“Charles Sheehan-Miles is an exceptional writer...” -- Midwest Book Review
INSURGENT
EPISODE 1
Charles Sheehan-Miles
Published by Cincinnatus Press at Smashwords
Copyright 2012 Charles Sheehan-Miles.
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Any resemblance to real people, living or dead, is unintentional, with the exception of certain named historical characters.
Cincinnatus Press
Atlanta, Georgia
Dedication
For my Dad
CHAPTER ONE
New York Times, March 18
PRESIDENT EXPANDS STATE OF EMERGENCY
By Marcus Jennsen
Washington, DC – On Monday, issued a statement expanding the current “state of insurrection” in West Virginia to include surrounding counties in Virginia, Pennsylvania, Kentucky and Ohio. The statement formally suspended habeas corpus in affected areas, as well as granting broad powers of authority to military commanders.
Whitesville, West Virginia
Lieutenant Jonathan Blake leaned against the door of his Humvee, eyes scanning the road and untouched snow ahead as the convoy drifted forward. Two feet deep, mostly unplowed; some of the snowdrifts were three or four times that height. The drifts were high enough to hide a man, a squad, a regiment even.
Heavy timberland and mountains marched on either side of the twisted road, an uninterrupted and threatening phalanx of grizzled soldiers, armed with storms and floods against the unwary intruder. Gusts of wind sent a dusting of snow back into the air in a swirling mist and cut visibility to nothing. Almost two miles up the valley, towering over the town of Whitesville, a nine hundred foot high earthen dam threatened the town with annihilation.
At five feet six inches, Blake had been the runt of his ROTC detachment at University of Florida and compensated for it with bodybuilding and a cavalier attitude marked by a quirky sense of humor. The humor was little in evidence these days: he had dark circles under his eyes, and those circles had their own dark circles. His uniform was sweat-stained and filthy; the computer-generated camouflage pattern had lost its pixilated look after weeks of hard use. At least it didn’t stink—he’d used so much soap in his last hand-washing of the uniform that it still gave off antiseptic fumes. He’d sewn the tear in the crotch a couple weeks ago, but that repair job had begun to give out—along with his patience.
For weeks, nonstop, he’d rolled with his platoon from town to town, back to the depot, back to the towns. Delivering supplies, trying to build up electricity, trying to rebuild… everything. Few of the tiny backwoods towns they'd visited had working electricity or phones; local cops were mostly missing, and people were very quiet whenever the troops arrived. Ominously quiet.
Today’s mission was no different: another tiny one-light (if that many) town in the middle of nowhere, at the end of a long, twisted mountain road. Along the road, they’d passed a startling billboard showing a filthy gas station bathroom with the stark words, “No one thinks they’ll lose their virginity here. Meth will change that.” Further along the road, a dilapidated shack squatted in the woods, smoke curling from a chimney. A faded rebel flag hung in the window.
Power and phones knocked out—presumably by the snow and ice. He’d never seen so much snow in his life, and every time he left the camp he asked himself the same question: why did I ever leave Florida? A mountain back home would be ten feet above sea level, and a cold winter might mean a light jacket. Not this never-ending ice-bound world of hills and ice, teeming with wildlife, abandoned coalmines and inbred elementary school graduates. Wild and wonderful, my ass.
That was one attitude he had to keep to himself. Though his sense of the ridiculous had often gotten him into trouble in college and infantry training, he’d only once made the mistake of making a smart-ass comment in the hearing of Captain Wellstone, the new company commander. Wellstone didn’t think new Lieutenants were worthy of a sense of humor. Blake had a bad feeling he’d have more trouble with the Captain in the future.
Nor had Wellstone done a very good job of reintegrating the replacements with the folks who’d gone through the brief war three months earlier.
Blake’s predecessor, his platoon sergeant, and half a dozen other members of his platoon were killed in January; even more were injured. More than half the faces in his platoon were fresh replacements, most of them straight from Fort Benning’s infantry training center. Whenever they had a few days of rest back at Camp Wingham, the tension in the barracks was palpable between the combat veterans and the replacements. Blake had wracked his brain, trying to work out a solution to that problem, but with no luck. Instead, half the time he had to intervene in fights. After all, he was a replacement himself. A sniper had blown away Lieutenant Dale Wingham, namesake of their godforsaken camp outside Charleston.
