One Year After

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

“Sir, it’s time.”

Startled, John looked about in surprise. Daylight streamed through the blown-out doors and windows of the store, and he sat up, shocked by—of all things—the smell of coffee.

One of his troopers was kneeling down by his side, smiling broadly, holding out a cup.

“I remember how you used to come into class every morning with a steaming cup—black.”

John nodded a thanks. “Where in the hell did you get this?”

“Sir, they must have a couple of thousand MREs back there and cases of that survival food. Check this out.” He offered John a plastic container filled with something dark red and in slices. “Freeze-dried strawberries. We each got a handful. Just stick them in your mouth; it’s a real treat.”

John tried one and nodded again. It did indeed taste heavenly, and so did the real coffee. When was the last time? And then it hit him: Forrest had given him a cup every morning while he was a prisoner. But other than that, coffee had run out within the first month after the Day.

The rush of caffeine startled him, and he was glad when another one of his troops, a sergeant in his late thirties, came over to share a plate of beans and a hunk of cheese. All around him were wolfing down their meals, and then—the temptation of temptations—he smelled cigarettes. Several of the reivers had found a stash in someone’s personal locker. It was such a dreadful siren call, but he resisted it.

His radio operator was sitting up, working the dial on the set that he had taken off from his backpack, the two dials glowing dimly.

“Anything?” John asked.

“Chopper is safely down, wounded are in the hospital, and our observers up along the parkway report a lot of activity around the courthouse—they say they actually have a Bradley Fighting Vehicle parked out front of it. They’ve ringed the place in tight.”

“I’ve monitored a number of urgent broadcasts saying they are about to be overrun by ‘terrorists and rebels.’” The old man sighed. “Us, we are the ones branded as the terrorists and rebels even after what they did. They’re sending out an urgent appeal for immediate help from Greenville, South Carolina, and Johnson City, Tennessee.”

“The reply?”

The old man laughed. “Basically, it was ‘You are up the creek without a paddle, and screw you.’ Typical, John. Everyone covers their own turf, and to hell with anyone else. Johnson City claims a fuel shortage but might be able to send a convoy later in the day if Asheville can promise that the Interstate 26 pass over the mountains is secured from the reivers.”

John chuckled.

“Hope you don’t mind, but I took the liberty of cutting in when they weren’t chattering and said we own the pass.”

“And Greenville?”

“No response. Not a word back.”

He took that in. They could have switched to another frequency. Greenville had good access to the coast; they could move a lot up quickly if motivated to strike back.

“And then there was the BBC again. Caught their 5:00 a.m. broadcast before the signal went weak.” The old man sighed.

“Well?”

“China repeated the threat that if any neutron bomb is used anywhere near them in the continental United States or anywhere on a demarcation line that I guess runs down the Continental Divide, they will construe that as an attack upon their homeland and retaliate with a full nuclear strike on Bluemont and a number of other cities, including Charleston. John, it is getting damn ugly out there. There were other reports of global condemnation of the neutron bomb strike on Chicago. BBC is reporting chaos over here, and then I lost the signal.”

Suddenly, the coffee in John’s stomach felt sour, nauseating. No matter how horrid the gangs, mobs, or just plain insane characters that had risen up in the wreckage of those once bustling cities, there was something about hitting them with neutron bombs, slaughtering nearly all that still struggled to survive within the cities who were hiding out from the gangs, that was beyond his grasp of understanding. Hunt down the criminals, yes, and execute those who had turned to the lowest barbarism, such as the Posse, but to indiscriminately kill all in what was left of the cities, claiming that all were now in rebellion against some central authority?

He stood up, shaking off the gloom that this news had cast as Kevin approached, grinning broadly.

“My God, sir, have we got a haul!” Kevin announced loudly. “Thousands of rounds of twenty-millimeter shells, .50 caliber, case after case of .223, grenades, rockets for the Apaches, over a hundred shoulder weapons of military grade, and—as you can tell by the scent—rations to feed this entire army for several days. A case of handheld two-way radios of variable frequencies, a dozen night-vision goggles, cases of various batteries, electrical generators… the list goes on. Six trucks they had stashed down below the old Lowe’s building have yet to be inventoried, along with two fuel bladders—one with jet fuel for the choppers, the other with gas—pure, clean gas! Five hundred gallons’ worth, not counting the topped-off tanks in the trucks.”

