“You have to go public with that information! The country has a right to know what’s going on.”
“That sounds good, but who am I going to tell? The press isn’t going to report anything that might make a Democrat look bad, especially not the one who’s in the White House now and the one who’s next in line to take over. Sure, there are still a few conservative news outlets, but for the most part they’re preaching to the choir, the thirty-five percent of the country that still works and pays taxes to take care of the other sixty-five percent.”
“If that’s true, then why do they care enough to try to kill you?”
“Because sometimes the wind blows in the other direction,” Gardner replied. “If something’s big enough, and bad enough, like that nerve gas business a few years ago, people might wake up, look around, and see what’s really happening in this country. The Democrats are scared to death that’ll happen and weaken their grip on power.” He shrugged. “Freedom’s a funny thing. Once it takes root, you never can tell what’ll happen. Demographics say the Democrats can never be beaten again, but they’re still running scared anyway. They don’t want to take any chances.”
Miranda’s head was still spinning. She said, “Shouldn’t you at least upload what’s on that drive to a secure server somewhere?”
“A secure server?” Gardner laughed. “What makes you think such a thing even exists anymore, Ms. Stephens? It’s been years since the average citizen or business had any privacy in this country. They see everything. They have programs that monitor billions of e-mails and Web postings a day, and those programs are the closest thing to artificial intelligences that have been come up with yet. They flag anything that looks the least bit like a threat to the administration. Then before you know it, some guy who runs an auto repair shop in Idaho who bitches about the government in an e-mail to a buddy is facing years of harassment from the IRS. A woman who posts something the least bit critical of the President on her blog has her ISP shut her down because she supposedly violated their terms of service. Some poor sucker who writes a magazine article the administration doesn’t like is arrested, and the cops find kiddie porn on his computer that he never put there, so he goes to prison and gets shanked the second week he’s there. We’re one step away from American gulags, Ms. Stephens. One step.” Gardner sighed. “Sorry. Didn’t mean to get wound up like that. I didn’t really realize all this stuff until recently. It’s been quite a blow to a guy who always believed in his country.” He sat up straighter. “All of which still leaves us with the question of what we’re going to do about your client’s problem.”
Miranda’s crazy thoughts had settled down to what seemed to her like the one chance they had.
“Let me make a call,” she said. “I think I know someone who might be able to help.”
Gardner grunted and said, “He’d better be ready for trouble if he gets mixed up in this.”
“I think he’s capable of handling it,” Miranda said.
Chapter 58
If what Ben Gardner had said was true, somebody somewhere who wished them harm was probably monitoring Miranda’s phone calls.
But there was only so much the enemy could do in the middle of busy downtown Austin. It was a little ironic, she thought. Austin was one of the most liberal places in Texas. Most of the other people in the bar were probably staunch supporters of progressive icons like the President and Senator Rutland.
Yet their presence was one of the things that kept killers who worked for those icons from sweeping in here and murdering a couple of their heroes’ political enemies.
Twenty minutes later, while Miranda was still nursing her first mug of beer, Colonel Thomas Atkinson and four other men came into the bar. Atkinson was thirty or forty years older than most of the people in here, but somehow he didn’t look out of place.
The men with him were all much younger, clean-cut, friendly looking but somehow with an air of danger about them. Miranda suspected that all of them were heavily armed, although you couldn’t tell it from their casual outfits.
Atkinson spotted Miranda and Gardner right away and came across the room toward them. One of the men accompanied him while the other three spread out a little to form a perimeter.
Miranda slid over and patted the bench beside her. Atkinson sat down. The other man moved into the other side of the booth next to Gardner, who regarded both of the newcomers warily. Miranda thought Gardner probably didn’t like being hemmed in like this.
“I’m glad to see you, colonel,” Miranda told Atkinson.
“I wasn’t sure we’d hear from you again quite this soon,” he said. “When you called our mutual friend’s private line, you didn’t explain to her what had happened.”
“I think it’s best we wait until we get back to her place to talk about that,” Miranda said.
Even in the governor’s mansion, she thought, there might be listening ears—but the likelihood was a lot lower.
“I’m Tom Atkinson,” the colonel said as he extended a hand across the table to Gardner.
Gardner shook hands with him and said, “You can call me Ben.”
“All right, Ben.” Atkinson nodded to his dark-haired, handsome companion. “This is my buddy Dave Flannery.”
“Good to meet you, Ben,” Flannery said as he shook hands with Gardner, too.
“You have a vehicle outside?” Miranda asked.
“Oh, yeah,” Atkinson said. “Armor-plated. Bulletproof glass. You wouldn’t know it to look at it, but it’ll stand up to anything short of a rocket attack.”
“Funny you should mention that,” Gardner said. “That’s actually one of the things we have to worry about.”
Atkinson raised an eyebrow quizzically and said, “Really?”
“I had to dodge one a week or so back in Manila. If it happens here, though, it’ll be an American drone launching it.”
Atkinson frowned.
“You’re not saying that one of our drones would fire a missile into the heart of an American city and kill hundreds of civilians?”
