The Hasten the Day Trilogy
Page 66
Jack McNabb’s Academy graduation ceremony was attended by more dignitaries and military officers than his dad’s funeral, he noticed with some mixed feelings and pride. As he gave his Valedictory speech, ending it by saying “Class, I salute you”, and giving all three sides of the audience in the gymnasium a stiff-armed Bellamy salute, some of them looked uncomfortable. They didn’t know how to act towards him, since his dad had died, really. That was okay, he would teach them.
With his graduation from the Academy came an automatic commission as a Second Lieutenant in the Unified Command. For him, with his grades and test scores and performances on the combat and weapons ranges, that meant his choice of service branches. Even without his family political connections, he could choose his own path. Jack chose a two year combat infantry enlistment, to everyone’s shock and dismay. His teachers tried to talk him out of it, but his mind was made up. Not even Hope could dissuade him. Gen. Harrison didn’t try. He wanted some experience killing, hand to hand. Maybe he needed it. There was an old saying that no man ever really becomes a man until his father dies. Jack was still trying to get used to the idea.
The fifteen year old maintained the Warehouse as his permanent residence, although as the sole surviving heir of legal age, it had been willed to his older sister. She and Kip and their kids would be moving back to the capitol from Orange as soon as a new ambassador could be picked by Randall. It was time, and besides, that would help diffuse any further investigations into the Bellefont assassination, for the new administration. Kip had sat Hope down and told her what he had known and when, and she had accepted it. The kids were still sad about their grandma and grandpa, but happy to be moving to the big city, except for Mary, who had a boyfriend in Jo’burg.
They had mutually agreed that they would all move into the Warehouse and live in it, and his room would be kept for him alone, whenever Jack was off deployment. A simple memorial ceremony was held for Carolyn, and a marker for her erected alongside the larger obelisk for John McNabb, on the Capitol grounds of the Old Courthouse. Randall and his family, and the Cabinet members and their families, and several ambassadors and media members were there. The honor guard performed a twenty-one gun salute, then presented folded starless flags to Hope and Jack. A brief scripture reading and prayer followed, before the empty casket was lowered and covered. None of the McNabb family adults had felt much like celebrating anything when Christmastime came, so even for the children, it was a muted Holiday.
While Hope and Kip were wrapping things up in Southern Africa, Jack’s first deployment was to a unit scheduled to flush some feral Latinos out of an old amusement park in central Florida. He looked forward to seeing his first wild nonWhites, as well as the ocean.
Several weeks later, his sixteenth birthday was spent on the oceanfront in Palm Bay. Somehow, it wasn’t quite what he had thought it would be. Jack had inherited his father’s near-sightedness, and wouldn’t be eligible for corrective surgery until his eighteenth birthday. His glasses kept getting dirty and smeared and fogged up. He waded through waist-high salt water grass behind a veteran Staff Sergeant from Emerald Coast who was more experienced in this kind of misery than he or the rest of his squad was. The eight other young men following him had come to accept him as one of themselves, despite who his father had been. That hadn’t come easy, but it had come, with time together. The Sergeant was missing one ear, and told him stories about fighting hordes of black savages, a quarter century earlier, as they sloshed along. First the Sergeant, then Jack, then the Corporal, Stehl, from Pittsburgh. The seven Privates he was still getting to know. There wasn’t a speck of sand or a bikini in sight. The rumor that the Cubans had an enclave in the area of the old roller coasters had turned out to be a real Mickey Mouse operation. There had only been three of them, and they were old and crippled. They had barely even bothered to run at all. And dirty? He had never seen such filth. They could hunt them down by their smell.
Finally, a mile further south, they hit an open area with some actual beach, although it was littered with driftwood and sun-bleached garbage. Corporal Stehl called for the medic, Private Gaede, to give each of them a malaria booster shot, while Sgt. Chittum showed Jack their position on the topo map tablet. The plan from division was to work their way South, then link up with the main Emerald Beach contingent coming down the Gulf side around the big lake, Okeechobee, where larger tribes of immune Latinos were camped.
