Shanghaied - 2ACW

91 – Fighting in the snow

It was down to the actions of armed militia serving under the banner of the Patriotic Corps which saw the ignition of several major firefights on the Idaho–Montana state-line all while Winter Storm Ted continued to do its worst across the Inland Northwest. Later discoveries by DAR Army Intelligence would uncover that one of those key figures involved, who lost his life in the exchanges of gunfire at the end of January 2029, was the lead suspect for the FBI in the November 2028 assassination of congressman-elect Damian Kowalski: the Democrat who had won Idaho’s 1st District and was murdered within days of that election upset. Then with the White Star Militia, that suspect had been active then in helping to destabilise the entire region ahead of the civil war so significantly affecting Idaho in the surprising manner which it did. One gunman didn’t cause all of that, but he played a leading role in helping. He also led a posse which broke the unofficial ceasefire due to weather effects. Near to Sage Junction, a crossroads along the route of Interstate-15 coming into Idaho from Montana, his Patriotic Corps detachment attacked DAR Army outposts using heavy weaponry. The militia were well-armed with heavy machine guns and missile-launchers (stolen military gear from nationwide National Guard armouries) and went up against national guardsmen serving with the 116th Cavalry Brigade there during a lull in the worst that Ted could unleash. Soldiers from Nevada serving with that understrength brigade were struck at and they returned fire against a militia force that had military equipment, military training and was organised as everything it wasn’t: a professional force. Lightweight drones were used to track and identify the opposition with each side employing them as well. Once Ted regained its strength, it put pay to the many handheld Blackjacks & Pumas flying about but not the continuous ground fire. Using tracked vehicles, Idaho soldiers within the 116th Cavalry Brigade (it was an Idaho Army National Guard unit) came forward to assist the Nevadans in the efforts to encircle and finish off guerillas who they believed to be pinned down. That movement brought about an opposing one too where, unsure of all what was happening, national guardsmen from the wartime-created 163rd Armor Group also showed up. Those were Idahoans too, men who hadn’t followed their brothers-in-arms in fighting against the United States. Idahoans fought Idahoans once more. The majority of the Patriotic Corps men pulled out after their leader was shot by a sniper at some considerable distance and did so before a whole load of snow was dropped in that area. The righting came to a close when that happened yet everyone, those on both sides, waited for Ted to move on so they could get back to the unfinished business of killing each other.

There was more fighting in the snow a little way to the east. Near to Ashton, where US Highway-70 connected Idaho and Montana like the freeway to the west did, militia involvement in action this time against US forces drew in others. Those who attacked the shattered US Army’s 173rd Airborne Brigade were an unrecognised DAR-supporting militia which had come up from out of Utah. They had no business being on a battlefield and so there was no assistance given to them by the HQ of the Idaho Corps. However, it was known by the DAR Army general in command that they were moving forward and he let that happen when he could have stopped it. Into a fight with outlying positions of the paratroopers those militia got, a fight which they stumbled into. They put up a terrible show for themselves. In Utah, they had been killing the helpless in ‘revolutionary justice’ which was an utter sh*tshow for the DAR authorities to try and control but they finally went up against those who could fight back. In a bad state at that time the 173rd Airborne Brigade was but it could handle itself against that militia. Moving forward during a lull in the worst of the weather, those paratroopers emerged from cover to finish off their opponents. It was a mistake made under the orders of the acting brigade commander, someone waiting upon a new commander (after the last one had been killed by enemy action a few days before) and eager to impress in the meantime. No one would be impressed though. Nonetheless, there was a reason why the Idaho Corps’ commander let those militia pass: for them to be bait. Thrown into the sky by soldiers deploying them, some more of those RQ-20B Pumas – there were thousands of them in US and DAR service – kept flying long enough for a series of confirmed sightings to be made. Heavy artillery supporting the Idaho Corps opened fire, targeting men with the 173rd Airborne Brigade. The US IX Corps had its own big guns though and returned fire in a manner which did more damage than the DAR units were willing to accept. They lost several batteries of vital guns in well-targeted return fire after exposing themselves. And then… back came the heavy snowfall and the furious wind to put a temporary end to all of that mess there.

