First Citizen

by Thomas T. Thomas

  “How will they know him?”

  “He’ll probably look a lot like the young man we’ve been calling Gabriel Ossing.”

  “You mean our Gabe was a plant?”

  “Don’t unhinge your jaw, Janna. His information was a little too good, especially toward the end. And Clary never called me ‘Jim’ in her life; so why should he? Now move on this, the real Gabe’s life might be in danger.”

  “Yes, sir!”

  The business with “our” Gabriel was all smoked herring, meant to distract me. And to deprive me of a set of ears.

  The following day, when I was tied into the House’s electronic agenda, working up the timing for our legislative package, an action flash came across the net. I keyed to check it out and found my own name on a bill of impeachment. The detail was sketchy, but it had something to do with my “aiding and abetting insurrectionist elements.” The bill called for my trial in the Judiciary Committee and, if I was found culpable, my removal from Congress, a separate trial in the criminal courts, and revocation of the charter for my G.V. division in Mexico. This action was signed with the personal codes of Harry Colpat, the chairman of Judiciary, and Winifred Ponce, a nobody but also on the committee. Both were New Republican cronies of Gordon Pollock.

  While I watched the screen, the preliminary enabling vote was scheduled. A counter bill to examine the evidence was introduced almost instantly. And, bless him, Mike Alcott’s code was on it. He was the junior-most representative on Judiciary.

  The data came across in a dump that tied up the network for almost two minutes. There were names, more than 2,000 of them, streaming down the screen: Kareem Ahmed, Kenny Avery, Mohammad Azrael … Burton Calhoun, Abu Conan, Mohammad Crockett … Abraham Davis, Myra Davis … John Doe 121, John Doe 122, John Doe 123 … none of them was familiar to me. At the tail end was the explanation.

  These were members of a revolutionary supergang, the Vice Lords, which had been operating in a dozen eastern cities. Each of these people had been apprehended in a felony or a criminal misdemeanor, and each had carried a plastic laminated card that reproduced in miniature a blanket pardon to all Vice Lords, signed by Granville James Corbin. A member of the House of Representatives and of the Special Executive had authorized purse snatchings, felony homicides, breaking and entering, and a catalog of crimes almost as long as the list of apprehended suspects.

  I knew immediately what had happened. The Baltimore Vice Lords must have used that piece of paper Birdsong arranged to spread their name, if not their influence, to hundreds of gangs up and down the East Coast.

  It might, in other circumstances, have been passed off as a joke. After all, Colpat and Ponce could have no proof that my signature on the card was genuine. And the idea that I would grant immunity for urban mayhem to a bunch of kids was absurd on the face of it. But those with a will to see me in the wrong would believe. Pollock and his henchpeople would have a lot of will in that direction.

  Again as I watched, Alcott introduced another counter bill challenging the evidence and calling for a nonbinding tally. This was crucial: If less than 30 percent of the congressmen and -women currently logged onto the agenda network accepted the bill of impeachment, it would die. If more than 30 percent, Judiciary would try it.

  I stabbed my thumb down on “N” and prayed that a majority of the members would have the charity, or the sense of humor, to see the absurdity of the charges.

  The tallies percentages flickered on the screen: 18 … 23 … 24 … 28 … 29 … 29 … 30 … 31 … 33 … 37 … 37 … 37. And there they settled. Pollock had more friends than I’d thought.

  I picked up the phone and tried to call Carlotta. The message she had left with the front desk at the Commerce Exchange said she was going to San Francisco for a few days. Shopping trip, she said.

  I tried to call Mike Alcott’s office, over in the freshman wing. His incoming lines were all tied up. And while I waited, another bill of impeachment went across the network—one with Alcott’s name on it. This one was a war-crimes charge, for some fictitious bit of torture-interrogation he was supposed to have committed in Yucatan. A fine touch of revenge for Tom Pollock there.

  Gordon was going to sweep us all into a bag in one morning. By the end of the week we could be on the street—or in jail.

  And my options were crumbling about me.

