Liberty or Tyranny (13 page)

Brian talked as he moved along behind his father. “You know, that old guy is going to have a hard time out here. How long are we going to have to hide in these woods?”

Nate froze for a second. “There are plenty of empty homes and hunting cabins in the area. It won’t be too long before we find better accommodations than sleeping on the ground.” He thought it best not to tell his son the whole truth. Chances were, they would be fugitives from the law until Washington was cleaned out, and no one had any idea how long that would be – if ever.

Lieutenant Nelson Herzing called Capt. Cleef over. “Sir, some CIA spook is on the radio and claims to have direct orders from the president himself.” He grimaced.

“What? Out with it, LT,” Capt. Cleef growled.

“He says they’re taking over the operation and we’re to assist.”

Capt. Cleef bellowed, “Bullshit! My CO is Colonel Donovan and I take my orders from him.” He rushed over to the radio. Talking to the radio telephone operator, or RTO, he said, “Get me that damn spook.” He scratched his chin. “Forget that. To hell with the spooks. Get Colonel Donovan.”

SFC Bartow found Colonel Donovan sleeping on a couch someone had carried into his office, so he would not have to sleep on the floor. “Colonel. Colonel, we have a problem.”

Instantly awake, Donovan sat up. “What is it?”

“That team of spooks has contacted Captain Cleef, and their leader is demanding to take over the operation. Cleef is on the radio now asking instructions from you.”

Without hesitation, Donovan rushed to the radio. He dispensed with all the normal radio procedures and protocol and went straight to the point. “Captain Cleef, I order you to let the civilians go and tell them to run like hell and hide. Give them back their weapons and other personal property.”

Cleef’s confused voice came back and resonated in the office. “Yes Sir.”

“And Captain Cleef,” Donovan added, “abort the search for the rest of the civilians. Leave those people alone. If the spooks give you any trouble, tell them to kiss your ass. Tell them you take your orders directly from your CO, not the CIA.”

“Yes Sir.” Capt. Cleef signed off.

Donovan’s face turned a shade redder than normal. “Someone raise that damn spook team. I want to talk to the SOB who is harassing my officers.”

SFC Bartow grinned. “Yes Sir.” His grin vanished with a thought. “Sir, you know calling off the search for the civilians without orders is crossing the Rubicon. If you weren’t in trouble already, you will be shortly.”

With a perfect deadpan face, Donovan said, “I didn’t think of that.”

Bartow didn’t smile, instead, his brow knotted with concern. “Do you have an end game? This could get nasty.”

Donovan answered, “There is no end game. At least not one that finishes well. Nasty isn’t the word. More like deadly.”

Bartow nodded and swallowed. “I’ll get the spooks on the horn for you.”

After cussing out the CIA team and telling them to stay away from his soldiers, Donovan spoke to Brigadier General Bernard Myers in Fort Benning, Georgia by satellite phone. “Sir, none of the civilians I’ve been ordered to hunt down have done anything wrong. Six of them were investigating terrorism in the county and stumbled onto some kind of a Black Ops nightmare ordered by the president himself. The six are all associated with the local Sheriff’s Department here and were doing their best to protect the people of the county. When they realized what they stumbled onto, they ran for it, knowing Washington would want to shut them up. The other civilians at the horse farm have nothing to do with any of this. They just happen to be friends of the six local law enforcement volunteers. They most likely still know nothing about the Black Ops BS.”

“I see,” the general said. “This is a spook matter and you do not have the clearance to even be discussing it.” He hesitated for a second. “Hell, if I’m going to look into this mess, I need to know what you know. What exactly is this spook operation?”

“It’s worse than just bullshit politics, sir. It appears the president wants more social and political instability, as if we don’t already have enough. I think he’s also worried about the big farm the locals have been working on here. He’s been using food to control the people and he doesn’t want the citizens here or anywhere else to be able to actually feed themselves. Never mind the fact Washington doesn’t have the ability to feed everyone and has allowed starvation to spread over the country. He has spooks drumming up antigovernment sentiment in the area – and who knows where else, maybe all across the country – and terrorist activity has increased here as a result. People have died. With the psychological condition that most of the people are in after the trauma they’ve been through over the last year and a half, it’s not exactly hard to push them over the edge.”

