by R A Peters
If change in general is spooky, such extreme change is petrifying. As if the politicians didn’t have enough internal problems, the Supreme Court declared open season on them until they installed Dimone in power. The new Congress and every piece of legislation they pumped out, no matter how mild or innocuous, was labeled unconstitutional by those old judges. Legally speaking, there was no legitimate president to hide behind.
By this point, Congress truly needed a president, any president. Republican or Democrat, it didn’t matter. Just someone to nut up and make the hard decisions. Most importantly, someone to shoulder the responsibility of decisive action. That R word was as scandalous and shocking to these professional politicians as a flasher was to a maiden. It disturbed them to their souls. Their entire carefully constructed understanding of reality was under attack. Apparently, the only bipartisan force powerful enough to make these children agree on anything was mutual fear.
As tempting as it was to give in to the courts and just go with Dimone, Congress couldn’t. Capitulation wouldn’t end the crisis, even if such a move wasn’t political suicide. No good way to spin a decision like that. Total surrender, no matter how you cut it.
“Turn up the volume!” The wind carried away most of the House Majority leader’s speech.
Jessica snatched the phone and held it close.
“That’s why we are forced to exercise Congress’s 20th Amendment power to select....” She turned away from the wind and hunched over the phone, “…until such time as new elections can be safely held.”
“No way…” Jessica gawked as the president stepped to the dais amid a thunderous standing ovation from both parties. With all the military uniforms, senior bureaucrats and foreign ambassadors crowding the chamber, there was only standing room. Even without a single member of the Supreme Court present.
Jessica handed the phone back in disgust as the now three-term president gave his inauguration speech. It was short, since he only had one item on his agenda: “Restore law and order, by any means necessary.”
Jessica grabbed her cameraman’s shoulder. Her producer was already gone. “That thing can zoom. Let’s get the hell out of the middle of this, right now.”
“Ah, relax. You know better than to be scared. It’s all theater.”
Jessica glanced back and forth at the rival soldiers, all in the same uniform, stacking sandbags on each end of the bridge.
“Right. I bet that’s what the emperor told the Christians at the coliseum.”
He lowered his camera, but didn’t budge. “Come on. The president’s not some type of Caesar.”
Two Apache attack helicopters thumped over from the Georgia side of the border. As soon as they crossed the river, rebel troops fired flares as warning shots. The helicopters hovered in place and burrrped out 25mm cannon bursts into the empty water. Rebel troops scattered under the much more intimidating warning fire.
The cameraman grinned and stowed his gear. “Okay, okay, maybe he is a little bit like a warlord.”
As they both walked briskly back to the federal side of the line with their hands in the open, Jessica wagged a finger at the new Fed tanks pulling up.
“These things aren’t the problem. I’m not scared of the president’s power. No, what’s frightening is this single-minded sense of purpose from a man who has only one thing left to lose: his legacy. Power might corrupt, but purpose kills.”
Eufaula, Southeast Alabama
16 February: 0900
The first combat action of the Florida Campaign actually took place over the Chattahoochee River on the Alabama/Georgia border. An A-Team from Florida’s National Guard Special Forces group pushed a zip-tied and gagged drawbridge operator through the dark Pines. The Afghanistan veterans dressed as civilians were having too much fun playing the insurgents.
Following President Dimone’s orders, the SF team were doing everything they could to slow down the federal military buildup along the border. That sterile order, decided upon by politicians sitting around in plush, air-conditioned offices, was less sanitary in the field.
“Damn, he looks pissed. Ha!” One of the plain clothed weekend killers gave the prisoner a gentle shove. “Would you rather us have left you sitting on the bridge with 300 pounds of plastic explosive? You wanna die that bad? Well, the day’s still young… unlike you. We’ll move faster without your old ass.”
The SF master sergeant running the show almost told the new demolitions expert to shut the hell up. He let it slide, for now. The harassment might be unprofessional, but it did help keep things quiet if a detainee wasn’t 100% sure of your intentions. Besides, it was important to stick with the rednecks-blowing-random-shit-up cover story. Good neighbors wouldn’t destroy their neighbor’s infrastructure, but who knew what a bunch of crazy hicks might do?
The tied-up old black man, a Vietnam veteran himself, failed to pick up on the humor. All he heard was some dumb cracker joking about shooting him and the head honcho looking contemplative and then smiling. For the first time, his anger faded and he began to worry. They hustled down some deer trail a good half mile from the rail bridge and only heading deeper into the Pines. Not much around in the way of witnesses.
A familiar whistle in the distance didn’t distract him, but stunned the rednecks like a gunshot. “Shit, since when the fuck are the trains early!” one shouted. The head Bubba, who strangely enough had a Chicago accent, issued an order.
“Two minutes to detonation. Blow it now. Right now or they won’t have any time to stop!”
The asshole in a Lynnrd Skynyrd T-shirt behind the prisoner hauled out a green box from his cargo pants. He turned one key and began taking a knee like the rest of the squad. Two of his teeth went flying when he took a bonus knee to his face from the old man on the way down. The barely conscious redneck lost control of the armed detonator. It sailed out of his hands and disappeared somewhere in a stand of blackberries along the trail.
