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The chopper—call sign Marine One—sat on the South Lawn, rotor blades spinning at flight idle. This was an unusual practice since normal protocol required the engine to be fully shut down while the president and his entourage boarded. The president was always the last to board, ostensibly so he could wave at well-wishers before he ducked into the cabin. Today was different—a tactical departure. The president would board first followed by his Security Council. As soon as all were on board, the rotor would come back up to full RPM and the chopper would speed away.

Maccabee had been ordered to stay behind to secure any classified documents. This was not a difficult task because the White House had been paper-less for the last forty-five years. It was mostly a case of needing to turn off the lights before he too was whisked away in another chopper sometime this evening.

*   *   *

After Air Force One departed, Maccabee sat at the president’s desk in the Oval Office. He propped his feet on the edge of the desk and leaned back in the chair with a notepad in his lap and the president’s antique phone receiver in the crook of his shoulder.

“Maccabee here. I sent him to Zebra Five, ETA…” he moused onto the clock icon in the computer monitor, “…make that ETA 17:30 HRS. My chopper will be here in one hour… No, I will not be on it. I ah… intend to depart by other means… Out here.”

18:30 HRS

Marine Two Approaching Secure Site Zebra Five

The Secretaries of State and Defense peered out the window of Marine Two at the wreckage of what could only have been Marine One.

“My god, do you think there were any survivors?” Secretary of State Foster Adams asked.

Secretary of Defense George Potter was on the intercom arguing with the pilot. “Dammit, man! We have to land. We must have confirmation of the president’s death!”

“Sir, protocol requires I get you out of the AO ASAP. What killed POTUS may very well be waiting around for you and the Sec State to show up.”

“But we must have confirmation of his death if the government is to go on with a proper succession!”

“Negative, sir. You will not be able to ID a body in that mess, and you two are both in the direct line of succession. We are leaving.”

The Secretary of Defense attempted to negotiate the narrow walk way that led to the cockpit. He was stopped at the door by the flight engineer whose hand rested on his holstered Glock .45 caliber.

“Please return to your seat, sir.”

Exasperated, the secretary of defense slumped back in his seat across the aisle from the Secretary of State.

The secretary of state reached across and put his hand on the secretary of defense’s shoulder. “If the president was on that chopper, he is dead. We need to notify… hell, who
do
we notify, George?”

“What? You mean with Pitstick and his secessionist goon squad trying to pull a coup?” the secretary of state asked.

“You think the president was serious about that?”

“One of them—the president or Pitstick—is on the lunatic fringe. If you were a bettin’ man, who would you put your money on?”

“Pitstick… easy money.”

“Yeah, me too, George. There’s just one problem. The president is dead, and we don’t really know who is responsible.”

“You think it was an assassination?”

“I do. The damage was too complete—lots of fire—I’m betting some kind of incendiary device,” the secretary of state said. “With a simple crash—engine out or something—the chopper would have been banged up pretty bad, but the fuselage would have remained whole. I could be wrong but I think the odds say somebody took him out. Pitstick would be my first pick for usual suspects, but without evidence we cannot call him on it.”

“Okay, so we should just get on with the succession. Who’s the successor?”

“Well, we don’t have a VEEP, and the Speaker of the House has gone on record that he will not serve.”

“We still have to ask him… officially,” the secretary of defense said.

“Yeah, but assuming he won’t do it—”

“Then it’s the president
pro tempore
of the senate which we have not had for six years after the last two in a row got shot.”

The secretary of state sat up, mouth open, as he stared at his friend. “That leaves me.”

At that moment…

Command Center,
Ilha do Corvo
, Azores

“Commander, we have Drone 7 orbiting the secure site.”

“Do we have another target in the area?”

“Yes, sir. Another chopper like the first one.”

“Very well, our orders are clear. Eliminate the target.”

Flying overhead at four kilometers altitude, the swept wing drone disgorged a long cylindrical glide bomb which began plummeting toward Earth. The target was clearly in view in the bomb’s nose camera.

“Keep your sites on the rotor hub, same as before. We don’t want the blades to destroy the bomb before it detonates.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Drone Ops, order three more drones into the area. We may have what the Americans fondly refer to as a ‘turkey shoot.’”

C
HAPTER
T
HIRTY-
F
OUR

October 15
^th
, 2071

RSRD plotters at a secure virtual meeting

“Gentlemen, the fact remains,” Senator Pitstick said, “that the president and his closest Cabinet members—including two potential successors, the SecState and SecDef—have all been AWOL for the last two weeks. The White House is empty—not even that pencil-neck twit Maccabee can be found. We have wreckage from no less than four Air Force helicopters—including fragments of a tail number believed to be Marine One—found in the vicinity of a little known Alpha Site in West Virginia. Neither the Speaker of the House nor the president
pro tempore
of the Senate—hell, we hadn’t even had one of them for what… six years now? Neither of them are willing to step up and assume the presidency. That being said, who’s running the damn country?”

“Looks like nobody,” Senator Kershaw from South Carolina said.

“Thank you for sharing your remarkable grasp of the obvious, Senator,” Congressman Robert Carroll from Alabama said.

“Simmer down, Bobby,” Senator Pitstick said. “Just ‘cause we’re tense is no need to get snippy. The question before us is whether we should try to find a proper successor, or should we take this opportunity and finally do what we’ve been jackin’ our jaws about for the last ten years?”

“You mean—”

“Yes, I mean dissolve the government and secede to form a country of our own.”

The members of the meeting shifted around in their chairs, only glancing at the camera from time to time.

“Um-hmm, right. There’s a big difference between fantasizing about Dixie and realizing Dixie!”

Several of the members grinned sheepishly.

