Standing the Final Watch Read online

  “I’ll keep that in mind, General Steeple.”

  Angriff despised Steeple, had never tried to hide it, and didn’t now. Angriff blamed him, more than any other, for wiping out centuries of tradition and training to curry political favor with those he believed hated America, namely, the commander-in-chief and his circle of cronies. The promotion of politically reliable but incompetent officers in the Army, as well as every major U.S. agency charged with protecting the country, and the overt coddling of terrorists and their sympathizers, had led to the murder of his wife and daughter. He could never forgive anyone who put self above country. Angriff saw Steeple as a traitor to his oath to defend the Constitution.

  “First, let me apologize for all the cloak and dagger stuff,” Steeple said, “but time was of the essence. You’ve put in for retirement, and once you were retired I couldn’t compel you to meet me. You’re not exactly president of my fan club, now, are you?” He paused.

  Angriff crossed his arms and stared.

  “Right. So much for small talk, eh? Nick, I first want to tell you how very sorry I am for your loss. My Regina has been gone five years now, and there’s not a day goes by that I don’t think about her.”

  “Thank you, General Steeple,” Angriff said, leaning away from his host. The whole setup felt off.

  “When she died, I was lost. I didn’t know what to do with myself. We never had kids, so all of a sudden it was just me. I wasn’t Chief yet, but I was a mover and shaker, and it didn’t seem to matter because the only woman I ever loved was dead. I almost quit the Army then, because I’d lost my whole purpose in living. So I hope that when I tell you that I know how you feel, you realize that I really do.”

  Angriff nodded. He recalled vague memories of Steeple’s wife dying some years before, but not what killed her. Cancer?

  Steeple looked out the window as if gathering his thoughts. “My career has been guided by the dictum that a battle is won or lost before it’s ever fought. I have stuck to that over the years and found it to be mostly true.”

  “Sun Tzu usually is,” Angriff said. “So this is a battle?”

  “In a manner of speaking, yes, but before we get ahead of ourselves, I’m going to tell you what I believe to be true and I want you to tell me if I’m correct.”

  “Yes, sir,” Angriff said.

  After a muffled clang the plane vibrated, followed by the rising whine of turbines being started.

  “Try to have an open mind, Nick,” Steeple said. “That’s all I ask. And there are some things you should know right off the bat. First, you won’t need that Glock. There are no recording devices on this plane of any sort. No bugs, cameras, or lasers outside recording our conversation. This is strictly off the record, and it has to remain that way. Even this aircraft is off the record. Its design is unique and it’s the only one in the world. Much like your operations in the Congo, it does not officially exist. If you were to dismantle it, not one part has a serial number or manufacturer’s mark; there is nothing to indicate who made it or where. And you and I are completely alone here. The pilot is in the cockpit. Your luggage is already on board and we’ll be taking off soon. For four hours, it’s just you and me.”

  Angriff uncrossed his arms and leaned forward, never taking his eyes off of Steeple’s face. “Where are we going?”

  Steeple ignored the question. “Second, I want you to forget anything you think you know about me, about what I’ve done or what I stand for. Everything you know is wrong, and that’s on purpose. Last but not least, this meeting and conversation never happened. Got it? National security. You can never, ever disclose that we even met today. Clear?”

  Angriff nodded.

  “Good, then let’s get started.” Steeple paused again. “Correct me if I’m wrong, but you believe that the United States military has been betrayed, not only by a narcissistic, incompetent president who hates the American ideal as much as or more than many of our enemies, but also by the officers who serve in the highest echelons of our armed services and pander to his whims, furthering their careers at the expense of their country. Correct so far?”

  Shocked by the directness, and correctness, of Steeple’s statement, Angriff also knew dangerous ground when he trod it, and he paused. Although true, if he agreed, he committed a court-martial offense, and the assurances of a man he did not trust counted for nothing in that situation.

