Liberty's Last Stand

by Stephen Coonts

  “He has chosen to rip up the Bill of Rights, destroying the right of free speech, which is absolutely essential in a democracy. He has destroyed the right to bear arms, which is a free people’s only defense against tyranny. He suspended the Writ of Habeas Corpus, an ancient writ created hundreds of years ago in England and brought to America by our first colonists to ensure the rule of law and protect the populace from government lawlessness. He has chosen to eliminate the currency. He has chosen to rule by fiat, dismissing Congress and flouting the courts. By his actions, he defines the word tyrant. In response to the dictates of a tyrant, we here in Texas have chosen to exercise our God-given right to self-government, our right to choose our own destiny and our own leaders, our right as a free people to resist tyranny and create a government worthy of a free people. In a sublime act of courage, the elected representatives of the people of Texas have done so. Yesterday morning in the very early hours they declared our independence. Today they established the Republic of Texas.”

  He paused in response to loud, sustained applause.

  “We face difficult days ahead. The federal government has already fired the first shots, which were cruise missiles launched from a navy ship at sea off our coast. Today the navy has declared a blockade of our ports in an attempt to deny us freedom of the seas.

  “The road ahead will not be easy. No doubt the federal government will escalate its pressure upon us. Still, precious as it is, freedom is worthless unless it is defended, and I fear blood will be required. How much, no man can say. At least a dozen people died and two dozen were wounded when a power plant in the Houston area was struck by those cruise missiles. Those Texans, who wore no uniform, were our first casualties. I am reminded of the words of that great American patriot Thomas Paine: ‘If there must be trouble, let it be in my day, that my child may have peace.’”

  The applause was thundering.

  When the noise had at last subsided, he said: “Tonight we ask lovers of freedom all over America, indeed, lovers of freedom all over the world, to join us in our struggle. Let us here in Texas resolve to fight, no matter the price that may be required, for all that we loved about our country, for all that we treasured and hoped to pass on to our children, and their children, and the generations yet unborn. Let us here dedicate ourselves to enshrining freedom, justice, and the rule of law in the Republic of Texas, for ourselves and our posterity. So help us God.”

  The applause and shouting died after a while, because the hour was late and the day had been long for everyone. Still standing at the podium, Jack Hays shouted, “Ben Steiner, you wrote our Declaration of Independence, what is your favorite song?”

  Texans argued for years afterward whether Steiner knew that question was coming, but his answer was quick and his voice carried throughout the chamber. “‘The Eyes of Texas.’”

  One of the television producers was about to send the program back to the studio for commentary by instant experts, but he now waited, sensing that the best might still be ahead.

  Jack Hays started singing. He had a nice baritone. Everyone in the chamber was still on their feet, including the spectators in the gallery. Nadine’s eyes were locked upon her husband as he sang, “The eyes of Texas are upon you, all the live long day. The eyes of Texas are upon you, and you cannot get away …”

  When the roar died, Hays looked and gestured at the Speaker, who shouted, “‘The Yellow Rose of Texas.’”

  “There’s a yellow rose in Texas, that I am going to see. Nobody else could miss her, not half as much as me … She’s the sweetest little rosebud that Texas ever knew. Her eyes are bright as diamonds, they sparkle like the dew. You may talk about your Clementine and sing of Rosalee, but the yellow rose of Texas is the only girl for me… .”

  All over Texas, people were sitting in front of their televisions or radios, many singing at the top of their lungs, as Jack Hays thought they would.

  Barry Soetoro watched the speech and singing on television in the family quarters of the White House. “That’s a dangerous man,” he remarked to Mickey. “He’s firing up every half-wit cracker in the country.”

  “You’d better have someone shoot him quick,” she said. “You knew those Texas bastards were going to give you trouble.”

  The president nodded. He knew good advice when he heard it.

  Jack Hays said, “My favorite now, ‘Deep In the Heart of Texas,’” and he led off.

