Foreign Enemies and Traitors (24 page)

Now the civilian administrator, Robert Bullard, was the person charged with restoring federal government control of Kentucky and Tennessee.  Worse, he was using foreign soldiers to subdue and occupy the region.  “Peacekeeping volunteers,” the president called them.  Most of them belonged to the hastily formed so-called North American Legion, a ragtag passel of miscreants led by Americans more loyal to the United Nations than to the United States.  The NAL troops had literally been picked up off the street corners of American cities.  Until recently they were illegal aliens, who had been strong-armed into enlisting with the promise of citizenship and a homestead land grant.  Many of the North American Legion recruits were convicted felons, taken directly from prison and put into uniform under the president’s “Operation Fresh Start” initiative.  Their prominent gang tattoos didn’t lie about their origins, or their true loyalties.

At best, the barely trained NAL troops could man checkpoints and conduct very basic cordon operations.  The real hammers in Tennessee and Kentucky came from much further away than North America.  The true enforcers were the “contract battalions,” recruited abroad from the militaries of Nigeria, Pakistan, Bolivia, Kazakhstan, Turkey, Albania and a dozen other nations.  They wore their own uniforms and served under their own officers, attracted by the promise of United States citizenship and free land.  Bringing in foreign mercenaries and calling them volunteer peacekeepers had been President Tambor’s idea.  “A grand experiment in new levels of international cooperation,” he had termed it.  “The first major test of the new U.N. military cooperation treaty.”  Well, it was surely that.

Considering the ongoing horror show that had evolved in Tennessee and Kentucky, General Armstead was in many respects glad
not
to have NORTHCOM involved in those two states any longer.  It was an interesting case study in the development of an insurgency.  From the first weeks after the earthquakes, a small percentage of the locals had developed the nasty habit of taking potshots at anybody that they perceived to be trespassing on their land—including uniformed members of the military.  This had begun shortly after the first of the devastated counties were reached by emergency response units. 

Following the arrival of National Guard troops and out-of-state law enforcement teams, a strong effort had been made to enforce the new federal gun control laws.  The reasoning was that ordinary citizens, living under conditions of hunger and fear bordering on hysteria, could not be safely relocated and fed if they were armed.  The unintended consequences of this policy had been calamitous.  Once the word spread that the government was collecting guns at every checkpoint, relocation camp and feeding center, thousands of Tennesseans had resolved to reject any assistance that came with the quid pro quo of mandatory disarmament. 

The situation worsened when ATF agents conducted confiscation raids on a few well-known gun collectors, using the National Guard for extra muscle and perimeter security.  These raids had been intended to serve as draconian examples—and examples they had proven to be!  The first raids had limited success, only because they retained the element of surprise.  After that, they had been met with bullets, lots of bullets, from point blank to extremely long range. 

Being met with armed resistance by fellow Americans, Regular Army and Guard troops had in most cases refused to apply the necessary level of tactical firepower, and the situation had stalemated for three months.  Everywhere the Army went in Tennessee and Kentucky, it was suspected of supporting firearms confiscation raids.  The bond of trust between the local people and the military had been shattered.  The result was invariably casualties lost to snipers, who typically fired one deadly shot from hundreds of yards away, and were rarely found.  Without security, reconstruction teams could not enter the contested areas.  Bridges over the Mississippi, Ohio and Tennessee rivers still lay in twisted wreckage, and the critical pipelines, power lines, railroads and highways that crisscrossed the region were still shattered in a thousand places.

Instead of reevaluating the policy of gun confiscation, the president had invited the U.S. military to leave Tennessee and Kentucky, for, as he put it, “demonstrated lack of performance.”  Tambor then put those two states under civilian control, most recently in the person of Robert Bullard, a DHS super grade.  He was an SES-2, a member of the Senior Executive Service, the civilian equivalent of a two-star general.  Bullard’s last federal posting had been as the Southwest Region Director of Homeland Security.  Bullard and his ilk had done such a bang-up job there that the United States had lost the entire Southwest to the Mexican nationalist “reconquistas.”  Naturally, this stunning failure qualified Bullard for another posting within the DHS.  Shortly after the civilians were put in charge of Tennessee and Kentucky, the first foreign contract battalions had been brought in by President Tambor.

