Divided We Fall (30 page)

“Oh shit,” I said. “You gotta be kidding me.”

He kept his weapon aimed at me and wiped his nose with his free hand. “You’re under arrest for shooting my squad leader. And I’m sure my chain of command will be happy to hear we finally have PFC Wright in custody.”

“I wasn’t even aiming at him, you dumb son of a bitch! I was just trying to scare you guys, make you go back to your side. If you’d stayed over there, he’d be fine.”

The specialist shook his sidearm. “Slowly lower your weapon to the ground.”

I bit my lip and tried to focus, tried to keep my legs from shaking. I was glad that the soldier I’d shot was okay, but I still felt like a moron from one of those zombie apocalypse movies who wanders off alone and foolishly trusts some desperate psychopath in the woods. Stupid mistakes like that always end up getting people hurt.

“I’m not joking!” the specialist shouted. “Put your weapon on the ground or I’ll shoot you right here.”

“Hey, Wright! You okay down there?” Luchen called down.

The medic risked a look up. I grabbed my rifle by the end of the barrel and swung it like a baseball bat into his wrist. His nine mil went flying. I gripped the rifle barrel with both hands and jabbed it at the medic hard, crunching the stock into his nose. Blood exploded from his face and he fell backward. “Luchen, cover me!” I shouted as I ran, picking up the medic’s sidearm and the first soldier’s M4 before scrambling up the steep rocky path to my bunker.

Safely behind the cover of our fighting position, I sat in the dirt and rested my head back against the rock wall. While I was in the valley, my whole team had crammed into the tiny space, along with Staff Sergeant Donshel, First Sergeant Herbokowitz, and Captain Leonard. We watched the line until the bleeding medic carried his wounded comrade back into Washington.

“What happened?” Captain Leonard asked, and I told him the whole story.

After I finished, the first sergeant frowned. “Next time, don’t try to be a hero. Someone says not to go down there, then you damn sure better stay up here. Got it?”

“Yes, First Sergeant,” I said.

“You stopped an incursion, saved that soldier’s life, and captured two good weapons.” Captain Leonard smiled at me. “Good work, Wright.” He patted me on the helmet as he walked out of the bunker with Herbokowitz.

“Why don’t you take some downtime, Wright? Come with me. We’ll make sure you get some chow and plenty of water.” Donshel held out his hand to help me up. I took it and followed him away from our fighting position down toward the TOC tent near the wire obstacle.

“The commander is talking about organizing a Quick Reaction Force that would always be on standby to back up any fighting position if something like this happens again. I’m sorry you were on your own like that, Wright. I’ll make sure someone has your back from now on, I promise.”

I didn’t answer. I was still so hopped up on adrenaline that I barely trusted myself to speak.

Donshel put his hand on my shoulder. “Hey, you need anything?”

I licked my lips. “Like to use my comm,” I said. “Make a call.”

“Yeah, sure. There’s a charging station inside the TOC if the power’s low.”

“Thanks, Sergeant,” I said.

Donshel nodded. “But I meant what I said. Chow first, and drink at least one CamelBak of water. Then you can make that call.”

About twenty minutes later, I climbed up into the Beast to call Mom in private. When the audio connected, though, it wasn’t Mom’s voice on the line.

“Danny?”
said a woman.

Where the hell was Mom? Had the Feds arrested her for some reason? “Who is this?” I said. “Where is Kelly Wright?”

“Whoa, relax. Is this Danny?”

Even if this was a trick, there was nothing the Fed could gain if I confirmed what they already knew. “Yeah, this is PFC Wright.”

“I’m Sarah. Your mother has been staying with me for a while. Your mom’s fine. She’s in the shower.”

“Why do you have her comm?”

“Listen, I’m sorry if this is freaking you out, or if this is an invasion of privacy or something, but I think we have a problem. It’s your mother.”

“Is she okay? Is she having an attack?”

