Liberty's Last Stand

FIFTEEN

Lightning was flashing from the clouds and gusts of rain and wind were pounding on the Blackhawk as it ran at a hundred feet above the housetops toward the El Paso National Guard armory, the coordinates of which the crew had punched into their GPS systems. The Blackhawk rocked and rolled in the turbulence. Fortunately the myriad lights of the city were still on, houses alight, street lights, traffic on the boulevards, so they had a good ground reference. Two Apaches were behind the Blackhawk, one on the right, one on the left.

If the city had been blacked out, Sabiston would have kept his crews on the ground. Still, they could go into inadvertent IFR conditions at any moment if some of this cloud dripped toward the ground, or if they hit a column of rain, or if the ground rose up into a cloud. If they flew under a thunderstorm, with its river of cold air descending out the bottom, all bets would be off: It would be all the pilots could do to keep their machines from being driven into the ground. Or a house. Or a school. Or a telephone pole. Of course, the same held true for the army pilots in their Apaches. Sabiston was listening on the Fort Bliss air traffic frequencies, trying to discover how many of their Apaches were airborne.

It sounded like only one base Apache was still airborne, and the pilot was bitching about the weather. “I gotta get on the ground,” he told the tower.

Sabiston keyed the intercom to talk to his copilot. “Good news. Only one enemy Apache in the air, and he wants to come down. So what do ya think?”

The copilot, who was from Albany, New York, keyed his mike and replied, “We are fucking crazy. Once more into the suck. Will Texas pay our widows death benefits?”

One of the Apaches behind him keyed the radio. “Sabby, I got him on infrared. Clear to the left.”

The copilot initiated a turn. They were almost on the housetops. Flying a helicopter was an unforgiving art, and in filthy weather this close to the ground, it attained the level of black magic.

The Apache behind them came abreast, accelerating. The Apache was an attack helicopter, manned by a crew of two seated in tandem. The pilot sits in the rear seat, the copilot/weapons operator, or gunner, sits in the front. Both were usually rated pilots and both had controls to fly the machine, but in combat the front-seater operated the sensors and aimed and fired the weapons, which included a chain gun under the fuselage and whatever rockets or missiles were loaded for the mission. It was designed to provide close air support to infantry, armor, and artillery, and it did it well.

The Apache gunner had his target in sight; the chain gun sent a finger of fire shooting across the gloom.

The target absorbed two seconds’ worth of 30-mm, then, with its tail rotor gone, lost control and tilted sideways, rotating viciously, then went into the ground and exploded.

Erik Sabiston saw the flash of the explosion in his night-vision goggles.

“The base,” he told the copilot. “Turn toward it.”

They turned right. The base was lit up with streetlights, house lights, lights in parking lots. Tanks and artillery were bunched up, parked in a large grass area behind the exchange, facing the main gate.

“Go down the flight line,” Sabby said.

They got lost once, flying just over the tops of the buildings, then miraculously they saw the field dead ahead: Blackhawks, Apaches, and a few old Chinooks were lined up in rows illuminated by floodlights on poles. They should have at least turned the lights off.

“I have the controls,” Sabby said. He turned the Blackhawk and pulled the nose up, bleeding off airspeed dramatically. When he was down to fifty knots, he straightened out, about fifty feet from the ground, and flew between the two rows closest to the hangar. He spoke on the intercom to the door gunners. “Shoot ’em up, guys.”

The gunners fired one-second bursts at each target. One helicopter caught fire. Brap, brap, brap, the gunners worked methodically; the noise bursts were out of sync. Another Apache in the line caught fire.

“Some ground fire from the hangars,” the copilot said, and within seconds a hole appeared in the right front quarter of their windshield. It was a strange feeling, being fired on intentionally by Americans.

When they finished the line, Sabiston accelerated and turned to fly back to El Paso International. No warning lights on the panel. All systems looked normal. “Any damage in back?” he asked his crew chief.

