Liberty's Last Stand (21 page)

He doubted that the commanding general there would surrender quite as quickly as Major General Ellensberger had. JR knew Major General Lee Parker, knew him to be a perfect bureaucrat who wouldn't want to buck the system. JR thought Parker personified everything wrong with the army: bureaucratic inertia, lack of initiative, a craven capitulation to political correctness, and a pathological fear of casualties. The media's fondness for trumpeting casualties meant that a career officer on the way up wanted as few as absolutely possible, so he took as few risks as possible, and accomplished very little. He also kicked difficult decisions up the line, so that he wouldn't be blamed if anything went wrong. JR thought that before he surrendered, Parker would want the blessing of higher authority, which he was unlikely to get.

Given some time, JR thought Parker could be conned into thinking his military bosses wanted him to surrender, but time was a diminishing asset for JR. He needed that armored division in his pocket right now. He was going to have to convince Parker that he was facing a mountain of casualties in a losing cause.

Major Judy Saar drove a staff car and parked at the first barracks she saw. Inside she found groups of male soldiers loafing in the lounge, loudly discussing Texas independence and the takeover of the base. She said, “Attention please.”

Some of the soldiers looked around. “I am here to ask for volunteers for a firing squad.”

Stunned silence greeted her. One black sergeant said, “Who do you want to shoot, Major?” His name tag read HILL.

“Major Nasruli. I have an execution order here in my hand.”

Every man in the room raised his hand, including the black staff sergeant, short and wiry and buff, with close-cropped, prematurely gray hair. “One of the men he shot was my brother, who is paralyzed from the waist down.”

“I need six people,” she said. “Sergeant Hill, will you select five other men and follow me to the base armory?”

“Yes, ma'am.”

At the armory she requisitioned six M4s and a cartridge for each of them. She passed the carbines to her volunteers and pocketed the cartridges.

“Turn these weapons in here afterward,” she told them. “Now the detention facility.”

She parked in front of the building and waited for the other vehicles, three private cars, to arrive. She felt as if she were watching herself outside of her body.

Her husband, a private physician, would not approve. But then he didn't approve of her service in the National Guard. He wanted her to stay home with the two children, who were now in junior high and didn't need her sitting at home. She wanted to make a larger contribution.

The cars drove up and the soldiers got out with their weapons.

Major Saar led them inside, showed the officer at the desk the execution order.

“You can't do this,” he said. “The death sentence has to be approved by the president.”

“You have heard that Texas has declared its independence and Lieutenant General Ellensberger has surrendered Fort Hood to the Republic of Texas, have you not?”

“Yes, but—”

“The president of the United States has no authority here. Would you care to call base headquarters and verify the order with Major General Hays?”

He would. He did so. After a moment of listening, he said, “Yes, sir,” and hung up and looked askance at Judy Saar.

“Do you have an exercise area?” Major Saar asked.

“Yes, ma'am.”

“Bring him out there. In handcuffs.”

She had the sergeant arrange the squad in a line and handed a cartridge to each of them. Major Nasruli protested as the guards led him out. Apparently he had been told what was about to happen, because when he saw her he shouted, “I have written to President Soetoro demanding clemency. Allah protects the faithful. Allah has—”

“The post that holds up the basketball backboard,” Major Saar told the guards. “Cuff his hands behind the post.”

Nasruli continued to shout, to rant. Sergeant Hill asked, “Do you want him blindfolded?”

“He can take this with his eyes open,” she said.

Nasruli refused to stop shouting. He was still shouting when Major Saar told the marksmen to aim at the center of the chest and gave the commands: Ready, aim, fire. The shots came as one report and Nasruli went down, held semi-erect by the pole. She heard the spent shells tinkling on the concrete. She walked over to the body. Blood stained his shirt. His eyes were open, staring at nothing.

Like an automaton, she drew her pistol, looked to ensure the safety was off, and, using both hands to steady and aim the pistol, shot Nasruli in the head from a distance of three feet. Brains and bloody tissue flew out the back of his head.

She engaged the safety of her Beretta, holstered it, and turned to the officer commanding the detention facility, who was staring slack-jawed at the remains of Major Nasruli. “Pour gasoline on the body and set it afire, Captain.”

The sergeant called the firing squad to attention, turned them, and marched them back into the detention facility.

It took twenty minutes for the detention facility staff to come up with a five-gallon can of gasoline.
They are probably robbing a civilian on a lawnmower
, Judy Saar thought. She stood and looked at the sky, at the windows of the detention facility, at the body against the pole. She thought she was going to be sick, but she choked it down.
Later
, she whispered. A bird skittered along the top of the wall. A mockingbird, she noted.

After they put the body against an exterior stone wall, drenched it with gasoline, and set it ablaze, she marched back through the detention facility and vomited by her car. Then she drove back to headquarters.

