DIRECT EXAMINATION, CONTINUED
BY MR. STENNINGS:
Q. What happened then, Alvin?
A. Well, I left to go east. Good thing I left when I did, too, because they closed the state border down right afterwards.
I sort of joined up with the big convoy leaving Fort Hood for Oklahoma. There must have been forty or fifty thousand vehicles, all told, what with the Army and all the civilians who decided to get out of the state while they still could. Some of 'em was plainly on the side of the federal government. They were pretty easy to spot: big BMWs and Mercedes cars with bumper stickers saying things like "President Rottemeyer" and such. I think a lot of others just wanted to avoid getting caught up in any fighting. Some looked like they just needed to keep sucking at the Federal tit to survive. They were mostly driving beat up old jalopies.
Couldn't say I really blamed any of 'em very much. Can't say, neither, that I thought much about it one way or the other. Like I told you right off, I got room in me to blame only one person for all the troubles, mine and everyone else's.
Anyway, it took a while to get past the border. Took longer still to fill my gas tank what with all the cars and trucks needing gas, and the Army taking over gas stations. It was nearly three days before I managed to get across Oklahoma and into Kansas.
It was around Oklahoma City that I saw the first riot. Seems some of the locals gathered and went after some of the folks runnin' away from Texas. Next thing I knew, there were people runnin' and screamin'; even some shots bein' fired.
No, I never did know who was shooting. The feds said the local folks. The locals blamed the refugees. The refugees blamed the local police. The local police said it was the feds what done it. And why would local cops lie?
Anyway, I got out of the area in a hurry, I can tell you. I didn't need the police looking too carefully at my truck. Fortunately, with all the diesel fumes from the Army as it passed by, they were mostly occupied trying to keep from chokin' while puttin' down the riot.
* * *
Amidst clouds of lung-wracking diesel fumes, just as its nose was edging into Oklahoma, the tail end of Third Corps left Fort Hood. The Corps now stood at less than full strength, much less. In a way, Hanstadt was saddened to see how many had taken a variant of the choice he had.
In another way, of course, he was pleased. Kind of heartwarming to see so many troops who won't fight for that murdering cunt in DC.
Despite this, Hanstadt waved goodbye—fondly—to those who had decided to stay with the Army. He couldn't blame them, really; couldn't put on any airs of moral superiority. How it might have gone had his retirement not been fairly secure he could not say. Certainly it would have made the decision to throw in his lot with Texas somewhat harder.
Though Washington had never announced the move of the Corps in advance, it was anticipated in all corners. Even now, Hanstadt expected a Texan detachment to show up momentarily to take charge of the post. Most particularly, did he expect the Texans to want the contents of the Ammunition Supply Point, the ASP. There had not been enough trucks, enough willing manpower, or enough time to do more than empty a fraction of the munitions to be found there. Still, he had done what he could to help the Corps commander take whatever could be taken.
That was one way to make sure that none of the rest was destroyed, he thought, not without some degree of mirth.
Hanstadt paused in his reveries at the sound of footsteps padding softly up behind him. He turned to see his driver, Chris Perez, a young man from Long Island, New York who had—somewhat unexpectedly—elected to stay with his old boss.
"Yes, son?"
"Sir, we got a radio call from the MPs who stayed behind and are manning the front gate. There's a Texas National Guard two-star and he wants onto the post."
"Ah. That would be General Schmidt. My compliments to him through the MPs and have them ask him if he would be good enough to join me in the Corps conference room."
"I'll join you in a minute, Chris," Hanstadt said to the driver. "Then you can take me to Headquarters. I need to change, after all."
As he said so, Hanstadt looked around him. Fort Hood seemed so different, now, with the departure of Third Corps. Not merely empty of manpower, it seemed to have been emptied of a certain spirit, in part a fraternal one, as well.
* * *
Shadowing Third Corps north on its way from Fort Hood, through Waco, through Fort Worth, Denton and Gainesville to Oklahoma, followed a platoon of Combat Engineers of the 176th Engineer Battalion under the leadership of their diminutive platoon leader, Jose G. Bernoulli.
Some said "diminutive." To most of his platoon he was "Little Joe." They meant it with affection and respect.
