by Billy Roper
It was a chilly late September night, and the guys felt it in the elevator. The ‘nuclear autumn’ still made winters come earlier and last longer, than they had before Cinco Day. John’s library was on the fourth floor of the fortified and converted private residence that the McNabbs called ‘The Warehouse’. There, they settled into comfortably overstuffed leather rocker-recliners.
“Of course, let me know if there’s anything I can do to help Hope, even just to talk to her, or maybe take her back to the Christian Revival Center for a few weeks, if she needs a semester off.” Jason offered. “We have plenty of people there to keep her occupied, now.”
“I’d heard you’ve expanded, in more ways than one,” John quipped. He and Kip exchanged a grin. Randall snickered in approval as he found himself a chair. His pompadour needed rebuilding, and sure enough, he hauled out a comb and began to groom it.
“Yeah, we did kind of annex two more counties. Pretty much everything north of Interstate 40, from the Mississippi within sight of what’s left of Memphis, to the Arkansas River across the Oklahoma line, it’s all Klan country, now.” Congressman Roberts explained. “We pushed the Cherokee troublemakers back across the river, but of course we’re still dealing with some raids by the Creek tribe into Ft. Smith. Just some skirmishes. The Eastern and Southern half of the state is still pretty depopulated. It’s kind of a noman’s land between us and New Africa, on the other side of the Big Muddy. And, we have about 300 full time residents at the Church property, now. About 8,500 members in the Knights Committee militia, and 1,100 more in the Youth Corps, up and coming…although we really don’t like to talk about our numbers.”
“I understand. Well, I appreciate your offer. If she gets in more trouble, that might just be the best thing for her, a little vacation. But, you know, at nineteen, really, there’s only so much you can do, I mean as a parent.” John frowned. Kip nodded, sadly, beside him. He missed Hope more than any of them, and worried about her the most. “But, the real reason why we asked you to fly up, Jason, is that there IS something we need you to help with…”
“It’s the kind of thing that we’ll have to ask you to keep to yourself, or at least within your family, for now, Counselor.” Kip added, leaning forward. “It has to do with the final restructuring of the national government.” The Congressman from South Michigan finished his hair care and made his comb disappear as he spoke from Kip’s left.
“And,” Randall added with a characteristic smirk, “it’ll require you to move up here, so your dad will have to speed up teaching your nephew how to run things down there.” He always had to be in other people’s business, and make sure that they knew it.
Jason took a deep breath. Over the last five years, the Constitution had been re-ratified by all of the 24 states, some whole and some new and some Balkanized, that made up New America. The Re-Constitutional Congressional Convention that McNabb had ramrodded had simplified the decision for their state legislatures by starting out with just the first ten amendments, the Bill of Rights. They’d simply changed ‘United States of America’ to ‘The Republic of New America’. Congress’s last act before adjourning was codifying the original Naturalization Act of 1790, limiting citizenship to White persons of good moral character, as the eleventh amendment. All of the other amendments had been left behind in the dustbin of history. The twelfth amendment, the next year, had given the electoral franchise back to women, after the Congressmen had gotten back home from their first trip, and heard from their wives.
With a gold standard, no Federal Reserve Bank system, and a national government which was both National Socialist and Libertarian by turns, issue to issue, power was sorting itself out. Political parties like the Nationalist and Constitutionalist and Libertarian Parties had reemerged as powers on the state level, but not on the national, yet. Neither of the old parties were still around in any strength. McNabb, as the Speaker of the House, functioned as the civilian head of the Executive branch of government, and General Harrison served as the Commander-in-Chief of the armed forces. This Provisional Government was in effect until a date one decade from its inception, three years ago. At that point, national elections for President, Vice President, and both houses of Congress would be held. That was the plan.
The four men had discussed before that, aside from local and state level courts, this left the new nation lacking a Judiciary. Jason looked skeptically at Kip, then at John and Randall. All of them were smiling at him. They already waited for his answer.
“So, you think it’s time, Mr. Speaker?” he asked. “Time for a Judiciary branch to decide what’s Constitutional, and what isn’t, about what we’ve done? I mean, are we ready to take that risk?”