“All that for what?” John sighed. “What does it mean?”

“To kick our asses back into the Stone Age.”

“Yup.”

What a fool Fredericks truly is, John thought as he took in this latest information. All that equipment and helicopters, but positioned out here rather than somewhere deep within the city. Was it that he mistrusted the civilians still trying to survive in Asheville? Regardless, it was a stupid position to take, perhaps motivated in some strange way by a memory of things past—the American shopping mall as a place of comfort, indulgence, and security—even though John had always detested them and went there simply to please his kids. It was Dale’s stupidity and now definitely his gain for the final move.

He stepped outside for a moment to relieve himself while still nursing the soothing cup of coffee. Up along Tunnel Road, some reserve troops were breaking their temporary camp and shouldering up their backpacks, now loaded with extra ammunition and rations. Like any father, he could spot his own child in a crowd of thousands, and he saw that Elizabeth was with the column.

Elizabeth? With the stress of preparing for the attack, he had tried not to think about her. She had insisted that she fall in with the reserve battalion. John could not veto her demand and had simply nodded agreement, unable to speak.

As he watched them head out, spreading out into combat column spaced far apart on either side of the road, he remembered the legendary story of General Robert E. Lee at Antietam: at the climax of the battle, the Union troops about to break through his center, he had personally ordered in a reserve battery of artillery only to then see his beloved youngest son, not yet eighteen, going into that most deadly of fights. But he did not stop, did not call out to the battery commander with orders to send his child to the rear. He had turned and rode away to other sectors of the line. Only at day’s end, having barely hung on to fight another day, did Lee return to that stricken position, breaking down in tears when he saw that his boy had survived unscathed.

If Elizabeth demanded to serve with the reserves that would now be the main assault force, if an attack was needed to finish this fight, he could not stop her. He recalled as well a much-beloved film, a favorite of his students when he showed it in class, about a Quaker family during the Civil War, the father portrayed by Gary Cooper, who, when confronted by his son’s decision to fight, had replied, “I am only his father, not his conscience.”

He went back into the Sears building where his troops where strapping on gear, gulping down the last of their cups of coffee, and forming up to move out. They truly did look like combat veterans, youth with old eyes, a sense of perpetual weariness at age twenty. But regardless of their weariness, they were ready to go into the next fight.

“The mortar position and their outposts?” John asked Kevin, forcing his thoughts away from his daughter.

“Took them out nearly an hour ago, though not sure we have all the outposts. But we did capture the mortar intact with fifty rounds.”

“Our losses?”

“Two dead, one wounded,” Kevin replied.

“Prisoners?”

He shook his head, and John did not ask. The fight was getting ugly, and after the outrages committed against the reivers and his own town, unless he was present to enforce discipline as he knew it, the passion of the moment was bound to take hold. He had come dangerously close to it himself with the Apache pilot.

He stood up, stretched, and nodded to the door. “Time?” he asked, gulping down the last of his coffee.

“Five minutes to go.”

John nodded. “Saddle up.”

Out the door of the Sears building, he started the long walk up Tunnel Road, passing the collapsed sign of the Old Mountaineer Motel, a favorite diner of his from before all of this started across the street. It was a walk he wouldn’t have thought of doing three years earlier when one had a car to go from parking lot to parking lot. But now? Though far more fit, he was feeling his age, and his cracked rib hurt like hell. Within a few hundred yards, he felt a bit winded as his far younger troopers, support units, and personal security squad kept sprinting ahead while his fractured rib throbbed with every step. The radio crackled with a report from an observer that she could see black-clad troops running down from the tunnel entrance and into the twin courthouses and the county jail alongside it, with positions manned behind heavy concertina wire. Dale had played it as he had hoped—pulling all his assets back into that complex of buildings, most likely assuming his Alamo could hold out until help from the outside finally arrived.

