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Dang thing quiet all day, I've been snoozing in the sun. Get up and stick it in a pocket and go for a walk and it starts. Gryph buzzed me before I got to the gate, said I might want to get down to Amarillo in the next couple of days, seems there's some folks there I might be interested in meeting. Which means there's someone interested in meeting me, and what I 'might want to' do is something Gryph thinks I ought to want to. Well, he's earned the right to expect that, and doesn't act impulsively. So I'm going to Amarillo. But not tonight. Sun will be down before I get back to the house, and I'm not driving at night, even safely inside the lines. I would have him send someone to pick me up, but I don't like being without my own transportation. I'll drive down in the morning. I was halfway down the east side when I got another. Alexis. I'll talk to her anytime, business or not. "Excalibird," I say. "How may I serve you?" We're on about as secure a link as is possible, but nothing is a hundred percent these days. The incompetence of the enemy is worth a lot of technology. "Just wanted to hear your voice," she replied. "It's pretty dull up here without you." Dull is good, no one shooting at you, but we all joke a lot because the whole situation is depressing. Acerbic conversation is the order of the day. "I just got advised to take a trip," I said. "Tomorrow." "Citadel?" "Yep. The old man, must be important." Alexis knows Gryph, knows about as much about him as most. Except me. We go way back. Still, she knows he carries some weight generally, not just with me. "I don't suppose you know how long." "Nope. Maybe he just wants input on something, or maybe not." Even if there's no one likely to be listening and it's even less likely they'd know what we're talking about we're naturally close-mouthed over the air. "Maybe you'll get lucky," she said. "Give me a call sometime, I'll get down that way." I hoped it would be soon. And not just because. I'm not a young man, and wars can take a lot of years out of your life. Dad was in WWII, and was twenty-six when he went in and hadn't gotten married yet. It would be four years before he was home again, and the most of the available women were pretty young. Mom was nineteen when she married thirty year old dad. And I'm sixty-six, never got around to getting married and carrying on with a woman less than half my age. I finished my walk and returned to the house with no more interruptions, and sat down in a chair on the front deck. Jessica promptly hopped up in my lap and purred contentedly as if she expected me to be there a while. "Sorry girl," I said after a couple of perfunctory rubs. "Got to take care of some business." She reluctantly accommodated my returning to vertical by hopping down and giving me a disapproving look. I went in and brushed my teeth and took a shower and got into a fresh outfit. In faded jeans and the usual khaki shirt I would have looked to a casual observer the same way I had before. I was wearing moccasins now, instead of the boots I had been wearing earlier, but if a watcher wasn't watching carefully.... And I had a glass of Irish Mist and a cigar. I kept a couple of bottles of Mist in the fridge on the office bar, so it didn't melt the ice so fast. A small table and a couple of chairs sat near the east end of the deck. I set the refreshments on the table and sat down. After a sip of Mist I lit up the 4K Black Sweet. I took a couple of pulls on the stick and another sip of Mist before thinking about Gryph. But think I did. He didn't have any more time for frivolities and wild goose chases than I did. Whatever he had was important. A half hour later I'd finished the libation and smoke and figured I was ready for bed. I'd had an unpleasant encounter with the Medical Industry some years back. Had a heart attack which was my own damn fault, but what should have been a pretty routine affair turned out to be anything but. First hospital they got me to poked around and tried to do a heart cath. Someone shooting the dye stuck the needle in one of my kidneys. That stuff is bad news at the best of times, mainlining it just upped the odds of something bad happening. They couldn't operate anyway, sent me to another hospital a half hour away. Another opportunity to fuck up. They did the bypass, next day it locked up again. Stopped breathing too, twelve minutes of no air while they got a trach in. Figuring I was a lost cause they figured they'd let me vegetate somewhere else and sent me to a third hospital. I use the word hospital loosely - it was an old facility that had been closed for years, opened up as a rehab hospital. A cash cow for someone or other, it was nearly three months before my family got me out, and for three months I was pumped full of some nasty psychotropics, and ended up with a lot of my nervous system being hosed. Took a few weeks to start walking again, brain recovery a lot longer. The hallucinations from the drugs I could remember years later while I can - and have always been - unable to remember a dream a few hours after waking. With rare exceptions. Learning to drive again wasn't that bad, just took a while. It was close to a year before I was able to shoot decently again. Shooting rifles long distance is still tricky because of the nerve damage, but I can generally do it. I won't be recruited for sniper duty, unless things turn the wrong way and we're on defense. Overall though I was doing better than I had any right to. Which was a good thing because three years and some weeks ago it all boiled over and I'd have hated to be any more physically compromised than I already was. When the regime tried to arrest the governor of Texas after the usual special prosecutor dog and pony show issued a laundry list of indictments and had the bad judgment to actually try to bring him in for a show trial. Some say it was the Fort Sumter of the second civil war. CWII as they call it now. Something like it was bound to happen sooner or later, and Texas figured sooner was better. I was down at Killeen visiting a friend from my Air Force days and we'd driven up to Waco to see the massacre site. They have a real nice memorial there, it was good to see they aren't forgotten by some. Anyway we were watching the news when it started. Having told the regime to pound sand and advising them that the governor wasn't going to play the game I guess they figured they'd done all they were obliged to in the way of being civil. Two dozen or so FBI agents and US Marshals showed up like they were actually going to arrest him. They were politely informed that they had twenty-four hours to be out of Texas. None of us knew what the feds would do, but most of us figured on them doing just what they did do. We knew there weren't more than a handful of them with enough sense to come in out of the rain as my grandma used to say, and worse, they actually thought they were smart. Actual military force was still out I guess, but they might has well have. Like Waco where they had a couple of Army choppers shoot up the place before the ground assault they set down a couple of Blackhawks on a field near the governor's mansion and two more on the grounds and assaulted the building with about two hundred personnel. That's the most common estimate, but they made no official statement as far as I ever heard. The Texas militia that officially didn't exist was a formidable force, and the detachment it sent to deal with the incursion was overkill by design. Sixteen of the attackers were in body bags when it was over, eleven more in local hospitals. Another two dozen or so were prisoners, having had the good judgment to drop their weapons and surrender quickly once they saw how it was going. A failed operation, a bunch of deaders and a bunch more hostages things pretty much came to a stop for a while. Negotiations ensued, and the Texans played it to the hilt. And some other folks got ideas.
