by Billy Roper
Along with the five of them who had survived the battle of Freeport, they had a dozen new privates straight from the Unified Command’s basic training course to herd along. Fortunately, their new assignment was a learn-as-you-go cakewalk clearing out Paradise Island in Nassau, after the surrender of the pirates there. One wave of Marines had already been through, and picked up or put down anything still moving. Their mission was just to make sure, and to declare it ready for salvage and re-colonization.
The boat ride out was a lot smoother and more enjoyable than his first experience. They had the chance to watch dolphins play and sharks cruise, in the near distance. Jack even saw a whale flip up and wag its’ tail at them as the troop carriers veered too near their pod. He wished he had his glasses, for that, so he could see them better. It made him think of stories his mom used to read to him, about giant sea creatures, kraaken, attacking the ships of his Viking ancestors, long ago. About Thor wrestling with the world-serpent. About his desire to kill, personally, those who had killed his parents, and if he couldn’t find the ones who had personally done it, to start at the top with the man who had ordered their deaths, and work his way down.
Their landing on the beach was a lot less dramatic this time, too. Jack found it easier to wade ashore without bullets and RPGs coming at him. The stench of rotting corpses clung to everything permeable on the former resort paradise. Years, decades, of death and decay, the copper smell of fear and the iron smell of blood , could not be sprayed off with all of the high pressure hoses and sea water the fleet could pump. Twenty years of black habitation had rendered it uninhabitable. After the three companies of New American infantry spent two days clearing Paradise Island, the salvage teams moved in behind them and stripped the buildings of any usable mechanical equipment or supplies. There was surprisingly little worth saving.
On day three Jack led his platoon across the Atlantis Bridge into Nassau itself. Other teams were filtering through the city, collecting the few survivors who hadn’t surrendered, flushing out some lone wolf resistors, and making a list of the resources available for salvage. Their first stop was Princess Margaret Hospital, where the high value prisoners were being held after their interrogations. They were to make an assessment of the medical supplies, including portable oxygen tanks specifically, for some reason, left at the facility. Sgt. Chittum had no idea why they had been given the list they had been given, but then neither did any of the noncoms with the other platoons on the island, either.
It was obvious from the cloying smell and the smear of black smoke above the roof of the hospital that the crematory ovens in the basement were still operating at full speed. Jack didn’t know if they were disposing of the blacks and Church members who had surrendered, or those who hadn’t, and he didn’t really care, either way. On the way over a lance corporal returning for his second rotation in Nassau had told them that all but the V.I.P.’s had been motored out a few miles and made to walk the plank. His Sergeant has told him to shut up spreading rumors, because everybody knew they had refused to jump in the water and the navy had left them adrift in barges and sunk them from a thousand yards off. He claimed to have seen the sharks in a feeding frenzy days later at the same spot, but who knew what to believe?
One of the Church of the New Dispensation’s doctors, an Asian, was allowed to walk free under guard, to show them where the medical supplies on their list were stored. They first secured the narcotics and opiates, then the antibiotics. As they were led to the second story closet where the manual forklifts for the heavy oxygen tanks were stored, they passed an armed guard blocking the entrance to a secured wing of patent rooms. Jack nodded his head towards the doors and raised his eyebrows at Sgt. Chittum, who shrugged.
“So, Dr. Chen, is it?” The oriental nodded, wearily. “Dr. Chen, what’s behind door number two?” Sgt. Chittum asked the exhausted physician.
“That’s where your people keep the prisoners. The ones they haven’t murdered already,” he mumbled.
“Oh yeah? Like, which ones?” Jack queried. “Anybody famous? Rev. Clearly himself?”
“No. The blessed Reverend martyred himself striking a blow against racism and bigotry. He has gone to stand at the right hand of Jesus until the son of God returns to destroy your hateful rule and cast you into the lake of fire where you can all fry with that heretic bastard McNabb.”
Sgt. Chittum glanced sideways towards his Lieutenant at the barb towards Jack’s dad, but the teen was smiling wolfishly. “So, nobody important, then?”
Dr. Chen sniffed. “King Ray Ray, the liberator of his people, a better man than any of you, is in there. He shares the wing with some of the most righteous of the Faithful. Until he is taken into God’s arms.”
“Oh.” Jack said. They continued to walk along the hall until they came to the locked closet.
“I don’t have a key to this. It’s kept at the nurse’s station.” Chen said, with a smart- aleck tone.
“Then why did you waste our time walking all the way down here?” Chittum growled, angrily.
The doctor shrugged. “The little things are all that I can do, any more, against you racist Nazis.” He laughed nervously.
Jack turned to one of his new recruits. He was squinting, getting used to going without his glasses. “Private, this man is an anti-White. Shoot him.”
The red haired youth licked his lips nervously, looked at the Sgt., who nodded, then raised his M3006 on its’ single point sling and leveled it at the doctor. Chen began to back up, a look of horror distorting his Mongoloid facial features, as he raised his hands. The blast slammed him back into the wall, which was smeared red when he slid down it, mewling like a kitten. The Private shot him again, finishing the job.
