The Second Civil War- The Complete History

by Adam Yoshida

Thirty seconds after the first shot was fired, the initial firing was over. One hundred and four members of Bravo Company lay dead or wounded along the Capitol steps along with one hundred and fifty-six Congressional volunteers.

  “Fuck!” screamed Colonel Gregory, grabbing off his helmet and throwing it against the ground.

  “We have the steps,” radioed Captain Gagnon in a deathly ill voice, “but we cannot proceed. We require all available medical assistance.”

  The Situation Room, The White House

  “Mr. President,” said Secretary of Defense Ransom, “should we order the next phase?”

  President Kevin Bryan sat silently in his chair, wordlessly watching the latest live feeds from the Capitol.

  “All I ever wanted to do was to ensure that everyone could have a decent life,” the President said sadly to himself.

  “Mr. President,” repeated the Secretary of Defense, “given what has happened already, I believe that we require your order to proceed.”

  “I have to explain to the people,” insisted the President quietly.

  “Mr. President...” said the Secretary.

  “Do whatever you have to do,” said the President.

  “Sir,” replied Ransom, “I think that this situation requires more explicit instructions than that. Should we continue the attack on the Capitol and arrest the insurgent members of the Congress, pursuant to your earlier orders?”

  The President gazed at the ground for ten seconds as every eye at the table trained on him.

  “Do it,” he finally said, “whatever you need... Just get it done. Now.”

  U.S. Capitol Grounds

  The Congressional Provisional Battalion had been forced to withdraw behind the doors of the Capitol under the fire of Bravo Company. The end of the initial standoff, however, posed new logistical challenges.

  “When they come through the door, open fire,” order Jacob Henry as he and the other sweat-soaked men and women took up their positions within the Capitol complex itself.

  Alexandria, VA

  General Richard Hall was unsurprised when the phone rang at his Alexandria townhouse and his caller ID showed that the call was coming from the personal line of the Secretary of Defense.

  “General Hall,” said Ransom.

  “Mr. Secretary,” said the General curtly as he continued to read the latest news from a two tablets and a computer set out across his kitchen table as he wife brought him endless cups of coffee.

  “General, we need you back,” said Ransom flatly.

  “I have been relieved by the President,” said General Hall.

  “I’m willing to take responsibility for bringing you back,” answered the Secretary, “but right now the whole of the military is coming apart. Already some units are signaling Terrance Rickover for orders, but he’s out-of-touch, given that the last reports have him in the Capitol, under fire. Soldiers have mutinied in multiple units when given orders to move. You’re the one figure with enough respect in the Army – and the armed forces as a whole – to keep this situation from devolving into an all-out civil war.”

  “Mr. Secretary,” said Hall, “frankly, I’m not even sure who the legitimate President is at this point or what the next steps are. The economy is collapsing minute-by-minute and there’s no one effectively in control of the country.”

  “That’s why we need to keep the Armed Forces together, General. I’m a Republican, as I believe that you are as well... Between you and I, I don’t like a lot of this President’s agenda either. But I don’t believe that an armed insurrection is the way to oppose him. And, even if I believed that was right – I certainly don’t believe that we can have the armed forces fracturing along ideological lines.”

  “According to the reports that I’ve seen, that’s already happening, Gerald.”

  “Come back, then, and keep together as much as you can. I don’t know what the solution will be at this point – but any hope of a peaceful end to this ends if the military is divided into competing factions.”

  “I... I’ll have to think about it, Mr. Secretary,” Hall finally answered.

  The Capitol

  Acting President Terrance Rickover had, almost immediately after his swearing in, been relocated to emergency space in the underground Capitol Visitor’s Centre.

  “Mr. President,” said Jacob Henry, “they still aren’t advancing into the Capitol complex itself. We’re holding the hallways with as many men as we can. If they try and enter, there will be a bloodbath. I don’t know if we can stop them but, by God, we can definitely make them pay.”

  “Let’s hope that it doesn’t come to that,” said Rickover.

  The problem facing the infant Rickover Administration was simple: they had no means of directly contacting most of the Federal Government and since almost all Executive Branch officials were appointees either of President Bryan or President Warren, few of them were inclined to accept orders from a usurper President and to pass them on to their subordinates. Thus were the group of men and women who, in theory, the new Executive Branch of the government reduced to using their handful of secure lines of communication to simply attempt to make phone calls and send e-mails to people that they happened to know and to beg them for their cooperation.

  Immediately after convicting the President and removing him from office, both the Senate and the House had immediately adjourned sine die, explicitly for the purpose of allowing the Acting President to dismiss the existing Cabinet and other Presidentially-appointed officials to install replacements by making recess appointments, but this was challenging in two respects. First, it was difficult to find qualified people willing to accept Federal offices from a besieged bunker and second, none of the people who he had been able to appoint had control over any of the facilities that they required to do their jobs.

  “The problem here,” Rickover finally said, “is chains of command. Even in cases where we’ve seen individual acts of mutiny or defections, in most cases we need the entire chain of command to come over to us or else we can’t really mobilize anyone for action. For the time being, I think, that we should forget about trying to gain control of most of the Federal apparatus.”

