John Birmingham - Without warning

He was the operator your troubled multi-billion-dollar company called in to quickly and quietly clean up the mess left behind by your recently departed and grotesquely incompetent CEO. He was the man who procured the difficult export licence in the hopelessly corrupt, but fabulously oil-rich, third-world shithole. Or the development approval for your six-star resort on the ecologically fragile tropical island. Or the seemingly impossible negotiated truce between the warring Stone Age tribes that was interfering with the profit margins of your hardwood logging operations in the New Guinea highlands. If that didn’t work, he hired the heavy hitters who protected your oil-drilling operations in Africa without cutting too deep into your budget.

Jed Culver was a rolled-gold son of a bitch.

That said, Ritchie had a gut feeling that when the big questions were asked, this gladhanding sack of shit would actually give you a straight answer, especially if that answer was something you didn’t want to hear. Perhaps he was a bit like old Joe Kennedy in that way. Ritchie, an avid reader of historical biographies, thought he recognised something in Culver that FDR might have seen in the old bootlegger when appointing him to head up the SEC way back in the Depression – a thief you could trust.

The admiral kept all these thoughts to himself, of course, as Culver walked around his office speaking from notes, with his expensive jacket off, shirt sleeves rolled up and tie raffishly askew. Was the ruffled, big-doofus thing just part of his routine? Probably. With a guy like Culver you had to figure that everything was part of the routine. But still, he seemed blessed, if that was the right word, with a frightening appreciation for the worst aspects of human nature, and how they might still be turned to everyone’s advantage.

‘The only intact chain of command we have left,’ the lawyer said, in his soft Southern brogue, ‘is, of course, your own. But by constitutional tradition, your entire chain remains subordinate to civilian rule and, let me just check-back you, ladies and gentlemen…’ Culver looked up from his notes and smiled at the small group of military officers in the room. ‘Y’all ain’t planning a coup d’йtat, are you?’

From anyone else, it would have been a dangerous gamble, an insult to people who had pledged their lives to defending the Constitution. But Jed Culver had a way of smiling and somehow twinkling his eyes that added an unspoken Naw, of course you ain’t - you’re good ol’ boys and gals. The best.

Ritchie even noticed a smile attempting to creep around the corners of the deeply fissured face of Lieutenant General Murphy, Commander, US Army Pacific, and the senior army officer on the islands. But, for professional reasons, Murphy had long ago banned any semblance of a sunny disposition from his person, and he managed now to crush the small grin stone dead. It had no discernible effect on Culver, who carried on.

‘Fact is though, folks, given the scale of disaster we face, precise legality will have to give way almost immediately to practicality. As the esteemed Justice Jackson pointed out in Terminiello v. Chicago, the Constitution is not a goddamn suicide pact. If we are going to survive, we need good government, and quick. And given that nobody is much interested in fashioning a military dictatorship out of the ashes of the old Republic, I would suggest that for practical purposes it will initially resemble a patchwork of small-and big-town mayors, the surviving political and administrative leadership, law enforcement, and perhaps-no, definitely - some religious and community leaders with a large following. Whatever government comes into being out of this nightmare has to arise from the ground up, rather than be imposed from above.’

‘Fine words, Mr Culver,’ rumbled Murphy. ‘Brings a tear to the eye. But we’re in deep shit and we need to dig ourselves out of it, muy pronto. Adapt, overcome and drive on.’

There were nine military officers in the room. The commander of the army’s 25th Infantry Division and the senior Marine nodded in agreement with Murphy’s brusque comment. Again, however, Ritchie watched with sneaking admiration as the lawyer let the rebuke wash over him, even turning it around.

‘Damn straight,’ said Culver. ‘We need this done yesterday. Hell, we needed it as soon as that energy thing crashed down on top of us. But we have to accept that as scared and fucked up as people are right now, especially those poor bastards who are close enough to the Wave to be able to see it, they will adapt. There will come a day when it’s not the first thing they think of when they wake up in the morning. And they will go back to the old ways of doing things, of each against the other and damn anyone in between. It’s just our nature. So whatever we set up now has to have the elegance of our first constitutional principles. It has to allow for the better angels of our nature to sing, because, Lord knows, the demons are going to be a massed fucking choir over the next little while.’

‘What exactly are you suggesting, Mr Culver? Could you take us through your proposal, step by step?’

‘Of course, Admiral,’ the lawyer replied. ‘Basically, some laws are going to get bruised, if not broken, but even Jefferson would have been cool with that. You know, his purchase of my home state, Louisiana, was, to put it bluntly, completely illegal – and he knew it. But he also knew that the strict observance of the written law, while one of the high duties of a good citizen, is not the highest.’

Culver stood up straight and appeared to stare off into space, obviously quoting from the third President of the United States. ‘The laws of necessity, of self-preservation, of saving our country when in danger, are of higher obligation. To lose our country by a scrupulous adherence to the written law, would be to lose the law itself, with life, liberty, property and all those who are enjoying them with us; thus absurdly sacrificing the ends to the means.’

Having finished, he leaned forward and placed his hands on the edge of the conference table where they all sat. ‘What that means, ladies and gentlemen, is that we’re gonna crack some heads together. And fast. And by “we” I mean the American people, what’s left of us.’

‘I think it might be better if nobody showed up in uniform, flashing their medals and… what d’you call that stuff – fruit salad?’ Culver gestured towards the campaign ribbons on Ritchie’s uniform. He didn’t wait for the admiral to reply. ‘Fact is, we already got blood spilled in Seattle. People are skittish. Yeah, you guys are the only outfit with the chops to put boot to ass and get it all done, but I promise you that anything that looks even halfway like a military takeover will mean the end of everything.’

Ritchie clamped down on his surging frustration. Only he and Culver remained in the office, all of the other attendees having returned to their duties. He was hungry and tired and didn’t see himself being able to do anything about either any time soon. The austerity measures he’d ordered for every military establishment in Hawaii were not merely window dressing. Food shortages would become dangerous if strict rationing was not enforced. The islands’ airfields were running around the clock, shuttling aid in and people out, but a cascading series of economic crises ripping through global money markets was beginning to bite hard in the real world. In the last twenty-four hours, both the Chinese and Japanese governments had quietly ordered container ships loaded with food and medical aid bound for Hawaii to turn around and head home. Ritchie had savoured his cup of coffee at breakfast this morning with sad relish, because he wasn’t sure when he might get another one.