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Praetorium Honoris

Friday, September 13, 2024

Sacramento Burns

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Kasparovich held out his free hand, "Just reaching for my ID, Sarge ..."

McKellar's aim went from Wilcox to Kasparovich, "Thumb and forefinger, slowly, I  swear if you so much as sneeze I will ventilate your head."

Wilcox started to speak, then he realized that Cameron was just down the short hall leading to the living room, his M1911 pointed at him. Wilcox elected to remain silent.

"See we're Feds, just like I said." Kasparovich was holding his DHS ID open so that McKellar could see it.

Before McKellar could say anything, two UH-60 Blackhawks roared down the street at very low altitude. The two Feds looked up, neither soldier did. After the helicopters had passed, Cameron said, "Sergeant McKellar, why don't we invite these two in? No need to put on a show for the neighbors."

"You heard the man," McKellar said, "slow and easy, come on in."


Sitting in McKellar's living room, Wilcox was beginning to question his decision to talk to these men directly. His orders hadn't been very specific, not much more than "Find out what the hell is going on with the California Guard." Now he thought maybe this was a bit too direct.

Cameron holstered his weapon, knowing full well that McKellar would shoot both of these Feds in less time than it took for his first expended shell to hit the floor. From the looks on their faces, the Feds knew that as well.

"So gentlemen, what brings you to California from Langley?"

Kasparovich said, "What makes you think we're ..."

Wilcox interrupted him, "That's right General, we're with the Agency, the DHS creds are to preserve our dignity, if you will. The Director of Ops sent us out here a month ago when rumors began to pop up about California seceding."

"Winsome sent me the OPLAN for that last week." Cameron offered. "I thought it was an insane plan. Winsome had an inflated sense of what our Guard units could do. Not to mention that since the troubles began, a lot of our Guardsmen don't bother to report in for drill. Most of our people are prior service, a lot of Yemen vets, they don't think much of our Governor. Neither do I. I wasn't sure of what I was going to do, I decided that resigning was my only course of action."

Before anyone could speak, the General's phone chimed.

"I need to take this."


The California Highway Patrol had set up roadblocks all around the Governor's private office complex. The Governor had ordered this done as a precautionary measure. He had issued a bulletin earlier that day advising California residents to remain calm in the event of a "Federal invasion" as the Governor's spokesperson had called it.

Word spread quickly that the Navy had sortied a number of its ships out of San Diego. Federal installations had been shut down, their gates closed with heavily armed troops guarding the perimeters. Many people were questioning who was doing the invading.

"Sir?" Winsome's aide was standing in the doorway to the office.

"What now, David?" Winsome's phone had been ringing all morning and into the afternoon, every media outlet in the state, and not a few, outside of the state, were asking what was going on.

"The mayors of L.A. and San Francisco have called, the Navy has ships patrolling off the coast. They're saying that they're not letting anything in or out of port."

"What? What do you mean?"

"No ships are coming in, no ships are going out."

"Are you telling me that the United States Navy is blockading the state of California?" the Governor was out of his chair, pacing across the office. His voice was getting louder with each word.

"Yes Sir. Uh, and another thing ..."

"What?"

"The FAA has grounded all flights coming into and going out of California."

"What are the airlines doing about that?"

"They're screaming to their representatives in DC. But they're been told that if they do get airborne and leave the state, the aircraft will be seized at their destination."

"Aren't the passengers up in arms ..."

"Rental car and bus companies are doing a booming business. Folks are hopping a bus or renting a car and heading across the line to Nevada. The airport in Las Vegas is as busy as O'Hare these days."

"Is this legal?" Winsome whined.

David Hopkins just looked at his boss, shook his head, then said, "Governor, the Feds hold all the cards. Nakagawa's a tough bastard, did you think he was like his predecessor?"

Winsome looked up at his aide, "Don't get cocky with me, you little twerp."

Hopkins pulled out a small revolver, Winsome shook his head, 'You don't have the balls, you simpering ..."

Winsome jumped when Hopkins fired the pistol, he felt a sharp pain in his lower abdomen. He looked down, blood was staining his khaki slacks and the fabric of his office chair. Pressing his hands against the wound, he groaned, man, that hurt.

Hopkins wondered why the Governor just sat there staring at him, in the movies, the guy who got shot always immediately died, he shook his head. Maybe the pistol is too small. So he fired again.

And again.

And again.

When the CHP troopers burst into the office, David Hopkins was still pulling the trigger, but the pistol was empty. As two troopers wrested the gun from him, one other went to the Governor.

