A light drizzle, little more than a mist, was falling across the Tidewater night. There was one customer left at the far end of the bar in the Side Pocket Lounge, contemplating both the bottom of his glass of beer, and the Miller Lite clock’s minute hand, which was rising steadily toward midnight.
Victor Sorrento was a week away from thrity-five years old, and wondering again if his life was already over. The bills were piling up faster than he could pay them down working as a plumber, and he was coming to the realization that not only was he never going to be taken into management at AAABest Plumbing, he’d also never get far enough ahead in his savings to strike out on his own as an independent.
This might have been tolerable if he had a wife that he could look forward to coming home to, but his Nell had gained at least 50 pounds since he’d married her five years before, ten pounds for each year, and if she had been “voluptuous” when they were dating, she was just plain fat today. He was a hard worker and a steady provider, and he was still in good shape and not too bad looking, in sort of a rugged Bruce Willis way.
So what had he done to deserve such a fat wife at his age? Even drinking a bit too much, as he was lately, he was keeping his weight under 180 pounds, which was not much more than when he had mustered out of the Marines a decade ago. He knew he was still fairly attractive to women; the bar maids still smiled warmly and sparkled their eyes at him, so he knew he was not too far over the hill.
But he’d kept his hands off of them, even Darla, the cute blonde waitress at the Night Owl who was always making eyes at him, even as his Nell’s weight had soared past his own. Simply addressing her “eating disorder” (which was in reality a “stuffing your face disorder”) caused her to collapse into a pitiful blob of tears and self-loathing, so Victor spent his nights at the Side Pocket and the Night Owl, hoping that she would be sound asleep by the time he got home.
And now, on top of the bummer which was his personal and professional life, the one area which had provided him with a measure of enjoyment and pride had unexpectedly boomeranged into a complete and total nightmare. Victor Sorrento was a shooting sports enthusiast who enjoyed trap and skeet, practical pistol competition, and all types of hunting, but now his informal affiliation with the Black Water Rod and Gun Club was keeping him in a perpetual state of fear and dread.
First Jimmy Shifflett, a war vet but a messed up loser just the same, turned up dead near the stadium in Maryland with an SKS, blamed for the massacre. That had only been the beginning of the terrifying times. Next the gun stores were burned, Joe Bardiwell was killed, and Mark Denton and his boy were blown up in his jeep. Those improbable killings had already been enough to make him jump from his own shadow, but now Burgess Edmonds, the big man himself, who owned half of the land the rod and gun club hunted on, had his house burned down and his family wiped out! Wiped out! And then, to top it all, Edmonds was being called a terrorist on TV! Victor Sorrento could see where this was leading.
Pete Broker on CBA News had said that Edmonds was a “militia kingpin and paymaster,” whatever that was. So what did that make him? None of it made any sense, but it sure looked like somebody was picking off members of the rod and gun club one at a time. And the television people were talking about a ‘secret shadow militia’, whatever that meant. If the rod and gun club was a secret militia, nobody had ever told Victor Sorrento! Different guys from the club got together a couple of times a month for some shooting or hunting, and sometimes some fishing, and that’s all they did as far as he knew. A secret shadow militia? It made no sense; he’d never heard of such a thing.
The clock over the bar was clear enough though, five minutes before twelve, and in seven hours he’d have to be out the door for work, so he decided to forego a final beer and head for home. Hopefully Nell would be sound asleep, and he could slip into bed without waking her up, or maybe he’d just crash on the couch again. And one of these nights maybe he just wouldn’t go home at all… He quaffed the last dregs of his beer and slid off the bar stool.
“G’night Joe, Later…”
“See ya tomorrow Vic.”
“Yeah, see ya.”
****
In the poorly lit corner booth near the front door of the Side Pocket Lounge, a thirtyish fellow, military perhaps, seemed to mumble something to his pal across the table as Sorrento said goodbye to the bartender. Actually he was speaking in order to be heard by the throat microphone concealed under his black turtleneck sweater.
