Whiskey Black Book Set: The Complete Tyrant Series (Box Set 1) (4 page)

Springfield, Illinois

Capitol Building

6:22 a.m.

“Thank you for meeting me on such short notice,” Colonel Wright said to Brigadier General Tony Erwin.

The colonel had called the adjutant general to a secret meeting; knowing him from childhood placed him in an inner circle of trust and like-mindedness. He was confident that whatever he told him would remain confidential.

“You’re welcome, Marcus. Can we be friends again, for old times’ sake?”

“Sure thing. Look, I know you followed through on the President’s order to activate the Guard. Is there any way to halt that order?”

“What are you talking about, Marcus?”

“I know that you know this whole thing stinks! You can’t seriously be considering following through on this?”

“I’m a general in the United States Army, Marcus. Of course I’m going to see it through.”

“I’ve already taken measures to make sure casualties are minimal.”

“What have you done?”

“I know you kept me out of the loop for a reason, Tony. You knew I would question everything about it. Maybe even refuse to participate.”

“That’s exactly why I bypassed you and activated your battalion personally.”

Colonel Wright was beginning to sense that something was amiss. He was right to assume something was about to go awry, but failed to see the signs and was wrong in assuming he could trust an old friend. All he could do was watch as his old friend turned his back on him and began to walk away.

“I’m sorry about this, Tony,” Colonel Wright said as he pulled his sidearm from its holster and pointed it at the brigadier general. “But if you can no longer see your patriotic duty and you refuse to honor your oath, then you’ve become a part of the problem.”

A shot rang out, but it wasn’t from the colonel’s pistol. Years of liberal Illinois politics paid off for Adalyn Baker and for Brigadier General Erwin. President Baker knew about the colonel’s phone calls and about his arrangement to meet with Erwin. She had placed Secret Service agents in every capitol building months prior. This acted as an intimidation tactic to keep the states aligned with her ambitions.

The bullet caught Colonel Wright in the back and took him by surprise. He failed to get off a round at the adjutant general. The colonel dropped to his knee and groped at his chest. There was no exit wound, to Erwin’s amazement. He walked over to the colonel and took the pistol from his hand.

“I’m sorry, old friend, but I can see no way around this.”

Brigadier General Erwin turned and walked away, leaving his old friend Marcus to his fate.

Rend Lake Community College

Carbondale, Illinois

Command Sergeant Thomas Damm was a stout and athletic Army veteran. He had participated in the Middle East Jihad Wars and was firm in his opinion of patriotism versus despotism. For years, he had a watchful eye on the autocracy of the US government and had silently been preparing for such an eventuality. The cost, should he fail at a coup, would be high. On the other hand, to succeed would mean certain national recognition. His plot was simple, wait for the inevitable and unconstitutional directive to come, intervene immediately, and rendezvous with all under his leadership. Intercepting all the guardsmen wouldn’t necessarily be difficult. The way their chain of command was established, all he had to do was reestablish another rally point, essentially intercepting all troops that responded to the call. It was a risky move, to say the least. If the responding troops were sympathetic to the President’s pleas, then he may have an issue to deal with. Under normal situations, refusing a direct order could mean a court-martial, but what he had planned could mean treason, which was punishable by death. He had to be careful when he communicated with his troops. They needed to know that what they were being told to do was unconstitutional, and that relieved them of the burden of believing they would be charged with treason. The complication was that the government had been so successful in calling evil good and good evil that the minds of Americans had been subverted. It was his intention to make sure they all understood where the lines were drawn.

One by one, the troops arrived at Rend Lake Community College. The college had been vacated years prior. Budget deficits and more urgent government expenditures meant the public college couldn’t be sustained. Damm felt it was a good alternate staging point for his men. It was tactically sound because the parking lots were large enough to hold his company-sized unit and their equipment. He also felt that it was open enough that they could set a large perimeter to keep unwanted prying eyes and ears out of their business.

