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GWOT VI - Scapegoat
Jan. 14th, 2020 06:58 pmGWOT VI - Scapegoat
"He fears his fate too much, or his deserts are small, who will not put it to the touch, to win or lose it all." - Montrose's Toast
I needed to provoke the Churches into a final battle, an event that I could certainly win and rub their noses in their failings.
But it also had to be a moral victory. Merely machine gunning husbands and fathers would neither be sufficient nor effective.
As I mused over the provocation, the orderly ran in.
"Sir. Rodeo Gulch."
I looked up mildly. Surprise is an event in the mind of a commander. I was already paging through the map in my mind.
"They burned it. Killed the inhabitants. Reaction is on the way but still an hour out."
"Who? Where?"
"First Pentacostal, Midland."
That was the provocation I was looking for.
At last scout report, yesterday, five hundred refugees had sheltered in Rodeo Gulch, fed by a Langar Aid food truck and guarded by Moldavian military police.
"Plan Trilogy, Plan Wiper, Plan Revival," I barked out.
"Plan Revival?" one of my officers said in horror.
"Plan Revival," I affirmed.
A lot of people got very, very busy even as our rapid-reaction helicopter lifted and the strike convoy rolled out the gates.
I took out the scouting reports for 1st Penis of Midland. Recalled my visits to the site. Thought about it carefully.
Issued more orders. This was going to be nasty.
Nastier.
###
The gun truck raced forward, towing a trailer full of demolitions.
Sergeant-Commander Mohammed had to stop himself from leaping out when the truck stopped on the far side of the bridge. The very last thing he needed right now would be a broken ankle.
As the crew of the gun truck started digging in, the soldiers and demo cell started laying mines and rigging the bridge.
Thousands of fundamentalist militia heavies would be coming. Soon. They just didn't know it yet.
###
The base had a feral air to it. Half-abandoned.
It would be completely abandoned soon.
###
The mortar platoon checked their ranges, and bearings. Preregistration of likely targets, all from a new vantage they hadn't really considered before today.
But the Major had, and that would have to be good enough.
###
The medical platoon finished packing up. The wounded would have to go on the trucks and trailers like everyone else.
They wouldn't be treating any wounded from Rodeo Gulch until they were established in their new base.
If they lived to.
###
The troops sweated in their hides along the road.
The Californian rapid-reaction force would come racing to the rescue, gun trucks waving like so many impotent phalli, and with the power of Christ, they would punish the heretics for their trespass.
The heretics weren't the only ones with machine guns and mines.
But as the minutes stretched to hours, and the hours stretched towards nightfall, the troops realized.
The Californians were racing … somewhere. If not to Rodeo Gulch, then to where?
###
Captain Somol wanted to cry.
The damned Christian militias had stopped respecting the neutrality of his force. They had shown up with their technicals and ordered him out of the way. He'd refused.
They'd opened fire.
And now he lay among the dead. Some small miracle had kept him alive, but if he moved to find out, the militias would be certain to finish the job.
He was getting cold.
He would have to sneak out at dark.
Every place he touched the ground was chill.
But he dared not shiver.
Not and disturb the corpses piled above him.
He smelled smoke next.
They were burning the shantytown.
Then he heard screams, as the fires flushed out the survivors hiding.
He did not hear shots. But he heard more screams.
Machetes.
###
If there is one institution sacred to the Christian church, it is not actually services. They're important and all … as are weddings and funerals, Sunday school and communion and baptism and confirmation, all the various holidays and festivals, of the Church and of mortal man.
It's Bingo night.
A chance for the menfolk and womenfolk to mingle, to gossip, to gamble in a limited form that could not be called sinful, to simply enjoy each other's company.
The 1st Pentacostal Church of Midland would never forget this Bingo night.
###
The rapid reaction helicopter never arrived at Rodeo Gulch. Instead it dropped off two patrols equipped for long range reconnaissance.
They would carefully sneak up on the site. Accepting that some wounded would die, but that all would die if their approach was detected.
The pilot of course called in the smoke from the fires. As did the recon scouts.
###
The bored sentries at the gate had their own card game going.
Strictly forbidden of course, but with the annoying sergeant and his wife at the Bingo game, there was no harm in it.
The congregation would be enjoying the call, and the music, and they would be … stuck … out here.
Perhaps stuck is the wrong term.
Or the right one.
Because they were the first to die, before the first shot was fired.