Lieutenant Bernoulli, despite his Italian forebears and the name he bore, considered himself Texan, first and foremost, American—a close second, and Mexican last of all. He never considered himself Italian. So far as he was aware that was just a name that came over with some Neapolitan sutler to a company of Spanish conquistadors.
Bernoulli, a graduate in engineering from Texas A&M, looked over the bridge complex spanning the Brazos and added a few details and an explanatory note or ten to the drawing on the pad of paper before him. Then he tore off the sheet and handed it to one of his squad leaders with the words, "The rest of the platoon and I are heading east to the Trinity River. When you're done prepping these for dropping wait until the demo guard"—the combat unit detailed to secure a facility, usually a bridge, that has been prepared for demolition to prevent an enemy from interfering with that demolition—"shows up and brief the platoon leader or company commander. Leave two men—two good men—with them and join us. You'll find us somewhere along the river between"—Bernoulli consulted his map—" . . . hmm . . . Oakwood and Riverside. Questions?"
"Couple, sir," answered the Sergeant.
"Go ahead," said Bernoulli, his face showing—and restraining—a considerable degree of impatience.
"One; do you think it's really going to come to that?"
"Yes," Bernoulli answered, simply.
"Okay . . . then where the hell is all the demo we're going to need going to come from?"
"That, Sergeant, I do not know. Maybe General Schmidt has an answer. I, for one, do not."
"Right. All right then, what if I can't find you?"
"Good point, Sergeant. If I haven't seen you by this time tomorrow I'll send someone to the middle of Oakwood to lead you to us. Fair enough?"
"Yes, sir. I'll get on with the job then, sir."
Bernoulli thought briefly and reconsidered. "Hmm. Let me see that sketch."
When the sergeant had returned it, Bernoulli looked it over again, thought a bit more and scratched out one section of the drawing. "Don't prep this section, Sergeant, unless and until I give you the word. We'll try to stretch out what demolitions we have because if the general can't come up with more, a lot more, we just won't have enough."
He restrained himself from an impulse to salute that, after decades of habit, had become nearly as ingrained as breathing. "I'm Colonel—retired—Hanstadt, sir," said the now civilian clad man to Schmidt, rather unnecessarily as Schmidt knew Hanstadt from various Corps meetings he had attended over the years.
"Retired?" questioned Schmidt. "Why?"
"Well . . . if I hadn't retired then I could hardly volunteer to become your new G-4, could I, sir?"
Schmidt raised an eyebrow and looked without focusing at some of the decorations on the wall behind Hanstadt. Be still, my heart. God, could I use a competent G-4.
"Your forces are slowly, well . . . not so slowly as all that, going up to corps sized. Maybe more . . . no, almost certainly more." Hanstadt added, again quite unnecessarily, "You will need someone a little more experienced than what you have."
God, could I use a competent G-4, thought Schmidt, again, unnecessarily. And I seem to recall this Hanstadt being very competent indeed.
"The job is yours. You planned this though, didn't you? What else have you planned?"
Hanstadt didn't answer directly. "Chris, bring the car around. We'll show our new boss what we have planned."
The first place they visited was the main maintenance facility. There Hanstadt was able to show Schmidt not merely machinery, tools and parts, but a large and expert civilian workforce that had not, naturally—being local, accompanied the Corps on its departure.
From the maintenance facility they had driven to some few yards loaded with heavy equipment, row upon orderly row of tanks, other armored vehicles, trucks, construction equipment.
"Somehow, I think the Corps commander, General Bennigsen, wanted you to have these. Certainly he never said a word about either destroying them or taking them with him."
"Why would he do that; want that?"
"A theory? He hopes he doesn't have to fight you and, the more prepared you seem the less likely it is that he will."
"Maybe," said Schmidt, noncommittally.
"Well . . . come to the ASP, sir, and I'll show you why I think so."
That proved a short drive. Once there, Hanstadt led the way into the main office. There, on the wall, was a breakdown, by bunker, by type, by category—training or war reserve stocks—of all the ammunition held there.
