A Thousand Years of Darkness: a Thriller (43 page)

“You set up on this ridge—
here
,” Big C instructed, pointing with his stick to the crude map in the dirt. “Success depend on you knocking out the roving Humvees so they don’t get through the gate at us. They going to have Apache gunships in the air if we not out of there in less than one hour. Remember that, everybody, and keep the timing going.”

Big C paused and looked around the circle of tense faces.

“Once the mission done,” he said, “haul ass when you see the buses exit the gate. We will set the buses in defensive posture three hundred meters down the road and wait until everybody aboard or accounted for. There should be enough confusion to give us some time.”

Withdrawing, the loaded buses would return to State 160 and haul over Wolf Creek Pass to the small lakes where the militiamen had concealed their private vehicles down a barely-passable dead-end road. If all went well, Big C’s army, along with those they rescued, would be scattered and in hiding while the Feds were still trying to sort through the chaos left behind at the detention compound. Several thousand escapees running all over the hills should keep Green Shirts and Homies occupied for days. With more luck, Zenergy News and Sharon Lowenthal would be on the story within hours after things erupted.

“Everything must be ready tomorrow evening,” Big C concluded. “Questions?”

What followed was more a mixture of nervous comments and doubts than questions. A tall, raw-boned man from the Colorado contingent seemed to be having the most second thoughts.

“We’re going to be shooting other
Americans?”
he protested nervously.

Big C understood the man’s reservations; he had read about the Civil War and brother against brother.

“We all got to deal with it in our heart and conscience,” he said. “In the Ozarks, The Defenders saw Green Shirts preparing execute innocent Americans with bullets through they skulls. What we got to understand is we fighting evil. They are murdering people down there inside that electric fence and harvesting they organs. There are other facilities being built like it all over this nation. Gulags like Solzhenitsyn wrote about. Are we to stand by like helpless children and
watch?
Or will we stand up like men?”

He stopped in front of the squeamish Coloradan. “What’s your name, soldier?”

“Potter, Fred.”

Big C turned to the Colorado commander and ordered him to disarm Potter and assign someone to watch him. No one must be allowed to leave because of doubts and possibly betray the operation.

“Anybody else have a problem?” Big C asked.

The rest of the force expressed solidarity; this was something that
had
to be done.

“Good,” Big C approved. “If a bunch of World War Two Jews armed with pistols in Warsaw ghetto could stop the Wehrmacht in its tracks, then we should be able bust out a few prisoners.”

A Baptist preacher from Mazie, Oklahoma, suggested they ask for God’s guidance in these perilous times. Rough men from the hills and mountains and plains of Oklahoma and Colorado, tough men of the soil, independent, resilient men, many of whom were military veterans, men of character and strength and courage, men like those who had served at Valley Forge, all bowed their heads.

FAD Bill Passes: Zenergy News To Be Indicted

(Washington)—
Speaker of the House Barbara Teague (D-CA) kept the House in late session tonight in order to pass the Fairness of Airwaves Doctrine (FAD). President Anastos declared it an emergency measure to stem the tide of treasonous anti-government rhetoric that poisons the nation’s airwaves, a vital step in restoring order to the nation. Senate Majority Leader Joe Wiedersham (D-Ill), one of the bill’s original supporters, said FAD will go a long way in restoring “civil and inclusive dialogue” in radio and TV.

White House spokesman Dewey Gubbins said the Justice Department’s first step would be to indict Zenergy News for conspiracy against the government. Zenergy has spearheaded a wave of hate directed against the President and his administration...

Chapter Seventy-Eight

Washington, D.C.

Majority Leader Joe Wiedersham liked to boast that his second residence in Washington, D.C.—his first being in Chicago, both of them on the taxpayer’s tab—was only a block away from the Georgetown redbrick where John F. Kennedy lived when he was nominated for the presidency in 1960. Georgetown was one of the most affluent and exclusive communities in the nation’s capital, occupied by politicians, lobbyists and luminaries like Senator John Kerry, Former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright, and Watergate reporter Bob Woodward.
The Exorcist
had been filmed on 36
^th
Street NW. Too bad, James Nail thought, that the entire town couldn’t have also been exorcised.

