Shanghaied - 2ACW

[James G]

Jun 22, 2021 11:14:07 GMT sandyman said:

I have been thinking about the computer virus a lot which is a first to me as I normally thing about work lol.

Would it be possible for the NSA to get its hands on a crashed DAR fighter be it F35 or F16 if the brain had survived would it not be possible to either clone it and up load the the code to several test aircraft to be flow by volunteers to see if it worked. Or have computer geeks go through each and every line of code to find out how or what is making them safe from the Virus.

I am sure that some where I’d have seen that US planes sold to allies are not affected by the Virus could their brains be cloned and used?

That's a pretty good idea. However, they have been replacing wholescale flight systems and finding it all works but once the aircraft is flying, and up-linking flight information from AWACS and other sources, that is where the issue comes in with reinfection. So... using a DAR fighter's systems cloned and free of infection would work until a combat situation arose.
Allies abroad feared the exact same thing but found they haven't suffered the same. When the NSA first built the weapon, which they wanted to have at hand for foreign use, they did a test run on the US Armed Forces, without telling the Pentagon too, so Glow-worm is really designed to attack US equipment. The virus is actually just a test virus being used as the real thing. Those working for the DAR who swiped had to know how to make it not attack DAR aircraft, oh and ground-based missiles plus everything else in time too, and that will be where any solution lays: the 'condom' (no better word I could think of) they put over their own gear. The same weapon cannot be used against them with such protection. Once the US military discovers how to use that, they they can get everything to work again.
Its the 'geeks' which will have to do it all. They will then be able to put own protection on their equipment, maybe even break the DAR's too. While they are busy, and the US is throwing everything at that, their country's armed forces suffer gravely though.  

[James G]

148 – Tank plinking

After an excruciatingly long delay, and only once the United States’ new Secretary of Defence was confirmed (the new Vice President just ahead of him), permission came for the US VII Corps spread throughout the north of Arizona to make a withdrawal. They were given word to fall back, to retreat eastwards and away from DAR Army units closing the net around them on almost all sides. It took almost a week for that permission to come. During that time, stuck where it was under enemy-controlled skies, the VII Corps took a pounding. The victors of Colorado, the liberators of Denver, were left waiting to be allowed to get out of the firing line while above them, DAR air units attacked with near impunity. Once the retreat was made, starting with the 1st Infantry Division pulling away from the Flagstaff area, there was no let up in the aerial barrage. In fact, it was increased. Defence Department intelligence summaries about the certain-to-be soon shortage of munitions available for those attacking the VII Corps had been junked time and time again. They had the weaponry on-hand and used it. The two divisions of national guardsmen with the VII Corps – the 29th & 35th Infantry – held their ground while the Big Red One was the first to take that necessary step back. The skies above filled with enemy aircraft the moment that that US Army unit was out in the open and on the move.

DAR Air Force jets went tank plinking. It wasn’t a usual tactical for American air power though something which had been done in wars beforehand in select situations. High-flying aircraft dropped guided bombs atop tanks and other tracked armoured vehicles rather than firing missiles at them or allowing for low-flying attack aircraft to shoot them up. Only when done right was it an effective strategy for smashing apart an opponent: if it wasn’t, it was quite the waste of expensive ammunition best suited for other purposes and also exposed attacking aircraft to danger too. However, with no US Air Force fighters in the sky and no effective ground-based air defence cover for the VII Corps, the tank plinking was done. 500lb & 1000lb laser-guided bombs were dropped atop mobile targets. The armour on the top of the M-1A3 Abrams’ below those jets was the weakest at that point, even in the age of top-attack missiles. A tank’s armour couldn’t be as thick as it was at the front all over because there were always weight considerations with such a vehicle. A falling bomb, brought down by gravity, and placed directly over the turret or just ahead of that where the driver sat, had quite the destructive force. If hit, each tank subject to such a strike was eliminated. Turrets were sent flying in the air while other tanks were literally crushed: it was almost like someone took a sledgehammer to them. When on the move, falling back into northeastern Arizona and across tribal land, the tank kills racked up by DAR aircraft were impressive. FA-18s and F-35s were beyond visual range and didn’t face any defensive fire. Their bombs hit tanks in the service of the 1st Infantry Division as well as their infantry fighting vehicles and self-propelled artillery pieces. Significant losses had already been taken by the Big Red One while in Arizona and under previous DAR air attacks. However, once the tank plinking started, the earlier numbers palled into comparison. Those on the wrong end of all of that air power suffered grave losses. Vehicle crewmembers were killed and so too were passengers. No one saw the bombs coming in and there was little chance of escape from the attacks when they came either.

It took a couple of hours, because the Big Red One was spread out, but eventually the withdrawal came to a halt. Orders came down for the corps commander for cover to be sought with vehicles getting out of the open. That message to the 1st Infantry Division’s commander was the last one sent by the VII Corps’ own commander. Moments after ordering a halt, a trio of Reaper drones, acting as a wolf pack, zeroed-in upon the position of his mobile command post with a wave of Hellfires fired against the armoured vehicles. Not as effective as using free-falling bombs, the Hellfire missiles still did their job. The corps commander and many members of his staff were killed, with severe disruption caused to overall command-and-control in the aftermath. That attack was made on behalf of the Arizona Corps, the DAR Army forces fighting to force the US Army out of that state. Once success was confirmed, and with the knowledge that there would be disruption in the aftermath, a ground attack was made from the south into the VII Corps’ flank. Advances made to retake the southwestern quarter of Arizona, destroying the US III Corps in the process, had gutted a lot of the offensive capability of the Arizona Corps but there remained some of that left… just a bit. A reinforced brigade from the 2nd Armored Division – in many ways stripping away most of the mobile capability from the other two brigades into it – was joined by the 11th Armored Cavalry Regiment in undertaking an offensive. Tanks led the way where a push was made from the east of Phoenix, avoiding the Tonto National Forest and going through tribal land on the other side of that. Most of the 29th Infantry Division – national guardsmen from the East Coast – was in that good cover, pushed up close to the edges of Phoenix, with flank forces spread across the Fort Apache reservation. There were tanks out there, with the division’s 30th Armored Brigade, but they faced more of that tank plinking from high above in conjunction with low-level drone and armed helicopter attacks to eliminate them. There were only Stingers for air defences: none of the Patriot nor SM-6 missile systems worked. Tank after tank was knocked out in stand-off strikes. When Arizona Corps tanks came into the fight, with their crews very weary about friendly fire, they barely faced any opposition. Ahead of all projections, they reached the other side of the reservation. The 30th Armored Brigade had been torn through as if it wasn’t there. A localised counterattack by dismounted national guardsmen gave the DAR troops a tough time around the small town of Show Low and then nearby around the heights of the Black Mesa but it wasn’t enough.

