Liberty's Last Stand

by Stephen Coonts

I became aware that Sarah was behind me, and she handed me a couple more grenades. I sent them down the street, and the explosions were gratifying.

  This went on for what seemed like an hour, but couldn’t have been more than a couple of minutes, if that. Willie changed magazines twice.

  “Keep your goddamn head down,” I told him when he kept bobbing up to squirt off a burst.

  I glimpsed a grenade flying into the street in front of our position. “Down! Grenade!”

  It went off and showered the office with shrapnel. I looked at the studio window, which was grazed but intact.

  Then I realized the shooting was tapering off. Another burst or two, and a deafening silence descended.

  “Willis? Travis?”

  “The survivors are running for the trucks,” Willis shouted into his radio. “Don’t let ’em get away!”

  About that time the alley door crashed open. Willie Varner spun on his knee, a very athletic move, and fired a burst from the hip. Then another burst that emptied his weapon.

  I was there with my M4, waiting, so I cranked my head to see. Two soldiers in uniform down.

  With the carbine at the ready, I went down the hallway. One was still alive, a black kid. The other was seriously dead. From the streetlight in the alley I could see the patches on their shoulders. New Jersey National Guard.

  Willie was there, kneeling, checking on the wounded man. The guy looked at Willie, gurgled something, then his eyes froze and he stopped breathing.

  Willie dropped his weapon and put his hands over his face.

  “Hey, man,” I said. “It was them or us.”

  Sarah put her hand on his shoulder.

  “If you had waited another half second to shoot,” I told Willie, “you’d be the one lying dead.”

  Willie straightened up, left his weapon right where it lay, and walked out the alley door and turned right, away from the fight.

  “Let him go, Tommy,” Sarah said.

  “I just hope there are no more bad guys out there.”

  “Let’s check on the broadcasting equipment.”

  The radio came to life. It was Willis Coffee. “There was a fire fight over west of town, about where that radio tower should be. Maybe they tried to take it too.”

  One of our guys was dead and three more wounded. The soldiers who lay on the floor in the hallway had apparently come south down the alley and gunned the two good guys on guard at the north entrance, then kicked in our door.

  Among the attackers on the ground there were nineteen bodies and eight wounded. The rest had gone north running or riding the surviving trucks.

  “If they had stopped in the right block, we’d have gotten them all,” Travis Clay said. And they would have destroyed the radio broadcast equipment, I thought, but I managed to bite it off before it came out. “And we have one prisoner, a FEMA guy who surrendered. His name tag says his name is Lambert. What do you want me to do with the wounded and this guy?”

  “Put all the wounded on trucks and take them out to the camp. Maybe the doctors can save them.”

  “Our guys already left. Grafton said no prisoners.”

  “I’m giving the damned orders. Take all the wounded out to the base. And bring that prisoner over here. I want to look at him.”

  Three minutes later Travis had him standing in the radio studio with a plastic tie around his wrists. Yep, it was Zag Lambert, whom I had met in Colorado a lifetime or two ago. He was even porkier than he had been in Colorado, with a truly awesome gut jutting out above his belt. I doubted if he had seen his dick in the last ten years unless he used a mirror. It was a wonder he could even reach it. He didn’t look as feisty now as he had in Colorado.

  “Take him to Grafton,” I told Travis. “After they interrogate him, lock him up with Sal Molina. Don’t feed him for a few days. Maybe a week. Water only. He needs to lose some weight. His wife will thank us.”

  “Yo. Come on, fatso.” And he led Lambert away.

  “New Jersey National Guard,” I told Grafton when he called on the radio a few minutes later. “FEMA guys in trucks and two Jersey guard helicopters with grunts who rappelled down. Travis is bringing you a prisoner to interrogate, Zag Lambert, the guy who ran Jade Helm 16.”

  “Good work, Tommy,” he said. “We’ll send some people to relieve you when the sun comes up, and you, Sarah, and Willie can get some sleep.”

  “Yeah.” I didn’t mention that Willie had bugged out. I figured that I would run into him at Dawson in the chow hall. At least, I hoped so.