It took no special training for Schmidt to grasp all that the wall charts implied. "He left the demo, the mines and the small arms. He took most—not all, but most—of the tank, artillery, and antitank ammunition. I think, maybe you're right. Bennigsen left us what we needed to put on a good show. Funny. Hmm. I wonder if . . ."
The new G-4 answered Schmidt's unasked question. "Yes, sir, Bennigsen took the nukes with him."
Schmidt thought about that, then sighed, "Oh, well. Maybe that's just as well."
"All right, then, Hanstadt; you're the new G-4 and you have your work cut out for you. However, as your first official duty I would like your driver to take me to Post Clothing Sales assuming it's still open."
That too, proved a short ride. And the store was, indeed, open. At clothing sales, Schmidt left Hanstadt and the driver in the car. On his way in he paused briefly to make a telephone call on his cell phone. Though neither of the others knew it, he was calling the governor with a request. When he returned, he opened a small plastic bag and took an even smaller item out of it.
"Here," he said, passing the stars of a brigadier general over to Hanstadt. "You'll need these to deal with my current quartermaster who is something of an arrogant ass, truth to tell."
Speechless, Hanstadt looked at the stars with wonder. "I didn't retire and join you for this."
Schmidt smiled broadly. "If I thought you had, you wouldn't have them."
"I was already on the list for promotion to brigadier general, General," sighed Hanstadt. "I gave that up to join you."
Schmidt was surprised, slightly. He had not known. He said as much.
"No matter," said Hanstadt. "Even if I didn't think you were right, I'd still rather be a BG in the small army of Texas where it means something, at least for a little while, than a two star in the large United States Army . . . where it means less each day."
Again, Schmidt reached into the bag and pulled out a notebook and a pen. These, too, he handed over to Hanstadt. "And now, Brigadier General Hanstadt, let me explain the depths of our problems . . . and of what we have started to do to fix them."
* * *
Texas, as did about forty other states, maintained a state owned "defense force." This was purely voluntary; unpaid except when it might be called to state service, scantily equipped and scantily trained. It was the one force available to the governors of those states which had them that the federal government could not legally take control of.
In the case of Texas, now, the seven notional—and, frankly, nominal—brigades of its state defense force had been mobilized and were in the process of expanding at various army camps. One of these, an old installation north of San Antonio, was Camp Bullis.
The old camp had gone through many permutations in the near century of its existence. Established in 1917 and named for a brigadier general prominent in the Indian Wars, Bullis had seen troops off to both World Wars, Korea and Vietnam. It had also seen them return, those who had returned.
Reduced from a high point of thirty-two thousand acres in 1918, the camp now boasted no more than twelve thousand.
Twelve thousand acres, however, was clearly enough for the thousands of new recruits to the Texas Defense Force that assembled there to train under its 1st Brigade—a brigade in name only, further nicknamed the Alamo Guards, and soon to be named the 1st Texas Infantry Division. That twelve thousand acres was enough seemed especially so as these thousands of new recruits had few weapons, none of those being heavy weapons, and boasted little other equipment.
"Weapons and equipment aren't the main problem," lamented the 1st Brigade's commander, Colonel Juan Robles, to no one in particular. "The real problem is that we haven't a clue. We're an oversized battalion of quasi military police—old, fat, and undertrained ourselves except maybe as military police."
From a high place where the San Juan Hill scene from the film The Rough Riders had been shot in 1926, Robles looked down to a road where a disconsolate "company" of recruits struggled in a herd through the boot-sucking mud. Rather, it would have been boot-sucking if only they had had boots. The Nikes and Reeboks still shodding most of the men? The mud gulped these down whole.
Robles muttered, "No order, no discipline. No weapons, no equipment, no uniforms. But, worst of all, no leadership and no training. We're screwed."
"It's not so bad as all that, Juan"—the State Guard was pretty informal, as Robles' operations officer demonstrated by the use of his commander's first name. "The Adjutant General has already said that he'll send one in ten officers and NCOs by grade to distribute among the State Guard folks. That'll help. And we're starting to get a trickle of volunteers from among the military retirees. Some folks from other states are coming in too. The general even says we'll have some real uniforms soon; weapons too."
* * *
No uniforms were worn here, though the two Americans carried arms under their light jackets.
