by Adam Yoshida
“Jake!” he had shouted, “the Rebels are marching on Washington!”
The twenty-one year-old college drop-out and Manager of the Electronics Department had wished that he could throw down his blue vest right then and there. But he had bills to pay and a young daughter to support. The Rebels had his whole-hearted support, but they also didn’t have any recruiting centres. If he had quit Wal-Mart on the first day of the Great Mutiny, where would the money to feed his daughter next week come from, especially if the rest of the Federal Government went to pieces?
Instead he and Allan had watched in near-silence as the US Military turned on itself and bloody battles were fought for control of units all the way down the squad level all over the world. Then Allan had taken his aged 2011 Toyota Yaris and driven South to join the Rebel army and Jake had been truly alone, for Allan was the only man he knew who he considered his intellectual equal, at least within the narrow milieu in which he existed.
Allan had gone to Fort Benning and learned to fire a rifle while Jake was promoted to Assistant Manager of the entire store. For the first few months of the war, ordinary commerce has seemed to continue almost unimpeded. The Dollar had collapsed slowly, than all at once. Federal Law, in both Rebel and Loyalist territories, required the stores to accept them anyways even as anything imported had to be paid for in some ungodly mix of Euros, Yuan, Yen, Pounds, and Western Republic and Australian Dollars. Wal-Mart, like the majority of the nation’s great corporations, had attempted to maintain an official neutrality as the second war between the states expanded and spread. It was in the interest of neither government to shut down inter-state commerce altogether. However, shortly enough both sides began to restrict the flow of goods between the territories controlled by each.
In Bentonville, Arkansas the computer techs and MBAs who had once used vast technical power to attempt to fine-tune Wal-Mart’s just-in-time inventory system had been forced to address new challenges. Now they were forced to conduct market research to figure out what the best products were to substitute for another when the collapse of the buying power of the dollar made continued imports of certain products impractical and they had to figure out how to shift inventory around as shortages and hoarding began to take hold. In both Loyalist and Rebel territory, Wal-Mart had responded to the problem of hoarding by introducing new customer loyalty programs that permitted each customer to purchase certain quantities of various goods in ordinary dollars at sub-market prices. It was, the CEO had declared, a matter of demonstrating that Wal-Mart intended to support Americans through the long haul.
Jake and his Store Manager, like a lot of other employees of Wal-Mart, Costco, Target, and the handful of other major firms with the capital and strength to keep their doors open even as the broader economy fell to pieces suddenly found themselves in a position of vital national importance. With the dollar’s value in rapid decline and inter-state transportation having become a greater challenge, only major corporations had the infrastructure and resources to purchase and transport goods across long distances. A lot more Americans were planning to farm (or more accurately, to attempt to farm) the following spring, but that was still an awfully long way into the future. During that first winter of the war the ability of most Americans to eat had come to increasingly depend on the ability of the major corporations to move goods around the country to areas of need and to bring in whatever they could from abroad.
“Thank God that the Westerners still take our dollars,” said Jake as he watched the latest load of frozen Alberta beef be unloaded into the back of the Wal-Mart. He rubbed his hands together for warmth and warily viewed the area around the loading docks. These days the security guards who protected the place were armed with M-16s and they took part of their pay in goods rather than cash.
“Are you kidding?” said one of the crew on the dock, “those fuckers are going to get Goddamned rich off of this when we win.”
The mood of the customers hadn’t grown any better in recent months either. For one depressing month after another they’d closed down departments one at a time. What point was it having a full electronics section open when all you had left in stock were a bench of accessories for old MP3 player models?
“Jake,” came a call over the radio, “I need you at six.”
“Fuck,” the Assistant Manager muttered under his breath as he walked away from the loading dock and began his long journey towards the front of the store. He was still two hundred feet away when he saw what the problem was. A fat woman, her stomach pouring over the sides of her ill-fitting jeans, was frantically waving her arms in the air and shouting.
“What you do you mean, you won’t take my money!” she screamed, gesturing wildly in the direction of the other customers in the store.
“Do you hear this?!? Wal-Mart won’t take my money!”
The other customers averted their eyes and shuffled along. Such scenes had been depressing enough in America before the war and now they were more common still.
“Ma’am,” said Jake, “I’m the Manager here. What seems to be the problem?”
“This bitch,” said the fat woman, gesturing in the direction of the Cashier, “won’t take my fucking money!”
“Sorry,” said Jake, extending his hand, “I’m Jake. What’s your name?”
“Shawna.”
“Ok, Shawna,” said Jake, “you’re going to need to explain this to me a little bit more clearly. Wal-Mart definitely accepts cash and I’m sure that Beth would be happy to accept your payment upon that basis.”
“No,” said the woman, scrunching up her face, “I’m not paying cash. It’s my EBT. She won’t take my EBT card.”
“Ah,” said Jake, sucking in his breath, “well, that’s another story. Wal-Mart isn’t presently able to accept that form of payment within the State of Iowa.”