“Don’t think so. I’ll inspect.” He turned the controls over to the copilot, then flipped freqs and got on the radio to JR Hays, who needed to know about the disposition of the base armor and artillery.

The Apache flown by Harvey Williston was following the Blackhawk down the line. “I have the target,” his gunner said. Dustin Bonner, from Tupelo, Mississippi, was the gunner. Earlier, Dustin was wondering if he had made the right decision signing on with the Texas Guard. There was going to be a lot of flying, a lot of shooting, and a lot of dying done before this thing was over. Maybe, he thought, he should have sneaked back to Mississippi and got back to playing blues guitar and working on his uncle’s catfish farm. One thing was sure, there was a future in catfish. Being a gunner on an Apache in the middle of a shooting war, not so much.

Certainly not when you were flying in a helicopter in shitty weather like this. Even if the bad guys didn’t whack you, Mother Nature might. He fired rockets at the first few helicopters in the third row, which look undamaged. Three of them were obscured by the warhead’s blast. Locked up a TOW wire-guided missile and launched it. Another. Then he was aiming the 30-mm M230 chain gun mounted on the fuselage between the landing gear. He pulled the trigger, moving from parked chopper to chopper.

The Apache flown by Mike Berk from Bemidji, Minnesota, followed along behind, with Mike’s gunner doing the dirty work. Despite soldiers sheltered behind hangar doors taking pot shots, there was no opposition. First Armored had not yet got it into their collective heads that they were in a war. They’d figure it out pretty soon, though, so the next trip down the flight line wasn’t going to be as pretty. Ahead of him he saw Williston turn left. “Follow me, Mike. Hellfires into the hangars. You have the one on the right, I’ll take the left.”

The two attack helicopters made a sweeping 270-degree turn as lightning flashed and rain came in waves, under that low ceiling, until they were lined up. The ramp lights were off by then — someone had gotten to the switches. It didn’t matter to the Apaches, which had night-vision and infrared sensors that allowed the crew to fly and employ their weapons as if it were high noon on a cloudless day. The gunners fired the Hellfire missiles through the open hangar doors, and the explosions caused at least one fire that they could see.

Then the two Apaches swept away southward toward El Paso International.

Wiley Fehrenbach worked feverishly with his officers and NCOs to get their stuff loaded and out of the Guard’s compound. When the trucks were rolling, men jumped in their cars and left as fast as they could get out of the garage. The last of the cars were still pouring from the parking lot when the tanks rolled into view.

The tanks stopped, then the Bradleys behind them. Only when the parking lot was empty did the tanks move forward again, carefully.

From his vantage down the street three blocks, JR Hays and two volunteer troopers watched the tanks and Bradleys go by. JR had an AT4 under his right arm and an M4 carbine on a sling across his back. One of the troopers was also carrying an AT4, an extra, just in case.

Before they left the armory, JR asked the young guardsmen, “Have either of you ever actually fired an AT4?”

“No, sir,” each of them said.

“Then you get to watch me miss tonight. Your job is to act as lookouts, to ensure we don’t get jumped by scouts.”

But to JR’s amazement, there were no scouts. This was America, for Christ’s sake, not Baghdad or Mosul or some other squalid Arab town. Well, the soldiers would learn. And fast. The next time the Guard tried this, it wouldn’t be so easy.

JR decided he would try for a Bradley when the troopers had re-embarked and were headed back to base. Patrols looking for guerillas or hidden troops took manpower. A constant low-level threat also took a toll on morale. JR knew because he had done his tours in the Middle East.

JR found a basement stairwell to hide in, and took the extra antitank rocket.

“If you see a scout, open up, force him to take cover, then scatter to the rendezvous point. Tonight’s goal is to ratchet up their fear a notch. You got that?”

“Yes, sir.”

Both these young troopers looked to be about twenty years old, but they were game. Given time, they would be good soldiers. Time. That’s what JR had to buy them by arranging some serious air attacks on the 1st Armored. Fuel storage tanks were probably the top priority if he could get some planes in the air carrying bombs. Without fuel, 1st Armored was going nowhere.

