"There's always a way, Gwen. But first you have to decide where you want to be."
"Right now, anyplace would be better than where I am," she said.
Her eyes met mine for an instant and then she looked down again at her lap, where she finished disinfecting my hand and wrapped it with gauze.
"If you want to leave the dispensary, I'm sure they could use your help in one of the other departments…"
She shook her head.
"I don't give a flying hoot about your revolt. I just want to get out of Kamas and start over somewhere else."
Gwen applied the final piece of adhesive tape to my bandage. Before I could think of anything to say, Gwen's eyes told me she was beyond reach.
After leaving the dispensary I returned to the barracks for a nap before dinner. I had just risen and was preparing to leave for the mess hall when I heard distant shouts and whistles and the banging of steel on steel that signified an attack had begun. I ran toward the Service Yard and climbed to the roof of the warehouse that was my observation post.
Jon Merrill was already there, watching the gaps in the wall and giving a detailed description of the action to a messenger from the command post. He explained to me that the enemy had moved a platoon of Tommy gunners into two of the four newly created gaps in the perimeter wall.
Through the gaps I could see a training facility that lay just outside the camp perimeter. Its second–floor verandah was packed with high–ranking police, military, and State Security officers spying on us through binoculars, telescopes, and enormous telephoto lenses. I borrowed a pair of binoculars from Jon Merrill and stared back at them, spotting Fred Rocco, Doug Chambers, General Boscov, and Colonel Tracy among the crowd. They appeared to be watching the reactions of our defenders to their side’s probes. Their men would advance just far enough through the breach to lure our men out from behind their barricades and then their men would retreat behind the wall.
Meanwhile, the video cameras turned and the still cameras captured the fierce postures of our primitively armed fighters. The officers laughed heartily from the safety of their distant balcony, delighting in the bizarre spectacle of impassioned savages confronting their civilized and well–armed opponents.
Suddenly Jon Merrill tugged at my sleeve and pointed to the gate at the far left of the Service Yard. There a squad of Tommy gunners charged from behind the gap in the wall and held their ground as a squad of warders rushed in from behind them to storm our barricades. The Tommy gunners leveled their weapons, ready to offer covering fire to the warders, who used hooks, nets, and lassos to capture our defenders as if they were hunting wild animals.
If the warders were counting on taking a few defenders back for interrogation, however, they were thwarted in this and nearly lost a few men of their own. As it happened, our defenders included elite troops skilled in hand–to–hand combat. Seeing the warders advance without firearms, our troops charged them, whirling and kicking and punching furiously and inflicting worse damage than the attackers had expected. The Tommy gunners resorted to firing over the heads of our men to cover the warders’ escape. They continued to play a game of cat and mouse this way for nearly another hour.
During this final hour of probing, the enemy introduced another tactic that they would use repeatedly in the days to come. They broadcast an appeal for deserters, using loudspeakers mounted on the watchtowers to the east and west of the Service Yard. The appeal varied little each time it was broadcast and generally employed a script similar to the following:
"Prisoners, come to your senses! Don't let the mutineers use you to put off their day of reckoning. Leave the camp now. No unarmed prisoner who approaches the gates will be fired upon. If you come out now you will be treated fairly and will not be charged with mutiny. Drop your weapons and walk past the barricades to the gaps…"
At first many of the prisoners who heard this message were confused. A few closet Unionists seemed sorely tempted to run for the gates but hesitated for fear of being cut down from behind. Within twenty minutes of the first appeal for deserters, however, Glenn Reineke announced over our own loudspeakers that anyone who trusted State Security to make good on its pledge was more than free to leave. He ordered our defenders to hold no one back from deserting. Once we knew we could leave at any time, the sense of urgency disappeared. Not a single prisoner deserted that day.
Seeing that the gambit had failed, the Tommy gunners withdrew and the high–ranking spectators packed their cameras and departed in their vans. But we knew they would be back. The conflict had simply entered a new phase.
