Divided We Fall (28 page)

“At least I won’t be alone,” I said to myself. Somehow I felt better about my decision, knowing so many others had chosen the same.

The show cut out to silence for a moment. Had the Fed shut him down? What about free speech? Then some music played, followed by an announcer.

A different voice came on.

I switched the radio off and drove on in silence. Everyone I talked to and everyone on the news had a different take on the standoff. Now the vice president, like Lieutenant McFee, was getting out of it. Not for the first time, I wished I could too.

The next four weeks of Army life were good for one reason. Most of the time, we were cut off from the news. The little news we did get went around the ranks quickly. That Laura Griffith woman became the next vice president. Some of the guys were worried about that because she’d been demanding the Fed get tough with Idaho, but we soon got word that President Rodriguez and Governor Montaine were videoconferencing to work out a possible compromise — something about tinkering with the stupid ID card law. Montaine sent a message to all of us, promising that he wouldn’t agree to any deal that would allow Idaho Guardsmen to be punished for the shootings at Boise, or for their service in the Idaho Guard during the standoff. I hoped the talks would work so we could end this and all go home.

We also heard that enough pissed-off Idaho voters had signed a petition that the state would have to have a recall vote on November 2. If Montaine lost, he would be out of office and the lieutenant governor would take over. I didn’t know who that was, but I did know that we were screwed without Montaine. If he was removed from office, the Fed would come in here and arrest every soldier who had been at Boise or refused to obey the president’s activation call. Sergeant Kemp was real into politics, and he said he didn’t think the recall effort would work, because not only would the majority of special election voters have to agree to recall the governor, but the recall votes had to exceed the number of votes for Montaine when he was first voted into office. He’d won in a landslide, and a lot of the Montaine haters had left the state after the blockade started. Still, it was one more big political thing to worry about.

It seemed all the more important as Fed soldiers set up their own checkpoint across the state line from our wire obstacle. They dug in their own fighting positions and gouged a big anti-vehicle trench in the road. A large dirt berm behind the ditch made it impossible to drive through and would provide cover for Fed troops.

My team’s job was to stand guard at the position Luchen and I had started building weeks before. Shortly after I showed up to duty, we stacked more rocks to build the west wall up higher. Then we pressed mud into the cracks between the rocks to harden up the barrier. After that we used some of the wood from the trees that we’d brought down to put on a log roof. More mud sealed up the gaps and mostly kept the rain out. Mostly. It didn’t keep out the cold, though, and the temperature dropped further the deeper we got into October.

There were four soldiers in our team, and we pulled guard duty in pairs, twelve hours on, twelve hours off. At least one of the two soldiers on duty needed to be awake at all times. Me and Sergeant Kemp got stuck with the night shift, and twelve hours is a long time to be awake through the night, so we took turns staying up to keep watch. Still, even with our ever-present thermal cloaks, it was tough sleeping out on that cold cliff, and boring sitting through the night watching the Washington border through our night vision glasses, shivering and waiting for the sun to come up over Silver Mountain.

The only major duty we had besides sitting there and staying awake was weapons maintenance. Every time the shift changed, the guys coming on had to remove the 7.62 ammo from the M240 Bravo machine gun, strip the weapon down, clean the parts, put it back together again, and then perform a functions check to make sure it would fire if needed. After that, we had to do the same to our M4 rifles. The whole process took over an hour if we did it right, but after a while our team came to the agreement that the 240 only needed to be taken apart and cleaned once a day. We alternated that duty.

We also killed time cleaning our personal weapons, which the Idaho Guard allowed us to carry. They weren’t strict with how often we performed personal weapons maintenance, but they did tell us we had to do it at least once a week. A lot of guys cleaned their weapons more often than that because they liked to get them out and show them off. Specialist Danning had his own Barrett 82A1 .50-caliber rifle. The rounds for that sucker were each about five and a half inches long, and he had two ten-round magazines, plus a wicked scope. The whole setup had to have cost him way over ten grand. Me, I was good with my standard-issue M4 and my dad’s nine mil.

