I WILL NOT recount the many Holy War battles that followed, most of which are now studied by schoolchildren as highlights of modern American history. Jordan and the military were methodical, carefully consolidating their position in each state or region before proceeding to the next. Resistance to troops on the ground was fierce, with many thousands of Sec militiamen and -women dying as they bravely attacked tanks and armored personnel carriers with bulldozers, trucks, and buses. But federal air power proved irresistible.
After Hawaii, Minnesota, and Illinois fell, there was a hiatus before the government attempted to take the Northeast. It became increasingly difficult to obtain reliable news from the West. We knew that in San Francisco and Los Angeles, as much as 40 percent of the adult population participated in guerrilla-style attacks on the centers and symbols of federal power. Sympathetic nations and citizens around the world offered to re-arm the resistance, but federal control of sea and air was such that very few weapons found their way into the occupied cities. When weapons and ammunition were exhausted, the guerrilla attacks died off. Tens of thousands of citizens in California alone were killed in violent confrontation with the Joshua Brigades sent to maintain order in the principal cities.
By mid-autumn, the feds took Boston from the water and began an overland march to the north and south, slowly securing Vermont and Maine, and then Rhode Island and eastern Connecticut. By October, they drove north through Philadelphia, pausing along the Raritan River in New Brunswick. Most people thought the Holy War was nearly over.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
Siege
2019–2020
10. When thou comest nigh unto a city to fight against it, then proclaim peace unto it.
11. And it shall be, if it make thee answer of peace, and open unto thee, then it shall be, that all the people that is found therein shall be tributaries unto thee, and they shall serve thee.
12. And if it will make no peace with thee, but will make war against thee, then thou shalt besiege it.
—Deuteronomy 20
WE ALWAYS BELIEVED THAT, one way or another, the Sec resistance in America would make its last stand on the island of Manhattan. But eighteen months before, working late in the office on the interposition strategy, I was genuinely startled when the governor pulled me aside and asked me a strange question.
“Greg,” he said, “you studied history. What do you know about the Siege of Leningrad during World War II?”
I was silent for more than a few moments, struggling to remember something interesting or useful. In a war filled with so many dark moments and impossible horrors, I knew that the Siege of Leningrad was one of the worst.
“All I know, sir, is that there was terrible suffering, including mass starvation. And also, of course, heroism. Do you know the famous story about the seed guy?”
“Seed guy? Nope.”
“Before the war,” I explained, “a renowned Russian botanist had made discoveries that revolutionized agriculture and the ability of Russia to feed its people. He was a hero to all of Russia. I can’t remember his name. But, there in Leningrad, he had amassed the largest collection of seeds in the world. The collection was carefully protected during the siege, as they believed that it was the key to avoiding starvation once the war was over. During the siege his staff died of starvation one by one. Finally, the last scientist sat in the laboratory surrounded by these seeds—all edible. All he needed to do to survive was to start eating the seeds. He didn’t. He starved to death rather than eat a single one. Can you imagine? Sitting surrounded by food and having the willpower to starve. Funny, it’s the only specific thing I remember about the Siege of Leningrad. Sieges, I think, are all about food.”
The governor then asked me to undertake some research—discreetly—about the history and conduct of sieges. He wanted to know what we might expect should the Holies decide to blockade New York, and what we could do to prepare.
I turned first to the Bible and was soon gripped by the notion that a siege of Manhattan might be too tempting for the Holies—obsessed as they were with the Old Testament—to resist. Siege was one of the main punishments that the Hebrew god Yahweh would use against His people as punishment for their disobedience; and disobedience, in evangelical eyes, was the main characteristic of our city. I soon discovered that the Old Testament was filled with examples of siege and contained detailed instructions about how to conduct them and how to defend against them.
