But come ashore they did. Low and weaving, maintaining the shelter of the partially raised ramp for as long as possible, the first wave of marines leapt onto the lower promenade of the park with a blaze of offensive fire. At least half of them were hit by our fire and dropped to the ground. But more marines kept coming. There was no hesitation. I admired the bravery of these men, but I needed to remind myself that they were the enemy, here to kill me if I did not kill them first. In the next wave, one marine who moved laterally to the west and was not hit swung around our right flank. Matthew, who was standing on the outside shooting around the west edge of our slab, took the first bullet. Matthew dropped to his knees and turned to face me. The top right side of his head was gone, as was his right eye and his face down to his mid-cheek. His left eye was active and very much alive. He stared at me hard, eye to eyes, in a look of confusion that hardened almost instantly to desperate imploring. I remember speaking the words, “What, Matt, what do you want?” Before my question was complete, the light in the remaining eye faded and he fell facedown. I looked beyond him to the west and saw a young man, red hair visible below his helmet. He had thick freckles on a pale face, which twisted with anger and hate. He charged in from the right, firing, but at an angle from which I was protected by the wall. He was screaming. I heard “Die faggot.” I realized that even before Matthew had hit the ground, I had taken a grenade from my belt and pulled the pin. I had no idea how long before. I swung my arm in a lazy underhand loop, and the grenade landed right at his feet. He paused, and then disappeared in a fine red mist.
I turned to my left and peeked around the east side of the wall. A unit of marines leapt over the end of the ramp, landed on the inside of the Battery seawall, and charged up the center of the memorial plaza. Without thought, I stepped to the outside of the wall, knelt, and fired into the group of running soldiers. I remember counting out loud the ones who dropped. The last thing I remember was softly saying to myself the word “three.”
It is not by one way alone that we can arrive at so sublime a mystery.
—Quintus Aurelius Symmachus, 384
T
HE DAY
I
ARRIVED AT
G
OVERNORS
I
SLAND
unfolded so strangely that I have replayed it over and over in my mind to assure myself that these memories are accurate and not part of the delirium we all suffered during the two days we spent tied on the ground in Battery Park. Months before the amphibious assault on the Battery, the feds had planned meticulously for the end of the siege. The centerpiece of their plan was the conversion of Governors Island, the 172-acre former military base in the heart of New York harbor, into a “re-education camp” for male Sec fighters. The female Sec fighters were taken to a converted summer camp on Staten Island.
After an intake procedure that seemed familiar from every prison movie ever made, thousands of male prisoners, dressed identically in orange jumpsuits, were ushered into a large auditorium. We had not been permitted to speak with one another since leaving the staging area in Battery Park. We were still shocked from the suddenness of the assault on the Battery, the savagery of the fighting, and speed with which it ended. The left side of my head, which was still covered by a large bandage, ached and throbbed from the wound to my skull. I was still trying to adjust to the fact that I was alive.
A clergyman strode to the lectern on the stage in the front of the room. An elaborate carved plaque affixed to the front of the lectern showed a sword and crucifix crossed against the background of a gold shield.
“Let us pray,” he said. “Oh God our father, the giver of life and giver of law; oh Lord Jesus Christ, Your son and our redeemer. These men, your children, have sinned against You most abominably. The illusions of Satan have penetrated their hearts, and they have taken up arms against their father and their brothers. The eternal torments of hell are their just rewards. And yet, merciful God, You still hold out the redemption of Christ, the possibility of eternal life in Christ, to
all
Your children. So I pray, oh Lord, that these children confess their sins and open their hearts to the light of Your Word. I pray, oh Lord, for the judges and the officers of this place, that they may do Your will. In the name of Jesus Christ, our Lord, Amen.”
A few muffled “Amens” rose from the room.
Three men in army uniforms—colonels, I believe—walked to the center of the stage.
