47

Tuesday, February 16, 2021, 4PM Pacific Standard Time

“AHHHHH…” Jake Nalley moaned.

“Sorry,” Joe said. “I’m trying to be careful.”

“Oh man,” Jake said. “It hurts.”

“Getting shot in the ass does hurt,” Joe said.

“I’m sorry, man,” Billy Boland said.

“AHHHH.”

“We’ll be at the cabin soon,” Joe said. “There’s an EMT there.”

Jake lay half-on, half-off the back of the snowmobile as Joe drove it very slowly down the trail. Billy looked back over the front seat sorrowfully.

“I’m sorry, man,” he said. “I never shot a gun before this week.”

“Oh REALLY?” Nalley said. “You could have fooled me…Ahhhhh.”

For no particular reason, it suddenly hit Joe with renewed force where he was and what he was doing, and where he had been and what he had been doing a bit earlier. He was in the woods of the Pacific Northwest, on a private ranch, playing snow taxi to a couple of complete idiots, one of them bleeding. Fifteen months earlier, he had been in Syria, helping Kurds not get mass-murdered. Kurds were the antithesis of bullshit, Joe thought. Helping them under fire for $800 a month now seemed like a privilege, at least compared to training preppy white supremacists how to terrorize non-existent “home-grown communist-Islamist paramilitaries.” Joe’s bullshit meter was pegged.

Forget three months ago, Joe thought; just a few days ago life seemed to make a far greater amount of sense. It had been a surreal week.

***

“You were in the 10th Mountain, right?” Maxfield King had asked him what seemed an eternity ago, the previous Thursday.

“Uh, yeah,” Joe had answered. “Long time ago.”

“But you must have liked mountains and snow and all that, having chosen the 10th Mountain Division, right?”

“Well, personal preference and the military don’t always go together, as you know. But sure, I guess. In my foolish youth, coming from the flat Midwest, the thought of mountains sounded pretty cool.”

“So, you might be open to doing a short training assignment starting this weekend in the Cascades?”

Joe paused.

“What are we talking about?”

“It’ll be like a vacation. Training some guys in some rudimentary Spec Ops tradecraft. It’s a favor for a pal, to be honest. We know we are not going to turn these guys into Rambo. But we want to make them feel like Rambo for a few days, to help their morale.”

“Tradecraft…that sounds more like intel than Spec Ops.”

“They won’t know the difference, trust me. Nor do we particularly care if they do. Again, this is a favor to a friend who might be able to do us good down the line.”

“Who’s the friend?”

“You may have heard of him. Ban Wilson?”

Joe tried to remember where he had heard the name.

“Isn’t he some kind of conservative journalism guy?”

“He runs a journalism outfit. He’s made some films too. He’s a businessman. But he served. A long time ago.”

“Nam?”

“After. Navy.”

“SEALs?”

Max could not stifle a laugh at this.

“No. Not SEALs. Regular Navy. I think he made light commander.”

Joe was silent at this. After a moment he spoke again.

“This isn’t a long-term assignment, then? I finally have to get the rest of my stuff out of my apartment in Fayetteville and shipped to my new place by the end of the month.”

“God no. A few days. A week. Two, tops.”

“Where in the Cascades? We don’t have mountain training facilities near there.”

“It’s not a USG facility. It’s actually my family’s ranch.”

“Okay,” Joe said.

“It’ll be a vacation,” Max said.

It was not a vacation. Not that it was exactly a hardship post. The ranch was scenic, snow-covered and situated amid stunning mammoth evergreens. The guest cabins were at a five-star-hotel level. Like many things with Max, thought Joe, it was partly first class all the way, and partly completely insane. The insanity component, in Joe’s mind, arrived with Ban Wilson and his rather goofy “boots,” and had a local spike at the group’s introductory dinner.

