Liberty's Last Stand (19 page)

One captain in the rear of the room got up and left. The door closed behind him.

“Adjutant, take this down. Everyone who stays will be sworn into Texas service with this oath: ‘I swear to support and defend the Constitution of the Republic of Texas against all enemies, foreign and domestic, and to obey the orders of the officers appointed over me, so help me God.' Make a lot of copies. Administer the oath before a Texas flag, with the oath-taker standing at attention with his right hand raised. Afterward, the oath-taker will sign a hard copy of the oath that will remain in his service record. Anyone accused of violating the oath will be tried by court-martial, and if found guilty, will be imprisoned or shot. Any questions?”

There were none.

“Okay, let's get at it. Chief of staff, have a list prepared of every United States military installation in the state, all of 'em. We'll divide up the list and take as many troops with us as we can find, go to the CO of every installation this afternoon or as soon as we can get there, and ask for the formal surrender of the base with all its weapons, ammo, and equipment. Prepare a short paragraph for the COs to sign.

“Our policy is this: Every person in Barry Soetoro's federal service who wishes to leave Texas will be allowed to take his family and personal possessions, no weapons or military gear of any kind, and depart Texas expeditiously. East, west, or north, no questions asked. Any man or woman in federal service, officer or enlisted, who wishes to serve the Republic of Texas will be mustered in by taking the oath and signing it. Enlisted will serve for four years, or until sooner discharged or our legislature decides otherwise. Officers serve at the pleasure of the governor. Time in service and pay grade will transfer directly. Any questions?”

“These folks who want to join us—the feds will probably list them as deserters.”

“That is not a question, but I'll comment on that point anyway. The feds are going to do whatever they want, and that's sort of a fact of nature. Anyone in federal service wishing to join the Texas Guard by taking the oath will be allowed to do so; in fact, they will be encouraged to do so. We need all of the soldiers we can get. Civilian volunteers will be enlisted after a physical and an abbreviated background check. No crazy people, felons, dope addicts, or congenital idiots.”

“We have our share of idiots now,” someone remarked. “We don't need any more.”

JR laughed and the tension was broken. He clapped his hands once and said, “Break out the sidearms and ammunition. I want every officer armed.” After a few more housekeeping details, he said, “We don't know how much time Barry Soetoro will give us, so let's get at it, people.”

As the staff dribbled out, JR and Elvin Gentry moved chairs together at the end of one table. “Call me JR,” the newest general said. “Will the air guard stick?”

“Most of them,” Gentry replied.

“What do you have in the way of airplanes, and where are they?”

Gentry told him. A reconnaissance wing equipped with Predator drones, an airlift wing flying C-130 Hercules planes, and a fighter wing flying F-16s stationed at Kelley Field at the joint base in San Antonio, Lackland. There was an air reserve C-5 outfit there too.

“We're going to need those fighters PDQ. How about you sending someone down there this morning to make sure we keep them?”

“Yes, sir. The air reserve also has a wing of F-16s at the Joint Base in Fort Worth, the old NAS Dallas.”

“And doesn't the air force have a wing of B-1Bs over at Dyess in Abilene?”

“They do. Plus some more Hercs.”

“We need them too. Fact is, we need every military asset we can lay hands on. We've got to grab everything we can reach before it is sabotaged or flown or driven out of state. We have to turn it over to loyal people.”

Gentry nodded his understanding.

“Send the best people you can find on to Fort Worth and San Antone. The critical assets, however, are the B-1s. They compose our only real transcontinental offensive capability. I suggest you go to Abilene as fast as you can get there.”

“I'm on my way, sir.”

“We also need someone to invade the air traffic control facilities and shut them down. It would be nice to ground every commercial flight in Texas and scoff up all the planes.”

“I'll do my best, sir.”

“Thanks, Elvin.”

ELEVEN

A
t Dyess Air Force Base in Abilene that morning General l'Angistino was trying to digest a message from Washington directing the Dyess B-1 wing and a B-52 outfit in Louisiana to prepare strikes against the heart of Austin. Before the Pentagon used this blunt weapon, however, an armored division from Fort Hood was ordered to surround the city to isolate it and, after the bombing, capture every politician they could find still alive.

An armored column cannot be organized and set in motion instantly, and the air force general knew that. He didn't know how long the army would need to comply with the directive, but he thought he had a couple of days before anyone would demand that Dyess bombers smite Austin.

And it was going to take a couple of days to get ready. The runway was now clear, but a hundred armed civilians were blockading the main gate and dozens of others blocked the other gates.

L'Angistino was rapidly running out of air policemen. Last night he had directed that machine-gun emplacements be dug on the edges of the ramp area.

