Liberty's Last Stand

by Stephen Coonts

  In California, the Mexican Army had been driven out, but Mexican gangs and their radical supporters were now engaged in a civil war against everyone else. They had supported the Mexican Army, and now were fighting for an independent Mexican Southern California they planned to call Aztlan. They were being crushed, but Southern California, and Los Angeles in particular, would never be the same again. Television cameras lingered lovingly on columns of smoke rising over the LA basin.

  In Mexico, another civil war had broken out. The reasons seemed to be manifold: the flood of illegals back to Mexico, Texas closing the border, the failed invasion of California (some said at the behest of the drug lords), and massive unemployment. The good news was that without the United States as a safety valve, Mexico was finally going to have to come to grips with poverty, monopoly, corruption, and lack of opportunity for most of the people who lived within its borders.

  The violent death of Barry Soetoro had, as Jake Grafton feared, transformed him into a cultural icon among certain groups. His sins were forgotten in the pathos of his demise. Bogus eyewitness accounts aired between newscasts. Mickey Soetoro publicly and loudly blamed “white people.” A waitress at a truck stop told us that Oprah was in tears for her entire show. All this despite the fact that the conversations Sarah captured in the White House in which Soetoro plotted to become a dictator were still airing on some radio stations.

  We had been on the road for four days when we rolled into Idaho. We examined the brochures at a visitor’s center and signed up for a float trip down the Salmon, the River of No Return. That took six wonderful days under a September sky. The nights were spent camping on a beach, and the days riding the river with a guide who paddled occasionally while Sarah and I fished the riffles and rapids for steelhead going upriver to spawn. We actually caught several good ones, which we immediately released back into the river.

  The whole experience was magical. The canyon was wild and glorious, the eternal river flowing through rapids and down long, languid stretches, then through more rapids. We saw mule deer and coveys of chukar. Eventually we ended up on the Snake and spent a day drifting with the current to the pullout. People along the banks of the Snake on farms and in yards waved to us.

  Sarah and I were laughing and smiling when the experience was over. America was still here, still glorious.

  After another week of driving through the mountains, we ended up in Idaho Falls. That evening we finally turned on the television to a news channel and began catching up.

  A constitutional convention had been announced. Jake Grafton was on television with the leaders of the House and Senate asking the governors of states both in and out of the Union to send delegates. He finished with this statement: “I think a great many people feel that the constitutional mandate for separation of powers between the three branches of government, and between the states and the federal government, got badly warped through the years. We hope a convention can fix that, especially by putting more teeth into the Tenth Amendment.”

  Grafton continued, “The judges decided the interstate commerce, due process, and some other clauses were loopholes big enough to swallow the states and give the federal government control of every aspect of American life. That control was not exercised by Congress, an institution totally inadequate for the task, but by unelected, unaccountable bureaucrats, sometimes controlled by the executive but often controlled by no one at all. That has to change. I don’t know what devices the convention delegates will come up with to harness the Cheshire Cat, but they can try or fail or surrender, as they choose.

  “The delegates may also choose to revise our democratic institutions to make them more efficient and responsive to the electorate.

  “What is not on the table are the basic civil rights we Americans as a free people enjoy. We are seeking new ways to preserve those rights, not diminish them.

  “If the delegations do their jobs well, we will have added safeguards to preserve liberty, the rights of the states, and the freedom of the people. It is my hope that the states that have declared their independence will return to the family of states that we call the United States, a family that has provided shelter and livelihoods for a free people for over two centuries, and I believe, with tweaking, can shelter us and our descendants for many more.

  “May God bless a restored and reunited America.”

  After the speech a commentator appeared on camera. I stared. Yes, it was Jack Yocke, clean-shaven, with a haircut, wearing a suit and tie. He was now the network’s expert on all things Grafton.

  Jack Hays was next.

  “Texas is getting its act together,” he said. “We are in talks with Oklahoma, New Mexico, and Arizona to form some kind of federation. How that will work out, I don’t know, but I am encouraged. The illegals who don’t speak English and have no job skills are going back to Mexico; we have about two thousand families a day moving to Texas to find jobs, families that do speak English and have trades and job skills to support themselves and make positive contributions to the economy and tax base. We are reforming the education system, training Americans, and putting them to work. Texas has a bright future.”

  When we turned off the television in the wee hours of the morning, Sarah asked, “So what are we going to do with our lives?”

  “I don’t know,” I replied, truthfully.

  “We can’t keep doing nothing.”

  “I know.”

  “I want to go home,” she said.

  The following day we pointed the truck east. The highways were more crowded, almost back to normal, I thought, and every filling station and truck stop had gas and lots of customers.

  Four days later we rolled into West Virginia and stopped by the safe house near Greenbank. Dr. Proudfoot was there making a house call. Mrs. Price sat on the porch with a jacket around her shoulders and a blanket over her legs enjoying the fall colors, which I thought were near their peak. Little Sarah threw herself at Big Sarah, and Armanti Hall shook my hand until I had to jerk my appendage out to save it.

  “I thought you were boogying off to Texas,” I said, flexing my fingers.

  “Gonna stay here and rebuild Mrs. Price’s house. Then the three of us are going to live in it.”

  “Got enough money for lumber, toilets, and pipes?”

  “I have a little saved up,” he said, looking down his nose at me. “Need a loan?”

  “Ah, right now, no. But if in the uncertain and unpredictable future I unexpectedly find myself in a fiscal hole, I know where to find you.”

  “Right up the road. We should be in by spring.”

  “It’s great to have friends.”

  “So they say.”

  We drove on to Washington and stopped in front of the lock shop. We went in, and there sat Willie the Wire Varner.

  “Where the hell you been?” he demanded. “I thought you two were dead.”

  “Still kicking,” I said. “What happened to you after the battle of Kingwood?”

  He said he had hitchhiked back to Washington. “I’m no warrior,” he declared defensively. “Ain’t got it in me.”

  This was the Willie Varner I knew and liked.

  We were catching up, telling him of our adventures and listening to him describe his odyssey back to Washington, when my cell phone rang.

  I looked at the caller ID—Jake Grafton—and answered it. “Hey.”

  “Tommy, where are you?”

  “In Washington.”

  “Good. Come see me tomorrow. I need you.”

  “See you where?”

  “Callie and I are bunking at the White House temporarily.”

  “Okay.”

  “I want you to go to Europe. Some of the Middle East refugees flooding in there turned out to be jihadists, which seemed to surprise the Europeans. Maybe you can help keep us advised of what’s going on.”

  “See you tomorrow.”

  I hung up.

  Sarah looked at me and raised her eyebrows.

  “Jake Graft
on,” I said. “He wants me to go to Europe.”

  “It’s about time,” she said, and smiled.