"Check his pulse!" a sergeant yelled out as he came into the office.

Trooper Juan Jimenez looked back at his sergeant in amazement, couldn't he tell from the hole in the Governor's forehead that there would be no pulse?


Cameron put his phone away, he looked ashen. He looked at the other men in the room.

"That was a contact of mine in the Governor's office. Winsome is dead. Shot by an aide apparently."

"Sir, the business at hand?" McKellar tried to push things along. He was a little nervous sitting in his own living room holding two Feds at gunpoint.

"So, the President sent you?" General Cameron had trouble believing that. He had trouble believing anything at the moment.

Wilcox shrugged, "Well, not directly, he ordered our agency to determine the threat level out here. Once we thought that it was manageable with the Federal forces already in place, our boss, the DO, Ephraim Johansen, ordered us to contact you. He had a hunch you might still be loyal."

"Johansen, Ephraim Johansen is the Director of Operations at the CIA? Jesus, I always assumed he'd get gunned down in some Third World shithole or shanked in a Federal prison." Don McKellar scoffed.

Everyone turned to look at him, Cameron spoke first, "You know Ephraim Johansen? How do you know him?"

"Afghanistan, clandestine op there in 2023. While that clown we had for a President was vacationing at the beach, we went in to try and destabilize those bastards." McKellar explained.

"Did you?" Kasparovich asked that, he'd done some time in that benighted country.

"They mostly destabilized themselves, without an external enemy they went back to fighting each other. Like they always do."

"But all that equipment we left behind ..." Wilcox said.

"Most of it was inoperable after a few years, we made sure of that."

"How?" Cameron asked, though he had a good idea.

"Kill one or two foreign 'advisors' and after that, no one is real keen to go there. Other than the incompetents trying to climb the political ladder back home."

"Foreign advisors?" Kasparovich had often wondered about that.

"Chinese, Kazakhs, the odd Iranian here and there, and then the Russians. Some of those f**kers wanted payback for what happened to their daddies back in the day."

Wilcox noticed that McKellar hadn't really lowered his weapons, if need be, he and Kasparovich could be shot down at will. He was about to ask a question when the unmistakable roar of an F/A-18N went by overhead, very low. Followed by an explosion not too far away.

"What the Hell?" Cameron said, he'd caught a glimpse of the aircraft as it had gone by, from the tail code, he guessed USS John F. Kennedy (CVN 79).

"We're only 90 miles from the ocean off San Francisco, we have a carrier battle group off the coast. We're blockading California." Wilcox was impatient to get moving.

"Guys, are we going to sit here all day and shoot the shit? We need to get the hell outta Dodge." Kasparovich chimed in.

"Yeah, but not in that 'look at us we're Feds' Suburban out there. We can take my ride. It's parked out back, in the alley." McKellar had made a decision, he'd holstered his weapon and headed to get his keys.

"Lose the ties and the f**king suit coats. I've got a couple of sweatshirts you can wear." McKellar went into his bedroom and grabbed those items. He also took the time to head back down to the basement where he grabbed his M4 carbine and his Mossberg 590S Compact shotgun. Wilcox and Kasparovich, looking a little less like Feds now, helped him load a gym bag with ammunition for those weapons.

While they were loading the car, two more Super Hornets roared over.

"What's near here?" Wilcox asked McKellar. Cameron answered.

"Mather Field, used to be an Air Force Base, there's an Intel squadron there now, the 149th. But a bunch of hard heads occupied the place three days ago. They've managed to procure a number of armored personnel carriers. They've sworn to defend the state from the U.S. government."

Kasparovich shook his head, "I'm guessing they're dying for their state right now."

From their position they could see large columns of black smoke boiling into the air, not that far away.

"Mather?" Kasparovich nodded at the smoke.

Cameron nodded, he knew the CO of the 149th, a good kid. "What's left of it."

"Come on people, move your asses!" McKellar shouted from the driver's seat of an old surplus Humvee.

Cameron nodded then looked at the two Feds, "You heard the man, let's get out of this place. Things might get hotter than that." He pointed towards Mather, it seemed the Navy was determined to wipe it off the map. Another pair of Super Hornets was over the base, the roar of their 20mm cannons was audible, even at this distance.



52 comments:

  1. Americans killing Americans. This is not good.

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    1. Hopefully this will end quick.
      Not even most of left side of the board in the most left sude leaning state would consider taking up arms against US federal government.
      Winsome was crazy to think he would have following enough to secede.
      Same would be for Texas if right wing governor there ever thought of sceding so to say, in opposite way to California.

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    2. StB - It's happened before in this story.

