Liberty's Last Stand

ELEVEN

At Dyess Air Force Base in Abilene that morning General l’Angistino was trying to digest a message from Washington directing the Dyess B-1 wing and a B-52 outfit in Louisiana to prepare strikes against the heart of Austin. Before the Pentagon used this blunt weapon, however, an armored division from Fort Hood was ordered to surround the city to isolate it and, after the bombing, capture every politician they could find still alive.

An armored column cannot be organized and set in motion instantly, and the air force general knew that. He didn’t know how long the army would need to comply with the directive, but he thought he had a couple of days before anyone would demand that Dyess bombers smite Austin.

And it was going to take a couple of days to get ready. The runway was now clear, but a hundred armed civilians were blockading the main gate and dozens of others blocked the other gates.

L’Angistino was rapidly running out of air policemen. Last night he had directed that machine-gun emplacements be dug on the edges of the ramp area.

He certainly didn’t have the personnel to patrol the entire base perimeter. The base comprised more than six thousand acres, and it was surrounded only by the fence, which, as Colonel Wriston had proved, could be easily breached. L’Angistino did the best he could. He ordered the digging of three machine-gun emplacements to deter an attack from the front gate and had his air police patrol the base in six armored cars with mounted machine guns, the same kind of armored cars FEMA was distributing to police departments nationwide.

L’Angistino picked up the file he had on Colonel Wriston, the National Guard commander who opposed him. He was a warrior. A tanker who had done four tours in Iraq and Afghanistan, he left active duty after fifteen years and had taken a commission in the Texas National Guard. He was married, with three teenage daughters — undoubtedly the reason why he’d transferred to the Guard. Wriston knew all there was to know about bulldozer blades burying machine gunners alive, and had mounted them on tanks. Now he had bulldozers, if he could find some more, and l’Angistino thought he probably could. Wriston wasn’t done, not by a long sight. The only question was what he would do next.

The major in charge of base security, Timothy Toone, had already had a confrontation with the people out front, who were standing around the county sheriff’s car.

As the major reported it to l’Angistino, he told the Taylor County sheriff, “You need to get these people out of here.”

“I ain’t movin’ nobody who’s not on federal property. They’ve got ever’ right to be here.”

“They have no right to blockade our gates. Interference with U.S. military operations is a federal crime.”

“Call the FBI and report it,” the sheriff said calmly. “I’m sure they’ll come roaring right out here and arrest everybody.”

“These people are armed.”

The sheriff looked around, acting as if he hadn’t noticed the guns before. Then he told the major, “People have a right to openly carry firearms in Texas, except in places where it’s prohibited, like courthouses. This isn’t a courthouse, but a public road. Fact is, these streets and roads belong to the City of Abilene, Taylor County, or the Republic of Texas. These folks don’t have to leave unless I tell them to.”

The sheriff grinned, the major told l’Angistino, while he waited for the major to ask him to do just that, a request that he would cheerfully refuse in front of an audience of his constituents. So the major had kept his mouth shut and returned to headquarters. Now what did the general want him to do?

More than half the officers and airmen assigned to Dyess lived outside the gates, mostly senior people. Many of the pilots did too.

“Major, I want hourly reports on conditions at all seven gates of the base; I want you to double the base guards and ensure they’re armed. If armed civilians are foolish enough to try to force their way onto the base, I want the guards to respond with lethal force. Do you understand?”

“Yes, sir.”

“If this blockade continues, we won’t have enough pilots, crew chiefs, and ordnance specialists to accomplish our missions. We have to break it.”

“Yes, sir.”

At noon, Major Toone estimated that the crowd on the streets had swelled to more than ten thousand civilians — including women and children. He estimated that half the men were armed. If they rushed the base, his troops would be in a hell of a fix if ordered to shoot. He wanted written orders from General l’Angistino.

Nothing in the brigadier’s military education or experience readied him to meet this situation. Shooting unarmed women and children would be an atrocity, a war crime… and, he thought, a sin. His wife would never forgive him. He wondered if the air force would.

His operations officer entered with a mission assignment. As many B-1s as l’Angistino could get airborne were ordered to bomb Austin tonight. They were to use JDAMs, which were precision-guided munitions. A detailed target list would follow.