The staff sergeant and the five other men from the firing squad were waiting for her in front of the building. They had apparently turned in the carbines to the base armory. All of them saluted and she returned their salute. “Major, we'd like to enlist in the Texas Guard,” Sergeant Hill said.

She nodded and motioned for them to follow her inside.

There was a handwritten letter waiting for Major Judy Saar in the commanding general's office.

“You are now the CO of the base and the 1st Cavalry Division. Get as many soldiers enlisted as possible, and get the 1st Cavalry ready to fight. I am on my way to Fort Bliss to grab the 1st Armored, Old Ironsides. We'll need them too. You are a good soldier. I'll back you in every decision you make. Texas needs you.” It was signed by JR Hays, Major General.

TWELVE

O
n the flight line at the base airfield, JR Hays went into a ready room full of helicopter pilots. They were gathered around a television, watching the feed from Washington. Someone saw JR enter the room and called everyone to attention. JR walked to a spot in front of the television, turned it off, and told everyone, “Please be seated.”

He surveyed the faces. Most army pilots are warrant officers. He was looking at a bunch of them, with a few commissioned officers scattered among them.

“I'm JR Hays of the Texas Guard. As you know, Major General Ellensberger surrendered to the Texas Guard just an hour or so ago. You've been watching television, so you know the current political situation. Barry Soetoro declared martial law and ripped up the Constitution, and consequently Texas declared its independence. General Ellensberger surrendered Fort Hood because it is indefensible. Circling the wagons in a lost cause struck him as ridiculous unless he was prepared to cut his way out of Texas, and he wasn't.

“Which gets me down to you. Every one of you has a decision to make: you can go home, pack your family, and leave Texas, or you can join Texas in our attempt to build a free nation dedicated to the principles that the Founding Fathers laid down when they wrote the U.S. Constitution. I suspect Barry Soetoro's army will not be pleased if you choose to join Texas in its fight, and it will be a fight, a second American Civil War. Barry Soetoro is going to use the armed forces of the United States to try to conquer Texas, so if you sign on, you will be fighting U.S. forces. Americans against Americans, as if it were 1861 all over again.

“Finally, if you choose to join the Texas Guard and fight with us, you can't change your mind later. It's sort of like getting baptized down at the creek: as the preacher would say, once you're in, you're all in, and you can't wash it off.

“Any questions or comments?”

One of the warrant officers stood up and said, “Sir, Chief Warrant Officer Three Buck Johannson.”

JR nodded and Johannson said, “My dad is a state representative in Wisconsin. His politics are right of center and he's loud. The feds arrested him yesterday and put him in a camp because they don't want other people to hear the opinions of a free man. Far as I'm concerned, Texas is on the side of freedom. I'd like to join the Texas Guard.”

“Fine,” JR said. “Anyone else?”

Another warrant said, “I think Soetoro wants to be a dictator. I don't want my kids to grow up in that kind of country. I'm from Georgia, but from now on I'm a Texan.”

“Welcome to the Alamo,” JR said, which drew a chuckle from his listeners.

About half the pilots volunteered to serve with Texas. JR dismissed the others, told them to go home and pack. “If, while you're doing that you decide to join us, you know where the headquarters building is.”

When only his volunteers remained, JR said, “Our first priority is the First Armored in Fort Bliss. I want to go over there and capture the whole outfit. We need the tanks, helicopters, ammo, and all the rest of it. I'll need three Apaches and a Blackhawk armed to the teeth. We are going to do some violence, enough to make the CG there, Major General Lee Parker, surrender. Who wants to go?”

Specialist Fourth Class James B. Cassel, a name that he and his kin had always pronounced Castle, spoke for thousands of his fellow soldiers when he got home to the tiny apartment he shared with his wife, Linda Sue, and their infant daughter. Jimmy Cassel was from a tiny town in the coalfields of southern West Virginia. He told Linda Sue, who was from Killeen and had married James just a year ago, about the surrender of Fort Hood to Texas forces.

“They say I can enlist in the Texas Guard, or we can pack up and get outta Texas,” he said as he took off his uniform and put on his jeans and tennis shoes. “Get packed up. We're leavin'.”

“I was born and raised here,” Linda Sue protested. “I'm Texan clear through to my backbone. I'm not turning my back on my family.”

“I joined the army to get the hell out of the coalfields,” Jimmy explained as he pulled on a T-shirt that advertised the local Harley dealership, although he didn't own a motorcycle because he couldn't afford one, not even a used one. “I didn't join the army to shoot Americans. If I was willin' to do that when push come to shove, I'd have joined the police. I got no love for that son of a bitch Soetoro, but America's my country from coast to coast. I ain't goin' to shoot Texans or Hoosiers or Californians or anybody else from America. We're leavin'.”

