Liberty's Last Stand (57 page)

“Good investment.”

The treasurer nodded and looked pleased.

“What about the New York Federal Reserve's vault?”

“I got a tour once,” the bureaucrat acknowledged. “Didn't get into the vault, of course, since they never let humans inside. The gold is moved on trolleys by remote control. Robots stack the ingots and load and offload the trolleys.”

“I've heard they have a private army guarding the vault.”

The treasurer nodded. “Yes, indeed. Most of what I know about the vault I picked up in casual conversation from the assistant treasurer, who used to work at the Bank of Manhattan. He wanted to get back to Texas so I hired him. Guy named Chuy Medina.”

“May I talk to him?”

“Sure. Great guy. You'll like Chuy. I talked to the governor about the gold, but why are you interested in it?”

“Oh, that gold has to come back to Texas someday. We thought we should ask some questions.”

“Sure.”

Chuy Medina was of medium height, about fifty years of age, from McAllen, Texas, and had spent fifteen years at the Bank of Manhattan. Left two years ago when he scored a job at the Texas treasurer's office.

“Tell me about the Bank of Manhattan,” JR prompted. “They have about forty tons of Texas gold, and I have been ordered to make a withdrawal.”

Medina laughed. “That's a joke, right?”

“Perhaps.”

“This is like some weird plot from
Mission: Impossible
. There ain't no way, man. No way at all.”

“Talk to me,” JR Hays said with a smile. “Convince me.”

The FEMA concentration camp guard towers on the edge of Camp Dawson were empty when we rolled by and went between the guards at the main gate. Several of the guards were wearing old army shirts, but most were in jeans and T-shirts. They were armed to the teeth and looked to me like they knew precisely what they were doing. This might be amateur hour, but there was some military discipline and brains guiding the amateurs. There wasn't a FEMA uniform in sight.

The place was as crowded as a state fair, but without the animals. I estimated I could see over a thousand people, all adults, most in civilian clothes, all armed and doing army stuff, like working on weapons, loading trucks, and doing calisthenics. Cars were parked in rows, men wearing pistols directed us to a parking place, and a girl who looked as if she had ditched her classes in high school that afternoon escorted us toward the headquarters building, not the one in the concentration camp, but the main National Guard building. I could hear rifles popping, no doubt over at the shooting range. And a buzzing overhead. I looked up and saw a Predator drone taking off with a Hellfire under each wing.

I glanced over my shoulder and got a good gander at Sal Molina's face. The man was stunned. Almost stupefied. Obviously Grafton hadn't been whispering to him, either. If he had been doing any whispering, I supposed it was to Sarah Houston, who looked as if she were trooping up to the director's office to be given another twenty-hour-a-day assignment.

Willie Varner was looking around wide-eyed. He had been clueless too. Willis and Travis were almost as surprised as the Wire.

I confess, I was a bit pissed at Grafton. I would have bet the ranch that
he
wasn't surprised, that he well knew what we would find here. Why hadn't the spook bastard confided in me? Need-to-know and all that spy shit, I suppose.

They confiscated all cell phones as we came through the front door, and put a sticky on each one with the owner's name. Then they patted us down.

We ended up in the back of a conference room standing against the wall, all of us, including Dr. Proudfoot. Grafton was sitting at a table right up front, and that
Washington Post
weenie Jack Yocke was sitting beside him as if he were number two in the chain of command. Three big bananas, all in their fifties, were standing in front of a map that covered a blackboard, I suppose, taking turns briefing Grafton. They had started a few minutes ago, and they didn't bother starting over for us. Another dozen or so people, perhaps half of them women, all wearing pistols, were in the chairs behind Grafton and Yocke and in front of us. One was a congressman I recognized from television, Jerry Marquart.

“So our plan is to have First Corps . . .” Yep, I thought, these are army dudes. “. . . proceed east on I-Sixty-Eight to Cumberland and Hagerstown. Second Corps will go east on U.S. Route Fifty to Winchester and then to Leesburg and into the District along that route. All this is subject to change if we hit opposition or find bridges have been blown. We'll be close enough together on parallel routes that we can mass if necessary. Keep the drones up and looking, use our Special Forces veterans as scouts, and take whatever comes.”

Grafton had a few questions, then asked to see the Pentagon's press release again. He read it carefully, then laid it on the table in front of him and said, “This is too good to be true.”

“It could be disinformation, deception,” the head dog agreed. “We don't have their crypto codes, but from all the plain-language traffic we are hearing, perhaps there is some truth in it.”

“What plain-language traffic?”

“FEMA and Homeland. They are complaining bitterly that Soetoro has betrayed them.”

“Even if we get into a firefight with that crowd, that doesn't mean the Pentagon's press release is inaccurate. It may only mean that the paramilitary boys are taking orders directly from the White House. If we see army troops, however, we'll know this is a pretty little lie.”

“Yes, sir.”

They chewed the rag about trucks, ammo, food, weapons, and all of that for another half hour, then I ducked out to find a restroom. There was toilet paper in there and the commode flushed. Life was looking up.

When I got back, the conference had broken up, the rebel officers were leaving, and only our little crowd remained. Everyone had taken seats around the conference table so they could talk to Admiral Grafton, who looked at Willie and said, “Please escort Dr. Proudfoot to the hospital. They may need his services. Is that all right with you, Doctor?”

It was, and the two of them left.

Jack Yocke jumped right in before the door shut behind them. “This rebel enclave didn't just happen, Grafton. Someone made it happen and you knew all about it.”

