A House Divided

by Adam Yoshida

  The Pitt Meadows airfield was clear, visible, and, for all intents and purposes, entirely undefended. After all, while they knew that the rebels had some anti-aircraft weapons, no one at the Department of National Defense had even so much as suspected that they might have tactical aircraft. Stern and his three fellow pilots brought their planes in low, heading right for the runway and the big, fat targets presented by the pair of C-17 aircraft that had landed upon the field.

  As he approached the field, he pulled the release lever and dropped six unguided five-hundred-pound bombs towards the field. As soon as he felt the release of the bombs, he pulled up and raced away. Even if there were no obvious anti-aircraft defenses around the field, there would surely be someone in a light brigade with a man-portable air defense system that they would be sighting and preparing to use as he flew.

  The bombs dropped straight and smashed the C-17 that sat on the field directly below him. Stern said a silent prayer and hoped that everyone had gotten off the plane. He had no particular desire to kill Canadians. He was here and flying because it was the only marketable skill that he had and, with the IDF grounded by the American "peacekeeping" operation in the Middle East, Praetorian had offered him not only a chance to get back into the air but also, one day, to be part of a force that would take back the sacred lands of Israel. This mission, Augustus King had personally assured him and his compatriots, boring into them with his hypnotic green eyes, was part of a master plan that would one day lead to the resurrection of the State of Israel.

  As he and his friends made their way away from the chaos that they had sown on the field below, Stern was already thinking several steps into the future. They would have to reposition and hide before the first Canadian aircraft came looking for their bases. And, even then, that would depend upon a lack of Canadian (or Allied) satellite surveillance.

  "I don't care what the fucking intelligence says," Colonel Ian Rickman, Canadian Army, screamed into the phone. "I'm telling you what just happened. They flew a bunch of old MiGs right over the fucking airfield and took out two C-17s and killed forty-something people. We're still putting out the fires and picking up the pieces of the bodies."

  "I understand that this is an emotional moment, Colonel," Major General Anne Hartford explained from Ottawa, "but we still need to take this one step at a time. After all, the use of aircraft represents a major escalation on the part of the rebels, and the government will want to consider a political response."

  "I need air cover. I need it immediately, or I will have to take other force protection measures," Rickman declared.

  "The orders – and these come from the very top – are to stay in position. Our intelligence does not suggest that they have a major air capability. What they were able to pull off is almost certainly a one-time effort on their part. God knows where they got the planes from, though."

  "General, our connection is breaking up," Rickman said.

  "Colonel, your orders..." interjected Hartford.

  Rickman clicked the phone off and turned to his Executive Officer.

  "Fuck what Ottawa says," he said, "fuck them. They want to leave us sitting out here vulnerable as fuck out in the middle of fucking nowhere because they still think that our mere presence here will be enough to overawe those motherfuckers. Well, we're not going to do that."

  Rickman ran his hands through his hair.

  "We haven't seen any reports of the evacuation of civilians, have we, Major?"

  "No sir," his Intelligence Officer replied.

  "Ok then. XO – get the men on the vehicles. We're going to go straight the fuck in. There might be a fight and we might take losses, but they're not going to bomb us when we're sitting right in the middle of downtown fucking Vancouver."

  "Goddamnit," Jackson slammed his phone down on the desk, "they're coming."

  He then picked up his phone and flipped through several more pages of his Twitter feed. The Battle of Vancouver would become the first in history in which Twitter provided a primary venue for the dispersion of tactical intelligence. As soon as the Special Operations Regiment had taken off down the highway, tearing forward with almost-reckless speed, people had started taking pictures and posting them. A lot of them.

  "It's too bad that there wasn't time to give rifles to these people taking pictures. A lot of them appear to be in excellent sniper positions," noted King as he flipped through the pictures himself.

  "I don't see what we'll be able to do about any of this," said a frazzled Eagleton. "Those forces that we have can't fight anything like this. And, from what we've seen of the media coverage, your air strike hasn't won us anything like the friendship of the country."

  King calmly smoked his cigar.

  "It doesn't matter if we can't fight them in a stand-up battle," he said. "We don't have to do that today. How many men, Bill, do you have in this city?"

  "Five hundred or so. More than that, actually."

  "Plus volunteers."

  "Plus volunteers for the defense militia. But those don't have that much military value."

  "Well," said King, "I think that we can pull back across this bridge here. Pull back most of the men, we'll leave some behind. Ex-Special Forces types plus locals who know the neighborhood. Then we'll blow both of these bridges on our way out. We have the demo personnel to do that?"

  Jackson nodded.

  "Well, good. Then we'll destroy the," he pinched and zoomed in to read the names, "Lions Gate and Iron Workers' bridges. They'll have a heck of a time coming at us across the water then. Then we'll worry about the next steps."

  "And the airports?"

  "Oh, take the fucking airports. We won't have time to extract those men and we definitely won't have time to bring back that artillery. Which is a real shame. Let's use it and then order the men to go to ground. They can join the stay-behind force here."

