Phoenix Rising: Page 5

  Not one of the group who identified themselves as Phoenix Rising, disagreed with Jake.

  That had been an earlier discussion. At the moment though, Jake Lantz and Bob Varney were at the Mobile airport. When Mobile was freed from the State Protective Service there were several aircraft there that were returned to their original owners. One was a business jet, a Cessna Citation 10 which belonged to Vaughan Charter. Jake and Bob had arranged for Dick Vaughan to fly them to the five military bases in order to enter into conversation with the patriots who now occupied them.

  The fastest business jet in the world, the Citation 10 is a six hundred mile per hour aircraft so that wheels up to wheels down between Mobile and Pensacola was a matter of minutes only. Landing on Runway 7R, Vaughan was able to take the A5 exit, then he taxied back down the A taxiway to Base Ops. There were at least half a dozen men standing out front, waiting for them. Jake opened the door and stepped down, followed by Bob, and then by Vaughan.

  A short, grey-haired man stepped forward. “I’m Hi Gurney,” he said as he extended his hand in greeting.

  “Mr. Gurney, I’m Jake Lantz.” Jake took Gurney’s hand, then introduced Bob and his pilot.

  “Come on in, have some coffee with us and we’ll talk about things,” Gurney invited.

  “Will your plane need servicing?” one of the others asked.

  “No, thanks, it’s good,” Vaughan said. “General, I’ll wait out here with the plane,” he added to Jake.

  “All right,” Jake said.

  “General, huh?” one of the men with Gurney said. “Well you two should get along fine. Hi was an admiral.”

  Jake chuckled. “Then you’ve got me ranked, Admiral. I was a major in the pre-O days. This gentleman, who is the provisional president of United Free America, appointed me general in our provisional army.”

  “I’m sure it was a wise appointment,” Gurney said. He looked at Varney for a moment. “You have the look of a military man about you. Would I be wrong if I guessed that you were in Vietnam?”

  “Three tours, Admiral,” Bob said. “I was a warrant officer.”

  “Aviator?”

  Bob nodded. “Helicopter pilot.”

  “And a damn good one too,” Jake said. “I’ve seen him operate.”

  Gurney led them into a lounge area in the operations building where a pot of coffee and the fixings sat on a table. After a moment of filling cups and adding milk and sugar, they settled into cushioned chairs and sofas to talk.

  “I’m aware of what you folks are doing over there in Alabama,” Gurney said. “And I was pleased when you contacted us and said you wanted to drop by for a visit. I’ve been thinking that there must be a way we can help each other.”

  “Have you heard from any of the other people here in Florida?” Jake asked. “How many would you say support your movement?”

  “I’d say most of the people who live north of I-4 support us,” Gurney said. “Those south of I-4 are primarily the ones who put that bastard in the White House in the first place, and a hell of a lot of them still support him.”

  “Have you ever thought about breaking off North Florida from the southern part of the state?”

  “I’ve never really given it much thought,” Gurney said.

  “Think about it,” Jake said. “Do that. Form your own state, then come join us as a state in the UFA?”

  “UFA?”

  “United Free America,” Jake said. “Part of the reason we’re making this trip is to get into contact with other independent groups to invite them to join us.”

  “You think there is a chance for such a thing?” Gurney asked.

  “I do. Fort Benning, Keesler and Barksdale Air Force Bases, and Fort Rucker are all controlled by patriots. And we have a destroyer, the John Paul Jones, that is on patrol right now in the Gulf, keeping an eye on the off-shore gas and oil platforms.”

  “Historically, the military bases have been in the South,” Bob added. “So getting control of them shouldn’t be that hard.”

  “And Ohmshidi has no army as such,” Jake said. “All he has are the State Protective Service and the Janissaries.”

  “Yes, but from what I’ve heard, he has over a million of them,” Gurney said. “And you have to give the son of a bitch credit, he has started rebuilding, he’s bringing their economy back, and he has all the gold in Fort Knox to back him.”