Hanstadt listened appreciatively as birds sang in the warm and muggy Mexican morning. Civilian clad and traveling on a civilian United States passport, he waited on the tarmac of the town's still sleepy airport. In his hand was clutched a bag containing several million dollars in new bills from the Western Currency Facility, each one good legal tender anywhere in the world, indistinguishable from other bills printed in the Washington, DC, facility, indistinguishable from bills printed earlier.
Moreover, and the Texans were quite sure Washington knew this, any attempt at undermining confidence in U.S. currency could have disastrous economic consequences as literally hundreds of billions of dollars salted away all over the world, largely by rich people who felt the need for "escape money," came pouring out of the woodwork and into other currencies. The United States had put up with nearly two decades of massive Iranian counterfeiting, and the terrorism that counterfeiting funded, to avoid just such a possibility.
Beside Hanstadt stood his newly commissioned assistant, Lieutenant Christopher Perez of the Texas Guard. In the background were two dozen Mexican workers and drivers with a dozen trucks lined up behind them for the trip to Brownsville. In the foreground, a brace of moderately ancient cargo aircraft awaited unloading. Aboard the aircraft, some hundreds of Chinese-manufactured small arms and tens of thousands of rounds of Chinese-made ammunition.
Hanstadt turned to the chief of the Mexican drivers and workers and commanded, "Unload the planes." To Chris he said, "This will be your job for the near future. Receive, account and pay for what comes here—and remember that that will start including radios, compasses, body armor . . . basically everything almost as soon as I can set up the contracts with the manufacturers and shippers. Then you'll forward it to Fort Sam Houston through Brownsville. You'll need to spot-check a bit for quality. And you had probably better hire the local Mexican Army unit for guards, especially when you have any large quantity of weapons or ammunition stockpiled here or in transit."
"How large are we talking about, sir, total?" asked Perez.
"Schmidt contracted for an even 200,000 rifles, 21,000 machine guns, 12,000 RPG-7 antiarmor weapons, and some really, really impressive amounts of ammunition. Likewise mortars and some heavier antitank systems. That's just what's coming through here. I am told there is a contract for artillery being negotiated even as we speak."
"Negotiated? Negotiated with whom, sir?"
"The Chinese," Hanstadt answered, simply. "All of this material is coming from them."
"Why should the chinks care about Texas?"
"They don't," Hanstadt admitted, "except maybe to wish we would sink into the sea. But they would much, much rather the entire United States sink into the sea . . . and perhaps they see helping Texas—for a handsome profit, mind you, to be sure—as a way to make the United States sink into the sea."
"That's going to happen, too, isn't it, sir? I mean if this thing turns into a no-shit civil war, we are finished as a country and as a power in the world."
As he had before, Hanstadt reflected that his former driver, recently jumped in rank, was by no means stupid. "Well, that's what the Chinese hope. But from our point of view, these arms may be the best way to prevent a civil war, to buy us time to find some other way."
* * *
"Nonviolent civil disobedience, Governor—NVCD for short—is the only way you have to win. It is also the only way to win while not destroying the country with a civil war." The speaker, Victor Charlesworth, was an old man now, wrinkled, beginning to stoop, slower in his speech and his movements. There had been a day, though, when he was both young, strong and more than a little handsome. Traces of those looks remained; enough to impress Juanita. When young, those looks—along with a fair talent for acting—had gotten for Charlesworth acting parts as prophets and presidents, generals and geniuses, cardinals and kings.
As a much younger man, Charlesworth had not merely acted the role of kings, he had marched with one. In Selma and Montgomery, Alabama, and in Washington, DC, he had locked arms with the Reverend Doctor Martin Luther King and marched for truth, right, freedom and justice.
He was here, now; in Texas, now; in Austin, now; and in Governor Juanita Seguin's office, now, to help do the same . . . and to teach others.
Right now, he taught the governor.
"It is going to be hard for you, Governor. Hard and dangerous. You are going to have to stand on a lot of balconies. You are going to have to go out and lead your people. You may be shot. You may be arrested. Given the nature and character of the people who are running this country right now, if you are arrested you will probably wish you had been shot."