Not a shot had been fired so far as he paused for a moment to catch his breath at the entry to the tunnel that passed under Beaucatcher Mountain and emerged on the far side with the courthouse complex straight ahead. Several squads were running through it, their footsteps sounding hollow while the main assault force pressed through the gap of I-240, flanking wide before infiltrating into the center of town above the courthouse center.

He followed the lead elements, flanked by Lee Robinson, still ready to haul him out of harm’s way, his radio operator, security team, and message runners squinting from the morning sunlight as they emerged on the far side and gazed down at last on Asheville. It was once a vibrant, bustling city of a hundred thousand. At last estimate, there were fewer than five thousand still alive in its abandoned buildings and streets, most huddled along the French Broad River on the west side of town—and hopefully well clear of a fight if one was about to happen.

The skyline was still essentially the same, though shortly after the Day, the old Battery Park Apartments had burned to the ground. The BB&T building was somewhat intact, though a number of windows had been knocked out, a perfect place for a heavy-weapons squad to set up on an upper floor—a position that Kevin Malady, leading a unit burdened down with captured armaments along with a dozen reivers toting deer rifles and high-powered scopes, was racing to secure. He heard a distant humming that grew louder, and then he saw the L-3 passing overhead, Billy Tyndall at the controls, undoubtedly far more comfortable in his old plane after the experience of flying in a helicopter with Maury. The radio with John crackled to life.

“Bravo Xray online and overhead. I’ll call it as I see it.”

Unlike Don Barber, who had come in far too low during the fight with the Posse, John had ordered Billy to stay at least fifteen hundred feet above the fray and to get the hell out if any fire came up his way. He had not even considered the prospect of putting Maury and whatever helicopter they were lucky enough to capture into this one. He’d either crash out of sheer amateurish piloting or get shot down within five minutes. That asset was to be cherished for some future use.

He looked at his watch. It was a quarter to eight. Fifteen minutes more to let his far more fleet-footed young troops sprint to the far side of the courthouse, enveloping it from the north and south and cutting off retreat, while some of the captured heavy weapons were moved up for the assault from the east.

The minutes clicked off. There was an occasional explosion of small-arms fire, either a sniper taken out or trigger-happy troops on his side reacting to a shadow in the window.

Two minutes before eight.

John turned to his radioman. He had feared that the batteries for the old-fashioned unit would not have held out this long, but they had captured a supply in the cache at Sears. D batteries were a thing of the past, but with a little twisting of wires, his man had rigged it up to work for several hours more using captured double As.

“All positions reporting in,” was the report, and John nodded. He felt obligated to try one time, and he took the mike, clicking it several times first.

“Fredericks, I know you are monitoring this channel. The game is up. We’ve captured your helicopter base, along with a Black Hawk. You can hear one of my planes overhead; we own the air now. The courthouse is surrounded. There is no alternative but surrender. Tell your people to drop their weapons and come out with their hands up. All who surrender will be treated by the rules of war and will be exchanged or paroled. That is my one and only offer, Fredericks. I have someone else here who wants to speak to those under your command.”

He held the mike open, and nodded for Deirdre to speak.

She identified herself, repeated John’s offer, and added that what they had been told about the treatment of prisoners was a lie. All had been fed and treated with respect, and the wounded were already back in a hospital. “What they told us is a lie!” she cried. “I know many of you. Please surrender. This is a senseless fight. Please listen to me.”

John took the mike back. “Any of you serving under the lying despot, this so-called administrator Fredericks, put your weapons down now, come out with hands up, and you will receive parole and exchange and returned to your families. You have one minute to act. Otherwise, may God have mercy on your souls.”

“Sir, can’t you just wait?” It was Deirdre. “Sit it out for a day or so, and I know most will crack. Let me keep talking to those with the ANR. They don’t want this fight any more than you do and will surrender if given a chance.”

