Liberty's Last Stand

by Stephen Coonts

  The missile depended on an accurate satellite survey of the terrain it would fly over to ensure it didn’t hit an obstacle, a system called Terrain Contour Matching. This feature allowed the missile to fly as close to the earth as possible, thereby making it difficult for defenders to acquire on radar and shoot down. GPS was used to guide it over the water to its preprogrammed coast-in point and in its terminal guidance phase. So precisely where were the power plants that Soetoro wanted destroyed? It would require several days of staff work to come up with that information from existing satellite databases and then pass it on in a targeting order to the ships selected to launch the missiles.

  Cart McKiernan wasn’t thrilled about using Tomahawks in this manner. Blasting the hell out of Texas could deplete the navy’s inventory of Tomahawks, which might hurt America down the road, assuming that down the road there still was an America and a United States Navy that needed the weapon. The Sunnis and Shiites were fighting each other in the Middle East, North Korea’s dictator was strutting as usual, China was bullying its neighbors, and Iran was once again giving the world the finger over its nuclear ambitions. Israel was worried about ISIS and Iranian attacks. And what if next week Soetoro decided to punish Oklahoma, Louisiana, or Florida?

  The alternative to Tomahawks was strikes against the power plants using carrier aircraft. USS Texas had just escaped from Galveston, so she was at sea somewhere in the Gulf of Mexico. Giving her an aircraft carrier for a torpedo target didn’t appeal to the CNO’s military mind. Losing an aircraft carrier or two off the Texas coast would be a poor trade for some power plants, many of which were probably scheduled to be retired in a few years anyway and replaced with more efficient ones.

  Of course, McKiernan could pass the request on to the air force and ask if they wanted a piece of this action, but that didn’t strike him as a good idea, either. Funding for the next generation of Tomahawk was the stake on the table, and if the navy couldn’t complete assigned missions with the missiles it had, perhaps it didn’t really need those new, more expensive missiles after all. And no doubt the air force already had a full plate.

  McKiernan attached a memo to the order authorizing the use of one hundred Tomahawks against Texas power plants, and he directed that the plants with the largest generating capacity be attacked first using five missiles per plant. Losing the generating capacity from twenty big power plants would play hob with the Texas grid and leave millions of treasonous Texans sweltering in the dark, which should satisfy even Barry Soetoro, Cart McKiernan thought.

  With CNO’s proviso, the presidential order went off to the strike planners.

  Colonel Nathaniel Danaher spent the morning and afternoon in the B-52 hangar spaces talking to the pilots, crewmen, and ground personnel attached to the squadrons. He wanted to know if any of them would fight for Texas and Oklahoma. A few people from those two states volunteered, but the vast majority didn’t want to fight for anybody. He was about to give it up as a bad job when his handheld squawked. “Major General Hays is here, sir. He came on the last C-130.”

  The officer on the other end was a major whom Danaher liked because he was competent and could think on his feet. “You know where to put the troops?”

  “Yes, sir. Augment our people at the ammo depot and fuel farm.”

  “Tell General Hays I’ll meet him at base operations.”

  Nate Danaher got into his staff car and rode across the parking mat the two miles to base ops.

  JR Hays was standing there in his camos. Danaher saluted, and it was returned. It felt a little strange saluting JR, who was ten years younger than he was and had been a newly minted major when he served with him, but he did it proudly, with a grin.

  “It went well, sir,” he said. “Total surprise. We even got into the message center before they notified the Pentagon, which bought us a few hours, anyway.” Of course, with cell phones, everyone in Bossier City and Shreveport knew the base had been taken.

  They walked into base ops and headed for the planning room as Danaher reported. “The commanding general was very unhappy when we stormed into his office and captured him.”

  “I’ll bet he was,” JR said with a smile.

  They stood in front of a large wall-mounted map and the two career soldiers examined it with practiced eyes.

  “As you suspected,” Nate Danaher said, “most of the people here don’t want to fight anybody, but we have enough volunteers with the right skills to make up a couple of crews.”

  “Fine.”

