Reposting.

Prologue.  The Texas Hill Country.

"Wake up.  It’s happening.  Now.  Just like we talked about."

Kyle woke to see his Uncle Evans looking down at him.  His uncle had that deathly serious look.  The small bedside lamp was on but otherwise, the room was dark.  No light came in through the windows.  The windows were open though, and a cool nightly breeze came in, bringing with it the nighttime sounds of the Texas Hill Country.

"What time is it?" Kyle asked.  Uncle Evans didn’t answer that question.

"Get up.  Get your gear," his uncle replied.  His tone was commanding, his words concise.  He'd reverted to his military roots.  "Get your rifle."

That statement, "get your rifle," drove all the sleep out of Kyle in an instant.  He was only sixteen, but he was old enough to understand that the world had become a very dangerous place.  After their summer together, Kyle knew he needed to listen to his uncle.

Kyle swung out of bed and was dressed in a flash.  He put on the dark, sturdy clothing and boots his uncle had him keep beside his bed for just such an occasion.  Then, he grabbed the rifle his uncle had also given him.  Uncle Evans called it his African Carbine.  It was an older, military-style rifle, with a collapsible stock and a red dot sight mounted on the carrying handle.  A clamp held a flashlight on the barrel.  Kyle knew how to use it instinctively because his uncle had drilled him on it.  Without needing to even think about it, Kyle checked the rifle to ensure it was unloaded and on safe, just as he’d been taught.  Then he moved through the darkened house to find his uncle.  He passed a clock on the wall that said it was past midnight.  On either side of the clock were mementos of his uncle’s military service: wooden paddles ornately wrapped in parachute cord, felt-lined shadow boxes, and a picture of his uncle with his friends in some desert, standing before a huge pile of bombs, a battered bomb suit helmet mounted on a walnut slab.  Military pins and badges gleamed even in the low light; the multi-towered Combat Engineer Castle, the Explosive Ordnance Disposal "Crab" badge topped with a star, rank insignia: bars with alternating silver and red stripes.  Kyle lingered for a second to look at one item; a picture of his uncle and two of his military friends standing before a mountain of captured enemy bombs.  Then he continued and found his uncle in his office.  His uncle was talking to somebody on his cheap disposable phone while at the same time studying a computer screen.

"Yeah Dale, I’m looking at their feed and their social media threads right now.  They’ve got our neighborhood on their target list for tonight.  How many did you say were out at the entrance?"  A pause, and then his uncle repeated, "A hundred?  Shit.  Yeah, and more coming down from Austin I suppose.  It says here midnight is when they are supposed to kick things off.  You call the sheriff yet?  Okay.  Yeah.  Yeah, I agree.  I wouldn’t count on her doing anything.

"Okay Dale, start waking up the others.  And Dale, no text messages or book-a-grams or anything like that, right?  You either send them a message on the device I gave you or knock on their door.  I’ll be down to our spot in a couple of minutes.  And Dale?  Like I said, no phones.  No phones whatsoever."

Uncle Evans hung up the phone and turned to Kyle.  The old man looked gravely serious.  But he wasn't excited.  He wasn't emotional.  He looked like a serious man about to handle some serious business.  Kyle knew his uncle had been in situations like this before; violent situations; life and death situations.  His uncle spoke.  His uncle spoke calmly, clearly, and concisely.

"The PVD has targeted our neighborhood.  Tonight, they are going to come in here and try kill us all."

1.  Emeryville California.  Late May.

Mary and Keith Walsh watched the world burn from their fourth-floor condominium.  On the other side of San Pedro Avenue, the big box stores and strip mall shops blazed orange against the midnight blue cosmos.  Sparks and embers drifted across the skyline.  Below, rioters danced like imps, backlit by the hellish glow of the fires.  Up and down the avenue, many blocks away from the riots and the arsons, police vehicles sat motionless.  Their blue and red lights flashed and spun, proclaiming their impotence.
"It is only going get worse from here on out.  Summer hasn’t even started," Keith said.  He looked at his watch.  It was almost midnight.
The riots began as a peaceful protest, as violent riots always seemed to do.  A local animation company that made feature-length movies announced it was relocating out of the state.  The news was not well received.  Egged on by loud and popular state politicians, protestors formed outside the studios.  They waved the typical signs and screamed the typical slogans.  In reaction to the protests, the CEO made an announcement.  The company would not leave California and he apologized to everyone traumatized by his earlier decision to move.
The apology didn’t cool tensions.  Instead, it inflamed them.
Emboldened by the CEO’s display of weakness, the protests became riots, and the riots attracted the radical direct-action group known as the Progressive Vanguard of Democracy, also called the PVD or sometimes just, the Vanguard.  The PVD was the latest iteration of socialist-anarchist fronts.  They were young, politically connected, well-funded and volemt.  Dressed head to toe in black and wearing masks, the PVD arrived well after dark.  While the police watched, the PVD broke into the studio and set it on fire with pre-made Molotov cocktails.  Not satiated with that, and knowing they had free reign, they rampaged through the small Bay Area city, burning and looting with impunity.
"This is going to go on until the elections.  And it is only going to get worse," Keith repeated.  Mary turned away from the window and looked deeper into their condo, where their only child slept.
"We can’t move.  Not yet.  We’re so close.  Six more months, and then we’ll have enough money for a down payment on a house somewhere.  Six more months and we’ll have enough to quit and leave."
Keith and Mary Walsh each brought in three times as much money as the average American household.  But that kind of money didn’t go far in their corner of California.  The Walsh family had an 1,800 square foot condo, one car that got broken into every month, a son that would be ready for college soon (and no solid plan to pay for that), and not much else.  Their plan had been to save up enough to move out of California to someplace simpler and safer.  A place where they could buy an actual house.  A place where they each didn’t have to work sixty hours a week in high-earning professions only to find themselves scraping by at the end of every month.
"It isn’t safe here," Mary said.  And as if on cue, the big home improvement box store across the street, burning for hours, imploded.  The rioters cheered.  Not a single police or fire vehicle responded.  They were under orders to give the PVD "space" to "vocalize their trauma." The fire moved to the next building, and so it went.  And while this happened, their son Kyle lay awake in his room.  He pretended to be asleep because, with his parents, that was easier.  But he could hear his parents’ every word.
The mother and the father talked it out through the night and into the early hours of the morning.  By 2 am Mary convinced Keith that sending their only child to go live with his uncle for the summer was the right thing to do.
"Your brother's a little bit crazy.  No offense, but the wars fucked him up.  He’s got that survivor guilt thing."
"The wars ‘didn’t fuck him up.’  My brother is fine."
"Well, he’s got issues."
Mary pointed out the window to the orgy of riots and the flames.  "That’s an issue.  And that issue could swallow our only son up at any time."
Keith wanted to wait, but Mary insisted on calling her brother right then and there.  The decision was marked by the thundering crash of another imploding building.
Mary got on the phone and called her brother, Evans.  It was just after four in the morning his time when she called.  He answered the phone on the second ring.
Less than an hour after hanging up the phone, Uncle Evans left for California.  His sister lived 1,700 miles away.  Evans stopped only for gas and made the trip in a little more than a day.  When he got to Emeryville, he loaded his nephew Kyle and his things into his truck, ate lunch with his sister and brother-in-law, then headed right back to Texas.  Evans was an overly practical man.  He didn’t sit still easily when there were things to be done.  He wasn’t the kind of man who enjoyed wasting time.  And he didn’t enjoy spending any time in California.
Kyle didn’t speak much on the trip back to Texas.  It wasn’t that he didn’t like his Uncle Evans.  He did, very much.  He just didn’t like the situation.  And he didn’t like the idea that he was being sent away with no say in the matter.  He didn’t consider himself a kid anymore.  He was sixteen.  When they crossed the border into Nevada, Kyle asked his uncle, "Will my parents be safe back there?"
"They’re parents.  It is their job to worry about your safety.  It isn’t your job to worry about theirs."
"Is it safe in Texas?"
Uncle Evans answered, "No.  Texas may be safer than California, but nowhere is safe.  Not entirely.  Not now.  Not with this election coming up and driving all the crazy people even crazier."
"The election’s still a long way away," Kyle said.
"It'll be here sooner than you think."
Many hours and many miles later, they drove past a timber and limestone sign that read, "Silver Springs."  That sign marked the entrance to the development where Uncle Evans lived.  In the suburban developments that Kyle had seen back in California, all the homes were packed in tight.  Silver Springs was different.  Most of the homes here sat on their own acreage, except for a couple right next to the entrance and the sign.  Rolling Texas hills spread in all directions.  To Kyle's city-raised eyes, they were in an untamed wilderness.
That same day the PVD released a new communique over social media.  They weren’t going to protest and burn and loot in the urban areas ever again.  For the rest of the summer, they were going to target the suburbs.  They were going to target rural communities.
"Nowhere is safe until our demands are met," the PVD declared.
"Nowhere."

The Texas Hill Country.  The end of May.

"Today we need to clear out brush and build a defensible space," Uncle Evans said over his morning cup of chai tea.
"Defensible space, in case the PVD comes?" Kyle asked.
"I was thinking defensible space in terms of wildfires.  It is hot and it is dry and it won't rain again until October.  But for practical purposes, you'll find the two concepts overlap."
Evans sipped at his tea.  He took it in the Middle Eastern fashion, scalding hot and loaded with sugar.  Maybe more sugar than tea.  Kyle had no doubt his uncle picked up this habit during his travels in the military.  Kyle scooped up a fork load of the eggs on his plate and looked them over: eggs, plain, one bottle of ketchup and one bottle of hot sauce on the table.  That, and a plate of sausages that had all been frozen just minutes before.  Kyle looked out the window for a better view.  Uncle Evans lived on twelve acres of Texas hill Country; rolling hills dotted with oaks and elms and cedar trees.  In the mornings, deer gathered around the house looking for their daily ration of corn.  In the evenings, owls hooted, and coyotes howled.  Scattered across the skyline were the roofs of the other neighborhood homes, red tile here, gray metal there.  The neighbors owned similar-sized plots of land, which gave the land an isolated and untamed feel to it.  It was a stark contrast to his native Bay Area California, where people lived on top of each another and the noise of traffic and people never ceased.
The inside of the house was also a sharp contrast to Kyle's coastal California home.  He and his parents lived in an 1800-square-foot condo, with everything packed in.  Uncle Evan’s home was twice that size, but it was sparsely decorated.  He’d never been married, and the interior of his house showed it.  It contained just a minimal amount of furniture.  The only things hanging on the walls were mementos of his time in the military: photographs of him with teammates, framed certificates and awards, a scorched and battered bomb suit helmet.  Uncle Evans didn’t even have a tv.  The only electronic indulgence came in the form of a laptop computer and a few monitors in the office.  Evans didn’t have a cell phone either, not a real one anyway.  He had some cheap-looking thing that ran off prepaid minutes.  The epitome of an old-man phone, Kyle thought.  Or maybe a drug phone.
Another teenage boy might have raised hell at the idea of moving out of the city and all its distractions for the summer, away from friends and familiar scenes.  Kyle wasn’t upset to be out here though.  He’d been to his uncle’s place before.  He liked the nature and the seclusion.  He liked the quiet.  He also liked his uncle’s simple manner and his hands-on ways.  Kyle’s uncle was a much different man than his dad.  Kyle didn’t resent his father, at least not more than any other boy his age, but Uncle Evans filled a paternal role that his dad never could.  With everything that was going on in the country, deep down Kyle knew that his uncle could teach him things that his father could not.  Important things.  Kyle knew things were going badly even though his parents tried their hardest to shield him from that truth.  Uncle Evans on the other hand didn’t baby Kyle.   He played it straight and didn’t treat his young nephew like a kid.  That was another reason why Kyle enjoyed spending time with his uncle.
"So, what are we doing, exactly?" Kyle asked between bites of egg.  Plain or not, he gobbled the food down with teenaged-boy ferocity.
"Clearing out all the brush and dead trees.  I’ve scraped out a bare path along the side of the drive up to the house.  Any dead stuff that’ll burn, we’ll drag over there into one giant pile."
"Are we going to burn it?" Kyle asked hopefully.
"I’d like to, but no.  It would be safer to just burn it now.  But there is a burn ban in effect.  And I’ve got a busybody neighbor down the road.  She can see the front of our place from her back porch if she uses binoculars, which she does.  If she sees us burning brush, she’ll call the fire department.  She’ll probably call them if she sees us stacking brush."
"She sounds like a pain in the ass," Kyle said.  He wouldn’t think of talking like that at the table back in Emeryville.  But this was Uncle Evans’ place, and his parents weren’t around.
"She is a pain in the ass," Evans agreed.  "I hope you don’t have to meet Lori, but I’m sure she’ll be around."  
Kyle gulped down the last of his eggs and said, "I’ll get the dishes."  You could say "ass" and probably a lot of other curse words at Uncle Evans’ place and get away with it, but you weren’t going to get away with not doing your share of the chores, and Kyle knew it.
Uncle Evans nodded once and sipped at his chai tea.

They left the house through the back door.  Planted in the ground nearby was a cement pipe sticking straight up and capped with a wooden lid.  It looked like it might be for cigarette butts, but Uncle Evans didn’t smoke.  Kyle lifted the lid.  The inside was partially filled with sand and on top of that were some metal canisters and road flares.
"Careful with that," Uncle Evans said sharply.  Uncle Evans didn’t raise his voice very often but when he did, his voice was clear and loud and had a way of making everybody nearby immediately stop and turn.  Kyle jumped and fumbled with the wooden lid.
"Be careful with that," Uncle Evans repeated.  "Don’t mess with the stuff in there.  It is dangerous."
"What’s it for?" Kyle asked.
"It is for emergencies," Evans said.  He took the wooden lid from Kyle and put it back over the pipe.  "Now these are for you,"  and he handed Kyle a new pair of calf-skin work gloves.  "The rest of the stuff we need is out of the barn.  C’mon."
They spent the morning and afternoon gathering up dead brush and piling it in one long heap along the driveway up to the house.  At 10 am the temperature seemed to jump twenty degrees and the humidity was murder.  Sweat rolled off Kyle in waves.  "Drink water," his uncle would say periodically.  Uncle Evans kept a cooler full of half-frozen water bottles close at hand.  Kyle would take off his new leather work gloves, grab a bottle, and drain it in only a few gulps.  The sun rose higher and grew brighter, but Kyle kept at it.  He gathered dead brush and fallen limbs of oak and elm and either tossed them directly in the growing brush pile or pitched them into a dump trailer attached to the back of his uncle’s tractor.  Some of the smaller trees on the property were dead, killed during a winter frost.  His uncle felled those with a chainsaw.  Kyle came in after and dragged the decaying wood into the growing pile.  By late morning his clothes were soaked through with sweat, but he refused to ask for a break or any kind of reprieve.  To his maturing mind, the idea of not keeping pace with his uncle seemed shameful.
Just before noon, as he was hauling a bunch of dead and gray acacia limbs to the mountain of brush, Kyle heard his uncle call out.  He turned and saw Uncle Evans pointing to the long drive that ran off the main road up to the house.  A golf cart was trundling up the road, an angry looking woman was behind the wheel.  Uncle Evans pulled his tractor up to Kyle and shut it down.
"Is this the neighbor?" Kyle asked.
"Yup," Uncle Evans said as he pulled off his leather gloves.  "This is Lori… and her dog."
The dog was a gray and white pit bull.  It was leashed up in the back of the golf cart, and it started snarling and snapping when it saw Kyle and Uncle Evans.  Lori looked much like her dog.  She was short and squat, and ugly.  Her eyes were windows into a unsteady mind.  She had a thick, punched-up face.  Her hair was a tangled mess of white, gray, and some purple strands that hadn’t seen a brush in far too long.  And like the dog, once she saw Uncle Evans, she got snappy.  She brought the golf cart to a halt on the gravel driveway, twisted her face into an unfriendly knot, and spoke.
"You know, there’s a burn ban in the county.  I don’t know just what you think you’re doing here." Lori said.  Her voice was as unpleasant as her appearance.
"Afternoon," Uncle Evans said with a half smile smile.  He stepped down from the tractor.  Kyle was young, but he was perceptive.  He noticed that his uncle kept his eyes fixed on the dog straining on its leash.  He also noticed that his uncle kept one hand at his beltline, near a bulge under his shirt.  The dog snapped and threw himself against its leash with enough force to make the golf cart tip.  Kyle took a few steps closer to his uncle.  Oblivious to her dog, Lori pointed a finger at the brush pile.
"You can’t do this.  There is a burn ban in effect.  You can’t burn this.  It’s against the law."
"I’m not burning anything, Lori," Uncle Evans said calmly.  "I’m just piling it up.  It is safer to have it all in one big pile than spread out all over.  And I know there is a burn ban in effect, same time as it was last year, and every year before that."
"Don’t you lie to me.  You’re going to burn it.  Why else would you bother to pile it up."
"Because something or somebody else might start a fire, and I don’t want fuel scattered all over my property."
"Bullshit.  There wouldn't be any fires around here if men like you didn't start them.  You’re going to burn it and that'll burn this whole neighborhood down.  We'll all be burned alive because of you." Lori snapped.  When she said 'whole neighborhood down' her voice cracked and raised an octave.
Kyle grew up in the Bay Area, not far from the Berkely Campus.  He’d met hundreds of women like Lori over the course of his life and he had her pegged from the moment he saw her: unhappy, unpleasant, insincere, incapable of empathy, emotionally unstable.  They mistook being impolite for being strong and self-confident.  They were always right, even when they were wrong.  They were always impossible to be around and thus they were always lonely.  That loneliness became anger that was directed at the outside world.  Kyle eyed the dog.  He knew without asking that it was a rescue dog, just as he knew that every chance she got, this Lori character trumpeted the fact that she rescued the dog.  The dog was less a pet than evidence of her moral superiority.  He also knew that the pitbull, still straining against its leash, was more dog than she could handle.
"Nobody is burning anything,"  Uncle Evans said calmly, his hand still resting near his belt.  "You know it, Lori.  We went through this last year.  We went through it the year before too."
Lori seemed to notice Kyle for the first time.
"Who the hell are you?" She demanded.  Kyle started to answer, but his uncle cut him off, using his loud and commanding voice.  The perfunctory politeness vanished in an instant.
"Who he is, is none of your business, just like my landscaping is none of your business.  Now turn your cart around and leave."
"What is he?  Some Mexican?  You probably aren’t even paying him to do your work,"  Lori huffed.  Then she said, "I’m calling the fire department right now."  She was in full lecture mode and not listening to anybody but herself.  "I'm calling the homeowners association too.  You can’t have people living in your house without approval from all the homeowners."
"That’s not true and that’s not what the homeowner’s association is for.  They’ve told you that three times before."  Uncle Evans was using logic and reason, but Kyle knew with a person like Lori, logic and reason did not factor in, not when her emotions were running high.  Not when she was certain she was right.
"It’s not safe.  This giant… stack thing."
"You mean pile?"
"You’re going to unstack all this stuff,  right now," Lori demanded.  Her voice peaked.  She swept her hand towards the morning’s worth of collected debris.  "Unstack it now or I’m calling the fire department… and the cops!"
Before Uncle Evans could again raise his shield of calm logic against Lori’s storm of emotional instability, the dog changed the entire situation.  As Lori grew louder the dog grew more agitated.  It threw itself against its leash, only this time it slipped off the back seat.  The barks became yelps and then were cut off completely.  The leash, fastened to one of the cart’s pillars, pulled tight like a hangman’s rope.  Dog legs scrambled frantically in empty air.  The heavy dog swung.  The cart tipped, listed, and looked like it might fall over.  The dog twisted on its noose, a leg found something solid, and pushed.  The cart righted itself.  The dog drew air, yelped again, spun, choked again.  Lori ran to her dog, the brush pile forgotten.  Uncle Evans moved quickly and silent as a ghost.  In an instant, he stepped in front of Kyle.  A pistol was out and held low by his leg, almost behind it.  Oblivious to it all, Lori moved to her dog in what might be described as a fast waddle and screamed, "My dog!  My dog!"
She scooped up the struggling dog in her flabby arms and deposited it in the backseat.  But after she did the dog bared its teeth and snapped at her.  Lori recoiled in horror.  But then she spun on Evans and did her own snapping.
"You see what you did?  You almost killed my dog!"  Her screaming voice was unsteady with emotion.  Either she didn’t see the pistol or didn’t pay it any heed.
"You need to leave now," Uncle Evan said.  His voice had an icy calmness to it that Kyle didn't quite like.  "Get in your cart and go."
"Oh, I will," Lori said.  And unable to not get the last word in she added, "I’m going home and I’m going to call the fire department and the police.  And the homeowner’s association."
It seemed to take forever for Lori to waddle around, get in her little golf cart, turn it around and drive away.  When she finally disappeared, Kyle said, "Well, she seems pleasant."
"All the kids your age as observant as you?"
"No.  I'm unique."
"You don't talk like any Californian I ever knew," Evan said.  "He adjusted the hat on his head and continued.
"Lori’s not the ideal neighbor.  She lives in the first house past the entrance to the community, the one that’s falling apart.  I want you to stay away from her, and her dog.  She has had a bunch of rescues over the years.  All pit bulls.  She rescues them and then sets them loose in her yard.  She doesn’t train them or anything.  They are all snappy and they all end up getting out and lost.  Lost, or killed by the coyotes, or the hogs.  Then she blames the neighbors for stealing her dogs.  If you see that dog wandering around, stay aways and let me know."  Evans slipped his pistol away.
"So, she’s unpleasant and she has a dangerous dog that she doesn’t take care of.  Does she have a job, or does she just drive around making people miserable?" Kyle asked.
"She’s on a fixed income.  She’s got a disability claim or something.  Her husband lives with her.  He’s in a wheelchair, and his mind’s not all there."  Uncle Evans brought his hand to his head a made a fluttering motion.  "Her sister lives with ‘em, and she’s a disability case too.  Lori’s probably hard up for money and just takes it out on everybody else."
Kyle thought about that, but only for a moment.  Back where he was from in California, everybody claimed to have some disability, some disorder, some neurosis, some issue that made them a victim.  And their "victimhood" always gave them license to treat other people badly, because to be a victim was to be morally superior.
"So what?" Kyle said.  "Everybody’s got problems.  That doesn’t give you an excuse to be an asshole."
Evans turned to his nephew.  "Well, look at you.  I didn't realize you're such a hard case."
"Try living in San Francisco.  All these whining victims will do that to you."
"I suppose you’re right," Evans said.  He looked over his nephew.  The scrawny kid was soaked through with sweat.  Evans smiled and clapped his nephew on the shoulder.  "C’mon.  Let’s go inside where it is air-conditioned and get some lunch.
Just as Kyle and his Uncle Evans finished lunch both the fire department and the sheriff's deputies pulled into the front yard.  Somebody had reported illegal burning in the neighborhood.


That evening Kyle was alone in his room, wasting time on his computer as kids often do.  It was maybe ten in the evening and the temperature was finally cooling off.  Uncle Evans knocked on the door and came in.  He had a serious look about him.  "Come with me," he said.
Kyle followed his uncle into his home office.   The walls were decorated with memorabilia from his uncle’s time in the military.  Flags.  Awards.  Souvenirs from far-away and violent places.  Against one wall stood a bookcase partially filled with military manuals.  A rifle rack was mounted on one wall.  It held a half dozen rifles and shotguns of various types.  A cable lock ran through their actions.  Kyle’s eyes were immediately drawn to it.
"Where are the .22s?" Kyle asked.
"I keep those in the safe.  This is the ready rack.  I keep these weapons at the ready, just in case."
"In case of what?" Kyle asked.
"In case of a lot of things, but lately, in case of this," Evans said.  He gestured towards the array of computer monitors on the desk in the center of the office.  It was 11 pm on the East Coast, and the riots were in full swing.  Queued up on the monitors were live streams of the chaos in cities up and down the Atlantic seaboard: New York, Boston, Baltimore, Washington D.C., Camden, Wilmington.  There was full representation.  The major streamers captured the feeds of individual streamers on the ground and combined them so each of the three large monitors had six different feeds streaming simultaneously.  Red boxes highlighted which video feed the current audio was associated with.  Kyle shook his head.
"That’s why my parents sent me out of the Bay Area."
"What’s happening back home is happening all over the country.  The professional rioters are getting better and more organized every summer.  Worse, they’re getting bolder every day.  They know nobody will stop them.  The police won’t do it.  The military won’t do it.  And if any private citizen does it, the law will come down on them with all their might."
Kyle watched the multiple feeds.  One caught his eye.  A dozen rioters dressed head to toe in black had set fire to a dumpster.  Now they were using it as a battering ram to smash into a Target store.
"At some point they are going to kill somebody," Kyle said.
"They already have," Uncle Evans replied.  "Many times.  It’s just that nobody talks about it."
Kyle’s eyes drifted back to the rifle rack on the wall.  "How would you do it?"
"Do what?"
"Stop them?"
Uncle Evans waited for just a second before answering.  "The biggest part of why they are doing what they are doing is because they know they won't face consequences, not of any kind.  If I was in charge, for starters, I’d stop it the same way they stopped riots and looters throughout history.  I’d shoot a bunch.  Shoot a dozen tonight, there will be a lot less out tomorrow night.
"But that’s only part of the solution.  Stopping these riots isn't about just stopping the rioters.  You have to stop the people who allow the riots to happen.  A lot of people, government-type people, are collecting paychecks because they swore to enforce the law.  But they aren't enforcing the law.  They are allowing if not outright fostering this lawlessness in order to further their careers.  Those enablers need to be held accountable too."
Kyle thought about that.  "What if shooting them makes it worse?"
"We already reached worse," Uncle Evans said.  On the computer screen, the rioters had smashed through the Target doors.  Now they were using the burning dumpster as a catalyst to burn down the store.  They grabbed up merchandise, held it to the flame, and then threw it alight deeper into the store.  Looters poured in the smashed doors behind them, snatching up anything that was not burning.  Mixed amongst the looters were more black-clad PVD.  Many carried the short AK-47 style pistols called "choppers" on the street.
"And if left unchecked, it will get worse yet.  Get me a can out of that fridge."
In one corner of the office sat a mini-fridge.  It was full of sodas.
"Any beers?" Kyle asked hopefully.
"Young man, if you can find a beer you can have one," Uncle Evans said with a smile.  "Truth is I rarely drink anymore.  Pass me a soda.  Grab one for yourself."
Kyle picked out one of the pop cans.  The body was light blue, with red letters on a white badge.  Kyle said, "I didn’t know they made this anymore.  Who drinks this?"
"They do still make it and I still drink it.  I picked up the taste for it overseas.  Out there they didn’t have Coke or Pepsi.  This was the only cola you could get.  When it is 120 degrees out, you’ll drink whatever cold pop you can find."  Evans took a can and opened it.  Kyle did the same.  It tasted different.  Not bad.  Just different.
The uncle and the nephew drank soda and watched the riots unfold.  By 11 pm Texas time the sun had gone down in the Rocky Mountains.  Denver joined the fray, along with Houston, Dallas, and Chicago.  Things were heating up in Austin.  That city was just over an hour away from where they sat now, a fact Evans appreciated.
"You best get to bed now.  We’ve got an early day tomorrow.  We need to drive up to New Fredericksburg and pick up an old stock tank."
"Ok," Kyle said.  Then he asked, "When are my parents leaving California?"
"Your mom thinks they might have enough money by the end of summer.  They say the housing market will be better for selling then."
"Housing market won’t mean anything if their building burns down," Kyle said.  He added, "My parents don’t tell me anything.  They still treat me like a kid.  I know why they sent me here.  I was awake that whole night when they burned down the box stores and everything else across the street.  They’re worried we’d get burned in the riots."
"That's what parents do Kyle, they worry about their kids.  And they weren't just worried about you getting caught in the riots.  They were worried about you getting caught up in the riots.  They were worried about you putting on black clothes and hitting the streets with those other idiots.  We may be old, but we were all your age once.  We know how exciting these riots might seem to a young person. I'm sure you know other kids back home your age who like this stuff, kids who are joining in on it."
Kyle didn’t say anything, but his uncle was right.  Some of his classmates had joined in on the rioting.  He’d monitored them from afar through their social media accounts.  For some these riots were a grand and romantic adventure.  But not for everybody.  Not for whoever worked and shopped at the Target that was now burning to the ground.  
After Kyle went to bed, Evans lingered in the office, watching the mayhem unfold on the live streams.  It was late, and the day started early on his slice of heaven.  But he was an older man and didn’t need as much sleep as he used to.  He watched the streams for a while.  Looting.  Arson.  The mobs were much better armed and equipped than they were just a few short years ago.  Evans saw uniformity in their gear.  The same short-barreled AK-47-styled weapons.  The same black body armor.  The same cheap Chinese radios.  Flashing blue and red police lights illuminated the scenes, but the police never actually intervened.  They observed from a distance while building burned, lives were destroyed, and civilization unraveled.  When it all became too tiresome, Evans shut down the computer, looked out the window into the night, and contemplated.
His sister had sent Kyle here to protect him from the anarchy exploding across the country.  Protecting Kyle was his mission now.  But how best to protect him?  That was the question.  He rarely went into the cities, and never went at night.  The likelihood of them getting caught on the streets by the mob was near zero.  Even with the PVD’s pledge to take the riots out of the cities, it was unlikely that a PVD mob would ever wind up in Silver Springs.  If they did, it was a long way from the entrance of the development to Evans’ front door.  If the mob headed this way, he’d have enough time to run out the back and hide in the wild acres around his house.  He’d been trained in the military to do just that.  He’d put his escape and evasion skills up against any Vanguard unit any day of the week, even at his age.
But was running and hiding the best way to protect Kyle?
People had been running and hiding from the PVD and the mobs that proceeded it for years.  They pretended to ignore it.  They hoped it would go away.  But it didn’t go away.  It came back every summer, bigger and badder and more organized than the year before.  Every May the black-clad revolutionaries came out stronger and more politically connected than the year before.  Running and hiding from the vandals and looters would work in the short term, but on a long enough timeline the mob would eventually swallow up everything.  Was that the kind of country he wanted to leave his nephew?  If at some fateful moment, Evans ran and hid instead of standing up to the mob, was he protecting his nephew?  Or was he just kicking the can down the road?  Passing the problem on to the next generation?  Passing the problem on to Kyle?  Would he be choosing a path of cowardice and telling himself it was prudence?
And the truth of it was that fighting the rioters meant more than just fighting the PVD.  Surviving a PVD confrontation just meant you’d be fighting the police and the courts and the entire legal system later.  The people charged with stopping the riots were actually enabling the riots and arresting and prosecuting anybody who interfered.  It was like an uneven game of chess, where his opponent was starting with a full set of pieces and Evans only had two pawns.
No, that wasn’t right, Evans thought.  One pawn and one king.  Evans was the pawn, and his nephew Kyle was the king piece. And if a pawn had to be sacrificed to save the king, then so be it.  That’s what pawns were for.  That’s how the game was played.
Evans looked around his home office.  He saw the rack of weapons.  He saw the awards and the certificates.  His ribbons.  His EOD "Crab" badge.  He saw that picture of him in the desert, flanked by his friends and standing in front of a mountain of captured artillery shells.  He’d lived a full life.  Now it was about Kyle.  If the PVD ever came to Silver Springs he’d do what he always did, which was the right thing.

The Texas Hill Country.  Early June.

"Wake up.  Time to get at it.  We need to go get that storage tank." Uncle Evans said.  His voice was the morning reveille call and it smashed away the sleep like a hammer on glass.  Kyle felt around on the nightstand for his phone so he could check the time.  He couldn’t find the phone and so he settled for looking out the window.  It was still dark outside.  If it was still dark outside, that meant it was early.  Too early.  Kyle slumped his head back down on the pillow.  But then he heard his uncle working in the kitchen.  No doubt he’d begun his morning ritual of brewing chai tea.  Kyle knew it was time to get up.  He groaned a teenaged groan and dragged himself out of bed.
"You got any way to tell time besides that phone?" Uncle Evans asked after breakfast.  Breakfast yesterday was bacon and eggs.  Breakfast today was sausage and eggs.  Evans was in the process of hooking up a large flatbed trailer to his pickup truck.  Kyle shrugged.
"The phone gives me the time.  Never needed a watch."
"That phone does a lot more than tell the time," Evans said.  "And not everything it does is in your best interests."
"What about you?"  Kyle asked.  "You’ve got a phone."
"I do," Uncle Evans said with a smile.  "The least-smart phone I could buy.  I’ve also got a watch.  If things go bad, the watch will stay on my wrist.  But the phone…  the phone will disappear, along with my laptop and my one external hard drive.  And since those are the only electronic devices I own, that will be that."
"Seems a little paranoid," Kyle said.
"Maybe it is.  Or maybe it is just a good precaution. There’s usually a fine line between the two."
"Who would want to track me?" Kyle asked.  "I’m nobody special."
"If I learned anything these past few years, is that even nobody special can get into the wrong people’s crosshairs," Uncle Evans said.  "And besides, you aren't a nobody to me.  You aren't a nobody to your mom and dad.  But enough about that.  You ever pulled a trailer before?"
Kyle felt his heart leap up into his throat.  He looked over at his uncle’s pickup truck.  With the flatbed trailer attached to the long bed, the entire vehicle seemed to stretch forever.
"I've never driven with a trailer before,"  Kyle said sheepishly.  "I've barely driven at all.  Back home we mostly use buses.  Or BART.  Or Uber.  The car is too much of a pain to park.  And gas is too expensive."
"No better time to learn," Uncle Evans said.  He tossed Kyle the keys.  The kid caught the keys deftly but stared at them in his open palm.
"Uncle Evans, I don’t think…"  his uncle cut him off before he could finish.
"No better time to learn than now.  It is early.  There isn't much traffic on the road, and what little there is, that will be going in the opposite direction.  I’ll be sitting right next to you the whole time.  The only tricky part is backing up, and we won’t have to worry about that for now.  So, C’mon."
Uncle Evans climbed into the passenger seat, a steaming metal mug of tea in one hand.  Kyle looked at the keys in his hand.  He wanted to say no.  If he was with his parents, things would be different.  Certainly, his mother would balk at the very idea of her son doing something so dangerous as driving a truck with a trailer on the back.  With his dad, he could resist the way defiant teenage sons do.  But his parents weren’t here.  Uncle Evans was just forcing him out of his comfort zone.  He was forcing Kyle to test his own boundaries.  On one hand, Kyle didn’t like it.  It was scary.  On the other hand, it was exciting.
Kyle took a deep breath and then got into the truck.

The drive out to New Fredericksburg was uneventful.  Kyle kept to the right lane whenever possible and kept it slow.  He could feel the pull of the trailer against the truck, and the sway of it as it drafted, but he got used to it quickly and he handled it well.  By the end of the trip, he barely noticed the long trailer was there.
There wasn’t much traffic on the road.  Part of it was the early hours.  Another part of it was that people didn’t drive as much anymore.  The price of fuel was too high, even in Texas.  Kyle knew that was by design.  Before he left the Bay Area, the federal government had come in and shut down the big refinery in Richmond California.  He’d also seen a headline on one of his social media feeds that several oil company executives had been arrested by the EPA in early morning raids on their homes.  Kyle was no economist, but it was easy to see why fuel was so expensive.
It was farm and ranch country between Uncle Evans’ place and New Fredericksburg.  The land was all fenced in.  Mounted on many of the fences were signs announcing, ‘land for sale,’ or ‘livestock for sale’ or ‘farm equipment for sale.’  These were the signs of a nation in decline.  But mixed in with the signs of depression were signs of defiance.  The Texas flag flew everywhere but more common than the Texas flag was the black and white "Come And Take It" flag, with its star and cannon.
Near New Fredericksburg they turned off the highway and onto a farm road of packed gravel.  The trailer bumped and jostled and swung.  Kyle slowed down to a crawl.  Dust from the road rose and swirled and blocked his vision.  He eased the truck up to a swing gate that was already opened for them.  On the other side of the gate sat the farmhouse.  On the porch stood a farmer, drinking coffee and waiting for them.  On the other side of the gravel lot sat the big water storage tank they’d come for.  A small forklift was parked beside it.  Kyle parked the truck.
"Good," Uncle Evans said.  "You just finished the easy part.  Now back the trailer up to that tank so we can get it loaded."
Kyle swallowed hard and looked around the gravel lot.  The ground was open.  There weren't a lot of obstacles or things he could hit.  Even so.
"I’ve never backed up with a trailer before," Kyle reminded his uncle.
"I know," Uncle Evans.  "And you never towed a trailer before this morning, but now you have.  It is just like we talked about.  Turn in the opposite directions and take it slow.  Small turns.  Don’t over-correct.  Keep pulling forward and straightening out when you need to.  You’ll be fine as long as you don’t get jackknifed, and I won’t let you get jackknifed."
Easy for you to say, Kyle thought.  He glanced at the farmer who would doubtless watch his attempts to back up with a trailer with a critical eye.  The thought of a spectator made the pressure to perform even worse.
"Don’t worry.  I’ll be right here and once you get used to it this will be a good skill to have.  Even back in the city."  Nervous, Kyle took a deep breath and shifted the truck into reverse.
It wasn’t pretty, and it took him many attempts, but Kyle finally backed the trailer up to the old tank.  After Kyle shut the engine down, the farmer walked down the steps off his porch.  He was old and wore a green plaid shirt and overalls, and his head was nearly bald save for scattered wisps of long white hair.  He smiled good-naturedly.
"It was his first time backing up a with a trailer," Uncle Evans explained.
"Yeah?  I didn’t think he was an expert," the farmer said with a smile.  Kyle found himself smiling, even if it was at his own expense.
"Well, keep at it," the farmer said.  "Keep at it and this time next year I’ll put you to work out here."
They loaded the old tank onto the trailer and strapped it down.  Before they left, the farmer’s wife came out with a plate of freshly baked muffins.
"You didn’t have to do that," Uncle Evans said.
"You gonna charge them?" The farmer asked his wife.  "Those muffins are worth a sight more than that old tank."
"I’m just happy you’re hauling his old junk away," the wife said, and she slapped her husband’s shoulder.  "Go on.  Take those muffins.  That young one looks like he needs to eat.  And keep the plate.  I don’t need that old thing back.  More junk."
"Thanks, Judy.  And next time I come back, I will bring your plate," Uncle Evans said.
"Bring that kid instead," the farmer’s wife said.  "It’d be nice to have a young man to cook for again."
Kyle smiled bashfully.  Five minutes later they were back on the road.  Kyle drove again.  The trailer was heavier now.  The bulk of the tank caught the crosswinds and those would push the combo to the side of the road.  There was more traffic out too, but not so much that Kyle couldn’t handle it.  He felt good about himself, pulling the trailer down the road.  He felt confident.  After a few miles, he asked, "What are we going to do with the tank?"
Uncle Evans paused before answering.  It was the kind of pause that suggested he was carefully considering his answer.
"I’m going to use it to finish off a project."  His uncle said.  He said it in a manner that suggested he didn’t want to speak about this project any further.  Kyle wanted to protest, to make his case that he could help out, whatever this project was.  But he thought better of it.  If his uncle wanted to keep this project to himself, maybe it was best to stay out of it.  Kyle changed the subject.
"Can we shoot the .22’s when we get back?"
"We can, but not today.  I want you to shoot something else first.  I want to get you spun up on my Africa Carbine."
"The M16?!"  Kyle exclaimed.  Uncle Evans smiled at his nephew’s excitement.
"It isn’t an M16, not exactly.  But I guess it is close enough."
"We can’t have those in California."
"I know," Uncle Evans said.  "But listen, this isn’t going to be just plinking at bottles and cans.  I’m going to show you how to use this rifle.  Really use it.  The same way I learned how to use a rifle in the service.  It’ll be fun because you’ll be shooting a rifle.  But it is going to work too.  A lot of work."
Kyle thought about what his uncle said as he slowed for a stop light.  Once the truck came to a halt he said, "You’re afraid of the rioters coming to the house, aren’t you?"
"Yes," Uncle Evans replied.  "I am.  And if that happens the .22s won’t cut it.  I want you schooled up on a real weapon.  And if the rioters don’t come so much the better.  You’ll still know how to use a real weapon.  You’ll have another skill."
"Like driving with a trailer?"
"Like driving with a trailer," Uncle Evans agreed.

Kyle managed to back the trailer up beside the barn, next to a pile of old scrap metal and a stack of rusting bales of barbed wire.  After that they spent all afternoon and the early evening going over the Africa Carbine, an AR rifle with a barrel brought to 16" by a pinned and welded muzzle device.  On top of the carbine’s carrying handle sat an Aimpoint optic old enough to accurately be called 'vintage.'  Going into the teaching, Uncle Evans worried about Kyle getting bored, frustrated, or just tuning out because of the heat, the long instructions, the physical corrections, and the math.  Kyle stuck with it though.  Uncle Evans gave him a crash course in rifle fundamentals, teaching the kid in a few hours all the rifle fundamentals the military taught him over the course of a week.  By the time the sun was in the west, Kyle could hit a steel target at 300 yards 10 times out of ten.  He could change magazines without fumbling and he could puzzle his way through most malfunctions.  Uncle Evans checked the sun’s position in the sky.  They had maybe an hour before dark.
"Come with me," Evans said to Kyle.  He headed off down a faint trail that led downhill.  Kyle ran a hand through his wiry, black hair and followed his uncle.
They wove their way past cedars and elms and thick stands of prickly pear.  Neither spoke.  The sun dipped further and washed the landscape in orange light.  The shadows grew longer and darker.  The trail flattened out.  Kyle heard road noises up ahead.  They crossed a dry creek bed.
"Unload the rifle and set it down here," Uncle Evans ordered.  Kyle unloaded the rifle and set it down.  They pushed a few meters further and the trail ended at a two-lane blacktop road.  A sign nearby read, "FM 325."  A pickup truck sped by, oblivious to Kyle and his uncle on the side of the road.
"Think you could find your way down the trail to here by yourself if you had to?"
"Yeah," Kyle answered.
"Can you?  This is important."
"Yes," Kyle answered.
"Okay.  Let’s head back then."
Kyle recovered the rifle, and they got back to the house just before the sun dipped away to night.  Uncle Evans asked Kyle what he wanted for dinner.  Kyle thought about it for a second before answering.
"Just sandwiches are fine.  But since you taught me about the rifle, I’ll make dinner."
Uncle Evans smiled.  "Okay," he said.  Kyle went inside, but his uncle stayed out on the porch to watch the sun slip away.  Kyle thought it was a melancholy scene.  His uncle looked like a lonely old man.  One who might be watching the sunset for the last time.  Or close to the last time.  His uncle wasn’t old, not what Kyle considered old-man old.  But his uncle had lived a hard life, and the wear of that seemed to make him older, maybe wearier.
After dinner, they both headed up to the office and opened up the live streams of the nightly riots.  This would be their ritual for the summer.
The peak of the evening's madness came from the outskirts of Raleigh North Carolina.  A mob of protestors had descended upon a subdivision of cookie-cutter homes, each one more middle-class than the last.  The protestors' ranks were augmented by black-clad members of the PVD.  All the PVD wore masks and IR-readable "PVD" shoulder patches.  They all carried choppers now.  The uniformity of their clothing and equipment belied the narrative that the PVD was just some loose collection of common-man, working-class, activists.  In truth, the PVD were politically connected and well-supported stormtroopers.  They weren’t just, "an idea."  The truth was there for anybody to see it.  But nobody wanted to see it, and if they did, they’d never admit it.  Unfortunately, in this new America what was the truth could not be said, and what was said could not be the truth.
The protestors massed outside the entrance to the sub-division and chanted the usual slogans against fascism, racism, and inequality in all their various forms.  Reporters circulated through the mass, picking up comparisons to Hitler and the Nazis that would make for enticing soundbites.  At the entrance, some residents of the community formed a sad-looking picket line, hoping to defend their hearth and home.  Some were armed, but the protestors didn't show any signs of fear.  Their brazenness suggested they didn’t expect the residents to shoot.  Shouts and insults flew back and forth.  Spittle flew off lips. Guns were waved menacingly.
"Look at them," Uncle Evans said.  "Most of the protestors are either older or really young.  Mostly women.  They’ve got some little kids with them.  They’ve got a bunch who don't look especially healthy.  But the fighting-age people, the fit ones, the young men.  They are all in the PVD.  They use the regular protestors to start things, then the PVD will swarm in when the time is right."

