Jake landed, then shut the engine down just long enough to brief them.

  “There are ten trucks,” Jake said. “Now, let’s say that each truck is eighteen feet long. Four are pulling M triple seven Howitzers that are thirty-five feet long. Allow a hundred feet between each vehicle, that means the column will be right at four hundred yards long, depending on the distance between. So the first thing we’ll do when we get there, is set up two roadblocks, four hundred yards apart. That will give us a contained kill zone. Do we have any C-4 left?”

  “Yeah, we got a lot of it from the SPS armory in Mobile,” Tom said.

  “Good, we’ll use it.”

  “Damn,” Deon said.

  “What?”

  “This is the American army we are about to attack. These are guys I served with, and fought with. I never imagined myself setting up an ambush. Hell, that’s what we had to deal with in Iraq and Afghanistan.”

  “First of all, Deon, I would be willing to bet that you never served with a single one of these men,” Tom said. “The army, like the navy, was totally destroyed by Ohmshidi. There is no army anymore. These are SPS goons.”

  “Yeah, you’re probably right.”

  “Let’s get mounted,” he said.

  “Damn!” Bob said with a broad grin.

  “What is it?”

  “This will be the first combat insertion I’ve done since Vietnam.”

  “Yeah?” Jake pulled the starter trigger and the blades started to turn. “Well, if you’ve done one insertion, you’ve done them all.” Using the beeper switch, he beeped the RPM up into the green, then lifted off.

  Bob knew the area better than Jake, and he recommended that they set down at an abandoned service station at exit 34. Jake landed just east of the abandoned building so the helicopter could not be seen from the road. Then, he deployed the team.

  “Not you, Bob,” he said.

  “What do you mean, not me? Are you an age bigot?”

  Jake chuckled. “You’re our reserve. If I get hit, you’ll have to fly us back.”

  “Yeah, all right, I can see that. But don’t get hit.”

  They found a Chrysler that, though it could no longer be driven, could be pushed, and they filled it with C-4 plastic explosive. They pushed it out onto the road, then moved back four hundred yards behind where they found a Chevrolet, and filled it with C-4.

  “I love it,” Tom said. “These cars are from the auto companies that Ohmshidi stole from the stockholders.”

  The C-4 in both cars were set to be exploded by two-way radio, broadcasting on a certain frequency. He left Willie and Marcus on the Chevy.

  “There are ten trucks,” Jake said. “Count them, when the tenth one goes by, push this car on the road, then back out of the way.”

  “Right,” Marcus said.

  Jake spread the rest of them out along the side of the road, then waited. There was very little traffic on what had once been a very heavily traveled artery that stretched from Mobile all the up to Chicago.

  A 2010 Ford came by.

  It was ten minutes before another vehicle passed them, this one a 2003 Dodge. Both cars merely steered around the Chrysler, which looked no different from all the other abandoned cars along the interstate. It wasn’t even the only car in the middle of the highway

  “Major!” Deon called from the top of a berm that ran parallel to the highway. Deon was looking north with a pair of field glasses. “They’re comin’!”

  “How far?”

  “No more’n a mile, I’d say.”

  Tom keyed the mic on his two-way radio. “Willie?”

  “I’m here.”

  “Did you read that?”

  “Roger.”

  “All right, stand by.”

  Deon came back down from the berm then, and Jake took his radio. He changed it to the detonation frequency, then put it down so that he wouldn’t inadvertently key the switch and activate the trigger signal that would set off the explosives.

  “Here they are,” Deon said.

  “Stay down.”

  The men stayed out of sight behind the berm.

  Jake watched as the first truck came by, the back of the truck filled with uniformed SPS men. Then he keyed the mic on the radio, and was rewarded with a stomach-shaking explosion as the Chrysler went up in a huge, rolling ball of flame.

  “Go!” Willie said, over the radio, indicating that the Chevy was in position and that he and Marcus were clear.

