by Tom Kratman
The federal forces had barely noticed. Rather, they noticed barely enough to induce a bit of caution, to be ever so slightly slowed in their progress.
Thus, the west side of the city, in that area where the Texas National Guard still reigned, the federal forces had not yet taken.
In that hollow space in the federal net, a lone helicopter flew.
* * *
"Mr. Charlesworth? I am Colonel Minh. General Schmidt asked me to meet you, to assist, and to observe."
"What did you say? I can't hear a thing," said Charlesworth, cupping a hand to his right ear.
Minh made a "come with me" gesture to lead the old but still towering actor away from the helicopter and the sound and turbine-propelled stench it produced. As Charlesworth followed Minh, three un-uniformed National Guardsmen and two equally plainclothed Texas Rangers unloaded the public address system. A skinny, pretty, dark-skinned girl stood uncertainly nearby.
When they were far enough away for normal conversation to be heard, Minh repeated, "I am Colonel Minh. General Schmidt asked me to meet you, assist, and observe."
"Yes, thank you, Colonel. The General told me to expect you. Is everything ready?"
" 'Ready' is an interesting concept, Mr. Charlesworth. You served in the army, I believe. You know, then, that nothing is ever entirely ready. We are ready for this much: after you and these people with you and those who come to hear you speak are utterly crushed, we will exact a price for that crushing. We are also ready to provide the crowd you will speak to and the video cameras that will film the crushing."
Minh's eyes narrowed as he bit his lower lip lightly. "It is a brave thing that you and these people with you are about to do. Unfortunately, that bravery would go unnoticed but for the cynicism of myself and my people who will amplify your bravery and self-sacrifice to a useful level."
"Just who are your people, Colonel?"
"Oh, we are a mix. A mix, that is, of former Vietcong and soldiers of the ARVN, the Army of the Republic of Vietnam. And their sons and daughters, too, of course."
"Old enemies, plotting together as friends?"
Minh cast a glance heavenward, wriggling fingers dismissively. "Well, so far from our first home such little political differences as we once had seem trivial now. And we do share certain skills."
Charlesworth knew the rule: "They'll talk to Martin because they don't want to talk to me." The skills of which Minh spoke were the skills of mayhem. And that was the purpose of this entire exercise: to get an overreaction from the federals for propaganda's sake; then to give them an almost equally nasty reaction in return. NonViolent Civil Disobedience depended on this mantra: Listen to us . . . or listen to the sound of the guns.
* * *
Anthony, Texas
It was a ballet; a noisy, stinky, dry, dusty, and miserable ballet. With Mexico on its right, a flank hanging in open air to the left, the Army's Third Armored Cavalry regiment—generally referred to as "the Cav" danced tentatively forward.
It was a dance; two unequal partners moving in time together. Ahead of the Cav, two task-organized battalions of the 49th Armored Division fired to miss, then fell back to the next set of sand dunes or strip development. Fire and fall back; fire, make the Cav deploy, and fall back. Miss just close enough to frighten. Hit the occasional landmark—building or sign post—often enough to let the Cav know that the misses were deliberate. Hit very close once the day's acceptable limits of retreat had been reached.
And the Cavalry danced forward in time with the pirouetting Guard.
* * *
McKinney, Texas
"I am getting as sick of this dance as I am of blowing bridges," murmured Bernoulli as the point of Third Corps approached the latest. One handed, with now very practiced ease, he squeezed and another multimillion-dollar structure shuddered, crumpled and began to collapse.
Bernoulli concentrated, no mean feat amidst the roar of thousands of tons of falling concrete, to pick out the sound of the western, Lewisville, bridge demolition. He listened for several minutes before uttering his first, "Oh, shit."
Even as he reached for his radio, the radio crackled into life. "Sir, the demo failed. I don't know why . . . maybe somebody crossed up a couple of pieces of det cord. But only about one in ten of the charges went off. That wasn't enough."
"Do you have time to reset them?" the lieutenant asked.
"Sir . . . Third Corps is already swarming the bridge. No way."
"Oh, shit." Bernoulli reached a quick decision. "Fall back."
* * *
Houston, Texas
There had been a day when Charlesworth might well have been able to speak to the crowd even without a PA set. Those days were fallen far behind him. Now, aged beyond anything he had ever expected to see outside of a biblical film role, his voice was weaker even though his heart—in the twin senses of both that which pumped blood and that which defined his spirit—was as strong as ever.
The crowd, about twenty thousand of Houston's more than four million, filled an area of not more than a couple of acres in the city's Galleria area. For this, the PA set was more than adequate.
Though weaker, Charlesworth's speaking voice had lost none of its inner power. Electric amplifiers added whatever time had stolen.
