“I’m JR Hays of the Texas Guard. As you know, Major General Ellensberger surrendered to the Texas Guard just an hour or so ago. You’ve been watching television, so you know the current political situation. Barry Soetoro declared martial law and ripped up the Constitution, and consequently Texas declared its independence. General Ellensberger surrendered Fort Hood because it is indefensible. Circling the wagons in a lost cause struck him as ridiculous unless he was prepared to cut his way out of Texas, and he wasn’t.
“Which gets me down to you. Every one of you has a decision to make: you can go home, pack your family, and leave Texas, or you can join Texas in our attempt to build a free nation dedicated to the principles that the Founding Fathers laid down when they wrote the U.S. Constitution. I suspect Barry Soetoro’s army will not be pleased if you choose to join Texas in its fight, and it will be a fight, a second American Civil War. Barry Soetoro is going to use the armed forces of the United States to try to conquer Texas, so if you sign on, you will be fighting U.S. forces. Americans against Americans, as if it were 1861 all over again.
“Finally, if you choose to join the Texas Guard and fight with us, you can’t change your mind later. It’s sort of like getting baptized down at the creek: as the preacher would say, once you’re in, you’re all in, and you can’t wash it off.
“Any questions or comments?”
One of the warrant officers stood up and said, “Sir, Chief Warrant Officer Three Buck Johannson.”
JR nodded and Johannson said, “My dad is a state representative in Wisconsin. His politics are right of center and he’s loud. The feds arrested him yesterday and put him in a camp because they don’t want other people to hear the opinions of a free man. Far as I’m concerned, Texas is on the side of freedom. I’d like to join the Texas Guard.”
“Fine,” JR said. “Anyone else?”
Another warrant said, “I think Soetoro wants to be a dictator. I don’t want my kids to grow up in that kind of country. I’m from Georgia, but from now on I’m a Texan.”
“Welcome to the Alamo,” JR said, which drew a chuckle from his listeners.
About half the pilots volunteered to serve with Texas. JR dismissed the others, told them to go home and pack. “If, while you’re doing that you decide to join us, you know where the headquarters building is.”
When only his volunteers remained, JR said, “Our first priority is the First Armored in Fort Bliss. I want to go over there and capture the whole outfit. We need the tanks, helicopters, ammo, and all the rest of it. I’ll need three Apaches and a Blackhawk armed to the teeth. We are going to do some violence, enough to make the CG there, Major General Lee Parker, surrender. Who wants to go?”
Specialist Fourth Class James B. Cassel, a name that he and his kin had always pronounced Castle, spoke for thousands of his fellow soldiers when he got home to the tiny apartment he shared with his wife, Linda Sue, and their infant daughter. Jimmy Cassel was from a tiny town in the coalfields of southern West Virginia. He told Linda Sue, who was from Killeen and had married James just a year ago, about the surrender of Fort Hood to Texas forces.
“They say I can enlist in the Texas Guard, or we can pack up and get outta Texas,” he said as he took off his uniform and put on his jeans and tennis shoes. “Get packed up. We’re leavin’.”
“I was born and raised here,” Linda Sue protested. “I’m Texan clear through to my backbone. I’m not turning my back on my family.”
“I joined the army to get the hell out of the coalfields,” Jimmy explained as he pulled on a T-shirt that advertised the local Harley dealership, although he didn’t own a motorcycle because he couldn’t afford one, not even a used one. “I didn’t join the army to shoot Americans. If I was willin’ to do that when push come to shove, I’d have joined the police. I got no love for that son of a bitch Soetoro, but America’s my country from coast to coast. I ain’t goin’ to shoot Texans or Hoosiers or Californians or anybody else from America. We’re leavin’.”
“I’m not,” Linda Sue declared. “And the baby is stayin’ with me. You just load your stuff in the car, Jimmy, and get the hell out. Go ahead, run off! If you won’t fight to defend us, I don’t want you.”
“Now, hold on! You married me and I’m the man of the family. My dad was in the army and fought in Kuwait. My granddad fought in Vietnam and got shot for his troubles. Us Cassels been fightin’ for this country since before it was a country. I ain’t turnin’ traitor.”
“Jimmy Cassel, I am not turnin’ traitor neither. I want to hear exactly nothin’ about your daddy and granddaddy. The baby and I are your family now. And if you won’t fight for your family, then you just hit the road. I’m takin’ the baby and walkin’ down to Mom’s place.”
An hour later, sitting alone in his apartment, Jimmy Cassel started to cry.
Sergeant Claude Zeist handed beers to three of his sergeant friends at his house on base. The television was on: scenes of federal agents making arrests alternated with scenes of riots in Baltimore, St. Louis, LA, and Chicago.
“The Texans have bit off a big chunk, and I doubt if they can chew it,” Zeist said. “But that’s neither here nor there. Fact is, I took an oath to defend the United States of America, and when this is all over I want my kids and grandkids to know that I did my duty. Did what I swore I would. And there is no way in hell I am going into combat against my fellow American soldiers.”
“It’ll be over soon,” his friend Benny Straight said. “Thing I can’t figure is why everybody is so damned upset. Barry Soetoro will be gone in January. He can’t run again. The next president can set things right.”
“What if he doesn’t?”
“That’s tomorrow’s problem. You don’t burn the house down just because the sewer is backed up.”
“So what are you going to do, Claude?”
“I’m going to pack up the wife and kids and get outta Texas and find an army base somewhere so I can be an American soldier again. That’s what I always wanted to be, and if we have to kick ass again like we did during the Civil War in the 1860s, so be it. That damn General Ellensberger hasn’t got enough guts to make a sausage.”
“Generals get paid to decide when to fight and when not to,” Benny remarked.
“One good fight and Texas will crack like a rotten egg,” Claude Zeist insisted, and drained his beer. Then he reached for another. “We should have had it today. Never put off until tomorrow kicking ass today.”
No one smiled; they were worried.
Benny Straight put into words a thought that all of them had and none of them had yet voiced. “After Texas folds, the U.S. Army is going to court-martial any United States soldier who did the turncoat trick. They’ll be called traitors, and you know it.”
“If Texas folds,” Jeff Hanifan said.
“Oh, it will,” Benny Straight scoffed. “For God’s sake, one state against forty-nine? Texas against the United States Army, Navy, Air Force, and Marine Corps?”
“Well, something good came out of this shit storm, anyway,” Claude Zeist said. “The Texans put Nasruli up against a wall and shot him. I would have bet my left nut that Soetoro was going to wait until his last day in office and commute the sentence to life in prison.”
“This is Texas,” Jeff Hanifan said, as if that explained everything. His comrades, all career soldiers, nodded knowingly and drank more beer.
Loren Snyder went down the open hatch in front of the small sail of USS Texas and found himself in the torpedo room. He looked around with his flashlight. The reactor was scrammed of course, and the boat was dead iron. The torpedoes in their cradles looked sleek and fat and ominous.