Empire

Coup

For Cole, the bad thing about Reuben Malich having left for New Jersey was that it left him in charge of the office. That had been fine for the first couple of days, before Cole ever met Rube, because even though he didn’t know anything, nobody ever called to ask him anything, either. Now he still didn’t know anything, but the phone didn’t let up.

Most of the people wanted to talk to Major Malich—old friends of his calling to congratulate him on stopping one rocket, at least. Cole would take a message with a promise to give it to him as soon as he saw him.

But the press callers were just as happy to talk to Cole and pump him with questions. The trouble is, Cole couldn’t think of anything to tell them that couldn’t be spun into an attack on him and Rube. The story in The Post had been more or less balanced—though a soldier like Cole was so used to the way the media treated the military that he heard a tone of snideness in everything they wrote. Still, Leighton Fuller had kept his word. Even the headline was balanced.

The questions Cole was getting now, however, were obviously designed to get him to say things that could spin against Reuben. Questions like, “How did you happen to be where you could see the underwater operation unfolding?” and “What exactly are the signs that you saw on the surface of the water? Why did you know to look for them?” and “Didn’t you and Major Malich both qualify as sharpshooters? Why were you able to hit only one of the rocket launchers?”

To all the questions, Cole gave the same answers: “We’re still in the debriefing process. We’re not authorized to discuss this.” To which they always replied, “But Major Malich talked to The Post!”

Like little children—they demanded that Rube and Cole be “fair” to the print and television newspeople, but there was going to be no attempt at fairness to them or the military they served.

Even as he thought this, he also knew that the questions were perfectly legitimate ones. And that the only answers he had were speculative at best. Why did they happen to be at Hain’s Point when the terrorists scubaed by? Maybe they tapped into the phone conversation; maybe they’d been watching Major Malich and knew him well enough to predict he’d go there for a private meeting. Why did sharpshooters like them only hit one launcher? Maybe because they were working with unfamiliar weapons. Maybe because they didn’t say, You take the left one, I’ll take the right, so they both shot at the same one. Maybe because they were distracted by being fired on. Why did you kill all the terrorists so none were left to be questioned? Maybe because we were getting fired on and in the heat of battle it’s hard to say, Let’s just wound this one. Especially when you fear that they’ll try to involve civilians if you let them live.

But the real answer, to question after question, would have been, “I don’t know.” The only thing he knew was, Rube was no actor. He had been furious that the terrorists got hold of his plan, desperate to stop them, devastated when the President died. Yet that was precisely the kind of thing that the press would never take seriously. Yeah, yeah, you felt “sure” that Rube didn’t know what was going on. Let’s have some facts.

The President was killed using a plan created by Major Malich. Major Malich was on the scene precisely when the plot unfolded. But you and he happened to hit only one of the launchers, so that the other one was still able to fire.

They weren’t there. They couldn’t know. All they knew was the collection of “facts” and the video footage from the guy in the car, and none of those showed the frenzy of being under fire, of being so wired with adrenalin you had no idea of the passage of time. Didn’t they get it that it was a miracle they got even one of the launchers? Didn’t they understand that it was a miracle they were able to get there, with weapons, as quickly as they did? Not for one second had Major Malich done a single thing to delay the operation to make sure the terrorists had time. And the terrorists got that rocket off with less than a second to spare. Nobody could plan for that.

Especially because Major Malich could not know that Cole would fail to hit the other launcher. He could not have planned on that. So if Rube had secretly wanted the assassination to succeed, it was a gross mistake bringing Cole along.

Unless, of course, Cole had been part of the assassination plot, too.

Only Cole knew he wasn’t part of any plot. And he knew that if Rube really had been part of the assassination, then he screwed up big time letting Cole be present with a weapon when the assassination was unfolding. It was the kind of screwup that a leader like Rube would never, never make.

That’s how Cole knew Rube was innocent of any intent to kill the President.

But that knowledge could not be conveyed to the press, particularly if somebody was juicing the process with leaks designed to incriminate Rube.

And me, thought Cole. Incriminate him and me.