With just the top of his camo cap showing, JR watched the troops set up a perimeter around the armory, with tanks on the four corners. Bradleys each carried six troopers, so that meant there were twenty-four troopers out there afoot, searching and guarding and looking to shoot the first man they saw with a gun.

Time passed. Perhaps a half hour. The idling tanks were surprisingly quiet. The thunderstorm drifted off to the east and the wind was just a zephyr.

Finally JR realized they had fired the armory. Probably by pouring gasoline around. Some of the windows must have been broken or shattered on their own, because soon smoke was oozing around the lights on poles around the place and the lights illuminating the parking lot. He hoped the fire department had the sense to stay in the station tonight.

He checked his sentries, who were out of sight. Waited.

Waiting was the hardest part, he thought. You never get used to it. You wait for everything in the army, literally everything. Take a number, soldier. Or get in line. Then in combat, you wait some more. Wait to shoot and wait to die.

Finally, with visible fire coming from three of the armory windows, the Abrams tanks started snorting and moving. Two of them led off up the street.

JR Hays ignored them and watched the troopers return to the Bradleys. The Bradleys lined up; two tanks guarded the rear of the column.

Darn.

Picking up his AT4 and the spare, JR scuttled out of his hidey hole — he didn’t want to be there if the tank or Bradleys cut loose. The Abrams main battle tank was a formidable foe. Equipped with a 120-mm gun, a .50-caliber machine gun, and two .30-caliber machine guns, it was a rolling sixty-ton fortress protected by massive armor. Quite simply, the M1A1 Abrams was the finest tank on planet earth.

The Bradley was also armored, more lightly than a tank, but for protection it did have a nice 25-mm gun that fired up to two hundred rounds a minute. Twenty-five millimeters meant the shells were about an inch in diameter. Throwing three of those monsters every second, the gun could shred buildings, vehicles, and people very nicely, thank you, at terrific ranges.

JR took up a new position, partially hidden by a corner of a building. He laid his spare AT4 on the ground against the building. The lead pair of tanks clattered past JR at perhaps eight to ten miles per hour. He turned on the battery in the AT4. Now the Bradleys came, in formation, at the same speed. Kneeling, JR glanced at the trailing tank, then sprinted forward to get a square shot at the rear of the last Bradley. He kneeled, pushed the safety button forward, quickly made sure he had the crosshairs where he wanted them, and pushed the fire button. The job took no more than four seconds. Just a tiny delay and the rocket shot out of the tube, leaving an enormous blast of glowing hot exhaust gases pouring from the rear of the launch tube… and almost instantly the rocket hit the end of the Bradley, punched through, and exploded. A jet of fire shot back out the entry hole.

JR had already dropped the empty tube and was running for the corner of the sheltering building when he heard the chatter of a machine gun. That was from the tank behind him, he thought. He tore around the side of the building, out of sight of the tanks, ran right by the extra loaded tube lying by the building, and ran hard. Troopers from the other Bradleys would be after him in seconds.

He quickly found himself in an old neighborhood of mature trees and lawns and iron fences. Vaulted a fence and ran as if the hounds of hell were behind him, which they were, then got into an alley and ran on the gravel.

From somewhere behind him he heard a shot. Not too loud. One of his kids, he hoped, slowing down the pursuit. He checked street signs and kept moving, now jogging.

The carbine on his back was slapping him at every step, slowing him, so he pulled it off and carried it in his hands. His pistol belt was also rubbing him with every step. Damn, he was going to be sore. He must have run three miles or more before he came to the parking lot of a Walmart. He found Wiley Fehrenbach sitting behind the wheel of his SUV; his two guardsmen were already seated in the back.

“I’m getting too old for this shit,” he told Wiley as he motioned him to drive and put on his seatbelt. Then he tried to ease the pistol on his raw, aching hip.

Fehrenbach headed downtown.

