The Last Centurion

Chapter One Ruminations on Durance Vile

It's said, justifiably, that in the Pentagon, light birds are the coffee bitches.

I was a fucking major. A very junior one. On temporary duty no less. I carried the piss-pot.

It didn't matter that I was "Centurion." The REMFs were just jealous and pissy. The warriors who were stuck in durance vile knew it was all a crock, anyway.

I thought they were just hiding me out. Oh, no. They were putting me to work.

I got stuck in "The Department of Emergency Supply Methodology."

Okay, an "oxymoron" is when two words don't go together. Jumbo shrimp. Happy marriage. (Wife edit: HEY!)

What is it when three words don't go together?

In an emergency, plans always leave out the emergency. So no matter what method you'd planned on using, you always end up finding out it don't work. "No plan survives contact with the enemy" or the disaster as the case may be.

And supply is always short.

Troxymoron?

So what was the "Department of Emergency Supply Methodology"?

It was the Army's Department of the Agriculture and FEMA combined.

USDA was just about the largest department in the government. It had, I shit you not, more county farm agents than there were total counties in the U.S. The one thing that is eternal, forget the stars—they burn out in a few million to billion years—is a government program. The USDA had programs that went back to the horse and buggy days. It had programs that were designed to "ensure critical military supplies of . . ." stuff that the military hadn't used in decades. Like, say, mohair wool. (I think that one actually finally got cut in the '90s.)

Were farmers at least in part to blame. Oh, hell yeah. We'd been major lobbyists since it referred to some hotel in DC where guys would hang out in the lobby to snag the arm of visiting congressmen. Back then, nobody stayed in DC if they could possibly avoid it (it was listed as a "hardship post" by the State Department) and most of Congress stayed in various hotels. The most powerful stayed in one in particular (damned if I can remember the name. The Lafayette?) and guys hired by various interest groups would hang out in the lobby hoping to snag them. And Farmers were one of the interest groups.

Am I gonna justify it? I could try. People that lived through 2020 and 2021, though, can probably justify it better by the results of farming "special interests" NOT getting their way in 2019 and 2020.

The point is the links between the USDA and the Army went waaay back. Back before the Civil War when it was the Agriculture Bureau of the Department of the Interior.

Here's a thing for you. Army veterinarians and vet techs (yes, the Army has both) were also the Army's food safety inspectors. Why?

Because the Army used to buy most of its meat on the hoof. And then slaughter same. You didn't used to be able to store beef and pork for very long. If you wanted meat, you slaughtered a steer and ate it. Vets made sure the beef wasn't ridden with diseases. Ergo: Food inspectors.

When storage methods improved big companies started supplying in big ways. ("Uncle Sam" actually came from the Civil War. One of the main suppliers of Union Forces was owned by a guy named Sam. The stuff was stamped "US." "We got another food delivery from Uncle Sam.") But the food still had to be inspected. Companies did then and do now occasionally cut corners a little too close.

Thus vets were the food inspectors. End of history lesson.

But, generally, the Army kept out of agriculture and the USDA didn't tell us how to fight wars. As long as USDA kept up the supply of food for the troops and we kept people from invading, nobody tread on each other's turf.

Problem was, in 2019 the USDA wasn't keeping people fed.

Don't get me wrong. The USDA can't feed a damned person. They're not farmers or distributors or processors. But they can, and their mission was, to "create a favorable environment for American agricultural production."

The problem being . . . the Bitch. And all the thousand of appointees she'd brought in.

Look, the Bitch wasn't, essentially, an environmentalist. I don't think so anyway, not beyond the "I won't throw stuff out my window cause that's littering" level of environmentalist. She contributed to some environmental groups, sure, but that's just feel good stuff unless you give all your money to them and live in a hut and a ragged shift.

But she had had to make a lot of political deals to get elected. And more notably to get the nomination because she was not what the hard left considered "a true believer." And while she'd packed important posts like Justice and Commerce and Defense and State with her more core supporters, mostly lawyers, she'd had to give stuff to the wackoes to keep them on her side.

Where did they go? All those departments they'd been feuding with for decades. Interior, USDA, Met Service (where there was too much support of "global warming deniers"), EPA of course. Anything that had to do with keeping the "environment" in that pristine state of pre-Columbian U.S. You know, where the Indians wiped out the mammoths and horses and used to run giant herds of buffalo off cliffs to get a few cuts of meat and a really cool blanket.

Logging had gotten to the point of "well we're shut down," CO₂, which is produced by every living thing on earth and the oceans and volcanoes, was a "pollutant" and under strict regulation. Taxes had been imposed for "excess carbon generation" and things were already starting to get hard in industrial farming before the Emergency Powers Act.

But before the Act there was only so much they could do. Congress knew that the farmers were a massive lobby and huge income, tax and jobs generator. Hell, about the only major export you could put your hands on from the U.S. anymore was food.

They hadn't thought the Bitch would use the Act to screw up the one thing that was sort of working post-Plague. But she did.

USDA cannot produce food. What it's supposed to do is create a favorable environment to produce food.

What it can do, easily, is create an unfavorable environment to produce food. It had detailed knowledge of the American farming industry. It knew where all the levers were.

The long-service people in USDA fought back, passive aggressively, as hard as they could. They, I'm told, tried like hell to keep the damage to a minimum. But they couldn't stop it.

And USDA had been being infiltrated, if you will, for years by the tofu-eaters. Why?

Most things that county agents used to be used for were pretty much gone by the 1980s. Back in the 1930s, say, county agents conducted classes in things like proper tillage to reduce soil erosion, better crops for the local soils, how to use modern fertilizers, soil chemistry, etc.

By the 1980s, you'd better have had classes on those and lots of experience before you were making decisions on a real productive farm. Or you were going to go out of business.

But you couldn't get rid of county agents. They were county agents! Besides, they were the eyes and ears of the USDA. They were the guys who compiled all the local crop reports.

But as the need for county agents to be expert in real farming decreased, there was an upswing in their need as "alternative farming" experts. Tofu-eaters were moving away from the cities because their "little brown brothers" were making them harder and harder to live in. Rich tofu-eaters would move out to the country, buy a small farm that was going under anyway and then not know what to do with it. (See Green Acres and multiply by hundreds of thousands and both members Eva Gabor. But crossed with Karen Carpenter and take away all shreds of common sense.)

Well, the tofu-eaters wanted to grow grapes or broccoli or whatever, but not using those icky and "should be illegal" methods. They wanted to be "all natural."

My dad didn't talk much but when he did get to talking he could tell a hell of a story. I recall one time he'd come back from a convention (yes, farmers have conventions) and was talking about a group of "old time" county agents, old guys who were actual experts in mass production of huge quantities of food using every method that was currently available, talking about the "Green" invaders they were encountering more and more. Very heavy along both coasts, less so in the Midwest but still some. But the tofu-eaters invading in Virginia were a particular source of amusement. And the old guys were just shaking their heads. Whatever. "They're not real farmers."

But they were, increasingly, the county agent's main customers.

So the old guys got out as fast as possible. They didn't want to deal with the airheads who couldn't understand why their corn was getting eaten by grasshoppers and worms and fields that had been pretty clear when they got them were cropping up with weeds.

Enter the new generation of county agents. Their mainstay was helping out the tofu-eaters. The "urban immigrants." They'd conduct seminars on organic methods and quite happily explain "alternative methods" that were "fully organic." Didn't stop the pests and weeds but it made the tofu-eaters happy that someone from the government, which was Good, was there treating them like adults. Actually, they were being treated like children but they had been their whole lives and didn't know the difference.

Treating like an adult: You're fucking up. Here's how to fix it. Now fix it.

Treating like a child: You're trying really hard! Good job! It's not the result that matters, it's just that you try!

(That's actually a functional way to deal with children up to a point. In most cases they can't do a real job. But when they get to the point they can, when they're ready to learn to be adults with adult responsibilities, "it's a good try" should never cut it.)

The old guys treated them like adults and it "hurt their feelings." The new guys treated them like children and they were happy little tofu-eaters.

So by the time of the Big Freeze, the stage was set. Most county agents couldn't explain industrial farming methods or modern farming tech if they were held over a fire and interrogated. That's the ground troop level. The "generals" and "colonels" were people so dead set against modern farming techniques they'd rather the country starve to death than support them. And the guys in the middle were just getting squeezed out. If they opened their mouths, well, there were the bread lines. Go get in them.

Farming depends on weather. The Met Service, which should have been beating the drum and sounding the alarm about the upcoming weather cycles, was also in a bind. Lower level employees had grown up on a constant drumbeat of "global warming, global warming." One of the big environmentalists sounding the drumbeat had actually said once: "Global warming, global cooling, it's all the same thing." And it was all caused by man.

Various bad hypotheses had been advanced over the years about what drove long-term fluctuations. They'd all been debunked, one by one, but the New Breed of meteorologists knew that they were True and they were Right no matter what the science said.

Look up (during the daytime). See that big burning ball in the sky?

That's what drives temperature. Always has, always will. Eventually it will cool down then expand and we'll be absorbed into its arms and the Earth will become more iron in its dying furnace. It won't be as hot then, but it will be very big. And then it will either explode, not too violently all things considered, or die down to go to a long slow bake until it's not much more than a big, fairly hot, metal planet.

Guys and gals further up the chain knew better. They knew that things were cooling off, fast, and that it was old Sol driving it and that things were going to a very hell in cold handbasket.

But their bosses knew better than they did. They knew it was all "global warming." This was just a temporary fluctuation then things will get hotter and hotter again until we all burn up! Seas will rise! Dogs and cats will be living together!

So the forecasts for weather conditions, which were based on "climate models" that ignored solar activity, were all for a long-term warming trend. It's cold right now, but it will be hot next spring. Expect droughts and hurricanes and terrible tornadoes! (Well, we had those but for all the wrong reasons.)

Real farmers knew there were more prediction groups than the U.S. Meteorological Service. Most of them had gone down in the Plague but a few were still up. And their forecasts were dismal. But even in dismal weather, good farmers can react, adapt and overcome. They'd started to.

Then came the Big Grab. Most major farms, including those run by massive farming corporations like Arthur Daniels Midland and Con-Agra, were seized. The tofu-eaters in the USDA had lists and lists of fellow-travellers, many of whom were standing in bread lines, who were ready to "assist in this time of need."

Out they went to the farms. Taking the place of experts with decades of experience.

In Zimbabwe it had been "veterans." Most of them weren't; they were just violent psycopathic supporters of the president. They had gone out, thrown out the (experienced, professional) owners and been settled on high function farms then run them into the ground.

In the U.S. it was reluctant sheriffs going to farms and telling the managers-owners that this is the new boss. You obey his/her orders, now.

I don't have much charity in my heart for those tofu-eaters but there is some. They'd been going to soup kitchens and lining up for their bowl of gruel in the snow. Suddenly, they're plucked up and whisked out to a fucking farm and told to run it.

These were people who had written pamphlets on the proper care and storage of your organically grown vegetables. How to run an organic garden. Some of them not even that, just people who subscribed to those journals in the hopes that someday they, too, could be expert organic farmers.

They're dropped off on a massive farm in the beginnings of a killer winter and told: You're in charge.

Ever seen a combine harvester? Even the small ones are fucking huge. They look like a cross between a dump truck and an insect.

Most of the managers had already been told their services were no longer required. They'd stuck around long enough for the "government nationalization management personnel" to turn up then waved goodbye. Most of them didn't live on the farms. The ones who did had family they were going to. There were houses, with small acreage, up for grabs. Might be some trace of the dead residents but that's okay. They'll understand.

They were planning on setting up for the winter as well as they could and using their long experience to provide enough food for their family to survive. Most of them were thinking greenhouses, most efficient production method thereof. Where can I get a whole bunch of plastic sheeting and some iron tubes?

Ranches. Here's how the majority of the beef in the U.S. is produced.

Cattle produce males (bulls) and females (cows) at the same rate as humans, pretty much 50/50. Cows have a long-term economic benefit; they provide more cattle. In the dairy industry, well, you don't get milk from a bull or a steer.

The majority of males, 90%, do not. They are useless for providing more cattle. One bull and ten cows is a decent ratio. You can go with one in fifteen or so.

The rest are deballed at six months, generally, and spend the next few years, three normally, eating grass on big spreads. (These are steers. Males without balls. Also what farmers call male tofu-eaters.) People think they're all in Texas. They're not. Florida had more beef cattle than Texas. More rain equals more grass equals more steers you can run on an acre. Average in Florida was three head of cattle per acre.

Out west, Wyoming and such, there were areas where it was three acres per head. But they had lots of room. And there wasn't anything else you could do with the land. (Unless you were a tofu-eater and then you just left it "pristine." And killing cattle is murder. Fine. You eat your tofu. I'm going to be over here with a nice juicy steak.)

They get up to a certain age and they're then moved to feed lots. Cattle that eat nothing but grass are a) very very tough meat and b) taste "gamey." (I don't really mind gamey meat but most Americans were pansies about their eating. I do mind tough.) There they sat on "feed lots" with piles of corn and mixed foods (to give them that perfect taste) and fed up. Also various additives to speed up the fattening process.

Last they were moved to slaughter houses and turned into steaks, hamburger and all the rest. Bits that American humans wouldn't eat became pet-food.

Comes the Big Chill. Professional ranchers are looking at the real weather forecasts and going "oh, my God."

See, even in good winters the grass falls off. You've got, say, one head per acre. That works in spring and summer and into fall. But come winter you've got to lay out hay (cut grass) for the cattle so they can make it through the winter. Harsher environments you have to lay out more than nicer environments. But in both you've got to lay out some.

Hay harvests had gotten massively fucked up by the weather. Storms were coming in all through the summer, what there was of it. To get hay, you have to cut it, let it dry and then harvest. If it gets rained on after it's cut, or if it's still wet from the rain when you cut it, it "sours" and gets fungal infections. Even cows can get sick from it. (Horses will die.) Ever heard the term "hay-making weather." Hot, dry and stays that way?

We didn't have much of that in the summer of 2019.

Hay was short. And they were looking at the most fucked up winter in recent history.

Way up north, cattle will die if it gets too cold. And it was predicted, by everyone except the Met service, to get really fucking cold. That meant the only cattle they could run were those they had shelter for. Which meant nothing but "base stock." Those ten cows and one bull.

Ranchers were calling feed lots all over the place, trying to get their cattle sold. Nobody was buying. There wasn't food to feed them. The slaughter houses were overrun and everyone was trying to recover from the Plague.

The USDA probably couldn't have been any help. But even if it could, the bosses didn't see the issue.

"The forecast for the winter is not that severe. And killing cattle is murder, anyway. Let them graze in happy peacefulness. It's good that they can't be industrially slaughtered."

Are you grabbing your hair in fury? You should be. The famines of 2020 and 2021 weren't because of the farmers or the evil farm corporations. Hell, they weren't in charge of food production. The "rationalizers" were in charge. When the farmers got back in charge, they proved they could react, adapt and overcome. 2022 wasn't a bumper crop year, but it fed not only the U.S. but various other nations.

Ranchers, too, were getting pushed out. Nationalization of the farming industry was the Hero Project of the latter Warrick administration. People could sign up at the soup kitchens. A lot of people figured that being on a farm was going to be a better place than in a city come winter. And how hard could it be?

The county agents were overwhelmed. They were supposed to be "organizing" the local "farming cooperative groupings" to "produce maximal output for the upcoming season" and they knew they were in deep shit. They might like organic methods but they knew that industrial was more efficient. And most of them were smart enough to know that the shit coming from the Met Service was so much baloney.

