A War of Shadows

ELEVEN

He was in a hazy fog, vaguely aware of what was going on but unable either to do much about it or to care very much. The drug was a minor hypnotic rather popular with the young; you floated, you felt wonderful, everything looked beautiful, and you didn’t think but were willing to be led around or do anything you were told. In the popular culture two people took it, whispered wonderful things about love or sex or something in a nice, quiet room, then acted out their fantasies until, in a couple of hours, they went to sleep and woke up feeling great.

Like most such substances, its popularity sprang from the fact that the average person’s life is simply too damned boring. And, it was true, the stuff didn’t hurt you at all—but it had one nasty little effect, being a hypnotic. You were totally open to suggestion and unfiltered outside stimuli; in wrong or, worse, sadistic hands, you were strictly at the mercy of whoever was around.

It was a handy little drug for an underground force.

So he’d cheerfully gone with the nice people, with vague, blurry memories of a long car ride to a small private airfield, and from there into a plane with numerous other people. Then he was asleep.

In between the periodic dosages administered in cups of juice or even water, there were occasional flashes but not much else. A seaplane landing, a ship pickup on the ocean, a voyage of who knew how long, a landing on some deserted shore, more flights, funny-looking people with strange languages and accents—but all of it ran together and none of it made much sense.

Sam Cornish awoke. It was a gentle awakening as if from a deep and restful sleep; he yawned, stretched, and felt really good.

He was strapped in a plane seat and was in the air somewhere. It was a very old crate; there was a lot of vibration and the interior hadn’t been maintained in quite some time.

Looking around he saw a number of other men and women in the other seats, most sleeping deeply but a few awake and looking around or just staring.

For the first time he realized that all of the windows in the aircraft had been painted jet black. He looked over at the person in the seat next to him, a black man with a few streaks of gray in his kinky hair who was still sleeping, then turned to the window. He was still wearing the clothes he’d worn in the apartment back in West Newton. They, and he, smelled pretty gamy. He fumbled in his pockets, but there was nothing there. Wallet, penknife, everything had been taken.

He had fairly long nails, though, and found after a few tries that he could scratch off a little paint with his index fingernail. It was slow and frustrating, but he didn’t have anything else to do, anyway.

Finally he produced a tiny line of glass under the paint, and he leaned over and tried to see if anything was visible outside.

Either it was night out there or else they’d painted the outside, too. All was still blackness.

He sighed and settled back. There was nothing to do but wait.

After a while more and more of the passengers came awake. Finally the man next to him stirred, blinked, and sat up, looking around at the plane and then at Sam. His expression was more thoughtful than puzzled.

“Very efficient,” he mumbled at last. “Much better than the old days.” His voice was deep and rich, and there was the slight trace of a West Indian accent in it.

“I think we could all use showers, though,” Sam said, trying to open a dialog.

The other man nodded, then smiled wistfully, as if remembering. “Even so, back in the old days we used to have to go under for weeks.” He chuckled. “I often wondered why the pigs never caught us by our stench alone.”

“Who were you with?” Sam asked.

“The Black October Brigades,” the man said. “You?”

He shrugged. “A number of different groups. Synergistic Commune Action Brigade was the last one.”

The other nodded again. “I remember that. Jim Foley and I were in Cuba for a while together a few years back. Whatever happened to him, anyway? I got a little fed up cutting sugar cane and came back, but he stuck it out. Never thought somebody like him would stay—drives you nuts.”

“He didn’t,” Sam Cornish said then checked himself. No names had been released on that California raid; he wasn’t supposed to know about Foley. A slight tinge of fear rose inside him and he suddenly realized how easily he could betray himself, and how fatal that would be. His mind raced.

“I got word from some mutual friends that he was back in action again,” he managed. “I don’t know much else, but I did hear he was back in action.”

That seemed to satisfy the other and he let it drop, looking around. “Several familiar faces here,” he noted, “and a few who might just be familiar. I think a lot of plastic surgery has been done.”

“And a lot of years have passed,” Sam pointed out. “Less hair, dental work, and a decade can do a lot. I know it did for me.”

The dark man sighed. “Don’t I know it. This hair is grayer than it looks, and these wrinkles and vein pop-ups are constant reminders. What happened to us, I wonder? We believed so damned much in all of it. It’s not much better now than it was then, but here we are, here we all are, out of it and domesticated.”

Sam knew what he meant better than the other understood himself. Here, on this plane, were a bunch of overage radicals, ages from the mid-thirties to almost fifty. From their college days and into their mid-twenties they’d been committed, fanatical firebrands, but, slowly, and not usually from a clear cause as his had been, they’d retreated from the front lines. The job was left to the newer, younger radicals whom they didn’t even understand, couldn’t even talk to.

