by Jeff Nesbit
I looked out over the parade of horses walking along with their handlers, trying to find the colors Jude had selected for Asher Racing. I found the black, red, and gold through the throng of people and gazed at the magnificent bay colt as it seemed to dance lightly alongside its walker.
“So what is the story behind the horse you bought?” I asked him.
“He’s from Alydar,” Jude explained.
“And who’s that?”
“Alydar finished second to Affirmed in all three Triple Crown races. He was probably the greatest horse in history never to win even a single Triple Crown race. He lost all three races to Affirmed by a total of less than two strides. The last race, the Belmont, was probably the greatest horse race of all time. Affirmed and Alydar battled neck and neck all the way down the stretch until Affirmed surged ahead right at the end to win the Belmont and go into the history books. No one knew, at the time, that decades would go by without another Triple Crown winner.”
“And if Affirmed hadn’t been racing that year …” I mused.
There was a sudden commotion on the grounds. Walkers for two of the horses had drifted too closely to each other on the grounds. Both horses had flared their nostrils, then one started to rear. The handlers struggled mightily to keep their two horses under control. Both horses were expending a great deal of energy in this prerace dance.
“So stupid.” Jude shook his head. “Their handlers should know better, though it hardly matters with those two—they’re both going off at forty or fifty to one.” He glanced over at our horse, walking off by itself, away from the other horses. It looked regal.
“Ours looks different—calmer,” I said.
“That’s because I hired the best training staff in the racing world. I spared no expense. We have the best trainer in the business and the hottest jockey right now.”
“I know.” I laughed. “Not that it matters.”
Jude smiled at me as we leaned casually on the railing that surrounded the parade grounds. “But to answer your question—yes, if Affirmed hadn’t been racing that year, there’s a good chance that Alydar would have won the Triple Crown. It was just his bad luck that he came to the track the same year as Affirmed.”
Now my brother’s actions were starting to make sense. I knew Jude and his knack for telling a great story that everyone understood at a gut level. “That’s why you named him Alydar’s Ghost,” I said softly. “If he wins today …”
“Then every sportswriter in America will bring back that historic duel between Affirmed and Alydar,” Jude said, his voice rising with excitement. “It will be a huge story.”
“Like Alydar riding again.” I chuckled.
“And winning the Triple Crown, like he should have a generation ago.”
“And you’re sure he’s going to win?” I pressed.
“We’re making some necessary moves to make certain.” Jude looked off to his left. “See that horse, the one with the white and blue colors? That’s the favorite on the board right now. It’s won three graded stakes in a row and is going off at six to five right now.”
I started to raise my hand to point at the horse.
Jude grabbed my arm and held it in place. “Don’t. That would call attention to what’s about to happen.”
We turned our attention back to the horse with blue and white. Most of the onlookers were still watching the two long shots prance and rear on the opposite side of the parade grounds. So we were among the few who saw a big, ugly, black vulture-like bird swoop down from the peak of one of the nearby barns. It almost collided with the horse in blue and white before veering off, heading away from the grounds, and disappearing behind another barn. The horse spooked terribly and then stumbled just as badly. The walker panicked, and the horse stumbled again before the walker was able to get him under control again. Even from here, I could see what had happened. The horse’s right foreleg had hit the ground awkwardly. It was now favoring it slightly as it walked.
“Takes care of that,” Jude said, nodding to no one in particular.
“Just like that?” I asked.
“Racehorses have delicate legs. It doesn’t take much to cause trouble to them.”
I already knew the answer, but I asked it anyway. “And I’m assuming that wasn’t a bird? And that you have more of those things waiting in the wings to make certain events go your way?”
Jude didn’t answer the question but pushed back from the railing. “Okay, ten minutes to post. Time to take our place in our celebrity owners’ box and get ready to watch history being made.”
Alydar’s Ghost won the Kentucky Derby by three lengths, going away. The prerace favorite, the horse with the blue and white colors, pulled up a bit lame about three-quarters of the way through the race and finished well back in the pack. Two of the other favorites had what the handicappers called “rough trips”—one veered wide for some unexplained reason around the far turn and a second stumbled against the railing without provocation. There was no race inquiry afterward.
Just as Jude had predicted, every single sportswriter seized immediately on the storyline. ALYDAR RIDES AGAIN! screamed the headline on the top of the Daily Racing Form. There was massive speculation about whether Alydar’s Ghost would right the wrong that so many racing fans still remembered from the Affirmed-Alydar duels.
And Jude was right there at every step, calmly telling the story about how he’d been enthralled with the hope—the mere possibility—that he’d once seen in the young yearling at the Keeneland sales.
“I fell in love with Alydar’s Ghost the moment I saw him,” Jude told the writer for Sports Illustrated. “And I just believed, in my heart, that Alydar’s Ghost might bring back that long-lost glory from 1978.”
“So you truly believed that Alydar’s Ghost might be the first Triple Crown winner in a generation?” the sportswriter asked him.
