by Ben Shapiro
And so Ellen’s job had become to prevent violence. That job, she knew, would be a lot tougher than merely walking some troops back and forth along the Rio Grande or even flying patrols over the border. For three weeks, she’d kept the peace. She’d have to do better, she knew. One incident gone wrong could end Davis’s dreams of a safe Texas.
Ellen’s cell phone rang. New York number. She picked up.
“Hey, sweetheart.” Brett’s rich baritone rumbled through the phone.
“Hey, babe,” she said.
“Miss you.” His voice sounded thick over the phone, almost tearful. Just a few days ago, they’d been so close to reuniting. Now, with commercial air travel shut down and the crisis in New York, it could be weeks, they both knew. But this was something new, too: Brett never talked like this. Since the rescue from Iran, Brett hadn’t been himself. She could imagine why, and she could imagine his face. She longed to reach out and touch it.
“Miss you too. How’s Bill?”
“He’s hanging in there.” Another pause. “Are you okay?”
“Yes.”
“That’s a no.” He laughed. So did she. “Davis made a mistake not sending the troops, you know.”
“I know,” she answered. “And I have a feeling something’s coming here. Something bad.”
“I’m getting the same feeling.”
“It’s not over, is it?”
A long pause. “No, I don’t think it is.”
Someone knocked at the door to Ellen’s office. “I’ve gotta run, babe,” she said. “Take a bullet for you.”
“Take a bullet for you, sweetheart.”
She hung up.
“Come in,” she called.
At the door stood a sergeant in the Guard. He held out a piece of paper. “Ma’am,” he said, “this came from HQ.”
She took the slip from his hand. She read it quickly. Then she dropped it and ran for the elevators.
The command headquarters was no more than a set of mobile homes set up along the border, within sight of the Rio Grande. Normally, Ellen operated out of the US Air National Guard military base at Biggs. By the time she arrived at the mobile home, a small crowd of journalists had formed outside. As she stepped out of her car, the cameras clacked away. The focus of the nation was certainly on New York, she thought, but that didn’t make the regional journalists any less hungry to get their footage on the national broadcast.
She saw the box as she stepped inside the empty room, sitting on a makeshift desk, a table somebody had culled from the local rec center. The box was cardboard, wet at the bottom. A wet plastic bag sat beside it. The box had been carved open at the top. She crept up on it, the pressure in her chest screaming at her not to look inside.
She did anyway.
A head. The head, more specifically, of one Lieutenant Jeff Jefferds. Jefferds, a member of the Texas National Guard, had been imprisoned in Mexico for months, held by the authorities there. Aside from a small group of activists, Jefferds had been all but abandoned after his imprisonment; the Mexican government claimed he’d driven across the border loaded down with weapons. He claimed it was all a big misunderstanding, that he’d been going hunting and made a wrong turn. His history of mental illness didn’t help him much on that score.
Now the holes in his head that used to hold eyes stared through Ellen. Written on his forehead in blue ink was one word: “TERRORISTA.” She held back the urge to vomit.
She turned away, thinking. It was a genius move, she concluded: so offensive that there would have to be some response from the Texas government, a crime directed not at the national government but at an individual claimed by the Mexican government to be a criminal. It played directly to Davis’s soft spot: abandonment. He’d want to retaliate. He’d want to push across the border into Ciudad Juarez. And Prescott would want no part of it, not while he was still trying to woo the president of Mexico to endorse his job creation plan, and not while he had the entire world unifying around him.
Her cell phone rang.
The name flashed across the screen: Bubba.
She picked up.
“I heard about it, Ellen.”
“I’m looking at it right now, Governor.”
“Then you know what we have to do.”
“No, Governor, I don’t,” she said.
“This is America, dammit, not Afghanistan. This shit can’t happen along my border.”
“It’s America’s border, Bubba.”
“But America won’t do shit to protect it. They failed. Now it’s my turn.”
She took a deep breath.
“Governor,” she said, “you do this, and you could be looking at open conflict with Prescott this time. No more playacting. No more excuses.”
“You think he’s going to send his boys down here to shoot at our boys over us killing some drug dealers?”
“I don’t know,” she answered. “But neither do you.”
“Everybody on earth has called the president’s bluff,” said Davis. “Everybody. He’s caved every time. What would make this time different?”
“You,” she answered. “He hates you.”
“That won’t make his cojones any bigger, girl.” He laughed. “This has been coming for a long time. I’m looking forward to seeing some dead criminals for a change.”
The line went dead.
Ellen closed the box softly, walked outside, and looked at the river. “Alea iacta esta,” she whispered. “Damn, damn, damn.”
Minot, North Dakota
Aiden burst through the front door of the cabin, sweating. Soledad stood. As she did, the men inhabiting the cabin stood up, readied for danger. Ezekiel picked up his M4.
“We need to talk,” Aiden said.
Soledad nodded. The men filed out of the living room, into the outdoors. Ezekiel nodded at her. “You need anything, holler. I’ll be outside,” he said.
Aiden collapsed into a broken-down sofa, breathing hard. Then he leaned forward, staring at Soledad.
