“Roger that, sir,” said Duke.
“We hope to get tracker bugs planted on both targets, but that may not be possible,” Vinnie told them. “Birdie thinks he can hack into the White House security cameras themselves, but he’s never tried before and he’s not sure. In addition to which, they have all kinds of security software including some he may not be familiar with, and they might pick up on his hack. I’ve had Comrade Byrd change position for tonight. He’ll be working from a hotel room in case they breach his firewalls and track down his hack. Hopefully, if that happens he’ll have enough warning to make a break for it. I hope not, because we can’t afford to lose him. Or any of you, for that matter. Anyway, if our asset can’t place the tracking devices, but if Birdie can in fact get into the White House security system, he’ll be able to spot Kravitsky picking up Herrin’s limo in the underground parking garage beneath the Executive Office building just before the War Cabinet meeting breaks up, and so he can tell us when she’s leaving. Ditto Ronald Schiff, White House chief of staff, who usually travels with two limos, one of which is a decoy, and a minimum of four Secret Service bodyguards. Birdie should be able to spot which limo he’s in, which we’ll need to know if we’re going to hit the vehicle with a Panzerfaust.
“If we get the GPS bugs in place, we track the targets with Birdie’s help.” Cardinale continued. “If not, we just follow them around until we’ve both got clear shots at the car, or as clear as we can get in the middle of a city street at night. If you see the targets getting out of the vehicles and exposing themselves at a nightclub or anything like that, or if you get a good close shot with a rocket or a grenade, go ahead and take it immediately. Otherwise, on my command, we make simultaneous strikes with everything we’ve got. Let’s see if we can confuse the enemy responders by giving them two major alarms at once. Once it’s done, you guys break contact with the scene and get to cover, an alleyway, underground garage, wherever you’re out of eyesight. We will have to assume that the enemy has caught your cars on digital and they will issue BOLOs for them, so detonate your vehicles with all your weapons except for your handguns inside. The feds will think they’re car bombs going off, and that will add to the confusion. Go to your E&E points on foot, as carefully but as quickly as possible. Pick up your secondary transport and try to make it out of the ESMA, back into Virginia if you can, into Maryland if you must. If they have the checkpoints sealed off, either run them in your cars or try and make it out of the ESMA on foot. Stay away from the Metro; those will be the first exits sealed off. Swim the damned Potomac if you have to. We need everybody off camera as soon as possible. Better to have you guys scrapping with nigger gang-bangers or nigger Maryland cops than being chased by FBI and real cops down here.”
“Wounded?” asked Duke laconically.
“You all know Shangri-La?” They all nodded except Bob Campbell. “No, you don’t, Richie. It’s a safe house on J Street we use sometimes. Doc Shapira will be there with emergency medical aid. I originally tried to veto that, but he insisted. For some reason he thinks enough of you apes not to want to let you die, even if his cover gets compromised. Hopefully it won’t be necessary. Any more questions?”
June Bug raised his hand. “Sir, what if at this War Cabinet session tonight, the two kikes are able to convince Wallace to order a nuclear strike on the Republic?”
“Then we’re too late, and we will be citizens of a country that has ceased to exist,” said Cardinale bleakly. “We then spend whatever lives remain to us here in this city, killing everyone who was even remotely involved in destroying the last hope of the world. Killing them in as painful manner as possible. I don’t know what else to tell you, June. We have to stop these two Jews, now, tonight! These evil things have been whispering in the ear of powerful men of our race for centuries, and the consequences have been terrible beyond comprehension. They cannot be allowed to do this! If there was any way we could storm the White House by force, get at the Jews and kill them, then I’d order it, even if it meant none of us got out alive.”
“Where will you and Betsy be, Boss?” asked Duke.
“Betsy and I will be on the move in my Cadillac to provide emergency backup and support to either team that needs it. We’ll act as a second surveillance car, a second attack car, or we’ll extract any of you who end up on foot.”