Orders were sent to those on the offensive to keep going. There was no one who had stopped them and no one ahead would could do so either. The rest of the 29th Infantry Division, the Blue and Gray Division who had that famous history of fights such as the beaches of Normandy, were left immobile in that forest with the Big Red One stuck elsewhere: the 35th Infantry Division was covering the north and east for the VII Corps too. Those DAR tanks which had gone forward in what was meant to have been a limited fashion had broken into the centre of the VII Corps. There weren’t many of them but they had on-hand close air support and free reign to see how far they could go. They were only halted once when moving towards Holbrook where that town sat astride Interstate-40. DAR Marine Corps F-35B Lightnings mistook 3rd Armored Division tanks for those of the US 1st Infantry Division in quite the major, and stupid, mix-up. A good few were knocked out before forward air controllers would manage to convince the pilots firing missiles to back off! That was it though. Holbrook was reached and the interstate cut. I-40 had been the main supply route for the VII Corps into Arizona where it stretched back into New Mexico and further east. It had been closed by DAR air power and then was reached by DAR tanks. No real escape could be made by the forward units of the VII Corps, should they miraculously receive some air cover to protect them, when the way out was held by their enemy. The advance halted there with what was left of two divisions who’d set out to liberate the West trapped by the devastating penetration deep into their rear.

The United States Army North had the VII Corps in Arizona – with the III Corps there too before their destruction – while back in New Mexico the V Corps and the XVIII Airborne Corps were kept in-place. All of those troops which had returned home from Europe in the mightily impressive ‘REFORGER in reverse’ plus the battle-hardened airborne & airmobile troops who’d fought so well at the very end of January in Colorado were kept out of the fighting in Arizona during March. ARNORTH had wanted them to go into Arizona, desperately needed them there in fact, but couldn’t get them moving. DAR air power was less significant into New Mexico yet remained a major issue. Neither forces at the disposal of ARNORTH could go westwards in the face of hostile jets which had control of the skies. The US Air Force couldn’t put up its own modern fighters and was struggling to main some sort of coverage with what others it had which were able to fly without suddenly crashing themselves into the ground. Both I-40 and I-10 on the New Mexico side of the state line with Arizona were closed to traffic due to air attacks and with those MSRs shut down like that, the V Corps & XVIII Corps couldn’t move. The DAR had knocked them out of the war and didn’t have to fight them while it destroyed the rest of ARNORTH.

Never in its history had the armies of the United States faced such a defeat as they were given in Arizona during the middle of March 2029. It was ceaseless and ferocious. It was done to them by fellow Americans too, making it feel even worse for those on the receiving end.

[James G]

Next update: a change of leadership in Las Vegas.

[gillan1220]

Jun 24, 2021 8:43:15 GMT James G said:

Next update: a change of leadership in Las Vegas.

There we go. Let the infighting begin. The DAR's days are numbered.

[James G]

Jun 24, 2021 11:25:34 GMT gillan1220 said:

Jun 24, 2021 8:43:15 GMT James G said:

Next update: a change of leadership in Las Vegas.

There we go. Let the infighting begin. The DAR's days are numbered.

Shock will come first.

[James G]

149 – The Mojave Project

Governor Samuel Pierce and his allies sprung into action come March 13th 2029 to forcibly replace the leadership of the Democratic American Republic. The Mojave Project was given a green light and there was no turning back for those committed once they got underway.

Outside of Las Vegas itself, in the suburban city of Henderson, Minister of Public Safety agents providing close protection for the nation’s president turned on her. Maria Arreola Rodriguez wasn’t shot nor ‘suffered an accident’ but instead was rushed out of the requisitioned family home she was residing in and placed in a black helicopter. She was told that there was an imminent threat to her safety and that she was being evacuated. She went along with it all, taken away from her aides and believing that those who then took her out of the Las Vegas metropolitan area were acting in her best interests. That wasn’t the case. Without realising, she was no longer under the protection of quasi-civilian security personnel and ended up in the custody of the DAR Armed Forces. The helicopter took her to the Mojave Desert and the Twentynine Palms military base. She was put in a holding cell which had been waiting for her without any of her questions answered. Only at that late point did she understand that she no longer had any power. Vice President Padley also had those civilian security personnel with her. The Minister for Public Safety, Desmond Thompson, had thrown himself in with the Pierce clique rather than deal any more with the shared leadership at the top of the nation. He had his people at the hotel in the middle of Las Vegas where Padley was staying get her out of there with the lie about an attempted assassination threat to her and then taken to Nellis AFB. She went on a military aircraft to Twentynine Palms as well, yet realising far faster than MAR had what was happening… that was aided by the physical restrains placed on her and then the black hood too. The two women could have been killed and forcibly disappeared. A lie could have been told that the United States, even extremist domestic terrorists within the DAR, were responsible. However, Pierce wanted them both alive: they could be ‘useful’ in unrevealed ways down the line. He had then in California, where he ruled the roost, and safety out of the way.

There was one member of the Council of Twelve which Pierce had been a key member of that he got rid of permanently. Governor Brad Winkelman was shot and killed up in Idaho. That Republican had been the only non-Democrat who had joined the leadership of the DAR when he had taken his state out of the United States. Idaho, deeply Red while attached to those ever-so Blue within the DAR, had been a hotbed of violence for many long years up there in the Inland North-West. Winkelman had sought to end the political terrorism by joining the secessionists in the West. All he had done instead was turn his state into a key battlefield of the Second American Civil War where there was conventional fighting on a huge scale on its edges and within a massive insurgency dwarfing all the pre-war violence. Pierce and he had plentiful and significant wartime disagreements. The man who sought to make himself the DAR’s new leader was confident that should Winkelman live, he would have a change of heart once MAR and Padley were gone along with the shared leadership. The man was a threat to Pierce’s new regime and so he had him killed. An elite special forces team provided by General Fuller directly conducted a deniable military operation. They hid themselves and their identity too when sniping at him from distance, blowing most of his head off when using a high-powered rifle. ‘Clues’ were left for those to find them apportioning blame upon guerrillas there in Idaho. No one else on the Council of Twelve posed any similar threat to the murdered Governor of Idaho. Pierce knew that there were many of them, pretty much all in fact, of those state governors who wouldn’t want to lose their power as national decision makers. Nonetheless, they would have no choice to accept what would happen when he took control of the country and removed them from the very top. Having identified beforehand those who would be miffed but not ready to lash out, Pierce set the mood music first a bit with them where he revealed his dismay at the rule of MAR and Padley. None of those he spoke to, four fellow governors from Colorado, Oregon, Utah & Washington, gave any hint of opposition to a change made even if they didn’t understand what was coming. As to the others, the ones close to MAR especially, Pierce only spoke with them once he had taken control. When addressing a virtual meeting of the entire ruling council, he informed everyone that he was the DAR’s new president and the Council of Twelve was dissolved. He went through his reasons why he had done what he had, shouting over shouts coming from the governors of Nevada & New Mexico, and made it clear that there would be no compromise. The support which Pierce had too was made distinct. Minister for Defence & Security Eleanor Rawlings, her fellow minister Thompson, the DAR’s military commander-in-chief General Fuller, Sarah Eaton who led the Directorate of State Intelligence… his allies were all of those with strength in the form of real power in a country at war. He didn’t need to say it: if they wanted a fight, they would lose.