“I made it happen,” Grafton said, looking around and taking in faces. “Sarah and I knew several months before Soetoro declared martial law that he was going to do it. We knew he was waiting for an incident that would justify martial law. The terrorists obliged. I have spent my adult life in the military and intelligence business. I talked to people I knew I could trust, told them Soetoro's intentions, and asked for their help.”

“How did you know Soetoro was going to seize power? Did Molina tell you?”

“Sal, do you want to answer Yocke?”

“No,” Molina said. He had to force the word out, and it came out unnaturally loud.

“But you knew Soetoro's plans,” Jack Yocke persisted, staring at the president's man.

“I'm not going to—”

Grafton spoke, which cut off Molina. “Sarah.”

She was seated at the end of the table. She had her computer out of its case and was fiddling with the keyboard. “I bugged the White House,” she said, “at Admiral Grafton's order. We used every electronic device in the White House as a listening device, including computers and cell phones.”

Molina turned ashen.

“Including yours, Mr. Molina, and President Soetoro's.”

Molina gaped at her. The way she said it, matter-of-factly, as if she were making a report to her boss, made it impossible to disbelieve her. Then Sarah pushed a button.

The president's voice came from the speaker, quite plain. “Martial law will give us the opportunity to remake America the way it should be, take charge of industries and banks, tax the rich, redistribute income, give full citizenship to illegals, take power from the states, and rule from Washington. We'll make America into a progressive socialist country that all of us will be proud to live in, and, incidentally, we'll make a good start on saving the planet.”

Molina's voice: “It won't work, Mr. President. The majority of Americans will never approve. Revolutions from the top down never work. You can't take the American people where they don't want to go.”

Sarah pushed a key and the sound stopped. She hit a few more and closed the computer.

In the silence that followed, Molina turned his attention to Jake Grafton, who had his eyes on him.

Jack Yocke broke the silence with a question aimed at Sarah. “What have you done to that file?”

“The background noises have been digitally suppressed so the speakers' voices are clearer. That's it.”

He grunted and faced Jake Grafton. “You knew that they were waiting. For a terrorist incident? Did they arrange those incidents?”

Grafton turned those gray eyes on the reporter. “They let those people into the country, lied about the vetting they would receive. They played for a terrorist incident, or incidents, and they got them. Considering who they were letting into the country, it would have been a miracle if there weren't any terror strikes.”

“You could have stopped it. Hundreds of innocent people were killed. Obviously you didn't stop it.”

“And just how do you think I should have accomplished that feat?”

“You sacrificed those people.”

Grafton's face didn't even twitch.

“You are a ruthless man, Admiral,” Yocke said softly.

“I think this has gone quite far enough,” the admiral said. “Jack, go find someone to interview. You might start with Congressman Jerry Marquart. I am sure he has quite a story to tell.” His eyes moved to Molina. “You stay,” he said.

Yocke stomped out with little grace. That's the free press for you. When the door to the room was once again closed, Grafton said, “I think it is time for a confession from you, Sal. Not one in the hearing of the
Washington Post
, but here before me and Sarah and these men who risked their lives to drag us out of that concentration camp a few hundred yards away.”

Molina seemed to have shriveled and aged ten years. He tried to compose himself, but it was a lost effort.

“Let me start your confession for you,” Jake Grafton said. “You were never Barry Soetoro's advisor—you were his controller. Your boss is Anton Hunt, the billionaire left-wing financier. He created Barry Soetoro, and you were there to tell him what to do, to make him obey Anton Hunt, so he could make more billions and create the kind of world he thought we all should live in.”

Molina licked his lips. “I—”

Grafton smacked the table a healthy lick with his palm. It sounded like a pistol shot. “I'll do the talking. You even suggested that Soetoro arrest me as one of the conspirators in the fake plot to take over the government. You argued that spies are easy to blame, and people would automatically give credence to any story of nefarious activities at the CIA. When you reported Soetoro's plans to Anton Hunt, he was horrified. He hadn't signed on to a communist dictatorship.

“He thought Soetoro was a black man of modest intelligence with a good gift of gab who would be grateful for all Hunt had done to lift him to the highest place in America and make him the most powerful man in the world. He thought he could control Barry Soetoro because he had written evidence of all he had done for him: a fake birth certificate, passport applications removed from the State Department, bribes to get him into school, bribes to conceal his academic records, all of it. He thought the evidence would ruin Soetoro if it ever came out, but the evidence was a two-edged sword. Soetoro knew the evidence would also take down Anton Hunt, so Hunt didn't dare to ever reveal it.”

Molina licked his lips and wiped a sheen of perspiration from his forehead.

“But somewhere along the line,” Grafton continued, “Hunt began to realize that he had no control over Soetoro, but the reverse was true. Soetoro controlled
him
. Perhaps the revelation occurred when Soetoro demanded Hunt fund demonstrators to protest racial injustice, demonstrations designed to drive a wedge between white and black America. Or perhaps the light dawned for Hunt when Soetoro sacrificed an ambassador and several Marines to the Taliban. Perhaps you can tell us, Sal. When did Hunt see the evil in Soetoro?”

Sal Molina was staring at the tabletop.

“Certainly both of you were in no doubt when Soetoro plotted martial law and suspension of the Constitution. You knew then, didn't you, Sal?”

Silence.

“
Answer me
!” Grafton roared.

“Yes.”

“One of the most amazing things I heard on Sarah's eavesdropping program was Soetoro telling you that Hunt thought he had a nigger slave in the White House, and the nigger had made a slave of him. And he made a slave of you, the slave driver. Do you remember that? Remember his laughter?”