Tears of Abraham

CHAPTER TWELVE Scream of Battle

COLORADO

The fire spread and things exploded inside the hardware store while Henry crawled outside surrounded by billowing black smoke. The heavy machine guns on the helicopters pounded the rear of the building.

He targeted the nearest gunner and fired. He expended one magazine and switched, lying on his back. The bird was moving and he knew it was hopeless. One of his rounds must have come close, though, because the gunner started walking tracers his way. Henry felt the hum in his chest as the bright orange rain approached him. He kept firing.

He felt anger and fear and regret. There was nowhere to hide.

He was screaming at the helicopters when they burst into flames. A missile from an aircraft punched through one of them without detonating; a second later, another missile followed, and that one did the job.

As flaming debris rained down upon the street, the attacking Chinooks spiraled around each other until they disappeared beyond below the row of stores. Henry heard the crash and watched the columns of smoke.

He fought the urge to laugh.

He rolled over and crawled further down the sidewalk, and a pair of F-35 jets swept overhead like avenging angels.

A four-man squad, some of those who had descended from the attacking helicopters, darted from one building to another directly across the road. Henry lobbed a frag through a blown-out window.

The whump from inside sent glass and wood shards needling through the air, and two men staggered out onto the road screaming and clawing at their eyes.

Henry peppered them with rounds and they spun to the ground.

He jogged to the alley and cut around to see how his friends had fared in the fight. The rear of the building was on fire, and several of the National Guard troops were bleeding out. Carlos and Sergeant Martinez were huddled over a man, trying to save his life.

Small arms fire continued from the rubble of the church around the corner. Apparently there were more commandos headed toward the hardware store.

“Sergeant,” Henry said. “We gotta go. The longer we stay here, the more people will get killed.”

“I know, damn it!”

Carlos looked up at Henry and shook his head slightly. The guy on the ground was burned on his face and hands, the skin bubbled and charred. He was crying for his mother.

Martinez stuck the wounded warrior with morphine, a heavy dose, and the man went still.

“Fuck,” Martinez said, standing with his hands on his hips and shaking his head in disgust.

The small arms fire continued, some of it closer now.

“On me,” Martinez said. “The church.”

Henry took up the rear, moving sideways so he could watch for enemies trying to come from behind. Henry was aware of the smell of burned flesh and hair, some of it his own. He decided he’d had enough of fire to last a lifetime.

They entered the church from what had been the rear; there was no easy way to tell the difference now, for the ceiling had collapsed and the front and back were open. Henry stepped past the pulpit, where a large cross had been blown onto the floor. The pews in the sanctuary were askew and torn.

Four Guardsmen were crouched down behind a smashed wall, and one of them was firing a light machine gun down the street. Spent cartridges clattered against the concrete.

“Friendlies!” Martinez said. The men turned their heads.

“Did the captain make it?”

“No,” Martinez replied.

“Motherfuckers. There’s more infantry. And I think I hear armor.”

“Yeah, there’s a Bradley, at least one, heading up the road,” said another man.

“Get out of here,” Martinez said. “Go home.”

“Home is gone,” said the machine gunner. “You go. I’m done.” He leaned into the scope and fired a burst. “That’s right!” he screamed. “Get some, you cocksuckers!” He fired again.

“Where is the rest of your unit?” Martinez said. “Did any of you fall back?”

The gunner laughed without humor. “You’re looking at us.”

“What about communications? Have you got a SAT phone? A radio linked to your brigade? Anything?”

“Captain Canella had a radio,” said the gunner. He fired again. “They’re trying to flank us,” he said calmly. “I’d strongly suggest you get the fuck out of here.”

“Good luck. And thanks,” Martinez said. He turned and Henry followed him out through the back of the church. Behind him, the machine gun resumed and pounded away.

They cut through more yards and side roads until they were beyond the town and into the hills and woods. Henry contemplated the drones that might be searching for them, the satellites and surveillance aircraft, and he had the feeling of being a seal on the surface of an ocean of great white sharks, wondering when he’d be ripped to pieces, and knowing there was nothing he could do about it.

He hoped that he was not a priority. There was a war going on, and within that war were many stories. There would be command and control issues, communication glitches and lags. And there were only so many assets in the area that an enemy could bring to bear. Federalist forces were still engaging; the F-35s had proven that. Maybe they could slip away.

The sun edged below the mountains and the sky was golden and pink and the air was sharp in Henry’s lungs. The woods were silent and still and brooding.

