Liberty's Last Stand (38 page)

In Hawaii, independence talk had been around for years, especially among native Hawaiians, many of whom were still on the bottom rung of the economic ladder. There was also a large number of people of all races that felt the Hawaiians had gotten a raw deal in 1893 when white American businessmen played a large role in toppling Hawaii's last monarch, Queen Lili'uokalani, an overthrow that even then-president Grover Cleveland thought an illegal act of war. The current political crisis on the mainland looked to many native Hawaiians like a rare, once-in-a-lifetime opportunity: perhaps the U.S. government would be too busy chasing Texas traitors to worry about the islands in the sea's middle. On the other hand, the economic ties to the mainland were the bedrock of the economy. Could trade and tourism from Japan and China replace lost American dollars? Would the people of the islands be better or worse off as an independent nation?

General Martin L. Wynette read the news summaries of all this “grandstanding,” as he called it, at seven o'clock on Wednesday morning when he got to the Pentagon, and thought if this news didn't wake up the fools in the White House, nothing short of nuclear war would. Those people in flyover land were pissed off and feisty.

One of his aides had brought him a copy of the Minerva Research Initiative, which the president had directed the armed forces to draft and study after he was elected in 2008. Minerva, the Roman goddess of wisdom and war. Idly, Wynette wondered about the subtle mind that had dreamed up that title. The Minerva Research Initiative was a military plan to put down a civil insurrection in the United States.

Wynette scanned it and tossed it aside. The plan assumed that the members of the armed forces would willingly participate in armed action against angry citizens. That was a forlorn and foolish assumption, Wynette now realized. He also had on his desk a flash message from the commanding general at Fort Sill in Lawton, Oklahoma, telling him that he had scoured his command for men and women willing to fight Oklahomans. They were willing to go to Iraq, Afghanistan, Syria, and if necessary Iran to fight for America, but only a few were willing to fight Oklahomans.

He was getting briefings on the result of other army commanders' attempts to muster soldiers who would fight for the Soetoro administration against domestic enemies when he was summoned to the White House. Wynette stuffed the messages in his briefcase along with a copy of the Minerva Research Initiative and called for his aide and his driver.

In Colorado a group of FBI agents and a sheriff's deputy searching houses to confiscate guns got into a shooting scrape with a homeowner and his son. The homeowner and son were killed, but not before they shot an FBI agent and the sheriff's deputy to death. Another agent was in the hospital. Social media was aflame, with citizens promising the agents and local law officers who cooperated with them in confiscating guns more of the same.

An FBI office in Seattle was attacked, one agent wounded: perpetrators unknown. In Idaho a county sheriff who agreed to help search the homes of citizens of his county to find and confiscate guns was ambushed, stripped naked, dipped in tar and feathers, and carried to his office on a fence rail. He was now hospitalized with burns over sixty percent of his body. A county in Utah with a significant percentage of Mormon fundamentalists declared its independence from the United States and the State of Utah. Polygamy there was now legal. Finally, a dispatch from Mexico City: the Mexican government was considering diplomatic recognition of the Republic of Texas.

In Baltimore, a suburban sporting goods warehouse had been looted overnight. The gun counters were stripped clean and the looters helped themselves to every box of cartridges on the premises, then amused themselves by shooting at stuffed animal heads displayed high on the walls. The good news was that due to the federal government's massive orders for ammunition over the last two years, and the president's oft-repeated remarks about his desire for gun control that had induced civilians to buy and hoard ammo, the sporting goods store had only a small supply of cartridges, most in unpopular hunting calibers. The bad news went unspoken: the inner-city rioters were now armed.

In other riot-plagued big cities around the country, the police and National Guard contented themselves with trying to prevent the destruction from spreading. It was a losing fight. The centers of many of America's largest cities now resembled the core of German cities after World War II.

People living in the suburbs nationwide were armed and organizing. They were also emptying the grocery and hardware stores, buying everything in sight, to the limits of their credit cards. Canned and dry food items were almost completely gone in some stores. Hardware stores sold out of emergency generators, charcoal, and gasoline cans. Gasoline stations found that many of their customers were filling up as many as ten five-gallon cans with fuel. Sporting goods stores were selling every gun on the shelf and all the ammunition in stock. In Howard County, Maryland, a bedroom suburb of Washington and Baltimore populated with a large percentage of federal civil service employees of all races, the county police and Homeland Security officers tried to search homes for guns, only to be met at four houses by armed householders who threatened to shoot to kill.

The chief of the Howard County police announced that henceforth his officers would concentrate on arresting criminals, answering domestic violence calls, and helping motorists involved in traffic accidents. The chief was quoted by a reporter as saying, “If Barry Soetoro wants to confiscate guns, he can figure out how to do it. The people here are frightened by what's going on in Baltimore and elsewhere and want to be able to protect themselves. I can't say I blame them.” After the story was published, two black Maryland legislators called the police chief, who was also black, a racist.

