"Nonetheless, that's what I want. At the first sign of a federal move near or behind you, drop the bridges and run back to the next set. Fight only as a last resort . . . though you can—and I want you to—make them think you are going to fight if you can figure out how to do that."
"Warning shots?"
"Maybe . . . with care . . . if they push too hard. But if you must fire, fire to frighten, not to kill or wound."
"That's one tall goddamned order, general, if you don't mind my saying so."
"There are people who are going to risk as much, colonel, and they won't have tanks to fall back on."
* * *
Las Cruces, New Mexico
The legislature had voted, the people had assembled, the busses had come and gone.
New Mexico was not quite yet ready to join Texas' protest in the way Texas was protesting. Neither was it ready to leave a neighbor in the lurch. "You just don't do that, in the American southwest; you pitch in and help." That was what Governor Garrison had told the Legislature before they voted.
What had they voted for, then? They voted to pay for transportation and food, to pay for their own national guard to set up tents for, and to provide food and water for anyone willing to go to the Army and Marine Corps assembly areas near Las Cruces to protest the coming invasion of Texas. They also cast a vote for the First Amendment, especially with regards to the news media. Lastly, New Mexico had voted to send the bulk of its own national guard, one very fine brigade—the "best by test" in any component of the U.S. Armed Services—of air defense artillery to join Texas' Forty-ninth Armored Division, along with the state's other combat support unit, a battalion of six-inch self-propelled guns.
And as the Air Defense Brigade and artillery had gone, so, answering a freed, and more than a little annoyed, news media, the people had come. Not so many, of course, in any objective sense; New Mexico was not a populous state. Yet there were enough. From Lordburg, from Deming, from Alamogordo and Albuquerque, from Socorro and Santa Fe, they came. They came in numbers enough to block the highways through Las Cruces; to block the flow of fuel and parts and ammunition to the cavalrymen and marines rotting in dusty tent cities between Las Cruces and El Paso.
And those people sat on the roads and would not move.
Normally, of course, the armed forces would have called on the local police authorities to disperse the protesters.
"That's not going to work here," muttered the commander of the Marines. "I don't even want to ask. Hell, the State Police are out there with the protesters, keeping order."
"We could clear them out ourselves, sir," answered an aide. "Or tell the Army to do it."
"No, Johnny. The cavalry colonel has already told me, in so many words, 'Don't ask.' And I don't know what we'll do if the police and the guard open fire. Then too, what will those Texas boys at El Paso do if it does turn nasty?"
"No," the marine sighed. "No. We'll buck this one up to higher."
* * *
Washington, DC
"It's spreading," said McCreavy, simply, to Rottemeyer.
"What's spreading?" asked the President.
"The 'Rebellion,' if you want to call it a rebellion."
Rottemeyer forced a calm into her voice she didn't quite feel, suppressing a shudder in her stomach she very much felt. "What now?"
"New Mexico. The Army and Marine force there is cut off from supply by protesters. The government down there is supporting the protesters, supporting them strongly."
"Define 'strongly.' "
"Transportation. Supply. Housing . . . of a sort. Police protection." McCreavy hesitated slightly, then added, "Military protection, too, though they have ordered most of what they had to Texas."
"And this means to us? To our plans?"
"It means that that force can go to El Paso and maybe a hundred miles beyond. Maybe less; the supply usage factors have hardly been updated since the Second World War and they are probably unrealistically conservative. In any case, when they run out they stop for lack of gas. Then they die for lack of water. The protesters . . . I should say the police . . . are letting enough water and food through now."
Carroll, ashen-faced, added, "It's . . . umm . . . worse than that, Willi. The state has ordered police protection for newspaper editors and other media types. Project Ogilvie is dead in New Mexico . . . dead for now anyway. We're having to beef up efforts in the adjoining states to keep them down."
Carroll gave a rueful and reluctant smile. " 'Course, not all the reporters are being too very brave. The state can't protect all of them from us; only the major editors, really. So the reporters are, some of 'em, using bylines like 'Spartacus' and 'Frederick Douglass'—I'm pretty sure I know who that one is. He's black, the treacherous, short-sighted bastard."
"Shit. Can we switch some police down to New Mexico to disperse the protesters?"
Vega answered, after a fashion, "Can we? Surely. But what's available? What's available that could do the job? The Surgeon General's Riot Control Police would be . . . umm . . . let's say that faced with armed and organized opposition they would be overtasked. The Presidential Guard could do it. But they're set for a different mission. Willi, I warned you we had to take control of all the law enforcement agencies in the country, to create a true national police. But no, you wouldn't listen."
"I listened, Jesse. But it wasn't yet time for that."
"Sure. Well, maybe that's so. But now it is too late. Do you want the PG's to pull off of the Fort Worth mission and go to New Mexico?"
Rottemeyer turned again to McCreavy. "How quickly can you turn them around once they take the currency facility?"
"And send them to New Mexico? Six hundred miles? A week . . . with luck. It will have to be planned."
"Okay," she told McCreavy. "Start planning."
To Vega she said, "They can take care of New Mexico after they take care of Fort Worth."
* * *
Pickup Zone (PZ) "Treasure," Oklahoma
They had armored vehicles. They had other heavy weapons. They had troops, mostly fairly well-trained for their usual missions. They had a logistic and administrative tail.
What the PGSS lacked was helicopters.
Oh, there were a few somewhat plush command and control jobs available . . . "for the brass," as they say. But as far as moving any substantial number of Treasury agents (for they carefully preserved the fiction that they were merely agents of the public fisc)?
None.
For this, they needed the Army. And the Army duly and dutifully complied by sending down nearly half the 101st aviation group out of Fort Campbell, Kentucky, that half being somewhat reinforced by the helicopters of the 160th Special Operations Aviation Regiment, at one time known as Task Force 160.
And yet using helicopters is not something that comes naturally to a military organization. True, some of the PGSS had previous military experience working with choppers. And yet many did not. As organizations, none of its battalions had any.
* * *
Austin, Texas
Juanita pointed to the helicopter idling on the pad beneath her office window. "And I told you, Jack, I will never get on one of those things again. No. Not. Ever. Never."
"Oh, Juani, be realistic, would you? You're expected in Fort Worth here shortly. The troops are standing by," Schmidt cajoled.
The governor answered with a grimace, "I know, I know. But, Jack I just can't. I . . . I wet myself when I saw those bullets—'tracers' you called them?—fly by. You have no idea . . ." Suddenly nonplussed, Juani stopped. She knew that Schmidt had a very good idea of what it was like to be in a helicopter someone was shooting at.