The Hasten the Day Trilogy

by Billy Roper

  The defensive firing positions in the parapets held the attackers away from the front courtyard, where Sur was wishing he had gone for a more Spartan topiary plan, to provide less cover to whoever was out there. His elite guards reported that they were White, and he guessed they were New American. What was tickling the back of his mind was the thought that a suicide attack wasn’t the style of the infidels, so either this was a diversion for a larger attack, or they were expecting reinforcements sometime soon. He sent a runner to check with the communications room to see if there was any sign of other forces, on land or sea or air.

  Kip stood on board the hangar deck of the NAS Ruby Ridge, watching the elevators raise the last of a dozen FB 29 stealth fighter/bombers into position, ready to take its place in the flight line. He hated missing seeing the kids unwrap their presents, and playing Santa Claus, in general. The nuclear powered carrier, the second of its class, was the heart of the 7th fleet task force churning towards Java as the first twinkle of dawn lit the sky. He was going into battle with the naval contingent after an unencrypted message from the Salt Lake City DPS to Bullens’ Intelligence division had given them a heads up about the commando raid on Jakarta. Randall had called him and told him to not question why the crazy Mormons were doing this, but just to back them up as soon as they got visual confirmation that it was happening. The fleet had been ready to roll for weeks. Now they were going forward, but not in the way that they had expected or anticipated.

  He had barely had time to call Hope and let her know what was happening. She’d seemed kind of abrupt with him, but maybe that was just his nerves and overactive imagination working on him. Kip didn’t have time to worry about what kind of female emotional issue she might be having, right now. To his left and right, smaller destroyers flanked the carrier as the klaxon alarmed that the first Javan ships had come into radar range.

  The officer in charge was hesitant to answer him the first time he asked, but the look on Moerdani’s face brought the response he was requesting. The communications room had confirmed that a naval battle was beginning between his forces and the New Americans north of Christmas Island. His air force was heavily engaged with fast and deadly aircraft that didn’t show up on their radar screens, apparently. Reports of losses kept coming in, as one plane after another fell.

  He couldn’t raise the prison on the radio, so he assumed the worst from that area, now that things had gone quiet. If they had taken the penitentiary compound, that would free up more attackers to tighten the pressure on his guards here. He had reinforcements on the way, too, though.

  Something heavier than a grenade blew up outside, maybe an RPG, against the wall. One of his guards was knocked down by the concussion, and his ears were ringing as dust and grit made his eyes tear. The sound of jet engines overhead signaled bad news. If they dropped ordinance on him now, the Caliph knew that his infantry reinforcements wouldn’t arrive in time to be of any help.

  If the 3rd fleet had remained in position, they could have finished off the Javan aircraft carrier and the rest of their navy piecemeal. With the other New American carrier group from the South Pacific headed around Tierra del Fuego to deal with the conflict in the Caribbean, it took three torpedoes from the trailing submarine to cripple the carrier. Once it had been stopped, the destroyers moved in to finish it off while the carrier wing decimated the Javan Air Force from the land bases as soon as they caught air. Most of them never got off the ground, and never saw their destruction coming.

  Captain Howell and a platoon dug in to hold the prison, while the rest of the surviving primary strike force redeployed to the palace battle. Just as they arrived and took up positions by the pool, racing motors came from three directions, and the thump of helicopter rotors approached. Corporal Timmons heard jibber jabber yelling coming up the hill, still out of sight, and figured that sitting still wasn’t a good idea. There wasn’t much future in it.

  The clump of attacking soldiers rushed forward right into the open, before they could get thoroughly caught in the cross-fire from his attacking reinforcements, and made it under the porticos. Back and forth the helicopter gunship swept, its chain gun mowing down the concealed men in the bushes. Some of them might have survived the strafing, but a low black blur streaked in and the New American jet fired a missile point blank down into the refurbished Malaysian helicopter, raining fire down onto the courtyard and gardens in a sheet of death. Moerdani cackled, drawing an incredulous look from his men. “Allah is great! He uses the infidel’s own weapons against them, and provides martyrdom for the faithful!” he explained. They looked at each other with raised eyebrows, and nodded in agreement.

