I thought, for the first time, that his plan might actually work.
Two hundred men initially signed up for the military. There turned out to be an unexpectedly high number of former army, air force, and marine officers in Thompson, and these men were recruited by Philipe to train the initiates. Philipe took fifty of the recruits himself and trained them as terrorists. These were to be the advance guard, the ones who would infiltrate the White House and pave the way for the others.
Two tanks were shipped to Thompson on the back of a semi truck.
Army jeeps arrived at the Jeep dealer.
Crates of automatic weapons were delivered.
Finally, after what seemed like forever, Philipe announced in a prime-time meeting/rally in the city council chambers that the militia was ready to start on its mission to Washington, D.C.
I had never seen such war fever, and it made me more than a little uneasy. Jane felt the same way. So did most of our friends. So did James, Don, Ralph, Mary, and Jim.
But the city was ready for this fight, ready to take on the known world, and there was a big parade on Saturday to see our army off. Flags and banners were waving; confetti was thrown; the high school marching band played. I stood on the sidewalk with Jane, waiting for Philipe. What he had done had not been erased from my mind —
swinging the knife, “My name is not David! It’s Philipe!”
— but it had been superceded by his unwavering dedication the past few months, by his obvious commitment to what he perceived to be the betterment of Thompson and the plight of the Ignored. I differed with Jane here. She saw this as grandstanding; I saw it as an extension of the terrorists, proof of Philipe’s belief in his cause.
The militia came marching down the street, in step, and I had to admit they looked good, looked professional. Foot soldiers were preceded by jeeps and trucks and the buses that would later carry them across country. Finally, at the tail end of the parade, riding in an open tank, waving to the adults, throwing candy to the kids, was Philipe.
I moved forward until I was standing on the curb. This was the Philipe I had first met. This was the Philipe who had led us. Standing tall and proud as the convoy rolled through the center of town, he glanced from one side of the street to the other. As I’d expected, as I’d half hoped, he saw me, caught my eye. He gave me a slight smile, then saluted. I nodded back. I felt a lump in my throat, shivers on my arms as I watched them pull away. If this was a movie, I thought, there would be stirring music and a sunset in the background. This was dramatic stuff. This was heroic.
The parade continued to the edge of the city limits. The bands and the marchers fell by the wayside. And the militia continued on.
They hit the White House Thursday night.
The Thompson channel had sent correspondents and cameramen along with the soldiers to cover the event, and on Thursday evening every TV in the city was turned to the station.
We saw our tanks and jeeps rolling down the capital’s streets, framed dramatically in front of familiar landmarks, and though I still did not support the war effort, I could not help feeling a surge of pride and something close to patriotism as I realized that our men were successfully invading Washington, D.C.
But while our people were Ignored, invisibility did not extend to their equipment, and we should have known that such a blatant full-frontal assault would not go unnoticed. Our military vehicles stood out in the civilian traffic like Godzilla at a tea party, and as they turned a street corner, heading toward the White House, they were halted by a blockaded street and a cadre of U.S. soldiers.
The tanks and jeeps braked, rolled back a few feet, stopped. A standoff. No one shouted, no one spoke; the two sides might have been communicating by radio, but there were no bullhorns and the street was silent. The minutes dragged on. Four. Five. Ten. There was no sound, no movement, and the correspondent covering the event got on camera, admitted that he didn’t know what was happening but would let us know as soon as he did.
The coverage shifted to the White House, where another reporter was following Philipe’s advance force. They had successfully hopped the fence and were dashing across the White House lawn, crouching black shapes against the moonlit grass.
Suddenly, the station switched back to the street, where U.S. troops were now firing on our men.
Our reporter was screaming incoherently, trying to explain what was happening but doing a poor job of it.
We could see what was happening ourselves, though.
Our militia was being routed.
Even with all of their weapons, even with the training, our forces were barely adequate, and going up against the best soldiers in the world, they didn’t stand a chance.
Our tanks fired once each, hitting nothing, then blew up.
The men in the jeeps, now spread out across the street, fired at the U.S. soldiers and their vehicles, but did not seem able to hit anyone or anything. They began dropping like flies, picked off and taken down by military sharpshooters, and then they abandoned their weapons and turned tail and ran.
The reporter and his cameraman beat feet as well.
The screen was black for several seconds.
Then we were back at the White House where Secret Service agents — the only humans as bland and faceless as ourselves — were chasing Philipe and his advance men back across the lawn. Security lights were on, trained on the area in front of the building, and the Thompson correspondent explained even as he retreated to the park across the street that one of Philipe’s men had set off an alarm, alerting the President’s security forces to their presence.
One of our men was shot trying to climb the fence and escape.
Please, God, I thought, don’t let it be Philipe.
Then I saw Philipe running. I recognized his gait, his build, the movement of his arms. He leaped, grabbed the bars of the fence, swung himself over. There was the sound of gunfire, but if it was aimed at Philipe it missed him, and he was running across the street, toward the camera.
Again the screen went blank.
“We’ve lost our feed,” Glen Johnstone, anchoring in Thompson, announced.
I quickly switched channels, expecting to see special bulletins on the network stations, thinking that of course they’d break into regular programming for an assault on the White House, an obvious attempt on the President’s life, but there were only the usual sitcoms and police shows.
I turned to CNN, watched for an hour. Nothing. I waited until the eleven o’clock news that night, flipped back and forth between ABC, CBS, and NBC.
The attack made the ABC news. Thirty-second footage right before a commerciaclass="underline" a shot of the White House from a vantage point across the street, Philipe and a handful of men running away, being chased by other men in suits. The anchor allotted them one line: “In other news today, the Secret Service repelled a small group of individuals attempting to break into the White House grounds.”
Then they cut to a douche ad.
I sat there next to Jane in silence, staring at the commercial. That was it? After all that preparation, after all the training, that was it? Over two hundred men had left Thompson on Saturday, a trained militia, with tanks and trucks and jeeps, in order to stage a coup.
And all they rated was one line on one newscast.
I turned off the television, crawled into bed. I realized, perhaps for the first time, how truly pathetic we were. Philipe had organized a fighting force, had come up with a workable plan, and it had all been for nothing.
Less than nothing.
I wondered how many members of our militia had been killed. I wondered if they had been jailed.