“There’s money on the card!” she said, waving it in Jake’s face, “let me spend my money.”
Jake struggled to keep himself from pointing out to the woman that the money she was speaking of was not in fact hers, but that it actually belonged to American taxpayers. Or, perhaps more accurately, that it had either been borrowed from abroad or simply created out of a thin air. There was little to be gained from that. All it would mean was a lecture from his own manager and this woman making a larger scene. It’s not like she was intellectually capable of understanding the point: if she was, she wouldn’t be screaming at him right now.
“This card isn’t money, exactly,” explained Jake, “what it represents is the promise of money. This card is processed electronically here at Wal-Mart and then the State of Iowa pays Wal-Mart money from its accounts on your behalf. But most of that money comes from the Federal Government and, no matter which Federal Government you consider to be the correct one, right now the government in Colorado isn’t paying any state any money for this particular program whatsoever and the government in Washington isn’t paying the government of Iowa in particular any money because the government of Iowa recognizes the Colorado government and not the Washington government as legitimate.”
“That’s not my problem,” said the woman, “politics ain’t my thing and ain’t my problem.”
“With respect, Ma’am, it is in this case, because it means that we won’t be able to accept this particular card for payment. Do you have another form of payment that you want to utilize today?”
“I want you to take my money.”
“I’m afraid that isn’t an option,” said Jake, “but I’d be happy to get you checked out if we can find some way to ring this through.”
“This is some bullshit!” shouted the woman, “it ain’t my problem if you can’t process my payment or whatever you’re saying.”
Jake simply looked straight at her and waited for a further response.
“This is fucking bullshit!” shouted the woman, throwing up her arms.
“I’m sorry if you feel that way,” said Jake with a long sigh.
The White House, Washington, DC<
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No one knew which President Kevin Bryan would show up on any given day. In the months since the repulse of the Federal Army by the Rebels at the Battle of Pueblo, the President had alternated between issuing wild instructions in a frenzy for days at a time followed by long periods in which he gave himself over totally to despair. Frankly, most people weren’t sure which of the two Presidents they preferred, since both were rather problematic in their own way. By a narrow margin - the manic President’s instructions could be ignored and at least when he was in such a mood he could be convinced to do something - Secretary of Defense Gerald Ransom preferred the former to the latter. Today, however, was not a good day.
“Mr. President?” said the Army Brigadier General who was giving the briefing as the Commander-in-Chief gazed blankly at the desk. She was a pretty blonde in her mid-30s, implausibly attractive and young for her rank and the position. The Army, knowing a thing or two about how the game was played in Washington, had fast-tracked her and a few of her colleagues and assigned them to various duties in and around the White House in this moment of supreme national crisis because their intangible qualities made is marginally less likely that the President would explode upon them at random.
“Mmmm… Yes, General,” said the President, looking up after a delay of several seconds.
“As I was saying, the principal problem here is complex. The Rebel forces lack the capacity to either overcome the territory that we hold in the West or to launch a major offensive outside of the areas that they control, but we can’t possibly hope to overcome them with the forces that we have on hand even if we look at this strictly in terms of the military balance-of-power.”
The General clicked a button and changed a slide.
“The Rebel forces in the Mountain West consist of four Divisions, plus militia. They have nearly a thousand combat-capable aircraft. A lot of those are old, but they can still pack a punch, as we learned at Pueblo.”
“But that,” she added, “is only looking at what we’re facing off against in the centre. There are three intact Divisions in the South and one occupying the State of Hawaii. Plus all of the forces under the control of the former Central Command, even if they are - for the present - trapped in the Middle East.”
“To face this force, we have approximately seven Divisions between our own forces and Allied forces. Another four Divisions are forming, but we have identified as least that many Rebel formations being created within the CONUS.”
“So,” said the Secretary of Defense, trying to steer the presentation towards a desired outcome, “what you’re saying is that we are almost outnumbered within the borders of the United States, even if we account for the European forces that we have on hand as being wholly willing to fight?”
“Yes, Mr. Secretary. But that’s arguably not even the worst part.”
“You’re telling me,” said the President, “that the Federal Government is outnumbered by Rebel soldiers on our own soil, and that isn’t the worst news you have for me today?”
“I’m afraid not, Mr. President,” replied the briefer, “the majority of the Special Forces of all types in the military - those that simply didn’t choose to go home when the fighting started - are aligned with the Rebels, and this is proving to be a mounting disaster. This is a classic Green Beret-type operation that we are witnessing being turned against us. The Rebel Department of Defense took all of their operators and reorganized them as a new Provisional Special Operations Brigade and put them into the field damned quickly. Large territories - even in staunchly loyal areas - are effectively under the control of insurgent groups.”
“For example, even though the government of New Hampshire recognizes the correct government at the national level, the reports that the Army is getting - as opposed to what’s coming through a lot of officials channels - are that outside of some of the urban areas… Or what passes for urban in New Hampshire… the state is wholly under Rebel control.”