We believed that Jordan and the feds would understand that an outright assault on Manhattan would come at a very high cost to the nation. The high-rise nature of the island and the extraordinary density of building would make conventional attack strategies difficult. And then there was the symbolic and political aspect. Would even the most ardent fundamentalist believe that the American people would tolerate the US government itself reducing the new World Trade Center building or other New York landmarks to rubble? We also hoped that the feds would realize that the United States was simply too dependent on New York—financially, economically, and culturally—to destroy it. And so, even without the biblical mandate, a siege seemed to us to be the preferred military strategy: surround Manhattan, blockade all goods and travel on and off the island, and wait. Starve the decadent city folks into submission. And if submission never comes, then a conventional amphibious assault, to subdue the city without destroying it, would be far easier against a weakened population. The Bible, in this case, really did have all the answers.
Within two weeks of my first conversation with the governor about the Siege of Leningrad, he had appointed a clandestine working group dedicated to siege preparation. Our first insight was that the outer boroughs of the city could easily be taken by ground troops employing conventional methods, and a blockade or siege, were it imposed, would almost certainly be limited to Manhattan. Then, to our great relief, our engineers advised that short of dynamiting the three massive tunnels that fed the city’s water system—a step that would render New York uninhabitable for decades—there was no practical way to cut off all the water inputs to Manhattan.
Electricity was a bit less clear. We had only one small power plant on the island, but multiple cables supplied the city from the north, east, and west. The good news was that the grid supplying Manhattan was complex and interconnected and not designed to be switched off from a location outside Manhattan. As a result, shutting off all power to the island was not a simple matter of flipping a few switches. But with effort, it could be done. We settled on two steps to make this more difficult. It turned out there were only five engineers capable of executing a deliberate shutdown of large portions of the grid in Manhattan. Each of these men was brought into our planning and moved with their families into Manhattan. The grid diagrams, shutdown procedures, and other materials necessary for others to figure it out were quietly lost and erased from the Con Ed computers.
Our second strategy was far riskier and more expensive. Using Bloomberg Foundation money, in only five months of work three new super-conducting cables were installed in unusued conduits under the Hudson and East Rivers. They appeared on no system map or diagram and were unknown to the rest of Con Ed’s personnel. Unless they were found and physically destroyed, these new cables would automatically route power from Westchester, the outer boroughs, and New Jersey into Manhattan if the existing feeder cables were disconnected. We were not completely certain they would work. Nor could we be sure that this major piece of engineering had escaped the notice of the federal authorities. But it was the best we could do under the circumstances.
In a biblical siege, if the wells could not be poisoned or fouled, the principal purpose of troops surrounding the besieged city was to deny it supplies of food, and starve the citizens into submission. My study of Leningrad and other modern sieges yielded key strategic guidance for our preparations. First, we would attempt to stockpile as much food as possible before the siege commenced. I learned that virtually all the food stockpiles in Leningrad became targets for German bombing and
arson, so we decided that ours needed to be made as secure as possible. We chose the largely empty workrooms and storage facilities adjacent to almost every subway station in Manhattan, and they were quietly adapted for food storage. But stockpiles alone would not feed Manhattan.
At my recommendation, the governor hired the charismatic doyenne of urban agriculture, Annie Novak, who ten years before had pioneered large-scale, for-profit vegetable farming on the rooftops of Brooklyn. Her job was to develop plans to quickly convert every available patch of land in Manhattan—and every rooftop that could take the weight—to the production of vegetables and other food should a siege be commenced. Under her guidance, hundreds of thousands of yards of green-roof soil mix began to be stockpiled at every sanitation garage in Manhattan. No one except a few bemused sanitation workers noticed that the sanitation trucks that usually hauled road salt were now loaded with a custom mixture of sterile light soils and pure compost. Annie also established extensive collections of vegetable seeds and seedlings at every public library branch in Manhattan and organized a small army of community organizers and urban farmers who would be ready—at the governor’s signal—to fan out across the island and teach the population of the world’s most densely populated place to become self-sufficient in food. As far as we could tell, the federal authorities never learned of these efforts.
But even if Manhattan managed to feed itself for some time, other supplies, such as medicines, would be critical. Close observers at the time noted that the governor’s jet logged multiple trips to London, Stockholm, Oslo, and Helsinki. The goodwill of northern Europe, and the governor’s money, resulted in substantial commitments from foreign governments and companies to step up and provide New York, if necessary, with the essential goods that it normally procured domestically. But how to bring supplies into a blockaded Manhattan remained a vexing question, right up to that week in November 2018 when we watched with alarm the advance of the federal forces, represented on F3 by little lines of gold crusader crosses marching across the electronic map.
