Marquart went back through the camp, taking his time. There might be some guards still around, and they would undoubtedly be in a pissy mood.
The back gate of the compound was standing open. More bodies lying round. He surmised this was from the machine-gun fire he had heard. Six more bodies lay on the porch and dirt in front of the guards’ barracks. One of the men wasn’t dead; he was groaning and his legs worked back and forth in the dirt. Marquart didn’t get near him.
The wooden sides of the building had been raked by machine-gun fire. Maybe there were more dead or wounded in there, but Marquart wasn’t curious enough to go inside to find out.
He examined the vehicles. One car with a body lying beside it seemed undamaged. As he checked the pockets of the corpse, which hadn’t bled much, he noted the man had taken four rounds in the chest, any one of which would probably have been fatal. He found a set of keys. They fit in the ignition. He started the engine, which seemed to run okay. Half a tank of gas. Bjerki stood by the driver’s door. Marquart ran the window down. “I’m leaving,” he said. “You want to come, get in.”
Bjerki walked around the front of the car and climbed into the passenger’s seat. He held his M4 between his knees. “Where are you going?”
“To the revolution.”
“Be a shame if they had one without us,” New Jersey Bjerki said.
“Put on your seatbelt.”
Marquart pulled the lever to get the car into drive, and they rolled.
On their way back to Longview, Nate Danaher said to JR Hays, “You understand that if we attack Barksdale, the gloves will be off.”
“Sure.”
“You’ve talked this over with your cousin?”
“Yes.”
“He understands that this is not a declaration of independence; it’s a declaration of war?”
“Nate, you and I know Barry Soetoro isn’t going to let Texas go without a fight. For us, the only decision to be made is whether we let Soetoro strike the first blow. Politically, it would be wise to let him be the aggressor. Militarily, not so wise. If Texas is going to win its independence, it must seize the military initiative and never let it go.”
Danaher nodded.
“If we let Soetoro pick and choose his points of attack, we will ultimately lose our organized military forces and be reduced to years of guerilla warfare. In the long run, I think we could win a guerilla war, but it will destroy Texas and ultimately cost more lives than an offensive that takes the fight out of Texas and into Soetoro’s territory. Jack thought that a Texas offensive would, in the long run, cause Soetoro to lose political control of the country. Soetoro must show his supporters he can win the battles, or else he will lose the war. He’s already on record as saying that he will crush Texas. I don’t think he thought that statement through very well, because Jack can say we are responding to an imminent threat, and everyone south of Canada will believe him. Barry Soetoro doesn’t want to negotiate: he wants war. We must give it to him in spades.”
“An assault on the base really ought to happen at night. Tonight would have been ideal. Tomorrow night would be the next choice.”
“We can’t wait. By tomorrow night they may have flown those B-52s out of here or arranged AAA and SAMs, plus a reception committee on the ground. In addition to air police, they can fly some troops up from Fort Polk. By tomorrow night they might be ready to kick our butts. So we must go as soon as we can get ready. The C-130s are already at Hood, and the troops, all volunteers, are getting ready. We just need you to brief them, set it up, and go. Tomorrow morning at perhaps nine o’clock is about the earliest possible time. In my judgment, we dare not wait. We cannot wait.”
“What are you going to do about that brigade combat team from Fort Polk? And those paratroops? They could push us right off Barksdale and back into Texas.”
“I’m going to bomb them while you are taking Barksdale.”
Danaher thought for a few minutes as the miles rolled by. Finally he said, “Okay, I’ll do it. Gina can stay with our daughter. Let’s saddle up.”
“Welcome to the Texas Guard.”
“Welcome to the war, you mean.”
“Yeah, that too.”
“I don’t know if I have another war in me, but I guess we’ll all find out,” Nate Danaher said softly.
The CIA safe house was in the woods of a large farm that the locals thought belonged to an eccentric novelist. That was the agency’s cover story, anyway. It was midnight when we entered by a gravel driveway, passing by signs that announced “Private Property, No Trespassing” and “Trespassers Will Be Persecuted and Prosecuted, This Means You.” The one-lane road led across a large meadow, passing a wooden hangar and a barn, and crossed a grass runway and then a bridge across a creek. Security cameras were mounted unobtrusively on trees and under the eaves of the hangar and barn. I led the way.
The safe house was used for interrogating defectors, Russians and Eastern Europeans back in the day, and now Islamic jihadists. I doubted if there was anyone there just now due to the current state of national affairs, but I was ready in case we met anyone. We didn’t. No one was at the guard’s cottage, and the gate was locked. Willie the Wire worked on it awhile and couldn’t get it open, so we used a tow chain to pull the gate down and off the road. Willie’s one skill in life is opening any lock without a key, yet he had just had his first taste of combat so he was a little shook up.
There was no one at the main house. After an incident a couple years ago when some bent FBI agents and former cops burned the house down, the place had been rebuilt. I was involved in that fracas, and hadn’t been here since.
Willie opened the front door for us, partially redeeming himself. While the guys fired up a gasoline generator out back, I explored the layout and found that the new building had a small medical room. It contained an X-ray machine and one that I thought was probably an EKG machine. Some other equipment that I couldn’t identify. I had the guys take Jake Grafton in there and put him on the gurney.
Grafton was conscious and obviously hurting. “He needs a doctor,” Sarah said with a frown.
“I’ll go get one.”
I drove back to the hard road and went into Greenbank, and found a small white cinderblock building that said “Clinic” on the sign. It was closed of course, but a sign by the door gave a number to call in case of medical emergencies.
Back in the FEMA truck, I fired up the GPS, played with the options, and found one labeled “phone number.” I clicked on it and a prompt appeared. I put in the area code, which was 304, and the number. In about two seconds a red pin appeared. Five more seconds, and the computer filled in a map with directions from my present position to the pin.
It was eight miles away. I rolled.
The doctor’s house was on a secondary road at the top of the grade, in a saddle where there was a nice view. I went up his drive and, late as it was, found a man and woman sitting beside an outdoor fireplace with drinks in their hands. I got out and went over.
“Doctor?”
“Yes. Nathan Proudfoot.” He was about six feet, thin, perhaps sixty years old, with cropped hair and a mustache.
“My name is Tommy Carmellini. I’m with FEMA. We have a medical emergency down the road a little ways and could certainly use your services. Could you come with me?”