****

Bullard finally arrived at the former Officers’ Club
twenty minutes late.  Armstead used the time to get some work done on his laptop.  The general did not stand to greet Bullard.  Even though he would have enjoyed the opportunity to tower six inches above the troll-like civilian, he did not want to show the respect that rising would convey.  If Bullard noticed the slight, he showed no sign of it.  He simply sat down and poured himself an iced tea, then took a sip while glancing around at the military artwork on the walls.  His bodyguards (dressed all in black like the Gestapo), waited in plain sight, just outside the open double door to the main dining room.  As the general expected he would, Bullard dispensed with pleasantries and launched directly into his requests for equipment and support.  The man somehow had connections directly into the Tambor White House, and despite his lack of a military rank and his generic unmarked khaki pseudo-uniform, there was little doubt that in purely political terms Bullard outranked him. 

“General, we’re down to only sixteen operational Predators.  We need at least a dozen more of them ASAP, to get our coverage up to anything like it needs to be.”

General Armstead ignored the request.  “Well, it’s nice seeing you again, Mister Bullard.”  He refused to dignify the man with any other title.  There was no “department of rural pacification” that he could find in any register of federal agencies or table of military organizations.  He would not refer to this Robert Bullard as “director.”  Director of what, exactly?  In equivalent federal service terms, he was clearly senior to Bullard, but today he found himself the subject of demands from this subordinate in rank.  To Armstead, this was reminiscent of the inverted power relationship between the Red Army and the KGB in the old USSR, a sorry state of affairs he had never imagined he would experience at first hand in the USA.  Or perhaps under President Tambor, now it was the USSA?

“Yeah, likewise, good to see you too.  Listen, General, we need more UAVs.  We can’t accomplish our mission—the president’s mission—without them.”

“Well, you’re not going to get them from me.  Not without something in writing from the NCA.”

“The NC who?” asked Bullard, popping a roll into his mouth.  “What are you talking about?”

Armstead sat fully erect, hands folded on the table, and stared downward at Bob Bullard.  “The National Command Authority.  That’s the White House, Mister Bullard.  The president.  Our mutual chain of command.  I cannot honor your request.  We are down to less than a hundred fully mission-capable Predators and Reapers for the rest of CONUS—that’s the continental United States—”

“I know what CONUS means.”

“I’m sure you do.  Well, the military also needs UAVs.  The actual American military.  I’m not signing any more of them off to you on just your say-so.  Particularly when you’re managing to lose one just about every week.”

“This winter weather sucks around here for flying, as you well know.  The terrorists don’t take time off.  We need to push the weather envelope with the UAVs, otherwise the insurgents would have free rein half of the time.  We can’t let that happen.”

“Well, I won’t transfer any more Predators just on your word.”

“I guess we’ll see about that, won’t we?  And while I have my wish list out, I need more aircraft.  Helicopters, to be specific.  Blackhawks, Chinooks, Little Birds, Hueys: we need them all.  At least thirty more, right away.  With crews, maintenance, fuel—the whole package.  I’ll send you a complete breakdown of what we need.”

“There’s no chance of that.”  General Armstead knew that all of the aviation assets that could be mustered were being readied for operations in the Northwest, to commence in the summer.  Operation Buffalo Jump was the president’s top priority.  Admittedly, securing Tennessee and Kentucky was more than a sideshow—it was a bleeding ulcer—but it was not the main event.  Pacified or not, the Mid South was not going anywhere.  And it was, blessedly, now Bob Bullard’s problem.  This was one positive aspect of having Kentucky and Tennessee transferred to civilian control: General Lucian Armstead was off the hook for future success or failure in the region.  Any more aircraft would be given to the so-called “department of rural pacification” only if the orders came from the president himself.

