Liberty's Last Stand

TWENTY

In Galveston that morning, after the sun came up, the sheriff drove his car down the pier and parked adjacent to the gangway of USS Texas. He walked across the gangway and shouted down into the open hatch, “Anybody home?”

In less than a minute, a man appeared below and looked up at him. “Yep, we’re home.”

“Mind if I come down and visit?”

“Please do.”

Speedy Gonzales escorted the sheriff to a small wardroom, where he found Loren Snyder studying several large bound volumes and sipping a cup of coffee.

“Coffee, Sheriff?”

“Don’t mind if I do.”

“Best coffee in the world,” Loren Snyder said.

The sheriff sipped at his, which he took black. Almost as good as Dunkin’ Donuts coffee, he thought, but he didn’t say it. Instead, he got straight to the point. “When are y’all going to nuke yourselves out of here?”

Loren laughed. “Well, we’re working on that right now. Before we go, I want my crew, all five of us, to run through every emergency procedure in the book and figure out how we’re going to handle it. We don’t have sixty people, just five. We don’t want to die in this boat.”

The sheriff looked around and nodded. “I sure understand that.” Just sitting here in this steel cigar gave the sheriff a mild case of claustrophobia. What it would be like being submerged he didn’t want to think about.

“How long can you guys stay submerged, anyway?” the sheriff asked.

“Until we run out of toilet paper.”

The sheriff chuckled at that, thinking Loren Snyder was being facetious. He wasn’t. With only five people aboard eating the stores, Texas could stay submerged for a long, long time.

“We’re going to spend today running emergency drills,” Snyder said, “making sure everyone knows what is expected of him and we are all on the same page. I hope by tonight we’ll be ready to leave this pier.”

“What about the U.S. Navy? I’ll bet they’re kinda unhappy that they lost this thing.”

“They’ll probably send SEALs to take it back,” Lorrie admitted.

“You mean like those guys who whacked bin Laden?”

“Yep. Naval Special Warfare commandos.”

“Maybe y’all oughta get outta here and do your drills someplace else.”

“Sheriff, I agree one hundred percent. As soon as we feel we can safely move this submarine, we will. In the interim, it would help if you would station some officers with radios out there around the harbor to keep a lookout. I suspect the SEALs will come at night. Probably tonight. We hope to be gone when they get here, but just in case, if your lookouts see anything suspicious — anything — I would appreciate a heads-up so we can cast off and get going. Once we close the hatches, the SEALs can’t get inside the boat.”

The sheriff nodded reluctantly. “Today and this evening?”

“Yes, sir.”

“You’ll try like the devil to get this stuff done and get out of Galveston?”

“Cross my heart.”

“Okay, Captain. But I ain’t asking my deputies to get in a shootout with SEALs. No way. They’re law enforcement officers, not soldiers.”

They discussed radio frequencies for a moment, then Loren Snyder said, “Thanks for stopping by, Sheriff.”

The sheriff had one last gulp of coffee, then said, “Good luck to y’all out there, Captain.” After he and Loren shook hands, he followed Speedy to the forward torpedo room and the ladder topside.

Captain. Loren Snyder liked the sound of that.

Secret Service sniper Tobe Baha drove slowly around Austin looking things over. He had had a private interview with President Soetoro’s chief of staff, Al Grantham, then went home and packed for a trip. He put his rifle in its aluminum airline case in the toolbox behind the cab of his pickup. He carefully locked the toolbox with the best padlocks money could buy.

The rifle wasn’t his service rifle. This was his personal rifle, a Remington Model 700 in .308, or as it was known in the service, 7.62×51 NATO. It certainly wasn’t the best cartridge for extreme long-range shooting, but Tobe had used it extensively while in the military and knew the ballistics cold, so he was very comfortable with it. And ammo for it was available everywhere, if need be. Tobe had loaded his own with match bullets and had two boxes in the airline case.

Under his rifle was another airline case stuffed with a quarter of a million U.S. dollars and fifty thousand dollars’ worth of gold. That was his down payment on the assassination of Jack Hays.