Down in New Mexico, Ted was projected to hit just as bad there as it did further north. Not everyone believed that it would though. When the leading edges of the storm approached, it was thought by the disbelievers of the weather forecasters that the opening foray was all that Ted had to give. It wasn’t that bad and couldn’t get any worse, could it? Ted answered that question in its own time. Before then, observing that US forces with their II MEF and III Corps had come to a temporary pause fearing the worst of the weather, some of the DAR forces in the Sandia Mountains area were instructed to make a run for it. Not all of those cut off after Albuquerque had fallen had been either overrun or forced to surrender. There were DAR Marines and New Mexico national guardsmen who’d been blocking frontal access to Albuquerque before it was taken from behind and they didn’t want to surrender. A way out was seen and they were instructed to go for it. From the Tijeras Canyon up to Santa Fe ran State Highway-14. It wasn’t much of a road, nothing like the nearby big freeways of Interstate-15 & I-40, but it was a way out. Setting out in many vehicles, some military yet others being civilian ones, more than a thousand DAR soldiers (a lot of them non-combat personnel) fled the net closed almost all the way around them. It wasn’t US forces which put an end to their flight but the weather instead. Ted closed the road and left the column of vehicles spread out. Those on the ground looked skywards fearing the US Air Force but instead of bombs it was snow, snow and more snow fell. Leading elements of the column made it out when they went past the expansive New Mexico State Penitentiary complex and to the Santa Fe area. The rest didn’t though. There was no real cover from the elements when out in the desert as vehicles ran out of fuel to keep those inside warm. A lot of those in the column lost their fight for life out there in the open by those who didn’t take proper shelter when Ted did its worst.

At the base of the San Francisco Mountains, where Interstate-25 looped around them linking Santa Fe with access up towards Colorado, national guardsmen from the US 28th Infantry Division fought against the elements rather than an armed enemy. Soldiers from Pennsylvania and Vermont who already had had a tough time fighting DAR Marines were tasked to keep the freeway in their operational area open. I-25 was shut further north in Colorado and ultimately there was no point to what they tried to do, but do it they did. Men and women worked to allow that Main Supply Route – almost all in US hands apart from where it ran near to Santa Fe – clear of obstructions to allow convoys to run. None of those ventured out though. The 28th Infantry Division moved damaged vehicles and shovelled snow. At times, mortar shells came from out of the slopes of the mountains which loomed above them to the west, where the Pecos Wilderness was. They died or were injured out there in the open as a seemingly fruitless effort to keep the freeway open went on for more than a day underneath Ted. As the weather worsened, they worked harder. It took the toll upon the 28th Infantry Division. Eventually, far too late to make any sense of the timing, orders came down from on-high for them to stop and seek shelter. Those who received that cursed those who had sent them out to fight against the elements all for no purpose. It appeared as if that within minutes, the freeway was blanketed in white making it indistinguishable from the surrounding landscape. All that they had done, all of their efforts, had been for nothing!

Ted lived up to all of the worst expectations. During January 31st, it covered almost the entire western half of the United States (DAR territory included). From Washington state to North Dakota, from California to Texas there was the worst weather seen in a long time. Blown in from further north, no more wind moved Ted onwards afterwards. The weather system stayed where it was, not going a bit more east as far as the Mississippi as initial projections said it might do. It shut down all military operations eventually. There was no way that aircraft could fly nor troops could move about in any number. Civilian services came under immense pressure while Ted stayed where it was leaving no end in sight. The meteorologists had been correct in what they said about days of endless atrocious weather bringing the fighting to an end when Ted sat where it did. No one at that time knew whether the same prophets of doom were correct about Winter Storm Ulysses following Ted and doing the same far into February as well. Canadians were suffering under that second storm but the projections said that when it moved across the border, it would intensify. Proclamations came from religious figures about what it all meant. They claimed that their deities unleashed such bad weather where the civil war was raging like it had been to bring an end to it all. It was divine punishment from above. Well… even if that was true, those not so minded to believe in such things mused, then Ted and Ulysses too would eventually move onwards. The Second American Civil War had only just gotten started when the weather intervened and wouldn’t be brought to an end in such a manner. Only either a political settlement (fat chance of that happening) or a comprehensive military victory for one side over the other would do that. Whatever comfort those believing any of that gave themselves was for their own ends. The snow continued to fall in the meantime.

Great update as always. I have a small al question reference the Nuclear weapons that MAR have managed to get them grubby little hands on. Does MAR have the ability to use them and if so do they have the codes or have they managed to get past the PAL systems on them.