As he stepped into the center of the parking lot, he called for the platoon sergeants to gather the troops into formation, and then he proudly watched as the sergeants ran toward their troops, shouting, “Fall in on me.”

Each sergeant found his place in the parking lot and then turned to face the sergeant first class. Normally, he would turn around and present the company to the captain, but there was no captain. Not on this day.

It had taken a little over an hour for about ninety percent of their unit to arrive and to stage on the makeshift parade deck. The other ten percent were likely defectors, which under the current situation, was understandable to Damm. It was the ninety percent that caused his anxiety. He could feel his gut wrenching inside of him. Almost knotting up like a cramp that wouldn’t go away until he said what he had to say.

“Gentlemen, we have been activated under Force Protection Condition Delta and are now assumed to be under Title 10 of the US code. Each of you received a text message to rally on this location and to leave all your cell phones behind. It is of utmost necessity that you tell me immediately if any of you have retained your cell phones.”

Damm paused for a minute and looked around at the troop formations. Nobody raised their hands, and he thought this to be alarming.

“Sergeants up,” he called out.

All the sergeants ran out from in front of their formations and met with Damm.

“Gentlemen, I don’t believe for a second that there’s not a single cell phone in our company. Please do a quick and thorough gear inspection to assure there is no cell phone in this company.”

“Yes, Sergeant,” they all responded, then ran back to their respective units.

Damm looked out at his company and saw duty gear being spread out all over the parking lot. It looked like a gigantic mess that would soon be purged of any cell phones, which could be used to track locations or send classified information.

Stephen Gill had scattered all his duty gear across the front of his position on the parking lot. As he removed his gear, piece by piece, carefully and thoroughly emptying each pouch, he was shocked to find that the CheapTalk phone he had purchased for the sole purpose of communicating with Nathan Roeh was, in fact, stuffed deep into his duty bag, where it wasn’t supposed to be. He immediately reminisced on the instruction he gave his wife. He had told her to charge the phone and wait on Nathan to call and give instruction. His fear now being that his wife couldn’t find the phone, and that she was certainly in a frenzy back home. Once he came to his senses, he realized that he was about to be discovered to be in possession of a phone after the command sergeant had very explicitly asked if there were any cell phones in the company.

“Will I get in trouble? What will happen to me? Will my integrity be called into question?”

A flood of thoughts flooded Stephen’s head and he scurried to hide the phone, but short of being seen throwing it or concealing it in somebody else’s gear, there was nothing he could do.

“Sergeant Rhodes,” he called out.

His platoon sergeant walked to his position.

“Yes?”

“I found this in my bag. I didn’t know it was there. We use it in case of emergency.”

“Give it to me.”

Stephen handed him the phone and he hurriedly took it to Thomas Damm.

Receiving the phone in hand, he asked, “Rhodes, who had this?”

“Specialist Gill, from Transportation Platoon.”

“What were his reasons for concealing it?”

“He said he didn’t know he had it.”

Damm carefully looked at the phone. It was not turned on and appeared to be dead.

After the duty gear search had been completed, there were, in all, about half a dozen cell phones that were discovered. All of them had been powered on, with one of them not silenced. Of the cell phones that were present, none of them were receiving services of any kind, as if cell towers were nonexistent.

Stephen carefully watched from his position in the formation. The batteries were being removed from each phone and they were being pocketed by Command Sergeant Damm.

Stephen was in the front of his platoon, near the front of his squad when Damm continued with his speech.

“Gentlemen, the reason I have called you here is because of the current FPCON status. As patriots, it’s your obligation to know and to understand every directive you receive. Sometimes, in the course of duty, it is required to question your superiors.
When injustice becomes law, resistance becomes duty
is the greatest truth ever fabricated. My idol, Thomas Jefferson, is credited for saying this over two hundred years ago. He never said it, but I wish he had. The comment represents the greatest truth embedded within our constitution, that we have a God-given right to liberty and property, and that there always comes a time when government gets too big for its britches and the people reserve the right to throw off such government. Gentlemen, that time is now. Each of you swore, as I did, an oath to the constitution of the United States, to defend it against all threats, foreign and domestic. The system establishment has ceased to exist and has been replaced with a system of smoke and mirrors, where the common man and the soldier are expected to believe anything and everything its government tells them. The purpose is to bring about a sense of freedom, where in fact, there is none. Now your country is calling upon you to restore freedom. What I need to know is that you are with me and that you will remain true to your oath.”