"And . . ." Charlesworth hesitated, for this next advice was possibly tantamount to telling the governor to commit suicide. " . . . and . . . you will have to travel. To open yourself up to being shot. Because Texas, alone, can't win. It can't win a civil war alone, and it can't win alone through NVCD. The states around you, as a minimum, you are going to have to visit, to see, to talk at and to. Other states too, as and when you can."
"Oh, sure," retorted Juanita. "I can just see me talking to Harvard University to sell an antigovernment message. Sure."
"Why not, Governor? I have."
* * *
Over the tang of the sea wafted the unpleasant scent of oil seeping up through the ground. Some seabirds swooped down to catch the occasional fish; others dined off scraps and garbage left on the docks. Under Schmidt's feet, the wharf boards creaked and gave slightly.
Reaching a particular boat, shiny, well kept up, smelling slightly of fish sauce, he stopped. "I have to see Mister Minh," Schmidt announced to an alert-looking Vietnamese fisherman.
"Mister Minh no see anybody anymore," answered the Viet. "He too old, too tired."
"He'll see me. We are old 'friends.' "
The fisherman peered intently in Schmidt's face, noted the uniform, noted the rank on the collar, noted the other insignia. Then the fisherman added one plus one plus one and came up with 1964–1972. "I go ask," he answered at length. "You wait here."
When the fisherman returned to the deck and beckoned he said, "Mister Minh . . . ah . . . he say 'okay, come aboard.' "
Walking the plank, then descending into the ship's bowels, Schmidt followed the fisherman to an aft cabin. They stopped briefly as the fisherman knocked lightly on the cabin door.
"Come in," said an ancient voice in slightly French-accented English.
Entering, Schmidt took in the cabin with a sweeping glance. Much to his surprise, he noticed a crucifix adorning one wall. The ancient Vietnamese man seated at the desk smiled, and explained, "I find the religion of my fathers more comforting with each passing day."
"That is a most unusual sentiment, Colonel Minh," observed Schmidt. "Most unusual for a former political officer of the Ninth Viet Cong Division," he added, somewhat wryly.
"That was long ago; a lifetime of mistakes ago. Why, you were only a lieutenant then . . . and look at you now."
Schmidt nodded. "A lifetime, yes. Long ago, yes. I suppose that's why I never reported your background to the authorities, Colonel, even though I knew you were here. I thought you had paid enough; your revolution betrayed, most of your family killed, yourself forced to flee your own country forever.
"Tell me, how does the idea of fleeing yet again appeal to you?"
"Not much," the old man admitted, his gray and balding head nodding slightly as he did so. "Is that why you have come here? To tell me to leave?"
"No," answered Schmidt. "I came for some advice and possibly a little help."
The old Vietnamese chuckled softly. "Advice? Advice is cheap. In consideration of our . . . mutual . . . yes I suppose it was 'mutual' service, I will even give it for free. Help? Well, I am an old man. I do not think I can be of much help to anyone."
Schmidt looked upward, his jaw shifting slightly to one side. "You might be surprised. But advice will do for now. Tell me, why did my side lose the war and yours win it?"
"Oh, that is easy. We won because we fought you on every possible plane, in every possible way. You lost because you could not fight us the same way. And we only had to win on one plane, in only one way, to win—eventually—on them all.
"Consider, mon General, just the scope of the conflict in South Vietnam. Around the peripheries, we employed troops, regulars well trained and fully equipped. You had to match those. This left irregulars more or less free to operate behind your lines, in the bowels of the areas you meant to control, in any case. And, if you had dispersed your troops to root out the irregulars? You would quickly have discovered how long one of your isolated infantry companies could live when attacked by a full Viet Cong or North Vietnamese regiment. The lesson would have been both painful and short."
Schmidt raised a characteristic eyebrow in skepticism.
Minh caught the motion. "You did try, remember? Your side tried at the Chu Phong massif in 1965. You tried at other places. Sometimes that worked reasonably well for you; as when you were able to generate massive artillery and air support for one or two ongoing battles. But multiply the number of possible targets from us from one or two to one or two hundred. Then you could not have given the kind of support on which your side relied so heavily to enough of your people engaged.