Staff Sergeant Meyers hadn’t reported for duty, meaning he had either stayed home or sold us out and joined the Feds. Our new staff sergeant was named Shane Donshel. They’d tried promoting Kemp, but he refused, saying he preferred to stay with his team. That was lucky for me. He was in charge, but he was also one of us. Best of all, Sergeant Kemp allowed me to bend the rules on using comms on the line so that I could call my mother.

She was getting along okay, staying in the guest bedroom of a nurse she’d met at the conference, but she was rapidly using up all the vacation days she’d saved for several years. She worried that if she couldn’t get back to the clinic soon, they’d have to let her go, and then we’d be in serious financial trouble, as we had a mortgage, car payment, and other bills that had to be paid. I was getting paid from the Idaho Guard — real silver coins with a picture of Idaho on one side and a Revolutionary War soldier on the other — and we had some income from the shop, but a PFC didn’t make much, and with gas supplies cut off, people weren’t having work done on their cars.

I could hear the shadow creeping into Mom’s voice more and more as time went on.

“I can’t take it, Danny,”
she said one night.
“I want to go home. You don’t understand. I need to go home.”

“Mom, you’re fine where you are. I know you’d rather be —”

“I’ve heard rumors that the Army doesn’t have every part of the border completely guarded, so people can sneak across into Idaho. Maybe I could do that, Danny. I used to do a lot of hiking when I was younger, and if I try it before the snow comes, it might not be that hard.”

I stood up without thinking and hit my head on the low ceiling in our bunker. “No, Mom. Listen to me. I’ve been on border duty for a long time now. If the Fed doesn’t have a camp somewhere, they are running patrols or scouting the border with drones. They would find you.”

“But —”

“It’s too dangerous for now, Mom. But these talks between the governor and the president seem like they’re going well. I’m sure you’ll be able to come home soon.”

“Oh, I hope you’re right, Danny.”
She did not sound convinced.

Each time we talked, it seemed like it took longer to get her to calm down and stay where she was. As I sat up nights looking out into the darkness on the Washington border, I worried about Mom a lot.

One Thursday night, Sergeant Kemp was conducting our nightly nineteen hundred hours shift change team meeting. “Good news and bad news,” he said. “The good news is we’re going to get some leave time tomorrow. The bad news is it’s going to be really short. So they’re going to let each one of us go home for half of our shift. That’s six hours off, and that includes travel time. Do not be late getting back because you’ll be screwing over the next guy. You have one major order while you’re at home: Gather all your civilian cold-weather gear. Hats, gloves, snowmobile suits, long underwear, whatever you got. It seems the Idaho Central Issuing Facility doesn’t have close to enough gear for everyone. They have to outfit us and the ICC.”

“What? The civilians?” Luchen said.

“Get used to it,” said Specialist Sparrow. “I hear they’re thinking about arming the ICC and putting them through some training.”

“That’s bullshit!” Luchen shouted.

“Maybe,” Kemp said, “but that’s the way it goes. Wright, tomorrow you can go home starting at nineteen hundred. Be back shortly before zero one. I’ll take the worst shift off.”

“Are you sure?” I asked, like I wanted him to take the best leave time. Like it was no big deal.

Kemp laughed. “You’re a bad actor, Wright. Just shut up and take your shift before I change my mind.”

The next day when my time came, I drove back to town, telling Hank to call JoBell over and over. Every time the call went straight to voice mail. Where the hell was she? My plan had been to call her same as I had every few days, acting like I only wanted to talk, but this time I’d be calling to figure out where she was. Then I’d show up there and surprise her. So far my plan was falling apart.

“Hank, call Becca, and don’t ask me if I want to listen to any damned songs.”

“You got it, partner.”

“Danny?”
Becca said.
“Oh my gosh, how are you?”
There was a lot of loud talking and laughter in the background. Was that music playing?

“Hey, Becca. What’s up? You at the game?”

