by Robert Boren
“Tell me about it,” Jason said.
“Mommy, I’m hungry,” Chelsea said.
“Get an otter pop out of the freezer, sweetie,” Carrie said.
“Goody!” She scampered to the freezer and pulled it open.
“What are we supposed to be doing?” Eric asked. “We need another target to hit. We need to get into the battle.”
“Don’t rush that,” Kim said.
“Yeah, seriously,” Carrie said.
“We’ve got the phone capability that only Curt had before,” Eric said. “We ought to be monitoring it.”
“We need something a little more active,” Jason said. “Maybe some human intelligence.”
“That’s right up my alley,” Eric said.
“I know,” Jason said. “I’ve had a little experience too, but not on the scale you have. We ought to enlist Junior. You know he’s the one who found out where the enemy was hanging out in Austin during that early attack?”
“Really?” Eric asked. “How’d he do that?”
“He followed some retreating enemy fighters,” Jason said. “Ballsy thing to do. He doesn’t exactly blend into the background.”
Kim laughed. “No, he doesn’t.”
Jason’s phone rang. “It’s Ramsey.” He put the phone to his ear.
“Hi, Chief.”
“Hello, Jason,” Ramsey said. “You been watching the news?”
“Yeah,” Jason said. “The anchor said Nelson was safe.”
“He is, sitting in a bunker under a ruined house.”
“Geez,” Jason said. “This was no random attack, obviously.”
“No, it wasn’t,” Ramsey said. “Nelson wants to have another teleconference, later this afternoon. Think you guys can join us?”
“Of course,” Jason said. “With who?”
“Just you guys this time,” Ramsey said.
“Okay, I’ll get with Moe.”
“Thanks,” Ramsey said.
“You think we’re safe here?” Jason asked.
Ramsey paused for a moment. “I don’t know. Probably safer than here. You guys have been a thorn in the enemy’s side. They’ll target you over and over, I suspect.”
“Comforting thought,” Jason said.
“You hear about the gulf coast attack last night?”
“Yeah, Corpus Christi,” Jason said. “Not good.”
“That’s an understatement,” Ramsey said. “One thing you won’t hear on the news. Enemy choppers targeted the homes of several of the patrol boat teams. The enemy knew where they lived.”
“Shit, are you kidding?”
“Nope,” Ramsey said. “Nelson’s team needs to find the moles. If we don’t a lot of people are gonna get killed.”
“Geez,” Jason said. “Let us know how we can help. We’re spoiling for a fight.”
“I know, but be patient,” Ramsey said. “You guys are important assets. I’d focus on working with Curt to upgrade as many vehicles as possible.”
“Yeah, I figured that,” Jason said. “Will do. Know when the additional 3D printers and supplies are coming?”
“Soon,” Ramsey said. “We’ll talk about it at the meeting.”
“Good, thanks,” Jason said. “Talk to you in a few hours.”
Jason ended the call.
“More bad news?” Carrie asked.
“The enemy targeted the homes of several patrol boat crews last night, during the attack on Corpus Christi,” Jason said. “They’ve got moles. They’re getting very good information.”
“They might have very good information on us too,” Kim said, eyes flashing fear.
“We have to assume that they do,” Eric said, “and act accordingly. What did Ramsey say when you asked what we can do?”
“Help Curt prepare as many vehicles as possible,” Jason said.
“We better make sure he stays well protected,” Carrie said.
“We’d better protect him from Amanda,” Eric said. Jason looked at him and they both cracked up.
“You two be nice,” Carrie said. “She’s gonna be good for him. Wait and see.”
“I know,” Jason said. “Doesn’t mean we’re not gonna mess with him. I’d better get down to the office and chat with Moe.”
“I’ll go with you,” Eric said. The two of them left together. Kim stayed behind.
“How are you taking all of this?” Carrie asked.
“It’s hard sometimes,” Kim said, “but there’s nowhere I’d rather be.”
