Liberty's Last Stand

by Stephen Coonts

  Wriston dressed, skipped his morning coffee, and got into his car. He picked up his deputy commander. They discussed the situation and were in agreement: the Soetoro administration would use force against Texas, just as quickly as they could.

  Wriston drove the county roads to a spot near the perimeter fence of Dyess Air Force Base. From there, they could see the two runways: the main runway, 13,500 feet long, and a short parallel runway, 3,500 feet long. Also visible in this flat country in the clear air of early dawn were the big hangars and flight line between the two runways. Wriston looked around. Not a cloud in the sky.

  No doubt the commander of the base, Brigadier General l’Angistino, was on the wires right now with bomber headquarters in Nebraska and the air force brass in Washington, asking for instructions. Everyone in the chain of command would bump the decisions up the ladder, Wriston thought. He knew how the military bureaucracy worked these days. Initiative had been ruthlessly and remorselessly squeezed out of the system. Obey orders was the mantra, and, whatever you do, don’t make your bosses look bad. General l’Angistino was a good man, but he would undoubtedly have to wait awhile for orders, which would have to come from the very top, perhaps even the White House, which would have a ton of other red-hot problems to deal with today.

  The deputy commander said it first. “We need to block those runways, make sure the air force doesn’t fly those bombers and Hercules transports out of there. Texas will need them.”

  “They’ll probably sabotage them,” Wriston said thoughtfully, “if they can’t fly them out.”

  “Either way, they can’t use them to transport troops or bomb us.”

  “We could use tanks, just go through the fence,” Wriston mused.

  “We only have four tanks, and one of them has the fire control system disassembled for upgrade.”

  “It’ll move.”

  The deputy said, “That big runway is about three hundred feet wide, as I recall. Take a serious amount of iron to block it. And the Hercs can use the short runway.”

  “We can get some construction equipment, road graders, and bulldozers,” Wriston suggested. “They can follow the tanks. We’ll block the long runway, and if we have any equipment left, leave it on the small one. We’ll have to block the long one in at least two places. Three would be better.” He used a small set of binoculars he kept in the car for looking at birds to examine the distant buildings, which looked like toy blocks sitting out there on the horizon.

  Wriston added, “They’ve got cranes and such to handle crashed airplanes. If they can’t start the engines and drive our stuff off, they’ll drag it off.”

  “We can disable everything.”

  “Only delay them for a day, maybe two.”

  “That might be enough. Let’s do it.”

  Wriston started his car and they drove away planning where to get the yellow equipment, people to drive it, and how to summon their tankers.

  At the head of the pier in Galveston where Texas was moored, Commander Mike Rodriquez found out that the Declaration of Independence news the sentry had given him was as real as a heart attack. Thirty or so civilians carrying rifles, some of them civilian versions of the M16, were standing there watching him. The sheriff had him sit in the right seat of his patrol car, which had its front windows down, then got behind the wheel. When he was comfortably settled, he gave the naval officer the news about the declaration.

  “Texas is now a free republic,” the sheriff said in summary. The captain scrutinized the lawman’s face to see if he was kidding. He didn’t appear to be. The fucking idiot! Secession in this day and age!

  One of the civilians came over and leaned on the car to hear what was being said inside. The sheriff ran him off.

  “Now, Captain, this is the way I see it,” the sheriff continued. He had a serious pot gut that lapped over the buckle of his gun belt. His shirt needed pressing and he needed a shave. “I haven’t talked to anybody in Austin ’cause the phones are out and, anyway, they’re probably drunk and asleep, which I ought to be. When they wake up they’re gonna be mighty busy. In any event this declaration thing sorta upset the applecart. Did you watch it on TV a while ago?”

  No.

  “County commissioners are asleep too, and even when they get up this morning, they’re goin’ to tell me what they always say, which is use my own judgment. That way if people start squallin’ I have to take the heat and not them. Being an elected official and all, I suppose it comes with the territory. But you probably ain’t interested in my problems, since you got a big one your own self.”

  Get on with it, you oaf, Rodriquez thought.

