He tapped a switch and an image of a black man, wearing a preacher’s collar, appeared in front of them. The Reverend Johnston was a gifted orator, the President had to admit, even if his speeches were more akin to Hitler than Martin Luther King. She listened as he raged, blaming the white man and treacherous black men for all the disasters that black Americans had suffered, before claiming that his forces were finally ready to begin the revolution that would destroy the old power structure and create a new world of social justice for all. The preacher had been a marginal political force in the world before Henderson’s Disease – indeed, the black voters had found him something of an embarrassment – but now his blend of Black Nationalism and social justice was finding a far greater following than he had ever dreamed would follow him. In times of hardship, the President reflected, people would follow the man who spoke to them on their level...and, thanks to the Mayor of New York, far too many people had lost all faith in the system.
“Enough of that,” she snapped, angrily. Spencer clicked the volume on to mute, leaving Johnston raving on silently in the background. “What do they actually want?”
“They sent out one of the hostages – a young black woman who had caught Henderson’s Disease – with a typewritten note,” Spencer explained. “They’re demanding that we withdraw all federal forces from New York, recognise their control over the city, ship in a million doses of vaccine and pay recompense for the numerous sins committed against black men and women by the United States Government.”
“My predecessor,” the President said icily, “was a black man.”
“They do not feel that he was black enough,” Spencer admitted. “My intelligence officer has been skimming through the literature provided by the Black Movement of America – the BAM. Johnston feels that President Obama was a sell-out because he didn't bring about a New Heaven and a New Earth for them. It’s not something that anyone with half a working mind can follow – a black man who climbs out of the ghetto is an Uncle Tom, while one that remains in the mud and sucks the federal teat is sticking it to the man – but it’s been going down a storm. Johnston really believes the shit he’s been peddling to young black youths without prospects and they can sense it. He has an entire army of young men who will do whatever he asks them to do.”
“I don’t believe it,” the Secretary of Defence objected. “How could he do this right under our noses?”
Spencer snorted. “I asked the NYPD liaison officer about that,” he said, sardonically. “It seems that the NYPD did attempt to sound the alarm, but their senior officers shot it down on the grounds that an investigation into the Black American Movement would be” – he held up his fingers in mocking quotation marks – “racist. It seems that the NYPD and the city government was prepared to sweep the problem under the rug rather than try to deal with it and take the flack. The fear of being thought racist held them paralysed. Besides...”
He snorted again. “Besides, the governor was convinced that the BAM wasn't actually anything to do with the Black Muslims and regarded their particular brand of Christianity as more favourable to the country than the Islamic movements,” he added. “It hardly matters just what they were thinking, Madam President; the fact remains that the country is coming apart at the seams. We need to take action quickly.”
“But why is this happening?” The President asked, desperately. No President since Lincoln had faced the prospect of social unrest on a massive scale. All the talk about uprisings against Clinton or Bush had just been talk, with few real incidents. This was...real. “What is happening to the country?”
“I’m afraid that it was inevitable, Madam President,” Christopher White said. The Attorney-General looked unabashed at his own words. “The country has been under a great deal of stress for years.”
The President frowned at him. Christopher White was a retired Army Colonel who had become a lawyer and then entered local politics through the Tea Party Movement. His political attitudes were regarded as slightly to the right of Genghis Khan, yet he was a remarkably effective administrator and she hadn't hesitated to take him into the Cabinet to help balance the ticket. The mainstream media had been attacking him since the day he had first entered politics, but he hadn't allowed them to beat him into submission, or to drive him into outright radicalism. He was older than the President by some years, yet he had been a friend of her husband’s and, after his death, stayed in touch with Paula before she had been elected into office. She didn't always agree with him and his politics, but she trusted him.
“Explain,” she ordered. “Just what is happening to us?”
White took a moment to gather his thoughts. “There’s a common joke, Madam President, that claims that a country is nothing more than a group of people united by a shared delusion about the past and a hatred of their neighbours,” he said, calmly. “Like all good jokes, there is a certain amount of truth in it. Nations cling to their founding myths and distrust their neighbours; after all, the distrust of their neighbours is what unites them. You could say that that is as true of us as it is true of...well, the French.
“A nation, therefore, is a group of people who share the same basic outlook on life. An empire, by contrast, is a group of peoples who do not share the same outlook, ideology or beliefs. The British Empire, for example, included Christians, Hindus, Muslims and Jews – and millions of people who didn't really have much in common. The empire was held together by military force, with the British on the top and their allies just underneath, and when that military force failed, there was little holding the empire together. Its collapse gave birth to many smaller nations, yet even those nations were not real nations; India and Pakistan separated into two – later three – nations, while many African states became empires in their own right – multiethnic states held together by strongmen.”
