by Reed Hill
“That’s right. We’re here to help.” Brodie nodded and examining his wife’s boots. “When Jeff called, there wasn’t any question about it. We’re here to do what we can.”
“I wish more people felt that way, ma’am,” the Governor put the glass back on the coaster and sat up taller on the couch. “What we’re facing is truly an attack on our state’s border as well as the country’s. I’ve mobilized the Texas Guard to respond to this threat, and I’m going to need to run things from here for the time being.” Chase turned Doyle, “What’s out status on a working room, Jeff?”
“We’re all set up in the dining room, Governor,” Doyle pointed in the direction of the kitchen. “It’s through there. We have a landline and a laptop in there, along with a small television to monitor the national and local news.”
“Very good, thanks, everyone for moving quickly,” Lopez said as Chase rose and started toward the kitchen.
“Not at all,” Mrs. Brodie gave a touch to Lopez’s arm, “don’t give it another thought. I’m going to work here in the kitchen for a bit and make sure we have enough food and drinks. You men holler if you think you need anything.”
Doyle thought Mrs. Brodie was terribly sweet – Nick Brodie really had hit a homerun when he got a ring on her. Keeping her happy was probably just as hard in this day and age, as Doyle well knew. He thought about the mistakes he’d made, rushing into a marriage to Kara right before he deployed as a 19-year-old buck private, only to have her walk out on him while he was still overseas. He vowed he would never make that kind of commitment again until he knew deep down that he had met the right girl. He had always hoped it would be someone like Sara Brodie. Could Callie Morgan be that kind of girl?
“Mr. Doyle?” he felt a tap on his shoulder. “Mr. Doyle, can I get you something to drink?” Sara Brodie’s broad smile and chestnut eyes were looking up at him. She cleared a lock of hair from her face.
“No, no,” he grinned broadly. “I’m fine at the moment.” He bobbed his head slightly and turned to follow Chase into the dining room.
The Governor scanned the dining room with hands on his hips, looking satisfied with the setup. There was an external wall behind which Chase would sit, and a huge china cabinet stood there imposingly. The adjacent wall had a bank of four floor-to-ceiling windows surrounding a French door. That door led out to a lanai that offered a wonderful view of the garden and the beginnings of the apple orchard up a little rise. The wall of windows was a security risk, but they would need to live with it. Doyle made a mental note to mention security for the patio to Brodie later.
“If you’d like, we can find some longer cords, so you can sit outside and enjoy the air, Governor.” Joe Lopez stood at the windows, gazing out over the orchard and prairie beyond which lays the hill country. “It’s remarkably peaceful out here.”
“Perhaps,” Doyle put his hand on one of the pecan chairs and looked outside. “But, I’m not sure it’s worth security risk for the Governor.” The views of hill country was majestic he conceded. A haze with a hint of lavender hung at the base of the hills off in the distance, and the sun was dancing off the apple trees and tall flora in garden. “It’s tempting, but a bit too risky, I think.”
“If things calm down a bit, maybe we can have a drink and a cigar out there later.” Governor Chase moved down the head of the long table and took a seat. “For now, we’ve got plenty on our plates.”
Doyle switched on the television. “Agreed. Let’s focus on getting our act together. We’re set to deploy the Texas Guard in less than twenty-four hours.”
CNN was showing press conference footage. A political junkie, Doyle recognized Homeland Security Chief Carol Shalitino at the podium right away. “That’s the Director of DHS.” He reached and turned up the volume on the remote of the small TV.
The DHS director was already midway through a statement, “—so to the best of our knowledge the rioting in the southwest appears to be local to specific border towns. We’re working with area law enforcement and state government to organize further actions. We’re advising and consulting with the administrations of the affected states as to the most appropriate responses, which they may desire or need.
“Our initial responses from our Strategic Response Teams have been very successful in gauging the extent of the rioting, and we’re actively working with state and local authorities to make the best use of the available intelligence.”
