PART THREE

51

H MINUS ONE

AMARILLO, TEXAS

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TOMMY LED HIS CONVOY to the area where the stadium sat, but ordered his men to spread their vehicles out, toward the outside, rather than all park clustered together in the lot. He assigned them places to post themselves on foot, as well. Each of them packed a pistol under their jackets, with a handheld radio in their pocket.

The stadium filled up nearly an hour before the Summit was scheduled to start. The racial mix of the crowds seemed pretty even. Tommy used the burner phone to call in an anonymous tip about a terrorist attack, 20 minutes before start time.

He waited for the deputies on site to begin clearing the place out. Maybe someone would make an announcement through the sound system.

After five minutes there was still no flurry of activity. Had he called the right number? The person he spoke to identified themselves as working for the sheriff's office, and acknowledged his message. He checked the number anyway.

Yup. He had called the sheriff's office.

Tommy walked over to the bleachers and stood where he could casually observe the nearest deputies. Maybe they were figuring out the best way to evacuate.

Nope. It looked like business-as usual.

Maybe they hadn't taken the threat seriously.

Why would you not take such a threat seriously, in times like this? The TSA was molesting little old ladies at airports hoping to find a terrorist threat, for crying out loud. And with all the violence around Amarillo lately...

After 10 minutes, Tommy was annoyed. Well, he had planned for "just in case" contingencies.

He took a deep breath and punched a different number into the burner phone. He placed his thumb over the "send" button and thrust the phone in his jacket pocket. After waiting a few minutes, he pushed the button.

The explosive with the cellular detonator he stashed in the garbage can behind the goal post on the opposite end of the field from where the stage sat was a small one, designed more for noise than damage. And it delivered noise, as well as busting open the plastic trash can and sending garbage everywhere.

Everyone jumped, including the deputies. Scads of people pointed at the shower of garbage falling back to Earth. The crowd noise surged. Maybe a hundred women screamed. People stood from their seats in the bleachers, and from the folding chairs on the field. Some made to leave. A couple deputies ran toward the explosion; others looked to each other in confusion, speaking into their radios for instruction.

Some white guy in a suit charged out on the stage and grabbed a microphone. His voice blared over the P.A. system.

"Ladies and gentlemen, please keep your seats. There is nothing to worry about. The fireworks were just a tasteless idea of somebody's sick prank. I assure you that law enforcement is looking into the matter and whoever did this will be caught. There's no need to panic. Security is very tight. The best thing to do is remain in your seats and don't let hateful people disrupt what we're trying to do here."

Tommy's blood ran cold. "Oh, shit."

He checked the time. The Summit began in one minute.

He range-walked toward the parking lot. When he got to where the portable toilets were between him and observers back at the stadium, he keyed his radio. "Okay guys, stay sharp. Heads on a swivel. This could turn out to be something."

Somebody spoke again over the P.A. system, then the children's choir began singing.

"Ron," Tommy transmitted, "I'm coming over to relieve you. I want you to post yourself at the far side of the parking lot, where the road comes in."

"Roger that," Ralph replied, over the radio.

Tommy made his way for the corner building outside the stadium nearest the parking lot. He saw Ralph running for the drive feeding the lot.

The fix was in, Tommy realized. The guy Tommy spoke to on the phone was in on it...or whoever should have relayed the message of the bomb threat. And the guy who told the crowd to ignore the trash can explosion was in on it...or whoever put him up to that speech. Somebody wanted a bunch of people packed in here, and it wasn't because of concern over race relations.

The children's choir finished their first song, and an adult voice came over the P.A., greeting everyone and verbalizing some ideals that most of those gathered believed in, judging by the applause.

"Hey Tim," Ralph's voice said, through the radio. (Everyone had been given temporary pseudonyms for the mission. "Tim" was Tommy's.) "This looks like it could be something. Two rental trucks coming down the drive toward me."

Tommy whirled and launched into a sprint to get around the outbuilding. "Stop them! I'll be right there!"

Tommy rounded the corner of the building and raced for the parking lot. He spotted the rental trucks on the drive. Ralph stood blocking the entrance to the parking lot, waving for them to stop.

They didn't stop.

Ralph waved more dramatically. The trucks veered around him, bouncing off-road, and continued on, circumventing the parking lot.

Running at full speed, Tommy was still too far to do anything. But he got a look into the truck cabs at a distance as they lurched past. There were two figures in each cab, wearing woodland camouflage and masks. They were bulky with ballistic armor.

Tommy shouted into his radio. "This is it! Guns up! Guns up! Two rental trucks headed toward the stadium! Don't let them get their back doors open!"

H-HOUR

Takoda had been standing among the crowd of outliers to the side of the bleachers, but he wandered away from the stadium so that the deputies wouldn't find his radio suspicious should he have to use it. As his father's words were crackling from the radio speaker, the two trucks in question bore down on him from the general direction of the entrance road.

Takoda moved out of the way, prepared to grab the mirror bracket of the lead truck as it went by, and swing up onto the running board. But the trucks slowed to a stop before they reached him. The passenger door of the lead truck swung open and somebody got out.

The figure was masked, with a boonie hat. He was dressed in a camouflage uniform partially covered by ballistic armor, knee and elbow pads. A Heckler & Koch G3 or HK41 was slung around his back.

The masked man hustled around to the back of the truck where he began to unlatch the garage-style sliding door. Takoda hit him hard from the blind side before he got it unlatched. The attack was part open-hand strike to the jaw, part tackle. They went to the ground. The man was bigger than Takoda; possibly stronger. But even had he not been restricted by his bulky outfit, and on queer street from the blow to his jaw, he probably wouldn't have lasted much longer. Takoda's knee drove hard into his crotch. His elbow slammed the masked face twice. He finished him off with a neck crank that caused an audible pop.

It was over in just seconds.

Takoda looked up to see a girl with a smartphone taking pictures of him and the dead guy. Her eyes were wide, her mouth twisted in horror at the savagery she'd just witnessed. Takoda rolled to his feet and snatched the cellphone out of her hands without missing a beat, on his way to the driver side of the cab.

Behind him the Saxton brothers converged on the cab of the second truck.

Takoda pocketed the phone and pulled his pistol. The girl screamed, but he barely noticed. He yanked open the driver side door, stepped up and clouted the driver in the masked face with the gun butt.

The stunned man fumbled for his own handgun but Takoda seized his wrist and struck him again. He pushed up into the cab, plowing the driver sideways onto the bench seat where Takoda pistol-whipped him unconscious. A hasty search of the man's gear revealed many items of interest. Takoda rolled the man sideways, pulled his arms behind his back and used his own zip-cuffs to tie his wrists together. He zip-cuffed his ankles to the steering wheel for good measure.

When the driver of the second truck saw the Saxton brothers level pistols at the cab, he threw it back in gear, hit the gas and jerked the wheel. The truck U-turned, shredding the turf with it's rear dual tires, and sped back in the direction it came from.

"Tim! Ron!" Takoda called over the radio. "The second truck is coming your way. These guys are armed, masked and armored."

Maurice arrived, breathing hard from the run from where he'd been posted. Takoda, stripping the rifle and magazines off the man with the broken neck, said, "Search these guys and take anything that might be useful." He found a flash-bang and a tear gas grenade. As he stripped items, he handed them to the Saxton brothers.

Maurice began searching the driver, glancing nervously over his shoulder. "The cops are gonna come over here any minute to see what's up."

"Good," Takoda said. "Be gone by then. But if they aren't curious about this truck by the time you're done, fire a shot or two into the engine compartment to get their attention. In fact, do that anyway. Use the captured weapon."

Tommy was already in the parking lot by then, running for his Blazer. He had radioed Ralph to give pursuit as soon as he learned of the escape attempt. By the time the rental truck reached the drive, Ralph was in his Explorer starting it up. He took off after the rental, switching from his walkie-talkie to the CB on his dash to let the others know he was in pursuit.

Gunther was on the other side of the stadium. When he heard what was going on, and that one of the trucks was retreating, he ran for the parking lot, yelling for Jason to come with him. A shot rang out on the other side. There were screams and yells. People saw Gunther running away and decided he had a good idea.

A new voice came over the P.A. and instructed everyone to sit tight. But after a small bomb in a trash can, two rental trucks that had come racing toward the stadium, and now a gunshot, people were motivated into a mass exodus toward the parking lot.

Gunther hoped nobody got trampled. He reached his Mustang, jumped in, twisted his key in the ignition and the engine roared to life. By the time he put it in gear, though, people were rushing past in front and all around him. He tapped the horn and eased forward. At the parking lot exit, he saw his father's Blazer swing onto the road and speed away. He grabbed his CB mike. "Ron, this is Gus. You have 'em in sight?"

"Roger that," Ralph replied. "They're heading...oh shit, they just ran a red light!"

"Run it if you have to," Tommy's voice advised urgently. "Don't let it get away. I'm behind, trying to catch you. Keep us advised of what turns they make."

Gunther could only move at a snail's pace, with all the pedestrians in his way. He gritted his teeth, inching forward, trying to get the message across that they should let him get by. Every second counted now, and he was forced to waste them by the hundreds in this parking lot. He grew a little more insistent on the gas pedal.

Some fat chick stopped right in front of him, turning back to talk to another person. Gunther nudged her with his bumper. She turned to face him, cussing a blue streak and pounding her flabby fist on his hood. Gunther grew angrier by the second. He gunned the engine, not allowing the car to move more than a couple inches—it was a feint—but the hopped-up engine snarled menacingly. The woman backed off a few steps, mouth frozen in mid-obscenity.

Gunther cranked the wheel to get around her and lurched forward. Then some skinny white jackass with a neckbeard jumped in front of him and stood there, refusing to move, with a self-righteous expression on his face.

Gunther was furious, now. He opened his door and stepped outside, pulling his pistol and leveling it at the neckbeard. "Get out of my way RIGHT NOW!!"

The self-righteous expression vanished like Lois Lerner's emails. So did the dude himself.

Finally, Gunther got the Mustang rolling. People pointed and cussed, but they stayed out of his way.

Once Takoda reached his Corvette and got it fired up, pedestrians got in his way, too. He mashed down on the horn and moved ahead, bumping people out of the way who didn't get the message fast enough. The passenger side of the front bumper clipped one of them, snapping his kneecap and sending him ass-over-teakettle. After that, they ran to clear the lane for him.

The Saxton brothers reached their truck and didn't even bother trying to make it through the parking lot, plunging immediately off-road and tearing off across open ground for the exit drive. Jason did the same with his motorcycle. By the time Maurice dumped his armload of loot in the passenger seat and got his own car started, pedestrians were clogging the lanes again. People were also starting up their own cars and adding to the big logjam. Maurice was parked close to the exit, but it still took him precious minutes to get out of there. He had to watch Takoda's 'Vette, Jason on the bike, then the Saxton brothers cross ahead of him.

Gunther tore out of the stadium drive onto the street, laying rubber as his V8 overpowered the traction of his tires. A light turned red ahead of him. He slowed down, but there was no cross traffic close enough to be a threat. He stomped the gas and ran the red light with gusto, heading in the direction of Ralph's last reported location.

Behind him Takoda's 'Vette never slowed down for the 8th Avenue light. It turned green by coincidence as he blasted through the intersection. He gained on Gunther quickly because he never broke stride.

Up ahead the street teed off to the left and right. "Which way on 10th?" Gunther asked.

"Go right," Tommy replied.

Gunther took the corner hard, with Takoda on his tail. "Then what?"

There was no answer at first. "What's after the right on 10th?" he asked, again.

"Left on Manhattan," Ralph answered.

"We just passed Manhattan!" Takoda said.

Gunther cussed and slowed to make the next left on Nelson. He didn't know this town, had no GPS, and couldn't spare the time to look at his road atlas.

He powered through the left turn and mashed the go-pedal briefly before it was time to make another left on 11th. When he got around that corner and accelerated, he had to stand on the brakes almost immediately when two cowboys crossed the street in front of him.

Literal cowboys. On horses.

Gunther pounded the steering wheel. Takoda sounded his horn behind him. Finally the riders were across. Gunther polished the asphalt digging out, and hung a right on Manhattan without lifting throttle.

Manhattan fed into Quarter Horse Drive and, after scaring some cross traffic on Tee Anchor, they could soon see the freeway ahead.

The rental truck had a head start of who-knew-how-many-miles by the time the Scarred Wolf brothers hit the freeway on-ramp. Gunther rolled on the gas and the Mustang dug out around the curve, thrusting him against the side of the bucket seat from the G-force. He was already climbing beyond 110 when he shot out onto Interstate 40.

Then he put the hammer down.

Takoda's 'Vette blasted out the ramp into the lane behind him. They ripped past traffic like it was going the other way.

Gunther turned up the volume on his CB so he could hear it over the throaty growl of his V8's performance exhaust system. Ralph reported the mile marker where the rental truck now was.

Some ignorant broad, who evidently didn't know how to check a rear-view mirror, cut Gunther off. He mashed on the horn while slowing rapidly, and kept it mashed until she got out of his way. Takoda closed the distance.

"Come on, boys," Tommy's voice called, over the radio. "We need you up here. If these guys pull over and unload, we'll be outgunned."

"We'll be right there, Chief," Takoda replied, with that cocky tone of voice that really annoyed Gunther sometimes.

When he had an open fast lane again, Gunther dropped the hammer once more. The Mustang shot forward, speedometer needle swinging past 140 in a matter of seconds. Takoda settled into a drafting position behind him and they continued accelerating past 160.

Ralph called out the mile marker, which told them they were finally closing the gap.

They wouldn't have stopped, had a cop tried to pull them over. But there seemed to be no cops on the road near the city.

Ralph called them to report that the rental truck was taking an exit.

"They're looking for a place with no witnesses," Tommy radioed. "We're gonna need backup ASAP."

With two open lanes for a significant stretch, Takoda swung out for a slingshot pass and took the lead.

They were already rolling north of 180 MPH. Gunther shook his head, but focused on the road as he nosed up to draft the 'Vette.

Takoda came up on the exit quickly, stabbing repeatedly at the brakes to bleed off speed. Gunther did the same, downshifting. Still, they took the exit at about three times the suggested velocity. In minutes they had their father's Blazer in sight.

The gap began to close between all the vehicles.

The rental truck turned onto a dirt road, the top-heavy rig nearly tipping over in the corner. The Explorer and Blazer swung onto the road right on its tail.

Takoda fish-tailed onto the road, barely able to keep from sliding into the ditch. Gunther backed way off, to avoid getting pelted by gravel.

The three trucks were kicking up a tremendous dust cloud.

The road was not very wide—you wouldn't want to encounter a semi with an oversize load on it. But Takoda swung out to pass on the left. Gunther gritted his teeth, stomped the gas and passed on the right shoulder, the outside half of his fat tires hanging in the air over the ditch. With the thick dust cloud his visibility was minimal. If a mailbox or something appeared out of the dust, he was done.

American V8s blasting a throaty battle cry, the two street machines zung by all three vehicles before the driver of the rental truck understood what was happening.

With clean, clear air ahead, Gunther and Takoda now merged toward the center of the road and slowed down. The rental truck driver instinctively slowed to avoid rear-ending them, at first. Then he must have realized that rear-ending them wouldn't be such a bad thing, and floored the gas.

The Scarred Wolf brothers surged ahead to avoid the ramming attempt. Gunther realized this wasn't such a good idea. The truck outweighed either car by a ton or more.

A high-pitched scream rose above all the other noise. Jason Lone Tree slung past the rental truck and between the Scarred Wolf brothers on his motorcycle.

John Saxton's voice came over the CB. "Make a hole! We can stop him!"

Tommy and Ralph let the Dodge Ram pass. It rolled up behind the rental truck. Sunglasses on and hair flying in the wind, Mike Saxton stood up through the passenger window and shouldered the captured HK41. He aimed through the dust at the rental truck's rear tires and opened fire.

The rifle wasn't zeroed for him, and standing offhand while speeding over a bumpy road with a face full of dust was not an ideal firing position, but he got the tire in three shots. Another two rounds and both the dual tires on the passenger rear lost air.

John backed the Ram off as the rental truck began to swerve out of control. The driver over-compensated for the squirrelly handling and the truck veered into the ditch.

Everyone stopped where they were, except Jason, who wheeled his bike around and rode back to park behind the Mustang. He jumped off the bike and ran to the wreck, pulling his sidearm.

The truck was tilted against the bank of the ditch, the passenger side mirror torn off and the passenger door trapped shut against the earth by the weight of the vehicle. The dust was still rising from where the truck slid to a halt.

Jason had the driver side covered.

Gunther popped his trunk, grabbed his rifle, locked-and-loaded. Takoda followed suit. They stalked up to the truck. Takoda kept his rifle trained on the windshield while Gunther joined Jason at the driver door.

"We've got you covered from the front and side," Gunther called to whoever was inside the cab. "We'll give you five seconds to open the door and come out with your hands empty. We have the means to make you come out if you want to be stupid."

The men in the cargo hold of the truck cussed and scuffled around, but there was no way for them to get out. The truck was not meant for passengers, so the garage-style retracting door on the "box" could only be opened from outside.

Tommy, Ralph White Feather and John Saxton dug out their personal rifles. They peered back through the billows of dust at the sound of a four-cylinder engine approaching, until they realized that Maurice Swope had finally caught up.

The driver door clicked open and a gloved hand pushed against gravity to hold it open as the driver climbed out, followed by the shotgun passenger. Both kept their hands visible and empty.

Takoda sidled around to help cover them. Gunther chinned toward Jason's pistol. "Put that away and get ready to search them. Just like we trained."

Jason holstered his sidearm.

"Drop," Gunther told his captives. "Belly-down, hands behind your backs."

The two masked, armored men complied.

Following Gunther's instructions, Jason zip-cuffed and searched them, pulling out weapons, radios, armor and knives. He rolled them onto their backs and continued. Takoda slung his rifle around his back and assisted with the search.

"No wallet or I.D.," Jason announced, when done.

Tommy walked up and kneeled beside one of the captives.

Jason climbed inside the truck cab and emerged with another HK41 and spare magazines.

Tommy opened a breast pocket on the driver. Embroidered onto the underside of the flap was the symbol of a knife piercing a globe. The knife was stylized so that, with long quillions angling back, it resembled a broken cross, or a peace symbol without the circle.

Tommy slipped the Buck knife out of his pocket, opened it and sliced off the pocket flap. He pointed with his knife at the other captive. "Check the other guy for this."

Takoda ripped the other man's breast pocket flap off his uniform. It had the same symbol. "What is that?" he asked.

"Proof Joshua was right," Gunther replied. "He was right about everything."

Tommy stood and waved toward the captives. "Get them up and bring them around back."

At the back of the truck the captives were positioned in front of the door. Tommy divided his men into two teams and had each team spread out and drop to the prone with rifles aimed at the back of the truck.

"You men inside the truck," Tommy called out, "there's only one way out of there. We've got you covered with a perfect enfilade. We will light you up if you so much as fart when we open this door. Lay all your weapons down—rifles, pistols, whatever you have. We're gonna open the door a crack for starters. When we do, start sliding your weapons out through the crack. When every last weapon is pushed outside, you can open the door the rest of the way and come out with your hands behind your heads. If we see any weapon of any kind still in your possession, we open fire."

Tommy waited, then added, "If you heard and understood, then somebody in there needs to sound off."

"Yeah, we heard," an echoing voice answered from inside. "We got it."

"Good," Tommy said. "Now stand by."

Tommy walked back to his men, and had a brief, whispered conversation with each one: Jason and Mike, armed with the enemy HK41s, were to initiate fire if the shooters in the truck tried anything funny. Only if they were unable to handle the situation themselves were the others to join in. And then it was imperative that they police up all their spent brass afterwards. It would be easy to identify their own casings, since the H&K brass was distinctly dented on ejection. Tommy reminded them that the shooters in the truck were likely armored up, so they should direct fire at unprotected body parts.

Tommy went back up to where the two captives stood facing the back of the truck. He stepped right behind the one on the right. "There's over half a dozen rifles covering you," Tommy said, softly. "I strongly advise you not to do anything stupid." He zip-cuffed the man's right wrist to the back of his belt, then cut the cuff holding his two hands together, so that the left one was free. "Open the latch and lift the door up just a crack," Tommy said, in his ear. "Then step back and stand right here again."

Tommy backpedaled quickly and took cover behind the berm of the ditch.

The guy with one free hand stepped forward, tentatively. He put his hand on the latch and paused.

"Guys, it's me, Brad," he announced, in a quavering voice. "They've got guns on me. They're having me unlatch the door. It's me. Alright?"

He swiveled the lock tab out of the way, then pulled on the steel latch hook until it rasped free of the embedded post in the steel floor. He grabbed the handle and pushed, lifting the door some three inches.

Before he could step back, somebody inside grabbed the bottom edge of the door and yanked upward.

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52

H MINUS ONE

DHS COMMUNICATION SUBSTATION

MEDICINE BOW NATIONAL FOREST, WYOMING

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TONY CALLED IN THE alert seconds before the engine noise could be heard on the approach road.

"Whoever it is," Rocco replied, "you know what we gotta do."

"Roger that."

All the veterans felt the pucker factor. If there had ever been a way to avoid a shooting war with the government, it was gone now.

A SWAT-style van bounced up toward the road toward the gate.

***

THE QUICK REACTION Force was cold, tired, and would rather be back in their bunks. Most of them napped on the way. They assumed some security guard fell asleep at his radio, or some kind of equipment malfunction had kept him from checking in. Nothing happening at this little podunk commo station in the middle of nowhere could be more than an excuse to waste their time.

The Force leader asked his driver where they were and tried one more time to establish secure contact.

No answer.

The van bounced and jostled down the rough backroad toward the station, multiplying the misery of the men who had to urinate. When the fenced-off compound finally appeared in the headlights, and the van slowed approaching the gate, the Force leader found it curious that no guard was visible in the shack.

***

WHEN THE SWAT VAN ROLLED over the spot where the mines were placed, Butch triggered them. Fire shot up from the ground and ripped through the bottom of the van.

The rear doors opened and wounded men staggered out in a shocked daze.

Griz opened up with the M60, chewing the agents to pieces and sweeping fire across the length of the vehicle. Butch and Tony added their fire to his from the side, while Frank and Kurt opened up from the front. They ceased fire after a minute had elapsed, waiting to see if anything moved. Then Butch moved in for search and double-tap duty.

Atop the roof Leon watched the actions on the objective through his scope, then felt something small, cold and wet touch his neck. He looked away from the ambush site toward his more immediate surroundings and saw snowflakes falling. Darkness was falling, too.

"Here comes the hawk. This's that snowfall we heard about."

Cavarra remained focused on the ambush, scanning with binoculars. "Well, it's gonna hit the fan, now. We drew first blood." He keyed his radio. "Mountain Man, this is Sea Dog, over."

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H-HOUR

Inside the little building, Josh was sweating bullets. It seemed he had very little to show for his efforts so far, and the cacophony of small arms fire outside just now emphasized the time crunch he was under to get results.

Josh was good with code and programming, but he wasn't up to speed on all the software in use, here. He had a whole lot of tweaking to do; but it took an expert to perform the tweaks without FUBARing the whole deal. He felt like Tarzan trying to teach himself brain surgery with a dying Klingon cut open on a tree limb while hungry leopards climbed up the tree after him.

Rocco came on the radio.

"This is Mountain Man," Josh replied. "Over."

"We had our first visitors just now. The ice is broken. Give me a sitrep, over."

Josh took a deep breath. "All good. Making progress. Just give me time and we'll be golden."

"Roger. Out."

Well, at least Cavarra was an experienced leader. Sometimes you had to give the proverbial kick in the 4th point to get subordinates to move faster. But it was not a good idea to pile up extra pressure on somebody who needed all their brain power focused on a highly technical task—that was just counterproductive to time-efficient work.

The lives of all the men outside were effectively in Josh's hands, now. He hated cliches, but one of the more macho slogans he'd seen on too many PT shirts really applied now: "Failure is not an option."

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53

H PLUS ONE

TEXAS PANHANDLE

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MANY ACTIONS PLAYED out in the short seconds after the agent inside the cargo hold threw the door all the way open. The door retracted into its coil at the top of the truck box with spring-loaded speed. Shooters were revealed in the truck, aiming their weapons outward. They opened fire even before the door had risen all the way clear.

After being in the dark cargo hold for so long, the bright outdoor daylight washed out their vision. Their fire was random and largely ineffective. But they did manage to cut down their own comrades, whom Tommy had placed facing the door without their body armor.

Jason and Mike opened up with the HKs, firing rapidly but efficiently, just as Tommy had trained them to do for the last few years. When they couldn't manage a head shot, they dropped to the shoulders, arms, groin or legs. The captured rifles were sighted for someone else, but at this short range they could hardly miss. The 7.62 NATO rounds took the crowded Tier Zero operators in enfilade, and only one of them managed to make it out of the truck, when Jason's magazine went dry.

"Get some!" Takoda yelled, and cut the man down.

All the shooters were down, now. Undoubtedly some were dead.

"Cease fire!" Tommy commanded. He pointed to Ralph and Maurice. "Sling your rifles. Get in there and search. No double-taps. Cover each other and toss out all the weapons first." He turned back toward Takoda. "Police up all your brass. Don't leave a single casing here." To everyone he said, "Keep your gloves on at all times. Loddy-doddy everybody."