  “Not all the gold in Fort Knox,” Bob said with a chuckle.

  “What do you mean?”

  Jake laughed as well. “What our president means is that one of our very first operations was to relieve Fort Knox of some of its gold.”

  “Good heavens! For real? How much did you get?”

  “In the neighborhood of 50 billion in pre-O dollars,” Bob said.

  Gurney whistled softly. “That’s a damn good neighborhood,” he said.

  “We’re using it to back our printed currency.” Bob pulled out his billfold, then took out a bill. “Here is an example of the bills. We are only printing one, five, ten, and twenty dollar bills. No coinage at all.”

  “This is a good-looking bill,” Gurney said. The bill he was holding was a five dollar bill. “Feels good, too.”

  “Seventy-five percent cotton and twenty-five percent linen,” Bob said, “just as in the pre-O currency. And, every dollar is backed by gold.”

  “I see you have Reagan’s picture on the five. Who do you have on the other bills?”

  “Eisenhower is on the one, Truman is on the ten, and Bob Hope is on the twenty.”

  Gurney smiled. “Bob Hope?”

  Bob nodded. “My father saw him in North Africa during World War II, and I saw him twice in Vietnam. I don’t think we’ve made a medal high enough to honor him.”

  “I can’t say as I disagree with you,” Gurney said.

  “What about it, Admiral?” Jake asked. “Are you with us?”

  Gurney nodded his head. “Damn right I am. Whatever it is you have planned, count me in.”

  CHAPTER SIX

  Dothan, Alabama

  As he shot baskets, sixteen-year-old Troy Jackson bobbed and weaved about on the blacktop pad near the chain-link fence that surrounded the grounds of the Dothan High School. Faking around an imaginary defender, Troy went high for a perfect layup. Troy had been a pretty good basketball player in the pre-O time. He had played on the eighth grade team and the JV team. He would have moved up to varsity the next year, had the country not collapsed under Ohmshidi.

  He had thought his dreams of playing basketball were over, but the movement that had started down in Gulf Shores, Alabama went on to free Mobile, and was gradually moving north so that it now incorporated Dothan as well as several other nearby towns, such as Newton, Enterprise, Ozark, and Troy, even as far north as Montgomery. It was beginning to look as if he might have a chance to play varsity basketball after all.

  He had just rebounded a missed three-point attempt, when he saw a truck coming very slowly up the drive toward the school entrance. The driver, a swarthy man wearing an eye patch, looked like a pirate. Troy paid particular attention to the truck because few trucks came this way, and one didn’t see a pirate every day.

  Troy waved at the driver. Instead of returning the wave, however, the driver looked away. Shrugging it off, Troy returned to his game. With his back to the goal, he dribbled, then pivoted around for a jump shot, getting all net. He smiled at the shot and wished that his father, who had played for Auburn, had seen this one.

  “Miss Margrabe! The truck!” a girl’s voice shouted.

  The girl’s shout, and the sudden racing of the engine caused Troy’s attention to be drawn back to the truck. He saw the truck moving swiftly across the grass, heading straight toward the fence that surrounded the school. There were several young students gathered just inside the fence and they turned to look, so surprised by the strange action of the truck that they were frozen into immobility.

  Troy recognized the danger at once. Dropping to the ground he rolled into a
tight ball with his arms folded over his head.

  The truck-bomb detonated at the fence.

  Troy felt the shock wave and the heat of the explosion. He was also bruised and cut by the detritus that fell on him, but he was not seriously injured. Eleven school children and one teacher, outside at the time and close to the fence, were not so lucky. They were killed, along with two others who died when the engine block of the truck crashed through the windshield of their car, just because they happened to be driving by on Highway 231 at exactly the wrong time. In addition to those killed, twenty-six children and three adults received injuries ranging in degree from Troy’s minor cuts and bruises, to four who were listed as critical.

  Fort Morgan

  When Jake and Bob returned from their recruiting tour that same day, they landed at the Mobile airport, then flew by helicopter across the bay to Fort Morgan. Bob and Ellen hosted the others for dinner that night, and he and Jake told his guests about their visits with other patriot groups.