The problem was that Tobe Baha wasn’t an assassin. He was a sniper, pure and simple, so he didn’t even bother trying to come up with a second method of taking out the president of Texas if setting up a snipe proved difficult. Actually, he couldn’t conceive of a set of circumstances that would cause him to miss a rifle shot, if and when he got one. And he would get one, sooner or later. Everyone was vulnerable to a sniper, unless they lived in a prison, and politicians especially. They had to make public appearances, they got into and out of limos and helicopters on a routine basis, and most of them, including Jack Hays, had families.

Patience was the sniper’s golden asset, and Tobe Baha had more than his share. He could and would wait until he was presented with a shot he knew he could make during one of Jack Hays’ inevitable public appearances. After that, with a cool million in his jeans, he would disappear.

Of course, he worried a little about the possibility that the Soetoro administration might eventually want him permanently removed from the land of the living. If they just had him arrested, he might talk. So arrest wasn’t the risk.

Tobe Baha had thought it over when approached for this shoot, and decided he could handle the risk of treachery by his employers. After all, three or four of the Secret Service people knew of the plot.

He had said as much on his last interview with Al Grantham. “If you don’t pay me the money you owe or if you send people after me, I’ll come after you,” he told Grantham, “and I won’t miss.”

Austin certainly had possibilities, Tobe concluded as he drove around. The capitol was surrounded by buildings, although they were several hundred yards from the capitol itself, which sat on a small knoll surrounded by scattered large trees and lots of grass. The governor’s mansion also had buildings within range of a .308. The real question was whether Jack Hays’ bodyguards included snipers. Protecting a public figure from bombs and maniacs with pistols and knives was what the Secret Service did best. Snipers, however, were the worst threat, which was why Tobe Baha had been recruited by the service. It takes a sniper to kill a sniper.

If the Texas crowd didn’t have snipers protecting Jack Hays, Tobe Baha’s mission would be a whole lot easier. So his first task was to determine if they did.

Tobe Baha smiled. This was going to be a good hunt.

Major General JR Hays launched his first offensive that morning, the thirty-first of August. He watched Texas guardsmen file aboard six C-130 Hercules transports, four-engine turboprops, at Fort Hood, sixty-four combat-equipped soldiers to each plane. Two other C-130s were being loaded with howitzers, ammunition, rations, water, and a portable field hospital.

“I’m banking on surprise,” JR told Colonel Nathaniel Danaher, who was leading the attacking force. “I think you can get on the ground and establish a perimeter before the people on the ground figure out that something is going down. I want you to clear the planes and let them take off immediately for another load. Ideally, I’d like to get a brigade on the ground over there with some artillery to give it teeth. F-16s will provide close air support and top cover. But it’s up to you to stop our assault if you find you are in way over your head. You must remain in radio contact with the planes in the air at all times, keep them advised of how things are going.”

Nate Danaher looked ten years younger than he did last night. The challenge of leading men in combat had always energized him.

The six transports bearing soldiers took off first, escorted by a high top cover of F-16s from Lackland. The attacking force would fly east of Barksdale, turn and approach the base from that direction, calling the control tower for landing clearance. While the panicked air controllers sorted through messages trying to find one about incoming Hercs, the Hercs would land, discharge their troops, and take off again. The C-130s bearing howitzers and ammo would land an hour later, after the soldiers of the first wave had secured the flight line.

Would they achieve surprise? JR Hays asked himself that question, but he didn’t know the answer. If the bad guys had gotten wind of the invasion of Louisiana, he would be among the first to hear about it.

Maybe yes, maybe no, he decided.

Perhaps he should have given his major general stars to Nate Danaher and commissioned himself a colonel, then led the troops invading Barksdale. Jack Hays would have said okay, if that was the way he wanted it. But would Nate Danaher have laid on this attack if he had been the general in charge? That hypothetical had no possible answer, because JR had made the decision. Nate had saluted and marched off to give every ounce he had in him. That quality, JR thought, was the salvation of the professional soldier. Regardless of whether the professional thought the order wise or foolish, he said, “I will do my best, sir,” and the rest of the sentence was unspoken: “Even if it kills me.” So generals ordered men into combat, knowing that some of them, an unknown number, would die. Generals hoped and prayed that the objective would be worth the sacrifice, and, in the end, only they and God would know how the scales balanced.