Enter the U.S. Army.

We'd gotten, in most areas, the food distribution, what there was of it, under control. We'd gotten local groups, "voluntary associators" and even companies to handle it. We couldn't turn it over to corporations because they were "bad." (Bechtel, by the way, handled something like 90% of the recovery from Hurricane Katrina. It was defunct but another would have started up, from pretty much the same people, if we'd put out bids. We couldn't let bids. Neither could FEMA.)

But the point was, we were distributing what we could and turning most of it over to local control. However, we also knew we were going to be fucked come winter. Because our meteorologists were going "holy FUCK."

USDA was acting like a tofu-chicken. "Nationalization" was hammering what production there was. Something had to be done or the nation we were sworn to protect and serve was going to starve to death. Not just over the winter, but the projections were for widespread famine by next May.

"Emergency Supply Methodology" was a department that had gotten formed when the U.S. Army had to try to supply food to a famine in Somalia. What was absolutely evident to anyone who was there was that there was no reason for the famine. Yes, there was a drought. All a drought means is that you get less food from an acre. There were enough acres and enough acres that could be irrigated, that Somalia should have been able to feed itself.

It couldn't because of the security conditions. Farmers were being killed and driven off their lands because of the militias. That was what caused the famine. And in many areas it was intentional. See also Darfur, the Kulak famine and the Great Leap Forward. Starvation is a good way to enact "ethnic cleansing." Starving people is easier and cheaper than shooting them.

It got started as a think-tank to figure out how to do the best job you could in a fucked up situation. Most food distribution was done by Non-Governmental Organizations. (By the way, "random associators" are NGOs. Just very small ones.) One thing that was noted was that some NGOs were "better" at distribution than others. There were a huge number of apparent factors but it really came down to which were the most functionally pragmatic. That is, if the mission was to feed a population that was enemies with the local strongman, turning the food over to the strongman was non-functional for the mission. It would feed him and his henchmen and the people they liked. It would not feed the populace he was starving on purpose.

The way to avoid this was to use some of your precious NGO funds to hire enough "security" that the local strongman left you alone. And you could feed whoever you wanted. If you could also get some of the farmers farming again, that was a benefit.

If your personal opinion of violence was "nothing is ever settled by violence" then you lost your food to the strongman and therefore failed in your mission. It didn't matter how "actualized" you felt as you flew back to your hippie commune in California. You'd failed in your mission.

It was an unfortunate fact that the most "functionally pragmatic" groups tended to be Christian missionaries. Tended. Some of them were not "functionally pragmatic" and some of the secular NGOs were. But it was a general trend. It was a conclusion that was very quietly distributed, though. The Army had too often been accused of being friendly with Christian Fundamentalist groups.

They also looked at factors like "throughput." That is, if a group was given ten tons of relief supplies, how much of that actually got to the refugees or whatever. Again, Christian groups tended to have the highest throughput.

Here's an example of throughput in money. It involves charities pre-Plague. One of the richest charities in the U.S. pre-Plague was the March of Dimes. Every March people all over the country would walk around raising money for "childhood diseases." The March of Dimes would collect the money and then send it on to "worthy researchers."

MoD would never release its records to anyone but the IRS, but outside analysis indicated that only about 30% of the money collected actually went to "researchers." The other 70% went to "support" of . . . The March of Dimes. For every ten bucks some poor "marcher" collected, seven went to the MoD and only three went to researchers. The leadership was not volunteers. Indeed, above the "street" level there were no volunteers. Salaries for the upper management were astronomical. The president of the MoD had a private 737!

By the same token, one of the largest Christian charities in the world, Christian Children's Fund, would release its records. (As did many others, secular and religious.) They had an average throughput, every year, of over 90%. Nine bucks out of every ten reached the children it served.

Ninety percent throughput vs. thirty percent throughput. If you're going to contribute to a charity, do the math.

The U.S. Army did the math. They couldn't always pick and choose what NGOs they supported, but when they could they looked at the functionality of the NGOs and chose them on that basis. Yes, that tended to be Christian groups but the reality was they didn't care. They just wanted the stuff they were distributing to get to the people who needed it.

ESM was the first department to look at that methodically and come up with "key factors" for commanders to consider when choosing which NGO to support in their areas. They also expanded into producing pamphlets for commanders and staff on "key secondary response methods" in emergency and humanitarian relief missions. That is, how to get a country back on its feet. Especially agriculture in a famine.

But with first the Plague then the Chill, ESM became big doings. That had caused some problems as the minor little department suddenly became a focus and every fucking Fobbit wanted to jump on the bandwagon. For a while in the summer, I was told, "ESM" bumped out "transformational" as the big buzzword. Somebody pitching a new weapons system had to throw "ESM" in on the PowerPoint presentation to get it even looked at.

"This new super-duper artillery system is the killer app for ESM. ESM cluster systems can provide wide-spread terminal coverage of ESM priority materials . . ."

In other words, we can shoot the food out of the cannon at a high rate of fire and hope it doesn't knock anyone out when it gets there.

And, yes, that's from an actual presentation.

When I got to the department some of the hoo-hroo had settled down. Yes, it was a bigger department with a general in charge instead of a colonel. But some of the vampiric Fobbits that had grafted to it over the summer had been sent back to wherever they came from (PIO, Morale and Welfare, Systems Procurement) and the core guys were back in charge.

Its mission had changed, though. Use actual ESM to look at what was happening in the U.S. and "react, adapt and overcome" wherever the Army could be a benefit.

Bunch of smaller departments in the department, now. I was in the "Agricultural Emergency Response" department. I was a farmer. I had a degree in agronomy. I don't know what fairy godmother thought I could do anything there, but there I was.

And at first I couldn't do anything. I was a major. I carried the piss bucket. Meetings on "agricultural emergency response" involved colonels and generals. (None of whom, as far as I know, had agronomy degrees. But they were doing their best.)

My particular piss bucket was to be put in charge of the "Midwatch Phone Response Center."

That was not some sort of switchboard. It was a call center. It was a call center that commanders in the field could call for help when they were dealing with "agriculture emergency issues."

Okay, here's the thing about an agricultural emergency. Most of the time, by the time you realize you have an emergency, you're already fucked. Farmers have huge lead times. Go back to my dad telling me he was investing in triticale because the forecast for six months later was for "cooling regimes."

The decisions that were being made in 2019 were going to affect 2020 and 2021.

2020's a no brainer. By November of 2019 farmers would have been planning what they were going to do in 2020. No brainer.

But 2021? Why 2021?

Hello! Seeds!

The seeds for 2021 crop cycle were produced in 2020. And they were based on really long-range forecasts by the major seed companies. They'd have to guess what the major crops were going to be two years in advance and lay on the right seed stockpiles.

But most of those companies had been "nationalized." The seeds they were considering were not being based on the long, long-range forecasts. Not the right forecasts, anyway. And genetic modification? I don't think so. Genmod was bad. Evil. Wicked.

But the emergency that was going on right then was cattle. There were too many. And no way to feed them through the winter. Most of the tofu-eaters who had taken over as ranchers didn't even realize that. And you couldn't tell them.

Some of the people moved out to ranches, though, weren't idiots. They asked the locals what the hell they were supposed to be doing. Mostly the locals told them to push off. But occasionally they'd get a bit of "you're going to lose them all come winter."

Everybody "culled" in the fall. It was the whole point of Thanksgiving and all the other harvest festivals in history. You fed up certain animals during the summer and culled them in the fall. That way you didn't have to feed them over winter. Pigs especially but also cattle. See Charlotte's Web.

Oh, yeah, pigs. Most pigs were raised on factory-farms. Ever seen the movie Babe? That big warehouse looking thing where all the piglets are? That's where most pork comes from. You don't turn out pigs to feed. (Not since the Middle Ages when they used to be herded through oak forests for acorns.) They have to be fed continuously. And there wasn't any feed.

So we'd get calls from local commanders. They were out there doing whatever mission and as one of their "corollary missions" they were supposed to provide "support" for "emergency agricultural situations."

So, you're a sergeant in charge of delivering a "packet" of emergency supplies. Let's say that it's to Lamoille County since we've talked about that before.

You go to the "random associator" which is the NGO you're favoring at the time. Say the Lutheran Church. And you drop your packet. But there's this guy trying to get your attention.

He's in a quandary.

"I'm an accountant. I worked for Smith Barney. They went under in the Plague. I signed up for this 'agricultural nationalization' program cause it had to be better than eating soup on the lines. I thought I'd be sent out to work on a farm not run it. My wife and I got put in charge of a dairy farm. I figured out how to hook the cows up to the milking machine and even found a guy who's still collecting the milk. But he tells me that I don't have enough feed for the cows for the winter and the feed I do have is running out and I can't find any more for love or money. The county agent's never answered my calls. I know you're Army but do you have a clue what I'm supposed to do?"

You had to be, at first, pretty desperate to ask an Army sergeant a question like that. After a while, though, people started doing it all the time.

So the sergeant says he has no clue but he'll ask around. And he asks his platoon sergeant. And the platoon sergeant remembers something about a department that is supposed to be handling shit like that. And because he's devoted to his job he dips into institutional memory and finds a number to call.

And, late, he calls the Emergency Supply Methodology, Agricultural Emergency Supply Methodology help-line.

And he gets a private.

"ESMAESM help-desk, Private Smedlap speaking. How can I help you sir or ma'am?"

Milk cows. Feed.

"Where is this? Vermont? Hang on . . . I'm waiting for my system . . . Oh, right. Okay. Vermont is anticipated to experience extreme climatic conditions in the upcoming winter . . . Waiting . . . Cattle will require long-term shelter for survival. Will require feed equalling x pounds of feed per head per day. Grazing will be a minimal option of no significant note to survival. Feed stores are at an all-time low. Current feed prices indicate minimal availability and are anticipated to increase over-winter. Absent large stores of on-site feed, recommendation is culling to breeding stock. Does that cover it? Yeah, that means they have to kill them all, and hopefully keep the meat and stuff, because ain't no food for them and they're not going to be able to graze. Hell, if they're outdoors most of the time they're going to freeze. I dunno if you've seen the internal forecasts but I hope you've packed your EWCS. I can e-mail you this shit if you've . . . okay . . . Platoon.Sergeant@us.army.mil. Right. On its way. Thanks for calling the . . . Okay he hung up."

As time went on, the number got passed out to civilians. At first the help desk wasn't supposed to answer questions outside the military but by the time I got there that was old history. AESM had been up and handling for nine months or so. So we often had to deal with tofu-eaters. Which was always frustrating but occasionally really funny.

I ran the help-desk. It wasn't exactly rocket science most of the time. I had about sixty guys on my shift. "Guys." Okay, I had about forty guys on my shift and twenty females. Two female lieutenants, even. It was strange. I was infantry. Having women working for me was an adjustment.

Generally, the response stuff was set up. Sometimes, though, there'd be a call that needed actual, you know, farming expertise. There was a progression for that. But we didn't get many calls on my shift and I was bored so I generally got on at Phase Two calls.

"Major Bandit Six. Hang on, waiting for the data to transfer."

(Note, my actual last name was fairly common. I don't think any of the people calling knew they were talking to "The Centurion" and I never let on.)

"Okay, I see that first line said you need to cull all but breeding stock. Frankly, I don't know if you can even keep the breeding stock. Pigs eat a lot and there's not much sw . . . Ma'am, they're there to be turned into food. You gotta kill 'em to do that. I know they're cute, but that's the answer . . . Yes, that's a lot of pigs to kill. I suggest a .22 in the back of the head . . . Hello?"

Yeah, I got some complaints. Screw 'em.

And then I'd occasionally get some guy who was really fucking trying and needed an expert to tell him what to really do. When I got those I treated them like fucking gold.

"The good news is you're in a zone where the climate's actually better for most farming under current conditions than before. This shit that's going on actually helps some regions. Okay, give me your e-mail address . . . Damn. Okay, gimme an address. I'll send you everything I can get on what should work there. I can't give you a degree in agronomy but as long as I'm sitting in this chair I'll hold your hand as much as possible. There are stores of seeds, pesticides and herbicides that you can use. We can release them . . . Don't go organic on me . . . Oh, okay. Right, here's the deal. You can still get winter wheat in the ground if you're quick. You're going to need hands to pick rocks . . . I'll explain . . ."

The problem being with livestock that had to be culled, well, we're back to everything getting backed up.

"Yes, I know the slaughterhouses are overloaded. Look, you're in Wisconsin. You're not going to warm up for months. Just slaughter them on site. Should have been done months ago. Store the carcasses anywhere you can keep them away from scavengers . . . Yes, I know it's a gruesome business. I grew up on a farm. Yes, I'm a real farmer, thank you. I've got a degree in this stuff . . . Actually, I can send you a pamphlet on the proper method of slaughtering cattle. But just remember, if you've got anything like feed for them, keep some breeding stock. That's the bull, he's the one with balls, and a few cows. You'll need x pounds of stock feed or x rolls of hay per animal per week. And with the temps they're predicting for your area, you're going to have to barn them every night . . . Yes, it is a lot of work. No, I don't know where you can get more help. There's a lot of people standing in soup lines. Go to one of those and ask . . . Sorry if you found that offensive, sir. Perhaps you could find some Mexicans. But the last time a soldier saw enough Mexicans to help was at the Alamo and we all know how that turned out . . . Hello?"

Okay, a lot of complaints.

California started getting "unseasonable" rains. That would have helped, a lot, in Imperial Valley if most of the people there had any clue what they were doing. But the real farmers were on soup lines (okay, most of them weren't) and the idiots from soup lines were trying to farm.

And the farms didn't have a lot of food on them. The ones that had actual houses (many didn't) had been stripped by the departing owners or managers. They weren't going to leave their food for the grasshoppers.

So some of the "experts" sent out to "rebuild the farming industry" decided that they were better off in soup lines.

ADM, when it got "nationalized," sent out along with its pink-slips a way for their various managers and "associated farmers" to keep in touch. Basically, it was a "forwarding address" database. Some of them didn't do it. But farmers are planners. And if they had any chance of getting back onto the farms, they were going to take it. It took a while and Con-Agra just basically went tits up. But in 2021 when the new administration went into reverse on all this, ADM was waiting. Which is why it really dominates the industry now.

But that's then.

A disaster? It was more of a nightmare. And at the call center we were the acoustic engineers getting every last nuance of the sound of the train wreck.

I was still there as spring came around. And the nightmare really got in motion.

But I'm getting ahead of myself again.

I think I only contributed one useful item the whole damned time I was stuck in the call center and that was by accident.

I was just coming off shift. I looked and felt like shit. I knew I was going to get a few more complaints added to the stack. It had been one of those nights.

I have no clue why the general in charge of ESM decided to stop by the field grade officer's can. But there he was, taking a whiz, when I flipped out my pecker in the next urinal and had to, as usual, back waaay up.

(Wife Edit: Be nice!)

I knew who he was. I didn't say anything. He did.

"You're Bandit Six."

"Yes, sir."

"What the hell are you doing in here? Get lost in the Puzzle Palace?"

"I work for you, sir."

"You do?"

"ESMAESM call center night shift supervisor."

"How in the hell . . . ? Lieutenant" To his aide. "You know who Bandit Six is, right?"

"Yes, sir!"

"Sorry, Bandit. I had no clue you worked in my shop. But you were a farmer, right?"