He wanted to agree with her. He knew taking on troops dug into the courthouse, county office, and county jail would be costly. But time most likely would be on Fredericks’s side. If Greenville responded with air assets, they could be here in little more than thirty minutes, and everything would unravel. A couple of Apache helicopters circling overhead would switch the odds back to Fredericks’s side. If there was any chance of taking him out, it had to be now.

He shook his head, hoping her appeal for surrender worked.

There was a flurry of shots from within the courthouse, half a dozen running out. One dropped to the pavement, shot in the back from within the courthouse.

John clicked the mike back. “All units, hold fire! Hold fire! Let them surrender!”

The half dozen did not make it far, a burst of automatic fire from an upper floor of the federal building slaughtering them. There was more fire from the county jail, flashes of gunfire from within. A door burst open, and two more ran out. They were dropped, as well.

“Those were friends of mine!” Deirdre cried. “His security team is killing them!”

“Damn you, Fredericks!” John shouted. “For God’s sake, show some mercy!”

Several more tried for a run from the county office. All died within seconds.

“It’s on your soul, Fredericks!” John cried. “And those who stand with you!” He had one flare left. He raised the pistol over his head and fired it off.

A fusillade of fire erupted seconds later from the three-hundred-plus troops deployed around the courthouse. He now wanted to keep his losses at a minimum; it was simply a question of overawing or—if need be—waiting them out unless he received word that Greenville was sending choppers up. He prayed that resistance would collapse before then, that there would be no need for a frontal assault or charge and resulting slaughter out of some Civil War battle or amphibious beachfront attack.

Overawe in the first minutes. Break the will of the jittery ANR troops inside.

With the captured armaments from the helicopter base, there was a surfeit of ammunition for once. A .50-caliber machine gun moved up by a team of Afghan vets to a position on the roof of the BB&T building poured an arcing stream of heavy fire down on the three main buildings of the courthouse complex, incendiary rounds igniting fires in the upper floors of the courthouse. He held back the two dozen air-to-ground rockets designed for the Apaches, because no one was sure of how to properly mount and shoot them, but half a dozen of the town’s homemade RPGs were fired, several going off wildly but two striking the county offices, igniting yet another fire in an upper floor. In an amazingly lucky strike, one hit the Bradley, the crew within abandoning the vehicle and running for the security of the courthouse, though there did not appear to be any real damage to the vehicle.

After the initial rain of fire in an attempt to overawe, the situation settled down to near silence and carefully aimed shots by trained snipers on John’s side. If Deirdre’s ridiculous stereotype of mountain rednecks had one true point, it was that John had in his ranks dozens of highly skilled hunters armed with deer rifles and high-powered scopes, and it was doubtful that his opponent had the same.

The morning dragged on, heat increasing, John looking at his watch ever more anxious, his radioman catching several quick appeals from someone other than Fredericks to Greenville calling for air support.

John could feel the pressure building. Greenville to Asheville was indeed within air-support range for Apaches. From liftoff to attack, they could be on him in little more than twenty minutes. Billy had returned twice to Black Mountain to refuel, and John sent an order for him to climb up to at least eight thousand feet, move south to over Hendersonville, and report in if any kind of air support or ground movement up from South Carolina was approaching.

They were four hours into the siege. In his mind, he felt he could, if need be, let it drag out for days since Greenville had not yet taken any action, but if they did, the tide could turn in a matter of minutes, and this chance to end the madness would be lost.

The top two floors of the county office were completely ablaze, black smoke billowing straight up in the hot, still noonday air. In the county office building adjoining the courthouse, numerous smaller fires were burning on nearly every floor. The sight of it sickened John in a way. Everyone who lived in the region knew the legend of how, during the Second World War, the local hero, Bob Morgan, pilot of the Memphis Belle, one of the first B-17 bombers to complete twenty-five missions against the Germans, had flown his plane between the two buildings in an ultimate buzz job. His grave was at the veterans’ cemetery in Black Mountain, where those who died fighting the Posse rested. Before his death, Morgan was a regular guest visitor to John’s class. John connected those memories to this tragic moment, where the buildings now housed an enemy and those dragooned into serving him and what he allegedly represented.