The Shawnee Militia had never practiced this exact drill, but they followed their War Chief's orders and did what needed to be done with minimal bungling. They showed the discipline Tommy demanded of them in training.

Weapons were taken, first. All but one had HK41 rifles and 9mm Berettas. There was also a homemade rocket launcher.

Then wrists were zip-cuffed. Masks were removed from the shooters, as they were dragged out of the truck onto the road. The dead were separated from the wounded. Then each was meticulously searched.

Gunther took initiative to handle pocket flap-cutting detail, then passed out the knife-and-globe emblems to the others as coup trophies.

When Takoda had accounted for all his spent casings, he remembered the smartphone he had confiscated. He took pictures and video of the truck and men, careful not to show the faces of his comrades.

"How about that?" Maurice remarked. "Eight of them; eight of us."

"They never had a chance with odds like that," Takoda bragged.

Gunther turned to face his brother. "We could have had all of them if you'd just taken the other truck."

Takoda flinched. "What was I supposed to do—have somebody leave their car back there, so we'd have to go back for it now? With law enforcement from all over the country swarming that stadium, probably."

Gunther chinned toward Mike Saxton. "He could have driven it. Now that's eight more goons free to pull another job somewhere, thanks to you. But all you could think of was not letting me catch this truck before you did."

Takoda's nostrils flared and his voice dripped with scorn. "Hey, I let you be the great leader, Tecumseh. That's why we missed our turn and almost didn't catch this truck."

"Okay, knock it off," Tommy ordered.

Gunther swallowed the retort on his tongue, with reluctance.

"Based on their reactions back there," Tommy said, with a tone meant to calm everyone down, "I think most of the deputies are honest. They weren't part of this."

"What about the bozo on the microphone?" John Saxton asked. "Telling everybody to just stay there?"

Tommy nodded. "You're right. There are people in high places who were in on it. Somebody involved in the event, there. Somebody in the sheriff's office who managed to get my warning ignored. But my point is, enough deputies on site are clean; the insiders might not be able to make those other shooters disappear."

"Oh, this'll get swept under the rug, all right," Gunther declared, bitterly. "None of those deputies have their own news network or TV show. All we're gonna hear about is Oprah's new diet or Brad Pitt's new girlfriend..."

"Brad Pitt's got another new girlfriend?" Maurice asked.

The others groaned and told him to shut up.

Tommy considered what Gunther said, and saw a lot of truth in it.

They were fortunate that the riots had scared enough people around Amarillo into staying indoors, as so far, this bloody encounter hadn't been observed by any curious citizens. But their good fortune couldn't hold forever. Since time was of the essence, Tommy directed his efforts back to the task at hand.

Besides weapons and ammo, the items found in the search were all piled next to the man who had carried them. Not surprisingly, none of the men had a wallet or any sort of identification on them.

Except one.

Tommy stooped beside that one, who was wounded in the leg and shoulder. He also wore a different style of uniform and had no embroidered emblem inside the pocket flap. Tommy opened the wallet and extracted the driver's license, then motioned for Takoda to come over. He bounced his eyes from the smartphone, to the wounded shooter, then to his son's face.

Takoda got the message and began video recording.

"Arden Thatcher," Tommy said, reading aloud from the driver's license. "You ever watch Sesame Street, Arden?"

Thatcher opened his eyes and focused on Tommy. "What?"

"Sesame Street," Tommy said. "They had some catchy music on that show. Remember this song: 'One of these kids is not like the others; one of these kids just don't belong.' Remember that?"

Thatcher's expression of intense pain contorted into one of confusion. He stared as if Tommy had three heads.

Tommy tried to sing the tune. "'One of these kids is not like the others; guess before my song is done.' Still don't recall that song?"

Thatcher shook his head, still slack-jawed.

"'And now my song is done'," Tommy finished. "You don't know what you are, do you Arden Thatcher?"

"Whaddya mean, 'what I am'?" Thatcher replied, with a thick drawl. He squinted his eyes, studying the faces of his captors.

"You're the patsy, dude," Tommy said. He wiggled the license and waved around at the other shooters laid out in a row. "You're the only one here with I.D. And did you ever wonder why your uniform looks different from everyone else's? And the armor you were wearing is old stuff that won't stop a rifle round, like theirs will."

Thatcher winced from some surge of pain in a wound. Through gritted teeth, he asked, "What are you—Mexicans?"

"Never mind us," Tommy said, smoothly. "This is your 15 minutes of fame." He inclined his head toward the stack of confiscated weapons. "You were the one with the makeshift bazooka, right?"

Arden's mouth twisted, but he said nothing.

"I think I know what the plan was," Tommy said. "The six of you...well, seven, counting the guy riding up front...you unass the truck, fire and maneuver into the stadium, shooting up everyone you see. And you fire homemade antipersonnel rockets into the crowd, or the group on the stage, or the children's choir. Maximum damage. Between you and these guys, and the other truckload of shooters, the body count could have been in the hundreds, right? It'd be a real turkey shoot after you wiped out the deputies and the crowd panicked. Tripping and climbing all over each other to get away. Sitting ducks. When their ammo runs low, they maneuver back to the truck and the getaway driver takes them back to where they came from. Job well done. Am I right?"

One of the wounded shooters near Thatcher spoke up. "Keep your mouth shut, Thatcher!"

Gunther stepped up to loom over the shooter, hanging his rifle down so that the muzzle hovered above his eye. "What's this? You wanna talk, tough guy? Wait your turn and we'll give you a chance."

The shooter choked down his anger and pain, catching his lip between his teeth.

"With your off-color uniform, you were easy to spot," Tommy told Thatcher. "Most likely they were gonna shoot you and leave you behind. With a single shot rocket launcher, it's not likely you could return fire effectively, even if you figured out what they were up to."

"Your accent isn't Mexican," Thatcher said. "Damn prairie niggers. What are you supposed to be?" His eyes shifted to the side, toward the shooter who spoke, as he licked his lips. Tommy got the strange impression Thatcher was seeking approval.

Tommy nodded toward the Saxton brothers and pointed toward the other end of the wrecked truck. "I should've done this before. Let's take him somewhere where we can talk in private."

The two husky young men hauled Thatcher up. He howled in pain. They ignored the cry and dragged him around to the front, where they dropped him unceremoniously to the ground again, like a sack of potatoes. Thatcher screamed.

"Shut up," John Saxton said.

Tommy slapped Takoda on the shoulder. "On me. Keep recording." He turned to the others. "One man watches the prisoners at all times. Everybody else puts weapons and gear away. Get ready to di di mau. Take the captured stuff, too. Don't worry about who gets what—we'll divvy it up later."

Gunther, the second-in-command, clapped Jason on the collar. "You have the least to pack away. Watch 'em and I'll have somebody relieve you in a minute."

Jason nodded while the others got busy packing up.

"Leave some of their ordnance," Tommy advised over his shoulder, walking to where Thatcher had been deposited. "I saw willie-pete in the pile. Leave two of them."

When Tommy reached Thatcher, he squatted next to him. "You think those guys are your buddies, Thatcher? You think they're too morally forthright to shoot you in the back?"

Thatcher groaned, tears spilling from his eyes. "Please...please, give me something for the pain. There's a first aid kit in the truck..."

"I'm disappointed in you, Thatcher," Tommy said. "You must not know much about 'prairie niggers.' Injuns are masters at torture. You never heard that? I want your pain to get worse; not better. I can guarantee you won't get any medicine if you don't cooperate. Well, that's not true. You'll get medicine. Heap bad medicine, paleface. Savvy?"

Thatcher groaned and sobbed.

"But before I was so rudely interrupted," Tommy said, "I was explaining how those guys threw you under the bus. Now maybe, just maybe, they wouldn't have killed you. Maybe they'd have just wounded you and left you for the cops. But who knows: maybe it would have turned out different. Maybe when news broke about the attack and they put police sketches on every TV set in the country, lo and behold, it just so happens they've already got the lone nut—you—in custody. The official story might be something like: you were pulled over for driving a car without a license plate and some heroic state trooper arrested you when he saw you had a loaded weapon, which you conveniently failed to use when he stopped you."

"P-please..." Thatcher murmured.

"You're getting weaker, huh?" Tommy asked. "You're bleeding out. Running out of time. We gotta pick up the pace here. See, now either way, they leave you holding the bag. The second scenario is one they've done before. It might be the worst option for you. They'll lock you away for years where nobody can see what they do to you, while you're on Death Row. Waterboarding is nothing compared to what an outfit like this can do to you. When the public gets a look at you again, you'll confess to whatever they want you to."

Thatcher groaned.

"I don't have all the high-tech stuff they do," Tommy said. "All I've got is pain. But pain works pretty good. You've got maybe 10 more minutes to live if we don't do something to stop the bleeding. That's more than enough time for me to make you talk. I can cause a whole lot of pain in that time. You will talk, Thatcher."

Thatcher turned his tear-blurred gaze directly at the phone's camera and cried, "Long live the Aryan race! You can't stop us! We're gonna bring down the Zionist Occupational Government!"

"That's good for starters," Tommy said. "Now tell us all about these guys you're with."

The threat of increased pain and the fear of bleeding to death was enough to make thatcher spill everything he knew. Which wasn't as helpful as Tommy hoped.

By the time the interrogation was done, everything was stashed in the vehicles and they were ready to go.

Dusk was settling in when Tommy had everyone gather around.

His eyes were dead.

Gunther and Takoda had only seen their father's eyes go dead a few times in their life. It was a very, very ominous sign. He was notorious for always having his emotions in check. Now there was cold fury ready to explode out of him like a neutron bomb.

***

GUNTHER REMEMBERED the time when he was eight and his father took the family to the movies. Afterwards, Tommy went to get the car while Linda, pregnant with Carl, waited with Gunther and Takoda outside the rear exit of the theater. Two young white men, for whatever reason, zeroed in on the quiet family minding its own business. They mostly just insulted Gunther's mother, but they grabbed parts of her body, too. Gunther was too young to know what it all meant, but he remembered it bothered him bad enough to speak up against the white men.

Takoda sensed something, too. Barely as tall as the men's knees, the six-year-old threw himself at one of them. Up to then the white men had been content with verbal insults and the occasional sexual grope.

Tommy pulled up with the car just as one of the white men pushed Takoda, who fell backwards and smacked his head against the theater wall.

However many yards away he was, and looking through the car window, Gunther saw his dad's eyes go dead.

Gunther didn't remember how Tommy got from the car to the sidewalk. What he remembered was the white men trying to play the whole thing off as a joke...but even so, with a "what are you gonna do about it" attitude.

In the blink of an eye one of the men was on the ground clutching his throat, making a loud, labored rasping sound. Gunther only saw a blur in place of his father's hands and feet. Blood sprayed from the second man's nose. Then he doubled over. Then his head flew back, a tooth flying from his mouth. He staggered back and fell against the same wall Takoda hit. Tommy was there as he bounced back from the wall. Tommy added to his momentum, flipping him through the air to land hard beside his friend.

The image burned in Gunther's mind was of Tommy gripping each man by a fist full of hair, slamming their heads into the concrete sidewalk. Linda screamed over and over again that they should get Takoda to the hospital. At first Tommy didn't seem to hear. He was in some kind of trance-like rage. But finally he looked up to see his pregnant wife with his child in her arms, and he let go of the men. He swept pregnant Linda, Takoda and all, into his arms and carried them to the car.

***

TOMMY SPOKE IN A MEASURED monotone, but there was the trace of a tremor in his voice.

"I want all of you to understand something," he said, dead black eyes piercing each man like twin lasers. "We are at war. The war may be cold for most of the country, but it's now hot for us."

His hard, black gaze swept over them again. All of them found it jolting to meet it.

"In the rules of war, a civilized army treats prisoners of war with what mercy and dignity is possible. Wounded P.O.W.s get hospital treatment. You don't just torture or kill prisoners in cold blood."

Ralph White Feather nodded.

"The rules are different," Tommy continued, "when it comes to spies and traitors, during wartime." His jaw flexed and his nostrils flared.

"This is war," he said. "These men are traitors. Enemy agents. They waived their claim to the rights of captured soldiers when they decided to become the secret enemies of their neighbors."

He turned to look at the prisoners, then turned back. "I've done more talking than I want to, today, already. Everybody in your vehicles. Get them turned around and ready to go; and don't look back this way. One of you who doesn't have a weak stomach take that camera my son has, and record what the living ones are gonna say. I apologize for what you're going to see."

"I'll do it," Takoda volunteered.

Tommy shook his head. "Anybody else? I'd rather it not be one of my sons."

"Hup, Chief," John Saxton said, holding his hand out for the smartphone.

The wounded men were bleeding out, but Tommy made good use of the time at hand. The Tier Zero operators were hard, professional killers, but they had their limits like anyone else. One of them broke right about the time the stars appeared in the darkening sky.

Tommy got some information confirmed, and a whole lot more that was news to him.

When it was time to roll, Tommy took the phone and sent John back to his truck. Tommy took the two incendiary grenades and pulled the pins.

He didn't look back as the heat of the flames reached his nape on the way back to his vehicle. The blazing white-orange light behind him cast weird flickering shadows far down the dirt road.

He sent a text to Josh's burner phone, followed by a series of multimedia messages.

The convoy started up and moved out, assuming radio silence.

––––––––

54

H PLUS ONE

DHS COMMUNICATION SUBSTATION

MEDICINE BOW NATIONAL FOREST, WYOMING

––––––––

JOSH'S GAZE BOUNCED between the screen of his laptop and the DHS computer monitor. The back door into the Data Center was open, and he was close to getting access to their secure intranet via the department Justin worked in.

"Sea Dog to Mountain Man," Rocco said, in his earpiece.

"This is Mountain Man, over."

"They're stepping it up. It's about to get hot. Over?"

"Roger that. Can't go yet. Need a little more time."

After a pause, Rocco said, "We'll give you what we can. Make this worth it, over."

Josh licked his upper lip, tasting salty sweat. "Wilco, Sea Dog."

He felt a vibration in his pocket. He pulled out his burner phone. He'd brought it along and turned it on once the building was secure. He mainly brought it in case Jennifer had an emergency of some kind. His own life was on the line right now, but he was armed and had guys covering his back and flanks. Jennifer was all by herself and he was more worried about what could happen to her in his absence, as silly as that was.

A text message came in from a number he didn't recognize.

Only Jennifer and Tommy knew the number to this phone. He opened the message.

Outside the sun had set and the landscape was dusted with snow. It was cold enough for the white flakes to stick, and the snowfall didn't show any sign of slowing down soon. The men shivered in their positions, but not just because of the cold.

In the distance they could hear the beating of rotorblades in the air.

"Beach Bum, this is Sea Dog," Rocco said, watching the dim sky.

"This is Beach Bum," Tony's voice answered in his earpiece. "I copy, over?"

"Three if by air," Cavarra said. "Time for Paul Revere to ride. Contingency Charlie. Over?"

"Roger. Out."

From his position on the roof, Rocco saw his buddies below rise from their positions and redeploy with quiet haste.

Rocco Cavarra hoped the opfor still hadn't guessed what was going on. If one of the approaching choppers was an Apache or even a Cobra, they didn't have a prayer. A gunship was the Angel of Death, if you didn't have serious antiaircraft assets. And the necessity of traveling relatively light had precluded them from bringing any robust surface-to-air weapons.

The shape of three helicopters appeared in the gloomy night sky amidst the clouds of falling snow.

"Oh shit," Jorge muttered.

Everyone else said something similar.

"Are those the black choppers we used to hear so much about?" Carlos wondered aloud. "Hard to tell at night."

"I think they're more like dark green," Leon said. "But whatever."

Whatever indeed, Cavarra thought.

Two of the choppers hung back. The small, bubble-shaped aircraft came on.

"Little Bird," Frank identified, from below.

The AH6 Little Bird passed at an angle to the building, about 800 meters out. It buzzed the mortally wounded SWAT van.

The two other choppers split up, moving in half-circles to hover about a klick out on opposite sides of the building.

"Sea Dog to all friendlies," Cavarra said. "Anybody got eyes on those other two birds? Over."

"Negative, Sea Dog," Butch replied. "Our view is blocked by the trees down here. Over."

Cavarra watched through the binoculars, but it was difficult to be sure what he was seeing through the snow.

"I got 'em," Leon said. "Blackhawks."

Rocco glanced at the sniper, who was peering through the scope on his M21.

"They insertin' troops," Leon said. "I see rappellin' lines."

A chill slithered down Rocco's spine. A unit that inserted into the woods, by rope no less, was not just a gang of door-kickers.

"Fast rope?" Carlos asked.

Leon squinted through the scope sight. "I don't think so. But I can't tell for sure."

So maybe it wasn't Rangers, or anybody trained by them. Law enforcement units from all over the world had been sending their elite teams to the Air Assault school at Fort Campbell for decades, though. If these guys had been trained by the 101st instead of the Rangers, that wasn't exactly news to jump and cheer about. Air mobile infantry—by whatever name—would at least be trained to deal with a stand-up fight.

"Mountain Man, this is Sea Dog. Over."

"Go ahead Sea Dog," Josh replied.

"Be advised that there are boots on the ground. Opfor has air cover and ground troops, closing in from two sides. If you don't wrap this up in the next few minutes, we'll be trapped."

"Good copy, Sea Dog. Will advise. Out."

No, Rocco thought. Wrong answer. You're supposed to say you're all done down there and we can get out of Dodge.

The AH6 soared toward the building, switching on a bright search beam that swept the ground.

"We're out of time," Jorge said.

"Yo, Rocco," Leon said. "What you want to do about this chopper?"

"If one of us gets caught in that light," Rocco said, "the jig us up. We'll have to pour it on with all we've got." As if to emphasize his point, he loaded a 40mm shell in the grenade launcher custom mounted under his Galil.

"Let me try for the tail rotor," Leon said, changing magazines.

"What you got?" Carlos asked, chinning toward the M21.

"Steel core armor piercing," Leon said, working the bolt to eject the standard round and load one from the new magazine.

Rocco chewed his lip. With anybody else, the answer would be hell no. They would sit still, attract no attention and hope that spotlight never found one of them. But with Cannonball it was worth a shot. Literally.

"Go for it," Rocco said.

"Y'all get on down from this roof," Leon said. "If I don't get him fast, he gonna light us up."

"Bullshit," Carlos said. "You go, I go."

"Well, the Marines have spoken," Jorge said.

Despite the situation, Rocco smiled. Jorge was right to mock. But Carlos was right, too. "You can go, Jorge. Link up with Butch and Tony."

"Screw that," Jorge said. "Marines don't have a monopoly on crazy. Neither do...what the hell are you again, Cannonball? Army?"

Leon set his elevation, achieved his cheek weld to the polymer stock and, assuming it was time for silly bravado, quoted, "I'm the 82nd Airborne, and this is as far as those bastards are goin'."

The Little Bird came in slow, searchlight sweeping the compound carefully.

Leon had a sight picture head-on. When the AH6 turned at an oblique angle to him, he tickled the trigger.

The M21 bucked in his grip and the .308 round flew downrange into the spinning blur of the tail rotor.

He didn't wait, but squeezed off another round when his crosshairs aligned again. Then another. And another.

It was obvious when the Little Bird pilot realized he was taking fire, since the aircraft jerked and wobbled before nosing down and banking left. The chopper's minigun opened up with a ripping sound like chain lightning at close range.

Josh jumped at the horrendous noise from outside, and realized Rocco was not exaggerating.

He instinctively shot to his feet, reaching for his rifle...

Then he forced himself to sit back down and put fingers to keyboard. If he didn't finish this, then whatever happened out there was all for nothing.

All components of the blended threat seemed to be working. Justin, who was pretty good with hacking, himself, had helped Josh design them. The worm should be corrupting The List, and other files at the Data Center, already. Within a couple hours The List should be completely unusable. So technically, Josh could program the little video he put together to loop over the Emergency Alert Service, and they could exfiltrate.

But Tommy had sent him some footage that was the smoking gun of all smoking guns—much better than his own little subversive video production. Josh just had to finish removing everything incriminating to Tommy and the boys out of the audio and video, string it together, add some explanatory text titles, save the file, upload it, and feed it out.

He knew it was getting busy outside, but he had to take the time. There would never be a chance to do this ever again.

The minigun burst flew off into the trees, as the pilot neither had his gun oriented toward a target, nor had he even identified any targets. It was a dumb reaction, but understandable for a pilot who had never been shot at before.

At the burst of the minigun, Rocco and the others lit him up, The spotlight popped and went out. The chopper wobbled wildly. This new heavy fire was directed at the cockpit and the pilot was even less happy about that.

When the chopper had initially banked left, it went broadside to Leon's position. Leon poured round after round into the tail rotor.

At first it seemed as if Leon's work had been ineffective. But after the Little Bird had made about 150 meters of its escape, the tail slewed around wildly as three of the vertical blades fragmented.

The chopper spun in wilder and wilder circles. The pilot disengaged the turbine too late and it went careening into the trees. It was a spectacular crash.

"You da man, Cannonball," Rocco said.

Leon changed magazines again. "At least they got no close air support, now."

"Mechanic, this is Bone Crusher," Frank called, over the radio. "We all owe you a beer. If we make it out of here, that is. Out."

Others sounded off similar sentiments.

"Alright," Rocco cut in. "Guns up. We're expecting visitors, still."

Everything grew deathly quiet. The Blackhawks spooled up and beat away until they could no longer be seen or heard.

The snow continued to fall.

––––––––

55

H PLUS THREE

LAS ANIMAS COUNTY, COLORADO

––––––––

JENNIFER SAT ON THE couch, with the big screen TV on. This weekend was the only time since she'd known him that Josh encouraged her to watch TV.

She knew Josh didn't let the dogs in the house because he didn't want them to get soft. But she was alone, worried and scared. So they were inside with her, enjoying the warmth of the dome home.

She jumped in her seat when an electronic buzz sounded, and the image on the television went black.

White text began a slow crawl across the blank screen:

"Earlier today thousands of people gathered for a conference at the Dick Bivens Stadium in Amarillo, Texas. The event was scheduled as an alleged response to the ongoing violence in that small city..."

Jennifer's jaw dropped lower and lower as she watched. The text spelled out the whole crazy conspiracy story, soon accompanied by still pictures and video footage. The footage was carefully edited to avoid showing certain faces, or sometimes blurred out the faces instead. Most voices were distorted, too. But even with the shaking of the cheap camera being used, she recognized two rental trucks and some heavily armed, masked military-looking men.

The scrolling text continued, now in a horizontal tickertape across the bottom of the screen as the scene jumped to where one of the rental trucks was wrecked, and several of the military men were lying wounded or dead, and unmasked. There was a short clip of some wounded kid prattling on about the mysterious men he was captured with. The text identified him as "the intended patsy."

There was a much longer clip of one of the military men being tortured by something happening off-screen (the camera was medium-close on his face). The clip picked up just as the man was beginning to confess. He named names and spilled the beans about the false flag operation.

Jennifer wanted time to process what she'd just seen, but then the short video looped to the beginning and played again. She grabbed her phone and called her mother. People needed to see this.

GREENWICH, CONNETTICUT

Lawrence Bertrand sat in the half lotus, meditating on circular shapes, with his eyes closed, as he chanted.

Many of his equals disdained Yoga as something for the useful idiots to practice. Why keep driving a Volkswagen when you had access to a Maserati? They had access to far more powerful techniques than twisting your body around on a rubber mat. But Bertrand found Yoga soothing, and healthy.

As he moved into the cobra position, the door to his meditation room opened and the butler appeared, holding Bertrand's phone, looking apologetic.

"So sorry to interrupt, sir," the butler said. "But someone is ringing you quite relentlessly. I feared there might be some sort of emergency."

"Set it down in front of me and leave the room," Bertrand said.

The butler did as instructed.

Bertrand frowned. He could understand how those at lower levels would be excited by the event in Texas, but there was simply no justification for anyone who had his contact information to be bothering him.

Less than 30 seconds after the door shut behind his butler, the phone rang again. He sagged fully to the floor, grabbed the phone and rolled to his side, scowling after checking the caller I.D.

He took the call. "Yes? No, I'm not watching television. You know I don't... WHAT?!?"

He hadn't risen off the mat that fast in 30 years. He stomped to the nearest room with a TV set and turned it on.

Just a few seconds into the video clip, blood boiled up into the skin of his face, flushing him with rage.

BOSTON, MASSACHUSSETTS

Jason Macmillan had arranged to be out of town on the day of the event, so he didn't have to put on a surprised act for his wife, in-laws and neighbors. Jade was able to get away as well, so they spent the night before, and most of that day, together in a nice hotel suite.

They had champaign chilled for the occasion as they waited for the first breaking news reports.

What he saw made him physically ill, like he'd been kicked hard in the stomach. Jade gave out a little cry and held her hands against her mouth.

Both their phones blew up less than a minute after the first loop had played. Macmillan ignored the incoming calls and dialed his team leaders.

He got a recording that the networks were down.

He dialed his contacts in the Potter and Randall County Sheriff's offices.

He got a recording that the networks were down.

"If networks are down, how the hell is my phone ringing off the hook?" he shouted.

"Switchboards are jammed because everyone's calling somebody about this," Jade said, pointing at the TV.

A call came in from Bertrand's number. Macmillan had to take it.

Bertrand greeted him with a caustic stream of profanity.

"That's one of your shooters blowing OpSec all to hell on national TV!" Bertrand screamed.

