Carl shrugged. "General . . . if we didn't get them those arms were going to be seized anyway. We are also, as part of the deal, paying very good money to arrange a strike on the Panama Canal when that brigade from the 1st Marine Division is stuck in the middle of Gatun Lake between the locks. That strike is going to cost us money and cost us big. You are hardly paying any more than what this is going to cost us and I think you should stop bitching about it. You are getting some artillery and you ought to be happy with that. Me, personally, I think my boss is making a mistake."
"A mistake? My ass. You're screwing us plain and simple."
Carl shrugged again and began to walk towards the line of tractors hauling the flatbed trailers northwards.
"Where are you going?" demanded Hanstadt.
"Why, I'm going to turn these trucks around since you seem to think the deal is so bad."
"Now wait a minute . . ."
"Then stop bitching about it."
Interlude:
From: True Faith and Allegiance: the American Military in a Time of Constitutional Crisis, Copyright 2067, Professor Samuel Horowitz, Harvard University Press.
It was well known. Indeed there had never been any doubt of the American military's sublime disgust with Wilhelmina Rottemeyer. No more had there been any doubt as to her distaste for her own armed forces. On the very day of her inauguration, an Air Force officer, one Colonel Douglas Farrell, apparently deliberately waiting for her to be sworn in in order to give his protest meaning, had pointedly and publicly voiced the opinion of nearly every serving officer and, it is widely believed, the bulk of the other ranks: "She's a rug-munching, acid-dropping, hippie-chick refugee from the '60s. I could live with all that. She's a national menace and that none of us should be willing to live with."
Colonel Farrell was of course duly court-martialed for violation of Article 88, UCMJ, "Contempt Towards Officials." This was one of two surprises. The first surprise was that he had not resigned from the Air Force to avoid that prosecution; this being the usual procedure. The second was that he was acquitted by a jury of his peers at that court-martial.
This acquittal did not save Colonel Farrell from a most unpleasant posting to Thule Air Force Base, Greenland, of course. . . .
* * *
Only once before had the American military, most especially its officer corps, been put to the test. And then, in 1861, fully a third had cast off their allegiance to the United States Constitution and joined their home states. These were joined, in some few cases, by officers of northern birth who were in political sympathy with the secessionists' aims.
That, however, was in a context of peculiar circumstances and widely differing interpretation of what was and was not constitutionally permissible and proper.
In the Rottemeyer presidency, on the other hand, there was little or no such difference of opinion among military officers. There was scarcely more among the rank and file . . . of any color, sex or religious persuasion. Almost openly spurned and despised by their commander in chief, the soldiers—officers and men, alike—heartily returned the feelings. Drawn themselves largely from the more rural—hence conservative—parts of the United States, they had little philosophical sympathy for her political and social goals, which were largely urban and liberal, shading over to Marxist. Their organizations twisted, warped and perverted by those goals, only long habits of obedience to civil authority, coupled with a lack of any clear alternatives, had kept these men and women to their duty.
And yet, what was that duty? These men and women had sworn an oath to support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic. But a domestic force that flouted the first and second amendments, bought votes and influence through cash payments to the underclass, violated the doctrine of separation of powers, and persecuted their churches?
Increasingly, the habits of discipline, obedience, and subordination to civilian control found themselves warring with the deeper meaning of the military oath, "all enemies, foreign and domestic." Increasingly the military saw Rottemeyer and her movement as such. Increasingly, men and women in uniform resolved to—if not openly resist—at least damn by faint support whenever and wherever the opportunity might arise.
The first such instance during the crisis was, arguably, the departure of the heavy corps from Texas; leaving behind so much useful materiel. The second, almost open, rebellion came with the assault on the Western Currency Facility. The third, and sometimes this was open rebellion, was the refusal of the Air Force's pilots to participate.
Army and Marine companies and platoons could be led by their less politically astute or sensitive noncommissioned officers. Even ships could sail and maintain a blockade under their senior chiefs.
Planes do not fly without pilots, and to an extraordinary degree those men (and in a few cases, women) refused, openly or tacitly, to fly.
This was, of course, equally true of helicopters.
There were, of course, some pilots, experienced ones even, that could be bought. . . .
Chapter Thirteen
From the transcript at triaclass="underline" Commonwealth of
Virginia v. Alvin Scheer
DIRECT EXAMINATION, CONTINUED
BY MR. STENNINGS:
Q. What did you find in Baltimore, besides a job, Alvin?
A. Well, I noticed posters going up all over town, eventually. They were kind of crudely done, if you know what I mean. Well . . . maybe crude isn't quite the right word; the drawings were a good enough likeness, after all.
You know the ones I mean? They showed Governor Seguin from a front view and from the side, just like she was a criminal or something. For a while there they were everywhere: "Wanted: Dead or Alive."
Now, of course, nobody ever took any credit for them. They weren't official. They didn't offer any reward or anything like that.
But it started me to thinking, which never did come too easy to me. I mean, I'm not stupid. I never read books much, but I'm not stupid.
Anyway, if the White House could pay people to march in parades, and I was pretty sure that's where that money I was handed did come from, why couldn't they make up—have someone make up—some posters like that?
Take it all together: the parades, the news that all seemed to come from one side only, the posters. What did it add up to?
To me? Well, I added one and one and one and came up with the White House. But I figure to a lot of folks, it probably seemed like it added up to real—what do you call it?—a tidal wave? Yeah, a tidal wave of support for doing whatever it took to knock Texas into the dirt.
* * *
Pickup Zone (PZ) "Treasure," Oklahoma
The faint nimbus of the rising sun was only just beginning to peek over the low Oklahoma hills to the east. A mild southern wind carried little dust on its breeze, and virtually none into the eyes of the Army teams overseeing the loading and departure of a battalion of PGSS "agents" towards Fort Worth.
The helicopters themselves, however, kicked up enough dust to be an annoyance. It was an annoyance to which the Army was long since used, however. The soldiers shrugged it off.