After America ww-2

by John Birmingham

  "We're also getting some intelligence back from Ellis Island, where the rocket attack was launched from…"

  Kinninmore flicked the briefest glare of disapproval at Kip's Secret Service detail before carrying on.

  "… and what we're hearing is that there's some new guys working the city. Professionals. I mean real pros, not just the organized gangs from Russia and so on. These new guys are rallying the pirate gangs and paying them off with tribute and turf."

  "Any idea who?" asked Kipper.

  "Early days, sir. But it doesn't sound good. Some of the prisoners referred to them as fedayeen. Some called them jihadi."

  Kipper's nuts did a slow crawl up into his body.

  He was unfamiliar with the first word, but he well remembered the term "jihad" both from the days before the Wave and of course from the French civil war that had followed it.

  "What are those fucking wing nuts doing here?" he asked.

  Kinninmore shook his head as they reached the foyer of the building. The sound of helicopters was growing louder.

  "Mister President, at the moment all I have are the first scraps of information from a very confused battlefield. I can't tell you any more than that. What I can say is that this does not look like a flare-up or an ad hoc resistance movement suddenly self-organizing. It looks to me like somebody who knows what they are doing is pissing in our patch."

  Kipper found the colonel's vernacular a strange fit with his cultured accent, but he supposed that Kinninmore must have spent his adult life in the army and so it would be silly to expect him to speak like a merchant banker or art dealer. He stopped just inside the building's entrance, and gave the officer his full attention.

  "Colonel, I remind myself every day to listen to people who know what they're talking about. If you feel strongly enough about this to have dragged yourself through the briar patch getting the information to me, I am willing to listen. Right now, though, at this very minute, we have people fighting and dying a few miles from us. First person I'm going to talk to when I get on my chopper is General Franks. I'm going to tell him to devote whatever resources he needs to clearing this city out, once and for all. This is an American city, and it is going to stay that way," Kipper said.

  "Hooah," Kinninmore replied in soft but firm agreement.

  Kipper continued, "I need you to write me up a report on what you've just told us and forward it directly to Franks as well as your local higher-ups on my authority. I'll have the national security director schedule it as one of our first agenda items for our next meeting, which is…"

  He looked across at Jed.

  "Three days from now, Mister President."

  "Okay, three days. Is that good enough, Colonel?"

  Kinninmore straightened his back and nodded. "Very well, Mister President. My S-2 has already prepped a report, with attachments. I will have him e-mail it to you via secure link ASAP."

  "Good enough, then," Kipper said, extending his hand. "Colonel. Good luck. Kicking these losers out of New York is a higher priority for me right now than knowing exactly who they are. But I do want to know that, too. And make sure Jed gets details of where your wounded are being treated. I will be visiting them."

  "Thank you, Mister President."

  Kinninmore saluted again, looking marginally happier than when Kip had first seen him but still very grim as he replaced the helmet on his head. If they were going to be fighting in the city to the end, he was going to lose many more troopers. A thumping roar announced the arrival of Marine One, Kip's personal chopper, now finished with evacuating casualties from the rocket attack. The Secret Service agents formed up around them, and Kipper was hustled out into the morning air, where oil smoke, dark and thick, obscured the sun and left a burning sensation in his nose. Sergeant Ryan Peckham of the Marine Presidential Security Detail ripped off a perfect salute. "Good day, Mister President. If you'll step aboard, please."

  Kipper returned the salute, still a sloppy one, he supposed, but Sergeant Peckham took no notice. The president of the United States passed by Peckham's younger brother, Lance Corporal Justin Peckham, who was standing at the ready behind a multibarreled door gun on Marine One. It intrigued Kip why two brothers had ended up on his chopper, but he had never had time to ask them about it.

