'Okay, then, sir. I think we ought to ask the Texans for some gas, turn around, and march back through New Mexico arresting or shooting every federal agent we can find on the way. But that's just me. . . .'
* * *
Wardroom, USS
'Is it just me or does anyone here agree we never should have given this place back?'
The speaker's comments were greeted with snorts of assent and louder snorts of derision at the local 'hosts.' No one in the Navy, and few if any in the other services, had thought that giving the Panama Canal Zone back to Panama had been a very good idea. The knowledge was made all the more bitter, especially among the more senior officers and chiefs that the return of the Zone had never been necessary. Rather, so they perceived it, it had been the mistaken decision of a past—be it noted, Democratic—President also widely considered within the military to have been a national mistake. It had been carried through fruition by a man convinced beyond contradiction of his convictions and ignorant beyond ignorance of his limitations.
Now the price had to be paid, ironically by another Democrat President. Three amphibious warfare ships, carrying the better part of a brigade of Marines, had entered the Canal from the Pacific. Other ships—some carrying troops and others carrying equipment and supplies—had assembled off of Venado Beach and in the bay of Panama on Panama's Pacific side in anticipation of making the passage.
Then, with the bulk of the force sitting in the fresh water of Gatun Lake the Canal had experienced its first stoppage since 1989 and only the second one in its history as thousands of Canal workers went on strike simultaneously.
The strike was as spontaneous as a man named Patricio could make it.
The Marines were not going anywhere soon.
In the warm blue waters of the Pacific, and the steamy brown waters of Gatun Lake, mixed in among the Marines' transports were merchant ships registered around the world. Among these were several registered with and owned by the People's Republic of China.
Those ships carried arms once destined for Texas and now traded to an international arms dealer . . . but of those the Marines and Navy knew little and cared less.
The captain of the
The Marines were not going to be able to break this foreign strike.
Colorado River, Texas
A military organization—and, while the Marines were a part of the naval service, none had ever suggested they were not in every important particular a military organization—might be likened to a bizarre sort of snake. At its point there were teeth and eyes and venom. Somewhere in the middle was the fresh meal it needed and was digesting to continue on its way. What made the snake bizarre is that its tail was an enormous conglomeration of fat and flesh, muscle and machine stretching out for anywhere from tens to hundreds of miles behind it.
And the point of the beast could move little if at all faster that that fat, bloated, dragging tail.
The point of Second Marine Division (minus that brigade roasting on ships in the Gulf of Mexico) might be at the Colorado River. Its gargantuan tail was still anchored somewhere east of Houston.
In Houston itself that recent and future meal—rather, its passage point—was being squeezed.
* * *
Houston, Texas
From his vantage point overlooking the intersection of Interstate 10 and U.S. 59 Colonel Minh smiled happily at the vista spread below him.
It hadn't even been too very hard. Before they were shut down by federal authorities, the newspapers had waxed lyrical about the martyrdom of Victor Charlesworth and those who had gone to see him speak. Immediately following the shut down, posters had gone up on walls, flyers had been anonymously delivered. Speakers at a dozen platforms appeared, aroused a crowd, announced a rally and then disappeared.
The local police—before they, too, went on strike—seemed quite indifferent to the impromptu rallies.
Now Minh had the results he wanted at this stage. Thousands of cars blocked the intersection. Thousands more people demonstrated around the cars. Not that more than some hundreds of these intended a demonstration. Many, many more had been caught up in the blockage and simply had no good way to leave.
And mixed in with those demonstrators and unwitting demonstrators? A hundred or more of his own 'troops' . . . his own 'armed and dangerous' troops.
To either side of the blockage military convoys had been building for hours, helpless to push on either to deliver the goods or to return for more goods to deliver. This, too, was part of Minh's plan. He intended that the very people who needed federal help to clear the road block should themselves help congest that road to delay federal help.
Still, he hoped—truthfully, he completely expected—that the feds would show up eventually.
'Ah, there they are,' he whispered. A mile away, plainly visible from his vantage point, the ragged lines of the Environmental Protection Police snaked around herringbone parked military trucks. 'Shouldn't be long now.'
Elpi watched with Minh. For the most part, and per Schmidt's instructions, he kept her in one or another of the safe houses that dotted the city. Even so, and even with some clever makeup, she would never pass scrutiny if one of the federal agents dominating the city took a careful look. For one thing, the safe houses were often in Vietnamese neighborhoods. For another, her face had become rather well known as a result of the speech she had made by Charlesworth's side.
