Liberty's Last Stand (27 page)

He quickly found himself in an old neighborhood of mature trees and lawns and iron fences. Vaulted a fence and ran as if the hounds of hell were behind him, which they were, then got into an alley and ran on the gravel.

From somewhere behind him he heard a shot. Not too loud. One of his kids, he hoped, slowing down the pursuit. He checked street signs and kept moving, now jogging.

The carbine on his back was slapping him at every step, slowing him, so he pulled it off and carried it in his hands. His pistol belt was also rubbing him with every step. Damn, he was going to be sore. He must have run three miles or more before he came to the parking lot of a Walmart. He found Wiley Fehrenbach sitting behind the wheel of his SUV; his two guardsmen were already seated in the back.

“I'm getting too old for this shit,” he told Wiley as he motioned him to drive and put on his seatbelt. Then he tried to ease the pistol on his raw, aching hip.

Fehrenbach headed downtown.

JR thought about the troopers in the Bradley he'd shot. No doubt they were all dead, or wished they were. They had been American soldiers, and perhaps he had even served with them somewhere in the last twenty years. When he recovered his breath, he turned to the two soldiers in the backseat.

“I'm a soldier,” he offered in way of explanation, “which is an ancient, honorable profession. I had absolutely nothing to do with independence. I wasn't even asked my opinion before the legislature did it. They did it because they thought their constituents wanted it desperately and without independence, Texas didn't have a chance. I don't know if they were right or wrong, yet I'm a Texan, and I'm all in. Do you understand?”

“Yes,” the two young men murmured. They were Texans too. JR wasn't sure they did fully understand, so he continued: “Soldiers fight for their country. Ours is Texas. Freedom isn't free, and if we're going to get it, we're going to have to fight for it. We're going to have to hurt them worse than they hurt us, and we can't ever give up. You see that?”

One of the soldiers, his name tag said he was Murray, replied, “My dad is locked in a railroad car at the base. He's the president of the El Paso Rotary. Wrote some stuff for one of those independence movements. Fight for Texas? Hell yes.”

The other soldier, his name tag said Tyler, nodded his head. At the wheel Wiley Fehrenbach was nodding too.

“Some of our enemies have to die and some of us will too,” JR Hays said. “Blood is the fertilizer of freedom. Maybe yours and mine.”

He fell silent and watched the street with old, careful eyes. Fehrenbach pulled into a McDonald's parking lot. Cars full of National Guard soldiers were waiting. “Murray, Tyler, run on over there and tell them to follow us to the airport. We have some work to do tonight.” The young guardsmen trotted off, carrying their weapons.

On the way to the airport, JR said to Wiley, “Our objective is to isolate First Armored, make sure it can't be reinforced or resupplied and can't run. I want you to pull all those executive jets onto the runways and taxiways and then shoot out their tires so they can't be moved easily. We may not be able to hold the airport, but at least no airplane will land on it until the army takes it back.”

“And the airport on base?”

“We'll take care of that in a day or two,” JR said. “After you do the international airport, I want you to get busy blowing up railroad trestles, as far out of town as you can. No trains in or out. Then bridges on the highways.”

“We can do that. We're engineers.”

“Do some ambushes, one or two, after you blow a trestle or bridge and they come to look. Try to hit a patrol in town occasionally. Shoot, then skedaddle. Don't get in any stand-up fights when you're outnumbered and outgunned. Just worry them.”

“Hit and run.”

“Precisely. The playbook is so old the pages are crumbling, but the tactics still work.”

After a moment he added, “The army will soon be trying to ambush your men and doing searches house to house looking for weapons and uniforms. You'll be amazed at how fast the army's combat veterans will catch on, even anticipate your tactics. They're pros, not twenty-year-old amateurs like the two with me tonight.”

“I understand.”

“You have to watch out for your boys, Wiley, or soon we won't have any soldiers to fight with, just a bunch of bodies.”

JR thought about his comment to the soldiers that he had had nothing to do with independence. Perhaps Joe Bob's death at the hands of smugglers had pushed Jack toward independence. Certainly, he thought, his father's death had convinced him, when he heard about independence, that
he
was going to fight.

Not being an introspective man, he left it there and began thinking about how to win the war of independence. When Wiley Fehrenbach climbed out of the car and went inside the terminal to wait for his soldiers to assemble, JR found a notebook in the car and wrote an order to Major General Elvin Gentry.

“It is essential that we take the offensive and give Washington something to think about besides pounding Texas into submission. Have your B-1 people study up on railroad trestles and bridges out of the Powder River Basin in northeastern Wyoming and southeastern Montana. Send as many planes as possible as soon as possible to hit those trestles and bridges. I want to stop all the trains into and out of the Powder River Basin. The coal-fired power plants they service will soon run out of coal and shut down. The second-priority targets are pumping stations on natural gas delivery lines to the Upper Midwest and Northeast. If we can shut some of those gas lines down, many of the power plants there will have to shut down too.”

He signed it JR Hays, Major General Commanding, Texas Guard. Then he went into the executive terminal, found the pilots of the executive jet that he had flown in on, gave them the note, and told them to fly to Dyess right away, before the runway was blocked. They were to deliver the message to Elvin Gentry.

