The Hasten the Day Trilogy

by Billy Roper

  After the breakfast plates were cleared away and washed the next morning, a man Hope hadn’t seen before drove up, and introduced himself to her as Jason. He was the Congressman, she realized, blushing deeply. “Have you ever gone for a ride on an airplane?”, he asked.

  Chapter Fifteen

  United States Congress, “An act to establish an uniform Rule of Naturalization” (March 26, 1790).

  SEC.1. Be it enacted by the Senate and House of Representatives of the United States of America, in Congress assembled, That any alien, being a free white person, may be admitted to become a citizen of the United States, or any of them, on the following conditions, and not otherwise…

  Everybody Get Together, Try To Love One Another…

  The Church of True Israel was the newest and best-attended congregational house in Kentwood, the bedroom community south of Grand Rapids where Randall and Barbara Balderson had decided to sink roots. The Michigan Militia Lieutenant was an electric company lineman again, and making good money since there were repairs to be made everywhere, constantly, with the grip coming back up to full power once more. Their kids had been some of the first ones back in class to re-start the Kentwood Middle School and High School as a remarkably non-diverse venture, and loved it. A year ago, he had been complaining to anyone who would listen that his oldest son, the sixteen year old, did nothing but lay around and play video games all day, while his youngest was rebellious and defiant and a smart-aleck. Now, they both seemed like pretty well-adjusted boys.

  Their dad being a local hero, and all of the other kids in awe of him, probably helped their attitudes, he reckoned. The local papers had played him up as having singlehandedly defeated the jihadists at the siege of the airport, and he was cool with that. It put some heroworship into the old lady’s eyes, too, and that was never a bad thing. They were all in their Sunday best for church.

  The offering plate held more New Dollars with every passing Sunday. After his usual remarks about the importance of continuing to be on the lookout for drug dealers and mixed race people trying to pass as White, the preacher called on Randall, and asked him to stand up. He did, not sure what to expect.

  “Brothers and Sisters, most of you know Brother Balderson her e as the brave officer who led his men to free the airport from the Jesus-hating Muslim scum. He fought throughout our town and all over the state, for us. Now, I’d like to tell you that he is asking for our vote to represent us in St. Louis, as the next elected Congressman from southwest Michigan, as the new redrawn district is simply being called, and fight for us there.” The pastor paused. “Well. Brother Randall, you’ve got my vote. And if any man or woman in this congregation truly loves God, and loves their people, you will have theirs, too!”

  Randall smiled his thanks, raised his hand to Heaven, and looked around him to wave at the people clapping and even cheering for him. Barbara looked up at him in shock.

  After the service, people lined up at the potluck luncheon to shake his hand and promise him their votes. A lot of them were already eager to offer advice about what the new Congress should do about the border or the economy or the government or the Mexicans. Some were already asking for favors, or offering them. His head swam with the names and ideas and deals he was supposed to remember, right off the bat. He caught Barbara’s eye across the room. She was corralling the kids, and taking her resentment out on them. Momma wasn’t happy.

  “Oops, baby doll, I was meaning to tell you, first, honest.” He apologized to her later, after they got home. “The preacher must have just really got excited about the campaign when a few of the Militia volunteers went door to door in his neighborhood canvassing for votes, I guess.”

  “So, you’re running for Congress. Well, you talked about it before, but I always thought you were joking. Is this something the Wolverines have talked you into?”

  “Nah, the guys are all on board, and they’re going to be my campaign staff and volunteers and work to get me elected, but with most of the fighting done, we need somebody down there to represent militia interests, and blue collar workers, and Michigan. It’s important that our voice gets heard.” Randall reasoned to her.

  “Okay, so if we’re going to do this, and it will be a ‘we’, not a ‘you’, Mr. Congressman, what are the platform issues? What are you for and against?” Barbara teased.

