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  Chris walked right up to the man reading, shot him, then shot the two sleeping guards.

  Gregoire, who had been awakened, stepped up to the bars and looked out with curiosity.

  “Who are you?” Gregoire asked.

  “Let’s just say I’m a fan of yours, Mr. Gregoire, and I don’t want to see you get your head chopped off tomorrow.” Chris took the keys from the desk. “Oh, and don’t let the fact that I’m dressed like a Muslim fool you. I just wear this shit to get by.”

  “I don’t know if there are any more guards in the building or not,” Gregoire said.

  “I think I’ve killed them all,” Chris said dispassionately as he unlocked the cell door.

  “How . . . how many have you killed?” Gregoire asked.

  “You mean today?”

  Gregoire shook his head. “Never mind,” he said. “I have a feeling this is something I don’t need to know.”

  “Come on.”

  Chris led Gregoire downstairs, then out to the car.

  “What about the man at the gate?” Gregoire asked.

  Chris glanced at his watch. “If I’m guessing right, it’ll be another half hour before the relief is scheduled, so if we’re lucky, they haven’t discovered him yet.”

  As they drove through the gate, Chris looked into the gate box. “Yeah, see, he’s still asleep.”

  “You mean he’s been asleep all this time.”

  “He’ll be sleeping for a very long time.”

  “Oh.” Gregoire didn’t have to say anything else, he had a pretty good idea of what Chris meant. “Where are we going?”

  “To tell the truth, I don’t have an idea in hell. My only thought was to get you out of here.”

  “I have a suggestion if you’re up to it.”

  “Sure, let me go pick up a friend first.”

  Half an hour later, Chris parked in front of the motel room he and Kathy had rented in Alexandria.

  “Wait here for a second while my friend gets dressed,” he said.

  Gregoire stood in the shadows against the front of the building while Chris opened the door, then stuck his head in.

  “Kathy, I need you to get decent,” he said. “We have company.”

  “Company?” Kathy’s sleepy voice replied from the darkness.

  “Yeah, get dressed, we’re going to take a trip.”

  “I’ll dress in the bathroom,” Kathy said. “Am I a man or a woman?”

  Chris laughed. “You’re a woman, darlin’, all woman. And no burqa.”

  Kathy grabbed a suitcase and disappeared into the bathroom. Chris stuck his head back outside. “Okay, come on in.”

  Chris turned the light on, and invited Greg to have a seat. “Want a drink?” he asked.

  “A drink?”

  Chris pulled a bottle of whiskey from a bag. “Just because the Muzzies say we can’t drink doesn’t mean you can’t still get it,” he said.

  “You know what, I think I would love a drink,” Gregoire said, and Chris poured a little into one of the glasses that sat on the desk. Kathy came out of the bathroom then, wearing a western-style dress.

  “Oh, my God!” she gasped when she saw Gregoire. She put her hand over her mouth. “You’re . . .”

  “Yeah, that’s who he is, all right,” Chris said, smiling. “George Gregoire, this is Kathy.”

  “I’m pleased to meet you, Kathy.”

  “I’m such a fan of yours!” Kathy said. “I can’t believe you are here. What are you doing here?”

  Gregoire smiled. “Well, I was just sitting around minding my own business when Chris stopped by and invited me to go with him. I didn’t have anything else to do, so I said, ‘Sure, why not?’”

  Kathy laughed. “That’s what you meant when you said he wasn’t going to get his head cut off, isn’t it. Oh, Chris, I love you!” Kathy kissed him.

  “Well, now, I’m glad you did that, Kathy. I wanted to, but I didn’t think it would be appropriate, I mean, us both being men and all.”

  “We have to get out of here,” Chris said.

  “All right,” Kathy said.

  They stepped back outside and Gregoire started toward the Ford.

  “Wrong car,” Chris said.

  “Oh, I thought this is the one we came in.”

  “It is, but that doesn’t mean it’s the one we have to leave in. Pick us one out, Kathy.”