  “Fine, you don’t trust me,” Steeple said. “I can’t say I blame you, so let me put it to you this way: if you agree with that statement, then know that I do, too. The only difference is that I know things you don’t, which means I know it’s a lot worse than you think.”

  Angriff scratched the back of his neck. What the hell? Was it some kind of setup?

  “Aside from all those domestic programs bankrupting the country — intentionally, I might add — our military is being re-designed from protector of the nation to protector from the nation. Homeland Security hasn’t bought billions of rounds of ammo for nothing. Did you know that they also possess the equivalent of an armored brigade, complete with an artillery regiment? It’s true. Nobody knows it, but this president is tailoring our security forces to put down a national revolt. But not just our security forces. What good would it do to have a Homeland Security armored brigade if the military could field armored divisions against it, complete with air support? So the military also had to be co-opted, along with all of the watchdog agencies like the FBI, NSA and CIA. That has taken a long, long time, but the process is nearly complete.”

  “Zero defect,” Angriff said.

  “Not originally,” Steeple answered. “The original idea was flawed, but innocent enough. It was only later that it was co-opted to weed out politically unreliable officers. And now we’ve become sort of a European co-op, a corporation with something for everybody, as long as we don’t actually have to fight a war. Everybody’s walking on eggshells their whole career.”

  “Not everybody.”

  “No, Nick, not you, just everybody else. It’s why you only have three stars, but I admire you for it. You were one of the few warriors left, only now you’re leaving, too. And we can’t replace men like you. Presumably you’ve seen the latest resiliency assessment reports?”

  “No, General Steeple, I’ve been otherwise occupied.”

  “So you have. I’m sorry, that was inconsiderate of me.” Steeple took a sheet of paper from a folder on the small table next to his chair. “The latest numbers continue the trend that started in 2009. Let me see… here it is: ‘Twelve months of data through early 2015 show that 403,564 soldiers, or 52%, scored badly in the area of optimism, agreeing with statements such as “I rarely count on good things happening to me.” Forty-eight percent have little satisfaction in or commitment to their jobs.’ Half the Army doesn’t give a shit about its job, and doesn’t expect things to get any better. We’re fighting a global war for our very lives, and the biggest force we have to fight that war is demoralized and pessimistic.”

  Steeple leaned over and lifted the lid of a cooler crafted into the polished woodwork and made to double as a table. He withdrew a bottle of water and offered one to Angriff. The plane had taken off without them even noticing and Nick wondered if it were VTOL. How could he not notice a light plane lifting off?

  “No, thank you, sir.”

  “Please call me Tom. It’s just water, Nick. We aren’t toasting my health.”

  Well, he was thirsty. “Thank you, sir.”

  Steeple tossed him the bottle and he drank half at one time. Steeple then pulled a bottle of Tennessee Black from a cabinet and cracked the seal. With a tilt of his head he offered some to his guest, who declined. Angriff narrowed his eyes. Steeple not only knew his favorite cigar, but his favorite whiskey, too. This had to be leading somewhere, but where?

  Drinking three fingers of the water, Steeple refilled it with whiskey, swirled the bottle and sat down.

  “Light your cigar; it won’t blow up. My doctor won’t let me smoke them any more
but I can sure as hell smell them. Second hand smoke is as close as I can get to having one myself.”

  “I’m good.”

  Steeple shrugged.

  “Save it for later, then. Where was I? Oh, yes. The situation is both simple and extremely complex. The simple part is that the guy in the White House is intentionally trying to drive the country into bankruptcy to provoke riots and insurrection. Then he will declare martial law and suspend elections until such time as they can be held safely. Just as Lincoln did during the Civil War, he will suspend habeas corpus and the Constitution itself. Congress may or may not protest, they’re more spineless than you can imagine, but the projections are that as long as he protects their privileges and treats them as if they still have power, most of both parties will go along with anything. Some will fight back, it’s true, but they will be arrested and charged with supporting the insurrectionists. Any station which broadcasts the truth will be shut down immediately, and secret camps already exist to house everyone who opposes the administration. So what about the primary guarantor of our personal freedoms, the men and women we lead in the U.S. Army? That report tells you what the rank and file think about it; they don’t much give a damn what happens.”