“Man, that was loud!” Jack said, his ears ringing. “We have to get some suppressors for those things, for indoor use, at least. Okay, Private, the next time I give you an order, you don’t hesitate. You don’t look at the Sgt., or at your mom, or to Jesus himself for confirmation of the order, you follow the order, without hesitation. Is that clear?”
“Sir, Yes, Sir.” the designated shooter responded.
“Alright, then, just for that, double-time back to the nurse’s station and get those keys to the closet door. Then bring them back, triple time,” the First Lieutenant ordered.
“Sir, Yes, Sir,” the Private barked back, before giving a smart salute and turning to run back in the direction from which they had come.
Jack watched him retreat for a second, shaking his head in disgust. Then he turned to his noncom. “Sgt. Chittum, when the Private gets back, have him do five hundred pushups here in the blood on the floor while the rest of the newbies get the lifts out and take them to get the oxygen tanks loaded up.”
“Very good, Sir?” Chittum looked at him, questioningly.
“I’m headed to find a bathroom, Sgt.. Don’t wait for me, I’ll catch up.”
The M.P. at the door to the secured wing started to say something when the new Lieutenant walked towards him without hesitating. He took a half step forward.
“Did you hear those shots just now?” the junior officer asked.
“Yes, Sir, I did. What’s going on?” the guard replied.
“Looks like that Chink doctor wasn’t quite as surrendered as he acted. He tried to grab a soldier’s weapon.”
“He did!?!” the guard gaped, incredulously.
“Yeah, better look alive, there might be more of them trying something. I’ll go check on the prisoners, stay alert!”
“Yes, Sir,” the nervous M.P. stuttered, looking around wildly as Jack walked through the doors.
Ray Ray was strapped to the rails of his hospital bed. The sedation was wearing off, and the pain from his interrogation was returning again. There had been shots nearby. He had heard them. His fingers and toes ached where the nails had been removed, and his eyes, or the holes where his eyes had been, burned like fire.
After the voices, he heard someone moving from room to room, spending a few mome
nts in each. Once or twice he heard some thrashing, and a muted cry for help that was quickly silenced. Ray Ray was no fool. He knew what was coming for him. With Taneisha gone, he didn’t care any more. They could have found out everything they had wanted to know just by asking, but they had fixed him, for sure. Just because they could. Even after he had spilled his guts.
When he was blinded, he first thought it was the end, but they kept going. They had taken his manhood, where only a bloody bandage covered his lap, now. He didn’t know much of what had happened, after that. Ray Ray wished he had died fighting. Instead he had lit up and gotten so stoned they had taken him without a struggle. He would have been embarrassed, except that he was too tired and weak to care.
He heard the door to his room open, and tried to sit up. “Who’s there?” he asked. “Who are you?”
“How original,” a surprisingly young voice came from just beside his head. “The last four of you asked me the same question. I guess everybody wants to know the name of the man who kills them.”
Ray Ray jerked at how close the voice was. “I reckon so. Who da Harold are you?”
“I’m the son of John McNabb. And based on your chart, you’re the great General Ray Ray,” Jack informed the prostrate black man.
“Whu? I don’t believe you. That can’t be so.” Ray Ray whined as he shook his head from side to side.
The teenaged officer brought his hand up, allowing the antique fighting knife he gripped to drip blood over the former New African military leader. He held Ray Ray’s head still with his left hand while he stabbed down into his throat with his right, over and over again. It got less messy each time.
There were three more rooms to visit before he rejoined his platoon, downstairs. He nodded at the guard authoritatively as he walked by. They were just getting the last of the oxygen tanks strapped on and looked annoyed that he had shirked the heavy lifting.
“Just in time?” Sgt. Chittum asked, grinning at him.
“Hey, it’s an officer’s prerogative.” Jack smiled. “I get to take it easy and let other folks do the hard work.”
They were clearing the airport for salvage the next day when a Captain and squad of M.P.s rolled up and took the Lieutenant aside to ask him what had happened at the hospital. He told them that just before trying to grab one of his men’s guns, the Asian doctor had said that he wanted to make sure that all of the prisoners in the hospital were free. That’s why he had went into the secure wing to check on things, but all of the room doors had been closed and he hadn’t heard or seen anything suspicious, so he assumed that everything was alright. “Why, did something happen after we left?” he asked them, looking them straight in the eye.
The Captain of the military police, an officer with a nametag that read ‘Shoop’, looked at Jack, then at his Corporal, then back at Jack. He gave him a very perceptible nod. “Your father was a great man, Lieutenant. I served with him a long time ago, when I was just about your age, in Peoria. He saved my life, more than once. My condolences.”
“Thank you, Captain, Sir. The only thing that lives forever, is the fame of a dead man’s deeds, he used to say.”
“Well, then, I think he’ll be around for a long, long time. Kind of like that fighting knife of his, I see you still have,” the Captain pointed out, looking at the hilt of the blade Jack carried horizontally along his left kidney.
Jack tapped the handle of the knife and smiled. “I remember him, too, Captain Shoop, and just like him, I always remember who my friends are.”
The Captain smiled back. “You do that, Lt. McNabb.”. With a nod of his head and a wave to his men, they were back in their Humvee and gone.