Joe sat at that dinner between Max and Terry Sweeney, who had arrived separately, at a round table on the far side of the banquet room, as the salads were being served by the wait staff. Like the maids and maintenance staff and security guards and snowplow drivers, they seemed to be imported from various impoverished foreign nations – Philippines, Mexico, Caribbean, East Asia.

“They’re employees of the family,” Max had told him after he had greeted the uniformed guard manning the security gate by name as they drove onto the compound. “Really, we consider them members of the family.”

Joe had been silent then, though after seeing more of Max’s “family members,” he had wondered how Max had been able to keep all these obviously foreign-born, almost certainly undocumented, personnel in the country in this era of ICE door-to-door searches and mass deportations.

Ban Wilson entered the dining room and sat down across from Joe and Max.

“Joe, this is Ban Wilson. Ban, this is Joe Durcan. He’s one of our trainers. Recent Delta Force.”

“Pleased to meet you,” Ban said, standing up and leaning across the table.

Joe noticed that the table on his own side bowed upward as the Wilson gut, camouflaged by some sort of safari-wear fishing vest, pushed the table down on his side. Joe rose and leaned across and took his hand. He noticed that Ban seemed to be wearing sweatpants. His complexion was mottled and his face seemed to have been shaven by either a blind man or a very skilled chimpanzee.

“Likewise,” Joe said, and sat down again. He surreptitiously took out a small vial of hand sanitizer under the table and rubbed his hands.

“And I think you know another of our trainers, Terry Sweeney,” Max said.

“The famous Lieutenant Sweeney,” Ban said, leaning over again and shaking Terry’s hand. “It’s truly an honor.”

The “boots,” seated at the other round tables, numbered some twelve. They were all twenty-something white boys wearing blazers, and all seemed to have similar haircuts – short on the sides, floppy bangs on top. None of them looked as though they were in anything like combat shape, except perhaps one lean, tanned, darker-complexioned, befuddled-looking guy who looked like some sort of surfer dude.

Looking at one of the others, seated next to the surfer dude, a rather strange-looking tall guy, Joe suddenly recognized him as a famous “undercover reporter” who had successfully infiltrated various liberal-leaning organizations and press outlets, surreptitiously taping their employees, and inducing them to say things that would be embarrassing to them when they were creatively edited in post-production facilities generously subsidized by various conservative billionaires. His odd, vaguely glassy, almost cross-eyed, goofily cheerful countenance looked to Joe like nothing so much as someone about to laugh a little too hard because he was intoxicated, or else a portrait of a future assassin, or maybe a mental patient. His name tag read “Jake Nalley.”

What can we possibly teach these people in a few days? Joe wondered as the party was finishing its salads.

“Surprised to see you here,” Wilson said, addressing Terry. “Weren’t you just with the President?”

“Yes, I did have that honor,” Terry said in what Joe took to be a smarmy voice. Why are you buttering this guy up? Joe thought to himself.

“So glad he reinstated your SEAL trident,” Wilson said. “This President stands up for real warriors.”

It took all the willpower Joe possessed to keep his eyes from rolling completely back into his head. He sat with a slight smile pasted onto his face as he recalled a conversation he had had with one of Sweeney’s shipmates in a bar in Fayetteville, North Carolina, a few months earlier.

***

“So tell me. What’s the general feeling about this whole Sweeney trial?” Joe had asked the swabby, who had complained jocularly of being “in denied territory,” over a beer in Fayetteville. They had both just attended a lecture on tactics at the JFK School of Special Warfare, spiritual home of the Army Green Berets, Joe’s outfit.

“I can’t speak to the general feeling,” the SEAL had said, “but I have strong personal opinions about that guy.”

“You served together?”

“Yep. He was my CO.”

“Really.”

“Oh yeah.”

“So, what’s the skinny?”

“Real son of a bitch.”

“Tough?”

“Sure. But not that kind of SOB, not the good kind. The bad kind.”

“Really.”

“Yep.”

“Can you elaborate?”

