Liberty's Hammer

by Reed Hill

  A deluge of thoughts flooded Callie's mind. We didn't expect the elections to be certified this soon. We haven't even gotten into pre-trial motions at all. We're getting into Subdivision argument before we do anything else. What will happen if we say 'the people of the State of Texas'? Is Hutchins inviting us to say something else or warning us not to try to? She was suddenly glad she didn't have the big job and leaned over to Meacham and scratched on his legal pad, "Where's he's going with this?"

  "Not sure," Meacham wrote back underneath. "I may have to dance here."

  Maria Baracho rose, straightened her suit, and stuck her chin out, "Maria Baracho for U.S. Attorney General Rosa Ross-Brown and other named defendants, if it please the court." With a quick nod, she sat back down in the mesh-backed steel chair.

  "Thank you, Ms. Baracho." Judge Hutchins then looked over to Meacham and Callie Morgan. "And now for the plaintiff."

  Meacham and Callie rose, and Meacham smoothed his suit jacket, "If it please the court, I'm William S. Meacham, and this is Callista Morgan representing the people of Texas, as identified in the initial complaint, as the State of Texas."

  The judge shifted in his seat and frowned, "Now Mr. Meacham, based on the resolution and orders of the Secretary of State just entered into the record, it is unclear to me who you are representing."

  "We're here for the people of the state of Texas, your honor," Meacham turned up his palms, and then rolled the proverbial dice. "And at this time, we would move that you dismiss the case, as the people of the State of Texas as defined by Secretary of State, have no substantive interest in Border Reinforcement, as they have no border to protect and defend. The border exists only for the states of West Texas and South Texas-"

  "Your honor, I object," visibly red-faced, Maria Baracho stood up rapidly and threw up both of her hands. "Your honor, I strenuously object to this. Plaintiff's counsel is offering motions out of order and using irrelevant distinctions, in the eyes of the federal government."

  Callie was stunned that Meacham played the motion, right out of the gate. He didn't lack guts, that much was certain. She didn't suppose you got to first chair anywhere by lacking in them. Callie allowed herself a little smile to cover her trepidation.

  Judge Hutchins banged his gavel loudly, in part to gain order over the rising din of discussions in the gallery, "I will need to see counsel in chambers, now."

  *****

  Three Eagles Ranch

  Outside of Hunt, Texas - July 5th, 2017 - 1:12 p.m.

  Brodie pulled down the long driveway and stopped in front of the unattached three-car garage. He looked up at the window over the automatic double door at the room he had made into a separate office area – sometimes it was good to just be able to be in a different room from Sara and the kids, if he was home and had to take an important phone call, or needed some quiet time. The light was on up there and he wondered why. He had a bottle of the good stuff in his desk, but he brushed the thought away when he saw little Jack appear in the window and wave.

  Kirk Thompson, Mark Simmons and Joe Calderon headed toward the house, toward the door to the kitchen, and Brodie walked through the garage and up the stairs at the back. Jack and Sam were waiting for him in the doorway, and greeted him with a loud "Daddy!" as he bounded up the stairs. They wrapped themselves around him like constrictor snakes as he hobbled into the big room and fell to the old couch that sat under the sloping roofline of the long narrow room.

  "What are you doing up here?" Brodie gave Sam's blond head a rough rub.

  "We were waiting for you." Sam pushed his dad's hand away from his head. He had been telling Brodie for the last year that he was too old for the noogie treatment. Brodie swore than turning ten gave the kids a whole different level of attitude.

  "Mom told us to pray for you, and her too," Jack looked up from the floor, tugging on his dad's boot. "And it's always quieter up here."

  Brodie thought to himself how good advice that was, but he and God hadn't been on the best of terms the past few years. He had kept going to church with Sara, but it wasn't a secret that his heart wasn't in it. Brodie knew he was lost, and he needed Sara and the kids more than ever. They were really the only things keeping him going these past few years, since the economy couldn't seem to recover and it was harder than ever to make ends meet. The Army was that to him in the past, but he had seen enough lives lost for obscure, misguided or dubious goals set by politicians. So many young men dead on foreign soil, some of them under my orders and supervision. Where was God in all that?