He shrugged. “The lesson of history is that nations remain intact while empires – multiethnic states held together by the ones on top – tend to shudder and eventually break apart. There was little holding them together apart from military force and when that force failed, so did the empires.”
The President tapped the table impatiently, willing him to get to the point. “As a society, we have been developing...fault lines of our own,” White said, refusing to be hurried. “The BAM is geared around exploiting black resentment at how they are treated by society, either told to climb out of the ghetto or subjected to social programs that claim to help, but actually work to keep people down and trapped in a place they cannot escape. There is a common identity – black men and women – and Johnson is using that to form a nation, one based around a shared belief.
“The same could be said for the Hispanics within the country. Many of them are illegal immigrants, or related to illegal immigrants. They see the government – particularly the local governments – as being against them and fear that Henderson’s Disease is just another attempt to get all of the immigrants to register. They don’t become Americans, not like my ancestors did when they got off the boat in Boston; they attempt to recreate Mexico and Mexican conditions within the south. This, in turn, provokes anger and resistance from the Anglo-Americans living within the area, who believe that the immigrants will eventually turn the American South into Little Mexico. They believe that the Federal Government, which has been seemingly unwilling to enforce immigration laws, is actually on the side of the enemy.
“And then there are other smaller groups. Homosexuals, for example, think that the nation discriminates against them. The Gun Community believes that the federal government is trying to take away their weapons. There are hundreds of Christian groups that believe that the liberals are taking prayer out of the schools and seeking to destroy American society; there are liberal groups that fear that bible-bashers from Texas will eventually create a theocracy on American soil. In such a climate, conspiracy theories profligate rapidly and are believed.”
He shook his head. “I could go on for hours,” he concluded, “but I’ll spare you t
hat. The bottom line, Madam President, is that there are many groups within this country that do not see themselves as American, or believe that the country is turning against them. The Mayor of New York, whatever was going through his head, convinced them that they were right. I expect that the trouble we have seen so far is only the beginning.”
The President frowned. “And what, exactly, do you suggest I should do?”
White hesitated. “You cannot allow this problem to get out of hand,” he said, flatly. “I suggest making an example of Johnston and his men.”
“That may not be easy,” Spencer said. “Morale within the armed forces is low.”
He tapped the remote and a chart appeared above the table. “Outside the families that are deployed outside the country with army personnel, there are very few who have been vaccinated against smallpox,” he said. “That is worrying men and women who are on deployment, either in the States or outside the country. They are nervous about their families and want them protected against the disease. So far, thankfully, we haven’t had a general breakdown in discipline, but we have had a great deal of grumbling and some pilferage. A handful of vaccine cases have vanished and, I suspect, used to inoculate some military families.
“This is actually worse in the case of the National Guard,” he continued, flatly. “The Guard is, by and large, currently being used to blockade their own cities. They’ve been coming under attack from random shooters within the city, but that isn't the real problem. The Guardsmen have families and they’re trapping those families within the cities.”
White nodded. “The vaccination program was targeted on emergency service personnel and others first,” he added. “The public might have accepted that if it was all clearly honest and in their best interests. The Mayor of New York has convinced them that” – he affected a thicker accent – “filthy rich bastards have been using their money to get vaccinated, while the poor have been left to die of Henderson’s Disease.” He returned his voice to normal when the President glowered at him. “Public faith in the government has collapsed and, at the same time, the tools you need to use to restore order have been weakened.”
“It didn't help when some idiot torched a storage warehouse in Detroit,” the Secretary of State added. “They burned ten thousand doses of vaccine in the fire, despite heroic efforts by the fire department.”
“It is going to get worse,” White said, ignoring the interruption. “The economy works the way it does because the system – our system – works smoothly. Or perhaps I should say it did work smoothly. The disease is keeping people out of work, so businesses are grinding to a halt, which means that people are getting laid off, which in turn means that they won’t be able to afford to pay for food, which means that they’re going to become very hungry...”
“And it’s affecting our supplies from overseas,” the Secretary of the Treasury said. “The entire global trading system has collapsed. We’re just not getting very much from Japan or China – hell, China may well be infected with Henderson’s Disease. The oil tankers from the Middle East are being diverted everywhere by their owners...”
The President held up a hand. “Enough,” she said, flatly. She’d heard too much about the disasters, an endless series of disasters, in the last few days. Before Henderson’s Disease, they would have been a serious issue, yet now they were nothing. “Here is what we are going to do.”
She tapped points off her fingers as she spoke. “First, recover the Brooklyn Medical Centre as soon as possible, taking Johnston and his people alive,” she ordered. “I know it may not be possible, but make it clear to the officer in charge that it would be appreciated if they can pull it off. Once we take them, we try them for treason and execute them once they are found guilty.
