WAR

2015 Second American Civil War

Book 5

“WAR.”

2nd Edition February, 2015

Copyright 2015 Ira J. Tabankin

Sterling VA 20166

Dedication

This book, as all of mine are, is dedicated to the love of my life, my wife Patricia.

Thanks to everyone who’s provided feedback and support for my writing. A special thanks to Cheri, who again was able to proofread and edit my words into something readable.

The following is a work of fiction. Any resemblance to actual names, persons, businesses, and incidents are strictly coincidental.

Prologue

              In mid-2014, the Tea Party and Republican Party reached a truce and agreement of mutual support. They expanded their hold of the House by the largest margin in fifty years and also won control of the Senate. Even before the new Congress took office the Tea Party reminded the “Old Guard” of the Republican Party the agreement was based on overturning most of President Obsma’s executive orders and his signature bill, the Affordable Health Care. The biggest hurdle was the demand for the impeachment of the President. At the White House President Obsma didn’t wait for the new Congress to take office, he issued new executive orders one after the other knowing he was going to have a fight on his hands with Congress starting January, 2015. While Congress fought with each other, the President decided to act alone; he disbanded Congress saying he was going to rule via executive order. He used the DHS as a private army. The “Black Shirts” arrested anyone whom they felt was racist. The President mandated the suspension of the second amendment; all firearms were to be turned in within sixty days. To ease the burden on the people, the President said he wasn’t confiscating firearms, he was buying them. The funds paid for the firearms were paid tax-free. With the real unemployment/underemployment so high, many had no choice but to sell their weapons in order to put food on the table.

              The country entered into a period of high civil unrest, the President cut the US military by 25% and he disbanded the US Marines whose last Commandant, Four star General Rod Brownstone, became the opposition leader. Radio talk show Glenn Backs sponsored a Hands-Around-DC march where millions of people held hands while standing along I-495 surrounding Washington, D.C. President Obsma forced the unions and members of the military to line the left-hand shoulder as a show of support for the President. The march turned violent when the unions crossed the lines of traffic to attack the peaceful protestors. General Brownstone forced the Congressional leaders to appoint him Secretary of State placing him in line of succession while Congress voted on and impeached the President, Vice President, and his cabinet.

              President Obsma didn’t go quietly into the night, he announced the formation of a new nation which he called the Liberal States of America which was going to be based on progressive principles. President Brownstone decided to allow the LSA to split away from the USA in order to avoid a very violent civil war.  During President Obsma’s announcement on New Years Eve in New York City, a blackout struck the city. The crowds, thinking a terrorist struck the city, panicked, a wave of people swept the President away, his head was hit causing him to lose his memory. Senator Harold Reid, who was going to be the LSA's Vice President, stepped in to become the new President. He was removed from office in a scandal that found kiddie porn on his laptop. Michael Bloomberg, the former Mayor of New York City, became the third President in their short history. Bloomberg ruled the LSA like it was his own private domain. He allied with the Russian Federation, Venezuela, Cuba and other socialist states. Bloomberg constructed a massive wall, called the divide, which separated the USA and the LSA. The two countries more or less forgot about the other until twelve years after the split when WOLF News Network in the USA and the CNN based in the LSA, got together to produce a look at life in both countries. Two average families were selected, the Smiths in Oregon and the Jones family in North Carolina. The two families explained their life in either the LSA or USA every evening for two weeks, the television program broke every viewership record. As the tide started to turn against the LSA, President Bloomberg and his DepLIES snuck mild poison into seven schools in the USA.  Hundreds of young children got ill from the poison which was placed in their school lunches. President Rand responded by cancelling the television program and turning his cyber warfare group against the LSA and the Russian Federation, turning off the electrical power selectively in both countries. Hospitals, drug stores and day care centers had electrical power while homes and businesses didn’t. President Bloomberg arranged with Russian Federation President Demetri Grameniko to invade the USA to force President Rand to turn the electrical power back on and to win compensation for the two countries’ losses from the lack of electrical power. 

Chapter 1

              A massive polar vortex drags frigid cold air south from the Arctic covering the Northern Hemisphere. Temperatures drop 30 degrees below normal across central Europe, Western Russia and the West Coast of the LSA. People in California wake to the shock of fifty-year record low temperatures. People in the Capital of the LSA, Los Angeles, wake to a low of 32 degrees and ice on their lawns and streets. People in Portland and Seattle wake to six inches of snow with an additional half an inch falling every hour. First and second world nations function on electricity. People have forgotten how to live without electrical power. Electrical power is taken for granted, flip a switch lights turn on or off. The loss of it even for an hour is bothersome, losing electricity for weeks can drive people to extremes. The LSA and the Russian Federation have both been cyber-attacked by the USA in retribution for them poisoning children in the USA. Many families in both countries have no idea why they’ve lost power. They’re scared, cold, hungry and wondering how they are going to survive without heat and electrical power. When the electrical power failed, so too did the supply of fresh water. Toilets stopped refilling after flushing, sewers backed up flooding homes, offices and streets with raw sewage, rats and mice living on the raw sewage are spreading diseases faster than the health providers can stop them.

