Chapter Twelve

The rental pickup truck held all of the wood and materials that were on the materials list that Carlo had given him, which made him think that the home repair job was possible after all. Gus paid for the material at the front counter, and picked it up around the side at the construction materials dock. His next stop was for pizza and soda for the work crew, who had declined a sitdown lunch after church. Carlo had recruited a couple of men from the men's ministry group that were handy with tools and had some construction experience. They wanted to get the job done early on a Sunday afternoon and get back home to their families before evening set in. That was just fine with him.

Gus volunteered to help with the work, of course, since it was his home that they were repairing. He was reminded quickly that manual labor wasn't his forte and sometimes it was the better option to just stay out of the way of the people who knew what they were doing. If they could get the access issue solved with a small ramp and repair the termite damage, as Carlo thought that they could, then Gus could still hope to close on the house on Wednesday as he had promised Jocelyn that they would. He offered moral support to Carlo and his team, and watched them work for a bit of time. Truth be told, though, he was still moved by the church service this morning, and he wanted to be by himself to reflect on what had happened. He hummed the chorus of the song that they had sung to himself – Lord prepare me to be a sanctuary... - as he set up his laptop on the breakfast bar and connected to his mobile hot spot on his smart phone. Technology is a wonderful thing.

A quick YouTube search yielded several versions of the song that Gus was still humming - “...pure and holy, tried and true...”, and he selected a cover version by a young lady with a guitar and put in his earbuds to keep from bothering the others as they worked. Nice. He listened to a choral version from some church in Alabama while he opened his private email account. Jocelyn had written him a quick note with an update on her time at the college with Mark. He was struggling at college she reported. It would be a difficult semester for their young man. He was struggling with being engaged with his classes, and was considering changing his major. He was struggling with learning to live in an apartment setting instead of the dormitories that he had loved / hated as a freshman and sophomore. Mostly he was struggling with the loss of his younger brother and with his own injuries healing.

Jocelyn closed her email with questions about how things were going on closing on the house, and with admonishments for him to be safe while she was away from him. Gus often worried her with his stories of the risks that he had taken over the years to get this photograph or that video. He was a risk taker, not by nature but out of a desire to get the unique shot that no one else got and that spoke to him and him alone. It was his passion. His addiction, really. And addicts take risks. He hadn't told her all of his stories of the photo locations that he had risked on the road and the situations that he had been in. Not even half. But, the ones that he had told her worried her enough. She had expressed her worry level often enough and admonished him to be safer, please, for her and for Mark. “You're going to disappear one of these days, and I won't even know where to find the body.”

Gus closed his email and absentmindedly surfed the internet as he watched the guys scurry around his house with lumber and tools, serving him with their ministry to the men in the church that had needs. He had done it himself years ago, and it felt odd to him to be on the receiving end of the help. He surfed some business websites with tips for salesmen. Some of them felt old hat to him, like Sales 101. But there were some new trends that he needed to keep abreast of if he was going to keep his edge. There was a lot to learn about “personal branding” in the internet age. He felt like a dinosaur reading through the tips, and it wasn't doing any favors to be reading this material on his days off. Gus flipped over to news websites to change the subject, and pulled up a news aggregator site to see what was going on in the world on a Sunday afternoon. Bad news, wall to wall, that's what. China was threatening Japan over some disputed islands, and ratcheting up the war talk. Russia was hosting an international conference with some rogue nations that needed weapons for oil. The stock market was building toward a bubble, and the Fed intended to keep pumping dollars for “easing” - whatever that was. Someone was raising an alarm about the Department of Homeland Security buying a billion bullets. Was that even possible? Were there a billion bullets being manufactured?

Time was getting by as Gus surfed website after website chasing the various news stories. I guess that's why they call it surfing, he thought. He opened his Facebook account and scrolled down through the stories in his timeline posted by his friends. Some were about family events. Some were photos of food that his friends thought worthy of memorializing, or recipes to share. More than one were cute dog or cat antics. There was the usual post from his friend Jerry who was passionate about politics. He had apparently not liked the last president but loved the current occupant of the oval office, and was promoting a bill that was up for a critical vote in Congress. Whatever. Gus rarely commented on those posts and skipped on down. When he scrolled back up to the top of the page, he realized that there was a Direct Message back from Robert Ellison. He was answering his question about the vehicle that he had seen with a video clip.