“But there is no fighter protection laid on,” the ops officer said. “The Texas Air Guard has a squadron of F-16s at the joint base at Lackland. If they sortie to intercept the B-1s, the Bones will be toast. They have to have fighter protection, General. We could lose them all on the way to the target, over it, or on the way home. It’s only seventy or eighty miles from San Antonio to Austin. Sending those guys without fighter protection is ridiculous. Foolhardy.”

A knock on the door, and his aide appeared. “General, there are two squadron commanders and nine pilots waiting to see you.”

The ops officer and the general exchanged glances. Did they know about the lack of fighter protection? Already?

“Send them in,” he said. Then he turned to Major Toone and added, “Major, let’s talk later.” The two colonels, squadron commanders, passed Major Toone in the doorway. “We have a problem, General. Some of our pilots want to talk to you.”

“Send them in.”

The pilots were wearing flight suits. The first man in line stood at attention in front of the general’s desk, saluted, and laid his silver wings insignia on the desk. “Sir, I wish to turn in my wings and be removed from flight status, immediately.”

L’Angistino stared at the captain, who met his gaze. In the American military pilots and flight crewmen were all volunteers. No one could order an officer to be a pilot.

“Do you want to give me an explanation, Captain?”

“Sir, I find that in good conscience I cannot fight other Americans. I may be obligated to remain in the air force, but I am not going to fly again.”

The next man laid his wings on the table and saluted. He repeated the formula, “I wish to turn in my wings and be removed from flight status, sir.”

“Why?”

“My wife and I are from Texas. Born and raised here. I’m not going to take a chance that you want me to bomb Texas, maybe kill some of our relatives or some friends I grew up with or went to school with. Or their kids. I can live with a court-martial, but I couldn’t live with that.”

When the last man left, nine silver wings lay on the general’s desk. The squadron commanders stood at parade rest.

“Where’s the other squadron commander, Colonel Hurley?”

“Somewhere off base, sir, we think.”

“How many pilots do we have available to fly the Bones?”

“Twelve, sir, including us. Nine command pilots and three copilots. Using some of the command pilots as copilots, we can launch six planes.”

The general sank into his chair. A hundred twenty pilots in the wing, and he could muster just a dozen?

“A lot of them are trapped off base, sir. To get them in, we’d either have to run the civilians off or slip one of our own over the fence to find our guys and organize a mass break-in.”

“That would take all night.”

“Or longer. And we have enlisted manpower problems. Our muster list shows about thirty percent of our personnel are present for duty.”

“I saw the morning muster rolls.”

“It’s a bad situation, sir.”

The general dismissed the colonels and sat thinking. The bomb wing wasn’t ready for combat. With only six flight crews and thirty percent of its enlisted personnel, it wasn’t ready for anything. Not even morning colors.

The ops officer left, but he soon came back. “There is a turboprop inbound, sir. National Guard.”

“Send them up here when they land.”

He watched the turboprop taxi to base ops and shut down. One or two people in uniform got out, climbed into a waiting sedan. Ten minutes later they were in his office.

He recognized the Air National Guard general, Elvin Gentry, whom he saluted since Gentry was a two-star. The man with Gentry was a colonel. “Please be seated, gentlemen,” l’Angistino said.

“This independence thing,” Gentry said, “it’s turned the world upside down. I’ve come to ask for you to surrender the base, its personnel, and all the military property on it.”

“Are you kidding?”

“Lou, I wish I was. But I’m deadly serious. My boss, Major General JR Hays — do you know him?”

“Not that I can recall.”

“He was army. Anyway, he sent me up here to get your surrender. If you refuse, he’ll have to launch an F-16 strike on the base to take out the planes. Texas wants them or wants them in ashes.”

“I’ll fly them out of here,” l’Angistino said stoutly. “The first ones leave in less than an hour.”

“Lou, you couldn’t have enough pilots to fly more than a handful of Bones and Hercs out of here, and I doubt you have the enlisted mechs and specialists it takes to even launch that many. We know the situation here. I’ve been on the radio with Colonel Wriston. Fact is, you could tell me to go to hell and sabotage all those planes, shoot holes in the spars, whatever, but we’re going to take this base before very long, and General Hays is going to be royally pissed with you people if those airplanes are harmed. I don’t know exactly what the Geneva Convention says about the treatment of prisoners of war, but this isn’t a war we’ve declared. You are now trespassers on property owned by the Republic of Texas. Lawyers love tangles like this, but the local Texans won’t. If you don’t surrender they will be even more pissed than JR Hays. You know those people aren’t under our control.”

