“So where is Texas’ gold?” JR Hays asked.
“Bank of Manhattan.”
“Have you ever visited the facility, looked at the gold?”
“Oh yes. Impressive vault. The bank installed it when people started speculating in bullion ten or fifteen years ago. They didn’t want to store the stuff at home or in a suburban safe deposit box, so the bank got into the business of storing gold for a fee. Modern facility, great vault, as secure as any vault on earth. We put about half a billion dollars of the state’s funds into gold, and they stored it for us. Our gold has essentially doubled in value, so it’s worth about a billion, or was until the current political difficulty arose. Probably worth twice that now.”
“Good investment.”
The treasurer nodded and looked pleased.
“What about the New York Federal Reserve’s vault?”
“I got a tour once,” the bureaucrat acknowledged. “Didn’t get into the vault, of course, since they never let humans inside. The gold is moved on trolleys by remote control. Robots stack the ingots and load and offload the trolleys.”
“I’ve heard they have a private army guarding the vault.”
The treasurer nodded. “Yes, indeed. Most of what I know about the vault I picked up in casual conversation from the assistant treasurer, who used to work at the Bank of Manhattan. He wanted to get back to Texas so I hired him. Guy named Chuy Medina.”
“May I talk to him?”
“Sure. Great guy. You’ll like Chuy. I talked to the governor about the gold, but why are you interested in it?”
“Oh, that gold has to come back to Texas someday. We thought we should ask some questions.”
“Sure.”
Chuy Medina was of medium height, about fifty years of age, from McAllen, Texas, and had spent fifteen years at the Bank of Manhattan. Left two years ago when he scored a job at the Texas treasurer’s office.
“Tell me about the Bank of Manhattan,” JR prompted. “They have about forty tons of Texas gold, and I have been ordered to make a withdrawal.”
Medina laughed. “That’s a joke, right?”
“Perhaps.”
“This is like some weird plot from Mission: Impossible. There ain’t no way, man. No way at all.”
“Talk to me,” JR Hays said with a smile. “Convince me.”
The FEMA concentration camp guard towers on the edge of Camp Dawson were empty when we rolled by and went between the guards at the main gate. Several of the guards were wearing old army shirts, but most were in jeans and T-shirts. They were armed to the teeth and looked to me like they knew precisely what they were doing. This might be amateur hour, but there was some military discipline and brains guiding the amateurs. There wasn’t a FEMA uniform in sight.
The place was as crowded as a state fair, but without the animals. I estimated I could see over a thousand people, all adults, most in civilian clothes, all armed and doing army stuff, like working on weapons, loading trucks, and doing calisthenics. Cars were parked in rows, men wearing pistols directed us to a parking place, and a girl who looked as if she had ditched her classes in high school that afternoon escorted us toward the headquarters building, not the one in the concentration camp, but the main National Guard building. I could hear rifles popping, no doubt over at the shooting range. And a buzzing overhead. I looked up and saw a Predator drone taking off with a Hellfire under each wing.
I glanced over my shoulder and got a good gander at Sal Molina’s face. The man was stunned. Almost stupefied. Obviously Grafton hadn’t been whispering to him, either. If he had been doing any whispering, I supposed it was to Sarah Houston, who looked as if she were trooping up to the director’s office to be given another twenty-hour-a-day assignment.
Willie Varner was looking around wide-eyed. He had been clueless too. Willis and Travis were almost as surprised as the Wire.
I confess, I was a bit pissed at Grafton. I would have bet the ranch that he wasn’t surprised, that he well knew what we would find here. Why hadn’t the spook bastard confided in me? Need-to-know and all that spy shit, I suppose.
They confiscated all cell phones as we came through the front door, and put a sticky on each one with the owner’s name. Then they patted us down.
We ended up in the back of a conference room standing against the wall, all of us, including Dr. Proudfoot. Grafton was sitting at a table right up front, and that Washington Post weenie Jack Yocke was sitting beside him as if he were number two in the chain of command. Three big bananas, all in their fifties, were standing in front of a map that covered a blackboard, I suppose, taking turns briefing Grafton. They had started a few minutes ago, and they didn’t bother starting over for us. Another dozen or so people, perhaps half of them women, all wearing pistols, were in the chairs behind Grafton and Yocke and in front of us. One was a congressman I recognized from television, Jerry Marquart.
“So our plan is to have First Corps…” Yep, I thought, these are army dudes. “… proceed east on I-Sixty-Eight to Cumberland and Hagerstown. Second Corps will go east on U.S. Route Fifty to Winchester and then to Leesburg and into the District along that route. All this is subject to change if we hit opposition or find bridges have been blown. We’ll be close enough together on parallel routes that we can mass if necessary. Keep the drones up and looking, use our Special Forces veterans as scouts, and take whatever comes.”
Grafton had a few questions, then asked to see the Pentagon’s press release again. He read it carefully, then laid it on the table in front of him and said, “This is too good to be true.”
“It could be disinformation, deception,” the head dog agreed. “We don’t have their crypto codes, but from all the plain-language traffic we are hearing, perhaps there is some truth in it.”
“What plain-language traffic?”
“FEMA and Homeland. They are complaining bitterly that Soetoro has betrayed them.”
“Even if we get into a firefight with that crowd, that doesn’t mean the Pentagon’s press release is inaccurate. It may only mean that the paramilitary boys are taking orders directly from the White House. If we see army troops, however, we’ll know this is a pretty little lie.”
“Yes, sir.”
They chewed the rag about trucks, ammo, food, weapons, and all of that for another half hour, then I ducked out to find a restroom. There was toilet paper in there and the commode flushed. Life was looking up.
When I got back, the conference had broken up, the rebel officers were leaving, and only our little crowd remained. Everyone had taken seats around the conference table so they could talk to Admiral Grafton, who looked at Willie and said, “Please escort Dr. Proudfoot to the hospital. They may need his services. Is that all right with you, Doctor?”
It was, and the two of them left.
Jack Yocke jumped right in before the door shut behind them. “This rebel enclave didn’t just happen, Grafton. Someone made it happen and you knew all about it.”
“I made it happen,” Grafton said, looking around and taking in faces. “Sarah and I knew several months before Soetoro declared martial law that he was going to do it. We knew he was waiting for an incident that would justify martial law. The terrorists obliged. I have spent my adult life in the military and intelligence business. I talked to people I knew I could trust, told them Soetoro’s intentions, and asked for their help.”
“How did you know Soetoro was going to seize power? Did Molina tell you?”
“Sal, do you want to answer Yocke?”
“No,” Molina said. He had to force the word out, and it came out unnaturally loud.
“But you knew Soetoro’s plans,” Jack Yocke persisted, staring at the president’s man.