"Yes, sir." (Zipping up.)

"Any suggestions?"

"Gotta get the livestock slaughtered, sir. That's all you can do this time of year. Should have been done months ago. And plan for next but we can't do that. All we can do is react."

"Slaughterhouses are full, so is cold storage. I had a brief on that yesterday . . ."

"Sir, we're looking at the coldest winter on record. Zones one through three, maybe four, you can slaughter them and hang them from trees and they'll keep all winter. Hell, we'll have eaten it all out by spring."

"Most of the farmers that are part of the . . ."

"Are idiots. Yes, sir. I run the call center, sir. And even then, the ranchers don't have the hands and the ones that are . . . transportees don't have the experience. Or in most cases the guts or will or willingness to do the work. But we, the Army, are going to need that food, sir. And we, the Army, do have hands. Sir. And guts. And willingness to work hard for survival. Sir."

"Interesting point. Lieutenant, block out some time for Bandit Six to stop by. I used to be a tanker before I got stuck on this crap detail. I'd like to talk to you about Khuwaitla."

"Yes, sir."

I went back to my quarters and forgot about the incident.

However, a week later the order went out to start "Emergency Slaughter Teams."

It wasn't just soldiers. Groups would go to the soup lines and pick up any people who a) looked fit enough and b) were willing to "do some hard work for better food." There was no pay. The pay was fresh meat, which was rare for most people in those days.

Some of the "farmers" didn't want to slaughter their pets. Most, however, had seen their feed almost totally depleted. In "Zones One through Three," the northern border down to North Carolina, dipping down to southern Oklahoma and then back up to northern California, snow was already on the ground to stay. Pigs, especially, were out of food. Pigs will eat anything. So will people. There wasn't any food for the people.

Well, there was. Rye bread from farmers who had seen that the summer of 2019 was going to be screwed and soup made up of anything that was available. Spices were a rare commodity.

Meat quickly became a common commodity for a while. There was quite a bit in those soups during the winter of early 2020. Might have kept the death rate down a touch.

Lost a lot of livestock unnecessarily. By the time the ESTs were really getting in gear most of the livestock, including breeding stock, had died of malnutrition or exposure. But we got some of the food. That was something. Not that it helped in the long-run but few things do.

By February all the livestock was either slaughtered down to breeding groups or dead. People were dying, too. Lots of people. Despite my "heroic efforts" fuel for power and heat was at a premium. There was a, in my opinion, good government program to make sure people could get what they needed. Ration cards and such. But there was never enough. And people died in blizzards when their meager stocks of food and fuel ran out. And cities lost power and people froze.

Everything froze. The sugar cane in south Florida froze. Old people in retirement in Phoenix and Miami froze.

And people died on soup lines because they were already malnourished (one small chunk of rye bread and a cup of soup is not enough to keep most humans going forever) and it was bloody cold and nobody had the right clothing and China wasn't making Gortex parkas anymore.

People got frostbite and hypothermia. They dropped like flies.

And it wasn't even the really bad winter.

Farmers are planners. They sit on their tractors and in their dens and peer into the future though cloudy crystal balls, trying to discern what wheat and soy is going to be worth a year in advance. They look at the long-range weather reports. They watch the flight of the wild geese.

I'd been trained to do that since I was a baby as a form of osmosis picked up from the few words my dad would say at the dinner table. The hands would be talking a bit and my mom would be chattering and one of the hands would say something and my dad would grunt.

"Soy isn't going to be worth the price of sand next year."

And when I got older I'd try to figure out why he knew that. And he was usually right.

There's going to be a glut in the soy market next year. Why?

Long-term weather looked right for soy. China was projected to do a big buy. Monsanto had just come out with a new seed strain that was going to increase yields, on average, by two percent. (Which, right there, was enough to cause a glut, believe it or not.)

Big corporations were shifting towards soy. Managers were talking about it over coffee in the corner greasy spoon, around the counter in the feed store. Bio-diesel from soy. Soy was the word. "Soy's going to be big next year."

And it was. Bumper crop. Perfect weather, great seeds . . .

China wasn't buying as much as predicted. Bio-diesel wasn't really taking off. Overall sales were about the same or down.

Supply and demand. High supply, low to normal demand. It was worth the price of sand.

This, by the way, is what "commodity markets" are all about. Dad didn't buy his seed in cash. He bought it, everyone bought it, on "futures." That is, credit. But the seed had to be paid for by something. So commodity markets gambled on what was going to be big in next year's crop. Or even this year's crop. People put money into the market, the market created the "margin" for the seed and pesticides and everything else. And at the end of the year you found out if you'd made money or not.

Hell, you could "day trade" on the commodity market. Going "long" on wheat, selling "short" on sow-belly (bacon). But it was always, truly, about going long. It was reading the crystal ball. By December all the money was counted and all the bills were paid or you'd lost the bet. You'd gotten the wrong answer from the crystal ball.

My dad was the fucking prophet Elijah, every single year. Which was why we stayed in business. Hell, I always wondered why he didn't just give up farming and trade in commodities. He would have made a killing.

I wasn't a prophet but you only had to be reasonably keyed in to see where we were heading. You only had to have the sort of head that could put five or ten variables, not complicated ones, together, plug in the known constants and get an answer.

The "model" in my head said that we were looking at a famine in 2020 and 2021. Could be marginal, looked to be major. But there simply wasn't going to be enough food for all our remaining mouths. And the winter was going to be another killer.

And the internal ESM models said the same about both production and weather.

Then I'd look at what the USDA and the Met office was saying and shake my head. That, by the way, was one of the variables. The fact that the people who should have been making accurate predictions were making predictions based purely on politics and fantasy.

Commodity markets were back up by spring of 2020. USDA was saying one thing. Independent research firms were saying the exact opposite. (Army data was secret but leaked.) Trading was all over the board. Long on wheat? Short on wheat? Hell, was there going to be any wheat?

Generally, the trading was very "stagnant." Which meant less money available for supplies. But just about anyone who got into the commodities market in 2020 got their balls handed to them.

It was supposed to be pre-planting. Met office was saying temps were going to be coming up, fast. USDA was predicting soil temperatures that were on with 2018 or earlier. Like they were totally ignoring the fact that we were entering an ice age.

But it was so clear, by then, that all but the most "government uber alles" tofu-heads were tuning them out. They'd constantly predicted better temperature regimes. Because of "global warming." Which everyone was starting to realize was so much bunk. They'd stood in food lines in below zero, Farenheit, temperatures. They knew it wasn't getting warmer. Not that year, by God.

And the Bitch was starting to campaign for office. She still had supporters. Some. The core of the news media, for sure. The "limousine liberals" who had managed to sail through the Plague and the Chill because, of course they got immunized and of course they got paid and had access to all their usual foods. But even that was starting to crumble.

Her opponents were beating her with a stick every time they got a second of airtime. Polls showed her numbers to be in the low twenties. And going down.

So then she started . . . reacting.

Chapter Two We Are TOO Going to Have an Election!

In March of 2020 the Bitch "nationalized" a major radio network. It had always been fairly right wing. It broadcast not only on local stations but on satellite. And it had hung in there, barely, through the whole Plague and the depression that followed. Lots of marginal stations just shut down, but it was still hanging in there.

Then it was announced, on all the stations, that they had been seized by the federal government for "violation of Fair Use laws." Essentially, their commentators had been saying Bad Things about the Bitch and thus she shut them down.

The FCC was ordered to ensure "Fair Use" of airtime in all radio and broadcast TV stations.

Short of simply turning off all the radio stations, she couldn't get rid of every person working for the company. And most of the "talent" were not exactly Friends of Warrick. But they knew the score. Toe the Party Line or toe the soup line.

But, hell, they were experts in playing with words. I got sent an MP3 in an e-mail from a guy who was still on his talk show down in Georgia. Very right wing. But he was "toeing the party line." The opening:

"We have another pronouncement of better things for tomorrow from our glorious leader President Warrick!" All in a tone of utter sincerity.

Subtle propaganda works for Americans. It was the stock in trade of the MSM. Over the top propaganda they spot in a heartbeat. And laugh their asses off.

But they weren't being "unfair." They were giving Warrick almost all their airtime. And when they spoke of her opponents it was . . .

"Today, the evil Senator from Tennessee, Fred Carson, who has the audacity to think he can best our glorious leader in November, suggested to a paltry group of scum-sucking supporters that perhaps some of her actions were uncalled for or perhaps wrongly judged. How dare he! The evil of the man suggesting that the vaccine distribution was, and I quote as the words cause bile in my mouth, 'less than optimal.' He should be shot and then hanged and then torn to pieces for suggesting our glorious leader is not perfect in every way!"

Yeah, they were "fair." Don't you think?

(Actually, there were people who complained about the presentation of Warrick's opponents as being "unfair" and "destructive." Some people just cannot get a joke.)

But we were getting into normal planting time in Minnesota. And snow was barely melting in Virginia. USDA estimates of "optimum soil temperature regimes" for various foods passed and were updated, passed and were updated. Based on those estimates, the tofu-eaters following the directions on the packet (that packet being the pamphlets they'd gotten from the county agents who were passing them from USDA headquarters) had laid in seeds, where available, for planting that were designed for a normal season.

It wasn't a normal season.

And a lot of the tofu-eaters had died on those farms in the middle of winter when they didn't ration their heating oil well enough and were stuck in the middle of nowhere in a blizzard and they couldn't even walk to their local emergency shelter for food and a place to sleep out of the killer cold.

Nine farms, recall. Two, Bob had managed through finagling to hold onto. I won't give the list of destruction that those tofu-eaters did to my farms. What I will say is that three of the seven died over the winter. Two of the other four only survived because they made it to Bob and he kept the grasshoppers alive.

The other two weren't bad folk. They're still my farm managers.

In Zone One, that is the great-white-north, that was about the rate. Three in seven of those "government cooperative farmers" died. So did all their livestock. It ripped the guts out of one of the most productive agricultural areas of our nation.

Going further south they survived in higher numbers. In a way that was worse. They were there to fuck things up.

Okay, let's return to Blackjack since we've used that before.

They manage to pull a good bit of their population through the Plague. The farmers in the community (and it's a heavy farming area) are looking at the forecasts. Cotton is a dead letter for the time being. People aren't buying new clothes. Food is the key for 2020 and although it's still summer of 2019, they're looking in their crystal balls. They've also looked at 2019 and have laid in their crops. Corn, wheat because the temperature regimes are going to be good for wheat in Georgia. (Wheat was not a major crop in Georgia prior to the Freeze. It's now one of our big wheat producers.) Potatoes. Soy because there's all sorts of things you can do with soy.

Some of them are seed farmers. They only produce seed. They get the base stock seeds from a seed company and plant those. The "harvest" is actually different from the base stock and that's what gets planted to make food and the harvest from that is different than what you get when you plant the seeds. (Trust me. It's complicated. I've given enough classes, I'm not going to give one in transform genetics. I'll just say it's not fucked up, it's how plants work. Period.) I don't mean it's a different species. It's just you wouldn't want to try to make bread from the stuff the seed companies send them to plant to make next year's seeds. You don't even want to make bread from the seeds. (Gluten content is wrong.)

So, they've got the seed in the ground. They've found sources for pesticides. They're ready to rock in what farmers do best; watching money grow out of the ground.

They first hear from the seed company. It's been nationalized. Not sure what that's going to mean except we've been told no genmod. We pointed out that the seed for next year is already in the ground and it's all genmod. They're in meetings. I have my pink slip. See ya.

Then the sheriff comes around looking pissed.

Farm's been nationalized. You gotta get out.

This has been in my family for generations. The hell you say.

I don't like it. Don't get stupid. Too many dead already.

Where go?

Parrish family died. House is in county hands. No buyers. Move there. Ten acres. Best I can do. Take personal stuff. Furniture even. No farm equipment.

So they move over to the Parrish house. And they look around at the belongings of people they knew through their kids going to school together. There are pictures on the walls. All the people are dead.

They take the pictures down. They move the Parrish furniture out into the storage shed. They put in theirs. They put the cans of food they've brought from home up on the shelves. They figure out how to get a new house going.

They walk five miles to town. They go to the feed store. There's a lot of other farmers in there, bitching. There's talk of revolting but it's just talk. There's a lot of "The South Shall Rise again" but the world's already a fucked up enough place and they know it. They're ants. If the South is going to Rise Again it's gonna have to be fed, first.

There's seed in the feed store. It's not much but there's seed. Most of the good stuff is getting stripped, fast. The feed store owner is pretty damned tight and he's not tied into the whole "futures" thing. But he gets another loan from the bank, which is only holding on from the government propping it up, and he buys more seed. He gets orders in advance and he lets people he knows buy on credit. Long-term credit.

There's a shortage of seed but what the hell.

There's a program that people who are farming can get gas for their tractors and combines. If you're a registered farmer. If you're a registered farmer and not tied into the "nationalization program" you're likely to be out on your ass.

People pool their gas rations. There's barely enough. There's a certain amount of "scrounging" and some finagling by local gas providers. But tractors get filled. Horses become a primary means of transportation.

Ten acres ain't much, unless you're a very smart farmer. Then you can do a lot with ten acres. There's land that hasn't been tilled in a long time. It's not great, but you're a pretty decent farmer. You get more credit for herbicides to kill the grass. You do soil samples. You have to get them tested through the county agent but you're not a registered farmer so you're waiting a while. In the meantime, you're planning.

Also in the meantime the "government cooperative farmer" has arrived at the farm. This is a "grade A" farm on the list the USDA keeps. It's gone to well-connected tofu-heads. Call it a former female marketing executive who specialized in promoting organic farming and her husband the lawyer, also an "agricultural expert." They've both been on the soup line a couple of times but mostly they've been able to get along. They don't have children because "they never found the time." As part of their "resettlement package" they've been given extra gas rations to drive to their "resettlement farm" and start a new life as happy farmers in the big wide open.

They arrive to find nothing in the house. Not a damned thing. Some scraps of paper. Everything else is gone. They drive to town to complain to the sheriff. He's to say the least uncaring.

They drive to the county agent's office. He's out and his secretary is less than helpful. They're handed a bunch of pamphlets.

They're low on gas to get to the farm. But they make it. They have, as part of the resettlement package, a bunch of instructions. They attempt to decypher them. "What is soil chemistry?"

They attempt to call the listed, USDA, help center. Their phone has been disconnected. They'll have to drive into town to get it connected. They run out of gas. They are out of gas rations for the time being. (As far as they know. Actually, farmers had plenty of gas but farmers needed it.)

They walk to town. On the surface people are very nice. They find the phone company. They get the phone and electric connected. The gas for heat and cooking is rationed. There's some in the tank. Don't use it up quick.

There is an "emergency food distribution center" at the Baptist Church. They don't like churches but they go there to get food. They explain who they are and that there's no food in the house and that it's a long walk. Reactions are mixed. A few people are hostile. Most smile and say "Bless your heart" a lot. (Southrons never ever say what is truly on their mind. They're very Japanese that way. In this case, "Bless your heart" means "So you're the poltically connected assholes that took over the Beauford farm . . .") A very young lady gives them enough simple foods to last for a few days. They leave. They try to hitch a ride back to the farm. Finally a guy in a pickup truck picks them up and drops them closish. They walk the rest of the way.

There is a truck garden the farmer's wife put in before they were thrown out. They pick some beans. There's a pig. They don't know what to do about the pig or the cows. They read the instructions. They try to figure out the instructions. They call the help center. It's a busy signal (because there are thousands like them in the same predicament).

