Liberty's Last Stand

SEVEN

In Washington, Thurman Truax, the senior U.S. senator from Texas, was appalled at the spectacle on television that morning. He had been in politics since he was twenty-seven years old, which was thirty-five years ago, and he kept his ear close to the ground in Texas to find out what people were thinking, so close to the ground that the people said he had dirt in it. He had been worried for years about this independence movement and had talked about it at length with the governor, Jack Hays, who he thought was against it too. Apparently Jack Hays had changed his mind or found he was caught in a tide he couldn’t resist.

Truax had suspected something of this sort might happen when Soetoro announced martial law, and had called the White House to tell the president so. He wound up speaking to some junior aide. The president had made his decision, Truax was told. He also shared his misgivings with the other senator from Texas and the members of the Texas congressional delegation, some of whom shared his concern, and the leadership in the Senate.

The television was still showing video of people cheering and celebrating independence in front of the capitol in Austin when Truax called his chief of staff. He had tried five times to call the governor and had sent him three e-mails during the broadcast, but had been unable to get through. Nor could he reach any of his political or social friends in Austin. Texas seemed to have dropped right out of the United States.

Not that he blamed Texas. Truax had fought the good fight against admitting Muslim refugees from the Middle East to America, many of whom, he suspected, were jihadists. Of course, despite Soetoro’s and the secretary of state’s bromides about security checks and vetting them, the reality was that the refugees had no identification whatsoever, a fact the president and his administration chose to ignore. And jihad had come to pass. Murder in a parochial school, on a train, in Yankee Stadium… sometimes Truax thought that the administration actually wanted some terrorist incidents. So now Texas had rebelled.

His chief of staff had watched the broadcast too. And she also had tried repeatedly to call people in Austin and had been unable to get through. Truax didn’t wait to hear her take on the whole mess, but told her to make airline reservations to get the senator back to Texas as soon as she could this morning.

He heard pounding on his door. When he answered it, a television reporter and cameraman were standing there, wanting an interview.

“As you can see, I’m still in my pajamas. My office will have a statement for the press later this morning.”

“Did you know this Declaration of Independence was going to happen, Senator?”

“No comment.” He closed the door on the reporter, a woman with NBC, locked it, and went upstairs to dress.

The truth was, he was appalled. Those fools in Austin had smashed Pandora’s box. Barry Soetoro would be outraged, and he was the commander in chief of the armed forces. No telling what that damned fool would do. The United States was tearing itself apart, and the senator felt powerless to prevent it. No one in Washington wanted to listen to reason. Truax well knew that every decision government made had consequences, intended and unintended. Barry Soetoro and Jack Hays were on a collision course.

After he was dressed, the senator went to the kitchen for coffee and a boiled egg. He ate his meager breakfast in front of the television watching national coverage of the news, whatever Soetoro’s censors would permit to be aired, which was universal condemnation of the Texas political system and everyone in it. Terrorism seemed to have dropped off the news radar. Texas treason, one talking head said. Another speculated that since the president had declared martial law, the governor of Texas and members of the legislature could be tried by court-martial, and probably would be.

Truax had had his fill and turned the television off when he heard another knock on the door. He looked out the security peephole. It wasn’t a reporter. He opened the door and found four FBI agents, who had orders to arrest him. As it turned out, the White House had ordered that Senator Truax and every member of the Texas delegation were to be arrested and held in a Washington prison for treason. An FBI agent accompanied him upstairs to get his medications.

As he rode away in the back of a car in handcuffs, Truax pondered on the reaction in Texas when this news got out.

One of the people who heard the Declaration of Independence read aloud heard it over the radio. As it happened, he was the captain of a tugboat in Galveston Harbor. He was always up early, planning the morning’s work on the boat before it had to get under way for the day’s tows or pushes. He took his cup of coffee out and climbed the ladder to his bridge.

Across the harbor he could see an attack submarine berthed, USS Texas, a Virginia-class boat, only a few years old, moored port side to a pier. She had come in yesterday for a three-day port call to show the flag, entertain visitors, and let the good people of Texas see where the navy’s share of their federal taxes was being spent.

How long would she be here now? he wondered. Bet they’ll get under way as soon as they hear the news.

He set his cup down and ran down the ladder to his crew berthing, where his engineer and first officer were sound asleep. Those two were all the crew he had right now. The seamen who fixed things and handled lines wouldn’t come aboard until half past seven.

“Wake up,” he urged as he shook them. “We’re going to move the tug.”

He gave hurried explanations as they pulled on jeans and tugged on shoes.

