by Ira Tabankin
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The first of seven Jericho flights takes off from Norfolk, the modified F4s fly low, at Mach 0.9 until they reach Washington D.C. where they begin to circle the city. The large sound generators mounted on the plane’s wings generate an ultra-sonic sound which shakes the cities windows and buildings. People on the streets feel a vibration in the core of their bodies. The F4s accelerate to Mach 1.2, they make seven circles over the Northern capital before they fly out to sea at Mach 2.1 and disappear before any Northern fighters can arrive. They leave behind tens of thousands of shattered windows and alarms screaming.
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The President laughs telling his CoS,
“Is that the best they have? Flying old fighters in circles around the city? What a joke. No one is going to be scared of them. Send them the bill for the broken windows.”
“Yes, sir.”
Jay smiles after being informed that flight one of seven was successful.
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Tony and Fred review the fifty-page financial and timeline proposal Glenn’s submitted to them, Tony shakes his head,
“Damn, fifty-pages, single spaced, loaded with spreadsheets and numbers. The only numbers I know how to read are P&L statements and payoff books.”
Fred smiles nodding his head,
“These are similar, he’s laid out all of the costs and the timeline, plus all of their partners, his subcontractors.”
“Subcontractors, I understand, they do the real work the prime contractor doesn’t want to do. I’ve arranged a lot of subcontracts in my day. I know how to pad and slice these expenses.”
“Tony, this is our money you’re talking about.”
“It’s not really ours, although a percentage of it could be ours.”
“Tony, I promised Jay I wouldn’t allow you to skim anything off the top of any contract.”
“You won’t be breaking your word to our fearless leader, I’ll skim it off the bottom, see our side doesn’t go up, the subcontractors amount just goes down a little, hell, they know this happens, they most likely padded their estimates. They won’t even miss a couple of points.”
“Nope, not going to happen. I happen to like my job, and I dislike jail. I’m going to keep you honest if it’s the last thing I do.”
“It might be. Look at that bottom number, it’s huge, no one will miss a little slice of it.”
“We’re talking about our lives and the lives of the new government workers, what is your life worth?”
“You’re right, I better increase the amount we skim in case Jay finds out, at least we’ll have enough to run and live a decent life.”
“Do you think he won’t find you? Do you really think he’ll rest before he skins you alive?”
“Hmm, you might have a point there. I’ll work it out directly with the subcontractors, this way you won't know anything. If you don’t know shit, you can’t tell Jay anything. You know Fred, you turned into a boy scout.”
“Tony, please don’t. Jay will kill me.”
“See, he’ll leave me alone and go after you.”
“TONY!”
“Okay, okay, chill out. Do you believe their timetable, eight months to dig the tunnels? It seems very optimistic to me. We’re talking forty miles.”
“I need to go over them again, based on some other tunneling projects, they do look possible. I admit, they might be optimistic, let’s do the math. We’re forty miles from the caves, he’s going to use three tunnel boring machine (TBM) so they can keep at least one tunneling 24/7. Each of the TBMs weighs 1000 tons and is140 meters long. The first problem I see is if one breaks down, how are they going to replace it with the placement TBM? According to their data, the fastest TBM has dug is 4357meters or 1117 feet a day. Forty miles is 211,200 feet, divided by the 1117 feet a day each tunnel equals 189 days without breaks. Glenn’s added some down time and time to replace the machines into his timeline. I think he can pull it off.” It’s going to be tight, but given a little luck, he may be able to pull it off.”
“Can they do it without the North knowing what we’re doing? If they figure out what we’re doing, they could destroy the caves before we get there. Where are they going to find the tunneling machines?”
“Since everything will be done underground. The TBM’s even has an internal train which carries the cut dirt and muck out of the rear of the machine. A lot will depend on how close we can keep the secret of what we’re doing. I think we’re going to have to approve his proposal and get them started. China has agreed to give us some of their largest TBMs, they have larger ones than we used to build the Boston tunnel.”
“Can we afford it? Will it bankrupt us?”
“We have to build a new capital anyway, I agree with Jay, if we have to build a new capital from a clean sheet of paper, then we might as well build one that is secure and defendable. After the main tunnel, we’ll have to connect other cities to the new capital, it’s a task that will continue for years. There’s a rumor the Chinese are going to give us a couple of their tunneling machines.”
“Shit, we’ll be a nation of moles.”
“Did you read the book, ‘The Time Machine’?”
“Yeah, we’ll be the Morlocs, living underground.”
“At least until we and the North can mutually agree to a treaty which assures both of our securities, frankly, I don’t see how that’s possible. I think Jay’s right, if we’re going to rebuild the cities and kick the Confederacy into the twenty-second century, we should do it in a way that protects our assets and our people. He wants our people to have shelters available to protect them from whatever happens.”
