“Gangs?” John exhaled noisily. “Have you debriefed your pilots yet? Have you looked at the gun camera footage?”
“No to the first question, other than a brief radio report, and as for the second, we don’t have gun camera footage anymore.”
“Why?”
“Because the equipment doesn’t exist. We’re cobbling aircraft back together once they are shipped back here to the States, and as quickly as we get them flying, they’re dispatched out. Gun cameras are just about the last damn thing we worry about as long as the machine flies.”
“Well, I wish to God you rethought that one.”
“Why?”
“Because when I wandered on to the scene, it wasn’t that those hotshots were tearing up some vehicles belonging to gangs and murderous thugs—they were strafing the woods where noncombatants, women, children, and old people were hiding.” He paused, forcing himself to calm down, to shift out of an emotional response, to fall back on to the long years of training to be dispassionate, in control of himself. He took a deep breath. “I witnessed the last firing run. The pilot lit up a stretch of woods, and a couple dozen people, many of them obviously women and children, broke cover in panic. They were gunned down without mercy.”
“How many?”
“A couple dozen, at least. Nearly all were hit.”
Dale took that in, again putting fingertips together in the shape of an inverted V, chin resting on the tips, looking pensive. “Hmm. They didn’t report that.”
“What were their mission orders? But before that, why the attack in the first place?”
“You didn’t hear?”
“Hear what?”
“A supply convoy running from here up to Johnson City was hit just north of Mars Hill. Two of my people dead, half a dozen wounded, one vehicle destroyed. That was yesterday afternoon.”
“Mars Hill—that’s in Madison County. Word is that the border reivers up there are an entirely different group.”
“How do you know that?”
At that moment, he felt it best not to elaborate too much. “Dale, I’ve been dealing with these issues for two years. You’ve been here how long? A month?”
Dale did not reply.
“May I suggest you get a better feel for who is what before you start sending out strike missions. There’s a nut job over in Madison and down into Haywood County who claims he talks directly to God and gets his marching orders from him, and that includes killing. They were the ones who most likely hit your convoy. Even with that in mind, is an attack on your convoy justification for slaughtering dozens of civilians in reply? How can you be sure you even were hitting the group that attacked your people on the highway?”
“Damn sure.” Dale’s tone was getting sharp, disturbed that his judgment had been challenged. “I had a drone up to check it out before we went in.”
“You’ve got drones?”
“Of course we do. Did a survey several hours after the attack on the highway—spotted a couple of vehicles heading from the direction of Mars Hill straight back to the encampment I ordered to be attacked today. It was and is intended to be a message to all in the region that, henceforth, official federal operations and convoys are not to be harassed. It is a necessary message to everyone if we are to restore order in my district.”
“But no confirmed identification that it was definitely them?”
“John, are you trying to defend these people?”
“No, Dale,” he replied quietly, making direct eye contact. “But what I can confirm is that I saw your people gun down innocent civilians.”
“If they are running with the reivers, they are not innocent civilians. If innocent, they’d have come out of the backcountry long ago, registered for rations, lived in safe areas as designated by the government. The army unit that was here before me put out that appeal, and I’ve done the same thing. Therefore, after they hit my convoy, I saw that as justified reason to send the strongest possible message that things have changed around here.”
“Dale, your people were shooting up civilians. They are people who were living up there before the war, and those that are left see it as their land still. And the fact that this drone of yours—which apparently has video equipment while your helicopters do not—spots two vehicles is slim evidence to me. These people are far too savvy to pull a hit on a convoy and then be spotted two hours later.”
“I made the decision and stand by it.” He paused. “Though I should have given you a call to get your view since you seem to know these reivers a lot better than you let on.”
“You implying something?”
“Well, it is curious that you get taken prisoner by them, and four days later, you come walking out of the woods as if nothing had happened.”
“What are you implying, Dale?” John repeated, this time more forcefully.
“Just that it was strange. You should have filed a report with me about what happened while you were their prisoner. It seems a lot more transpired than you let on in our last conversation. Otherwise, you would not be defending them now.” He paused. “Did you strike any deals with them?”
“I didn’t receive any memo from you that henceforth I was to report all activities to you.”
“I am the representative of the government here. If you had been more forthright with me, maybe what happened today could have been avoided.”
John glared at him without responding to this classic maneuver to transfer responsibility and guilt if something went sour.
“Yeah, the reivers over the mountain from me are a tough bunch, but they’re mostly into raiding for food, gas, and whatever they think they need. Yes, they’ve killed, and we’ve killed some of them, but outright murdering for a pig, a bushel of wheat, a few gallons of gas… that’s not their style or mine. Taking on an armed convoy sounds more like the reivers farther west following one of those nut jobs than the ones north of me who I have found are mostly folks just trying to survive, the same as you and me.” He paused for a moment. “In spite of our differences, I still see them as Americans.”
“And I see them as what you locals here call reivers. They got a hundred different names for them around the country, but they all come down to the same type, and one of my jobs is to either bring them back under legal control and compliance with the law or else.”
“Or else what, Dale? And while we’re on that, what is this rumor about the release of neutron bombs for use within the continental United States?”
“The situation in some urban areas is beyond retrieval. But come on—to actually use them? We both know the game of threat, and that’s all I can tell you.” Dale sighed and extended his hands in a gesture of frustration. “But back to here and now. I’d rather try persuasion than what I had to do this morning.”
“Twenty-millimeter miniguns are a rather permanent and uncompromising way of persuasion.”
“Damn it, John.” Now his voice was cold. “Have you been anywhere outside of your small town since the Day?”
John gazed at Dale, a bit startled after all their previous conversations—which, though grating at times, reminded him of a typical smiling midlevel bureaucrat in the prewar world. “Go on.”
“I sure as hell have—or at least seen reports you never laid eyes on. Every major city in America is down, most of them abandoned wastelands, those left controlled by ruthless mobs like those you call reivers. More than fifty thousand of them control Chicago and have declared a dictatorship under some whack job who calls himself ‘the Great.’ The prisoners he takes? The lucky ones get thrown off the top of the old Sears Tower. The rest he crucifies along the shores of Lake Michigan. If those at Bluemont do decide to pop a neutron bomb, I hope he’s the first to get it. Reports of human sacrifices with some cult running Saint Louis—another good candidate for a nuke. You want to see the reports, John, of what’s left of our country?”