  One of the choppers had crashed on a baseball diamond, and the other went into a block of old houses a quarter mile away. There were no survivors from the Blackhawks. Someone said six or eight civilians were killed in the crash into the houses; no one knew for sure. The smoke was still rising from the fire at dawn.

  Thus ended the battle of Kingwood. Maybe someday they’ll put up a commemorative plaque.

  I just hoped that somewhere people were listening to the radio.

  THIRTY-TWO

  JR Hays had four C-17s lined up, fueled, and ready to go. Aboard them were twelve trucks, three apiece. For now, the trucks were loaded with ammo, welding torches, and C-4 explosive. On the trip back, they’d be loaded with gold. He had selected and briefed his men—all one hundred of them. They were dressed in U.S. Army combat gear that would have passed the inspection of any sergeant major. The men had been briefed to shoot only in self-defense. He meant this to be a bloodless adventure.

  JR had confirmed, in three satellite calls with the Pentagon, that the United States armed forces were in a state of armed truce and officially neutral in the war between the United States and Texas, and he had letters in his pockets, all forgeries on good paper with appropriate letterheads affirming that he was Lieutenant General Robert Been, United States Army, with written orders from the president of the United States, Barry Soetoro, and the secretary of the Treasury to transport the gold in the Bank of Manhattan to the New York Federal Reserve Bank for safekeeping until the current political crisis had passed. To further his ruse, he had five Texas Rangers, three men and two women, in civvies carrying FBI pistols and credentials, which Colonel Tenney had confiscated from agents in Austin. Chuy Medina had told him the bank had at least a hundred tons of gold on deposit. JR hoped to take every ounce.

  Sarah and I went to the big head honchos’ meeting in the conference room of the headquarters building on Tuesday night after dinner. The place was packed, standing room only.

  There were four generals: Jose Martinez, an active-duty two-star who either took leave or deserted (he wasn’t telling); Mort Considine, a retired brigadier; Lee Netherton, a retired three-star; and Jerry Marquart, a congressman if Congress ever got back in session. Jake Grafton was the general commanding, by the unanimous vote of the four, and he presided.

  The big news was that radio stations along the East Coast had received duplicate thumb drives of Sarah’s recordings from Dixie Cotton; and Dixie herself was making a splash as she flitted through Washington, Baltimore, Philadelphia, and New York, broadcasting on her mobile radio. FEMA and Homeland were after her, but I figured they would drop the chase soon enough—news of the recordings had already gone nationwide, and the rumor was that even FEMA and Homeland were now having doubts about Soetoro.

  Within twenty-four hours of the first Kingwood broadcast, more than a thousand people joined our little army—veterans, truck drivers, steel workers, mechanics, carpenters, dentists, students, housewives, eccentrics, whackos, and no doubt some true psychopaths, all angry about Soetoro’s violation of their “rights” and the “Constitution.” Many brought their own firearms.

  The generals fretted about the willingness and ability of civilian volunteers to follow orders. As usual, Grafton cut to the chase. “We’ve got to keep control of our troops or we are nothing but a mob. Let’s agree right here, right now, that anyone caught robbing, stealing, raping, or murdering noncombatants will be summarily executed on the spot. Anyone accused of thes
e crimes but not caught in the act will be court-martialed as soon as possible with the accuser and any witnesses testifying. If found guilty, he or she will be executed immediately. That will be General Order Number One.”

  Further orders followed swiftly. Jose Martinez, with Mort Considine as his deputy commander, would take the units designated as the First Army, or our northern army, to Washington via I-68. Lee Netherton, with Jerry Marquart as his deputy, would lead the units organized into the Second Army, or our southern army, to Washington via Leesburg. Grafton would fly the Cessna, our only observation plane, and keep in touch with the columns via radio. Predators would scan the ground for bad guys and ambushes.

  Then they got into logistics. The generals told their staff officers to stay but ordered the rest of us to get busy.

  Thinking that good advice, I wandered out with Sarah and asked, “Wanta get laid?”

