A Just and Lasting Peace Read online

  Contents

  Copyright Notice

  Epigram

  To the Death

  Chapter One - The St. Lawrence

  Chapter Two - Disengagement

  Chapter Three - The Struggle

  Chapter Four - The Debate

  Chapter Five - The Race

  Chapter Six - The Little Mutiny

  Chapter Seven - The Final Push

  Epilogue: A Just and Lasting Peace

  Author's Note

  About the Author

  A Just and Lasting Peace: The Second Civil War (Book Five)

  Copyright 2014, Adam Teiichi Yoshida

  Cover Image, Copyright 2014, Sharon Miki

  #

  Also by the Author:

  The Blast of War

  A Land War in Asia

  A Thousand Points of Light

  A House Divided

  Robot General

  The Fiery Trial

  Shall Not Perish

  The Impeachment of Barack Hussein Obama

  This Mighty Scourge

  "With malice toward none, with charity for all, with firmness in the right as God gives us to see the right, let us strive on to finish the work we are in, to bind up the nation's wounds, to care for him who shall have borne the battle and for his widow and his orphan, to do all which may achieve and cherish a just and lasting peace among ourselves and with all nations."

  - Abraham Lincoln

  To the Death

  2nd Platoon, Charlie Company, 1st Battalion, 66th Armored Regiment, 1st Brigade Combat Team, 4th Infantry Division, Arlington, Virginia

  General Dylan Mackenzie strode purposefully past the burning vehicle that was sitting next to his parked HUMVEE and walked up towards an Abrams tank that was sitting nearby.

  As the General stood there nonchalantly, a Second Lieutenant with a look of genuine terror on his face popped out of the top hatch of one of the tanks.

  "General?" he asked.

  "Ah, yes, Lieutenant," said General Mackenzie, "it looks like you've done some fine work here. Fine work."

  "Thank you," replied the nervous Lieutenant, "but, sir, we just fought off an attack by FNASA tanks here about ten minutes ago."

  "I saw that," said the General, pointing towards the burning wrecks of several imported ex-Soviet tanks in the distance, "that's exactly what to do with the bastards."

  "But General - where there's some of them, there's probably more. They could be back."

  "And I want you to go right on killing them. Speaking of that, why is the advance of this platoon stalled?"

  "Well, my understanding is that the highway closer to the Pentagon is thoroughly blocked and the battalion is waiting for air support before we go further," said the Lieutenant.

  "How long have you been waiting?" asked the General.

  "Like you said," replied the Lieutenant, "around fifteen minutes. We were told to hold here."

  The General furrowed his brow for a moment and then he picked up his Army-issue smartphone. The General tapped several items on the screen and then entered his thumbprint with the home button of the device. That being completed, he put the phone back into his pocket and turned to face the young Armor officer.

  "Where are you from, Lieutenant?" he asked.

  "Boston, sir," replied the young man.

  "Have you still got family there?" asked Mackenzie.

  "My folks. My wife and kid were on base housing down in Tampa when everything went down, so they're safe. But my parents haven't been able to get out."

  The General walked over to the tank and looked the young man in the eyes.

  "Don't sorry son," he said, "we'll free them real soon."

  "I hope so," the Lieutenant said glumly. As he spoke the noise of numerous jet engines drowned out the conversation. Four A-10 Thunderbolts swept in low over the Platoon, headed in the direction of the roadblocks on the highway further ahead. In seconds the sound of the jet was largely overshadowed by the distinctive mechanical sound made when the 30mm Avenger cannon fired. The impact of the rounds themselves occurred beyond their field of vision, but it comforted both the General and the Lieutenant given that they were quite familiar with just what sort of mess the A-10 could create.

  "It pays to know people," said General Mackenzie as he walked back towards his HUMVEE and the Platoon began to continue forward.

  Unified Army Group Headquarters, Montreal, Quebec

  General Eugene Wesley felt strangely energized even though he hadn't slept more than a few hours in days. Bringing together a force of nearly five divisions of soldiers - admittedly of extraordinarily variable quality - had been am amazing feat, given the poor condition of most of the transportation networks of eastern North America and the constant threat posed by the airpower of the United States armed forces. For over a week he and his staff had done little other than to troubleshoot the vast movement not only of men and women, but also of a massive quantity of supplies. Now, with that part of their task nearly complete, it was time to turn to the actual employment of the forces that they had gathered.

  The General carefully went through the latest reports on the movement of the forces being transferred away from Chicago and Washington. This was the sort of work that he was best at. A graduate of West Point, the General had previously spent much of his career serving in logistical posts. Before the current war he had been serving in the critical-but-obscure role of Deputy Commander of the United States Army Sustainment Command at the Rock Island Arsenal in Illinois. He hadn't necessarily thought too much of Kevin Bryan - though he had, unlike many of his fellow officers, voted for his murdered predecessor - but he'd never had much use for the extremism espoused by the rebels. The Great Mutiny, as it had turned out, had found him in temporary command of the facility, which he had managed to secure for the Federal Government in Washington. Rapid promotion had followed that feat and, as one of the minority of flag officers to side with the Washington government, he'd found himself called upon to take on positions of increasing prominence. Eventually he had become one of the primary architects of the Army of the United States, organizing the rapid mobilization of a force of over a million men and women by using the semi-moribund structure and organization that had been left in place to allow the Federal Government to raise an army of draftees in wartime. If the performance of that force had been, as even Wesley had to concede, uneven at best it was still better than leaving the country defenseless.