By the time the federal troops reached the Raritan River in New Jersey, a strange calm had settled over the city. The normal throng of tourists and business travellers left town, all commuters returned to the suburbs, and trains and airlines suspended service. Anyone left in New York assumed they would be here for the duration. State Guard troops were stationed at places where major highways entered the city, but with few tanks and no effective antiaircraft defenses, we realized these checkpoints would fall quickly against any regular military force determined to proceed. We had little hope of keeping federal troops out of the Bronx, Queens, Brooklyn, or Staten Island should they choose to advance from the north and east. But Manhattan itself was heavily and effectively fortified, with each potential landing point around the island defended by multiple rows of barbed wire, concrete barriers, and Guard and volunteer Sec troops manning well-protected defensive positions.
On the Tuesday before Thanksgiving, the feds advanced up through New Jersey, and the formidable Joshua Brigades from Oklahoma, Kansas, Alabama, and Colorado took up positions up and down the west shore of the Hudson from the George Washington Bridge in the north down to Bayonne. Manhattanites lined the east bank of the Hudson staring across at the alarming sight of tanks and artillery all poised to shoot across the river at the full length of the island. In a symbolic gesture, the Holies occupied Liberty Island from the Jersey side and draped the base of the Statue of Liberty with the “Christian flag.” At the same time, a small unit of marines landed at Stony Brook, on the North Shore of Long Island, and proceeded south to secure McArthur Airport in Islip. We watched nervously as huge air force C-17 transports streamed continuously in and out of MacArthur Airport all afternoon, discharging troops, tanks, vehicles, and supplies. The next morning, the city was transfixed by TV images of tanks and armored personnel carriers streaming west along the otherwise empty Long Island Expressway and Southern State Parkway. The defense perimeters at the city’s eastern edge were pierced following a brief skirmish. A brave unit of Guards briefly halted the advance around Kennedy Airport using only three old tanks, brought down from Camp Smith in Peekskill, until helicopter-fired missiles destroyed each tank. The governor pulled all our forces back to Manhattan and deployed them at the bridge and tunnel exits, which were relatively easy to defend, and reinforced the troops at the most obvious spots for amphibious assault around the island’s perimeter. By the end of the day, the same formidable line of tanks, artillery, and troops lined the east bank of the East River all the way up to the South Bronx.
The governor and all the senior staff spent the night in our command center on Third Avenue, most of us believing that it might be our last night alive or at least our last as free men and women. Well after midnight, we received reports of guerrilla-style attacks on the rear and side flanks of the Joshua Brigades arrayed along the river in Brooklyn on a large flat area just south of Newtown Creek that included the Greenpoint Playground. The gunfire continued for well over an hour, and when it ended we did not know whether the citizen soldiers of Brooklyn had been killed or had staged a tactical retreat.
Around 4 a.m. we were again summoned to the roof as a single US Air Force bomber flew low and slow over Greenpoint, blanketing the neighborhood behind the harassed troops with bombs, presumably in retribution for the attack. We did have antiaircraft weapons mounted on the tops of some of the taller buildings in Manhattan, and several of those shot unsuccessfully at the slow bomber. After only a few minutes, the plane departed. Although the bombs did not appear to be the incendiary type used on the Castro, the effect was equally devastating. From Newtown Creek down to Greenpoint Avenue, the entire area west of McGuiness Boulevard, almost thirty square blocks, was leveled by violent explosions. Not a single building was left intact. We stood on the roof on Third Avenue and gazed silently to the east. Thick black smoke obscured the stars and drifted on the wind to the north. But under the smoke, yellow flames enveloped the ruins of collapsed buildings and illuminated the surface of the East River. For the sixteen thousand households living in the neighborhood of old brick and wooden structures, there was no escape. No one knows how many died that night, but it cannot have been less than half of the neighborhood’s population of about forty thousand Poles, South Asians, North Africans, artists, rooftop farmers, foodies, and other young people who had been attracted in the years before to one of New York’s most affordable and dynamic communities. When we came down from the roof, the governor was in shock.