Out in Arizona some good old boys weren't the good old boys the feds thought they were. In fact they were about as far from mentally challenged hicks playing at being rebels as the khaki-and-polo-shirt fake Nazis the feds had been using for a few years for false flag operations were from actual Nazis or white supremacists. I wasn't sure I'd ever seen an specimen of either one, and apparently the feds hadn't seen any either. Anyhow, they'd been reeling the fed goons in for several weeks. The same old playbook, get some marginally literate angry hicks talking to your agents and cook up some kind of conspiracy. Supply them with guns and explosives and whatever else you want in the mix, and when it's all set arrest them and have a big press conference about how you foiled another domestic terrorist plot. We figured it'd happen eventually, feds weren't that smart back in the days when they were actually tracking criminals or spies. Lower quality personnel coming in, diversity and equity, and of course you didn't have to be a scum-sucking lowlife to do the work they wanted done but it helped. Turned out the resistance had some pretty smart cookies in their ranks. In fact I figured before long our dumbest was smarter than their best. In an little prepper enclave off I-40 east of Flagstaff they'd been cooking up things like it for years. Lure them in the same way they're trying to do you. The way law enforcement - when there was any - tried to catch child molesters by digital stalking. Troll the social media sites and look for likely victims, draw them in and set up a meet, guy shows up thinking he's about to get some thirteen-year-old and slap the cuffs on and call the news people. The problem with that was - to the degree it was a problem - was the pigeon was rarely the real deal. The real predators - ones that were already doing it - were smart enough not to get caught that way. The marginal offenders - potential offenders usually - could be drawn in that way and as often as not either the charges were dropped because of the entrapment thing or the eventual charge was trivial. But they got the attention they wanted. Politicians used it to show they were protecting the public, especially children. Few real predators were taken down that way. After all, a lot of the real ones were the politicians and their social class. It worked even better when they got kids who had been so warped by the psych drugs they had left the real world and were even easier to manipulate. By keeping some engaged all the time a series of mass shootings could be deployed with a fair degree of precision and predictability. Why not use the same technique to create 'domestic terrorists'? Well, it had worked before. The folks out in Arizona were old-timers, having been in the business since the 1980s and were about as far from what the feds expected as they could be. Josh Henson and his small group of survivalists had been building their outfit for over forty years, and would have been a tough nut to crack in any case. Hundreds of what they called mandroids - artificial personas that looked real even to a thorough investigation. Social Security numbers, jobs with companies that existed only on paper - or as electrons and magnetic spots - and bank accounts and credit cards. It took a lot of work, but it was well-financed and had been fine-tuned over forty years. Everything was there except warm bodies. Any kind of body. It was even even easier when a physical presence was necessary for almost nothing. Of course bodies were needed - warm and breathing - for operation Desolate Sanctum. Easy enough, there were plenty of volunteers. So a group was assembled and it got underway. The first operative began by a bit of trolling, and in this environment it didn't take long to get a hit. And not much longer to confirm. Chase Alexander was the point man, and before long he had a meeting. A meeting in an old run-down house with a thirty-something guy in camo bdu pants and an olive wife-beater, just what a fed would expect. The guy calling himself Chase Alexander was nothing of the kind, and the four men the FBI men would meet in the coming weeks weren't either. Eventually four more agents joined the operation, one for each 'conspirator', and the team had as many more at the field office. It was a pretty basic plan - get a handful of malcontents ready to kill someone or blow something up and get the evidence. Every agent was wearing a wire all the time and the recordings were archived for the big case. And when it was time to spring the trap the weapons and explosives were delivered and safely stowed away to await the big day. "I had trouble believing it was that easy," Chase had told us later. "We expected the whole time for something to go wrong, for them to see through us in some way. But they were fixated on the expected outcome - the big bust, press conferences, TV interviews, the promotions, the works." I wasn't surprised. The federal agencies had done the same thing the armed forces had. Recruiting large numbers of mentally ill and physically unfit personnel who would be willing tools and at the same time driving out the people who were capable. So when it was time for the bust they got a big surprise. The Phoenix TV and newspaper people had been alerted and had crews in nearby Flagstaff waiting for the signal. Like they did at Waco, but they hadn't learned anything. They kept doing it, and hadn't had any more debacles. They were about to. About two dozen FBI and US Marshals - we