WAR (32 page)

“Everyone? You would even knock out power to our government?”

“President Rand was very clear to me on this point. If he turns off the power, this time it will be for everyone and it may be permanent.”

“Can you define permanent?”

“I think the term, you're looking for, is, forever; like you’ll be back to life in the mid 1800s. In addition, the LSA will be bankrupt. No one will loan you a dime, you owe trillions and I can assure you, every one of those loans will be called in.”

“We have resources that will see us through the rebuilding.”

“If you mean the counterfeit dollars you had the mint make, we’re taking care of those. We have samples of your artwork, we have made provisions to ensure none of the currency you made ever sees the light of day.”

“Sean, I have no knowledge that the funds in the mint’s vault aren’t real. President Booker told me we had a few trillion in US reserves. Since your currency is backed by precious metals, President Booker plans on calling in an exchange in gold.”

Sean breaks out laughing. “Wolf, don’t bullshit a bullshitter. I know when you’re lying as you are now. I hear the pitch of your voice change. You did that every time you tried to hide something on the television program. Listen to me; when I tell you we have plans that the cash will never see the light of day, trust me on this. As they say, you can take it to the bank.”

“Sean, how long do we have to respond?”

“Wolf for old times sake, I’ve been authorized to give you 96 hours.”

“I’ll get back to you with 96 hours. Sean?”

“What?”

“Thank you for giving us a chance to respond.”

“Wolf, do the right thing.”

@@@@@

Colonel Grover thinks to himself,
we were just about to fly home when the orders came to destroy their mint. If we don’t get out of here soon, they’ll have us running around blowing up post offices.
He and four staff finish planting explosives and flammable ignitors inside the LSA mint. “I think we deserve a good dinner, how about a steak?”

The four men nod in agreement. They drive to Morton’s Steak House where they walk in just as Wolf is exiting the private conference room. Grover notices Wolf holding his phone while shaking his head side to side. The Colonel whispers, “That’s Sean’s and Rash’s friend Wolf Bracken, he’s their new Minister of Media and Truth.”

An explosive Specialist says, “You mean they have their own Sean?”

“Yes, let’s see whose he’s having dinner with. Maybe we can have some fun with him before we go home.”

The men nod in agreement while smiling like hungry sharks.

@@@@@

Russian General Leninkov meets US Marine Commandant Wilcox at the entrance of his command post. “Welcome General Wilcox. I’m sorry to be seeing you again under such circumstances.”

“General Leninkov I’m sorry for the loss of your people. I wish things had gone differently.”

“General Wilcox, by differently do you mean, that we would have caught your forces in a trap?”

“No, I meant that you and your forces wouldn’t be here in my country. Now we have to deal with the damage and the dead. We could have remained friends had you stayed home and not been talked into this foolishness.”

Looking down while standing at attention, “General Wilcox, I too wish I had stayed home. Come, I have a list of our survivors for you. I also have a list of the dead or missing.”

“Thank you. I’m ready to sign the surrender document.” General Leninkov unbuckles his side arm handing it to the US Marine General
.

Removing the bullets, General Wilcox hands the side arm back to the Russian General. “General, I would no more take your sword than your side arm. Before the military police come to take you and your people to a secure location, why don’t we spend a few minutes together? There're a few issues I’d like to discuss with you.”

“General Wilcox, I’d be honored to spend some time with you.”

“General, there’s an officer’s mess set up around the corner, let’s grab a cup of coffee.”

“Do you serve Vodka at your officer’s mess?”

General Wilcox laughs, “Sorry General, we’re limited in the field to water, soft drinks, coffee, tea and sometimes hot chocolate. On base, we have full bars.”

“Coffee will be fine. I just happen to have this small flask of brandy to help take the nip out of the air.”

Both Generals walk towards a newly built officer’s mess tent; they are surrounded by General Wilcox’s protection detail which consists of six military police and five senior FBI agents. General Leninkov looks at their escort, “You are very important to rate this level of security.”

“General Leninkov, they are here for your protection.”

“For mine?”

“Yes, to keep locals and some of the militias away from you. They fear for your life. Since you surrendered, we won’t let anything to happen to you which may cause us to step back to the brink of war. Your surrender most likely saved the world from a very messy World War 3. I’m sorry you lost most of your battalions.”

“To be honest with you, I never thought you had the balls to drop the garage on us. I thought your people were too soft. I thought you wouldn’t want to cause collateral damage. The loss of your shopping center must be in the hundreds of millions.”

“Our other options were to wait for you to exit the garage, we could have met you with massed missile and tank fire, most likely stopping you. It would also have cost us our lives and might have caused a lot of civilian lives. Of course, we could have come in after you, in which case you would have held the best defensive positions, we would have pounded each other until one side ran out of ammo. Both sides would have lost a lot of people.”

“I thought you would try to drop your penetrator bombs on us. I dispersed my tanks and people so a single bomb would have hurt, but not been fatal to us. I didn’t think you’d try to enter to engage us. We were going to break out at midnight tonight.”

“I thought you would break out tonight which is why we moved against you today. We couldn’t take the chance of you breaking out and making it into the city. Once you got inside of D.C., all of our options were bad.”

“I don’t know if I’d say your options were all bad. If your politicians are anything like ours, we might have done you a favor by hitting them.”

Laughing General Wilcox responds, “I’d be happy to give you some of them to take home with you. Would you like a few souvenirs from our political class to take home with you? We won’t charge you for an export fee.”

Laughing, General Leninkov replies, “General, I was going to offer to send you some of ours.”

