A Thousand Years of Darkness: a Thriller (38 page)

These good, common men from the hills sprang to their feet and thrust their weapons at the wind-rattled roof of the old store and cheered. They had followed this big black ex-cop to Arkansas for that little fight, such as it was, and trusted his judgment and generalship. Little Tump Kinsey shoved a fist at the ceiling. He was almost seventy.

“We Vietnam vets can still fight!” Tump shouted.

“I know you can and you will. None of us who has been in combat is fond of it, but we do what must be done.”

They were ready. Mad as hell and they weren’t going to take it anymore. Big C ended with the famous quote from John Stuart Mill: “War is an ugly thing, but not the ugliest of things. The decayed and degraded state of moral and patriotic feeling which thinks nothing is worth a war is worse. A man who has nothing which he cares more about than he does his personal safety is a miserable creature who has no chance of being free, unless made and kept so by better men than himself.”

He paused and, after a long moment, added, “You are those better men.”

President Signs Education Transformation Bill

(Washington)—
Flanked by public school teachers from across the nation, President Anastos signed into law the Education Transformation Bill that proponents say will streamline American education and make it more relevant to the challenges faced by a modern society. Speaker of the House Barbara Teague called passage of the bill “a great vote for our children.”

“If Congress hadn’t passed this bill,” the President said, “education would have sunk into a crisis we may not have been able to reverse. For every day we drag our feet on key issues like this, more of our citizens will lose their jobs and their dreams.”

Due to the flagging economy, the bill calls for saving money by the elimination of certain niche programs that are no longer necessary for a good public education. Among those programs being dropped are U.S. history, civics, economics, and academies on the U.S. Constitution and Bill of Rights...

Chapter Sixty-Seven

New York

Executive Producer Carl Patton of the Zenergy News Cable Station received a phone call from a man who identified himself as “John.”

“I work for Mr. Zuniga,” John said. “I think we should meet for lunch.”

“Why would I want to do that?”

“To hash out some critical issues that affect your TV station, the nation, and particularly Miss Sharon Lowenthal.”

They met at a little out-of-the-way eatery on Broadway. John was about fifty, nondescript, but with an air of authority that came from associating with powerful men. It didn’t take him long to get to the point. They were still waiting to be seated when John began.

“Sharon Lowenthal is corroding the foundation of America and instigating violence,” he said.

They were shown to a table before Patton came up with a response. As soon as they were seated, John continued with an accusatory diatribe against the “Rightwing conspiracy” led by Zenergy News and Sharon Lowenthal against George Zuniga.

“Why is she focused on Mr. Zuniga?” John demanded. “Why does Zenergy allow it?”

“Can it be because Zuniga’s name and his various Open Society projects keep popping up wherever there are failed economies and failed nations?” Patton shot back. “Zuniga has spent the past quarter-century recruiting, training, indoctrinating and installing Marxist operatives in countries around the world to establish a One World socialist government. Now he’s targeting the U.S.”

“His influence is overhyped,” John insisted.

“Is that a fact? Let me revisit his
modus operandi
. He moves in, forms a shadow party which leads to a shadow government built on bribery and corruption. He takes control of the airwaves, destabilizes the nation’s economy through massive state overspending and corporate bailouts, provokes or exploits a national crisis, after which his shadow government takes power in order to quell massive unrest initiated by various leftwing organizations and so-called community organizers. Feel free to stop me at any time—John, is it?—when you think I’ve gone wrong.”

“These are not normal times,” John replied, unperturbed. “Mr. Zuniga does not accept rules imposed by others. If he did, he would not be alive today. One needs to adjust one’s action to changing circumstances.”

“I read somewhere that he considers himself a god, sort of like the world’s conscience.”

“The world needs a conscience.”

“Some people think he may be the Antichrist.”

John scoffed at the suggestion. “I don’t think you understand me, Mr. Patton. If people like Sharon Lowenthal—and you—don’t recognize that the world is changing, they will be left behind. She is hurting Mr. Zuniga and his business.”