The sentry's face was an agonized mask of terror and regret, when he realized that the sudden sharp pain in his side was a heavy knife through his kidney.
It hurt. Too much. To scream.
###
The California troops had rehearsed taking control of the site. They knew its weaknesses better than the militia. And so many of the would-be defenders were away, waiting in ambush after their murders at Rodeo Gulch.
Cameras are only as good as the sentries watching them.
Alarms are only as good as the people who installed them, and selected the sensors and their placement.
So it was that like fleeting shadows, the heavily armed shock troops of the California Republic had the campus taken away from the owners before they even noticed.
###
This part was sheer theatrics. But that was the very point of all this.
A drama, with players. And ratings and stakes. And no deux ex machina, no Gods from machines or anywhere else.
The people of this Church were in the hands of the California Republic tonight.
And that meant they were in Hell.
###
Suddenly the back and front and sides of the church were full of heavily armed California Republic troops.
The caller was Tasered, and someone stepped over his twitching body and took the microphone from his hand.
Groans and thuds signaled that the AV room and the sound techs had been subdued.
"DROP IT," warned a sergeant as six laser dots appeared on the church usher who started to stand with a pistol in her hand.
She did, shaking, and saved her life.
The man with the microphone started to speak.
###
"My name is Major 18. I must apologize for the informal way that I have taken over as your guest speaker tonight. I regret that the pastor is indisposed. I fear that something he will try to eat tonight will disagree with him.
"Many of your menfolk just carried out an unlawful atrocity, a war crime, at a site called Rodeo Gulch. They are huddled in trenches waiting for my reaction force to respond. Eventually they will figure out that we're not coming and come back here.
"They are not going to like what they find.
"My scouts confirm that five hundred men, women and children have lost their lives at Rodeo Gulch. No, not lost their lives … not LOST … had their lives STOLEN from them, had their lives TAKEN from them … WERE MURDERED! MURDERED I SAY! MURDERED WITH THE HELP OF THE PEOPLE IN THIS ROOM!"
I was just warming up.
"We all know that the Churches are working day and night to expel the refugees from Iowa. And since they are not leaving fast enough on their own, you are going out at night to kill them. How many of you have had red blood drip from the hands of your men, as they wash in their sinks and showers and tubs? How will you explain all this to your children?
"Don't worry. I'll take care of that."
And with that, California Republic MPs force-walked the children who had been in day care into the room, and pushed after them the parents who had been caring for them. Some of them freshly bleeding.
"Hi kids," I said calmly once they had rushed to their parents and stopped most of their wailing.
"I'm a soldier. That means I do bad things. I'm about to do some very bad things here. But you have a right to know what I am going to do, and why I am going to do it."
I raised a hand to cue the first video clip.
On the screen behind me, video appeared. Video of refugees being beaten with sticks by Soldiers of God. File video.
"What are the two great commandments?" I asked parenthetically. "To love your neighbor as yourself, and to love God. These are your _neighbors_ that are being beaten here."
Someone started to say something. He was pulled down by others.
"No, no, let him speak," I ordered.
"They're not our neighbors!" the exceptionally brave zealot cried out, muzzled but not silenced by our guns.
"I believe it is written in the Bible that they are, actually. But I will let a minister speak to that, for I am not a Christian. I am a soldier, and the only parable that speaks to me is that of the Centurion. 'I say to one that he go, and another that he cometh.' Where did your men go?"
A second video. This one live. A scout team, long range recon video, of Rodeo Gulch. Burning. Figures moving in front of the flames. Clearly killing people who are down.
"This is what your men are doing tonight, while you gamble in a house of the Lord. They are killing! Murdering! Burning the shacks and shanties of your neighbors! I should add, for the benefit of all my listeners, that this is being broadcast, live, on the Church video network, to all of Iowa.
"Coming to you live, at the First Pentacostal Church of Midland, Iowa, this is Major 18 of the California Expeditionary Force. As you can see, we have taken the church and are addressing the congregation.
"Your militia is about one hundred fifty effectives. They've killed five hundred people. Let me do a little math. I see about four hundred people in this room.
"Hmmm. An interesting coincidence."
Someone whispered in the earbud in my right ear.
"Major, the Churches are sounding a mobilization alert. They are mounting a rapid reaction, here. Aircraft are lifting from Council Bluffs and Davenport."
I nodded briefly, and made a circle with my hand. Next video.
The trenches and hides, in which they waited to ambush us. Live. Zoomed enough that people could recognize faces.