This far down the peninsula, the surviving White enclaves greeted them like conquering heroes, or liberators. One night a whole town of fifty people welcomed them into their walled village and gave them a feast of seafood, fresh caught that day. That was near where Titusville used to be, so they still used that name for their fortress. Like most of the surviving White towns, it was scraping along at a nineteenth century technological level, but they looked healthy enough.
And the girls! Jack had never seen what a rock star was treated like, except for on old vids, but as the officer in charge of the squad, he had more feminine attention from the survivors than he knew what to do with, literally. He had always been treated differently, but not like this. It was amazing for an adolescent young man with limited experience, socially. Military discipline dictated that he not take advantage of his position, but several young ladies certainly tried their best to take advantage of theirs. He was the highest status male from outside their village that most of them had ever met.
Some of the Whites wanted to join the army immediately or follow along behind them as hangers-on, but except for one or two local men temporarily hired as guides, Jack felt that camp followers of any kind would result in an erosion of discipline and combat effectiveness, so he declined. Actually, his NonCom acted like a chaperone, most of the time. When the girls from communities that had been in sporadic or partial contact with New American authorities found out who their visitor was, it made his fame even greater. One Mayor compared him to King Arthur, the son of Uther Pendragon. The oldster had been an English professor, before the Balk.
The New American borders were advancing southwards, and soon the survivors in the White enclaves would be visited by doctors, engineers, mechanics, and teachers who would begin the process of reconnecting them with the world, he assured them. And to a few of the girls, he promised that he would be passing back through, himself, some day. Whether he really would or not, he liked their expressions when he said it.
Even though there was no Chaplain with them, the men kept up the practice of morning prayer before setting out each dawn for another patrol or sweep South. As their officer, Jack said grace over every shared meal. Some of the enclaves they encountered were a bit uncertain about the second nature that religious observance had assumed in the Unified Command military culture. They had been isolated from the rest of the continent for so long, that some of them were unaware of the nationalization of Christian Identity as an unofficial state religion in the non-Mormon areas of the former U.S.. It would take some getting used to, for them.
In the day to day tactical exercises of clearing large areas of coastline and driving any immune virus survivors inland and South in front of them, Jack relied on Sgt. Chittum. The dishwater blonde teen, awkward in his last growth spurt, often stumbled at the heels of the man who had been at the Battle of the Two Bridges, like an overexuberant puppy. He learned more from the veteran every day than he had learned in combat training through the whole Academy. Like how to communicate when your ears rang from shooting, day after day. His N.C.O. helped shape the teenager into a capable junior officer, and a leader of men. By the time they got to the half-burned ruins of Port St. Lucie and the White enclave there, Jack’s squad, working parallel to others in the same sweep, had bagged eleven Latinos and two blacks, and found one recently dead Asian, strangely enough. Even in Florida, he could tell that early summer had arrived. It was hotter and more humid than he had ever imagined possible, and even worse than it had been when he had gotten off the C-140 in Tallahassee.
Following the rende
zvous with the other units, they held a collective debriefing, then a mission status update where the Colonel in charge of ‘Operation Clean Sweep’ revealed the second part of their plan. He nodded at Jack, recognizing him from his promotion ceremony at the Capitol, last year. After the roundup and liquidation of the immune nonWhites on the mainland, one pincer would continue down to Miami and reconquer it, then work their way down the Keys. A smaller contingent, after some seaborne training by Marines, would commence a naval assault on the Bahamas, assisted by the New American 3rd fleet.
After a week of R & R during which there wasn’t much to do but sleep and clean their weapons and listen to Sgt. Chittum tell tall tales about what life was like when he was a kid, before the Balk, their training began.