“‘Elaborate?’ Jesus, they’re getting a more refined brand of operator in Task Force Green these days,” the SEAL said, grinning.

“I’m enlisted, sir,” Joe said, grinning back. “We noncoms have to read the dictionary all the time just to keep up with you guys.”

“Elaborate. Okay. Well, he was a son of a bitch to us, but that’s standard, as I am sure it is in your outfit.”

“Affirmative.”

“Maybe he was a bit more of a son of a bitch to us than other COs might have been, but we all knew how to deal with that. It was the other stuff that I could not hack.”

“Such as?”

“Such as posing enemy corpses for hunting trophy photos.”

“I had heard about that.”

“That stuff did not endear us to the locals.”

“I believe that. What else?”

“It was a constant effort to keep him from shooting random civilians. At least once I caught him aiming at one of my translators who was approaching our gate. He claimed he was just doing recon through his scope, but that’s not what it looked like. He was locked on to every movement of the bogey, rifle moving in perfect sync with it. He was a psychopath. Really fucking evil.”

“You think he’ll get convicted of this thing? The murder?”

“Letting that enemy combatant die? I don’t think so. From what I hear, for once, he was not the doer. I think especially with this administration right now, he’s going to get off.”

“What do you mean, this administration?”

“I think even if he does get convicted, which, as I say, is unlikely, he’ll be pardoned. I’m just glad they took his trident. We do not need his kind in the service. Bad enough if you’re captured and they don’t have any reason to mutilate you beyond general principles. Guys like him turn the entire civilian population into jihadists.”

“But better this President than the other side,” Joe said. “Right?”

“I… don’t know,” the SEAL said, looking Joe over skeptically as if reappraising him.

“I mean, those people have no respect for the military,” Joe continued. “They’re a bunch of slacker civilians with no discipline. Maybe the President is kind of goofy at times, and he sometimes says stuff that makes our Kurds pretty angry. But the alternative was pretty…unappetizing.”

“‘Unappetizing?’” the SEAL said, grinning again. “You sure you didn’t go to college?”

“Oh, sure, I went to college,” Joe said. “I just didn’t finish.”

“Well, I appreciate your critique of the Democrats,” the SEAL had said. “But I have to say, when supporters of the President who never served – just like he never served – start this balls-to-the-wall, all-out defense of this Sweeney guy on Wolf News and talk radio, it makes me reexamine a lot of things. I don’t want this guy representing me. He really fucked with the heads of some of our best operators. Three of them have already had their pins taken for not reporting him, and five or six more are leaving the service because of stuff they saw and had to testify to. Testifying against your own takes balls of steel, but it might also just break you. If Sweeney somehow survives this,” the SEAL said, his voice rising above the ambient country music, “then something is broken in our country. Because this ain’t about real patriotism. To do the kind of shit we do, we need to be the good guys. Otherwise, what the fuck is it all about? We’re all psychopaths like Sweeney, either perpetrating or turning a blind eye to massacres. Okay, he never did anything as huge as My Lai, but maybe that’s just because he never had the opportunity.”

Joe stared at the SEAL in surprise at this sudden vehement outpouring. They both took long pulls on their beers and sat back.

“Maybe we should talk about sex or religion,” Joe said after a minute. The SEAL laughed, and they began to talk about sports and video games instead.

***

Sweeney had indeed been acquitted of the murder charge after some odd and unexpectedly self-implicating testimony on the part of one of the other SEALs who had been there that day. That testimony had been given under a guarantee of immunity from further prosecution by the military prosecutors, who had been reduced to utter slack-jawed incredulity by their prosecution witness’s answers.

And the President had indeed restored to Sweeney his trident pin.

Sitting next to Sweeney, Joe thought back to the conversation with the SEAL, and felt certain long-held unexamined assumptions about reality begin to shift within him.

“Real warriors are what we need to revere in this country,” Ban Wilson was saying. “And real warriors finally have a Commander in Chief they can respect.”

