No mention of where the justices would now serve was given, and Eastridge shuddered at what their fate would be since they had crossed the Chairman. However, he did know that if there were spikes atop the main gate leading into D.C., their heads would adorn them.
The next declaration made by the Chairman was the disbanding of Congress. With their decreased numbers, neither the Senate nor the House of Representatives had convened in the last two weeks. The last time they had gotten together, they did manage to pass a bill on reopening the relief centers, but it was a moot point. When they were finished, they realized that there was no one to sign it except the man that had shut them down in the first place. The bill was passed to the Chairman, who promptly vetoed it. Congress promptly banded together to override the veto, but because of a sudden restriction in movement throughout the capital ordered by The Chairman, they had been unable to convene. Congress might have been a mere irritant to the Chairman, but they had openly opposed him and had to go.
More heads for the spikes, Eastridge thought.
After all of this, the final order from the Chairman was not surprising. Explaining to the men gathered around the table that since there was no longer an acting legislative or judicial branch looking out for the best interests of the people of the United States, he would take complete control until the crisis had abated and elections could be held.
Acting dictator and chief, Eastridge thought. Now that he has complete control, maybe he
will
install spikes on the gate.
Applause met this announcement. The men around the table knew that as advisors to what was now the most powerful man on the planet, the louder and longer they clapped, the longer they lived. Knowing he had to play along to keep his seat, General Eastridge clapped along with the rest of them.
The meeting finished with the Chairman giving a collection of orders ranging from the honor guard at funerals no longer firing their guns so as to conserve ammunition, to how they would divert some of the small creeks in the area to supply them with water.
Footsteps crunching through the leaves to his left brought him out of his reverie. Expecting to see the Navy SEAL again, Eastridge was surprised to see Admiral Sedlak coming toward him through the trees behind the memorial. The area around them was open, causing a bolt of fear to shoot through him. Looking in all directions to see if they had been spotted, he was relieved to see no one.
Holding out his right hand, the Admiral said, “I’m glad you could make it. I know it’s kind of last minute, but after the events at the briefing today, I don’t see that we have a lot of time to waste.”
Grasping the outstretched hand and shaking it, Eastridge said, “I kind of expected something like this, only not so soon. I expected The Chairman to strengthen his own position with troops loyal to him before taking over.”
“The way I see it, he has more than enough,” the Admiral explained. “He’s got four battalions of infantry that he’s been reinforcing for the last month. They’re almost up to full strength, with about a thousand men in each. He also has his Green Berets and his Rangers. Like my SEALs, the Green Beanies got chewed up pretty badly, but the Rangers are mostly intact. He’s got them billeted in a housing project near the east side of the wall. You have to remember that he also pulled what was left of Delta Force from the Gulf Coast and brought them up here last week for rest.”
“That’s why there’s so much activity in Dog town,” Eastridge said aloud, referring to a section of town populated by bars and whorehouses. It was a legendary area that had sprouted up about fifteen minutes after D.C. had been secured, but it was ignored due to the present circumstances. Who was going to order a soldier that was more than likely going to be dead within a few days not to go out to drink rotgut moonshine and get laid?
“Delta’s been lying low in Dog town there since they got here,” Eastridge told him, “and the Rangers are spitting distance away. I doubt any of these men know exactly what’s going on, so they must be getting fed a line about keeping the integrity of the United States intact. Either that, or they think they just got lucky by getting R and R. The one thing I do know is that The Chairman is keeping them isolated so they’ll be ready to do his dirty work. He can spin whatever story he wants, and they’ll jump to do his bidding.”
“So, who do we have besides you and me? No one else in the Joint Chiefs stood up to him,” Eastridge commented. “He walked into the meeting today and basically took over the United States without firing a shot. What does he need all the troops for?”
“He knows that people will eventually oppose him,” Sedlak said. “And he knows that if anyone tries anything that he can send his special forces in. Once they’re engaged, he can order his infantry in and they will fight for their own.”
Eastridge saw the wisdom of this. In a combat situation, men didn’t fight for politics or patriotism, they fight for the guy next to him. Add on top of this that they were facing an opponent that was against God, America, Mom and apple pie, and it was a wrap. Killing other Americans might cause them to hesitate, but they would shoot first and ask questions later if told that they were fighting against someone trying to overthrow the standing government.
“How did you find this all out?” Eastridge asked.
“I might have lost most of my ground combat men in the war against the dead,” Sedlak explained, “but my intelligence services stayed mostly intact, along with my Naval forces. I don’t have a whole lot of combat troops to call on, but I know that you have two understrength battalions inside the wall totaling fourteen hundred men, and another two of about the same size at Quantico.”
“So you want me to order my people at Quantico to march almost forty miles through a land full of dead things trying to eat them, and then have them assault the D.C. wall because the Chairman will know that they’re coming since they’ll be kind of hard to miss as they move through a city that’s been bombed flat, and then have them pull off some kind of half-assed coup?” Eastridge asked sarcastically.
“No,” Sedlak answered, “getting your men here is where my Navy comes in.”
Eastridge immediately saw the possibilities. His men guarded the wall along the stretch that faced the Potomac, so it would be easy for them to let his Marines into the city. Getting them out of Quantico and onto boats without being spotted might be a little tricky, but he had an idea on how to get around that. If he played it right, he might even have the Chairman’s approval.
Having been trained all his life to plan everything through from beginning to end, a thought came to him. Suddenly finding himself in a Machiavellian plot orchestrated by the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, he wondered if he was being drawn into another one. With this in mind, he asked Sedlak the most important question of them all.