Several soldiers scrambled into the bush after the little box, cursing at the thorns, while two more dived for the old man. He hadn’t shown such flexibility since his wedding night, but somehow slid his tied hands up under his butt and out front before they reached him. It was an awkward grip on the fallen man’s M4, what with both cuffed hands on the handle and butt stock pressed against his chest, but he managed. Style wasn’t important at arm’s length range anyway. He flipped the selector to three round burst, what was full Rock n’ Roll in his day, and grinned as the first hillbilly took it all in the chest.
He might have had just enough time to swing a few more degrees and take out the second fellow, if Mr. Busted Nose behind him hadn’t drawn his sidearm and blown the old man’s brains out. The gunshot barely stopped ringing when they heard a distant explosion, followed by a never-ending screech of steel on steel. A battalion’s worth of M1 Abrams tanks just went swimming…along with 45 drivers traveling in a cabin car.
The master sergeant muttered something about “friggin’ Murphy” and chucked the now pointless detonator at the demo expert. The rest of his team vainly slapped on six pressure dressings to their wounded man. They didn’t stop until well after the medic rose up and shook his head. It slowed them down, but of course they took his body with them.
The dead civilian they left. His unarmed corpse, shot in the back of the head, would later be chalked up as yet another terrorist victim. The old man, never a member of the NAACP, still soon became their poster child. Already a strong supporter of the president, the organization grew practically militant over the coming weeks.
Homestead Air Force Reserve Base, Florida
17 February: 1500
Pickens couldn’t get comfortable in his new office. The endless window rattling from reservist F-16 fighters doing “touch and go” training a few hundred yards away didn’t help. Witnessing rhetoric give birth to desperate action played a larger role. Florida’s acting governor popped another antacid tablet and grudgingly wished he could be as mellow as the senator next to him, or president, a
s the smug bastard called himself nowadays.
“You’re so damn relaxed, for a man considered public enemy number one by half the country. Your government is trying to kill you, yet there you sit, planning how to staff your new administration. You’re either the most optimistic man I’ve ever met or the craziest!”
President-proclaimed Dimone ignored the incredulity in his compatriot’s voice and gestured at the television. “You should be relaxed too. Because this is the end game. That the Feds are resorting to raw military force shows they’ve lost control and are out of viable political options.”
“Or they don’t see this as a political game anymore,” Pickens snorted.
“Come on, don’t play the country bumpkin. You know damn well what this is all about. You even helped start it. It’s all showmanship. As long as we stay strong, as long as we keep preparing and looking dreadfully dangerous, they’ll back down. We just need to keep our war face on. It’s always been a question of who’s going to blink first.”
“I don’t know. All the normal political calculus hasn’t been serving us well lately. Wouldn’t you say?” He gestured at the federal general giving a press conference on TV. Looked just like the press briefings for the Iraq invasions, except this map was much more familiar from postcards.
“Ok, then look at it this way. We’ve passed the point of no return. At this juncture, it’s fame or famine. Either prison or the presidency, and not many options in between. When you’re face to face with a bull, all you can do is grab ‘em by the horns and hold on tight!” Pickens raised an eyebrow. What an odd reference for someone who’d never been within a hundred yards of a farm, let alone any bulls, to make.
“And if they do attack, despite your confidence? All our military people are convinced the best we could do is hold them off for a few days, and even that would require a lot of luck. What’s the point?”
“Governor, power isn’t defined by how many guns and bombs you have. It’s about how many people are willing to sympathize with you. The more they push the more radical our support becomes. The harder they fight, the stronger we get! That’s why Al Qaida is still a danger today, even after having their top five leaders killed ten times over.”
“So…we’re like Al Qaida? God, I hope the press doesn’t quote you on that one! You sound just like the president.” Dimone dismissed his half-serious joke.
“You know what I mean. Armies can be wiped out, charismatic leaders can be killed, but a popular idea will raise fresh, larger armies and produce new, smarter leaders in perpetuity. The Brits slaughtered one Minuteman army after another for years, but they kept coming back. Tougher, smarter and larger every time. Righteousness can’t be destroyed. Persecution only emboldens it.” Dimone didn’t sound like such a tool when speaking off the cuff.
“If you want directly relevant examples, just look over the border. The Georgia legislature has condemned us in the strongest possible terms, but the people there are on our side. We canceled the sabotage campaign after that first screwed up mission, but our neighbors are doing a hell of a good job without our help. Look how much they’ve hampered the Army’s response. We haven’t done anything to encourage them. That’s just the power of an idea.
Dimone refused to make eye contact. “I’m not excited by how all this turned out. I hoped we could succeed without any violence. Unfortunately, that mad man in Washington is hell bent on war. The only option we have is to stand up against him. At this point, our followers demand it. I wonder if we could even back down if we wanted to.”
Upon closer inspection, Dimone did have a slight tick in his left hand. He kept drumming his fingers while muting the volume, just as the president made yet another public appeal to him to end this madness.