Doyle chortled at that last line, “Is she serious?”
“Apparently…” Chase was bemused, but the anger was just below the surface. “I can’t listen to any more of that nonsense.”
As Chase left the room, Doyle drew closer. The spin from DHS chief was simply amazing in its inaccuracy and arrogance.
I know it’s political, but these people are dangerous.
*****
Sara was really turning on her charm for the guests, but her cloying tone was beginning to grate on Brodie, particularly since she seemed to being saving venom for him behind every closed door or brief moment alone. She was kind-hearted, but she had never been the flirty type, so he knew he was being punished. Brodie sat back in one of the tall dining room chairs at the opposite end of the table from the Governor as Doyle switched to CNN. Brodie slouched into the chair trying to keep from scowling too badly. He hoped that Sara could find a way to get past her anger and take some of the burden off him rather than pile on more stress.
CNN was showing coverage of turmoil involving the Justice for America protests in Atlanta, so Jeff Doyle turned down the volume and spun to the table, “I’d like to confer with Tompkins about security for the household.” Doyle turned to Brodie, “Nick, maybe you could head outside and start organizing the men? I’ll be out in a few minutes after we do a bit of procedural stuff in here.”
“Okay.” Brodie rose and headed toward the kitchen and grabbed a bottled water from the fridge. Sara stood at the counter by the sink preparing a bunch of finger food, and Brodie edged over beside her, “You doing okay?”
“Sure,” she cut down into a new brick of cheddar cheese with the knife hard enough to hit the wooden cutting board with a thud. “I’m doing just great.” She punctuated the statement with a stab into the cheese. “What can I do for you? I’m pretty busy here making sure all our guests won’t starve.”
“Fine,” Brodie threw up his hands, “I won’t bother you, then.” He marched out the kitchen door, toward the pack of men at the garage, sipping his water and trying not to look back. He was rapidly coming to the conclusion that her staying had been just a terrible idea. Brodie was trying to do the right thing in a crazy time. If Sara wasn’t willing to support him now, maybe they were just destined to fail.
“Hey, man,” Kirk Thompson greeted him the big smile. “This is a trip with the Governor, huh?”
Brodie studied the dried mud on his boots and tried to scrape some off one with the side of the other, “Yeah, it is pretty wild.”
“What’s going on with you, man?” Mark Simmons put his hand on Brodie’s shoulder as Finnegan strutted over with Frank Martin and the guy with the orange goatee. “Wife troubles?”
“Yeah.” Brodie kicked the dirt and glanced up at Thompson and Simmons, “Sara’s kinda pissed off about having to play hostess on such short notice.”
“I could see that,” Kirk folded his arms on his chest. “I wondered how she would be about all this.”
“I need you guys to help me out with these patrols, okay?” Brodie massaged his temples with a calloused hand, “This whole situation is starting pull at me a little bit.
“I could use a drink and a nap,” Finnegan chuckled sardonically, putting his hands in his pockets, “maybe two of each.”
*****
Outside of Crystal City, Texas - July 5th, 2017 – 2:55 p.m.
This is what happens when you stop to help a couple of kids in a park, Darren Schmidt thought, as the rear window of the police cruiser was blown out. He immediately felt the small wounds like wasp stings
on the back of his neck and felt a trickle of blood roll down the back of his neck, so he swerved side to side on the road and pressed the accelerator down to the floor. The shotgun pellets weren’t lethal but they stung like hell and Schmidt cursed. A quick check of his neck showed blood smears on his hand.
While the tall weeds and trees of the hill country began to blur around him and the engine whined in protest, Schmidt glanced quickly in the rearview mirror. They were still back there. He had managed to put a little distance between himself and the three trucks that had chased him since the edge of town, but it still wasn’t safe. He pulled his sidearm, and, steering with his knee for a moment, he checked the Sig P226 before grasping the steering wheel once more with his left hand.
