*
As George walked Cheese to his car, Linda looked down once again at the package on the table. It was a battered copy of Conrad’s Heart of Darkness.
Linda had given it to May the day she had agreed to join the group.
Linda opened it up again now and looked at her original inscription. Remembered writing it and smiled at the memory.
May had written under Linda’s original signature. “Please give my love to Cheese and Tom. I knew who you were all along, Linda, but I still don’t know who ‘Tom’ is. This decision by me to remain in the dark---in darkness---is from my heart. As are you. Thanks so much for the opportunity.” It was signed “MK”.
AFTERWORD
The President and Moose sat in the Oval Office watching the six members of the President’s new counter-terrorism unit reading the Press Release.
“When does this go out?” Licht asked.
“Ten minutes before the one o’clock press conference introducing you.”
“Why is May listed as still with us?” George asked.
“I agreed to pardon her for all her vigilante acts through today at noon. No one is searching for her. There are no warrants out for her arrest. I can’t pardon her for her future acts. She’s on her own from here. We’ll just say she couldn’t make the press conference. That’s the best I can do. It’s not her real name anyway.”
“And,” Cheese said, “you can bet it isn’t the name she’s using now, either.”
“Leaving her on the list this way, she isn’t singled out in any way,” Linda said. “I’m good with it.”
“So,” the President said. “George, which one of you is Samms?”
“I’m Samms,” Linda said. “Always have been. Our agreement explicitly states that none of the seven of us are required to give details about our explicit individual counter-terrorism acts that we’ve undertaken over the past years.”
“We’re all accepting equal culpability,” Licht said. “That’s the deal.”
“The innocent as well as those who were involved?”
“Yes, sir. Again, that’s the deal.”
“And accepting equal pardons,” Nancy said.
“Even May?” The President asked. “She didn’t sign the agreement.”
“Even May,” Cheese said. “Sir.”
“By the way, Mr. Teeter, thank you for your service while you were alive.”
“You’re welcome, sir.”
“So the empty MM peanut bag left in El Paso was just a ruse?” the President asked. “An attempt to throw suspicion on to Nancy?”
“Just my lame attempt at humor,” George said. “We thought it might lighten up the Rogues Task Force’s work.”
“Told you at the time it couldn’t have been Tom,” Nancy said. “No sense of humor.”
“What now?” Colonel Tom Edwards asked, ignoring the jab.
“Moose?” the President asked.
“At the press conference, the President will announce that, assuming Congress agrees to pass the provisional, partial Declaration of martial law, you seven will officially transfer from your current jobs to form an Executive Team to coordinate, direct, and carry out inter-agency counter-terrorism efforts. Reporting to me.”
“Our discussions never mentioned reporting to Moose,” Linda said.
“For now,” the President said.
“Okay. And the DNI is good with this?”
“Yes,” the President answered for Moose.
“And the pardons?” Nancy asked. “How do you propose to handle those with the press?”
“My intentions are to duck that head on.”
“How so?” Licht asked.
“We’ll see how it goes. Since I’m a little vague on the specific details of each of your involvement in the vigilante acts, it shouldn’t be hard for an old pro like me to accomplish that.”
“The press will want all those details, sir.” Tom said. “And why senior counter-terrorism officials were allowed to participate.”
“Pardoned senior counter-terrorism officials, Colonel. Who have all been protecting the American people.”
“The ACLU will have a field day with this,” Nancy said.
“Not today they won’t,” Moose said. “They’re going to have their hands full fighting the martial law proposal.”
“How do you want us to organize our activities under your authority?” Linda asked. “How do we coordinate with existing efforts?”
“Above my paygrade,” the President said. “You all are empowered with my full authority under the martial law to do that. I’m leaving it to you and Moose.”
He now stopped to rest his gaze on each of the six individually. “I sincerely want to take this opportunity to thank you each for your efforts in fighting domestic terrorism. Each in your own way. For working to protect the American people and working together to bring this into the fold. Each, again, in your own way. I know this has not been easy for any of you.”
He looked at his watch. Then at Linda.
“Linda, er Samms. Three questions.”
She nodded.
“First, given your pardon, you have no risk in answering this now, but why did you,” and he nodded to George, “and the General, choose this vigilante avenue rather than using your expertise and skills to enhance and leverage our legitimate counter-terrorism channels?”
“I would think, Mr. President, it would be obvious. When the bureaucracy and the lawyers prevent legitimate security operations from being effective, those who can do it more effectively will always step in and do it at the point of a gun, Mr. President.”