“I think they stopped being our drones a while back,” Gardner said. “Whoever’s sitting in the Oval Office seems to think they belong to him, and he can do whatever he damned well pleases with them.”
“As long as he’s a Democrat, he’s probably right, for all practical purposes,” Atkinson said.
Flannery suggested, “Maybe we’d better not waste any time getting out of here.”
“Good idea,” Atkinson agreed with a nod. “Just so you two know, I’ve got five more men outside keeping things clean around here. You ready?”
“More than ready,” Miranda said. “There are things that the—our mutual friend needs to know.”
The governor’s mansion was free of bugs, Atkinson assured them.
“We sweep the place every day, top to bottom,” he said. “When your enemy has the resources of the entire country at his disposal, you’ve got to stay on your toes.”
“How sad,” Miranda murmured, “that we have to regard the President of the United States as the enemy.”
“That’s what you get when you keep electing people who can’t figure out if they want to turn us into a communist nation, or an Islamic one, or some other radical flavor of the month that’s supposed to usher in some sort of progressive paradise,” Atkinson said. “What they never seem to remember is that the communists have murdered more people than anybody else over the past century and a half. They make the Nazis look like amateurs. And if the radical Islamists ever take over, the first thing they’ll do is chop off the heads of about half the people who like to whine about how Islam is a religion of peace. And yet the Democrats are unwavering in their support of those types.”
From behind the desk in her private office here in the mansion, Governor Delgado said, “I want to hear what Mr. Gardner has to say about this information he’s brought to us.”
Gardner, who seemed to have relaxed once he finally realized that he was safe among allies and didn’
t have to run for his life anymore, held up the little metal rectangle.
“If you want to open these files, governor, they’ll tell you the whole story.”
Delgado took the USB drive from him and plugged it into a port on her computer.
“Why did you head for Texas when you got back to the states, Mr. Gardner?” she asked as the files were loading.
“I’d looked at those documents you’re about to see enough to know that the whole thing centered around Mr. Brannock’s ranch. I did a little research, found that you’d had your own squabbles with the Feds—”
“Squabbles,” Atkinson said. “I like that.”
“Anyway,” Gardner said, “I found out as much as I could about what’s been going on, and then I figured I would try to get in here and dump the whole thing in your lap. That’s why I was outside tonight. I saw Ms. Stephens leaving and recognized her, so I decided on the spur of the moment to approach her first.” He looked at Miranda, smiled, and shook his head. “I owe you an apology. I almost got you killed when that assassin came after me.”
“What’s important is that you’re here now,” Miranda told him. “And between all of us, we’re going to figure out what to do to help G.W. and Kyle.”
Delgado leaned forward in her chair to frown at the monitor in front of her. In a stunned voice, she said, “I know what you told us, Mr. Gardner, but to see it all laid out like this in black-and-white . . .”
“Yes, it’s pretty sickening that our country’s leaders would get mixed up in something like that, isn’t it? To put so many people at risk, just to make money—”
“It’s not just the money,” Delgado snapped. “That man hates Texas and everything about it.”
No one had to ask her who she was talking about.
“I’m sure Senator Rutland is more interested in the profit that he and his brother-in-law will make,” the governor went on. “But the President, what he wants is to dump millions of tons of poison on us and see what happens. He wants to ruin our air and our water and sit back and laugh while we die of cancer and radiation sickness.”
“Why would that surprise you, Maria?” Atkinson asked. “Remember when there was a chance a hurricane would strike the city where the Republican National Convention was being held, and one of the Democrats said he hoped all of them washed out to sea. How many times has some Democrat politician gone on record as wanting Republicans to get cancer and die? Remember the Ebola scare? A Democrat said she wished all gun-rights supporters would get Ebola and die. They say things like that all the time. The so-called party of peace, love, and diversity is just stewing in their own bitter hatred for everybody who doesn’t agree with them a hundred percent.”
“I know!” Delgado shouted angrily as she slammed a fist down on her desk. “But it shouldn’t be that way!”
“No, it shouldn’t,” Atkinson agreed in a quiet voice. “But we have to deal with the world the way it is, not the way we wish it could be. So what are we going to do about this? Are we going to stand by and let those so-called UN peacekeepers sweep over G.W. Brannock’s ranch like a Mongol horde? You know good and well the Chinese government insisted that they would provide the troops for this mission.”
“Of course, they did,” Gardner put in. “They don’t want that toxic nightmare in their country, and they’ve got to have somewhere to put it.”
Governor Delgado sat there breathing a little heavily while Miranda, Atkinson, and Gardner watched her. Finally, she gave a little nod, almost to herself, and looked up at them.
“They’re not going to get away with it,” she said. “Not in Texas.”
“We don’t know how those crooked bastards in Washington will react if we step in,” Atkinson said, but the grin on his face made the statement sound like anticipation, rather than a warning.
“Not in Texas,” Governor Delgado repeated.
Chapter 59
It was sort of like they were in a fort surrounded by hostile Comanches in one of those old Western movies G.W. loved so much, thought Kyle as he stood on the ranch house porch watching the stars begin to fade while the ebony sky overhead slowly turned gray. Dawn wasn’t far off now.
