A state of disobedience

Houston, Texas

From his vantage point overlooking the intersection of Interstate 10 and U.S. 59 Colonel Minh smiled happily at the vista spread below him.

It hadn't even been too very hard. Before they were shut down by federal authorities, the newspapers had waxed lyrical about the martyrdom of Victor Charlesworth and those who had gone to see him speak. Immediately following the shut down, posters had gone up on walls, flyers had been anonymously delivered. Speakers at a dozen platforms appeared, aroused a crowd, announced a rally and then disappeared.

The local police—before they, too, went on strike—seemed quite indifferent to the impromptu rallies.

Now Minh had the results he wanted at this stage. Thousands of cars blocked the intersection. Thousands more people demonstrated around the cars. Not that more than some hundreds of these intended a demonstration. Many, many more had been caught up in the blockage and simply had no good way to leave.

And mixed in with those demonstrators and unwitting demonstrators? A hundred or more of his own "troops" . . . his own "armed and dangerous" troops.

To either side of the blockage military convoys had been building for hours, helpless to push on either to deliver the goods or to return for more goods to deliver. This, too, was part of Minh's plan. He intended that the very people who needed federal help to clear the road block should themselves help congest that road to delay federal help.

Still, he hoped—truthfully, he completely expected—that the feds would show up eventually.

"Ah, there they are," he whispered. A mile away, plainly visible from his vantage point, the ragged lines of the Environmental Protection Police snaked around herringbone parked military trucks. "Shouldn't be long now."

Elpi watched with Minh. For the most part, and per Schmidt's instructions, he kept her in one or another of the safe houses that dotted the city. Even so, and even with some clever makeup, she would never pass scrutiny if one of the federal agents dominating the city took a careful look. For one thing, the safe houses were often in Vietnamese neighborhoods. For another, her face had become rather well known as a result of the speech she had made by Charlesworth's side.

Mostly Minh kept her off the streets. Still, for reasons more instinctive than articulable, he occasionally risked bringing her out as a witness to events.

The military vehicles had stopped well shy of the blockage, of course; soldiers were not stupid, Marines no more so, and neither soldiers nor Marines wanted to be anywhere near a potentially unruly crowd.

As the first agents of the EPP debouched into the open space Minh's people began a chant, "Charlesworth! Charlesworth! Charlesworth!" Others picked it up, even among those who had only been inadvertently stuck at the rally. Soon, the volume had grown to the point where most of the demonstrators could not hear, let alone obey, the EPPs perfunctory order to disperse.

The police formed a skirmish line. Brandishing batons, they advanced. This the crowd had to notice and many shied away, shuffling backwards around the mass of misparked automobiles and further from the threatening clubs.

Not all did so, however. Minh's people, for example, did not shy away. Of course they were for the most part in cars which they could not leave. Most especially could they not leave with the rifles those cars hid.

A command rang out in Vietnamese over a loudspeaker. A hundred rifles came out of hiding. The EPP recoiled in shock as soon as these were recognized.

The shock was short lived.

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