USA vs. Militia 02 Battle Front

  Battle Front

  USA vs. Militia

  Ian Slater

  Copyright

  Diversion Books

  A Division of Diversion Publishing Corp.

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  New York, NY 10016

  www.DiversionBooks.com

  Copyright © 1998 by Bunyip Enterprises, Inc.

  All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book or portions thereof in any form whatsoever.

  For more information, email info@diversionbooks.com.

  First Diversion Books edition November 2013

  ISBN: 978-1-62681-181-2

  Also by Ian Slater

  Firespill

  Sea Gold

  Forbidden Zone

  Manhunt: USA vs. Militia

  Chapter One

  Florida Everglades

  There was a shot. A hundred yards apart, one chasing the other, two airboats slithered and swerved through the Everglades mangrove islands, the boats’ wakes scratching bruised, storm-colored water. The gunshots from the man in the pursuing boat sounded like the sharp cracks of a stock whip. Frightened egrets were startled to the air over the darkening green islands, appearing as flying white clouds above the wide expanse of brown saw grass bending obediently in the wind. In the fleeing boat, Bob Kozan, a young park ranger, was now only fifty yards in front. A long streak of lightning followed by a thunderclap set Kozan’s black Labrador retriever, Laddie, to howling. The distance between the two boats narrowed farther as the sky opened up and rain pelted down, churning the swamp water into a steaming caldron in the high humidity. The pursuer slowed the flat-bottomed boat, knowing the fleeing park ranger somewhere ahead would have to slow too if he were to navigate the mangroves through the curtains of rain.

  It began because only the rangers and the Miccosukee Indian guides were allowed to use airboats in the national park. Kozan had spotted the unauthorized boat not more than ten minutes before, and, using his loud hailer, had ordered the man to pull over. In response, the man made a sharp U-turn, heading full throttle straight for the ranger, firing a handgun.

  There was another thunderclap. In the quiet that followed, the pursuer, his boat barely moving in the hiss of rain, could faintly hear the sound of Kozan’s dog whining.

  “Goddammit, Laddie!” Kozan kept his voice as low as possible. “Shut up!”

  Suddenly the dog perked up, emitting an impatient whine, his front legs tattooing on the no-slip aluminum strip on the bow in his eagerness to investigate.

  “Shut up!” Kozan pleaded. The heavy rain prevented him from seeing more than a foot or two in front of him. He cut his motor, drifting, every sense alert for danger. Why had the man gone ballistic when all he’d been asked to do was stop? Surely there was more to this than bad temper. Either that or his pursuer was just plain crazy.

  “Don’t go!” Shirley had told him at breakfast. Bob Kozan was a fit man of medium height and build, light brown hair with striking blue eyes. Those eyes, Shirley had once told him, were the first thing she noticed about him. They had been married for six years, and by now he thought he could read her moods. But this morning he had been taken by surprise. She’d never said anything so forcefully. Besides, the Everglades was a new posting and he wanted to make a good impression. For a moment, drinking his coffee, he’d thought she was kidding. Maybe she wanted to make love—a “dawnbreaker” they called it in their more relaxed moments. But when he’d looked up at her—she suddenly seemed much older than twenty-five—he could see she had something else in mind. Clearly, she was frightened.

  “What’s wrong?” he had asked.

  “I had a dream last night that you were dead.”

  He’d swirled the last of his coffee in his cup, smiling. “Well, I’m not.”

  “I’m serious, Bobby. I dreamt you were dead in the Everglades. You and another park ranger disappeared, like all those people in that Valujet crash.”

  “Ah,” he’d said dismissively. “You worry too much.”

  “Is it any wonder, with all this business in the West?”

