First Citizen

by Thomas T. Thomas

  Technically, a state of war existed. Moscow protested, and the U.S. government, in the person of Speaker McCanlis, cited the now-defunct Monroe Doctrine, bared its collective teeth, and fingered The Button. Moscow backed off.

  Why did I get involved? Couple of reasons …

  The first was boredom. I was tired of paper risks, with all the adrenaline flowing in somebody else’s blood. I could buy a colonel’s rank—maybe even a general’s—in the G.V.’s and campaign with my own troops. It would be the ultimate game, the real “sport of kings.” I might even get killed.

  The second reason was part of the first. I was tired of being a victim of circumstances. My life to that point had been pushed right and left. By the rise and fall of the economy and the financial markets. By one wife’s demands and another’s appetites. By terrorists in Arabia and America. By the lusts and laws that my own childhood had imposed. By the stuttering thing in my head that I never talked about.

  It was time I went out and made some circumstances of my own. And Mexico was the place to do it.

  Chapter 12

  Billy Birdsong: War Among The Ruins

  God-damned white man!

  I had almost gotten my life together, making something to be proud of with the sludgeworks and socking away big money, too. Sludge is almost soothing: a complex of fertile, life-supporting liquids that gurgle gently inside white piping and cook in gleaming steel vats. The farmers, the pharmaceutical makers, and the metal and water traders all depended on my products. It was a gentlemanly business, like aging wine and cheese.

  Then Corbin decided he would go to Mexico and wanted me to take him in. More deserts and jungles. More killing. More sand. I did not want that, and I told him so.

  “Aw, Billy! You’ve got this business knocked!” Granny’s eyes were shining like a kid’s. “What’s left to do but just sit and watch the greenbacks grow?”

  “An occupation I could like real well.”

  “You’d grow old. And fat. And respectable. You’d end up with a house in Woodside. A nagging wife and a pack of kids. Probably have a couple of horses, too. Do you know how much stable rents cost? And you’d have social obligations—have to learn to play golf. Do you know what greens fees are at the clubs there? Sky high!”

  “Keep talking. I could die young in Mexico, too. Hip deep in sticky green vines, centipedes, and other poisonous crawlies. Let it alone, Gran. Enjoy life, now that we got it made.”

  “Mexico needs us. It’s almost our duty to go down there and bring those poverty-stricken peasants into the twenty-first century. Teach them technology and a free market. Make them good U.S. citizens. And protect our backside, too.”

  “I did my duty in Nicco. Thought we learned our lesson there. And in Vietnam. And in Beirut. Our backside is better off when we just sit on it.”

  “It’s the course of history, Billy.”

  “History is not my business. Sludge is.”

  “It’ll be fun!”

  “God damn it, it will be a tangle of hard work like you would never believe. To build up from scratch—what? A battalion? A division? With a table of organization to set up. Vehicles, arms, and equipment to buy. Officer and enlisted ranks, not to mention specialists, to recruit. And test. And train into a unit, so they shoot at something besides each other the first time you take them into combat. Do you have a base for that? What about logistics and support? And transport? And signals? And air cover? And—and—”

  “You see?” He was almost gloating. “You already understand the problems involved. That’s why I need you to organize this, Billy. More than I need you to run a series of processing plants that are all under computer control anyway.” There was a dealer’s edge to his voice. I was hearing the whip in Corbin’s other hand.

  “What about money?” I asked. “A venture like this will cost two or three billion-with-a-B dollars just to put together. Running it will gobble down another billion a year. Maybe more. Can you cover that?”

  “It can be arranged.” Corbin smiled more to himself than for me.

  “And the cash flow is one hundred percent outgoing: soldiers’ pay and benefits, fees and bribes, food and fuel, equipment losses, indemnities to the next of kin. And what comes in? Nothing.”

  “Duty. Country. Glory. Adventure.”

  “Bullshit. Will you get use of the territory and markets you conquer? Will the people who surrender to you become your chattels?”