  Many things had changed since the Wave, and Marine One was a perfect example. No longer a brightly polished dark green and white VH-3D Sea King helicopter emblazoned with the presidential seal, Kipper's rotary wing transport was now a gray, camouflaged, and heavily armed AugustaWestland medium-lift chopper, a joint British-Italian design. The Royal Air Force had fitted out six for his use as part of a complicated facilities and equipment exchange deal negotiated under the new Vancouver Alliance agreement. Climbing aboard, he found the cabin was still configured for medical evacuation, with only four seats available up near the cockpit. It was difficult to hear himself talk over the thunderous noise not just of his aircraft but from the three gunships hovering protectively overhead. As he strapped in, Jed Culver dropped into the seat opposite and raised an eyebrow but said nothing, either. Between the Super Cobras of the Marine One escort force and the howling engine over their heads, it was simply too noisy to speak until they were under way.

  That took less than a minute, and when they lifted off, Kip felt himself pressed into the seat much more firmly than usual. The floor tilted radically, and the Rolls Royce turboshafts spooled up with a scream. The marines flying him out of New York were not inclined to take chances. They were another sign of the radically changed times. Three marine Super Cobras flew escort for Marine One no matter where the president went. The marines themselves were no longer attired in the smart dress uniforms and white gloves of their counterparts back in Seattle. All of the flight crew's members wore desert tan flight suits and came with a heavy load of personal weapons. Members of the Presidential Marine Security Detail wore body armor, standing at the ready by doors and window apertures that bristled with heavy machine guns. When they were safely away and the noise had throttled back some, Kip leaned over to speak to his chief of staff.

  "Jed, can you make sure Tommy Franks gets that stuff from Kinninmore? Especially this fedayeenie-whatsit business. Today."

  "Fedayeen. And it's already done," Culver said, smiling tightly and waving his mil-grade PDA. "I've scheduled it as an item for discussion at NSC. Second on the list."

  "What's first?" Kip asked, wondering what could squeeze out a report of possible foreign interference in the pirate war.

  "Well, I'm afraid you're not going to like it, sir, but we do need to get to grips with this Blackstone situation."

  Always back to Blackstone. Kip could feel his facial muscles tighten with anger as Jed held up one hand and begged his indulgence.

  "I know, Mister President, that you think it's near the bottom of the priority list, and having him down there running wild means fewer federal resources going into border security along the El Paso," Jed said.

  "Look, I don't like Mad Jack any more than you do, Jed. But he was elected. And you may have noticed that we are a bit short of resources," Kip said.

  Even Tommy Franks had pestered him about the importance of controlling the center of the continent, which was part of why there was a heavy federal outpost in Kansas City. But in Kip's eyes Texas just didn't seem worth the aggravation, regardless of what the history books and his own advisers said. If Blackstone wanted to play out some frontier fantasy down there, let him have it. For now. He was still an American. He'd been voted into the governorship fair and square. As big an asshole as he was proving to be, he was a duly elected asshole and that was that. It wasn't like a foreign state had set up shop down there.

  "Sir," said Culver, undaunted as usual. "We have to start looking at Blackstone as a major impediment to reconstruction a few years down the path. If we don't get this little dictator slapped into line, we are going to lose control of the South forever. He's not making any bones about that."

  "The whole Republic of T
exas thing is a joke," Kipper said. "I've been reading up on your briefings. They weren't able to make it work in the 1830s, and I do not see how they'll make it work now. Blackstone can bluster on about holding as many referendums as he wants. Nobody outside of Fort Hood is going to vote to break up the union."

  Jed leaned forward in his seat. "It's 'referenda,' and it is no joke, Mister President. Jackson Blackstone was legitimately elected territorial governor in 2005, which makes it very difficult for us to challenge his position. It's not like that last little coup by stealth he tried after the Wave. What's more, he has plenty of allies in Seattle who would like to see Texas fast-tracked to independence. The reality on the ground, as the military likes to say, is that neither Blackstone nor his territorial legislature respects the authority of Congress or you, or the courts, or anything other than the threat of the 101st jumping in there to smack him upside the head. And sir, we are getting to a point where I doubt the army will be able to do it. For every officer we have like Kinninmore, Blackstone has three, and for every solid soldier we have, Blackstone has anywhere from three to seven, most of them disgruntled veterans."