“Gentlemen, the time is now. I know where my Dixiecrats stand. Am I right on that, Reverend Screven?”

“I believe you are, Senator. The flocks are ready to follow in the path of the Shepherd.”

“Utah? Arizona? How ‘bout it? You ready to make Promised Land a reality?”

Senator Joseph Young from Utah and Senator Packwood from Arizona both looked to Bishop Lorenzo Frost of the Fundamentalist Mormons. Bishop Frost, his brow covered with sweat, only nodded.

“It looks like we are,” Senator Young said.

“I guess I am now Senator Packwood from Promised Land. Has a nice ring, don’t you think?”

“One thing,” Senator Wilson Pike from Georgia said. “What about the rest of the country? The West Coast, the Middle Northern States, and the Eastern Coastal States?”

“What about ‘em, Will?” Senator Pitstick asked?

“If we’re no longer part of the country formerly known as the United States of America, what are they supposed to do?”

“Why do we care?”

“I’d like to prevent their getting any notions about having another Civil War, like they might think it’s their patriotic duty to pursue. Kind of their Lincolnian legacy—it’s in their DNA.”

“Go on.”

“I think instead of leaving them to their own devices,” Senator Pike said, “we should
include
them in our secessionist architecture. Explain to them pure and simple that in the nigh three hundred years since we signed the Declaration of Independence, the country has grown too big to harbor a single sense of nation. We ain’t lookin’ for a fight—we just have nothing in common with one another anymore.

“They should go off and form their own countries just like us. We should draw up some suggested boundaries for them—maybe Hawaii, Alaska, California, Oregon, and Washington should go off and form… I don’t know, Western America or something. Hell they can figure out their own damn names. The thing we can’t afford is them staying united. They are too big and too powerful, and I don’t like having them surrounding us like that.”

“By damn, Wilson!” Senator Pitstick said, “I believe you really are on to something! One suggestion though—nobody gets to use the word America in their new name. Has to be something original—no throwbacks.”

“I motion Reverend Screven and Bishop Young to head the committee to divide up the rest of the nation,” Senator Pike said.

“Second the motion,” Senator Packwood said.

“The motion has been seconded,” Senator Pitstick said. “Any opposed? Motion carries!” He banged his gavel on the table. “I’ll start work right now getting a speech ready for the West Steps. We’ll make press releases so people know it’s coming and will be more inclined to sit back and wait for us. Let’s shoot for… November 1
^st
.”

That night…

Over a secure communication link

“Yes,” answered a raspy voice.

“Hello, Mr. Puce! Magenta here. I have big news! Earlier today we had an epic meeting of the RSRDP, and I am proud to announce that on November 1
^st
, 2071, the United States of America will be no more. It will be dissolved into at least five different sub-nations.”

“Tell me more,” Puce said.

“The country is no longer a country. It has no government. Four decades of coordinated assassinations has gutted the Congress. The recent assassination of the president and his closest Cabinet members with no one willing to succeed them has removed the possibility of continued rule by executive order. America is done. And on November 1
^st
I will address the nation from the West Steps of the Capitol Building to tell them that, having grown so far apart these many years, it is time for them to re-assert their identities.”

“You have done well, Mr. Magenta. Very well indeed.”

“Yes, yes, I know. And for which I expect to be rewarded equally well!”

“Indeed you shall, Mr. Magenta.”

A few minutes later...

The Niavarān Palace Complex, Pourebtehaj Street, Tehran

The head and shoulders of the Commander from
Ilha do Corvo
filled the monitor on the wall. The Supreme Leader stood before an open window observing some little children playing with a baby farm animals in a petting zoo below. The children—toddlers mostly—were petting the baby farm animals and feeding them tufts of hay. He liked the sights and sounds of little children at play, though he could not say as much for their filth.

“Well, Excellency,” the Commander said, “it appears the Consortium’s grand strategy of the last fifty years has finally come to pass! That most egotistical archetype of nations, formerly known as the United States of America, can never again feed the world the patented shit-sandwich she calls democracy and guilt them into acting like it’s the finest beluga caviar. I can’t wait to see the look on their faces when they learn it was us all along.”

“They must never learn that, Commander. Never!”

“All due respect, Excellency, may I ask why not? Don’t you want to gloat… just a little?” the commander asked smiling and holding his thumb and index finger apart next to his face where the gesture would be visible in the monitor.

The Supreme Leader smiled in spite of himself, then left the window and walked nearer to the commander’s monitor.

“How do nations rule, Commander?”

“Well, according to Herr Goering’s excellent guidance, they must first convince their people that there is a terrible enemy threatening them—”

“Exactly, Commander! Therefore, would it not make sense that the last thing we need to do right now is provide them with a convenient enemy?”

“But will they not just invent one?”

“You are only partly correct, Commander.
They
will not. They are too cowed to rule right now. Forty years of assassinations have seen to that. But
Mr. Magenta
is not cowed. Mr. Magenta knows our ways. Mr. Magenta will provide them a brand new terrible enemy. Us.”

PART
III

C
HAPTER
T
HIRTY-
F
IVE

10:00 HRS, November 1
^st
, 2071

15 km above the West Steps of the Capitol Building

The drone made lazy circles in the sky, broadcasting a continuous image of the growing crowd assembling in front of the West Steps. It was a cloud-free day, trees dotting the grounds of Capitol Hill were dressed in the reds and oranges of autumn. The crowd—100,000 plus—could not hear the drone circling above. Their eyes were on the rotund figure addressing them from the podium. This crowd was there of its own volition, unsolicited, motivated only by the flyer that said there would be a great speech on November 1
^st
. And a great speech it was depending of course on your political stripe.