Freedom's Sons

by H. A. Covington

  “It’s just routine, Earl,” snorted Mona impatiently. “Just policy.”

  “Nobody told me about any such policy,” said Hornbuckle sulkily.

  “Well, they wouldn’t, would they? Qui custodes ipsos custodes?” quoted Brandon dryly.

  “Precisely,” said Hart.

  “Huh?” said Hornbuckle. “That don’t sound Amurrican.”

  “It’s Latin,” said Mona. “It means ‘Who guards the guardians?’ and in this case, I do.”

  “Getting back to the question at hand, can you use the transponder to locate the Lexus over there on their side?” asked Hart.

  “No,” said Mona. “Like I said, our civilian GPS satellites aren’t programmed for their side at all, again as a measure to prevent defections and also to prevent the Northmen from hacking the satellites and using them to operate their own mapping and tracking programs.”

  “Then how do the Northmen get around over there, with no GPS?” asked Agent Hornbuckle curiously.

  “Probably the same way our ancestors used to get around before satellites and computers were invented,” said Brandon. “They use road maps and signs, and they ask directions when they get lost. Agent James, if they don’t find your tracker and the car crosses the Road again, will it at least trip the alarm on your phone and computer? And could you use GPS to find it then?”

  “As long as the car stays on our side of the Road, yes,” said Mona.

  Luck was with them. Johnny Selkirk did indeed buy the Lexus off the Basin station for a generous but not exorbitant donation to the Civil Guard Family and Dependents’ Fund, thinking he could use it on his next run into the land of the red, white, and blue. He did yank out the factory-issue GPS tracker as a standard precaution, but hadn’t gotten around to taking the rest of the engine down yet when he decided to say to hell with it, he was off to find Danny Tolliver. On the evening of September tenth, right around sunset, Mona James’ phone pinged.

  * * *

  Brandon and Gabi were busy dealing with some local businessmen who had come sniffing around looking for the first taste of CPZ dollars, and so Mona called Hart and Hornbuckle to her room. “I’ve got it on my laptop,” she told them, looking at the screen. “The vehicle crossed back over to our side of the border at 7:18 p.m. and it is now stationary at a location right at the eastern end of Second Avenue, on the southwest corner of the Boulder Cemetery.”

  “That’s a straight shot up Second Avenue from their side,” said Hornbuckle. “Whoever it is has got to be pretty ballsy, driving right through town in a stolen government staff car.”

  “Somehow I don’t think Sheriff Lomax is overly concerned with enforcing the law in any way that might make waves with his unpleasant neighbors,” said Mona. “That’s one of the things that’s going to have to change around here, and I will be having some words with the appropriate people in Burlington when I get back, on the subject of arranging for a new sheriff in Jefferson County.”

  “You said stationary?” put in Hart. “That looks like chummy might be meeting someone. Could this be one of their people meeting an intelligence asset on this side? A government car would actually be a neat bit of camouflage.”

  “Well, let’s go find out,” said Mona. “Get your vest on, Agent Hornbuckle. Make sure you bring your taser. I want to see if we can not only recover Gabi’s stupid car, but catch the driver. Could I persuade you to accompany us, Colonel?”

  “My dear lady, I wouldn’t miss it for the world,” said Hart gallantly.

  There was no meeting of spies in Boulder Cemetery, just Johnny Selkirk and Danny Tolliver snatching a moment of privacy. Several days before, Danny had managed surreptitiously to purchase a disposable cell phone from a vending machine in a local hardware store, while her father and grandfather had been loading one of the trucks with cases of pesticide and cattle vitamins and other miscellaneous items. The cheap Indonesian junk phone had only the most basic apps and a bare minimum range and minute limit, without all kinds of murderously expensive add-ons, but she could and did text the number to John with the admonition not to call her at all. They had to talk, and she would text him instructions as to when and where it was safe to meet.