  “How about that gray Honda?”

  “Yes, that’s pretty nondescript,” Chris said. He pulled a flat piece of metal from his pocket, stuck it down in the window, and popped the lock. He opened the door and the horn began to honk and the lights flash, but he reached under the dash and stopped it almost instantly. He signaled to the others and they climbed into the car. Again, Chris reached under the dash, connected a piece of wire, and started the car.

  “I shouldn’t be impressed by such a thing,” Gregoire said. “But I have to admit, I am.”

  “Chris can pick any lock,” Kathy said proudly.

  “I believe it.”

  “Now, George,” Chris said as he pulled out of the parking lot. “You said you had a suggestion as to where we might go.”

  “Yes,” Gregoire said. “There are some people down in Alabama who have broken away and formed their own country. They call it United Free America.”

  “What part of Alabama?”

  “Everything south of Mobile.”

  Kathy laughed. “I didn’t think there was anything south of Mobile.”

  “Oh, yes, there’s Gulf Shores,” Chris said.

  “Have you ever been there?” Gregoire asked.

  “Yes, but it’s been quite a few years. If they’ve broken away, what makes you think they’ll let us in?”

  “Because I have some information that I think they would like to know,” Gregoire said, mysteriously.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

  Fort Morgan

  “Son of a bitch!” Jake said angrily. “Are you telling me that this country actually has concentration camps for Jews, like they had in Germany during the war?”

  “Well, not exactly like that,” Sam said. “As far as I know, they have no gas chambers. And we were adequately fed.” He smiled. “But they did work the devil out of us. Have you ever chopped cotton?”

  Jake chuckled. “I never did, but my dad did, and he told me about it.”

  Sam and Sarah had arrived the day before, and were given an apartment right next to Tom and Sheri in the row of connected rooms that had been built when Jake and his team first arrived.

  “I’ll have to find some way to earn my keep,” Sam said.

  “Ha, I have just the job. We have money now. I’ll have Bob appoint you as Secretary of the Treasury. That will be a paying position.”

  “Secretary of the Treasury?”

  “Well, yeah, I mean, you’re Jewish aren’t you? And everyone knows that Jews are good with money.”

  “Jake!” Karin scolded.

  Sam laughed. “If anyone else said that, I’d be offended. But I am good with money. And I do need a job.”

  Two days later, Chris, Kathy, and George Gregoire arrived at Gulf Shores. Gregoire created quite a stir when he arrived, so much so that a pot-luck dinner was held at the Holy Spirit Episcopal Church, which had also been the site of their declaration of independence. Gregoire was invited to speak, and though he only spoke for a few minutes, the audience was uplifted by his words, which concluded with:

  “I can tell you now that there are at least twenty other groups like yours, including one group of American Muslims who call themselves American Scimitars. And while none of these other groups have the geographical advantage you have in establishing your own country, they have been conducting guerrilla operations all over the country, with some success. You haven’t heard of it, of course, because none of the AIRE media has covered it. And I haven’t spoken of it over any of my broadcasts, because I didn’t want to take a chance on saying anything that might put these brave freedom fighters in jeopardy. But there
have been some highly visible operations, such as attacks on military convoys and bases, and against SPS squads acting as Sharia-compliance enforcement, as well as the neutralization of all the missile sites and nuclear weapons that were once in the U.S. arsenal.”

  “All of them?” Jake asked.

  Gregoire nodded. “Yes, all of them. I can tell you, with some authority, that AIRE does not have access to any nuclear weapons. Let me repeat that. AIRE has no nukes. We can thank God, and the wisdom of the American military who were in direct charge of those weapons. As soon as they saw the direction the country was going, they neutralized the weapons, doing so in such a way that none of them can be reactivated.

  “The most important figure in the so-called American Islamic Republic of Enlightenment is not Mehdi Ohmshidi. Ohmshidi is only the front man for a cabal of Islamic plotters who plan to establish a world caliphate where everyone will either conform to their religion, or be killed. And the principle spokesman for that group was a man named Mohammad Akbar Rahimi. He was the one who pulled the strings for Ohmshidi.”

