The upload was slowed down a bit by security scanning software. So far, there had been only one serious computer system hack carried out by the United States Office of Northwest Recovery against any network in the Republic’s government, in the second year after independence. An American saboteur gained entry to the Bureau of State Security’s main office, dressed in a Civil Guard officer’s uniform. He delivered some genuine but routine paperwork to a secretary, then he dropped a smoke grenade that set off a fire alarm. In the confusion, he slipped a malware DVD into the machine on her desk which uploaded a destructive virus onto the system, but which also triggered an alarm on the PC. The spy was apprehended and shot trying to get out a window. His virus was nabbed and quarantined by the IT technician on duty, but it had already destroyed 80 percent of the data on the server. BOSS’s ironclad practice of keeping paper copies of everything in actual, physical filing cabinets enabled the system to be reconstructed and brought back on line within a week. Not being able instantly to network everything at the speed of light, like the Americans could, definitely slowed things down in the Republic. But it also made data and facilities infinitely more secure. In addition, the extra time and effort needed to perform many procedures manually was conducive to more acute thinking and better efficiency. The Republic had something the United States of America did not: filing clerks who actually knew how to file.
Garrison got into the computer and flashed several grainy images on the plasma screen. “To begin with, CMI has noticed several developments down south of the border over the past forty-eight hours that give us cause for concern,” he told the officers. “As you know, we’ve been intermittently hacking the American surveillance satellite system for some years now, as well as the European and Chinese satellites. They all know we’re doing this, they periodically figure out how we’re doing it, and they either discover a way to interdict our hack, or else in some cases they disable a whole satellite if they can’t get whatever bug we’ve put inside it out of the system. In some of those cases, thanks to our Technological Warfare Department and their brilliant egghead types, we have actually been able to reactivate some of these dead spy satellites and reprogram them to spy for us, to the great chagrin of the ONR and NASA.”
“The Lazarus Birds,” said Basquine with a chuckle.
“You got it, sir. These photos come from a Lazarus Bird, a satellite we’ve raised from the dead. We keep it focused on key points of interest in Aztlan. Unless the ONR’s computer nerds have figured out some way to hack us in turn and dick with the images, these are legitimate.”
“How likely is that?” asked Basquine. “I mean, how likely is it that ONR might be planting these images as disinformation?”
“Nothing is certain in the weird and wonderful world of spy technology, sir, but we’ve matched these photos, tracked the subjects and collated their sequences with other satellite feeds we’re intercepting, and also with ground intel in California, and we’re convinced this is the straight dope,” Garrison told them. “Something is going on down there in the land of the hot tamale we need to be concerned with, no question.”
“Okay, what exactly are we looking at here?” asked Morgan, staring at the pixilated images.
“The first series we see now was taken on Pier 84 and Pier 85 at the Puerto de San Diego Zona Alta Seguridad,” said Garrison. “The vessels being unloaded are the Chinese freighters Hangchow and PanAsian Star. Those are two mega-freighters, the biggest class in the Chicom merchant fleet, and they are offloading nothing but the same size container. Hundreds of them. One of our guys on the ground managed to get inside the perimeter posing as a wino. He was intercepted and badly beaten by Asaltos for his trouble—the place is crawling with them—but he managed to report back. The containers are being loaded onto flatcars and sent up to the El Cajon air base under heavy armed escort.”
“Not surprising,” grunted Basquine. “Virtually their whole air force is Chinese or North Korean. Nobody seems to be able to teach mestizos how to fly or maintain aircraft engines.”
“A team of operatives managed to get close enough early this morning to snap this through a telephoto lens,” Garrison told them. He clicked up the next photo, showing a long row of hangars with freight containers in the middle of a cracked asphalt street. There seemed to be a lot of activity, trucks, vans, and indistinct men in blue coveralls. Garrison brought up the next shot, which depicted the open bay doors of one of the hangars, and then he clicked up the magnification to maximum. Dimly visible inside the hangar was a long sleek metal craft on landing skids. Men on top of it seemed to be attaching a rotor.
