Against All Enemies

by John Gilstrap

  Ian had been in camp now for six weeks, and this was the first burst of emotion he’d seen from Tommy. It hurt his heart. “The orders are no exceptions, son. That includes you. Hell, it includes me.” That last part wasn’t true, but he hoped it sounded convincing.

  “Please, Colonel. Please. The office doesn’t open until seven-thirty. That gives me five hours. I promise I’ll be back before then. I have to go, sir. One way or the other, I have to go.”

  Ian heard the veiled threat of desertion, but he shrugged it off. The fact of the matter was that due to their daily proximity, Tommy got away with transgressions that others would not. And that was a slippery slope. Once an officer started making exceptions based on personal preferences, the fabric of discipline unraveled.

  “Please, Colonel. I need you to do this for me. I swear to God I’ll be back early in the morning. You know you can trust me.”

  Ian looked at the kid’s eyes. Justified or not, Tommy needed this. Sometimes, good leadership required making exceptions. “Look,” he said, “I feel ridiculous standing out here in my skivvies. Follow me for a minute.”

  “But Colonel, I need to go.”

  “I hear you, Tommy, but listen to me. I need you to follow me to my quarters.” This time, he didn’t wait for an answer, but rather turned and headed back toward his open front door. He was relieved when he heard Tommy climb out and close the truck’s door. He noted, however, that the kid left it running.

  Ian entered the living room, turned on the light, and walked straight to the little desk he used for personal matters. He snatched a ballpoint and scribbled out a message. Tommy Piper, General Karras’s adjutant, has permission to leave Camp Wainwright for a short period. He will return in the morning. Refer any questions to the undersigned. Then he signed the note with a flourish.

  Tommy had come no farther than the doorjamb, but he stood in a posture that was neither relaxed nor at attention.

  “Here,” Ian said, offering him the note. “This will get you out and back in without a headache.”

  Tommy looked genuinely relieved. Emotional, even. For an awkward couple of seconds, Ian feared he might start crying again.

  “Thank you, Colonel,” the boy said. “I’ll never forget this.”

  “Forget what?” Ian said with a wink. “I’ll see you at work bright and early tomorrow morning.”

  Tommy stood there for a moment more, then snapped to attention and tossed off a picture-perfect salute. “See you tomorrow, sir.” He closed the door behind him as he left.

  It took twenty-five minutes for the doubts to materialize in Ian’s head. He’d gone back to bed and might have already been asleep when it hit him. Camp life was defined by routine, the utter lack of the extraordinary. So why was Tommy Piper, who’d never, so far as Ian knew, been contacted by this foster mother—or anyone else for that matter—suddenly contacted tonight?

  Sure, he’d said it was a medical emergency, but how can one verify such a thing? The emergency could have happened on any day or any night, but why this day and this night? Why must it come at a time when the camp was asleep and therefore most vulnerable?

  Ian tried to slow himself down. Sometimes things just happened. Emergencies by their very nature did not follow a schedule. Certainly, Tommy Piper was loyal to the cause. He was above suspicion, and as such, Ian felt anger at himself for even considering the thoughts that were troubling him now.

  But he felt what he felt. And that niggling voice in the back of his head had saved his life more than once.

  Rolling to his side, Ian turned on the lamp next to his bed and picked up the phone. He dialed a three-digit extension. On the third ring, the man on the other end said, “Duty office.”

  “It’s Carrington,” Ian said. “I want you to triple up on the guard detail tonight.”

  “Is there a problem, sir?”

  “Not officially, no. Call it an uncomfortable feeling.”

  “Want me to sound the general alarm?”

  Ian considered that. His misgivings were that strong. Absent an identifiable threat, though, it made no sense to pull everyone out of the rack and into full gear. How would he know when it was time to release them back to their quarters?

  “No,” Ian said. “Just triple the guard.”

  “Sir, are you aware that a soldier left the camp under your signature?”

  “I am,” Ian said. “Mr. Piper is a big part of my concerns.”