"Yes sir," Macmillan replied, trying not to vomit. "He does look like one of mine."

"Looks like? Looks like? You idiot, he's naming names! What are you doing over there? How is it even possible you could screw this up so royally?"

"Sir, I followed every security proto..."

"You moron!" Bertrand interrupted. "Now I find out one of our repeater facilities has been hijacked! Haven't any of you incompetent buffoons figured out that they're using the E.A.S. from that very substation to do this?"

"Sir, I haven't heard anything about that," Macmillan said. "I'm not in charge of..."

"They're pumping this out on every channel! Every damned channel, Macmillan! What else has been compromised?"

"I have no idea sir."

"Well of course you have no idea! I shouldn't be surprised at that."

Macmillan suffered a dry heave, but managed to hold it back.

Bertrand took an audible breath and composed himself somewhat. "This is that redskin sheriff behind this. It's got to be. He pulled a stunt like this in Indonesia. This has his fingerprints all over it. One team all K.I.A. for all we know, and the other one in custody of a sheriff's department! This may require more damage control than the press can give us...assuming they can ever take the airwaves back from that son of a bitch!"

Macmillan heaved again. Jade, in a heated conversation on her own phone, shot him an annoyed glance.

"You listen to me, Macmillan," Bertrand said. "I want that Scarred Wolf bastard. You hear me? You've utterly destroyed all our other work. Your only job now is this: You take him down. His family. His friends. Anybody he knew in Special Forces. Take them alive or dead; do it quietly if you can, but do it!"

"Yes sir."

"Now since your informant spilled his guts on national TV...in fact the little worm is still doing it! Over and over and over..."

"Yes sir."

"Since he's talking, we've got more damage control to do."

"Like what, sir?"

"Like the group you had him infiltrate, genius."

"Right. Of course, sir."

"Well we can't very well tell the world they did it now, can we?"

"No sir."

"Well, assuming you didn't let them go with all-expenses-paid vacations to Disney World or the French Riviera or something, which wouldn't surprise me at this point, I'm hoping you have them secured somewhere."

"Yes sir. I do."

"Well bravo, Macmillan You managed to keep somebody in custody. Next I'll teach you how to tie your shoes all by yourself. Now make them go away. We'll figure out who can do the PR for us on that later."

"Go away?" Macmillan replied. "Oh. The F.A.P. group."

"No, the New England Patriots, genius. Those two tasks are your job, now. So get moving on them. Now let me talk to Jade."

"Um...Jade...?"

"Oh really, Macmillan You think I don't know exactly where you are at any moment? Maybe you assumed you were her first? It's what she does. She'd fornicate with a boa constrictor if she thought she could mess with its head in the process."

McMillan's dry heaves became wet. He spilled the contents of his stomach all over the carpet.

"What was that? Bertrand demanded. "What are you doing? Give the phone to Jade, now."

Macmillan held the phone out toward her. At first she waved him away in disgust. When he explained who was calling, she set her phone aside and took his.

"Yes sir," she said. "They're ready. I can have the first wave of cells operational tonight. All of them can be active within a couple days. ...Well, for security reasons. ...Yes, I understand. Yes, it's a disaster. ...We will. I'll have good news for you in a very short amount of time, sir. ...All right. ...I already have that target allocated to one of my cells. ...That's fine. If Jason gets it done first, I'll just have them move on to the next target. ...Very good, sir. Yes, my phone is on. The switchboards must be jammed. ...Understood. Goodbye."

She tossed the phone back toward where Macmillan lay on the floor clutching his stomach.

"All I can say, Jason," Jade said with a cold, severe expression, "is you better take care of this Scarred Wolf character."

Macmillan nodded, trying to get his breathing under control. This was the worst day of his entire life. And getting sick about it in front of Jade just added humiliation on top of it. "Scarred Wolf is going down. I guarantee it."

"Oh, he's going down," Jade promised. "But trust me: it will go much better for you if I don't wind up cleaning up this mess. My guys will be on this in very short order. You don't have much time to get to him first."

"Can't you...?" he began to plead, but stopped himself. He looked weak enough already.

"No," she answered anyway, sneering. "I suppose you have a profile for him and his potential accomplices?" She tossed her hair, gathered her purse and overnight bag, then headed for the door. "Nevermind. I'll get it straight from the Data Center."

The door slammed behind her. Macmillan rose to all fours and resumed throwing up.

PHOENIX, ARIZONA

Mac took a seat on the passenger side of the communication van cab and waited for his tablet to connect to the 4G network so he could fill out the necessary forms. He watched his agents lead a man, woman and teenaged boy in handcuffs out of the vinyl-sided house. Another agent escorted a younger girl over to their liason who dealt with children. Once the perps were hauled away for booking, his agents went back inside and began bringing out the weapons, ammunition, accessories and other equipment.

Once again, nothing was found that was officially illegal yet, but Mac's superiors had changed the policy. Now arrests were to be made and property confiscated whenever his team rolled out, and somebody else would worry about what was legal.

Agent Samuels spotted Mac and walked up to stand outside the passenger window, which Mac then rolled down. The agent removed his helmet and balaclava.

“What's up, Samuels? Please tell me you didn't stomp any cats to death in there.”

Samuels grinned. “Nope. Shot the dog, though.”

“Why?”

Samuels shrugged. “It was barking at us.”

Mac groaned. “That's what dogs do, man. It's a family pet. It's naturally protective of its owners.”

“Hey, boss, it's bureau-wide policy. What's the big deal?”

Unfortunately, Samuels was right. Policy was that barking constituted aggressive behavior. And aggressive behavior from a dog justified deadly force. “Look,” Mac said, “I know we've got clearance to do it. That doesn't mean we have to do it every time. Every single dog in the world is going to bark when strangers bust in a house and scare the owners.”

Samuels shrugged again. “Hey, this guy had some nice stuff. You should see the computers and...”

“The computer goes into evidence,” Mac interrupted.

“Well I've got dibs on the flat screen with the surround sound,” Samuels said.

Mac straightened his posture in the seat. “I'm tired of telling you guys that I won't have you stealing from the crime scene.”

Samuels scowled. “What's your problem, Mac? How come we're the only unit that doesn't get the normal side perks? You're not impressing anybody with this boy scout shit, and meanwhile somebody else is gonna have their pick of the loot while we get nothing.”

“I don't have a problem,” Mac growled. “But I'm about to give you one if your insubordinate attitude isn't adjusted real quick. Got it? Now finish what needs to be done and get back in the van.”

Samuels whirled and huffed away.

“Mac!” the comm tech called from the back of the van. “You're gonna want to come back and take a look at this!”

Mac sighed, opened the door and got out. He walked around to the back of the van and climbed in. The tech had a live TV broadcast on one of his monitors.

“The game was on,” the tech said. “Then the broadcast was interrupted.”

Mac stared in disbelief at the little screen. After watching the video for the third time, he had his tech check other channels. This pirate broadcast was on every station.

Mac knew, as a federal agent in charge of a unit, he should be on the phone volunteering to go where needed. But he felt paralyzed.

He hadn't been this stunned when he watched the passenger jets hit the Twin Towers on TV.

Either this was an extremely elaborate hoax by fanatic right-wing whack-jobs or...

Or what?

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56

H PLUS TWO

DHS COMMUNICATION SUBSTATION

MEDICINE BOW NATIONAL FOREST, WYOMING

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CAVARRA AND THE OTHERS stowed their anti-infrared overgarments and replaced them with winter camouflage. The landscape was painted white, and snow was still falling steadiy.

The quiet before the proverbial storm set in.

Storm was an apt description for what was coming, Cavarra thought. But the scope of it was on a far, far greater scale than the impending firefight. Barring some kind of miracle, it was going to tear the whole country apart.

What would happen to Jasmine? What would happen to Justin? They didn't have the training to survive what was on the way. It would be up to him to get them to some kind of safe place.

The storm was threatening his very life today. For them he had to get some shelter, while America burned away.

The shooters moving in from the north side tripped one of the booby traps.

Safeties clicked off, on the roof and below. Cavarra adjusted his grenade launcher sights according to his distance estimation of where he saw the flash, and fired a shell.

A minute later and a booby trap went off to the south.

Gotta love bouncing Betties, Cavarra thought. That made for two UH60-fulls of troops, minus maybe two or more now. He blooped off another grenade into that general area.

On the ground, Butch scanned the northern approaches with night vision goggles. He spotted the opfor.

"This is Surf Rat," Butch said softly over the radio. "Enemy in sight. Looks like a squad of six men."

Hearts beat fast and everyone forced themselves to breath slow and steady.

The opfor moved in two wedge formations in bounding overwatch, again suggesting that they'd received combat training from some kind of US ground forces.

Butch watched them advance. He carefully laid his rifle down in front of him and grabbed a clacker in each hand. Soon even the men without night vision could see the approaching squad in the gloom. When they were 50 meters out, Butch squeezed both clackers.

The Claymores blew and the opfor went down. Griz opened up with the M60, raking them with grazing fire.

Butch and Tony sought targets for their rifles, and tried to make every shot count. Above them Carlos and Jorge did the same.

On the south side Kurt scanned the terrain with Josh's NVGs, watching for the enemy approach. Atop the roof Leon also faced south. They waited for minutes after the northern front went hot, and still didn't see the other element.

Leon left his position and crawled over the snow-covered roof to the west side, wondering if maybe the other squad had decided to circle around or something. Just as he began scanning with his scope, Kurt's voice came over the radio.

"This is Shortstop. Got 'em. Enemy in sight. Squad of seven, slow and cautious. Your sector, Bone Crusher. Out."

"Roger that, Shortstop," Frank said. "Standing by for visual. Out."

Leon crawled back to the south edge.

Before the enemy squad got within range of the Claymores, though, they halted and dropped.

What was going on with that squad?

The leader must be skittish. It was probable nobody had expected this level of organized resistance—surely he was in radio contact with the other squad leader and knew they were getting chewed up. He was probably trying to decide what to do. He could skirt the perimeter and try to attack from another direction. He could continue skirting until he linked up with the other squad. Or he could retreat back in the woods and live to fight another day.

Cavarra hoped he would choose the latter option.

The northern squad was pinned down, maybe with half or more wounded. The biggest problem for the time being was the southern squad.

H PLUS THREE

"Sea Dog, this is Mountain Man. Over?"

Rocco keyed his mike. "This is Sea Dog, over."

"It's a wrap. Leaving party favors now. Ready for exfil, over."

Cavarra could have jumped for joy. He instructed Josh to link up with Kurt and Frank on the south side when he finished planting booby traps and came outside.

While Josh got into position below, Rocco keyed the radio. "Sea Dog to all hands: Prepare to move out on my command. Everyone on the south side: the opfor can't make up their mind whether to fish or cut bait. We're gonna give them incentive to back off in less than three mikes."

The "wilco" replies came in from the individuals one by one. Then Griz said, "Sea Dog, Judge Dredd, over."

"Go ahead Judge Dredd," Cavarra replied. "Over."

"Enemy pinned on this side," Griz said. "How 'bout I bring some rock & roll to the southern concert? Over."

"Make it happen," Rocco said.

Once Griz was in position behind a tree trunk on the south side of the building, Rocco broadcast, "Sea Dog to all hands. Initiate on my 203 splash. Out."

Rocco sighted the M203 at where the enemy squad still lay in the snow. They were little more than dark shapes on the white earth to his eyes. But that was good enough for a grenade.

Rocco fired. The shell arced in and exploded in the midst of the dormant squad.

Leon's crosshairs already rested on his first target. He squeezed off a round. The prone figure winced with the impact. Leon acquired his next target and tickled the trigger.

Griz cut loose the M60 upon the impact of the grenade shell, peppering the area with six-round bursts. He couldn't make out individual targets at this range from ground level in the dim light, so this was mostly a harassing fire to give the enemy incentive, as Rocco put it.

Rocco fired another shell. Then another. Snow and clods of dirt flew into the air with each impact, mixed into shrapnel-filled blossoms of explosive light.

It didn't take long for the squad leader to decide the objective was too hot. They retreated, some individually, some helping others. But by standing, they provided aiming points for Griz, who made them pay the price for silhouetting themselves.

Learning their lesson, their retreat became a crawling movement, dragging wounded with them as best they could.

Neither squad was capable of offensive action anymore, unless they were suicidal.

"Sea Dog to all hands: Exfil to Rally Point Bravo. Last ones out will be myself, Mechanic, and Judge Dredd. Over?"

Those on the roof with him acknowledged directly. The rest by radio.

"Cannonball," Rocco said, "get on the north edge and give those guys something to think about."

Leon crawled over to the north edge of the roof while Jorge, then Carlos, climbed down the rope to the ground.

Rocco alternated firing shells at the north and south opfor to cover the retreat, while below Griz churned through his belt, six-to-eight rounds at a time, making life miserable for the enemy troops trying to fall back.

Rocco watched the ghostly figures of his unit moving out in a column on a westward azimuth, then turned to Leon. "Your turn, Cannonball."

Leon skootched over to where the rope was, slung the M21 over his back and climbed down. Rocco fired a shell at the northern squad, which was also pulling back, now.

When Rocco saw Leon disappear into the curtain of falling snow where the others had vanished, he radioed Griz. "Good work, Judge Dredd. Now your turn. I'll be right behind you. Over?"

"Wilco Sea Dog. Out."

The M60 chugged out one more burst, then fell silent. Rocco fired a shell after the southern opfor, watched Griz's huge form fade into the snow storm, then crouch-walked over to the rope, slinging his weapon. He slipped down to the ground and took off at a jog after the others.

Cavarra caught up to them at Rally Point B, and got a head count. Nobody missing; nobody wounded. But this was no time to push their luck, so they got moving again.

Less than a klick farther into the woods, and they came up against a fence.

"We can't be at the western boundary already," Frank said over the radio, checking his pace count for the second time. "There's no way, unless the map is wrong."

"You're right," Tony said. "We shouldn't come up on the fence for another three klicks."

"Maybe the map's not wrong about where the outer fence is," Griz said. "Maybe we're just not aware of everything inside it."

"What do you mean?" Rocco asked.

"Take a good look," Griz replied.

The fence was even taller than the one they had breached to get inside. It was topped with concertina wire, on leaning support brackets. Beyond the fence, camouflaged by the fresh snow, were several uniform structures: simple longhouses built to the same dimensions and lined up in perfect rows.

Rocco looked along the fence to the left and saw some sort of looming shape through the snowfall. He pointed along the fence and said, "Let's skirt this thing and keep moving. We can sight-see on the way."

They took a left turn and resumed their march. In short order they came to a corner of the fence. Just outside the corner was a 30-foot tall tower they could clearly make out through the snow storm as they passed below it.

"That's a guard tower," Griz said. "That concertina is angled inward. It's meant to keep people in, not keep them out. Those buildings are barracks."

"It's a doomed concentration camp," Jorge remarked. "It's just waiting for a staff and prisoners."

"One of those FEMA camps in all the scuttlebutt?" Butch asked, incredulous.

"FEMA, DHS, does it matter?" Carlos replied.

"That's why the commo building back there was pushed up so close to the gate," Griz said. "To make room for this facility back where nobody would know, until time comes to use it."

"Scum suckers," Frank grumbled.

"Don't be paranoid, guys," Griz quipped. "It's just an Amtrak switching yard. Move along. Nothing to see here."

They circumvented the fenced camp and made their way to the outer fence. This time they breached simply by cutting it, as Josh had taken care of all the electronic detection when he FUBARed the security system.

Once outside the fence, they changed course and drove on. Their tracks were filling in already behind them. After perhaps only another hour of snowfall like this, there would be no signs of their passing left in this winter wonderland.

They reached the small air strip well before sunrise. Phil Jenkins was waiting with a Cessna 441 Conquest II fueled up and ready to go.

Jenkins needed every inch of runway to get the passenger turboprop off the ground. It was built to haul up to 10 passengers, but with weapons and gear it was quite a heavy load.

They flew to another private airstrip, where Jorge's RV was now parked. Everyone transferred to the ground vehicle and drove for Josh's place where their personal vehicles waited.

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57

H PLUS SIX

UPPER EAST SIDE, MANHATTAN, NEW YORK

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LAWRENCE BERTRAND LEFT his impromptu meeting with Harrison Travis, and eight other members from the Council, feeling like the whipping boy.

They had chewed him up and spit him out. A lot more than just his career was on the line, if Lightning Strike didn't achieve big results and earn him some redemption.

In addition to the abortive operation in Texas, the E.A.S. hijacking was a debacle of the first magnitude.

It was embarrassing.

Once it had been known that security was compromised, reaction teams were dispatched. Department resources were stretched thin, with everything going on. But still, the Quick Reaction Force should have been overkill for the job.

That the QRF was routed so handily, with nothing to show for it, confirmed that there were professionals among the DomTers.

And nobody figured out how to stop the broadcast for hours! Excuses flew like scattering geese about booby traps at the remote station, computer viruses in the Emergency Alert System, trouble finding a technician to sort it all out on short notice...

Finally power grids had to be shut down. But the virus had wormed its way through half the networks before it was stopped. Normal broadcasting resumed, but the damage had been done.

And speaking of viruses, somebody had hacked into the Data Center itself! It was diabolical—first cleaning the tracks of whoever the attackers were, then wreaking havoc on the intelligence gathered for the last few years. Unless there was still data somewhere, uncorrupted by the worm, on the most dangerous of the DomTers (such as the ones who hijacked the E.A.S.), Operation Lightning Strike wouldn't have nearly the effect needed.

Six of the nine Council members Bertrand met with had the burden of damage control resting on their shoulders, now. Their organizations not only had to withstand the onslaught of elements within the rogue media, they had to somehow make everyone forget about the nationwide pirate broadcast that looped for hours during prime time. Of course they weren't happy about this.

As far as making everyone forget, Harrison Travis told them, they'd be getting some help with that soon. But he made it clear that the DomTers had to be hit hard, and quickly.

Bertrand assured them they would, and that Tommy Scarred Wolf and his accomplices would be among the first to go.

They asked how that was possible, since the Data Center had been hacked and the Threat Matrix destroyed. How could they be sure who the Indian sheriff's accomplices even were?

Bertrand was already on that, he assured them. Although outdated, they still had old, pre-Data Center intelligence to work with. And some Negro flunky in the C.I.A., DeAngelo Jeffries, had come forward voluntarily to share what leads he'd collected on the Scarred Wolf network.

As the limousine carried Bertrand to the airport and his private jet, he replayed, in his mind, his own speech about loose ends after he first hired Macmillan

Loose ends had been the bane of his efforts for half a century.

Previous operations always seemed to be plagued by overlooked details, or well-meaning people drawing attention to thin spots in the narrative. Special commissions had done some of the damage control, but the press had been instrumental in patching it all up.

With the rogue media challenging the official story every day, though, the loyal press organizations were losing their grip. Bertrand's colleagues in the Council had bought off who they could, planted others to discredit the rogues with straw man stories and lunatic fare, but they'd never be able to curtail the problem until they shut down the rogues completely—and that meant they needed a strictly regulated Internet. In fact, that was one of the objectives the Amarillo op was supposed to sell. They had put together a good backstory on how the DomTers had obtained their equipment, knowledge and hateful motivation all from the Internet.

Amarillo had backfired in the worst possible way.

But still, at least half the population—both liberal and conservative—accepted the narrative. And half was enough.

Everything would work out, in the end. All would forget McMillan's incompetence and the other embarrassments. The bad guys could slow things down, but not by much. They sure couldn't stop it. The momentum was unstoppable.

It was unfortunate that the phrase "New World Order" had been so profaned in recent years, because there didn't seem to be any better term so far. Whatever phrase was used, though, it was a done deal...by consent or conquest.

It looked like maybe a little of both, now.

Thoughts drifted to Bertrand's Collie; and all herding dogs.

Bertrand had watched many videos of modern livestock. There were often stragglers in any herd of cattle, which had to be dealt with according to their obstinacy. But with sheep, all it took was a loyal core that would respond to command, and the whole flock would follow.

Herding was easy. In North America he didn't need everyone to like him or even believe the narrative. He only needed them to follow the loyal core of the flock, until such time as what they wanted or believed was of absolutely no consequence.

As it should be.

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58

H PLUS 14

MOJAVE DESERT, NEVADA

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THE SIGN HANGING ABOVE the tent entrance read, "Helen's Hypnotheraputic Healing."

Inside, Terrance Handel reclined on a cot while Helen—an older blonde woman with Hindu-style clothing and a turban—sat facing him in a beanbag chair.

Helen had told him he had a very vibrant aura and that she might be able to unlock some of his lost long-term memories.

Now he was in a sleep trance and Helen was guiding him back to the early blank spots.

Terrance remembered standing in the corner during class, in elementary school. He'd been too aggressive on the playground again and the teacher put him in "time out."

He remembered staring into the texture of the paint on the wall, imagining each little bump and ripple was a hill or ridge to hide behind, from little microscopic soldiers. He imagined himself as a lone microscopic good guy soldier, waiting to spring up from hiding and shoot at the enemy army.

While the teacher read Daddy's Roommate to the class, Terrance visualized a whole microscopic war in the texture of the paint, with tanks, jet planes, artillery...and strange futuristic weapons as well.

A woman leaned in the doorway to the class and spoke to the teacher. The teacher called to Terrance. Terrance stepped away from the corner and his microscopic war, to face the teacher. The teacher told him to go with the woman.

As Terrance walked past the group of kids seated on the floor facing the teacher, embarrassed by everyone staring at him, Mandy Albright raised her hand. Mandy had naturally curly blonde hair, just like the girl in the Peanuts cartoons.

Yes, Mandy, the teacher said.

Mandy, sitting in the very front, listening with rapt attention when the teacher was reading Daddy's Roommate, asked why Terrance had to leave. Wasn't the time-out punishment enough?

The woman was going to help Terrance, the teacher said. Then he would learn to get along and be like all the other kids.

Terrance followed the woman down the hall, around a corner and into a private office. The woman was friendly, unlike his teachers, and attractive for a grown-up. She let him sit in an easy chair and make himself comfortable.

She said her name was Jade, and she had come to his school to help kids just like him. She worked at a college, which Terrance knew was a school for grown-ups. So she was really important.

She asked him about the trouble he got into during recess, and he told her a little bit. She didn't condemn him for any of his behavior, but encouraged him to say more. So Terrance did.

"And then what happened?" Helen's voice asked, from the present.

Then Terrance went back to see the woman on another school day. She asked him more questions—this time about the games he liked to play at recess. She seemed fascinated with his answers, which inspired more questions—most of them about how he felt and why he felt that way, at a given time.

"Yes?" Helen prodded.

The woman, Jade, took acute interest in how cool Terrance thought soldiers were. And war. She questioned him about this a lot.

Then during one school day in her office, she had him lean back in the easy chair and watch Disney's Fantasia on the television.

It was a cartoon, which was cool. Terrance liked cartoons. But after a while, Terrance remembered drifting off to sleep. The cartoon played on in his mind, but changed. It was just shapes and colors flashing and blending, with noises and music...

Terrance sat bolt-upright from the cot, eyes wide open and forehead beaded with sweat.

Helen uncrossed her legs and leaned forward in her seat, alarmed. "Terrance?"

He looked at her. "What?"

"You came out of it? You weren't supposed to come out of it yet. What happened?"

Terrance blinked his eyes and wiped his brow. "I... It's like I hit a wall. A door. A locked door." He pointed to his temple. "And it hurt, up here."

He stood up. "I remembered more details about stuff I already knew. But you didn't help me remember any of the missing stuff."

Helen stood, too. "Well, this was just our first session. It might take a few. You were doing great—I could really see your aura engaged with what you were seeing." She handed him one of her cards.

Terrance took the card, but had stopped listening to her. Somebody was reading announcements over the loudspeakers outside.

"...Corporate meditation at 7:30. You don't want to miss it. It will open your mind for the rave tonight at nine. You can't really experience the beauty and power of the music if your mind isn't opened. Also, all Shinar Soldiers and Montauk Marines, you are invited to... let's see... Operation Lightning Strike? Yes, that's it. Anyway, that begins in five minutes over behind the Eternal Flame. Now don't forget that if you hear a song you just have to have tonight, to check the music table at the flea market for a compact disk or..."

Terrance exited the tent and shielded his eyes from the bright sun. He scanned over the area, and when he identified the Eternal Flame—basically a huge custom Bunson burner in a fancy altar-like structure with a gas-fueled fire—he marched toward it.

Behind the Eternal Flame some people were already gathered. Terrance joined them. Everyone behaved pretty much like him—standing and glancing around expectantly, briefly studying other faces looking for recognition or simply taking measure via eye contact.

Others approached and joined from all directions. They were all like him—relatively young; physically fit; male; with sober faces.

Finally a slightly older man arrived, holding a clipboard. He had the demeanor of somebody with rank, so all the healthy young men paid attention. Terrance had seen his type enough—the humorless military bureaucrat, as out of place in civilian clothes as a Muslim girl in a bikini contest. Such men had universal contempt for everyone except those of equal rank, yet obeyed, repeated, and enforced the most moronic, counterproductive orders without so much as a flash of critical thought.

"Alright, listen up," the man said, briefly rubbing his brow so that only one eye was visible. “Everyone here should be a member of the Baphomet Brigade. If anyone isn't, raise your hand.”

Terrance had never heard of the Baphomet Brigade, so he raised his hand.

