Foreign Enemies and Traitors (82 page)

“Are you sure?” asked Rogan.  “What about the other guy?”

The black man said, “If he’s with Boone and Ira, then he’s okay.  Ira Hayes Gersham and Boone Vikersun!  Damn, now we’re talking!”

Donelson spoke into the radio, and in a minute the three were led into the den via the back door and kitchen.  The men were all standing, exchanging animated greetings and hearty handshakes.  Several of them playfully grabbed Boone’s shoulder-length dirty blond hair.  He was easily the tallest man in the room, and with his wild hair and beard and flashing blue eyes, he really did give the appearance of a Viking raider. 

Cold bottles of beer were thrust into the newcomers’ hands.  Phil Carson was introduced to the men by Boone, who vetted his Special Forces credentials and his unquestionable trustworthiness.  A lingering air of reservation seemed to hover around the stranger, so Boone made a point of mentioning that Carson had served with his father in the same SOG Recon Team.  This recounting of history seemed to raise Carson above doubt.  The men were just naturally suspicious; it was an ingrained part of their makeup not to trust a recently met outsider.

The last visitors arrived soon after, including one man they all addressed as colonel, until he told them to knock it off, he was just Tom tonight.  This seemed difficult for the men, who continued to refer to him as colonel or awkwardly as Mr. Spencer.  The colonel was another six-footer, in his late forties, with a regulation military haircut that was gray on the sides.

Twelve men were finally assembled in the den; they ranged in age from their mid-thirties to Phil Carson at over sixty.  They were all active duty, reserve or retired Special Forces operators, or members of the 160th Special Operations Aviation Regiment.  They had been trying to continue their lives as normally as possible on Fort Campbell and around Clarksville, while Boone Vikersun had “gone operational” in resisting the foreign occupiers.  They listened with rapt attention as Boone described his recent experiences in West Tennessee.  They were particularly amazed by his recounting of their hijacking of the Kazak ASV, their pursuit, and their instigation of a running gun battle between the Kazak and Nigerian peacekeepers. 

****

Carson noted that the other men called their driver “Ira.”
  Nobody asked how Boone and Carson had managed to come to the meeting in Ira’s company.  Carson listened carefully, but nobody in the room called Ira by any other name.  He assumed Dewey Lieberman was an alias, based on the initials D.O.L. from the name on his truck.  The initials were an obvious coded reference to the Special Forces, but Carson had not mentioned it and Boone had not brought it up.  Ira’s cover as a salvage hauler and his operation of a clandestine evacuation network was never mentioned by the men in the room.  Carson was left to wonder if the other men knew about Ira’s secret work. 

Except for the muscular black soldier wearing a T-shirt, the men in the room were all dressed in a variety of boots or running shoes, jeans and windbreakers or parkas.  Loose, bulky clothes, which could conceal serious weaponry.  He could only guess who among them in the room was on active duty and who was retired, mostly judging by the length and grayness of their hair.  They ranged from super-fit to somewhat physically gone to seed.  Most appeared to Carson to be NCOs, but guessing at ranks was always a dubious undertaking.  He heard someone call their host Sergeant Major, and another man who arrived after them had been greeted as Colonel Spencer.

Apparently, rumors about the Kazak-Nigerian firefight were already floating around the local Special Forces community.  Carson heard them asking Boone, “So you started this fight between the Cossacks and the Nigerians?  You got the Kazaks to chase you through a Nigerian forward operating base?  That’s how it went down?  That’s just awesome, man!  Talk about a force multiplier—you guys practically started a war!” 

A pint bottle of dark beer clutched in his hand, Boone couldn’t help gloating a bit, but he was happy to share the credit with Carson.  “This old man here was driving that ASV like a maniac on crack.  I was just shooting up the countryside with the turret guns, until I ran out of ammo and fired off the smokes.  I swear, I think he killed more Cossacks and Nigerians by running them down than I got with the forty-millimeter and the fifty-cal combined.  I could hardly hold a sight picture, the way that ASV was knocking them down and rolling over their bodies.”  Bottles were raised and clinked in toast, and both Boone and Carson were subjected to congratulatory backslaps and arm punches, amidst broad grins and mock salutes.

