A state of disobedience (22 page)

"Are you sure, Juani?"

"I'm sure. If those men in there can do what they seem determined to do then I'll be damned if those people in Washington are going to frighten me out of the air. We'll take the helicopter."

"That's my girl, Juani. . . ."

Elpidia had thought she was alone in the house. Normally—every day, of late—the governor had gone to her office, the father of the family to his, and even the youngest boy, Mario, to school long before Elpi even awakened.

The girl was surprised, therefore, to hear the sounds of sobbing, quiet but distinct, coming from the governor's home office.

Also quietly, Elpi walked to the door. Shyly she knocked.

"Who is it?" asked the governor in a quavering voice.

"
Solo yo, Gubanadora
 . . . just me, Governor, Elpi. I heard crying. Are you okay?"

Juani hastily dried her eyes on her sleeve and answered, "I'm fine Elpi," in a voice that gave the lie to the claim.

Elpi walked in, invited or not. "What's wrong?" she asked.

At the query Juani burst into fresh tears. She half bent and wrapped her arms around herself to try to control the trembling. Rocking back and forth she moaned over and over, "They're all going to die . . . they're all going to die . . ."

Elpi was literate in English, but freshly and barely so. She could make out the headlines from the newspaper laying on Juani's desk. "The Eyes of Texas are Upon You." She read a few lines, painfully slowly. It seemed to her that the state's free press was being a little irresponsible in putting any blame on the governor for the state of affairs. She came to the line, " . . . and the men who are about to die in Fort Worth . . ."

"Who is going to die?" the young girl asked.

It came out almost as a shriek, "All those men in the currency facility are going to die and who knows how many others? And it's all
my
fault . . . mine,
mine,
MINE! Oh why, oh
why
couldn't I just leave it alone? Why did I have to start this whole thing?"

Elpi walked over to Juanita and put a warm hand to her quaking back. When this did no good the girl bent her head down, resting a cheek upon the quivering shoulder of the Governor of Texas and whispered, "You didn't start anything. Neither did your brother. This was started by the people who throw riot police at people who protest killing little babies. It was started by people who attack churches and burn children alive."

"You didn't start it Governor . . . but you have to end it. You have to see us through this."

Twisting around, Juanita pulled the girl into her shoulder and sobbed, "I know."

Behind Juani, standing at the podium, a map of Texas and its surrounding states shone against a screen. News cameras panned across her, the screen, and on to the raptly listening legislators. This broadcast was going out live to Texans, and via continuous streaming on the Internet to the rest of the United States. A Chinese company had rented Texas the use of a satellite to bring the word to the rest of the world.

"This is what we know," began Juanita. Instantly, at Schmidt's direction, several dozen symbols appeared on the map behind her.

"To our west, just across the border with New Mexico, the bulk of the 1
^st
Marine Division and the Army's 3
^rd
Armored Cavalry Regiment stand poised to invade. To our north, in southern Oklahoma, is the Army's Third Corps. This force has in it the 1
^st
Cavalry Division, the 1
^st
Infantry Division, 4
^th
Infantry Division, and about two thirds of the 101
^st
Airborne Division, a helicopter heavy formation."

"East, in Oklahoma, is the 18
^th
Airborne Corps. This group has been reinforced by, again, about two thirds of the Second Marine Division. The rest consists of two brigades each from the 3
^rd
Infantry Division, the 82
^nd
Airborne Division, and the 10
^th
Mountain Division.

"Southwards, the Navy and a brigade of Marines are blocking our coast and poised to descend upon it. We have reports—reliable reports—that a portion of the 1
^st
Marine Division has boarded ship to pass through the Panama Canal to join the fleet assembling in the Gulf."

At this last bit of unpleasant news the legislators, those at least siding with Juanita, gave an audible groan.

Not everyone was on her side of course. Some were ambivalent, others hostile. Many were simply frightened and this news—though not unexpected in broad terms—made them more so.

Juani looked out, smiling, at a known opponent, Imogene Cochran, seated about center in the room. Imogene—pinch faced and severe—was of the rather rare far left variety of Texas Democrat. She returned Juani's smile with a sneer.

