Transcript
A Fiery Gospel A novel
This book is dedicated to everyone who has ever worn a uniform
One: Marching on Autumn
Ladysmith, Virginia THE Predator stirred the air lazily, 3,000 feet above a dusty Piedmont crossroads. Below it was dirty siding on the houses, squat brick storefronts with weeds poking up through the parking lots that surrounded them. It had been loitering all afternoon, but in reality it and its siblings had been loitering for months, their Cyclopean stares trained on everything and nothing, watching only for that which stood out, for the discrepancies. It had gotten to know this town, knew its routines as if it were a piece of machinery, and knew when it saw a mis-timed gear or a blown fuse. Two trucks parked together long after the sun went down, or an unusually large group of people congregating at an anonymous house back behind the lake. The drone didn't judge the teenagers who were either making out or running guns, the neighbors who were either barbecuing or assembling the next car bomb; it didn't judge, but still it noticed. This particular bird was toothless. Once, not so long ago, it had done almost nothing but shoot missiles. It was designed for precision, and was capable of carrying warheads small enough to blow a man to pieces while leaving his two year old daughter in the next room unharmed. It had had its share of such killings, to be sure, but at other times, more necessary times, it had been employed as a blunt instrument as well, wielded against tanks or runways or just anywhere some ordinance of any kind was needed. That had been when there were more targets to shoot at. Now there weren't as many, or at least not as many of the kind
it was capable of seeing. Now the authorities down below it had to use more traditional methods. One of those authorities, 3,000 feet below, was watching the late afternoon sun hurl daggers of shadow through the trees across the road from him. 1LT Channing, Robert G. felt annoyed at the combination of post-lunch drowsiness and an awkward stack of paperwork. NCOERs were, without a doubt, his least favorite aspect of this job, and always inspired severe procrastination. Somewhere in his mind rose unbidden the reflection that this was almost exactly not the reason he enlisted. Soon he was halfconsciously listening to the sound of a radio coming from somewhere outside—the local country western station was playing. He suddenly found himself transported to the last place and time he'd heard this music as often as he did since being posted to this part of the country—but that was decades ago and thousands of miles from here. He didn't recognize the song that was on. His reverie was interrupted by the crunch of returning Humvees rolling over the gravel outside, followed by the abrupt silence as their motors were switched off. He could hear a few voices as the returning patrol was welcomed back, but clearly nothing interesting had happened. It was then that he decided to take action. He fastidiously put away the evaluations where no one could see, got up, and went out of the one-man sleeper which contained his bunk and office both. He phoned SFC Johnson, Cory R. in his hooch. “Sergeant Johnson, would you be so good as to step into
my office for a moment.” He wondered for a moment if anyone realized that when he affected this kind of strained, almost British formality it meant he was up to no good. Johnson sat down in the flimsy plastic chair that just barely fit opposite the desk in the tiny room. He didn't say anything. “Sergeant, I'm starting to worry that the patrol routes are getting too predictable again. We haven't had a night ride in a while, perhaps you should get your squad ready to head out at 2030.” “Yes, sir.” Johnson nodded and got up to go. As he was trying to work his way around the chair to get to the door, Channing spoke again. “Maybe head down south, around the far side of Lake Caroline. Roll real slow past some of those nice houses down there, make them think you suspect something's up. No need to get out and walk, unless you want to.” “Yes, sir.” Johnson repeated, but he was smiling this time. His hand was already turning the doorknob when his CO spoke for the final time. “Oh, and if you come across any vehicles make sure they know to stay out of your way, hm?” He always took every opportunity he could to mindfuck the locals. It helped to relieve the boredom. Forcing cars off the road whenever a convoy went by, for instance. Or strolling into the Food Lion in full battle rattle, just to buy a Coke. On the first day of school, a few weeks ago, an entire patrol had circled up in the elementary school parking lot, just sitting in their trucks watching the parents dropping off
their children, not saying a word to anyone to let them know what was going on. There was no point to any of it, but at least, he told himself, it was harmless. “You got it, boss.” Johnson smiled even wider. “Dismissed.” * * *
FOB Ladysmith consisted of some corrugated metal boxes inside a ring of Hesco bastions, barbed wire, and floodlights. It stood in what had been an empty grass field behind an Exxon station. It was situated less than a thousand feet from I-95, and less than a mile from the only-too-ironically-named Jefferson Davis Highway, the two main thoroughfares whose safety and continued accessibility were Bravo Company's ostensible mission. Channing's platoon, Bravo-1, were the southernmost outpost of the military district of Fredericksburg, which due to the uniquely tough fighting that had gone on there was one of the few parts of the state still under Federal occupation. South of them was Virginia National Guard country, all the way down to the Carolinas. At the moment, there were 45 soldiers on base—slightly over-strength for an Army platoon, due to the presence of intel elements that had been seconded there. The military presence here had also recently been augmented by a Highway Patrol station, which was nearly the only civilian police presence around. The county sheriff's folks had been around once or twice in the beginning, but now they seemed to have plain disappeared, either out of
fear of the insurgency, or a desire to join it, neither of which was good. Channing wanted almost everyone to be afraid, but not the civilian cops. After all, they'd have to pick up this job when he and his troops left. The arrival of the police had been accompanied (or perhaps made possible) by the eerie hush that had fallen over occupied country, ever since the fighting had lost its place at the top of every news broadcast. As soon as the airstrikes and armored columns had disappeared from the collective consciousness, they had quickly been replaced with, not jubilation or a sense of victory, but an almost painfully conscious forgetting that they had ever existed. This seemed to extend to the insurgency as well—what few guerrilla actions there had been seemed to dry up overnight. There had never been much, nothing amounting to more than a few potshots from behind the trees. The unit had seen only one injury the nearly six months they'd been here, and that had been non-combat. The most serious incident had been when a pickup truck tried to drive right into the base with a quarter-ton of ammonium nitrate in the bed. The sentries had been on their game, though, and took out the driver before he could set off the bomb. Later on, the EOD guys remarked at just how big the bomb was, how sophisticated the timing mechanism—apparently the hapless driver had intended to get away. * * *
Bravo-1 bought its gas from the Exxon station it was camped out in back of. The owner—a man named Strong—somehow
managed to get enough tanker trucks to come through to keep the town and the gas-guzzling Humvees supplied, not an easy feat in this part of the country. Channing availed himself of the man's services because of a general order from USNORTHCOM to locally source as many acquisitions as possible, in the belief that hearts and minds were more easily bought than won. In the case of Strong, at least, this stratagem worked magnificently; he sold them the gas, and gladly. He always made a show of saying how glad he was the Army was in town, although Channing was never quite sure how much to believe him. There always seemed to be a nervous hesitation hiding just behind the facade of eagerness. Perhaps, Channing sometimes reflected, Strong is neither sincere nor insincere; perhaps the mere anxiety and the constant nagging feeling that he's doing something wrong are truly the full extent of his feelings about our situation. At any rate, the nervousness was well-placed; one morning they found him strung up from the pump island with seven holes in his back. The lieutenant found it interesting that they'd wasted seven bullets when one to the head would've done. Maybe they thought it would be more dramatic, he reasoned. Or maybe they were just nervous. A cardboard sign hung around his neck reading “The cause is not lost”, which Channing thought was a rather poetic way of putting it. The state troopers came around and investigated, but Channing wasn't interested. They were for issuing speeding tickets as far as he was concerned; any time there was a major crime like this—a political crime
like this—he kept those for himself. So Bravo Company kicked in some doors until they found an unregistered firearm (it didn't take but a few tries), zip-cuffed the men of the house and sent them on their way. He wasn't sure where detainees were sent nowadays—he'd heard Togiak was full and not taking any more new ones, which was too bad as he'd never been to Alaska and considered it a rather exotic and romantic place, a place he'd take any chance he could to think about instead of where he was. But away the men went, and the authorities considered the case closed. * * *
That very night, only a few hours after a Blackhawk picked the men up and out of their sleepy corner of Virginia for what might as well be forever, Channing awoke to an explosion. He couldn't hear it, but as soon as he was pulled out of sleep as if by invisible wires, he knew what had happened. Pulling on boots and Kevlar, he was outside in less than five minutes. And outside, when he saw what direction the flames were coming from, reflected off the night sky, he knew it was the Highway Patrol that had been hit. He began barking orders. “Cormire, get your men and saddle up. Nye, Johnson, double patrols—outside the wire, give us a wide perimeter and make sure you check the woods. Polizzi,” he said, spotting his RTO, “call this in to battalion, we might need a medevac and we'll definitely need whatever surveillance footage they can give us. Alright, let's go.” There were no emergency vehicles in sight, but already
a crowd was forming around the blazing wreck of the police station. The station had been left vulnerable by design, without so much as a chain-link fence separating it from the road, much less a Jersey barrier or anything else to afford real protection. This had been done in the name of normalizing police-civilian relations, and indeed, most places the police dared to have a permanent presence at all were safe enough. Channing assumed the conventional wisdom about that might change now, though. All dozen of them were dead, crushed or more likely suffocated in the smoldering remains of their barracks. Pieces of what had once been a white panel van were scattered across the road and into the woods beyond. Eventually the local volunteer firefighters showed up, followed by more state police. The bodies were taken away by a civilian ambulance. By morning, the fire was out, the firefighters had left, and the police had started logging evidence. Channing couldn't care less. He knew that for him, it just meant that the kick-zip-extract drama would play out a few more times. In the wake of the State Patrol bombing, Bravo Company was reinforced by an element of 3rd Battalion, which set up a checkpoint just to their south. They came armed with some kind of biometrics database, so they could ID people and only let in those who legitimately lived there. “Just like we had in Fallujah!” their CO, a guy named Ramirez, gushed by way of introduction. “Was wondering when they'd roll this thing out again.” As it had during the worst of the fighting, north-south traffic on the highway ground to a
standstill. It was fairly depressing, Channing thought, that we're back to doing this again. He tried not to think about the last time he'd interacted with a government database, and the implications that experience held for the good people of Ladysmith who only wanted to get home from their refugee camps. He decided he should have a sit-down with this Ramirez fellow. “So, mostly conscripts huh?” he asked, still not used to seeing this relatively new phenomenon. These seemed alarmingly malnourished, their M4s looking like man-sized guns held by pre-teens. He would have made a joke about Michael Dukakis, if any of these people even knew who that was. “Yeah,” said Ramirez, who with that first word immediately struck Channing as being a man of very limited intelligence. “They really love the draft now, you know. Now that a bunch of guys' terms are coming up and they don't have any reason to re-enlist, and now that the riots up north have calmed down and they don't have to worry about having a two front war on their hands.” He chuckled mirthlessly. “You having many morale problems with them?” He tried to remain casual. “No, you think that'll be a problem?” Now there was a delicious uncertainty in the other officer's voice, which gave Channing some greatly-needed confidence. Now he spoke with more authority. “Don't know, haven't ever seen the draftees in action. You ask me,” and he lowered his voice, seeming not to want
to be heard by anyone else. “There's nothing can take the place of a baptism by fire, you know what I mean? I mean, we've always had pretty good unit cohesion because most of these guys were together in Lynchburg when we were in some really deep shit. Let me tell you—I don't suppose you were there, or in Virginia Beach or one of those places?” When Ramirez shook his head no, Channing continued. “Well, let me tell you, after something like that you won't have any morale problems at all. Once you lose one or two, you know what I'm saying?” Ramirez only kept nodding, that stupid grin still plastered to his face. * * *
Channing still hadn't gotten back to doing the NCOERs he'd left abandoned on his desk two days ago, in fact Bravo-1 was right in the midst of the sweep that followed the police station bombing, when the Outlaws showed up out of nowhere, with their usual impeccable sense of timing. They pulled their bikes right up inside the wire, as usual. Their presence always reassured Channing—as far as he knew, they'd always been fighting on the same side. Granted, this might have been because it allowed them to make their illicit living with less interference from the proper authorities, but as long as it was his enemies that they preyed on he saw no reason to stop them—especially since he knew his superiors encouraged them, too. And Charlie Shaw's gang had been riding this area for as long as Bravo had been here, which practically made them old friends.
Channing wasn't the only one glad to see them—most of the platoon was on friendly terms with them, and their arrival was a real boost to morale. Someone in one of the enlisted hooches had even managed to acquire a banner that read “God Forgives, Outlaws Don't”, which is what the gang had taken its now semi-official name from. Shaw and Channing chatted briefly in the latter's office. Channing thought the other man might have a few more wrinkles, a few more gray hairs than last time. “I just don't know, Bobby,” he said, very deliberately, after a little while had passed. “Pickins' getting' kinda slim up here, you know what I'm sayin'?” Channing did indeed know what he was saying. He'd been dreading this conversation for a while. He tried to affect a devil-may-care disaffection. “Well, you can fuckin' have this town. It's startin' to get hairy again, man—not like before, though. They won't fight us out in the open like they used to, but I think they can keep this sort of thing up for a long time.” He inclined his head in the general direction of the ruins of the police station. Shaw smiled. He knew better than to put his trust in some white guy in a uniform. Much less some kid, who looked not much more than half his own age. In the beginning, it had been just such a man who'd turned his life into the steaming shit-pile it now was, simply to further some plan that Shaw himself hardly cared about. At least back when the insurgents walked around like they owned the place, there hadn't been any rules. He'd had his freedom, even if
it was bought dearly, and he could take what or who he wanted, and if he got in trouble he could run up to Washington and wait it out behind the Army lines. But it wasn't like that now, hadn't been like that since the Army swept through Virginia and chased the insurgents out—now the folks in charge knew that if they broke something, they had to buy it, and they didn't want the Outlaws running around breaking things without permission. He knew how it was, how hard it was to have something and not break it. But that wasn't his problem anymore, unless they made it his problem, which he was trying to avoid as far as he could. “You got anythin' I can use?” he asked, his usual way of framing the question. Channing got up and unlocked a cabinet. He took out a 9mm Barretta and a disassembled hunting rifle—slim pickings, indeed. “Shit, man, I told you,” Shaw interjected. “Ain't nothin' left around here that ain't already nailed down.” But of course, he took the guns. “Well, at least fill up at the gas station.” Channing smiled. “Tell 'em to put it on my tab.” The Outlaws gunned their engines and rode off north on I-95. Shaw worried about the future. The way he and his boys had lived during the fighting—some of the things they'd done—there was just no way that lifestyle was gonna fly now that things had settled down. He was sure he couldn't go back to his old life in Wilmington—was sure he didn't have a house, much less a job to go back to.
Besides, his gang had become accustomed to a certain standard of living, and even if the thought of a constant life of crime didn't sit well with him personally, he could hardly abandon these guys as long as they were following him. And something about that conversation with Channing had unsettled him—the white folks were getting scared again. * * *
Channing had always been possessed of a great sense of hearing, and so in spite of being a commissioned officer he heard all the rumors. Finally getting back to work on his NCOERs, he had the window next to his desk cracked open and could hear two of the enlisted men talking about the latest one, the one about how they were going to stand down Fredericksburg before the end of the year and ship everyone back north. Channing wanted to talk to them about it, but he wouldn't even know where to start. There was simply too much history. We'll leave when someone strikes a deal, he would have said, same way we left after Reconstruction, the same deal that Nixon struck with the Southern Strategy. We won't really stay long enough to root out the problem, of that you can rest assured. To do that we'd have to stay here the rest of our lives, and our kids' lives, and their kids' lives. We'd have to live here, permanently, and nobody in charge on either side really wants that. It's just too hard for them. So eventually we'll come to some sort of compromise, and pack up and go home, and the people who started all this will take over down here again without
having really learned their lesson. And then in another fifty or a hundred years or so it'll happen again, and again no one will recognize it happening because everyone will have forgotten the corrupt, cowardly way we settled the last one. Maybe, he thought, maybe losing is the new winning. Maybe in these times, the only way to guarantee that you won't lose is to keep the fight going, even if you could win it if you wanted to. Channing himself, however, would not stay. He'd never meant to make a career out of the Army, and felt that after what he'd been through no one could fault him for keeping that bargain. The fighting part was over, and it was time for him to go back to the normalcy that everyone else seemed to be experiencing all of a sudden. He thought about the last civilian job he'd had, in New York, and it was tempting to think about going back. He knew he was letting himself indulge in romanticism and nostalgia, but he felt that now he could really enjoy the freedom that he'd had, a freedom which two years of Army life had finally taught him the value of. But he couldn't go back, he knew that also. There was a distance simply too far to cross. He didn't feel as if he knew anyone there anymore; moreover, he felt as if he never really had in the first place. He was thinking about grad school. No, leave the euphemisms—he was working on applications to grad schools. Of the many things the Army had given him, he had a suspicion that the discipline could be put to more uses than his instructors had suspected. He now saw that his
whole life he had been building up thoughts in a slipshod, haphazard fashion, powerfully creative yet going nowhere because unfocused. He'd had plenty of ideas, but never learned how to order them, his term papers always indifferently graded by public school teachers just trying to get through the next standardized test. He always aced the multiple-choice tests. The ability to think properly had never been on those Scantrons. Besides, he'd been surprised by what he could do here, surprised at how successful he'd been. He had nothing but confidence that, with a bit of education to facilitate the switch back to civilian life, he'd be able to make something of himself. It was really surprising, how easy the Army had been after all. He hated Forrest Gump as a movie, but that basic training scene was true: if you could just follow instructions, you were promotion material. He didn't think of himself as exceptionally good at his job, but somehow it seemed, looking back, that people had been not only satisfied but impressed. He'd almost certainly make captain, maybe even before the end of this term, and thought he could go a lot farther. Really surprising. The cynical way to look at it would be to say that the world's standards were just a lot lower than he had thought, growing up sheltered and timid as he had. But he wasn't feeling inclined to cynicism. He felt nothing but the open possibility of a child who has the day off from school. * * *
Togiak, Alaska
The valley slept under a starless, moonless sky. If you were to look down from the mountainous ramparts which enclosed it on three sides, you would have seen only the perimeter floodlights, and the lights of a few guard towers to indicate the presence of what was now one of the largest prisons in the world, the kind of prison usually produced only by the most draconian police states but which went mostly unnoticed now, in a country never shy about incarceration. In all his time in Alaska, Jeffrey Rainier could count the number of honest-to-God uniformed servicemen he'd seen on the fingers of one hand. The camp guards appeared to be employed almost to an individual by some private contractor or another. Most of them weren't even American; instead they were a pastiche of nationalities with passable English and some proficiency with a rifle. There had been one group, before the last time they'd moved him, that Rainier and his buddies had gotten along with pretty well; they affectionately called them the Jordanian Mafia, a bunch of Bedouin cousins who apparently came as a set to do their year in America and earn enough to buy themselves a real nice house back in Amman. Rainier admired their curious mix of patriotism and utter contempt for authority. “You know, zeh dee-oh-dee, zey tell us zat zey like bringing zeh foreigners here to work,” Abu Hisham had told them in his lilting, accented English, his r's rolling. “Zey say we are more trust-worthy even zen your other Americans.” At this, his cousin said something in Arabic and they all laughed. Rainier didn't get the joke.
Rainier, Jeffrey E., TIDE #120945287 was sleeping when they came for him. He was awoken by the sound of the door unbolting, and by the light that streamed in from the hallway and the several flashlights trained on him. Guard staff informed him that he was to leave his cell, in Isolation Block D, and would have to be hooded before being moved. The prisoner complied in all respects. He was lead outside and was loaded into the back of an old canvascovered military truck, and instructed not to speak to the other prisoners. Jeff Rainier wondered what was happening. He felt annoyance at being roused from sleep in the middle of the night, but he wasn't afraid; he knew that they wouldn't kill him, anyway. He'd never heard of anyone being killed outright; they might torture you to death, but they wouldn't do you the simple courtesy of shooting you in the head. No, he knew all the ways out of this place, and being shot at dawn like a hero of the revolution wasn't one of them. Most likely you'd die of natural causes, or in a riot, or of an elaborately produced “suicide”, or you might be one of the lucky few who was sent off to stand trial somewhere else. But so far, what was happening didn't fit any of those scenarios. And there were no other ways out. He waited. As he continued to sit in the truck, one by one he could hear his fellow inmates being loaded on, manacles clinking, and told to keep their mouths shut. He was starting to get fidgety. He wondered if the sun was coming up yet—he didn't know what time he'd been woken up, and it
felt like he'd been sitting here for hours. The hood blacked out his vision completely. He found himself longing for the same sad, gray, perpetually overcast sky he saw every day. At this point of the year, with the days shortening rapidly, the clouds were hardly even backlit by the distant sun except for a few hours on either side of midday. He suddenly realized, to his great surprise, that the cold no longer bothered him. The previous winter had been enough to knock a lifetime of never leaving the South right out of his body. Finally, the tailgate slammed shut and the truck started. The prisoners were driven out of the camp and south, a distance of about 10 miles, to arrive at the Twin Hills airstrip. There they were unloaded, six at a time, and escorted onto a waiting C-130J Super Hercules, which had arrived the previous morning on a regularly scheduled resupply mission. The prisoners were strapped into their seats on the plane and reminded not to converse. The prisoners remained hooded throughout. Shortly after being seated, the back of his hood was lifted up and a sedative patch applied behind the right ear. Rainier tried to guess where he was. Felt too big to be a truck, but wasn't pitching as a boat would. He couldn't imagine any railroad tracks in this place, so must be a plane. That certainly peaked his interest. He tried to game out the possibilities of where they could be going with this many prisoners. It didn't seem like the normal process of being remanded to one of the court systems, which was done on a case-by-case basis and never en masse like this.
He thought it most likely that he was to be part of a prisoner swap, which meant that the war must have turned around since the uninterruptedly bleak news brought by some of the newer arrivals. The last new arrival had been almost three months ago, so this seemed like a plausible explanation to him. The only other possibility he could think of, which he considered much more remote, was that the war was completely over and done with, and they were being released outright. Whether that was a good or bad thing, of course, depended on the outcome. After the last of the prisoners from his truck had been seated for a while, he heard a new group shuffling in, their manacles clinking. Another truckload, he thought. Must be a big plane. Sometimes it seemed like his own life was infinitely far removed from where he was now. Drugs must be kicking in. He wondered if he had ever had a life that didn't involve fighting. When he tried to remember specific events, those which he knew with as much certainty as he could muster had actually happened, he found that he couldn't remember what order they came in, or what relationship one event had to the next, or even who had been involved. It seemed as if he had too many memories for his 24 years. This tendency got worse the closer his memory got to touching on the war. It was as if someone had smashed his memory, his very sense of self, and then tried to glue it back together, but got it all wrong, like a vase pieced back together but with the pattern all jumbled up, recognizable only for what it used to be. Finally, his hood
still on, he slept. He probably awoke several times over the next several hours. He wasn't sure, since the hood hungry. He did not dream. The C-130 departed Twin Hills airstrip at approximately 0930 AKST, heading south-southwest. On board were 90 prisoners and 39 guards, in addition to the flight crew. Rainier thought about whether it had all been worth it. Everyone he knew was dead, and they hadn't even won. He wondered if sheer heroism like that could ever really win out in the end. What was that thing Danny had quoted to him? No man ever won a war by dying for his country, you won by making the other sorry son of a bitch die for his. Maybe, he thought, all the heroism just canceled out in the end. Maybe both sides could claim enough heroes that in the end what swung the outcome was how many bombs or how much gasoline or how many soldiers you had. Simple math. The thought was chilling. What kind of a world was that to live in, anyway, if there was no such thing as heroism, or at least none that mattered, if you were absolutely powerless to really change anything? He thought again about that previous life, that mixedup jumble of images. He tried to have a séance right there in his airplane seat, tried to channel the spirits of the dead and make them speak. He felt a pang of regret. He missed them, and his life. For a crazy split second he felt guilty for ever having left them, felt that he was being punished for not being grateful enough for what his life and the sedative made it hard to tell when his eyes were open. He was so
had been. He thought about history. He wondered what history would think of America, after this. He simply couldn't fathom the change that had occurred. He found that the America he had fought for, that all his friends had died for, couldn't possibly still exist after this. History had become like his life, a mixed-up bag of moments that bore no relation one to the next. He wondered if this was how the Roman Empire had come to an end. At least, he hoped, the world would remember America the way it remembered the Romans, at least there might be a few crumbling monuments for tourists to take pictures of two thousand years from now. He wondered idly how he would be seen, in that time—would the war he fought in even be remembered? Or remembered as anything more than one last, pitiful gasp, as significant as a death rattle? He still believed in the cause, although sometimes he couldn't remember why. If he ever got out of wherever he was, he knew he'd go right back to fighting, even if he was the last one left. It was a simple matter of having no other life to go back to, now. Most of the others he was truly unsure about. Since they'd got here, the vast majority had turned their energies away from anything to do with the outside world, and focused on being master of whatever patch of ground the guards allowed them to stand on without being shackled and bolted. Gang warfare was endemic. What was worse, most of it was conducted under the guise of some meaningless philosophical difference they'd had on the outside. So the Libertarians fought the Dominionists who fought the Three-Percenters, and everyone
fought the Texans, who cared about nothing so much as their pet issue of secession. And so on and so on, still blaming each other for losing the war, now deprived of any fight against their captors and reduced to vainly posturing at one another, although Rainier knew that really it was just about cornering the market on cigarettes or porn or whatever was in demand. When a major riot hit, as had happened a few weeks ago, multiple times as many prisoners could die at the hands of their fellows as were ever killed by the jailers. Perhaps it was inevitable, in a place this big. Now, Rainier wondered if they'd even know what to fight for if they ever got out, or if they'd just go on perpetuating their gangs and their little fiefdoms. There were a few who didn't partake, but that ran the risk of being deemed a collaborator. Indeed, there were a few who had to be working with the guards—occasionally one would be found out and dealt with—but Rainier thought that many had just given up and were trying to find a little peace and quiet, at last. Most of them buried themselves in their Bibles, like Kaminsky, who did nothing but read his NIV morning to night, cover to cover. Rainier wondered why he even bothered to read it anymore, since he must know every word, every dog-ear, every smudge and fingerprint by heart. He could probably just close his eyes and imagine that book, his specific personal copy, exactly in every detail. But he kept reading it, the physical copy, just the same. He tried to decide, as objectively as possible, if he would be better off dead. He found he couldn't decide, possibly because the more he thought about it the more he
realized it wouldn't be all that different. No matter where he was, he couldn't go back to those shades in his past, if any of them could even be found. He couldn't stand Kaminsky and the bible-thumpers, with their complacency, he couldn't stand the gang-bangers that ran the prison, he couldn't escape and there was nothing to go back to if he did. He hung suspended, in the belly of a cargo plane between earth and sky, and between possible futures each of which was as impossible as it was undesirable, and yet each of which represented the next moment of his life, and the one after that, and an unending march into the future from which he could not turn away. * * *
The rest of the flight passed without incident. The C130 arrived at Henderson Field at approximately 1600 SST. Prisoners were deplaned in groups of six and loaded onto trucks to be taken to the ferry across to the Eastern Island complex. Rainier could feel the sun. He couldn't see it, with the hood still in place, but he knew that they were somewhere much farther south. Granted, that didn't mean a whole lot. But the combination of sun and breeze felt unbelievably good. There was a smell, too, something he couldn't quite place, somewhere behind the exhaust fumes from the plane. He let them maneuver him into the back of another truck, and then the brief excitement was over. He was back to waiting. The truck started eventually, but they rode for only a minute or two before stopping. When he was
led out of the flatbed, Rainier could hardly believe his ears. At first he couldn't distinguish it from the idling of the truck motor, but there it was; the sound of surf pounding on a beach. He realized belatedly that he had smelled the ocean. The group of prisoners was led onto a boat. Rainier was beginning to feel like a cartoon character, being put through some comically improbable chase scene, trying to escape a monster by climbing out a window, tightroping across a powerline, grabbing an airplane wing, and dropping into a remote mountaintop castle only to find the monster standing right there. The boat ride, too, didn't last very long, and soon they were hustled onto a wooden dock. They were prodded along, heard the unmistakable sound of jail doors opening and closing. At the last, the hood was removed and Rainier found himself staring at the inside of a cell block much like his old one, the first sight he had seen since being hooded back in Alaska nearly 12 hours ago. The door slammed shut behind him. Finally, all the interminable waiting, on the truck, on the plane, on the other truck, all the grating moments of the prison gaggle being slowly loaded and unloaded that had slid by, were over. And even better, now a guard outside, in military uniform no less, picked up a telephone handset mounted on the wall and began to speak to them through the PA system, which was piped into each room so as to be heard through the steel doors and airtight plexiglass windows. “Welcome to Midway, folks,” the voice said. “You'll find it's a lot like Alaska, but warmer and. even harder to
escape from. It's called Midway because we're almost exactly in the middle of the largest body of water on Earth. San Francisco is about thirty-five hundred miles to our east, Tokyo is about twenty-two hundred miles to our west, and the nearest living human being is about six hundred miles to our southeast in Hawaii. So if you feel up to the swim, go ahead on. Otherwise dinner is at 1700, lights out at 2100. Other than that, please just carry on exactly as you were.” * * *
Danbury, Connecticut The hillside sloped down gently to the lake, perhaps 100 yards away. From where she was standing, Phoebe Lingampally could see, past the last rows of tents, just a few clumps of trees and some low bushes, and then the deep blue expanse of Danbury Bay, bracketed on the other side by bucolic split-level suburban houses with immaculate lawns. This view was broken only by the chain link fence, topped with thickly coiled barbed wire, which was the only barrier between her and freedom. It was really a flimsy thing, she often thought, almost inviting of breakout attempts. Yet no one ever tried to break out, even after they'd been moved into the hastily-constructed New Camp to make room for the arrival of more serious newcomers to the big house up on the hill, their previous residence. When people fight in prison, Phoebe thought, they fight all the harder because they're really not fighting for anything. No one here really has anything worth having. I
don't think many people realize that that logic applies to the guards as well. It was a pretty neat explanation of all the useless posturing and stupid, aggressive behavior. All her life, she'd thought that prisons were run this way to maintain order. Now she thought that people were simply bored. Phoebe had been almost stupidly grateful when she'd first been moved to the New Camp. She didn't know how many people were supposed to be held in this prison, but it was certainly far over capacity by now. She and her five cellmates had all slept in a cell that looked fit for two people. After the drab cell blocks of the prison building itself, living in the outdoors had felt almost as good as being free, with the added bonus of lacking the responsibility that would've come with freedom. But that had been months ago, during the height of summer when sleeping in a tent felt more like an adventure out of her childhood. Now that there was snow on the ground, and the tents still not replaced by anything more permanent or warmer, she felt ready for the adventure to be over. It seemed that these conditions were almost too inhuman for prisoners in the United States to be kept in in this day and age, and sometimes she thought that there must be some kind of legal recourse they could all seek, but she had no idea how to go about such a thing. Most of her fellow inmates were like her, short-timers with only a few months, at most, left. Short timers, she thought. I'm starting to sound like some old black-andwhite movie about Alcatraz. Most of them were as young as
she was, too, or even younger. She'd been surprised by how many of them, like her, also had something to go back to on the outside—at least family who would take them in, although none of them wanted to think about their longerterm prospects. Having never experienced prison before, she had half-imagined it would be filled with no one but hardened criminals, although once she realized how many people had been picked up almost by accident during the riots, as she had, and what flimsy grounds they had all been held on she realized that her preconceived notions had been woefully inadequate. She'd gained quite the education in this place, now that she thought of it. Any experience that starts out with as much blind terror as this one had was bound to produce a profound insight or two. Terror, and simply surprise. She'd been surprised by how guilty she'd felt—all the disapproving words of the police and court officers and the judge. She knew she was innocent, but she felt guilty anyway. Every time she thought back on everything that had happened, every time she went over and over every last possible detail until it became a kind of liturgy, a Via Dolorosa ritual that eventually swallowed whatever actual memory she had of that chaotic event, there was always another cop there, telling her condescendingly how much trouble she was in, another prison guard treating her like another number, almost without human form. Their voices held such command, such authority, that when she heard them she reflexively had to lend them credence. Surely, part of her reaction could be chalked up to
sheer shock. She'd never expected to wind up a prisoner. She'd never known anyone who was a prisoner. To her, being arrested was as unthinkable as not going to college. In this terra incognita, lost in surroundings that challenged her very sense of identity as they did, perhaps it was only natural to rely on the words of others, with their strange dream logic that seemed to prove her guilt simply by asserting it, because at least knowing she was guilty was better than not knowing anything. Even so do the religiously fervent prefer to be judged guilty by a God they don't know, than to take up the burden of judging themselves. The first station of the cross was the lower Manhattan precinct house where they'd initially taken her to be booked. They'd given her her phone call, although for a minute she hallucinated thoughts of not using it, since there was no one she could call that the act itself wouldn't kill her for its shame. Finally she'd called her sister as a sort of compromise between her parents (which probably would have been the logical choice) or nothing, tried to explain all in one breathless gasp what had happened. It seemed she'd only had a few seconds, and at the end she wasn't sure she'd been able to get across everything she needed to. She spent that night there, still in her street clothes. Late the next morning, without so much as a shower, they'd put her in a van with a passel of other women and driven her uptown to a larger facility. Here, a few hours later her family and their hastilyengaged lawyer arrived. Her parents mainly wanted to know
what she'd been doing in that part of town, where the demonstrations were going on, to begin with. They didn't seem nearly upset about the arrest as about the fact that she'd been anywhere near the riots in the first place. (Riots? she'd thought, naively. What riots?) To this, she had no good answer but to break down and cry. The lawyer asked her a few more humane questions, and these she answered as best she could. Then he told her that this was all a big misunderstanding and they'd have it all cleared up probably by the pre-trial hearing, that this kind of thing happened a lot in these situations. What situations? Then, again after seemingly only a few seconds, they were gone. Walking through the dayroom a few moments later, she caught some words on the TV news about the previous day's death toll, saw the smashed windows and burnt cars downtown, and only then did she begin to think about the enormity of what had happened to the city, and not just herself. Later that day they gave her a shower and an orange jumpsuit. The first courtroom was small and dingy—hardly any better than the classrooms she used to teach in. (Used to teach, she thought to herself in the present, sitting in the New Camp. When did I stop being a teacher?) Only her lawyer, a prosecutor, a bailiff, and a magistrate were there. Her lawyer seemed upset that she was in the orange jumpsuit, but mainly he, the other lawyer, and the judge talked amongst themselves up at the bar. After only a few minutes, he was grumbling something about discovery and how they were just wasting time, and unfortunately they'd have
to come back tomorrow. Two days more in the jail. It was stuffed to the gills with inmates, just like the old precinct house had been. Her cell had two beds in it, but they'd rolled out a mat on the floor to sleep a third. Phoebe was used to the small, casual cruelties of jail life by now, knew what was expected of her—surprising, really, given what a short time she had actually been here. On the afternoon of the second day, she went to another courtroom—this one was a much longer walk, over what felt like a pedestrian bridge across a street. This new courtroom was magnificent—all oak paneling and great seals, like something out of Law and Order. This time, her lawyer wasn't there, but there was a line of fellow defendants. She waited her turn, and then in a few moments the prosecutor (she assumed that's what he was) had laid out clearly that she was a flight risk, and that she needed to be subject to something called “expedited commissioning”, and then the judge gaveled the session closed with a few words about remanding them all to something or another. They all filed out, and early the next morning she (along with a completely different passel of women) was on a much larger truck, which had taken her here, to Danbury, where she was sitting now. It all seemed very clear and easy to remember, and she could explain none of it, how she'd come from a common misunderstanding with the always-overzealous NYPD to being held in a Federal (or whatever it was—the flagpoles out front had a U.S. flag and a Corrections Corporation of America flag, and that was it) penitentiary.