He and Judy were en route in his Toyota to Wiedersham’s residence. Judy knew the way. Dennis Trout had been showing off one day and drove her past JFK’s house, in the process pointing out Wiedersham’s mansion on N Street.

“These politicians got their gumption to live like this and call other people fat cats,” she remarked. She had asked Trout how politicians get so rich.

“Connections,” Trout replied. “We’re going to live here after I win the election.”

She hadn’t asked him if by
we
he meant her—or him and Marilyn and Reggie.

Today’s run on the Wiedersham estate was a recon to check out the lay of the land for tomorrow morning. According to the notebook, Wiedersham expected Trout to ride the limo with him on Monday—tomorrow—to the meeting site on Lake Ontario. Nail figured
he
, and Judy, would take Trout’s place.

“Lake Ontario” seemed to have triggered something in Sharon when Judy read the passage from Trout’s notebook to her over the phone. She must have somehow connected all the dots. Nail was convinced they would find Sharon at the secret summit meeting—if he could
persuade
Wiedersham to take them there.

While Nail drove, Judy filled him in on the meeting Big C and she had had with Marsha Ross and Carolyn at the Pizza Hut in Oklahoma City. The last she saw of Big C, he was rounding up the militia to rescue Lieutenant Ross from a secret detention center in Colorado.

“Corey treated me better than any man ever, like I’m a real person. I’m afraid I ain’t never going to see him again either...”

Big C could take care of himself. Sharon, on the other hand, although resourceful and resilient, was on her way to a Devil’s den from which even God might not be able to save her.

Judy had learned through Trout that his brother-in-law was so preoccupied with schedule that he even brushed his teeth and went to the toilet by the clock. He had a limo driver fired once for being five minutes late picking him up at his mansion to drive him to the office. Trout was counting on Wiedersham’s obsession with punctuality to make what he had to do easier.

It was now quarter till seven. Trout told Judy that Wiedersham liked to be picked up at precisely seven.

Clouds hanging in the northern and eastern skies were translucent with diffused sunrise. There was a spray of rain in the air. Nail parked at the curb beneath the overhang of a giant spruce down the block from Wiedersham’s place. He and Judy in the rusty old Toyota looked as out of place in this neighborhood as two whores in church. To cover their asses against nosy neighbors and even nosier cops and Homies, Nail had lifted a couple of magnetic signs off a parked truck and slapped them on either door of the Toyota:
Hughes’ Landscaping Service.

“Dennis wasn’t no bad man at heart,” Judy said while they waited. She stared at the broken locket and chain clutched in her hand.

Nail opened
The Notebook
, curious about what else he might discover in it. Entries in the thick steno pad went back for nearly a year, apparently to when Trout began struggling with his conscience. It was dynamite stuff alluding to conspiracies, betrayals, crimes, and suspected crimes...

Joe was talking on the phone with that Homeland prick Vladimir when Tea Baggers were marching on the Capitol. I overheard him say, “Fuck them. Create an incident.” After that, I heard the shooting...

It tears me apart not to tell Judy about her cousin. They were close; she talks about him quite a bit. I’m not sure what all this is about, how Joe can be involved in so much shit. This is mafia stuff, having Judy’s cousin hanged. And in a cemetery...!

Nobody fucks with Joe. He’s the go-to guy to get things done without anyone knowing. He talks to George Zuniga, to the President... Then strange things happen. Jerry Baer is gone, that judge from Louisiana ODs, congressmen from New Hampshire have car crashes... You don’t cross these people...

I think Joe is afraid of what that cop from Oklahoma will do. It seems the cop is out for revenge and if he finds out Joe was behind the helicopters... Well, he’s already killed the shooters, but that might not be enough...

Nail had to take a deep breath over that entry before he continued.

These people are starting to scare me. All the Global Government talk. They’re building detention camps, private armies, plotting euthanasia... Sometimes I feel like I’m living through the Stalin era...