“Helicopters,” said John Morgan. “They’re bringing in helicopters. A whole passel of ’em.”
“Yes, sir, quite a passel,” replied Garrison. “We’ve confirmed that is a Chinese Taipan Seven gunship, in the process of being assembled. We conjecture that the containers each carry a military helicopter, either all Taipans or more likely a mixture of Taipans, Dragonfly recon craft and possibly some transport copters as well. If each container equals one chopper, then our beaner friends down south have just acquired an armada of almost a thousand new aircraft.”
“For what purpose?” asked Leach. “And what did the beaners pay for all those choppers with? Aztlan is just as perpetually broke as their cousins south of the Rio Grande. The chinks don’t just give away firepower like that in exchange for a few oranges and cantaloupes laced with disease.”
“I believe we can guess what they intend to do with their new toys, sir,” said Garrison grimly. “Our computer hackers have checked incoming flights to LAX, and also into Mexico City, and there seem to be a higher than usual number of young male Chinese nationals flying in over the past week, allegedly as business travelers or tourists.”
“Those would be the pilots and crews?” suggested Morgan.
“We think so, yes, sir,” confirmed Garrison. “Dispersed and carefully inserted into Aztlan to try and avoid detection.”
“Our observers on the ground break contact and E&E okay?” asked Leach.
“Yes, sir. But this sudden influx of air power into Aztlan isn’t the only item that’s caught our attention of late,” Garrison went on. “You gentlemen will recall that the status report for last month included a copy of some Pentagon e-mails detailing the combined summer exercise planned by the U.S. Army, Air Force, and Marines in North Dakota and eastern Montana? The one they call Operation Blast Furnace?”
“Yeah, they’re rattling their saber like they do every couple of years,” said Basquine. “They’re always massing troops on the border and playing war games, testing our reaction. We move our own troops up to the border and have our own war games, and we make it clear that any time they want to come over and play with us, we’re ready.”
“That may be what they’re doing this year as well, sir, but we picked up on something that’s a little disturbing,” said Garrison. “Earlier this year the Canadian government in Ottawa approved a really major chunk of budget for highway reconstruction, in theory all over the whole country. But the only place this makeover has actually begun is on two fairly insignificant rural roads, Provincial Highway 18 in Saskatchewan and Highway 501 in Alberta.” Garrison clicked up a map onto the big screen. “They’re re-grading, re-paving, adding multiple lanes, and strengthening bridges to bear greater loads. As you can see, both of those Canadian highways run more or less parallel to the U.S. border until 501 runs into National Highway 4 at Milk River, Alberta, right on our own border.”
“You think the Americans may be reviving Operation North Star?” asked John Morgan keenly.
“Could be, sir, if President Wallace has managed to arm-twist the Canucks into going along with it,” said Garrison.
“What’s Operation North Star?” asked Air Marshal Basquine.
“Oh, yeah, I forgot, that was before your time, Bill,” answered Morgan. “One of the Pentagon’s invasion plans a few years ago was called Operation North Star. It called for moving a major force int
o Canada, rolling west fast and hard just north of the border, and then forking and slashing down into Montana and Idaho to take Kalispell and Coeur d’Alene.”
“Rather like the Schlieffen Plan the Germans used in World War One to hit the French through Belgium on an undefended frontier,” added Colonel Garrison, who was something of a military history buff. “The trouble was, the Belgians resisted and managed to slow the Germans long enough for the French and the British to react. If you’re going to invade another country through a neutral nation, you need to make sure the locals stay neutral. Operation North Star fell through when the Canadian government of the time wouldn’t go for it. They hate the Northwest Republic with a passion that amounts to insanity, but they also fear us. We’re militarily stronger than they are, and Ottawa doesn’t dare take us on alone. They know a large segment of the white population of western Canada wants to throw in with the Republic, and they don’t want to get involved in a war where they might lose all or part of their western provinces.”