  “Your problem is that these voters here aren’t going to let your sailors get on your submarine. And it looks to me like those tugboat captains ain’t goin’ to move their boats to allow you to get goin’, even if you had all your sailors. That’s kinda it in a nutshell.”

  “And you aren’t going to clear the pier and tell the tugboat captains to get out of the prohibited area?”

  “That’s about the size of it.”

  Rodriquez thought of a common dirty word but didn’t say it. He pulled at the door handle.

  The sheriff laid a hand on his arm. “You stay right here. I think this whole situation will go better if you sit right here with me. Keep the crowd calmed down. If these people start shootin’ your sailors, we’ll both have more problems than we do now.”

  “If they shot my sailors, you’d arrest them, wouldn’t you? A crime committed in your presence.”

  “Well, I don’t know. I haven’t got my thinkin’ that far down the road. Been my experience that problems are best headed off, if possible, rather than tackled afterward. That’s what I’m tryin’ to do. Now are you gonna just sit here like I told you, or do I have to handcuff you and lock you in the back?”

  Rodriquez couldn’t contain himself. “You son of a bitch!”

  “Be that as it may, I need a yes or no.”

  “I’ll sit.”

  “Fine. I’ll radio for one of my deputies to stop by McDonald’s and get us some McMuffins and coffee. Or do you want something else?”

  “That’ll do, thanks.”

  The sheriff picked up the dashboard mike and started talking.

  Forty-five minutes later, after they had eaten, the sheriff had the deputy, with the crowd’s help, disarm Rodriquez’ sentries and take them to jail. “Just to hold for a little while,” the sheriff told Rodriquez, “until somebody with more brains than me can figure out what we oughta do.”

  Five minutes after the sentries had departed with the deputy, a sailor from the sub came looking for his captain. He had a wad of paper in his hand. He spotted Rodriquez in the patrol car and came over to the open window. “Messages, Captain,” he said and offered them.

  “I’ll take those, son,” the sheriff said, holding out his right hand. When he had them, he told the sailor, “You’re under arrest. Now you get in the back of the car here.”

  The sailor looked beseechingly at his commanding officer.

  “Do as he says,” Rodriquez said listlessly. Shit, he thought, I should have stayed on the boat. What a fool I was! There goes my naval career!

  By ten o’clock the crowd had swelled to at least fifty people, most of them carrying rifles. They were having a high old time. Some of them had brought beer, which they shared. Sailors who were ashore and wanted back aboard their submarine were arrested and taken away.

  “Crowd’s gettin’ a little rowdy, don’t you think?” the sheriff asked Commander Rodriquez.

  “Yes,” he agreed.

  “I kinda think it’s time we put an end to this and let these folks go home or to work or to a bar someplace to tank up. Let’s you and me walk down the pier and you get all your people out of that thing and bring them along. I’ll get a bus to take them to a hotel.”

  Rodriquez felt like a cornered rat. Aboard the boat he could overpower the sheriff, scram the reactor, and order her scuttled. But should he scuttle her?
If this political thing blew over… . He looked longingly at the classified messages the sheriff had read and tucked into a pocket in the driver’s door. It wasn’t as if these civilians knew how to operate a nuclear submarine, for Christ’s sake. USS Texas wasn’t going anywhere. And the U.S. Navy could destroy her with a Tomahawk cruise missile or two anytime they got around to it.

  “Let me read those messages,” he said.

  “Nope. It’s my way or I send you off to join your sailors in jail. Then I’ll go down there with these voters and arrest all of them aboard. Your only choice is to go with me or go to jail.”

  “I’ll go with you.”

  The sheriff got out of the car. He stopped the captain and pulled out handcuffs. “We’ll put these on you,” he said, “in case you get any big ideas. Just to protect myself, you understand.”

  He cuffed the captain’s hands in front of him, then pulled his pistol. He waved it at the crowd. “You people back off and give me room. Don’t want anyone comin’ down the pier. Don’t want anyone doin’ anything we’ll all regret. Come on, Captain.”

  At the gangway, the sheriff could see an officer or sailor on the bridge. He told the captain, “Tell them to turn off the reactor and come out. All of ’em.”

  “Aren’t we going aboard?”