  “Basically they have all agreed to join us,” Jake reported. “And what we have now is a military force awaiting only the command and structure that is necessary to bring them all together.”

  “We have an air force, an army, and a navy,” Bob said.

  “What is the size of our military?” Tom asked.

  “We did some figuring on the plane on the way back,” Bob said. “It looks like when we get everyone on board, we’ll have a combined force of a few thousand.”

  “A few thousand? That’s not a very large army,” Chris said.

  “Don’t look at it like that,” Jake said. “Look at the few thousand as a cadre around which we will build our military. Once we get things underway, I think we can use them as a magnet to attract others. I believe we will be able to develop a pretty sizeable military force rather quickly.”

  “Yes,” Bob said. “And one of the advantages we have, over anything that the AIRE has . . . is that we actually have most of the military equipment. When the US totally collapsed, the military left behind the very latest in helicopters, Humvees, armored personnel carriers, trucks, jet fighters, bombers, even UAVs. We don’t have a significant sea power yet, but we do have a navy base at Pensacola, we have a sheltered port at Mobile, and we have a ship building company in Pascagoula.”

  “Yeah,” Tom said. “When you look it like that, I think we can hold our own if anything happens.”

  After dinner they watched a newscast from CMN, the Columbia Muslim Network. The program began with a full screen shot of the new national flag. The words CMN, America Enlightened Truth Television were keyed onto the screen, replaced by the words Obey Ohmshidi, then a reverent voice over intoned the opening lines.

  “All praise be to Allah, the merciful. Whomsoever Allah guides there is none to misguide, and whomsoever Allah misguides there is none to guide. You must live your life in accordance with the Moqaddas Sirata, the Holy Path.Those who do will be blessed. Those who do not will be damned.

  “You are watching CMN. And now, our National Anthem.”

  As the music played, the national flag of the AIRE fluttered in the background, but, superimposed over the letter O, was Ohmshidi’s face. It remained prominent as the music began to play, the words sung by an all male chorus.

  American Islamic Republic of Enlightenment

  Our people loyal and true

  To Ohmshidi our Leader

  We give all honor to you.

  Glory to our great leader

  May he remain right and strong

  The party of the faithful

  Ohmshidi to lead us on!

  In Moqaddas Sirata

  We see the future of our dear land

  And to the Ohmshidi banner,

  In obedience shall we stand!

  Glory to our great leader

  May he remain right and strong

  The party of the faithful

  Ohmshidi to lead us on.

  When the anthem ended, the scene returned to the studio where a young woman was sitting behind a news desk. She was wearing a burqa and her face was covered so that only her eyes could be seen.

  “Obey Ohmshidi.

  “In Dallas today, two cowardly infidels murdered Grand Ayatollah Amar Shihad. Imam Shihad was on his way to the airport, to take a flight to Muslimabad where he was to have received the Ohmshidi Award of the Holy Path for his application of the Ultimate Resolution to the Christians and Jews of the Dallas–Fort Worth Metroplex.

  “In Dothan, Alabama, today, a brave martyr sacrificed himself for Allah and the glory of our beloved Glorious Leader, President for Life, Mehdi Ohmshidi, may he be blessed by Allah. The martyr, who is now in paradise, drove a truck filled with explosives into a schoolyard.

  “Several schoolchildren were killed, but it must be noted here that if the children had been in the Youth Confinement and Enlightenment Center as they should have been, none would have been killed. The fault therefore lies with those apostates and infidels who, in violation of what has been decreed by Glorious Leader, President for Life Ohmshidi, may he be blessed by Allah, have taken their children from an environment that would guide them along the path of Moqaddas Sirata, and exposed them to the heathen world.”

  The picture on the screen was replaced by a stylized portrait of Ohmshidi in a pensive pose, looking slightly up and to his left. The rendering was in red, beige, and blue, with the words Obey Ohmshidi underneath. The letter O in both words duplicated the new symbol.