didn't get consistent reports - moved on the house just before daylight. The five on-the-ground agents - four men and one woman - had been in the house dozens of times and knew the layout and where everything was. They'd had it under surveillance for two days, and Chase and his teammates made sure they were seen regularly. They didn't know exactly when the assault would come but it didn't matter. Even if the TV trucks didn't show up ahead of time they were ready. Four fire teams were watching the feds, completely undetected. So when they took up positions around the house and began firing gas grenades and flash-bangs through the windows their backs were exposed. As they approached Chase and the team had quietly opened a trap door in the floor of a room that had previously been filled with junk and given not much attention by the feds. Below it a tunnel led a hundred yards underground to a small patch of trees. They exited the tunnel in time to see the fire teams mopping up. Seven of the two dozen or so survived. Perhaps more would have if the ambulances had arrived sooner but the feds weren't expecting any casualties on their side. The bait hitched a ride with the fire teams and got out of there. They left their vehicles and any personal effects behind. They were all linked to the mandroids, and those would be retired. Of course there were pictures of all of them, heavily disguised, and they had been careful not to let the enemey get even one fingerprint or article possibly containing DNA. And if they had it was unlikely to be of use as none of the team had ever had theirs collected. That was just the beginning. Like mushrooms after a rain the independents got in on the act. Most were enthusiastic but not very competent. But each fracas was a no-win situation for the regime. To fend off an attack or track down the perpetrators taxed resources already spread too thin. And when the organized operators acted the results were even more devastating.
My two vintage Trans-Ams live in a small garage behind the house. The antique ivory '73 is a complete resto, with just a 30-horsepower or so tweak to the engine. The silver-grey one - a '72 built from two wrecked ones - was substantially modded, with an engine that began life as a 472-inch Caddy and has a late model 6-speed auto tranny behind it. I once disconnected the speedo and used a GPS unit to see how fast it would go. I was on a four mile high-banked oval out in California and thought I was feeling something a little dodgy in the ride around 180 and dedided not to push it. You drop twenty thousand plus in a project and you don't want to wreck it. And I value my body somewhat more. Could have been the track or the tires or something else. I'm guessing it'll do 200 easily enough. Still gets decent mileage at 70, and gas isn't a problem here in the Republic. I put my bags in the back seat and went back to the house to lock up. After doing that I called Suzy. She likes to sleep late some days but rarely past sunup. I got the standard all-clear greeting. "Hello darlin'" "Nice to see you," I replied. "Something tells me you're leaving," she said. "Yeah. Gryph has something important. I'll probably be gone a few days. Can you watch the watchers for a while?" "Sure thing honey. Wish I could go." "Me too, if it hadn't been so sudden we could have arranged it. Be safe, I'll call every day." "Got it. You be safe too." I'm always wishing I could get a few days away from everything except Suzy. Guess it will have to wait. I went back to the garage and fired up the Firebird I was using, the hot one. I used it a bit on trips around the area, and it was well known to the highway patrol in the Texas, Arkansas and Oklahoma. They'd keep an eye on me and were on call if I needed help. I backed out of the garage and closed the door, punched a number on my Commpad 264. Phone service is pretty crazy with a war going on. It works, to the extent that it does, under an uneasy and unofficial truce. Some of the infrastructure was damaged early on and some still hasn't been fixed, but it's marginally useful. For critical needs we have other methods. I got the Arkansas State Police commander on in about twenty seconds. "Morgan here, that you Ironwolf?" "The south forty is full of geese," I replied. "What's your route?" "I-40 to Amarillo." "Gotcha. We'll be looking out for you, when you come up on Fort Smith I'll get Ed out in OK city on the horn and set you up for that run. What's your ride?" "Miranda." "Got it. The I-40 corridor is secure, we'll advise of any developments." "Thanks 'wolf." Miranda is the hot rod I'm driving. Her more sedate sister back in the garage is Minerva. I eased her down the quarter mile driveway to Highway 42 and turned west. In under ten minutes turned on 49 south at Hickory Ridge and watched the rice fields scroll past for another twenty. That put me on I-40 and I set the cruise on 75 and picked up the sound pod. It looks like a phone but it's actually a controller for the on-board sound system with two terabytes of music. Or room for that much, it's unlikely to ever be near full. I've got one of those newfangled stereos with USB and Bluetooth, made to fit in old cars like Miranda. Minerva is all original so she doesn't have it. I selected a playlist, the first ten Alan Parsons Project albums in chronological order and hit the GO button. It had been nearly fifty years since I first heard it and still listened regularly. When I had the time, and the drive to Amarillo would give me plenty.