  The primary reason JR had wanted Barksdale was to prevent B-52s from bombing Texas cities or military bases. Taking as many of the bombers as possible to Texas was not in the cards since the infrastructure and equipment to maintain and fly the planes, not to mention their weapons, was here. It would take weeks, if not months, to move all that to a new base.

  Then there was the fact that B-52s, and B-1s for that matter, were essentially defenseless against modern jet fighters equipped with air-to-air missiles with ranges up to a hundred miles. They were dinosaurs and could only be used when one had absolute air supremacy. The B-1s had managed strikes yesterday on railroad bridges in the Powder River Basin and today on Fort Polk and Whiteman Air Force Base in Missouri because there was no air opposition. In the future, there would be. Meanwhile the U.S. Air Force would be getting its act together, and strikes against Barksdale, as long as it was occupied, and Dyess and the other air bases in Texas would soon be forthcoming.

  JR Hays and Nate Danaher knew that their window of opportunity would close as soon as Soetoro’s brain trust could slam it shut, so they intended to use the bombers while they still could.

  “We hammered Whiteman,” JR said, jabbing at the map with a finger, “but of course we didn’t get all the B-2s. Expect a few to visit tonight.”

  “We have four F-22s,” Danaher said. JR had already seen them as his ride taxied in. “But no one to fly them. One of the pilots shot up the instrument panel of his before he got off the boarding ladder. The other three aren’t interested in joining Texas.”

  JR merely nodded. A competent F-22 pilot—if he had one, which he didn’t—might have been able to find B-2s in the night sky, but F-16 pilots certainly couldn’t. “At least those are four F-22s that can’t be used against us,” he said to Danaher.

  JR went back to the map. “We are loading an armored brigade at Fort Hood onto a train. Tanks and troopers and artillery. They’ll be rolling tonight. At first they said it couldn’t be done. Anyway, they’ll be coming through here tomorrow morning. By tomorrow night I want them here.” He pointed to a position between Barksdale and Fort Polk.

  “A flight of four F-16s will be along in—” he consulted his watch—“about an hour. Since we don’t have aerial tankers, we’ll have to refuel them, top them off. As soon as we can get some B-52s ready, assuming they aren’t destroyed by B-2s from Whiteman, launch them and their fighter escorts at the bridges.”

  JR jabbed at the map, which only showed rivers, towns, and interstates. “They know their targets. I want every highway and railroad bridge across the Mississippi from Baton Rouge to above Memphis in the river by morning. Elvin Gentry says it can be done, and he swore he could do it.”

  “How many bridges is that?” Danaher asked.

  “I don’t know, but Elvin does. All he has to do is drop at least a span of each one into the river. He says JDAMs will do it. Any intact bridges left standing tomorrow will be attacked with F-16s, or any B-52s or B-1s we have left.” JDAM was an acronym that stood for Joint Direct Attack Munition. It was a guidance package that screwed into a dumb—freefall—bomb, enabling it to make a direct hit on a preprogrammed target.

  JR took a deep breath and let the air out slowly as he surveyed the map. His strategy was simple. He didn’t want to fight in Texas, but Louisiana would do fine. If Soetoro’s army could get across the Mississippi River to fight. An opposed crossing of a big river was the most difficult maneuver an army could undertake, the equivalent of an amphibio
us assault against a dug-in enemy.

  They had discussed this objective before, but now that they were on the cusp of trying it, they looked at it again, discussed logistics, roads, what the enemy might do.

  “I wish we could get more B-52 crews,” Nate Danaher said, a tad wistfully JR thought.

  “If you think we have problems getting people to fight, Soetoro’s forces have them worse,” JR assured him. “I suspect the U.S. Army and Air Force are on the verge of falling apart, and will unless Soetoro starts putting people against a wall and shooting them. Still, mutiny and mass desertions will certainly slow them down. Our edge is that our people are fighting for something, for a free and independent Republic of Texas. Soetoro is fighting to become an absolute dictator, and the people in uniform aren’t stupid. They’ll figure out the difference, if they don’t know it already.”