  “We need to take this to the FBI,” Rollins said at a whisper. They were up in Mary’s apartment, away from the others as Jonathan watched through the window for signs of this Tommy kid. “We’ve found what we needed to find. Now we need to turn it over to the professionals.”

  “You’re welcome to leave anytime you want, Colonel,” Jonathan said.

  “Oh, so we’re dick-knocking now?”

  “Keep your voice down.” Jonathan pivoted his head to look Rollins in the eye. “This is about finishing what we started.”

  “But the feds have a thousand times more resources than we do,” Rollins insisted. “Christ, they could use air power if they needed to.”

  “But they won’t,” Jonathan said. He peeked through the curtain again.

  “You can’t know that.”

  “But I do.” He turned back to Rollins. “Let me hear your pitch to the FBI.”

  Rollins looked confused.

  “You know,” Jonathan continued, “tell me what you would tell them.”

  “I’d tell them that there are a bunch of terrorists training on the top of the mountain.”

  “Who are they?”

  “What?”

  “I’m the FBI,” Jonathan said. “You’re you. Let’s do some role-play—pardon the pun.”

  Rollins’s face reddened.

  “I have a point,” Jonathan said. “Play along. Who are these terrorists?”

  “I don’t know them by name.”

  “How do you know them, then?”

  Rollins waved him off. “I’m not—”

  “You started this, Colonel. Stick with it. How do you know there are terrorists at the top of the mountain?”

  “We have evidence.”

  “And how did you get that evidence?”

  Rollins started to answer, but then the lightbulb came on over his head. “We don’t have any evidence that they could use.”

  Jonathan pointed at his nose. “Bingo. Add to that the fact that the source of our inadmissible information is the federal government’s secret Public Enemy Number One, and that whole law-and-order response gets tough.” He turned back to the window.

  Rollins was silent for the better part of a minute—Jonathan’s favorite part of that particular minute—and then he said, “You really love this stuff, don’t you?”

  Jonathan thought about ignoring the question, but it triggered something in his gut. He looked back again. “Yes and no,” he said. The man asked an honest question, so if Jonathan was going to answer, he owed him an honest answer. “I don’t love the ops. I’m past the adrenaline-junkie shit of my youth. Every time I do this, it takes longer and longer for the soreness to go away. But I do love the clarity. There are good guys and bad guys. Getting past all the relativistic crap I laid down on Mary—all of which was true—I don’t get involved in that. I am Batman, breaking all the rules for all the right reasons. I like being Batman.”

  “What does that make Big Guy?” Rollins’s eyes sparkled as he asked the question.

  “Just scary,” Jonathan said. “At the end of the day, he’s just very scary.”

  Outside, beyond the window, Jonathan heard a vehicle arrive. He spun back to the window in time to see a white, nondescript SUV pull into a parking space out front. A tall, skinny guy in a uniform spun out of the driver’s door and made a beeline for the diner’s front door.

  “Okay, team,” Jonathan said. “We’re hot.”

  Tommy Piper was at least ten years younger than Jonathan had pictured him in his mind. He was merely a boy, maybe twenty year
s old if he lied a bit. Certainly not old enough to buy a drink. The kid entered through the front door of the restaurant—clearly he had a key—and he tore up the stairs, bursting into the apartment that was Mary’s home, and that used to be his.

  “Mary?” he called. “Mary, where are—Who the hell are you?” His expression turned from fear to anger when he saw Jonathan and his team standing in a loose circle around the living room.

  “Sweetie, I’m fine,” Mary said, standing from her spot on the sofa. “I’m sorry to scare you, but it was the only way we could think of to get you to come down off the mountain for a visit.”

  Tommy’s eyes never moved from Jonathan, who had taken a position closest to the door. “Who the hell are you?”

  “That’s a little complicated, Tommy, but for now, how about you call me Scorpion?”

  “That’s not a real name.”

  “No, it’s not, but it will do.”

  Mary moved to the boy with her arms spread, ready for a hug. “I’m sorry I scared you.”