Lou l’Angistino’s thoughts tumbled around.

“Lou, for God’s sake. I am not trying to threaten you, although maybe it came out that way, and if so, I apologize. Most of your people don’t want to fight other Americans, many are Texans who won’t fight other Texans even at the point of a gun. You can’t sit here on a base protected by nothing but a wire fence and defy the whole population of Texas! There is no realistic chance for victory. None. For God’s sake, do the right thing and save some lives.”

Gentry pointed to the little pile of wings on l’Angistino’s desk. “Even your pilots are trying to tell you something. Your air force is disintegrating.”

General l’Angistino picked up the op order directing a strike on Austin, glanced at it in disgust, then dropped it on the table. “What are your terms?”

An hour later, after the surrender document was signed and sent to be posted in barracks, ready rooms, and maintenance shops, Colonel Wriston of the National Guard was escorted into the office. He was wearing jeans and a faded Texas A&M T-shirt. Lou l’Angistino reached for his hand and perfunctorily shook it.

“Lou, here’s the man responsible for the ten or so thousand people standing outside on the street,” Gentry told the air force general. “Wriston and his men spent the night recruiting their friends and neighbors.”

“You mean some of that crowd were National Guardsmen in civvies?”

“They were. Wriston did what he could to block your runways, but he didn’t go home afterward to watch television. He knew the vast majority of the civilian community was behind him, so he used his men to mobilize them.”

A loud voice interrupted them, to l’Angistino’s relief. Colonel Wriston went to meet the man, who was standing in the reception area.

“Wriston, you bastard. I got back from Dallas this morning and nobody’s workin’ my job site. My foreman says the equipment operators stole ever’thin’ that would move on your orders. Where the hell is my construction equipment?”

“Out beside the runways, Carroll. We used it yesterday to block the runways here. Did you watch the declaration read night before last?”

“Sure did! All I can say is, it’s about damn time.”

“I couldn’t call and ask to borrow your stuff, but I thought since Carroll is a good man, he won’t mind.”

“By the runways, you say?”

“It’s damaged and tore up some, but it kept all the planes from taking off. You should be able to repair some of it. Anyway, your project is going to go slow until you get some more equipment operators. Most of yours are in the Guard and they are now on active duty and won’t be back for a while.”

Carroll took a deep breath. “The yellow iron is insured, but the insurance company will lawyer up and refuse to pay unless I sue ’em, then offer ten cents on the dollar. You know that.”

“Tell you what,” Wriston said, and put his arm around the construction man. “If you eat the repair costs, we’ll give you an airplane. Any one of those along the road into the base, your pick. You can put it in your front yard. When things calm down, we’ll move it for you.”

Carroll’s eyes lit up. “Got pecan trees in the front yard, but I could put it in the horse pasture out back. Damn, I’d like that.”

They shook hands on it.

It was noon when JR Hays, wearing a camo uniform and a pistol on a web belt, arrived at the front gate at Fort Hood, sixty miles north of Austin in Killeen. He was in the right seat of a sedan with Texas flags flying from the corners of the front bumper. Two guardsmen, a male captain and a female major, were with him. An enlisted woman was driving.

The soldier at the gate wanted to see ID, but the sergeant was right there immediately and said, “Sir, you can enter the base, but the carrying of firearms around the administrative and living areas is forbidden.”

“Who is the commanding general?” JR asked the sergeant.

“Lieutenant General Gil Ellensberger, sir.”

“Call him. Tell him Major General JR Hays of the Texas Army is sitting at his main gate and wants in to see him. You may tell him we are wearing sidearms, if you wish.”

The sergeant did as he was told. When he hung up the phone, he came out and explained to the driver of the sedan how to get to the headquarters building. Then he saluted. JR returned it.

The commanding general was in a staff meeting. The receptionist had a television in her office, and JR stood in front of it a minute watching. Armed citizens were taking over federal office buildings statewide. The FBI agents in Waco had been arrested en masse, disarmed, and jailed. DEA and ICE headquarters had been occupied, the agents disarmed and sent home.