An enormous woman with a surgical mask and purple hair tried to seize a hunting rifle from one of the residents manning the picket line.  The man pulled his rifle back and the woman tumbled.  Somebody shouted an insult.  Punches flew. A protestor swung a cardboard sign at a resident.
"This will go badly," Uncle Evans said.  "Somebody is going to get shot."
Kyle couldn’t help but agree.  A protestor with multicolored hair was shouting and spitting in the face of one of the residents.  A short distance behind her, black-clad PVD thugs stood ready with their choppers.  The back and forth of insults continued.  All the big live-streamers were carrying feeds from the scene now.
About a half hour later more buses started showing up at the subdivision.  They disgorged their loads of protestors.  Pierced and painted college kids.  Urbanites who probably had nothing better to do than go on a destructive lark in the suburbs.  Unhappy and directionless middle-aged folks looking to exact revenge on the "other" for their so-far unaccomplished and unfulfilling lives.  More PVD arrived too.  They came separate from the bused-in protestors.  They arrived in large, brand-new passenger vans.  Again, their uniformity and organization betrayed the idea the PVD were just a loose collection of like-minded activists.
As more busloads of protestors showed up, the police arrived.  Blue and red lights flashed and spun, but the police never confronted the crowd.  They never issued any order to disperse.  As far as Kyle could tell, they never left their vehicles.  This was not atypical.  When it came to these kinds of protests the police had not been doing anything for years.  But then something new happened.  Federal agents arrived.
The federal agents arrived in blacked-out SUVs and they wore tactical gear that rivaled what the military issued.  They moved along the outskirts of the shouting mob.  Some of the live-streamers tried to ask them questions, but they were always either ignored or pushed away.
"Do me a favor?  Get me a cola out of the fridge?" Uncle Evans asked.  His eyes were fixed on the array of monitors.  Kyle went to the fridge and got two more cans out.  He passed one to his uncle and opened the second one for himself.  He drank and turned his attention from the mayhem on the monitors to the decorations on the walls.
One particular item that caught his interest was a wooden paddle.  It was like the kind you’d find in any sporting goods store for paddling a canoe.  This one had been sanded down and stained.  Its handle was wrapped in intricate twists of parachute cord.  Mounted on the blade were a silver EOD "Crab" badge, a silver dive helmet badge, a gold parachutist badge, and row upon row of military ribbons.  A brass plate beneath the ribbons read: To CWO "Frankenstein" Evans.  Kyle was lost in the display, especially the Frankenstein part.  What did Frankenstein mean?  His uncle didn’t look like a Frankenstein.  He was neither tall nor broad, and despite his partial Japanese ancestry, his hair had been thin and light brown before it all fell out leaving a pale, bald, egg-shaped head.  Kyle pondered this in his own world until the gunfire erupted.
The sounds of automatic weapons made Kyle spin back around towards the riots.  Uncle Evans was out of his seat and leaning in towards the monitors.  On the displays, protestors screamed and ran in all directions, arms flailing.  More gunshots.  Automatic chatter, distinctly Kalashnikov fire.  Next came the answering fire of shotguns and hunting rifles, single shots, deeper and louder.  Then screams.  The screams of the dying.  Cameras bounced up and down.  Uncle Evans cursed.  A live-streamer fell to the ground, his feed showing nothing but trampling feet.  Another streamer was approached by a team of federal agents, each brandishing a military-style carbine.  One feed showed the distinct muzzle device of an AK-styled weapon.  The muzzle flashed, climbed upwards from the recoil, then disappeared out of the camera’s frame.
The gunfire stopped but the pandemonium continued.  A federal agent charged forward and placed an open palm over a streamer’s camera.  A second later that stream ended.  Within a minute all the live streams of what would be called the Raleigh-Durham Executions went offline.  Less than ten minutes later, all the live streams went offline everywhere in the country.  It wasn’t just Raleigh.  The protests streams across the nation all went dark.  Boston.  Newark.  Spokane.  Vegas.  They all went dark, as quickly and as easily as if somebody somewhere threw a switch.  Computer messages declared, "This Channel is No Longer Available."
Uncle Evans shut down his computer and said, "The Kalashnikovs fired first.  Remember that."
"The Kalashnikovs?  You mean the choppers?"
"Yes.  The choppers."
Kyle thought for just a second then said, "They aren't going to say that tomorrow, are they? That the choppers fired first?"
"No.  No, they are not,"  Uncle Evans said.  "They won’t mention the choppers fired at all.  They won’t even mention that both sides were armed."  His uncle’s voice was mostly devoid of any emotion.  Mostly.  But Kyle could feel the undertones of his uncle’s seething rage.  That was on the inside.  On the outside, his uncle displayed the unemotional functionality of a machine.  It was easy to see how Uncle Evans made a career out of finding and disarming bombs.
"There’s nothing we can do about this.  Time for bed," Uncle Evans said.
Kyle went to bed, but he lay awake for a long time.  North Carolina was not California, and the suburbs of Raleigh were not the urban sprawl of the San Francisco Bay Area.  Even so, the PVD and their enablers had done their dirty work and demonstrated just how far they could reach.  Even now those homes in North Carolina might be getting put to the torch, their owners being beaten by the PVD, or arrested by the police, or even shot.  Was he safe out here?  Kyle knew the answer to that was a resounding no.  His uncle had confirmed as much.  So, what would he do if the PVD came?  More importantly, what would his uncle do?

Texas Hill Country.  June.

Kyle sat in his bed with his laptop open.  The morning sun shone in through the window.  Dust motes drifted in the light, and a video played on the laptop.
"The nation remains shocked and devastated after the brutal, politically motivated executions of peaceful protestors in North Carolina."  The anchorman spoke earnestly into the camera.  The video kept playing, but it jumped to another newsman, on another channel, in another city.  This one said, "Shocked and devastated, that is how our nation feels as it mourns the peaceful activists brutally executed in North Carolina."  Another jump, this time to an anchorwoman in San Diego.  "The brutal, politically motivated execution of peaceful activists in North Carolina has left our nation shocked and devastated."  Another jump, this time to Denver.  "All Coloradoans remain shocked and devastated after the brutal and politically motivated executions of peaceful activists in North Carolina."
The video Kyle watched was a collection of news footage taken from local stations across the country, all edited together into one long set.  There were different commentators in different cities, but they all said the same thing practically verbatim.  Kyle took a deep sigh.  In this digital age, it was not as if it wouldn't be noticed that all the news personalities were saying the exact same thing with the exact same words.  KING 5 News in Seattle was only a click away from Fox 10 in Phoenix.  Kyle didn’t know what the word Orwellian meant, but he knew wrong when he saw it.  Disgusted and upset, Kyle kept watching.
Boston: "These peaceful protestors were shot executions style, likely by right-wing neo-fascists."
Salt Lake City: "It was likely right-wing neo-fascists who shot the peaceful protestors, execution style."
Tampa: "It was here outside this otherwise tranquil suburban neighborhood that the peaceful protestors were shot, execution style.  Authorities suspect ultra-right-wing neo-fascism to be linked to these brutal crimes."
Cleveland:  "The peaceful protestors were outside this suburban neighborhood when they were shot, execution style.  The murderers are believed to have ties to right-wing neo-fascism."
The edited video kept going, kept jumping around to different commentators, on different channels, in different cities, all saying slight variations of the same thing.
"These executions of peaceful political activists are truly a threat to our democracy."
"Political leaders around the country say that these political executions truly threaten our democracy."
"Jane, I feel that these executions of peaceful political activists are a true threat to our democracy."
"When peaceful political activists are executed in the streets, well Dan, I think we all agree that that is truly a threat to our democracy."
"It is all so tiresome," Kyle muttered aloud, and he closed his laptop.  He could smell his uncle cooking breakfast downstairs.  He went through the morning routine of getting up and getting moving.  On the way downstairs he took a detour into his uncle's office.  He admired the weapons in the ready rack for a moment, but what he really came in to look at was the decorated paddle hanging on the wall, the one that addressed Uncle Evans as, "Frankenstein."  He looked it over for some clue as to how that nickname came to be.  He found none.  Disappointed, but only a little, he headed down for breakfast.  It was bacon and eggs.  Again.  And again, his uncle sat at the table sipping his chai tea.  The scene didn’t feel repetitive. It felt comfortable.  And it felt distant from the chaos and violence taking place around the country and on the screens of electronic devices.  Kyle sat down with a plate.
"I wanna show you something," he said to his uncle.  He pulled out his phone and played the same video for his uncle.  His uncle didn’t seem moved at all.
"Yeah, that’s been going on for a while now.  Just a few big companies own all those local affiliates.  They feed them all the same talking points."
"It is creepy," Kyle said, and immediately after saying that he regretted his word choice.  "Creepy," made him sound like a kid, and no 16-year-old wants to sound like a kid, especially to his wise, old, combat-hardened uncle.
Evans sipped at his chai tea and said,  "You want creepy?  When you wake up tomorrow, see if that video is still up or if it’s been pulled off the internet."  He set down the glass cup and added a heaping spoonful of raw sugar to the tea.  "But we’ve got more important problems to solve.  Think you can get the trailer hooked back up to the truck?  We need to go down the road and pick up a skid steer from one of our neighbors. I’ve got some yard work in the back I need to get done."
"Sure," Kyle said.
"Think you can do it on your own?  Remember how I showed you to do it?"
"Yeah, I guess.  Maybe."
"Well, give it your best shot.  I’ll get the dishes and then meet you outside."  Kyle finished his breakfast, took the truck keys off the hook on the wall, then went to work connecting the truck to the trailer.  Evans went to work on the dishes and watched his nephew through the kitchen window.  He was proud of his nephew.  The city kid's handling of the truck and trailer wasn't skillful, but he'd get there.  It was just a matter of practice, and with practice would come confidence.  And they had all summer.  Maybe more, if his sister and Keith moved out here like they planned.
Evans moved slowly as he cleared away the dishes.  His mind was on the "executions" of last night.  The PVD was better armed, better equipped, and better organized than ever before.  Their efforts had been coordinated with the federal authorities.  That was obvious to anybody willing to pay attention.  Those efforts were further coordinated with the media and with the tech platforms that killed all the national feeds on order.  The end result was a bunch of Americans lying dead on some street, and nobody would know for sure who they were.  And the "executioners" were just middle-class tax-paying Americans who wound up on the wrong side of the revolution.  When they went out to defend their homes, they had no idea that they would be the villains in this narrative.  They didn’t understand the nation was different now.  Their world was different now.  They were the bad guys.  It didn’t matter how much they paid in taxes, or how many soccer games they coached, or when and how and where they might have served their nation in the past.  It didn’t matter that the PVD fired first. It didn’t matter that they were just trying to defend their homes and families.  They were the villains now.  Cut and dried. Simple as that.
Evans kept a small radio in the kitchen, tuned to an oldies station.  Not what somebody Kyle’s age would consider oldies, but oldies to an already old man like Evans.  A song came on, Silver Springs by Fleetwood Mac.  Music can stir up emotions, and this song certainly stirred emotions in Evans. None of them were good.  The muscles in his face tightened and his jaw set.  He ground his teeth.  Without being conscious of his actions, Evans reached over and shut off the radio and then went outside to help Kyle.  He left the sink full of dirty dishes, something quite out of character.

"We’re not going far, just towards the back end of the development," Evan said.  Kyle nodded.  They drove downhill from Evans' place, away from the entrance to the community.  They dipped down, went up another hill, then down the hill and up another.  There was no shortage of hills. They rose and fell in all directions.  Each hill had three, maybe four homes on it.  Kyle had the window down.  It was early enough in the morning that the air was still cool.
"The houses were built closer together near the front of the development.  Out here, the plots of land got bigger and the houses farther apart," Evans explained.  "Out in the very back of the development, they didn’t even build houses.  They just sold land."
"What are we doing again?" Kyle asked.
"Our neighbor George is building a house out here.  We’re going to borrow his skid steer. I need to do some digging."
They reached the top of the next hill and the paved road ended at a dirt track.  The dirt track ended at the decent beginnings of a house that would someday be best described as palatial.  The foundation was laid and suggested a home of 6,000 square feet or more.  Two swimming pools were underway, along with a pair of tennis courts.  Stacks of building materials were scattered about the site, as were various pieces of machinery and big steel gang boxes for tools.  Nestled close against this aspiring mansion was a rather uninspiring camping trailer.  A lean-to had been built against the trailer and it housed a couple of old motorcycles in various states of disrepair.  The door to the camper opened and a man with a rifle came out.
"George, put that fucking rifle away," Evans yelled from the truck.
The man with the rifle squinted.  When he recognized Uncle Evans he smiled, set the rifle back in his camper, and gestured obscenely with both hands.
"Park it here for now," Uncle Evans said, and he climbed out of the truck.
"It is good to see you today," the man who had the rifle said, grinning.  "But I think your calendar is wrong.  Asshole day is tomorrow my friend."
Evans smiled.  "George, this is my nephew Kyle.  He's helping me out. Kyle, this is George Jimenez."
Kyle reached out and shook George's hand.  Evans nodded in approvement.  George looked to be in his late twenties and had dark hair, grey eyes, and skin that might be a little on the pale side if not for the Texas sun.   He stood maybe 5' 9".  His face was kind.  His smile was easy.
"George is building a house for his family."
"My extended family, not my own family," George corrected.  "And I’m not really building.  I oversee the building. I do the scheduling, the contractors…"  George waved a hand towards the future mansion. "But it is slowly going.  These days, it is hard to find the proper materials.  When you do, they are not cheap.  Slow going."
"Money should be no object for a rich man like you."
"I am not rich.  The family and the business are rich.  I am just like you; another poor, dumb-shit Texan."
Evans turned to Kyle, "Don’t let him bullshit you.  George’s family owns their own construction company back in Columbia.  They’re loaded.  The part about him being a Texas dumb-shit is true though.  He went to school here in the states, but only because his dad bought his way in."
"This is true," George said.  "But now I am here in Texas.  The family wanted a house in Texas so, I’ll get the house built.  But it is slow going as I said.  No proper materials.  No proper workers.  When I find the proper workers, they are all too busy.  Very slow."
"Why do you want a house in Texas?" Kyle asked.
"To tell you the truth, the family is very rich, but this can be a bad thing.  Colombia can be a dangerous country.  Not like before, with the FARC and the cartels, and the Cubans coming in too.  But who can say what the future will hold?  The family wanted a place in Texas to go to, to be safe.  And to protect the money.  Real estate in the United States is always safe.  Only these days…"  George looked at Evans.  "Only these days the United States maybe not so safe.  Maybe you need to get a house in Colombia you can go to."
"I’m not buying any house your family built."
George grinned.  "We’ll build one especially for you.  It will fall down right on your stupid head."
Evans grinned too and Kyle found himself grinning at the two older men’s banter.
George addressed Kyle next.  "But your uncle, he should not go to Colombia.  His Spanish is not so good."
"My Spanish is better than your Spanish," Evans protested.
"Your uncle is wrong,"  George said to Kyle. "He doesn’t speak Spanish.  He speaks Mexican.  Or Texas-Mexican. I don’t know which, but it is not good."
"It was good enough the two years I lived in Mexico,"  Evans protested.  George waved a hand dismissively.
"You didn’t live in Mexico.  You lived on a base with the other Americans."
"I didn’t know you lived in Mexico," Kyle said to his uncle.  "I thought you were in the Middle East."
"I was everywhere," Uncle Evans said.  "Uncle Sam can send you a lot of places in thirty years."
George said, "Too bad they didn’t send you to into the real Mexico.  Maybe somebody would have kidnapped you.  Although they’d be pretty upset when they found out you were just another dumb-ass Texan with no money. They’d probably pay you to go away."
They laughed.  George spoke directly to Kyle again.  "I make fun, but I like talking to your uncle.  We can insult each other and he does not get upset.  With some Americans, I cannot do this.  They are very sensitive."
"What the hell was the rifle for?" Evans asked.
George cursed in Spanish and then said.  "Yes.  That bitch dog was out here last night.  Running loose.  No leash.  Barking.  Dog tried to bite me.  Lori, she came up on her little electric car.  She screamed at me.  I told her, ‘your dog comes here again, I’m going to shoot it.’  That made her even madder.  She said she would call the police.  She said she would call immigration."
"Great," Uncle Evans said.  George smiled and waved a hand again dismissively.
"Joke is on her.  I have a US passport.  Dual citizen.  She can call the police as much as she wants."
"I’d still be careful," Evans said.  "If she calls the cops, she’ll probably tell them you have a gun or you tried to rape her or something.  She’s vindictive.  She called the cops and the fire department on us the other day."
"Yes, John told me about that.  She is vindictive,"  George agreed.  "So, you ready to borrow my machine?"
"Yes.  But before we load it up, what’s going on with the bikes?" Evans asked.  He pointed to the lean-to.
"Yes," George said, and he nearly bounced with excitement.  "John welded up some cargo racks for the back.  Custom.  So, I’m one step closer.  I found a couple of old Bultaco’s down at Elmendorf that would be good for parts.  John was going to take me down to get them, but his truck is not running."
"John needs to fix that Dodge’s driveshaft," Evans said.  Then he explained, "George has got some grand plans.  He’s going to take that old motorcycle and tour all of South America."
"It’s a Bultaco.  Spanish.  The best. While the house gets built I’m customizing the bike and saving up money for the trip.  Make this Bultaco a little better here.  Make it a little bit better there.  Then…" George made a slipping gesture with his hand.  "Then take a year and travel around South America.  See things.  Eat.  Drink.  Fall in love.  Fall out of love.  Maybe take two years.  Then, time to get serious and into the family business."
"Sounds like fun," Kyle said.
"Sounds like an adventure.  Just be careful.  South America can be dangerous," Evans added.
"Everywhere is dangerous.  South America is dangerous.  Mexico is dangerous.  But the United States is dangerous now.  Texas is dangerous too.  Dangerous and getting more dangerous.  It is dangerous because most of you Americans don’t know how good you have it.  You took it all for granted."  George pointed at Kyle.  "That’s why I like men like your uncle.  The veteran men.  They’ve traveled all over the world.  They know how bad things can be.  They know how good things can be too.  They don’t take these things for granted."
"What about you, Kyle?  You up for a little adventure?" Uncle Evans asked.  "You ever ridden a motorcycle?"
Kyle looked from his uncle to George, to the motorcycle under the lean-to.  He wasn't quite sure if his uncle was serious.  He said, "No. I've never driven a motorcycle."  The older men laughed.
"First lesson, you don’t drive motorcycles."
"I meant ride," Kyle said.  Evans turned to George.
"Doesn’t look like you’re doing much building today.  You want to give a motorcycle class?  Teach this kid how to ride."
George smiled. "How much you paying?"
"How about I don’t beat your ass in front of my nephew?"
George smiled.  "You’re a powerful salesman, for a Texan."

"Make sure he wears a helmet and don’t go too damned fast," Evans said out the truck window.  He had the skid steer loaded onto the trailer.  George and Kyle stood on either side of the Bultaco.  Both waved.  Kyle was all smiles.  He looked like he was in heaven.  That made Evans smile.  He drove back to his place with the skid steer and left the other two to the lesson.  He had a hole to dig.

When Uncle Evans came back a couple of hours later, Kyle and George were sitting on old crates in front of the camper, drinking cans of pop.  The Bultaco stood on its kickstand nearby.  Kyle and George were both covered with dust, but Kyle’s big smile shone brightly.
"He’s a natural," George said.  "Get him a motorcycle of his own.  When I go down south he can come along."
"Good,"  Evans said.  Then he addressed Kyle, "Sounds like you know how to ride now.  You have fun?"  His nephew’s smile seemed to grow by a foot at each end.
"It was great.  It was.  I want a bike of my own."
"Well, you better clear that with your parents first.  I’m not getting you a motorcycle without your mom’s say so.  She’d probably kill me just for these lessons today.  That reminds me.  You better call her tonight."
George gestured towards the truck.  The skid steer wasn’t on the trailer.  "You didn’t get all your holes dug?"
"I got one more to dig," Evans answered.  "Let me hang onto it for another day or two."
"No problem."
"And thanks for the riding lessons."  Uncle Evans said.  He turned to his nephew, but Kyle didn’t need any prompting.
"Yeah, thanks for the time on the bike," he echoed.

When they got back to the house, Kyle saw the pile of scrap metal by the barn was gone and so was the storage tank.  The stack of rusting barbed wire bales was still there.
"Where’d the tank go?" Kyle asked his uncle.
"Don’t worry about it," Evans said.  "Call your mom.  I’ll make us some dinner."
"You want to watch the riots after?"
"Sure, if they are on.  But I need to take care of something in the barn first.  I’ll meet you up in the office after I’m done."
The barn wasn't really a barn.  It was a detached garage full of tools, boxes, random parts… the typical American clutter.  It smelled of sawdust and machine oil.  Evans unfolded a stepstool and took a cardboard box off a plywood shelf mounted high on the wall.  He set the box on a workbench between a drill press and a belt sander.  He opened the box and rooted through its contents.  He found the first thing he was looking for right away.  It looked like a big baby’s bib, only it was camouflage and covered with various pouches.  He set that aside then dug deeper in the box and found the other thing he was looking for.  He took out what looked like a big metal flashlight and set it next to the camouflage bib.  The flashlight-thing was well used.  Its surface was covered with small dents, and scratches, and worn down to bare metal.  A yellow sticker on the flashlight-thing was almost completely rubbed away but two words were still readable, "Laser Radiation."
Evans put the box back on its shelf, then he opened a cabinet beneath the workbench.  Inside were two five-gallon metal containers labeled, "Transmission Fluid."  What he needed was behind those containers.
Evans spent a long time looking at those two metal buckets.  When he was ready, he gently, ever so gently, moved the containers out of the way.  He moved them one at a time, more gingerly than if they were eggs.  With the transmission fluid out of the way, he took a mechanical tower out of the cabinet and set it beside the bib and flashlight-thing.  The tower was painted the same color as desert sand.  That done, he sat down, took a deep breath, and carefully considered the buckets of transmission fluid again.

While Evans worked in the barn, Kyle went back up into the office and turned on the computer.  The monitors came to life with their electric glows.  Kyle wanted to check the streams, but first, he wanted to know more about what happened in Raleigh the night before.  His fingers typed away.  The information the internet issued forth was not reassuring.
First off, the incident the night before was uniformly referred to as the Raleigh-Durham Executions.  They weren’t called the Raleigh Murders, or the Raleigh Shooting, or the Peaceful Raleigh Protest that happened to go a little sideways.  They were called the Raleigh-Durham Executions by each and every mainstream outlet Kyle checked.  And there was no use of the qualifiers "alleged" or "allegedly."  These were executions. Period. End of Sentence.  Consensus was achieved.  The science was settled.  The debate was over.  "Their uniformity is a dead giveaway," he could hear his uncle saying.  Kyle searched further.
Who were the Raleigh Executioners?  That was easy enough to find out.  Their booking photos were all over the internet; middle-class, middle-aged faces.  Men and women.  Sad and scared. Shocked and disbelieving.  They looked like ordinary, law-abiding people who just learned out of the blue that they'd been sentenced to death.  And they had.  Their names and ages were published along with their booking photos, but there was more.  Their addresses were also put out on the internet and not just by the fringe elements on the web, but by the big three-letter media outlets.  Their addresses were published.  The names of their employers were published.  The names and photos of their spouses.  The names of their children and where they went to school.  What banks they used.  Even their IRS records were accessible with just a few clicks and keystrokes.
What could not be found on the internet was who the executed were.  The media outlets that were so forthcoming, so detailed about the identities of the villains were vague about who the victims were.  Words like, "multiple victims,"  or "many victims" were used.  But a specific number of victims was never given.  Kyle watched an exchange from a press conference earlier that day.  A blue-suited government lawyer spoke to a crowd of reporters.
"One of the executioners we arrested is Thomas Ramon.  Mr. Ramon works at Greenhills Middle School where he teaches science and coaches girls soccer.  He has two daughters, Tracy and Gia, and they both attend the same school.  From electronic devices we seized at his residence, we were able to link Mr. Ramon to anti-establishment and conspiracy-theory internet movements, as well as fascist right-wing white supremacist movements that communicate via the dark web.
"The weapon Mr. Ramos used to commit these fascistic executions was purchased at Superior Pawn, located at 612 Wharf Avenue, Raleigh Durham.  The owner of Superior Pawn is Crispin Hoskins.  He leases the property from Gilman Commercial Equities and Investments.  Their contact information will be made available on our webpage.  He also took out several business loans from a variety of lending institutions.  We will post their information on the website as well.
"A stockpile of arms, ammunition, food and anti-government literature was seized from Mr. Ramon's house.  Also seized were a powerful telescope and two sets of binoculars that could have been used to spy on government facilities.  We believe he was able to purchase and stockpile these war supplies through the extra money he made coaching and the money his wife Joanne made working at Shade Hill Mortgage and Trust located in Greenhill North Carolina.  We believe he also hid some of his income to avoid taxes. In the interest of transparency, and in coordination with the IRS, we’ve made his tax records available to the public."
"Can you tell us how many victims there were?" A reporter asked.
"I’m sorry, but we don’t comment on active investigations,"  The spokesman with a straight face.
Kyle drifted through the internet, moving away from the Raleigh-Durham Executions and toward tonight’s activities.  Most of the major cities held candlelight vigils for the nameless and numberless victims of the Raleigh-Durham Executions.  Streamers moved through the crowds and past the candle arrangements. Kyle thought those all looked too choreographed, too slick, and the logistics too carefully planned to be authentic.  Kyle surged some more.  The sun was setting on the West Coast.  Kyle found a live-stream out of Portland.  Some protestor-looking kids had overdosed on the street.  The paramedics were trying to get to the kids, but more protestors were shouting them down and chasing them off.  They threw trash.  A barefoot woman with a fistful of crystals and prayer beads sat over one of the overdose victims, trying to open his charkas and release the negative energy.  The kid's lips were blue.  Somebody heaved a chunk of concrete into the paramedic's ambulance.  The windshield cracked and the ambulance drove away.
"Anything happening," Uncle Evans asked.  He came into the room with a box of stuff and set it down next to the computer desk.  There was a slight chemical smell in the air.  Kyle felt the inside of his nostrils burn.  He sneezed.  Then sneezed again.  Uncle Evans left to go wash his hands.  When he came back into the office he said, "Why don’t you shut that computer down."
Kyle took one last look at the computer and shut it down.  Uncle Evans took the mechanical tower out of the desk and set it on the desk beside the computer.
"What’s that?" Kyle asked.
"Salvage from one of my trips overseas.  It’s a camera system that mounts on the roof of a vehicle.  We used it to find bombs on the sides of the roads.  It has a regular camera, a thermal camera, and night vision.  It has a pretty powerful zoom, at least for its time.  It has a spotlight and an infrared light built into it. It all works off a remote control. You can pan, tilt, pivot, zoom in and out, everything."
"Where does the video go?" Kyle asked.
"It routed into its own monitor, but we can run it wireless into the computer monitors," Uncle Evans said. He gestured towards the monitor array on the computer desk.  "We’re going to mount this onto the roof of the house.  It will give us a view of the neighborhood at least as far down as Lori’s house.
Kyle looked the big tower over.  He wiped some light tan dust off an edge.  "It’s pretty big.  It looks pretty old," he said.
"It was state of the art over a decade ago. It ain’t pretty or small, but it will work.  We’ll have to fiddle around with it though.  It is meant to run off vehicle power but I want to wire it into the house."
"Worried about the riots and the PVD?" Kyle asked.
"Not exactly," Uncle Evans said. "I’ve been meaning to do this for a long time. Now I’ve got the motivation."
Kyle looked into the box, reached in, and pulled out the flashlight-looking-thing.  "What’s this?" Kyle asked.
"That’s called a dazzler."
"What is a dazzler?"
"It is a powerful laser pointer.  We used them overseas to get people’s attention.  Mostly to keep them driving through our roadblocks or crashing into our convoys."
"Did it work?" Kyle asked.
Evans shrugged.  "Sometimes it did.  Sometimes it didn’t.  If the dazzler didn’t work then we usually went to guns.  A lot of people got shot for no other reason than they were bad drivers.  But that was a long time ago.  Anyway, we’re going to mount this onto the tower along with the cameras and lights."
"You know how to do that?" Kyle asked.
"I can figure out the mechanical part.  The electrical part, I'm not so sure about.  Same with the tower itself.  It was designed to run off vehicle power, but I want to wire it into the house. I could probably figure it out myself, but we've only got one of these and I don't want to fry any components because I crossed the wrong wires or didn't do the math right.  I've got a friend down the street who used to be an electrical engineer.  We'll take it by him for a look."
Kyle ran his hands over the camera tower.  "It shouldn’t be too hard to add the laser and wire it all up.  I took a robotics class for a year back in California back when I was in junior high."
"Did you like it?" Uncle Evans asked.  Kyle thought about that.
"I did like it.  I should have stuck with it. I could have gotten more out of it."
"Skills," Uncle Evans repeated.  "You can’t have too many."
"Yeah," Kyle agreed.  He looked back into the box.  "And what is this thing?"  He pulled the camouflage bib with all of its attached pouches out of the box.
"That is called a RACK," Uncle Evans.  "RACK stands for Ranger Assault Carrying Kit.  I traded a Ranger for it a long time ago.  I can’t remember what I gave him for it.  Anyways,  these pouches here are for all the stuff you might need in an emergency: magazines for that carbine, water, a first aid kit, flashlight, knife, everything.
Kyle looked over the vintage piece of military surplus appreciatively.  Uncle Evans went on.
"We’re going to keep the RACK in here, by the rifles.  It is the best place for it.  If we need it, we’ll know right where it is."
Evans froze, reached into his pocket, and pulled out his old-man phone.  He looked at the screen and asked, "Was anything happening with the protests?"
"Nothing really.  Candlelight vigils for the Raleigh-Durham Executions," Kyle said.  He immediately regretted saying "Raleigh-Durham Executions."
"Turn the computers back on.  Look for a feed from Oklahoma City.  Something is going down there."
Uncle Evans’ voice sounded anxious.  Kyle’s brought the computers back up and found a feed from Oklahoma City.  What they saw looked something like a wild street festival that spilled over into a working-class Oklahoma suburb.  There were teens.  Hundreds of them, all swarming up and down a suburban street.  They walked up and down the middle of the street.  They walked through front yards, kicking apart flower beds and lawn decorations.  A young man came up to a live-streamer and mugged for the camera, the fingers of each hand twisted into gang signs.
"We get our reparations tonight, baby," the man declared.  Then he disappeared out of view.  The audio switched to another feed in the same location.  Girls in cutoff shorts and fuzzy house slippers twerked on parked cars along the curb while a young man smashed out the taillights with a baseball bat for no other reason than to do it.  Four men walked past holding beer bottles aloft.  "Reparations," they yelled for the camera.  Then they scattered frantically as a quad came careening down the street doing a wheelie, headlights shining into the night sky.  The camera followed the quad, then swung back around and caught a mini-van.  A local family filled the mini-van.  They were trying to escape.  The van swung around a corner, so fast it looked like it might pitch over.  The van straightened, then almost hit another group of teens marching up the street.  At the last second, the van swerved out of the way, bounced over a curb, smashed through a low, split rail fence, then back over the curb and onto the street again.  The teens threw beer bottles and rocks at the fleeing van.
"I don’t see any PVD," Evans said.  "Looks like this ain’t their operation."
In the past, flash mobs had gone into gas stations and convenience stores, sometimes even shopping malls.  The mob would come in en’ masse and rob the place, their numbers so great as to overwhelm any possible resistance.  This was the same concept, only instead of descending upon a corner store, they were descending upon a residential neighborhood.
A modified sports car, sitting low with wild lights, screamed up the neighborhood street, the rear end drifted, swinging left and then swinging hard again right, and throwing out smoke the whole time.  The camera swung and caught a family fleeing their home on foot.  It swung again and caught about a dozen teens smashing their way into a garage.  The metal garage doors buckled.   "Street Reparations!" Another teenager screamed into the camera.
Evans’ phone buzzed.  He looked at the screen.  "Find a streamer named Forty-Switches."
Kyle’s fingers danced across the keyboard.  Soon, Forty-Switches’ (Spelled "FoTay Switches")  live-stream came up.  Switches was in the same neighborhood.  The houses were the same, mostly single-story and brick.  The older homes of an older neighborhood.  The streets were still wild with teens.  Switches alternated between pointing the camera at the unfolding mayhem and pointing the camera at himself while he provided commentary.  Right now, he had his camera pointed at the entrance to the neighborhood.  Police vehicles sat there, lights flashing and spinning.  
"Dat’s the police right there.  Dat’s the police right there," Switches said.
"Yeah.  They ain’t moving, though.  They ain’t moving," another commentator added.
"Hell no, they ain't moving.  They just gonna sit there.  They gonna let us do this.  They know what's right!  They know what's right!"

A US flag hung off the side of a nearby house.  Next to it was a US Navy flag.  Next to those was a third flag that depicted an anchor fouled with a serpent.  The words, "Navy Medicine" were written across the top of that flag.  There was a van in the driveway.  All the windows had been smashed out.  Shattered glass glittered in the driveway.  The front door to the house was opened.  It looked like it had been smashed open.  Even in the chaos, Kyle could hear shouting inside the house.
More teens descended on the house.  They came in groups of four or more.  Each group had at least one member who walked with their eyes glued to their phone.  Switches followed one group.  His video stream bounced up and down with each step.
The teenager leading this group wore a red sweatshirt.  He picked up a lawn chair and threw it at the home's big, plate-glass window.  The glass buckled but did not break.  The teenager's friends laughed at him.  Somebody said something.  The teen laughed.  Then he picked up a cement birdbath and pitched it at the window.  This time the glass broke.  Cheers went up. From the massed teens.  More tromped across the front lawn.  Police lights outside the community kept flashing, but the patrol cars did not move.
The kid in the red sweatshirt moved to the shattered window and brushed the remaining shards of glass away.  His friends followed his lead.  Soon they were all climbing through the broken window and into the house.  The yelling grew louder.  Clearer.
Switches climbed through the window too.  The view of the camera swung in acrobatic jumps and twists with his movement.  The camera swung again and Kyle and Evans saw the source of the shouting.
The house was filling up with teens who obviously did not live there and were not invited.  The teens weren't wrecking anything, but they weren't leaving either.  They were mostly milling about and watching a confrontation between one teen in a black jersey and an older man who could only be the homeowner.  Both the homeowner and the teen had guns.  The teen had a black pistol that was mostly plastic.  He kept it low, at his waist.  He didn't wave it around wildly but seemed to rock back and forth with it, moving it left and right as he shouted insults.  The homeowner had a rifle, semiautomatic with wood furniture and iron sights.  It was an older weapon, from an older time, easily handled by an older man.  The homeowner had his rifle raised, but he wasn’t firing.  He was in a shouting match with the teen in the black jersey.
"He’s afraid to shoot," Uncle Evans said.  "He’s afraid to shoot because he knows he’ll end up in jail.  He’s more afraid of jail than he is of dying.  That’s exactly what they want."
"What who wants?" Kyle asked.
Instead of answering his uncle said, "Thing is he’s going to jail anyway.  Maybe not for murder, but he’ll be in jail this time tomorrow."
"There are like thirty people in that guy’s house," Kyle said.  "How can they arrest that old guy?"  The only answer his uncle gave was a sad, disgusted shake of his head.
The shouting went back and forth.  Screaming and mayhem exploded on the peripheries.  Some teens mugged for Switches’ camera.  Others cheered on their comrade in the black jersey.  Nobody took this seriously, not even with the muzzle of the .30 caliber rifle waving just inches away.  It was all a big joke.  There was only one way it could end, and that's the way it ended.
The kid in the black jersey raised his pistol.  He probably wasn’t going to shoot it.  He just wanted to menace the homeowner.  The homeowner wasn’t taking that chance though.  His rifle barked twice and the kid in the black jersey disappeared.
The cameraman turned and ran, back out the house, back out the smashed window.  On the street, people yelled and screamed and ran frantically.  Hands waved.  Switches dropped his phone, stopped, and picked it up.  There were more gunshots from inside the house.  A car sped by at twice, maybe three times the residential limit.  The camera angle turned up the street and a pickup truck could be seen burning.  Behind that, kids were running out of a house with armloads of goods and loading them into a waiting van.  One saw the camera, smiled, and yelled, "Reparations!"  Then the big .30 caliber rifle barked again and again.  The kids dropped what they were carrying and dove into the van.  FoTay Switches ran for the cover of a nearby hedge.  A woman could be heard screaming in the background.
"Turn that off, please," Uncle Evans said.  His voice was quiet.  He sounded tired.
Kyle shut down the computer.

The Texas Hill Country.  Mid-June.

Uncle Evans woke up to the sounds and smells of Kyle cooking breakfast.  Evans rose slowly and groaned.  His body protested and registered aches and pains from all the recent work.  He eventually got out of bed, rubbed his bald head, then bent over to touch his toes.  He got almost all the way there before his muscles refused to stretch any further.  He straightened up and checked himself in the mirror.  Bald.  Deep wrinkles at the eyes.  A face of gray stubble that was fading further to silver.  Once he’d been old as measured by kids Kyle’s age.  Then he’d gotten old as measured by the Marines around him.  Now he was just plain old, and the gravity of what that meant really hit him.  The best years of his life were behind him, truly.  He’d done a lot of amazing things, things he’d never get the opportunity to do again.  And even if he did get the opportunity, he might not be physically able to do them.  The machine that was his body had a lot of miles on it.  It didn’t have the speed, strength, flexibility, balance, or ability to recover that it once did.  Time always won in the end.
But old or not, Evans had his nephew here for the rest of the summer and that was a good thing.  Part of being a man of a certain age meant recognizing that you needed to maximize the moments you had left.  When there wasn’t much time left on the clock you had to make each play count.
Evans went downstairs.  Breakfast was bacon and eggs.
"Can we go to the store today?" Kyle asked.
"Sure.  What do you need?"
"What do I need?  We need something for breakfast besides bacon and eggs and sausage and eggs."
"I like bacon and eggs.  And I like sausage and eggs," Evans said.  He rubbed the remaining sleep out of his face and went to work on his chai.  "I’m not some healthy food fanatic, but I’m not getting you a bunch of cereals that are nothing 90% sugar."
"Oh yeah?  That tea you drink is 90% sugar."
"I earned this tea, and ain’t you full of piss and vinegar this morning. I thought kids your age stayed in bed until noon?"
"To tell the truth, I couldn’t get to sleep last night.  When I finally did I just woke up an hour later and couldn’t get back to sleep."
"The riots have you worried?"
"They don’t have you worried, uncle?"
Evans looked out his kitchen window to the rolling hills beyond.  There was plenty of room to run out there.  There were plenty of places to hide.
"Maybe they do," Evans answered.  "We can go to the store this afternoon when the heat’s up.  This morning I want to finish off some work with George’s skid steer.  You ever handle one of those before?"
"Nope.  I guess I’m going to learn to do that today too."
"Yeah," Evans said.  "Learning how to pull a trailer.  Learning how to ride a motorcycle.  It has been a productive summer for you so far."
"Yeah," Kyle agreed.  "And the rifle.  But I still haven’t learned to drive a stick."
"We might get you there yet," Evans said.  His tea was ready.  
"Skills," Kyle said.
"Skills," Evans agreed, and he took a sip of the steaming hot, syrupy sugar drink.

