Foreign Enemies and Traitors (78 page)

Boone wasn’t finished.  “And here you sit, a natural-born American citizen, a commissioned United States Army officer—but I don’t see the stars and stripes on your shoulder, Tony.  Instead of Old Glory, you’re wearing a badge with three stars for three nations.  ‘Three Nations, One America’ might sound good to some people, but to us, it’s just one more goddamn lie they’re trying to shove down our throats—and by God, we won’t take it!  The United States is still one sovereign country—not just one-third of North America!  And that means all fifty of the United States, no matter what the president and the Congress say.  You swore an oath to the Constitution of the United States,
not
to the North American Union.”

“But…but West Texas isn’t under the old constitution any more.  After Philadelphia, after the Aztlan Agreement, the Southwest is—”

Boone cut him off.  “Tony!  You’re back to that false constitution again!  That bullshit doesn’t fly in my courtroom.  Stick with the
real
Constitution, the
original
Constitution.  The
only
Constitution.  Now, please explain to me how it was that you swore an oath to defend the Constitution of the United States, but now you’re wearing those North American Legion badges on your uniform and you have a Legion ID card in your wallet.”

Lieutenant Malverde seemed to have given up hope of convincing Boone of his reasons, and Boone was clearly the only one in the trailer whose opinion mattered.  He looked at the loaded SR-25 rifle lying across the arms of Boone’s chair.  His inquisitor could turn it 90 degrees and pull the trigger anytime he chose.  “What difference does it make what I say?  You’re just going to kill me anyway,” he mumbled, shaking his head and slumping forward, his forearms on his knees.

“Not necessarily.  But you do pose a problem—you can identify us.  You know what happened back in Carrolton.  You even know about this shitty little junkyard safehouse.  So you’re a problem for us.  We can’t just let you go.  Offhand, I’d say that you need to make yourself valuable to us.  You’re what, Tony, twenty-two or -three?  Hell, at twenty-three I made all kinds of mistakes.  Big ones.  Fortunately, none of them were fatal, or we wouldn’t be having this little chat today.  You actually seem like a pretty nice guy—except for the treason thing.  But there’s no getting around it, treason’s a big deal, considering that we’re in a civil war.  Especially with foreign mercenaries running around Tennessee, shooting women and children.  That sort of raises the ante.  So treason counts very large in my book.  And let’s face it, you’d be a prime witness against us.  So you need to provide me with something of value, something to put on the other side of the scale when we weigh the evidence.  Otherwise…”

From his position standing in the kitchen passageway Doug suddenly exclaimed, “Oh, no—we can’t just kill him!  He’s our prisoner.  He’s a prisoner of war.  We can’t just kill him.”

Boone turned toward the kitchenette, surprised at Dolan’s unexpected outburst.  “Then you’re okay with him pointing the finger at you and sending you to the gallows?”

“I didn’t say that.  But we can’t just kill him.  I won’t be a part of it.  I’ve been down that road, and I won’t go down it again.”

“Then what do you suggest?”

“We could tie him up, and then we could call somebody later on.  Once we’re in a safe place.”

“But there
is
no safe place, and this trailer is valuable to us.  More valuable than Tony here, I’m afraid.  This is war, not a game.  This is realworld, not an exercise.  If he’s debriefed by the traitor government, he’ll blow this place and we’ll lose a valuable asset.”

“Then we could take him with us and let him go later, when we’re somewhere else.”

“But he’d still know about this place, and about us.  It’s not like he’ll forget.  We can’t erase his memory.  He’ll be debriefed.”

“Then we could take him with us and keep him for a while.  Then we could use him for a prisoner exchange.  Trade him,” Doug suggested.

“Take him with us to
where
?” asked Boone.  “Where is our safe territory, our home base?  We have no sanctuary.  We don’t even have a base camp.  Do you think we’re running POW camps in a dirty war?”

“Well,” said Doug, “we could send him back to West Texas, if he swore on his word of honor to leave Tennessee and never come back.  They did that in the first Civil War all the time.  It was called honor parole.  They didn’t just shoot prisoners, not even when they were captured on raids in enemy territory.  Not the rebels, and not the Yankees.  They didn’t do it.”