“Not in New York. I really didn’t think they would do it. Not here. It’s my fault. We should not have let the people think they could fight and win this battle. How many …” Sitting on the couch in his corner office, he covered his face with his hands, elbows on his knees. After a minute, he sat up straight, wiped his eyes with the monogrammed sleeve of a day-old shirt, and seemed determined.
“That’s it,” he said. “No more. We’re going to surrender. I’m going to call Jordan.”
“Don’t, Governor,” I said abruptly. “Please, sir. They will not come after Manhattan tomorrow. I’m sure of it. It will be a siege. Go ahead and make a statement for the outer boroughs. If you want, tell the militias there to give up. Tell them the price is too high, that they cannot win. Tell them the price for continuing the fight is their neighbors dying in their sleep as they did in Greenpoint. But not Manhattan. We must try to hold Manhattan.” I paused.
“Mike”—I almost never called the governor by his first name—“think of the gays. To give up now is a death sentence for them. And we have to think of the millions in the rest of the country who don’t go along with this madness. As long as secular rule continues somewhere in the country, even if it’s just Manhattan Island, they all will have at least some hope. They need us to hang on, sir. If we lose, all those people out there will give up. The siege will give us time. Anything can happen. The world may come to our rescue. Jordan could die or lose the next election. We have time; we’ve got to take it. Please
—”
I stopped talking abruptly. The governor stood at the window looking out at Third Avenue. He asked the others for their advice.
A few hours later, at six o’clock on Thanksgiving morning, the governor summoned the media. It was the first time I ever saw him meet the press without shaving. Deep purple creases under his eyes made him look old. He honored the troops who had perished trying to stop the advances against the city from the north and east. He said simply that November 24, although celebrated by the fundamentalists as a triumph, would instead, ultimately, be seen as a day of infamy. No true Christian, no American, no person of goodwill could possibly condone the murder of sixteen thousand innocents in their beds. History would judge it to be a crime against humanity, the horrible fruits of fanatical belief. The governor then begged the people of Brooklyn, the Bronx, Queens, and Staten Island to stop fighting. He said they should continue to resist in every way available to them other than violence. He said seeing the city ripped into two broke his heart, but violence in the occupied parts of the city would bring only overwhelming and disproportionate retribution against which we had no defense. The other boroughs had been occupied by federal forces and must acquiesce for the moment to the inevitable. He then addressed President Jordan directly:
Mr. Jordan—for I am too much of a patriot to call you president—Mr. Jordan, hear this clearly. We draw the line at Manhattan. Yes, you have the power to destroy us. But think a moment. This island is the capital of the world and a microcosm of the whole world. Our people are the best and brightest who have come from all corners of the earth drawn by the promise of America. Our diversity, and the energy and creativity it drives, are a model for what the world can be. Our dozens of great museums and private collections hold the most important art, sculpture, and artifacts of all human civilization. Here on this island live some of the world’s most accomplished musicians, dancers, actors, and artists. Here are the headquarters of dozens of the world’s largest enterprises, providing jobs for tens of millions of Americans and people around the world. Here lies the heart of the world’s financial system. You cannot take Manhattan without destroying all these things. If you do, your name will be recorded by history alongside the likes of Pol Pot, Saddam Hussein, and Adolf Hitler—you will be regarded by history as a genocidal maniac and vandal of civilization. So I tell you this. Not one federal soldier will set foot on this island. The 1.7 million New Yorkers who live here will fight you in every neighborhood, every street, every building, every alley. This is a promise and a fact. What do we have to lose? We who have come from all over the world for the promise of American freedom and the American dream—we have nothing to lose, because losing that dream is to us like death. Our brothers and sisters whom you want to slaughter for their God-given sexuality—they have nothing to lose because they fight for their lives. So think well, Mr. Jordan, what you do next. And I ask the governments of the world to do everything they can to help us, and I ask the people of the world for their prayers.
Christian Nation Page 28