Block the runway. Was the guardsman telling the truth, or was this only a rumor? Or was he a plant to spread disinformation?
The general was consulting a map of the base with his security officer, a major, when Colonel Wriston stopped his column at the place he and his deputy commander had been that morning.
A lowboy behind the colonel’s Humvee off-loaded a bulldozer, which scraped dirt to fill in the ditch between the road and the perimeter fence. The job was done in less than two minutes. More bulldozers off-loaded from lowboys. They quickly tore out fifty yards of eight-foot-high, chain-link, barbed-wire-topped fence and shoved it to one side. A tank covered with soldiers went through the gap.
Wriston watched his tanks, bulldozers, road graders, earthmovers, trucks, and buses full of guardsmen as they rolled through the gap and disappeared in a cloud of dust. Many of Wriston’s men were heavy-equipment operators in civilian life, which had made commandeering so much equipment relatively easy; it was theirs, and by parking it on the Dyess runway, they’d be putting themselves out of work. Well, he suspected Jack Hays would want full-time soldiers.
The drivers of the tanks soon spread out until all four were running abreast raising dust clouds. This had the unintended consequence of blinding the drivers of the vehicles behind them, who were also trying to spread out to avoid colliding with everyone in front. Watching his column disintegrate, Colonel Wriston was reminded of his experience in tanks in the deserts of Iraq. He hated deserts. He climbed into his Humvee and headed off behind them to supervise this operation. If they didn’t get the runways blocked, this whole adventure was for naught.
In the leftmost tank, the tank commander saw an air force SUV charging across the prairie toward him. There were four people in it, apparently. It came to a stop fifty yards in front of him, and the driver jumped out, holding up his right hand in the universal signal to stop.
“Shoot out his radiator,” the tank commander told his machine gunner.
The burst of the .30-caliber apparently holed the SUV’s radiator, because a cloud of steam shot forth from under the hood. The other three occupants of the vehicle jumped out with their hands in the air. Two guardsmen dropped off the tank, which speeded back up. The guardsmen disarmed the air police, pointed them at the hangar complex two miles away, and told them to start hiking.
“You can’t do this,” the air force sergeant protested.
“We already did,” a soldier answered. “Git.” They grabbed the guns in the SUV and on the ground, then ran to the left, the west, to get away from oncoming vehicles. Colonel Wriston saw them as he came up and stopped to give them a ride.
A small group, one bulldozer and three earthmovers, peeled off to block the short runway. The main column clanked up to the long runway, an awesome sight with more than two miles of thick concrete stretching before them, three hundred feet wide.
Wriston sped past the lead tanks and went a third of the way down the runway. He knew how far he was because he stopped just past the big “8” sign, marking eight thousand feet remaining to the end. He gestured to two of the tanks, and they came to a stop, then turned sideways. Other equipment would also park there.
Wriston got back in the Humvee and rolled on to the “4,000 feet remaining” sign. He stopped there and awaited his vehicles.
The operation went well, he thought. As some of the soldiers stood guard, the two tanks and four pieces of construction equipment were parked. Mechanics worked on the treads of the tanks, then the tanks ran off the treads. Bulldozers were similarly disabled. The tires of the earthmovers were shredded with automatic weapons fire.
While this was going on, four air police vehicles came rushing toward them, two on the runway and two on the adjacent taxiway. Machine-gun fire and automatic weapons fire over the top of the vehicles convinced the drivers to turn around and retreat.
Hand grenades were placed in engine bays, and guardsmen ran from the explosions. It was over in less than eight minutes. When all his guardsmen were on buses and trucks going back toward the hole in the fence, Colonel Wriston surveyed the blockade and followed along in his Humvee. The men and women of the Guard couldn’t have done it any better if they had practiced it every day for a week, he thought proudly. Then he followed his retreating vehicles.
General l’Angistino had watched the dust cloud and activity on the runway from his office with binoculars. When the guardsmen had departed, he rode out to the mess of abandoned equipment and surveyed it with his fists on his hips.
His chief of staff rolled up in an air police sedan. “You know what to do,” he said to the colonel. “Get busy and get this stuff off the runway. As quickly as possible.”
Air force crash crews were still moving equipment at dark, when General l’Angistino went home. He had of course notified GSC and Washington of the runway obstructions, but other than a terse message to report when the runway was open again, nothing else was said.
NINE
There was an old sleeping bag in the workroom of the lock shop, and I spent the night in it. Willie had the television on when I woke up.
The news this Sunday morning was that Texas had declared its independence during the wee hours of the morning. I listened while I helped myself to a cup of coffee.
“The world is movin’ right along, Tommy,” Willie said. “Texas declared itself free of the US of A, and Barry Soetoro is havin’ a shit fit. He says that the right-wing conspiracy was more virulent than he and his advisors suspected. This should silence any critics of martial law. And so on.”
The coffee was hot and black, and strong enough to take the enamel off your teeth, but a man can’t have everything. Idly, I thought about Sarah’s coffee — hers was several times better than this stuff. Maybe I should have tried to wheedle her into letting me sleep on her couch last night. Or in her bed.
“Guess we’re back to forty-nine states,” Willie said philosophically, “if Texas can make Soetoro eat it. Kinda doubt that they can, but who knows. He was on the tube a minute ago, and was he ever pissed! Babbled about treason. Treachery. Betrayal. The malignant tumors in high offices.”
“Good help is hard to find these days.”
“Want an egg?”
“Yeah, that would be good.”
“Well, we ain’t got any, this bein’ a lock shop. No pancakes or bacon or ham or toast. I brought in a half-dozen doughnuts for me this mornin’; if you want one I can spare it.”
“That’s mighty white of you.”
“Don’t get racial, dude.”
“What else don’t we have?”
“Lots of stuff. Got toilet paper, though. White toilet paper.”
“That’s the best kind.”
“Can’t believe that they let us black folk wipe our asses with it.”
I took my coffee to the restroom and settled on the throne. I reflected that Willie Varner had reminded me once again why no female on the planet had succumbed to his charms and leaped into matrimony.
The Texas revolt was good news, I thought. The dung beetles at the White House now had something to think about besides forcing confessions from people like Grafton. Perhaps. Maybe they would decide that Grafton was partly responsible for the bad attitude in Austin.
I dressed, drank another cup of Willie’s coffee-colored enamel-eater, and then headed over to McDonald’s for a sausage and egg biscuit and a cup of decent coffee. I made some phone calls. Called some of the covert warriors I knew, guys I had served with in various third world shitholes. Two were at home. I asked if I could come by. They said yes.
Willis Coffee lived in Bethesda. His wife answered the door and told me he was around back in the garden. It looked more like a flower bed with vegetables, a few onions and some scraggly lettuce. He was hoeing.