TWENTY

I
n Galveston that morning, after the sun came up, the sheriff drove his car down the pier and parked adjacent to the gangway of USS
Texas
. He walked across the gangway and shouted down into the open hatch, “Anybody home?”

In less than a minute, a man appeared below and looked up at him. “Yep, we're home.”

“Mind if I come down and visit?”

“Please do.”

Speedy Gonzales escorted the sheriff to a small wardroom, where he found Loren Snyder studying several large bound volumes and sipping a cup of coffee.

“Coffee, Sheriff?”

“Don't mind if I do.”

“Best coffee in the world,” Loren Snyder said.

The sheriff sipped at his, which he took black. Almost as good as Dunkin' Donuts coffee, he thought, but he didn't say it. Instead, he got straight to the point. “When are y'all going to nuke yourselves out of here?”

Loren laughed. “Well, we're working on that right now. Before we go, I want my crew, all five of us, to run through every emergency procedure in the book and figure out how we're going to handle it. We don't have sixty people, just five. We don't want to die in this boat.”

The sheriff looked around and nodded. “I sure understand that.” Just sitting here in this steel cigar gave the sheriff a mild case of claustrophobia. What it would be like being submerged he didn't want to think about.

“How long can you guys stay submerged, anyway?” the sheriff asked.

“Until we run out of toilet paper.”

The sheriff chuckled at that, thinking Loren Snyder was being facetious. He wasn't. With only five people aboard eating the stores,
Texas
could stay submerged for a long, long time.

“We're going to spend today running emergency drills,” Snyder said, “making sure everyone knows what is expected of him and we are all on the same page. I hope by tonight we'll be ready to leave this pier.”

“What about the U.S. Navy? I'll bet they're kinda unhappy that they lost this thing.”

“They'll probably send SEALs to take it back,” Lorrie admitted.

“You mean like those guys who whacked bin Laden?”

“Yep. Naval Special Warfare commandos.”

“Maybe y'all oughta get outta here and do your drills someplace else.”

“Sheriff, I agree one hundred percent. As soon as we feel we can safely move this submarine, we will. In the interim, it would help if you would station some officers with radios out there around the harbor to keep a lookout. I suspect the SEALs will come at night. Probably tonight. We hope to be gone when they get here, but just in case, if your lookouts see anything suspicious—anything—I would appreciate a heads-up so we can cast off and get going. Once we close the hatches, the SEALs can't get inside the boat.”

The sheriff nodded reluctantly. “Today and this evening?”

“Yes, sir.”

“You'll try like the devil to get this stuff done and get out of Galveston?”

“Cross my heart.”

“Okay, Captain. But I ain't asking my deputies to get in a shootout with SEALs. No way. They're law enforcement officers, not soldiers.”

They discussed radio frequencies for a moment, then Loren Snyder said, “Thanks for stopping by, Sheriff.”

The sheriff had one last gulp of coffee, then said, “Good luck to y'all out there, Captain.” After he and Loren shook hands, he followed Speedy to the forward torpedo room and the ladder topside.

Captain
. Loren Snyder liked the sound of that.

Secret Service sniper Tobe Baha drove slowly around Austin looking things over. He had had a private interview with President Soetoro's chief of staff, Al Grantham, then went home and packed for a trip. He put his rifle in its aluminum airline case in the toolbox behind the cab of his pickup. He carefully locked the toolbox with the best padlocks money could buy.

The rifle wasn't his service rifle. This was his personal rifle, a Remington Model 700 in .308, or as it was known in the service, 7.62×51 NATO. It certainly wasn't the best cartridge for extreme long-range shooting, but Tobe had used it extensively while in the military and knew the ballistics cold, so he was very comfortable with it. And ammo for it was available everywhere, if need be. Tobe had loaded his own with match bullets and had two boxes in the airline case.

Under his rifle was another airline case stuffed with a quarter of a million U.S. dollars and fifty thousand dollars' worth of gold. That was his down payment on the assassination of Jack Hays.

The problem was that Tobe Baha wasn't an assassin. He was a sniper, pure and simple, so he didn't even bother trying to come up with a second method of taking out the president of Texas if setting up a snipe proved difficult. Actually, he couldn't conceive of a set of circumstances that would cause him to miss a rifle shot, if and when he got one. And he would get one, sooner or later. Everyone was vulnerable to a sniper, unless they lived in a prison, and politicians especially. They had to make public appearances, they got into and out of limos and helicopters on a routine basis, and most of them, including Jack Hays, had families.

Patience was the sniper's golden asset, and Tobe Baha had more than his share. He could and would wait until he was presented with a shot he knew he could make during one of Jack Hays' inevitable public appearances. After that, with a cool million in his jeans, he would disappear.

