The Rag

by Michael Connelly

  After the militia had destroyed the remainder of the federal convoy, Cannon and his team took Moreland to their nearby Blackhawks and flew him back to the militia headquarters in Canton. Ray Thibodeaux had returned to Canton and personally interrogated Moreland. He quickly determined that Moreland was a coward who was willing to order other men to fight to the death but was not ready to put himself in harm’s way. In order to keep himself from being executed for treason, he agreed to tell Ray about the deployment of federal troops in states neighboring Texas, including Louisiana, Mississippi, Arkansas, Alabama, New Mexico, and Arizona. These troops were supposed to capitalize on the imminent defeat of the East Texas militia and destroy the militias that had blossomed in these other states.

  Ray sent out envoys to the militias in all these states so they could prepare for the coming assaults. However, the attacks never occurred because after the massive defeat in Texas, the feds were not about to embark on any other operations in the adjacent states. In fact, as had occurred previously, the word of the victory in Texas had spread rapidly through the rest of the country, and state militias had increased in strength and were threatening federal control everywhere. President Richard Thompson and his cabinet decided that they could no longer defend each state, and they were fearful of the power of the East Texas militia, so it was decided to pull all remaining troops out of Texas and the nearby states and send them to reinforce the federal forces in other states.

  Within months, the East Texas militia had incorporated other county militias into a statewide force that controlled all of Texas. The states of Mississippi, Louisiana, Alabama, Arkansas, New Mexico, Oklahoma, and Arizona were now free states and had chosen their own governors. All of them were in agreement that they needed to unite into a new but much smaller United States of America. Everyone agreed that the military commander of all the state militias would be General Ben Donnelly.

  When the governors of the states met in Canton two months later, they decided that General Donnelly should also be the president of the new United States. Donnelly told the governors that he was honored by the request but adamantly refused. If he accepted the appointment as president while he served as the military commander, he would be establishing himself as a military dictator, which he had repeatedly said was totally unacceptable to him. However, he urged the governors to not tinker with the Constitution but to continue with the election of civilian authorities at the local and state level and have the populations of the states elect members of a national Congress and a president.

  The states and counties—or, in the case of Louisiana, parishes—would continue to maintain their own militias but would be subject to the command of General Donnelly when a combined effort might be needed. The feds were back on their heels and were clearly not in a position to launch any significant attack on the seven states that now made up the new United States. However, General Donnelly and his staff did not believe that the war was over and, in fact, did not want it to be over. There were forty-two more American states out there that were still under the thumb of a totally corrupt and brutal dictatorship, and the general felt that the job would not be over until all the states were back in a united USA.

  Chapter XLVI

  The people of the newly constituted United States of America then overwhelmingly chose Texas governor George Michaels to be the new president. Michaels was a former Green Beret captain in the US Army who had organized militias in six counties in southwest Texas. The large city of El Paso was controlled by the federal government that was assisted by drug gangs from Mexico and Middle Eastern terrorists who had been allowed to freely cross the border.

  There were little that Michaels and his small militia force could do for the people in El Paso where rape and looting by the enemy were out of control and Americans were dying on a daily basis as a result of starvation and disease. However, Michaels and his men were determined to keep this cancer from spreading into the surrounding rural counties. He had followed the example made by General Donnelly in the eastern part of Texas and had built his force with a nucleus of military veterans supplemented by well-trained civilian volunteers.

  They did not have the manpower or the weapons to engage in pitched battles with the federal troops and their ruthless allies. However, the militia under the command of Michaels had something the feds didn’t have: they had cavalry. Southwest Texas was ranch country, and if the ranchers weren’t using horses in their day-to-day operations, they were raising horses to sell to other ranches.

  The traditional regiment of the United States Cavalry consisted of ten companies with approximately one hundred men in each company. Two companies constituted a cavalry squadron, but that was later changed to having the regiment divided into three battalions of three companies each with the tenth company being a smaller headquarters company. Michaels used this original designation but set up the companies to consist of sixty men each commanded by a militia captain. A squadron consisted of three companies and was commanded by one of the company commanders who were designated as the senior officer that would command the squadron when it went into battle. A regiment was commanded by a full colonel with a lieutenant colonel as the executive officer or second in command. Militia majors were in charge of the regiments’ supply and logistics support and the intelligence gathering operations.

  It was not easy to put an operational cavalry regiment together, because although most of the people in southwest Texas knew how to ride, the horses had to be specially trained to not panic at the sound of gunfire. It took expert horsemen to accomplish this, and they worked diligently so that within six months of the EMP attack, there was a full regiment of cavalry operating in the area. This regiment provided Michaels with the opportunity to use his cavalry as dragoons, who were historically infantry that while moving from place to place on horseback actually dismounted to fight on foot.