“She’s fine! She’s fine. But … Danny, she’s packing her bags. She’s paid someone to drive her up near the Idaho border. She’s going to try to sneak across the line.”

“What!? Don’t let her!” Anything could happen if she tried that. The whole border was lined with anxious, trigger-happy soldiers. Idaho Guardsmen could mistake her for the Fed. The Fed could figure her for a smuggler or a Guardsman. My uniform was still stained with the blood of soldiers who had tried to cross the border this morning.

“That’s the thing. I don’t think she should try to cross the border by herself, but she also can’t stay here. It’s not good for her being trapped over here, Danny. She can’t handle it. Wait. Here she comes. Danny …”
Sarah became very quiet.
“You gotta do something. You’ve seen the news. People get arrested, shot, trying to cross —”
Her voice picked up.
“Hey, Kelly, your son’s calling! It was nice talking to you, Danny. Here’s your mom.”

“Danny?”
Mom said.

“Hey, Mom,” I said. “How’re you doing?”

“Are you okay?”

“Yeah, Mom. Fine.” No way was I going to freak her out with the story of this morning’s shoot-out. “They gave me a little time to make a call this morning, and I thought I’d check in. How are you?”

“I’m good!”
she said.
“Better than I have been in a long time. Danny, I’m going home. I’ve paid a friend to drive me to the border, and I think I know a good place to sneak —”

“Mom, no.”

“But Danny, I can’t handle —”

“Mom, you can’t —”

“— being away from home any longer. I need to get home. I need to get back to work. I really think I have it worked out and —”

“Mom, listen to me! Be quiet and listen! Be quiet!” I closed my eyes and pressed my comm to my forehead, taking deep breaths to calm down. I could hear her sniffling on the line. She was crying. “It’s not safe for you to cross the border. You’ll never make it.”

“I’ll never … make it if I … if I have to stay here,”
Mom choked out her words through heavy sobs.
“You don’t understand, Danny. I have to come home. I have to.”

Neither of us said anything for a long time. I pressed my fist to the side of my head, trying to figure out what to do.

“Okay,” I said. “Okay, fine. You need to come home. I get it. But I’ll come get you, Mom. I’ll bring the Beast and I’ll pick you up. I’ve been working the border for weeks, and I know how to get you across safely. Okay?”

It sounded stupid even as I said it. Leaving Idaho was easy. Trying to sneak through the Fed blockade and back across the border into Idaho was nearly suicidal. But what choice did I have? I couldn’t let my mom try this alone and on foot. She’d have a better chance with me in the Beast.

“Really, Danny?”
she asked.
“I don’t know —”

“Stay where you are for now. I’m on my way to get you. I’ll bring you home, Mom. I promise.”

*  *  *

A few hours later I was approved for a three-day pass. I hadn’t screwed around putting in a leave request and waiting for it to go up the chain of command. I just called Governor Montaine directly and told him I needed a few days to settle some things at home now that my mom was trapped in Washington. He bought my story, sent the leave orders to my unit, and ordered my chain of command to give me a gas ration card. I know I pissed off the captain and first sergeant by jumping rank, but I didn’t care. I’d do anything to protect my mother.

I told the truth to Sergeant Kemp, though. A guy learned real quick not to talk about too much personal stuff in the Army. Lots of times, the other guys had a sick sense of humor and would give you a lot of shit about your family or girlfriend if you were stupid enough to tell them about it. But Kemp seemed like a guy I could trust.

“You really think you can get over the border and back?” he said.

“I’m going to try,” I said.

“As your team leader, I should let the chain know what you’re up to. They’d put a stop to it. I doubt even the governor would approve your leave if he knew what you were really planning to do.”

“No way you or anyone else can stop me, ’cept if you put me in handcuffs or something. I have to do this.”

Sergeant Kemp clapped his hand on my shoulder, and I spun away, thinking he meant to keep me from going. But he smiled and pulled his hand back. “I know we couldn’t stop you.” He held out his hand. “So I wanted to wish you good luck. Bring her home safe.”