Of course, he worried a little about the possibility that the Soetoro administration might eventually want him permanently removed from the land of the living. If they just had him arrested, he might talk. So arrest wasn't the risk.

Tobe Baha had thought it over when approached for this shoot, and decided he could handle the risk of treachery by his employers. After all, three or four of the Secret Service people knew of the plot.

He had said as much on his last interview with Al Grantham. “If you don't pay me the money you owe or if you send people after me, I'll come after you,” he told Grantham, “and I won't miss.”

Austin certainly had possibilities, Tobe concluded as he drove around. The capitol was surrounded by buildings, although they were several hundred yards from the capitol itself, which sat on a small knoll surrounded by scattered large trees and lots of grass. The governor's mansion also had buildings within range of a .308. The real question was whether Jack Hays' bodyguards included snipers. Protecting a public figure from bombs and maniacs with pistols and knives was what the Secret Service did best. Snipers, however, were the worst threat, which was why Tobe Baha had been recruited by the service. It takes a sniper to kill a sniper.

If the Texas crowd didn't have snipers protecting Jack Hays, Tobe Baha's mission would be a whole lot easier. So his first task was to determine if they did.

Tobe Baha smiled. This was going to be a good hunt.

Major General JR Hays launched his first offensive that morning, the thirty-first of August. He watched Texas guardsmen file aboard six C-130 Hercules transports, four-engine turboprops, at Fort Hood, sixty-four combat-equipped soldiers to each plane. Two other C-130s were being loaded with howitzers, ammunition, rations, water, and a portable field hospital.

“I'm banking on surprise,” JR told Colonel Nathaniel Danaher, who was leading the attacking force. “I think you can get on the ground and establish a perimeter before the people on the ground figure out that something is going down. I want you to clear the planes and let them take off immediately for another load. Ideally, I'd like to get a brigade on the ground over there with some artillery to give it teeth. F-16s will provide close air support and top cover. But it's up to you to stop our assault if you find you are in way over your head. You must remain in radio contact with the planes in the air at all times, keep them advised of how things are going.”

Nate Danaher looked ten years younger than he did last night. The challenge of leading men in combat had always energized him.

The six transports bearing soldiers took off first, escorted by a high top cover of F-16s from Lackland. The attacking force would fly east of Barksdale, turn and approach the base from that direction, calling the control tower for landing clearance. While the panicked air controllers sorted through messages trying to find one about incoming Hercs, the Hercs would land, discharge their troops, and take off again. The C-130s bearing howitzers and ammo would land an hour later, after the soldiers of the first wave had secured the flight line.

Would they achieve surprise? JR Hays asked himself that question, but he didn't know the answer. If the bad guys had gotten wind of the invasion of Louisiana, he would be among the first to hear about it.

Maybe yes, maybe no, he decided.

Perhaps he should have given his major general stars to Nate Danaher and commissioned himself a colonel, then led the troops invading Barksdale. Jack Hays would have said okay, if that was the way he wanted it. But would Nate Danaher have laid on this attack if he had been the general in charge? That hypothetical had no possible answer, because JR had made the decision. Nate had saluted and marched off to give every ounce he had in him. That quality, JR thought, was the salvation of the professional soldier. Regardless of whether the professional thought the order wise or foolish, he said, “I will do my best, sir,” and the rest of the sentence was unspoken: “Even if it kills me.” So generals ordered men into combat, knowing that some of them, an unknown number, would die. Generals hoped and prayed that the objective would be worth the sacrifice, and, in the end, only they and God would know how the scales balanced.

JR thought ruefully about the old observation that doctors buried their mistakes. Truly, so did generals.

And yet, even if he lost every soldier and airplane he sent this morning, JR Hays would win a strategic victory simply by attacking. He knew that in the depths of his military soul. Soetoro would stop worrying about invading Texas and wreaking havoc and start worrying about protecting what he had. People the world over expect their government to protect them, and when it doesn't, or can't, they begin to worry.

And if Danaher was victorious and captured a fleet of intact B-52s, Barry Soetoro would start fretting about where they might be used against him. Would they bomb Washington? New York? Los Angeles? A squadron of B-52s carpet-bombing with unguided weapons could destroy a city, just as they did Hanoi. Fighters would be detailed to guard the skies over cities and military bases. Soetoro
must
commit his air force to protecting those places, and if he did, those air assets would be unavailable to attack Dallas, Houston, San Antonio, Austin, or the military bases Hays had captured.

JR walked across the tarmac when the troop-laden transports were out of sight and went into the base's air traffic control facilities. “Are the Lancers from Dyess airborne?”

“Yes, sir. Target time is less than an hour away.”

The B-1s were targeted against the military equipment at Fort Polk. Many of the soldiers at Hood had trained at Polk, and they helped annotate maps. The Lancer crews knew precisely where they were going, and they had air cover, F-16s from Lackland. In and out fast like a rabbit was their credo. Leaving smoldering wreckage.