Tucker took a deep breath, took aim at the left rear tire of the Mustang, and pulled the trigger. The first shot embedded in the car’s fender. However, the next shot found its mark, causing the tire to explode.
Tucker took off toward the gate, spinning gravel and kicking dust into the air. The newcomers ran through the parking lot toward them, but within seconds, Tucker had put plenty of distance between them. After handing the gun back to his mom, he swerved to the left, placing them back on the county road heading east.
His adrenaline was racing, and Lacey had gripped anything she could find to hold onto until her knuckles turned white. Tucker drove at a high rate of speed until Lacey finally convinced him to slow down.
“Whew!” an exhilarated Tucker shouted as he turned onto another county road headed south.
“What was that all about?” asked Lacey.
“I didn’t want them to follow us.”
“So you shot out their tire?”
“Good idea, right?”
Lacey wasn’t sure she agreed. “What if they had a gun and shot back? What if you missed and they did chase us down?”
“They didn’t,” Tucker argued.
Lacey rested her chin on her hand and looked out the passenger window. A farmhouse sat off the road a couple of hundred yards. Its downstairs windows were lit up with flickering candlelight. She decided not to get into an argument with her son, although she thought the risky maneuver should be addressed before something like that happened again.
She sighed and then unfolded the map. With a penlight provided by Dr. Brady, she studied their location. She wanted to make it into Arkansas before they stopped for the night. It meant traveling another five hours or so. Then something struck her as odd.
“Tucker, what kind of car was that?”
“One of those new Must—” he began before cutting himself off. “Mom, it was a new car. That means Sheriff Mobley was right. There are gonna be other cars now.”
Lacey sighed. Things were about to change, and she wasn’t certain they would be for the better.
Chapter Forty-Four
Monday, November 4
Mount Weather Emergency Operations Center
Northern Virginia
In the U.S., a law called the Posse Comitatus Act prohibited the domestic use of military for law enforcement purposes without specific congressional authorization. There was another law, the Insurrection Act, which provided the president authorization to use the military under certain circumstances. Throughout American history, the Insurrection Act of 1807 had been invoked on numerous occasions but generally to quell unrest in large urban environments. It’s considered an action of last resort to be used in the event state authorities were unable to give their citizens the protection of law enforcement.
Pursuant to the declaration of martial law, the president was able to invoke the provisions of the Insurrection Act without the input of the states’ governors. Both the governors of Florida and Texas refused to take action as he’d requested. Texas doubled down and ordered the Texas Army National Guard to assist law enforcement to create roadblocks at any road entering the state. Those roads they couldn’t patrol were blocked with concrete barriers and razor wire.
In Florida, the governor set up roadblocks at the state line to ask for proof of residency. He didn’t use the Florida National Guard, as it was occupied tamping down unrest in Miami, Orlando, and the Tampa Bay area. Likewise, the governor of Florida refused to intervene in the actions of the Monroe County government.
The Florida Keys represented a very small part of the state’s population, and their actions didn’t threaten any lives, although the evicted nonresidents argued to the contrary. Nonetheless, he refused to take action, and this angered the president every bit as much as the Texas border issue.
In response to the perceived insolence on the part of the two governors, the president elected to use a show of force to make them capitulate. He sent available troops from regional military bases toward Texas. They were instructed to amass at major highways entering the state as if they planned to invade. Whether that actually came to pass was yet to be determined. He hoped the Texas governor would back down from her quasi-secession attempt.
In Florida, he needed to make an example of the Florida Keys. Across the country, communities and towns were learning of these quasi-secessionist movements so were also following Texas’s lead. Federal highways that passed through towns were being blocked, and travelers, few that they were, had been denied entry. Pockets of rural communities across the southeastern states had armed citizens engaging in hostilities with refugees seeking help. If they weren’t residents, they were told to leave. If they didn’t leave of their own accord, they were forced to at gunpoint.
The president saw this type of activity as lawless, and it ran contrary to the spirit of cooperation he thought the nation needed to help one another through the crisis.
During the daily briefing that morning, Secretary of Agriculture Erin Bergmann was called upon by Chief of Staff Chandler to provide the president some insight into the mindset of these rural communities. She very succinctly equated it to the Helton administration’s position on assisting Israel and India during the outbreak of nuclear war. The president’s duty, similar to that of governors, county executives, and mayors, is to protect the citizens within his charge. Rural communities don’t get the kind of attention large cities do in times of unrest. They had to fend for themselves, she explained.
This honest assessment was the proverbial nail in Erin’s coffin. The president was interested in surrounding himself with yes-men, those who agreed with every one of his proposals. He wasn’t interested in contrarian points of view at the moment. Although Erin responded with her opinion when called upon, following the meeting, the president instructed
