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Praetorium Honoris

Thursday, October 21, 2021

Negotiations

US Air Force Photo

SFC Levine poked his head in the door of Colonel Tanaka's office, "Sir, the Duty Officer says he has a guy on the line claiming to be the Chinese general commanding the peacekeepers in New York state."

"Does the guy speak English?" Tanaka asked.

"Negative Sir, but the duty officer actually speaks Mandarin."

"What's the duty officer's name?"

"Roy Feng, he's a Navy lieutenant commander. Line 5, Sir."

"Got it."


"So what's going on Lieutenant Commander Feng?"

"Yes Sir, I've got a guy on the line who claims to be General Liao Yong of the PLA. According to our intel, the guy commanding the Chinese units in upstate New York is a guy named Liao Yong. Not sure how we could verify that."

"What's he want?"

"He wants to surrender, they got hit by A-10s and drones yesterday, apparently caused a lot of damage."

"Why's he calling the Pentagon? Can't he surrender to the guys up there?"

"Quite frankly Sir, he said he can't make contact with anyone up there, but his aide knew the phone number here."

"Well, I'll be damned. Hang on a second." Tanaka checked his notebook and found the New York State Adjutant's phone number. Heck, the Chicoms should surrender to him, it was his state they had invaded. "Okay commander, give him this number, that's Major General Allan Jones, acting commander of the New York National Guard."

"Acting Sir, is New York's governor dead?"

"He is to us, bastard's on the other side."


"Who?"

"Sir, it's the Chicom bastard who invaded us, they want to surrender."

Major General Allan Jones thought for a minute, then asked, "Does the guy speak English?"

"No Sir, he's speaking through an interpreter." Major Morrison was grinning from ear to ear. His guys had been planning to attack the Chinese lodgment on Fort Drum tomorrow, after another A-10 attack. Now it looked like they wouldn't have to, which made him very happy, since this undeclared war had started, he hadn't lost any of his people. Now they might all survive.


"What did the American say?" General Liao was a very unhappy man, he had received orders from his commander up in Canada to "fight your way to us, then we shall march to the sea together and withdraw from this accursed place" were his exact words.

That way was death, he knew that, his commander knew that. He had served the Party for forty years, now they were willing to throw him and his men away. For what?

"We are to come out of the compound, leaving all weapons and equipment behind, hands behind our heads, fingers interlocked. When we have cleared the compound, all personnel are to drop to their knees." his aide explained.

"They mean to humiliate us, Comrade General!" Major Huang Bai protested, jumping to his feet.

General Liao turned to look at him, "Sit down Major, we have already humiliated ourselves. We have been defeated by common citizens and second line troops. If you would prefer to die, then you may do so at your own convenience, but I mean to take my troops home, alive."

"They will shoot you as a traitor!" Major Huang screamed.

At that point, Colonel Peng Yu drew his sidearm. As Huang reached for his own pistol, Peng shot him in the chest. With a stunned look on his face, Huang dropped to his knees, he stared at Peng and began to speak. Peng shot him again.


Sergeant Heather Jefferson had her squad ready for anything. She could see the Chinese troops massing inside the compound, so far it appeared as if they were following instructions. They appeared to be unarmed.

"Damn Sarge, that's a lot of Commies!" Corporal Bill Winston was by Jefferson's side.

"Sure is Corp, gotta be at least five hundred of the bastards. You know what to do if anything odd goes down, do the guys know their jobs?" She knew they did, but she had to ask.

"Yup, anything funny happens, light 'em up. The guys know it, in fact, they're kinda hopin' the bastards try something."

Jefferson turned to look at her assistant squad leader, "Keep 'em under control Bill, I don't want my guys opening up just because they're pissed off."

"Roger that HJ."


"I'll be damned." Colonel Tanaka said as he hung up the phone. "Seven-hundred and seventy-two prisoners, our guys have retaken Fort Drum. The Chicoms wrecked most of their equipment and we did find a couple of booby-traps in some of the offices, but nobody died, nobody got hurt. Upstate New York is back under our flag."

"Now we just need to get those assholes out of Washington and Minnesota." Admiral Harry Fairchild said from a corner of the room.

Tanaka stood up and went over to the situation map, "Is this data up-to-date?" He was pointing at the computer graphics marking up the map over the state of Washington.

