Liberty's Last Stand

by Stephen Coonts

  “I have no idea,” she said distractedly. She was looking at the huge towers carrying their high-voltage transmission wires across the countryside.

  When I realized what she was looking at, I said, “Are you thinking what I’m thinking?”

  “There’s no power on those wires right now. If we could lay down some towers, they wouldn’t know we did it until the grid came back up. People who see it fall can’t even call in.”

  “You are a natural-born terrorist,” I acknowledged.

  I pulled over to the side of the road and the pickups pulled up behind me. I got out, and we all huddled over a roadmap. “Here is where we’re going, Camp Dawson, near Kingwood, West Virginia, in Preston County. I thought we would stay off the interstates and do the back roads. But along the way, I’d like to take down some of these transmission towers. Two or three on each right of way, to put the wires on the ground. Use C-4, set the timers to the max on the dial.”

  “That’s an hour,” Armanti Hall said.

  “You guys can drop off, do a couple of towers, then catch back up. Try to make them fall in the woods or streams, not on the road. We’ll meet here.” I jabbed my finger at a crossroads, near Kingwood.

  “Okay by me,” Travis said. The others nodded their heads.

  I went back to the van and climbed in.

  “I could use a bathroom,” Sarah said.

  “The side of the road is brushy,” I pointed out. “No one will see you. Climb on down there.”

  “I don’t have any toilet paper.”

  I reached around the seat to my duffle bag, extracted a roll, and passed it to her. “I stole a roll of yours this morning when we were leaving.”

  She scanned the roadside weeds, then observed, “There might be poison ivy or snakes.”

  I started the engine and got the van rolling. “Maybe we’ll find an open filling station with clean restrooms,” I said brightly, “or even a McDonald’s.”

  “Jerk.”

  She ended up using a port-a-potty on a road bridge rebuild project. The construction crew wasn’t around. After she finished, I used it too. It smelled like every port-a-potty I’d ever been in, but it was like the facilities at the Ritz compared to the places I had pooped in the Middle East, often merely a hole in the floor you squatted over. Or a patch of desert. The miracle of toilet paper has not yet been revealed to most of the sons of Islam. Muhammad never said a word about it. If you don’t believe me, read your Koran.

  When we were back rolling again, I told her, “There may come a day when you dream longingly of that port-a-potty.”

  “Did you see the graffiti in there?”

  “Yes.”

  “Men are such pigs.”

  I let that one go by without comment.

  A little while later Sarah began to laugh.

  “What’s so funny?”

  “Oh, I was just thinking about the irony of it all. Jake Grafton and I have been listening to the goings-on at the White House for about six months. He knew all about Soetoro’s plan to declare martial law and tear up the Constitution.”

  I stared at her, trying to decide if she was telling the truth. And almost ran off the road.

  She chuckled. “He refused to do anything about it, of course. Said there was nothing he could do. And maybe he was right. If he told people about Soetoro’s plan, they would have thought him crazy. It would have gotten back to the White House, and they would have arrested him and locked him up. So he decided to do nothing and he got blamed for a fake coup and assassination plot and he’s locked up anyway. Life is crazy.”

  “Tell me more.”

  “Only Grafton and I know about it. When the Iran treaty was being negotiated in Switzerland, he asked me if we could bug the hotels where the delegates were staying. He wanted to know what the Iranians were talking about, what their negotiating strategy was. The problem was that the hotels were going to be swept repeatedly, and any bugs with transmitters would be quickly discovered. So I ginned up a program to use all the hotels’ computers and security systems as listening devices and have the feed sent to me over the internet.

  “But when I got into their systems, I found that the Israelis had been there first. They had a surveillance system in place using the computers and security cameras and even the personal computers that everyone brought with them and that used the hotels’ Wi-Fi systems to connect with the internet. You may have heard about it last year. The Russians had the same idea, and they announced the Israelis’ espionage.”

  “I did hear about that.”

  “The Israeli system was better than mine. So I got all their computer code and we just listened in.”