JR thought about the troopers in the Bradley he’d shot. No doubt they were all dead, or wished they were. They had been American soldiers, and perhaps he had even served with them somewhere in the last twenty years. When he recovered his breath, he turned to the two soldiers in the backseat.

“I’m a soldier,” he offered in way of explanation, “which is an ancient, honorable profession. I had absolutely nothing to do with independence. I wasn’t even asked my opinion before the legislature did it. They did it because they thought their constituents wanted it desperately and without independence, Texas didn’t have a chance. I don’t know if they were right or wrong, yet I’m a Texan, and I’m all in. Do you understand?”

“Yes,” the two young men murmured. They were Texans too. JR wasn’t sure they did fully understand, so he continued: “Soldiers fight for their country. Ours is Texas. Freedom isn’t free, and if we’re going to get it, we’re going to have to fight for it. We’re going to have to hurt them worse than they hurt us, and we can’t ever give up. You see that?”

One of the soldiers, his name tag said he was Murray, replied, “My dad is locked in a railroad car at the base. He’s the president of the El Paso Rotary. Wrote some stuff for one of those independence movements. Fight for Texas? Hell yes.”

The other soldier, his name tag said Tyler, nodded his head. At the wheel Wiley Fehrenbach was nodding too.

“Some of our enemies have to die and some of us will too,” JR Hays said. “Blood is the fertilizer of freedom. Maybe yours and mine.”

He fell silent and watched the street with old, careful eyes. Fehrenbach pulled into a McDonald’s parking lot. Cars full of National Guard soldiers were waiting. “Murray, Tyler, run on over there and tell them to follow us to the airport. We have some work to do tonight.” The young guardsmen trotted off, carrying their weapons.

On the way to the airport, JR said to Wiley, “Our objective is to isolate First Armored, make sure it can’t be reinforced or resupplied and can’t run. I want you to pull all those executive jets onto the runways and taxiways and then shoot out their tires so they can’t be moved easily. We may not be able to hold the airport, but at least no airplane will land on it until the army takes it back.”

“And the airport on base?”

“We’ll take care of that in a day or two,” JR said. “After you do the international airport, I want you to get busy blowing up railroad trestles, as far out of town as you can. No trains in or out. Then bridges on the highways.”

“We can do that. We’re engineers.”

“Do some ambushes, one or two, after you blow a trestle or bridge and they come to look. Try to hit a patrol in town occasionally. Shoot, then skedaddle. Don’t get in any stand-up fights when you’re outnumbered and outgunned. Just worry them.”

“Hit and run.”

“Precisely. The playbook is so old the pages are crumbling, but the tactics still work.”

After a moment he added, “The army will soon be trying to ambush your men and doing searches house to house looking for weapons and uniforms. You’ll be amazed at how fast the army’s combat veterans will catch on, even anticipate your tactics. They’re pros, not twenty-year-old amateurs like the two with me tonight.”

“I understand.”

“You have to watch out for your boys, Wiley, or soon we won’t have any soldiers to fight with, just a bunch of bodies.”

JR thought about his comment to the soldiers that he had had nothing to do with independence. Perhaps Joe Bob’s death at the hands of smugglers had pushed Jack toward independence. Certainly, he thought, his father’s death had convinced him, when he heard about independence, that he was going to fight.

Not being an introspective man, he left it there and began thinking about how to win the war of independence. When Wiley Fehrenbach climbed out of the car and went inside the terminal to wait for his soldiers to assemble, JR found a notebook in the car and wrote an order to Major General Elvin Gentry.

“It is essential that we take the offensive and give Washington something to think about besides pounding Texas into submission. Have your B-1 people study up on railroad trestles and bridges out of the Powder River Basin in northeastern Wyoming and southeastern Montana. Send as many planes as possible as soon as possible to hit those trestles and bridges. I want to stop all the trains into and out of the Powder River Basin. The coal-fired power plants they service will soon run out of coal and shut down. The second-priority targets are pumping stations on natural gas delivery lines to the Upper Midwest and Northeast. If we can shut some of those gas lines down, many of the power plants there will have to shut down too.”