Then there were the hang-ups. Ring ring, answer, click. Cole guessed those might have something to do with Major Malich’s clandestine work. Phillips and his cronies. Either that or they were just making sure Cole was still in the office.

DeeNee was no help. She let all the calls through to him while she was running errands around the building. Cole had no authority to ask her for an accounting, but since Rube trusted her, Cole could only assume she was about Major Malich’s business.

Those calls from friends in the Army. Which of them might be the one who passed along Rube’s secret worst-case-scenario plan to the terrorists who proved that it was, indeed, the worst case?

Or was it?

Up and down the halls of the Pentagon, television sets were set to CNN, Fox News, MSNBC, C-SPAN. A lot of stuff about the funeral arrangements, sympathetic statements from world leaders who had vilified the President but now were officially regretful, human interest bits about the First Family and the Vice President’s wife and children, and the families of the others who died.

But in the cracks there were the real stories: How surprisingly small a blip the assassination of the President made in the stock market. (“Is this a sign that the identity of the President is no longer a significant issue in the market? Or that LaMonte Nielson as President is somehow reassuring to Wall Street?”) The identity of the terrorist group responsible. (“All the assassins identified so far entered the country legally and with no known ties to terrorists or to groups that sympathize with terrorists.”)

And, now and then: “Questions continue to arise about why the two Pentagon officers, Major Reuben Malich and Captain Bartholomew Coleman, happened to be on the scene. According to a Washington Post story this morning, Major Malich actually worked on a hypothetical plan for assassinating a President that was eerily close to what the terrorists actually did… ”

Bad spin. The public didn’t like coincidences. They made up stories about coincidences without the media actually having to spell it out. In Europe, the media always told people what to think, and they thought it. In America, the press asked leading questions and framed things to point to what they wanted people to think—but they never actually said it outright.

That was Congress’s job. And sure enough, the House Minority Leader was on camera saying, “Just because the dead bodies at the Tidal Pool were all Muslims from Arab nations doesn’t mean that this was exclusively a foreign plot. In a White House populated with right-wing extremists, maybe somebody didn’t think the late President was extreme enough.”

And there was already a ghoulish online cartoon making the forwarded-email circuit. A drawing of the blown-out West Wing windows, with two cops looking up at it. One of them says, “At least we know it wasn’t the Vice President.” “Oh yeah?” comes the answer. “Maybe they got each other.”

The thing that Cole couldn’t let go of was the fact that maybe they were right. Not about him and Rube being complicit, but quite possibly about who the insiders were. There were no left-wingers in the White House to finger the President’s location. And given the makeup of the military, the odds were in favor of it being a conservative of some kind or another who passed along Reuben’s plans.

Meanwhile, Cole couldn’t call anybody and actually talk about what was on his mind, since he could only assume that his phone was being monitored. And whom did he have to call? The only people he could trust, Reuben’s friends, were not Cole’s friends, not yet anyway.

He did call his mom, who was so proud of him for doing his best to stop the assassination, he was a real hero, he should get the Medal of Honor. He didn’t have the heart to break it to her that he’d probably be hauled in front of a couple of congressional committees and have people accuse him of being part of the assassination plot. She’d find it out in due time.

So he let her talk about how brave and smart he was and how proud she was, and tried to answer in something like a natural way, knowing that the tape of the conversation might well end up being played over and over on the news at some future date. “Listen to how he talked with his mother, saying nothing about the suspicions already in the media. If he could lie to her this way, then how can we believe anything he says?”

And then there was a man standing in front of his desk. A two-star general.

Cole leapt to his feet and saluted, saying to his mother, “Got to call you back, Mom, I’ve got a general in the office.”

“General Alton,” said his visitor. “I don’t think we’ve ever met, Captain Cole.”

“Major Malich is out, sir,” said Cole.

“I know,” said Alton. “But I came to see you.”

Generals don’t come to your office to escort you to a court-martial—MPs do that. So what did he want? To hear the story in his own words?

“Interesting article in The Post. Your picture was in it, but not a single quote from you. All Malich’s show?”