JR thought ruefully about the old observation that doctors buried their mistakes. Truly, so did generals.

And yet, even if he lost every soldier and airplane he sent this morning, JR Hays would win a strategic victory simply by attacking. He knew that in the depths of his military soul. Soetoro would stop worrying about invading Texas and wreaking havoc and start worrying about protecting what he had. People the world over expect their government to protect them, and when it doesn’t, or can’t, they begin to worry.

And if Danaher was victorious and captured a fleet of intact B-52s, Barry Soetoro would start fretting about where they might be used against him. Would they bomb Washington? New York? Los Angeles? A squadron of B-52s carpet-bombing with unguided weapons could destroy a city, just as they did Hanoi. Fighters would be detailed to guard the skies over cities and military bases. Soetoro must commit his air force to protecting those places, and if he did, those air assets would be unavailable to attack Dallas, Houston, San Antonio, Austin, or the military bases Hays had captured.

JR walked across the tarmac when the troop-laden transports were out of sight and went into the base’s air traffic control facilities. “Are the Lancers from Dyess airborne?”

“Yes, sir. Target time is less than an hour away.”

The B-1s were targeted against the military equipment at Fort Polk. Many of the soldiers at Hood had trained at Polk, and they helped annotate maps. The Lancer crews knew precisely where they were going, and they had air cover, F-16s from Lackland. In and out fast like a rabbit was their credo. Leaving smoldering wreckage.

JR got a cup of coffee from the pot and sat down in front of a temporary theater map taped to the wall. He had launched his strikes; now there was nothing to do but wait.

Wait, wait, wait.

I found Jake Grafton alert that morning when I took a cup of coffee into the dispensary. He was still on the gurney.

“Tommy, you’ve got to get me off this thing and help me to the restroom.”

I did that, and then I put him in a large easy chair in the main room of the facility, or lodge, or whatever they called it, with a blanket wrapped around him.

“Thanks for rescuing me, Tommy,” Grafton said with coffee in hand. He sniffed it, savoring the smell before he took the first sip.

“Any old time, Admiral. The guys and I had nothing to do since you got kicked out of the agency. So we thought, let’s go spring the admiral and take a nice vacation.”

“And Sarah Houston?”

“She’s got the hots for me something terrible. I think that’s affected her brain. Whatever, she came along.”

About that time all the folks upstairs came down, so I got busy fixing breakfast. Needless to say, we didn’t have eggs or milk or any of that, but we had beans and MREs and a lot of canned meats and veggies. I made a stew. Tasted it and added some salt and a generous dollop of Cholula sauce.

When I brought it into the main room and put it on a table, Sal Molina and Jack Yocke were in earnest conversation with Grafton. I ladled some of the stew out for the admiral, gave it to him with a spoon, and told everyone else to help themselves.

Sarah was eating tiny little bites. “The first person who complains gets to do the cooking,” I said with no-nonsense authority.

Willie Varner made a face. “Tastes like shit, Tommy, but good.”

When the chuckles died, he started telling about the fare in the prisons he had resided in. According to the Wire, prisons were good feeders. He was lying, again. After he got out the second time, he told me he never wanted to see a macaroni or spaghetti noodle again as long as he lived.

I sent Willie and Armanti down to the guard shack to relieve Travis and Willis. “We’re going to have visitors, probably sooner rather than later.” I told them about the doctor and my threat. “I doubt if he believed me. I don’t have a face that will scare anybody.”

“He’ll blab for sure,” Willie said, nodding.

When Willis Coffee got there, he went upstairs and got an extra shirt and jeans for the admiral. He was about the same size. Travis Clay loaned Grafton his tennis shoes; he said the boots were fine for him. I left the guys to clean up, took a carbine, checked to see that the magazine was full and there was a round in the chamber. Strapped my pistol belt around my middle. It had been a few years since I was here, and I wanted to refresh my memory about how the land laid. Grafton, Molina, and Yocke were busy solving the world’s problems as I left.