“It’s impossible to provide shelters for everyone.”
“Why? It’s only a question of time, money and the will to do it. With the money we’re saving from the normal government bullshit spending, we should have more than enough funds to build the shelters. The Chinese TBMs added to Glenn’s will give us the equipment we need.”
“I don’t think it will be that easy, I think the people will look at the shelters and bitch like hell, they’ll see us spending money they want, money that used to go into their pockets. I really think we’re going to have an uprising on our hands. Let’s see the reaction to Jay’s town hall meetings.”
“Agreed, I'll summarize everything and send our thoughts to Jay.”
“I agree. Have we heard anything about his first meeting yet?”
“The only thing we’ve heard is about the demonstrations and protests this morning. God, I pray the meeting goes better. Jay does not know to hold his tongue if he gets pissed off.”
“That’s for sure.”
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“Admiral, good news, the Lincoln reports being ready to leave dry dock.”
“How the hell did they manage that feat?”
“Let’s just say the carrier HHS was building, the JFK, will be a little delayed, she lost her props and rudders.”
“That’s a trade I can accept. She and five escorts left at 2300 hours last night. It will take her twenty to twenty-five days to reach our position.”
“I have a better idea, let’s increase the pressure on the North, order her captain to slowly sail up the West coast, have them sail close enough they can be seen from the coast. She can rely on our base in San Diego for resupply.”
“Aye, sir. I’ll send the orders right away.”
“What’s the word on the other carriers?”
“Not good, it takes months to manufacture propellers and rudders.”
“Order one of their air wings to San Diego and the other to fly CAP over the repair facility, we can’t afford to lose the site.”
“Will the Chinese allow us to use the facilities at Pearl?”
“Good question, I’ll check with the President, it’s something he should check with the Chinese before the treaty signing. Is the Task Force ready per our plan?”
“Sir, three destroyers have dropped the radar amplifiers, they may draw off some of their missiles
.”
“Thank God we know their weapons, their primary surface to surface weapons will either be Tomahawks or Harpoons, the Harpoons will be easy to deceive, we’ve practiced it enough. The Tomahawks depend on which version they’ll use. They’ll use F15, 16, 18 and B52s. We should be able to counter all of them. I want to run practice drills tomorrow to ensure we’re ready.”
“Aye, sir. I’ll arrange it.”
Four hundred miles away Admiral Lockless, the commanding Admiral of the Northern battle fleet is reviewing the recently approved battle plan.
“Who the hell wrote this plan? What happened to mine? This is a cluster f-ck.”
“Sir, the general war staff who reports directly to the President approved it. The President wanted a show of force that knocks their President back on his heels, he wants to prove that we can defeat the South.”
“Let me see if I understand this new plan, each side is using the same weapons, weapons we’ve practiced defending against, they have a Battleship with sixteen inches of armor and cannons which can reach out and smack us 250 miles away, they have more submarines and destroyers than we do, they have most of our Air Force, including the damn B2 stealth bombers and he wants us to sail down their throat and attack them with our five-inch guns which have a five mile range?”
“Admiral, that’s after our submarine wolf pack softens them up, even a Battleship can’t survive being struck by a large number of mark 48 heavyweight torpedoes. Once we sink their key ship, the rest of their fleet with turn tail and leave the battle area, yielding Norfolk to us.”
“Please tell me you don’t believe this fantasy. You know we’re about to get our asses handed to us. This isn’t going to be pretty. If I have to follow this asine plan, I’m going to change the timeline, I want the subs in position today. They’re to each fire a spread of four fish and retreat, move forty-five degrees and hit them again, keep it up until they run out of fish or are sunk. While the rebels are trying to figure out what’s going on, we’ll launch a mass missile attack. Hopefully, our missiles will arrive at the same time as the sub’s second salvo of fish. It will limit their ability to maneuver if they have to defend against both torpedoes and missiles.”
“Admiral, that’s not in the approved order.”
“Just do it, if the ax falls, it’ll fall on my neck, maybe I’ll be able to save most of our people. If I follow these orders, we’ll lose most of the fleet. I want to open the attack at 1900 hours tonight.”
“Aye, sir. I’ll issue the revised orders.”
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Jay and Lacy stand on the stage, he raises his hands to quiet the audience,
“My fellow rebels, yes, we’re rebels, rebels from the political correctness which has strangled the country for years, we’ve gone from JFK who said, “Ask not what your country can do for you, but ask what you can do for your country” to “You didn’t build that” and gender has nothing to do with a person’s sex. I’m an old man, when I went to school, I was taught that there’s an easy way to tell what sex a person is, just look in your underwear.”