When they started work that morning, Kyle noticed something he hadn’t noticed the day before.  The stock tank was gone.  The big pile of scrap metal beside the barn was also gone.  The bales of barbed wire were still there, each coated with rust.  Kyle thought better of asking his uncle about where the stock tank went.  Uncle Evans was doing something, but whatever it was, he wanted to keep it to himself.  Kyle figured it was best to respect that.
So instead of asking questions, Kyle listened.  He listened and learned.  He listened when his uncle instructed him how to run the skid steer.  He listened and learned when his uncle surveyed the ground in front of the house and explained the slope and the lay of the terrain and where he wanted Kyle to dig a trench, a trench that would face the drive and the long pile of brush on the other side.
"Everything you dig out I want you to pile up into a berm on the forward slope.  That way it doesn't all just run downhill back into the hole you just dug," Evans said.  "Keep digging until the hole is chest deep.  And if you’ve come to some rock that's too big for the machine, just dig around it.  I’ve got some old pallets behind the barn.  We’ll use them to shore up the sides of our little hole."
Uncle Evans went to get his pallets.  Kyle went to work.  Before long Kyle had a trench that was maybe twelve feet long and almost chest-deep throughout.  Here and there, huge chunks of limestone remained, too big for the machine to move.
"What do we do about those?" Kyle asked.
"Once upon a time, we would have drilled holes in them, filled them with dynamite, and blown them into smaller more manageable chunks.  Dynamite is a no-go these days, but we can still use chemistry to solve this problem."  Uncle Evans produced a hammer drill and a plastic container that he handed to his nephew.  Kyle read the label on the container out loud.
"’Expansive Grout. Cures in 24 hours.’  I’d rather use dynamite,"  Kyle said with a grin.
"So would I, but this is pretty cool too," Evans said.  And the next lesson began.  Together they drilled holes in the limestone boulders.  Then Evans showed Kyle how to mix the grout so they could pour it into the holes.  When they were done, they were both soaked with sweat and covered with limestone dust.
"Nothing else we can do until the grout cures, and it is too hot anyway.  Let’s get cleaned up and hit the store," Evans said.
While Kyle got cleaned up, Evans went into the office and grabbed the carbine off the rack on the wall.  He took that and a couple of loaded magazines and loaded them into his truck.  In addition to these, he brought along a pistol with its own spare magazines.  Evans didn’t like going into town.  Any town.  And by town, he didn’t mean city.  He meant town.  Cities and towns meant people, people he didn't know, and people that weren't from his "tribe."  In his experience that meant danger.  Even in the relative safety of the United States, thousands of miles and decades away from his violent past, Evans couldn’t just turn off his feelings of apprehension or his compulsion to remain hyper-alert.  He’d been through too much.
Kyle offered to drive, but Evans took the wheel.  He didn’t turn on the radio, and he barely spoke on the drive.  Kyle sensed his uncle’s unease and didn’t try and start a conversation.  The sun was high, and the glare was bright.  The road noise hummed inside the truck.  Evans felt his mind drifting towards places he didn’t want to go back to.  His knuckles went white as he gripped the steering wheel.
They made it to the supermarket without incident.  Evans parked his truck about as far away from the entrance as he could get, the nose facing out for a quick getaway.  There were no other cars parked anywhere near them.
"You know what you want," Evans asked.  Kyle said he did.  Evans' eyes scanned the parking lot once more, looking for anything he didn’t like.  Looking for any people he did not like.
"Okay, let’s go in and get it, and then get back out.  Quick."
The inside of the supermarket was expansive in the American fashion.  Luckily, it wasn’t crowded.  It was noon on a weekday.  There weren’t a lot of shoppers out.  Evans was thankful for that.  They grabbed a cart and moved up and down the aisles slowly.  Kyle seemed to know what he wanted, and so he led the way.  Evans followed his nephew, not really thinking about shopping.
They drifted from one aisle to the next.  Kyle grabbed some things here.  He grabbed some more things there.  They turned another corner and headed down an aisle loaded with sodas in cans and bottles.
"You want more of that cola you drink?" Kyle asked.  Evans grunted out a yes, but he wasn’t consciously in this market anymore.  His mind was in another market, in another part of the world, in a time long past.


"Anything?" The major asked.  The major leaned over the hood of an armored truck.  The major looked like a man whose life had been one long series of bar fights, and he always looked like he was on his way to one more.  The truck was as worn as the man.  Large swaths of its desert tan paint had worn away, revealing shades of woodland green beneath.  In several places, the body of the truck had been smashed and dented.  The bulletproof windows along one side were all pockmarked from shrapnel.  The truck and the major suited each other.
"We can’t see shit, sir.  A bunch of the shelves got blown over.  The robot can’t move.  Too much shit scattered in the aisles."
Evans and another EOD technician named Lasky hovered over a display screen that showed a feed from their bomb disposal robot.  The robot was inside what passed for the local 7-11.   That store had just been rocked by an improvised explosive device.  Nobody had been killed, luckily.  But the locals said there was another IED inside the store.  Now the locals were all gathered around.  They wanted to watch and see what the Americans might do about that last bomb.  That, or they just wanted to see some Americans get blown up.  Either would help pass the time.
"One more.  One more," the local policeman said in heavily accented English.  The policeman had a thick black mustache.  The major nodded.
"One more, huh?  Does he know where it is?"  A translator wearing tan coveralls and a helmet two sizes too big, jabbered with the policeman.  When they were done, the policeman turned to the major.
"He doesn’t know where it is, but he knows there is one more," the translator said.
"One more.  One more," the policeman said.
"One more.  Got it," the major said.  He sounded like a man who’d been through this a thousand times before and was just too tired to be upset.  
A man standing next to the major wore one radio in a pack on his back and a second radio in a pouch on his chest.  He was a stark contrast to the major.  The man in the flight suit had the boyish good looks of a male model or a teenage pop singer.  In truth, he’d been both before joining the Marines.  The man in the flight suit never stopped smiling.  The major looked incapable of any emotion save maybe blind rage.  The major used words as sparingly as if he had to pay for them.  The man in the flight suit, for no reason at all, would periodically break out into song.  One of his radios crackled with the sound of an impatient voice.  The man in the flight suit held a handset to his ear.  He listened, then he spoke to the major.
"It’s Law-Dog-Six-Actual.  He says this ain’t our problem.  He says he wants us to get out of here."
Evans looked over the faces of all the people nearby.  They were all either brown-skinned boys or brown-skinned men.  The brown-skinned kids wore hand-me-down western clothes and smiled at the Americans.  The brown-skinned men all had mustaches just like the policeman, and not one of them smiled.  They glared at the Americans.  The major looked over those faces too and came to the same conclusion as Evans.
"If they watch us leave and then ten minutes later their neighborhood blows up, it will be our problem."
The officer with all the radio said, "We’ve got a UAV on top of us, feeding back to Law-Dog."
"It’s a good thing they are watching out for us," a nearby second lieutenant said appreciatively.  Up to this point, he'd been doing what second lieutenants were supposed to do, keep their mouths shut and their eyes and ears open.
"They aren’t watching out for us," the major corrected.  "They are watching us.  Watching to see if we leave like we’ve been ordered."  The major turned to Evans.  "I can buy you about ten minutes.  Can you find the other bomb?"
Evans looked at the faces of the kids gathered around.  Bright white smiles amongst the mustaches and the glares.  Evans wondered how many of those kids would be dead between now and the next time he came back to this country.  Everybody who was paying attention knew the situation.  The locals were just waiting for the Americans to leave and when they did, they’d start killing each other wholesale again.  Whoever put this bomb in the local store must not have gotten that memo.  Or maybe they were impatient.  Or maybe they wanted to take one last shot at the Americans.  Or maybe they just wanted to blow people up and they didn't care who they killed just as long as they killed somebody.  There were a lot of possibilities.  But if a couple of kids got killed and the locals felt the Americans could have prevented it, it would cause the kind of trouble nobody needed.
"I’ll find it,"  Evans said to the major.  To Lasky he said, "No time for the suit.  I’ll go in slick.  Just get the robot loaded back up."

The inside of the store was a mess.  It looked more like an earthquake went off than a bomb had exploded.  All the strange, foreign products had been knocked off their shelves and scattered across the floor.  A couple of shelf systems had been toppled over from the blast.  A ceiling fan was on the floor.  Fluorescent lights hung by their wires.  The blast also shattered a glass cooler door.  The air coming out of the cooler was cold enough that you could see it and Evans realized just how hot it was outside.  He stepped over a pile of bread and pre-packaged food items whose labels were written in a scrolling language he could not read.  He stopped, wiped the sweat off his brow with a faded green cravat, then looked around the store for the second bomb.  He remembered the words of one of his instructors back at Eglin Air Force Base.
"You’re not looking for the thing that doesn’t belong.  You’re looking for the thing that looks like it is supposed to belong but doesn’t belong.  You aren’t looking for a zebra in a herd of giraffes.  You are looking for a horse in a herd of zebras, only some mother fucker spray painted the horse black and white.  That’s ‘cuz he’s packed the horse full of HME and only needs you to not notice for a few seconds before he blows your stupid, non-observant ass up."
Evans' eyes moved slowly across the store.
Along the back wall of the store sat a row of metal containers.  Evans couldn’t read the scrolling script on them, but he spent enough time in this country to know they contained cooking oil.  Amongst the containers, he found what he was looking for.  One container was the same size and shape as all the others.  It was even roughly the same colors.  But its label said "Transmission Fluid" in English.  Evans looked at its lid.  It was resealed.  Not sealed, but resealed.
Evans reached up to the radio on his vest and turned it off.  He toed the metal container with his boot.  It wasn’t empty, but it wasn’t full of transmission fluid or cooking oil or any other liquid.
Evans considered the container carefully, then he knelt down and took off the lid.
The IED was made up of several Soviet-era OG-7 40mm frag grenades,  daisy-chained together with braids of cheap blue explosive cord.  Electrical wires pulled out of a car or an old appliance connected the blasting caps to a Norwegian cell phone.  It wasn’t a sophisticated device.  It wasn’t even especially lethal.  It was hardly worth building.  But inside a store full of kids, it would be lethal enough.
Evans knew there weren’t any anti-tamper devices.  The good bomb makers were all either dead or waiting for the Americans to leave.  He checked for anti-tamper devices anyway.  Not finding any, he disconnected the phone.  Then he removed the blasting caps for good measure.
On the way out, Evans stopped at the store’s cooler.  They didn’t have Coke or Pepsi in this country.  That was because of the old economic sanctions levied against the previous ruler.    Evans took out two 2-liter bottles of RC Cola.  He found a pack of Pine cigarettes behind the counter, and he grabbed that too.  He opened a pocket on his Nomex coveralls and took out a US Twenty-Dollar bill.  Then he took out a second bill for good measure and left them both on the counter.
"Tell the locals I found the bomb," Evans said to the major.  "It’s disarmed.  It’s in a metal bucket in the back."
"What was it?" the major asked.
"Not the bomb I’d build," Evans said.  "Left over junk mostly.  Wasn’t worth the blasting caps it took to make it.  You got time for a smoke?"  Evans ripped open the pack.
"We should get going.  Law-Dog is all over my ass,"  The major said.  He didn’t move though.  He took an offered cigarette and slowly smoked it over the hood of his truck.
"Can I get one of those?" the handsome man with the radios asked.
"No, you can’t," the major said.
Evans offered up a cigarette anyway.  The three men smoked their cigarettes.  Somebody twisted the cap off one of the bottles.  The carbonated soda hissed.  It was cold and sweet.  Evans drank almost half before passing it around.  The local police came out of the store, bomb in hand.  The locals went into the store.  The radio crackled with impatient demands.  The two officers didn’t move to answer the radio, so Evans felt no need to do so either.  The three leaned over the hood of the armored vehicle, smoked their cigarettes in the summer heat, and savored their small victory.


"Evans!" A man called out.  Evans broke from his reminiscing and turned to find who was calling his name.
"Evans!"
Evans left the memories of his past behind and returned to reality.  He spun and saw one of his neighbors at the other end of the soda aisle.
"Evans," the man repeated, a little too loud for Evans’ liking.
"Hey there Dale.  What’s happening?"
Dale was another middle-aged man, tall, but soft and doughy in spots with thinning hair.  He dressed like a middle-aged man, and Evans immediately noticed the bulge under the man’s shirt, right at his appendix.
"Who's this?"  Dale asked.  The man was looking at Kyle.  Evans did not dislike Dale, but he didn't exactly trust the man either.  He didn't know why he didn't, he just didn't.  Evans had reached the age where he didn't feel he needed a reason not to trust anybody.  He had been around enough people in enough places that if his gut told him somebody was off, he trusted his gut.
"This is my nephew.  We’re just out shopping."  Evans intentionally did not give his nephew’s name.  Instead, he changed the subject.  "What’s going on?  You look like you got something on your mind."
Dale looked around conspiratorially.  There was nobody else in the aisle.  Evans was happy about the cue and took it.
"Hey, nephew.  Why don't you keep shopping?  I'll catch up with you in a bit."
Kyle was quick enough to catch on and made his escape.  The two old men stood alone amongst the root beers and diet colas.
"So, what’s on your mind?"
"Are you following all these riots and attacks?  They’re happening everywhere.  All over the country.  This ain’t like before.  They’re coming out into the suburbs.  They’re coming into people’s homes.  The police are damn near escorting them."
"Yeah, I’ve heard about ‘em," Evans said.
"Well, we got to do something about ‘em," Dale said.  Evans sucked his teeth.  He’d been afraid something like this might happen.  It was only a matter of time before somebody got the idea of putting together some kind of neighborhood watch.  His military background wasn’t exactly a secret, which made Evans a good candidate to lead such an endeavor, even if he didn’t want to.
"We’re a good distance from anywhere anybody would want to go," Evans said.
"That’s the damned thing," Dale said, his voice rising a  little.  "They’re coming out to nowhere.  They’re coming for the suburbs.  They’re coming for us.  A couple of places got burned up out by New Brahmfeld a couple of nights ago.  Farms.  Those PVD kids from the college, no doubt.  Then you got what happened in Raleigh and Oklahoma.  Everybody knows what’s going on.  We got to do something about it."
"The best thing you can do when they come is not be around," Evans answered.  "You got plenty of acres of hills and scrub to hide in.  That’s about the only winning play if the PVD shows up."
"I do that, and they’ll burn my house down.  And what happens then?  I can’t allow that.  I’ve worked my whole life for that.  Everything I own.  Everything my family owns.  I need the equity in my house if my kids are ever going to see college. I can’t just let it burn."
"If the PVD comes and you defend your house it may not burn down but you’ll lose it anyway.   Some District Attorney will prosecute you and take your house and every other thing you owned or might have owned."
"I'd rather take my chances in a courtroom than lose everything I own," Dale replied.  He was speaking louder now, and Evans turned his head looking up and down the aisle, making sure nobody was around.
"That's the thing, Dale.  You won't have a chance in a courtroom.  You'll be guilty before you even get before the judge.  It's just a question of how much they're going to make you suffer before they let the judge do his thing.  The PVD and the government, they're one and the same.  If you shoot a PVD, you might as well shoot a cop because that's the level of trouble you'll be in.  It is just a damn house Dale."
"Not to me it ain’t,"  Dale said.  He looked around again.  This time he spoke in a whisper.  "But what if it ain't about the houses?   What if they come and start killing people?"  Dale asked.  "What if they come and start rounding people up and killing them?  Huh?  ‘Cause you know that’s what’s next.  They've gotten away with so much already that they're going to try for more.  They're going to round people up and kill them next."
Evans shook his head.   "It ain't next.  It's already happened, plenty of times.  It is just that nobody talks about it."  He shook his head again but he looked his neighbor in the eye and asked, "What are you thinking, exactly?"
Dale explained that he wanted to set up some kind of neighborhood watch, with a communications plan, so that if the PVD came the neighbors could all get organized quickly; grab their guns and confront the mob somehow.
"But not all the neighbors.  Not Lori," Dale said.  "She’d likely be marching with the PVD if it came down to it.  But I talked to John and George about it already."
"You did?  What did they say?"
"They said they’re in," Dale said.  "They’re in, but you’re the one we need.  You’re the one who’s done this type of thing before."
"I don’t know about that," Evans said.  "I disarmed bombs.  I didn’t organize patrols exactly."  Evans looked around the store.  He didn’t see Kyle, but he knew the kid was there.  This discussion with Dale got him back to the same dilemma.  If things went south, what was the best way to protect his nephew?  In the short term the answer was obvious; run into the woods and hide until everything was over.  But in the long term?  Was it right to let his nephew grow up in a world ruled by a government-sanctioned mob?  Evans shook his head again.  If you got into a confrontation with the PVD then your life was over.  It would not be like the books or the movies.  Right, wrong, justified, or not.  The government wasn't going to let somebody win against the PVD.  They just weren’t.
"Dale, let’s talk about this somewhere else," Evans said.  "I ain’t saying no, but I ain’t saying yes either.  I need to sit down with you and make sure everybody knows what this will mean because it won’t be like you think."

Interlude:  The Lawyers #1.  Austin Texas.

Following the Raleigh-Durham Executions, America's elites cranked up the mourning theater.  Flags descended to half-mast.  Avatars on social media accounts changed.  Octogenarian politicians conducted their poorly rehearsed games of playacting, demonstrating the empathy they felt towards the constituents they never saw.  Corporate leaders expressed their grief and solidarity by having their publicists craft saccharine sweet messages, all 280 characters board approved and reviewed by legal before posting.
Deep inside a federal building in Austin, two prosecutors met.  One worked for the federal government.  The other worked for a local government.  Uncle Evans’ corner of Texas was within that one’s jurisdiction.
"What went down in Raleigh is the playbook for any illegal use of force cases regarding the PVD or the rioters," the federal attorney said.  His name was Teddy.  What he was calling "illegal use of force" most Americans once called "self-defense."  Once, but not now.  The rules of the game had changed, and the federal attorney was on the side that changed the rules.  He continued while his audience of one listened.
"Every case will initially be prosecuted locally.  Once you get a conviction at the local level, we’ll pile on at the federal level.  After that, if the dumb chump has anything left… a house, kid’s college fund, 401K, grandmother’s wedding ring, his dead father’s baseball cards…  we’ll pave the way for a civil suit."
"Why not just come in at the federal level right from the start?"  The district attorney asked.  His name was Greg.  He wasn’t from Texas.  He had no ties to the area.  But political winds had sent him there to do necessary work.
"The last thing we want is to step in right off the bat with federal charges on every single use of force case involving the PVD.  The optics aren’t good.  It’ll look like federal overreach.  That’s why we need local prosecutors who are on board to make the initial charges.  We’ll have to step in and make up the difference in the places where the locals aren’t on the team.  But we can’t step in every time."
"But some of these cases…" Greg began.  "Raleigh was one thing.  But this thing in Oklahoma City.  They were in that man’s house.  They’d set fire to the house next door.  The ones that he shot were all armed.  The guy was a decorated combat veteran."
"None of that matters.  What matters is he shot protestors.  He shot our protestors, and that cannot be tolerated.  And when some stinky-ass fly-over tangles with the PVD… and this is going to happen more… they are no longer combat veterans or decorated veterans.  If they tangle with our guys then it means they're unstable veterans.  ‘Dangerously Unstable Veterans.’  That’s the term we’re supposed to use going forward.  Dangerously Unstable Veteran means they’ve got anger issues.  It means they’ve got PTSD.  It means they scare their kids and hit their wives and they need to be taken off the streets.  It means instead of getting the help offered by the VA they spend all day in their basement reading conspiracy theories and misinformation on the internet.  It means the gun they used they stole out of some National Guard Armory, even if they didn’t.  It means they are a ‘Dangerously Unstable Veteran,’ and that’s the term we’re all going to use."
"I get all that, but Teddy, we’re not back in New York anymore.  The self-defense laws here are too accommodating to the citizens.  I’ve got to make a case that will stand up before a judge."
"Don’t worry about making solid cases and don’t worry about any judges.  If a protestor or a PVD activist gets hurt just arrest the guy that did it and file charges.  And make it high profile, and I mean high profile.  The elections are right around the corner.  Don’t worry about getting your cases in front of a judge.  Worry about getting your cases in front of the TV cameras.  After this election, the case will come.  DOJ’s got your back on that.  Get their family members too if you can.  Taxes.  Environmental Crimes.  Whatever.  Some good media coverage of kids getting hauled off into foster care is perfect.  The HHS agents taking away all those kids from the Raleigh Executions… that footage was fucking gold.  Half the mothers in America are going to be tossing their husband’s guns in the trash."
Greg sipped at his coffee.  It had a hint of pecans.  He didn’t like it.  The coffee back in New York was better.  Everything in New York was better he thought.
"Maybe, but I’ve got an election coming up too.  I made the last one by the skin of my teeth.  If that old man didn’t kick that money into my campaign, I wouldn’t have held onto the office."
"Your election is not what you need to worry about.  The House, the Senate, the White House, that’s what counts.  I don’t know why you’d want to stay out here anyway Greg.  I sure don’t.  We’re doing our part for freedom I guess, just like those guys that landed at Normandy.  Just get us through these next couple of months, get our party through the election and I’ll see to it you get out of Texas and into somewhere nice.  Boston, Chicago, New York.  Anywhere.  Just make the arrests, file the charges and get it all out on the press.  High visibility.  Big headlines.
"And guns.  Guns are good too.  DOJ is going to implement a program this week.  There are going to be bounties paid out for successful gun prosecutions.  Paid out directly to the prosecutors.  Big numbers too.  A good way for you to get some extra money."
"Where’s all this money coming from?"
"The President’s opening up Title 50 funds.  Domestic terror intersecting with foreign collusion and election interference.  You know, ‘the need to secure the election and protect our democracy.’  With Title 50 the funding floodgates are going to open.  And we’re moving fast too.  This isn’t the normal speed of government.  The next few months are going to be a sprint, all the way up to the election."
"The election?  Teddy, it's June.  The election isn't until November.  These riots are going to keep going for the whole summer?"
"They are, and we’re going to keep them going.  Listen, Greg, we're not up against the opposition party of days gone by.  You used to be able to count on them to compromise at the last minute and do the right thing.  But these new people?  They are committed.  I mean committed, Greg.  They’re fanatics.  These are the guys in the Middle East that strapped bombs to their chests.  And they’ve taken over the opposition party.  That, and they hate people like us Greg.  Government workers.  They hate us.  They have no appreciation for how hard we work for them or the sacrifices we make.  They are ungrateful, upstart, little, middle-class shits.  That’s why we’ve got to hold onto the levers of government.  That’s why we’ve got to break them.  That’s what these riots are all about.  Every American is going to see the PVD in action.  Burning and looting.  The riots are going to keep going right into November, and the only way they are going to stop is if every American goes out and votes the correct way on election day.  Nothing else will stop the protests, and if anybody tries…"  Teddy shook his head.  "Examples have to be made.  Some Americans have to be made bankrupt, humiliated, and imprisoned.  Their families will have to be destroyed.  Jobs and businesses will have to be taken away.  Kids made pariahs.  It is not personal.  But we can’t let the wrong people get elected.  It is that simple."
"We don’t need them in the courtroom.  We need them in front of the camera," the one lawyer repeated.
"We’ll get the convictions. But first, we need the clicks," the federal lawyer said.
Gregg toyed with the coffee cup on its saucer.  "What if it doesn’t work?" He asked.  "What if the riots don’t work and the voters vote incorrectly?  What then?"  Teddy emphatically shook his head no and then leaned forward and spoke softly.
"If worse comes to worst, even if the vote doesn’t go our way, our party won’t be leaving office.  We’ve got plans for that too.  We will win this election.  Period.  Full stop.  The only question is how painful does the other side want to make it for themselves before they admit that we won?"

The Texas Hill Country.  3 July.

Evans fiddled with some dishes at the kitchen counter, stopped, and stretched.  His back hurt from the day before, pulling out the last broken hunks of limestone from the trench he and his nephew dug.  If he was honest with himself, more than just his back hurt.  His knees and his elbows hurt too.  And his shoulders.  And pretty much everything else.  He wasn’t young anymore, and he felt it.  Stretching, Evans caught sight of his nephew out the kitchen window. Kyle walked out of the scrub and thickets and approached the house.
"How was it?"  Evans asked when Kyle came back inside.
"Easy," Kyle answered.  He went to the fridge to get something cold to drink.  It was early, but it was already hot.
"No problem finding your way down to the highway?" Evans asked.  They’d incorporated a new ritual into their day.  Every morning before breakfast, Kyle had to take the footpath down to the highway and back.  It wasn’t far.  Even so, Evans wanted to know, he wanted to be absolutely certain that Kyle could find his way.
"No problem," Kyle answered.  He took out some orange juice and drank straight from the plastic bottle.  Evans didn’t say anything about that.
"You’re positive you made it to the sign?"
"I made it to the sign."
"What did the sign say?"
"It said Farm-to-Market route number Who-Gives-A-Shit.  Same as it said yesterday."
"Who taught you how to talk like that?"
"My ne’er do well uncle,"  Kyle answered with a smile.
"Well, maybe you learned something on this visit," Evans fired back.  Then he asked, "You want to make more of those breakfast burritos you made the other day?"
"You don’t want bacon and eggs again for like the five millionth time in your life?"
"I’d rather have bacon and eggs, but I figured I’d humor my upstart nephew."
"Then sure.  You want to just eat at the counter today?"  Kyle asked.  And he tapped the large wooden box that occupied half of the breakfast table.  Uncle Evans’ salvaged camera tower occupied the other half.  Kyle ran a finger down one of the box’s joints where the two pieces of plywood came together.
"Glue’s dry,"  Kyle announced.  He examined the box further.  He and his uncle built it the day before, using the table saw and a variety of other tools in Evans’ shop.  The box was slanted on one end so that it could rest on the roof of the house.  The opposite end was built with a nest that would accommodate the base of the camera tower.  The box would go on the roof and the camera would go on the box and from there the camera could see all the way out to the entrance of the Silver Springs development.  Kyle ran his finger down another seam on the box and found a clump of dried wood glue.  He took out his pocketknife, opened it, and scraped away the lump of glue.
"What are we doing today?" Kyle asked.
We’ll go visit my neighbor, John.  Now that the base is built, I’d like to get this camera working and up on the roof.  He can put the final touches on this."

John’s house was a short drive towards the entry into Silver Springs.  His house was like any other, just a bit closer to the main road than Uncle Evans’.  John was another old guy, a retiree.  He was balding, tall, and lean.  He was one of those old men who seemed to get skinnier past middle age instead of rounder.  Kyle learned that John had done a stint in the Air Force, then got out and worked for the local electric company until he retired.  His daughters were grown and out of the house.  When John opened the door, he greeted them both with a smile.  John’s wife sat on a couch watching TV and did not get up when Evans and Kyle came inside.  John made no attempt to introduce her.
"Let’s head into the garage and take a look at what you’ve got there," John said after the initial pleasantries.  Kyle shot a quick glance over toward the coach and John’s wife.  The light of daytime TV flickered across her pale, blank face.
John's garage was big.  Four bays total.  The walls were lined with tool chests and workbenches and pegboards loaded with all kinds of gizmos and instruments that Kyle didn't recognize.  But what immediately drew Kyle's attention was the truck.
The truck was a 1990 Dodge Ram, black on black accentuated with gleaming chrome.  It was lifted, and the top of the cab wasn’t too far from the ceiling of the garage.  It looked and smelled clean.  The driver’s window was open.  Kyle walked over and stuck his head inside.
"Help you with something?" John asked.
Kyle retracted his head with a quickness and looked at John, embarrassed.  He stammered out, "Cool truck.  Just checking on the transmission."
John raised an eyebrow.
"Kid doesn't know how to drive a manual transmission," Evans explained.  "We’ve been looking for something with a manual he can learn on."  Now John looked embarrassed.
"Can’t help you there.  That truck of mine won’t even go.  The drive shaft has been out on this one for a while now."
"Yeah.  George mentioned that the other day.  When are you going to get that fixed?"
"Probably never.  I got the parts I need, just need the time to take the old one out and put the new one in.  I’d love to let you drive it though.  I was going to give that truck to one of my girls, but neither one wanted it.  The older one said it was too big and the younger one said it was too old.
"Don’t sweat it," Evans said. "I got a line on a truck with a stick."
"Fair enough.  Well.  Let’s have a peek at this project of yours."
Evans nodded to Kyle who pulled the tower out of a big cardboard box.  John whistled.
"Uncle Sam must be missing that."
"Uncle Sam never even knew it was gone," Evans said.  "I’m not smart, but I’m smart enough to know not to take anything from the government that they might miss."
"Fair enough. And I see you got a laser mounted alongside the camera too.  What is that all about?"
"I’ll fill you in on that later,"  Evans said.  "What I need now is to be able to run this off my home’s power.  It was designed to run off vehicle power.  The last thing I want to do is plug it into the house and fry something."
"That’ll be easy," John said.  He took the tower in both hands, lifted it up, and looked it over.  "Of course, if it is wired into your residential power and the grid goes down…?"
"I’ve got solar and battery backups, remember?"
"That’s right,"  John said.  He set the big tower down on a workbench.  To Kyle he said, "You’re the youngest, that makes you the gopher.  I want you to go fer’ a couple of things over in that blue tool chest.  You know what a multi-meter is?"
"Yes, sir," Kyle answered.  John looked impressed.
"I'm glad to hear that.  I thought all you kids did nowadays was play video games."
"Kyle’s taken some robotics classes," Evans said proudly.
"Is that a fact?  Good.  Well.  First, we need to get the cover off.  Go get me a Philips head screwdriver.  There's one in the second drawer over there with a pink handle.  Get that and the multi-meter in the drawer below it and we’ll see where we go from there."

John had all the tools, parts, and pieces he needed.  In less than an hour he set his soldering iron down with some satisfaction.
"Well.  Let’s plug it in and see how it works."
Kyle plugged the tower into the wall outlet.  The system powered up quickly.  Evans held up the remote control and began tapping.  The camera zoomed in and out and out and panned up and down.  As the camera went through its motions, the display screen imaged what the camera was seeing.
"Looks good so far," John said.
"Let’s check out the dazzler. Put your glasses on," Evans said.  Kyle put on some safety glasses his uncle had brought along.  Evans tapped another button on the remote control.  Brilliant green laser light beamed out of the Dazzler and danced across the garage wall.  John smiled proudly.  Evans kept tapping the controls.  The camera swung left and right.  The Dazzler, mounted co-axially with the camera, kept its place.
"Well.  Looking good.  Looking really good," John said.  Evans agreed.
"Yeah. Let’s check it at distance though.  I want to make sure the laser is zeroed in with the camera."
They opened the garage door and used a shed at the other end of John’s yard as a target for the camera/laser combo.
"Looks like the laser is a little off.  Toe it in a little," John said.  Evans used a small screwdriver to make a few twists on the laser’s mount.
"Much better," John said.  Kyle looked into the display unit.  The Dazzler’s green light was perfectly centered in the camera’s field of view.
"Perfect,"  Evans said.
John smiled too, but his mood changed and Kyle could sense the tension increase a little when John started talking.
"Glad I could help you out with that, Evans," John said.  "Maybe you can help me with something.  Got a few minutes to talk?"
The smile left Evans’ face as if it were never there.  He turned to his nephew and said, "Mind loading all this stuff into the truck while John and I talk a bit?"
Kyle looked from his uncle to his uncle’s neighbor.  Kyle was young, but he wasn’t stupid.  He knew what his uncle was really asking for, and he trusted his uncle enough to do it without any questions or protests.  Once Kyle disappeared, Evans spoke.
"I’m guessing Dale talked to you?"
"He did," John said.  "And he talked to George too."
Evans shook his head.  "Who else did he talk to?
John shrugged an ‘I don’t know.’  Evans rolled his eyes in disapproval.
"Three is enough.  Dale’s idea isn’t the kind of thing you talk about in the open.  You don’t necessarily bring it up with friends.  You don’t even bring it up relatives, for a whole list of reasons.  This is the kind of thing where you better know who the hell you are talking to before you bring it up."
"Got it."
"Do you get it?  Does Dale?  Does anybody?"  Evans asked, and he flashed his eyes once to the door that led into the house.
John's eyes flashed toward the same door leading into the house before he answered.  "She and I don't talk much anymore.  Not since the girls moved out.  The girls and I don’t talk much either… not unless they need money."
"So as far as you know, just you and me, Dale and George talked about this?"
"That everybody as far as I know,"  John answered.
"Good.  Keep it that way," Evans said.  "Now, if you want to talk, let’s talk."
John kept a refrigerator in his fridge.  He went to it and took out a bottle of bourbon and a bottle of Coke.  He poured himself a drink.  When he went to pour Evans another, Evans made a horizontal slicing moment with his hand.
"Just the Coke for me today."
John handed Evans a glass of Coke, sipped his own drink, and started.  "Well.  Dale thinks we need to form some kind of neighborhood defense network."
"Yeah, so he said," Evans replied.
"What do you think about that?"
"My feelings on that are mixed," Evans said.  "On the one hand, I don't want to see my house get burned down.  On the other, I don't want to spend the rest of my life in jail, which is exactly what'll happen if any of us form some defensive militia and then end up popping one of these PVD kids."
"That’s the damned thing about it," John said.  His voice rose in volume and pitch.  "These PVD are burning things down, attacking people, maybe even shooting people and the police aren’t doing anything."
"They are doing something," Evans said.  "They’re letting it happen.  And if you do anything to stop it from happening, they’ll sweep in the next day and put you in cuffs, just like they did to those folks in Raleigh.  Just like they did to that retired Sailor in Oklahoma."
"Well.  Dammit, what are we supposed to do then?" John asked.  "We just have to sit here and take it?  They got it so we can’t do anything!"
"That’s the whole point," Evans said.  "They got it so you can’t do anything but sit and take it and hope that when the election comes around in November it all goes away.  That isn’t by accident."
John shook his head.  "It ain’t a fair fight."
"Sure it is,"  Evans said.  "Each side can fight as dirty as it wants to.  It's just that one side doesn’t want to fight at all."
"Well, that’s the bind we’re in, ain’t it?  You don’t fight, your house gets burned down, you and your family get your asses kicked or maybe killed.  You do stand up, maybe your house doesn’t get burned down but the state comes down on you and destroys your life anyway.  And there ain't nobody going to stand up for you or stand by you.  Nobody at all, not even the people who say they are on our side.  You can bend the knee, die, or stand on your own against the storm.  Given those options, I’d rather be alive and standing against the storm."
"There’s another option. You can always just run," Evans said.  "We ain’t packed in one on top of the other like some Seattle suburb.  We all got land.  Run into the woods and hide out until the PVD passes.  I don’t see them combing through the woods looking for people.  Once they've burned and looted they’ll move on.  Maybe you lose your house, but you stay alive and won’t get jammed up and have your life ruined by some prosecutor."
"If you can get out into the woods in time," John said.
"If you can get out in time," Evans agreed.
"Plus-wise, after they burn down one neighborhood they’ll just move on to the next one.  And the next one.  And the next one.  And they’ll just keep going.  And maybe if the election turns out the way they want, they’ll stop.  Or maybe, they get the election results they want but they decide now they want something else, and the whole thing starts up again."
"That is true," Evans agreed.
"And in that case, the only people that are going to stop them are ordinary people.  Nobody in the government is going to do it.  Cops.  Sheriffs.  The Feds. The state of Texas.  Left. Right.  Up.  Down.  None of them are coming to help us.  We’re on our own."
"That is also true," Evans agreed.
"You’re right, Evans.  You’re right about it being easier to run."  John shrugged.  "The thing of it is, Dale and I, we got our roots here.  Our whole lives.  And George, his family has a fortune invested in building that mansion.  So, maybe none of us want to run.  Maybe we feel we need to stand our ground, come what may."
"It won’t just be you. It’ll be your families too.  Your friends.  Your co-workers.  You are signing them up for this ride too, whether they know it or not."
"We’ve considered that."
"Have you?"  Evans asked.  "If that’s the case, you can do this on your own.  You don’t need me."
"We can’t do it without you," John said.  "You’re the one with all the experience."
"I wasn’t Special Forces.  I didn’t raise armies and train freedom fighters.  I found bombs.  Besides, you were in the military too."
"I was in the Airrr Forrrce and I fixed electronics.  That was all decades ago.  And I never went to the Middle East, or anywhere else really.  Besides, it ain’t just your training.  It is you.  You’re the only one with the leadership skills to do this.  Dale maybe came up with the idea, but he ain't got what it takes to put it together. You’re the backbone of this thing.  Without you there it ain’t happening."
Evans lookout the open garage door to where Kyle was waiting in the truck.  His back suddenly ached again.  "I don’t think I want to be a leader."
"The best leaders never do," John said with a knowing smile.  That made Evans wince.  He took in a deep breath and blew it out slowly.
"You going to do the 4th of July here?" Evans asked.  John always invited the neighborhood over on the 4th of July for a barbecue and fireworks.  John sucked his teeth.
"Yeah, we’re doing it again, same as before.  Not sure how many people will show up.  The neighborhood isn't what it used to be.  Nothing's been the same since my girls moved out.  And my wife,"  John jerked his thumb towards the interior of the house, indicating his wife.  "She ain’t into it anymore.  All she wants to do is sit on the couch and watch TV.  You coming by?"
"Yeah, we’ll be there," Evans said.
Dale and George will be coming by too," John offered.
"I figured as much," Evans said.  He sighed again.  "Okay.  Maybe we can talk more about it then.  All of us.  Together.  I need some time to think about this."
John gave a sly smile and asked, "You gonna bring any of your own fireworks again this year?"
"Maybe.  I haven’t put any thought into it to be honest."
"Well.  The fourth is tomorrow.  If you want to make another batch of your own stuff you only got one day."
"We’ll see," Evans said.

After the visit with John, they headed back home.  Uncle Evans brought out a step ladder.  They mounted the camera system on the roof and wired it in.  From the office, they could control the camera and the laser and see whatever it was seeing.  The camera gave them a view all the way down to the entrance to Silver Springs.  They even had a view into Lori’s backyard.  They were both satisfied with their work.
"What now,"  Kyle asked.  Evans leaned over and stretched his back and shoulders.  His joints made popping sounds.
"Now I take a break."
"Want me to make dinner tonight?"  Kyle asked.
"You that sick of my cooking?"
Kyle shrugged but smiled.  Evans nodded.
"I’d love for you to make dinner.  The Vice President is giving an interview in a bit.  I think I’ll sit down in the office and catch that if you don’t mind."  Evans said.  He realized his knees hurt too and he went to the freezer to grab some ice.
"Are you okay?" Kyle asked.
"I’m fine.  I’m just old," Evans said.
In the office, Evans sat with his legs up and ice on both knees.   The components of a full-length rifle covered the desk.  Evans had stripped it down and cleaned it while he waited for the live stream of the Vice President to begin.  He’d been running patches through the 20-inch barrel when the stream began, a cola over ice close at hand.  Once the interview got going, he set down the rifle receiver and sipped at his drink.  The Vice President spoke.
"We need to be very conscious.  And we need to be very deliberate.  We need to consciously deliberate.  And we need to be consciously deliberate in the way we think… and in the way we act.  Because that is what we have to do.  And we have to do that now, and every day."
She spoke slowly, and she paused dramatically.  The interviewer, legs crossed, nodded appreciably as she blessed the world with her sage advice.
"People.  People are hurting," she continued.  "People are in pain.  And this pain, it is real.  It is a real pain that they feel.  And it hurts.  There is a great deal of pain in this country right now.  And fear.  People are worried about these elections.  People are worried about what kind of country they are going to live in.  People wonder if there will even be a democracy after this election.  People are afraid that they will be arrested for the color of their skin, or who they choose to love, or because they go to a Mosque."
The interviewer’s head bobbed up and down slowly, conveying the gravity of the matter at hand.  His face was solemn.  He played the part of a man looking right into the face of wisdom.
"Let me be clear," she continued.  "Because it is important that I’m clear, so you can understand me clearly, and everybody really.  So let me be clear.  This election is going to be the most important election ever in our history.  And if the other party wins, I’m not sure that America will even exist anymore.  It won’t exist for people of color.  It won’t exist for people who don’t believe in hate, and who don’t believe in what the most radical fringe elements of our country believe.  Look, Jake, if this election doesn’t go the right way, we could even see slavery reinstituted in this country."
"Slavery?" The interviewer asked, his face a mask of practiced alarm.
"Yes, slavery," she replied.
"You think your opposition party would implement slavery if they came into power?"  He asked.
"Jake, I know they have plans for that.  You can read these things on the internet, on the dark fringe places of the internet.  And it is, I mean, this idea of slavery is hidden, but it is also very out in the open.  So, I can understand how the temperature has risen and I can understand people's pain.  And I can understand that people feel fear and frustration…  and pain, and those things… and all of them.  People need an outlet, and they need time and space to say, ‘this is a democracy and we are not going to let fascism, and hate, and white-supremacy steal our democracy through an election.’  So, I understand, and I hear the voice they are speaking with.  And if they need space to vent their frustrations, that is how democracy works and people need to respect and support that, even if it is messy, because that is what we do.  And we do that every day.
"These political demonstrations and these political activists are a necessary and a peaceful element of the process and it is a process, because a process is what this is… and what it happens to be."
Nodding with agreement and approval, the interviewer asked, "Do you support these demonstrations?"
"I promote these peaceful demonstrations and this administration supports these peaceful demonstrations just as it supports all peaceful demonstrations that we deem as legitimate.
"Look, Jake.  Let me be clear.  I’m a mother so I know how to listen.  And I am listening to both sides.  For the side that rejects these peaceful protests and these peaceful expressions of democracy, I would just ask them to use their empathy, to use the Christian values they claim they believe in.  There is an election coming up.  An important election.  The most important election in our history.  If people want to see the demonstrations and these peaceful expressions of freedom and democracy stop, then people need to do the right thing on election day.  They need to vote with empathy.  If the voters do that.  If they do the right thing on election day, the voiceless will feel like they’ve been heard, and I think a lot of pressure will be taken out of the room.  But the voters have to do the right thing."
The interviewer’s head kept bobbing.  "And do you also support the PVD?"
"The PVD are the greatest force for freedom and liberty in the history of this country, The PVD is a necessary movement to bring progressivism and accelerate progressivism here in America.  Our democracy is too important to allow the motives and the conduct of the PVD to be questioned.  There are people who are speaking out against the PVD.  We are aware of it.  We are monitoring it.  And frankly, we consider that to be Un-American and those people will be dealt with."
"So you support the PVD?"  The interviewer asked again, more pointedly this time.  The politician's answer this time was not some rambling, freestyling riff.  The question and its answer had been rehearsed dozens of times and it showed.
"This administration supports the PVD with all of its power and all of its authority.  And this administration will take action against those who reject the PVD with all of that power and all of that authority."
Evans tapped a button on his laptop and killed the interview.  He’d heard enough. The politician wasn’t saying anything Evans hadn’t heard before, and she wasn’t saying anything new that might change his calculations or his convictions.  A path had been laid out.  If the time and conditions were right, he’d walk down that path, and that would be that.
He finished off his drink and went back to work on the rifle.  He decided his time would be better spent dry-firing than finishing the interview.  Not too long after the rifle was back together, Kyle knocked on the door to the office.
"Dinner’s almost ready," Kyle said.
"Awesome," Evans answered.  He took the bags of ice off his knees, winced preemptively, and stood up.  Nothing cracked or popped this time.
Kyle watched his uncle rise, then his eyes caught the commemorative wooden paddle hanging on the wall.  Without thinking about it Kyle asked, "Why did they call you 'Frankenstein?'"
"Huh?" Evans grunted.
Kyle pointed at the paddle on the wall.  "That was your nickname, right?  Frankenstein?"
Evans turned, looked at the paddle, and smiled.  "Callsign.  In the military they're called call signs, not nicknames.  Anyway.  You want to know how I got the call sign, Frankenstein?  Okay.  Let's have dinner and I'll tell you."

