Liberty's Last Stand (6 page)

“That won't do any good, Charlie,” Jack Hays said conversationally. He was standing behind his chair and now addressed the crowd. “I have no doubt we'll hear from Washington soon, and in great detail, and when we do I'll pass it on. You'll know what I know just about as fast as I get it.”

“What are
you
going to do about this mess?” someone demanded.

“What am I going to do if it rains?” Hays said. “What am I going to do if it doesn't? You people go back to your chambers and make speeches, hold press conferences, tell the people of Texas what you think. That's all we can do right now. Tomorrow is another day. Now git!”

And they did. All except Ben Steiner. A lawyer from Abilene, he had tried civil and criminal cases all over Texas for forty years. Politics was his hobby. Now he closed the door behind the last of his colleagues and seated himself in one of the chairs across the desk from Hays.

“You are avoiding the issue, Jack, and you know it.”

“I know a lot of things I don't talk about in public,” Jack Hays replied curtly.

“Barry Soetoro is ripping up the Constitution and declaring himself dictator. All he needs is a crown. That's indisputable. This crap about terrorism—the FBI can find terrorists, and they don't have to go any farther than the nearest mosque. What's really happening here is Barry Soetoro taking out his political enemies. What are we Texans going to do about this? Are we going to knuckle under?”

Hays moved around in his chair, trying to get comfortable. He rearranged his scrotum. “You're working up to something, Ben. What?”

“We need to secede from the Union. Declare the Republic of Texas, again.”

Hays made a face. “This isn't 1836. There are forty-nine other states and the U.S. Army, Navy, Air Force, and Marine Corps. The last time Texas got uppity, back in 1861, the roof caved in. It would again.”

“Really?” Ben Steiner leaned forward and lowered his voice. “The roof has already caved in. Give me a better idea, Jack. Tell me what we are going to do if Soetoro calls off the election. If he declares himself president for life.”

“He hasn't done that,” Hays shot back.

“Not yet,” Steiner admitted. “What he has done is declare martial law, adjourn Congress, shut down the courts, muzzle the press, and arrest his critics. How are we going to preserve our way of life, preserve our liberty, preserve our democracy with a dictator in the White House?”

“I don't know,” Jack Hays admitted. “I need to think on it.”

“Better not think too long,” Ben Steiner said as he got out of his chair. “There's a lot of people in Texas who won't think long at all. They hate that son of a bitch and they won't take this lying down. While you're thinking, think about how to head them off if they get out of hand. If you don't, or won't, or can't, we're talking anarchy. No man's life or property will be safe.
Think about that. Also think about what you're going to do if Soetoro sends some federal agents to drag you out of this office and throw you into a prison somewhere. Until such time, if ever, that he decides it's safe to let you out. Think about that too.”

Ben Steiner walked out of the governor's office and closed the door behind him.

Jack Hays put his hands on his face and tried to force himself to relax. Various right-wing groups in Texas had argued for independence for years. They were the lunatic fringe, the village idiots. Hays had kept his distance. Now Ben Steiner had taken his turn at the independence podium, and he was no crackpot.

The way people lived in early-twenty-first-century Texas depended on the American monetary system, Social Security, military retirement, banks stuffed full of U.S. Treasury bonds as their capital, the national telephone grid, the power grid, all of that. Companies here paid wages to Texans to manufacture goods and sold them all over the United States—all over the world—and the stores in Texas that supplied the stuff of life were filled with goods manufactured all over the world; Texans used their paychecks to pay for what they needed. Independence, he thought, would take a civil war, and that would destroy the very fabric of life for a great many Texans. Cutting Texas out of the United States would be like trying to cut Mona Lisa's face out of her portrait and arguing that the operation wouldn't harm it.

Jack Hays didn't believe it could be done. In this interdependent world, Texas had to be part of the United States, a state in the Union.

Or did it?

He was thinking about his deceased uncle, Joe Bob Hays, and the drug smugglers who killed him when the phone on his desk summoned him to duty.

THREE

T
here were five people in Grafton's tent, all males, when he went in after sunset. Everyone introduced himself: three civil servants, one
broadcaster, and one congressman.

“Where are the women?” Grafton asked.

“They have their own tents,” he was told. “Politically incorrect, but those are army regulations.”

“If Elizabeth Warren only knew.”

The tentmates had just arrived, and were still outraged that they had been arrested. Being taken in handcuffs from their homes or work, with family or colleagues watching, and physically transported to Camp Dawson, a three-hour ride from Washington, had filled them with adrenaline that had to be burned off. They had been frightened, humiliated, and shamed, and now they were very angry. They told each other their stories and talked long into the night while Jake Grafton slept.