  New America’s fleet couldn’t stop the surviving Javanese ships from retreating, but the carrier wing did gain air superiority over the island before the land came into view, with only two lost aircraft. Hundreds of Muslim sailors spread their prayer mats on the tilting deck of the sole aircraft carrier in the Javan fleet as it slowly rolled onto its side and slipped beneath the waves. The sea burned from flaming fuel, welcoming them to Hell.

  Their radioman was dead, but the transceiver on his back still worked. Timmons reached Captain Howell just in time to hear the platoon holding the prison being overran by the Caliph’s reinforcements. The Captain ordered ‘No Surrender’ and signed off. The other strike force had been caught by the gunship, too. They didn’t answer his radio call. Corporal Timmons looked back at the winking flashes of firing from concealed positions in the courtyard. There was no way out that way. Their backs were against the front wall, and on the other side of that, was the bad guy they had come after, but couldn’t quite reach. He was so close. So Harolding close. There were two guys with Timmons still mobile, and all three of them had taken hits on the way in. He sat back painfully onto the body of the radioman, and thought about his girlfriend and his mom and dad. Had Prophet Walker made a mistake? Would this have happened, if the Church had anointed a man, instead of a woman? He imagined what his memorial ceremony would be like, and who would give the speech. Probably his brother. The nerd. How many girls would cry for him? He briefly touched helmets with the Privates and told them the plan, so they could hear him over the weapons fire aimed at their general direction.

  Through the second story window, the fires still burned in front of the palace, he could see. The Caliph had just received a report that the prison had been retaken, and none of the attackers had been captured alive. The officer who had radioed him claimed that the attackers were Saints. Saints! Why did those cultists get involved? In the wider battle, the New Americans had hurt him badly. It would take years to rebuild his navy and air force. But if they didn’t land more troops, he would live to fight another day, praise Allah. The firing had slowed down from the front, then another explosion at the doorway triggered a final burst of shots. Venturing down the stairs, Moerdani saw the bodies of three White soldiers, just inside the door. The infidels had defiled his home, and threatened his life. But Allah was merciful, and he had survived.

  Low-level flights over the prison and the Cali ph’s palace filmed Javan troops sauntering around the grounds, shooting wounded Deseret troops and celebrating. The assault had failed, utterly.

  Chapter Five

  “I have been reading about the problems of youth. You know, with all the criticism that was levelled at von Schirach and his Hitler Jugend, it is forgotten that he did a fantastic thing with Germany's young. He kept them busy, he kept them out of trouble. In those years we did not have to concern ourselves with the worry of youths taking drugs, getting involved in crime, and sexual permissiveness. We did not have burning of national flags and draft cards. We had a healthy youth with healthy minds, all pulling together to build a nation. That is what we need today. We need to get them back on the right track.”

  -Rudolph Hess

  “Momma, just killed a man…put a gun against his head, pulled my trigger, now he’s dead…goodbye, everybody, I’ve got to go…”

  Kelly’s personal driver didn�
�t bring the car around the day after the BBC carried their coverage of the failed hostage rescue attempt on Java. The fact that the Caliphate had given them an interview denying that he had ever actually had Carolyn McNabb as a prisoner, made it more of an international headline story than the Battle of Jakarta, itself. Deseret officially censored incoming satellite and internet media, as best it could, but there were always leaks. Within hours, Col. Harbin’s widow was on the air, sobbing for her lost husband. As she shrugged off Josh’s attempts to talk to her about staying home ‘until things cooled off’, she remembered how she had first gotten started down this path, with the unlicensed shortwave transceiver trap. That had been a lifetime ago.

