Chapter Six - part three

   The days passed and became weeks. Congress had managed to get a few things ironed out and were about to pass a long overdue budget. There wasn't much good news in that budget as far as James was concerned. They hadn't actually cut spending at all. In fact they had increased it far beyond all expectations. The real problem was they had made cuts in some things and some of those were drastic. They had reduced foreign aid by a little, but it was military spending that was to be slashed. It wasn't all at once, but within two years the military budget would be cut by more than a quarter of the current annual budget. They gave few specifics. Those were being left for the people in charge of the military itself to decide. James knew that it would make little difference what was cut. If they made cuts that large they would have to gut the military. There would simply be no way left to support the manpower or the equipment needed to maintain an effective military. It required lots of men, machines, and munitions in order to have a strong military, and those in turn all required a lot of money.

   Everyone in D.C. was ecstatic about the new budget. It was a long term plan that would almost double the spending over the next decade that was being provided to support the people who couldn't find work. The news media was proclaiming a great victory and a clear path towards a brighter future for everyone. The only problem was that they weren't mentioning the drastic cuts in other areas or the drastic increase in various taxes either. A lot of people listened to the news reports and cheered about the coming changes, but not everyone. In fact a lot of very important people became very upset and concerned. Those were the people who had jobs and businesses; the people who would be facing those huge increases in taxes or the major cuts in other programs. They weren't happy at all, but they also weren't the direct cause of what happened next either.

   The world financial analysts had looked over the budget that was about to go up for a final vote and they reacted. They stepped out and announced that if that budget was passed they would be forced to lower the credit rating of the United States. That had happened before and it had seemed to have little effect. This time it was different though. All of the major firms had come together and made the announcement in union. They also made it very clear that if the budget passed they expected their first reduction to be followed very rapidly by more reductions in the credit rating, though they couldn't or wouldn't say how fast or how many more might follow. They couldn't have expected everything that did follow that announcement though. First, the vote on the budget bill had stalled.  Next the stock market took a huge hit, forcing it to close before noon the day after the bill had stalled. Then other world markets fell dramatically too. That was when some countries in the world seemed to smell blood and moved to take action on their own. Their first step had been to refuse credit and demand payment of what was owed to them by the United States. The second item, and the biggest hit, had been refusing to accept the dollar in any further transactions. That event alone was enough to cause total chaos among all of the world markets, but that had just been the beginning of the chaos that now virtually held America and much of the world captive.

   The timing of all this seemed to be the worst it could possibly have been too. The winter had turned far colder than normal and there were lots of small storms in various parts of the country that were slowing down transportation and production. A lot of large cities were running very low on fuel and food supplies. The people were beginning to panic. The government was trying to rush supplies to critical areas to reduce that panic, but that resulted in reducing supplies to other areas and spreading the panic instead of reducing it. As the panic spread the protests became riots. Those riots caused even worse shortages and more panic. The government had soon lost all credibility with and control of the people. The only thing left for them to do was call in the National Guard. The Guard had quickly learned that regaining and then maintaining control would require the use of extreme, often deadly force. Many of them weren't willing to use such extreme measures on people they lived with and knew. The situation had rapidly gotten beyond the ability of the Guard to handle.

   James and Susan had been alert and watching before it started; so had a lot of other people. But that had made no real difference either. They had too little warning and they had too little time to even try to formulate a plan before things had gone totally out of their control. They weren't standing by totally helpless though. The military had been preparing for action. The commanders at the top had also been watching and they knew almost immediately that the military was likely to become involved eventually. They just didn't know exactly where, when, or how much they would be involved. They had seen enough action in other nations around the world though to recognize what was now happening in their own. They knew that the only way to restore order was going to be with force. The question for them was how much force their troops would be willing to use against their own people. Everyone was looking for a peaceful way to diffuse the situation, but there didn't appear to be any peaceful ways left.