“Could that reluctance on their part have changed?” asked Leach.
“Maybe,” said Morgan, ruminating as he ran his fingers through his beard. “They’ve got a new prime minister now who has opened the gate to all those refugees from what used to be Israel, and in return the Jews have backed his government with every penny and ounce of influence and propaganda they can muster, which is still mighty considerable.”
“That’s what’s most worrying,” said Garrison. “Canada now has a million Israeli Jews and the U.S. now has at least three million, who are screaming at the top of their lungs for revenge because they blame the Republic, correctly I think, for undermining the American Middle Eastern oil empire to the point where it collapsed. When that happened, Israel lost their American lifeline and became unsustainable. In addition to which, President Wallace is coming up for re-election for his third term this fall, and he needs to be seen taking at least some steps to recover the Northwest, as per his campaign promises when he ran on that whole ONI spritz.”
“One Nation Indivisible my ass!” growled Morgan. “But I have to admit, it worked. It not only got him elected, but he’s kept up the drum beat, and with the Jews backing him he’s managed actually to get some things done and halt the U.S.A.’s slide into complete chaos, at least somewhat. And he’s built their military back up again after that series of disasters in the Middle East.”
“One more thing, gentlemen,” said Garrison. He clicked on the computer and brought up several documents from the United States Department of Justice marked Top Secret, which he followed with more documents from the Department of Defense.
“Jesus, you guys must have every janitor and cleaning lady who empties a wastebasket in Washington, D.C. working for you!” said Leach admiringly.
“It’s more complicated than that, Admiral,” said Garrison. “Sometimes people die to get us these documents. Their people, and ours.”
“WPB get you most of this stuff?” asked Morgan.
“Some of it, sir, certainly. The Circus has a very good crew in place in the District, no question, but most of it’s our own CMI ops,” said Garrison.
“Two foreign intelligence agencies?” asked Basquine. “Don’t you ever duplicate one another’s efforts?”
Garrison nodded. “Sometimes, yes, sir, but that’s a good thing, when we can confirm each other’s intel. The only way a head of state like President Morehouse can ever find out how good his intelligence service really is, is the hard way—by having it fail him. Hence the duplication. The Republic uses both suspenders and belt. Anyway, the upshot of all these documents is that the old FATPO training school at Fort Bragg, North Carolina, is being re-opened and a large number of personnel from the Army, the Marine Corps, the six or seven secret police agencies, and a number of law enforcement agencies around the U.S.A. are going to be attending a six-week course beginning next week. They call this Operation Chain Link, and the whole thing is so hush-hush that the details and actual nature of the mission aren’t even being committed to paper or computer drives. It’s apparently only being discussed verbally by the Joint Chiefs of Staff, the American cabinet, and the White House. These picked personnel will be trained by former FATPO officers and FBI agents, and also by a number of former Israeli military personnel.”
“They’re reviving FATPO?” laughed Basquine. “Hell of a lot of good those sons of bitches did them during the war!”
“I remember, sir,” said Garrison, a former NVA man himself.
“How many of them?” asked Morgan.
“About three thousand,” said Garrison.
“If they were planning on invading the Republic, I think they know us well enough to get that they’d need a lot more than three thousand Fattie thugs with six weeks of training to keep us down,” chuckled Morgan. “Thirty thousand of the assholes couldn’t do it back in the day.”
“No, sir,” said Garrison. “But according to what we’ve been able to learn, General, this six-week event is actually an instructor’s course. These first three thousand are being taught to train others. The main intakes start early in the summer, and will include drafts from what they call community activist groups, meaning non-white street gangs from the cities, as well as elements from the Mexican and Aztec military, including the Assault Guards. The documents also refer to the formation of Israeli expat units serving under their own officers, many of them personnel from the old Mossad and the Shin Bet secret police. Finally, there is to be a unit called the Sacred Band, named after a probably mythical ancient Greek force of charioteers and spearmen who supposedly were all homosexual lovers. Apparently, the purpose of this grotesque thing is to prove once and for all that so-called gay people can be military effectives, which will do wonders to nail down the gay vote for Hunter Wallace for the November election.”
