After America (21 page)

“Jed, can you make sure Tommy Franks gets that stuff from Kinninmore? Especially this fedayeenie-whatsit business. Today.”

“Fedayeen. And it’s already done,” Culver said, smiling tightly and waving his mil-grade
PDA
. “I’ve scheduled it as an item for discussion at
NSC
. Second on the list.”

“What’s first?” Kip asked, wondering what could squeeze out a report of possible foreign interference in the pirate war.

“Well, I’m afraid you’re not going to like it, sir, but we do need to get to grips with this Blackstone situation.”

Always back to Blackstone. Kip could feel his facial muscles tighten with anger as Jed held up one hand and begged his indulgence.

“I know, Mister President, that you think it’s near the bottom of the priority list, and having him down there running wild means fewer federal resources going into border security along the El Paso,” Jed said.

“Look, I don’t like Mad Jack any more than you do, Jed. But he
was
elected. And you may have noticed that we are a bit short of resources,” Kip said.

Even Tommy Franks had pestered him about the importance of controlling the center of the continent, which was part of why there was a heavy federal outpost in Kansas City. But in Kip’s eyes Texas just didn’t seem worth the aggravation, regardless of what the history books and his own advisers said. If Blackstone wanted to play out some frontier fantasy down there, let him have it. For now. He was still an American. He’d been voted into the governorship fair and square. As big an asshole as he was proving to be, he was a duly elected asshole and that was that. It wasn’t like a foreign state had set up shop down there.

“Sir,” said Culver, undaunted as usual. “We have to start looking at Blackstone as a major impediment to reconstruction a few years down the path. If we don’t get this little dictator slapped into line, we are going to lose control of the South forever. He’s not making any bones about that.”

“The whole Republic of Texas thing is a joke,” Kipper said. “I’ve been reading up on your briefings. They weren’t able to make it work in the 1830s, and I do not see how they’ll make it work now. Blackstone can bluster on about holding as many referendums as he wants. Nobody outside of Fort Hood is going to vote to break up the union.”

Jed leaned forward in his seat. “It’s ‘referenda,’ and it is no joke, Mister President. Jackson Blackstone
was
legitimately elected territorial governor in 2005, which makes it very difficult for us to challenge his position. It’s not like that last little coup by stealth he tried after the Wave. What’s more, he has plenty of allies in Seattle who would like to see Texas fast-tracked to independence. The reality on the ground, as the military likes to say, is that neither Blackstone nor his territorial legislature respects the authority of Congress or you, or the courts, or anything other than the threat of the 101st jumping in there to smack him upside the head. And sir, we are getting to a point where I doubt the army will be able to do it. For every officer we have like Kinninmore, Blackstone has three, and for every solid soldier we have, Blackstone has anywhere from three to seven, most of them disgruntled veterans.”

“I don’t understand why they’re so disgruntled,” Kipper said morosely. He didn’t understand at all, on any level, why so many former members of the U.S. Armed Forces had gone down to Blackstone’s self-styled Republic of Texas. Kip was taking care of their health needs and providing them with preferential hiring privileges and free education in a society that did not have much time for such things these days. They got fast-track placements into both the urban and regional resettlement programs. They were exempt from the various compulsory labor laws, yet they
still
went to Texas. Meanwhile, those who stayed under the federal banner often took advantage of the benefits while supporting the rump Republicans, which was a real kick in the head. Not all of them, by any means, but a sufficient number to inflame his acid reflux on a daily basis.

“Different dreams,” said his chief of staff in answer to Kip’s question. “We haven’t offered them a better one. Blackstone has. He is growing and hardening his forces, Mister President, and if you’ll excuse me pushing the metaphor perhaps a tad too far, we are gonna get fucked because of it.”

Kipper couldn’t help but smile in spite of the sense of frustration that welled up as a bilious taste at the back of his throat whenever he was forced to give due consideration to the antics of Jackson Blackstone. Jed would not let this dog lie, and Kipper supposed he would one day have to thank him for that, but right at the moment, the renegade former general turned politician and his Southern political machine were hardly a more pressing issue than the small war that apparently had broken out in the city below them.

He stole a quick glance out of the small window to his left and shook his head at the dismal scene of a large part of Manhattan shrouded in smoke and flames, with the flash of bomb bursts and rockets clearly visible in the dark gray canyons below midtown as long sparkling chains of yellow and green tracer fire lashed up from street level.