“White flag!” one of his team cried.

John raised his binoculars, focused on the county building, and there was indeed a white sheet or towel hanging out of a window, a floor above where the fires raged. Someone was standing in the window, waving, making the gesture of throwing his weapon out to clatter on the pavement below. Smoke began to billow out of the room he was in so that he climbed out onto the window ledge.

The sight sickened John. It was, of course, a gut-wrenching reminder burned into the heart of every American, the memory of the morning of 9/11.

The man tried to crawl along the ledge, and John felt a swelling of pride in his troops in that no one fired at the man, and several around John were whispering encouragement.

And then he lost his balance, tottered, and fell, plunging twelve stories to his death, and John heard groans of anguish erupting around him.

He turned back to his radioman and took the mike. “For God’s sake, Fredericks! Your people are burning alive on the upper floors! Get them the hell out! We will not shoot!”

He paused a few seconds, clicking the mike five times to signal it was a message to all units. “All units, all units. Cease fire unless directly fired upon. Let them surrender. Let them surrender.”

Apparently, there was more than one radio link between the three buildings under siege monitoring his own broadcasts. Within seconds, a dozen more white flags were out from upper floors. Someone in the prison building had managed to find enough bedding; after shattering a window, someone tossed a rope ladder of sheets out the window and started rappelling down the side, reaching the pavement six floors down and holding the rope ladder taut as a woman in black uniform came out next. But before she had dropped a floor, shots rang out from the county courthouse, and she plunged to her death. The man on the ground ducked low and ran hard, dropping as puffs of shattered concrete erupted around him, but then he was up again, reaching a low stone wall and tumbling over it.

“Send someone down there and try to find that man and bring him to me!” John shouted, and one of his security team got up, crouched low, and sprinted off.

Apparently, at least one sniper in the upper floor of the federal building was still alert and nearly hit his runner, triggering another explosion of return fire that plastered the side of the building for several minutes.

“Deirdre, you got the guts to get closer?” John asked.

She looked over at him and nodded. “Yes, sir.”

He motioned to his radioman. “Ready for a little running?”

“John, I’d prefer not, but I’m game if you are.”

“Damn it, John,” Lee snapped. “You can control things just fine from here.”

John looked at his old friend and smiled. “Okay, everyone, take a deep breath.” He hesitated. The order was indeed so hackneyed in so many bad movies. “Follow me.”

He got up, crouched low, and started to sprint down the Tunnel Road, zigzagging every few seconds, startled a bit when he heard a bullet slap by close to his face. It was a long two-hundred-yard run down to the base of the hill, every gasp for air an absolute agony, until he finally dodged into cover behind a building at the northwest corner of the traffic circle below the courthouse complex.

He looked back. One of his team was down, clutching his leg below the knee, a medic dragging him to cover, shots kicking up around them. He did not need to call for suppressive fire. Several hundred rounds slammed into the three buildings, any window that still had a pane of glass shattering. Whoever had fired on him and wounded one of his team was either dead or cowering.

“Deirdre, you can talk your people out better than I can. You’ve seen how we’ve behaved since taking you prisoner. Do you trust me?”

She looked at him and nodded.

“Try to talk them out and end this before any more people get hurt. I promise you, I will move anyone with the ANR who surrenders to arrange their repatriation back to their homes as quickly as possible.”

At this point, as to the fate of Fredericks and others, he was making no promises after more than four hours of this day’s madness and the weeks leading up to it.

Deirdre took the megaphone and began to appeal to those within the courthouse complex to surrender and end the killing. Her appeal was heartfelt at times that she was in tears, begging those within to just give up and come out with hands up. Then she made a gesture John had not anticipated, and it happened so quickly he did not have time to react. Deirdre suddenly stepped out into the middle of the traffic circle, megaphone still raised.

“Please, all of you. Surrender. I promise you, you’ll be treated fairly. It was those who brought us here who lied.”

A single shot clipped her shoulder, spinning her around and dropping her in the middle of the traffic circle.

