Foreign Enemies and Traitors

by Matthew Bracken

  “But I have no choice in—”

  “Shut up, Stanley. You’re happy to collaborate with the foreign troops, so I guess you’re profiting very nicely out of this occupation. You could even feed those two great big German shepherds, while Americans are starving all around you. It’s even nice and warm here in your house; what is it, oil heat? Well, that figures, I guess it would be. Yeah, you’re doing okay for yourself. You’re living mighty high on the hog, selling gas to foreign troops and the traitor police. But that’s okay—like you said, you have no choice. Now all we’re asking for is a little help, a tiny little patriotic gesture now and then. So that we won’t have a reason to come back here and visit you again.”

  “There’s no way, I can’t—”

  “Oh, yes you can, and you will. Stanley, think about it. These foreign mercenaries won’t be here forever. Sooner or later they’ll be gone. But this won’t ever be over for you—not if we mark you down as a collaborator. We’ll remember you for the rest of your life, Stanley, no matter what you do or where you go. Even if you move back to Illinois or try to hide somewhere else. You might not even live long enough to see the foreign mercenaries leave Tennessee. Then who’ll take care of your daughters? Maybe the foreign troops will get them, if you’re not around. Who will get your daughters if you’re gone? The Albanians? The Nigerians? The Kazaks? I hear they all like young girls, the younger the better. The Nigerians even think that screwing virgins can cure AIDS. Virgins are big magic back in Africa.”

  “Stop it!”

  “Think about it, Stanley. Think about your girls. You have to plan for the long term. You need to get on the right side of this war before it’s too late. You have to come over to the patriotic side, right here and now. Tonight.”

  “How? I can’t do what you’re asking.”

  “Don’t worry, Stanley, we won’t stop you from doing business with the foreign mercenaries. We understand, you have to live. You have your daughters to take care of. We understand that, it’s perfectly normal. We just want our fair share of the gas, and some logistical support now and then. Car parts, engine work. Tires. Things like that. Easy stuff for you.”

  Fromish was beaten. He thought rapidly while the man talked about his dogs, who were probably dead, as they claimed, and his children, who he prayed were untouched. “How will I know what you want? I don’t even know who you are.”

  “You’ll know when we send somebody to your station. They might have a ration card for two gallons, but you’ll fill them all the way up instead. You, personally, not one of your employees. Or they’ll catch you in your office, almost at curfew time. They’ll give you a sign, like this.” The man in the mask held his left hand against his chest, crossing his fingers and tapping them against his heart. “The man who makes that sign will be your contact. He’ll give you more instructions, and you’ll obey them. Later on, we might ask you to put somebody on your payroll—a mechanic. We’ll let you know who and when.

  “But if you pull anything smart, if you try any kind of double cross…then we’ll send another team right back here to your house, and we won’t be in such a forgiving mood. Remember, Stanley, you’re choosing sides, right here, tonight. Double-cross us and…well, I’m sure you love your daughters too much for that. And always keep this in mind: no matter what happens this year, or next year, or ten years from now—when this occupation is over—we’ll remember you, and the decision you made tonight. There are hundreds of patriotic Americans all around you, Stanley, and we’ll remember you. There’ll be no forgive and forget. One way or the other, we’ll all remember how you acted while Tennessee was under foreign occupation. So there’s really nothing to think about, because you don’t have a choice. You want to get on the right side of this war, don’t you?”

  “Yes, yes, of course…”

  “Good. So, you understand what we want, and how we’re going to contact you?”

  Stanley Fromish was amazed that they hadn’t dragged him out of his bed, to torture him, to force him to open his safe and hand over his thick bundles of red TEDs. Promises of future cooperation were easy to make. It was all the same to him: he cooperated with whoever was holding the guns at any given moment. “Yes, I understand. I’ll help you; I’ll be on your side.”

  “Good. Very good. We’re leaving now, but we have somebody with a night scope who will be watching you through that window—so don’t do anything stupid. Wait ten minutes, and then go check on your daughters. Lovely girls, your wife Molly must have been beautiful. Okay, ten minutes.” The two masked bandits flicked off their painfully bright lights, and Stanley Fromish was plunged into utter dark, white flares pulsing where the lights had been.