On his second evening in Camp Dawson, Jake Grafton ran into
Washington Post
columnist Jack Yocke in the chow line. Yocke was in his late thirties, lean and ropy, with shoulder-length hair and a fashionably grizzled face, the lumberjack look. His name was pronounced Yockkey.

“When did you get here, Admiral?” a plainly surprised Yocke asked.

“Yesterday at noon.”

“Seems to be a lot of people here,” Yocke said, looking around.

“Welcome to the American gulag archipelago. I think I was one of the first, but there were a bunch of people already here. Spies, I think. Stool pigeons. I would be careful what I said and who heard it, if I were you.”

They ate together in silence, put their leftovers in a large garbage can, and stacked their trays, then went to sit under a shade tree near the wire, where they could talk privately.

Grafton managed to get the first question in, always a feat with Yocke. “Did you piss on the establishment or did they dump you here on general principles?”

“I'm an unreliable bastard. I wrote a column that was uncomplimentary to the administration, and a political apparatchik in the editor's office called the troopers. Needless to say, I don't think my column will be in tomorrow's paper.”

“Brave editors.”

“They were threatened with arrest, their families were also going to be arrested, their bank accounts and property seized, and the IRS would prosecute them. Not audit them, but prosecute them. The only thing they weren't threatened with was execution.”

“Why did you flout them?”

“Stupid, I guess. And you?”

“The same.”

“There's a lot of that around. Soetoro is going to be surprised.”

“They've made their preparations. The administration didn't decide this after they got a look at Saturday's terror strikes. They've been getting ready for this for years.”

“When this is over,” Yocke mused, “someday, the only heroes will be the people who stood up to them and went to prison.”

“Martyrs,” Grafton murmured.

“Christians versus the lions.”

“Martyrs don't win wars,” Grafton stated. “That's a law, like gravity. So what's happening out there beyond the fence?”

“The country's falling apart. Inner-city riots: Chicago, Detroit, Saint Louis, LA. Just getting worked up, getting the car fires set. Agitators and race-baiters screaming about overturning white America once and for all. What they are going to do is loot Walmarts and Safeways and burn down the inner cities, then starve. We've got martial law,
but there's no National Guard, no soldiers, no police stopping the rioters, there's no fire departments putting out the fires, and there's apparently no Border Patrol at the border. Go figure.”

Grafton didn't say anything.

“The cops have got the message. Let it burn, baby.”

Yocke got out his cell phone and checked his messages.

“You have a charger for that?” Jake asked.

“Yep. All I need is a place to plug it in. If cell phones go flat, civilization as we know it will be stone cold dead. Teenagers, millennials, reporters, and real estate agents will go through seismic withdrawal and drop dead left and right.”

“The camp authorities will pass out chargers when they can lay hands on some,” Jake said.

“Why?”

“The NSA can listen to every cell phone and telephone transmission in America. They've been working on it for over a year. Soetoro's orders. It used to be all they got was your number and the number you dialed. Now they can record the conversations digitally and mine them for key words or names. They
want
you to talk on your cell phone. That's why they didn't confiscate the things.”

Jack Yocke sat with his cell phone in hand watching the shadows lengthen. Finally he put the device on the ground, took off his shoe, and pounded on it with the heel until the glass screen broke. Then he threw it over the fence.

After a while Yocke calmed down. “So when do you think we'll get out of here?”

Grafton snorted. “They didn't let me pack my crystal ball.”

“A few days, months, years?”

When Grafton remained silent, Yocke decided to answer his own question. If you are going to make your living writing newspaper columns, you must have opinions, on everything. Yocke did. Almost every living human had opinions, but no one wanted to hear them. People paid to read Yocke's because his were better thought out and expressed. “People are upset and angry right now, but few if any are willing to risk everything they own, everything they have, even their lives, to oppose Soetoro and the federal government. That will change over time. Government oppression in the short run pisses people off. In the long run it transforms them into revolutionaries.”

“Conquer or die,” Grafton mused. “Too bad you weren't there at the White House when the aides discussed how to keep Soetoro in office for life.”

Yocke wanted to talk. Like most writers, his head buzzed with words. Sooner or later he had to spew them out so that he could have room to think about something else. “Being a revolutionary is very romantic,” he said. “It isn't for everyone. The hours are brutal, you can get seriously hurt or dead, even if you win you'll be a pauper, and you'll probably wind up unhappy with whoever emerges from the chaos as the head dog. Sooner or later the optimistic revolutionary becomes the disillusioned veteran. If he is still above ground.”

“Was this your column that won't get printed?”

“Yeah. Good solid stuff.”

“So, Jack, are you willing to kiss your pension, 401(k), Mazda sports car, and Washington condo good-bye and sign on for the voyage? Are you ready to pledge your life, your fortune, and your sacred honor?”