I walked up behind the lodge, stood for a moment listening to the muffled generator, then hiked straight up the hill to the ridge. At first the hill behind the lodge was steep, then the grade lessened and it was just a walk in the forest, which was beautiful. The chain-link fence on the ridge ran north-south, surveyor straight. The trees and brush had been cleared for ten feet on either side, and this late in the summer, the open space was full of knee-high weeds. I walked the fence for about a half mile north, going downhill when the ridge turned west. I crossed a little creek that didn’t have any water in it and then followed the fence back steeply uphill.

I kept track of the security cameras mounted unobtrusively in trees on our side of the fence. The cameras were battery-operated and broadcast to a receiver in the security shack. I could just discern a trail agency people had walked through the years changing the camera batteries, and no doubt replacing cameras that broke or got water in them or someone in the National Forest on the other side of the fence shot for the hell of it.

When I had had enough I turned eastward, downhill in the general direction of the guard cabin. Ended up climbing another ridge. This ground was cut up by meandering little creeks and steep slopes, all heavily wooded.

Mainly by accident I finally found the access road and followed it to the guard cabin. I could hear the generator running a hundred feet away.

I walked in without knocking and startled Willie Varner and Armanti Hall, who were listening to a radio — police calls, or maybe FEMA calls. The digital feed from the security cameras was on a monitor beside the radio, but they weren’t watching it.

“With that generator going, you dudes won’t even hear them coming,” I remarked.

“Sit down, Tommy,” Armanti said. “You should hear some of this. People are shooting at federal officers. I don’t know if they are FEMA or Homeland, and I don’t guess it matters.”

“Where?”

“Well, I don’t recognize any of the place names, but I kinda think up in Maryland or Pennsylvania someplace. One guy was talking about getting more vehicles and agents out of Harrisburg.”

Willie chimed in, “Two federal guys shot and need evacuation. They claim they killed three of the locals. Civilians. Ambushers, they called them.”

“We thought we should keep an ear open for transmissions around here,” Armanti explained, reading the expression on my face.

“You guys start watching the barn and hangar security cameras on the monitor. The feds won’t sneak down through the woods. Someone will drive up that road sooner or later and they won’t give you a heads-up call on the radio. You’ll see them on the barn and hangar cameras.”

“We can’t stay here,” Willie declared. He wasn’t Einstein but he got there eventually.

I tromped out and headed up the hill to the lodge. If we didn’t leave we were running the risk of being trapped. I should have stuck my pistol in that doctor’s mouth and scowled until he crapped his pants. Grafton was asleep again. He was certainly in no condition to be moved, so we had to stay.

I got Willis Coffee and Travis Clay to dig a nest for two heavy machine guns across the road from the parking area where they could engage any vehicles that drove up. They were pros: they knew how to set up a machine-gun nest. They took some AT4s along, just in case, and got busy moving the guns and ammo.

Jack Yocke and Sal Molina were not thrilled when I told them they were now soldiers in the Army of the Rebellion. “I’m a reporter,” Yocke said stiffly.

“I just drafted you,” I replied. “When this is over, you’ll probably have enough material to write a couple of books and eat on the rubber chicken circuit until you die of constipation. Right now, however, your problem is staying alive. I’m about to do you a big favor and show you how you can do that, and help the rest of us stay alive too.”

“And if I say no?”

“You walk down to the hard road and hitch a ride anywhere you want to go.”

“I’ll stay.”

“I’m so thrilled.”

Molina said, “I’m fat, out of shape, and never touched a weapon in my life.”

“When this is over, you’ll want to join the NRA.”

“What about me?” Sarah asked.

“You are my inside surprise. You can toss grenades and shoot if they come through the door in front or back. I suggest that you pick a few spots to watch the back of the building. If we get visitors with something nasty on their minds, they will drop someone off to come through the woods behind us. Your job is to guard the rear.”

I showed the three of them how to operate the carbines, grenades, and AT4s. “Don’t fire one of these AT4s in the house. The back blast will burn the building down.”

