Liberty's Last Stand (47 page)

He checked that he was on Eglin Air Force Base tower frequency. Yes, two fighters were taxiing. A flight of two. The lead had a laconic, gravelly voice.

He headed that way and eased his fighter into a climb. He wanted to be as high as possible so he would have an energy advantage. His wingman to his right and aft stepped up several hundred feet.

Now the Eglin fighters were airborne and switching to Departure Control. He pushed the button on the radio for the new frequency.

And he heard that voice again. Jesus, it sounded like Johnny O'Day! Of all people, Johnny O'Day, his roommate at the Air Force Academy, way back when.

Another transmission to Departure. Hell yes, it
was
Johnny O'Day, and he flew F-16s. Headed for the B-52s over the Mississippi.

The bombs from Gentry's BUFF smashed into the bridges at Vicksburg. They were falling supersonic, so no one on the ground had a clue except for the faint, distant rumble of jet engines way up there in the night. The explosions on each bridge were so close together they sounded like one big bang, which rolled through Vicksburg and woke up several thousand folks.

Slowly, ponderously, the weight of the now unsupported bridge spans carried them down into the dark water of the big river. There were only two trucks on the highway bridge, since traffic on the interstates these days was down to a trickle. One driver on the highway bridge managed to stop his truck; the other rode the span into the river and drowned in his cab.

The railroad bridge actually had a train on it, rumbling along at eight miles per hour. The bombs went through a railcar, penetrated the track and ballast, and detonated against the targeted abutment. The spans on either side of the abutment began sagging, dragging the train along, down, down into the river.

The scene would be repeated tonight up and down the river. America was being cut in half with surgical precision.

Victory in a modern dogfight usually goes to the pilot in the most technologically advanced fighter, who will usually detect his enemy first and shoot first. Once missiles are launched, the rest is up to the missiles, those marvels of modern weaponry, which, if fired within their operating envelope, are quite deadly.

Tonight Walter Ohnigian fired two AMRAAMs at the Eglin fighters at a distance of fifty miles, head on. They raced off downhill at their targets and had soon accelerated to four times the speed of sound, the active radar in the nose of the missiles probing the night for their targets.

“Fox Three,” Walter Ohnigian said over the radio, a transmission he knew Johnny O'Day would hear. He held the transmit button on the stick down and continued, “Johnny, this is Oboe. You better eject.” Johnny was married to an operating room nurse and they had two kids. Ohnigian owed him the warning.

In his fighter, climbing through ten thousand feet, Johnny O'Day's eyes automatically scanned the sky for the pinpoint exhausts of the rocket engines in missiles. Oboe—Ohnigian! After wasting several seconds, he looked at his radar screen.

And saw the tiny dots streaking toward his aircraft and that of his wingman.

He pumped off chaff and tried to turn a square corner. He was pulling eight Gs when the first missile went off just below the belly of his fighter and showered it with shrapnel that penetrated into the delicate internal organs of his steed. One second later the fighter exploded.

The second AMRAAM exploded as it went through the expanding cloud of pieces.

O'Day's wingman had also turned violently to avoid the oncoming missiles, so after he was sure they had missed him, he had to turn back into the threat to acquire a firing solution on the bogeys on his radar screen. He was turning hard when the first AMRAAM from Ohnigian's wingman actually struck his machine and exploded. Like Johnny O'Day, he died in the fireball.

TWENTY-FOUR

T
exas Ranger Parker Konczyk went to see Colonel Tenney of the TxDPS. “We think there's a sniper casing the roofs of buildings around the capitol,” he said. “He's dressed in a jumpsuit that bears the logo of an air conditioning company. We spotted him with a drone.”

“What air conditioning company?”

Konczyk told him. “We talked to the owner. He had the van for sale and an Anglo came along, paid him ten grand for it. He wanted fifteen, but the most the guy would pay was ten, cash, and the owner was way behind on his child support, so he took it. He signed the title and never even got the guy's name.”

Konczyk used an iPad to show Colonel Tenney video from the drone. The man in a jumpsuit on the roof of a bank three hundred yards from the capitol didn't even bother looking at the rooftop-mounted HVAC units, but inspected the roof and lased the capitol and some other buildings, including the hotel with the underground parking garage that was being used by the Texas government as a bomb-proof bunker. “That location hasn't been published, but half the people in Austin know the government is down there.”