When Damm had finished with his speech, he scanned his eyes upon the individual faces of the men in the company. Realizing there was still much to be said but that time was running short, he added, “I need to know right now.”

Two HMMWVs (Humvees) pulled up near Damm’s position. The driver’s stepped out from the driver’s seat and casually walked to the back of the HMMWV and opened the hatch. Damm walked to the rear of the one nearest his location and peered inside at the contents.

“Sergeants up,” Damm called out. The platoon sergeants fell out of their formation and ran to Damm’s position, where Stephen could see them speaking in low tones, but no words could be heard.

Stephen’s mind was racing.

This is big. This is very big. I am in formation with hundreds of soldiers, my magazines are dry, my wife and daughter are at home without communication, the country is under martial law, and my command sergeant is asking us to defy the government,
he thought. Scenario after scenario raced through his head.
How would it end if I ran from formation right now? What’s in the back of those Hummers? Are Sammie and Evan okay? Have they left for Gorham? Damm has the phone, how could they know to leave?
Stephen was realizing the magnitude of the situation he was in. There could be no right or wrong answer for what he was about to do. The safety of his family was what mattered most to him.

Run, just run,
he thought. Reaching down to grab his bag was risky. Even though the soldiers were standing at ease, each of them were as statues. He realized that he might as well blow an air horn, because that was the attention he would gather if he bent over to grab his gear.

Movement from Damm’s position grabbed his attention. The sergeants were running back. When Sergeant Rhodes had returned to the front of the platoon, he delivered the news Damm had given to him.

“Okay, listen up, Transportation…”

Transportation
is what the platoon sergeant called the men and women of Transportation Platoon. He now had their attention.

“Command Sergeant Damm is giving us an opportunity to return home to our families or to follow him to only God knows where. I need to list, right now, anybody that wants to roll with the command sergeant.”

Rhodes pulled out a pad of paper from the cargo pocket of his BDUs. His pen was taken from his left chest pocket. He looked stoic as he waited for somebody to speak up.

“What’s in the back of those Hummers?” Stephen asked, breaking the silence.

“Ammunition. Damm will use this list to control the distribution of ammo. If you choose to stay, you get ammo, if not, well, it’s my understanding that we’ll be cut loose to return to our families.”

That was the answer that Stephen was waiting to hear, but something wasn’t sitting right in his stomach. Something felt off, and Stephen couldn’t put his finger on it. Perhaps he was sensing the overwhelming weight of the entire situation. He shirked the notion that something was amiss and focused on returning home to Sam and Evan.

“So, what’s it going to be?” Rhodes said.

One by one soldiers began to sound off with their name. Not everybody joined in. Some for fear of what might happen if they revolted against the government, and others for loyalty to their government. Whatever the reason, about half of them provided their names.

“That does it,” Rhodes said. Leaving his platoon, he rejoined Command Sergeant Damm and handed him the list of names. Each sergeant ran back to his respective platoon.

“Now Command Sergeant Damm will call your name. When you receive your ammunition, you will fall into formation behind him. Those of you that did not provide your name will close the ranks and maintain formation until you’re dismissed to return to your families.”

Stephen was an educated man and had a tremendous sense of patriotism. What was happening right now was both patriotic and uncomfortable. He was surprised at the number of soldiers that were remaining in formation. He was concerned that he would be labeled as unpatriotic for not fighting the good fight with Damm. He had no intention of working against liberty, but he was deeply concerned for the welfare of Sam and Evan. His neighborhood was not a safe place before martial law went into effect. Now, he feared they might have ventured out to Gorham without him.