  Chapter 18

  Billy Birdsong: Rio Grande Rubicon

  “Evacuate! The whole division? Impossible, Gran!”

  We were talking on an open satellite link, speaking in Malay. I was pretty rusty because, fighting in Yucatan, just speaking English was enough to confuse any comm-circuit eavesdroppers.

  “What’s impossible?” he said. “I thought the military situation there was fairly stable. Besides, even if it’s not, I need you back in the States.”

  Now that was crazy: He needed the division in the States? I had understood what he said clear enough, so Granny had to be using the wrong words in Malay.

  “Gran … No way I can bring the division back,” I told him. “It would be illegal, bang, dead. You know that.”

  “Yes, illegal. I’ll take responsibility. But can you do it? Physically, that is?”

  “What? Uproot 6,000 troops, their bases, vehicles, and hardware? Take them across 600 miles of the Gulf? Then what? Just where do you want the division?”

  “Go through to Southern California. Regroup at our old desert base, Poway.”

  “Okay. So we march through six G.V. military jurisdictions in Mexico … or, alternatively, through the TENMAC States. I guess we can do that. Do we have to fight our way through?”

  “I don’t know yet. I’d try diplomacy first. General Barton in Tamaulipas will probably help you; he did before. So will Poniatowski in Nuevo Leon and Coahuila. If they won’t, hold up the specter of the G.V.’s being eaten up piecemeal—”

  “Christ! Is that happening?”

  “Not yet. …. Let’s see, Jenkins in Chihuahua can be bought; I’ll arrange that. Wackley in Sonora is touchy; promise him whatever he wants. But he’ll balk anyway. Dodge around his positions if you can; beat the shit out of him if you can’t. Then, in Baja, you’ll be crossing such a narrow strip that Clarkson, who’s based down in La Paz, probably won’t notice you. After that—”

  “Gran … all this omits a minor geological quirk—two bitch mountain ranges called the Sierra Madre, Oriental and Occidental. Nobody takes a ground army across Mexico east to west, not since Cortes, and not in the north.”

  “Oh.”

  “And after all that, what do you want us in Poway for? Are we being disbanded?”

  “No!” Gran barked. “Not while I can help it.”

  “Then this is a—” Strategic? Check out my Malay dictionary. “—menurut siasat situation?”

  “Yes. I am to be impeached on trumped-up charges in the House, followed by a criminal trial, probably for treason. Pollock is finally going to do away with me. He thinks.”

  “Well then, falling back to Southern California does nothing. Will you wait for them to come and get you? Lick your wounds? You can do that here in Yucatan. No, instead, we ought to go on the attack. Straight across the Gulf and capture New Orleans or Houston. It would be less work, for one thing.”

  “Whom do I trust in New Orleans? Or Houston?”

  “Well,” I answered, “who can you trust anywhere? Certainly no one at Poway anymore.”

  “The real objective, of course, is Baltimore. …”

  “That is a long way, by sea. And we have no navy. …”

  “Can you go east? Land in the Florida Panhandle, then right up the coastal lowlands—Georgia, the Carolinas, Virginia—”

  “Skirting the black-glass crater that used to be Washington?”

  “Yes, and then—”

  “They—the Congress, Pollock, the States themselves—would be organized to fight us before we even pulled out of the swamps. We are talking civil war here, Gran.”

  “Yes”

  “
We are going to invade the continental United States, without securing a strategic nuclear capability or even heavy air support? That could be suicide, you know.”

  “Yes … But then, the country has no opposition in the field, and no standing army since ’98. We can walk ashore, I think.”

  “So.” I thought for a minute. “Who is on your side?”

  “I can probably swing the G.V. patron-generals—thank God, all the professional military men are there in Mexico. And the Southwest, TENMAC for a start, will trust me more than they trust Pollock—at least, he’s no soldier. The rest of the country, that we’ll have to fight for.”

