by Adam Yoshida
“Now we have impeachment. Impeachment, I might add, for following one law that Congress passed in order to follow other laws that Congress passed. I didn’t pass the laws requiring me to spend or the laws that allowed for Platinum Coinage. The Congress did that. And now they want to impeach me for not violating the law - for not spending the money that they voted for me to spend? Come on.”
“When billionaires and the richest corporations in America use the most absurd of loopholes to avoid paying billions - trillions even - in taxes, they praise them as patriotic. When I follow their laws - the laws they passed - in order to find a way to pay for pensions for veterans and health care for seniors, they say that I’ve committed a high crime? Come on.”
“They want to nose and poke around these Constitutional technicalities and trivialities. They’re as much in thrall to some dead text as those who tell us that the world is only six thousand years old and that men lived alongside dinosaurs. Let me tell you something: the American people elected me to lead them, and I intend to do just that to the best of my conscience and the best of my ability.”
Takoma Park, MD
Major Varro was listening to the radio in the car as he waited outside the journalist’s home. He had studied the man’s routine for nearly a week and he knew that he would be arriving at his walk-up apartment in minutes. He was happy enough to see the impeachment vote carry in the House but, at the same time, he’d seen the willingness of the President and his allies to brazen through this - to simply deflect their violations of the Constitution as acts of ordinary politics. It was all simply enough.
He attempted to lay low, his face covered by a hood and hopefully hidden by the cover of darkness. He’d already taken care to wipe down every surface on the car - though he’d been careful, in the course of stealing it, to not wear gloves and attempt to leave no trace evidence of his presence behind.
When the journalist turned the corner, Varro visually scanned to make certain that no one else was obviously in the path of the fusillade he intended to let loose. Once had had done that, he robotically emptied the entire magazine of his rifle into the journalist at a range of just fifteen feet, leaving what was left of the man a torn, shattered, and bloody mess on the pavement before jumping into his car and speeding off to a vacant lot - one he was certain was not covered by any cameras - where he had stashed a second car, this one purchased in cash several months before. He jumped out of the stolen car, popped open the gas tank, and stuffed a rag into it which he then set on fire before jumping into the second car and speeding off into the night.
Vancouver, British Columbia
First Armored Brigade, Western Republic Army had formally become 1st Brigade, 1st Armored Division, Western Republic Army, overall command of which had been handed to General Wayne. With the money flowing and the Federal Government now ejected from most of the Province of British Columbia (the provincial capital of Victoria having surrendered without a fight a week after the Second Battle of Vancouver), a major force was now being assembled for the drive to the east. In addition to the 1st Armored Division, the Western Republic Expeditionary Force now consisted of the 1st and 2nd Infantry Divisions and two independent regiments of armored cavalry, created from a mix of foreign volunteers and ex-Soviet tanks that had been fairly cheaply acquired.
The new WRA, no longer able to be supplied largely with stolen American weapons and weapons acquired from Israeli stocks, was now largely forced to subsist upon the sort of weapons that could be quickly acquired from the global arms market. The result was sometimes a logistical nightmare, with infantry units being equipped with different rifle types and using several different types of incompatible ammunition. Likewise, the artillery assigned to the newly-formed infantry units included everything from ex-Canadian Army model to heavy-duty ex-Soviet equipment dating to the era immediately after the Second World War.
Likewise, the Western Republic Air Force largely consisted of foreign pilots flying planes of Russian design. After some debate the MiG-29 had been chosen as the standard fighter-bomber of the WRAF due to the fact that, though it was now somewhat obsolescent, it was the most-modern aircraft that could be acquired on the open market in any sort of substantial quantity. The three squadrons worth of the MiGs, purchased by Praetorian's agents at often-inflated prices and then shipped by sea to the port of Vancouver gave the Western Republic and adequate-if-weak air arm.
General Jackson was sitting his his headquarters reviewing the final plans for the first stage of the liberation of the rest of the West when General King stepped into the room.
“I know that this is the worst possible time for this, but I think that I have to go,” announced King.
“Go?” asked Jackson, “we’re getting ready to move 50,000 men across the fucking Rockies.”
“I know - and I know that this situation has the potential to pay off fantastically, but I have some information that has to be handled in the most confidential possible way. Believe me, it’ll be absolutely worth whatever losing me here means in the short-term.”
Jackson looked up at him and asked, “can you tell me about it?”
“Are you still planning on moving along the front-lines with the rest of this force when the offensive is launched?”
“Yes.”
“Then,” said King tactfully, “I’d better not.”
“Fair enough,” said Jackson, “are the C-130s that we ordered still on track to arrive on time?”
Arlington, Virginia
What good is a murder if no one notices? wondered Major Varro as he scanned the latest news reports. The mainstream media was reporting the murder of one of their own as a tragedy - but as an ordinary act of violence.
Did no one notice that I put thirty bullets into the motherfucker? he asked himself, burning with a quiet rage. Of course, in Washington, DC murder was no unusual thing - there was one practically every single day. Perhaps also the media did not wish to face the reality of his act. He had thought that it would speak for itself. Evidently it had not.