  He held out his hand and stiff-armed her in the chest. “Right,” he said. “I get that. Who the hell are these people?”

  “Will you take a seat?” Jonathan asked.

  “No.”

  Boxers slipped behind Tommy to physically block the door. It was okay if the kid didn’t want to sit, but he wasn’t going to bolt out, either.

  Jonathan shifted his weight to one side and crossed his arms. “Let me start with who we’re not. We’re not cops and we’re not FBI and we’re not any government agency who can send you to jail.”

  The words resonated with relief on Tommy’s face, giving Jonathan two data points simultaneously. The kid was aware that he was breaking laws, and he wasn’t willing to pay too high a price for breaking them.

  “But to be perfectly honest, we are very close to people who are all of that. You know that you’ve been committing the worst kind of treason up there on the mountain, right?”

  As color drained from his face, Tommy’s eyes burned right through Mary. “You brought these people into our house?”

  “She didn’t bring anyone anywhere,” Jonathan said. “We showed up on her front step and she got stuck with us.”

  “But I’m also worried about you, Tommy,” Mary said.

  Jonathan winced. Mary’s part in this drama was finished. She brought the kid to the house. Now he wanted her to shut up. He didn’t want this to get personal.

  “Who are you to worry about me?” Tommy snapped.

  “Easy, kid,” Boxers threatened. “The lady cares about you. Show some respect.”

  Tommy whirled to give Big Guy some lip, but clearly did the math and decided not to. Boxers saw it and smiled. “Smart,” he said.

  “Here’s the thing,” Jonathan said. “If we’ve done our research right—and we usually do—you and your pals up on the mountain are planning to commit murder. I confess I don’t know the details, but whether it’s one person or a thousand, someone famous or just another guy, murder is murder, and that means a quick trip to a padded table and a sharp needle. Know what I’m saying?”

  Tommy’s eyes darted all around the room. If he was planning a reply, it wasn’t finding traction in his mind.

  Jonathan continued, “Within a couple of days or a couple of weeks, it’s all going to come down around your ears. I’m certainly not going to keep your secret, and when I tell the people I intend to tell, you’ll learn a thousand lessons about what it means to piss off Uncle Sam.”

  Without thinking, it seemed, Tommy helped himself to a hard-backed chair to Boxers’ left. His color was looking progressively less right. “Are you arresting me?” he asked. His voice was barely audible.

  “You haven’t been listening,” Jonathan said. He kept his tone soft, reasonable. “I’m not a cop. I have no power to arrest you.”

  “So, what do you want?”

  “Information,” Jonathan said. “Treason Camp is ending tonight.”

  Tommy scowled as he considered the words, and then he laughed. “What are you, five people? We’ve got two hundred up there.”

  “We’re very good at what we do,” Jonathan said.

  “Nobody’s that good. Are you bulletproof, too?”

  It was a throwaway question, and Jonathan didn’t honor it with an answer.

  “I’m not a snitch,” Tommy said. “I’m not a sellout. Why should I tell you anything?”

  Jonathan had been waiting for that question, and he took his time. He grabbed the matching chair from the other side of the door and pulled it over. He spun it around so the back faced Tommy, and he straddled it. “I’m betting on the fact that you’re a survivor,” he said. “After the fan has scattered all the shit that is going to hit it, people will go to jail. People will die, and those who don’t will see their lives ruined.” He pointed at Tommy’s nose. “You’ve got a lot of life ahead of you. It’d be a shame for you to spend the next sixty, seventy years staring at the same concrete wall, only seeing the sunlight through bars or chain-link.”

  “You said you can’t arrest me,” Tommy said.

  “That’s right. But those who can are going to depend on me to point to the ones who should live in a cage. Help me out, and I won’t point to you. Help me out, and you’re free and clear.”

  Tommy shot a look to Mary. “Please, Tommy. Listen to him.”

  “How do I know I can trust you?”

  “I’d be interested in hearing all of your other options,” Boxers said.