The general sounded like he blew a gasket, but he said nothing.

“Sir, I believe the order to hunt down innocent civilians and hold them for questioning, perhaps to be tortured by CIA operatives, and to arrest the local law enforcement personnel here is unlawful and immoral. I hereby inform you that I respectfully refuse to follow this order. If you wish, I will resign my commission immediately.”

“Well.” The general sighed audibly over the satellite phone. “When you decide to dump a shitload on me, you don’t play around. This conversation alone could get both of us in hot water. Give me some time to digest all of this, will you?”

“Sir, the American people are drowning in deep shit from the bottom up, and they do not need this fake president and his own private Congress in Washington doing all they can to make it rain shit on their heads from the top down.”

“I hear you. Well, try to hold the fort until tomorrow. In the meantime I’ll find a replacement for you, just in case you do wind up having to resign. Just keep in mind one thing, I believe in civilian control over the military. I believe it is a basic concept of America’s system of government, and I will not support any kind of revolt or coup.”

“Yes sir, I understand that. And I have not mentioned any such thing. I have simply informed you I refuse to follow unlawful and immoral orders and have offered my resignation. What happens after I’m gone is a matter for others to decide.”

“Just sit tight, Colonel, and wait until I get back to you. In the meantime, do not speak to anyone about this matter.”

~~~

It was Brian who stumbled onto the spring. He hand-signaled his father the way he had been taught. While waiting for Nate to ease through the brush and close the 35 yards that stood between them, Brian examined the water’s edge and saw many tracks. He noticed deer, wild hogs, raccoons, possums, even foxes and coyotes frequented the spring for water. He knew other predators were probably attracted to the area also, to prey on those animals that came for a drink and the raccoons that came to catch fish and whatever else they could find in the water.

When his father came close enough, Brian whispered, “No human tracks.”

“Good.” Noticing Brian’s interest in the tracks, Nate observed, “Even though the spring’s not that far from the river and other sources of water, it’s still a natural watering hole.”

Brian nodded in silence. He slid out of his pack and prepared to fill his canteen, along with Deni’s. “This would be a good place to set up snares, since there are no people around, just a lot of thirsty animals.”

Nate followed suit, slipping out of his pack. “Hold on a second and watch how I do it.” He took a two-quart canteen, leaving the lid tight, and thrust it down into the clear, roiling water, holding it in front of the spring opening, which was only three or four inches in diameter and lined by limestone rock. With his other hand, he unscrewed the lid, letting the air escape as the water rushed in. He didn’t bother to filter it with a shirt or some other cloth because the spring wasn’t a sand boil, and the water was clear. When the canteen was full, he screwed the lid tight, lifted it out of the water, and handed it to Brian, taking an empty one from him at the same time. “This water is cold.” He stood knee-deep in it, and already his lower legs felt like ice.

“Maybe you should’ve taken your boots off first,” Brian suggested.

“Too late now. Give me another canteen.” Exchanging a full canteen for an empty one from Brian, Nate said, “This’ll be a good place to sit and soak during the heat of summer.”

“Yeah, but it’s not summer now. And I doubt your boots, socks, and pant legs will be completely dry by tonight when the temperature’s down in the 30s.”

“I have extras, except for the boots.”

Standing on the edge of the water and leaning over, Brian handed him another empty canteen. “We can’t chance a warming fire at night, can we?”

Nate filled the last canteen. “No. And we’ll have to be careful about cooking and boiling water. We’ll dig a small hole to build a fire in with a narrow ventilation tunnel off to the side. Burning only the driest wood will help keep the smoke down, and using a fire only large enough to do the job will reduce the heat signature as much as possible. Still, a fire of any kind is a risk. Modern technology has made it much harder to hide, even in the woods. I’ve read many accounts of Che Guevara being tracked by U.S. satellites, which led to his execution. Supposedly, they were able to track him by satellite as he made his way through the jungle, because he stopped every night and built a fire for tea. Personally, I think he would have been building a fire for coffee. Anyway, he was traveling along a river, building fires every night, so the CIA only had to tell the soldiers where to wait in ambush. He was captured alive and then executed. One rumor has it at least one finger was removed, in case Washington wanted to get fingerprints for verification. An entire hand was sent to Castro.”

“Wow. I didn’t know our government did things like that.”

Nate waded out of the water. “Every government does much worse than that, or at least has in the near past. The reality is I don’t know exactly what happened. I’ve read so many different accounts, all being a little different, or in some cases a lot different from the one I just told you, there’s no way to ferret out the truth from the rumors. Other accounts say a local villager tipped soldiers off to the location of Guevara’s guerrilla fighters. It does seem to be established that his hands were cut off and sent to Castro so Castro couldn’t claim he wasn’t dead.”

While they were stowing the canteens in their packs, Brian asked, “What about our body heat?”

“Satellites can’t tell human body heat from animals, and these woods have a lot of deer, bears etc. roaming around. Aircraft, on the other hand, is a risk. But they pretty much have the same problem, unless they’re close enough and catch one of us in the open, where they can make out the outline of our heat signature, telling them we’re humans walking on two legs. So it’s a risk, but if we stay under a thick canopy of treetops and they don’t fly directly over us, we should be okay. After all, people get lost in the woods all the time, and they’re trying to be found.”

Brian slipped into his pack and grabbed his rifle. He had been listening intently, learning as much as he could from his father. He pulled a compass from under his shirt where it hung from his neck on a string. “I want to see if I can find camp on my own.” He glanced up at his father. “But if I’m getting off course, let me know. We have no time to waste.”

“Good idea.” Nate looked up and located the sun shining through the swamp canopy to judge the time. “Think it would be easier if we headed for the river and then went downstream before turning and heading for camp?”

Brian nodded. “Yeah, you always said to aim for a big target and you won’t get lost.”

“We can’t miss the river.”

“And we’ll know when to head east again, because it’s just a little south of that sharp bend in the river.”

Nate nodded. “Let’s go.” He let his son take a couple steps before speaking again. “Are you factoring in declination? Decades ago, it was tiny in Florida, but it has grown over time and it’s now enough it should be factored in. Remember what the declination is for this area from the last time you looked at a topographical chart?”

Brian stopped for a second and did some calculations in his head, then checked his compass and went on.

