“Cortes is dead,” was all he said, and then he turned back around.
At first Lieutenant Kai could not figure out what was happening. After the last of the food had been dropped off, he watched as his troops loaded up into the trucks. He was the last man to get in and rode in the last vehicle headed out of the village. Before the noise had a chance to register in his brain, he felt the back end of the truck lifting up, flipping over the front. As the vehicle flew upside down, the truth occurred to Kai; they’d been hit by a rocket. His brain told him to prepare for impact, to prepare for pain, and to prepare to get out as fast as he could. The latter part turned out to be very difficult. Kai couldn’t figure out why, but not all his body parts were working. The top of the vehicle had collapsed most of the way, so there was less than a foot of window for him to crawl out of. His entire right side was numb. The rest of his body was racked with pain. He fought to stay conscious. He fought to stay focused. He had men to lead. As the ringing in his ears faded, he noticed there was a lot of screaming and small-arms fire.
Through the smoke and dust he saw the young, retarded man with the ugly scar running up to him. Kai tried to ask for help, but found even words were escaping him at the moment. He was relieved that the young man smiled and pulled him from the wreckage. His relief turned to horror as the man used a knife to gouge out his eyes. Kai tried with all his might to scream for help, but as if in a nightmare, his voice just would not manifest more than a hoarse groan. As if his feeble cry was offensive, Kai soon found his mouth pried open and his tongue was pulled out and severed. As his mouth filled up with blood, Kai feared that it would choke him, but as his mutilation continued, he welcomed his death.
Chapter Twenty-four
President Harmon leaned back and kicked her feet onto the ottoman. She was tired after a long hard day following weeks and months of long hard days. She was tired of being harassed by reporters. She was tired of being questioned by members of her own political party, not to mention by the opposition. The primary campaign had been rough and was leaving her feeling frazzled. She hoped things would slow down, and she would get the chance to recover a bit. She’d need it, the general election was less than five months away.
She had not expected to have an opponent in the primary. She was even more shocked that he would gain enough traction to win the Iowa Caucus. Senator Robert H. Gall, of Wyoming, had been brazen enough to challenge a sitting president; and he’d done it advocating Clark’s hard war strategy. The last five months had been a debate as to who had the best strategy to win the war. Gall had won the support of their party’s base, but Harmon had been able to survive the primary challenge with the support of her donors and the political and media connections she had established over her twenty plus years in Congress. She now feared that she was too weak, politically, to win the general election.
Negotiations with the People’s Republic failed to bring transition. President Zhang was tough, resilient, and tone-deaf to the international community. To add to her woes, no matter how much she went after military personnel over alleged war crimes, the media still painted her as a bad wartime president. That had been a problem for her. The only advantage she had with the media was that they liked her better than Gall. She feared that would change in the general election. At a minimum, she had to make it look like progress was being made by November. The “Partisan Resistance,” as the media called it, and possible US war crimes had to be knocked out of the news cycle. She could only court-martial so many soldiers before it would hurt her even more with her own base. If Zhang did not abdicate from UN pressure, she was going to have to make it look like military gains were being made. Thus leading her to a late night meeting with General Mythers.
“Madame President, General Mythers is here to see you.” Sophia Porter popped her head through the door of the hotel’s presidential suite to notify her boss.
“Thank you, Sophia. Give me ten more minutes and show him in, would you?”
“Yes, Madame President.” Miss Porter curtly bowed her head and backed out of the room.
Harmon downed the last of her white zinfandel. She was surprised to find more in her glass than she had counted on. Still, she decided to have another. She figured Mythers would like a drink as well, so why not?
I deserve a little treat after all I’ve been through lately, she told herself.
“Good evening, Madame President.” Mythers walked into the room, wearing casual civilian attire so as to attract less attention from the press watching at this hour of the night.
“Good evening, Peter. Please have a seat.”
“Thank you, Madame President,” Mythers said with his compliant smile.
“Can we get you anything, Peter? It’s been a long day. Have a drink with me. Sophia, get the general whatever he wants.”
“Oh, Madame President, I don’t—”
“Nonsense, Peter. You at least deserve a drink for all you do for this country.”
“Oh, all right. Any scotch?”
“Of course, Peter. Sophia, get the general a scotch—”
“Neat, please,” the general finished.
“Yes, Madame President.” Porter smiled and did an excellent job of looking happy to do a task she thought was completely beneath her.
“Peter, we’ve got to win this election, and I can’t get beat over the head for Clark’s war or I, we, will lose.”
“I know, Madame President. Thank you, Miss Porter.” Mythers got a lot of inside scoop from Porter and wanted to stay on her good side. “And I hate to tell you, but it’s worse than just China. We have cartel activity in Occupied Mexico. They’re coming into conflict with the state militia units guarding our border.
“On top of that, since the Russians have taken out the caliphate in the Middle East, my intel tells me we’ve got jihadist cells in the Great Lakes, looking to become the new epicenter of Islam. These fires are on the brink of becoming infernos if we don’t get a hold on them now.”
