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  The key to the success of the limited EMP attack was to set the nuclear devices on the missiles to detonate at lower altitudes. It was supposedly well established that a nuclear bomb detonated at 250 to 312 miles in the atmosphere over Kansas would shut down the entire electric grid in the United States. To prevent this from happening, it was decided to set off detonations at 200 miles.

  To a certain extent, it worked. Most of the red states lost their power while many blue states such as California and Oregon out west, the New England states, the states in the Northeast, and Washington DC were mostly spared. Unfortunately, for the government, the EMP attack produced an unintended consequence. It created an Internet virus that completely destroyed all databases including those stored in the cloud. Government computers no longer had the names and addresses of veterans or any other potential gun owners.

  At first, it was not considered a serious problem, at least in the case of veteran records, because they had all been transferred to flash drives that were locked in metal safes that would be safe from an EMP attack. A military team of computer specialists led by a US Army captain had been assigned to transfer all veteran data to these flash drives. However, when government agents went to recover the flash drives and their data, they found nothing. Everything had been erased, and the soldiers in charge of them had disappeared. So had the records of veterans like Raymond Thibodeaux, and the government therefore thought they had nothing but an outstanding chef in detention.

  Chapter IV

  As Ray continued his nightly meetings with Jamie, the trust between the two continued to grow, and more was revealed to the young prisoner. First, Ray told Jamie more about the piece of cloth that Jamie had first thought of as the rag. It was more than just the flag of the United States. It was, in fact, one of the most important flags in American history. The day after the September 11, 2001, attack on the United States, some New York City firefighters raised an American flag amid the rubble that had once been the twin towers of the World Trade Center.

  That image was an iconic one for the American people who were initially united against the radical Islamic terrorists who had launched the 9/11 attacks. The flag was eventually removed and replaced by a permanent flag, and the original one was supposed to have been stored by the city to be used later in future ceremonies honoring those who died in the attacks.

  However, it was later discovered that the original flag had been stolen and replaced by another flag. This was determined by the fact that before the firefighters had raised the original flag, they had written the date of the attack on its edge. The replacement flag did not have that date. An intense investigation was launched, but while the thieves could not be identified, it was thought that the flag had been sold to a private collector.

  It was ultimately determined that a key suspect in the purchase of the flag was a millionaire businessman from Saudi Arabia. He had business and real estate interests all over the world, including in the United States. However, it was also suspected that he was tied in to several Islamic terrorist organizations including the Muslim Brotherhood. That meant that if he acquired the flag, it was as a jihadist trophy, not a symbol of American heroism.

  It was also suspected by Ray that the flag could not be easily smuggled out of the country and was kept at one of the residences used by the Muslim businessman. One such residence was a suite of rooms at the New Orleans Marriott Hotel. It would probably have been in the hotel’s safe that was broken into by looters after the EMP attack. The significance of the flag would not have been recognized by the looters, and the flag was discarded, to be found years later by Jamie.

  Ray told Jamie that the flag needed to be returned to the American people, in particular those still resisting government tyranny. Ray knew where at least one such group could be found, and it was time to have Jamie meet with some of the other members of the cell of American patriots that existed in the detention center. There were only seven others because the men who were able to overcome the drugs and function normally without the guards seeing though their charade had to be incredibly strong and resourceful.

  Ray had an uncanny ability to spot such men and recruit them into his small circle. They had been planning an escape for some time, and now with the addition of Jamie and the discovery of the iconic flag, Ray had determined it was time to act. All seven of the men actually worked for Ray in the prison. He had freedom to operate that was granted to few other inmates.

  The detention center was located at the original location of Tulane University on historic St. Charles Avenue. All the dorms and classroom buildings had been converted to house the inmates, and the other buildings had been set up to house the guards and administrators of not only the detention center but the regional headquarters for the ISA (Internal Security Agency). All the nearby houses, many of them historic landmarks, had been destroyed, so there was a clear buffer zone and field of fire around the prison.

  Included in the buffer zone but outside of the fence surrounding the prison were several large fields that had been converted to gardens. The guards wanted more than just the bland rations supplied to them. They wanted to have fresh vegetables and spices as well as fresh meat and eggs. So one of the fields was filled with vegetables such as green beans, corn, potatoes, lettuce, tomatoes, and other items to augment the incredible menus that Ray was producing. The other one was where the produce was grown to feed the pigs and chickens that were kept in adjacent pens. There were even a few cattle kept on the premises; some were dairy cattle to provide milk, and the others were raised for their beef.