CHAPTER 35
"One day Larisa Fedorovna went out and did not come back. She must have been arrested in the street at that time. She vanished without a trace and probably died somewhere, forgotten as a nameless number on a list that afterwards got mislaid, in one of the innumerable mixed or women's concentration camps in the north."
—Boris Pasternak,Doctor Zhivago
MONDAY, JUNE 7
DAY 23
Over the weekend every able–bodied supporter of the revolt turned out to work on the massive project of tearing down the interior walls between the divisions and using the rubble to build a new inner perimeter wall. The new wall was set back about fifteen yards from the original and was given added height and thickness where it faced breaches exposing us to gunfire from outside.
All day long while the construction crews worked, the camp bosses broadcast propaganda messages from their network of loudspeakers surrounding the camp. They broadcast live speeches by the Warden and by visiting brass hats. They broadcast recorded speeches by the late President–for–Life and by other Unionist leaders. They even broadcast prerecorded interviews with ordinary citizens of Heber and the Kamas Valley, apparently to impress upon us that we could expect no sympathy from the local population.
In response, Ralph Knopfler's Information Department redirected our own loudspeakers outward to tell our side of the story to the guards and to the troops surrounding the camp. Before long, each side resorted to jamming the other side's messages through simultaneous broadcasting, with the result that the air was filled with unintelligible noise played at earsplitting volume, sometimes well into the night.
On Sunday our Information Department tried a new trick: tying bundles of crude propaganda leaflets to kites and releasing the leaflets as soon as they were over enemy positions. After the first few bundles hit their targets, State Security officers rode across the hills on motorcycles to intercept the leaflets the moment a kite soared above the perimeter wall. We never learned whether the leaflets persuaded any guards or troops to soften their attitudes toward us but we could be sure that the leaflets threatened the bosses when the guards began firing machine guns at the kites. When bullets did not succeed in bringing down the kites, security officers sent up attack kites to tangle strings with ours and bring them down that way.
At breakfast on Monday morning, Ralph Knopfler predicted that the Technical Department would soon have a radio transmitter with sufficient power to reach Mexico City. According to Jerry Lee, the Information Department was busy writing radio scripts aimed at attracting international attention to Kamas.
D.J. Schultz, who sat with us, scoffed at the idea that publicizing the Kamas revolt would have any impact at all on our opponents.
"You could reach every country in the world and raise protests from all of them without making the slightest dent in the bosses' thick skulls," D.J. declared. "The Unionists don't respect public opinion. All they respect is force. And who's going to send troops or planes against Washington over the likes of us?"
"There are other ways of getting to them besides force," Knopfler argued. "There's economic pressure and diplomatic pressure. The Unionists need plenty of things from overseas that the free countries can cut off."
"I'll believe it when I see it," D.J. replied. "Which countries stood up to those bastards when they bombed civilian targets during the Events? Who stood in the way when they invaded Mexi
co and Canada? Who raised hell when the Unionists executed politicals by the thousands and sent their families to death camps at Hudson Bay?"
"My Lord, D.J., where did you suddenly pick up so much history?" Jerry Lee asked, feigning surprise.
"I’ll admit that I was too young to understand what went on in those days," D.J. said defensively. "But Gary's been holding classes…"
"Don’t take everything Gary Toth tells you at face value, D.J.," Knopfler warned. "Gary has his own axes to grind and sometimes he grinds them pretty hard."
"I've got to start somewhere, Chief."
Knopfler and Jerry Lee exchanged skeptical glances.
As we dropped off our dirty dishes at the kitchen I mentioned that I was on my way to the security offices. D.J. said he was going that way, too.
"You’ve probably noticed that Jerry Lee and I haven't been seeing eye to eye lately," he volunteered as soon as we were alone. "I told him this morning that I'm moving out of the barracks."
"I'm sorry to hear that, D.J." I said. "I thought you two were pretty close friends."