But maybe, she realized eventually, it didn't have to make sense. Maybe that was the whole point. Her memory wasn't faulty, and she knew she'd done nothing wrong, and why hadn't she ever seen her lawyer again anyway? As she began to think about it, the idea became more appealing. It solved her own identity crisis, it obviated the problem of her actual criminal liability (at least in her mind), and it even won her some friends. Being able to explain that in fact, none of them were really guilty, because even if they'd been guilty the system had screwed them in a blatantly illegal way, became her shtick, and she eventually developed a loyal if somewhat more political than average following among the many gangs and cliques that made up prison society. But it felt good on an even deeper level, because it gave her something to do, and something she could have even after she got out—for clearly, this fight was just beginning. It all felt very natural—this was her own personal story, not some activism on behalf of an abstract idea or a group of people she never socialized with. This was her authenticity—she may have been protesting on behalf of someone else the day she was arrested, but by God now she had a real grievance that she couldn't lay down when she went home. Once she and her friends got out, they could really organize, really raise some hell and not have to feel guilty about it. The only reason she was in here in the first place was because she'd been at that stupid anti-war protest, trying to talk about a fight that had never even involved her in the first place. But now she didn't have to feel empathy for some
imagined strangers; she no longer needed to be abstractly angry, she only needed to bear witness to her own life. Her resolve seemed infinitely more powerful for it. The more she thought about it, the more impatient she became.
Two: The fateful lightning Late Summer
Orangeburg County, South Carolina BY the time the gray predawn's early light had barely made an appearance, Shaw and his gang packed up everything they could into their saddlebags and slipped away from the abandoned house they'd been staying in. No one said anything. No one hardly said anything at all, anymore. Shaw drank his coffee but didn't bother to eat anything. When had he become such an addict? He wished he didn't need to eat, would never need to eat, could get by just on coffee. Maybe he just had other things to worry about now, and eating and sleeping had fallen so far down on his list of priorities, his body was simply rejecting the very idea out of hand. The police were closing in on them here, Shaw was sure, and although it meant leaving the only people they could trust—most of the locals, after hearing what had happened to them in Andrews, were more than willing to help with the occasional meal or tank of gas, and never ask where the money they got came from—they had to get going. Shaw did marvel at how much friendlier people were out here in the countryside, or maybe the ongoing catastrophe had just made everyone feel a little more like a kindred spirit. But just today a cruiser had rolled past this very house, slowly, clearly suspicious, and Shaw finally felt justified in what the others had called his paranoid idea of always hiding the bikes. After all, several of those were stolen, too. When the eight of them departed the ramshackle house they headed generally northeast, nearly retracing the route they had taken to get here. Shaw had no real idea of where
they were going, but thought perhaps things in Andrews had settled down enough that he could reconnect with someone he knew there. For a moment, the thought of retracing their steps caused him to think reflexively about his old life in Wilmington, which now was mainly reduced to memories of his kids' faces. They rode for a good few hours, making their serpentine way along back roads which often caused them to double-back or go nearly in circles, passing the same ramshackle farmhouses time and again. At one point they found their way blocked by a little stream running into Lake Marion, a stream which was no more than few feet wide but which they could not, to save their lives, find a bridge over. On the other side of them was some small town or other, towns being something they sought to avoid. It was while trying to thread this Scylla and Charybdis that the law, such as it was, finally caught up with them. They rounded a corner out of the woods, onto a big open field that stretched away into a cemetery to their west. They hardly had time to notice the roadblock before they had to stop to avoid hitting it. A van and a pickup, parked at an angle clear across the road, and half a dozen meanlooking white dudes with guns were in front of it. One of them raised his hand to signal them to stop. Some of them raised their weapons at the Outlaws. “Hold up,” the man said. “Kill your engines and keep your hands where we can see 'em. Randy, you better call this in, tell 'em we got the whole lot of 'em out here.” Then to Shaw and the others: “Oh, you didn't think we'd
heard about you? Y'all pulled that bank job up in Spartanburg, dincha? Y'all are famous.” He smiled toothily, but paused a moment. “I thought I told you to kill the--” Shaw heard the first shot behind him and to his right, and sure enough the man who'd been addressing them staggered backwards with a red bloom coming out of his chest. Shaw dove off his bike as approximately a thousand other shots flew back and forth overhead. He'd gotten pretty good at that maneuver. He already heard screams by the time he'd managed to draw his handgun. Now he was aiming and firing; it was funny how automatic it was now. He didn't have the self-consciousness about it he'd had last time something like this had happened. The members of the self-appointed posse who were still standing retreated behind their vehicles, but Shaw kept peppering them with covering fire. He looked around at his compatriots. Someone was on the ground, not moving. Jonesy, to his left, was clutching his arm and doubling over. “Get behind me!” Shaw shouted to him, and when he didn't seem to understand he reiterated, “Get on my bike!” Then to the others, none of whom appeared to be hurt but who did seem to be in a kind of daze: “Let's go!” Their bikes managed to claw their way around the asphalt, tearing through the ditch and then back up onto the road on the other side of the parked vehicles. Before riding past, Shaw turned around and peppered the men hiding behind their vehicles with bullets until the breech of his gun locked open. They were lucky. For whatever reason—the fact that this wasn't their first gunfight, perhaps—they'd
been just a little quicker on the draw, and more of them made it out than did their opponents, three of whom they left on the ground. Their own comrade was still lying on the pavement, but something welled up inside all of them that made it impossible to stop for him. Charles Shaw was nearly laughing as they rode away. He hoped Jonesy, holding on for dear life behind him, wouldn't notice. The funny thing was, he'd never even been to Spartanburg, South Carolina in his life. A month ago, he probably would've wondered who the men they'd just fought were really looking for, but now he was finding that any periods of confusion that he felt didn't last as long as they used to. This wasn't like the confusion of being exiled from his home, or from the many other displacements he'd suffered. Shaw didn't realize it then, but after that day they would never find themselves on the defensive, knocked back on their heels like that, again. * * *
Lynchburg, Virginia. Operation Mountain Lion, the long-awaited move to sweep the insurgents out of their final remaining stronghold on the western side of the state, had begun sometime in the small hours of that morning. There had been a months-long prelude; Bravo Company, and indeed the entire rest of the brigade, had spent the last six months patrolling the countryside and slowly tightening the noose. The city itself had remained tantalizingly unapproachable, for a number of reasons. It was set amidst a number of cramped
mountain valleys, the ideal terrain for a defending commander. The insurgents, had reinforced it to the hilt, armor, artillery, and enough ammunition to make “to the last man and the last round” actually mean something. The final straw though, and the key to the whole thing, had been air superiority. When the enemy's planes had begun failing to appear—over Lynchburg, as well as over the rest of the country, it seemed—the time had finally come to make a big move. As nearly an entire division closed in on Lynchburg, an even longer column of IDPs streamed the other way, new fodder for the camps. 1LT Channing bounced down the highway, the line of Humvees moving quickly into position. On the console in front of him was an empty bag of Kroger's generic trail mix, and there was an empty water bottle rolling around at his feet. He silently reprimanded himself for not having someone clean out the trucks before they left, but when he thought about it he was glad for the tinge of normalcy. It was like he was bringing a small piece of the outside world into the strange theater of combat which he was about to enter. He thought about the battalion briefing he'd attended. There had been no bones made about the real purpose of this mission: to attritt as many enemy fighters as could be found. The occupation part, restoring order and denying the territory to the enemy, had not been part of their briefing. Channing was glad to be done with six months of patrols, house searches and IEDs on a good day, mortars or firefights on a bad one. But now there was a purpose, a
direction to their efforts; they at least weren't sitting ducks, holed up behind the wire in Roanoke. The Humvees took an exit ramp off of the Lynchburg Highway and trundled north. Separating the residences from the highway, in addition to the usual twenty-foot-high noise barriers, was a pair of burnt-out Strykers, still standing watch over this entrance to the neighborhood, the undisturbed trees next to them a silent testament to precision-guided munitions. There was an armor company arrayed around the circuitous interchange where they exited; their rescue plan if they found themselves in a bad way later on. Channing tried to concentrate on the immediate situation. Already there'd been contact; at least one truck was down in an ambush less than a mile from where they now were, and right now their mission was simply to outflank the ambush site to the rear and sweep up any hostiles that tried to make a run for it. Channing thought about how an operation like this, the world's most advanced military devoting itself body and soul to such a massive undertaking, must represent the height of precision on every level. He had wondered before how something like this could be so well-planned down to the last detail, while if the same people had tried to plan, say, an operation to eradicate poverty, or provide a quality education, to the same city they were now trying to penetrate forcibly and occupy, they would find themselves tied down by a million Lilliputian devils, hiding in every detail. Were military men simply more passionate about their work, did they throw themselves into it
wholeheartedly the way teachers and caseworkers did not or could not? Or was the job simply easier, in the way it is always easier to destroy than to create? Channing did not know, but he wanted to think that military maneuvers such as this took on a balletic grace of their own, a kind of preternatural poise that other human activities did not possess simply because they were not as virtuous or honorable as a just war justly fought. Rationally, he knew this could not be the case; he knew that right now he was just one cell in a plant that was growing organically, following the sunlight but otherwise sprouting shoots, stems, branches, leaves in any number of directions. Nothing was graceful about this war, and everything was organic. To say that war is not graceful is a cliché, but this war was not so much ungraceful as it was ungainly, an unwieldy, ponderous thing that one could somehow never seem to get a firm grasp on no matter how one turned it. Even the trusty red-and-blue splatterings had no meaning anymore, this map would need more than two or even three colors. It had the disgustingly organic quasi-fractals of mold growing in a week-old coffee pot, not a map with clean lines drawn by a human hand, but something that had grown completely unconscious of itself or of any human notions of symmetry or beauty. This was the really terrible thing; that it was just so confusing. Even where there was no fighting, there could be no telling, since to be an enemy in this conflict was as potentially simple as having a difference of opinion, something ephemeral that could change moment to moment, could not be discerned by any
means short of telepathy, and that could survive with no tangible manifestation in the physical world. It was totalizing and it was absent. It was not of this world. And that is why to human eyes it manifested itself as a patchwork, a fractal of infinitely recursive divisions that were slowly being brought into focus only through tremendous effort and many thousands of deaths. The entire country had been turned into this nightmarish quilt, with patches the size of entire states or the size of a single person's conscience. There was no discernible pattern. Why was Bucks County, PA a hotbed of sedition while the Shenandoah Valley was serenely quiet? Why was Wisconsin being consumed by house-to-house (or even farm-to-farm) fighting, while across the Minnesota border, sometimes less than a dozen miles away, life carried on as normal? He thought of an image he'd seen on the news, taken at NAS Key West, of some Marines zip-cuffed on the tarmac, detained on suspicion of harboring insurgent sympathies. Their patches just couldn't overcome the patch they found themselves surrounded by, standing on, breathing in. He wondered how many people there were like that, who suddenly found a front line sprung up right in front of their eyes, and found themselves on the wrong side of that front line. We all did, he thought suddenly, for a reason he couldn't quite grasp, and succeeded only in confusing himself. He thought wryly of how a movie might depict something like this. Surely there would be a tabletop map, down in the bowels of the Pentagon of course, with some of the protagonists standing around it purposefully pushing
miniature tanks and planes around, speaking in baritone, gravelly voices of how such-and-such a front was collapsing, or how this city or that had been secured. This movie, being an action flick after all, wouldn't be able to spend too much time on exposition, and so the conflict would just have to be explained in a few throwaway lines, a solution come up with on the spot so the heroes could ride out to grasp victory from the jaws of defeat. It was all backwards. The exposition, the planning, the preparation always took more time than the action. The reality was, in this as in the rest of human existence, that if there was a solution at all, it certainly took longer to figure out what it was, blindly feeling your way, than it did to actually do it. The reality was that it didn't take one map, it took thousands, and they had to argue with each other, differ, be reconciled and gradually built up into a kind of fuzzy picture before any heroics could take place. Worse, all these maps weren't in one place, in the basement of the Pentagon or something, but they were in toughbooks, in peoples' heads, in old paper pamphlets, spread out across thousands of square miles of country. The Humvee swung off the main road onto a side road, hardly slowing down. Channing tried to clear his mind, get ready for the dismount. Should be simple; they were only setting up a defensive position, they had plenty of cover, and they wouldn't be facing any kind of organized resistance, although there might be some resistance of the disorganized kind. More likely than not, anyone they came across would try and run. Perhaps it wasn't the most
efficient use of an infantry platoon, he thought, but the idea was to go slowly, thoroughly, and minimize the number of enemy combatants escaping. As they came around a sharp bend, the lake came into view on their left. This was the other piece of their tactical plan; the lake stretched away to the west and south, meaning that anyone running from the fight currently in progress would have to cross a four-lane road (which the armor was probably already moving up), swim across the lake, come through Channing's position, or move north, towards the city—the same direction the entire brigade was moving at the moment, and so at best only a tactical retreat. Swept up into a nice neat box of diminishing size, one of thousands of such boxes being drawn across the city. They were on the extreme edge of the suburbs; the houses here were set far apart and back from the road, and there was fairly heavy forest in between, although the ground cover was light. Channing set up three of his squads on the west side of a creek which ran into the lake; the one bridge over it seemed like a natural destination someone trying to run west might make for. He set up his fourth squad across the bridge, to minimize surprises. Then they waited. When his crew first trundled out of the Humvee, the first thing he heard was the gunfight going on down the street. He couldn't see anything; the road bent around to the left behind some trees, but the action was less than half a mile away now. There might be no giant map in a
cavernous war room in the Pentagon, but there was one, of sorts, distributed in a cloud of hand-held tablets across most of North America. Channing's tablet was working just fine, he could see each of his men in position, updated every few seconds from a blue-force tracker at some higher level. It was a clunky piece of machinery—it could only refresh itself every 10 seconds or so, and if he accidentally tipped it and it tried to re-orient the screen it froze up for a full 20 seconds sometimes—but he also didn't know what he'd do without it. It even gave him some idea of where other blue units and active firefights were. He heard shots off to his front-left, close. A second later a voice was in his ear saying something about contact, but he knew exactly where it was. Although he hadn't heard any bullets aimed at him, he still moved a bit farther behind his truck. He gave an order to advance and secure any structures—they were still far enough away from their comrades down the road that he didn't see a risk of friendly fire, and better they have a house or something to shelter in than the bad guys hole up in it. Who knew how long it might take to get them out if that happened. He was still waiting by his truck as two of his squads advanced. Time dragged. He heard something about a hostile down, how Bravo-13 had secured a house. Heard that the hostile was down with a survivable wound and put in a call for a medevac. He wanted to just march over to their new prisoner, menace him, maybe draw his M11 and put it to the man's head and ask him where his colleagues were hiding whatever MacGuffin the cast of this movie was after. Wished
he could create such drama, but of course he knew better. Now he heard more shots, still off to his left, someone said something about a hostile bugging out off to the north, and some of his own flankers were off in pursuit. He was worried that they might get too spun up and just keep going, move out of their lane and leave the rest of the platoon behind trying to catch this one lousy redneck they were chasing, but a few shots rang out and somebody called in that the enemy combatant was down. Nothing was said about survivable wounds, so he assumed that the man's condition didn't require urgent care. There had been no more shots. He wanted to call into company and ask if they were still to hold this position, but didn't see any rush. The firefight down the road had escalated; he heard the ominous boom of the main gun of an M-1 Abrams, so close that it couldn't be coming from anywhere else. He decided to take his medic and his RTO and go to look at what they had caught. The man—he could hardly be called a man, Channing thought with a start, he looked barely college-aged—was rolled on his side, his shirt taken off, and when he saw the patches on opposite sides of his torso and heard the telltale whistling of a punctured lung, he realized why. The boy also had a tourniquet around his right leg—he was pretty beat up, but his wounds had been field dressed fairly well and there wasn't much doubt he'd survive. The medic bent down to administer something, and his Polizzi was calling in a status update. “Bravo, bravo,” he said over the radio. “This is Bravo-
1, we have one enemy combatant detainee in custody, medical condition critical, one enemy combatant KIA.” Channing wished they could just use the much simpler “POW”, instead of the mouthful that was “enemy combatant detainee”, but they'd been told not to. Lieutenant Channing squatted down to get a better look at their prisoner's face. The boy was still conscious, but distracted by pain; he had the expression of someone deadlifting a heavy weight. His previous thoughts of dramatically interrogating the prisoner came back unbidden, and he almost asked him some pointless question—clearly, this guy knew nothing of any importance—but in the end just shook his head. The boy wouldn't have been able to answer anyway. “Death is too good for these people,” he said, getting a laugh from his teammates. The prisoner groaned louder. And just like that, it was over. There was no climax, not even a proper shoot-out. They'd only made contact with a total of two hostiles, one of which was their prisoner and the other of which was apparently dead. Granted, their mission here had been completely defensive in nature; they had no reason to even expect any contact in the first place. He had days, weeks of this to go before Lynchburg would be made safe. Combat hadn't lessened the repetitive, monotonous Army life for him. As the thought dawned on him, or just the wearing off of the adrenaline, he felt hopelessly tired. * * *
Five days later, the 43 soldiers of Bravo-1 had become intimately familiar with more terrain in Lynchburg than they would have ever thought possible. Channing never thought his life would reach a point where kicking in the doors of total strangers' houses would become monotonous, but here he was. If he hadn't been so exhausted and busy, he might've mused on just how surreal this all was. Things had started to go wrong. A resupply mission had been waylaid and nearly all of Bravo-1's replacement ammo and food had been lost. None of them complained, of course, and none of them slowed down, but this was annoying nonetheless. At 0200 of D+6 a halt was called so they could take a couple hours of sleep, in shifts. The suburban houses had given way to shopping malls and office parks, which had now turned back into houses, although these were older and than their suburban counterparts. After clearing an enormous complex of buildings—a Baptist megachurch of some sort—they bivouacked in between two of the wings of the three-story structure, behind the cover it provided. Channing allowed his soldiers their second meal of the past 24 hours—second, or first; come to think of it he wasn't really sure. By 0600, it was time to start moving while there was still some darkness left. This part of the city wasn't much for streetlights, and even though the electricity was still on they were few and far between. The haunted aspect the city presented, with its own intermittent lighting in the predawn had Channing thinking that every time a branch moved it was someone coming at them out of the bushes. He
knew he wouldn't have to worry, though, until he stopped being jumpy and started slacking off. He called in his squad leaders for a quick brief before moving out. “Alright,” he began, his voice sounding slower than usual to himself. “Cordon-and-search is gonna be the order of the day, again. Current objective for the battalion is this college campus up here, everyone's been talking about. We,” he emphasized, illustrating all the while on his tablet, “are responsible for this southeastern sector here. Once we're in place, force recon is going to pass through us, once they've penetrated all the way through we sweep up behind them. As usual, we'll have armor behind us in case anyone gets in trouble. Now everything I've heard indicates this is gonna be a real fight this time—maybe the hardest we've been in yet, so I know it's been pretty light so far but keep your heads in the game. This is one of the highest-activity areas we're likely to be in. Questions?” “I thought the university campus was the big hotspot,” said Johnson. “Is this gonna be as bad as it was over there?” “I don't know, Johnson,” sighed Channing, truly exasperated. “Liberty's not our concern right now. At least this place is smaller, won't take as long. Just be careful, everyone, okay?” A few more minutes, and they were once again hiking down the two-lane streets, past the seemingly lifeless houses. All of his squads peeled off to cover their sectors, and Channing and his immediate team headed towards what would be the extreme right end of the platoon's
position. Having gone past simply jumpy now, his mind was starting towards some seriously manic behavior—he felt a misplaced sense of elation one moment, and as if he would fall asleep on his feet the next. They'd all trained for this and expected it, and he tried to use all the tricks he knew to stay alert. He tried simply letting his instincts take over, tried to give his conscious mind a rest, but found that he couldn't switch it off. His body tensed—his usual coping mechanism for dealing with exhaustion wasn't working, and it was stressing him out. Of course, their field discipline was admirable. Twenty yards apart from each other, moving from cover to cover. They didn't take any chances—but field discipline isn't meant to keep you safe, only to give you the best odds possible. No amount of discipline or training will save you, if the big one finds you. They say that death is like taxes, but really it is far beyond the ability of any earthly bureaucracy to operate on it. So it was that, keeping his eyes fixed on the back of 1SG Ismail Shahbaz ahead of him, Channing saw the man's neck explode out from underneath his head, a red nebula going off to his left, his head snapping back at an odd angle and then his whole frame collapsing to the ground. For the rest of his life, Channing would never be able to recall hearing the gunshot that killed him. The next thing he knew, in a dreamlike instant he was flat on the bottom of the drainage ditch next to the road, and he could hear the gunshots coming from all around. Get off the X, his mind said, but his body didn't seem
able to respond. He took a moment to clear his head and found himself looking around. Muzzle flashes in the house directly in front of them. He chanced a look over his shoulder, only a split second, and saw muzzle flashes from the house kitty-corner as well. When his head turned back around, he saw a man with a rifle running at him. Finally, his conscious mind was turned off. He swung his M4 around, fired three times. He didn't even have time to properly brace himself, so one of the bullets missed completely. The second one caught the man in the upper left thigh, the third in his shoulder, and he staggered backwards. He checked his six again, saw two more coming across the street. This time, with so many seconds to spare he had no trouble taking careful aim. By the time they fell, the shooter in the house was back at it; he heard the bullets' high-pitched whine impossibly close to his ear, saw the very dirt in between his feet kick up, but didn't have time to wonder how he hadn't been hit. He finally realized that Polizzi, behind him, was his nearest teammate. He bellycrawled down the drainage ditch until he was stopped by a driveway. He shouted to lay down covering fire on the house, and then pushing himself up out of the ditch sprinted across the driveway. Another dreamlike, unremembered moment later and he was back down again, but now he was in the same segment of ditch as Polizzi. Together, they would have to fight their way out of here. Channing, now finally regaining a sense of control, issued an order for the whole platoon to fall back, and for his weapons squad, which had been left in the rear, to envelope
left and attempt a flanking maneuver to give them some relief. He spent the next few minutes waiting for updates— all of his squads seemed to be in similarly dire straits. While waiting for his lines to re-form, though, he realized that he and Polizzi, at least, didn't have any fire coming from behind them—they must be at the front edge of the ambush zone. Struck by a sudden idea, he led his RTO back down the ditch, the way they had come. Settled in the next segment of ditch, they were still pinned down, but the enemy fire had grown more occasional. They traded shots for an indeterminate amount of time, until at long last Channing could hear the approach of some kind of heavy vehicle. At that, just before the Abrams rounded the corner, the insurgents melted away. Although he desperately wanted to give chase, the lieutenant knew that now was the time for some serious debriefing. He first ascertained what kind of shape his platoon was in. He'd lost six KIA and a dozen more injured— nearly half his combat strength. In terms of US Army lives, this was one of the costliest incidents in the entire battle for Lynchburg. He knew they'd given out even more than they'd taken, although he didn't know exactly how many they'd taken with them and he also knew that it didn't matter. Losing six American soldiers was something everyone, on both sides of the fight, would be talking about. Instead of trying to determine how responsible he was for any of this, or how he'd reacted, he very consciously decided instead to wonder just how in the everloving fuck the intel branch had let them down this badly.
A relief platoon moved through their position, headed for the college campus that had been there objective a few hours ago. Taking advantage of this temporary reprieve, Channing accompanied some of his wounded to the medevac helicopter. On the other side of the LZ, which was in the parking lot of a shopping mall over on the nearest main road, he could make out just a handful of civilians, waving their miniature American flags in salutation. * * *
New York, New York Things had calmed down enough for Phoebe's life to feel like it had gotten back to normal. The war was now relegated to some godawful backwaters in the South, so instead of arguing or hiding, everyone seemed to be willing themselves to forget that anything had ever happened. If the pitched battles going on in Pennsylvania a few months ago had been just within the awareness of the median New Yorker, now the closest real fighting was all the way in Virginia, and certainly not worth knowing about. An unlooked-for advantage of this situation, however, was that now there could be antiwar demonstrations again. Or at least Phoebe thought of it as an upside, in some abstract sense. These protests weren't like the last ones, though. It wasn't the same advocacy groups and umbrella organizations that organized every protest, organizing this one. This one had come together slowly, and didn't really seem to have as much direction. In fact, it seemed almost like an organic reaction to the willful forgetfulness of
most of the city, as if all these people had assembled for no other reason than producing an uncomfortable memory of the fact that there was still a war on at all. There were no speakers, and certainly no color-coordinated t-shirts like the UFT had. Instead there was just a slow buildup of more-or-less homeless looking people in Washington Square, until a few kids got on a news camera and announced that it was an antiwar sit-in. She didn't know if that's why everyone was there, but they were certainly many; far more than had ever camped out during the height of Occupy Wall Street. Phoebe Lingampally didn't tell anyone she was going back to the square. No one—not her parents, not her friends—would have approved. They'd all been notionally against the war at first, but that was in the past. And anyway, she could hardly even justify the decision to herself; perhaps it was one of those actions we keep secret because, although we know it is the right thing to do, we can't explain why, even to ourselves. Perhaps this was one of those times when taking an action, any action, is preferable to stewing in one's own thoughts. Somehow the square seemed busier than last time. There couldn't be as many people here as before, could there? There were still a few too-well-dressed tourists or wellwishers or just gawkers or whoever they were strolling through, but the campers seemed to have spread out some, taken up more space. It seemed louder, too. Maybe people were just warming up their voices for the march that was supposed to begin soon.