"Almost two centuries ago, and just about two hundred and fifty miles from here, a group of Texans stood up for what was right at a little Spanish mission called the Alamo. Just as far away in space, but so recently that it still makes the headlines—makes them, that is, anywhere that headlines are permitted to speak the truth—another group of Texans stood up for the right at another mission, the Dei Gloria in Waco.
"In both cases, the defenders of the truth and the right paid with their lives. They fought a hopeless fight for principle. In the first case, whatever the short-term end, we know today that the defenders won after all. In the second case, the Dei Gloria Mission, boys and girls and an old Catholic priest lost their own fight . . . but they may just have arranged for us to win ours.
"There were several survivors of Santa Ana's tyrannical attack. There was but one from the Dei Gloria. Her name is Elpi—she is a very nice young lady—and she'd like to say a few words to you. . . ."
* * *
They'd had words before, the Commander of 18th Airborne Corps and the suited chief of the EPA's Environmental Protection Police—his personal "Zampolit." Much of this had been trivial. More had been hostile. The EPP simply abhorred roughing it and the Army and their attached Marines took a perverse glee in seeing that they had to do so. This was not the only point of disagreement, be it noted.
One of the more notable aspects of the many new police which the Rottemeyer Administration had put on America's "streets" was the extremely "issue oriented" nature of those police. A precise breakdown would, of course, be impossible as some of these "police" fell into the secret variety.
But of those which were not secret? Their organizations, parent organizations and missions read as a litany of left leaning and outright leftist causes. Besides the Surgeon General's Riot Control Police—the mission of which was to make profits safe for abortionists—there were the Animal Rights Police, existing to make the world unsafe for purveyors of female cosmetics, the Internal Revenue Service's "Enforcement Arm"—for when the courts took a dim view of legalized extortion, and—notably—the "Raid Command" of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms—whose mission needed no restatement. Then there were the Environmental Protection Police which, within a couple of years of Rottemeyer's election, made it clear to would-be polluters that one could either follow the government's stringent environmental policies . . . or contribute heavily to the Democratic National Committee.
It went almost without saying that the PGSS, whose mission was the protection of Rottemeyer and the enforcement of her precise will, had a leftist cause all their own.
The one thing each of these agencies shared was that none of them were composed, strictly speaking, of police officers, of the simp
le constables of the peace that made civilized life possible. Snipers there were aplenty. Riot control trained thugs were in no shortage. But of men and women who could make a bad situation better, deal with people—sometimes angry ones—temper justice with a trace of mercy? These were vanishingly rare.
The people with whom they dealt generally despised them as police as much as the armed forces tended to despise them in their manifestation as soldiers.
"You people aren't soldiers and you aren't much as far as being cops goes. So stay the hell out of our people's way while we move into the city." Those were the last words the Commander of the 18th Airborne had given to the Chief of the EPP before his soldiers began to fan out into Houston.
* * *
Perhaps it was because a hooker had no time to be shy. Perhaps it was that her loss was too profound even for a shy girl to keep hidden. Whatever it was, the girl soon had the crowd eating out of her hand. She wept? Then they wept too. She showed her pain and her anger? The crowd growled with their own. She was such a success that Charlesworth was moved to whisper, "When this is over, Elpi, remind me to link you up with my agency."
Elpi had just finished speaking—Charlesworth had coached the untrained girl very thoroughly—when the first of the 3rd Infantry Divisions armored vehicles were spotted turning a corner into the Galleria. A thrill of anxious worry ran through the crowd.
As Charlesworth pulled Elpi to one side, the side where Minh stood by to help her escape when the time came, he said, "Be calm, my friends, be calm. These are just our soldiers. At heart, most of them are on our side. They feel about Washington as most of us do." A soldier—a sergeant with a nametag that read "Soult"—standing upright in a passing armored vehicle looked at Charlesworth and gave a soft thumbs up. He was not alone.
"Elpidia here has told you of what it was like from her point of view at the Dei Gloria. Now I want to remind you that there is yet another group, a third Alamo, if you will, making their stand up in Fort Worth. . . ."
* * *
Western Currency Facility, Fort Worth, Texas
The damage from the first fight had mostly been cleared; cleared, that is, to the extent it hadn't been added to in the interests of defense.
From one of the twin rectangular projections atop the main building, Major Williams gazed through binoculars eastward to Interstate 35.
"That's the First Cav passing through," he told Pendergast, standing next to him. "I think it is anyway. None of the tracks are flying Cav guidons. You suppose they are ashamed?"
"Dunno, sir. Might be."
Overhead another of the seemingly endless flights of Army helicopters passed by, bringing in another load of PGSS.
Williams looked upward. "How many is that now?" he asked.
Pendergast answered, "How many troops? About seven thousand would be my guess. I didn't know Rottenmuncher had that many in her private army."
"There's a lotta things about her people didn't know when she was running, Sergeant Major. Maybe more things she kept secret after she won."
Pendergast shrugged. Well, too late to do anything about that now.