92 – The airlift

The Pentagon called it Operation Eagle Lift. It was referred to as ‘the airlift’ though by those involved. Tasked to move from Eastern Europe the entire US Army Europe & US Air Force Europe home, it was quite the undertaking for American strategic airlift capability to achieve. A sea-lift would take too long and the majority of the equipment and stores (personnel were ‘easy’ to fly home) was sent via air across the North Atlantic. Doing so pulled airlift assets away from other important tasks and the overall capability had already been damaged by losses to DAR service, sabotage & war losses. Regardless, the airlift went ahead. It began ahead of President Roberts’ death with President Mitchell ordering it to continue while Winter Storm Ted shut down almost all other wartime military operations against the secessionists in Las Vegas. There were a lot of aircraft involved and the airlift had assistance to it from allies both in NATO and the Middle East too.

Many C-5M Galaxy and C-17A Globemasters, the big freight airlifters, had been lost to the DAR when places such as Travis AFB in California and McChord AFB in Washington state had ‘gone over to the enemy’. There had been losses inflicted too by deliberate sabotage as well to such aircraft which had remained in United States territory. Plenty of those aircraft were still in service though and took part in the airlift. They flew across the North Atlantic and back again heavily loaded. Tanks and heavyweight gear was shipped across in vessels given that tasking but so much more went by air. That included such loads as six AH-64E Apache gunships loaded into a C-5 and eighteen fully-loaded pallets at a time inside the C-17s. Artillery pieces, missile-launchers, vehicles including Strykers, stocks of personal equipment, ammunition and so on flew in the airlift. Flights departed from Poland and the Baltic States as well as Germany, Italy Norway and the UK. KC-46A Pegasus airborne tankers had a cargo capability and many of them were loaded with freight while also refuelling in-flight US Air Force Europe jets returning home as well. Air-freighters in civilian service, taken over by the Pentagon as part of the Civil Reserve Air Fleet, also flew with Boeings (B-747Fs & -777Fs) and Airbuses (A-330s & -340Fs) too. There were passenger airlines moving personnel yet many of them were also involved in moving cargo as well, just of a lesser load than dedicated aircraft.

Aircraft involved in the airlift didn’t just fly back westwards across the North Atlantic from Europe full on that journey. They went towards Europe laden with equipment and stores too. A deal had been struck between DC and London & Ottawa with regards to the airlift needs of Britain and Canada. They were moving military gear about as the two of them tried to replace (alongside other NATO countries) the American commitment in Eastern Europe with a larger one of their own. The British were helping out the Canadians as well as moving some of their stored military equipment for training purposes out of Canada; Canada was sending two regular brigades, along with reservists mobilised to provide reinforcement for them, to Europe too. The RAF and the RCAF had their own C-17s and they also each flew A-330MRTTs as well. American aircraft went back and forth across the Atlantic aiding them and their aircraft did the same in providing assistance to the United States. Fuel costs were helped with by the Pentagon in that endeavour and that offset for the British and Canadians the re-routing of some of those flights. RAF aircraft went direct into the United States for a ‘drop off’ before going up to Canada. The Canadians didn’t do that themselves with their RCAF jets but did make stops at CFB Winnipeg. From that city, there was a direct rail connection for freight trains and also an excellent highway connection too down to Interstate-29 for a fleet of trucks. Within Europe, Britain (using RAF Airbus-400s) and a few other countries moved US Army Europe loads about too allowing for collections with less flight times for C-5s and C-17s coming across the North Atlantic. The same principle was used with those trans-Atlantic flights that the RAF & RCAF made: empty aircraft from NATO partners returning from their own runs moved American air freight a short distance. The Pentagon had eyed up the NATO-controlled Heavy Airlift Wing with its C-17s and A-400s too but their allies were already making much use of them with intra-continental airlift. Qatar and the United Arab Emirates flew C-17s and many of those were ranted by the United States to help with the airlift. Arab aircrews flew them into Israel – it wasn’t something everyone knew about – to collect portions from the massive War Reserve Stocks that the Americans had in-place in that country. The United States had long kept ammunition and weapons there due to the near certainty that Israel would always be an ally. They weren’t very happy about it all in the Israeli Government as those stocks were raided because Israel occasionally drew from the same supply but didn’t try to stop any of that. The Arab airlifters then flew onwards to the United States with cargoes in their holds. Furthermore, the private company Strategic Airlift (registered in Luxembourg but American owned) was contracted to put to use its own special air-freighters which they often provided certain armed forces the service of. Ilyushin-76s and Tupolev-204s were loaded with American military equipment: those were aircraft built in Russia in a situation where everyone saw the irony of it all.

