The House of War: Book One Of : THE OMEGA CRUSADE

by Carlos Carrasco

  William O’Neill picks out a nearby table where three female soldiers are having lunch and sits down opposite the smirking one. She is a tall, blue-eyed and broad-faced blonde wearing Sergeants’ stripes. She is seated between two dark-skinned Corporals. The name Burnett is stitched into the left breast pocket of her uniform.

  “What’s so amusing, Sergeant Burnett?”

  “You are, Mr. President,” she says without missing a beat. Her tone is less than amused, laced with sarcasm in fact. Her accent hints at Kentucky or maybe the western end of Tennessee. “It’s funny watching a politician who has made his bones screwing people over get mad when the people turn around and screw him right back. It’s a real hoot.”

  Morton Gallagher and Lamar Reed arrive at the table with their trays of food. They sit to his left with Gallagher at O’Neill’s side. Annie Cooper is behind them and she, like the President, has opted for a coffee. She sits down at the President’s right. They nod curt hellos at the trio of female soldiers.

  “Politicians are elected to make public policy,” says O’Neill. “Not all our decisions are going to be popular with everyone.”

  Burnett rolls her eyes. “Spare me your prompter-speak, Mister. You don’t give a rat’s ass whether a policy is popular or not. You enter office with agendas that you are committed to shove down our throats regardless of how anyone feels about it.”

  O’Neill sighs dismissively. “I’m sure that sentiment has plagued every losing side in every election in history.”

  Sergeant Burnett plunks her utensils down on her plate. She places her arms on the table and leans forward into the President’s face. “And it’s never been more justified than by the heavy hand with which you signed the Shanghai Accord.”

  William O’Neill feels Morton Gallagher start to stir in his seat. The President settles the Secret Service Agent down with a hand across the forearm. He smiles at the woman facing him, oddly relieved by her hostility. It is something he knows. He has dealt with hostility a thousand times across aisles and debate floors, on streets and campaign trails.

  “The Shanghai Accord was a ground-breaking piece of international law,” says the President. “The resultant treaty was approved by a Congressional majority,”

  “It was approved by a one party majority,” the dark skinned corporal at Burnett’s right side says, carving the slab of turkey on her plate into small pieces. She has the high cheekbones, long, slender neck and full, pouting lips common to North Africans. Her accent, like Father Hermez’, has hints of French. The President notes that Hourani is stitched into her name tag. “There was nothing democratic about the way it was hoisted on Americans. It really was shoved down the nation’s throat, passed by a Congress who didn’t even bother to read its’ contents.”

  She dips the piece of turkey into a dollop of gravy-smothered mashed potatoes and smiles sweetly at the President as she chews it.

  “And what did you politicians do when the people pointed out that no one had read any of it?” Burnett asks. “You spat your contempt in our faces by hiring a speed reader to run through it. Do you remember that? Y’all had yourselves quite a chuckle-fest over that. Tell me, are you still laughing, Mr. President?”

  “Looks to me like he’s fresh out of chuckles,” says the third woman. She is both lighter and rounder than Hourani, though taller. Her hair is much longer too, falling to her waist in two thick and dark braids. The name Simms is stitched into her uniform. She sounds as American as Burnett. The President guesses she comes from the northeast, Philadelphia, maybe New Jersey. Her plate is heaped with red and green gelatin.

  Burnett continues. “What did you say, Mr. President? Do you remember? You were still head of the Department of Peace at the time, pushing Congress to sign on to the accord. Do you recall what you said to Americans concerned about what might be contained in the accord? You said, ‘we had to sign on to the accord before we could find out what was in it.’ Do you remember that little gem?”

  President O’Neill remembers his off the cuff response to the media. It was not his most artful reply. Five years later, his detractors were still making hay of it. O’Neill took to ignoring all references to the comment. He was not going to give Sergeant Burnett the benefit of a different response.

  “And so now you intend to do the same thing, don’t you?” Annie Cooper asks. “You’re going to try and ram your agenda down our throats, no?”

  “We could say that you have it coming to you,” Simms says. “You know, what’s good for the goose and all that?”

