The Cause (8 page)

“I guess I’ll have to judge for myself,” I said. But Conroy was gazing at me with an upturned lip. He stood that way for some time, nodding his head up and down with a coy, smug smile on his face. I stared into his set of multifarious eyes shining the color of obsidian while a sort of unspoken acknowledgement lingered between us. A duality of purpose wafted about the air that had no language, but was clearly seen in our body movements. Our eyes communicated as if they were made out of tongues, untraceable signs where deniability were its nouns, blurred meaning its verbs, and arcana its adjectives. We were two bishops placed on Pelletier’s chessboard, our role to take out the king. Although we couldn’t speak of it directly, there was an incognito recognition bubbling to the surface, one that we would never speak about. The sweet secret of treachery was best withheld.

The first days were running, war games, and field work. Then days of jumping off cliffs with a river below you, the goal to try and latch onto an overhanging rope before you hit the water. We plunged into other jumping exercises—rock climbing, tree jumping with ropes and nets. Sometimes no nets. Seee was giving us hard lessons in escape training, growing balls so we wouldn’t be afraid to jump. Not surprisingly, Split loved these exercises the most, never giving a jump without a net a second thought.

Next, we were taught how to map an exit plan, think improvisationally if things ever fell apart. We learned advanced Krav Maga, how to turn defense into offense, Traxler counters they called them. Next, we underwent stress inoculation and enhanced interrogation techniques.

The others had already gone through the exercise of killing chickens. Many funny stories could be heard about headless chicken dances throughout the camp. But when I finally joined the men, they had just begun killing goats. One man would stand over the animal and attempt to soothe it by softly petting it. But the animal was wiser than this and quickly began bleating. Another man would hand over a hammer, and it was used to bash in the skull. The first time I watched Brock do it, I found myself shivering at the sound of the horrifying crack. Once over, and the goat lay limply on the ground, it was simply a matter of cutting the throat and watching the blood gush out while it hung from a tree. That first day, I skinned it, cut out the innards, stabbed it through a spit, and roasted it over a fire. My arms were
lathered to the elbow in blood and the sticky messiness of animal slaughter. All of it a very new sensation—the foul smell of innards, the gooeyness of blood and guts, what a liver or heart felt like when you squeezed it in your hands. Soon we would graduate to the squeal of live hogs as we chased them with our hunting knives. As time passed our taboos about killing grew into tasks or routine.

Then one day, the robots came out. We started with a DARPA BigDog and advanced to Petman humanoid models. We didn’t know where they had come from, but we learned how to fight them. Loaded up with paint pellets at first, rubber bullets later. Mistakes were costly. The first step—disengage their eyesight and heat sensors. If you wanted to use an electric magnetic pulse, it had to be done at close range. Terrain-capturing shields could cloak you under electric eyes, but we only learned how to use these after we employed other diversionary tactics.

Beyond the robot skirmishes and gore of killing farm animals for our meals, we had rest hours where we spent time reading
Hagakure
, the book of clan studies,
The Art of War
, and then books on history, Thucydides and the Peloponnesian War, the American Revolution and Civil War. We read the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution, and speeches by George Washington. Seee didn’t let our minds linger, saying he was modeling us after the Romans, the first army to think, and he relished listening to our debates.

After dusk, we spoke only Yoncalla, no matter how bad our tongues were at it. An extinct Indian tongue of the Kalapuya people from southwest Oregon, Yoncalla was full of clustered uvulars, few ablauts, stiff and without vowel harmonies.

The first night after dinner, when the fire died down and our tired tongues twisted in knots from pronouncing Yoncalla nouns, a TV was dragged out by Des, just as Conroy had said. A couple of pushed buttons later, an image appeared. A man with his back to the camera moved over to a cocktail bar where liquor bottles
were spread out on top. He took a glass and set it down on the countertop. Then he uncorked a bottle of Knob Creek and poured it into the glass. The man moved over to the adjacent window, and through the reflection, General Titus Montgomery’s image appeared, blurred but discernible. It certainly appeared to be him, a handsome face, thick nose, stern forehead—the sort of face that commanded, not one that asked. The image seemed to be coming from a wide-angled lens. The width of the picture took in most of the scope of the room.

