GWOT V - A State Of Desperation - Civil Defense

GWOT V - A State Of Desperation - Civil Defense

Our time in Redding had come to an end.

We had a date in Sacramento.

We also had many things we wanted to see in Sacramento. Not least of which, I hoped to interview the level voiced contradiction between masculinity and femininity that California referred to lovingly as Pat, less lovingly as the Governor (or the Govern_ator), and the rest of the world thought was simply insane.

Pat had apparently made several decisions about us already, at least one of them concerning whether we should be thrown out on our asses.

So far we were welcome. But despite our new citizenship cards and medals, I sensed that our status could change again as quickly as it had before.

The majority of California's military potential was in various bases and manufacturing facilities in Southern California. But some of it was here.

As any capital city does - such as our own home, London - Sacramento accumulated both the instruments of governance and the trappings of bureaucracy. But what we had accumulated over many centuries, California had built in less than two years.

Also, to the extent that California had slums, many of those slums were surrounding Sacramento. The displaced, homeless, distressed and refugees had flocked to Sacramento for the same reason the displaced people of the 1st Civil War had flocked to the new city of Washington D.C.

We traveled by bus. We had no guards, unless you count my own bodyguard. Of all of us, he seemed to speak fluent Californian the best. Not the language - English served, Spanish would often do - but the thoughts.

It bothered me that a soldier understood California best. Another clue to what we were dealing with here, in this rebel colony of a rebel colony.

###

The bus arrived in a busy terminal with many buses, many stops, and brightly colored signs.

Pairs patrolled the boldly lettered Sacramento Downtown Transit Terminal.

One was a soldier with a loaded rifle on a quick-release sling, held in arms and aimed carefully at the frescoed ceiling or the sky. The other was a police officer whose hands were empty but eyes always moving, equipped with a belt of lethal and non-lethal weapons like most American police officers.

But this was not America any more, and had not been for some time.

One sign is that the mixed pairs of soldiers and police were so friendly to everyone. Helpful even. But the one inveterate rule was that the soldier could not sling their rifle. Their rifle was their greeting to everyone.

My bodyguard whispered to me.

"The police officer is there to guard the soldier. That is the reverse of the usual practice. In Northern Ireland, our soldiers guarded our police."

Interesting. But I didn't see ... why.

A rumpled man in a cheap suit met us at the bus exit as we retrieved our luggage.

He winked. We knew him. But rumpled was not something he normally did and his suits were usually far more expensive.

George, the Collections Agent. But his walk and his demeanor was as different as his clothing.

"Follow me," he said normally. No need to whisper.

He looked like a tout for a taxicab. And we duly followed him to a taxicab.

Although it was painted like a taxicab, I could see even from the outside that it was something else.

The car rested heavily on a extra stiff suspension, weighing about three times what it should.

The door that opened towards us was heavily hinged and despite hydraulics clearly weighed much more than any car door should.

There was plenty of space inside, but the cheap vinyl seats clashed incongruously with the plain metal racks against the partition between passenger and driver compartment.

We got in. Those plain metal racks contained rifles, shotguns and other instruments of death.

This was a counter terrorist vehicle - armored and armed - disguised as a taxicab.

"Seat belts," intoned the driver over the intercom. Sigh. California.

Our luggage came in with us, then we put them on.

George leaned over to brief us.

"As usual, there isn't much time. There's an exercise on at Mather. We already have one foreign observer. We'd like two."

###

'Mather Air National Guard Base' read the sign.

The taxicab was waved past the first two checkpoints - heavily armed military personnel - without stopping.

We were searched, and our baggage and the cab itself, including the undercarriage, at the third checkpoint.

Then we were admitted to the underground garage.

We walked to a tunnel, where we merely had to show our IDs to be given little plastic cards to wear.

Badges.

Just like my one visit to MI-6, British counterintelligence, ours read "V VISITOR ESCORTED EVERYWHERE" and did not give our names or affiliations.

Then we came to another checkpoint with a number of lockers with combination locks.

"Divest all electronic devices. All."

"My pistol?" my bodyguard asked.

"Keep it."

But all our devices - especially my satellite phone - had to go into the lockers. There were No Exceptions Ever - Deadly Force Authorized, according to the sign.

We then were walked down a hallway to an elevator.

The elevator took us, up or down I could not tell, to a large open room, at the back. An obvious viewing gallery, or visitor's area.

The front two thirds of the room was a command post. Spaceflight, air warfare, Tactical Operations Center, Combat Information Center. All the same - console operators and prowling section supervisors, all wearing headphones and staring at so many screens.

A huge front screen showed - a map of post-Firecracker Sacramento.

In front of us, separated by polite ribbon and frowning armed troopers, was a conference table with obvious leadership.

At the head of the table sat Pat.

George was beside us. I looked for his snarling bear credential and he was not wearing it. Instead his credential was VISITOR just like ours.

There was one other man, notably short of stature but wearing a finely tailored business suit and exuding an air of false confidence, also wearing the VISITOR badge.

"Major Verrill Hund, United States Army," he introduced himself.

I nodded briefly, and ignored him thereafter. My crew followed my example, turning shoulders to him as if we had rehearsed it.

We were not here to study America.

But there was something here that California wanted the world to see.

"Attention operations, this is an authorized training exercise."

A bell rang and monitors lit with a rolling script.

"UNCLASSIFIED SENSITIVE - OPERATIONAL TRAINING EXERCISE - DRILL DRILL DRILL"

"Attention on deck. This is a Civil Defense operational exercise. Field components are being table topped."

I looked helplessly at my bodyguard.

"It's a war game," he said. The American Major chuckled.