The lawyer actually sits down and reads all the documents. The main thing he extracts is that they are entitled to "supplementary emergency fuel" allocations on the basis of being farmers. Okay! Styling. They can get gas!

They have driven down a Mercedes SUV from Atlanta. A gas turbo. The "fuel" they can get, by special delivery to the tanks at the farm, is diesel. Their car sits on the side of the road for a long time.

There are no diesel vehicles at the farm except a tractor. The diesel F-350 is at the Parrish farm, up on blocks until the "real" farmer can find fuel.

There are crops growing in the field. They look at them. There's not much else to do. The cable is out and the only channel they can get on the TV is CBS and that's snow-filled and nearly impossible to understand. There are no books in the house.

The wife runs out of birth control pills. They don't have any money to buy some from the small-town pharmacy that's still struggling along. It's not going to sell them birth control pills on credit. They are extremely polite but firm. The wife makes a scene.

At this point, some of them get fed up and find some way to get back to being real grasshoppers. The soup lines are better than this.

But we'll say they hang in there.

At some point an officious woman turns up at their house. The officious woman is the new rep for the seed company. It is pointed out that all of their crop is owned by the government. But it's genmod seed. So it can't be used. They need to till it under and plant new seed. That will be provided by the government, as well. And when it's harvested, it will be turned over to the government.

And we get paid . . . ?

In seed.

That's the next point where people said "blow this for a game of soldiers" and found any way back to civilization.

There are lots of such points. I'll skip most of them.

The husband finds out that driving a tractor over a plowed field is not easy. But he does it. The wife does not. She is attempting to learn how to cook. He also learns that:

Hooking up a plow is a bitch.

So is plowing. And it's very fucking boring. And it takes forever, especially if you're in a fucking little 35-horse tractor that the farmer only ever used for minor stuff. But he'd taken one look at the big combine and gone "oh, no fucking way."

The seed is delivered. He plants it. Despite being an intelligent person he is confused by the concept that the seed he's growing is going to be seed. But if that's what he's doing for a living . . . I wonder if the town needs a lawyer?

No, as a matter of fact. Ours survived, alas.

He then finds out.

Seed bags are very fucking heavy.

So is a spreader and if you don't know how to hook one up you can kill yourself. Or hook it up wrong and then bad things happen.

A standard grass spreader is a lousy way to spread wheat seed. He doesn't know that there's a seed planter sitting there. He doesn't know what a seed planter is. And, besides, it's designed for the big tractor he's avoiding.

And he has to keep filling the spreader with those heavy fucking bags of seed.

Things break. They always do. Some things you just have to get a repair guy for. Most, farmers can fix. He can't. The tractor stops. He doesn't know why.

He goes down the road to the next farm. That's no help, that's a young couple who look like they just stepped out of a rock concert and they haven't even bothered to figure out the tractor. They've got a nice crop of ganja out back, though. The crop's like, whoa! It's beans and shit! I think! Dude you have got to try some of this shit! Hey, Stacey's pregnant, man, 'cause we're like out of birth control pills . . .

His wife has cut him off because she's not going to have a baby, the tractor is stuck in the field because the spreader is on backwards and it's jammed the transmission and he really needs a drink, not a toke.

Leave point.

Instead, he goes into town looking for help. There are choices as to what to do.

There were those who said: "I'm a bigshot and you farmers had better fix this or I'll get the gub'mint on your ass!" Or just were hostile and in people's face.

In which case they got exactly dick for help. And the crops never got as far as planted. Seed sat in bags until it got rained on and rotted and was lost. This, alas, was common and contributed to the famines of 2020 and 2021.

We'll give this guy a more optimum situation. He's a dick normally but he also knows when he has to crawl. He's just not sure where to.

Sometimes he runs into the county agent who is running around like mad and gets some help. Enough to get the crop in the ground.

Sometimes he ends up on the phone with me. If he's not a dick, I'll do what I can long distance. Because I can see the train wreck on the way. If he's a dick, I figure he's not worth the time.

Sometimes he walks into the feed store.

There are a bunch of guys sitting around not doing much. There are rocking chairs. None of them are available. Some other guys are standing up.

He doesn't know it, but there's a defined pecking order to those chairs. If a guy gets up and leaves, a specific guy is going to get his chair.

The hayseeds in the feedstore kind of nod and go back to talking about the weather. He waits around for someone to walk up and ask him what he needs. No one does. He's not sure who works there and who is just hanging around. Everyone is in the same clothes.

He is, more or less, ignored.

One of the guys makes mention that it's gonna be a cold winter. The woolies are already getting wooly already. (And the old farmer knows where to look for real long-term predictions.)

The lawyer contends that predictions are for a mild winter. Yeah, it's been a cold spring but it's warming up and what with global warming . . .

They look at him as if he's a Martian. One of them finally says:

"Can I help you?"

He pours out his tale of woe. Little does he know that the guy he displaced, whose truck garden he is eating off of, is sitting in one of the rocking chairs. Everybody knows who the newcomer is. Everyone knows his "tale of woe." Everyone knows that the harvest is going to be fucked and famine is on the way. What they're discussing in quiet voices is how to survive.

"Put the spreader on backwards," one of the hayseeds contends. "Reverse and take it off. Put it on right ways round. That'll do ya."

"Why you usin' the spreader? There's a perfectly good planter."

"What's a planter?"

If, at this point, he just says "Look, I know this is fucked up. I didn't think we'd be taking someone's farm. I thought I'd be working on one. Helping out or something. I don't have the slightest clue what I'm doing. The only thing I know about farming is from watching reruns of Green Acres. But I've got to get this right or . . . it's going to be bad . . ."

Well, then sometimes they'd help out.

We'll continue this in two directions.

The first is the optimal result. It wasn't common, but it happened enough that it's probably why any of us survived 2020. And, remember, we're back in summer of 2019 when I was over in Iran.

The guy whose farm he took, the guy with the Browning ballcap on his head and the Winston dangling from his lip (in violation of the universal smoking ban in indoor public areas) pushes the ball cap up.

"Got a deal fer ya."

The guy in the Browning ballcap will teach him how to farm. The lawyer and his wife now work for him. The lawyer does what he tells him to do and he's not going to enjoy it. But the guy even knows where there's some furniture up for grabs and he knows there ain't none in the house. Do what I tell you to do and we'll make it through.

"Why? I mean, why would you do that?"

"I get a cut of the pay. An' cause that's mah John Deere you done fucked up. An' ah don't want it fucked up again."

There was, thank God, a lot of that. The two "good" farmers on my farms. They found out about Bob quick and told him they had no clue what they were doing. Teaching people who have no clue what they're doing, and are mentally and physically unsuited to farming, how to farm is ten times the trouble of professionals. And it was a very fucked up planting season. But Bob did it. And they didn't totally screw up.

The other five? They were . . . suboptimal results in various ways. I had to replace a lot of equipment over time. But the government paid for it eventually. Why not? It was the Bitch's fuck up in the first place. And the Congress let her get away with it.

But we'll go to the less optimal result. The farmers and store owner tell him the minimum he needs to know and suggest he call the USDA help-line. He points out it's overwelmed. The feed store owner finds a number for another help line. It's Army. See if they can help you.

So now we're back to the seed farmer.

He was not, in fact, in Blackjack. I won't say where he was except that it was "southern" and in prime farm country.

I never would have noticed if I hadn't been bored and listening to the techs answering questions. I always kept half an ear on that in case things were getting out of hand, as they frequently did.

This wasn't out of hand, it was the tone of confusion. That was nearly as good. So I hooked into the circuit.

". . . don't have any information on how to fix equipment, sir. We can give advice on crops and weather and pests but we don't have anything on equipment, I'm sorry. Have you tried contacting the manufacturer?"

"Major Bandit Six, cutting in. I've got it, Smedlap. Say problem again, over. Start at the beginning, go to the end and I'll see if I can help."

Tractor broken. Information I got doesn't work. Lawyer. Didn't know I was taking over someone's farm. Out of my depth. Army knows about farming?

Army knows everything. What kind of tractor?

I don't know.

What kind of spreader?

I don't know.

Get pen and paper. Go find out. Here's a number you can get through to me.

While he was gone, I considered the voice. The guy was clearly over his head and just a touch angry.

But it was also the middle of the damned night. And he was still working the problem. If he could get over the anger, there might be some worth to him.

He called me back.

"Bandit Six, if you've got the time, I've got the dime."

He had all sorts of information about the tractor and the spreader. All I needed was the model numbers.

"Oh, hell, yeah you've got the spreader on backwards. When they said 'reverse it' what they meant was just pop it in reverse then back out. You can't back it up. I hope you didn't break the spay arm. Okay, get ready to write this down. Memorize it. You won't be able to read it in the dark and do it at the same time. Do you have the lifting tines hooked up? Okay, I'll walk you through how to bring it back with the lifting tines, too. Get ready to write . . ."

It took about two hours to get through a fifteen-minute evolution. The guy wasn't getting much sleep that night. But we got the spreader back to the equipment shed.

"What were you using it for? It's not time to spread grass seed. Wheat? Why were you using a spreader to lay down wheat? Don't you have a planter . . . ?

. . .

. . . . . .

. . . .

. . .

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

"Okay, calm down." Grin. "You're what I class as a C. That means there's some promise. You can get your back up and wroth and decide you're the expert here and then you're going to go to D and you'll be talking to my call center guys until you get tired of it and go back to the soup lines as an F. Or you might work your way up to A. But I'll give you the chance. It's late and it's about time for you to actually go to work. If you're willing, though, I'll walk you through a lot of shit and you might make a barely functional farmer . . . Yes, I grew up on a farm and I've got a degree in the shit. I'm about the only guy working this place who does so for anything farming beyond C-A-T equals cat, you're going to have to talk to me . . . I work nights. But that's not a problem. Because you're going to be getting up around . . . an hour ago. And you'll be going to bed around sunset . . . Yes, there's a reason. Are you listening? Is this actually sinking in? Because I'm not going to waste my time if it's not . . . You're welcome."

He'd been a lawyer in Memphis specializing in "environmental agricultural issues." He was, in fact, every farmer's worst nightmare. The kind of guy who environmental groups hired to sue farmers for drying out a plot of land that they considered "wetlands."

His wife started out the complete bitch.

We'd gotten beyond C-A-T equals cat by then. We were talking as he was getting ready for another hard day's work. He was fixing what he could find for breakfast. I asked him where his wife was. Asleep.

"Farming is team work. You're supposed to still be asleep. She's supposed to be cooking breakfast. Who's cleaning? Who's taking care of the garden?"

Getting his wife to sit down and talk to me was, I take it, not easy. But it happened.

"Bandit Six, this number is permanently connected to a nuclear tipped missile aimed at you, keep that in mind . . . Oh, Hi Roger. Mrs. Roger? Oh, that would be Miz Roger. Miss Roger-Not-Roger? We're going to have such a nice time. Hello, ma'am. My name is Bandit Six. Here is the deal . . ."

You and your husband are in deep cacky.

This winter things are going to be a nightmare.

The nightmare will continue into next year.

I don't care what the President and her ministers say, trust in me, I'm with the High Command.

You are an expert in whatever your field used to be.

You know nothing about farming or being a farm wife.

If you do not listen to me, you and your husband are going to die.

Did you hear me? Do you believe me? D-I-E.

Okay, here is lesson one. There will be many more. And you'll like them less.

" 'A man he works from sun to sun but a woman's work is never done.' That's not a complaint. That's reality. Your husband, in case you hadn't noticed, is now going out all day just about every day working his tail off. It's hard, brutal, necessary work. He's probably losing weight. He'll gain it back as he gets better at things and if there's food. But he will always be expending more calories in a day than you do. He will be working harder physically. You will be working constantly physically but at a lower level.

"Farm work is team work. You are part of the team. The part you have to do, not sort of have to do, not can ignore, is vitally important. You're going to think it's demeaning. It's not. You are a critical member of the team. Your job, accept it or not, is support for you husband and hands . . . Well, you're going to need them eventually. If you stick this. Here's your job list . . ."

Fix heartiest breakfast you can fix before your husband is awake. Cereal, if available, is insufficient. Carbo-load but add any available protein. There's a reason that bacon, eggs, hash browns and toast is called "A Farmer's Breakfast" on menus.

Wash kitchen thoroughly after each meal. Foodstuffs available to you have no preservatives. Flies carry bacteria. Flies are endemic to farms. The combination means any foodstuffs left out become bacteria magnets. You will suffer from food poisoning, sooner rather than later, if you don't keep the kitchen area spotless . . . If you don't have soap make it or trade for it in town.

Next chore is pick eggs. Get your kids to help you . . . Then I'm sorry. Hands are hands. Kids learn, early, they've got chores on farms . . . Go see if there are any orphans available . . . No, I'm not joking. If we chat some time I'll tell you about how my great-grandpappy started in the farming business. Short answer: he was an orphan from Baltimore who was sent out as slave labor. No, I'm not joking.

Then you're working in the garden . . .

Lunch for you, husband, family and hands. Heavy carbo load again.

Clean house. More garden work.

Dinner. Make it light. He'll be asleep in an hour.

Clean from dinner. Make sure everything is locked down and correct. Go to bed. Get up before husband and do again and again and again.

Canning.

Household maintenance.

Laundry.

Clothing maintenance. What do you mean, you don't know how to sew . . . ?

"There's a hole in the bucket dear Liza dear Liza there's a hole in the bucket dear Liza a hole . . ."

She eventually made a decent farmer's wife. She's a lobbyist for farmers now. Leopard can't change its spots, much.

There were about fifteen like that. "A"s that is. People who were out of their depth but willing to admit it and somehow got on the line with me.

There were way more that I tried to help and fell by the wayside. Farming is not easy.

One of the "A"s, sort of, that I tried to help was funny. I say "sort of" because there wasn't anything I needed to tell the guy about farming.

He'd been a farmer. He'd moved to Arizona when he retired. Sold the farm (big farms plural) to ADM. Didn't want to live in a retirement community. "Liked some space around him." Didn't like people much, that's for sure. Crotchety didn't cover it. Talked to his wife, once. Nice old lady. Didn't have to tell her about being a farmer's wife, either. She was glad he was back working since "he'd been a handful" retired. Given what he was like when I dealt with him, I cannot imagine what he was like retired.

Anyway, he'd bought a pretty big spread of fuckall. Think that desert I went through in Iraq. He wanted land around him, but he didn't want to actually have to work it.

Come spring of 2020, he's looking at what his internal computer is saying is prime farmland.

Huh?

Cli-mate Was Chang-ing. And not always for the worse.

Back in pre-Columbian days there was this race of "Native Americans" called the Anasazi. Had something sort of approaching civilization in the Southwest. Up and disappeared. Some indication of violence. Pueblo builders are thought to have been Anastazi "in retreat." But in retreat from what?

Probably each other. And surrounding tribes. See, in the mini-ice age back in the Middle Ages, the rains shifted. The "desert southwest" was about like, oh, Kansas. Prime farming country. As things started to warm up, it slowly dried out to the desert we know and love today.

Same thing was happening. The arid belt around the world was shifting south and contracting. Positive effect of global cooling. Thank God there was at least that.

Point is, this guy walks out one cold morning. Food around the nation is rationed. He's still keeping his ear to the ground about farming. Things are looking like fucking nightmare.