  As the vehicles came to a stop, Tom triggered the explosion in the Chevy, trapping the convoy between the two burning cars.

  “All right, take out the heavy guns!” Tom ordered, and almost immediately two missiles were launched, and two of the guns were destroyed. At the same time the other members of the attack team opened fire on the SPS personnel using M-240 machine guns.

  There was very little resistance from the SPS troops, and those who weren’t killed in the initial attack ran, most of them abandoning their weapons. It was all over within five minutes. Tom, Deon, and the others of the attack team came out from behind the berm and completed their work by tossing thermite grenades into each of the trucks. They also took care of the remaining Howitzers by damaging the breeches so that they couldn’t be fired.

  “Gather up the weapons,” Tom said. “We can use every piece of armament we can find.”

  Fifteen minutes later, with at least two dozen undamaged M-4 rifles, along with several containers of ammunition, the attack detail regathered at the helicopter.

  “Whoa! We can kick some major ass now!” Deon said as, laughing, he and the others climbed back into the helicopter for the flight back.

  They landed at the Mobile airport to take on more fuel, and were met there by several of the town’s citizens who had heard the news that there had been troops coming down to reclaim Mobile.

  “President Varney, we want you to come on TV tonight and give a report to the city,” Barney Caldwell said. Caldwell had been the mayor of Mobile, before the SPS took over and appointed their own mayor. That appointed mayor left town shortly after Mobile was retaken, and Caldwell moved back into the job.

  “All right,” Bob said. “I’ll be glad to.”

  Caldwell looked at the other men who had taken part in the interdiction operation.

  “And, I think it would be great if you would all just drive down Government Street and let our citizens see you, and cheer you,” Caldwell said.

  Caldwell had made several convertibles available to Bob and the others, and as they drove on into town, both sides of Government Street were lined by cheering citizens. That night Bob Varney went on the one remaining television station to address the citizens of Mobile. Sitting behind the news desk, he couldn’t help but think of the last time he was in this studio. Then, it had been to promote his novel about the 8th Air Force during World War II.

  The book had sold very well, and as he recalled that interview, he remembered thinking how good life was then, how he and his wife had realized their dream of buying a beach house, and how his publisher wanted as many books as he could write.

  Now, all that was gone, and he was navigating his way through a world that was still very alien to him.

  “President Varney, you’ll be on in ten seconds,” the floor director said. “You’ll hear the voice-over introduce you.”

  Bob nodded, then watched the floor director hold up a clenched fist. He counted off the last five seconds by lifting one finger at a time.

  “Ladies and gentlemen, President Bob Varney,” the voice-over said.

  A red light on the camera came on.

  “Good evening,” Bob said. “Over the last three and a half years, beginning with the election of Mehdi Ohmshidi, our lives have undergone some major, and, most I am sure will agree, unpleasant changes. It began innocently enough with a presidential election. We have had many presidents in our history, some better than others, but always there was the power of the ballot box so that we could, every four years, vote to sustain or to replace the person we had chosen to lead us. And, we even had the power of impeachment, so that if the sins of our elected officials were too severe, we could remove them from office, short of re-election.

  “It was not until this last election that we, by our own hand, cast the ballot that destroyed our republic. For with that ballot we elected Mehdi Ohmshidi. Now, Ohmshidi has declared himself president for life, and our precious heritage has been taken from us.”

  Bob let that comment sink in for a moment, then he smiled at the camera.

  “But we Americans are a resilient people, and, town by town, county by county, state by state, we will take back America!”

  Although Bob was not speaking before an audience, several who were in the TV studio cheered, and their reaction could be heard over the air.

  “Today the illegitimate government of an illegitimate entity, the so-called American Islamic Republic of Enlightenment, sent a reconnaissance team in force to our city, intending to bombard us with artillery fire. At this point it isn’t clear whether they thought that, by intimidation, they could take the city back, or whether they had no idea of recovery at all—but only the intent to kill as many of us as they could.