  “Possibly.”

  “Bullshit. Becoming a general with your own half-assed army is a sinkhole you could throw money into for years.”

  “What rank do you want, Billy?”

  “Colonel, at least.”

  “Don’t you want to fly choppers?”

  “Not going to be that kind of war. I hope.”

  “Then let’s get on with it.” Corbin reached over and squeezed my hand. It passed for a handshake. “I’ll begin the negotiations and paperwork in Baltimore. And in Sacramento, if we’re going to acquire a base. … Oh! And I’ll write you a letter of credit to cover the costs of starting up.”

  “I hope you know where it will end.”

  “In a free Mexico, Billy.” He smiled like a girl going to a wedding, sure of everything. “And in glory.”

  Now, as Corbin said, I had a practical knowledge of military organization—from the inside out, as it were. I knew the table of organization for a standing army: corps, division, brigade, regiment, battalion, company, platoon, squad. Most of the units that fit in there were self-contained for moving and fighting—a squad with its riflemen, machine gunner, thumper man, radio man, medic, and team leader. The platoon combined several squads, just as a hand combined several fingers—for a practical purpose. And so the T.O. was built up.

  Some of the units were highly specialized for staff and support—medevac, airmobile, quartermaster, press office, et cetera. Each of these fit in at the level—company, say, or battalion—that represented the right span of control or service. But how many new specialties had been thought up in the last twenty years since my war, I was not sure. Did the army of today need a company of computer programmers and hackers? How about economic theorists in each battalion? An organ bank at the division level? Financial counselors? Insurance adjusters?

  A corollary question: How would isolated militia units like the Gentlemen Volunteers be different from a standing army? To start with, Gran was talking a division. We would operate without a corps level to call our own, a theater command we could depend on, a Pentagon, or a whole string of U.S. bases to stage from—or draw replacements from. It followed that many of our staff functions would logically be filled in at lower levels in the T.O., probably. The whole army would have to be more mobile, probably. And set-piece battles with high casualty rates would cripple us or wipe us out, probably.

  Also, if Granville J. Corbin was planning to be the general, we could not afford to be top-heavy with high officer ranks. No room for promotion. So the lower ranks would have to take on wider responsibilities and have more authority. But be willing to march in place, as it were. That meant we would be paying more for experienced men. Running a G.V. unit was going to be complicated and expensive. Probably.

  Sergeant Billy had a lot of boning up to do.

  One thing Granny made clear from the start: He wanted his own press corps. I was to be sure we had writers, video producers, tape editors, lighting techs, makeup specialists, media reps. And all the equipment and blank disks they needed.

  “Are we starting a war or making a movie, Gran?”

  “We’re making sure no one forgets this war.”

  Granny wanted to be a second MacArthur.

  I had to strategize our recruiting. With other G.V. units already forming up, it could easily become a seller’s market for bodies. Not that I minded taking a certain number of green kids with big dreams; after all, somebody had to hold a rifle and walk into the bush. But I needed that high proportion of seasoned men, and they would keep the kids walking forward when the shoot
ing started. I also needed all those flinking experts.

  My advertising plan covered Fortune as well as Soldier of Fortune, plus a healthy sprinkling of special-interest magazines like Black Belt, Cycle Dad, Trucker, Chrome, and Playperson.

  Gran and I debated whether we should be an equal-opportunity employer and take on women recruits in all specs. He was for it, but I could see immediate problems of morale on both sides. The question was finally answered for us when the State of California passed a resolution grandfathering the G.V. units. A rider to the bill required EEO documentation. So we signed up anyone who could run two miles, bench press fifty pounds, and had a clean medical record. The rest we could teach—and motivate them to learn.

  That State resolution also simplified a lot of the legal questions. Being a legitimate militia, we could get end-user certificates for all our arms and ammunition. We could legally buy heavy equipment like tanks and jet fighters, if we wanted them. And we could make war outside the country. No need to train in secret and push off across the Rio Grande in civilian clothes on a moonless night.