There was longer hair, more bandanas pulled over faces, than last time. It was getting even louder now. Phoebe was growing impatient. She felt a bit awkward just standing there with her out-of-place Starbucks, and just wished the whole thing would get underway already. She was surprised at how few cops she saw, it seemed like just a few cruisers were parked around the perimeter, although maybe her vision was blocked by the crowd and the numerous signs and structures that had been erected in the square. Now, finally someone was standing on something, trying to get the rabble's attention. All of life's truly worst moments happen when we are alone, and Phoebe, surrounded as she was by thousands of people, may as well have been alone. She hadn't told anyone she was coming here. She knew no one here. In this crowd she was completely alienated, and would wonder for the rest of her life if things might have turned out differently if she hadn't strayed so far from her family and all that was familiar, safe, mundane. Even if she had just had someone with her. At that very moment, though, there was a new loudness, of a qualitatively different sort, the kind that our distant ancestors used to warn of only the gravest dangers and which therefore still causes a chill to run through us, an instinct millions of years old, whenever we hear it. The crowd, that great collective beast, turned as one towards the source of a real fear which all of them now felt, for a split second, and then there was chaos as it started to surge, this way and that, trying to escape from whatever it was that had startled it. From that very first
yell, Phoebe knew somehow that something had gone wrong with the police around the edges, and the dread that was now in her stomach was bottomless. Somehow she recognized the pop of a gas grenade, and then the low dread that was still sinking through her was replaced by an even more primal terror, as she was nearly bowled over by the surge of the crowd making for the exits. She was knocked over, clawed her way up the bodies of those standing next to her, muddied and scuffed after a terrifying second, was knocked over again. Now the crowd had thinned out—or simply surged itself in a different direction. Her field of vision suddenly open, Phoebe could see rock-throwers in front of her, and perhaps fifty yards in front of them, but terrifyingly real all the same, the unbroken black line of riot gear. The acrid taste of tear gas was already in her mouth and nostrils. The line of black was moving towards her, patiently, methodically. She sat down behind a bench, possibly trying to hide or shelter herself, now needing to think of something to do, somewhere to go, which was even worse than being borne along by sheer terror as she had a moment before. How much time had elapsed? Everything was happening too fast, like a car accident. Too fast, and then everything would be too still later. She was next to some of the concrete chess boards, and couldn't help but notice that one of them still had the pieces on it, mid-game, not one out of place. She had to try hard not to simply think of the next move, her brain automatically going to someplace that it knew, some problem that it could handle,
simply to escape the stress of her present circumstances. Phoebe was now experiencing what might have been the third distinct species of mortal terror she'd felt that day. This was the desperate kind, the pleading kind, the kind that drives you to things that might be completely unthinkable in normal circumstances. She looked around wildly for a way out, tried to find a gap in the line of riot gear, thought of trying to dig herself a foxhole, or climb a tree. Who knows how long she sat like that, waiting for an opportunity to escape which she had no way of even recognizing. All she knew was that at some point, after taking a few minutes to process the fact, she had looked up and the police were gone. Looking around as far as she could, she could make out only isolated groups of them, and they seemed to be moving back the way they had come. Too long she sat there, paralyzed once again by the sudden change of fortune, until the tear gas began to waft in thick around her. Spurred once again by panic (amusing how a life-or-death situation can ebb and flow by the second, interspersed with random moments of looking at trees or feeling a chill wind), she got up and began to run forward, worried in the back of her mind that the police might come back, worried more about the gas coming in behind her. She ran and ran, and in what seemed like a few seconds was off the square, running down a street (she didn't know which), lined with artsy student restaurants in neat row houses. Several blocks ahead, she saw the line of police again, swinging their truncheons furiously; she saw on the other side of them black smoke coming from somewhere. She turned
right on a hunch, confident that this was the way to take her quickly out of here. Very suddenly, the noise had died down. She found herself in an alleyway devoid of people. She realized that the tear gas had affected her more than the surge of testosterone would allow in the heat of the moment; her eyes began to burn badly, and she had to sit down. She sat on a stoop, gasping, and became dimly aware of people approaching. Solicitous voices asked her if she was okay, all she could gasp out was “Don't know” when all of a sudden their hands were on her, in her pockets. Realizing what was happening, she tried to push them away only to find her arms pinned. In a second it was over, and they were gone; in amazement she patted herself down, unwilling or unable to believe that her wallet, her phone were gone but for some reason they had left her keys. Not knowing whether to sit down and weep or to keep moving (where to was anyone's guess), she found herself stumbling automatically forward. She was now well and truly lost; she wandered down nameless streets until she saw the familiar lit globe of a subway station, although the entrance was surrounded by a phalanx of police. Not knowing what else to do, she walked up to them, was told to keep back, the subway was closed. Her mouth worked, speechless. She must have presented a pretty pitiful sight, a few of them discussed among themselves and then let her through. One of the officers asked her name, typed something into a tablet. Sometime later (she'd lost any notion of the passage of time), a police armored car showed up, in between bands of
marching, chanting rioters. It was only then that they arrested her. * * *
Chesapeake, Virginia The drive into Norfolk was nothing like the drive into Atlanta had been. First of all, the fighters were much reduced in number—where four school buses had carried them into Atlanta, now they were down to one, and it not even completely full. The drive this time had also been much, much longer, almost 8 hours across northeast Georgia and the Carolinas. They'd driven northeast on 85 all the way to Greensboro N.C., and then due east to the Atlantic. But despite the length of the trip, they moved not at all like ponderous city buses commuters ride; they moved with a purpose. The problem with Norfolk, Danny had explained to them, was that it was surrounded on two sides by water and on the third side by a swamp, and the fighting had taken out nearly every bridge in the city, which was cut up by a bunch of smaller rivers and inlets of Chesapeake Bay and the Atlantic Ocean besides. So they'd snaked their way up the coast on some two-lane highways, through miles of countryside without more than a dilapidated shack or two along the way to give proof to the fact that anyone even lived here. Now they were nearly there, but somehow for Jeff the tedious rhythm of the long ride refused to let him go, even when the entire northern sky ahead of them was filled with columns of smoke and they knew they must be getting close. Here, now, with the fighting looming up in
front of him ominous and indecipherable as a thundercloud, he still couldn't help but feel that particular kind of sleepy one feels during a long road trip. The certain knowledge that they would see combat before 24 hours had elapsed couldn't do anything to him to help shake it. The men were different, too. They were no long civilians, exactly. They still wore the same street clothes they'd brought with them, but now they were covered in a fine layer of dust, their hair a little more unkempt, the stubble on their chins a little longer. They had the slightly off-putting aspect that comes with long-term homelessness, the appearance of elderly canines whose fur has gotten dusty and matted. Their clothes were wrinkled, their boots worn out, and when they stood up to disembark at the occasional break from driving they had a weariness about them, moved slowly. Their weapons were no longer carefully or self-importantly slung around, instead their muzzles slouched towards the floor or wheeled around over their shoulder. In short, they had reverted to the historical norm for how paramilitaries are supposed look. They could have been Serbs, or Chechens. Jeffrey Rainier didn't like thinking about how they'd come to make this trip. The way most of their comrades had deserted them in Atlanta had stung, not so much because Jeff thought they were abandoning the cause as he did they were rebuking his brother's leadership of their small company, and the rebuke made all the worse because he couldn't be certain it wasn't accurate. It was all that Jerry Rico's fault. The man had done nothing but complain
since they'd left Macon, and he had finally turned most of the others against Danny. Jeff couldn't feel any hatred for the enemy he was going to fight now; he felt the most searing hatred for Jerry Rico. Of course, after things in Atlanta had fallen apart and the rest had gone home, Danny couldn't exactly let their remaining numbers stay in Atlanta. There was nothing left to do in that city, and so to stay would have been just as pointless as going home with the rest. So, after some brief discussions with his colleagues among the regular military, they who had some inkling of the bigger picture, Danny had decided that his men's efforts were needed here, to help block one of a number of government offensives that were attempting to steamroll their way south. They were now on some real back roads, although the houses, still few and far between, had become much nicer than dilapidated shacks. He thought he saw a golf course off in the distance at one point. They must be only a few miles from the ocean. Suddenly off to the left he saw for the first time what the war had left in its wake, not the abandoned streets of Atlanta, or the tense barricades, or the streams of refugees, but the sheer destructive power of a real war. Through the trees popped out a small, almost miniature airstrip. The smooth gray tarmac had been reduced to pebbly craters in at least three or four places. What he realized with a start had once been buildings could now just barely be made out, only the blackened stumps of some wall studs left. And at the very end, a plane—a top-shelf military fighter it looked like, maybe an F-22—lay on its
belly, completely scorched so that its landing gear had softened and twisted beneath it. Everything had been burnt off of it—paint, glass, rubber. It resembled the shed skin of a dead insect, and looked as if it might blow away at any moment. Jeff dimly apprehended that this was the most man-made destruction he himself had ever seen in person—and it had all been concentrated into such a small area, no more than a few hundred square feet, while leaving the trees standing all around. That was the strange thing. He no longer felt tired; now he wasn't sure how he felt. They turned a corner and crossed a bridge (apparently at least some of them were still left), and then suddenly they were in a proper neighborhood, on the outskirts of the city. Jeff could hear the crackle of small arms fire—it wasn't the first time in his life he'd heard it, and it didn't really scare him. But still, it sounded too close for him to relax, either. Danny Rainier got up from his seat near the front, consulted with the driver for a few seconds, then turned to face them. “All right, guys,” he said, and there was a tone in his voice which suggested that he wasn't wasting a single word. “Everybody's gonna be gettin' off right up ahead. This is as close as we can get without makin' too big of a target. Now when you dismount, you're gonna cross the street and form up behind the houses. Hargreaves is on the left, I'm on the right, we'll proceed northward double-time. The objective is to find some suitable terrain, set up an ambush, and once enemy forces reach our position to hit 'em as hard as we can. We will then fall back to a defensible
position and regroup there. Now let me just say one thing. I know y'all have never been in real combat before. No, those little scrapes we used to get into in Atlanta don't count. Well, I have been in combat. I fought 'em up in Lancaster right when this whole thing broke out, and let me tell you something. Up there they had a lot more planes, and a lot more locals on their side. Now we here, we got our own planes and our own locals, and I can tell you they ain't nothing without that. You hear me? Nothing. We fought 'em to a draw for a solid week up in Lancaster, they had to level the whole county before they could dislodge us. Here, hell. We can stand up to 'em forever here. So don't think about the fact that you're the only thing between those bastards and your families and your homes, or anything like that. Just think about that we've got planes same as them.” The school bus, still conspicuously bright yellow, crossed a bridge. Off to the left, but much closer now, was the golf course. On their right, cut out of the thickset trees like some kind of mirage that hadn't been there a moment before, were close-packed suburban homes. “Cell phones off?” Danny asked with a sudden urgency. Everyone checked, turned them off. After a few more minutes they turned down another street. The houses and the water were all around them now. They passed a megachurch on the right. The pillars of smoke were becoming terrifyingly close now. Danny seemed to be peering out the front of the bus intently, at what Jeff didn't know. Finally they came to an intersection with a divided four-lane road, and the bus stopped.
“Alright,” Danny announced. “Hoods up, glasses on, the drones'll have a harder time seeing you that way. From here on in we're gonna hoof it, we're too close to the hot zone. Let's go.” They got out and formed up into the 10-man squads they had long practice with. Then, maintaining good field discipline, the little platoon snaked its way across the road and into another tract of suburban homes. If that road had been a little straighter, they might have seen the Marine position less than a quarter mile from where they were. As it was they made it across the open space without incident. They jogged across cul-de-sacs and back yards. All they heard was the barking of dogs, the distant drone of one (or more?) helicopters, and the far-off boom of HE rounds, in addition to the omnipresent small arms fire. Danny seemed to know where he was going, although Jeff couldn't tell where that might be. The proscription against any kind of electronics was strictly observed, so Danny had one of those old paper tourist map books, the real sturdy spiral-bound kind. They hopped a fence, through another backyard and across another cul-de-sac. Jeff noticed that the lawns hadn't been mowed in quite some time. Down the road, through another yard, over another fence, and now they were on what looked like a bike path. It followed a narrow causeway between two lakes—this town must be more water than land, he thought. At the end of the causeway, they stopped at another wide-open, four-lane road. Danny peered downrange with his field glasses. “Yep,” he said slowly. “That's a Bradley. Can't be just
one of 'em either, although I can't see the other one. Looks like this is as far as we go.” Jeff thought he could see a greenish blob at the extreme edge of his vision, but couldn't tell what it was. Danny sat back on his heels and thought for a moment. The helicopter, closer now, was momentarily drowned out by a jet screeching by low, making a sound like an enormous sheet of paper being torn slowly in two. “Wait a minute.” Danny consulted his map book. “Looks like there's another lake right across this road, behind those trees. Yeah, this'll work. We'll have to move down about a block or so, get 'em right as their passing the water in that straightaway.” They turned left, and proceeded between several sets of duplexes and a line of trees that hid them from the road. Finally, ahead of them they saw a building of three or four stories—the regular pattern of the windows, the cheap siding and trim in shades of blue and green suggested a budget hotel. Here Danny ordered the two other squads to fan out behind them, among the duplexes and what looked like a construction site that lay beyond. Past the construction site were some woods, which would be their escape route, and Danny wanted to make sure that they had a clear line of retreat. At the first sign of trouble, he thought this would allow their perimeter to contract in an orderly fashion, beginning with him, Jeff and the rest of their squad up by the road, back through the duplexes in stages, and finally everyone would be in the woods and they would have some cover to maneuver under.
He wished he had more time to explain this to his men. As it was, he and Jeff and the other eight men assigned to the ambush along the road hopped a short white fence and made their way into the building by breaking a window. They had with them only their rifles, and a couple hand-grenades each, a parting gift from the National Guard when they'd left Atlanta. The room they were in looked too lived-in to be a hotel; an apartment building, apparently, or condos. They set up in a room with a fairly good view of the road, but the view downrange towards the hostile patrol was blocked by some sort of outbuilding. Breaking his own rule of necessity, Danny turned on his phone and told Jeff to do the same, then went out to be the advance spotter himself. He set himself up just on the other side of the outbuilding; everyone else was in position behind them. They waited. The distant gunfire was dying off now. Instead there were more and more explosions. They even saw one from their vantage point at the window, a distant poof of dust and flames and smoke that seemed to lift almost lazily into the air a second before the reverberating sound. No one said anything. Jeff was afraid they might fall asleep. Finally, Danny called in to say that he saw some sort of movement, but then nothing. Were they coming towards them? Was this it? A few seconds later, Jeff heard gunfire of a different sort, but this wasn't coming from the same direction as before. As it crescendoed, his squad mates wondered aloud if it was coming from their rear. Then they heard a boom,
and there was no doubt in their minds that it was coming from their rear. Panicking now, Jeff broke radio silence again to ask Danny, in a humiliatingly broken voice, what they should do. Danny thought for a moment. He had to stick to the plan. “Retreat along the line we discussed,” he said. “I'll meet up with you at the rally point, if not before.” Jeff assumed that he meant the woods. They rapidly made their way out of the building and ran along the white fence they'd jumped earlier. They had only run a few seconds, though, before they saw the military vehicles between them and the woods. They veered to their left, into the serpentine cul-de-sacs that the duplexes were set on. Field discipline had completely broken down; they huddled together behind one of them and watched as a squad of fatigue-clad soldiers swarmed up to a house, apparently one which their comrades were holed up in. At that moment Jeff's phone rang again. He'd have to remember to put it on vibrate to avoid being heard. He heard Danny on the other end. “Got movement on the road. A lot of heavy stuff coming this way. Just keep moving towards the woods and you'll be fine.” Jeff knew he had something to say, but Danny hung up before he could. These were the last words Jeff would ever heard his brother speak. Jeff was completely frozen. He couldn't even tell Danny that the woods were now off limits. Where else could they go? “So that's it, right?” someone said. “Once they're done
with those guys they'll be here in a matter of minutes. Where do we go?” For some reason he looked at Jeff, as if in his brother's absence he had become the leader. Where was Danny, anyway? Wasn't he supposed to meet them? “We gotta go back the way we came, then. Remember, it's the only way out that isn't through the water?” someone else offered. As if not even stopping to think, they set off in that direction, almost falling over each other in their haste, keeping behind the duplexes to avoid seeing the end of the firefight going on down the street. After what seemed like an eternity—longer than they'd waited in the apartment building, longer than the drive here from Atlanta—they saw the line of trees that marked the bike path they'd come in on. And just then, like something out of a bad movie, the Bradley crashed through the trees from the road, flattening them like matchsticks. Danny saw a puff of smoke, heard the sharp buzzing sound of the Bushmaster as it spotted them. He spun around and dove for the corner of the house, didn't quite make it in time but at least managed to get flat on the ground as he felt something warm and wet splash on him. Then it was deathly silent. He lay motionless, now completely without any recourse, not even panic. In spite of everything, it was what followed that would haunt Jeff Rainier for as long as he would remember it. Up until this point, he was still able to fight. He could have sprayed the air wildly with bullets, pulled the pin on a grenade and hugged a GI, done something. Instead, leaving his weapon on the ground, not even thinking about picking
it up, he simply sat up and, hearing voices yelling behind him, put his hands over his head. He was knocked down, zip cuffed. They walked him back to where they were keeping the prisoners, a big open park of some sort, bleakly empty, not even any tree stumps. They were across a lake from some built up area, and now he could see just how perfected the destruction of this city had been. A row of crumbling buildings, their facades all sheared off cleanly as if by a butcher's knife, their doll-house perfect interiors visible, and behind them smoke rising up, discrete columns but enough of them to nearly fill the horizon. He had just enough time to take in this tableau before they hooded him.
Three: Trampling out the vintage Early Summer
Roanoke, Virginia THE Roanoke Salient. This is where Channing learned he was, after almost a month of being there. He had learned this watching the nightly news, that he himself was wedged in one of the last pockets of government control in the southeastern United States. It was held up as some kind of a triumph, but in fact it had only been allowed to form because all the insurgents were busy fighting farther east, on the road to Washington. Those first few weeks at the beginning had been enough to reinforce it, and now that the rebels realized what had happened it was, in fact, too late. He knew it as a place of the endless dull COIN grind: patrol, eat, sleep, patrol. The front line, when there was one, shifted from day to day or even from hour to hour, and had a way of jumping over entire towns sometimes too. Perhaps this was the reason for the increased media attention, he thought. In that typically newsy way, nobody noticed until there was a neat story. A besieged, heroic city, encroached upon by the advancing ranks of a wellregulated militia bent on its conquest, is a headline. A thousand besieged roadblocks and FOBs, besieged not so much by an encircling army as an encircling sense of uncertainty, is something best left for the lowerreadership, higher-brow literary mag. In that typically newsy way, as soon as Roanoke became the story it ceased to be the story. It was, as they say, overtaken by events. For that was the day that one of the most iconic, enduring images of the conflict emerged virally into the mainstream, its conquest of the zeitgeist
made possible by battalions of Facebook profiles, and a brigade of tweets. Two men, their faces covered in scarves that still can't hide the smiles behind them, standing beside a highway. The sky is overcast, the perfect light for an image that must be foreboding but crystal-clear at the same time. Between them, a snake coils on a bed of yellow, the motto DON'T TREAD ON ME partly hidden in the folds of the cloth but not needing to be seen. Above the snake, and the men, and beneath the lead sky, white letters, the corners unassumingly rounded off, on a green roadside sign, the innocuousness of a million such familiar signs transformed by the juxtaposition of the legend WASHINGTON D.C. 59 into a talisman of power and terror. In that typically newsy way, overtaken by events, the story had to be summed up in one image to be understood; and oh, did they ever understand now how serious things were. Thus, today's news was footage of area residents preparing for what appeared to be the strangest hurricane anyone had ever seen. Some of the images were familiar; boarded up windows, bare supermarket shelves, streams of cars crawling their way down the Interstate towards what they hoped was safety. Some of the images, though, were alien; not only supermarkets but gun stores bare-shelved; a few enterprising neighborhoods where instead of fleeing, the residents had staked their chances on some frightfully slender barricades, not trusting the boarded-up windows to keep out looters by themselves. The authorities had made their preparations much earlier, when the first home-made
IEDs had started going off. That was when the White House, the Capitol, the whole center of the city had been cordoned off, the Excluded Zone (as it was called) that he himself had patrolled not too long ago widened from just a few blocks around the more important buildings, to now an entire ghost-city-within-a-city, barricaded not with the particleboard and sheet metal of the city's residents but with serious firepower behind poured concrete walls, SAM missile batteries around the Washington Monument. But this latest threat, this new terror, was something in a whole other league. The threat now wasn't as physical as an IED, but the sight of civilians fleeing from the capital itself was all the more dangerous for it. * * *
Channing had to stop thinking so much. One of these days he was going to actually give voice to his opinions, give voice in front of the wrong people that is, and then he would be in a world of shit. One day, a Sunday, they were out at the end of Route Kilo, on station near the Bedford checkpoint which marked the real front, one of the few tangible, reassuring pieces of boundary between them and rebel territory. Heavily fortified, with SAWs and several layers of Jersey barriers stretched across the divided highway, there was no telling if it actually kept anyone out; ever since they gave up on their half-hearted attempts to infiltrate into Roanoke, no one really dangerous had tried to drive up this road. They could easily go around it on foot, through the woods and hills on
either side, and they often did; thus the need for constant patrolling on the back roads between here and the city proper a few miles away. Perhaps it wasn't reassuring so much because it was an indication of any sort of territory that they controlled; perhaps it was only reassuring because at least they knew where it was and who was there. But all the same, just having a few Jersey barriers to hide behind beat being out on the road. Just west of the checkpoint was what had once been the town of Bedford, Virginia, which was now mostly a collection of abandoned buildings dotted here and there with bombed-out shells. For a few days, right at the start of the fighting, this had been the Western front, the site of an extended artillery duel while the front stabilized and neither side could gain air superiority. Nearly all the inhabitants had fled, more fodder for the camps up north. As usual on these drives, Channing's men dismounted when they reached the checkpoint to talk to the soldiers manning it, see if there was any actionable info that they needed to be aware of. Today was busy; a delivery truck had made a stop at the little convenience store just behind the checkpoint, and the few remaining civilians from the town and its environs had made their weekly pilgrimage to try and grab a loaf of bread or two. The queue stretched across the parking lot, turning aside only to avoid spilling over onto the road. Half the country is fighting its own government, Channing reflected, but damn if they'll be caught blocking traffic on an empty street.
He and his platoon sergeant Shahbaz had been talking to two of the checkpoint contingent, and just as he finished the thought the two, who were positioned to look past Channing and his sergeant across the highway, both turned their heads at the same time in the same direction, in a way that Channing knew could only mean trouble. His reflexes weren't the best, and now they were already shifting their weight to start running, their rifles rising up to their shoulders. Spinning around now, he could hear them shouting, saw the two boys, got the impression they were as white as grubs turned up from under a log. Somehow, impossibly, they were on the wrong side of the barrier. Saw them drop to the ground, it seemed more from fright or to hide from what they thought must surely be a hail of bullets that would momentarily be headed their way. Now Channing was running after them, Shahbaz too, but the soldiers had covered the distance remarkably fast, and four more of them had appeared from somewhere nearby. Now he could hear what they were saying. “Get the fuck on the ground!” “Don't you move a fucking muscle!” “You move so much as one finger and I'll blow your fucking brains out!” Now Channing caught up to them. The boys were pinned on the ground, the soldiers' knees pressed into their backs. They were probably in their early teens, looked younger. “Corporal,” he began. His voice was not as loud as the others'. Rough, gloved hands were patting the boys down. A woman ran up, hysterical, several other civilians
behind her. “No,” she said, “these are my boys, please they didn't mean to do anything wrong, please...” she paused a second, unsure of what she could say, perhaps waiting to see if words would even have any effect. “Corporal,” Channing again, louder this time. “I hardly think this is necessary.” “Let me handle this, sir.” the corporal said, a clear note of warning in his voice. At that moment the LT in charge of the checkpoint hustled up. “The fuck is going on here,” he said, then rounded on the woman, holding up a hand. “Back the fuck up and give us some space.” The woman took a few steps back. A sullenlooking youth, Channing guessed an older brother to the children on the ground, stood behind her. “They ran out of nowhere,” one of the checkpoint garrison said. “Ran straight at us. Way too close. The little fucks are lucky we didn't tag 'em.” This last directed rather obviously at the prostrate individuals on the ground. “And you,” he said, directed at Channing. “You aren't trying to interfere with opsec here, are you?” A fatal pause on Channing's part. “Your men overreacted--” “Overreacted?” the LT said in disbelief. “I don't know if you've ever been in a situation like this--” “--of course I have--” “--but it's not possible to overreact--” “--I don't know if you realize-“You want to risk your own men's lives that's fine,
just don't do it in the middle of my checkpoint with my men.” His voice was still measured, with the grating smoothness of one who knows that he knows best. Channing spun on his heel. “Mount up,” he muttered over his shoulder at Shahbaz. His face burnt. He was possessed by the feeling that lies beyond embarrassment, which is more akin to fatigue, which one feels when one can see precisely how long it will take to live something down. On the way back to where their trucks were parked, he muttered to Shahbaz some more, a pitiful stream of justifications and explanations, pitiful because it was more to calm himself down than because he was actually worried what the sergeant thought of him, as anyone listening could've told. “These guys are shooting themselves in the foot. They aren't here to fight any insurgency, all they care about is force protection and getting this tour over with and getting promoted. It's not my fault we're in an impossible position, where the only way to keep things from getting worse is to take on some risk ourselves. You know, like every time we overreact like that, sure we're safer, but how many new insurgents do you think that interaction just created? How many people were watching that, and how many will remember?” Shahbaz smiled slightly. “No, you're right boss, it is impossible.” “It's those things, and the fact that they do it every day, that hardens people against us. We can't be at such a remove, even at the risk of our own safety. I mean shit, cops do this all the time, go through bad neighborhoods
without kicking in every door and arresting everyone in sight. It's an impossible situation, because we're either being too brutal or we're opening ourselves up to harm. But that's not my fault. And if these people would stop being so fucking short-sighted and realize that the long-term goal means some short term risk, this whole thing would be over with a lot sooner.” Shahbaz was nodding now. They had made it back to the trucks. He sighed a bit too theatrically. Channing couldn't tell if the sergeant really agreed with him, or was just going along because he was his superior officer, or just acted this way whenever anyone he thought to be smarter than him went on a diatribe such as this. He felt annoyed. It didn't take long for Channing to get an email, back at his desk in the compound, summoning him to see MAJ Henderson, the battalion S-3. As he dragged himself between the hooches of Camp Mountain View and over to the HQ company, he thought about the first job he'd had out of school, how getting called into the principal's office, even though it was for some screw up or other, had given him a certain sense of misplaced pride, or at least of importance. At least when he screwed up people noticed. Now, however, all he felt was glum, and a little nervous. MAJ Henderson had the air of someone who was extremely busy and didn't really want to deal with him, but he had to, so he made it quick. “Now, I understand you've been interfering in the operations of units you don't have any business interfering with.” He spoke briskly, somehow getting his southern drawl
to sound clipped and martial. “Sir,” Channing began. He voice betrayed his nervousness. He hadn't even really been clear-headed enough to think of exactly how to put this, having little more than his rant to Shahbaz from earlier to base it on. “in my opinion the actions of those soldiers are compromising the long-term viability of this operation.” It was the best he could come up with, ad-libbing. “Well son, we have a chain of command for a reason. Your opinion may be the most well-founded piece of reasoning since Aristotle, but that don't matter none.” “Sir, I know about the implications for opsec, but the overall effect is to--” Henderson was growing impatient. “Look Channing, I understand your frustration, really I do. But right now we all have jobs to do, and if we take our mind off those jobs too much all the reasoning in the world isn't gonna help us any. Now you've had a fine service record up til now, so there won't be any kind of formal reprimand, but, consider yourself warned.” He turned back to his computer screen. Channing stiffened slightly in anticipation of what he knew would come next. “Dismissed.” Lieutenant Channing saluted with all the smartness he could muster, turned on his heel, and walked out. * * *
Perhaps as punishment, Channing was told he'd have to find room for a bunk for one of the new batch of
replacements rotating in. Apparently battalion still didn't have their act together on the housing situation. He went to meet the new arrival himself. He was going to ask what unit the new guy was with, but when he saw nothing in the way of insignia on his shoulder he thought better of it. Perhaps it was just his mind playing tricks on him, but he felt like once he noticed that the man instantly became more physically imposing. No point fooling himself—he knew perfectly well what that meant, and that this was no replacement, and at the very least probably wouldn't be staying with them very long. An operator, as they called them. Curious that he didn't have a beard—most of them had beards. Fortunately, on the walk back to their barracks from HQ, the new soldier made a fairly interesting subject for small talk in the British accent that he spoke with. When he asked him about it, the Brit looked at him a bit too directly, smiled a bit too long. “Yeah, from England originally. Moved 'ere as a teen.” Perhaps sparked by this unlooked-for bit of cosmopolitanism in his otherwise humdrum existence, Channing tried to take the opportunity to talk about something more intellectually stimulating than professional sports, sex, and how many days were left until the next RRB, which was about all that his compatriots ever wanted to talk about, and none of which particularly interested Channing. “So do you keep in touch with your family back home? What do they think of all this?” “Oh, I think they just see it as mostly kind of silly.