Everyone else did, too. Something weird was going on.

The man with the clipboard undid one of the buttons on his shirt and slipped his free hand into the gap, assuming a Napoleonic pose. “Alright, I'm gonna clear some things up for you. If you still aren't sure you belong here when I'm done, see me afterwards. Time is short, so be advised: The birdcage door is coming open. But the owl sees all and smiles. We have Christmas hams for 13 families. The average low this winter will be 33 degrees below, as above. There are gifts hidden for the widow's son. And the angel is in the whirlwind."

When the word “smiles” left the man's mouth, Terrance was gone. In his place was Adiur.

Adiur was a warrior from way back. He'd been waiting for Lightning Strike for most of Terrance Handel's life. He felt patterns of energy in the air and stretched out his arms to absorb them. He remembered.

All the blank spots in Terrance Handel's memory...Adiur knew what filled them. He remembered the early sessions with Jade, how she established the triggers first, before guiding him to deeper levels.

He remembered the field trip, when most of Terrance's class went to a zoo and an observatory, but Jade took him to Disney World for an incredible day and night.

He remembered Ms. Greeley, who showed him unimaginable levels of sexual pleasure, all while reinforcing his training, and testing his capabilities.

He remembered the special advanced training he went through in Colorado Springs. He remembered the special duty assignment to transport the treasure in artifacts from the museum in Iraq; guarding an opium field in Afghanistan; guarding pallet loads of absentee ballots until the 2012 election was over; firefights with the Taliban; escorting V.I.P.'s around the Sandbox; training for counter-terror; training for wet work; training for black ops in the homeland...

And he knew why he was here, today.

Adiur recognized the other warriors around him. There was Adini, Zamana, Urukh and Nurval, to name just a few.

Zamana, the one with the clipboard, began calling them up by name. They formed a line in the order of the names he called. To each one he handed a sheet of paper and gave brief instructions. "Your first target is this sheriff in Phoenix," he told one. "Your target is the sheriff in this little podunk town in Montana," he told another. "Your target is this guy with the radio show in Texas. After that, there's a sheriff in the neighboring county..."

Nurval was just ahead of Adiur in line. When he reached the front, Zamana handed Nurval a manila envelope.

"You've got a big assignment in Washington, DC," Zamana said. "You'll be working with a ghost team that will link up with you there. All instructions are in the packet. Good luck."

Nurval saluted him. Zamana returned the salute. Nurval marched away toward his tent.

Adiur stepped up. Zamana pulled a sheet off the clipboard and handed it to Adiur.

"You live in Oklahoma," Zamana said. "This one's right in your front yard. There are other forces going after this same target. Regular ghost teams. You can work with them, advise them, or take over if need be. Just do whatever is necessary to terminate this sheriff."

"Yes sir," Adiur said, and saluted. Zamana dismissed him with a return salute and Adiur marched toward the tent Terrance had set up, looking over the text and images on the page.

Upon reaching the tent, Adiur set to taking it down and packing up.

He felt Kari approaching before he saw her. "You're leaving already?" she asked.

Adiur examined her physical form. He would like to enjoy that body. It was a shame Terrance hadn't been aggressive enough. Kari would have done it with him while her boyfriend danced at the rave, if he'd only pushed her buttons right. Well, there was no time, now.

"Something came up. But it was nice to meet you, Kari."

"An emergency?" she asked.

He shrugged and grinned at her as he stuffed the folded tent into the pack.

"You seem different, somehow," she said, breathily.

He looked her up-and-down, gave her another grin, and tossed his loaded backpack into the air with a flick of his wrist. He slipped into the straps as it hung suspended for a split second before gravity pulled it back toward Earth. Kari blinked her eyes as if she wasn't sure what she'd just seen. Adiur winked at her and marched off toward the parking area.

He studied the sheet of paper with more concentration as he went, this time. There was a color photo of a Native American man with intense, coal-black eyes, short black hair and a red-bronze face that betrayed no emotion. "Tommy Scarred Wolf," Adiur read aloud.

Nice that the target lived right on the reservation. Terrance was pretty familiar with the area.

Scarred Wolf was evidently one tricky character. Well, his tricks weren't going to help him now. He had no idea what he was up against this time.

59

H PLUS 15

ABSENTEE SHAWNEE TRUST LAND

POTAWATTOMIE COUNTY, OKLAHOMA

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LINDA WAS RELIEVED when Tommy made it home unscathed, but she had to hit him immediately with bad news.

The reason Carl disappeared was he had been arrested. Carl called Linda from the jail the night after his arrest. Apparently Rachel White Bird had entrapped him on an alcohol-related charge. Carl told the whole story to his mother in Shawandasse, which none of the Tribal Police spoke or understood.

But when Linda arrived at the jail to bail her son out, she was told he wasn't there.

He was never there. It must have been some kind of prank, lady, like teenage boys are famous for pulling.

Tommy drove straight to the jail.

A sallow, haggard Jason Macmillan had arrived at the station just off the redeye flight to Oklahoma City the morning after the pirate broadcast. He was not in a polite mood, throwing his authority around and making threats when they weren't necessary. The Chief let him take over the interrogation of the Scarred Wolf Boy.

Macmillan took off the kid gloves almost immediately. The boy resisted being strapped to a chair and he had to be worked over a bit before they could secure him. Then the two experienced interrogators from the Department went to work on him.

The kid clammed up, and couldn't be tricked or scared into telling where his father was or who was with him. They worked on him non-stop for hours, and he wouldn't crack.

Macmillan had the Chief and all non-Departmental personnel leave the interrogation suite.

Young Carl's pupils dilated when the burning cigarette was ground against his flesh, but his expression remained blank and he refused to so much as squirm, as if the pain bothered him no more than the smell of burning flesh.

An interrogator told him there was a lot more where that came from if Carl didn't cooperate.

Carl spit in his face.

Macmillan was pondering what it was going to take to break this kid when he found out the man he was looking for was now at Tribal Police Headquarters, making a major stink.

The mountain had come to Mohammed.

As Macmillan and his two agents stalked down the hall toward the bullpen, they caught some of the heated exchange between the Chief and Mr. Scarred Wolf.

"Your brother doesn't work here and you don't work here anymore," the Chief said. "You got no business back here. Civilians come to the front counter."

The other officers at desks around the bullpen were frozen, staring agape at the scene. Most of them knew Tommy, and the officer at the desk let him in like she always had.

Today Tommy's holster was unflapped and his eyes were dead.

"Listen, shitbag," Tommy told the Chief. "You can charge him with something, or whatever you need to do. But my son is coming with me."

"Your son isn't here," the Chief said. "I don't know who told you that."

Some of the officers present knew that was a lie, but held their tongues, averting their gaze with ashen expressions.

The three arrogant visitors emerged from the hallway and nudged the Chief out of the way. They stood facing Tommy.

"Tommy Scarred Wolf?" asked the tall, bald, chunky one.

Tommy just looked at him.

"Yes, that's him," the Chief said.

The bald chunky one didn't exactly smile, but he appeared pleased on some level. "I'm Jason Macmillan, DHS. I'm afraid I need to ask you some questions."

"I'm afraid you've got bad timing," Tommy said. He chinned toward the Chief. "Your yes-man needs to give me my son. We can chat later."

Now Macmillan did smile. "This is a matter of Homeland Security. It's not a request."

Tommy cocked his head and fixed a sharp, scrutinizing stare on the bald chunky man. "Jason Macmillan. I've heard that name. On TV, maybe.”

McMillan's face and neck flushed dark red. One of his agents had cracked and gave up Macmillan's name to the nation, via the subversive video played during the hijacked broadcast.

Tommy sneered. “Let's see some I.D., big boss man."

"Enough of the games, Tommy!" the Chief cried. "Don't play with these people!"

"You seem to be all mixed up, Scarred Wolf," Macmillan said, smugly. "You're not in a position to demand anything. I represent the Federal Government. You do what I tell you, when I tell you. Got that, boy?"

Tommy wobbled his head around to pop his neck, then flexed his back. "That depends on what country this is, I guess," Tommy said, in a flat, cold voice. "It looks like you and me are in a disagreement about that."

The Chief licked his lips and said, "Don't do anything stupid, Tommy. You're in a room full of police officers."

One of the agents with Macmillan eased his hand toward his sidearm. Tommy stared Macmillan in the eye. "If your goon so much as touches that gun..."

The man's hand moved away.

Officer Stark rose from his desk to Tommy's right. "That's it. This is too much," he declared, with a disgusted tone. "The Chief is lying. Carl is strapped to a chair in the interrogation room. They were torturing him."

"Stark!" the Chief roared.

Macmillan's jaw slackened and he turned his head to stare at Stark, confused.

Officer Lone Tree, Ralph's cousin, stood up behind his desk and pointed to a smoked plastic bubble protruding down from the ceiling. "Video cameras, dumbass. We have them in every room. I saw what you did to that boy, too."

"I never thought I'd live to see the day I was so ashamed," Stark said, then turned his head to the left. "I'm sorry, Tommy."

"Now listen here, everybody!" the chief shouted. "I don't know what you think this is, but I'm in charge here! I'm not going to tolerate..."

Tommy shifted his gaze to the other cops in the room, wondering who would break which way. One of the agents took that as an opportunity and went for his gun.

Tommy's M1911 blurred out of its holster and he fired while diving to the floor. The heavy slug hit the agent in the face, throwing him backwards, while a bullet snapped over Tommy's head.

Macmillan and the other agent pulled for their weapons.

Tommy hit the floor and fired again, hitting Macmillan in the groin. He raised his aim and fired, this time catching Macmillan in the neck. The other agent had his weapon out now and jerked the trigger. His bullet punched through Tommy's calf.

Tommy fired up through the underside of the man's jaw. The bullet pushed a big wad of brain and skull bone out the top of his head, to splatter on the ceiling.

Everyone's ears rang as the report of the last shot reverberated to silence. The smell of the powder hung in the air. Tommy rolled to a sitting position with his back against the wall, pistol still in hand while he scanned the room for any more threats. A couple of the officers had their hands up. Stark and Lone Tree had their guns out, but pointed at the floor for now.

"Oh, sweet lord..." the Chief muttered.

"You okay, Tommy?" Lone Tree asked.

"I'm good," Tommy said.

"I'll go get your boy," Lone Tree said.

The Chief stared dumbfounded as Lone Tree left the bullpen and disappeared down the hall. Tommy rose to his feet.

"I don't know what your deal is," Stark told the Chief. "But you pushed it too far. I kept my mouth shut for too long. You want a resignation? You want to take this in front of a jury? Let's go for it."

Tommy pointed at a female officer with her hands up. "Are you Rachel White Bird?"

The woman blanched.

"That's her," said Muroc, who Tommy recognized.

"You and me need to talk," he said. "After I get my son home. You can do it the easy way, or I can come find you, but you and me have business."

White Bird nodded that she understood.

While Stark covered for him, Tommy checked his leg. The bullet had missed his shin or he'd be in a lot more pain, probably. It had passed clean through—also welcome news. But he was bleeding pretty good.

A different female officer—Tommy couldn't recall her name—fished around in her huge purse, produced a couple feminine napkins and handed them to Tommy. He thanked her and pressed them onto the wound. Muroc handed him a roll of tape and Tommy secured the field expedient bandages to the wound.

Lone Tree returned with Carl. Son and father looked at each other.

Carl's gaze dropped to the floor. "Sorry, Dad."

"Get behind me, Son," Tommy said, softly. His lips trembled and he glanced around the room again. He raised his voice, and it throbbed with rage. "Anybody else got a bone to pick with me? Anybody want to be a hero for your Chief of Police?"

The room was silent, then Stark, his pistol still in hand, said, "Ain't nobody got shit to say, Tommy."

Tommy holstered the M1911 and stepped toward the Chief. "If you had a gun, I'd kill you. I don't know when you went dirty and I don't care at this point. You want to step outside with me, I'll hand my weapon over to Carl right now. You want to send somebody after me or mine, you better pack a lunch."

The Chief said nothing, but tried to meet Tommy's glare with his own evil eye.

Nobody in the room saw the left hook. Suddenly the Chief was on the floor, his mouth bleeding and eyes glazed over.

"Let's go, Carl," Tommy said.

Before exiting, Tommy nodded at Stark and Lone Tree. "I know what this cost you. You are honorable men. Thank-you."

They nodded back. Father and son left the police station.

Carl sat in the passenger seat as Tommy drove them home.

"They hurt you, son?" Tommy asked.

Carl shrugged. "Knocked me around a bit. Cigarette burn. No big deal."

"You told Mom Rachel White Bird set you up for the DWI?"

Carl nodded. "Bitch." He looked out the window, then turned back, wiping a tear away. "I didn't talk, Dad."

Tommy reached across the cab to squeeze his son's shoulder. "What did you mean back there: you're sorry? You got nothing to apologize for."

Carl shrugged again. "I was stupid. Fell right into a trap. And I wasn't there to help when you needed me."

Tommy fought back the lump in his throat. "Shake it off, Carl. I couldn't be more proud of you."

Carl's face betrayed no reaction.

"It was me that was stupid," Tommy said, "going in there with no backup. Tribal police all around me and for all I knew they could have all been dirty."

"I could have fought back hard, Dad. Messed them up good. I thought about it. But they were cops..."

"Yeah, about that..." Tommy sighed. "Stuff is changing, fast, Son. The rules are gonna be different from now on."

Carl's eyes dropped to his father's leg. "You're bleeding. Did you get shot?"

Tommy nodded. "I'll let you handle the first aid when we get to the house. It'll be good practice for you."

"Shouldn't you go to a hospital?"

"I'd rather not," Tommy said. "If it's bad enough, me and your mom know doctors and nurses who can come by. I think we all need to be careful where we show ourselves from now on. Especially without backup."

After a few minutes, Carl said, "I heard somebody watching TV in the jail last night. Guys in jail are spreading some bizarre rumors. What's going on?"

"War, Son," Tommy replied. "We're at war. First shots have already been fired."

––––––––

60

H PLUS 15

NORTHERN ARIZONA

––––––––

CARLOS, LEON AND ROCCO had carpooled to the Rennenkampf place, and they carpooled back. They were bone-tired after the operation and hours on end of stressed nerves, so they drove in shifts. Rocco was the lightest sleeper, and woke up when Carlos slowed down to take a freeway exit.

"What's up?" the older man asked, groggily.

"Just pulling over to get some gas," Carlos said.

Rocco stretched and yawned. "How far are we?"

"Just another hour or so, but I didn't want to risk it."

Leon stirred in the back. "It's cool. I gotta drain the weasel anyway."

Shotgun rose from the floor to put her paws on the armrest and look out the window.

"You must have to whiz," Rocco chided. "Your own bladder's about the only thing that can wake you up."

"Don't be hatin'."

Carlos pulled his gaze from the road ahead to glance in the direction of his friends. "Hey guys, straight up...you think we just saved the world?"

Neither answered him right away.

"I think we did everything we could do," Leon finally replied.

"If the world can even be saved at this point," Rocco added, "maybe what we did saved it for a little longer."

Carlos cussed in Spanish, as he turned off the ramp and the gas station sign became visible. "Look at those prices! They must have jumped 30 cents."

"Normally they jack 'em up for the weekend, then leave 'em be until Monday," Leon said. "Looks like they still climbin'."

Rocco frowned thoughtfully.

Carlos pulled up to the pumps and got out to fill the tank. Leon went inside to use the restroom.

When Leon returned from the restroom, something in the newspaper rack caught his attention before he made it to the front door. He pulled the top paper from the stack to look at it.

The headline read: "INSANITY!" The subheader read: "DHS Says Depraved Right-Wing Extremists Want the World as a Captive Audience."

Leon read the accompanying article. According to the mainstream media, the broadcast Rennenkampf had pulled off was an elaborate hoax with actors pretending to be captured government agents and a manipulated informant. In other words: it was not the government, but anti-government extremists who perpetrated a false flag. They even called the confessions by Thatcher and the agents "shoddy acting."

It was all a tragic but incompetent attempt at deception on a grand scale, the story explained. Sensible people rejected it, of course, but still, there was a danger that some less sensible people might take it seriously, and act on it. Somebody needed to take steps to ensure nothing like this could happen again. And the perpetrators needed to be apprehended and prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law, according to the experts.

"Excuse me," called somebody with an Indian or Pakistani accent from the front counter. "If you want to read that you will have to purchase it. This is not a library."

Leon tossed the paper back in the rack. "Like hell am I gonna pay for that."

A white guy about Leon's height, with a pierced ear and a tattoo of a marijuana leaf on his neck, stared at Leon from where he stood by the coolers where the beer was kept. He laughed an ugly laugh. "That boy's never been in a library. You wanna hide somethin' from a spook, put it inside a book."

"That's a good one, Einstein," Leon replied, shaking his head. "I can tell you're a intellectual giant. You must read a lot yo'self." He pushed the door open and trudged back toward the truck. He had a bad feeling, though, and turned back when he heard the door open again behind him.

The white dude who had been at the beer cooler rushed out, accompanied by another one, with long red hair spilling out from under a ball cap with a Confederate flag emblem.

"Man, this is too cliche," Leon said. "All you guys need is banjo music from somewhere."

The first guy sneered and said, "What's that? I know you ain't talkin' to me, boy."

"What you don't know would fill a library," Leon said. He wondered how tough these two were; if they knew how to fight as a team; or if they knew how to fight at all.

Leon knew he should have just swallowed the insults and turned tail, eating crow if necessary. That was the smart course of action. But he'd done that enough for one lifetime. He was tired of feeling like a coward because of being outnumbered and never knowing what other potential enemies might pop out of the woodwork.

"There's nothin' worse than a coon with a smart mouth," the first redneck said. It was obvious he was ready to throw a punch. His buddy looked ready for action, too.

Shotgun began barking from inside the truck. Leon wished she was beside him now. It sucked being alone at times like this.

Rocco and Carlos arrived from the pumps to flank Leon.

"Is there a problem here?" Rocco asked, staring hard at the one with the tattoo and pierced ear.

"Oh, is that how it is? There's two of us so you have to go and get three?"

"There's one of him," Carlos retorted, nodding toward Leon, "so you had to go and get two?"

Leon was not alone. Why had he automatically assumed he was? His friends had his back.

The second redneck said to the first, "C'mon, man. Let's go."

The first redneck didn't like this, but apparently saw the wisdom in backing down. But he pointed his index finger toward Leon's face. "Boy, don't ever show your face around here again, unless you have a lot more than two Spics to hide behind."

Leon gave him the last word. By letting a belligerent ignoramus talk trash as he backed down, it allowed him to save face in his own mind, defusing the confrontation.

The two rednecks went back in the store.

Rocco clapped his hand on the back of Leon's neck. "I'm offended: I'm a Dago, not a Spic. He better get his euphemisms sorted out."

They returned to the truck. It was Leon's turn to drive, so he took the wheel and the other two climbed in.

"It's good you kept your cool, Cannonball," Carlos said. "We don't need police coming in and paying attention to us right now."

Leon said nothing for a while. Then, in a quiet, grieved voice, he stated, "Rocco's right: the world can't be saved at this point."

"C'mon, man," Carlos said. "They're just a couple of bigots."

"Yeah, exactly," Leon said. "They don't know me. Nothin' about me. Don't know what kind of life I lead; what I've done; what I believe; who I vote for. And they don't care. But they hate me anyway. If you can just look at somebody you don't know, and hate 'em...man, how can that be fixed? I put my life on the line for this country over and over again, so assholes like that are free to be assholes. But they just see a black man and think I'm the enemy."

Rocco bit his tongue. His friend was right; but it worked the other way around, just as often. And the animosity was sanctioned when going the opposite direction.

"You know what's worse?" Leon continued. "There's a whole lot of people out there who don't have a Confederate flag on their hat, but they ain't much different under the hat."

Leon was right about that, too.

“And it's only gonna get worse,” Rocco said.

COCCOCINO COUNTY, ARIZONA

They certainly didn't expect customers on Sunday, but after arriving at CBC Southwest Tactical, where they'd left two of their vehicles and all their cellphones, they hung out for a while after cleaning and re-oiling their weapons.

They sat around the lobby drinking coffee together as if it was just another day. But it wasn't just another day, and the atmosphere was heavy with that fact.

"You hear the news from the Middle East?" Carlos asked, checking the news feed on his phone. Leon shook his head, almost scoffing at the idea that a place so far away could pose any significance.

"Israel hit Iran's nuclear facilities," Carlos said.

Rocco took a sip of coffee. "So they finally did it." He spoke the words as if they were talking about a neighbor who finally repaired a hole in his roof.

"It's hitting the fan over there, too," Carlos added.

"Either of you notice the Dow Jones?" Rocco asked, eyes on his own phone.

Leon shook his head again. "All I'm hearin' about is that our video is all fake."

"Well, I'm not a stock market expert," Rocco said, "but keep your eyes on it. Looks like the petro-dollar is finally being replaced. When foreigners start dumping it, the whole house of cards comes down."

They heard a car pull into the lot. Carlos stood and strode to the window for a look. "Know anybody with a black Challenger?"

"That'll be Justin," Rocco said. "I told him to meet me here."

Justin knocked at the front door a moment later and Carlos let him in. They offered him coffee and a seat, but he hesitated.

"Does this TV work?" he asked, pointing to the flat screen in the lobby.

Rocco nodded. "Sure. What's up?"

"Just heard something on the radio as I was pulling in," Justin said. "Turn it on, please?"

Leon grabbed the remote and used it to turn on the TV. The image of a news anchor sitting at her studio desk appeared on the screen.

"...We have a camera on Capitol Hill and should be able to patch in the video feed momentarily," the news anchor said "As I mentioned there are reports from around the country of orchestrated attacks on local law enforcement. But by far the worst attack was on the nation's Capitol. Oh, alright, I hear that we're ready to go to our news team on site."

The scene changed to a woman holding a microphone with the Capitol Dome, fire engines, and police cars all in the background. Black smoke wafted by the scene.

"Now this can't be good," Carlos remarked.

H PLUS 18

LAS ANIMAS COUNTY, COLORADO

Joshua was so glad to have made it back home; and Jennifer was so glad to have him back, that the dogs staying inside the house while Josh was gone never came up in conversation. Jennifer wrote off going to church for the day. They spent some time doing what young healthy couples in love do pretty much whenever they get the chance, then ate together and talked for a while, before Josh's phone rang.

"That's different," Jennifer said. "It's your phone this time." She went to the kitchen to do the dishes.

Josh checked the caller I.D., saw it was Paul Tareen and took the call. "Hey neighbor," Josh said. "How's everything in your neck of the woods?"

"Josh," Paul said, speaking excitedly, "I know you don't watch TV, but you need to turn yours on now. There's a news broadcast on all the channels. Alternative media hasn't picked up the story yet."

Josh's eyebrows furrowed. "You mean the attempted false flag in Amarillo?"

"No. That's old news already. Things are happening fast. Just turn the news on. I need to make some more calls. I'll talk to you later."

The line went dead. Josh set down the phone, found the remote for the TV in the drawer of the end table, and switched it on.

He saw the reporter in front of the smoky Capitol Building, with fire engines and police cars in the background.

"It's still a state of pandemonium here," the reporter said, "but what has been confirmed is that a group of armed men shot their way into the Capitol Building, overwhelmed the security detail, and set off some kind of explosive inside. The terrorists used military weapons and tactics to spray bullets at everyone they saw. At least one representative from the House is dead, an untold number of Congressional aides and people who were visiting when the attack took place are dead or being evacuated to the nearest emergency rooms. Sources say the victims include members of an elementary school on a field trip who were also caught in the gunfire. One of the terrorists was shot by security and left behind by the other terrorists. He has been identified as a member of a right-wing militia."

Josh leaned forward on the couch. "Jennifer! C'mere—you need to see this."

ABSENTEE-SHAWNEE TRUST LAND

POTAWATTOMIE COUNTY, OKLAHOMA

Tommy and his family were holding an impromptu meeting at his house when they got the call. Everyone who had accompanied Tommy to Texas was there, plus Linda, Carl, Uncle Jay, and every single member, active and inactive, of the Shawnee Militia. The meeting began as a mission debriefing, but evolved into a warning order for what might come next.

Michael Fastwater called Uncle Jay, who quieted everyone down and turned on the TV.

They watched and listened, dumbfounded by what they saw and heard. Gunther was the only one who spoke for quite a while.

"It was all for nothing," he muttered. "We stopped one thing, but they just went ahead with something else."

The Capitol Hill attack was the focus of most reporting, but one of the talking heads mentioned a simultaneous attack on hundreds of local sheriffs around the country. Everyone turned to Tommy when they heard it.

Tommy calmly addressed his oldest. "Gunther, take six of the guys and organize a detail to guard the property. Turn the dogs loose. Everybody packs a sidearm and his rifle. Everyone not on the detail, clean your weapons, reload your magazines, fix your gear and ditch your civvies. Put on your uniforms and whatever body armor you have. Who needs to go back home to get stuff, by show of hands?"

Most of them raised their hands.

"Nobody travels alone," Tommy said. "In fact, everybody goes to each house and pulls security for the guy who goes inside to grab gear. When you get back here, squared away, you relieve the men on Gunther's detail, and they go, as a group."

Linda, her eyes moist, began to say something.

"Hold that thought, baby." To the others he said, "We'll have more updates as time goes on, and I'll disseminate the relevant poop as you need it. In the mean time, be ready for anything."

