Homefront: The Voice of Freedom (30 page)

“Show me.”

The DJ left the engineer sitting on the floor, nursing his wound. He took Salmusa and two other men to the back of the station and pointed at the broken door jamb. The Korean considered that the men might be telling the truth. However, he needed to send a deterrent to the Voice of Freedom.

“Go back to your microphone,” he ordered. “I want you to broadcast something for me.”

Knowing better than to argue, the DJ returned to the studio booth and sat behind the console. Salmusa gestured with his pistol for the engineer to return to his seat and do his job. The Korean then entered the booth and stood behind the announcer. When the red light came on, the engineer said, “We’re live.”

“Repeat after me,” Salmusa commanded. “This message is to the Voice of Freedom and his network of rebels and dissidents.”

The man did as he was told.

“You will no longer use radio stations to make your disloyal and treasonous commentaries.” After the DJ replicated the words, Salmusa said, “Now
identify yourself and this station.” The man obeyed. “Now continue repeating what I say. To show you that your traitorous words will do you and the Resistance no good, the Korean People’s Army will hereby execute me and my engineer.”

The DJ’s eyes widened. He turned to Salmusa. “What?”

“
Say it!
” He lifted the Daewoo’s and touched the barrel to the man’s temple.

The announcer met the eyes of his colleague through the window separating the booth from the control room. One of the other soldiers also held a gun to the engineer’s head.

“To show you that your … what?”

“Traitorous words will do you and the Resistance no good …”

“Traitorous … words will do you … and the Resistance no good … oh God, please help us! Jesus Christ!”

Salmusa cruelly jammed the barrel into the side of the DJ’s head. “… the Korean People’s Army will hereby execute me and my engineer! Say it!”

“Please, don’t do this …”

Salmusa nodded at his man through the window. The soldier squeezed the trigger of his weapon and blew the engineer’s brains out. The DJ screamed.

“If you do not say the rest, I will torture you for hours and
then
execute you,” Salmusa said.

With tears running down his face, the DJ stammered, but he managed to get the rest out.

“Very good,” Salmusa said. Then he pulled the trigger, making sure the noisy discharge went out over the airwaves for all to hear.

   Walker and Wilcox set up their portable generator and radio in the seclusion of an abandoned gas station
three miles from the trailer park. At eight o’clock, they went on the air. The frequency on their board was still set to that of the religious radio station where they’d last made a transmission. As soon as Wilcox fine-tuned the signal, they heard a broadcast—the voice of a very frightened announcer reciting words that another man in the control booth was dictating.

“This message is to the Voice of Freedom and his network of rebels and dissidents.” Pause. “You will no longer use radio stations to make your disloyal and treasonous commentaries.” There was mumbling and then the DJ identified himself and the station’s call numbers. There was no doubt it was the same place where the couple had been.

There were more unintelligible words between the two men, and then the DJ asked, “What?”

“
Say it!
”

Pause. “To show you that your … what? … traitorous … words will do you … and the Resistance no good … oh God, please help us! Jesus Christ!”

The sound of a distorted thud made Walker and Wilcox jump. They shared a glance, instinctively identifying the cause. After a moment, the DJ continued through sobs. “Please, don’t do this …” Another pause, and then the announcer screamed bloody murder. After a further moment of inarticulate words between the men in the control booth, the DJ stammered and said, “… the Korean People’s Army will hereby execute me and my engineer!”

This was followed by the sharp, jolting sound of a gunshot.

The recording repeated after a short silence. It was obviously on a loop so it could be heard continuously.

“Oh, my God, Ben, we got those poor people killed,” Wilcox said.

Walker stood and walked away. He kicked a chair across the room. He picked up a screwdriver someone had left on the floor long ago and threw it hard at the wall.

“There’s something else, Kelsie,” he said. “I think I’m responsible for Las Vegas, too.”

“What do you mean?”

“The Koreans track our signals, right? They must have heard DJ Ben’s broadcasts, didn’t like them, and figured out they were coming from Vegas. I bet they bombed the city because of me.”

“You don’t know that, Ben. The Norks did it to exert their dominance over us. Come on, don’t go thinking that.”