Ellensberger came striding in. He was a tall, lanky man. He didn’t look happy, but he said, “Good lord, JR Hays, as I live and breathe. I haven’t seen you since Afghanistan. Come on into my office.” Ellensberger led the way and closed the door.

JR thought commanding generals’ offices all looked alike: big desk, carpet, U.S. flags, mementos of the current occupant scattered around. Unbidden, he dropped into a chair.

“I retired from the army last year, General, and my cousin, Governor Jack Hays, just this morning put me in charge of the Texas Guard. Raw nepotism.”

Ellensberger let that one go by. “All our off-base telephones are down, as well as the internet. Did you have anything to do with that?”

“Jack Hays did, not me. I am here today to accept your surrender of the base and all of its personnel and military equipment to the Republic of Texas.”

Ellensberger snorted. “You know I can’t do that. You can’t just march in here and take over a United States military installation!”

“Gil, you don’t have a choice. Texas is now an independent republic, and Fort Hood is right smack in the middle of it.”

Ellensberger waved that away. “Texas is a state in the United States that has tried to secede from the Union. We settled all that back in the 1860s. Surely you read about that. It didn’t work then and it isn’t going to work now.”

“We’re not lawyers and I can’t read tea leaves. We’re soldiers, and you have an impossible military problem. How many of your troops reported for duty this morning?”

From the look on General Ellensberger’s face, JR knew he had scored a hit.

“Half? Was it fifty percent?”

Ellensberger didn’t reply.

“Last I heard, you had over forty-five thousand soldiers assigned here. If we blockade the base, how are you going to feed them? And for how long?”

Still no reply.

“Are you going to deploy your troops around your perimeter — how many miles of it do you have, anyway? — and defend it? How many U.S. Army troopers do we have to kill before you will surrender? Or are you going to defend this dirt to the last man and go down like they did at the Alamo? Tell me now so I can brief my staff and get at it.”

“Pfui. All the good ol’ boys in Texas aren’t going to whip an armored division.”

JR Hays rubbed his nose.

Ellensberger pushed the intercom button. “Bring in this morning’s classified message traffic.”

In a moment a soldier came in and handed Ellensberger a clipboard. He automatically said thank you, and the soldier left.

The commanding general flipped through the messages, then handed the clipboard to JR.

“It’s the one on top. Op Immediate from the chairman of the JCS, Wynette. He has ordered me to take an armored column from the First Cavalry down the interstate to Austin and surround the city. The air force is going to bomb it. We will go in after the bombers are finished and capture every politician left alive.”

JR took his time with the messages. He read the first one, then saw that Ellensberger was an info addee on a message to the B-1 bomber wing at Dyess and a B-52 outfit in Louisiana ordering them to prepare a strike on the Texas capitol in Austin. They were to wait to launch until First Cavalry had the city surrounded.

“This is insanity,” JR said, gesturing with the clipboard. “They are going to indiscriminately slaughter everyone in central Austin.”

“They’re not thinking very straight,” Ellensberger admitted.

“But you are willing to be a part of this? Murdering civilians from the air? Americans?”

Ellensberger sighed. After a bit he said, “If I surrender to you, Wynette will just order the bombers to obliterate Austin ASAP. A dozen B-52s should be able to convert the heart of the city to rubble and kill a whole bunch of civilians.”

JR carefully placed the clipboard back on Ellensberger’s desk. “Which side are you on, Gil?”

Ellensberger took his time answering. “As I see it, the governor of Texas and the president of the United States are locked in a hell of a political dispute. I wish they would settle it between themselves without dragging the American flag through the dirt and asking American soldiers to kill other Americans. Honest to God.”

“It isn’t the governor. It’s the legislature and the people of Texas who are locked in a dispute with Soetoro. Haven’t you been watching television?”

Ellensberger didn’t reply to that remark, either.

“But politics isn’t my business,” JR murmured. “I’m a soldier.”

“Soldiering is politics. You know that!”

“Yes or no, Gil. I have responsibilities too.”

Ellensberger took in a bushel of air and sighed deeply. “What are your terms?”