  “No. They ain’t goin’ no place in that boat and you ain’t neither. So get them out here.”

  When the remainder of the submarine’s crew were on the pier, about two dozen men, the sheriff thought, although he didn’t bother to count them, he asked one of the chiefs, “Did you turn that reactor off?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Got everybody out of there?”

  “Yeah.”

  “That’s good, ’cause after you’re gone, I’m goin’ aboard and look around, and if I find anybody they might scare me and I’ll probably have to shoot ’em. Hate to do it, but if I fear for my personal safety, and I will, there ain’t nothin’ else I can do. Promised my wife when I first run for sheriff that I wouldn’t endanger myself.”

  “There’s no one else aboard,” the chief said sullenly.

  The sheriff looked down the pier and saw that a blue bus marked SHERIFF had arrived on the quay. “There’s your ride, Captain. Lead them down the pier and climb aboard.”

  That was how the brand spanking new Republic of Texas acquired its first warship.

  EIGHT

  In the dim light of dawn JR inspected the bodies. Some of the nails and screws in the mines had ripped open the backpacks and blasted white powder everywhere. JR didn’t know if it was cocaine or heroin, and he didn’t care. Only two of the mules had obviously tried to crawl away and bled to death; the others died almost instantly, perforated by the metal from the mines—four with nails and screws that had ripped into their brains, another eviscerated.

  The two at the fence were well and truly dead, too. The man who had dragged himself had his gut torn open and intestines were trailing behind him. The bullet that killed him had been a mercy.

  JR got his first surprise when he looked at the first man he shot, the man near his hide. The man had yellow and green tattoos that started at his wrists and ran up his forearms.

  That deputy sheriff—he had tattoos like that, very distinctive. What was his name? Morales? He seemed to recall that was it.

  JR didn’t recognize the other man wearing night-vision goggles. JR pulled the goggles off. He looked like he might have a lot of Mexican in him, but with his face contorted in death, it was difficult to say.

  Hays walked back to the ranch house and poured himself a stiff tot of bourbon. Sat on the porch with the AR across his lap sipping the whiskey as the sun poked over the horizon and sunlight began illuminating the high places in the brush. Cloudless blue sky. Another scorching hot day in the works. Those bodies were going to get ripe pretty quick.

  The syndicate that sent those drugs across the border would send more men, probably pretty soon. JR had no idea how much money the drugs represented, but he knew it was a lot. Enough to buy the deaths of a thousand peons and a whole lot of Americans. Enough to buy half the sheriffs in Texas.

  JR took out his cell phone and called his cousin the governor. Nothing. No ringtone on the thing. He looked at how many bars he had. Two. Well, that should be enough. But the cell didn’t work. He went inside and tried the landline. No luck there either.

  He was exhausted and needed sleep. Yet Manuel Tejada would be along in a little while to find out what had happened to his deputy and all the drugs he was supposed to pick up. He wouldn’t phrase it quite that way, but that would be what he wanted. Mainly, however, he would want the drugs. If Tejada could show the syndicate the drugs he might get out of this with a whole skin. If he couldn’t, he was going to be in trouble, although how much JR didn’t know. Maybe he could dig Tejada’s pit deeper.

  JR placed the guns in the floor of the backseat of his pickup and drove down to the arroyo, as close as he could get. He retrieved the gear from the hide, including the periscope and parabolic antenna, stored all this stuff in the tool chest in the bed of the truck. Went to the bodies of the mules and removed the backpacks. Two were so torn up the white powder spilled all over the ground. JR thought each backpack had contained twenty-five pounds or so of the stuff.

  The syndicate was going to be pissed.

  JR put the six reasonably intact backpacks in the chest, locked it, and drove off. When he got to the main gate, he stopped and opened the gate, then got back in the truck.

  Had the sheriff been in on it? Apparently. But JR wanted to be sure. He pulled out his cell phone and let it log on the network. Two bars. He called 911, got the sheriff’s office number, then dialed it.

  “Sheriff Tejada.”

  “JR Hays, Sheriff, out here at the Hays ranch.”

  A pause, then, “What can I do for you, JR?”