  She stopped and did a double take, then said, “Why, Mr. Romantic, I thought you would never ask. You must be overwhelmed by my feminine charms.” She held up a palm. “Don’t explain. I would rather keep my illusions.”

  “Wise woman,” I acknowledged.

  “Where do you plan to conduct our tryst? The barracks is full of people playing poker, shooting craps, and listening to Barry Soetoro on the radio, and I’m not doing it in a pickup truck, period.”

  “I was thinking of walking a little way up into the woods and finding a leafy glade that we could remember fondly all our days.”

  “You animal! Lead on.” She placed her hand in mine.

  Apparently some other couples had similar ideas, so we had to go a bit further uphill into the woods than I wanted. It was so dark we tripped over tree roots twice.

  When we thought we had a private spot free from brush and snakes, we sank to the ground. “Ooh,” she said as she ran her hand around, “moss covered with sticks and stones and spiders. I’ve always dreamed of getting laid on a bed of moss, our very own private bower of carnality.”

  “I’ll bet,” I said, and got busy brushing the debris off the moss.

  Hours later gently pattering raindrops woke us. The night was as black as the inside of a coal mine but a lot noisier, what with drops loudly whacking leaves, which were beginning to drip on us. Sarah and I hurriedly put on our clothes and threaded our way through the trees downhill toward the barely visible lights of the camp.

  When we got back to our barracks we were a little damp, so we hung our trousers and shirts and web belts on the posts at the end of the bunk and both of us crawled under my blanket. When I woke up, it was dawn and Sarah was still sound asleep in my arms.

  Other people were stirring, but they studiously ignored us.

  Jake Grafton came thumping in. I pretended to be asleep. He shook my shoulder anyway and said, “Come on, Tommy. See you at the plane in fifteen minutes.”

  “Yessir.”

  Grafton was adding a quart of oil to the Cessna’s engine when I came walking up. I put my M4 carbine and a little bag of extra loaded magazines and a dozen grenades in the plane. The sun was trying to come up under a high overcast. The earth smelled of late summer, pungent, fertile, and hinting of fall. The temperature was in the fifties so my sweatshirt felt good. Truly, we had a marvelous piece of the planet.

  I stood there inhaling it all and watching the sun fire the tops of the trees as Grafton finished his preflight. I could hear the PA system squawking, wakening the troops. I had been hesitant to wake Sarah so I didn’t kiss her goodbye; now I wished I had.

  “You ready?” he asked.

  “I suppose.”

  We got aboard and put on seat belts and headsets, and he fired up the engine. It caught on the first crank, and the prop spun into a blur with a nice little roar, blasting the morning dew from the windscreen. I checked the fuel gauges on the butts of both wings: we were full.

  There was no wind, so after waiting a moment for the engine to warm and doing a short run-up and mag check, we were rolling down the runway. The tail came up and in less time than it takes to tell, we were airborne. Out over the camp and the trees, climbing into that morning sky between the low green mountains, then turning eastward into the morning sun.

  He gave me a brief on the ICS. “We’ll check the roads the two columns are going to take, then we’re going to Washington.”

  “I thought we were the eyes of the army?”

  “For a little while. Then we have places to go, things to do, people to see.”

  “Right.”

  “It’s a great morning to fly,” he said. That was Jake Grafton. He was wearing a little smile.

  After an hour in the air, he reported on his handheld to the generals. No ambushes were evident. We did find a couple of campsites in the woods, but apparently the people there were refugees from the cities. Fires were giving off smoke, and we saw no evidence of heavy weapons. Our scouts would see the smoke and be forewarned.

  Then Grafton set a course to the east. No low clouds, excellent visibility, so he climbed to four thousand feet. Soon Leesburg came into view, and a few moments later the long runways at Dulles airport.

  The C-17 Globemasters landed one after the other at LaGuardia airport in Brooklyn. There were no flight plans, of course, since the FAA was out of action because the power was out, but these were air force planes on official business, so they landed and that was that.

  The ground controller parked the four giant cargo planes on the cargo ramp, appropriately enough, and the loadmasters and their soldier passengers got busy offloading the trucks. Also on the trucks were little cargo donkeys driven by gasoline engines, just in case.