“It was Malich who wrote up the plans that the terrorists used, sir,” said Cole. “I only got here a few days ago.”

“And yet your ass is going to go through the wringer just like his,” said Alton. The general looked Cole up and down like he was sizing up the prototype of a new weapon. “Do you eat, Captain Cole?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Lunch?” asked Alton.

“I was thinking about it,” said Cole.

“Anybody expecting you?”

“No, sir.”

“Any urgent appointments this afternoon?”

“Unless they need more debriefing time, sir.”

“Come with me, Coleman.”

A half hour later they were in a Thai restaurant in Old Town Alexandria across the street from the Torpedo Factory. The whole way, Alton had kept up a low-key interrogation. Where were you raised? Any family? Was your father military? Good service record—what was your best assignment so far? It was what passed for Smalltalk between a general who outranked almost everybody but God and a lowly captain who still had no clue what his assignment at the moment even was.

Only after they ordered did Alton start in on talk that didn’t sound so small anymore.

“So how do you see this whole thing going down, Coleman?”

“Down, sir?” asked Cole. He wasn’t playing dumb, he just wasn’t sure what the general was asking.

“The public crucifixion of Major Malich, Captain Coleman, and the U.S. military.”

“Oh, that,” said Cole. “Well, I’d say it’s right on schedule, sir. We’re at the innuendo stage right now. I give it till tomorrow before the first calls for a congressional investigating committee surface.”

“They’re already calling for that,” said Alton.

“I mean, a committee to investigate Major Malich and me, sir. In particular.”

“And investigate the entire Army,” said Alton. “You and Malich being there yesterday, that’s going to cause the whole Army a shit-load of trouble.”

“Yes, sir.”

“If you two hadn’t had to be heroes, if you’d just driven away, your faces wouldn’t be all over the news and you wouldn’t be under suspicion for anything.”

“That didn’t seem like an option at the time, sir,” said Cole.

“Damn straight,” said Alton. “Not an option. You don’t stand by and do nothing while your country is being assaulted and innocent people are getting killed. Well, more or less innocent people.”

Cole didn’t know where he was going with this.

“I didn’t like our President much, to tell you the truth, Coleman. Didn’t trust him. Thought he was a clown. A puppet of the SecDef, God rest his soul. A SecDef who thought he could transform military culture. The two of them, thinking you could wage war like they did it in Vietnam, one hand tied behind our backs. Boots on the ground, kicking down doors, that’s what would have cleaned things up in record time! You can’t subdue an enemy that doesn’t believe you beat them! Not this namby-pamby stuff about going in and making nice-nice with the locals.”

Cole didn’t know how to answer. It was obvious Alton was one of the old school, one of the guys who had no use for the new doctrines. But Cole’s whole military career was built on the new doctrines—small forces that get to know not just the terrain but the people, so that locals start helping you. And Cole believed in it—the idea that you toss out the enemy regime, but do it without alienating the people. Get them to see you as their liberators and protectors, not their conquerors and occupiers. But Alton liked it the old way. And Cole couldn’t see a thing to be gained by arguing with him.

“It’s useful to know the local language,” said Cole.

“The only thing you need to know how to say,” said Alton, “is ‘Put up your hands or I’ll blow your ass to hell.’ ”

Cole tried a little levity. “I can say that in four Middle Eastern languages, sir.”

Alton shook his head. “New model Army. Pure bullshit. But I went along! Civilian control of the military! The Constitution! I believe in it, God help me but I do. The SecDef wants to cripple our Army and the President says to go along, then my job is to implement the emasculation. The gelding.”

“We did some things,” said Cole softly, “that took some balls to do.”

“I’m not talking about you! Or Malich! You did what you were trained and ordered to do and you did it brilliantly. You’re the real thing. AlvinYork, Audie Murphy.The guys who get it done. The five percent who actually do the killing and the winning.”

Cole couldn’t say what he was thinking: What is this about? Why did you take me to lunch? So you could have an audience for some meaningless tirade about our dead President?

“I’m in the Pentagon now, sir,” said Cole. “I don’t carry a weapon right now.”