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    3. Paweł - Winsome thought that most people thought the way he did. Wishful thinking on his part.

      As to Texas, a lot of Americans might sympathize with the Lone Star State over the Feds.

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    4. Re: Texas, the big cities would fight the governor but the power of the Texas National Guard and most law enforcement agencies lies not in the big cities. There's active hatred against Austin and Houston.

      And the way the FedGov has been treating Texas is plenty justification in a lot of peoples' minds for standing up against the Imperial Overlords in Washington, DC, up to and including potential secession and/or rebellion.

      Re: Winsome, ah, Winsome. It's been proven over the last decades that, yes, indeedy, a Governor can buy the power of the lower people by payments and reining in enforcement of actual laws. Winsome thought he bought enough 'hearts and minds' to do the deed. And it seems he almost did.

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    5. Winsome rolled the dice ...

      Win some, lose some.

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  2. Enough Force can end the immediate conflict. But as history shows an idea cannot be so easily quelled.

    Afghanistan comes to mind. Their manner of thinking didn't include the western ideas we tried to force down their throats.

    So, after 20 years the Graveyard of Empires is again ruled by the same Taliban.

    Across this country is plenty who think poorly of the Feds in general. Cali was just more ambitious.

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    1. Stupid ideas take a lot of quelling.

      Yeah, Communism, I'm looking at you.

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    2. You look at Afghanistan's history and you wonder why we were there a day longer than we had to be? I figured either they were unaware of it's history (not likely) or if they just wanted to spend other people's lives and money to see if they could find a spot in history.
      I really wonder who sits on the cabal's board of directors....

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    3. Fools always think that they can succeed where others have failed.

      Besides which, if it makes money for the corporation and the stockholders, who cares if anyone dies? (Smedley Butler was right.)

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  3. Far too many pols put themselves first, their party second and the country third. At the end of the day there needs to be fewer hardheads alive than started the day, jess saying.

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    1. Which is precisely the problem. The people you want running things don't want the job. Those you don't, desperately want it.

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    2. A case in point is General Sherman "I will not accept if nominated and will not serve if elected."

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    3. Sherman was a straight shooter, no bullshit in that man.

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  4. Muse now has me reading the daily offerings, closing the site, doing other things, coming back and rereading. Several times. On this, my only comment is, "Shot placement, shot placement, shot placement."

    Oh, and,
    "Sic semper tyrannis"

    Something that Nakagawa should keep in mind. It doesn't take much to convince the mobocracy that someone is a tyrant.

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    1. "Doesn't take much to convince the mob that you are the tryant "

      Afghanistan point above.

      Who controls the mass media can make any action of the "not elected president " into a good idea OR the action of a tryant.

      Michael

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    2. Well said, Michael. Especially, "Their manner of thinking didn't include the western ideas we tried to force down their throats." Our diplomats and their bosses don't quite grok that not all the world is Western Europe, the Commonwealth, or the United States, and that the
      mores and values of "The oppressive Judeo-Christian patriarchy" don't apply in much of the world.It's why we had so many problems in the Middle East and SE Asia. Look at the outrage caused by that one out of context photo of Nguyen Ngoc Loan. https://cherrieswriter.com/2015/08/03/the-story-behind-the-famous-saigon-execution-photo/

      "The General killed the Viet Cong; I killed the general with my camera. Still photographs are the most powerful weapon in the world. People believe them; but photographs do lie, even without manipulation. They are only half-truths. What the photograph didn’t say was, “What would you do if you were the General at that time and place on that hot day, and you caught the so-called bad guy after he blew away one, two or three American soldiers?”"

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    3. The mainstream media is a poison right now, they have elevated themselves from reporters to judges. A pox on their houses.

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    4. The MSM is owned by the cabal running things, that takes out a good chunk of the 1st Amendment with the loss of a free press.

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    5. The main-stream media has been pushing agendas for a long time. Where were the photographs of South Vietnamese mutilated by the VC and the NVA? Where's the villages wiped out by the VC and the NVA? Where's the media negatively reporting on VC blowing up people using boobytrapped bicycles and baby carriages?

      It's like presidential candidate coverage since at least 1972. The republican candidate gets about the same amount of coverage as the democrat, but the news articles are not 'front-page' unless they're negative, photos are usually in black and white vs color, on and on. Even the NYT published an article within a month saying that coverage of Trump has been mostly negative while coverage of Biden/Harris coverage is mostly positive.

      Yeah, media, hwack-ptoooieee

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    6. The media learned it could influence people probably around the Vietnam timeframe. I shall despise them forever for that.