Blake looked over to his left. Behind the wheel of the Humvee sat Specialist Jim Turville. Turville had only been back with the unit for a week: he’d been shot through the throat and spent two months at Walter Reed Army Hospital in Washington. He seemed to be okay now, but he moved like an arthritic old man, and he probably wouldn’t have been out on this mission if they weren’t so shorthanded.
They moved slowly; the tires rustled in the soft, heavy snow. Four times now they’d had to dig the column out when they’d gotten buried in drifts too big to drive over even with the huge tires of the Humvees. Turville looked bored but alert as he stared out, eyes darting from place to place.
“You feeling all right, Turville?”
“Yes, sir. My throat’s still a little achy, but I’ll make it.”
“All right. Just don’t do anything I wouldn’t do.”
“No problem with that, sir. I’d just as soon stay right here warm in the truck.”’
Blake smiled. According to the platoon’s non-commissioned officers, Turville had been in continual trouble for the first six months of his tenure in the Army, including an aborted move toward a court-martial: he’d accidentally killed a civilian in Charleston during the chaos last fall. Then, out of the blue, he’d shown remarkable heroism in combat. During the murderous fire when their unit had been ambushed, he’d run out into the open to rescue their wounded platoon sergeant. The move diverted fire from the rest of his platoon, allowing them to run to safety.
The platoon sergeant was killed anyway, and Turville was shot in the throat. The bullet missed the artery and windpipe, bruised one of the vertebrae, and passed out the side of his neck. Luckily it had been freezing cold then—just like it was now. The cold had served to slow the escape of blood, so instead of bleeding to death, he’d half frozen instead.
Turville didn’t know, but their former company commander had filed an award recommendation for the Silver Star. He wouldn’t get it: they’d probably downgrade it to a Bronze Star or Soldier’s Medal or something of the like. Standard operating procedure was to submit an award for a much higher level than was expected, because everybody knew that each grade in the chain of command would knock it down one level.
All that aside, Turville’s miraculous survival had turned him into something of a good luck charm for the platoon. And, given the extreme shortage of decent replacements, that meant he was probably getting his own fire team—whether he liked it or not.
Blake had emailed Lana about Turville, telling a little about his story. She wrote back two simple sentences: “Turville is probably looking for redemption. Watch out for him.” Blake thought she was likely right—ever since they’d met in college, she’d had an unerring eye for understanding people. He’d have done just about anything to be with her now, instead of here in this godforsaken wilderness. He couldn’t help but worry about Turville as well: people looking for redemption in life were likely to do particularly stupid things.
Turville said, “Sir, I think I see somebody over there.”
“In this snow? Where?”
“Look right over there, sir.”
Blake looked. Two hundred meters ahead of them, to the side of the road, stood a man in white, baggy hunting gear, a rifle slung over his shoulder. The man waved at the convoy through the shroud of misty, blowing snow.
“Flash the lights at him and honk the horn, let him know we’re coming.”
“Yes, sir.” Turville flashed the headlights. As they approached the man, Blake got a better look. He was well built: hair cut into a tight buzz cut, broken blood vessels in his face suggestive of a fair acquaintance with alcohol. Startling blue eyes stared back at Blake.
Turville slowed the Humvee to a stop a few feet from where the man stood.
Lieutenant Blake leaned out. “You need a ride somewhere?”
The man grinned, and his teeth gleamed.
“Oh, no. I don’t need a ride. It’s you who’s gonna need a ride.”
Blake recoiled, then his eyes widened.
At least twenty men stepped out of the woods, most of them armed with automatic rifles. All of them wore various patterns of camouflage, hunting clothes, anything not bright colored, anything to blend in with the woods. Most had beards and looked haggard and weak, as if they’d been living in the woods even through this hard winter.
“Lieutenant, put your hands in the air. You too, over there, driver.”
Turville didn’t hesitate. He raised his hands, his face impassive.
Blake said, “I don’t know what this is—”
“Shut up. Get out of the vehicle. We’re commandeering this column for the West Virginia National Guard.”
“The West Virginia National Guard? I don’t think so—the National Guard is under Federal authority now.”
The man smirked.
“Oh. Is that so? Well, in that case, I guess I’m jes confiscatin’ it for me. I’m the head of the local militia.”