“A rangefinder?”

“It looks like a laser rangefinder, a small unit that he holds in both hands up to his eye.”

The picture on the iPad went to another building and apparently the same man scouted out that roof. Finally, pictures from the drone of the van parked by the curb.

“So what is your recommendation?”

“Right now all we have this guy for is not registering the van in his own name, and a few trespass charges. If we arrest him he'll be out on bail in an hour. And he might not be a sniper; he might be a scout.”

“Go on.”

“Or we can wait until someone appears on the roof with a rifle.”

They discussed it, and decided that the best course was to keep the van under constant surveillance, and the best way to do that and not spook the suspect was to use drones. Konczyk only had access to one.

“Get a couple more from the National Guard,” Colonel Tenney said. “Let's just watch this guy for a while, find out where he is staying and who he sees, and try to figure out how big this conspiracy really is, if there is one.”

Chairman of the JCS General Martin L. Wynette was working late at his office in the Pentagon. The problem he faced was the disintegration of the United States armed forces, all of them, Army, Navy, Air Force, and Marines. The reports from commanders all over the nation were appalling: huge numbers of troops were not available for duty. In some major commands the AWOL rate approached forty percent. Another thirty or forty percent refused to bear arms against Americans, or as they phrased it, to fight for that son of a bitch Soetoro. Sailors on navy ships were refusing to go to sea. Commandos and paratroopers were refusing to go to Texas, Oklahoma, or Alabama, which had just declared its independence. Pilots were refusing to fly, which made it impossible to get fighters aloft to protect military targets or to attack targets in Texas. The most powerful military force on the planet was shattering like old crystal right before his eyes.

Maybe Soetoro was right, Wynette mused. Maybe it was time to start standing some people against the wall and shooting them to inspire the rest.

Wynette and several senior members of the JCS staff were trying to figure out just how many willing fighters Barry Soetoro actually had and how to get the willing to where they could fight when the news came in that the interstate and railroad bridges over the Mississippi at Vicksburg had been bombed and were impassable. Even as he tried to digest this information, he learned that bridges were being bombed from Baton Rouge to well above Memphis. Four bridges in Memphis had gone into the river. It was thought that the bombers were B-52s from Barksdale, but of course that was merely speculation.

On top of all of this were the plights of cities such as Washington, Baltimore, Philadelphia, metropolitan New York, and Boston. And Pittsburgh, Cleveland, Chicago, Milwaukee, Detroit, St. Louis, and Los Angeles. For seventy-five years architects had created urban buildings that were sealed units and uninhabitable without electrical power. Millions of city dwellers were abandoning the cities for the supposedly better life in the countryside, where some planned to throw themselves on the mercy of the rustics while others planned to rob, steal, and kill their way to a better life.

Wynette wondered what the heck was going to come of all this. According to radio reports, they were partying in Montgomery tonight. The governor had made a speech, a “rant” according to the reporter on the radio, in which he told Barry Soetoro to go to hell and do something anatomically impossible to himself when he got there. The lights were back on in most of Alabama, and the governor vowed they were going to stay on even if the Alabama National Guard had to defend the plants against Soetoro's troops and thugs. He also vowed that a copy of the Ten Commandments were going up in every courtroom and classroom in Alabama; if the justices of the United States Supreme Court didn't like it, he said, they could come to Alabama and take them down, if they could.

It was obvious to Martin Wynette that Soetoro's propaganda campaign to blame the electrical outages on Texans and right-wing fanatics hadn't moved the needle. Barry Soetoro and his minions were taking the blame.

Wynette was trying to put this mess into perspective when the assistant chairman, a four-star admiral, knocked on the sill of the open door and, when Wynette glanced up, strolled into his office and closed the door behind him. He was the only officer in the navy that outranked the chief of naval operations, Admiral Cart McKiernan.

His name was Hiram Gregory Ray. He was a feisty little cuss, a fighter pilot, and somewhere along the line he had acquired the nickname of Sugar. He was anything but sweet, but the people who worked for him regarded him in awe. Brilliant, technically savvy, aggressive, and competent, he could fire up a room full of sailors and he could kiss a congressman's ass so subtly and perfectly that the bastard would fart red, white, and blue for months.

Sugar Ray knew Wynette's peccadillos and usually tried not to fret the boss unnecessarily. After a day spent watching the United States and the armed forces come apart at the seams, he was in no mood tonight to stroke the chairman.