First, there were trial introductions of the prototype M-3006 carbine, just in from St. Louis. The new rifle was a semi-automatic 30.06 based on the AR platform, with an added tri-burst feature. Jack liked the added stopping power, but it was a lot heavier and had a more significant recoil. Then, the mission specific training. The 3rd fleet Marines were relentless. How to board an amphibious landing craft. How to disembark from an amphibious landing craft. From the front. From the rear. Over the side. On the beach. In the water. Blindfolded. At night. The division of New American Unified Command Infantry, joined by three Companies of New American Legion Special Forces, numbered almost three thousand troops. Jack and the rest were put through the paces of a seaborne assault by another Company of Marines who’d gotten their boots wet from the reconquest of Myrtle Beach to the docks of Green Bay during the brief Franco-American Conflict a decade earlier. With a hundred changes of socks, they were pronounced ready enough. It was time to finish off both King Ray Ray and Rev. Clearly, once and for all.
“One day at a time, sweet Jesus, that’s all I’m asking from you…just give me a chance, to do every day, what I have to do…”
The loss of New Orleans, and ninety percent of his actual congregation, had seemingly affected Rev. Joe Bob Clearly not at all. While the pleas for help from the deacons and Church of the New Dispensation officers, trapped in their basements by the radioactive rain from the lake blast, continued, he listened numbly. King Ray Ray had to take over trying to organize the defense of the city over the radio, but it was no use. He might as well be back home with Taneisha, for all the good he could do.
Once one radio broadcasting post after another went silent, the last few as New American ground troops blasted open barricaded doors or set the buildings on fire on top of them, the Church of the New Dispensation leader became stoic. From three sides, Unified Command soldiers had swept in behind the fallout rain and the blast debris, preventing almost all of those in ‘The Big Easy’ from escaping, much less fighting back. For a generation, the diverse coastal city community had been taught that love and compassion and brotherhood were more important than studying warfare and violence. Most of them were unarmed, due to the strict gun control laws Clearly had ordained for the city. A few of the several thousand Church members who survived the bombs had the will to resist, but the New Americans weren’t taking prisoners.
Some reports by those already at sea in the Gulf when the attack began reported that the last waterfront holdouts surrendered their positions by nightfall the fourth day after the bombings. New American armored units had followed the air strikes and deadly rain in, providing cover for infantry, block by block and building by building. Rev. Clearly locked himself in his hotel suite in Nassau to commune with the Holy Spirit. He stayed there for three days, before coming out. The preacher used up six island girls during his sequester. On day four, the sickeningly sweet smoke cleared, and Joe Bob emerged from his retreat. Looking like he needed a shower, he whined “Are you sure they went nuclear? It’s all gone? All…gone?” Ray Ray just shook his head. It looked like it was all up to him now, oh sweet Jesus.
The call went out to every pirate with a radio. Come to stop the man. The man was coming to shut them all down. Ray Ray’s informants had reported to him about the 3rd fleet being anchored off Boca Raton. F-22s circled his home in Freeport, several times a day. His Queen was beside herself. Any ship that got close to the fleet got sunk by their air cover. He knew it wouldn’t be long, now. Like the monkey said when he got his tail cut off. “It won’t be long, now.” The pirate fleet grew, as the black refugees prepared for a desperate last stand. From throughout the Caribbean they arrived. Ray Ray gave them orders to swarm the landing craft as soon they came into open water, then retreat, and swarm them again when they attempted the landing, wherever that turned out to be. Two hundred and eighteen vessels, from cabin cruisers to yachts to sports fishers to cargo and fishing ships, answered his call.
Sgt. Chittum laughed at Jack, then held the junior officer’s head up as he threw up into the floor of the landing craft. He was so Harolding sick. Several others were seasick in the heavy swells, as well. There had been some whispers from the other guys, once they had recognized who their Second Lieutenant was. They had expected him to be a spoiled rich kid brat. He had proven how tough he was, and earned their respect. A little upchuck didn’t change that.
They were underway and experiencing some chop from the other boats in front of and beside them. It was like being on a mechanical bull, in the old days, the Sarge yelled. None of them knew what he was talking about. Chittum shrugged and grinned. Puking again did make him feel better, though. None of his men seemed to care, or share in his embarrassment. Jack retched once more, finally clearing his head. He rinsed the taste out of his mouth with salt water from the wash. That helped. Then he cleaned his glasses. He wished he hadn’t. A motley assortment of small craft had topped the southern horizon, growing larger as he watched. Corporal Stehl said The Lord’s Prayer, out loud, as the big guns of their escort ships opened up like thunder.