  Ray had been put in charge of all this, and he was allowed to handpick the men who tended to the gardens and cared for the animals. That meant that he and some of the people who worked for him were allowed to be outside of the fence for most of every day. Five of Ray’s recruits worked in these areas, and the other two worked for him in the kitchen. Unfortunately, only three of them were housed in the same barracks as Ray and Jamie, so there was no way for all of them to meet together at the same location.

  At their usual meeting time and place, Jamie was finally able to meet these three men. The first of these men Jamie was introduced to was a forty-six-year-old named George Carson. He was a small wiry individual who appeared to be a bit of a nerd. He wore glasses, had a pale complexion, and just looked weak. He was, in fact, a former Navy SEAL who had been an active fighter in the war on terrorism. He left the navy when it was being turned into a shell of its former self and had become a police officer in his hometown of New Orleans. He now worked in the detention center kitchen with Ray.

  The second man was a tall, muscular, and handsome black man named William Jackson, who had been a captain in the Second Ranger Battalion of the Seventy-Fifth Ranger Regiment of the US Army. He had been a highly decorated fighter in the war on terror, earning a Silver Star and Bronze Star for bravery and two Purple Hearts. He had resigned his commission when he had seen the military becoming a vehicle for social experimentation and political correctness instead of an organization of dedicated men and women who wanted to defend their country. He had also ended up back home in New Orleans as a police officer. He had been assigned by Ray to work in the garden.

  The third individual was also a military veteran named Frank Hansen who had been a young lieutenant in army intelligence and had become disgruntled when he found out that reports he and other intelligence analysts were submitting to their superiors about the growing strengths of various terrorist groups were being altered to understate the actual threats. He was the youngest of the three men and was a large-boned white male with rough features and facial scars received during a training accident while in the army.

  Frank had not become a police officer in New Orleans. He had received his commission as an army lieutenant after completing ROTC at Louisiana State University and earning a degree in engineering. After leaving the army, he had gotten a master’s degree and gone to work for the city of New Orleans a
s a supervisor of the agency that maintained the levee system surrounding the city. He did not actually live in New Orleans but resided in the city of Kenner in Jefferson Parish, Louisiana. It was there that he had become a reserve officer in the Jefferson Parish Sheriff’s office.

  In the cases of all three men, they had been arrested by the government not because of their military backgrounds but because of their work as local law enforcement officers who had refused to violate their oaths of office and pledge allegiance to the new dictatorial government. Therefore, they were considered a threat to the new order and needed to be reeducated.

  Ray and his group had been planning an escape for a long time and were fairly sure that they could get out of the camp, but they needed a way to get out of the city. The inclusion of Jamie in the group gave them something they had not had before: eyes in the city itself.

  Chapter V

  Jamie has successfully stayed off the drugs and had gained Ray’s complete trust and that of the other three men he had met. He was still on rat-killing duty at the Marriott and surrounding buildings, and that was a plus for Ray and his team. The bosses eventually wanted to redo the Marriott to create luxury condos for some of the higher-ranking government officials, so the plan was to clean up several blocks around the hotel.

  The hotel was located at the corner of Canal Street and Chartres Street right on the edge of the historic French Quarter. The location was important because it was only a few blocks away from the headquarters of the Eighth District of the New Orleans Police Department on Royal Street Both George Carson and William Jackson had been stationed at that location. Even before the EMP attack, both men had seen that the advance of the progressive government was going to lead to the destruction of the United States. So they had joined with several other like-minded officers and had started stashing confiscated weapons and ammunition in a nearby location.

  The weapons had been seized from gang members and other criminals and were supposed to be logged in to a central location and stored until they were ultimately destroyed. The officers had falsified the records so that not all the weapons were put into the central registry of the department. The location where the weapons were stashed was across Royal Street and just a half block away from the police station. They were in an antique store that occupied a historic two-story building that dated back to the early 1800s.

  It had been the residence of one of the wealthy New Orleans families and included a beautiful courtyard. Off to one side of the courtyard, there had been a carriage house that had been bricked in years before to provide additional space for the store to hide some of its finer antiques until they were displayed in the public areas. The entrance was hidden behind a movable bookshelf that contained old books. George Carson was friends with the owner who was also a patriot and readily agreed to have weapons stored there. The owner, an elderly Jewish man, had unfortunately later been murdered when he tried to protect his property against the looters who ransacked the city after the EMP attack. They had ransacked the store but had not found the hidden room, so George had every reason to believe that the weapons were still there.

  This meant that in order to have a successful escape, Ray and his men had to accomplish three goals. First, to get out of the detention center without being immediately detected; second, to get to the location of the weapons and get as many as they could carry; and, third, to find a way to transport themselves and the weapons out of the city. Then they had to successfully execute the plan.