“Sure we are, Congressman, so long as we hold all the cards in the game, and we do. In addition to being a Representative, you’re also a lawyer.” John stated. Jason nodded. “ That’s good enough for me. I want to create a new Supreme Court. But first I need an Attorney General to help me select the Justices from surviving Federal Judges, so we get only the right nine people. Our people. I want you to be my Attorney General, Jason.”
“Were you thinking about a whole cabinet, then?” Jason asked, after a moment’s consideration. Kip produced a small notepad covered in his chicken scratch, tapping it for emphasis. He nodded in confirmation.
“A half dozen posts crucial to speeding up the recovery and rebuilding process,” the Chief of Staff began. “First, for Secretary of Defense, we’re tapping General Fred Grace, the former Chief of the National Guard Bureau, and the only surviving member of the old Joint Chiefs of Staff. He’s on board and won’t interfere with Gen. Harrison’s Unified Command authority.” Kip made a jot beside the name on his notepad.
“Okay. I don’t know him, but I know he was one of the first to support the plan and give it a sense of…of continuity and legitimacy.” Jason noted. They had his undivided attention. “What other posts?”
Kip flipped a page. “Like we said, you for Attorney General, Marine Lt. Gen. Mark Smith for Secretary of State, since he has experience dealing with the Europeans; and the rest, to be passed out as favors.”
“The idea is that the Representatives in the states most involved in the positions are best suited to know who would do an efficient job and be loyal.” Randall butted in. “That’s why I’m picking a Ford Motor Company engineer from my neck of the woods, South Michigan, as Secretary of Transportation.”
“And, the honorable Congressman from Iowa gets to pick the Secretary of Agriculture, because they’ve got corn. The Representative from West Virginia gets to choose the Secretary of Energy, because they have coal. Also, then they’ll be in our pocket.” John clarified with a sly grin, leaning back to lace his fingers behind his head.
“I see,” Jason said. “What kind of problems do we have that you need a Secretary of State to help sort out?” He looked worried. There must be some things he didn’t know about.
John held up a hand and started ticking off fingers: “Germany has asked us to nuke Istanbul, Izmir, and Ankara, as soon as Ferguson hits the Islamic State from the West, so the refugees won’t overwhelm Greece. “ Jason looked startled, but John continued. “Long story.” He lowered one finger. “We’re coordinating the shipment of cast-off Chinese weapons and armaments all the way across the Pacific and down to southern Africa, smuggling them to the Orange Free State there.” He lowered another finger. “AND, we, or rather the 3rd and 7th and 4th fleets, are cleaning up and dredging out and repairing the Ports of Seattle-Tacoma and Portland so we can bring home the 5th and 6th fleets home from Australia, finally, too. We’re re-taking the West Coast, Jason.” While that all sunk in, The Speaker began methodically cleaning his glasses on an embroidered white handkerchief.
“Okay, okay, I see what you mean. You could use a whole team of State Department people for those issues.” Jason commented, shaking his head. “It’s a good thing Gen. Smith has his own staff.”
With a sick smile, John peered through the lenses as he he
ld the bifocals up to the light, then reseated them and continued his litany. “I need him, Jason. That way, I can focus on the domestic civilian side of getting British Columbia, Oregon, and Washington from Territorial to State status. That is, as soon as they pick state legislatures who’ll ratify the revised Constitution and establish internal governments, which we can help them with.”
“And that will put us in direct contact and conflict with the Chinese in California.” Randall added. Don’t forget that we still owe them, big time, for what they did to Baltimore and New York and Philadelphia. The liberty bell, man!”
“That’s right, but there’s also the problems of the Mormons, everywhere out West, and eventually, Bellefont down in Texas, though we’re getting along okay at the border, right now….except for those Church of the New Dispensation weirdos who want to cross through to his territory.” Kip interjected.
John mimed lowering two more fingers. “So, when Congress reconvenes next month, I want to have a final slate of nominees to offer them for votes. I want confirmation votes before the Thanksgiving recess. And, I want your name to be on that list. Can I count on you to be my Attorney General, Jason?”
The Congressman from North Arkansas exhaled a puff of air. “I think so. But, I’ll have to talk to my wife and discuss it with my family, before I make a final decision, if that’s okay. And, I’ll need to pray about it.”