He signed it JR Hays, Major General Commanding, Texas Guard. Then he went into the executive terminal, found the pilots of the executive jet that he had flown in on, gave them the note, and told them to fly to Dyess right away, before the runway was blocked. They were to deliver the message to Elvin Gentry.

Fehrenbach posted guards armed with rifles and AT4s on the access roads to the airport. He set the rest of his men to towing planes onto the runways with the little tractors and tow bars the FBO had parked on the ramp. “Park the crash truck out there too,” he said.

Wiley Fehrenbach and JR Hays were called to the lobby television by the desk lady, who apparently had no idea that the jets on her ramp were being moved. She pointed to the television. Jack Hays was giving a speech.

President Jack Hays — the legislature had awarded him that new title along with declaring itself the Congress of Texas — was escorted by the leaders of the Texas House and Senate. They walked past television cameras from local stations whose feed was beamed to satellites that were broadcasting across the world. Soetoro’s censors might prevent it from being aired outside of Texas, but it would circle the earth and eventually reach every person upon it.

After shaking dozens of hands on his way to the podium, Jack Hays at last took his place behind it. His writers and Ben Steiner had given him a speech, but to Steiner’s dismay, he left the speech in his pocket. He was going to wing it.

In the packed gallery he saw his wife, Nadine.

“My fellow Texans,” he began. Then he changed that, “My fellow Texans and American patriots everywhere. I speak to you tonight after a tumultuous few days, a historic period that marks the beginning of our fight for freedom, a fight that we hope patriots everywhere in America will join and stand shoulder to shoulder with us against tyranny.”

He detailed President Soetoro’s transgressions, laying special emphasis on his imposition of martial law and the jailing of political opponents. “Who would have thought that what is being done now was possible in the United States: that we live in fear of the midnight knock on the door; that many of our leading citizens are in concentration camps, where at any moment we might join them as prisoners. Let us be frank. America is now being ruled by a tyrant who has shredded the Constitution of the United States. In the last week, one man has seized all power unto himself, and the rights of no man or woman in America are safe.

“He has chosen to rip up the Bill of Rights, destroying the right of free speech, which is absolutely essential in a democracy. He has destroyed the right to bear arms, which is a free people’s only defense against tyranny. He suspended the Writ of Habeas Corpus, an ancient writ created hundreds of years ago in England and brought to America by our first colonists to ensure the rule of law and protect the populace from government lawlessness. He has chosen to eliminate the currency. He has chosen to rule by fiat, dismissing Congress and flouting the courts. By his actions, he defines the word tyrant. In response to the dictates of a tyrant, we here in Texas have chosen to exercise our God-given right to self-government, our right to choose our own destiny and our own leaders, our right as a free people to resist tyranny and create a government worthy of a free people. In a sublime act of courage, the elected representatives of the people of Texas have done so. Yesterday morning in the very early hours they declared our independence. Today they established the Republic of Texas.”

He paused in response to loud, sustained applause.

“We face difficult days ahead. The federal government has already fired the first shots, which were cruise missiles launched from a navy ship at sea off our coast. Today the navy has declared a blockade of our ports in an attempt to deny us freedom of the seas.

“The road ahead will not be easy. No doubt the federal government will escalate its pressure upon us. Still, precious as it is, freedom is worthless unless it is defended, and I fear blood will be required. How much, no man can say. At least a dozen people died and two dozen were wounded when a power plant in the Houston area was struck by those cruise missiles. Those Texans, who wore no uniform, were our first casualties. I am reminded of the words of that great American patriot Thomas Paine: ‘If there must be trouble, let it be in my day, that my child may have peace.’”

The applause was thundering.

When the noise had at last subsided, he said: “Tonight we ask lovers of freedom all over America, indeed, lovers of freedom all over the world, to join us in our struggle. Let us here in Texas resolve to fight, no matter the price that may be required, for all that we loved about our country, for all that we treasured and hoped to pass on to our children, and their children, and the generations yet unborn. Let us here dedicate ourselves to enshrining freedom, justice, and the rule of law in the Republic of Texas, for ourselves and our posterity. So help us God.”