“That’s the problem right there,” said Alton. “It’s not the boys in the field, not the ones who are eating sand and sleeping with camels and firing their weapons and getting blown up by roadside bombs. It’s us in the Pentagon, us right here who got clipped and don’t even know it. Shooting blanks, that’s what we’re doing. We signed on to defend the Constitution, and now they’re knocking it down and blaming us for it. Specifically, you and Malich, but it’s all of us they’ll be crucifying, don’t think otherwise.”

“The Constitution is working well enough, sir,” said Cole. “President Nielson was sworn in before the smoke cleared.”

“President,” said Alton contemptuously. “If I got taken short without a toilet I wouldn’t even piss down that man’s throat. He’s a hack and everybody knows it. He’s our commander-in-chief?”

“That would be what the Constitution says, sir,” said Cole.

“Yes, well, that’s fine, my point isn’t that he’s a bad guy, my point is that he’s weak, and that’s what they want.”

“Who, sir?”

“The people who set you and Malich up,” said Alton. “The people who made damn sure Malich was there at the scene—almost blew it, though, didn’t they, because you and Malich came that close to wrecking their plan. They didn’t know what a soldier could do, did they! Didn’t know that suppressing cellphones and cutting landlines wouldn’t stop you! Didn’t know our boys know how to improvise.

“Who are those people, sir?” asked Cole.

“The Left, Coleman, and you know it. The blue-staters.The latte-sipping assholes who took over this country by taking over the law schools so that everybody on the bench has been brainwashed into thinking that the written Constitution is nothing but modeling clay, you can shape it into anything you want and what they want is for it to be a nation where marriage between faggots and lesbians is sacred and you can kill babies right up to the moment they’re born and who gives a shit whether the people vote for it or a constitutional amendment could ever pass! They learned with the ERA—you’re too young to remember that, but I do—Equal Rights Amendment, they couldn’t get it through the state legislatures, so they learned their lesson. No more amendments! Just take over the courts and make them the dictators. Make them tell us that the Constitution says the opposite of the words on the paper and then it will take a constitutional amendment to set things back to rights!”

Cole hated it when people talked like this. Because sure, he felt like this a lot of the time, but he didn’t like hearing somebody say it this way. Angrily. Abusively. Cole might hate the way the courts decided stuff that was supposed to be decided by supermajorities of the citizenry, but he wanted it to be discussed and corrected reasonably.

The trouble with Alton was that he had generalitis, the inflammation of the ego that came from having everybody salute you and say yessir all the time. You started to think it was you they were saluting, and not the stars. You started to think you were smart.

And maybe Alton was smart.

“I can see your face, Coleman,” said Alton. “I know what you’re thinking. You don’t like me talking plain. I’m not supposed to say ‘faggot.’ I’m supposed to call them ‘fetuses,’ not ‘babies.’ I’m supposed to sound reasonable, not like an extremist. But they don’t play by those rules, do they! They can say any outrageous, offensive, name-calling bullshit they think of. They can label everybody that doesn’t lift their skirts or spread their cheeks for them as some kind of extremist wacko, but if you name them for what they are, then that proves you’re an extremist wacko. It’s a catch-22, isn’t it, Coleman? If you argue against them with any kind of passion, then you’re not worth listening to. And if you don’t argue with passion, nobody hears you! That’s why they get things all their way. Nobody yells back at them!”

Coleman thought of listing a few talk-show hosts who did plenty of yelling back, but decided that wasn’t a conversation he wanted to have. He wished profoundly that he had told Alton he had an urgent appointment. It was too late to “remember” one now, though.

“There is a point to my diatribe, Coleman,” said Alton. “My point is this: What is this left-wing conspiracy going to do with the death of this President? Because you know that’s who did this. That’s why they’re going to such lengths to implicate you and some nameless right-wing conspirator inside the White House. They want to discredit the people who still stand for something. They want this country thrown into chaos and blame it on the Right, so they can force their agenda through. I don’t know why they hated this President so much. He was their boy. Look what he did—amnesty for illegals, socialized medicine, mollycoddling defeated nations instead of occupying them—this President made FDR look like Barry Gold-water, he was so damn liberal. But never liberal enough for them. Because they’re insane. They have to have everything fit in with their vision of Utopia. They’re going to make us live in hell, and if you don’t call it heaven, then off with your head!”