“I think we can wave good-bye to America,” he said, “unless that damned fool in the White House turns the juice back on. New York, Chicago, and LA are in meltdown. Soldiers, sailors, and Marines deserting in droves, refusing to enforce Jade Helm mandates, refusing to fight, refusing to back up the police. . . . Why in the name of God did that idiot turn off the power?”

“He blamed it on the Texans,” Wynette said sourly. “He's a disciple of Joseph Goebbels. The truth will never catch up to a lie. ‘If you like your doctor, you can keep him. If you like your health insurance, you can keep it.' He's that kind of guy.”

Sugar Ray tossed a message on the desk. “Here's a tidbit that will make your evening. Soldiers at Fort Benning are deserting and taking their weapons with them. They are driving out of the base in trucks. The CG there says all order and discipline are lost. If he tries to arrest people, he is afraid that the MPs will refuse to obey, and if they do obey, he's afraid the people he wants to arrest will shoot back. He asked the chief of staff for guidance.”

Wynette picked up the message and read it. “A complete breakdown of order and discipline,” he muttered.

“I think it's high time we arrest Soetoro and take over the government.”

Martin L. Wynette stared at Sugar Ray for several seconds, took a deep breath, and said, “I'll pretend you didn't say that.”

“Oh, shove it, Marty! Soetoro is attempting to become a dictator, and he has got to be stopped. We should arrest him or shoot him. Personally, I'd like to shoot him, and I volunteer to pull the trigger, but I'll settle for arrest and solitary confinement.”

Wynette shook the message at Ray. “And just who the hell do you think we're going to lead over to Pennsylvania Avenue to do all this arresting? Or will it be just you and me with a couple of pistols and any beggars with signs that we can pick up on street corners along the way?”

Sugar Ray cocked his head as he looked at his boss. “Have you sent any of these numbers—” he gestured at the messages on Wynette's desk “—over to the White House?”

“Not yet. Tomorrow morning is soon enough.”

“What do you think the reaction will be?”

“By God, I don't—”

Sugar Ray interrupted and finished the sentence for him. “You don't know. Civil society in this country is coming apart in the large cities. Old people and babies are dying like flies in un-air-conditioned apartments and tenements; people are fighting for food, looting grocery stores, banks, liquor, and jewelry stores; breaking into ATMs; shooting at police at every opportunity. . .and the military is collapsing. Man, we went back to the stone age in less than ten days! I hope you appreciate the delicious irony of the fact that Soetoro fucked the very people who voted for him.”

Wynette grunted. He thought political loyalty was an oxymoron.

Sugar Ray wasn't done. He said to the general, “Tomorrow morning Soetoro will probably want some heads, and yours is first on the block.”

Wynette didn't reply to that comment.

“But that's in the short term,” the admiral said, dismissed that little problem with a flip of his hand. “Eventually Soetoro is going down hard, and anyone who saluted and said, ‘Yes, sir,' may go on the gallows with him. Hitler's and Mussolini's generals didn't fare so well.”

Admiral Ray stood and leaned toward Wynette, braced himself with his fingertips on the general's desk, and said, “My assessment is that this situation is completely out of Soetoro's control. If we lock up Soetoro and everyone else in the White House we can lay hands on, maybe we can stop a humanitarian disaster and save millions of lives. Maybe we can even save our miserable country and some of those morons who voted for Soetoro. . .
twice
.”

Wynette looked at Sugar Ray for a long moment, then asked softly, “Who have you talked to about this?”

Ray straightened up and took a deep breath. “All the other chiefs. I was hoping it would be unanimous, but it isn't. The commandant and army chief are with me, but CNO and the air force want to think about things.”

“Well,” Wynette said dryly, “treason
is
a big step.”

“Yeah—and Barry Soetoro is striding out. How long are we going to wait, Marty, before we call him on it? In a better day to come, Americans are going to ask that question of us.”

Wynette sat stolidly, eyes focused on infinity.

Sugar Ray shrugged, then headed for the door. “I'm going home and getting some sleep,” he tossed over his shoulder, and pulled the door shut behind him.

Walter Ohnigian actually flew two flights that night, and landed as dawn streaked the eastern sky. The B-52s were safely back on the ground at Barksdale and the Mississippi bridges all had at least one span in the river, from Baton Rouge to Memphis.