  “Ahhhh,” he said again, bending over, pulling on his boot laces, his easy tone underplaying the “business in the West.” But he knew that it had been the most violent clash of arms of Americans against Americans since the Civil War. “That’s over with now, hon. General Freeman’s seen to that.” He was referring to the legendary general, Douglas Freeman, formerly commander-in-chief of the federal force. Freeman, now retired, had done battle with the massive uprising of the militias—the Sagebrush Rebellion some were calling it—which, like many militia outbreaks in the West, had started with a clash between locals and the federal government. Much of the land in the western United States was still owned outright and administered by the federal government, a fact little known by Americans in the eastern U.S., where only a tiny percentage of land was government owned. A hunter and survivalist by the name of Ames had killed a wolf up in Washington State’s Cascade Mountains. Government agents had moved in to arrest him, the militias came to his aid, and before anyone could stop it, the entire Northwest—already seething with discontent against what they saw as Big Brother government in Washington, D.C.—was literally up in arms.

  “Anyhow,” Bob Kozan assured Shirley, “it’s over with now. National Guard units are mopping up. Besides, that’s the Wild West, hon. We’re in Florida.”

  “It’s a nationwide problem,” she retorted. “There are militias everywhere. If there weren’t, do you think the President would be planning to go to Spokane—try to steal the thunder from the militia convention? That Louis Rukeyser on Wall Street Week says that if the President can’t show he’s the boss, foreign investors’ll get the jitters, the dollar’ll tumble, and then there’ll be massive layoffs and—”

  “Don’t worry so much,” Bob cut in, pulling her toward him, holding her tightly, kissing her on the cheek. “You had a bad night, that’s all. It was just a dream.”

  “I hear there are even militias down here in the Everglades,” she said, “getting ready for—”

  “It’s all talk,” Bob had told her, releasing her and slapping his thigh. “Laddie, come.” The black Labrador bounded in from the yard, scratching frantically on the screen door, eager to hit the road. Bob smiled back at her. “See you tonight.”

  “Where’ll you be?” she called after him as the screen door banged shut.

  “The islands.” He meant the Ten Thousand Islands. He might as well have said he was going to Siberia, the area was so vast. There were channels, mangroves, and, inland to the east, saw grass as far as the eye could see. You could lose a city in there. He remembered how the Valujet had disappeared. The Everglades had sucked it down in seconds.

  The storm continued, unabated.

  “Where’s Kozan?” the ranger superintendent asked. His secretary didn’t show any sign of recognition. “You know,” he explained, “the new man.”

  “Oh yes,” she said. “Let’s see…” She peered down through her reading glasses at the sign-out clipboard on the wall. “He’s somewhere in Ten Thousand Islands.”

  “Huh!” the superintendent grunted. “Somewhere is right. He call in on the crackler yet?”

  She shrugged. “Might have, but with this storm, the cracklers are really cracklin’, if you get what I mean.” She smiled at her little play on words.

  “Geez, Elma,” the super said, walking over to the coffeepot, mumbling. “You’ll wind up on Letterman. If Kozan does get through, you tell ’im not to panic in this storm. Just tie up on an old bayhead tree and wait ’er ou
t.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “He take that stupid dog with ’im?”

  “Laddie,” she said. “I don’t know for sure.”

  “Well, if he gets lost, we’ll just have to listen for the dog. Never heard such a noisy mutt.”

  “He’s no mutt. Purebred Labrador retriever.”

  The super picked up the sugar container and let it pour.

  “ ’Sat a fact?”

  “Uh-huh.”

  Kozan’s pursuer reloaded slowly and spun the chamber. He was in no hurry. He could wait out the storm the same as the ranger. One thing was for sure: if any goddamn government officials came snoopin’ around, they were going to find the ranger floating facedown in the Gulf with all the other swamp debris. Son of a bitch had gotten too close.

  At last the rain ceased. The militiaman stared through the rising fog. He could hear the dog whining and the sound of a chain just ahead.

  “Drop the gun!”