The applause and shouting died after a while, because the hour was late and the day had been long for everyone. Still standing at the podium, Jack Hays shouted, “Ben Steiner, you wrote our Declaration of Independence, what is your favorite song?”

Texans argued for years afterward whether Steiner knew that question was coming, but his answer was quick and his voice carried throughout the chamber. “‘The Eyes of Texas.’”

One of the television producers was about to send the program back to the studio for commentary by instant experts, but he now waited, sensing that the best might still be ahead.

Jack Hays started singing. He had a nice baritone. Everyone in the chamber was still on their feet, including the spectators in the gallery. Nadine’s eyes were locked upon her husband as he sang, “The eyes of Texas are upon you, all the live long day. The eyes of Texas are upon you, and you cannot get away…”

When the roar died, Hays looked and gestured at the Speaker, who shouted, “‘The Yellow Rose of Texas.’”

“There’s a yellow rose in Texas, that I am going to see. Nobody else could miss her, not half as much as me… She’s the sweetest little rosebud that Texas ever knew. Her eyes are bright as diamonds, they sparkle like the dew. You may talk about your Clementine and sing of Rosalee, but the yellow rose of Texas is the only girl for me…”

All over Texas, people were sitting in front of their televisions or radios, many singing at the top of their lungs, as Jack Hays thought they would.

Barry Soetoro watched the speech and singing on television in the family quarters of the White House. “That’s a dangerous man,” he remarked to Mickey. “He’s firing up every half-wit cracker in the country.”

“You’d better have someone shoot him quick,” she said. “You knew those Texas bastards were going to give you trouble.”

The president nodded. He knew good advice when he heard it.

Jack Hays said, “My favorite now, ‘Deep In the Heart of Texas,’” and he led off.

“The stars at night… are big and bright”—clap, clap, clap—“deep in the heart of Texas. The prairie bloom… is like perfume”—clap, clap, clap—“deep in the heart of Texas. Reminds me of the one I love”—clap, clap, clap—“deep in the heart of Texas…”

The last notes had barely died when Jack said, “Let’s end with the anthem of Texas, ‘Texas, Our Texas.’”

The voices rose loudly, if not melodiously. “Texas, our Texas! All hail the mighty state! Texas, our Texas! So wonderful, so great…”

The last stanza was the best, and although many of the legislators didn’t know the words, Jack Hays did. He sang it with every ounce of fervor that was in him. “Texas, dear Texas! From tyrant’s grip now free, shines forth in splendor, our star of destiny! Mother of heroes, we come your children true, proclaiming our allegiance, our faith, our love for you… God bless you, Texas! And keep you brave and strong, that you may grow in power and worth, throughout the ages long…”

Long after the singing had died and they turned off their televisions and radios, in cities, towns, and hamlets and at isolated homes and ranches, from the islands and low flatlands near the gulf and the thickets and pine forests of east Texas, to the prairies, plains, and semi-deserts of west Texas and the windswept tableland of the Panhandle, people hummed the tunes and thought about Jack Hays’ words. In truck stops, cafes, and big rigs rolling along lonesome highways, people thought and pondered, about America and Texas and the dreams men carry for a someday that may or may not ever come.

As Jack Hays once remarked to Nadine, “Texas isn’t a place; it’s a religion.”

At Fort Bliss, Major General Lee Parker had a nightmare on his hands. His flight line had been shot to hell, an Apache had been shot down, he had lost a Bradley and every soldier in it, and three helicopters had shot up his flight line. As Jack Hays spoke on the television, Parker’s air officer was trying to get a count on how many helicopters were flyable.

In addition to these problems, the Pentagon was bombarding him with messages directing him to attack in all directions, disarm all civilians, and arrest every male Texan he could find. “What about the women?” he asked his chief of staff, who had no answers. Parker had served in Texas long enough to know that many Texas women were, if anything, made of even sterner stuff than the men. Given sufficient reason, they could and occasionally did shoot a man as dead as a man can get. On the other hand, arresting women, some of them mothers of young children, would not play well in Washington. And he had no decent facilities to hold them in.