Sweeney raised his water glass at this. Max and Ban did the same. Joe was still staring into space.

“Raise your glass to the President,” Max said.

“Oh,” Joe said, and raised his water glass. What did my Irish grandfather say? A toast using a water glass doesn’t count? Or counts the opposite?

“To the Commander in Chief, and his beating the virus,” Max said. And all four men, each a veteran, raised their water glasses to a man who had received five deferments in order to stay out of Vietnam.

Now, just before the main meal was to be served, Max got up and cleared his throat.

“Gentlemen,” he said.

The conversation among the “boots” dwindled into silence.

“I would just like to welcome you to my family’s ranch.” The “boots” clapped respectfully. Max continued.

“We’re going to have a pretty intense few days here, but I think you will also enjoy the challenge, and learn some new skills that will stand you in good stead as you form the core of a new organization, one that will in turn be an integral component of the future conservative movement. This visit is just the first step in a long process. By the time we are finished honing your skills, you, gentlemen, will be the finest private intelligence organization in the world. Private, but devoted to a public good – the triumph of conservative values over the decadent rootless elitist cosmopolitan globalists who sap the strength and commitment and entrepreneurial genius of our nation.”

These guys are going to fix all that? Joe thought to himself.

“Some eighty years ago, a man named William Donovan, ‘Wild Bill’ to his friends, called a meeting just like this one, a meeting of energetic, intelligent, young American patriots, to begin their formation as a force to combat the great evil of his time, totalitarianism. That group went on to become the Office of Strategic Services, which executed hundreds of heroic secret missions behind the lines in Europe. Later, the OSS formed the core of what became the intelligence services of our great nation.”

Joe looked around him, furtively. They are eating this stuff up.

“More recently, of course, those intelligence services were corrupted into becoming guardians of the Deep State. So now we must recreate them, outside the government, which by its nature is inimical to the liberties of a free people.”

Joe saw the surfer-looking dude mouthing the word “inimical” with a look of confusion on his face.

“From time to time the tree of liberty must be watered with the blood of patriots and tyrants,” Max continued. “In order for this nation to be preserved, free men – free MEN – must stand up from time to time and wrest from a corrupt and tyrannical government the resources and authorities and weapons that guarantee our rights. Privatization is the name we give to this process of liberation.”

Am I the only one who is having doubts here? Joe thought to himself, looking around. The only one who seemed to share his hesitancy was the surfer guy. Well, there are different types of intelligence, he thought.

“So, I welcome you, the leaders of the future, to my family’s compound as you commit to putting your lives, your fortunes, and your sacred honors on the line for our cause. Without further ado, I would like to introduce a man who has been an intellectual leader in our cause, a titan. He is a publisher, a filmmaker, a public intellectual, a gadfly, a journalist, a high government official, and a presidential campaign manager. You all know him already from his many books, his podcasts, his radio show. Gentlemen, I give you… Ban Wilson.”

Ban rose from his seat to enthusiastic applause from the crowd. Joe saw a large piece of lettuce fall from his shirt front as he got up. He had tucked his napkin into his collar; he forgot this as he walked up to the lectern. Max attempted to mime removing it, but Ban simply nodded and adjusted the microphone, and began to speak.

“Good evening, gentlemen. I echo Lieutenant King’s welcome to you. What is happening tonight is the beginning of a great movement. A movement that we hope will rescue this country from the weakness and anomie of modern liberalism, and reestablish it on sound conservative principles. You are part of a movement that has crossed borders, and has chapters in many nations, a movement of the best and the brightest against the global elites that threaten our way of life.

“For too long our national sovereignty has been ceded, bit by bit, to these unelected, elitist, transnational institutions. They have spies everywhere. So, we have to meet here, off the grid, as it were, away from the prying eyes of foreign corrupt forces, in order to preserve our precious European-American values.”