  “The stars at night … are big and bright”—clap, clap, clap—“deep in the heart of Texas. The prairie bloom … is like perfume”—clap, clap, clap—“deep in the heart of Texas. Reminds me of the one I love”—clap, clap, clap—“deep in the heart of Texas… .”

  The last notes had barely died when Jack said, “Let’s end with the anthem of Texas, ‘Texas, Our Texas.’”

  The voices rose loudly, if not melodiously. “Texas, our Texas! All hail the mighty state! Texas, our Texas! So wonderful, so great… .”

  The last stanza was the best, and although many of the legislators didn’t know the words, Jack Hays did. He sang it with every ounce of fervor that was in him. “Texas, dear Texas! From tyrant’s grip now free, shines forth in splendor, our star of destiny! Mother of heroes, we come your children true, proclaiming our allegiance, our faith, our love for you… . God bless you, Texas! And keep you brave and strong, that you may grow in power and worth, throughout the ages long… .”

  Long after the singing had died and they turned off their televisions and radios, in cities, towns, and hamlets and at isolated homes and ranches, from the islands and low flatlands near the gulf and the thickets and pine forests of east Texas, to the prairies, plains, and semi-deserts of west Texas and the windswept tableland of the Panhandle, people hummed the tunes and thought about Jack Hays’ words. In truck stops, cafes, and big rigs rolling along lonesome highways, people thought and pondered, about America and Texas and the dreams men carry for a someday that may or may not ever come.

  As Jack Hays once remarked to Nadine, “Texas isn’t a place; it’s a religion.”

  At Fort Bliss, Major General Lee Parker had a nightmare on his hands. His flight line had been shot to hell, an Apache had been shot down, he had lost a Bradley and every soldier in it, and three helicopters had shot up his flight line. As Jack Hays spoke on the television, Parker’s air officer was trying to get a count on how many helicopters were flyable.

  In addition to these problems, the Pentagon was bombarding him with messages directing him to attack in all directions, disarm all civilians, and arrest every male Texan he could find. “What about the women?” he asked his chief of staff, who had no answers. Parker had served in Texas long enough to know that many Texas women were, if anything, made of even sterner stuff than the men. Given sufficient reason, they could and occasionally did shoot a man as dead as a man can get. On the other hand, arresting women, some of them mothers of young children, would not play well in Washington. And he had no decent facilities to hold them in.

  So how was he going to do all this attacking and arresting? He huddled with his ops officer, the brigade commanders, and their ops officers trying to figure out what his objectives and priorities should be. Staff officers flitted around like moths around a flame. Given enough time, something might have come out of the blizzard of orders from headquarters and all this staff work, but time ran out for Lee Parker at about three a.m. He was whipped. He hadn’t slept in eighteen hours, and was keeping himself running on strong black coffee.

  “Sir,” one of his aides whispered to him. “There is a delegation of NCOs in your outer office. They want to talk to you.”

  “A delegation?”

  “Yes, sir. That’s what they said.”

  “We don’t do delegations in the army. Tell them to return to duty or their quarters.”

  “General, they insist on seeing you.”

  Parker stormed out of the conference room and down the hallway to the reception area outside his office, fully intending to blister some soldiers.
A delegation! Just who did these sergeants think they were, anyway?

  He faced a group of command sergeant majors. “What the hell do you want that can’t go through the chain of command?”

  “We wanted to bring this to your attention right now, General. The troops in the barracks are packing their duffle bags, getting in their cars, and driving out the main gate. Over in base housing, officers and men are loading their families and leaving.”

  “This base is on lockdown. No one in or out. You know that!”

  “Yes, sir, but the gate guards have left too. Our gates are wide open and unmanned.”

  “Get them manned immediately. Anyone leaving this fort in violation of orders will be arrested and court-martialed.”

  “Sir, the soldiers we have left refuse to man the gate. The main road outside the gate is lined with armed civilians, and more are coming every minute. The sheriff’s deputies are out there trying to keep them from flooding onto the base.”

