American Requiem, by TX2Guns

Originally appears on The Tactical Hermit. -NCS
 
This is a work of Fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in this short story are entirely fictional and are of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual events, locales or organizations or persons living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
 
“I do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic; that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the same; that I take this obligation freely, without any mental reservation or purpose of evasion; and that I will well and faithfully discharge the duties of the office on which I am about to enter: So help me God.”
 
(U.S. Military Oath of Enlistment)
 
Day 1 – Thursday
 
The four wheel drive pickup left the asphalt of Interstate ninety in the wee hours and turned off on an unmarked dirt road that snaked its way through the south Texas chaparral and dry arroyos, eventually dead-ending three hundred yards from the Rio Grande river. As the two men inside the pickup quietly downloaded their weapons and gear from the back, a waning crescent moon glimmered small splinters of white light across the river as flocks of pintail and muscovy ducks roosted in a stand of cottonwoods on the far bank. For this operation each man was outfitted in minimalist fashion for speed and concealment with a standard loadout of ammo, water and meds. In addition they also carried an iPhone with night vision capability.
 
Dawn was approximately three hours away as they hit their objective eight clicks southeast; an elevated plateau with plenty of good cover and excellent visibility of the river below. After checking the GPS one of the men scanned below with his night vision monocular. In a small draw some two hundred yards from the river was a large square piece of IFF marking tape tied to a mesquite tree, visible only with night vision. The intel had been solid. This was the RV. Now all they had to do was wait.
 
The night was quiet and cool with the sounds of the river being interrupted only by the croak of bull frogs or the occasional shriek of an owl hunting along the river bank. As the wee hours churned into early morning, a mist fell over the river like a soft blanket and the dewpoint and temperature dropped by five degrees. The four rhib boats appeared out of the mist with no nav lights and their outboard muffled engines barely audible.
 
The two men on the plateau above began recording with their phones as each boat maneuvered close to the bank. The lead boat had four armed men with rifles and around half a dozen extra large black Pelican cases on board. The other three boats had between six to seven men each. Once all the boats had landed, one of the armed men produced a cell phone and made a text. A few minutes passed and several ATV and truck engines could be heard approaching from up the draw. They came in blacked out with the drivers using night vision goggles to navigate.
This was it, showtime.
 
The unloading of the cases was done quickly with the ATV’s making one trip each to get them up to the waiting van’s. When that was done twenty men disembarked and made their way up the river bank. In a span of three minutes everything and everybody was loaded and gone. It was eerily efficient, like they had done this dozens of times before.
 
The two documentarians arrived back at the truck just as a lavender and pink dawn was beginning to break in the eastern Texas sky.
 
“My God what did we just witness Kyle?”
 
“Treason. High fucking treason is what we just witnessed.” Kyle replied, shaking his head in disbelief with his heart thumping like a jackrabbit.
 
Day 2 – Friday
 
Charlie “Buzz” Warden, Commander of the Texas Brigade Militia was an imposing figure of a man. At six foot four and two hundred and fifty pounds he resembled a cross between a ninth century Viking and a redneck shade tree mechanic. His tan and leathery bald head was typically always covered with a mossy oak camouflage cap and although his full spartan goatee had more gray in it than brown, Buzz was a warrior, cut from the sacred cloth of the old breed and schooled by the deadliest men the American military had ever produced. Whenever you saw Buzz you could always count on him having two things:  His red plastic spit cup and a Glock 19 RMR with an extended mag in an Appendix rig.
 
When Buzz entered the room it got quiet.
 
“Alright Gentlemen it’s time to go to work so stop the grab assin’ and bullshit and listen up. What you are about to see is considered For Your Eyes Only and does not leave this room. You were selected to view it because of your command positions within the unit, so don’t be a cheese dick and go run your mouth to your wife or girlfriend. Some background before you watch it: Paul and Kyle were contacted by a fellow patriot who wishes to remain anonymous. He proceeded to give them information on a scheduled meet on the border between members of The Jalisco New Generation Cartel (CJNG) and unknown members of the U.S. Government. That is all the information we were given but as you will see, the video speaks for itself. Play it when you are ready Paul.”
 