  The girls wanted to stay home from school today, because at the end of the day yesterday several of the other girls had been whispering about their mom being a ‘false prophet’. Girls could be so mean. Especially at that age. She had disconnected the phone at midnight after the calls from the Council kept growing more heated.

  “It may be, Prophet Walker, that we have reached that point, “ one of her closest supporters up until then had offered, like he was giving away candy.

  “What is that supposed to mean, Thomas?” she had asked, exhausted by the casualty reports and the questions about the deeper scandal involving the assassination of Bellefont.

  “Well, sometimes, Kelly” he elaborated, dropping the titular pretense entirely, “in life we burn bridges and have to know when it’s time to walk away…”

  “And, has that happened, here, Thomas?”, she’d asked.

  “Well, I’m not sure yet, Kelly, I just don’t know…”

  “Oh, go Harold yourself,” she had replied, slamming the phone down.

  This morning a small but growing group of protesters stood across the street. They were mainly war veterans and closet fundamentalists who mocked her historic moves to allow women a greater voice in public discourse by dragging three or four wives each out to hold up signs calling for her resignation. “Murderer” and “Traitor”, some of their placards declared. When no Department of Public Safety officers showed up to move them along, they became emboldened. Now they were getting louder.

  On the Deseret News, no one was asking why Moerdani would have claimed to have Carolyn if he didn’t. As she stood looking out the window longing for a cigarette and wondering if her driver was even going to show, Kelly listened to the anchors interview one Bishop after another about the ‘secret alliance’ with the New American Navy, and “the shame and humiliation all Saints feel at the needless sacrifice of so many brave soldiers for no reason”.

  The leaked ballistics report and its’ coverup was being treated as a second page story, even with her old Intelligence Division boss Jimmy materializing to tell the interviewer that he had known she was a corrupt traitor all along, and he had tried to tell them, but noone had listened. The sound of his gravelly voice, like a ghost from long ago, caused Kelly to turn from the window and glance at the wallscreen. He had really gotten old. Where had the time gone? She felt her face, and the fine lines beginning there at the corners of her eyes and mouth.

  Josh opened the door and yelled at the protesters to go away, but that just set off a new round of chanting. Karen hustled the girls back into their rooms, away from the noise, and pulled Josh back into the foyer by his arm. They both turned to look at Kelly. Josh took a step towards her. She turned her back to him and reconnected the phone. Immediately it began ringing again. The caller ID announced that it was the Deseret News. Smelling blood in the water, she surmised. Kelly dialed her own office number, to ask how bad the protesters were there. The phone rang four times, as programmed, and then went to voicemail. Noone answered. She tried again, with the same result. Karen was crying quietly in the hall. Her sister had never been able to hold things together under any stress, after her time in slavery.

  Checking her voicemail, Kelly found one message from Hope telling her that the leaks hadn’t come from her, but she hoped that the story wasn’t true, and eight calls from Council members expressing their support unequivocally, then eleven later calls asking for her resignation. The eleven latter calls included all eight of the members from the previous calls offering support, as well as three more. She chuckled dryly as she listened to the first few words of each, before deleting them. Beep. Beep. Beep. She hadn’t acted quickly enough to outmaneuver her political enemies.

  The t.v. news feed switched over to a ‘Special Report’, on demands for clarification about the assassination allegations from the Republic of Texas government. Austin was recalling their ambassador today. Tensions were escalating on the border in New Mexico. Speaker Balderson vigorously denied any knowledge of the allegations during a press conference in the New American capitol. Kelly turned to Josh, softening now, with tears in her eyes. He took her in his arms silently, and kissed the top of her head. It was time to see who was still on their team.