  However, this last provision turned out to be not all that important. While we were still in training, Congress passed the Henderson Act, naming Old Mexico’s thirty-one estados and the Distrito Federal as the fifty-second to eighty-third States. All we G.V.’s had to do was go out and get them. The news certainly made recruiting easy.

  In three months, we recruited 9,000 men and women. And we must have talked to 20,000 more to find them. Even putting the early officer-types to work right away as recruiters, I personally had to see, question, and grab or make walk six people each hour, ten hours a day, with only Sundays off.

  “What name, Sarge?”

  “Rusas, sir.”

  “Where you fight?”

  “Nicaragua, Guatemala. … Got my start in Lebanon.”

  “What are you, Shi’ite?”

  “No sir! I fought in the Zone with Colonel Haddad.”

  “What specialty?”

  “This and that. Communications, mortar man, computers, cook, point man. Whatever you need.”

  “Scrounger?”

  “That too. Just tell me what you want—and what’s off limits. The rest just happens.”

  “Terms are six months till shakedown, then we are all month to month, or duration of hostilities. Rank assigned at end of training. Pay is—” Flip, flip, flip. “—twenty forty-one a month, on the first. Report to the bus station in Escondido the first week in June. Need anything to keep you fed till then?”

  “No, sir. I got my stash.”

  “Good man.” Check the application “[ ] Approved” and initial it. “Next! … Okay, Sis, what name?”

  “Beth Longacre and I ain’t your sister.”

  “Listen, Beth. These collar tabs tell you I am a full colonel. ‘Sir’ to you. Now we can start over. Name?”

  “Beth Longacre—sir.”

  “Experience?”

  “Well, uh, I was in on the Madera Run last year, riding with the Road Ferns.”

  “Baggage? Or do you sit your own bike?”

  “I ride my own—sir. I’m hell with a knife.”

  “Put you down as a silent killer. Ever fire a gun?”

  “I can learn—sir.”

  “You will. Any other specialties?”

  “I graduated from high school—”

  “Hmmm. ‘Claims can read and write own name.’ Anything else?”

  “Two years of business college—”

  “No typing pool in this army.”

  “I can do FASB accounting, program in Ada VI, field strip a Kodak 2880, and maintain a LAN—sir.”

  “Okay … okay. Quartermaster is light. You can start there. Terms are six months till shakedown, then we are all month to month, or duration of hostilities. Rank assigned at end of training. Pay is—” Flip, flip. “—eighteen twenty-two a month, on the first. Report to the bus station in Escondido the first week in June. Need anything to keep you fed till then?”

  “I’m square.”

  “Great, Sis. Next! … What name?”

  “Julio Garcia, sir.”

  “Experience?”

  “Nicco, sir. For as long as that lasted.”

  “My first war too, Julio …”

  They became a blur of white and brown and red faces, squinty eyes, twitchy hands, bitten lips, smiles and sneers, and sometimes cold, dead voices trying to out-John Wayne the Duke himself. I saw kids who had learned it all on television and kids who claimed to have taken out entire villages with tactical nukes. I saw ex-cons and future-cons and men on the run. I saw women who thought Yucatan was going to be Cozumel and were already working on their bikini lines. And I saw women who wanted to kill something, anything, quick. I saw career soldiers from the Old Army who thought war was polishing buttons, filling out triplicate forms, and eating three flavors of ice cream in the chow hall. I also saw pros from the O.A. who would be the backbone and bootsoles of our unit. I saw everything that walked, talked, and wanted to go to Mexico.

  And once I got the bodies squared away, and the Early Birds down in the desert building our base at Poway, I went on a shopping trip. Uniforms, cots, blankets, and bullets we could buy from the wholesale catalogs. Jeeps, stoves, and radio transmitters I had somebody else look over. My concern was air power.

  Although I told Gran it was not going to be that kind of war, a light and mobile attack unit had to be ready to jump long distances, land dry, and be firing as they unloaded. That meant helicopters or something better.