Slade Grayson hadn’t pinned down the hour on the deadline he’d given them. He’d just said that they had until morning to surrender.
Knowing Grayson, he’d tell the Chinese to attack at the crack of dawn. More dramatic that way, and the man loved his drama, even though there were no TV news cameras around to record it this time.
Kyle was sure that after the fact . . . after he and G.W. and all their allies had been wiped out in a bloody slaughter . . . camera crews would come in and broadcast a carefully staged scenario to the rest of the world. They would make it look like the ranch’s defenders were the bad guys, the aggressors, the radical, violent right-wing extremists who had caused the whole thing.
And too many people would just nod solemnly and think that, yes, those awful, evil conservatives are just like that, then go on eagerly lining up at the trough of their masters, never giving a thought to the fact that one of these days, the same sort of hammer inevitably would fall on them, too.
G.W. came out onto the porch behind him, carrying a cup of coffee.
“Thinkin’ deep thoughts?”
“Thinking sad thoughts. What we do here isn’t going to change anything, you know that, don’t you, G.W.?”
G.W. sipped his coffee and said, “Do you recall me sayin’ anything about wantin’ to change the world?”
“Well, no . . .”
“I’m doin’ this because I won’t be put off land that rightfully belongs to me. I’m not doin’ it to make a statement or to open anybody’s eyes. I’m doin’ it because I’m a stubborn old bastard who won’t be pushed around by the government or anybody else. As for the rest of you . . . well, I reckon you got your own reasons. I’m not sure any of those reasons are good enough to be dyin’ over, but I reckon that’s up to you.” G.W. paused. “I still wish you’d light out for the mountains, all of you. Scatter and go back to your lives.”
“My life is here now,” Kyle said quietly. “I don’t really care about making a statement, either. You’re my granddad and I love you. That’s enough of a statement for me.”
G.W. put his free hand on Kyle’s shoulder and squeezed.
“Son, you’ve made this old man proud.”
“It’s about time, I suppose.”
G.W. shook his head and said, “See, that’s where you’re wrong. I’ve always been proud of you, even when it looked like you’d lost your way, because I knew the sort of stuff you had inside you. I knew you’d come around and figure things out.”
“If that’s true, you had a lot more faith in me than I ever had.”
“More than likely. That’s what family’s for, isn’t it?”
A grin spread across Kyle’s face. He reached down to the Winchester that was leaning against the porch railing and picked it up.
“Let’s go kick some Chinese ass,” he said.
“Go get you some coffee first,” G.W. said. “We want to be good and awake for this.”
The Chinese positions had been ablaze with light all night. Generators chugged constantly. The so-called UN forces were trying to intimidate the ranch’s defenders and make Kyle, G.W., and the others realize just how hopeless their cause was.
That was wasted effort. The men on the other side of the fence knew exactly how hopeless things looked for them. Each man had searched his own heart, realized that he was going to die, probably not long after the sun came up, and accepted that fact as necessary.
Nearly two hundred years earlier, a small group of rough men had stood together inside an old mission in San Antonio and come to that same conclusion. A lot of things had changed in Texas since then.
But not the hearts and spirits of true Texans. That same love of liberty burned just as brightly inside G.W. and Kyle Brannock, Thad Bowman, Dave Sparks, and all the others. That had never changed and, God willing, never would.
Texan to the bone. Texan to the blood.
Bring it, you sons of bitches, thought Kyle as he stood behind one of the pickups parked near the fence and watched the Chinese troops moving around on the other side of the highway.
The sun wasn’t up yet, but there was enough light for the defenders to see the enemy getting ready to launch their attack. There was nothing secretive about it. With such a huge advantage in numbers and firepower, there was no reason for the Chinese to sneak around and try to hide what they were doing.
The orange glow on the eastern horizon brightened even more. In a matter of minutes, that fiery orb would appear, a sliver at first, then rising steadily higher as its light spread across the West Texas landscape.
Before that happened, Slade Grayson walked out alone into the middle of the deserted highway.
“Brannock!” he shouted. “G. W. Brannock!”
“I hear you!” G.W. called from where he stood beside Kyle.
“Last chance, old man! You’ve defied the federal government long enough. Your time’s up! Open that gate, and you and all the others come out with your hands up. You won’t be hurt. You won’t ever see the outside of a federal prison again, I can promise you that, but we won’t cut you down like you deserve.”
“You know, Grayson, I reckon I was a little wrong about you,” G.W. said.
Even from this distance, Kyle could see the puzzled frown on Grayson’s face. The government man asked, “How do you figure that?”
“I had you pegged as a bully, and most bullies are cowards at heart. But you’re not yellow, Grayson. You’re standin’ right out there in the open, and you’ve got to know that I could put a bullet through your head before you could get back to cover if I wanted to.”
Grayson laughed and said, “You wouldn’t do that. I’m a pretty good judge of character. I could tell right away that you think of yourself as an honorable man. You’re not a murderer.”
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