A little over an hour I hit the outskirts of Little Rock. About that time my Commpad buzzed and I tapped the answer button. "Hey sailor, looking for a good time?" A female voice - I can never guess a woman's age by the sound of her voice. Women in the business cover the same age range as men, although there are a lot of young ones percentage-wise. I had the feeling a lot more women than men weren't hadn't been paying attention before. "The golden goose is on the loose," I replied. "Brighter than a thousands suns," said the caller. Good. Can't be too paranoid. "How's it look?" I asked. "Clean and clear all the way. You've got a couple of escorts, one in front and one behind. They're maintaining visual contact. Everything's calm here, but we can't be too careful." "Thanks. Have a good one." "Back atcha." Little Rock was the only part of the state where there had been even a little trouble. The cities in the blue states, as we called them, had more than enough. They had deliberately let their urban cesspools run wild before and when the interruption of food and essential services hit them they went up in flames. The red states had better control of their urban population to begin with, and maintaining order was relatively easy. And the red states didn't experience the squeeze, partly because they were producers and an alliance with contingency plans was already in place. So after the first riots ended with a few hundred malcontents being hauled to detention camps in the country the others got the message fast. They were now mostly going on as before, with some logistical adjustments. As long as they were fed the denizens of the cesspools were relatively quiet, with only internecine violence of little concern to the state governments. There weren't that many of them anyway. I clicked on a radio app on the Commtab and scanned the band used by my escorts. We would be the only ones on it as its range was only a couple of miles and the freak wasn't used by anything official. A hobbyist might pick it up, but that was about it. It locked on channel seven of the ten available. "That you Ironwolf?" I can figure men's age by voice better than I can women. Probably makes sense somehow. Cobalt is probably thirties to early middle age. "The one and only," I replied. "Some folks be glad to hear that," Cobalt replied. "Or that there were less than one." "I do seem to have a reputation." "You're lookin' good. I'm coming up on you now, blue bug. I'll hang here 'til we're through town." "Gotcha, thanks." "I'm backing off to let you catch up." That would be Seven's partner. A blue bug meant any late-model car, which could be twenty years old since they've looked like squashed bugs for that long. I saw a blue car about a hundred feet back. "Got it. What am I looking for?" "Black Ford F-150, regular cab." "Roger." Those were about as common as hen's teeth, everybody and his brother having gone for crew cabs years ago. Made sense as a general purpose vehicle, but I never cared for the look. I've got a fairly new 150, extended cab, like it all right. The black thing ahead must be him. A couple of minutes later I was behind him. They were pacing their vehicles to my speed, and a few minutes later we passed the I-430 junction. We were leaving the city and my escorts would peel off shortly. "Catch ya later," Seven in the 150 said as his turn signal came on. As I passed him Seven's partner in the blue bug signed off. "Have a safe trip, kiss some Texas gals for us." "I'll try to sneak in one or two," I replied. "Have fun while I'm gone." They probably would. They were probably with the state police, and traffic was light with the war going on. Most people were staying close to home and the interstate traffic from the regime states had ceased. Except for infiltrators, and they had to be advised before taking action. A lot of cruising and looking though.
As the landscape turned back rural I restarted the music. The first track on Eve was one of those intriguing instrumentals they did on most albums. I relaxed and turned down the volume on the Commpad, leaving it in view so I could see any alerts. Easy as the big modded Caddy mill was on gas, I'd have to stop for fuel before long. I didn't stop in Little Rock just to be extra safe, and I'd always enjoyed the stopping at the small towns further out of town. As the final track of Eve was ending I took the next exit, with an Exxon sign on the right. There were a couple of cars in the parking lot and one at the pumps, so I selected one furthest from the building and with a good view of my surroundings. I had a Glock 10mm Long Slide G40 in a crossdraw holster, something that didn't attract much attention even before the war, Arkansas being on of the early states to adopt constitutional carry and its citizens not being shy about exercising the right. I liked the extra punch of the ten and the longer barrel if I was looking at the possibility of action in a situation just like this. The other customer had finished fueling and went into the store. A young man, twenties I guessed. He was packing too, something about the size of my Glock in a hip holster. I put the spout in and started the pump, looking around as the fuel flowed. There was no traffic to speak of off the interstate, and Morrilton was a couple of miles away. I finished fueling and got on my way, the other customer not having emerged. I figured him for a local, yakking with someone inside. Back on the road. Fort Smith and the Oklahoma line was ahead. Russellville was in between, nice little city with a lot of small manufacturing. I barely noticed it as I passed, and the little towns along the way were off the interstate - just names on signs. Approaching Fort Smith I got a buzz from Seven. "All right, once you hit the OK line do a reset," he said. "They're waiting." "Got it," I replied. "Thanks for the eyes guys." "Good luck, catch you later." I hoped it wouldn't be too much later. Selfish of me I knew, a lot of guys and gals working harder than me, and have less to lose but they still fight for it. Knowing that I was taking more risks, and having a price on my head didn't make me feel less guilty when I