  “And just what is your agenda?” Morton Gallagher asks as he spears a ranch dressing smeared head of broccoli out of his salad bowl.

  “We’re going to create a Christian Republic,” Hourani answers.

  “Do you intend to just throw out the non-establishment clause or is the whole Constitution being chucked?” Congressman Reed asks.

  Hourani puts down her utensils, knits her brow in mock concentration and asks. “We got us a Constitution in this here country?”

  “I think so,” answers Simms. “It’s buried somewhere under a pile of Executive orders, Congressional decrees and a bunch of international law mandates like the aforementioned Shanghai Accord.”

  “Ah,” says Hourani, picking up her knife and fork again. “And all this time I thought the Constitution was just a myth, like Bigfoot.”

  “Seriously ladies,” Gallagher continues. “We do have a Constitution in this country and what you plan to do with it will determine how a great many people will react to your revolution.”

  “We’re going to fix it,” Simms says. “Make it more perfect.”

  “Pray tell, how?” O’Neill asks.

  Burnett answers crisply. “Well, that ‘non-establishment’ clause for one. It’s a goner!”

  “Why?” asks Reed.

  Corporal Hourani throws her hands up in the air. “Duh,” she says. “We can’t create a Christian Republic which recognizes that Jesus Christ is King of Heaven and earth with that pesky thing in the way.”

  Annie Cooper gives Hourani a narrow-eyed glare. “How twelfth century of you to point out,” she says.

  “Thank you!” says Hourani, beaming with a wide smile. “I do so love the Middle Ages, the Scholastics in particular. Saint Anselm is my favorite. Who is yours?”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about, Mother Theresa,” Annie says with a shake of her head.

  The smile on the corporal’s face turns into a pout and her shoulders drop. “Ah, too bad,” she says. She brightens up again a moment later when she takes another bite of food.

  “It’s the fatal flaw in the Constitution,” Burnett continues after a pause. “Our founding fathers failure to establish Christianity as the religion of the land was their one great mistake.”

  “Some would say that was a mark of their genius,” President O’Neill protests.

  “Well, they would be wrong,” Simms says.

  “They didn’t want to create a ‘Church of America,’” Gallagher says.

  “True enough, but that wasn’t the whole aim of the first amendment,” Burnett says. “Secularists like to ignore that whole other part, you know, the ‘no prohibiting the free exercise of religion’ thing. They love to ignore that part.”

  “So we’re going to ignore that whole ‘make no law respecting an establishment of a religion” thingy,” Corporal Hourani says.

  “Besides,” says Simms. “We already have a ‘Church of America.’ It’s the Federal government. Power is its god almighty. Secular fundamentalists are its priests and they have gone and declared unholy war on Christianity.”

  “How so first century,” Hourani says with a roll of her eyes. “Wouldn’t you say, Agent Cooper?”

  Annie leans across the table at the corporal. “Listen sweetie,” she says, icily. “I don’t care what happened, not in the first or the twelfth century, not in year one, for that matter.”

  “Wow, dissing history like that.” says Corporal Simms. “You’re s
eriously disassociated from reality, aren’t you hon?”

  Corporal Hourani nods her head. “Yes. To believe that one can exist free of any historical context or influence is a sure sign of some seriously advanced disassociation.”

  “It’s brought on by her sexual deviancy,” Burnett says tellingly. “Once you make a break from natural law, it’s only a matter of time before you start calling it splits between you and reality.”

  The other two women nod in agreement.

  “I live in the here and the now,” Agent Cooper says. “And I’m telling you, right now and right here, there is no way and no how that your Christian republic is going to get the likes of me to subscribe to your fantasies about a King of Heaven or a Lord of whatever.”

  “Don’t be like that,” Hourani says. “We here, at Homeland Inquisition, have every confidence that you can do it.”

  “Yes,” says Simms. “You got to think positive, Ms. Cooper. You got to believe! You can do it. Yes, you too can change.”

  Annie Cooper brings her fist down on the table. “I don’t want to change!”

