Liberty's Last Stand

by Stephen Coonts

  “How will they get across the rivers and all that?” Grantham interrupted, glowering.

  “I was about to cover that, sir,” the briefer said patiently. “We will drop paratroops to seize the key bridges and hold until relieved. Then—”

  “So how are you going to get there? Across cow pastures and rice paddies?”

  “We will use the interstates and other roads where possible. A division cannot move on only one road. It must move on a wide front, yet not so wide that one brigade cannot reinforce the other. Where we must cross rivers without a bridge available, we will use pontoons. We will have close air support from attack helicopters and air force fighters every foot of the way. We’ll use satellite reconnaissance, aerial reconnaissance, and drones to keep us apprised of the enemy’s movements.”

  “Those crackers are going to shoot at you,” Al Grantham said. “Probably a lot. Every one of those racists has a gun, or two or three or four.”

  “No doubt,” Martin Wynette replied. “We’ll take casualties, yet we’ll annihilate all opposition and proceed forward as fast as possible to our objective.”

  The president smiled at that comment. He apparently liked to think of his opposition being annihilated. Then the smile faded. “When?” he asked.

  “It will take at least two days to get people sorted out and transferred to fill up our three assault divisions. Another four days to get our people and equipment to Barksdale, and another two days to get them under way. The Fort Carson division commander says he can get his division under way in two days, after he gets his personnel sorted out and is reinforced by willing fighters. That shuffling will take at least two days, maybe three. Then it will take another three days to get them to the Texas line. Seven days total. If anything slips, eight or nine.”

  “What will the rebels be doing while we are getting our show ready to go on the road?”

  “Making a nuisance of themselves and getting ready to block our moves.”

  “How will they know what we intend?”

  “Texas’ commander is JR Hays, Jack Hays’ cousin, and he was a career army officer, although retired now. He could probably write our op order. If he hadn’t burned out in the Middle East and retired, he would have become a general. I’ve seen his service record. JR Hays is a soldier from head to toe, and he doesn’t shrink from combat. He’s seen more than his share and knows precisely how to fight. And how to win. The Taliban had a price on his head: ten thousand American dollars. No one in the Middle East was able to earn it.”

  “Can you whip him?”

  “The United States Army can.”

  “Eight days to get combat troops into Texas,” Al Grantham stated. “Or nine. Or ten. Or eleven. That’s too long. Can’t we use fewer troops and go sooner?”

  “Even if we cut our invasion force to only one division, we will only save one day,” Wynette said flatly. “So the tradeoff is one division that can possibly be surrounded and cut off, or a two-pronged assault that will force the Texans to divide their forces to fight them both. In my military judgment, and the judgment of the Joint Chiefs, if we are going to hit Texas with a hammer, it should be a really big hammer, as big as we can put together in a reasonable amount of time. Given a month, we could hit them with every American soldier willing to fight.”

  The president nodded his agreement.

  Grantham asked, “And how many is that?”

  “I don’t know yet,” Wynette said. He continued, “There are around twelve thousand fighting soldiers in a division. We’d like the divisions at full strength, if possible. In addition to their weapons, artillery, air support, food, and ammo, we must also move all the support equipment and manpower required to keep the warriors eating, sleeping, and fighting, the planes and choppers flying, the artillery supplied with ammo, and enough extra stuff to provide humanitarian relief. We are doing all we can to get this organized and moving, which is everything humanly possible.”

  “So we sit on our asses for eight days and wait,” Al Grantham summed up.

  Wynette gestured to the briefer, who went on with his presentation. JCS envisioned beginning air operations against Texas tomorrow. The targets would be all the surrendered military equipment at the military bases. Missions would be flown by B-52s escorted by F-16s during the day and B-1s at night targeting Fort Bliss, the Texas Guard armories, and other military targets. The navy can bring an aircraft carrier around Florida and begin air operations in two days against the military bases around San Antonio and Killeen. “Our goal,” the briefer summed up, “is to attrite their armor and air assets by seventy-five percent by D-Day, which is the day we plan to cross the Texas border.”

  “Why not hammer their industry, their refineries, and factories and power plants?”

  “Those are legitimate strategic military targets,” Major General Strong said, “but the primary goal of the air campaign must be the destruction of the enemy’s combat power—the opposition we’ll face when we put boots on the ground. After we knock out their combat power and render it impotent, then we can bomb strategic targets.”

  “But before we do that,” interjected Wynette, “you must decide how much of an economy you want standing after we take over. If everyone is destitute and starving, the assets to feed them and rebuild Texas must come from the rest of the United States.”

  “Just the military targets,” the president said. Then he added, “Unless this invasion gets bogged down. If push comes to shove, we are going to win if we have to flatten every building and kill every cow in Texas.”

  “Yes, sir,” General Wynette said.

  Barry Soetoro leaned forward in his chair and looked straight into Wynette’s eyes. “I expect you to crush the rebels, General. If you don’t, don’t come back alive.”

  It was the second time that the president had told him that, and though Wynette had kissed ass for a lot of years, he was fed up with Barry Soetoro. “Mr. President, if you don’t think I can win, fire me and get a general you think can. The army has plenty of experienced combat leaders for you to pick from.”