Fehrenbach posted guards armed with rifles and AT4s on the access roads to the airport. He set the rest of his men to towing planes onto the runways with the little tractors and tow bars the FBO had parked on the ramp. “Park the crash truck out there too,” he said.

Wiley Fehrenbach and JR Hays were called to the lobby television by the desk lady, who apparently had no idea that the jets on her ramp were being moved. She pointed to the television. Jack Hays was giving a speech.

President
Jack Hays—the legislature had awarded him that new title along with declaring itself the Congress of Texas—was escorted by the leaders of the Texas House and Senate. They walked past television cameras from local stations whose feed was beamed to satellites that were broadcasting across the world. Soetoro's censors might prevent it from being aired outside of Texas, but it would circle the earth and eventually reach every person upon it.

After shaking dozens of hands on his way to the podium, Jack Hays at last took his place behind it. His writers and Ben Steiner had given him a speech, but to Steiner's dismay, he left the speech in his pocket. He was going to wing it.

In the packed gallery he saw his wife, Nadine.

“My fellow Texans,” he began. Then he changed that, “My fellow Texans and American patriots everywhere. I speak to you tonight after a tumultuous few days, a historic period that marks the beginning of our fight for freedom, a fight that we hope patriots everywhere in America will join and stand shoulder to shoulder with us against tyranny.”

He detailed President Soetoro's transgressions, laying special emphasis on his imposition of martial law and the jailing of political opponents. “Who would have thought that what is being done now was possible in the United States: that we live in fear of the midnight knock on the door; that many of our leading citizens are in concentration camps, where at any moment we might join them as prisoners. Let us be frank. America is now being ruled by a tyrant who has shredded the Constitution of the United States. In the last week, one man has seized all power unto himself, and the rights of no man or woman in America are safe.

“He has chosen to rip up the Bill of Rights, destroying the right of free speech, which is absolutely essential in a democracy. He has destroyed the right to bear arms, which is a free people's only defense against tyranny. He suspended the Writ of Habeas Corpus, an ancient writ created hundreds of years ago in England and brought to America by our first colonists to ensure the rule of law and protect the populace from government lawlessness. He has chosen to eliminate the currency. He has chosen to rule by fiat, dismissing Congress and flouting the courts. By his actions, he defines the word tyrant. In response to the dictates of a tyrant, we here in Texas have chosen to exercise our God-given right to self-government, our right to choose our own destiny and our own leaders, our right as a free people to resist tyranny and create a government worthy of a free people. In a sublime act of courage, the elected representatives of the people of Texas have done so. Yesterday morning in the very early hours they declared our independence. Today they established the Republic of Texas.”

He paused in response to loud, sustained applause.

“We face difficult days ahead. The federal government has already fired the first shots, which were cruise missiles launched from a navy ship at sea off our coast. Today the navy has declared a blockade of our ports in an attempt to deny us freedom of the seas.

“The road ahead will not be easy. No doubt the federal government will escalate its pressure upon us. Still, precious as it is, freedom is worthless unless it is defended, and I fear blood will be required. How much, no man can say. At least a dozen people died and two dozen were wounded when a power plant in the Houston area was struck by those cruise missiles. Those Texans,
who wore no uniform
, were our first casualties. I am reminded of the words of that great American patriot Thomas Paine: ‘If there must be trouble, let it be in my day, that my child may have peace.'”

The applause was thundering.

When the noise had at last subsided, he said: “Tonight we ask lovers of freedom all over America, indeed, lovers of freedom all over the world, to join us in our struggle. Let us here in Texas resolve to fight, no matter the price that may be required, for all that we loved about our country, for all that we treasured and hoped to pass on to our children, and their children, and the generations yet unborn. Let us here dedicate ourselves to enshrining freedom, justice, and the rule of law in the Republic of Texas, for ourselves and our posterity.
So help us God
.”

The applause and shouting died after a while, because the hour was late and the day had been long for everyone. Still standing at the podium, Jack Hays shouted, “Ben Steiner, you wrote our Declaration of Independence, what is your favorite song?”

Texans argued for years afterward whether Steiner knew that question was coming, but his answer was quick and his voice carried throughout the chamber. “‘The Eyes of Texas.'”

One of the television producers was about to send the program back to the studio for commentary by instant experts, but he now waited, sensing that the best might still be ahead.

Jack Hays started singing. He had a nice baritone. Everyone in the chamber was still on their feet, including the spectators in the gallery. Nadine's eyes were locked upon her husband as he sang, “The eyes of Texas are upon you, all the live long day. The eyes of Texas are upon you, and you cannot get away . . .”

When the roar died, Hays looked and gestured at the Speaker, who shouted, “‘The Yellow Rose of Texas.'”

“There's a yellow rose in Texas, that I am going to see. Nobody else could miss her, not half as much as me . . . She's the sweetest little rosebud that Texas ever knew. Her eyes are bright as diamonds, they sparkle like the dew. You may talk about your Clementine and sing of Rosalee, but
the yellow rose of Texas
is the only girl for me. . . .”

All over Texas, people were sitting in front of their televisions or radios, many singing at the top of their lungs, as Jack Hays thought they would.