have selfish thoughts. Should it? Beats me. A few miles into Oklahoma I ran another scan. One hit, I didn't know what frequency to expect but if there was more than one we had problems. Sort of. The enemy might have detected the network but still not have the information needed to exploit it. I tapped the squawk button and waited. "Dinosword to Ironwolf. You copy?" "'wolf here," I replied. "The objectivity of dual-sidedness is dogmatic in its hypocrisy." "Ain't it the truth? The simplicity of deviousness is prosaic in its fluidity." "That's for sure," I said. "How's it look ahead?" "Clear and calm, even more than Arkansas. You figure on a pit stop?" "I usually stop at Okeman. Any status change I should know about?" "Nah. Your escorts are in place, look for a grey Dodge Ram behind you, and you should be closing up on a white Chrysler minivan before long." "Sounds good. Can you advise of my stop?" "Can do. Hang on while I verify." I waited, saw the truck approaching in the rear view mirror. Once it was close enough for me to recognize it dropped back to about a hundred yards." "You're good," Dino said. "We'll let you know if anything comes up." "Thanks. 'wolf out." I was coming up on a white minivan, it let me close enough to see the three red circles on the hatch. Blue-yellow-red. All good. Vulture Culture was coming to an end as I hit the Oklahoma City. I paused the player and concentrated on driving. Okie City was pretty busy, a lot of added population with military operations. And the airport was busier as well - I looked over as I passed by a few miles north. I'd flown out of there a couple of times lately, on a G-650 the operated by SID, kind of like the feds' FBI, Secret Service, and US Marshals rolled into one. With a couple or three special ops types. My line of work. Leaving the city I soon passed a sign informing me that Elk City lay 113 miles ahead. Something I knew, having stopped there a few times. A little chain of taco joints had one there, and I liked their tacos. The mileage was about right for a gas stop. Stereotomy was beginning, and Gaudi would mark then end of the Alan Parsons Project odyssey. I could start a new playlist when I started on the last leg of the trip. Upon arrival I topped off Miranda's tank before going for tacos. I grabbed a half dozen of the mini chickens and a big Coke and drove over to the Wal-Mart parking lot next door to munch on them and relax a bit. My escort went for lunch too, I'd buzz them when I was ready to move on. The Wal-Mart lot was pretty busy. I wondered how they looked in other places. Like most of the big retailers they were open in most places, but the trucks didn't cross the lines. Most of their distribution centers were in the free states, but the west coast wasn't accessible. That meant the states under government control could still get stuff from China while we couldn't. But we have more food than we needed. Word was it was getting bad in the cities. Almost an hour later, having chased the tacos with a Juliet-6 cigar, a French vanilla cherry flavor. I have no idea if there's French vanilla in them or any vanilla at all. Or cherries, but I like them. Back on the road again. Texas state line about thirty miles. Another one- fifty to Amarillo. I start thinking about what's there that the Gryphon wants me for. Have to be something big, and I'm still thinking this may end up taking a while. Alexis won't be happy, but neither will I. I call up a list of Gordon Lightfoot albums, chronological order again. Soothing. When I hit the Texas line my guardian angels will hand me off to someone. Texas has something like SID, they'll handle escort duties the rest of the way. I was about twenty miles out when Dino buzzed. "Texas ISD will be waiting at the line," he said. "Four marked cars, you know the drill." I knew it. Texas was the de facto heart of the Republic, where it all began and around which the other parts coalesced. Like Philadelphia a couple of centuries ago, some said. All the other states had their representatives here, both to conduct the war and plan for its conclusion. Amarillo had become the center, the state capitol of Austin being a pretty nasty place due to the influx of commies as we called them, mostly from California, which had turned it into a blue cesspool. As we called them. They'd fucked up the city quite thoroughly, and while the state had cleaned it up pretty well it was decided from the beginning to have the center of the revolution somewhere else. The population of Amarillo had grown a lot as a result, and several new hotels were already open and more were under construction. A couple of small settlements had grown up outside the city, one on Texas 60 and the other off I-40, both about five to six miles outside the city limits. Between the two there's about twenty thousand people, a lot of them figuring to leave someday and go back where they came from. For some it will depend on the war ending on favorable terms - there's quite a few from what is at present enemy territory. A couple of hours later Gordon is singing Bitter Green, sounds like it's a about a woman waiting for her man to come home, something like that. The Commpad buzzes. That'll be my escorts for the last leg - I tap the answer button. "Enoch here," I say. "Do you have it?" the caller asks. "If it's blue I do," I reply. "Otherwise it's been a wasted trip." They've been talking to Oklahoma the last hundred miles or so, and know my car. There's a couple of choppers up there keeping an eye on me, but Texas is seriously tight. Any enemy agents here are buried deep, observing only unless they have something that's worth revealing themselves to report. Then they're cooked and either get out of get locked up. "Gryphon says proceed to his headquarters," the watcher says. "We'll keep an eye on you the rest of the way." "Thanks. Looks like I'm about two hours out," I say. "Holler if there's anything I should know." "Will do. He's being updated regularly." The speed limit is eighty here, and I adjust the cruise and sit back to enjoy the ride. Nothing much to see, turn the music off and try to think about nothing. I'll find out when I get there.
