by Billy Roper
Even as they pulled into Texarkana, it was obvious that New America had a thumb over the region. A squad of Marines in spit and polish met them at the city limits, and nearly broke their arms saluting when they saw who was onboard the unscheduled convoy. He made the commander proud by conducting an impromptu inspection of the barracks, and the mess hall, where he ate with the troops, and their armory. At the end of it, he shook the commander’s hand in front of the border guards, and gave them a brief speech in which he praised their continued diligence, and promised that as a reward, a Troop Morale show featuring Kelley Meghan speaking and Keith Toby performing to show them how much their nation was grateful for their service would be making the rounds within a month. John made a mental note to himself to make that call when he got back. Not having Kip around to be his memory was hard to get used to.
That evening he met with President Hampton symbolically at the border. John got out of his APC, walked across the dark highway by himself, and climbed into the back seat of the Republic of Texas leader’s Cadillac, to sit beside him. Scott smiled agreeably at the forwardness, and said “Ya know, the last time somebody in my position came to a meeting with a foreign leader, he got himself killed.”
McNabb frowned seriously. “I know, Mr. President, we lost a couple of good people that day, too. We’re as determined as you are to find the people involved, and make them pay.”
“Good, good, I’m very glad to hear y ou say that, Mr. Speaker, because I think we both know pretty much what happened there.” He looked as if he was testing the waters.
“And, it’s safe to say that you don’t think it was simple negligence, that they dropped the ball?” John asked. He wanted to see how much Hampton knew.
“No, as a matter of fact, our sources there tell us that the exact date and time and location of the negotiations was leaked to a network of FLDS radical groups a week before Perry got there.” Scott confided.
“By Prophet Rammell? But why?” the Speaker asked.
“By somebody in their Department of Public Safety, at least, we’re not sure how high the conspiracy goes, or more precisely, how far down it flowed.” the Texican replied.
“Okay, I’ll take your word for it. You know I’m no big fan of theirs, it’s all I can do to keep one wife happy half the time,” John joked.
Hampton relaxed somewhat and smiled. “So, if there should be hostilities between Deseret and the Republic of Texas….?”
“Well, you have a larger army, and both sides are about equal in air power. You have more armor, but they do have their nuclear option. That’s a hard bear to overcome, if it came right down to it.”
“The Republic of Texas is not without….” Scott began. McNabb stopped him with a gently raised hand.
“Come on, don’t kid a kidder, Scott, if we’re gonna be friends, let’s play it straight. Nukes are about the only thing that Texas doesn’t have. And, that’s why it’s important for you to have a friend who does.”
The President regarded The Speaker the way a farmer might look at a snake he’d just discovered in his garden. “Okay, fair enough. So, let’s get down to brass tacks, son. What do you want?”
“Well, there’s an answer to that, too, Scott. First, we want Colorado. All of it, including the high ground they’ve taken in the Rockies where they sit peeking down at our people there. You get all of New Mexico, like you want, no question there. Secondly, we want the corner of Wyoming they’ve carved off. Thirdly, we want the southern third of Idaho, below the Snake River, back. But that’s between us and them. As far as you’re concerned, our nuclear deterrent counterbalances theirs. We’ll move on them in Colorado to draw resources away from their defense when you hit them in New Mexico. But also, we want your help in wiping out the Church of the New Dispensation, once the Mormons have been taught a little Biblical humility.”
President Hampton smiled like a wolf. “Why, John McNabb, are you sure you ain’t from Texas?”
Who let the dogs out? Who-who-who-who?.....
