The Forgiven The Fallen The Forsaken (21 page)

PHOENIX,
ARIZONA

JUNE 16
^th

Jim watched
from one of the hangars as the 747 flew in low and landed on one of the Nellis
Air Force Base runways. 
I wonder how the hell they kept that working.  Must
have kept it in a hardened bunker,
he thought. 
Or maybe Europe didn’t
get hit with any nukes or EMP
. 
Now that’s an interesting thought.

The pilots taxied
the plane to the hangar and a stair truck was dispatched to the main doors. 
General Whitman was the first off the plane, followed by his staff, then a
number of civilian adults and children.  

They were still
unloading when Whitman walked up to Jim and saluted.  Jim awkwardly saluted
back and said, “Welcome home, General.”

Whitman shook
his hand and said, “Please, sir, call me Paul when it’s just us.  This is my
wife, Emiko.”

The plump
Japanese American woman grabbed Jim in a tight embrace and said, “Thank you for
taking such good care of our daughter.”

Jim had to
laugh.  “Really, I think it might have been more of the other way around, Emiko. 
You have an amazing daughter.  Welcome back to the States.”  She just hugged
him tighter before letting go and allowing herself to be led away to temporary
quarters.

After she left,
Jim and Whitman walked into an office that had been prepared for the occasion.  They
sat in a couple of office chairs around a metal table, and Jim said, “Okay,
don’t think for a second that I’m buying your bullshit.   That was some of the
most masterful manipulation I’ve ever seen, so I’m not about to pretend that
you don’t have a contingency plan. Either you need a patsy, in which case I’m going
to turn your world on its head, or you needed me in place for a decision that
you knew I would decide your way.  So talk.”

“Okay, Mr.
President, I’ll skip to the point.”

“First off, cut
the Mr. President shit when we’re alone.   You know damn well that you’re the
one who put me here.”

“Okay, Jim.  You
know that there is a group of politicians, corporate leaders, and billionaires
that got early word of the crisis and dug in with a plan to come out later and
be royalty rather than merely wealthy.  They did everything they could to
prevent effective measures that would have made us less vulnerable to the
disease.  Bluntly stated, they would rather rule absolutely over a population
of a few million serfs than live as equals among a population of a couple
hundred million survivors.   

"Unfortunately,
they’ve recruited throughout the ranks of the military, too.  For now, they are
staying out of sight because they don’t know the vaccine is available yet, and
that’s the only thing they are waiting for before they come out and clean our
clocks.

 “Once they
come out of hiding, the fight will be on their terms.  You can count on a war
over control of the military, and it only gets worse from there.” 

Jim rubbed his
chin.  “So it’s civil war if we don’t eliminate them and an unprovoked first
strike if we do?  Why didn’t you just take them out?”

“There were
difficulties with me giving that order from Europe.  I don’t believe that it
would have been carried out.”

“You’re saying
that the military is
significantly
infiltrated.”

“That's right,
sir.” 

“So what is
your plan?”

“We’ve
identified the twelve major and thirty-three minor sites where they have dug in. 
I have loyal people positioned to eliminate all of them.”

“No nukes,
right?”

“We don’t need
them, sir.”   

“I don’t like this.”

“Neither do I,
Mr. President.”

“I’d like to
see some evidence before I give orders to execute them.”

Whitman opened
his briefcase and started handing over documents and satellite photos.  After
the third document, Jim asked, “
They assassinated the Vice President
?!”

“I can assure
you that you are number one on their hit list now, Mr. President,” Whitman said
softly, “and I am number two.  This is why I stayed in Europe for so long.”

After two more
hours of reading, Jim said, “I’m satisfied.  Limit collateral damage if you
can.  Do it right.  And I want it kept extremely secret.  No leaks afterward.  
It can be one of those things that historians can argue about after we’re all
dead.”

“I think that’s
wise, sir.”

