“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
At 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?”