It was Charlie Donelson’s house, so he finally addressed them as a group to bring the meeting to order, redirecting them back from the rising locker room victory atmosphere.  “All right, listen up.  I think everybody’s here who’s coming.  I know you’re wondering what this is all about, aside from Boone’s homecoming—which was a surprise to me too.  What’s the urgency?  What’s up with the dispersed arrivals, and the Sneaky Pete backdoor routine?  Just watch the computer screen, and you’ll find out.  That’s why you’re all here—to see a Predator video.  It was taken over Radford County on Saturday.  Get in close, and pay attention.”

“Where’s Radford County?” asked one of the men as they gathered by the computer desk.

Boone answered him.  “It’s southeast of Jackson, down near the Mississippi state line.  That’s in West Tennessee, on the other side of the river.  That was my area of operations.  I’m guessing that this video was taken outside a town called Mannville.”

“How the hell did you know that?” asked Rogan in surprise.  “Have you seen it already?  Damn!  And I thought we had the only copy.”

“No, I haven’t seen the video; I didn’t even know there
was
a video.  But I think I know where it was shot, because if it’s a video of the same thing—I was there.  Right there.  I even took pictures, and that’s why
I’m
here.  Charlie, have you got a cable that can jack this camera into your computer?  After we see the video, I’ll show you my pictures.  I’ll bet it’s of the same thing.”  He handed his silver digital camera to the sergeant major, since it was his house and his computer.

The muscular black NCO said, “Boone Vikersun was
there
!  I should have known.  Tell us about it, Boone, go ahead, tell us about it while we get your pictures loaded.”

“No, let’s see the video already!” said another.  “Boone can narrate it if he knows what went down.”

And that’s what they did.  Sergeant Major Donelson clicked the mouse and played the Predator video.  The condensed ten-minute film looped continuously while the visitors watched in stunned silence, their cheerful camaraderie blown away by its grim content.  Even seen from 15,000 feet up, there was no question about what had taken place in Radford County.  The mounted horse troops, with their infrared lights blinking Kilo in Morse code, left no doubt as to the identity of the perpetrators.  Hundreds of civilians were rounded up, put onto buses, driven away and shot, fifty or more at a time in a remote gully.  Afterward, they showed Boone’s still photos, his color close-ups from the massacre, in their gory, frozen detail.  There were over twenty sharp digital pictures on his camera, and the silent men watched them all in a slide show that played through several times.

The black NCO pointed to a dead Kazak soldier on the computer screen.  He was lying on his back wearing the Russian-style camouflage uniform, among the civilian corpses dusted in snow.  “I don’t understand.  You were there during the massacre?  How did you…”

“No,” said Boone, “I took these pictures at dawn on Sunday morning.  Yesterday.  The massacre happened on Saturday afternoon.  Saturday night I got intel about it from a survivor, an eyewitness.  So I was there doing photo recon Sunday morning when three Cossacks showed up to loot the bodies.  I was hiding right where they were bound to trip over me, so I had to kill them first.  I hid their bodies after I finished taking these pictures for proof.”

The black NCO’s eyes were welling up.  “You were down there fighting.  You were fighting, while we…while we…”  He couldn’t finish the sentence.

Hugh Rogan, the Warrant Officer 4 helicopter pilot, said, “That blue Eurocopter—I know I’ve seen that helo.  It’s from here.  It operates out of the back of Campbell Field, the old air strip.  The restricted end.” 

“Is that the Building 1405 crowd?” asked Colonel Spencer.

“I don’t know, but I can sure find out,” said Rogan.  “What’s the tail number?  Can we see the tail number in that picture?”

After they had watched the Predator film and seen the photos multiple times and heard Boone’s story, the now very angry men talked randomly and chaotically, venting their pent-up fury and frustration.  Finally the colonel said, “Listen, men, I don’t want to pull rank, but I think I’m starting to see the big picture here.  A few things are coming into focus for me.  Now, I think we should dispense with the distinction between active duty and retired, and officer and enlisted.  SF is SF, and I think we all know where this is going.  I’m counting you Night Stalkers from the 160th too, of course.  Nobody’s giving orders here; we’re past that, way past.  I left that at the door.  But I may know a few things from the message traffic that I’m privy to—and added to what we’ve just learned, I think I can see where this is heading.”