  Jamie’s job was to find a route from the camp to the weapons cache that would avoid government patrols and also to locate some form of transportation and a safe way out of the city. Jamie always had a good memory at least until he was subjected to the government’s drug regimen. Now the memory was coming back, and he was starting to think about how he had ended up in federal detention.

  His father, Ben Donnelly, had been an army officer, and the family had moved around a lot. When his father retired, they ended up living in Dallas, Texas. His father had been a stern but loving man who was a patriot and had tried to raise Jamie and his two brothers, Matthew and John, to be patriots. He had been successful with the brothers, but the younger Jamie was a rebellious teenager.

  As his father and his mother, Jean, became more involved with the efforts to resist the changes the Left was forcing on the country, he and Jamie had often argued. Ben had started writing and speaking and had eventually become the executive director of a group called Americans to Restore the Constitution. On the other hand, Jamie had been taught by his liberal high school teachers that the Constitution was an outdated document written by slave owners to perpetuate racism and tyranny. He bought the party line completely.

  Eventually, his father’s organization had been shut down by the government, and authorities were monitoring Ben and Jean and their two sons, Matt and John. Jamie was not aware of these developments since when he graduated from high school, the government had sent him to Tulane University in New Orleans. He was seen as a brilliant student who was loyal to the new government, and it was felt he could be trained as a psychologist who could assist in the manipulation of behavior and the retraining of individuals who resisted the new order.

  Jamie had eagerly accepted the opportunity despite the objections of his parents and had gone to the federally controlled university. He had not talked to his parents since that time and was not aware that they had fled Dallas one step ahead of the federal police. They had never been located. All this had occurred about a year before the devastating EMP attack. After the attack, the university had been virtually shut down. Classes were canceled, but a select group of students, including Jamie, were going to be assigned to the federal police operating in New Orleans for some specific on the job training.

  Following the attack, most of the cities in the United States had descended into absolute anarchy. Food and water shortages, the loss of power, and the lack of local police protection led to widespread looting and other crimes including rape and murder. Local authorities tried to do what they could to protect lives and property but were limited by federal restrictions that required them to swear allegiance to the new government and do what they were told even if that included looking the other way when the feds told them to.

  Jamie was assigned to ride with one of the federal police squads that were patrolling the city. This way, he could get a feel of what was going on in the streets and see who was being arrested and for what reasons. Then he would help decide if the prisoners could be reeducated or needed to be simply incarcerated. During the ride along, Jamie saw humanity at its worse. Mobs were looting stores and then setting fire to them. People were being beaten and robbed in the streets or in their own homes.

  Yet the federal police were seemingly making no attempt to break up the riots or arrest the looters. Instead, most of the people being arrested were business or home owners who were trying to protect themselves, their families, and their livelihoods. If the officers saw someone resisting the looters with a firearm or even a knife, it was they who were arrested. Their homes or businesses were being searched and all weapons confiscated.

  In fact, the officers Jamie was with had a prepared list of names and addresses of people that they were picking up. It didn’t seem to matter if they were actively resisting looters or just hiding in their homes. Their houses were being raided and the homeowners led out in handcuffs. This was all being done pursuant to the order that had been handed down by the government several years ago outlawing the private ownership of firearms. It had been difficult to enforce at the time because few people were willing to voluntarily surrender their guns. In addition, many local law enforcement officers refused to kick in the doors of their friends and neighbors and violate their rights under the Second Amendment to the Constitution.

  However, the federal government had been preparing for this for years. The National Instant Criminal Background Checklist (NICS) maintained by the FBI was supposed to
have been for the purpose of preventing convicted felons, known illegal drug users, and people who had been adjudicated to be mentally ill to the point of being a danger to themselves or others from legally purchasing firearms. Everyone who wanted to purchase a gun from a federally licensed firearm dealer had to first fill out a form that included their names, addresses, Social Security numbers, and other personal information. The form was then transmitted to the FBI that did a background check and then approved or disapproved the purchase.

  Under federal law, the form was then supposed to be destroyed within seventy-two hours. This had stopped being the case under orders from the president years before. All the information was transferred to computers and eventually flash drives, so there was a permanent record of Americans that legally owned guns. It was portions of that list that were being used against the people of New Orleans, following the devastation of Hurricane Katrina in 2005.

  However, Jamie noticed something odd. Many of the looters had firearms, and while some were being disarmed by the feds, others were ignored. They appeared to, in some cases, being in charge of the looters and rioters. What was happening appeared to the young student to be orchestrated by the federal police to encourage the anarchy.

  There were some people who were using firearms to defend their homes or businesses and refused to surrender to the federal authorities. When that happened, members of SWAT were called in, and the resisters were usually gunned down after a short firefight. In some cases, families had banded together to defend whole neighborhoods, and they were also attacked by the feds and ultimately killed or arrested.