  “You’re the man I want,” Soetoro shot back. “I know you’ll obey orders.”

  “And you think these others might not? What kind of orders wouldn’t they obey?”

  Soetoro’s eyes were locked on Martin Wynette. “We’ll cross that bridge when we get to it,” he said.

  Wynette was the first to look away.

  Back in the air-conditioned Pentagon, Wynette had another bad moment. The staff had framed the loyalty question to the troops as “Are you willing to fight for the United States of America to stamp out a rebellion?” Yes or No.

  Last night on television he saw commentators talking about “Barry Soetoro’s army” versus Texas. Wynette thought—and he knew many of his troops thought—there was a huge difference between “Barry Soetoro’s army” and “the United States Army,” and the more commentators talked like that, the more desertions he would have.

  The Joint Chiefs assembled in his office. They wanted to know their role in putting down the riots that were raging in the big cities.

  “Forget about that for now. That doesn’t seem to be the president’s priority,” Wynette replied. “He seems to think that if he squashes Texas, all his other problems will go away. However, in fifteen minutes Grantham may call and want us to invade Detroit.”

  What he didn’t say, although he thought it, was that the president and his staff were fixated on the wrong problem. In his years of service he had served on joint staffs on numerous occasions and knew it was the job of a commander to define the priorities and keep his staff focused on them. Wynette thought Barry Soetoro didn’t understand what his problems were or couldn’t prioritize; if either was the case, he was incompetent. As the general saw it, the primary problem in America just now was that civil authority in much of the nation was about to collapse. It wasn’t just Texas that the president might lose, it was America.

  When JR Hays arrived in Austin that afternoon, he headed straig
ht for the capitol and was ushered into the governor’s (now the president’s) office. He waited in a corner while some politicians briefed Jack.

  Several thousand people a day were pouring into Texas from other states. Many of these people said their extended families, neighbors, and coworkers were only a day or two behind them. More people were coming, a lot more, and they would need housing and jobs. After the politicians had spent ten minutes discussing how the flood of refugees might be accommodated temporarily, Hays shooed them out and locked the door. He and JR sat in chairs facing each other.

  “We’ve had some good luck,” JR said, “because a lot of the people in the army and air force refused to fight for Barry Soetoro. Any commander in that position would have had to surrender. Still, those services are going to find people who will fight for Soetoro, and then the shooting will begin in earnest.”

  “So what’s your plan?”

  “We can’t sit here waiting for Soetoro to hammer us. I would bet my soul they are plotting to do that right now in Washington. If Soetoro lets us get away with leaving the Union and setting up as an independent nation, other states will do it too, one by one, and eventually he won’t own anything but the federal district in Washington. He can’t let that happen. He has to whip us, and he has to do it as soon as he can assemble the forces to do it with. Every day he doesn’t win is a victory for us. If we can pile up enough little victories, we can win the war.”

  Jack Hays nodded. He was delighted JR was thinking about all this, because he hadn’t had time. Politics was his business, not the military.

  “We need to seize the initiative and force Soetoro’s military forces to react to us. We need to put them on the defensive, derail their plans. And, if possible, we need to move the fight out of Texas; we want the front line to be somewhere else, not here.”

  “So how do you propose to do that?”

  JR Hays began explaining his plans.

  When he had finished, Jack nodded.

  “We’re going to have a lot of civilian problems to deal with,” JR added. “Soon the enemy will target our power plants. Houston and Dallas and the high-rises all over Texas will instantly become uninhabitable. We need to get organized now to take care of what will become a huge humanitarian crisis.”

  “Houston and Dallas are using school buses to evacuate all the people stranded at the airports,” the governor mused, “so we have a start, anyway. I’ll get our emergency people involved.”

  “In my view, Jack, your number one job is to buck up the people of Texas with your courage and determination to see this through to the end.”

  “My courage? How much do you think I have?”

  “Enough, or we’re doomed. Leaders must lead. But the more effective you are, the more likely Soetoro will send assassins or commandos to take you out. If they kill you, the backbones of a lot of people will soften. Get some bodyguards, and good ones. Use them.”

  “The Texas Rangers,” Jack Hays decided.

  “Your call. But they must keep you alive. That said, you and the Congress need to get out of this building and set up at an undisclosed location. I suggest somewhere underground, like a parking garage under a hotel. Right now a handful of cruise missiles into the capitol would decapitate the new republic. No doubt Soetoro is thinking about that right now, trying to figure out what the repercussions of a mass assassination would be on his political base up north.”

  “We’ll be out by five o’clock.”

  Jack Hays nodded, stood, and shook hands. JR left. He had a ton of things to do, all of which needed to be done at once. Or yesterday.

  His jailers came in midafternoon and tossed a plastic water bottle on the cot. Jake Grafton was still on the floor. One of the jailers came in and kicked Grafton in the ribs, repeatedly.

  The man who delivered the water stopped the kicker. “Don’t kill him. Sluggo wants him alive.”