"So of course you did not do that. Your regulars and the best of South Vietnam's troops faced ours in the jungles. This led you and the South Vietnamese government to overly expand its army in order to root out the irregulars, the guerillas. But that, in turn, not only made their army diluted and weak, it robbed the south of human talent needed to run and advance their society. In fact, one aspect of this was to make their society so corrupt that decent people joined my side in hordes. And you could not do a thing about it.
"And then, of course there was the terror, especially the singling out of important people in the south to both undermine their society and government further and—and this was most important—to cause people to start to worry about the future; their personal future. For you see, even someone who fervently believed in the continued separate existence of the Republic of—South—Vietnam would still 'buy insurance,' would still help us on the side lest his family be targeted."
The former colonel became silent, leaving Schmidt a moment to think. This is not exactly helpful. We will not be in the position of regulars holding down regular forces so that an insurgency can grow in security. Geometrically, our position is exactly the opposite, with us in the center and the only place for insurgency to grow being behind the wider perimeter, further away from us. Hmm. I wonder if maybe that isn't the same after all.
"But do you know what really cost you?" asked Minh. "What really cost you was trying to use soldiers to perform what was essentially a police function, population control. Not only were soldiers much more expensive, but they would never be able to get to know the people of the area they were trying to control. They would also never be able to conduct the kind of investigation that actually might have rooted out our infrastructure. Why, I remember reading a captured copy of your manual on counterinsurgency operations.
"Even today I still marvel that your brightest people could only find a use for police in the short-term supervision of displaced persons while more conventional military operations were going on. This blindness cost your side very badly, mon General."
Schmidt considered. Yes . . . and using the army for the same thing today, here in Texas, will work no better. But then Rottemeyer has lots of police, doesn't she?
Minh continued, "But you did say you wanted my help. Before I say 'no,' why don't you tell me what kind of help it is you need?"
"I need someone who can organize certain kinds of resistance."
"Certain kinds?" Minh raised an eyebrow. "Guerilla resistance?"
"That perhaps, too," answered Schmidt. "But what I really need is someone who can make police work behind the lines a very dangerous thing to be engaged in. I need sabotage. And I might need some terror."
"I see," answered Minh. "Let me think this over carefully."
"While you think, Colonel, think about this: you might never have won your war and lost your country without the influence and actions of Rottemeyer and people like her."
* * *
"Carefully I said, goddammit! Carefully."
"Yes, First Sergeant," answered a meek Fontaine as he adjusted his hands for a better grip on the piece of a disassembled printer he had very nearly dropped.
Half the printing equipment and supplies, more or less, was staying put in the WCF. The other half was to be forwarded to San Antonio where it could continue to fund Texas even after the federal government took back the WCF.
Everyone, not least among them the facility's defenders, suspected that was just a matter of time.
And so, between fortifying the place, the guardsmen took time out to remove as much as possible of the reason for defending it.
Pendergast shook his head disgustedly and repeated, "Be careful with that equipment, Fontaine. The state needs it."
"I promise, Top. I'll be more careful."
Ah well, thought the first sergeant, wandering away. He's slow and clumsy. But the kid's heart's in the right place.
* * *
The governor's son, Mario, sat with his care- and work-worn father in the shade of a square gazebolike structure. Some distance away—out of earshot—walked Elpidia, alone with her thoughts, hands clasped behind her, head down with sadness, circling repeatedly a small fountain and pool.
"I think her heart's in the right place, Mario. She's not a bad girl, not deep down, just a very unfortunate one. But she comes to us with a load of baggage I doubt she will ever be rid of."
"I know, Padre. But she's just so damned beautiful. I find I can think of little else."
"That's your youth speaking, that, and your hormones."
Mario flushed. "Oh, c'mon, Dad. No. Other girls? Girls in general? Sure. Not her. Her I do not think of talking into bed."
Seeing his father's skeptical look, Mario admitted, "Oh all right. That, too. But not just that. I think of . . . I want . . . so much more than just that."
"Well, son, she is what we call damaged goods. Not through any fault of her own, no. But even so, the fact remains she has been damaged, and badly. I could not recommend any such girl to you."