“And by the
way, next time I see you, you’d better have that fifth star on your uniform.”

“Thank you,
sir.”

Whitman used
his own pilots to launch the mission and, in the early hours of the next
morning, twelve recently built small cities and shelters were completely
destroyed within seconds of each other.  Bombs, missiles, and bunker busters proved
effective at wiping away the best laid plans of those who would be kings.

By the time Jim
woke the next morning, it was to world in which the worst of his enemies were
buried under tons of earth or burned to ash before they had even realized the
war they were savoring was already over.   

CHEYENNE, WYOMING

JUNE 17
^th
.

Nicholas Larson
was furious.  The
Organization
had just lost three quarters of its
assets overnight.  They were down to two bases and a few caches and small
communities here and there.  Had he opted to stay on the Idaho base instead of
at his own home, he would be dead now. 

Of the eight
leaders, he and those idiots Simmons and Walker were the only ones who
survived.  The future now looked very bleak.

The immediate
problem was General Whitman.  The man had gotten wind of the organization and,
clearly, had done his homework.  The
Organization's
ranking military
officer, General Evans, had died in a helicopter crash just before the
outbreak.  Larson was sure that Whitman had something to do with that. 
He's
not going to stop
, thought Larson.  Whitman had also figured out that they
were waiting for the vaccine to be completed to set their launch day.  He had
obviously hijacked that process, while feeding everyone bogus information about
the vaccine not yet existing.

The more
serious problem was that they no longer had the resources to create a completely
new form of government.  Now he would have to claw his way to the top of
whatever would be left of the old.  He now knew his foresight in saving
Wyoming's governor and as many of the state's people as possible would actually
pay off. 
I will get my House seat and my revenge.  You're a dead man, Jim
Ambrose.

He called in some
of his men and took a drive to meet Governor Martin.

LAS
VEGS, NEVADA

JUNE 18th

Jim met with
Rob, Al, and General Whitman.  "We need the internet back up and running. 
We can't manufacture computers here, yet, but I understand that Mexico was not
affected by EMP and they have factories to manufacture the computers,
televisions, satellite dishes, and radios that we quit making a couple of
decades ago.  I need to have those factories pumping out products."

"We can do
that," said Al, "but the days of Mexico supplementing our lifestyles
with ultra cheap labor are over.  If we treat them that way, we'll never have
enough troops to make it work."

"So we pay
them more," said Rob.

Jim looked at
the map on the wall.  He stood and walked over to it.  The others stopped and
waited for him to speak. 

"Here's
what I'm thinking," said Jim, drawing a big circle on the map with his
finger.  "We go all in.  We take Mexico, Cuba, and all of Central America
and make it the New Territories.  We take out all opposition and use Helen's
forgiven,
fallen, forsaken
model to get the people up and running.  We vaccinate
those who join us and we execute those who are destructive to their own people.

"Once
things are subdued, we bring all of it in as new states, or at least as much of
it as will go for it."

Whitman said,
"You sure don't think small.  What's the advantage?"

"I need
their manufacturing capability and we need crops grown in a climate that doesn't
require massive irrigation.  For sustainability, we have to have them."

"Here in
the states, I need a free press up and running as soon as possible.  It can start
with local radio, internet newspapers, then satellite radio and TV, even though
we'll have to set up the initial stations ourselves.  NPR and PBS might have to
be the initial model until we get commercial stations up and running.  Maybe we
can talk Samantha into starting an online newspaper."

"Shouldn't
we be using the military or our own people?" asked Al.

"No, Al.  The
military is the one group that has been well protected from the flu.  By the
time all is said and done, they will be almost four percent of the remaining
population," said Jim, pausing to let that fact sink in. 

"Realize that
we're coming out of this as the only nation in the world with our military
almost completely intact.  Our only remaining enemies have been internal, and I
can't fully trust my own armed forces yet.  It wouldn't break my heart to have
a lot of the military doing humanitarian and other work overseas until well
after our government is stable.