  The voice came from behind him, and he swung around, gun in hand. Kozan fired and the militiaman was flung out of the boat. As he hit the water, Kozan’s dog strained to free itself from the chain that anchored it to a small mangrove island. With lots of gators around, Kozan knew he’d put Laddie at terrible risk, tied up like that, but it was the only way of suckering his pursuer forward in the fog. Even so, Kozan was almost too late. As he grappled and began hauling the dead man aboard, two gators slid off mangrove roots nearby, Kozan barely able to unchain Laddie in time and get him aboard.

  Kozan radioed in on the “crackler,” informing the superintendent what had happened. Sometime later, as he came in to tie up the boat, the dead man lying stretched out at an angle to the bow, he was surprised to see that a crowd had gathered around the dock. The onlookers included half a dozen reporters and angry members of the South Florida militia who’d been plugged into the ranger frequency, several of them already promising that there’d be serious repercussions for the “murder” of one of their members.

  Even before Kozan stepped ashore, microphones were being thrust in his face, the reporters shouting questions. “Did you fire first?” one of them asked.

  “No, he did.”

  “Did you draw your gun first?” another asked.

  “No, I did not.”

  “Then why d’you think he fired at you?”

  “I don’t know. All I did was hail him to stop.”

  “That’s all?” a skeptical ABC correspondent asked.

  Kozan nodded.

  The correspondent clearly didn’t believe him, and shared his skepticism with a colleague. “Has to be more to this. Must’ve seen something or someone he wasn’t supposed to.”

  The next day, after his report to the homicide detectives, Bob Kozan knew he had to go back out into the Everglades. It was like being in a serious auto accident. If you didn’t get back behind the wheel immediately, you might never drive again. Refusing to take the rest of the week off, he and Laddie were back at the dock, Bob arguing with the super, who wanted him to go with a partner. Kozan told his boss that traveling on the airboat with his dog was the equivalent of having a human partner. In fact, in many ways Laddie’s acute sense of smell and hearing made him a better partner than any human. Out West, Kozan pointed out, General Freeman’s elite Special Forces had used dogs to track down Latrell and Hearn, the Nazi, two of the most wanted militiamen in America. Latrell, it was reported in the media, had murdered a black man in Oregon. Hearn had killed a highway patrolman, cutting him in half with a shotgun at point-blank range, and was also a suspect in the murder of several black men. Latrell had managed to elude capture, but the National Guard had taken Hearn from Wentworth to Camp Fairchild, a compound for captured militiamen near Fairchild Air Base outside Spokane.

  It was his dog, Kozan pointed out, who had provided the diversion in the fog that he’d needed to trap his pursuer in the mangrove swamp.

  “Pursuer, manure!” the super said. “Go with a partner. They started doing that out West in the national parks in ’ninety-five because of these damned militias.”

  “That’s the Wild West,” Kozan protested, as he’d told his wife just the day before. “Got a gun nut every five yards. This is Florida.”

  “Yeah, where they shoot tourists at Miami Airport. Take a partner.”

  A gator call came in on the crackler then, from a frightened senior, the reptile a reported eighteen-footer. “In my backyard. Better come quickly!”

  The super, one hand over the phone, rolled his eyes heavenward at Kozan. “Never seen an eighteen-footer in my life,” he said, but he had to send out the ranger whom he’d initially assigned as Kozan’s partner. “Looks like you win,” he told Kozan. “Though I don’t know why in hell you’re so keen to go on your lonesome.”

  Kozan grinned boyishly. “Chief, wasn’t one of the reasons you joined the Park Service that you wanted to get away from people?”

  “Since when is a partner a crowd?”

  “I like to work alone.”

  “Oh,” the super said. “One of those, or are you just trying to impress me with your self-reliance?”

  Kozan smiled. “Trying to impress you.”

  The super sighed heavily. “Off you go, then, but keep in radio contact.”

  “You got it,” Kozan said.