When I thought they had the basics, I gave them a little heart-to-heart about combat. “You are going to be very scared when the shooting starts. Concentrate on making your weapon function and keep firing it at the bad guys. It’s really easy to shoot the wrong people, which will not help you nor the rest of us. The main thing is to stay in the fight.”

“What about prisoners?”

“What about ’em?”

“Well, what if they throw down their weapons and surrender?”

“Anybody who gets into a shooting scrape with us wants our weapons, vehicles, and food. If you surrender, they’ll kill you. I suggest you do the same to them.”

“I can’t do that,” Molina said frankly. Yocke nodded his agreement.

“Don’t worry. Someone will do it for you,” I said. “Just don’t let ’em run off.”

“Could you shoot a man with his hands up?” Yocke asked Sarah.

She looked at him as if he had asked if she were still a virgin. Women are usually tougher and more realistic than men.

One of the troopers in the back of the first C-130 in the string flying just above Louisiana was Specialist Jimmy Schaffran from Minnesota. His story was unique, as was the story of every man in the plane, but perhaps similar to many. He had been a chubby nerd in high school, addicted to video games, partly because he wished to find some way to escape a bad home situation and partly because he was unattractive to girls. He had no idea what to say to them. Certainly he wasn’t a jock or rocket scientist. There was no money in the family to send him to college when he graduated from high school, a fact he didn’t fret because he didn’t know what he wanted to do with his life and doubted that he was smart enough for college, anyway. He got a job delivering sandwiches in his father’s old work car, then pizza because the tips were better, and finally decided to join the army.

Recruit training nearly killed him. Pushed mercilessly by the sergeants, the pounds began melting off and his stamina increased dramatically. After thirty pounds of fat were gone, he began gaining muscle.

Jimmy Schaffran found a home in the army. He had some buddies and they went into town together. He met a girl, a cute waitress in Killeen with a little tattoo over her heart, which happened to put it on the top of the swell of her left breast; she loved to neck in his car, the first one he had ever owned, cherry red, only three years old, with a loud aftermarket muffler.

When this Texas thing went down, a Guard officer asked him if he wanted to go back to the U.S. Army or fight for Texas. Jimmy hadn’t hesitated. “I’m from Minnesota,” he said, “but now I’m a Texan.” His buddies, from California, Michigan, and South Carolina, also decided they were Texans. “Be a shame to break up a good team,” one of them said. So all four were in this assault on Barksdale, two on this plane and two on another.

“Hell, it’s all an adventure,” Jimmy Schaffran told himself, wished his stomach would stop doing flips, and squeezed his weapon a little tighter.

Nathaniel Danaher sat behind the pilots in the cockpit of the first C-130 to approach Barksdale. The planes, strung out in trail about a mile apart, had flown the entire distance from Fort Hood at a hundred feet above the ground. They had managed to avoid several radio towers, which would have made flying at this altitude suicidal at night.

As briefed, the pilot called Barksdale Approach, gave his position from the field, and asked for clearance to land. “I’m leading a flight of six. My playmates are in trail and would like to land behind me.”

There was a long silence, then, “We don’t have a flight plan on you. Where did you take off?”

“Fort Rucker.”

Another pause, then, “Make a modified straight-in to Runway Three-Three, Altimeter two niner niner six, wind three one zero at seven. Switch to Tower and report five miles.”

“Wilco.”

The copilot flipped the radio freq and made the call, trying to keep his voice airline-pilot, ah-shucks cool.

“Flight of six, cleared to land.”

The copilot turned to Danaher. “They’ll get on the phone to Rucker, sir.”

“Regardless of what they say, land. Taxi right over in front of base ops and drop the ramp.”

Danaher went into the back and got his troops ready. They had been carefully briefed, and knew they were to go off running as soon as the loadmaster lowered the ramp.

In Barksdale Approach Control, confusion reigned. The only planes scheduled to arrive at noon were a flight of four F-22s. If Ops had received messages about arriving Hercs, no one had seen them, but that didn’t mean they didn’t exist somewhere. And there was something else. Approach Control radar showed blips without transponder codes, up high and approaching from the south. What were these airplanes? The duty ops officer called his boss, a colonel, who confessed his ignorance. Flipping madly through the messages on the message board, and calls to the message center, didn’t help. Nor would calling Center do any good: Center was off the air and no one was answering the telephones.

