Chapter 07
Tuesday, November 21, 2017
The greater community making the decision to deal with the crisis with grace didn't change anything. The UN was still guarding the Federal Building; the world was still falling apart. But the troops relaxed some, knowing that the crowd was, in the main, friendly and the crowd relaxed some, knowing that the troops were there to try to help.
The commander of the UN troops came on the radio and started laying down the law for the next two weeks. Curfew, no hoarding, essential services to continue, banks closed for a few more days, and so on. It sounded to everyone like the UN had a contingency plan for the breakup of a country and they were running it step by orderly step. From the general reaction of the crowd no one was inclined to throw a wrench into the well-organized works.
The BAU team continued to hold down that back corner booth. "They didn't ask first responders to report in." Morgan said when it was over. "I would have expected that."
"I haven't seen any all day." Garcia said.
"You know this explains the helicopters I saw taking off." Spencer said. "They were probably heading to Travis Air Force Base. That's the only major military base in the area."
"Helping to put down the traitors," Morgan said.
Spencer winced. "I want to say that's harsh…"
"…but we took an oath to defend the Constitution against all enemies, foreign and domestic. These people just put themselves on the domestic list. So did Gordinski, he must have known this was going down."
"So did my Dad, that's why he moved Mom. I know his law firm works with a number of state government officials, he must have taken them on as clients and didn't realize the scope of what they intended until the last minute. How could we have missed this? There hasn't been anything…?" Spencer asked.
"Millennium Challenge." Garcia said.
"The what?" Morgan asked.
The Millennium Challenge," Spencer said. "The Millennium Challenge was a major war game exercise conducted by the United States armed forces in mid-2002, likely the largest such exercise in history. The exercise, which ran from July 24 to August 15 and cost $250 million, involved both live exercises and computer simulations. MC02 was meant to be a test of future military "transformation "—a transition toward new technologies that enable network-centric warfare and provide more powerful weaponry and tactics. The simulated combatants were the United States, referred to as "Blue", and an unknown adversary in the Middle East, "Red". It was later determined that "Red" was assumed to be Israel as the most technologically sophisticated nation in the Middle East."
"Okay, I am actually interested this time." Morgan said.
"Red, commanded by retired Marine Corps Lieutenant General Paul K. Van Riper, adopted an asymmetric strategy, in particular, using old methods to evade Blue's sophisticated electronic surveillance network. For example Van Riper used motorcycle messengers to transmit orders to front-line troops and World War II light signals to launch airplanes without radio communications. Red used a fleet of small boats to determine the position of Blue's fleet by the second day of the exercise. In a preemptive strike, Red launched a massive salvo of cruise missiles that overwhelmed the Blue forces' electronic sensors and destroyed sixteen warships. This included one aircraft carrier, ten cruisers and five of six amphibious ships. An equivalent success in a real conflict would have resulted in the deaths of over 20,000 service personnel. Soon after the cruise missile offensive, another significant portion of Blue's navy was "sunk" by an armada of small Red boats, which carried out both conventional and suicide attacks that capitalized on Blue's inability to detect them as well as expected. At that point the exercise was suspended, Blue's ships were "re-floated", and the rules of engagement were changed with the participants forced to follow a script drafted to ensure a Blue Force victory, including revealing the position of the Red units and not allowing them to shoot down the aircraft bringing Blue troops ashore. When that happened Van Riper resigned his position and later expressed concern that the war game's purpose had shifted to reinforcing existing doctrine and notions of infallibility within the U.S. military rather than serving as a learning experience."
"So how does that apply here?" Morgan asked.
"The Millennium challenge showed that you can evade US intelligence by being patient and going low-tech. The term Brethren is commonly used by a number of churches within the US, implying that the new government is theocratic. Using the church networks would give them regular, secure meetings which could not legally be monitored by the government, assuming they had any indication that they should do so. All they would have had to do was pass out schedules at the various services, they could meet to plan attacks under the guise of bible study. That would also explain the number of military members involved, Protestant churches are allowed to set their own requirements for military chaplains, they could have seeded the chaplain core with loyalists who, if they passed the general military requirements, would have been commissioned as officers and allowed to counsel troops on any matter without generating any records."
"Who are you more faithful to, the government or God?" Morgan said. "That's a good way to turn someone's head. I could see all kinds of ways that could go wrong."
"On the plus side, it looks like they're following postmillennial dominionist eschatology."
"English, Reid." Garcia said.
"In Christian end-times theology, eschatology, postmillennialism is an interpretation of chapter 20 of the Book of Revelation which sees Christ's second coming as occurring after the "Millennium", a Golden Age in which Christian ethics prosper." Spencer said. "Dominion Theology or Dominionism is the idea that Christians should work toward either a nation governed by Christians or one governed by a conservative Christian understanding of biblical law. Most Dominionists believe that the United States is supposed to be the great Christian nation that will lead the world into the Millennium, which is why the Lord gave the US such a large and powerful military."
"And now they're taking control of it." Morgan said. "They planned their work and now they're working their plan. Slick."
"It could be worse. Some postmillennialists believe that Christ will only return once the planet is completely destroyed. Given that they might have control of our nuclear arsenal I'm actually rooting for the Dominionists on this one."
Morgan and Garcia both looked at him. "Your turn to get the coffee sunshine," Morgan said.
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Note: Much of Spencer's lecture on the Millenium Challenge is taken from the Wikipedia article on the subject.
Footnotes over at my AO3 account. Really worth a look this time.