  “You put a lot of faith in average, run-of-the mill people,” Danaher murmured.

  “Average, run-of-the-mill people won their independence from Great Britain,” JR shot back, “and have fought in every war this country ever had. They were at Valley Forge and the Alamo, at Shiloh, Gettysburg, and the Wilderness. Not to mention Belleau Wood, Normandy, Iwo Jima, Vietnam, and Afghanistan. You and I spent our military careers leading them. They’ll fight for freedom, all right, to the last drop of blood. Barry Soetoro is on the wrong damned side.”

  TWENTY-TWO

  With the power out again in suburban Maryland on Friday morning, Lincoln B. Greenwood was a changed man. His adventures the previous day in the supermarket had shaken him to the core. To be in the midst of a mob of people savagely fighting for basic necessities—and fighting just as hard as anyone else—had given him a glimpse of the monster in all of us.

  Eat or starve. Move or die. Kill or be killed.

  Those monsters were waiting out there in the darkness now. Evil people, unrestrained by the bonds of civilization or religion. People willing to do anything to survive.

  “We gotta get outta here,” he said to his wife, Anne.

  “Where will we go?” she asked reasonably as she placed candles around the house for the coming evening.

  He gestured vaguely. He hadn’t the foggiest idea, but here there was chaos, so instinct told him to leave. To run. To escape.

  “What about Suzanne and her family?”

  The daughter, the son-in-law, and the baby; Lincoln B. Greenwood hadn’t thought about them all morning. He glanced guiltily at the box of Similac powder and the baby food jars still resting where he had put them on the kitchen counter.

  “She married that moron; they are going to have to take care of themselves.”

  His wife glowered at him, but Lincoln didn’t notice. He walked around the living room looking out the windows at the darkness. He could see faint light in a neighbor’s window across the cul-de-sac. Candles, he figured. The other houses on the cul-de-sac appeared dark. Maybe the neighbors had already left. Maybe that was the smart thing to do. Get in the car and go. Somewhere. Escape.

  He felt the urge to run, to flee. Adrenaline. He broke into a sweat.

  “Get packed up,” he said to his wife. “Your meds, some clothes. Some food. Nothing else. We’re leaving.”

  “But where are we going?” she demanded.

  “I don’t know. We can’t stay here. They’ve been rioting in Baltimore all week. They rioted at the supermarket yesterday. Power is off, phones are off, internet is off. When the inner-city thugs come to the suburbs to loot and burn and rape, we had better be gone.”

  “I don’t want to leave.”

  “Dear wife, we don’t even have a gun, because you wouldn’t have one in your house.” That’s when Lincoln B. Greenwood lost it. “I don’t give a shit what you want!” he roared to his shocked wife. “I am not going to sit here waiting to be murdered or die of starvation. Now get upstairs and pack what you want to take.”

  Greenwood ran upstairs and threw three pairs of jeans and some shirts into a bag. Some underwear and socks. He added his blood pressure medicine and his prostate pills to the bag, his toothbrush and toothpaste, his razor and shaving cream, plus some laxatives and a bottle of aspirin.

  Then he went to a safe in his closet, opened it, and got out the strips of gold he had invested in when the economy was going to hell in 2008 and 2009. A few Krugerrands. It was damn little, but paper dollars weren’t going to be the coin of the realm and credit cards were worthless. Not that it mattered. He had maybe fifty dollars in his wallet and, since the power was out, no prospect of getting more from his bank, even if the ATMs worked or the bank was open and willing to convert every dollar in his savings and checking accounts to cash, which they wouldn’t be.

  He stuffed the gold into his pocket and zipped up his bag. Carried it downstairs. Anne was still upstairs packing.

  A car pulled up in the driveway and he went to the window. His daughter, Suzanne. He opened the door for her. “We’re leaving, Dad. Going to Gerald’s parents’ place in Front Royal. We’re going to ride it out there.”

  “Good idea. We’re getting ready to leave too. I got some Similac and baby food for you. I’ll put it in a bag while you go upstairs and say goodbye to Mom.”