  Tommy whirled to look at him. Look up at him.

  “I can’t,” Tommy said. “They’re my friends. My family.”

  “They’re murderers,” Jonathan said. “Did you know that your man in charge, Victor Carrington, has already murdered one man and tried to murder a second? Did he mention that to you?”

  Tommy just stared. Jonathan sensed that he was searching for an angle to work.

  “Please, Tommy,” Mary said. “You need to do the right thing.”

  “That’s what they’re doing,” he said. He slapped his thigh for emphasis. “They’re doing the right thing. They’re taking the country back from the bastards who hijacked it.”

  “The bastards who hijacked the country were elected by the people who are being hijacked,” Jonathan said. As Tommy became more agitated, Jonathan softened his voice. “Think it through. Imagine you win. Imagine the wildest win possible. Say you rally a million people to your side. Then what? What’s the next step? You kill a few politicians you don’t like, along with a couple of senators and congressmen and maybe a few judges. What happens next?”

  Tommy’s eyes darted around the room. He seemed to want to be anywhere but here. “Things . . . change.”

  “No, they don’t,” Rollins said.

  “Shut up, Madman,” Jonathan snapped. He didn’t need any help. “We’ve got a million-plus soldiers in uniform, Tommy. Thousands of federal law-enforcement officers and hundreds of thousands of police officers of various stripes. I suppose you’ll pull a few of those to your side, but not all of them. Not a quarter of them. What are you going to do with the state legislatures and the town councils and the courts? You cannot win.”

  “Then why do you care so much?” Tommy asked as if it were a killer question, an argument ender.

  “To plug the bleeding before it starts,” Jonathan said. “As bad an idea as your operation is, it can be effective enough to hurt a lot of people. It’s enough to send the economy into the toilet and create panic in the streets. If that’s the picture of victory, then you can have a victory, but you have to know that it can’t last. The American people will demand order, and sooner than later, they will all turn against you. You. Cannot. Win.”

  Tommy shook his head. “I won’t turn on my friends.”

  “Then save your friends’ lives,” Jonathan said. “You say there are two hundred of them up there. I only want one of them. As far as I’m concerned, the rest of them are free to go.”

  “You don’t mean that,” Tommy said
.

  Jonathan crossed his heart. “Hand to God. If I can get my hands on just one, then everything else falls apart and goes my way.”

  Tommy looked like he might cry. He looked to Mary, and then he looked to the ceiling. Jonathan gave him all the time he needed to sort through his options. “Take me, then,” he said.

  Jonathan smiled. He almost wanted to give the kid a hug. Greater love has no one than this, that one would lay down his life for his friends. How many times had he discovered himself in that same space? “I admire the sentiment, Tommy,” he said. “And I mean that from the bottom of my heart. But you’re not the one I’m looking for.”

  Tommy cocked his head.

  “Victor Carrington,” Jonathan said. “Him alone. I don’t need the others.”

  Tommy’s face sagged. No matter what followed—no matter what recovery Tommy attempted—Jonathan now knew that Victor Carrington was someone important. He’d mentioned the man twice, and had gotten the same reaction two times.

  “I don’t know who that is,” Tommy tried.

  “Don’t,” Jonathan said. “Don’t insult our intelligence. That’s just wrong.”

  Tommy stared.

  “You need to wrap your head around the fact that you really have no options,” Jonathan continued. “I know that sucks—even though it saves your life—but that’s the way it is. You can help us, or you can spend the rest of your life in prison. I need you to choose quickly.”

  Tommy continued to stare. It seemed to be too big for him to comprehend.

  “Listen to the man, Tommy,” Mary said. “They’re giving you a way out.”

  “I don’t want a way out. I don’t need a way out. What we’re doing is for the good of everyone.”

  “You’re going to lose,” Jonathan said. He didn’t know how he could be any clearer. “If we don’t win a total victory tonight, then the FBI and the army and God knows who else will be here within the next few hours to finish it for us. If it gets to that, you and your surviving friends—however few there are—will all go to jail.”