He grabbed the mic on the police radio and switched from HF to CB mode, hoping to rally a little support from local LEOs as he raced toward the town. “Any law enforcement out there, this is Sergeant Darren Schmidt – I’m under fire and need assistance.” He hit a number of different channels with the distress call including channel 19, the trucker’s channel, as well as channel nine, the emergency channel of the CB world. He was starting to regret stopping, both in Carrizo and Crystal City. The trucks were gaining on him again, putting their old V8 engines to good use. He could see shotguns sticking out from open windows and an arm holding a pistol here and there. This whole day was turning out to be one giant shit sandwich – hold the bread.
He had stopped in Carrizo Springs for some lunch and had received some funny looks as he had strolled into the McDonald’s and casually ordered a number three meal deal. It had given him a chance to stop and think about what he was doing, what all this goddam mess meant.
The government was clearly completely and utterly dicked up – that or they just didn’t give a damn about him and his guys, and he was just some kind of measuring stick to see just how deep the crap was. Either way, he was questioning whether it was an outfit that deserved his loyalty. What he did know was that if he was going to be served up as a sacrificial lamb, he wasn’t going out meekly, like some kind of good soldier. He had seen enough bureaucratic SNAFUs to last a lifetime, and Darren Schmidt was interested in reminiscing about them in his old age, rather than reliving them as he was escorted to a DHS review board.
After the long lunch, he left Carrizo Springs north on Highway 83 and stopped when he saw a truck full of Mexican roughnecks harassing a group of teenagers at a small clearing near an RV park about four miles from town. The two idiots had probably mouthed off to the thugs, and things got out of hand. Maybe they were trying to defend the girls’ honor, but it went bad real quick. He had taken two of them down, but their buddies in two other trucks showed up within a few moments. He was outgunned ten to one, so that meant retreat with him having just a sidearm. He had high-tailed it, trying to lose them. No dice. So, now he was running, trying to find some friendlies to clear his six and give him some back-up.
A shotgun blast blew off his right side mirror, and he took evasive maneuvers with the car once again. He had to be careful – they were different at eighty miles per hour versus fifty. More blood on his neck gathered and rolled down his back, as he swayed the car like a kid on his first joyride in his daddy’s sports car.
At that moment, the radio came alive, “Roger Sergeant, this is Kilo Delta with the Crystal City Regulars. Say your position, over.”
Schmidt pulled the handset from the console as he wheeled side to side, “I’m on Highway 83, northbound, two klicks past Old Highway 83 intersection – high speed chase, over.”
“Roger that, we’re about three miles west of you on County Road 191. See if you can turn west on 191 and bring them to us, over.”
He saw the sign and it was a hard left. He started braking but it was too late – he overshot, coming in too hot. “Negative – just past 191 – I’m taking the next left and will try to cut back to 191, over.”
A couple tiny cutout field access roads zoomed past, before he saw a decent gravel road heading west. Two shotgun blasts hit the rear of the car, and he heard the metallic tink as the shot hit the trunk area and blew out a brake light. Schmidt ducked down in the seat as he made turn across the oncoming lane and negotiated the looping gravel curve.
He fishtailed around, trying to get the police cruiser under control as he gunned it west down the gravel road. He could see the trucks make the turn and he heard the big truck tires groaning under the strain of the curve as they left the pavement. He pushed it to sixty while he scanned the road for any cut through south back to County 191. The road jogged north, and Schmidt cursed as he turned away from the intercept road, but it quickly turned back west so he pushed his speed back higher. He blew past a farm on his right, sending a long trail of dust through the laundry that hung on suspended from an old clothesline. The long gravel road turned north again. He started to brake, and, seeing the wide open field on his left, blew through the equipment entrance and headed across the scrubby field.