McNabb nodded sagely. “We all will, Jason. We all will.” He got up and stretched, signaling that the meeting was over. “Just like every other day that ends in ‘y’. “
…On their knees the war pigs crawling…
Major General Gerald “Ferocious” Ferguson saw himself as a modern day Roman ‘Legatus’, a commander of legions. With his broken nose and balding head, he even looked a bit like Julius Caesar. When you thought about it, that’s what he had become. Here he was, exiled, or at least not able to return to the homeland, for years. Not able to cross the Rubicon, or the Atlantic. After they had force-marched up out of Afghanistan all the way to Russia, the European contingents of the Allied coalition in Afghanistan had been transported by rail westwards and home. There was no railroad across the ocean. The Russians did provide enough transport planes to take the relatively few Australians and New Zealanders leap-frogging back down under. Ferguson, with more troops than he knew what to do with, had sent two Companies of Marines and a handful of liaison officers to each country, to reinforce the U.S. embassies there, and help guard U.S. citizens stranded in those nations when Cinco Day had brought air travel to a halt. He’d sent another Company of jarheads Australia’s way to strengthen the 5th and 6th fleets stationed in Perth, on loan to the Aussies as a ‘joint command’.
They just might be his ride home… some day. Putin’s successor was a hard c ore Ultra-Nationalist, and wanted Ferguson to kick Georgia, Azerbaijan, and Armenia back into the stone age, to stop the spread of the Islamic States’ fundamentalist jihad northwards. Then, he wanted the Turks fighting with the Iranians over Tabriz to get a good swift kick in the rear. After that, he promised to ship them by train over to Sevastopol so they could get their cruise home.
Home seemed like a faraway place, right now. His staff had been back in regular communication with the Unified Command almost all along. The last several months, they even had been getting mail from New America, passed from hand to hand across the world. Some of it did more harm to morale, than good. After five years, there were more than the expected number of ‘Dear John’ letters from fiancés and wives who had stopped waiting. Many parents and grandparents and other family members had died, during the breakup since Cinco Day, and some of his men learned about that, the hard way. The men and women under his command who heard nothing at all from Stateside considered themselves the lucky ones. They had long since learned that thinking about home could be a fatal distraction.
In exchange for shepherding the American forces out of one ‘Stan, the Russians had employed them in cleaning out three others. Ferguson couldn’t count the number of Muslim corpses they’d piled up over the last half decade. All he knew or cared about was that it had cost over 4,000 American lives. The ones left, just over 11,000 of them, were combat hardened and efficient, like no other force on Earth since World War Two had been. Their air power had been reduced to a few dozen Apaches and Cobras and Blackhawks. Once they became permanently mobile, taking and holding airfields cost more time than the mission itself. They used up the ordinance they had, and depleted their jet fuel reserves, in the first six months in Uzbekistan. Then, General Ferguson had made a generous gesture of turning over his remaining F-16s, F-15s, and C-130s to the Russians, who had used them to pound the heck out of the last Chinese regiments in Xinjiang Province, before taking it all the way to the Tian Shan mountain range. The Russians had stopped at the Takla Makan. That desert was border enough for the Western Chinese Front.
It had been in Turkmenbashi, on the Eastern shore of the Caspian Sea, that ‘Ferocious’ Ferguson had called a general staff meeting to discuss the disposition of forces. They had chewed their way through most of their ammunition and heavy weapons in the Kaplankyr Reserve fighting. Since the Russians hadn’t been pushy enough to disperse his units, he still had the entire division with him. So many units had been decimated or hollowed out, though, that a total reorganization was in order. Without any direct orders or local chain of command above him except for their neo-feudal Russian lords, he was on his own. That gave Ferguson an awful lot of leeway. And THAT is where the idea of the Legatus had been born.
A Roman Century had been roughly the size of a Company. So, the first step had been to fill in standing Companies, by stripping down nonessential Companies such as the Air Support units that weren’t needed any more. They and other non-ground pounding Companies were disbanded, and their personnel reassigned as needed to bring the combat units back up to full strength. Those Companies were then re-designated as numbered Centuries. Following the Roman model, sixty Centuries, or six thousand men, made up a Legion. When it was all said and done, Ferguson had almost two full strength Legions under his command.