It took a half hour for the surrender document to be typed and signed. Meanwhile JR sent the captain to the flight line to take a helicopter to National Guard headquarters at Camp Mabry in Austin with a message to Major General Gentry. Bombers were coming sooner or later to flatten Austin, and he’d better get fighters ready to fly with pilots willing to fight for Texas.

Lieutenant General Ellensberger signed the surrender. Then he went to the U.S. flag in the corner and carefully removed it from its display pole. He folded it reverently and put it into his briefcase.

“Two mornings ago,” he said conversationally to JR, “when I heard the legislature had passed the declaration and the governor had signed it, I knew this moment was coming. And I didn’t know what to do. I could have asked Washington, but all I would have gotten was bullshit. I wanted some time to see what my staff thought, what the troops thought — you can’t fight if the troops aren’t with you body and soul. The moment of decision just came sooner than I thought it would.

“JR, I am sick to death. You and I were both at West Point, served our country — all of it. Then along came Soetoro. A progressive fascist, if there is such a thing. I figured the country could stand eight years of even the devil’s rule, but I was wrong. Race was the wild card. Everyone is scared to death of being labeled a racist. If Soetoro were white he would have been impeached years ago… Do you mind if my wife and I stay in our quarters for a few days? I need to figure out what to do next.”

“Whatever you need,” JR replied. Ellensberger took a deep breath and looked around the office one more time. “I fear for my country,” he said softly. “The United States may not survive this mess.”

“Texas will,” JR said with more confidence than he felt. He saluted, Ellensberger returned it, and then JR walked out to address the office staff.

“You folks in the United States Army who wish to leave can go. You folks who want to enlist in the Texas Guard can stay. You civilians have a job right here if you want it.”

The civilians all stayed. Most of the soldiers asked permission, which was granted, to go home and discuss it with their wives or just to think about things.

JR’s next problem was easily solved. The aide he had brought with him, Major Judy Saar, asked, “What are you going to do about Major Nasruli?”

Nasruli was an American-born jihadist who had murdered thirteen Fort Hood soldiers several years before and wounded thirty-two more.

“Is he still here?”

“So they tell me. In the jail or detention facility or whatever they call it.”

“I thought he was convicted by a court-martial and sentenced to death.”

“Yes, sir. But he’s very much alive.”

“We are not going to waste people running a jail or spend a dime of taxpayers’ money feeding him,” JR Hays said. “It’s high time he was dead, anyway. Dictate an execution order addressed to yourself. Put in Nasruli’s rank, full name, service number, and a place for my signature. Reference the death sentence. Then get a half-dozen volunteers, get them some M4s, and put him up against a wall. Make sure he’s real dead. Then come back here and dictate a press release. The army and the civilians in Washington have screwed around and screwed around, and now he’s history.”

“And the body, sir?”

“Burn it.”

“Yes, sir,” Judy Saar said, came to attention, and saluted. Apparently she too thought Major Nasruli had lived long enough. In seven minutes she was back with a one-paragraph order she had apparently typed herself. JR Hays read it, signed it, handed it back to her, and went on to the next problem, which was the armored division at Fort Bliss, in El Paso.

He doubted that the commanding general there would surrender quite as quickly as Major General Ellensberger had. JR knew Major General Lee Parker, knew him to be a perfect bureaucrat who wouldn’t want to buck the system. JR thought Parker personified everything wrong with the army: bureaucratic inertia, lack of initiative, a craven capitulation to political correctness, and a pathological fear of casualties. The media’s fondness for trumpeting casualties meant that a career officer on the way up wanted as few as absolutely possible, so he took as few risks as possible, and accomplished very little. He also kicked difficult decisions up the line, so that he wouldn’t be blamed if anything went wrong. JR thought that before he surrendered, Parker would want the blessing of higher authority, which he was unlikely to get.

Given some time, JR thought Parker could be conned into thinking his military bosses wanted him to surrender, but time was a diminishing asset for JR. He needed that armored division in his pocket right now. He was going to have to convince Parker that he was facing a mountain of casualties in a losing cause.

Major Judy Saar drove a staff car and parked at the first barracks she saw. Inside she found groups of male soldiers loafing in the lounge, loudly discussing Texas independence and the takeover of the base. She said, “Attention please.”

Some of the soldiers looked around. “I am here to ask for volunteers for a firing squad.”

