“That’s the first place I’d hit with an airstrike,” he said. “Clean it out and leave it empty.”
The bank was solid, one of the few reinforced buildings in town. It also had a huge pile of PR currency in the vault, which the workers had forgotten to close when they left. That would make for useful kindling.
Larry Langer and Dale Chalmers stood around the desk where the manager used to sit. He was gone now, having fled north with most of the rest of the Tories. They had clogged the roads out of town earlier. Turnbull had directed that they be let go – no need to have a whiny, fussy Fifth Column among them, agitating about imagined racism and homophobia.
The bank was a hive of activity. Lee Rogers stood a few feet away talking to some people about food stocks. Power was already cut; how long the generators could make up for it was anyone’s guess. Food and fuel were going to be problems. Nothing was flowing into the area anymore – but with the freeways still open, stuff was flowing across.
“You want to cut the freeways?” Langer said.
“That’s right. Cutting off 64 and 69 will prevent them from moving military forces quickly. It’ll keep them on smaller roads, where they’ll be slower and more vulnerable. But it also has a strategic component. It effectively blocks out the agricultural products from Southern Indiana and Illinois completely, and forces goods from further west around on a long detour north. When the country split, the blue folks forgot who feeds them. They need every inch of farmland they can get.”
Langer cocked an eyebrow. “So, how does that help us?” he asked.
“What do you mean?” said Turnbull.
“So they gotta tighten their belt in New York City because they aren’t getting all the beans and corn they used to. How does that help us?”
“It makes them pay attention to us.”
“It might just make them pay too much attention to us, if you get my meaning,” At Turnbull’s direction, Langer had organized a number of teams to head north to Bloomington to scout out the People’s Republic Army’s forces and their locations and report back. The PRA was sitting there for now, but who knew when it might move south to put an end to their little revolt?
“What are you saying?” Turnbull asked.
“I’m just wondering if this was meant to get them off our backs, or if you’ve got bigger plans.”
“Spit it out, Larry,” Turnbull said.
“Well, are you doing this for us, or for the US? Because I don’t quite see the end game here. Oh, don’t get me wrong – I like to fight. I got nothing to lose. Those blue sons of bitches already killed all my family. I’ll shoot them until they shoot me. But how does this end for all these nice people like Dale and Lee here?”
Lee had joined them and was looking at Turnbull. So was Dale.
“What’s the endgame here, boss?” Lee asked.
Turnbull paused. “There’s a good chance this half of the state is going over to the red,” he said. “I don’t know how or when, or even if. It’s a possibility. They’re talking about it, the reds and the blues. Secret negotiations”
“Holy shit,” Lee said.
“Are the reds going to invade?” Dale said.
“I don’t know. There are negotiations. My mission is to make it easier to lose this place than keep it. And your mission is to keep the PR from treating you like dirt, and you’re accomplishing it.”
“I feel like we’re pieces in a bigger game,” Dale said. “Do we matter at all?”
“Do you matter to yourselves? I didn’t make you fight. I offered to help you if you did. You wanted to live free. Our interests correspond. So now, what’s next?”
“We could just stay put, let this settle down,” Ted Cannon said. He had gotten out of the hospital and made his way over to the headquarters. His face still looked like a stretch of Chechnyan ruins, but he was on his feet. He had battle gear on and an AK was over his shoulder.
“You think it will simmer down? You worked with them,” Turnbull said. “You know them better than any of us. Do you think they can tolerate people living free in the heartland of the People’s Republic?”
“They won’t think about anything else until we’re back under their thumb,” Ted said. “You’re right, I know them. They can’t stand defiance, and they’ll do whatever they have to do not only to get us back under control but to make sure we can never stand up to them again.”
“If we don’t cut those roads, they can swing in and around us fast with their heavy army units before we can stop them. That’s our tactical reason to do it. And there’s the strategic reason – hitting them in the stomach,” Turnbull said.
“I don’t care much about how much they have to eat in New York City,” Langer said. “But if those freeways are open they can move on us before we know they’re coming. So, that’s gotta get done.”
“I have some ideas,” Turnbull said.
“Me too,” replied Langer.
“What else?” Turnbull asked.
Dale spoke up. “I’ll get working on the coordination with other areas,” he said. While the PSF had not been completely driven out of the regions to the east and west – except for the Hoosier National Forest, which no PSF unit would dare enter – much of the map across south Indiana and Illinois and even Ohio was red. There were enough friends and relatives across the area that hooking up contact between resistance units was relatively easy.
“Good,” Turnbull said. “And get the Mayor working to organize the noncombatants. We’ll need the hospital up and running even though most of the doctors ditched. Plus, we need the stuff we talked about built.”
Lee Rogers nodded. Her logistics portfolio included construction and manufacturing.
“What do you want me to do?” Ted Cannon said.
“You are ex-military, right?” Turnbull asked.
“MP,” Cannon replied.
Turnbull motioned him over and bent over the map on the desk. “Okay, while I’m out dealing with the interstates, I need you organizing the defense in depth north of town. Divide into sectors; Dale knows the plan. We need to be able to defeat the main force advance, but we also need to fight the counter-recon battle. If I know their commander, he’s going to flood the zone with recon, surveillance, and target acquisition elements. You gotta stop them.”
Ted nodded. During a conventional fight, military police abandoned their usual role of pulling over drunk privates driving back from the club and undertook rear area security, meaning locating and eliminating spies and infiltrators.
The huddle broke apart, and they went off in their various directions, all except Turnbull. He surveyed the activity. The locals had slid into their new roles quickly and with remarkably few bumps. Many had military experience, which helped. But mostly these people had been organizing their own businesses, their churches, and their community activities from Little League to parades all their lives. Maybe it was different elsewhere, but here they didn’t look to anyone else to do for them. When the PR government left, the Mayor simply created a new one. These people always assumed they would do for themselves, so when someone needed to step up someone always did. Turnbull was providing them some tactical expertise and some guidance, but this war was decentralized, not dictated. They had to fight it if they wanted to be free.
Turnbull watched them proceed with satisfaction. This was becoming a real insurgency. Now all they had to do was not get killed.
Closing the freeway was a two part-operation. Turnbull oversaw Part One.