Liberty's Last Stand (35 page)

Before they went onto the base, JR Hays and Nate Danaher stopped at a beer joint, which was packed, every stool and booth full, with people standing and drinking beer. The conversations were loud. A television was on up in the corner, showing the devastating effects of the power outage in the northeastern United States. Philadelphia and Baltimore were rioting as usual.

JR kept an eye on the television as he waited for Danaher to work his way to the bar and order beers. There was a short segment about rioting in Watts in LA, then a parade of Soetoro administration officials being interviewed. JR couldn't hear the audio, but he thought he knew what the officials were saying. Everything was under control. The administration was taking steps, and so on.

Then he heard a snatch of a conversation between two men at the bar. “This place is going to be packed when those soldiers get here. . . . Yeah, I heard the day after tomorrow. . . . Someone said the Fourth Brigade. . . . Gonna come in dribs and drabs, I suppose. . . . Thirty-five hundred men and equipment is a lot to move. . . .”

The Fourth Brigade Combat Team of the 10th Mountain Division. JR knew about them. The fact that they were being deployed from Fort Polk, the massive joint training base further south in Louisiana, to Barksdale was certainly news. There was also a brigade of airborne troops at Fort Polk, JR thought, and he listened intently to see if the garrulous bar buddies knew about them. A brigade of paratroopers dropping into Texas, or Barksdale, could cause massive problems.

He wandered on, listening. Most of the men and women in the bar were talking about the run on grocery stores and Walmarts. The lines were horrendous. One woman said she waited over an hour in line to check out. One gasoline station was completely out of gas and the clerk said they didn't know when they could get more.

After they drank some of their beer, JR and Danaher left the mugs on the bar and went outside. Their retired military ID cards got them onto the base. They drove over by the flight line and looked at the rows of B-52s parked there. Barksdale was home to the 2nd Bomb Wing, the only outfit in the air force that still had B-52 Stratofortresses.

Huge hangars, flood-lit ramps, here and there a security vehicle. Half-full parking lots. Activity at the barracks.

The parking lots at the commissary and PX were packed, with almost every space occupied. A long line waited to get to the fuel pumps at the base filling station.

JR told Danaher about the conversation he had overheard.

“That's no surprise,” Nate replied.

“I want you to lead an assault team in here tomorrow morning. We need to take this base and be prepared to hold it. If we can't, we need to destroy those B-52s. Can an assault team arriving on C-130s pull it off?”

“Let's go back to the flight line and take a look,” Danaher said.

“If it can't, we can do an air attack tomorrow,” JR explained. “Strafe the flight lines, drop some JDAMs on the hangars and fuel farm, make a royal mess.”

“Hold that thought. I have a small set of binoculars in the glove box. Let's trade places, and I'll look while you drive.”

They did so. The only plane in the traffic pattern was a B-52 shooting landings, apparently on a training mission. They could hear the engines roar every time it lifted off and watch it in the pattern, a big dark-green metal cloud.

“They're not bombing up the BUFFs,” Danaher said after a while. “No missile batteries or missile-control radars or AAA in sight.” AAA was anti-aircraft artillery. Five more minutes of looking, then Danaher said, “Let's go home. We've seen all that there is to see.”

Sluggo Sweatt had Jake Grafton brought to his office that Tuesday evening. Grafton couldn't walk, so the jailers dragged him. They didn't bother putting him in a chair. Sluggo came around his desk and rested a hip on the edge of it and looked down at Grafton lying on the floor. Sluggo had a smile on his face.

“How are your ribs?”

Grafton tried to focus. Being dragged here had made him want to scream, so he had bitten his tongue. Now blood was leaking out his lips. He could feel it, warm and slick.

“I think we'll take you back to your cell and let you sleep through the night. If tomorrow you don't sign the confession in front of a television camera and read the little script we have prepared—it's only about a hundred words—we'll beat you to death tomorrow night. The other prisoners will hear your screams. I'll be honest, Grafton, I don't like you. Still, I urge you to be tough. Don't give us an inch. Then I will have the pleasure of helping the boys work on you.”

Sluggo Sweatt smiled at Grafton. He picked up a sheet of paper from his desk, fluttered it, then handed it to one of the thugs and made a gesture. They dragged Grafton back to the cell. There they threw the sheet of paper on his chest and left him lying on the floor, after one of them had kicked him in the balls.

The overhead lights were on. Although Jake Grafton didn't know it, the power for the camp was being supplied by several large emergency generators since the grid was down. With the generators snoring away, grid problems didn't really matter to Sluggo Sweatt. He was the king of his own little empire, and he liked the feeling.

Every breath Grafton drew was agony. When the fierce pain in his testicles finally subsided to a dull ache, exhaustion overcame him and he went to sleep. He dreamed of Callie.

