Liberty's Last Stand

by Stephen Coonts

  The loss of USS Texas gave the navy serious heartburn. Some advocated launching Tomahawk cruise missiles at the attack submarine while she lay at the Galveston pier, but the chief of naval operations, the CNO, Admiral Cart McKiernan, was having none of it. “We spent 2.6 billion dollars for that boat that we had to squeeze out of Congress like it was blood,” he roared to the Joint Staff. “I’ll be damned if I’m going to order her destroyed until we’ve tried every other option. We may desperately need her if Iran and China get feisty. Those rodeo cowboys in Galveston are going nowhere in that boat; the very idea is ludicrous. Now you people get a SEAL team saddled up to go down there and get her. Have them take some submariners with them. I don’t give a damn who the SEALs have to kill or how they do it, but I want that submarine back in one piece. Understand?”

  That was yesterday. In the wee hours of this morning it looked as if the SEAL team needed at least another twenty-four hours to get ready. People and equipment had to be moved into position and it all took time, a fact that infuriated the White House staffers sitting in on the pre-dawn meeting, who knew absolutely nothing about logistics. While they ranted, the lights and computers in the Pentagon flickered and went out for a few seconds until the building’s massive emergency power system automatically came online.

  The sabotage of the natural gas trunk line from Louisiana had forced several natural gas power plants in the area to shut down until gas could be rerouted over the network. The shutdowns of the power plants blacked out cities in northern Virginia and Maryland. Then the problems began to cascade. The computer system that controlled the electrical grid, automatically rerouting electrical power to restore it to deprived areas, began to do precisely the opposite. It demanded power from the stricken plants, and when there was none to be had, began shutting down the grid across the northeastern United States. In seconds, the power was off from Chicago to Boston and south all the way to Richmond. Air conditioners quit, elevators jammed, computers died, the telephone system went down, water and sewage pumps failed.

  I found out about the power failure about seven that morning when I sneaked from Sarah Houston’s bed and padded into her kitchen to make coffee. The kitchen lights wouldn’t illuminate. Suspecting the worst, I opened the door of a very quiet refrigerator. No light inside. Oh boy. I jabbed the remote to turn on the television, just in case, but no soap. I thought maybe it was the circuit breakers, but I didn’t know where her panel was. I tried my cell phone: no service. So it wasn’t the circuit breakers.

  I went back to the bedroom, woke Sarah, and told her the news.

  “Perhaps my little program worked,” she chirped, pleased with herself.

  “Maybe the juice is only off in this neighborhood.”

  “You are always so cheerful, Tommy. And at this hour of the morning.”

  “I’m a natural-born optimist,” I objected. “In fact, I’m so optimistic that I think we should throw on some clothes and hot foot it over to the lock shop. If the outage is regional, we don’t have to wait until tonight to hit that warehouse. We can do it as soon as we can get there, and should.”

  “But I’m not packed.”

  I was already dressing and didn’t reply. Sure enough, forty-five minutes later we were in my car on our way. Sarah’s a trooper.

  And the power was off everywhere. Traffic was light. Why go to work if nothing at the office or factory will function, if the malls, grocery and convenience stores, and gas stations are closed?

  The guys were waiting at the lock shop. “How’d you do it, Sarah? How did you kill the power?”

  “I waved a wand,” she said.

  In addition to the Wire, Willis Coffee, and Travis Clay, there was one other guy there, a big black guy, really buff, who hadn’t had a haircut or shaved in months. His name was Armanti Hall, and I knew him, although not very well, because he and I had done some training together a few years back. He was in a sour mood, didn’t say a word.

  “Armanti was waiting for me last night at my place,” Travis said. “He wants to go with us, and he has a pickup with a bed cover.”

  “Did you brief him?”

  “No. He doesn’t give a damn what we’re up to. I’ll tell you about it later.”

  We unloaded the lock shop stuff from the van and began packing it with stuff we thought we might need in our war on FEMA and Barry Soetoro. Took some propane bottles and a torch, a box of tools, two crowbars, and some other things. I took my bag of cash and my weapons and ammo from the car and packed them in the van. The other guys had some small duffle bags of personal items, so we threw them in too.