  When his eyes regained their normal functioning, he looked at his watch. Its illuminated face told him that it was 12:43 a.m. He wanted to leap from his bed and check on his children, but he looked at the open shades of his window and remembered what the man had said about a watching sharpshooter. He spent the next ten minutes horrified that the intruders might be doing terrible things to his daughters. He also considered ways to finagle the accounting on the fuel deliveries and adjust the flow meters, in order to divert gasoline off the books to whomever the masked men sent to his office. He wondered if he would have the courage to falsify his paperwork, to run bogus accounting past the military government. If he was caught, they would hang him in Jackson for black marketing or for helping terrorists. Literally hang him from the marble arch in Unity Park, where they hanged rebels, terrorists and bandits almost every Saturday at high noon. That was dead certain. But only if he was caught. On the other hand, these masked men could come back at any time, and his girls…

  At exactly 12:51 he slid out of his bed, his heart thudding, and padded silently down the cold hallway to his daughters’ bedroom with a flashlight in his hand. They shared a bedroom now, to conserve precious heat. He slowly opened their door and scanned the twin canopy beds. Grace and Emily were both sleeping, undisturbed. He walked closer, crossing the carpet in his stocking feet. Thirteen-year-old Grace was sleeping on her side, facing him, her angel eyes closed, her lips a perfect bow. Across her neck was a wide red line, and he stifled a scream with the back of his left hand. His light’s beam swung to eleven-year-old Emily, sleeping on her back across the room, and to another crimson trace across her delicate throat. He closed the gap to Grace’s bed in an instant, the light bright in her face, and she awakened and then shut her eyes tightly against the blinding glare.

  “It’s me, pumkin.”

  “Daddy? What’s wrong, Daddy?”

  Across the room, Emily stirred and rolled onto her side, facing him, her eyes opening in little blinks.

  He breathed again, kneeling by her bed, touching Grace’s throat, smearing greasy red paint—no, it was red lipstick—on his fingertips. An open tube of lipstick was standing on her little bedside table. Next to the lipstick stood a rifle bullet, copper tip over golden brass. He recognized the red lipstick by its silver-and-black cylinder; it was his wife’s, taken from atop her bureau in their bedroom. Stanley had left the bureau as it had been before she was lost in the first Memphis quake. The intruders must have been wandering freely around their upstairs bedrooms before waking him up. And that, after defeating his security systems and killing his dogs. If their intention had been to terrorize him, they had succeeded.

  “Nothing. Nothing’s wrong princess, nothing at all.” He switched off his light, leaned over and hugged her. “Nothing at all, Gracie.”

  Diverting the gasoline would be no problem. Not compared to the danger of another midnight visit from the masked men, if he failed to cooperate with them.

  3

  It was Carson’s first morning in the quarantine camp. He was already awake when he heard the national anthem playing over a distant loudspeaker at 0800 hours. Temperatures had dipped to near freezing overnight, and he had slept with his clothes over his scrubs, in a green Army sleeping bag on a cot. The cot and sleeping bag had been brought to the tent the evenin
g before, after he’d been fingerprinted and had his photo taken by a pair of MPs in masks and rubber gloves.

  He tied back the two narrow door flaps to let in some daylight; the sky was leaden and the air heavy with cold mist. Breakfast had been brought around on a handcart after reveille: oatmeal and grits in a plastic bowl, and some kind of orange drink in a plastic cup. He was told to keep the cup; he would not get a new one at each meal. In the future, his cup would be refilled from a jug on the handcart.

  He could have easily slipped away from the quarantine center overnight, but what would that have accomplished? He would still have been inside a huge military reservation, without any of the forms of identification necessary for traveling. As he paced around outside his tent, he reconsidered the wisdom of his chosen strategy. Two other options had been available to him yesterday: stay aboard the wrecked catamaran and try to find another escape vessel, or travel overland covertly, moving only at night. Well, he’d chosen a third strategy, and now he was stuck with the consequences.