  “Who?” someone asked.

  Gregoire smiled. “It’s no surprise that you have never heard that name, for his success depended upon being unknown, behind the scenes. But though you may never have heard of him as Mohammad Akbar Rahimi, you may have heard of him as Warren Church.”

  “Warren Church? You’re damn right I’ve heard of that son of a—” Remembering they were in a church, Tom stopped and covered his mouth in embarrassment. “I mean, yes, I’ve heard of him.”

  The others laughed.

  “You are speaking of him in the past tense,” Bob said.

  “Yes, I am. Rahimi is the one who ordered my arrest,” Gregoire said, “and he was the one who was going to have me beheaded. And he would have, had not a man in shining armor come along to slay, and I mean literally slay, the dragon. I’m talking about Chris Carmack.”

  Gregoire held his hand out toward Chris, and the others applauded him.

  “All these groups I’ve spoken about, these freedom fighters, to the man and woman, are dedicated to the principle of taking our country back from the despots who have usurped control.

  “And I promise you, it will be done!”

  The applause that greeted his final words was thunderous, and for a while afterward, he stayed and met just about everyone who had come, one on one, signing hundreds of autographs.

  The next day Chris and Gregoire met with the group who now lived at Fort Morgan. They were here to discuss the information Gregoire had brought.

  “Before I was captured, I was acting as a clearinghouse for several other groups that are just like your group,” Gregoire said. “Well, not exactly like your group; you are the only ones who have actually declared your independence. You are probably also the group that is best situated to take advantage of a situation that is developing, a situation that can net you several million gallons of refined gasoline.”

  “Several million gallons?” Bob asked.

  “Twenty-one million gallons, to be exact,” Gregoire said.

  “How? I mean, where is this gasoline?”

  “It’s on board the Khoramashur, a tanker ship that will be coming into the port of New Orleans on the twenty-second of this month. There was some talk of capturing the tanker.”

  “The twenty-second is only twelve days from now,” Jake said. “That doesn’t give us much time to come up with a plan.”

  “Maybe not,” Bob said. “But twenty-one million gallons of gasoline would really be something. That would keep us going for a year.”

  “And we don’t have to come up with a plan,” Gregoire said. “We already have a plan. All we have to do is implement it.”

  “What is the plan?”

  “The tanker is being escorted by two destroyers,” Gregoire said. “They were formerly of the U.S. Navy, but now they belong to Iran. The officers of the tanker, and one of the destroyers, are Iranian. The crews of both the tanker and one destroyer are all Iranian as well. But the other destroyer, formerly named the John Paul Jones, now called the Shapur 1, has Iranian officers, but American crewmen, eighty percent of whom served on the old John Paul Jones. And that includes its former captain and executive officer.”

  “Would that be Stan Virdin?” Tom asked.

  “Yes, that’s the one,” Gregoire said. “You know him?”

  “Yes, I do. He was a damn fine officer.”

  “And a good American,” Gregoire said. “He is the one who came up with Operation Tight End.”

  Tom chuckled. “Still reliving his glory days, I see.”

  “Glory days?”

  “He was a tight end at the academy.”

  “All right,” Jake said. “Let’s hear about Tight End.”

  “Every American on board the Shapur 1 has pledged their allegiance to the revolution. They are going to take over the ship, then sink the other three destroyers. With the escort gone we can put an assault team on board the Khoramashur, then bring it to Mobile.”

  “Something like this is going to have to be well coordinated,” Jake said. “And I don’t see how we are going to be able to do that.”

  “Virdin has a satellite phone that nobody knows about.”

  “Then all we need to do is find a satellite phone.”

  “We have one,” Willie Stark said.

  “What? Since when? Where did we get a satellite phone? How did we get it?”

  Bob laughed out loud. “Jake, I could have used you when I owned the newspaper. You would have been a good reporter, you just demonstrated the formula for all news articles: what, when, where, and how.”