“That’s foolish,” Boone replied.  “We could never trust him to keep his word.”

“But at least it’s an option!  They did that thousands of times in the Civil War.  Don’t just automatically rule it out.”

“Maybe they did that in the last Civil War.  But it’s different today.”

Doug asked, “How is it different?”

Boone looked at the lieutenant, and then at Doug, and said, “They had
honor
back then.  Both sides.  A man’s word of honor really meant something.  And prisoners could practically walk home.  It’s a long way back to Laredo.  Do you think he can make it there without being picked up as AWOL from the Legion?  What’s he going to do then?  How can he explain himself, an officer leaving his post?  That’s desertion in
any
army.  No, I’m sorry, we can’t just let him go.”

During this exchange the prisoner had been staring at the floor, his elbows on his knees, holding his head.  Then he turned his face back up and looked at each of his three captors, trying to catch their gaze but finding them turning away.  “I would do it, I swear to God I would do it,” he said in a hush, with more than a hint of desperation in his voice.  “I’d go back to Texas and
never
come back here.  I would just disappear—gone.  I don’t belong here, this isn’t my fight!”  He extended his hands, wrists held together.  “Tie me up, like he said.  Tie me up and leave me here.  Leave me anywhere—or take me with you, whatever you decide!  When you let me go, I’ll catch a bus or a train back to Texas, and I’ll never cross the Mississippi again as long as I live.  I’ll hitchhike, I’ll walk.  I give you my
word of honor
.  I swear to God, I swear on my mother.”  Malverde slumped forward in his chair again, trying to hide his fear.

Doug said, “At least
think
about it.  Can you at least do that?  Think about it?”  Then, with the captive officer looking down, he whispered almost inaudibly to Boone, “
We’re not murderers
.”

After a full minute of silence, Boone said, “I’ll think about it.”

****

Director Bullard sat behind the driver
of his black Chevy Suburban, for the five-minute drive from UAV flight operations back to headquarters in Building 1405.  He would take his lunch there today.  His assistant, Jeff Sinclair, was on the phone, sitting next to him in the middle seat.  The driver and front seat passenger were his top bodyguards.  Only on Fort Campbell did he travel in a single vehicle without extra security.  Bullard was in his usual khaki.  Today the men up front were wearing black tactical pants and bulky black coats concealing their weapons.  A pair of MP5 submachine guns were bracketed beneath the dashboard, the heavy stuff was in the back.  Jeff Sinclair, the only one in the Suburban who was wearing a jacket and tie, was speaking quietly on the secure phone, mostly listening while making only brief comments and interrogatives. 

The morning trip over to UAV flight ops had produced mixed results.  The missing humvee had not been located, but there was at least some good news.  The ravine outside Mannville had been bulldozed flat and planted with tiny pine trees.  At least Colonel Burgut had taken care of that important job.  Bullard had been able to direct the Predator’s camera and briefly scan the area, without bringing attention to it or raising questions, another positive aspect.

His assistant replaced the secure phone in its cradle.  “That was operations.  Our investigative team is in Carrolton; they’ve already been to the garage.  They also interviewed the morning watch at the Tennessee River bridge.  The Legion provides security for both sides of the State Road  214 bridge.  There’s a NAL company based there in Carrolton.”

“I got that already.”

“Right.  Well, one of the guards who was on duty at the bridge remembers a humvee with a Legion colonel in it, crossing the river eastbound.  So far, nobody knows what unit this colonel belongs to, if any.  A lieutenant was driving.  Apparently, all the bridge guard saw of them was their rank devices, and he waved them through.  A NAL lieutenant and a humvee are missing from the garrison in Carrolton.  Two of the missing lieutenant’s men were killed in the gas station, along with the gas station owner.  It’s believed that this lieutenant was driving the humvee under duress when it crossed the bridge.  That’s the working theory.”

“This bridge guard was a Mexican?”

“Uh, I believe that’s correct.”

“Typical,” said Bullard.  “If they were any dumber, they wouldn’t be able to tie their own shoes.  Or boots, or whatever they wear.  Was there any video of this humvee?”

