27.
Henry Kissinger had made it nearly three blocks down the street before a limousine pulled alongside him, the driver’s side window rolling slowly down. Kissinger glanced over and saw the face of his driver.
“You seem to be in a hurry sir,” the driver said amiably, “perhaps I could help you get to where you’re going a bit faster.” Kissinger, who had been aiming for an unmarked car that he kept parked a few blocks away in the case of an emergency, slowed down, huffing for breath.
“Sure.” Opening the door, he tossed in his briefcase before clambering in afterwards. As he began to turn to set his folder of gold bonds somewhere safe he heard the door shut behind him and froze, suddenly something was very wrong.
“Pleasure to see you again so soon Mr. Secretary,” a pleasant voice said and Kissinger turned slowly to see a black suited man holding an equally black pistol, the barrel aimed directly at his chest.
“You bastards.” Kissinger said numbly, how could he have been stupid enough to think that Bush would let him go? Bush didn’t leave loose ends, especially not at a time like this.
“Don’t worry Mr. Secretary,” the man said, motioning for Kissinger to sit and fasten his seatbelt, which he did, “I’m not going to kill you. Not if you cooperate anyways. We’re going back to the White House and I expect you to behave.” Kissinger nodded desperately, wondering what Bush wanted with him. It didn’t seem like he wanted to kill him. Not yet anyways. That didn’t do much to narrow the possible options, none of which made Kissinger feel very good about his current position.
“How much did you pay him to do this?” He asked pointedly, jerking a finger towards the driver, who had now turned the limousine back around and was fiddling with the radio, probably listening to CBS like the rest of the nation. The gunman chuckled.
“He’ll probably enjoy the money you have in that briefcase there. You wont be needing it anymore, not after tonight.” Kissinger felt a little twinge of panic but just nodded.
“What does Bush want with me?” He asked harshly, but the gunman just shook his head with a bemused smile.
“Who says it’s the President that’s asking for you?” Kissinger couldn’t think of anything to say to that so instead he stared out the window and the distant glow of flames and general chaos erupting in the distance. If what the gunman was insinuating was true then things were going to get a lot worse in a hurry.
_______
Prime Minister Edward Heath, already looking at a very hostile set of elections a little more than a year ahead, was watching the ragged remnants of his electability tumble to the floor. The destruction of his career sounded a whole lot like Walter Cronkite. And indeed, there on the television, next to a battered and bruised Vice President and a decidedly angry governor, was the news anchor himself, calmly relaying the news that Michigan had joined New York in defying the recent, dictatorial orders lodged by the President, who it appeared was trying to hold onto power at all costs. The military was being mobilized all across the country and Heath wondered just how badly the more anti American elements of the electorate would react to an American civil war, especially considering that there were no shortage of photos of him shaking hands and talking with the man who had started it.
Sitting down and looking at the screen, Heath poured himself a drink and contemplated resignation. He wouldn’t be the first, nor the last, but the thought put a bad taste in his mouth so he washed it down with a mouthful of whiskey bitters and shook his head. He had never considered himself amongst the great Prime Ministers of history but it was still a shame that his tenure had to end this way.
_______
“There are probably Marines on the way here because of what you said to Holloway,” Rumsfeld was pacing in front of Bush’s desk, his men arrayed around him, all keeping a very careful eye on the man that they had once been assigned to protect, “so when they arrive at the door I want you to say that you’re alright and that the call was a false alarm. Also tell them that Kissinger will be arriving soon and to let him and his people into the office.” Bush spat more blood, he had bitten his tongue quite badly but fortunately he didn’t seem to be slurring his words.
“And if I don’t?” Rumsfeld smiled icily.
“Then my men release the papers and bring the nation tumbling down,” Rumsfeld snapped his fingers, “just like that.” Bush was silent for a long moment, his eyes locked on Rumsfeld, hatred smoldering within them.
“So you’re going to bring the football into the Oval Office, along with Kissinger. That’s clever, except for the fact that Holloway isn’t going to let you launch. He thinks I’m a maniac and there’s no way he’ll let a request from the football through.” Rumsfeld leaned forwards, about to say something angry, then someone knocked, firmly and authoritatively, on the door to the office.