They all really seem to think that America is really completely incapable of ever losing, in any serious way. They're the type of people who just have this sort of faith in old-fashioned things, and to them America is sort of the ultimate expression of, you know, middle-class steadfastness. Maybe that's what led my parents to move here in the first place. Although I admit, personally I find their opinions all a bit too Tory for my taste,” he said, with a final grimace. “So you don't have their same faith that middle-class values will win out in the end?” “Oh, I'm certainly not as sure about it as they are, although I do think that the U.S. government—if that's what you mean by middle-class values—will probably win in the end, only for different reasons than they think. It's got nothing to do with who has what values and everything to do with the fact that America is still simply the most powerful nation on Earth, by a long road, and it's just always going to have an advantage going in, no matter what sort of contest you're talking about.” “Sure, they can't beat us straight-up,” said Channing, warming to his subject. “But this is an insurgency. They don't need to beat us, they only need to undermine us enough that we collapse under our own weight.” “Right,” said the Brit, his response at the ready. Channing's opinion of the intelligence of characters like this guy had already been high, but was rising farther still, especially in comparison to the rest of the enlisted rabble he found himself among. “But I don't think even that
scenario is very likely. In order to undermine us they would have to deprive us of something valuable—either our population, or our territory, or our security, or something to get at the base that everything else, like the military, rests on. But they can't, not in any serious fashion. Because all of this--” he gestured at the pre-fab buildings, the Hescos and barbed wire, the floodlights and sentries that had all been built up almost overnight in this spot as a means of prosecuting the war-- “it all rests on a base that's distributed all over the world. I hate to use management-speak, but the U.S. Government's supply chain is global. There's nothing we need in any particular patch of territory that we can't replace somewhere else. They bombed that munitions factory in Minnesota? There are factories in Egypt that can turn out however many M4s we need. A third of the country stopped paying taxes? The rest of the world will finance us, at least in the short term, because they're smart and know that this really is just some passing silliness. You heard about this new 'national unity' caucus in the Congress? Do you really think that's about healing our divisions or is it about showing the Chinese that this country is still governable? I hate to be cynical about it, but these hooligans in their pickup trucks would have to wage a fight that reached around the world and back if they really wanted to make a dent.” His enthusiasm for the subject spent, the two walked on in awkward silence for a moment. Channing heard the duckand-cover alarm almost before it started—heard the telltale static crackle of the PA system turning on, and the sing-
song tone of the alarm itself was almost an afterthought. Camp Mountain View hadn't taken any incoming IDF in almost a week, so this came as a bit of a surprise, but Channing had been through this drill hundreds of times before. He was usually careful, but today a sudden wave of bravado made him want to keep walking straight on, not head for the bunker that was just off to his right next to the perimeter fence. Perhaps he was trying to impress the operator. However, the other soldier, who hadn't lived this long by being incautious, turned in the direction of the bunker and Channing was obliged to follow him. The operator had his duffel, but neither of them were wearing any bulky gear so the bunker wasn't uncomfortably cramped. They saw nothing move outside, heard no explosions, but the alarm was still going off. When it was finally silenced, while they were waiting for the allclear, Channing tried to strike up a new conversation. “So, I don't know if you've been here long, but around here we have this game,” he began. “It's called 'Where's the President?' Since we know she's not in Washington after that air raid the other day, we try and guess where she is. Right now the best guesses we've got are the Playboy Mansion, and the sound stage they faked the moon landing on.” The British man's brow furrowed, as if Channing had asked a question with an obvious answer. “She's at sea,” he said shortly. “On the Ronald Reagan.” “Come on, man,” Channing said with a little laugh, “We've all heard that one before. Don't you have anything
better than--” but his words were theatrically cut off midsentence when he saw the look on the operator's face, no hint of humor, just blank, as if he didn't get the joke. Channing shrugged. “Never mind.” That night on the news, Channing happened to overhear something about how that big refinery fire in New Orleans turned out not to have been an accident, but was probably a deliberate act of sabotage. This was only reported as a footnote in the longer story about how a fresh round of racial killings had broken out in the city (how many folks had been left alive in the Ninth Ward after the last round? he found himself wondering), but Channing couldn't really concentrate on that. Instead he just thought about global supply chains, and wondered where exactly in America it was that the nameless British operator now called home. * * *
The intermittent foothills that surrounded Roanoke flattened out into farmland, flecked with the occasional patch of woods, as they approached Smith Mountain Lake. The weather was gorgeous, a little breezy, but overall the best you could hope for in October at this altitude. Channing had the feeling that he was playing hooky, that he couldn't have possibly been given a mission this enjoyable. The houses they passed looked like the rural South; peeling siding, rusted cars up on cinder blocks. An elderly black man sitting on his porch gave no visible reaction when eight Humvees rolled by his house, on a backwoods road he may have lived on his entire life without seeing such a
thing before. His men were on edge; they had the honor of being the very first to reconnoiter this particular route, so it might as well have been IED alley. The general feeling was that leaving the wire, at least in the last week, only meant a bad end. Channing simply couldn't share their concern; the weather was far too nice. And anyway, insurgents target patterns, and so their being the first out here probably made them more safe than less. He wondered idly if he came off as callous sometimes, as if maybe he should take things more personally, even if it was intellectually wrong, like being afraid of an attack he was fairly certain wasn't coming, to make himself a bit more normal just for the sake of those around him. The detachment split; Channing himself and the lead trucks turned off the state road while the others went around to approach the airfield from the northeast. There was only one road leading into the place, but he wasn't taking any chances. After rumbling past a few more farm houses and patches of forest, he saw an open field and what looked for all the world like an airplane hangar off to the left. “Wait, wait, wait,” he said casually, and the convoy slowly came to a stop. He re-checked his map. “This looks like an airstrip. Is this the one we're supposed to check?” He cursed himself as the grunts around him shrugged their shoulders; he'd forgotten his own rule about not asking questions in front of the men. He radioed back to HQ for guidance; they just told him his mission again, which he
already knew. It was a nice day, so he decided to go for a walk. He told the squads that weren't with him to proceed as planned and wait at their destination. His men dismounted and walked over to the hangar. The lock was broken easily enough; inside was a single engine Cessna. Channing called in the tail number and waited for a response. While they were waiting one of the soldiers standing guard outside shouted for him. A middleaged, paunchy man in a denim shirt was walking towards them, his hands aloft. Already weapons were being raised. “Stay back, sir!” one of the men shouted. “I'm unarmed! I just wanted to ask you--” he stopped as he noticed the guns about to be pointed at him. “Just stay there, sir.” “I just wanted to ask you what you think you're doing on my property, and if you're aware that that this is an unconstitutional-“There been any planes landing or taking off from here lately, sir?” The soldier's question had the benefit of stopping the man's spiel. “What? No--” “Sir, perhaps I can explain.” Now Channing walked up close to him. “There's been some suspicion that this airfield is being used by unlawful enemy combatants to resupply. We're just going to look around, should only be a minute.” “Now look here, you know you all might not have this problem if you stopped doing things like this to lawabiding--”
“What did you say your name was, sir?” Channing was impressed with his own “command” voice. The man hesitated, gathered some resolve. “I don't have to tell you anything.” Channing let him finish, bowed his head for a moment, and sighed. The memory of the fracas at the Bedford checkpoint was weighing heavily, but as he continued to intone commands to the hapless civilian he felt the weight lifting somewhat. “Sir, if you don't want us to do to your house what we're doing to your hangar, but in a less polite manner, you'll tell us what your name is.” Again his performance commanded. The mans' eyes quivered. Then he answered, meekly. “And is this your plane?” “Yes, it is.” “You seen anything suspicious around here lately? Anyone moving in the woods, anything like that?” “No.” At that moment the radio crackled, to inform him that the man had in fact been telling the truth. The soldiers mounted up and rode away. Improbably, they found yet another grass airstrip, just around the next few corners in the road, but there was nobody at this one. No planes in the hangar, either. They made a cursory inspection of the woods. Nothing. Finally they came to the paved runway, where the rest of the platoon was waiting. Still no planes. They were almost right up on the water's edge. On a whim, Channing took one of his squads and walked across the street. The houses here were enormous, very expensive
looking, and every last one had a boat dock. The one they crossed to had every window boarded up. He couldn't see any others that had taken that precaution, although all seemed to be abandoned by the lack of any vehicles around. The boats were all raised up out of the water in their sheds. It was completely silent, except for the breeze and the occasional crunch of a boot on gravel. Channing felt the sunlight on him, and felt very, very awake. He looked up and down the shore. A few houses to the right, one of these McMansions had been reduced by fire to a few charred structural members. Strangely, nothing around it seemed to have been touched by the conflagration. “That's weird,” he said, to no-one in particular. This place had clearly been abandoned for some time. “Wonder how that happened.” He looked across the narrow bay they were standing on. On a whim he took out his field glasses, looked farther down shore. He noticed one boat that wasn't raised out of the water—a pontoon boat, about an eight-seater, just like every other one he could see. When they went to investigate, they found it well-stocked with some serious ammunition—C4, RPGs, the whole nine yards. It took forever for EOD to come out and blow the thing up. Besides the old man on his porch and the man at the airstrip, they hadn't seen a single living soul the whole time. * * *
Newark, New Jersey When our land is illumined
With liberty's smile If a foe from within Strikes a blow at her glory Phoebe was upset that they had military men, in uniform, singing the anthem yet again. No, but that wasn't quite right. She was really more upset with the introduction the announcer had given them over the PA system. He'd really laid the jingoism on thick, with a couple of “greatest nation on Earth”s and some “fighting for our freedom”s thrown on top. She knew she had to stop having these knee-jerk reactions to any sign of the military. She told herself that she had nothing against the soldiers themselves, that it was easy for her to confuse the politics of the whole thing with the individuals caught up in it. She just wondered why the fight had to be injected into New York's life in this particular way—as a harmless bit of pageantry. It wasn't like any actual violence had gotten anywhere near this place. Down, down with the traitor That tries to defile The flag of the stars And the page of her story! Red Bull Arena was still new enough that it hadn't lost that patina of shiny, superficial corporate entertainment, that delicate aesthetic that appealed to you in the moment but that you know would start to crumble and come undone well before its time. Today's match hadn't drawn much of a
crowd. Suddenly she noticed that not everyone was standing up, hand over heart as they were supposed to. But now they were getting to the high note, always an exciting moment: By the millions unchained Who their birthright have gained We'll keep her bright blazon Forever unstained The sky was a dull gray overcast, and it was cold. Phoebe saw a helicopter buzzing overhead, and suddenly realized how fitting it was that the only musical accompaniment to the singers was a snare drum roll, barely audible but sustained throughout. They were singing in four-part harmony, which gave the song a surrealistic barbershop quartet quality; but the stentorian words of Francis Scott Key and the fat, sluggish melody of whoever had written the score were enough to banish the mere thought of any other artistic influence from anyone's mind. Wait, not Francis Scott Key—this was the verse they added during the Civil War. She couldn't now remember who wrote it. Part of the growing fetish for Civil War history, which she had always thought of as a Southern thing, but it had recently become fashionable, at least among people of Phoebe's age and education, to know obscure Union generals, to be able to talk about at least one or two battles that weren't named Gettysburg. Somehow, she thought she shouldn't be as upset about this development as she was—but really, nobody obsesses about a war that happened nearly 160 years ago. There was a definite strain of We did it
before, and we can do it again, and this is what Phoebe picked up on and disliked. Now, finally, the interminable song was coming to an end. It always seemed to take longer lately. The star-spangled banner In triumph shall wave While the land of free Is the home of the brave. They drew out the last two lines too long and loud, as always. But Phoebe was slightly shocked at the crowd's reaction when the last note had finally given itself up; there was no cheering, only a vague, inchoate sort of roar, not booing exactly but frighteningly close. Her immediate reaction was surprise, tinged with insecurity; who boos the national anthem anyway? How could this be happening? This insecurity was itself confusing, considering her own political leanings; if this many people felt this ambivalent about the runaway militarization of American society, or whatever one called it, in such a benign setting, surely they could be mobilized on behalf of the political cause of peace? Wasn't this just a sign that the silent majority of Americans was on her side, after all? That she had been right? Still, she felt uneasy. Phoebe and her friends sat down. She'd come to this game at the invitation of some of her fellow teachers who she didn't particularly care for, but was on decent terms with. She especially didn't care for their boyfriends. Mainly, she needed to get away from following the news of
the actual fight, going on far from here. Her companions did not disappoint; no one could have told there was a war on by their behavior. Matt came back from the concession stand, and didn't even have to explain that Coors Light was the only kind of beer available today. Such a scenario was now so expected, no one even bothered to roll their eyes resignedly. Taking advantage of a momentary lapse in the conversation, Jill dropped one of those lines that is precisely calculated, in both wording and modulation, to pointedly invite a civil if vigorous and interesting disagreement. “You know, I don't really like the new words to the national anthem.” But everyone present seemed to avoid the words with their eyes. Phoebe, though, took the bait. “Why do you not like them.” She didn't really want to ask it, and the sentence fell flat at the end. “I just don't see how it helps anything, you know? All it's doing is making this conflict even more impossible to solve, calling people traitors and whatnot.” The sincerity was positively cloying. “Yeah, but the whole song is about conflict. It has to be, right? It was written during a fucking war.” Larry said, and laughed. “Besides the whole point is to heighten conflict. Divide and conquer is how this country's always worked, and now is no different.” He had switched into his professor-voice, but decided at the last moment to grace them with a smile that was a bit too wry. “Nationalism, man. It's a crock.”
Phoebe could tell the others were already getting annoyed with this fracas. She regretted ever opening her mouth in the first place. On the way back into town on the train, Phoebe tried to remember a time before they searched your bags upon entering the station, and found that she couldn't. Maybe if we could remember that time, everyone would realize that this stupid war affects them, too. It wasn't quite fair, though, to say that no one in New York was affected by the fighting going on in far-away Pennsylvania, or even the fighting farther south. It seemed the one piece of collateral damage it was acceptable to talk about, the only acknowledgment the war was ever given, was the messed-up flight schedule out of all of the airports. Everyone had gotten used to the shortages, the omnipresent security, the nightly news coverage of the National Guard mustering at the armory in Midtown, but the lack of reliable passenger air service was a cause for near panic. For a while, as the airlines adjusted their routes, it had been impossible to get a flight anywhere, except for a few of the nonstop overseas services. Now it was at least possible to get a domestic flight again, but with the Atlanta hub shut down completely and so much airspace restricted around the combat zones, it would still take you twice as many transfers. * * *
Atlanta, Georgia. Four school buses, their sunny yellow exteriors almost
gauche in the early morning gloom, trundled north on I-75. They had no real destination, except in a strictly symbolic sense. They had only a hazy image of a barricade on MLK Boulevard where Atlanta's mayor and a few loyalist cops and National Guardsmen had holed up against the combined forces of almost the entire rest of the Georgia National Guard, as well as an entire regiment of the US Army and any number of hastily-organized local militias, such as the Bibb-Houston Volunteers, who rode in these buses. They also had no real plan of what to do when they arrived. They mainly just trusted Danny Rainier, when he said he knew who to speak to when they arrived. He was in close enough with the regular military—not only had he actually been the regular military until very recently, but after all he did to help them at Warner-Robbins those folks had been more than willing to put him in touch with the right people in Atlanta. So far the standoff in Atlanta had remained peaceful; better to take the city peacefully, the military leaders reasoned, than risk the chaos that might accompany an armed occupation. But negotiations to procure the acquiescence of the holdout city's government had dragged on for nearly a week, with no success. In reality, the mayor and his supporters controlled only a few square blocks of the downtown area, but as long as they stayed there they were as good as a thorn in the belly of everyone on the Rainiers' side. As long as they stayed within their hasty fortifications, the city ground to a standstill: police didn't walk their beats, buses didn't drive their routes, and the commercial engine which had been so cleverly and
delicately built up in this leafy city was quickly falling apart. This is what the military truly feared; they could have stormed the barricades and killed everyone within if they chose, but then they would have no one to order the city back to work, and they knew where that would lead. Many of them had seen Iraq, after all. So the Bibb-Houston Volunteers, with no reliable information, no real destination, and almost no plan at all, had decided that this was where the front lay, this was the new struggle which was part of that longer struggle which could only end in the rescue of their country. So they had loaded themselves and as much food and camping gear as they could take onto their makeshift battle-wagons and set out in the small hours of the morning, hoping to reach the city while still under cover of night. They were armed, of course. Nothing too fancy, mostly long guns which could plausibly be used for hunting, although given how martial some of them seemed Jeff wondered if that was what they had really been bought for— all-black large-caliber numbers with fold-down bipods and all kinds of fancy scopes. Danny still had his service weapon, but picked up a sidearm as well now—said he was worried about being able to find ammo for the M4. No one asked how much ammo he planned on using, exactly. Jeff was given a very cheap bolt-action rifle, which was definitely meant for nothing more exciting than deer season. It was barely better than a .22-caliber squirrel gun. When it was first handed to him, it reminded him of nothing so much as the kid-sized .22s they sell for the 7-
and-under crowd, that come in pink for the girls. It was slightly humiliating, but he didn't protest. The morning of their departure, as they hastily prepared to leave, Mrs. Rainier had argued with her sons again about going. She had helped them pack, going through the surreal motions as if they were back in grade school. Her words had grown more and more clipped throughout, and what was coming was clear enough for all to see. They'd had this argument many times in the past couple of weeks, after all. It had been Jeff, never as politic as his older brother, who'd finally sprung the trap. “You don't want us to go,” he'd said innocently. “Do you, mom?” “I don't care what you do,” she'd snapped back, with a sudden ferocity they couldn't remember seeing since they were smaller than she was. The rest of her words poured out more quietly, but quickly, as if she were running out of time in which to say them. “Matter of fact, I wish I could join you. But I can't, seein' as someone's got to take care of your sister, and water the grass, and watch after the house. Of course you can go to Atlanta, I know how much this means to you, and I couldn't stop you anyway, but I just hope you remember that there's somebody here taking care of your home, so you have a home to come back to. Your father--” she broke off, realizing that it might not be the best time to bring up that subject, in her current flush of anger. She softened her tone a bit. “Now you know your father woulda been proud of you, but he also woulda been at least a bit cautious. Sometimes it's better not to stray
too far from what you already got, lest you lose it.” Jeff had wanted more than anything to argue with her, to make her see that that was the whole point, that going to Atlanta was intimately tied up with holding on to what they had, that it was the only way to keep what they had. But he couldn't. He didn't have Danny's gift for gab. He'd tried before, and he knew it was futile, or maybe he was just sad to leave without knowing when or if he would be back. At any rate, at that moment Danny interrupted his reverie, his toothy smile leaning in close, bringing him back to the present reality of the bus, one arm holding on to the seat in front of Jeff and the other curled around the back of his headrest. “You ain't fallin' asleep back here, are ya? We're almost there.” Atlanta rolled by outside the windows. The night was quickly turning to the gray of pre-dawn. At this hour they didn't pass a single soul, although even at the height of what used to be rush hour this stretch of road would now be nearly deserted. Finally, ahead under the streetlights they could make out the matte green of Humvees, a maze of Jersey barriers guarding the approach to a checkpoint. The buses stopped well short, Danny told everyone to stay put and then he got out. He started to walk through the Jersey barriers, then held up something in his hand and stopped short. A soldier came out to meet him. They talked for a minute, Danny shook his hand vigorously, and then the soldier turned and walked back while Danny returned to the bus.
“He's gonna call it in, he said. Someone'll be out to meet us, show us where to go. I'll tell the others.” Eventually, another Humvee crawled up to the far side of the checkpoint and several more soldiers got out. Jeff really was falling asleep now. The eastern sky was already a deep red, and he hated the thought of having to face another whole day on no sleep. Now four soldiers were walking out from the checkpoint. One of them boarded each of the buses. “Alright folks, listen up. I'm gonna be showing you guys where you'll be bivouacked. Later on this morning someone will come around to explain about training, standing orders and the like. Now first things first, are you all in immediate need of food?” Jeff had expected this moment to be more exciting, but everyone just seemed kind of dumbfounded. Danny murmured something about food, and the soldier said “Okay then, let's get a move on.” The buses couldn't get through the Jersey barrier maze, so they turned around and got off the highway at the last exit ramp before the checkpoint. They drove through some residential neighborhoods. It was light enough to see now. Outside, the city seemed uncanny in its normality, as if everyone should have prepared for this but didn't know what to do. They still saw no people outside, but the run-down, graffiti-covered storefronts and the blankets of kudzu didn't seem to have changed much since the last time Jeff was here, a few years ago to take in a Braves game. They finally came to rest in an open field of some kind, in the
middle of another neighborhood of slightly run-down singlelevel houses. Bracketing the sky before them, to the west was the brick facade of Turner Field and to the north the skyscrapers of downtown. Jeff's intuition about having to go all day with no sleep proved correct. An officer showed up not 15 minutes after they'd finished eating a breakfast of granola bars and bananas. He introduced himself as Sergeant Weigler. He was very old and frail, and his voice was high pitched—he sounded like an old cartoon rendition of an Appalachian coal miner. He was wearing camouflage, but he really seemed to Jeff to be too old to be a Guardsman, much less active duty. “Now listen here,” the sergeant began rather abruptly. “Because this is serious. I hope you all haven't run up here thinking you'd play soldier so you can go back home and tell everyone about it. If you all want to stay here you're going to have to follow orders—without question.” Jeff thought that Danny must've told the man about the lack of military experience in their group. “Doesn't matter if you don't understand it, just do it. We've got a city of near a million people to keep from blowing up, and until the regular cops come back we're it. So far things've been quiet, but every day more and more folks are getting over the shock of all this and figuring out how to take advantage of this chaos. We're seeing a lot more crime, and if we don't squash it now we could have an insurgency on our hands real easy. So your job is simple; we'll give you a sector to patrol, you go out every day and walk it.
There's no courts or nothing here, so you see anything that needs fixing, you fix it. You don't know what to do call in to headquarters. You need backup, call in to headquarters. On the day-to-day things you go through Sergeant Rainier here--” He paused, and Danny nodded. “Any questions?” After this brief spiel, Sergeant Weigler stuck around to chat for a while. When they asked him what the plan was for dislodging the recalcitrant city fathers holed up in their Gothic tower of a city hall, he seemed a bit uneasy. “Well, we've got their city,” he said, and Jeff didn't quite understand what he meant. “If they want to put up such a stink, they'll be responsible for the consequences, and they know it.” Looking around, he sensed that this meant something serious, but nobody else seemed to know what he was talking about either. Danny just stayed quiet. “Until then,” he continued, getting up to go, “force protection is your priority. Keep an eye out, and let people know that we won't put up with any funny business, but remember, you're not responsible for these people. Let the Red Cross deal with 'em. Or the city fathers,” he finished, rolling his eyes. The next morning was the first time they laid eyes on some actual locals. Several small groups of people, across the street at the far corners of the park they were in, just looking at them. They were all black folks. They made no move to approach them, didn't even seem to be talking to each other, they just stood there or leaned on a nearby building, watching. Danny didn't seem to like all the attention, so he quickly mustered up a squad to go out on
patrol. The activity sent the civilians off in a hurry. That evening, when he got back from reconnoitering the neighborhoods around their camp, Danny found his younger brother flipping through his well-worn copy of Starship Troopers. “You should give it a read,” he said. “Don't let the movie version fool you, it's one of the best books ever written.” Jeff put down the book. He was ashamed of the weakness he was about to show, even more so because he knew that his older brother wouldn't treat it as such. But he had to do it anyway. “D'you think there's gonna be trouble? Like serious trouble?” He looked grim. “I don't know, to tell the truth. There very well could be, and it's no use lyin' to ourselves about it. Somebody once told me that we should welcome our doubts, because it means we still have a conscience, and I guess fear is kinda the same way, it just means we haven't lost touch with reality yet. But you know how you get over it, if we do get into a scrape? You get past it by watching out for your brothers. These men here, you watch out for them, and if everyone does what they're supposed to we'll be fine. World might go to shit, but I can tell you, after two tours in Afghanistan, that as long as you've got your brothers at your back you can get out of most anything.” He wanted to close on a more positive note. “Besides, who knows. This ain't Afghanistan after all, and I think people here have a bit more civic pride than to let their city go to shit around them. Things ended up pretty well back home,
remember? Out at Warner Robins? And those guy had the whole Air Force at their backs, not like these city politicians cooped up in city hall, and they still came over peacefully after a while.” “Yeah,” Jeff had to agree. He felt reassured, almost against his will. “Who knows,” Danny said, actually grinning a bit. “Maybe everything'll change around us. If those 101st Airborne boys keep tearing up Virginia like they are, they'll be in Washington inside of a week.” His face fell slowly, bit by bit, until the grin was completely gone. “I just hope it doesn't turn out like what we saw up north. Up there we could move around fine—this was right at the beginning, remember—but we didn't have any of the country behind us. It's no good if you have to watch your back the whole way. First chance you get to screw up, you will, and if you don't have a fallback then there ain't no recovering from a screw-up like that.” He had a faraway look in his eyes, now. Danny hadn't talked much about what happened up north— it all seemed so improbable. Hell, just making it home from upstate New York, without a car or even a bus or train, was improbable. Jeff realized with an interior start that Danny had probably killed people in the fighting up there, and seen people die, too. He wondered which had been worse. * * *
Atlanta sweltered under the early summer heat, which was surprising in its ferocity. The gawkers who came to look at their little makeshift camp grew bolder, no longer
ran when they the soldiers started to stir themselves. Instead, they walked right up to them, tried to sell them bottled water. In fact, they began to see more and more people starting to go about their lives again while out on patrol. There were cars on the streets now, shops had reopened (although the schools still hadn't, at least not officially), and after all folks can only cower in their basement for so long before a new normal simply asserts itself. Danny, being the talker that he was, took this as an intelligence-gathering opportunity, although mostly all they heard were complaints alternating with questions about when some problem or other would be fixed. There was little that was actionable. For his part, Jeff preferred their semi-regular “supply runs”, which were really just trips to the grocery store, to patrolling. Their original supplies long since spent, they were now subsisting on monetary donations, mainly from home but also raised on the Internet. Jeff had found it a bit off-putting, at first, such a normal activity carried out in times like these. But after a while, he got to where he could talk to the cashiers or baggers as if nothing was the matter. It did him some good, breaking up the routine like that. On one occasion, back out on patrol, a large group of black women and kids, with a few men hanging around in the background, started to gather around their patrol as they marched down a quiet residential street. “Excuse me,” said one of them loudly, walking right up to the group of armed men and causing them all to tense, visibly, at once. “But
we all been getting bills from Georgia Power saying they never got no LIHEAP check from the government so they billing us for the whole cost, and we been running our AC units with this heat and all and we can't afford it...” “Ok, ok,” Danny cut in, starting to talk over her. “You'll have to direct questions about that to the state government, I don't know anything about that--” “Well, could you at least let somebody know, whoever's in charge up there--” both their voices were rising now. The group of civilians was starting to draw in closer, and everyone's trigger finger was beginning to get twitchy, although they hadn't raised their weapons yet. As long as Danny was still talking, their discipline held. “Well I'll let someone know, but I can tell you right now they won't know what to do about it any more than--” “Well what the fuck you doing then, coming and taking over Atlanta and then not doing anything to help out the people who actually live there,” she was fairly shouting now. Danny remained admirably calm. “Alright, y'all got to get out of our way.” That authoritative voice was back now, accompanied by pushing past the knot of women directly in front of him. Jeff and the rest followed. Their interlocutor was still shouting, but no one else seemed to join her, besides a few muttered curses they heard as they passed. * * *
Danny's hope that their would be no trouble was shown to be false. Jeff didn't know how it had started. All he
knew was that one minute Danny had taken an urgent call from whoever it was he spoke to over the two-way, and the next moment he was on his feet, with that really urgent tone of command in his voice, ordering them into the buses. “We got trouble,” were his exact words. On the bus ride over he explained that a large crowd had gathered outside a grocery store downtown, apparently as the result of some dispute, and was growing larger and more agitated by the minute. Their objective, he said, was simply to hold the perimeter while a company of properly trained National Guard MPs cleared the street. Jeff didn't see the first group they came upon, as he was still in the bus, towards the middle and couldn't see out the front windshield. Couldn't see the figures with baseball bats and debonair backwards baseball caps, couldn't see their sneakers kicking up behind them as they ran, their well-honed instincts for such things telling them as soon as the bus started unloading that here was the law, back again to come down hard on them. Instead he noticed only that Danny ordered the bus stopped rather suddenly, told them all to form up in front of it. They formed a few uneven lines across the width of the street. It was narrow; they were right on the cusp of downtown, where the smooth concrete and polished steel that decorates the bases of skyscrapers gives way to the old brick and faded paint of a hodgepodge of buildings that are old but too decrepit to be historic. “Alright,” the one-time sergeant was saying, and neither Jeff nor anyone else could hear in his voice the
fact that he was panicking, just now realizing that this was one of perhaps a million possibilities that they had not trained for, not even considered, and that he would have to instruct them in how to control a violent crowd while they were actually in the act of doing so. “Most important thing, don't break ranks. You stand shoulder to shoulder with whoever's next to you. Second thing, if anyone fucking fires his weapon without me telling him to, I will personally kick his ass all the way back to Macon. Just don't let anyone through, do what you have to but whatever you do don't run, and don't shoot til I tell you. Now let's move, not too fast, stay in line...” They inched up the street. Jeff could see them now, not really all that many. They were pounding on the shuttered storefront of a corner bodega, one of those real ghetto places with bars over the windows, which sat at an intersection of the street they were on and another, equally narrow cross-street. He could see that several windows had been broken, although apparently no one had gotten in yet. He couldn't see anyone else in a uniform, either regular military or volunteers. Of a sudden, the crowd stopped pounding and shouting. People were looking around, confused. Then Jeff could see them, in their riot gear, complete with helmets and batons, moving down the street from his right. He couldn't see anyone to their left, maybe they were trying to herd the rioters out that way. They were coming even more slowly than his men had moved, a kind of weird halting step in perfect time. A few of the crowd split off and started
coming towards them, and some weapons were raised instinctively which arrested their progress for a second. Jeff Rainier had always had good reflexes, and he saw the wooden two-by-four sailing by in his peripheral visions early enough that he could track its progress, not really thinking about its significance, until it landed with a very quiet thud on one of his compatriots. The man let out a howl and staggered backwards. Almost reflexively, the crowd began to surge forward again, drawn to this new opening. Danny was shouting something now, but he couldn't hear what it was. Then the sharp crack-crack of two pistols shots got everyone's attention, the heads of the mob and of the poorly-disciplined volunteers both swiveled involuntarily to where Danny was holding his sidearm, the two warning shots having drilled into the pavement just in front of their attackers. For a second there was a stillness, and then the MPs were upon them, and the crowd broke and ran in headlong retreat away. Some of them were screaming. Despite everything that happened later, the screams stuck with Jeff for a long time. They held their position there for what seemed like another half an hour. There was now no one left in the street except some other volunteers, and a detachment of the MPs making sure that it stayed that way. Danny struck up a conversation with one of their sergeants, who told them that the whole thing had started when the grocery store owner had closed up early and started taking all his stock off the shelves. The owner had come to them when the trouble had gotten serious, said he had to close because
his customers' EBT cards had stopped working, and no way in hell anyone in this neighborhood was buying any groceries without them. To hear him tell it, they'd just gone crazy, as if they expected to be able to buy food without any money. Danny was shaking his head. “You see,” he said, and he stared at Jeff for a long moment before turning to encompass the rest of their unit in the ambit of his diatribe. “This kind of thing is exactly what we're fighting against. This is how deep the sickness goes in this country. Forget about politics, we're trying to teach people just how to be decent human beings again. Can't even take care of their own fuckin' city.” Everyone nodded their agreement. It was Jeff who first noticed the columns of smoke rising up from the tree-shrouded neighborhoods that stretched off away from downtown, behind the building they'd just defended. “Should we be worried about that?” he asked, with perfect innocence. * * *
The Rainiers and their cohort stayed camped out in their field, dug into a defensive position as best they could be. No one ventured out. The riots never spread to that part of town, although they could see the smoke all around them and even heard the occasional gunshot or two. After a very long conversation over the radio with whoever it was that he talked to, Danny announced that their orders were to stay hunkered down and take only defensive measures
if they were threatened. “Aw, come on man,” protested Jerry Rico. He was much older than either of the Rainier brothers, owned a laundromat, and generally seemed to think he knew best in most situations. Now that the heady rush of their first few days out in the trenches had worn off, he was starting to wonder who had made Danny Rainier, who had only just turned 30, into their supreme commander. “Why are we lettin' these fools run away with the city like this? I thought the whole point of this was that folks wouldn't be able to get away with shit like this anymore, tearing up other peoples' property--” Danny cut him off. “Look, none of us down here have the big picture, okay? Now there's people a lot smarter than you and me who are dealing with this, and we just have to realize that they're the ones in charge, not you and not me. Maybe they just don't need us right now--” But Rico was right back at it. “Yeah, but it looks like they don't need anybody. Those National Guard boys down by the penitentiary haven't moved either. Hell, no one I know has done a damn thing to stop any of this. How do you know they've even sent anyone in to--” “Look man, I don't know, but it doesn't matter, alright?” Danny's voice was elevated. “Whatever strategy they're going for, and I don't claim to know what it is, it's better than no strategy at all, and if we go off on our own ignoring our orders, that's what we'll get, is no strategy. And then all hell'll break loose, and you can trust me on that. I've seen it happen. So ya'll will just
have to cool it, you hear?” And that was that. The little platoon held together just enough to follow his brother's orders, despite Jerry Rico's insubordination. Jeff's phone had died, now that he couldn't go sit in the Panera up the street and charge it in one of their wall outlets like a bum, and therefore he had no way to get any news at all from the outside world, no way to know if the situation in Atlanta, or indeed in the whole country, was getting worse or better. All he had to go on now was Danny's brusque relayed messages from headquarters, which always took the form of dictates rather than information. The next day, Danny decided that they should start up foot patrols in their neighborhood again. “This side of town's been quiet so far,” he said. “We want to make sure that doesn't change.” Jeff got the distinct feeling that Danny had just gotten fed up with the lack of any kind of orders coming from his superiors, and was taking things into his own hands, although he was sure that Danny would never disobey an order in this situation. But out they went, and didn't see a single soul. The few sparks of life the city had been showing, the shops that had reopened and occasional traffic on the roads, were nowhere to be found. The garbage piles continued to grow, however, and if a rain shower hadn't come through that morning the heat probably would've made the smell unbearable. On the third day, it was over. As soon as it was announced that the remainder of the city government had reached some kind of settlement with the military, Danny
wasted no time in trumpeting the fact to everyone— especially Jerry Rico—before deciding they should go out on patrol again. When they got back, they found Sergeant Weigler, the first time any of them had actually heard from an authority figure in over a week, not counting Danny's interlocutor on the radio. He'd come to deliver a message of thanks for the work they'd done in helping secure the city, but afterward stayed to chat as he had before. Jeff and a few others were gathered around, but they quickly moved out of earshot from the rest of the company. “Knew they'd crack,” the older man was saying. “You just gotta be firm with people.” He paused. “It was a close thing, though. Even after we stopped letting the Red Cross in, you know what it took to convince 'em to stand down? Had to get a bunch of fat cat bankers and such together to go and talk to them, talk some sense into them. Got some executives from Delta to tell them that their whole airline was gonna go bust if they couldn't reopen their hub out at the airport, that kind of thing. After all that, once they realized this might not be the, ah, best thing for the business community, that's what got them to ease up and see the writing on the wall. Politicians.” he spat, with an air of finality. Jeff was finally able to recharge his phone. There was hardly any mention of Atlanta. Most of the stories were about the fighting up north. It seemed Virginia was where all the action was, or at least where all the headlines were. After much searching he finally found a story about Atlanta, only a couple paragraphs, one of those wire
stories. It mentioned that entire blocks had been burnt down in the riots, and that the highways were clogged with refugees in every direction. * * *
Another day, another patrol. Jeff was on point. They hiked south, getting close to the penitentiary. This route wasn't usually too bad; there was a large military presence around to make sure no one locked up inside got any ideas. It wasn't yet 11 in the morning, but already the heat was shimmering above the asphalt, and the intermittent garbagesmell even worse than usual. He could tell it would be one of those days to make the road surface slightly sticky, as if freshly tarred. Jeff Rainier didn't think it possible for everyday heat (even in this kind of a summer) to halfmelt the road, but then he couldn't think of what else might cause such a thing, either. The patrol had gotten field discipline down pat. Danny didn't waste an opportunity to improve their unit's efficiency; even on a boring patrol like this, he would never fail to explain or point out something they could be doing better, until now most of them knew the basics by heart. On-the-job training. The other irregulars, who were more concerned with talking with each other than they were with executing a military operation, all bunched up, walking down the road in broad phalanxes or all in the back of one pickup, sitting ducks. Danny's men always had at least 100 feet between them. Still, all it took was one emergency, one situation that called for quick thinking,
and the facade of paramilitary discipline Danny had instilled fell away. So it was that Jeff, who hadn't even noticed how quiet it was until he heard a burst of laughter off to his left, was caught unawares, his thoughts elsewhere, when he saw the laughing boys come out of one of the cross-streets, a flat-screen TV between them. He instinctively held up a fist to stop the movement of his fellows, but it was too late; one of the boys, mouth agape, had seen them. Without a word between them, in a split second they had unceremoniously dropped the TV and were sprinting back the way they had came, not able to risk crossing the wide boulevard and giving the volunteers a clean shot. “Hey!” was the first word out of Jeff's mouth. “Stop!” He was already running after them, but they were too fast. He had no idea what to do if he caught up with them, but kept after them anyway. Danny was shouting something behind him now, but he couldn't tell what it was. His feet slapping the pavement with the lightness of a sprint, he rounded the corner just in time to see the boys disappearing down another street, ducking behind a tree. He had hardly shifted direction slightly to make for this new direction when the unmistakable boom of a shotgun came back from just the same alley the boys had dodged into. He was going too fast to stop, which was lucky because if he hadn't already been going he would've been frozen. A second boom, and suddenly he was at the end of the alley looking down it, seeing the two motionless bodies in pools of surprisingly little blood, a confused-looking old man
standing on the porch over them. “Just thought I would help you boys out,” the old man managed to say. Now Danny and the others had caught up. Danny looked grim, went up to the old man and said a few words. Jeff was still rooted to his spot at the end of the alley. Danny came back, told someone to call it in. In what seemed like a few moments a National Guard ambulance had arrived and taken the bodies away. Jeff found himself eagerly wishing to know what would become of them. * * *
Even though the standoff downtown was now over, the neighborhoods around the Bibb-Houston Volunteers didn't seem to regain their lost populations. Then the troop a few blocks over from the Rainiers, generally a bunch of older country guys, lost a man who went out by himself one night, didn't tell anyone, and never came back. They found him lying right out in the street, shot. From what Jeff came to understand later, they tried to found out who did it, became convinced that one of the locals was hiding the killers, and started going door to door. The civilian police, who were back on the job at least part-time now, were nowhere to be found—from what he heard of the story, Jeff wasn't even sure if they'd been contacted. The longer the volunteers went without a suspect, the more frustrated they got, and the more houses they wrecked, and the less people talked to them. So they tried to institute a curfew in their neighborhood, and then cleared out the houses
around the parking lot where they'd set up camp, in the name of security. Then came the quarantine, with no one allowed in or out without going through an inspection. What they got in return was more potshots taken at them, although now they were so thoroughly hunkered down that it didn't matter. Then the Army left town, suddenly. No one had any advance notice, there was no announcement, just one day there was no one giving orders anymore. Suddenly what had been their strong points—the airport, the prison, the downtown business district—were completely vacant, big gaping holes in their walls. Danny acted like this was a good thing, talked about how things were so safe now they didn't need the Army anymore. This naturally led Jerry Rico to state pointedly that their side had just started taking casualties, that they had big targets on their backs now thanks to those idiots down the street, and shouldn't the Army stay until that situation was settled? Danny said the real fighting still wasn't over, that they had the good of the entire country to think about, and that the regulars were needed elsewhere. No one really believed this, of course. Some started to talk openly now about going home. At this Danny looked about the angriest Jeff had ever seen him. His face was dead set. He said he wouldn't tolerate deserters, that if anyone tried to run back to Macon he'd personally get there first to welcome them. But Danny's confidence was betrayed by events once again. A coordinated string of attacks, no mere potshots these, broke out all over the city. Danny got a call on his
cell from one of their neighboring companies, asking for help. He sounded extremely terrified, so Danny decided they would have to go back them up, although Jeff sensed that he felt a little uneasy doing so. Always the consummate soldier, he disliked having to order his men into a combat situation while knowing that there was no one above them, to coordinate what they were doing as part of a larger strategy, to ensure that their action had some meaning in a larger context even if that strategy was a flawed one. He suddenly felt all the burden of command bearing down on him, in a way he hadn't seen coming. They moved down the street, strict field discipline as always. The element of surprise was theirs, and all of a sudden Danny was firing his weapon at something almost indistinguishable down the street a couple blocks. It was only after Danny had stopped firing that Jeff saw the small dark-brown figure, moving a little on the ground but no longer standing up. Jeff looked down at his rifle as if seeing it for the first time, realizing only now that the might actually have to use it on someone. They were moving down a broad avenue now, crossing side streets. Jeff was covering the man in front of him—what was his name again?—from wedged between the corner of a house and a short bush of some sort, poor protection but he felt safer. The man was vastly overweight for this kind of work, and was trying to carry his bulk across the street as fast as possible. Jeff saw movement off to his left, saw a man with a gun, who obviously wasn't on their side, round the corner of the house and raise his weapon. For a split
second he wanted to avoid what he had to do, wanted to shout at the fat man to run faster or hide or something, didn't know what to say, knew he should do instead of talk, and finally raised his weapon and fired at the same time as their assailant. The masonry on the house next to his target exploded violently, and the man leaped about a foot into the air, before backing up, looking around him for where the shot had come from. Jeff fired again, to no discernible effect, and the man started firing blindly in his direction. He heard bullets hit the ground next to him, louder than a paintball but not all that different, really. Now he glimpsed the fat man lying in the road, rolling around, moaning. He was bleeding from his stomach, and Jeff had no idea how badly he'd been hit. Once again, Jeff didn't know what to do. The thought of going out and helping the man didn't occur to him, but his forward motion had been arrested and now he was stuck. He didn't know where the rest of his unit was. He saw Danny and some others running up ahead, many more shots. A moment he laid there, and then another moment more. Finally, when he could no longer see anyone except the wounded man in the street, he decided it was time to get up and go help him. He'd no sooner shifted his weight to get up off the ground then Danny came back around the corner and made a beeline for the man. Jeff, suddenly nervous about how well (or how poorly) he'd acquitted himself in this latest combat, jogged over to meet his brother. Danny was bent over the man. “He's fine,” he said, and the relief was palpable. “Just grazed. Put pressure here.