Blake looked back and forth. Turville’s hands were in the air—he wasn’t going to offer any resistance. They only had eight men on this convoy. They had no escort. The trucks were loaded with supplies: water, generators. Well, this may be one of those times when discretion is the better part of valor.
Captain Wellstone was going to be pissed.
“Look, can I just call in, so you guys can get away, and I won’t have to walk all the way to Charleston?”
“Well, the way I see it, you got two options. You can walk on into Whitesville. It’ll take you about two hours, and you can call in from there. Or I could just shoot you dead right here, and then I won’t have to worry about nobody coming after me. Understand?”
Blake raised his hands.
One of the men opened the door of the Humvee. Blake looked back at the other vehicles in the column. The two men in the other Humvee had been disarmed just as easily, as had the truck drivers.
“Got any weapons?”
“Just what you see.”
Briskly, the men patted him down, confiscated his M-16 and the .45-caliber pistol at his belt. He also had two hand grenades in a pouch. They grabbed those too. Not good.
“Check ‘em for phones.”
The search revealed his mobile phone—they took one from Turville as well. After the search was completed, the men got into the trucks. The leader waved with a grin and drove away into the snow.
The eight soldiers stood in a loose circle, seven of them looking to Blake for a solution. One he didn’t have. Blake said, “All right, gentlemen, looks like we’re going for a walk. We’re screwed, but we might as well be warm while we’re at it. Whitesville is four miles that way.”
Blake pointed down the snow-covered road. “Let’s move out.”
“Uh, sir?” Turville said.
“What is it?” Blake asked, expecting a complaint, or at the very least some criticism.
“Do you think the Army will reimburse me for my phone?”
For some reason—probably inappropriate—the question struck Blake as hysterical. He let loose a loud belly laugh as he turned toward the town.
“Why not, Turville? What’s a few hand grenades and automatic rifles next to your missing cell phone?”
Turville’s blank stare just caused Blake to laugh even harder. “Come on, Turville. Let’s get walking.”
###
“General, we just got a call from Second Brigade. We’ve run into some trouble in Boone County.”
Brigadier General Tom Murphy looked up from the report he’d been reading and set it to the side on the utilitarian desk he’d installed in the governor’s office three months before.
His aide-de-camp, Lieutenant Aaron Thrasher, stood in the door. Thrasher was a tall man in his early twenties with an immaculate uniform. He would have made a good model for a recruiting poster with his square chin, blue eyes and open, frank look.
“Trouble?”
“Sir, a relief column was accosted by a group of thirty men calling themselves the West Virginia militia. They were relieved of their weapons and trucks, as well as the relief supplies.”
Tom sat back, his face puzzled. “Let’s go down to the operations center.”
As he stood, his phone rang, and he called out to his administrative assistant. “Marissa, hold my calls.”
“But sir, it’s General Wells.”
Tom muttered a curse. “Hold on.” General Howard Wells, Commanding General of U.S. Northern Command, was many things, but patient wasn’t one of them. This was one phone call he couldn’t put off.
Tom picked up the phone. “General Murphy speaking, sir.”
“Murphy, its Wells. I have good news for you.”
“Yes sir?”
“We’ve located your niece and had a discussion with Homeland Security. They’re releasing her today.”
Tom unconsciously relaxed in his seat and exhaled. For the last three months, he’d hounded Homeland Security over the disappearance of his niece, Valerie Murphy. Chief of Staff to the then Secretary of State of West Virginia, she’d been arrested on the first day of hostilities and held without charges. Two weeks ago, Wells had promised he would approach the President about her.
“Thank God. Is there any way I can reach her?”
“I don’t know anything about that. All they said was they promised to release her and Al Clark immediately.” There was a noticeable pause, then Wells continued, “Between you and me… the White House decided holding them any longer was too much of a political liability. They’re hoping to cut them loose quietly, with a minimum of fuss.”
“Whatever the reason,” Tom replied, “We need him. Things are starting to get a little crazy here.”
“I understand that. How are things going?”
“I was just heading down to the operations center to check, sir. One of our relief patrols was set upon by a group of armed men. They were relieved of all of their equipment. I don’t know any details yet, sir. I’ll let you know as soon as I find out.”
“Relieved of their equipment? What the hell does that mean?”
Tom grimaced at Wells’s response. “Again, sir, I don’t have any details yet. I’ll get them now and will get back to you with a report.”