And here he is looking at what is quickly becoming some of the most arable land in the U.S. Rainfalls have been, for the southwest, nightmarish. The "arroyos" are rivers. Standing ones. He's not a climatologist but he's thinking they're going to stay that way. Sort of what the long-range forecasts, the good ones not U.S. Met, are pointing to.

Now, if he only had . . .

A big tractor.

Plows.

Planter.

Fertilizer.

Herbicide (still a bunch of that pesky sage around).

Pesticides . . .

Hell, it's a long list. If he only had everything he'd left up in North Dakota. And some weather numbers he could count on.

Oh, seed . . . that would be helpful.

So I'm leaning back in my chair, trying to stay awake and wondering how in the hell I'm going to get out of durance vile. There has to be a way. Marry a general's daughter? Nah, he'd think I did it to stay in the Pentagon . . . And I couldn't come right out and say "I married your daughter so I could get some career progression again, sir. Not that she's not a nice piece of ass but could you maybe call branch and get me the fuck out the Pentagon?"

"Yes, sir . . . I understand that, sir . . . Sir, we're not here . . . I don't think we have any actual equipment available, sir . . ."

I figure it's a tofu-eater. Let Smedlap take the heat. That's what enlisted guys are for, to take the fire.

"Sir, let me transfer you to my supervisor . . . No, sir, I'm not 'passing the buck.' He's a farmer, he might have some idea what you're talking about!"

Fuck.

"Major Bandit Six. What?"

"Do you know what time it is? I've been on this damned phone all night looking for somebody in the U.S. government who has a brain! I doubt it's you but maybe I'll find somebody sometime and I'll stay on this phone all night if I have to! I didn't pay taxes my whole adult life to get the run around!"

"All of which told me nothing about why you've called. So if that's all you've got . . ."

"My name is Farmer Bill. I've been retired for five years. I moved to Arizona and bought a spread. It was desert. It's not, anymore. I don't know what your bosses are saying, but as a professional I can tell you, sonny, that we're going to be short on food as a nation next year. So I don't see why a bunch of prime farmland should just go to waste. Can you understand that or are you as dumb as a box of rocks?"

"Hang on . . . No, seriously, I'm looking at the damned climate plat, okay . . . ? Yeah, Arizona's forecast for long-range increased precipitation. Gimme a township plat or your GPS location or, hell, your address . . . Okay." Tap, tap . . . "Yeah, you're right. But we both knew that. I see your plat. You're now the proud owner of four thousand acres of prime wheat, corn or soy farmland. Congratulations. And, yeah, Department of the Interior and the USDA both still have it marked as desert, the dumbasses . . . I'm not using their climatology models is why . . . Because I'm not as dumb as a box of rocks . . ."

Farmer Bill was a character. Called me every week or so just to chew me out. Reminded me of my dad if Dad had been a motor-mouth. It was heartening. I got to looking forward to his calls for the comfort zone.

Took me a while to find what he needed but the Army had "stood-up" a "military farming support network." And eventually I found everything.

Look, an army travels on its stomach. Soldiers are always the last people to go hungry.

In most societies, that's because we've got the guns. But the U.S. Army tries, very hard, not to steal all its food. (Sherman's March to the Sea being a notable exception.)

But our models were forecasting "chronic, serious and endemic nutrition shortages" in the U.S. That's a fancy way of saying "famine." It was classified Top Secret because the Policy Makers were saying everything was coming up roses. I saw the actual reports. And as the growing season of 2020 went on, the reports were getting worse and worse.

So the Army had set out to rectify that as well as it could. It was stepping all over USDA at that point, but it didn't care. Soldiers were going to eat. If for no other reason than so that they'd have the strength to stop the food riots that were coming. Without killing the rioters.

"Stuff" for farming was available. Dealerships had gone into receivership. Stocks weren't getting distributed. Seed that was "genmod" was just sitting in warehouses and getting ready to go bad.

The Army was handpicking some farms to make sure soldiers ate. It might not be perfect, but soldiers would have something to eat.

I really think it was mid 2020 when the coup was closest. (Other than at the election and I'm getting ahead of myself again.) The Joint Chiefs were looking at the fucking country starving and the President and her advisors leading the charge into famine. But they didn't revolt. They held firm to the concept of The Society of Cincinnatus. Civilian leadership control never truly broke. But they did whatever they could under the table.

Farmer Bill became one of those "under the table" deals. He got what he needed from "seized" stocks that were just sitting around. He sold his food to the Army when it came in. Quite a few soldiers ate actual wheat bread during the winter of 2020–2021 because of Farmer Bill.

Enough of Farmer Bill. This is about me.

It took several months for the general's schedule to open up enough for some chit-chat time. And it was late when we started and I had duty that night. He had my predecessor sit in for part of my shift. We talked late.

He really was interested in Khuwaitla. He wanted out of this rat-fuck, too. But we both agreed we were doing useful work even if we hated it. So I talked about Khuwaitla. And he agreed that Abrams were tough and thought it was funny that I was so ambivalent about them. I pointed out he'd never had to fight them. He laughed.

We talked about getting them over the Taurus and the Anatolians and he thought it was funny that I'd gotten the routes mixed up. He told a story about when he was commanding a brigade in the Entry Phase in Iraq and despite GPS getting on the wrong road and running into a hell of a firefight. I told him about swinging wide on Mosul, which I'd gotten from that op. And some reading over the years. We talked about Slim and he'd read "Unofficial History" and he recommended a couple of others that turned out to be excellent. Slim was big on logistics. We segued from that.

He asked me if I'd seen the classified reports on food production.

I admitted I had.

He asked me if I had any suggestions. Beyond expanding the "food for soldiers" program which was already as big as we could do and get away with under the table.

I said I'd had a lot of time to think on night shift.

And?

What? You want the full PowerPoint presentation?

That's how I got into Plans and Ops of ESM.

Not that that was a lot better. Every answer came down to the same equation: H.R. Puffinstuff. We could do a little, but we weren't going to be able to do enough.

Things were totally and completely screwed. Factor after factor was building up. The Plague. The bad weather. The false forecasts. The utter stupidity of the Zimbabwe Plan. USDA being forced to give all the wrong suggestions. "Organic" uber alles. Remember my rant about "Organic." Three times the tilled land for the same amount of food. We had less tilled land and mostly organic and all natural farming. "Farmers" breaking stuff for which the parts were becoming scarcer and scarcer and scarcer because the factories that used to make them were abandoned and the rate of breakage was beyond belief. And the "farmers" didn't know how to fix anything. (Okay, by 2020 the worst of them were gone. Most died in the winter of 2019. But then they got replaced by a new crop of idiots.)

Any single one would have been bad.

The combination had things totally and completely FUBARed. Fucked Up Beyond Any Recovery.

And we knew deep in our bones that as soldiers we were going to be left holding the bag. We'd be the ones that people threw stones at when there wasn't even the food for the soup lines. Or shot at.

The economy was still not coming back. Stocks were trading, commodities were trading, banks were sort of getting their feet under them again. But the damned "nationalizations" had people running scared. Say you bought stock in a company then the next day it got "nationalized." Know what you got? Nada. Nichts. Nothing. Nobody wanted to invest under those conditions.

And in the meantime anyone who was paying any attention to the news could see that the coterie around Damen Warrick was getting fatter and fatter and fatter.

Hell, if people had had the energy there would have been a flat-out revolt.

And, yes, that did break out in places in 2020. And as soldiers . . . we were left holding the bag. We were the ones that had to kick down doors and round up "insurgents." Our stock was starting to fall. We were going from saviors to "oppressors."

People, we didn't vote for Warrick. Nor for the Dems that gave her absolute power.

We just got left holding the bag.

It was July of 2020 and I pulled an idea out of my ass. It was shit. I knew it was shit. And soon enough everyone in the U.S. and in several other countries ate my shit.

I invented the Kula Bar.

Yes, that's right, people. You can blame that abortion purely on me. I am at fault. Mea culpa, mea culpa, mea culpa.

The Kula Bar. The most reviled and despised food on earth, with the possible exception of Spam.

The Kula Bar in all four revolting flavors: Piss yellow, leprous green, horrible horrible blue and that truly stomach-turning red. I cannot to this day get the taste out of my mouth. I refer to them as their colors because there is no way to explain to those who have not experienced them the taste.

The sole redeeming quality? It kept the death rate down. Not gone, but down.

Here are the factors that led to that monstrosity.

Food was going to be short. Not "soup lines" short but "nothing" short.

Fuel was going to be short. Not "perhaps we should use the hybrid" short but "we can't even boil a cup of water" short.

It was going to be cold. Not "it's cool in here" cold but "if we don't get five or six people under this blanket we're going to be corpsicles in the morning" cold.

With enough food energy and some common sense and shelter you can stave off the cold. But we were going to be low on food. And you can't just hand out a bunch of semolina to somebody and tell them to come back in a week to get more when they can't cook it.

We needed emergency distribution rations that:

A. Would keep for a long time.

B. Contained a tremendous amount of energy so that people could use body energy to stave off the cold.

C. Were nutritionally complete. Preferably one "packet" was enough for one person for an entire 24-hour period.

D. Could be easily stored and transported.

E. Were in a smaller packet than MREs. Preferably "energy bar" sized.

F. Were as easy to produce from readily available materials (what there were of them) as possible.

Oh. And here's the kicker.

G. Tasted Bad.

We didn't actually want people to eat them. We wanted them to be starving to death before they'd eat them. They were "the food of last resort."

We were planning on passing them out in job lots. But we wanted people to eat anything before they'd eat the "Emergency Ration Bars." Because they were for even worse emergencies. Like, we're cut off in a blizzard and out of power and, fuck, all we have left is those fucking Kula Bars!

They tasted horrible on purpose.

We might have gone a little overboard on that one. I never saw any certified reports on it, but it was widely held allegory that people were found as emaciated skeletons with a pile of Kula Bars right in front of them.

Ever have a Bandit Bar?

It's a Kula bar with a different suite of artificial flavors.

Gotcha.

Do not mess with the Bandit.

When we got the harvests in from the "farmers for soldiers" program we looked at projected needs for the next year, compared the total input from the program and saw that we had a surplus. A sizeable one. The FFS program used only trained farmers and every trick in the book. The FFS program proved that the famines of 2020 and 2021 could be laid squarely at Warrick's feet. Also classified at the time. It's been released since under FOIA.

We poured that "excess" into Kula Bars.

That was starting in September of 2020. By then it was Warrick vs. Carson.

And then . . .

I mean how stupid could she be? Yes, it was clear she was going to lose barring some miracle. That the Dems were, across the board, about to take a shellacking.

But having her opponent arrested?

Power corrupts, absolute power corrupts absolutely?

I don't think so. I think she truly believed that She was Right and that The Way She Showed The Nation Was Just and . . .

I think she was thinking in capital letters. And the advisors she had around her were so insulated from reality that they weren't going to tell her different.

There had been a lot of quieter arrests. Commentators, reporters, minor political figures, even Congressional staff. Hell, members of the Army for that matter who hadn't obeyed her edicts and had been caught out. They weren't making the news because the MSM was still in her corner, I think horrified but horrified more of what would come out if she didn't get another term. They'd been covering for her and a change of administration was going to make that patently obvious.

She arrested Carson and about a dozen other senators, all from states with Democrat governors, and shut down Fox News and a bunch of radio stations all at once. For "conspiracy."

Yep, it was a conspiracy. It was a group of people coming together to enact political action. It's called a Political Party, you moronic Bitch!

But, man, can you imagine being on the Secret Service detail?

They'd already taken over security for Carson. He was the Republican candidate for President. They take over when a person gets close to that position. He's starting to be briefed in on peripheral matters, just in case he wins. (It's as clear as glass he's going to.)

And they get orders to take him into custody. Total incommunicado. Disappear him.

And they do it. Why?

Because you obey orders. You obey the law. The Congress had passed a law saying that this bitch can do whatever the fuck she wants. The Supreme Court had not overriden it. They let the son of a bitch stand. (5–4 vote. The dissents are scathing. Read 'em some time. Scalia has a way with words. You can practically feel the spittle.)

There's one other thing. One other reason to go along with the Bitch.

Because on November 2nd, or maybe January 20th, it's not going to matter.

Those are the drop-dead dates. Those are the dates when things are going to come apart.

What if she fucks with the elections?

I wasn't in on the "privy councils." They didn't even take place at the Joint Chiefs level. The JCS knew that if wind got to Warrick about any "special political operations planning proposals" that they'd be the first to disappear. It was going on at a much lower level.

But Warrick was serene in her belief that the People Would Do Right And Choose The New And Fresh Voice for the 21st Century. That she had Conducted A Conversation With The People And The People Would Make The Right Choice.

And she figured she'd assured it by sticking her political opponent in the Federal Prison in Marion, Ill. Right next to Manuel Noriega.

Things exploded. The military knew all it had to do was hold on until the election. If she didn't fuck with that, we were golden.

There were more than a few people who were tired of waiting for things to get better. And figured that if they couldn't kill Warrick they'd kill whatever representatives they could find.

Quite a few of the tofu-eater farmers were "made examples of." Democratic representatives, a few journalists.

"Right-wing death squads?" Try people who are fed up with being in a tyranny.

And the SCOTUS upheld the damned Act again!

"Interference in Executive powers during a National Emergency . . ."

Another scathing dissent. Thomas's was great, too. The "plantations" metaphor had a bunch of levels.

There's a song that has a line in it: "Everything exploded and the blood began to spill." That was the autumn of 2020. We were damned short on food. Harvests were in all over and they were scanty. Distribution was still fucked. Fuel was short.

The only thing that the U.S. seemed to have in abundance was anger and weapons and bullshit from 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue.

The Chairman of the Joint Chiefs finally had had enough. On October 5, he called for a press conference under emergency broadcast rules. He worded the order as if there was some new huge emergency and it was presented by the news media that way. So lots of people tuned in and turned on. Also simulcast over the Internet for those who had access and "Psy-Ops" units set up bullhorns near food lines.

"This is General Gordon. I'm Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff of the United States Department of Defense. I'm not here to declare martial law. I'm not here to say that an asteroid is about to hit the Earth, which is about the only disaster we haven't had. I'm just here to say this.

"There are a lot of people who are very angry right now at the situation in the United States. I can understand that anger. But would you please quit throwing things and shooting at my soldiers? In less than a month you can feel free to express your opinion in a normal setting. It's called a polling booth. This is America. It is not some Third World dictatorship. Quit acting like it is and wait for your chance to be heard. Make the decision in the polling booths. And whatever the outcome, face it like Americans. Not terrorists. Thank you for listening."

Things calmed down. The Bitch asked for Gordon's resignation. He told her to stick it. And a bunch of the brass sent word through their contacts that if Gordon left, the Society of Cincinnatus was going into abeyment for "the duration of the current emergency."

On October 29, the last working day before the week of the election, Executive Order 5196 was issued ordering a "suspension of all Federal elections for the duration of the current emergency." At the same time, the news media released "secret testimony" indicating that Carson had been involved in "redirection of essential disaster relief material." It was on every remaining network and front page news in every major newspaper.

On Tuesday morning, November 2, 2020, people started lining up, early, at the polls. Most places it was snowing or freezingly cold. Right down to the bottom of "Sector Three." It didn't matter. People lined up in droves. Soup kitchens shifted over to polling places.

Almost every polling place in the U.S. opened on time. And the areas that did not? Well, they were the ones that were controlled by very hard-core factions of the Democratic party. Das (feminine) Fuhrer had said that there were to be no more elections and so there vere no more elections! Alles in ordnung!