"Roger that, War Chief," Uncle Jay replied, with solemn respect.

"Then move out," Tommy said.

Everybody stood. Gunther picked six men for guard duty. The others went outside to their vehicles.

H PLUS 22

DALLAS, TEXAS

Clayton Vine was in an incremental process of epiphany ever since his forced retirement. He had become friends with both Doug Haugen and Gordy Puttcamp since meeting them. Vine had been disconnected from fellow Marine officers of commensurate rank (except for those he knew only online) or he might never have fraternized with the veteran pilots.

They talked about weighty stuff when they got together, and they disagreed on some matters. But he came to respect and trust them.

He was somewhat expecting Haugen's call that weekend after great steaming piles of dung hit the fan all over the United States.

Vine had a pocket copy of the US Constitution/Declaration of Independence creased open on the arm of his chair. He'd been reading it studiously of late, and after hearing a few points emphasized and reemphasized by people on the news networks, he thought he saw a pattern developing. He had penciled some checkmarks on the page with the Bill of Rights. The biggest check was next to the Second Amendment, because the phrase "military weapons" and "military assault weapons" were uttered too many times to count in association with the attack at the Capitol Building..

He had three checks by the First Amendment because the talking heads repeatedly stressed that the "right wing extremists" (also a phrase uttered too many times to count) behind all the domestic terror took advantage of the freedom of speech to network over the Internet, spread their hate speech to recruit some and intimidate others, and collect dangerous knowledge they used to deadly effect. Also, their hateful ideology was formed in evangelical Christian churches (freedom of religion), where some of their networking also took place. And they met together both publicly and privately to conspire (the right to assemble peacefully).

A checkmark was next to the Fourth Amendment because of the repeated claims that police and federal authorities "had their hands tied" even though those authorities suspected that the domestic terrorists had been "stockpiling weapons." But authorities were uncharacteristically adherent to the freedom from unwarranted searches in this one isolated case, despite their suspicions, and so the country was repeatedly reminded how those outdated Constitutional protections had prevented the Feds from apprehending the murderers before they could carry out this atrocity.

There were checkmarks by the Ninth and Tenth Amendments as well. Vine hadn't yet checkmarked the Fifth and Sixth Amendments, because those rights hadn't come up concretely in all the rhetoric yet. But from his research he knew that life, liberty and property could already be (and was, in many cases) deprived without due process—which included a speedy trial by jury.

"You watching this garbage on the news?" Haugen asked, after minimal small talk.

"Been watching for a while, now," Vine said. "The story so far, in a nutshell, is, right-wing extremists perpetrated a hoax in Amarillo to make everyone fear the government. When that didn't work, they decided to commit acts of terror. The other theory is that other right-wing extremists have been waiting to become active terrorists for years; so when they saw the Amarillo hoax, they were inspired to get started."

"How 'bout we grab a beer and talk?" Haugen suggested.

"Yes. I guess we should."

D PLUS ONE

AMARILLO, TEXAS

Jimmy and Bill were in evening service at church when they got texts from some of their heathen friends. They went outside to listen to the reports on the radio in Bill's truck. They stood there listening until after church let out.

The piano player found them and said the preacher would like to talk to them in his office. Bill and Jimmy exchanged a look, shrugged, and went to see him.

"Come on in," the preacher beckoned, from behind his desk. He was a short, rotund fellow with thinning hair and a sunburn.

Jimmy and Bill entered his office, shut the door behind them, and took seats.

"I noticed you two left a little early tonight," the preacher said, with a friendly tone and smile.

Jimmy explained about the news. The preacher turned grave, shaking his head over and over as he listened.

They exchanged some remarks about how horrible everything was. Then the preacher mentioned he heard rumors that the two of them had formed a militia unit. Jimmy and Bill didn't deny it, but didn't confirm it, either.

The preacher spent about 20 minutes telling them how wrong they were. He pulled a few verses out of his memory about submission to authority, and the sin of violence. Jimmy responded by bringing the context of those verses to the preacher's attention, and threw in a few biblical references of his own. After that the preacher tried to prattle on about doctrines he couldn't back up with text, but the two men had heard enough.

As they rose to leave his office, the preacher said, "Hey, I know things are bad. And we've got corrupt rulers breaking the law they swore to uphold. I get that. But taking up arms is not how you change things. That's not the way."

"I don't know what version of history you were taught, sir," Jimmy replied, "but there never would have been a United States of America if good men hadn't taken up arms."

The preacher began to sputter the usual platitudes about how that was acceptable for 1776, but not for the present day. Jimmy and Bill were halfway down the hall before he was able to fully develop this line of reasoning.

Once they had shaken off the preacher's spiel, Bill told Jimmy, "I'd say we're at DefCon One."

Jimmy sighed. "In a way," he said, "I'm glad. It's better that it happens now, while we're still pretty much ready. I'd hate to be looking at this from the age of 50."

They climbed in their pickup trucks and drove away to their respective homes with a simple nod to each other.

COCCOCINO COUNTY, ARIZONA

The narrative was pretty much revealed before the evening was over: Right-wing extremists were motivated by the racial tensions in Amarillo and other cities, to try taking over the government via acts of terror.

Cavarra turned the volume down on the TV and told his friends and son. "Well, I hate to be a party-pooper, but life as we know it is pretty much over."

Carlos nodded sadly. Leon was wrapped up in his own thoughts. Justin asked, "What happens next?"

Cavarra sighed. "Some time tomorrow probably, the alleged POTUS will give a speech. It might be worth listening to—he occasionally lets something slip that happens to be true. But the speech is to keep most people in their seats by the TV; and to tell his constituents what they want to hear. He has to show himself a 'strong leader' and all that. But the next event that really matters is, doors start getting kicked in. Camps like that one we saw out in the middle of nowhere? They're gonna be populated pretty soon. They've got to try taking out the potential trouble-makers as soon as possible. It might not be as convenient to find all of us now, with the Data Center out of action, but they'll find us if we let them."

"Trouble-makers," Leon said, with a scoffing laugh, staring at the floor.

"Potential trouble-makers," Cavarra repeated. "Folks who don't like the way government is going to work from now on, and might try to say or do something about it."

"Hope and change," Carlos mused, sardonically.

"What about us, Dad?" Justin asked. "What do we do?"

Cavarra began rolling his sleeves up. "I'd like you to come with me to get your sister. I need to get her out of the city, and I don't want her trying to travel alone. Sooner or later there's gonna be roadside checkpoints everywhere you go. There'll probably be more shooting going on, too. Like Amarillo, only worse. Once we get her...well, we'll have to figure it out from there. There's no place that's gonna be completely safe, but we'll need to reduce the risks as much as we can. Increase our chances to survive."

Leon raised his head to look at Carlos. "What about you, man? You gonna get with your family?"

Carlos shook his head. "My family's crazy. Mother and father been dead for a while. Brothers, sisters, cousins—they all signed on to this 'La Raza' bullshit. They see all this as a chance for revenge against the Gringo. Gonna take back the southwestern states Mexico lost in the war. Actually, the leaders want to take over all of North America. It all sounded like ridiculous talk until now. It probably still is ridiculous. But I think they'll go for it. And my family is all on the bandwagon."

"What, then?" Leon asked.

"I'm going with Rocco," Carlos said. He turned to the older man. "Well, if you want me along, that is. I'd like to stick together."

"I could use you," Cavarra said, gratefully. "I'd love to have somebody with us I can trust."

"Trust is at a premium, now," Justin muttered.

Carlos chinned toward Leon. "How about you?"

Leon stared at the floor for quite a while. Cannonball was cool as ice when bullets were flying, but he looked deeply troubled right then. "There don't seem to be any place for me in the world, does there? I mean, some people will shoot me on sight. Other people will welcome me on sight...but I ain't buyin' what they're sellin'. If you could use another man, Rocco, I think I better stick with you."

Cavarra nodded. "Thought you'd never ask, Cannonball. I got your back. Okay?"

Carlos held out his fist to Leon. "Me too."

Leon bumped his fist.

Cavarra stood. "Let's pack our trash, then. We should take all the weapons, ammo and gear out of this place we can carry. Might as well toss our license plates, too. The less can be used to identify us, the better. And I won't be pulling over for anybody voluntarily."

They all got up and got busy. They had a mission to focus on: get Rocco's daughter and take her to safety somewhere. After that, they'd figure out the next mission.

***

THERE WAS A LAG BEFORE the alternative media began reporting on the weekend's events, but when it did, the big picture was at least more reliable than the one the leftist press was painting. Joshua stayed up all night, piecing together what he could.

At zero-dark-hundred he called Tommy on their secure link and was surprised to get an answer right away.

"How's everything up there?" Tommy asked. "How's Jenny?"

"So far, so good," Josh said. "How about you?"

"Hoping for the best. Expecting the worst."

"Yeah, about that," Josh said. "I don't know how much you've paid attention to the attacks on local police..."

"It did pique my interest," Tommy said, dryly

Josh cleared his throat. "The state-approved narrative is that right-wing militias are attacking different sheriff's departments. But I recognized the names of a couple of those sheriffs, and did some checking. It just so happens that every one of the sheriffs being hit is somebody who's been resisting the federal takeover in their jurisdiction, or has gone on the record to say they won't participate in any civilian disarmament schemes."

"It just so happens," Tommy repeated, meaningfully. "Purely coincidence."

"You're catching on. Anyway, we may have slowed them down with what we did to the database, but they'll be coming after you sooner or later."

"Preaching to the choir, nijenina," Tommy said. "But if I'm hearing right, there's hundreds of sheriffs being hit at the same time. They've got that many death squads?"

"Obviously. We only cut off one head of the hydra. They had another one ready to do the job in Washington. If somehow we'd managed to stop both, who knows, they might have pulled another one. These guys are good at covering all bases. Just look at the elections in our lifetime."

Tommy thanked him for the heads-up. They went over commo contingencies for after the power grid went down, then signed off.

Josh kept a tab on his news sources and his head spun from all the chaos. On top of everything else, there were full-scale street wars underway in Detroit, Atlanta, Los Angeles and Cleveland. It wasn't just black against white against Hispanic against Asian, either. There were what sounded like Muslim hit squads attacking targets that weren't already engaged in a fight.

The big purge had begun in earnest. Feds and their local and state collaborators were kicking in doors. Patriots and other liberty-minded folks, along with veterans, and known and suspected gun owners, were disappearing in untold numbers in the dark of night. Hopefully most of them were bugging out on their own initiative. Others were undoubtedly being arrested.

But perhaps the most alarming news of all was of a financial nature.

Josh clicked the "Economy" button on a site he trusted and began to study this topic in depth.

Jennifer, in her nightie, stumbled out from the bedroom with tired eyes and sat in his lap. "Aren't you coming to bed, Sweetheart? I know you must be exhausted."

"You're right. I should."

"The world won't fall apart any faster if you take time out to hold me," she said, nuzzling against his neck. "I promise."

"I'm reading about the world falling apart right now," he said.

"I thought you'd be following the Capitol Hill thing."

"I am," he said. "But there's plenty more warm, fuzzy developments out there. Looks like the dollar may finally be collapsing. I'm really surprised it lasted this long."

"Is it because of the new Chinese currency thing?" she asked.

"The 'experts' are blaming all kinds of different stuff," Josh replied. "Blaming everything and everyone except what and who really caused it in the first place."

"Well..." she began, but didn't complete her thought.

"Oh boy," he groaned. "I suppose the Bible predicted this would happen."

"Not this exactly, in detail," she replied, yawning. "But it predicts a situation that requires something like this to happen, first."

"How much do you still have in your old bank account?" he asked.

"Less than a thousand," she said.

"We'll go to the bank tomorrow. Pull it all out, if they'll give it to you," he said.

"They better give it to me—it's my money, that I earned."

Josh shook his head sadly. As wise as she was about most things, she still didn't appreciate how differently bankers and politicians thought about private property, and who someone's honest earnings truly belonged to.

"There's gonna be a run on the banks, baby. They don't keep as much as what people put in, and everybody is gonna want their money when they realize what's about to happen. We only got a small window of time to get what cash we can and convert it to something with value. It's going to take a shopping cart full of Federal Reserve Notes to buy a loaf of bread, soon."

"You don't think the Fed can do something to stop the collapse this time?"

"The Fed is what caused it," Josh said. "It's what the Fed was designed to do in the first place, a century ago. Politicians have prolonged it for as many election cycles as they could, but everybody around the world understands how worthless our fiat currency is, now. There's no saving it, this time. Welcome to the Weimar Republic."

"The solution will be the regional currency," she said. "The 'Amero' or something like it. But that's just a transition to a global currency. And later a cashless economy."

So she had been paying attention, after all.

"You have to get your cash out, too, don't you?" she asked, rising to her feet.

He nodded. He had a bank account, but only kept enough in it to cover his bills. Thanks to his frugal lifestyle, those were minimal. The rest of his money went into food, supplies, and ammo, which he not only stored in the house but cached around his property. He'd sunk some of his earnings into silver, and in addition saved all his change when he bought items with cash, since there at least was some value in the metal of older coins.

Josh had invested in storage batteries, and generators to charge them. The smaller generators were powered by wind and water, respectively, and the big one turned thanks to the huge solar engine he'd built in the back yard. They already kept his light bill at minuscule levels, and when the grid went down, he would still have plenty electricity to handle the basic functions of his house.

Josh checked some of the mainstream news sites. They might actually have time to exchange their funny-money, because the lapdog media was keeping people in the dark for as long as possible. Meetings between the White House and the Federal Reserve were reported, and the implication was that the latest development would be smoothed over and life would continue as before once the right-wing insurrection was put down.

Yeah, right.

Some backhanded references were made about "irrational pessimism," but that was the only clue as to what was really happening.

"We'll make a day of it tomorrow," Josh told her. "You clean out your account; I'll clean out mine. We'll do some shopping, then make like Hillary's emails."

"Fine, baby," she said. "Now will you come to bed with me?"

He turned off the desktop monitor and she stood. He rose, picked her up and carried her back to the bedroom.

There was no point completing his current I.T. consulting gigs, because he'd never get paid for them anyway. At least, he wouldn't be paid with anything he could use. The world may be spiraling to hell in a freight train, but he planned to sleep in the next day. At least his little corner of the world should be pleasant for a few hours.

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61

D PLUS ONE

TEXAS PANHANDLE

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THE ORDER CAME DOWN from the top.

The agents assigned to guard the F.A.P., until time came for the show trial, now had a different mission. They herded their prisoners into a concrete bunker-like structure with iron grating for windows. The men, women and children of the group who had bugged out of their homes and lives in Amarillo, because of Arden Thatcher's fake alert, were bound and blindfolded. Most of them wouldn't have believed what was in store, even if somebody had told them.

The agents locked them in the concrete compartment. Hundreds of spray nozzles in the walls and ceiling drenched them with a chemical very similar to lighter fluid.

When they smelled what they were being soaked with, panic gripped all of them and they began to scream.

After the contents of the bunker was set ablaze, most of the agents gathered to watch from a distance, upwind. The heat was very intense, especially when the fat in the people's bodies began to combust. But in time the smell was too much for all but the most hardcorps.

A couple agents were left behind to sweep up all the bones and ashes once the oven cooled down. The bones would be fed through the grinder. Nobody would ever know what happened to them, and the Free American Patriots could tell no tales.

Except, perhaps, as an example to other DomTer cells, who let their imaginations wander.

The other agents were freed up to join the teams converging on Oklahoma.

OKLAHOMA CITY, OKLAHOMA

As the various team members linked up around Oklahoma City, word spread that Macmillan was dead, at the hands of the primary target himself. Team leaders called the next step higher in their chain of command—Lawrence Bertrand. He gave them the location of a safe house and a time to meet there.

When they assembled at the safe house, they met an imposing young man who introduced himself only as Adiur—their new commander. He wasted no time laying out their new assignments.

Tommy Scarred Wolf was a war hero from the Special Forces. He had already bested the ghost teams twice, in two different confrontations. Adiur told them that was because they had fought on his terms. His kind of fight. They had played right into the Indian's strengths.

Tommy Scarred Wolf excelled at small-force-on-small-force engagements in the boonies. No doubt he'd already devised a defensive scheme for his home on the reservation; and he obviously had dedicated, capable followers. Most likely he was waiting for them.

Adiur's plan was to make Tommy come to them, against a fortified position in an urban environment. He outlined a plan to take over the county jail. Cynthia Greeley and some other key inmates would be freed and given assignments. Deputies and jailers who could be turned would be assimilated. Those who remained loyal to the sheriff would be slowly tortured to death, one at a time, until the crazy redskin had no choice but to attack the fortified jailhouse.

Some of the agents were surprised at this cavalier reference to death by torture. Macmillan and his predecessor had always been careful not to spell such things out.

Commander Adiur was not fooling around. They quickly came to admire his fearless, unadulterated belief in playing for keeps.

D PLUS TWO

BROOKLYN, NEW YORK

Huzayl reported to the mosque as ordered, and found about 15 of the other mujahadin had already gathered. He sought out Ridhwaan, who was from his own clan in the home country. Ridhwaan had just made his way into the U.S.A. three weeks ago through Mexico. They were still waiting on paperwork to be processed before he began collecting welfare, so Huzayl had to support him out of his own subsidy checks for now.

Something else had recently made it into the U.S. from Mexico—a very heavy metallic backpack. Everyone was curious, but it seemed nobody knew exactly what it was, nor who to ask besides Itqidar. And Itqidar wouldn't tell them.

All the mujahadin were present, and had been waiting for almost an hour when Itqidar finally arrived that night. They knew he traveled around a lot, and assumed he must have just got back from an important trip.

When he addressed them, Itqidar didn't give a rousing speech. The mujahadin didn't need to be convinced or reminded what they were doing was Allah's will. He just led them in a motivational chant, did the call-and-answer with some Islamic slogans, and went into task assignments.

Most of the warriors would be operating as units—three different units, in three different cities. Huzayl and Ridhwaan were selected for a special mission.

In a back room, Itqidar showed them the big metallic backpack. He pointed to a switch and a lanyard on the object.

"The two of you must find a way to get this into the heart of Manhattan," he said. "Preferably Wall Street. When you do, flip that switch and pull this lanyard."

Itqidar told them that pulling the lanyard would activate a timer and they would have two hours to evacuate the city.

This was a lie.

If there really were a timer, there was a chance the infidels could discover the device and disarm it. No, it had to be a martyr mission.

But Itqidar wasn't just deceiving Huzayl and Ridhwaan. The infidel Lawrence Bertrand, who had been funding Itqidar's network, believed the bomb was being detonated in Plano, Texas. Itqidar had given Bertrand every reason to believe his orders would be followed to the letter. In fact, Itqidar had never given Bertrand reason to doubt his loyalty in the last 21 years.

That was a long time to hide the fact that Itqidar could think for himself.

An atomic blast in Texas would seriously cripple the Great Satan, to be sure. But an atomic blast destroying the heart of New York City would lay the Great Satan so low that it could never be raised from the ash—even in the fundamentally transformed state that infidels like Bertrand desired.

The eagle was going down for the count, and would not rise as a phoenix.

Infidels like Bertrand just couldn't conceive of a motivation stronger than their lust for power and control. To their own detriment, they underestimated the power of Islam.

Or, to paraphrase a famous old Communist: “When we have cleansed the Earth of all but the very last capitalist, he will lend us the money to buy the rope with which to hang him.”

CHICAGO, ILLINOIS

Mac had a little difficulty finding the office building. It was tucked away in a warehouse district where nobody would expect an office to be. He drove around the back, checking numbers, until he saw the one he was looking for.

He parked, went up to the door, found it locked and pushed the button. After a moment the door opened and a stern-looking brother stood facing Mac. It was painfully obvious the guy was packing heat under his jacket. He asked for a name. Mac gave it to him. He stepped aside and Mac entered, ducking his head to clear the door frame.

The brother at the door gestured down a hallway behind him. Mac went down the hallway toward an open door with light and voices spilling out. He peeked inside.

Some 20 people occupied the room, mostly male; all black.

"Big Mac!" called a familiar voice. "You're right on time, man."

DeAngelo Jeffries appeared from behind a screen of other people. He met Mac halfway and rubbed skin before returning to the front of the room.

DeAngelo raised his voice and his hands, addressing the entire room. "Alright, we gonna get started. Settle down, now."

The mix of voices quieted.

"For those who haven't already met him," DeAngelo said, "let me introduce Mr. Lee Dickerson. He's been in the intelligence community for over 30 years—since back when you didn't see many black faces in clandestine service. He's helped many a young brotha and sista over the years, and I consider him a mentor. Go ahead, Mr. Dickerson."

An overweight bald brother in a sharp suit joined DeAngelo at the front of the room. They rubbed skin. DeAngelo stepped off to the side and Dickerson faced the people in the room.

Dickerson spent the first few minutes listing his credentials and accomplishments—which weren't all that impressive compared to the big words he used to describe them. He then transitioned to explaining that DeAngelo and a few others were instrumental in organizing this group; and they only recruited those who were exceptionally talented in their field and committed to the advancement of people of color.

After that bout of ego-pumping for DeAngelo and everyone else gathered, Dickerson said, "You may have noticed that the revolution has started."

A murmur of collected voices went through the room. A few people clapped—DeAngelo being one—but it never caught on to become outright applause.

"Before we get too excited, though," Dickerson went on, "keep in mind that we're outnumbered. And not just by the white man and his Jewish overlords.

"Now amnesty was a necessary tool, that in a sense took us in the right direction. But as we can see in Amarillo and other places, the Spanish got their own agenda, that don't always line up with what's good for black people. And let's be honest: they've been draining the resources that our people need. Their birth rate is much higher than ours. Not only that, but the rate that they've been coming across the border also exceeds our birth rate."

Mac was a little uncomfortable. This was a meeting of intelligence professionals, ostensibly to plan for contingencies to protect black lives in the developing crisis. It felt more like a campus rally of Louis Farrakhan supporters.

Mac sat in a chair with folded arms, listening to Dickerson use very diplomatic yet lofty language to outline a strategy to recruit the most violent gang-bangers from the 'hood for enforcers, and organize the inner cities into strongholds from which offensive action could be taken. They couldn't count on Hispanics or Asians as allies, Dickerson assured them. And yet their numbers and the impoverished condition of their brothers and sisters was such that they had to have help from somewhere. They had to put aside their prejudices, squeamishness, and differences, Dickerson claimed, and reach out to the Muslims.

So the similarity to a campus Farrakhan rally was not by accident. This whole surreal scene was something out of a B-movie scripted by some phobic white bigot.

And yet here I sit, Mac thought, seeing and hearing it live in the flesh.

When the official part of the meeting broke up, Mac pulled Jeffries to the side.

“Are you guys serious about this?” Mac asked. “The Muslims? DeAngelo, those people are crazy.”

Jeffries shook his head and waved his hand as if to imply this was no big deal. “It's all good, Mac. He's not talkin' 'bout radical Islam.”

Mac fixed a hard stare on him. “That is so weak, man. I don't know how long you were in the sandbox doing the spook thing, but 'radical' is normal for them. 'Moderates' are the ones who videotape the beheadings, or collect the rocks that are used to stone a teenage girl to death after she's been raped.”

Jeffries closed his eyes for a moment and held out his hands, palms forward, in an assuaging gesture. “Alright, alright, Mac. But that's over there, man. That ain't gonna happen here.”

Mac did find it hard to visualize Sharia Law executions taking place here on the block.

“And besides,” Jeffries added, “the enemy of our enemy is our friend.”

Somebody called Jeffries by name. He left Mac to attend to them.

Mac wasn't comfortable at all shaking hands with the devil. That's what an alliance with the Muslims seemed like to him.

But a brother sure could use friends in times like these.

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62

D PLUS TWO

COLBY, KANSAS

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GARY FRAM INVITED ALL of his squad leaders over to his house for the speech. Several of the younger guys—just normal militia men, showed up as well. Most of them had been there for the standoff at the Bar G Ranch.

"This oughta' be good," was the common sentiment.

Gary and his wife set out drinks and snacks, and tried to be cheerful hosts despite the gravity of the situation.

They turned on the TV at the appointed time and all sat around the set. The boisterous ones were reminded, sharply, to be quiet so everyone could hear.

The individual who most of them referred to as the "Usurper in Chief" stood behind a podium emblazoned with the Presidential Seal, on a very elaborately built custom stage. Cameras flashed from the press box, but everyone hushed as he took in a breath just before beginning.

"I stand...before you...today..." he said, with painful, deliberate slowness.

"He likes to start speeches that way, don't he?" one of the men asked.

"Shh!" hissed several others.

"...With a...heavy...heart...and...profound sadness..."

Several of them rolled their eyes, but kept quiet.

SIERRA NEVADA MOUNTAINS, CALIFORNIA

Cavarra, Leon, Justin and Carlos rolled along the highway slowly, all within sight of each other and in radio contact. Their tanks were full; they carried extra gas cans full of fuel, and every vehicle was loaded with supplies, gear, weapons and ammo.

Cavarra had his stereo tuned to an FM station, as all the others probably did. Every regular commercial station was broadcasting the speech.

"...To...take this...nation...captive, with fear...and hate," the voice on the radio was saying. "These...hateful...deranged men...took advantage..."