  At 10:15, a camouflage-uniformed visitor approached while Carson was outside the tent doing stretching exercises. He was about Carson’s age, which meant he should have been too old to be serving in the military. The oak leaf rank on his chest indicated that he was a lieutenant colonel. The nametape over his right pocket said FOLEY and over the other pocket it said U.S. ARMY. He was wearing a black beret like most of the soldiers Carson had seen on the base. The man’s hair was just as gray as his own but a bit longer, a good inch past strict military regulation length.

  The lieutenant colonel kept a polite distance and made no offer to shake hands. Carson wasn’t offended. This was a quarantine camp, and the man wasn’t wearing a mask or gloves. He had a round, pasty face, and brown eyes beneath gold wire-rimmed glasses. He spoke slowly, as if he was addressing an utter moron. “Well, good morning, ‘John Doe.’ I’m Doctor Foley. My medics brought me up to speed on your case. I came by to check your cut, and see if you’ve regained any of your memory.”

  Like hell you did, thought Carson. But no matter the reason, the appearance of the doctor was a good sign. Carson said, “You know, I think I do remember these Army tents, and that beret you’re wearing seems sort of familiar, but that’s about all.”

  “The medics that brought you in said you had an Airborne tattoo on your arm. Army jump wings. You must have been in the service at some point. If you were in the service, then your fingerprints should be on file, though I wouldn’t be surprised if they don’t get a match. A lot of the old paper records never made it into the modern databases. But if I had to guess, I’d say you must have been in the Army to get an Airborne tattoo.”

  “I suppose so, but I’m not really sure. It’s all kind of hazy. I’ll tell you what, though: I got a flash of something when I put my cot together last night. Sort of like déjà vu.”

  “Good, that’s something at least. Somewhere to start.” The doctor paused, and then set out on a different line of conversation. “Say, I’ve got to thank you for something.”

  “Excuse me? Thank me for what?”

  “For the best cup of coffee I’ve had in months.”

  Carson kept his face blank as he replied, “Coffee?” The old peanut butter jar he’d filled with ground Brazilian coffee had been intentionally left in his pack as bait. When passing through customs he sometimes left racy magazines or a carton of cigarettes packed inside his bag. Whatever was rare, forbidden or valuable in that country—it always paid to throw the low-level inspectors a bone. Once they had their own pilfered contraband to spirit away, they were much less interested in conducting a more detailed search.

  “Best coffee I’ve tasted in years,” continued the doctor. “Sure beats the hell out of that damn chicory. I’d almost forgotten how much I love real coffee. You don’t remember how you happened to come by it? Sometimes tastes and smells can trigger memories.”

  “No, I don’t remember. I just remember waking up in a pile of wreckage, and walking out.”

  “Just waking up, and walking out?” The doctor looked skeptical.

  “That’s right.”

  “Well then, okay. Now, let me take a look at your cut.” The doctor approached to within a yard and leaned forward. “Hmm, not too bad. It’s going to be a beauty of a scar, but it’s not infected. If you let your hair grow, it should cover it up. I’ll give you a little antibacterial ointment, that’s the best I can do.”

  “Thanks.”

  “Any headaches? Blurry vision, double vision, ringing in the ears?”

  “I’ve had a headache. It comes and goes. None of the other things you said. Doctor, how long do I have to stay here?”

  “All of your blood tests were negative—normal. Usually that means you’d be able to leave in two weeks, if you don’t have any reactions to the shots they gave you yesterday. That is, medically you’d be able to leave. But you’re a tricky case.”

  “What’s that mean?”

  “You’ve got no ID. I don’t think they’ll let you go until they find out who you are. You can’t just go walking around without an ID badge. You need it to prove you’ve had all the vaccinations.”

  “I don’t see you wearing a badge, doctor.”

  “Military personnel in uniform don’t have to wear them. Our uniforms are our badge,” he stated a bit pompously. “Everybody else has to wear the badges at all times when on public property.”

  “I…see. But what if I don’t remember? What’ll I use for ID?”

  “Maybe they’ll get a hit on your fingerprints.”

  “What if they don’t?”

  “I don’t know. Let’s hope your memory returns. It usually does.”

  “So, doctor, let’s just say I do remember, what then?”