“All the games have been canceled due to gas rationing. Danny, hang on, I can hardly hear you. Let me step outside.”
A moment later the background noise died down.
“We’re all at Cal’s. His dad has been making trucking runs for the ICC, picking up supplies from somewhere. He brought back, like, a pallet of beer for himself, and we didn’t think he’d miss a few cases. I wish you were here. I miss you. I mean, you know, we all miss you.”

“JoBell there and everything?”

“Um … Yeah.”
There was sort of a long pause.
“Should I put her on?”

“No, no.” Bingo. Found her. “I’ll call back later. My sergeant is yelling at me to go do something. I have to go.”

We said our goodbyes and tapped out. I cranked up the radio, switched off my mufflers so the Beast would be loud as hell, and drove on toward Cal’s. Although it was against uniform regulations, I even put on my cowboy hat. It was my night off and they had a party going and everything. The night was starting to look a lot better.

A short time later, I’d parked the Beast, sprinted across the gravel lot by Cal’s trailer home, and jumped up the wooden steps to his door. I could already hear the music thumping inside. Forget knocking. Nobody was going to hear it anyway. I rushed inside, threw the door closed behind me, and stopped when I saw JoBell.

She and TJ were sitting on the stairs that led up to the kitchen. TJ was leaning toward her, saying something real quiet-like so nobody else could hear. JoBell threw her head back laughing and playfully elbowed him.

“Oh, you gotta be kidding me,” I said.

JoBell saw me and stood, her eyes wide in shock.

“Danny!” Becca jumped up from the faded plaid couch where she sat between Cal and Sweeney. Brad Robinson waved to me from the cracked vinyl recliner in the corner. Becca ran up and hugged me. I squeezed her once, but then gently pushed her away.

JoBell was right behind her. She kissed me quickly and then hugged me. “Danny, what are you doing here?”

“Yeah? Surprised? Didn’t expect to see me?”

Her smile faded. “Of course I didn’t expect you. I thought you were on duty.”

“Why is your comm shut off?”

“We made her keep it off so she wouldn’t be checking the news all night,” Sweeney said.

JoBell frowned. “Are you okay?”

I’d waited, like, a month to see my girlfriend again, and when I finally had a chance for a couple hours with her, I walk in to catch her with that jackwad TJ. “Why don’t you ask him?” I asked.

JoBell saw who I’d nodded at. “You mean …” She folded her arms. “Oh, come on. We were just talking.”

“Keeping your comm off so I can’t call you —”

She put her fists down by her sides. “Oh, I’m sorry, I didn’t realize I was on twenty-four-hour standby in case the Guard happens to allow you a few minutes to use your comm!”

TJ stood up. “Hey, Wright. Seriously, it’s no big deal.”

“You can shut the hell up or I will beat your ass, TJ.” I took a step toward him. Even though we were still a good six feet apart, Brad and Cal were instantly on their feet between us.

JoBell stepped up and shoved both of the guys out of the way. “I think that uniform and all that macho weapons bullshit have gone to your head. Why don’t you calm down so you don’t ruin everybody’s good time? Have a beer.”

“I can’t drink. I’m only on a pass. I have to go back on duty.”

She threw her hands up and let them drop to slap on her thighs. “It’s always something. I told you not to enlist in the first place, to get out when the governor —”

“You know …” This was one of those times when I knew JoBell was half drunk and probably didn’t mean what she was saying, when I knew in my head I should just be quiet, but in my heart I was really pissed and I couldn’t stop my mouth. “You know,” I said, “I’m getting sick of you bashing on my service. I swore an oath, okay?”

“Words, Danny! Just words!”

“Come on, you two,” Sweeney said.

“Damn it, it’s more than words! I promised God I would do my duty.”

“So did the killers at Boise!” JoBell shouted.

“Whoa,” Brad said. Becca tried to take JoBell by the arm, but JoBell shook her off.

“That’s what it really comes down to, isn’t it?” I said. “You’ve acted all fine, but you still blame me for that! I told you —”

“No! I was talking about other soldiers at Boise, Danny! We’ve been over this! I’m not blaming —”

“— I fired by accident! One shot.”

“— you for any of this!”