  Armanti and Willis muttered to each other while we loaded up. They decided to ride in Armanti’s pickup together. We locked up the shop and my car and saddled up. Willie Varner and Travis rode in the back of the van and I drove, with Sarah Houston in the right seat.

  After we were off the Beltway headed for Leesburg, I asked Travis what the story was on Armanti.

  “He just got back from Syria a couple days ago. He thinks the agency will be looking for him soon, maybe to turn him over to civilian prosecutors.”

  “Lovely. Want to tell us about it?”

  “They had him working with the Brits, trying to find the executioner. Last week sometime he went into a building to drag out a guy they wanted to question, guy who they thought was a big dog in ISIS. Hall is an expert in unarmed combat and he thought he could put him down quick, minimum fuss, minimum time, and carry him out.”

  Travis glanced at Sarah and stopped talking. I prompted him.

  “Anyway, he got in okay and started searching the house. Couldn’t find his guy. He went up the stairs to the third floor and walked in on the guy. The shit was trying to get his dick into a six-year-old girl. You know those guys are pedophiles, child-fuckers?”

  “Yeah. I know.”

  “The kid was sobbing and had been hit a couple of times. Naked from the waist down. Armanti didn’t hesitate, just came up behind the guy, grabbed him, and broke his neck. Crack. So with the guy there dead and the kid sobbing, Armanti castrated the corpse and stuffed his genitals into his mouth. That took just seconds.

  “He had the kid under his left arm and was on his way out when a woman walked in. She took one look at the corpse and started to scream. He hit her once in the chest as hard as he could. Maybe he wasn’t trying to kill her, just wind her good so she couldn’t scream, but…anyway, the way he told it to me, her heart stopped dead. Probably burst like a balloon. He’s a strong man and was all pumped on adrenaline…”

  Travis took a few seconds, then continued, “Met a man coming up the stairs as he and the kid went down. The guy decided to shoot Armanti, but he was a hair slow. I think Armanti actually stuck his pistol in the guy’s mouth and blew his head off.”

  We all thought about that for a moment.

  Travis went on. “The Brits took the kid and said they would send her to a British charity that is trying to get orphans out of Syria and into the UK. Of course he had to tell the Brits why they didn’t have a prisoner to sweat. They said to forget it, but you know how these things are. Someone will whisper about it, and when the agency gets wind of it, killing the mother and kidnapping the girl, the shit will hit the fan. Armanti just wants to be gone.”

  “How does he know the woman was the child’s mother?” Sarah asked.

  “She was. He was briefed before he went in. But when she walked into that room, she didn’t care about the child—she was screaming about the holy warrior who was going to do a Muhammad on the kid. So he killed her. Instant justice, I guess.”

  “Can he be trusted?” I asked.

  “You’ve trained with him, Tommy. I’d trust him with my life, but I don’t do kids.”

  We left it there.

  As we approached Leesburg I glanced to my left and saw a strip mall with one store all lit up. It was a drugstore. I wheeled the van into the parking lot. We locked it and went inside.

  “How come you’re open?” I asked the guy behind the
counter.

  “We have an emergency generator. We’re open twenty-four/seven, all year around, rain, snow, or power outages. People sometimes need medications in the middle of the night. That’s our edge.”

  We stocked up on bandages, antiseptics, needles and thread, surgical tape, aspirin, and a box of surgical gloves. “Be prepared,” my scoutmaster always said.

  The warehouse district is on the south side of Leesburg, in an industrial district that looked as if it contained only warehouses and light industry. Without power, there were only a few vehicles there today.

  Sarah pointed out the warehouse we wanted. It was a big steel building and the sign said “Walmart. Always low prices. Always.” It was locked up tight, with a steel personnel door and a code pad.

  I parked the van so people down the street couldn’t see what we were doing. Armanti parked a block away in the other direction.