  “Jesus,” I said, trying to think as I steered the vehicle. That Grafton!

  “Then about six months ago, he asked if I could use the Israeli system on the White House.”

  “Jesus!”

  “He and I have been listening for six months. All the plotting, all the plans, all the bullshit. But he wouldn’t do anything about it.”

  “You are saying he knew about the coming of martial law?”

  “Oh yes. He and I knew. They were merely waiting for an excuse. They thought the excuse would be a domestic terror incident, but if that hadn’t happened, it would have been something else. Martial law was going to happen. We were the only ones who knew outside the inner circle at the White House. I demanded the admiral do something, but he just gave me those cold gray eyes and asked, ‘What?’”

  Indeed, I thought, what? Whom do you tell? Who will believe?

  “So here we go, riding to the rescue,” she said sourly, “and he knew all along.”

  “So did you.”

  “Yeah. I had to agree with Grafton. What do you do when the president is plotting to become a dictator?”

  “Assassinate him,” I suggested.

  “Who? Me? Grafton? Or should Grafton have sent you to do the dirty deed?”

  She had a point.

  EIGHTEEN

  The Blackhawk helicopter settled onto the tarmac at the Longview, Texas, airport, shut down, and JR Hays went forward to speak to the pilots. CWO4 Erik Sabiston was in the right seat.

  “Wait for me,” JR said. “Be back late this evening. Fuel the chopper and get something to eat.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  JR climbed out and walked across the tarmac into the FBO. “I need a car,” he said to the lady on the desk.

  “We have a courtesy car, sir. It’s kinda old and wrinkled, like me, but it’ll probably get you there and back again. Always has so far, anyway.”

  She handed him the keys and he made a pit stop, then went outside and climbed in. It was an old Ford with sun-scorched paint and more than a hundred fifty thousand miles on the odometer. It started on the first crank.

  He had gotten the address from the Texas Department of Motor Vehicles. It took him a while to find it that afternoon. There were high cirrus clouds up there, making the afternoon light gauzy. It didn’t do much to soften the heat, though.

  JR found his address in a newer subdivision, parked on the street, and walked up the driveway. Inside he heard a dog barking, a little one from the sound of it. Rang the doorbell.

  In a moment a man in shorts and an old army T-shirt opened the door, a man in his mid-fifties.

  “JR Hays! As I live and breathe!”

  “Hello, Nate. May I come in?”

  “Of course.” The man threw the door wide, then closed it behind JR. His name was Nathaniel Danaher, and he was a retired army colonel with thirty years service. JR had served under him on his last combat tour in Afghanistan. Danaher was from Connecticut originally, but he hadn’t lived there since he went away to VMI for college. He hadn’t been able to score a West Point appointment so he joined the VMI corps of cadets, got a reserve commission, which, after a few years of outstanding service, the army transformed into a regular commission.

  “I like the gleam of those stars on your blouse, JR. Somehow they look exactly right on you. Want a bee
r?”

  “Sure.”

  With beers in hand, they sat on the covered porch in the backyard, a ramada as the old Texans called it. It kept the sun off and allowed the people sheltered under it to savor any breeze. The dog, some kind of terrier, was friendly enough. He did some exploratory sniffing and then found a shady spot to lie down.

  Danaher was still lean and fit. He looked, JR thought, exactly as he had when he was in Afghanistan, only a little older and grayer. JR remarked on it.

  “Still get up at five o’clock every morning and run five miles,” Danaher said. “Might as well; can’t sleep past five anyway. Heard your cousin put you in charge. He couldn’t have found a better man.”

  “That remains to be seen. Where do you stand on independence?”

  “Well, when I first heard about it, I thought, there goes my fucking pension and health benefits unless I get the hell out of Texas. That was pretty small of me, I suppose, but then I heard on TV that Texas is taking over all the federal government’s obligations to military and Social Security retirees, so that was a relief. I’ve got some money saved up but nowhere near enough without a pension. I despise that son of a bitch Soetoro and everything he stands for. It’s a big club so I have lots of friends. Independence is great if you folks can make it stick, because the country that elected that bastard twice is going somewhere most people in Texas don’t want to go.”