The census of 2020 had never been completed. Nobody was absolutely sure what the population of the U.S. was. There were some areas where there were questions about voting. People had moved around, a lot. Documentation was sketchy. There were a lot of "questionable" ballots that had to be set aside for determination. A lot.

Things were not as efficient and fast as they'd been before the Plague. Ballots were primarily paper. Returns were slow coming in.

Warrick ordered the military to shut down polling places. She also ordered local police to do so. She went on television under the Emergency Broadcast rules and ordered it.

Flash Order CJCS Number 2187-20, OpPlan Open Polls, ordered local Regular and National Guard troops, by unit down to platoons (it had been written months before), to move to polling places and "ensure security and continued function of same." In any area where polling was not open they were to "find local polling officers and escort them and any necessary materials for polling to the designated polling office and ensure function of same until the normal close of polling."

Mutiny? Oh, hell, yeah.

Coup? No. That would have been what was contemplated for November 3 if the vote didn't go off.

Flawless? Not hardly. Nothing had been close to flawless since 2018 and that was a pretty fucked up year all things considered.

Good? Good enough, anyway?

Yeah.

The news media held its ground as long as it could. It was still declaring for Warrick when Army numbers showed California had gone to Carson. So had every other state in the nation except Vermont, Massachusetts and Connecticut.

Carson was still unavailable to comment. He was in jail.

Warrick refused to concede. The vote was "illegal." The person elected a "criminal."

(Warrick, by the way, was one of the people to first castigate against "the politics of personal destruction.")

Not even the SCOTUS could take that one. November 23, when all the states had certified their results, they declared the vote valid and binding. 8–1. They ordered the release of the President-Elect on a 5–4 vote for.

Warrick said that nothing was going to change. She ordered the arrest of the CJCS and the members of SCOTUS, all eight, that had certified the vote.

The Capitol Police ordered to arrest the CJCS went to the Pentagon, took one look at the troops guarding the doors, and went away.

So did the ones that went to the Supreme Court building.

So did the ones ordered to arrest more Republican congressmen and senators.

We'd turned over most of the emergency resupply duties. The troops were just sitting there. Might as well camp out on the doorsteps of various "distinguished persons." Hell, we even had teams around the Democrats. Fair and balanced and all that.

The Secret Service brought Carson to his home in DC. He gave a very nice acceptance speech. Finally. He also mentioned that he'd been well treated during his "unfortunate stay in federal custody" and was pretty humorous about it. You got the impression he'd been at a resort.

Warrick threw the Secret Service out of the White House. She brought in a private security firm to protect her. She also never left from before the vote until January 20th.

Food was getting very scarce. Nobody was talking about it in the news.

The Carson "transition team" got underway. The word was out that as soon as Carson was in place and things were relatively stable, the Joint Chiefs were all going to resign. Carson wasn't having any of it. But they were pretty adamant. They'd performed a sort of de facto coup. And they weren't going to continue with power under those conditions. It couldn't be seen as a good thing. They were not only going to resign, they were going to forego any government service for the rest of their lives. They were going to disappear and live off their meager (for the job they do, anyway) pensions.

I felt really sorry for Carson in a way. He had a lot of picking up to do and there wasn't any good news in the near future. Projections for 2021 and 2022 were for colder and colder temperatures. Ice age here we come.

December we started distributing Kula Bars and the public view of the Army hit an all-time low. Everybody knew we'd saved the election but . . . Kula Bars? Fuck 'em. It kept people alive.

We were still in the "taking care of everybody" business and starting to get sick of it. We wanted things to start getting back to any semblance of normal so we could get back to learning how to kill people and break things. That didn't look to be happening any time soon.

India sent us grain shipments. India. My grandmother used to say "Eat all your food. There are starving children in India." By then there weren't starving children in India. But there had been in her memory and Grandma was a little besotted by then. Back when she was no more than middle aged, we'd been sending grain to India to help out with their famine.

Now they were sending us grain. We made it into Kula Bars. When they found out, they got a little testy. Till we explained the rationale.

Oh, India was an interesting case. But this isn't the time for that. Maybe later.

January 20th. Inauguration Day. Cold as a witch's fucking tit. I was part of the security. I know.

Carson stood up, raised his right hand and then let loose one hell of a speech. He didn't even use old catchphrases that were perfect for the conditions. The closest he got was his "continued hard times that will require great sacrifice. We will face them together as Americans and triumph over all that stands against us."

The guy had been an actor for a long time. He knew how to deliver a speech. He made even the weakest phrases ring with conviction that was so solid you could cut it and serve it as food. Better than Kula Bars, anyway. Could barely break those with your teeth. (Another "feature," not a bug.)

Warrick was not present. Her VP was and gave a short speech praising the new Prez and wishing him good luck.

Warrick had to be removed from the White House more or less with force. Actually, her personal physician sedated her and she walked out under her own power. She just thought she was taking a moonwalk or something.

Chapter Three Gosh, Here's a Thought . . .

A new Congress was in. The House of Representatives looked . . . somewhat different than before. It was incredibly white-bread. It was even short on females comparatively and it had never been a really heavy girl group. The Senate, of course, had less turnover. One election in six years. All the arrested Congresscritters who were up for reelection got reelected in a landslide and just about every Democratic senator got trounced. The new crop was also less than "collegial" with their Democratic colleagues seeing them as, essentially, lame ducks. The majority leader was not elected from the Old Guard. He was a former Congressman but he didn't play by the old rules.

Carson asked for six months of continuation of the Emergency Powers Act. He went to Congress and asked for it, doing a speech on the floor. He explained that he simply needed the same powers to undo the damage.

At the same time, the Joint Chiefs stood up and gave their retirement speeches. They explained that, as they saw it for the good of the country they had violated the honor of their offices. Gordon was great.

"Were I a Japanese General in World War II I would now cut open my belly to expiate the shame. There has been enough death. We ask to simply fade into history."

None of them have ever, that I know, written a memoir. I wish they had. I'm reasonably certain there was a group planning the coup and I'd love to have the inside scoop on it. The most I ever got from a pretty good source was "Task Force 629."

So far, nobody has ever geeked. Cowards. I admitted to creating the Kula Bar. How bad could it be to admit you were getting ready to take Warrick down? Hell, they should have given out medals for doing the tasking paperwork!

Carson got his six months. And my God was he a busy little beaver. Or, rather, his staff already had been.

They'd gotten the full list of seized farms from the USDA along with data on farm output relative to 2018. They also had a list of when farms were "family owned cooperatives" (we actually fell into that category, it was an actual line item under USDA rules) vs. really big farm corporations. And another list of farms that had been "moribund" due to the family or managers being killed by the Plague. And then there were the ones abandoned by "government cooperative associates" not to mention dead folk in them.

Hey, presto! Add a few good database geeks and you had . . .

A list of farms that were to be turned back over to farming corporations.

A priority list of farms to be turned back over to owners.

A list of farms that had been seized and turned over to new farmers but which were a) performing well and b) the owners were dead anyway.

The problem in many cases was finding the original owners and/or managers of the farms. That might have bit us in the ass but, well, there were fewer people to feed. And we had some time since what with the weather, ground breaking was going to take a while yet for most of the major crops.

People were dying, though, while he was giving his speech. And he knew it. Wasn't much he could do. Everybody who had a clue was already on the job trying to keep the death rate down.

Businesses were "denationalized." Money, at this point more or less fiat money based on our really junky bond rating, was made available to get them back on their feet. Warrick's coterie was out on their ass faster than you can say "tofu." Most of them couldn't be prosecuted for what they'd done because, hell, it was a valid executive order. Fucked up as hell, but that's what happens when that many factors come together.

The ag situation was still badly screwed. Everything was in short supply. India came to the rescue, again, with seed and pesticides. We actually ended up producing enough of the latter and herbicides by the time planting season came around. But they sent a couple of tankers full which were quite useful.

They'd also opened up the Persian Gulf. My buddy the mullah down in Abadan had "expanded his sphere of influence." Mostly through negotiation and occasionally with a bit of fighting he and the south Iraqi "moderates" had taken over most of the Gulf areas of former Iran. But the "pirates" in the Straits of Hormuz (the ones on the Iranian side of the strait) were armed with the weapons left over from the Iranian military and liked owning the Straits.

He didn't have a problem working with the "heathen" Indian military in straightening them out.

And, okay, we punched some Marines over there to help, too. As the general had said to me on the phone, we were still playing world's policeman to an extent.

Then my mullah friend said, effectively, "We've got oil and food. Y'all come on down!"

The "Fertile Crescent" was getting extremely fertile. The same change that was going on in Arizona was happening in the Middle East. Which is why the PU has become a net exporter of food. And, hell, everything else. I'm wearing a jacket right now says "Made in Persia."

And most of the minor little crap in the house says "Made in India."

India. Okay, time for the digression.

The Plague hit India hard. Real hard. Lots of vaccine distribution but it was Type One. Total death toll was right at fifty percent, which is a bit off the sixty but given their vaccine, spread should have been better.

Anyway, the thing was "where'd it hit?"

Well, everywhere equally. Right? Plague doesn't care if you're a king or a criminal.

Sort of.

Airborne spread flus have a harder time in hot environments. They don't last as long on surfaces, not even hands.

But there were large segments of India, especially the very poor, who were in very crowded conditions. And they didn't, by and large, get vaccinated. It hit those segments at a rate of about 60% with secondary effects adding another 10% or so.

Not to be coldhearted but what I'm saying is that it hit the least productive segment of their population the hardest.

India, since it climbed out of socialism and got with the mainstream, had two problems. One, it was overpopulated and undereducated. They were working hard on the second problem even before the Plague but the first was making the conversion hard. Too many new babies being born to poor people who couldn't help either through taxes or direct payments to get them educated meant more babies that weren't educated and couldn't get modern jobs . . .

It had a huge middle class, don't get me wrong. And they were functional and productive to their country and the world. Its middle class outnumbered the U.S. total population. But everything they did was against the inertia of this huge population of the poor. And other inertia.

Despite all the surface changes of modernity ("India is the largest democracy in the world!") there were still huge and very definite class differentiations. And if you weren't from a certain "class" there was little or no chance of you getting beyond a certain point. It was glass ceiling after glass ceiling after glass ceiling.

Don't get me wrong, most of the underclass wasn't going to produce Einsteins or Reagans. But it was going to produce some. But it wasn't going to happen as long as caste still ruled. And it did.

Come the Plague.

Most of the "upper class" no longer lived in daily constant heat. The heat that Kipling spoke of so luridly about India. India had discovered air conditioning in the 1990s and taken to it with abandon. At least if you could afford the enormous electric bills.

But.

Nice cool air-conditioned offices meant nice places for H5N1 to hang out for a bit longer. Yes, the "upper class" had gotten vaccinated. Most of the strains that hit India were mutated binding sites.

The upper class of Indian society got hit nearly as hard as the very poor. It wiped out whole families that were proud of the fact they could trace their ancestors back five thousand years.

It also took out about 30% of India's college graduates. Which was bad. But it tended to take out the ones with degrees in "English" and "Literature" and "Marketing" and "Social Finance."

The less well paid "Engineers" and "Mathematicians" and such like had a much lower death rate since they tended to spend less time in air-conditioned environments.

Before the Plague, despite all the changes, India was a fairly sharp financial and social pyramid. That is never good for a society.

After the Plague the tip had gotten sliced and a big chunk of the base had gotten sliced. That made it a much more functional country than before.

Oh, it was a maelstrom at first. Everywhere was. But it recovered faster than most of the rest of the world (including us). Well, there were still "issues" even when they were shipping us grain. "Restive local populations." (Read Moslems.) A nutball in Pakistan had seized that country's nukes. Various other "issues." (Including an abortive invasion by a Chinese general that never really amounted to much.)

But India was, and is, a comer. Are they ever going to be a "super-power" to rival the age of Pax Americana? Well, when they do send "blue water" task forces over to play with the Navy, they still end up towing some ships home and often cancelling part way through. Nor can they field a supercarrier to save their ass. They still can't get what is called in the military "systemology."

But they're a comer. And, hell, we're not exactly out of the play-pen.

But I'm getting ahead of myself again.

Thing is, India was doing better than the U.S. in 2021. Part of that was they didn't have an idiot like The Bitch in charge. Part was environmental. But they were definitely doing better than us.

However, they were also friends. It's not only okay, it's a good thing, when friends are strong. They were strong friends in our hour of need and I'm glad we're on such good relations. Hell, I helped to make some of them, I've got a vested interest. But I digress, again.

I'm basically avoiding talking about Detroit.

The economy hadn't started booming by any stretch, but people were "cautiously optimistic." Coming out of the Great Depression had required WWII. Coming out of the effects of the Plague only required a stable business environment. People wanted to get back to work and there was work to be done. It's just that nobody wanted to invest in anything when they couldn't be sure the government wouldn't seize it.

But there was another problem. The cities.

Many of the cities, especially in "red" states, were back up and functioning at some moderate level. They were, at least, as secure as they'd been pre-Plague. (Some more so since people were less forgiving of criminals. A lot of the stupid had been beaten out of the surviving tofu-eaters. And unless it was a religious thing, they were all willing to eat meat if it was available.) Red states had eventually sent in their own "security forces" to reestablish order.

However, there were some cities that remained free-fire zones. Where gangs or even whole small organized "governments" held power that refused to recognize the authority of the feds or the states. Generally, those hadn't voted. You had to be under state and federal authority to vote. If you weren't, you didn't vote. Most of them were functional dictatorships, or de jure dictatorships, anyway.

The list of cities that were definitely functional city-states is small. Chicago, Boston, Hartford, Newark and most especially Detroit. There was a list of others where order had broken down and never been reestablished. But that's different from "we have order, and we are the order."

Detroit was a very special case. It was . . . touchy. It shouldn't have been but it had a number of "political correctness" factors associated with it.

The group that had taken over Detroit was the "Islamic Caliphate of the 9/11 Martyrs." Now, right there most people like me were thinking "There's no better group to take out."

Problem was . . . Warrick and the MSM had treated the IC9M with kid gloves. Why?

The leader of the IC9M was Mullah Ali . . . sigh, here goes, don't get pissed if I screw it up . . .

Mullah Ali Al-Kirbi Aqal ibn abu Meiri Al-Haj Amani El-Haddi abu Saleh Al-Ahad ibn Mohammed Al-Rashid Al-Kuwukji abu Kahdra Al-Wohoush Akim ibn Tamud ibn Bakdash Abu Saeb.

I had, as part of a lot of briefings, an explanation in detail of his name. I cannot for the life of me recall any of it.

Call him Mullah Ali or Caliph Ali as he styled himself. I don't give a shit. I called him "burrhead."

Okay, yes, that's a racist comment. Caliph Ali would make Martin Luther King racist.

Somehow Kuwazi Jones, aka half a dozen names ending in Mullah Ali, former drug dealer, armed robber and rapist, had become the darling of the media and what was left of the tofu-eater set. He had "established order" in Detroit and was "working for the poor and oppressed peoples of color of the degenerate and oppressing" United States by bringing a "new order" of "equality and enlightenment."

He was, I'll admit, photogenic and charismatic. He was very good on camera. He was well-spoken and could deliver a good line. He knew all the liberal mantras to spout.

But somehow the refugees that made it out of Detroit with tales of horror never got as much air-time.