Central Moscow is unusually cold this winter. The brutal Russian winter crushed the invading German and French armies. Brutal Russian winters have stopped many invaders.   Anyone who hasn't personally experienced winter in Moscow, can’t imagine it. The icy wind feels alive searching for any exposed skin to attack. The wind rips old political posters off of the walls from the dark buildings. The ripped posters dance in the wind until they run into people trying to stay warm while they make their way through the city. Moscow looks better in the dark; sunlight shows the city’s dirt and decay. Snow is swept from the sidewalks by old women wrapped in heavy coats using brooms to clear sidewalks and driveways. In Moscow, some tasks are still done the way they’ve always been done. Time hasn’t been kind to Moscow. This winter is worse than any in recent history, the city is dark and without power, its citizens are cold, hungry and confused. People on the streets are wondering what happened, most don’t know why the USA turned off their power and with it their heat. People go from street to street looking for lights or anything that indicates there’s power available. Usually, the only light they see is the flickering of candles in windows. The flickering flames create shadows that trick people’s eyes. The patchwork of electrical power in Moscow and the rest of the Russian Federation surprises and scares most Russians. None have any idea how the USA was able to selectively access the Russian’s power grid to keep power on for hospitals and drug stores, yet homes and stores next door and on the same circuits don’t have power. People take it as a sign from above that houses of worship still have power. Thousands try to jam themselves into every house of worship they can squeeze into in order to charge their portable devices and also to get warm.

Twenty minutes ago battery powered alarms sounded sending the Russian Federation leadership to their bunkers. There are no shelters for most of Moscow’s twelve million people. Some assume the blackout and alarms are the pre-cursors to an all-out war with the west. They know intuitively if they stay in the cities they will most likely die, they feel that the blackout is the start of the Third World War. The Russian city dwellers packed what they could carry and left the cities for safer pastures. When the lights went out millions of Moscow’s citizens panicked, many broke into and ransacked stores. They took whatever they could carry, usually torching the store when its shelves have been stripped bare. Riots break out in most of the Russian cities; old rivalries turn into bloody and deadly block wars. The police, like many others, have left their jobs to spend whatever time they have left with their families. Millions of people are trying to exit the cities any way they can. Within three hours, a quarter of Moscow and most of the other cities across Russia are burning out of control. Firefighters, like the police, think the lack of electrical power and the country wide alarms are the signal a new world war is going to or has already started. Tens of thousands refuse to report for duty. Their only thought is to be with their families. Russian first responders leave the fires burning out of control and chaos in their wake as they too try to escape the cities. They’re carrying what they can hold in overstuffed plastic bags and backpacks, some are pulling carts filled with their personal effects. The roads are jammed with refugees, which block cars and trucks from operating. Most didn’t have any idea where they’re going, they’re driven by their sense of survival, all they know is they have to get away from the cities that are likely targets for the USA’s nuclear weapons. Many of the refugees are pulling wagons filled with their children and what supplies they could quickly grab as they rush to find security. They are being kept warm by their fear on this cold, windy winter night. As the people walk out of the cities they keep looking over their shoulders; they look back at their homes which they don’t expect to see again; they look over their shoulders expecting to see mushroom clouds explode over their homes. Some are afraid to look back, remembering the story of Lot’s wife in the Bible. The flames from the burning cities reflect off of the base of the heavy cloud cover creating an eerie orange flickering glow in the Russian sky. Some pause, they kneel and cross themselves thinking the fires of hell have been released in their cities. No one knows the truth of what’s happening; the government hasn’t made any official announcement, or if they made one, none were able to hear it because of the blackout. Thousands of rumors spread through the lines of refugees ranging from world war to aliens landing to the return of Jesus.

              In the center of Moscow, three hundred feet beneath the Kremlin is a bunker designed to protect the Russian Federation’s leaders in case a nuclear war was fought between Russia and the West.  The bunker is connected via an underground rail network to other government leadership bunkers spread under Moscow. Demetri Grameniko, the President of the Russian Federation, slams his fist onto the conference table in front of him. He pounds on the table two additional times to get everyone’s attention in the conference room.

              Frustrated, he stands yelling, “Enough of this petty bickering, we don’t have time for you to act like a group of Babushka’s complaining about sweeping the snow off their porches. Shut up. I can’t hear myself think. I want to hear your reports, one at a time. First, Alexi, tell me about our electrical power and defense condition.”

              Alexi is a thirty-year veteran of the Soviet and Russian military. He started his career fresh from the Moscow Military Academy as a junior officer commanding a squad of three Russian T64 tanks on the German border. Had war broken out between the Soviet Union and the West, Alexi would have commanded his squad of tanks across the East/West German border. He would have found himself on the front line of the third world war facing American and German tanks. Tonight his words may start a nuclear war. “Mr. President, our electrical grid is down. It’s not an issue of circuit breakers or poor quality fuses or the wiring. There’s nothing wrong with our power generating plants. It’s not like they struck every one of our generating stations. We have been deliberately cyber attacked. This attack is nothing as we’ve ever seen before. Every time we try to reboot our network, it fails. The attack is very unusual because hospitals, senior/rest homes, jails and many schools weren’t taken offline. The most unusual is the houses of worship have power. Millions of our people have jammed the churches. They think it’s a sign from heaven.

“Whoever did this wanted to hurt us, they wanted to hurt our economy while at the same time not taking lives unnecessarily. The degree of the attack is way beyond what we’re capable of. Let me show you images from one of our helicopters. In the southwest sector of Moscow there is a children’s hospital, their power is on, across the street is a pharmacy, its power is on, yet the apartments on top of the pharmacy are blacked out. Everything else around the hospital and pharmacy is dark, all, except for this one location two blocks away.”