“Okay, he’s leaving. Get set people, here he comes.”
Outside the tavern in a nondescript shopping center off of Independence Boulevard in Virginia Beach, nothing appeared out of the ordinary, but in fact a complex and well-oiled machine was operating unseen. Tonight the STU’s Blue Team was running their first real world snatch, an “old buddy” operation, and Blue Team leader Tim “Hollywood” Jaeger was playing the lead role.
The key to a successful old buddy operation was having good biographical data on the target, and tonight they had an abundance of it. It also helped that Sorrento had consumed eight draft beers in two bars in the last couple hours, and wouldn’t be exactly razor sharp.
Sorrento’s green Ford Ranger pickup was parked along the shopping center sidewalk, about forty yards from the front door of the Side Pocket Lounge. The Blue Team had parallel-parked the STU’s blue Dodge conversion van along the same sidewalk, between Sorrento’s truck and the bar.
Tim Jaeger heard the inside team announce Sorrento’s imminent departure, and he took his position on the sidewalk 100 feet from the door, outside of a closed beauty parlor. When he saw the tavern door swing open, he began his walk.
“Okay, folks, here he comes, get ready,” Jaeger said through his throat mike to the rest of the hidden team. In a moment both men were facing one another, and closing the distance between them. At thirty feet from Sorrento, Jaeger made solid eye contact with him. At fifteen feet he smiled broadly in counterfeit recognition and said “Hey! Vic! Vic Sorrento? Long time no see, buddy!”
The two STU men from inside the bar were now padding up silently behind the suddenly off-guard Sorrento, who was looking puzzled, searching his murky memory for the name of this apparently forgotten old friend.
“Hey Vic, I’m Bob Michaels, remember me? We were in Echo Company at Camp Lejeune in ’91, remember? Semper Fi, buddy!” Jaeger put out his hand for a friendly shake and Sorrento, his mind stirring through a sudden whirl of old memories of his Marine Corps days, put out his own hand in return and Jaeger took it. Sorrento smiled weakly, he still couldn’t quite place the name or face of this old acquaintance from the Marines, but…
Jaeger, still smiling broadly and holding eye contact (in order not to look at his two team mates coming up from behind) gripped Sorrento’s right hand tightly in both of his. He did this so that in the event that Sorrento was armed, he would not be able to draw with his strong-side hand. But there was not much risk that he was armed; his rotating watchers in the bars had observed him closely, and had not seen a pistol “printing” through his clothes, or seen Sorrento make any tell-tale touching motions, checking the position of a concealed weapon. Even though Sorrento had a Virginia concealed carry permit, he was evidently a law abiding type who would not “carry” illegally into a bar.
The side door of the STU Team van quietly rolled open just as the two operators from inside the bar seized Sorrento’s arms and shoulders from behind and shoved him violently toward the black opening. A jolt of electricity from the two silver prongs of a pocket-sized cattle prod zapped him in the back of the neck as more strong hands reached out for him from within the van, seizing him by the front of his gray wind breaker jacket. The middle bench seat of the van had been removed, providing a clear space for the snatch team to work unimpeded. Victor Sorrento was both pushed and pulled inside before he could so much as formulate a thought. The door slid shut again, and the van pulled away.
No one had happened by on the sidewalk in either direction in the light drizzle to see the chance meeting of old friends. The van itself blocked the view of the abduction from the parking lot and street side, and so the disappearance of Victor Sorrento passed unnoticed by the world.
In seconds Sorrento was face down on the carpeted floor of the van, handcuffed behind his back and shackled around his ankles, with a black cloth sack pulled down over his head and tied around his neck.
He was rolled onto his side and his car keys were pulled from his front blue jeans pocket, and dropped casually out of the front passenger window of the moving van. A few moments later another Blue Team man on foot picked them up and walked to Sorrento’s Ford Ranger, unlocked it and climbed in and drove off. In a minute the blue Dodge conversion van was heading south on rain-slick Independence Boulevard, followed by a pair of black Chevy Suburbans and a green Ford Ranger.