This was all monumentally ugly.
I'd taken the advance warning from the defector seriously. It had correlated with our other HUMINT and TECHINT. They were going to massacre Rodeo Gulch tonight.
I had known it.
I had let them.
To create this situation.
Like Churchill and Coventry, I'd killed those five hundred refugees just as certainly as if I had done it with my own hands.
And knowing it, I had known where semi-trained feral militia were going to place their ambushes.
And like a skilled chess player against a novice, moved my queen.
Artillery, queen of battles.
The video exploded.
The explosions walked the trench line in which their men sat. No overhead cover.
It was merciless and brutal, as the 81mm and 120mm mortar shells burst over and over again, preregistered under direct observation.
Their men would not be coming home.
Not now, not ever.
The crowd groaned. Then the screams began.
This time someone did point a concealed pistol, and quite literally lost his head for it.
In the sudden shock of gunfire, smell of cordite and of spilled copper blood, I pounded the podium.
"For every drop of blood drawn with the lash, a drop of blood drawn with the sword! Blood for blood! Life for life! No true God! Begotten not made! Fire coming down from Heaven! To judge the living and the dead!"
My blasphemy, in the cadence of their faith, was quite deliberate. I'd rehearsed in the privacy of my quarters.
I stopped. Resumed a firm conversational tone. The video, which had never had audio, stabilized to show shattered small movements in the trench line, and faded to black as prearranged.
I hadn't actually killed all that many of them. But untrained civilians could be forgiven for thinking I had. And it was essentially true anyway, they wouldn't live out the night. One way or another.
"The law of war is clear. To kill helpless people, women and children and babes in arms, is a war crime. Abhorrent. Criminal. Illegal."
I paused to hiss.
"Genocide. Did you hear that, Iowa? GENOCIDE! And here before me I have a room full of the families of the men who did it!"
The people moaned. I'd just killed their men. And they were very clear that I could kill them just as easily.
"The laws of war are enforced by reprisal. There are no courts between nations at war. That means a very ancient Judeo-Christian concept. Don't get bored with my preaching, I'm going somewhere here.
"Someone help me out. 'An eye for a …." What? What do we trade an eye for?"
"An eye," helpfully called out one of the California Republic soldiers.
"That's right. An eye for an eye. A limb for a limb. And a life for what … what is as valuable as a human life? Anybody?"
I transferred the Church microphone to my left and drew my pistol with my right.
"Anybody?!?"
It had to come from the congregation.
"A life for a life," a woman screamed.
Very good. I holstered.
"Very good," I said. "A life… for … a life. And the 1st Pentacostal Church of Midland, Iowa owes for five hundred lives."
I stopped to pretend to count the room.
People saw what I was doing.
More than one bladder cut loose. The hard stink of human feces added to the room. More than one person fainted. I felt briefly bad for the 'bonk' as a fainted person's head hit the vinyl floor. They likely had a head injury.
The earbud spoke again.
"Major, the Prefect of the Churches is broadcasting in the clear, asking to speak to you. We have his location. They are doing a full mobilization. Pagers and radio traffic has quintupled. They are designating staging areas. Iowa National Guard and State Police are calling full alerts."
That last was new. And an essential part of the plan.
I had to get the dirty parts of both organizations to commit a crime for which the Governor of Iowa could nail them.
Mobilizing because the Church called, as opposed to their lawful chains of command, would do it.
"Reprisal is payback in kind for a war crime. You blow up my ambulance, I blow up your ambulance. You kill my wife, I kill your wife. You murder five hundred people … "
I stopped. I could see them following the logic and looking around at each other.
Someone in the congregation started murmuring to himself. In Hebrew. Oy. If he lived he would have some explaining to do.
They were starting to believe. That was important too.
"Under the authority delegated to me by the Commander, California Expeditionary Forces, I hereby order an act of reprisal for the murders and arson committed at Rodeo Gulch this afternoon.
"I must, really must, have the officers of the 1st Pentacostal Midland militia put their hands in the air and walk to the back of the room. Your families are safe. I swear it, on my honor as a California officer. But you need to say good bye to them and walk outside, right now."
We'd had enough time to compare our face books to the military age men in the room. The officers who hadn't gone on the raid. They were still members of an unlawful combatant organization which had committed a war crime.
"Colonel," I addressed their leader, as a spotlight shone on him. God, our AV techs deserved a medal.
"Colonel, set the example for your officers. Order them to go out the back of the room, and do so yourself. You are detained, that is an order."