He certainly didn't have the personnel to patrol the entire base perimeter. The base comprised more than six thousand acres, and it was surrounded only by the fence, which, as Colonel Wriston had proved, could be easily breached. L'Angistino did the best he could. He ordered the digging of three machine-gun emplacements to deter an attack from the front gate and had his air police patrol the base in six armored cars with mounted machine guns, the same kind of armored cars FEMA was distributing to police departments nationwide.

L'Angistino picked up the file he had on Colonel Wriston, the National Guard commander who opposed him. He was a warrior. A tanker who had done four tours in Iraq and Afghanistan, he left active duty after fifteen years and had taken a commission in the Texas National Guard. He was married, with three teenage daughters—undoubtedly the reason why he'd transferred to the Guard. Wriston knew all there was to know about bulldozer blades burying machine gunners alive, and had mounted them on tanks. Now he had bulldozers, if he could find some more, and l'Angistino thought he probably could. Wriston wasn't done, not by a long sight. The only question was what he would do next.

The major in charge of base security, Timothy Toone, had already had a confrontation with the people out front, who were standing around the county sheriff's car.

As the major reported it to l'Angistino, he told the Taylor County sheriff, “You need to get these people out of here.”

“I ain't movin' nobody who's not on federal property. They've got ever' right to be here.”

“They have no right to blockade our gates. Interference with U.S. military operations is a federal crime.”

“Call the FBI and report it,” the sheriff said calmly. “I'm sure they'll come roaring right out here and arrest everybody.”

“These people are armed.”

The sheriff looked around, acting as if he hadn't noticed the guns before. Then he told the major, “People have a right to openly carry firearms in Texas, except in places where it's prohibited, like courthouses. This isn't a courthouse, but a public road. Fact is, these streets and roads belong to the City of Abilene, Taylor County, or the Republic of Texas. These folks don't have to leave unless I tell them to.”

The sheriff grinned, the major told l'Angistino, while he waited for the major to ask him to do just that, a request that he would cheerfully refuse in front of an audience of his constituents. So the major had kept his mouth shut and returned to headquarters. Now what did the general want him to do?

More than half the officers and airmen assigned to Dyess lived outside the gates, mostly senior people. Many of the pilots did too.

“Major, I want hourly reports on conditions at all seven gates of the base; I want you to double the base guards and ensure they're armed. If armed civilians are foolish enough to try to force their way onto the base, I want the guards to respond with lethal force. Do you understand?”

“Yes, sir.”

“If this blockade continues, we won't have enough pilots, crew chiefs, and ordnance specialists to accomplish our missions. We have to break it.”

“Yes, sir.”

At noon, Major Toone estimated that the crowd on the streets had swelled to more than ten thousand civilians—including women and children. He estimated that half the men were armed. If they rushed the base, his troops would be in a hell of a fix if ordered to shoot. He wanted written orders from General l'Angistino.

Nothing in the brigadier's military education or experience readied him to meet this situation. Shooting unarmed women and children would be an atrocity, a war crime . . . and, he thought, a sin. His wife would never forgive him. He wondered if the air force would.

His operations officer entered with a mission assignment. As many B-1s as l'Angistino could get airborne were ordered to bomb Austin tonight. They were to use JDAMs, which were precision-guided munitions. A detailed target list would follow.

“But there is no fighter protection laid on,” the ops officer said. “The Texas Air Guard has a squadron of F-16s at the joint base at Lackland. If they sortie to intercept the B-1s, the Bones will be toast. They have to have fighter protection, General. We could lose them all on the way to the target, over it, or on the way home. It's only seventy or eighty miles from San Antonio to Austin. Sending those guys without fighter protection is ridiculous. Foolhardy.”

A knock on the door, and his aide appeared. “General, there are two squadron commanders and nine pilots waiting to see you.”

The ops officer and the general exchanged glances. Did they know about the lack of fighter protection? Already?

“Send them in,” he said. Then he turned to Major Toone and added, “Major, let's talk later.” The two colonels, squadron commanders, passed Major Toone in the doorway. “We have a problem, General. Some of our pilots want to talk to you.”

“Send them in.”

The pilots were wearing flight suits. The first man in line stood at attention in front of the general's desk, saluted, and laid his silver wings insignia on the desk. “Sir, I wish to turn in my wings and be removed from flight status, immediately.”

L'Angistino stared at the captain, who met his gaze. In the American military pilots and flight crewmen were all volunteers. No one could order an officer to be a pilot.

“Do you want to give me an explanation, Captain?”

“Sir, I find that in good conscience I cannot fight other Americans. I may be obligated to remain in the air force, but I am not going to fly again.”