He was only able to manage about forty miles per hour through the bumpy field without feeling like he was going to bottom out or break an axle, and he could see the trucks to turn to follow him. They were gaining. In that moment, a dust trail billowed up in front of him maybe a thousand yards away, and the CB crackled, “We see you coming through the bee brush – keep heading south, over.”
Schmidt was being bounced around too much to take the CB mic, so he just pressed forward toward the dust trail. Within moments he saw three trucks and an old, lifted Bronco come at him in the brush, and slam on their brakes as they passed him. The outer vehicle edged close, forming a nice convex shield, so Schmidt hit his brakes and wheeled around. The crew exited their vehicles and took cover behind them – there were twelve men in all.
Schmidt exited the cruiser and took up a cover behind it, scanning the landscape for enemies. The marauders had stopped perhaps two hundred yards from Schmidt and his new friends and, after a moment, whipped their trucks around and headed back north out of the brushy field.
“Should we follow them?” a young guy in a straw cowboy hat called out.
“No, we’ll radio over to Harve that he may have visitors in a little bit,” a portly man in a John Deere hat replied. “He’s got a few more in his crew anyhow.”
Seeing the thugs move off out of sight, Schmidt came around the police car and extended his hand to the portly man while the others gathered up around them. “Thanks a bunch, there fellas,” Schmidt grinned holstering his sidearm. “My bad day was about to get real awful bad.”
The squatty man grasped Schmidt’s hand and gave it a solid shake, before pushing his green mesh hat higher on his head, “Oh, no problem, buddy. A lot of folks have had a pretty rough day around these parts.”
“Yep, I’m sure that’s true.” Schmidt bared his teeth and recovered his breath a bit. “You aren’t alone in that, I can tell you.”
*****
The White House – The Oval Office
Washington D.C, - July 5th, 2017 – 3:00 p.m.
President Mallory Denton stalked past her secretary, grabbing the stack of files from the assistant’s hands without stopping. She strode to the large desk and let the stack of folios fall there as she spun the high-back leather chair around and let herself fall into it.
As half the National Security Council filed into the room and stood before her, Denton straightened her coiffure of long, silky dark hair and rubbed the corner of her mouth. After scanning the top sheet of the first few files, she leaned back and looked at Chief of Staff Fiorino, and DHS boss Shalitino.
“I don’t have an hour to read all this. Somebody better start bringing me up to speed quickly.” Denton marched across the room and opened the little door near the tall bookcases next to Lincoln’s bust. “I’m going to get a drink, and when I get back, you people will fill me in on these problems, and give me some thoughts as to solutions.” She disappeared for a minute, only to return bearing a crystal tumbler half full with a dark liquid.
Director of Homel
and Security Shalitino was the first to speak, as Denton took her seat at the wide desk. “We have a number of issues domestically, Madam President. The most pressing are the insurgency in the southwest, bombings in Portland and Chicago, rioting in several cities, including–”
“Don’t talk to me be about rioting,” Denton cut off the DHS boss. “We have that every summer in basically every major city. Let’s take the bombings last. Tell me about what’s happening in Texas.”
Arthur Burke cleared his throat lightly. “Madam President, we have dispatched a Critical Incident Task Force to Austin to investigate the AG’s killing and arrest the Governor and his staff.”
“Good,” Denton got up and went to the window, looking out over the courtyard. “I want those people brought to justice. For Rosa’s sake and the good of the country.”
“They haven’t asked us to intervene in the border breach. Intel suggests that it’s bigger than we thought.” National Intelligence Director DiNardo shifted his feet.
“Fine. We’ll watch them and see how things develop. They have a sizable standing national guard – let them use it for now.”
“Unlike most other states we’ve talked to, Texas has resisted allowing their national guard to be federalized,” General Marvin Williams said coldly. “They’re quite an independent lot down there.”
“They key to stopping the madness is getting Governor Chase and his staff in custody, Burke said firmly. “We’re on them, Madam President. We’ll bring them in.”
“Do whatever it takes, Arthur. Whatever needs to be done.”
*****