When the 82nd Airborne Division had gone into Colorado Springs at the beginning of the fight against the Democratic American Republic, C-17s had brought in tanks to support the paratroopers. There had been only a company of fourteen M-1A3 Abrams (detached from their parent division) yet the movement of them had been a big deal. At a weight far above sixty metric tons, only one at a time could go in a C-17. The US Army Europe had five hundred plus of those tanks. The airlift could have, in theory, moved all of them yet that would have been a waste of capability. Likewise, American forces in Eastern Europe operated several variants of the Bradley and the M-109A6 Paladin: once more, heavy tracked armoured vehicles. If the tanks had gone into the airlift, then all of them would have done too. The planners of Operation Eagle Lift didn’t go down that route. There were ships that would move the tanks and such like, RO-RO ones quickly loaded and sent at flank speed. Of course, that took a lot of time yet it was what was done rather than sent all of that huge cargo via air when the aircraft involved could be put to much better use. A trio of Strykers could go into one of the air-freighters, six helicopters or so much more than just one tracked vehicle. Canada did move some of their Leopard-2 tanks via RAF & RCAF aircraft yet did as the Americans did and made sea-lift the preferred method of sending them across the North Atlantic.

The huge undertaking which the airlift was brought with it problems. A C-17 went down over Germany due to an in-flight emergency and there was a C-5 lost over the North Atlantic too. Hard landings were made by American and allied aircraft involved at several airbases and airports. Aircrews and ground personnel taking part were working long hours and mistakes were made. The Europeans were under less pressure with their own movement of NATO forces eastwards closer to the Russian border – where President Makarov still had his army of conquest in-place – as they could use rail and road links. Still, a few air accidents occurred with what they did as well. Protests came in Europe against the American military activity to support their civil war at home as well as the European mobilisation to deploy combat forces in the east. Anti-war movements were busy and they didn’t all just protest in their national capitals: some went towards airbases or the roads nearby. There were environmental complaints as well when all of that mass movement of freight via aircraft doing what they did took place. Aircraft involved in the airlift moving personnel plus stores out of Poland and the Baltic States found themselves ‘lit-up’ by long-range radars on Russian fighters as well as from missile batteries. It was intimidation to try and hinder what was going on. Mortar shells struck the runway at Riga International Airport just ahead of a US Air Force KC-46 taking off. Latvia had been beset by Kremlin-backed terror attacks and that incident was one of them. No one was hurt but the runway there was shut for some time. Fears ran high in the Pentagon that aircraft might be targeted by man-portable SAMs yet that perceived threat didn’t materialise.

The airlift focused first on the movement of non-human cargo. Freight was sent home ahead of the majority of military personnel. Some of them did go, from non-combat units of the US Army Europe & US Air Force Europe, but the majority waited for their own orders to follow. For those serving with the 1st Armored & 3rd Infantry Divisions especially, the two major combat-manoeuvre units which formed the US V Corps, there was no point in flying them home fast while there was the wait on the sea-lift to get their tanks and such like across the ocean. Desertion rates increased when the airlift was underway. There had been some of that ahead of the civil war starting yet it rapidly increased among American service-personnel in Europe when it was clear beyond any doubt that they were going home to fight their fellow Americans. Rather than do that, for so many the only choice that they felt that they had was to go AWOL. Approaches taken from the European to all of this varied yet nowhere was there government policy to round up deserters and return them using force to the US Armed Forces. A welcoming arms approach it wasn’t yet neither was there any move to force those who didn’t want to fight to return to their units. As had been seen before with other deserters, both in Europe yet also those who had gone to Canada direct from the United States, there was a lot of huffing and puffing from the American authorities. However, they didn’t turn on their allies for not forcing those who had gone AOL to go back. A public show of anger and empty threats had to be made to try and not encourage more of it but it was all hot air and allies understood that.