  "Dad?" he felt a tap on his shin. He looked down to see Jack tapping his leg. "Hey, Dad. I don't want to go to Grandma Jean's and Grampa Ed's."

  "Me neither." Sam was blowing on his hand and making what could have been airplane movements or bird swaying in the wind. "It's not very fun there. Grampa Ed is kind of…grouchy."

  Sara's parents were great people, but they were wound pretty tight. They often joked about mellowing at some point with age, but Ed was always so serious and Jean so meticulous and a bit critical. Ed had just retired from his financial planning practice over in Austin, where he'd been just successful enough to resent Brodie not wanting his advice.

  "Well, let me see what I can do about that," Brodie got himself out from under the weight of his boys and made for the stairs. "No promises, though. You know how mom can be when she makes up her mind."

  Brodie heard the groaning "yeah" from the boys as he went down the steps, wondering what Sara was up to with her parents. They had always been quite involved with her and the kids, and it hadn't caused big problems in the past. Brodie had always considered it to be garden variety in-laws meddling that every guy dealt with, but he admitted he had felt a growing concern lately. It was probably justified.

  He came in the kitchen and the guys were already around the kitchen table drinking from large glasses, and pouring more diet soda in their mugs. Joe Calderon had his head in the fridge, "I'll get out some of this lunch meat. Kirk you get the bread out."

  Mark Simmons got up, "I'll get some paper plates and chips from the pantry." He pointed back toward the bedrooms and mouthed something he couldn't make out. After two tries which received only a frown and a wrinkled brow from Brodie, Simmons gave up and turned his attention to the pantry, "You all want barbeque or sour cream and onion?"

  Brodie hastily made his way through the big hearth room, past the dining room down the hall where the bedrooms were, "Honey," he scratched his beard. "Sara, are you back here?"

  He heard her call out "yes, in the back," just as he hit the doorway to their bedroom. When Brodie entered, he saw the big gray suitcase on the bed and two more little bags sitting on the stone fireplace. Sara emerged from the walk-in closet folding a blouse and setting it firmly in the big suitcase. Without looking at Brodie, she spun and returned again to the closet, and he could hear the clicking of hangers.

  "Sara, what's going on?" Brodie moved to the closet and rested his hand on the top of the door. "Sam and Jack said something about going your parents' house."

  "Yeah," she brushed past him and set several skirts and blouses still on their hangers on the bed and started taking them off and packing them neatly.

  "Why now?" Brodie put his hands on her shoulders, and she kept working on getting the clothes packed. "You know how much I need you."

  She spun toward him looking up at him, their faces only a few inches apart, "Nick, I just can't do this anymore."

  "What are you talking about?"

  Her eyes were welling up with tears, and she reached down below the bed. "Well this for one," she thrust the empty whiskey bottle from this morning into his hands. "And this gallivanting around the countryside getting shot at for another. I spoke to Mary Simmons."

  "I was going to tell you--" Brodie tried to grab her hands, but she resisted and went into the closet again.

  "You promised you had quit drinking. You even told Pastor Everson that you were done with it – I believed you. I got my nursing license renewed
last month. I'm taking the kids to mom and dad's while you decide if you're going to be a real husband and father."

  "But Sara, listen to me...."

  "But Sara nothing," she ripped a blouse off its hanger in the closet and stomped toward the bed. "And now, with all this violence, you're out running around shooting up the county and these thugs. It's like you have some kind of death wish. They tried to kill the Governor and the U.S. Attorney General was killed this morning in Austin. Phoenix is under attack just like here. Bombings in Chicago and San Francisco, and rioting in Atlanta, St. Louis–"

  Brodie blocked out all the questions he had about these other places and focused hard on her, "That's not it, Sara, really. I know I've been drifting on you and the kids the past few years, but things are going to get better, I promise."

  "All your promises… I just don't think I can deal with them anymore. The world is coming apart at the seams and you're telling me we're going to be better."