  "I don't understand why they're so disgruntled," Kipper said morosely. He didn't understand at all, on any level, why so many former members of the U.S. Armed Forces had gone down to Blackstone's self-styled Republic of Texas. Kip was taking care of their health needs and providing them with preferential hiring privileges and free education in a society that did not have much time for such things these days. They got fast-track placements into both the urban and regional resettlement programs. They were exempt from the various compulsory labor laws, yet they still went to Texas. Meanwhile, those who stayed under the federal banner often took advantage of the benefits while supporting the rump Republicans, which was a real kick in the head. Not all of them, by any means, but a sufficient number to inflame his acid reflux on a daily basis.

  "Different dreams," said his chief of staff in answer to Kip's question. "We haven't offered them a better one. Blackstone has. He is growing and hardening his forces, Mister President, and if you'll excuse me pushing the metaphor perhaps a tad too far, we are gonna get fucked because of it."

  Kipper couldn't help but smile in spite of the sense of frustration that welled up as a bilious taste at the back of his throat whenever he was forced to give due consideration to the antics of Jackson Blackstone. Jed would not let this dog lie, and Kipper supposed he would one day have to thank him for that, but right at the moment, the renegade former general turned politician and his Southern political machine were hardly a more pressing issue than the small war that apparently had broken out in the city below them.

  He stole a quick glance out of the small window to his left and shook his head at the dismal scene of a large part of Manhattan shrouded in smoke and flames, with the flash of bomb bursts and rockets clearly visible in the dark gray canyons below midtown as long sparkling chains of yellow and green tracer fire lashed up from street level.

  The door guns opened up, spewing a stream of red light down on the city, spattering their rounds against the streets. Lucifer tearing the curtains of Hell came to Kipper's mind as the brass tinkled away from Marine One. Riflemen took their positions at the rear of the cabin, opening the windows to get a clear shot at whatever might try to kill them. Kipper saw Corporal Peckham swivel his door gun as his brother directed the rest of the detail over his headset.

  "RPG! Evasive!" one of the riflemen roared.

  Kipper gripped his armrest as the chopper dipped and dropped to the right so suddenly that his stomach felt as though he'd left it a few hundred feet higher up. The door gunner opened up again on an unknown target beneath them, and he caught a black flash out of the corner of his eye as one of the Super Cobras screamed away to lay fire on whatever had caused them to maneuver so violently. The machine gun fire cut off abruptly, and he felt the chopper settle into a new heading that took them directly away from the island. Both Kip and Jed were used to the extremes of flying out of contested airspace, and neither man bothered to check with the air crew. For their part, the crew did not interrupt the presidential party, in line with orders Kipper had issued long ago to just get on with their jobs and not waste time briefing him on every little scare and mishap during flight.

  Marine One powered higher above the Manhattan skyline until they were well out of reach of everything short of a decent surface-to-air missile. The marine detail eased back from the windows and returned to their seats, allowing Kipper to refocus on Jed. He sighed heavily, trying to gather his thoughts. It was more a protracted grunt of annoyance, really, and he rubbed his eyes, which were hot and gritty with a lack of sleep.

  "Why, Jed? Why now?" he asked over the ringing in his ears from the gunfire. "Don't you think I have enough on my plate out here without starting another fight down South? Mad Jack loves it when I get on his case. He fucking lives for it."

  Culver reached into a briefcase on the floor between his legs. It was a battered old brown leather satchel that he carried with him everywhere, and Kip was certain it must be a relic of his former life as an attorney. It was out of character, because Jed Culver was a man who even now dressed in only the finest clothes and still wore expensive aftershave, but in Kip's experience most people liked to keep something of the old days close to them, and he assumed that the briefcase was a talisman of sorts for his chief of staff.

  Jed passed across an unmarked manila folder that Kip opened to find three sheets of paper and a couple of poorly focused low-res color photos. The printout was a long list of place names and dates followed by notations that made little sense to Kipper. The first read: • Baker Lake/Madison/14-March-07/Pieraro/TDF-Bravo 2/14…/13CC

  "I'm sorry, Jed. What does all this mean?"

  Jed tapped the top of the sheet Kipper was holding.

