State of Rebellion

the ditch. The man crawled to Riker’s side.

“They seem to be concentrated on that small ridge on the other side of the cars,” he shouted. “Maybe we can filter into the woods behind us. I’ll stay here with several men to cover, and you find better positions in the woods,” he instructed.

From his vantage point on a small rise, located about eighty yards from the cluster of cars, Jackson Shaw, Shasta Brigade commander, watched the scene below. He looked over to his right and got a thumbs-up from his demolition team. Nodding his approval, he gave little thought to the seventeen men who would die in the ensuing thirty seconds as the detonation cord, lining the ditch into which the ambush had funneled the surviving agents, exploded. The blast severed body parts on many of the agents, and all-men and women alike-were grievously wounded. Some died instantly. Others bled to death more slowly. In less than four minutes, twenty-two ATF agents on the ground and two in the air were dead, without word of the ambush having reached the central command, other than the initial report, which had declared the target secure and four suspects in custody.

Following a brief radio contact from Shaw, five men of the Shasta Brigade who had not been involved in the ambush stealthily approached the remote cabin holding the small-arms cache-three from the front and two from the rear. On signal, they kicked in the doors and assaulted the two agents holding the woman and sixteen-year-old Timothy Castleton. The previous twenty minutes had been slightly uncomfortable for Timothy, who had been forced to lie on his stomach, his arms handcuffed behind his back.

When the door flew open, the first agent reached for his weapon with quick reflexes, but not fast enough to avoid the three nine-millimeter slugs that entered his body and neck from the first brigade man through the door. The second agent raised his hands in surrender and lived for an additional two minutes-long enough to be taken outside, where he received a bullet to the back of the head, point blank.

Captain Roger Dahlgren, who also served as Woodland’s city manager, led the small contingent of men at the cabin. He ordered two of the men to load the dead agents’ bodies into their truck and take them to the ambush site. With two other men, he then entered the cabin.

“Get the weapons out of the cellar, fast,” he said as they entered the house.

“You got my money?” the woman said, recognizing Dahlgren as the man who had first met with her.

“We’ll take care of you, not to worry,” he said.

“You said we’d be here two days, three at most. It’s been near on to a week. I want more money,” she said.

“Shut up. I said you’d be taken care of. Tim,” he said to the young boy, “you’ve done a fine job here. Help load out the weapons and then get out.”

“Yes, sir,” the boy replied.

In ten minutes, two of the vehicles were gone, one with weapons loaded under a thick tarpaulin and one with two dead ATF agents bouncing in the truck bed. Only Captain Dahlgren remained, his Jeep Cherokee parked over the crest of a hill behind the cabin.

“Get your purse, and I’ll take you back into Redding,” he said to the woman.

As she turned to pick it up, without hesitation, Dahlgren fired a shot into the back of her head, instantly dropping her to the floor. He looked for a moment at the two smaller children, both too young to be aware of what had transpired. From the pocket of his jacket, he retrieved a small bottle of clear fluid and a wad of gauze wrapping. He poured the contents of the bottle onto the gauze and held the cloth over the nose and mouth of each child in turn, laying them gently on the floor of the cabin next to their mother. His last act was to sprinkle the floor of the cabin with liberal amounts of gasoline from a two-gallon can that had been stashed behind the cabin. Outside, he turned, looked over the cabin once more, and threw a match through the front door. The flames immediately swept throughout the small, dry, wooden structure.

Back at the ambush scene, brigade members salvaged radios, automatic weapons, and assorted ATF gear from the disabled vehicles. Commander Shaw, one task left to perform, motioned for Steve Turner, who jogged over to his side.

“Yeah, Commander?”

“Steve, get behind the wheel of that second vehicle and check the glove box for anything of interest. The team leader was in that car.”

“Right,” Steve replied. Shaw and First Sergeant Krueger followed Steve to the car and stood by as he slid over the seat toward the glove box. When Shaw slammed the driver’s door, Steve jerked upright and looked toward Shaw, who was glaring down at him.

“What are you doing?” Steve said.

“A good logger,” Shaw said, emphasizing the term, “should be careful in the woods, don’t you think, Steve?” At the mention of his code name, FBI Agent Alex Hunter, who had worked undercover within the Shasta Brigade for nearly a year, reached for his weapon, but Commander Jackson Shaw quickly triggered two rounds into the side of his head, then reached in to grab him by the collar and shove him forward against the steering wheel before pinning a California bear flag on his collar. Turning to Krueger, who was clearly surprised by the event that had just taken place, Shaw gave the order: “Clear out, First Sergeant. We’re through here.”

“Yes, sir,” Krueger replied, glancing once more at the lifeless body of Steve-or whatever his name was.

Shaw stood silently for a few moments, looking up at the sunlight filtering through the heavy stand of trees alongside the mountain trail. The woods were beautiful, tranquil, and they provided relief from the confines and confusion of the city. As he watched the smoke from the action slowly rise and dissipate, the acrid odor of cordite heavy in the air, he gave one further glance to the carnage strewn over the trail and turned to leave.

The Shasta Brigade, acting on orders from Commander Jackson Shaw, had planned, deployed, and then trapped and killed twenty-six agents of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms-all without having a man wounded. Shaw had also dealt with one undercover FBI agent whose cover had been blown by Grant Sully, deputy director of operations for the CIA, in his back-channel report to the brigade. The entire platoon was gone in twenty minutes. The only sound remaining in the forest was the radio in Riker’s vehicle, repeating at frequent intervals, “Bugle Base, Bugle Base, this is ATF Central, do you copy? Over.”

“Good evening. I’m Paul Spackman, and welcome to the Six O’ Clock Eyewitness News. Another brazen daylight attack was perpetrated today on agents of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms. Twenty-six agents were gunned down in the Sierra Nevada Mountains east of Red Bluff in what appears to have been a military-style ambush. From initial reports submitted by the sheriff’s department in Lassen County, the ATF agents were returning from a raid on a suspected weapons cache, and in the process of that raid, they burned a remote cabin in the high Sierras to the ground. Inside the cabin were the charred remains of a woman and two infant children,” Spackman said, shaking his head in a gesture of sadness.

“In a terse message left on this reporter’s voice mail, a caller identifying himself as a representative of the Western Patriot Movement claimed that the attack on the agents was in retaliation for the horrendous act committed against the woman and her children, who lived alone, unarmed, in their solitary cabin in the mountains.

“In a related news story today, thirty-eight of California’s fifty-two members of Congress filed a joint-action suit with the United States Supreme Court, seeking the court’s determination that the recent secession election was unconstitutional and should be overturned. We have a further report on today’s startling developments from our field correspondent, Janice Strickland, who will provide additional information. That report in a moment. .”

Watching the evening news from his corporate suite in downtown San Francisco, John Henry Franklin leaned back in his chair and contemplated with satisfaction the endless possibilities this new direction offered. Whatever the U.S. Supreme Court might say wouldn’t really matter. The die had been cast. The Franklin Group had already conducted negotiations with Japanese and Korean corporate and labor leaders, paid the necessary “consideration fees,” and had received assurance of political acceptance. The Mexican government, with the intervention of General Valdez, had also promised immediate recognition of the Republic of California.

Franklin thought back to when General Valdez had first approached him, nearly twelve years before, with his scheme to provide an immigrant labor force. It was an ingenious plan, but limited in scope, until Franklin put his vast resources behind it. Valdez had thought to bring in thousands, but under Franklin’s planning it had grown to tens of thousands, and then nearly a half-million migrant workers in all aspects of menial labor throughout the