  We put on surgical gloves, and then used a propane torch and a crowbar. Took about ten minutes but we got that door open. No alarm sounded. The place was dark as King Tut’s tomb. We used flashlights and right in front of us was a deuce and a half and four pickups with FEMA markings, plus a gaggle of big forklifts. I left the Wire outside to warn us if anyone came along, then, using flashlights, the rest of us explored.

  The place looked like the hold of a ship heading for D-Day in Normandy. More pickups, trucks, Humvees, electrical generators on trailers, mobile kitchens, tanks for water and fuel, even some weird looking things that Travis said were microwave radar for crowd control, plus mobile radio setups and com units mounted on the backs of trucks. The stuff was painted a dark green and had a white star stenciled on each side. It wasn’t marked U.S. Army. This was FEMA stuff, for Barry Soetoro’s army.

  That was one side of the warehouse. On the other side, arranged so there was room for forklifts to go between the stacks, were pallets of ammo, several tractor-trailer loads; more pallets with boxes full of one-piece green coveralls emblazoned with a FEMA badge on the right shoulder and an American flag on the left; tractor-trailer loads of MREs, meals ready to eat; mountains of weapons; crates of M4s, AT4s, heavy belt-fed .30-caliber machine guns and M279 light machine guns, hand grenades, belted ammo, and pistols; and even some small wooden boxes containing two sniper rifles each. There were some industrial-sized coffee pots, a truckload of first aid supplies, including anti-coagulant pads, and medical emergency kits for corpsmen. Basically, it looked to me like enough military supplies to outfit an infantry brigade for a trek across Africa even if they had to fight every step of the way.

  “When the revolution comes, these folks planned to come out on the winning side,” Willis Coffee remarked. The rest of us just looked around, stunned.

  “Did you know all this was here, Tommy?” Armanti asked.

  “Nope. But I was hopeful we’d find some weapons. Our pistols aren’t going to be enough to pry Jake Grafton out of Camp Dawson.”

  “So that’s what’s going down.”

  “Yeah. You still want in?”

  “Why not.”

  “Okay, people,” I said. “Let’s get at it. We’ll load two of their pickups, the van, and Armanti’s ride. Use that forklift over there to load up some pallets of MREs. Take four of those ten-gallon jerry cans full of fuel. We want a crate of AT4s, a couple of machine guns with boxes of belted 7.62 for them, a couple of light machine guns, a couple M4s for each of us, lots of ammo, and anything that looks interesting, like those boxes of hand grenades and the medical supplies. I don’t want to die for lack of a Band-Aid. I’d also like a sniper rifle for my personal collection in case I decide to take up groundhog hunting. But what I’d really like to find in here is some C-4, timers, and detonators. Chop chop.”

  The good news was that Willis, Travis, Armanti, and I knew how to use all these weapons and keep them in good working order. Sarah didn’t, of course, and neither did Willie the Wire. On one trip to the van with a crate of MREs, I asked Willie, “You want a rifle or pistol for a souvenir?”

  “I’m a two-time loser, man, and you know it. If I got a pistol in my pocket when they arrest me for jaywalking while black, it’s mandatory life. Thanks, but no thanks.”

  He was going to bet his life on our ability to rescue Grafton, but wanted to do it disarmed. Explain that logic if you can.

  Since it was already ninety degrees outside, we threw our jeans and shirts in the van before we stepped into the new duds. Everyone but Willie strapped a web belt and pistol holster on, including Sarah. Beretta nines were the flavor of the day. “You know how to use that shooter?” I asked her.

  “No, but it’s the fashion accessory of the season, so I want one.”

  There were boxes of army combat boots in the warehouse, so we each took a pair. Sarah, of course, said, “I’m not wearing those.”

  “Find a pair that fits, try them on to make sure, then throw them in the van, just in case we have to wade a swamp.”

  She nodded and did it.

  We spent fifteen minutes opening the overhead door so we could get the pickups out. Using the forklift, they raised me as high as possible and I unlatched it from the opening mechanism, then we used one of the door cables to pull it open. The forklift pulled and up it went. Willis and Travis climbed into the cabs of the pickups. The keys were in them, lying on the dashes.