As Kyle and his uncle sat down for dinner the weather changed.  Dark clouds formed overhead, and soon heat lightening flashed on the horizon.  The crack of the thunder rolled across the Texas landscape and rattled the windows in their frames.
Kyle and Evans ate in silence.  When they finished their meal, they left the dishes on the table.  Evans got up and brewed his chai tea.  His every movement was deliberate, as if the act of making his tea was no different than defusing a bomb.  When he finished brewing the tea, he sat back down at the dinner table.  He took a sip of the steaming, sugary drink, and began his story.
"I was young, older than you are now, but just starting my military career.  I was still a combat engineer.  I hadn’t moved over to Explosive Ordnance Disposal yet.  Too young.  Too junior in rank for that.  Anyway.  We were training up to go overseas and into combat.  We’d been busting our butts training and we finally got an easy day.  The plan was to conduct a range in the morning, and before sunset, we’d all be back in the barracks and drinking beer.
"The range was a demolition range.  We’d been given a whole truck load of different explosives and the plan was to just spend the whole day building and setting off different charges.  A lot of us built field expedient charges.  Field expedient is where you take ordinary, everyday junk and combine them with the right explosives to build very specific demolition charges.  For example, you cut a wine bottle in half, fill the bottom end with C4 and you have the start of a very nice shape charge.  Or you pack two fencing pickets full of C4, tape them together and use that as a Bangalore torpedo.  You get the idea.  So.  The charge I built that day was a Frankenstein.
"The obvious question of course is, ‘what is a Frankenstein.’  Well, let me tell you.  Do you know what a claymore mine is?"
"Yes," Kyle said
"How do you know about claymores?" Uncle Evans asked.
"Video games," Kyle answered.
"Huh.  Of course," Evans answered.  "Alright.  A Frankenstein is an explosive charge.  Like a claymore, only bigger, and worse for whoever is on the receiving end.  The way you build it is you take a bale of barbed wire.  The empty center of that bale, you stuff it full of explosives.  I prefer using TNT.  The blocks fit nicely inside your standard barbed wire bale, and I’d rather use an explosive with the right amount of push rather than one that cuts.  C4 or HME will work just fine if that's all you got though.
"You fill the bale with explosives, prime it, and now you’ve got a giant claymore.  Only instead of 700 ball bearings for shrapnel you have about 80lbs of barbed wire ripped into nasty little fragments.  And instead of the 60-degree horizontal spread you get with a claymore, a Frankenstein spreads its shrapnel horizontally in 360-degrees.  If you really want to spread some hate, you mount a Frankenstein up high, like in a tree.  That way you maximize the 360-degree spread and also get the same effect as plunging fire.  That, and people tend to not look up, even when looking for mines and IEDs.  Humans are programed to look down.
"So, I'm building this Frankenstein and I'm feeling really proud of my work.  One thing you need to understand is this; I’m putting together the last demolitions shot of the day, and nobody wants to take any explosives back to the magazine and turn them back in.  Turning ordnance back in means inspections and paperwork and a lot of wasted time.  It just isn't done.  So, everybody is giving me their left-over explosives and I’m packing them into the center of this bale of barbed wire.  And more stuff keeps coming to me and I just keep backing it in.  TNT.  C4.  Boosters.  All of it.  I get the center of the bale packed so full an ant couldn’t crawl inside.  I’m just going to blow the shit out of it.  And I’m going to mount it high up in an oak tree, right?  Just like the manual says.  I've already got the tree picked out, just over the rise and out of sight of the observation bunker.  And all around the tree we've set up these cardboard silhouette targets to simulate an enemy patrol walking through the kill zone.  It is all perfect and I'm just daydreaming about how cool my shot is going to be.
"Now, the sun is starting to drop and I’m finishing off this charge and the other engineers all figure I know what I’m doing so they are packing everything up so we can get off the range after this last shot and go get drunk because we all know we are on our ways overseas and into the shit in a few weeks.  There is a Master Guns on the range and he's getting impatient.  He wants to get home too.  So, he starts yelling and the Marines finish what they are doing, and I finish with this Frankenstein and me and this other kid named Gill, we haul this thing out.  We get it up in the tree, we're hauling and pushing this heavy son-of-a-bitch and every time we get it up in a bough, we see one more branch higher that can support its weight.  So, we climb up one branch higher and see another branch further up and say, 'fuck it'  and we keep climbing.  And soon we're high enough up in the tree we can see over the rise, and we can see the roof of the observation bunker.  It’s a long way down and we're trying to decide if we can get down the tree in time once we ignite the fuse.  But we're young and invincible and the next branch looks sturdy enough, so we go just on branch higher.  Then we ignite the fuses and scramble down the tree like monkeys.
"The timed fuse is smoking.  Gill gets halfway down the tree and just jumps.  He hits the ground, and it looks like he's broken his leg, but he's up and running for the bunker.  I drop too and haul ass because at this point that bale of wire is going to explode and nothing is going to stop it.
"We dive into the bunker, huffing and puffing.  Some of the guys are waiting in anticipation for this thing to go off because they want to see the damage its going to do.  But most just want the thing to go off so they can pack up and go home.  And nobody is more impatient than the Master Guns.  He doesn't even want to be out here with all of us dumb Marines.  We're all waiting in the bunker, and it seems like forever, but finally my creation explodes.
"And it is big."
Just then sheet lightening flashed again and a split second later, thunder cracked.  Evans kept going.
"You work with explosives for awhile and you learn how big or loud things are supposed to be and this thing is too big and too loud.  The boom and the shock hit us, and Master Guns is cursing.  A few seconds later we here what sounds like rain, only its exploded bits of barbed wire coming down on the roof of the bunker.
"Master Guns is really cursing now.  The shrapnel stops.  Somebody gives the 'all clear' and we all pile out of the bunker to see what's happened.
"The tree I hung the Frankenstein is just blown to shit.  Just blown to shit.  The top half of the tree is gone.  All the branches are chopped off, and the truck is split vertically down the middle.  All the trees around it are chopped down like somebody came around with a chainsaw.  All the grass is cut down too, like somebody came in with a scythe.  And hell, nobody can even find any of the cardboard silhouette targets.  They’re just gone.  
"Some piece of barbed wire got hot enough that when it landed in the grass it started a brush fire.  And this is California in the summer.  It is hot and it is dry and before we know it the whole damn range is on fire. And everybody is pissed off and cursing because nobody wants to stay out here all-night waiting for the fire department to come out and put out the fire.  They all want to get back to the barracks and start drinking.  They don’t care.  They just want to put this fire out so they can go home and crack some beers.  And everybody is pissed-off at me and cursing my name and slapping out this fire with whatever they can find.  Their jackets, their boots, whatever.

"Well, we finally get the fire under control, but then we find we have a new problem.  We hear this weird mewling sound coming from over a hill.  That part of the base is all rolling hills that lead up this mountain in the very center.  Anyway.  We all hear this mewling sound, and we all know what it is.  It’s the sound an animal makes when it is dying.
"So now we all head out and look for what making these sounds and sure enough we find it.  And when we do, I just know I’m screwed. Like really screwed."
Uncle Evans stopped and sipped his tea.  Once again, he carefully set the teacup down and continued.
"On this particular base lives a herd of buffalo.  They wander all over the training areas and roam through the ranges, but they are protected.  They make it clear to everybody that you do not fuck with the buffalo, period.  And there are all kinds of game wardens and environmental folks whose job is to look after the buffalo and make sure the Marines aren't fucking with them.  Somebody fucks with the buffalo, and it means investigations and paperwork and fines and all kinds of bullshit and nobody wants that.  
"The Frankenstein was so high up that a bunch of shrapnel went over a hill and found this buffalo.  He’s on the ground, mewling and gasping for breath and dying.  The whole back half of this thing is just shredded by exploded bits of barbed wire.  One of his back legs is missing below the knee.  The other one is just gone.  All over this poor thing there are bits of barbed wire sticking out and parts of its hide are smoking.  There was this blood trail and drag marks going back towards where my charge went off and we figured this poor animal just dragged himself as far as he could and then just gave up and now, he just waiting to die.  And now it is looking up and it sees all the dumb-fuck Marines standing around it.
"And nobody is saying a word because we all know this is a serious fuck-up.  And right dead-center of this fuck-up is me."  Evans paused.  Sipped at his tea and continued.
"Nobody is saying or doing anything, and this buffalo is dying and we're all watching it.  And then up walks Master Guns.  He's got a sledgehammer in his hand.  He walks right up to this buffalo, which is protected of course, right.  Master Guns, he hefts up that sledgehammer, brings it down, and hits that buffalo right between its eyes.  One strike and that buffalo is out of its misery.  And nobody says a word.
"The Master Guns asks us, ‘Which one of you fuck-tards built that last fucking charge?’  And everybody, I mean everybody is looking right at me.  Gill, he's gone.  He's hiding in a ditch somewhere and I feel like the smallest man on earth.  I’m so scared I can’t even talk, so I just put my hand in the air.  Master Guns, he sees me with my hand in the air and he growls.  He’s so mad he growls, like an animal, like a lion.  Like he’s so mad at me he can’t even talk.
"So, I’m looking up at this Master Guns like I’m looking up from the bottom of a mile deep hole.  I mean I’m in trouble and I know it.  Everybody else knows it too and they are all looking at me and the Master Guns just waiting to see he’s going to do to me.  Everybody is expecting him to kill me.  They’re expecting him to hit me with that hammer just like he did the buffalo.  And I’m just standing there, and I know I’m dead.
Master Guns, he returns to his truck and comes back with a shovel. He throws the shovel right at my feet and he says to me, ‘I’ll be back at dawn and one of two things is going to happen.  Either I’m taking you to a court martial, or you are going to make that fucking buffalo fucking disappear.’  And then he goes back to his truck and drives off."
The lighting flashed again and illuminated Kyle’s face.  He didn’t look like a boy anymore.  "What did you do?" Kyle asked.  His tone was even and serious, without any hint of boyish excitement.
"He was a Master Gunnery Sergeant, and I was a Lance Corporal.  That choice wasn’t any choice at all.  I took that shovel and dug my ass off.  When then sun came up, Master Guns was back on the range and every spec of that buffalo was gone.
"Not many people called me Evans after that.  From then on, I was Frankenstein."
"And nobody found out about the buffalo?" Kyle asked.  Evans shook his head.
"A few weeks later we were in the desert, and we all had bigger problems than buffalo."
Kyle thought about the story some more.  He asked his uncle.  "Could you make them?"
"Make what?"
"Make explosives?  You know, out of household stuff.  Like they do in the movies?  Take like soap and stuff and turn them into explosives?"  could you do that?"
"I could," Evans said.  "They taught us how to make that stuff, mostly because it made us better at finding and disarming enemy bombs.  But would I?  That'd be the last thing I'd do.  One thing about professionally made explosives is they are stable.  The most important thing for me about explosives is this, I don't want them to go off when they aren't supposed to.  That homemade stuff, it isn't consistent.  It isn't stable.  It isn't reliable.  Back in the day when we were looking for enemy bomb makers, they were always missing fingers, or hands, or eyes.  Its better to use the professionally made stuff."
"Do you have any of that?"  Kyle asked.  Evans shook his head.
"They don't mess around when it comes to accounting for explosives," Evans said.  "They keep that stuff under tight control."
"You got that camera system," Kyle said hopefully.
"That was different.  I took that off a wrecked vehicle that wasn't ever going to leave the country it got wrecked it.  That was like stealing something out of a dumpster.  Nobody was going to miss it.  The real stuff, they keep tighter control on that.
"No, the strongest stuff I want to set off these days are fireworks.  Which reminds me, tomorrow is the 4th, so we need to get up early and go get some.  So, I, my young friend, am going to bed."
"You want to watch the riots," Kyle asked.
"Not tonight," Evans said.  "Tonight, I want to sleep.  I’m sure the riots aren't going away."

Evans lay awake in bed for a long while after retiring.  He didn't tell his nephew Kyle the whole story.  Master Guns had to retire after that deployment.  Retired life didn't suit him though, not while a war was going on and his people were getting killed.  One night he got drunk and drove his truck at full speed into an overpass abutment.  The police thought it was no accident, though they didn’t write that in their report.
Gill didn't fair any better.  He left the Marines but  after a few years he decided civilian life wasn't for him.  Unable to get back into the Marines, he joined the Army.  On a snowy mountain far away, he lost both legs to a roadside bomb.  The medics kept him alive long enough to get him into the chopper, but he bled out before the helicopter landed.
Gill.  Master Guns.  And a long list of other names.  A parade of faces, all dead.  Killed in some far away place.  And here Evans was, in nowhere-ville Texas, while the rest of America burned every night.  The tragedy and the wasted sacrifices weren't easy to think about.
The lightning flashed against.  In the semi-dark, the ghosts kept him company.  Evans, a man who in his prime was called Frankenstein and defused bombs for his country, slowly drifted off to sleep.

Texas Hill Country.  The 4th of July.

Kyle woke up that morning and bounded out of bed.  It was the 4th of July and being that he was in rural Texas and not the constricting and confining landscape of urban California, that meant fireworks.  Real fireworks.  The kind you didn't just watch but lit off yourself.  The roadside stands had been open for months now.  Kyle started cooking breakfast, which was standard operating procedure.  He did all the cooking now, which was fine by him.  Aside from his morning chai, his uncle's palate was unsophisticated.
When Uncle Evans came down for breakfast, he looked refreshed and ready to go as well.  Kyle dished out the food, and Evans brewed his tea.  Over the morning meal, they discussed the plan for the day.
"We need to go to the bank so I can get some cash.  After that, we'll hit some fireworks stands and grab some stuff for tonight.  I'll also need to go to the hardware store, the paint supply store, and probably the pool supply store.
"Why the pool supply store?" Kyle asked.
"I need to buy some pool supplies," Evans answered.
"But you don't own a pool," Kyle replied.
"I never said I did."
Kyle decided not to press the issue and changed the subject.  "I suppose it is going to barbeque at this thing tonight?"
"That's right."
"Does that mean frozen hamburger patties and packaged hotdogs?" Kyle asked.
"Of course.  This is the United States of America, ain't it?"
"How many years did you serve?"
"Thirty," Evans answered.  Kyle nodded once.
"My thirty-year veteran uncle isn't eating frozen hamburger patties on the 4th of July.  Can we hit up the grocery store?"
"That's nice of you to say that.  I'm sure we can fit in a trip to the grocery store too.  How did you get into cooking?"
"Mom and dad work long hours.  Back home either I make dinner or we eat takeout.  Besides, I figure as long as I know how to cook, I can always find a job.  Everybody has to eat."
"That's a pretty mature attitude.  When was the last time you called home?"
"It's been a while."
"Give them a call today," Evans said.  He took a sip of his steaming tea.
After breakfast, they headed out to the workshop.  Evans rummaged through some cabinets and pulled out a spool of green parachute cord.  He tossed the spool to Kyle and said, "Put that in the truck.  We'll need it for tonight and I don't want to forget it."
Kyle looked the spool over.  The cord on the spool was actually many short pieces of parachute cord, all tied together with double-fisherman knots.  After putting the cord in the truck, Evans had him help load a few of the barbed wire bales in the truck too.
"What do we need barbed wire for?" Kyle asked.
"We don't need barbed wire.  We just need the weight.  Something heavy that can resist my pulling.  That reminds me, there is a half sheet of plywood back in the workshop against the wall. We'll need that tonight too, so let's load it now.  Otherwise, in my old age, I might forget."
They loaded the truck.  The first stop was the bank.
"Wait here in the truck," Evans said.
"Why?" Kyle asked.
"You trust me?"  Evans asked back.  Kyle nodded.  "Good," Evans said.  I want you to wait here because banks have cameras."
"Yeah so?"
"So, this country ain't what it used to be.  I know old guys like me are always saying that to young guys like you.  But this time it is true.  I go into the bank where the cameras are.  You wait here in the truck where the cameras aren't."
Inside the bank, Evans made his withdrawal.  When the teller asked if there was anything else he needed, Evans replied, "Yes.  I know this is unusual, but I need access to a computer.  I need to send an encrypted message to another financial institution."
Evans' accounts were in good standing, and they were not insignificant.  He'd never been divorced.  He had no children.  He'd never gotten a DUI and its associated legal costs.  Most importantly, he'd saved and invested wisely his entire career, most of which had been spent overseas in tax-free combat zones.  A private banker offered Evans a computer.  Thirty minutes later, Evans was out of the bank, cash in hand.
"Let's get some fireworks," he said.  They went to buy fireworks.

In that particular corner of Texas, there were plenty of fireworks stands.  Evans drove past dozens of smaller stands before stopping at one of the bigger stands out on the highway, a prefabricated steel building, flanked by open pasture and close to nothing.  Pickup trucks and run-down commuter cars filled its dirt parking lot.  Red and yellow signs declared, "FIREWORKS" for all to see.
Evans was a discerning fireworks shopper.  He moved up and down the aisles, examining items by the score.  He handled fountains and rockets, mortars and roman candles.  He'd pick items up and alternate between holding them close or far, letting his eyes adjust to the fine print on their labels.  Eventually, he settled on several dozen items.  The lot filled a shopping cart.  At the checkout, Evans asked if they had any fuse.  The kid behind the counter said they did and asked how many feet he needed.
"I need a whole spool," Evans said.
When they got back in the truck, Evans said, "We've got about a third of what I need.  There is another decent place out by Colinas Frias we'll try next."
They drove to Colinas Frias, then two more stands after that.  At each location Evans repeated the process, examining packaged fireworks as carefully as if he were defusing bombs.  When he finally had what he wanted they headed back toward home, but not without making more stops.  A hardware store.  A paint supply store, and finally a pool supply store.  At each location, Evans paid cash.  And at each of those locations, Evans had Kyle wait in the truck.  After the paint supply store, the truck bed was filled with fireworks, various containers of chemicals, and an assortment of pipes and other hardware.
"You know what you need at the supermarket?" Evans asked.  Kyle nodded.  "Okay, let's go," Evans said.
An hour later they were back at home with several bags of groceries.  Kyle asked his uncle how much time they had.
"We've got a few hours.  Fireworks won't start until well after sunset."
"Good.  I need time to prep the hamburger," Kyle said.
"The hamburger is already made.  It is in the packages," Evans said.  Kyle shook his head with disapproval.  Evans shrugged and said, "I need to prep some stuff myself."
"What do you need to prep?  The fireworks are already made," Kyle said with a smart-alec smirk.  Now Evans shook his head, but he did it with a smile.
Kyle took the food into the house.  Evans took the pool and paint supplies into his workshop.  Inside, he took out a few of the small plastic buckets used for mixing paint.  Next, he brought out some glass jars and stir sticks.  The last thing he brought out was an old mortar and pestle.  He laid all those tools out on his workbench alongside the various chemicals he bought during the day.  He looked everything over once, then he started mixing chemicals.
An hour later, Evans went back out to his truck and grabbed the roll of fuse.  Inside the shop, he cut the first two feet off both ends and tossed those lengths away.  Then he cut off six one-foot lengths of fuse.  One by one, he lit each foot-long length and timed how long it took each one to burn to nothing.  He recorded each time on a scrap piece of cardboard.  Then he cut six more lengths and repeated the process.  That done, he did some averaging, went back out to his truck, and grabbed the sacks full of fireworks.  After that, he retrieved all the hardware supplies.  Once he had everything inside the workshop, he closed and locked the door and got to work.
While his uncle worked outside, Kyle worked in the kitchen.  He diced up onions and peppers and then mixed them into the raw hamburger along with some raw eggs to bind everything together.  On the other end of the counter, he had the ingredients for several different sauces waiting to be mixed.  But before he started work, he'd called his parents and left a message.  Midway through forming a patty his phone chirped.  He put down the food, cleaned his hands, and grabbed the phone.  It wasn't his mom or dad.  It was a message from Jake, one of his classmates back in California.

Still in Texas?

Evans texted him back.

Yeah.  What's up?

Just seeing if you were back in town.  What are you doing tonight?

My uncle bought a truckload of fireworks.  We're gonna lite them off tonight.
I think he's making some fireworks of his own.  He bought a ton of random stuff today.

Cool man.  Sounds like Texas I guess

What are you doing tonight?

We're heading out to Lovell Mixon Square in Berkeley.  Big Party/Protest there tonight  BIG! HUGE!

Kyle set his phone down and thought about things for a minute.  Jake wasn't exactly a close friend.  The more Kyle thought about it, the more he realized he didn't have any close friends back home.  But he and Jake had grown up near each other and hung out plenty of times.  Friend or not, Kyle didn't like the idea of Jake heading to another protest, not after the nightly riot viewings with his uncle.  Not after a good part of the city across from his parent's apartment was burned to the ground.  He thought about warning his friend or telling him not to go.  He looked at the phone a long time before texting back.

Have fun but be safe.  If it gets too crazy get out of there

Jake replied with a thumbs up.  Kyle went back to work on his hamburger patties.  Outside, fireworks had already started.  Chirps and whistles sounded as Kyle prepped the food.


They pulled into John's driveway early in the evening.  Kyle was talking about the fat content of their hamburger meat, and asking questions about John's barbeque grill that Evans couldn't answer.  Evans was distracted.  His attention focused on the other vehicles in the driveway.  He saw Dale's truck as well as George's motorcycle.  Other families from the neighborhood were there too, and kids of various ages chased each other across John's lawn.  But it was George and Dale that concerned Evans.  Together with John, they were likely going to corner him and bring up this idea of a neighborhood militia again.  Evans dreaded the thought.
Kyle and Evans unloaded a couple of coolers from the truck.  They found John already on the grill, smiling.  Some younger kids were playing with sparklers and pop-its.  John's wife was nowhere to be seen.
"What you got there?" John asked.
"Kid made some special hamburger patties, seems the frozen stuff isn't good enough for his refined California palate."
John smiled and offered Evans a beer.  Evans declined politely.  "Well, the kid's welcome to throw them on the grill whenever he's ready.  Say, Evans.  Dale and George are here.  We'd like to sit down and talk with you when you get a chance."
"Yeah, okay," Evans answered.
"You bring any of your special fireworks this year?"  John asked with a sly grin.  Evans grinned back, just as slyly, if not more so.
"I might have put something together."

Kyle managed to find his way at the party without much assistance from Evans.  He not only cooked up his own burgers, but essentially took over grill duties from John.  He mixed and matched with the food everybody brought and concocted delicacies that everybody found wonderful.  After the grill, he found a place amongst the other neighborhood kids, most of whom were a litter younger.  Kyle was in that awkward phase of not being an adult yet, but also not being a child any longer.  He seemed to navigate it well.  The sun dropped low and Evans watched Kyle pal around with some of the other kids, all smiling and having a good time.  Evans felt an immense sense of pride at that, even more so when the other adults walked up to him and complimented his nephew's skill at the grill.
Unfortunately, the moment Evans dreaded came.  While the other people from the neighborhood did their thing, John led evens to the garage where Dale and George were waiting.  John's truck sat parked in the same spot as before.  His wife's barely used vehicle was parked beside it.  They'd arranged toolboxes and camp stools around a cooler of beer.  Everybody but Evans grabbed a beer.  Evans sat down.  The conversation began.

Outside the garage, Kyle linked up with two neighborhood kids who were setting up some fireworks of their own.  For Kyle, fireworks were something that the cities put on, or didn't put on.  People didn't light off their own fireworks, not unless they wanted to risk meddling neighbors, a visit from the fire marshal, and a crippling fine.
"What's that?" Kyle asked.
"Mortar," One of the kids replied.
"Mortar?  How does it work?"
"Easy," the kid answered.  "Drop one of these balls inside.  Light the fuse, and off it goes."
"Can I try one?" Kyle asked.

"We've all got guns, but I can get more.  And ammo.  I also think we need to get suppressors.  Now listen, I know this guy who runs a machine shop…"  Dale was talking, but Evans could barely listen.  It wasn't that he didn't like the idea of a neighborhood watch or whatever they were calling this.  It wasn't that he didn't think it was necessary.  It was that he didn't think anybody in this room truly understood what they were up against.
"The guns we all have are fine Dale," Evans said.  "We don't need suppressors and we don't need full auto.  We certainly don't need the trouble that comes with them.  Night vision, maybe.  What we need is a secure way to communicate."
"There is this secure messaging app I have on my phone," Dale started.  "I spend a lot of time on this gun forum, and they said that…" Evans cut him off.
"None of these apps for your phones are secure.  None of those phones are secure.  That's why I had you leave them outside in your trucks.  They get you and they get your phone.  They get your phone, they get everybody close to you, and they will turn that back on you to pressure you further.  They put the pressure on you to make you sell out your friends."
"I'm not selling out anybody," Dale said defiantly.  Evans ignored that.
"Once they get your friends, they go back to you again.  They blackmail you with the fact that they asked you to sell out your friends, which you did.  And they tell you you're going to do more for them, which you will.  Because now you're so deep down their hole you don't even see light when you look up.  And because they've taken everything you had, including your family."
"Not me," Dale said.
"What are you saying, exactly?" John asked Evans.
"They have these devices.  I can't remember what they call them but they're like an old pager, only you can send and receive alpha-numeric messages.  They're prepaid.  Not smart.  No GPS installed.  No microphones or speakers installed so no listening.  Just text.  And minimal memory."
"They even have such a thing?" John asked.
"They do in Mexico," Evans answered.
"Cartel guys," Dale spat.  "Fuckin' Cartel guys."
"Sounds like the perfect device for a drug dealer," John said.  "Who'd even make a device like that?" John asked.
"Same people who make all the fentanyl.  The same people who make all those drop in switches that make pistols full-auto," Evans said.
"It isn't just the Cartel that uses phones like that down there,"  George said.  "Cops, politicians, media reporters, lawyers, military officers…  essentially anybody with a security concern."
"What do we do when the pre-paid data run out?" Dale asked.
"You destroy the phone completely and get rid of it.  Which is the same thing you'd do after communicating.  These things are disposable and need to be treated that way. Now…"
Before Evans could finish his thought, the mortar outside went off and threw its star shell into the night sky.  The mortar was just a short plastic tube, not a long metal one.  And the shells it launched were for entertaining kids, not for killing men.  But when it went off it made a sound close enough to a real mortar, a distinct, hollow-echoing-ringing sound.
When that ringing sound hit his ears, Evans stopped talking and winced.  His head dropped down and his shoulders went up.  He looked like he was trying to duck down into himself, like a turtle going into its shell.  He turned in the direction of the sound, towards the open garage door, and glared.
"Where the hell are you going to get these phones?  I ain't driving down to Juarez to buy a phone, I'll tell you that right now.  I'd rather take my chances with the PVD and the police than with some Mexicans."
Evans looked away from the source of the noise and back to his neighbors.  "Don't worry about that.  I can get them locally.  I know a couple of guys."
"I don't know man," Dale said.  "That seems like a lot of work.  I can download an encryption app pretty easily.  And they say it can't be broken.  These guys on the forums, they said that…"
Of all the men in the garage, George spoke the least and observed the most, especially when it came to Evans.  More fireworks went off outside.  They shrieked and whistled.  They howled and popped.  None of these bothered Evans at all.  But with the mortars it was different. When the first mortar went off with its distinct hollow-ringing sound, Evans winced and spun to find the source of the noise, muscled instantly tensed.  The second time the kids' mortar went off, Evans winced again.  Only this time he looked angry.  He looked like he was about to leap out of the garage and give the kids a talking too.  Evans gritted his teeth.  His hands balled into fists.  The third time he looked like he'd give the kids a lot worse than a talking too.  The fourth time he started sweating and by the fifth time, his face was flushed red.  And each time, even when he was looking out the garage, even when he knew the mortar was about to fire, its hollow ring sound made Evans wince.
George liked Evans.  But he didn't like this Evans, the one that was red and sweating, tense and angry.  The one who looked like he was about to explode.  George was so concerned, he couldn't even follow the latest thing that Evens and Dale were discussing.
"What are you even saying," Dale began.  "First you said we need to get these drug phones.  Now you're saying we need to run away?  What's the point of doing this then?  What's the point of defending our homes in the first place if you say we need to run?  I don't get it."
"Because you can't defend your home," Evans said.  "If the PVD come up the road and pick your house down to burn down, you can try and stop them, but you are going to lose your house anyway because the legal system is coming after you with everything it can.  It doesn't matter what the PVD does.  Legally, they can do whatever they want."
"They can't do whatever they want," Dale said angrily.  "They can't just burn peoples' houses down."
"They've been burning stuff all summer, and nobody's done anything to stop them.  They aren't being arrested.  They aren't being stopped.  Worse than that, everybody in power is encouraging them.  Politicians.  The media.  The universities.  The entertainment industry.  Pro-Sports.  Corporate leaders.  They're all encouraging this nonsense.  They love these riots and are celebrating them all day long.  They want the PVD to burn us all to the ground.  They don't care if the PVD murders us.  But if one of us so much as shows a gun, they're going to jail.  And if you shoot one of these PVD vanguards, you're going up for murder.  Doesn't matter if he was breaking into your house, inside your house, setting your house on fire, wielding a gun, shooting a gun, or raping your wife and kids.  The government isn't going to touch them.  But they will come after you.  They'll come after you with all they've got."
"That would be self-defense," Dale said.  "This ain't California.  This is Texas.  There are just as many important people on our side as…"
"There is nobody on our side," Evans shouted as he leaped to his feet.  Dale was so startled he almost fell off the toolbox he was sitting on.  John immediately looked away.  Only George, standing, kept his composure.  His expression was a fixed mask of non-emotion.  Evans, face red, shouted again.
"There is nobody, get it?  Nobody. Nobody in any position of power is going to do a damn thing for you if you get caught up in this shit.  Haven't you been watching what's been happening all summer?  The people that claim to be on our side?  They are all cowards!  Or worse, they're in on it too.  I don't care what they say on the radio.  I don't care what they say on the news.  Media people.  The politicians.  All those retired generals that can't keep their four-star mouths shut.  None of them are going to stick their necks out for people like us.  Self-defense is a thing of the past.  If the PVD comes in here and we shoot one, we will be left out to dry.  All those tough-talking firebrands?  They'll fold.  They'll fold like they always do and they'll be crawling all over each other, trying to be the first to condemn us.  To condemn us and call for moderation and principles.  And saying shit like, 'that's not who we are,' and 'we need to lead with compassion' and all that same old shit they've been doing all summer.  The same shit they always do when those radicals attack us.  Ordinary people like us just trying to live our lives? Nobody is on our side.  Nobody is coming to help us.
"So, if you end up going at it with the PVD, you run.  You run, or you surrender when the cops come for you and accept your fate.  Or…"  Evans' voice trailed off.  He sat back down on the wooden crate and hung his head.  He wanted a drink.  He really wanted one.  But he wouldn't have a drink, not even now.  Alcohol took him to sad and lonely places he'd rather not revisit.
"Or what?" John asked.
"What?" Evans replied.
"You said 'run or…'  Or what?  That's what I'm asking you, Evans. What is the 'or what?'"
"Or," Evans began.  He thought about how to answer that.  Then he answered that.  "If you're dead, it stops with you.  They won't go after your wife or kids or family if you're dead."
"Horse shit," Dale drawled.  "I'm not doing this to die.  I'm doing this to live.  Going out in a blaze of glory is bull shit.  I've got friends and family.  I've got a nice house and nice stuff.  I've got stuff to live for. I'm protecting it."
"You would be protecting it," Evans said.  "You'd be protecting it with your life in the truest sense of the word."
Dale shook his head.  George turned away. John looked at his feet for a while.  Then he looked up at Evans and ask, "You think you could do that?  You think you could knowingly put yourself in that kind of situation, where there was no way out?"
Evans thought about his tours overseas.  He thought about all the times he showed up after the fact, at scenes where a suicide bomber had martyred himself.  Roadsides, where one committed individual in a truck full of Semtex traded their life for just the chance to kill an American.  Marketplaces where a bomber with a suicide vest walked into the crowd and self-detonated.  He thought of walls pockmarked from shrapnel. He thought of twisted bits of metal that used to be a vehicle before the HME went off.  He thought of scorched cloth and buckles, the remnants of a suicide vest, mixed in amongst the dried blood, and burnt flesh.  He thought about human teeth embedded in a wood post, like shrapnel, which they were.  He thought about the man on the island with the machine gun, the one who wouldn't run even though he could, even though there was no reason to stay.  Evans shrugged.
"I don't know.  I think maybe when you reach that point in your life…  when you reach that level of commitment, and you know it is your time…  I think then you don't feel any fear.  I think then you are ready, and you do what you need to do.  There's a reason why they call it, 'making your peace."
"Uncle Evans."  It was Kyle at the open garage door, smiling.  "We set off all the small stuff.  People are asking if you are ready to set off your stuff now."
"Okay," Evans said.

The sun had set.  The sky was a cloudless black upon which the stars dazzled.  Most of the lesser fireworks had already been set off, and the guests at John's party wanted to see what their retired Explosive Ordnance Disposal Tech neighbor had cooked up this year.
Evans called Kyle over, and together they pulled the four-foot by four-foot sheet of plywood out of the back of his truck.  Various cardboard and plastic tubes studded the surface of the wood in neat arrangements, like organ pipes.  They carefully set the plywood sheet down on John's cement driveway.  Kyle looked the creation over, and from what he could tell, his uncle had deconstructed the fireworks they purchased earlier and used their components and the other items they purchased to build his own.
"Get that spool of parachute cord out of the truck," Evans asked.
Kyle came back with the spool.  Evans tied the free end to something in the center of the plywood that looked like a mouse trap but wasn't.
"Get back," Evans ordered.
Kyle walked back to where the party guests were waiting anxiously.  Evans slowly backed away from his creation, playing out loops of green parachute cord, but never taking his eyes off the fireworks.  When he was back amongst Kyle and the others, he looked around once to make sure everybody was clear.  Then he pulled hard on the green cord.
First, there came the sound of breaking glass.  A split second later came the hiss of a chemical reaction.  And then…
A tube on one corner of the sheet erupted into a fountain of red sparks.  The sparks plumed out and up, spitting and hissing as they rose.  One foot, two feet, three feet.  The assembled guests gasped, "oooh!".  When the fountain of red sparks reached six feet, the tube next to it flashed and erupted, white sparks this time.  The crowd gasped, "ah!"  The white fountain plumed more quickly than the red.  Moments later a blue fountain of sparks erupted.  Then red again.  And around the perimeter it went.  Fountains of red, white, and blue sparks all erupted in sequence.
When the fourth blue fountain came alive, something near the center of the plywood popped so loud the audience jumped.  One older lady first gasped with fright and then squealed with delight when dozens of small rockets shot up into the air.  They rose, whistling and trailing brilliantly colored sparks; purple, green, red, yellow.  The small rockets flew and then exploded, blossoming into new colors.  Eyes remained fixed skyward.  People cooed in amazement.
Something else exploded, something bigger and nearer the center.  Its launch flashed yellow and red, like a muzzle blast in the dark.  Kyle could just make out the blur of it as it climbed then exploded into a brilliant kaleidoscope of colors, and as it exploded, something new launched.  This rose, popped, and out came a parachute suspending a flare that burned a metallic green.  A second after that exploded, something else launched, perfectly timed.  It climbed skyward, burst, and another rainbow's collection of color blossomed out.  People gasped out again, only this explosion of color detonated again, and then a third time.  Each explosion brought new collections of colors.  The neighbors squealed with delight, and gasped in awe, they smiled and laughed and nodded approval, every eye transfixed on the Texas sky.
It went on, each explosion bigger, brighter, and more colorful than the last.  Kyl looked around and saw the neighbors glowing with joy.  He looked at his uncle.  Evans seemed pleased with his work.  Periodically he'd check his watch, obviously counting down the seconds until the next detonation.  Kyle could see his uncle's mouth the countdown and every time he got to zero, something new exploded, celebrating with noise and color all the best things that the experiment called America represented.
Even the greatest fireworks display cannot last forever.  Just when Kyle thought the spectators might get restless, the finale came.  Kyle caught Evans' eye.  Evans tapped his watch and nodded.
One last set of fountains erupted into a rolling, boiling, shower of white sparks.  The sparks spat and hissed and glowed with chemical brilliance.  From out of these sparks came a cannon blast, a loud but simple boom that shot something skyward.  After the first cannon blast came another, then another.  If one were to count, which nobody did, they would have counted 21 total cannon blasts.  When these 21 payloads reached their apex, they burst apart in a dazzling display of sparks and colored smoke.
Out of each of these colorful bursts emerged blurred shapes that drifted downward.  As the smoke cleared, the shape became clearer and revealed itself, a parachute suspending a flare that burned with colorful brilliance.  There were twenty parachute flares in total; seven red, seven white, and seven blue.  Evans had arranged them perfectly so that they drifted to the earth in a perfectly repeating pattern.  Evans had also timed the launches and detonations perfectly so that each of the parachute flares drifted to the earth in almost perfect horizontal alignment.
Everybody began clapping, yelling, and hooting with delight.  Uncle Evans' modest display in a small corner of America was just as wonderous, just as exciting as any city's professional display.  As the neighbors cheered and clapped, Kyle looked over at his uncle with admiration.  Despite all the dark clouds on America's horizons, Evans created something fantastic that made all his neighbors forget all their troubles and perhaps think about the United States not as it was, but how it aspired to be.
Evans still looked up at the sky and smiled with satisfaction.  He'd done a good thing by making his neighbors happy, and he felt a calm joy at that.  But then, somewhere nearby, kids set off another mortar shell.  When its distinct ring hit Evans' ears, Kyle watched his uncle instinctively wince and try and duck into himself.  His teeth gritted.  The corner of one lip pulled back into a canine sneer.  More fireworks went off.  The neighbors kept cheering.  But Kyle didn't see his uncle smile again for the rest of the night.
That night, Evans sat down on the edge of his bed and rubbed at his temples, hoping to massage away the metallic ringing in his mind.  He wanted a drink, but he refused that temptation.  He could have a drink a month from now, on a date less joyous than the 4th of July.  In the meantime, he had to just deal with the painful ringing in his ears and the unpleasant memories.  Succumbing to exhaustion that was more emotional than physical, Evans crashed back into his bed and looked up at the ceilings.  And more ghosts of his past came back to haunt him.

A Bridge in the Middle East.  A long time ago.