The next order of business was conversion of arms. With ammunition and replacement parts for most weapons systems, even personal arms, about gone, a change had to be made. ‘When in Rome, to continue the meme’, Ferguson had joked to his Russian procurement liaison officer. The Colonel hadn’t known what a ‘meme’ was, but had gone off on a tangent about how the Russian ‘Czar’ title was named after the Roman Caesar because the Eastern Roman Empire had continued on through Russia. It had taken until the end of the year, but by the third anniversary of Cinco Day, Ferguson’s two legions had been outfitted with Russian uniforms to replace their worn out B.D.U.’s, and Russian weapons to replace most of their own. The re-training only took a few weeks. After that, they sported AKs instead of M4’s, and phased out their Abrams and Bradleys for BMP3’s. Most of them had learned to speak at least a little Russian and Uzbek, too.
Ferguson was aware of the German plan, and was dead-set against it. At least, he wanted to make sure that the goofballs in St. Louis didn’t nuke Istanbul. It wasn’t that it used to be Constantinople, ancient capitol of the Byzantine Empire, and all that Bravo Sierra, that bothered the General. What he was worried about was that he was going to have go through it, to get from the Black Sea to the Mediterranean, on his way home. Didn’t they have any globes left, back Stateside? In a very undisciplined manner, his mind drifted off to the silly old song he’d seen on cartoons as a kid: ‘Istanbul was Constantinople, now it’s Istanbul, not Constantinople, been a long time gone, Constantinople, why did Constantinople get the works? That’s nobody’s business but the Turks…”
As he had crossed the Caucasian Mountains headed South, Ferguson had wondered whether the name for White people really did come from those peaks they had climbed heading into Europe after their captivity from Israel, as legend told it. More pressing matters soon filled his thoughts, however. After the 2008 war with Russia, the South Ossetians borde
ring Russia and the Abkhazians on the coast had been independent. With the Islamic State faction operating in Georgia, that made it a four way war, even before they had dived in. First, they had to take Tblisi, the Georgian capitol. Then, they had to cut south and push the I.S. out of the formerly autonomous Republic of Adjara, now a caliphate. It was going to be a long winter ahead. This place was ugly as sin. No wonder Stalin had wanted out of it so bad.
Don't take your guns to town son…
Petty Officer Tommy Bullens, formerly of the U.S.S. (now the N.A.S.) Abraham Lincoln aircraft carrier, sat in front of his radio, giving coordinates to Oregon State Militia guerrillas in Eureka who had a truckload of Chinese HJ-10 anti-tank/antihelicopter missiles they had ‘found’. The abandoned weapons would be trucked north into Oregon, to the southernmost Marine post at Medford. Then, they’d come in produce trucks to Eugene, where Tommy and his buddy Rick and the rest of the crew dredging out the Williamette River would manage getting them over to the abandoned Coast Guard station in Astoria. There, an Australian fishing boat would pick them up, and trundle them towards southern Africa, where they were needed most. ‘The Orangers would be able to take out anything on wheels or that the kaffirs could still get in the air with these babies’, Tommy thought to himself. Water pattered on the steel roof like a drum. Tommy was glad to not be freezing this late in the year, for the first time in a long while. This was better than Alaska, but did it have to rain ALL the time? It sure made being outside in the fall a bummer.
Marines attached to the 7th had located several retired and deactivated Corps of Engineers who had survived the relatively brief but brutal Chinese occupation of this part of the Coast. Those guys oversaw the operation underway in Yaquina Bay. Half of the Newport’s 7,320 remaining residents were glad to have jobs working on the dredging operation. They got paid in food, the best coin in the land. New American Dollars backed by gold were just getting into circulation here. With the hundred or so Marines, twice that many Naval personnel, and a few hundred recently arrived workers from outlying areas, the place was jumping. Some of the workers were actually living in old cargo containers, lined up near the construction zone like trailers. As in Portland and Seattle-Tacoma and Coos Bay, the city benefitted by having its power restored. The four ports were anticipating a bright future as the homes of the New American Navy. People were already moving to Newport from the downsized neo-medieval villages of Salem and Eugene.