“Answer the question, Sal,” Grafton prompted.
Molina took a deep breath and looked around for eavesdroppers. Finally he said in a low voice, “Yes. They told the president he had to do it. It would be unpopular, but martial law was the only way to save the progressive revolution. Soetoro loved it. This was his chance to change the course of history, to save the planet. The bastard has a messianic complex.”
“He’s got a lot of complexes,” Jake Grafton muttered.
“More than you can imagine. For example, Barry and Mickey do S and M. She’s a dominatrix. I guess he needs it, although don’t ask me why. They didn’t talk about that kind of stuff in psych class when I went to college.”
“Hell, that’s old news,” Yocke scoffed. “For seven years I’ve heard rumors that Soetoro is gay. People have even accused him of being a gay prostitute when he was younger, servicing old queens for drugs.”
Grafton asked Yocke, “So how come your fine newspaper hasn’t investigated these rumors about Soetoro?”
“The editors don’t think that crap is news,” the Post’s man explained. “They’re liberals. Some of them are gay, and for all I know some of them are swingers or dig S and M. Soetoro is liberal and black. He gets a pass. Now if he were some white Republican presidential candidate, they’d have had reporters investigate every day of his life from the moment his mom popped him out. You’d be reading about spitwads he threw in second grade and how many hours of detention hall he got in junior high.” Yocke made a gesture dismissing the whole subject.
After a pause he asked Molina, “So why does Soetoro want to frame Grafton for plotting an assassination?”
“Spymasters are good villains,” Molina explained. “They do a lot of secret shit they can never tell about, so people will believe almost any accusation. And the president doesn’t like Grafton. And, of course, right-wing plots give the public something to talk about instead of terrorism and jihad in America. And S and M. Matt Drudge got the story from some Secret Service guy and was trying to get confirmation when a White House maid ratted him out. Still, Drudge might have broken the story anyway, so Soetoro had that hanging over his head when the terrorists did their thing. That helped push Soetoro to martial law now.”
“He doesn’t like a lot of people,” Yocke replied. “Is he going to frame them all?”
“Oh no. He’s just going to lock them up in concentration camps. Hitler and Stalin wrote the playbook.”
“I suppose they grabbed Matt Drudge.”
“He was locked up before the declaration. He’s in solitary someplace. Drudge isn’t the Washington Post; he would have run the story.”
“So you’re telling me that we’re sitting in a concentration camp and the United States is about to bomb Texas because Soetoro is a pervert?”
“That’s about the size of it. As my old Marxist professors used to say, ‘The personal is the political.’”
We were leaving the restaurant when Sarah Houston said to me, “Are you going to sleep at the lock shop tonight?”
“Yes, unless I get a better offer.”
“I feel the need for your manly presence to reassure me,” she said.
“That’s a better offer.”
In the parking lot we agreed to meet at the lock shop tomorrow morning at eight. “This is it, guys,” I told them. “Bring whatever you need for the op. I have no idea when we’ll be back.”
“After Barry Soetoro is dead,” Travis Clay said gloomily.
“Christmas, maybe,” Willis Coffee offered.
“The Fourth of July,” Willie the Wire chimed in. “Bring an extra set of underwear.”
On that note we parted.
Back at Sarah’s place, she fixed drinks, Grand Marnier this time. “I didn’t know you kept this stuff around,” I remarked.
“For the road,” she told me, and lifted her glass.
In bed she whispered, “You know we will probably all soon be dead.”
“No one lives forever.” That was a stupid remark. I sounded brave, which was a lie. Bravery is not on my short list of virtues. I’m anything but.
“I want more of this,” she said.
“Me too,” I agreed. The hell with it. Live today…
Wiley Fehrenbach and JR Hays decided to welcome any contingent that came to take the El Paso National Guard armory with a little ambush, then the ambushers would evade. Washington was probably lighting a fire under Lee Parker, so it was just a matter of time before he sent troops to the armory. This time it wouldn’t be ten troopers and a colonel. This time he’d send the first team, some tanks, and maybe an infantry company, all with orders to shoot to kill.
Army Apache helicopters were already circling the area. Armed with Hellfire missiles and rockets, they could incinerate any vehicle, and their Gatling guns were hell on exposed troops.
The Apaches were the reason the Guard hadn’t moved from the compound all day. Let the army open the ball, Wiley Fehrenbach and JR Hays reasoned, while they waited for the Fort Hood helicopters that were the equalizers. Every minute brought them closer.
JR was in Fehrenbach’s office. He heard thunder and watched lightning from the window. A soldier rushed in; three colonels followed.
“Sir,” the soldier blurted. “Four tanks and four Bradleys are coming out the main gate of Fort Bliss.”
Wiley Fehrenbach looked at his colonels and said, “You know what to do.”
The colonels saluted, “Yes, sir!”
“Wait!” JR roared. He got on a handheld radio. “Milestone One Six, this is JR.”
“One Six, go ahead.”
JR could hear the engine; the Blackhawk was airborne.
“At least four tanks and four Bradleys are coming from Fort Bliss, probably headed toward the armory. We need you to take out any airborne Apaches you can find, over.”
“Can do.”
“Leave the stuff on the ground to us. Over.”
“One Six copies. Out.”
“Some of those Apaches are ours, along with a Blackhawk,” JR told the colonels. “Don’t let your men shoot at a helicopter unless they are absolutely sure it’s the enemy. Now go.”
For the first time that day, JR felt optimistic. Lee Parker had dithered too long.
He got more news when a trooper announced, “We’re destroying the decryption gear, sir, so the army doesn’t get it.” JR nodded, and the trooper handed him a batch of messages from Camp Mabry.
The first was from Loren Snyder: “She can be moved. I’m searching for men.”
Another, from Elvin Gentry: “Dyess surrendered. Airplanes, weapons depot, and fuel facilities not sabotaged. Am recruiting crews. Awaiting further orders.”
FIFTEEN
Lightning was flashing from the clouds and gusts of rain and wind were pounding on the Blackhawk as it ran at a hundred feet above the housetops toward the El Paso National Guard armory, the coordinates of which the crew had punched into their GPS systems. The Blackhawk rocked and rolled in the turbulence. Fortunately the myriad lights of the city were still on, houses alight, street lights, traffic on the boulevards, so they had a good ground reference. Two Apaches were behind the Blackhawk, one on the right, one on the left.
If the city had been blacked out, Sabiston would have kept his crews on the ground. Still, they could go into inadvertent IFR conditions at any moment if some of this cloud dripped toward the ground, or if they hit a column of rain, or if the ground rose up into a cloud. If they flew under a thunderstorm, with its river of cold air descending out the bottom, all bets would be off: It would be all the pilots could do to keep their machines from being driven into the ground. Or a house. Or a school. Or a telephone pole. Of course, the same held true for the army pilots in their Apaches. Sabiston was listening on the Fort Bliss air traffic frequencies, trying to discover how many of their Apaches were airborne.