I've got a call in for an ambulance, should be here soon.” Jeff hoped this wasn't another display of bravado on Danny's part—he personally hadn't heard any emergency sirens in days, and who knew how long an ambulance would really take to get here. Jeff did as he was told, and Danny ran off down the side street, in the same direction the man Jeff had shot at had gone. “Where is it?” the fat man asked, strain in his face. Jeff was at a loss. “Where's what?” “The ambulance, the ambulance...” his voice was urgent. “It'll be here in a second,” Jeff said, feeling some trepidation. He wondered how long he'd have to keep the man calm for. He was so panicked, it almost overwhelmed his consciousness, and his mind started to wander. “They just called it in a minute ago, you have to give it some time.” Only too late did Jeff realize that this was intended for himself and probably wouldn't make the wounded man feel any better. “Ah, God...ah.” He was breathing hard. At that moment though, Jeff was saved. He heard the distant wail of sirens. He also noticed that the gunshots had ceased. “Hear that,” he said, “it's all over. You'll be out of here soon.” He laughed to himself. “You'll get to go back to Macon a hero, man.” The fat man was not amused. Within a few minutes, some grim-looking paramedics had the man in the back of an ambulance. They'd asked Jeff a few perfunctory questions, and he tried to be as helpful as he could but truth be told, he was anxious to get out of there. He took off in the direction Danny had gone,
realized he'd left his weapon back there on the ground, went back and retrieved it, and then started off again. He couldn't see anyone as far down the street as he could look, panicked for a second, and then had the idea of calling Danny on his cell. A few minutes later he'd rendezvoused with the rest of his company. Danny was talking to someone unfamiliar, but who seemed to be in charge of another band of irregulars that was standing off over on the next block. “Hand it over to who?” he was saying, apparently not noticing Jeff's arrival. “Ain't nobody in this town but a bunch of criminals. We high-tail it out of here we'll just be giving it right back to 'em.” “But that's what I'm saying,” the other man said. “Who cares? Let 'em have it. Things is getting' out of hand ever since the professionals left, so let the police deal with it. This...this ain't our fight.” “Ain't our fight?” Danny was really heated now. “And whose fight'll it be when the federales come back through here? You think those police, or the city government are gonna stop 'em from using that airport? Hell, we leave here we'd be opening the back door for 'em, might as well show 'em into the fucking living room.” He was shouting now. He abruptly turned away. “Let's go,” he said to his gang. They followed him back the way they had come. “Some people are so stupid it's enough to make my eyes cross.” Then to Jeff, as if seeing him there for the first time: “Wait, why didn't you ride in the ambulance?” * * *
Andrews, South Carolina The trouble did not start with the five AfricanAmerican teenagers playing a pickup game of basketball in the driveway. The trouble started when these youths thought they witnessed a transgression of their town's particular brand of law and order, and tried to take justice into their own hands. The expansive schoolyard across the way was a designated neutral zone during days when school was in session—it had remained impressively desegregated, although not without tensions of its own, enclaves and exclaves of the larger divisions at work—but during evenings, weekends and holidays its status was a bit more confused, and it formed a sort of porous border between the two sides of the town. Jaron Washington was one of the youths playing basketball that day. “Yo Dee...yo, Dee!” he was saying, urgently trying to tell his teammate that he was open, when he spotted them. He stopped immediately, modulated his tone of voice to produce a different sort of urgency. “Hey, whoa, hold up...hold up.” he was saying now. “Look over there.” Although the sun was now nearly set, they could clearly see several Caucasians of about their own age milling about on the near side of the school building itself. “The fuck man,” Jaron continued. “They know they ain't supposed to be here. The line's on the other side!” “You sure about that, man? I thought Alder Street was the line.” said his friend Darius.
“Fuck no man, MLK's the line, yeah it is!” Jaron was highly agitated now. “The fuck, we gotta go show those bitches what's what.” He started walking, paused to make sure all of his friends were behind him. “Come on, niggers! Whatchoo waitin' on?” * * *
Shaw forked the last bite of pasta into his mouth. He was still hungry. This business of food prices going up was working his last nerve. He knew it wasn't just that though— he knew that Candace was starting to hold out on them. She was really starting to get tired of all the people camped out in her backyard, and having to feed them all, and none of them being able to find work. He'd been having words with her more and more frequently. They weren't the only ones in town in this predicament. Things were much better here than where Shaw had come from, and apparently the same was true for a lot of folks judging by all the tents and RVs and other informal living arrangements that had sprung up in the neighborhood. The town of Andrews was being punished for its success at keeping the domestic peace, punished by an influx of refugees from less fortunate places. So far no one of either race had minded, much. They were all, black and white, proud of the fact that they weren't like those other, less genteel parts of the South that no one mentioned in polite conversation. The sun was going down. The shadows from the trees along this quiet residential street were at their longest;
soon they'd be gone altogether, eaten up by the night. He put his plate down, was just about to try and decide what he was going to do next—another game of cards, probably— when his cousin came out onto the porch and sat next to him. Today they had not fought about her never having enough food around here, or about did all his friends really have no place else to go, or even about anything at all, so he didn't mind. Talking with her, when she was in a good mood, was one way of relieving the boredom at least. “Good?” Candace asked solicitously. “Girl, you know you put pesto sauce on anything and I'll eat it.” He really did want to preserve the good mood they were both in right now, so he tried to think of anything else to talk about besides the food. “Thought I might go in try and catch some of the game.” “Man, there ain't no game on tonight. They canceled it, you know, cause they still can't get in to the stadium down there in Atlanta.” Shaw was already scowling. “Ah man, shit.” This was certainly not helping his mood any. They were only saved by the ringing of his phone. He saw it was his nephew, Candace's boy. Wondered why he'd be calling him instead of his mom. He flipped it open, but the voice on the other end wasn't one he was familiar with. “Hello? ...Who's this?...Listen, is Jaron there?..I said, is Jaron...Who is this?...Ok...OK be there in a minute. I said I'd be there in a minute.” He hung up, as he was already rising from the porch swing. Candace hadn't
been able to hear the other side of the conversation, but whoever it was their tone of voice hadn't sounded good. They'd sounded like they were panicking about something. “Some of our friends from cross MLK drive causing trouble,” Charlie said. He knew the meaning wouldn't be lost. “Willie! We gotta go man, some of the kids got in a fight downtown.” Andrews is not a big town. They were on the scene in less than five minutes. The pack of motorcycles swooped towards the narrow strip of commercial establishments along Main Street that Andrews called a downtown. The house they were looking for was just a few blocks shy. As they rounded the last corner, there was no mistaking they were in the right place. In the quickly-gathering twilight, not yet broken by what streetlights there were that still worked, they could make out the gaggle of youths standing in the middle of the road, striding around impatiently. They pulled up as close as they dared, and the crowd began to break apart. “The hell is going on here!” Shaw fairly screamed at them. The group was now split neatly in half, with one half backing off quickly. The white boys. Charlie Shaw was walking toward them powerfully; he easily had a foot and fifty pounds on the biggest of them, they couldn't have been more than teenagers. He heard his nephew. “They were cutting across our street! They oughta know where the lines are--” “We weren't on your street!” they heard someone shout back out of the darkness. Shaw gave a quick start towards
the voice, and then they were gone. “They were--” his nephew again, but he come him off, grabbing him roughly by the collar of his shirt and halfdragging him towards the bike. “I oughta beat your ass,” he said, pausing to bend over, bringing his face closer. “You know we can't afford to get into this kind of trouble. The hell do you think you're doing, you want to start a war or something? You know what it's like out there and we damn lucky things here haven't blown up like they have everywhere else.” He paused, looked at the rest of the boys gathered around. “The rest of you run on home, now.” Again at Jaron: “You're going back to your mom's.” On the way home he worried. He reflected that Jaron was one of those youths with so much raw ambition and drive that, given their situation, he would wind up as either a millionaire, or in jail or dead. But right now, they didn't need any millionaires, much less any dead teenagers, and the boy would have to tone it down. Fights had been breaking out more often along the border. Maybe it was just the heat. The very next morning Shaw's worst fears were realized when a car pulled up to the house. There was only one man in it; they knew him as the guy who owned the local Subway franchise, but on the white side of town he was something of an authority figure. He came to tell them that their little camp in the backyard was a nuisance and a public health hazard, and they'd better move it. But Shaw knew what he really meant. He and Candace spent all day trying to decide what to
do. All trace of the unpleasantness over food was now gone. Candace Washington knew, or perhaps intuited, that despite the inconvenience her cousin and his friends represented, she was far safer with numbers around her than without, and that if they left she would have to leave with them. There couldn't be a right answer, because it came down to the fact that they weren't safe no matter where they were, unless they all managed to make it up north somehow. But he'd heard that they'd started stopping refugees from leaving the state, sometimes in rather ugly ways. He felt he'd been through all this before and it hadn't turned out pleasantly. Their discussion went on, intermittently, into the night, when they were interrupted by Charlie's cell phone. It was Willie, said they'd found some white dude just walking down the street, but when they approached him he said he wanted to talk to Charlie. Yes, he knew his name. Then he said he was from the Army—no, the real Army—and wanted to help them. Charlie agreed to meet, but made sure that there were at least ten of his pals in the room to keep anything foolish from happening. “Think of me as a consultant,” the Army man had said. He wasn't in uniform, to say the least. His beard had apparently been growing for weeks, he wore only shorts and a t-shirt and one of those vests with all the pockets on it, but he had a piece nice enough that it must've been military standard issue of some sort. He smelled like he'd walked there all the way from Pennsylvania. He was clearly not from around here; he had a flat accent and Charlie
would've guessed he was from the Midwest somewhere. “You all are the biggest pocket of refugees in this part of the state,” he continued. “and I know you've been getting into some trouble with the locals. You may think you can get out of this by just being quiet and behaving yourself, but listen. In their eyes, you don't belong here and they won't be happy, they won't stop giving you grief til you're gone, either peacefully or not so peacefully. Don't you know there's a war on? It seems to me your choice isn't how best to appease those folks on the other side of town, your choice is to either run away, again, or let us help you.” “Run away again? What do you mean, “again”? Now how the hell could you possibly know--,” Charlie interjected. But the man remained calm. “We're the U.S. Government, my friend,” he said with a smile, leaning back in his chair. They—the soldier, Charlie, most of his biker friends, Candace and a few of her neighbors—had gathered around Candace's kitchen table. It was a a rather improbable scene, a gaggle of refugees and and armed soldier in such a domestic setting, Candace's faux-homespun décor hanging on the walls. The kids were watching TV in the next room over. “You have any idea how many phone conversations we listen to per day now? How many emails we read? Anything as interesting as what's going on around here is gonna light up like a Christmas tree, the way we track these things.” He went on, more forcefully “Now let's not fuck around about how long your odds are here. You can either all try and pack up and run for the
border, in which case you'll be even less able to defend yourselves, or you can let us help you.” “Help us how?” Charlie finally took his bait. “Help you fight. That's right, stay right here, all of you, and fight. Don't believe everything you hear on the news,” he continued quickly, anticipating their objection that Uncle Sam wasn't exactly making himself look good these last few weeks, “these yahoos have got themselves spread so thin, they can't send anyone down here to deal with you. No one serious, anyway. They'll just write you off, like they've written off a whole bunch more of their rear areas. And don't think that we're just using you as a distraction, either—we need a forward base in this area, so we've got as much stake in this as you do. Me and my team'll be right here with you the whole time, so if shit goes down at least you know you'll have a few Rangers on your side.” “Rangers?” Shaw asked. “As in more than one?” The soldier paused for a second, looked as if he'd said more than he meant to. “There's four of us here, counting me. You'll meet the others tomorrow, if we can agree tonight on what our course of action is.” “So what,” Charlie said. “You got guns? You gonna train us?” The soldier smiled that condescending smile again. “Yes, and yes. We can certainly arm you, and given a few days train you so you can at least hold your ground. The tricky part is that we're a little short on time now—those guys the other side of town could move on you any day now.
So you'll need to buy us some time, try to negotiate something with them, or find some other way to stall.” So, the next day Shaw and a delegation went down to the 7-11—one of the last neutral spots in town—and let it be known that he wanted to talk. It didn't take long for the shop owner to show up, this time with a whole posse of cops in tow. Shaw tried to convince them that he could set up some kind of more acceptable, permanent structure—he'd thought chemical toilets might be a nice touch—but they demurred, feeding him the usual bullshit about ordinances and such. The whole thing took a lot less time than Shaw was hoping for, and ended with him unceremoniously being given an ultimatum to begin moving his people out by sundown the next day. Suddenly things seemed a lot more real, and were happening a lot quicker. Charlie Shaw was now starting to think that maybe it was a stroke of luck, that soldier showing up when he did. He seemed supremely confident, and they found themselves following his lead without much thought. They'd had only two days of the most basic weapons familiarization—they hadn't even been able to squeeze off that many practice rounds, for fear of the attention the noise would draw, even though they'd found a spot so far out in the country there was no way it could be heard from town. But somebody must've heard anyway, because the police showed up early—before sundown the next day. And they showed up in as much force as Charlie had ever seen. An APC led the way. Behind it must've been nearly every cruiser in the county. As the convoy schooled through the
neighborhoods on their side of town, some of the kids tried throwing rocks or setting up barriers in their path, but they were easily pushed aside. They made a beeline right for Candace's house—they knew just where to find Charlie, all right. As soon as it pulled up right in front of the house, it just sat there for a long minute. Charlie was standing in the side yard, Candace and a few of the neighborhood kids next to him. This was where he'd been told to stand by the soldier, who was nowhere to be seen. They were careful to make sure none of the weapons were visible either. Finally, the back door of the APC swung down and the SWAT team started to emerge. They looked otherworldly, in their gas masks and layers of body armor. From Charlie's vantage point, they stayed behind the vehicle, but he could see at least one of them still had him in his sights. A voice came over some kind of PA system, saying something about getting down on their knees and keeping their hands up. Charlie did as he'd been told to do and complied, and the SWAT team filed out from behind the truck and started moving towards him. Now all their weapons were trained on him. For one split second, he could think of nothing except the fact that he was being used as bait, hadn't even realized until just now, was sure this would all go to shit and he'd wind up-Then the first shots rang out. He saw one of the SWAT team go down, the rest turned towards the noise, and then his face was in the dirt as shots started whizzing by him. He'd never heard bullets pass that close. He wasn't
expecting the high-pitched noise. He heard a strange, stifled scream next to him, saw the kid on his right fall down clutching his throat. He couldn't see anyone else—the yard had emptied in a split second. He saw a quick bright light, like a firefly shoot towards the APC, and then it was on fire. He saw the SWAT team dragging a few of their comrades back into it, trying to close the door fast enough. There were shots ringing out all up and down the street now. The police SUVs that had been at each end of the block were speeding towards him now, and more coming in behind them, although he could see one that wasn't moving and was on fire. Every police officer in the county must be here. He was close enough that he could see the muzzle flashes from the cops inside them, the spider webs on the glass where bullets had hit. They slowed down to give an instant's cover for the APC, which had finally closed its door, and then all of them sped up and broke for the ends of the street. In a few seconds they were out of sight. After that it got more chaotic, as they dealt with the wounded. The kid next to Charlie wasn't moving, and he didn't really feel like bending down to see if he was dead or not. One of the soldiers had been hit, as well as one of Charlie's, although neither was very serious, his Army friend assured him. They found four dead cops on the street, with no idea about the condition the rest had got away in. The Ranger tossed Charlie a weapon and told him, Willie and a few others to follow. They ran through a couple yards, until they were several blocks closer to the border
of the neighborhood, where it gave way to the four-lane, green-median asphalt border of Porter Avenue and MLK Drive. He was instructed to hunker down in a drainage ditch along MLK Boulevard, while the Ranger went on ahead. He and Willie waited in their shared, ad hoc foxhole for what seemed like a long time. He understood that there was a danger that the cops would regroup and come back at them, that they needed a perimeter if they were going to turn back any counter-attacks. He could hear the crackle of gunfire somewhere close by. He couldn't see anyone else, and wondered if maybe it had been an oversight to leave him here by himself. He heard the sounds of gunfire coming closer, and somewhere someone was shouting. When he saw the SWAT team come back around the corner of the house directly across from him, his mind found it impossible to process. By some stroke of luck, or more likely sheer terror and survival instinct, he managed to raise his rifle from where he was laying prone, aim it and squeeze the trigger. The lead officer didn't go down, but did back up, scuttling backwards to take cover behind the corner of the house. Apparently he'd been close at least. After that first shot, he wasn't sure what to do next; he could no longer see where the officer was, but he felt the need to blanket that corner with bullets, set the fancy military rifle the Ranger had given him to full auto and empty the clip just to keep the cop from coming back, which suddenly seemed far more important than killing him. Before he could even decide what to do next, his target reappeared, leaning carefully around the house. His weapon
seemed to be pointed straight at Charlie, who ducked and a few seconds later was rewarded with the sound of bullets singing right over his head. He waited a good second or two after the sound had stopped, then poked his head back above the edge of the ditch. Now there were two cops; the first still leaning out from the corner of the building, the next just disappearing behind a car parked in the driveway. He fired again, without aiming; neither of the cops moved, so he stopped firing long enough to take better aim this time. He couldn't be sure but he thought a hole appeared in the car's front fender, a silver eye with a black pupil staring out through the paint job. Now both officers swung their weapons around to point at him. He tried to get a shot off before they did, but heard and saw the bullets hitting the ground right in front of him before he could. He ducked down again, now starting to realize that he wasn't stopping anyone this way. He thumbed his walkie talkie, told the Ranger (he hoped) where he was and that he needed assistance, although not in so many words. He received, or so it seemed, a disheartening response, everyone stretched too thin, or so the Ranger said. He looked up again to see several cops crossing MLK, now onto the greensward between that street and Porter. He fired once more in what seemed like their direction, earning himself a hail of bullets which once again pummeled the edge of his pitiful, improvised fortification. This time though, he used the pause in their advance to start crawling. He shouted something to Willie (the Ranger had stressed that they should never become separated from what
he referred to, a bit ridiculously Shaw thought, as their “battle buddies”), decided to keep his foes on his right, and moved west down the ditch. Then up ahead in the shadows he saw someone move. He meant to call out the password they'd been given to know each other by in the dark, but all he got out was “Hey,” although the stranger seemed to understand, stopped, aimed, and fired. Fired again, and then dropped into the ditch on the other side of a driveway from Charlie. Another hail of bullets, and then Shaw turned and tried to aim. He was getting this rhythm down; he always had been a good dancer. He saw two of the cops helping a third, who was only using one leg. He aimed and fired, again to no visible effect. He heard more shots from whoever it was behind him, then the cops found various hiding places on the other side of the street. Their advance seemed to have halted. The next morning, the gunfire had grown much more occasional. As far as he could tell the SWAT team was still holed up across the street, so Shaw didn't dare move. But the Ranger came to them, scooted in and laid right next to them in the ditch. “Just came to see how everything's going,” he said as if Shaw were some kind of shut-in relative, a note of amiable, jocular concern in his voice. “You did real good last night,” he added. “These guys in the battle rattle broke right through up by Main Street. I think we've got 'em pinned down, but it's a big hole in our line that we're gonna need to take care of at some point. I guess that'll have to be after we shore up all the other holes. Man, we
really kicked up some kind of hornet's nest. We found a bunch of civilians coming through the woods last night, trying to flank us. Looks like every able-bodied man for miles around has found a gun and come here to kill us.” He smiled. “Don't let 'em back through here. Keep your eyes on the windows.” And he was off. The sun came up at a glacial pace. There was dew on the grass now. Shaw began to cramp up, lying in the ditch. He wanted to stand up, stretch his legs, walk around. He settled for crawling back down the ditch to the east, farther away from the unknown across the driveway, whom neither he nor Willie had seen to reappear. Figured it would be easier to cover all the angles from over here. He still heard the crackling gunfire, but it was much less frequent now. After a while he saw a column of smoke somewhere off to the west. He was beginning to realize that he was ravenously hungry. The adrenaline had worn off, and he realized he had been awake and exerting himself all night, and he needed to eat. The sun was now well into the sky, but his phone had died so he had no way of knowing precisely what time it was. He guessed around 8. Just then he heard the staccato tune pick up again somewhere to his right, and a few seconds later his radio sputtered to life. Apparently the fight had metastasized around a bank only a few blocks away. After a tense several minutes of assuring themselves that they were no longer in anyone's field of fire, he and Willie jogged behind several houses, drawing closer to the
sounds of shooting. Shaw dove behind the engine of a car (an engine block could stop near about any bullet thrown at it, that much he knew without being told). Around the bank was parked a ring of vehicles, like an old wagon trained circled round. He could see shots going in and out. He yelled to a man in the yard behind him. The poor guy didn't seem too sure what had happened, but that these cars had come screeching in and circled through the bank parking lot, cutting off what was one of their strategic redoubts covering a main intersection. Before anyone could get across the parking lot to lift the siege, the others were set up inside, and the parking lot too exposed to run across. He didn't know if anyone on their side was still alive inside. As if in answer to his doubt, they saw an emergency door at the rear of the building open and one of their own come running out. He'd dropped his weapon, but was running near as fast as anyone Charlie had ever seen. He was aiming for the slight shelter of a street lamp, but didn't make it. They saw him fall violently, almost diving into the ground, and behind him the gunman, who had braved walking all the way out of the back door and into the broad daylight, puffs of dust kicking up around him where the bullets landed, just to get a hit. He ran back in, his work finished, and spider webs spun themselves on the teller's window as Shaw's comrades tried in vain to find their target on the inside. That evening things had died down again. He managed to get away—as if there was any getting away from the fighting
in a town this small—and check on Candace and her kids. The water had been shut off. “They had a few bottles of water, those army guys,” she said, “but it didn't look like many. I don't know how long we can keep this up. I bet not more than another day or two.” She paused to think for a second. “I wonder why they cut off the water but not the lights?” They would get their answer soon enough, when a bullet shattered the living room window just as they were walking in from the kitchen. They both hit the ground. Someone must be using the lights against them, targeting silhouettes. And whoever it was probably couldn't tell the difference between combatants and civilians, or didn't care to. Charlie heard another shot, far off, and somewhere nearby a girl's anguished scream. For the rest of the night, the lights stayed off. Charlie ran back to his post before the sun could come up. The next morning, the Ranger came back around to Charlie's post in the drainage ditch. Said they were in luck, that he'd managed to get a few helicopters to do a quick supply drop once night fell again. He seemed excited, talked about going on the offensive. Charlie was just exhausted. Later on in the day, when he started hearing explosions back behind him, back toward the house, and the screams, even louder and more of them than before, he wondered how much more of this he could take. The Ranger was on the radio again momentarily. “They must have a motherfucking grenade launcher,” he said. “I don't believe it...” his voice was trailing off, and not
very reassuring. Shaw saw a family pile into a station wagon, on the block behind him. How many more had left already? He hadn't been keeping track. Might be only a minority of them left at all. Who knew how many more had been killed outright. Soon he saw one of theirs, a man he recognized from the fight at the bank, stumble past under the weight of an enormous duffel bag. “Listen man,” he said. “I just called my wife, and we're getting the hell out of here. This ain't no place to make a stand, we're sitting ducks around here. You want to come with us you're welcome to.” Charlie's desperation, as was only natural in a situation like this, was feeding on that of others, his mind over-clocking itself trying to rationalize his imminent departure. Things were collapsing all around him. At that moment, Charlie understood. He got up and ran back to the house, desensitized to the popping of bullets behind him and the intermittent explosions at seemingly random intervals and distances. The shattered roof of a house, screams still coming from inside, the exploded wreck of a car he passed on the way back only served to heighten his resolve. There was damage everywhere—bullet holes, broken windows. Candace and her son were nowhere to be found, and their car was gone. He tried calling them, but got no answer. Every woman I know ends up leaving me and taking the kids with her, he thought. Even the ones that aren't my exwife. Charlie Shaw finally decided that he'd had enough.
“Look, we had a deal.” the ranger insisted, when Charlie told him what he'd decided. “We saved your asses, but you have to help us too. These guys are a bunch of fucking amateurs. We've pasted their asses so far--” “Saved my ass?” Charlie rounded on him. “Everything's gone to shit, man. You crazy if you plan on staying around here.” “Look, maybe we can't protect the civilians but that just makes our job easier. We can be more mobile this way...” “Man, you crazy,” he insisted again. “Where we gonna hide if we ain't got nobody to hide us?” With that, he turned for his bike. No one had made him the leader of their little gang, but in moments like these you don't question such things. Willie tried to slow him down a bit, make him stop and think. “Man, you sure we should leave soldier boy behind,” he started. “Forget about this crazy ass town, we should at least take a guy who knows how to fight with us.” Shaw considered for a moment, but shook his head. “Nigger, you don't get it, do you? Huh? You think that guy gives half a shit about us? We just tools to him, man, he got a fight with some other white dudes and wants us to help him, not the other way 'round. He can take his white ass back to Nebraska or Rhode Island or wherever he from, because we done had enough help.”
Four: The glory of the coming Spring
Washington, D.C. A pall of iron-gray stratus lay over the District, threatening snow or, worse, the half-melted “wintry mix” that seemed to fall around here frequently. Without looking, Channing tried to remember as many details as he could of the impassive edifices of the House office buildings behind him, too large and a little bit creepy. Ahead of him was a bit more color—a neon sign in a restaurant window stood out especially—so he preferred to look this way. Between him and the House offices was an empty parking lot (Congress being out of session), and the subway station. This was the perimeter they'd been mandated—two clear streets between the Capitol and the closest public access. He'd heard it was causing traffic nightmares for the locals. He was bored out of his mind. Without the usual flow and thrum of staffers going about their workdays, he didn't even have the luxury of a few minutes of people watching. He envied the cops manning the makeshift gate which fed into the parking lot—they at least had the intellectual stimulation of checking a badge whenever someone tried to get through the cordon, although of course today that meant they were hardly any better off than him and his grunts. For some reason, it was never the same cops manning the checkpoint for more than a few weeks at a time—not even the same department, as sometimes they were Capitol police, sometimes DC cops, even transit police. He'd figured after a while that this was probably to avoid letting the bad guys get a good enough look at any of them to take
reprisals against their family. He couldn't honestly say what he was doing here. Of course he knew the mission profile—to back up the civilian authorities in case of an attack, and secondarily to serve as a deterrent to any such attack. But he also knew that if another attack came, it probably wouldn't be here, and probably wouldn't be something that a few more assault rifles could stop. He was really here to lock the barn door after the horse had already escaped. On another level, he knew that none of that was worth worrying about. Even if all this was only for show, nobody would ever peek behind the curtain. That was the thing about the idea of security—people could never get enough of it, even when it was only imaginary. It was reassuring, somewhat, to not have to worry what other people thought of the job you were doing. Everyone supported the troops. But his satisfaction with this job was still at a fairly low ebb. Morale, he reminded himself. It's called morale. He'd been so excited to be deployed, to say nothing of what a high-profile deployment this was. He'd heard that conditions were pretty spartan here—the recent massive influx of soldiers was only “bivouacked”, as they say, crammed into a bunch of hastily assembled pre-fab metal boxes. At least he got his own box. But during the heady final days after, w the end of his training, hen he'd only had things to look forward too, such deprivations seemed far off and a bit romantic. Now that he'd spent a couple months in them they just seemed as boring as the cramped single bedroom he used to rent in Brooklyn, except without
the ability to leave whenever he wanted. The sun was going down. He checked his phone for what seemed like the hundredth time in the last hour, willing it to be later so the next watch could take over. They finally showed up, a minute late, but at last he and his platoon were able to load across the river. He'd hardly had time to doff his PPE upon the platoon's return when his CO, CPT Meyer, called him into his office. “Look,” he said. “I was just told by battalion that they're pulling some of your guys for some sort of detail, pronto. Tomorrow, in fact. So tell them to pack up tonight.” He gave him the names of four soldiers in his platoon. “Yes, sir.” Channing said after what he felt was a long pause. He had to stop himself from stupidly saying “Ok,” such was his confusion. “Oh and Channing,” said Meyer, just as he was about to dismiss him, “I got the impression there's no need to make a big announcement to the world. The way S1 was acting this is kind of on the down-low, okay?” “Yes, sir.” he said, more resolutely this time, and saluted on his way out. Back at his desk, Channing called his staff sergeants into the office, gave them the news. “I don't know what this is about, but the captain sounded like it was awful serious,” he revealed, hoping the non-explanation would make it a bit easier. They engaged in a bit of idle speculation about what might be going on, whether the men were in trouble, what they had in common that could into the Humvees for the drive back
possibly be a clue, but came up with nothing. The next morning, only three of the four got on the bus that was supposed to take them away to God only knew where. CPT Meyer showed up right at Channing's desk—he hadn't even had his first cup of coffee yet. With him, apparently to heighten the surrealism, was CPT Wozniak, the battalion S2, and a pair of enlisted MPs. By their demeanor, none of them was interested in explaining what any of this was about, they simply asked a bunch of heated questions about when he'd seen the man last (Peterson, was his name), and if he'd been with anyone, or said anything at all. It was like an interrogation. Channing answered to the best of his ability, which was not very helpful, and they left as brusquely as they'd come. Channing was fortunate in that he was on friendly terms with Wozniak, and he decided to risk an end-run around the bureaucracy, so great was his curiosity. He managed to catch up with him over drinks after work that Friday, although for some reason Wozniak wouldn't touch any alcohol that evening. Channing played the concerned commander angle, pointing out how unfair it was that battalion was just whisking away four of his guys like this, with no warning or explanation. Wozniak was sympathetic, but still evasive. “Look, I can tell you this much,” he volunteered. “There are legitimate opsec concerns here. This isn't just us, either, this is a brigade-wide exercise, and I can't be sure but I think brigade is only implementing something coming from higher up.”