“Not to be defensive, but we have been getting better at stopping terrorism. And in matters of national security in a free society, there is a natural conflict between the rights of an individual and the public’s need for an effective defense.”
“Then let’s just agree that none of us will be defensive, Mr. President. It’s now our job to improve on that record. And I don’t believe it’s either, or, sir.”
The President thought about that for a minute. Started to say something. Seemed to think better of it, and said, “Okay. Second, the night Cheese approached Licht at the bistro, was that designed to expose him or was it really a coincidence?”
“I wish I could claim we were clever enough for the former, but it was a total coincidence.”
“Unless,” Nancy said, “you look at it from the perspective that the two of you both singled out the best qualified man for a job. And, unbeknownst to any of you…”
“Or to me,” Licht said.
“…unbeknownst to any of you at the time, it was the same job.”
The President, Linda, and George all cocked their heads as they each seemed to digest that at the same time.
“And the third question, sir?” Linda said.
“What were all those damned initials about on the backs of your cards? Do you have any idea how many hours dozens of computer geeks have put in trying to triangulate, or whatever they call it, all those crazy initials?”
Linda looked at her husband. He nodded toward her, “All yours, dear.”
“I was struck by the irony of the location of the hitchhiking jihadist dirtbag. The one we killed in the gas station men’s room.”
“Which was?” Moose asked.
“Laramie, Wyoming. Up until then we had been leaving the calling cards just to alert local law enforcement that these acts were all connected. Making sure they reported them to the Feds.”
“And the name Paladins?” the President asked.
“America has a long, glorious tradition of vigilante justice when authorities have let the public down. My grandfather’s favorite TV show back in the fifties was Have Gun---Will Travel. He used to tell me about the West Point graduate and Civil War veteran who carried out acts of justice throughout the West, dressed all in black, wearing the symbol of a Knight, and calling himself Paladin.”
“And Laramie?”
“On October twenty-eighth, eighteen si
xty-eight in Laramie, Wyoming, a self-appointed Vigilance Committee entered the Bucket of Blood Saloon and arrested three men who had been among those terrorizing the six-month old town. That night they hung them, hung three others, and shot four more.”
“Okay, I’ll bite,” the President said. “And ‘BOBS’? The vigilantes were all named Bob?”
Linda laughed. “No. BOBS stands for the Bucket of Blood Saloon. George will circulate a document for each of the historical events when we’re done.”
“And Samms then?” the President said. “Does your code name have any meaning?
Linda Simmons blushed. Looked at her husband.
“Go ahead,” he said. “Can’t hurt now.”
“I always though Sam was the name of her first boyfriend,” Cheese said. “But none of us ever cared enough to ask.”
“It’s a little embarrassing,” Linda said. “So I’m only telling if it’s off the record. Permanently off the record.”
Everybody agreed, the mood having lightened somewhat.
“When we first started planning the Paladins, the General and I were taking target practice at my favorite shooting range one Sunday. He asked if I was really going to be able to illegally shoot dirtbags. I nodded and he said, ‘That’s my girl. My semi-automatic mad mama sidekick.”
“The initials stuck when we had the idea of needing a name for the cards.”
*
General Simmons handed out a short history of vigilantes in America as they filed out to the press conference, courtesy of the now-reinforced Paladins.
THE END
A SHORT HISTORY OF VIGILANTES IN AMERICA
BOBS: October 28, 1868. A group of local townspeople in Laramie, Wyoming had had enough of “Big Steve” Long and the two half-brothers who had appointed themselves as the law in their new town. The trio had robbed and murdered dozens of innocent civilians in the few short months since the railroad had arrived and the new town had started up. The self-appointed vigilantes walked into the Bucket of Blood Saloon as a “Vigilance Committee” and, under force of arms, marched the three to a small, unfinished cabin nearby. There, they summarily hung them, along with three of their accomplices. For good measure, they also shot and killed four others who had worked with them. In one night, the rule of law had come to the infant town of Laramie, Wyoming.
VCOAG: December 23, 1863. Five residents of what is now Virginia City, Montana founded the “Vigilance Committee of Alder Gulch.” Curiously, the founders called the name of their town, then in Idaho Territory, “Verina,” after Jefferson Davis’s wife, but a judge overruled and named it Virginia City. The VGOAC was formed in response to the failure of the courts to bring to justice a gang under the control of a local sheriff that had robbed and murdered as many as a hundred travelers that fall. For approximately six weeks, VGOAC companies hunted down and executed more than twenty of “The Innocents” gang, with many others escaping execution by accepting banishment from the Territory.