The audience laughs and cheers. We’ve gone from first responders being our heroes to them being criminals while thugs and criminals are heroes. We’ve gone from a country founded on religious freedom to one where Christianity is evil, but Islam, who pledges to kill us all, is good. We have gone from the greatest generation which stormed the beaches of Normandy, to one where our veterans are homeless and jobless while illegal immigrates receive more benefits than those who fought to protect us. The country was over $20 trillion in debt, and growing daily. Our founding fathers thought Congress would be made up of average people who served a term in Congress and returned to their homes, Congress became a body of a political elite who no longer represented the people who elected them, in fact, I’m not sure our votes mattered, elections were bought and sold. The President passed laws to bankrupt coal without any replacements, causing brown and black outs, he ordered that the average person couldn’t own precious metals. We were told the rich didn’t pay their fair share, even though the top one percent paid more than 60% of the country’s taxes and 50% of the population didn’t pay anything.
I got fed up. Since you’re sitting here, I’m sure you felt the same way.”
The applause drowns out Jay.
“Faith is very important, our founders said God must be in our country, I want to put God back into our country!”
Stand ovation and cheering.
“I want to put an end to the political class!”
Standing ovation.
“I want our new country to be returned to the one our founding fathers envisioned, one where the states have most of the control, not the federal government.”
A long standing ovation.
“I want term limits for every office, including our Supreme Court. I don’t want the office of President to have the ability to appoint Czars. I want to give the states the right to pick their own education system, let them manage their own internal affairs. The purpose of the Federal Government is to protect the people. Hence, our new Federal Government will have a Department of Defense, Homeland Security, Energy, State and Treasury the rest of the agencies are on the chopping block. The first one to go is the EPA, followed by the Department of Education and the Department of the Interior. We got to the way we were because of our education system; tenure has ruined our beloved nation. As such, tenure is outlawed in the Confederacy. Teachers will have to pass yearly tests, not for their students, but for them. We spend too much time testing students versus checking what our children are being taught. They were being taught to hate the values which build America. They were being taught Islam in our schools, a religion whose goal is our deaths. This has to stop.”
Long standing ovation.
Jay holds his arms up so he can continue, “No agency will be able to issue regulations without them being approved by Congress, regulations have choked our country. Regulations which have the power of law without Congress approving them. The cost of these regulations is now larger than Germany’s economy, amounting to a $4 trillion loss to the American economy, according to a new study by the Mercatus Center at George Mason University. The recently released study said the regulations over the past several decades amount to a loss of $13,000 for each American worker. What could you do with an extra $13,000 in your pockets?”
The audience screams their approval; Jay again has to ask for quiet so he can continue.
“Our currency is based on gold and silver, anyone is be able to walk into a bank with paper money and walk out with gold or silver coins. Our money has real value; our dollar is already worth twice the American dollar on the international currency market. While the North’s currency become worthless, ours will explode in value. We have more than enough oil to meet all of our needs for hundreds of years, as such, we will stop paying our hard earned money to countries which hate us. Countries who fund terrorists with our own money. Think about that for a moment, we buy oil from countries in the Middle East who use our money to fund organizations to kill our citizens. Are we crazy? We have the ability to be energy independent, why haven’t we? Because our leaders wanted to support the very people who want to kill us. I say we stop trading with countries that want to do us harm.”
The audience cheers for five long minutes.
“Do you realize we’ve been paying illegal aliens more benefits than we pay our own seniors and veterans? These people broke our laws and we’re rewarding them. NO MORE. I am going to build a wall across our borders, we will begin deporting illegals, we will cease accepting the children of illegals as citizens. No longer can a pregnant woman cross the border and have a baby who is automatically a citizen, I’m ending the concept of anchor babies. I’m ending the concept that our Constitution applies to everyone living in our country; it applies and protects our citizens. If you’re not a citizen, you’re not protected by our constitution. PERIOD!”
The audience explodes in cheering, all except for the prote
sters outside the convention center who are listening to Jay’s speech via loudspeakers mounted on tripods so everyone who gathered at the convention center can hear what he has to say. They begin turning over cars and burning the new Confederate and American flags. Unknown to the protesters, Jay had cameras installed outside, he plays the video of their destruction and chaos.
“Let me show you what’s going on outside of the convention center.” He plays the videos on large screens. People are shocked by the violence going on outside: the fighting against the police and the burning of hundreds of cars not only parked in the street but in parking lots.
“Watch them wave the Mexican flag, look at them saying they want America to be Mexico, I’m going to help them, we will round these people up, they will be deported, if they return they will be put to work in hard labor camps.”