The main video display zoomed on the terminal we had just left, on a particular area coned off from the rest.

A bus sat there.

"We have a contingency situation. Radiation sensors have detected a possible radiological device in the Transit Terminal."

Operators sat bolt upright and started talking and comparing. I realized that one that I could see wore a CAL-OSHA uniform; another the distinctive tan of the California Highway Patrol. This was a command post for civilian as well as military operations.

"Do we evacuate?"

"They'll detonate."

"Casualty projection two."

Two? My face must have betrayed me to the American.

"Two million," he muttered, as a bored man might to a servant or a dog.

"Jammers?"

"Ready on command."

"CONSTANT?"

"Also ready."

I found out later that CONSTANT was an acronym. California Operational Nuclear Safety Tactical And Neutralization Team. California's equivalent to America's Department of Energy Nuclear Emergency Search Teams.

"Do we have a disruption option?"

"In a crowded transit terminal?"

The jumpsuit the horrified man who answered the question had pilot's wings to go with the stars on his collar. An Air Force general?

"Yes. Launch the standing CAP. Load the second CAP with cluster ordinance."

"Governor, we can drop two five hundred pound bombs directly on top of that bus whenever you like. It will also flatten the terminal and kill several hundred people."

"Cheaper than two."

"Be ready. Let's give Collections a chance."

A woman in a nondescript military uniform with no rank, yet carrying a powerful holstered handgun, spoke over her headset.

"We're getting snipers into position. Working on a second disruption option. Ten minutes to get it there."

"Do we have a signature?"

Some discussion.

"Not an obvious one. We would need to get equipment much closer, or lab analysis of a sample."

The answer to that was oarda consensus of "Too late."

"We have new information. The item is of American manufacture."

The American frowned at this, clearly resisting the temptation to scoff. Of course the Untied Snakes were the bad guys, as predictable a villain as in any movie Hollywood had made when it was in the movie business. Before the Firecracker.

"Contact the Americans. Warn them. Noncooperation means the Pact."

Even I knew about the Pact. One more Californian city nuked, and America would lose ten cities.

This dramatically increased the complexity of the scenario. Because now the deterrence involved military operations, not merely domestic ones.

The American looked he could not decide whether to be baffled or infuriated. He settled for observing carefully.

Now I could place him. A military diplomat, a known spy. A military attache, was the term.

"They disavowed."

A slight scoff. "Of course. But are they being helpful?"

"Partial evac. Let's get the Governor out at least."

"No," intoned Pat from the head of the table. And I had the feeling it was not for the sake of the exercise either.

"Continuity check..." a pause. "Passed."

So if something happened, it would simulate the destruction of this room.

That was of course the problem with nuclear warfare. Huge areas of effect with relatively small devices. Something that could be hidden on a bus could wreck a city.

"We have three choices and not much time."

"Four, we have a charge five minutes out," the rankless woman soldier said.

"Fine, four. Blow it or blow it, move it or attempt to disarm it."

Pat carefully shrugged.

"This one is up to the experts."

"Bomb is unreliable. Use the charge," one specialist recommended.

"Disarm. High risk high return," another avowed.

"Move it or blow it," a uniformed soldier with a name tag and actual collar stars said.

"Charge," became the consensus.

I didn't know what they meant until someone started talking about casualty and damage projections.

Someone had knowingly walked up to a nuclear weapon and given it a nice big friendly hug, while wearing a suicide vest.

Even in simulation it was a forlorn hope, a counsel of desperation.

"Bear Force," the American breathed. Then looked around in fear anyone had heard him.

Only we had. No one else.

California's terrorists. Apparently on the side of the angels here. And the soldier with no name tag, the liasion officer between the clean hand and the dirty one. The one that dropped the pants versus the one that did the wiping.

"Under twenty dead, over a hundred injured. Some radiological injuries. We've got the drains covered and the hazard contained."

By the standards of nuclear war, that was getting off cheaply.

Then they proceeded to play out the other three choices. It made sense, everyone was here.

The air delivered bombs - hundreds dead, thousands injured. And no guarantee of success.

The disarm. A frank discussion of how not very good their technicians were. A small chance of no harm at all, and a not small chance of losing that two million people in this part of Sacramento.

Movement was a guaranteed fail. The device was smart enough to know it had reached its final resting place, and further motion was not to be allowed. No chance of no harm.

The exercise ended. Pat left so swiftly that I hardly saw her go, and I had been looking for her to move.

(Her? Him? Other pronouns? Pat left everything so vague that no one could figure it out.)

The American looked at us.

"You're British," he said wonderingly at last.

I shrugged.

"And the guy who doesn't talk, I guess he must be French."

A cameraman with no camera could still play a part. He did, by saying nothing at all.

"What does California gain by playing these posturing games, as if she were an actual power?" the American major challenged.

We did not answer.

So a long moment later, he was escorted out by his handler, a California Army officer wearing major's tabs. Equal in rank if not in power.

George joined us.

"Sorry about the swift timing. It was a use it or lose it to get you in here."

"Can we ask the staff questions?"

"No."

With that, we were escorted back to our devices, with them back to the taxicab, which left and wandered Sacramento and ultimately took us to a luxury hotel, where rooms had - as usual when changing cities - been booked for us.

George had left us taxiside. We would see him again, but probably not today.

We had been tired from the bus trip. Now we were exhausted.

The impression I had gotten from the exercise crew was that they were utterly serious, highly dedicated - and frightened. Not in the sense of a child or a fool, but as adults knowingly facing war's desolation with poorish odds.

I wanted to ask George where California could find people willing to die for her. For myself I was afraid he might answer.

"Bear Force," I mused aloud.

"How can we find out more about them?"