He wandered along, inspecting everything. The sailors hadn’t even been able to take their personal gear. It seemed they would return any moment, but he knew they wouldn’t.
The flashlight’s beam in that dark ship was sorta spooky. The gentle, barely perceptible motion of the ship riding the little waves of the harbor made it even more so.
In the control room, the realization hit him that he was standing right dead center in a cruise missile target. Tomahawks could be climbing for their final dive right this instant. Each breath he took could be his last. He felt perspiration break out on his forehead and forced himself to concentrate on what he could see with the flashlight’s beam.
In the reactor spaces, he examined everything and could find nothing amiss. The crew had simply secured the reactor and the batteries, then trooped up the forward ladder out of the ship.
Assuming he could get the reactor started again, how many men would he need to move this boat? Lorrie Snyder thought hard. No more than five, he thought.
Move her where? Satellites could see her submerged in shallow water, even if the water were muddy, using infrared. Where could he put a submarine so that the U.S. Navy couldn’t find her?
Even if he could find such a place, did he really want to do it? JR Hays had asked the question point-blank: Was he willing to fight for Texas? Well, was he?
If he planned on living and practicing law in Texas, Loren Snyder thought he had better get that figured out. Along with everything else.
The easy way out of this personal nightmare would be to just scuttle the submarine right here at the pier. Then the U.S. Navy wouldn’t need to sink her or send SEALs to steal her. JR Hays would tell him he had done his best, and thank him. Loren Snyder thought about that too.
That Sunday afternoon chairman of the JCS General Martin L. Wynette was back at the White House. He hadn’t had a day this bad since he was a plebe at West Point, way back when. President Soetoro, Vice President John Rhodes, and their aides surrounded him at a conference table and wanted to know how and when the armed forces of the United States were going to crush the Texas rebellion. The general had two aides with him, a Major General Stone and a brigadier, but the questions were directed at him, and the politicians weren’t happy. They wanted action now.
“Willy-nilly bombing and invasion without a plan will get us nowhere,” the general explained. “We are working around the clock to formulate a coherent plan that will accomplish a military objective, which is the occupation of an enemy state.”
“That’s not it,” Soetoro said, thumping the table. “The military objective is to destroy the political opposition in Texas.”
“Your political opposition.”
“You’re damned right. Those who oppose the progressive policies of this administration, earth-friendly policies that will benefit all future generations, policies designed to take care of those today who are unable to participate in our high-tech economy, whether from institutional racism or white privilege or the circumstances of birth, are indeed my political opposition. They oppose America! Your job is to kill or capture them. Now — how are you going to get it done?”
“The navy will launch two Tomahawk cruise missiles at power-generating facilities in Houston later tonight, after dark in Texas. Your staff told me they want bombs falling immediately, so I gave the order. We are planning more strikes on the power plants—”
“Planning?”
“Scattering cruise missiles around like grass seed isn’t going to kill or capture your political opposition, Mr. President. These strikes must be in coordination with armed invasion, or we are simply wasting missiles.” Wynette felt his irritation leaking through. He was the military expert. None of these political types had ever spent a single day in uniform, unless they did a stint at scout camp once upon a time. Hell, they didn’t even like soldiers, whom they often referred to as neolithics.
“So when is the invasion?”
“Sir, as I said, we are working around the clock to produce a plan. Going in half-cocked and getting our asses shot off isn’t going to get us any closer to your objective. When we go in, we want to win.”
“So when? Tomorrow? This week? Next week? Next month? Next year? When?”
“I would say next week. We must move soldiers and equipment from all over the country, figure out the logistics—”
“Bullshit,” Soetoro’s senior political advisor, Sulana Schanck, said acidly. “This isn’t the invasion of Germany or Iraq! Your opposition is a mob of crackers with deer rifles who will shit their pants when the shooting starts and run like rabbits.” She obviously was a believer in direct speech.
The thought shot through Wynette’s head that British General Thomas Gage had that same opinion when he marched his troops from Boston to seize the arms and powder at Lexington and Concord, but he had the sense not to air it. He did, however, screw up the courage to say, “The Texans did a number on General Santa Ana, as I recall.”
“Damn it, General,” Soetoro roared. “I don’t want a history lesson! I want you to take the United States armed forces down there and kick butt. If you can’t do it, we’ll find someone who can.”
Wynette automatically dropped into his ass-kissing mode. “We’ll get it done, sir.”
“And how come the brass in charge of these military facilities in Texas are busy seeing how fast they can surrender? Are they a bunch of traitors?”
“Sir, I have ordered investigations. The commanders will be held responsible for their actions.”
“Firing squads will stiffen some backbones. The sooner the better.”
“Yes, sir.”
“When the invasion starts, I want you down there in the lead tank, General. Do you understand? If you fuck this up, don’t come back alive.”
“Yes, sir,” General Wynette said.
Late Sunday afternoon as JR Hays settled into one of the passenger seats of a U.S. Army executive jet, normally used to ferry flag officers around, he took stock of all the things he needed to get done and hadn’t been able to attend to today. Everything needed to be done immediately. He hoped that Air National Guard Major General Elvin Gentry had hit the ground running. Air traffic facilities and their radars, in addition to fighter planes, bombers, helicopters, had to be seized by the Guard. Without ground control sites pinpointing incoming enemy planes, fighters were handicapped severely. Gentry also needed to ground civilian air traffic and confiscate every jetliner he could lay hands on so they could be used to ferry troops.
Just thinking of all the critical tasks and decisions that had to be attended to made JR’s head throb and gave him a sense of anxiety that he was having trouble shaking off. The fact that the feds were equally inundated didn’t help much to ease his frame of mind. If the feds got licked, they had forty-nine other states to play in. If Texas got licked, a whole lot of Texans were going to die in the aftermath.
The three Apaches and one Blackhawk that he had launched from Fort Hood were going to make a pit stop for fuel in Pecos. Unfortunately the weather was rotten around El Paso. Thunderstorms full of rain and lightning were drifting in from the west and southwest, bringing low ceilings and visibility in addition to their usual goodies.
He had no plan for forcing the 1st Armored to surrender. He had learned long ago the truth to the old maxim that no plan survives contact with the enemy, so he made none. First he had to learn what the situation was in El Paso and at Fort Bliss, then he could plan. The Apaches and the Blackhawk were arrows in his quiver. The National Guard commander, Wiley Fehrenbach, scion of the Hill Country Fehrenbachs, and his old civilian contractor boss, Pete Taylor, would know, so he would land at the civilian airport and seek them out.