Forgotten Forbidden America:: Patriots Reborn (14 page)

“I know,” Nelson said, turning away. “I was just hoping you would poke holes in my theory.”

“Nope,” Gerald said as Matt drove around the tractor to the back of the house. Bernard shut the tractor down, and Nelson backed up to the swing. He unbuckled his vest and let it drop on the porch and sat on the swing. Seeing that, Gerald took off his vest and sat down in one of the rocking chairs.

Bernard came up and saw them sitting on the porch. He took off his goggles and turned them off. “Have to say, these things are right nice,” he said, sitting down in a rocking chair next to Gerald. “You boys made a nice haul. Shame about the truck and trailer.”

“We don’t need them.” Nelson shrugged. “Bernard, Gerald wants to go over to Hank’s today with you, and I do as well.”

“Welcome to.”

“Bernard, Hank may fight to protect Steven,” Gerald said as he stopped rocking. “It may get bloody because if they fight back, we have to kill them all.”

“Well, I don’t think Hank will do anything, and we are assuming he hasn’t already shot him,” Bernard said as Michelle came out carrying a platter with cups of coffee. “Thank you, darlin’,” Bernard said, taking a cup.

She let Gerald take one then Nelson. Taking the last one, Michelle sat down on the swing with Nelson, leaning her head on his shoulder. “So we going to Hank’s?” she asked.

“You’re not,” Nelson said in a dead voice. Michelle looked up at him, but he kept looking straight ahead. “If it gets bloody, I don’t want you there.”

Seeing the worry on Nelson’s face, Michelle laid her head back on his shoulder. “Then I’ll stay here.”

They sat quietly as the world around them slowly started to brighten in the predawn. “I love sitting out here before the sun comes up,” Bernard said quietly as he sipped his coffee. “No matter what I feel like or what I have planned for the day, this puts me at ease seeing the colors slowly come out as the new day takes hold.”

Nellie stepped out. “Breakfast is ready.”

“Just a few more minutes,” Bernard said, draining his cup. Smiling, Nellie walked over and sat on his lap as they watched the sky light up as the sun rose off to their left. “A new day is here.”

“I didn’t really like the last one,” Nelson mumbled, getting up.

Bernard reached over and grabbed his arm. “Nelson, you done a good thing. You rescued Alex and Adam. Don’t let killin’ that trash bring you down.”

Giving a scoff, “That’s what you thought I meant?” Nelson snorted. “I’m not going to lie, I got little tingles and even a touch of a woody. I’m talking about seeing girls not much older than Gavin being raped. Parents taken out behind a church and a wife raped beside her husband. All the empty houses and no one is doing anything.”

“We are,” Bernard said, letting his arm go. “And we will do more.”

“I think before this is over, I’m going to be very fucking tired of killing,” Nelson said, walking past Bernard and into the house.

They all turned to Michelle, and she shrugged. “He’s tired, and he gets melodramatic,” she said. “Next is unbelievably bitchy. That one, I really fucking hate.”

“Make him take a nap,” Nellie said.

“What, and make bitchy get here faster? I think not,” Michelle said, walking in the house.

The others followed, and everyone sat down at the table as Michelle came over to Nelson. “Open your mouth,” she commanded.

“Why?” he asked, but as soon as he opened his mouth, Michelle threw a capsule in, almost choking him.

Grabbing a glass of water and draining it, Nelson sat it down. “You trying to kill me?”

“No, trying to stop me from killing you before you get bitchy,” she said, sitting down.

Taking a drink of orange juice, he asked, “What was that?”

“Go pill.”

Nelson jerked up and smiled. “Ooh, feel good awake pill.”

Bernard laughed and held out his hands. Everyone held hands as he said grace. When he was done, Nelson looked down the table at Nancy feeding Mike. “Nancy, time to spill it, girl. What the hell did you do for the government? I’m thinking you were with NSA,” Nelson said as he loaded his plate.

