Liberty's Last Stand by Stephen Coonts Page A

maimed and killed are black. The people doing it are black. A lot of the businessmen getting looted and burned out are black. If the federal government won’t stop it, the state government must: it’s that simple. A government that fails to protect its citizens from violence has forfeited its claim to legitimacy. And if bucking Soetoro and the feds leads to a confrontation, it’s time for Texas to face the issue head-on and declare its independence.”
    Charlie Swim stood on a chair and looked around the room. “I tell you now,” he continued, “I’m for independence. The people of Texas would be better off without the other forty-nine states, all the Texans, white, black, and brown, for all the reasons that have been mentioned here this morning. We would be better off without those fools in Washington.
    â€œLuwanda, you, the Republicans, and everyone in the country with a brain know that Cynthia Hinton doesn’t have a chance to win the November election. She knows it too. She has plenty of her own ghosts, but carrying the Soetoro record on your back would have defeated anybody. All Hinton is doing is jacking off the faithful.
    â€œAnd as for Soetoro and his gang. You know what their motto is: Never let a crisis go to waste. I don’t trust them or believe anything they say.
    â€œI think the time has come for us to start our own country. When you don’t trust your spouse, or your boss, or your government, it is time to say good-bye and go on down the road.”

    When JR Hays considered the tactical possibilities, he decided the only answer was booby traps, or mines. One man shooting wasn’t goingto get it done. Oh, he might get a few of the drug smugglers, but he wouldn’t get them all, and if he didn’t get them all, every last one, he would be signing his own death warrant.
    Not that JR thought he was going to live forever, because he doubted that he would.
    The problem with booby traps was that they kill anyone who trips them—illegal pregnant women trying to get across the river to have their babies in Texas, men looking for work, as well as any drug smugglers and professional killers who happened by. Anyone and anything, including kudus, elands, oryx, springbok, nyalas, impalas, whitetail deer, and coyotes.
    Unless he wanted to bury a lot of relatively innocent people and very innocent animals, he needed mines he could detonate at the proper moment.
    He unlocked the toolbox in the bed of his pickup. Using the truck’s tailgate as a table, he laid out all the devices he had borrowed from his former employer, the defense contractor, and looked them over carefully. Nothing there was explosive. What he had was sensors, miniature control boxes, radio controllers, batteries, and the other bits and pieces of high-tech booby traps. With the black powder and fuses, he should be able to construct some seriously lethal homemade Claymore mines.

FIVE

    A fter the crowd filed out of Jack Hays’ office, Ben Steiner stayed behind and closed the door. He dropped into a chair and lit a foul little cigar. Jack Hays sat in his executive chair, which his wife had bought from Office Depot and he had assembled in his garage.
    â€œLooks like you’ve crossed the Rubicon, Jack. Ain’t no going back from here.” Steiner blew smoke around, then looked for an ashtray. There wasn’t one. “You’re sort of in the position of the fellow that found himself astride a fence when the ladder gave way and he came down with one leg on either side.”
    â€œIf you introduce a declaration of independence in the legislature,” Hays asked, “will it pass?”
    â€œThat’s the question, isn’t it?” Ben Steiner said, puffing lazily. “And damn, I don’t know. It might. Just might.”
    â€œOr it might not,” Jack Hays said disgustedly. “Don’t you think you ought to start counting noses? If it’s DOA, I’d