A PATRIOT DIRGE: The Siege

Port Townsend Retreat
Hunter and Hunted
Covering Tracks

Roy was worried but it did not matter. Amy was in a mood for celebration. Miguel Estrada was safely implanted in his own apartment in Chicago. He had a job at a local market and was enrolled in night classes at the university.

Even the recent spate of attacks on neighborhood activist centers did not alarm Amy. It was a sign the opposition, the parties in power and the hands that guided them, were concerned. They were a threat and they were making an impact. That it happened so soon was surprising but it was inevitable. They were prepared. They would hold their ground and strike back.

Roy was convinced it went beyond party politics. He was convinced it was the first volley, a shot across the bow, a warning before an all-out assault on the organization. He had to admit, as a writer, he was prone to exaggeration, even bouts of paranoia, so it was easy to discount his own fears and yield to Amy’s optimism.

They booked a hotel in Port Townsend, took a ferry across the Sound and spent the day wandering from shop to shop, sipping lattes, enjoying good food and spirits, sitting in the sun and listening to an open-air blues festival. Port Townsend was a place of artists, poets, musicians and intellectuals, people who understood the way the world worked and fought to make it better.

It was a place of beauty that collected people like Roy and Amy, whose idealism was sown in the cultural tapestry, a mélange of unique individuals connected by common values and a collective vision of utopia. A dancing girl smiles at strangers. A bearded man passes out free water. Solar panels on rooftops and hybrid vehicles. A spirit of acceptance, tolerance, appreciation and earthbound equilibrium. Here there was a sense of living and being in harmony with the planetary soul.

It was a sensation that neither Roy nor Amy had felt in a long time, not since the age of flower children, free love, counter culture and radical antiwar and anti capitalism sixties – or what modern historians called the sixties which was really the years between 1967 and 1972, a coming of age for a generation of revolutionaries. It was a long, long time ago, longer even than the years that marked its passing. But in this place, with the lush green mountain forest of Olympic Peninsula behind them and the majestic currents of the Sound before them, it was easy to remember.

They breathed the cool oceanic air, forgot their plots and plans, their worries and frustrations, and rediscovered youth in each other’s arms.

Sitting on a balcony in the late evening, watching the ferries roll in and out, Roy felt a rise in passion and Amy caught the wave. They returned to their hotel room and made love with the vigor of youth and the knowledge of age. She teased him with her pointed breasts, chided him for his impatience, and drove him to the edge of madness before the final act.

Breathless, they lay entwined, arms and legs, in the scent and aura of desire.

Amy suddenly had an unbearable hunger for ice cream, Ben and Jerry’s Whirled Peace and Cookie Dough. He knew better than to question it.

She threw on some clothes and blew him a kiss on her way out.

"Be back in ten minutes."

It took longer than ten minutes. The place she had in mind was no longer in business. It seemed not even Port Townsend was immune to a growing recession. She drove on until she found an all-night market, enjoyed a conversation with the clerk and climbed back in the car for the return drive when she got a text message on her cell.

"Code Blue," it read. "Take cover."

She was baffled. There was no Code Blue – not that she was aware of – and she did not recognize the source. A knot was building in her stomach as she drove back to the hotel. Roy’s paranoia was taking hold and she could not wash it away.

What’s happening? Was he right? Is this the beginning of a siege? Who were they and how far were they willing to go?

She shook her head and told herself it was nothing, just a joke or a prank, but her brow was suddenly warm and she could feel beads of sweat rolling down to join tears building in her eyes. She told herself it was nothing, a false alarm, something they would laugh about, but she was scared and wanted only to get back to the hotel.

She pulled over half a block short when she noticed a white van parked in front of the hotel. She looked up at their room and the curtains were drawn. She drove slowly down the road, spotting a man in a suit at the entryway, looking around.

Did he see me? No. Maybe. I don’t think so.