“Where do you want me?” asked Bob/Richie.
“I have a special assignment for you. The rest of you, start moving back to your vehicles now. All of us have been clustered here for too long. Get out of the Mall, get mobile and start cruising, circling, a good long radius around Sixteen Hundred, stay loose and ready to move in case either target decides to cut out of the situation briefing early.” When the rest of the team were gone except for himself and Betsy, Cardinale said, “Rich, how’s your art appreciation?”
“I beg your pardon, sir?” asked Campbell.
“You need to take a cruise over to Pennsylvania Avenue, drive past Sixteen Hundred, and stop at Sixteen Sixty-One,” Cardinale told him. “It will be a two-story red brick building, the Renwick Gallery. It’s an annex of the Smithsonian Institution, housing part of its collection of early American art. Put this on your windshield.” Cardinale reached into his jacket pocket and brought out a blue and white plastic decal.
“Holy Moses, that’s a Federal Zone parking sticker!” exclaimed Bob. “Is this the real thing?”
“It will pass the Metro and FBI databases if anyone checks it, let’s put it that way,” said Cardinale dryly. “And yes, it cost even more than that Class A FLEC card we got for you. There is a small parking lot behind the Renwick that you will access off 17th Street. The first access code I wrote on the back there will get you in and out of the automatic gate. Once you park, you use that second code on the rear door. The cameras will be conveniently malfunctioning in both the lot and the building, but use caution anyway; there’s only one person in there who needs to see you. Go down the corridor to the office on your far left and you will meet a little guy who looks like he’s about a hundred years old. He’s Doctor Herrick, the curator of the gallery and probably the Northwest Republic’s longest serving agent in the United States. He was personally converted by the Old Man himself, way back in the day when dinosaurs roamed the earth. He will show you to an observation post where you can keep an eye on Sixteen Hundred, see if there’s any unusual movement or anything of the kind, and be ready to pick up Belladonna on the fly if she hollers rainstorm.”
Rainstorm was Georgia’s coded emergency distress call; it meant she was in trouble and needed an immediate extraction. The problem was that she would first have to make it out of the White House on her own and then get to one of the extraction points, either Mickey Mouse, which was across Lafayette Square at 16th and H Streets and would be indicated by a texted picture of the famous cartoon rodent, or else Donald Duck, which was on the corner of 15th and F, in front of the Treasury Department. If she totally lost contact due to her special phone being confiscated, lost or destroyed, she had to make it to a public computer terminal to use e-mail or get hold of an unsecured phone, preferably a Mighty Mart disposable, but all of these paled beside the obstacle of getting out of the White House once she’d been discovered and exposed as a spy.
Ever since the Clinton years, the White House had been equipped with several private cells and a soundproof interrogation room in the sub-basement near the security control room, where the Secret Service and sometimes the president himself or herself could conduct private and discreet questioning and attitude adjustment sessions with anyone they so desired and could lure into the White House. Hillary Clinton had damned near lived down there, and despite her public feminism, like all female rulers she was reputed to be especially cruel to women who crossed her. Practically speaking, if she was caught inside Sixteen Hundred Pennsylvania, Georgia wasn’t coming out again.
* * *
Casualty summary as of July 3rd
NDF military casualties—4,220 dead and 9,436 wounded
NAR civilian casualties—2,804 dead and 4,312 wounded
United States military casualties—72,642 dead and 100,657 wounded
United States civilian casualties—138,464 dead and 368,826 wounded, gassed, or ill from biowar agents, casualties overwhelmingly non-white
Aztlan military casualties—Est. approx. 192,000 dead, 164,000 wounded including those killed in Aztlan civil conflict beginning around June 30.
Aztlan civilian casualties—Unknown number wounded, gassed, or ill from biowar agents or killed in civil unrest during the collapse of Aztlan.