Walker shook his head, leaned against a workbench, and breathed heavily until he came to a decision. With purpose, he strode back to the radio, picked up the microphone, and spoke.

“My fellow Americans, this is the Voice of Freedom. This message is for our Korean occupiers. I know you’re out there. How
dare
you murder innocent human beings. How dare
you
use
me
as a reason to slaughter people. Every one of you bastards is a
coward
. You have no honor. You have no decency. You are the scum of the earth, the lowest of the low. And you know what? Your Idiot Comrade Kim
Dung
-un is the biggest coward of you all. He sits over there on his puny ass, preaching to the world what a peace-loving dickhead he is, and all the while he gives the orders to do
this
to innocent people. Let me tell you something, you uninvited sons of bitches who are in our country. The Resistance is gonna kick your asses out. Mark my words! It may not be tomorrow and it may not be next month. It may not even be next year. But one day it’s going to happen, and you’re going to regret stepping foot on our
beloved soil. You are no better than slimy dung beetles, and we don’t want you here! The Resistance will
bury
you! Americans, are you with me? Are we going to
bury
these cowardly bastards? Are we going to kick our boots so far up their butts that our feet’ll bust out their noses?
Hell yeah!
Repeat after me!
Hell yeah!
Come on, louder—
Hell yeah!
Louder, louder!
Hell yeah! Hell yeah! Hell yeah!
”

He chanted for a full minute, screaming his lungs out, using the emotional outburst as a cathartic release for his pain. And when he stopped, Wilcox grabbed his arm.

“Ben,” she whispered. “Listen.”

At first he didn’t know what she was talking about.

Then he heard it. Voices. Outside.

Walker stood, went out the back door, and put his ears to the wind.

It was distant and it was faint, but it was in unison.

Hell yeah! Hell yeah! Hell yeah!

Thousands of voices across America had answered his call.

   Salmusa made it a point to monitor radio traffic at night. The Voice of Freedom usually made his transmissions between eight and midnight. He had heard the eight o’clock broadcast and the ensuing cry of protest that echoed in the sky. He was so angry that he walked out on a pedestrian-filled Kansas City street and shot the first person he saw.

When the chatter began later that evening, Salmusa recognized the Voice of Freedom and another network operative known only as “Derby.”

“It’s been a Hard Day’s Night, my friends,” the VoF said. “And I’m looking for a place of higher learning.”

“Tomorrow Never Knows,” Derby answered. “Not until ten o’clock, anyway.”

“I copy that, sir. This is the Voice of Freedom signing off.”

Salmusa stared at the radio speakers.
What was that all about?
Obviously it was code for something. However, there was something about the phraseology that rang a bell. He clapped his hands for Byun, his assistant, who obediently jumped into the superior’s office.

“Get me the transcripts of the Voice of Freedom’s last ten broadcasts.”

The underling fetched them quickly. Salmusa laid them on the table and studied the texts.

Then he smiled.

His former wife Kianna had been a Beatles fan. She had played the disgusting Western rock music until he was forced to wear earplugs. But some of the words, song titles, and lyrics sank in.

He thought he understood the code.

Salmusa stood and entered the room where his team was working.

“Find me a school—a college or a high school—that has a working radio station!” he commanded.

JULY 22, 2026

Derby and his janitor friend, Eric, quietly rode their bicycles toward the university’s loading dock. They stopped at the entrance of the long expanse of road that led to the campus. It bordered a lush park. They could barely see where they were going in the dim light.

“What time is it?” Eric asked.

“I don’t know. It’s almost ten. I hope we’re not late.”

“This makes me nervous.”

“Relax. It’ll be all right. The Voice of Freedom will
make his broadcast in five minutes and we’ll be gone before the Koreans can figure out we were here.”

The sky was black. There was no moon and the stars were hiding. Even though it was the middle of summer, Derby felt a chill in the air. “Come on, let’s get going.”

They rode on, pushing through the final mile to the campus. There were no cars in the parking lot in front; the building was dark and silent. They pedaled the bikes around to the back and stopped at the loading dock.

