Chapter 3
Justin hated being right.
While there was no television at the cabin – which was really two distinct cabins, connected by a concrete slab where the barbeque and the wood for the stove traditionally sat – the radio worked just fine. Still, hearing the announcement shortly after they had arrived at the dilapidated old pair of buildings that the United States Congress had voted unanimously in favor of declaring a state of war with Canada was a little disconcerting. All Canadians currently in America, including any Canadians who had obtained American citizenship in the last fifteen years, were given a 48 hour allowance to depart the United States, or face incarceration as enemies of the state. Americans in Canada were being urged to depart Canada within the same amount of time or risk being denied entrance back into the US.
While he had anticipated something of the kind, the next part of the announcement shook Justin to the core.
“All American personnel currently in service, either civil or military, in non-American locations are immediately being recalled to American soil. All current military and international humanitarian activities are hereby suspended until further notice. All foreign nationals in the United States, from nations other than Canada, are hereby given seventy-two hour notice of repatriation to their nations of origin. All Visas have been revoked, and all international embassies are hereby ordered closed.”
The US was going into lockdown.
That kind of US withdrawal, particularly from hotspot locations such as the Middle East or the Korean Peninsula, was going to throw the world into chaos. For more than a century, the US had played the part of the international strong-arm, ensuring that old enmities didn’t erupt into fresh hostilities. Now, without that threat of retaliation, it seemed inevitable that someone would seize the opportunity that had been presented.
It also meant that the US would have access to its entire military strength to attack Canada.
Justin switched off the radio and glanced across at Lisa, who was staring blankly at the table. “Forty-eight hours,” he commented. “That will take us to Sunday night…”
“Do you think they can come to a resolution by then?” Lisa asked, a sliver of hope in her voice.
Justin bit back his immediate response. He didn’t want to smother that glimmer of hope, even though he knew that it would take a miracle for the current situation to be resolved diplomatically… and the one man who might have been able to pull it off had been shot that morning. “I hope so,” he said carefully. “But I think we should plan for the worst. I booked all of next week off before I left. I had six personal days, so I used five of them. If things clear up, we’re none the worse for wear…”
Lisa closed her eyes. “You’re always one step ahead, aren’t you?” Her voice had a trace of bitterness in it.
“Look, Lisa…” he began, but she rose from the table and crossed the open room to where James was sleeping quietly in one of the large bunk beds.
“What kind of world is he going to grow up in, Justin? You seem to be able to predict the future…”
Justin growled softly. “That isn’t fair, Lisa.”
“But you knew this would happen!” she snapped, spinning to face him. “You’ve been talking about it for years, off and on. It was always, ‘someday’… but you knew it would come. It’s not ‘someday’ anymore, Justin. It’s today, or tomorrow, or next week… but it’s here. So what comes next, or haven’t you thought about it?”
Justin froze. The sad thing was, he had thought about it. He’d thought about it a lot. It showed in his face, and Lisa searched his eyes for a long moment. At last he looked away.
“It’s going to be that bad?” she asked in a terrified whisper.
Justin shrugged. “There are a couple of scenarios,” he replied. “None of them are very good.”
“Tell me,” she demanded softly.
Justin leaned back in his chair and ran a hand across his neatly trimmed beard. “Are you sure you want to know?”
“Tell me,” she repeated, moving back to join him at the table.
Staring at his hands, Justin cleared his throat softly. In a detached voice, the voice he used when thinking out loud, he began in a whisper. “The major cities will be targeted first, of course. They won’t use nukes… there’s no need, and it would make the areas uninhabitable. They’ll want to be able to move in and use as much of the local populations as possible, both for clean-up after the war and as general labor for the resources we still have. They’ll want to reduce the population, but not too badly. Missiles should be enough, but they’ll bring up ground and sea support as well, for two main reasons: the first is to ensure the local populations are properly… subdued. The second is because they aren’t the only ones interested in our resources, and while they’ll be the first to take action, other nations will come. They’ll claim it’s to liberate Canada from American tyranny, but the truth is that we have what they want, and they’ll fight to get a piece of it. Oil, water, lumber… we’re the prize sow, and they all want a slice of bacon. The US will need to have enough ground support in place in a matter of weeks to repel whatever countries decide to come knocking. That’s when things are going to get really ugly. At that point it won’t matter who wins and who loses, at least not as far as Canada is concerned.