  She was in town that evening with old Elwood, who had only been able to get a late appointment for his bimonthly checkup at the rundown local clinic, to make sure his cheap plastic artificial knee was still functioning. He left her in the library, ostensibly to study, while he sat in the waiting room for the circuit-riding doctor from Butte. He left instructions with the librarian, Ms. Goodspeed, to make sure Danny did not use any email-capable computers or the public phone. Since Ms. Goodspeed was the widow of a Union veteran killed in the War of Independence and the mother of another wounded in the Seven Weeks War, he knew she could be relied upon.

  Danny was tired of it all and she decided to take the bull by the horns, knowing full well that thereby she could be landing herself some years of exile in North Dakota and elsewhere, but she had to try to get this settled. She texted Johnny to meet her at 7:30 on the corner of Second Avenue and South Madison, knowing that he was always punctual. At 7:27 she got up to take a video disc back to the shelf, leaving her books and notebooks on the table, and as soon as she was around the corner out of range of Ms. Goodspeed’s eagle eye, she slipped out the back door of the library and ran down the street. John picked her up on Second on the fly, driving a big black luxury sedan she’d never seen before, and within three minutes they were parked at the cemetery. After the preliminary greetings were over Danny got right down to business. “Johnny, we need to decide what we’re going to do. My parents say I can’t see you any more or else they’re shipping me out of state, my grandfather says he’s going to kill you if he sees you, he’s going around carrying this big cannon he had back in the war to do just that, and everybody in town is looking at me like I’m Jezebel and Delilah and the Witch of Endor rolled into one. Well, not everybody, but a lot of people. I’m willing to put up with all of it and I’m willing to fight for us, but I have to know what I’m fighting for. Do you want me?”

  “I do,” Johnny told her. “I do, honey. Okay, part of it is I want you so I can stand up and spit in the eye of all these people who say we can’t be together and who are trying to tell us how to run our lives. That’s some of it, and I won’t deny that, Danny. But not all of it. Look, if I asked you to marry me, would you?”

  “I’d have to be really sure,” she said. “My parents are right. I know I’m way young to be making that kind of decision, even if I was living Over The Road in your country.”

  “Yeah, it’s a bit young even in the Republic,” said Johnny. “Most couples wait until they’re nineteen or twenty and they’ve done their National Service, at least. But the Republic believes in marriage and family and personal commitment. That’s one reason we developed the prom baby custom, as strange and contradictory as that may sound, to encourage that kind of commitment early and make sure by the time they’ve finished their service and they’re ready to start the serious business of life, young white couples know who they’re going to be starting it with and why. None of this crap about drifting along until you’re twenty-nine or thirty-three years old and still sitting in a furnished room or your parents’ basement playing video games like the Americans used to do.”

  “Still do, sometimes,” said Danny pensively. “Johnny, if our getting married is the only way we could be together at all, then I’m willing to do that. But I’d have to drop out of school and maybe never see my folks again…”

  “No, it wouldn’t be that bad,” Johnny assured her. “Danny, we live barely ten miles from one another! Of course you’d see your family! There are a lot of people with relatives on both sides of the border, and they visit back and forth all the time!”

  “Do those families have relatives who are threatening to kill one another?” asked Danny.

  “Some of ’em did, for a long time,” said John soberly. “Maybe if we were married your grandfather would come aroun
d.”

  “Would yours?” she asked.

  “I don’t know. If he doesn’t, that’s his problem. But it’s not like you have to run off and get married to me right this instant. Look, why don’t you just Come Home, Danny? Emigrate? You’re sixteen now, and our law says you’re an adult capable of making that decision, so just move your stuff on over the Road.”

  “To where?” she asked. “What would I do? What about school?”

  “The Labor Service has work-and-study programs, so you can finish your senior year at Cataract High, and some of it goes as credit toward your national service as well. They’ll put you to work, and contrary to what you may have been told over here on your side, it’s not slave labor. You do get paid, at the normal civil service rate.”

  “Doing what?” asked Danny, interested.