A Filipina server leaned in toward Joe to offer him some icewater. He nodded to her and she expertly filled his glass from an impressive height. He whispered thanks; she smiled and nodded and looked up at Wilson as he continued talking.

“The way forward, gentlemen, is to destroy the administrative state, to cripple its ability to interfere in our lives. For too long we have been told by elitists what toilets we can buy, how powerful our light bulbs can be, what fuels we can put in our cars. We have been told that we must wear masks, and ‘socially distance,’ participate in international bodies, giving way when those bodies predictably told us we must cede our God-given authority to them. No. Our government as it has come to be must be destroyed, and then it must wrest our sacred sovereignty back from these globalist foreign interlopers. …Thank you.”

A Central American man had come out from behind some curtains, replaced the water pitcher next to Wilson’s podium, and gracefully withdrawn again behind the curtains.

“The way to guarantee global security is for each nation to be completely free to pursue its own national interest, as it sees it, unimpeded by these globalist elitist institutions that have shackled them for lo these past seventy-five years. And the only way to guarantee American global supremacy is for America to withdraw from all these global institutions and to pursue our own interests, equally unimpeded. I have visited dozens of countries, throughout Europe, Asia, Latin America. In each country we find allies that are similarly nationalistic, similarly proud of their heritage, and similarly determined to bring greatness back to their own countries. To make each nation return to the apex of its historic greatness.

“We have created a worldwide movement against globalism, in which like-minded nationalists walk forward arm in arm into a future in which globalism has been banished. And in the spirit of Leo Strauss, we will defeat the elitist rootless cosmopolitans, utilizing people like you, who are the best of the best, a secret select few out of the entire country. For as Leo wrote, in his book Persecution and the Art of Writing, that in a world in which the truth is persecuted, and I believe that statement applies to our current age, that essential truths must be hidden from general view, and upheld in turn by a hidden priesthood that must be dedicated to upholding those truths at all costs.

“GENTLEMEN,” he thundered, at the precise moment when the attention of his audience seemed to be in danger of wandering, “YOU ARE THAT PRIESTHOOD.”

The “boots” got to their feet and applauded. The surfer dude, looking confused again, was the last up and the most dilatory in his clapping.

“But Leo did not believe that a nation could be ruled by philosophers,” Ban went on after they had resumed their seats. “That requires men of action. Action and philosophy – that is a formidable combination. So, we will be training you to be actors as well. Fighters, if need be. Spies, if necessary – or should I say, counterespionage agents, since we are certainly already being spied upon by agents of the administrative state.”

Joe saw the surfer dude look around in alarm. The rest of the “boots” seemed unperturbed, and continued to watch Wilson as he went on.

“So, imbibe well the lessons we impart here this week. Learn to be men of action. Learn how to preserve your sacred European heritage. All those dead white males. Greeks. Romans. Italians. Some of the Germans, the true ones – not Marx and Engels, of course. And learn how to handle a weapon. All true American males should know how to shoot. Our forefathers all knew how to handle their weapons. Stand up for American manhood. Stand up against the administrative state. Revel in your status as the secret international vanguard that will defeat the globalist elites. Prepare to take your own part in restoring the Founders’ vision by going to war against the federal government. Gentlemen – let us raise our glasses to the international nationalist movement against globalism! And to the restoration of American global greatness through isolation from international institutions!”

The audience stood and raised their glasses, clapping, and spilling much of the contents thereby.

“We’ll see you out on the training grounds later. Eat well, and get plenty of sleep.” Ban returned to his table.

“Jesus, I’m hungry,” he said. “I could eat a farmer’s arse through a tennis racket. Where’s my napkin? Did they take it?”

The dinner was consumed with increased bonhomie, with lots of laughing and loud conversation among the “boots.”

After half an hour, Max rose to his feet again. “Gentlemen,” he said, “I’d like to propose one more toast.”

His audience stumbled back to its feet, glasses in hand.

