Firebase Freedom

by William W. Johnstone

  “MPCs?” Jake asked.

  “Military payment certificates. When we got paid in Vietnam, we weren’t paid in dollars, we were paid in scrip—certificates that were good only on the military bases—but one dollar in MPC was equal to one dollar U.S. And, we could exchange them for Piasters. The MPCs were accepted by the soldiers, because they were backed by dollars. We can do the same thing here, but back our currency with gold.”

  “Yes,” Jake said. “And I think we should call them dollars.”

  “How about, Freedom Dollars?” Bob suggested.

  “Yeah, Freedom Dollars. I like that,” Jake said.

  Youth Confinement and Enlightenment Center 251

  Jane Poindexter was sound asleep when she was awakened by her teacher, Miss Mugambwe.

  “Come girl,” Miss Mugambwe said. “Get dressed.”

  “Why?”

  “Don’t ask questions, just do as I say.”

  “Why aren’t you waking the others?”

  Miss Mugambwe slapped Jane hard.

  “Ow! That hurt!”

  “Then do as I say, and don’t give me any backtalk.”

  Jane reached for her burqa.

  “You won’t be needing that,” Miss Mugambwe said.

  “What should I wear? All my clothes have been taken from me.”

  “You’ll wear this.” The woman handed Jane a very sheer nightgown, so sheer that you could see through it.

  “I don’t understand.”

  “You don’t need to understand. All you need to do, is do what I tell you to do.”

  Jane took off her sleeping gown, then reached for her bra and panties.

  “You won’t be needing that.”

  “Miss Mugambwe, I don’t like this. I don’t know what is going on, but I can’t leave this barracks wearing only this, and nothing under it. Why, you can see right through it.”

  “This is your wedding night.”

  “What? Wedding night? I’m only fifteen years old! I don’t want to get married!”

  By now several of the other girls had been awakened, and although they overheard the conversation, they were too frightened to do anything, so they lay in their beds, quietly, praying that nobody came for them.

  Except for one girl.

  Barbara Carter was seventeen years old, the oldest girl in the barracks. She had been thrust into a position of leadership by virtue of her age, and had willingly taken on the responsibility. She lay quietly until Miss Mugambwe took Jane out. Then she got out of bed, put on her burqa, and slipped out of the barracks.

  Hiding in the shadows, she watched the cabin into which Miss Mugambwe took Jane, then, when the coast was clear, she moved quickly to the boys’ barracks.

  Eddie was asleep when he felt someone pushing on his shoulder. “What?” he asked.

  “Shhh.”

  In the dark over his bed, Eddie saw a burqa-clad figure, and he sat up quickly.

  “Jane? What are you doing here?” he whispered harshly.

  “I’m not Jane,” Barbara said quietly. “But Jane is in trouble.”

  “What sort of trouble?”

  “Shh. Come with me. Be quiet.”

  The air was rent with snoring and heavy breathing, and it didn’t appear that anyone was awakened.

  Eddie got up and quickly pulled on a pair of trousers, then put on his shoes. That done, he and Barbara left the barracks, walking as quietly as they could.

  “What is it?” Eddie asked, once they were outside. “What’s going on?”

  “Jane has been selected to be a bride tonight.”

  “To be a bride? What are you talking about?”

  “You haven’t received any classes on the Moqaddas Sirata rites of marriage?”

  “No, I don’t know what you are talking about.”

  “What I’m talking about, is Jane is going to be raped tonight, unless we can do something to stop it.”

  “What the hell! I’ll kill any son of a bitch that tries.”

  “You may have to,” Barbara said. “But whether you kill him or not, once you interfere, you won’t be able to stay here. They’ll punish you and Jane.”

  “Thanks for telling me. Who are you? No, wait,” Eddie said. “Don’t tell me. If I don’t know who you are, I’ll never be able to tell them who helped me, no matter what kind of torture they put me through.”

  “She’s in that cabin,” Barbara said.