“Thank you, Reverend,” one of them opened. “The special military tribunal convened by order of the president to deal with domestic enemy combatants in the Holy War for the Union has reached a judgment in your case. Although Executive Order No. 424 gives the military tribunal exclusive jurisdiction, the president asked that our finding be reviewed by the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit, which also sits as a special court to advise the federal judiciary on questions of biblical law. The commission has instructed us to come before you to read its decision.” He looked up and then continued.
“In the matter of
The People of the United States of America v. Enemy Combatants in the State of New York
, this tribunal finds said enemy combatants guilty of sedition, treason, armed insurrection, and conversion of federal property. You are hereby sentenced to death.” He again paused to let this sink in. I heard only a few gasps and quiet groans in the large room.
“However, the sentence of death is hereby suspended for three years, or until such earlier time as you indicate by your words or deeds that you have closed your heart to the saving grace of Jesus Christ. Each of you is ordered confined to the federal Faith & Freedom Rehabilitation Facility, Governors Island, until such time as you are born again in Christ’s love and you have demonstrated for six months thereafter the sincerity and total conviction with which you have accepted Jesus as your savior, following which time you shall be released and your death sentence commuted. May God bless you and forgive you for your sins.”
The three colonels left the stage, and a murmur erupted among the men until the guards brusquely demanded silence.
A blond man in his late thirties in civilian dress came to the front of the room. His large boyish face presented a picture of corn-fed innocence, but the head sat atop a body that exuded danger. It was a body that suggested vanity, pride, and obsession with physical prowess. Half of a crucifix tattoo peeked out from the arm of a T-shirt, the sleeves of which seemed to me to be unnecessarily tight. He moved with an awkward self-consciousness. His expression tended toward a sneer. This is a person, I imagined darkly, who likes watching others suffer.
“Welcome,” he said, “to Camp Purity. I am Joe Jones, superintendent of the Faith & Freedom Rehabilitation Facility, Governors Island, better known among those who will be your … your … hosts here as Camp Purity. In case there was any doubt about your sentence, let me make it clear. You are criminals who have been convicted of multiple capital offenses and sentenced to death. That sentence has been temporarily suspended. You now have a choice. You will accept Jesus as your savior and be born again in Christ, or you will be executed. If you cease to work in good faith on your rehabilitation in Christ’s love, you will be executed. If you falsely claim to have accepted Jesus Christ as your savior, a heinous sin and crime, you will be executed. If you are not born again within three years, you will be executed. Are you getting the picture?”
He paused for dramatic effect, his gaze fixed on a large crucifix, with a Christ figure that was at least fifteen feet tall, mounted on the side wall of the large hall. His gaze drew mine and others. This was not the lanky Jesus mild of countless medieval and Renaissance depictions. This was Jesus the warrior, with the musculature of a marine and a fierce gaze that spoke of defiance to his torturers, not submission and suffering. His crucifixion was grotesque, with splayed skin and bone fragments hanging from the nail wounds in his ankles, and tendons and blood vessels spilling from a large tear in his right wrist. The dirty cloth that was supposed to maintain the modesty of the crucified Christ instead suggested his virility. As a sculptural object, the crucifix was literal, empty, and entirely without art. I could not imagine how it could inspire devotion.
“On the other hand,” Superintendent Jones continued, “if you look honestly at your lives, if you are truly contrite for the terrible sins you have committed, if you open your hearts to Christ, if you study the Bible and pray, if you maintain your purity, and if you hand over your life to Jesus, then you will experience the most wonderful thing that can happen to a mortal man. Your old selves—your grasping, dark, sinful, satanic selves—will suddenly melt away. The lies of Satan will disappear in a moment when they’re exposed as the illusions they are, and you’ll be filled with the light of Christ and know that you have gained eternal life through his grace. For six months after this wonderful epiphany, you will stay here with your brothers so the strength and integrity of your second birth can be tested. When we know it to be real, you’ll be released to take your places as devout and useful citizens of our Christian Nation. Any questions?”