A smaller percentage of the Chinese, both U.S. born and first generation, survived the effects of the Turkish Flu than did Hispanics, it seemed. As Gene Ferguson’s legion mopped up the last holdouts of the People’s Republic of China Humanitarian Peacekeeping Expedition in the alleyways of ChinaTown where they had hid out, New American Marines were already in transit from Sacramento to secure the Bay. Over 1,500 legionnaires had died or been severely wounded in the California campaign, most before the flu had swept in and done 90% of their job for them. As the commanding officer, “Ferocious” couldn’t help but wish he’d delayed landing another two weeks, until the virus had destroyed the enemy for them…but they just hadn’t known how it would play out, and in war…in war, that’s just how it played out, sometimes. Of the 1,500 casualties, six hundred would survive, and half of those were walking wounded who could become combat ready, eventually. He left them to guard the nonambulatory wounded and the medics until the Marines secured the peninsula, then collected his intact troops and marched south again, to make sure he hadn’t missed any straggling Chink immunes. They found a few in the Valley who had survived, and hadn’t been called up in the desperate human wave attacks they had encountered on the southern edge of their pincer. These were ethnically cleansed as they were encountered.
Camped in the Kern National Wildlife Refuge, the General who was in line to become the Secretary of Defense took another head count, and found that he had 6,300 battle ready veterans under his command, whom he once again reorganized into a Legion of sixty Centuries, with three Centuries left over. Their forward scouts met up with the northernmost Deseret patrols just outside of Bakersfield, and the meetings were cordial. The New American Marines, though, reported that they were woefully understaffed to secure northern California, even with the nationalization of the various militia, partisan, and guerrilla groups of the resistance under the Unified Command. Gen. Ferguson knew what his men had been through over the last half decade. Now, they had made it back. He decided to do something completely unprecedented. He allowed his entire command to vote, simultaneously, on their enlistment status. They were given three options: the legionnaires could vote to receive an honorable discharge and return to civilian life, either to try to return to wherever their homes had been as best they could, or to go anywhere they wished in New America with a universal 90 day rail pass, or stay in California as a civilian colonist to resettle the depopulated area. As a second option, they could vote to transfer their enlistment to the Unified Command in California, and stay there under arms. Or thirdly, they could remain with the legion. They had one day to decide, before the decision had to be communicated to their senior officers.
In the end, around 1,400 former legionnaires voted to study war no more, and muster out. A third stayed in California to recolonize it, and the other two-thirds attempted to find their way homes. About eight hundred transferred their enlistment over to the New American Unified Command in Northern California, giving them eight full companies to patrol the border and insure law and order in the frontier. They were happy to have them. The remaining 4,100, either out of personal loyalty to Ferguson or because they had no idea what else to do, voted to remain in the Legion.
Because most of the east-west rail lines ran through Deseret controlled territory, the trip to St. Louis by circuitous train tracks up through Oregon and Washington, across northern Idaho, and through Montana, Dakota, Minnesota, and Iowa was a macabre tour. It educated them all, over a week and half, of what had really happened here, as they rolled through one burned out city after another, and came to welcome the few small settlements and secure towns along the line which were still alive. Each day they stopped to refuel the train, take on or drop off commercial freight, produce, or finished products, and to allow the returning legionnaires to get a decent meal and, every other day, a shower or bath in a frigid creek. Sometimes they had to break the early November ice in Montana streams to wash up from the dirty sweating masses they had become after hours of rid
ing in metal boxcars heated by wood stoves.
The people crowded around them. In awe, they asked them not what they had seen, or what things were like over there. Instead, they wanted to know where they were from in New America, did they have any folks waiting on them, and if they were interested in settling down. The word was passed that any soldiers who wanted to jump train and become a farmer or a guard for farmers and marry some cornfed rancher’s daughter could hop out with no bad feelings. A few did, along the way.
When the streamlined American Foreign Legion arrived in St. Louis, the high school marching band met them playing “America The Beautiful”. The Speaker met Gen. Ferguson on the platform to accept his salute and shake his hand and welcome him home. Every member of Congress rose and applauded when Ferguson spoke before them to give his report of their actions since Cinco Day. He then accepted the nomination for the office of Secretary of Defense. John drove him out to meet with Harrison for a few weeks of transitional training, to being Ferguson up to speed on their force of arms and deployments. In the meantime, the 4,000 lost warriors enjoyed a week of rest and relaxation in the capital city, with free food, drinks, and lodging anywhere they wanted in the capitol. The loss in property damage and revenue was worth it. A parade was held in their honor every day, for that week.