  "Sara, this time it is different," Brodie calmed himself, despite the hurricane that was going on inside of him. "I know that things are bad right now out there – but in here, you and me, they haven't changed. We're still us – the same people."

  "I don't know, Nick," Sara had tears flowing down her cheeks. "You've had a rough time since getting out of the Army. I know that. But it's been ten years, Nick." She raised her hand as if to touch his face, but stopped short and made a tight fist instead, closing her eyes. "I'm doing my part to help us work through it. But I can't deal with the drinking and the lying. I need honesty at the very least."

  "I know, honey," Brodie moved back closer to her, and she didn't move. "When this is all over, I'm going to make a new start. We, us, we can make a new start together."

  "You've said that before," she shouted through the tears. "It's not enough. It's just not enough this time."

  "But I really need you right now." Brodie moved in tighter toward her. "You mentioned the Governor."

  "Yeah, so what about him?" Sara wiped the tears from her eyes.

  "Someone did try to kill him, and a guy that works for him called me. Sergeant Doyle, from my second deployment."

  "No way, Nick Brodie," Sara threw her hands in the air and started to pace away from him. "Not a chance, not in a million years."

  "Wait a sec," Brodie tried to get her to stop by standing in front of the closet door. "It's not what you think."

  "I don't want you doing anything with a Governor who is being shot at. No way. Are you trying to get yourself killed?"

  "No." Brodie's voice was soft and eyes fell to the beige shag carpet. "I thought I was trying to do the right thing, protecting people, our little part in this God-forsaken world."

  "I lived all those years not knowing if you were going to come home. All those nights laying awake at night, wondering if you were dead." She stared him in the eyes, "I'm not starting all that over, just so you can feel alive again."

  "He's coming here – the Governor," Brodie's tone was low and he grabbed the bridge of his nose, looking down at his dirty boots. "They're coming here to lay low for a little while."

  "No way, Nick. Just look at this place! It's a mess. And now you're telling me the governor of Texas is coming to stay here? Do you have any idea how that is going to look? How embarrassing it will be for me. The looks I'm going to get at church, and in the homeschool group, when my friends realize the governor had to stay in this rattrap?"

  “It’ll be fine.”

  "No way." She grabbed his arm. "You just call them and tell them to turn around. They can find someone else's home to lay low in."

  “But Sara, they'll be here probably in ten or fifteen minutes.”

  She threw her hands up in the air and stormed out of the room, slamming the door behind her. Brodie wondered what he had gotten himself into. Was she really leaving? He breathed deeply before following her into the hallway. Once there, he heard shuffling sounds coming from the guest bedroom.

  She was putting new linen on the guest bed violently tearing off the old sheets.

  “I thought you were leaving.”

  “With the Governor coming to my home, you’re dreaming. Someone has to be here to make sure everything gets handled properly. I’m can’t leave that to you.”

  She closed her eyes and breathed deeply gathering herself before looking up at him. “See, I’m a sweet southern lady. Butter won’t melt in my mouth, but you, my friend will be sleeping in the yard for at least a year. Get ready to pitch your tent, buddy.”

  *****

  Downtown - New Executive Office Building

  Washington D.C, - July 5th, 2017 - 1:25 p.m.

  Arthur Burke walked through the door opened for him by the secretary and thanked her blithely. Jim Douglas, the hawkish CIA Director, the portly Carol Shalitino, Homeland Security Director, and U.S. Army General Marvin Williams, Vice Chairman of the Joint Chiefs all rose to greet him. Shalitino was surprisingly underdressed for the meeting, wearing a khaki slacks and light blue polo over her considerable belly. She ran her fingers through her short, gray, masculine hair and placed her hands on her lap. Douglas eyed Burke with his hawkish face and extended his hand on a gangly arm to him as the FBI Director entered the room. Only about fifty, Douglas was considered a rising star in the Democratic Party. Behind the large dark cherry desk, the Director of National Intelligence Peter DiNardo also stood and moved around his desk, extending his hand to Burke as he finished greeting the others, "Arthur, thanks for coming. Please have a seat," he motioned to the long red couch where Williams sat in his crisp olive uniform adorned with ribbons.