The next man laid his wings on the table and saluted. He repeated the formula, “I wish to turn in my wings and be removed from flight status, sir.”

“Why?”

“My wife and I are from Texas. Born and raised here. I'm not going to take a chance that you want me to bomb Texas, maybe kill some of our relatives or some friends I grew up with or went to school with. Or their kids. I can live with a court-martial, but I couldn't live with that.”

When the last man left, nine silver wings lay on the general's desk. The squadron commanders stood at parade rest.

“Where's the other squadron commander, Colonel Hurley?”

“Somewhere off base, sir, we think.”

“How many pilots do we have available to fly the Bones?”

“Twelve, sir, including us. Nine command pilots and three copilots. Using some of the command pilots as copilots, we can launch six planes.”

The general sank into his chair. A hundred twenty pilots in the wing, and he could muster just a dozen?

“A lot of them are trapped off base, sir. To get them in, we'd either have to run the civilians off or slip one of our own over the fence to find our guys and organize a mass break-in.”

“That would take all night.”

“Or longer. And we have enlisted manpower problems. Our muster list shows about thirty percent of our personnel are present for duty.”

“I saw the morning muster rolls.”

“It's a bad situation, sir.”

The general dismissed the colonels and sat thinking. The bomb wing wasn't ready for combat. With only six flight crews and thirty percent of its enlisted personnel, it wasn't ready for anything. Not even morning colors.

The ops officer left, but he soon came back. “There is a turboprop inbound, sir. National Guard.”

“Send them up here when they land.”

He watched the turboprop taxi to base ops and shut down. One or two people in uniform got out, climbed into a waiting sedan. Ten minutes later they were in his office.

He recognized the Air National Guard general, Elvin Gentry, whom he saluted since Gentry was a two-star. The man with Gentry was a colonel. “Please be seated, gentlemen,” l'Angistino said.

“This independence thing,” Gentry said, “it's turned the world upside down. I've come to ask for you to surrender the base, its personnel, and all the military property on it.”

“Are you kidding?”

“Lou, I wish I was. But I'm deadly serious. My boss, Major General JR Hays—do you know him?”

“Not that I can recall.”

“He was army. Anyway, he sent me up here to get your surrender. If you refuse, he'll have to launch an F-16 strike on the base to take out the planes. Texas wants them or wants them in ashes.”

“I'll fly them out of here,” l'Angistino said stoutly. “The first ones leave in less than an hour.”

“Lou, you couldn't have enough pilots to fly more than a handful of Bones and Hercs out of here, and I doubt you have the enlisted mechs and specialists it takes to even launch that many. We know the situation here. I've been on the radio with Colonel Wriston. Fact is, you could tell me to go to hell and sabotage all those planes, shoot holes in the spars, whatever, but we're going to take this base before very long, and General Hays is going to be royally pissed with you people if those airplanes are harmed. I don't know exactly what the Geneva Convention says about the treatment of prisoners of war, but this isn't a war we've declared. You are now trespassers on property owned by the Republic of Texas. Lawyers love tangles like this, but the local Texans won't. If you don't surrender they will be even more pissed than JR Hays. You know those people aren't under our control.”

Lou l'Angistino's thoughts tumbled around.

“Lou, for God's sake. I am not trying to threaten you, although maybe it came out that way, and if so, I apologize. Most of your people don't want to fight other Americans, many are Texans who won't fight other Texans even at the point of a gun. You can't sit here on a base protected by nothing but a wire fence and defy the whole population of Texas! There is no realistic chance for victory. None. For God's sake, do the right thing and save some lives.”

Gentry pointed to the little pile of wings on l'Angistino's desk. “Even your pilots are trying to tell you something. Your air force is disintegrating.”

General l'Angistino picked up the op order directing a strike on Austin, glanced at it in disgust, then dropped it on the table. “What are your terms?”

An hour later, after the surrender document was signed and sent to be posted in barracks, ready rooms, and maintenance shops, Colonel Wriston of the National Guard was escorted into the office. He was wearing jeans and a faded Texas A&M T-shirt. Lou l'Angistino reached for his hand and perfunctorily shook it.

“Lou, here's the man responsible for the ten or so thousand people standing outside on the street,” Gentry told the air force general. “Wriston and his men spent the night recruiting their friends and neighbors.”

“You mean some of that crowd were National Guardsmen in civvies?”

“They were. Wriston did what he could to block your runways, but he didn't go home afterward to watch television. He knew the vast majority of the civilian community was behind him, so he used his men to mobilize them.”

A loud voice interrupted them, to l'Angistino's relief. Colonel Wriston went to meet the man, who was standing in the reception area.