Marilyn thinks I should be grateful to Joe for all he’s doing for us. I’m beginning to question if having my toast buttered is worth it. They’ll get rid of me too as soon as I’m no further use. Joe says President Anastos is a useful idiot and can be killed just the same as anyone else if he gets in the way or fails to live up to expectations...

Jerry Baer was a threat to what Joe calls “the Shadow Government.” Then that Lowenthal babe takes over and she has to go...

Judy nudged him. “There’s a limo coming.”

Black and long of the type contracted by the government from private companies to chauffeur around important politicians. It entered the opposite end of the street, eased slowly down the block in the misting rain, and pulled into Weidersham’s drive. Two men occupied it. It was precisely one minute until seven.

A lean man wearing a trench coat and gangster hat got out of the passenger’s side and walked to the front door, leaving the driver waiting with the limo engine running.

“I think that there’s Justin Cobb,” Judy said. “He took Dennis’ place when Dennis started running for Congress. Dennis said he carries a gun. Dennis never did own one. I guess that’s why he took mine.”

In spite of the hat and trench coat, the guy looked more like a pencil dick with a calculator than a gangster packing heat. Still, Smith & Wesson could turn a wimp into Machinegun Kelly.

A fat man in a rumpled but obviously expensive raincoat came out of the house and hurried with Cobb to the limo. Cobb opened the back door to allow him to slide onto the back seat. Nail’s eyes narrowed. He thought of the 30.06 in the trunk of his Toyota.

But for now, this corrupt piece of shit was more valuable alive than dead.

Center Warns Against “Patriots”

(New York)—
A report this week issued by The Center for American Justice (CAJ) profiled “40 individuals at the heart of the resurgent patriot movement.” The Federal Government considers CAJ its primary source for information regarding domestic terrorists from Rightwing militias, conservative and libertarian extremists. Here are the 40 names in order of perceived threat:

1. Sharon Lowenthal, host of Zenergy News’ anti-government The Jerry Baer Show w/Sharon Lowenthal;

2. Rush Limbaugh, conservative radio talk show host;

3. Joe Bannister, former IRS special agent, tax protester and Tea Party leader;

4. Chuck Baldwin, pastor, syndicated columnist, Constitution Party presidential nominee;

5. Robert Crooks, Iraq war veteran, anti-illegal immigration proponent;

6. Larry Pratt, Tea Party leader, militia member, executive director of Gun Owners of America;

7. Stewart Rhodes, army veteran, Yale Law graduate, founding member of Oath Keepers;

8. Michele Bachman, U.S. Representative from Minnesota;

9. Ron Paul, U.S. Air Force veteran, medical doctor, U.S. Representative from Texas, former Republican candidate for President...

Chapter Seventy-Nine

Colorado

From the tiny barred window of his cell, Lieutenant Jack Ross of the Tulsa Police Department had watched the buses arrive every day. As usual, one followed the other across the compound and disappeared beneath the “hospital” where he was being held. The windows of the buses were tinted opaque. Ross assumed the incoming “patients” were drugged, as he had been when he arrived by the same manner two weeks ago. When he revived, his abduction in Wichita and transportation here—wherever
here
was—seemed like the hazy memory of some bad dream. He was lying on a narrow military-style cot in a cold, bare room.

He opened his eyes and blinked twice at a burning light bulb on the ceiling. The ceiling and walls were painted in hospital beige. A voice asked, “What did you do?”

“Huh?”

He swung his legs gingerly to the floor and caught his head in both hands. He rubbed his face to restore awareness. Someone had stripped off his police uniform and replaced it with green hospital scrubs. His shoes and socks were gone. He looked up through his fingers after a moment. A skinny kid who appeared to be about eighteen or so sat on the other cot. He also wore scrubs.

“Where am I?” Ross murmured through his grogginess.

The kid shrugged. “Rocky Mountains, I think. We’re mushrooms—kept in the dark and fed bullshit.”

He got up and padded to the barred window. The pane was tinted red from the setting sun. He had to stand on tiptoes to look out.