"My sub commanders stayed loyal to the Constitution, every man jack of 'em, oh yeah, my two female captains as well. They report in whenever there are no Chicom satellites overhead to intercept their comms. We had no idea the f**kers could detect our transmissions from those satellites. The sonsabitches actually stole most of the tech to make those from us. We reported it to Congress but they didn't care." Fairchild said, with barely restrained anger in his voice.

"What?" Tanka said, turning in shock to the Admiral.

"Yup, bastards said it would 'upset trade negotiations.' They're stealing our stuff while we negotiate how much Chicom-made crap we're going to buy from them."

Tanaka thought for a moment. "Do you have names?"

"Names of the Congress-critters who made that decision? Sure, why?"

"Let's just say, I want to take this coup to the next level."

"Take over the government instead of just ignoring them? Fairchild asked.

"Yup. You got any better ideas?"

Fairchild sat there for quite a while, then he said, "I play golf with an ex-President, can we at least talk to him first before we move on Congress?"

"Which one?"

When Fairchild answered the question, Tanaka's eyes got very big, "You've gotta be shitting me. Him? I would think he..."

"Look the man might have leaned the wrong way politically for our tastes, but he was always a pretty strict Constitutionalist. Hey, we don't have to listen to him, but..."

Tanaka, still slightly surprised at the name Fairchild had given him, finally spoke, "Do it, it might save our asses later, if they need saving."

"Okay, I'm on it."

Tanaka watched the admiral leave the room, he'd done some crazy shit in his time in the Corps, but this had to be the craziest. Hopefully it would work. In the meantime, how do I get the Reds out of Washington and Minnesota?

Just when he thought things might get less complicated...





44 comments:

  1. I was wondering how far the ChiComs had penetrated into the US. Surprised they had not gone as far as LA. That entire state would have welcomed them with open arms.

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    1. Not quite the entire state, but everything west of the Rockies. And the same goes for Washington and Oregon!

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    2. Coffee Man - Remember, they came in through Canada as they had forces in that country training with the Canadians. Mounting an invasion as far south as California would have proven daunting, logistically speaking.

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    3. Mark - Uh, the entire state of California is west of the Rockies.

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    4. Mark might wanna look at a CA county election-returns map. Still a lot of Americans in CA.
      Boat Guy

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  2. Sure, need to get the Chicoms out of the District of Corruption and Minnesota. But there is still plenty of sewage in the country FUNDING the swill. One down does not even remotely fix that problem!

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    1. The Chicoms aren't in DC, at least not to the extent they were in New York. Washington State.

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    2. I would posit that they are not east of the Rockies in Washington state. My time around Spokane was a while ago, but they did not seem to be of the same religion as the coasties...

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    3. Make that "east of the Cascades"...

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    4. Mark #1 - I would agree as to the political leanings of the folks away from the coast in Washington state. Most of the loonie left seems to be concentrated in the urban areas. Can't get much free stuff out in the country, where folks expect one to work for a living.

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    5. Mark #2 - I assumed that's what you meant.

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    6. Spokane is a fairly urban area, though not when compared to LA...

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    7. I've never been up that way, passing through Seattle is the only time I've been to Washington state. That doesn't really count!

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    8. Here in WA the I5 corridor is where all the people live who keep the crazies in office, the rest of the state has to go along.

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    9. Fyi, this is the map that Kurt Schlichter made for his introductory book of the Kelly Turnbull series.

      https://www.quora.com/In-the-novel-Peoples-Republic-by-Kurt-Schlichter-the-United-States-has-amicably-divided-into-separate-red-and-blue-nations-Could-that-actually-come-to-fruition-in-the-foreseeable-future

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    10. I wonder what he based his map on? (Yup, that was rhetorical.)

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  3. Wait......wut.......Minnesota? There's mostly Red territory tween the US/Canadian border and the very Blue Twin Cities Sarge, where you will never find a more wretched hive of scum and villany.........:)

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    1. Same goes for upstate New York.

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    2. (Don McCollor)...And next to Red western MN is Red ND, sparsely populated, but with very good NG units and two SAC bases....

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    3. Which is probably why the Chicoms stayed away!

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  4. One suspects that in such a situation, all sorts of interesting information might come out.

