Subjugation

“Make it a vassal state,” was the simple plan, as expressed by the General to us back on January 10, 2021. And so began our training and placement for today. It had been a couple of years to get us here, but that made sense: how long does it take to plan the hobbling of an empire.

I had handed a pry bar to a local moments ago. We referred to them as locals, the native citizens brought in to bulk up the action on the Capitol, White House and to make feinting riots in the state capitals.

Years of coordination had brought us here, and now the pry bar I had handed to a local made quick work of the locking bar on the chamber door. The contractor that installed the locking bar provided services for many of the country’s facility contracts. It had been penetrated on and off for decades since the middle Twentieth Century, feeding a steady stream of specifications for materials and facilities around the world. This allowed us to know how much sheering force it would take to comprise the integrity of their strike fighters maintenance hangar roofs, or whether or not the electrical transmission wires that feed their space launch sites were shock insulated. And now, in the hands of a local who probably thought I had bought it on impulse from a local hardware store in my cover hometown, the information from that contractor we knew assured that the locking bar would fail with this bar if used by one of this country’s average adult males. As the locking bar bent then broke, I smiled: the back up breaching explosives in my backpack could be saved for later.

Now the doors opened, and in a moment Coverbreak would happen.

Coverbreak, is the well-rehearsed moment when the operation’s covert tactics shifted to overt. Timed with strikes at this moment, seventeen minutes after noon and zero seconds, localized to all the time zones of the operation, and with supporting coordinated regular military strikes, we would decapitate and shock.

In a moment, at Coverbreak, our long gun safeties would be flipped off, and, weapons free, we were to proceed with the target list.

My part was to be what the locals would have called an irregular troop, secreted into the building under the cover of the locals' insurrection, and along with fifty-three other irregulars here, strike the decapitation blows within this building of their largest branch.

Reserve irregular forces staged in the museums near the building, mainly under tourist cover, would reinforce us. Their intent was to mop up any enemy positions that remained, connect up with us to compensate for L’Enfant’s forward-looking defensive plan for the city, and secure a perimeter to stop any target evasion from our strike. Their latent role was to replace us if we were not successful.

The first face I see at Coverbreak is a staffer. Probably 26 or 27, she stood, shocked, as I moved my muzzle toward her. The Chair of the Armed Services committee is standing behind her. This caliber will penetrate. I know the weapon well, and while locally sourced, my unit’s in-country armorer had reviewed it twelve hours earlier. The staffer fell from the three rounds. It was loud as my teammates also fired at Coverbreak and marble reflects sound. I advanced. The committee Chair, hit and still. I gave three more to assure it.

Having worked my cover life as a news videographer, Coverbreak was here. From my vantage in the gallery, the concern was this target’s protective detail might absorb the blast and shield the target. The target’s bullet-resistant suit required a fragmentation device to succeed with the target moments after Coverbreak. As luck had it, ten seconds to Coverbreak, the detail’s agent on the west shifted to speak with their east side counterpart, and that opening was all that was needed.

The blast was at Coverbreak plus two. The cover colleague reporter I filmed for in my cover said simply, “what are you doing?” I knew she took Pilates, I’d gone with her, and she was physically able. Like me, she had taken the company’s hostile environment awareness training seminar. The news organization’s kidnap and ransom policyholder had required of all of us to take it. Back home, in training, we’d known and prepared that our cover press colleagues might be a difficulty because of this. At Coverbreak plus seven, I gritted my teeth and pulled the trigger. I pivoted to my secondary and tertiary target list in the gallery below.

Over the last year, using assets previously in place to get the cover job with Customs and Border Protection, containers had been received and emptied, cargo swapped before the inspection. The contents armed me and others throughout the capital today. Four minutes before Coverbreak, I had entered at the North Portico, passed through the glass vestibule that kept the cold air out, and was now standing at the door of the Office with my cover supervisor. The blast at the windows at Coverbreak surprised the protective officers. That had been hoped during training back home in the mock-up of the Office. Their startle was an instant, and the hearing protection I wore as if a hearing aid meant I had the initiative as planned.

At Coverbreak plus two I had the agent’s weapon, and the ceramic one in the small of my back would not be needed. The agent took two head rounds leaving thirteen for the target. At Coverbreak plus seven, I enter the Office.

The target behind the desk had taken off the bullet-resistant suit jacket. I had five rounds off before my colleague’s rounds from just inside the Chief of Staff’s door joined mine.

Our secondary target was in the Roosevelt room, though elements of the protective detail with long guns were likely between here and there.

The fire alarm’s blare, set off by the airstrike at Coverbreak, was muffled for me as we checked the target’s riddled body for a pulse.

The Justice was bent down over a rose flower bed in front of their house on this well-manicured street. Their twelve-year-old daughter was home sick today. In my cover as an online delivery driver, tasked with targets defying their schedules, I moved across the front of their property at Coverbreak minus thirty seconds. My colleague was starting up the path to the door as a cover staffer.

At Coverbreak, we fired.

The Embassy was quiet. The soldiers inside had been told to lock it down at Coverbreak minus five minutes. All diplomatic staff was within, their local diplomatic protection likely outside as usual. As our official-cover resident, my years in military service would now come into play as hybrid forward control for our legals and illegals, and liaison with regular forces in operation.

My foot twitched under my desk chair. The Ambassador was still but I sensed the tension in him.

Years in the planning, the first minutes after Coverbreak would decide much of what would happen in history.

The plan was layered.

Politically, five hundred forty-six primary targets, making up the head of their three branches. Secondary and support staff were meant to be mainly spared at Coverbreak, allowing for orderly capitulation and later obedience.

Militarily, the decapitation plan had been controversial. Some said that tactical nuclear attack on carrier groups and the headquarters would lose worldwide support, and urged instead large conventional arms be brought to bear. Their voices had been shouted down by the “need for total and complete success,” and the message that total war was not only possible but had arrived. While strategic exchange that would raze cities we hoped would be avoided, all measures short of a mutual annihilation were to be utilized.

After all, it had been made clear that by pulling the right levers and applying the right force at the right places all at the right moment, the whole of them could be hobbled in minutes. It would only take deep planning and resource commitment.

In minutes, with the firing of some well-placed shots, and the detonation of sixteen tactical weapons, the forces and command of the nation would be crippled and confused. Then, as an intact prize, the country would become the vassal state that had first been suggested and started to be planned on that Sunday in January 2021.

Then, with this complete, others would tremble and comply, securing our control for the next hundred years.

At Coverbreak plus sixteen seconds, observer messages started to arrive. I smiled at the Ambassador. The tension in him relaxed a touch. A small smile joined mine.

Wordlessly, he moved to the sideboard. With a nod, he asked and I accepted with my own. It would be ours. In minutes, it would all be ours.

© Copyright January 10, 2021, David August, all rights reserved davidaugust.com

David August is an award-winning actor, writer, director, and producer.