“And how many people will these main intakes consist of?” asked Morgan.
“They’ve budgeted and they’re gearing up for two hundred thousand men, sir,” replied Garrison quietly. “They are building a permanent paramilitary army of occupation for the Northwest, commanded by some of the most experienced killers and torturers in the world. I can’t see them going to this kind of effort and expense if they didn’t intend to use it.”
There was a long silence around the table. “Jesus, John,” said Leach after a while. “They may really be coming for us this time.”
“I get a bad vibe offen this, boys,” said Morgan, shaking his head. “Okay, here’s what we do. First thing tomorrow, I want the entire strategic planning staff from all three services in the War Room. We will do a complete re-work of Plan Sixteen, based on the assumption of a combined American, Canadian, and Aztec full-bore invasion attempt sometime this summer, probably in June. These so-called war games of theirs are scheduled to begin on June twelfth, and I suspect those uniformed time-servers and bureaucrats in the Pentagon still remember enough basic military strategy to go for a quick victory in the summer and not let it drag on into a winter war, especially east of the Cascades. Nobody in his right mind wants to fight in Montana or the Sawtooth in the dead of winter and meet our best generals, General January and General February. We will re-work Plan Sixteen into Plan Seventeen on the basis of that assumption, and begin making our dispositions.”
“When do we call up the reserves, John?” asked Leach.
“Not until we get something more solid. I have hopes that may come soon. There’s an intelligence operation pending through the War Prevention Bureau. Colonel, thanks for your report, and I’ll want to talk to you later about this information and make sure I understand all the ramifications. But right now I need to discuss something with my comrades here that’s a bit above your clearance level. No offense.”
“None taken, sir,” said Garrison, standing up. “First rule of intelligence: no one can reveal what they don’t know. I use it all the time.” He saluted the officers and left the room.
Morgan turned to the other two. “I was at a security briefing at Longview Hou
se a couple of days ago,” he told them. “Charlie Randall was there. He says good Lord willing and the creek don’t rise, the Circus may finally have a shot at placing an asset of ours in the White House. Right next to the President of the United States himself.”
* * *
At the same time the senior officers of the military were meeting at Fort Lewis, down in the capitol city of Olympia, a lieutenant in the Civil Guard parked his alcohol-fueled private car and walked into a nondescript three-story office building on a quiet side street. There was no sign outside the building indicating its occupants or purpose, and all of the blinds in the windows were closed, despite it being a sunny, windy spring day outside. The Guardsman was alert and observant enough to spot the discreetly placed surveillance cameras covering the entire street, but otherwise everything was as quiet as a ghost town.
He walked through the front door and into the building’s lobby, which was bare except for a desk behind which sat an elderly man in a shabby suit and tie that looked about forty years old. It was dark in the lobby, and the old man was reading a Dostoevsky novel in the pool of light cast by a green-shaded banker’s lamp onto the desk. The young cop glanced up and saw some slits in the wall high above his head. He was reasonably sure someone was behind those slits covering the lobby with a rifle or automatic weapon. He walked up to the old man. “Good afternoon. Guard Lieutenant Robert Campbell to see the ringmaster.”
He expected the old man to be impressed, but he merely pressed a button under the desk. “Wait here a minute. They’ll send somebody to escort you.”
“Aren’t you even going to ask me for my ID?” asked Lieutenant Campbell, surprised.
“Son, anybody trying to sneak in here would have letter perfect ID, good enough to fool me, and good enough to fool a scanning machine,” said the old man with a snort. “Our security system is simple.” He flicked aside his blue serge jacket to show a pistol in a shoulder holster. “We’re all packing. We make sure that anybody who gets in who ain’t who or what he says he is, don’t come out again. Beyond that, we don’t worry much about it. We got the gods on our side.”
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