  “I need some help,” JR said. “I need some civilian duds, and then if you are willing, let’s the two of us drive over to Louisiana and take a look around.”

  “You mean it?”

  “I do.”

  “My wife is playing bridge this afternoon. Went over after lunch. I’ll leave her a note. We’ll be back tonight?”

  “I hope.”

  “I think I may have some clothes that will fit you. If you haven’t had lunch, mine the refrigerator while I root around. Make yourself a sandwich or something. Last night’s meat loaf was pretty good.”

  JR was halfway through a cold meat loaf sandwich when Nate returned with a pair of baggy shorts, an ancient VMI T-shirt, and a set of worn tennis shoes. He also handed JR a pistol, an old double-action revolver, small and trim. “If you’re going to Louisiana you better take this, stick it in your pocket, just in case. It’s loaded.”

  JR checked the cylinder, snapped it back in place. The gun was an old Smith & Wesson in .38 Special with about half its bluing remaining. “That thing’s about ninety or so years old,” Danaher said. “Used to carry it in my pocket when a service pistol wouldn’t do. Louisiana is enemy territory for you.”

  Nate Danaher’s car was a late model sedan. “Where are we going?”

  “Barksdale Air Force Base, east of Shreveport and Bossier City.”

  “I know where it is. Take Gina to the doctor there on a regular basis. She’s got lymphoma. It’s under control now, we think, but …” he shrugged, “it’s in God’s hands. I shop at the PX while she’s getting examined.”

  “Stay off the interstate tonight. Take the back roads. We don’t need to run into a roadblock.”

  “Sure.”

  “Got that postcard from you a while back,” JR explained. “So I knew you were in Texas. Why here?”

  “Our daughter is here. Her husband is an engineer in the oil business. Gina wanted to be near the grandson, Little Nate, who just turned seven. He’s a pistol.”

  “I seem to recall you had a son, too.”

  “Yep. Got on drugs in high school and dropped out. Pot at first, then crack, then heroin and meth. We put him in rehab twice, but it didn’t take. Haven’t seen him in…well, it’s been twelve years now. A few years ago someone said they saw him in New Orleans, living on the street. For all I know he may be dead now. All those drugs—it figures he won’t last too long.”

  JR changed the subject. “So how is Longview taking to independence?”

  “Was out at Walmart today. The place was packed. People on welfare were cashing their last checks, loading up their cars, and getting out of Texas. They heard Texas isn’t paying welfare anymore, so a lot of them are heading for greener pastures. Everyone else is stocking up. Everything they can get, food, toilet paper, everything. People in line said the liquor stores were mobbed. I wanted to buy a little generator—figured I could wire it into the house circuits some way—but Walmart was out of them. None in the hardware stores. People sense that times are going to get hard.”

  “Yeah,” JR said dryly.

  Sarah and I drove the van along the road by Camp Dawson and sure enough, there was the compound that held the detainees, though we didn’t see any. The compound, surrounded by a chain-link fence topped by barbed wire, with guard towers about ten feet above the ground on all four corners, was about a hundred yards on each side. It was lit up in the late afternoon like Macy’s on Christmas Eve, so obviously they had generators going. All the comforts…

  The gate was manned by four guys in FEMA dark-green coveralls carrying carbines and wearing green caps. They weren’t soldiers, lounging around like that, smoking, laughing, and grab-assing. And, I suspected, they were not well disciplined. No army sergeant I ever met would allow his troops to goof off on guard duty. They were armed thugs.

  I got all this on one slow drive-by. The gate guards paid no attention to us. The guy on the last guard tower was leaning on the rails of his perch, smoking a cigarette, looking into the compound.

  Which made me suspect that they weren’t worried about people breaking in, but their prisoners breaking out. The thought that someone might assault them with intent to kill apparently had not entered their hard little heads. When the shooting started in earnest, many would probably boogie. No one wants to be dead any time soon, which can happen when people shoot at you.