“And even some urban areas aren’t as secure as you’d think,” she added, changing the PowerPoint slide to show a recent New York Times story about a reduction in crime in Los Angeles.
“You know why crime has dropped in Los Angeles?” said the General, “because there are Rebel operatives there who have organized and supplied the local street gangs and turned them against the Federal Government.”
“We all know the situation is bad,” admitted the President, “what’s the point?”
“The point, Mr. President,” said General Richard Hall, now the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, “is that the unanimous recommendation of the Joint Chiefs of Staff continues to be against the resumption of any major offensive operations this year.”
“That’s just not going to do, General,” said Bryan, “because this is an election year. We know that the Rebels are going to hold their own Presidential and Congressional elections in November, and we know that Rickover is going to run in them and probably win their unfair, rigged, and discriminatory election. And, when that happens, he’s going to claim a democratic mandate and some more people are going to listen.”
“I don’t want to become entangled in politics, Mr. President,” said Hall, “I just know what is militarily possible. We have the stronger concentrated force, but that advantage isn’t everything and, to the degree that it still exists, that advantage is diminishing a little with every passing day. We don’t have new recruits lining up - they do. They’re getting proportionally stronger with each passing day. I don’t have the whole solution, but attempting to assail either of the main Rebel bastions in the West or the South is not desirable at the present time.”
“So, what you’re saying, General, is that this is hopeless?”
“No, Mr. President,” Secretary Ransom interjected, “that is not what the General is saying. What he’s saying is that we have to explore alternative solutions here.”
“Such as?” asked the President.
“Well, first,” said Ransom, “I think that we have to recognize that the insurgencies that exist are a serious problem. If we can’t get those under control, we’re apt to see this whole thing collapse in on itself.”
“Second, we need to begin discussing a political solution to this with some seriousness. Military operations need to support politics and not the other way around for the present.”
“And?”
“And, Mr. President, if we want to live to see next year, you need to forget about Terrance Rickover in Colorado and worry about the Third Army sailing over here. If we can’t do something about that, then this is all over.”
U.S. Central Command Forward Headquarters, Jerusalem
General Dylan Mackenzie looked at the map laid out in front of him and rubbed his forehead. Packing, he reflected as often the worst part of any journey. It was one thing to, as he himself was guilty of doing, to make high-toned statements about the Third Army and the rest of the Central Command sailing home to “liberate America,” but it was another thing to actually do it.
The General had at his disposal some four Divisions of various types and configurations along with two brigade-sized supporting units. Combined the 1st and 4th Infantry Divisions, the 1st Cavalry Division, and the 82nd Airborne Division, together with with supporting troops, totalled more than 150,000 combat soldiers. They were the most powerful combined formation put into the field since the Persian Gulf War more than thirty years earlier. They were supported by the USS Ronald Reagan, John C. Stennis, Theodore Roosevelt, and Harry Truman along with thirty other support vessels. Four hundred aircraft belonging to the United States Air Force were available for support. It was a truly amazing force until you considered that they were thousands of miles from home and short on money, transportation, and all sorts of critical supplies.
Third Army was increasingly concentrated within the borders of the renewed State of Israel, preparing for movement. But exactly where to and by what route remained, even after more than a month of debate, wholly unsettled. The safest route by far wou
ld be to take the fleet and the Army through the Indian Ocean and across the Pacific. The alliance of the Rebel government with the People’s Republic of China, combined with the Seventh Fleet’s operation in Hawaii, made the Pacific a mostly-secure area. However, once their trans-Pacific transit was completed they would have to either land in the Western Republic, which was still politically unwilling to fully sign on with the Colorado government, and then fight their way across Loyalist-held areas before they were even able to begin an offensive against the Loyalist bastions in concert with the rest of the Rebel army in the West.
Yet, the trans-Atlantic route had an even more-vexing problem: opposition.
The European Union had been willing to provide military support to the Loyalists when they thought it would be a ninety-day war. German, French, and British soldiers had died by the hundreds during the fighting in Kansas and Colorado and all major navies and been bloodied during the sporadic fighting in the Atlantic. But European support for Washington had grown tepid in the months since Pueblo. If they threw all of their air and naval might at the task they might - might - be able to block the passage of the Rebel fleet, but whether they were willing to accept the terrible loss of blood and treasure that even a successful implementation of that policy would require remained an open question.
Still, it was quite possible that moving across the Atlantic would require the forces under Mackenzie’s command to fight their way through a blockade established by multiple navies and then land somewhere on the Eastern Seaboard in the face of tenacious opposition.
“General,” said the Acting President over the video connection, “I am not going to make a decision against your recommendation. I know that what we are asking you to perform would be one of the great - perhaps the greatest - feat of arms in the history of the world.”
Central Command had not been really integrated into the structure re-formed by the Rebel Department of Defense in any meaningful way. The distances were too long and communications too unreliable and vulnerable to interception. Central Command remained wholly the fiefdom of General Mackenzie, in consultation with President Rickover.