   Susan Holt hadn't wasted any time when it had started. She had called in all forces and ordered an immediate lockdown of the base. She had also contacted all of the other commanders she knew to urge them to do the same and she began an effort to form a network across the nation. The first major riot had happened on a Saturday. By the next Monday most major cities had seen protests turned into riots and not riots that could be controlled. These were major riots causing major damage, injuries, and deaths. By Wednesday a lot of cities had declared curfews and some had implemented martial law. It was sort of like watching dominoes starting to fall, one after another, until everything was collapsing at once. A massive winter storm late that week had shut down much of the country just after all the chaos had started. That had been both a blessing and a curse. Many roads were closed and most major airports had shut down. Trains had even been stopped due to the heavy snows. All of that had helped to contain the riots in the middle of the nation, but it had also seemed to feed the riots on the coasts at the same time. That Friday the President had also ordered the military to begin emergency shipments of food, fuel, and supplies into the worst spots. That sounded like it should help, but it didn't! It was the next Monday before the first shipments began to arrive and they were met with violence rather than joy.

    The storm had shutdown most routes of travel by ground, stopping almost all commerce. Due to the political bickering and the long holiday, most of the major cities had already been on short rations for the huge number of people who now depended entirely on government aid to survive before this began. Those limited supplies of food and other essential items that had been the cause of the protests and riots were now almost completely gone. There was simply no food, fuel, or medicine available in many major city centers. There were places where they no longer had power for lights and heat due to damage done during the first riots. Even water had become limited in many cities along the west coast due to the riots causing damage to the main water systems. Many of those same cities were now burning out of control, because of the lack of water too. They couldn't get supplies in or repairs made because of the combination of the violence within the cities and the winter storms that were limiting movement nationwide. It had indeed become total chaos in most of the major cities within a matter of a few days, especially those along the west coast. The President declared a national curfew as well as martial law and ordered the military in to contain things and restore order. The chaos had seemed to become frozen in place by the storm hitting for a short time and where the storm hadn't done the job for them, the military had managed to contain the worst of the rioting; especially along both coasts. But they hadn't managed to regain any control inside those cities. In fact, it seemed that they were losing control of more ground each day as time passed.

   A lot of the people Susan and James were talking with were directly involved in the efforts to restore order. Some of the commanders were eager to rush in and some were reluctant. As the days continued to pass the situation grew worse and the divide between the two groups also grew. It wasn't anything that could be called a revolt, but some of the commanders weren't willing to rush in regardless of their orders. Others were charging in despite their orders to use restraint. The two groups were becoming more clearly separated as time passed. One group followed orders from D.C. without question. The other group, the one James was involved with, were more inclined to question things they felt were wrong.  And there were a lot of things going wrong all at once. The two distinct groups within the military both wanted this to end, but how to go about it was a huge divide between them. The only thing that was good about the split in military approaches was that everybody was still trying to obey orders. They might question them and try to get changes made to their orders, but when all was said and done they still followed orders.

     The orders given by the President to regain control had been given to General Hodges who was the current Joint Chief over all military branches. What those orders actually meant had been hotly debated, but they were being carried out one way or another. The results had been mixed. In some of the less extensive riot areas the Army had made some progress, though very limited. In the worst spots they had been stopped or even driven back. The next step had been to order in heavier units, but they could make little progress without even heavier air support. The President had listened to advice from his cabinet, but it was the Secretary of Defense and the Joint Chief who had pushed for armored units to be used along with Air Force back up in order to break down all resistance and restore order. General Hodges hadn't been among the people who James was talking with. However the current head of the Air Force was among those people. General Kendrick wasn't ready to bomb his own cities, not if he could find a way to avoid it. He hadn't really disobeyed his orders. He was just changing who he assigned to carry those orders out. General Hodges had called only the people who he knew agreed with him and they had assigned people who would carry out his orders without question. General Kendrick had changed some of the key people involved in the Air Force portion of this new attempt to restore order. James was to be one of those people.