  “Then we go for your strength. Land at Corpus Christi or Houston and appeal to Texas history. If the State rallies to you, we have a chance. If not, get out of the country entirely. But Gran, you have to land in Texas. Personally. They will not accept me, or any other surrogate.”

  “All right. Prepare the division for the crossing, then. I will come down.” And he hung up without even saying good-bye and good luck. The job Corbin was leaving me could be compared to moving the circus out of town without letting the town know.

  An infantry division is that big. Officially, we were listed as 5,600 combatant and support personnel. Plus ground vehicles, Stompers, auxiliary aircraft, and boats. Plus cyber and communications gear. Plus armories, supply dumps, maintenance shops, mess halls, dormitories. Plus a few thousand inventories, from bonding lists to bedding to burial records. Add to that the community of families, merchants, mendicants, scroungers, and paid spies that any occupying force gathers to itself during seven years in one location. All of it had to be either moved or left behind. And moved or dumped secretly, because the bastards in Baltimore would have spies following Gran, and more spies watching Gran’s personal army in Mexico. If he made a beeline for Yucatan, and then that army pulled stakes and started north, the Federals could choose our landing site with a coin toss. They would meet us with overwhelming force.

  I began pulling the plugs very quietly, making it look—wherever possible—like we were demobilizing. We paid out the spies, sold the bedding, and burned the burial lists. We sent the families into exile in British Honduras. We took the unit colors down from our headquarters building in Merida. All very public and sad.

  Then, secretly, I began buying steamers, the old kind with cargo cranes on their decks, not container hoists or air slides. I also did a quiet deal with the Israelis for a hundred of the new Jonah landing craft, to be shipped air freight to our port at Progreso. These vehicles were personnel-carrying hovercraft with armor mesh knitted into their skirting. The airfloods were all collapsible titanium ducting; so the whole boat folded flat. We could pile a dozen of them on deck in a stack fifteen feet high. The propulsion systems were Netanya Industries KK-4 jet turbines. These were stored separately from the boats, would be fitted at sea and fired up just before launching.

  Clips on the front of the air boats would take our .50 calibers and a rack of the powzookas that Gran hated so. We were ready to go up Galveston Bay into Houston spitting like a fire serpent. Just in case.

  As these preparations moved forward, Corbin worked his way across the country. He went first to Vegas, making it look like he was going to ground, just to throw off Pollock’s watchers. But he kept in touch with me—always in Malay and usually by electronic maildrop.

  January 19 was the day we picked to move out. That was a Friday and, allowing travel time and make-ready, put us in a perfect position to land in Houston at dawn on Sunday, the 21st. I had big surveyors’ maps of the city and began training our officers in their attack roles and contingency moves. We met in the warehouse on the edge of Merida, plugging numbers into our battle cybers while the rains came down on the leaky tin roof. We drilled each other on landmarks, rally points, and acceptable kill rates.

  What we were going to do after we took the city, I did not know. Cross one mountain at a time. If our charade went as planned and we achieved surprise at Houston, then we might be able to move west, rally the TENMAC, and fortify it before the Federals could build up a standing army and get moving our way—if the State militias would come out on our side. If not … maybe better we lose a glorious battle on the Houston waterfront.

  I never liked loser’s odds. We needed an edge for our one slender division. Faith and friendship would only take us so far: We needed to give the opposition a reason to fear us. I had a few ideas along that line. Knowing Granny would not approve, I went about researching them quietly. I even went so far as briefing an action team that would … but later. I will tell the story in order.

  Granny turned up in Merida during these preparations. He rode in on one of our gasoline trucks coming from Celestun. The rain was rolling off his Baltimore topcoat and the mud of the roads was squishing in his Baltimore shoes, but he was grinning, looking fit, and ready for anything.

  Like some Roman general, Corbin insisted on an eve-of-battle speech the day before we loaded up the steamers in Progreso. Any other modern G.V. officer would just post general orders, usually as a data dump of time ticks and map coordinates to all unit cybers. What does a soldier need to know besides when and where to fight? But Granny wanted them to know why and he wanted to tell them in person, all at once.