As Buzz took a seat, so did the rest of the men in the room. Paul signaled for the lights to be turned out and then clicked the play button on the laptop. The video began playing on a sixty inch flat screen mounted on the wall. After Kyle’s splicing of all the footage, the total run time for the video was just under seven minutes. After it had finished playing there was complete silence in the room.
 
“Play it again from the start.” Buzz commanded.
 
As soon as the ATV’s began making their way down to the boats Buzz held up his hand for Kyle to pause the video. Buzz got up from his chair and walked up to the screen and stared for a long minute, his massive frame blocking out the T.V. like a Texas live oak.
 
“OK, play it from there.” Buzz commanded, still standing.
 
The video played another couple of minutes until the men from the boats began loading up in the vans.
 
“Pause it there!” Buzz commanded, again closely inspecting the image for a long minute.
 
After getting a fresh dip and spitting into his cup Buzz turned around to speak to Kyle.
 
“They were careful with the vehicles. I don’t see any kind of unique markings.”
 
“Maybe they were stolen?” One of the men in the back proffered.
 
“If we were talking about one ATV or one van that might hold water but when there are half a dozen ATV’s and three vans? No, that is pure complicity all the way.” Kyle replied.
 
“So you are saying the Government agency tasked with protecting the U.S. Border is actually working to weaken and dismantle it? How do we not know this is just some rogue group of corrupt officers who have been bribed or blackmailed by the cartel? I mean that’s not that fantastic or uncommon of a scenario.”  The same man replied.
 
“Until we get more information, right now any theory is plausible.” Kyle replied.
 
Buzz let out a laugh from the front of the room that made the room hush.
 
“I think you boys are not seeing the forest for the trees here.”
 
“What do you mean?” One of the men asked.
 
“Play it through to where the vans are being loaded up with those men.” Buzz asked Paul, motioning with his big butcher hands.
 
Kyle fast forwarded to the six minute mark and paused it.
 
Buzz stood staring for a minute at the screen and then turned around slowly to face the room.
 
“Yeah it’s obvious the Government, or at least a group of people within the Government, are actively trying to undermine and subvert the security of this nation by partnering with the cartels in what appears to be most certainly arms and/or drug trafficking.”
 
Buzz let his words hang in the air for a long minute as he looked around, meeting the gaze of each man with his pale blue eyes.
“But the bigger question that remains is just who the hell are these twenty military age WHITE males that the U.S. Government is going to all this trouble to smuggle INTO the U.S.?  I can tell you right now they sure as hell ain’t here to pick strawberries!”
 
A low, excited murmur went through the room.
 
An hour later after everybody had left Buzz, Kyle and Paul remained in the “War Room” sharing Cohiba cigars and a bottle of Glennfiddich single malt to decompress. As Kyle sat on the sofa squinting through the smoke, he admired the collection of pictures, flags and military decorations on the wall. Buzz had been a ground pounder in the Marines and had served with distinction in Iraq. Most notably in the Battle of Ramadi in 2006 with the Second Battalion Fourth Marine Division (2/4) aka “The Magnificent Bastards.”
 
Unlike almost everybody in the militia, Kyle did not have military experience. During his sophomore year in college he was snatched up by a NSA contract agency and spent the next five years finding terrorists in cyberspace all over the globe. He quit at the tender age of twenty-seven and began his own cyber-security consulting firm in Dallas. It wasn’t until he ran into Paul, an old friend from high school who had just returned from two tours in Iraq with the Army Rangers that he was invited to lend his skill-set to the Texas Brigade.
 
“I want you guys to reach out to everybody you can to try and ID those twenty men. Kyle, you might want to reach out to your source and see if he can come up with any other information. Time is of the essence here.” Buzz exhaled the cigar smoke into the room like a dragon.
 
Paul and Kyle nodded approvingly.
 
Buzz closed his eyes and took a deep breath. He looked tired and worried.
 
“You OK Buzz?” Paul asked concerned.
 
Buzz let out a long breath and opened his eyes. He didn’t answer but just stared at a far point on the wall in deep concentration.
 
Day 3 – Saturday
 
Logan Riggs was getting tired of living in his van and pissing in gatorade bottles, but suc