“How did you guys meet?”
Kim leaned back and smiled. “We met in a bar. Raylene’s, in central Florida.”
“Really?”
“Yeah,” Kim said. “I had to throw myself at him.”
Carrie chuckled. “Know what that’s like. Jason wasn’t easy either, in some ways.”
“Runs in the family, I guess,” Kim said. “I tagged along when he left to come to Texas. He didn’t want me to. I had to force it a little.”
“He didn’t resist for long, though, did he?”
“Not really,” Kim said. “We hadn’t dated long enough to be intimate before we left.”
“Oh,” Carrie said. “So this is pretty new, then.”
“Yes,” Kim said.
“How serious are you two?”
“We’re as good as married,” Kim said. “I’m trying to get pregnant.”
Carrie smirked. “Lot of that going around these days.”
“So I’ve heard,” she said.
“You two going to get married pretty soon?”
“Yeah, if things will settle down a little,” Kim said. “Are Kyle and Kate planning on it?”
“I think they’re in the same boat as you two,” Carrie said. She glanced out the screen door. “Here they come.”
Jason and Eric came back into the coach.
“All set?” Carrie asked.
“All set,” Jason said.
“Hope they have something for us to do,” Eric said.
“Let’s go back to our place,” Kim said. “Okay? I’d like a little us time before the meeting.”
“I’m ready,” Eric said. “See you both later. You too, Chelsea.”
She looked up from her coloring book and smiled. “Okay Uncle Eric.”
Chapter 7 – New Focus
“How long will the generator run?” Maria asked.
Hendrix was sitting near the console, with Governor Nelson, Major General Landry, and Major General Gallagher sitting near him.
“It runs on natural gas,” Hendrix said. “We’ve got a deep buried pipe which can use either our own tanks or the city distribution system. We’re on the city’s system now. We can run indefinitely.”
“I can barely hear it,” Nelson said. “Worth the money we spent.”
Hendrix chuckled. “I thought this place was overkill. Changed my mind on that.”
“I’ve changed my mind on a lotta things,” Gallagher said.
“We have to find these moles,” Nelson said. “If we don’t, it’s only a matter of time before they nail us.”
“The worst thing is that we don’t even know where to start,” Landry said.
“Yeah, you’re right about that,” Hendrix said.
Nelson’s phone rang. He picked it up off the counter and looked at the number, then put it to his ear.
“Chief, you get the meeting set up?”
“Yes sir,” Ramsey said. “Four in the afternoon works great for them too.”
“Good,” Nelson said. “You going to show up here for the meeting, or attend remotely?”
“Just talked with security. They told me not to go down there. It’s too wide open to clear it against sniper fire with the building and half the walls gone.”
“Understand,” Nelson said. “We have agents combing through the wreckage, right?”
“Yes sir, that’s going on right now,” he said. “They still want you to keep that vault locked up tight.”
“You check on my wife and family?”
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“I did,” Ramsey said. “They’re in the secure location. You and I are the only people who know where it is. I think your wife is going a little stir-crazy. Maybe you ought to call her.”
“I’m going to wait on that,” Nelson said. “We should’ve had Curt fix up our phones when we were out there.”
“We’ll talk about that in the meeting,” Ramsey said. “I think we ought to give them some phones to set up. That way we can distribute them to key people.”
“Anything else?”
“No, governor,” Ramsey said. “I’m almost ready to slip into a secure location myself, just in case. Nobody thinks this is over yet.”
“Are the rest of the key people safe?”
“Yes,” Ramsey said. “Spread out all over the place, in locations we’ve never publicized.”
“I don’t think whoever this is relies on public information.”
“Understand, sir,” Ramsey said. “Call me if you need me.”
“You too,” Nelson said. “Don’t get killed.”
“I’ll give it my best shot,” Ramsey said. “Later.”
Nelson put his phone back on the counter. “The meeting is all set.”
“Good,” Landry said.