They slept for a few hours in a ramshackle cabin, probably a poacher’s lodge. They were in the middle of some kind of national forest or park. The tallest peaks were behind them now, and the plains would be ahead. They decided to travel mostly by night, and the overall plan changed.

In front of a pathetic fire crackling in a stone fireplace, Martinez stared at the flash drive in his hands.

“Whatever this is, it’s more important than we know. It’s more important than any of us, anyhow. We’ve got an oath to uphold.”

“What do you mean?” Carlos said.

“I mean, the information that is on this thing has gotten a lot of people killed. Not just our boys, either. I think maybe the reason for this war is on this thing. Maybe the people behind it. They’re scared.”

“If that’s true,” Henry said, “they’ll never stop coming.”

“Right,” Martinez said. “They’ll come for us, for our families, and they’ll never quit. I’m guessing they know exactly who each of us is by now. They could have pulled down that footage the idiot reporter put up on the net and run us through facial recognition software. They have tremendous power and influence to have pulled off what they have. They stopped an upload. That means they either had control of that satellite, or the whole damn Internet. I don’t know. And they had to know what they were looking for. That kid Travis said the upload stopped after only a few seconds. The airstrike, and I’m thinking it was a drone, was… what? Maybe two minutes after that? Whoever these guys are, they saw us on the Internet, knew we were a part of Alpha Pack, tasked a drone to that shithole town, and then waited for us to show our faces again.”

“You really know how to inspire,” Carlos said. “I feel all warm and fuzzy now.”

“We’re still alive, though,” Martinez said. “So we managed to lose them for now. Those jets might have engaged some of their drones, saving our asses twice. So now we stay off the grid completely. They are powerful, but they’re not God. They’ve got an Achilles’ heel, and I’m holding it right here in my hands.”

“But how are we going to use that?” Henry said.

“I haven’t figured that part out yet,” Martinez admitted. “But let me ask you something. How did you feel when you saw those kids? Those little children and their grieving parents?”

“Sad,” Carlos said. “Angry too. Really angry.”

“Yeah,” Henry agreed. He’d been enraged and broken inside. It hurt to remember.

“Well, these guys don’t care,” Martinez said. “They don’t care about taking innocent lives. They don’t give a damn about leveling a town or killing a family in a van or hitting our capital with a nuclear weapon. They just don’t care. So I’ve been thinking. What do they care about?”

“Power,” Henry said.

“Money,” Carlos added.

“Exactly. Power and money. And that’s it. They don’t care about anything else, because if they did, I don’t think any of this would have happened.”

“I don’t follow,” Henry said.

“Work backwards,” Martinez said. “Who thinks like that? Who just doesn’t give a fuck about anything but money and power?”

“Well, that’s a pretty long list. Wall Street. Politicians. China, maybe. The Russians.”

You’re spot on,” Martinez said. “I’m just a dumb grunt from LA with a little bit of community college, but I know people. I see patterns. Work with me here. For the last, what? Fifteen years, the global economy has been crap.”

“Yep,” Henry said.

“Europe and the US hit a major recession. The recovery we keep hearing about, well, we all know how that’s been. China’s real estate bubble popped and that made things even worse. Everybody is poorer than they were.”

“Mostly,” Henry said.

“Right. Mostly. Who’s not? Who is better off now than fifteen years ago? The people at the very top, that’s who. The clowns who have the system rigged in their favor. The guys with private islands and more than one jet. They’ve managed to turn tremendous profits while everyone else got poorer. I wonder how they did that?”

“They’re smart,” Carlos said. “And they work harder than everyone else.” He chuckled.

“That’s the campaign poster, right? That’s what they want us to believe. And I’m sure some of them are for real. Some of those people are brilliant and earned every penny, and more power to them. Some of them, though, just don’t give a damn. That’s who we’re fighting right now. The people who ordered the wholesale slaughter of innocents. You guys know anything about the Civil War?”

“You mean the first one?” Carlos said. “Yeah, man. I love Lincoln. Emancipation Proclamation. Gettysburg Address. Freed the slaves.”

“Uh-huh,” Martinez said. “Any idea how many people died?”

“Let’s see,” Carlos said. He smiled, his dark face getting darker in the flickering firelight, teeth white and shining. His voice changed, slightly lower in pitch, and his inflection altered. He sounded like a documentary voice-over narrator on the History Channel.

“The Civil War was the bloodiest war in American history. More than 650,000 Americans died. The bloodiest single day for America was at Antietam. We lost more men in a day than in ten years of fighting in Afghanistan and Iraq combined.”

