meant to do that. Under state law, he could assume command of the TxDPS during a public disaster, riot, or insurrection, “or to perform his constitutional duty to enforce the law.” As Jack Hays saw it, Barry Soetoro could not relieve him of this responsibility or void the statutes or Constitution of the State of Texas for any reason whatsoever. Jack Hays had sworn to uphold the law and, by God, he was going to do it or die trying.

  His decision made, he called in the leaders of the legislature to brief them.

  It was three o’clock that Friday afternoon when Jake Grafton was led into an office in the admin building of Camp Dawson. He wasn’t wearing handcuffs. The room looked like what it used to be, a crowded office for low-level bureaucrats and staff officers of the West Virginia National Guard. Now it appeared to be full of FBI agents.

  “We want to ask you some questions,” the man behind the desk said. He was a White House aide, maybe in Soetoro’s inner circle, or only one level away. His name was Harlan Sweatt, known to the world as Sluggo. He was balding, with a double chin and a serious spare tire that was hidden behind the desk. Jake recognized him, although the two had never met.

  Grafton dropped into the chair across from Sweatt. Scanned the other agents in the room, four men and one woman. All looked as if they hadn’t had much sleep, and no wonder, busy as they must have been rousing citizens from offices, golf clubs, bars and beds, and transporting them here to this mountain concentration camp.

  “Ask away,” Grafton said.

  “I am not going to read you your rights,” Sluggo said, “because your rights have been suspended by the declaration of martial law.”