  When Suzanne left, Lincoln Greenwood went upstairs to check on his wife. She was sitting on a stool in her bathroom crying.

  “Are you packed?”

  “Oh, Lincoln. I feel as if I am saying goodbye to my life. What is to become of us?”

  “If you don’t get a move on, woman, we’re going to be dead.” He could feel the evil out there in the night. “Pack your meds and a few clothes and let’s get in the car and go while there is still time.”

  She sobbed, trying to pull herself together. And nodded. “You’re right. Another few minutes.”

  So he went downstairs and put his bag in the car, which was in the garage. He would pull the handle that disconnected the door and raise it to get the car out. But not until they were ready to go.

  Five long minutes later, as he threw all the dry and canned food they had in garbage bags and stuffed them in the car, he heard engine noises.

  He ran to the living room window and looked out. A police car and a late-model pickup were examining the houses in the cul-de-sac. Lincoln Greenwood went back to the kitchen and helped himself to a carving knife from the block on the counter. He put it up his left sleeve, leaving only a bit of the handle sticking out.

  Then he went back to the window. Four young black men were coming up the walk, and all four had pistols in their hands.

  One of them pounded on the door. “Open up in there or we’ll kill all of you and burn this goddamn thing down around your bodies.”

  Greenwood unlocked the door and they rushed in. One of them pointed a pistol in his face. “Hello, asshole. Who else is here?”

  “My wife is upstairs.”

  He jerked his head at his compatriots and they went charging up the stairs.

  “You and me are goin’ to the kitchen, motha-fuck. We want the food. All of it. And anything else you got.”

  Greenwood led the way.

  The man immediately began opening cupboards and rooting through the pantry. He turned on Greenwood and pointed the pistol in his face. “Where is the grub, honkey? Don’t tell me you people ain’t got no grub in the house. Cause if you do, I’ll just shoot you now and be done with it.”

  “In the car in the garage. We were just about to leave.”

  “So we got here just in the nick of time. Ain’t that sweet? You lead. Get it out.”

  He went into the garage and began emptying the garbage bags of spaghetti noodles and cans onto the floor.

  “Pick it up. Take it to the front door.”

  Greenwood hoisted a bag in each hand and led off. The thug picked up another and followed him, gun in hand.

  When the bags were at the front door, the man said, “Let’s go get the rest of it. Seems like you oughta be carryin’,” and he laughed.

  Another trip cleaned out the car. The men who w
ent upstairs were rooting around and shouting to each other, as if they were on an Easter egg hunt.

  In the kitchen, the punk with Greenwood said, “You got any guns?”

  “No.”

  “You better not be lying, ’cause we’re gonna look. If I find you lied, I’ll just shoot you like a dog and that will be that.”

  “I’m not lying.” Lincoln Greenwood was scared and his voice was an octave high and quavered.

  “Pills. We want all the pills you got, motha-fuck. And your grass and powder and smack.”

  “Pills are upstairs.” That was a mistake, Greenwood realized. There was nothing in the medicine cabinet in his bathroom, and if the man looked, there would be hell to pay. “We don’t have any dope,” he added.

  “Like shit! You lyin’ asshole. All you white motha-fucks got shit to get high on. You buy it in Baltimore from the guys in the ’hood. Us niggers ain’t got the money for nothin’ but pot. It’s white trash like you that buy the high-dollar shit and then convict the poor dudes sellin’ it who ain’t got no other way to make a livin’.”

  The man, who was perhaps twenty or twenty-one, looked around, surveying the crystal and kick-knacks in the kitchen. He pointed his pistol at the counter television that Anne watched every morning when she made breakfast and pulled the trigger. The shot sounded like a cannon. The front of the television showered glass on the counter.

  Then the gunman turned his back on Lincoln B. Greenwood. Greenwood pulled the knife from his left sleeve and rammed it between the man’s ribs on his right side up to the hilt. Gave it a savage twist and jerked the knife out. Blood squirted out, under pressure.