“Thanks, Sergeant. I will.” I shook his hand. “And keep your comm on, will you? In case I need a little extra help getting back.”

“You got it,” he said. “Give me a call when you’re coming home.”

Having said my goodbyes and leaving my Guard-issued M4 with my unit, I climbed into the Beast and started her up. Then I drove down the highway to begin my most dangerous mission yet.

By the time I got home, I had been awake for the better part of a day. I was fried, and even though I had to fight to avoid thinking about this morning’s firefight or Mom’s trouble, I fell asleep almost as soon as I flopped down on my bed.

The next morning, dressed in regular jeans and a sweatshirt, I drove down to the shop. The news was playing on the radio. Word of the “border skirmish” was already out. Schmidty looked up from the engine of the little Honda he’d been working on. “Danny. It’s good to see you.”

That wasn’t the greeting I’d expected. Coming from him, that was downright cheerful. He lit up a cigarette from a pack on his desk, squinting a little as the smoke wafted up in his eyes. “You just can’t seem to stay out of trouble, can you?”

“I … almost killed a guy yesterday, Schmidty. I wasn’t aiming at him. Suppressive fire, but …”

Schmidty blew out smoke. “You did what you had to do. Like I did one day in Gulf War One. Wish I could say it gets easier.”

“Maybe I need to find a way to make it easier. Or … not easier, but so I can deal with it better. I went down to help the guy I’d wounded, and after I saved his life, a Fed medic tried to arrest me. I guess I should have —”

“Known you can’t trust the Fed.” He flicked some ash to the floor. “Not anymore. They’re talking on the news about working this all out real peaceful-like. But this situation is a lot like Vietnam or the second Iraq war. Once blood is spilled, we’re stuck in the fight for the long haul, because if we quit early, if we work out a compromise, then what was the point of those casualties?” He took a long drag on his cigarette. “We’re all too deep in this now. It’s going to get a lot worse before it gets better. If it ever gets better. Ain’t no running away from this.”

“I’m not running away,” I said. “I only wish there was something I could do to make things right.”

“Nothing you can do to fix this mess.” He put his hand on my shoulder and led me out to the driveway. He pointed at the faded old American flag fluttering in the breeze. “See, way I reckon, this country is like its flag. When troubles hit the country like the weather on that flag, people got different ideas about how to fix that trouble. They start arguing about it. Folks getting madder and madder at one another, pulling apart in different directions, until, like that flag, there are little threadbare spots, small tears. Finally, something comes along that’s too much, and those little worn spots rip open, leaving the flag, like this country, in tatters.”

Schmidty was making a lot of sense, but it felt weird hearing him all serious like this. “That’s real poetic of you,” I said.

“W’d’ya shut the hell up?” He led me back into the shop.

“Sorry,” I said with a smile so he’d know I didn’t mean it. “Anyway, I’m here because I’m going to go bring my mother home from Spokane.”

I heard footsteps on the pavement behind me, and I reached under my belt for my gun.

“Hey, babe.”

It was JoBell. I turned to face her. She ran to me, throwing her arms around me and pulling me close for a hungry kiss.

“I missed you,” I said. “I’m sorry —”

“I’m sorry about what happened at Cal’s. Let’s not fight anymore?” she whispered.

Behind us, Schmidty hacked and then spat on the floor. I stepped back from JoBell. She brushed a strand of that golden hair out of her eyes. “Saw your truck out front. I couldn’t believe it at first, but here you are. I thought you had to go back on duty.”

“You really gonna do it?” Schmidty asked loudly, as if to make a point to JoBell. “Jump the border?”

JoBell’s eyes went wide. “What?” She pressed her palms to my cheek and made me look at her. “Danny, what is he talking about?”

“I got to,” I said. “You know my mom. She can’t handle being trapped over there much longer. Says she’s going to try to sneak back into Idaho. After what went down yesterday morning, I can’t let her do that on her own.”