“I thought Alydar’s Ghost could right that wrong,” Jude said confidently. “And it might just happen.”
When Alydar’s Ghost won the Preakness two weeks later, the story broke out of the sports world and on to the front pages of nearly every newspaper in the world. With Jude providing colorful quotes along the way, the story about how Alydar’s Ghost just might “right the wrong” done by Affirmed way back in 1978 launched itself to the top of the public’s mind.
By the time the Belmont Stakes arrived, Jude’s winsome, smiling face had appeared in hundreds of publications alongside pictures of the now-famous descendant of Alydar. Tens of millions of people tuned in to the Belmont, nearly all hoping that Alydar’s Ghost would win and “right the wrong.”
There were so many photographers at the finish line of the Belmont on race day that they had to bring in rows of bleachers to accommodate them. Everyone wanted to be there when Alydar’s Ghost crossed the finish line first.
When they announced the horses on the track, most of the photographers turned their cameras skyward toward the owners’ boxes to capture Jude waving happily at the crowd below.
And when Alydar’s Ghost won the Belmont Stakes to become the first Triple Crown winner in a generation, Jude immediately announced, live on the network covering the race, that he would donate both the race purse as well as the proceeds from the Triple Crown purse that hadn’t been claimed since 1978 to the International Red Cross efforts in parts of the sub-Saharan that had been dealing with a three-year drought. The kid billionaire was now the quite-famous owner of a Triple Crown winner—the owner who’d found the horse to “right the wrong” as it rode to triumph and into the history books.
In one shining moment, Jude had inexplicably, seemingly against all odds, used a horse named after a famous, distant, losing legend to catapult himself into the public consciousness. It was, as Jude said, “One heckuva story.”
Chapter Nineteen
“It’s called the American Redoubt,” Frank Gore told me over th
e phone.
I was standing outside a coffee shop on the outskirts of Bozeman. Jagged mountain peaks framed the lower end of a sky that seemed bluer than I thought possible. The natural landscape literally made one stop and stare. “Redoubt?” I asked him. “Like doubting again?”
“No, nothing like that,” Frank said, laughing. “It’s a military term. It’s like a fort or a defensive system that’s actually outside a larger fort—an earth or stone barrier designed to slow down enemies as they approach the actual fort.”
“A fort outside a bigger fort?” I was confused.
“You have to go back in time a bit,” Frank explained. “Back to when forts were important, and you wanted to keep approaching armies from laying siege to it. They built additional barriers—redoubts—out of stone or brick that extended the outer perimeter of the fort itself. Redoubts could also serve as last resorts, a place of retreat in the event that the fort fell.”
“Not much good today, considering that no one builds forts anymore …”
“Hold that thought,” Frank said enigmatically. “There’s a place I want you to visit. It may surprise you a bit. But the concept of a redoubt has changed now that we’re in a time of modern warfare, where sieges don’t mean all that much in the military. Nowadays, the concept of a redoubt has more to do with a place where the remnant forces of a nation can withdraw and continue to defend themselves once the main battles have been lost. It can also be a place where these remnants pre-position themselves because they believe the main battle will be lost.”
“Where would you find these … national redoubts?”
“They tend to spring up without any planning,” Frank said. “When military forces realize that they’ve lost or that they’re about to be overrun, they fall back to a mountainous region or a peninsula with fewer borders where they can more easily defend themselves and wait. That’s the simplest way to think of it.”
“I see,” I said thoughtfully. “It’s why al Qaeda hid in the mountains in and around Pakistan? That’s the concept of a redoubt?”
“Yes and no. Al Qaeda wasn’t a remnant force holding out to try to preserve their national independence—it’s a loose confederation of jihadists and terrorist cells. But the redoubt concept is still roughly the same there—you fall back to a mountainous region where you’re harder to find and where it’s easier to defend yourself.”
I looked out at the mountain peaks off in the distance. “So this … American Redoubt? That’s the concept here? People moving out West to places like this because they believe it’s a safe haven, a retreat, where they can survive the coming apocalypse?”
“Yes, in theory,” Frank said. “It was a concept created some years ago, about a place where patriots could flee and establish a retreat—a redoubt—because they believed that America was so severely in decline that defeat and chaos were inevitable.”
“Like a final holdout for families who believe that the dollar will crash, that financial chaos and martial law will descend in the United States, and that they will be ensconced in a place where they can withstand the societal upheavals?”
“Exactly.” I could almost sense Frank smiling at the other end of the line. We’d had a number of these sorts of conversations since I’d begun to explore the hidden parts of America that I’d never even known existed. I could never tell how much of what Frank was telling me he actually believed in.
“So where, exactly, is this American Redoubt?”
“It’s mostly in just five states in the west—Montana, Wyoming, Idaho, and then just the eastern parts of Oregon and Washington, away from the big cities where the liberals have taken over.”
“Yeah, right.” I laughed. “There are Second Amendment patriots in Oregon and Washington?”
“You’d be surprised,” Frank said. “But mostly the American Redoubt is largely confined to communities throughout just the first three states I mentioned—and especially in places like Idaho and Montana.”