  When the federal troops started sending patrols into the militia-controlled counties, they were met by squadrons of cavalry that would dismount and set up ambushes that would disrupt the federal advances with IEDs, mortar fire, and machine guns and automatic weapons. Once the attacks took place, the cavalry troopers would mount their horses and disappear into the rugged southwest Texas terrain where federal vehicles could not follow.

  This led to the destruction of the federal alliance in southwest Texas with the Mexican drug cartels. They saw no chance of being able to sell their drugs in small Texas towns if they could not even reach them, so there was no reason for them to sacrifice cartel soldiers in an ongoing battle. The Middle Eastern terrorists felt the same. They wanted to get to the major oil fields in West Texas and control the oil supplies in order to finance terrorist attacks in large cities. The chances of that happening quickly were being diminished by the unrelenting militia activity and the apparent inability of the federal troops to take control of any of the counties north and east of El Paso.

  This caused the feds to virtually cease any offensive activity outside of El Paso for several years and allowed General Michaels to strengthen his militia force to three full cavalry regiments. Then the federal commander received word that there was going to be a major attack on the East Texas militia and that his force was to be heavily reinforced by foreign fighters with tanks and artillery that would be landed on the west coast of Mexico and brought to El Paso so that he could conduct a simultaneous attack on the West Texas militia.

  The federal commander, General David Simmons, was formerly a Far Left member of the US House of Representatives who had consistently voted for any legislation that would weaken the US military and destroy the morale of the troops. Since he considered himself an elitist with superior intelligence to the underlings in the armed forces, he thought as a military commander he could secure the support of the southwest Texas Indian tribes that had once controlled southwest Texas. This included the Lipan and Mescalero Apaches and the Comanche tribe. After all, he reasoned they had once fiercely fought against the U
S Army, and he was going to offer them the opportunity to do so again. However, he had two problems. First was the fact that the Indian tribes had suffered just like millions of other Americans both before and after the EMP attack. The leftists who had taken over the government and destroyed the American republic had used minorities in the country essentially as cannon fodder, promising things that they never intended to deliver to get the support of the communities.

  Since the elitists that controlled the government did not plan to ever hold another free election, the minority votes no longer mattered. The feds would continue to recruit members of the communities into the federal military, but those who did not immediately comply were abandoned and left to fend for themselves. The southwestern Texas Indian tribes had expected this and had made themselves self- sufficient, using many of the ancient skills that they were supposed to have forgotten. They did not trust this federal government, but the tribal leaders were not surprised when General Simmons approached them to join the federal forces.

  However, Simmons had another problem because he was not aware that all the tribal leaders sitting around the table in his office in El Paso were US military veterans, and true to the warrior spirit of their ancestors, they were now loyal to the fighters that were trying to save the United States. They were aware of the growing resistance in East Texas, and they were all secretly members of the West Texas militia under the command of General Michaels. In fact, most of the tribes’ warriors were excellent horsemen who had quickly become an important part of Michaels’s cavalry command.

  The tribal leaders listened to Simmons as he proposed making the warriors part of the federal force and providing significant financial incentives to them including relocating all the families to a special facility in El Paso where they would be well cared for. The tribal chiefs knew that this was double-talk for placing the families in a concentration camp where they would be held hostage to ensure that the warriors fought for the federal cause. After some private discussions among themselves, the chiefs agreed to do what the federal general wanted, and Simmons told them that since their reservations were all located in the counties controlled by the militia, the tribes would have to gather at the border of the federal-controlled El Paso County.

  There they would be met by a federal convoy of trucks that would transport the families to the facility near the city of El Paso and would take the warriors to a federal training base not far away. The operation did not go as Simmons had planned. As the federal convoy approached the heavily guarded border, there was no sight of the tribe members; instead, the border guards were, in fact, militia troops who had seized the border crossing the night before and donned the uniforms of the federal soldiers. They opened fire on the lead elements of the federal convoy that included trucks and Humvees that were transporting a platoon of federal infantry that was to supervise the transfer of the tribe members into the numerous empty trucks that comprised the rest of the convoy. The militia unit at the border was not alone; as it opened fire, other units of Michaels’s cavalry hit the feds on both sides after emerging from concealed positions in the surrounding hills.

  The attacking cavalry included the members of the Apache and Comanche tribes who gleefully participated in the total destruction of the federal convoy. The warriors and their families were now totally committed to the militia and were relocated in towns and cities throughout West Texas where they were welcomed with open arms. Collins was now in a position where he could not risk making any further major assaults against the West Texas militia. This was the situation for months until the federal government decided to use El Paso as a base to launch a second front to support the ultimately ill-fated attack on the East Texas militia.