"We were. But since I signed up with Gary’s outfit, we've been arguing a lot. Jerry Lee says they're filling me with hate. I say I'm fighting for what I believe in. Neither of us is willing to change his mind, so I guess the best thing we can do is to go our separate ways."
"Where will you bunk now?" I asked.
"With my martial arts team in Barracks A–7. We start training this week to learn how to use the new weapons the workshops are making for us. Believe me, when the goons enter this camp, they’re going to get the surprise of their lives."
"Is fighting something you enjoy, D.J.?" I asked him. I was surprised at his transformation, having always seen him as friendly and easygoing–hardly the kind of person who enjoyed inflicting pain.
"Not exactly," D.J. replied. "I hardly fought at all until prison. Oh, I had a few years of karate during high school but I never took it seriously. It wasn't until I got banged around during interrogation and in the transit camps that I learned how to dish it out. When I came here and the warders smacked me every day, I felt like I had to pick a fight sometimes just to get the poison out of my system."
"Are you sure you're ready to go up against troops with assault rifles? How will you even get close enough to land a punch?"
"I probably shouldn't tell you this, Paul, but soon we're going to have a lot more than punches to throw around," D.J. confided. "The techs are making us high–powered crossbows, super slingshots, throwing darts, and all kinds of standoff weapons that we can use to hit the enemy at a distance. We're also learning how to capture their assault rifles and body armor to use against them. I think it's going to be more of an even match than anyone expects."
"Honestly, D.J., what chance do you think you have of living through the first assault?"
"Less than ten–to–one is my guess," he replied easily, looking me straight in the eye. "Paul, I realize that State Security will never give in to our demands and that the only way out of here is in a body bag. I just want to go down swinging."
"You're sure of that?"
"Dead sure," he replied with his old boyish smile.
D.J. and I arrived at the entrance to the women's jail compound and presented ourselves to the guard on duty. D.J. was waved in right away. I told the guard that I had an appointment with Glenn Reineke and waited while he scanned his clipboard for my name. At last he waved me in, too.
I made my way to the one–story brick outbuilding that served as the Security Commissioner’s offices. The duty officer led me to one of the rear offices that had been converted to a conference room.
"Come on in, Paul; we were just getting started," Reineke greeted me when he spotted me outside the door. With him were Pete Murphy and Gary Toth. Ralph Knopfler arrived a moment later and took a seat beside me.
"Lieutenant," he told the duty officer as soon as Knopfler was seated. "Please shut the door and don’t let anyone in until I tell you."
"Yes, Sir," the lieutenant replied before closing the door.
"The reason I called you," Reineke began, "is that I need your advice on a situation that arose over the weekend. Last Thursday after Colonel Majors and I had our weekly conference with the Warden and General Boscov, the General called me aside for a private talk. He started off by praising my war record. Then he said he had read my security file from cover to cover and thought I had been wrongly convicted on the desertion charge. He offered me what Doug Chambers offered Colonel Majors two weeks ago: expedited review before a special hearing panel. I reminded him that I didn’t think any commissioner should get a rehearing until after the revolt was settled. When he finally got it through his head that I wouldn't take the bait, he backpedaled to erase the impression he’d been trying to recruit me.
"The moment Boscov left, I looked for Colonel Majors, wondering what sort of pitch the Warden may have made to him while I was with Boscov. When I caught up with him, I told him what Boscov had offered me and asked what Rocco had said to him.
"Majors became extremely defensive. He told me he didn’t think expedited case reviews were at all improper for commission members and that if I wanted to exclude myself, fine. But others had waited a long time for wrongs to be righted and it would be unfair to deny them their moment before a panel. In the meantime, he said he intended to exercise his privilege as chief commissioner to meet with his counterparts in State Security whenever and wherever he wanted, without consulting me or anyone else. Then he turned on his heel and left."
"It seems to me that Colonel Majors cares more about getting his career back than he does about the revolt," Knopfler remarked.