“I think it’s a lot of things,” he said. “In my case I was just plain tired. After all, I’m human, like you, like everyone. You can only hit, run, live forever fearing the knock on the door, in a constant state of tension, for so long. It gets to you the older you get.”

The other man shrugged. “I don’t know about that. I suspect it was as much our small numbers and lack of unity. We kept our groups very small to minimize betrayal, and that worked well enough, but we never got together, never got a common program, and, worse, were so far underground we couldn’t recruit our own replacements.” He grew less reflective, more serious. “I think that’s what this is all about.”

Sam Cornish’s eyebrows rose. “Huh?”

“Look around you,” the man said, gesturing with his right arm. “A lot of folks from the old days. Suppose some of these younger cult-groups and the remaining members of the old guard could be brought together under a single unified structure, a common program, with proper money and support?” His eyes gleamed. “Why, man, we could take over anything!”

Sam shrugged. “Who knows? I think we’ll find out in a little bit, though. My ears just popped and I think the plane’s banking for an approach.”

It was true. Almost as he finished saying those words they heard the thump, thump, of the landing gear being lowered and locked, and within a minute or so more they were on the ground, there was the rush of engines reversing, and the plane slowed to a crawl and began to taxi.

It was a short ride on the bumpy ground until the plane stopped with a jerk and a groan. Most of the people were awake now, many talking in hushed whispers, but all eyes were looking forward to the pilot’s cabin and the door just before it.

Now the cabin door opened and a bearded young Latin-looking man in olive drab fatigues emerged and opened the door. The engines shut down, and when the door opened a blast of tremendously hot, dry air rushed in. The temperature in the cabin rose tremendously.

A stair or ramp of some kind was quickly attached and there were footsteps running up to the plane. A thin, small woman in fatigues entered, shook hands with the crewman, exchanged a few words they couldn’t make out, then walked back to the main passenger cabin, stopping at the galley.

Cornish wasn’t the only one who noticed four V-shaped chevrons in dark red on her left sleeve. She was tanned darkly, but could have been any nationality with European antecedents. Sam guessed she was no more than twenty-five.

Her voice was deep, rich, and loud, and had the ring of confident authority. “Welcome to Camp Liberty,” she announced. She sounded like she was from Kansas or another of the midwestern states—neutral, a little nasal, and totally American. “I am Sergeant Twenty-Four. As far as you are concerned, that will be the only name you’ll ever hear. All of you will receive code names and/or numbers here. Stick to them and do not use any other. You will be training with, and trained by, literally hundreds of freedom fighters from around the world. Naturally, when we go into action, a few of us may wind up in enemy hands. If so, you will be placed under conditions where you might tell all you know. Because of this, you will know what you need to know and nothing else. That way no one can betray another.”

The man next to Cornish chuckled. “You see?” he murmured. “Organization. Yes, sir, real pros.”

“Camp Liberty is a military camp and is run as such,” the woman went on. “You are all now in the Liberation Army. In the times ahead, we will train you, equip you, and weed out those who can and will carry out the armed struggle and those who can or will not do so.”

Sam felt slightly ill, not entirely from the building heat and effects of little to eat and drug suppression. There was very little doubt in his mind as to what would happen to those these people found could not or would not aid in the struggle. Everyone there was a non-person, someone easily and efficiently eliminated.

“You have many long and hard days and nights ahead of you,” the sergeant warned. “However, you are among friends, people from across the globe committed to eliminating the fascist corporate states who still dominate the world. In the past you worked alone or in small groups, and you know what that got. Publicity, and little else. Now, this time, we are in a different position. Revolution not only within our lifetime, but within the year.”

She went on and on with it, but Sam was tuning her out rather quickly. A fanatic like those in the past; her face shone with vision and purpose, and the rhetoric was the same.

It was getting damned hot, and sweat was pouring out of most of them. He was uncomfortable and he itched. He admired the way this overdressed young revolutionary seemed oblivious to all that, and, indeed, oblivious to the discomfort and boredom of her passengers, all of whom had also heard this or said this long before, when this woman was a pigtailed elementary schooler.

“I wish she’d run down,” he whispered to his seat companion out of the side of his mouth.

“I think this is the start of it,” the other said in the same hushed tone and manner. “She wants to see who the troublemakers are at the very beginning, who can’t take this and who can.”

Sam sank back in his seat and wiped the perspiration from his brow. They’d even taken his handkerchief.

The other man was right, though. The more she droned on, the clearer it became to everyone that they were in a contest, the sergeant in those heavy fatigues versus those in regular clothes in the plane. Suddenly he noticed the plane crew in the background. The fellow who’d opened the door was standing there with a clipboard, eyes looking around at the passengers. Every once in a while he’d jot something down.