  There was no amphitheater in Merida big enough to hold all 5,600 troops in the division, plus casuals and native reinforcements. Or, there had been no amphitheater since we bombed the futbol stadium in our first fight for the city, seven years ago. So we made a special day of his speech and assembled the entire division at Uxmal, on the green grass surrounded by the dead white stones. Luckily, the rains held off.

  Granny stood high above our heads—a couple of hundred steps up the eastern side of the Pyramid of the Sorcerer, with enough sound equipment that his voice could be heard back in Merida. He began bravely enough:

  “Women and men of the California 64th. By now, some of you probably have heard or guessed why I’m down here with you and not up in Baltimore doing my job. It’s difficult to keep anything from people as sharp as you—though your officers try pretty hard. …” That brought a laugh, especially from the officers themselves, arranged near the foot of the steps. “Anyway, it’s all over the satelcast by now, what a bastard I am. …”

  More laughs—and a few shouts of “No! No, Gran!”

  “I’m supposed to be the man who sold out his country to the mobs. Taught innocent little children to go shoot their parents, loot their neighborhoods, rape their sisters. Then I’m supposed to have promised these brat psychopaths a free pardon, free ice cream, and a chance to do it all again. Oh, the stories you can hear in Baltimore! And in return … in return, I was supposed to get—what? You tell me! What?”

  “Pussy!” some joker down in front shouted. I saw people on either side turn and punch him out.

  “That would be a good reason!” Gran cracked back, and the crowd dissolved in laughter, even the women in our ranks.

  “But it’s more reason than the politicos give me! Anyway, it’s all a fiction, lads and lasses. A lie, but with a core of truth. And truth is that we, Colonel Birdsong and I, did pardon a group of black youths who helped us when we were being persecuted—just as they had been. They helped us when no one, not in the Federal government, the Baltimore police, the FBI, no one could be trusted to help us. And in return for that favor, these young people have been themselves hunted and persecuted. And now these children are being used against us.

  “The truth is, lasses and lads, you cannot believe anything from the ‘duly elected Congress’ that leads our country. Take that from someone who tried to work inside it, tried to do something for the people, tried to follow the soldier’s path of honor—and got kicked in the teeth. If I return to the States, I will be tried for treason and imprisoned. Then I would probably be shot. If you return to the States, you will be detained and jailed, then sent back here. … The Special Executive means to disband the California 64th and exile you—here!

  “We are exiles toge
ther, lads and lasses, while the pigs of Congress sit up there in Baltimore and eat our country alive. Are you going to hold still for that?”

  “No! No way, Gran! No way, man!”

  “Of course you aren’t!” he shouted back at them, his amplified voice dominating the field.

  “There is only one course open to us. Only one way to follow that path of honor … We must return to the States and challenge those bloated pigs. We must return to the States and claim our rights as citizens. We must return as a unit. We must return armed. To save our country—we must go to war!”

  Six thousand breaths caught on the same inhale. Six thousand pairs of eyes focused on the tiny figure that was poised on the steps of an ancient Mayan ruin.

  All night, I had argued with Gran about this. Take them to Texas, I said, but without fanfare. Move first and explain later; they will follow you and be returning fire—if they are fired upon—before they can think about it. But if you stand in front of them and tell them what will happen, they might have time to decide against you.

  And all night, Gran shook his head and insisted it was immoral to trick a person into history. And these were not innocents. They had read and understood and fought under the charter of the Gentlemen Volunteers. They had minds. Long before we came in sight of the Texas shore, they would be worrying themselves with rumor and speculation. No, better that they heard it said straight out.

  “That’s right, ladies and gentlemen. We are going to a war. Just like the shopkeepers of Boston in 1775 who, for reasons they knew were good, picked up their flintlocks and ran for Lexington and Concord. Just like the farmboys of the Carolinas in 1861 who, for reasons they knew were good, manned the guns that fired on Fort Sumter and then marched up the road to Washington. So we are going to war in 2018, for reasons we know are good.