Liberty's Last Stand Read online

  He still had his cell phone, but he had no charger, so he turned it off in the car on the way here. He had managed a call to Callie before he left the Langley facilities, so she knew he wasn’t coming home this evening, even if she didn’t know where he was.

  He sat on the side of the cot he had chosen in his assigned tent. He was the only occupant of the tent, so far, but he expected plenty of company. Finally he unrolled his sleeping bag and stretched out on it.

  Barry Soetoro had just decapitated the American government in a coup d’état. Furthermore, Soetoro and his aides knew that Grafton was politically unreliable. How long they would hold him, if indeed he would ever be released, was unknowable.

  Jake Grafton was a political prisoner.

  The suspension of the writ of habeas corpus and declaration of martial law in the United States stunned the world. Abraham Lincoln did both during the American Civil War in the 1860s, so there was precedent. The Constitution itself, Article 1, Section 9, stated: “The privilege of the Writ of Habeas Corpus shall not be suspended, unless in Cases of Rebellion or Invasion the public Safety may require it.” Clearly, this past week there had been no rebellion, as there had been during the Civil War. What there was, Soetoro declared, was an “invasion by terrorists,” and in Soetoro’s opinion, “public safety did indeed require martial law.” During the Civil War Lincoln had also declared martial law, claiming he had a right to do so to preserve the Constitution; his actions were quickly ratified by Congress and the Supreme Court. Army officers arrested several politicians, including one prominent one, Ohioan Clement Vallandigham, and closed down several newspapers. Lincoln’s generals caused him more trouble than the people they arrested; the newspaper editors were quickly freed, and Vallandigham, a copperhead Democrat, was taken south and handed over to the Confederates, who didn’t want him either. He wound up in Canada, slipped back across the border, and ran for governor of Ohio. Lincoln ignored him and told his generals to do likewise. Vallandigham lost the Ohio governor’s race of 1864.

  The Constitution was silent on Soetoro’s two other declarations: the adjournment of Congress until he recalled it and suspension of all federal cases in which the government was the defendant. There was absolutely no precedent for either action, which hadn’t been attempted in the history of the republic, which spanned a civil war and two world wars. Critics immediately claimed that Soetoro had unconstitutionally attempted to seize power, subordinating the legislative and judicial power to that of the executive. Strident voices compared him to Hitler and Napoleon, both of whom took over the government and made themselves dictators. Soetoro’s supporters—including ardent white leftists and more than ninety percent of black Americans, who had backed everything he had done in office since his first election and damned his critics as virulent racists—loudly supported him now. Amazingly, those who cheered his actions were given space in newspapers and time on television, while critics weren’t. Those editors and producers who were not inclined to fall in line, and most of them were, were threatened with arrest. If that didn’t make them behave, they were hustled away to detention camps.

  Social media websites also received government attention and were told if they allowed “criticism of the government” on their websites, they would be shut down. Since they had no way to stop the wired-in public from posting anything they wanted, these websites were soon shut down by their corporate owners. Pirate social media websites quickly sprang up, but unhappy people could make little noise on them in the near future. Mouse squeaks, someone said.

  The result of all this in much of America was an ominous silence that afternoon.

  The news that Soetoro had declared martial law and suspended the holy writ arrived like an incoming missile in Austin, Texas. Legislators crowded the governor’s office and all wanted to talk to the governor, Jack Hays. And they all wanted to talk at once.

  State Senator Benny “Ben” Steiner copped a seat in a corner and listened. The consensus was that Barry Soetoro had declared himself dictator.

  “Anybody have any idea of when America will get its Constitution back?” Charlie Swim asked. He was the most prominent black politician in the state, a former Dallas Cowboys star. He was, arguably, also one of the smartest and most articulate politicians in Texas.

