Empire (14 page)

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. Alvin York, 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.”