He attempted to send messages to the media claiming responsibility for the act. Unfortunately, he was the fourteenth person to do this and, consequently, was roundly ignored. Next time, he resolved, he’d have to make his message clearer.
The White House, Washington, DC
“We might lose some votes in the Senate,” Alexis Jensen noted softly, “if the economic situation continues to deteriorate.”
President Warren grunted and turned over in bed.
“Some votes, sure - but we’d need to lose fifteen, provided that all of the Republicans vote aye, which I don’t think is even a done deal yet.”
“I suppose anyways,” Jensen said, “the question isn’t whether or not the economy gets bad, but who people trust to take care of them through the bad times. I mean, when the Republican alternative is to throw the poor out on the streets, are they really going to turn to them?”
“Anyways, the real reason the economy is getting bad - as I’ve been saying to anyone who will listen - is greed. Individuals hoarding money. Corporations with Trillions in profits stashed overseas in order to avoid taxes. That’s the real problem,” said the President.
“Really,” replied Jensen, “we ought to think of this as a moment of liberation. They’ve taken their best shot at you and failed. Given that, we ought to take it as a renewal of your mandate.”
Calgary, Alberta
The Western Republic Air Force - now nearly one hundred planes strong - filled the night sky. The MiG-29s led the way, scanning ahead with their radars and maintaing a wary eye for any sign of the arrival of Federal aircraft. Nothing had been held back.
Lieutenant Colonel Stern, now formally enrolled as one of three WRAF squadron commanders, preferred the Fulcrum to the Floggers that he’d been stuck flying during his first days in Canada, but still - even with the upgrades and Western electronics hastily fitted into the MiG-29s during their conversion by a mixed team of WRAF ground crews and specialists employed by Praetorian I
nternational - they did not really compare to the modern Western fighters that he had flown for the IAF.
One squadron - flying further ahead of Stern’s - had been detailed to attack the airfields known to be used by the RCAF in and around southern Alberta. The other two were flying further back, guarding the dozen precious C-130 aircraft, scrounged up from all over the world and quietly delivered to the Western Republic over the previous few days. General Jackson had tried to use his rank to secure himself a place on one of them, pointing out that he had been skydiving several times. It had finally taken the intervention of the President himself to put an end of that notion.
The Republic’s High Command, it turned out, hadn’t had to worry nearly as much as they had about the operation. The five hundred airborne-qualified (or pseudo-qualified) men that they had managed to scrape together from the ranks of their volunteers were greeted on the ground as liberators by thousands of Calgarians who had, either armed with their own guns or those provided covertly the government of the Western Republic, already convinced the local Federal forces to surrender control of the city.
New York, NY
Daniel Hampton could do the math. Anyone could, really. Twenty-one years learning various forms of math in school, and all I really ever needed was some common sense and a copy of Microsoft Excel, he bitterly thought.
Gold was headed towards $5000 an ounce. Oil, despite a surge in production, remained above $200 a barrel and rising. People were, quite simply, losing their trust in the Dollar. No, he corrected himself, the Dollar was the last thing that they trusted. Now they don’t trust anything.
Instead, people were throwing depreciating Dollars - and Euros, Pounds, Yen, Rubles, and Yuan - at whatever physical assets that they could lay their hands on. People were bidding up the price of Gold and then physically moving it overseas, the long memory of 1933 lingering in the minds of a few. People were buying real estate, shares - anything that they could actually touch and hold. It could not go on and it would not go on.
“Are you telling me,” he finally asked the assembled staff, “that there are no bidders on the current tranche of Treasuries, other than the Fed itself?”
“Yes, that’s exactly what we’re saying,” one of the silent aides finally chimed in.
“Jesus,” he said, “can’t we make it look a little better than that? Make some capital infusions into some of the banks and other institutions and have them buy at least some of them?”
“...we can try,” said one of his deputies, breaking a long silence.
U.S. Central Command Forward Headquarters, Jerusalem
“A couple of hundred nuclear bombs and the fuckers just don’t seem to have gotten the message,” General Dylan Mackenzie announced upon the conclusion of his daily regional briefing.
“That’s about the size of it, General,” his Intelligence Officer quietly agreed.
Insurgent attacks all across the region, but especially those directed against Israeli targets, were actually increasing. Palestinians had actually become bold enough to fire off a couple of hundred Katyusha rockets against Israel, the first time that they had done so since the arrival of American “peacekeepers” the better part of a year earlier.
The General slammed his fist upon the desk.
“Fuck!” he shouted, “this isn’t war. This is half-war. This is the lesson that we somehow didn’t learn in the decade of fighting after 9-11 and that you people,” he gestured in the direction of the Israeli officers at the table, “never seemed to learn in more than half a century of fighting. The only way to end a war like this is to make it so hellish that the people themselves become so heartily sick of war that they won’t dare to fight again for a century or more. That’s the way to fix this fucking thing.”
He slammed his fist down again.
“How have we responded to this latest outrage?”