  “Hell of a shootout last night here at the ranch, Sheriff, a little after three. Woke me up. A real firefight. Kinda scared me. I went down this morning for a look, and bodies are lying all over the place. Looks like a drug gang ambush. The dead men had about two hundred pounds of some kind of drug on them.”

  He paused, but the sheriff said nothing.

  “It’s pretty bloody, Sheriff. Goddamn mess is exactly what it is. Might have been some of the bastards who killed my dad.”

  “The drugs are still there?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Huh! What kind of drugs?”

  “Damn if I know. It isn’t marijuana, that’s for sure. Some kind of white powder. Anyway, I’m going to call the staties and DEA, but I wanted to give you a courtesy heads-up first.”

  “Appreciate that, JR. Much obliged. But before you call those other agencies, let me run out there for a look. I’ll bring the county coroner and we’ll see about the bodies.”

  “When can you get here?”

  “Couple of hours.”

  “I’m pretty worried. God only knows what all that powder shit is worth. I kinda suspect somebody might come back to get it.’’

  “This is my county, JR.” Like the slob owned it.

  “Yes. Yes, it is.” He paused as if he hated to wait. “Okay, Sheriff, you come out and look around and call them. These guys aren’t going anywhere. Gonna get hot again today and they’ll get real ripe fast. Better bring some body bags.”

  “Two hours. I’m on my way.”

  “Sure.”

  He broke the connection. The sheriff hadn’t even asked how many dead men there were.

  He pulled the truck through the gate, got out, and shut it carefully. As he walked back to the truck a buzzard in the cloudless sky caught his eye, circling over the old trail. Two of them; no, three. Little dots up there riding the thermals. There would be more buzzards soon.

  He remembered the bumper stickers. Got one out of the truck, peeled the paper off the back, and stuck it on the gate. Stood back and admired it. FUCK SOETORO. He liked it so much he put the other one on the truck’s rear bumper.

  JR
got into his pickup and headed southeast toward Del Rio. He decided he owed himself a treat, so he reached across to the glove box and pulled out a pack of unfiltered Camels. Opened it and lit one.

  The raw smoke tasted delicious. JR adjusted the bill of his ball cap to keep the rising sun out of his eyes and smoked in silence.

  The television clip of Colonel Bean reading the Texas Declaration of Independence on the steps of the capitol in Austin, and the shots of the delirious crowd, went to television stations nationwide. Networks worldwide rebroadcast the scenes over and over. In the United States, many station managers had qualms, and at some stations federal officers demanded that the feed not be aired. Some stations caved, but most didn’t. Managers argued that other stations would show it, and while they were arguing with federal censors, many staffs flipped switches and put it on the air. The scenes ran over and over again. Usually the scenes were aired without comment because the people in the stations were leery of the gun-toting bureaucratic squads who occasionally walked their halls, but the scenes spoke for themselves.

  The spectacular act of defiance by the Texas legislature had immediate consequences. Here and there groups of armed citizens waylaid federal officers hauling away political prisoners, disarmed them, and released the prisoners. Several of these federal officers chose to fight it out and were shot dead. Others were taken to a county jail.

  The armed federal police forces from bureaucracies nationwide became nervous. The mood of the public was turning ugly. Some of the agents stayed home and locked their doors.

  Barry Soetoro nationalized the National Guard nationwide. Less than half the guardsmen reported to their armories to be inducted into federal service. Officers resigned on the spot. In two cities, small groups of guardsmen called local television stations, which sent crews to watch the guardsmen take off their uniforms in public, put them in a pile, and burn them.

  In Oklahoma City a half-dozen armed officers from the FAA trying to arrest a local newspaper columnist, a conservative, panicked and opened fire on a crowd of vociferous unarmed citizens. Four people were killed and seven wounded, four of them severely. The payback came within an hour. A mob of armed civilians arrived at the FAA’s basement office where the armed enforcers hung out and put it under siege. When the officers came out four hours later with their hands up, the crowd opened fire. The last one ran a block and took refuge in someone’s basement; he was dragged out and executed with a shot in the head. No one knew if the four murdered officers were the ones who shot the unarmed civilians, nor did anyone really care. Civil wars are messy.