“This war is already worse,” Martinez said. “And it’s only been a few weeks.”

“I’m lost,” Henry said.

“What the sergeant major is saying is two things,” Carlos said. “Number one, this war is going to become exponentially worse than the first Civil War because of the increased lethality of our weapons and training and the fact that the people pulling the strings don’t give a fuck about killing everyone. Finally, it’s our job to stop them. That about right, Sar’n?”

Martinez gave Carlos an odd, appraising look. “Yes, Carlos, that’s about right.”

“The Civil War was not about slavery or morality, not really,” Carlos said. “It was about money and power. The men on the ground, the guys pointing the rifle at each other, they were caught up in it. Most Confederate soldiers were never even related to someone who owned a slave, and still they fought. Maybe they listened to the wrong sermon, or maybe because their brothers were all fighting, too, and that was the honorable thing to do. A bunch of dirt farmers and sharecroppers who fought like hell because they had been manipulated into believing in a system which benefitted the gentry at a disproportionate rate to the general populace.”

“Where the hell did that come from, and who the hell are you?” Martinez said with a grin.

“I like history,” Carlos said. “I love to read. But in the army, it doesn’t pay to be too smart.”

All three of them laughed then, and they told stories about foolish and dangerous officers they’d all served under. In the stories, the lieutenants, captains, and majors were buffoons. Henry rejoiced in the laughter and shared reminiscing, for the stories were similar. There were cowards, bullies, and grossly inept officers they’d all had the displeasure of serving under. It wasn’t all funny, though; soldiers had died because of these fools. The conversation became serious.

“That’s what this is, you know,” Carlos said.

“What?” Martinez asked.

“The same kind of thinking, similar manipulation, but on a broader scale now, that compelled the South to really go to war the first time. Fear, misinformation, dehumanization, misplaced loyalty. Brotherhood. Money and power. But the money and power now, worse than then, is centralized in the hands of a few. And the economy is global. I’m guessing our real enemies have estates in Europe, Asia, all over the world. They’re loyal to the dollar and the yuan and the ruble. They don’t want to lose what they’ve got, and they’ve managed to get people to fight for them. And now we have a new ‘bloodiest day in American history.’”

“I’m sorry,” Henry said, “but it’s not quite that simple. The government has gone nuts. They’re in our personal business and no one is stopping them. They want to take our guns, hand out money to people who lay around all day and expect us to pay for it. Welfare, entitlements. Spending money the government doesn’t have to spend. And you’re wrong about the Civil War. The first one, I mean. It wasn’t just about—”

“All right, Johnny Reb,” Carlos said. “You tell that to the motherfucker with the private island who’s trying to kill you. The team that comes for your wife and kid. We can debate the Federalist Papers and the theory of nullification then. Right now, there is an enemy that needs some killing.”

“Amen, brother,” Martinez said. “Now shut up and get some sleep. I’ve got the first watch.”

KEY WEST, FLORIDA

Suzanne peered through the hole Bart had cut in the front door while the others took up positions around the house. Bart, carrying an AR-15 from Henry’s gun safe, padded from room to room, checking the windows and doors. Outside, the gang of looters whooped and hollered as they pillaged the home across the street. Suzanne knew no one lived there at the moment.

The looters, at least thirty of them, loaded pickup trucks, trailers, and vans. Suzanne could hear them laughing and joking. These were the kind of people that longed for a breakdown of society. For them, this was an extended holiday, a chance to be free of the law and constraints of morality. A window of opportunity afforded by a lack of consequences.

Maybe they’ll leave us alone. There are plenty of other houses around here.

More of them came, their ranks swelling through some invisible cockroach network, an announcement floating through the air that the light was out and it was time to swarm..

Ginnie took Taylor into the guest bathroom, the safest room in the house. They hunkered down in the bathtub with some blankets over them. They’d gone over this plan more than once, and even drilled on it. The tub might protect them from rounds tearing through the house. Although the walls were concrete, the hurricane shudders over the abundant windows would do nothing to stop a bullet.

Mary sat in the living room holding a .22 pistol in her hands and looking at it as though it were a poisonous snake.

Greenburg looked morose and tense and he had a baseball bat over his knees.

“They’re coming this way,” Suzanne said. The sun was coming up. She’d hoped these clowns would lose interest, but they seemed to be enjoying themselves. They’d set one of the houses down the street on fire.