  Lee Parker stared, his jaw agape. In all his years in the army he had never even heard of mass disobedience. “This is mutiny,” he said to the top sergeants.

  “Yes, sir, it is that. But we can’t stop our soldiers short of shooting them, and they won’t do the army any good if they are shot. What it boils down to is that less than ten percent of the troops will stick. That’s just an estimate. More like a guess, maybe. The rest are scattering like leaves in the wind. Some say they are going to fight for Texas, others are going home, wherever that is for them. Bottom line, General, is we have no one to fight with.”

  On the way to headquarters, the sergeants agreed that having soldiers arrest local civilians and incarcerate them had been a major mistake. They didn’t think it was Parker’s fault; he was just following orders. Ill-considered orders. The men and women of the 1st Armored were soldiers, damn good ones too, not KGB or Gestapo or Brown Shirts. Or FEMA or Homeland thugs. “We’re soldiers, sir,” the division sergeant major told the general now by way of explanation, although without context the general thought that comment inane.

  “Our troops aren’t acting like soldiers,” Parker shot back heatedly. “Mutiny! By God, when this is over I’m going to send a whole lot of people to Leavenworth. Just watch.”

  The command sergeant major, Alfredo Mendez, five feet, six inches of professional soldier from McAllen, Texas, said, “General, I don’t think you understand the situation. Perhaps we weren’t clear enough. Your troops are leaving. They will not fight Texans. They refuse to serve in Barry Soetoro’s army. Your choice right now is to get in a plane as quickly as possible and fly out of here, or stay and surrender to the National Guard. When Wiley Fehrenbach figures out the situation here at Bliss, which will be sooner rather than later, he and his troops will be coming, armed, and our people will not fight.”

  The general went into his office, slammed the door, and tried to get control of himself. Never in his wildest nightmares had he ever imagined this. Mutiny!

  After five or six deep breaths, he walked out, past the waiting NCOs, and headed for the staff conference room. He broke the news to his staff and his generals in four sentences.

  One of the brigadiers exploded. “We’ll get the loyal soldiers and kick the snot out of those guardsmen and civilians. Let’s get at it.”

  “So you want to go out like Custer, eh?” another brigadier shot back. “This isn’t Iraq. These civilians will shoot first, just like the Sioux did. The people of Texas are fighting for their freedom from what they believe is a tyrannical government that has suspended the United States Constitution. So far we have fifteen dead and thirty-two wounded and all we’ve accomplished is burning down an empty National Guard Armory. What do you plan to do, fight house to house to get the hell out of El Paso? Make a last stand at a Walmart or on some lonesome, windswept hill in the middle of a cow pasture, if you get that far?”

  “We could get our loyal troops and some of the equipment into New Mexico, and the Texans wouldn’t follow us across the border.”

  “You think this is chess?” another officer retorted. “If I were making the decisions for them, I would follow you all the way to Hell to force you to surrender. And we’re just not ready to move. It would take a couple of days to get ready, and we don’t have two days.”

  Lee Parker made up his mind. The brass would court-martial him if he ran, and, in truth, he didn’t have running in him. Nor did he want to fight for Barry Soetoro. He had been doing what he had done for the past thirty-two years: obeying orders because he was in the United States Army, serving under the Stars and Stripes. Now he lacked the means to fight. “We’ll surrender,” he said. He glanced at the chief of staff and told him to draft a message to all the higher headquarters telling them of his decision.

  “Sir, shouldn’t we disable the tanks, artillery, Bradleys?”

  “If we had the people to accomplish that, we wouldn’t be surrendering,” Lee Parker said bitterly. “This command has just disintegrated. I didn’t see it coming, and I doubt if anyone else in this room did either. If you did have an inkling, you certainly didn’t do your country any favors by keeping your mouth shut.” Yet, after all, in a vast bureaucracy, one didn’t get ahead by pointing out statistically remote disastrous possibilities that had never occurred in the past. A mutiny! For heaven’s sake, this is the United States Army, and 1st Armored was a hell of a good outfit!