  The Federal troops, moving at thirty kilometers an hour, made their way into the city of Vancouver practically unmolested. A few freelancers had taken shots at them as they proceeded along the highway, but they had not suffered a single casualty during the movement.

  Master Corporal Dimitri Lavigne watched carefully as his LAV-III Infantry Fighting Vehicle moved along East Hastings Street. Now that his soldiers were moving into a built-up area and off of the freewheeling highway, they faced a more serious threat. All of the intelligence reports that had been passed down to the squad level indicated that there was no reason to fear that the rebels had any serious capacity to contend with a mechanized force in a war of movement. But, at the same time, they were well-trained and armed with a large quantity of light weapons.

  What, Lavigne thought, I would not give for an attack helicopter or two paving the way for us, on call to provide fire support like in Afghanistan.

  Lavigne's platoon was approaching a sharp corner when an Israeli-made Spike-SR anti-tank missile reached out and struck the lead vehicle, instantly shattering it.

  The movement by the Mechanized Battalion was intended as a "Thunder Run". What this meant was that an armored or mechanized force would attempt to use its speed and firepower to overwhelm and bypass opposition. What this meant was that, even with the command LAV on fire and smoking, the rest of the platoon's objective was to press forward. Rescue and relief of the possibly-injured crew would be left to a follow-up wave.

  "Continuez. Continuez!" came the call from the radio as the surviving three LAVs of the platoon attempted to lay down suppressive fire from their two machine guns in the general direction from which the missile had come and the new lead vehicle deployed multiple smoke grenades to provide some cover.

  A second missile blazed a fiery trail through the afternoon sky, narrowly missing Lavigne's LAV. One of the infantry fighting vehicles, presumably in the belief that it had sighted the source of the missile fire, stopped and turned to make better use of its 25mm cannon. Turning to fire, it was struck by a third missile. The Spike tore a hole into that LAV, killing the driver and the gunner, but not befor
e the rear door was dropped and its infantry squad allowed to dismount.

  The first infantryman to emerge from the protection of the ruined APC was instantly killed by a sniper's bullet that found his head. The remaining five members of the squad, however, managed to scramble for cover at the side of the road and began firing in the general direction of the sniper and missile fire that had wounded their platoon.

  "Fuck it. Turn and engage," ordered Lavigne from his position as the vehicle commander. In a few seconds the two surviving LAV-IIIs turned and began to fire on the hastily-prepared enemy position, located in a now-ruined Chinese restaurant. The enemy counter-fire came to a stop. Whether the attackers were dead, wounded, or had merely slipped away remained an unknown. Orders were quickly issued for the survivors of the two damaged LAVs to cram onboard the remaining functional units as Lavigne, who now found himself in command of the Platoon, ordered them to drive forward at a reckless speed.

  This, thought Augustus King as he walked around the ruined concourse of the Vancouver International Airport, is why I fucking hate working with amateurs.

  The regular soldiers who he had provided had done a professional job of disabling much of the airport that would now have to be abandoned. However, the goal in doing so had never been to destroy the place – simply to place it out of commission in order to prevent it from being used to bring in immediate Federal reinforcements. When we retake the city, he thought, ought to have been the paramount thought in the organization of this operation. Instead, a bunch of wannabe soldiers who had never previously served a day in their lives had run wild through the place after his professionals had done the real work. They'd set fires and caused explosions almost at random, as though they were playing Call of Duty or something along those lines. Even worse, they'd shot a number of perfectly innocent airport personnel, which would be certain to create some PR difficulties. Of course, as was standard practice, they would blame the deaths upon the Federal forces that had defended the airport, but the truth always carries with it a certain degree of gravity.

  Iraq. Afghanistan. Somalia. Libya. Syria. Sudan. Augustus King had been everywhere that the forces of the West had officially fought over the decade and a half of the Long War as well as a number of places that no one had ever even admitted that they had been. War these days was everywhere all the same. He earnestly wished the he might dress his men in Red Coats and array them against the enemy at a hundred paces in a genuine contest of honor. Instead, what he had encountered was a degree of savagery in men everywhere that filled him with a deep revulsion. Yet, at the same time, he recognized that there were times – in fact many times – when matters could only be settled by force. More than that, here as there, he knew that he was engaged in a Holy work of redemption. The people of this country, as so many others, had sinned against God. And what could they say now, watching the ultimate consequences of those sins, other than that the judgements of the Lord were true and righteous altogether?

  "All right," he shouted over the din of the airport, "we need to get the fuck out of here now, you fuckers, if we're going to get over to the other side in time!"

  William Thomas Jackson checked his watch as his Lincoln Town Car sped through Stanley Park. He had wished to join in either the delaying fight being fought at the outskirts of the city or the battle for the airport, but the case had been convincingly made to him that his place, as a part of both the military and political leadership, was behind the lines.

  King, he was certain, would make quick work of the airport. They had been in many battles together, for the shared common goals, even if they saw different roads to their accomplishment.

  "Once we have everyone across, I want to stop just on the other side," Jackson ordered the driver.

  He picked up his phone and dialed a number, "I'm going to stop," he ordered his deputy, "but I want the rest of the convoy to keep on going to the designated assembly point."