So how was he going to do all this attacking and arresting? He huddled with his ops officer, the brigade commanders, and their ops officers trying to figure out what his objectives and priorities should be. Staff officers flitted around like moths around a flame. Given enough time, something might have come out of the blizzard of orders from headquarters and all this staff work, but time ran out for Lee Parker at about three a.m. He was whipped. He hadn’t slept in eighteen hours, and was keeping himself running on strong black coffee.

“Sir,” one of his aides whispered to him. “There is a delegation of NCOs in your outer office. They want to talk to you.”

“A delegation?”

“Yes, sir. That’s what they said.”

“We don’t do delegations in the army. Tell them to return to duty or their quarters.”

“General, they insist on seeing you.”

Parker stormed out of the conference room and down the hallway to the reception area outside his office, fully intending to blister some soldiers. A delegation! Just who did these sergeants think they were, anyway?

He faced a group of command sergeant majors. “What the hell do you want that can’t go through the chain of command?”

“We wanted to bring this to your attention right now, General. The troops in the barracks are packing their duffle bags, getting in their cars, and driving out the main gate. Over in base housing, officers and men are loading their families and leaving.”

“This base is on lockdown. No one in or out. You know that!”

“Yes, sir, but the gate guards have left too. Our gates are wide open and unmanned.”

“Get them manned immediately. Anyone leaving this fort in violation of orders will be arrested and court-martialed.”

“Sir, the soldiers we have left refuse to man the gate. The main road outside the gate is lined with armed civilians, and more are coming every minute. The sheriff’s deputies are out there trying to keep them from flooding onto the base.”

Lee Parker stared, his jaw agape. In all his years in the army he had never even heard of mass disobedience. “This is mutiny,” he said to the top sergeants.

“Yes, sir, it is that. But we can’t stop our soldiers short of shooting them, and they won’t do the army any good if they are shot. What it boils down to is that less than ten percent of the troops will stick. That’s just an estimate. More like a guess, maybe. The rest are scattering like leaves in the wind. Some say they are going to fight for Texas, others are going home, wherever that is for them. Bottom line, General, is we have no one to fight with.”

On the way to headquarters, the sergeants agreed that having soldiers arrest local civilians and incarcerate them had been a major mistake. They didn’t think it was Parker’s fault; he was just following orders. Ill-considered orders. The men and women of the 1st Armored were soldiers, damn good ones too, not KGB or Gestapo or Brown Shirts. Or FEMA or Homeland thugs. “We’re soldiers, sir,” the division sergeant major told the general now by way of explanation, although without context the general thought that comment inane.

“Our troops aren’t acting like soldiers,” Parker shot back heatedly. “Mutiny! By God, when this is over I’m going to send a whole lot of people to Leavenworth. Just watch.”

The command sergeant major, Alfredo Mendez, five feet, six inches of professional soldier from McAllen, Texas, said, “General, I don’t think you understand the situation. Perhaps we weren’t clear enough. Your troops are leaving. They will not fight Texans. They refuse to serve in Barry Soetoro’s army. Your choice right now is to get in a plane as quickly as possible and fly out of here, or stay and surrender to the National Guard. When Wiley Fehrenbach figures out the situation here at Bliss, which will be sooner rather than later, he and his troops will be coming, armed, and our people will not fight.”

The general went into his office, slammed the door, and tried to get control of himself. Never in his wildest nightmares had he ever imagined this. Mutiny!

After five or six deep breaths, he walked out, past the waiting NCOs, and headed for the staff conference room. He broke the news to his staff and his generals in four sentences.

One of the brigadiers exploded. “We’ll get the loyal soldiers and kick the snot out of those guardsmen and civilians. Let’s get at it.”