Anna Collins, the Governor of Nevada, inquired over the fates of MAR and Padley: the two of them were absent from the virtual meeting and Pierce would have had to have stepped over them to do what he had. He told her the truth. The DAR’s new president had had them taken into custody by military units. He did so for their own safety. There were people who posed a threat to those two women, two of the founders of the nation, and Pierce didn’t want no harm to come to them following their loss of power. Collins asked if the rest of them should fear arrest and military detention. Absolutely not! California’s governor was adamant that there should be no concern about any of that. He had taken power only because the Council of Twelve had failed as a decision-making body with MAR and Padley at the top of that. State governors retained all other rights over their domestic sovereignty and were key to the nation. What Pierce told them the country needed was a different kind of leadership, one which no longer was done by committee voting. He had no shame in admitting that he was centralising power in his own hands: he told them that that was the only thing which would save the country. Carmen Espinoza Diaz questioned what she called his ‘arrogance’. How was he so sure that only he could save them? In reply, Pierce reminded her that the vast majority of her state was in the hands of United States troops: DAR control had been pushed into the northwestern corner. Shared leadership had got them into that situation. He would provide the sole leadership that would liberate New Mexico from what he reminded her was ‘foreign occupation’.

The absence of Winkelman was noted by the governors of Oregon and Washington. The leaders of those neighbouring states had returned him to power when he had been thrown out by pro-US internal forces on the eve of war and supported his rule over Idaho. Pierce brought Eaton into the remote gathering to explain that. She was patched into the conversation. Ahead of his assumption of power, no outsiders, even high-level ministers, had been allowed to address the Council of Twelve as a whole directly where they kept all discussions for themselves and then instructions were passed on. Pierce did with the last meeting of the dissolved council what hadn’t been done before though in having an appointed official brought in. That was the new way of doing things. Pierce intended for that meeting of all of them to be the last and they would have to get used to those ministers and officials having a far more important role, on equal status to them, than beforehand. As to the DAR’s security chief – she was subordinate to Rawlings yet had significant power of her own –, she gave a briefing on the ‘terrorist action’ which had killed Winkelman. Those behind that would be hunted down. Pierce had some kind words to say about the man whose murder he had been behind and reaffirmed what Eaton said about capturing those responsible. He urged the other governors to be careful and promised them that there would be extra security for them too. The domestic security situation was worrying, he said, and that was another reason why it was best to keep MAR and Padley as safe as he had them.

A couple of the governors started to talk about how best to deal with the news of the removal of the president and vice president with Pierce replacing them. Pierce had told them that the Council of Twelve had been done away with yet they acted as if that wasn’t the case. He cut them off. A decision had already been made on that, one taken by him. He would tell the nation’s people of the change of leadership and so it with utmost urgency. Matters such as that, everything in fact unless it was a domestic state matter, was up to him from that moment on.

It was less than a quarter of an hour later, when broadcasting a live address from Sacramento (not Las Vegas), that President Pierce spoke to the DAR… and the watching world too. He left out all of the details about what had gone on yet informed those within the country which he had taken over in that he was leading it from that moment onwards. The Mojave Project came to a conclusion and the coup d'etat within the Democratic American Republic was complete. The war to retain its independence would take a different course with Pierce in complete control. No longer would there be consensus after deliberation from the all-powerful committee of leaders. The policy of not lashing out with the full strength of the illegal nation’s armed forces, worrying about who that might upset, came to an end. Pierce, the last one standing from among the dissolved Council of Twelve, made a change with all of that once he had the DAR fully in his hands and no one to stand up to him.

[gillan1220]

Pierce will be an HVT by the USSOCOM then. His power grab will ultimately be the end of the DAR.

[James G]

Jun 25, 2021 7:43:11 GMT gillan1220 said:

Pierce will be an HVT by the USSOCOM then. His power grab will ultimately be the end of the DAR.

They haven't had much luck going after others though. Some successes, other expensive failures.

[James G]

150 – Ambush

A couple of days after being confirmed by the US Senate, the new Vice President, Christina Cruz Flores, appeared on Elaine. Elaine Hunt-Emery had her own web political talk show after previously spending several years with NBC then CNN before that. Independent out there on her own, Hunt-Emery had ended up beholden to no partisan agenda at any network and could freely interview whomever she wanted without executives worrying about losing advertisers fearing a backlash to be associated with a guest. Elaine had good viewing figures, enough advertisers to keep it going and had been gaining in popularity significantly since the Second American Civil War had started: the host’s guests had provided many talking points and she herself had provided drama. A shorter interview had been done between Congresswoman Cruz and Hunt-Emery before the former got the formal nomination to serve alongside President Mitchell. There had been good chemistry between the two of them so the latter invited Cruz to do her first major post-confirmation interview live on Elaine. It wouldn’t be a hostile one, not one of gotcha politics. Neither them foresaw when they made the agreement that only the day before the interview there would be a sudden, shocking change of leadership out in the Democratic American Republic.

The interview with Cruz led with that. Hunt-Emery questioned the 53rd Vice President about what the US Government knew had gone on out in the DAR. Had there been warning ahead of time of what was coming? Would the approach being taken with Maria Arreola Rodriguez differ now that Samuel Pierce was in charge? Did democracy ever stand a chance out West? Cruz at once linked the DAR’s apparent new president to that of the drug smuggler Carrillo with the allegations that California’s governor and that criminal had been behind the murder of Shauna McCleary and other events in the lead up to the illegal UDI made out in Las Vegas back in January. Pierce was a traitor, a murderer and the United States would have no dealings with him at all. He was wanted on multiple federal charges and the indictments against him wouldn’t change regardless of his seizure of power out there. As to democracy, Cruz reminded viewer of Elaine that there had never been a vote of any kind when it came to forming the DAR nor there had been any elections since. Those in power, those who had committed treason against the United States, had no interest at all in the will of the people. When Hunt-Emery asked about reports coming out of the West that the change of leadership there had resulted in many deaths occurring during power struggles, Cruz confirmed that that was the case as far as the Mitchell Administration knew. Hundreds of deaths had occurred, Cruz said, adding to the thousands seen during internal political repression within the DAR. She spoke too about the recent fall of the Arizona city of Tucson where it had once more come under the control of the secessionists. Cruz reminded her host of the footage which had come out of there, videos of very similar violence which had been seen up in Salt Lake City. So-called enemies of the state were murdered for having different political opinions: Cruz expressed her utter disgust at that.