The looters carried pieces of rebar, bats, crowbars, and guns. They were mostly young men, but Suzanne could see some who looked to be in their forties, bearded and crusty. A group of them stood in the road looking at her home, hands on their hips, apparently sizing things up.

There was more shouting and gesturing and the group of thugs formed up and started walking up the driveway.

“Get ready,” Suzanne said.

“It’s clear in the backyard,” Bobby said.

“I’m not playing with these assholes,” Bart said. “Suzanne, aim for the chest.”

Bart stood next to the front door, the assault rifle in both hands. He had extra magazines stuffed into his pockets and a sidearm holstered at his hip. He paused for a moment, and Suzanne saw him nod to himself, as though he were counting down in his head.

He threw the door open, moving to his right.

Suzanne fired the first shot, at a man less than thirty feet away. He was carrying a black revolver in one hand, sauntering forward with a grin. When the door opened, he started to raise his weapon, his grin fading into surprise while Suzanne pulled the trigger.

The blast knocked him two steps back, and he pivoted on one foot while his knees buckled beneath him, sitting down, then falling at an angle that would have been painful and awkward for a man who was still alive. The recoil from the shotgun slammed into Suzanne’s shoulder and rocked her on her feet; she was already chambering another shell, racking the weapon and shifting the barrel slightly.

Bart was firing and moving off to the right. Single shots like firecrackers.

Suzanne fired again, feeling outside of herself, and surprised at how calm she was. She tingled all over, and her ears were humming.

The second guy was trying to run, but instead of turning away, he’d come straight at her. He was about twenty feet away when she shot him in the face. His head was transformed into pink mist and meat and his body twisted to the ground, arms and legs twitching.

There were other shots from further away, and Suzanne heard the crack of rounds hitting the metal shudders covering the windows only a few feet away. From inside, she could hear Mary screaming. It sounded like Bobby was shooting at someone in the rear of the house.

The knot of men who’d initially approached the house scattered and they were running for cover. Bart kept firing, and two more of them fell mid-stride.

The smell of propellant mixed with the salty air and sewage and smoke from the burning house down the road.

Bart cut down the driveway, crouching next to Suzanne’s Mercedes, firing through another magazine.

Suzanne turned back into her house to check on Bobby, who was shouting with his wrecked voice.

“Go on, now!” he screamed. There were several shots. “Git!”

“Where are they?” Suzanne asked him.

“Down by the canal,” Bobby said. “I can’t get a clean shot. I think they’re trying for the boat.”

“Damn. Okay, you stay here. Greenburg, hold that door and open it for Bart!”

She went back out the front door and cut around the side of the house. The crushed coral crunched beneath her feet and the palms and flowers were lush and inviting. There was no time for remorse or thought beyond what had to be done. She had to protect her child.

At the canal, one man was stepping onto the Mistress while another crouched down to remove the lines from the cleats; the one on the dock had his back to her, and Suzanne shot him from forty feet away as she skirted the pool. The buckshot somersaulted him into the water.

The other man slipped and fell, perhaps surprised by the sight of Suzanne pointing the shotgun at him, or startled by the sight of his accomplice having a hole blown through his back. He cried out and vanished from sight, down on the deck of the boat. Suzanne came forward slowly, knees bent, another shell in the chamber.

“Come on,” she heard the man say. “Don’t shoot! I’m unarmed. We was just trying to get off the island!”

He stood up then, both hands in the air. Suzanne saw he was young, maybe under twenty, and his eyes were rolling and white and terrified.

I should shoot him. He might come back. They came to my house, trying to hurt me and my child. She hesitated, the gun leveled at the man’s chest.

“Please,” he begged. “I wasn’t going to hurt anyone.”

“In the water,” Suzanne said. “If I see you again, I’ll shoot you. I don’t care if it’s on Duval Street five years from now. I swear, I’ll put a hole in you.”

He sat back on the side of the boat and let himself fall over backwards, one hand pinching his nose. Suzanne watched him swim toward the opposite side of the canal and she turned back toward her house. The gunfire had ceased.

She walked the perimeter of her property, past orchids and sago palms, and palmettos along the edge of her land swished against her bare legs. Lizards scampered out of her way, and a snowy egret took flight from the walkway.

Bodies and blood stained the white coral driveway. So much blood. There were pools of it seeping into the ground and splashes of crimson against the rocks and on her car. Two old pickup trucks loaded full of loot smoked in the middle of the road pockmarked by bullet holes, windows shot out. She saw an arm draped over one of the doors, hanging lifeless. Thick blood dripped down onto the vehicle’s door.