XVIII
CRY HAVOC
(D-Day plus 14 days)
And Caesar’s spirit, raging for revenge,
With Ate by his side come hot from hell,
Shall in these confines with a monarch’s voice
Cry “Havoc!” and let slip the dogs of war . . .
—Julius Caesar, Act 3, Scene One
The War Cabinet meeting in the White House Situation Room on the evening of July third was tense and vituperative. It had finally begun to sink into the ruling élite’s consciousness that barring some sudden stroke of deus ex machina the United States was going to lose the war, or at least be forced into a position that would be extremely difficult for even the liberal state-controlled media to spin as victory.
After a lengthy briefing on the military situation from Admiral Brava and General Scheisskopf, during which President Hunter Wallace mostly kept silent, Vice President of the United States Hugh Jenner spoke up. For the past several days, Wallace had been increasingly morose, withdrawn, and twitchy. A lifetime in politics warned Jenner that something bad was coming down the pike. Wallace knew that now the quick victory he had hoped for was no longer going to happen, his whole career was in ruins. He would be looking for someone to blame, and he would be willing to do anything in order to salvage something from the ruins. Heads of state in such positions are dangerous to the nations they rule. “Mr. President, I don’t think it would be inopportune now to discuss some of the political implications of all—of our present situation,” began Jenner carefully. “I need hardly remind you that tomorrow at two p.m. local time you are addressing the nation and the world in your annual Fourth of July speech. May I ask what you are going to tell the American people?”
“At least we have cable television back on line so he can address the nation and the world,” muttered Secretary of State David Modlin.
“Indeed, Mr. Secretary,” said Jenner. “That’s something of a minor miracle. But what are you going to say tomorrow, Mr. President? I haven’t seen any of your speechwriters around the West Wing any time today.”
“I was busy,” said Wallace sullenly. Yeah, busy with that blonde Halberstam bimbo, thought Jenner to himself. Wallace ignored his question and addressed the two Pentagon officers. “Admiral Brava, General Scheisskopf, I want you both to give me candid worst-case scenario assessments. How bad is this likely to get?”
Albert Scheisskopf cleared his throat. “General Logan’s situation at Anaconda seems at the moment to be the most desperate, sir. His men are out of food and water, and Logan himself is separated from his main force by almost four miles of exposed ground under such heavy enemy shellfire that he can’t re-unite his command. They are outnumbered and outgunned. The situations at Fairfield and Ponderay aren’t much better. The offensive from Aztlan has totally collapsed and right now, we’re having trouble getting accurate information out of there. There is a lot of casual rioting and shooting in the streets of Los Angeles and Sacramento, and apparently some generals are muttering about a military coup against El Presidente.”
The U.S. Army and Marines had thrown together a force of almost 100,000 men that was now moving across American Montana toward Anaconda on the NAR side, in an attempt to break the siege, reinforce and re-supply the beleaguered Group South. The Pentagon had stripped every last remaining combat arms soldier and most of the supply and personnel clerks, motor pool mechanics, MPs, cooks and bottle washers from over fifty bases for the purpose. Even so, half of the relief force was comprised of National Guardsmen in non-combat military occupational specialties, a number of companies that had been thrown into action during their last weeks of basic training, men and women who had been previously deemed medically unfit or too obese for combat, and recent retirees who had been called back to active service. This was no Baghdad Boogie, it was a last-ditch effort to avert the total disaster of having an American army clearly and undeniably decimated and defeated in the field, by a people and a nation whom the American media and ruling élite hated and held in contempt. The column was advancing slowly, and the field grade officers were reporting a high desertion and suicide rate among the ranks.