  “Oh, I wouldn’t worry about that,” Corporal Hourani says with a dismissive wave of her dark, slender, fingers. “That’s nothing a little enhanced baptism couldn’t clear up.”

  Simms nods agreeably with her fellow corporal’s diagnoses. “Yes, she’s definitely a candidate for enhanced baptism therapy. She might even be a double-dunker. What do you think, Carol?”

  “I say we triple-crown her, just for the gags and giggles,” Sergeant Burnett says with a wink at Agent Cooper.

  “You must forgive our Carol, Agent Cooper,” Corporal Hourani interjects. She pokes Burnett gently with one of her cross-painted nails. “She is just fascinated by sexual disorders such as yours.”

  “Girlfriend,” Corporal Simms says, putting a hand on the Sergeant’s shoulder. “She just loves you freaks!”

  “I bet she does,” Annie says.

  “I do, I do,” Carol agrees. “I’ve been studying sexual deviants such as you since college.”

  Annie’s eyes and tone grow frostier. “Real close, no doubt.”

  Carol’s smile is equally cold. “Face to face, just like God intended. It’s always best that way, isn’t it? The way God intends. I think so. Well anyway, there I was in California, having a grand time, learning and researching, experimenting every which way! Y’all have been to college. You know what that’s like. Anyways, there I was working towards my Doctorate, helping out with some truly pioneering work designing reparative therapies for sexual disorders when the State of California up and declares our work to be illegal.”

  “Bummer!” says Simms.

  “I know,” Burnett agrees. “We were making some serious headway.”

  “They had good reason to ban reparative therapy,” Annie says.

  “Not a good enough reason for my liking,” says Carol. “The Federal government didn’t offer me a better reason either when it followed California’s lead a few years later. It was darn inconvenient, let me tell you; rude even. But I’ve kept working at it. A lot of us have. The work is too important to give up. I mean we got us a serious pandemic of perversion to combat. We were not going to abandon the fight just because our dim-witted ruling class told us to. We kept at it and, let me tell you, we’ve come up with some truly exciting therapies since they kicked us off campus. Are you interested?”

  Agent Cooper stares cold murder at Sergeant Burnett.

  Carol’s smile widens. “Don’t you worry none, hon. There is no need fearing that you may not be interested. We got us a therapy here for that too.”

  “Yes indeed!” Corporal Simms agrees enthusiastically. The jaunty shake of her head gives her braids a feline whip and swish. “We got us something for whatever ails you up in here. We are Homeland Inquisition and we are here to help.”

  “Any way we can,” Corporal Hourani adds sweetly.

  “Because we care,” Sergeant Burnett says, giving the table a soft strike of her fist for emphasis. “We truly care about right and wrong, good and evil, moral and immoral, natural and unnatural, and all sorts of other things. And we care about you, Annie Cooper.”

  “We really do!” Corporals Simms and Hourani say together.

  “We’ve read your file, Agent Cooper,” Sergeant Burnett continues. “We know you’re not straight…”

  Corporal Simms laughs. “Not straight at all, Annie girl. Your head is not screwed on straight.”

  “You can’t see straight,” Hourani adds.

  Simms snorts. “See straight? This poor child can’t see at all, so deep and dark is her denial of her God-given purpose as a woman. Living so long in the dark has made her angry, confrontational and hateful; possibly opened her up to demonic oppression.”

  “You might be on to something there, Corporal,” Sergeant Burnett says. “Look at the facial spasms, how her countenance flickers almost maniacally between scowls and sneers.”

  “Yes, yes,” Corporal Hourani agrees. “It could very well be the physical manifestation of demonic influence. She might be oppressed.”

  “It’s certainly queer enough to merit further investigation,” Simms says with a heavy nod. “We might want to consider an intervention while the good agent still enjoys our hospitality.”

  “You think we should?” Corporal Hourani asks.

  “It might be the charitable thing to do,” Simms proposes. “Look at the poor dyke, she’s fixing to burst.”

  “Yes,” Carol coos. “She is looking a bit piqued.”

  “Is this your idea of charity?” the President asks.

  “It is therapy,” Corporal Hourani answers.