Gryph's HQ is near the settlement on 60, about three or four miles past it. A right off the highway onto a two-lane chipseal road, about a hundred feet in there' s a fence. Chain link about ten feet high, it's not intended to prevent passage, just to mark the boundary. A quarter mile beyond is a small grove of trees and some buildings. I know Gryph had the place built about ten or so years ago, when it was pretty evident things were about to get bad but the breaking point was still unknown. I stopped at the gate and waited. I could sneak in a little Al Capone cigarillo, maybe. But as sure as I light one up the gatekeeper will show up. Besides, much as I like them they're an inch too short. Or a ring size too small. Or both. Sure enough it was just a couple of minutes before I saw a vehicle headed my way. A big old '68 Dodge pickup stopped short of the gate and a guy in Gryph's blue-grey livery got out. He unlocked the gate and swung it open, waved me by. I nodded and drove through. That was one of Gryph's personal vehicles, I'd driven it. He's a gearhead like me, and likes oddball stuff. I didn't wait for the retainer but drove on. The trees were numerous but not that big - the place had been bare when Gryph acquired it. I knew where to park - I've got a reserved space even though I'm rarely there for long. The reserved spaces have signs - mine has a red lion rampant on a gold background, like the miniature one on the bridge of my sunglasses. The old truck passed on behind me and disappeared to somewhere. Gryph had a garage on the premises, with a small collection of his favorite cars, it was probably going there. I parked and sat in the car for a few minutes. The last leg had been over four hours and I'm not as limber as I once was. I saw a couple of guys coming out of the front entrance and decided my break was about over. I got out and removed my bags, set them on the pavement. By the time I got the Commpad and other items out the guys had arrived. "Let us get those for you," guy #1 said. He and guy #2 grabbed them and headed for the entrance. Another guy was coming my way, and I followed them. Guy #3 was dressed the same way, but with a cowboy hat instead of the Smokey hats the first two were wearing. Those were the same as those worn by the highway patrol and the uniformed ISD types. The blue-grey was about the same as the Arkansas state troopers wore - I never decided if it was more blue or more grey, it looked a lot like Civil War uniforms. The southern kind. But it had looked that way as long as I'd been around, while the Texas and Okie boys wore tan and some dark green. But Gryph had his men in the blue-grey. I liked it. Even if I wear khaki shirts all the time. Guy #3 was Phantom Bishop, at least that was the of his code I usually heard him referred to by. His name was Clayton Faulkner, from an old Texas family. He's not old though, his dad and Gryph are friends from way back, and Clay - along with most of a fairly large clan - are deep in the operations of the republic. The Republic of Texas, that is. The rebel states aren't a single entity, even the southern states are just an alliance with a common goal. Same as the ones in the northwest. We'll get it figured out later, assuming we win. Clay didn't extend a hand - that's not done much these days. Especially among people already familiar. "Pretty quick trip," he said. "How's Miranda doing?" "Wants me to drive her more," I replied. "I'd like it too." "Yeah. Guess we'll get around to doing what we want eventually. Dinner in about an hour." I'd left a little after 0700, and it was just past 1900 now. Twelve hours, couple of fuel stops. Not bad. "You didn't hold it up on my account, did you?" "Not much. Gryph wants you to meet a few people before, he doesn't like talking shop at the table." He doesn't. Neither do I. "Lead on," I say. I want a drink and a smoke. The big building is three floors with rows of windows like an office building, but plain masonry blocks painted white. Center of the first floor are four sets of doors, suggesting more traffic than there ever is. We go inside, the dozen or so security types largely ignoring us. Clay is one of about three or four people in the organization with no one above them except Gryph. The building is new, just completed a little over a year ago. It didn't take long to see the war was going to go a while, and Gryps had the money to do pretty much anthing he wants. The Republic doesn't mind having him pick up a piece of the financial load. We ride the like-new elevator up to the third floor and I follow Clay to one of the conference rooms. That's what just about all of the rooms up there are. There weren't many people - we met a couple of guys in Gryph's uniform and Clay exchanged greetings with them. At the end of the corridor - I knew because there was a window there - Clay opened the door to the last room on the left and we went in. A large table filled the center of the room, surrounded by about thirty chairs. Several were occupied, and the occupiers rose as we entered. "Gentlemen," Clay said, "the eagle has landed." I recognized a couple - Marcus Stuart and Henry Langley were two of Gryph's most trusted lieutenants. I'd seen them in action, no