“This toast is to you all,” Max said. “Each of you who has broken bread with us here, each of you who has partaken in this feast of manhood, is now a member of a sacred brotherhood.”

The brotherhood raised its glasses.

“Because your meals have all been infected with the virus.”

The brotherhood looked suddenly stunned. The surfer’s head whipped left and then right, and sweat broke out on his forehead.

“Maybe you have heard rumors,” Max continued, his glass still held high. “Well, those rumors are true. Congratulations.”

The honorees looked less than delighted at their luck.

“The initiation into this particular fraternity demands that each of you develop immunity to the virus. The way you do that is by voluntarily taking the virus into your system. I require it of all my people. If you’ve already had the virus, like the President, this can have no effect on you and you will suffer no ill effects. If you have not had it, then in a mere two weeks here, you need never fear this virus again. But you can still spread it to the weaker people in our society – the liberals, the multiculturalists, the politically correct. They don’t want to wear an MK medallion because they think it’s my initials? Fine. They will be shunned by everyone, and remain targets for the virus. And we – you – will be happy to pass it along to them.”

Joe was almost as stunned as the other attendees. He turned to Ban and saw that Ban was sweating and had a glassy look in his eyes. Terry was grinning, his eyes shining a little crazily.

“So, eat hearty. ‘The only way to avoid trouble,’ a philosopher once said, is ‘to meet it plump.’ The rest of society has driven itself crazy, destroyed its own wealth and security, desperately trying to avoid being infected. Those people are sheep. We are the sheepdogs. They fear and cower; we will drive them where we want them to go. But in order to do that, we cannot share their craven fears. We must take bold action to remove those fears from ourselves. Congratulations on your bold action.”

Max raised his glass once more. Those he toasted barely responded. Then Max sat down again, and his attendees slowly did the same.

Joe leaned over toward Max, being careful not to change his expression.

He whispered, “Are you fucking crazy?”

Max whispered back, “Don’t worry about it. I’ll talk to you later. It’ll all be fine.”

***

After the dinner, Joe confronted Max.

“You infected me? Without me knowing it? You fed me a pathogen? What are you, Dr. Evil?”

Max laughed.

“You already had the virus. You’ll be fine.”

“You know that’s not necessarily true. There are credible reports that the virus has mutated.”

“No one reads the fine print in the contract. You agreed to hold me harmless when you signed up.”

“I read it. But this is over the line.”

“You’ll be fine. These kids need toughening up. That’s why you’re here.”

“These kids are rich. Their parents are gonna sue you.”

“They signed a contract too. My lawyers tell me I’m bulletproof.”

Joe looked at him. Before this is over, you may need to be literally bulletproof, he thought.

“It’s all good, Joe,” Max said to him as he walked away.

Joe had turned on his heel and stalked back to his room. He sat on the bed and looked up at the air conditioning vents in the well-appointed room. Who knows what he’s piping in from there? It took him hours to fall asleep.

***

The next few days had not been “all good.” And Max had taken off for a couple of days beginning Sunday morning, leaving his contractors to do the “intelligence training” without further direction.

“Sorry,” Max had told him. “Something came up.”

“What’s her name?”

“I’m a good Christian man,” Max had said to him. “But her name is Kathleen. I’ll be back in a couple of days.”

Some of the boots had had rudimentary experience with firearms. Joe quickly learned that these were the most dangerous of the group, because the most cocksure of their skills. Most had developed wretchedly bad habits. A few of them shot pistols as they had seen television detectives shoot, with their palms pointed down, walking as they shot. When Joe did finally convince them to use two hands when firing, they often kept moving, as if walking through a house and clearing rooms, as in a movie, making accuracy an unattainable dream.

When they advanced to the AR-15, if possible, things got worse. One of the most arrogant and cocky of the bunch had actually had cut down the stock of his Armalite in order to “Gucci” his weapon, as he called it, rendering it almost entirely unusable.