Cavarra's satphone rang. This reminded him that he should probably throw the device into the next river they crossed, after finding Jasmine. But he answered anyway, curious about who, of everyone who had his satphone number, might be calling him at a time like this.

"Cavarra?" asked a familiar female voice in the earpiece.

"Speaking,” he said. "Who's this?"

"Bobbie Yousko," she replied.

He swerved slightly. "Holy crap. This line isn't secure, Bobbie."

"I know," sighed his old patron from the C.I.A. "There is no security. Never was, when you think about it. Anyway, that really doesn't matter anymore."

"You listening to the Reichstag Fire speech?" he asked.

"Don't need to," she replied. "I saw one of the early drafts a few weeks ago, by accident. You know: about 12 days before what happened in Amarillo. What didn't happen in Amarillo, I should say. Of course the speech writer couldn't have known that operation would backfire. I'd love to shake the hand of whoever spoiled that party. But anyway, even with the revisions, I know the gist of the speech: Thesis; antithesis; synthesis. Crisis; reaction; solution, yada yada yada."

"Are they coming for you, too?" Cavarra asked.

"I love my country," Bobbie replied. "What do you think?"

"Right," he said. "It is pretty cut-and-dried, isn't it?"

"And speaking of The List," Bobbie said, "That's another hand I'd like to shake someday, if somehow I live long enough. The suicidal genius who hacked into the Data Center and jacked it all up, I mean. But some of us are too high-profile for them to forget. Even before the Big List, there were thousands of little ones."

"I kinda' figured I'm still on somebody's," Cavarra said. "But I appreciate you thinking of me."

"You were farmed out to the NSA once—I figured you would know you're a target," Bobby said. "I'm actually calling so you can warn a couple of your buddies."

"Who is it?" Cavarra asked, his heart rate accelerating.

"Tommy Scarred Wolf. He's on the Sheriff List for one, of course. They're really concentrating some heavy firepower on him. If they haven't hit him hard yet, it's because they're winding up for a terrific haymaker. Think Desert Shield before Desert Storm."

"I'll let him know," Rocco promised.

"And a buddy of his from Special Forces is in the crosshairs too," she added. "Joshua Rennenkampf. You know him?"

"I know him. Good man. Somebody who deserves a handshake if you ever meet him."

She was silent for a moment.

"You have any idea when, where or how, on either of those?" Cavarra asked.

"I just know that they're priority, so it won't be long," Bobbie said. "Hey, I gotta go. I don't need to tell you to lose the phone, GPS, vehicle tracking gadgets and stuff like that as soon as possible, do I?"

"Read you five by five, Bobbie. Thanks."

"And Cavarra?"

"Yeah?"

Her voice faltered as she said, "Thanks for your service." Then the line went dead.

Was that tough old broad crying just now? Cavarra stared at his phone thoughtfully as the voice from the radio droned on.

"...Some hard choices must be made...as we travel this unfortunate road...before we can reach a place of healing."

LAS ANIMAS COUNTY, COLORADO

The Rennenkampfs returned from town and spent some time hauling in groceries and other supplies.

All anyone could talk about all day, it seemed, was the scheduled speech at the White House. Joshua wrestled with whether or not to watch this episode of Snake Oil Theater, and finally decided he should hold his nose and do it—just for a hint at what the other side's next move would be.

Reality set in for Jennifer after the speech began, and she couldn't hide her horror. Josh held her while she stared in slack-jawed disbelief.

The polished, charismatic fraud on TV was saying, "...Grave threat...to members of Congress...cannot be ignored. For the protection of...these tireless, loyal men and women of the Legislative Branch...Congress is out of session...until further notice."

"Oh you big, brave hero," Josh remarked at the dirtbag on TV. "You're going to continue on with your noble leadership in the face of such a dire threat to all public servants, while Congress hides behind your skirt. If that means no checks and balances whatsoever, well, it's a sacrifice you're willing to make."

"Joshua," his wife complained, "I can't hear."

He bit his tongue and swallowed his anger.

"...A state...of national emergency," the slick grifter on TV was saying.

ABSENTEE SHAWNEE TRUST LAND

POTAWATTOMIE COUNTY, OKLAHOMA

Tommy took some time from his administrative and logistical duties to watch the speech with Linda.

"...Local law enforcement has done...the best job...it's been possible to do...with what leadership...and resources...were available," the popular man on TV said.

"Oh boy," Linda muttered. "Here it comes, Tommy."

Her husband nodded.

"But tragically...they have been set up to fail. By leaving them...to their own devices...the policy makers with...misplaced paranoia...have deprived them of the tools...they need to counter this very real, and very dangerous threat. In addition...we've seen the same...culture of hate...that we're now at war against...infiltrate local and state level police...because there was no federal oversight...to safeguard against it. To our national shame...it was the ugly specter of racism...inside these unregulated police forces...that inspired the very first shots fired. We must seek...greater levels of cooperation...across all jurisdictions of law enforcement...local, state, and federal. And I know...some of you are worried. Change can be scary. Maybe you've heard...frightening speculation...about the dangers of a Federal Police Corps. But a comprehensive law enforcement structure...is needed. And let me be very clear: the safety of our people and our children demand it!"

The land line phone rang, and Rocco's caller I.D. showed on the screen.

Linda looked at her husband. "Let it go to voice mail, Tommy. Wait until after the speech and call back."

Tommy chewed his lip. "No, I better take this."

He picked up the phone.

AMARILLO, TEXAS

Bill and his girlfriend watched the speech together. There was really nothing worth gloating over, so Bill didn't throw any I-told-you-sos at Eva while she heard confirmation of his "fearmongering" and "conspiracy theory" right from the horse's mouth.

"...These new, proactive measures are no threat at all...to anyone's personal freedom. But they are essential...to the safety of every person. A new system of identification...must be implemented. I have experts...and professionals...joining forces from the scientific and law enforcement communities...to develop a means of universal identification...which can't be lost, stolen, or counterfeited. Because of the desperate need for...robust security enforcement...you may be occasionally stopped and checked. There are times when it will be necessary...to submit to a search of your vehicle, your house, or your person. Let me be very clear: these are not violations of your rights. These are simply common sense precautions...required by a responsible government...during the times in which we live...that might require a...sacrifice of personal convenience once in a while."

Bill, pushing rifle rounds down into a box magazine with his thumb, glanced up to gauge Eva's reaction. She had scoffed at his predictions so many times in the past, he had simply given up on convincing her. If she could still deny the truth now, then there could never be any convincing her.

Eva's eyes were glued to the television screen, her face pale, her mouth clamped into a tight line.

"Some of you...are no doubt worried...about losing your guns. We are working very hard...to balance the need for safety...with the preservation of the privileges...you cling so dearly to. Those of you who act responsibly...and use guns for legitimate sporting purposes...will be permitted to continue just as before. But let me be very clear: the insanity...of allowing military weaponry on our streets...perpetuated by previous administrations...and by partisan political factions...sympathetic to a voter base of domestic terrorists...that insanity MUST COME TO AN END!"

Bill could hear the audience cheering through the television speakers.

"I know there's another situation...that's probably on your mind. During my time as President...I've worked hard and long...trying to repair the economic damage...of the previous administration. It's become obvious...that the damage is too severe. Two hours ago...I had no choice...but to declare a banking holiday. But even that isn't likely to stop...the failure...of the US Dollar. It's time we faced the facts: this grand experiment...this grand, tragic experiment...with a free market...has had disastrous consequences. It's too late...to avoid all the suffering...this reckless dereliction of duty has caused. The path is long...and recovery won't be easy. There are decisive actions...that must be taken. To begin with, we need a new, stable monetary base. Tomorrow...I'll be meeting with the national leadership...of our northern and southern neighbors...to discuss a new, regional currency. Together with Canada and Mexico, we share a common crisis...a common resolve...and a common destiny."

Finally, Eva puffed her cheeks and turned to her boyfriend. "I think I've heard enough, Honey. What do you need me to do?"

"I have a bugout bag packed for you," Bill said. "I'll bring it up from the basement in a minute. If you can get yourself dressed for a camping trip, I've got some calls to make."

The first call he made was to Jimmy. Neither of them mentioned the speech. "You know," Bill said, "I've always wanted to try bungee jumping. Think you might want to go?"

"I always thought bungee jumping was kinda' stupid," Jimmy replied. “But why not?”

They forced themselves to chat casually about banal matters for a couple minutes, then hung up. Message received and confirmed. They would link up at a predesignated rally point by midnight. They had a radically different life in front of them.

63

D PLUS THREE

LAS ANIMAS COUNTY, COLORADO

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AFTER ROCCO'S WARNING, Joshua took Jennifer, the dogs, horses, and all the gear they could carry, and went up the mountain.

The simple alarm at the east gate transmitted a signal to Josh's old pager when the cable “gate” at the entrance to his driveway was disconnected, breaking the circuit. Like all his other precautions around his property, Josh had concealed the wiring well enough that it would never be noticed if somebody didn't already suspect it was there.

Josh dug the remote console out of his ruck and turned it on, slipping on his jacket, boots, and exiting the tent. When the screen flickered to life, he toggled through the camera feeds until he saw the SWAT vans and armored vehicle slipping and sliding their way up his private drive, slick with packed snow. The low level of light prevented much in the way of detail, but the dark shapes were easy to identify against the gray background of the snow-covered environment at night.

"What is it?" Jennifer asked, slipping outside after him, eyelids heavy with sleep.

"It's the storm troopers," Josh replied.

Jennifer raised the flaps on the pile cap he'd given her, and stared through the trees. Ragnarok and Valkyrie looked off in the same direction, heads tilted sideways. They could hear the truck engines. Josh's own hearing was sub-par, like so many men who'd been exposed to a lot of pyrotechnics up close without earplugs. He couldn't hear the approach this far away.

"It's all ground-based," he said. "I guess I don't rate heliborne assets. Too bad—I really wanted to see one of those black choppers I've heard so much about."

Jennifer was apparently not in a mood to appreciate his jocular remark. She stared through the trees down the mountain, toward the home she had hoped they would live happily-ever-after in, raising children and peacefully growing old together.

Josh tracked the vehicles' movement up the mountain, then toggled through the cameras to watch the Feds deploy. Their dark uniforms and armor made them easy to follow against the snowy background. His own mood turned dark, now. He activated all the buttons on the console.

He had planted and wired most of the mines years ago, and hoped they would still work. He had never told Jennifer about the ones at the front entrance to the house, so as not to cause her worry every time she came in or out.

A team of blackshirts stacked on his front door. When they struck the first blow with the battering ram, he pushed two buttons.

Inside the front door of his dome home, six short lengths of thick steel pipe protruded from the inner wall—three on either side of the door. As far as Jennifer knew, they were just a crude hat/coat rack. Hats were hung on the top pipes, coats on the middle ones, and boots or shoes dangled by their laces to dry on the bottom ones. Jennifer sometimes complained about them because she bumped into the pipes while cleaning.

Indoors, the pipes were angled outward. But outside, on the front porch, the pipes were angled inwards. Each pipe was, in reality, a remotely activated smooth bore single shot weapon containing a 50 caliber armor piercing cartridge. These fired into the team at the front door; and the antipersonnel mines underneath them blew as well.

The breach team was shredded.

The effect of that countermeasure was similar to kicking an anthill. Federal blackshirts swarmed all over Josh's property. When one or more of those came within the effective range of another mine, Josh touched it off. The Claymores couldn't defeat their body armor, but the shrapnel sure wasn't kind to the unprotected parts of their bodies.

The assault force was roughly platoon strength on arrival, which was kind of flattering. Soon a good third of them were rendered ineffective.

Not bad.

Those who were still able opened fire, pouring hundreds of rounds into the Rennenkampf house. All the windows were shot out and the walls of the dome home became pockmarked with bullet strikes. They must have assumed Josh was holed up inside. But Alamo fantasies never really appealed to him.

The noise of the explosions and small arms fire were audible from his location. Valkyrie tilted her head at an angle and whined.

"Easy girl," Josh said. "Quiet."

"What are they doing down there?" Jennifer asked, now fully awake.

"Shooting up the place."

Her eyes were glossy. "They're destroying our home."

Josh could possibly have rendered all their vehicles inoperable, but he wanted to leave the option of retreat open to them. He triggered the antitank mines where the armored vehicle and the van with all the antennas were parked. The MRAP shuddered and the communications van hopped in place before it was engulfed in fire.

The assault degenerated into something barely more organized than a Chinese fire drill. The blackshirts did send another team at the front door. Those men successfully breached. Once they were inside, Josh waited for optimal timing and blew the small C4 charges stuck to the hard drives inside his computer towers. This caused a couple more serious casualties.

Then two of the federal blackshirts brought German Shepherds out of a van and led them into the house.

Josh turned to his wife. "Pack up the tent and everything else. Take both horses over to the creek and follow that uphill until you get to where I check the beaver trap. Wait for me there. Don't tether the horses near you. Hide them in the thickest trees you can find, then get about 50 meters away from them. Cover yourself with snow and lie very still. If you hear three short blasts on the whistle, escape and evade like we talked about."

"Cover myself with snow?" she repeated. "Joshua, it's too cold."

He reached inside the tent and grabbed his winter camouflage parka.

"So is death."

He pulled on his web gear, shrugged into the parka and let it drape loosely over him. He locked-and-loaded his tricked-out Mini-14 and checked the safety, then called to the dogs. "Ragnarok. Valkyrie On me—quiet!"

He trudged off down the slope, the two large hounds trotting alongside. Within seconds they had disappeared into the gloom of the winter night.

Jennifer got her anguish in check and began striking camp.

Josh went down their trail far enough to give Jennifer plenty of time, and took cover behind a snow-covered boulder. He ordered the dogs to get behind the rock with him.

He waited.

Time went by; the clouds parted and the moon appeared, bathing the mountain with a pale blue glow.

In time Valkyrie began to whine again. He made a sharp cutting gesture with his hand and she flinched and fell silent.

When Ragnarok began to growl, deep in the back of his throat, Josh knew they were close. He silenced the hulking brute with another violent gesture. Ragnarok wagged his tail and smoothed his head, ears back, in an expression of contrition. But in seconds his instincts reasserted themselves. His ears hung forward, tail pointed straight down, and legs stiffened. But he kept quiet for the time being.

Josh pulled the hood of the winter camouflage parka over his head and scooted slowly over until he could see around the side of the boulder and sight down the slope.

The men and dogs appeared on the trail. Josh flicked off his safety.

Either the dogs heard the click or they caught the scent of their prey, because they barked and strained at their leads.

Josh's hounds began whining and growling again, on the verge of breaking discipline.

"Quiet!" he hissed. "Stand fast!"

The Mini-14 was a stainless steel model, originally, but Josh had it anodized flat black. He fitted it to a polymer pistol grip stock, and attached to the foregrip of the stock a folding bipod with telescoping legs, which were now extended. The trigger pull had been decent right out of the box, but he had modified it to be much lighter. In short, it was a nail-driver, and much more reliable in all weather and environments than the more popular AR15 variants.

For his opening round, Josh decided on a head shot. There was no armor there under the helmet, and he wanted at least one heavy body that other men would have to carry or drag back down the slope.

He got his breathing under control, willed himself not to shiver, and tickled the trigger.

The rifle thudded back into his shoulder. The first dog handler caught the 5.56 NATO round in the face and flopped backwards, sliding down the snowy slope.

Josh lined up his sights to below center mass on the other dog handler, in order to catch him under the ballistic vest. He fired as the handler was turning and caught him in the hip. The man winced from the impact, but didn't go down. Josh lowered his aim and shot him in the thigh. The man finally crumpled, rolling and sliding downhill, leaving dark streaks on the snow. Between the two dog handlers, four more blackshirts should be tied up pulling them back to the medics.

Both German Shepherds were loose, now, and bolted uphill barking furiously, making a bee line for the boulder. They were too low, and too fast, for Josh to draw a bead in time.

He raised his voice to his own dogs. "Attack!"

The two Pit Bulls launched down the hill in a blur. Ragnarok struck one of the Shepherds in a head-on collision, driving it hard back into the ground.

Valkyrie was more evenly matched in weight with her opponent, and the two tumbled over and over in the snow in a flurry of fangs and claws. When she wound up on her back underneath the Shepherd, Josh began to panic. But her powerful jaws had ahold of the other dog's snout and her paws ripped at its belly. The Shepherd yelped and instinctively tried to get away, but Valkyrie wouldn't let go. Meanwhile Ragnarok had the other dog by the neck and shimmied, terrier-fashion, whipping it back and forth like a stuffed animal. Pained choking gasps rattled out of the Shepherd's mouth as its throat was crushed in Ragnarok's monstrous jaws. Then with a mighty heave of his huge, muscular body, Ragnarok flung the dog a good four meters through the air.

Josh pumped two rounds into the Shepherd, finishing it, when it hit the ground.

Ragnarok pounced on it, realized it was no longer a threat after a few more bites and shimmies, then trotted over to help his sister finish off the other dog.

Josh called his bodyguards back to him and hid behind the rock once more. He checked them for wounds and found nothing serious. They wagged their tails and panted, looking at him for commendation for a job well done. He gave them each a pet and chest-scratch.

Josh waited some more.

It took a while, but he finally heard men moving up the hill toward him. Their noise discipline was lousy. He heard them exclaim as they found the dog handlers, and they openly discussed how to evacuate them, with much cussing and arguing.

They sent somebody forward to scout. When he appeared over the ridge, Josh held his fire. Josh wanted to let a few of them get well into the kill zone. If they were smart they would send a separate force up and around to flank or trap him from behind. The dogs would let Josh know if that happened.

After the lone scout advanced far enough to find the bodies of the dogs on the trampled, blood-smeared snow, he turned and retreated the way he'd come. Josh listened to him report his findings. There was more cussing, discussion, and squawking of radio headsets.

"Let's go," somebody with an authoritative voice said. "Leave the dogs. We're pulling out."

"But the perp is still up there somewhere," someone protested.

"We have critically wounded agents who need medivac, now. And there's still no damn choppers free. This is a bust. We gotta go."

They gaggled and scuffled back down the mountain to Josh's house. From this distance he could hear the truck engines start. He dug the remote console back out of his buttpack, turned it on and activated the buttons. He toggled through the camera feeds again. He caught an agent preparing what was probably an incendiary device to burn down his barn. Josh triggered the nearest Claymore. It wasn't perfectly placed for the circumstance, but it made the agent jump, drop everything and hold his arm. He backed away where another agent grabbed him, looked at his arm and steered him toward one of the vans.

The dogs found Jennifer's hiding place in the snow, greeting her with licks and wagging tails. Josh pulled her to her feet.

She shivered violently. He held her against him, wrapping his parka around her. He let her feed off his body heat for a while, telling her the blackshirts were gone for the time being and they would probably be okay for a while.

"What about the house?" she asked. "The barn?"

"Well-ventilated," Josh replied, sadly.

"Well, it can be repaired, right?" she asked. "I mean, we can..."

Josh shook his head. "We can't go back, baby. It's the wasp and hornet factor. A meter reader or utility man comes to do some work outside a house, opens the box he needs to work in and finds out wasps or hornets have built a nest there. They tear him up good and chase him back to his truck. But the guy is gonna come back there with bug killer, or whatever weapons he needs to make every last one of them pay for the hurting they gave him. It's the same deal with us, baby. We gotta let 'em have the nest, and escape. We'll sting 'em when they get too close, but we can't go back. Hopefully they'll decide we're not worth the trouble of chasing down."

"No white picket fences," Jennifer muttered with a faraway look, shivering hard.

In Joshua's mind he hoped they could return one day, if the war went better than anticipated. But he didn't want to get her hopes up. Or his own.

Sunup was only hours away. The most efficient solution for present circumstances was to get moving. It would put distance between them and the huge bullseye of his home. And physical exertion would warm Jennifer quickly.

He checked his trap, found a beaver in it, quickly gutted it and gave the innards as treats for the dogs. Then they led the horses deeper into the wilderness.

––––––––

64

D PLUS THREE

POTAWATTOMIE COUNTY, OKLAHOMA

––––––––

SHORTLY AFTER RECEIVING Rocco's warning, Tommy Scarred Wolf got word that the county lock-up had been captured by Tier Zero teams. Word from the ninja Nazis was that those who were loyal to Tommy would be tortured to death until Tommy turned himself in.

Tommy knew a trap when he smelled one.

He deputized every member of the Shawnee Militia, and began to secure an operational area around the rez. Other volunteers sought him out, asking to join, including members of the Tribal Police.

There were a lot more responsibilities to consider besides just fighting bad guys. People had to eat, for one thing. Tommy found competent people and delegated logistical and some administrative duties.

When he first caught wind of the currency crash, Tommy had everyone scrape up all the money they had and raid the gas stations and grocery stores. They bought up every single package of seeds they could find for organic fruits and vegetables, because they would have to start growing their own. He visited every ranch in the area, seeing what the ranchers would accept in trade for horses. The ignorant ones accepted the funny money that was soon to be worthless. The less ignorant were willing to trade horses for vehicles. The fully awake ranchers asked for the protection of the Shawnee Militia from what was coming.

Once all that was in motion, Tommy began placing teams around the jail until every avenue in and out was locked down. Under cover of darkness, Takoda led a small team in to shut off the water and electricity to the building.

During a rare quiet moment of the siege, Tommy called all his sons together for a meeting behind the cover of a pumping station.

"It's a new world now," he said, in their native language. "You aren't just my sons anymore. You're my soldiers. My most trusted, to be sure, but you're still soldiers."

"Yes sir," Gunther said. Carl and Takoda nodded that they understood.

"Gunther outranks both of you right now," Tommy went on. "You may not like it, but that's just how it is. I'm not gonna be able to spend much time with any of you from now on. I'm gonna be busy pretty much 24/7." He pointed at Gunther, then Takoda. "I can't keep you two separate all the time. I'm not gonna be around to play referee. The two of you are gonna have to work together. There's no compromising, here: you will work together. Whatever petty grudges you're holding are done as of now. I need you. I have to be able to trust you."

The four of them stared at each other for a moment, then Gunther looked at Takoda. "Brother, everybody who knows you would want to have you on their side in a fight. Especially me."

Takoda's gaze dropped to the ground and his face twitched a few times. Then he looked up and said, "I'm sorry for what I did, before. It was wrong. I'm ready to do whatever you or Dad need me to. I won't give you any trouble."

"Well, not too much, anyway," Carl quipped. Despite his joke, he knew how important Takoda's words were, and how hard it was for him to say them.

Tommy nodded at his sons. "Okay. Let's get to work, then."

Every time somebody tried to make their way out of the jail complex, they were interdicted by two or three-man teams of the Shawnee Militia and either retreated or were captured or killed.

A Tier Zero squad outside the complex, however, surprised one of the interdiction teams, killing Charlie Drake and wounding Jason Lone Tree. Tommy stepped up the patrols in the area. The next time the opfor struck outside the jail complex, their intended victims were ready for them. While the two forces shot it out, one of Tommy's sniper teams moved in. Carl Scarred Wolf—a superb shot—took out the leader and two others with the old Russian sniper rifle his father had taken as a trophy in another conflict long ago and far away.

At night, the Shawnee Militia donned anti-night vision camouflage and opened sections of the fence surrounding the county lock-up. One of those nights one of Tommy's deputies, Sanford, escaped from the jail and linked up with his boss.

He had pretended to switch allegiance and assimilate into the group led by the man known only as Adiur. They forced him to take a blood oath before they would trust him.

“I kept my fingers crossed,” Sanford explained.

He painted a frightening picture of what was going on inside. Inmates were loose, beating and raping everyone who had balked at assimilating. Adiur had tortured one person to death every day since they took over.

The siege and the loss of power and water was having an effect on morale. Cynthia Greely, who'd been put in charge of Adiur's de facto harem, had candles burning all over the place and conducted weird religious rituals. Adiur participated in these to one degree or another.

Tommy grilled Sanford on what weapons were inside, how much ammunition, and where Adiur's shooters were deployed.

One afternoon while Tommy was visiting his interdiction teams, a brightly colored van rolled up into his area of operations. It was rare to see any sort of vehicle on the streets anymore. This one was emblazoned on both sides with the name of a local surround-sound equipment dealer.

A long-haired white man in perhaps his late 30s got out of the truck with his hands up, facing the militia men.

“What's your business here?” demanded John Saxton, flank covered by his brother.

He approached slowly, scared but determined. “I've been hearing that this is free territory over here.”

“Yeah, so?”

“So I'd like to come over to this side,” the man said. “Between the gangs and the Muslims and these federal...soldier/police, it was only a matter of time before somebody got me. I loaded up everything I could fit from my store and got out of there.”

When he drew close enough, Mike Saxton pulled him behind cover and searched him. Tommy watched the whole process unfold warily. More and more people were escaping Oklahoma City and other areas and joining the community roughly covering Tommy's jurisdiction, for the same reason this man gave. All had been sincere so far. Some of them even came armed, equipped, and ready to help defend “free territory.” Tommy was grateful for the added strength. But it was only a matter of time before the Feds started sending over moles to infiltrate.

“He's clean,” Mike said.

Tommy nodded to Mike, who went back to pulling security. Tommy beckoned the man over, and sat, encouraging the visitor to do the same.

“You escaped with a van load of stereo equipment,” Tommy asked, searching his face, “not food, clothes, toilet paper and drinking water?”