Stunned silence greeted her. One black sergeant said, “Who do you want to shoot, Major?” His name tag read HILL.

“Major Nasruli. I have an execution order here in my hand.”

Every man in the room raised his hand, including the black staff sergeant, short and wiry and buff, with close-cropped, prematurely gray hair. “One of the men he shot was my brother, who is paralyzed from the waist down.”

“I need six people,” she said. “Sergeant Hill, will you select five other men and follow me to the base armory?”

“Yes, ma’am.”

At the armory she requisitioned six M4s and a cartridge for each of them. She passed the carbines to her volunteers and pocketed the cartridges.

“Turn these weapons in here afterward,” she told them. “Now the detention facility.”

She parked in front of the building and waited for the other vehicles, three private cars, to arrive. She felt as if she were watching herself outside of her body.

Her husband, a private physician, would not approve. But then he didn’t approve of her service in the National Guard. He wanted her to stay home with the two children, who were now in junior high and didn’t need her sitting at home. She wanted to make a larger contribution.

The cars drove up and the soldiers got out with their weapons.

Major Saar led them inside, showed the officer at the desk the execution order.

“You can’t do this,” he said. “The death sentence has to be approved by the president.”

“You have heard that Texas has declared its independence and Lieutenant General Ellensberger has surrendered Fort Hood to the Republic of Texas, have you not?”

“Yes, but—”

“The president of the United States has no authority here. Would you care to call base headquarters and verify the order with Major General Hays?”

He would. He did so. After a moment of listening, he said, “Yes, sir,” and hung up and looked askance at Judy Saar.

“Do you have an exercise area?” Major Saar asked.

“Yes, ma’am.”

“Bring him out there. In handcuffs.”

She had the sergeant arrange the squad in a line and handed a cartridge to each of them. Major Nasruli protested as the guards led him out. Apparently he had been told what was about to happen, because when he saw her he shouted, “I have written to President Soetoro demanding clemency. Allah protects the faithful. Allah has—”

“The post that holds up the basketball backboard,” Major Saar told the guards. “Cuff his hands behind the post.”

Nasruli continued to shout, to rant. Sergeant Hill asked, “Do you want him blindfolded?”

“He can take this with his eyes open,” she said.

Nasruli refused to stop shouting. He was still shouting when Major Saar told the marksmen to aim at the center of the chest and gave the commands: Ready, aim, fire. The shots came as one report and Nasruli went down, held semi-erect by the pole. She heard the spent shells tinkling on the concrete. She walked over to the body. Blood stained his shirt. His eyes were open, staring at nothing.

Like an automaton, she drew her pistol, looked to ensure the safety was off, and, using both hands to steady and aim the pistol, shot Nasruli in the head from a distance of three feet. Brains and bloody tissue flew out the back of his head.

She engaged the safety of her Beretta, holstered it, and turned to the officer commanding the detention facility, who was staring slack-jawed at the remains of Major Nasruli. “Pour gasoline on the body and set it afire, Captain.”

The sergeant called the firing squad to attention, turned them, and marched them back into the detention facility.

It took twenty minutes for the detention facility staff to come up with a five-gallon can of gasoline. They are probably robbing a civilian on a lawnmower, Judy Saar thought. She stood and looked at the sky, at the windows of the detention facility, at the body against the pole. She thought she was going to be sick, but she choked it down. Later, she whispered. A bird skittered along the top of the wall. A mockingbird, she noted.

After they put the body against an exterior stone wall, drenched it with gasoline, and set it ablaze, she marched back through the detention facility and vomited by her car. Then she drove back to headquarters.

The staff sergeant and the five other men from the firing squad were waiting for her in front of the building. They had apparently turned in the carbines to the base armory. All of them saluted and she returned their salute. “Major, we’d like to enlist in the Texas Guard,” Sergeant Hill said.

She nodded and motioned for them to follow her inside.

There was a handwritten letter waiting for Major Judy Saar in the commanding general’s office.

“You are now the CO of the base and the 1st Cavalry Division. Get as many soldiers enlisted as possible, and get the 1st Cavalry ready to fight. I am on my way to Fort Bliss to grab the 1st Armored, Old Ironsides. We’ll need them too. You are a good soldier. I’ll back you in every decision you make. Texas needs you.” It was signed by JR Hays, Major General.