“Mr. President,” a voice said, muffled, “are you alright in there?” Bush grimaced.
“I’m fine,” he said, “that call you got from Holloway was a false alarm, he told me he was disallowing the use of the nuclear arsenal, I told him something equally ridiculous. Also, Kissinger is returning to the White House and will be coming here soon, so let him in when he arrives, is that clear?” Though his voice was normal, the look on his face was murderous and Rumsfeld looked away, disconcerted, aware that the only thing keeping the President from strangling him, or worse, was a simple piece of rope.
“I’m going to ask that you let us in sir, to guarantee that you’re alright.” Rumsfeld shot a panicked look at his men and immediately knelt down next to Bush, tearing at his bindings.
“Act normally,” he hissed and Bush looked at his Chief of Staff and almost laughed at how rough he looked, glasses askew, blood crusted beneath his nose and staining the back of his shirt collar. He probably didn’t look any better. There was also a splintered bullet hole in the corner of his desk and as Rumsfeld covered it with a pile of paperwork, Bush rubbed the feeling back into his hands and pulled his sleeves over the marks that the rope had left.
“Your nose sir.” One of Rumsfeld’s men said gently and Rumsfeld swiped briefly at his nose before looking at the door. Bush drew a finger across his throat while giving Rumsfeld the most malicious look he could manage, then composed himself.
“Come in then.” He told the guards outside the door and immediately it opened. As he had suspected, they were Marines, dress uniform and all, glancing at the coffee stain on the carpet and the various detritus of the night with unhidden suspicion.
“Your nose is bleeding sir.” One of the Marines said, glancing at Rumsfeld, who chuckled shakily.
“Yeah...it happens sometimes I guess.” Behind the trio of Marines, Rumsfeld’s men shut the door and Bush rose.
“As you can see, nothing much has happened besides me tripping over my own feet and biting my tongue. Now let us be, I have work to do.” The Marines didn’t move, and Bush saw, behind them, Rumsfeld glancing nervously at his men.
“General Holloway said he heard a gunshot.” Bush pulled the stack of paperwork off of the bullet hole and smiled weakly.
“My Chief of Staff and I got embroiled in an argument and I fired a shot to end it. No intention to harm anyone.” The Marine nodded slowly and then glanced back at his two colleagues, whose hands visibly moved towards the safeties on their rifles. Rumsfeld took a small step backwards and Bush had just enough time to open his mouth in a cry of outrage before four micro-Uzis flipped upwards from underneath coats and a barrage of snapping filled the room. The three Marines had just enough time to shoot one of Rumsfeld’s men in the throat before they were mowed down, the single report of a rifle deafening in comparison to the silenced submachine guns.
Rumsfeld’s man was dead before he hit the ground, blood spraying across the wall he had fallen against, dislodging a portrait of George Washington, which crashed to the floor. Two of the Marines on the other hand, were reaching for their sidearms. One, uniform drenched with claret, stared up at the man who was approaching him and began to tell him to go fuck himself when a final burst put an end to the threat. Rumsfeld observed the carnage, breathing hard, eyes wide in mingled terror and exhilaration. Bush, who hadn’t moved so much as an inch throughout the whole exchange, looked at the four corpses on the floor, the ocean of blood in which they lay, and then up at Rumsfeld.
“You fucked yourself there Don,” he said hollowly, “now there is no way in hell that any of us are leaving this room.” Rumsfeld, wiping at a few scattered droplets of drying blood that had landed on his face, shook his head.
“Nobody heard that,” he insisted, “all we need is for Kissinger to get here, then everything will be perfect.” Bush said nothing, just stared at the corpses and tried to feel something besides rage.
_______
President Andreotti, who had been listening to CBS coverage for nearly the entire time that Brooke and Rockefeller had been on, was furious as he dialed a number.
“Hello?” A tired voice asked him, sounding depressed and remarkably resigned to whatever fate awaited him.