The door guns opened up, spewing a stream of red light down on the city, spattering their rounds against the streets. Lucifer tearing the curtains of Hell came to Kipper’s mind as the brass tinkled away from
Marine One.
Riflemen took their positions at the rear of the cabin, opening the windows to get a clear shot at whatever might try to kill them. Kipper saw Corporal Peckham swivel his door gun as his brother directed the rest of the detail over his headset.

“RPG! Evasive!” one of the riflemen roared.

Kipper gripped his armrest as the chopper dipped and dropped to the right so suddenly that his stomach felt as though he’d left it a few hundred feet higher up. The door gunner opened up again on an unknown target beneath them, and he caught a black flash out of the corner of his eye as one of the Super Cobras screamed away to lay fire on whatever had caused them to maneuver so violently. The machine gun fire cut off abruptly, and he felt the chopper settle into a new heading that took them directly away from the island. Both Kip and Jed were used to the extremes of flying out of contested airspace, and neither man bothered to check with the air crew. For their part, the crew did not interrupt the presidential party, in line with orders Kipper had issued long ago to just get on with their jobs and not waste time briefing him on every little scare and mishap during flight.

Marine One
powered higher above the Manhattan skyline until they were well out of reach of everything short of a decent surface-to-air missile. The marine detail eased back from the windows and returned to their seats, allowing Kipper to refocus on Jed. He sighed heavily, trying to gather his thoughts. It was more a protracted grunt of annoyance, really, and he rubbed his eyes, which were hot and gritty with a lack of sleep.

“Why, Jed? Why now?” he asked over the ringing in his ears from the gunfire. “Don’t you think I have enough on my plate out here without starting another fight down South? Mad Jack
loves
it when I get on his case. He fucking lives for it.”

Culver reached into a briefcase on the floor between his legs. It was a battered old brown leather satchel that he carried with him everywhere, and Kip was certain it must be a relic of his former life as an attorney. It was out of character, because Jed Culver was a man who even now dressed in only the finest clothes and still wore expensive aftershave, but in Kip’s experience most people liked to keep something of the old days close to them, and he assumed that the briefcase was a talisman of sorts for his chief of staff.

Jed passed across an unmarked manila folder that Kip opened to find three sheets of paper and a couple of poorly focused low-res color photos. The printout was a long list of place names and dates followed by notations that made little sense to Kipper. The first read:

• Baker Lake/Madison/14-March-07/Pieraro/TDF-Bravo 2/14 …/13CC
  

“I’m sorry, Jed. What does all this mean?”

Jed tapped the top of the sheet Kipper was holding.

“What it means, Mister President, in the first case there, for instance, is that soldiers from Bravo Company, Second Infantry Battalion of the Texas Defense Force, entered the property of one of our homesteaders, a Miguel Pieraro, three months ago. There they found fourteen members of the Pieraro clan dead. Killed by bandits, according to the
TDF
report. The state authorities then seized the property and reallocated it to their own settler program under the agreement we signed with them to ensure the Federal Mandates did not lie fallow.”

Kipper found himself grinding his teeth together. He felt a sick sort of anger curling tightly in his stomach.

“Bandits, they reckon? And three months ago?” Kipper asked. “Why so long to let us know?”

Culver shrugged. “Travel time required to get the dispatches back to Corpus Christi, according to Fort Hood.”

“Bullshit.”

“Of course.”

Kipper fought to get his temper under control. He looked at the name on the file again. Pieraro. It didn’t ring a bell, but he did recall a clear blue day more than two years ago on the deck of an aircraft carrier filled with homesteaders down at Corpus Christi. The photo op included pressing the flesh and handing out warrants for homesteads throughout Texas. A delegation from Fort Hood had been there, watching the ceremony and promising that they would protect the new homesteaders. Governor Blackstone had been notably absent.

“Want in one hand, shit in the other,” Kipper muttered.

“What’s that, Mister President?” Jed asked.

“Never mind. The fourteen dead homesteaders. Was that all of them?”

“No, sir. Pieraro himself and one of his children, a girl called Sofia, were not found. That doesn’t tell us anything, though.”

Kipper examined the sheet of paper again. There were dozens of entries, some with subtle differences that he picked up after a moment. He held the report up to Jed, pointing at a word he didn’t understand.