  “Thanks. Now, go, get out of here while you can,” Eddie said.

  “You are a good person, Eddie. God be with you,” Barbara said as she turned and slipped back into the dark night, her black burqa making her invisible within a few steps.

  Eddie moved up to the side of the cabin, then looked in through the window. He saw his girlfriend, her young, nude body, being tied hand and feet to a bed. The person tying her was obviously a woman, as she was dressed head to toe in a burqa. A beardless man, dressed in the forest-green uniform of the SPS, was standing by the bed watching, his face contorted by lust.

  “That’s good enough. Leave her now. You can come back for her in about an hour.”

  The woman bowed, then started toward the door.

  Eddie waited outside the cabin, behind a tree, and as the woman walked by, he stepped out in front of her and brought her down with a powerful roundhouse right to her head.

  With the woman knocked out, Eddie quickly stripped her of her burqa, then he put it on, and went back to the cabin. Opening the door he stepped inside, just in time to see the man dropping his trousers.

  “What are you doing here?” the man asked angrily as he saw, what he assumed to be Miss Mugambwe coming back into the cabin. “I told you to leave us now.”

  Eddie pointed toward the corner as if the woman had forgotten something, and when the man looked around to see what it was, Eddie picked up a chair and brought it crashing down over his head. The man went down, but Eddie didn’t stop. He hit him several more times until he was sure he had killed him.

  Jane had been looking on in frightened and confused silence.

  Eddie pulled off the burqa.

  “Eddie!” she said.

  “Shh. We’re getting out of here,” Eddie said. “As soon as I get you untied, put this on.”

  Eddie worked quickly to undo the ropes at her hands and feet. Then, when she was free, she slipped into the burqa. As she was doing that, Eddie went through the pockets of the man he had just killed. His ID card identified him as Troy Dawson, Captain of the Mobile Branch of the SPS. He also found car keys, and that gave him an idea.

  Quickly, Eddie stripped the man. Then, taking off his own trousers, he put on the SPS uniform. By the time he was finished dressing, Jane was sitting on the foot of the bed, now wearing the burqa, but not the scarf and veil.

  “Eddie, what are we going to do?” Jane asked.

  “He’s got a car out there somewhere,” Eddie said. “As soon as we find it, we’re going to get out of here.”

  “Are we going home? Oh, I so much want to see mama again.”

  “I’m sorry, Jane, we can’t go home. That’ll be the first place they look for us.”

  Dawson had also been wearing a pistol, and Eddie strapped that on as well.

  “Let’s go,” he said. “Be quiet. When we leave here, don’t say a word.”

  Once outside, Eddie reached out for Jane’s hand as they hurried through the night. At least twice during their move through the darkness, Eddie and Jane had to stop and get behind a tree or a shrub, to avoid detection by roving guards. Then, when they reached the parking lot, Eddie raised the remote key up and clicked it. He saw the lights flash on one of the cars.

  “There is it,” he said quietly.

  Taking Jane by the hand, he guided her through the parking lot to the car, a black Buick. On the door were the letters SPS, above the stylized “O” that was now the national symbol. The doors had been unlocked by the remote, and he and Jane slipped into the car. Eddie started the car and drove toward the gate. To his pleasant surprise
, the car had a remote device that opened the gate automatically as they approached.

  “Where are we going?” Jane asked.

  “We can’t go to Mobile, but I have a place in mind that’s not far.”

  “Where? No matter where we go, we’ll be caught and brought back here.”

  “No we won’t, not with what I have in mind. I overheard some of the SPS talking about a group of people down at Gulf Shores who have sort of broken away from the others. That’s where we’re going to go.”

  “If they’ve broken away from the others, you won’t be welcome wearing that,” Jane said.

  Eddie chuckled. “If I take this off, I’ll be in my underwear.”

  “Just take off the jacket,” Jane suggested.

  “Yeah, that’s a good idea.”

  Stopping the car alongside the road, Eddie pulled off the shirt. A couple of minutes later, when he drove onto the bridge across Weeks Bay, he tossed the uniform jacket into the water.