The other two of the crew, both of the same type and background as the man with the clipboard, stayed for a little bit, then walked out and down the ramp.

Sam began to be amused by it as time wore on. The woman started slurring her words slightly, and seemed uncomfortable and a little dizzy. She kept recovering, but these flashes were coming more and more frequently now, and her uniform was drenched. Finally she admitted defeat and wound it up.

“You will now exit the plane from the front. When you get to the door, Navigator Nine Sixteen will hand you a card with your own identity for the duration of this exercise. Memorize it, learn to use it exclusively for your own sake later on.”

They disembarked. When Sam passed the navigator he was handed a little white index card on which was printed 2025. Easy enough number, he thought, and went out.

It was even worse under the sun, but it was dry as hell and with a slight wind. The greedy dry air sucked up much of his perspiration.

They were in a desert, that was for sure. Whitish sand was everywhere in great dunes and depressions, with no features and no signs of living things.

The sand was hard-packed right here, though, and felt solid as a rock. Somebody had put down a paved runway and a little bit away was Camp Liberty.

It looked like something out of an old desert movie combined with a cheap war picture. Lots of large tents all over, interspersed here and there with old-type quonset huts, buildings of tin that looked like the upper half of buried tubes.

There were lots of people about, all wearing either the military fatigues and boots of the sergeant and flight crew or olive tee-shirts and shorts. Some wore armbands of one sort or another, and all wore incongruous-looking hard khaki-colored Jungle Jim hats. Men and women were about equal in number.

They headed first for a large tent nearest the plane, directed by a few uniformed people. They didn’t enter, though. Instead they were broken up into groups of ten, equally male and female, and made to stand there a bit more. The sorting was by number.

There were eight groups, he counted. Eighty old revolutionaries on that plane.

Now a big man and a husky woman in uniform emerged from the tent. They went to the first group, and the man, in a Slavic-sounding accent, said, “You will follow us, please.”

As soon as the first group was away, the second was met by another man-woman team, and then it was his turn.

An Oriental-looking man and a tiny black woman were his group’s caretakers, and both had soft but definite accents as well.

“You will follow us,” the woman commanded in an accent that was somewhat African-English with traces of French. They followed, all feeling like they would drop any second.

Several hundred meters later they reached another large tent.

“As I call your number,” the Oriental man said, “you will enter, disrobe completely, then enter the shower and rinse completely. When you emerge, you will give your number to the person there and they will give you a box with your number on it. Go out the back, dry off with the towels there as necessary, unpack the box and put on the top set of garments in the box. We will be there to take you farther.”

There was a big bin inside into which they shed clothes, then walked to a set of a dozen or so showers fed by large tanks plainly in view. They were not on; water was to be conserved here. You went in, turned one on, and bathed in the cool liquid using a little bit of gummy-looking soap, rinsed, turned off the shower, and walked out the back.

There was some grumbling from a couple of the people at being pushed around, but all realized that they were there by choice, and they had no other option.

Sam took the box marked 2025 and walked back outside, still nude. He felt slightly embarrassed and uncomfortable standing nude like that, although he was in exceptional condition and almost nobody paid him any mind. Old conditioning dies hard, he thought in self-reproach.

The top clothing proved to be one of the hard hats with his number stencilled on it, the tee-shirt and shorts, some short matching socks that seemed to cling, and a pair of low military-style boots. To his surprise, they all fit perfectly.

Finished, they lined up in front of their boxes.

“I am Sergeant Eight Eighty-One,” the Oriental man told them. “This is Sergeant Seven Sixty-Four. We are your training instructors. We will be living with you for the duration of your stay here, and we will chart your progress and go with you to classes and drills. Please feel free at any time not in class or drill to ask us any questions you like or to register complaints, make comments, et cetera, et cetera.”

A woman about thirty-five, small, plain, with short-cropped reddish-brown hair, spoke up. “Sergeant, will we get to eat and rest?”

The Oriental nodded almost imperceptibly. “Yes, yes. First we will go to our living quarters, your new home, and store your boxes. Then we will eat, then sleep. Tomorrow you will awaken before dawn to start. Most of our physical program will be done very early, very late, or at night. Midday, as you can imagine, is rather too hot for this, and that time you will spend inside at classes. Any other questions?”

One thin, tall, lanky man raised his hand and was recognized with a nod.

“Where are we, and how long will we be here?” he asked.

“You are in Africa. As to exactly where, that you will never know. You will be here as long as it takes. If you all progress at the correct rate, a few weeks at best. Remember, though, that you are older than many of our recruits, and unused to our ways. Also, you are, on the whole, in less than the best shape. This program is designed to help you survive when you go back into action. Once back into action, you will be in small groups, on your own, as you used to be, the difference being that you will be part of a larger and well-coordinated infrastructure. Together, we will accomplish the impossible, and we will do it quickly and effectively. Together, we will accomplish the collapse of the fascist corporate state of the United States of America, and when it tumbles the world will quake so much from its fall that those of us who survive will truly see the revolution for which we’ve prayed so long.”