Ten minutes later, the tug, Mabel Hardaway, named after his wife, got under way. Captain Hardaway took it over to where the sub was berthed and maneuvered to anchor immediately behind it. To ensure the tug didn’t swing on her anchor and damage the sub’s screws, he dropped an anchor from the stern as he came up slowly, then a bow anchor. He backed down and killed the engines, then went down the outside ladder to the deck to help the first mate secure the anchors.

That sub isn’t leaving until I say so, he thought, vastly pleased with himself.

He got on the radio to another tug, managed to wake up the skipper, and asked it to come anchor immediately beside the submarine. “As soon as you can get here,” Captain Hardaway added for emphasis.

Aboard Texas, the watch officer awakened the captain, Commander Mike Rodriquez, who had spent the previous evening at a dinner in his honor in a hotel in Galveston, one attended by the mayor, most of the city councilmen, and everyone who was anyone in the Chamber of Commerce. He had probably had one or two too many glasses of wine, but toasts were offered right and left and he had to do it, he told himself then.

His head was a little thick as he listened to the watch officer. “We have a tugboat anchored immediately behind us.”

“In the prohibited zone?”

“Yes, sir. I’ve notified the harbor police.”

“They can probably handle it,” the captain said. “Are our guards on the pier?”

“Yes, sir. And armed.”

In the age of terror one can’t be too careful, the captain well knew. Local jihadists would secure undying fame in Paradise if they could damage a U.S. nuclear submarine. The FBI had assured him they were keeping a close eye on the local Muslims, of whom there were only a few. Still…

The captain quickly donned his uniform, khakis because he wore camos only when under way and he hated them. He went to the control room, satisfied himself that everything was as it should be, then climbed the tiny conning tower to the miniscule bridge.

Yep, there was the tug, Mabel Hardaway. What in the world was that thing doing there? He picked up a loud-hailer and pointed it at the tug’s bridge.

“You are in a prohibited zone. Get under way and move your boat immediately.”

“Sorry,” came the shouted reply, quite audible in the pre-dawn stillness.

“You will be arrested if you don’t move that boat.”

No reply.

“Sir,” the watch officer said. “One of the sentries is running toward us. There are some civilians up there at the head of the pier.” He was using his binoculars. “Looks as if some of them are carrying rifles.” He handed the binoculars to the CO, who was staring through them as the sentry came halfway across the gangway and shouted, “Sir, those civilians say they have closed the pier. They say they won’t let our liberty party back aboard.”

“Why?” the officer of the deck asked loudly enough to be heard.

“They say Texas declared its independence an hour ago.”

The captain rubbed his head. Jesus Christ, he thought. Of all the time for a port visit! He glanced back at the tug. Well, he couldn’t back out of here, even if he got all the lines off the boat.

He looked to his starboard side. If he could swing the stern, perhaps he could back and forth using the rudder until he could go behind the tug, like a car getting out of a parallel parking place. He used the binoculars in the half-light and saw the line running off the stern of Mabel Hardaway at an angle, out into the open area he would have to use. He knew he was looking at a chain with an anchor on the end. Backing the naked screws of his boat into the chain would disable Texas.

“Here comes another tug, sir,” the OOD said, and pointed.

Sure enough, there it was, maybe a mile away down the harbor, coming slowly. It would certainly be here before he could get Texas free of the pier and maneuver her out of this slip. And even if he did get Texas out of the slip, the tugs could ram her and make sure she didn’t get out of the harbor.

Damn!

“Go below,” Rodriquez told the OOD, “and get off a flash message to SUBLANT. Tell them we are blocked in by tugboats, with armed civilians on the pier. Go.”

“Aye-aye, sir.”

Gulls wheeled above him as he stood alone weighing his options. Half his crew was on liberty in Galveston. While he could operate the boat with the duty section, he had nowhere to go with tugs in the way. His sentries could keep the civilians off the pier, for a while, anyway, unless they started shooting.

He could scuttle the boat, sink her here in this slip. But the navy brass would have his balls if he did that and the independence news was some kind of misinformation or a political ploy to embarrass the Soetoro administration, something that could be cleared up or would go away in a few hours or days. He certainly didn’t know. All he knew was what the sentry had told him. If he scuttled Texas, she could be raised of course, and eventually returned to seaworthy condition, after she had spent a year or so in the Electric Boat shipyard in Connecticut where she was built.

He decided to wait and see what SUBLANT said to do. He wanted someone in a much higher pay grade to point to if recriminations started. Let the admiral earn his pay, he thought as he watched the other tug ease into the slip and tie up starboard side to the pier abeam Texas. Now he was blocked in.

When the OOD came back up the ladder he said, “Message sent, Captain.”

The skipper pointed at the tug on the starboard side. “Go send another one. Tell them we are corked good.”

The OOD took a quick look and disappeared back down the ladder.

The skipper looked at the people milling on the pier. At least thirty of them, only a couple of sailors in uniform, and a police car. Maybe he should go up there and talk to the cop.