The Colonel caught the nuance, as I knew he would.
He was detained. He was not a prisoner.
Therefore he was not a prisoner of war.
And I was separating out him and his officers to be killed.
And he knew it.
His eyes and mine met.
He evaluated my given word.
"Our blood, for theirs," he announced loudly. "1st Pentacostal! My fellow officers! Duty compels, follow the Major's orders."
His officers followed him out of the room.
The door closed.
Loud racking gunfire and hoarse male screams followed, abruptly cut off by single barks of a pistol.
The crowd wailed in fear. Some cried. Many looked hate at me.
If glares could kill, I'd burst into flame on the spot.
"Now, we will burn your church. And to the Prefect of the Genocidal Churches of Iowa, I reply to your hail. Fuck you. Strong message to follow. Stand down your forces. If you mobilize I will kill you all.
"National Guard and State Police of Iowa. Defend the innocent. That is your calling. If any unit moves to defend the Church of Genocide instead, that unit will be in rebellion against the state of Iowa, and I will crush it.
"It may occur to some of you, watching this, that you can try to take hostages. Recall that California is a no hostage nation. And that reprisal, effective reprisal, is an essential part of the laws of war.
"If you choose to kill families, and put your own families in mortal peril, now and forever, that's quite literally on you. But let me give you some street wisdom.
"Fuck quid pro quo, or tit for tat, or a life for a life. I learned in Detroit, a hard school, and then in Oakland. California plays One Up.
"You may not know what that means. One Up is this. You dis me, I slap you. You slap me, I knife you. You knife me, I shoot you. You shoot me, I hang you. I swear before Almighty God, if ONE MILITIA OFFICER kills ONE innocent person, I will go One Up on all of you! AND I WILL HANG EVERY CHRISTIAN MILITIA OFFICER I CATCH UNTIL EVERY TOWER AND TREE IN IOWA BEARS STRANGE FRUIT!"
I drew my finger across my throat and as prearranged, the transmitter cut out.
The back doors of the Church opened and the half-naked but entirely unharmed militia officers were pushed back into the room, hands zip tied behind their backs.
They'd been searched for weapons. They'd been fingerprinted and photographed.
But they had not been shot.
It would have taken an experienced genocidaire to realize that there hadn't been the hard stink of blood and shit under the door.
It had all been blanks and acting.
But our audience, the Churches Militant, believed that I had murdered their peers, the militia officers.
Deception is also a part of war, assholes.
"Now, folks, in good order, you will walk out of this room quietly and assemble on the baseball field. You will not resist and you will not be harmed. But your church will burn, for the burning of Rodeo Gulch."
My best demo people were busy. But my second best demo people had already tagged out the fire suppression system and started spreading the gasoline and other accelerants.
They smelled the gasoline and walked hastily.
"Pick up the body," I ordered. "Carry him with honor. He died defending you."
Again as prearranged, the video cut back in just as the flames started to be visible outside. As did the transmitter.
I had to enrage the Churches into rash action, into going after me in haste with a limited force, to meet me on the battlefield at a place and time of my choosing, not theirs.
The earbud spoke again.
"Sir, we have confirmation of full mobilization. Intelligence estimates that we're getting the rapid-reaction of over two hundred separate congregations."
And each could muster at least a platoon. Thirty men.
A little math. We were outnumbered at least ten to one. More when you considered that the bigger congregations could put a battalion into the field, and that their big limitation was not personnel but vehicles and fuel.
Good.
It would be nice to get the enemy out into the open where I could kill them.
And they were headed for three possible locations: Rodeo Gulch, to finish the job, succor wounded and possibly catch our rescue force. Our base at Camp Golf. And right here, the burning bush that had been 1st Pentacostal Midland.
But we would not be at any of the three.
I had a chance at victory, and I was willing to put six hundred Californians in harm's way to take it.
It had only meant allowing the murder of five hundred civilians.
Cheap at the price.
But infinitely costly.
###
"Captain," the California scout-soldier acknowledged without saluting. Or pointing his weapon away, for that matter.
Hastily, the team was sorting through the bodies looking for those who could be saved, which was the same as those who could, after bandaging, move under their own power, plus or minus their carrying capacity.
The Californians couldn't carry anyone. They would be too busy dying, as the rear guard.
"I need communications," the man covered in blood said. He had taken a moment to wipe the blood from his collar on both sides, which was the only reason his insignia had been recognized.
"We can do that. Why?"