  Angriff swallowed. Every paranoid conspiracy theory had sprung to life and been certified as true. He had imagined all of those things could happen, but now one of the most powerful men in America stated, in no uncertain terms, that a conspiracy to take over the country had already begun. He held out his hands, palms up, aghast. “And you’re helping them do this?”

  Steeple rubbed a jowl. “Whether I help or not doesn’t matter. If this happens, it will happen with or without me.”

  “You could at least try to stop them!”

  “As long as I do my duty, the rest will take care of itself?” Steeple said.

  “Something like that,” Angriff answered, surprised that Steeple paraphrased George Patton. In return, he quoted Patton against Patton. “‘Moral courage is the most valuable and usually the most absent characteristic in men.’”

  Steeple smiled back. “You overestimate my importance,” he said. “I have more enemies than just you, Nick, I have a lot of them. And some of them don’t hate me because they believe I’ve ruined the Army; they hate me because I haven’t done it fast enough. There’s a small but very dangerous group called RSVS — don’t ask what it stands for because we don’t know — and they would like to see me dead, and you, too, apparently.”

  “They’re the ones who shot at Norm and me in Virginia?”

  “We think so.”

  “Who are they? Were they involved in Tahoe?”

  “We don’t know too much about them, except they’re old-style Stalinists right out of 1952 and they want to install a dictatorship. We do know they were not behind the attack on your family, however.”

  “Then why shoot at me?”

  “You’re asking the wrong guy. I can guess, though. You’re a powerful leader within the Army, you’re well respected, and people believe what you say. You hate communists and, what’s worse, you can’t be bought and you won’t keep your mouth shut. You’re their nightmare.”

  “If they had anything to do with Tahoe, I’ll be theirs,” Angriff said.

  “They didn’t. Do you know the exact chain of events that led to the death of your wife and daughter, Nick?”

  Angriff sucked in a breath, the air whistling in his nose. His hands clenched and he leaned forward again, from the waist. “I don’t know, General Steeple, do I? The latest I’ve got is that a traitor infiltrated Homeland Security and gave the bad guys intel about a boatload of American tourists on Lake Tahoe that just so happened to include my wife and daughter. They attacked the boat and mowed down women and little children along with the men, using thermite to make sure nobody had a body to bury. The FBI still cannot identify the Muslim terrorists responsible, and the White House insists that it could have been white supremacists, not Islamic radicals, despite the intel that led them back to the leak at Homeland Security. Oh, and the identity of the leaker has not been discovered. That’s the version I’ve been told. Now tell me what I don’t know.”

  Despite what Steeple had said earlier, Angriff expected an argument. But Steeple nodded. “You’re right about everything, except that the identity of the leaker is known. He is an ISIS sympathizer and may have been trained at one of their schools. What’s more, this was known when he was hired.”

  Angriff leaned back in shock, his mouth open, and tried to digest the magnitude of the horror he had just been told.

  “But… why?”

  “Because the president is a terrorist sympathizer and he absolutely hates America.” Steeple let that sink in before continuing. “The president knows he can trust such people to kill as many American citizens as necessary to keep his poll numbers up — you know that after a terrorist attack people rally to their elected officials, right? He wants a third term by declaring martial law, although it’s pretty late in his second term now. Oh, and just so you know, the terrorist who fingered your family still has his job.”

  “Are you telling me the president of the United States authorized the murder of my family?” Angriff said.

  “I didn’t say that,” Steeple said. “In fact, I doubt that he knew about it personally. But whether he did or didn’t, it suited his purpose, and he has materially hindered the investigation. That much is a fact.”

  He would never rest until everyone responsible lay dead at his feet. But when the initial wave of rage tapered off, his instincts told him the moment of battle had not arrived. Steeple had not yet come to his point; everything so far had been just a prologue. The discussion of his family had changed his outlook on the conversation, however.