At the end of that week, John asked Gen. Ferguson to personally select and endorse a successor to the command of the legion. Gene chose Col. Victor Brown, the highest ranked Marine officer in the legion, as his surprise successor. Brown had actually been a J.A.G. lawyer in Kabul before the collapse, but he had earned his red wings since then. After conferring with the Colonel, Ferguson called the legion into barracks, and transferred authority to Victor. The next week was spent issuing new weapons, uniforms, and equipment to the legion, because it took that long to gather than much new gear and make sure they were familiar with the weapons systems and equipment. Logistics and quartermastering weren’t what they used to be, before Cinco Day.
The now well rested and newly armed and equipped legion reboarded another train the day after Speaker McNabb and his entire family joined them in their mess hall to bless their Thanksgiving dinner and share in it with them. That had meant a lot to the hardbitten vets. The railcars took them in the opposite direction the next time, across Missouri, through the bustling Columbia, and around the trainyards of Kansas City, where they stopped for the night. Within two days they had crossed the bare plains awaiting the next year’s wheat, and come to Dodge City, where they switched to a northern spur to Fort Morgan, Colorado. It was the last stop on the line.
While the New American legion was detraining in Fort Morgan and making camp outside of town, open disagreement had broken out down south. Republic of Texas mounted infantry had probed west of Santa Fe to claim the Los Alamos laboratories, long a target for the Texican government due to their atomic problem. When Fundamentalist Latter Day Saints militia ambushed them out at dawn the next morning, the Republic of Texas Air Force from Dyess was called in to soften up the F.L.D.S. positions. The F.L.D.S. called on the local Deseret Gulls unit commander to intervene, but while he waffled in indecision, the Texicans reinforced, and took Los Alamos.
President Hampton waited impatiently for Speaker McNabb to fulfill his end of their bargain. After calling a press conference to complain bitterly about “Mormon radicals and terrorists, of the same kind responsible for the recent tragedy in Salt Lake City” stealing cattle from New American colonist’s homesteads, he made his move. That day the legion force-marched to Greeley. The next evening they camped in Loveland, and John sent a radio message to Prophet Rammell requesting clarification on why LDS troops were assisting FLDS terrorists in raiding New American territory. The next sunrise, the question was above the fold in all of the morning papers. Deseret troops attempted to retake Los Alamos even as Prophet Rammell asked for a cease fire to discuss the territorial disputes with both nations. Hampton interpreted that as a sign of weakness, and ordered a general advance on Gallup.
The New American legion approached Estes Park, to find it occupied by Deseret artillery units which made their presence known with a general area bombardment. The 37th Helicopter Squadron from Warren Air Force Base near Cheyenne aided elements of the legion by deploying them in the huge expanse of the national park southwest of the LDS positions, to flank them. Estes Park was surrounded.
Josh was torn. He was heartbroken that his nation and Kelly’s were, without declaring it as such, at war with one another. How would he be able to return to her, now? He didn’t know what he could do, without being disloyal, or downright treasonous. He thought about returning to active duty with the Air Force and flying a few missions to prove his patriotism, before asking to be reinstated in Salt Lake. He considered suggesting that now, more than ever, an Ambassador for Texas was needed in the Mormon capitol, to negotiate their surrender when they inevitably called for a cease fire. It really didn’t sound plausible, though, even to him. There was no way that Hampton would go for it.