“From that point it will be a negotiation game. The US knows it can’t hold all of Canada. I mean, we’ve got more ocean-front property than anyone else in the world. The best they can hope for is to control those areas they want the most… pretty much everything south of the territories. The territories they could auction off to Russia… there’s enough oil up there to appease the Russians. Once Russia’s on board, they’ll want to appease the Europeans. That will be more difficult. If I were a gambling man, I would bet on the Maritimes and off-shore oil and fishing rights. It will give the EU an alternate source of income, as well as a toe-hold in North America, and it will make them look like Canada’s saviors. The wild card will be if China gets involved. The US doesn’t want to go toe-to-toe against China. Not yet, anyway. Mind you, China doesn’t want to get involved with the US, either, so they’ll likely hold off until things start to settle a bit, then rattle their sabre to ensure that the US doesn’t forget them.”
He glanced up and caught Lisa staring at him in shock. He grimaced. “That’s the best case scenario.”
She shuddered, looking away. “You really have thought about this, haven’t you?”
Justin rose to his feet and moved to look out the window. It was getting dark, too dark to see. He frowned as Dylan’s lyrics echoed in his mind. Sadly, he realized, he did feel like he was knocking on heaven’s door… and no one was home. “They won’t wait forty-eight hours,” he said softly. “The announcement is a ruse.”
“No,” Lisa protested. “They wouldn’t. There are still Americans up here.”
“Collateral damage,” he breathed. Then he shook his head, as though trying to get rid of a thought. “Strike early, unexpectedly… but to do that they would have had to…”
Lisa watched him as he began to pace, the thought unfinished. “What? They would have had to what?”
Justin glanced over at her, his brow furrowed. “They would have had to begun moving ordinance and troops days ago to get things into position to strike the major centers. They wouldn’t want to use ICBMs, though the base near Great Falls, Malmstrom I think, houses them. They’ll probably go with Tomahawks. Every major city in Canada is easily within their range. Five hundred kilometers… easy striking range for Apaches, too…”
“How do you know all of this, Justin?” Lisa whispered.
Justin smiled slightly, returning to the chair at the rickety table. “Student projects, actually,” he said as he sat down. “Ask a group of boys in a high school Social Studies class to research an area of interest, and invariably they turn to war machines.”
Lisa giggled softly, but then her face grew sober. “Do you really think the US government assassinated their own president?”
Justin nodded. “What would any group in Canada have to gain from it? It doesn’t matter, I guess. We’ll know by tomorrow night. Either way, tomorrow or Sunday… the military can move quickly, but to get everything they will need in place within forty-eight hours is an almost impossible task. They had to have this planned in advance. The president was a fall guy.”
“And if it wasn’t planned…?” Lisa prompted.
“A week… maybe two,” Justin answered. “They’ll wait until all of their resources are in place. Unfortunately for the US, a week’s delay would give the international community time to organize a legitimate defense force… essentially pulling the rug out before the US can act. They can’t afford that, not if they are after the resources. One on one against the US, and we’ll last a month at most. Bring the UN into it, and the US has to fight against the combined might of the world. That changes the playing field.”
“You don’t have much faith in the Canadian military,” Lisa muttered.
“It’s not a question of faith,” Justin replied. “For the last decade or more – probably more – the government has been leeching funds away from the military. Cuts to funding, cuts to recruitment, base closures… as good as the individual soldiers are – and they are good – they don’t have the numbers or the equipment to stand up against what’s coming. The best we can hope for is that the US commander is dumb enough to send ground troops in rather than just bombing the hell out of the cities. At least then they will take some reciprocal casualties from whatever resistance we can muster.”
“And you want to just hide out here?” Lisa hissed. “Can’t we… do something?”
Justin stared at her in stunned disbelief. “Do something? Like what, Lisa? Join up? Enlist? Hide in the house and hope the bombs hit other houses? The best hope we have is to wait.”
“Wait for what?” Lisa snapped. “For American soldiers to drag us out of this cabin?”
“Do you have a better plan, Lisa?” Justin snarled. “Rouse the country? Start a revolution?” He rose to his feet and began to pace across the floor in agitation. “The people aren’t ready. They won’t believe you any more than you believed me. Sooner or later the people might be ready to rise up; maybe once they’ve seen their homes burned out, their families killed indiscriminately… maybe then they’ll be ready to do something, but they aren’t yet.” He returned to stare out the window at the darkness. When he spoke again, his voice was softer, sadder. “Right now we’re all too optimistically apathetic. Until that apathy changes, until the people are ready, we just have to wait.” He shook his head and turned imploringly to face his wife. “You can’t just run around screaming ‘Rise Up!’ It doesn’t work that way. It has to begin quietly, a whisper that can’t be spoken out loud for fear of reprisal… and Canadians aren’t ready to listen to that whisper.”
“You’re wrong, Justin,” Lisa said softly, staring at her hands. “You have to be wrong. And even if you aren’t, the UN will do something. They won’t turn a blind eye, not on something this big.”
Lying on the bed, James blinked back tears. Somehow he knew it wasn’t his father who was wrong.