  “What’s to stop me from going to the media with this? You’re fucking with me. You know I want to kill the sons of bitches, you know I want the name of the leak, so why tell me this? See, I haven’t forgotten that whoever hired that terrorist bastard is just as guilty as he is. Shit flows downhill, but it can also flow back up. If everything you say is true then it flows all the way to the top, and maybe that means it has to go through you.”

  Steeple rose and went over to the humidor near the small bar fitted to the bulkhead. He withdrew a cigar, snipped the end and picked up a box of matches. Striking one, he toasted the foot of his smoke and sucked it to life. Gesturing with it, he said: “Screw my doctor. I’m gonna die of something; might as well be a fine cigar.” He sat back down and tossed Angriff the box of matches. He caught them but did not light one.

  “Maybe you’re right. Maybe it does all go through me. But you won’t go to the media, because first, nobody would believe you, and second, you swore a few minutes ago never to divulge that this meeting took place, and you’re not the kind of man who goes back on his word.” Steeple paused for a long pull from the water bottle. “So now comes the tricky part — explaining why you’re here.”

  “That would help, all right,” Angriff said. “So far none of this makes sense.”

  “Have you ever heard of Generalmajor Henning von Treskow?” Steeple pronounced the name and rank in the German manner, with the G like the hard g in gun, the j as a y and the w as a v.

  The question caught Angriff off guard but he answered without having to think about it. “Architect and prime mover behind Operation Valkyrie. Stauffenberg gets all the credit, but Treskow was the heart and soul of the opposition.”

  “Correct. For many years he opposed Hitler. Yet he continued his work in the German Army nonetheless, helping the regime he opposed by doing a thoroughly competent job. He simultaneously worked for German victory while leading a resistance clique within the Army and personally trying several times to kill his commander-in-chief. He didn’t mind Germany winning the war, he just didn’t want Hitler running the country. So, was he a hero for trying, but failing, to kill Hitler, thereby giving the regime even more power than it already possessed and ensuring that Germany would fight to the finish? Or was he a
villain for helping Germany conquer Europe and slaughter millions of people? Less than a month before Stauffenberg planted that bomb near Hitler’s feet, von Treskow signed an order that deported between forty and fifty thousand Polish children to Germany to work as slave laborers. That’s evil incarnate, or so you would think. But by trying to kill Hitler, he’s remembered to history as a martyr.”

  “What’s your point?” Angriff asked.

  “My point is that von Treskow could, at any time, have resigned his commission on grounds of honor and nobody would have blamed him, although the Nazis probably would have thrown him and his family into a concentration camp. But he could have done it. Hell, it might even have been the ‘right’ thing to do. There might be statues of him in little parks all over Germany for the pigeons to shit on. But if he had, if he had chosen the high road, then he would never have been in a position to orchestrate Operation Valkyrie.”

  “So what are you saying? That you’re the American von Treskow?” The surreal situation exceeded anything Angriff could have dreamed. Had the most powerful American military leader alive just suggested the assassination of his commander-in-chief?

  “To a point, maybe I am, but only to a point,” Steeple replied. “I have no intention of initiating or participating in any attempt to kill the president, not that I’ve heard of any that were legit. It’s not that I’m squeamish, the son of a bitch has virtually destroyed the country, but it wouldn’t do any good. We are too far gone for the death of any one man to make a difference now. In historical terms, we are Rome in 470 a.d., or Germany in 1945. The barbarians have breached the gate and are about to overrun the empire and there’s not a damned thing we can do to stop it. If this president is eliminated there are others in his party far worse than him.

  “But I will take action to save my country. I took the first steps a long time ago, I’ve taken a lot since, and today I’m taking another one. I’m talking to you.”

  And just like that, they reached the real reason why Angriff had been kidnapped for a private meeting with a superior officer he barely knew, on board an airplane that did not exist.