  “I am happy to say that we successfully intercepted their attack and totally destroyed their force. But, you may rest assured that any future force that Ohmshidi may direct toward us will be much larger, and much more lethal, so we must be ready for it.

  “Therefore I am asking, tonight, that anyone within the reach of this broadcast who has any military experience, report to the Hank Aaron baseball field tomorrow at thirteen hundred hours.” Bob smiled at the camera. “If you have military experience, I won’t have to tell you what time thirteen hundred is.

  “Now, I address this to those of you who converted to Moqaddas Sirata. If your conversion was genuine, and you wish to continue to practice that perversion of Islam, you are free to do so . . . but . . . you are not free to condemn, or to interfere with, any other citizen in the practice of their religion.

  “And finally, I tell you this. We are in a state of war with the American Islamic Republic of Enlightenment. Anyone who gives aid and comfort to the enemy shall be treated as a traitor, and will be dealt with. If you think you cannot live under these principles, leave now! We will make no effort to stop anyone from leaving. But if you leave, we will not let you return.

  “God bless all who join our struggle for freedom. And I bid you all a good night.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

  Bob and Jake were both surprised by the number of military volunteers who showed up at the ball park the next day. Many were wearing bits and pieces of military uniforms, several were wearing the complete uniform, some were old enough that the uniform they wore had, on the right sleeve, the patches of MACV and USARV, units that were specific to Vietnam. Jake took a count and determined that there were at least seven hundred who had showed up. That was more people than they had weapons for, but they decided that they could acquire the weapons later, if need be.

  After some organization, they broke the assembly down into army and navy, explaining to the air force and marine veterans that, for the time being they could only support an army and navy. The first job would be to organize them into functioning units, and to do that, he asked those who had been officers and noncommissioned officers to report to him.

  “For now, I’m putting you men on your honor,” he said. “Don’t be giving yourselves spot promotions. I need leaders, but more than that, I need honesty. If you represent yourself as something you aren’t, we will find out about it, and once we find out, you’ll no longer be of any use to us.”

  “I was an NCO” one of the men said. “But I was only a buck sergeant, I don’t know if that’s high enough for you.

  “For now, I would say that we could use the experiences of anyone who served as an NCO, E-5 and above,” Jake said.

  The man smiled. “Then you’ve got me.”

  His call for officers and noncommissioned officers produced a cadre of some thirty men, ranging in rank from full colonel down to buck sergeant.

  “Damn,” Jake said quietly. “I’m just a major, two or three of these guys have me outranked.”

  “No they don’t,” Bob said. “I was a chief warrant officer, now I am the commander-in-chief, and that gives me the authority to appoint you, general.”

  Jake laughed. “General Lantz. Yeah,” he said. “I like the sound of that.”

  “Gentlemen,” Bob said, speaking to the assembled officers. “I am President Bob Varney. This is General Jake Lantz. I’m going to turn this over to him.”

  “Hell, Major, you’ve come up in rank quite a bit since I saw you last,” Ed Tadlock said. “Look at you, you’re a general now.”

  “Ed!” Jake said, starting toward him with his hand extended. The two men shook hands. “Bob, I want you to meet another chief warrant officer. This is Ed Tadlock. We were together at Mother Rucker when everything collapsed.”

  “I’ve been wanting to meet you,” Tadlock said. “You wrote Barracks Ballads, didn’t you? About warrant officer pilots in Vietnam?”

  “Yes.”

  Tadlock laughed. “That’s the funniest damn book I’ve ever read in my life. I was in Walter Reed where they were trying to get shrapnel out of my ass when someone gave me that book. I knew it had to be a warrant who wrote it.”

  “I don’t know that book,” Jake said.

  “Trust me, Jake, you wouldn’t like it. It tells the truth about how every commissioned officer needed a warrant to wipe his nose.”

  “Well, that’s better than having a warrant wipe my ass,” Bob said, and the others laughed.