****
Four-hundred miles northeast, in the small bedroom community of Wilton Connecticut, a semi-retired computer network consultant sat in his living room, watching a video replay of the CBA newsmagazine Timeline. Mark Fitzgibbon had seen the preview of the Suffolk arson fire story while watching the nightly news with Pete Broker, and decided to tape the Timeline segment for further study.
He was no fan of CBA News or Pete Broker, but he forced himself to endure a certain amount of it in order to keep abreast of the latest government propaganda and disinformation. Since the Stadium Massacre he had recognized that CBA, even more than the other networks, was being fed a steady stream of lies which they flipped around and reported as the truth. By analyzing the various mistruths, and fact checking them on the internet, Fitzgibbon was able to ascertain something of the reality behind the recent “outbreak” of so-called “militia terrorism.”
When the Timeline segment (luridly titled “Terror in Tidewater”) finished playing, he turned off his television and walked to his office, passing his open bedroom door where his wife was sleeping. Sitting at his computer desk, he switched on his flat screen, and clicked to his favorite internet news forum, FreeAmericans. Newspaper, magazine and internet-derived articles and columns were posted about all of the recent acts of terrorism, from the Stadium Massacre to the recent crossfire fiasco at the FIST checkpoint. Much of what was posted on FreeAmericans was garbage, because any tinfoil beanie-wearing kook could post just about any far out conspiracy theory on the open forum. But among the trash could be found much treasure; one merely had to pick up the solid nuggets while ignoring the fool’s gold.
He scrolled down the “latest articles” page until he found a small story from the online edition of the Norfolk newspaper about the deadly Suffolk house fire, and the wealthy owner’s alleged connection to a mysterious covert militia group. As he expected, the article’s author only referenced the same unnamed “official sources” that had been mentioned by the CBA News reporter Rich Mentiroso. Mentiroso could have written the newspaper piece; it did not vary from the Timeline version in any significant way.
Any real information, he knew, would be found in the replies posted by individual “FreeAmericans” below the article. Most of the replies were simply the opinions of observers from all over America, mainly observations that the Edmonds family had been the victim of yet another “accidental” fire...of the Waco variety. Cynics posted gallows humor about the adverse health effects of being a gun collector in Tidewater Virginia, ever since the obviously staged Stadium Massacre.
Fitz found what he was looking for down at reply #27. A FreeAmerican whose screen name was Virginia Peanut claimed to have been to the actual scene of the fire and listed the following points: #1: There were numerous fresh tire tracks left by several large vehicles which did not belong to the Edmonds. #2: The Edmonds’ two Doberman watchdogs were missing, but blood trails were found leading to the driveway. A Doberman had also been shot at the scene of a gun store arson attack a week before, where the owner had been killed. #3: Fired ten millimeter brass had been found at both arson attacks. #4: The first Feds to arrive on the scene at midday had immediately asserted federal control, and evicted the local law enforcement officers, claiming that a terrorism-related federal investigation was already underway. #5: Shortly after the first Feds arrived and took over, a convoy of vehicles arrived, which included a backhoe excavator on a tractor trailer, along with a CBA network television crew.
FreeAmericans responded furiously to this new information, drawing the obvious conclusion that the dead Dobermans, the ten millimeter brass, the backhoe and the ready TV crew meant that the Edmonds fire was surely another government sponsored arson and murder attack, designed for public consumption, in order to heighten the perception of a rampant “militia” threat.
Fitz could not recall ever seeing a reply posted by “Virginia Peanut” before, and clicked on the name to get his posting history on FreeAmericans. Fitz was not in the slightest bit surprised that Virginia Peanut had signed onto FreeAmericans only today, meaning that the information could be false, planted by a “troll” for an unknown reason. But it was more likely that the new poster did in fact have first hand knowledge, and was afraid to post under a traceable account, so he had created a new one with an instant Hotmail or Yahoo email address. Fear was in the air, and such precautions were only reasonable.
