Don Pendleton - Civil War II (23 page)

"Our nation is occupied by military might. In each of our states at least one city has sustained massive destruction of property—though, oddly enough, with very small loss of life. Assassins have been at woTk, however, in each of the state capitals and of course, here in Washington. And everywhere, if these reports are any indication, black troops with massive firepower and certainly with the capability for rampaging terrorism merely sit and watch. What are they watching for? Eyes upon the nation, America.
Eyes
more than
hands.

"The facts seem to be these. A sort of limited and unusual form of military coup has taken place. Limited and unusual, I say, because there have been no direct moves upon the chief seat of government. Our Congress remains intact, though adjourned. Our President remains in the White House. No proclamations have as yet been issued to establish military rule. No attempt has been made to seize communications networks.

"We
are,
however, very definitely a nation occupied. And something more than a coup is suggested by our present situation. Using simple mathematical extrapolation, FBS has established an estimate of the number of troops in the occupying forces. This reliable estimate amounts to a staggering sum, nearly one hundred

186

times more than the known strength of our army regular combat forces.

"This nation is blanketed, ocean to ocean, Canada to Mexico, with grimfaced soldiers of an occupation
force. II
all the black, uniformed men who now calmly gaze upon America are indeed themselves Americans, then it would seem that the entire black nation is participating in this action. And this, it appears, is indeed the case. The only alternative is much worse. If these black troops are not Americans . . . then they are Africans. And if they are Africans, then the charges of treason in high places are indeed ominous. Let us pray that these are American Macks wearing our uniforms ... and let us so assume.

"Perhaps it is now appropriate that the people of the United States re-direct their questions. Perhaps now we should ask the White House: what do
you
intend to do? Black soldiers are camped on the White House grounds, directly outside your windows. Their tanks prowl our streets, unopposed and unchallenged. Their bayonets point at our unprotected bellies. Dozens of our great cities he in rubble. Every executive branch of government throughout these states has ceased to exist, including your very own.

"How does the AMS Society get itself out of this predicament, Mr. President? Which slot do we feed for personal protection? Which one for national survival? You have been telling us for most of two decades that AMS is the purest form of democracy and the most certain solution to our racial problems. Look out your window, Mr. President, and tell us: do we still have that solution?

"And please, sir, do not speak to us in vague terms of foreign plots, of unlikely traitors or of the great American dream. Do not flower your answer with mentions of patriots, of fine old institutions, of inferior and superior races, of noble instruments of government. Simply look out your window, Mr. President, and tell us where we go from here.

"This is Howard Silverman saying good day from Washington. May we—God willing—meet again."

Silverman peered somberly into the camera until the red light winked out, then be sighed and pushed his chair away

from the desk. Lou Washburn, the technical director, j moved nervously to the desk and declared, "Jesus, Howie, you're going to get hanged from the highest point in Washington."

Silverman sighed and tried to fish a cigarette from a crumpled pack. "It's the end of an era, Louie," he said, with a tired smile. "For us, anyway. All I've done for twenty years is bitch about things. But never where it could be heard."

The cigarette package was empty. Washburn handed the newsman a smoke and lit it, then peered at him with troubles eyes. "The word is run.
Run,
Howie, not walk."

"What's that you have there?" Silverman asked, glancing at the paper.

"Came in just as you were winding up, so I held it. It's their manifesto."

The newsman took the creased message paper and opened it, grunted something unintelligible, then began reading intently. He finished the reading, then raised clouded eyes to his companion. "Well, that answers all the questions," he quietly declared. "But it's not the end to anything."

CHAPTER 2

Abraham Williams was bringing Mike Winston up to date regarding the history of Negro thought during fifteen years erf institutionalized servitude. "AMS was the final straw," he pointed out. "That's what really broke our backs. Just as Arlington knew it would. The guy that controls your pocketbook controls
you,
and I guess it's the oldest idea in history. All the kings and emperors used it, the commies used it, and I guess every power bloc has used it, consciously or not. Economic power is the ultimate power. When Arlington AMS'd this country he knew exactly what he was doing."

"The first American
coup d'etat,"
Winston commented.

"That's right. I don't think he could have pulled it off except for the condition the country was in. Everyone in panic, people going hungry, the economy in disarray. The population flowing back to the land. AMS seemed like the logical blueprint to a lot of people to get the country back in shape. Not many people realized they were selling their souls to a devil machine. The
black
people least of all. We couldn't get anyone to believe that those litde cards weren't the goldmines Arlington promised. The majority of blacks had gone to the cities anyway, and nobody would take them back on the land. The minority of us who still owned land were pushovers for the power bloc. They AMS'd us right out of there and into the Towns, and it wasn't done all that gently either."

Winston murmured, "Yes I remember the land sweeps."

"So do a lot of us," Williams said, sighing. "I had twenty acres of the prettiest, rolling. ... Ah don't let me start talking about that."

"They threw you off," Winston said quietly.

"Yeah. The law of eminent domain. Sounds nice and legal, doesn't it." The black man smiled ruefully. "Well, I'm digressing. What was I. . . ? Oh yeah. It was in the autumn of '88 when most of us finally started singing the same tune. By then most of the hotheads had cooled somewhat and the upbeat ideas were beginning to sound more inspirational than the 'burn, baby, burn' dialogue. Don't—uh—don't think that Norm Ritter's attitudes are the prevailing ones. And don't sell Ritter himself short. He runs around making bad noises, I know, but I believe most of it is show. He's a deep one, really. You never know what the man is really thinking. Personally, I admire Ritter.

