Foreign Enemies and Traitors (13 page)

“I still can’t believe we’ve come to this in America!  I can’t believe people don’t fight it.”

“Fight it?”  The doctor seemed to take offense at this challenge to the courage of Southerners, and he rose from his chair, bumping the cheap table.  “Fighting it won’t put food on your family’s table!  I don’t know where you were the last couple of years, but around here, people were starving to death, right here in Mississippi, in the USA!  Look around you, this camp is down to only twelve of these big tents now, from sixty-four.  Our daily census is down from over a thousand, to only you and that black family over there.  A year ago we were losing a hundred a day, in this very camp!  We lost more than half of the medical staff, most of my colleagues, including a lot of old friends, and including my only son and most of his family.  I can take you to see the mass graves!  So please don’t tell me about fighting it—we
did
fight it!  We’re
still
fighting it.  Cameroon fever, bird flu, cholera, dysentery, beriberi…you name it, we fought it.  We even lost thousands to pellagra.  Pellagra!  Do you even know what that is?”  He dropped back into his plastic chair.

“That’s, um, from a vitamin deficiency?”

“Right, no niacin, which you get from protein.  We had pellagra beat in the South after the Great Depression, and now it’s back.  It brings the four Ds: diarrhea, dermatitis, dementia and death—just from a lack of niacin, because of a shitty starvation diet with no protein.  We were right back to square one, we went back a century in medicine, but now we’re turning the corner—and with almost no help from the federal government, I might add!  So we did what we had to do to survive.  We have nothing to be ashamed of, nothing.”  The doctor was red-faced with emotion, and out of breath. 

Carson was reduced to temporary silence, and then said in a hush, “Listen, I’m sorry, I really didn’t know how bad it was here.”  And this was true.  Carson didn’t know.  He knew the vague outlines, but he had not heard the dire details.  After hearing Doctor Foley’s description of life under martial law, he understood how news reports from the Southeastern emergency zone could be tightly controlled.  With the electricity out and travel restrictions in place, this would not have been hard to accomplish.

  The doctor added, “I guess you’d have to remember living through the last couple of years to really understand just how bad it was.  Or maybe it’s part of the reason for your amnesia.  I know we’ve seen PTSD like you can’t imagine.  Post-traumatic stress.  We have thousands of young or-phans.  Sometimes they just don’t talk, not a word.  Shocked into silence.  Catatonic.  People commit suicide, people just plain give up.  And not a few—thousands.  People can’t adjust to living without electricity, to living poor, dirt poor.  Being hungry all the time, with no end in sight.  And where they’re putting the elderly is just a disgrace—it’s a wonder they don’t
all
kill themselves.  Nobody gives a
damn
about the elderly anymore,
nobody
. 

“That’s why I don’t mind working again
.  Nothing
is worse than being old and unemployed these days—nothing.  These days, if you can’t work, you don’t eat.  Society has just…
changed
.  In some ways, the psychological impact has been worse than the physical, and it’s all tied together in tight little vicious circles.  Here’s just one: a bad diet leads to pellagra, and that causes dementia.  So whole villages wander around like idiots, starving, killing each other over
nothing
.  People would fight over a shovel to dig a well, and then kill each other with the shovel!  So we might not eat too well these days, we might not have coffee or bananas or new shoes, but at least we’re not starving anymore.  Little kids aren’t drinking water from ditches and dying from cholera.  And one more thing: at least the Mississippi National Guard is
us
.  I mean, it’s our own.  General Mirabeau is one of us, he understands us.  Not like up in Tennessee and Kentucky and some other places.”

“What’s going on up there?”

“You really don’t know?  You’re not just putting me on?”

“No.”

“Well, after the quakes it was too crazy up there, too wild for their National Guard to handle.  Everything just fell apart after all the bridges went down and the power went out for good.  In most of Tennessee and Kentucky, the Guard wasn’t…reliable.  It didn’t respond to federal authority.  The Guardsmen just went home, or never reported for duty.  The chain of command collapsed.  There was something like an eighty percent desertion rate in the Tennessee Guard.  Almost nobody reported for duty.  Police?  Gone.  There was no General Mirabeau in charge up there, that’s for sure.  The president had to ask for help…outside help.  He had to bring in outsiders—there was no other solution.  Foreign troops, foreign volunteers.  Six months after he signed the new U.N. global security pact, he’s bringing in foreign soldiers…”

“What about other U.S. troops?” asked Carson.  He’d heard rumors of so-called foreign peacekeepers, but it still seemed implausible.  “What about the Regular Army?” 