  The plan involved two Iranian armored brigades and three infantry brigades landing on the Pacific coast of Mexico and moving to El Paso. From there, they would strike north through the counties controlled by Michaels’s militia. The federal plan was to destroy several key cities held by the militia because they expected little serious opposition from the militia cavalry. They might be effective in limited engagements with infantry but were not believed to be equipped to inflict any real damage on armored columns.

  Unfortunately for the feds, General Michaels was a lot like his counterpart that commanded the East Texas militia. There were things that Michaels kept from everyone except the key members of his staff that had a need to know. Right outside of El Paso was Fort Bliss, the second largest US army base in the country. It was originally the home of the US Army First Armored Division and a heavy-combat aviation brigade that consisted of forty-eight Apache attack helicopters and thirty Blackhawk helicopters. Some of these helicopters were actually in nearby National Guard and army reserve units, which trained at Fort Bliss for two weeks every summer. The same was true of the First Armored Division that had over 220 tanks either located at Fort Bliss or assigned to National Guard and reserve units.

  Chapter XLVII

  Prior to the EMP attack, Fort Bliss was targeted by the leftist federal government to be dismantled as part of the reduction of the military and its consolidation into a force loyal only to the new order and not to the Constitution or the American people. Part of this process was to replace all the senior officers on the base with federal officers who were willing to oversee the destruction of the finest military force in the history of the world. The new base commander was a former employee of the Department of Justice that was totally corrupt and had been for a long time. Her name was Maxine Williamson, and she had no military background at all; but she could be relied upon to do as she was told with no questions asked, so she was now a general in the federal army.

  The other senior officers on her staff were mostly recent recruits into the military who were given commissions based solely on their willingness to serve the government. They had received more and better training than many of their counterparts at other bases but did not really understand the basic organizations of the military units they were to be in charge of. When they took over the command of Fort Bliss, they were supplied with inventory lists of the tanks, aircraft, artillery, vehicles, and weapons on the base. This information had been provided by Major Patrick McMillian, the base S-4 in charge of supply and logistics. He was a patriot, and he knew he was not completely trusted by the increasingly leftist commanders of the military. He also knew that his days were numbered before he was transferred out of the base and ultimately thrown out of the military.

  He had decided to do everything he could to disrupt the new government’s plans to complete the destruction of the United States. The first thing he did was to submit a totally false report to the new post commander that understated the number of weapons, armor, and vehicles on the base by a full one-third. Of course, the federal commander, General Williamson, and her staff checked on the accuracy of this inventory and to their surprise found it to be truthful. This was because there were many other patriot soldiers on the base and in the West Texas National Guard, reserve units, and newly formed county militias. Over the course of the previous two years, they had been engaged in helping the people of Texas prepare for a new war of independence.

  The plan was elaborate and risky but proved to be highly successful. During the summers, when the National Guard and reserve units would come to the base for their two weeks of annual training, they would bring with them their own equipment and vehicles including tanks, Humvees, and Strykers, as well as their individual crew-served weapons. However, when the units completed their two weeks and left, things were different. For example, when a National Guard armor unit from Midland, Texas, came to Fort Bliss, it would not have a full company or battalion complement of tanks that a regular active armor unit would have, but it would have some additional equipment when it left. So if the unit came in with six tanks, it would leave two weeks later with nine or ten tanks, plus a few extra vehicles, weapons, and ammunition.

  All this occurred during two summers with many units involved, but
after the EMP attack, the federal government quickly moved to rid the major military bases of all members of the armed forces not totally loyal to the government. The National Guard and reserve units were also being disbanded and their equipment retrieved for use by the federal forces. However, much of the equipment in the hands of these West Texas units had mysteriously disappeared as had the unit members and their families.

  There had been a hidden base quietly built in the mountains north of El Paso where all this stolen military equipment was stored. The soldiers blended back into the populations of their towns and cities. Since the EMP attack had destroyed all their records of military service, they could not be identified by any federal authorities who might be looking for them. Many of these veterans joined the militia but were instructed not to talk to anyone about the hidden cache of arms. In fact, most of them did not know where the cache was since they had not been directly involved in hiding it. Only a few people were privy to this information, and one of them was General George Michaels.

  General Michaels had been effectively using his militia cavalry for years to deter the federal occupation of the counties under his control but knew that at some point his relatively limited group of fighters might be confronted by a federal force they could not handle alone. That finally occurred when Michaels learned from his intelligence sources that the attack on his counties was to occur when other federal forces were moving to East Texas to conduct the assault on General Donnelly’s force.

  He could not permit this to happen, so he decided to activate all the National Guard and reserve units and bring their heavy armor and weapons into action. He put Patrick McMillian in charge of gathering the unit members and retrieving their equipment. McMillian had joined with Michaels and his militia after he had received orders transferring him to another base. Within a week, the units had assembled at a single location in the foothills of the mountains where the secret base was hidden.