Soetoro made the decision, as his inner circle of committed progressives knew he would. “Do it,” he said, and gestured toward the door.
Some moron asked, “How?”
Grantham fielded that one. “Call the heads of the various power companies and tell them to shut off the juice, and if they don’t, send the FBI around to arrest them and every officer in the company. Crack the damned whip.” When you have dictatorial powers, you can iron out all the little difficulties.
“Yes, sir,” they said, and scattered.
“You stay,” the president said to the general and his aides.
When the room was empty, the president said, “Tell me about that attack in Louisiana.”
So he had heard after all. “I got a telephone call in the car on the way over here,” Wynette said, “so all I know are the basics. Apparently B-1 Lancers. They probably came from Dyess Air Force Base in Abilene.”
“What can we do about those Texas traitors?”
“Sir, we are putting together an invasion, as you directed. JR Hays just made the invasion a little more difficult, but he can’t stop it.”
“What will he do next?”
“We need to destroy those B-1s on the ground at Dyess. I was thinking of using the B-2s at Whiteman Air Force Base in Missouri to do that as soon as possible.”
“Fine,” Barry Soetoro said. “We should have retired those old B-1s years ago. Instead we wasted mountains of money on them that could have been better spent elsewhere.”
Wynette didn’t argue that point.
“I also want you to turn off the lights in Texas, General. I don’t think calling the president of the power company will do it. Do it any way you can. As soon as you can. Texas started all this trouble.”
“Yes, sir.”
Barry Soetoro would have been furious if he had known that JR Hays was already one jump ahead of him. Another half-dozen B-1 Lancers were already in the air on their way to Missouri to bomb Whiteman Air Force Base. An hour later, as the carcasses of the B-2s at Whiteman were still burning, he found out.
In the limo with his general officer aides, Martin Wynette said, “He knew about that Louisiana attack when he ordered the power turned off nationwide.”
His generals both nodded.
“And he knew about the state legislatures giving him the finger.”
Yes.
“Did he do it to punish the American people?” Wynette asked aloud.
“Ten to one that he blames the Texans for the loss of power,” the female two-star said.
“No bet,” her male colleague said.
“A hundred to one,” she offered.
“No bet.”
But with the power off, only a few will hear him, Wynette thought. And who will care? The one fact every American will understand is that the federal government can’t keep electricity flowing through the wires.
At Barksdale Air Force Base four F-22s broke over the runway and swung into trail on the downwind. They slowed, dropped their landing gear and flaps, and the controller in the tower cleared them to land. Once down, Ground Control directed them to park on one end of the B-52 ramp.
Everything appeared normal to the pilots as they followed the directions of linesmen, parked in a row, and one by one shut down. Number Four was the last to shut down, of course, and the pilot was the last to exit his cockpit onto a boarding ladder that had been pushed to the side of his plane.
He was standing with one foot in the cockpit and one foot on the ladder when he looked around and realized that the other pilots had their hands in the air and soldiers in battle dress were pointing weapons at them.
He drew his pistol from a holster under his left armpit and began shooting into the instrument panel, which was composed of complex multifunction displays.
The air force officer had fired three shots when Specialist Jimmy Schaffran triggered a three-shot burst from his M4 carbine from a distance of eighteen feet. The pilot tumbled backward without even trying to grab the ladder and fell to the concrete.
Jimmy Schaffran, late of Minnesota and now of Texas, walked over to the body. The man’s head was at an odd angle. Obviously a broken neck. If the carbine bullets didn’t kill him, the fall to the concrete did.
Schaffran was still staring at the corpse when his buddy from South Carolina came running over.
One look at the dead man was enough. Carolina threw an arm over Schaffran’s shoulders. He turned him away from the body and said, “You had to do it, Jimmy. We may need these planes.”
“Fuckin’ shit,” said Jimmy Schaffran.
“Hey, man. We chose our side of the fence and he chose his. Not much any of us can do about it now. God will have to figure it out.”
TWENTY-ONE
In Galveston, Loren Snyder had a visitor. The man shouted down the open hatch, got no answer, then climbed down and wandered aft. He found Loren in the control room.
“Hi. I’m George Ranta. The sheriff sent me to see you.”
“Oh.” Loren was more than a little surprised. The sheriff was supposed to be guarding the pier and preventing the locals from meandering over for a look at a real submarine.
“I used to serve in attack boats. In fact, I used to be the head sonarman on this one.”
“On this boat?”
“Yes, sir. Could you guys use some help? I’d kinda like to volunteer, if you could use me.”
“Volunteer for what?”
“For whatever you have in mind, Captain.”
That captain thing did it for Loren. This guy could be a SEAL in civvies, he reflected, here to kung fu the whole crew, all five. On the other hand, that captain thing sounded automatic, and he didn’t look like a muscle man who spent four hours a day in the gym. Maybe he was on the level. “Prove it,” Loren said.
Ranta sat down at the main sonar console and began flipping switches. In less than a minute the sonar was running through built-in tests. Yep, he knew what he was doing.
“We’re going to sea in a few hours. If you’ve served in these boats, you know what we’re up against. The navy won’t like us out cruising around in an armed attack submarine.”
“You have torpedoes in the tubes and Tomahawks in the wells?”
“Yep.”
“Going to use them?”
“We might.”
“To free Texas?”
“Yep.”
“I’ll go if you’ll have me.”
“Got any stuff?”
“It’s on the other side of the gangway.”
“Go get it, and find yourself a bunk.”
Two hours later, another person showed up, a woman. Loren heard her call and went to meet her as she came out of the torpedo room.
“I heard you guys were getting ready to go to sea, so I talked to the sheriff and he let me come down here to talk to you.”
“So talk.”
“Got out last year after three years aboard Colorado.”
“Why’d you get out?”
“Oh, the usual. I had a boyfriend and he wanted me home to fuck him every night. So—”
“The navy will try to sink this boat. You understand?”
“Sure.”
“And you still want to go?”
“I was born and raised in Texas.” She stopped, thought about that answer, and decided it was adequate. She was of medium height, trim, with a firm mouth and thin lips. Her hair was in a ponytail. The T-shirt she was wearing had a Texas flag on the front and back.
“What was your rate?”
“Quartermaster.”
“Can you handle the helm?”
“Yes, sir!”
“Get your stuff and find a bunk.”
“I already dropped my bag through the hatch.”
“Welcome aboard.”
She stuck out her hand. “My name is Ada Fuentes.”