“There’s still a conservative majority in Congress, sir, and President Nielson—”

“They’ll all jump through hoops once the media is done with them. You know they will! Because they’ve got no spine.”

“Sir,” said Cole, “I don’t know why you’re telling me this.”

“I’m telling you this,” said Alton, “because we’re not going to let it happen. They killed the President and the Vice President and SecDef and six fine soldiers who were doing their duty for their country, and now they’re going to blame the Army for it and use it as an excuse to take over even more than they already have.”

“What do you mean, you’re not going to let it happen?” said Cole. “Sir?”

“I mean exactly what I’m saying. This is a time of national emergency. Like the American Civil War. President Lincoln said it best. ‘The Constitution is not a suicide pact.’ Sometimes you have to suspend parts of the Constitution in order to save the whole thing. The left-wing courts have already thrown out half of it. In order to put those parts back, we have to take steps. The new President can still lead, but with the Army behind him, and without the media twisting everything into a pack of lies. You and Malich are not going on trial, Coleman. Not in a court martial, not in a civilian court, and not in the media.”

“Are you proposing a coup?” asked Cole. He couldn’t help looking around to see who was listening.

“I’m proposing to save America,” said Alton, “and return it to the system that made us great. I’m proposing to bring it back from the ruins of the extreme left. I’m proposing to restore a country where it’s not a crime to be a Christian, where criminals go to jail, where marriage is between a man and a woman, and where we aren’t killing millions of babies every year. Eisenhower’s America. And don’t give me any crap about ‘does that mean segregation again?’ because this is a racially integrated Army and we’re not bringing back any of that racism shit. That was a good change and we’re keeping it. We’re going to let women keep the vote, too, in case you were going to ask that.”

“I don’t know what to say, sir,” said Cole. Because at this moment it finally dawned on him. This guy was serious. He was going to try to use the Army to take control of the government, impose martial law, stifle the media, and nullify fifty years of Supreme Court decisions—the ones he didn’t like, anyway.

Alton had just laid out his agenda and if Cole said no, was that his own death sentence?

“Say what’s on your mind, Coleman,” said Alton. “You’ve got nothing to fear from me, no matter what you say. I know you’re a good man, but I also know that many good men will disagree with what I’m doing. I’m restoring democracy, not eliminating it. Majority rule. When everything’s back the way it’s supposed to be, then they can arrest me and put me on trial and shoot me for all I care. I’ll be proud to die for my country. As long as you don’t actively fight against me—and I mean with weapons, not with words—then nobody’s going to touch you. So speak your mind.”

“It’s treason,” said Cole.

“Absolutely,” said Alton. “The Left has committed slow treason. The country is being strangled by treason. But yes, we’re committing treason, too. We’re bringing the force of the military to bear. Like in Turkey, where the army keeps the wackos from turning the country into another Iran. We’re stepping in to save the country, no matter what it costs us.”

“It’s the wrong way, sir. We need to find out the real conspirators and expose them.”

“And put them on trial? Like O.J. was put on trial? Like the courts allowed the Clintons to steal FBI files and withhold subpoenaed documents from Congress and commit perjury and accept bribes and nobody was ever put on trial? Like that? The courts in America are the heart of the leftist conspiracy. Only regular Americans get convicted in those courts. Americans like you.”

“I won’t help you, sir,” said Cole.

“Well, there you go,” said Alton.

“I’ll work against you, sir.”

“Do your damnedest,” said Alton. “But just like yesterday, you’re already too late.”

“Am I?” said Cole. “Didn’t it occur to you that my debriefers probably planted bugs on me? On my uniform?”

“Of course they did,” said Alton. “But all your interrogators are with me on this, Coleman. You still don’t see it. What I’m doing—what we’re doing—is an Army operation.”