A single shot rang out. To Pendergast it sounded like a .50 caliber. To a Guardsman standing just to Pendergast's left it didn't sound like anything at all . . . for it killed him instantaneously.
"Down! Goddammit, down!"
And so it begins again, Pendergast thought, as a steady spattering of rifle fire began to pelt the facility.
* * *
Houston, Texas
"Just come on, girl, forget the old man," Minh demanded of Elpi, he and a henchmen dragging her by each arm. The girl twisted and struggled to turn around and go back to stand beside Charlesworth in his hour of need, the hour which was possibly his final one. She struggled, but fruitlessly; for all his age and tiny stature the former Vietcong was still much stronger.
Even as they hustled Elpi through some merchant's doors, Minh looked behind him with a certain amount of satisfaction. Like some mindless colony of killer ants the EPP were wading into the crowd, beating, breaking, arresting in some cases. Photographers stationed by Minh in the overlooking windows would be catching all that, catching on film and tape the actions of the federals against a helpless, unresisting crowd. These images would appear everywhere soon; on television in unoccupied Texas and across the world, on the Internet in the still fully federated states; within the environs of Houston there would soon be no wall without its poster of bleeding women.
Minh gave Elpi a final push then turned around full and, with folded arms, watched the blue-clad horde chew its way closer to Charlesworth. So it was not all just an act, you blue-eyed devil; all those heroes you played.
Charlesworth, himself, kept to his microphone, speaking even until the club descended to shut his eyes and his mouth forever.
* * *
Bunker Hill, Texas
Once past Houston, proper, the point of the Marine's 2nd Division had split off southwest, towards Corpus Christi. The Army's 3rd Infantry Division continued almost due west towards San Antonio.
I don't know how long I can keep my eyes shut to what's happening, thought the grizzled, old sergeant major of the division. The boss didn't see, he was too far to the front, what was left of poor Charlesworth. But I saw . . . and this is not what I signed up to do.
The sergeant major was not alone. Almost two-thirds of the division had passed through or near the Galleria area on their way eastward. Many were too far away to tell much of anything. Still, a substantial number had seen the bodies, heard the screams.
The Army's Third Infantry was one very unhappy division.
* * *
El Paso, Texas
Smoke drifted on the breeze. Some of it was from the gasoline stations burnt and destroyed by the Guard on its retreat. As much came from wood cooking fires across the border in Juarez, Mexico. The Marines couldn't do much about Juarez. They were trying manfully to reduce the flames in and around El Paso.
But none of the locals will lift so much as a finger to help us, thought Fulton, unhappily. You would think that at least some of them would want to save what could be saved.
Fulton looked up as his G-4, his quartermaster, approached.
"Forget saving any of the diesel and gasoline, boss," announced the "Four," dejectedly. "It's all going up in smoke. I might be able to save some of the packaged POL"—Petroleum, Oil and Lubricants—"but we can't burn that in our engines."
"How far did you say we could go on what we have?" queried Fulton, though he knew the answer.
"Just like I told you, General—twenty miles past El Paso. By which point we are bone dry."
"Fine. Shit. Okay then, call a halt. Any word on clearing out our supply route back into and through New Mexico?"
The G-4 sighed deeply. "We've started getting what we don't need; ammunition, mainly. The fuel? Well, they cleared out the demonstrators at Las Cruces. So naturally, the State of New Mexico has declared all the roads closed and seized any trucks they can get their hands on of ours. But . . . General, sir? There's this driver, nice kid, a reservist who was at Las Cruces. Sir . . . you need to talk to this kid."
Fulton had a very strong feeling—nay, a certainty—that he was not going to like what the reservist had to tell him. Even so, never a coward—certainly not a moral coward—he agreed. "Send the kid to see me this evening, after chow."
Colorado River, Columbus, Texas
The sign by the highway said, "This far and no farther."
"You suppose that's directed to us?" Sergeant Soult asked his driver through the vehicle intercom.
Before the driver could answer, the Interstate 10 bridge spanning the river went up in a flurry of smoke and debris.
"Stop the LAV," Soult commanded. "Stop it now."
It was well he did so. Less than a minute after the bridge went down there came the sound of muffled freight trains. Soult instinctively ducked, pulling the hatch halfway closed above him. The driver merely hunched down a bit.
&nb
sp; Ahead of them erupted a maelstrom of fire and flying shards as several dozen large-caliber artillery rounds went off more or less simultaneously at the near end of the bridge.
"Yeah, bubba," said Soult. "I think they mean it."
* * *
Northeast of El Campo, Texas
They did mean it.
AMTRACs and infantry—the bulk of 2nd Marine Division—moved slower than LAVs. And, though the Marine Corps had LAVs aplently, they were to a large extent constrained by the speed of their slowest movers; in this case LPCs, or Leather Personnel Carriers.