“How are we going to operate like this?” Hendrix asked.
“We’ve got a good network,” Nelson said. “We could stay down here for a month and still run the state, but we must get a handle on the traitors in our midst.”
“It’s the Feds,” Gallagher said. “Got to be. I wasn’t convinced until I saw that picture.”
“What picture?” Hendrix asked.
“The one that showed President Simpson, Governor Sable of California, and Saladin together,” Nelson said.
“As dangerous as Saladin is, the fact that Daan Mertins was there scares me more,” Gallagher said. “I looked into him and his company. They’re a danger.”
“Sable is dead,” Nelson said. “Nobody has raised him for weeks. California is a real mess. They’ve declared martial law over the entire state, and the people are revolting. Now you can’t even get news from there.”
“Then who’s running the state?” Landry asked.
“My guess is the Feds, and worse,” Nelson said. “Our side still controls the San Diego area, thanks to the Navy.”
“That’s good, because of the border,” Hendrix said.
“Yep,” Nelson said. “California is the Globalist’s pilot project. It’s not going well, but they will still run by that example. They’re already starting the same thing in New England and the Mid-Atlantic states, from what I’ve heard.”
“Martial law?” Hendrix asked.
“You got it,” Nelson said. “With UN Peacekeepers controlling the population.”
“The nuke attacks happened on the coasts,” Gallagher said. “Most of them, anyway. They’ve softened up the population.”
“We’re lucky we could stop all the nuclear attacks here,” Hendrix said.
“I know,” Nelson said, “but our luck might not hold out forever.”
“Oh, God, don’t even say that,” Landry said.
“We have to be open to all possibilities and prepare,” Gallagher said. “So what are we going to discuss in the meeting?”
“Logistics for getting the 3D printers and weapons hardware to Curt,” Nelson said. “We also wanted to chat with them about the chips we found in the enemy fighters.”
“Good, I was hoping you would hit that,” Gallagher said. “General Walker told me about that before he left. Says he knows of a civilian who’s working on cracking them.”
“He going to put us in contact?” Landry asked.
“No, he’s not telling us who this person is or where he is,” Gallagher said. “I don’t blame him.”
“Can’t say I disagree with that,” Nelson said. “It wouldn’t hurt to have Curt look at it.”
“I suggest we don’t get him started on that until we’ve had him do what we know he can do,” Gallagher said. “Messing with those chips will be a science project.”
“Agreed,” Nelson said. His phone rang. “Excuse me a moment.”
He got up and walked into the living room area. Hendrix watched him nervously.
“He getting any sleep?” Hendrix asked quietly.
“Not enough,” Gallagher said. “We need to protect that man. He’s our present day Sam Houston. If we lose him, we’re in real trouble. Hell, the nation would be in real trouble.”
“That’s a little overly dramatic, isn’t it?” Landry asked.
“No, I don’t think so,” Hendrix said.
“Sorry,” Nelson said, walking back in.
“Who was it?” Landry asked.
“The DPS Commissioner,” Nelson said.
“Wallis,” Landry said. “Where is he?”
“In hiding at the moment,” Nelson said. “He’s been up in Dallas working the security of the lakes in that area.”
“Oh, yeah, forgot about that,” Landry said. “Could have used him in Corpus Christi instead. Maybe his intelligence needs some work.”
“He wants to chat with you later,” Nelson said. “He’s wondering what happened to the air support down in the gulf last night. They couldn’t raise anybody to help.”
“Want me to call him?” Landry asked.
“Yes,” Nelson said. “Go do it in one of the bedrooms.”
“Don’t you need me in the discussions for the meeting?” he asked.
“I’ll fill you in, but it’s mostly a ground show anyway,” Nelson said. “I just texted you the land line for Wallis.”
“Okay,” Landry said. He glanced around the room nervously and left.
“Okay, we need to talk a little more about the meeting,” Nelson said. “It’s only a couple hours away.”
“Okay, what’s the gist?” Hendrix asked.