“No way, sir,” said Cole. “There’s no way the whole Army is behind you.”

“They will be,” said Alton. “I wanted you with us because you and Malich would be great on camera. War heroes. The guys who tried to save the President and are now getting framed for killing him. But we can still use your story—we just won’t put you on camera.”

“I’ll go on camera against you,” said Cole.

“And what?” said Alton. “Tell the world that you did conspire to kill the President? Since the story we’ll be telling happens to be true, I don’t know what you’d say.”

“I’d say that you don’t save the Constitution by tearing it up,” said Cole.

“Say what you want,” said Alton. “Nothing you say will be broadcast. No one will hear it. No one will read it.”

And for the first time it dawned on Cole that much as he hated the media, he and Malich had been able to get some version of their story out there. Leighton Fuller believed them, or at least thought they might be telling the truth, and he gave them their public hearing, and his editors went along with it. It wasn’t some Pentagon committee deciding what could be published. Cole knew something about military culture, and he didn’t want the Army controlling the American news media.

He didn’t even want the Army controlling the Army.

“Sir,” said Cole. “This is an all-volunteer military. We’re all citizens of a free country. We took an oath to support the Constitution, not destroy it. To obey elected civilians, not dictate to them. Most of us get pissed off by a lot of things going on in this country, but our weapons are meant to point at foreign enemies, not at American news editors and reporters. If you think the Army is going to follow along blindly, you’re crazy, sir.”

“Well, you know what they say,” said Alton. “’Soldiers want to get paid and not die. Civilians want to be left alone.’ We’ll pay the soldiers and we won’t ask them to die. We’ll leave the civilians alone.”

“Except the reporters and the judges.”

“They ain’t civilians, son,” said Alton. “They’re the tyrants and traitors.” Alton stood up. “We’re done here,” he said. “You’ve been brainwashed, but that’s fine, no harm.” He put two twenties down on the table and led the way out to his car. “As for the Army,” Alton said, “we’ve succeeded in retiring most of the top officers who would oppose us. All the stateside forces of any size are already under our control. And our public statements will not be as plain as what I’ve said to you. We’ve got our own media experts, Coleman. We know how to spin this story.”

They got in the car and Alton’s driver started back toward the Pentagon. “It’s the nice thing about how the Left has emasculated America. Most people really will just sit back and let it happen. There just aren’t that many real men left in this country. You watch—inside of a week, we’ll have all the editors asking us when to jump and how high. America has been pre-adapted to live under a dictatorship, because we already do. All we’re doing is trading in politically correct judges for dedicated soldiers.”

All the way back to the Pentagon, as Alton went on talking, all Cole could think about was: He can pretend he’s not going to kill me, but this is going to lead to bloodshed almost immediately. He can pretend that he doesn’t care what I do, but I just went on an enemies list.

They pulled into General Alton’s reserved parking space. Cole did not open his door. “Sir,” he said. “This is all working out so well for you. You were so ready. So what I want to know is this. Was it you? The Army, I mean. Your group inside the Army. Was it you that gave those plans of Major Malich’s to Al Qaeda?”

Alton’s brisk, cheery attitude disappeared at once, replaced by true rage. “By God I swear to you we did not,” he said. “We were preparing, yes—for the day when a leftist President was elected, determined to destroy the military. We weren’t going to stand for it. But that was still many months away. This President was an idiot. But he kept the military strong. We didn’t want him dead.”

“I believe you, sir,” said Cole. “But can you vouch for everybody else in your… group?”

“I can, son,” said Alton. “I can indeed. We had nothing to do with this. It took us by surprise. But we do contingency planning in the Pentagon, Coleman. When shit happens, we’re ready to deal with it.”

“I’ve got another contingency for you, sir,” said Cole.

“What’s that?”

“The guys who really did get the President killed—doesn’t it occur to you that they know about your group and your contingency plans and they pulled this off specifically to get you to do exactly what you’re doing? So they’d have an excuse to go to war to save the country from you?”

“Maybe,” said Alton, “but so what? We’ve got all the guns.”