The issues surrounding Nicholas and Jessica Toomey were raised with Vice President Cruz. The first one of that former married pair wasn’t in federal custody, Cruz declared, nor held by the US Government in any form of denial manner. She had no idea of where he was though did tell Hunt-Emery that the FBI had opened an inquiry into his disappearance. She was asked why that hadn’t happened in the first place, why the FBI had been so unconcerned about the vanishing of one of the highest-profile DAR supporters active in the United States who had stayed just inside the law on what he had said and done. Cruz would only say that that was a matter for the FBI but that she had been told they had no evidence of foul play initially and it was only later that that had come about. With regards to Jessica Toomey, Cruz called her another traitor to the United States. Her time spent overseas in Europe openly supporting that DAR and trying – thankfully unsuccessfully – to gain political & diplomatic support for that breakaway nation had been followed up by her going to Russia. Hunt-Emery asked about those allegations made from Moscow about the death of President Roberts. Trash, Cruz told her: utter lies, ones designed to cause divisions. The death of the 49th President had been a domestic accident and there was no conspiracy to see him dead, no cover up and no involvement at all in what happened with that from Mitchell. What Toomey was doing out there in Moscow was in fact supporting those out to harm the United States. When her host brought up the fate of MAR out in the West, another woman within the borders of a hostile regime, Cruz reminded Hunt-Emery that the DAR had no borders because it was an unrecognised entity. Regardless, the US Government believed that MAR, as was the reported case with former Vice President Padley too, remained alive. Both of them were wanted on federal charges of treason just as Pierce was. Cruz personally wished to see them in court and then jailed for all that they had done. She told those watching that broadcast of Elaine that she was looking forward to the day cameras showed them making their court appearance.

Defence Department operations had moved away from the Pentagon following the missile attack upon that iconic building which had left it pretty much a ruin. When he had been confirmed for his post, right after Cruz was made vice president, new Secretary of Defence Terrence Darby followed the lead set by former SecDef Ferdinand in operating executive functions from the Raven Rock underground facility in Pennsylvania. Other operations were dispersed at multiple varied locations around DC with one of those being the Mark Centre Building in Virginia’s Alexandria. That was a DOD off-site and where media events had been moved too when the SecDef and others had dealings with them. Darby did a press conference there, taking questions even when they were mightily difficult to have to face. He was pretty much ambushed at that. An hour before the scheduled event Darby was taking part in, Ferdinand went on Fox News for a live interview… a network which had all but accused him directly during his own time in office of sabotaging the war effort for the benefit of the DAR. The Ferdinand–Fox News love-in came with an assertion from the ex-SecDef that the war was lost. The DAR had won and it was all over bar the shouting: so said Darby’s predecessor.

Darby contested that claim, arguing that Ferdinand was utterly wrong in his belief. There had been ‘setbacks’, so he said, but victory would come to the United States in the end. Ferdinand had stated that his conclusion on the outcome of the fight with the secessionists in the West was due to how effective their self-promoted computer virus had been in crippling significant parts of the US Armed Forces. Darby was asked about progress in trying to reverse Glow-worm and whether it was true that the US Army was beginning to have major issues with the flight capability of its Gray Eagle armed drones too. Such matters were military secrets which Darby wouldn’t discuss. He couldn’t and wouldn’t comment on those issues. Neither confirming nor denying that Glow-worm was undefeatable and that such vital unmanned aircraft at those were becoming inoperable, the press conference went downhill from there. Darby had wanted to talk about successes had to ones to be continued in fighting against the DAR, plus talking about his own desire as Westerner to see his native part of the country liberated from an illegal regime but Ferdinand had done all of that damage ahead of Darby talking to those reporters. He was unable to comment on further matters too, secrets not revealed by Ferdinand but other former officials – unnamed sources for those reporters – concerning DAR submarine actions in the Pacific, air activity above liberated portions of Colorado and also a series of commando raids against military bases in the rear throughout New Mexico. Those weren’t matters which Darby wanted to put into the public domain and he in fact went as far as admonishing several media members for what he deemed as ‘spreading enemy propaganda’. Questioned about Ferdinand’s opinion that the war was lost, Darby snapped at that journalist who put that too him in something that didn’t look very professional. The whole thing was watched in the White House. Mitchell wasn’t amused in the slightest. He had hand-picked Darby for that role, used political capital to put him in-place and was witness to the disaster which was the new SecDef’s first media performance.

Senate Minority Leader Laura Yorke also spoke to the media the same day which Cruz and Darby did. The Massachusetts senator had ascended to that position following the new session of Congress after convincing fellow Democrats that the previous holder, the senior senator from Illinois, was no longer up to the job. Yorke was on the political right of the Democrats. She had become the leading figure in what had been called the ‘War Democrats’ where it was the public position of almost all elected Democrats in Congress to fully support the war: anyone who didn’t play along was frozen out. There were twenty-four Democrats left in the Senate following the pre-war walkout of those from the eight states in the West and the murder of another one of their number (Tommy Dunbar from Arizona) by terrorists long after his refusal to follow their lead. The Republicans had sixty senators. That majority of theirs gave them more than a two-to-one advantage where, should they have wanted to, the Senate majority could have done anything it wished with the future of the nation despite Yorke and her fellow Democrats. The unaccountability of democracy when the Republicans had a 60-40 advantage was bad enough before the numbers were 60-24. Yorke fought with the Republicans in the Senate, just not directly against how the war was being waged but rather on a political front. It was something which she didn’t have wholescale agreement with despite her arguments that it was necessary. Her fellow Massachusetts senator, the loud-mouth Patrick O’Shea, whom she and so many others despised because he was always putting his foot in that big mouth of his, had been shut down hard when he tried to get his fellow War Democrats to hold the Mitchell Administration to account on failings to do with the war effort. Yorke had been assisted in keeping him as well as those in the US House as silent as possible though where she worked with the party establishment. The view taken was that criticising the way in which the war was being fought would be directly used by the Republicans against them. There was no argument to be won on that front and it would only do fatal damage to their party. It had taken a heck of a lot of effort to silence the dissenters of such a strategy, one which they said allowed the Mitchell Administration to do whatever it wanted, but those for it had won out. Yorke believed that she’d never be president herself in the future (it was personal for her) and her party would face electoral oblivion otherwise. The critics kept on saying that was madness though.