John, horrified, sprinted to where she lay writhing in pain and scooped an arm around her, pulling her up as he started to drag her back. One of his security team leaped out, weapon raised to cover the two, and he toppled over backward, shot in the forehead.

Lee reached out, grabbing the two, dragging them the last few feet back into cover, the brick from the corner of the building peppering them with fragments.

Lee grabbed the radio mike. “Leader okay. Now tear the bastards apart!” he cried.

John cradled Deirdre as a medic came up to their side, crouching low. The medic, carrying a standard pack looted from the stockpile in Sears, cut Deirdre’s shirt open. She had been punctured just below the left collarbone, and contrary to all movies, a shoulder wound was not merely a nick with the bundle of blood vessels, nerves, and bones just above the rib cage and heart. The medic slapped on a sterile compress, pumped a morphine vial looted from medical supplies found in the Sears building into the young woman’s upper arm, stuck the empty syringe to her collar to indicate the dose she had received, and called for stretcher-bearers to take her to the rear.

“Sorry, sir,” Deirdre said, looking up at John. “Thought if they saw me they’d lay down their arms.”

“It’s okay, Captain,” he gasped, a wave of pain hitting him from his fractured rib. “You are one helluva brave woman, even if you are foolish.”

He looked back out to the street where the young soldier of his security detail was dead, blood pooling on to the pavement. Yet another kid from one of his classes. It wasn’t Deirdre’s fault; it was war with all its stupidity and random violence that had killed the young man.

Stretcher-bearers came up and lifted Deirdre to carry her off.

“When all this is over,” John said, “I hope you stay on with us. We need soldiers like you.”

She forced a weak smile of thanks. “Nothing to go home to now, anyhow. Thank you.”

The next ten minutes were an explosion of unrelenting fire poured into the courthouses, and he sat silently, staring at the young man lying dead in the middle of the traffic circle. A decent lad caught up in madness who had died trying to do the right thing. And chances were that so many down in the courthouse complex believed they were fighting for the right thing, as well. But they had to be defeated now if his community had any hope of survival.

Finally, after the long, sustained barrage, white flags began to appear in windows in all three buildings, but he let the fusillade continue on. It was time to break them entirely.

“Tell all units to cease fire,” John finally announced.

His radio operator looked over at him. “Billy reports he thinks he sees at least three helicopters coming up from Greenville.”

“Scan the frequencies. See if you can find the one they’re operating on—most likely one of the aviation ones, perhaps the standard 122.9 of uncontrolled air space.”

As the gunfire slacked off, with only an occasional return shot from the county building where it looked like part of the roof had collapsed in, John edged to the corner of his concealment and held the megaphone up, clicking it on. “This is John Matherson of Black Mountain and commander of the forces engaged against you. I am giving all of you five minutes to surrender and come out with hands up. This is my final offer. If you do not comply immediately, we will storm the buildings, and no prisoners will be taken. You have five minutes to surrender unconditionally but with the promise that you will be treated by the Geneva Accords. Otherwise, you damn well better be ready to die for that scum leader of yours.”

In less than a minute, a side door of the county prison burst open, the first few stepping out looking about nervously and then breaking into a run down the street, staying close to the north wall of the building. From the office building next to the courthouse, it was the same, several score pouring out from a south-facing door, out of view of the county building. From the county building, the fugitives dashed out the side door facing Tunnel Road. Several ran from the main entry, and again, a flurry of shots from inside the building dropped some, but the majority were now making it to safety. Return fire tore into the front entry even as those pouring out of the other buildings raced across the potentially fatal open ground. The first of them reached John’s position, having no idea who he was. They were wide eyed and terrified, begging for mercy. He would rather spare them than kill them, but after all that had happened, he gazed at them with disgust and shouted for someone to take charge of the prisoners and get them to the rear.

After ten minutes, no one else emerged. His radio operator announced that someone inside the building was desperately calling for air support from Greenville, the choppers going into a holding position just south of Hendersonville, which was only a few minutes away by air.