“I'm not,” Linda Sue declared. “And the baby is stayin' with me. You just load your stuff in the car, Jimmy, and get the hell out. Go ahead, run off! If you won't fight to defend
us
, I don't want
you
.”

“Now, hold on! You married me and I'm the man of the family. My dad was in the army and fought in Kuwait. My granddad fought in Vietnam and got shot for his troubles. Us Cassels been fightin'
for
this country since before it was a country.
I ain
'
t
turnin
'
traitor
.”

“Jimmy Cassel, I am not turnin' traitor neither. I want to hear exactly nothin' about your daddy and granddaddy. The baby and I are your family now. And if you won't fight for your family, then you just hit the road. I'm takin' the baby and walkin' down to Mom's place.”

An hour later, sitting alone in his apartment, Jimmy Cassel started to cry.

Sergeant Claude Zeist handed beers to three of his sergeant friends at his house on base. The television was on: scenes of federal agents making arrests alternated with scenes of riots in Baltimore, St. Louis, LA, and Chicago.

“The Texans have bit off a big chunk, and I doubt if they can chew it,” Zeist said. “But that's neither here nor there. Fact is, I took an oath to defend the United States of America, and when this is all over I want my kids and grandkids to know that I did my duty. Did what I swore I would. And there is no way in hell I am going into combat against my fellow American soldiers.”

“It'll be over soon,” his friend Benny Straight said. “Thing I can't figure is why everybody is so damned upset. Barry Soetoro will be gone in January. He can't run again. The next president can set things right.”

“What if he doesn't?”

“That's tomorrow's problem. You don't burn the house down just because the sewer is backed up.”

“So what are you going to do, Claude?”

“I'm going to pack up the wife and kids and get outta Texas and find an army base somewhere so I can be an American soldier again. That's what I always wanted to be, and if we have to kick ass again like we did during the Civil War in the 1860s, so be it. That damn General Ellensberger hasn't got enough guts to make a sausage.”

“Generals get paid to decide when to fight and when not to,” Benny remarked.

“One good fight and Texas will crack like a rotten egg,” Claude Zeist insisted, and drained his beer. Then he reached for another. “We should have had it today. Never put off until tomorrow kicking ass today.”

No one smiled; they were worried.

Benny Straight put into words a thought that all of them had and none of them had yet voiced. “After Texas folds, the U.S. Army is going to court-martial any United States soldier who did the turncoat trick. They'll be called traitors, and you know it.”

“
If
Texas folds,” Jeff Hanifan said.

“Oh, it will,” Benny Straight scoffed. “For God's sake, one state against forty-nine? Texas against the United States Army, Navy, Air Force, and Marine Corps?”

“Well, something good came out of this shit storm, anyway,” Claude Zeist said. “The Texans put Nasruli up against a wall and shot him. I would have bet my left nut that Soetoro was going to wait until his last day in office and commute the sentence to life in prison.”

“This is Texas,” Jeff Hanifan said, as if that explained everything. His comrades, all career soldiers, nodded knowingly and drank more beer.

Loren Snyder went down the open hatch in front of the small sail of USS
Texas
and found himself in the torpedo room. He looked around with his flashlight. The reactor was scrammed of course, and the boat was dead iron. The torpedoes in their cradles looked sleek and fat and ominous.

He wandered along, inspecting everything. The sailors hadn't even been able to take their personal gear. It seemed they would return any moment, but he knew they wouldn't.

The flashlight's beam in that dark ship was sorta spooky. The gentle, barely perceptible motion of the ship riding the little waves of the harbor made it even more so.

In the control room, the realization hit him that he was standing right dead center in a cruise missile target. Tomahawks could be climbing for their final dive right this instant. Each breath he took could be his last. He felt perspiration break out on his forehead and forced himself to concentrate on what he could see with the flashlight's beam.

In the reactor spaces, he examined everything and could find nothing amiss. The crew had simply secured the reactor and the batteries, then trooped up the forward ladder out of the ship.

Assuming he could get the reactor started again, how many men would he need to move this boat? Lorrie Snyder thought hard. No more than five, he thought.

Move her where? Satellites could see her submerged in shallow water, even if the water were muddy, using infrared. Where could he put a submarine so that the U.S. Navy couldn't find her?

Even if he could find such a place, did he really want to do it? JR Hays had asked the question point-blank: Was he willing to fight for Texas? Well, was he?

If he planned on living and practicing law in Texas, Loren Snyder thought he had better get that figured out. Along with everything else.

The easy way out of this personal nightmare would be to just scuttle the submarine right here at the pier. Then the U.S. Navy wouldn't need to sink her or send SEALs to steal her. JR Hays would tell him he had done his best, and thank him. Loren Snyder thought about that too.