A state of disobedience

'Lieutenant? Are you going to blow it or not?'

Bernoulli remained frozen. Am I going to 'blow it'?

Across the river, a few miles away up the highway, the first of Third Corps LAVs, Light Armored Vehicles, made an abrupt appearance.

Ohh, shit. Bernoulli steeled himself. He set his jaw in a tight grimace. Then he closed his eyes and forced his hands together.

* * *

'Wow! Oh, my God! Holy fucking shit, that was fucking great!' The captain jumped up and down, in plain sight, shouting praise and waving two upright fingers in the general direction of the LAVs massing on the other side of the river. 'Son, you done good,' he continued, pounding Bernoulli on the back with exuberance.

'I went to college to learn to build bridges, sir, not to blow them up,' answered Bernoulli, trying to retain his dignity under the pounding. With one hand he dusted from his uniform fine concrete from the shattered and sundered bridge.

With a last look at the Trinity River, now boasting a set of rapids it had never had before, Bernoulli recovered his detonator, got in his Hummer, and drove south.

* * *

Beaumont, Texas

The Trinity River flowed generally north to south, passing between Houston and Beaumont before spilling itself into the Gulf of Mexico. East of that river, east also of Beaumont, ran a series of creeks, rivers, and bayous. Most of these were too swift, too deep, too muddy, or had too insubstantial a set of banks for easy fording.

A LAV would float and even, after a fashion, swim. It took some preparation and, even so, water was not precisely the LAVs optimum environment. The Marines of the 2^nd Division had LAVs, of course, as did the Army's 3^rd Infantry Division, both moving quickly westward towards their final objective, Houston.

But the Marines had more than LAVs; they had AMTRACs, Amphibious Tractors. And the AMTRACs' optimum environment was the water.

Thus, while a mixed company of Texas Guard infantry and tanks, reinforced by some air defense, was enough to prevent a helicopter insertion to seize a bridge—as it had been up north—it was not enough to stop the reinforced battalion of Marines, swimming their AMTRACs, that crossed Cypress Creek between Deweyville and Orange, then fanned out to seize—without a shot being fired—not one but four bridges, along with their engineer defenders. The engineers, like the rest, had been under orders not to shoot.

In panic and despair, the covering force raced back toward Beaumont and even farther westward. Sadly, they did so without so much as a single detonator to blow the bridge over the Trinity River where it was crossed by I- 10.

The road to Houston was open . . . and in less than a day.

* * *

Washington, DC

'Hah!' exclaimed a jubilant Wilhelmina Rottemeyer when she was given the news. 'Hah!' she repeated, 'let's see that wetback wench stop us now! And her precious national guard is running like scared rabbits. Maybe we took all this too seriously.'

'They're not running, Madam President,' corrected McCreavy. 'They're under orders not to shoot to kill; to warn and withdraw. I'm actually kind of amazed that they're following those orders, to tell the truth. It requires a level of discipline somewhat higher than one would expect in a reserve formation.'

'Bah,' answered Rottemeyer with a contemptuous snort. 'They're folding, crumbling.'

Exasperated, McCreavy ran fingers through close cropped hair. 'I don't know how to make you see this . . . but they're really not. All my commanders report the same. Professionally prepared demolitions, in the hands of people willing to use them, covered by forces that buy them some time and then withdraw . . . rather well, too. And we took some prisoners from the Texans. . . .'

'I want those men to put on trial,' insisted Vega.

McCreavy ignored her. 'We took some prisoners,' she repeated. 'They—the ones who would talk anyway—insist that their orders not to shoot are temporary and that at some point Texas will fight. They likely would have fought along the Colorado River and the Balcones Escarpment. But with things having swung our way faster than they might have liked or anticipated, my guess is that they might fight to hold Houston. And that would eat the 2^nd Marine and 3^rd Infantry Divisions alive. We need to approach that city very carefully.'

* * *

Austin, Texas

'It's disaster,' admitted Schmidt. 'No other word will do.'

'What can we do about it?' asked Juanita.

'Fight? I can move a brigade from the State Defense Force into the western parts of the city. I can reinforce them with a couple of battalions of mech infantry and even a few tanks.'

'But you said the State Defense Force was mostly untrained.'

'So they are, Governor, about half trained. But they're more like completely untrained for city fighting. They're not too badly trained—provided they have some help—in defending the fortifications we have thrown up. And the heavy troops aren't the most suitable for a city either. I asked if you wanted me to 'fight.' I didn't say I could 'win.' But this is so bad . . . Juani I have got to fight.'