It was a moment where Maury, back in Asheville, knew what to do, starting up with spoof radio traffic on the same frequency, announcing he and his assets were up and waiting to take out any approaching aircraft, the frequency jammed up with signals that John prayed was buying them time.

It was a risk John could not tolerate. Fredericks would spin out his account of the disaster in the manner all such stories were spun going back thousands of years, and though John doubted the government Fredericks represented would be willing to drop a neutron bomb on them, two or three fuel-air explosives could nevertheless destroy his beloved valley and all whom he held dear. It had to end now.

“All units. At my signal, once those surrendering are clear, suppressive fire for two minutes, assault units to go in and secure the buildings.”

He half stepped out from the safety of where he had set up his command post. A dozen or so black uniforms were running for their lives, a few shots coming only from the county office.

“On my mark. Now!”

There was another explosion of fire, all of it focused in on the county office, and there was a fury to it now, a release of rage by his troops, fed up with all that had transpired and knowing that the cause of it was at last pinned down to this one final corner of trapped bastards.

The assault teams started to dash in, crouching low under the suppressive fire, those racing for the federal office and county jail not showing too much concern as they burst into the buildings, but the county office was a different story. A heavy weapon, concealed and silent throughout the fight, now opened up from the third floor, dropping half a dozen of the team heading for the front entry. The way one of them was running, John—like any father—could recognize it was his daughter. A girl running next to her crumpled over, but his daughter pressed on. He watched, heart racing as she disappeared from his sight, his view of her blocked by the building. John could not contain himself. He stood up and started for the side entrance, his security team cursing him soundly, shouting for him to stay back as they sprinted ahead with younger legs and stronger hearts.

None of them were hit, but out at the front of the courthouse where his daughter was looked bad. The assault team dived for cover and scattered, even as John’s team reached the side entryway where, across the years, those waiting for their cases—from traffic tickets to divorces to civil suits and criminal charges—had stood wreathed in cigarette smoke, waiting for the courthouse to open. It was a tawdry place in John’s mind, having stood out there himself when he had decided years earlier to fight an unfair traffic stop from an overeager trooper on Route 70 who claimed he was two miles per hour over the speed limit. His angry comment to the judge that the trooper was just looking to make her quota for the month had lost him his case, but it was worth it for being able to at least say exactly how he felt about things.

And now he was running for that door as if his life depended on it, which it most certainly did. The glass door was shattered, his team leader diving through it and coming up with weapon raised, sending a burst of fire down the corridor to cover the others storming in.

John lagged far behind, cursing the day he had taken up his first cigarette. The long-abandoned and defunct metal detector that guarded the entryway was still there, his team pushing past it, heading for the stairs that led up to the main floor. The foyer had been built in a grand old style, soaring up three stories, ringed with balconies along the four walls leading to offices on upper floors, and the foyer was thus a death trap. There were several explosions; someone was dropping grenades from above. One of his team dropped and was being dragged back to cover.

Damn it. When will they ever give up? John thought, boiling with rage.

His people were pouring in enough suppressive fire to disrupt the defense against the main entryway facing downtown Asheville, several dozen charging in, creeping up stairs one at a time, firing toward the balconies, and dropping several of the defenders. And then suddenly, the firing slackened, several weapons being thrown over railings to clatter onto the floor of the foyer, black-clad troops, crying that they were surrendering, holding up their hands and nervously coming down from the upper floors. Nearly all with him held fire, though one of his troopers, filled with rage, nearly reignited the fight when she shot one of the surrendering foes in the head as she turned the final bend of the staircase. She was jumped on and dragged back as she screamed at those surrendering that they were all murderers.

John did not react but knew he’d have to deal with it later.

Shots erupted from the corner office suite that John knew was the nerve center and where Fredericks, he hoped, was most likely dug in. Sandbags had been piled around the entryway, the gunner guarding the approach collapsed and dead.

“Fredericks, it’s over with. Your people have surrendered!” John shouted. “You got thirty seconds to come out, or we blow the rest of this apart and leave you to burn to death, because this building is coming down in flames once we pull back.”