And Warrick had treated him like fucking God. He could do no wrong. Getting food shipments to the "established government" in Detroit had been a high priority. Whenever the Army tried to balk, somebody got canned.

Since Caliph Ali was very good about not shooting at the troops, as long as they dropped off the shipments at the edge of his territory, the Army geeked. They didn't like it, but they geeked.

Problem being, we also saw the intelligence coming out of Detroit. We knew that life in the "Caliphate" was, well, life in a Caliphate. Which meant hell for values of hell. Worse than most Caliphates, really, because Mullah Ali was one fucked up psychopath.

Right-wing radio had long had Detroit as one of its underlying themes of how fucked up Warrick was. Carson knew about the conditions, he thought, from that. When he saw the real conditions in intel reports, he was said to have nearly thrown up.

The problem being, well, the story that everyone had gotten for going on two years was that Detroit was a "model of modern good governance in a multicultural environment."

Just rolling into Detroit and hanging every fucking hardcore would have thrown everyone for a loop. Sure, he had overthrown established order and governance. But for most people in 2021, that wasn't good enough. Here was an African-American spokesperson who had "saved the people of Detroit."

The other cities that were "city-states" all had similar "image issues." To cover for Warrick, the news media had had to avoid finding anything wrong with dictators holding American cities. Since they'd practiced for years finding nothing wrong with Fidel Castro, they were very good at it. They'd made people look as if they enjoyed the chains. Hell, there were people who wanted to go to Detroit. It sounded like paradise.

The only thing that would work would be showing people the truth of the situation in such a way as they couldn't ignore it. The Army was going to have to counter the propaganda. Hard.

"Gosh, here's a thought . . ."

Chapter Four The Penalty for a Job Well Done Is . . .

Look, you don't get on the short list for promotion to lieutenant colonel after a year and a half as a major. You don't. It doesn't matter if you walk on clouds and suck every general in the Pentagon. You don't.

Suddenly, I was up before a promotion board. And on the promotion list for lieutenant colonel.

You don't go to boards, by the way. Officers sit on the board and consider a whole bunch of personnel packets. Based on the personnel packets they pick a group of officers and give them a score. Depending on the number of officers the Army needs for that rank, if your score is high enough they promote you.

(When I got "selected" for major, that is the promotion board said I was a possible, the "promotion" rate was 93%. So all but the absolute lamest captains got major that board.)

I'd been on the short list each time. Okay, I'm pretty good at what I do. And I'm a handsome devil and charming. (And, yes, unfortunately that matters.)

But promotion boards are supposed to be "lacking in influence." A general isn't supposed to stop by, toss a packet on the table and go, "We really like this guy and if he doesn't get promoted you all might as well figure on staying at your current rank for the rest of your lives."

Promotion boards are supposed to consider only what is presented in front of them. It's like a jury. Even if they've seen TV stuff about the guy they're judging, they aren't supposed to consider it. And they're also not supposed to consider if somebody calls them at home and says "he walks or your child goes through life blind."

I didn't like the way it got handled from all appearances. If they'd said "you're a light bird" and given me the oak leaves, that would be one thing. There's paperwork and precedent for that. But it appeared that someone had fucked with the promotion board in my favor. That sort of thing, down the road, can really bite you in the ass. Besides . . . it's dishonorable.

(So later I went digging. There is "standard minimum time in grade" for all positions. There is also "nonstandard minimum time in grade" for all positions. When promotion boards sit, they can, at their discretion, consider "nonstandard minimum time in grade" officers. The promotion board had looked over the list of all majors in "standard minimum time in grade" and found some that deserved the next rank. Then, since they'd done their jobs efficiently, they had some extra time and considered "nonstandard minimum time in grade officers" for light bird. And ran across Bandit Six in the bunch. And, well . . . People who are on the board are not supposed to talk about the board. What happens on the board, stays on the board. But a guy told me about when they ran across the "Centurion" packet as they put it. And passed it around. And talked about shit they're not supposed to talk about like "I fucking die every time I watch 'CAM(P)ing'!" And moved it to the top of the stack and recommended the packet be "selected under waiver of time in grade." Still kind of pisses me off. There was some guy my grandstanding fucked for that go-round. To whoever it is, I apologize.)

So I was now a major promotable. Big whoop. I was still in the Pentagon and still shoveling horse-shit. Nice bump in pay, though, when the promotion finally came through.

So one day I get word I need to report to a different department for "consultation on Emergency Methodology." I've got an office. And the name of a major.

I go to said office and meet a nice major. The major is wearing the tabs for aide to a full general. The nice major asks me questions. I answer them politely. Some of them are on the borderline of "wrong." They were a touch . . . political.

The Army has to play politics all the time. That is, they have to find the Congresscritters who will support funding and all that. But within the Army, it's a written rule that you don't discuss or argue politics. You don't ask someone what their politics are. Yes, it gets done all the time, but not in an official setting. It was the equivalent of asking me "Are you now or have you ever been a homosexual?" It's Just Not Done.

At the end of the "interview" I was told "thank you very much, we may be talking again."

And I got orders. To my old unit. As Battalion Commander.

Wait. WRONG!

First of all, I can't think of a time when a guy who has been a commander in a unit has been brought back as a BC. There are too many battalions in the Army. Just luck of the draw says you're not going to get your old unit. At the level of major, you've scooted off somewhere else. If you spend the normal time as a major, you've done staff time at various levels and some in a battalion to get the feel. You probably have been an XO. But not of your old unit. Doesn't work that way.

Second, it was like taking over the Company. Normally, the "career progression" was that I'd get promoted to light bird and take a staff position for my rank. If I was a very good boy I might get a battalion. But not until I've gotten some experience under colonel's silver.

And I still wasn't on the books as a light bird. Majors hadn't commanded battalions since WWII.

Oh, wow, look. I'm a light bird. Fancy that.

Promotion came in the day after my orders.

My skids were being greased. And greased hard. "Selected" way out of zone. Command time when I should have still been shuffling papers. And now promotion out of zone.

Once is happenstance, twice is coincidence, three times is enemy action.

Note, this sounds crazy. But there are two things about promotion in the Army. If you get promoted at one rank too fast, you're bound to get fucked over later. I, eventually, wanted to be a general. Despite the number of generals around, getting to general is very hard. Having my skids greased now would probably fuck that up then. (Absent, like, a World War.) The other is, if someone is hand-selecting you, and that is pretty much verboten in the Army, it's rarely for something you're going to enjoy. It means somebody wants you to do something fucked up.

I didn't know at the time how fucked up.

I drove down to Stewart, which I hadn't seen in a while but it hadn't changed much either, and found quarters. I reported in to the Division. I got the usual smoke blown up my ass but not as much as usual. I was an old Division hand. The Army's "Third Herd." (The actual motto is "Nous Resterons Là" "We Shall Remain." Don't ask.) I got the standard incoming battalion commander "in-brief."

With FEMA actually starting to be left to do its job, the Army was coming more and more off of "disaster relief" duties and getting trained back in on "kill people and break things." The Brigades (which were the actual deployment units) weren't by any stretch back to their glory days of being able to break your hearts and your armies any where, any time, but they were getting back in shape.

My battalion was the next one slotted up for "combat retraining." I got some frowns but they weren't explained even when I asked. But I did notice that my Brigade wasn't up for combat retrain, yet. We were getting bumped up the cue.

Combat retrain means starting from the ground up. Soldiers train on individual tasks while officers try to remember how to conduct operations. The latter is mostly "TEWTs," Tactical Exercises Without Troops, and can range from sitting at a table working over a problem to sand table exercises to going out in the field and considering how to take terrain to full up computerized battle with independent scorers.

Later on the officers and troops are "mated up" for field exercises and then finally go through a test to see if it's taken. Generally, after the test (called an ARTEP) there's a stand-down for maintenance to fix all the shit that broke in training then the unit, if it passes the test and the inspection of its equipment, is considered "combat certified." It's ready to go to war.

Normally, "combat retraining" is a six-month process.

We were scheduled for three.

I looked at the, very tight, schedule, kissed sleep goodbye then looked again.

We were scheduled, if everything went well, to be "combat certified" one month before the end of Carson's requested "six months."

We weren't going to be the first "combat certified" battalion available while Carson still had "Emergency Powers" authority, suspending habeas corpus and posse comitatus (the law that said you couldn't use federal troops in United States territory for police forces) but we were going to be one of the first.

Okay, once is happenstance, twice is coincidence, three times is enemy action. What is four?

It's a puckering feeling in the rectum.

I still didn't have the word "Detroit" in my head. But I did have the word "pacification actions." Okay, it's a phrase.

I also didn't have the word, phrase, whatever, "Centurions" in my head.

We started training. Part of the training was learning to be a battalion commander without:

A. Being an S-3 (operations officer).

B. Being an XO (second in command of a battalion).

C. Ever having been to or even taken the correspondence course for Command and General Staff College, which was normally a "must have" for battalion command.

I'd had experience with "large force" command. Don't get me wrong. Hell, by Istanbul I was commanding the forces of a light brigade. Or a heavy battalion "team."

But that was there under make-it-up-as-you-go-along rules. Now I had to learn to play by Army rules and there were a lot of them.

But I had very good help. All the staff officers were excellent. They'd been trained in by my previous commander and for the first month or so I just let them keep doing what they were doing. Hell, I never really made a lot of changes.

And my company commanders were also "hold-overs." They'd all been doing their jobs a bit over time for when they should have rotated out. They knew them well.

The only fly in the ointment, at first, was me. But I'm a quick learner. I didn't make the mistakes I'd made as a company commander because, among other things, I'd sort of done this job before. I just had to figure out the details.

We trained up, hard. We had a pretty decent budget for it, thank God. And I knew some tricks to get more. Budget was a "use it or lose it" proposition. You had to use up all your budget by the end of the year.

Unfortunately, we weren't near the end of the year but there were still some units that were looking at their projected training and going "I'm not going to use all this budget." Normally, it's the other way around. But there were some. I found them and got more budget for stuff like ammo for live-fire training.

(Hell, there was a lot of ammo sitting around. We hadn't been using much for the last couple of years and we'd stopped very abruptly in the middle of a war. There was plenty of ammo. Less fuel but that just meant the troops learned to walk.)

We were getting ready for ARTEP, not up to that point but close, when I got orders cut for TDY to the Pentagon. What the Fuck? I'm a commander! You don't send battalion commanders TDY (temporary duty) to the Pentagon for fuck's sake! Not when there's an ARTEP scheduled in two weeks!

I got on a plane and flew up to the Puzzle Palace, again, cursing under my breath.

And got "briefed in."

The mission of my battalion, like it or not, was to "pacify" the city of Detroit and return it to "normal order" under the laws and customs of the United States of America and the State of Michigan.

But that wasn't all.

I was asked, not ordered, asked if it would be possible to reactivate the Centurions stories for the mission.

Some of those meetings were totally fucked. The PIO assholes had somehow become involved. They had lots of "recommendations" on ways to improve Centurions.

Look, I'd made it up as I went along but it was still the highest rated show in reruns in the U.S. and maybe the world. A lot of people were just starting to get back TV, especially cable. And they'd heard about Centurions but had never seen it. DVDs were selling like hotcakes. (I swear, Murdoch owes me, big-time. The bastard.) It was about the only thing that was selling, consistently.

I didn't need PIO shit-for-brains giving me recommendations on how to improve Centurions. Especially recommendations that amounted to turn it into a steer. It was a bull. That was its horror and glory. If they couldn't figure that out, they could kiss my ass.

Oh, and they wanted it more "family friendly" and "gender friendly" and "culturally friendly" and . . .

I wasn't just meeting with them, though. I was meeting with serious colonels and generals who were laying out the problem. Detroit had to be taken down while we still had posse comitatus. The President was smart but he hadn't realized how long it was going to take to get units back in shape for combat. And it was going to be combat. The caliph had seized NG military hardware early on, both convoys that were under orders not to defend themselves and stuff that was already in the Detroit area. An entire company had been "suborned" and turned over military grade weapons and hardware. He might have all the shit I'd faced before. Low ammo for most of it, maybe none. But he had the gear and some ammo was very much missing.

And with the caliph being held up as a shining light by the news media, it was going to be a shit-storm. The MSM wasn't going to just take us taking down the caliph. They were going to spin for all they were worth. And they were going to be all over the mission. No way to keep them out, practically. If we did, it would look like "censorship" and that was the last thing we needed.

We had to get the word out about what was really going on in Detroit. And we needed to get the word out fast. And hopefully show what the media was spinning.

And the one thing the generals agreed on, but weren't going to shove down my throat, was that the name needed to change.

Thus was born The New Centurions mini-series.

I started getting balky. I was getting dozens of "briefings" on every conceivable subject. Some of them were useful, much of it was crap (especially any that involved PIO). I was digesting all of it, sure. But I was on short time. My battalion was getting ready for its final exam and I was having to be thinking way past it to a mission that still wasn't clear and was going to be very very complicated. And very secret. That we were going into Detroit was Top Secret. That we were planning a Centurions broadcast about Detroit was Top Secret and compartmentalized.

And, thus far, nobody was asking me anything. I was given information and "suggestions" but nobody was asking me what I thought or how I thought it should be done or, critically, what I was going to need. It was like they thought I could just pull one out of my ass.

I was in a meeting on "potential taskers" that had one of the main generals sitting in it and at one point when they were discussing "communication strategy taskers" I just stood up.

"This is bullshit. And it's got to stop."

"You have a problem with the mission, Bandit Six?" the general asked. He was sort of stern but I could see he was also alarmed. Everyone assumed I was totally going along with "information management." If I wasn't willing to, the whole plan was in the shitter.

"No, sir. I'm up with the mission. My problem is that for the last three critical days I've been getting briefings more or less at random, most of which have been useless and a waste of everyone's time. It's like every department in the Army got a secret message there was going to be a Centurions broadcast and wants to get its two cents in. And, thus far, none of the meetings have been about what I suggest much less what I'm going to need. And those meetings are going to take a long time and there are going to have to be decisions made. And not by committee, General. And may I remind everyone that in less than two weeks my battalion, which is going to be somewhat necessary to this whole jug-fuck, is up for ARTEP. And if it fails said ARTEP, because for example its commander has been sitting in meetings for two weeks, it's not going to be combat certified, rendering all of this moot."

"It's not going to fail the ARTEP," the general said.

"We've been working hard, sir, but . . ."

"No," the general said. "Listen to me. It Will Not Fail The ARTEP. If I have to personally pencil in all the results. Besides, it's a good unit. It will do fine. On that you're just suffering from pre-ARTEP jitters, which is normal. You're a new battalion commander. Had them myself. Your unit is good and will pass ARTEP. If it doesn't, It Will Pass ARTEP. That's been decided at a much higher level than this. Okay, who or what do you need for these meetings?"

"I need . . ." I said then paused. "I'm going to need someone senior from PIO. Someone with a brain and preferably real media experience if that exists. Pretty quickly I'm going to need geeks. Since I don't talk geek, I'm going to need translators from my unit, two sergeants from Bravo. They're still there. I stopped by and said hello already. I'm going to need overhead specialists. I'm going to need Graham and the crew if I can get them. They can come in late. I have an op-plan for this. It's not the op-plan that's been presented. The op-plan presented, especially the 'suggestions' from PIO, will not work. My op-plan will work. Oh, and I need someone senior enough in each of the meetings that require coordination with other departments that when I say 'this is what I need' the person can say 'do it' and it gets done. And eventually I'm going to need a lot of savvy and devoted-to-the-concept eyeballs. Those can't come from my unit and should probably all be geeks. Intel geeks might work. Say an intel battalion. Maybe a DIA unit."

