He scowled. “For the moment, the bastards hold the centres of power, and they’re not doing anything with them. Why?”
“I don’t know,” King said. He looked up at Truman. The Vice-President looked pale and wan. “We have to move soon, Colonel; we’re not in a good position here.”
Truman looked up at him. “Yes, Ambassador,” he said. “God only knows what they’re doing to the President.”
“They should have made him put a message out,” Palter said. He’d been studying coup techniques on King’s instructions. “An… abdication, in effect. Instead… we have silence and all the time we need to launch a counter-attack. It’s… odd.”
“It’s bloody frustrating,” King snapped. “What about Robinson?”
“His people are in position,” Palter said. “He said he could move at first light.”
King scowled. It was dawn, way too early for any serious activity. “Tell him to wait until the sun has risen, unless the situation changes radically,” he said. “I wish we’d bugged the White House; we’d know what was happening then.”
William Brockman Bankhead, Speaker of the House of Representatives, stared in horror at the body of Franklin Delano Roosevelt, the man who had presided over the American political scene for so long. Beside him, MacArthur stared at the body as well, laid out on his bed.
“Where the hell is Hoover?” Bankhead snapped finally. “What happened to the President?”
“A heart attack,” MacArthur said. “According to his doctor” – they’d found the future citizen hiding in his rooms in the White House – “the man had a dicky heart. He was under a lot of stress recently and…”
“And we will be blamed for his death,” Bankhead snapped. It had been the single issue they’d argued over since arriving, late last night. Even a few hours sleep hadn’t made it look any better. “Where the hell is Hoover?”
MacArthur, not a coward by any means, no matter what was muttered about him when no one thought he could hear, flinched back. “He’s back at FBI headquarters, organising the round-up of communist sympathisers,” he said. “We have to move fast”
“But what do we tell them?” Bankhead asked sharply. “Do we tell them that the President is dead? Where the hell is Truman?”
“I don’t know,” MacArthur snapped back. “The FBI team that was meant to protect him” – he coughed – “reported that he escaped!”
“And those blasted Governors, even my Governor, are sitting on their hands,” Bankhead said. “What do we tell them?”
MacArthur sighed; Bankhead glared at him. He’d agreed to the plot because of the riots spreading through his native Alabama, but now they’d come so far… he’d almost lost his nerve. Nothing was going the way they’d planned it… and there was no sign of Truman.
A cough from the bespectacled FBI agent drew his attention. Agent Eastwood had been trained on the new-fangled computers in London; he was the closest thing the FBI had to an expert. Short and fat, he hung on in the FBI by the skin of his teeth – Hoover had come close to firing him more than once.
“Sirs, there is bad news,” he said. Both men glared at him. “Sirs, someone is putting out a pretty accurate version of what’s happened on the web.”
“Shit,” Bankhead swore. “What are they telling them?”
“That the New Deal’s enemies have taken the White House and intend to crush all the labour gains,” Eastwood said grimly. “Sir, there are riots going on in the South, and some very nasty incidents in…”
“Hellfire,” Bankhead swore, seeing his entire country starting to collapse around him. His dreams shattered. “What the hell do we do now?”
MacArthur glared at him. “We continue, of course,” he snapped. “It’s time we made a statement to the public. We can explain that Roosevelt and Truman were assassinated by communists, the same ones who blew hell out of New York, ok?”
Bankwood nodded grimly. MacArthur’s eyes were starting to flicker dangerously. “Of course,” he said. “Let’s do it now.”
Marine Lieutenant Jones Robinson knew just how dangerous the next step would be, and not just because of MacArthur’s troops, most of whom were white trash from the south. He wasn’t scared of them. The real danger, however, came from the citizens of Washington, who would see a black army attacking the White House. If they reached for their weapons, there would be a bloodbath. The best and brightest of Black Power, three hundred men armed with AK-47s and equipped with some other weapons from Jim Oliver’s warehouses, pitted against an army of unknown strength and power.
“Mount up,” he snapped, as the doors opened. Jim Oliver had provided them with enough trucks to move the army, but he knew that they would have to dismount near the White House; Lieutenant Bosco had provided them with images of the site. The bastards had dug into the grounds; it looked as if they were prepared to stand off tanks.
“A shame Oliver couldn’t provide us with any of those,” he muttered. He’d had some jeeps rigged up, as the Marines had done in Iraq, with armour, but if they had the new anti-tank rockets the jeeps would be lost quickly. “Let’s go,” he shouted. “Move out!”
The men responded quickly and well; he was pleased with them, particularly his grandfather. They boarded the trucks and moved out, the jeeps in the lead, heading down towards the White House. There was no traffic on the streets; the only bit of advice from the radios had been to ask people to stay off the roads. The handful of police on the streets gaped at them, saw their weapons, and decided that discretion was the better part of valour.
“They’ll have let the bastards know we’re coming,” Jackie said. Robinson shrugged. It had never been part of his plan to have surprise; he’d assumed that the coup plotters would have taken care to watch all the roads leading into Washington central. The first sign they saw of enemy opposition was the barricade across the road near the George Washington University.
“Fire,” Robinson snapped, as the jeeps lurched towards the barricade. Machine guns, welded onto the jeeps, poured fire into the barricade, shredding it with ease. “Everyone dismount, move out!”
His radio buzzed. “They’re moving up a column of troops from the White House,” Bosco said. “Permission to start sniping?”
“Granted,” Robinson said, as the firing began again. He smiled; the so-called troops would be picked off one by one by an invisible enemy, lacking computers that could track the bullets back to the sniper. “Forward!”
“Don’t you ever say anything else,” Jackie asked, tossing a grenade at the advancing troops, who seemed shocked to see armed black men coming their way. The explosion blasted the troops to the ground, blowing them apart. The force advanced, passing through the barricade, heading onwards to the White House.
“No, my drill sergeant was very hot on that,” Robinson snapped. “Bosco; what’s coming now?”
“I can’t see anything from the White house,” Bosco reported. “I’ve been picking off a number of officers, but I can’t see anyone important.”
“Hope someone is watching the FBI building,” Robinson muttered, as they passed where the World Bank would have been, in a different future. The White House had never been attacked in their timeline, not even by the terrorists. It stood ahead, gleaming with promise, even as the men lying in the bushes poured fire at them.
“Bosco, see how many of them you can pick off,” Robinson ordered. “Colonel, we need more snipers!”
“We’re working on it,” Palter said, through the radio. “They just got frisky outside here, Jones.”
Robinson hesitated. “Should we head to help you?”
“Fuck no,” Palter snapped. “You have to retake the White House.”