Empire

Border crossing

Gathered in a classroom at Gettysburg College, Rube’s jeesh knew only two things: They were going to Lake Chinnereth, and they had to do it without anyone knowing they had entered the state of Washington on a military mission.

If they were caught, it would be taken as provocation. The governor had posted the National Guard at all the entrance points, with airplanes overflying the rest of the border, and boats patrolling the Columbia River.

As Drew said, “It plain hurts me to be looking at a map of part of the U.S.A. in order to figure out how we can get U.S. Army ordnance across a state boundary line undetected. This is just wrong. No matter who’s President, we should be able to tell them to get their little National Guard boys out of the way, we’re the American Army on American soil!”

The others could only agree.

But the job still had to be done, right away. “We can’t enter from Canada,” he said, “and I think we should avoid Oregon. We get spotted there, it’s almost as bad as Washington itself—their legislature is debating a resolution right now.”

“So,” said Mingo, “it’s Idaho or the Pacific Ocean.”

“Idaho,” said Arty. “I don’t know nothin’ ’bout boats.”

“You want boats, send Marines,” said Benny.

Most of them were looking at ordinary highway maps of the Idaho-Washington border. Load was flipping through a stack of U.S. Geological Survey maps. Drew had Google Maps and Google Earth up on his laptop.

“We’ve got to come in on a legitimate road,” said Cole, “because once we’re inside Washington, we need to carry our ordnance in regular trucks, not the kind of all-terrain military vehicles that could get in cross-country.”

“We could come in with ATVs and then transfer to trucks.”

“Any way to hide everything under, like, potatoes?” said Babe. “Coming in from Idaho the way we are?”

“Not bad,” said Cole. “Let’s find out how potatoes are shipped from Idaho to Washington. But look at the map. The most direct route is Highway 12. Gets us from Idaho right to Lewis County. National Forest Road 20 leads right to Lake Genesseret. Road 21 leads to the eastern lake, Chinnereth.”

“Can’t go up those roads,” said Drew. “Probably the ones they use.”

“No,” said Cole. “We go in on National Forest Road 48 and then go a mile up 4820. Only a couple of us need to be with the truck. Everybody else goes in like birdwatchers or photographers, in rental cars, on different days, park in different places. We rendezvous here and then cross over the ridge.”

“We’re climbing that?” said Drew.

“You must have the vertical exaggeration set on ‘two,’ ” said Cole. “The ridge isn’t really that high.”

“High enough,” said Drew.

“So the guys with the truck,” said Benny. “If they screw up and don’t get there, then what?”

“Then the rest of you have binoculars and cameras,” said Cole.

“Take what pictures you can, email them in, and at least we know more than we did.”

“Two trucks,” said Drew. “Twice the chance of getting in.”

“Twice the chance of getting caught,” said Mingo.

“Either we can get in or we can’t,” said Cole. “We don’t want one of the trucks to go in by the second-best route.”

“And I bet you’re with the truck,” said Arty.

“We’ve been working together for a little while now,” said Cole. “I don’t care who goes in with the truck. There’s nobody here I wouldn’t trust for the job.”

“But you want to go,” said Arty.

“Don’t you?” said Cole.

“No way,” said Arty. “Trucks are great big targets. Trucks run over mines. Trucks get blown up.”

“They haven’t mined the roads,” said Babe, disgusted.

“Not at the border,” said Arty. “But the rebels? Up those National Forest roads they’re using?”

“Start killing park rangers in jeeps,” said Cole, “and somebody’d notice them. There are no mines.”

“What ordnance are we taking, anyway?” said Cat.

“Separate discussion,” said Cole and Drew at the same time. They laughed. “We’re on border crossing right now,” said Drew.

“Idaho and Washington got a lot of border,” said Mingo.

“Route 12 comes across the border at Clarkston, Washington,” said Arty. “Lewiston, Idaho, and Clarkston, Washington. Lewis and Clark. I feel like I’m in grade school again. We did a pageant about Lewis and Clark.”