The Pentagon had also stripped every American continental base of the last of its motorized transport, and had begun commandeering civilian vehicles when that proved insufficient. When that was gone, there was no more. The United States Treasury had no money left to buy any more vehicles, weapons, or munitions, and no one in the U.S.A. or anywhere else in the world would extend them any credit. There had simply been too many bond and T-bill defaults, too many bailouts down through the years that had disappeared without a trace, too much willy-nilly printing of money to cover welfare payoffs and just plain bribes to minorities, unions, and special interests, as well as to pay the daily operating expenses of government that were nowhere near covered by depleted tax revenue as effective production of anything within the United States ceased. The New Deal had lasted for a century, but finally it had collapsed, when the United States at long last ran out of other people’s money. There had been too many defaults on things like Social Security and Medicare in the past for anyone to trust America with a dime anymore.
Scheisskopf’s face was haggard. This simply didn’t happen to the mighty by God United States of America military, unquestioned lords of every battlefield they surveyed since 1945. At least they were in their own minds, even if history didn’t quite bear that out in embarrassing little glitches like Vietnam, Iraq, and Afghanistan. “What do we hear from the Anaconda relief column?” asked President Wallace.
“The relief column is advancing with all speed, Mr. President, and every man and woman in that force will do their duty, I can promise you,” replied Scheisskopf.
“Except for the deserters,” replied Wallace dryly.
“They’re nearing Billings, but there seems to be a problem,” said Admiral Brava. “We still have aerial scouting by AWACs and choppers on that side of I-Fifteen, remember, out of range of the Nazi ray guns. Apparently, there is a large enemy force advancing on the relief column from the south, out of Wyoming. The NAR call it their Seventh Army, and we’ve learned it’s commanded by that kraut, Conrad Baumgarten.”
“The one who used to be the sniper back during the Trouble? The one they called Der Judenjäger?” asked Angela Herrin with distaste.
“The Jew Hunter, yes, ma’am,” replied Brava. “This is the flank attack that we were told would never happen by…” He didn’t dare to name Wallace and Janet Chalupiak to their faces. “Well, we were assured it would never happen by those who were in charge of planning and logistics, and we were compelled to proceed on the basis that there would be no threat from that quarter. We were assured that Wyoming is nothing but a big wasteland, the enemy is spread thin on the ground and never managed to fully assimilate the proud American cowboy spirit, and besides, cowboys are all closet homosexuals and did I never see the classic flick Brokeback Mountain? The evil racists walk softly in Wyoming, because the white people of that state secretly love all the world’s black and brown people, especially the noble Native Americans, despite the fact that for some reason there don’t seem to be any more Native Americans in Wyoming. The racists don’t dare maintain too great a troop presence there for fear of a pro-American revolt by fifty thousand secretly liberal and gaily inclined John Waynes and Clint Eastwoods on horseback, waving Old Glory and flourishing Winchesters like Rooster Cogburn. We see
m to be getting our strategic thinking from old Hollywood movies, by no means for the first time. Wyoming is so ripe for our plucking that we don’t have to worry about it, we will be welcomed in the streets of Laramie as liberators…” Brava couldn’t help it; his voice was rising almost to a scream of rage.
“It was Bagwell,” offered the Secretary of State, “Gator Dave” Modlin. “I thought we’d all agreed to blame it all on Bagwell, since he’s gone crazy and he’s not able to respond in the media from his rubber room.” Modlin was not being crass or cruel; he was simply stating rather bluntly a policy that had taken shape in the collective governmental mind since Secretary of Defense Marlon Bagwell had fled clucking and flapping his wings from the room. The narrative was already being fed out into the news cycle by administration talking heads and tame media people on the cable networks. Operation Strikeout was Marlon Bagwell’s baby, it had gone south, and Bagwell had broken under the pressure and lost his mind in remorse. The president, the Pentagon, the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and the rest of the cabinet and government were just along for the ride, and certainly not to blame for an American military and civilian death toll that might well top one million.
“We still haven’t figured out how the president is going to explain all this away in his nationwide address tomorrow. Admiral Brava, let’s cut to the chase. Without the nuclear option, what are our prospects?” asked Ronald Schiff bluntly. “Is the United States going to win this war?”
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