Mythers had the president’s attention. She knew of these problems, but hoped to deal with them through money. Start programs and funding that would benefit the groups that represented those interests. It was a time-honored practice to use taxpayer money to buy the compliance, if not the loyalty, of groups opposed to American interests.
“What do you propose, General?”
The use of his rank was not lost on Mythers. He knew he had tapped into issues she was insecure about. He resisted the urge to smile, when he really wanted to laugh. He thought of politicians as predictable and easy to manipulate.
“First, Madame President, dealing with enemy insurgency within the United States is beyond the ability of the local law enforcement agencies of the Great Lakes region. Even with the help of the FBI, these people cannot be handled by law enforcement because they are not a law enforcement problem.”
“What do you mean by that, General?”
“They are a national threat. They are an enemy to the State. With all due respect, Madame President, they are a threat to your authority and the voice of the American people. They’re no less of an enemy than the PLA or the cartels on the border. You wouldn’t send local police or state troopers to deal with either of those. Is it fair to expect them to handle jihadists?”
“Cut the crap, Peter. You know damn well that is exactly what we’ve been doing. What is your point?”
The general noticed the switch back to his first name. He also noticed a change in her tone he’d not heard before. Was the wine getting to her? Or was his presentation that good? He suspected the former.
“Madame President, volunteer state militia is not trained to deal with violent, sophisticated, organized crime. You need to get them out of Occupied Mexico.”
“General”—Harmon sounded incredulous—“you know I never supported Clark’s militias, but they are a fact now. If I pull them off the borders, I anger millions of Americans who want the border protected. There is no other alternative until after the election.”
“Madame President, as well you know, our negotiations have stalled. Zhang doesn’t have a chance, but he’s daring us to come after him. He’s exploiting your desire to save human life and the media’s bias against you for his political gain, or really just his political survival at this point.”
“General”—Harmon sounded like she was losing the good feeling the wine had given her—“you’ve told me nothing I don’t already know.”
“Madame President, what if I told you I had a plan that could deal with all three national security issues. Dodge legal jurisdictions and limitations in the Great Lakes, ‘deactivate’”—Mythers did the quotation symbols with his fingers—“the militias, give Zhang the motivation he needs to step down, and make yourself look like the biggest national security hawk in our nation’s history. Would you be open?”
“Peter”—Mythers inwardly cringed at the sound of slurred impatience in the president’s voice—“don’t waste time with foolish questions.”
“I propose we combine the State Department, military, intelligence, and all national law enforcement under one command. Instead of several independent entities trying to do the same thing, combine our resources and combine our funding for the same goals. We can replace, or co-op rather, all three organizations under one command. We’ll save money. We’ll be more efficient. We’ll be more effective.”
“I don’t know.” The president began to nervously tap her pen against the sofa’s armrest. “I’m not certain how voters will react to this. Our government was formed on the concept of the separation of powers, after all, and I’ve got to try to appease all those Constitution fanatics in the party.”
“Madame President, practically speaking, what separation is there now? As it stands, you’ve got multiple people and multiple organizations with the stated mission of the public safety. If just one of those law enforcement officers, militia commanders, or military generals fails, it is you who is held responsible. It is you who is held accountable. If you are going to be held responsible, why not take control of the responsibility? Put one person in command, who you have authority over and is accountable only to you, to deal with all national issues of public safety. Why not have one person, who you can directly control, to implement your agenda and see to it that your will is done for the sake of public safety?”
“An agency for public safety,” Harmon thought out loud and stared beyond Mythers, thinking of the possibilities this new control could give her. “Yes, we consolidate for the sake of national security, for the sake of the people.”
“Precisely, Madame President.”
Harmon’s eyes darted back to Mythers’s. “And just to whom should I entrust all of national security and safety? Do you have anyone in mind?”
“Of course I do, Madame President.” With that, Mythers took his first drink of scotch. Enjoy it. You’ve worked hard. You deserve it, he told himself.
Zhang smiled. The first true smile of happiness he’d felt in the last four years.
“General Huang, please tell me again. I want to be sure I understand what I believe to be the genius of your plan.”
“My pleasure, President Zhang.” And Huang Jianguo meant it. He thought his plan to be absolutely brilliant and sensed that Zhang did as well. Fully aware of his president’s intolerance for failure, he was relieved to see a smile on the face of the People’s leader.
“I assert that we use the Americans’ tactics to our advantage. Over the last three months we’ve seen a significant increase in the deployment of ground troops. I believe this increased activity on the American line is not a military strategy as much as it is political. In other words, I think the Americans put more ‘boots on the ground’ to gain a factor of intimidation in our negotiations, and/or convince the American populace that President Harmon is serious about winning the war. This is not for the sake of defeating our People’s Liberation Army, or even to conquer more territory for the criminal Republic of China, but rather to ensure President Harmon’s election this November, just over three months from now.
“On the other hand, President Harmon does not want to seem like she is escalating the war or provoking us to respond. Thus General Hinneman has dotted the Northern China Plain with all these military outposts.” Huang again pointed out several of these bases north of the Yellow River to Zhang. “But many of these, particularly in the west, have very little support beyond artillery. These I think are particularly vulnerable to being cut off, surrounded, and destroyed.