“What did you play, Sacajawea?” asked Cat.

“And we’re headed for Lewis County,” said Arty. “It’s like a tour of American history.”

“There’s a road comes in just north of the river at Clarkston, so we aren’t going right through town,” said Mingo. “In case there’s shooting.”

“There won’t be shooting,” said Cole. “We’re crossing into Washington, not Iran. If they stop us, they stop us, we don’t shoot.”

“And if they try to arrest us?” said Mingo.

“Then we’re arrested,” said Cole. “Let them take the heat for arresting United States soldiers. Better than us killing U.S. citizens. In or out of the National Guard.”

“Those really the rules of engagement?” said Mingo.

“Absolutely,” said Cole. “The only time we use our weapons is at Lake Chinnereth, and then only if we know they’re definitely the rebels and we can’t avoid shooting.”

“Hell, the truck’s all yours then,” said Mingo. “Those are shitty rules of engagement. I’m not going to rot in some jail.”

“It’ll be an American jail,” said Benny. “Cable TV.”

“Okay,” said Cole, “who’s willing to go with the truck, under those rules of engagement?”

Everybody looked stonily forward. “We don’t want to kill anybody,” said Drew, “but we don’t want them to be able to shoot, and us not.”

“I don’t want to do it alone,” said Cole.

“It’s just a U-Haul,” said Mingo.

“No need two of us getting arrested,” said Arty.

“I’d go with you,” said Drew. “Except that’s white man’s country. Eastern Washington? Might as well be North Dakota. Black face with you in that truck, they’re going to look extra hard at whatever you’re carrying. They’ll be looking for drugs.”

“Come on,” said Cole. What century was this?

“You never been black in the United States,” said Cat. “Trust me on this. Drew and I travel separately or we’re a gang. We come through Seattle airport, and we try real hard not to look like drug dealers.”

“How’s this,” said Load. “The truck comes in from Genesee, Idaho, on this Cow Creek Road.”

“That’s a promising name,” said Cole.

“Not exactly a major highway,” said Arty.

“That’s what we want, right?” said Benny.

“If they got nobody on it, then yeah,” said Mingo. “But if they put somebody there, it’s gonna be Barney Fife. Real eager to inspect every vehicle to count the bolts in the chassis.”

“I look at the map and it looks like this goes nowhere,” said Cole.

“No, you pick up Schlee Road to Steptoe Canyon Road and take that south to Wawawai River Road.”

“Is that a real name?” said Arty. “Wawawawawawai?”

“What is this, the Grand Canyon?” said Cole. “Nothing crosses this river for miles.”

“That’s right,” said Load. “You backtrack almost to Clarkston before you can cross the river. But we’re not working to save gas, we’re trying to go undiscovered.”

“So what shows up more,” said Cole, “a truck on main roads, or a truck driving on back roads? We have to remember they’re watching by air, too.”

“Maybe the guys with the truck go there and see what it looks like,” said Mingo. “Play it by ear.”

“There’s no second chance,” said Drew. “The first time you try is the only try you get. How can you see how it looks?”

“Cross in a car first?” said Arty.

“And then you decide that’s a good place to cross, but when you come back with the truck, the guardsman recognizes you?” said Drew. “One shot.”

“So whoever drives, decides,” said Arty. “We can’t decide it from here, looking at a map.”

“Okay,” said Drew. “Cole, when you’re about to come through, you call me on your cell. If I don’t hear from you in two hours that you got through, then we lay hands on whatever weapons we can buy inside Washington and go on without you.”

“Okay,” said Cole. “I’ll do it.”

“Of course you will,” said Drew. “You’re still active duty, so you’re used to taking shit from everybody.”

“It’s the assignment I want,” said Cole.

“Why?” asked Arty.

“When Rube and I came out of the Holland Tunnel, the National Guard saved our butts. They did their job and they went the extra mile. I want to be there to make sure we don’t hurt any of them.”