"I know who ordered this," Captain Solon hissed.
"He fears his fate too much, or his deserts are small, who will not put it to the touch, to win or lose it all." - Montrose's Toast
I needed to provoke the Churches into a final battle, an event that I could certainly win and rub their noses in their failings.
But it also had to be a moral victory. Merely machine gunning husbands and fathers would neither be sufficient nor effective.
As I mused over the provocation, the orderly ran in.
"Sir. Rodeo Gulch."
I looked up mildly. Surprise is an event in the mind of a commander. I was already paging through the map in my mind.
"They burned it. Killed the inhabitants. Reaction is on the way but still an hour out."
"Who? Where?"
"First Pentacostal, Midland."
That was the provocation I was looking for.
At last scout report, yesterday, five hundred refugees had sheltered in Rodeo Gulch, fed by a Langar Aid food truck and guarded by Moldavian military police.
"Plan Trilogy, Plan Wiper, Plan Revival," I barked out.
"Plan Revival?" one of my officers said in horror.
"Plan Revival," I affirmed.
A lot of people got very, very busy even as our rapid-reaction helicopter lifted and the strike convoy rolled out the gates.
I took out the scouting reports for 1st Penis of Midland. Recalled my visits to the site. Thought about it carefully.
Issued more orders. This was going to be nasty.
Nastier.
###
The gun truck raced forward, towing a trailer full of demolitions.
Sergeant-Commander Mohammed had to stop himself from leaping out when the truck stopped on the far side of the bridge. The very last thing he needed right now would be a broken ankle.
As the crew of the gun truck started digging in, the soldiers and demo cell started laying mines and rigging the bridge.
Thousands of fundamentalist militia heavies would be coming. Soon. They just didn't know it yet.
###
The base had a feral air to it. Half-abandoned.
It would be completely abandoned soon.
###
The mortar platoon checked their ranges, and bearings. Preregistration of likely targets, all from a new vantage they hadn't really considered before today.
But the Major had, and that would have to be good enough.
###
The medical platoon finished packing up. The wounded would have to go on the trucks and trailers like everyone else.
They wouldn't be treating any wounded from Rodeo Gulch until they were established in their new base.
If they lived to.
###
The troops sweated in their hides along the road.
The Californian rapid-reaction force would come racing to the rescue, gun trucks waving like so many impotent phalli, and with the power of Christ, they would punish the heretics for their trespass.
The heretics weren't the only ones with machine guns and mines.
But as the minutes stretched to hours, and the hours stretched towards nightfall, the troops realized.
The Californians were racing … somewhere. If not to Rodeo Gulch, then to where?
###
Captain Somol wanted to cry.
The damned Christian militias had stopped respecting the neutrality of his force. They had shown up with their technicals and ordered him out of the way. He'd refused.
They'd opened fire.
And now he lay among the dead. Some small miracle had kept him alive, but if he moved to find out, the militias would be certain to finish the job.
He was getting cold.
He would have to sneak out at dark.
Every place he touched the ground was chill.
But he dared not shiver.
Not and disturb the corpses piled above him.
He smelled smoke next.
They were burning the shantytown.
Then he heard screams, as the fires flushed out the survivors hiding.
He did not hear shots. But he heard more screams.
Machetes.
###
If there is one institution sacred to the Christian church, it is not actually services. They're important and all … as are weddings and funerals, Sunday school and communion and baptism and confirmation, all the various holidays and festivals, of the Church and of mortal man.
It's Bingo night.
A chance for the menfolk and womenfolk to mingle, to gossip, to gamble in a limited form that could not be called sinful, to simply enjoy each other's company.
The 1st Pentacostal Church of Midland would never forget this Bingo night.
###
The rapid reaction helicopter never arrived at Rodeo Gulch. Instead it dropped off two patrols equipped for long range reconnaissance.
They would carefully sneak up on the site. Accepting that some wounded would die, but that all would die if their approach was detected.
The pilot of course called in the smoke from the fires. As did the recon scouts.
###
The bored sentries at the gate had their own card game going.
Strictly forbidden of course, but with the annoying sergeant and his wife at the Bingo game, there was no harm in it.
The congregation would be enjoying the call, and the music, and they would be … stuck … out here.
Perhaps stuck is the wrong term.
Or the right one.
Because they were the first to die, before the first shot was fired.
The sentry's face was an agonized mask of terror and regret, when he realized that the sudden sharp pain in his side was a heavy knife through his kidney.