“Therefore I put to you that we launch a coordinated assault against all American military outposts north of the Yellow River. The majority of what is left of our tanks, armored cars, and jets will attack in the east. In the west, we will overwhelm the American bases with our superior numbers of people. For more than a year, we’ve built a vast partisan network among the farmers and rural villages. There we have millions of armed peasants and soldiers that can overwhelm the American camps with their sheer numbers alone.”
“Yes, we have the numerical advantage, but the Americans have the technological advantage with tanks and air superiority at this point. If they respond to defend the bases in the west, the assault will fail.” Zhang had liked Huang’s answer to this the first time and hoped it would sound even better a second.
“Yes, President Zhang, but if they respond with their jets to the western assault, they will not be able to answer our thrust in the east, nor the center of their front. However, I think they will meet our tanks and jets with theirs, leaving their western outpost with little to no air support. General Secretary, we do not need tactical success to achieve a strategic victory.
“Remember, our goal is not to repel the American forces. We overrun just one American base, even if our troops cannot hold our gains and fall back, the American media will report the defeat of US troops nonstop. The propaganda will be invaluable.”
“And if no bases are overrun?”
“Our objective is political, not military. Even a massive assault against US troops will be reported as a failure of President Harmon’s by their media. They obviously favor her rival candidate in the presidential election, Senator Tang from California.
“Worst-case scenario, as I see it, President Zhang, is that even if we fail to overrun one military base, the American media will be so anxious to report their own military failure in order to promote their preferred candidate, they will grossly exaggerate any success we have, great or small.
“They will declare failure. They will declare defeat. They will blame Harmon. Even if media exaggerations are eventually discovered, it will be too late. Damage will have been done. As the Americans say: it will be an ‘October Surprise.’ Tang will be elected. The United States will have a weaker leader and thus will be easier to defeat.”
Easier to defeat? Most likely Tang would happily pull US troops out and even pay for damages, Zhang thought. He relished the idea of a “President Tang.” No doubt he preferred Harmon to Clark, but Tang could be like having his own man in the White House.
Benedict Xavier Tang, in fact, had had much of his previous political career nurtured by the People’s Republic of China. He was a native Californian that claimed some descent from Chinese immigrants of the nineteenth century. He had gotten his start in politics when he was a student at Berkley. He was a champion of progressive causes and advocated many Marxist ideals. As the People’s Republic of China looked to make connections and inroads into the United States government, Tang had caught their attention when he first ran for the House of Representatives. The man did not look Chinese to Zhang, but that was of no matter as long as he was of use to the PRC. Their investment had paid off. Tang had always fought for China’s interests in the United States, going back even before the Leakey administration. He had happily accepted many gifts and campaign donations for his loyalty. As a senator, Tang had been one of Clark’s most outspoken critics. Now he ran as an antiwar candidate for the presidency of the United States. Tang’s promises to withdraw from the war would not only
reverse the PRC’s losses over the last seven and a half years, the political vacuum could allow the People’s Republic of China to achieve even greater glory.
“General Huang, can you execute your plan in three months?”
“Yes, sir. Much of our foundational work has already been done by our Gansiduì units.”
“A President Tang would be a great asset to the People.” Zhang looked up from his cup of tea. “I approve your plan. If you are successful, General, you will be one of China’s greatest heroes.”
Zhang had every intention to be China’s greatest hero, and he could deal with Huang when he was no longer useful.
Chapter Twenty-five
Harris was glad to have the summer heat broken. He would drink hot coffee in the heat, but found it more enjoyable in the cool mornings. He’d gotten the process down to something of an art. One heat tablet would boil his canteen cup of water. He then added the instant coffee, hot cocoa, cream, and sugar packets from his MRE (Meals Ready to Eat) packet. His morning coffee and cigarette while playing a game of chess with Hastings were the highlight of his day. After that, it was all downhill until the next morning.
Life for Harris had been duller recently, which did have certain advantages over the terror of combat. However, this kind of boredom was not what Harris had had in mind when he had joined the Marines.
His TOW section had just started their month-long rotation at what the Marines affectionately called Camp Michael Foxtrot. It was a small camp positioned on some high ground that over looked the headquarters for 1/1, known as Camp Charles Foxtrot.
“Hey, would you rather be at Camp Alpha Foxtrot?” Hastings liked to joke.
The only reason anyone could think of for the existence of Camp Michael Foxtrot, was to deny the Pricks high ground over Charles. No one seemed to know, or admit to anyway, the exact purpose for Camp Charles Foxtrot.
Lately, the Allied plan seemed to be to set up fortified field camps north of the Yellow River. Perhaps to scare the PLA from heading south. Most of the Marines were skeptical, but that said, they had not been attacked by Pricks for several weeks. On the other hand, they weren’t attacking the Pricks either. The meals on wheels missions were reduced, and they stayed closer to camps for support.
The Last Marine Page 24