  “Well, Ma’am, I’m all for the stars being erased from the flag and the national anthem being changed to “America, the Beautiful”, because I can sing it better than the “Star Spangled Banner”, and of course it’s more fitting for the new situation, too. I support burning all the Korans left in a pile that reaches to the moon in a fire that can be seen from Mars. I support St. Louis and Killeen and Salt Lake City having diplomatic relations and exchanging ambassadors or whatever because, hell, we may have different visions of America, but we’re all still Americans, and all still White, so we oughta be friendly, if we can be….”

  “Yippeee! You’ve got my vote!” Barbara shut him up by jumping in his lap and kissing him. “You know, Congressman Balderson, the kids are gone to culture night. They’ll have their heads full of European heritage for another two hours. We have the house all to ourselves….”

  It looked like that saying about men in power must be true. Randall looked forward to going to St. Louis after November, more than ever. Come to think of it…in a week the local semi-pro baseball team, the West Michigan Whitecaps, were going down to the new capitol. The ball game would be fun. His boys would really love the chance to see the big city and take a break from school for a day or two. He bet Barbara would enjoy getting out of town, too. As his mind was redirected to other happenings closer to home, Randall thought about baseball, and Meatloaf’s song “Paradise By The Dashboard Light”.

  I Think I See My Friends Coming, Riding Many A Mile

  Captain Ming personally emptied Admiral Liu’s ashes into the ocean, dumping them overboard while the white-gloved honor guard looked on and offered a decidedly unoverboard while the white-gloved honor guard looked on and offered a decidedly ungun salute. The ‘heart attack’ had been so sudden, and unexpected. It must have been the pressures of the job, and the situation. The other officers were quick to offer their condolences to Ming, and acknowledge his superiority in the shortened chain of command.

  His radio operator usually only spoke to him when the American Seventh Fleet’s overflights got too close or they intercepted something decipherable. He had at last given him some good news yesterday, while Liu had lain in state for the crews to pay their respects to their dead Admiral. A destroyer, five cruisers, and three troop ships were on their way from Hawaii. Without resupply, they could not hold Pearl Harbor or Hickam Air Base. They had evacuated from Honolulu, where the civilian population had been so reduced due to food riots and starvation that there wasn’t much left to rule, anyway. They didn’t exactly count as reinforcements, but it would strengthen Ming’s position, if he could ensure the newcomer’s loyalty. They were still going to be an unknown quantity, at first.

  The 1,800 new arrivals did bolster the Chinese position, which was now Humanitarian and Peacekeeping in name only. After the remnants of the fleet from Pearl snuck into the San Francisco Bay under the cover of darkness the next night to avoid being spotted and sunk by the American’s carrier air wings, Ming began meeting and getting to know the officers. After he was satisfied that none of them posed any threat to his authority, he ordered a general Captain’s Council to begin crew reassignments. Once done, that make sure that all of the surface to surface and surface to air combat operations crew quarters and stations were fully staffed at all times, throughout the two dozen ships he now commanded in the Bay. It also would help him determine how many he could spare for shore patrols and holding their land territories.

  With about fifty-three hundred total now in his command, that gave him roughly a battalion of land forces available to defend their shrunken territory. Ming decided to go on the offensive, and defend as far forward as possible
. Two companies of Chinese Marines converged on San Jose from Mountain View and Milpitas. Their surprise attack caught the Republica forces unprepared, and pushed them south, out of the broad valley and into the more easily defensible chokepoint at Morgan Hill. The Mexican defenders lost nearly a hundred men, the Chinese fewer than twenty. That gave them more fighting room, more looting room, and more room to undertake agricultural efforts to feed themselves, in case they came under siege from the north. One of those companies would be sufficient to hold the line, there, astraddle the 101. The other Ming redeployed to Santa Cruz in case of a seaborne assault. He positioned another company in Livermore, with a reserve in Dublin, to cover the East. Four more in Novato, Napa, Fairfield, and Concord covered the north. There was far less pressure on his lines there from the American guerrillas and militias testing his defenses, but he preferred not to show weakness.