“So where do you live, Frank?” I asked him gently. “You’ve never said.”
“And I won’t—not to you and not to anyone else. The last thing I want is for hundreds of families to show up on my front lawn when your brother isn’t around and the dollar finally collapses. They can find their own places.”
“Yeah, they just need to read OTG?”
“Exactly. Has everything they’ll need to get situated.”
“But you’re out here, somewhere in the American Redoubt?”
“That’s a safe assumption,” Frank replied. “And you could probably find me if you tried really hard. But I’d encourage you not to. I have somewhere else that I think you’ll find a whole lot more interesting.”
“Before we get there, though, I was curious,” I said thoughtfully. “You’ve read Ayn Rand, right? Her book Atlas Shrugged?”
“Of course,” Frank said. “We all have—those of us who value our freedom and don’t trust the government to run the economy.”
“So how does all of that square with the American Redoubt? The Second Amendment. Christian militias? Libertarians who want to abolish the Federal Reserve? They’re all jumbled together, now that I’ve been around talking to folks. It’s all built on a flimsy house of cards that fears a strong, centralized national government. I don’t see any common ground between Christian patriots, as you call them, and libertarian worshippers at the altar of Ayn Rand. They have almost nothing in common other than a distrust of big government.”
“That distrust is a pretty powerful bond, wouldn’t you say?”
“Yeah, I guess,” I admitted. “It’s a powerful thing, bordering on raw hate, racism just beneath the surface, and extreme paranoia in plenty of the places I’ve visited in the last few weeks. But I still don’t see how they coexist. I don’t see any realistic way in which Galt’s Gulch could exist out here in what you call the American Redoubt.”
“Which is precisely why I want you to visit a place,” Frank said. “I’ll let them know you’re headed their way. They’ll let you in—based on my recommendation to the director—and show you the ropes. They’ll give you a tour others wouldn’t ordinarily see or even realize is there. And we’ll talk afterward. I think things will become a bit clearer after you’ve been there.”
“Will I find the Christian Brigades there?”
“Patience.” Frank laughed. “First things first.”
I took a deep breath, taking in big gulps of the cool, crisp air in what was arguably one of the most breathtaking places on the planet. “Okay, fine,” I said a bit testily. “I’ll wait. So where am I going?”
“It’s called the Fortress. You can drive there from Bozeman, up toward Kalispell and the northwest part of Montana.”
“And it’s called that—the Fortress?”
“It is, though it isn’t a city or an official name,” Frank said. “It’s just their name for the community of idealists and believers who’ve settled there.”
“Christian believers?”
“You’ll see soon enough. It’s a self-selected group of believers. They don’t exclude by race or religion. Anyone is welcome—if they are interested in what the community stands for.”
“But they’re all white, conservative Christians?” I pressed.
“Ask them yourself when you get there,” Frank said. “There were two such places in the news a few years ago when the concept was first proposed at the heart of the American Redoubt. There’s a place to the west, in the mountains at the edge of Oregon, called the Citadel. It was proposed as a gated community for Christians who wanted the ability to trust their neighbors when lawlessness and chaos descended. Guns were not only allowed—they were welcomed. In fact, the Citadel built a munitions and ammo factory inside the walls to make certain they wouldn’t run out.”
“Inside the walls of the place? They make their own guns and ammo? And DHS allows it?”
&n
bsp; “Sure, why not?” Frank said. “Guns have to be manufactured somewhere, and that’s as good a place as any.”
“I’ll bet they feel safe at the Citadel,” I joked.
“They do. Everyone knows their neighbors at the Citadel. It costs a pretty penny to buy a lot there and build your own place on the grounds. It’s a real gated community with hefty dues. They run a tight ship.”
“You’ve been there?”
“Many times,” Frank said. “They invite me in to speak there quite often, in fact.”
“So the Fortress is like that—like the Citadel?”
Frank paused briefly. “They were lumped together in the press for a bit. The media has an awfully bad habit of that—not discerning, I mean. They sound the same, they’re both in the American Redoubt, and they’re both a bit secluded and walled off from society. So they must be similar. But people forgot about it eventually. Now that the Fortress is largely built out and thriving, they don’t go out of their way to advertise themselves. But people who need to know about it find the place, visit, and even settle there.”
“They sure sound similar,” I offered.
“They aren’t. But I’ll leave it at that. Go see for yourself. They’re expecting you.”
“Are you there, Frank? At the Fortress?” I asked.
“You are relentless, aren’t you?”
I chuckled. “So I’ve been told.”
“Go see the Fortress for yourself. I’ll try to answer your questions after you’ve been there. But I think the place will make sense to you all on its own.”
Chapter Twenty
I was twenty-seven when I first met Singen Prithar. I knew immediately that he was different than the other regents who had grown to play such prominent roles in my brother’s life. Singen had a way about him that set him apart. He seemed more certain of himself, less afraid of upstaging Jude while he was in his presence.