A Time for Patriots

About ten minutes later, the worker named Joe returned to the cockpit with a plastic canteen. Another worker was maneuvering one of the casks behind him. “Here ya go, Carl,” Joe said. “A little Black Jack for ya.” Carl took the canteen and drank — most of it dribbled out of his mouth, but he didn’t seem to notice or care. “We got the payload up here for ya too.” Joe dropped a ratcheting wrench onto the copilot’s seat, then said apprehensively, “I… I can loosen a few of the bolts if you need.”

Carl looked at Joe’s taut face, smiled, and shook his head. “No reason for both of us to get zapped, Joe,” he said. “I can handle it.” He held out an emesis-stained hand. “Thanks, brother. For the True Republic.”

Joe hesitated for a heartbeat, but swallowed his fear and took Carl’s hand. “Good luck, Carl. For the True Republic. See you in Asgard, brother.” He turned and made his way out of the aircraft and closed and dogged the door shut.

For several minutes, Carl sat in the cockpit, staring at the floor, trying to remember what he was supposed to do. But one look at the large steel-and-concrete cask sitting beside him reminded him of the task before him.

On the handheld GPS navigation system attached to the control yoke, he called up Flight Plan Nine, the flight plan he had developed and tweaked over the past several weeks for this mission. He had rehearsed it several times on a desktop-computer flight simulator, even using real-world satellite and three-dimensional street-level photographic images to get the most detailed preview of the final moments of the flight. But that was before the diseases ravaging his body began destroying his vision, lungs, and nervous system, and he wondered if he had the strength to do it after all his hard work. It would be so easy, he thought, so peaceful, to just let go of his sense of duty and responsibility, accept the horrible death that had been imposed on him, and let the inevitable happen.

But then, just as his spirit was waning to the point of surrender, he looked out the cockpit window. One of the soldiers had brought an American flag out onto the playa so Carl could see the wind direction and strength. He reached behind the copilot’s seat and withdrew his own flag: the flag of the Knights of the True Republic of America. It was a Stars and Stripes flag but with the coiled snake from the Gadsden flag, the original flag conceived by South Carolina army officer Christopher Gadsden and adopted by the colonial American Navy and Marine Corps, in the stripes field. But instead of a coiled timber rattlesnake shaking its rattle and warning others to stay away as on the Gadsden flag, the flag of the True Republic of America showed the rattlesnake striking. The symbology was plain: those who carried this flag would no longer be warning our enemies not to oppose us, but its followers were ready to attack.

The persons he was working for weren’t members of the Knights of the True Republic, but it was clear that they shared the same ideas and vision, and he was happy to contribute his flying skills for them. There were armies of men, women, and even children throughout the West, willing to risk their liberty and even their lives to stand under the Knights’ flag, willing to do whatever it took to wake up a comatose American public, warn them of the danger of those bureaucrats and politicians who wanted more government and more taxation, and call on others to follow them into battle against those who were driving the nation into the ground. But it was not enough to rally around the flag — someone had to carry it into battle.

This flag was special: he had fashioned it out of material from old uniforms. He hated to soil it with his own blood and vomit, but a flag carried into battle would naturally be soiled with the stain of battle. The important thing was not to make sure the flag stayed clean, but make sure that the world, and especially the enemy, saw the flag at the front of an advancing and angry army. That was his mission: to carry the flag in the Knights of the True Republic of America’s next and greatest offensive.