JoBell took a couple steps away from me and looked down at her comm. She tapped away.

“What are you doing?”

“Texting the others. Telling them to get over here.”

“I don’t know if that’s a good idea.” I made a halfhearted grab for her comm to stop her, but she twisted away from me. “I mean, I can see them when I get back.”

JoBell shook her comm up above her head. “Maybe they’ll talk some sense into you.”

*  *  *

“You’re high if you think you’re going alone,” Sweeney said after he arrived with Becca and Cal.

“I am going alone.” I paced to the other end of the shop, squeezing my hands tight into fists. “I mean it. I’m not putting you guys in danger again. It’s not your problem. You don’t have to do this.”

“Nobody has to do this,” said JoBell. “Nobody’s jumping the border.”

Cal put his arm around JoBell’s shoulders. “Oh, come on, JoJo, Danny’s mom is totally cool. We can’t leave her trapped over there.”

She was too upset to even bother complaining about the nickname. “I know she’s great.” She pulled away from Cal. “I love that woman …” She paused a moment, then smiled and added, “and her son. Which is why we shouldn’t encourage either of them to take the risk of trying to run the blockade.”

I was both happy to hear what she said about love, and sad that I would have to disagree with her again. “I’m sorry, JoBell,” I said. “But I am doing this no matter what you say. I’m going alone. None of you are coming with me.”

“Yes, we are, Danny,” said Becca. “We’re your friends. Besides, it will be great to have the whole group back together.”

“No, it won’t!” Schmidty was coming up the stairs out of the basement, blinking against the cigarette smoke in his eyes, carrying the AR15 in his hands and its spare loaded magazines under his arms. Gross, I thought. The magazines would be funkified by Schmidty’s nasty, sweaty armpits. “It won’t be great. This ain’t the damned senior prom. If you try to travel on paved roads into Washington, the Feds will stop you all and arrest Danny on sight. So first you’ll have to find some way to hide him, or else try to cross in the woods somewhere. The way back will be even harder. You have spooked-out, pissed-off soldiers on both sides of the state line. Be real easy for y’all to end up in the crossfire.” He held out the rifle to me. “Here. It’s what you came for, right?”

I cleared the rifle, slung it over my shoulder, took the ammo, and then held up the magazines to show them what my life had become. “Schmidty’s right, Becca. That’s why I’m going alone.”

“You won’t make it by yourself,” Becca said. “Anyway, if you try, we’ll just follow you in one of our cars. You won’t be able to stop us. So we’re with you — or
I’m
with you — no matter what.”

The argument dragged on for an hour. Eventually I had to give in and agree to let them come. I believed them when they said they would follow me in their own vehicles whether I wanted them to or not. Even JoBell changed her mind, figuring she got along real good with my mom, and she might need JoBell’s help.

We thought getting out of Idaho would be the easiest part, provided the Feds didn’t find me. I’d ride on the floor behind the backseat until we approached the border, when I’d wedge myself into the storage space under the false bottom that Schmidty had installed. Sweeney already had a fake ID, but he made new ones for everyone else so the Fed couldn’t recognize their names and link them to me. For the return trip, Cal said he knew a tiny dirt logging road near the Canadian border. If the Fed had that blocked, we’d off-road up into Canada and come back down into Idaho on one of the smugglers’ routes.

“Cal,” I said, “you think you can drive? If the Feds find out I’m hiding back there, you’ll have to whip the Beast around and get us back into Idaho fast.”

Cal folded his big muscled arms over his chest. “You kidding? I’m the son of a long-haul trucker. Driving’s in my blood.”

“The problem is gas,” I said. “I finally got one of those ration cards, but I don’t have enough money, really, to fill up the tank.”

Schmidty blew smoke in my face. “See? While everyone else was playing grab-ass and wondering,
Oh, is the governor going to play nice? Will the president let this go?
I
was getting ready. Buying ammo, buying a dozen cartons of cigarettes.”

