Gordon Ryan - State of Rebellion

Tires screeching, the van turned the corner and was gone. The young black boy crawled out from behind the parked car and ran to his friends. One lay unmoving on the sidewalk, blood flowing from a wound in his head, the other lay writhing on the ground, clutching his stomach as blood soaked his shirt and ran onto the sidewalk. A dog was barking, and the boy began to shout for help. The uninjured black youth continued to kneel by his dying friend, crying, and yelling for someone to call an ambulance.

As the van returned to normal speed and retraced the route to the prearranged point for rendezvous, the two skinheads were hyped, their emotions at a fever pitch.

“Did you see that sucka’s head fly open? I think we got two of the spooks.” The shooter’s legs jerked spasmodically in a nervous motion, and his heart raced, fueled by the adrenaline in the aftermath of the hit.

“Let’s just get out of this van and back across the bridge,” the driver said. Pulling into the alley behind the car, he turned off the key and waited. Headlights appeared behind them, and Jackson Shaw got out of his car and moved toward them. The two young men climbed out of the van.

“How’d it go?” Shaw asked.

“Piece of cake, man. Two dead gang-bangers.”

Unnoticed by either of the two men, Krueger was also out of the car and had moved around behind the van, opening the rear doors as Shaw talked with the skinheads.

“Okay. Let’s get moving. Get your weapons out of the van,” Shaw ordered. As they started toward the rear of the van, Shaw’s muffled shot caught the shorter of the two in the back of the head, and he dropped immediately.

“What the. .?” his friend jerked around to look at Shaw, bewilderment on his face. He never saw the tire tool Otto brought crashing down on his head, crushing his skull and depositing his unconscious body next to his now-dead companion.

Otto continued to bash the man’s head and upper body, breaking the skinhead’s shoulder and arm bones long after consciousness, then life itself had been lost. Shaw and his accomplice then lifted the two bodies into the rear of the van. Otto resumed his position as driver, followed by Shaw in the car, and they re-crossed the Bay Bridge back to San Francisco. They parked the van near the hangout of the skinhead group to which the two young men had belonged. Before abandoning the vehicle, Otto wiped the steering wheel and jumped in the car with Shaw.

“Clean?” Shaw asked.

“Completely wiped. Are you sure about leaving the weapons?”

“The black gang wouldn’t have taken them from the crime scene. They would know the heat was coming, and they might be matched to the hit. They’re actually a lot smarter than the skinheads in that regard. On the other hand, the skinheads, when they discover the van, will probably take the rifles into their dump of a headquarters, where the cops will easily locate and identify the weapon and match them with ballistics.”

“Neat package if it works,” Otto replied.

After placing the van with two dead skinheads near the gang’s hangout, Otto and Commander Jackson Shaw rode most of the way in silence. They stopped for coffee once and arrived in Redding just before daylight.

“Good night’s work, Otto,” Shaw said. “Now we’ll sit back and watch to see if it erupts.”

The news the next day carried the story of a drive-by shooting in Oakland that had resulted in the death of two black youths and the subsequent killing of two skinheads, one of whom was brutally bludgeoned to death. The skinheads were suspected by the police of having taken part in the drive-by shooting in the black neighborhood. It seemed clear that they had been caught and killed by local black gang members, then delivered back to San Francisco as a warning to other skinheads. One of the military assault weapons found in the van along with the dead skinheads matched the ballistics of the murder weapon used to kill the two young black men.

Three days later, two retaliatory drive-by shootings targeted at skinheads were perpetrated by a gang of black men, and within ten days, a full-scale race war had erupted on both sides of the Bay Bridge. Skinheads from other cities poured into San Francisco as the call went out for reinforcements.

Commander Jackson Shaw watched all this with satisfaction on television from the comfort of his living room, where he took a call from Wolff one evening after the news.

“Good work, Jackson,” Wolff said.

“Easy pickings. Shall we move to the next site?”

“I think so. I’ve arranged a meeting with the local command out of Angel’s Camp. We need to get the other units fueling this race war.”

“Name the time,” Shaw replied. “We’re ready.”

California National Guard Armory

Sacramento, California

July, 2012

The tension around the table was palpable, although under normal circumstances each of the groups involved would have considered it a routine, interagency planning session. Colonel Pug Connor, dressed in civilian clothes, represented the president’s task force. Nicole Bentley from the FBI, whose involvement in the task force was being kept confidential in this setting, sat across from General Robert Del Valle, representing the California National Guard. Two members of Del Valle’s staff were also in attendance: Lieutenant Colonel Jack Harman, battalion commander, and Captain Daniel Rawlings, from the judge advocate general’s office.

Connor had called Del Valle to arrange the meeting, and with Del Valle’s permission, Connor requested that the FBI send a representative-specifically, someone familiar with the operation of militia groups in California, and namely, Agent Bentley.

The previous evening, in her apartment, Nicole had divulged to Dan the actual nature of her current assignment, outlining her responsibility to keep all militia units in northern California under surveillance. Surprised at first, Dan had quickly understood her earlier interest at their meeting in the armory during the investigation of Lieutenant McFarland’s execution.

“I gather I was also a suspect?” Dan had commented.

“In the beginning,” Nicole had replied. “Although, I had no reason to suspect you more than others-in fact, less.”

“How so?” he pressed.

“I can’t get into that, Dan,” she said, still unable to reveal the involvement of their undercover agent who had been killed. “I’m sorry.”

Nicole was pleasantly surprised that Dan didn’t display any anger or frustration at the knowledge of her work assignment or her inability to discuss it with him. He had known, of course, that she was an FBI agent, but then, so had her former boyfriend, a memory Nicole had worked to bury. Following the bank robbery, her former boyfriend had confronted her with his discomfort.

“You know I’m an FBI agent. What did you think I do?” she had asked him.

“Dunno, really. I never gave it much thought. I guess I just thought you were, well, maybe some kind of administrative agent,” he had said, stumbling through the words.

“An upper level secretary, perhaps?” she had asked sarcastically.

“Hell, Nicole,” he had blurted out, “I didn’t think you killed people for a living.”

The words had stood between them through the evening, and when he left her apartment, she had known it was over between them. One week later, Dan had called with his impromptu dinner invitation.

Anticipating the planned meeting with the National Guard and the fact that Dan would likely be in attendance, Nicole had wanted no surprises to come between them. But as the time came to tell Dan of her involvement in the militia investigations, she had become apprehensive. She knew much more about his part-time assignment with the National Guard and the ways their assignments actually paralleled one another. After discussing the matter, Nicole watched Dan through the lasagna dinner she had cooked and while they washed the dishes together. She was unable to tell what he was thinking, but as she was drying her hands on the dishtowel, he came up behind her and wrapped his arms around her waist. He kissed the back of her neck and nuzzled his face in her hair.