“Where’s that, sir?” asked Sergeant Major Donelson.

“For now, right back to Fort Campbell.  To U.S. Army North, the Fifth Army.  Northern Command, the homeland command.  NORTHCOM.  And maybe from there to the 101st, what’s left of it.  There are some people I know who should see this video, and these pictures.  People high up, who I trust to do the right thing with the information.  Or at least that I trust not to do the wrong thing.”

“How do you know you can trust them?”  The question could have come from any of the men.  NORTHCOM, a jumbled-up staff command, consisted of active duty and reserve units assigned to it on an ad hoc basis.  Some units assigned to NORTHCOM were even working together with the foreign “peacekeeping” forces.

Spencer answered, “The same way that we know we can trust each other.  I have some longtime close friends over there.  How many of you know General Lucian Armstead?”  There were a few nods of recognition.  Except for Phil Carson, they were all familiar with his name, his three-star rank and his position, but none of them had ever met him.  The colonel said, “Armstead’s the commanding general of NORTHCOM, headquartered right here at Fort Campbell ever since they got booted out of Texas.  General Lucian Armstead is the one who needs to see this video.  We need to focus our effort on him, and then we’ll know how to steer this thing.  If we can bring Armstead on board,
anything
is possible.  Anything.  Armstead meets regularly with the Joint Chiefs…and even the president.”

One of the men said, “That’s what we’re really talking about, isn’t it?  That’s where this has to go.  Straight to the president—to Jamal Tambor.  The traitor-in-chief.”

“Hey, that’s the president of the United States you’re talking about!” said another.

“I know it.  But the buck stops at the top, and nowhere else.”

“Still, you can’t say—”

“Can’t say what?  Can’t say that the president is a traitor?  That he’s wrecking this country on purpose, tearing it apart piece by piece?  That’s what I can’t say?”

“Whoa, whoa, hold your horses.  Don’t even go there!  I won’t be a part of any plot to take out the president.  No way.  Not even this president.”

Colonel Spencer said, “I agree, but for a different reason.  It wouldn’t work anyway; it would be counterproductive.  We need to discredit him, not make him a martyr.  We need to use this massacre video.  We can only destroy him and everything he represents with the truth—the truth that’s on these pictures and this video.”

Phil Carson knew only one man in the room, Boone Vikersun, and he had known him for only a few days.  Ira, AKA Dewey O. Lieberman, he had met just today.  The rest of the men were strangers to him on one level, but on another, they were not.  They were all Special Forces or other specops warriors.  They were part of an indivisible, unending community, stretching in an unbroken line back to his tours in Southeast Asia and beyond. 

After they had finished watching the video and his pictures, the men continued their discussion away from the computer, standing mostly around a circular poker table that dominated the middle of the den.  While they argued, Phil Carson meandered around the perimeter of the wood-paneled room.  He heard them, but didn’t follow who was saying what because he didn’t know them.  Like many homes of military men he had visited over the years, the shelves and walls of this den were packed with military memorabilia.  Framed group photos of old A-teams, plaques commemorating foreign visits and old unit assignments.  A Kevlar helmet, a chromed dagger stuck into a black rock like Excalibur.  Small statuettes of soldiers, helicopters and military vehicles.  The overloaded bookshelves leaned heavily toward history, aviation, weaponry and military special operations.  He recognized many of the titles, had read a few, and would have liked to borrow some.  Behind him, the arguing continued and intensified.  They were not all men of the South; many regional accents were represented.

“You know, the government will consider what we’re doing to be treason if we even
think
about moving against the president.  They’ll call us traitors.” 

“Sorry, Jack, too late—I called
him
a traitor first.  I mean, the president invited foreign troops in to kill Americans—we just saw it with our own eyes!  And do you know how they pay off these foreign troops?  They’re paid with land, American land!  Selling America by the acre to foreign enemies—what do you call that, if that’s not treason?”

“But he’s still the president!  He’s the commander-in-chief, so he’s authorized to sign treaties, and Congress—”

“Congress is not authorized to sell pieces of America to foreign mercenaries, mercenaries like the Cossacks who we just saw massacre hundreds of Americans!  That’s treason, whether it’s coming from the Capitol, the White House …or the Pentagon.”