He winked again. “Don’t worry; I’ll be sipping Coors a week from today,” he said. “Besides, when I get back, you get the exclusive interview.”
Chapter Forty
– Anonymous
“The President is losing it.”
Deborah Ivey lifted her eyebrows at the bald statement. The bunker was surprisingly luxurious for its size, but then, it did play host to nearly a third of Congress and the Senate. The government had been dispersed across the United States, although one of the bunkers, in Texas, had been converted into a resistance headquarters, and it had been a surprise to be summoned from the President’s bunker to a very different facility. She had suspected anything from a session in front of a Senate Committee to another round of recriminations, but instead…
She leaned forward. “In what way is he losing it?”
Ovitz met her eyes, unflinchingly. “He hesitated to unleash nuclear weapons against the Redshirts,” he said. Far be it from a major politician to use the Redskin label. “The result of that failure was the alien landing and successful occupation of Texas. He refused to use them in Operation Lone Star…”
“Nukes were deployed against targets in orbit,” Deborah said, carefully. “They generated the EMP pulses that helped to blind the aliens.”
“But not completely,” Ovitz reminded her. “If they had been deployed against ground targets, Operation Lone Star would have gone the other way. Instead, they were not deployed and thousands of our best fighting men were killed. Worst of all, when the aliens started their advance, he did use nukes…and the result was the loss of Washington, with hundreds of thousands dead or seriously injured.”
“I advised the President to deploy nukes, as did you,” Deborah said, dryly. “One must argue that the President was right. At best, we would have turned Texas into radioactive glass, with the remainder of our cities open to alien attack. I don’t think that anyone would consider that a plus.”
Ovitz frowned. “I was under the impression that you supported harsher measures against the aliens,” he said. “We know, now, that they have very few nukes, certainly no more than fifty. Our prisoners have confirmed that for us. We could have traded nukes with them and come off the winners.”
Deborah steepled her fingers. She loved arguing and debating…and this one promised to be interesting, spiced with the taste of possible advancement.
“First,” she said, “we don’t know for sure that they really do have only fifty warheads, of which three have now been deployed on Earth. The alien prisoners might be lying…or they might have been lied to by their leadership. An old intelligence trick is to do just that, knowing that the person doing the lying is under the impression that they are actually telling the truth. Second, they have easy access to thousands of asteroids and other pieces of space junk; they don’t need nukes to mess up our cities. Third…I don’t think that anyone in America would take the exchange of forty-seven cities for burning out Texas.”
Ovitz smiled at her. “Are you taking his side?”
“I think that we’re not in a position to start rocking the boat,” Deborah said. “I don’t mean to be rude, but really…what do you want?”
“I want Texas freed from alien control and America restored to its former heights of glory,” Ovitz said. “I will do whatever is necessary to achieve those goals.”
“And take the credit as well,” Deborah finished, dryly. It wasn't a question. “How exactly do you suggest that this miracle is to be achieved?”
Ovitz said nothing. “I understand your desire to rid your state of the aliens, but at the moment…it’s not possible,” Deborah said. “The former might of the Army has been effectively destroyed. There are barely more than a hundred active tanks left in the entire United States. Levels of other vehicles and equipment are also low; certainly, anyone driving a military vehicle anywhere does so at risk of his life. We have gone from possessing an army that could go anywhere and beat anyone to a force that can barely delay the aliens if they decide they want the remainder of the United States.”
“The gun nuts are happy, at least,” Ovitz growled. He’d been a loud opponent of any form of gun control before the aliens had arrived and now, with civilians the only form of resistance in many areas, had been watching the gun control lobby disintegrate under the pressures of war. Several Governors had unilaterally revoked all gun control legislation, allowing their citizens to arm themselves to the teeth, while others had discovered that no one was listening any longer. “They’re the last line of defence.”
“You’re forgetting the League of Woman Voters,” Deborah said, just to watch his reaction. Ovitz wasn't their most favoured politician. “Don’t they get a say?”
She cleared her throat and continued. “The aliens have deployed weapons systems that make it impossible for us, even if we had the full pre-war might of the United States concentrated in one place, to recover Texas,” she warned. “We lost several units, including some of our best, before they even had a chance to shoot up some of those floating tanks. Senator, I’m sorry to put this to you, but…Texas is beyond our ability to recover.”
“And yet, the President is on the verge of a breakdown,” Ovitz said. “I have been reading the reports from his doctors. He’s stressed, is developing an ulcer, and hasn’t been sleeping enough. What happens if he decides he wants to surrender?”
“I don’t think that he is on the verge of deciding anything of the sort,” Deborah said, icily. She’d forgotten that Ovitz, fourth in line to the Presidency, would see those reports as a matter of course. “Yes, he’s not in a good state, which is hardly surprising. How many Congressmen and Senators are in the same state?”
“They’re suffering from a sudden loss of importance,” Ovitz said, with a quick grin and a wink. “They don’t like the damage that is being inflicted on their states and they really don’t like the way that power is devolving down, more and more, on the Governors. Why, dear Jacqueline was all upset yesterday because her people weren’t listening to her any more.”
Deborah rolled her eyes. Jacqueline had been a Senator who made most left-wingers look like the reincarnation of Genghis Khan. She’d been a fervent proponent of gun control, climate control, multiculturalism, homosexual marriage and everything else that tended to send right-wingers into a frenzy of rage. She had represented San Francisco, secure in the knowledge that she would never be voted out, until the aliens had arrived and destroyed her comfortable world. She’d been one of the loudest voices demanding no military preparations for First Contact… and, after the first attacks, she had continued to demand peace, not war. Her people, suddenly powerless and with an alien occupation force in Texas, only a few days away, hadn’t agreed. The only reason she hadn’t been recalled was the difficulty in having her travel back to California…and, probably, no real desire to have any further dealings with her. When – if – the next elections took place, she would probably lose by a landslide, screaming about right- wing plots and conspiracies all the way.
“But some of them want to impeach the President,” Ovitz continued. “They think that he is not living up to the role.”
“They say that in every war,” Deborah said, angrily. She had a sneaking suspicion – more than a suspicion – about who was behind it. “Did any of them seriously believe in aliens before we detected the mothership?”
“Jacqueline probably did,” Ovitz said, wryly. “They want the President to get rid of the aliens, post haste.”
Deborah thought fast. It was hard to tell what was really an impeachable offence; generally, it was whatever Congress thought it was. Every President since Nixon had faced the possibility of impeachment, although proceedings hadn’t always gotten underway. It was used more as a club to beat the President with rather than a serious threat. They didn’t have a case…but if they were angry enough, they might be able to impeach the President anyway.
“And how much better would anyone else do?”
“They just think that someone else could do a better job,” Ovitz said.
“That’s what always happens,” Deborah said, frustrated. “We have a war…people start second-guessing the President and the Government. We should be doing this, no, we should be doing that, no, we should never have