"We are prepared to fight them," Juanita announced baldly, voice ringing loud and clear through the hall. "On the Gulf Coast beaches, in the cities, in the towns, in the field . . . we are prepared to . . . but surely we do not want to," this last was spoken in a stage whisper.

"We will hold off from fighting until the very last extremity.

"Something else we know: officials named by the White House have been integrated into the regular armed forces down to battalion level. These men . . . and a few women . . . are backed by federal police forces and appear to have the duty of insuring that the orders of the White House are enforced."

Juani gave a smile that was perhaps slightly out of place. "It seems that Washington does not trust its own army. Kind of makes you wonder whether, if Washington doesn't trust the armed forces, perhaps—just maybe—
we
can."

Most of the legislators joined Juani's smile at the jest. Imogene merely looked furious.

Juani took a deep breath, steeling herself. The next part was going to be difficult. She pushed a button on the podium. The symboled map disappeared leaving a blank screen in its wake.

"Did you ever notice how, when Somali kids are starving, the papers and television screens are full of pitiful pictures? Did you ever notice how, when Kurdish kids are driven from their homes you can hardly pick up a magazine without being bombarded with big, innocent eyes? A California girl gets kidnapped and murdered and the media pastes her picture across the nation.

"Why do you suppose we've never seen a single picture of any of the kids burned alive in Waco?" She tapped the button on the podium once again and the screen behind her lit with a portrait of a smiling little Mexican girl.

"That's Josefina Sanchez." Juani tapped the button again and the screen split. On the right side appeared the obscenely charred corpse of a very small person, curled into a fetal position and holding a smaller bit of once-human charcoal between arms and chest. The legislators groaned.

"That is also Josefina Sanchez. In her arms is a little baby . . . what is left of one . . . named Pedro."

A tap of the button and the picture zoomed in to focus on the little shriveled bundle that had been found wrapped in Josefina's arms. Another tap and it focused further onto Pedro's face, little carbonized teeth faintly visible inside a burned and distorted mouth, empty eye sockets staring from blackened face.

Again she tapped the button and a full color picture of Pedro at his first birthday party appeared on the right side of the screen.
Thank God I didn't let Elpi come to this and told Mario not to let her near a television or computer,
thought Juani, fighting down her own gorge.

Juani continued to tap, interspersing normal pictures with pictures of the recovered, charred bodies. At each she announced a name, "Maria Ramirez, aged nine . . . Pablo Trujillo, aged eleven . . . Peter Smith, aged eleven . . . Colleen Drysdale, aged ten . . . Katherine Collins, aged eleven . . . David Robles . . ." About halfway through there was the sound of someone wretching.

"You have no right," shouted Imogene. "You have no right to show us these things. It isn't decent."

Juanita scowled. "No
right
, Imogene? No one had a right to do to these kids what was done to them. And you don't have a right to bury your head in the sand and ignore what was done to them. Admit it, that's the real crime in your mind. Not the killings, but upsetting
you
."
Bitch.
 

"Enough, anyway," Juani continued. "The rest of the pictures wouldn't show you all anything you don't know now.

"But you all needed to see
why
I decided to resist. It wasn't my brother and it wasn't even that . . . that . . . that bastard of a 'United States Commissioner for the State of Texas,' Forsythe, that Washington stuck me with. It wasn't the taxes and it wasn't the jobs and it wasn't even over the control they were taking in the schools.

"I just don't want to live, don't want any of our people to have to live, under a government that will do
this
; murder a bunch of kids then wrap itself in a shroud of sanctimonious hypocrisy and pretend nothing ever happened.

"One last thing before I go: we are about to be invaded. Washington will no doubt decide to call it something else . . . but an invasion is what it is. I am not going to ask every Texan to fight the invasion. In fact, except for those many thousands who have joined our National Guard and State Defense Force, I am going to ask the rest of the state
not
to fight.