“Second, I want vaccination programs to be closely supervised,” she continued. “The priority is to remain on emergency personnel and people who are willing to work, but I also want it expanded to cover military dependents and farmers and their families. I want those people pulled out of the cities and transferred to safe communities as soon as possible.
“Third, I want the FBI to spearhead a series of raids to mop up as many radical groups as possible. We can arrest and detain them under the various antiterrorist protocols; once the crisis ends, we can free them or try them for treason. I want this done as gently as possible, but it has to be done. I do not want any fucking” – she smiled inwardly at their reactions to her profanity – “about with fears of appearing racist or community relations or whatever. I want these groups taken off the playing field yesterday.”
“Madam President,” her Press Secretary warned, “that will look very bad to the public...”
“I know,” the President said, cutting her off. “I don’t think that we have any choice.”
Chapter Nineteen
How do you get elected in a post-modern country? Answer; you pledge to take money from one person’s pocket – preferably someone your voters don’t like – and put it in someone else’s pocket. That’s how you end up with ‘tax the rich’ and other dunderheaded schemes that really cannot work for long. And if your opponents don’t like it...? Call them racists, call them capitalists, call them anything you like, as long as it sounds bad. Set one group against the other and keep the pot boiling; that’s how you win an election. And really, who cares what happens to the country anyway?
- Jim Revells
New York, USA
Day 18
Al was feeling cross as he watched the Brooklyn Medical Centre from what he devoutly hoped was a safe distance. The terrorists – or so he had decided to call them, although the mainstream media was still arguing over the precise definition – had shown themselves quite willing and able to take shots at any police officer who showed his face, even though negotiations were in progress. Al personally suspected that the talks wouldn't get anywhere. The terrorists hadn't even allowed them to recover the dead bodies from the surrounding area, perhaps suspecting that the NYPD would use the opportunity to slip an attack force into the hospital.
He scowled over towards the television van, filming the hospital in the hopes of capturing something interesting on film. Rather predictably, the terrorists hadn't tried shooting at the media; instead, they’d doubled the barrage of propaganda streaming out onto the internet. Al didn't know what orifice the speaker was pulling his words from, but he had to admit that they were having an effect on the rest of the city. Parts of New York had become no-go areas for cops, despite the fact that the media kept trying to warn them that the more public contact they had, the greater the chance of coming down with Henderson’s Disease.
One of the reporters – a middle-aged man who looked more like a bureaucrat than a reporter – started to amble over toward Al, clearly looking for an interview. Al fixed him with a look that made him break off and wander elsewhere, perhaps hoping that one of the newer cops would talk to him and say something indiscreet. Al wished him luck; apart from spokesmen, cops were generally discouraged from talking to the media. It was far too easy for a hostile reporter to take a statement out of context or simply misquote a source, who would then have no way to complain or to gain recompense. Careers had been wrecked that way. The MSM might have tried to overlook it, but the bloggers had picked up on just why the BAM had been ignored, adding yet another nail to the Mayor’s political coffin. The fear of appearing racist seemed like nothing compared to losing an entire hospital and hundreds of medical personnel, including dozens of young women.
His fists clenched as he imagined the scene inside the hospital. The NYPD might not have been permitted to take active measures against the BAM, but they had built up a fairly comprehensive picture of what the Reverend Johnston had called its action arm, the revolutionary vanguard that would pave the way for global revolution. Al had no idea just what the man had been smoking, but the bastard had done an excellent job of building up a force that included men who had no scruples and a complete willingness to do whatever was necessary to ac
complish his aim. Between them, they had an impressive list of convictions for violent crime, rape and murder; many of them had only been spared a lifetime in jail because of witnesses being frightened into silence. The BAM looked after its own.
He didn't want to think about what they could be doing in the hospital, for they had to know by now that they’d captured hundreds of people dying of Henderson’s Disease. It wasn't hard to realise that merely being in that environment, without protection, would doom them all to infection and certain death. Even if they somehow got out of the hospital and through the steel walls the police and National Guard had thrown up to seal off the area, they were still doomed. Henderson’s Disease would burn through their bodies and kill them. When they realised that, would they lose themselves in an orgy of rape and murder?
The Reverend Johnston had demanded vaccines, of course, but Al knew from his briefings that the vaccine couldn't cure a person who was already infected. The BAM had launched the assault because they believed, judging from Johnson’s increasingly hysterical videos, that there was a cure and it had merely been withheld in the hope that the black population of the United States would drop dead of Henderson’s Disease. Al knew better and, soon enough, the BAM would know as well. What would they do then?
The Coward's Way of War Page 18