  By noon, the crowd of protesters had amassed to over a thousand, surrounding the house on all sides. A few of her loyal guards had shown up, but they brought their families and luggage with them, as if they knew what taking her side in this would mean. Eight of the fifty members of the Council, those who had too much to lose if the Fundamentalists came back into power, stuck by her side. The other forty-two had drafted a resolution calling for her resignation and excommunication from the Church. The atmosphere in her living room felt like a wake, or a political party headquarters after a bad night, awaiting a concession speech. If that’s what they wanted…

  Reporters from all over the world continued calling and e-mailing her, asking for a statement. She wanted to be stubborn, but Josh led her into their room and they sat on the bed and vented, then talked about their options. He never once had asked her whether it was true or not. From a Texican born and raised, that was all the proof of his love and loyalty that she needed. It was what made the difference when he told her that they should leave.

  Kelly made another call, to a New American phone number, this time. The Unified Command officer who answered was a double agent of hers. When he was faced with the choice of being exposed, or helping her rally support for her from the LDS community and churches across the border in Colorado, Andrew McDonald didn’t have to think twice.

  Just before dusk, as the protest outside turned into a candlelight vigil, Kelly returned a call from the Council. She curtly told them that she would resign her position and go into voluntary exile without a fight under two conditions. First, that no charges be brought against herself or any of her subordinates, now or in the future, and secondly, that any Deseret citizens who wished to join in her in exile could do so, without hindrance. In order to try to get the spiraling international situation with Texas under control, they agreed. Another two phone calls had a BBC camera crew and production team in her living room, setting up lights.

  The first female Prophet of Deseret gave a live interview on BBC that went worldwide to Europe, Africa, Australia and New Zealand, and throughout North and South America, that night. In a sincere, strong voice with just the right amount of righteous indignation, Kelly denied the assassination allegation completely. She claimed that it was a political stunt obviously designed to harm the reputation of the deceased New American Speaker. The evidence had been manufactured and was being promoted by the enemies of New America, and she considered herself to simply be collateral damage to their conspiratorial plot against New America. She insinuated complicity by the Javan Caliphate, without giving specifics.

  As to the massacre of Deseret troops in Jakarta, she accepted full responsibility for that military defeat, and responded to the questions by stating that she had made the decision to attempt the rescue of the wife of the assassinated Speaker on her own, without the Council’s knowledge or approval. Kelly did use the opportunity to point out that Java had claimed to have Carolyn McNabb as a prisoner, themselves, initially. She expressed her condolences to the families of the servicemen who had died in the operation, and even allowed a few tears to
fall on camera, for their benefit.

  After taking those two positions, she straightened and regained her authoritative posture and command voice. Because of the tensions between Deseret and the Republic of Texas over the slanderous accusations against herself and John McNabb, and because of her mistake in Jakarta, she would be resigning from public office effective immediately. She further stated that she would be surrendering her Deseret citizenship, and entering voluntary exile in the San Luis Valley of Southern Colorado. Furthermore, the Deseret government had agreed to allow any citizens who wished, to join her there, in exile.

  That last part was a mere footnote to the international viewers, but had Randall Balderson’s office in an uproar in St. Louis. The Speaker immediately realized that he couldn’t tell her no, after Kelly had publicly exonerated New America in general and their founding Speaker in particular to a worldwide audience, and announced her move as if it were a done deal. Not without creating more problems for himself, he couldn’t.

  Within hours, Deseret and Republic of Texas troops stood down along the border. The Council accepted her resignation as Prophet, as well as the resignations of eight of their own members, the next day. Balderson ordered the New American border opened for the Walker family and their party, which had snowballed to nearly three hundred persons by the time they reached Colorado. Another few hundred of the more progressive minded Mormons from Deseret, as well as from New Mexico and even from Oklahoma and Texas, joined their community there, over the next several months. Deseret fell back under the grip of the newly resurgent Fundamentalist Church of Latter Day Saints, but Kelly and Josh barely noticed. They kept their t.v turned off in their new place and didn’t care.

  “If the day should ever come, when you might just appear, even though you’d soon be gone, when I reached out my hands…if I could see you….”