Kelly’s new position as Jimmy’s replacement required her to meet with Prophet Rammell every day, to give him his formal intelligence briefing. At first it was a bit daunting, sitting in front of the man who was both the religious and political leader of Deseret, but she soon saw that he was just a guy. Not only was he just a guy, he was an old, crotchety, lecherous guy. He might be a Saint, but he sure was a sinner, too. Kelly soon saw that the Council of Fifty, squabbling amongst themselves as they constantly did behind the scenes, held the real top-level power in the LDS Church. Rammell, whatever he had intended to be or started out being, was just a figurehead. The only thing he could decide on was what Sister Missionary to take back to his quarters with him at the end of his day at the office. Sometimes, when even that was too hard a decision to make, he took two or three. Knowing and understanding this, after a few days Kelly began to use her natural feminine charms as well as her b.s. skills to spin a web for the Prophet.
The FLDS faction would never approve of a female being in such a position of influence, no matter how conservatively she dressed or how demurely she acted at the office. Prophet Rammell loved it, though. And, after the debacle at the capitol, and the war it had led them into, the Council of Fifty was eager to do anything to weaken the Fundamentalist’s influence and power. That’s why she had been promoted, and that’s why she laid it on thick, every day, about the FLDS stirring up conflict in Colorado. Because she lay the responsibility for the alleged raids on New American property at the feet of the FLDS, the Council was reluctant to commit to a fight against the legion in Estes Park. They didn’t want to be seen as siding with terrorists, even their own terrorists, and they wanted to punish the extremists. When Prophet Rammell himself ordered the young Lieutenant in charge of the artillery units in Estes Park to ask for a cease fire from the legion, he did, and was almost relieved that they accepted.
Col. Brown met with the Deseret lieutenant, and told him that LDS troops and colonists would be allowed one week to withdraw from Estes Park, during which time the cease fire would be honored. That message was conveyed to the Council, which entered into a brief debate, showing fracture lines deepening between the fundamentalist and Community of Christ factions. The more liberal wing, emboldened by the disfavor the FLDS was in, won. Estes Park and the immediate vicinity were evacuated by all of the Mormons there, and the legion moved in to occupy the town.
FLDS adherents in Rock Springs, Wyoming, reacted with anger at the capitulation, and burned down the homes of several non-Mormons in the town. With winter coming soon, that was a real threat to their survival. Wyoming National Guard forces in Laramie under the Unified Command were mobilized and placed on high alert, in response. The extremists began not only verbally harassing, but physically assaulting, women on the street who were not dressed modestly or conservatively enough to suit their tastes, even in the middle of a Wyoming December.
Having secured Los Alamos and the Abiquiu Reservoir, the Republic of Texas forces in northern New M
exico seemed content to allow the large dead zone of the former Apache reservations serve as a buffer between themselves and the disheartened LDS forces in that sector. They would hold their positions through the New Year. In the south, however, Texican troops from El Paso, supported by F-16s flying out of Biggs, engaged Gull units defending Silver City.
The name tag still read “Lt. Walker” on his Texas Air National Guard uniform. It even still fit. As he walked right past the Rangers at the security kiosk and out onto the tarmac, his back itched. Nobody questioned him, and nobody followed him. Apparently his face being in the news as an Ambassador and as a hero of Salt Lake’s massacre hadn’t made him recognizable, either, at least not when he was in a uniform. It was something he had learned in the military: people have ranks, not faces. Of course, President Hampton was a military man, to, but he wouldn’t understand what Josh was doing. To him and to all of his comrades, he would be a traitor. He might even be called Texas’s own version of Benedict Arnold, if it went bad. But if it went good, well…if it went good, he could stop this stupid, senseless war, and end the men on both sides dying over desert sand and ghost towns and bleached bones.
As he looked over the aircraft on the flightline, ready to be fired up, he wondered if Kelly would understand. First, he’d have to explain to her why he hadn’t told her that he was a Republic of Texas Air Force officer. That would require explaining to her that he had been on a mission to infiltrate Deseret intelligence, specifically through her, but that was before he had really fallen in love with her, and now he was back, and they could make things right, for them, and for their two countries. He would just have to see, he couldn’t live without her, no matter what happened.