While there was no television at the cabin – which was really two distinct cabins, connected by a concrete slab where the barbeque and the wood for the stove traditionally sat – the radio worked just fine. Still, hearing the announcement shortly after they had arrived at the dilapidated old pair of buildings that the United States Congress had voted unanimously in favor of declaring a state of war with Canada was a little disconcerting. All Canadians currently in America, including any Canadians who had obtained American citizenship in the last fifteen years, were given a 48 hour allowance to depart the United States, or face incarceration as enemies of the state. Americans in Canada were being urged to depart Canada within the same amount of time or risk being denied entrance back into the US.
While he had anticipated something of the kind, the next part of the announcement shook Justin to the core.
“All American personnel currently in service, either civil or military, in non-American locations are immediately being recalled to American soil. All current military and international humanitarian activities are hereby suspended until further notice. All foreign nationals in the United States, from nations other than Canada, are hereby given seventy-two hour notice of repatriation to their nations of origin. All Visas have been revoked, and all international embassies are hereby ordered closed.”
The US was going into lockdown.
That kind of US withdrawal, particularly from hotspot locations such as the Middle East or the Korean Peninsula, was going to throw the world into chaos. For more than a century, the US had played the part of the international strong-arm, ensuring that old enmities didn’t erupt into fresh hostilities. Now, without that threat of retaliation, it seemed inevitable that someone would seize the opportunity that had been presented.
It also meant that the US would have access to its entire military strength to attack Canada.
Justin switched off the radio and glanced across at Lisa, who was staring blankly at the table. “Forty-eight hours,” he commented. “That will take us to Sunday night…”
“Do you think they can come to a resolution by then?” Lisa asked, a sliver of hope in her voice.
Justin bit back his immediate response. He didn’t want to smother that glimmer of hope, even though he knew that it would take a miracle for the current situation to be resolved diplomatically… and the one man who might have been able to pull it off had been shot that morning. “I hope so,” he said carefully. “But I think we should plan for the worst. I booked all of next week off before I left. I had six personal days, so I used five of them. If things clear up, we’re none the worse for wear…”
Lisa closed her eyes. “You’re always one step ahead, aren’t you?” Her voice had a trace of bitterness in it.
“Look, Lisa…” he began, but she rose from the table and crossed the open room to where James was sleeping quietly in one of the large bunk beds.
“What kind of world is he going to grow up in, Justin? You seem to be able to predict the future…”
Justin growled softly. “That isn’t fair, Lisa.”
“But you knew this would happen!” she snapped, spinning to face him. “You’ve been talking about it for years, off and on. It was always, ‘someday’… but you knew it would come. It’s not ‘someday’ anymore, Justin. It’s today, or tomorrow, or next week… but it’s here. So what comes next, or haven’t you thought about it?”
Justin froze. The sad thing was, he had thought about it. He’d thought about it a lot. It showed in his face, and Lisa searched his eyes for a long moment. At last he looked away.
“It’s going to be that bad?” she asked in a terrified whisper.
Justin shrugged. “There are a couple of scenarios,” he replied. “None of them are very good.”
“Tell me,” she demanded softly.
Justin leaned back in his chair and ran a hand across his neatly trimmed beard. “Are you sure you want to know?”
“Tell me,” she repeated, moving back to join him at the table.
Staring at his hands, Justin cleared his throat softly. In a detached voice, the voice he used when thinking out loud, he began in a whisper. “The major cities will be targeted first, of course. They won’t use nukes… there’s no need, and it would make the areas uninhabitable. They’ll want to be able to move in and use as much of the local populations as possible, both for clean-up after the war and as general labor for the resources we still have. They’ll want to reduce the population, but not too badly. Missiles should be enough, but they’ll bring up ground and sea support as well, for two main reasons: the first is to ensure the local populations are properly… subdued. The second is because they aren’t the only ones interested in our resources, and while they’ll be the first to take action, other nations will come. They’ll claim it’s to liberate Canada from American tyranny, but the truth is that we have what they want, and they’ll fight to get a piece of it. Oil, water, lumber… we’re the prize sow, and they all want a slice of bacon. The US will need to have enough ground support in place in a matter of weeks to repel whatever countries decide to come knocking. That’s when things are going to get really ugly. At that point it won’t matter who wins and who loses, at least not as far as Canada is concerned.
