Foreign Enemies and Traitors Read Online Free PDF Page B

couldn’t drop a missile on him like he was some garden-variety domestic terrorist.” 
    The president sighed.  “Well then, in that case I think our only option is to sway the general back over to our side.  We need to convince him that we’re going to win back complete control of the Union, and that if he wants to retain his position as the el supremo of the Deep South, he needs to get on board with us.  Openly and publicly.  He needs to come to the White House for a photo op.  Or to Camp David, if he’d be more comfortable there.  Kiss the presidential ring, as it were.  Now, we can send him offers and overtures to that effect, but in the end, the only way to convince him to get aboard will be for us to wrap up the Mid South, and do it quickly.  Why would he feel a need to obey Washington, when we can’t even pacify the earthquake zone?  Once all of Tennessee and Kentucky are back under our control, he’ll see the light.”
    “I agree, that’s our best course.”
    “So we need a victory.  We need Tennessee to be a success.  A visible success.  But Sidney, I’m gathering that things are not going so well down there.”
    “They’re getting better.  We’re gaining traction; we finally have the right man in charge of rural pacification.  He knows how to get results, and he’s not hamstrung by old-fashioned moral qualms.”
    “Do you mean Robert Bullard?”
    “Yes, he’s the one.”
    Quietly the president said, “You know, he’ll have to be eliminated when this is over.  Along with every trace of his rural pacification program.”  He whispered this, as if he didn’t fully trust the soundproofing of his “private study.”
    “Of course.”  Krantz had selected Robert Bullard from a small pool of potential directors of rural pacification.  This was a classified position atop a classified directorate.  The rural pacification program was a black operation from start to finish.  Rural pacification was Krantz’s solution to the Mid-South insurgency, and it was wholeheartedly embraced by the president…but never formally in writing.  All of the funding was covert; officially, it did not exist.
    Robert Bullard, the former Southwest Region Director of Homeland Security, was already under informal non-judicial house arrest when Krantz had discovered his dossier.  To call Bullard an unsavory character was to sugarcoat his life history.  The man was a thug, ruled only by his lust for power, wealth and young women.  But he had a proven track record as an effective leader of other groups of thugs.  He knew how to get things done when nobody particularly cared how.  In short, Robert Bullard was the perfect man to crack the whip in the rebel areas of Tennessee and Kentucky.  Once the mission was complete, he would be tossed out like the garbage he was.  Bullard’s group was in effect a cutout, a circuit breaker between the foreign mercenary units and the White House.  If the foreign units were successful, the president would take the credit.  If they were not, then Bullard’s rural pacification group would be made the scapegoats and take the blame.
    “You know what’s ironic?” asked Krantz.  “Bullard thinks he’s first in line to be the director of our new Department of Internal Security, or whatever we finally name it.  He thinks rural pacification is his audition.  He really does.  I’ve got him convinced.”
    “Then he’s a fool.  Every trace of rural pacification has to disappear when this is over, starting with him.  Even with our influence over the media, using the foreign troops…it’s still controversial.  It’s unpopular.  Not even using them to suppress the racists in Tennessee.”
    “But it works,” Krantz replied.  “Our own soldiers couldn’t get the job done—they were much too soft.  Foreign troops don’t bring all of that sentimental baggage with them.  And Tennessee is the perfect test bed for using international peacekeepers in the United