  The hubbub subsided somewhat. Everyone wanted to know what Charlie Swim thought. “The problem here is that Washington politicians haven’t had the guts to impeach Soetoro. And I’ll tell you why. He’s black. They’re afraid of being called racists. If Soetoro had been white, he’d have been thrown out of office years ago. Rewriting the immigration laws; refusing to enforce the drug laws; siccing the IRS on conservatives; having his spokespeople lie to the press, lie to Congress, lie to the UN; rewriting the healthcare law all by himself; thumbing his nose at the courts; having the EPA dump on industry regardless of the costs; admitting hordes of Middle Eastern Muslims without a clue who they were… . Race in America—it’s a toxic poison that prevents any real discussion of the issues. It’s the monkey wrench Soetoro and his disciples have thrown into the gears that make the republic’s wheel turn. And now this! Already the liberals are screaming that if you are against martial law, you’re a racist; if anyone calls me a racist, he’s going to be spitting teeth.”

  Charlie Swim wasn’t finished, and his voice was rising. “The black people in America were doing all right, working their way up the ladder, until drugs came along. Then welfare, and payments to single mothers—when you pay poor people not to work and not to marry they are going to take the money. Barry Soetoro had a real chance to do something about what’s taken black America down—drugs, welfare rather than work, kids without wedlock—but he didn’t bother.” Swim’s voice became sarcastic. “Climate change is his cause, and discrimination against Muslims. And expensive golf vacations.” His voice rose to a roar. “I’m sick of this self-proclaimed black messiah!”

  “That won’t do any good, Charlie,” Jack Hays said conversationally. He was standing behind his chair and now addressed the crowd. “I have no doubt we’ll hear from Washington soon, and in great detail, and when we do I’ll pass it on. You’ll know what I know just about as fast as I get it.”

  “What are you going to do about this mess?” someone demanded.

  “What am I going to do if it rains?” Hays said. “What am I going to do if it doesn’t? You people go back to your chambers and make speeches, hold press conferences, tell the people of Texas what you think. That’s all we can do right now. Tomorrow is another day. Now git!”

  And they did. All except Ben Steiner. A lawyer from Abilene, he had tried civil and criminal cases all over Texas for forty years. Politics was his hobby. Now he closed the door behind the last of his colleagues and seated himself in one of the chairs across the desk from Hays.

  “You are avoiding the issue, Jack, and you know it.”

  “I know a lot of things I don’t talk about in public,” Jack Hays replied curtly.

  “Barry Soetoro is ripping up the Constitution and declaring himself dictator. All he needs is a crown. That’s indisputable. This crap about terrorism—the FBI can find terrorists, and they don’t have to go any farther than the nearest mosque. What’s really happening here is Barry Soetoro taking out his political enemies. What are we Texans going to do about this? Are we going to knuckle under?”

  Hays moved around in his chair, trying to get comfortable. He rearranged his scrotum. “You’re working up to something, Ben. What?”

  “We need to secede from the Union. Declare the Republic of Texas, again.”

  Hays made a face. “This isn’t 1836. There are forty-nine other states and the U.S. Army, Navy, Air Force, and Marine Corps. The last time Texas got uppity, back in 1861, the roof caved in. It would again.”

  “Really?” Ben Steiner leaned forward and lowered his voice. “The roof has already caved in. Give me a better idea, Jack. Tell me what we are going to do if Soetoro calls off the election. If he declares himself president for life.�
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  “He hasn’t done that,” Hays shot back.

  “Not yet,” Steiner admitted. “What he has done is declare martial law, adjourn Congress, shut down the courts, muzzle the press, and arrest his critics. How are we going to preserve our way of life, preserve our liberty, preserve our democracy with a dictator in the White House?”

  “I don’t know,” Jack Hays admitted. “I need to think on it.”

  “Better not think too long,” Ben Steiner said as he got out of his chair. “There’s a lot of people in Texas who won’t think long at all. They hate that son of a bitch and they won’t take this lying down. While you’re thinking, think about how to head them off if they get out of hand. If you don’t, or won’t, or can’t, we’re talking anarchy. No man’s life or property will be safe. Think about that. Also think about what you’re going to do if Soetoro sends some federal agents to drag you out of this office and throw you into a prison somewhere. Until such time, if ever, that he decides it’s safe to let you out. Think about that too.”

  Ben Steiner walked out of the governor’s office and closed the door behind him.