“Twelve cartons?” Sweeney said. “That had to cost you …” He poked around in the air like he was doing calculations.

“Cost way too much! What’s it to you?” Schmidty growled. “They cost about twice as much now, and you can’t find any.”

“Yeah. Smart,” Sweeney said.

“Anyway, my point is I also have two hundred gallons of gas in four barrels down in the basement.”

“Geez, Schmidty,” I said. “You’ve been smoking down there.”

He shrugged and flicked ash on the floor. “You guys will have to use the hand-crank pump to fill the gas cans and then make a million trips to carry it all up.”

He was right, but about an hour later we were packed up and fueled. We even changed out the plates on the Beast to make it harder to identify.

“Thanks for all your help,” I said to Schmidty.

“Just bring my rifle back.” He coughed. “Oh, and buy me some cigarettes while you’re over there in the land of plenty.”

I nodded and climbed into the back of the Beast, cradling the AR and keeping my nine mil handy. With Cal behind the wheel, JoBell rode shotgun. Sweeney and Becca sat in the back. Becca leaned over the seat and winked at me, then covered me with a blanket. It was time to go.

*  *  *

“I don’t care what Schmidty says,” said Becca after we’d been on the road for a while. “It
is
great with all of us together again.”

“Yeah, buddy. It hasn’t been the same without you,” said Cal.

They filled me in on everything as I rode along under the blanket in the dim light and the heat from my own breath. It felt weird hearing my friends’ voices when I couldn’t see them.

Football, volleyball, and cross-country were basically all canceled after the blockade. Schools couldn’t afford the gas to travel to other schools for competitions. Instead, Coach divided the football squad into two teams that would play each other.

“It’s not nearly as fun. Took all the suspense and competition out of the games,” Sweeney said.

“I don’t know,” JoBell said. “With everything else that’s happening, sports don’t seem to matter as much as they used to. We’re lucky they’re keeping the school open at all. Some districts have a bunch of the newer buses that run on natural gas, so they’re doing okay, but Freedom Lake only has two.”

“Yeah,” said Becca. “Buses are only running on limited routes and hard-surface roads. Some kids have to travel pretty far to their bus stops.”

“It hasn’t all been bad,” Cal said. “I finally got a date with Samantha Monohan. She agreed to go with me on my motorcycle. Takes less gas. We were going to go Saturday night, but the movie theater closed down on Thursday, so we stayed in and watched movies online. It was a good time.”

“What movie did you watch?” I asked.

“I can’t remember,” said Cal. “Didn’t see much of it.”

“Yeah, dude,” Sweeney said. “That’s the way it’s done. She’s a cool girl. Don’t screw this up.”

“I won’t,” Cal said. “She’s really great. I’ve never had a girlfriend this awesome.”

I smiled under the blanket. Cal had never had any girlfriend. It was great to hear him so happy.

“Hey, Becca,” said Cal, “who was it that said Sam’d never go out with me?”

“I’ve never been so pleased to be wrong,” Becca said.

I was grateful that my friends knew me well enough to know I didn’t want to talk about the Guard or the shoot-out on the border. Instead, we talked like normal — well, normal except that I was hiding under a blanket in the back of a truck — for a long time. Next to what we were about to try to do, maybe that seemed crazy, but it felt right. I needed a dose of school, and sports, and regular life.

Cal flipped on the radio. He tuned it to the country station, and a song I hadn’t heard before came on.

“Hank McGrew put this song out a couple days after the blockade started,” JoBell said. She hated country music, but for once she was cool about it. I listened to the words.

The song went on like that for another couple verses, and I don’t know if it was the song or if it was me, but something had changed.

“You know, I really used to love Hank McGrew’s music,” I said. “But now that ‘we’re all Americans’ line sounds too easy. I
want
McGrew to be right, and I pray every night that we can all just be Americans again, but nothing can be that simple —”