The meeting and the lunch ended right after the salad arrived. With a slow, sinister smile, John rose to his feet. Before he walked out, leaving Patton with the check, he handed Patton a DVD of an old movie—
A Face in the Crowd
starring Andy Griffith as Larry “Lonesome” Rhodes, a drunkard and petty criminal who becomes a powerful radio personality before being corrupted by the system. The movie ends with him posed to commit suicide by jumping off a building.

“Give this to Ms. Lowenthal with Mr. Zuniga’s compliments,” John said.

The news media had compared Jerry Baer to Lonesome Rhodes just before he was gunned down in Tulsa at the ORU Convention Center.

Chapter Sixty-Eight

Chicago

Strategy meetings were breaking out somewhere every week. Something was about to happen. Majority Leader Wiedersham expected Trout to attend them.
When
he became the junior congressman from Illinois, his loyalty to the cause must be well-tempered by the growing fires of the coming workers’ revolution.

Today’s summit was being held in the meeting hall of a Chicago AF of L/CIO, a dingy, depressing place out near the old stockyards. About thirty people showed up. Trout recognized some of them as, like himself, Illinois candidates for office, no doubt placed in position by George Zuniga and his friends. Others were key leaders in the labor movement—teachers, state employees, airport air controllers, most of whom represented the Public Employees International Union, PEIU. The topic tonight, as Trout soon learned, was a frank one on what labor and community organizers could do to help collapse the American economy, a prerequisite for a Marxist takeover.

The keynote speaker was Duane Smith, White House Environmental Czar and current head of PEIU. Trout had encountered him before, during conferences on the AP oil spill, the “Next Step” Conference, and at several other insider meetings. He was no doubt a major player. Behind the podium as he took the stage hung a large red and yellow bunting inscribed with Karl Marx’ war cry:
Workers of the World Unite
.

The continuing objective of these summits, Smith explained, was to “create conditions of ungovernability” as explicated by Francis Fox Pivens.

“What the folks in charge want—you know, the big banks and everything—what they want is stability,” he said. “There are extraordinary things we can do to destabilize the folks that are in power. For example, a quarter of the people who own a home are underwater. They are paying more for their homes than it is worth. Ten percent of these people are now in strategic default, meaning they are refusing to pay but they are staying in their homes. They figure out it takes a year to kick me out of my home because foreclosure is all backed up. I’m going to say I won’t pay. It’s a good business decision. What would happen if we organize these homeowners in mass to do a mortgage strike. Just say if we got half-a-million people to agree we won’t pay our mortgages. It would literally cause a new financial crisis for the banks, but not for us. We would be doing quite well, thank you, because we wouldn’t be paying.”

A prattle of laughter rippled through the small audience. Trout did not laugh.

“The folks that control this country care about one thing—how the stock market does, how the bond market does. I think we need a very simple strategy. How do we bring the stock market down? How do we interfere with their ability to be rich, which means we have to politically isolate them, economically isolate them, and disrupt them.”

Trout squirmed in his seat. What if his father was still alive and knew he was mixed up in all this?

“A bunch of us around the country think about who would be a really good company to hate. We decided that would be J.P. Morgan Chase based in New York. So we’re going to roll out over the next couple of weeks, as soon as we can get enough people together. A week of action in New York with the goal of—I don’t want to give away the details because I don’t know which police agents are in the room.”

More conspiratorial laughter.

“Labor can lead. We do have money, we have millions of members who are furious. We also need coalitions of community groups if we really believe that we are in a transformative stage of what’s happening in the decline of capitalism. We need to confront this in a serious way and develop a real ability to put a boot in the wheel. We have to think about how, together, labor and community alliances are building something that really has the capacity to disrupt how the system operates...”

Trout’s practical side kept telling his uncomfortable side that what he was doing was securing his future. Buttering his toast. He was sweating and his left eye twitched.