  "What it means, Mister President, in the first case there, for instance, is that soldiers from Bravo Company, Second Infantry Battalion of the Texas Defense Force, entered the property of one of our homesteaders, a Miguel Pieraro, three months ago. There they found fourteen members of the Pieraro clan dead. Killed by bandits, according to the TDF report. The state authorities then seized the property and reallocated it to their own settler program under the agreement we signed with them to ensure the Federal Mandates did not lie fallow."

  Kipper found himself grinding his teeth together. He felt a sick sort of anger curling tightly in his stomach.

  "Bandits, they reckon? And three months ago?" Kipper asked. "Why so long to let us know?"

  Culver shrugged. "Travel time required to get the dispatches back to Corpus Christi, according to Fort Hood."

  "Bullshit."

  "Of course."

  Kipper fought to get his temper under control. He looked at the name on the file again. Pieraro. It didn't ring a bell, but he did recall a clear blue day more than two years ago on the deck of an aircraft carrier filled with homesteaders down at Corpus Christi. The photo op included pressing the flesh and handing out warrants for homesteads throughout Texas. A delegation from Fort Hood had been there, watching the ceremony and promising that they would protect the new homesteaders. Governor Blackstone had been notably absent.

  "Want in one hand, shit in the other," Kipper muttered.

  "What's that, Mister President?" Jed asked.

  "Never mind. The fourteen dead homesteaders. Was that all of them?"

  "No, sir. Pieraro himself and one of his children, a girl called Sofia, were not found. That doesn't tell us anything, though."

  Kipper examined the sheet of paper again. There were dozens of entries, some with subtle differences that he picked up after a moment. He held the report up to Jed, pointing at a word he didn't understand.

  "What does 'ivet' mean?"

  "Involuntary transfer," Jed replied. "Deportation. The Pieraro homestead was attacked and emptied out by bandits, according to Fort Hood. But some of those other cases detail settlers in the Federal Mandate who've been evicted by Texas Defense F
orce personnel on Blackstone's orders. Usually citing disagreements over the extent of the Mandate."

  Kipper felt a world-class headache sharpening itself up for an assault on his skull. He rubbed his forehead irritably, continuing to read the report. "And K.I.T.O.P.?"

  "Killed in transfer operation," Jed said flatly.

  That sick bilious taste was rising in his gorge again. "I see. And when did we get this information?" the president asked.

  Culver essayed an apologetic dip of the head.

  "I've been on at the FBI to collate the figures for about five months now, sir. They have a field office in Corpus Christi, but as you can imagine, it is understaffed, overwhelmed, and mainly dedicated to fraudulent salvage contracts. They finally put someone on this full-time when we got confirmation of the first kitops."

  Kipper frowned at the ugly acronym.

  "Murder," he said. "The first murders, you mean."

  Culver nodded at the photographs behind the printout. "A bureau agent managed to get coverage of a transfer in progress just outside a town called Groveton in Trinity County."

  Kip examined the photographs properly for the first time, and his face twisted into a contorted mask of disgust. The images were poor, probably shot from a great distance, but there was no mistaking the story they told. A small group of men, women, and children were being beaten by a larger number of uniformed men. One of the photos appeared to show one of the victims being shot.

  "Jesus H. Christ," he breathed. "How extensive is… this…"

  Words failed him, and he simply waved the folder at Culver.

  "We're still compiling data, sir. And you have to remember that we don't control the south any more than we control Manhattan. Less so in some ways because we're not challenging Blackstone down there like we are challenging these bastards up here."

  Kipper ignored the tone of rebuke that Jed had allowed to creep into his delivery.

  "But as best we can tell," Culver continued, "over six hundred of our homesteaders have been driven off their land. Only a hundred and twelve have made it back to a federal facility. Now," Culver added hurriedly, "that doesn't mean the TDF killed them. Texas in particular is crawling with genuine bandits and freebooters. There's also the road agents, outlaw gangs, but the FBI believes they are operating with the tacit assistance of Fort Hood. Chances are that most of our people fell afoul of these agents. But it is undeniable that there have been instances where lethal force has been used by the TDF when transfer was resisted. And as terrified as the refugees were of the TDF, they were even more frightened of any encounters with the road agents."