“Get back with me soon.”
“Yes, sir. One more thing, sir.”
“Yeah.”
Tom took a breath. “I’ve got three battalions of the state National Guard sitting around doing nothing as prisoners. I’d like to put them to use.”
General Wells responded with a terse, “Go on.”
“Look, sir. I’ve been saying for weeks I don’t have enough troops here. State and local police have just about vanished, and we’re having a nightmare getting even basic services going. If I can get those troops delivering supplies, then my combat units can act as escorts or can be forward deployed in the towns. I think it will help.”
Tom spoke in understatement. He’d told Wells the day he accepted the job of military governor that a reinforced brigade wouldn’t be enough to do the job. The President had turned down the request of additional troops: a decision that had unnecessarily cost lives.
A few moments went by before Wells answered. “It won’t look good politically, but I understand the issue. You make whatever preparations you need, and I’ll tell you when and if you can pull the trigger on that.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Call me when you have a status on that patrol. And you need to give some thought to what you’re going to do about officers for those National Guard battalions. No way in hell they’ll let the officers come back. Out.”
Wells hung up. Tom placed the handset back in its cradle and turned to Lieutenant Thrasher. “Let’s go.”
He marched to the operations center, the young Lieutenant half-skipping to keep up as they walked through the lushly carpeted halls of the governor’s mansion.
The ops center was a large conference room converted to a military headquarters. Inside, two rows of tables were scattered with laptops, papers and coffee cups. A large percolator sat against one wall, and coffee cups were scattered about the room. Another wall was covered with a giant map of West Virginia. The operations officer sat at the end, overseeing the battle captains who manned the radios and computers.
“Attention!” called the operations officer as Tom entered the room. Five seconds later, Colonel Jordan Bronner, the Chief of Staff, entered. Tom had been friends with the six-foot five former college basketball player since their deployments to Iraq more than a decade ago.
“As you were,” Tom said, and the officers in the room relaxed. “What’s going on?”
The operations officer, a young major, replied. “Sir, we received a call from one of the platoon leaders in 2/16 Infantry. Our relief convoy into Boone County encountered more than thirty well-armed men about two hours ago. We had eight men in the convoy, only light armed. They had to walk into Whitesville before they could call in.”
“Anybody hurt?”
“No, sir. But they took both Humvees, as well as their weapons. They also got two trucks and all their supplies.”
“What kind of weapons did they get?”
“They had eight M16s and a forty-five pistol. Half a dozen hand grenades. Gas masks.”
“Humvees weren’t armed?”
“No, sir, they weren’t expecting any opposition. Nobody was locked and loaded, and they were surrounded before anyone had a chance to react.”
“Christ.”
Colonel Bonner looked at him and said, “You know what that reminds me of?”
“Yeah, you don’t need to tell me what it reminds you of.”
They looked at each other, thinking of the three months after the fall of Baghdad, when everything had seemed quiet. During that brief lull, the violence to come had merely been simmering in the background. Tom had been afraid of that here. He’d been operating as military governor for three months. An unhappy situation to say the least, but he’d finally managed to convene the legislature three weeks before.
Of course it figured that when they finally met, the legislature elected as their Governor a man who had been held for months by the Department of Homeland Security under unspecified charges.
Tom had argued long and hard to get them to reverse their decision, but they held firm. Finally, he had to lobby to try to get the former Congressman, now Governor, released. Of course, he knew Clark hadn’t done anything wrong. Clark and Valerie Murphy, Tom’s niece, had both been in Washington trying to negotiate a peaceful settlement to the war when they’d been arrested.
“All right. I want to pull the battalion commanders together. We’re going to have to come up with some new procedures. All of our convoys are going to have to go escorted.”
“Yes, sir.”
“We’ve also got those three National Guard battalions. They may be back on duty soon, minus their weapons. I want the staff to start working on contingency plans to use them for relief operations.”
“Sir?” Bonner looked skeptical.
“Look, whoever set this up must have known there was a convoy on the way. They were well prepared, just sitting out there waiting for us. That means somebody gave them the information.”
“Sir, my understanding is that this particular convoy went out because the phone and power lines had gone down, possibly because of the storm.”
“Maybe they cut the lines. How did the platoon call in if the lines were down?”
“Satellite phone, sir, from a store in Whitesville.”