Montgomery was the Chairman of the National Security Council (NSC) and Director of the NSA, one of the President’s closest advisors. Whether the camera was drilled into the wall or hidden behind a picture didn’t really matter. Whoever had put it there had taken a huge risk, and most likely the device would not have been installed very long. The obvious irony of the situation was not lost on the men. They laughed and guffawed and made jokes about NSA surveillance programs saying,
who was the bitch now
. Yet, I felt agitated by the situation, as if the point of the video wasn’t just about exposing some foreboding truth, as much as making the point the NSA was weak and vulnerable. Still, a burning curiosity filled me to see an insider’s view, and my heart raced a bit in anticipation of what would happen next.

On the TV, a knock rattled the door and Montgomery called the man in. The man entered, saluting as he stepped through the door. “Sir.”

“Yes, Colonel Davis.”

“The Elevation reports, sir.” The man walked up to Montgomery and handed him a manila folder.

“Give me the seven sentence summary. I’ve got a meeting in a few minutes.”

“Elevation has outperformed all operational targets. Our strategic media goals have been met, and Uplift program demand exceeds available spots. Los Alamos is now working on a more efficacious dose.”

“Your recommendation?”

“The report supports the expansion plan, sir.”

“I’ll take a look at the report and let you know. Thanks, Davis.”

Davis left the room. Montgomery stared out over other buildings in the distance, and down to the parking lot, then returned to his seat where he waited at a huge conference table sipping his drink. Nothing happened for five or six minutes. Merrill and Kumo filled the time by saying the words in Yoncalla for the various objects in the room—the table, the glass, the word for drink. Merrill, pointing at Montgomery, stumbled around making the word for drunk. The men had a laugh at this, and began to use some of the words they knew.

“The camera—where is it?” I asked Merrill. He unrolled a pack of cigarettes from his shirtsleeve and bounced the pack in his palm. He shrugged his shoulders and looked at me quizzically, lighting up a smoke. Then he cupped his hand around his ear and asked me something in Yoncalla. He refused to speak to me in English.

Finally, a military aide led someone into General Montgomery’s room. The camera rose and faced a man in a prim, black Italian
Garbato
suit.

“Mr. Roth, a pleasure seeing you again,” Montgomery said. Mr. Roth was a squat fellow, with beady eyes that seemed to be black stones dropped into a glassy fountain. He was old and frail, white-haired, hunched over, but still distinguished. His face was weathered and hard, and wore an uncompromising expression.

They sat down at the conference table while the aide left the room. Montgomery spoke first. “Let me start by saying the subject we are about to embark upon is extremely sensitive. If it should leave this room, there could be disastrous consequences.”

“Understood.”

Montgomery picked up his drink and took a swallow. “It has
come to my attention that some of the journalists on
Crossfire Nation
are depicting the United States Government in a somewhat negative light.”

“How so?”

“They’re chattering about the Uplift camps, ridiculously saying they are FEMA camps and asking too many questions that are frankly compromising national security. They are openly critical of the way the riots are being handled. To be blunt, I’m not sure the National Guard perspective is coming through clearly enough. The Guard has been extremely professional under the circumstances.”

“In the last week, the Guard killed three protestors,” Roth said calmly.

“Certainly an unfortunate circumstance. There was provocation. We are investigating it thoroughly, let me assure you.”

“So you think it the duty of a journalist to speak only of your opinions? We’ve bent over enough to pressures from this administration already.”

“I’m sure you’re sensitive to the fact we have to worry about national security. These critical broadcasts aren’t helping sway public opinion.”

“You have an advocate with Bob Sanders though,” Roth said with a chuckle. “Isn’t he your spokesman on the show? The man wants to tear up the Constitution for Christ’s sake.”

“Aren’t we all absorbed with the past too much? Always looking at things how they once were and making dangerous comparisons to the present. It does no good for morale.”