  “Look around and get all the people out of this area. You’re FEMA guys, tough dudes. Government orders. Don’t take any backtalk.”

  “You aren’t going to blow this warehouse, Tommy,” Willis Coffee said.

  “I thought I would.”

  Willis lowered his head onto the steering wheel for a moment. When he raised his head, he said, “And I thought we were just going to burgle and run.”

  “Hey, Walmart’s lawyers undoubtedly got FEMA to agree to indemnify them. The surrounding owners can sue in the sweet by and by, if the courts ever get back up and running.”

  “I don’t care about that lawyer shit. I would prefer not to be chased. Not anytime soon, anyway.”

  “An opportunity like this comes along only once in a lifetime, if that,” I told him.

  So they drove through the open door and I walked over to the C-4 pile and got busy. I figured the C-4 would ignite all the ammo in the warehouse, so there would be a pretty good pop. Even if it didn’t, the blast should wreck all this stuff, turn it into junk. Just to make sure, I poured a jerry can of gasoline on the ammo pile and opened three or four others. I gave us twenty minutes on the timer, checked my watch and saw it was two minutes after one o’clock, and pushed the button. The countdown began.

  I used the forklift to lower the overhead door, then walked out of the warehouse through the buckled personnel door and pushed it shut. The three or four civilian vehicles that had been in front of other warehouses were now gone. I climbed into the van with Sarah and drove away. The pickups were waiting by the front gate. We headed west.

  I was glancing at my watch when the whole thing went off. I saw the top of the mushroom cloud in my rearview mirror.

  Sarah saw me looking, twisted her right side mirror, and took a squint.

  “Tommy, what if some civilian was killed in that explosion?”

  “We all have to die sometime. I’ll pray for ’em.” I wouldn’t, though, if I heard they were Soetoro voters.

  It took a little under half a minute for the sound of the blast to reach us. The concussion probably broke windows in Leesburg.

  SEVENTEEN

  The mushroom cloud was still hanging over Leesburg when General Martin L. Wynette and two staff officers, both generals, arrived at the Executive Office Building across from the White House. President Soetoro and thirty or so of his staff were waiting in a large conference room. The emergency generators were apparently running sweetly: the building was well lit and the air conditioners were pumping cool air.

  “So what is your plan to crush Texas?” the president asked the chairman of the JCS.

  “The briefer has some maps. He’ll run through
it and we’ll answer questions.”

  The briefer, Major General Strong, stood in front of a huge computer screen, upon which a PowerPoint presentation was projected. “Our first problem is manpower. Given desertions, we’re estimating our combat effectives are fifty percent of what they should be.”

  The president’s chief of staff, Al Grantham, blew up. By reputation, he was one of the most aggressive leftists on the president’s staff, and, although he was white, was of the opinion that white America would have to be conquered. He thought most whites were racists and Nazis. “You mean to tell me that in the armed forces only the people who want to fight have to fight?”

  Wynette said flatly, “We have a volunteer army. It’s hard to make someone fight if they refuse to do so.”

  Grantham glared. “What the hell have we been paying them for?”

  “We have been paying them to defend the United States. Not to put too fine a point on it, a lot of our personnel don’t think shooting their fellow Americans meets those criteria.”

  “Court-martial the bastards.”

  “Oh, we can do that, if the president orders us to do so. We can convict them of cowardice, give them bad discharges, maybe some jail time, but that still doesn’t put people in ranks willing to fight.”

  The president gestured at the briefer to continue.

  The major general nodded and said, “We will take two divisions, one armored, one infantry, from Georgia and Alabama; put them on trains, trucks, and air force transports; and assemble at Barksdale Air Force Base in Louisiana. From there we will proceed to Austin and take it, engaging any Texas military units or guerilla bands we encounter along the way. Meanwhile we will have the Fourth Infantry division at Fort Carson in Colorado proceed by road to Amarillo, and from there to Austin. So we will have three divisions in a two-pronged assault. Operating on two fronts—”