It wasn’t just in the United States, either. The Snakes were trying to hold down the entire first world. Communications channels to the rest of the world were flighty, but they’d managed to get general agreement to join the attack on the aliens. The Snakes would start thinking that the entire world had turned on them. And if they realised that no Snakes were being killed…
“Keep the pressure on, but don’t let them have a chance to smash you,” the General added. “We cannot afford a stand-up fight; not now, perhaps not ever. We hit, we hurt… and then we get out. Any questions?”
There were none. “Very well, gentlemen,” the General said. “Let’s go.”
Chapter Thirty-Six
Washington DC
USA, Day 69
Jeffery Spender was having a bad day.
It was bad enough that the FBI had been turned into a cheap knock-off of the Gestapo. He’d never signed up to abuse American citizens, back when his wife had become pregnant and he’d been forced to choose between staying with her or staying in the Marines — without her. He’d applied to join the elite FBI Hostage Rescue Team and discovered, much to his surprise, that he actually enjoyed the work. He saw more combat action and saved more American citizens than his brothers in the Marine Corps. And besides, many Marines had been discharged back when the government had started cutting the military in line with the Galactic Federation’s demands. Spencer had known that his position was secure.
And then the government had been forced to order a lockdown and Spencer had found himself serving as their tool. He’d had to raid houses, arrest citizens without any regard for little niceties like law and constitutional rights; the look on the faces of scared citizens would haunt him until the end of his days. If he’d been a bachelor, he would have deserted and joined the resistance, but that hadn’t been a possibility. His wife and his six-year-old daughter had been taken into protective custody, officially because the wives and children of federal agents were being targeted by the resistance. Unofficially, they were hostages for his good behaviour. If he failed to satisfy the government — and its alien masters — that he was doing the job they ordered, he had no doubt that his wife would be killed and his daughter fostered out — or killed herself. He dared not do anything that might alarm their captors.
He scowled. A motley group of federal agents had been placed under his command, with orders to intercept anyone attempting to leave the city. The darkness and the drizzling rain had deterred anyone from driving out, not when they might be shot by the federal agents or arrested and taken to one of the detention centres. Spencer didn’t know quite what happened there, but some of the arrestees became pod people and others simply vanished. Or were vanished, as they’d joked down in Latin America. The fools who had welcomed the Galactic Federation with open arms hadn’t seen how they’d been manipulated until it was far too late. They’d been nothing more than useful fools, just like the American-born Communists and Islamists who had served an agenda that had treated them as nothing better than tools. And really, what had they deserved? They had betrayed their country — and Spencer, by following orders, was no better than them. How could he ever look himself in the face again?
Washington was encircled by a ring of federal agents, backed up by a handful of military units and equipment. No one was allowed to enter or leave without good reason — and there were very few reasons that they were allowed to accept. A number of federal agents had gone completely to the bad, abusing their powers in ways that would have shocked any pre-Contact American — and been completely familiar and accepted in a Third World country. Most of the good ones had deserted, been turned into pod people or — like Spencer — found that their families were being held hostage. At least Spencer’s team wasn’t abusing the refugees. He had that much honour and dignity left.
But there were the stories… federal agents, like everyone else, loved to share stories about what was going on and what was going to happen. Some of the stories were shocking, suggesting mass rape and kidnapping; others were merely worrying. It wouldn’t be long, he’d been assured, before every federal agent was a pod person. And then there would be no hope of resistance. If the Galactic Federation turned everyone on Earth into a pod person… but they couldn’t do that, could they? The logistics would be formidable, even for super-powerful aliens. He checked his M16 automatically as he glanced down the long deserted road. Everything had been much simpler in Iraq. The enemy might have been cowardly enough to hide behind the civilian population, but at least they hadn’t had pod people on their side. And they hadn’t had access to America families.
He heard the truck before he saw it, a lumbering gas tanker heading along the road towards Washington. Gas deliveries had been reduced sharply ever since Tehran, when chaos had spread over the Middle East. Rumour had it that the Saudi Royal Family had been strung up by their own population, while the Iranians were taking their revenge upon the Mullahs who had driven their country into the dirt and Iraqis were slaughtering each other in vast numbers. Not that it really mattered any longer; oil deliveries out of the Middle East were all that mattered, and they’d been reduced. Rumour had it that the aliens were talking about producing synthetic oil, but Spencer no longer believed them. They’d lied to get the human race to let down its guard — and they’d succeeded brilliantly. They’d stolen an entire world.
The tanker started to slow as it approached the roadblock. Traffic in and out of Washington had slowed dramatically since Tehran, leaving the capital perched on the verge of starvation. What little food there was had to be brought in by soldiers and men pressed into service, ever since many of the truckers had gone on strike after Tehran. Seeing a tanker gave him hope, even though he knew that there would only be a small amount of gas — and none of it would be put into civilian hands. They’d be more likely to take it directly to the collaborators.
Shaking his head, Spencer walked forward as the tanker lumbered to a halt. He couldn’t see the driver’s face behind the windscreen, but that was hardly surprising. The rain was pelting down now, as if even the weather disapproved of the aliens. Or maybe the aliens were manipulating the weather from orbit. God knew they’d shown enough remarkable tricks before they’d shown their true faces. Maybe they’d promised their collaborators sunshine and rainbows while drenching the rest of the world with cold rainfall.
The driver’s door didn’t open. Puzzled, and a little alarmed, Spencer stepped up and pulled at the handle. The door opened, revealing a makeshift doll — life-sized, wearing male clothes — grinning at him. There was no one else in the cab. He stared at it, his tired brain refusing to quite process what he was seeing, and then he threw himself backwards. It was far too late.
Mathew Bracken, who was officially dead, loved C4. It was a common feeling among the SF community, who firmly believed that there was no such thing as enough C4. Rigging up the gas tanker with enough explosive to destroy the roadblock utterly had been easy; it had been more complicated to rig the tanker so it could be driven by remote control. In the end, they’d had to cannibalise a set of remote-control cars to construct the control system — and even then it had been flighty. But it had sure paid off on the night. The explosion smashed the roadblock as if it had been made of paper, throwing a pair of police cars dozens of meters away from the blast. They caught fire and burned merrily, adding an eerie light to the scene.