“We need to go to Detroit,” he said.
“Detroit?” she laughed. “I thought we were staying off the grid, holing up. This is the first time in weeks they haven’t been looking for us. And you want me to take all these men into the heart of the firestorm?”
“I wouldn’t ask it, but Ricky needs my help.”
“You mean that cop? The one who shot the black kid? I heard they just let him off on the radio. They’ll get him out of town.”
Aiden shook his head. “No. They won’t. Those pieces of shit just took over the detention center.”
“They’ll let him out. Probably just shake somebody down.”
“I don’t think so.” He reached forward, picked up her portable radio. They sat, listening to the commercials for carpet cleaner and gold. Then the news came back on. A newscaster, speaking in somber tones, his voice cut by static interference. “The protesters—SHSHSHS—gathered outside the detention center—SHSHSHS—chanting that they want their own trial.” Aiden switched the radio off. “It’s an old-fashioned lynch mob,” he said. “They’re not going home without a head on a pike.”
“Why do you care? Bad shit goes down in this country every day.”
His eyes shifted to the ground. When he looked back at her, his eyes were watery. “We’re friends. He saved my life once.”
“So now you want to return the favor.”
He nodded.
“But this isn’t just about you anymore,” she said. “I’ve got forty guys out there who abandoned everything they had to come out here and try to be left alone. You want me to put them into the middle of a shitstorm.”
“The storm is coming to you.”
“They’re distracted. They’ll leave us alone.”
“For how long?” Aiden grimaced. “I’ll bet Ricky thought they’d leave h
im alone. That he was doing the right thing. Damn idiot.” Aiden looked at her, his eyes begging. “I don’t know what to tell you, Sole. All I can say is I’m going. If you can help, I’d be grateful. If not . . . all I can say is thank you for helping me find something I’d been missing.”
“What’s that?”
“A reason to do what I do. To fight.”
It stirred something in her. The same feeling that had once forced her to get up at 3:00 a.m. on her ranch. The same feeling that had forced her to build from the dust up, and had forced her to hire criminals to bomb a government installation. A feeling of helplessness in the face of something larger. All she could do, she finally figured, was to chip away at that feeling, bit by bit.
“Maybe I’m a damn idiot, too. But I’ll talk to them all. We’ll head out at nightfall.”
Detroit, Michigan
They arrived in the evening, a chain of cars and motorcycles taking refuge in the abandoned Michigan Central Station, the old rail depot for the city. Aiden guided them through the dark—the electric lights in this part of the city went out long ago, and the city didn’t normally send workers to fix them, fearing crime—and the caravan pulled into the empty grass field in front of the building. It stood above them, glorious and decayed, an image from a science fiction film, backlit against the waning twilight. Soledad shook her head. So much promise. All of it wasted.
They made shelter in the building itself, a Beaux-Arts masterpiece tagged and chipped by years of vagrants and hoodlums. A few elderly homeless drunks still lay around the place; Aiden left them where they were. Together, the group of thirty climbed up the stairs to the tower, an unused set of floors crumbling from disuse. At least, Soledad thought, nobody would bother them here.
Aiden whispered information about the building as they climbed, his voice resonating in the ill-lit halls. For years, the city had tried to rehabilitate the building; it had been bought, rebought, bought again. They’d considered bonds, taxpayer subsidies, anything to get the building restored. Nobody had bothered. Detroit was a disaster area; investing money in the city would be a massive waste.
Aiden had grown up in Detroit, he said. He knew the city well. His grandfather worked for General Motors, had a union job that was supposed to keep him employed all his life. Then foreign cars began flooding the American market, and the auto union contracts meant that American car companies couldn’t compete. Jobs started fleeing. As they did, the government of the city decided to raise taxes dramatically on the people who still held jobs, on the companies that still decided to stay in town. They left, too. Mayor after mayor took office promising to bring business back, then pandered by crushing businesses that remained. The tax base disappeared.
The place became a wasteland. White families moved out into the suburbs. Black families couldn’t afford to follow. The city self-segregated.
Aiden thought he was the only white kid left in the city. Then he met Ricky O’Sullivan. The two became fast friends, joined at the hip. Their parents went to church together; they fought back bullies together. Ricky was the straight arrow, Aiden the budding juvenile delinquent eager and ready to do anything to make friends. They grew distant as Aiden hooked up with new friends, missed school.
One day, Aiden’s mother saw Ricky in church, asked him if he’d seen Aiden. Ricky lied to cover for him; Aiden, he said, was probably at the library. Then, hands gripped into fists, still wearing his Sunday suit, he went looking for Aiden. He found him in a rundown tract house, surrounded by a couple of dropouts, high on weed and drunk off his ass.
“Aiden,” Ricky said, “your mom’s looking for you. She missed you at church.”
One of the losers laughed. “Yeah, mama’s boy, your mama’s looking for you.”
“Shut up,” Aiden slurred to him. “Yeah? Well, tell her I’m out here.”
“I’m not going to do that. I said I’d come and get you.”
Aiden laughed, a high-pitched whine that eventually tapered off into a snort. “Well, you tried, Boy Scout. Now get back home to your mama.”