“We have to change our strategy,” Nelson said. “We’re being pinned down so we can’t halt the enemy operations in New Mexico. We have to re-focus.”
“What do you have in mind?” Gallagher asked.
“This is a hard choice, but we have to do it,” Nelson said. “I want to pull our resources away from the cities. We need to concentrate on two things, and push everything else to the background.”
“And those are?” Gallagher asked.
“Protecting the Gulf Coast, and building up our civilian forces to stop the enemy in West Texas and New Mexico,” Nelson said. “We’re going to temporarily reduce our emphasis on protecting the civilian areas.”
“Isn’t that going to get people killed?” Hendrix asked.
“Yes, but it’s the right choice,” Gallagher said. “I was hoping you were going to realize this, governor. I was getting ready to bring it up.”
“I’m still not getting it,” Hendrix said.
“We’ve been in reactive mode, and the enemy has been working that,” Nelson said. “The attacks we’ve seen in Austin over the last twenty-four hours are part of that strategy. They buy nothing for the enemy other than keeping us busy.”
“Exactly,” Gallagher said. “They’re keeping us busy so they can pump their forces over the Mexican border to New Mexico.”
“Yes,” Nelson said. “They’re also pumping people across the Texas southern border, but most of them are joining the enemy forces in New Mexico and Colorado. We have to stop that.”
“Why’d you send Landry out of the room?” Hendrix asked softly.
“Something's wrong in his organization,” Nelson whispered. “We should have had air power helping us several times recently. Somebody has been preventing that. We aren’t sure if it’s Landry himself or moles in his organization. We’re setting him up to find that out now.”
“So we shouldn’t tell him about our change in focus?” Gallagher asked.
“We can talk about most of it,” Nelson said. “We won’t tell him that we’re going to eliminate much of the effort to protect the cities. We’ll insist that we have enough resources to protect the cities
and do what we need to do in New Mexico and the Gulf. You guys understand?”
Hendrix and Gallagher nodded yes.
“Good,” Nelson said. “The meeting today is about the logistics of getting the supplies to Curt. We will have a brief discussion about New Mexico, but it will be a surface conversation. Everybody understand?”
“Yes sir,” Gallagher said.
“I get it,” Hendrix said.
“One other thing,” Nelson said. “I just got a text from Ramsey. We have a non-classified PC and a non-Classified network connection here, right?”
“Yes sir,” Hendrix said. “I’ll have to get out the laptop. See the network ports over there, on the other side of the console?”
“Yeah,” Nelson said. “Great. Get that PC out and boot it up.”
“What’s going on?” Gallagher asked.
“Curt can update our phones with his programs remotely. We’ll just need to give him the IP address of the laptop. We have to do it when Landry isn’t around, so get it set up, and we’ll update the phones later. Make up a story about why we need the unclassified system up.”
“That’ll be easy,” Hendrix said. “It’s a good way to find out what’s going on in social media.”
“Perfect,” Nelson said.
“You aren’t going to update Landry’s phone?” Gallagher asked.
“Nope,” Nelson said. “Keep it from him. Got it?”
“Got it,” Gallagher said.
“Yeah, I get it,” Hendrix said. He got up and went to a cabinet on the far wall to fetch the unclassified laptop. He brought it over and removed it from the case. “How we gonna do this when Landry is here? We’re packed in kinda tight.”
“He’s leaving soon,” Nelson said. “He’s getting instructions from Wallis right now.”
“Is that safe?” Gallagher said.
“If what we suspect is true, I’d say he’s the only one of us who’d be safe leaving,” Nelson whispered.
Chapter 8 – Fear and Love
“So what’s this four o’clock meeting about?” Junior asked. He was sitting on the couch in his RV, Rachel next to him. Kelly and Brenda were sitting in the dinette benches, feet sticking out the ends.
“Not sure,” Kelly said. “Maybe this.” He nodded to the fires still burning in Austin.