It hurt. Too much. To scream.
###
The California troops had rehearsed taking control of the site. They knew its weaknesses better than the militia. And so many of the would-be defenders were away, waiting in ambush after their murders at Rodeo Gulch.
Cameras are only as good as the sentries watching them.
Alarms are only as good as the people who installed them, and selected the sensors and their placement.
So it was that like fleeting shadows, the heavily armed shock troops of the California Republic had the campus taken away from the owners before they even noticed.
###
This part was sheer theatrics. But that was the very point of all this.
A drama, with players. And ratings and stakes. And no deux ex machina, no Gods from machines or anywhere else.
The people of this Church were in the hands of the California Republic tonight.
And that meant they were in Hell.
###
Suddenly the back and front and sides of the church were full of heavily armed California Republic troops.
The caller was Tasered, and someone stepped over his twitching body and took the microphone from his hand.
Groans and thuds signaled that the AV room and the sound techs had been subdued.
"DROP IT," warned a sergeant as six laser dots appeared on the church usher who started to stand with a pistol in her hand.
She did, shaking, and saved her life.
The man with the microphone started to speak.
###
"My name is Major 18. I must apologize for the informal way that I have taken over as your guest speaker tonight. I regret that the pastor is indisposed. I fear that something he will try to eat tonight will disagree with him.
"Many of your menfolk just carried out an unlawful atrocity, a war crime, at a site called Rodeo Gulch. They are huddled in trenches waiting for my reaction force to respond. Eventually they will figure out that we're not coming and come back here.
"They are not going to like what they find.
"My scouts confirm that five hundred men, women and children have lost their lives at Rodeo Gulch. No, not lost their lives … not LOST … had their lives STOLEN from them, had their lives TAKEN from them … WERE MURDERED! MURDERED I SAY! MURDERED WITH THE HELP OF THE PEOPLE IN THIS ROOM!"
I was just warming up.
"We all know that the Churches are working day and night to expel the refugees from Iowa. And since they are not leaving fast enough on their own, you are going out at night to kill them. How many of you have had red blood drip from the hands of your men, as they wash in their sinks and showers and tubs? How will you explain all this to your children?
"Don't worry. I'll take care of that."
And with that, California Republic MPs force-walked the children who had been in day care into the room, and pushed after them the parents who had been caring for them. Some of them freshly bleeding.
"Hi kids," I said calmly once they had rushed to their parents and stopped most of their wailing.
"I'm a soldier. That means I do bad things. I'm about to do some very bad things here. But you have a right to know what I am going to do, and why I am going to do it."
I raised a hand to cue the first video clip.
On the screen behind me, video appeared. Video of refugees being beaten with sticks by Soldiers of God. File video.
"What are the two great commandments?" I asked parenthetically. "To love your neighbor as yourself, and to love God. These are your _neighbors_ that are being beaten here."
Someone started to say something. He was pulled down by others.
"No, no, let him speak," I ordered.
"They're not our neighbors!" the exceptionally brave zealot cried out, muzzled but not silenced by our guns.
"I believe it is written in the Bible that they are, actually. But I will let a minister speak to that, for I am not a Christian. I am a soldier, and the only parable that speaks to me is that of the Centurion. 'I say to one that he go, and another that he cometh.' Where did your men go?"
A second video. This one live. A scout team, long range recon video, of Rodeo Gulch. Burning. Figures moving in front of the flames. Clearly killing people who are down.
"This is what your men are doing tonight, while you gamble in a house of the Lord. They are killing! Murdering! Burning the shacks and shanties of your neighbors! I should add, for the benefit of all my listeners, that this is being broadcast, live, on the Church video network, to all of Iowa.
"Coming to you live, at the First Pentacostal Church of Midland, Iowa, this is Major 18 of the California Expeditionary Force. As you can see, we have taken the church and are addressing the congregation.
"Your militia is about one hundred fifty effectives. They've killed five hundred people. Let me do a little math. I see about four hundred people in this room.
"Hmmm. An interesting coincidence."
Someone whispered in the earbud in my right ear.
"Major, the Churches are sounding a mobilization alert. They are mounting a rapid reaction, here. Aircraft are lifting from Council Bluffs and Davenport."
I nodded briefly, and made a circle with my hand. Next video.
The trenches and hides, in which they waited to ambush us. Live. Zoomed enough that people could recognize faces.
This was all monumentally ugly.