The first Herc touched down and, ignoring orders from Ground Control, taxied to a stop in front of the Ops building; armed, helmeted troops in battle dress piled out of the plane.

An enlisted controller in the tower remarked, “Rucker must have sent an advance party to augment base security.”

Very shortly, everyone in the tower was disabused of that notion and jerked headlong into the reality of war. Troopers entered the tower, pointed their guns, and waved the air force controllers away from the scopes and microphones. An NCO growled, “You people get on the floor, hands in your laps, and no one will get hurt!” Troopers bound the air controllers’ wrists with plastic ties. Cell phones were confiscated. Another trooper sat at a microphone to guide approaching aircraft.

Similar scenes were enacted at the base ops center, where Colonel Danaher established his command post, and at the message center. It all happened so quickly that no message of the attack was transmitted. As far as the Pentagon knew, Barksdale was still owned by the United States Air Force.

Danaher couldn’t believe his good fortune. Lady Luck had just given him a gift of a few hours.

The second C-130 taxied to the B-52 parking mat. As the troops disembarked, an air police SUV came roaring up and two armed men jumped out. When a couple of the troopers fired bursts over their heads, the air policemen jumped back into the SUV and started off, but now someone shot the tires out. It kept going anyway. Another burst into the rear of it brought it to a stop. One of the air policemen was slightly wounded. They were disarmed and led away across the mat to a holding area as the troops fanned out and the C-130 began taxiing for takeoff. There were more troops at Fort Hood that needed transport.

Two minutes after the sixth and last transport off-loaded its men, Colonel Danaher could look at the base’s mechanics, officers, and pilots seated in rows, hands fastened with plastic ties, and under guard. It was a quick victory for Texas. Hearing the reports over handheld radio, Colonel Danaher breathed a sigh of relief. For the first time in his life, he understood the ennui that engulfed the military personnel in Pearl Harbor in the weeks before the Japanese attack on December 7, 1941. It is devilishly difficult to instantly transition from peace to war. Danaher knew he wasn’t up to speed yet, but thought maybe he better get that way fast. No doubt all the air force personnel on the base were waking up mighty quick.

The B-1 Lancer surprise attack on the war materiel stockpiled at Fort Polk was a complete success. Not a SAM or artillery shell rose to meet them. Using JDAMs, the six bombers hit the large tank and artillery depots. Then the F-16s flying top cover came down and used rockets and cannons on armored vehicles and artillery pieces that appeared undamaged. Several JDAMs went into the fuel storage facilities. Post-strike photos snapped by the F-16 strike leader suggested that perhaps forty percent of the tanks and artillery were no longer serviceable. The black column of smoke rising from the fuel storage areas was visible in the sky from a distance of ninety miles.

While that strike was going on, General Martin L. Wynette was in his limo on his way to the Executive Office Building. When he received a call from the JCS duty officer informing him of the attack on Fort Polk, Wynette hung up the phone with a frown. The president and his disciples were going to eat him alive. He briefed his general officer aides, a male and a female, so they would know what was coming.

At the Executive Office Building, Wynette and his two aides were ushered to a conference room where Soetoro, his national security advisor, and a dozen top political aides were waiting, including Sulana Schanck, the Muslim. She had always intimidated Wynette. Those eyes, glaring at everyone who didn’t share her vision of a Muslim America. Wynette thought her the most evil woman he had ever met. He thought that one of these days she might snap and start cutting off heads with a butcher knife. He hoped she would begin with Al Grantham.

Wynette opened his briefcase as the men and women in the room debated the implications of Oklahoma’s rebellion and the scheduled independence votes in other plains states. Soetoro seemed to have himself under control this morning, Wynette thought, as he listened to machine-gun bursts of terrible news.

Wynette dropped into a chair and tried to keep his face deadpan. His aides sat down beside him. No one mentioned the attacks on Fort Polk in Louisiana. Maybe they don’t know yet, he thought.