“Opsec?” Channing queried. He was legitimately confused by this. “What, are they all building bombs or something?” Wozniak gave him a look, shook his head, and sighed. “Let me put it to you this way, and then I definitely can't say any more. Were you ever in Afghanistan?” When Channing shook his head no, the captain continued. “Well, in Afghanistan we used to have this problem with green-on-blue attacks, maybe you remember, it was all over the news back here. Taliban or al-Qaeda would join the Afghan army just to get onto one of our bases, and once they were inside the wire they'd just shoot the place up. It got to be so bad that we had to physically segregate Afghan and American forces on the same base—like, you had to go through a CAC to get from the Afghan side to the American side. Well--” here, he visibly strained, as if he'd reached the limit of what he wanted to say. “Let's just say that the Army learned that lesson pretty damn well. And let's just say that at a post this close to so many important people, in times like this, they don't want to take any chances. There's a lot of people with funny ideas in this country, and not all of them are as far away as some militia compound in Michigan.” He paused for a second, looking morose. “Still, I've never seen—well, no I shouldn't speculate. I've said too much already.” He got up to go. “But, Channing—just be careful.” It was after this conversation that 1LT Channing began to notice things, little things. The first thing he noticed was the mirrors above the stalls in the men's room. Tastefully small, certainly not enough for a voyeur to take
advantage of, but just enough for a passing MP to see if anyone was hiding inside or not. * * *
Another day past. This one contained no snowthreatening stratus clouds; it had been sunny and pleasant enough, but still cold. A harbinger of the spring that Channing knew was still some months away, the kind of day it is impossible to dress for, the kind in which one always has too many layers or not enough. Channing had gotten to the point where he was finding little value in staying awake through an entire watch, but the ancestral work ethic, Midwestern or Protestant he wasn't sure, but of a sort to make Weber proud, kept him from doing so. His subordinates, however, were another story. He had been at this post just long enough that everyone had fallen into a familiar, corner-cutting routine; certain of the men would slack or goof of, and he'd let enough of this slide that it would be unfair of him to start cracking down now. It hadn't been going on for too long, so it wasn't as if there were any serious problems with discipline or effectiveness, none that would be noticed by his equally bored superiors, anyway. Still, it was a start. They had started in the direction of poor discipline, but they had only just started. “Hey Shahbaz,” said Channing, a propos of nothing, “you ever notice how many people fly the city flag around here?” “Huh? No,” 1SG Shahbaz trailed off the word, a sort of query.
“You know, those red-and-white striped things, that's the D.C. city flag. I just feel like, you know, back in New York no one ever flew a state flag or a city flag. It's just weird.” “Huh,” said Shahbaz, his query answered, hoping his boss wouldn't pursue another one of his random soliloquies for long. “Maybe it has to do with not being a real state, you know?” Channing went on, dashing his subordinate's hopes. “Like Puerto Ricans, you know? They fly their flag all over the place. Or Texans, maybe because they wish they weren't a state. I dunno.” “Hm,” Shahbaz grunted, even more noncommittally. It seemed to do the trick, as Channing's armchair anthropology returned to the inside of his head. They had only just returned to slacking off in a sort of sullen silence when they all felt and then heard the explosion, close by, just to the south. A second later a plume of smoke rose from a spot that seemed to be only a few blocks away. “Well, that's an explosion.” 2LT Channing said, to no one in particular, but he didn't feel ashamed of talking to himself, since what he'd said was in fact accurate, helped to focus his mind on what to do next. His next thought, to himself, was Who are these people? Could there really be that many people in this country that hated each other so much? Every day the police busted another ring of bomb makers or gun runners, but clearly they had missed one. Or they hadn't, and these guys had only just entered the bomb
making market. Next second, before he could get any farther in his reverie, a burst of frantic radio chatter confirming what he already knew, calling for backup, extraction, medics, everything. Right, time to spring into action. What was it he was supposed to do in this situation? They had no contingency for this—attacks against convoys en route were supposed to be handled by whoever was doing personnel recovery, which wasn't him. If it had been an attack directly at their position that would be different. But this fell in the middle—the convoy was still en route, but they were also right there, and he could hardly leave them hanging when he was just a few minutes stroll away. He was vaguely aware that now, everyone was looking at him. His first instinct was to mount up and head right into the thick of things. No, no—there could be a follow-up attack, and it might be against this very position, and even if there wasn't another attack, abandoning a defensive position a few blocks from the U.S. Capitol seemed like an idea that could get an overzealous officer in trouble. “Everybody look sharp,” he said. “It could be a diversion, or there could be a bigger op heading our way. We don't know anything, so just know where some cover is and keep your eyes up.” The men spread out a little until they had the platoon's sector pleasantly well-covered, good spacing, alert. Still, the urge to react was simply too much. He called his platoon sergeant back over. “I don't like the idea of just sitting here,” he said. “I think we should move down
these cross streets,” he gestured to indicate the streets running perpendicular to the one the platoon was deployed along. “Send a squad down this one and that one over there, just try and stop anything coming at us before it gets here.” “How far? A couple blocks?” asked Shahbaz. “No, just...say half a block, they're pretty long.” Shahbaz nodded and went off to rearrange the boxes, try and cover their assigned sector with half as many guys. He wasn't helped by what Channing said next. He'd just remembered something he'd heard not 30 seconds ago over the radio, that the explosion had occurred on South Capitol Street where it went under the Interstate. “Bravo-13, you got any visibility down South Capitol? What's it look like down there?” “Uh, moving to take a look now,” came the answer, and instantly Channing felt a twinge of regret for making everyone dance around like this. “Can't see anything, ell-tee. I mean, just a whole lot of smoke.” Channing saw a bevy of police cars tear down a street parallel to them, some distance off, no doubt heading for the scene of the crime. They were moving fast enough that he hadn't even heard the sirens. “Bravo-14, you able to raise anyone over there?” “Overheard a lot of maydays,” came the reply. “They are definitely calling in casualties.” Nothing else for it, then. His perimeter secure, he spun up a squad and they took off on foot for the scene of
the explosion. They could probably use his platoon's medic, at least. As they got closer, he felt an urge to slow down. He still couldn't see or hear anything, and there was still a lot of dust hanging in the air. As they continued to approach, he was almost overcome with the fear that there would be a second device, to target any first responders, which he realized with a shock meant him. It was a relief to finally hear voices, not shouting but just normal voices. The relief caused him to not notice at first that the dead soldier lying on the ground was actually dead; he only noticed that the man seemed smaller than life, shriveled up and cast aside like a forgotten toy on the living room floor. There were a number of civilian cops standing around nonchalantly; maybe this wasn't their first homicide scene. Channing and the detachment with him didn't have much to do at the site of the attack, so they went back to their position down the street. As they were hiking back, the urgent radio chatter started up again; this time, his own platoon had detained a suspicious vehicle just north of where the attack occurred. His squad changed direction to provide backup. This was turning into a very long day. By the time they got there, the lone occupant of the car was already on his stomach, hands behind his head. Nobody had zip cuffs to tie him with, or else they would have. “Stupid prick wouldn't get out of his car,” Shahbaz was explaining. Channing thought there were an awful lot of his soldiers standing around, and wondered for a moment who
exactly was guarding their sector. He thought that he'd spread his soldiers out too thin, that surely there would be some after-action report and he'd be taken to task, first the unnecessary stroll down to the attack site and now this. He was hardly listening to Shahbaz. Finally they had to let the man go. Channing thought that he'd heard something about the guy trying to get into the Capitol—he had a valid badge—but the man pulled a uturn and sped away in the opposite direction. As he and Shahbaz walked back towards the wire, his platoon sergeant couldn't help but opine for once. “It's just so backwards,” he said. “They can kill us but we can't kill them.” * * *
When he'd first enlisted, and was still in training, falling asleep had been harder than waking up; yes, falling asleep exhausted after 12-hour nonstop days was harder than waking up at 0530 every morning, and this for Robert Channing who'd never been a morning person. Falling asleep was hard because it robbed him of the few moments every day that were his and only his, those few moments in his head, after lights out, when he wasn't following someone else's orders. When he wasn't forgetting a step while trying to strip a rifle, or being spoken to sternly by men who had no appreciation for his sense of humor. As a child he'd gotten good at keeping his own company, but now he was deprived of even that, pushed by the requirements of the service on one end and pulled by the instinctual urge towards
unconsciousness on the other. And in those few fleeting moments he had to himself, he had nothing to do but worry, or so it seemed. Worry that he would mess up or fail in some way, not measure up. He'd developed a constant, irrational fear of tripping, tripping while going through an obstacle course or even just walking through the DFAC. He was able to feel losing his balance, as he laid there in his bunk, and wondered amazed at how he'd managed to avoid it every time he put his feet on the ground. In the constant moments of activity during the day, he was too busy for such worries, and whenever he could he was able to remind himself that he had no real evidence for any of them. But still, in the long struggle to acclimate his stubborn body to the long, unfamiliar weight of a rifle in his hands or the phantom-backpack feel of body armor on his back or, worst of all, the constant balancing act of a helmet on his head, keep up. But his mind was being reshaped—not by a classroom seminar or a well-turned sentence, but by the simple physical necessity of rising at 0530 every morning, and following the same routine, down to each exacting, minute detail, day in and day out. He lived orderly, and his mind followed, just like Descartes' unbeliever who becomes religious simply by pantomiming the action of clasping hands together in prayer. This transformation had a long time to act itself out—by the time he'd been through 10 weeks of BCT, 12 weeks of OCS, 16 weeks at Infantry school, and 61 days at Ranger school, not counting the time cooling his mind was clearly struggling to
his heels in between all of them, his brain had become like the apocryphal frog in the slowly-heated water, boiled without even realizing it. Why had he put himself in this position, anyway? Something must have changed at some point to even make him want to join the military. He knew what it was, but never wanted to think about it. What it was was his belief in the cause—his knowledge that there was an enemy out there to be fought—but the lack of any other way of knowing that you could do something about it. The certainty he'd found hadn't come from any military discipline, it had come from the ease with which everything becomes more certain when violence is involved. It had thrown him a lifeline, him flailing around in his post-modern stew of uncertainty, and by God he'd grasped that lifeline, regardless of its effects on the more refined parts of his intellect. He had craved it, he wanted it, although he knew it was wrong. No atheists in foxholes, after all. * * *
He didn't find Army life to be that bad, but in retrospect was glad he'd gone the OCS route instead of enlisting. He knew the types of people he'd have to live with if he'd just enlisted—they were the same people he'd gone to elementary school with, and there was a reason he didn't keep in touch with them anymore. Now his colleagues were certainly not geniuses, but at least they had a modicum of intellect. Furthermore, he'd always had a knack for self-denial, so as long as they fed him three meals a
day and kept him too busy to be bored, he couldn't really complain. That didn't necessarily mean it was easy, though. For example, one thing he struggled with was the concept of “leadership”. According to his superiors it was a quality he lacked, and only partly made up for by excelling in more technical fields. For a while, he sincerely tried to improve himself, but there was always something holding him back, something that he could never really articulate. He finally solved the puzzle by realizing that “leadership” was just a meaningless weasel-word, like all the other managerial words he'd ever heard used, like “leverage” or “resource” used as a verb. All it really meant, he finally came to realize, was management, the ability to manage other people while also setting at least a somewhat-good example. “Leadership” had frightened him, he now thought, because it made it sound like he would actually have to make decisions, that the conduct of the war, in at least some small way would be on him, but this was in fact not so. All it really meant was motivating the people under him to do the things the people over him wanted done. This in turn presented its own problems. He'd never had to motivate adults, even though he'd had plenty of practice on his students at his last job. Even for that though, he'd been too weak, too soft-spoken. He loved to educate, but he only loved it if he could do it patiently, if he could sit down with someone on that person's own time and explain to them slowly and thoroughly the point he was trying to get across. Even back then, the industry he worked in hadn't
had the patience for it. Certainly, the military had the least patience of any organization. Enforcing discipline was first of all about making yourself special or different in some way, so people would know who was in charge, and he hated being the center of attention. * * *
He heard about the mutiny first, of course, on the Internet. He'd never watched TV much even before he enlisted, and he didn't really have the time or inclination now. As far as he was concerned, print newspaper or the radio were as relevant as the Gutenberg Bible—historically interesting, but not something he'd ever read himself. He was insatiable in his appetite for news, of course, and whenever he'd had spare time this had turned into an unfortunate procrastination-inducing habit. Now, though, that was no longer a problem. Free time was hard to come by, of course, but what little there was he was glued to his phone. He'd only had time to glance at the headlines for a moment; he had emails to send to his family. But when the first thing he saw was CADETS OCCUPY BUILDINGS AT AIR FORCE ACADEMY He clicked through with the unthinking instinct of a moth drawn to a flame. There was a picture, smoke rising up behind a distinctive, metallic triangular-prism-shaped building. He almost recognized the building, but couldn't quite place it. The details of the story were still sketchy—apparently the news had just broken—but there had been shots fired,
although it was still unclear what exactly had been set on fire. In a situation like this, he had to find someone to talk to. Or perhaps talk at, just someone to participate in some way in the discussion that was already going a mile a minute inside his head. He had to find a TV. He knew that soon a TV would gather a crowd, that there would be a public space where he could express himself without fear of disturbing anyone. He knew around a TV there would be a sense of community. On his way out of his quarters, he ran into one of his fellow candidates, a woman named Carson who he hardly ever spoke to. He simply couldn't contain himself. “Did you see this news from Colorado?” he asked excitedly. “No,” she said, her face falling into a pleasingly worried look. “What news?” “Some kind of mutiny at the Air Force Academy. Apparently it got a bit out of hand, they said there've been shots fired. I'm gonna go try and find a TV to watch.” “Wow,” she said, a little too unenthusiastically, but followed him nonetheless. They finally found a crowd gathered around someone's TV, all of them stuffed into one of the already claustrophobic double rooms. There was just enough space for them to squeeze in. “--apparently much more widespread than was previously thought, as I said before we can't get very close to anything that's going on but we've heard from security
forces at the school that the shooting has stopped and that they are in negotiations with this group or groups, it's not clear how many, of cadets, apparently, who have taken over several buildings.” Nobody said much. After a while, one of the students actually inside the buildings called into the local TV affiliate whose feed they were watching, one of those incongruous cases of a local reporter hurled bodily into the national spotlight. “We have on the phone right now a cadet, who won't identify himself, he says he has a statement,” he said. “So, sir, please go ahead.” Channing glanced around at his fellow soldiers. While every expression in the room was either worried or blank, he felt an unaccountable thrill running through him. What was wrong with him? Surely he didn't want these nut cases to win, did he? Now they were all listening with rapt attention to what the nut case on the TV was saying. After the recent actions of this government during the siege at Houghton Lake, we feel it is our solemn duty, in keeping with the oath we swore to protect and defend the Constitution of the United States, to resist the steady march of tyranny and socialism sweeping across this land in the only way we know how. The fact that this administration used the Air Force, which we have pledged our lives to, as the opening salvo in its war on the American people has only heightened our resolve and convinced us even more of the necessity of action. No doubt some will disagree with our methods, and try and convince us that there are other,
safer channels through which to pursue the change we seek, but the fact remains that we have reached a tipping point, and that all throughout the long period of buildup to this crisis, when all could clearly see what was coming, the “usual channels” were of no avail, and they will certainly not be now. We ask all loyal Americans to join us in acts of civil disobedience until the illegitimate regime in Washington is overthrown. We seek only peace and liberty for all our countrymen, except the few traitors who wish to enslave us. We move forward with confidence that the unbreakable American spirit will triumph again as it always has in the past. If Channing had still been a civilian, he would have been glued to this sort of news for the next days, weeks, as the cadets' sympathetic compatriots followed their lead, first Fort Bragg, then Fort Benning. They took over buildings, entire bases, cities; usually accompanied by the cheering of the locals. The mutinies and defections reached a crescendo, found its zenith, and then for a moment everyone wondered what would happen next. Would there be a negotiated solution of some kind? No one dared to breathe the word “war”. But then, perhaps inexorably, certainly without any kind of overall command or unified strategy, the military began moving, with an almost charmingly conventional goal of capturing the enemy's capital city. If he'd been a civilian, Channing would have liked very much to have been able to follow the news during these days, to have time to think, to build his own sense of history about these events so that years later he could
take exception to the conventional wisdom and sound clever in doing so. But now there was no time for rumination, and not only because such things had been indoctrinated out of him. There was no time, simply because Bravo Company had been told to spin up for a deployment. * * *
New York, New York P.S. 152 was too large and set too close to the street for comfort. It loomed over the narrowness of 61st Street, its height and sheerness made all the more cartoonish by the contrastingly run-down and small row houses that were its neighbors. Inside the stoic exterior, in the more private recesses of its cheaply tiled classrooms and cavernous, reverberating cafeteria was all the usual chaos and din of a public primary school in this kind of neighborhood. Phoebe had never been cut out to deal with managing this sort of messy undertaking. She was too weak to maintain effective discipline, but since she was conscientious in trying, and since the standards people were held to in such matters were so low, nobody said much. Lately she'd been terrified that she was feeling herself slip, beginning to take the shortcuts that everyone takes after a while, shortcuts or last-gasp instinctive survival strategies, it was hard to tell which. Last night, another standoff at a militia compound, this one in Michigan, had ended in a particularly violent manner. Certainly not the first time that had happened recently, but the news this time seemed to be that instead
of storming the place with boots on the ground, the feds had simply lobbed a few precisely targeted missiles through the windows from the air, small enough explosions to leave no civilian casualties (despite the presence of small children, sometimes only a room away from the targets) without risking the lives of the good guys. For some reason Phoebe would never understand, this was considered controversial while the previous fatal shootouts hadn't been. It's like the government was finally being serious about the whole “unlawful enemy combatant” thing, and only now were people starting to notice, or at least act like they were upset about it. Really, though, hadn't this been going on for months already? Her life hadn't changed all that much during all this, though. The main thing was that the cops were everywhere now. Mainly downtown, in the high-traffic, landmark-rich areas of Brooklyn and lower Manhattan, which had been turned into a veritable citadel. A nearly unbroken ring of police cruisers lined the perimeter of Washington Square. A line of larger paddy-wagons camped out in the narrow streets half-buried under the Brooklyn Bridge right next to Grimaldi's, but instead of hauling prisoners away they were full of cops waiting to go who knew where. Not doing anything in particular, just there, a pro forma show of force, like something out of eastern Europe during the fall of the wall. Phoebe mightn've been surprised to see this level of security when the UN was in town, or in a more localized form if there was some VIP event going on. But now they were everywhere, and everywhere constantly.
The only other thing she had noticed lately was that garbage pickup was even more erratic, maybe because there were so many cops there wasn't even room on the streets for garbage trucks. But that had been a long time coming, and she thought it highly probably it would've kept getting worse regardless. So Phoebe's life continued much as it had; there were no school closures here, no gentrifying yuppies abandoning the city they claimed to love for safer climes. But the truly earth-shattering events in history spare no-one, and even the more fortunate have to endure the incessant fixation of others on the imagined disruption of their daily lives, and are forced to listen to the usual gossip and cocktail chatter about what it all means. Humans can be frightfully clever things, and quickly become as expert as they need to. So on the day everything went down in Colorado Springs—it might as well be one day, although she could distinctly remember the sun rising and setting several times—suddenly her colleagues, usually the sort of career bureaucrats that talk mainly about their next career move, were ready to talk politics. Some of them were even ready to act, after a fashion. The views of her colleagues at P.S. 152 ran the gamut. Some were simply panicky. One of their fellows called in sick that first day, and they were later to find out that she'd been stocking up on canned goods and plywood, as if preparing for a storm. Some were disconsolate, finding refuge in panic's more mature, older sibling. Most, however were still held together enough to form an opinion. They
managed to console themselves by telling stories about everything New York had been through, just within their lifetimes—9/11, Sandy—and telling each other they would pull through. It was always framed that way—against the city. There was little talk of America. No one thought the mutiny should be met by force, or at least that only as a last resort. With what the day before they had derisively called terrorism, they were now suddenly willing to deal. “I mean look, clearly the government's overreached,” said Jill, who Phoebe secretly thought was the loudest person on staff. “You can't say they don't have legitimate grievances. How many people have they rounded up without a trial now? It's literally thousands. There just comes a point when our reaction only makes things worse.” “But this isn't going to settle anything,” said Gloria. They were huddled in the teachers' lounge, making the most of their 20 minute lunch. They talked in hushed voices, lest a student overhear them and relay what they said to its parents. Parents, after all, were what they more-orless-consciously feared more than anything else in the world. “Just to have some sort of truce won't settle anything. It'll just leave everything the way it's been. It can't go on forever.” “But we don't have to leave everything the way it's been,” Phoebe couldn't stay out of the conversation any longer, although joining it made her feel a little bit unclean anyway. “We have to hold our side accountable too.” “But this is a crime!”
“But what if these guys were just on strike from their job? Or occupying the state capitol or something? I think we can't let the fact that they're military detract from the fact that what they're doing is simply public disobedience.” Civil disobedience, thought Phoebe, annoyed. Lo and behold, the UFT announced it was one among many organizations sponsoring a “rally against violence” in all forms, to take place in Times Square that weekend. Phoebe's friends grumbled about how the union was spending too much time playing politics, when really it should just be representing them in contract negotiations. Phoebe didn't bother to ask them if they were going. For such a hastily-planned action, the rally was an enormous success. By some estimates a million New Yorkers turned out to protest the twin evils of lawless rebellion and a government which, they felt, had better things to do. “We are here to change the conversation,” one woman thundered, whose name and affiliation Phoebe didn't catch. “We need to stop focusing so much on the things that divide us and focus on rebuilding our middle class, rebuilding our schools, rebuilding our environment, rebuilding our society so that it benefits all Americans, so no one feels the need to resort to violence in the first place.” That line got a lot of applause. “We're gonna fight this government, with its austerity and its Wall Street bailouts, and its inaction on all the problems that are so hurting our middle class and our working class families,” said another man in a Teamsters jacket, “as if there were no terrorism. And we're gonna
fight those who violently oppose democracy and the rule of law as if we had no disagreement with this government.” That one wasn't quite as popular. In the days that followed, the protest started to go beyond the ability of the organizers to contain it. The march became a camp, and Times Square (and a great deal of the rest of midtown) ground to a near-standstill. The police either couldn't do anything to disperse it, or didn't want to, given all the media attention now focused on the protestors. For a few days, it seemed as if a real peace movement had sprung up overnight. It was like 2003 all over again—not that Phoebe could really remember 2003. Until the shooting started. Like everything else that had happened, none of the shooting was actually in New York, but suddenly places like Lancaster, PA, places which many New Yorkers had never heard of, and if they had they thought of with derision as some kind of uncultured backwater, took on enormous and almost visceral significance. Nothing serves to clarify one's mind so wonderfully as does violence, no matter how physically removed one is from any actual danger. When lives are on the line, there is no such thing as neutrality. You can't look at it and you can't look away, it forces you to react, you are sucked in, powerless. Moreover, there can never be more than two sides. The effect is amazing and immediate, perhaps an evolutionary vestige of when humans lived in hunter-gatherer clans that shared a bond with each other closer than any human society that exists today, a bond through which in some
circumstances each member knew what every other member was thinking, and consensus could be reached immediately, without any discussion and hardly even a thought. At any rate, after the first airstrikes began that morning, without even saying anything everyone knew that all further protests were called off, for the duration. Everyone went home and locked their doors. * * *
It was now Saturday, and Phoebe found herself with no where to go. She had the day off work, of course, but it seemed that along with protesting, any form of socializing had also been postponed. She'd gotten various sorts of apologetic emails canceling various sorts of plans she'd had for that evening. So she mostly sat around the house all day, with little to do but follow the news. Maybe this is what 9/11 was like, she thought. Over the course of the previous day and night, much of eastern Pennsylvania, not even a hundred miles from where she sat, had turned into a near-war zone. The thought of this was almost surreal when she looked out the window at her own neighborhood, which seemed quieter than usual but certainly did not have an air of imminent invasion about it. You could only tell from Twitter and the like, which were breathless as usual although actual hard news arrived only agonizingly slowly and tenuously. Cooped up as she was, she unfortunately soon found herself becoming more and more desperate for information that wasn't there, or at least wasn't really there. What was there was tweets, and other breaking news
coverage that was breathlessly exciting but slim on actual facts. But it was close enough. She soon discovered, falling farther and farther into this fascination from which she could find no distraction, that thanks to the miraculous technology of social media there was no shortage of eyewitness accounts, especially photos and videos. A neighbor's garage taken out by a stray bomb, a platoon of tanks rolling down a tree-lined residential street. She saw a picture of a car, drilled so full of holes it seemed to now have about the consistency of tissue paper. Nothing around it had been touched. There were more graphic images, too. She tried to avoid them. She didn't know if anyone had been in that car. These people have some real problems, she thought finally. She was going crazy, sitting here by herself. She shot off an email to her sister. How fucked up is this? is how it began. Getting no immediate response, she Facebooked a slightly shorter and more well-worded version. She never posted about politics; she knew as well as anyone that one slip up could cost her her job. But, with only herself for company and all this going on, it seemed like her last best hope to try and salvage some sanity from this day. How fucked up is this? This is almost enough to make me a fucking pacifist who does nothing but protest wars for the rest of my life. I honestly can't decide which side I hate more right now, I only know that I hate them both extremely. The fact that this can even happen in this country just makes me want to go insane.
She didn't get much of a response—mostly distant relations expressing concern for her safety from abroad. Facebook, like everything else right now, was mostly just a constant stream of news updates, pablum about darkest hours and the like, and only a very few polemics, for or against one side or the other. * * *
Fort Drum, New York It had been a busy couple of days for Danny Rainier. As he looked back on all that had happened, he had to admit to himself that he wished just ever so slightly that he had had more time to think things through. He felt as if he had been simply reacting to events, like he wasn't fully in control, not just of the situation but of his own actions; it was not a feeling he enjoyed very much. Now it seemed that ever since the news from Colorado Springs had broken, he could see clearly the path he had had to follow, like a train rolling down a track. In fact, he felt a bit bad that they hadn't been first—now, no matter how successful they were, they could never be written into the history books the way those brave souls in Colorado had been. After what happened in Colorado Springs, the post, the entire country, held its breath in anticipation. Danny and the others could almost palpate the tension. But after Fayetteville—Fayetteville, and then Fort Benning in such quick succession—then there could be no more anticipation. There could be no more bystanders. Once that was accomplished, it was amazing how quickly he and his like-
minded compatriots had moved, how quickly they'd had to move. Not even two weeks into the present crisis, and they were already cutting up white t-shirts to tie arm-bands on themselves, to distinguish blue from red once the action started. Again, he marveled at how quickly it had all happened, and how organized everything was becoming. Of course there'd be plenty of like-minded people, soldiers sympathetic to their cause, but he hadn't known who, exactly, and certainly had no idea how they'd all come out of the woodwork at once, as if at some sort of prearranged signal. Perhaps this was a moment where everyone could read the historical writing on the wall, and simply knew what had to be done. But he had a suspicion that they must have friends higher up the chain of command, someone in a position to know who was on their side across the brigade and to organize the individual groups of resisters into a coherent whole, without risking their plan being made public. He'd be surprised later, and a little bit proud, when he learned there wasn't a single one on their side higher than an LTC. Farther south there were some generals, maybe, but at Drum nearly all of them were between the ranks of corporal and major. It had only been that morning when word had come down that an unscheduled flight had landed at the airfield not even three miles from where he now was. PFC Cooper, over in aviation, had sworn that the tail markings made it out to be civilian law enforcement, federal, probably either DHS or FBI. The rumors had started immediately; the feds were snooping around the post picking up known malcontents, a
pre-emptive strike that came lightning-fast from a government Rainier had always assumed would be too slow to respond to something like this in an effective manner. This had thrown their operations, already underway but not quite open yet, into an even more accelerated tempo. So now they were cutting up white t-shirts, soon to load into their quotidian civilian cars and fan out to try and flip Fort Drum onto the right side of history. They headed down the street, Danny and his cohorts trickling out of the barracks and towards the division HQ and the armory. Out of his entire platoon, months of careful recruiting had yielded only 10 others, besides himself, that he trusted enough to bring along on this mission. Trying to be inconspicuous, they missed their timing and soon the road was clogged. Now things were getting out of hand. Some of the less-disciplined were openly shouting and waving flags. They passed a few confused-looking soldiers, the Pizza Hut, and a few office buildings, and soon enough they were arrayed around the administrative centers of the camp. The first part of the plan, as Rainier understood it, was to secure the armory to arm themselves and hopefully head off any resistance. By the time he got to the armory, there was a sort of mob just milling around in front of the doors. He couldn't see what was going on inside, or if there had been resistance of any sort. But soon enough white armbands started filing out with armloads of weapons and ammo, and it didn't take long to fall in and gear up once they got moving. Rainier and his team's objective was the airfield, to suspend air
traffic control operations in order to dissuade any more unwanted visitors from landing, and to be their to greet them if they tried to. The quick drive out to the airfield was Danny's cometo-Jesus moment. If his resolve was ever going to shake, now would be the time, and he knew it. He was in charge of these men, now. He would be the face of their movement, in this moment at least, for good or ill. He wondered what he could possibly say to the guards at the airfield, who may have still been unaware that anything was going on. He felt that he should have some action-movie one-liner ready, but how could you sum up such a momentous occasion in just a few words? But when they came to the CAC, which sat tollplaza style athwart the main road to the airfield, the plain white letters reading WHEELER-SACK AAF across the front, they found it already a scene of considerable chaos. Almost an entire platoon was milling around, blocking the road behind the gatehouse. He could already see some of them were armed, and a few appeared to be shouting at each other. Rainier noticed that none of them were wearing armbands. Whatever their argument was, he was sure that the Gadsden flags streaming from his makeshift convoy would let them know which side he was on. He and his soldiers dismounted. Danny Rainier carried himself carefully, supremely conscious of his white armband. He wore it as one might wear a new pair of shoes, in the hopes of not getting scuffed; he carried his M4 almost primly, his trigger finger carefully indexed, but his thumb flipped the safety just in case. He approached
the gatehouse, his men following. He wasted no time, ducking under the lowered gate arm and pushing his way into what looked like the largest cluster of soldiers, gathered around the two who were shouting at each other the loudest. One wore an MP uniform, the other was in plainclothes. “Hey,” he shouted. “Hey, hey hey. Who's in charge here?” They were still shouting at each other. Rainier suddenly realized where his tactical advantage lay. “Restrain them,” he said over his shoulder to his men. Two of them apiece dragged the fighting pair away from each other, their mutual anger suddenly turned to shock, and then began to be redirected at these new interlopers before Rainier shouted them down. “All right, everybody listen!” Finally, a modicum of quiet. “Now it looks like you all have heard that there's been a change of leadership,” still shouting, hoping to keep the momentum going while he completely and utterly ad-libbed this thing. “This base supports the rule of law and opposes tyranny. Now I know this might be hard for some of you to accept, but the choice has been made. Now, no one has to join us, but if you don't you'll have to stay out of our way or there'll be trouble. I've been sent here to secure this airfield, and that's what I'm gonna do. So we need to get these gates open.” He meant to add something else, but a second's pause was enough to break the spell. Now the crowd had visibly split; most of them seemed to have received his speech well, while the MPs and a minority of the others looked dispirited or hopelessly confused, almost
as if torn on the horns of a dilemma. The plainclothes that had been held back by his men came up to Danny and shook his hand. “We sure are glad to see you,” he said. “Somebody up here got wind of what was going on down at the fort, and this mess just sort of spontaneously erupted. Don't know what would've happened if you hadn't shown and cleared things up.” Danny tried not to make visible his relief at not having to shoot anyone. It's not that he wanted to, exactly. But he also didn't want not to. He was a soldier, had been for nearly 10 years, and he knew how he would react if things got violent. He'd make it safe. It was simply instinct at this point, with no moral content whatsoever. “Yeah, well,” he told the off-duty soldier, “good thing you got this many people out. I think just having a numbers advantage was enough to convince them to stand down.” Indeed, the resistant MPs had folded quickly, once Danny's leadership had joined forces with the numerous mob in front of them. Almost as if they knew this many soldiers, and the only guy there not losing his head, couldn't both be wrong. * * *
He'd only seen him the day before yesterday, but Danny was fairly dying to talk to the Chaplain again. He knew just when to find him, on a Sunday morning—knew just how long to wait after the service let out, knew how long the Chaplain would glad-hand the ones who stayed behind to talk
to him, how long to talk to the real hard cases in his office, how long to clean up, how long to do paperwork. It was just under two hours. Danny had done this many times—at first their talks had mainly consisted of the Chaplain trying to get him to come to church, but over time they'd discovered they had so much in common in the way of philosophical beliefs and general outlook on life that that subject had been forgotten. Danny was glad for it too; he considered the Chaplain easily the smartest man on post, someone you could have a real meaningful conversation with. He was glad he didn't have to avoid him on account of some touchy subject like religion. Today he miscalculated slightly. The Chaplain was putting something away in a cabinet, one of those random little hiding places that seem to be all over the inside of churches. He was apparently just finishing up, but he didn't seem to be engaged in conversation with anyone. A couple of soldiers—a husband and wife by the look of the little girl in between them—were talking among themselves near the door, but otherwise the sanctuary was empty. The Chaplain saw him walk up before he had said anything. “Well, hello Danny,” he said, locking the cabinet. He'd taken off his vestments but still had his dress uniform on. The tiny silver cross on his lapel glinted. Somehow it always looked out of place, a symbol of the otherworldly amidst the very particular, utilitarian tableau of an American soldier's uniform. “'Sup, padre,” Danny said by way of his customary greeting. “You got time for a chat?”