"I don't like the sound of it, either," Pete Murphy agreed. "I think he's made up his mind to do what's best for Mitch Majors and to hell with everyone else."
"Ditto that," Toth said. "I wouldn't trust him, regardless. It all adds up. Start with his public and private statements: rarely anti–Unionist, usually sympathetic to the bosses. Then look at who he hangs out with: Perkins, a die–hard Unionist; Quayle, a fellow traveler; and the crooked judges, Richardson and O'Rourke. Then there's his personal life: right from the start, he set up a private suite for himself and has had special meals delivered to him from the mess hall. He plays favorites in doling out privileges and generally throws his weight around like he's cock–of–the–roost. The latest is that he's got his mistress on his clerical staff. It all comes down to a question of character. If he'll cheat in small things, what's to hold him back from the big ones?"
"What do you think, Paul?" Reineke asked.
"I've had an intuitive suspicion of the Colonel for some time," I told him. "But I've kept it on hold until I had facts to justify it. For me, the central issue is whether the Colonel has put himself at the head of the revolt because he genuinely believes in it or because he thinks he can manipulate it to his own advantage. If he believes in the revolt but has some flaw that makes him act high–handedly, perhaps he can be forgiven. But if he deliberately sought the post of leader for the purpose of selling us out, then we need to move him aside before he can do any more harm."
"What kind of harm do you expect?" Murphy asked. "We're the ones who control the security and defense forces. He can't do much without us knowing about it first."
"He could create a pretext for the other side to attack," Reineke suggested. "Or fail to respond when they do. Or he could try to dismiss us and order our men to surrender. Paul is right: we need to be ready in case he steps out of line."
"And we need to keep Perkins, Quayle, and the judges under twenty–four–hour–a–day surveillance," Toth added. "If they do anything suspicious, I think we ought to bring them in for questioning or maybe even put them on ice for a while."
"We've already got four or five in custody for Unionist agitation, don't we?" Murphy pointed out. "What's a few more?"
"They might even welcome it," Reineke observed. "You couldn't ask for a better alibi when the revolt is over."
*
***
The bosses' next provocation was not long in coming. Late that afternoon another appeal for defections began blaring from the loudspeakers:
"Prisoners, vote with your feet! Show them what you really think of the revolt. Leave the camp now through the gaps in the east wall or through the main gate. We will not fire at any unarmed prisoner who crosses our lines. Your own commission has ordered its troops not to prevent you from leaving. So why hesitate? Leave today and you will not be punished…"
Over the weekend the Information Department had recorded a response to this speech similar to the response Glenn Reineke had delivered the previous Friday. The recording assured prisoners that anyone who wished to leave the camp and surrender to State Security was free to do so without fear of reprisals. The defenders at the barricades were ordered to prevent no one from deserting.
Unlike Friday, however, when those most tempted to make their exit had hesitated for fear of catching a spear on their way out, today a small number of prisoners seemed ready to bolt. I watched them from a nearby roof. They joined the throng of prisoners watching from a distance, jostled their way to the front, and finally the first of them broke free and ran for the gate.
As the first defector passed between two of our barricades, every spectator held his breath. In an instant, a prisoner ran out from behind a barricade in hot pursuit but halted when his commanding officer bellowed for him to stop. The defector gained speed, vaulted over the waist–high new inner wall to a chorus of catcalls and escaped through the eastern gate, where warders pulled him to safety.
Seeing the first defector reach the gate without harm, two more bolted from the cordon of spectators toward the gate and encountered no interference, except for shouts of "Traitor!" from their fellow prisoners. Then I saw a familiar figure break free from the crowd and start off at a brisk walk along the same path. It was George Perkins, crossing the yard without fear or shame as if he had business with his masters on the other side. Within moments, dozens of prisoners recognized him and cursed him roundly for his duplicity.
Forty Days at Kamas Page 28