  Jack Hays put his hands on his face and tried to force himself to relax. Various right-wing groups in Texas had argued for independence for years. They were the lunatic fringe, the village idiots. Hays had kept his distance. Now Ben Steiner had taken his turn at the independence podium, and he was no crackpot.

  The way people lived in early-twenty-first-century Texas depended on the American monetary system, Social Security, military retirement, banks stuffed full of U.S. Treasury bonds as their capital, the national telephone grid, the power grid, all of that. Companies here paid wages to Texans to manufacture goods and sold them all over the United States—all over the world—and the stores in Texas that supplied the stuff of life were filled with goods manufactured all over the world; Texans used their paychecks to pay for what they needed. Independence, he thought, would take a civil war, and that would destroy the very fabric of life for a great many Texans. Cutting Texas out of the United States would be like trying to cut Mona Lisa’s face out of her portrait and arguing that the operation wouldn’t harm it.

  Jack Hays didn’t believe it could be done. In this interdependent world, Texas had to be part of the United States, a state in the Union.

  Or did it?

  He was thinking about his deceased uncle, Joe Bob Hays, and the drug smugglers who killed him when the phone on his desk summoned him to duty.

  THREE

  There were five people in Grafton’s tent, all males, when he went in after sunset. Everyone introduced himself: three civil servants, one broadcaster, and one congressman.

  “Where are the women?” Grafton asked.

  “They have their own tents,” he was told. “Politically incorrect, but those are army regulations.”

  “If Elizabeth Warren only knew.”

  The tentmates had just arrived, and were still outraged that they had been arrested. Being taken in handcuffs from their homes or work, with family or colleagues watching, and physically transported to Camp Dawson, a three-hour ride from Washington, had filled them with adrenaline that had to be burned off. They had been frightened, humiliated, and shamed, and now they were very angry. They told each other their stories and talked long into the night while Jake Grafton slept.

  On his second evening in Camp Dawson, Jake Grafton ran into Washington Post columnist Jack Yocke in the chow line. Yocke was in his late thirties, lean and ropy, with shoulder-length hair and a fashionably grizzled face, the lumberjack look. His name was pronounced Yockkey.

  “When did you get here, Admiral?” a plainly surprised Yocke asked.

  “Yesterday at noon.”

  “Seems to be a lot of people here,” Yocke said, looking around.

  “Welcome to the American gulag archipelago. I think I was one of the first, but there were a bunch of people already here. Spies, I think. Stool pigeons. I would be careful what I said and who heard it, if I were you.”

  They ate together in silence, put their leftovers in a large garbage can, and stacked their trays, then went to sit under a shade tree near the wire, where they could talk privately.

  Grafton managed to get the first question in, always a feat with Yocke. “Did you piss on the establishment or did they dump you here on general principles?”

  “I’m an unreliable bastard. I wrote a column that was uncomplimentary to the administration, and a political apparatchik in the editor’s office called the troopers. Needless to say, I don’t think my column will be in tomorrow’s paper.”

  “Brave editors.”

  “They were threatened with arrest, their families were also going to be arrested, their bank accounts and property seized, and the IRS would prosecute them. Not audit them, but prosecute them. The only thing they weren’t threatened with was execution.”

  “Why did you flout them?”

  “Stupid, I guess. And you?”

  “The same.”

  “There’s a lot of that around. Soetoro is going to be surprised.”

  “They’ve made their preparations. The administration didn’t decide this after they got a look at Saturday’s terror strikes. They’ve been getting ready for this for years.”

  “When this is over,” Yocke mused, “someday, the only heroes will be the people who stood up to them and went to prison.”

  “Martyrs,” Grafton murmured.

  “Christians versus the lions.”

  “Martyrs don’t win wars,” Grafton stated. “That’s a law, like gravity. So what’s happening out there beyond the fence?”