  “I wish I had something else to wear,” Jane said.

  “We’ll find something for you to wear when we get there,” Eddie promised. “At least you won’t have to wear that damn bee keeper’s screen over your face.”

  Jane laughed. “Bee keeper’s screen.”

  They made it from the confinement camp to the Intracoastal Canal on Highway 59 in just over half an hour. The permanent bridge had been destroyed, but had been replaced by a pontoon bridge. It was still dark as they approached, and Eddie stopped the car about one hundred yards short of the bridge.

  “What are we stopping for?” Jane asked.

  “I don’t expect we’ll get a very warm welcome in this car,” he said. “We’d better walk the rest of the way.”

  “All right.”

  Leaving the car, Eddie and Jane walked toward the canal, but they were stopped about twenty-five yards short of the bridge by two armed men. One of them raised a bullhorn.

  “Both of you, put your hands up.”

  “Eddie, I’m scared.”

  “This can’t be any worse than what we’ve already been through, can it? Put your hands up, like the man said.”

  “Yeah, I guess you’re right.”

  “Advance slowly,” the guard with the bullhorn ordered.

  As Eddie and Jane got close enough, it was easy to see that they were both very young.

  “Damn, they’re just a couple of kids,” one of the guards said.

  “He’s wearing a pistol,” the other said.

  “I’ll take the pistol out,” Eddie called to them.

  “No, don’t touch it. Just advance slowly.”

  Eddie and Jane walked on up to the gate.

  “Who are you?” the other guard asked.

  “My name is Eddie Manning. This is my friend, Jane Poindexter.”

  “What are you two doing here?”

  “We escaped from YCEC 251,” Eddie said.

  “You escaped from what?”

  “Youth Confinement and Enlightenment Center, number 251,” Eddie explained.

  “What is that? I’ve never heard of it.”

  “You haven’t heard of the youth confinement centers?”

  “No.”

  “Everyone between the ages of six and seventeen have been put in confinement camps. There’s one at Camp Beckwith. That’s where Jane and I were being held before we escaped.”

  “Are you serious? Everyone between six and seventeen has been rounded up?”

  “Yes.”

  “And you say you escaped?”

  “Yes. That’s where I borrowed these pants. Actually, I borrowed the whole uniform, but I threw away the shirt. Then I borrowed this car,” Eddie said, pointing to the vehicle they had come in.

  The two guards laughed.

  “You stole an SPS car?” one of them said. “Good for you, kid. I’ll say this, you’ve got balls.” Then realizing that he said that in front of a young girl he put his hand to his mouth. “I’m sorry, Miss, excuse the language.”

  “If that means Eddie has courage, then you are right,” Jane said.

  “That’s exactly what it means. All right, come on across the bridge, we’ll figure out what to do with you.”

  “What about the car?” the other guard said.

  “What about it?”

  “It’s got SPS markings. You never can tell when it might come in handy.”

  “Yeah, you’re right. Okay, go get it, bring it in.”

  “What do you want us to do?” Eddie asked.

  “To tell the truth, kid, I don’t have the slightest idea. But I guess the best thing would be to take you to the president, and let him figure it out.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  “I had no idea that they were doing anything like that,” Bob Varney said when Eddie and Jane were taken to meet the island’s president. “How long has it been going on?”

  “We’ve been there for two months,” Eddie said. “The guards and teachers told us that this is going on all over the country.”

  “Teachers? You mean it’s a school?”

  “Yeah,” Eddie said. “But they don’t teach anything real there, like math or English or history or anything. It’s just all stuff about Muslims, and how glorious it is to die for Islam.”

  “And you say they came to take you out of your parents’ home?” Jake Lantz asked. Bob had invited Jake to come listen to the story of the two young people.