"The enemy did their homework on this one," the captain said.
None of the Marines disagreed with that assessment.  To accentuate the captain's appraisal, a barrage of 12.7mm machine gun rounds crashed into the bridge's superstructure, clanging, and banging, and throwing up sparks.  Even though they were safe on the bridge's embankment, the Marines instinctively recoiled at the sound of the incoming fire.
The convoy had been crossing over the bridge when the ambush went off.  The improvised explosive devices hit the last three vehicles right as they came onto the bridge.  The hulk of one was still on the bridge.  It had been blown in half, and its shattered mechanical guts were spilled out across the bridge’s broken deck.  A severed human leg rested near the wreckage.  No other body parts, just a leg.  Evans could tell by the boot that the leg belonged to Hoffman.  There were no signs of the rest of Hoffman.  There should have been another truck on the bridge.  There were no signs of that either.
Another barrage of heavy machine gun fire crashed into the bridge’s superstructure. Bullets clanged.  Marines recoiled again.  The enemy tracers burned green.  It was suppressive fire, Evans knew.  The enemy didn't want them crossing back over the bridge to the last vehicle.
The last vehicle in the convoy had been driving onto the bridge's approach when the bombs went off.  Its front end was gone.  The thick armored glass of its windshield was an ugly spider web of cracks splashed with blood.  One Marine managed to drag himself out of the wreck.  Evans, and everybody else on the opposite bank, could hear screams coming from inside that wreck… that wreck all the way on the other side of the bridge.  That wreck, separated from the rest of the Marines by the DShK fire.
Another volley of machine gun fire clanged into the bridge's superstructure.  The heavy 12.7 rounds sparked as they punched holes through the old metal I beams, erected decades ago by the Russians, back when the Russians were called the Soviets.
Buildings crowded up against the banks of the river and the bridge.  The captain poked his head out onto the bridge far enough to get a good look at the source of the machine gun fire.  Upriver sat a small island, thick with tall grass and reeds.  It was a sea of green amidst the mud brown of the river and the tan desert shades that made up the rest of the country.  The island looked more like something out of Vietnam than the Middle East.  The machine guns chattered again.
"Two DShKs.  Their gunners know what they're doing," the captain said.  He shook his head.  "I told the battalion commander we should have cleared that island weeks ago."  The captain spoke aloud but he spoke only to himself.  The captain usually had a mean look about him, like an angry man who was about to get into a bar fight for no reason than the sake of fighting.  Most people steered clear of the captain.  Evans had served with the captain here before, back when the captain was still a lieutenant and Evans was a lance corporal in the combat engineers and not an EOD technician.  Evans doubted the captain remembered him.  The crazy thing was that the captain had not even been part of the convoy.  He'd just shown up after the explosions went off, him and the pilot.  The pilot was never far from the captain.  They were thick as thieves.
"What's going on with the air?" the captain asked the pilot.  While the captain almost always looked mean, the pilot always had a smile on his face.  He was a fighter pilot and had the movie-star good looks to match.  He also liked to sing.  He'd walk around the base camp, singing Elvis Presley songs or old cowboy ballads.  Evans figured the pilot must be crazy.  Why else would a pilot give up flying a fighter jet to run around on the ground with the grunts, risking death to bring liberal Western democracy to people who didn't seem to want it?  Why else would he be paling around with the captain, who Evans knew to be crazy enough.  The pilot spoke.
"Vengeance is bingo and Winchester.  There's a section at AA getting ready to go, but they can't launch until Vengeance lands."  The pilot carried at least two radios on his gear and a look of disappointment on his face.  He added to the captain, "Battalion said don't do anything until air gets on station."
"Battalion always says don't do anything until air gets on station.  How long will that be?"  The captain asked.
"Ten minutes," the pilot said.
Evans looked across the bridge.  Its surface was warped and twisted.  Parts of the decking were gone.  It looked like it might collapse at any minute.  On the far side, one of the Marines unfurled a black tourniquet and frantically tried to get it around his leg.
"Those Marines don’t have ten minutes."  Another machine gun barrage clattered into the bridge.  The captain added, "We need to get some suppression on those machine guns.  The only place to do that is from the bridge."
"We could try to get a truck back over there," the pilot suggested.  The captain frowned even deeper at that suggestion.
"Naw.  Those 12.7s would rip it apart, that's if the bridge didn't collapse first."
The captain turned away from the bridge and the island and the wounded on the far bank and looked over the troops on this side.  They were all waiting to be told what to do.
"Sergeant Owens, you got a mortar in one of these trucks?"  The captain asked one of the Marines.  Owens nodded.
"Go get it and all the ammo you got for it.  Put the assault base plate on.  Leave the bipod."
Sergeant Owens hesitated, and the captain knew why.  Each convoy was required to keep a 60mm mortar with it per standing orders.  That had been made perfectly clear to every Marine in country.  The battalion commander made it perfectly clear to everybody under his command that any Marine who fired that mortar would find themselves facing a court martial.  To the uninitiated, it might seem ridiculous that a military unit might be required to carry around something they were not allowed to use.  But for those who served in the US military, such contradictions were commonplace.
"I know what you are thinking.  Just get me the mortar.  I’ll take care of it," the captain said.  Owens ran off.  The pilot approached the captain.  Evans watched.  The pilot spoke quietly into the captain's ear, but Evans could still hear.
"Don't," the pilot said.  "The air will be here in ten.  They won’t even have to drop a bomb.  The bad guys will run as soon as they hear them.  Don’t go on that bridge."
"The Marines on the other side don’t have ten minutes," the captain repeated.
"You are your own worst enemy."
"Yeah.  Just do what you can on the radio.  Skip battalion.  Go straight to Wing.  And don't follow me out there.  We lose those radios and we're fucked."  The captain turned from his pilot friend and shouted out, "Doc Youngblood, once those machine guns are suppressed, you get your ass over there with the aid and litter teams."
The Marine named Owens came forward.  He had one 60mm mortar with the assault baseplate attached, and two big green metal cans full of shells.  The captain seized the mortar, stopped, and noticed Evans for the first time.  He smiled, the way a man smiles when he meets an old friend by chance after years apart.
"Evans!  It's been a while.  How have you been?  Thanks for driving that truck for me last time we were out here." The captain offered his free hand to Evans.  Evans took it.  He was too surprised to do otherwise.  He was surprised the captain remembered him from their previous deployment.  Another machine gun barrage impacted the bridge.  Sparks flew.  Evans winched.  The captain didn't seem to notice.
"Good," Evans mumbled.  The captain looked up and down.  While the regular Marines wore the desert pattern camouflage uniform,  EOD Marines wore tan Nomex coveralls.  Evans was wearing the coveralls.
"So, you’re a staff sergeant now, and in EOD.  Good," the captain said.  He sounded genuinely proud of Evans.
"Yes.  Yes sir," Evans mumbled.  He felt like an idiot after speaking.
"That's great.  I'm glad to see you moving up." the captain said.  Then he let go of Evans' hand, picked up one of the ammo cans for the mortars, and said, "Well, I got to go."
Without another word, the captain sprinted onto the bridge.  He held the mortar in one hand and the ammo can in the other.  The second he came into view, both DShK machine guns opened up.  The bridge came alive with flashes, sparks, and clouds of dust.  Green tracers blazed.  Bullets smacked into the beams and girders that held the dying mechanical structure together.  Clang! Bang! Sprang!  A bullet impacted the bridge deck just behind the captain and tore up a chunk of asphalt as long as a man's arm.  A tracer hit a girder, ricocheted off into another girder, then bounced off and rose up into the air, spinning around end over end and burning green.
"Fuck," Evans cursed.
The captain got halfway across the bridge and skidded to a stop in a manner that would have been laughably cartoonish in any other circumstance.  He knelt, ripped open the ammo can, and pulled out a mortar shell.  His hands worked frantically, removing the dunnage and the excess increments and the safety devices, throwing them this way and that.  He dropped the mortar shell down the mortar tube.  The light mortar was in its assault configuration, and much easier to handle with the smaller baseplate and without the bipod.  The mortar ready, the captain eyeballed the alignment with the target, checked and rechecked the bubble on the range indicator, then depressed the trigger.
"Whump!"  The mortar boomed, and the boom was followed by a distinct metallic ringing sound Evans would remember for the rest of his life.  The enemy machine gun rounds kept impacting, but the impacts went high and wide.  Evans and the others at the end of the bridge saw the mortar round arc up towards the island.  It peaked, came back down, and exploded at the southernmost tip of the island.  Water and mud and grey smoke splashed up.
"Fuck," Evans repeated.  He and all the others stood dumbfounded.  More DShK rounds impacted into the bridge.  The captain, exposed to it all, grabbed another mortar shell and prepped it.
"Fuck," Evans repeated a third time.  Then he spun around.  The man in the turret of the nearest truck was Lasky.
"Lasky,"  Evans shouted.  "Get that machine gun out of the cradle and meet me out there."  Evans didn't wait for a response.  He turned around, grabbed the second can of mortar shells, and sprinted onto the bridge.
His arms pumped.  His heart thundered in his chest.  Evans wanted to scream.  He wanted to vomit.  Most of all, he wanted to not go on the bridge, but Evans sprinted onto it anyway.  He could hear the DShKs' impacts striking all around him.  The bullets clanged and sparked against the bridge's superstructure.  They cracked over his head.  The captain seemed a mile away.  Evans kept running, as hard and as fast as he could.
A section of the bridge's deck was missing.  A hole yawned open and beneath it, Evans could see the muddy water of the river rush by.  Evans leaped over the gap.  He landed.  Something snapped over his head.  It was something much bigger and more powerful than the bullets he'd always heard at the rifle range.  Evans kept going.  He saw something out of the corner of his eye; a line of burlap bags along one side of the bridge, opposite the captain.  The captain's mortar thumped again.  Evans heard that distinct metallic echo.  He hated that sound, but he was focused on the burlap bags.  They were more important now than the captain's mortar or the DShKs or anything.
Evans pitched the ammo can of mortar rounds off his chest and towards the captain.  The big metal can hit the bridge deck, then spun and skidded over toward the captain and his mortar.  Evans went in the other direction.  He went for the burlap bags.  He got there and ripped the first one open with his bare hands.
Inside he saw exactly what he expected.
Sprouting out of the 122mm artillery shells were electrical wires and red tubes of Semtex shock cord.  The wires ran into a Nokia cell phone.  The red shock cord ran into the 122mm shells in the other burlap bags. Somewhere in that mess were the necessary blasting caps.  The face of the Nokia phone glowed electronically.  Evans decided right there he was going to die, on this shitty bridge in this shitty country.
Evans also decided he didn’t care.
He seized the first 122mm shell, brought it up to his chest, and pitched it over the side of the bridge.  The wires and shock tube snapped.  As the 12.7 bullets impacted all around him, Evans leaned over the side of the bridge to watch the IED fall.  He said to himself, "If you watch that thing fall all the way into the river, and it explodes, it is going to take your head off."  Evans watched it fall all the way into the river anyway.  It splashed into the water without exploding.  Evans seized up the other two burlap bags one at a time and pitched those off the bridge too.  Then he ran to the captain.  When he got there, he collapsed in a heap behind the nearest girder.
The captain was aligning his mortar for another shot.  "What were you doing over there?" He asked casually, his eyes shifting from the rim of the mortar tube to the bubble on the elevation indicator.
"More IEDs.  Artillery shells, all daisy chained together and rigged up to a mobile phone."
The captain froze.  Without taking his eyes off his mortar he asked, "What did you do?"
"I took care of it," Evans said.
"Good," the captain said.  He focused back on his mortar, got his alignment and elevation where he wanted them, and squeezed the trigger.  Another whump followed by another one of those damned metallic rings.  The shell arced out.
"What can I do?" Evans asked.
"Prep another round for me," the captain said.
The mortar round he just launched landed near one of the two machine gun positions and threw up dirt and gray smoke.  That machine gun paused its firing.  Evans' hands worked frantically at his mortar round.  He tore open the cardboard packing tube and ripped out the safety devices and the excess powder increments.
Lasky crashed down next to them.  Lasky looked like he was 15 years old.  He was all tangled up in the medium machine gun and the belts of ammunition.  Evans ripped the machine gun from the younger man, got it up on its bipod, slapped in a belt of ammo, charged it, and opened fire.
A burst of fire marked by red tracers arced out and splashed into the river just short of the island.
"The distance to those guns is 1200 meters on the dot," the captain said calmly.  He fired his mortar again.  Another thump.  Another metallic echo.
Evans adjusted the sites on his weapon and fired again.
"At this range, if you are firing off the bipod then you're just making noise,"  The captain advised.  He wasn't mad.  He spoke more like a patient coach.
"Lasky, go back and get the tripod."
Lasky leaped up and sprinted back to the vehicles.  DShK impacts danced around his feet.  Evans wondered if the young man was going to get cut in half, decided there was nothing he could do about it, and fired his machine gun anyway.  Another burst of 12.7 machine gun fire came in and impacted all around him.  Spall came off the girders and peppered Evans' face.  Evans cursed, shouldered his machine gun and bipod or not, and let loose another burst.  Beside him, the captain's mortar thumped again.
Lasky was back with the tripod.  He dove next to Evans and landed with a crash.
"Oh shit," Lasky said.
"Yeah, 'oh shit," Evans screamed back.  He ripped off another burst with the machine gun, then lifted it onto the tripod.  The captain's mortar thumbed.  A 12.7 bullet punched a ragged hole through a girder a foot from Evans' head.  A Marine named Reed ran out onto the bridge and fired at the island with his rifle.  His rifle was long but not long enough for the distance.  Evans got the machine gun onto the tripod and nestled in behind it.  The mortar thumped and rang.  Evans let off another burst.  The gun spat out spent brass and links.  Red tracers arced out toward the island and landed near one of the DShKs.
"Shift left and elevate a little," the captain advised, his voice still casual.  Evans could make out the tiny, "pop-pop-pops" of Reed's rifle.  He ripped off another burst.  More bursts impacted into the bridge, high up in the superstructure.
"We're getting suppression," the captain said.  "The gunner on the right on the right is slowing down.  And he's missing the bridge more than he's hitting it."
Incoming fire clanged into the bridge and Evans thought the gunner on the right was doing fine.  He ripped off another burst of his own.  Lasky was beside him, feeding the ammo belt into the gun and trying to make himself as small as possible.  The captain had his mortar lined up.  He was concentrating on the elevation bubble and squeezing on the trigger.  He was just about to fire when a hand clamped over the top of the mortar tube.
"Check fire!  Check fire!" a Marine yelled.  It was the pilot.
The captain cursed and simultaneously lowered the mortar and slapped the pilot's hand away.
"You dumb fuck!  You almost lost your hand,"  the captain shouted.  The pilot was oblivious to the scolding.  He was looking up at the sky and speaking into the radio, in that nonsense pilot talk that Evans didn’t understand.
And then the bridge collapsed.
At least that was what Evans thought.  His world was full of noise, a louder more powerful noise than all the machine guns and that damned ringing mortar all put together.  It was a noise you felt more than heard.  Something high up in the superstructure snapped, and the bridge dropped, and listed to one side, like a ship beginning to capsize.  The bridge only dropped an inch, maybe two.  To Evans, those inches seemed like a mile.  He felt his stomach drop out of his body.  Above, the sky ripped open, and the heavens cracked in half.  Evans looked up and saw a haze gray fighter sweep overhead.  Fire spat out of its twin jet engines.  The pilot was a pro.  He hit the burners just at the right moment.  A supersonic crack rolled over the bridge and the island.  Right as he was over the enemy position, he dumped all his chaff and flares, and the sky came alive with the brilliance of metallic fire.  With his burners flaring, the fighter climbed, banked, flew away, and disappeared to the west.
"I thought you said he was outta gas?" the captain shouted at the pilot.
"He was outta gas," the pilot replied.  He turned back to his radio, said more pilot stuff, then turned back to the captain.  "He just called for the crash crew at the airfield to get ready." The pilot paused again for his radio spoke into it, turned back to the captain, and said, "I got two more fighters on divert from TQ.  Full load but they can only make one pass."
The hope had been that the jet would scare the enemy off.  It didn't work.  Not exactly.  The DShK on the left resumed firing on the bridge right after the jet passed.  After a long pause, so did the DShK on the right.  But the lull was enough.  Out of the corner of his eye, Evans saw the corpsman lead a team across the bridge.  They carried big medical backpacks and dusty black stretchers.  Other Marines were on the bridge now too, firing long-barreled rifles and light machine guns.  They were aiming high and trying to lob their rounds in.  Red tracers zipped through the air.
"Concentrate your fire on the DShK on the right," the captain ordered.  "He's scared.  His fire is getting wobbly."
More 12.7 crashed into the bridge.  Evans had no idea what the captain meant when he said the enemy's fire was getting "wobbly."  The enemy fire still looked pretty damned dangerous.  Even so, he shifted his gun, aimed in on the enemy flashes, and fired.
"How much ammo do they have?"  It was the pilot talking.  The captain answered.
"They probably got all the ammo in the world.  They chose the terrain.  They chose the time to attack us.  They planted the IEDs.  They're dug in on an island.  They probably prepared this for weeks."  Then he asked, "Why are you on the bridge?  I can't lose those radios."
"You won't."
"Get off the bridge."
"I need to be on the bridge to control the air."
"Well don't have them fly over us again.
"They have to fly up the river and over us.  If they fly over the city and they miss their drop, their bombs could fall on the civilians."
"If they fly up the river and miss their drops their bombs could fall on us," the captain fired back.
"You know I can't bring them in over the city.  You know what kind of war we're in," the pilot said.  That was that.  Evans rolled his eyes and fired off another burst.
His machine gun went dry.  Evans flipped up the feed tray cover.  Lasky ripped open an ammo can and passed over a belt.  Evans set the belt on the feed tray, his hands fumbling along.  Through his peripheral vision, he could see teams of litter bearers running back across the bridge with screaming casualties.  He could see the pilot talking into his radio.  Somebody at the wrecked truck called for a Halligan tool.  At the opposite end of the bridge, a Marine fired his rifle.  Brass flew out and gleamed in the sunlight.  The corpsman ran up to the captain and crashed beside him.
"One's still stuck in that wreck.  We got all the others."
"Can you get him out?"
"Yeah.  We got to smash apart that truck though."
"Do it."
At their end of the bridge, Evans saw a truck come speeding toward the embankment in reverse, its tailgate down.  The stretcher bearers loaded the casualties into the truck.  In less than a minute.  The tailgate went back up.  One Marine smacked the back of the truck with a gloved fist and the truck sped off.  Evans got his machine gun in action.  The captain fired the mortar again.
This time the mortar's ring seemed louder, angrier.  Evans winced at the noise.  He could see the mortar projectile arcing up into the sky.  It climbed, peaked, descended, came down on the island, and exploded.
It was just like in the movies.
The mortar shell impacted right on top of the rightmost enemy machine gun.  It made a "Krumpf" sound and exploded into a cloud of gray smoke.  Only this time something else exploded.  It flashed yellow and red.  A second later, the explosion's boom rolled over Evans and everybody else on the bridge.  The rightmost DShK machine gun swung up and fired up into the sky.  It didn't just fire a burst.  It fired one long continuous stream.  The green tracers buzzed.  Evans could see it in his mind; the gunner was dead, collapsing to the ground with his fingers locked on the triggers, firing up into the sky in one final act of defiance.
"We got one, now get the other one," the captain ordered.
The Marines, the rifles, the light and medium machine guns, everything converged on the last enemy DShK position.  Red tracers filled the air.
"We got him!  We got him!" somebody yelled in triumph.  It was Doc Youngblood.  He had the last casualty over his shoulder.  That Marine's camouflage uniform was soaked through with blood.  His head rolled on his neck.  "We got him," the corpsman yelled again.  He ran back across the bridge.  When he came to Hoffman's severed leg, without breaking stride Youngblood, dipped, grabbed the limb with his free hand, and kept running.  Evans paused from his firing to watch the corpsman run to the other side.  When the next burst of 12.7 impacted right next to Lasky, Evans mounted his machine gun and fired another burst at the island.
"Doc's got them all across," the pilot said.  "They're all back across.  We don't need to stay on this bridge."
The captain paused, a half-prepared mortar round in his hand.  The pilot was right.  They'd gotten their wounded back across the bridge.  They didn't have to stay on the bridge dueling it out with the last gunner.  The captain looked at the pilot.  Then he looked at Evans.  The captain didn't speak, but he seemed to be soliciting advice.  Evans spoke his mind.
"This one is too good.  If we don't kill him, we're going to regret it.  He's too good for us to let him live."
The captain turned to the pilot.  He nodded once in agreement with Evans.
"Okay," the captain said.  "We finish it."
As if the last enemy gunner heard them, the line of DShK fire straightened out and bore down, laser-like on the bridge.  It seemed to come in with more intensity, and the Marines fired back with more intensity.  Red and green tracers zipped up and down the river, whipping past each other.  The machine gun came alive under Evans.  Lasky, belt in hand, called over his shoulder for more ammo.  The mortar boomed and then rang again, that damned metallic ring.  Behind Evans, the pilot knelt and faced down the river.  He looked towards the sky and chattered away into his radio, the weird-ass pilot talk that was one-half officer gibberish and one-half magical incantations.
The bridge was alive with the sparks of metal on metal.  Upriver, Evans could see the island's vegetation being torn apart.  Another mortar round exploded, this one almost right on top of the enemy gunner.  How was that machine gunner still alive?  How were any of them alive?
Behind him, Evans could hear the pilot speaking faster now.  Spent brass flew left and right.  Evans heard the jet coming in.
"He's dropping!  Get your heads down!" the pilot yelled.
Evans heard something cut through the air, then the middle of the small island exploded.  A gray and black cloud rolled up into the sky.  Beyond it, a fighter banked and soared away into the sky.
Nothing happened, not for a few seconds.  The pause stretched impossibly long.  One of the Marines stood up on the edge of the bridge, pointed at the island, and shouted, "Fuck You!"
Then the DShK opened up again.  The Marine dove for cover.  The captain cursed.  The pilot chattered into his radio and looked up to the sky.
"He dropped long.  He was worried about dropping short and hitting us," the pilot said.  "I've got dash-two inbound."
Evans thought he heard the plane coming in.  He turned from his gun and looked up into the sky.  The pilot spoke into his radio.
"Yeah four-five, from lead's hits, bring it in fifty."
The enemy gunner on the island must have heard the plane too.  His stream of fire lifted off the bridge and rose into the sky.  He was searching for the second fighter that he knew was coming in after the first.  Evans watched the green tracers fly by, up overhead.  He could hear the jet getting louder.
Another Marine stood up on the bridge and shouted at the island.  Instead of cursing, this one said, "Stop shooting and run you dumb-fuck!"
Evans looked up over his shoulder at the pilot.
"Four-five, you aren't getting a second pass at this, so just drop everything you've got."
Another Marine stood and shouted at the lone gunner, "Run! Run you dumb fucker!"
The green tracers blazed skyward.  No breaks.  No interruptions between short and controlled bursts.  Just a steady stream of continuous fire searching for the plane everybody knew was coming.
More Marines were shouting at the island now, shouting at the gunner to run away.  One waved his arms frantically in, 'go-away' gestures, as if trying to shoo an animal.  The captain was sitting back, alone, shaking his head, and at that moment, Evans knew what the captain knew; the gunner on the island wasn't going to run.  He wasn't the running type.  He was committed.  He was going to die on that island.  The pilot spoke into his handset.
"Cleared hot."
The radio buzzed back a response that Evans couldn't make out.  The heavy machine gun rounds cracked overhead.  Green laser-light of tracers.  Evans felt the air thicken.  He heard the jet pull up and away.  And then…
This one wasn't like in the movies.  There weren't any secondary explosions.  There weren't any screams.  There was no raging against the dying of the light.  No melodrama.  The bombs fell and exploded, and this time when the smoke cleared, the second gun remained silent.  The enemy was dead.  Maybe he could have run, but he didn't.  He died at his post on the island.  And that was that, and that was all.  Everybody on the bridge just looked at the island.  Nobody spoke except for the pilot.  He stood and raised a radio handset to his lips.
"Target destroyed, four-five.  Thanks for the work today.  Menudo out."
The battle at the bridge had ended.  Now the recovery work began.

There were never enough people and never enough equipment to adequately defend the bridge or clear the island before the ambush.  Now, after the ambush, no expense was spared to clean up the mess.  People and resources flooded in to begin the recovery operations.  An entire infantry company arrived to secure both embankments.  Armored boats came from upriver and posted as pickets on either side of the bridge.  Civilian experts from the Army Corps of Engineers arrived to assess the damage to the bridge.  Then they debated if it was better to repair the bridge or destroy it completely and build a new one.  Troops erected massive stadium lights so operations could continue through the night.  Generators hummed.  Squat recovery vehicles parked at the end of the bridge.  Steel cables snaked out from their powerful winches and pulled the wrecked vehicles across the bridge, one inch at a time for fear of collapsing the bridge.  Word was that the Army was flying in divers the next morning to search the river bottom for bodies.
The day had been long, and now twilight fell.  The shadows grew long, and the sky changed from blue to orange.  Evans and Lasky sat together.  They watched the activity on the bridge.  Lasky had the machine gun resting across his thighs.
"That was one helluva day," Lasky said.
"A helluva day," Evans agreed.  And then, they heard singing behind them.

Out in the West Texas town of El Paso
I fell in love with a Mexican girl

They both turned.  The pilot walked up behind them, a broad smile on his face.  Even dressed as he was, in his filthy camouflage uniform with his radios, he possessed a strong element of showmanship.  There was just something about the way he moved.  The pilot kept crooning.

Nighttime would find me in Rosa's cantina
Music would play, and Felina would whirl

When the pilot got to Evans and Lasky, he stopped singing and said, "Gentlemen, I need your help with something.  Would you follow me?"
Evans and Lasky followed the singing pilot down the street.  The pilot didn’t sing anymore, but he hummed the rest of his ballad without any hint of self-consciousness.  You would never guess from the pilot's demeanor that they were in a war, in a town full of people that would happily see them dead.  They went down the street a block, maybe two.  They turned.  They twisted.  Then the pilot walked right into the local equivalent of a convenience store.  Evans and Lasky looked at each other and then followed the pilot inside.
"I'm thirsty," the pilot said.  "I'd buy some beers, but that's against general order number one.  That, and there isn't any beer for sale in this whole country.  Grab a bunch of those soda pops in the cooler."
The store was full of brown-skinned locals who eyed the three of them warily.  The pilot didn't seem to notice the locals.  He fished into one of the many pockets on his uniform for a wallet.  In the back of the store were stand-up coolers with glass doors.  One was filled with bottles of soda: blue and white with red lettering.
"How many should we get?" Evans asked.
"Grab as many as you can," the pilot said.  He thumbed through his wallet, took out a few US bills, and handed them to the shopkeeper.  The shopkeeper smiled.
Evans reached open the cooler.  A blast of frigid air hit him in the face.  It was refreshing.  He grabbed a plastic bottle of soda and the coldness of it bit into his fingers.  It was then he realized how thirsty he was.  Back at the counter, the pilot asked, "You got any cigarettes?"  He mimicked smoking a cigarette.  The shopkeeper smiled and nodded.  He had no idea what the pilot was asking.  A young boy, maybe ten years old, said something to the shopkeeper in their native tongue, then said something else to the pilot in English.
"Pines?  You got Pines back there?" the pilot said.  Evans filled Lasky's arms with soda bottles, like he was loading him with firewood.
"You get those soda pops?"  The pilot asked.  He stuffed cigarette packs into his pockets.
"Sir, we're getting 'em," Evans said.  "What are we going to do with all these sodas, anyway?"
"We're gonna drink 'em," the pilot said.  He took a $20 out of his wallet and handed it to the kid.  Then he shrugged, took out a crisp $100 bill, and set it on the counter.  The shopkeeper's eyes lit up with delight.  They all walked out of the store.
"Sir, you know you overpaid for all this stuff," Evans said to the pilot.  They all walked back towards the bridge.
"Maybe," the pilot said.  "But what do I care?  It is only money.  I'm a well-paid fighter pilot.  Money is nothing to me."
"If money is nothing to you, sir, maybe you could give some to me," Lasky said.
"Ha," the pilot said.  "Just enjoy the smokes and the soda pop."
"Where are we going?" Evans asked.
The pilot smiled.  "We're going to drink these soda pops and smoke these cigarettes.  Where else would we be going?"  And then the pilot started singing again.

Blacker than night were the eyes of Felina
Wicked and evil while casting a spell…

Lasky and Evans followed the pilot.  "I wish he wouldn't call them soda pops," Lasky whispered.  Evans nodded in agreement.
The pilot led them down to the river.  The others from the bridge were already there, the captain, Owens, Doc Youngblood.  They were all sitting on a hidden bank, legs dangling above the water. Above was the shattered bridge.  The portable stadium lights blazed.  Across the water, the riverine patrol boats circled.  Up the river, smoke still lingered above the island.  The new infantry company that arrived had taken over security.  There was nothing for them to do but sit and watch the river.
"Hey, EOD showed up.  Welcome.  Grab a seat," one of the Marines said.
"Took you long enough.  You get my cigarettes," the captain grumbled.  His remarks were for the pilot who sat down next to him.
"Yeah.  We got your cigarettes," the pilot said.
"Gauloises?"  the captain asked.
"Pines," the pilot replied.
"Good.  I like Pines better," the captain said.
"Funny thing for a guy to say when he doesn't even smoke," the pilot said.
"You don't smoke either," the captain said.
"No, I don't," the pilot said.  He ripped open one of the blue and white packets, shook out a cigarette for himself, then passed the pack over to the captain.  Another pack was passed in the opposite direction.  None of them smoked, not normally, but everybody took a cigarette.
Evans collapsed down on the riverbank.  His legs dangled over the water.  He took the soda bottles from Lasky and passed them left and right.  He opened his own bottle and drank.  The soda was cold and sweet.  He guzzled down almost half the bottle.  The breeze off the river found its way under his armor.  The cool air hit his sweat-soaked back and he shivered.  The captain's eyes stared across the river and beyond.  He spoke to the pilot.
"Smoking will ruin your singing voice."
The pilot opened a soda, drank gustily, then puffed on his lit cigarette.  "Nonsense.  Besides, my professional singing days are over.  I'm a Naval Aviator now."
One of the Marines snickered.  The captain just stared out across the water.  He said, "No.  It is true.  He used to sing professionally.  He used to be in a boy band.  That's why his call sign is Menudo."
Evans choked on his soda.  He set the bottle down and said, "What?"
Another Marine asked, "Menudo?  Like the soup?"
"A different kind of Menudo, and it is true," the pilot said.  "When I was a teenager, back in the day I was in a boyband.  It was fun while it lasted, but I got kicked out."
"You get too old?" Evans asked.
"I got too tall.  I had a growth spurt one summer.  I was eight inches taller than the others.  When we did photo shoots it looked ridiculous."  The pilot puffed on his cigarette, then shrugged and said, "What do you do when you're too tall and too old to sing in a boy band and you got nowhere else to go?  You join the Marines, that's what you do."  The pilot puffed out a perfect ring of smoke.
"I was in college, but drank all my tuition money away," another Marine added.  "When I sobered up, I was standing on some yellow footprints in Paris Island, getting screamed at."
The river rolled by.  The sky turned dark blue.  Up on the bridge, the generators rumbled and the stadium lights burned through the darkness.
"Who was in that missing truck?" One of the Marines asked.  A pause followed.  Then the captain answered.
"Fraser, Ivy, Goodwin, and Cifuentes."  He flicked his cigarette into the water and added, "I knew we should have cleared that island."
"You kept asking.  The BC kept saying no," the pilot said.
"I should have done it anyway," the captain said.  "I'm tired of always being in react mode  I'm tired of always having our reactions constrained by people who aren't interested in winning this war.  Just once I'd like to go on the offensive and make the bad guys react to me."
"Ain't nobody gonna let you win," the pilot replied.  "You know what kind of war you're in."
"Yeah, I know what kind of war I'm in."
Nobody said much after that.  The river rolled.  The night sky darkened and the stars grew brighter.  They all just sat on the bank, enjoying their cigarettes and the soda and the peaceful solitude.  Evans finished his soda.  He held the empty bottle up to the light and considered the blue, white, and red label.  He recapped it, tossed it into the river, and watched it float away.  The plastic sides gleamed unit the river and the darkness took it away.
Lasky spoke.  "That gunner was good.  The last one.  Holding out to the end like he did."  Nobody replied to that, so Lasky went on.
"He must have been shitting himself in the end though.  Being stuck on that island with no way out and those jets screaming in."
"He didn’t have to stay there and die on his gun," the air controller said.  "He could have just stopped shooting and slipped away."
"No.  No, he couldn't have," the captain said.  "He knew what he was doing.  He made his decision to die on that island before he got out of bed this morning."
"Still," Lasky said.  "He had to be shitting himself in fear at the end.  When the air came in.  Knowing that was how it was going to end for him.  He had to be scared then, knowing there was no escape, knowing that he was going to die."
"I don't know," the captain said.  He spoke slowly and clearly, and everybody listened intently, especially Evans.  "I think maybe when you reach that point in your life…  when you reach that level of commitment, and you know it is your time…  I think then you don't feel any fear.  You're ready.  You know what you need to do.  At that point, I think a calmness sets in and you just do what needs to be done."
The captain drew in on his cigarette, blew out the smoke, and finished.
"There's a reason why they call it, 'making your peace.'"

The dream that was really a memory ended with a knock on the door.  Evans opened his eyes.  The sun was up.  It shone brightly through the bedroom window.  It was late in the morning.
"Yeah, what is it?" Evans asked.  Kyle opened the door.
"You alright?"
"Yeah.  Why wouldn't I be?" Evans asked.  His head ached with the damned metallic ring from the fireworks the night before.
"It is after eleven and you're still in bed."
"Yeah, well," Evans grumbled.  He sat up.  His old muscles ached with the movement.  "I'm getting up now."
"You hungry?  You want me to make breakfast or lunch?" Kyle asked.
"Breakfast," Evans said.  "You cook a good breakfast.  I won't pass that up."
"Okay," Kyle said.  "But get up.  I'm sure you have work to do."
"I'm retired," Evans said.
"Yeah, I'm sure you got work anyways."  Kyle left and went down to the kitchen.
Evans sat on the edge of his bed.  He didn't want to remember the battle at the bridge, because remembering stirred up emotions he'd rather not feel.  The bridge had been both a good day, and a terrible day, as the most important days in a man's life are.  If the story had ended there on the banks of the river, with all of them smoking cigarettes and drinking sodas, that would have been fine.  But that wasn't how it ended because it wasn't that type of war.  So, as Kyle made breakfast, Evans remembered the last part of the story.

Evans was back at the base, in the back of the metal shipping container where the EOD team stored all their gear in.  He was organizing their tools, making sure they would have everything they needed the next time they went out to deal with a bomb.  Manuals and tools and pieces of bomb suits were scattered all over shelves and workbenches made out of plywood and lumber.  The skill level of the carpentry was about on par with that of some 12-year-old boys building a tree house.  Nothing was quite level, and nothing was quite square.  Evans had a dozen screwdrivers laid out before him.  The screwdriver on the end kept trying to roll away.  Off to one side was the helmet of his bomb suit.  The clear faceplate stared back at Evans as he worked.  There was a knock on the container door.  It was Lasky.
"You get those radios back from the communications shed yet?  They should be done with them." Evans asked.
"Not yet," Lasky said, and he lingered at the door.  The silence spoke volumes.
"What is it?" Evans asked.
"Remember that captain on the bridge?  The one with the mortar?"
Evans nodded but didn't look up from his screwdrivers.  "That was just two days ago.  The memory is still pretty fresh," Evans said.  Lasky nodded.
"The battalion commander just relieved him.  Said he shouldn’t have fired that mortar so close to an urban area.  The battalion commander said the captain put too many locals at risk."
Evans didn’t say anything.  He didn’t do anything that might betray a single emotion.  Lasky continued.
"They sent the captain up to regiment.  They sent in a helicopter just for him.  Pulled him out this morning."
Evans nodded and then said, "Forget about the captain.  Get over to the communications shop and get our radios back."
After the corporal was gone, Evans picked up the helmet of his bomb suit.  He raised it up and then smashed it onto the oak floor of the container as hard as he could, again and again.  The faceplate cracked.  Evans kept smashing the helmet until his emotions burned out.  Then he set the bashed-in helmet back on the end of the off-kilter workbench.
"Stupid fucking war," Evans cursed.  Then he went back to organizing his tools.  There was nothing else he could do.

Interlude:  Logistics.  Oakland California.

The two containers were offloaded at the Port of Oakland, California.  They were each 40 feet long and looked like the thousands of other containers that came from China to the United States every day.  Each container was identified by an alpha-numeric code stenciled on its sides.  These codes were flagged, so when the containers were offloaded from their Chinese cargo vessel, the longshoremen put them in a secure area.
The team that received the containers consisted of four men.  Two were from Customs and Border Protection.  The other two were from a private company:  Davos Consulting of North America.  The CBP agents were young.  The two men from Davos were old.  They'd already retired from the military and were now in their second career.
The CBP agents checked the seals on the two containers.  Once they confirmed the seals were intact, their job was done.  They left the containers to the two Davos men.
The Davos men waited with the containers.  They sat in a brand new, blacked-out SUV that looked like something a federal agent might drive.  After a few hours, two semi-trucks arrived along with three more SUVs.  Each of the SUVs contained more Davos employees.  The containers were loaded onto the semis and then the whole group left the Port of Oakland.  Two SUVs accompanied each truck.  They didn't leave via the normal exits, but through gates in the chain-link fences normally reserved for emergency vehicles.  These gates didn’t have the cameras or kiosks that the normal commercial points of entry and exit had.
They drove to a warehouse outside Sacrament.  The warehouse was newly built and big.  Each semi was able to drive inside the warehouse, detach from the chassis-mounted container, and drive off.  But not before the drivers were paid, in cash.  The drivers were all independents who had been contracted locally by other Davos agents.  There were no digital records linking the truck drivers to Davos.
After the drivers were gone and all the warehouse doors closed, the Davos employees opened the containers.  One contained crates marked with Mandarin characters and just one word in English: Norinco.
"We'll need to destroy those crates when we're done," one of the Davos men said.
With long-handled crowbars, they opened the crates.  Each crate contained what were being called Type 56C-B rifles.  The executives at Norinco added the "B" designator to identify these weapons as being designed for the Baizuo.  It was an inside joke that they found hilarious.  Each weapon was a slightly modified Chinese Type 56C rifle, which is a long way of saying they were modified AK-47s.  Each was fully automatic, and each had a shortened barrel.  Either of these features would demand additional scrutiny for the average American citizen to own, if they even lived in a state that allowed them to own such weapons at all.  But this was a special operation.  There wasn't going to be any scrutiny.  These weapons weren't going to average American citizens.  This operation was serving a higher ideological purpose and thus could not be constrained by any laws.
The second container was filled with ammunition for the weapons.  Fortunately, the ammunition containers didn't bear any markings.  The retired general who negotiated this arms deal with the Chinese made certain of that.  Repackaging all the ammunition would have been a task.
The weapons and the ammunition were all unloaded and divided into separate stacks.  Each stack was labeled with the name of a US city:  Portland.  Newark.  Seattle.  Houston.  The stacks varied in size.  The two largest were going to Los Angles and Chicago.  The smallest two were going to the capitals of Nebraska and Tennessee.  The teams that would receive those shipments were small but very well-trained.  They'd been trained by other veterans who also worked for Davos.
The Davos men worked efficiently.  They all had backgrounds in either the military, law enforcement, or the intelligence community.  They'd all been recruited by the executives of Davos North America, who were all either retired flag officers or former members of the Senior Executive Service.  Once everything was in its appropriate stack, several of the Davos men left to get the panel vans that would transport the arms caches to their final destination.  Once the weapons were gone, the warehouse was sterilized.  The Davos men destroyed any evidence of the arms and ammunition.  Even the shipping containers and their truck chassis would disappear.  They would get stenciled with new alphanumeric codes, then sent down to Mexico.  It was perhaps an overly cautious step, but the Davos employees were thorough.  They had all done work like this before in other countries.  Now they were doing it in the United States.  The pay was better.  And according to the senior executives of Davos Consulting of North America, the mission more urgent.  "You are defending true democracy," the retired admirals and generals said.  Some of the Davos men believed that.  Most were just in it for the money.
Naturally, one of the arms shipments was destined for Texas.  It would be delivered not too far from Uncle Evans' house.

Texas Hill Country.  July.

Evans and Kyle were back in the office.  They'd put in a full day of work and now they were going about their post-dinner ritual of watching the nightly news.  Evans had a glass jar like the one he'd had at the 4th of July party.  Using a scrap of cloth from an old t-shirt, Evans polished the inside of the jar with some compound.  A second glass jar was on the desk waiting its turn.  A can of Evan's favorite cola stood beside it.  Kyle admired another memento of his uncle's service that was hanging on the wall.  On one of the computer monitors, a cable news personality was about to interview a career politician from the party currently out of power.  
"Good evening and welcome to the program.  With us tonight is former congressperson, former governor, and former presidential candidate, Robert Hutchinson.  Welcome Governor Hutchinson."
"Thanks for having me on tonight, Shawn.  It’s a pleasure to be here."
Kyle turned from the decorated paddle on the wall to his uncle.  "Do you have the cleaning kit?  I thought I'd clean the rifle tonight.  Evans opened a desk drawer, took out a bag full of weapons cleaning gear, and tossed it underhand to his nephew.  Kyle caught it deftly.
"Governor, there's been a lot of talk lately about these protests that are happening across the country.  This country is no stranger to protests that get a little out of hand.  But in the past, these demonstrations typically took place in the cities.  Some of my viewers have expressed concerns that these demonstrations are moving out into suburbs and rural areas.  Some even say that these demonstrations are being used to intimidate rural and suburban voters as we head toward the next election.  What do you have to say about that?"
The politician leaned closer to the camera.  His face took on a very grave serious look.  Too serious.  Everything about him was too much; his earnest look; his coiffed hair with just the right touches of gray; his bright white teeth and the shiny American flag pin on his lapel.  He was too everything to be real, Kyle thought.  Too everything to be trusted.
"Well first of all Shawn, I want to state clearly that I support every American's right to protest.  The right to protest and to speak truth to power is one of the many rights the government grants to the citizens of this great nation.  That's why when I was governor, I implemented some really powerful policies that protected freedom of speech and expression while at the same time implemented necessary, common-sense measures to cool the types of inflammatory speech and harmful rhetoric that quite frankly we see too much from both sides of the aisle these days.
"Let me also say that I deplore violence in all its forms.  Violence never solves anything and for those who share the same political views that I do, I'd just like to remind those viewers tonight that violence simply is not—who—we—are."  The politician put dramatic pauses between the last words for emphasis.  Kyle took the Africa carbine off his uncle's ready rack and went to work cleaning it.  The politician continued.
"I can understand how some of your viewers might be frustrated at what they see going on.  But I've spoken to the experts and a lot of what Americans are being told about these riots just is not true."
"It is misinformation," the interviewer said, nodding.  He didn't say it as a question so much as a statement of fact.
"That's right Shawn, it is misinformation.  And it is misinformation like this that's really dividing Americans in ways that are dangerous.  Look, I have spoken with leaders in the law enforcement community.  I have spoken with the leaders at the Department of Homeland Security.  I have spoken with leaders at the Department of Justice, and they all told me the same thing.  These demonstrations are mostly peaceful.  These protests are not that big.  For the most part, these are simply peaceful expressions of true democracy.  And the people conducting these demonstrations are often the most vulnerable and under-served urban youth of this country, and they are frustrated.  They simply are starving for the opportunities that more privileged Americans take for granted.
"So, I think the important thing we need to remember, Shawn, is for those of us on this side of the political aisle, we may not agree with what these demonstrations are all about, but we need to respect others' right to express their views, and we need to show these demonstrators empathy.  We need to listen intentionally and give them the space they need to express themselves."
The interviewer's head bobbed up and down, like a cork floating in a bucket of water.  "Yes, governor.  Very wise.  Very wise.  But we're getting some reports that these protestors are bringing firearms to their political rallies.  They are getting violent.  They are setting fires. That they've burned down homes and businesses…"
The former governor, shaking his head the whole time, interrupted his counterpart.  "Not true, Shawn. Not true.  That's just more misinformation.  These are just political rallies. Nobody is getting attacked.  No businesses are being burned.
"But you see, this is what really upsets me, Shawn.  What upsets me are the violent responses to these peaceful expressions.  And this violence has been coming from people who claim to be patriotic Americans.  First, we had the Raleigh Executions.  Then we had this incident in Oklahoma where a disgruntled veteran used his military training to target and attack peaceful protestors.  And again, all of this is being driven by misinformation and unfortunately, what we are seeing Shawn, are frustrated Americans, mostly male, mostly from the suburbs, who can't discern fact from fiction.  These men then lash out against other Americans just because they look and act differently.  They have this… rage.  This rage that they have is unhealthy and a danger to our communities.  And that saddens me, Shawn.  So again, let me be clear.  Violence in response to peaceful political expressions is simply un-American and it is not who we are.  Our political party is always one that has put principals over partisanship."
"Yes, you know governor," the interviewer began.  "I'm no stranger to violence.  I'm an orange belt in Judo as well as a pistol marksman, so I'm more than an expert on the subject…"
Uncle Evans, working the polishing compound into the inside of his jar, snorted out a laugh.
"But I've been trained governor. And I've been trained to only use violence for self-defense and only as a last resort.  That's not what we're seeing, is it?"
"No, it isn't Shawn.  What we saw in Raleigh and in Oklahoma was just ugly and I want to take a moment to disavow that kind of violence.  I also want to take a moment to remind your viewers that our side must never lose our compassion for the other side.  I will never be afraid to reach across the aisle.  I have a demonstrated track record of working with the other party to get things done.  No other political leader has the experience that I do when it comes to sitting down and making the compromises we need to make for the greater good.
"Now Shawn, I'm willing to fight.  I've always been a fighter.  But I want to fight the right way.  There's nothing I like more than to get in there and fight for the issues that Americans truly care about.  The real issues.  Things like corporate tax reform, lowering the costs of prescription drugs, and making sure we have a strong military that will go out and export the values of Western democracy around the world.  And speaking of fighting for all Americans, Shawn, I want to take this opportunity to make this promise to your viewers.  I am absolutely committed to rolling back the federal overreach into healthcare, which we are going to do the next time we take the House and the Senate.  That's why I created my PAC, which your viewers can donate to through  my website."
"Now governor, you are a busy man already.  But I hear you are also writing a series of children's books?"
"That's right Shawn."
"As busy as you are fighting for hard-working Americans, how do you have time to do that?"
Both the politician and the interviewer gave good-natured chuckles that were too perfect, too practiced, too rehearsed to be genuine.  Kyle rolled his eyes at the ersatz joviality.
"The series is called, 'The Courage to Compromise.'  It is about Republican politicians who had the courage to compromise on their core values for the good of the American system.  It is a really fun and exciting series of books that can teach children at a very young age the necessity of compromising on issues for the good of the government."
"That's a fascinating perspective governor.  Can you give us an example of a time when you had to compromise on your values for the good of the government?"
"Certainly.  There was a time in Congress when I had to work with the opposition party on spending.  They wanted to increase spending on social programs, and I wanted to cut taxes, and we were reaching a point where if we did not increase the debt ceiling the government would shut down.  Something like that would be disastrous for the American people.  So, I compromised.  I agreed to some of their social spending proposals.  I agreed to some of their commonsense gun control measures.  I moved on taxes and you know what?  We increased the debt ceiling and avoided a government shutdown.  We kept all of DC working and that's a good thing for the system."
"That's a great example of bipartisan cooperation and a powerful message.  So, what kind of lessons do you hope children will take away from your book series?"
"I hope that children will learn the importance of compromise and the value of putting the good of the American system ahead of personal beliefs.  I also hope they will learn to respect those with different opinions and work together to find common sense solutions to problems."
"Wow.  That is a powerful message governor.  Where can our viewers buy these books?"
"Shawn, your viewers can preorder them now…"
Evans held his jar up to the light.  He turned it from side to side, examining the way the light was filtered through the glass and the clear compound he rubbed inside.  He set the first jar down and went to work on the other.  The interview continued.
"Now governor, the election is fast approaching, and it's gotten very heated.  What are your thoughts on the race so far?"
On cue, the politician switched from faux downhome joviality back to faux earnestness.
"Shawn, I've held one political office or another my entire adult life, and I've never seen a presidential race like this.  It is just gotten ugly, some of the things that are being said about our president.  Look, I know our president and his family personally.  Now, I don't agree with a lot of his policy positions, but I know him to be a good man.  I know that the members of his administration are good people and patriotic Americans.  Again, I don't agree with their policies, but I do agree with them on principle.  So, when I hear some of this, just despicable rhetoric coming from the candidate who is supposed to be 'our' candidate, it is very troubling to me.
"Listen, Shawn, let me be clear.  We need to take our country back.  Yes, we do.  But we need to do it the right way.  We need to do it in a manner that is principled and inclusive and compassionate.  Not in a way that's violent and deplorable and elevates some of the worst demagogues this country has ever seen.  Not in a way that is mean and hurtful.  Not in a way that makes the most vulnerable Americans feel less safe.  Real politicians like myself, career politicians, we have certain principles.  If it comes down to a political victory or sticking with our principals, we're going to stick with our principals every time."
"Thanks, governor."
"Thanks for having me, Shawn."
"I can't believe I voted for that asshole," Evans said.  He set down the glass jar he'd been working at and clicked at his computer.  He brought up the riot feeds.  Things were heating up in New England.  A mom had formed up on the outskirts of Boston and was marching out into the suburbs.  Many of the marchers carried Choppers, the AK-47 based pistols they seemed to favor.  Evans looked from the compact Choppers on the screen to his ready rack on the wall.  There was a full length rifle there.  That, and the carbine his nephew was cleaning made two, but neither one were AK-styled weapons.  Evans decided he needed to fix that.
"What is: S-E-R-E?" Kyle asked.
Evans shifted his attention from the weapons back to his nephew.  "What?"
"S-E-R-E?" Kyle asked again.  He pointed to another decorated paddle on the wall.  This one had a yellow and green badge on the blade.  The word SERE was emblazoned on the top.
"It is not S-E-R-E," Evans said.  "You pronounce it as one word.  Sere.  Like the Sears store, only without the last S on the end."
"What's a Sears store?" Kyle asked.
"Okay.  Just sear then, without the last S on the end.  Like the sear on a gun."
Kyle threaded a patch into the eyelet on a cleaning rod.  He dropped the cleaning rod down the barrel of the rifle and pulled it out the other end.  Kyle asked his uncle, "So what is it?"
"What's what?"
"Sear, or Sears, or SERE, or whatever it is?"
Evans turned away from the monitor and looked at his nephew.  "SERE is an acronym.  It stands for Survival Evasion Resistance and Escape.  It was one of the military schools I went to."
"And they taught you survival?  Like how to survive in the woods and make fires?  Things like that?"
"Yeah," Evans said.  "Fire starting and eating bugs and things like that.  Mostly they teach you what to do if you get captured by the enemy."
"You mean like, taken prisoner?"  Kyle asked.
"Yeah," Evan said.  "Exactly.  Taken prisoner."  Evans popped the top of his cola and took a drink.  He went on.
"They teach you things like how to avoid question.  Tricks the guards might try to pull on you.  Ways to try and escape."
Kyle ran another patch down the muzzle of the carbine.  He asked, "How do they do that?"
"They make a fake prison.  With fake guards and the whole deal.  Then they throw you inside and put you to work.  It is pretend, kind of.  But it is not.  It is enough."
"Sounds like a cool school.  Did it work?"
"What do you mean?"
"Did they teach you all that stuff?  How to escape and all that?"
"No. I mean yeah.  Yes, SERE taught me all that stuff,"  Evans said.  "But what SERE school really taught me is not to be taken prisoner."
Kyle's phone rang.  He set down the carbine parts he was cleaning and fished the phone out of his pocket.  He glanced at the face of the phone, then looked up at his uncle.
"It's my mom."
Evans nodded.  Kyle answered the phone.  Evans turned his attention back to the weapon hanging on his wall.  He'd put almost all his other guns into storage, he figured he'd better do the same with that one.  He took another sip of his drink and then realized that by the tone of the conversation, something was going on between his sister and his nephew.  He turned from the wall.  Kyle was standing up, put staring wide eyed at his uncle.  His face was pale.
Without speaking, Evans mouthed the question, "What is it?"
Kyle let his arm and the phone drop to his side.  He spoke.  His words came out shakily.
"I had a friend back home named Jake.  He went to one of the protests on the 4th of July.  He got shot.
"He's dead."