“I assume some of you have been invited to the Sustainable World Conference on Lake Ontario two weeks from today,” Smith concluded. “It is there that we will propose and debate final solutions. Until then, everybody, you know, must continue to work to produce chaos in his region to allow us to at long last implement social and economic justice. Truly, we are at that point. Workers of the world unite!”

Trout’s eye began tic’ing. Since linking his fate with his brother-in-law’s, he had seen enough to know that once someone was
in
there was no safe way to get
out.

Chapter Sixty-Nine

South Fork, Colorado

The crude map Carolyn sketched for Big C in Oklahoma City showed the “mental health facility” situated west of the Great Divide in the San Juan Mountains, at the end of a narrow road blocked off and guarded against intruders. Big C couldn’t be sure how accurate the map was, since Carolyn drew it from memory off directions supplied by her husband. He and Tom Fullbright set out for Colorado to scout the camp while the rest of the Defenders stayed behind near Alamosa to link up with Colorado’s Sons of Liberty in the mountains and wait for the call to action. Judy decided to spend a day or so with relatives in Oklahoma before returning to Washington.

Fretting that they might be too late to help Lieutenant Ross, Big C and Fullbright rushed on through South Fork to reach their destination at a pair of remote trout lakes in the mountains north of State 160 and east of Wolf Creek Pass. It was already getting late in the valleys and hollows when they arrived in Big C’s rattletrap Impala. The early arrival of fall put enough bite in the air to encourage rutting elk to bugle and discourage most hikers and backpackers. Elk hunting season was still a few weeks away.

“We got a hour or two daylight to burn,” Big C commented as he and Fullbright stuffed their backpacks with enough supplies to last several days. Once they studied the detention facility and devised a tentative assault plan, Fullbright would hike back out to guide in the militia while Big C maintained surveillance on the target.

They left a note on the Impala’s windshield in case a Ranger happened by. The note said they were backpacking and would return in a few days. The vehicle shouldn’t arouse suspicion since its registration checked to Vernon Smith, the alias Big C used in Alabama. The two militiamen hoisted packs and followed the trail that led around the little lakes and climbed through big timber toward the summit of the Divide. They wore roughout hiking boots, jeans and light jackets, with heavier coats in their packs to be used against high mountain weather. Big C carried a Glock stuffed in his backpack, Fullbright a .45 in a belt holster. Big C calculated they should reach the facility by tomorrow evening.

Shadows in the lowlands turned from murky gray to deep purple. Scarlet streaked the skies beyond the westernmost mountain peaks. A bull elk bugled, a high whistle that ended in a series of coughs, answered by the lonely cry of a loon on the lake.

They camped in the timber when night made hiking hazardous. Tucked into sleeping bags, they listened to the mournful inquiry of a nearby owl. Fullbright said Indians believed owls were harbingers of death.

FCC To Regulate Internet

(Washington)—
Requirements mandated by Congress in its Economic Stimulus Bill direct private cable and communications companies to provide the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) with all internet data about individual homes, including what speeds they have, the kind of services a person uses, and their IP (internet protocol) addresses. Additional regulations being planned through the Wiedersham-Teague Fairness in Airwaves Doctrine (FAD) will enable federal government websites to combat foreign and domestic terrorism by tracking private citizens who visit certain websites... Government has already seized more than 1,000 domain names and shut down 1,000 websites—sites apparently engaged in illegal slander against the government…

Citizens may report the e-mail addresses of suspicious persons to Whitehouse.gov...

Chapter Seventy

Washington, D.C.

Out!
That was what Trout kept thinking on the short flight from Chicago to Washington. He rented a car at the airport and drove to the Russell Building. Senate Majority Leader Wiedersham appeared to be in prime Godfather mode in his new Italian suit that was already rumpled across his ample belly. Justin Cobb propped himself against the doorframe of Wiedersham’s office as Trout showed himself in, past Liz’ reception desk. Wiedersham calmly looked him over.