  Lee Parker went back to the NCOs who still stood in the reception area.

  “Sergeant Major Mendez, will you please go to the main gate and tell the sheriff or his deputy to send for General Fehrenbach? I’ll surrender Fort Bliss to him. Have the sheriff bring him here.”

  “Yes, sir,” Mendez said, saluted, and marched from the room.

  The thunderstorms were gone and it was drizzling rain when JR Hays and Wiley Fehrenbach were ushered into the commanding general’s office at Fort Bliss. Seeing that JR was wearing major general’s stars, Lee Parker, standing at attention beside his desk, saluted and said, “Gentlemen, my troops have mutinied and I am unable to defend the base or the military equipment here. In order not to squander lives uselessly, I wish to surrender the base and its personnel to the Texas forces.”

  JR and Wiley returned the salute. JR told Wiley, “You accept the surrender. Write it out on a computer.” He dictated the terms: All military equipment would be surrendered along with the troops. Those soldiers who wished to leave Texas were welcome to do so, and those who wished to enlist in the Texas Guard would be encouraged to do so after they took a loyalty oath and signed it. Anyone caught sabotaging surrendered military equipment would be dealt with summarily.

  “If you or your staff or senior officers wish to leave, General Parker, I suggest you get in one of your C-130s or executive transports and leave immediately. We are going to block the runway with tanks as soon as you depart.”

  “I’ll stay,” Lee Parker said. “My officers can make their own decisions.”

  “I understand you have some civilians locked up.”

  “Orders from Washington,” Parker replied curtly. “FEMA has lists.”

  “Let them out, Wiley, and get them rides home. And haul down the American flags on base. Find some Texas flags and run them up.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  Wiley Fehrenbach unbuttoned his shirt and produced a Lone Star flag. He grinned at JR and handed it to the nearest soldier. “You heard him. Run it up the pole outside and get one for the pole at the main gate.”

  JR glanced at the leather couch, and asked the two generals to conduct their business in the outer office. When the door was closed behind them, he sacked out on the couch. He glanced at his watch. The Republic of Texas was just a bit less than forty-eight hours old. The window was open and the breeze felt good. He was asleep ten seconds later.

  SIXTEEN

  The riots continued in inner cities around the country. Baltimore was probably the worst: it had been racked by riots the previous year, and this time the mob at the core expanded across downtown and into
the suburbs.

  Police and National Guardsmen had disappeared. Much of their leadership had already been imprisoned by the feds. Many of those left on duty went home to protect or move their families. Others just threw up their hands. Why try to bring a mob under control when the physical risks were high and the politicians were frightened that they might lose some votes, so none of the political elite or police brass would back the men and women in uniform on the streets? Police and guardsmen went into bars, had a few, then found their cars and went home.

  In the suburbs, people were getting into a state of near panic. Rumors were rampant. In subdivisions and neighborhoods, mothers and fathers surrounded by children met in front yards and culs-de-sac, exchanging rumors and fears. People talked about blocking off streets as they faced the prospect of having to defend their homes against marauders. It seemed as if much of America now had two ravenous domestic enemies—rioting, looting mobs, and the federal government. Many of the suburbanites had an old lever-action Winchester or Marlin, or a bolt-action Winchester, Remington, or Ruger in the closet, and a couple boxes of ammunition for it. They decided what they were going to do if the mobs invaded their neighborhoods to rob, loot, rape, and burn.

  In Detroit, Chicago, Philadelphia, St. Louis, and Los Angeles, the mobs were still in the ghetto, but as in Baltimore, those who lived in the riot-torn area and were not a part of it were trying to flee. People left on foot and in cars, streams of refugees, some with the contents of looted stores on their backs, but all convinced they had had enough.