“I live in Norman,” the man said. “My store is in OK City. I've been holed up there for days. I'm starving. But I should have some of that stuff at my house, if nobody broke in and stole it all.”

“That's a big 'if' in this new world,” Tommy said.

“Yeah, I know,” the man said, and chewed on his lip for a moment. “Look, I hear that Sheriff Scarred Wolf is still in charge, here. That he's keeping the Feds and gangs out.”

“The gangs, yeah,” Tommy said, then wobbled his head back and forth. “The Feds...well, that's a taller order.”

“That's better than back there,” the man said, thumbing over his shoulder toward OK City. “I should be allowed to stay, right? I mean, I'm a resident of this area, anyway.”

Studying his eyes, Tommy was pretty sure the guy was on the level. He said, “Well, maybe. We try to respect everyone's free will and property over here. But the situation requires us to be more strict than we'd normally like to be. If you're working for the other side...well, this is wartime, and espionage is a capital offense.”

The man gulped, but shook his head, showing his palms. “No, no. Oh hell, no.”

“And there's no such thing as the welfare state anymore,” Tommy added. “We can't afford to support freeloaders and deadbeats. If you want to eat, you're gonna have to contribute in some way.” Tommy glanced back toward the van. “Are you pretty good with wiring? Simple electrical stuff?”

The man brightened. “Simple? I was a licensed electrician before I got layed off. That's why I went into business for myself. But boy, if I'd have known about all the bullshit regulations, and the taxes...”

“Okay, okay,” Tommy interrupted. “Maybe we can use you, then.”

“To be honest, what I really need right now is something to eat and drink. Is there some message you can broadcast, so nobody shoots me while I drive to my house?”

“Let me think for a minute,” Tommy said.

“I wasn't able to pull my money out of the bank in time,” the man said, “so that's all gone. I guess nobody's accepting paper money anymore, anyway. I got nothing to trade for food, except a bunch of high-end electronics. Something tells me there's not going to be much demand for that, now.”

Tommy looked toward the van again, glanced at the jail complex, and almost smiled.

Leon Campbell had once told Tommy about Operation Blue Spoon (better known as “Just Cause”). Specifically right now, Tommy remembered how a psyops detachment had blasted heavy metal and American pop at the Vatican Embassy in Panama City where Noriega was holed up, waiting for him to crack and give himself up.

Tommy oversaw the setup of the sound equipment at points around the jail complex. His newest recruit worked with some militia volunteers to wire it for power. Tommy had the word spread throughout the area that they needed CDs or MP3s of a very specific music genre, and the citizens who had what he needed gladly made an offering of it.

So loud that it echoed all across the landscape for untold miles, the Shawnee Militia assaulted the besieged enemy with the most obnoxious old-time Gospel music that could be found in the county. They played it non-stop, day and night.

***

THE SITUATION IN THE cities grew worse. Neither Federal Reserve Notes, nor food stamps, were accepted as payment by anyone within a few days. Nor were the cards that digitally represented those resources accepted as payment. Life savings and other investments were rendered worthless before most citizens who had them could pull it out and exchange it for anything useful. Millions of people around the country couldn't get refills of their prescriptions. Whether the drugs were truly necessary or not, folks were dependent on them just the same. Without them, the worst of human nature began to show itself.

Gradually, cell towers went down; phones quit working; Internet connections failed; and power went out.

Starvation was a strong motivator, but almost nobody had the skills to accomplish the most basic task of survival without calling in a specialist. Life turned cheaper by the minute. Out in the country it wasn't quite as bad, but bad enough. Suddenly people with highly specialized jobs that paid big salaries in white collar fields had absolutely no skills that could benefit themselves, their families or communities. After what material goods they could trade for food and firewood were gone, they had nothing left to bargain with.

And a bad winter was coming.

Small armies of urban looters went to war with each other over who would ransack grocery stores for what food was still on the shelves. They tended to divide along racial and ethnic lines. Fewer and fewer local and state police reported for work, as their salaries were suspended. The departments didn't have the new regional currency to pay out.

The unchecked anarchy spreading through the country made the Amarillo riots look tame by comparison.

Active and reserve military units, supplied with fuel and food paid for with the new regional currency, were deployed to replace police. The forces participating in Jade Helm had their exercises interrupted by new orders. Like good soldiers, the C.O.s of the relevant units transitioned from training to peacekeeping duty without missing a beat. Nobody in the establishment used the phrase "martial law." Military troops were not just ordered to crack down on the gang warfare, but to clear the cities house-by-house, confiscating weapons, ammo and any hoarded supplies missed by the federal units executing Operation Lightning Strike. People were relocated out of the cities by the thousands, and interned. Initially, most city-dwellers volunteered for the camps, if it meant they'd be fed and kept warm.

First they came for the gun owners. Then they came for the veterans. Then they came for everyone considered to be right-wingers. Then they came for "fundamentalist hate groups": anybody with an evangelical Christian worldview.

As the most potentially troublesome individuals were removed, new categories of domestic terrorists were created, and people who fit the new classifications were snatched and relocated. It seemed nobody was safe. Anybody with any belief which didn't line up with state-approved dogma might be suspected of hateful thought at any time and turned in by a neighbor hoping to be rewarded with food, drinkable water, drugs or brownie points.

The threat (real or imagined) of some personnel or units causing mutiny among the ranks of the armed forces, against Washington, prompted the new "streamlined" government to bring in multinational peacekeeping troops as a precaution. Some foreign military forces were already in-country, and set about their duty right away.

Almost as if that was their intended purpose all along.

When Manhattan was consumed in an atomic fireball, even Washington was stunned into paralysis. The currency change and peacekeeping troops seemed inadequate to salvage what was left of civilization in the United States of America.

65

D PLUS EIGHT

SACRAMENTO, CALIFORNIA

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ROCCO CAVARRA AND HIS small crew had to run a roadblock checkpoint on the way up to reach Jasmine. On a rural backroad they stopped at an old country gas station and traded some 12 gauge and 22 LR ammo for a gas fill-up. They also shot it out with a small gang there who thought they could steal one of the vehicles. The major interstate highway had too many checkpoints, so they bypassed it. They had to take a long, roundabout course to reach Sacramento, filled with detours and delays. The precautions they took made their journey even slower.

They rolled up into the parking lot of the apartment complex and positioned their vehicles for a quick exfil. The place had been a clean, modern facility not long ago, but now it looked like a tornado had passed through, smashing windows, tearing off doors and scattering garbage everywhere. In fact, all they could see of Sacramento looked like a battleground—pretty much like every other city, now.

The four men and one dog dismounted. Justin wrinkled his nose.

“What's that smell?”

“Death,” Carlos replied. “We're downwind of dead bodies. Quite a few, I would guess.”

Rape, murder

It's just a shot away

It's just a shot away...

Cavarra couldn't get the song out of his mind.

All of them were armed and armored. They pulled on their web gear as they stretched their legs. If there was a firefight, they wanted to have loaded magazines handy.

Faces appeared in windows. A few men around the complex wandered tentatively outside to see what was amiss.

Leon and Carlos remained with the vehicles while Cavarra and Justin advanced warily toward the staircase.

“Yo, boss, you affiliated?” somebody called to them from a balcony.

“What you lookin' for?” asked somebody else.

Rocco and Justin ignored these and other questions and demands as they climbed the stairs to the second floor. They strode down the balcony until they reached her apartment. Like many others, the door hung wide open. The window was smashed in and the drapes hung out through the opening.

Anger, fear, and dispair tore through Jasmine's father and brother. They entered the apartment with weapons ready. After searching every room, it was painfully obvious that Jasmine and her roommates were long gone. The place had obviously been looted. Every closet and drawer was thrown open and ransacked, with unwanted items left strewn all over the floor.

Justin sat heavily on the couch in the living room, face in his hands.

Rocco paced for a moment, then went back to Jasmine's room. He came out with the dress he had bought her a couple Christmases ago. He spoke over the radio.

“Cannonball, we're coming out. Gonna need to borrow Shotgun. Over?”

On their way back to the vehicles there were more questions, challenges and demands from a growing number of people emerging from apartments. It was doubtful many of them were paying residents, here. More likely they were squatters who had left even worse conditions in the inner city.

This time Carlos and Justin guarded the vehicles while Rocco and Leon followed Shotgun, after letting her sniff the dress.

Shotgun led them back up to the apartment and Rocco's heart sank all over again.

“No. No, you stupid bitch. You're not supposed to find her apartment. You're supposed to find her.”

Leon held up his index finger to Rocco, but spoke to Shotgun. “Naw. This ain't it, girl. Where else?”

Shotgun growled, then barked, baring her fangs, staring toward the front door.

It was a chilly day, but the belligerent-looking young black man in the doorway stood bare-chested. One hand held a snubnose pistol hanging at his side.

Leon hushed Shotgun.

“Yo, I know you heard me talkin' to you out there,” the stranger said, just dripping with truculence. “You deaf or somethin'?”

“You got our attention now,” Leon said. “Speak your piece.”

“I wanna know what you doin' here, yo,” he said. “You come rollin' up on my turf wif guns an' shit, I'm askin what your bidness is here.”

“Why?” Rocco replied. “Are you offering to be helpful?”

“I ain't offerin' shit. But you needa answer my questions, fool.” His angry gaze shifted from Rocco to Leon. “I don't care if you got guns, dog. You better show some respect.”

“Mind your own business, scrotum head,” Rocco spat.

“What? What you call me, fool? I'm 'bout to take all yo' shit, then use you for bitches!”

He raised the snubnose, but he held it sideways like the thugs in the movies did, evidently believing it was the cool thing to do. Rocco brought the barrel of his Galil down hard on the back of his hand and the snubnose dropped from his grip.

Leon strode forward, driving his rifle butt into the man's face.

The man staggered backwards through the door and against the balcony rail, blood spurting from his busted nose and ruined mouth.

Rocco followed him, and landed a kick to his solar plexus with such force that the balcony rail gave way and the man fell one story to the ground below.

All the yelling in the complex came to a stop.

“Anybody else wanna show us how bad they are?” Rocco rasped, voice echoing off the building walls.

Leon pocketed the snubnose and held the dress down for Shotgun to sniff again. “Where else, girl? Where else?”

The Shepherd spun in place a few times, looking up at Leon after each revolution.

Leon shook his head. “No, Shotgun. Where else?”

She put her nose to the ground and went through the doorway. She paused, then trotted down the balcony walkway. Leon followed.

Shotgun paused, looking back until Leon caught up, then surged on with her nose to the ground. Rocco brought up the rear, turning periodically to evaluate potential threats.

Shotgun led them down a staircase at the opposite end of the building, then stopped facing a metal door. Leon tried the door, but it was locked. It was one of those locks that took a key card with a magnetic strip. With the electricity out, now, it wouldn't even work if they had a card.

“I got some primacord back in the truck,” Leon offered.

“Save it,” Rocco said, pulling a strip of what looked like gray taffy, sandwiched between celophane, from his jacket pocket. He pulled a simple detonator out of his buttpack.

Tempering the normal “P” factor (plenty) with situational frugality, Rocco crammed the charge into the gap between door and jamb where the lock was, and “wired it for sound.” He ducked around the corner where Leon and Shotgun already waited. Cavarra covered his ears. Leon had inserted earplugs, and now clamped his hands over Shotgun's ears.

“Fire in the hole!” Rocco yelled, out of habit.

The charge blew with a loud blang and they stepped around the corner. Leon pushed the door open and Shotgun led them down an inner staircase to a below-ground level.

The stairs fed out into a long room with a concrete floor and washing machines lining one wall, driers lining the other.

“Oh that's just great, Cannonball,” Rocco said. “I wasted some ordnance so she could lead us to where Jasmine forgot some laundry.”

“Daddy?” a tired, weak voice echoed off the concrete walls.

Shotgun barked and ran to a dark corridor which separated two different laundry rooms. She barked some more.

Both men rushed into the corridor, eyes still adjusting to the darkness. A trembling, wraith-like figure rose up from a fetal position on the floor. Leon used a red-lensed flashlight to illuminate the young woman, then told Shotgun to be quiet.

Father and daughter recognized each other and fell into an embrace.

They returned to the vehicles. Sister desperately hugged brother like she feared never seeing him again. Hiding out in the basement for days with no food or water and only other people's laundry to keep her warm, that had been one of her recurring fears.

The family reunion wasn't a happy event for everyone, however. Growing bolder by the minute, a crowd of squatters had emerged from the surrounding apartments, swaggered toward the small convoy and now moved to surround it.

One of the squatters, a big one, leered at Jasmine and licked his lips meaningfully. “Oh...see, now, I didn't even know that sweet little thang was nearby.” He rubbed skin and exchanged muttered comments with those on his left and right.

Some of the squatters had pistols. Others had knives, pipes and improvised weapons.

Leon opened his truck and placed the M21 in the rifle rack. He came back out, faced the mob, unflapped his holster, then pulled the captured snubnose out of his pocket and snapped open the cylinder to check the load. It still had four live rounds.

“Y'all ain't affiliated,” a squatter said. “Y'all look like some a' them militia fools or somethin'.”

Rocco turned to Justin, speaking calm and low. “Get her in your car and get ready to go.”

Justin helped his weakened sister into the Challenger, slid behind the wheel and shut the door.

The squatters watched this happen and visibly grew antsy—like watching a bear escape a bear trap. One of them nodded to the others and began advancing closer. The others followed suit and the cordon closed in. Shotgun growled and bared fangs.

“Yo, man, they ain't getting outa' here with all these goodies, y'all,” the leader told his followers. “You know why they ain't popped any caps, yo? 'Cause they ain't got bullets. They tryin' to scare us, like we punks.”

“I bet that dog would taste real good, sliced up and cooked on the barbeque grill,” another one remarked, coaxing ugly laughter out of his buddies.

“Carlos; Cannonball,” Rocco said. “Leader at one o'clock. Pistols at eleven, six and three. You see anything else?”

“That's what I got,” Carlos said.

“I got another zip gun at nine o'clock,” Leon said.

Rocco turned to confirm. “Roger that. I'll take one and three.”

“I've got nine and eleven,” Carlos said.

“Six is mine, then,” Leon said, sidling around to his truck's passenger door.

“That's far enough, 'original gangster',” Cavarra told the head squatter. “You come any closer, it's on.”

The leader cussed, laughed, slapped skin with those on his left and right...and kept coming.

Cavarra shouldered his rifle and shot the leader between the eyes. Pivoting at the waist he pumped two rounds center-mass into the squatter with the pistol at three o'clock.

At the first shot Carlos opened up, catching the gunmen at nine and eleven o'clock, and most of the individuals in between.

Leon didn't stop at just one, either. He took out the one with the revolver at six o'clock with his Ruger, gunned down those who tried to retrieve the fallen revolver, then emptied the captured snubnose into the crowd.

With their leadership destroyed in a matter of seconds, the remaining squatters ran, with a few more well-placed shots as encouragement.

Knowing they could use the guns for trading down the line, Carlos and Leon policed up the dropped weapons. Then they climbed in their vehicles and laid tracks out of there.

They found another gas station abandoned along a rural road outside the city, with dead bodies strewn around it. The pumps no longer worked. Cavarra had Justin use a foot pump and plastic hose to siphon fuel. They topped off their tanks and filled their gas cans.

They headed south and east toward Yosimite, with no specific destination in mind—just getting as far away from major population centers as quickly as possible

It had been a hell of a ride.

The small party pulled into a lonely rest stop, dismounted, took turns making head calls/latrine breaks, then congregated around a picnic table to look over a AAA map of the region, trying to figure out their best course of action. They were all exhausted from lack of sleep. Their fuel supply might not get them back to their place in Arizona on a circuitous route. There was certainly no guarantee they could find more fuel along the way, and they might run into a situation they couldn't shoot their way out of this time.

The consensus was they had probably pushed their luck far enough. But they had to figure out where they were going to go.

The younger veterans looked to Rocco for an idea. He had proven himself an excellent planner in the past. He was crafty as a fox, could think on his feet and make the right calls under pressure. Surely he could work some magic again.

But it was Justin who piped up. "Where are we?" he asked, pointing to a spot on the map with his index finger. "Here, right?"

Carlos nodded, blinking bloodshot eyes.

Justin traced his finger along the thin blue web-like representation of a river until he found what he was looking for. "There's a construction site within sight of the bend in this river here. About 40 miles from here as the crow flies. Probably 90 miles on the roads. Construction was halted about seven years ago. I passed it on a canoe trip one summer. Got curious after I was back home; looked it up. The permits were revoked—some big environmental concern about mining on federal land. There was going to be a mine there, and some buildings were going up nearby. Warehouses or something. Just frames when they had to quit. I seriously doubt the permits were ever reinstated. It's probably still abandoned. Only a handful of people even know about it, and I doubt any of them live nearby."

"What good does that do us if they never finished the buildings?" Jasmine asked, feeling much better now with some food in her.

"They didn't finish the permanent structures," Justin said. "But the first thing they did was build a construction office on the site. They parked a trailer there, probably for a security guard to watch the equipment at night. I paddled by there on the river at least a year after it had been abandoned, and there was still a big propane tank sitting on the site. If it's full, that could give us heat for the coldest months. Even if not, we can still get out of the elements. There's a source of fresh water nearby, full of fish. I'm sure there's game in the woods around there. It might not be perfect, but we'd have a good chance to survive there."

Rocco clapped his son on the back, a smile wrinkling his haggard countenance. "No Son, I disagree. I think it is perfect." He turned to the others. "Anybody got an objection, or a better idea?"

"Call me Daniel Boone," Leon said. "Or Grizzly Adams. It sounds good to me. We should have gas left over afterwards, too."

"If we can find the access road," Justin said, and chewed his lip. "I don't know how to get there on land."

"We can find it," Carlos assured him, studying the map and pointing. "You said it's right here by the bend of this river?"

Justin nodded.

Carlos moved his finger in a circle around the indicated point. "There's only so many places it could be. What makes the most sense to me..." 

Rocco leaned back and put his arm around Jasmine's shoulders as the younger men figured out the best place to search for the access road.

There was hope.

They could survive—indefinitely, if nobody discovered them. But at least they could find shelter for a few months—the next few months that would prove to be the most important of their lives.

After all, there was a bad winter on the way.

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66

D PLUS 21

WILDCAT HILLS, NEBRASKA

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GARY FRAM AND HIS UNIT, part of a larger organization which went by the name "Defenders of the Republic," had a perimeter established on a wooded hilltop.

Only one of the men was wounded, and him not critically. It was a small price to pay for the successful ambush of a U.N. supply convoy. They had scored medical supplies, rations, water purification tablets and cold weather gear. All of it was stuff they could use. The gravy was, it was a treasure that would be deprived the enemy.

In a hasty command post dug into the cold ground, reinforced with dirt and collected logs, and winter camouflaged by a white sheet, Gary read his map and made notes on a pad he normally kept in a zippered plastic bag. His wife slept, wrapped tight in a mummy bag sandwiched by space blankets. The other women, and children, were in the big dome tent camouflaged in the center of the platoon's position.

A runner from Second Squad arrived. Gary glanced up. "Everything okay?"

"LP/O.P. says we got visitors," the runner said.

They needed to get some better commo, so these kind of reports could come straight to Gary; not the nearest squad to the Listening Post/Observation Post.

Gary's forehead wrinkled. His next panicked thought was that somebody had tracked them from the ambush. "SALUTE?"

"Um, two guys. They look to be searching for something—probably us. They're approaching from the west. Uniform is kinda' mixed up, like most of ours," the runner reported. A live example of that which he spoke of, he had civilian mossy oak cammie pants on, white Bunny Boots, a tiger stripe fatigue blouse, and an old West German field jacket over that. On his head was an old U.S. Army surplus soft cap, with the inner flap pulled down to protect his ears from the cold. "Cowboy boots. One has a cowboy hat. Not carrying much but their rifles. One is a CAR15. The other is some old lever-action job. Maybe a '94 Model Winchester."

"Sounds like our link-up from the boys in the Chapanee Valley," Gary said, relieved. "Give them the old pre-war challenge. But don't light 'em up if they don't remember the password. Disarm them if you have to and let me take a look at them."

The runner nodded and left.

The cowboys remembered the old password and were escorted back to the CP to meet Gary.

He climbed out of his hole to greet them. He shook the hand of the older one with the lever-action rifle. "Rusty."

Rusty gave him a nod. "Gary."

Gary turned to the younger one, shaking his hand as well. "Mike. It's good to see you guys. Where are your horses?"

"We left 'em a ways back," Mike said. "Thought we might have to sneak away if we ran into somebody besides you. Can't sneak too good on a horse."

"Got any hot coffee?" Rusty asked, blowing into his hands.

Gary frowned. "Sorry. We're already low. And we don't want to waste heat tabs right now."

"I reckon that's understandable," Mike said.

"Sorry I don't have much in the way of furniture, either," Gary said, wiping snow off the seat of his pants.

"Y'all come all this way on foot?" Rusty asked. "That's a lot of walkin'."

Gary shrugged. "We're light infantry. A lot harder for the Traitors to find than if we had trucks and such. We can go more places, too."

"You should get some horses, at least," Rusty said.

"Hey, if you can hook us up, that'd be great. How're you guys doing?"

"Well, they done left us alone, so far," Mike replied.

"They ain't worried 'bout us," Rusty said, then chinned toward Gary. "They must not even be worried 'bout you, yet. Got bigger fish to fry, and they'll come for us afterwards."

Gary nodded. "Are you ready for it?"

Rusty shook his head. "I don't see how we could be. Horses and rifles against tanks and helicopters and artillery? They ain't scared of us. We'd have to take off to the hills like you, to be any threat. Then what happens to our herds; our grass; our families?"

"Exactly right," Mike said.

Gary kicked at a tree root bulging the snow. "Well, any news?"

"There's a big war in the Middle East," Mike said. "I don't know who all's involved. Israel against everybody else, I guess."

"Because they attacked Iran's nuclear program."

"That's what everybody thinks," Rusty said. "Who knows?"

"You hear about New York City?" Mike asked.

"Something about a nuke there, right?" Gary replied.

Mike nodded. "Ever'body thinks it was us. Get this: we joined forces with the Moslems, accordin' to the experts. Ain't that a hoot?"

They all shook their heads, sadly.

"Anyway, there is some good news," Mike went on. "Some American military folks are comin' over to our side. Texas National Guard, for starters. I heard the same thing about Montana and Idaho."

"Maybe Arizona," Rusty added. "Kentucky, Tennessee, the Carolinas. Don't know how much of that is true, though. Could be just wishful thinkin'."

"Heard about any active duty units coming over?" Gary asked.

"Not yet," Mike said. "'Course, some of them are still overseas. But we do have our own general, now."

This got Gary's attention. "Our own general?"

"Yeah. Some retired marine, name of Vine or Vaughn or something. Says he's organizin' a guerrilla resistance. Some of the militias are joinin' up with him."

"We could use something like that," Gary said. "If it's legitimate."

"My boy's got one of them HAM radios," Mike said. "Fancy rig. It can jump or skip or something."

"Frequency hop?" Gary asked, getting excited.

"That's it. Anyway, the other side can't listen in. So my boy hears about this hoppin' plan for his radio. So he programs it, and hears this general talkin' one night."

Rusty adjusted his hat. "A bunch of us been goin' over there to hear his show ever night. It's like a 'fireside chat' I guess."

"He teaches about tactics and strategy and such," Mike went on. "He must have his own generator, like us."

"He better be careful," Rusty said. "They'll find out where he's broadcastin' from and come after him."

"He's probably ready for 'em," Mike said. "Like I said, militia groups like Gary's here are hookin' up with him. He calls them the 'Patriot Resistance.' Somethin' called the 'Special Forces Underground' is trainin' 'em. And soldiers from the Army and Marine Corps are desertin', joinin' up with him one by one. Don't know how they're findin' him, but I guess they are. Some of those boys who were trainin' with Jade Helm? They're defectin', too."

Gary locked eyes with Mike. "I'd like to talk with this guy. Think that could be arranged?"

Mike thought about it, then said, "Yeah. I'd have to take you back with me. Would it be just you or the whole outfit?"

"I'd prefer to keep everybody together."

Mike turned his head to the side and spat, staining the snow brown with tobacco juice. "Well, I can put up some of ya. I know Roy Jr. will be glad to help. We can do it. Might be good to get your folks out of the weather for a while, anyway. There's a bad winter on the way."

"I'll get everybody ready to move," Gary said. "We'll leave right away."

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67

D PLUS 22

SPANISH PEAKS WILDERNESS, COLORADO

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JOSHUA AND JENNIFER rode down into a thickly wooded valley. Both animals and humans were tired from the rigorous journey of the last few weeks.

Josh was able to get enough meat for them by hunting and trapping, and Jennifer already knew a lot about what local fauna was edible. Plus, Josh had hidden caches all around his mountain stuffed with ammunition, dehydrated food and other necessities. He and Jennifer, and even the dogs, would be fine on the mountain. But the horses weren't doing well on just grain and pulped tree bark. They needed grass. Grass was pretty sparse that high up the mountain, at least where they could get to it without sliding down to their deaths on the snow-slick slopes. The snow also made the sparse grass all the more difficult to find.

They needed to get down to where the grass was thicker and where it wasn't as cold, so the snow wouldn't stick as tenaciously.

And so their migration began.

From high up on a ridge they had spotted a patch of green in a valley below, where the sun had melted off enough snow to expose grass. The plan was to ride down there and let the horses graze and rest while they figured out what to do next.