  Jackson's car quickly came to a stop in the parking lot of a mall that sat adjacent to the far end of the bridge. He looked off into the distance and checked the time on his phone. There was no traffic on the bridge, the path to it through the park being guarded by a patrol of men who would go to ground after the demolition and make their way across in a boat later during the day. As the minutes passed, one military Humvee and a handful of other civilian – vehicle after another trickled along on their way. From a distance, he picked out the Humvee that he knew King had been using as a command vehicle.

  When King crossed the bridge, he turned and joined Jackson in the mall's parking lot. Jackson paused for a moment before picking up his radio and asked.

  "Is the bridge clear?"

  "Yes sir," came the reply.

  "Fair enough. All right – blow the bridge," he ordered.

  King and Jackson stood in the parking lot and watched as a set of orange flashes illuminated the early-evening air. The sound of the explosion of the series of demolition charges cascaded throughout the air in a single deafening instant.

  "You know," Jackson turned to face King, "if global interest rates don't come down, we're going to get murdered when we have to issue bonds to replace that Goddamned thing."

  Master Corporal Lavigne's depleted platoon was the first to reach the core of the city. As he hesitantly emerged from his battle-scarred LAV-III Lavigne crossed himself and thanked God that there had not been further heavy resistance. From the intersection of Robson Street and Burrard Street, he and his men had formed a fighting position that stood alongside several of the major thoroughfares of the city and that afforded them good all-around visibility.

  The casualty lists for the day had alarmed Colonel Rickman somewhat. Forty-two of his soldiers had died during the charge into the city. He was certain that he would catch hell for that. Maybe he would even be relieved. Yet, at the same time, as the Colonel began to inspect forward positions he became increasingly convinced that he had made a fundamentally correct decision to charge forward into the city. After all, the damage that the rebels had inflicted – the murder of fellow Canadians in his opinion – could only be made infinitely worse had they been allowed to entrench themselves and multiply their forces. They could easily, given enough time, have forced a bloody street-by-street fight for every building in the city. Plus, of course, who was to say that Ottawa's intelligence as to the air capabilities of the rebels was correct given that they had missed out on detecting even the existence of that threat.

  "Good work, Master Corporal," Rickman declared as he visited with the survivors of his platoon. The soldiers had taken some of the heaviest losses of the day, but they were already hard at work setting up a strongpoint from which they could await further reinforcements to ensure the resumption of orderly government in the city.

  CHAPTER THREE

  That Which Cannot Go On...

  Terrance Rickover turned the TV off. With a heavy sigh the House Majority Leader turned to his assembled aides.

  "Is there any good news anywhere in the world these days?"

  "The seventh season of Arrested Development will be out any day now," his Deputy Press Secretary helpfully volunteered.

  "Smashing," said Rickover, who stood up and walked to face the window that looked out on Washington from office in the Cannon Building.

  "Most the military is busy fighting Jihadists from Israel to Iran. The economy contracted by 6% at an annualized rate in the last quarter. Our deficit is approaching two trillion dollars. Why can't we do anything about anything from here?"

  He turned to face the assembled men and women of his staff, practically charging to his desk and punching up an e-mail on his computer.

  "Have you seen this? Have you?"

  Rickover turned the computer to face them. They didn't need to read the article. They all had seen it.

  "They want more fucking stimulus spending? The deficit is two trillion dollars and they think that the solution is to spend more money? There has to be a point where we stop trying to reason people out of insa
nity."

  "You know what?" he said, with a sigh, "everyone can go home. We're not doing any good here today. Go and spend some time with your families, because I fear that we are coming to a juncture where your time will be limited indeed."

  The President of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York's phone was buzzing, but he wasn't checking it. The fifty-two-year-old silver-haired banker had had a hellish week – one that didn't appear likely to get better anytime soon. So he had allowed himself an hour to seek some comfort.

  Fighting against America's seemingly inevitable insolvency was like a fiscal Battle of the Somme. Trillions of dollars were spilled across the same bloodstained ground each day. He – and the other men and women who held together what was left of the world's financial system – deployed every resource that they had to try and overcome their opponents, gaining a few hundred yards of territory only to be almost-immediately forced to relinquish them in the face of some new calamity. Then they repeated the process.

  Blair was twenty-seven and a graduate student at Columbia, working on her PhD in the History of Art. Her once-prominent family's name had been enough to get her into Harvard for her undergraduate studies and their money had almost been enough to pay for them as well. That, of course, had been before the Great Recession and everything that came afterwards. Nor did it seem as though whatever career she might attain once she had completed her education would be able to cover the vast loans that the Federal Government, in a last mad burst of seeking to buy the people's love with the people's money, had guaranteed for her.

  Faced with a choice between jumping into an increasingly brutal working world and finding some other accommodation, Blair had jumped an opportunity to pay for her education and the refined tastes that an upper-class Manhattan upbringing had gifted to her by becoming a "Sugar Baby" – a woman who traded her companionship (among other things) to a wealthy man in exchange for his financial support.