“We represent a pretty solid confederation of over 80 independent militias in seven states outside of Florida. Combined, we’ve got nearly 10,000 armed members and five times as many unarmed sympathizers. Our numbers have swollen in these last few weeks and we’re training them hard! Believe you me, sir. We can offer a lot to your cause.”
“Sixty…thousand, you say?” He appraised his staff with new respect.
The Bubba grinned. Finally, some respect. “Oh, yes sir. The South shall rise again and liberate the whole country!”
Pickens guffawed nearby. No one paid him any attention.
He knew the poll numbers well. The South was solidly in the president’s camp. Fiercely pro-American, which was to be expected since they’ve borne a disproportionate burden of defending the country over the last century. All he heard was only 60,000 supporters out of seven states. My how the mighty have fallen.
On the other hand, this force was larger than the Taliban even at their strongest…and look what havoc they unleashed.
Part III
“The time has come when the strongest arm and the longest sword must decide the contest, and those members who are not prepared for action had better go home.”
Chapter 10
Florida National Guard Armory
Clearwater, Florida
Major Gorgas personally doubled-checked the last truck’s cargo. There would be no load manifest for this trip, nor the hundreds like them around the state. He grinned and scanned the empty warehouse one last time.
With no paper trail left behind, the Feds should have some fun trying to track down all the Florida Guard’s missing weapons and munitions. He’d even selected only the most trusted drivers for this final mission. Men and women who’d proven themselves during the initial invasion. Gorgas had no idea where they were headed. Which was for the best. The less he knew, the safer they all were. Every driver and the guerilla cell they belonged to were responsible for hiding their own weapons cache.
Maybe some of them would turn around and sell the gear on the black market. Perhaps some would just park the truck, walk away and wash their hands of the whole mess. Still, he was confident that most of the arms and ammo would be squirreled away somewhere. That’ll come in handy for the future resistance.
Satisfied, he flipped off the lights and stepped outside. He supervised the detail burning any paper records having anything to do with the National Guard. Gorgas tossed a stack of computer hard drives in the burn pit as well. The central data servers were already destroyed, courtesy of the enemy’s air superiority and paranoia. The personnel records, unfortunately, were centralized at the Pentagon. There was nothing he could do to keep the identities of his soldiers a secret. The best he could accomplish was slipping them into the new “underground” or somewhere else out of the federal reach.
That was getting much harder as the Federal Government tightened their no fly zone and naval blockade noose around Florida. He was pleased to get just a few hundred guardsmen to safe havens out west. Cuba took two thousand more as refugees, and thank God for how many they were willing to take in, but that still left way too many rebels to hide easily.
Gorgas grimaced as a jet roared above his head, racing south. Unfortunately, there wasn’t much chance someone higher in the Florida command chain would be asking questions. The politicians were the first to disappear. General Cooper never recovered from his wounds and most of the rest of the senior staff hadn’t survived the relentless Air Force revenge campaign.
Revenge was the only way to describe it. After keeping such a low profile during the invasion, the White House turned the Air Force loose to do whatever they could to halt the much feared “rebel invasion.” They blasted apart anything of even remote military value. Everything from A-10 Warthogs to B-1 strategic bombers roamed the sunny skies of Florida, hunting for vengeance.
Which was the biggest overkill Gorgas had ever seen. They’d pulled off the stand in North Florida by the seat of their pants. A damn miracle the first time and it wasn’t something they could ever repeat. The regular Guard forces suffered around 70 % equipment and 40 % personnel losses. The irregulars were in nearly as bad a shape. There wasn’t a single flight worthy combat aircraft left in the inventory.
To make things even worse, most of what they still had left was tied down maintaining law and order. Armed, self-organized militias and gangs roamed out of control from the Keys to St. Augustine, and not all of them were friendly. Not all of them seemed to have a goal either, outside of simple looting and pillaging. Many of them were preexisting self-styled militias that weren’t accepted into the FDF due to one crazy ideology or another.
The pro-Fed groups were frustrating, but the supposedly loyal ones were the deadliest. They were desperate and thought ferociousness could turn the tide. One of the Florida National Guard’s last combat operations was against an independent band of pro-rebel “white supremacists.”
These assholes didn’t have the balls to battle against the Feds directly, but when the fight was over, they had the guts to take over some small town. They went door to door one night shooting supposed “Federal collaborators,” i.e., anyone they felt like. Oh, the Guard shut them down before the sun rose. Not a single one of those bastards survived, but vengeance is a poor substitute for prevention.
The ranks of the state’s law enforcement agencies and security forces were seriously depleted. Whether from fear of federal retaliation, hopelessness of the cause or simply a desire to protect their families, more and more personnel disappeared every hour. Between the desertions and casualties, they could just barely keep chaos at bay. At least during daylight hours. The night belonged to the bandits. The once haughty Florida Defense Forces couldn’t even hold their own land. The idea of an offensive was a twisted joke.
The whole conflict was never personal for Gorgas until the unrestricted air campaign kicked off. Sure, he was angry in the early days; just like everyone else. The president was crazy, the governor was so passionate and everyone around him itched for a fight. War seemed natural. That terrible fever the only solution. They didn’t so much decide to start a fight as just stumbled into one.
The simple truth is he had been too busy being a professional doing his duty to examine why he was fighting. To wonder how far he was willing to go. That was just too complicated a thought to deal with. It was too easy to push down and ignore, what with all the other things he had to do. Only when he witnessed his homeland treated like some Third World shithole, just so that some asshole a 1,000 miles away could stay in power… well, it got personal.
Despite the partial social breakdown, he had to salvage what he could of his forces. Besides, that gargantuan federal force massing on the border, twice as large as the previous invasion, would be moving soon. They could clean up the mess. He had bigger battles for his enraged and now bloodied veterans.
He was officially deactivating the last Guard units and unofficially breaking them into small, hidden bands while the TV ran live footage of the second and final federal onslaught. He knew that this would not be the last fight. Not by a long shot. While the politicians in Washington, whether in suits or in uniform, jubilantly watched their soldiers storm through the state, Major Gorgas and millions like him decided that the real war had just begun.