  Jake laughed as well. “They’re good questions, I can see why reporters ask them. What about it, Willie, can you answer them?”

  “Yes, sir. Well, you know what a communications geek I am. When we took Mobile, I found the phone in one of the police stations, so I took it.”

  “Good for you, Willie. That was pretty farsighted of you. I should have thought of that.”

  Willie laughed. “I have to confess there was nothing farsighted about it. I just wanted it, so I took it.”

  “Does it work?”

  “I’ve never tried to use it, but I have checked it over. Yes, it does work.”

  “Suppose we do get hold of Virdin, how will he know we are legitimate?”

  “Yes, well, we might have a problem there,” Gregoire said. “I was going to get an authenticator code, but I got captured before I did. And if he’s heard I was captured, he probably thinks the whole thing is off now.”

  “There’s no way he hasn’t heard you were captured,” Chris said. “When he got you, Ohmshidi figured he had such a coup that it was broadcast to the whole world.”

  “Maybe we can still pull it off,” Jake suggested.

  “Tom, how well do you know this guy?”

  “We were classmates,” Tom said.

  “Is there anything you can say to him, something that maybe only the two of you will know?”

  “Uh, yeah, there was that time in Norfolk that, uh, well, this was before Sheri and I were married, and it’s pretty embarrassing.”

  “Good,” Bob said.

  “What do you mean, good?”

  “If it’s embarrassing, that minimizes the chances of others knowing about it.”

  “Yeah, I guess you’re right.”

  “What is it?” Jake asked.

  “I don’t have to tell everyone, do I? At least, not until I actually have to use it.”

  The others laughed. “I guess not. All right,” Jake said. “We’re going to have to come up with our own plan as to how we take over the tanker. We’ll need to put enough men on board to do the job, and that will definitely take at least two helicopters. Bob, are you up to flying one of them?”

  “Damn straight I am,” Bob answered enthusiastically. “There is a Hughes 500 at the Mobile airport. We can get six in there. And twelve in the Huey.”

  “That’ll give us eighteen,” Tom said. “I d
oubt there are that many crewmen on board the tanker, and they for sure won’t be armed.”

  “Once we establish contact with Virdin, we’ll need to keep track of the location of the ships. We’ll hit them when they are about fifty miles off shore,” Jake said.

  “All right. All we have to do now is make contact with Virdin, and let him know our plans,” Bob said.

  Ten days later—at sea with the Shapur 1

  The convoy of the tanker and two destroyers were off the southern tip of Florida when Stan Virdin’s satellite phone vibrated in his pocket. Walking to a part of the ship where he could be relatively alone, he answered.

  “Virdin.”

  “1994. It was all your fault, Stan, if you had hung on to that short sprint-out pass, we would have been within field goal range, and we would’ve beaten Army twenty-three to twenty-two. But you dropped the ball and we lost twenty-two to twenty.”

  “I didn’t drop the ball. It was over my head.”

  “You could’ve caught it. You just didn’t try hard enough.”

  “Who the hell is this?”

  “Let’s see if this tells you anything. Norfolk, Virginia, August of ’96, we got drunk at the Red Dog and took a cab home.”

  Virdin was quiet for a moment, then he said, “Yeah? What’s wrong with taking a cab when you’re drunk?”

  There was laughter at the other end of the phone. “Because the next morning, neither one of us could remember where we left it.”

  Virdin laughed as well. “Hello, Tom. It’s been a while.”

  “It’s been too long,” Tom said. “But now that we’ve made contact, I hope it won’t be long before we get together. Say about fifty miles from port.”

  “What are you saying?”

  “What was the position you played? Tight end.”

  “I thought with principle gone, the deal was off.”

  “He’s not gone. He decided not to stick around.”

  “I’ll get in touch with you tomorrow,” Virdin said. “After.”

  After hanging up the phone, Virdin got in contact with the others on the crew who had been briefed on Operation Tight End.