The Last Gasp of the Defeated?

J. Edgar Hoover Building
FBI Headquarters
Source

FBI Director William Sheppard took a deep breath. He had just got off the phone with a contact on the old President's staff. With that President, who had appointed him, dead of a heart attack and the Secretary of the Interior John Nakagawa claiming to be the new President, he thought that he had a golden opportunity to take control of the government, albeit temporarily, and use that to implement the scheme the "Silver Dozen" in Congress wanted to push through.

Five men and two women from the House and five Senators, all men, had concocted this idea during the unrest of the summer before. The American people were apparently getting tired of their wages not going as far as they used to, due to what the "Silver Dozen" had considered to be rational and correct policies. Their views were not shared by the bulk of the American people.

Riots had broken out in at least eight cities, as many as twelve if you counted some of the smaller disturbances, citizens with firearms had started to show up at those demonstrations. Policemen had been threatened, many of whom had then walked off the job. It was one thing to push around unarmed demonstrators, but when those demonstrators were armed, that was another thing altogether.

It looked very much as though the country was going to explode as the temperatures soared throughout the month of August. The last straw seemed to be when a demonstration in Austin, Texas, which had started out peacefully enough, blew up into chaos. The local politicians had decided to quash what they saw as defiance of the law by a show of force. Ten demonstrators had been killed when the police opened fire.

Thirty seven Austin policemen had lost their lives when the demonstrators had fired back.

Only a sudden, and massive, storm front rolling through had broken up the fighting. Tornadoes in the area, flooding after an unusually heavy rainfall, and the fact that both sides were somewhat stunned over what had happened. Both sides were more than ready to step back at that point.

The governor of Texas had sent in the National Guard to separate the two sides. The Guardsmen, with the governor's blessing, had arrested a number of members of the city government and all of the top cops in the city, save those who had fled.

Sheppard thought the "Silver Dozen" was a stupid name, one of the women staffers had noted that all of the members of this clique were gray haired, not one was under the age of seventy. One wag in the press had referred to them as the "Silver Dozen," and the name stuck. The members of the cabal actually liked the name, one had said that it denoted wisdom. But they had promised Sheppard vastly expanded police powers in a new government, so he went along.

"What about the Constitution?" he had asked.

The senior Senator, from Oregon, had shook his head and said, "The Constitution says what we want it to say. We've allowed that piece of paper written by old white slave-owners to govern our actions for far too long. Take away their guns and the masses will settle right down. Mark my words."

An unusually cold autumn and the very early onset of a brutal winter had settled things down. No one wants to protest in the cold. But now things were heating up again, it was time to act.

He picked up his phone, barking at his administrative assistant, "Get me the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff on the phone."

Shirley Watson paused, then said, "Of course, Director. I'll connect you."

She didn't have the heart, or the courage, to tell him that the phones at the Pentagon were not being answered. She'd keep trying until he asked what the hold up was, then she'd tell him.

Leroy Jackson had been on the phone all morning, things were apparently going nuts in DC and some guy in West Virginia was claiming to be the President. From the calls he had made, apparently the man in West Virginia, one John Nakagawa formerly the Secretary of the Interior, might actually be legitimate.

Lieutenant Colonel Ramirez had returned to his motel, he had thought about heading back to Baltimore but word of one President dying and another one taking office not fifty miles from Cumberland, made him stick around.

As he had told Jackson, "I want to be close to the action."

Of that there seemed to be damned little for the moment.

He walked down to the barracks area, where the on duty staff could sleep and rewind. Ramirez wanted Choe and Chapman close, he didn't think they'd run but he wanted them close at hand. So he had had them put up in the barracks.

Captain Choe was sitting in the break room, wearing tan slacks and a Naval Academy sweatshirt. He looked up from his coffee when Jackson walked in.

"Chapman sleeping?"

"Yes, she is. It's been a rough couple of weeks for her. So, this business with the new President, you buying it?"

"Can't see that I have much choice. Did you know that the FBI Director claims to be the new acting President?"

Choe laughed, "Based on what? Does he think that knowing secrets will give him power?"

"Most of the folks he thinks he has his hooks in are in the wind. Hell, almost half of Congress went home as soon as things started to go south. The ones that stayed seem sincere in getting the country back on track."

"Is that even possible at this point?" Chapman had walked into the room, disheveled and tired, she couldn't sleep for long. Her old back injury made sure of that.

Jackson sighed, before he could answer, his cellphone chimed.

"Jackson. Seriously? All right, I'll send what units I can spare."

Hanging up he looked at Choe and Chapman, "Seems the former SecDef had one more roll of the dice in him."

Choe asked, "What can he do?"

"For starters he's sent out orders over an unencrypted frequency for the Air Force to attack Site B."

"Where Nakagawa and the current government are at?" Choe stood up abruptly, the look on his face worried Jackson.

"Yup. He seems to think that the folks at Joint Base Langley-Eustis and also at Seymour-Johnson are under his control. If he does, that's big trouble. That would give him four squadrons of F-15Es, the Strike Eagles, and three of F-22 Raptors. Do you have any sources at the Pentagon which might still be active?"

Before Choe could speak, Chapman interrupted, "I know a guy at Homeland, he's a Marine Reservist, he knows people, Master Gunnery Sergeants often do."

Jackson pulled out his cellphone and handed it to her, "Call him."