  Across the road from the compound was an up-sloping pasture, maybe fifty yards wide, with what looked to me like yearling steers in there munching grass. Maybe dreaming of the girlfriends they would never have. Perhaps those were the virgins the jihadists would find in Paradise. Beyond the pasture and higher was a strip of forest on a low ridge. Over the top of the ridge I got a glimpse of a green mountain.

  I kept on driving, thinking about how we could pop Jake Grafton out of that compound. Since we had no idea where in there he was, we were going to have to ask someone. That would be my job. I am pretty good at getting answers in a hurry from people who initially thought they didn’t want to be bothered.

  The designated rendezvous was a crossroads about eight more miles along. I pulled over to the side of the road and turned off the engine. The sun was just setting, so we had at least another half hour of evening, then maybe another fifteen minutes of twilight.

  All I needed were my troops.

  “You know how to use that pistol?” I asked Sarah.

  “Never fired one in my life.”

  I showed her how the Beretta worked, popped out the magazine, jacked out the shell from the chamber, made her dry fire it, and put everything in and reloaded. “Just disengage the safety, point, and pull the trigger. It will fire thirteen shots, one with every squeeze of the trigger. The gun will kick in your hand, so use both hands. Don’t use it unless the bad guy is very close, and keep shooting until he’s dead on the ground. Not wounded on the ground, but obviously dead, so he can’t hurt you.”

  “Okay,” she said, hefting the weapon.

  “Never point a gun at a man unless you are willing to shoot, and never shoot unless you are willing to kill. This isn’t Hollywood.”

  “Okay,” she repeated, and holstered the weapon.

  I felt better. She seemed to be getting into this warrior gig. If I could just keep finding her bathrooms or port-a-potties.

  I rooted in my duffel and came up with my Kimber 1911 in a holster. I added it to my web belt and put it on the right side. On the left I put my Marine Corps fighting knife with the eight-inch blade.

  The Beretta was a 9-mm: it shot a .357-caliber, 125-grain full-metal-jacket bullet since it was a weapon of war—Geneva Co
nvention and all that—and would make nice holes in people. Magazine capacity was thirteen rounds. The .45 shot a 230-grain bullet, and I used hollow points. Under fifty feet, one of those to the body would kill King Kong. It held eight cartridges, but if eight wasn’t enough, I was probably gonna soon be dead anyway.

  I made sure my shooter was cocked and locked, then sat there wondering where my troops were. Civilian cars and pickups came by from time to time, and after a glimpse of my FEMA green, ignored us. Apparently the boys in Soetoro’s army were not yet winning the hearts and minds of the locals. I glanced at my watch from time to time.

  “Stop fidgeting,” Sarah said.

  I loaded up some M4s, passed one to Sarah, and laid a couple behind the passenger seat where I could reach them. Broke out some grenades and put one in each shirt pocket.

  Finally I got a couple of boxes of MREs and dug through them. Sarah took a fruit cup, and I munched a cardboard cookie that had come out of the oven during the first Bush administration. We certainly weren’t in danger of gaining weight on this adventure.

  Before they went onto the base, JR Hays and Nate Danaher stopped at a beer joint, which was packed, every stool and booth full, with people standing and drinking beer. The conversations were loud. A television was on up in the corner, showing the devastating effects of the power outage in the northeastern United States. Philadelphia and Baltimore were rioting as usual.

  JR kept an eye on the television as he waited for Danaher to work his way to the bar and order beers. There was a short segment about rioting in Watts in LA, then a parade of Soetoro administration officials being interviewed. JR couldn’t hear the audio, but he thought he knew what the officials were saying. Everything was under control. The administration was taking steps, and so on.

  Then he heard a snatch of a conversation between two men at the bar. “This place is going to be packed when those soldiers get here… . Yeah, I heard the day after tomorrow… . Someone said the Fourth Brigade… . Gonna come in dribs and drabs, I suppose… . Thirty-five hundred men and equipment is a lot to move… .”