The focus of the War Democrats was instead of political matters relating to the war itself rather than what was going on across the battlefield. Yorke did an interview with Brandon Vannucci from ABC. She criticised the quasi martial law which had been imposed upon areas of the West liberated during January and February when the United States Army North was on the offensive. Through Colorado first, then New Mexico and even where there was federal control in parts of Arizona, a military administration governed people’s lives. Vannucci questioned whether that was true when Governors Webb (in Colorado) and Gibson (Arizona) had authority but Yorke stuck to her guns. They had no real power. It was un-American and an affront to democracy. Civilian rule, backed up by elections as soon as possible to move from appointees to those elected, should be what governed the Americans who lived in those portions of liberated states. She was asked whether she anticipated that voters there would vote for the Democrats. Yorke admitted that it was unlikely given the association with all that had happened when Democratic office-holders had defected to the DAR against the will of their citizens yet she said that it wasn’t about partisan politics for her. What mattered was that it needed to be done. The war against the DAR, which she (for seemingly the millionth time) affirmed her full support, was one waged to fight for democracy and the United States needed to show that was taking place. The interview moved to the matter of Hawaii. The readmission back into the union was welcomed by Yorke though she questioned whether that was necessary in how it was done. She argued that Hawaii had never legally left the United States, just as the other nine states hadn’t, so where was the need for formal readmission beyond the Mitchell Administration making some sort of political point. When Vannucci asked her about the matter of congressional representation to be sent to DC from Hawaii, Yorke was all over that. Again, she wanted a vote to be had. Governor Ito shouldn’t be able to appoint senators and representatives to go to Congress – no matter what their political affiliation, Yorke was at pains to point out – in such a manner. She opposed that and the Democrats were against that plan of action. Vannucci had done an easy interview for Yorke to handle. His particular brand of left-wing politics were well-known and there was no way she would have done such an important interview with him had she feared an ambush. Her strategy with doing that was to continue to try and repair the public perception of her party. There was doom and despair in some quarters, serious opposition elsewhere too, to what she did where she tried to do everything possible to change the view shared by many (helped to be formed by the Republicans) that ‘Democrats equals traitors’. That was going to be a long fight though, considering how much of a pre-war public following that the traitors out West had had as leading lights in her party before they stormed out in a huff to fight against everyone else.

[James G]

150 – Restrictions removed

The DAR Army’s Arizona Corps finished off the rest of the US VII Corps in the north of that state. It was no easy affair. The fighting which took place through the middle of March was costly for each side and drawn out too. An intention on behalf of the DAR commander-in-chief, General Fuller, to make it as quick and painless as possible was one which was unfulfilled. Surrounded on the ground and with enemy-held skies, US Army soldiers with the 1st Infantry Division and national guardsmen serving with the 29th Infantry Division fought on when they should have given up. A lot of deaths and injuries were caused for no other reason than pride. They didn’t want to give in, didn’t want to throw down their arms. When getting up close and personal didn’t work to break the individual pockets of cut off troops which DAR attacks with tanks had broken them into, those at the front-lines were ordered to take a step back. Artillery first and then air power was brought in. One by one, each pocket was finished off. The last big grouping was of Florida national guardsmen in the Tonto National Forest. They were committed to the fight until the very end. When napalm, a lot of that, was brought in, there was a final surrender there.

Most of the 35th Infantry Division – more national guardsmen – as well as a lot of the VII Corps’ non-combat supporting personnel had evaded being trapped by the Arizona Corps and sought an escape eastwards back towards New Mexico. Just like the 1st Infantry Division before them, when those troops tried to withdraw across open ground, they were targeted extensively from above. The Painted Desert offered little cover from air strikes and missile attacks. DAR tanks eventually caught up with pinned down enemy units and ran through them. There was less of a strong fight in those further elements of the VII Corps. They weren’t as stubborn and as determined to hold on as the others further away to the west, not when faced with all that they were. Collapses came quicker with a far lower casualty count for those on the attack and those trying to hold them off. Large numbers of US soldiers were soon being trucked away as POWs while medical teams tried to deal with the mass of injured too.

The demise of the VII Corps came not long after the DAR forces in Arizona had eliminated the III Corps too, part of the latter wiped out after trying to make an escape through Mexico. Six full combat divisions were lost overall: 1st Cavalry, 1st Infantry, 29th Infantry, 35th Infantry, 36th Infantry & 48th Infantry. Worse, all of that supporting infrastructure which the two corps brought with them into Arizona was likewise massacred at DAR hands. Not just artillery, engineering and aviation units in combat-support roles but supply, transportation and signalling elements as well. Complete air control was in DAR hands when they were given the orders to try and flee from Arizona and they were utterly unable to. They were either destroyed trying to run or captured when caught up with by fellow Americans fighting for a different regime. The equipment losses and the death or capture of specialist personnel was immense. For the United States Army North, the multi-corps grouping of ground forces which had been assembled to liberate the West, the defeat incurred was horrific. Almost half its strength was finished off with the rest of ARNORTH being in no position at all to help avert what came. General Lambert’s remaining troops were in fact lucky they hadn’t been forward in Arizona too otherwise they also would have been destroyed. Total defeat had come to US forces in Arizona who not very long beforehand had been on their way to storm California and finish off the Democratic American Republic for good.


Newly-installed President Pierce had the majority of the restrictions removed upon DAR forces undertaking long-range strikes far outside of the DAR and deep into United States territory. The previously ruling Council of Twelve had spent the entire war where the West was fighting to keep its independence hamstrung by inflexible rules which bound them to not pose any danger to civilians at all. There had never been a wish to cause civilian losses – collateral damage – but the restrictions had meant that so much of what the DAR Armed Forces wanted to do, they had been unable to. That changed once Pierce had secured his power. United States propaganda had been saying that his replacement of shared leadership with his own sole leadership of the DAR had come at a frightful human cost with hundreds, maybe a thousand deaths incurred. None of that had been true. Only a very few fools had wanted to make a fight for the previous leadership to deny Pierce what he had taken. A lot of personal opposition had come, from those who found their conscience offended, but they didn’t act on that: the strength which Pierce had assembled was overwhelming. His taking over came at the cost of a few dozen lives. Intimidation and the realisation within those who might have stood in his way that they had already betrayed one oath meant that only those few fools tried to take up arms. Pierce talked other opponents around, bullying his way into getting their support. That done, he unleashed his aircraft and missiles.

The DAR Air Force conducted a major strike against the oil & gas infrastructure in the Gulf of Mexico. F-35s flew from airheads in California and met with tankers flying in Mexican skies. There was no challenge to the airspace intrusion from Mexico. Those strike-fighters needed an early fuel top-up due to the weight of external ordnance carried: two long-range cruise missiles each. Those were released once the F-35s reached the sea, on the other side of Mexico after flying around Texas, before the aircraft went back to their tankers once more. US Air Force F-15s took shots at them from distance, entering Mexican airspace to try and get the tankers too, but didn’t have any real luck in that endeavour and also came off terribly when the F-35s returned fire. Those launched cruise missiles flew on unmolested. Out in the Gulf of Mexico, away from the coasts of Louisiana and Texas, there were two & a half thousand plus offshore platforms. The vast majority were in shallow water and (relatively) small. There were some big ones out in deeper water though, pumping out the hydrocarbons to fuel the United States’ war effort from underneath the seabed. DAR missiles flew towards them. JAASMs were used with their 2000lb warheads striking the biggest platforms. The destruction was quite something. So too were the resulting oil slicks. They were far worse than the Deepwater Horizon disaster in 2010 and the Atlantis IV explosion (2022). As the targeted platforms burnt, there were shutdowns everywhere else. It wasn’t known if there were to be follow-up strikes and so the taps were turned off. Emergency disaster crews were overwhelmed with so many incidents to try and address at once. As to the spills, they were quite something. The DAR’s former president, Maria Arreola Rodriguez, had refused to be responsible for an environmental disaster like that when pressed beforehand to make attacks in the Gulf of Mexico but Pierce had no such moral concerns.

