Against All Enemies by John Gilstrap

Author:John Gilstrap [Gilstrap, John]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Literature & Fiction, United States, Mystery; Thriller & Suspense, Thrillers & Suspense, Military, Spies & Politics, Espionage, Political, Thrillers
Amazon: B00ONTR5M0
Publisher: Pinnacle
Published: 2015-06-29T05:00:00+00:00

It turned out that the adjutant who sat perpetually outside General Karras’s office was a local boy named Tommy Piper. He was twenty-three years old—older than Ian would have guessed—and was kin to a long line of local Pipers. The line was destined to stop with him, however, thanks to an explosion in the mines that killed his father and two brothers when Tommy was only eleven. His mother hadn’t taken the stress well, and in trying one night to drown herself with a few belts of moonshine, she drowned herself for real while skinny-dipping in the quarry. Social workers had sniffed around Tommy for a few years, but this was West Virginia, where eleven-year-olds had been working hard for generations, and the government do-gooders ultimately lost interest in him.

One day at a time grew into a month at a time, and then, in the normal course of things, he evolved into an adult with little ambition but tons of street smarts. When he got word of Karras’s Patriots’ Army, he jumped at the opportunity to become a member—of anything, probably, but this in particular—and he impressed the right people.

Ian had grown to like Tommy, and the sentiment appeared to be mutual. He greeted Ian with a bright smile. “Good morning, Colonel,” he said.

“Hello, Tommy. Is the Old Man available?”

“Yes, sir, he is.” He lifted the receiver on his phone and pressed the button. When Karras answered, Tommy said, “Colonel Carrington to see you, sir.”

Karras said, “Send him in.”

When he hung up and lifted his gaze, Tommy looked offended. “Why are you laughing?”

Ian waved the concern away with broad strokes of his hand. “No, no, it’s not about you. It’s the phone. You can hear every word from the other side of the wall. What’s the point?”

“It’s the way the general wants it, sir.” His answer came straight, devoid of irony.

“Then so he shall have it,” Ian said. He opened the inner door and let himself into Karras’s office. If this were a real army with a real general, he’d have entered smartly and snapped to attention. As it was, he just entered.

Karras looked up from the stuff on his desk. “Good morning, Colonel. Why are you giving my adjutant a hard time?”

Ian pulled out one of the metal torture seats and helped himself. “I suppose it’s what I’m good at.” He waved his fingers at the flotsam that cluttered Karras’s desk. “What the hell do you do with all that paper?”

“Mostly I wish that it wasn’t there.” He chuckled. “We feed a lot of people here. We burn through lots of ammunition and we buy a lot of structures. All of that has to be contracted and paid for.” He laughed at what he saw in Ian’s face. “That’s the difference between government procurement and insurrection. Cash flow has to be managed.”

Ian acknowledged the point by arching his eyebrows. He’d never given that a lot of thought. Uncle Sam employed legions of rear-echelon types to manage that stuff. It ever occurred to him that it would fall on the shoulders of the man who claimed to be in charge.

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