“Prime Minister,” Andreotti said crisply, “I take it you’ve heard of the...alarming events in America?”
“Of course I have. I’ve just advised that all British citizens visiting there return immediately. What are you calling about?” The possibilities abounded, and for an ally of Bush’s like him, none of them were good.
“NATO,” Andreotti said, “nations are going to start withdrawing from it soon. I’d advise that you follow along.” Heath stared down at the floor for a long moment.
“We’re going to have a formal meeting about this and talk about a solution, we don’t need to just...destroy the institution that we’ve spent so much money and manpower on over the past few decades...” Andreotti scowled at the pleading tone in Heath’s voice.
“The Americans are about to go through a civil war, and quite frankly they deserve it. Bush is no better than Rhodes, who was no better than Reagan. The whole structure is rotted and tumbling down, don’t get caught in the wreckage.” Heath’s mouth set in a frown.
“I understand that, but if we are to dismantle NATO then we must dismantle it in an organized fashion. We cannot have nations leaving piecemeal and spreading chaos across the continent.” Other people, ministers and military aides had begun to enter the room but Heath gestured for them to wait.
“I can agree with that,” Andreotti said, “but this meeting must come soon. Goodbye Prime Minister.” Heath set down the phone and glanced over at the small ocean of aides and ministers facing him.
“That was the Italians,” he said unhappily, “they want to disband NATO.” There was significantly less uproar than Heath had foreseen, instead most of the military aides nodded grimly, the ministers reduced to a few panicked looks and even a smug smile from one of the more anti American members of Heath’s cabinet.
“It would be wise to close our embassies across the globe and put the guards on full alert. The Americans have probably already done the same.” Heath set his drink aside, it suddenly seemed terribly unappealing.
“Yes. We also need to contact the other leaders of NATO, besides the Americans, and invite them to a meeting. We need to discuss the fate of NATO sooner rather than later.” The little crowd suddenly shuffled aside and Heath found himself face to face with the American ambassador.
“Hello Mr. Prime Minister,” he said, “I’ve come here to inform you that our embassy will be be placed on high alert until the crisis in the United States has been resolved. I’d advise placing roadblocks around the embassy so that any riots or demonstrations against us don’t result in bloodshed.” Heath nodded and shook the man’s hand, suddenly remembering how close he had come to throwing the man out of the country following the London shooting.
“Very well. Good luck.” The ambassador departed, and Heath sat down, his cabinet assembling around him. This was going to be a very long day.
_______
General William Westmoreland had served his nation for thirty six years, participated in five wars, and had never been more frightened than he was as he listened to the disjointed flow of information coming from home regarding martial law, rebellion from a number of states and the very good possibility that the President was guilty of murder.
There were reports of gunfights between advancing Army units and police officers in upstate New York and Westmoreland thought suddenly back to stories that he had heard in his youth from very old men who had fought in the Civil War. Their war had been about ending slavery and uniting a nation torn apart by the fires of extremism, but this war, if it even was one, seemed to have no real end game. Sure Bush could be impeached, overthrown or put up against a wall and shot, but when Brooke came in to take his place it wasn’t as if the violence wracking the nation would suddenly cease. No matter how principled and intelligent Brooke was, and no matter how effective his actions, he was a Negro, and that, for the ignorant millions scattered across the country, was more than enough reason to hate him.
But though that quandary weighed heavily upon Westmoreland’s mind, there was another thing that bothered him even more. General Holloway, the commander of the Strategic Air Command and the man in charge of the bulk of the nation’s nuclear arsenal, had announced his neutrality in the crisis, supporting neither the President nor the renegade states, congress and Vice President that sought to bring him down. That was concerning and so far Westmoreland hadn’t dared to make a move. Holloway was backed by Director Paine of NASA and, oddly enough, John Glenn, who at the moment was perhaps the most influential and dangerous private citizen in the world.