  “But, you’ve just been given a spot promotion, Ed. As of now, you are a lieutenant colonel.”

  “What the hell makes you think that’s a promotion?”

  “You’re just going to have to live with it,” Jake said, laughing. “I need all the help I can get.”

  After the initial organization, Jake asked Tadlock to have dinner with him at a restaurant that was near the TV station. He remembered the last time he had seen Tadlock, it was just after General Von Cairns had committed suicide.

  Chief Warrant Officer-3 Edward Tadlock was waiting just outside the door to the Post Headquarters building when Jake and Clay arrived in Jake’s Jeep SUV.

  “I waited out here,” Tadlock said. “I don’t mind telling you, it’s creepy as hell in there.”

  “How do you know it was a suicide?” Jake asked. “Did he leave a note?”

  “No, there was no note. But the pistol is still in his hand.”

  “Let’s have a look.”

  The three men went back inside the building which, as Tadlock had said, was completely deserted.

  “I’m taking off,” Tadlock said. “I’m going to Missouri. I own a small farm there, I’m going back to work it. My wife and kids are already there, waiting for me.”

  “Do you have enough fuel to make it all the way to Missouri?”

  “I’m driving a diesel, and running it on jet fuel. I bought thirty gallons extra from someone that I didn’t ask any questions as to where he got it.”

  “Well, good luck to you, Chief,” Jake said.

  When they stepped into the general’s office, he was still sitting in his swivel chair, facing the window that looked out over the parade ground.

  “I left him just the way I found him,” Tadlock said.

  Jake walked around to get a closer look at him. He shook his head. “Damn,” he said. “He was a good man. I hate to see this.”

  “Ohmshidi killed him,” Tadlock said. “Yeah, von Cairns may have pulled the trigger, but Ohmshidi killed him.”

  “I can’t argue with that,” Jake said.

  “So now the question is, what do we do with him?”

  “Does he have any next of kin?” Clay asked.

  “He’s divorced, I know that,” Tadlock said.

  “He has a daughter somewhere,” Jake said. “If we looked through all his things, we could probably find out where she is. But then what? The way things are now, what could she do with him?”

  “We can’t leave him here,” Tadlock said.

  “Let’s bury him out there on the parade ground, under the flagpole,” Clay suggested.

  “Damn good idea, Sergeant Major, damn good idea,” Tadlock said.2

  “What happened to you?” Jake asked as the two men sat down to a meal of barbecue pork steak. “I thought you were farming in Missouri.”

  “Yeah, I was. But there were too damn many of Ohmshidi’s officials around then, telling me that I could do this, and I couldn’t do that. So I just decided to leave. When I heard that Mobile had been freed, my wife, kid and I came down here. We’ve only been here a few days.”

  “Well, I’m damn glad to have you here. I want you and your wife to come on out to Fort Morgan. After all, you’re on my payroll now.”

  “Payroll? Wait a minute, you mean I’m going to get paid for being in your army?”

  “Yes, with Freedom Dollars. And don’t worry about them, they are real currency.”

  “Sounds good enough to me,” Tadlock said.

  “Oh, what about my eighteen years? Does that count? Can I retire in two more years?”

  “Ha. You can if you want to, and you’ll get the same retirement pay Bob gets.”

  “Why do I have the feeling that’s nothing?”

  “I don’t know. Maybe because it is nothing,” Jake answered with a laugh.

  “Do you ever think about the army? I mean the way it was in the before time.”

  “I think about it all the time,” Jake said.

  “I do too. I think about the general, and how Ohmshidi same as killed him. And I think about the way we buried him.”

  “Yeah, I remember that as well.”

  Clay went to the general’s quarters to get his dress blue uniform and he and Jake dressed the general, to include all his medals. While they were doing that, Tadlock rounded up as many officers and men as he could, including seven men who would form a firing squadron to render last honors, and one bandsman who agreed to play taps.