"You don't understand," Mary said.  Kyle had gone to his room and now Evans spoke with his sister over the phone.  She went on.
"California passed a new law.  When we sell the car, the proceeds from the sale have to go into escrow for 90 days before we can access it.  It’s that way with any private car sales."
"So, sell it to a dealer."
"It’s the same if I sell it to a dealer.  90 days before we can access the money."
"It is like an exit tax.  They don't want anybody leaving the state.  Go and park the car at the Oakland Bart Station.  Leave the keys inside.  Problem solved."
"Evans.  That's wrong, we couldn't do that.  Besides they passed another law.  If a car gets stolen and is used in any crime, the State of California will hold the owner of the car criminally and civilly liable.  We'd be in more trouble than whoever stole the car.  The person who stole the car could even sue us for damages.  Besides, we've got to sell it.  We need the money."
"The laws they're coming up with are meant to keep you in California.  You aren't going to get out of there without bending them at least a little," Evans said.  Then he asked, "It’s a  beat-up hatchback,  not a Ferrari, how much could it be worth."
"We need the money," Kyle's mom said.  "Our place is back underwater.  The housing market here in the Bay Area just crashed again."
"Of course it did.  Too many people are leaving the state, and nobody wants to move to San Francisco."
"And all our other bills have gone up this summer; the energy bill, recycling assessments, the garbage, sewer…  We have three different water bills we have to pay now: a city bill, a county bill, and a state bill.  And all the billing is done on a progressive scale, so the more money you earn the more you have to pay.  And then there are these monthly state assessments on Inclusivity and Gender Security, and we still have the High-Speed Rail assessment we have to pay.  When we sent Kyle out there, we thought in six months we'd have the money to leave.  Keith and I can't get ahead."
"You aren't meant to get ahead," Evans said.  "You're meant to stay there and get fleeced with taxes and keep the system churning along."  He paused, thought, and then said.  "Just go."
"What?"
"You heard me.  Just go.  Throw whatever you can into your car and just go.  Drive out here.  You can live with me.  I got space.  Come out here.  Once you get here you can figure out the house and all the rest."
"Evans, we couldn't."
"Do it tonight.  The longer you stay the harder it will be to leave." Evans said.
"I don't know if our car will even make it that far."
"Go as far as it'll take you.  I'll head west, meet you and make sure you make it all the way.  The thing is you should just go.  Now."
Mary hemmed and hawed.  "But what about our jobs?  What about our friends."
"Your jobs would lay both of you off tomorrow morning if they thought it would make the stock price move a fraction of a basis point.  You don't owe them anything.  And as for friends, you don't have any friends out there.  Those friends will sell you out to the state in a heartbeat for nothing more than vanity and the pride of doing it."
"Evans," she admonished.
"Remember all the tattle tails back during the recent public health event?"
"You're talking conspiracy theories again," Mary said.
Evans didn't respond to that right away.  He let the conversation pause long enough to be awkward.  He did it to make a point.
"Sis?"
"Yes?"
"You sent your only child out here to live with me for a reason.  We aren't living in a time when we can dismiss anything as a conspiracy theory.  Your window of opportunity is closing.  Soon it will be closed and when that happens there will be no getting out."


Kyle sat on his bed quietly, not doing anything but listening to the phone conversation in the other room.  Not long after his uncle hung up, he knocked on Kyle's door and opened it.  He looked Kyle up and down once.
"Meet me outside on the back porch."
Slowly, not really wanting to, Kyle got up.

The night sky was clear.  A breeze swept across the hills, cool, not cold, and just enough to rustle the trees.  Kyle sat down in a wooden Adirondack chair and stared into the night.  In the woods nearby an owl hooted.  After a few minutes, his uncle came out with two drinks.  He handed one to Kyle and then sat down beside him.
Kyle sniffed his drink.  His nose crinkled.  "What's this?"
"Bourbon and cola.  Heavy on the cola and light on the bourbon."
"What are you drinking?"
"Just regular cola for me," Evans said.
"You don't drink, do you?"
"I'll have a drink twice a year.  Once on November 10th, because that's the Marine Corps birthday and that's what Marines do.  I'll also have a drink or two on August 3rd."  Evans didn't explain why August 3rd.  Instead, he asked, "You want to talk about your friend Jake?"
"I've had booze before," Kyle said.
Evans grunted.  Then added, "Maybe not like this though."
Kyle sipped at the drink his uncle gave him.  It was sweeter than he expected, but with a kick after.  He almost coughed but held it back.  For some reason, he felt it was very important not to cough in front of his uncle.  He suspected it was pride.  He felt coughing would make him look weak.
"Were you and this Jake close?" Evans asked.  Kyle shook his head.
"We hung out every so often.  We knew each other from school.  But we weren't super close."
"But close enough, maybe," Evans offered.  "Close enough.  You obviously feel something."
"Jake and I were texting each other on the 4th of July.  He told me he was going to one of the protests.  He made it sound like he was going to some big party.  Like, it was going to be this big fun time.  And then…  mom said he got shot."
"Who shot him?" Evans asked.
"My mom says they are still investigating."
"If they are still investigating, that means it wasn't the cops.  Probably one of the protesters.  Too many of those choppers floating around, too few people showing those weapons the respect they require.  If they don't know who it was by now, they'll probably never know."  Evans sipped his own drink.  He let the pause stretch out.  It was natural.  Not awkward.  The breeze blew and the owl continued its hoots and the night sky stretched on endlessly.  Evans asked, "Did you try and talk him out of it?"
"I told him to be careful," Kyle said.  "I was worried.  After watching the riots with you all summer, I knew they weren't just street parties.  I knew they were dangerous.  And I…"  Kyle trailed off.  His uncle finished his thought.
"And now you feel guilty because you didn't talk him out of going,"  Evans said.  Kyle knew from his uncle's somber tone that the old man knew exactly how he felt.
"I should have tried to talk him out of it.  I didn't even try.  I knew what was happening at those stupid things.  They weren't parties.  But I didn't try.  I didn't try at all."
"Maybe you could have talked him out of it.  Maybe you could have done something different, and he'd still be here.  Maybe.  Maybe not.  There's no telling what might have been.  No certainties and no guarantees, not even if you could go back and do it over.  All I can tell you for sure is that he's gone and you’re here and alive.  If that hurts, that's good.  It means you are a good person.  Only a good person would feel those pangs of guilt."
"That guilt, that wondering if you might have said something or done something differently and they'd still be here, that kind of thing is not easy to live with.  But you must live with it.  You must live with it and keep on and live your life.  It sounds trite, the idea that you need to get on with your life; that the dead would want you to go on living, but it is true.  If you are going to go on living, then what are you going to do?  Let the guilt will eat you up and destroy you if you let it. Go down in some circle of despair?  That would be easy, maybe even comforting in some strange way.  But it isn't helpful.  And if there is some divine plan for our lives, some reason why you are alive and others aren't, then it is because there is something you were meant to do.  Some act you were meant to perform.  You have to keep living and find the things, or even just that one thing worth living for."
"You knew people who died, right?  In the war?"
"Yeah," Evans said.  "I was in a few bad spots."
"A lot of people?" Kyle asked.
"Too many," Evans said.  "Too many, I think that's the only honest way to answer that question."
"Does it go away?" Kyle asked.
"The guilt?"
"Yeah, the guilt."
"No," Evans said.  "It fades in frequency, but not in intensity.  Not in my experience.  It'll go away for a while, but it never goes away, not completely…  I wouldn't want it to though.  The pain and the guilty are part of remembering the people.  If losing the pain meant losing the memory of who they were and our time together, I'd keep the pain.  I'd consider that a fair trade."
Kyle looked his uncle up and down.  "That's why you don't drink," Kyle said.  He said it as a statement, a conclusion he'd come to rather than as a question he was asking.  Evans nodded.
"Why August 3rd," Kyle asked.  But Evans shook his head no.
"I'm not ready to tell you that story.  Not yet."
Neither Kyle nor Evans spoke after that.  They just sat on the porch, drinking their drinks, and enjoying the night.  The breeze was cool, and the stars were bright, and if the world was a cruel and tragic place, at least in this small corner of it, on this night, there was some goodness to it all.  And if not goodness, maybe Kyle received some wisdom from his uncle.

Before he went to bed, Evans went to his office and logged into his computer.  He went into a secure messaging program and sent the following:

Hey,   I need a big favor.  I need to borrow your truck one of these days.

The next morning, he got the following reply:

Anything you need Frankenstein.  Just let me know when and where and I'll sneak it over.

The Texas Hill Country.  The end of July.

Evans twisted the knob on the stove and set the tea kettle to boil.  He had his computer on the kitchen counter.  For Evans, the news was an all-consuming thing now.  He didn't want to watch it, yet, he found himself hungering for information.  Any information.  The more information he had, the better he'd be able to protect what was important.  Evans glanced out the kitchen window, looking for Kyle who was running the trail.  Kyle was nowhere to be seen.  Evans turned back to the program on the computer screen.
The mood in the studio was friendly to the point of gleeful.  The lighting was bright and cheery.  The governor of California wore a jacket, but no tie.  His advisors felt wearing a shirt with an unbuttoned collar would contribute to the relaxed mood of the interview and play well with certain demographics.  The hostesses, a team of middle-aged women with long careers in media and entertainment, simply gushed over the governor.
"Now, governor," the lead interviewer began.  "You've always been a strong advocate for forward-thinking causes, and California is leading the country when it comes to progressive reforms…"
"And the world really," one of the other ladies interjected.
"Yes, yes.  Leading the world, really.  You've done so much throughout your political career already.  But this new multi-state reparations initiative you created is what true political leadership looks like.  What can you tell us about it?"
The Governor of California smiled.  He was all shine and polish.  "Thank you so much, Diane.  It truly is groundbreaking, and I am so proud California and Californians showed the leadership the Golden State is famous for.  We call it the United Progress Pact for Reparations and Equity, or UPPARE for short.  And it truly is groundbreaking."  The governor pronounced the acronym, UPPARE, as 'Up Air.'
"The UPPARE is a multi-state commitment to make whole those among us who have been marginalized and victimized by this country's long-held power structures.  Racism.  Sexism.  Genderism.  Colonialism.  Christian Norming.  Patriarchy.  Capitalism.  Childism.  Now, reparations are nothing new, especially to Californians like me.  But what the UPPARE does is it establishes a model for standardizing reparations across the nation.  Nine other governors and I signed this pact yesterday and this pact is a commitment to all victim-persons.  It says, 'We see you.  We see your pain, and we will make you whole.'"
"Now what can you tell us about these reparations, governor, because it is not just about slavery, is it?"
"Absolutely not, Anna.  The sins of slavery are just one patch in a quilt work of reparations.  As I said, the intent here is to make whole the victims of all the United States' power structures.  So, it isn't just the descendants of slaves who are eligible for reparations.  The program will also make payments to the descendants of American aggression from the Mexican-American war and the Spanish-American war.  It will include to those who have been historically marginalized based on their gender identifies and sexual identities, especially those who may be minor attracted…"
"Governor, I read payments will also be made to those suffering from substance abuse?"
"That's right.  The governors of the alliance have taken a bold and progressive view toward substance abuse.  We are making payments to those who were unfairly victimized by the war on drugs.  And not just those suffering from addiction, but those who were unfairly and inhumanely incarnated for substance criminalization.  All those people were doing was simply providing legitimate and necessary entertainment and relaxation products to the public.  UPPARE will give the victims of substance criminalization not only the financial means to support themselves as they pursue their journeys, but it will also allow them to make those journeys with a sense of pride and dignity.
"Look, since 1619, our country has been a very hurtful and exploitive place.  I and the other governors who signed the UPPARE recognize that.  Now we are doing what's right for those marginalized voters and giving them the payouts they deserve."
"Well let's talk about those payouts governor.  Just how much money are we talking about?"  It was then that the hostess shifted towards the in-studio audience and addressed them.  "Am I right?  Am I right?  Show us the money!  Show us the money!  Am I right?"  The audience broke into cheers and applause.  The hostess raised her arms and began to dance and gyrate in her seat.  She sang, "Show us that mon-eee!  Show us that mon-ee!"
The governor smiled and laughed along good-naturedly until the cheering died down enough that he could talk.
"The other governors and I decided it was only fair that the victims should be brought up to a level on par with the victimizers.  That's only right and it is what equity demands.  So, the reparations payments will be no less than the median salary for a working family in the United States."
"And that's the minimum?"
"Yes, that's the minimum.  Naturally, the entire program is built on a progressive scale, so those who were victimized to a greater degree will receive a greater benefits package."
"And this program is available for persons who are making non-traditional documentation journeys as well, correct?"
"That is 100% correct, Anna.  This program is aimed at all stakeholders regardless of where they are on their documentation journey.  At the outset, the other governors and I wanted a program that would transcend any backward-looking concepts of citizenship.  This program is available to all, regardless of documentation status."
"Now governor, in the past, reparations payments were based on the number of years a victim lived in the state of California.  Has that changed?"
"An excellent question Joy.  I'm so glad you asked it.  We've changed the residency requirements for reparations.  We now know that the past residency requirement was unfair and especially disrespectful to the unhoused.  Under the UPPARE, a reparations applicant will be qualified for payment the second they step into one of the participating states, no matter where they come from."
"Even if they are coming from another country?"
"Absolutely," the governor said with a smile.  "Even if they are from another country."
"And ten states have agreed to this?"
"That's right Diane," the governor said.  "Ten states.  And we hope that's just the start.  We are committed to the belief that the UPPARE will be the model for a federal reparations program.  And I call on other governors and congress to show courage and take up this challenge.  Universal reparations are an obligation that the American taxpayers owe the entire world."
"Well, that brings us to the real question.  We've got a presidential election coming up just a few months from now, and I'm sure somebody is going to be re-e-lect-ted."  The hostess sang that last word out and the in-studio audience broke into cheers and shouts of joyous agreement again.
The hostess continued.  "But it is never too early to think about the election after this one.  Are we going to see you run for president in four years?  Because I have to say governor, we'd all just love that.  We'd love to see you in the White House."
"Diane, I'm just here to serve the public.  Being a humble servant to the people is all I ever wanted to do.  Right now, I'm content to serve all persons in the great state of California.  But if the voting persons of the United States want me to seek out the highest office in the land, how could I possibly say no?"

"Oh, for fuck's sake," Evans swore.  With one hand he turned off the computer feed.  With the other hand, he poured steaming tea into a glass.  He spied movement out of the corner of his eye.  His head spun to the window just in time to see Kyle emerge from the Oak and Elm trees and shuffle head-down towards the house.

It was early.  Kyle hadn't even eaten breakfast yet.  Every morning began with a run down the trail to the road and back, and now Evans had him running with a weighted pack on his back.  And while the hour was early, that counted for little in Texas in July.  Kyle was soaked through with sweat.  His chest heaved.  Even so, he didn't head for the air-conditioned house.  Instead, he headed over to the workshop.
There were still impressions in the ground marking where the stacked bales of barbed wire were.  The bales were gone though.  Kyle looked left and right.  He saw no bales of wire.  He toed the ground, gently kicking the dirt and erasing the rings the heavy bales left behind.

"You want to make breakfast, or should I?"  Evans asked when Kyle entered the house.  Kyle didn't answer.  He didn't even look at his uncle.  He stormed upstairs, head down, moving with an angry energy.
Evans watched his nephew disappear upstairs.  Then, he sighed heavily and poured more sugar into his tea.

"Where's the rifle?" Kyle asked when he came back downstairs.  He was cleaned and dressed and ready for the day.  His question was pointed.
"What rifle?" Evans asked.  He knew what rifle his nephew was referring to, but he wanted to slow the conversation down and see where this was going.
"The long rifle.  The full-length one.  It is not in the office anymore.  There's a hammer hanging on the rack where the rifle should be.  The Africa Carbine is on the rack but the other one is gone now.  And where did all the barbed wire go?
"Barbed wire?" Evans asked.
"The barbed wire!" Kyle fumed.  "There was a mountain of barbed wire out by the workshop and it is not there now.  The rifle in your office is gone.  All your other guns are gone.  Where is everything going?"
"The barbed wire I moved out deeper into the property where I have plans to use it.  The rifle I put into storage with the other guns." Evans said.
"Why?" Kyle asked.  He was equal parts mad and exasperated.  "Why would you put the other rifle into storage?  We might need it."
"We won't need it," Evans answered evenly.  He knew his teenage nephew was about to pop.  He knew it was best to maintain his composure.
"Everything is some vague ass answer with you."  Kyle pointed at the front door.  "Just like with that pipe out there with the flares inside.  I ask you what it is for, and you say, 'It is for emergencies.'  What does that mean?  Everything is like that with you.  Everything that's important anyway."
"And why am I running down this trail every morning?  I know the trail.  I know where it goes.  I know how to get back.  You aren't even timing me or anything.  You just have me running around while you drink your tea.  I'm not some little kid.  I want to know what's going on."
Kyle was upset.  His hands were clenched into trembling fists, and his face was flushed red.  Evans calmly sipped his tea.  Then he spoke.
"As far as running down the trail goes, let me pass on to you a bit of wisdom: 'Amateurs practice until they get it right.  Professionals practice until they can't get it wrong.'"
Kyle's face scrunched up.  "Great.  Another vague answer.  What does that even mean?"
"It means if I send you down that trail, I want to know with absolute certainty you are going to get to the end."
"In case the riots come here?" Kyle asked.
"Any number of tragedies could come our way.  The riots are just one of them."
"Don’t give me that," Kyle said.  "My parents sent me out here because the whole city was burning down around them.  My friend Jake is dead.  You're glued to that computer screen every night watching the rioters destroy everything.  And they aren't even doing their thing in the cities anymore.  They're getting bused out into the suburbs  They could be coming here tonight for all we know."
"Maybe they are.  So what?"
"So why are you packing all the guns away?  We're probably going to need them."
"Need them for what?  Shooting the rioters?  Shooting the Vanguard when they come storming through the gate.  Is that what you want?"
"Maybe.  Yeah."
"Let me remind you that anybody caught defending themselves goes to jail.  The rioters won't go to jail.  They can burn.  They can assault.  They can murder.  Nothing is going to happen to them.  But regular people?  People like you and me?  We will go to jail.  We will go to jail.  We'll get charged, we'll get convicted, and after they take every penny we ever had and ever will have, we'll spend the rest of our lives in prison.  That's what happens when people like us defend ourselves from the PVD.  That's what those guns will get us.  And I'm not spending the rest of my life in prison."
"So what?  Do we just give up?  Let the PVD burn our house down?  Let them kill us?"
Evans sipped his tea again before responding.
"You know who Joan of Arc was?"
"Yeah.  She was like, some lady with a sword, back in the time of knights."
"She was a French girl about seventeen years old.  A major figure in the Hundred Years War.  You know anything about the Hundred Years War?"
Kyle shook his head no.  Evans smiled sadly.
"It was fought in the Middle Ages, like you said, between the French and the English.  The English were trying to take over France.  Joan was French, and she fought to stop them.  You know what happened to her?"
Kyle searched for an answer.  He said without any confidence, "She won the war?"
"No," Evans answered.  "She wasn't around for the end of the war.  Up until Joan came around, the English were winning the war.  They are winning these big battles and seemed unbeatable.  Part of the problem for the French was not everybody in France thought of themselves as French.  Some thought of themselves as Burgundians, or Bohemians, or whatever.  They thought of themselves as unique groups.  They thought the war might pass them by, or that they could make deals with the English to stay out of it.
"Then along comes this girl, Joan of Arc.  She's got the charisma to be a real leader.  She says that God communicates directly to her and people believe her.  The king of France believes her.  She leads a force and scores a major victory for the French.  Things start turning around."
"Good," Kyle said.
"Kind of," Evans said.  "Thing is, Joan, she gets captured.  The English ain't too happy with this French girl that's kicking their asses, so they burn her at the stake."
"Shit," Kyle said.  "That isn't good."
"That isn't good," Evans agreed.  "Especially for the English.  You see, the French people didn't like the fact that their girl got burned alive.  They got very upset, and they started thinking about things.  They weren't happy with the English, or what the English were doing in their country.  They weren't happy that the English were burning French people at the stake.  They stopped seeing themselves as just being part of these small little fiefdoms.  They started thinking of themselves as French.  They started seeing the war as something they needed to get involved in.  No more deals.  No more hoping the storm passes by.  Time to fight.  About twenty years after Joan is burned alive, the English are out of France and the war is over.
"I know you want to ask what the point is, so I'm going to go ahead and tell you.  The point is that a bunch of people are going to have to get burned at the stake before everybody wakes up, unites, and puts a stop to the PVD and all their nonsense."
"And you don't want to be the guy who gets burned at the stake," Kyle said.  Evans shook his head no and corrected his nephew.
"No, I don't want you getting burned at the stake.  Your mom wanted me to keep you safe from these riots.  That means keeping you safe from the mob.  It also means making sure you don't get caught up in them, either for or against.  That's what I'm going to do.
"You're young Kyle.  You've got your whole life ahead of you.  You don't know what a gift that is or how lucky you are.  Me?  I'm an old man looking back.  I see you and I see all the endless opportunities and the roads not taken.  I can't go back.  All I can do is make certain that you can go forward.  I'm not going to let you get caught up in the PVD and these riots.  I'm not going to let the Vanguard touch a hair on your head.  And I'm not going to let any lawyer or politician, or the system burn you at the stake.  That ain't going to happen.  I'm not going to let that happen.
"As far as that rifle goes, don't worry.  If the situation calls for it, we won't be left wanting for firepower."
"But how can I know that?" Kyle asked.
"Kyle," Evans said.  "We're at a point where you're just going to have to take a few things on faith."

Later that morning they drove out to New Fredericksburg to pick up some customized cargo racks for George's motorcycle.  Now, they were heading back home.  John rode up front.  Evans drove.  Kyle and George sat in the backseat.  Wheelchair rock played on the radio.  Rolling hills and barbed wire fences on mesquite posts blurred past the windows.
"Thanks for inviting me along, George," John said from the passenger seat.  "The misses, all she was up for today was watching her tv shows.  It was nice to get out of the house."
"You should get your truck fixed," Evans said.  "A truck that doesn't run is nothing but a liability.  Especially so in times like these."
Kyle eyed his uncle from the backseat.  Their argument that morning, short as it was, had put his uncle in a sour mood.  He hadn't said much during the trip.  When Evans had spoken, his words were sparse, and his comments pointed.
"Well, I just want to live vicariously through George here while I can.  About the closest I'll ever get to a worldwide motorcycle trip is picking up parts for George's bike."
"I'd get that truck fixed all the same," Evans said.  "The way things are going, you might need that truck to get away somewhere.  And quick."
"Where would I go?"  John asked.  "Even if the PVD came marching down our street, I couldn't get the wife out of the house  She might as well be glued to the couch there, watching those stupid shows all damned day.  She ain't the same woman I married."
The truck hit a bump.  The frame creaked and nobody knew how to respond to John's comment, so nobody did.  On the radio, one old-man rock song ended and another one began.  A woman's voice called out from the speakers.
"You could be my Silver Spring…"
Without looking, Evans reached over and flicked a finger into the radio, hard. The radio shut off.
"Not a Fleetwood Mac fan, I see," John said with a smile.  Evans didn't smile back.  He didn't respond either.  Only the noises of the road filled the interior of the car for the next few miles.
A billboard loomed ahead.  Kyle leaned his head over to get a better view of it.  The billboard read:
Your Parents Don't Understand You.  But We Do.
Transition Moms Will Keep Your Secret
Transition Moms Will Keep You Safe
Begin Your Transition Journey Today

Pictured on the billboard were three middle-aged women with fake smiles and wildly dyed hair.  They stood behind three androgynous children, beringed hands resting on the children's shoulders in a show of motherly support.
When they drove past the billboard, Kyle turned to look at it from the opposite direction.  On the back side, a graffiti artist had drawn a bearded old man with spray paint.  A cartoon balloon out of the old man's mouth read, "You can't stop what's coming."
Kyle turned and looked at his uncle in the rearview mirror.  His jaw was set.  His eyes were clear.  He looked like a man who was searching for something on the horizon, and when he found it, he'd destroy it.

They were about a mile away from the turn into the development when Kyle had a premonition.  George and John were discussing a subject too grown up to be interesting.  Evans drove with a focus and intensity beyond what was necessary for normal traveling.  It was like his uncle was driving back in time, looking for roadside bombs again in this foreign country or that.
Kyle sat in the backseat accompanied by his thoughts.  He felt something hovering about them all, something violent.  It was like right before a spring rain, when all at once the plants and the grass seem greener, and the air takes on a new smell.  Or on an early summer evening, when the sky is clear save for dark clouds on the distant horizon, and you can hear the faint rumblings of the approaching storm and feel the change in the air pressure in your chest.
John's phone rang.  John squirmed in his seat and fished through his pockets for the phone.
"You find a manual yet?" John asked.  It took Kyle a moment to realize John was speaking to him, and another moment to discern what the man was asking.
"We're still looking for something with a stick shift," Kyle said.
John found his phone.  He glanced at the screen.  "Dale," he said to everybody and nobody.  Then to Kyle, he said, "They ain't as easy to find as they used to be."
"I'm working on it," Evans said.  His eyes darted back and forth along the road and the shoulders, scanning for things that weren't there.  John's phone kept ringing.  "You gonna answer that?"
"I'll let it go to voicemail," John said.
Kyle felt sick to his stomach.  The phone stopped ringing.
"They're only rare in America," George said.  "You go traveling around the world, you better be able to drive a manual."  Something buzzed and George fumbled for his pocket.
"That's the idea," Kyle said.  His words had no enthusiasm.  He watched George take out the phone and look at the screen.  He could taste the bad tidings, sour and acidic.  He knew who was calling.
"Dale," George announced.
"You better answer it," Evans said.
"You think it's bad news?" John asked.
"If he's trying this hard to get a hold of us, it ain't good news."  George's phone kept buzzing.  "Answer the phone, please," Evans said.  He spoke like a man about to lose all patience.
George answered.  There was the typically perfunctory back and forth.  Then George said, "I'm putting you on speaker."
Evans used the rearview mirror to look at Kyle.  His nephew's face was grave.  Evans flicked the blinker on and pulled onto the shoulder.
George held out his phone so everybody could hear.  "We got you on speaker Dale.   What is it?"
Dale cursed.  Then he asked, "Where have you been all day?"
"Getting parts for George.  What is it, Dale?" Evans asked.
"Oh.  Oh, man.  I forgot you were on the road today.  It is bad.  It is so bad," Dale said.
"Dale, you called us.  What is it?"
"Out in Raleigh Durham.  All those homeowner types they arrested after the confrontation with the PVD?  The Raleigh Durham Executioners?"
"Yeah?  What about them Dale?"
"They were all killed his morning on their way to the courthouse,"  Dale said.  He added, "A mob surrounded their transport bus and burned them alive."
Evans turned, leaned over his seat, and looked at Kyle right in the eye.  He didn't say anything.  He didn't have to.

They all twisted their bodies and craned their necks inside of Evans pickup to watch the news on George's phone.  They hadn't even taken the time to go home.  They sat on the side of the road where Evans had pulled off, watching.  A reporter offered commentary.
"We're outside the federal courthouse in Raleigh North Carolina where a bus transporting the Raleigh Durham Executioners for their court appearance was set on fire during a first amendment celebration earlier today."
Behind the reporter sat the charred wreckage of a prison transport bus.  All the tires had burned away, leaving nothing but steel wires and black stains on the street.  Inside, blackened corpses could be seen leaning forward.
"The bus behind me was transporting the murderers known as the Raleigh Durham Executions for a court hearing this morning when it was stopped by a group of peaceful protestors celebrating their first amendment rights.  Investigators tell us that a second group of mega-fascist counter protestors showed us and that's when things turned violent."
The images on the phone screen cut away.  They were replaced by short clips of protestors in all black clashing with masked counter protestors dressed in blue polo shirts and khaki pants.
The images cut again.  Now the anchor and the reporter on the scene were side by side.  The anchor asked if other prisoners were on the bus.
"No.  This bus was only transporting the murders known as the Raleigh-Durham Executioners.  As you may remember, these were firearm perpetrated executions of peaceful protestors in suburban North Carolina."
"Brian, how did the protestors and counter protestors know to expect the bus?"
"A spokesperson for the District Attorney's office says it is standard practice to transport high profile prisoners from the jail to the courthouse by bus.  And that is also standard practice to publish the time and date, and route of such transports.  Making the prisoner transport schedule public is a necessary safety requirement."
"Brian, did any of the Raleigh Durham executioners escape?"
"No Dan.  All the prisoners were shackled to their seats.  By the time firefighters arrived, it was too late."
"What do we know about these counter-protestors?"
"Officers are still investigating who these counter-protestors might be, Dan, but they believe they might have links to white supremacy and mega-fascism.  What we do know from witnesses on the scene is that the counter protesters definitely started the bus fire."
The images cut back again to the masked counter-protestors, in their khaki pants and polo shirts.
"Why would the counter protestors set fire to the bus?" John asked.
"They wouldn't," Evans grumbled.  Kyle wondered what it must have been like, to be shackled to the seat of the bus, as the whole thing burned up all around you.
"Brian, were any law enforcement personnel injured in this act of domestic terrorism?"
"No Dan. Thankfully, all of the law enforcement here will make it home safe tonight.
"Turn it off," Evans said.  He started the truck up.  Twisted around to look over his shoulder, he made sure there wasn't any traffic.  Then he pulled out onto the road and made a U-turn.  The truck tires kicked up gravel, then squealed when the hit the black top.
"Where are we going?" George asked.
"Back into town.  There's something I need to get," Evans answered.

Ten minutes later they were parked infront of a pool supply store.
"Wait here," Evans said.  They waited in the truck.  He went inside.  The minutes ticked by.  They could all see Evans through the store's front windows.  He stalked through the store, grabbing this and that.  He'd set various finds on the checkout counter, then stalk back into the aisles to search for new items.  The pile on the counter steadily grew.
John asked, "Kyle, does your uncle have a pool?"
"No," Kyle answered.
"Is he thinking about getting a pool?"
"No.  Not as far as I know."
"Then what is he buying all those pool chemicals for?"
Kyle looked through the store window.  His uncle was at the checkout counter.  He had several plastic buckets full of various pool chemicals at his feet.  More, smaller containers of chemicals were all over the counter.  Kyle thought about it, then shrugged, and answered.
"Sir, I think we're at a point where you're just going to have to take a few things on faith."

Interlude: The Lawyers #2.  Austin Texas.

Greg sat in a coffee shop, inside the lobby of a federal building in downtown Austin.  He was waiting for Teddy.  Greg had a pretentious coffee in his hand.  A daytime talk show played on the TV.  The TV hostess had long, curly blonde hair that couldn't possibly be her own.  Her guest was a middle-aged woman who looked insufferable.  The guest began her practiced pitch.

"As we all know Windy, the PVD are out there daily, fighting for the rights of all persons.  Nobody has done more to advance freedom and true democracy than the PVD.  And that's what makes these mega-extremist attacks on the PVD so hurtful and so triggering.  Whether we are talking about what happened in Oklahoma, or what happened in Raleigh-Durham, these ultra-vigilante attacks are a real threat to our democracy."
The host interrupted.  "Well, I don't think the Raleigh-Durham executioners will be causing trouble again any time soon."
"You're right about that, Windy," the guest said.  Then she and the hostess had a good laugh over the people who were burned alive, shackled to a bus outside the courthouse.  Even Greg thought that was funny enough to warrant a sensible chuckle between sips.  The guest continued.
"What the PVD needs now more than ever are allies.  These heroes need allies who say, 'We see you, we stand with you, and we will support everything and anything you do.'"
"And you brought something today to show our audience how they can do that?"
"Yes Windy, I did."  The hostess held up a plastic yard sign, like the ones politicians use when running for office.  It was painted in the colors of the PVD.  A list of affirmative statements ran down its length.  Windy, the hostess, made gushing sounds like she was looking at a cute baby or a puppy.
"By putting these signs up in your home or business, you show the PVD you are an ally.  You show the PVD you are aligned, that you are a friend, and that you can be trusted.  You show the PVD that you are an advocate for Progress."
"That is such a great idea, and so important, especially in these times of mega-extreme veteran-vigilantes.  I feel like, if somebody has this sign in their yard it will really resonate with the PVD.  This is a way to really make yourself seen in the appropriate social and cultural spaces that we all occupy."
"It sure is, Windy.  And our non-profit has so much more for your viewers than just yard signs.  We have stickers you can put on your car.  We have wristbands you can wear when you are at work or out shopping.  But most importantly, we have these cute little buttons your children can wear to school because nobody is too young to prove they are a political ally."
"Oh, those are so cute.  And that is such a great idea.  You are right, children are never too young to advocate for the correct political and social causes."
"Absolutely Windy.  I want all the viewers to think about their children.  Their children are seen in the cultural and social spaces we all share.  They are seen by their teachers.  They are seen by school administrators.  They are seen by coaches and librarians and other children.  They could even be seen by the PVD.  The space children occupy is just so important and that's why every parent should buy these buttons for their children."
"Now, let's talk about these signs again for our TV audience.  How do our viewers buy them and how much do they cost?"
The guest named the non-profit's website and then named the price.  Greg choked and almost spit out his coffee when he heard the figure.  "Oh my," he said.
"Well, that's a small price for families to pay to let the PVD know just how much they are appreciated for the hard work they do."

Teddy came into the coffee shop.  He looked left, looked right, saw Greg, and then headed straight for Greg's table.  Greg was smiling, still high off the extortion campaign taking place on national TV.  Teddy didn't smile.  Even when a handsome barista passed, arms full of intricate coffees, Teddy didn't smile.  His eyes tracked the young man, but he didn't smile.  When he sat down at the table, he heaved out a sigh.
Greg motioned towards the TV.  "That's a brilliant shakedown they’ve got going.  They're selling those signs for probably a few hundred times what it costs to print them.  They're going to make a mint.  Who even knows what the stickers and buttons will bring in."
Teddy looked from Greg to the TV and back again.  He still wasn't smiling.
"We got a problem," Teddy said.
"What?"
"That crap that’s all over the TV."
Greg pointed at the TV.  Teddy raised a hand and swept it horizontally through the air, dismissing the TV protection racket with a wave.  "No.  Not those shakedown artists and their signs.  I'm talking about the governors and the reparations.  The UPPARE."
"What's wrong with the UPPARE," Greg said.  "Those marginalized communities deserve big taxpayer dollars.  It’s only fair.  We've been talking about that since law school."
"It’s the right thing to do but the wrong time to do it.  Not now, not with the election months away." Greg looked puzzled.  Teddy explained.
"We've got too many people moving within the United States.  For years it's been manageable.  Unreliable voters moved to unreliable states.  That was fine.  It made the voting bases in our reliable states more ideologically pure.  We could get more done in those states.  In the swing states and the unreliable states, we still had our urban enclaves.  Our reliable voters there weren't leaving, and we had ways to dilute the power of the unreliable voting blocs: immigration, vote by mail, online voting, and the like.
"But with this UPPARE, all those reliable voters are leaving unreliable states.  They're leaving the mega states, but more importantly, they are fleeing the swing states.  We're losing all our footholds.  When the election comes around all our reliable voters will be living in California and just a handful of other states."
"C'mon," Greg said.  "That won't happen.  Those people are too poor and too lazy to move."
"They're too lazy not to move.  You can move to California today, show up at a reparation's office in Sacramento, claim you suffer from drug addiction, and you'll get paid the same amount that a working couple in Tennessee or some rustbelt dump-town makes.  All just to sit at home on a couch and be an addict."
"Never happen.  Those people never have the money to move."
"Greg, it is already happening.  We are seeing it.  People that can't come up with the money are getting it through non-profits.  Same thing as with the immigrants."
"Okay, Teddy.  But how many people could that be?"
"Enough Greg.  More than enough.  It’s a numbers game.  We're wargaming it out and we don't have the numbers.  That damned electoral college.  I knew we should have just declared this election was going to be a straight popular vote and ran with it.  It would have been a decade before the case got to the Supreme Court, if they even chose to hear it."
Greg shook his head, disbelieving.  He said, "What about the PVD?  Teddy, we've done some…"  he stopped, thought, then continued.  "We've done things the opposition party does not like.  If they get into power…?"
"They won't get into power.  As I said, if it comes down to it, there is a plan B we can execute.  We'd rather not do that.  It is a bit extreme.  But we will if we must.  We're not turning over power.  Not to them.  That is not going to happen."  Teddy looked at the TV.  His face twisted with disgust.  "Damn.  That stupid California Governor.  He got way out ahead of himself."
"He thinks he's preordained to be president."
"He is preordained to be president.  But that doesn't mean he's allowed to make any decisions.  The guy is nothing more than nice hair and a good body to hang the right clothes from.  He needs to stick with that."
"What about the election?" Greg asked.  "If we don't want to resort to plan b, what do we do about that?"
"For now, stay the course Greg," Teddy answered.  "The PVD will get active here in Texas soon.  Hopefully, some vigilante-veteran will show up and we can get you a high-profile prosecution case you can work with.  Get what you can out of anybody you arrest early on and don't worry about any courtrooms.  None of these cases will ever go to trial.  Raleigh-Durham is the model for how things are going to go."
Greg leaned forward.  He whispered to Teddy.  "Did we do that?"
"Don't ask questions you don't want me to answer.  And no, we didn't do that.  Ultra-Extremists did that.  Just like the media said."
Greg sat back in his chair.  His face sank.
"Don't look so dejected," Teddy said.  "This is what we need to do to protect our democracy.  True democracy.  What we're doing now is necessary, and it is nothing compared to what our political opponents might do if they get into power."
"That isn't it," Greg said.  "I'm comfortable with the morality of what we are doing.  It is for the greater good.  A higher moral cause.  What I'm worried about is somebody striking back."
"That's the whole idea, Greg.  Get some mega-vigilante type to attack the PVD."
"I don't mean strike back against the PVD.  I mean, strike back against us.  And I don't mean in a courtroom either.  What if somebody finds out what we're doing?  Or what if they find out about everything that happened in Raleigh?  What if somebody comes after us?  And I'm not talking about some stinky Walmart type or somebody in their parents' basement.  I'm talking about somebody who knows what they are doing.  What then?"
Teddy sliced horizontally through the air again, dismissing the idea.  "That's never happened before.  That didn't happen last time, not even with everything we did."
"Yeah.  But what if it happens this time?"
"It won't," Teddy said, and he made one last dismissive horizontal wave through the air.  "Those people, they never fight back.  The few that do stand up, we always knock them back down."