Armanti Hall and Willie the Wire showed up first. I got out of the van and Willie started motormouthing. “Damn, Tommy, did we have fun! You should have seen those towers come down. Man, if someone would pay me for doing this, I'd give up the locksmith business in a heartbeat.”

I didn't have the heart to tell the fool that he was probably permanently out of the locksmith business unless a meteor hit the White House and all its inhabitants were instantly obliterated.

“How'd it go?” I asked Armanti Hall.

“We dumped towers on two different transmission lines. Just walked up to them, rigged the charges, and went on to the next one. We watched one stretch of them go down. Some of the lines broke, and the others went on the ground.”

“You two get some MREs, take a whiz, and when the other guys get here I'll brief everyone.”

Ten minutes later Travis Clay rolled in, and five minutes after that Willis Coffee. They had each found a transmission line and put three towers on the ground. Travis, however, had done more. He came across a substation and used an AT4 to put it out of business. “That box blew apart into a thousand pieces, Tommy. It was kinda fun.”

“I'll bet. You didn't leave the tube there, did you?”

“Oh, no. It's in the back of the truck.”

“Good man.”

I addressed my lock shop partner. “Tell me, Willie, now that you are back in the felony business, are you willing to pull a trigger or not?”

“Well. . .”

“One life sentence, two, three, what does it matter?”

“You're suckin' me into a life of crime, Carmellini. I'm not ready to give up pussy. I got a few good years left, dude, me and Viagra, and a couple of women who are countin' on me to help them find a little joy in this colorless life.”

“Sarah, would you put a first aid box in each truck while I brief these guys?”

We gathered around the hood of one of the FEMA pickups. I spread out the map. “Here is where we are going to rendezvous, this bridge over the Greenbrier at Bartow. Then we'll go to the CIA's safe house near Greenbank. I want each of you to go to Bartow by a different route.” We traced routes with fingers in the twilight.

Then I explained the setup at Camp Dawson, how the internment compound was laid out, where the four guard towers were.

“Now, Sarah and I are going to drive in the main gate of the internment compound in a FEMA pickup. We'll want to find out where Grafton is being held. We'll ask to see the commandant of the camp. Meanwhile Armanti and Willie Varner, you will go through the main gate of the National Guard base and come around behind the compound. That gate was open when I went by and the Guard looked like it had moved out. Set up an M279 machine gun out back. There is undoubtedly a rear gate through the compound wire, and maybe a barracks where these FEMA dudes are bunking.

“When the shooting starts up front, the guards in the rear towers are going to be trying to see what's happening, and from the way the camp is laid out, I don't think they can see. They might get interested in you. If they do, open fire. If the FEMA guys stream out the back gate after the shooting starts, let them all get out. Wait until they are out, then kill them quick and fast, including anyone left in the rear towers. If the fleeing guards go into a barracks, use an AT4 on it. If they get into vehicles, use the machine gun. It is imperative that no one follow us.” I looked at Armanti and asked, “Can you do that?”

“These people aren't soldiers?”

“Some of them might have some military experience, but now they're civilians. FEMA paramilitary thugs, Barry Soetoro's army. What we have going for us is surprise. We want them dead before they can figure out that they oughta shoot back. They aren't holy warriors: being a martyr for Barry Soetoro isn't on their bucket list.”

“You're asking an awful lot of one man with one gun.”

“Willie will help.”

Armanti looked at Willie Varner, who for once kept his mouth shut.

I explained, “I don't want the guards in the compound taking hostages, and I don't want them following us. If we can't take them down quick and fast, we're going to have to clean that camp building by building.”

“Okay,” Hall said, and shrugged. FEMA's reputation was going downhill fast.

“Willis and Travis, you guys are the front shooters. You are to wait one minute after Sarah and I go through the gate, exactly sixty seconds, then shoot the guys in the guard towers beside the road. They may have a machine gun in each tower, although I doubt it. But they might. Shoot each of them and toss a grenade up into the tower, then do the guys at the front gate.”

“I'll take the south tower,” Willis said, and Travis nodded.

“Then come into the compound. Drive through the compound and kill anyone in FEMA green. Try not to shoot any of the detainees. My idea is to let the guards get out of the compound through the back gate before we lower the boom. When the shooting starts out back, go help with the rear towers and anyone in FEMA green still standing. No FEMA people are to be left alive.”

“Got it, Tommy.”

“Wish I had a better plan,” I admitted, “and I wish we had a few days to sniff this out, but we don't have any more time. It's tonight or never. Any questions?”

We cleaned up a few details, then mounted up.

Another half-assed plan with insufficient reconnaissance. That was a prescription to get my guys killed, as all of us knew, but it couldn't be helped. We didn't have days to set this up.

Sarah and I rolled up to the main gate of the compound in our brand-new stolen FEMA truck and I leaned out the window, which was down. I had my Kimber in my left hand, out of sight behind the door.