"The other
component to this is that the American people have to be functional.  It's
crucial that they have to be the ones to do the work to rebuild.  We use the
military to keep control and to help with logistics, but the people themselves
are going to put in the elbow grease and ingenuity or it's not going to be
done.        

"So, what
I'm thinking for the military is that we start in friendlier areas of the New
Territories and go in with massive humanitarian missions and vaccination
programs while we hunt and destroy the cartels.  We'll set the people up to
help free themselves of the corruption and crime that have been keeping them
down for so long.  At the end of the day, the combat mission turns into a humanitarian
mission that eventually turns into annexation.  We need all the people we can
get and most of them want to be Americans anyway."

"You're
full of surprises," said Rob.

Whitman said,
"But he's right.  It makes a lot of sense.  Al, can you take point on this
one?"

"I'll have
to shift some things around, but yes, I should be able to go to work on
it."

"I want to
start as soon as we have the southern states and coasts under control,"
said Jim.  I don't want to give the conspiracy folks any time that I don't have
to.  Let's get to work on the planning."

LAS
VEGAS, NEVADA

JUNE 20
^th

Julie and Helen
flew four
forgiven
into Las Vegas in a twin engine Cessna T303 that had
been abandoned at the Phoenix airport.  It was a beautiful aircraft and had
been very well maintained.  Julie made up her mind that, unless the actual
owners showed up for it, she was keeping it.  In less than two hours, they made
the trip from Sky Harbor to McCarran in Las Vegas. 

Once they had
taxied to the executive terminal, Julie was very happy to stop and get out of
the plane.  There was a driver waiting for their passengers, so soon the two of
them were soon on their own again.  They strapped the plane down to prevent
problems with wind, and were soon walking into the small terminal, itself.

They found
their driver, Tony, inside the terminal, planted in front of a television
watching a replay of Jim’s inauguration and enjoying the air conditioning. 
Thank
God for Hoover Dam,
Julie thought.  He started to get up but Helen waved
him back down, enjoying the cool air.  They watched the last few minutes of it
with him. 

Afterward, Tony
said, “Now this guy, I like.  He’s not taking no bull from nobody.  You know,
he cleaned the criminals out of Phoenix without batting an eye.  I hear his
people are doing the same thing across the country.  I got to meet him.  He’s a
good guy, I tell you.” 

Tony had to
have been in his sixties and had driven a cab in Vegas for the past 30 years.  He
was lean, but there was no telling if that was the effect of months of short
rations are if that was his normal state. 

Julie said,
“I’m glad to hear that.  It’s going to be tough times ahead.”

Tony answered,
“Are you kidding?  Nothing could be worse than January.  Nothing.  But he’s
gonna’ do okay for us.  Just wait and see.  Everyone I talk to thinks so.”

Tony filled
them in on the recent history of Las Vegas.  Unlike Phoenix, Las Vegas had done
reasonably well, considering.  The freeways were closed very early to entering
traffic, Metro, the local police department, hunted the gangs to near
extinction, and martial law was enforced with high power rifles. 

When it became
clear that the prisons could not be maintained, the inmates were abandoned in
their cells and the guards took the remaining food home with them.  The same
thing happened with the county jail. 

Essentially,
anyone who was a problem soon disappeared, whether the problem was excessive
freeloading or criminal behavior.  Yesterday’s juice didn’t mean anything
today, as a few casino executives, celebrities, and attorneys found out the
hard way.

Overall, the no
nonsense handling of things slowed the spread of the disease in the beginning,
and caused it to grind to a halt in later days.  Julie couldn’t imagine making
those decisions.  When she said that to Tony, he said, “This is a hard town. 
Nobody here has any time for stupid anymore.”  

Tony dropped
them off at the front gate of Nellis Air Force Base.  Fifteen minutes later
they were at the house that Helen’s parents were using.  It was huge.