“No, not at the bridge, but we got something at the Lynnville FEMA camp.  It’s grainy, but it shows a Legion humvee driving north.  State Road 13 goes right through the camp.”

“I’ve been there.  A Wal-Mart and a Home Depot are all fenced in.”

“That’s the place.  The timeline fits the humvee that crossed the bridge.  Nobody is claiming that vehicle, so we’re assuming it was the one taken at the gas station in Carrolton.  Apparently, on the video the three North American Legion stars are visible on the door, but you can’t make out any numbers.  The film was shot on the old Home Depot system, so they were able to access it at headquarters.”  Bullard’s assistant didn’t need to mention that digital surveillance video from all of the national chain stores was fed into federal law enforcement channels in real time.  This had been the case for years.

“Home Depot?  And that’s it?  That’s the only video?”

“That’s the only video that’s been located so far.  If that humvee was the same one that crossed the bridge, it could be the same group that killed the Legion soldiers in Carrolton, and working backwards—”

“I know.  The Nigerians, and the Kazaks in Radford County.”

“Yes sir.”

“Damn.”  Bullard stared out the SUV’s side window as they passed row after row of semi-derelict desert-tan Army trucks, parked behind chain link fences on vast motor pool lots.

Sinclair said, “This group would appear not to be your average rebel insurgents.  These are not just a few Billy Bobs with deer rifles.”

Bullard grunted, but said nothing beyond “No shit.”  He was too busy pondering how these events might eventually be connected to his own personal involvement with the Kazak Battalion.  This string of killings went back to Mannville, near the location of Saturday’s massacre.  On a map in his mind, Bullard visualized the line of connected dots.  And now that line was pointing straight north, toward Fort Campbell.  Why?

Besides the obscure black operation sometimes known as the Department of Rural Pacification, what other groups were stationed at Fort Campbell?  Along with what remained of the 101st Airborne Division and a shitload of old trucks and helicopters, there were, notably, the Green Berets.  He passed the brown brick two-story buildings belonging to the 5th Special Forces Group almost every day.  Stationed there were a thousand super-patriotic and gung-ho overgrown Boy Scouts.  Eagle Scouts.  Eagle Scouts with machine guns and sniper rifles.  Scouts who could cut your throat with one hand and sew you back up with the other.  He saw them every day in their PT gear, jogging all over Fort Campbell in large and small groups.

If anybody could hijack a Kazak ASV and wipe out dozens of allied troops in a single killing spree, it was them—the goddamn Green Berets.  Bullard didn’t trust them any more than President Tambor did.  They were more loyal to quaint but passé notions of “duty, honor, country” than they were to their own government, even during this time of exceptional national emergency.  For this reason, they were virtually restricted to Fort Campbell and their other bases, and given no missions inside the United States.  The only time the Green Berets left Fort Campbell or Fort Bragg in uniform with weapons was when they were being flown halfway around the globe to third-world shit holes, on diplomatic photo-op tours.  They were paid and kept on the government rolls primarily to keep them isolated and out of mischief.

Bob Bullard didn’t believe in coincidences.  That line of dots, punctuated at each stop with bloody corpses, was coming his way.  He knew it.  He had felt safe and secure, believing that the rural pacification program was effectively hidden deep within a gigantic federal reservation that was strictly off limits to the general public.  But with this latest series of events, he felt his cloak of security disappearing like a morning mist under the hot sun.

“Sir?  Sir?”  His assistant had to repeat himself several times to get his boss’s attention.  “The Legion humvee, should we put out a BOLO alert?  Should we have Predators search the area north of the Lynnville FEMA camp?”

“What?  Oh, sure, do all that.  And let’s turn around.  Let’s go back to flight ops.  We can send out for lunch.”  At headquarters in Building 1405, he could only listen to reports and wait passively while events unfolded around him.  Bullard had little hope that they’d find the humvee or its crew of killers, but flight ops was where he could observe the situation in real time, and make things happen like God Almighty Himself.  It might even be time to drop a little something on Colonel Burgut, who still knew far too much, even if he had bulldozed the ravine.

                                                       
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