  Then had come what was generally described within the areas under the control of the Federation as the "Transition." The rapid collapse of the old Federal Government and its replacement with the new Federation of North American States, in theory as part of the broader transformation of the old European Union into the new and global Democratic Union, had caused more than a few officers, who had felt themselves to be fighting for the Constitutionally legitimate government, to resign their commissions. Here and there a few had even gone over to the Rebels. Wesley, however, had stayed because he believed that he was fighting for the fundamental principle of the Constitution - a government of the people, by the people, and for the people - rather than the ambiguous words that had happened to be written down nearly two and half centuries earlier. Because of this he had soon found himself in command of the whole Federation Army which, like most of the government of the Federation, was really just the old Loyalist Government with the name and some of the faces changed.

  "General," reported Colonel Spencer Chernow, "the Quebec authorities have been calling all day. They're concerned about reports of us wiring bridges for demolition."

  "Ignore them," ordered General Wesley.

  "Yes sir," replied the Colonel.

  "Alright gentlemen," said the General, "
I suppose that's as good a launching point as we're going to get."

  He walked over towards a large map of the area and took out a laser pointer.

  "We know that the enemy is coming this way with a force of three Divisions in strength. Now, those numbers are somewhat inferior to our own, but their forces are wholly-professional and well-supported from the air. We can say neither of our own forces. If we fight a mobile battle with these people in the open field then we are going to lose. However, I have no intention of doing so."

  "The St. Lawrence River is our great friend. It runs fully seven hundred and fifty miles and the only way to get around it - other than crossing it - is going to be for the enemy corps to double back either through their own territory or backtrack and move through more hostile ground. I don't think that they're going to do either and, frankly, we don't want them to."

  "Now, there are a few ways that we could fight this battle. In addition to the sort of mobile battle that I already ruled out, we could also attempt to fight the enemy from fixed positions. However, that creates the very real danger that we would be rendered immobile and then destroyed by the heavy use of the enemy's airpower and bypassed by their ground forces. We could also drop all of the bridges at once, inviting the enemy to make a river-crossing attack. However, that would carry the serious possibility of the enemy deciding to simply turn around. We don't want them to do that, because our objectives here are as much political as they are military. Put simply, we need to inflict a major defeat upon the United States before the Presidential election in order to ensure that we can obtain a just peace. Simply dropping bridges into the St. Lawrence River isn't going to be enough to do that."

  "Instead, we are going to drop bridges one at at time, systematically, with the hope of trapping and isolating parts of their force that we may then defeat in detail. The European Division, as our strongest and best-trained force, will take the lead in this, acting as a mobile reserve that will be brought to bear against isolated enemy units that are able to cross the river."

  "At the same time, I have obtained a large reserve of boats that we will hold back for our own purposes. Once we have weakened their force by destroying the first units across, then we are going to cross back to the west bank of the river en masse and attempt to rout the enemy."

  XII Corps Headquarters, 50 Miles East of Ottawa

  "The FNASA has assembled a force of surprising strength along our projected path of advance," noted Colonel Dunford as he led the morning briefing.

  "A lot of them are scratch forces - just re-labelled AUS forces," noted the Major General who commanded the 2nd Armored Division.

  "Yes," agreed General Jackson, "but we shouldn't dismiss them out-of-hand. As I read these reports, for example, they outnumber us at the moment."

  "That is correct, General," said Colonel Dunford, "though they're arrayed over a much broader frontier."

  General Jackson stood up and walked over to the real-time map display that had been set up along one of the walls.

  "We must presume," he said, "that they intend to use the river to their overwhelming advantage in some fashion. That's what I would do."

  "It stands to reason," said Colonel Dunford.

  "Ok," said Jackson, "then if geography and numbers are their advantages, what are ours in this situation?"

  "Training," said Colonel Dunford.

  "Mobility," volunteered the Assistant Commander of the 42nd Infantry Division.

  "Support," said Colonel Benson.

  "Right," said Jackson as he walked along the entire run of the map.

  "They've concentrated a large part of their force in the Montreal region," he noted.

  "Well, it is the most direct route," said Dunford, "and they have pretty strong interior lines. They can shift forces around."

  "With what transport that they have," said Jackson, "and provided that they are not disrupted by out supporting forces anywhere along the way."

  "Certainly," said the 42nd Division commander.

  "Well then," said Jackson, "let's do what they don't expect. They know our time constraints, and so they're working upon the premise that we will take the most direct routes available to our targets. However, if we decide to say the Hell with that... Then we have some alternatives available to us that will really throw them for a loop."