As soon as they dismounted, a floodlight cracked on, bathing the dock—and them—in bright light.

“Hands up! Do not move!”

The Korean officer barked the command through a megaphone. The voice was so loud and strident that the two men yelped in fright. The light blinded him, but Derby made out several uniformed soldiers pointing rifles at them. The man with the megaphone approached, now backlit so that his silhouette stood ominously before them.

“Which one of you is the Voice of Freedom?” he asked.

The men were too scared to speak.

“Or are you meeting the Voice of Freedom here and he hasn’t arrived yet?”

Salmusa moved closer so he could examine the fear in the captives’ faces. His eyes went from one to the other and back again. “You better speak, or I will kill one of you in three seconds. Are either of you the Voice of Freedom or his colleague Derby? I am counting to three. One.”

Derby swallowed.

“Two.”

“Wait! I am the Voice of Freedom!”

Salmusa wasn’t sure. The timbre and inflection in
the man’s speech was familiar, but it wasn’t what he’d expected. He addressed Eric. “And who are you?”

“I’m just a janitor here at the college.”

“And you were going to let the rebels into the radio station?”

Eric hesitated.

“Tell him the truth, Eric,” Derby said.

The man nodded. Salmusa smiled. He was pleased. He turned and clapped his hands. Four solders trotted to the threesome. Indicating the janitor, Salmusa said, “Take this man and hang him from one of the light poles in front of the college.”

“No!” Derby cried. “No!” There was nothing he could do. The troops dragged Eric away and around the building to the other side.

Salmusa eyed Derby again. “So you are the Voice of Freedom?”

“Yeah.”

“Prove it.”

“What?”

“Prove it. I want to hear you speak. Tell me what you were going to broadcast tonight. I want to hear you
in action.
”

Derby knew that wasn’t going to work. But could he warn the real Voice of Freedom not to show up? The man was probably on his way to the college at that very moment.

“May I use your megaphone?” Derby asked.

Salmusa was surprised by the request. “Why?”

“If this is my last broadcast, don’t you want me to share it with anyone who can hear?”

Salmusa thought,
Why not?
He handed over the device.

Derby fiddled with it for a second, making sure it was on and at full volume. He raised it to his mouth … and started singing at the top of his voice.

“
You better run for your life if you can, little girl, hide your head in the sand, little girl, catch you with another man, that’s the end, little girl!
”

Derby’s delivery resounded through the parking lot and beyond. He started to walk toward the floodlight, continuing to sing.

“
You better run for your life if you can, little girl, hide your head in the sand, little girl, catch you with another man, that’s the—
”

A gunshot interrupted the performance. Salmusa lowered the Daewoo and watched the dissident drop to the pavement and bleed to death.

   Walker and Wilcox heard it all.

They had left the SUV in a secluded spot in the park across from the college. They were walking along the road near the campus with their radio equipment in backpacks when the megaphone singing filled the air.

“That’s Derby!” Walker whispered.

The gun blast abruptly ended the song.

“Christ. That was the Beatles song, ‘Run For Your Life.’ He was trying to warn us. Let’s get out of here!”

Keeping to the shadows, the couple quickly moved back to a densely wooded area in the park and watched in horror as the Koreans hung a man from a light pole in front of the main building.

“Is that him?” Wilcox asked.

“I don’t think so. That must be his friend.”

They waited in the dark for an hour. Finally, the Koreans left in a Humvee that was parked in the blackness behind the school. When they felt it was safe, the couple returned to the SUV and escaped.

They stopped at an old, rundown drive-in theater. After parking the SUV, Walker started to set up the portable radio.

“What are you doing?”

“It’s almost midnight. I want to hear something.”

He was very shaken by what had occurred. Because of him, now at least four men had given their lives for the Voice of Freedom Network’s cause. Walker had not anticipated the bloodshed.

“I’ve been naïve, Kelsie,” he said. “Why didn’t I think people might die for this?”

“Ben, it’s not your fault. Come on, we all know what we’re doing is dangerous. It’s a risk and we signed on for it. Don’t beat yourself up.”