Ricky grabbed him by the scruff of his T-shirt. “Get your ass home, Aiden.”
“Or what?” Aiden sneered.
“Or this.” Ricky punched him in the face. Aiden went down like a load of bricks, laying on his back in the dirt. “You’re a loser, Aiden, and if you’re not careful, you’ll end up like these ones.” Aiden started to push himself to his feet, his lower lip bleeding onto his chin. Ricky hit him again, clipping him right on the point of the chin. Aiden wobbled, fell.
Ricky picked him up, took him home, cleaned him up, and got him home to his mother. That was the last time Aiden got high.
After high school, they went their separate ways. Aiden joined up with federal law enforcement; Ricky went to school, then joined the police academy. They chatted on Facebook from time to time, but their friendship fell into acquaintance, and finally into complete disuse.
Until now.
Aiden went silent. The small fire in the center of the tiled conference room reflected light off the mildewed walls.
Soledad turned to Ezekiel. He stepped forward, warming his hands on the fire. Then he made a circle with his hands.
“Imagine the detention center in the center of our map. My hands are the crowd. Now, they’re rowdy, and they’re waiting for O’Sullivan’s release. That’s why the cops have him locked down tight. But the protesters know that eventually the cops will crack, release him, put him out there on his own. They just have to find the right button to push. And they’re going to move fast now to push it.
“So here’s the plan. We have to wait for the right time. We’re not interested in taking on the police. They’re armed, and they’re scared, and armed and scared cops are just as likely to shoot us as anybody else. Instead, we need chaos for the cover. Every riot is led by a few key characters. Everybody there may look like they’re ready for war, but most are there to show their friends that they’re brave. The authorities know that, so their chief task is to arrest the rabble-rousers and let the rest sort of fade away.
“If that happens, we’ll never get Officer O’Sullivan out of there. I guarantee you that whoever is leading this thing is smart and capable. This is not amateur hour.”
One of the men in the back piped up. “Why don’t we just grab him off the street when he’s released?”
Ezekiel guffawed. “Have you seen us? We stick out like a KKK rally in Harlem. No chance they don’t find us and at least neutralize us. No, here’s what we’re gonna do.”
Aiden took out a garbage bag, pulled from it four uniforms. These he tossed to Soledad and three other men, who stepped forward to put them on. “Now, for the rest of you guys, I’ve got something really special.”
He opened a duffel bag. In it were T-shirts. When the rest of the men saw them, a few jaws dropped. Soledad chuckled. “Well,” she said, “you’ve gotta die sometime.”
Detroit, Michigan
For two days, Levon stood in the cold. He had his men bring him food and clothing. He slept on the sidewalk. Next to him slept the mother of Kendrick Malone. With them slept hundreds of others. Every day, local businesses shipped out supplies for the group, eager to be seen as caring for the plight of the righteous protesters.
And still, they didn’t release Ricky O’Sullivan.
Perhaps they thought that the crowd would dissipate. Perhaps they were waiting for federal intervention—intervention that wouldn’t come. The president had already declared that this was a local matter, and the resources of the state had already been redirected to the disaster area in New York City. There would be no cavalry.
And so they waited. Each day, members of the media crowded around Levon to hear his words. But each day, the number of media dwindled. The attention span of the nation ran shorter and shorter these days. With the cleanup in New York, the investigation underway to identify the culprits for
the attacks, and the situation on the border, the media had a full lineup without having to go back to the same pictures of the same people lying on the same street.
The time had come, Levon knew, for action.
But action required provocation. So far, the authorities had been smart: they had holed up, put nobody on the street, waited for the ire to burn itself out. They hadn’t made any statements other than to praise the peacefulness of the protesters and suggest their sympathies for the protesters’ cause. The city of Detroit didn’t run well anyway—what was a few days of crowded streets and delayed services?
Meanwhile, Levon itched. Big Jim had already told him he could negotiate a way out of the stalemate—he said that Levon could become a player by accepting the verdict, demanding change from the feds, and being granted an informal say in the appointment of officials up to and including police officers. He said that Levon should just let O’Sullivan go, show that he was the bigger man. Already, Big Jim had gone on national television urging the president to send more federal officials to talk about the future. The nation’s eyes had been riveted on Detroit, but with Big Jim’s imprimatur of legitimacy, the Detroit-federal solution was gradually drawing the steam out of the kettle. Levon knew he couldn’t hold out much longer, and that he might be forced to take Big Jim’s deal.
And then they arrived.
Like a blessing from the skies, they came. There weren’t many of them, but there were enough: white men, riding motorcycles, planting themselves in the midst of the newly minted tent city. And they wore T-shirts: “FIGHT THE THUGS.”
That got the media’s attention. But oddly enough, few of the men wanted to talk to the media. One, in particular, bowed his head anytime the cameras came near. Levon denounced them for the cameras—“Who are these white supremacists, coming into a city white racism has ruined, and accusing us of racism for standing up for our human rights?”— but secretly thanked God for bringing them. It kept the fight alive, at least for another day.