“If they do come, we don’t have to win. Just slow them down and show that force has a chance to stop the president. Our real support isn’t here; it’s with all those millions of moderates around the country, especially out West. Once they see the lengths the Administration is willing to go to defend their illegal grip on power, that’ll be their undoing. What happens on the battlefield here…”
A pair of jets made a low-level fake bombing run over their heads and drowned out his words. Pickens wasn’t sure if the senator was delusional or a genius. For better or worse, he’d find out soon enough.
Freedom Brigade “Self Defense” Training Camp
Los Padres National Forest, California
19 February: 1500
Sophie went down hard as a 200 lb. riot-armor clad policeman wrenched her own shield out of her hands and smashed it right into her face. On the ground, she at least had the sense to fight from where she landed instead of getting back up. Even with a sports cup, that same officer nearly fell over when she shot out a long leg and caught him in the groin.
When she finally rose, she didn’t run back to her V-shaped phalanx trying to push through the police line. Nor did she head back to safety away from the enemy. Instead, Sophie gave a banshee scream and flung herself at the knees of the other officers in the line. Armed only with youthful rage, she didn’t get far.
Two burly men still pummeled her with plastic baseball bats well after the instructor blew her whistle. The rest of the “strike team” and “police officers” reluctantly lowered their plastic weapons and shields.
“What the hell are you doing, girl?” The female instructor yanked her up by the ponytail. Despite a bruise on her cheek and tears in her eyes, Sophie’s voice still held defiance.
“Kicking ass, ma’am!”
The older woman grinned, despite herself. “Not out of formation you’re not.” She waved for the rest of the students, OPFOR “bad guys” dressed as cops and BLUFOR “good guys” protestors, to gather around. “You’ve all heard me say it a thousand times this week. You never break rank! That’s the only edge the fascists have on us; they fight as a unit.”
Her eyes burned the faux cops. “If we’re ever going to smash their lines, if we’re ever going to show the Man and his lackeys they can’t just gas and club their way into power, we have to match their Gestapo discipline with our own iron discipline!” She took a breath.
“It’s my own damn fault here. What the hell was I thinking putting a 100-pound girl on the skirmish line? Miss Kampbell, you’ve got the fighting spirit, all right, but it’s wasted in this course. Non-lethal, dynamic protesting is not your style.” She grinned knowingly.
“The type of war you want to wage can’t be learned with this program. Why don’t you go back to administration and ask for a slot in one of the Proactive Defense Brigades? Tell them Shania suggested it.”
Sophie managed to look hopeful, angry and confused all at once, in the way only a teenager can. “The militias? I’ve never touched a gun in my life. They’ll never take me. Please don’t boot me out of the class. I just want to make a difference…”
“Damn, girl! Shut up already. They’re not putting together a vigilante mob over there. We’re building our own army. You’re not being fired. You’re being promoted. This here is important, but it’s just the beginning. When the pigs are routed and the Man calls in his jackbooted thugs, that’s where you come in. That’s where you can make a difference.” She suddenly wheeled back on her class and seemingly forgot about Sophie.
“But that don’t mean you all can slack off! We’ve still got to get control of the streets. Masks on! Form up! We’re going again.”
Sophie spat out a little blood and made her way to the admin office…to look for more.
Situation Room, White House
20 February: 1300
“No sir, we’re not quite ready, but we will be shortly. By the end of the week, tops. That sabotage campaign slows things down a little, but not significantly. We just need to arrange for additional force protection along our lines of communication. The casualties so far have been light, although the loss of material is more frustrating.”
Some presidential aide interrupted the general’s briefing as casually as he would a
subordinate. “Like that Army fuel dump outside of Valdosta, Georgia that blew up for no apparent reason? How many trains have these saboteurs derailed? You’ve lost dozens of men and hundreds of millions of dollars in equipment…before the invasion has even started! The Joint Chiefs said you were the wrong man for the job.”
“The Joint Chiefs are an advisory board and not in the chain of command. Neither are you. I’m in charge of this ridiculous operation and will prosecute it how I see fit. Who the fuck are you anyway? Where do you get off telling me how to do my job?”
Once upon a time, such unprofessional bickering in the situation room was unthinkable. There were a lot of new precedents being made nowadays. In every meeting, the usual mild tension between the military and the new age breed of young civilian technocrats reached new heights. The president shook his head and finally stepped in. He wasn’t impressed with the general’s performance either, but he had zero doubts about his loyalty. At this delicate time, that was a pearl beyond price.
“General, no offense was intended. We’re civilians and used to debating things before taking action, that’s all. I have complete confidence in you and your staff. Please continue.” The president’s smooth lying mollified the general, but the indignant staffer spent the rest of their meeting only half-listening while plotting ways to ruin the officer’s career. How dare some simple soldier talk to him like that!
“Yes, sir. As I was saying, I’m confident that we have more than enough resources on hand to deal with any elements of the Florida National Guard that choose to resist. Even these rumored irregulars shouldn’t present much of a threat.”