“We’ve moved drones over the area, but we have yet to find any targets that our RoE authorize us to engage, General. We’re continuing to sweep...”
“No. No. No,” replied Mackenzie, “firepower. Firepower. Firepower.”
“General, as you know, the present RoE explicitly forbid us from making indiscriminate use of force in areas where there is a civilian presence, as there definitely is along the Gaza frontier.”
“No,” Mackenzie pronounced firmly, “this is enough. Put in a call to Diego Garcia. I want cells of B-52s fully loaded and put on station in shifts. The next time someone launches these rockets, I want to pulverize the area. That’s the only way that anyone is going to get the message. That’s an order.”
Mackenzie turned to face the Israelis present.
“I trust,” he said, “that you will carry my message and intentions back to your government.”
Near Winnipeg, Manitoba
From a military perspective, it might have better better to wait. Flush with foreign volunteers and the money bought from selling their commodity-backed investment vehicles, the Western Republic had the resources to organize a real army. So far units like the 1st Armored Division and the Airborne Brigade (the latter being so-named, in spite of the fact that it only had five hundred and fourteen airborne riflemen on its rolls, in the Western Republic tradition of optimism about the future prospects for growth) had performed well and they, thanks to the popular acclaim for the rebellion in the right-wing portions of the American media (as well as the experience and organizational skills possessed by Praetorian International), had plenty of combat veterans among their ranks, but it was undeniably also true that units thrown together from scratch without adequate training or even, in many cases, standardized weapons would encounter all manner of trouble in actual combat. However, military considerations were not the only ones driving the calculations of the Western Republic.
Politically, the time to move was now. The pace of the impeachment of President Warren dictated that they had to move immediately or risk losing everything. Through back channels they had already been informed that the President had told the Prime Minister that, while he was unable to intervene militarily or provide substantial aid to him at the moment, he would have additional “flexibility” once the impeachment process was over.
In six months, the Western Republic Army would have had an additional two fully-trained divisions. Now it only had one half-trained one along with two independent brigades. But it would have to do.
Given the vast distances involved in travel within Canada, there wasn’t much room for subtlety. I Corps had managed to make its transit over the Rockies to Calgary, following the Trans-Canada Highway, without facing any substantive opposition. There had been some isolated skirmishes as the army passed through the Okanagan region, largely triggered by the expansive promises now being made to Canada’s First Nations by the Federal Government in exchange for their support in putting down the rebellion. The next stage of the plan was a reckless lunge across the Prairies, one that would carry the rebel forces all the way into Ontario and force a speedy end to the conflict before the new Federal Army could be fully prepared for battle. However, despite smooth sailing through the now largely pro-Western province of Saskatchewan, it had now become clear to both General Jackson and General Wayne that an entirely unopposed transit was not in the cards.
“Fucking Manitoba,” said Jackson as he finished reading the message passed to him by an aide before handing it on to General Wayne.
The Provincial governments of Alberta and Saskatchewan had been for the rebellion from the start. British Columbia had, after some domestic disturbances, likewise declared for the Western Republic. Manitoba had dithered and dodged and now, with armies from both sides at its doors, it had invited the Federal Army in.
“We could simply bypass Winnipeg,” suggested Wayne.
“That would leave a major city - including large-scale facilities - in the hands of the government. And we don’t have any substantial garrison forces behind our own army. The First and Second Divisions remain embryonic at best. With a large and friendly
city behind our own lines, the Feds could probably put a mobile brigade into the city - and supply it - and cut our own lines.”
“If we wait to reduce Winnipeg, then there’s every chance that the U.S. might let them transit their new army through the American rail and road system. And then who knows where the hell that they’d strike,” pointed out Wayne.
“They don’t have substantial forces there yet,” noted Jackson quietly.
“I don’t think that there’s any question that we’d take the city, if we hit it immediately. But then what? Our force is mostly armor, hardly a good garrison force.”
“What if we take the city, but don’t garrison it?” said Jackson.
“What’s the point of that?” answered Wayne.
“As you pointed out, the question of the importance of Winnipeg is largely logistical. As things stand, the Federal Army could fly a substantial force almost anywhere behind our lines - save perhaps for British Columbia and parts of Alberta. The problem is that, once they got too far behind our lines, they wouldn’t be able to supply that force, so they’d have to live off on-hand stocks of food, fuel, and other supplies. There’s not enough ammunition anywhere in this country, so they’d have to fly that in - but elsewhere that they could move they’d have to fly everything in in quantity, thus reducing the size of the force that could be supported to one that would be swept aside by whatever relief expedition that we could mount.”
“That’s all true enough. But what’s your point? That we should wreck Winnipeg?”
“Shermanize the place, to be exact.”
The Capitol, Washington, DC
Though, in some ways, it ran contrary to tradition, Rickover had managed to get himself appointed as one of the House Managers in the impeachment trial of President Warren. Whether this act had been motivated by ego or the reality that he was the best man for the job was a question that even Rickover himself was not able to answer but, in any case, it had been done.