I'd taken the advance warning from the defector seriously. It had correlated with our other HUMINT and TECHINT. They were going to massacre Rodeo Gulch tonight.
I had known it.
I had let them.
To create this situation.
Like Churchill and Coventry, I'd killed those five hundred refugees just as certainly as if I had done it with my own hands.
And knowing it, I had known where semi-trained feral militia were going to place their ambushes.
And like a skilled chess player against a novice, moved my queen.
Artillery, queen of battles.
The video exploded.
The explosions walked the trench line in which their men sat. No overhead cover.
It was merciless and brutal, as the 81mm and 120mm mortar shells burst over and over again, preregistered under direct observation.
Their men would not be coming home.
Not now, not ever.
The crowd groaned. Then the screams began.
This time someone did point a concealed pistol, and quite literally lost his head for it.
In the sudden shock of gunfire, smell of cordite and of spilled copper blood, I pounded the podium.
"For every drop of blood drawn with the lash, a drop of blood drawn with the sword! Blood for blood! Life for life! No true God! Begotten not made! Fire coming down from Heaven! To judge the living and the dead!"
My blasphemy, in the cadence of their faith, was quite deliberate. I'd rehearsed in the privacy of my quarters.
I stopped. Resumed a firm conversational tone. The video, which had never had audio, stabilized to show shattered small movements in the trench line, and faded to black as prearranged.
I hadn't actually killed all that many of them. But untrained civilians could be forgiven for thinking I had. And it was essentially true anyway, they wouldn't live out the night. One way or another.
"The law of war is clear. To kill helpless people, women and children and babes in arms, is a war crime. Abhorrent. Criminal. Illegal."
I paused to hiss.
"Genocide. Did you hear that, Iowa? GENOCIDE! And here before me I have a room full of the families of the men who did it!"
The people moaned. I'd just killed their men. And they were very clear that I could kill them just as easily.
"The laws of war are enforced by reprisal. There are no courts between nations at war. That means a very ancient Judeo-Christian concept. Don't get bored with my preaching, I'm going somewhere here.
"Someone help me out. 'An eye for a …." What? What do we trade an eye for?"
"An eye," helpfully called out one of the California Republic soldiers.
"That's right. An eye for an eye. A limb for a limb. And a life for what … what is as valuable as a human life? Anybody?"
I transferred the Church microphone to my left and drew my pistol with my right.
"Anybody?!?"
It had to come from the congregation.
"A life for a life," a woman screamed.
Very good. I holstered.
"Very good," I said. "A life… for … a life. And the 1st Pentacostal Church of Midland, Iowa owes for five hundred lives."
I stopped to pretend to count the room.
People saw what I was doing.
More than one bladder cut loose. The hard stink of human feces added to the room. More than one person fainted. I felt briefly bad for the 'bonk' as a fainted person's head hit the vinyl floor. They likely had a head injury.
The earbud spoke again.
"Major, the Prefect of the Churches is broadcasting in the clear, asking to speak to you. We have his location. They are doing a full mobilization. Pagers and radio traffic has quintupled. They are designating staging areas. Iowa National Guard and State Police are calling full alerts."
That last was new. And an essential part of the plan.
I had to get the dirty parts of both organizations to commit a crime for which the Governor of Iowa could nail them.
Mobilizing because the Church called, as opposed to their lawful chains of command, would do it.
"Reprisal is payback in kind for a war crime. You blow up my ambulance, I blow up your ambulance. You kill my wife, I kill your wife. You murder five hundred people … "
I stopped. I could see them following the logic and looking around at each other.
Someone in the congregation started murmuring to himself. In Hebrew. Oy. If he lived he would have some explaining to do.
They were starting to believe. That was important too.
"Under the authority delegated to me by the Commander, California Expeditionary Forces, I hereby order an act of reprisal for the murders and arson committed at Rodeo Gulch this afternoon.
"I must, really must, have the officers of the 1st Pentacostal Midland militia put their hands in the air and walk to the back of the room. Your families are safe. I swear it, on my honor as a California officer. But you need to say good bye to them and walk outside, right now."
We'd had enough time to compare our face books to the military age men in the room. The officers who hadn't gone on the raid. They were still members of an unlawful combatant organization which had committed a war crime.
"Colonel," I addressed their leader, as a spotlight shone on him. God, our AV techs deserved a medal.
"Colonel, set the example for your officers. Order them to go out the back of the room, and do so yourself. You are detained, that is an order."
The Colonel caught the nuance, as I knew he would.