  “In other news, the Organization of Islamic Cooperation announced that every member nation of the OIC will support the American Islamic Republic of Enlightenment’s petition to the United Nations for full status membership. The OIC had high praises for our beloved Glorious Leader, President for Life Mehdi Ohmshidi, may he be blessed by Allah, and said that to him goes the praise and credit for destroying the Satan that was the United States. In so doing, our beloved Glorious Leader, President for Life Mehdi Ohmshidi, may be blessed by Allah, removed a threat from the peace loving Muslim states of the world.

  “That is the news.

  “Obey Ohmshidi.”

  Bob clicked off the TV. “I don’t know who it was that killed that son of a bitch in Dallas, but here’s to them,” he said.

  “Yeah, we could use a few more like that,” Tom said.

  “I expect we have more like that than anyone knows,” Chris said.

  “I expect you are right,” Bob agreed.

  “But how many do we have like that bastard who killed the school kids in Dothan? I never, ever thought I would see the time when an American would become a suicide bomber.”

  “He wasn’t an American,” Chris said. “He gave up that designation as soon as he signed on to this Moqaddas Sirata nonsense. And when you think about it, it isn’t all that new. Even in the pre-O time we had them. It was my job to keep up with them. There’s Colleen Rose, she calls herself “Jihad Jane,” Daniel Patrick Boyed, Adam Gadahn, Abdul Yasin, Anwar Al-Awlaki, Omar Hammami, he was from right here in Alabama, John Walker Lindh, and David Headley, all born in America. Oh, and how can we forget Major Yusef Mahaz? How he shot up a processing center at Fort Eustis.

  “Mahaz doesn’t count. That was workplace violence, don’t you remember?” Tom asked sarcastically.

  “Yeah, I remember,” Bob said with a mordant chuckle.

  “The point I’m making is this,” Chris said. “What we’re doing now is essentially the same thing that happened during the Civil War. We are trying to establish a new nation, carving a chunk out of what was the United States. And there’s no way we are going to be able to do this peacefully. There is going to be fighting, and it will be American against American.”

  “What do you think of that, Bob?” Jake asked. “Do you agree with Chris?”

  “I’m afraid I do agree with him,” Bob said.

  “What I’m worried about is, if it does come down to fighting, will our people fight against other Americans?” Jake asked. “That’s going to be asking an awful lot from
them.”

  “Jake, Americans fought against Americans in the Civil War, and ‘brother against brother’ wasn’t just an expression. There really were cases of brother against brother, and son against father,” Bob said.

  “But that didn’t stop the killing, did it?” Tom asked.

  “No. And as you know it was the most deadly conflict in our history. Estimates are that from 600,000 to 750,000 died in that war. Americans did a pretty good job of killing other Americans.”

  Bob’s comment was met with a stony silence.

  Hamburg, Germany

  American passports were no longer recognized and the government of AIRE had not yet issued passports. That was no problem for Sorroto who had a Swiss passport, and his own personal Boeing 787 aircraft with more than twice the range required to fly him from Springfield, Missouri to Hamburg.

  He was in Hamburg to donate ten million euros to the “Sorroto School of Business.” However, he was also here to meet with Dmitry Golovin. Golovin was a Russian general with whom Sorroto had been in contact. Golovin had the authorization of his government to meet with Sorroto, because Sorroto had promised to give ten million euros, which came to 360 million rubles, to a children’s hospital in Omsk, Russia.

  Sorroto and Golovin walked out onto the patio outside the Kuchenwerkstatt Gasthaus and over to the far corner where their conversation was masked by the sound of traffic on the autobahn.

  “I have five of them,” Golovin said.

  “How large are they?”

  “Three kilotons.”

  “No, I mean how much do they weigh? I don’t want them to be unwieldy.”

  “They weigh 140 kilograms.”

  “What is that in pounds?”

  “It is about 300 pounds.”

  “Then one person could not handle it.”