The Texas Hill Country.  August 1st.
Four days until D-Day.

Evans and Kyle spent all morning working on the yard, and they didn't talk much.  The Vanguard was active in Texas now.  One group seemed to be centered around Dallas.  A second group around Houston.  A third group was operating out of Austin.  That group had hit Neuheim the night before and Esperanza del Rio the night before that.  Neither was far from where they stood now.
In the middle of the day, when the heat was up, they stopped for lunch.  After lunch, Kyle lounged in his room while Evans went to his workshop.
When afternoon ended and the evening began, and the air cooled and the sun began its descent, they returned to the yard, clearing brush and scraping clean tracts of dirt around the house.  And when the sun was nothing more than an orange semi-circle on the western horizon, they stopped for the day.  Evans stood and surveyed the work they'd done.  Kyle surveyed his uncle.
"That's what a pile of brush looks like," Evans said.  Kyle nodded.  The brush pile of dead wood was as high as a man at the shoulder and over 100 feet long from end to end.  It flanked a long section of the driveway that ran up to the house.
"Are we going to burn it?" Kyle asked.
"Not now.  Not with a burn ban in effect.  I think we'd be alright if we did though.  Nothing around that brush pile in any direction but twenty feet of bare dirt.  Unlikely a fire there would do anything but burn itself out."
"Let's check out the hole," Kyle said.
Evans said, "Okay."
They walked over to the hole they began earlier that summer.  The hole was bigger now.  Deeper and longer but not wider.  The sides were shored up with used pallets and plywood.  Kyle and Evans had piled up the broken rocks and loose dirt outside the hole and formed them into a parapet with embrasures.  Kyle stood at the edge for a moment, then jumped down inside.  He leaned against the edge of the hole.  A spied a hunk of limestone.  It was one of the pieces they broke apart with the expanding grout.  Kyle spotted the seam of one of the boreholes and traced his finger along it.  Bits of grout flaked off.  Then Kyle  sighted through one of the embrasures towards the long driveway.
"This ain't for brushfires, is it?"  Kyle asked.
"It is not," his uncle said.  He dropped into the hole beside Kyle.
"From here, we can observe the entire length of the driveway.  The slope of the ground and the way we formed the dirt outside the hole make it hard for anybody on the driveway to tell this is more than just another piece of Texas.  If somebody on the road were to take a knee or drop down completely, a man up here could still see them.  Anybody caught on the drive wouldn't have a good way to run.  They could keep going up to the house.  They could go back the way they came.  Or they could try charging up the hill towards us.  Not much between here and there except bare ground.  No cover.  Nowhere to hide."
Kyle looked over the ground, seeing everything his uncle just pointed out.  There was a direct line from their hole to the driveway to the brush pile on the opposite side.
"You planned this all out when I got here?  Before maybe?" Kyle asked.  Evans didn't answer that question either.
"We're close enough to the house that a man could get from the house into here pretty damn quick.  But we're far enough away that somebody focused on the house wouldn't necessarily spot this hole."
"What were you doing in the workshop?" Kyle asked.
"The next step here is to build overhead cover.  Run some logs or some railroad ties over the top, then cover that with a few feet of dirt.  It doesn't look like the PVD have grenades.  At least, they don't yet.  They just got those choppers, as you call them.  But there is still another month of summer.  Ninety days until the election."
"You make forts like this before?" Kyle asked.
"I did when I was a combat engineer.  That was before I went EOD and started playing with bombs."
"What were you working on after lunch?  Something for this?" Kyle asked again.  Evans looked at his watch.  The shadows had gotten long.  He looked back over his shoulder to the trail Kyle still ran down every morning.
"Let’s check the laser."

The dazzler they mounted on the roof came on just like it was supposed to, and when they used the remote control to swing and pitch the repurposed camera system, everything worked as it should have.  It was twilight now, and the beams of green laser light pulsed across the hills and danced amongst the oaks and the elms and the cedars.
"It won't work," Kyle said.
"What won't work?" Evans asked.
"The dazzler.  It won't work.  This isn't the Middle East."
"Don't I know it," Evans said.
Kyle looked at his uncle in frustration.  He was tired of more of his uncle's evasions and non-answers.  Kyle went on.
"It won't work.  That dazzler isn't going to see the scare the vanguard off."
"It'll work," Evans said.  Kyle shook his head.
"Once the PVD see the laser show, they're going to come marching right up the driveway.  It isn't going to work."
"It'll work," Evans repeated.  He checked his watch.  "Let's go inside and get some dinner before the bugs get us."
"You want to watch the live streams after dinner?" Kyle asked.
"I don't want to, but we will," Evans replied.

After dinner, Kyle cleaned up and Evans went up to the office.  Evans booted up the computer and opened up the normal newsfeeds and livestreams.  He didn't bother looking at any of them though.  They were just background noise.  A part of the environment that could be registered and dismissed.  He went over to the ready rack on the wall.  Only the carbine was there now.  He traced a finger along the hammer that hung where the full-length rifle used to be.  That rifle was gone.  All the other guns were gone.  Even his gun safe was cleaned out.  Nothing in the house.  Gone.  Vanished.  Disappeared.
Evans glided across the office from the ready-rack to the display on the wall with the busted bomb-suit helmet mounted on it.  It was big.  Heavy.  It hung from wall via a French Cleat screwed directly into the studs.  With both hands, Evans hefted the display off the wall.  He turned it over and read the names and messages on the back, all scrawled in black Sharpie pen.  Old names.  The names of friends.  Names from the past.  Names that brought back good memories.  Names that brought back bad ones too.
Evans heard his nephew coming up the stairs.  Evans bowed his head as if genuflecting and rehung the display.  Kyle entered the office.
"Anything happening yet?"
The sun was just a razor thin orange line across the horizon.  The East Coast was already dark.  The West Coast had hours to go until sunset, but Los Angeles and San Francisco started early.  Portland and Seattle never really stopped.  From Bellingham to San Diego, urban "Autonomous Zones" sprung up with such routine they weren't even reported by the alternative media anymore.
"Dunno.  Wasn't really paying attention.
"Supposed to be a big interview tonight?"
"Who?"
"You know who.  That big guy."
Evans shrugged.  "Anybody getting a mainstream interview isn't going to say anything I haven't heard before.  Want to drive?"
"Sure."  Kyle slid into the desk chair and started tapping the computer's keyboard.  The sounds coming out of the computer's speakers rose, fell, crashed, shifted as Kyle cycled through the different feeds.  Chants of "Shame! Shame! Shame!" Chants of, "No Justice-No Peace."  Chants of, "The whole world is watching."  Angry cries blare out, too ugly and shrill to be intelligible.  Evans heard them all before.  Now they just made him feel tired.
Something rattled electronically in the desk.  Evans opened a drawer and took out his burner phone.  Text messages glowed on the face.

We'll bring her by in a couple days.
Hombre Enojado is picking up some new devices.  He says we've had these ones too long.

The burner was stripped down to bare essentials.  No emojis.  No pictures.  No camera.  No mic.  Just basic text.  Evans heard they were specially made in Ciduad de Este in Paraguay especially for people who wanted to leave a minimal electronic trail.  He typed a reply.

Muy Bien

Kyle opened the news interview.  A media stalwart sat across from politician that looked as ancient and desiccated as a mummy.  The politician had an expensive blue suit and thin whisps white hair expertly styled to appear more than what they were.  The politician had just been asked a question.  He was answering.
"If the voters want these demonstrations to stop, then the answer is simple…" Kyle watched as the politician leaned in menacingly towards the interviewer and the camera.  His eyes were dark, drug addled pinpricks, and insane.  His smile was a skeletal rictus.  He let out a conspiratorial stage whisper.
"If you want it all to stop, then vote for me.  Vote…for… me."
"Can you find something else?" Evans asked.
"Not a fan of that one?" Kyle asked.
"I'm not a fan of any of them," Evans answered.
"Any feed you want to check out?" Kyle asked next.
Evans shook his head no.  "Whatever.  You pick."
Kyle looked his uncle up and down.  The man was there, in the office, but only physically.  His eyes were fixed on the Texas hills, now black against a midnight blue sky.  Kyle typed.  A few interesting feeds came up.  Boston.  Groton.  Harrisburg.  Another police car burned.  Looters ran out of another department store.  Kyles eyes darted from the screens and up to his uncle.  His uncle isn't there.

Evans is back in the Middle East.  He's younger.  He's got hair on his head.  His body is all tight, lean, muscle mass.  Not an ounce of fat.  Nothing sags.  Nothing is wrinkled.  He's with his Marines and they are in a poor, Middle Eastern farm villa.  Everything is made from cinder blocks and cheap sheet metal with flaking paint.  Somewhere, goats bleat.  Dogs are barking.  When the sun finally sets, the barking will stop.  When the sun rises tomorrow, the barking will begin anew, as if all the dogs are working in concert.  A Soviet tractor and a Japanese pickup sit dead and derelict in front of the farm buildings, the mechanical equivalent of dinosaur bones in a museum.  On one side of the compound is a river.  Evans doesn't know for which one.  He is too junior to have a map.
In every other direction the land stretches out to the horizon, flat and smooth as a billiard table.  Marines and Sailors scramble about to finish out various last-minute tasks before the sky goes dark.  They've all been in the field for two-weeks straight, sweeping along the river, on foot and on-line.  Old Corps, as some say.  It is August, and it is hot.  Temperatures reach 120 by midday.  Along the banks of the river, it is humid.  Jungle like.  Palm trees and fig orchards.  They could be in Vietnam, or some island in the Pacific.  They're all filthy.  Everybody has heat rash from the sweat and the dirt.  Everyone reeks.  They've eaten nothing but pre-packaged rations since they've been out there.  Some men are constipated from the rations.  Others have the runs from drinking water from the farm ditches and irrigation canals.  The mood is one of elation.  Moral couldn't be higher.
Stacked between the Soviet Tractor and the Japanese pickup is the gold mine they came searching for: a mountain of enemy weapons: 122mm rockets, 155mm artillery shells, Italian "cake" anti-tank mines, Semtex and ball bearings and cheap Croatian tactical gear: all the ingredients for suicide vests.  There are Romanian assault rifles and banana mags made in East Germany back when it was its own country.
And more.
Inside the farmhouse, the captain is glowering over eight stacks of hundred-dollar bills.  Each stack is four inches tall.  Each bill is brand new.  The U.S. currency is not as alarming as the two rifles they found with, "Property of U.S. Govt." stamped on the receivers.
Military intelligence reported there were weapons caches along the river and for once their reports were right.  The Marines sweeping along the river found the cache and every piece of ordnance they captured means one less roadside bomb.  One less dead Marine.  One less dead corpsman.  One less widow.  One less set of heartbroken parents back home.  One less child growing up without a dad.
This cache was actually many caches spread all over the farm.  The officers couldn't see everything and Lasky and Evans helped themselves to some souvenirs.  Lasky has gangster rolls of the country's old bank notes, enough to fill an empty green satchel charge bag.  Arabian Stallions are on one side of the notes.  The old mustachioed dictator is on the other.  Lasky believes his roll of old money will be worth millions in a few years.  Evans has brand new Yugoslavian made machinegun.  The action is stiff.  It has never been fired and smells of Cosmoline.
"They aren't going to let you take that home," Lasky says.
"I know they won't let me take it home."
"Are you gonna try?"
"Try what?"
"To take it home?"
"Even if I was dumb enough to try and smuggle this home, I wouldn't tell anybody.  Especially somebody like you who can't keep his mouth shut."
"You think they'll let me take all this money home?"
"I'm sure nobody cares about all that Monopoly money you've got."
"I'm taking it back," Lasky says.  "Gonna use it to buy a house back in Soldotna.  Cash.  Gonna buy a Mustang too."
"The second most productive thing you could do with that money is set it on fire," Evans says.  He looks his RPK over, admiring it.
"If that's the second, what’s the first?"
"Think about it.  It'll come to you."
"What did the EOD guys say?" Lasky asks.
Evans sets down the RPK.  After they found the cache, a team of intel pogues swooped in and whisked away everybody living in the house.  Next came a team of EOD technicians.  They'd been called in to blow the weapons cache up right where it was.  But when the EOD team arrived, they looked the pile of terrorist ordnance up and down and said, "It is too big to blow up."
"What do you mean it is too big to blow up?" Somebody asked.
"I mean it is too big.  We don't have enough of our own demo to blow all this stuff in place.  Even if we did, the explosion would flatten every town along the river for two miles.  Too big.  Too beaucoup."
"Then what do we do?"
The EOD team leader shrugged.  "Call back to rear.  Let the officers figure it out."
They called to the rear.  The geniuses in the rear agreed it was too dangerous to blow the cache where it was.  For safety's sake, they said the best thing to do was load everything up in trucks, drive it back to base, and blow it up there.  Evans spent the afternoon loading ancient ordnance onto trucks.  They ran out of trucks long before they ran out of ordnance.  Now they were going to spend the night on the river.  More trucks would come the next day.
"The EOD guys said come talk to them after we get back to Pendleton and they'll help me put the paperwork together."
"To go EOD?" Lasky asks.
"Yes.  To go EOD," Evans says.
Lasky thinks for a moment.  "That would mean you'd have to stay in.  You want to stay in?"
Evans thinks about that, but only for a second.  He answers, "Yes.  It is."
"Think I could make it into EOD?"
"That's up to you man.  You got the physical fitness score to get in.  Your run time is good." Evans answers.
"What does running have to do with defusing bombs?"
"This is the Marine Corps," Evans says.  "Running has something to do with everything."
Evans looks out across the foreign landscape.  The river.  The desert.  The night sky and the captured pile of bombs.  The elation at a job well done.  All is right in his world, and everything is clear.  He'll get back to Camp Pendleton.  He'll transfer from the combat engineers into Explosive Ordnance Disposal.  Getting into EOD will mean coming back here and to places just like it, just as bad, just as dangerous.  It will mean wearing the uniform for most of his life, however long that might be.  But that's okay.  Here, in the desert, on the river, with his Marines, it all makes sense.
"I think you're wrong," Lasky says, breaking the mood.  "I think I can at least get a Mustang for all this money."


The drug phone rattled again, and Kyle watched as it brough his uncle back from wherever he was into reality.  Uncle Evans picked up the phone and read the message.
"Look for a feed named Austin Andy," Evans said.  Kyle's fingers danced across the keyboard.  Austin Andy came up.
Austin Andy's channel was comprised of five different live feeds.  One was a livestream of "Austin Andy" making comments about the riots on the other four.  Those other four were all coming from New Fredericksburg.
All of Evans' muscles tensed at once.
"You remember how to load magazines?"  His uncle's question was so cold and emotionless it sent a chill down Kyle's spine.
"Yes."
"You remember where I keep them?  And the extra ammo?"
"Yeah.  In those green metal cans."
"Go get them.  Then start loading mags.  Use the speed loaders, just like I told you."
Kyle went to get the ammunition and empty magazines.  Evans watched the feed.
What was happening in New Fredericksburg was a variation of the earlier riots in the cities and suburbs.  New Fredericksburg was ranch country.  Isolated homes.  The lighting was different.  Darker.  There weren't any streetlights here.  The lighting for the feeds came from headlights, headlamps, and flashlights the streamers wore or carried.  It came from the wavering orange firelight.  In one stream, a rancher's flatbed truck and tractor were fully engulfed in flame.  Twenty, thirty, maybe forty rioters milled about the ranch house and outbuildings.  Some smashed property.  Some were looting.  Most were just there.  Some of the rioters looked like typical political activists.  Others were dressed in black, masked, with Choppers in their hands.  There was no sign of the people who lived there.
In another feed, a farmhouse burned.  Tongues of flame licked up out the windows and doors.  When that streamer panned left and right, Evans saw barns and other outbuildings on fire.  The camera panned across the ground.  Evans saw a dead dog and dead chickens lying in the dust.  The dog had been shot.  The chickens had been stomped to death.  Kyle came back into the office with a green metal ammo can in each hand.  He set them down then looked at the feed.
"They got bussed in," Kyle said.
Kyle was right.  When the camera swung again two motorcoaches came into view.  They both looked to be high end charters.  A black clad vanguard member waved to his comrades.  He said, "C'mon!  C'mon!  We going to the next one!  We going to the next one!"  Kyle popped the lids on the ammo cans.  He took a magazine out of one and a stripper clip loaded with bullets out of the other.  Evans did the same.  The bullets made a distinct metallic sound as they were pushed from the stripper clip into the magazine.  Something like grating, but smoother.  Metal rolling against metal as it was designed to.
Vanguard members, masked and wearing black, climbed into the bus.  They carried choppers.  Some had bright green egg-shaped devices hooked to their black tactical gear.
"Are those grenades?" Kyle asked.
"Illumination grenades," Evans said.  "Serbian made.  An old Soviet design.  Powdered magnesium.  A good way to start fires."
The feed of PVD getting onto the bus cut out.  A new feed came up.  The view was unsteady.  The focus kept going in and out.  Somebody was shooting from their phone.  The only light came from a burning building in near distance.  Dark figures were backlit by the fire.  Whoever was shooting was whispering unintelligibly.  To Kyle, it looked somebody had run from their house and hidden in a nearby field and now were watching their home get looted and burned by the PVD.  Without warning, that feed went out.  Kyle had a suspicion that it was not the owner who shut it down.
"Where are the police?  The sheriffs?" Kyle asked.
"Paid off, maybe.  Tied up somewhere else.  Maybe got a court order to keep them away, filed by some non-profit that's just a lawfare arm of the PVD and their masters, handed to some activist judge who's also down for their cause.  Whatever the reason, the point is nobody can hide from what's coming.  Not even in Texas."  Using a speed loader, Evans pushed another stack of ten rounds into a magazine.  The brass made the familiar grating sound.  The bus feed came back on again.  Kyle and Evans were looking out the bus's big windshield.  The bus was heading down a driveway of packed earth.  The headlights washed another remote ranch house in ghostly light.  Kyle heard the PVD agents in the back of the bus laughing maliciously.
"How far away are they from us?" Kyle asked.
"Far enough that they won't be here tonight," Evans answered.
"What about tomorrow night?"
Evans pushed the last rounds into the magazine he was loading.  Then he set down the speed loader and tapped the spine of the magazine against his desk.  Next, he looked down into the magazine, making sure all the rounds were properly seated.  Satisfied, he set that loaded magazine with the others.
"I can't say about tomorrow.  Let's shut those feeds off.  We've seen enough."

The Texas Hill Country.  August 2nd.
Three days until D-Day Minus.

Kyle began the morning breakfast ritual with high hopes.  He'd had a variety of foods delivered to the house and now the kitchen counter was loaded with different spices, sausages, fruits, and cheeses.  He even had three different types of tortillas.  He hoped to make something special for his uncle beyond the usual fare of scrambled eggs and bacon or scrambled eggs and sausage.  But when he came into the kitchen, Kyle found his uncle distant.  When the old man spoke, he used his words as sparingly as if he were paying for each syllable.

When Kyle spotted the old plate, he thought it would be a good way to get his uncle talking.  It was the plate the farmer's wife loaded with muffins and gave to them, back when his uncle got the old stock tank, back when Kyle first got there.  Kyle held the plate up for his uncle to see.

"Hey, we could take this back to that couple today.  The one that gave us the muffins."

Evans froze.  He looked at the plate a long time.  Then he looked Kyle right in the eyes.

"That couple is gone.  Theirs was one the houses the PVD burned down last night.  The fire department found their bodies in the askes this morning."  Evans looked the plate over one more time, then said to his nephew, "I'm going out to the workshop.  I've got something I have to do."

Kyle watched his uncle go.  Then, not knowing what else to do, he dropped the old plate in the trash.

Excellent!  Thank you for bringing this back.

Must have missed it before Sharkman... this is fantastic writing.

Story's looking good.

Those buffalo are a pain, this is true.

I'll watch for more content.

Thanks for reposting!

In lieu of a Patreon a donation, please enjoy your membership renewal.

A couple of proof reading notes.

Thanks for keeping the story going.

Fuck yeah, it's back!

Following on certain other sites, but looking forward to the kindle/hard copy version.

Thanks for sharing this.   I just finished reading from the first post to the last one tonight and missed out on a few hours of sleep.

@mbg0001:

Thanks.  I will put it to good use.

Woohoo

The latest part is up on my Patreon page now.  I'll post it here at the end of the week.

"Every Marine is a safety officer.  Anybody can call a cease fire at any time."

I sent you a PM. How do I find on Patreon?

Here.

Couldn't stop reading.
Please post further.

Thanks

This is fantastic and can't wait for the next installment. I'll definitely be buying this up when you're done.

The Texas Hill Country.  August 3rd.  Two Days before D-Day.

Evans woke, sat up, and spent a long time just sitting on his bed.  The morning sun shone through the window, and outside the birds sang their morning songs.  Evans didn't want to get out of bed.  He checked his watch, not for the time, but for the date, even though he knew it already.

The watch read 8-3.  August 3rd.

Evans spent a long time after that just sitting on his bed, trying not to think, trying not to remember.  If it wasn't for his nephew, he probably wouldn't have left the room.  Maybe he wouldn't have even left the bed.  But Evans heard Kyle working in the kitchen and that gave him the strength and the courage he needed to get up and face this day.


"Sleeping in," Kyle asked when his uncle came into the kitchen.  Evans saw that Kyle was working on something.  Pans and dishes and various ingredients were spread across the kitchen counter.  It smelled good, Evans had to admit, though he knew he couldn't bring himself to eat.

"Not sleeping in, just kind of zoning out," Evans answered.  He decided there was no point in avoiding what he needed to say to his nephew, so he came right out and said it.

"Kyle, look at me."  Kyle stopped what he was doing at the kitchen counter and faced his uncle.  He knew what his uncle was about to say was serious, and the young man's look reflected the gravity in the air.

"Today… today isn't going to be an easy day for me.  I'm going to be in a bad mood.  It isn't anything you did or didn't do.  It is me.  Something I've got to deal with.  All the same, I'm not likely to be my normal self today.  I might be shorter.  Curt.  Angry maybe.  But I need to let you know before the day gets going that it isn't you.  I'm glad you came out here this summer.  You're coming out here, it really made me happy."

Evans took a deep breath and let it out in a long and heavy sigh.

"I've got some errands to run today.  Will you be alright here by yourself for a few hours?"

Kyle nodded, then asked, "You want some tea before you go?"

"Not this morning," Evans said.  "I've started too late already."  With that, Evans grabbed his keys and headed out the door.  Seconds later, Kyle heard the truck engine come to life and his uncle drive away.

Kyle looked around the kitchen counter.  Strategically hidden in all the breakfast clutter was a package he ordered just for his uncle.  The face of the box read:

Chai Tea.  Original Flavor.
Sweet and Spicy
Import of the Middle East.

Kyle picked the box up and tucked it away in the back of one of the cabinets.  He'd make it for his uncle another day.

Evans didn't bring any guns into town.  He drove carefully, just under the speed limit.  Consciously, he checked his mirrors, looking for any law enforcement vehicles.  Unconsciously, he checked the sides of the road for any anomaly that might be hiding an Improvised Explosive Device or IED.  There weren't any IEDs of course.  But the deeper, primal parts of his brain would never admit that, especially on this day when he was only partly living in the hear-and-now.

Evans' first stop that morning was the bank.  He needed cash for his errands.  No other form of payment would do.  He parked well away from the bank, and any cameras that might be monitoring the bank's parking lot.  Of course, the inside of the bank had cameras, but Evans didn't feel like making things easy for anybody.

His next stop was at an auto parts store.  Just like the bank, he parked several blocks away and walked from there.  Inside, he hunted through the aisles until he found the motor oil with the lowest viscosity.  He bought a case, paid cash, and walked out without a single unnecessary word to the clerk.

It was August, in Texas, and the walk back was hot.  The heat reminded him of all his time overseas, and that made him think about today, and the anniversary, and that set him on edge.  He felt anxious, angry, regretful, and ashamed all at once.  When he got back to the truck, he threw the oil inside, started up the truck, put the AC on as high as it would go, and just sat there.  The cool air blasted into his face, and Evans just sat in the truck, staring off into nothing.  He turned the truck's radio on, then turned it off a second later.

When he finally felt under control again, he thought about what he had to do next.  He thought through all the steps, forced himself to relax, then thought through all the steps again.  He couldn't write any of the steps down, not on paper, and certainly not on anything digital.  He had to do everything from memory, which he knew he could do, he just had to be careful and deliberate about it.

"You always knew you were going to have to do this someday.  You thought this out a thousand times.  Now it is time to do it," Evans said to himself.  The cold air kept blowing through the truck's vents.

Evans buckled his seat belt and shifted the truck into drive.  The next stop would be back to the paint supply store.  The next town to the north had a chemical supply store.  Then, he'd double back.  The town to the south had a store that sold chemistry equipment to schools and laboratories, as well as an industrial lubricant outlet that sold the type of lithium grease he wanted.  After that, he would hit the wrecking yard out on Farm Route 325.  The last stop would be the package store and then back home.  He'd priced everything out already.  He had the cash he needed.  He'd also scouted out where to drive and where to park to avoid any cameras.  He'd done all this long before his nephew arrived.  Back then, it had all been an intellectual exercise.  At least that's what he told himself at the time.

"No," Evans said to the air vents.  "You were fooling yourself.  You always knew you'd be here someday.  You just never knew the path that would lead you to this point.  Now you know."

Evans turned on the radio again with a stab of his finger.  A few notes played and he thought it might have been that Fleetwood Mac song he hated.  He didn't wait to find out.  He turned the radio off with another stab of his finger and drove the rest of the day in silence.


While Evans shopped, Kyle fired up the computer in the office.  His fingers tapped at the keys, and he made his way through the daily news feeds.  A new law had been passed in California: The California Coast Cleaning America's Air Act.  The law required that any private or commercially owned vehicle leaving California had to have a full tank of fuel, and the California Highway Patrol had repurposed all the state's agriculture checkpoints to now check the fuel gauges on all the cars and trucks leaving the state.  It was no coincidence that the price of a gallon of fuel in California was four times the national average, most of that cost being state taxes.  Kyle wondered how that would delay his parents' departure.

Kyle switched to another news feed.  A senator from Utah was being interviewed, and the senator expressed his support for the latest gun control bill being pushed through Washington D.C.

"Look Shawn," the senator began, "there is no bigger critic of this president and his party than me.  You know that.  But common-sense gun control is just that: common sense.  We can't have our schools and our daycares being turned into warzones because some child bought an AK-47 off the internet or through a gun show loophole.  And let me be perfectly clear, I am truly embarrassed about how our party's voters haven't moved forward with the times on this issue.  I've represented my party in politics for over two decades, as the governor of one state and a senator in another.  My father served as a governor and a cabinet secretary.  I know what's best for the voters and I'm telling you now, this Second Amendment absurdity just needs to stop."

"Well, I'm a shooter myself, senator, and I couldn't agree more.  You don't need a grenade launcher to hunt a deer," the host groveled.  Kyle flipped to another news feed, watched another career media personality interview another career political figure.  Thick as thieves.  The same questions.  The same non-answers.  The same self-serving theater.  Kyle looked the interviewer and the interviewee up and down.  Neither one cared about him, or his parents, or his uncle, or the things they were going through.  Neither said anything about the riots.  Neither one had any inkling about how things worked in the real world, the world outside of their bubble.  Neither one cared.  Kyle shut off the computer and looked around the office.

The display on the wall with the smashed bomb helmet caught his eye again.  He walked over to it and, inspired by some hunch, he hefted it off the wall.  He turned it over to look at the backside.

Messages were scribbled all over the back in black Sharpie pen.  A note at the very top read:

FROM:
EOD TEAM 1-4
TASK FORCE 1-4
TO:
GUNNERY SERGEANT "FRANKENSTEIN"
SOON TO BE
WARRANT OFFICER "FRANKENSTEIN"

Below that were personalized messages made out to his uncle, Frankenstein.  Beneath each message, the author signed their name.  Hoffman.  Bloem.  Fraser.  Lasky.  One was signed Menudo, which Kyle thought odd since Menudo was a soup and not any name he'd heard of.  Kyle's eyes locked on to the longest message, scribbled out in an inelegant, almost childlike mix of looping cursive and blocky print.  Kyle read the message.

Frankenstein,
What can I say.  You and me have been rockin' together since day one.  One adventure after another.  One bomb after another.  It won't be the same without you watching my back, but I can't wait to salute you.
Semper Fi
SSgt Lasky.

Kyle counted the number of times  Frankenstein was written on the back of the display.  He thought back to his uncle's story and about the Frankenstein demolition charge: a bale of barbed wire packed full of explosives.  He thought about the damage that could do; 80 pounds of barbed wire exploding in all directions.

Kyle hung the display back on the wall and went out to his uncle's workshop.  The imprints of the bales of barbed wire were still in the dirt there.  Faint, but noticeable if you knew to look for them.  Kyle kicked away the last of their imprints, then he tried the door to the workshop.  It was locked.

Kyle peered in one of the windows.  No signs of barbed wire in the shop.  No signs of anything.  Every surface was clutter-free and clean.  Every tool was in its place.  His uncle's shop looked tidy enough for a catalog shoot.

Kyle went back into the house.  His uncle kept a bowl by the front door.  Inside were odds and ends and loose change.  Kyle took a few dimes out of the bowl and went up to the office.

He checked the carbine.  After ensuring it was unloaded, he set it on the desk.  Then Kyle unloaded a couple of the magazines.  He slipped a dime into each empty magazine.  The small coin fit perfectly beneath the feed lips.  He inserted one modified magazine into the carbine and racked the bolt.  With the small, flat coin holding down the magazine follower, the bolt did not hold open on the empty magazine.  It ran freely.

"Amateurs practice until they get it right.  Professionals practice until they can't get it wrong," Kyle said to himself.  He picked a point on the wall, brought the carbine up, and dryfired it, using all the shooting techniques his uncle taught him.  Then racked the action and dry-fired again.  And again.  And again.


Evans came out of the package store with a case of his favorite cola in one hand and a bottle of whisky in the other.  It wasn't a large bottle, and it wasn't an especially good one either.  He wasn't looking for taste, he was just looking to get drunk.  And given that he rarely drank, it didn't require much volume to make that happen.

Everything he'd purchased was in the bed of the truck.  He tarped the load, tied it down, then added a second tarp and tied that down, just in case.  The odds of anybody seeing the contents of his shopping adventure and adding them all up were damn close to zero.  Still, there was no point in taking chances.  Not with his nephew's future hanging in the balance.

Evans opened the passenger door and put the cola and whisky on the floor.  He shut the door and went over to the driver's side.  Across the street, four patrol vehicles were parked.  The police officers were standing outside, talking with each other.  Smoking and joking, as they used to say in the Marines, not that anybody smoked anymore, at least not here in America.  Evans looked the policemen over.

They looked young.  They looked too fresh, too innocent, too clean, and too soft for Evans' taste.  Conspiracy theories on the internet said that law enforcement across the nation was being shaped at the highest levels to ensure only the right type of people got into the profession, with "right" defined as politically reliable.  Evans suspected there was some truth to that.  In any event, Evans looked the police officers over and didn't like what he saw.  They had their fancy equipment and their fancy vehicles.  But what did that mean?  The oath they'd taken wasn't that much different from the one Evans and all his friends had taken.  But what good was the oath if the police didn't uphold it?  They didn't stop the burning, or the rioting, or the looting, or the murders.  They just sat back and watched from inside the safe cocoon of their expensive vehicles.  Evans never sat back, not when there was a road to patrol.  Not when there was a weapons cache to find or a bomb to defuse.  Not even when the bridge was getting raked with machinegun fire and about to collapse.  Lasky never sat back either.  Or Hoffman, or Bloem, or Fraser.

And what would the police do if Evans tried to stop the PVD?  More importantly, what would they do to Kyle?  Evan knew the answer to those questions.  Evans took one look at the tarped load in the back of his truck, then climbed inside and started the engine.

The thing about bombs, he knew, was that there were lots of ways to keep them from going off, but only if you got to them in time.  But if you didn't stop them in time, then they were going to blow up and there was nothing anybody could do to stop it.  Lots of things in life were like that.  If you got to the problem soon enough, you could keep it from getting bigger.  But if you chose to ignore the problem or just hope that it went away… well… problems have a way of getting bigger and bigger until one day they explode.

"It is your job to stop this," Evans whispered at the police across the street.  "If you don't, the consequences are on you."

Evans put the truck in drive and headed home.


Evans turned into his development.  He passed the big "Silver Springs" sign and made another turn toward his home.  It was then that Evans saw the spectacle, and it made him groan out loud.

It was all laid out before him, a circus of the absurd, as if all its perpetrators and participants had conspired together to put this performance on solely for Evan's benefit.  Evans saw Dale, George, and John, along with other neighbors.  He saw the motorcycle lying sideways on the road.  He saw the flashing lights of an ambulance, half a dozen police vehicles, and the county animal control van.  But the thing that was most prominent of all was the dead dog.

The dead dog lay in the middle of the road.  A bundle of gray and white fur.  One of the police officers stood over the dog with a shotgun up in the crook of his arm, triumphant.

"You've no idea what you've done," Evans whispered at the young cop.

The road was partially blocked.  Police cruisers and SUVs sat parked half-on-half-off the road haphazardly.  An officer waved Evans forward.  Evans was immediately glad Kyle wasn't with him.  He took one more look at the tarped load in the back of the truck, then crept forward.  Dale and John rushed to the truck.

"You'll never guess what happened?"

Evans looked over the bike in the road, the dead dog, the cop with the shotgun, and George in the open back of the ambulance.  In the back of the ambulance, two EMTs poured over George's leg.

"I bet I can," Evans said.

John and Dale explained what Evans already deduced.  Lori's dog had gotten loose.  Again.  It embarked on its usual reign of terror, which peaked when George was attacked on his motorcycle.  George was bit and dumped the bike.

Somebody called the cops on the dog, and this time the cops came.  When the dog charged one of the cops, the cop responded with two rounds of .12 gauge 00 buckshot.  That was that for Lori's fur baby.

"He must have been a cat person," Dale joked.

"Is George okay?" Evans asked.

"The dog bit him, but not badly," John said.  "He was wearing his leathers.  He was on his bike when Lori's mutt got him.  He ended up dumping the bike and the crash scared the dog off.  He got lucky."

"Maybe," Evans said.

George must have sensed them talking about him.  From the back of the ambulance, he flashed them all a thumbs-up sign.  Evans returned it.

One of the police officers, the oldest one, maybe a decade younger than Evans, walked up to the truck.  

"What are you doing here?" the police officer asked.

"I live up the road," Evans answered.

"You know anything about this dog?"

"I know it gets loose and tries to bite people all the time," Evans said.

"Yeah.  I figured," the older officer said.

It was then that the agent of their destruction came trundling up on a clapped-out golf cart.

It was Lori.  Her golf cart came puttering up towards them.  It swayed from side to side on dilapidated suspension.  Everybody around the truck braced themselves for what was about to come.  Even the cop, who'd never met Lori in his life, shifted uneasily.  

The cart stopped just short of Evans' truck.  Lori applied the parking brake, and it made a loud and unhealthy mechanical sound.  She stepped out of the golf cart.  Her shoes were cheap molded plastic clogs, and they were just as clapped out as the golf cart.  They seemed to be spilling apart at the top and broken at the soles.  They'd been asked to support far too much weight for far too long.  Lori took one last look at her dog.  Then the screaming began.

"You mother fuckers!  You murdered my dog!"

Everybody stopped and turned towards the screeching sound.  The EMTs in the back of the ambulance stopped what they were doing.  The officer with the raised shotgun lowered it, then quickly headed for his car.

"You killed my dog, my poor dog.  My baby," Lori screamed again.  And Evans realized Lori wasn't screaming at the police but at him.  At him, and at Dale, and at John.  The older police officer stepped away from the truck and towards Lori.  He raised his hands in a placating manner.

"Ma'am…" He began.

"You mother fuckers," Lori swore.  A lock of unkempt, dyed hair flopped into her eyes.  She brushed it away and swore again.  "You mother fucking men."

"Ma'am," the cop repeated.  "Right now I need you to calm down…"

Lori bent down, picked up a handful of gravel from the side of the road, and hurled it at Dale and John.  Dale cowered away from the thrown gravel.  John whined, "Hey.  You can't do that."

"Fuck you," Lori swore.  She picked up another hand of gravel and plastered John a second time.

"You men!  You fuckers!"

The cop stepped forward, more aggressively now.  "Stop that."    

The gaggle of other, younger cops up the road came forward.

"And you!" Lori screamed.  This was directed at Evans.  "You and your fucking truck!  I bet it was you."  She picked up a baseball-sized rock and hurled it at Evans' truck.  It thunked against the side of his truck.

"Hey," Evans and the old cop said at the same time.  The cop stepped right in front of Lori.  She cursed about her dog again.

"I'll get you.  I'll get all of you.  You killed my dog.  You fucking… I'm going to ruin your lives."

"Ma'am," the cop shouted.  "Ma'am, that man in the back of the ambulance?  That man was bit by that dog."

Lori paused.  She looked like she was going to pick up another rock, then stopped.  She seemed to see the cop for the first time.  She straightened.  Looked right at the cop and said, "Fuck that man.  He deserves to get bit.  You all do."

"Ma'am, is that your dog in the road?" the cop asked.  He was trying to reason with Lori, but Lori was beyond reasoning.  Her face tightened.

"You're going to let them murder my dog?  You're going to let them do that?  You fucking men.  You are all in it together.  You men.  You fucking pigs."

And then, Lori spat right in the cop's face.

Evans expected Lori to get arrested right then and there, but she didn't.  Things were different now.  Some people got arrested and some people didn't.  Lori wasn't the type that didn't.

The older cop wiped the spit off his face and looked like he was about to rip Lori in half, but the younger cops came rushing forward.  Buy they didn't come for Lori.  They came to restrain their older partner.  They ignored Lori and surrounded him.  Evans overheard one of the cops say, "We can't arrest her.  The chief and the DA…"

Lori kept cursing.  She spat and pointed her finger like a knife.

"My dog!  I'm going to fuck you up.  I'm going to ruin you.  All of you.  You're all fucking dead."

The cluster of officers broke apart.  One, a female with long orange nails, broke free to try and soothe Lori.  Evans caught another's attention and asked,  "Do you need me here?"

The cop shook his head no.  Evans nodded once, then put the truck into drive.  He wanted out of there.  Nothing good could come from lingering.  He left without another word.

In the rearview mirror, Evans watched the scene continue: the twirling flashing lights, Lori screaming, Dale and John standing dumbfounded, the police kind of milling about, and the dead dog in the middle of the road.

"Of all the days.  August third," Evans said to himself as headed home.

Evans backed up to his workshop.  Easier to unload the contents in the truck bed that way.  Easier, and harder for his nephew to see what was inside not.  Not this his nephew could infer Evans' recipe from the ingredients in the back of the truck.  Still.  Why take a chance?

Evans switched off the engine.  He looked down at the whisky and cola on the truck's floor.  They were pretty tempting, especially after this day, with its shopping trips and Lori's dead dog, and with the anniversary.  Something Evans didn't want to remember but felt obligated to do so.  Evans wanted to crack the bottle and the cans open and just get drunk right there in the truck.

But he didn't.

He got to thinking about the war, and the battle of the bridge.  He thought about the enemy and all the work they'd done.  Setting up the ambush,  Hauling all the ammo out to the island.  Observing the passing American convoys to calculate all the moves and countermoves necessary to set up a trap.  They'd done their work.  Evans had to respect that.  He decided instead of drinking he needed to do his work first.  He got out of the truck, unloaded the bed, and brought everything into his workshop.

Up in the house, Kyle watched his uncle through a crack in the blinds.  One tarp came off the load in the back, then another.  Kyle was no dummy.  Two tarps over a load of parcels, and there hadn't been a could in the sky for weeks.  It wasn't weather his uncle was worried about.

His uncle took the various parcels and packages into the workshop.  Lights inside flashed on.

Kyle wanted to make dinner for his uncle, but Evans said he needed his space tonight.   Kyle thought it was best to respect that.  He closed the crack in the blinds and walked away from the window.  He went back into the office and reloaded the magazines he'd emptied earlier that day.

It was late when Evans finished up his project in the workshop.  He washed off his hands and arms thoroughly and then locked everything up.  After that, he checked his watch.  Again, he was looking for the date, not the time.  It was still August 3rd.

Evans looked up into the clear night sky of Texas.  The stars were all there in their orbits, shining and looking back down on him.

"Well, my friends," Evans said to the heavens.  "It is that time again.  Let's have a few drinks and think about what happened."

Evans found a chair and table on his back porch and set himself up.  He took a glass, nearly filled it with whisky, splashed some cola into it, held the whole thing up, grimaced, then drained it in one go.  He repeated this twice more, going for speed and volume over taste.  When it was time for the fourth glass, he went heavier on the cola and easier on the whisky.  It was time to slow it down now, he knew.  It was time to slow it down now, to remember what happened, and to pay respect where it was due.

Evans looked up at that big, clear night sky with its expanse of stars.  Animals hooted and insects chirped.  Evans sipped his drink, and he remembered.


The Middle East.  August 3rd.  Years Ago.

Gunnery Sergeant Evans pushed on the passenger seat of his armored vehicle while the other members of his EOD team watched.  The seat toppled over.