Arty rolled his eyes. Cat coughed.

“An idealist,” said Drew.

“A pacifist,” said Mingo. “Did you join the Peace Corps and got Special Ops by mistake?”

“Just teasing you,” said Load. “None of us wants to hurt American soldiers. We all agree with you. But it’s your job because you’re the one most willing to do it. We trust you to bring us the tools of the trade.”

“Of course, you got to change your appearance,” said Mingo. “You went on CNN, people are gonna know you.”

“I went on O’Reilly,” said Cole.

“So even more people,” said Mingo.

“How fast does your beard grow?” said Drew.

“Bleach your hair?” suggested Arty.

“Fake glasses?”

“Wax teeth?”

“You’re getting silly now,” said Cole. “I’ll grow my beard, I’ll dye my hair darker. It was a month ago. Nobody’s going to remember.”

Then they got down to the serious business of choosing their weapons. Torrent had opened the whole arsenal to them—including all the prototypes that were meant to counter mechs and hoverbikes.

“Guys, it’s a candy store, I know,” said Arty. “But we got to shlep these things through the woods and over a ridge that looks like it’s, what, eight miles high.”

“Vertical exaggeration,” Drew reminded him.

“A hundred and fifty pounds on your back gives you all the vertical exaggeration you need,” said Arty.

“Want to buy good backpacks in Washington?” said Drew. “Easier than trying to carry them through airports.”

“Can we keep it after?” said Benny.

“If you pay for it yourself,” said Mingo.

“Of course we’re going to pay for it ourselves,” said Benny. “You think they’re going to take a DOD purchase order?”

Cole shook his head. “They’ll fill our ATM accounts with plenty of money. This is the United States government. Possibly the only entity with more money than Aldo Verus.”

So it came down to Cole in a U-Haul. Everything they needed for a week in the woods—including rations, uniforms, backpacks, weapons, and ammunition. Covering it: a bunch of used furniture and boxes filled with old kitchen stuff. A Goodwill somewhere had been stripped of everything, it looked like.

If somebody just looked into the back of the truck, fine. If they pulled out a few boxes and looked inside them, fine. If they unloaded the first three layers, fine. But if the search got serious, Cole was toast.

He tried to picture the truck on the lonely back roads and he didn’t like the picture. Oh, he had his cover stories—if he took the northern route, then he was moving from Genesee to Pasco, but he needed to pick up stuff from his mother-in-law’s house in Colton on the way. If he went into Washington through Clarkston, then it was still Genesee and Pasco, only he could skip the mother-in-law. He even had the mother-in-law’s name—a woman they knew would not be home, but who had a daughter the right age to be married to Cole. Just in case they got a guardsman who happened to be a local boy.

Still, once he got across the border near Uniontown, why in the world would he take that circuitous route on Schlee and Steptoe and Wawawai River Road? Obvious answer: He wanted to avoid crossing the border again. Maybe they’d buy it. But it was a lot of miles out of the way. If I were a patrolman and I heard that story, I’d unload the whole damn truck.

It had been a solitary drive. A few cellphone calls, but not too many, just verifying that Drew was in Washington and that there were more guards but they didn’t seem particularly alert or hostile. Business as usual. Only… everybody in the airport watched the news. Baseball season, the Mariners were even in contention, sort of, but even in the bars, more people were watching CNN than ESPN or whatever game happened to be on.

“They care, man,” said Drew. “I just don’t know from looking which ones want the revolution to succeed, and which ones want it to fail.”

“Probably most of them just want it all to go away.”

“Don’t see many people inspired by President Nielson, tell the truth.”

“They inspired by the New York City Council?”

“The mayor’s acting like he thinks he’s the new President of the U.S.A.,” said Drew. “People kind of laughed.”

“Well that’s a good sign,” said Cole. “But we’ve talked long enough. Cellphones. Somebody might be listening.”