  “Not sure,” he answered. “The Labor Service does all kinds of things to keep the community running. When I did my stint they had us working a road crew for six months, then planting seedlings, then we helped a private company upgrade the water and sewage plant and hook it up to irrigation lines. Then I went into the army, but you’re a girl so you won’t have to do that, unless you want to. But you’re a farm girl, and you can do pretty much anything that needs doing. At first you could live in a girl’s dorm they’ve got out on Creek Side Road for female personnel who work in this area. Later on, as a new immigrant you can get a little house or apartment from the Bureau of Race and Resettlement at a really low rent, although it won’t be much. Not many new people want to settle here in the Border District itself, so there’s not much immigrant housing. But you see what I’m saying, Danny? If you Came Home you could support yourself, and finish school, and have a paid job, and we wouldn’t be rushed on the marriage thing. All the pressure would be off.”

  “Uh, I’m not sure I could make it through senior year at Cataract,” said Danny dubiously. “I mean academically. From what I hear your high school is about like a major university over here. You have things like calculus, and your language you have to speak perfectly before you graduate.”

  “Well, you told me they made you learn Spanish starting in seventh grade,” said Johnny with a laugh.

  “Yeah, but that was just something left over from all those years ago when there were Mexicans everywhere,” said Danny. “I mean I don’t speak Latin, for one thing.”

  “It’s not that hard,” Johnny assured us. “For most of us it’s only a one-year basic class in ninth grade so you can understand where a lot of our language comes from, and so you can learn to think better with declensions and stuff, unless a student wants to keep up with it. You might not even have to take it, but if you do you’re smart as a whip, and you won’t have any trouble. I still have my old notebooks from Cataract and I can help you. Plus if you go to Cataract you can have Mrs. Campbell for history. The Daughter of the Nation.”

  “Who?” asked Danny.

  “Oh, I guess you wouldn’t know. Her mom was a great heroine in the second war. Never mind. The fact is that you can Come Home and start living your own life, and you and I can see one another whenever we want, we can take our time and see if it’s the right thing…”

  Autumn was coming on, but the twilight was still warm, and so Johnny had left the driver’s side window down. He was turned to face Danny while speaking to her, so he hadn’t seen FBI Agent Mona James creeping up on him in the side mirror. The crackling taser prongs slammed into Johnny’s back and neck and he suddenly leaped in the seat like a fish hooked on a line, howling in pain. Danny screamed in shock and fear. Johnny clawed the door of the Lexus open and rolled out onto the ground, writhing, and yet with a superhuman effort he still managed to stagger to his feet and jerk his gun from the belt clip holster beneath his jacket. His arm was too numb to even raise the weapon and his fingers couldn’t have fired if he had. Colonel Hart stepped forward and dropped him with a quick and expert martial arts chop to the neck, retrieving the gun as it slipped from Johnny’s hand as he fell. On the passenger side Agent Earl Hornbuckle pulled the door open and dragged Danny out into the dirt, screaming and kicking. He picked her up by the collar of her blouse, slammed her against the car and jerked her arms behind her back, whipping a pair of plastic cuffs onto her wrists. “Well, I got mine!” he called out cheerfully to the others.

  “And we’ve got ours,” said Mona, as she and Hart dragged a handcuffed Johnny Selkirk to his feet.

  “And we got Gabi’s ride back!” crowed Hornbuckle, almost jumping with joy at the FBI’s first victory over the hated Northmen in a very long time. “What are we gonna charge these two evildoers with, Agent James?”

  Mona was almost equally pleased with herself. “Oh, all kinds of sanctions violations and illegal entry and hatecrimes for our young perpetrator here, I think,” she giggled, shaking the still-dazed Johnny. “The nearest federal judge is in Billings. Time he had some work to do. For her, how about Unauthorized Contact and maybe espionage if it turns out she was whispering state secrets into this racist joker’s ear?”

  A clap of thunder and a flash of lightning shattered the still sunset air, and the passenger-side window of the Lexus exploded into powder. Roughly ten paces away from where Hornbuckle gripped Danny, just past the low brick boundary wall of the cemetery, a large shape rose up by a tombstone. It was old Elwood Tolliver, and he held the antique .357 Magnum in a relaxed two-handed stance, the hammer cocked back. His voice was deep and calm. “That’s my granddaughter you’ve got there. Let her go. Now.”

  “I’m an FBI agent and I’m making a national security arrest!” yelled Hornbuckle, startled. “Who the hell are you?”