“Very good,” she said, looking over at him. “Yes, I was a contractor for them first, but they hired me seven years ago. I tested system vulnerabilities by hacking into them. Then I was transferred to system design and concept programming.”

“So you designed the networks like that safe house?” Nelson asked as he shoved a biscuit in his mouth.

“And the house,” she said, trying to spoon rice cereal into Mike’s mouth without much success. “Like I said, that is a command and control house. It can house the fifty-man action and response team assigned to it.”

“Nelson, if you counted those lockers you ransacked and the bunks upstairs, you would’ve counted fifty,” Gerald said.

“I can count, but I’m talking to Nancy, so hush,” Nelson said, grabbing the pitcher of water. “Okay, the operational command house. You helped design it and the computer setup?”

“Yes.”

“When?”

“Seven years ago,” Nancy said, and everyone but the babies, Olivia, and Brittney stopped moving. “When they handed me the outline of what had to be done, I talked to Gerald, knowing if they found out, we would both be dead. He’s the one that gave me the idea of the Special Forces ready rooms. That is what the shop was designed after.”

“Seven years ago?” Matt mumbled with a mouth full of food, and Nancy nodded, finally getting a spoonful in Mike’s mouth, which he pushed out with his tongue.

“That’s when I started looking for us a place to hole up,” Gerald said, spreading jelly over a piece of toast.

“How many were built?” Nelson asked, grabbing his glass of water.

“Don’t know how many right now until I look at what I downloaded, but three years ago, my section chief told me they just finished the three hundredth one,” Nancy said, making Nelson choke as he drank his water. “Those command houses are set up just like Palmer told you. Homeland has the country divvied up according to population. The areas here in Missouri cover five counties. Some states it’s more; others, less. It depends on if that state is a strong gun state or wants less control from the federal government. If so, they get more action response teams, your military contractors. Palmer was the area administrator.”

“So those I shot in Springfield—”

“Yes,” Nancy cut him off. “They were the administrators for Springfield. I’m sure that’s why Palmer had Ivan with him. Missouri is about in the middle as you can get on gun control, but Springfield and the southern part of the state is where most of the gun owners live. So down here, one area is five counties. Up north, it’s eight counties, but there are twenty-seven operational centers here in Missouri for its one hundred and fourteen counties and population of six million.”

“They don’t know who owns guns,” Matt said, and Nancy laughed.

“Bullsh…” she stopped, looking at Mike spitting out more cereal. “Yes they do. If you buy it with a credit card, it’s logged into NSA under your name. NSA scans all for sale sites and gun boards. The ones online are easy as you can figure, but if someone withdraws four hundred and twenty dollars and a gun was advertised in the local paper for that much, your name is flagged. When you go out and buy ammunition with your credit card or a check, your flag turns into a registration. If you buy ammunition of a different caliber than they have you down for, it’s classified as a registration of unknown make and model. It’s really simple how they did it with the banks cooperating.”

“And nobody said anything?” Bernard gasped.

Nancy shook her head. “I learned about it four years ago in a meeting by accident. I was warned it fell under my NDA, nondisclosure agreement, and they pulled up a federal judge’s interpretation of a presidential order that Franklin D. Roosevelt signed. Then the judge said it was backed further, and confirmed by executive order 12222 that Reagan signed.”

“One man can’t pass law,” Bernard said.

“Hey, I know that,” Nancy snapped. “I have known people that tried to speak out. They are all dead—accidents of course but still dead. They could take control of your car going down the road, forcing the accelerator wide open, turn off the brakes and air bags, then disengage the ignition. You are stuck in a rocket you can only steer.”

Bernard just stared at her in shock as she continued. “Or they send someone to rob you and kill you. Have someone break in, give you a shot, and you have an instant heart attack. The list is endless in how they can kill you.”

“Makes the Nazis almost look tame,” Nelson mumbled.