"To give you a bit of insight into this guy, Mike ... he lost his wife and baby in the Oregon land purge of '87. Not to violence, nothing like that. But conditions were appalling in some of those temporary relocation centers. You'd have to live through it to know. Gertrude Ritter and the baby just weren't physically up to it. They died of pneumonia. And they weren't the only ones to go that way. I had it better than some. I was at the Camp Roberts Center, for three months only .The weather was pretty good, and there happened to be a health service medic there who believed that nigger babies needed vitamins and things the same as white babies. My kids came through okay. But this is all old history. I want to give you the late history.

"After the agreement of '88 we began quietly bringing the scattered black community together—in the soul, I mean. And we began to understand just what it was they'd done to us. And we decided that we were not going to accept it this time. No more slavery, not by any name. We got a dialogue going with the government niggers, and Ritter became our go-between with the military. He arranged the first meeting between General bogan and meWe've had direct rapport now since the summer 92.' with all elements of the government community-the blacks, I mean. What few holdouts there were came over quickly when Arlington entered the White House."

"You were going to tell me about the philosophy," Winston quietly reminded his host.

"Yes. Well we thought, see, maybe this entire terrible thing could be worked for the eventual good of the black man in America. What have we ever had, Michael? I mean, actually
hacP.
Nothing. Except a few dreams, a lot of promises, much talk about equality and freedom and opportunity. But it was all emptiness. They niggered us to death. The white people really did not want us to have those things, you see. They didn't applaud our few advances. They niggered us about them. And they squealed with delight every time we fell on our faces. And we began to realize that we'd come full circle in this country. We started in slavery, as nothing more than the white man's tool, we'd gone around the horn and landed on the shores all over again, and nothing had changed.

"These towns are nothing more than government reservations, Michael. So, like I said, we got to thinking. Maybe the thing could be turned to our better good. And that was the way we went at it. We began to look at all the suffering of the seventies and the frustrations of the eighties as the nicest thing anybody had ever done for us. They'd given us
back
to
ourselves,
you see.

"And we began to build hope again. We'd been running around half crazy from the forties to the seventies, three decades of insanity, trying to hack a trail through that white jungle out there. And, in the process, we'd lost sight of ourselves and of our true place in the American society. The white man had lost sight of us, also. The Negro image was terribly distorted, entirely out of focus.

"Most Negroes, Michael—and I say this in all sincerity, most Negroes want the same things that most white people want. We want food on the table when we're hungry. We want nice clothes. We want things and opportunities for our kids. We want to feel a bit of pride now and then, and—well, just like all people everywhere, Michael, we want the respect of our fellow man. And what really rankled, you see, was the terrible feeling that the white man was determined that we weren't going to have those things. If it hadn't been for that, the Rap Browns and Stokely Carmichaels and the black bigots could have yelled until they were blue in the face and nobody would have paid them any mind. But, see, that's what made Rap and Stokely scream too. Those same things."

"I guess so," Winston murmured.

"Yeah. Well, this was the framework we hung everything together on. We knew we had to have the power, first of all. And the way Arlington immediately began demilitarizing, we knew we'd have no real trouble in that area. The only reason, now the
only
reason that the old man cut back so severely on the armed forces is because he was scared silly at the thought of all those armed blacks. And he wasn't willing to pay the price to hire good white men to bear aims. So he demilitarized. We had Automated Defense anyway, he reasoned, so who the hell needed a standing army—especially a standing army of
blacks.

"Well, General Bogan could tell you something about that decision. He says that there was no way, not with ADS or anything else, that we could've turned back a determined massive invasion by the Chinese—not the way Arlington went. And the old man knew it, too. Yet he played dice with national security in his determination to keep us pent up in those towns.

"We got the power and we knew we could come out of those towns any damn time we wanted to. But there was a rub. Power could get us out, yeah. But it couldn't
keep
us out, not unless we wanted to become prisoners to our own freedom. See? We don't want to
occupy
this country, 'til doomsday, Mike. We want to
live
here as equal American citizens, in dignity and with respect. We knew that we needed a political base. We needed someone to stand up and arouse the conscience of the nation all over again—and this time, by God, we'd make it work right. We'd make them give us good government and rockbound guarantees that this sort of crap would never happen again.

"And that was the hardest part, getting a political base. Most people in the white community who we knew would be receptive to our cause had just run flat out of time. They were old. They wanted no part in any harebrained scheme to overthrow the nation by force. They could see themselves, I'm sure, hanging from their wheelchairs. And I couldn't blame them.

"The point is, we had a tough time. We very strongly considered asking President Tromanno to represent us—he was the greatest white friend we'd ever had, and I guess we damn near got him hung the first time around. But... we were thinking about asking him to lay it out for us again. Our contacts told us the old man was just barely clinging to life, so we left him alone. He's got a place up in—"

"Yes I know," Winston cut in. "I saw him just last night. He's alive and well, and he's probably still your greatest friend. But your information was correct. He is very frail."

Williams shrugged. "So you see our problem. There were some we could have recruited whom I wouldn't have had on a bet. The wild-eyes ones, you know. Those guys are suffering their own special brand of insanity.
We
sure didn't need it. Anyway, Arlington knows about that bunch, and they're kept under pretty close watch.

"So we started in '96 trying to line up some intelligent white sympathy to our plan. As of yesterday, when you walked in on us unannounced, I had enlisted five white men to help. Good men. I have them now, and they constitute the provisional government." The big black man sighed and added, "They're far from the best I would like to have . . . but they're good men."