Revolt: the book

Crawford stepped outside with Childs.  Crawford looked up at the late summer night stars.  “How long do you think before they will strike back?”

Childs looked up too.  “Maybe three days, maybe a week.  It will take some time to get organized after Friday.” It was Child’s turn to ask a question.  “Do you think they’ll send in more feds?”

Crawford’s brow furrowed.  “I don’t know.  This is way bigger than a Waco situation or that guy in Texas who had his gun collection taken with an HRT raid by the FBI.  He was just one man, and Waco was a compound in the middle of nowhere.  Hell, this whole county is in the middle of nowhere.”  Crawford laughed as he made a sweeping gesture with is arms.  “I’m not sure they have enough agents in the entire western part of the country to handle this!  Maybe that will delay them some.”

“Well at least they can’t send in the Army.”  Childs smiled in the dark.  “That is still against the law.”

Crawford didn’t answer, but something clicked in the back of his mind.  He couldn’t grasp it right away, fatigue was setting in.  But there was something bothering his subconscious.  He knew he would think of it sooner or later.

The blonde four year old girl picked up her favorite doll and stuck it back into the baby buggy she was pushing. She shook her finger at the doll and chastised her for not staying in the buggy, just like her mother did her on the days they went to the mall. She laughed and kissed the doll, forgiving all transgressions. She turned her head and looked up at the sky when she heard a deep thumping whine coming from the backside of the mountain behind her house. The noise grew louder as a dark shadow swept over her. The little girl looked up in time to see a black helicopter, with missile pods hung under its wings, swing low over her neighborhood, bank hard and then begin a straight run down her street.

Her mother was watching her daughter through the kitchen window when she saw and heard the same thing. The mother dropped a glass shattering it in the sink. She started to run for the door, yelling her daughter’s name. “Sally, Sally, come here honey!” The mother tried to control the panic in her voice. She didn’t want to scare the child but at the same time she wanted the girl to react quickly. Sally heard her mother and picked up her doll so she could go. Sally froze as she looked up at the noisy funny looking bird. It was flying right at her.

At two a.m. Sunday morning, three unmarked Humvees, an armored personnel carrier and two large box trucks drove down a two lane road that ran through a town thirty miles south of Rockledge.  The only witnesses to the small column were a couple of barking dogs.  Had someone been around to take a closer look they would have noticed the grim faced soldiers inside the vehicle wore no insignias on their uniforms.  The vehicles drove toward Wyatt County on one of the only three roads into the county.

At the same time two other identical columns were making their way in similar fashion along the other two roads.   Approximately two hours later the columns halted just inside the county line.  One truck continued up the access road to the sole cellular tower servicing the area.  Another truck drove on to the repeater station that carried the local police channels.  The rest of the column trucks parked in a flat area alongside the road.  The soldiers jumped out and began taking up defensive positions around the vehicles.  One soldier opened the back of the truck to reveal a bank of communications equipment with several soldiers at the controls.  Another soldier strapped himself in a lineman’s belt and gaffs then climbed up to the top of the telephone pole next to the truck.  After a few minutes he signaled down to the people inside the truck.  At the cell tower and repeater station, the soldiers exploded charges at the base of the towers knocking them down.  Wyatt County was cut off.

Fontaine had a few problems, as he liked to call them- “growing pains” during his first term in office. He had a tendency to appoint people with less than perfect backgrounds. Some of them made it through, but others had to be cut out. Fontaine was secretly pleased with the level of forgiveness in the American voting populace, especially when you promised them things they wanted to hear. Publicly, he was a stalwart defender of the little guy. Privately, he felt that most if not all average Americans were idiots and fools. This is one of the reasons he felt compelled to lead them into the new era. Fontaine was careful though; only a select trusted few around him knew how he felt.

President Tyler Fontaine was a tall angular athletic man of fifty two. His dark straight hair was kept short and combed back in a suave fashion. The women loved him, especially those in the media and entertainment world. He could be very convincing and persuasive. Some people swore could talk a nun out of her habit. But at the moment, Fontaine wasn’t thinking about sex. He was sitting back in the thick leather chair at the head of the long dark oak table. A number of important people were also seated around it. Fontaine was holding a meeting in one of the secure rooms in the White House. He picked the room because he was sure there were no bugs or other surveillance devices that would be able to record anything said inside. Absolute secrecy was necessary for his plan to work. Fontaine surveyed the group he had ordered there. He, like all the men there except one, were dressed in the obligatory dark suit and power tie. At the table to his left sat George Chandris, secretary of Treasury and the mastermind behind the monetary policies. Next to him was the deputy director of the FBI Robert Johnson. To Johnson’s left was the only man not dressed in civilian clothes, he was the key to it all. That man was the head of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Army General Vladimir Chechecko, a second generation Yugoslavian, whose father was a great freedom fighter in World War Two. His uniform displayed numerous medals regaling Chechecko’s almost thirty year service. Across from the three sat two other men, Daniel Stoner the Secretary of the Interior and Walter Weedman the Majority leader of the Senate.

When I wrote this book I never thought I’d find myself yelling at the TV “read the book!” It was this summer when I pulled the manuscript off of the shelf and began working on it again.

Why do I think there is something here? Because people are people and history is history. Just because we are the United States of America doesn’t mean we are immune to failure and defeat. Our founding fathers did their best to create a system strong enough to resist the temptations humans have to rule without conscience. They hoped balancing three branches of government against each other would allow for the times  when one branch lost its collective mind (so to speak) the others would push back against any abuse. That works well, if the branches are doing their job. They aren’t today.

Where does the journey lead? Read the book. Over the next several months, I’ll be posting some excerpts. Hope you enjoy.