  The General took a stylus and began to draw on the map. Starting from their position near Ottawa, he began to draw a long line heading up towards the northeast. He kept on drawing until he had run the entire length of the St. Lawrence River to its mouth.

  "We can make them run for a change. First we'll force them to engage us and then we'll take the main body of the army and move it in a way that they hadn't anticipated. We'll have them chase us to the north and then finally turn to make an assault crossing of the river at a time and place of our own choosing."

  HMS Prince of Wales (R09), Norfolk, Virginia

  Captain Derek Welch ran his hands along one of the grime-covered computer terminals that sat in the Prince of Wales ' bridge. The original plans for the reactivation of the ship had called for all of the crew spaces to be given a thorough cleaning but, with only a few days to prepare the severely-damaged aircraft carrier for a possible combat mission, the Captain had ordered that every available minute was instead to be devoted to improving the combat readiness of the ship, to repairing the handful of Fleet Air Arm F-35s that had remained with the carrier, and to preparing it to field American fighters. Besides, he figured, they could always clean the ship while it was underway - it would give the volunteers who were going to man her something to do that would distract them from their possibly (and in fact likely) imminent deaths.

  The Captain had barely been able to get settled into the prisoner of war camp that the U.S. Government had set up in North Carolina for their British captives when he had been surprised to receive a visit from both the Duke of Edinburgh and Wing Commander David Hennessy, who had late been the commander of the RAF forces belonging to His Majesty on the Falkland Islands. The two of them had, in that particular meeting, gone straight to the point.

  "Our government is out of control," explained the Wing Commander, "which is why it was necessary, as much as doing so went against so many of my own instincts, to disobey the oder that were issued to me when my forces were ordered to go into combat against those of the United States."

  "That, Wing Commander," Welch had replied, "is a feeling that I can appreciate deeply. Very deeply, in fact - as few other men can - but not one that I can fully reciprocate."

  "Hear him out, Captain," the Prince had softly replied. The Captain, always one to defer to his social betters, had done as asked. When the RAF officer finished speaking, he had looked at him incredulously.

  "There are an absurd number of assumptions in that plan," the Captain finally said.

  "There are," conceded Hennessy, "but risks are going to have to be taken if we are to ever free our country from slavery."

  The Captain, who had spent a lifetime obeying every order issued to him, had sat in his position for several seconds with a slackened jaw before he finally elected to turn towards the Prince.

  "What is your opinion of this?" he finally asked.

  Henry Windsor didn't like to exploit his Royal status, but he was not above doing so when there seems to be no other reasonable alternative.

  "The King - my father - is effectively a prisoner," he said curtly, "and it is the duty of every one of the King's subjects to effect his rescue at the earliest possible time. Are you up to that duty, Captain?"

  "You propose that we sail this Carrier, across the Atlantic Ocean - and that we do it alone. Do you know how dangerous that would be? Do you know how many deaths you risk?"

  "A lot of good men and women have already died for Britain, Captain. I hope that there's a Britain for their descendants to fight for and live in in the future," said the Prince.

  That, for Welch, had been enough to settle the question. And so here they were.


  "I wish that we had some British ships to escort us," said Lieutenant-Commander Duane Redding, the most senior officer of the ship besides the Captain who had agreed to accept the mission and who had therefore been assigned as the Executive Officer.

  "Don't worry about that," said Wing Commander Hennessy, "I know these people who they're sending with us. They have balls. So to speak."

  "Speaking of which," said the communications operator, "the commander of the Cape St. George , is on the line for you."

  "I'll take the call here," replied Captain Welch.

  The face of Rear Admiral Olivia Collins (now, Rear Admiral (Upper Half), Olivia Collins, technically though it was never spoken that way) appeared on one of the monitors that was working on the bridge.

  "Captain Welch," said Admiral Collins, "it was good of you to wait for us. We came as fast as we could. Wing Commander - it's good to see you again."

  "The same to you, Admiral," replied Hennessy.

  "Well," said Lieutenant-Commander Windsor laconically from his position along the side of the bridge, "now that the introductions are over with, let's go free Britain."

  Cleveland, Ohio

  Initially the Acting President had resisted calls that he spend more time campaigning. After all, he had a war to run - a war that required near-constant management. Moreover, he argued, wasn't it really beneath the dignity of the Presidency to be engaged in petty politicking while men and women were still dying in the field?

  The Acting President's advisors had held their ground. FDR, they pointed out, had gone on a campaign tour during the 1944 election. Indeed, arguably Roosevelt had managed to secure his abbreviated fourth term by that final burst of vitality, with moments such as his "Fala" speech convincing doubters that the ailing President had enough fight in him to serve out another term. Even if that had ultimately proven, like so many things about Roosevelt, to be a elaborate deception that didn't invalidate the basic principle.

  Thus, Terrance Rickover had found himself on the campaign trail.