surprises there. An old guy, older than me or Gryph, and a guy in I guessed to be in his thirties. The old man was dressed casually in khaki slacks and an oxford shirt. The younger one was wearing olive cargo pants and a black mock turtleneck pullover. He'd have been at home in Gryph's livery. And may have been, just in civvies now. "Ironwolf," Clay said, "You know Mark and Henry. Oliver Grayson," indicating the older man, "and Raymond Bradley. I believe Gryph will be with us shortly. Meanwhile, how about a drink?" Oliver and Raymond joined us and Clay poured four glasses of brandy. We returned to the table and sat down. Just in time for Gryph to enter. He's a bit older than me but doesn't look it. A bit taller too, at six feet even if you believe him. Military haircut, neat short beard and conservative mustache. At close to seventy and that tall he gets around smooth and quiet, like a big cat. In fact some south-of-the-border types I know of call him El Gato. Wearing the same outfits as his people, only with some jewelry. A Mike Charlie shield over the left shirt pocket and a lapel pin with crossed rifles. The rifles weren't the usual old fashioned ones, they were FN FALs, and made by the same jeweler that made my lions. There weren't many like it. He went to the bar and poured a drink, took a cigar from a humidor and sat down. He lit up, sipped his drink and looked around. "Might as well get to it," he said. "'wolf, Oliver and Ray here are with part of Operation Talisman. Ever heard of it?" "Can't say as I have," I replied. Gryph grinned. "Glad I've kept one secret from you. They're the liaison with me and Obelisk, and outside of a couple of guys at ISD and Obelisk we're the only ones who know anything about it." Obelisk is the president, or the closest thing the Alliance has to one. He heads the council of the representatives of the Alliance states. His identity is a closely guarded secret - not that the enemy even has much of an idea of how the Alliance is structured. But we don't want anything unfortunate happening to him. "I'm going to guess you haven't heard of the Dead-Enders," he continued. "Nope." "About a year ago," Gryph said, "Operation Short Circuit went down. We knew it was risky, but important. A couple of guys, after we had the plans in place and were ready to launch, volunteered to be the hammer. Knowing their chance of survival was near non-existent, they insisted. "Sure enough they didn't come back. One of them left me a message to be opened in that case. Both of them were terminal and even with decent medical care had little time left. They preferred to go out that way. It was something I'd suspected, but it was what they wanted. What I'd want. "Word got around. There's a few guys in that situation, and while we're doing a lot better than the enemy at taking care of our people for some there comes a time no matter what we do is no good. They'd rather go down fighting, take a bad guy or two with them." They certainly did that in Short Circuit, I figured. More than one or two. "Dead-Enders," I said. "Right. For now the closest guys like that can get is being on the perimeter, even there contact with the enemy is infrequent. But we're going to have to make some serious breakage in their supply lines to seriously accelerate their end. So there's some going into Injun country. We have some guys that have the experience and ability we need, and are phyically able, that want a shot at it." A guy could be dying from cancer, nothing's gonna save him but for the time being he isn't feeling too bad - yeah, I'd probably want to go that way. "Kansas has got to to," Gryph said. "Completely break it - railroads, highways, power lines - but we have to hit a lot of small targets. No big rivers where you can take down a bridge - if you could do it - and it's down for years. Same with interstate overpasses - hard to do. But you blow up one railroad bridge across a creek and the railroad's useless until they get it fixed. Take out a couple dozen... same with highway bridges. If they can't cross Kansas they're cut in two, and back east is in big trouble." Yeah, a lot of food from the west coast. We control most of the farmland. I've thought about it enough, now we're gonna do it. I look over at Oliver and Raymond. Figure if Gryph wants me to know something he'll tell me. "I'd like for you to be in on the planning," said Gryph. "Starting with target selection. Then we'll put the teams together, and be assembling supplies and equipment." I didn't say anything, just nodded. Alexis wasn't going to be happy, but maybe I can figure out a way to get back once in a while, just for a few hours. We use the old airport at Washburn, and Gryph can get a small plane to drop me off. "We've got an office suite on this floor," said Clay. "Your lodgings are ready." "If you need anything from home," Gryph said, "I'll have you flown out tomorrow. Pick up whatever you need for a week or so, we can get you home for a day or so that often." I already figured he reads my mind pretty easily. I thank you, and Alexis thanks you. Not really, but she'll cut you some slack if I'm home regularly. "Meanwhile," he continued, "I'm going to get back to work and let you guys talk."