  “Yeah, I remember, from back in the day,” rumbled Elwood. “You got the look of some of them buzz-cut boo-yahs, all right. I also remember that whenever there was a booby-trapped door to be kicked, or a dark road that needed driving down, or an exposed sentry post that needed to be covered, somehow it was always us local boys who drew the short straw. I’m not impressed. I don’t care who you are, I don’t care what kind of bird-brained badge or paper you’re carrying, or what asshole in a black robe you think gives you permission to come here and lay hands on my family. I don’t care what you do with that Selkirk kid, but you’re going to let my granddaughter go, right now. If you don’t, or if I see your hand so much as twitch like you’re going for your gun, I’m going blow that buzz-cut of yours up into that elm tree behind you. That’s the second time I’ve told you, jackass. I won’t tell you again. Do it!”

  John Selkirk was still shaky on his feet, and in addition to the plastic cuffs that held his arms behind his back, Mona had slipped a steel handcuff around his right elbow for control, but he understood who Elwood was and that he was trying to get Danny free and clear of their captors. He called out, “Mr. Tolliver! You got a damned limey rent-a-soldier trying to flank you on your right!”

  “I see him, son, but thanks for the heads-up anyway,” Elwood called in reply. “All right, Colonel Blimp, I know where you are, and you ain’t getting anywhere near me before I shoot you as well as this turkey holding my granddaughter. We going to play it that way?”

  “I’m actually rather a good shot myself, old chap,” answered Hart, lying prone behind the 30-inch brick boundary wall with his .41-calber New Model Army officer’s issue sidearm in his hand, steeling himself to roll over the wall and cover behind one of the tombstones.

  “I may be old, but I ain’t your chap,” replied Elwood steadily. “Tell you what. I’m going to count to three and then I’m going to kill Buzz-cut here. You got until then to make your move. One. Two…”

  “Oh, screw this!” yelled Mona. “Enough of this bullshit! Put your dicks away, gentlemen!”

  Danny gasped. “What kind of a lady uses language like that?” she cried indignantly.

  “I’m not a lady, you little bitch, I’m a woman,” snapped Mona in irritation. “There’s a difference.”

  “So I see,” said Danny.

  “I mean it, you guys, enough with the
High Noon bullshit!” Mona went on. “We got what we came for, the car and the blockade runner. We don’t need all the complications involved in a shoot-out with some local curmudgeon. Malcolm, stand up slowly, holster your weapon, and come back here. Earl, let the girl go. We know where to find her if we want her.”

  “Yeah?” said Elwood. “Well, just remember, where you find her, you find me. In case you hadn’t noticed, Mzzzzzz whoever the hell you are, you FBI ain’t so scary any more. Haven’t been for forty years.”

  Several minutes later, Elwood and Danny were in his truck and headed for home. “I don’t think they’ll really come back and try to arrest you, Danny,” said Elwood. “I wasn’t kidding, they really aren’t what they used to be, there’s only two of them, and they’re on thin ice out here. But still, you might want to stay close for a few days.” Danny stared straight ahead, silent. “I’m sorry they got the Selkirk boy, not for his own sake, but because of the pain this is causing you, honey,” he said gently. “But truth to tell, this had to end somehow and sometime soon, and this might actually be one of the better possible endings.”

  Danny was quiet for a time. “How did you know where to find us?” she asked after a while.

  “When Doris Goodspeed told me you’d flown the coop, it wasn’t hard to figure out,” said Elwood. “Kids in Boulder, Montana, have been boozing, and toking, and making out, and sometimes getting knocked up in that cemetery for a hundred years, Danny. Don’t ask me why, when there’s plenty of other places around. That’s just where Boulder teenagers always sneak off to do what they shouldn’t be doing. Kind of a youth tradition, I guess you’d call it.” He was quiet as well for a while. “I remember when I was fifteen and got my license and my dad let me borrow his truck for the first time, I took a young lady to a movie and then out there to the cemetery afterward. A girl even younger than you are. Carol was her name. Carol Selkirk.” Danny looked at him in astonishment. “Things weren’t always like this, Danny,” he told her.