  “Well, you might be able to go home, if you remember where that is. After they check out your story. But if they charge you with traveling without identification, with being in a prohibited zone…they might sentence you to labor. To be honest, that’s probably the most likely outcome in any case.”

  “Labor?”

  “Sure, a labor battalion. Reconstruction, or maybe agriculture. That’d be my guess.”

  “What do you mean, ‘labor battalion’?”

  “If you don’t already have a critical skill or an approved job, they’ll assign you one. Reconstruction, cleanup, or farming. Depends on your age and your physical condition. If you have a skill they need, they’ll assign you. Mechanic, electrician, things like that.”

  “Whether I want a job or not, I’ll get assigned to one?”

  “That’s right.”

  “Doc, Mississippi is still in America, isn’t it?”

  “Don’t get testy—I don’t make the rules. It’s martial law, what can I say? Nobody gets a free ride. But since you’re a John Doe, you’ll stay here—at least for a while. I never heard of the tribunal charging an amnesiac, but you never know. Like I said, you’re an unusual case.”

  “Well, thanks, Doc…I guess.”

  “No problem. Odds are your memory will come back; it usually does. No doubt you’ve had a concussion, and probably some post-traumatic stress as well. I’ll check back on you in a few days.”

  “Thanks.”

  “You know, I’m 65, and you’re probably close to my age. If you earned jump wings in the Army, then you were probably in the service about the same time I was. Do you remember going to Vietnam?”

  Carson hesitated. “No.”

  “Well, I sure do. I was a door gunner on a Huey. In the 101st Airborne Division.”

  Carson let the references to Vietnam pass; it was too early for that discussion. “Doctor, if you’re 65, what are you still doing in the Army?”

  Foley laughed and rubbed his head, combing blunt fingers through his gray hair. “Great question. I was drafted last year…for the second time. Considerably older this time around! That’s one more problem with being an MD, I guess. When Uncle Sam needs you, he finds you. You might say he made me an offer I couldn’t refuse.”
The doctor gave a shrug of resignation. “So now I’m doing my patriotic duty…whether I want to or not. Just like everybody else.”

  ****

  Bob Bullard hadn’t forgotten Colonel Jibek. He hadn’t forgotten his outright refusal to conduct raids outside of Clark County, while his men were playing goat polo and chasing American girls. Well, if Jibek didn’t understand the chain of command, there was every reason to think that his second-in-command would, if an appropriate lesson was administered. There was growing pressure from above to finish the pacification and evacuation of western Tennessee, and the Kazaks were supposed to be taking the lead, not taking time off. Sidney Krantz, the president’s special adviser, was breathing down his neck to get the job finished. Krantz had been responsible for Bullard being picked to head the rural pacification program, and had let him know that he could also fire him.

  A dozen foreign contract battalions in Tennessee and Kentucky provided the fist behind rural pacification when nothing else would work. The holdouts were beginning to understand that overt resistance would result in several hundred Kazaks sweeping in to conduct massive cordonand-search operations. The horse-mounted Kazaks were particularly impresssive, galloping across the countryside on raids. The Mexicans and the other lesser troops in the North American Legion provided the manpower at the checkpoints and performed routine occupational missions.

  The foreign troops on the ground were a vital part of the force equation, the visible face of rural pacification, but the real incentive for cooperation came from the sky. When it came to instilling fear, nothing provided more bang for the buck than the UAVs. Unmanned aircraft—from airplane-sized Reapers and Predators to drones no bigger than model airplanes—kept a watchful eye above Tennessee around the clock. In the areas slated for complete evacuation, the holdouts could be located by the UAVs and targeted for special action as needed, county by county.

  While the foreign troops worked on the ground in the problematic regions, the UAVs, helicopters and fixed-wing assets were strictly an American-run show. Bob Bullard enjoyed visiting the UAV operations center in the middle of Fort Campbell. The center was only minutes away from his current residence, a four-bedroom senior officer’s house near the base’s golf course. In the UAV center, up to sixty flight technicians at any given time were busy monitoring screens, remotely flying twenty to thirty drones and keeping a watchful eye on their assigned regions. All of these flight technicians were federal agents, assigned to the task of rural pacification in Tennessee and Kentucky.