“Of course,” said the older man. “Let's go for a walk.” Outside, the weather was almost painfully nice—the sun just a little too bright, the air just a little on the warm side of mild, as if you could feel the summer coming on right then and there. They were walking back towards where the Chaplain parked—he lived off-base. They made small talk while Rainier tried to think of the best way to broach the subject he'd come to talk about. “You know what's the funniest thing about all this,” he said finally. “I didn't expect so many civilians to show up.” They both had a laugh at that. “Well of course,” the Chaplain said. “This movement, Danny, you know it goes back to before you and I.” He spoke as if this was a fact that hardly merited verbalizing. “Some folks have been organizing to make this day possible for years. Decades. It's always been strong in the military, but in a lot of ways the civilians have really led the way.” He had stopped walking, as if to drive home his point. “Which is probably as it should be. We aren't fighting to save the military—we're fighting to save the nation, all of us, and if we didn't have the civilians on our side we'd hardly be any better than a third-world coup.” “Well, it's not just that they're so well organized, or that they're working so closely with us,” Danny chimed in, his voice no longer betraying any note of humor. “But they're so well equipped. And some of them have come from so far away. I just wonder how people can up and quit their jobs, how they can afford some of the gear they have—a lot
of 'em I noticed have body armor, that's at least a few hundred bucks apiece, not to mention fancier stuff like night vision, and of course their weapons--” he shook his head. “I just wonder where all this stuff came from, and I worry about how we can sustain something like this now that there's no more government to keep us supplied.” The Chaplain stared off into space for a long moment. “Danny,” he finally said. “There's a lot that goes into all this that you don't know about. There are levels. There's you and me, down here. And then as you go up, I think you would be really surprised some of the people that are on our side. People with deep pockets, Danny. Real deep pockets. If it's the money you're worried about, well I can tell you money's the cheapest thing we got. We got a lot of friends, Danny. Not just the people here. I mean friends all over the world. Canadians, Israelis, ev--” he caught himself up short, then talked quickly to make up for it. “For instance, they're talking about sending a detachment up to Wellesey Island, take control of the border crossing and resupply ourselves that way. We could do it. It's easier to take stuff across a land border like that than to try and fly it in, especially if it's coming from overseas. You know over in Michigan they got trucks running to Canada near every day, the militias've been doing that since even before all this started.” “Anyway, what's important is we're here now. We got a job to do, we know we're doing the right thing and if we just keep at it everything'll turn out okay.” He smiled at Danny, was about to say something about God, thought better
of it. * * *
Where the first day at the fort had been chaotic, and the few intervening days had been almost eerily still, the convoy that deployed south had the makings of a triumph. The civilians—Danny was getting used to calling them “irregulars”--the military, all their supporters in town were in high spirits. There was almost an impromptu parade to see them off as the lead elements, AA-modified Humvees and their support squads, mustered in town on Leray Street and started off for I-81. Rainier enjoyed making a show, strutting around barking orders, but he tried to keep a level head all the same. Unlike a lot of the civilians, he'd done more than simply play at being a soldier before; he knew how really wrong things could go. Already, between the many of their comrades who refused to join them, and the units they'd had to leave at Fort Drum to keep the place from falling into the wrong hands, they were starting out well under-strength. They were well-supplied, but they had no air cover. Things were already getting serious; if the news was to be believed, every National Guard unit in New England had been called to federal service, and unlike their colleagues down South they had actually showed up. Already the Massachusans were rolling in force into the Hudson Valley. Supposedly they would soon be in Albany. But this only served to double the resolve of him and his men; as predicted, when faced with a real challenge the governments in both Albany and Washington both relied on
nothing more than brute force to silence it. Really, they always had; the only difference now was that this fact was laid bare and submitted to a candid world. That day they spent driving south. The first real obstacle was Syracuse. The local cops were no where to be found, and there was some sort of a demonstration, people linking arms across the interstate near where it passed by the university, which halted their forward progress. Danny heard that the MPs had had to crack a few heads to get their convoy moving again. He almost wished he could have been there, but he was too far down the road. At any rate, it felt good to be achieving something, especially if it meant irritating the very people who'd forced them to take this action in the first place. * * *
You're listening to the BBC World Service, the headlines at this hour: political instability, threatening to spill over into violence, continues to spread across the United States. Rogue military units continue their movement towards the capital, despite the passing of a midnight Eastern Daylight Time deadline to halt their advance or face quote serious consequences end quote. In a related development the People's Bank of China says that despite the crisis, it has no plans to reduce its holdings of US Treasury bonds, an announcement which sent global financial markets ticking upward... Rainier had lost what little cell phone signal he'd had hours ago. His company had stopped for a few hours of shut-
eye, their vehicles huddled around each other in the dark in the middle of several farm fields stretching along the side of the road, their headlights making do in place of the campfires that would've illuminated this gathering if it had occurred in a more romantic era. The nights were still quite cool, and Danny wished he'd had a campfire just for the warmth. After the dust-up in Syracuse, they'd faced no further obstacles and their column made good time, not stopping for their brief rest until somewhere south of Wilkes-Barre, PA. After finishing a quick MRE breakfast, he'd flipped on the radio, but in this remote part of Pennsylvania all they could pick up was the local public broadcaster, which at this early hour was only relaying the BBC. The gray of pre-dawn was already turning to violet by the time they got back on the road. They continued south as the sun continued its imperceptible climb into the sky. On either side were nothing but woods; this patch of interstate was too sparsely traveled to support even any of the hanger-on sorts of towns, built around a gas station and maybe a restaurant. They came around a bend to see an artillery battery ahead of them, the Paladins mounted on flatbeds. They were catching up to them quickly, going uphill. At that moment, Danny was annoyed by the first red rays of the risen sun coming through the trees into his peripheral visions. Fumbling with the sun visor above the windshield he was momentarily distracted, and at first didn't notice the glint of an aircraft flying too fast, too low.
*
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Less than 100 hours later, Danny and his two remaining colleagues found themselves sprinting across a highway for cover. Rainier knew Wiese and Cisneros were behind him, but he didn't know where the others were. The incoming artillery continued to thud to their southeast; perhaps that meant the fight was still going on and they could rejoin it at some point. In the course of their current tactical retreat, however, they'd been forced to move north and west, away from the fighting and away from their objective, which was stopping the armored column that threatened to flank the town around the north side by taking up positions covering the four-lane highway. After what seemed like an eternity, they made it across and took cover in a copse of trees right on the edge of a housing development. They saw no one. The units that had managed to drive out of that first airstrike had scattered in such a rout that they'd regrouped far to the southeast of their intended line of advance, which went through Harrisburg towards Cumberland, MD, and under the threat of continuing enemy air supremacy someone had decided that an urban environment provided the most defensible position. Thus they'd settled on Lancaster as the place to make a stand. The general understanding Danny got, from bits and pieces of information he gleaned from folks who knew leadership's thinking, was that they would have to maintain a salient here in the face of encirclement, until either a relief force arrived or some
kind of cease fire was arranged. Surrender at discretion was never mentioned. By the time they got there they had found the feds waiting for them. They'd managed to fight their way into the city itself, and were holding their own until the enemy's air support showed up again and the artillery drew a bead on them. Now Rainier tried to pull up a map on his phone while Cisneros tried to raise someone on the radio. Unfortunately, their way south was full of open fields that they'd be sitting ducks to cross. Cisneros relayed that the new orders were to regroup south of Highway 30. “Well that's just fucking perfect,” said Rainier. “We've been going the opposite direction for the last halfhour, and the only way to get back there in less than an hour is to go back the way we came.” He sat down heavily. He didn't want to think about what they'd left behind them— as far as he knew, they were the only ones from their platoon not pinned down, the only ones who'd gotten this far away, and he knew the feds were probably still hot on their heels. He was trying not to think about how exhausted he was, knew that as soon as he did the mere fact of it would loom up, imposing, distracting him and keeping his head out of the game. Already, he belatedly realized, the strain was starting to show in front of the men he was supposed to be leading. What did not bother him was the fact that he had probably killed several of his fellow Americans by now— several of his fellow soldiers, to be precise. It didn't bother him after what he'd seen, an entire platoon
incinerated from the air at the onset of the airstrikes yesterday—just one Bradley after another blown into scrap. It wasn't fair, to be killed without being able to see the face of the person killing you. It wasn't fair, and the people who did it were no better than criminals, in Danny's eyes. The other two were staring at him now, accusatory. “Well if we can't go south, where are we gonna go?” asked Cisneros. Danny was already sensing what had to happen—knew he really didn't even have a decision to make. They were easily half a dozen clicks from the nearest friendlies, and he judged them to be in imminent danger of capture or envelopment. Time to find some concealment and go to ground. Here, at last, they had some luck. The trees led right up to the backdoor of a house on the corner of where the housing development met the agricultural and industrial area that stretched out to their south and west. They trotted up to it, tried the new-looking screen door. Locked. Danny broke one of the small, inset plate glass windows with the stock of his weapon, threw the deadbolt. The door came open. He didn't bother to check if the solid panel door within was locked, just kicked it open. It had taken a matter of seconds. Danny's training took over again. Clear the corners. But already there was a man, older and slightly rotund, gaping at them from the middle of what was apparently a kitchen. He seemed as if they'd caught him in the middle of something, half turned away from them as if in that instant
he couldn't make up his mind whether to run or not. “Down! Get down!” Danny screamed at him, pinned his arms behind his back, stomach down on the floor. “Is there anyone else here?” he screamed again, as the other two moved out to clear the rest of the house. “Is there anyone here?” he screamed again when there was no answer. The man managed to stammer out a weak “No,” but a few minutes later was shown up when Wiese dragged what must have been his wife up from where she'd been hiding in the basement. More screaming. “You fucking lied to me?” and then Danny smashed him in the face with the stock of his weapon. The man staggered back, but before he could fall Danny had grabbed his arm and dragged the pair down to the basement. He ordered the Cisneros and Wiese to make sure all the windows were covered, and to disable all the phones. By the time they were done and all gathered in the basement, Danny had calmed down somewhat. “Now, if you lie to me again I'll hurt you again,” he started. “Are you expecting anyone to come over any time soon? Is anyone coming to check on you?” The man was also more composed by now. “What do you expect,” he shot back, blood still dripping from his nose, his voice sounding stuffy from the swelling. “No one's going out of their basements in this shit.” “No one's going to come looking for you if they don't hear from you for a few days?” The man just stared blankly at this. “We're gonna be here for a few days at least,” Danny
elaborated. “Can't have you letting anyone know we're here, so no phones and no going anywhere. Likewise if anyone comes over, can't have them knowing that we're here.” The man flushed red, but answered. “My son lives in town,” he said. “But I have no idea if he'll get it in his head to come out here if he can't get in touch. Depends on how bad the fighting is, I guess.” That night, Rainier, Cisneros and Wiese ceased being able to raise anyone on the radio. Towards morning, the artillery stopped thudding, although the sound of helicopters was still ubiquitous. All through the next day, they paced and fretted, unsure of what to do. At one point a patrol passed by so close they could hear the tread of the soldiers' boots on the grass just outside the basement half-window, could hear their voices although they couldn't make out any words. They waited, silent and tense, perfectly ready to go down in a blaze of glory, for what seemed like half an hour until the soldiers moved on. The three soldiers now started to talk seriously about their options. They'd had no contact from any friendlies since before concealing themselves in this house. Danny found it a bitter pill to swallow, but they'd seen enough cable news over the last few days to know that this wasn't the only fight, that there was terrain more hospitable to their cause located to the south and west. They finally decided that it was time to go to ground, make an undetected retreat from this theater and link up with friendly forces along a more stable front. Without saying it, all of them independently realized this meant going
home. There arose the problem of what to do with the two civilians they had been detaining. They obviously couldn't take them with, but also didn't want to risk leaving them behind. They'd been careful not to discuss their escape plans within earshot, but who knows what the two elderly residents might have heard. They finally decided that they couldn't simply shoot them, so they fixed their gags nice and tight, and made sure they were tied securely to the chairs they were in. Then they took a few changes of the old man's clothes, ill-fitting as they were, and the car keys. * * *
The three of them headed west, for sheerly tactical reasons. To go any other direction would have meant crossing miles of battlespace in any direction; as it was, the most intense search-and-destroy missions had already passed over them and they bet on the countryside to the west of town being more or less clear of hostiles. They stayed off the highway, passed through fields and a few housing developments. They saw a few patrols, but no one challenged them. By the time they reached Harrisburg, the sun was already up, and they felt safe enough to get on the Pennsylvania Turnpike. They kept going west. They crossed the Alleghenies, and then the Laurel Highlands. By mid-morning the small, intermittently-spaced towns had started to crowd together, and they knew they were coming up on Pittsburgh. Danny knew
he would have to turn south at some point if he was ever to get home. He figured sparsely populated Appalachia was his best bet for avoiding the authorities, and planned on following the Interstate south out of Pittsburgh through Charleston, West Virginia and on into the southeast corner of Virginia and then the Carolinas. But Cisneros and Wiese still had farther west to go. He knew this moment would come eventually, so he took their offer of some cash and, with a few terse words of farewell and a promise to “keep in touch”, they took the car, leaving him in the back parking lot of a seemingly abandoned Chinese restaurant. Now, he knew he couldn't avail himself of any common carrier transportation. No buses, no trains, not even a rental car, nothing that he would have to show ID for. It was possible he could get away with it, that there wasn't a spook at DIA or NSA or someplace on the look out for any transaction with his name on it, but he didn't consider it worth the risk. He'd have to stick his thumb out, and walk. Danny Rainier was, of course, in good physical condition despite the stress of the last few days, and made good time on the easy grade of the Interstate. But the sun was already low to the horizon by the time he saw the “Welcome To WEST VIRGINIA Wild and Wonderful” sign he'd been looking for. For no reason, really, this made him feel a little better. It was full dark by the time he got to Morgantown, and the terrain was getting hillier, but he kept going. He was on a mission, and these certainly weren't the worst straits he'd been in. In Afghanistan he'd been just as miserable and overworked, and here at least no
one was shooting at him, for the moment, and everyone spoke English. All through the night he pressed on, his thumb still out, but no luck with picking up a ride. By the time dawn broke, he was approaching a town called Weston. Now it seemed as if that luck might change; he saw a car parked on the shoulder up ahead, several men milling around it. Hopefully it wasn't broken down, or they had a ride on the way—at least it was someone to talk to. Just as the men started to notice him approaching, at that moment he heard a rustle in the bushes right on his three o'clock and froze. All of his concentration, more than his concentration, something that was a combination of years of training and sheer killer instinct, was focused on the bush for the split second until he saw a fifth man, a companion of the others, emerge. Just a guy taking a leak. The men around the car were all looking at him now, and he realized how foolish he'd been. Some of them spoke to each other, something in Spanish, and then one of them tipped his white Stetson at Danny and they loaded up and took off without a backward glance. Clearly his overreaction had spooked them, especially walking as he was at this early hour with the sun not even fully up, unshaven and grimy. He cursed himself, and then wondered grimly if there were some VA service available for recently separated veteran hitchhikers. Before mid-morning though, his luck really did change, and he managed to score a ride with a trucker all the way to Charleston. He let himself buy breakfast at a truck stop, his second meal in as many days. The TV was turned to
a cable news station, and he could see something about Lancaster on the screen although there was no closed captioning, so he had no idea what it meant. The pictures were wide shots of the town, which didn't look any worse for the wear except for a few columns of smoke rising at uneven intervals. He knew that up close it would look worse. Yesterday, back in Washington the last thing he'd heard on the car radio was that, incredibly, there were still elements holding out in eastern PA, although he had to tell himself that their strategic situation was probably untenable at this juncture. This got him thinking about his home, about Georgia. Last he'd heard, everything between Atlanta and Raleigh was friendly territory at this point. Hell, he didn't have to walk all the way back to Macon, he just had to get inside the wire somewhere, anywhere, identify himself to some friendlies. He could even just call his mom on a pay phone, if it came to it. By this point something on the order of a few thousand vehicles had passed up his offer to ride along. But not even an hour after leaving Charleston, he finally got the break he was looking for, a long-haul trucker going all the way to Florida. People this far out in the boonies must be friendlier. If he couldn't drop him in Macon exactly, he could get him as close as Columbia, SC. By the way the man complained bitterly about being sent into a “war zone”, Danny thought it best to leave the conversation guarded and brief. Instead, he finally got an hour or so to sleep. He was brought to by the truck jerking to a stop, the
driver swearing. Danny was awake instantly, and he tried not to panic when he saw men in camouflage approaching. He thought for a moment, with the detachment that comes with a situation which you know you can't control the outcome of, that they were feds, but then he realized that they were at the Virginia border. There had been no federales when he'd walked into West Virginia, and something told him these guys were locals, there were no FBI- or ATF-branded parts of their uniforms, and they carried themselves too informally. He decided to bet the mission on this calculation. One of the men signaled to him to roll down the window. “Where you headed?” the uniformed man asked, nicely enough. “Well sir,” Danny began. Was his voice shaking a little? He couldn't miss a single beat, couldn't spook these fellows like he'd spooked those Mexicans. These guys were certainly more well-armed. “I'm on my way home, matter of fact. I just came from the fight up in Lancaster, Pennsylvania, maybe you heard about it.” Rushed the words a bit too much, but the man's expression showed that Danny's words had had the intended effect. Soon he was invited out of the truck, which much to the driver's obvious consternation was still stuck there, and was he was given a thorough debriefing from the men. They ID'd themselves as National Guard, although almost nothing they had was standard issue, so Danny suspected the title might be more self-appointed than official. After he showed them his CAC, and then just because they seemed curious the M4 he'd
hauled all this way as well, they enthusiastically agreed to let him through. After a query he determined he could catch a Greyhound from here that wouldn't put him in any danger of being collared; he was somewhat awed by how total a lock their side had on eastern Virginia and the Carolinas, a number of National Guard (self-appointed or otherwise) units mobilizing on their own to keep the feds from flanking the regulars further east, which apparently was where some serious fighting was going on. At the Greyhound station he found exactly one working pay phone. He dialed the number of his childhood home, its digits worn like grooves into his mind. * * *
Danny realized only after he was in his mother's arms that she had every right to be furious with him. He hadn't spoken to her at all in over a week, the only link between them the one-way stream of unremitting violence on the TV news. She knew well enough he'd been in the fight in Pennsylvania, he'd at least told her what he was doing the night before they'd spun up and rolled out of Fort Drum. But she was just too grateful to have her son back, or more likely simply hadn't had time to process all that had happened, or was simply too tough to let it get to her. So her tears were of happiness, not anger. That did not mean, however, that she had stopped being a mother. The honeymoon of forgiveness and forgetfulness— the period of being “just glad you're okay” and not asking in too much detail about what he'd had to do to get here—
lasted only as long as Danny behaved himself. But Danny had not come this far and done this much to start behaving himself now. He heard almost as soon as he got home, of course, about the ongoing standoff at Warner-Robbins AFB. He gave two of his days to his mother, since he was still grateful for the absence of her anger. Then, though, he began to agitate. “What am I supposed to do?” he plead, when he told her of his plan. It was evening, and they had barely started dinner before the arguing began. “Why would I go back on everything now, now that it's looking like this is going to take a lot longer and a lot more effort than anyone thought? Besides it's not like Warner-Robbins is dangerous...” “Look,” she said, “I know y'all tried to do what you thought was best. I'm not questioning anyone's intentions. But things have gotten out of hand, Danny. When people start dying, intentions don't mean much anymore. And I--” she continued on as he tried to interrupt her “I can't believe you're going to leave me again, so soon after makin' me sick with worry about you.” The guilt trip. Don't let it get to you. “I'll be right here, Mom. I'm not going all the way back to Pennsylvania or nothing. And like I said, Warner-Robbins is different, it's still peaceful...I mean hell, Drum was peaceful too. Nobody fired a shot up there, we didn't start shootin' until the feds started bombin' us.” “It is not.” She was really on a roll now. “They're shootin' out there every day, just because they haven't
called in the tanks and airstrikes yet don't mean it's peaceful.” Danny shook his head. “It don't make no difference,” he announced. “I'm a grown man.” A sudden idea came into his head. “And so's Jeff.” At this Jeff finally seemed to pay attention. No one had touched their dinner in a good few minutes, and Jeff had been studiously avoiding eye contact with either of the belligerents, but for him to be included in his older brother's plan—not just any plan, either, but a more important plan than anything either of them had ever been a part of before—commanded automatic, almost instinctive fixation. * * *
When they arrived at the Robins Air Force Base CAC, it didn't take much convincing on Danny's part to let them in. This place wasn't at all like Fort Drum had been in the first few days—there seemed to be no sense of purpose. Groups of airmen, and many more civilians, were milling around outside. A lot of tents had been set up. He had to ask directions to the actual standoff, and when he got there he had to get through several more increasingly dense layers of random, distracted-looking groups before he found someone in charge. A number of haphazard defensive positions, some of which overlapped, some of which left large gaps in between, ringed a two-story brick office building. “As you can see, we didn't have much time to plan
this,” said Danny's interlocutor, who wore a master sergeant's chevrons. “They had this place locked down, right up until about a week ago. Once a few folks figured out that these boys up in North Carolina might stand a chance, some of 'em started trying to outdo each other, talkin' about how we had to come down on the right side of history and anything. Just kinda snowballed from there, about a week ago the security squadron finally just cracked under the pressure, they just went AWOL and vanished, more or less. After that it wasn't long before we had these folks wrapped up in here. Higher-ups, field grade officers, mostly, but I guess there's enough fightin' men in there to keep us from getting anywhere close. You can see,” he continued, warming to his subject, “these parking lots are too open to get across without drawing fire. Don't have any vehicles with armor enough to back up to a door or anything. We cut off the water, I honestly don't know how they've held out this long.” It was at this moment, completely without bidding or even any conscious thought, that an idea wandered into Danny's head, the idea that, along with his natural genius for motivating, would earn him a leadership position with the Bibb-Houston Volunteers, when that unit stood itself up at the moment of crisis to take the fight to the enemy. He had somehow remembered an air show he'd been to here as a kid, put it together with the air-assault training he'd had not too long ago, and considered the result just plausible enough to mention. “They keep helicopters on this base, don't they?” he
asked. The next day, as some hastily assembled air assault teams broke through the roof, a white flag was spotted waving out the window. Wilmington, North Carolina Charlie Shaw had spent much of the last two days becoming progressively more glued to the TV. He'd never really watched the cable news channels much before, and even now he found them at best a necessary nuisance. They were certainly the only way to keep up to speed on everything, happening as quickly as it was, but at the same time there seemed to be so much filler, so many talking heads just repeating the same things over and over, or talking in circles, or asking questions that didn't seem relevant. Despite the near deluge of newsworthy events, the overall effect was one of punctuated equilibrium, of a seemingly hugely important development every few hours, followed by hours of inane talk. But, since he had no way of knowing what might happen next, he found himself addicted. Even worse, he was sure he wasn't getting the whole picture. He hadn't seen anything on the news about the convoy he'd just witnessed. Who knew how far they'd actually gotten. It would be better if they had shown a map or something. At the same time, he was privy to another source of news, one that never made it anywhere near the TV screens. He'd been getting a lot of calls, texts the last few days. So-and-so's house had been vandalized, “nigger” scrawled in
bright orange spray-paint across the side. Someone's cousin had been jumped by a gang of white kids. On neither occasion did the police respond when called. All the subterranean fears had sprung to life in an instant, from a watchful sort of sleep to a vicious clawing thing with all the sudden ferocity of a wild animal. Now everyone he knew was caught between flight or fight. Shaw, and he seemed to be nearly alone in this, didn't trust the near-instinctive reaction, but didn't entirely distrust it either. He'd been trying to get in to the shop, just going to work, when he found the way blocked off by police barricades. The size of the crowd that had gathered was enough to tempt him out of his car, to at least ask someone what the hold up was, how long it would be, if there was a detour. Now he was glued to the real world in disbelief, as he'd been glued to the TV earlier, watching the convoy of Humvees roll down the highway. The sudden arrival of the war was one thing, but the cheering groups of people lining the road, festooned almost to a person with miniature American flags, only served to heighten the surreality. Standing at a bit of a reserve, half behind a power pole, not wanting to draw any attention to himself, he suddenly felt it very necessary to return home. He turned and fled the scene. Before he could get back to the side street where he had parked, though, he found his way blocked by a smaller, but growing commotion. Up ahead was a small clearing, about a block in size—not a park exactly, just an open field set between one of the fancy new condo blocks and the main
thoroughfare down which the Army was parading. This clearing had filled up with spectators, of course, but now it looked like the crowd had turned away from the parade route, and was watching something on the other side of the clearing, perhaps on the sidewalk in front of the condos. As he approached, he could hear elevated voices, see peoples' worried expressions, and knew, through that unspoken sympathetic sense that runs through all crowds and through which it is possible to lose control of oneself in the way a bird gives up control to its flock, that something was amiss. He heard them before he could see them clearly—an amplified voice reading what sounded like Bible verses, but in a strange, harsh tone. Soon he was able to catch exactly what it was saying. “So we know we can't trust the white man. We know this because every time he's gotten caught in one of his lies, he's told another lie to get out of it. He's told us that if the black man can only take one step forward for every two that he's allowed to take, that's progress. But we know there can't be any progress while the white man's in charge. There can't be any progress because of the white man's ungodliness. Read on!” A different voice now: “Neither shalt thou make marriages with them; thy daughter thou shalt not give unto his son, nor his daughter shalt thou take unto thy son. For they will turn away thy son from following me, that they may serve other gods: so will the anger of the Lord be kindled against you, and destroy thee suddenly. But thus
shall ye deal with them; ye shall destroy their altars, and break down their images, and cut down their groves, and burn their graven images with fire.” Charlie had reached the point where he could see clearly the speaker and several companions, apparently standing on a raised platform of some kind. It was one of the strangest sights he'd ever seen: about half a dozen black men, wearing what could only be described as leather armor, fantastical in nature, with elaborate designs in metal rivets across the front. One was speaking into a microphone, another was holding what must be the Bible he had read from a moment ago. Next to them was parked a van with the words PROPHET WARRIORS OF THE TRIBE OF SHEM on a banner strung along the side. The first man had started talking again. “We already know that we can't trust the white man. We know that every thought he has is bent on our destruction. So why do we continue doing business with him? We need to--” At that moment he was interrupted as a burly man in a muscle shirt roughly pushed his way through the last line of onlookers before the Warrior Prophets' improvised stage. With a shout of “Excuse me!”, the polite sentiment woefully out of place not only in this setting but in the tone in which he fairly screamed it, he made to grab at the speaker's microphone. His leather jerkin-clad compatriots, though, were ready, and two of them intercepted him, took him by the arms and tried to throw him back into the crowd. Perhaps they had experience with this sort of thing. But then another man was stepping up to one of the two
enforcers, trying to wrestle him off. Someone shouted, “What are you all standing around for? You just gonna stand here and listen to these n—nincompoops?” and suddenly the little ring of spectators was collapsing into a hard knot. Charlie knew he'd seen enough. He fled for the second time, and not a moment too soon; he'd hardly turned on his heel and started walking at a fast clip before he saw several police run around a corner. He was now no longer unsure of whether he should be afraid or not. He had to do something. He was mostly thinking of his kids, figured if there was ever a time to be with them it was now. Forgetting completely about legally binding custody arrangements, he called his ex. “Darla?” he said when she picked up. “Where you at? You seen these soldiers rolling right down 76?” “Sure as hell did,” she fairly shouted. “Charlie, I'm taking the kids and gettin' out of here.” “You're what?” his voice wasn't even angry, just surprised, so taken aback was he by this. In the next split second of reflection it occurred to him that he should have known this would happen. “I'm getting out of here, tried to get onto 76 but the police got some kind of roadblock and ain't letting nobody near Wilmington. So I'm going around on 11 but once I get north of town I'm hitting the road and I'm not stopping. I ain't stopping. You see what's goin' on in this town? Niggers getting' beat up in the streets, peoples' houses getting broken into--” “Darla,” said Shaw, regaining a measure of composure.
