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  Foreign & Domestic

  Part V

  A Time for Reckoning

  Foreign and Domestic, Part V: A Time for Reckoning. No part of this publication may be used or reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the prior written consent of the Publisher except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews. For information, address DJK Publishing House at [email protected].

  First DJK Publishing House edition published 2019.

  Copyright © 2019 by David J. Kershner

  This is a work of fiction. All characters, organization(s), and events portrayed in this novel are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.

  Cover Art designed by Pintado

  Cover Art Copyright © 2019 David J. Kershner

  Disclaimer: There are several survival and sustainability concepts expressed in this work. These topics and descriptions are not meant as instructions for the construction, use, or tactic of any concept noted. Readers should seek proper training with regard best practices when employing any concepts noted herein especially with regard to the safe handling of weapons and explosive materials and, if at all possible, become certified from an accredited training facility or institution.

  All rights reserved.

  Published in the United States by

  DJK Publishing House

  ISBN 978-1-796-77802-1

  Printed in the United States by Create Space, an Amazon Company.

  Electronic Distribution by Kindle Direct Publishing.

  Foreign & Domestic

  Part V

  A Time for Reckoning

  By: David J. Kershner

  Chapter 1

  As scheduled, Maj. Isiah Barnes and the other teams slipped away in the pre-dawn light. Prior to Josh’s departure from Omaha and Offutt, Barnes and the men he’d been serving with were read in on Josh’s plan. To say that there was giddy excitement around the barracks was an understatement. A dozen men were sick of the assumption of power and usurping of rights. Each of them, in their own way, had related their displeasure to Josh by explaining some of the travesties and miscarriages they’d personally been ordered to execute or bore witness to.

  When pressed by Josh and his cohorts as to why they’d willingly gone along with such things, the answer was always the same, self-preservation. However, all had intimated that individualized exit strategies were concocted shortly thereafter. One by one though, Barnes had recruited them to lend their assistance and help fuel a resistance of sorts.

  Families and loved ones were sent away to live with friends and relatives until they could be collected and rejoined. Once they were secreted elsewhere, and out of harm’s way, the dozen men, through their offices and positions, began fueling the underground resistance that Josh had been monitoring. They cached supplies, began manipulating stock tracking logs, provided troop movements for the execution of ambushes by the ragtag insurgency of the militant drones, and they kept nearby towns fed through the harsh winters by offering up re-supply convoys for raiding, but this still wasn’t enough.

  The real motivation for the men wasn’t in the monetary offerings they were able to provide the ‘civilian agitators’ as the Regional Provost and Calderon had coined them. The governmental apparatus based in Richmond, Virginia refused to give these ‘agitators’ legitimacy and actively avoided calling them a ‘resistance’. To Barnes and his men, the thing they were most proud of was their ability to provide advanced warnings on raids. The horrors they’d heard about in Calderon’s ‘labor’ and ‘re-education’ camps were nightmare inducing. None had a full understanding of the POTUS’s end game, but it was clear to all of them that he was building up to something.

  Barnes was confident that the presence of the McArthur contingent would drag the Provost’s all-seeing eye in their direction. So, it came as no real surprise when the Adjutant’s appeared and started berating the officers and plying them with questions. This delay was factored into their planning. Not that they knew an inspection was coming per se, but if they departed prior to the arrival and subsequent inspection, the region would essentially be locked down until they were hunted down, questioned, and more than likely, put in front of firing squad.

  As a result, prior to the first team’s departure, Barnes, along with the rest of Officers and NCO’s had withstood the verbal onslaught of questions and insinuations from the power tripping interlopers.

  Where was Col. Simmons headed?

  Where did Col. Simmons come from?

  What was the nature of Col. Simmons’ visit?

  Who was with Col. Simmons?

  Even the General, a committed loyalist, and his staff seemed annoyed with the Provost’s office.

  The base had been physically and forensically inspected over the course of twenty-four hours by a cadre of minions riding from the nearby towns on orders from the regional capital located in Rochester, MN. Barracks, showers, chow halls, medical facilities, warehouses, everything was examined and searched. To their chagrin, all materials had been accounted for down to the last bullet and long expired MRE. The shipment manifests and duty logs were scrutinized as well but produced nothing.

  While the hatchet men returned to their originating towns, the first team of deserting men would be riding south, then east toward Corydon, Iowa. They would be riding hard to put as much distance between themselves and Omaha as quickly as possible. Once they reached Jake, the horses would be rested and their pace would slow.

  Isiah and the three men heading out with him would trail Josh by heading south then west, toward Kearney. They too would be riding hard to catch up with Josh and arrive in Kearney together. Barnes’ team had essentially been assigned convoy duty. The final group of four would depart the next night and work as a follow-on force of sorts for the first group headed to Corydon. With the exception of Barnes’ team, Josh wanted the groups to be days apart to avoid suspicion as they moved east across the country toward Cincinnati.