  “Really?” Congressman Reed asks. “It strikes me as rather sophomoric bullying.”

  “Well it’s not,” Corporal Hourani insists. “Political correctness and hate speech laws have made any treatment of sexual disorders impossible by simply denying that sexual disorders exist. Without anyone to question their choices or criticize their behavior, poor deviants like Agent Cooper have developed the false impression that their lifestyles decisions are beyond scrutiny and exempt from challenge. This enabling, modernist mindset has made a patently unnatural behavior like homosexuality socially acceptable in just fifty years. If it is not vigorously countered, a dangerous behavior like pedophilia will be just another acceptable lifestyle choice before the century is out.

  “Our therapy challenges the mindset in both the deviant and the society that enables her.”

  “By insulting her?” Reed asks.

  Hourani shakes her head. “We’re not insulting, we’re challenging.”

  “Sometimes you got to rattle someone’s cage,” Simms says. “To remind them they’re locked up.”

  “We’re looking forward to doing some major re-orientating of society at large once the revolution really gets going.” Sergeant Burnett adds.

  “Not half as much as I’m looking forward to re-orientating your face the first chance I get,” Annie says, glowering at Carol.

  “The opportunity to try can be arranged, Agent Cooper,” Sergeant Carol Burnett says with a grin. “Some of the boys here are going to put on a friendly mixed martial arts throw down on Boxing Day.”

  “That’s the Feast of Saint Stephen, first Christian Martyr,” Hourani explains.

  “December 26th, to you heathens,” Simms adds.

  Burnett continues. “Your file says that you’re proficient in Tae Kwon Do and Thai Kick Boxing and, as it happens, so am I! Think of it, you and I, in the ring, mano-a-mano for a three round, butch-brawl of a good time. What do you say?”

  “I say I’ve heard enough,” Agent Cooper rises and turns to leave.

  “How disappointing,” the Sergeant says with a sigh. “I thought you’d jump at the chance for a little girl on girl action.”

  “The therapy must be working,” Corporal Hourani suggests.

  “Nah,” says Simms. “She’s just chicken.”

  Annie Cooper stops in her tracks. She turns to th
e three women. Her face is red, drawn tight. She settles her glare on Burnett.

  “Alright, I’ll fight you,” Annie says coldly. “Bring your Cyclops of a priest along. You’ll need him to administer last rights when I’m done with you.”

  “Oh, no she didn’t!” says Corporal Simms with a wag of her head.

  “Oh, yes she did,” Sergeant Burnett says. “She just threatened my life.”

  “Oh, mercy!” Simms exclaims. “Such poor sportsmanship, I never done seen.”

  “They can’t help themselves, these poor heathens,” Corporal Hourani says. “They’re always trying to kill off us Christians. It appears that Agent Cooper has also got a bad case Christian Derangement Syndrome.”

  “Sure has,” Simms agrees, nodding sagely. “It’s another sign of Demonic Oppression.”

  Annie turns around again and walks away.

  The mess hall is quiet for several minutes after her exit. The soldiers finish their meals.

  “Well, it’s been sure nice chatting with you boys,” the Sergeant says. “Is there anything else we can help you with, Mr. President, before we get back to work?”

  “No, thank you,” William O’Neill replies, his tone is painfully polite.

  The three soldiers smile, pick up their trays and leave the table. President O’Neill watches them walk away, his mood dark and growing cold as the coffee in his hand.

  00:09:08

  General Alan Stone rebukes himself for looking up at the clock again. In ten minutes the nation will either be at war with itself or some new strangeness will befall it. Counting off the seconds isn’t going to help. It can only heighten the anxiety of his staff to see their Chief glued to every tick and tock of the clock. He turns from it in his cushioned, swivel chair and studies the three, large whiteboards set end to end across the floor. Everything they know about the coup is on those boards written out in different colored dry-erase markers. He looks them over for what he feels must be the thousandth time, hoping for something to jump out at him, showing the way through the crisis. Nothing does. Though they have three board’s worth of notes, the General feels that three hundred boards might not be able to contain everything they don’t know.