“It was supposed to be our navy.” Colonel Johnson muttered loudly and cast an eye at Luther. “You said that they would give us the ports and the ships, Luther.”
“I thought that they would,” Luther protested.
The meeting at the renovated coliseum took up a fraction of the seats. A man that none of them knew chaired the meeting, but President Newman presided and was clearly in charge. Given that the Los Angeles Basin was about to be unlivable, the militia would staff a redoubt at the Port of Los Angeles and would occupy the old Fort MacArthur area. Food, water and fuel would be brought in by ship to sustain them. Caesar Chavez State would relocate most of its personnel to Needles, Primm, Blythe and the California strip to the west of Yuma. Cali would try to supply them with necessities, but it was likely that the militia would have to live off the land for some time to come.
Mike whispered to Larry Marcus, “They’ll all defect across the border to the U.S.”
President Newman stood and walked to the lectern and looked at Major Mike Sanchez and Colonel Dorris Johnson, “You will shoot and kill anyone who is even suspected of planning to defect across the border. The U.S. is erecting a border wall as I speak across that portion of the Inland San Diego and Los Angeles area. We will build our own wall eventually. We must maintain order and must keep our people in Cali to rebuild what the U.S. is doing to us. Questions?”
“What about people in Southern Cali who have no water, food or power?” Colonel Johnson spoke for the group.
“I’m afraid that they’re on their own. Up north we have Lake Tahoe to drain but since the mechanism to send water south has been destroyed, we have no way of supporting you except by ship. With the ports damaged or blocked, the only way we can do that is by off-loading big ships to small ships and landing them. We’ll increase our capacity over time but right now things are stretched to just providing for the militia and special friends. We will make sure that the roads are open for anyone who wants to walk to Sacramento.”
Dorris Johnson, showing an uncharacteristically sound grasp of the situation attempted to clarify what he heard. “But if they walk to Sacramento, they’ll do it without food or water.”
President Newman shuffled uneasily and said, “Yes, that’s the situation, Colonel.”
The remainder of questions put to the president were presented by panderers who tried to ingratiate themselves with the new leader of the nation and he warmed to them.
At the conclusion of the meeting, Larry and Mike waited by the MRAP for Dorris Johnson and Luther, who never strayed far from his man. General Brown, the militia commandant for Southern Cali and two captains walked up to them and informed them that Colonel Johnson had taken ill and that Mike was to drop Larry Marcus at the San Pedro depot to begin organizing the defenses there. “Larry, consider yourself breveted to major. We’ll make it official within the week. The Fort MacArthur command is yours. We’ll change the name to Fort Newman in honor of the president but for now, we just need to set that up and to make that the new beachhead for Los Angeles. Mike, we need you to pack up what you can, while you still have fuel, and get your militia to the border with the U.S. You’ll be executive officer under Sheila Malik, the Colonel commanding that sector.”
“So we’re abandoning Los Angeles, General?” Mike Sanchez itched for a drink from the bottle in his bag in the truck and Larry saw him lick his lips thickly. All of it began to unravel and Mike read the tea leaves.
“Of course not. Major Marcus here is going to be holding down the fort, pardon the pun.”
Mike slapped Larry on the back, “He’s a good man, General!”
“Meanwhile, I’m moving my flag from Brentwood to Santa Barbara, where there are water wells that will keep the command supplied, and we can receive food shipments by sea.” Brown had the pained expression of a man weighed down with the chains of command. “Oprah is making her home in Montecito available for our use. We’ll make the regional headquarters there work as best we can.”
“But Oprah’s not visiting Cali?”
“Apparently there are no immediate plans for her to do so.”
CALEXIT
D+60
Enterprising members of the militia were buying property for water. It worked like this. There were literally millions of empty homes and you could move into any one of them. By transferring the deed to your house to the Militia, which divided them up, and relinquishing legal ownership, and squatting in another house of your choice, you could receive water that the militia had control over, remain in the area and barter for food, again from the militia, which controlled all of it for distribution as they saw fit.
When Larry Marcus arrived at Fort MacArthur, he found that the militia was a going concern and that warehouses on the waterfront had been annexed by the officers for the scavenged loot that they’d been swapping for food.
He didn’t stop the practice, but he drew the line at trading gasoline. It kept the militia loyal, if focused on personal gain, and determined to defend what they were continuing to accumulate.
The officers didn’t object too strenuously when he walked the warehouses and selected his cut of the purloined goods.
The fortified boundary of the redoubt had expanded as militia members chose the most desirable homes for themselves and installed water tanks for a gravity feed on each of them, absent pumping capacity. Diesel generators provided light to the facility and to the residences. Labor, which lived outside of the wire, worked for food and water, which arrived as relief supplies from other nations and were stored specifically for the use of the militia.
A regional governor had been appointed but his entourage was ambushed on the freeway on the way to Fort MacArthur by persons unknown, who used anti-tank rockets to punch through the armored cars. Larry Marcus used the opportunity to reinforce the intelligence that well-armed roving gangs had taken over much of the city, and that the militia lacked the strength of numbers, vehicles, fuel and ammunition to sally forth and take them on. Another governor, dispatched by sea, also met his end before he could arrive. Pirates infested the sea lanes around the formerly prosperous and populated city. At D+54, there were no more trusted members of the inner circle who would volunteer to act as an administration in Los Angeles and there had been talk of elevating Larry Marcus to Colonel and increasing his legal authority to one of viceroy for the People’s Republic in Los Angeles.
CALEXIT
D+62
Colonel Marcus pinned the new eagle devices on his collars and looked into the mirror. Then he depressed a hidden catch on the mirror and it slid silently on hinges to expose a satellite telephone cradled in a charger.
He called preset #1 and heard a voice on the line, “Green Tree”. He replied, “Blue Hummingbird. The progressive cipher would change the next time that it needed to be used with the query and the response shifting.
“Good morning Larry.”
“Good morning. We are keeping to plan but I need more watercraft and crews to control sea lines and approaches, looking and behaving sufficiently like pirates. They need to sink a few of the aid ships that are arriving to jack up insurance rates and turn others around. We’re getting so much in here, even working glacially on unloading, that I am running out of room.”
“Understand and will advise.”
Larry Marcus ended the connection.
CALEXIT