His men all looked at him when he rejoined them. “What was that all about?” Sgt. Chittum asked him.
“Oh, just an old friend of my dad’s, who wanted to pay his respects,” Jack replied.
It was another two weeks before the island was declared fit for re-colonization. The plan was for the Bahamas to be a trade and naval hub for New America’s southern flank. The men who had served there would never think of it as a vacation spot.
Chapter Seven
"If Satan himself, with all of his super-human genius and diabolical ingenuity at his command, had tried to create a permanent disintegration and force for the destruction of the nations, he could have done no better than to invent the Jews."
-Willis Carto
“There are places I remember all my life, though some have changed. Some forever, not for better, some have gone and some remain.”
It would be years until New Orleans could be reopened as a port to bring goods up and down the Mississippi. Half the city, the most important part for shipping, was a blasted, irradiated mess. That would keep the eggheads in St. Louis bottled up and directed to the East Coast, away from his Gulf. Scott Hampton felt like giving the renegade pilots who’d nuked it a medal, but instead he had just given them a pardon and their wings back.
The President of the Republic of Texas was determined to use the time he had as an open window of opportunity. The European Coalition had agreed to leave him unfettered trade in the rest of the world, if he kept his oil out of their domestic markets. That was good enough for him. His new good buddies in the Unified Command were mopping up things in the Caribbean for him, taking care of his long-standing pirate problem. He even had gotten Cuba and the viable Mexican ports out of the deal. Of course, the Germans were already making noise about wanting to send in salvage teams to Guantanamo Bay, to further their ‘partnership’ by looting the old U.S. base there. Scott didn’t care. He had gotten what he wanted.
The British were going to help him expand and modernize ‘The Eyes of Texas’ orbital platform, and he was going to help them get more resources to theirs, in exchange. Texican raw materials in trade for English and German engineering. A fair trade, all around.
The exodus of a few hundred of his Mormon citizens from New Mexico and Oklahoma, mainly, had actually allowed him to nationalize their ranches and farms and give them like feudal rewards to his most loyal officers. He didn’t think the cultists would turn into much of a problem for him, there in Colorado, across the line. Kelly and her Reformed L.D.S. would be more of a headache for old Randall Balderson, than himself, Hampton calculated. The Fundamentalist bent of the new regime in Salt Lake would make Deseret look inwards instead of outwards for quite a spell, too, giving him a rest out West. Texican Mounted Infantry Units were once again riding the fences right at the old New Mexico line, looking for weakness in their neighbors.
Scott found that if he kept busy enough, his mind didn’t dwell on his wife. He stayed around people, to ease the pain, but she was always there in his mind, haunting every solitary moment. At his age, even though a man of his position always could, he had no desire to remarry, or even get involved with another woman. He just had his regrets. Her kids wouldn’t speak to him, not even at the funeral. Well, he understood, they had just found out that their biological dad had actually been involved in some kind of conspiracy-driven assassination, in all likelihood. For all they knew, he might have been involved, too. And now their mom had killed herself, a sad and lonely death. As far as Scott was concerned, they had as much to feel guilty about as he did, though.
Over the years, he had played King Herod, and tried to eliminate any who might have been his successor, or too ambitious, or too capable. If any followed after him who did a better job than he had, everyone would forget him, wouldn’t they? He couldn’t have that. So it was that Scott Hampton’s management style had evolved into dividing his underlings against each other, and plotting them to take sides in Byzantine, internecine court rivalries. By keeping them weak, he had remained strong…or so he thought. When he looked around and tried to find someone better than a petty bureaucrat or sycophant, there were none to be seen. And now that he was old, and thinking of the future of Texas, for once, there were few up and coming that he might trust to hand the reins to, some day. That realization was impetus to begin assessing w
ho in his court and administration were just suck-ups, and get rid of them.
Whether it was the drive to keep himself busy and avoid thoughts of his deceased love, or consciousness of his own advanced age and looming mortality, the former Air Force General did more for his nation in the first months after he became a widower, than he had in the previous decade. It would have been easier, if he hadn’t painted himself into a corner, and governed alone.
Salvage teams sent out from Austin scoured Cancun and Havana, followed by engineers who restored public services, and colonists who established the beginnings of Texican communities in both cities. Texas Rangers probed throughout Cuba, locating and eliminating the scattered survivors, and blazing trails for new pioneers and settlers to come. The Republic of Texas Navy became the dominant martial force in the Gulf of Mexico, leaving the Caribbean and Atlantic to the New American fleet. With German aid, their power grid and rail structure began upgrades, too. And then, the tankers full of petroleum flowed outwards once again, to Texican territorial possessions first, and then to the Argentine sphere in South America.
President Hampton knew that he had to rebuild a coterie of advisors and administrators, from the ground up. A few men, such as his Commander of the Texas Rangers, Brad Nelson, stood out as leaders whose advice he could trust. He began grooming others to take charge of their departments, for the good of the Republic. Scott Hampton stepped up from his role as President for Life of Texas, and became something more…he became a statesman. Perry Bellefont, at last, would have been proud. Of his wife, at least, if not his successor.