  The caravan got itself arranged, the soldiers got their weapons and got into cabs and on the backs of the trucks, two armed guards were posted at each plane, and the fliers stayed with their steeds. The rest of the hardy band of adventurers set off through the wilderness of Brooklyn toward Manhattan.

  The place reminded JR Hays of Baghdad. Trash was everywhere, windows were broken out, and knots of idle young men congregated on corners, looking like packs of feral dogs. Few women could be seen, and those that were, were always walking with several men. Carcasses of burned-out cars sat pushed to the side of the street. Other cars had been stripped of wheels and even doors.

  None of the stoplights worked, which didn’t matter because there was little traffic, probably because there was little or no fuel available, so the caravan rolled steadily at twenty-five miles an hour onto the main thoroughfares that led to the bridge into Manhattan.

  He looked at his watch. At least this Wednesday, the seventh of September, there weren’t a couple million commuters and an endless stream of over-the-road tractor-trailers and local trucks fighting to get into Manhattan. The roads were essentially empty, with pieces of cars strewn randomly that the army trucks had to drive around. Wrecks were abandoned against the median barriers. It looked to JR as if Barry Soetoro had finally managed to choke America, and it was dying.

  It was ten minutes before nine. His convoy would arrive at the bank a few minutes after the hour. He straightened his uniform, the dress uniform of a lieutenant general in the United States Army. He had given himself a promotion. He had used his own ribbons on his left breast, which was a dazzling collection for a twenty-year light colonel, but rather sparse for a three-star. JR doubted that the bankers had met many three-stars in full regalia.

  As the truck rumbled along, he sat in the right seat on the lead truck praying that the Bank of Manhattan was going to be open today. If it weren’t, this trip would be nothing but two airplane rides and a short jaunt on abandoned highways and streets.

  From the right seat of the Cessna buzzing over suburban Virginia, I didn’t see any airliners in the air, but I saw a bunch parked around the terminals at Dulles. Every gate was full and the ramps were crowded.

  We flew on. The Washington Monument rose like a finger ahead of us. Grafton flew toward it. What a view that was, with the Potomac winding into town, the Lincoln Memorial, the Capitol Building, th
e White House, the Jefferson Memorial, and the long slash of the Mall.

  I was nervous. I figured someone might decide to take a pot shot at us with anti-aircraft artillery or a surface-to-air missile, but apparently not. The streets looked almost deserted, yet the Mall and area around the White House certainly weren’t. People everywhere, a sea of people.

  Grafton swung the airplane to fly around the White House counterclockwise, with the good view on his side. But I could see plenty. Uniformed police and cops in riot gear were arranged outside the fence that encircled the executive mansion. They faced a sea of people, ten, perhaps twenty thousand flooding toward the White House. It was the damnedest sight I ever saw.

  Books have been written about what was going on in the White House that morning of the seventh day of September, about how the president and his advisors and staunchest legislative allies weighed options and tried to figure out what to do next. At the risk of stating what you already know, I will summarize by telling you that Barry Soetoro was in denial, according to later accounts, and so were Al Grantham and Sulana Schanck. They raved about the treason of the military, demanded summary executions.

  The vice president thought the mob outside could be handled by the Secret Service and police riot squads, augmented if necessary by fire trucks with high-pressure nozzles. He urged calm and assured everyone who would listen that America’s progressives and people of color would ignore the crap spewing over the radio (and now some television stations), and support their president with their lives, if necessary. According to an account written by a senator, a delegation from Capitol Hill tried to warn the president that the fury of the American people was real and widespread, and had been dismissed as traitors for their pains.

  Of all that drama Grafton and I were blissfully ignorant. After Grafton had made two complete circles, he leveled the wings and aimed the plane across the river toward the Pentagon, that massive stone structure between the Potomac and Reagan National Airport.

  Grafton circled the Pentagon, eyeing the vast parking lot. On his second circuit, I had a good view of armed soldiers, machine-gun nests, military vehicles, and tents. We were only a few hundred feet above the parking lot by then, but no one started shooting.