“When we pull this off, who takes control?”
Without hesitation, the Admiral said, “We form an ad-hoc committee made up of each of the Joint Chiefs, along with the remaining leaders of the Republican, Democratic and Independent parties. A jury decides on the basis of twelve, so I think that there should eventually be twelve members. To be honest, I haven’t figured out who those twelve should be, but if we start with a solid foundation, we can build it from there.”
The General watched Sedlak closely as he talked but could see no subterfuge in his answer. He knew he was a good judge of character and felt that the Admiral had answered honestly.
“And what about the Malectron?” he asked.
“We use it in the way it was meant to be used,” Sedlak answered, “to push the dead into isolated areas where they can be dealt with.”
“You mean eradicated?” Eastridge asked.
“Completely,” Sedlak assured him. “We also need to push forward in finding a cure, but the Malectron will at least give us some breathing room to do that. We need to work together.”
After hesitating for a moment, General Eastridge extended his hand to where it was grasped firmly by the Admiral’s. The two men looked each other in the eye as they said in unison, “Done.”
***
General Eastridge took off his coat as he entered his outer office. Cursing when he saw that his aide was absent from his desk, he made for his own. If they were going to pull this coup off, he needed to get working on his plan. Seeing the door to his office slightly ajar, he called out, “Jim, get your ass out here. Something’s come up, and we’ve got a lot of work to do.”
Instead of hearing his aide’s voice in reply, Eastridge’s blood ran cold when he heard the Chairman call out, “Don’t worry about him, I told him to take a break. I need to speak to you privately.”
Dread flooded through him at hearing this, his first thought being that he had been found out in the plot to depose the Chairman. Jim was probably in custody right now. The man might not have done anything wrong, but guilt by association ran strong in the new head of the United States. After the meeting of the Joint Chiefs, they had been informed that along with the remaining senators and representatives, their staff had also been rounded up for questioning. The excuse was given that they needed to be debriefed, but if it was a simple debriefing, why take them under guard from their homes and offices to an undisclosed location?
Knowing he had no choice but to face his fate, Eastridge made to straighten the blouse of his uniform. What he was really doing, though, was pulling the back of it down to conceal the .45 caliber pistol in a holster at the small of his back. If given half a chance, he would take out the Chairman. He knew that he would never make it out of the office building alive, but if he was going down, so was the dictator that had seized power. When he felt he was presentable, he strode purposefully into the room.
As soon as he entered his office, though, he knew that he didn’t have a chance of assassinating the Chairman. While the man made an easy target sitting on the edge of his desk, the two men flanking him with pistols at the ready would cut him down before he got a chance to draw and fire.
Scowling, the Chairman said to the guard on his right, “Search him.”
When the man had relieved Eastridge of his pistol, the Chairman said to him, “You’ve been a very busy boy.”
Eastridge felt his heart sink at the thought that they had been found out. If this was it, then at least he would get a chance to tell the Chairman what a scumbag he was.
“I’ve only been doing my duty, sir,” he replied forcefully. “I want you to know-”
Eastridge wanted to say how he was planning the coup because of duty and honor, but the Chairman cut him off by saying, “I really appreciate the extra work you had your men put in at the laboratory so that we can get Doctor Hawkins here as soon as possible. I know that I’ve been rough on everyone, but getting the Malectron up and running is a priority. I came here for two reasons, the first being to apologize if I stepped on your toes, but it had to be done.”
Eastridge was at a loss for words. He remembered how he had reported that he was pulling every third man off guard and sending them on temporary duty to help get the lab up and running, but it was a lie. In reality, these men had been given twelve-hour passes to go into Dog town.
With a smile, the Chairman added, “And I apologize for cutting you off. Now what were you going to say, General?”
Eastridge fumbled his words for a second and finally picked up where he had started by saying, “I want you to know that it’s an honor to serve you, sir.”
The words stuck in his throat, but he managed to get them out. If he wasn’t being arrested, then it meant he would live to fight another day. If living to fight meant kowtowing to the Chairman, then so be it. If Karma was a train, he wanted to be the engineer when it came around.
The Chairman nodded and smiled as he waved his two bodyguards away. When they were gone, he said, “And that brings me to the second reason for this visit.”
Standing, he circled the desk and sat in Eastridge’s chair before waving the General into the one that faced it. Eastridge sat heavily, his knees slightly weak from being so close to what he thought was a certain death before dodging it.
Clearing his throat, the Chairman said, “I took absolute power today for a reason. This country needs a strong man to lead it to its destiny of being the one true power on Earth. Others have faltered in this time and again, but I plan to succeed. To do that, I made the decision to let the weak fall by the wayside and perish. When you look at history, it is full of stories of great men that tried to help the pathetic masses and paid for it by being pulled down.”
Trying to keep the look of utter revulsion off his face, Eastridge could only nod.
“That is why I need strong men like you by my side to help me in my conquest,” the Chairman went on. “The Marine Corps built you into the man you are today. They taught you to obey orders and to follow those orders as they are handed down to you by your superiors. The main reason I’m here tonight is to make sure that you are on my side, the side of righteousness.”
Knowing that to reply in any other way meant that the two men waiting outside the door would quickly escort him to an undisclosed location from which he would never return, Eastridge said, “I’m with you, sir. The whiners and the crybabies have had it their way for way too long. It’s time to get rid of the dead weight and move on.”
Although he had a hard time spitting these words out, knowing that Sedlak could do nothing without his Marines made Eastridge utter them.