When the OOD came back, the captain gave his instructions, went below for his ball cap, then went to the forward torpedo room and climbed the ladder through the open hatch to the main deck. He paused on the gangway and saluted the flag flying on its portable flagpole on the stern, then went ashore.

After Colonel Curt Wriston, commander of the Texas National Guard in Abilene, saw the declaration read on TV, he tried to call his headquarters in Austin, with no success. The telephone didn’t even ring.

Wriston dressed, skipped his morning coffee, and got into his car. He picked up his deputy commander. They discussed the situation and were in agreement: the Soetoro administration would use force against Texas, just as quickly as they could.

Wriston drove the county roads to a spot near the perimeter fence of Dyess Air Force Base. From there, they could see the two runways: the main runway, 13,500 feet long, and a short parallel runway, 3,500 feet long. Also visible in this flat country in the clear air of early dawn were the big hangars and flight line between the two runways. Wriston looked around. Not a cloud in the sky.

No doubt the commander of the base, Brigadier General l’Angistino, was on the wires right now with bomber headquarters in Nebraska and the air force brass in Washington, asking for instructions. Everyone in the chain of command would bump the decisions up the ladder, Wriston thought. He knew how the military bureaucracy worked these days. Initiative had been ruthlessly and remorselessly squeezed out of the system. Obey orders was the mantra, and, whatever you do, don’t make your bosses look bad. General l’Angistino was a good man, but he would undoubtedly have to wait awhile for orders, which would have to come from the very top, perhaps even the White House, which would have a ton of other red-hot problems to deal with today.

The deputy commander said it first. “We need to block those runways, make sure the air force doesn’t fly those bombers and Hercules transports out of there. Texas will need them.”

“They’ll probably sabotage them,” Wriston said thoughtfully, “if they can’t fly them out.”

“Either way, they can’t use them to transport troops or bomb us.”

“We could use tanks, just go through the fence,” Wriston mused.

“We only have four tanks, and one of them has the fire control system disassembled for upgrade.”

“It’ll move.”

The deputy said, “That big runway is about three hundred feet wide, as I recall. Take a serious amount of iron to block it. And the Hercs can use the short runway.”

“We can get some construction equipment, road graders, and bulldozers,” Wriston suggested. “They can follow the tanks. We’ll block the long runway, and if we have any equipment left, leave it on the small one. We’ll have to block the long one in at least two places. Three would be better.” He used a small set of binoculars he kept in the car for looking at birds to examine the distant buildings, which looked like toy blocks sitting out there on the horizon.

Wriston added, “They’ve got cranes and such to handle crashed airplanes. If they can’t start the engines and drive our stuff off, they’ll drag it off.”

“We can disable everything.”

“Only delay them for a day, maybe two.”

“That might be enough. Let’s do it.”

Wriston started his car and they drove away planning where to get the yellow equipment, people to drive it, and how to summon their tankers.

At the head of the pier in Galveston where Texas was moored, Commander Mike Rodriquez found out that the Declaration of Independence news the sentry had given him was as real as a heart attack. Thirty or so civilians carrying rifles, some of them civilian versions of the M16, were standing there watching him. The sheriff had him sit in the right seat of his patrol car, which had its front windows down, then got behind the wheel. When he was comfortably settled, he gave the naval officer the news about the declaration.

“Texas is now a free republic,” the sheriff said in summary. The captain scrutinized the lawman’s face to see if he was kidding. He didn’t appear to be. The fucking idiot! Secession in this day and age!

One of the civilians came over and leaned on the car to hear what was being said inside. The sheriff ran him off.

“Now, Captain, this is the way I see it,” the sheriff continued. He had a serious pot gut that lapped over the buckle of his gun belt. His shirt needed pressing and he needed a shave. “I haven’t talked to anybody in Austin ’cause the phones are out and, anyway, they’re probably drunk and asleep, which I ought to be. When they wake up they’re gonna be mighty busy. In any event this declaration thing sorta upset the applecart. Did you watch it on TV a while ago?”

No.

“County commissioners are asleep too, and even when they get up this morning, they’re goin’ to tell me what they always say, which is use my own judgment. That way if people start squallin’ I have to take the heat and not them. Being an elected official and all, I suppose it comes with the territory. But you probably ain’t interested in my problems, since you got a big one your own self.”

Get on with it, you oaf, Rodriquez thought.

“Your problem is that these voters here aren’t going to let your sailors get on your submarine. And it looks to me like those tugboat captains ain’t goin’ to move their boats to allow you to get goin’, even if you had all your sailors. That’s kinda it in a nutshell.”

“And you aren’t going to clear the pier and tell the tugboat captains to get out of the prohibited area?”