“I know of sixteen NSA employees or contractors that have been ‘handled,’ what they called it. Snowden was beyond brave, and his only saving grace is he became public fast, and he only had information about the wide surveillance programs, not registration or preparation for civil disorder. I think if he would’ve been on those projects, they would’ve killed him regardless of where he was.”

“Nancy, I have to say you were brave just living under that kind of threat,” Nelson said.

“Thank you, but it’s of little condolence,” she sighed. “But back to the Area Op/Con buildings, that’s what they are called. I have the information now of where they are and how many, but I only glanced at it as I downloaded it. Texas has 254 counties, and if it followed the same plan as Missouri, it would have fifty or so Area Op/Cons. It was the only state I looked at, and Texas has one hundred and twenty-four.”

She looked around the table, and Nancy saw even the little ones were listening and staring at her in shock. “In the states that are trying to pull out from the union, the Area Op/Con are now ordered to create unconventional warfare.”

Michelle gasped, jumping back. “We have to let them know.”

“Oh I did,” Nancy smiled. “I sent the governor of Texas the locations of the Op/Con buildings and the safe houses in the cities. I sent him the information for each state that has joined him. The rest I sent to a man Gerald knows that was still in SOCOM until a month ago. He has an active network already set up.”

Letting out a laugh, Gerald looked around the table. “Those boys will get the word out, and the government will lose a lot of toys.”

Matt asked, “What about the rest of the world? Nelson said Palmer told him every country had an economic collapse.”

“Yes, but we are really the only problem child. That is what I skimmed hard as I downloaded. The EU is having problems, but if only the government has guns, all the people can do is mass and catch bullets with their bodies. That is why they feel safe to send troops here to get the ‘wild children across the pond’ under control. We have the ability to feed them.”

“What about China? They could invade,” Matt almost shouted in shock and jumped back when Nancy and Gerald started laughing. “It’s not funny.”

“Oh, I’m sorry, but we aren’t laughing at you,” Nancy said. “No country wants to invade us no matter what you’ve read. We have over three hundred million firearms here. China is at war; they invaded Indonesia.”

“They could still come here,” Matt said, unconvinced.

“Matt, I got to sit in on several digital war scenarios and help program others. An invading army would suffer horrendous casualties just from the population. We ran one game that the Chinese and Russian armies were able to occupy the entire country in forty-eight hours, which is impossible. From the population only, they were suffering sixteen hundred casualties a day. That’s just from the acts of individuals, one person taking a shot at a soldier without coordination with others. Just one person hiding out and taking one shot in one town. All of the research said that would be repeated two thousand times a day across the country, and that was the most conservative number. No army can withstand those losses.”

Seeing Matt nod, Nancy continued. “They did run one scenario repeatedly, changing variables every time. The only one that had a viable chance to subdue the country, that scenario was the federal government seizing control. They aren’t seen as an occupying army, so they don’t get hit hard with the losses at first. I went over the data after I hacked into the program and can show it to you. Two factors were the only things that sped up, stalled, or changed the outcome of the scenario: private gun ownership and individual independence, but only the first one really matters. An armed man is a citizen; an unarmed man is a subject.”

Watching Matt’s jaw drop, Nancy nodded. “Yes, if people were dependent on the government for survival, they didn’t fight or didn’t fight long. The most promising of all the ways to create dependence on a large scale quickly involved seizing the money. Those scenarios showed the most promise if the banking system was controlled. They kept changing the other parameter of the scenarios: guns. I mean they input different gun laws, confiscation, registration, and such, but the only thing that gave them a quick victory almost every time was moving the people away from their homes and relocating them. People who brought guns would be detained, and they could only bring so much. The rest of the guns would sit in empty houses.”

“I’m going to be sick,” Nelson said, getting up.

“It’s just the go pill, baby. Eat some more,” Michelle said in shock.

“No, I’m sick because they actually ran programs taking over the country,” Nelson said as he paced around the kitchen. “I mean to whittle it down to two factors, holy shit! That’s persistent.”