SFCOV: June 10, 1851. Seven hundred enraged San Francisco citizens hung a man they had unlawfuly convicted of safe stealing. The San Francisco Committee of Vigilance had declared itself the day before, and went on to hang three more men, whip another, deport more than a dozen Australian immigrants, and dispose of more than fifty others in various ways over the ensuing months.
PALADIN: The main, fictional, character in the 1950’s and 1960’s TV and radio series Have Gun---Will Travel, Samms’ Grandfather’s favorite TV show. The radio show opened each episode with "San Francisco, 1875. The Carlton Hotel, headquarters of the man called ... Paladin!" A self-appointed Knight to right the wrongs for the people of the American West that were not being solved by their government.
RCSM: January 2011. A group describing itself as a crime prevention brigade in Seattle, Washington, the Rain City Superhero Movement, began intervening for several years in active crimes to protect citizens and apprehending and holding perpetrators for the police. Led by “Phoenix Jones,” the patrol group was composed of masked and superhero costumed people with military and martial arts backgrounds. Jones, whose real name was Benjamin John Francis Fodor, fought professionally in the World Series of Fighting and was arrested for suspicion of assault during one of his vigilante acts, but the charges were dropped.
BHG: December 22, 1984. Bernhard Hugo Goetz owned an electronics shop in Greenwich Village, New York City. He had previously been mugged, and, when he was attacked on the New York Subway by four muggers on this date, he opened fire, shooting five times and seriously wounding each of his attackers. He turned himself in nine days later and was tried for attempted murder, assault, reckless endangerment, and several firearms offenses. He was acquitted by a jury on all charges except for possession of an unlicensed firearm, for which he served eight months. Forever after he was known as the “Subway Vigilante.”
BK: 1883-1889 Southwest Missouri Ozarks. In 1883 a group of vigilantes met on a hill called Snapp's Bald, located just north of Kirbyville, Missouri. The vigilantes were called the Bald Knobbers after the grassy bald knob summits of the Ozark Mountains in the area. They organized themselves to fight the marauding gangs in Taney County who, over the previous two decades, had committed more than thirty murders with never a conviction. Sympathetic to the victorious Union cause, the Bald Knobbers found themselves opposed by a group of Confederate sympathizers, the Anti-Bald Knobbers. The battles among the two groups and law enforcement officers continued until it more or less came to an end at the Kirbyville 4th of July Picnic in 1889 when the pursuing sheriff and bounty hunter were killed in a battle at the picnic, and the Anti-Bald Nobbers fled. Most local residents still hope they fled for good.
GHAG: October 1862, Gainesville, Texas. Slave owners in Cooke County, Texas became alarmed that local Union sympathizers who had formed a “Peace Party” to fight conscription into the Texas Confederate Army would collude with non-Texans. State troops began arresting, and an unofficial “Citizens Court” began hanging, the suspects at the Great Hanging at Gainesville. Within days, forty-one had been lynched and three shot before the Confederate and state courts could stop them.
SLOVC: Early 1850’s San Luis Obispo, California. The region was known for its particularly common and excessive lawlessness, gaining a well-deserved reputation as "Barrio del Tigre" (Tiger Town). The San Luis Obispo Vigilance Committee was formed to deal with the growing robberies and murders of travelers that authorities couldn’t stop. The Committee hunted down and lynched or otherwise killed seven suspects. Many members of the Committee remained influential in San Luis Obispo for decades thereafter.
HCI: July 10, 1868. The Reno brothers of Jackson County, Indiana were lawless before the Civil War, then made a living bounty jumping the Union Army, enlisting and taking the money under different names during the war. After the war, they moved to robbing trains, putting together the then-famous Reno Gang. There ensued a series of 1866-68 train and courthouse robberies and notorious chases by many posses, including the Pinkertons. In two separate incidents, six members of the gang were caught, brought back to Seymour, Indiana, taken away by a group calling themselves the Jackson County Vigilance Committee, and lynched under the very same tree. The site became known as Hangman Crossing, Indiana. Four and a half months later, four more members of the gang were in federal custody in New Albany, Indiana, when sixty-five hooded men arrived and lynched them.
SUPERMAN…BATMAN: 20th Century American fantasy vigilantes.
END
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Text: All rights reserved © LitArt-World & Edition Bärenklau, Germany 2017 / The Point Of A Gun © Steven W. Kohlhagen
Images: Cover and book design by Glen M. Edelstein © 2017
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Publication Date: July 18th 2017
https://www.bookrix.com/-obd35050865e965
ISBN: 978-3-7438-1909-2
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The Point Of A Gun: Thriller Page 32