  Grafton was still conscious. His ribs were on fire. If one of the broken edges penetrated a lung, he would die quickly. If he started coughing blood, he would know.

  Steeling himself, he moved. The pain was searing. He managed to reach the water bottle.

  The plastic cap almost defeated him. He had to open it with his teeth. After he drained it, he lay back on the floor. And passed out.

  As it happened, the White House political staff was indeed trying to estimate the damage decapitating the Republic of Texas would cause in the president’s political base. Would it fuel insurrection elsewhere? There were no easy answers, so the staff was having a wonderful time wrestling with these imponderables, preparing a list of options for the chosen one.

  While staff was staffing, Barry Soetoro signed an order temporarily closing all stock and commodity exchanges. Since the power was off in New York and Chicago, this order wouldn’t create much of a sensation today, but it would when the power came back on. Tomorrow, perhaps. Or the next day. No one knew when the juice would again flow. The power company execs were doing all they could, they told his staff. One of them darkly hinted at sabotage, but Soetoro wasn’t buying that excuse. One natural-gas trunk line in Virginia had been severed, stopping the gas flow through that line, yet that amount was only a drop in the bucket. Sheer damned incompetence, he thought angrily. One of these days he was going to have to nationalize all the public utilities, replace the executives with reliable people.

  His thoughts turned back to Texas. Using cruise missiles or JDAMs on all the power plants in Texas was certainly an option. In August and September it was a lot hotter in Texas than it was in most of the Northeast. Texas was closer to Hell.

  Had Soetoro been a fly on the wall in Jack Hays’ office that afternoon, he would have been delighted at what he heard. A delegation of oil and gas and refinery executives had called in a body upon the new president. Many rich men and women value predictability and stability above all else, so this crowd had been cold to the idea of independence from the start, hinting strongly, as it did, of civil war. There is a lot of money to be made in war, but people with multibillion dollar capital investments in the line of fire wouldn’t be making much of it. If anything, they stood to have their investments wiped out.

  Jack Hays listened patiently to the executives.

  “Mr. President, the fact is that any damned fool with a machine gun or a few sticks of dynamite could take down the refineries on the southeast coast of Texas.” Even if that didn’t happen, the feds could destroy the refineries and oil storage tanks by air attack. And the U.S. Navy could prevent tankers carrying foreign oil from discharging their cargoes, restricting supply to what Texas could produce, which in fact was a hell of a lot, since Texas was the biggest producer of hydrocarbons among the fifty states. Still, guerillas or federal forces could stop the flow of natural gas and gasoline out of Texas, destroying their markets. All together, the group spokesman said, the picture was “bleak.”

  “What assurances, Mr. President, can you give us that the armed forces of the Republic can protect our facilities?”

  “Very few, gentlemen,” Jack Hays said. “In fact, I was thinking of asking you to stop pumping oil and gas to the northeastern United States and California. That would bring a significant amount of political pressure to bear on the Soetoro administration.”

  The executives were horrified. Such an action would cut off their cash flow, and it would mean that many of their facilities would have to shut down, oil and gas wells would be shut in, people would be laid off, and money would cease to percolate through the economy.

  “Do you realize, sir, how many people make their livings directly from the petroleum industry in Texas? And twice that many indirectly. You are talking about a depression, millions jobless.”

  Another said, “The people of Texas didn’t sign up for that!”

  Jack Hays refused to be riled. “I think the people of Texas knew that they would have to fight for their independence when the idea was first discussed. In a war one stands to lose not only his livelihood, his home, and everything he owns
, but also his life and the lives of his family. Texans aren’t stupid; they knew that. They were for independence anyway, if that meant they could preserve the benefits of a free society with a representative democratic government that they had enjoyed all their lives, benefits they hoped to again enjoy, benefits that would be their legacy to their children and the generations of Texans still to come. They were willing to pay the price. Or most of them were, anyway.”

  Everyone tried to talk at once, but Jack Hays silenced them with a gesture.

  “We have taken a political step that cannot be reversed,” he said.

  “Of course it can be reversed,” a big oil executive said loudly, to drown out other voices. “It’s time to make peace with Soetoro. You’ve made your political points, Hays. Now let’s settle this mess and get on with business.”

  “Talk loud, then surrender. Is that your advice?”

  “Now see here. That isn’t what I said. Oil and gas are the heart of Texas industry. Hell, of American industry.”

  “Gentlemen, thank you for your time today,” Jack Hays said. “I will carefully consider all your points. For my part, I’m glad that Colonel Travis had men with him at the Alamo who had more backbone than you have.”

  One of the executives—dressed in an Armani suit, hand-tooled alligator boots, and a two-hundred-dollar silk tie—snarled: “Travis didn’t own a goddamn thing but his horse and some worthless scrub land. If he had owned something he’d have been a bit more careful.”

  And you’d be speaking Spanish and working for Petromex, Jack Hays thought savagely. He didn’t say that, of course. What he did say was, “I will meditate upon that insight. Now if you ladies and gentlemen will excuse me…”

  “How much time do you think we have before the electrical wizards figure out what you did to their computer, and fix it?” I asked Sarah as we rolled into the West Virginia panhandle.