Within the confines of both El Paso and Oklahoma City at first, then later moving on to hit Houston and Kansas City, there were more DAR missile attacks. Pure civilian targets weren’t hit but the military sites nearby were struck with immense force where civilian casualties were correctly anticipated to occur. When General Fuller presented the target package to Pierce, he informed his president that those locations were being used by the US Armed Forces more than they otherwise would be because around them there were human shields. They were important to the United States war effort and could no longer be ignored; everything would be done to avoid the deaths of innocents yet that was bound to happen. Cruise missiles hit military facilities in those cities with ones off course and also unexpected blast effects taking the lives of those not in uniform. Transportation and supply links were cut but the attacks around those urban areas.

In New Mexico, DAR Marines went back into Santa Fe. That city had sat in the middle of no-man’s land after a brief fight within in which took so many lives previously all for nothing. The 1st Marine Division was given orders to move forward and retake control. There were US Army forces located nearby but in no position to stop them, not when they had no effective air cover in opposition to that supporting the attackers. Santa Fe was taken and the marines moved onto cutting Interstate-25. Once more, that freeway was blocked from open use by US forces… those that had been unable to avoid air attacks anyway. The reaction to the move to take Santa Fe and then push onwards, possibly towards Albuquerque according to ARNORTH emergency intelligence analysis, was to move forward US Marines to head them off. They came out into the open after being told that DAR air power was concentrated elsewhere. That wasn’t the case at all. Attacking aircraft feasted upon those below them, bombing and strafing US Marines long before they could get anywhere near DAR Marines. As to Albuquerque, DAR jets flew above that city and struck at Kirtland AFB. Heavy payloads were dropped and not all of them were as well targeted as they should have been. Casualties were caused to what civilians remained in that New Mexico city where the rules for those making those air strikes had been relaxed quite a bit. Once again, no one wanted to kill civilians yet it happened in great numbers due to how much ordnance was unleashed in shutting Kirtland for good and eliminating the US military presence in area as much as was done.

Pierce had said to the cabal around him, those supporters who he had given real influence where before they had been bit-part players, that he was fed up of the DAR ‘trying to lose the war’. He wanted it won. He wanted the independence of the West to be won. That meant not fighting with one hand tied behind their backs. The rules against deliberately targeting civilians were still left in-place with a whole world of trouble to be dropped upon the heads of those who broke them. However… the leadership would interpret where there was wrongdoing. Those targeted oil and gas platforms were full of civilian workers for instance and no punishment would come for those who authorised that strike. It would be the same in other matters afterwards. Pierce wanted the war won and thus so many of the previous restrictions on certain military activities were removed in the name of achieving that goal.

[redrobin65]

Given how long it takes to get rid of oil spills this is going to cause a major headache for the US. I do wonder if Washington would use this to galvanize environmentalist opposition towards the DAR, especially if there are many in the rebel state with pro-environment sentiments. Maybe something along the lines of "DAR says they care about the environment but they caused an oil spill!!"

[gillan1220]

Jun 28, 2021 2:04:22 GMT redrobin65 said:

Given how long it takes to get rid of oil spills this is going to cause a major headache for the US. I do wonder if Washington would use this to galvanize environmentalist opposition towards the DAR, especially if there are many in the rebel state with pro-environment sentiments. Maybe something along the lines of "DAR says they care about the environment but they caused an oil spill!!"

Consider that Washington State and Oregon has a lot of "tree huggers" or "tree hippies", this will be a cause of internal divisions among the DAR.

Not to mention, the DAR's ruthless attacks on oil rigs in the Gulf of Mexico would not only create an ecological disaster in the southern U.S. but to Mexico, Belize, Haiti, and Jamaica as well.

[James G]

Jun 28, 2021 2:04:22 GMT redrobin65 said:

Given how long it takes to get rid of oil spills this is going to cause a major headache for the US. I do wonder if Washington would use this to galvanize environmentalist opposition towards the DAR, especially if there are many in the rebel state with pro-environment sentiments. Maybe something along the lines of "DAR says they care about the environment but they caused an oil spill!!"

Major problems indeed.
They have tried everything propaganda-wise and not had success. The DAR controls its own media fully and can always deny it. Even if the message gets through, by now the people out West have no voice left.

Jun 28, 2021 12:41:56 GMT gillan1220 said:

Consider that Washington State and Oregon has a lot of "tree huggers" or "tree hippies", this will be a cause of internal divisions among the DAR.

Not to mention, the DAR's ruthless attacks on oil rigs in the Gulf of Mexico would not only create an ecological disaster in the southern U.S. but to Mexico, Belize, Haiti, and Jamaica as well.

I agree, hence why MAR didn't want to do anything like that early on. Things have gone too far now though with internal state control.
I hadn't considered those other countries: bad on me that.

[James G]

151 – The war is not lost

The former US Secretary of Defence, E. John Ferdinand (he intensely disliked his first name: Egbert), had gone on Fox News ahead of his replacement’s first Defence Department press conference and declared that the war against the secessionists in the West was lost. Fired by the 48th President, reappointed by the 49th and then forced to resign by the 50th, Ferdinand wasn’t someone that anyone could ignore on such a matter. That was something tried though. Mitchell Administration officials on and off the record had said that he had no idea what he was talking about, he was out of the loop. There had been setbacks in the fight to liberate states under the illegal regime which called itself the Democratic American Republic but the United States would ultimately prevail. Days later, once the US Army had taken a second catastrophic defeat out in Arizona, he was joined by other former high-level national security officials from the previous administration – that of President Walsh – saying the same thing. First up was Russell Talbott. He had been the Secretary of the Air Force below Ferdinand under the 48th President and had stepped up to Acting SecDef when Walsh had fired Ferdinand for being one of the ringleaders of the effort to use the 25th Amendment to remove him at the very end of his term of office. Talbott had been in the Pentagon when huge portions of the US Armed Forces out West went over to the DAR. He had tried desperately to stop that, to use force to put down insurrection, mutiny & treason yet been refused permission to use force. Just a little was all that he asked for, just to shoot a few generals. For those terrible ten days, Talbott had had his hands tied and overseen the loss of all of that military forces spread across the West where it ended up with those out to destroy his country. He spoke live on CNN after the DAR began claiming that they had completely destroyed the US VII Corps and said that the war was lost. The United States would just have to accept defeat and the shearing off of the West to a hostile, foreign regime. Reactions to his remarks were hostile. From media commentators, politicians and Mitchell Administration officials, he received professional and personal criticisms blaming him for the formation of the DAR Armed Forces which had happened on his watch. As to his views on the course of the war, he was also out of the loop and didn’t know what was really happening.