Sweet Jesus. What did we do? What did I do?

A shot that seemed louder somehow than all the other shots that came before it rang out and echoed from the other houses and the street; Suzanne jumped. One last parting shot from the looters.

Bart came around the mailbox holding the assault rifle in his right hand. His left arm was bloody, his short-sleeved shirt soaked, and his face was tight and grim.

“I’m okay,” he said. “You?”

“Yeah, but you don’t look okay.”

“Through and through. Just a graze. Have you checked on everyone?”

“No.”

“All right, then.”

There was a clenching feeling in her, a choking, constricting sensation. She pushed the door open, dreading what she would find inside. Someone was screaming. She could take a lot, but losing Taylor wasn’t one of those things.

Suzanne had never envisioned herself being a mother. She’d been driven and a little reckless and selfish, and she’d privately scoffed at the women she’d known who went from being smart, successful, and fun, to dowdy and dumb in less than a year. She’d resolved never to join that particular settling tribe of minivans and bake sales and PTA queen bees and passive-aggressive judo she heard about and saw from former members of her own tribe, the let’s do something with our lives women she’d largely surrounded herself with.

She met Taylor, and her world changed.

It wasn’t the sonogram that did it and it wasn’t the initial shock of the test. Feeling the child growing inside her, she still felt reckless and even resentful sometimes. She loved Henry, and she knew he wanted to have a child, but sometimes late at night, she would scream at the loss of her youth and freedom and the idea that something had been taken from her.

The nurse put baby Taylor on Suzanne’s chest. Swaddled and crying and with a little pink cap on her head, and hands so small they could hardly wrap around Suzanne’s little finger, the child suckled at her breast, and everything Suzanne thought was so important before mattered less. The baby was purpose, future, and everything good and right. Taylor was perfect, unblemished by the world, and Suzanne felt an outpouring of love that was electric and true. She cried, something she never did, from the joy and promise of the moment, for what it meant for the rest of her life. Her child mattered more than anything else in the world.

Suzanne believed she’d lived her life with Taylor’s best interest in mind; she’d sacrificed gladly for her baby girl, and hadn’t become cow-eyed and torpid. The idea that a woman must give up sensuality, intelligence, freedom, and grace because she has a child seemed absurd, in retrospect. There was no dichotomy between motherhood and living a full life unless it was by choice.

Doing something with her life, though, meant raising a child, that little baby with the hand wrapped around her finger. That was doing something, the most important thing, at the end of the day. She’d thought about that when she signed the divorce papers with the heavy Montblanc pen in her attorney’s office after weighing the pros and cons and deciding Taylor would be better off in the long run.

Bart paused for a moment at the door, his face a mask of pain and rage and an almost pleading look, a fear of the unknown, perhaps, which Suzanne understood. She wanted to open the door but she also didn’t. Pain waited on the other side. Once she opened it, she would never be able to close that door again. There are nightmares and things which wake you up screaming and thrashing and sweaty, and then there is seeing that worst fear face-to-face and being powerless against dripping, hungry fangs, when everything that mattered before has fled and there is that one thing left.

Suzanne flung the door open and stepped inside.

Mary was screaming, lying sideways on the couch, her hands pressed to her belly in the way of a pregnant woman. Mary’s hands were covered with blood. She howled and yelped and her legs kicked and shook.

Suzanne sat the shotgun against the wall and ran for the med kit while Bart went to his wife.

“Bobby, go out back and keep an eye out. Greenburg, you go out front. Take the shotgun.”

Suzanne handed Bart the kit, and he tore into it, removing gauze, gloves, antibiotics, and painkillers. He gave Mary an injection, and within seconds she relaxed enough that she stopped screaming. Her eyes rolled back in her head.

Bart cut away Mary’s white nightgown, which was now crimson and soaked.

“Water,” Bart said.

Suzanne came back with a pitcher of clean water, and Bart poured it over Mary’s bloody belly.

More blood oozed to the surface from a hole in her abdomen.

“There’s no exit wound, so the bullet is still inside her,” Bart said. Go see if you can find a doctor at the hospital. Take Greenburg with you, and the AR.” He was packing the wound.

Suzanne grabbed her keys and jogged out to her car. She and Greenburg drove into town. She feared when she returned Mary would already be gone.

More than anything, she was glad Taylor had not been harmed; she was glad it had been Mary and not Taylor, and there was only a small part of her that felt guilty for it.