A broken door ever so slowly cracked open, and to John’s utter disbelief, the man was looking out at him, wearing his ubiquitous jacket and tie as if ready to head off for a noonday power lunch meeting.

“Matherson, you could have written your own ticket, and I was ready to write it for you.”

“Just come out slowly, you bastard. Hands up.”

“For what? A trial by you and then a hanging?”

John would not admit here that was precisely his intent after the crimes that Fredericks had committed, the hundreds who were dead because of him.

“John, I was only following orders, and I suspect you do hate those five words, ‘I was only following orders.’”

“You’re damn right, I do!” John shouted in reply.

“Were you only following orders in Iraq? Were your minions only following orders when you executed the leaders and followers of the Posse?”

He did not reply.

“Greenville’s air-assault team will be here any minute, and if you kill me, John, the word will come down from Bluemont to neutron or fuel-air your precious hick village.”

It was precisely what John feared, and Fredericks had hit a nerve.

“Ah, I sense hesitation,” Fredericks taunted back. “So what’s it going to be, John? We talk this out like two reasonable men, or your community ceases to exist. You’d better call it now; the clock is ticking down.”

Damn, he is good, John thought. As good as so many he had witnessed long ago, stalking the halls of power, amoral sociopaths drawn to power who, behind the smiles and handshakes and backslapping, held men and women of moral convictions and a soul-stirring love of a concept of the Republic in contempt. He knew far too many like Fredericks who, while mouthing platitudes, actually held everyone in secret disdain, because they as “leaders” knew what was best “for the people.”

John took several steps forward. “It’s over, Fredericks. And no, I will not trade you back. You will stand trial in front of the people you ordered murdered where a jury of twelve of your peers shall decide your fate.”

“You mean you don’t have the guts to just order me hung now, as you did that Posse leader?”

“I hold you in contempt lower than that sick bastard I hung,” John replied. “He was driven by hunger and a twisted belief in his Satan that he worshipped. You, you son of a bitch, were driven by something far deeper and darker. You are beneath contempt.”

John stepped closer, pistol in his hand half-raised. “Hands up, Fredericks, and step out slowly.”

Fredericks lowered his head, and his voice began to choke up. “Okay, John, I quit, but know if you kill me, you’ve lost your best bet to negotiate your way out of things with Bluemont. I’m worth a helluva lot more to you alive than dead.”

John sighed and nodded. The bastard was right. “Someone arrest him and get him out of here. And clear the wounded before his damned place collapses on all of us.”

He turned his back and began to walk away, disgusted with the entire end of this affair. His rage of minutes before had cooled. Fredericks would live, and chances were, trial or not, he’d be a bargaining chip with Bluemont in the end to spare further retaliation, and then another Fredericks would eventually arrive, for vermin like him certainly did breed like lice and had been a plague since the first day that someone had figured out that while some labored, others would “administer.”

“Down, John!”

He barely had time to turn back when a flurry of shots echoed, stitching Fredericks across his chest. He staggered backward and collapsed into his sacred office.

“What the hell?” John cried.

“Bastard was drawing a gun on you,” someone said even as the sound of gunfire echoed in the foyer.

John saw his old antagonist Ernie Franklin stepping out of the gathering that had come into the foyer to witness this final confrontation.

“What?”

“He drew a pimp gun and was about to blow your brains out, you damn fool. You’re a damn fool, Matherson, turning your back like that, so I covered your ass.”

John looked about in confusion. No one spoke. There were faint grins from several as Ernie walked across the foyer, stepped over the sandbag emplacement, and leaned over Fredericks’s body. Ernie’s hands were out of view for a few seconds as he appeared to pat down Fredericks and then stood back up holding a small pistol.

“Pimp gun. Bastard like this couldn’t even carry a real gun.” He then turned his weapon on Fredericks and put one more round into his head. Without further comment, he turned and walked out of the foyer, pausing to toss the “pimp gun” on the floor by John’s feet. “Historian, know your history. ‘Sic semper tyrannis.’”