Finally the president addressed a question to the general, his first acknowledgment of the officer’s presence. “What can the military do to put a stop to this treason?”

“Nothing,” Wynette said, “except maybe bomb the statehouses involved. And I’m not sure what that would achieve.”

Al Grantham let out a roar. “Goddamnit, General, it would kill some traitors.”

“You folks have a red-hot political crisis on your hands and the U.S. armed forces are melting away. A couple more days of this and we won’t have enough people to turn the lights on and off at the Pentagon.”

Silence descended upon the room. Wynette thought about all the ways the president had disrespected the men and women in uniform during his administration, including refusing to make appearances and public statements during Armed Forces Day, and refusing to salute the flag. His contempt of the people in uniform was now being returned in spades.

“We are going to have to recruit an army of progressives who are willing to fight for America,” Barry Soetoro said.

Good luck with that, Wynette thought. What he said aloud was, “By the time you get your army recruited and equipped, with enough training to teach them which end of the rifle the bullet comes out of, you are going to be out of office.”

The political aides merely stared ahead silently, Schanck included. Soetoro didn’t say a word. Even Grantham managed to control himself. All of which proved to the chairman of the Joint Chiefs that the White House knew there was not going to be an election in November. That was still their little secret.

Finally Grantham said, “Maybe you should start shooting some of your reluctant warriors. That would inspire the rest to do their sworn duty.”

“I don’t have the authority to hold drumhead courts-martial and execute soldiers.”

“The president can give you that authority.”

“I don’t want it. If you like, I’ll tender my resignation right now and you can dig down through the officer corps until you find someone willing to shoot American soldiers. There must be one or two ambitious assholes in uniform that would shoot their own mothers for a big promotion. I’ve never met any, but they say there are rotten apples in every barrel.”

Grantham snarled, “Why don’t you start saying yes, sir, and no, sir, and stop this damned insubordination?”

“I thought you wanted me here for professional advice. I just gave you some.”

“Enough,” Soetoro said. He rubbed his face with both hands. “We have a political crisis that is fed by social media and the press pouring gasoline on hot embers. What we need to do is shut down the power grid nationwide to stop all the bitching, plotting, and conspiracies.”

Martin Wynette lost control of his face. He stared slack-jawed at the president. That had to be the most idiotic suggestion he had ever heard.

“We must do something, and that might have a good effect,” Al Grantham opined.

Ironically, Martin Wynette thought that comment proof that Grantham was a total, complete flaming fool, and a world-class ass-kisser to boot! Had his senior aide only known the general’s thoughts, he would have probably laughed aloud. Wynette managed to close his mouth and put on his poker face again.

The civilians around the table discussed it. Indeed, they thought that something had to be done to douse the political fires, and this was something. If those rebels were sitting in the dark without air conditioning or the internet or telephones, at least they wouldn’t be damning the administration and fomenting treason before a national audience, the members of which would have their own problems to deal with. And it was the president’s own idea, which was nice. No one there had to take the risk of offering a suggestion that might be rejected. It never hurts to say yes to the boss.

What wasn’t addressed, Wynette noted grimly, was how cutting the juice was going to stop the social collapse that he thought almost inevitable. In fact, Wynette thought that leaving people nationwide without power to stay cool and preserve and prepare food in the dead heat of August was likely to accelerate the process, not impede it. Not to mention the havoc it would play on nursing home residents and the elderly who lacked emergency generators. Police and firefighters could not be summoned in an emergency. This callous decision would kill American citizens, whether they were progressives or conservatives, loyal or disloyal, whether they worshipped the ground Barry Soetoro walked upon or urged God every night to take the bastard quick. It would also stop the American economy dead in its tracks. Factories would be left without not only electricity but natural gas, because electricity powered the compressors needed to move it through pipelines. Without pumps, water and sewage would cease to flow. And every filling station in America would be unable to pump gasoline or diesel fuel. Truck deliveries would stop. If the power outage went on long enough, urban Americans would begin to starve or die of thirst. Cutting power might be justified as a military necessity, Wynette thought, but certainly not as a political expedient to silence dissent. He almost said aloud that JR Hays would turn off America’s juice if he could, but being Martin Wynette, he kept his mouth shut.