"But I am going to ask, in fact I am going to beg of the people—here in Texas and elsewhere in the United States—do not fight . . . but do not cooperate. Block roads, interfere with supply columns, stop trains, swarm over airfields. In short, make this invasion impossible to supply and federal control impossible to maintain.

"If you will do this, I think we can win."

Hanstadt never did quite buy in to the whole nonviolent civil disobedience idea. It just wasn't in his nature. He measured things materially; so many guns, so many tons of rations, so many artillery shells . . . so much X . . . so many Y. That was what made him a prize as Schmidt's G-4 and something of a cipher for the governor's other plans.

"How many shells did you say came with those things?" he asked, pointing a finger at a passing CONEX on its way to Camp Bullis. He had to shout to be heard over the roar of massed diesels.

"Carl" answered, "Seven hundred fifty rounds, mixed high explosive, illumination and smoke, with each 85mm gun. two-fifty to three-fifty with the others. Plus you're getting a fair number of pure ammunition loads."

"And you say these things are self-propelled?"

"The SD-44s, the 85mm jobs, are
auxiliary
-propelled. That is, they have an engine, a steering wheel, a driver's seat and a small gas tank. For the 122s and 152 you're going to have to rig up something on your own and use civilian trucks."

"And the manuals are inside?"

"Every CONEX comes with a manual and firing table printed in Spanish. I figure you have enough Spanish speakers in Texas. Though, I've got to tell you, those manuals were translated from Chinese by people maybe none too good. You'll have some problems."

Hanstadt normally wouldn't look a gift horse in the mouth, but these guns were no gift. Texas had paid for them with the ships about to be seized while going through the Panama Canal. They had also forked over no small amount of cash for all the stock to Materiales de Seguridad, SA, the Mexican-incorporated, Panamanian-run arms company that had held these particular weapons.

He figured this entitled him to check the teeth. "Where and why did you get all of this? Why did you hide it?"

Carl hesitated before answering. Some of what Hanstadt was asking was very close-held. In the U.S. military and intelligence communities it would have been called "Special Compartmentalized Information." "We bought it from China, Russia and North Korea when this sort of thing was a glut on the market. We have kept almost two-thirds of it out of Panama expressly to avoid antagonizing the United States. And that is all I can say . . . except that some Panamanians have been in the surreptitious arms business for quite some time . . . TOW missiles to Iran in the 1980s . . . rifles and mortars for Croats in the 1990s . . . that sort of thing."

"Fair enough. Though I insist that it is
not
fair for you people to grab over five hundred newer and heavier guns we paid good money for and replace them with three hundred fifty lighter and older ones for even more money."

Carl shrugged. "General . . . if we didn't get them those arms were going to be seized anyway. We are also, as part of the deal, paying very good money to arrange a strike on the Panama Canal when that brigade from the 1
^st
Marine Division is stuck in the middle of Gatun Lake between the locks. That strike is going to cost us money and cost us
big
. You are hardly paying any more than what this is going to cost us and I think you should stop bitching about it. You are getting some artillery and you ought to be happy with that. Me, personally, I think my boss is making a mistake."

"A mistake? My ass. You're screwing us plain and simple."

Carl shrugged again and began to walk towards the line of tractors hauling the flatbed trailers northwards.

"Where are you going?" demanded Hanstadt.

"Why, I'm going to turn these trucks around since you seem to think the deal is so bad."

"Now wait a minute . . ."

"Then stop bitching about it."

From: True Faith and Allegiance: the American Military in a Time of Constitutional Crisis, Copyright 2067, Professor Samuel Horowitz, Harvard University Press.

It was well known. Indeed there had never been any doubt of the American military's sublime disgust with Wilhelmina Rottemeyer. No more had there been any doubt as to her distaste for her own armed forces. On the very day of her inauguration, an Air Force officer, one Colonel Douglas Farrell, apparently deliberately waiting for her to be sworn in in order to give his protest meaning, had pointedly and publicly voiced the opinion of nearly every serving officer and, it is widely believed, the bulk of the other ranks: "She's a rug-munching, acid-dropping, hippie-chick refugee from the '60s. I could live with all that. She's a national menace and
that
none of us should be willing to live with."