“What’s the latest?” Pat Brown demanded as his bodyguards rushed him inside the great neoclassical California State Capitol. Footsteps rang on the marble underfoot and echoed to the hallowed vaults of the great building.
“The President is alive,” a staffer blurted. Two-and-a-half thousand miles away from Washing DC there was a feeling of profound shock and disorientation. The Republic was quaking to its foundations. “General LeMay has assumed command of the Defense of Washington.”
Pat Brown almost missed a step.
The President was alive and Curtis LeMay was leading the fight back?
The Kennedy Administration had as good as blamed ‘old iron pants’ for the October War; the Navy had always blamed him. But if LeMay was still onside; what kind of coup d’état was actually going on in DC?
“What about elsewhere?”
“There are reports of power outages in San Francisco, Oakland, San Diego and of course, all across LA,” he was informed as the entourage traversed the State Capitol. Like most buildings of its age — it had been built between 1861 and 1874 to ape the Capitol in Washington — moving from one point to another within it was rarely a thing swiftly achieved due to its large ground footprint, its multiple floors and the relative paucity of elevators. “We have also received reports of scattered shootings and civil unrest but nothing local law enforcement can’t keep the lid on, sir.”
“Is the State National Guard playing ball?”
“Yes, sir. All Federal military forces in California have been placed on alert to assist the civil authorities and representatives of the services await your convenience in the ‘ready room’, sir.”
Pat Brown strode into the ‘ready room’, the big ground floor conference hall normally reserved for California State Senate Hearings and other major ‘Inquests’, which had been hurriedly cleared for the use of the state’s ‘Emergency Management Staff’ overnight. There were armed National Guardsmen at every door and State Troopers in the lobby. The Governor smiled sternly and nodded acquaintance at familiar faces.
“Any news on the shooting in Oakland?”
“Miss Sullivan is unhurt, sir. At her request she is being driven to Sacramento to report to you personally on the affair.”
Pat Brown absorbed this. In retrospect he regretted allowing his young staffer to take the lead in the ‘Braithwaite Shooting Affair’. Unfortunately, she had been the one who took the call from the Navy about Oakland PD’s lamentable handling of the killing of Rear Admiral Jackson Braithwaite and his wife in Sequoyah County. Thereafter, because she was such an obviously capable young woman she had run with the ball before anybody really knew what was going on. The kid’s initiative and, well, sheer chutzpah spoke well for her but he had already had strong words with his chief of staff — Miranda Sullivan’s boss — to insure the neither the girl, she was still only twenty-three for goodness sake, nor any other young staffer ever got themselves into such an exposed situation again.
On another day he would have been appalled by the apparently senseless killing of four FBI men in Berkeley; today that palled into insignificance in the perspective of the nightmare playing out in the streets of the nation’s capital.
“Keep Miss Sullivan away from the Press.”
“Yes, sir.”
Pat Brown turned to the grey, stiff man in nondescript infantry combat fatigues who had, at Al Rosellini’s suggestion, accompanied him back to Sacramento from Portland.
‘Whatever the Hell’s going on back East,’ the Governor of Washington State had observed, ‘my people and Governor Hatfield’s people have got the security situation pretty much tied down. We don’t have any large coherent Federal forces in either of our states.’ These days he discounted the massive Navy base at Bremerton across Puget Sound from Seattle because that had become the world’s largest ship graveyard in the last year. ‘If Colin is willing, maybe he should talk to his counterparts in California. If this thing goes bad, I mean…’
Colin was Major General Colin Powell Dempsey a veteran tanker who had fought through Tunisia, Sicily, France and the Ardennes with Patton before being invalided back to the United States in early 1945. He had been Al Rosellini’s state Emergency Disaster Management and Civil Defense Commissioner since the night of the October War. For most of that time he had also been Al Rosellini’s right hand man and military supremo. In Washington State and Oregon Dempsey was already very nearly a legend in his own lifetime; he was the man who had pacified Seattle and large areas of the Cascades before personally leading the assault on Bellingham. If there was ever to be — God forbid — such a thing as a West Coast confederacy, Colin Powell Dempsey would assuredly be the unyielding military rock upon which it would be built.
Everybody in the Sacramento State Capitol Building knew exactly who the man in the anonymous — without badges identification or rank — fatigues was when he removed his battered forage cap and looked around at his surroundings.
Standing a few feet away the commander of the California State National Guard had dressed as if for the parade ground, his chest laden with medal ribbons and his uniform immaculately pressed.
Major General Roderic Hill did not salute the other military man.
Dempsey eyed him up and down and stuck out his hand, which after a moment, the Adjutant General of the California Army State National Guard shook. Al Rosellini had warned him confidentially that a few months before the October War, Hill and Governor Brown had found themselves drawn into an imbroglio about secret ‘political’ files compiled by Hill’s predecessors in a three decade long ‘anti-communist’ campaign. Information in these files had been leaked to discredit — or support, depending upon the readers’ inclination — candidates mainly but not wholly opposed to Pat Brown, and Roderic Hill had stepped in and confiscated the offending archive of files, some nine bulging cabinets of documents, and taken them into ‘secure’ custody. Whereupon, a ferocious custody battle had ensured involving the FBI and the California State Attorney General Stanley Mosk. The affair had be blown up into something of a Californian cause celebre which had only been finally put to rest by Pat Brown’s re-election as Governor in the aftermath of the October War.
“Bad business at Bellingham,” Roderic Hill declared gruffly.
“Would have been even worse without the boys you sent me, General Hill,” Dempsey growled in return. A small cadre of veteran Guardsman from California had stiffened the ranks of the green assault force at Bellingham, many of the aircraft and helicopters deployed had been based in California, and without the technical support of Hill’s mechanics and gunners from the 40th California State National Guard Division, half Dempsey’s tanks would never have made it anywhere near the battlefront.
The two men exchanged wary, respectful looks and the tension filling the air between them slowly evaporated.
Pat Brown cleared his throat.
“I requested General Dempsey’s presence in Sacramento in the event it becomes necessary for your command,” he said addressing Roderic Hill, “to co-ordinate with the forces under state control in Oregon and Washington. General Dempsey has Governor Rossellini and Governor Hatfield’s leave to speak and act on their behalf in all military matters. General Dempsey has informed me in the most unequivocally terms that you are the senior officer in this matter and that he is in California in a purely advisory capacity.”
The feelings of his senior military commander assuaged the Governor of California began to go around the room demanding the latest reports.