As a lawyer, I had to admire the clever construction of our sentence. Our death sentences were suspended for three years (meaning we died if we had not converted in thirty-six months). But the suspension also lapsed (that is, we would be executed)
before
the three years were up if we indicated by our words or deeds that we have
closed
our heart “to the saving grace of Jesus Christ.” So, if at
any time
they thought we were not trying hard enough to be saved, then they had license to kill us at will. I could imagine President Jordan explaining to the people how his government had shown the mercy of Christ to the rebels on Manhattan, sparing our lives and giving us every chance to find the peace of the Lord and emerge as free men. No one would know that each of us stood under the sword of Damocles, hanging by a thread, facing death every minute of every day, if by word or deed or bad luck one of our captors decided that our heart was irredeemably closed to the light of the Lord.
Having scanned the room, the superintendent suddenly looked more animated than he had at any other stage of the proceedings.
“Now that you understand your sentence, and the gracious mercy of Christ that has been extended to you by your fellow citizens, I will turn to the next topic. This is masturbation.”
I thought at first that I had not heard right and looked to the person to my right for affirmation. He arched an eyebrow. Seeing the confusion in the room, the superintendent repeated himself.
“Yes, that’s right, masturbation.”
For ten months they had laid siege to Manhattan. Tens of thousands of Americans all around the country had died in the Holy War. And now that victory was finally theirs, now that they had the most committed Secs within their control, theirs to reshape in accordance with their holy vision, now that their moment had come … I didn’t know whether to laugh or cry. In my confusion, I remembered a comment Sanjay had made—that all authoritarian regimes, were they not so tragic, tended toward the farcical. Superintendent Jones continued.
“Look within yourselves. Somewhere deep down you knew this day would come. From the first day you pleasured yourself you knew it was wrong. Ugly. Unclean. A perversion of the purpose of sex. An abomination in the sight of God.”
He glanced dramatically at the crucifix.
“A terrible violation of His temple, your body. Impurity—the corruption of your bodies—is what opened your souls to Satan. Impurity literally cracked open the door to evil, and evil flowed through that crack and filled up the work with corruption, like water flowing through the crack in a dam. So you see, impurity is what lies at the root of every social and political evil. And, what’s worse, you and your culture were blind to impurity; instead, you tolerated, even celebrated, the corruption. And this tolerance of impurity is what caused God to punish us on 9/11 and then again on 7/22.”
We had heard this part before. The moment that President Palin publicly endorsed the idea that America’s disobedience to God caused both 9/11 and 7/22 is the moment that so many of us first awakened to the danger we faced. Many in the room shifted in their seats.
“Do you understand? Everything, everything that was wrong with you and with the wicked culture you built was based on the black foundation of sexual violation. Thus, it is obvious that to create the conditions where you can enjoy the redemption of Christ’s love, we must pull down that foul foundation. The place to start on the road to your second births is simple. You will cease to masturbate. This is the first and most important rule of Camp Purity.” He gazed around the room as if looking for someone, then continued.
“This is so much more than a rule. This is a covenant you will make with yourselves, with one another and with God. Knowing how to make and keep covenants is the first step to knowing God. When you get to your rooms, you will find a contract on each bunk. It’s a binding agreement among the six of you in the room. Your five roommates are your brothers. They are your new family. Their role is the same as your brothers in your first life—to love and support you, to keep you strong and pure. You will agree to do this for one another and for God, and you will sign this contract. If you break your word, you are betraying yourself and your brothers and God. If one of you fails, all fail.”
Superintendent Jones continued with his hands on his hips, his right bicep flexing so that the tattooed cross on his arm distractingly emerged from below his sleeve.
“You will be monitored at all times. If you attempt to masturbate, you and all your brothers will be punished … punished severely. If you observe someone else attempting to masturbate and you do not report it, you and all your brothers will be punished, severely. This is the nature of your covenant with one another—a sin by one is a sin by all. There is no such thing as punishment of one of you, for the failure by one is a failure by all.”