Jennifer's hearing was still superb, and Josh was learning to interpret subtle changes in behavior from the animals. There was something going on in the woods ahead, in between them and the grass.

Josh called a halt. He dismounted and handed his reins to Jennifer. He told the dogs, "Stay with Mom," then picked his way through the trees.

As he drew close, he began to recognize the sounds of an encampment. There wasn't enough noise discipline for it to be military, but he proceeded with caution anyway. When he drew close enough to have a visual, he saw it was civilians—maybe 40 of them, with less than half as many tents set up in a clearing. A lot of the civilians had horses.

Just as he was wondering why there were no dogs, a group of canines came at him from the side, yapping and growling, alerting everyone in camp. Josh stepped out in the open with his hands up, rifle slung over one shoulder. Gun muzzles swung his way from everywhere.

It was amazing he didn't get shot, or eaten alive by ravenous dogs. A young man ran forward with rifle leveled, and stopped a couple meters from Josh.

“Who're you?” the kid demanded. “What're you doin' here?”

“Relax,” Josh said. “I'm not from the government, but I was afraid you all might be, until I got a look up close. I've been up in the mountains for three weeks and just came down today. I was trying to get over east of here a bit. I'm just passing through.”

As he spoke, more men showed up, of various ages, all with weapons trained on him.

“And you just happened to stumble across our camp?” another man asked, obviously skeptical.

“Well, yeah,” Josh said. “It happens a lot, actually. Haven't you ever come across somebody you didn't expect?”

They all studied him like Bedouins about to stone a heretic.

“How do we know you're not with the Traitors?” someone else demanded.

Josh drew half of the fish symbol in the snow with his foot. They watched this, but none of them drew the other half. They looked at him like he was not only a probable enemy, but crazy, too.

No Christians. Great. Or maybe they just don't know their own history.

His thoughts drifted back over the last few weeks he spent with Jennifer. Sometimes in camp during daylight hours, she read aloud from her Bible. At that moment one of the stories she read him came to mind.

Joshua liked he story of Jephthah for two reasons: because the Hebrew judge reminded him a little of himself, and because it was interesting from a communication angle. The story was the source of a now-archaic household term for “password.”

Jephthah went to war against the tribe of Ephraim, and routed them. When the Ephraimites tried to escape back to their own land across the Jordan, they pretended to be from a different tribe. But when Jephthah's men commanded them to say “shibboleth,” they couldn't pronounce the “sh” sound and were exposed for what they were.

“Okay, let's try this,” Josh said, meeting the gaze of several people in the growing crowd. “We hold these truths to be self-evident: that all men are created equal; that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights; that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. That to secure these rights, governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed. And whenever any form of government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the right of the people to alter or to abolish it.”

This raised many an eyebrow among the people who confronted him.

This was a variation on the old "who won the World Series" shibboleth from generations past, when G.I.s used their horse sense to test for German spies.

One of the men lowered his rifle. “I doubt a Traitor would have bothered to memorize that.”

“You never know,” another one said. “Besides, that wasn't the whole thing.”

“You want me to recite the whole Declaration?” Josh asked, incredulous. He had surprised himself by being able to recite any of the words, after they had collected dust in his memory for so long.

“That wasn't even the whole preamble.”

“When in the course of human events...” Josh began.

“How 'bout Article II in the Bill of Rights?” another man interrupted.

Josh sighed. “A well regulated militia, being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed.”

Two more men lowered their weapons.

“Lot's of people know that one,” the suspicious one said, “because we quote it everywhere, all the time.”

“Yeah, but the Traitors edit out the part about 'the people',” another one said. “Or they don't even know it's there.”

“And you didn't say 'Second Amendment',” somebody pointed out. “You have to actually read the Bill of Rights to identify it as 'Article II'.”

Another man lowered his weapon, but said, “Tell us about the separation of church and state.”

“No such phrase in the Constitution,” Josh replied. “That was taken from Jefferson's letter to the Danbury Baptists...ironically explaining that the First Amendment forbids the government to mess with churches. Article I says, 'Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press, or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances'.”

All but the suspicious one lowered their weapons after that.

“C'mon, Pete,” one of the suspicious dude's compatriots said. “Ain't one person in a hundred could answer that one so good. Some people right here couldn't, I bet.”

“They might have coached him,” Pete said.

“Well he at least earned you takin' that rifle out of his face.”

Pete reluctantly lowered his weapon.

Josh lowered his hands and let out a relieved breath when Dan and Reuben Tareen arrived from the other side of the camp and recognized him. Paul Tareen was called. He emerged from a tent, followed by his wife, and hurried over. Terry appeared from a tent with some other girls of various ages. They all vouched for Josh. The whole community relaxed after that.

Josh went back to his family and brought them to the camp.

Everybody was hungry for news. Josh had picked up broadcasts now and then on his small shortwave receiver, and knew some of the big stories—like the nuking of Wall Street and the Marine Corps general organizing a resistance movement. Then it was time to exchange personal stories. They did that for a while, and Josh certainly was glad to find friendly faces out here, but he worried about his horses.

Josh left Jennifer in the camp and took the horses to find that thawed grass he'd seen from the mountain.

When Josh returned to camp, after dark, Paul and a group of men gathered around him.

Paul made introductions, then said, "Josh, we've been puttin' our heads together. I told the rest that you were a Green Beret. It was your job to train native forces to fight, the way an army fights." He made a sweeping gesture that included the whole camp. "You can see what we have here is one big cluster fu..." He stopped abruptly before finishing the word, gaze shifting to some eavesdropping children.

"A gaggle," Josh said. "What you have here is a colossal gaggle. This is a pond full of sitting ducks."

"Exactly," Paul said. "Anyway, we'd like you to pitch in with us. We're here. We're willin'. We're armed. Would you be on board with trainin' us? Get us ready to fight?"

"Think of us as the Montagnards," another man said.

Josh scanned over the men gathered around. He took a look around the camp. He studied some of the women and children. He glanced over to where Jennifer had set up their own tent.

Well I guess I know what she wants to do, he thought.

This wasn't a very promising start for the Patriot Resistance. If this remained the state of it, they'd never be able to strike back at the Traitors. And if they couldn't take the fight to the enemy at some point, resistance would collapse. The great military thinkers said every successful resistance movement needed popular opinion on their side, and the support of a foreign power. They didn't have either, and as Josh saw it, they weren't likely to pick up either of those along the way. That was two strikes against them already.

His mind went back to what he'd studied about the American Revolution—yet another cluster of memories that had lain dormant for many years after he soured on the American Dream.

At first General Washington wasn't able to challenge the British effectively. It was everything he could do just to hold the Continental Army together. During the bitter winter at Valley Forge, he did all he could to scrape up food and basic supplies for his starving troops. Meanwhile, he assigned Baron von Steuben to drill them in the tactics of the day. The Continental Army may have been lacking in some basic necessities like shoes for all the soldiers, but it began to develop discipline, and espirit de corps.

The priority was to keep the Patriot Resistance alive for the immediate future. At the same time, they would have to be disciplined and educated very quickly. If they could survive until the spring thaw, maybe they could begin to sting the enemy, here and there.

This would have to be their Valley Forge. Guys like Joshua Rennenkampf would have to be the von Steubens this time.

"I'd be willing to talk about it," Josh said.

Being around other people would probably be better for Jennifer, anyway. And there was a long, rough winter coming.

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68

D PLUS 24

POTAWATTOMIE COUNTY, OKLAHOMA

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THERE WAS TOO MUCH going on for Tommy Scarred Wolf to concentrate all his attention on the siege of the county lock-up, but his men managed to keep anybody from getting in or out of the complex.

There was no electricity in the jail. One of Adiur's men took a battery powered radio up to the roof, but Carl managed to pick him off with the sniper rifle.

Somebody else must have tried again, but stayed low enough to keep out of sight. That's how Tommy figured they must have called the chopper in.

When the old UH1 “Huey” was heard flying toward the jail, Tommy was notified. He radioed his commanders and had all but a skeleton force at assigned posts break off and assemble near the jail.

But before everyone arrived, Adiur's force, spearheaded by inmates, attempted the breakout.

Power was down most everywhere now, but the music still blared at the jail thanks to a diesel generator. The annoying music was partially drowned out as the approaching helicopter drew closer.

Carl and his spotter were already in place, and went to work right away, dropping the inmates as they flooded out the doors and toward the gate. Gunther arrived before the mob reached the gate. The team he brought had the homemade rocket launcher captured in Amarillo, and the M1928A1 Thompson submachinegun from Tommy's personal war trophy inventory.

They wasted no time. The crude antipersonnel rounds from the rocket launcher didn't land with pinpoint accuracy, but they hit amidst the surging mob and exploded with impressive shrapnel spread. After the second such explosion, the mob's charge stalled.

Another team arrived. Gunther directed them to a good overwatch position and told them to fire at will.

Between the shock of the explosions and the increasing small arms fire, the inmates lost their enthusiasm and broke, most of them attempting to get back in the building. This created an ideal turkey shoot for a few moments, until a couple Tier Zero teams forced their way through the trampling chaos and got the herd moving toward the gate again with threats and a few Soviet-style hasty executions.

By that time both Takoda and Ralph White Feather had arrived with their teams of recent recruits. They got into position behind cover and opened fire.

“Carl!” Gunther yelled. “Concentrate on the guys in military uniform!”

“Okay,” Carl replied, still sending rounds downrange.

The chopper came in to buzz over the jail compound just inside the fence. Gunther had always thought those old Hueys were good-looking birds. But this one had rocket pods and machineguns on both doors. One of those machineguns now swung toward the Shawnee Militia and opened fire.

“Get the door gunner!” Gunther told his comrades.

Gunther's men were behind good cover, and none were hit by the chopper's machinegun. The door gunner was laying suppressive fire, and as such, it was effective. Those not hiding from the gunner were occupied trying to pick him off. Adiur's mob used the distraction to rush toward the gate.

The Huey finished its gun run and banked for another pass. This was when the chopper was at its most vulnerable. The men came out of hiding and poured it on, until Gunther noticed the mob at the gate.

Gunther ordered Carl to prioritize the door gunners, but everyone else to concentrate on the mob. They were close enough now that Gunther nodded to the man with the Thompson. He opened up with the old museum piece, ripping a bloody swathe through the ranks of inmates.

Gunther called Takoda over the radio. “Bowtie, this is Blue Oval. Over?”

“This is Bowtie. Over?”

“Time to rock & roll.”

Takoda's men opened up with Ingram M10 submachineguns that his father had hung onto after the rescue op in Sumatra. They fired heavy, jacketed .45 ACP slugs like the Tommygun. Adiur's cannon fodder was cut to ribbons.

But the surviving Tier Zero teams dropped to the prone and returned fire. Meanwhile the chopper completed its turn and came back, this time firing rockets.

“Incoming!” a dozen men screamed.

The rockets streaked in, one blowing a pothole in the ground and the other destroying an abandoned Volkswagen. Fortunately nobody had been using the Volkswagen for cover, but Gunther still heard somebody cry out, “I'm hit!”

And now the chopper was coming in for his second gun run, the opposite door gunner now lighting them up.

Gunther himself had to make like a cockroach as a burst of 7.62 NATO snapped by too close for comfort. Then another sound swelled in the noisy ambiance.

An old Dodge pickup truck with a camper shell came barreling around a corner and bore down on the parking lot below Carl's rooftop perch. Tommy's voice came over the the radio. “Blue Oval, this is Hammer One. Be advised: friendlies are entering your A.O. in a mobile anti-aircraft platform. Make a hole. We'll take care of the chopper; you concentrate on the ground-pounders, over?”

Gunther pointed at the truck and yelled, “Friendlies in the truck! Make a hole; pass it down!”

The men to his left and right repeated his statement, which was in turn passed all along the line. At Gunther's direction, they tried to ignore the impending ground-to-air action and continue to engage personnel.

With the chopper's machinegun stitching the ground seemingly all around it, the truck careened into the parking lot and cut a hard turn, rocking to a stop with the tailgate facing the general direction of the enemy.

Both doors swung open. Tommy and Sanford stepped out. Tommy limped back to the bed on one side of the truck; Sanford hurried back to the other.

“You're not ready?” Tommy hollered, then laced his next remark with creative profanity. The gist of it was: “They're lighting us up while you're taking your sweet time in there!”

There was a muffled retort, then Tommy and Sanford each grabbed a side of the camper shell and lifted it off the bed. This revealed Uncle Jay, in the act of positioning himself behind a large machinegun on a makeshift monopod. “If you crazy bastards didn't drive like total maniacs,” Uncle Jay bellowed, “I'd have had it unclamped already!”

Nobody was used to seeing Uncle Jay in a foul mood. Unless you knew him well, it was rare to even find him in a serious mood. But he was a crotchety bastard right then, pissed off and smarting from the pain of being tumbled around in the truck bed like a pinball. But the old fart knew what he was doing with a belt fed weapon.

The gun was called “the Dover Devil”—Tommy's most impressive souvenir from the Sudan mission. A gunner could feed belts of SLAP (Saboted Light Armor Penetrator) ammo from either side, and it had other features that were just too high-speed for words.

In the midst of the firefight, men took notice of the heavy pounding noise of the Devil—a new instrument in this symphony of destruction. The Snare Drum From Hell.

The Huey visibly lurched when the SLAP rounds tore through the nose. The old Air Cav trooper worked over the entire fuselage of the chopper, and the hapless gunners in the open doors. Glass and sparks and chunks of metal flew off the old bird as the .50 caliber saboted rounds punched through one side and out the other, sucking debris out with them. Then Uncle Jay bullseyed the tail rotor and down she went.

While this was going on, Adiur's forces made it through the gate. They were mowed down in droves, but several Tier Zero operators made it out of the death funnel.

Tommy called to Sanford, who by that time was acting as assistant gunner to Uncle Jay, up in the bed of the pickup. “Tell me if you see their C.O!”

Jay ceased fire. Sanford, still holding the belt up out of the big ammo can, scanned the opfor's faces as they charged through the gate. “Don't see 'im!”

The Huey crashed, blocks away.

“Wolverines!” Uncle Jay bellowed, striking a heroic pose.

“Okay, Colonel Kilgore,” Tommy said. “Get your big fourth point down, before it gets shot off.”

“Charlie don't surf,” Uncle Jay replied, easing himself down to a sitting position.

Most of the inmates were littered over the space between the jailhouse and the mouth of the gate. Adiur's Tier Zero teams didn't continue the charge toward the Shawnee Militia, but took hard left or right turns once outside the gate and scrambled away as fast as their feet would take them. Two of them inadvertantly drifted back into Takoda's sector of fire and were torn nearly in half. Several more were dropped or winged by Gunther's sharpshooters, but plenty made their escape good.

Gunther signalled for a cease-fire, then assigned a couple teams for pursuit.

“Blue Oval, this is Bowtie,” Takoda called. “Over?”

“Go ahead, Bowtie.”

“Permission to recon the crash site. We can use those door guns, if they're still good.”

Gunther gave permission, and added that they should secure the site until somebody could come by to salvage the rocket pods or whatever else might be of use.

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TOMMY HAD THE MUSIC stopped and the generator killed to save fuel. He found Gunther while he was busy getting a head count and ammo check.

“Sitrep?” Tommy asked.

“Pretty sure we got some wounded,” Gunther replied. “But I haven't heard back from everybody. Some of the opfor made it out of the gate and got away.”

“I know,” Tommy said.

“I sent a couple teams after them to hunt them down, but no luck yet.”

“Call them back,” Tommy said. “They might be anywhere out there, and your boys could walk into an ambush. Worse—they might get ambushed and cut off.”

“Okay,” Gunther said, dejectedly.

Tommy gave his son a light slap on the back. “Hey, we got 'em out of the jailhouse, didn't we?”

“Yeah, but I sure would have liked to get them all.”

“I know. Me too. But that's war, Gunther.” Tommy swept his gaze over to the jail compound. “Keep eyes on that place for a couple hours before you send anybody in. Then make sure whoever does go in has all the backup you can spare. You've got to see if any bad guys are in there, or if any friendlies are, or both.”

“Okay,” Gunther said, still glum.

“Keep all the approaches interdicted until it's clear,” Tommy said. “Then let me know. We're gonna need to redeploy your teams, now that we have Tier Zero units in our A.O. Also get me a casualty report ASAP. If any of it's bad, they can ride with us to the rear. We have an aid station established where the clinic was.”

“Will do,” Gunther said.

Tommy left him and climbed up to check on the sniper team. Both were healthy.

Tommy made sure to spend more face time with the spotter than with his son, to make sure the other man knew he was no less important than even Tommy's own family.

But Carl had a long face, too.

“How much ammo did you use?” Tommy asked, looking over the brass spread across the area to the right of Carl's hide.

“I think about 70 rounds,” Carl said. “Maybe more.”

Tommy whistled. “Wow. Did you get 70 kills?”

“Over 50, easy,” the spotter said.

“I just couldn't hit the door gunner,” Carl grumbled, as if ashamed and prepared for a reprimand. “I don't get it. It's like he had a force field or something. Sorry, Dad.”

“You got to lead it according to the aircraft's speed,” Tommy said. “And the rotor wash is like a powerful wind. Could be you have to aim high. When you're relieved from your post and get some chow, see about hooking up with Uncle Jay. He can probably give you some tips about engaging choppers with small arms.”

“Okay, Dad.”

Takoda was still out with his team scavenging weapons, ammo and gear off the chopper, and two other teams were returning from their aborted pursuit. Tommy checked on everyone else personally before returning to the truck.

There were three wounded men, and one dead—one of the new recruits. Tommy had the wounded put on the gun truck and he drove them back to the aid station. There would be a brief funeral service for the dead man once everything was stabilized a bit. Enemy dead...there would have to be a burial detail composed of men who would rather be assigned some other task, and were needed elsewhere...but it had to be done or the stench, vermin, and possibly disease would contribute to more problems.

Gunther had handled things pretty well. Any death on their side was tragic and unwanted, but it would have been much worse had he not taken charge and made some good calls. All his riflemen gave good account, too. Their fire was disciplined and effective. He believed they had all honestly tried to make every shot count. And most of their shots did count, judging by the bodies massed around the gate and farther back. They didn't panic when faced with superior numbers and air support. After taking automatic weapons and rocket fire, they came back swinging. That meant not only had he disciplined his original shooters well, but they were doing an outstanding job training and leading the recruits.

Recruits were sorely needed, because there was a lot of terrain and resources to protect. And he was getting a lot of volunteers, mostly from OK City. A few of them even had their own weapons. A couple were veterans, thank God, and got up to speed quickly.

But nothing was happening quick enough for Tommy. And he didn't have enough men for the ground he had to protect, while at the same time, he had too many to feed.

Tommy had reduced rations to one meal a day and still didn't think that would get them through the winter. He had made deals with farmers in the area and was seeking deals with more, but their crops wouldn't be coming in any time soon and it would be stupid to eat all their livestock, not leaving them enough to breed more. He and his sons all knew how to hunt, and there was an overpopulation problem with deer and other game in the area. They would just have to be careful not to go too far. It was better to stay a little hungry than get greedy and wipe out all their food supply for the future.

There were also the problems of fuel, electricity, and medicine. Or the lack of it, more accurately. Meanwhile the mysterious Adiur and his elite killers were on the loose.

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OKLAHOMA CITY, OKLAHOMA

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ADIUR CALLED A HALT when Cynthia Greeley and the other surviving members of his harem could no longer continue the march. They had complained incessantly and lagged farther behind until they just gave up outright.

Already in a foul mood, Adiur considered killing at least one of them as an example to the others that complaining wouldn't be tolerated. But his anger should rightly be focused elsewhere.

He let four teams into a hotel building.

They rounded up the owners and security force guarding the place against looters and squatters. Once all were stripped and zip-cuffed, they were put in Cynthia's custody and locked in a closet. They would be used in subsequent ceremonies. Their energy was needed.

Adiur set up his headquarters in the Presidential Suite and established radio contact with the ghost teams that had escaped in a different direction from the jail complex. One at a time the surviving teams converged on the hotel.

The opportunity to release some of his rage presented itself when one of Adiur's subordinates did the unthinkable.

With witnesses all around, during a briefing, the agent said, “You're not exactly the genius you're cracked up to be, whatever-the-hell your funky-ass name is. I thought Scarred Wolf was supposed to blunder right into your brilliant trap. But we all saw you turn tail and run with everybody else after he kicked your ass.”

Adiur lifted the agent over his head, gear and all, and hurled him across the suite to hit the bar with such force he knocked it over. Hardly had he bounced off the bar and hit the floor before Adiur was on him. He tore the agent's helmet off and began to beat him with it.

The agent was unconscious after one blow. He suffered fatal head trauma not long after that. But Adiur kept beating him with the helmet, blood splattering all over the area. By the time he stopped, now with a satisfied gloating grimace, the agent's skull was caved in.

Adiur stood, hardly even breathing heavy, and raked everyone in the room with a chilling glare.

“That's the last time anybody is going to disrespect me in any way.” He pointed with index and middle finger at the closest ghost team leader. “Your incompetence is why my plan didn't succeed. All of you! You're spoiled! You always have the advantage of surprise, and strike against targets that don't fight back. If they do fight back, it's only token resistance. And if you run into the slightest difficulty you call in support from any number of sources and it arrives withing minutes to bail you out.”

With a gutteral cry, Adiur stooped to lift the toppled structure of the bar, then slammed it down on top of the dead agent. His subbordinates squirmed. Some of the harem girls and inmates averted their gaze or closed their eyes to avoid seeing the atrocity. Some in the room were filled with an awe not unlike sexual attraction. The dressing-down they suffered made Adiur seem all the more admirable.

“You were humiliated by militia men!” He roared. “And I guess one helicopter in support just wasn't enough to tip that match-up in your favor!”

Adiur paced, clasping his hands behind his back. “It was a perfectly simple, reasonable plan. Unfortuanately, this Indian Chief and his 'braves' are a determined opponent. They didn't take the bait. They're clever. You stupid shits underestimated them!”

He stopped pacing and faced them, in a stance similar to parade rest. “But they've got weaknesses. We're going to regroup. I'm going to train you candy-assed door-kickers how to fight somebody who fights back. Then we're going to exploit those weaknesses. We're going to drain the blood out of Tommy Scarred Wolf's lifeless body if we have to slaughter every single person on the reservation to do it. In fact, we might just do that anyway.”

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ABSENTEE SHAWNEE TRUST LAND, OKLAHOMA

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AS TOMMY PASSED THE little church where his niece had been married a lifetime ago in a different world, he saw people standing in line to get in. Snow was falling now and they shivered in the cold.

Well, at least one place is still open for business, Tommy thought.

He suddenly noticed his own feet were freezing, and his wounded calf was throbbing with pain made worse by the cold.

Instead of driving to his own house, or his temporary headquarters, he went to Michael Fastwater's property, pulled up in the yard and killed the motor.

“Good idea,” Uncle Jay said. “Michael's probably not handling the cold real well.”

“We're gonna have to put him with somebody else now that Louise is helping out at the aid station during the day,” Tommy said. “Somebody who can look after him. Make sure he's warm, clean, and well-fed.”

Louise was Michael's great-great granddaughter, who used to take care of him year-round.

Neither man made a move to step outside, yet. Tommy gazed out over the prairie, now being covered with snow.

“Ironic, huh?” Uncle Jay asked.

“What's that?”

“Tecumseh was in a similar position once,” Jay explained. “Didn't work out so well for him, did it? Not for us.”

“That's why we wound up in Oklahoma, ultimately,” Tommy replied.

“I hope you're planning to do things differently,” Uncle Jay said, rubbing his shoulder with a pained expression.

“A lot differently,” Tommy said. “Because a lot is different. Back then it was all about our tribe. For the whites it was all about their tribe. Freedom isn't about tribes. America's not. Some people want to make it about that. But it's not. It can't be. America is an idea.”

“You sound like your friend, Rennenkampf,” Uncle Jay said.

Tommy shook his head. “Not anymore. Joshua hasn't talked like that for a long time.”

“Well, he picked a hell of a time to give up on the idea.”

“Not just him,” Tommy said.

Uncle Jay sighed, stretching his neck. He attempted a straightforward smile and cheerful tone. “I see you got plenty of white folks coming over to our side.”

For just a moment, Tommy's lips curved upwards. “They think we're on the right side of this. Or at least we're the best option they see. Folks from all over are hearing about us, and they're stepping up to do what they can. Red people. White people. All colors, I guess. I wish it didn't have to come to this, for that to finally happen.”

“Now that it has, you think it'll be enough?”

Tommy continued staring out into the prairie. “I don't know, Uncle. Not my call, and not much I can do about it. All we can control is our little piece of the puzzle here. Do the best we can and,,,we'll see.”

Uncle Jay lit up a cigarette, cracked the window and did some staring into space of his own. “If anybody can pull this off, Nephew, it's you.”

“Wow. Was that a compliment? With a straight face, no less.”

“Hey, I'm too cold and sore to figure out how to hide it inside an insult.” Jay opened his door. “Let's go get the old crippled Jarhead. If I'm cold, he must be freezing.”

They both stepped out and walked to the trailer. It felt like the temperature had dropped another 20 degrees. The wind kicked up and Tommy felt like his body was being stabbed with icicles.

The bad winter was finally upon them.

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THE END