He had received a call from Holloway’s number a little bit earlier, before he had heard of the man’s pseudo-defection, but had ignored it. His realm was outside of the United States, controlling the wars in Pakistan and China as well as the air mission in Saudi Arabia and the police action in Brazil, which was to be ended by the middle of the year. So far this had been a busy day for him as he sat in his office in Taipei, directing an ever heavier flow of traffic along, orders to suspend all bombing missions over Saudi Arabia for the time being, to end combat operations along the Uyghur border in China and in the river valleys and mountains of Pakistan. Embassies all across the world were buttoning down the hatches and he had heard reports of rioting in India and several nations in Europe as the American flag was burned and bottles were hurled at the embassy walls. So far the embassy guards hadn’t had to kill anyone but Westmoreland knew better than to assume that that would remain the case. The world had taken a decidedly critical eye to American foreign policy, even if it did contribute heavily to making the world a safer place for all of them. They would never understand that though, it was better to let them sit and shout rather than futilely try to change their minds.
Embassy riots hardly concerned Westmoreland, who knew that airstrikes and other methods of relief were no more than an hour or two away from each and ever American diplomatic enclave on the planet, he was more concerned about a resurgence of jihadist activity in Pakistan and China. American troops were already stretched thin in both nations, and while the jihadist armies that they had fought in both nations immediately after the Mecca bombing had largely been destroyed, there were still a disconcertingly large number of terrorist cells operating in the region, including plenty in a number of Pakistani cities.
The ROC had done an admirable job at stamping out their own terror cells but the Pakistani military, of which rampant corruption and low morale were the least of its problems, had largely failed to mop up the mess in Multan’s slums, which Westmoreland wanted nothing more than to burn to the ground. He had heard of the slum clearings that Sanjay Gandhi was carrying out in Punjab, and while they were excessively brutal, Westmoreland knew that if the people were moved from the slums and perhaps into prebuilt settlements elsewhere, they would be happier and terrorism would decrease as a result. It would never happen though, especially not with the ongoing crisis back at home.
Grumbling to himself, Westmoreland swiveled his chair around and picked up the latest piece of paper to come through the Telex machine. An order for the arrests of General Holloway, John Glenn and Director Paine for treason. That made sense. Grumbling a bit more, Westmoreland wondered where Holloway was and then dialed his number. He wanted to understand why the man had done what he had done. Subconsciously, he supposed, he needed confirmation towards the growing feelings of mistrust he had begun to hold towards the President ever since the first allegations had come forth. He wasn’t at all convinced that Brooke would be any better, but if it meant that a murderer didn’t occupy the Oval Office then it just might be worth it.
_______
Across the globe, with a police radio giving them occasional updates, Brooke, Rockefeller and Cronkite had been joined by a SWAT sharpshooter team, who had taken up residence on the floor below and were preparing to open fire the moment the Army came within a few hundred yards of the building. The police barricades had been strengthened by the addition of a dozen trucks that had been supplied by civilians. Brooke, though he had wanted to go outside to thank them, had been advised to stay inside. It wouldn’t be above the Army to shoot him on purpose, one SWAT man said, and if the Vice President were to die then where would that leave the nation?
In the end Brooke had returned to the broadcasting room, just in time for another Telex message from Muskie to come rumbling out of the machine. This one was longer and as he sat down Cronkite glanced over it and nodded.
“We’ll be back on the air in a few moments. Any more news on the Army?” Brooke shrugged.
“They’re nearing the Brooklyn-Battery Tunnel but I’m not sure if they’ll be able to get through, the police have been burning cars at the entrance for a while now to keep the Army out, same thing with the Brooklyn Bridge.” Rockefeller nodded.
“We’re tracking their advance with helicopters. We’re very lucky they don’t have any air power of their own. At least not yet.” That had been one of Rockefeller’s primary concerns as time went by, whether or not the Army would begin to land reinforcements using planes or helicopters. So far nothing had happened, but with the blackout of news it was uncertain if anything had happened upstate besides the occasional vague report of firefights between Army units attempting to break out of their bases and the policemen assigned to stop them. The announcements made by Governors Romney and Finch had probably snarled reinforcements and possibly even shaken Army resolve. Nobody knew just how big the rebellion was going to grow. Rockefeller hoped that with another few states it would break military morale and cause them to either surrender or join his side, but just as with the plans of the rest of the nation, that breaking point was obscured by the confusion still surrounding the President’s actions and the complex web of intrigue that shrouded the whole affair.