“They tried, but it didn’t work.  Americans couldn’t do the job, they wouldn’t…”

“Wouldn’t fire on fellow Americans?”

“That’s right.  That was a part of it.  They couldn’t do what had to be done.  So they needed fresh soldiers from outside.  Motivated soldiers, who could go in there and sort things out, really knock heads.  Shoot people.  Most of them are in the North American Legion, the NAL.  Mexicans, Salvadorans…men that used to be illegal aliens.  It’s all so confusing.  With this North American Union crap coming down, I don’t really understand what’s going on up there.  From what I hear, they’re none too gentle, those NAL troops.  And they sure don’t get along too well with the native Tennesseans, I know that much.  They’re getting paid with land, homestead grants, so you know that’s not going down easy.  God, Tennessee is a mess!  So, no matter how bad it is in Mississippi, at least we know we’re being taken care of by our own.  Sure, it’s rough, but we’re handling it on our own, in our own way.  If we lost control, like up in Tennessee…well, then, I think we’d find out how bad it could really get.”

“Foreign soldiers on American soil,” said Carson, shaking his head.  “I never thought I’d live to see the day.”

The doctor continued.  “Foreign troops…you’d think that’s about as bad as it can get.  But you know, there’s one thing worse: anarchy.  Up around Memphis, you can’t believe how bad it was after the quake.  Mass murder, mass suicide…from what I hear, just about an all-out race war.  Thousands of people froze to death up there last winter.  There was starvation, and with lots of frozen bodies, there was even
cannibalism
.  And not just a little of it, here and there.  It was common.  They even had a name for human meat: ‘long pig.’  That’s how desperate people were, after a month with no food, no clean water, no electricity, no gas and no heating oil.  When people are starving to death, when they figure out that the government can’t wave a magic wand and save them, they turn into animals.  Wild animals, savages.  I’ve seen it—it happened in Mississippi too. 

“But it got so out of control in Tennessee that even when the government could finally bring the supply convoys in, they were attacked and looted before they could get the food distributed.  My God, it was a hundred times worse than after Katrina in New Orleans.  It was even worse than after Matilda down here.  Inviting in the foreign troops was the only option the president had left.  Well, if you count the North American Legion as foreign.  We’re all supposed to be one country pretty soon, so maybe the Mexicans aren’t really foreign anymore.  It’s pretty confusing.”  The doctor scratched his head, looking down, bewildered.  “Well anyway, they needed troops to guard the relief convoys, they needed troops for everything.  Troops who wouldn’t balk at shooting native-born Americans.  At least here in Mississippi, martial law is run by Americans, and it’s only temporary.”

Carson replied in a subdued manner.  “Well, now I guess I understand what you’ve been through down here, I really do.  But it’s still not anywhere I want to live.  I’d rather not stick around and find out how temporary the martial law is going to be.”

“I don’t see how that’s up to you.  Until we find out who you are, you’ll be staying right here.  And after that, you’ll probably be assigned to a work crew.”

“What if my memory doesn’t come back?”

“Then eventually you’ll be classified and assigned to a work brigade.  Everybody works for his food in the emergency zone.  Nobody rides for free.  No work book, no ration cards.  No ration cards, no food.”

“I’d have no choice in the matter?  About leaving, I mean.”

“None that I can see.  Unless…”

“Unless what?”

“Well, unless maybe your memory just happened to come back.”  The doctor walked over to the open side of the tent, looked around outside, then continued in a softer voice.  “Let’s say you remembered where you found that coffee, and then you remembered where you might just find some more.  That would go a long way to getting a positive disposition of your case.  If it was handled…carefully.  Privately.  I mean, if it was a significant amount of coffee, the right people might be more…favorably disposed toward your case.  So you see, ‘John Doe,’ a lot depends on your memory.”