John McNabb had allowed the Church of the New Dispensation and Ray Ray’s pirate tribe to expand their control over the Gulf and influence into the Caribbean for fifteen years, because their presence choked down the Republic of Texas. The limitation of shipping repeatedly threatened foreign trade, restricting the R.O.T.’s economic growth. Even when New America had reclaimed most of what had, for a few years, been New Africa, they didn’t take on the C.N.D. directly. McNabb had been content to contain them and begin recolonization through large scale agriculture throughout the SouthEastern corner of the North American continent. St. Louis had reestablished the ports of Norfolk, Savannah, Charleston, and Wilmington on the East Coast. Soon more foreign imports from Europe came through the four reborn cities, than through the St. Lawrence Seaway which New American commerce had previously relied on. In fact, the reduction of traffic through Quebecois controlled lanes had led to the Franco-American Conflict, but a balance had been reached in recent years.
The new Speaker was already inclined to clean up the mess left in the old South, and Harrison had been pushing for years to be allowed to conquer the Caribbean. The 5th fleet patrolling the northern Pacific from Anchorage to keep the expansionist Russians honest, and the 7th fleet being stationed in Perth to defend their Australian, Kiwi, and Oranger allies, left the 3rd fleet to alternate between Pearl Harbor and Buenos Aires. The Argentines required a short leash, lately. A keel had been lain and construction begun on a new Supercarrier which would eventually be the core of a new Atlantic fleet, but so far the New Americans had avoided being expected to clean up the pirates by not having anything more than coastal defense Coast Guard cutters in the Atlantic. General Smith had played that game of realpolitik on an international level with their European allies and Texican rivals. With his influence absent from the Cabinet, and Balderson not having named a successor to fill the Secretary of State position, the Speaker had begun to move conventional forces into position encircling New Orleans. His plan had been to retake the city through siege, using the Mississippi River fleet. Those maneuvers created the perfect opportunity for the sleeper agents, primarily within the Emerald Coast stationed forces, to kick off the aerial bombardment o
f the city early, before the ground forces or the freshwater naval forces were in position, but Moerdani had no way of knowing that he just sped things along their pre-planned path. Neither he nor anyone but the renegade Texican pilots could have anticipated that nuclear weapons would get used, either.
In the long run, the New Orleans incident led to a dialogue between Speaker Balderson and President Hampton about further, better planned, joint exercises against Rev. Clearly. While New American troops flushed out and liquidated the Church of the New Dispensation survivors in southern Louisiana, the Republic of Texas called up their troops and began mobilizing their limited naval resources. The lone star nation sent all three of their destroyers and nine cruisers from their home ports of Galveston and Corpus Christi to sweep from West to East through the Gulf. All of the stragglers from Ray Ray’s fleet which had either planned on sitting the coming conflict out, or were slow at responding, were caught in the trap and either sunk or driven back to the C.N.D. outposts at Havana and Key West. Those bases, as well as the pirate outpost at Cancun, were attacked from the sea and from the air by a combined force of Republic of Texas and Emerald Coast air force flights. By the time Jack was retching his guts out, Texican Marines were storming the beaches of Cancun as the fortified resort hotels burned. The exonerated and lionized Lt. Charles Morris wagged his wings over Isla Mujeres in exultation.
Of the thirty-six pirate ships King Ray Ray had sent against the fleet in the open water, half were blasted to bits by the long distance guns before they came within a thousand yards of the escort ships and the troop carriers. Helicopter gunships rose from the deck of the N.A.S. Vicky Weaver and finished off the rest before they came within rifle range. Jack watched the carnage and wished aloud that he had gotten a chance to use the new M-3006. Sgt. Chittum grimly reassured him that he would have a chance, soon enough. The 3rd fleet continued East, without even slowing down or turning aside for a moment.