    One cannot fault the Colonel - and yes, that does sound precisely like the sort of order that might be given.

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    1. It's time to be decisive, even without a lot of info to go on.

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    2. The best soldier I ever worked for insisted the exercise Intel we supplied should be incomplete or even erroneous. He wanted our people to train in a realistic environment.
      Boat Guy

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    3. The only way to do it. Guess what, they don't do that these days.

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  5. Tanaka is "in for a penny in for a pound". Whatever they do, public executions go a long way to prevent future offenses as well as encourage the citizen. Because justice is slow in coming, they hearts of men are fully inclined to do evil. It's in Ecclesiastes.

    Peng was the aide? I thought there were two in the conversation, then General and his aide. Then along came Jones... uh... Huang!! Suddenly, PLA were popping up everywhere.... Need more coffee...

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    1. It can get confusing at times. Colonel Peng is actually Liao's adjutant. I'll have to look back and see if I named the aide.

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  6. As good a morning purge of angst as there is! Thanks Sarge for the experience. Thanks for sharing in a wonderful way what many of us dream of.

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  7. Funny, we just had a 'Navy submariner caught with wife pulling a Rosenberg with the ChiComs.' Sadly the two will not meet the same fate as the Rosenbergs, or anything comparably final, if you get my drift. Heck, in this climate, they'll get fat jobs at some big-name school as faculty. Heck, in this climate it might even be one of the service schools.

    As to the ChiComs, both in the States and in the Provinces, they ain't making an Anabasis Pt II. Can't punch northward to the Arctic, not enough nukes in the PLAN. Can't punch east, as we'll sweep up and join with our Nova Scotian brothers. Ain't nobody going westward, especially in wintertime. Even the crazy Canucks don't go westward in wintertime unless it's along the border, and the Canadian National Railroad has a tough time keeping some of the mountain passes clear in a good year. "Fight our way to home" ain't happening. If tried, it will make Napoleon's Retreat from Moscow look positively tame, once fuel and food runs out. Not a lot of civilization between the Great Lakes and the West Coast, maybe enough homesteads and small towns to raid to keep a company alive, but that's about it. And once the crazy Canucks learn of what is coming their way, they'll trash the roads and rails and make it more difficult. Not including 'savages' raiding from down south into Canada to intercept any ChiComs.

    Any ChiCom officer who makes it out will be shot pour encourager les autres. Any ChiCom officer who surrenders or is captured will meet the same fate, once they get home. Either way, the officers' families are held hostage and many will be disappeared to camps or slave factories or convenient holes in the ground.

    Hmmm... golf-playing president. Which one. Barkey the Lightbringer? Clinton the molester-in-chief? George Bush II? Trump? Dangit, Sarge, you leave us guessing way too often. Lessee... Barkey was supposedly a constitutional scholar. Clinton was Clinton. Bush was supposedly also a constitutionalist but a left-leaning one. Trump started out left-leaning and the Left turned him into a mostly-staunch originalist. Hmmmm...

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    1. First off, he wasn't a submariner. I can't find any evidence of that, his LinkedIn profile doesn't mention any Navy service at all.

      Secondly, the Chinese from eastern Canada and northern New York could easily get to the St. Lawrence without any great deal of effort. Arranging shipping could be an issue. Also they're won't be any US forces sweeping north any time soon. At least not in the story. Things in the East are rather confused.

      As to the President, I haven't specified a time period for this story, could be a decade or two into the future. Yes, I know that thought is depressing. Could be someone you've never heard of.

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    2. Haven't you heard, Beans?? Globull wArming means the end of snow!

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  8. Expanding the coup. I like it. Go big or go home! If, of course, home hasn't been given to the Chicoms...

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    1. In for a penny, in for a pound, just as STxAR said.

      They've already gone past the point of no return.

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  9. Another great installment, Sarge!

    Col. Tanaka definitely has the warrior spirit!

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  10. Even if they made it to the Saint Lawrence, and shipped out, there are VIRGINIAs in the Atlantic, too. Ships disappear at sea, and the Chicoms would have to transit The Bermuda Triangle, to get home.

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    1. Finding ships at sea is not easy.

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    2. Not to mention the North Atlantic in winter time is reputed to not be a fun place to be...

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Just be polite... that's all I ask. (For Buck)
Can't be nice, go somewhere else...

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