~~~

Back at the camp, Tyrone and Atticus learned why the others preferred stainless steel canteens. While they could’ve boiled water in a plastic canteen by being careful, it was much easier and faster when not being forced to worry about melting the container.

Since it was late in the day by the time they were through purifying their water, everyone enjoyed an early supper and rested. Though they felt relatively safe, as far in the woods as they were, at least one person was on guard duty at all times, standing back from the others and staying hidden in thick brush. They wanted an early start in the morning, because setting up a new camp near the spring would take time. Nate also planned to do a little fishing at the river. What little food they had in their packs would not last long unless they supplemented it with food taken from the woods.

~~~

Brigadier General Bernard Myers wished Colonel Donovan hadn’t dropped such a hot turd in his lap, but he couldn’t ignore it now that it had come to his attention. He also wished the military’s computer network had been maintained properly over the last year and a half. He wished a lot of damn things. Hell, in a few months the military’s (and America’s civilian) satellite constellations would probably be useless. They simply didn’t have enough trained technicians left after the plague to keep the systems properly maintained and in proper orbit around the Earth. Everyone’s fervent hope was that their enemies were in even worse shape than them. The thought they could be blind, while their enemies still had eyes in space looking down on everything on Earth, was the stuff of nightmares. Already, the U.S. Global Positioning System was acting wonky and becoming less and less reliable. Soon, their most advanced missiles would have no guidance systems and pilots would be forced to resort to navigation techniques left behind generations ago, such as celestial navigation. Ditto for Navy navigators.