Founders

the foyer. By their clothes and mannerisms, they looked like XE Corporation toughs or at least XE wannabes.

Inside the building, Andy expected to see a utilitarian office. But he was stunned to see that the office was overfurnished with ornate antique furniture. Every bit of wall space was lined with fancy chairs, armoires, china cabinets, and marble-top tables. He handed the chit to a plump secretary who wore too much eye makeup. As she rose from her chair, Andy observed that she was armed with a wakazashi Japanese short sword, carried in a sashlike obi belt. She escorted him to a room with a pile of empty Hardigg lockers and said matter-of-factly, “Take one. You’ll have to provide your own lock and chain.”

Andy shouldered one of the lockers and carried it out to his pickup. When he opened the locker to examine it, he found a silkscreened sign the size of a bumper sticker lacquered inside the lid. It read:

Inspection Exempt Items, Per Art. 4, ProvGov-UNPROFOR Agreement. Please give generously to A.C.S./A.E.R. When this locker is too full to hold any more, then it’s time to give. Thank You.—Ft. Knox A.C.S.

When he got back to his quarters that evening, Andy discussed the locker with Kaylee. He said, “I feel like I’ve been transported into an alternate universe. The AER office used to be just a place for penniless wives of junior NCOs to get the bare-bones necessities of running a household, like diapers and dishes, and stew pots. But now the place looks like something out of an antique furniture auction catalogue. It’s bizarre. Do you remember when we borrowed my dad’s set of the old Star Trek television series on DVD? There was that parallel universe episode where Spock had a beard?”

Kaylee nodded and said, “Yeah, it was called Mirror, Mirror.”

“Yep, that’s the one. Well, I haven’t met a bearded Mr. Spock yet, but today I met Uhura with a dagger. The world has been turned inside out. Since when is a charitable organization given control of excess loot?”

26. Trampling Out the Vintage

“Freedom is never more than one generation away from extinction. We didn’t pass it to our children in the bloodstream. It must be fought for, protected, and handed on for them to do the same, or one day we will spend our sunset years telling our children and our children’s children what it was once like in the United Stated where men were free.”

—President Ronald Wilson Reagan

Fort Knox, Kentucky

January, the Fourth Year

As the Resistance continued to gain ground, the ProvGov tried to sound upbeat in their propaganda broadcasts. The UN’s Continental Region 6, which included the territory that had been the United States, Mexico, and Canada, was in a losing war with the guerrillas. There was resistance growing throughout the region. The resistance ranged from passive protest to sabotage and overt military action. The UN was steadily losing control of Region 6.

It was becoming clear that resistance was the strongest, the best organized, and the most successful in rural areas. Unable to wipe out the elusive guerrillas, the UN administration and their quislings began to concentrate on eliminating the guerrillas’ food supplies.

In areas where resistance was rampant, “temporary detainment facilities” were constructed to house anyone thought to be politically unreliable. Special emphasis was placed on rounding up suspect farmers or ranchers, or anyone remotely connected with food distribution businesses. When farmers were put into custody, their crops were confiscated, plowed under, or burned. The authorities carefully monitored bulk food stocks.

Despite the ProvGov’s efforts, the guerrillas rapidly gained in numbers. As the war went on, resistance gradually increased beyond the UN’s ability to match it. Every new detainment camp spawned the formation of new resistance cells. Every reprisal or atrocity by the UN or federal forces pushed more of the populace and even federal unit commanders into active support for the guerrillas. Increasing numbers of commanders decided to “do the right thing” and abide by the Constitution. The decision to support The Document rather than the Provisional Government’s power elite at Fort Knox was becoming widespread. Units as large as brigade size were parlaying with the guerrillas and turning over their equipment. In many instances the majority of their troops joined the Resistance.

County after county, and eventually state after state, was controlled by the Resistance. The remaining loyal federal and UN units gradually retreated into Kentucky, Tennessee, and southern Illinois. Most held out there until the early summer of the war’s fourth year. Militias and their allied “realigned” federal units relentlessly closed in on the remaining federal territory from all directions.

Fort Knox, Kentucky

Early July, the Fourth Year

The opportunity for the Constitutionalist underground within the UNPROFOR to round up the foreign troops at Fort Knox came on July 3, when there was a German art film scheduled to be shown at the old Waybur Theater. The movie had been produced two years before the Crunch. It was titled Die jungen gefangenen Karrierefrauen (“The Captive Young Career Women”). The movie could at best be called soft pornography. The film was in German, with Dutch subtitles. A large number of UN officers and NCOs were expected to be there. Since it had been a very popular film in Germany, the first showing at the post theater was restricted to officers and NCOs only.

“It should be perfect,” Andy told General Olds. “It is bound to draw a full house. I heard that it shows lots of skin, so the foreign officers are already starting to talk about it, and they’re giving each other the elbow nudge. They all want to be there.”

“Have them bring as many riot shotguns as you can muster,” Olds recommended. “Those scare the heck out of the Germans and the Dutch.”

The Waybur Theater, constructed in 1936, was built of brick. It had seats for 674 people. Even after it had been restored in 2009, it still had a 1930s look and feel. Many of the building’s original terrazzo floors were intact.

Two days before the roundup at Fort Knox, the planning got a lot easier. Maynard Hutchings and most of his staff—including Chambers Clarke, Major General Clayton Uhlich, and as well, the two-highest-ranking UN officers at Fort Knox—suddenly boarded night flights to Brussels on the pretense of “attending meetings.” So the coup committee members who had been assigned to arresting Hutchings and his cronies were reassigned to arresting UN officers, or to the Waybur Theater raid itself.

Andy was tense the day of the theater raid. He forced himself to appear casual and nonchalant, putting in a normal day of pushing paper at his S3 desk. Only his 42 Alpha Human Resource Specialist assistant (called a “Clerk/Typist” in the Old Army) picked up on his tension. To explain his agitation, Andy told him that he’d had a lengthy argument with his wife the night before.

That evening, Andy positioned himself just inside the right-rear fire exit door—at the end of the theater closest to the screen. He waited until twenty minutes of the film had rolled. Then he unsnapped the thumbstrap on his SIG’s hip holster, said a brief silent prayer, and toggled the handset on his handie-talkie three times. Then he immediately pushed the bar on the fire door, opening it from the inside. One hundred sixty men—the equivalent of one and a half infantry companies—took over the building, rushing it from every entrance. They soon lined the walls of the theater, and shouldered their rifles and shotguns at the audience. Eighteen men covered the exits from outside while the rest rushed down both aisles—half from the front lobby, and half from the rear fire doors. Engrossed in the film, the audience was taken completely by surprise. One fire team was sent to clear each of the restrooms. The projector stopped and the house lights came up.

Andy jumped up onto the theater’s restored wooden stage and pulled out a PylePro electronic bullhorn that had been hidden behind the curtains. He turned it on and flipped it to the siren setting for two seconds, getting