“We’re live in three...” the cameraman said, snapping Brooke from his thoughts, “two...one...” The camera turned to focus on Brooke, who held up the paper.
“I have received a new update from senator Muskie and his congressional gathering regarding the completion of the first step in the impeachment process. The Articles of Impeachment have been set by the House Judiciary Committee and warranted as valid reasons for the President being removed from office. These Articles of Impeachment read as follows:
In his conduct, while President of the United States, George Herbert Walker Bush, in violation of his constitutional oath faithfully to execute the office of President of the United States and, to the best of his ability, preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States, and in violation of his constitutional duty to take care that the laws be faithfully executed, has willfully corrupted and manipulated the Constitution of the United States for his personal gain and exoneration, in that:
On January 4, 1973 George Herbert Walker Bush arranged for the assassination of the congressional leadership as they met to organize an effort to remove him from office. Contrary to the oath he swore upon taking office to protect and uphold the laws of the United States of America George Herbert Walker Bush has violated federal law regarding one or more of the following:
(1) The murder of ten members of the leadership of the 92nd/93rd congress of the United States, as well as the murder of Senator Robert Kennedy (D-NY), the murder of fifteen security agents tasked to the wellbeing of the men in power at the meeting, the attempted murder of the Vice President of the United States and the attempted murder of three surviving security agents.
(2) The murder of Senator Hubert Humphrey (D-MN), Fernando Chavez and his unnamed personal pilot through malicious sabotage of his private plane.
(3) The abduction and subsequent murder of former President Lyndon Johnson as well as the murder of the unnamed election official Johnson was with at the time of the abduction.
(4) Electoral fraud in the state of New Mexico amounting to an unknown number of ballots cast for the presidential candidacy of Hubert Humphrey and Daniel Inouye.
In doing this, George Herbert Walker Bush has undermined the integrity of his office, has brought disrepute on the presidency, has betrayed his trust as President, and has acted in a manner subversive of the rule of law and justice, to the manifest injury of the people of the United States.
Wherefore, George Herbert Walker Bush, by such conduct, warrants impeachment and trial, and removal from office and disqualification to hold and enjoy any office of honor, trust of profit under the United States.”
Brooke looked up from the sheet before continuing.
“These Articles were presented to the House and received a vote of 104-28 from the gathering, signifying that the impeachment effort will continue onwards to the Senate. Should the impeachment motion garner a 2/3s vote from the Senate then President Bush will have been impeached from office. I hope that he will accept the results of this impeachment and stand trial or resign rather than continue this mad grab for power.” The room was very silent and Cronkite nodded.
“As the Vice President has said just now, the effort to impeach the President for murder, election fraud and sabotage amongst other things, has passed the House by a wide margin and is now headed to the Senate. Army units are still headed our way and while we are still not sure of what is happening beyond city limits we hope that all of you out there are safe and encourage you to stay indoors. Thank you for watching and be sure to keep tuning in for news of this ongoing crisis. We’ll be back after a brief break.” The cameraman turned the camera off and Brooke stared down at the paper before passing it to Rockefeller, who looked at the little vote tally at the bottom.
“There’s no way that Bush is going to accept this. We need to get the military on our side if we want to win.” Brooke nodded.
“I agree. But unfortunately we’re stuck here for the time being. What have the police been saying?” Rockefeller scowled.
“The Army has bypassed the Brooklyn-Battery Tunnel. They’re headed straight for the bridge.”
“What does that mean?” Rockefeller didn’t look pleased.
“It means that if they break us there then the only thing protecting Manhattan will be forces surrounding this building.” That wasn’t good. The little flashing sirens looked few and far between in the bitter darkness, and with the Army massing for what seemed to be a hammer blow against the defenders at the bridge, Brooke wondered how long they would be able to last.