“So you’re asking me to put a muzzle on our program,” Roth barked, “the one show on our news lineup that crushes the ratings. Do you know why that show is so successful, Mr. Montgomery? It’s because the show presents two opinions.”

“People need hope, not negativity. We are in a dangerous time with national security. Don’t you want to be on the side of the people?”

“The people need to know both sides of the equation.”

Montgomery tapped his fingers against his forehead as he bit down on his lower lip. Roth’s face grew angry and impatient.

The battle of wits lasted another minute before Montgomery said, “There is a Chinese proverb that states he who says nothing when something is to be said is wise, where he who listens to silence and thinks it is nothing is inscrutable.”

“Sir, you forget who you speak with! Do you know who put this President into office? With one phone call, I could—”

“Do nothing,” Montgomery said cutting him off. “Tell me. When one flips a coin and the outcome is tails, does one then say, it was I who did this, who commanded fortune to lean my way? Furthermore, do you really believe the outcome of the coin makes any difference? When this administration is through, do you really believe I will be gone? Go ahead, make all the phone calls you like. You do not own the US Government, Mr. Roth. The US Government owns you.”

“I’m not going to sit here and listen to any more of this,” Roth said, standing. “You talk about manipulation. But how is it not manipulation when the government creates millions of fake Twitter accounts to beef up their propaganda campaigns?”

Montgomery crossed his legs and picked up his glass. He smiled into it, as Roth glared at him. “No, we won’t report the Twitter business. But don’t go making threats. We’ve had enough.”

Montgomery finished his glass and stood up. “The number zero either destroys another number or keeps it intact, all depending on its operator. Which sort of operator are you, Mr. Roth? Simple or complex?”

Montgomery moved out of the purview of the camera, but his next words were not misheard. “This is not a zero-sum game, Mr. Roth. You should think twice before stepping in the way of national security. Please give it some thought.”

The TV switched off, and we went off to sleep, the men
mumbling to one another as they strode off into the forest with flashlights.

The next day, with the previous night’s event still in our waking brains, we went jogging at the break of dawn. It was a morning in early October. We ran through branched towers of trees spreading out over the scalloped earth. We ran up canyons and into valleys, across riverbanks, and into the jungle. Tetrapods croaked under the confines of creepers, vines, and ferns. Swampy sounds of creatures silenced as sixty-four footsteps drummed the earth over the terrain. Glistening rays of sunlight beamed like angled spears into the shadowy woods. We burst through them, and the flashes of light across our faces danced in our eyes. Hearts pounding, our breaths asynchronous and hurried, we inhaled the thick air in heavy gasps. We trampled through the forest, Seee in the lead. The men struggled with the pace, lungs bursting with heavy breaths, sweat running like rivers out of every pore. Briana trotted behind Seee. She could have taken the lead easily, but she showed a certain reverence toward him, as if winning wasn’t everything, something that seemed to be contrary to her nature.

We galloped through the forest and onto a plain. In a thicket, the lush grass rustled against our legs. For a moment we felt freedom spying the wide openness of a hillock glittering from the dew of a morning mist. Then the sun beat down on our bare backs and our bodies returned to groaning. The insects awoke, howling discordant symphonies, stridulating cicadas, bumblebees. Flies and mosquitoes buzzed the air in strafing attacks on us. I remember Split opening his mouth wide as we passed through a cloud of gnats. He swallowed them and grinned.

On this flatland we found rhythm, synchronicity, every man feeling the pitch of hot breath melding together. Our minds awakened into abstract consciousness, sensing a purpose to fulfill as brothers but the clarity of it still vague. On this morning, the
air would be filled with Seee’s song:

We repeated his verse after each phrase and the valley echoed it back.

The world tilted and we dipped down a hill and picked up speed. We were a phalanx of human ants flowing down a path, following the pheromones of our leader. We did this for miles and miles, back into the forest, alongside river canyons until finally we straggled back into camp, lungs bursting and bodies
lathered in sweat.