He was detained. He was not a prisoner.
Therefore he was not a prisoner of war.
And I was separating out him and his officers to be killed.
And he knew it.
His eyes and mine met.
He evaluated my given word.
"Our blood, for theirs," he announced loudly. "1st Pentacostal! My fellow officers! Duty compels, follow the Major's orders."
His officers followed him out of the room.
The door closed.
Loud racking gunfire and hoarse male screams followed, abruptly cut off by single barks of a pistol.
The crowd wailed in fear. Some cried. Many looked hate at me.
If glares could kill, I'd burst into flame on the spot.
"Now, we will burn your church. And to the Prefect of the Genocidal Churches of Iowa, I reply to your hail. Fuck you. Strong message to follow. Stand down your forces. If you mobilize I will kill you all.
"National Guard and State Police of Iowa. Defend the innocent. That is your calling. If any unit moves to defend the Church of Genocide instead, that unit will be in rebellion against the state of Iowa, and I will crush it.
"It may occur to some of you, watching this, that you can try to take hostages. Recall that California is a no hostage nation. And that reprisal, effective reprisal, is an essential part of the laws of war.
"If you choose to kill families, and put your own families in mortal peril, now and forever, that's quite literally on you. But let me give you some street wisdom.
"Fuck quid pro quo, or tit for tat, or a life for a life. I learned in Detroit, a hard school, and then in Oakland. California plays One Up.
"You may not know what that means. One Up is this. You dis me, I slap you. You slap me, I knife you. You knife me, I shoot you. You shoot me, I hang you. I swear before Almighty God, if ONE MILITIA OFFICER kills ONE innocent person, I will go One Up on all of you! AND I WILL HANG EVERY CHRISTIAN MILITIA OFFICER I CATCH UNTIL EVERY TOWER AND TREE IN IOWA BEARS STRANGE FRUIT!"
I drew my finger across my throat and as prearranged, the transmitter cut out.
The back doors of the Church opened and the half-naked but entirely unharmed militia officers were pushed back into the room, hands zip tied behind their backs.
They'd been searched for weapons. They'd been fingerprinted and photographed.
But they had not been shot.
It would have taken an experienced genocidaire to realize that there hadn't been the hard stink of blood and shit under the door.
It had all been blanks and acting.
But our audience, the Churches Militant, believed that I had murdered their peers, the militia officers.
Deception is also a part of war, assholes.
"Now, folks, in good order, you will walk out of this room quietly and assemble on the baseball field. You will not resist and you will not be harmed. But your church will burn, for the burning of Rodeo Gulch."
My best demo people were busy. But my second best demo people had already tagged out the fire suppression system and started spreading the gasoline and other accelerants.
They smelled the gasoline and walked hastily.
"Pick up the body," I ordered. "Carry him with honor. He died defending you."
Again as prearranged, the video cut back in just as the flames started to be visible outside. As did the transmitter.
I had to enrage the Churches into rash action, into going after me in haste with a limited force, to meet me on the battlefield at a place and time of my choosing, not theirs.
The earbud spoke again.
"Sir, we have confirmation of full mobilization. Intelligence estimates that we're getting the rapid-reaction of over two hundred separate congregations."
And each could muster at least a platoon. Thirty men.
A little math. We were outnumbered at least ten to one. More when you considered that the bigger congregations could put a battalion into the field, and that their big limitation was not personnel but vehicles and fuel.
Good.
It would be nice to get the enemy out into the open where I could kill them.
And they were headed for three possible locations: Rodeo Gulch, to finish the job, succor wounded and possibly catch our rescue force. Our base at Camp Golf. And right here, the burning bush that had been 1st Pentacostal Midland.
But we would not be at any of the three.
I had a chance at victory, and I was willing to put six hundred Californians in harm's way to take it.
It had only meant allowing the murder of five hundred civilians.
Cheap at the price.
But infinitely costly.
###
"Captain," the California scout-soldier acknowledged without saluting. Or pointing his weapon away, for that matter.
Hastily, the team was sorting through the bodies looking for those who could be saved, which was the same as those who could, after bandaging, move under their own power, plus or minus their carrying capacity.
The Californians couldn't carry anyone. They would be too busy dying, as the rear guard.
"I need communications," the man covered in blood said. He had taken a moment to wipe the blood from his collar on both sides, which was the only reason his insignia had been recognized.
"We can do that. Why?"
"I know who ordered this," Captain Solon hissed.