  “Something better” was Stompers.

  The Bell HU-1 Iroquois had been the main ass-hauler and gunship for Vietnam, and the Blackhawk, Apache, and their brethren in Nicaragua. As I said earlier, Charlie and later the Chorotegas could hear those aircraft coming before they could see them. And it did not take too many attack approaches for those little brown people to figure that heavy thwock-thwock-thwock meant they were right on the flight path. Being no dummies, they prepared accordingly.

  Well, at ground-level basic our soldiers and defense suppliers were not stupid either. In the decade and a half between Vietnam and Nicaragua, one of the airplane companies brought out a tilt-wing, short takeoff and landing, or STOL, airplane for ground support. It was light and fast, but not as maneuverable as a chopper. The Pentagon kept it from limited duty and went to updated helicopters for Nicco.

  After those Constitutional amendments whirled the Pentagon’s bright boys into oblivion, the country’s defense contractors were scrambling to make the States’ National Guard units and the international buyers happy. The big firms like Boeing and McDonnell-Republic finally did something about the status of air mobility. By the time we were heading for Mexico, the Western Alliance’s infantry units were flying recon, ground support, and infiltration with the Boeing STM-4 Skyjay, the Stomper.

  I took Granny to the airfield in Hayward, California, to try out the skinned, or troop carrier, model.

  “Looks like a crop duster,” Corbin said, squinting across the concrete at the stubby little plane.

  “Flies like one,” grinned the tech sergeant, Gonzales, who was going to show us. “Only better,” he said after a beat. “She’ll do vertical takeoffs and landings carrying twelve soldiers or 3,700 pounds of cargo. Range is about 800 miles, fully loaded. In the air, she’ll cruise at 280 miles an hour or attack at 350—usually straight down. This baby can’t stall and she’ll only spin if you tell her to.”

  Gran went immediately to the Stomper’s engines, which were mounted in swivel-and-tilt nacelles at the end of the short, broad wings. From the swept area of their fans, I could see they would give the pilot almost as much control and hover ability as a helicopter.

  “The turbines are high-revving jetprops,” Gonzales went on. “From the ground they’re almost silent, until the plane’s about a hundred yards out. And then your bush people hear just a bee-swarm whine that seems to be coming from everywhere.”

  The underside of the Stomper’s fuselage was
fitted with ceramic-sponge panels.

  “Those’ll deflect or absorb the energy of anything up to .50 caliber. They learned how to fit them from the heat tiles of the old Space Shuttle. Engine nacelles and fuel pods’re protected with a titanium laminate armor. Supposed to turn back an armor-piercing grenade, but I’ve never tested that.”

  When we climbed in and I took the copilot’s left-hand seat, I could immediately see the weak link in the whole Stomper system: the controls. Every function was monitored or commanded by computer and routed to the pilot through the central display unit, or CDU, and the variac, or joystick. That stick and the “Engines start” button were the only two controls. Just like a kid’s video game. No, I was not worrying about electrical glitcharillos: Backup circuits and tandem chips were probably stuffed into the console. But let something crack the gas plasma plate of the CDU, or a wire pull loose inside the joystick, and you plowed it. Even the canopy jettison was set up from the variac.

  It was a design vulnerability that, in combat action, everyone would chalk up to computer dependency, system efficiency, or low-bidder mentality. Everyone except those who crashed and burned.

  Gonzales, in the right seat, pushed the button and before anything else the CDU flickered on. Then the engines, right and left in order, kicked to vertical, coughed one puff of black smoke, and began to whine high and nasal like Gina Fong.

  Sitting on the ground, Gonzales did a test orbit with the stick. I could see the nacelles rotate and tilt in unison. Through the airframe, we felt them tug right-forward-left-backward. That plane wanted to go.

  He twisted something on the variac and the Stomper leapt straight up into the air at 1,200 feet per minute. The CDU said so. In about ten seconds, we were looking a long way down at the field and surrounding rooftops.