  “Well, what then?” said Michael Nelson, soon to be promoted to House Majority Leader, but temporarily serving as Rickover’s de facto Chief of Staff.

  “The states,” said Rickover.

  “But, when Federalized, the soldiers of any state National Guard fall firmly within the DOD’s purview,” pointed out Nelson.

  “Well, sure. But if they’re only de facto Federalized, rather than de jure, is there any practical impediment to the Governor of, say, Arizona ordering their National Guard units to report to me or such official as I might designate, instead of accepting ordinary Federalization?”

  “I suppose not,” agreed Nelson.

  “Then let’s get on the fucking phone,” said Rickover.

  Petersburg, VA

  General Starnes watched as his fleet of M1000 Heavy Equipment Transporters pulled over for a penultimate time to refuel. The giant trucks had hauled the 3rd Squadron’s Abrams and Bradleys all the way from Georgia, but now it was almost time for the armored vehicles to disembark and take to the road on their own.

  The General walked over to the Squadron commander, a sandy-haired Lieutenant Colonel in his late 30s.

  “Colonel,” said Starnes, “how are the boys holding up?”

  “They’re all listening to the latest news from all of their personal devices,” said Colonel Taylor Smith, “and they’re fucking ready to go. Especially after what happened on the steps of the Capitol.”

  “Ready to fight fellow soldiers?” enquired the General.

  “I don’t think that anyone feels great about that General, and I don’t think that any of them envy those men in the Old Guard... But, yes, they’re damned well prepared to fight.”

  “Well, I think that’s what we’re going to have to do,” said Starnes, “we’ll disembark around Fredericksburg and go on
the rest of the way tracked.”

  “What if they start blowing bridges?” asked the Colonel.

  “Then we’re fucked,” said Starnes, “but I don’t know if they’re organized enough to do that. Anyways, we have a lot of personnel – we can fight on foot if we have to. It sure doesn’t sound like they have a lot of personnel on their side either, or else they’d have already taken the Capitol.”

  “Do we know where we’re going, General?” asked Smith.

  “What do you mean?” asked Starnes.

  “Well, almost everyone assumes that we’re going to the Capitol... But we could end this even sooner if we headed to the other end of Capitol Hill. Couldn’t we?”

  “Hmmm...” responded the General, “perhaps we should ask the President.”

  “I’m pretty sure he’d be against us storming the White House, General.”

  “Not that one. The other one.”

  The Capitol

  Mark Preston had served four years as the Deputy Secretary of Defense before he had retired to a life of luxury as a K-Street lobbyist. Once, in another life, he’d had ambitions of taking the top job at the DOD in the next Republican Administration, but those dreams had waned as his accounts receivable had waxed. Not only would a return to the Pentagon have meant giving up a seven-figure income stream, but his myriad contacts with defense contractors would have made his confirmation a torturous process with no more than 50/50 odds of success. This morning he had woken up as just another resident of This Town concerned with what the absolute mess in Washington meant for the economy and for his business. He’d gone to the Capitol that morning for consultations at the invitation of the Speaker. Now, at mid-afternoon, he was suddenly the Secretary of Defense.

  “Mark,” Acting President Rickover had told him, “you’re the only guy with the contacts to pull together the vast defense apparatus without control of the Pentagon bureaucracy. I need you. You’re the Secretary of Defense.”

  The challenge that existed this Wednesday afternoon was that while the military as a whole was broadly sympathetic to Acting President Rickover and a majority of officers and soldiers were likely to accept his claim upon the Presidency in theory, the Pentagon bureaucracy was still definitively in the hands of the Bryan Administration, as was a substantial minority of the military. Worse still, many of those inclined to be politically sympathetic to Rickover and the Republicans would still act in accordance with the orders of their superiors who were still aligned with President Bryan.

  Someone had shut down cellular phone and internet service to the Capitol itself. However, rudimentary communication lines were being maintained by those who had access to personal devices that had satellite access. It was quite possible that these satellite phones were being monitored but, for the time being, they were pretty much the only means of communication with the outside world. It was by these means that General Starnes reached Preston.

  “Well, congratulations, Mr. Secretary,” said Starnes to his old friend.

  “Thanks,” said Preston hurriedly, “but now we have a pretty damned large load of troubles.”

  “Indeed. I’m on my way. One heavy battalion. 3-7 Cav. Where do you want us?”

  “Sorry... Where are you?”

  “We’re two hours out,” answered the General.

  “All the fucking way from Georgia?”

  “All the fucking way, Mr. Secretary. Fully loaded. We’re good to go. But, where do we go?”

  The Pentagon

  When General Richard Hall walked back into the Pentagon, almost everyone stopped to stare. They knew that the General had stood up to the President over the assault on the Capitol and they knew that he’d been gone for nearly a day. The rumors were that he had been fired. Now, walking into the National Military Command Centre wearing his full uniform, the General brushed questions aside.