“Do you think I’ll get my memory back?  I’m already remembering some things more clearly, like Vietnam.”

“That’s a good sign.  Now see if you can remember things that are more up to date.  Keep in mind, I’m your doctor.”  He smiled.  “If you can’t trust me, who can you trust?  We were both in ’Nam, and you know, we’re sure not getting any younger.”

“No, we’re not,” Carson agreed.

“I can hold you here for two weeks without raising any eyebrows.  That’s the standard quarantine period these days.  After that, some flags will go up.  Then it’ll get tougher for you, a lot tougher.  Pretty soon some other officers will come around, asking hard questions.  Some officers who might not believe in amnesia, let’s say.  So if your memory is going to get better, maybe it had better happen sooner rather than later.  Before you’re standing in front of a military tribunal.”

“I’ll remember that, Ken.”

“I hope you do.  I won’t be around again until early next week.  Try to stay out of trouble here in fun city until I’m back.”  Lieutenant Colonel Foley rose from his plastic chair, put on and adjusted his black beret.  “I always hated these damned fuzzy things.  A little round blanket for a hat?  Like a Frenchman?  It’s sure not my style.  They soak up the rain, and they don’t even keep the sun out of your eyes.  Berets are about the most useless damn thing the Army ever issued, especially in the South.”

“Well, the berets used to mean something,” replied Carson.  He thought that the doctor might have been trying to provoke a visible reaction, indirectly ribbing him about his possible past service with the Special Forces.  “At least, I remember that the green ones did.  Back in the old days.”

“Yes, they sure did,” said the doctor.  “Here, keep this pencil and paper and work on your memory.  Jot down those fleeting thoughts, and try to organize them.  That’ll help a lot.”

“Thanks.” 

“And a word to the wise: time is not on your side, John Doe.

                                       
           4

Lieutenant General Marcus Aurelius Mirabeau
flew into Fort Campbell
on his own Blackhawk helicopter, escorted by an Apache gunship.  The sprawling Army base straddled the Kentucky-Tennessee border, just east of the Tennessee and Cumberland rivers.  Bob Bullard had requested this Friday meeting, but it was not a command performance.  Mirabeau came only because it suited his purposes; he was not under Bullard’s control.  Or under the control of anyone in the federal government, for that matter.  As a courtesy, Bullard had sent two Suburbans and two pickup trucks to the landing zone, for the general and his staff and bodyguard detail. 

The meeting took place after their luncheon on the patio deck outside the base golf course’s clubhouse.  The entire golf course had been cleared of players for the day to accommodate the meeting.  Bullard thought that General Mirabeau looked like a young Harry Belafonte, the popular singer of calypso songs in the 1950s.  He looked very sharp in his starched camouflage uniform, polished jump boots and perfectly set black beret.

It was warm, over sixty degrees, but the officers and soldiers accompanying the general wore their camouflage uniforms with their sleeves rolled down, exactly matching the way the general wore his.  Each wore his beret at the same angle, just touching the right eyebrow and ear.  Bullard smiled at what a flock of ass-kissing clones they were.  Only their skin tones varied, running across the racial spectrum.

Bullard, as usual, wore his unofficial field uniform of generic khaki pants and a matching long-sleeved shirt.  After lunch, General Mirabeau suggested a private ride on a golf cart, to which Bullard readily agreed.  A meeting room in the “19th Hole” clubhouse had been prepared, but Bullard could well understand that the general would not want to be covertly filmed and recorded.  Mirabeau selected one of the carts at random and slid behind the wheel, leaving Bullard in the passenger seat.  Their bodyguards fit into a half-dozen more carts, and followed their bosses down the fairways at a respectful distance.

On a cinder path in a small hollow between fern-covered banks they came upon a cement bench, and Mirabeau stopped.  The two leaders left the golf cart to sit in the shade beneath willow trees, facing a brook.  Very importantly, they were in cover, out of the line of sight of any distant sniper, a consideration even within the protection of the surrounding miles of Army base.  Both men took such precautions instinctively.