“So you want to go out like Custer, eh?” another brigadier shot back. “This isn’t Iraq. These civilians will shoot first, just like the Sioux did. The people of Texas are fighting for their freedom from what they believe is a tyrannical government that has suspended the United States Constitution. So far we have fifteen dead and thirty-two wounded and all we’ve accomplished is burning down an empty National Guard Armory. What do you plan to do, fight house to house to get the hell out of El Paso? Make a last stand at a Walmart or on some lonesome, windswept hill in the middle of a cow pasture, if you get that far?”

“We could get our loyal troops and some of the equipment into New Mexico, and the Texans wouldn’t follow us across the border.”

“You think this is chess?” another officer retorted. “If I were making the decisions for them, I would follow you all the way to Hell to force you to surrender. And we’re just not ready to move. It would take a couple of days to get ready, and we don’t have two days.”

Lee Parker made up his mind. The brass would court-martial him if he ran, and, in truth, he didn’t have running in him. Nor did he want to fight for Barry Soetoro. He had been doing what he had done for the past thirty-two years: obeying orders because he was in the United States Army, serving under the Stars and Stripes. Now he lacked the means to fight. “We’ll surrender,” he said. He glanced at the chief of staff and told him to draft a message to all the higher headquarters telling them of his decision.

“Sir, shouldn’t we disable the tanks, artillery, Bradleys?”

“If we had the people to accomplish that, we wouldn’t be surrendering,” Lee Parker said bitterly. “This command has just disintegrated. I didn’t see it coming, and I doubt if anyone else in this room did either. If you did have an inkling, you certainly didn’t do your country any favors by keeping your mouth shut.” Yet, after all, in a vast bureaucracy, one didn’t get ahead by pointing out statistically remote disastrous possibilities that had never occurred in the past. A mutiny! For heaven’s sake, this is the United States Army, and 1st Armored was a hell of a good outfit!

Lee Parker went back to the NCOs who still stood in the reception area.

“Sergeant Major Mendez, will you please go to the main gate and tell the sheriff or his deputy to send for General Fehrenbach? I’ll surrender Fort Bliss to him. Have the sheriff bring him here.”

“Yes, sir,” Mendez said, saluted, and marched from the room.

The thunderstorms were gone and it was drizzling rain when JR Hays and Wiley Fehrenbach were ushered into the commanding general’s office at Fort Bliss. Seeing that JR was wearing major general’s stars, Lee Parker, standing at attention beside his desk, saluted and said, “Gentlemen, my troops have mutinied and I am unable to defend the base or the military equipment here. In order not to squander lives uselessly, I wish to surrender the base and its personnel to the Texas forces.”

JR and Wiley returned the salute. JR told Wiley, “You accept the surrender. Write it out on a computer.” He dictated the terms: All military equipment would be surrendered along with the troops. Those soldiers who wished to leave Texas were welcome to do so, and those who wished to enlist in the Texas Guard would be encouraged to do so after they took a loyalty oath and signed it. Anyone caught sabotaging surrendered military equipment would be dealt with summarily.

“If you or your staff or senior officers wish to leave, General Parker, I suggest you get in one of your C-130s or executive transports and leave immediately. We are going to block the runway with tanks as soon as you depart.”

“I’ll stay,” Lee Parker said. “My officers can make their own decisions.”

“I understand you have some civilians locked up.”

“Orders from Washington,” Parker replied curtly. “FEMA has lists.”

“Let them out, Wiley, and get them rides home. And haul down the American flags on base. Find some Texas flags and run them up.”

“Yes, sir.”

Wiley Fehrenbach unbuttoned his shirt and produced a Lone Star flag. He grinned at JR and handed it to the nearest soldier. “You heard him. Run it up the pole outside and get one for the pole at the main gate.”

JR glanced at the leather couch, and asked the two generals to conduct their business in the outer office. When the door was closed behind them, he sacked out on the couch. He glanced at his watch. The Republic of Texas was just a bit less than forty-eight hours old. The window was open and the breeze felt good. He was asleep ten seconds later.