“In D.C. I worried,” said Drew. “Didn’t know who was doing what, and everybody had all the tech. But out here? What, they’re listening to all the cellphone calls?”

“Talk to you when I get in place,” said Cole.

Well, now here he was on Down River Road in Lewiston. He’d picked a wide spot to pull off and pretend he needed to take a quick nap. Then he walked like he just needed to stretch his legs. Got to a place where he could see the crossing. Not bad. Two National Guard guys stopping everybody, but they were mostly just looking inside cars and passing people through.

Of course, that might just be people they knew. But this was the road that became Wawawai River Road at the border. There were a couple of trucks, too. And those got looked at more carefully. Backs got opened up. Anyplace big enough to hold—well, to hold the kind of stuff that Cole was carrying

Still, nobody was unpacking anything.

He should go north. That’s what Drew and Load both told him. But last thing before he left, Mingo just said, “Barney Fife,” and grinned.

I’m not the U.S. Army invading Iran. I’m not a terrorist with a truck full of explosives to blow up a building or a city. I’m an American citizen crossing through a weird new security checkpoint where there didn’t used to be one. What have I got to be afraid of?

It was too far to see the faces of the guards. If he showed binoculars, that would make him look suspicious. The crossing on Highway 12, right in town, that was a bad one. Lots of guys with guns, lots of traffic, six cars at a time, no way could he cross there. And from here, not too late to turn around, go north; if somebody noticed him, he could say he just pulled off to reset, decide whether to stop by his mother-in-law’s house or not.

He sighed. Stretched. Sauntered back to the truck.

Hot hot day. That was the good thing about going in civvies. He could wear shorts and a T-shirt, sandals.

He got in the truck. It had done okay, crossing over the Rockies, driving more than twenty-five hundred miles. Good truck. Only three hundred miles to go.

He called Drew. This close to the border, they might be eavesdropping. So the call was circumspect. “Mom there?” asked Cole.

“Napping,” said Drew.

“Well tell her I’m on the way.”

Cole turned the key. Started up again. The air-conditioning kicked in. But he turned it off, rolled down the windows.

There was only one car ahead of him. The two guardsmen were looking in the windows. They waved the car on.

Cole pulled up to the portable stop sign. “I really got to do this to get to Washington now?”

“How it is,” said the guardsman. “Air-conditioning broken?”

“Trying to save on gas,” said Cole. “Moving is expensive enough.”

“From where to where?”

“Heading for Pasco.”

“Address there?”

Cole rattled it off. He was tempted to add chatty comments but decided against it. This guy looked serious. Young, but definitely Barney Fife-ish. Full of his authority, like a rookie cop. Didn’t have to go the northern route to get that, after all.

“And where you from?”

“Genesee.” He gave the address, but the guy wasn’t listening.

“Open up the back, please.”

Well, that was routine, he’d seen that from the top of the hill. He got out and headed for the back. Meanwhile, another car pulled up behind him.

The guardsman waved the other car around. “You take this one, Jeff.”

So now it was just Cole and the man in charge. No use wishing it were the other way around. They couldn’t have fit what they needed to carry inside a car trunk. Or even eight car trunks.

“Saw you up on the hill,” said the guardsman.

Shit, thought Cole. “Yep,” he said.

“Deciding whether or not you wanted to come through here?” asked the guardsman.

“I shut my eyes for a few minutes. Then I took a walk to stretch my legs.” Cole let himself sound just a little bit defensive, because he figured a regular citizen probably would. But he didn’t like the way this was going.

“Already tired of driving, just from Genesee?”

“I got up tired this morning,” said Cole. “I loaded the truck yesterday and I’m still sore.”

“Don’t look like the kind of guy gets sore just from loading a truck,” said the guardsman. “In fact, you look like you’re in top physical condition.”

“I used to work out,” said Cole with a smile. But his heart was sinking. The one thing they hadn’t taken into account was that even in civilian clothes, Cole looked military. And in shorts and a T-shirt, his utter lack of body fat was way too easy to see.