  “What’s our status?” he asked.

  General Martin Walker, the Vice-Chief of Staff of the Army walked up to him.

  “General, it’s damned chaos out there. Units are refusing to respond to commands, or calling us here and demanding to speak to Mark Preston...”

  “Preston?” asked Hall.

  “The rebels announced that he’d been appointed as the Secretary of Defense a few hours ago,” answered a staffer.

  “Right,” nodded Hall, holding his arms up.

  “Ok, everyone stop for a second,” he said.

  “I know that the situation is terrible right now. There are a lot of hotheads out there, both inside and outside of the armed forces and they’re making a bad situation a lot worse. I know that some of you aren’t fans of the current President and his policies. I know that a lot of you have had thoughts or said things like, ‘I took an oath to the Constitution, not to this President.’ I understand those feelings. I share in them. I took an oath to the Constitution and not to the President. That cuts both ways, ladies and gentlemen. There’s a process and there are elections and there are courts. I know that things look bad right now. Wrongs have certainly been committed. But our government ultimately remains one of laws and not of men. If we can keep our cool and keep the Armed Forces together, we can keep the country together.

  “However, if the military comes apart – then what happened on the steps of the Capitol today will only be the beginning. That’s our job today. Not to champion any particular political cause, but to keep the armed forces together so that we can keep our country together.”

  He looked around the room to see nods all around.

  “My first order: all previous orders authorizing offensive action are withdrawn. Units are to defend themselves if fired upon only. No offensive action whatsoever. Is that clear? These orders are to stand unless they are countermanded by a higher authority.”

  “Ok then. Now, what’s our status in detail?”

  “Different units are responding in totally different ways. Some units have signaled that they’re standing by and awaiting our orders. Others have called us to announce that they’re only going to accept orders from the rebel government. Others have gone dark. We’re keeping track of it on the screen,” said Walker, pointing to a giant monitor.

  Hall walked towards it, put on his glasses and squinted.

  “What is the 3-7 Cavalry doing in northern Virginia?” he asked.

  “Well,” answered Walker, “that’s what we were just grappling with.”

  The Capitol

  “Mr. President,” began Mark Preston, “Third Squadron, Seventh Cavalry Regiment – essentially a heavy battalion – has raced north from Georgia over the last twenty-four hours. The best reports that we have are that they’re now in position to the north of Fredericksburg. There aren’t any other heavy units in the Washington, DC region. They could be here in a few hours.”

  “To lift the siege of the Capitol?” asked Rickover.

  “Well,” answered Preston, “that’s one option. Major General Gregory Starnes – he’s the commander of the Third Infantry Division but he’s essentially taken command of the Squadron for the moment – has proposed that they could use their power to move directly on the White House to arrest President... Former President Bryan and to, hopefully, bring this whole mess to an immediate end.”

  “Mr. President,” interjected Michael Nelson, “I know that this has been a terrible day. And I recognize the situation that we are now in... But what is the world going to think if you begin your Administration by rolling tanks down Pennsylvania Avenue? They’d call it a coup d’etat.”

  “What would you have us do?” asked the Acting President, “we can’t live in the Capitol Visitor’s Centre forever.”

  “No. We can’t. But the people outside are holding their distance from us. I don’t think that they’re going to try and come in. And if what the Secretary is saying is right – there’s a tank battalion ready to simply march into this city – then I think we’ll be able to lift the siege without further loss of life here. Then we can put on political pressure for a peaceful settlement.”r />
  “What sort of settlement?”

  “I don’t know. But I think that if we take the rest of the government by force, we risk civil war. Or at the least a prolonged insurgency.”

  “If we don’t take the President now, then we risk an actual civil war,” pointed out Preston, “even if a large portion of the military sides with us, some will feel duty-bound to stand by the existing Administration. Not everyone in the military is a Republican – some of them will go along ideologically. And they’ll certainly have control of most of the civilian apparatus of the Federal Government, many state governments, and all of the resources that come with that.”

  “Alright.” replied Rickover, “I’m convinced. Order them to take the White House. Take Bryan alive, if they can. If this can be over now, that’s a risk worth taking.”

  The Situation Room, The White House

  President Kevin Bryan sat quietly as the room around him buzzed with activity.

  “...Twenty miles south of the city...”

  “Surely we have some special forces that we could deploy?” asked one Undersecretary of Defense.

  “We should evacuate the White House,” maintained one official.

  “That’d signal to the rebels that they’d already won,” shot back the Secretary of State.

  “Alright!” Secretary Ransom finally announced to the room, “I have some more information.”

  General Richard Hall walked through the door. The President looked at him quizzically for a moment.

  “General Hall,” he said, then stopped.

  “Mr. President,” replied the General curtly.

  “It’s good to see you,” the President finally said, sinking into his chair.

  “I’ll keep this brief,” said Hall, “elements of the Third Infantry Division, led by the division commander, joined the rebel forces even before the fighting in Washington began today. As a result, there is a battalion-sized force on the way to Downtown Washington right now. We don’t have anything on the ground that can stop them.”