A new internet acronym had been born on FreeAmericans in the past two weeks: LAL, which was not to be confused with LOL. LAL stood for “lock and load,” it meant that some kind of a shooting war could break out at any time, and the midnight knock on the door could be the “gun Gestapo” coming for you. Many FreeAmericans wrote that they did not plan to “go quietly” if they received a midnight battering ram or flash-bang grenade greeting from Uncle Sam’s black-clad minions.
Unlike the majority of network news consuming drones who they derided as “sheeple,” FreeAmericans were not fooled by recent events, and while many of them had hidden their now illegal semi-autos and scoped rifles, virtually none had turned them in or destroyed them. Thousands of FreeAmericans had even informally organized a nationwide campaign to mail pictures of their so-called “assault rifles” and “sniper rifles” to Washington as a stark warning.
This new information from “Virginia Peanut” about the fatal Burgess family house fire pushed Mark Fitzgibbon, the semi-retired computer network consultant, over the precipice he had been balanced on the edge of for the past two weeks. He disconnected from the internet and clicked off his computer, and sat alone in the dark for long minutes staring at the illuminated face of his digital desk clock.
Mark Fitzgibbon had not always been an old fat bald guy, a revelation which might have surprised most of the people who knew him today. In fact, in a much earlier life, he had been involved in certain activities on the behalf of his government, which were not completely unlike what he was seeing on television and reading about on the internet this September.
In a previous life, a much younger (and leaner) Mark Fitzgibbon had been a Navy SEAL, leading teams of mainly ethnic-Chinese Nung mercenaries throughout the Mekong Delta and all the way up into Cambodia, on missions which were in some ways similar to what he was now observing in Virginia. But that had been in a foreign country during a prolonged and vicious guerrilla war, and his targets had in fact been secret Viet Cong “tax collectors” and spies and terrorists, living undercover lives in the Republic of Vietnam.
Fitz had only been an E-6, a Petty Officer First Class, during his second tour in-country, but running “PRUs” or “Provincial Reconnaissance Units” was not a task which was assigned according to rank. Most of the other SEALs in the Rung Sat Special Zone operated in seven man squads and 14 man platoons, as he had on his first tour with SEAL Team Two’s Third Platoon in 1967. But because of his obvious ease with the local cultures and his amazing aptitude for Asian languages, he had been approached by the local mission of the “Christians In Action” about operating with the PRUs, wiping out secret VC where ever they could be found. (It hadn’t hurt that he was a dark-haired “black Irish” and stood only five foot eight: he could blend in better than most Americans in an all-Asian patrol file.)
He had agreed to lead the PRU mercenaries on behalf of the CIA, he’d done his new job and done it well, and he’d had no regrets. Their targets had been bloody-handed communist butchers, who ruled in secret by murdering and terrorizing the inhabitants of any hamlets which wavered in their support for the Viet Cong communists, or dared to back the RVN. These VC terrorists, who wore no uniforms, were merely being paid back in their own coin, and Fitz had zero regrets about sending them to hell a few years ahead of schedule.
But this time Mark Fitzgibbon, fat and old as he was, decided that he would not sit passively by while his own government ran a new “Operation Phoenix” against its own citizens, right here in the USA. He walked to the kitchen and opened a cold Harp Lager, brought it back to his office, and closed the door.
Then in secret, he prepared and loaded a more dangerous weapon than the FBI or the BATF had ever faced in their long histories of battling Mafiosi, drug cartels, outlaw biker gangs, spies and terrorists. Fitz had designed and created this unique weapon long before, largely as an intellectual challenge, but he had hoped that the circumstances would never arise where he would have an actual reason to use it. That began to change after the Stadium Massacre, and now, two weeks later, he was beyond the slightest doubt or possibility of hesitation.
Tomorrow morning he would fire his home made weapon directly at the federal government.