“What do you have there”, Carlo said as he opened the video clip. He came up behind Gus to tell him that they were finished and that the guys were loading up the tools and supplies. Gus took out his earbuds, and showed him the video from someone named “Judge Betty” on a news channel who was talking over news footage of vehicles like the ones that Gus had seen. The judge was apparently vexed about increase in the use of military equipment by domestic police agencies. “This is a 'MRAP' vehicle”, the judge intoned, “a Mine Resistant Ambush Protected vehicle designed for the battlefields in Iraq and Afhanistan where our soldiers were endangered by IED bombs and other threats. What possible threats exist in Chicago and Dallas and Atlanta that require this technology in law enforcement hands, and will they be turned on us as citizens? I ask you.” After the video clip ended, Gus saw that there was an additional note from Robert identifying the logos in the pictures that Gus had provided him. “I've seen them here on the base now and then. The logo is for the Department of Homeland Security. Where did you see them, again?”

Carlo was reading over Gus's shoulder. “Did you see some of those vehicles?”, he asked Gus.

“Yeah. I saw three last night in Peoria while I was taking pictures downtown in the warehouse district. It seemed odd. They were detaining two guys that they put in the vehicles, and then drove off. I stayed out of sight.”

“Judge Betty is right, Gus. We've made a serious mistake in this country since 9/11, vesting so much authority and firepower in the hands of civilian authorities. Posse Commitatus has been seriously diminished because of that. We're free-born citizens of this country, and we are not supposed to be threatened domestically by military power at home in the hands of a tyrannical leader. But, man, that is right where we are. We need to be prepared for it to go bad. And soon.”

“Carlo, you were talking like that yesterday at the gun range. Don't you think that's a little over the top? There are real threats out there. Real bad guys. Bad guys that we weren't prepared for on 9/11, that were right here in the States. We learned some lessons, and beefed up our security at home, and are hopefully safer. Don't you think?”

“We went too far, Gus. We gave too much power to the power structure elites, who are naturally inclined to tyranny. The danger they pose to the Republic is greater than the danger of terrorists. I believe that. DHS has too much power. The president has too much power, which he granted to himself in signing the NDAA bill. You can be detained now without warrant or cause, and held anywhere in the world indefinitely and without counsel. That's not a theoretical power. It's going to be misused. Here, in our country. With citizens who are deemed a threat to the powerful. A threat to patriots.”

“So, are you prepared? I mean beyond the bugout bag in your truck? Are you a prepper?”

“Not just me. There are several of us. We have a backer, and we have the means to do what we have to do when it hits the fan.”

“A backer? Who is your backer?”

Carlo looked at Gus pensively. “I've said too much, Gus. You've got other things on your mind. We're all finished here. You should pass your inspection tomorrow and have no problem closing on your house on Wednesday. I'm going to get out of here with the guys and let you get on with your photography plans. It's almost Golden Hour isn't it? See, I'm learning from you.”

**********

There wasn't time for Gus to get to out of town to some of the spots that he had scouted out for landscape photography at some point in the week. The Golden Hour was on him and he needed to make it count. He was hoping that he could catch some aspenglow reflected off of a structure, like the bridge, and the river was close. He remembered talking with Carlo about their hanging out at the river at the firepit just up off of the beach back in their day, and thought that there might be a vantage point there with a good angle on the bridge in sunset light. He headed down Main Street to the frontage road behind the ethanol plants, and found a place just off of the gravel road to park. Gus grabbed a monopod and his Canon t3i, locked his Taurus, and headed off into the woods toward the beach below the firepit.

Walking through the stand of woods above the river was difficult. There were a lot of trees down, and some mounds of dirt that were dug out up the road to lay pipe in his way. He marvelled at how the trees in this bottom land were tilted at odd angles. This area had flooded so many times that the root systems were shallow and frequently muddy, to the point that the trees leaned all different ways. Strange landscape. He snapped a couple of pictures as he walked toward his destination, and almost tripped over the firepit as he walked. Ah, here we are. He walked around the firepit, taking pictures from various angles and distances, and noticed that there were signs of people living down here. Homeless people? There was a trash bag tied up in a tree with food stores, and beer bottles strewn around the firepit. Gus wasn't keen on encountering anyone out here alone, and moved on toward the shore.