“You can't just up and take the kids like that. You want us to end up back in court again? Cuz I swear I'll take you to court if--” “Fool, there ain't gonna be no courts left--” she started to cut him off, but then he heard his phone beep at him. There was another call, this one from Willie. “Look I gotta let you go,” he said over her continued protestations. “Look I'll call you back.” He hung up on her and picked up the other call. “Man, you see this shit,” Willie didn't even bother to introduce himself. “We gotta find someplace and hole up, man. I was just driving by the car dealership out by the cemetery and there ain't a single car on that lot. Not a single car, man. This is gonna get real bad.” Later, after the parade had passed, he and his friends arranged to meet at their usual bar. It wasn't yet 6, and the place was predictably empty except for the bartender. No sooner had they all arrived, though, than a county cruiser pulled into the parking lot. They noticed the flashing lights first. The two deputies swaggered in, with that slow, swinging gait that officers seem to have mastered just for the sheer intimidation value. “Just happened to be in the neighborhood,” one of them explained. Shaw noticed there were at least two cruisers parked outside. “Saw all your bikes parked out front and thought we'd let you know, there's a curfew imposed starting tonight at 7. Everyone's gotta be indoors, at their place of residence, no exceptions.” On his way out, Shaw noticed that in fact not only were there two cruisers
in the parking lot, there was a third across the street. Alone again at home, back in front of the TV news. At 10, he switched over to the local news, and was not disappointed. He sat through a recap of the day's more important events elsewhere in the nation, but then the focused turned to downtown, where it seemed the column of soldiers had finally stopped and set up camp in some of the big parking lots next to the community college. Forming a perimeter around the ranks of vehicles was a jubilant crowd, its enthusiasm not diminished at all from the one he'd seen along the highway earlier that day. He wondered what happened to that curfew he'd been told about it. It was then that he started getting texts again. Apparently the crowd's jubilation had started spilling out of downtown, and now there were large bands making their way east on Market Street, towards the area between Forest Hills and the MLK Parkway which was the nearest less-welloff and less-white neighborhood they could find. Many of them were very intoxicated. Shaw had had enough, even before the ensuing riots. Wilmington being what it was, they were hardly proper riots and didn't make the national news, not in the wake of everything else that was happening. At any rate, he was nowhere near downtown or any of the affected areas. The next day, he got more than texts. Near everyone he knew showed up at his house. They came with their families, some of them with possessions loaded into the backs of cars or pickups. They all drove their bikes too, the ones that had them, while the wives or kids drove the cars; after
all, these were the most valuable things they owned and whatever happened they weren't leaving them around for looters or rioters or God only knew what. Because Charlie lived farther out of town than anyone else, they all felt they could argue about what to do next in relative safety here. All through the afternoon and into the evening, they tried to decide whether it was better to stay put or to try and go north. Families were split. Finally, even this very tenuous sort of calm was shattered by the red and blue flickering of a patrol cruiser. “Curfew,” the cop said, by way of explanation. Everyone stood around for a moment, dumbstruck. At last, someone spoke up. It was only one cop after all, and not a white one but a brother this time. If they were ever going to be able to reason with the law, now would be the time. “Man, you crazy if you think I'm going back there,” said Willie. “My house done near got torched last night, swear to God I thought I was gonna die--” This could charitably be called an exaggeration, but of course the police officer had no way of knowing that. The cop said nothing by way of explanation, he only turned into his shoulder-mounted radio and said something which they could all intuit was a call for backup. The flashing lights of the cruiser were starting to draw attention. Now the neighbors were starting to come out on their porches to watch, their pale faces looming up like moths in the gathering twilight. They were careful to stay half out of sight, and avoid eye contact, but he could feel
them watching him. Willie continued in vain, trying to argue with the officer. “Sir, you're going to have to go home,” was all the policeman would say, in between repeated calls on his radio. Soon another patrol car showed up, and then another, and then another. Then an SUV. The numbers of cops and civilians was now damn near even. Finally, the jowliest, most mustachioed one—Charlie always secretly suspected this was the basis on which the police chose their leaders—spoke in his authoritative voice. “Alright, you all need to disperse right now or we are gonna start making arrests. Get back in your vehicles and go home immediately.” Everyone knew where this was headed. Charlie, in a voice that he remembered later as if it came from a dream, finally said something. “Hey, everybody,” he said, screwing up all his courage to speak as loudly and unhaltingly as he could manage. He climbed up to stand on the bumper of someone's SUV. “Forget about this mess. Let's just get out of here.” Quizzical looks from everyone, police and civilian alike. “I mean,” he said, faltering a bit. “Forget about this town. I got a cousin down South Carolina, I was talking to her earlier today, she says down there they ain't got this sort of problem. It's been real peaceful. God's honest truth, I'm tellin' ya. Ya'll cain't go home, we cain't stay here, closest place I know we can at least have a roof over our heads is her place down Georgetown
County.” “Ain't it too far to drive, this late?” someone in the crowd asked. “A few hours, but you want to stay here you go right on ahead.” He took the bike instead of the truck. Later on he would tell himself that it was more fuel efficient, more maneuverable. If someone saw the truck still parked here, they might think he was still home and not break into the place. He didn't have time to pack anything up anyway, could borrow clothes from his friends who'd packed before coming to his place. But in that final moment before leaving his house for the last time, he knew, although he would later never admit it to himself or anyone else, that what had made him take the bike was simply the thought that he couldn't stand to be here for the extra few seconds it would take to open the truck door, that he would go blindly mad from the panic.
Part Five: A fiery gospel One year earlier
New York, New York IT was unseasonably warm, for March, but all that meant was that they got to walk in the rain instead of in the snow. Bobby's umbrella wasn't even really big enough to cover one person, much less two; he'd bought it in a pinch from one of the vendors next to a subway entrance during a summer downpour last year when his previous umbrella had finally broken for good. So, he and Phoebe were forced to huddle under the pitifully small covering, neither one really staying dry but both clinging tenaciously to this fiction of an umbrella, because in some circumstances even a fiction is better than nothing. Even if it hadn't been raining, and they hadn't been hurrying to try and minimize their exposure (an effort just as futile as the umbrella itself), they would have proceeded down the sidewalk as New Yorkers typically do—in the manner most people reserve for driving down the Interstate at rush hour. Phoebe had grown up here, but Bobby had walked like this even before moving to the city, even though he came from a tiny Midwestern nowhere that was a tumbleweed in the summer and a snowball in the winter, where life wasn't really slower, so much as its usual circular paths had a shorter diameter. He'd actually be born (and lived a few of his youngest years) in southern California, when his parents could still find decent unionized jobs in the aerospace industry, so perhaps some of the freeway rush-hour mentality had stuck from that experience. They met their friends for dinner at some anonymous
bistro near Myrtle Avenue in Bushwick, one of a number of that particular species of superficial eatery that had sprung up in the area recently. The food was predictably bland, and overpriced for what it was. It had all the atmosphere of a Starbucks, and its surfaces resembled an aging movie star with too much makeup, in the sense that they seemed somehow too clean, the colors just a little too coordinated, the light fixtures distributed just asymmetrically enough about the room to make it seem as though aesthetics had been precisely calculated to look haphazard. A plaque next to the menu on wall extolled the virtues of the locally-sourced organic food they were about to eat, and even had a few ridiculous words about how “authentic” it was, too. At dinner they all made the usual small talk, mostly gossip about work. Public school teachers in New York City share a special sort of bond; anyone who has had to deal with the unique bureaucracy that is the NYCDOE will find it easy to talk to anyone else who's shared that experience. Just ask one of them about the rubber rooms, and you'll see. On top of that, their lives had all been so similar before this that they probably would've been friends anyway; childhoods in various suburbs around the country, playing on what might have been the same U-16 soccer teams, the same liberal arts education, graduated within a few years of each other. Listened to the same music, watched the same TV shows. In a word, their lives were just similar and just dissimilar enough to make for a few minutes of interesting small talk, and the conversation was always
relentlessly pleasant. They talked, as they always did, about themselves, although they did a good job dissuading themselves that that was the case. They had been talking about how a continuum of hipsters, with one anchor in historic Williamsburg, had been extending its reach east. The limits of this expansion were subject to debate; had they made it as far as Brownsville, or had they taken over East New York already, and was there already a beachhead in Ridgewood? Left unsaid was the fact that these were the same neighborhoods they lived in. At any rate, before long the conversation turned, as it always did, back to work. Bobby was feeling in a good mood, so he launched into one of the diatribes that he was known to give occasionally. Usually through the semi-anonymity of the internet, but occasionally, as now, in person. Perhaps, or perhaps on some level he found the surroundings simply too perfect, the conversation too easy, his feeling of friendship with these people too strong, and simply decided to try and wreck it a little bit. When he spoke again his own vitriol surprised him, especially as he hadn't been drinking. “Look, education's not the point,” he began slowly and deliberately, but could feel the bile rising within him and knew this wouldn't end well. “The point of having schools is not to educate people, okay? Education is something anyone can get, just by living. No one can keep you from getting it, and no one can take it away from you once you have it. It's about the most democratic thing there is, and
therefore it's completely useless and not of interest to anyone in charge. So we're not here to educate people. We're here to check off a couple of boxes in someone's record, so that later on some college will know who to accept and some employer will know who to hire. We're here to sort people, to pick winners and losers. Except we're not really the ones even doing the picking, because we have our own boxes to check—we have to give the same standardized tests, which are graded based on some criteria we didn't have any input into, to everyone so that we can avoid taking any responsibility, and leave everything up to some experts who have, you know, objectivity and evidencebased techniques behind them so that no one has to do anything so scary as make a decision, ever. We're bureaucrats, can we just admit it? We care more about sticking to the process than about what the actual outcome is.” Reactions around the table varied. Some were nodding enthusiastically, others had their eyes fixed on their meals. Nobody could or would argue with him, but Bobby was still dissatisfied. He was dissatisfied precisely because no one would argue with him—because no one found this as urgently important as he did at that moment, and that therefore they would rather commit the unpardonable sin of saying “This is a problem” and not doing anything about it, than at least doing their victims the courtesy of believing that they weren't victimizing anyone. It was the essence of petty, bourgeois privilege, which was perfectly willing and able to wax eloquent about its own failings while
resolutely refusing to do anything to set things right. On their way back to the subway after dinner, it was still raining, so they still clung to their fictitious umbrella. Cars sped past in the dark, tires hissing. Bobby was still pissed that his speech hadn't been well-received, more pissed that it hadn't been well-received by Phoebe. His mind instantly sought out something to argue about, something to stake out a position so at least he could end the night with some sort of victory, or at least a stalemate. Without prompting, his mind went to the one topic that it seemed he was always fixating on. “Did you hear about the camp they raided, out there in Oregon? The guys who they think were behind the shooting at the ACLU office out there?” “No.” “Yeah, it's crazy some of the stuff they found. Not only a whole ton of explosives and, you know, heavy weapons, but apparently these guys had a whole coordinated plan, all over the West Coast they said they had other cells ready to launch attacks but something went wrong and they jumped the gun.” “Oh, really?” “Yeah. It's freaky. And it's all really only because the crazy right-wingers lost the last election so badly.” Why didn't she ever care enough? Why didn't anyone ever care enough? When she didn't say anything further he pushed ahead, regardless. “I mean, forget about Afghanistan. We need a war on terror back here,” he said, shaking his head.
“Against American citizens?” Bobby was almost thrown, but not quite. “American citizens who aren't Muslims, you mean.” Now Phoebe was getting at least a little indignant, but not about the correct subject. “I think they should be tried and go to jail, sure,” she said with obviously thinning patience. “But don't you think this problem has kind of taken on a whole different magnitude? I mean I'm not sure this is something the police can handle anymore.” Phoebe just shrugged, her impatience now changed to resignation. Bobby fumed silently. He thought to himself that everyone just seemed confused about what the real problem was. He was also well educated enough to realize, much later, that the real problem for him was the fact that he couldn't deal with his own lack of conviction, had to find something to indict simply because a world without indictments obviously couldn't be just. Finally the bus came, and they got on. They sat silently, fidgeting. Directly in front of them, not even three feet from their faces was one of the plexiglass barriers that flank the doors of MTA buses, for some obscure reason, possibly to funnel exiting passengers or keep them from falling out. Looking into the plexiglass now, despite a few irritating scratches and discolorations that might have been caused by accident or as someone's halfhearted attempt at a small graffito, Bobby got the strange sensation of looking down into water, not at his reflection but at a series of faces buried under the
surface. The two of them were only slightly blurred, but the faces of the passengers behind them faded progressively, just as objects sink into the opacity of a lake. * * *
Phoebe Lingampally took God's death personally. When Phoebe saw that God had died, she handled it with about as much grace and maturity as anyone ever has. This was because she had the rare ability to know God as an intimate, not as some abstract principle or a storybook character, but as a living, breathing person. Consequently, when He died she felt His loss as keenly as if it had been her best friend. Her mourning was certainly intense, much more so than the mourning most have for their own loss of faith, but unlike others' it eventually passed. Just as the wound left by any mortal person's death heals in due time, so when Phoebe had made her peace with God's death she was somehow left better off than most, those for whom the death of an abstract principle or storybook character is a wound which can never heal, and which continues to suppurate. She wasn't haunted by His ghost, the way some species of fundamentalists are. God had been indispensable, sure, but after all the graveyards are full of indispensable men. Modernity, thinly painted with very selective Bible quotes and pasted together with transparently specious reasoning—that was the essence of fundamentalism. The simultaneous inability and necessity to deal with modernity, which a coating of theological-seeming
rationalizations made easier to swallow but not easier to digest. Her parents had been fond of telling her the genesis of the name they'd given her—it came not from the Hellenic tradition, but from an obscure reference to a Phoebe who was made a deacon of the early church by the Apostle Paul. Her father always smiled when he told her this story, pleased with his own cleverness at finding a name that conveyed both piousness and female empowerment. Modernity and pre-modernity in the same moment. A vague, shadowy impression of this line of thinking— which Phoebe had turned over and over in her mind many times before, until she knew its contours as well as those of her own hands—was floating once more on the very limites of her consciousness when the thought suddenly struck her that she was quite through with Bobby. It didn't make any sense—Bobby was no fundamentalist, he'd only been to church a handful of times in his life and was quite proud of the fact—but for some reason recalling he story about how she got her name caused the utter pessimism she felt about this relationship to suddenly crystallize, and it was then that she knew that this was the end for them, although she didn't know exactly how it would come. Or rather, she knew that she had to end it, although she didn't exactly know how. Their equilibrium, tenuous enough to begin with, had been punctuated. This night had been the thing to do it. Macon, Georgia Jeff Rainier needed his morning routine. He needed it because he was most decidedly not a morning person, and if
he couldn't autopilot his way to work someone would have to come around and drag him bodily from bed, that's how much headway he'd make if he had to use his scarce powers at this time of day to put any effort into thinking about it. So he snoozed the alarm precisely three times, grabbed the first clothes that came to hand and took a shower. He brushed his teeth, sort of smashed his hair down over his head, and thought about shaving, before deciding against it. If, that is, whatever process going on in his head could be given the name “deciding”. He poured a generous bowl of cereal, ate a bagel and banana on top of it (he was always ravenously hungry this time of day), did a last quick check to make sure he had his keys, and was out the door, into the hallway of the squat gray raised ranch. His mother, of course, was already out of the house and at work, probably had been for hours. It was unseasonably cold outside—not seeing-your-breath, car-won't-start kind of cold, like Danny must be getting up in New York, but cold for Georgia nonetheless. He drove to work. He was more than used to the drive, after working there for almost a year now. He hadn't been this familiar with a daily commute since high school, when he'd driven the same road every day for three years, gotten to know it so well he could probably have done it blindfolded. The only problem was, the easier the drive got the more his mind started to wander, which only made him feel more tired. He'd been working at the center since last May, when he'd come home, jobless, from college. It wasn't his first
choice, or even his second, but he was still too much under the influence of the temporary high of luck and steady income to worry about it yet. Those first few months of living at home had been sheer hell. The first choice, the real first choice all the way back when he was a kid, had been to write for TV shows, but he'd given up on that long ago. So he'd majored in Communications hoping to be able to do something creative at least, even if it meant working for a marketing firm. At first the job at the center hadn't even been a job, just a volunteer gig—he'd been volunteering there on and off for years, because of his sister, but now he found more time on his hands and they could use any (unpaid) help they could get. Eventually, either through proving himself or simply being pitiful, they'd offered him a real full-time job, better than he could've expected, with health insurance and paid vacation and everything. They could hardly support any real employees, but the ones they did support didn't have it half bad, apparently. * * *
The winter sun was already low when Jeff drove home again that evening. At least the days were getting longer, now. During the day, he'd made plans with some of his buddies to come over and play COD that night, a necessary mid-week break to see them through to the weekend. They sat around the old, thick-screened TV, on the beat-up old couch or a beanbag chair or even the dusty carpet in his basement room, playing and drinking. For some reason, or no reason,
he'd forgotten to silence his phone, and somehow he heard its high-pitched ping when his mother texted him. He didn't have a controller in his hand at that moment, so he bothered to read it. She was working a double at the medical center; when he saw it was from her he figured she must've just gotten off work. The message was written with her usual immaculate spelling. Turn on TV. Danny not coming home next wk leave canceled Jeff was struck, first of all, by how those sentences seemed to not have anything to do with each other. What would be on TV that would cause Danny's leave to be canceled? Must be something on the news; when he figured this much out was when his stomach began to sink. He wondered what the most convenient way to see what the news was would be. The TV in this room was already in use, and he couldn't convince his friends to suspend playing for this. The TV in the master bedroom was behind him, and there was no way to turn it so as to watch both at once. He thought his phone must have some news app or another on it somewhere, but he didn't know off the top of his head and didn't want to go rooting around. So after a moment he went back to playing, the thought slowly sliding off of his mind even though he felt bad, that he should worry about Danny more. The games went on. The next thing he noticed was that it was already fully dark outside; he thought idly about finding some food, as it must be getting late. Then he heard the front door opening upstairs, and realized his mother was home. She must have been working
really late, it was nearly nine o'clock. No sooner had he heard the door squeak back into its frame, felt the house shudder slightly as it did every time someone opened or closed a door in their matchstick-sturdy raised-ranch, then he knew something was wrong. He could hear his mother's voice talking to someone—must be on the phone, as he only heard one voice—and it held that singular quality, some timbre of urgency, pitched slightly lower and softer than usual, which produces an instinctive, almost reptilian this is serious somewhere in the lower reaches of the cerebellum. The text from earlier came flooding back to him with a foreboding far exceeding its actual, diminutive size. He took the opportunity of the next game ending to ask if anyone else was hungry. The others were noncommittal, but he decided to excuse himself and go upstairs anyway on the pretext of finding something to eat. He knew his mother wouldn't bother them down here. He got to the top of the stairs, which led into the combination kitchen/dining area. His mother was smoking a cigarette, apparently heating something up in the microwave. He managed what he thought was a passably casual “Hey, mom.” She turned to look at him. “Did you see what happened?” There it was again. Too urgent, too fast, all sense of pretense and euphemism dropped away. His stomach started to sink again. “See what happen?” he asked, pretending momentarily to have forgotten or not seen the text, which thankfully she
seemed to have actually forgotten as well. She took a drag off her cigarette. “There was some kind of bomb gone off at the Capitol, in Washington. Whole lot of people are dead. Everyone on the news seems to think it's a big deal, you know even more so than those others they had recently? They were talking like they're gonna call up the National Guard, go after those militia nuts that are doing this.” Talking through it, she'd come back to the part of the story she tried to tell him originally. “I'm afraid they canceled Danny's leave too. I tried to text you, I dunno if you got it or not.” Jeff quickly excused himself and returned downstairs. Now he couldn't shake that feeling in the pit of his stomach, and the game he was playing couldn't take his mind off it even the slightest bit. The others were in the midst of another game, having started without him in their impatience. “ 'D you find anything to eat?” someone asked. He quickly made up some excuse about the fridge being empty. Someone ordered a pizza. “So I guess there was some kind of bomb went off at the Capitol. In Washington.” He felt the need to get it off his chest, almost a confession. There was no reaction, save a few halfhearted grimaces. Someone gave a short, sharp guffaw. “You mean to tell me that politicians aren't really all that popular?” They finally settled on ordering a pizza. Eventually, very late, the rest cleared out. His TV, in a possibly
unprecedented move, was switched to the first cable news channel that could be found. * * *
The next evening, there was a solemn address to the nation by the President. It was not to be remembered as one of the great speeches of history, but it was certainly very solemn and Presidential and no one had anything really bad to say about it. The word “horrific” was used, as well as “unsuspecting” in describing the victims; the interesting part though came at the end, where there was a lot of talk of “unprecedented” threats and “all options” being on the table for dealing with them. There was a cursory coda about the need to balance security with civil liberties, and then a notably creative turn on the phrase “God bless America.” What was left unsaid in the speech, of course, was that there were any number of interesting counter-terrorism laws on the books, never repealed in the nearly 20 years since they'd been passed in the wake of September 11th, which had by long precedent only been used overseas, but which a creative enough lawyer could apply just as easily here at home. When the administration decided that the people who carried out the Capitol subway bombing, and their friends and accomplices, were no longer criminal suspects but were unlawful enemy combatants, they didn't do it in secret. They didn't advertise it in prime-time either, but mostly whatever play it got in the news media was limited to a few soundbites of criticism and a lot of hushing and reassuring from everyone else. In the immediate, emotional aftermath
nobody thought about where it would all end, how the unaccountable violence would slowly ratchet up until a Predator drone was firing missiles through the windows of a besieged compound in Michigan. They certainly didn't think about how that event would flip a switch, and suddenly all this apparatus of violence would turn on the very people who constructed it. * * *
On the other side of the TV images from Jeff Rainier, that first night of the explosion, was Robert Channing. He was not distracted by video games, or friends. No fact escaped his notice. He knew that it was not the Capitol but the nearby subway stop that had been bombed, although the blast was powerful enough to jolt ceiling tiles loose in the visitor center directly underneath the building itself. He knew that there had been four simultaneous blasts as two trains pulled into the platform directly across from each other, at the height of the afternoon rush. He knew there were already 51 confirmed fatalities, and certainly more to come. But he didn't have a sinking feeling in his gut. Instead he had an unaccountable case of what felt almost like euphoria. It was the euphoria of an idea which is just clear enough to be evocative, without being so clear that it invites the inevitable criticism. His idea was exciting, because it was edgy, but it was also just plausible enough. The school year was nearly over, so now was the perfect time to quit his current job. His parents would probably be surprised, but he doubted
they would protest—hadn't he almost gotten that ROTC scholarship once, anyway? And he certainly didn't have any social ties here that wouldn't disappear in a couple years anyway. In his profession, people his age didn't last very long, and if they did they stopped being much fun to hang out with. And the more he thought about it, the more something even deeper stirred within him. Wasn't it worth fighting, and possibly dying for your principles? That was how he put it to himself: not to kill for his principles, but to die for them. What he didn't know then, as the Clash had sang decades earlier, was that he who will die is he who will kill—it's the easiest leap in the world to make. Sure, somewhere in the back of his mind he knew it wouldn't be pretty, but he could be morally conflicted about that when the time came. Right now a lifetime of being steeped and educated in a culture that saw all the things he really knew he believed in, things like democracy, the rule of law, fairness, saw all of these as being the reverse side of violence all along, all those half-remembered somber tones and stirring invocations to stand up for what's right, the exhortations to think about something greater than himself, all the sappy rhetoric was what finally turned him, what finally convinced him to go through with it. Finally, there would be an end to being smart enough to know what the problem was, but too smart to do anything about it. This was the end of ambiguity. It was the logic of all those who are pragmatic, and realistic, and have to
make the tough decisions. He didn't make the decision quickly; it took him a while to think about it enough to work up the courage. But Bobby Channing decided to enlist. * * *
Shinkai District, Afghanistan SFC Rainier, Daniel J. took a moment to consider the mountains all around him. They were very high—snow blanketed their upper quarters, even though it was still summer. He'd gotten good at spotting the differences between these mountains and the mountains back home. Besides the obvious—the Adirondacks were nowhere near this tall, nor so devoid of trees—these had steeper sides, and they were closer together. It was more than that, everything was off about this place—the bugs looked weird, the birds didn't sound like birds but like mechanical replicas of birds. Even though he'd been studying them, on and off, for the better part of the last three years, the differences never failed to strike him. Lately he'd begun to worry that when he got back, he might start to find his home mountains to be the ones that appeared strange and alien. He was closing in on the end of this tour—28 days left, went the constant mantra in his head—and was having trouble picturing exactly what upstate New York looked like. Shifting his gaze downward, he saw the qalat, over two clicks distant, lit up by the rays of the setting sun, which was just lowering beyond the distant end of the valley behind him, where it opened onto terrain that slowly
settled into the wide, arid plains stretching off to the southwest. The mud-brick structure mirrored the sunset hues, to some extent—even that dull mud was capable of picking up some color. He couldn't see the lead elements of the ANA company that he knew was ahead and off to their right. They must be in contact by now, though. Who knows, maybe they're talking it out. Maybe there won't be any shooting this time. As if on cue, he saw a puff of smoke come up from behind the building, heard the boom a second later, followed by the rattle of gunfire. Twenty-eight days left, he thought to himself one last time. Get through this one and it'll be twenty-seven. The passing of the days was a source of hope, but mostly just more frustration, like the last few pushups in the APFT. Hope could be excruciating under some circumstances. He turned around and gave a wry look to his squad mates. “We're on.” They advanced in a skirmish line, up to a dry riverbed which they followed until they were well within gunshot of the qalat. Luckily, they were in a perfect position to catch a gaggle of white-robed figured coming out of the shadow of one of the mountains to their left. They opened up on them, watched with satisfaction as they fell—unclear how many of them were down for the count, but they weren't taking any return fire, and just as Danny had got a foothold to launch himself over the edge of the wadi he saw the bullets striking the dirt to his right, not three feet away. He didn't think, just spun around and looked for muzzle flashes, yelling out the contact to his squadmates.
He waited for what seemed like forever, had to fight the urge to start firing blindly into the rapidly darkening crevices between the mountains that were at their back. Finally he saw one, squeezed off a few shots. He could hear bullets coming from both directions now; there were more muzzle flashes up ahead. They were severely outnumbered, and pinned down right on some insurgent's X, but at least they had cover and a moment to think of a way out. He called in their situation to his company commander; he knew they had armor waiting in the wings somewhere behind them. Now an RPG scudded by, but it was far overhead. It was hard to get any shots off, the covering fire they were taking was so intense. This was bad, and getting worse. “Where's our ANA friends at?” he asked the soldier behind him. He took a moment to answer. “Sir,” he said, in between taking shots, “looks like they're trying to move this way from the road but I think they're taking it as bad as we are. That RPG was aimed at one of their trucks, and I saw a few more head that direction--” Danny took a minute to reiterate, over his radio to his company commander, just how bad their situation was and where was that armored support? The soldier who'd just told him about the RPGs was next to him now, facing the same direction—had they stopped taking fire from the compound?-but was standing just a little too straight and, after the dull, metallic pop that Danny knew from long experience was the sound of a 7.62mm round hitting a ballistic vest, fell backwards clutching his chest. Lucky, thought Danny, not
for the last time tonight. A few inches higher and it would've been his neck. Finally, the covering fire began to taper off. He heard the MRAPs moving up along his squad's left flank. Just as they arrived to relieve his men, the firing quit altogether, before the CROWS turret mounted on top of the lead vehicle could even get a shot off. Danny, suddenly full of energy, charged towards the vehicles. He ordered his men to mount up. Except for the one who took a round to the vest, no one had been hit. A few more seconds and we'd have been out of the wadi, exposed, he though. A few inches higher and it would've been his neck not his vest. He probably should wait for air support before taking off in pursuit like this, but he was just too angry. He cajoled the driver into taking them back into the ravines, where it was now fully night in the shadows of the mountains. They drove around awhile, with nary a passing glance of the enemy, before finally the protests of his men caused him to turn back. They returned to the qalat, now an island of confused, jagged shadows cast by headlights under the more placid illumination of the stars in a clear sky above. There was a quick conference by the front gate. They were just waiting for the ANA to finish searching the place and debriefing the few civilians who were still there, and then it would finally be time to head home. Danny took advantage of the quick break to wander inside the compound. It was smaller inside than it had looked from without. Immediately inside the gate was a
courtyard, with misshapen ovoid spaces in the walls that could've been doorways or some kind of vaulted arcade which wound around the open space. It wasn't hard to find the ANA team, talking to a huddled knot of women in burkas—there was only one light on in the whole place. Danny strode across the courtyard, bumping into what felt like lowsitting tables with dishes on them. He didn't find it hard at all to raise his voice. “These motherfuckers holding anything back? Not telling you anything?” he demanded of the Afghan soldiers. “Huh?” He kicked at one of the tables, sent dishes flying to the ground. The Afghans didn't seem taken aback in the slightest. The soldiers started chattering at him immediately in their broken English, the women started screaming something in God only knew what language, and looked like they wanted to hit him but knew they couldn't. “They know who was shooting at us!” his voice boomed over all of them. Now there was an American gripping his shoulder from behind, talking calmly, trying to lead him away. “They knew who was shooting at us,” he said to his teammate, quieter now, as if explaining something patiently. Later on, at the FOB, he was only even more incensed. “Why were we even there?” he asked rhetorically, as he paced up and down the tiny DFAC, which sometimes served as an impromptu conference room, like a tiger in a cage. “Why didn't we just plaster the whole fucking compound from the air?” “Danny, we didn't know--” someone started, but he cut him off.
“Why are taking this fucking cautious approach, when we could make the whole country safe if we wanted to?” he looked around, almost as if he was in disbelief. “We could do it! What the fuck are we afraid of, a little bad press? A little criticism from some whiny civilians? Why are we putting their lives ahead of ours? They're just some hajjis in a fucking mud brick shithouse.” * * *
Delco, North Carolina The sound of the pattering rain filled the garage through the open door. Charlie was already in a foul mood. His rent had gone up by $100 a month, for the second year in a row. It was now nearly 50% higher than when he had moved into the house, not quite five years ago, after the divorce. On top of this, he knew he would soon be told in no uncertain terms that he'd have to go back to school for at least a few classes. Not told in any way that would bind his employer to pay for it, of course. It was simply a fact that being an auto mechanic was now such a technologydriven job that simply knowing how to fix the mechanical pieces of an internal combustion engine couldn't cut it. If he wouldn't go back to school, he knew he'd be out on the street, with some young know-nothing kid ready and more than willing to take his place. The constant drumbeat of alimony and credit card debt, of course, never let up, but by now he'd almost gotten so used to that that he didn't even notice it anymore. Working on his bike was a welcome distraction, though.
He could lose himself in it, even if it was just for a few minutes for something simple, like the brake he was now realigning. It probably didn't really need it, but he had a hunch that it would soon anyway, and besides, it beat worrying. He was hoping he could get done just in time, just as his buddies started to show up, so he wouldn't have to find some other way to distract himself in the interim. The rain didn't worry him too much; couldn't see many clouds, it'd probably pass over in a few minutes. He'd been riding with his crew for five years now. He still didn't really know why he'd gotten into motorcycles in the first place. Once he'd been at his job for a while, got his family established, then got some money burning a hole in his pocket, the first thing it occurred to him to do with it was spend it on nothing more than being able to feel the wind on him, to be able to maneuver around the suddenly-sluggish cars like he was a kid again on a bicycle. He was lucky he had friends to ride with, buddies who could afford the expensive habit; he'd known them since his school days, but they hadn't gotten close til later, by virtue of being some of the only kids from their class who still lived in town and had the time, money and inclination to pursue a hobby. He'd now been riding with them for just about as long as his marriage had lasted, a fact which was starting to lend itself to a lot of jokes lately. Sometimes, he tried to admit to himself that this bike is what had broken up his marriage. It wasn't just that, of course, and he couldn't really say it was any one thing at all, but Darla had had it in for his poor Harley since the
day she laid eyes on it. He was no longer really upset about it; he still got to see his kids at least, they didn't live far away. His need to keep seeing his kids was what kept him current on the child support. Oh, Lord, the child support. It did weigh heavy. He tried his best, but he'd been hauled into court more times than he cared to think about for being late once too many. Trying to return his thoughts to the bike, he wondered when anyone else would be showing up. He'd finished working on that brake and couldn't think of anything else to do. It was still raining. He could just see his neighbor through the trees, walking down the next-door driveway to get the mail. Even this far outside of town was starting to fill up with white commuters. The real reason the rent keeps going up, he couldn't help but think. Pushing the rents up, putting the old bar-b-q places out of business to replace them with neat little boxes of restaurants, their Port City Javas, their yoga studios. Always with the yoga studios. They never did say much to him, either. Just kind of acted annoyed because he rode a loud motorcycle around and kept some old junkers in his yard. He finally heard someone gunning it down his street. They weren't really late, of course. Willie Adams pulled into his driveway a few minutes later. Jason Aldean was just coming on the radio. “Two Buck,” he said, trading some skin after getting off his bike. “Man, it's gotta stop raining one of these days, I'm starting to get pissed off.” “I hear you, man. You know I was really thinking it
woulda stopped by now, I mean there ain't hardly any clouds in the sky.” “Man I don't know if anyone's even coming, got a call from Devon before I came out here saying he had something else to do anyway.” Now, Charlie was getting seriously annoyed. “The hell is that man, no one's even gonna tell me they cain't come, even though it's not really raining and it's gonna stop rainin' any second now?” Now Willie looked thoughtful for a second. “Well, you know there's um. There was something slowing down traffic on 76 comin' out here, something going on downtown like a parade or something. I couldn't really see it.” “Man, there ain't no parade today. What is it today, ain't no holiday today!” “Well if it wasn't no parade it was like uh, a march or a demonstration or something. People all standing around, looked like they had signs or something. Shouting. Don't know what it was about.” Outside, the rain continued to fall.
Look out, kid It's something you did God knows when But you're doing it again Dylan, “Subterranean Homesick Blues”