  “The country’s falling apart. Inner-city riots: Chicago, Detroit, Saint Louis, LA. Just getting worked up, getting the car fires set. Agitators and race-baiters screaming about overturning white America once and for all. What they are going to do is loot Walmarts and Safeways and burn down the inner cities, then starve. We’ve got martial law, but there’s no National Guard, no soldiers, no police stopping the rioters, there’s no fire departments putting out the fires, and there’s apparently no Border Patrol at the border. Go figure.”

  Grafton didn’t say anything.

  “The cops have got the message. Let it burn, baby.”

  Yocke got out his cell phone and checked his messages.

  “You have a charger for that?” Jake asked.

  “Yep. All I need is a place to plug it in. If cell phones go flat, civilization as we know it will be stone cold dead. Teenagers, millennials, reporters, and real estate agents will go through seismic withdrawal and drop dead left and right.”

  “The camp authorities will pass out chargers when they can lay hands on some,” Jake said.

  “Why?”

  “The NSA can listen to every cell phone and telephone transmission in America. They’ve been working on it for over a year. Soetoro’s orders. It used to be all they got was your number and the number you dialed. Now they can record the conversations digitally and mine them for key words or names. They want you to talk on your cell phone. That’s why they didn’t confiscate the things.”

  Jack Yocke sat with his cell phone in hand watching the shadows lengthen. Finally he put the device on the ground, took off his shoe, and pounded on it with the heel until the glass screen broke. Then he threw it over the fence.

  After a while Yocke calmed down. “So when do you think we’ll get out of here?”

  Grafton snorted. “They didn’t let me pack my crystal ball.”

  “A few days, months, years?”

  When Grafton remained silent, Yocke decided to answer his own question. If you are going to make your living writing newspaper columns, you must have opinions, on everything. Yocke did. Almost every living human had opinions, but no one wanted to hear them. People paid to read Yocke’s because his were better thought out and expressed. “People are upset and angry right now, but few if any are willing to risk everything they own, everything they have, even their lives, to oppose Soetoro and the federal government. That wi
ll change over time. Government oppression in the short run pisses people off. In the long run it transforms them into revolutionaries.”

  “Conquer or die,” Grafton mused. “Too bad you weren’t there at the White House when the aides discussed how to keep Soetoro in office for life.”

  Yocke wanted to talk. Like most writers, his head buzzed with words. Sooner or later he had to spew them out so that he could have room to think about something else. “Being a revolutionary is very romantic,” he said. “It isn’t for everyone. The hours are brutal, you can get seriously hurt or dead, even if you win you’ll be a pauper, and you’ll probably wind up unhappy with whoever emerges from the chaos as the head dog. Sooner or later the optimistic revolutionary becomes the disillusioned veteran. If he is still above ground.”

  “Was this your column that won’t get printed?”

  “Yeah. Good solid stuff.”

  “So, Jack, are you willing to kiss your pension, 401(k), Mazda sports car, and Washington condo goodbye and sign on for the voyage? Are you ready to pledge your life, your fortune, and your sacred honor?”

  “Not yet, Admiral. I’m working up to it. Soetoro is dragging me to it by the hair. He’s dragging a whole lot of people there. If Soetoro doesn’t stop this shit pretty soon, there is going to be a major explosion.”

  “He thinks not.”

  “Barry Soetoro is a damn fool. President of the United States, and he doesn’t know Americans.”

  On Thursday, the twenty-fifth of August, Jack Hays and his wife, Nadine, rode a helicopter from Austin to Sanderson, Texas, where a funeral home had Joe Bob Hays laid out. JR and his brother, Fred, and Fred’s wife and eldest son were there. The grandson was only four. JR had been divorced for the past ten years. His ex-wife had custody of their children. The wife had had an affair while her husband was in Afghanistan, and divorce followed. She didn’t remarry. The kids were teenagers now and knew everything about everything. JR wrote them a note about their grandfather and mailed it, and that would have to do.

  The sheriff, Manuel Tejada, was there with some of his deputies in uniform. One of them, a man with bright, garish yellow and green tattoos that started at both wrists and ran up his forearms, took the time to shake JR’s hand and tell him how sorry he was. “Knew your dad,” he said. “Good man.” His name was Romero, according to the silver name tag he wore over his left shirt pocket.