“We have enough of our own. How about we both ship the ones we don’t want someplace else. Maybe a nice island. We can arrange for them to meet every other day to discuss how we’re going to end this war before it gets out of control.”

“Da. The politicians make war that we shed blood for, afterward they forget about us, they use us like yesterday’s newspapers. They all have forked tongues, none to my knowledge speaks the truth.”

“We have a few that are good men.”

“I know you do. I studied your President Brownstone. He’s a politician who impresses me. He doesn’t act or speak like a normal politician.”

Laughing General Wilcox replies, “General that’s because he’s not a politician. He was the Commandant of the US Marines. He’s one of us. He’s a warrior, which is why when he tells another nation not to cross him, he means it. He only speaks the truth. He’s never sent a man or woman in uniform on a one-way mission. He’s advising President Rand.”

“That explains why we ran into resistance. Doesn’t it?”

“We were led to believe your President Rand would not counterattack in his own capital. We were told that you would issue threats and bluffs, phony red lines in the sand, none that meant a thing. In the end, you would give us what we wanted and we would go home. Tell me. General Wilcox, what happens to my surviving people now?”

“They will be checked by our medical people and then you and they will be sent home.”

“He told me that. I didn’t believe it, but he was right. You don’t have gulags?”

“We’re not the LSA. We don’t have political prisoners. I think some of what you heard about us isn’t true. By the way, who is he?”

“General Marshal Avdotya. He’s our new acting President. He was in STAVKA’s bunker when your space based weapons took out President Grameniko’s bunker. Your space weapon took out our civilian leadership.”

“Thank you. We knew we struck the location above ground of Grameniko’s bunker, we didn’t know if we’d actually hit it.”

“You got it alright. You destroyed it, I understand there’s nothing left but a hole in the ground.”

“General, what do you think General Chekov is going to do in Las Vegas?”

“The General Marshal told us both to surrender. He told us you’d send us home if we surrendered. He was right. You are sending us home.”

“Can you reach Chekov?”

“I have his radio codes if that’s what you mean.”

“Yes, would you be willing to contact him, ask him to follow your lead and surrender. It would save a lot of lives.”

“I’m willing to contact him.”

Holding a cup of hot coffee in one hand, General Leninkov contacts General Chekov, “General, I want you to know I have surrendered what’s left of my forces to the Americans. They are treating us very well. The Marshal was correct, they are going to send us home, they don’t have political prisons.”

“I might consider surrendering if I wasn’t under attack by unknown forces.”

“I’ll talk with US Marine General Wilcox, we should be able to arrange a cease-fire.”

“Let me know, right now, I’ll a little busy to talk right now, call me back if he can arrange a cease-fire.”

@@@@@

Wolf stands in front of President Booker, “President Booker, Sean told me President Rand is giving us 96 hours to respond to their offer.”

“Wolf, I thought you understood the American politicians better. You reported on them for over twenty years. This is a bluff. Rand had Sean contact you because he knows your friends. You trust him, so naturally you listened to what he had to say. You know damned well Rand isn’t going to do anything that may harm the civilians, he really believes he speaks for them. There’s nothing he can or will do to us. Anyway, don’t worry about them, they are going to have much larger issues to deal with than us.”

“Mr. President, what do you mean?”

“I’m calling on every African-American in the USA to rise up and overthrow the yoke of the government’s oppression. When I make the call, their citizens will rebel; my people will not listen to the local police who everyone knows are racist. My people will destroy the link that holds their communities together. They will attack the police thereby bringing civil disorder to every community. The USA government will have more on their hands to deal with than us. They’ll leave us alone if I promise to call off the riots in their cities. They are going to need all of their forces to contain the violence that my people are going to create, they are going to rip the heart out of their cities.”

“Mr. President, we have a lot of your people here in the LSA, how do we know those in the LSA won’t rise up to overthrow us?”

“Wolf, why would they want to overthrow us? We’re all equal, we provide nice homes, full bellies, and free education for everyone in the LSA. We don’t force people to work, we don’t force drug tests on them before we give them benefits. We don’t cut off their payments if they don’t look for work, or if they have more than two children out of wedlock with different fathers. We’re what my people asked for. We even provided them with a fund to compensate them for the years of slavery.”

“That’s one item in our benefits program I don’t understand. None of the people we make payments to was a slave. None of them were alive when there was slavery. Why are we making payments to people who don’t have a standing to sue for something that happened to some of their maybe ancestors. Almost none could prove their ancestors were really slaves.”

“Wolf, their skin color alone meant they grew up disadvantaged, it’s our progressive duty to help them.”

“Mr. President, I don’t want to shift the conversation, but someone or other has been helping them for sixty years and the number of poor always increases.”

“Wolf, you sound like a Republican. What’s come over you? Did spending time with Sean change you? Should we issue a new rule that none of our people can spend more than a few hours with someone from the USA? Is it like the flu or some illness that goes from person to person? You’re not the same Wolf I thought I knew and not the person I appointed to be the Minister of Truth. Tell me what happened to you?”

“Sir, nothing happened to me. I’m just asking for proof we’re making the lives of those in the inner cities better. I see the improvements in the lives of those in the middle class and suburbs. I see the happy families who no longer worry about being laid off or having their hours reduced. I see the rows of nice homes, I see the new cars in driveways, I see the many happy people. I see the new schools, the factories, the full shopping centers. When I look at the inner cities, I don’t see a lot of change. I see the same people sitting on their stoops, I see the same people walking the streets, the same people waiting for their government check to arrive.”