She parked around the block, got out and eased up to the corner of a building where she could see the front of the hotel. Another man in a suit appeared and exchanged words with the man on lookout. They seemed concerned and looked around. Finally, two more men emerged with Roy in cuffs. They threw him in back of the van as a couple just entering the hotel looked on in astonishment.

For a moment she was paralyzed. She understood what was happening but she could not accept it. She could not escape the feeling that it was her fault. He knew what was happening.

We should have taken precautions.

She also knew they would be looking for her now. She bit down on her lip and allowed the survival instinct that had served her so many years and guided her through so many difficult situations, to kick in.

She moved back to the car with the silence of a cat, climbed in and waited for the van to pass in front of her. Then she turned around and drove.

Certain they would be looking for her at the landing, not certain if any ferries ran this late at night, she headed south and drove into the night. She steeled her nerves for planning her next moves: Drive to Tacoma, cut over to the interstate and up to a safe house in Seattle. It was an empty apartment designed for this occasion: high security internet access, low profile, a spare car registered in Canada, a gun, cameras, cell phones and a printer designed to reproduce authentic altered identification.

She planned no further. At the safe house she would find out what went down, who was swept up in the siege, who was holding them where and the charges drawn against them. She sensed what she was up against and recoiled. She was sickened that Roy was caught and not her. Caught? They were not criminals. Unless participating in the political process is criminal activity, they were no different than any other common citizen.

Sara felt the heat rising and let it go. Who were these people? What entitled them to trample on the Bill of Rights? From what well did this authority spring? Centuries of progress, liberty and justice, undone in less than a decade – and to do so in the name of democracy! The arrogance of power and the audacity of kings!

At this moment she understood the mindset of a terrorist. At this moment, she knew how a woman could strap explosives to her body and blow herself up. At this moment, if there were a magic button that could blow up the White House, she would have pressed it.

But they had broken the law, hadn’t they? They helped illegal immigrants and deserters escape the hand of justice in the name of justice. They did not agree with the law but they could not reach out to the law for help. They worked outside the law, in the cracks where justice fell through, but they knew the potential consequences.

They knew the risk but everything she felt, everything she had learned, everything she witnessed and experienced in the world told her to resist. It was the duty of every citizen to resist in every way they could. That was the lesson of the founders. That was the culmination of knowledge from generations of dissent.

The Bill of Rights was enshrined in the universal law that governed all women and men not for the mindless masses and not for the elite but for those who chose to oppose a government that regarded its people as a herder regards his sheep.

They would not get away with it. They would pay a price. The movement would not go down in silence. Too much was at stake.

Sara fought the urge to press down on the gas pedal. She fought to regain control. If they were going to strike back, if they were going to prevail, a cool mind and a steady hand was worth a thousand clenched fists. This was her calling. This was her battle. It was the fight she had waited for her entire adult life.

Like the Freedom Train abolitionists, like the French underground, like the Warsaw resisters, like the student protesters of Kent and Jackson State, like the Civil Rights activists in Mississippi and Alabama, like the farm workers in the Cesar Chavez army, like the suffragettes and the lonely figure who stood before the tanks at Tiananmen Square, like the Buddhist priest who set himself aflame in protest of Vietnam, Amy was born to this cause, this moment, this destiny. She had no choice. Her only regret was that Roy was no longer at her side to help shoulder the burden. Maybe that was their destiny and his: to be held at an anonymous detention center, hauled before a secret tribunal, to be interrogated and to resist. It was not what they wanted but it was the hand they were dealt.

She drove into the night, letting down her windows to take in the crisp cool air. It was a pleasant night in Seattle. Most of the people were comfortable in their quiet homes, sleeping in their soft beds. How few of them knew the world had changed.

All her tears spent, Sara drove through Seattle and made her way through quiet streets to the suburban apartment house where a bed and safety awaited. She parked her car in the garage and took the elevator to the apartment. A click of the key, a flick of the light…no one home.

Thank god.

She sat down at the computer and began to learn everything she could about what happened the night before.