Samantha Leach went on MSNBC hours after Talbott’s comments. Along with Ferdinand, the then US Secretary of State had been at the very heart of that failed removal of Walsh when it was claimed that he was unfit for office. Without a vice president, who’d just been impeached & removed for office for treason, Leach had been willing to see US House Speaker Kenneth Fraser put in the White House for a week and a bit rather than have the 48th President stay there. The votes hadn’t been there when the crucial moment came: she and Ferdinand had been lied to by their Cabinet colleagues over the level of support for Walsh. Fired just like the SecDef, Leach had left office but stayed in DC rather than go back to her home state. Arizona was where she was a native of, somewhere that secessionists had taken control of and she certainly wasn’t welcome. When remaining in the United States capital, she had sought to be one of those voices of influence speaking for the people of the West. Others had sought that mantle too where they could be the leading voice arguing for the rights and needs of Westerners like she. That hadn’t been about supporting the DAR, not at all, but reminding her fellow Americans that those people out there were Americans as well who needed liberating yet couldn’t be killed in the effort. When Arizona was in the process of being liberated through mid-February, she had been ready to go back. Mitchell had appointed an acting governor and Leach had been tapped to become a US senator (appointed too: her as a Democrat and a Republican alongside her) for a temporary period. The DAR’s armies had then gone on the rampage though, all while a computer virus ravaged the US Armed Forces, and she had stayed where she was in DC while Arizona fell back into DAR hands. Speaking on MSNBC, Leach told those watching and listening that the war against the Las Vegas regime was lost. There was no way that it could be won. The time for a successful liberation had come and gone: what was needed was for the country to admit that defeat and move to dealing with the aftermath. Just like Talbott, her comments brought outrage. There were threats made to her life from extremists while from out of Congress, she was openly called a traitor spreading ‘enemy propaganda’.

In DC, a Mother’s March took place. Women whose sons & daughters had been killed in action during the civil war had started gathering on Sunday afternoons in the nation’s capital a few weeks into the war. The movement had been organised online and grew fast. The organisers worked their socks off to fight off infiltration from unwelcome groups into their movement. They wanted to march silently through the streets holding candles in remembrance of their dead children. Despite those efforts, the unwelcome were attracted to the growing gatherings. Anti-war protesters of various stripes and then of the extremist political nature turned up leading to clashes with the police. Various politicians sought to express support for their cause, putting their own political views on what the mothers were doing. It wasn’t about protesting against the war itself, just making a statement that young service-personnel had been killed in their thousands and for the world to see that their mothers cared. On March 22nd, two months after the Second American Civil War had started, the weekly march faced violence on its edges. Six thousand silent women moved through Downtown DC peacefully while anarchists clashed with far-right nationalists nearby, marring the cause which those women were making a statement for. Images from DC were on television and computer screens that day of what happened there yet elsewhere, across the DAR and then in selected places around the world, people saw released footage coming out of that illegal country where they broadcast images of masses of POWs taken in battle. Faces were blacked out and there was no humiliation of them nor triumphalism in victory depicted. Instead, it was just the mass ranks of United States service-personnel who had surrendered out in Arizona where the DAR was trumpeting its recent victory. Broadcasters in the United States didn’t show those images despite having access to them because they were still engaged in mass self-censorship.

To do so, would have been aiding the enemy’s war effort: such was the collective opinion among media executives.


Glow-worm continued to reek havoc once late-March had arrived. Out of the public eye, the many serious problems got even worse. As had previously been seen on a few isolated occasions, but what suddenly became a full blackout, the computer systems controlling flight operations aboard multiple at-sea US Navy carriers went down. They couldn’t be restarted and were just junk after they went dead. Out in both the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans, the carriers already were unable to fly their F-35s yet after that blackout, there were no more flight operations at all. The Chief of Naval Operations, at Raven Rock with the other Joint Chiefs, summed up the situation in crude but simple terms: ‘we are so f*cked!’

US Army problems getting their Gray Eagles to function properly moved to those unmanned aircraft deciding to commit suicide in-flight. Many of then crashed into the ground in a wave of destruction before all flight operations were cancelled. The flight computers for Apache attack helicopters went on the blink and, ahead of seeing so many of them go down with crews aboard, the entire fleet was grounded ahead of that likely outcome. The US Air Force had the same issue with drones smearing themselves into the ground which the US Army did, in their case their MQ-9 Reapers, leading to their grounding alongside the B-2s, F-22s & F-35s which all couldn’t fly. Aboard the E-3 Sentry AWACS aircraft which the US Air Force flew to control operations of the F-15 & F-16 fighter force being murdered in the skies, the combat computers crashed and wouldn’t restart. The big aircraft themselves could fly but they couldn’t gather nor share data coming from the mounted radars which the E-3s carried. Their combat value was zero without those systems operational.

There was a National Security Council briefing after the news came – almost simultaneously – about the carriers and the AWACS aircraft. It wasn’t just a matter which concerned the war against the DAR but wider national security for the United States too. The whole world was watching the US Armed Forces being destroyed at home ground by domestic opponents and one of the results of that conflict was the crippling of America’s outward defences. SecDef Terrence Darby spoke up against his predecessor’s comments about the course of the conflict with the DAR: the war wasn’t lost. However, also there at Raven Rock and patched into the White House Situation Room where Mitchell and others were was General Dowd. The Chair of the Joint Chiefs pointed to the disasters incurred on the battlefield and their combination with the virus effects. She said that she couldn’t see a way in which the war could continue, a successful outcome seemed beyond grasp. For seemingly the longest of time, but in reality only seconds, there was only silence. Then there were outbursts of anger at such a suggestion. From SecState Jo Renzi, there was the claim of ‘defeatism’ in the Chair, a call echoed by Vice President Christina Cruz Flores.

The war was still winnable!

Mitchell had spent several days getting extreme heat from state governors across the nation. Fellow Republicans from Florida, North Carolina (his home state, where he had once been governor himself) and Texas had expressed futile anger at the loss of the contingents of national guardsmen from their states in battle. Carrie Garner out of Texas had been the most aggrieved: the entire 36th Infantry Division, almost all Texans, had been destroyed with a mass of casualties in so many POWs in DAR hands. States led by Democrats had likewise witnessed from afar the elimination of their own contingents also out there on the battlefield in Arizona. He met ire from their governors too (those from Illinois and Virginia) at what had happened. Fully-equipped and well-trained Army National Guard units from states across the nation had been wiped out. There were more national guardsmen who hadn’t been in Arizona but were elsewhere and their home state’s leaders, plus legislatures, were gravely concerned that they were next. All of them were federalised with no state control over where they were sent and what they did yet Mitchell just couldn’t ignore the fact that their home states cared about what happened with them.

The president didn’t agree with Dowd that the war was lost. His disagreement wasn’t one of anger at her, like others showed, but instead he told her that he wanted the war won. There had to be a way to defeat the Democratic American Republic. Mitchell wouldn’t accept the it wouldn’t be defeated. He asked her to tell him how the war could see the United States emerge rightfully victorious.

