A state of disobedience (18 page)

The head of Global News Network didn't normally have to force himself to think of himself as a "big man." He was not only physically large; he was rich, he was powerful, he was even rather famous around the world. He had grown used to people treating him with a certain respect and deference.

He was shocked.

Somehow, the man had come to believe that Wilhelmina Rottemeyer was a kindred soul; another person whose fondest desires were an end to want, a government that cared, a respecter of the law. And yet, when he had voiced complaints to the White House about what he saw as dangerous abridgments to the First Amendment he was met with scorn.

He was very shocked.

"So you listen here, you stupid bastard," said the unnamed man in the suit with a bulge under the left shoulder, "I don't care about your 'Freedom of the Fucking Press.' The President has said the gloves are off with dealing with assholes like you. She hasn't got time to sugarcoat this crap any more. You will broadcast what you are told to, and only what you are permitted. Is that clear enough even for a moron like you?"

Summoning his courage—the head of the network asked, "And what if I don't?"

The suit picked up the phone from the desk and dialed a number. On the other end someone answered the phone. "This is McCarthy. Put the lady of the house on the phone. She needs to have a little chat with her husband."

"What do you think you are doing? Where the hell did you get my home number?"

The suit just smiled, beneficently, and handed the phone over with the words, "Why don't you ask your pretty new wife what she thinks you should do?"

Whatever the standards of the American press as a whole, the head of Global News was no coward. For himself, he feared essentially nothing. Yet, the color drained from his face as the head of the news agency listened to his near hysterical bride describe what had transpired at their lavish home—the knock, the forcing of the door, the manhandling of her and their young son . . . the slaps . . . her split, puffy lips. When she was finished, he returned the phone to its receiver and said, ashen faced, "I'll play along. Just don't hurt my family."

The suit's smile broadened further. "Well, then, I am glad you are going to be sensible. Not everyone is being so, you know?"

Most of the major media didn't need the lesson administered to GNN. Leftward leaning already, they were more than happy with Rottemeyer's program. There were some few, however, who did need some sterner measures.

In this former military base turned partial federal prison those who were not being "sensible" came in by twos and threes and tens and twenties. Shorn of hair, and dignity, the dissidents were quickly and efficiently processed into the general population. Fortunately, for them, this was a fairly low security prison. They were spared the very worst that the system had to offer in the way of roommates.

What they had was bad enough, even so.

There was, however, a saving grace. In order to leave, all the assembled newscasters, editors, and writers had to do was sign a paper admitting their complicity in "treasonable activities" and promising to cooperate with federal authorities in the future.

At first, none would. Some few days later, after a particularly nasty homosexual gang rape, a few would. A week later still, and with a regular session of beatings for the recalcitrant, a few more signed and were duly released. Then the heat was turned off in the prison barracks until, as it was announced, the members of the press corps in those barracks decided to cooperate with the authorities.

At that point, the authorities stopped providing physical "corrective measures." There was no need as the freezing nonpolitical prisoners warmed their limbs through strenuous exercise. After that, some of the talking heads would need extensive prosthetic dental work before they could hope to resume their old jobs.

The number of resistors shrank daily thereafter.

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."

Nothing but the best for the White House; that was the rule. And, if one excepted certain of those elected to sit in the Oval Office, it was a rule that was well followed.

The best, in this case, was a Tandberg 7000 video conferencing system. Though normally the screen was easily split to allow up to thirty-six different participants to be seen on one screen, in this case—in this very private conversation—only two faces appeared in front of Wilhelmina Rottemeyer. And both of those were in the same room, seated side by side. One she recognized easily as the United States Ambassador to Panama—a political appointee rewarded for major campaign contributions. The other she knew from pictures as the president of that country.

"I want you to stop those guns," said Rottemeyer to the President of the Republic of Panama. This was in reference to the shipment of Chinese-built medium artillery contracted for by Schmidt due to pass through the Panama Canal within a few days. "I need not tell you, Mr. President, that the price for failure to do so will be very heavy."

The ambassador winced. Though no career diplomat, he had still a reasonable sense of tact and decorum.

The foreign president, a man of middle age, middle paunch, middle complexion, and narrow, beady eyes did not wince. He knew his, his government's, and his country's position in the world, that of supplicant to the United States. He answered. "But of course. I did not know of it. I will give orders to stop it immediately."

"Telephone, Governor. Someone who calls himself 'Parilla.' Never heard of him."

Juani hesitated, looking at Jack who likewise expressed his ignorance with a shrug.

"I'll take the call."

"Governor? This is Raul Dario Parilla from Panama. Think of me as an arms dealer, of sorts. My organization has intercepted the most curious conversation between your President and ours. How? Oh, let's just say that your embassy here lacks the very best in video conferencing equipment. I would like to send something to you by courier. The . . . umm . . . courier's name will be Patricio. Can you arrange to pass him through your border with Mexico?"

Another unrecognized and disembodied voice answered, in slightly New England accented English, "I'll be there in forty-eight hours."