Soetoro made the decision, as his inner circle of committed progressives knew he would. “Do it,” he said, and gestured toward the door.

Some moron asked, “How?”

Grantham fielded that one. “Call the heads of the various power companies and tell them to shut off the juice, and if they don’t, send the FBI around to arrest them and every officer in the company. Crack the damned whip.” When you have dictatorial powers, you can iron out all the little difficulties.

“Yes, sir,” they said, and scattered.

“You stay,” the president said to the general and his aides.

When the room was empty, the president said, “Tell me about that attack in Louisiana.”

So he had heard after all. “I got a telephone call in the car on the way over here,” Wynette said, “so all I know are the basics. Apparently B-1 Lancers. They probably came from Dyess Air Force Base in Abilene.”

“What can we do about those Texas traitors?”

“Sir, we are putting together an invasion, as you directed. JR Hays just made the invasion a little more difficult, but he can’t stop it.”

“What will he do next?”

“We need to destroy those B-1s on the ground at Dyess. I was thinking of using the B-2s at Whiteman Air Force Base in Missouri to do that as soon as possible.”

“Fine,” Barry Soetoro said. “We should have retired those old B-1s years ago. Instead we wasted mountains of money on them that could have been better spent elsewhere.”

Wynette didn’t argue that point.

“I also want you to turn off the lights in Texas, General. I don’t think calling the president of the power company will do it. Do it any way you can. As soon as you can. Texas started all this trouble.”

“Yes, sir.”

Barry Soetoro would have been furious if he had known that JR Hays was already one jump ahead of him. Another half-dozen B-1 Lancers were already in the air on their way to Missouri to bomb Whiteman Air Force Base. An hour later, as the carcasses of the B-2s at Whiteman were still burning, he found out.

In the limo with his general officer aides, Martin Wynette said, “He knew about that Louisiana attack when he ordered the power turned off nationwide.”

His generals both nodded.

“And he knew about the state legislatures giving him the finger.”

Yes.

“Did he do it to punish the American people?” Wynette asked aloud.

“Ten to one that he blames the Texans for the loss of power,” the female two-star said.

“No bet,” her male colleague said.

“A hundred to one,” she offered.

“No bet.”

But with the power off, only a few will hear him, Wynette thought. And who will care? The one fact every American will understand is that the federal government can’t keep electricity flowing through the wires.

At Barksdale Air Force Base four F-22s broke over the runway and swung into trail on the downwind. They slowed, dropped their landing gear and flaps, and the controller in the tower cleared them to land. Once down, Ground Control directed them to park on one end of the B-52 ramp.

Everything appeared normal to the pilots as they followed the directions of linesmen, parked in a row, and one by one shut down. Number Four was the last to shut down, of course, and the pilot was the last to exit his cockpit onto a boarding ladder that had been pushed to the side of his plane.

He was standing with one foot in the cockpit and one foot on the ladder when he looked around and realized that the other pilots had their hands in the air and soldiers in battle dress were pointing weapons at them.

He drew his pistol from a holster under his left armpit and began shooting into the instrument panel, which was composed of complex multifunction displays.

The air force officer had fired three shots when Specialist Jimmy Schaffran triggered a three-shot burst from his M4 carbine from a distance of eighteen feet. The pilot tumbled backward without even trying to grab the ladder and fell to the concrete.

Jimmy Schaffran, late of Minnesota and now of Texas, walked over to the body. The man’s head was at an odd angle. Obviously a broken neck. If the carbine bullets didn’t kill him, the fall to the concrete did.

Schaffran was still staring at the corpse when his buddy from South Carolina came running over.

One look at the dead man was enough. Carolina threw an arm over Schaffran’s shoulders. He turned him away from the body and said, “You had to do it, Jimmy. We may need these planes.”

“Fuckin’ shit,” said Jimmy Schaffran.

“Hey, man. We chose our side of the fence and he chose his. Not much any of us can do about it now. God will have to figure it out.”