  “They didn’t exactly come take us from our homes. Everyone was told that they had to bring their children, between six and seventeen, for registration. I know that our parents thought they would be getting ID cards for us, so they could buy more things,” Eddie said. “But it was a setup. As soon as all the parents of Mobile brought their kids to Ladd Stadium where we were supposed to be registered, the SPS put us all on buses and took us away.”

  “Away to where?”

  “Camp Beckwith. Or at least, what used to be called Camp Beckwith.”

  “Oh, well, that’s not so bad,” Bob Varney said.

  “I’m Episcopalian, the camp is sponsored by the Gulf Coast Diocese. It’s really quite a beautiful place.”

  “Not so pretty when it’s surrounded by strands of razor wire and patrolled by guards,” Eddie said. “It’s like a concentration camp.”

  “But they don’t let us call it that,” Jane said, speaking up then. No longer in the burqa, Jane was now, quite happily, wearing a dress given her by one of the citizens of the island. “We’re supposed to call it an educational camp.”

  “Do they feed you in the camp? Do they torture you?”

  “They feed us, and no, they don’t torture us,” Eddie said. “But they do everything they can to make us conform. And it’s worse for the girls than it is for the boys. At least the boys don’t have to worry about getting raped.”

  “Are you saying the guards are raping the young girls?”

  “Jane, you want to tell them what happened to you?”

  “Good Heavens,” Bob said. “Were you raped?”

  “I would have been, if Eddie hadn’t saved me,” Jane said.

  “Where are your parents?”

  “My mom and dad are in Mobile,” Eddie said. “Jane’s mom is there as well. Her dad is dead. I was afraid to go there because I figured that would be the first place they looked. And, right now, I’m probably wanted for murder. I’m pretty sure I killed the son of a bitch who was about to rape Jane.”

  “Son, if the son of a bitch needed killing, it’s not murder,” Bob said. He smiled. “You and your friend are welcome additions to our group here.”

  Bel Air, Maryland

  When Chris and Kathy first arrived in town, they drove up and down every street, checking them all out to make certain which routes were least likely to be blocked by the police, and which ones did not wind up as dead ends.

  The bank they chose was on Main Street, occupying the same building that had once been the People’s Bank, but now billed itself as “Bank of the Faithful.” Kathy, who was wearin
g a dishdasha and taqiyah, as well as a false beard, was driving. She had to be dressed that way, because it was illegal for a woman to drive, and they didn’t want to get stopped. She parked in the bank parking lot, in a spot nearest the bank.

  Right across the street from the bank was a huge billboard with the now-ubiquitous “Obey Ohmshidi” portrait.

  “Keep the engine running,” Chris said. Like Kathy, Chris was wearing the dishdasha and taqiyah.

  When Chris went into the bank there was one customer standing at the teller’s window. Walking around the bank he checked all the offices and found that only one was occupied.

  Chris stepped into the office, uninvited. “Are you the bank president?”

  “I am, but I don’t see anyone without an appointment,” he said.

  “Oh, I think you’ll see us.”

  “Who is ‘us’?”

  Chris raised his revolver and pointed it at the bank president. “Me, Mr. Smith, and Mr. Wesson.”

  “What? Are you robbing the bank?”

  “Robbing is such a harsh word. I prefer to think of it as a redistribution of wealth. After all, wasn’t that what Ohmshidi promised us, when we were foolish enough to vote the son of a bitch into office?”

  “You’re out of your mind, you’ll never get away with it.”

  “Maybe not,” Chris replied with a smile. “But I do think it will be fun to try. Come out into the bank with me. I think having you along will facilitate things.”

  “If you think I’m going to help you rob this bank, you’re crazy,” the bank president said. “I’m not moving from this desk.”

  “No problem, you can stay there until they come for your body. Because as I think about it, I don’t really need you at all.”

  Chris cocked his pistol and aimed it at the bank president’s head.

  “No! No, wait!” the bank president said, sticking both hands out in front of him, as if holding Chris away. “I’ll come with you.”

  Chris smiled. “Now, I do believe that’s why you are the bank president. You do know how to make quick decisions when under pressure.”