      Foxtrot Walter Cronkite.

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    7. Contrary to the popular myth, The Press has almost never been “fairandunbiased.” I think the closest it came was the '50s and early ‘60s.

      It used to be that except for the smallest towns, if there was one newspaper there was another with an opposing editorial bias. Now Big Corporate Press controls almost every outlet, and all those speak with one voice. There is no major opposing editorial bias.

      I blame Watergate for this. Every budding “journalist” wants to be the next Woodward or Bernstein. And, because Nixon was a Republican, obviously Republicans are all the Spawn of Satan.

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    8. You can see the enemyization of the Media starting in the Korean War. Instead of mostly positive articles like in WWII, the hate of America starts showing in the coverage of Korea. Which makes sense because in 1950 the first fruits of the USSR's takeover of American Journalism schools reach the main desks of news organizations.

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    9. When was the media ever considered fair and unbiased? Hearst and the Spanish American War, prime example of lying to people to achieve an end desired by?

      The media.

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    10. Any Mouse @ 6:45 PM - Any examples?

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  5. Evil will, given enough time, turn on itself.

    Given the death of the leader, I wonder how much stomach there will be to continue.

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    1. Blasting the hell out of Mather Field should also cool passions.

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    2. There's probably lots of people who have the stomach to continue, behind the scenes, at dinner parties and at natural food stores and other places elite socialist jackwagons congregate.

      Open resistance? Probably partially ended, but the 'protests' and 'marches' against the Evil Federal Government and Satan Naka will be large and epic and full of rioting and looting and burning, just like every other time. And expect protests and marches against the Government and the President in other states not 'touched' by rebellion, including commercially printed signs and shirts that all look very much alike no matter where one is seen, because these are 'grass-roots movements' against authority, right?

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    3. This President might not hesitate to give the mob a "whiff of grapeshot."

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  6. A little collateral damage to the State Legislature please? It's not too far from Mather. 😉

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  7. I’m a little concerned about the patients at the VA Hospital at Mather.

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    1. The patients should be okay, until the rebellion takes a page out of the Hamas/Hezbollah playbook and move the resistance into said hospital (and other hospitals and schools and day-care facilities) under the assumption that the US Government won't attack the rebellious jerks at said hospitals and schools and day-care facilities. And they'll be mostly right. Though government hit-teams could enter said places, but the jackwagons will use the enemedia against the rightful government, just like the Hamas/Hezbollah playbook says...

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    2. Skip - I'll check up on them shortly.

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    3. We'll see what the "resistance" in California will do. (I'm thinking they're more along the lines of gangs looking for loot and places to sell drugs rather than politically motivated fanatics.)

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  8. By the time of this story, how many conservatives are left in California? And will the illegals side with the Winsomeites? If the Central Valley still is conservative, there should be a lot of anti-support against the Winsomeites. Same with illegals who are milking California for everything. Lots of questions, and, yes, I know, I have to wait to find out.I

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    1. The Central Valley is still a bastion of conservatism.

      A lot of the illegals want jobs, the want the American dream, they're not looking for handouts.

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    2. Correction. A lot of the old-school illegals want jobs and their illegal version of the American Dream.

      The current crop during and since Comrade Obama? They're here for the free money and food and phones and housing and health care. And that's the ones that aren't criminals kicked out of their old countries' prisons.

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  9. Good ,as usual, Sarge; however, two gentle corrections:
    "They're saying that their not letting anything in or out..." Should be "they're".
    "the roar of their 20mm cannons were audible..." The roar were audible? Nope, "was audible".
    Forgive me, but some things just jump out at me. I really do try not to be pedantic.
    --Tennessee Budd

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    1. Argh, two unforced errors in one post. I'll have my editor sacked.

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  10. As long as we are in CA, shout out for Travis AFB where my father in law, The Master Sergeant, served for many years.

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    1. Flew out of Travis once upon a long time ago, Okinawa bound.

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  11. Replies
    1. Sometimes it's like that. A storm blows up without warning.

      We'll see what follows in its wake.

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  12. Just curious, knowing this is set in the future, so there may well be such a thing then "...the unmistakable roar of an F/A-18N went by overhead..." What would make a F/A-18N sound different from the current versions which only go up to F model, I think?
    John Blackshoe

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    1. Because it's the only variant of Super Hornet still on active duty by the time of this story.

      (You've also got the EA-18G at the moment, the Growler electronic warfare platform, a variant of the F/A-18F. Youngest was a backseater in the F/A-18F, her husband is still on active duty flying the F/A-18E.)

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