“That’s about the size of it.”

Rodriquez thought of a common dirty word but didn’t say it. He pulled at the door handle.

The sheriff laid a hand on his arm. “You stay right here. I think this whole situation will go better if you sit right here with me. Keep the crowd calmed down. If these people start shootin’ your sailors, we’ll both have more problems than we do now.”

“If they shot my sailors, you’d arrest them, wouldn’t you? A crime committed in your presence.”

“Well, I don’t know. I haven’t got my thinkin’ that far down the road. Been my experience that problems are best headed off, if possible, rather than tackled afterward. That’s what I’m tryin’ to do. Now are you gonna just sit here like I told you, or do I have to handcuff you and lock you in the back?”

Rodriquez couldn’t contain himself. “You son of a bitch!”

“Be that as it may, I need a yes or no.”

“I’ll sit.”

“Fine. I’ll radio for one of my deputies to stop by McDonald’s and get us some McMuffins and coffee. Or do you want something else?”

“That’ll do, thanks.”

The sheriff picked up the dashboard mike and started talking.

Forty-five minutes later, after they had eaten, the sheriff had the deputy, with the crowd’s help, disarm Rodriquez’ sentries and take them to jail. “Just to hold for a little while,” the sheriff told Rodriquez, “until somebody with more brains than me can figure out what we oughta do.”

Five minutes after the sentries had departed with the deputy, a sailor from the sub came looking for his captain. He had a wad of paper in his hand. He spotted Rodriquez in the patrol car and came over to the open window. “Messages, Captain,” he said and offered them.

“I’ll take those, son,” the sheriff said, holding out his right hand. When he had them, he told the sailor, “You’re under arrest. Now you get in the back of the car here.”

The sailor looked beseechingly at his commanding officer.

“Do as he says,” Rodriquez said listlessly. Shit, he thought, I should have stayed on the boat. What a fool I was! There goes my naval career!

By ten o’clock the crowd had swelled to at least fifty people, most of them carrying rifles. They were having a high old time. Some of them had brought beer, which they shared. Sailors who were ashore and wanted back aboard their submarine were arrested and taken away.

“Crowd’s gettin’ a little rowdy, don’t you think?” the sheriff asked Commander Rodriquez.

“Yes,” he agreed.

“I kinda think it’s time we put an end to this and let these folks go home or to work or to a bar someplace to tank up. Let’s you and me walk down the pier and you get all your people out of that thing and bring them along. I’ll get a bus to take them to a hotel.”

Rodriquez felt like a cornered rat. Aboard the boat he could overpower the sheriff, scram the reactor, and order her scuttled. But should he scuttle her? If this political thing blew over… He looked longingly at the classified messages the sheriff had read and tucked into a pocket in the driver’s door. It wasn’t as if these civilians knew how to operate a nuclear submarine, for Christ’s sake. USS Texas wasn’t going anywhere. And the U.S. Navy could destroy her with a Tomahawk cruise missile or two anytime they got around to it.

“Let me read those messages,” he said.

“Nope. It’s my way or I send you off to join your sailors in jail. Then I’ll go down there with these voters and arrest all of them aboard. Your only choice is to go with me or go to jail.”

“I’ll go with you.”

The sheriff got out of the car. He stopped the captain and pulled out handcuffs. “We’ll put these on you,” he said, “in case you get any big ideas. Just to protect myself, you understand.”

He cuffed the captain’s hands in front of him, then pulled his pistol. He waved it at the crowd. “You people back off and give me room. Don’t want anyone comin’ down the pier. Don’t want anyone doin’ anything we’ll all regret. Come on, Captain.”

At the gangway, the sheriff could see an officer or sailor on the bridge. He told the captain, “Tell them to turn off the reactor and come out. All of ’em.”

“Aren’t we going aboard?”

“No. They ain’t goin’ no place in that boat and you ain’t neither. So get them out here.”

When the remainder of the submarine’s crew were on the pier, about two dozen men, the sheriff thought, although he didn’t bother to count them, he asked one of the chiefs, “Did you turn that reactor off?”

“Yeah.”

“Got everybody out of there?”

“Yeah.”

“That’s good, ’cause after you’re gone, I’m goin’ aboard and look around, and if I find anybody they might scare me and I’ll probably have to shoot ’em. Hate to do it, but if I fear for my personal safety, and I will, there ain’t nothin’ else I can do. Promised my wife when I first run for sheriff that I wouldn’t endanger myself.”

“There’s no one else aboard,” the chief said sullenly.

The sheriff looked down the pier and saw that a blue bus marked SHERIFF had arrived on the quay. “There’s your ride, Captain. Lead them down the pier and climb aboard.”

That was how the brand spanking new Republic of Texas acquired its first warship.