The food was typical field kitchen stuff. What it was and how it had gotten into that condition were total mysteries. They were starved, though, and it tasted just fine.

Sam had a bad night of it. His own inner fears combined with his personal demons. He did not cry out—some subliminal self-preservation brake kept that from happening—but he saw it all once again: the plane, the launcher, Suzanne Martine’s ecstasy as the great airliner exploded…

He awoke several times in his hammock, staring. By the time the two sergeants came to get them up at 4:30 A.M. he guessed he’d slept less than three hours.

Breakfast wasn’t great, either—powdered eggs, some tough sort of meat, and a vitamin-fortified juice that tasted like rotten tomatoes. It filled, though, and then they went to work.

In the gloom and through sunrise they did basic calisthentics right out of gym class, running, jumping jacks, pushups and situps, the whole routine, until their bodies ached from it. Sam alone had no real problems; he was in superb physical condition and found the exercises refreshing and effortless. The two sergeants were duly impressed.

Another shower, some coordination drills to instill teamwork, and then it was time for class.

The indoctrination lecturer was a matronly woman of late middle years with a Russian accent, although she made it clear that they were not working for the U.S.S.R.

“Camp Liberty was not established by any of the major powers,” she told them. “Instead, it is a project of a number of radical revolutionary third-world nations working in concert, financed in part by the patriotic work of brigades around the capitalist world and by some excess revenue from some of those states better endowed with natural resources. We look upon the U.S.S.R. and the People’s Republic of China as stalled regimes, continually reactionary once the elite assumed power. They are better than the U.S.A, of course, but only in degree, and we shall attend to them in due course. However, it is the U.S.A. that has only a sixteenth of the world’s population yet consumes a fourth of its resources. It is the principal cancer holding back the attainment of basic human rights to food, shelter, and protection throughout the less fortunate nations of the world. Remove it, and you excise eighty percent of the cancer.

“However,” she continued, “we wish to remove it without placing the entire world in the center of a war it has avoided for decades. Atomic rain benefits no one, for there would be no one left. As a result, this project was established by progressive theorists. To the capitalists of America, the enemy remains totally mysterious. They cannot attack or threaten or pressure or cajole when they do not know whom to do it to. In the meantime they are being shown up as impotent fools, and already America is taking its first steps toward becoming a fascist state in day-to-day practice. We will let it continue, while the people chafe under true dictatorship for the first time.

Then, suddenly, we—you here, and the others who have passed through this camp—will strike, massively, despite all of their militaristic repression. Out of the rage at their heavy-booted impotence will come the popular revolution many thought impossible.”

During the questions, one thirtyish man with a southern accent stood.

“I’m an American, born and reared,” he told her, the implication that she was not obvious in his tone. “I firmly believe that the American just doesn’t think in those terms. That’s why I quit the Movement. All we were doin’ by our little bombin’s was to entrench the government in power. It’s the lack of pressure, good and uneventful times, that make Americans forget about their nationalism. How can this work now?”

She didn’t seem upset at the question. “First of all, Americans have never before experienced true repression. The poor may be starving to death, but they are free to gripe all the way to the grave, which is what keeps things as they are. We have induced a situation where, now, for the first time, they are finding out what it means to be dictated to, to have the Army and a single group run them. Since it is in power to serve the corporations and bankers, it is those institutions who will be protected and prosper; the individual will simply get stepped on, constantly. This will fuel revolutionary fires. And as for there not being a revolutionary spirit there—well, the U.S.A. was founded in popular, bloody revolution although it was perverted in the hands of the merchant and slave-owner aristocracy who seized control. And as late as the 1930s, under the Depression, granges and collectives in South Dakota took up the red banner and had to be suppressed by federal troops. The seed is there, it needs only to be fertilized and nurtured to grow.”

There was more. This was only the introductory phase and it only spelled out the theories. Sam realized that he could only place two people in the camp, old revolutionary hands he knew more from the newspapers than experience. He didn’t know who these people were, where he was, what countries were involved, or anything.

Some spy, he thought glumly.

The next class, in another tent, was on modern counterinsurgency techniques. They sat again in folding chairs and waited for another lecturer to come in.

Finally, she did. A small woman, exotic and dark complected who moved with the grace of a cat to the front, where she turned and looked them over.

Sam Cornish could only stare at her, a knot forming in his stomach and a tingling coming over his body. His mind raced and couldn’t settle; he was numb, overcome.

After a decade, Suzanne Martine was as beautiful as ever.