  Plans were also made to obfuscate their absence from the General and his staff for as long as possible. Barnes and the men gave Josh a complete rundown of their daily routines, pre-planned meetings for the week following Josh’s departure, and of course their rotating patrol schedule.

  This is where they found their opening.

  One of the twelve men oversaw the setting of the schedule and presenting it to the General. Amazingly, all twelve men were assigned a three-day patrol duty.

  Each group was leaving Offutt and ‘unlawfully’ deserting their post, but all were departing well supplied… as only their former positions could provide. Each team leader received an individual briefing where they were presented with detailed instructions regarding where to go, who to see, and when to be where from Josh privately.

  James, Dallas, and Jesus watched Josh like a hawk during the entirety of the planning. To their combined amazement, each had come to the conclusion that the mental exercises, the plotting, planning, and scheming, all worked to keep him lucid for the remainder of their stay at Offutt. It was the mundane triviality of the ride that was his biggest enemy thus far. Prior to reaching Omaha, all Josh had had were his thoughts and ideas. Now parts were moving, things were progressing, and taking shape. In turn, the jump start within his mind kept the effects of disease’s progression at bay.

  Once the group had a full accounting of Barracks 8, Josh divvied it up relatively equally. To Josh, it was vitally important that Jake receive as much as possible in the first two loads. Therefore, each of those teams carried one of the three 105mm howitzer shells, with the third going to Josh’s wagon. The artillery rounds weighed just under forty pounds apiece and measured almost thirty inches in
length. As a result, Barnes had requisitioned large leather slings under the guise of something mundane and repurposed them for the trip.

  The first team would also carry three claymore mines, complete with clackers and blasting caps for each, along with a five-hundred-foot-long roll of det cord. The second team would carry another roll of det cord and a half dozen blocks of C-4. Josh’s wagon would bring the lone McMillan rifle, with a dozen and half rounds, plus two M-16’s, extras magazines and three 50 cal. ammo cans that had been repurposed and were now full of loose 5.56x45mm NATO. Everything they took for each of the four groups of travelers could basically be considered a consumable as there was no replacement ordnance headed their way.

  The night before the McArthur contingent departed, Dallas pulled Barnes aside and gave him two things. The first was a message to be telegraphed to Sheriff Fitzpatrick back home. The other was the cipher. Josh had taught them the cipher before they even reached Dex in Noblesville. Dallas was making this comms decision on his own. He didn’t bother to disclose his own medical condition, or Josh’s for that matter. However, by his way of thinking, he was entrusting the code to a third party; someone he knew could use their rank and position to enter a town and send messages and would be without reproach.

  So, on the morning after Josh departed, under the auspices of their assigned patrol duty, two four-man teams stopped at the main gate to register their departure. As each man was entered into the log, Barnes asked the sentry if they’d seen or heard anything suspicious. This, in and of itself, was not an odd question to ask since he was an officer heading out and leading a patrol.

  “Yes, sir,” the man replied. “Well, I thought it was odd when we relieved the last watch.”

  Barnes cocked his head at him as if to say, ‘explain’.

  Recognizing the officers questioning look, the sentry continued.

  “According to the log, a three-man team departed at 02:00 and initially didn’t want to register the departure in the official log, sir. The previous watch stated that it was SOP. It was apparent that they weren’t regular Army.”

  “So, what did the party register the departure as?” Barnes asked.

  “It’s listed here as a tracking party, sir.”

  Damn it, the Major thought. Now we’re definitely gonna step in it.

  “Where were they headed, which way?” Barnes asked as nonchalantly as possible.

  The guard ducked back into the little hut that had been provided for inclement weather and returned with the spotter’s log.

  “Log says they started south then turned west, sir.”

  The former sergeant shrugged and said, “They were probably heading out on a non-sanctioned hunting trip. I wouldn’t worry about it, Corporal.”

  “Yes, sir,” the man replied and saluted.

  Barnes and the other team lead shook hands and they wished each other safe travels. They watched casually as the other four rode off toward Jake and Corydon, Iowa. Once Barnes and his team had ridden a safe distance and were outside of the hearing range for the sentry post, he gave them new instructions.

  “The minute we are beyond the spotter’s net, we are hauling ass to Kearney! There are hellhounds on the Colonel’s tail!”

  * * *

  Boone and Doc sat on the wheat festooned knoll just east of Kearney quietly observing. The tall green and brown grasses obscured their backlit silhouettes well in the morning sun. To passers-by, they just look like scrub brush growing among the tall wheat. Based on the sun’s position, it appeared to be almost 9:00 AM. The amount of movement in the town below helped to confirm this reading.

  The pair had been situated in their perch for two nights. They’d heard a commotion and watched their idiot friend, Alex, get thrown out of the tavern and dragged over to the Sheriff’s office. The man was a hothead with a quick temper, but public drunkenness, as of yet and as far as they knew, still wasn’t a large enough offense to be sent to a labor camp. The chip on his shoulder would be the weight that drowned him if he didn’t learn to turn the other cheek for any slights, real or imagined.