Bob Bullard finished his glass of iced tea and rose to leave.  “I’ll get right back to you, after I talk to the White House.  Then I’ll get my helicopters, and my UAVs.”

“Perhaps you will.  Just bring me authenticated orders—in writing—and we’ll talk about it again.  Orders from
my
chain of command—the president, through the JCS.  You know who they are, don’t you?” 

                                         
         8

Almost two weeks had passed since the arrival of the stranger. 
Phil Carson was napping on the sofa near the wood stove after a tasty dinner of canned pork and beans.  A book lay open across his chest while he snored softly.  The iron stove warmed the living room and kitchen, and it heated their water and cooked their food.  It also provided a substitute for television as the center of their indoor lives.  The stove door was often left open, the glowing coals comforting them. 

They were eating better the last few days, since Carson had given Zack two gold dimes to take down to the free market, which was held on the former Wal-Mart parking lot outside of Corinth.  The purpose of the trip was to collect information on conditions in Mississippi as much as it was to buy a variety of canned food and other needed items.  The roads were dry and the trip took only an hour and a half each way on his mountain bike.  Zack had tied a plastic milk crate to the bicycle’s rear cargo rack to bring home his purchases. 

These days State Road 72, which ran parallel to the Tennessee border, was safe enough for a daylight expedition.  On the road Zack wore his ID badge visibly, as the law demanded, clipped to his jacket collar.  He was not hassled at the permanent Guard checkpoint at the big intersection by the town of Walnut, or at another temporary one halfway to Corinth.  The Guard soldiers had no badge scanners, and merely looked him over, asked a few basic questions about his home and his destination, and allowed him to proceed.  The few cars and trucks on the road were given closer scrutiny at the checkpoints.

Like most of the other shoppers and traders, Zack slyly concealed his ID badge while he was in the actual free market area.  He reclipped it so that it hung down inside the upper left pocket of his camo hunting jacket.  If questioned, he could plausibly say that this was to prevent it from being accidentally lost while riding his bike.  He cautiously showed the tenth-ounce gold coins to the clandestine moneychangers lurking under the trees, just beyond the Wal-Mart parking lot.  Their ID badges were also hidden, and for good reason.  Trading gold or silver could be a hanging offense, depending on who caught you and if there was a push on to stamp out black-marketeering.  That day there were no Guard soldiers stationed around the free market, which was a sign that the martial law currency regulations were being relaxed—at least for the time being. 

The best offer had been 450 TEDs for both gold dimes, which Zack accepted, exchanging them for nine of the red-and-yellow fifties.  He was also offered 350 pink-and-blue North American Dollars.  These bills were also called ameros, but to Zack Tutweiler they were just NADs, a slang word for gonads.  Instead of portraits of dead presidents, the NADs featured famous landscapes in their central position.  The Grand Canyon, Canadian Rockies and Mexico’s Mayan pyramids were on different denominations.  The NADs were harder to spend in Mississippi (you were supposed to use only TEDs in the emergency zone), but they were needed if you traveled to the North, to the federal states.  At least that’s what the moneychangers told him.

Zack’s father had said that the NADs would eventually replace the Temporary Emergency Dollars in the South.  People were beginning to hoard them, in case the red TEDs were suddenly replaced, as the blue bucks had been, and the old greenback dollars before that.  Paper money being devalued or even becoming worthless overnight was a constant threat.  When paper currencies were switched, you took whatever the government offered at any rate it set, which could be ten or even a hundred to one.  If you didn’t exchange your paper money within the official grace period, it became totally worthless, which was why many folks were beginning to accumulate North American Dollars whenever they could.  Zack had no use for the NADs.  He was only interested in money he could spend easily here and now, in Mississippi, so he took the 450 dollars in red Temporary Emergency Dollars.