  Yes, he admitted to himself as he left the office, he was trying to impress the super. Dammit, he was trying to impress everyone with his independence, particularly the locals. Take a few days off to settle his nerves? Not him. He sure as hell didn’t want it to get around that he was afraid of going out again, alone. With that kind of reputation, every illegal fisherman and smuggler in the glades would call your bluff. Besides, he loved being alone with only Laddie for company. It was a simple yet profound thing to be alone—not lonely, but alone—and yet it was such a difficult thing to convince other people of. Deep down, Kozan knew people were terrified of being by themselves, particularly in the wild, especially those who, like the overwhelming number of Americans, lived in cities and suburbs. Shirley was an exception. She understood, even if she did worry too much at times.

  The Everglades’ watery vastness was like a tonic to him. He never tired of watching the changing hues of blues and greens and the crimson-streaked twilights passing over and through the Ten Thousand Islands.

  “What d’you think, Laddie?” he asked as he started up the airboat’s fan.

  Laddie’s moist, black nose was avidly sniffing the fetid odor of the swamp up ahead, the dog eagerly stretching so far over the bow near the grass roll bar that it amazed Kozan he didn’t fall in. Kozan eased the boat away from the jetty. The bow lifted slightly as he increased speed, and Laddie moved back toward the front seat well of the boat as the craft slid quickly past tangled growths of Australian pine and the grotesque remains of long-dead trees, the watery world going on forever. Bob glanced at his watch. Ten-thirty. He’d turn back from patrol at about three, and he’d get laid tonight for sure—Shirley so glad to have him back. And another thing, though he sure as hell wasn’t going to tell anyone—he’d been shit-scared there for a moment yesterday, unable to see anything in the teeming rain. But after he’d shot the guy, the adrenaline rushing through his veins, he’d been on a high, so horny he figured he’d stay hard all afternoon.

  What he hadn’t known, couldn’t know, was that he would soon become one of the most pivotal men in American history.

  The White House

  The President of the United States sat in one of the Oval Office’s white lounge chairs, ringed by his advisers, who were planning his controversial visit to Spokane while watching last night’s tape of Larry King Live.

  King faced a panel of experts on the militias. “Look, you guys, help me out here. There’s the Aryan Nations group, patriots, survivalists, Posse Comitatus—that how you pronounce that? Com-it-ta
-tus? That’s a right to bear arms movement, right? Right. Okay, so what do we have here? I mean can someone give me a figure, and I don’t mean out of thin air. I mean based on some kind of research—anything from FBI or FEMA?” He meant the Federal Emergency Management Agency.

  “Well, Larry,” one of the panel responded. “Hard-core fully armed militiamen, we’re talking a hundred eighty to two hundred thousand—”

  “Nationwide?”

  “Yes, nationwide.”

  “How many states?”

  “Forty, and growing.”

  “Yes,” one of the other pundits added. “And I think we have to remember how Professor McCauley of Bryn Mawr College put it to Time magazine.” He glanced down at a clipping. “ ‘If you think these people are crazy, then you have to ask if there is anything the federal government could do that would make you willing to take up arms against it. If you can answer no, then you’re entitled to think these people are crazy. But if you say yes, then you’d better hazard a thought that they are human beings just like you.’ ”

  “So you’re saying,” King responded, “that while there are only a hundred and eighty to two hundred thousand armed militia…” He paused. “That sounds a lot to me.”

  “To me also,” one of the experts said. “That’s ten divisions in military terms—two armies.”

  “Yeah, and if I’m hearing you guys right, you’re saying that there’s more support for the militias than we think.”

  “Oh yes, there’s a lot of racial stuff out there, and if you factor in all those people who are strongly antigovernment so far as taxes, environmental laws, and antiabortion are concerned, and the pro-gun, pro-school-prayer lobby, Second Amendment people, you’re looking at five percent of the population.”

  One of the President’s aides was dismissive. “Five percent? That all?”

  The chief executive did a little math. “That’s all? D’you realize how many people that is in this country? Over twelve million. National Rifle Association is three and a half million alone. That’s more than our entire armed forces, for Christ’s sake!”