The tugboat searchlight stopped Gus at the treeline. He was familiar with the tugboats working the barges on this part of the river. He knew them by name, he had photographed them so often from the pier at the foot of Court Street. He had rarely seen the tugs using the searchlight before sundown though. They seemed to be searching the treeline along the beach. Stepping back away from the beach, he crouched down behind a pile of fallen trees and stuck his long lens out through a gap between the trunks. He pivoted the lens back and forth up and down the river, viewing what it captured on the 3” display on the back of the camera body. Something looked different than normal, but he couldn't quite figure out what it was. Gus pulled the lens back as the searchlight came across the pile of trees, and then put it back through. He scoped out the tugboat wheel house, and then scanned across the deck of the barges pushed down the river.

Ah, that's it. They don't have the low-slung profile that the coal barges that are the mules of the river typically have. This was tall, like containers on container ships were. Gus could see doors on the sides, and barred windows. It looked like a floating office. He could see lights on inside the container, and people moving around inside. He pulled his lens back and waited for the search light to go past again, and saw movement when he poked his lens back through. A speedboat came up next to the container barge and tied up quickly alongside. While Carlo watched, two men in handcuffs were transferred up onto the the barge and in to the container office. Gus recognized them as the two men that he saw arrested last night. He snapped a picture of them, and of the logo next to the door on the container, which he now recognized as the Department of Homeland Security logo. What were they doing operating on the river? Was it for the same reason that casinos boats worked the river – because the river was national waterway outside of the control of the state? That didn't mean good things for those two prisoners.

Gus pulled out his phone, selected the camera function, and took two quick snaps of the barge: one long view and one close up of the logo. He dropped both pictures into his InstaPic app and selected filters that lightened up the scene. He posted both pics to his gallery with the hashtag #government ? Then he sent a quick text to Carlo saying “You won't believe what I am looking at!”, as the sunlight faded out.

*******

Montel Smith was working at his station at the National Security Agency outside of Salt Lake City Utah. “Hey, Mike. Come look at these two pics that were just uploaded. We need to alert DHS that their logo is online on InstaPic. Who is GK1978? Do you know that user.”

“No”, Mike replied. “Start a new file.”

********

Carlo felt the text notification buzz on his silenced smartphone on his hip, but ignored it. He was working his way up the break in the corn rows in parallel to the storage unit complex. Where was Donny May, and why hadn't he called in? The Group was waiting for a report, and Donny had gone silent. He thought Donny had gone on a bender and had forgotten to do the simple job that the Group had asked him to do. Check out the storage unit, and call in. But nothing had come in, and the other members were getting worried. Carlo had done a cursory look for him down the frontage road and was about to give up when he saw Donny's Ford Explorer parked just off the road at the break in the corn.

Carlo walked bent over down the row, trying not to be seen in the high intensity lights that were coming from the storage unit compound. There seemed to be more activity there than he expected. It was a good thing that the corn rows here hadn't been harvested yet in September, and he had some cover. He thought he would walk up the row another hundred feet or so, and turn back. He was trying to decide on a landmark feature that would mark the turn around point, when he tripped and fell face first in the dirt. Dang! He looked back to see what he had tripped on and was surprised to see a hand sticking out behind a corn stalk. Dread came over him as he backtracked and walked down the row to find Donny May, dead as can be. Shot, by the look of him, and bleeding. Apparently, given the blood track trailing out behind him, Donny had been shot up closer to the storage unit, and had crawled out the break in the row. He hadn't made it back to the truck, though, before he succumbed. Carlo got a chill down his back as he realized that he might be in the same danger. He turned Donny May's body over and searched his jacket pocket for his truck keys. He found Donny's cell phone in the hand that had been under his body, and he tucked that in his jeans.

Carlo ran down the break in the corn rows back to the vehicles. He made a quick decision and beeped his own keys to lock his own truck, which was hidden well off the road. He jumped in Donny's Sport Trak and turned around and headed back toward town. Dialing a number on his cell phone, he made quick arrangements with a member of the Group to meet him at a gas station where he could take Donny's vehicle and bring him back to his own truck. That plan was interrupted by Manny Juarez and his Security team blocking off the road and stopping Carlo's vehicle. “Get out of the truck, and get on the ground!”

******

Col Skip Breen was getting another cup of strong coffee in the classroom at the West Campus command post. It was from one of the security contractors that he had talked to earlier this week. Manny Juarez. It simply said: “Detainee inbound your location.”