[James G]

152 – Treating with the enemy

On March 23rd out in east-central Arizona, near to the small town of Safford, rearguard elements of what was left of the 3rd Armored Cavalry Regiment – the Brave Rifles – spotted a HMMWV approaching their positions flying a prominent white flag. The Brave Rifles were all that was left of the US III Corps and were covering a retreat of a mixed bag of combat and non-combat elements escaping from Arizona to flee back into New Mexico less they be destroyed like everyone else. The HMMWV so adorned was an unusual sight but not an unknown event. On more than a good number of occasions, elements of the US Armed Forces and those of the Democratic American Republic had approached each over under a white flag for the purposes of parley in special circumstances. Those had been due to civilian incidents where there was the requirement for innocents to evacuate through a combat zone unmolested as well as exchanges of badly wounded where one side couldn’t care for the other’s injured in select combat situations. Moreover, there had also been a parley incident in Denver early in the fighting there where an accidental industrial chemical spill had seen one side warn the other about it less there be confusion over any supposed hostile intent with that. Bad words had oft been exchanged and at times the parleys had broken down with violence ensuing, but the incidents happened on quite the regular basis and all out of the public eye.

No gunfire was directed against that four-wheeled vehicle. An infantry Troop commander moved to deal with whatever was up while other personnel continued their escape during a short period when the skies were almost empty of the enemy. The young US Army lieutenant was met by a DAR Army colonel from the first vehicle who pointed out that there was a second HMMWV approaching, also flying a white flag. An enquiry was made as to what was the cause of the need for talking rather than shooting and the response came was that there was the matter of two civilians whom the DAR wished to hand over to the United States there outside Safford. Regarding the matter as far over his head when he recognised the insignia of a three-star general in that second vehicle, and worried about the negative implications of being seen treating with the enemy too when it didn’t look like any ‘normal’ situation, the lieutenant requested a senior officer attend before he would have any more dealings with the DAR officers.

Colonel McSherry turned up not that long afterwards. He was the commander of the Brave Rifles, an infantry unit which had started the war the size of a brigade but been reduced to less than the equivalent of two worn-down battalions by late March. His reports to his own senior commander was that it looked like a ‘Swansong incident’. That code-word put a lot of things into motion including McSherry being told to go and see what exactly what was going on. A local ceasefire took place where DAR troops nearby stopped their seemingly lazy advance forward… McSherry had more of his people fall back further though during the forced break in fighting. He met with that general, a good-looking female DAR Army officer who only a few months beforehand had been one of the highest-ranking women in the US Army’s combat arms command structure: Lt.–Gen. Natasha Harvey. She was General Fuller’s second-in-command, someone who had a high-profile in DAR military propaganda. McSherry almost forgot himself to nearly salute her but was bound by standing orders to not recognise her rank nor authority because she and everyone like her were traitors whom the Defence Department decrees had deemed banned from receiving the respect that a proper battlefield opponent would receive. McSherry nodded at her instead before asking her what was the case with the civilians which she wanted to see handed over to the US Army. The certainty that it was another one of the few previous Swansong incidents, where military personnel were present when high-level intelligence exchanges took place, filled him with a lot of dread. He didn’t want to be involved.

Escorted by soldiers, two women were removed from the second HMMWV and released into US custody. McSherry recognised the first but not the second. That second woman, Harvey told him, was Lucinda Gibson: the Acting Governor (appointed by President Mitchell) of Arizona. The DAR was returning her to the United States for they had no wish to hold her. With the first woman who was sent forward, whom the Brave Rifles’ commander knew her identity already, Harvey confirmed that she was indeed Cicely Blair Padley. The former vice president of first the United States and then the Democratic American Republic too, the seventy-one year-old grandmother of eight, was in handcuffs when pushed forward away from her captors to another set of them. She had some curses for Harvey, causing eyes to widen from those who heard such a distinguished looking lady use such guttural language. McSherry asked what was going on: why was he being given such people? He said that he wasn’t going to give Harvey nor her soldiers anything in exchange for Gibson and Padley. Nothing was wanted for them though. Harvey told him that the DAR was unilaterally extending the localised ceasefire for two hours and wouldn’t be engaging any aircraft or helicopters flying away to the east. There would be safe passage out of Safford for those two women captives of the DAR which had been given to the United States, and she urged McSherry to get on with that.

A document folder was something which Harvey tried to hand to McSherry afterwards. He refused to accept it. He was told that it was for his superiors but McSherry was extremely uneasy. The meeting with Harvey and her party, with him having his soldiers there too, took place out in the open and there were a lot of uniformed people around with guns. McSherry feared that recording the whole thing from afar was being done though. He had concerns about how that might look. It might have seemed irrational to others, but not to him. He was meeting with the enemy, those people who had betrayed their country to serve an illegal regime. To take something from them which they said was for his superiors just didn’t seem right when he had that concern. Taken out of context, twisted to fit someone else’s narrative, he didn’t want the blowback to come down the line. He had a career to think of. Harvey was damn insistent and kept at him. She said it was intelligence information that her regime wanted to have passed onto DC. McSherry suggested she send them an email rather than hand him something like that! Eventually, still worried but thinking a bit more lucidly, McSherry got on the radio and received explicit permission to take the package. He spelt out the whole situation and his concerns before receiving a clear and direct order to take what Harvey was offering. McSherry snatched away the document folder quickly, when he could best have people around him to shield that a bit, and then took his leave of the enemy. Harvey laughed at his behaviour and told him not to worry about it. Off back towards DAR lines went the two HMMWVs. Several of McSherry’s soldiers close-in and far off all wanted to fire on them but obeyed orders not to. There would be a time to get back to the killing soon enough once the localised ceasefire put in-place by the DAR ran out.

McSherry had Gibson and Padley taken to a helicopter. He left the latter in those handcuffs while releasing the former. Because he only had Harvey’s word that Gibson was whom it was said she was, McSherry had two of his female soldiers keep a close eye on her on the way to the helicopter. She assured the Brave Rifles’ commander of her identity and told him of her capture when Tucson had re-fallen to the DAR. Gibson asked what was going to happen with Padley. McSherry could only guess and told her what he though: Padley would likely face the federal death penalty despite her age. He pressed the freed politician about what had gone on with her fellow captive. All that Gibson knew was what Harvey had told her on the way to the hand-over site. The DAR was handing Padley over to the United States gift-wrapped in light of the new vice president’s recent comments about wanting to see Padley in court. Gibson had been sent along with her and told by Harvey that the Las Vegas regime was setting her free to show ‘good faith’ as well. The two of them, Gibson and McSherry, could only imagine what all of that would bring when news reached DC. They also had their own thoughts about what was in that document folder which McSherry had been forced to take. Right before getting on the helicopter, sharing another ride with the silent Padley, Gibson told McSherry that she had the suspicion – just a belief, no proof to that – that it was part of a peace offering which she and Padley had likewise been a portion of during the handover near Safford. That made sense to both of them.