“Jesus,” Joe said to Terry. “Where did they get these guys?”

“The movement,” Terry said.

“‘The movement,’” Joe said. “Well, we all need one, every day.”

“Well, we just have to train them,” Terry said. “We don’t have to turn them into G.I. Joe. It’s just to get them excited and feeling like masters of the universe or something.”

“I’m just worried that after surviving the sandbox, I’m going to get plugged by one of these morons. I’m starting to think maybe I should be standing right in front of the target. So far it’s the safest place on the range here.”

And so it went, for several days. Joe exhaled only whenever all the weapons had been collected from the eager boots and they could turn to some other seemingly pointless exercise. How is any of this stuff going to help them defeat urban cosmopolitan elites? Joe wondered. They’d probably get more useful experience if I got them building snow forts.

And then came the fateful Tuesday when Billy Boland had plugged Jake Nalley in the six.

It was a shame, really. Joe had come to actually like Billy. All these guys were idiots, from what Joe could see; only Billy seemed dimly aware that he was an idiot, and seemed willing to ameliorate his idiocy by asking basic questions that no one else dared to.

“If we’re the select few, but we’re supposed to be fighting elites…” Billy had begun to ask him one night.

“Yeah?”

“Well, I looked up ‘elite’ in the online dictionary, and it said it meant ‘select few.’ So, we’re an elite, fighting the elite?”

“Yeah, that doesn’t seem to make a hell of a lot of sense, does it,” Joe said. “Maybe you should ask Ban what he meant.”

“Nah,” Billy said to him. “He’d just get pissed at me again.”

“Billy,” Joe said to him, “in my experience, people who get pissed off when you ask questions about the stuff they’re telling you are sometimes bad news.”

“Well, all the other guys say he’s a genius,” Billy said. “They keep showing me this New York Record article that says he’s a ‘deep intellect’ or something.”

“I thought the New York Record was part of the Lügenpresse,” Joe said.

“Yeah, it is, part of that loogypress,” Billy said. “So now I really don’t know what to think.”

“Billy,” Joe said, “I think it takes an honest man to admit when he’s confused. Don’t ever change that.”

“Uh, thanks, I guess.”

The next night, Billy sat down next to Joe in one of the common areas.

“Joe,” he said.

“Yeah, Bill?”

“Here’s another thing I don’t, like, get.”

“Okay.”

“All these nations are supposed to be, like, trying to become great again, like ours.”

“Yeah.”

“Like, the greatest they’ve ever been.”

“Sure.”

“But I looked up some of these countries,” Billy continued, “and a lot of them, when they were, like, the greatest they’d ever been, owned a lot of their neighbors. And a lot of those neighbors, at different times, like, when they were the greatest they’d ever been, had, like, grabbed all their neighbors.”

“Oh yeah?” Joe said.

“So, my question is this, and this is another one Ban gets mad at,” Billy said. “If they are all going to try to be the greatest nation they can be, then aren’t they going to be bumping into each other? I mean, they all want the same land or whatever. Isn’t that gonna cause, like, a problem?”

“That’s an excellent question, Bill.”

“But you don’t have an answer?”

“I think that’s one of those answers that Ban wants to keep hidden. Maybe because it doesn’t exist.”

“I mean, I want to be part of this new Billy Wilder SS. But sometimes some of this doesn’t seem to make sense.”

He couldn’t help it, Joe liked Billy. And it was, Joe thought to himself, extremely ironic that a certifiable low-IQ surf dude was actually crystallizing some serious doubts that had already begun to form in his mind.

And those doubts had brought something to the surface that he really had been very good about keeping buried: the deception he had been practicing on Vaneida. He hadn’t come around completely to her political side. But he had come to like her a lot, and to respect her, in a way he suddenly realized he neither liked nor respected, say, Ban Wilson, or Maxfield King. Or, obviously, Terry. Or, it now occurred to him, the President. And it was eating him up that he still had not come completely clean with her.