  Captain Ming considered himself a long-range strategic thinker. He had been able to reestablish communications via satellite with General Jiang. Jiang had ended up holding onto everything from the carnal house of Beijing to Harbin in the north, where began the roughly hundred miles of demilitarized zone that the Russians had insisted on, as a part of cease fire agreement. Ming had offered his support and loyalty to General Jiang, and reported the sad news of Admiral Liu’s death. Jiang had accepted Ming’s oath of allegiance, and assured him that The People’s Republic of Shenyang would welcome them all home with open arms to help rebuild their nation and restore its honor…but right now, he couldn’t lift a finger to help them. The rest of China was in chaos, with warlords, famine, disease, and foreign troops from India, Pakistan, and even Vietnam running wild wherever they could reach. They were on their own.

  His next long-range concern became how to feed the five thousand men in uniform and eight times that many surviving Chinese citizens who had re-concentrated to the Bay Area as civilian refugees under his protection. That problem solved itself. Ming pushed one of his two reserve companies north from Novato to retake Santa Rosa, and although improvised explosive devices and snipers all along the way harassed their advance, they took enough of Sonoma County that he was satisfied. Over the space of a week he bussed two thousand Chinese civilians into the farms there, guarded by the Novato company, and began intensive efforts to prepare a late Spring planting of crops there.

  Further down the road, Captain Ming foresaw a real problem if the baby steps that Deseret, the Republic of Texas, and New America were taking towards diplomatic relations grew into something more. He had to figure out a way to turn the three American entities against each other, and away from him…or at least to focus them on the Republica del Norte. But, how?

  Oh Dance In The Dark Of Night, Sing To The Morning Light

  The ‘Indomitables’ had saved them, and that was a fact that neither he nor his surviving men could deny. Col. Mark Smith looked around at his bleary eyed command staff, sprawled over the tables at the Amphora Greek restaurant in Herndon, Virginia. So many faces were missing, faces of men he had served with in boot, in OCS, in Germany, and here at home. The three hundred and thirty survivors of his Marine command and the 3rd ID out of Fort McNair, along with a handful of French and U.S. Air Force pilots and admin., and the fifty-odd militia, were crashed out in a fleabag motel across the street. It was shaped like a “U”, as defensible a position as they could find before the storm came down, carrying toxic rain from the slagged out wastes of Baltimore up northeast. If it hadn’t been for the Virginia militia named after their Confederate ancestors, many of the jarheads would have been caught out in the open by the torrent outside. They had gotten them off the 267 and under shelter just before the clouds opened up. Mark just wished they didn’t have to stand around dressed in Rebel gray uniforms. For a man whose greatgreat grandfather had held the crest at Little Round Top, it was downright spooky.

  He thought briefly of that German woman who had promised him armor support from the Heer, but he figured that the German armor had been turned to lava when Philadelphia got it, so he expected no help from that quarter. Smith had no way of knowing that at that moment, Gerta was flying overhead, four miles up, headed to O’Hare and then to Lambert.

  When the Chinese missile intended for Baltimore blew, over thirty-five miles away, he had been standing on the south side of the White House lawn, and had seen his shadow light up like a negative silhouette in front of him. Several of his troops on the north side of the building were blinded, those that looked in that direction, and some in the open areas of the national mall in between his position and the Capitol got sunburned. It was that close. Probably right over Towson State, from what he could figure.

  If the Col. had thought that the natives were restless before, he had really been in for a treat when the ugly red cloud rose up to block out the mid-morning sun. They had flown on C-130s from La Guardia into the long disused Bolling Air Force Base, held by a mixed French/U.S.A.F. transition team at Joint Base Anacostia/Bolling as the French got ready to make like a baby and head out. The Anacostia side was so quiet you could hear crickets, after the U.S. Naval Aviation units there had taken part in the evacuation of the bigwigs to New York. That had disappointed Smith, he had hoped that the Marine Helicopter Squadron there had been left intact. It wasn’t.