"How short can you make an operational outline?" the general asked.

"Depends on if people are going to joggle my elbow."

"1700. My office. Verbal only. Meeting, and all meetings on this matter for the rest of the day, adjourned."

My op-plan was simple in concept and really complicated in detail. A simple Centurions broadcast would not work. The media was going to be all over the op like shit on stink. We were going to have to not only do a normal Centurions show but on top of it, woven into it, deconstruct most or all incidents of "spin."

Which meant we were going to have to cover the media like stink.

Every photograph from every stringer was going to have to be caught by an Army team who would find the context the stringer was, intentionally or unintentionally, missing. Every broadcast of every news network was going to have to have another camera on it, showing what the cameras were not reporting. When it was impossible to really show that, we were going to have to "craft" imagery that got into the details.

And we were going to have to turn a one-hour show out in nearly real time. Preferably every evening the op was going on. Graphic imagery, script, the thematic elements and step all over the news media's reporting. Since most people still got their news between 5PM and 7PM, and that was when all the really spun news was going to hit the airwaves, we were going to have to do a show while they were spinning. Then show the counter spin. Show the reality they were missing or essentially falsifying.

Waiting until the next day, waiting until the next week, wasn't going to cut it. We had to hit people when they were still gathering their opinions about what they'd seen on the news.

"That's impossible," were the first words out of the mouth of the PIO general in the meeting.

"No, sir," I replied. "Taking Istanbul with a Stryker company was impossible. This will just be very very difficult."

And it was.

So while I was working on all the shit involved in getting combat certified, I was also working on getting that operation ready. And it was a massive fucking exercise. Worse, really, than getting through the ARTEP which, the general was right, was not as hard as I'd expected. I had very good subordinates. Thank God. And the previous commander.

After our inspection by the IG, another hair tearer while I'm simultaneously juggling the "secret" side of what we're going to do, we got our, secret again, orders for our upcoming operation. Finally, I could get the battalion staff working on that op, but I still didn't have them in the loop on the Centurions side.

But it was obvious I was working something else. Most battalion commanders don't go through pre-ARTEP and then ARTEP and ORSE without contributing much but "Uh, huh. Sounds good. Great job. Keep up the good work." Delegation was one thing, this was crazy. They input something. I just didn't have the time.

I finally got the go-ahead to bring the battalion staff in on "Operation New Centurions." And they looked at me like I had two heads. I gave them background. Then I gave them more background. Then I tried to explain what a massive fucking headache it was going to be. And I also explained that while the operation was going on, I was going to be juggling both sides.

We were still waiting for our "combat certification" when the PIO guys started filtering in. They were gathering "background" on people. It quickly became evident that the Centurions thing was starting up again. Sergeants pointed out that talking about it was a bad thing.

The last remaining problem was, we didn't have an outlet. We could release it on the Web but that would only hit a fraction of the available households.

The Army cut a deal with the networks. One broadcast network would get a new Centurions show for free. Each night, 8PM Central, guaranteed broadcast was all that was required. Resale rights would be minimal for cable networks and one cable TV news company could get it for free. But it had to air, guaranteed, without editing. That was the only proviso.

The networks knew they were looking at something radioactive. They also knew that Centurions meant vast numbers of viewers glued to the TV.

In the end the network execs went for the money. They couldn't pass up new Centurions shows.

Fox got the cable news rights. ABC, again, got the broadcast rights. Four or five other minor networks picked it up as well.

The news hit the Internet before we were even starting to move out. Actually, while negotiations were still going on with the networks. From the way it was sounding, it was coming from our side. Hit the conservative blogs first. I figured it was someone in the battalion. I didn't care. It was creating "buzz."

But what the operation was was still secret. When we moved out, we moved out at night and spread out our units so we could be going anywhere.

Three days later, all the units were assembling in a state park near Lansing.

Chapter Five I Am Your Centurion

"Rubble" was our first episode.

We moved out from our assembly areas at dawn. It had been determined that for reasons of "reduction of collateral damage" we should do most of our fighting during the day. Also, because that way we were able to "craft the image."

There were reporters on scene by the time we hit the edge of Detroit. They'd been told we were coming and punched out crews immediately. The command track I was using had, besides all the usual shit, four TVs in it tuned to every major network. We had the "regular" networks split and one for Fox and one for CNN. Graham had done one bit for us then faded out. He was actually on the "other side" of this war.

There were actually reporters "embedded" with the Caliphate forces to show the "truth" of this "unconscionable use of force" against "peaceful Muslims" who were being "oppressed" for "voluntarily choosing" an "alternative lifestyle" to the "Fundamentalist Christian orthodoxy." Graham wasn't with those idiots, but he was still on the other side of the propaganda war.

I didn't spot the shot. But one of our "savvy eyes" did. CNN had broadcast a touching piece while we were still on the outskirts of Detroit about the "horrific collateral damage" of our "military assault." As far as I knew, nobody had fired a shot, yet, and there was a female CNN reporter standing in front of a pile of rubble we had presumably made.

And right behind it came the "alternative view" from an Army videography team. The guys on the team had the right idea. They stayed on the reporter though most of her bit then zoomed in, so you could still see the reporter's shoulder out of focus, on some rebar sticking out of this rubble we had, presumably, made that day. It was rusted.

"Get me all the information we can about that building," I snapped. "I need to know when it fell down and why."

Sure enough, it was a lead-in shot for most of the evening news shows. And they were all over us like stink. We were barely fighting and they already wanted us to surrender.

Hell, no. I haven't yet begun to fight. Either war.

"Rubble" talked about how "Caliph Ali" had been tearing down buildings to build a mosque. The "Martyrs of the Great Jihad of September 11th Mosque." We had overhead of "people" still working on it (more on that later) even as we did our approach. Also dated satellite imagery showing that particular building standing, then being pulled down. Nearly a year before.

We discussed the basis of Islam and, notably, the way that the Koran talked about slaves. Because we already knew where we were going with the overall story.

We took the outskirts of the area "Caliph Ali" held with fairly light fighting and about no casualties. We put out sniper teams to counter their sniper teams. And we bunked down for the night.

Normally, the U.S. Army fights at night. We've learned to own it. But we wanted the news media to get good video. So we could hammer them with it.

Two-front war. The main front was taking down Ali. The second front was showing the media we could fight that war, too. I'm not even sure they shouldn't be reversed.

Second day was "Collateral."

The main shot for that was a shot of one of the Mongrels' Abrams taking out a building. And the line of dead bodies, females and kids, that were outside the building. Clearly dead because of those evil U.S. Forces since nobody else was shooting, right?

Another shot from CNN, broadcast all over the place as we expected. It was the most newsworthy shot of the day and we were pretty good at figuring out which would be the lead-in story for the news at that point.

We showed the heavy weapons emplacement in the building. And had Predator video of the women and children being shot, by Caliphate forces, as they tried to get out of the way of the battle.

The Caliphate was using human shields all over the place. We showed just how very hard it was to avoid collateral damage. We had video of soldiers taking fire and casualties and not returning it until they could target the actual fighters. Also of kids being used as spotters.

Body slammed them again.

The third was "Tangled."

The shot for that day was an Abrams with a plow ripping down a building. Urban renewal indeed.

The Caliphate had laced their penultimate defenses with IEDs. Most of them anti-personnel.

We had one, unfortunate, shot of a civilian trying to escape who ran into one and got blown to rags. Sniper overwatch and we were gathering everything in realtime.

We had graphics of how they were laid out and how we took them out, mostly by going through buildings.

Of course, we were also showing the Caliphate how we were coming, but I didn't really care.

We were picking up lots of video of some horrific stuff that we weren't showing. That was for the last segment.

The last day we did start out before dawn. I took the Bandits, the Scouts and the Mongrels on a sweep to the east.

While the main force of the battalion, and most of the media, were concentrating on the main fighting, we swept around in our standard flanking maneuver. There were defenders in that area but they weren't numerous. Also IEDs but we had those licked.

We breached their final defenses and shoved, hard, for the central command post.

Why?

Hostages.

The "Caliph" had gathered many of the "dhimi" (cover that in a bit) as well as all of his slaves around him. Well, most of them were packed into the roads that the battalion was slowly and with much noise and commotion grinding forward on.

They were forced to stay in place with chains on their legs as well as guards behind them with machine guns.

We swept in behind them. And we got the guys with machine guns, mostly, before they could open fire. At which point I told the battalion to speed the fuck up and watch out for civilians. And handle casualties.

The "Caliph" had taken refuge in a former library that was, for the time being, the most palacious building he could find. It was, he considered, heavily defended. And he, again, had hostages.

I had the Mongrels take out the forward defenses and then the Bandits unloaded and started raising all kinds of hell.

Our intel was that his "throne room" was in an upper lobby. I had Third Herd assault the front while the rest of us went around the side and up the fire stairs.

The "Caliph" was on his "throne" (a canopy bed) surrounded by his harem, not one of which was over sixteen. He had his "martyr guards" oriented to take Third under fire.

When we came out of the stacks, everybody was looking towards the main stairs.

Second Platoon lit them up. They want their 72 virgins, we'll make that easy for them.

Which left the caliph surrounded by terrified teenage girls and holding a naked ten-year-old up as a human shield.

I was a commander. I didn't shoot people if I could avoid it. That's what snipers are for.

I had Second's sniper shoot him in the elbow. It was nice and exposed.

Then I shot him.

And, yes, he appeared unarmed. But I couldn't be sure. He was still moving and thus "a potential threat to myself and noncombatants."

So I shot him several times. Some of the shots at point blank range.

Sue me.

That night we broadcast "Chains."

Two hours, by previous negotiation, it laid out what had really been happening in the "kindly" Islamic Caliphate of the 9/11 Martyrs.

Mullah Ali had established true Shariah. There were three classes of people. The Muslims, "dhimi" and slaves. Dhimi were any people who refused to renounce Christianity or Judaism but were able to successfully contribute to the Caliphate's brutal "tax regime."

If you could not contribute, you were made into a slave. Sometimes. Actually, what usually happened was that you sold a member of your family. Usually a pretty daughter; they brought the most money. Or you'd lose your business and eventually become a slave.

It was, in fact, very much on the normal lines of a caliphate.

The only added fillip is that each week every dhimi household was paraded before the "faithful" and forced to undergo a ritual auto de fe in which they were at first threatened with death and then "reprieved" if they paid their taxes.

Dhimi females were, by law, not to be veiled. They had to wear the "hijab," the headscarf, which is a sign of ownership by the way, but they could not wear veils.

At the weekly auto de fe, females ranging as young as ten were pulled out of the dhimi households and "used" for the pleasure of the caliph and his "generals."

Sometimes they were used publicly while the parents and husbands were forced to watch.

Rape is a method of control. It is an exercise in naked power. It was used as such to ensure that things in the Caliphate were "peaceful" and "ordered."

Then there were the slaves. The slaves were dhimi who could not pay their taxes. They did the majority of the labor on building the mosque, as well as the combat emplacements. Chained in long lines, the shackles on their legs were muffler clamps mostly, they were as ragged and emaciated as death camp survivors.

Given all that, you'd think that anyone would want to become a Muslim, right?

Only "persons of color" were permitted to "submit to Allah."

Like I said, he'd have made MLK a racist.

The news media, by the day of the final assault, was trying to change its tune. Why?

People had stopped watching anything but The New Centurions. They knew they would get their news as facts, not spin. Not a picture of something and a whining bitch talking about how soldiers, who were incredibly well regarded by then, had been killing innocent women and children but what was actually happening.

There's no point in watching a 24-hour news cycle if all the "news" is wrong.

People were turning off TVs until Centurions came on.

By day four, the news media was getting the hint. It was taking a clue-bat, but they knew that whatever they showed that night, we were going to deconstruct and destroy them with.

"Chains," we actually had a hard time. But CNN could be counted on to toe the party line and they had a shot of dead women and children lying in a roadway.

They'd been chained up to stop our advance. They couldn't run and they couldn't hide. They were shot in the back by "soldiers" of the Caliphate when Farmer's Freaks breached the perimeter. And the "soldiers" died seconds later, courtesy of two fast acting TCs and the World War One era Ma Deuce, thereby saving hundreds of lives.

CNN showed the bodies, from the hips up.

They didn't show the chains.

They didn't show the sobbing men, women and children being released from them by soldiers of the United States Army.

They didn't show the women screaming at us, "WHAT TOOK YOU SO LONG?"

(Actually, they showed the angry mob, they just did a voice-over that cut out what they were angry about. We deconstructed that one, too.)

We deconstructed piece after piece that showed the Army and the Carson administration in the worst possible light. We talked about what the Koran really said, how it could be interpreted and how the "Caliph" had perverted even that perverse document. (Don't like my take? Go read Surahs Eight and Nine. Skip One. It's superceded by Mohammed's own directives in Surah Six.)

We found "moderate" Islamics, real ones that were immigrants and had been good Islamics their whole lives, and got interviews about their anger at what had been done. The one imam from Iraq who was crying and apologizing over and over again was particularly good, I thought.

By the next day, the news media was effectively broken. They were interviewing survivors and even CBS and CNN reporters were getting a bit testy at what had been allowed to happen.

"That this travesty could be permitted in America at even the worst of times says something about the previous administration. And the news media has to share a portion of the blame."

CBS evening news, President of CBS News, Day Five.

By then, units were going into all the "contested" cities and finding similar horror stories. None as bad as the "Caliphate" that had been held up as "enlightened" but very fucking bad in their own way.

Then came "Trust."

That was all me. I'd actually built most of it from footage going back to the very beginning of the Plague. It was, in parts, very dry. It's not anyone's favorite and perhaps I should have quit on a high note. But I wanted my swan-song to be my song.

I talked about trust. I talked about societal trust, when it worked and when it didn't. I talked about assimiliation, the "melting pot" concept vs. "multiculturalism," the "salad" concept. I talked about studies of societal trust. I pulled in shots from The Gangs of New York, talking about how "multicultural" it had once been when Italians and Irish and "American" Americans couldn't talk to each other and didn't trust each other and therefore killed each other in such droves that the Army had, way back then, had to do a "Detroit" on New York City itself. And now one group had great food and the other great beer and it was otherwise hard to tell them apart.

I talked about how Swedes and Norwegians, two cultures as white-bread as you can find, had once battled even here in the U.S. over differences brought to our shores.

"If we sunder ourselves internally, if we accept the false divisions, then we bring with those false divisions all their ills, all their blood of centuries. Where then, can we find trust? If we cannot see the difference between the evil that stands here before us with blood-soaked hands and what we are told is the evil we do in bringing peace and plenty to foreign shores, where then is the trust? If we cannot remember who we are, if we cannot comprehend what it means to be this shining light on the hill, this country of wonder and riches, this . . . America, then we shall surely slip into the long dark night that the enemies of our freedoms so richly desire.

"We are told, always, that there is no black and white. That there are only shades of gray. This is a picture that is held up to us. But it is only a picture and it is false. Each day, each of us makes countless choices, and each of these choices is black and white. If we choose, over and over again, as we have for so long, to choose the black choices because they are easier, to choose 'me' over 'us,' to choose division and strife over assimilation and trust, then we slowly slip into that black night.

"I do not so choose. I am your Centurion. This America Shall Not Fall!"