  DiNardo was a swarthy man, about sixty, with thinning salt-and-pepper hair slicked back like a New York attorney, appearing at ease in his expensive suit among the government's elite. He adjusted the rimless glasses and brought the pleasantries to a close. He got to the business at hand as he sat in the large white chair opposite the desk, "Thanks everyone for being here, especially you, Marvin for sitting in for the SecDef. Secretary Jabarra is over the Atlantic and will be back around five or six tonight. We're looking at a number of very serious situations. The president is on her way to the White House on Marine One as we speak, and I need to have a recommendation for her in when she arrives at the White House at two-thirty. Carol, give us a breakdown on the incidents that we know about as of now."

  The DHS boss inched forward on the couch and consulted her tablet, which sat on the table in front of her, "Right now we're dealing with a number of separate incidents which have occurred over the past twelve hours, in rough chronological order:

  U.S. Attorney General shooting in Austin, Texas

  The shooting of the Governor of Arizona at a speech in Tucson

  Border breaches at four points in Texas, and separate breaches in Arizona, in New Mexico, and in California

  Explosions at a biking race in Portland, Oregon. At the start of the national Race Across America - over three hundred dead and more than one-thousand injured

  Bombing of the Transamerica Building in San Francisco - details are emerging but we have at least one hundred dead there

  Rioting for the Justice For America movement in New York, Los Angeles, St. Louis, and Atlanta are decidedly more violent in the past twenty-four hours

  Bombing of the Naval base in Norfolk

  The Stock markets have closed for the day prematurely - no word if they plan to open tomorrow

  The Governor of Texas was the target of an apparent assassination, which left the U.S. Attorney for the Western District of Texas dead

  Shalitino moved back on the sofa and pinned her knees together, placing her hands in her lap again, "Details emerging on that last incident. It's rather unclear who was shooting at whom, as FBI agents report they exchanged gunfire with Texas state troopers guarding the Governor. Bottom line is we have three FBI agents dead at the scene and one in serious condition at a local hospital and the Governor of Texas is resisting the subpoena to explain the Texas Subdivision."

  "Thank you, Carol,
" DiNardo put one leg over another and adjusted his glasses higher on his face. "Is that everything?"

  "It's what I have in front of me right now, Peter," The DHS Director's tone was brusque, sour.

  "Our cyber-security unit reports intermittent blackouts on both the Pacific northwest and the eastern seaboard that suggest planning and coordination." CIA chief Jim Douglas referenced his notes. "Origins trace back to China and North Korea. These cyber-attacks may help explain how the Norfolk Naval station bombing had been successful." He shot the DHS director an upraised eyebrow, which she deflected with the wave of her hand. "The cyber-attacks look serious – not the normal 'kid in the basement' nonsense. That's all I have to add, Peter."

  "Right, thanks Jim. DIA Cyber-warfare division has confirmed the Chinese and North Korean hack of the grid in Seattle and Portland. DIA has heard rumblings about ChiCom sleeper agents as well, so we'll need to keep an ear to the ground on that. Jim, perhaps you can work the phones on that for us." DiNardo smoothed the crease in his pant leg and glanced at CIA Director Douglas with a detached look. "Internationally, we're looking at the same situations from Sunday's Presidential Daily Briefing: the Chinese exercises off the coast of Guam, the North Koreans readying a second ballistic missile test for the month, which could come any day, the Israeli-Iranian conflict is heating up near the Golan Heights, the civil war in Mali, a number of minor conflicts in India and Pakistan, as well as the requisite dozen small tribal disputes in sun-Saharan Africa."

  DiNardo paused and then sighed, "By far the most distressing situation is the development that Arthur just told me about prior to coming over. This involves the TALON experimental tactical nuclear weapons being worked on at Los Alamos and Alamogordo. Do I have that right, Arthur?"