  Bolling barely had enough warm bodies to hold their own perimeter, but an armored convoy from Fort McNair had kept the South Capitol Street bridge open for them while they force-marched three miles up the 295 and across. To their left, across the river, the blackened ruins where Reagan National Airport used to be had told them that they were not on a class field trip. After some brief mutual back slapping, they rode the last couple of miles to the Capitol in deuce and a half trucks behind the big smelly M113’s of A Company, 1st Battalion, Third U.S. Infantry regiment. That night, the gangs mass attacked them like a scene from ‘Zulu’.

  It had cost the lives of eighty-one men, nearly sixteen percent of his combat strength, just to clear and hold the national mall. Thirteen U.S. Army soldiers from Company A bought it, too. They had been attacked with everything from Ak-47s and RPGs to machetes, hatchets, and shovels. It felt almost like there was some resentment among the black community at having been left behind by the government when they evacuated. They had attrited over twelve hundred, by the dawn’s early light. It was one thing to say that the tree of liberty had to be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants. It was another thing entirely, when the tree was rotten to the roots.

  The five remaining Marine companies had pushed back the perimeter to Union Station, and over to the Lincoln Memorial, but it had been costly. Another twenty-eight good men had died during those two weeks. They relied on the 3rd ID to help them get their wounded out and back to Bolling for medivac to New York. Their third week in, the gangs ceased resistance and dispersed, and the Marines broke through to the other side of the Potomac. Things were going pretty well. They were working with local militias in northern Virginia and southern Maryland, expanding their AOC. They confidently asked the U.N. to declare the Capitol Administrative District pacified. Then Baltimore went up, and all hell broke loose.

  Obviously, they had no idea at first that New York had gotten hit, hard and twice, and was out of action, as were the other northern U.N. commands. They received only scattered reports from surviving Blue units in Massachusetts, Eastern Pennsylvania, and New Jersey. They didn’t have time to worry about it for long, though, because the Battle of Rorke’s Drift, Part II, started with the pounding roar of thousands of running feet. Right at them.

  It seemed to be a pretty area-wide involvement. Bolling was overran and evacuated their three dozen staff north to regroup with the Marines. Fort McNair’s commander wanted to be stubborn, thinking he could ride out this storm just like he had ridden out so many others over the last few months, but this time was different. They came right down Potomac Avenue and cut off the National Defense University and the War College, enveloping the Fort itself like a swarm of ants covering a cater
pillar. There were thousands of them. Only those units north of Nationals Park were able to fall back to the mall.

  It took them a day, a night, and another day of hand to hand brutality to fight a rear guard action and drag all of their sorry asses together in the only direction left open to them, due west. They lost so many squads and platoons cut off in pockets with names like the Air and Space Museum and the Pavilion Café and the Sylvan Theater that by the time they got to the U.S. Marine Corps War Memorial in Arlington, they were all able to ride by it, and just stare. There were enough seats for everyone.

  They gathered up a few squads of their outlying patrols along the way, and one of them was coordinating with the ‘Indomitables’ in Tyson’s Corner. The militia commander was a former college professor who looked awkward with the M-4 on his shoulder. He took one look into Smith’s eyes and said “That bad, huh?”. When the Colonel didn’t dignify that with an answer, he flinched, and said “Okay, uh..Colonel, where do we go now from here?”

  Mark ordered his m en to take a six hour nap in the Sheraton Tyson’s, then looted the Wal-Mart next door for food left behind in the back stockrooms. There were a lot of nonperishables. He was amazed at how few times the looters even bothered to check behind the doors to the stockroom. He then told his staff and the surviving officers what he had in mind.

  “Don’t worry, guys, we aren’t running in a blind panic. There’s a method to my madness. I intend to get to Dulles, get some aircraft there working, and get out of here. Who’s with me?”