  Doc didn’t say much about Alex’s latest indiscretion. For Boone’s benefit, Doc had only sighed as he exhaled and shook his head.

  Neither man could adequately explain why they had let Alex go to town instead of Doc. The tried and true method of Doc going in first as the victim of highway robbery had worked in every town they’d encountered thus far. However, for some baffling reason, both of them had acquiesced to Alex’s request. They didn’t acknowledge it to one another verbally, but their body language read like they were happy he was being taught a lesson for his unchecked bravado.

  A night in the drunk tank might straighten him out, they thought. Concern grew when the man hadn’t been released after his initial overnight stay. On the second day, they saw that he and another prisoner were being taken to a wash house. This perplexed them. On the morning of the third day, they’d made the decision to go into town together.

  As they waited and watched from a distance, a man started riding out in their general direction. He had two horses in tow.

  “Rider comin’,” Boone declared and the pair silently shifted from their kneeling position and went low onto their bellies.

  It wasn’t uncommon to see people coming and going from the area. Any number of people had been observed doing so. However, several minutes later, the horse and rider came to a stop only twenty yards from their position. As he stood up in his stirrups, the pair watched as he put a small set of well-worn black rubberized binoculars up to his eyes and scanned the immediate area. Given the man’s height advantage by being on a mounted horse, it became apparent they were about to get caught.

  Doc looked around and noticed that they had trampled the wheat in an unnatural inexplicable manner and that there were multiple channels from their foot traffic leading to and from the matted area.

  “We’re such idiots,” Doc murmured under his breath.

  “Yep,” was all Boone said in response.

  Spotting the disturbed wheat patch, the rider sat back down. The two men waited for the inevitable when they heard the unimaginable.

  “Dr. Sebastian Jensen… Mr. Boone Deschamp. Your presence is requested in town.”

  The man said nothing else.

  The pair looked at each other.

  “What has that idiot done now?” Doc said under his breath.

  “Beats me,” Boone replied. “Do we go with him or run?”

  “Where are we gonna run to? We are literally in the middle of nowhere and the closest cover is that stand of trees hundreds of yards away,” Doc remarked incredulously.

  Boone shrugged. “Just an idea.”

  “Come on,” Doc insisted. “Let’s go see what he wants.”

  It was only when Doc and Boone neared the rider that they noted the glinting star pinned to his vest.

  “Damn it,” Doc muttered.

  “Yep,” Boone replied. “Son of a bitch turned us in.”

  Instinctively, and cautiously, the pair began putting their hands in the air. The man chuckled.

  “You can put your hands down, guys. You’re not under arrest. There’s a lady in town that needs medical care.”

  The pair glanced at one another before Doc replied.

  “How did you know we were there… or that I was a doctor for that matter?”

  “Your buddy, Alex, has made some new friends. You’ll be coming with us once the mother is cleared for travel.”

  The men continued their approach and mounted each of the horses that had been brought from town for them.

  “So… who are you and where are we headed?”

  “I’m Marshall Doolan,” Grap stated as he introduced himself and started riding back to Kearney. “And where we are headed is ‘need-to-know’ for the time being… sorry.” He brought his horse to a stop and asked, “Don’t you want your bag?”

  Shaking his head and exhaling loudly, he answered, “Yes, sorry. Your badge has me a little flustered.” br />
  Grap smiled.

  “Boone?”

  Boone dismounted his horse and jogged back and retrieved it.

  “Take your time, son,” the Marshal added as he adjusted his weight in the saddle.

  “So, what’s the problem with the lady?”

  “She’s about due and she thinks she’s going into labor. The doc in town is more of a vet than anything else. Alex offered up your services. You qualified?”

  “I did a rotation or two in obstetrics before all of this. Probably delivered a couple dozen babies since then.”

  The pair watched as Boone mounted his horse and then Grappler changed the subject as they began riding into town.

  “I hear you boys broke out of NorTex. Pretty ballsy. Heard that place is the hell hole they buried under the shit house.”

  Doc chuckled.

  “Sounds about right.”

  As the three men rode on, curiosity got the better of Grappler.

  “What’d they send you there for?”

  “Manufacture and distribution of Laudanum,” Doc answered flatly.

  The Marshal whistled impressed.

  “Automatic ten-year stretch,” Grap stated without emotion. “How much of that you serve?”

  “Eight.”

  The Marshal guffawed. “You served eight of a ten-year hitch and broke out? The final two years should have been easy living.”

  “Not really,” he replied. “Folks down there get real creative when it comes to release time.”

  Grappler cocked a weary eyebrow at the man.

  Boone offered, “Had a guy and his son on our chain that was supposed to pull a one to three-year hitch for theft and they’d been there almost five. Both he and Doc, for that matter, had a useful skillset. They don’t want to lose the skills… so they plant something that’s been stolen, or claim they were caught trying to escape when they’d been dragged from their beds not two minutes earlier.”