***

And so, this Tuesday, when the inevitable happened and one of the idiots shot another idiot in the ass, Joe was sorry that Billy was the idiot who was going to take the blame. He was a good kid. But secretly, Joe was happy that one of these morons had gotten shot in the ass, and he was also happy that Billy was not the one who had, and maybe even more secretly, he was a little happy that Billy had plugged this particular asshole Jake. After three or four days with this crew, Billy, as far as he was concerned, was worth the entire rest of the lot combined. All the rest of them were rich arrogant ignorant entitled incompetent pricks; Billy alone seemed untouched by pride or ill will.

So, as they drove slowly down the trail toward the cabin, and Jake moaned in the back, and Billy teared up, Joe tapped Billy on the shoulder and winked at him. When they arrived at the cabin and unloaded their patient on the EMTs, Joe took Billy around the back of the cabin.

“I’m so sorry,” Billy said.

“Don’t be,” Joe said. “He probably had it coming.”

“He’s my friend,” Billy said.

“No, he’s really not,” Joe said. “Listen, Bill. They’re probably going to send you home after this.”

“Oh man,” Billy said.

“Listen to me. You are gonna be fine. You are a good guy. You have a good heart. These guys are not good guys. A wise man told me once, ‘Better a wise foe than a foolish friend.’ Do you know what I’m saying?”

“No,” Billy said, unhappily.

“Well, to be honest, I’m not a hundred percent sure what he meant there either,” Joe said, laughing. “But I think it had something to do with true friendship. A lot of these guys seem to me to be a little foolish. I mean, we’re all foolish to one extent or another. I guess it’s foolish to shoot someone else in the ass by accident.”

“It feels foolish,” Billy said.

“I know,” Joe said. “But I want you to know that I don’t think you’re a fool. At least not the way a lot of these guys here are. We have a saying. As far as I’m concerned, out of this whole group, you’re the only one that’s worth the bullet.”

“What does that mean?”

“It means that none of these assholes are even worth the effort to fire a bullet, only you are.”

“I don’t get it,” Billy said.

“Don’t worry about it. But I don’t think you are a fool.”

“Thanks, I guess,” Billy said, miserably.

“And let me say one more thing. If you get kicked out of this particular merry band, don’t feel bad. Maybe consider it a lucky break. Because between you and me, and don’t tell anyone I said this, I think Ban is an asshole. And so are most of these Ban wannabes. Nothing good can come of this. So, if you value my advice at all, I would tell you, walk away from this whole thing and don’t look back.”

Billy looked at him, still not quite comprehending.

“Go back to surfing, man,” Joe said. “Do what you love, and stay a good person.”

“Thanks,” Billy said. “I’ll think about it.”

“That’s all I can ask,” Joe said. “Now go back in there, and whatever happens, know you’re going to be all right. Because you are. And Billy?”

“Yeah?”

“Go to an urgent care facility and get tested for the virus when you get back. Trust me, if you are infected, you’ll want some medicine. This thing can damage you, no matter what Max or the President says. Get the best care you can.”

Billy got a little wide-eyed at this. “I don’t have insurance,” he said. “Ban told me I shouldn’t get Okomocare, it’s a scam.”

“Take my card. It’s got my cell number on it. Text me and I’ll find you a doctor.”

“Thanks, man.”

“Let’s go.”

They had walked around the cabin back to the front porch. Billy was sent home the next day, and the rest of the training was curtailed, with all live-ammo shooting canceled. None of the “boots” had developed symptoms within the training period, which Joe knew meant nothing; it was too early. But all the same, Joe breathed a sigh of relief as he packed up his gear for the return flight home.

But Max seemed to be looking at him a bit more intently on the flight home. Did he hear what I said to Billy? thought Joe. He dismissed the doubt from his mind as he pushed his seat back on the G5 and went to sleep.

© 2020 Nolan O’Brian