“All, right,” Tom said. “Looks like we’re going to have to do some investigation. Who’s on their way out there?”
“A platoon from 28th MPs, sir. We sent two choppers as well, and they’re heavily armed.”
“All right, give me a report back.”
“Yes, sir.”
Tom turned around and walked back to his office.
“Marissa.”
The youthful admin assistant sat up when he called her name. She’d been Governor Slagter’s assistant until January, when Slagter committed suicide. Tom had speculated more than once that the former Governor might have hired her for more reasons than her dictation ability, which was middling to poor. She was a contradiction, a puzzle he hadn't figured out. An extremely attractive, petite blonde with sea-green eyes, she dressed in a prim, business-like fashion. She had no photos on her desk, nothing to indicate a personal life of any kind, other than the Bible she kept on the credenza. At the same time, her computer skills were nonexistent, and according to her personnel file, this was her first job. In short, it appeared Frank Slagter had hired her because of her fantastic body and beautiful eyes.
Tom had little patience for men who hired women who would function as eye candy. For now, he was stuck with her until the new Governor took his seat—hopefully soon.
“Yes, sir.”
“My understanding is that the Department of Homeland Security is releasing two prisoners today—Al Clark and Valerie Murphy.”
“Your niece, sir? That’s wonderful news.”
“Thank you. Find out where they are. I want to talk to them as soon as possible. You know Clark is taking over as Governor here, so we can provide official transportation for him. I want to send a chopper to Washington to pick them up. Get Hatfield moving on that.”
In the office, Tom sat down, and his eyes fell on the photograph on his desk. The picture of two smiling men in their prime—Tom and Ken Murphy—in Iraq, a lifetime ago. The frame was a cheap, two-dollar plastic frame from Wal-Mart that he’d bought maybe ten years before. The photo, however, was priceless. Ken Murphy, his big brother and lifelong hero, was gone, executed, leaving behind a gaping hole Tom knew would never be filled.
Somehow nothing seemed the same.
###
The cheap cell phone sitting on the dash of Joe Blankenship’s muddy pickup rang. Joe let it ring twice and then picked it up off the dash. His truck sat on a seldom-used ice covered road near the top of the ridge south of Whitesville. Below him, spread out like a moonscape, the remains of Wright’s Mountain: carved up, gutted to the bedrock by the mining companies, the rocky detritus filling in the hollow below the mountain.
A small community, Lorrie’s Hollow, had existed in that tiny valley when Blankenship was a child. But the mine had closed, followed by most of the other small businesses in town. Pretty soon no one was left but a few old and tired senior citizens in their trailers and shacks, with no one left to defend them when Montgomery Energy bought or stole their land.
“Yeah?” he said to the caller. His mind was still on Lorrie’s Hollow, and it took him a few seconds to mentally shift.
“We’re in position,” replied the man on the other end of the line.
“All right,” Blankenship responded. “Army headquarters got the word. They’re sending two choppers, followed by a platoon of MPs. Make your targets, and I want everyone out of there in ten minutes. No risks, all right? Not enough of us to go around as it is.”
“No sweat, Boss. We’re on it.”
Blankenship hung up the phone with no further word. Everything he’d been working for since Mandy was murdered hinged on the next thirty minutes. He trusted his own guys: they’d been through it together, more than once. But his information from the Army headquarters in Charleston: that was something different. It came by way of Roland Channing, the leader of a Reconstructionist Christian group, which had been sniffing around the rebels for a while. Promising information, resources, money.
This was a test of whether or not Channing could deliver on his promises. And a dangerous test at that. Mandy would have said to trust his gut. And his gut told him that with a core group of real patriots who he could count on both hands, they just weren’t going to accomplish a lot.
If he failed, Mandy’s death would be for nothing. Dale Whitt had been assassinated because he believed in freedom. Dave Firkus, gunned down the same day as his wife. Ken Murphy, executed by the Feds after a trial so short it left most Americans gasping. If he failed, he’d be failing all of them. Spitting on their memory.
Blankenship would rather have died.
So he sat in the truck in the cold, waiting for word to come back. Either the rebels would fail here and it would all be over, or they would succeed and possibly open the door to saving the country.
Ironic, really, that the first shots would be fired right here in Whitesville, where it had all started for him and Mandy. Ironic and fitting.