“From that point it will be a negotiation game. The US knows it can’t hold all of Canada. I mean, we’ve got more ocean-front property than anyone else in the world. The best they can hope for is to control those areas they want the most… pretty much everything south of the territories. The territories they could auction off to Russia… there’s enough oil up there to appease the Russians. Once Russia’s on board, they’ll want to appease the Europeans. That will be more difficult. If I were a gambling man, I would bet on the Maritimes and off-shore oil and fishing rights. It will give the EU an alternate source of income, as well as a toe-hold in North America, and it will make them look like Canada’s saviors. The wild card will be if China gets involved. The US doesn’t want to go toe-to-toe against China. Not yet, anyway. Mind you, China doesn’t want to get involved with the US, either, so they’ll likely hold off until things start to settle a bit, then rattle their sabre to ensure that the US doesn’t forget them.”
He glanced up and caught Lisa staring at him in shock. He grimaced. “That’s the best case scenario.”
She shuddered, looking away. “You really have thought about this, haven’t you?”
Justin rose to his feet and moved to look out the window. It was getting dark, too dark to see. He frowned as Dylan’s lyrics echoed in his mind. Sadly, he realized, he did feel like he was knocking on heaven’s door… and no one was home. “They won’t wait forty-eight hours,” he said softly. “The announcement is a ruse.”
“No,” Lisa protested. “They wouldn’t. There are still Americans up here.”
“Collateral damage,” he breathed. Then he shook his head, as though trying to get rid of a thought. “Strike early, unexpectedly… but to do that they would have had to…”
Lisa watched him as he began to pace, the thought unfinished. “What? They would have had to what?”
Justin glanced over at her, his brow furrowed. “They would have had to begun moving ordinance and troops days ago to get things into position to strike the major centers. They wouldn’t want to use ICBMs, though the base near Great Falls, Malmstrom I think, houses them. They’ll probably go with Tomahawks. Every major city in Canada is easily within their range. Five hundred kilometers… easy striking range for Apaches, too…”
“How do you know all of this, Justin?” Lisa whispered.
Justin smiled slightly, returning to the chair at the rickety table. “Student projects, actually,” he said as he sat down. “Ask a group of boys in a high school Social Studies class to research an area of interest, and invariably they turn to war machines.”
Lisa giggled softly, but then her face grew sober. “Do you really think the US government assassinated their own president?”
Justin nodded. “What would any group in Canada have to gain from it? It doesn’t matter, I guess. We’ll know by tomorrow night. Either way, tomorrow or Sunday… the military can move quickly, but to get everything they will need in place within forty-eight hours is an almost impossible task. They had to have this planned in advance. The president was a fall guy.”
“And if it wasn’t planned…?” Lisa prompted.
“A week… maybe two,” Justin answered. “They’ll wait until all of their resources are in place. Unfortunately for the US, a week’s delay would give the international community time to organize a legitimate defense force… essentially pulling the rug out before the US can act. They can’t afford that, not if they are after the resources. One on one against the US, and we’ll last a month at most. Bring the UN into it, and the US has to fight against the combined might of the world. That changes the playing field.”
“You don’t have much faith in the Canadian military,” Lisa muttered.
“It’s not a question of faith,” Justin replied. “For the last decade or more – probably more – the government has been leeching funds away from the military. Cuts to funding, cuts to recruitment, base closures… as good as the individual soldiers are – and they are good – they don’t have the numbers or the equipment to stand up against what’s coming. The best we can hope for is that the US commander is dumb enough to send ground troops in rather than just bombing the hell out of the cities. At least then they will take some reciprocal casualties from whatever resistance we can muster.”
“And you want to just hide out here?” Lisa hissed. “Can’t we… do something?”
Justin stared at her in stunned disbelief. “Do something? Like what, Lisa? Join up? Enlist? Hide in the house and hope the bombs hit other houses? The best hope we have is to wait.”
“Wait for what?” Lisa snapped. “For American soldiers to drag us out of this cabin?”
“Do you have a better plan, Lisa?” Justin snarled. “Rouse the country? Start a revolution?” He rose to his feet and began to pace across the floor in agitation. “The people aren’t ready. They won’t believe you any more than you believed me. Sooner or later the people might be ready to rise up; maybe once they’ve seen their homes burned out, their families killed indiscriminately… maybe then they’ll be ready to do something, but they aren’t yet.” He returned to stare out the window at the darkness. When he spoke again, his voice was softer, sadder. “Right now we’re all too optimistically apathetic. Until that apathy changes, until the people are ready, we just have to wait.” He shook his head and turned imploringly to face his wife. “You can’t just run around screaming ‘Rise Up!’ It doesn’t work that way. It has to begin quietly, a whisper that can’t be spoken out loud for fear of reprisal… and Canadians aren’t ready to listen to that whisper.”
“You’re wrong, Justin,” Lisa said softly, staring at her hands. “You have to be wrong. And even if you aren’t, the UN will do something. They won’t turn a blind eye, not on something this big.”
Lying on the bed, James blinked back tears. Somehow he knew it wasn’t his father who was wrong.