Carroll had sat silently through Rottemeyer's tirade. He spoke now in a voice full with wickedness. "Take their families hostage, Willi. Send a force to Camp Pendleton, California and grab the wives and kids."
McCreavy's eyes opened very wide in stunned disbelief. "You are out of your mind to even suggest such a thing," she said, turning them onto Carroll. "Are you going to grab the families of 2nd Marine Division too? How about all of the Army's? The Air Force's? The Navy's?"
Shifting her focus back to Rottemeyer, she exclaimed, "Willi that is the one thing I can guarantee will turn the entire armed forces against us! If we so much as start to move in that direction we'll be destroyed."
Looking at the President's face McCreavy's eyes opened wider still, if possible. "Willi, you just can't be seriously thinking about this."
"Why not?" Rottemeyer snapped. "What the hell do I owe those people or their families?"
"Remember what Machiavelli said, Willi," added Carroll. "You know; about people who do not know how to be forceful or wicked enough to survive turmoil?"
He stood and began to pace among the scattered books and broken bits. Wickedness disappeared from his voice, being replaced by a more reasonable, even intellectual, tone. "We have come so far, so fast Willi . . . we are so near to completion of the . . . the . . . the revolution—and that's what it is—to which we all pledged ourselves so many years ago that it would be nothing less than criminal to let anything stand in our way now."
Carroll leaned forward, resting his hands on the President's desk and staring her straight in the eye. "If we lose this contest, everything for which we have worked for so long and so hard will disappear. This government will be pared down to impotence. Every federal program we believe in will be dismantled. Control of the economy will go back to an unelected cabal of the rich. The environment will be trashed in the interests of greater and greater profits for fewer and fewer financial aristocrats."
He turned around to speak more generally to the Cabinet. "I don't even claim that Texas and this Seguin bitch even want that. She was, after all, a Democrat of sorts. But that's still the logic of what will happen if we lose. Not even Seguin will have the moral authority to keep this marvelous machine—this wonderful federal government we have created through the sweat and blood and sacrifice of millions—from being largely dismantled.
"If we fall, Madame President, the nuts will come out of the closet. And the momentum of events will be with them. The federal budget? Watch it pared to a fraction, a small fraction, of what it is now. Civil rights? Women's rights? Minority rights? Watch every progressive Supreme Court ruling made over the last seventy-five years legislatively disappear as if they had never been. Multiculturalism? Gone. Group rights? Gone.
"Everything we believe in . . . gone."
Carroll turned back to Rottemeyer. "You cannot let that happen."
Rottemeyer turned to Jesse Vega, in effective control for the nonce of the PGSS. "Tell my personal guard they are to reduce the Western Currency Facility before midday tomorrow—regardless of cost—and then move sufficient force, post haste, to California to . . . mmm . . . 'secure' the persons of the military dependants in and around Camp Pendleton."
Looking up at an obviously distraught McCreavy, the President added, "Those are my orders, Caroline. Do not balk me on this."
McCreavy sat heavily, putting her head in her hands, incredulous that it could have come to this.
Carroll added, "We need to put some kind of spin on this. People won't like the idea of us taking hostages. Might I suggest instead that we arrange some sort of incident with some of the locals around Pendleton. A demonstration, maybe, that gets out of hand. Perhaps a couple of rapes and a murder or two. Our party organization in California is strong, Willi. I can arrange the incidents within a few hours."
"And then we bring the families in for . . . ummm . . . 'protective custody'?" Rottemeyer grinned.
"Yeah," said Carroll slowly. "Yeah . . . 'protective custody' . . . that's the ticket."
Carroll stopped for a moment before continuing. When he did continue it was with a hesitation unusual in someone of such forceful character. "There's one other thing I think we need to do, Willi."
Rottemeyer raised an eyebrow.
"I checked with CIA. They can provide any required number of Predator Remote Piloted Aircraft."
"So?"
"The Air Force won't play." He turned an inquisitorial eye toward McCreavy who shrugged in agreement.
"So I think we need to bomb that cunt Seguin out of the equation."
"That's going to cost us . . ." began the President.
"Damn the cost," shouted Carroll. "Madame President we are fighting for our political lives here."
* * *
Western Currency Facility, Fort Worth, Texas
Regardless of cost, Sawyers read for approximately the fortieth time. Reduce the Western Currency Facility before mid-day tomorrow, regardless of cost.
Sawyers heard and felt the tremendous roar of one of the guns he had commandeered to reduce the WCF. The flash from the big gun's muzzle lit the landscape, forming it briefly into surreal shadows. Another flash and roar followed almost instantaneously as the shell impacted on a new section of exterior wall.
Oh, well, thought Sawyers, resignedly. It could be worse. After all, we've got a minimum of half a dozen practicable breaches in each of three exterior walls; two more in the fourth. And I can be certain now that all their exterior claymores are either gone or at least deranged or disconnected. Since we pounded the roof it's likely as not there won't be any more mines there either. So there'll be no repeat of the goddamned fiasco we had the first day we arrived . . . my fault, my fault, all my fault.
Once we break inside though . . . that is going to be pretty horrible.
* * *
"It's pretty awful up there, ain't it, Top . . . I mean Sergeant Major?"
Pendergast, just returned to relative safety from a mind-numbing tour of the ruins the big guns had made of much of the edifice could only nod his head dumbly at first. It was bad away from the safer, inner perimeter, no doubt about it.
After a moment Pendergast gasped out, "Fontaine, go tell the major that Captain Davis's been hit. Well . . . shit . . . tell him he's dead . . . I mean really fucking dead. Tell him I put Royce in charge of that sector." Pendergast trembled slightly with the vivid memory of a man ripped into two pieces and screaming his lungs out—begging, pleading—for someone, anyone, to kill him and put him out of his agony.
Though Pendergast didn't mention that part; could not, in fact. The memory of his own rifle's muzzle pressed against Davis' head . . . the squeeze of the trigger . . . the flash that burned even through his closed eyes . . . no, that he could not mention, nor even quite bring himself to think about . . .
"Sergeant Major? Sergeant Major, wake up."
Pendergast's eyes opened immediately from the rough shoving. It took him several moments to place the voice. "Major Williams? Sorry, sir, I just . . ."
"Never mind. You needed the sleep. But sleep time is over. The guards say there's movement outside, a lot of it. All the walls."
"Figure they're coming?"
"Yes . . . BMNT comes in about forty minutes. I figure they'll hit us simultaneously from every direction."
Pendergast forced a smile with a confidence he did not truly feel. "We'll hold 'em, sir, never worry."
* * *
Outskirts of Santa Fe, New Mexico