#Payback.
“Great sermon, Reverend, but do you always have to be so political? Might get you in trouble one of these days.”
Gorgas shook the old preacher’s hand in a particular way. With only the briefest hesitation, the clergyman returned the countersign with his thumb.
“My dear fellow, I always render onto Caesar what is Caesar’s, but free speech is no sin and surely no crime.”
Gorgas tried to keep his pleasant demeanor. What was with the code? Surely this man recognized him. The Feds had a five million dollar reward on his head, for Christ’s sakes.
“Well these are strange days, sir. What ever happened to turning the other cheek, like in Matthew 5:39?”
The preacher smiled. “In these dark times, I find solace in the Lord of the Old Testament. I suggest you study it too. Start with 1 Samuel 8:7.” He turned his back quickly and went off shaking hands and “fellowshipping” with the other couple hundred members of his congregation.
Gorgas glanced at the nervous members of his executive cell behind him and wandered out a side door. They all casually followed. Outside on the mega-church’s sprawling campus, his fellow leaders weren’t so quiet.
“I don’t care how important you think this soldier is, Gorgas. Why should we risk meeting him in person? With the president tightening the martial law screws, I say the fewer people that see our faces, the better.”
Gorgas kept walking towards building eight a short distance away and paused just before room seven. “The problem isn’t that the Feds know our faces. The real issue is that regular people know us too well. Everyone has long since made up their minds to either fear or help us ‘crazy terrorists.’ We need a fresh face if we’re ever going to reinvent ourselves and expand our support base. That’s the only way to win in the long run.”
He knocked on the entrance of the unused Sunday school room and gave the same biblical verse the preacher mentioned. A female teenage guard cracked the door and showed him the stink eye. “My father sent you? Suits or not, you all look like a bunch of soldiers to me.”
Gorgas slipped a hand into his pocket. The muzzle of a sawed-off shotgun jutted out an inch or two from the door. “I’d do that real slowly if I were you, mister.” He grinned and pulled out a military ID while waving to his bodyguard to calm down. Holding the card to the light, the girl gasped. “So, dear, either let us in or pull the trigger and become a millionaire. Either way, make a decision quick.”
The door swung wide open. “I’m sorry, sir! I had no idea it was you!” She snapped to attention and gave a comically stiff salute when they all came inside. Gorgas absentmindedly returned the pleasantry while sizing up the famous skinny guy watching television in a corner. The young man waved hello at the newcomers. “Are you all with the insurgents?”
Gorgas didn’t mind the lack of decorum when addressing a senior officer. They had bigger problems these days. “So you’re the famed Lieutenant Donaldson? I thought you’d be taller.”
Donaldson shrugged his shoulders, but didn’t get up. “And I thought you’d be waiting in Miami. Some disappointments are worse than others.”
“Surely you’ve been briefed on what happened?”
“Oh sure, I heard the spin your people put on the battle, but I’ve heard a lot of bullshit these last few months. So are you the head honcho or something? Come to give me some personalized lies? Let me guess. You need me to do something stupid and courageous for the good of… whatever the hell we’re still fighting for.” Donaldson never took his eyes off the cartoons.
“Let me start over. I’m Major Gorgas, acting commander of the Florida Defense Forces, and you are a commissioned officer in the Florida National Guard. Now I have an assignment for you.”
Donaldson laughed. “I’m actually just a treasonous terrorist, according to the Pentagon. Well, if you want to act like my brevet lieutenant rank means anything, then fine. I resign. I’m PFC Donaldson now. Private Fucking Citizen.”
Gorgas snatched the remote and flipped off the TV. He plopped down on the end of a children’s table. “Cut the crap. Don’t give me the disgruntled vet routine. You volunteered. You could have gone home when the Feds first attacked. You might have deserted like so many others when they won in Florida. Hell, you could have just stayed on the beach in Cuba rather than come back here. Chance after chance for peace, yet you keep coming back. What does that say?”
For such a young man, Donaldson’s thousand-yard stare held too much pain. “All that proves is that people like you are too damn good at making speeches and playing people’s emotions. Maybe that I’m a fucking idiot too.”
Gorgas waved around at the children’s drawings on the wall. “You’d like to believe that, wouldn’t you? Life would be so much easier if you had a bad guy to peg everything on. Tell me though, why are we here? Why are two soldiers sitting in a classroom? Because there’s an insane dictator in the White House that has gone to war with anyone that opposes him. If we don’t stop him, they’ll always be a soldier in every classroom. Do you really want to see America turned into some Third World military dictatorship?”
“Whatever he’s done, the president isn’t here. We kill some Feds; they kill some of us. None of it changes a damn thing. How does fighting over Florida matter in the long run?”
Gorgas glanced at his downtrodden entourage and sighed. “You’re absolutely right. I never expected this war to go on for so long. To put things simply, we’re losing.”
For the first time, Gorgas shocked Donaldson. After everything he’d seen, honesty took the young soldier by surprise. “Less than a quarter of the population here really hates the Feds and sympathizes with our merry band of insurgents. About the same number support federal actions and hate us ‘terrorists.’ Truth be told, the majority of Floridians just don’t give two shits either way. Vengeance, politics, etc… all of that is less important than being able to go outside after dark without getting arrested or caught in the middle of a shootout. It doesn’t matter how many Feds we kill. Every bit of violence just scares more of our sympathizers away and drives up recruitment for the president’s cause. The diehards we gain from our casualties don’t outweigh the alienated public at large.”
Gorgas struggled to whittle down the big picture into something a simple fighter could understand. The Feds had money and major media resources, as well as the strong allure of tradition, to help spread their influence. All the rebels could offer was revenge. Vengeance and hate might be enough to start a war, but made a weak foundation to build a future on. Their movement peaked in strength two months after the invasion. Since then it had been a slow but steady slide into obscurity.
“Look, people are getting tired of the endless fighting. Remember, to most of the country, this is just a backwater side conflict. Not relevant to the real war between Sacramento and Washington. Every week our base of support fades. New followers are harder to find. Even some whole cells have stopped responding to orders. The killing and tying down occupation forces might help the rebels out West, but does little for us directly. We’re losing the battle for hearts and minds. Let’s face it, that’s the only struggle that really matters.”
Donaldson seethed. “So we should just give up? Has all this sacrifice been in vain?”
“No, son. We won’t give up, but if we plan to win, the sacrifices have to be less one-sided. We need to take the fight to the people that started this all. That’s where you come in.”