"Well, that's not supposed to happen."

"I told you, all the bolts sheared off," Staff Sergeant Lasky said.  The wind kicked up.  Evans was grateful for the breeze, but he didn’t like the cloud of sand that just got blown into his vehicle.  Either way, it didn’t help him with his current problem of a broken seat.

"It’s brand new, multi-million-dollar vehicle.  How the hell did all the bolts shear off at once?" he asked.  The answer to that question didn’t particularly matter right now, but it would give him a few extra moments to think.  He turned and looked up the long line of military vehicles, all parked along the side of the road, all painted the same sandy-tan color.  The convoy was about to leave, and he'd just come to find his vehicle wasn't roadworthy because of some cheap bolts on the passenger seat.

"Hell, if I know how they broke," Lasky said.  Hoffman shrugged once in support.  Hoffman had had enough of deploying overseas and disarming bombs while his kids grew up without him and his wife grew distant.  Instead of trying to save the Middle East, he was going to get out, start a new career in the private sector, and try and save his marriage and his family.

The other two crewmembers assigned to the vehicle, Fraser and Bloem, watched the events unfold.  Evans stood up the seat on its brackets again, then touched it lightly with his finger.  The touch was gentle as a fallen feather.  The seat toppled over again and crashed backward into the second row of seats.

"We got any spare bolts?" Evans asked as he checked his watch.  The boss, HE-6, said he wanted to be moving in ten minutes.  That was five minutes ago.  HE 6 was not an even-tempered man in the best of times, and missing a timeline was sure to elevate his anger from its normal state of barely controlled anger up into a blind rage.

"No.  We don’t have any spare bolts," Lasky said.

"Won’t matter if we did," Bloem added from the gunner’s turret.  "Those bolts in the seat bracket were welded in.  We’d need to get the broken stubs out first.  With time and the right tools, I could do that here."  Bloem was a reserve Marine and when he wasn’t running around the Middle East he and his family ran a chain of auto repair shops in Columbus Ohio.  In the outside world he could fix anything mechanical and knew enough about finance and tax law to work on Wall Street.  In the Marine Corps, he manned a machine gun.  "We probably don’t have the right tools and I doubt we have the time."

"No, we don’t," Evans agreed.

"The bump plan was for somebody to ride in the command vehicle.  But… maybe we could just set the seat up and try it.  Maybe tape it down with some rigger tape?"  Lasky said hopefully.  Evans shook his head.

Evans looked at Lasky like he was crazy.  "Tape?  Really?  You wanna go riding around in a warzone on a seat that's held in with duct tape?"

"I don't want to ride in the command vehicle, I can tell you that."

"I'm sure none of you do," Evans said.  He took another look over his EOD team.  Bloem and Fraser weren’t EOD techs, they were infantrymen who’d been added to his team when they arrived in country, but they were all still HIS team.  HIS Marines.  He looked at their faces.  They spent the last eight months together.  Eight months into a deployment that was only supposed to last six.  He knew these young Marines as if they were his own children.  In some ways, they were.  The broken seat meant somebody had to ride in the command vehicle with the First Sergeant and with the commander, HE 6, and all the other brass.  No young Marine wanted to be stuck in a vehicle with a senior officer and a First Sergeant.  These Marines were no exception.

"Wait here.  I’ll go talk to the boss," Evans said.

"You mean HE-6?" Fraser asked.

"Yeah.  And don’t let him hear you call him that.  He won’t like it.  You can call him Yes Sir or No Sir."

"I don’t see why not.  It’s a cool call sign.  Plus, I heard he got a Bronze Star for it, clearing out that ambush on that bridge all by himself."

"They hand Bronze Stars out to officers like candy,"  Bloem said.  Bloem was a bit rough around the edges.  He wasn't afraid of officers, not even HE-6.  He wasn't afraid of IEDs either.  When he wasn't behind his machinegun, he would go poking around looking for them with reckless abandon.

"Not Bronze Stars with ‘Vs’ they don’t," Lasky said.

"Maybe he didn’t want that Bronze Star, V or not," Evans said.  This was his fourth tour overseas with HE-6.  He knew their commander better than anybody in the task force, even the First Sergeant and the Executive Officer.  Evans examined the sheared bolts one last time.

"You fucktards wait here, and try not to break anything else on my vehicle while I'm gone."

Evans walked up to the head of the convoy of military vehicles to the 6x6 armored truck that served as the command vehicle.  It was hot.  It was always hot in this part of the world, and he already swimming in sweat under his Nomex coveralls, heavy body armor, and layers upon layer of gear.  Along the way he passed dozens of vehicles like his own, each sporting machine guns and whip antenna, with backpacks hanging off the sides and roof racks overflowing with gear.  At one vehicle, the Marines and a Sailor had some gadget out that was blasting music while they cleaned their machine guns one more time.  The song was Silver Springs by Fleetwood Mac.  The sailor had a guitar out and was trying to match the chords.  Evans kept walking.  When he finally got to the command vehicle, the Air Officer was standing at the open back hatch.  He had his helmet off.  One hand held a radio handset to his ear.  The other hand worked its way through a thick tangle of black hair that had grown beyond acceptable military standards, even for a fighter pilot.  As was often the case, the pilot was singing.

"Out in the West Texas town of El Paso, I fell in love with a Mexican girl."

The Air Officer saw Evans.  He smiled, made the Hawaiian shaka gesture, and stopped singing.

"We're still waiting on air to check-in.  What's up, Frank?  You looking for the boss?"

Evans nodded.  The Air Officer pointed toward the front of the truck.  "He's up at the hood of the truck, looking at a map and brooding."  The pilot winked.  Evans kept walking.

At the front of the armored 6x6 truck, Evans found the boss, HE-6.  The man had a map spread out and was studying it.  Evans studied the man.  When they first met, Evans had been a Lance Corporal and the other man had been a Second Lieutenant.  Now Evans was a Gunnery Sergeant about to become a Warrant Officer, and the other man was a Major about to become a Lieutenant Colonel.  They had been coming to this hot dusty part of the world since the war started.  Years later, they were still coming here.  The major saw Evans and folded up the map.

"What’s up?"

Despite his reputation for being a hothead, HE-6 was a good officer as far as Evans was concerned.  The man just took it all too personally, these military misadventures of the last two decades.

"I got a problem with the EOD truck," Evans answered.  "The passenger seat broke off its brackets.  All the mounting bolts sheared off."

"It’s a multi-million-dollar vehicle. How the hell did all the bolts shear off at once?" HE-6 asked.

"I asked that very same question."

HE-6 shrugged.  "No problem.  Bump one of your guys up here.  Once the pilots check in we'll get going."

"Roger sir.  Actually, I’ll be the one riding up here with you.  I’ll let my guys know and be right back." Evans said.

"Sounds good, but before you go, let's talk," the Major said.

Evans had already half-turned to head back to his team.  He stopped, turned back, and faced the major.

"I got word back from Quantico.  They aren't going to let you delay your start date.  So, as soon as we get back to base you need to get packed up.  You're heading out on the first plane back to the States."

"What about the deployment?  What about my team?"

"I'm sure Staff Sergeant Lasky can take over.  He's been around a few times.  He's ready, right?"

Evan looked back down the column in the direction of his vehicle.  Lasky had been riding his coattails for years now.  They'd been through just as much as he and the major.  Maybe more."

"Lasky's ready.  He can handle it."

The major nodded.  "As far as the deployment goes, you getting through the Warrant Officer program is more important than anything here.  This whole war here…" The Major made a sweeping motion with his hand.  "It is all on hold.  The only bad guys left are smart enough to wait for us to leave before they start killing again.  All the dumb ones, we already killed.  The only people here for us to kill are the Iranians, only we've been ordered to pretend they aren't here so we can't very well kill them.

"Just so you know though, your boys have something planned for you when we get back to the rear.  They put together a gift for you.  Something for you to remember us all by."

"So, they already know I'm leaving when I get back."

"They kind of know," the major said.  He gave a half-smile and held up his hands.  "What do you want?  You were going to go sooner or later.  I wasn't going to let you slip out without a proper goodbye."

"I don't want to go.  I don't like the idea of leaving my team here in country."

"Good," the major said.  "You shouldn't like the idea of leaving your team.  But you still have to do it.  You're taking the next step in your career.  Which reminds me.

"I made some calls back to the Headquarters Marine Corps.  The Mexican Marine Corps is looking for an EOD expert to advise them.  Once you get done with your training in Quantico, I can pull some strings and get you down to Mexico."

"I'd rather be where the action is."

"You're going to be a Warrant Officer.  Your days of being where the action is will be few and far between.  Besides, there's plenty of action in Mexico.  It'll give you a chance to see a different type of war.  You could always end up back here later.  This part of the Middle East isn't going away.  It's just going on pause for a bit."

"Major, when are you getting promoted?" Evans asked.

"Not for a while, still.  I was lucky to get selected for promotion at all.  I pissed a lot of people off throughout my career.  I was never good at playing the establishment game.  I spent too much time focusing on how to outmaneuver the enemy.  I should have spent more time figuring out how to outmaneuver the establishment.  Had to learn that lesson the hard way.  I won't make those mistakes again."

"You survived whatever happened on the bridge.  Career-wise, I mean," Evans said.

"Yeah, I got lucky there.  I didn't know it at the time, but I had somebody looking out for me."

The Major paused, as if he was puzzling something out in his mind.  He reflected a bit longer, then went on.

"Like I said, I'm never going to make those same mistakes again.  You shouldn't either.  It is like the game of chess; you need to have everything planned out four, five moves ahead.  What you are going to do?  What your opponent is going to do?  Action and reaction.  Only after you've done all that thinking and planning do you start making moves.  Remember that."

It was then that the Air Officer came up to the front of the vehicle.

"Our air cover just checked in.  We can get moving."

"Roger," the major said.  He looked at Evans.  "Alright.  We'll talk more when we get back."

Evans nodded.  "Let me go brief my team.  I'll be right back."

Evans went back along the column, back past the scrambling troops in their dusty tan uniforms, past the guns and the antennas and the classic rock concert again.  They were playing that same song.  The Navy Corpsman still had his guitar out and was strumming along.

"How many times are you going to play that song?" a sergeant yelled down from the vehicle's turret.

"I'm trying to figure out how to play this part," the Corpsman yelled back.

"Figure that crap out on your own time, doc.  Now pack your crap away, we just got the word to move out."

Evans kept walking back along the convoy.

At the EOD truck, his team members had the faces of men about to be led to the gallows, each wondering who'd be the one condemned to ride in the command vehicle with the brass.  Each hoping they weren't the one.

"I'll ride in the command vehicle," Evans said.  The four Marines collectively sighed with relief.  "You all take the truck just like normal.  If we find something along the route, just stay in the truck and I’ll come to you.  And when I say stay in the truck, that means stay in the truck."  Evans pointed at Lasky.  "And don’t ride in that broken seat."

All the Marines smiled, even Hoffman.  The Gunny had given them a reprieve.  None of them would have to endure a long ride sealed up with the brass today.  Evans smiled too.  They'd come a long way, his team.

"Alright.  Catch you on the flip side," Evans said.  He looked his team over for the last time, then he turned and headed back up the convoy.


Within minutes the convoy was moving down another dusty, potholed, road that stretched out to the horizon.

IED stands for Improvised Explosive Device and EFP stands for Explosively Formed Penetrator.  EFPs are a type of IED, but there is nothing improvised about them.  They are sophisticated demolition charges built for a specific purpose.  This EFP had been built in Iran, and it was purpose-built to destroy American armored vehicles.  It was good at its job.

The Iranian program that designed and built these EFPs had been suspended for a period for a lack of funds.  But political winds in the United States changed, and the nation that led the sanctions against Iran was now providing it with cash.

This infusion of American cash reinvigorated the Iranian weapons program and provided Iranian intelligence operatives the means to smuggle the weapons to their agents throughout the Middle East.  Those agents, of course, would use the weapons to target Americans.  It was a move that could only make sense to somebody living in Washington DC.  The Iranian agents were good at their job too.  They'd been trained to discriminate between the look-alike desert-tan American vehicles.  High on their target list were the EOD vehicles.

When Evans' EOD truck passed, the EFP detonated.  In less than a second it pushed a seven-pound molten copper slug out at Mach speed.  This slug punched through the EOD truck's multilayer armor as if it were mere sheet metal.  Lasky, Hoffman, Bloem, and Fraser were all killed instantly.

When he thought about it later, Evans remembered the call on the radio.  "They got the EOD vehicle."  Evans didn't remember anything after that.  He didn’t remember the convoy stopping.  He didn’t remember jumping out of the command vehicle and running back down the convoy to his truck and his dead Marines inside.  He didn’t remember yelling, screaming, crying.  He didn’t remember burning his hands trying to get into the smoldering wreckage.

When he regained his senses, he found himself being dragged away from the burning wreckage.  HE-6 and the Air Officer each had an arm around him, pulling him away from the twisted and burning metal that was his truck.  His truck, with his EOD team, his Marines inside.

Two days later, Evans boarded a plane for the United States.  Under one arm he carried the going away gift his team members but together: a walnut slab with his old bomb helmet mounted on the front, and their signatures on the back.  For Evans, the difference between life and death had been a set of bolts built by the lowest bidder, and a decision he made on the side of a road in the middle of nowhere.  The Iranians had just killed a few more American servicemen.  The American government was pretending they hadn't.  Evans was headed back to the States.  Lasky, Hoffman, Fraser, and Bloem were dead.  And as tragic as it all was, that was the way things were.

Back in Texas, Evans took one last sip of his drink.  Then he stood and poured the last of it out onto the ground.  He looked up into the night sky.  Maybe his old team members were up there, looking down at him from the vast, twinkling expanse.  Maybe they weren't.  Evans didn't say anything.  No words of condolence or regret.  He just looked up.  And when he decided he'd lingered long enough, he went inside and went to bed.

PM sent

Heh.  I remember when I read the earlier parts for the first time, that I thought Lori's dog was Chekhov's gun.

Aka, at some point, it was going to get shot.

Sharkman, very glad you decided to restart the story. Thanks !

Chekhov left a few more "guns" in this story.

Next part is up on Patreon now.  I'll post that part here in a few days.

Thanks for the update. Liking the Bronco.

Man that last bit is a rough kick in the balls.

The Texas Hill Country.  August 4th.
The Day before D-Day.


Kyle was working over the stove top when his uncle came downstairs and into the kitchen.
"How are you feeling?"


"Nothing that some water and a cup of tea won't cure."

"I didn't think that you wouldn't be down so early."

"Yeah, well, not as late as it might have been when I was younger," Evans began.  "My days of staying up all night and burning the town down are long behind me.  When I do drink, it is more of a race to finish what I'm drinking before I fall asleep."
"Well, try this."  Kyle spooned a mixture of eggs, cheese, chorizo, and potatoes into a tortilla.  He folded his creation up and passed it to his uncle.  "We've got red sauce and salsa verde…  the verde is the green one."

"I know what verde is," Evans said.  He bit into the burrito.  Chewed.

"Hey, this is pretty good."

"Better than your chowhall food?"

"Better than my chowhall food," Evans agreed.  "Got any hot water?"

"Not yet," Kyle said.  He glanced over at the cupboards, thought about the tea he had hidden in the back of one, then thought against it.  "I'll put some on."

"Don't bother.  What did you have planned for today?"  As Evans asked this, he walked to the window, cracked open the blinds, and peeked into the driveway.

"No plans," Kyle said.  "I figured you had some work for us to do or something."

Evans smiled and turned away from the window.  "No work.  But I've got plans.  Take a look in the driveway."

Kyle walked over to the window, opened the blinds, looked outside, and gasped.

"What is that?"

"That is a 1969 Ford Bronco.  Restored and modified with loving care by a guy who knows what he's doing.  It has a 302 under the hood, custom-built to perform.  Most importantly, it’s a manual transmission."

The Bronco was a work of automotive art.  It was red with black trim.  Big, knobby tires fit under a lifted body and suspension.  The stock bumpers had been replaced with heavier ones made of tube steel.  The front bumper held a winch.  The Bronco's top was off, exposing a roll cage of gleaming black metal.  Kyle's jaw dropped.  He looked at his uncle.

"You wanted to learn how to drive a manual transmission.  I found something with a manual transmission."

"We're going to drive that?"

"You're going to drive that," Evans said.

Kyle was still overcome with disbelief.  "How?  How did  you get that?"

"I know some people.  They dropped it off this morning."

"I didn't hear anything."

"Yeah, well, those two aren’t the kind of guys you hear coming.  You ready to drive."

"Now?" Kyle asked.

"Right now."

"What about breakfast and the dishes?"

"The dishes can wait," Evans said with a smile.  "You learning how to drive a stick is more important."

Out in the driveway, they were both seated in the Bronco.  Evans was behind the wheel.  Kyle was in the passenger seat.

"I thought you said I was going to drive," Kyle said.

The Bronco's 302 engine gave a throaty rumble.

"We're going to somewhere flat first.  We'll switch seats then."

"Why not now?"

"You see all these hills?" Evans said, sweeping his hand across the horizon and the rolling hills.  Kyle nodded.  Evans said.  "That's why.  You'll thank me later.  Besides, it ain't like I don't want to drive this thing too."

Evans gassed the engine.  It made a mighty, satisfying rumble.  Evans put the truck in gear and hit the accelerated.  The Bronco screamed powerfully down the driveway and out into the hills.



"Grind a pound for me, buddy," Evans said.

"Huh?"

"Something we used to say back in high school," Evans said.  He looked around.  They were in the parking lot of the local high school.  It was empty now, but wouldn't be for long.  Summer was ending.  School was about to restart.  He hadn't enrolled Kyle in any school.  He didn't like the idea of that, enrolling his nephew in school here.  But he knew they had to do something, and quick.  He needed to call his sister and see how the exit from California was progressing.  Of course, right now Evans had a more pressing matter.

Evans looked at his nephew in the driver's seat.  The sun blazed, and the sound of grinding gear still lingered in the air.  Kyle's sweaty hands gripped the controls of the Bronco.  The leather-wrapped steering wheel.  The gearshift which even to Evans now seemed like some ancient artifact of alien mechanics.  Kyle's face was red, a mix of shame, embarrassment, and frustration rather than the Texas heat.  Evans felt nervous for his nephew, though he didn't show it.  If you could teach teenagers how to handle bombs, you can teach your nephew how to drive a stick, he told himself.  Evans took a deep breath.

"All right, Kyle," he began.  His voice was a reassuring presence amid the sweltering heat.  "Remember, driving a manual's all about the timing between the clutch and the gears.  It's a rhythm, like a dance.  Once you get it down, your muscle memory will take over.  Like riding a bicycle."

"I haven't picked it up all morning."

"You'll get it."

"I'm going to burn out your friend's shifter or clutch or whatever."

"He won't care.  It'll give him an excuse to put a whole new transmission in his toy truck.  Now let's get back to it."

Kyle's heart raced with a mix of excitement and nervousness.  He had seen his fair share of automatic cars, but a manual transmission was an entirely different beast.  He looked over at his uncle and was reassured by the older man's calm and patient smile.

"Okay," Kyle whispered.

Kyle pushed the clutch pedal in and turned the key in the ignition.  The engine came to life with a throaty roar.  The truck rumbled with power, shuddering with the heartbeat of the big engine.

"Good, good," Uncle Evans encouraged.  "You've got the engine running.  Now, put the clutch in, and gently shift to first gear."

Kyle's sweaty hand pushed on the shift knob.  The truck rumbled and shook, but not in a good way.  The engine was about to keel over.

"That's third," Evans said.  "First is over further.  Get it back into neutral."

Kyle had made this same mistake several times already this morning.  This time he was able to save the engine from dying.  He got back into neutral, then up into first.  The Bronco, which was trembling like a wounded animal, settled down.

"All right, nice and easy, Kyle," Uncle Evans said. "With one foot on the clutch and your other foot ready on the gas pedal, start releasing the clutch slowly while giving it a bit of gas."

Kyle followed his uncle's instructions.  He'd done this many times already today, and it almost always ended with the vehicle jumping forward and the engine shuddering and dying.  His feet eased on the pedals, moving slower than before, smoother.  He could feel the tension move up the shifter as the teeth of the gears engaged.  Kyle felt the power of the truck, it was like a horse that wanted to break into a gallop.  The big tires eased forward.

"You got it.  Nice and easy, Kyle.  Keep it going," Evans said.

The truck began to move, a jerky motion that mirrored Kyle's unsteady coordination.  He'd killed it many times already, just going into first or getting from first into second.  Too much to think about; feet and hands, brakes and acceleration, shifting and steering.  This time Kyle was ready though.  The Bronco lurched forward, but it picked up speed.  The forward movement smoothed.  Kyle glanced at the tachometer.  The speed increased.

"Listen to the engine," Evans said.

The speed increased.  The Bronco was accelerating smoothly now.  Not the mechanical bucks and lurches of earlier today.

From first to second, Kyle thought.

"From first to second," Evans said.

The Bronco rolled faster.  The engine began to strain.  Kyle could hear it.  He could feel it coming up through the gear shift.

First to second, he told himself again.  The big tires rolled.  He was running short on runway, even in the open parking lot.  The few times he had gotten this far he'd killed it going from first to second.  He'd panicked.  He'd overthought it.  His hands and feet didn't make the connections.  The engine whined.  The end of the parking lot loomed ahead.

"First to second," Evans said.

Kyle got from first to second.  Hands and feet worked together.  He hit the clutch.  He pulled the shift knob down into second.  The needle on the tachometer dropped.  The engine stopped its strained whine.

"Turn," Evans advised.  The end of the parking lot and a row of cedar trees were just ahead.  Kyle was already ahead of his uncle.  His right hand left the shifter and grasped the steering wheel.  The Bronco eased to the right.  It wasn't the frantic careening of a panicked driver, but an easy long, looping turn.

"Accelerate through the turn," Evans advised.

Kyle accelerated.  His confidence was boosted, though he wasn't conscious of it.  He was in a groove now.  The Bronco came around, looping around 180 degrees and accelerating back in the direction it first came.  It came out of the turn.  Kyle kept on the gas.  The Bronco straightened.  Without thinking, Kyle's hands and feet went to work again.  His right hand went back to the shifter.  His foot pushed it.  His right hand pushed up and over.  The engine whined for a split second, the power screaming free in neutral, and then the gears engaged.  Kyle felt the resistance through the shifter.  The Bronco ran forward.  Smooth.  Easy.  The wind whipped through the open cab.  Kyle shot a quick glance over to his uncle and smiled.  Evans smiled back.

"All right Kyle, now let's try slowing it down."

Kyle slowed the truck, braking and downshifting and working the gears back down to first.  Just as their runway of empty high school parking lot ran out, Kyle brought the vehicle to a complete stop.  In neutral, the engine rumbled away.  No jerks. No jumps forward.  No violent death rattles as the engine died.  The throaty 302 growled, ready for more.  Kyle smiled.

"Good job," Evans said.  "Now do it again."

"Practice until you can't get it wrong?" Kyle offered.

"Practice until you can't get it wrong," Evans agreed.


Thirty minutes and several flawless circuits of the parking lot later, Evans asked, "You ready to try it on the road?"  Kyle looked over at his uncle.  "I thought we could go to the store and grab a couple of steaks for dinner."

Kyle grinned.  "That depends.  Who is grilling the steaks?  Me or you?"

"I will, but I think you're the better man for that job."

Kyle's grin grew broader.  "Let's do it."

Kyle put the Bronco in gear and pulled out of the high school parking lot.  The first traffic light they came to was changing from green to yellow.  Kyle accelerated, beat the light, and got from second to third just as they crossed the intersection.  He was smiling the whole time.


Dinner was excellent.  Steaks with sautéed mushrooms and onions and baked potatoes.  After dinner, Evans and Kyle sat around the table.  The remains of the steak dinner lay spread out before them. Kyle picked at his teeth.  Evans sipped at the cola he liked.

"You want to watch the riots again tonight?" Evans asked.

Kyle thought about it.  Then he answered, "No.  This day's been perfect.  Let's not ruin it."

This is really good, thank you. Goma have to get on your Patreon.

Great extra, hangin' by my finger tips.

 Thanks

Latest part is up on Patreon as of two minutes ago.  I'll post here in a couple days.

We're getting to the end of this story, so I figure I better let everybody reading in on my plans.

I'm obviously building this up to a crescendo as I like to do.  I'm going to post 90% of the story here.  If it turns out the way I hope it does, you'll find the ending satisfying.

I'm planning on publishing three additional chapters only on pay sites:  Patreon and I'm going to give Substack a try.  I'll also publish the whole thing on Amazon... not that I really want to, but it is what it is.   My hope is the reader will find the very end extremely satisfying and worth the bucks they pay out for it.

I should add that I was working in Seattle in the Summer of 2020, which served as inspiration for this endeavor.


Attached File

So, bang for the buck, where would you prefer us reprobates to support you?

It's been a while since I've done the economics in the publishing sphere.  I know everyone takes a cut, but don't know the cost benefits of each of the channels.

It's less about bang for the buck and more about who I do and don't like doing business for.  I'm not thrilled with Amazon/Kindle.  I think they take the biggest cut, but I also don't like their politics.

I still remember the ARF shut down of 2020.

I have not tried Substack yet, at least not for pay.

Amazon\Kindle would probably be the best cost benefit for the reader.

Patreon works out best for me.  At the end of the day though, I'm doing this for fun.  Whatever bucks I make are just icing on the cake.

The Texas Hill Country.  August 5.
D-Day.

Evans woke, rolled out of bed, and greeted the day with a smile.  The day before had been great.  Maybe this day would be just as good.  Maybe even better.

Before he headed downstairs to the kitchen, Evans stopped in his office.  Everything was  right where it should be.  The controller for the laser unit on his roof was on the desk next to his computer.  The single rifle hung in the ready rack.  Beside it, a hammer rested in one of the empty rifle spots.  The bomb-suit mask/display from his EOD hung on the wall.   Evans rested his hand on that reverently and bowed his head.  Then he headed downstairs.

"Morning," Evans said to his nephew, who was busy at the stove.
"Good morning to you.  Hey, the jeep is gone."

"You mean the Bronco?"

"Yeah, the Bronco is gone."

"Yup," Evans said.  "They came and got it early this morning."

"Funny.  I didn't hear anything."

"Well, like I told you," Evans said.  "Those guys aren't the kind of guys you hear coming."

"They weren't coming though.  They were going."

"You don't hear those guys going either."

"I guess so," Kyle said.   He turned from the stove top and faced his uncle.  He had the biggest smile spread across his face.

"What's got you so happy?" Evans asked.

"Try this," Kyle said.  He passed a tray to his uncle.  On the tray sat a small dish filled with sugar and a tiny spoon, and an ornate glass filled with tea the color of dark honey.  Steam rolled up out of the glass.

"What's this?" Evans asked.

"Special order," Kyle said.  "I hit up some message boards.  This is supposed to be the best tea you can get.  I think I got the right amount of sugar for you too.  If not, there's more there."

Evans set down the tray, took up the decorative glass, and sipped.  Kyle waited anxiously for his uncle's reaction.  Evans lowered the glass, smiled, and said, "damn."

He sipped again.

"Like it?"

"Like it?  I love it.  This is the real deal.   Where'd you get this?"

"At the getting' place."

"Ha," Evans laughed.

"I wanted to heat the water with charcoal and a brazier.  You know, the traditional way."

"No, no," Evans said.  He took another sip and the kick of the hot, strong, sugary tea hit him.  "No, this is perfect.  It takes me back.  It is like I'm back over there again."

"Oh," Kyle said.  And his mood immediately shifted from pride and elation to dejection.  His eyes lowered.  His shoulders sank.

"No.  No.  I meant in a good way," Evans said.  He took another sip, and the spicy, sugary sweet kick hit him again.  He remembered the good times: paling around with Lasky, first as Combat Engineers and later as EOD technicians.  He remembered their small victory on the bridge and relaxing along the riverbank after.  And he remembered all the other small victories; the weapons caches they discovered and the bombs they disposed of.  He remembered that crazy pilot, always singing that Marty Robbins song.  And he remembered that moody infantry officer everybody feared, the one whose path he always seemed to cross.  And he remembered his EOD team, the one he'd lost on a nameless highway in a war everybody back home was quick to forget.  They'd been taken too soon.  Evans had never been able to shake the feelings of guilt and the remorse, and the nagging questions about how things might have been different.  But he figured parts of his team lived on in him, the good parts.  And maybe, just maybe, he'd passed those good parts along and into his nephew, and they could live on in Kyle.

Evans smiled.  "The tea is perfect Kyle.  It is just perfect.  You did good.  Really good."

Kyle's mood shifted back again to pride and elation.  "Good," he said.  "Now, what do you want for breakfast?  Anything you want.  I'm making it."

"Anything?" Evans asked.

"Anything."

Evans thought.  Then he answered with a smile.  "Scrambled eggs.  Bacon.  Potatoes."

Kyle's face crinkled up.   "You want chow hall food?"

"Yup," Evans said.  "I wanted chow hall food."

Kyle shrugged.  "Okay.  If that's what you want."

Smiling, Evans sat down and quietly sipped his tea.  It was shaping up to be a great day.


Lori

Lori was not having a good start to her day.  While Evans felt contentment, Lori felt anger.  She was angry about the murder of her dog.  She was angry that those men up the street killed it and, in her mind, the police let them get away with it.  She was angry that she was stuck in the State of Texas, with its radical politics, all run by filthy and insensitive men who only motivation was to further the patriarchy.  She was angry that neither the State of Texas nor the federal government was giving her more money.  She was angry that she was poor.  She was angry that her family was poor.  She was angry that she was married to a cripple.  She was angry that she lived in a house that was falling apart all around her.

But most of all she was angry about her miserable and empty life.

Looking back to when she was a child, her opportunities had been endless.  But she hadn't seized any opportunities.  She'd wasted away all those years and now, an old and miserable woman, she had no opportunities and nothing to show for her life.  Her failures were all her own.  Deep down she knew that, but she would never admit that.  Not to anybody, and especially not to herself.

Lori wanted to spit on her own floor.  Instead, she looked around her house.  Her husband, nearly comatose and wheelchair-bound, sat drooling in front of the TV.  She never loved the man.  She married him because he was a meal ticket.  He came with a house and steady checks from the Department of Veterans Affairs and Social Security Administration.  When he was younger, he also came with the necessary connections to maintain a steady flow of marijuana and other recreational drugs into their living room.  His life had been one party after another until all the fun and the drugs and the booze caught up to him.

His health had never been good, and his decline had been rapid.  Now he was essentially a vegetable, and like any vegetable, Lori had to nurture and care for him.  If she didn't and he died, the checks would stop.  Once she'd seen him as a meal ticket.  Now he was a gilded anchor chained to her neck.  Lori would happily take her husband to the nearest lake and drown him, but if she did, she'd have to fend for herself.

The TV flashed.  Lori turned from her invalid husband and looked around the rest of the house.  It stunk.  It needed cleaning.  It had the ammonia smell of dog urine, cigarette smoke, and the stink of half-eaten food left to rot.  Fast food bags littered the kitchen counter.  A garbage can that should have been emptied days ago, stood beside an ancient refrigerator that didn't match any of the other appliances.  Overloaded ashtrays cluttered the coffee table.  Some were spilling over with cigarette butts.  Others were filled with the pungent leavings of cheap weed.  Trim around one door frame had come loose and now it hung from the frame by a single nail.  One window, broken, had been crudely patched with cardboard and duct tape.  The cardboard had gone yellow with age.  The duct tape was turning into dust.  Her dead dog's waste occupied several corners.  It had occupied the corners so long it had dried to the consistency of cement.

"Are you going to the store today?  I need cigarettes and some stuff for my hair," a voice screeched from the bathroom.  Lori's eyes flashed in that direction.

"Lori?  Are you there?  Did you hear me?" the voice screeched again.  It was Lori's sister.  She lived in the house too.  Just as Lori leeched off of her husband's disability checks, Lori's sister leeched off of her.

"Did you hear me?  I need some cigarettes."  The screeching was endless.  The least her sister could do was clean this mess of a house.  But her sister wouldn't.  By noon she'd be high as a kite and by dinner she'd be drunk as a skunk and if she was lucky her fat and purple-haired ass would find some disgusting man on the internet to buy her a case of beer and fuck her.

Men.  Lori wanted to spit every time she even thought of the word.

Men were the cause of all the bad things in the world.  Men were the cause of all the bad things in her life.  Men were the reason she was stuck here.  Men were the reason her dog had been murdered in the middle of the street.  Whether it was those racist cops or her redneck, hick neighbors, it didn't matter.  They were all men.  They were all in it together.

She knew what she'd do though.  She knew.

Lori logged into her computer.  Her husband sat nearby in his wheelchair, the clear tubes of a nasal cannula wrapped around his ears and nose.  His eyes saw, but his mind did not comprehend.  Lori typed and tapped.  With just a few keystrokes she was right where she wanted to be.

A banner across the top of the webpage asked, "Know Any Ultra-Fascists?  Know Any White-Supremacists?  Know Any Christian-Nationalists?  Identify the Enemies of True Democracy Here!"  Below those questions were professionally edited pictures of the PVD in action, marching peacefully through the streets, proud, their fists raised, their faces covered with masks.

Lori navigated through the website and found what she was looking for.  She clicked some radio buttons and opened an online form.  She filled it out, describing in detail the murder of her dog, her mega-irredeemable neighbors with their ultra-deplorable ways.  She listed the multitude of injustices she'd been forced to bear.  She ended her digital tirade with an address and description of the Silver Springs development.  That done, with a smug grin smeared across her face, Lori hit the form's submit button.

Her husband coughed.  In the kitchen, her sister was bitching that there was not enough of the food she wanted.  Lori didn't mind though.  Her unhappiness had melted away, replaced with self-satisfaction.  She was going to show those men.  The PVD truly was a vanguard that would destroy the patriarchy and bring about equity and social justice once and for all.  And she, given her lifestyle choices, was an undeniable ally to their progressive cause.  Together, they'd smash the patriarchy.  They would show those men who had the power now.  She'd show them that it wasn't their world anymore.

She'd show them.  Oh yes, she'd show them.


The Contractor

In a previous life, the contractor worked for the US Army.  Now, he worked for a company called Unified Security Consulting.  Unified Security Consulting was a subsidiary of United Security Consultants.  That company was a subsidiary of Unity Specialized Consultants.  All of that was confusing, and that was by design.  If one had time and abilities, the various subsidiary companies, holding companies, shell companies, and partners could be traced back to The McMaddis Leadership Group.  The CEO of that company was retired Army General William  McMaddis.'

Before retiring, General William McMaddis hunted international terrorists around the globe.  After retiring from the Army, he formed the McMaddis Leadership Group.  Now, he hunted domestic terrorists in the United States.  If he felt any reservations about hunting down American citizens on American soil, McMaddis did not show it.  Combining years of counterinsurgency experience with big tech, William McMaddis provided a very specialized service to the highest levels of the US Government.  He made a very healthy profit, and as a private entity, he was able to operate without the legal constraints or congressional oversight a public entity might have to endure.  William McMaddis hired many of his former staff officers for this very important work.  This contractor was one of them.

All summer the contractor had been on the road.  His job was to provide operational support to the PVD.  Lately, that meant focusing their efforts on targets.  It wasn't the targets themselves that mattered.  One group of middle-class suburbanites was just as good as any other.  What mattered was focusing the efforts of the PVD, forcing upon them a unity of effort lest they attack in a hundred different directions at once.  For the contractor, it wasn't much different than what he did as an Army Officer, building up foreign military forces and directing them to take actions favorable to the United States.  In a lot of ways, it was easier.  The PVD all spoke English.  They were also a lot more motivated than the average Third-World conscript.  The PVD were all true believers.  And of course, the pay in his new role was a lot more than what he made in the Army.  Like the retired general, the contractor showed no qualms about attacking average middle-class Americans.

He needed to find a target for tonight's "First Amendment Celebrations," as they were now being called.  As in any operation, logistics was a concern.  He needed to find a suitable target close to where the PVD were currently staged, somewhere in the Texas Hill Country.  He logged into the database where people nominated targets for the PVD.

Normally devoid of any sense of humor, the contractor read one suggestion and laughed out loud.  Some lady, he assumed it was a lady, was mad that one of her neighbors shot her dog. Now she was suggesting, no, demanding, that the PVD come to her neighborhood and avenge her dog's death.  Did she not know who the PVD were?  did she not know what they did?  They'd been ravaging one neighborhood after another all summer; burning, looting, murdering.  Now this lady wanted the PVD, with all their rage and fury, to come into her neighborhood?  All over some dumb dog?   The contactor chuckled and shook his head.  "You want the PVD to come to your home?  Okay, lady.  I'm going to give you exactly what you asked for."

The contractor kept on laughing as he typed away at his computer, turning the call to avenge the dead dog into the operational directive for tonight.  Just as he finished his personal phone rang.  He picked it up and looked at the display.  It was his wife.  She was calling about their daughter, no doubt.  Lisa was entering high school and needed some dental work done.  The thought of his wife's hectoring changed the contractor's mood from amusement to emotional exhaustion.

"She needs braces, I'll get her the damn braces," the contractor said to the unanswered phone.  With that, he typed the last keystrokes that would send the PVD to Silver Springs.

Teddy

Teddy stepped out of a secure room located deep inside a nameless federal building in Dallas Fort Worth.  He took up his phone and dialed a number.  Just like Evans, Teddy used to have a "burner" phone for this type of work.  That was in the past.  Now he just used his government-issued phone for everything.  There was no need to hide the things that he was doing.  Certainly, a lot of those things were illegal.  Many more were unethical and immoral.  But it wasn't like anything Teddy did would ever be investigated or exposed.  There were laws and rules, but those laws and rules were only exposed one way.  People like Teddy were, "on the right side of history" and "serving a greater good."  His moral superiority, evidenced by his political affiliations, made Teddy and others like him exempt from the laws and regulations that bound ordinary Americans, especially those Americans with incorrect political views.

The call went through to Greg's voicemail.  Normally, Teddy wouldn't have left a recorded message.  But again, Teddy didn't need to worry about leaving evidence.  He knew the Justice System was one-sided.  And he knew he was on the right side.  He began speaking as soon as he heard the beep.

"Grey, Teddy here.  I wanted to give you a heads-up.  There are going to be some serious First Amendment Celebrations in your jurisdiction tonight, so be ready.

"Also, the gun safety bounties just increased.  Keep your fingers crossed.  If you're lucky a couple of chumps and dregs will do something dumb tonight and you'll be able to rake it in at their expense.

"Okay.  Talk to you soon."

Teddy put his phone back inside a tiny metal locker mounted on the wall and built to store phones.  He swiped a badge and re-entered the secure part of the federal building.  The part where phones were forbidden and secrets were kept.

This part of the building was called a Sensitive Compartmented Information Facility, or SCIF for short.  Because this was a SCIF in a secure Federal Building, it was not supposed to be used for any political campaign.  At the very minimum, that's what Teddy and the others were doing here today.  What they were doing was much worse, but nobody in the room was worried about that.  The Justice System was one-sided, and they were all on the right side.

Teddy walked down a hallway and entered a conference room.  Other people filed into the room.  Some held fresh cups of coffee.  All were dressed like typical government types: dark business wear.

"Okay, let's get back to it,"  the man running the meeting said.  "Once again, this is option "B" for the unlikely event the election doesn't go correctly.  The list we are compiling today is for just locals in the area and this is for round six.  So, the names we put on this list will all be arrested on the sixth political sweep."

"When is the sixth sweep supposed to happen, again?" a grey-haired woman in a dark pantsuit asked.

"Great question.  The sixth sweep will take place somewhere between Memorial Day and Juneteenth.  Remember, there will be big jury verdicts and convictions on Juneteenth and the 4th of July, but those won't be for anybody on this list.  Those will be reserved for the biggest names that get arrested in the first and second sweeps."

"Will the people arrested in the sixth sweep get a trial?"  a man asked.  He wore a pin on his suit lapel: the multi-colored Pride flag crossed over the Iranian flag.

"Of course.  What do you think we're doing now?" the woman in the pantsuit quipped.  Everybody in the room let out a sensible chuckle.

"Okay, okay, let's get back to it," the moderator said.  "We've got a quota we need to meet of a hundred names for arrests and we aren't even halfway through.  Let's focus.

"Are next victim is… Mr. Robert Webster, age forty-four.  Father, veteran, goes to church… all the same crap."

"What did he do?" Teddy asked.

"Nothing really," the moderator said.  "Misinformation.  Disinformation.  A few mean posts here and there on the internet.  But his family owns twenty acres.  One of our big donors wants us to imminent domain this guy's land so he can buy it back a develop it into a smart city."

"What is our margin on something like that?" the woman in the pantsuit asked.

"Minimum twenty percent," the moderator said.

"Done.  Hell, let's arrest him now," the man with the flag pin said with a smile.  That brought more smiles out from around the room.

"Any children?" Teddy asked.

"Page two of the dossier," the moderator said.  Teddy flipped the page over and quickly scanned it.  Done, he tossed the dossier back onto the conference table.

"Arrest his wife and kids too," Teddy said.  "His son isn't old enough to drive, but I can massage the system and have him tried and held as an adult.  With his son in general population and his daughters with protective services, he'll roll over on the land quick enough."

"After we get the land, what do we do with the wife and kids?" another woman at the table asked.  Teddy shrugged.

"Who cares?  Leave them in jail.  Fewer people for us to worry about and it will send a powerful message to the rest of these fly-over types.

"The point we're at right now as a country, guilt doesn't matter, innocence doesn't matter.  And people like this guy and his family, they don't matter either.  What matters is that we win.  That we gain and maintain power.  That,"  Teddy said, "Is all that matters."


John

"I'm heading out," John called to his wife.

His wife sat on the couch in the darkened room.  The TV flashed and flickered.  She didn't stir.  She didn't make a sound.  John looked at his wife, so small on the couch, so focused on the TV.  John looked at his shoes.  He looked up at his wife again.

"I'll spend the night up there in Austin and then come back in the morning," John said.  His wife said nothing.  The TV flashed.  John looked at his shoes again.  Then he looked around the dark house again.

"Our daughter found me a nice hotel near the campus," John said next.  The only reply was a flash of images and some canned laughter from the TV.

"Okay, I'm going now."  Nothing came in response.  John shook his head and headed into the garage.

His 1990 Dodge was still there.  It sat, still waiting for him to fix it up.  Someday, John thought.  Someday I'll get to it.

He left his house, his wife, and his project truck and headed up to Austin to see his daughter.

Boy it's tough to see a happy ending here.

As a wise man once said, "You can't stop what's coming."