“Not yet, Admiral. I'm working up to it. Soetoro is dragging me to it by the hair. He's dragging a whole lot of people there. If Soetoro doesn't stop this shit pretty soon, there is going to be a major explosion.”

“He thinks not.”

“Barry Soetoro is a damn fool. President of the United States, and he doesn't know Americans.”

On Thursday, the twenty-fifth of August, Jack Hays and his wife, Nadine, rode a helicopter from Austin to Sanderson, Texas, where a funeral home had Joe Bob Hays laid out. JR and his brother, Fred, and Fred's wife and eldest son were there. The grandson was only four. JR had been divorced for the past ten years. His ex-wife had custody of
their children. The wife had had an affair while her husband was in Afghanistan, and divorce followed. She didn't remarry. The kids were teenagers now and knew everything about everything. JR wrote them a note about their grandfather and mailed it, and that would have to do.

The sheriff, Manuel Tejada, was there with some of his deputies in uniform. One of them, a man with bright, garish yellow and green tattoos that started at both wrists and ran up his forearms, took the time to shake JR's hand and tell him how sorry he was. “Knew your dad,” he said. “Good man.” His name was Romero, according to the silver name tag he wore over his left shirt pocket.

The sheriff, his deputies, the mayor and county commissioners lined up to shake hands with Governor Jack Hays. Funerals aren't normally places to talk politics, but they were very worried about terrorism and martial law and asked Hays what it meant.

“Washington hasn't said much. We'll know more soon,” was his stock answer. Actually, he was lying. Washington had sent him a directive that ran over a hundred pages. He had scanned it and turned it over to the attorney general for comment. His aides had run off some copies. He gave a copy to Ben Steiner and one to Charlie Swim, and told them to keep their mouths shut. He had taken another copy home and he and Nadine had read it.

As he stood listening to the preacher drone on, he was thinking of some of the major points in the directive. In effect, Soetoro and his administration were deputizing the state government to enforce their orders in Texas. That was Nadine's verdict as she read the thing. She was an archaeology professor at the University of Texas and considered herself middle of the road politically. In Texas, that put her a little left of center, but not much. At the university, that made her a conservative oddity among the faculty, most of whom didn't think much of her husband either.

Hays glanced around. Against the back wall stood two Texas state troopers in uniform who had flown out to Sanderson in the helicopter with him. They were now his official bodyguards. This morning he asked them point-blank: “What will you do if federal agents try to arrest me?”

“They better come a-shootin',” the little one said. He was the senior man. The other man merely nodded.

“I doubt if it will come to that,” Jack Hays told them, “but it might.”

“You're our elected governor. Ain't nobody in Washington gonna drag you outta the state house. Period.”

“Thanks.”

“Them guys and gals at the FBI office in Austin, some of them are Texans too. If they get orders to come and get you, they'll call us first. They promised.”

After the service, Jack and Nadine stood on the lawn and watched the funeral home personnel load Joe Bob's coffin in a hearse. JR and Fred and his wife were going to follow the hearse to the ranch, where Joe Bob would be interred beside his wife, who had died of cancer ten or eleven years ago. No, Jack Hays thought. Twelve years ago. Damn, but time slides right along.

Before they closed the rear door of the hearse, he went over to the coffin and touched it. “Good-bye, Uncle Joe Bob.” He started to say more but choked up. “Good-bye,” he whispered and walked away.

“Drug smugglers,” Nadine said as they walked to the helicopter, which was a block away in the courthouse square. Texas flags hung everywhere, from windows and poles mounted on buildings. “They killed him,” she said, “and now their poison is ready for consumption all over.”

“Ready to supply the addicts and recreational users who don't give a damn about violating the law or who gets killed,” Jack Hays muttered, “as long as they are having a good time.”

“Why haven't we sealed that border?” Nadine asked.

“We tried,” he shot back. Nadine knew that. He had tried and the federal government sued and the judges said only the feds could control the border. We have to leave it open so the illegals can get in, Jack Hays told himself. Can't take a chance on pissing off the Latino voters. And all those illegals who Soetoro wants to turn into voters. Hays was in a foul mood. Drug smugglers, now Soetoro and his martial law. It's a hell of a world we live in.

His cell phone rang. He looked at the number. His aide.

The engine on the helicopter began to make noise.

“Yes.”

“The Houston police got troubles. A riot broke out several hours ago in the projects. They are burning cars and building barricades. Doing some looting. Some black congresswoman is shouting into microphones about the racist right-wing conspiracy trying to keep people of color down.”

He was tempted to order her arrested for inciting a riot, but that would only pour gasoline on a fire. “I'll be back in Austin as soon as I can,” he told the aide. “Get out the riot plan and act on it.”