A state of disobedience

Washington, DC

There was a great shuffling of chairs as Rottemeyer and her Cabinet took their places for the daily crisis management conference. Of course, some aspects of the problem were no longer in crisis management mode.

"I always knew the press corps were pussies," mused a highly amused James Carroll. "No offense," he said to Rottemeyer.

"None taken. And how goes 'Project Ogilvie'?"

"Not bad. Not bad at all, really. We are filling the airways and the papers with every nasty, dirty, and underhanded thing we can think of to say about that fucking priest, his goddamned sister, and Texas in general."

"Fine, fine," commented Rottemeyer. "Be sure to pass on to your people how much I appreciate the fine job they are doing."

"I'll do that, of course. But, Willi, this is a labor of love for most of them."

McCreavy, also present, was sickened by the very idea of "Project Ogilvie." To her mind this was nothing less than the destruction of the First Amendment and the rights it guaranteed. She had given most of her life, in large part, to the defense of those rights and others. Now, she could see, all was lost.

But she had also spent too much time in uniform to argue with the boss.

"Willi, I have some bad news. We were hoping that Texas would be too poorly armed to put up much resistance when we roll."

McCreavy paused, contemplating the news she had received, news of tens, possibly hundreds, of thousands of buried rifles, now unearthed and in hostile hands. She considered news of arms shipments through Mexico. She shivered slightly from rumors among the arms dealers of the world of massive shipments of heavy, Chinese-made arms currently in transit.

She decided to speak mostly of more local and immediate matters.

"I have learned, however, that the Third Corps commander, General Bennigsen, left them a great deal of all kinds of war materiel when he and the Corps pulled out. Bennigsen has been relieved of his command and is going to be turned over to the FBI on charges of treason."

"Shit! Fuck!" fumed Rottemeyer, banging her hand against her desk. "What's that do to our plans? Damn it!"

Embarrassed, McCreavy answered, "It's going to make them a lot harder to take down. Worse, Intelligence says they are bringing in enough foreign arms to make them a very tough contender."

"How are they getting the arms, from where?"

"Some of the lighter stuff—rifles, machine guns and such—is coming over the border with Mexico. Apparently they are buying from the Chinese, paying cash to boot."

"Paying cash with money they have printed at our currency facility. Bastards! Where else are the weapons coming from?"

"By sea, we think. In fact, a shipment, maybe fifteen or twenty thousand tons worth, is due to go through the Panama Canal sometime next week on its way to Galveston or Corpus Christi."

"Through the Canal?" queried State. "Madam President that could give you the foreign crisis you wanted me to investigate creating. General McCreavy, are your forces capable of reoccupying the Panama Canal Zone to stop that shipment?"

"I think we are," answered the general. "But why reoccupy? We can simply blockade Texas' ports or Panama itself."

"But that wouldn't give us the crisis, would it?" pointed out State, reasonably.

"Willi?" pleaded McReavy. "This is simply not smart. What if the Panamanians actually fight?"

"Fight with what?" asked Carroll. "Bananas? They don't even have an army."

"They do, actually. Some anyway."

"What would it take, Caroline, for you to retake the Canal?"

"I can't say right off the top of my head, Madame President. I can say though, that whatever I use there is something that won't be available here. And why do it when we can blockade Texas' ports? Or maybe we should declare them 'closed,' which makes more sense."

"Sure, Caroline, we'll do that too," answered Rottemeyer. She considered briefly. "Ah to hell with Panama. Wouldn't be enough of a war to do us any good anyway. And with Mexico's border open, the blockade will be incomplete with or without the Canal in our hands."

"In any case, relax. We aren't going to invade another country, not just yet in any case."

Changing the subject Rottemeyer went around the table.

Of Justice she asked, "Are we ready to shut down the Texas Border, Jesse?"

"Excepting their border with Mexico, ninety to ninety-five percent," answered Vega.

"Law enforcement ready to follow the Army in?"

That this was a tougher problem, Vega was loathe to admit. "We have enough . . . initially."

That seemed close enough. Rottemeyer turned away from Vega to the secretary of the treasury. "Are we ready to retake the Western Currency Facility?" she asked of Treasury.

"The Army," a gracious head nod in McCreavy's direction, "has put the better part of a helicopter group at the disposal of the Presidential Guard. They'll go in on your say-so."

"Good. Caroline, after subtracting for what you have scattered around the world, what do you have left for reoccupation of Texas?"

McCreavy mentally pulled out the map she had studied just before coming to this meeting. From the symbols on the map, engraved on her mind, she translated, "Third Infantry Division and most of Second Marine Division are closing on Fort Polk, Louisiana. That's their interim staging area before they move to assembly areas west of Lake Charles, near the Texas border. They'll be joined at Fort Polk by the Second Armored Cavalry . . . though that's really just a big battalion. First Marine Division, minus one brigade, and the Third Armored Cavalry Regiment are assembling in the New Mexican desert west of Fort Bliss, Texas. Along the Texas-Oklahoma border is Third Corps, one armored and two mechanized infantry divisions. Tenth Mountain Division will fly down as we advance to provide backup to the law enforcement agencies. The Air Force is standing by.

"It all just awaits your command," McCreavy concluded.

Good, good; Rottemeyer liked it when things awaited her command.

"But there are a few problems, Madame President," continued McCreavy.

"As in?"

"As near as we can tell, Texas has wired every bridge leading into the state for demolition. And they are guarding those bridges, again 'as near as we can tell,' pretty competently. We also have reason to believe that those guards' orders are to blow the bridges at the first sign of our forces."

"So?"

McCreavy suppressed a sigh. It would not do to let presidential ignorance of the military get to her. "So it is not going to be all that quick. A modern division uses up hundreds of tons of supply a day. Those supplies have to go by road and rail, mostly. The farther away from base they get, too, the more they use. Right now, if Texas blows the bridges in, we can get about halfway into the state before we simply run out of gas and have to stop.

"Note, too, the expanded forces the Texans have built up? They are just past lunging range, digging in along a line we probably can't get to all that quickly. Though, mind you, if I didn't have to give up a helicopter group to the PGs then I might be able to grab a bridge or two intact."

"No, Caroline. Nothing is more important than taking the WCF back."

"But Madame President, the Texans will surely have moved half of the printing ability by now."

"It's the symbol of the thing, Caroline."

Carroll cleared his throat. "Speaking of symbols, Willi, you have a spontaneous demonstration calling for forcible reimposition of law and order on Texas scheduled for about twenty minutes from now. The Marine helicopter is waiting."

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