"Oliver and Ray," Clay said, "Are as Gryph said, part of Talisman. I'll let them fill you in." Talisman was apparently a suicide squad, or a bunch of them. As Gryph had said they were men with little time to live and willing to use it in missions that would probably get them killed. Dead-enders. "We've got a half-dozen squads now," Clay said. "Five man cells, quartered here. There's a small hospital here Gryph's compound. The hospital in Amarillo has been upgraded considerably, and what treatment the guys need is available there. As long as there's a chance most of them want it, but they know their chances aren't good. Still it helps them stay as physically able as possible." It was feeling kind of weird, but I could grok. "We'll be planning Operation Serpent's Kiss - that's what the Kansas operation is called - here. Some of them will be involved. If you guys are ready we'll get to it." He got up and we followed him down the hall to another door. Aside from the number 32 on the door there was no other indication of its purpose. Room 32 was a large conference room with two doors, only one was open. The usual desk and chairs of a small office were visible. The usual sideboard - usual in Gryph's domain anyway - was present at one end of the room. "Grab a drink and a seat," Clay instructed us. "And a smoke if you want. I'll be right back." I guessed Oliver and Raymond had been around for a bit, as they casually went to the sideboard and poured drinks. I followed and looked over the selection and poured a glass of Paul Masson mango brandy, wondering how much California liquor was finding its way into Alliance territory. I knew Gryph and other forward-thinking types had laid in considerable stocks of such things. Those that could afford it anyway. Probably there was a healthy black market, since the enemy needed money and even that small input was welcome. The big nationwide retailers like Wal-Mart had an interesting situation, and probably a fair amount of shenanigans went on there. And with some of the big liquor distributors being owned by foreign companies made it interesting. For the southern part of the Alliance the border with Mexico made things easier, and the northern branch could get small items flown in, since the regime didn't have the resources to shoot down our aircraft when they flew across Kansas. Soon even Kansas wouldn't be a problem. Raymond and Oliver had lit cigars and I checked out Gryph's offerings. There was the usual assortment of imports, I decided on one of my 4K mango flavored to go with the brandy. The large table would seat twenty or so - I didn't count the chairs. A computer was set up on one end and a large electronic whiteboard - actually a huge video screen that could be used with a telestrator - stood off to one side. Clay returned and went to the sideboard for a drink then took a seat near the end of the table. "Have at it, guys," he said. Oliver moved to the seat where the computer was and sat down. He picked up the board controller and activated it. The screen displayed a large map of the country with only the outlines of the states. The Republic states were gold and the Alliance states were silver, light enough to mark on with the telestrator. The enemy states - those not under control of either the Alliance or the Republic - were light blue. Kansas was light blue. Its only importance to the regime was the highways and rail lines crossing it but they were especially critical for the seat of power back east. Missouri had remained under federal control and Kansas City and St. Louis had large populations that would soon be a little hungrier than they already were, and further east the effects would be even more severe. Serpent's Kiss would see to that. "I-70 is the big artery," he said, drawing a line long it on the map. Everything from Colorado to the west coast was in enemy hands and I-70 connected them. We hadn't yet had the resources to make an effective assault on Kansas. "With it and these rail lines out of commission it will get real painful real fast back east." He marked several of the railroads. "We're not capable of something like taking down bridges across the Mississippi but we can make it harder to even get to the river. Each of these railroads and highways runs across numerous small creeks on small bridges that are easier to blow." He clicked a button and a photo of a rural railroad bridge appeared. It was typical of the thousands of rail bridges - often not much over a hundred feet in length, supported by wood pilings. "These columns are about a foot in diameter, three across. We've developed the equipment and techniques for boring into them and placing charges quickly - a four man team can blow a row in under a half hour. Out there in the middle of nowhere, with enough men we can take down a dozen or so bridges on a single line in one operation. For good measure thermite will be used to melt sections of rail. It can take a couple of days to repair one bridge - fixing a lot of them, assuming they have the material and manpower, will take a lot longer." He called up another picture, this was of a highway bridge "These take a little more energy," he said, "but a whole lot longer to fix. We can break the interstate in several places, but they can detour on secondary roads. So we have to cut some smaller bridges. Probably we can't stop traffic completely but it will be severely curtailed. And depending on the situation on the ground we should be able to continue selectively cutting the detours. It's a big place and hard to police. The partisans number in the thousands, and they know the country while the military is already spread thin and are easy prey outside their bases. And they can ill afford to send in more." He paused, waiting for comments. Oliver tapped ash from his cigar and took a puff, then a drink. "What kind of resources are we putting on this?" Raymond asked. "Assume no help at all from the locals." "The Alliance is sending twelve teams, average of five men. They'll be accessing caches already in place, as will the twenty or so we're sending. Between us we have over forty agents on the ground, verifying the preparations. As for the locals we're keeping contact to a minimum for now to minimize risk of them being compromised. The regime doesn't have much of an intel operation there but we're taking no chances. Those forces don't include the Dead-Enders." "How many of those are there?" "Thus far about two dozen," Oliver replied. "Only enough for five or six teams but we're expecting several more in the next couple of weeks. They'll be on the most risky jobs, where contact with regime forces are extremely likely. And there are a few." No one commented and he continued. "It is rather... morbid I suppose. Suicide missions. But it's what they want and I suspect most of us would. Better to go out that way than a lingering death that benefits no one. Most of these guys have families, younger people. We're prepared to die and we're fairly young and healthy." Speak for yourself. I'm no spring chicken and getting kind of creaky in places. I knew he was right though, and Gryph and I are the only ones much over fifty. And Oliver. "Wolf, Gryph indicated you might be willing to help out with planning and training," Oliver said. "Figured as much," I replied. "I'll be here as long as you need me. Gryph says I'll get a couple of days off every week or so, keep things straight at home." "We appreciate it. We're looking at the middle of July, that's seven weeks." "What do you need me to do?" "Work on plans with Ray and Oliver. We've got most of the intel we need it will be coming in, updates as things change, until we're ready to strike. We'll be doing some training here, depends on what the guys need. Some have behind-the-lines experience but most don't. And demolition is something most have little experience with.
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