“What does ‘ivet’ mean?”

“Involuntary transfer,” Jed replied. “Deportation. The Pieraro homestead was attacked and emptied out by bandits, according to Fort Hood. But some of those other cases detail settlers in the Federal Mandate who’ve been evicted by Texas Defense Force personnel on Blackstone’s orders. Usually citing disagreements over the extent of the Mandate.”

Kipper felt a world-class headache sharpening itself up for an assault on his skull. He rubbed his forehead irritably, continuing to read the report. “And K.I.T.O.P.?”

“Killed in transfer operation,” Jed said flatly.

That sick bilious taste was rising in his gorge again. “I see. And when did we get this information?” the president asked.

Culver essayed an apologetic dip of the head.

“I’ve been on at the
FBI
to collate the figures for about five months now, sir. They have a field office in Corpus Christi, but as you can imagine, it is understaffed, overwhelmed, and mainly dedicated to fraudulent salvage contracts. They finally put someone on this full-time when we got confirmation of the first kitops.”

Kipper frowned at the ugly acronym.

“Murder,” he said. “The first murders, you mean.”

Culver nodded at the photographs behind the printout. “A bureau agent managed to get coverage of a transfer in progress just outside a town called Groveton in Trinity County.”

Kip examined the photographs properly for the first time, and his face twisted into a contorted mask of disgust. The images were poor, probably shot from a great distance, but there was no mistaking the story they told. A small group of men, women, and children were being beaten by a larger number of uniformed men. One of the photos appeared to show one of the victims being shot.

“Jesus H. Christ,” he breathed. “How extensive is … this …”

Words failed him, and he simply waved the folder at Culver.

“We’re still compiling data, sir. And you have to remember that we don’t control the south any more than we control Manhattan. Less so in some ways because we’re not challenging Blackstone down there like we are challenging these bastards up here.”

Kipper ignored the tone of rebuke that Jed had allowed to creep into his delivery.

“But as best we can tell,” Culver continued, “over six hundred of our homesteaders have been driven off their land. Only a hundred and twelve have made it back to a federal facility. Now,” Culver added hurriedly, “that doesn’t mean the
TDF
killed them. Texas in particular is crawling with genuine bandits and freebooters. There’s also the road agents, outlaw gangs, but the
FBI
believes they are operating with the tacit assistance of Fort Hood. Chances are that most of our people fell afoul of these agents. But it is undeniable that there have been instances where lethal force has been used by the
TDF
when transfer was resisted. And as terrified as the refugees were of the
TDF
, they were even more frightened of any encounters with the road agents.”

Kipper pressed his lips together and took a moment to calm himself. He gazed around the cabin, taking in the crouched, watchful posture of Corporal Peckham at his door gun and nodding to Agent Shinoda, who was drinking from a water bottle while hanging on to a grab bar near the marines at the back of
Marine One.

“Lets not dress it up any fancier than need be,” he said, turning his attention back to Jed Culver. “Lethal force, involuntary transfer. It’s all bullshit, Jed. We’re talking about murder and ethnic cleansing. And you’re right. I’m sorry. We do need to do something about it.”

Salisbury Plain, England

The large faded yellow and red poster read:
WARNING
TO
THE
PUBLIC
.
DANGER
FROM
UNEXPLODED
SHELL
AND
MORTAR
BOMBS
. The words in the middle of the sign were faded beyond legibility, but the last sentence, IT
MAY
EXPLODE
, didn’t leave much room for doubt that a world of hurt lay around them. The effect was lessened by the pole to which the poster was affixed leaning over at thirty degrees, creating a definite air of neglect, but Caitlin could hear the distant thud of munitions and, occasionally, when Dalby’s little car crested a ridgeline, she could make out the dark, heavy shapes of armored vehicles maneuvering through the mist and rain in the distance. Some of them were still painted desert tan, most likely former U.S. Army Abrams and Bradley tanks given to Britain as collateral for her materiel support since the Wave. A mountain of U.S. military equipment and more than a few personnel to maintain and operate it had been “permanently loaned” to a handful of allies in a variation of the lend-lease arrangements from World War II. Although the signage appeared to be neglected, Salisbury Plain itself was alive with thousands of troops training in the wet, filthy conditions.