The guardsman leaned against the open back of the truck. “What am I going to find when you and I unload this truck?”

“Crappy furniture,” said Cole. “Crappy stuff in nice new boxes. The story of my life.”

The guardsman just kept looking at him.

“Why are you doing this to me, man?” said Cole. “I served my time in Iraq. Do I have to have uniforms hassling me now?”

“Am I hassling you?” asked the guardsman.

Cole sat up on the tail of the truck. “Do what you’ve got to do.”

Another car pulled past them. So Jeff would be busy again for a minute.

The guardsman pulled out the ramp at the back of the truck and walked up, started untying the ropes that were holding the load in place.

And Cole remembered Charlie O’Brien, the guardsman at the mouth of the Holland Tunnel. That had been so much easier, soldier to soldier. They each had respect for what the other one was doing.

“You know,” said Cole, “it’s not like Washington is at war with the rest of the United States.”

“I know,” said the guardsman. A rope end dropped down across Cole’s shoulders. “Sorry.”

“It was the President and Vice President and Secretary of Defense of the whole United States that got murdered on Friday the Thirteenth. No matter what your politics were.”

“I know that, too,” said the guardsman.

“So… what if the guys who set the whole thing up—the assassinations—fed the information to the terrorists and then invaded New York. What if the U.S. Army had hard information that those guys were inside the state of Washington? What do you think they’d do?”

The guardsman stopped what he was doing. “I think they’d go in and get them.”

“But the state of Washington says they aren’t letting any military in. Which means, if the bad guys are already in the state, the only people being kept out are the good guys. Assuming that you think the assassins are the bad guys.”

“And the U.S. Army doesn’t want to launch a big invasion,” said the guardsman. “They just want something quiet. Something… Special Ops.”

“Like that,” said Cole.

The guardsman stood there awhile. “It’d make a difference, though, if those guys were gonna start shooting at guys like me.”

“They’d be crazy to do that, wouldn’t they? I mean, you’re part of the U.S. Army, aren’t you? What is this, a civil war?”

“I hope to God not,” said the guardsman. “We’d get creamed.”

“Nobody’s going to be shooting at the Washington National Guard, I’d bet my life on that.”

“Yeah, but can I bet my life on it?”

The question hung there.

“Man, think about it,” said Cole. “If Special Ops sent a guy in, and he wanted you dead, you think you wouldn’t be dead already?”

The guardsman’s hand strayed to his sidearm. But then his hand went on.To reach for the rope end. Cole got it and handed it to him.

The guardsman started retying the knot.

“Thanks,” said Cole.

“All that bullshit you told me, it was pretty good,” said the guardsman. “But I saw you reconnoitering up there. I knew what I was looking at.”

“And you made sure you were alone when you inspected my truck.”

“Had to know how things were,” said the guardsman. “But there was a guy on the news a month ago. He said, If somebody tells you to point your gun at a guy just doing his job, then you point it at the guy gave the order.”

Cole felt himself blushing. Damn. Had the guy recognized him? A month later? With a stubbly beard and darker hair and in civilian clothes? Or did it just happen that Cole’s words on O’Reilly made an impression that stuck with the guy, and he didn’t recognize him now at all?

“Glad you watched that program,” said Cole.

The knot was tied.

“Long way to go?” said the guardsman. “I’m betting it isn’t downtown Pasco.”

“A little farther than that,” said Cole.

They pushed the ramp back up under the truck together. Then the guardsman held out his hand. “Appreciate your cooperation, sir.”

“Thanks,” said Cole. “Pleasure to know you.”

Cole walked back to the cab as the guardsman went back to Jeff, who had just waved on a third car. “So you’re not unloading it?” asked Jeff.

“I could see clear to the front,” said the guardsman. “No reason to ruin this guy’s day.”

Cole started the engine and closed the door. He gave a little wave to the guardsman.

The guardsman returned a little hint of a salute and said, “Godspeed.”