Before Ted shut down so many American air transport hubs for aircraft inbound with cargo from Europe, those aircraft landed in Kansas, Nebraska, Oklahoma & Texas. With those facilities shut due to the weather, the airlift saw flights arrive further eastwards. Barksdale AFB in Louisiana, Little Rock AFB in Arkansas and Scott AFB in Illinois were busy afterwards. On the East Coast, those flights before Ted and during the storm also went to US Air Force facilities such as Dover FAB in Delaware and McGuire AFB in New Jersey. Civilian airports along the East Coast, in the Mid-West and down in Dixie too were landing sites for inbound aircraft too. Turn-around times were pretty good. There was proper scheduling and organisation with unloading. The use of standard-size pallet for loads – rather than the majority of cargo having to be hand-balled off – was one of the highlights of American military logistics. So much air freight came in but at no time was anywhere overwhelmed by it all. Once off the aircraft, the cargoes were moving soon enough onto trucks or railcars ready to roll westwards. The DAR was going to have to face what the airlift brought with it: a strong, professional force all outfitted with everything needed to really take the fight into rebel territory.

General Fuller would have loved to make major attacks against the airlift. Ted put pay to the majority of his planned interference from DAR forces though. Tinker AFB in Oklahoma had been raided by his aircraft before there was no more flying possible. All of the other planned operations, including ones going pretty far eastwards, came to an end when every airbases in the West was covered with all of that snow and the airborne conditions were near impossible. Only the bare minimal air defence missions could be run and those came at a cost too with accidents occurring. The DAR’s military chief was presented with intelligence by his staff concerning what was happening at Winnipeg. When the storm lifted, the idea was put to him that there should be an attack made there like elsewhere to target the United States’ wartime use of that facility in Manitoba. It wasn’t something that he was prepared to see done though. Canada had most of its army and the majority of its Gripen-E fighters in Europe but Fuller knew that most of the rest was positioned in Alberta and British Columbia. There would be a retaliation for anything like that: no one in Ottawa would allow a strike like that to go unanswered. Less some of the hotheads on the Council of Thirteen decide that maybe it might be a good idea and they could defeat a reaction through some deft political manoeuvres, Minister for Defence & Security Rawlings agreed with Fuller when he suggested to her that perhaps they best not inform their political masters about the significance of Winnipeg (they downplayed it all) just in case. There were quite a lot of things that the Council of Thirteen weren’t told concerning military matters. They stuck their noses in where neither Fuller nor Rawlings believed that they always needed to. While ‘adventurism’ – Utah a case in point – was something that certain members were fond of, others had caution. Right before Ted come down from the north, Fuller had wanted to strike at several oil platforms in the Gulf of Mexico. Those were fuelling the United States war effort. Permission was refused due to environmental concerns despite Fuller pointing out that that would be the US coastline, not that of the DAR! Rawlings told him that certain members still thought of themselves as Americans, part of the whole country, despite all that they had taken part in though he believed that their global environmentalism was the biggest factor there. He was granted permission to strike at inland refineries in Louisiana and Texas instead but that came too late before the weather turned for the worst. Watching from afar as the airlift continued, Fuller had eyes on it. He waited to lash out, to unleash F-22s racing deep into enemy territory firing AMRAAMs at distant, helpless transports. Wait he did, through Ted and while worrying about what that second storm would do too in negatively effecting the defence of the new country which he served.

Its big, I'm not sure if it is that big. The aircraft are certainly larger, then there is too the internal European military movements by air too.

How timely for your story?

China could invade Taiwan by 2027

94 – High Value Captives

César Ramirez, the Mayor of Albuquerque, was held at a black site known as Location G in West Texas. The Department of Homeland Security had secured access to private land (under the threat of eminent domain being used if the request wasn’t granted) adjacent to Goodfellow AFB, a non-flying installation of the US Air Force. Location G was staffed mainly by contractors with long associations to the DHS though there were DHS people themselves who dealt with Ramirez, and others like him, directly. There was no legal access granted to him and his constitutionally-protected rights were, in the words of one of that top DHS people, ‘thrown in the trash’. He was one of the many High Value Captives of a political nature who had been a key element to the Democratic American Republic’s civilian administration. The DHS held him in secret detention for the purpose of ‘exploitation’ in terms of what could be gotten from him via interrogations. When he had been in his native city across in New Mexico, Ramirez had a long history of activism for a various range of progressive causes including his opposition to foreign conflicts that the United States had been involved in. His ability to gain and keep support for his opposition to the causes he fought for was well known. During the protests against the outcome of the 2028 presidential election, Albuquerque had been the scene of many of those marches against what Ramirez and so many other Americans – not just those in the West – had regarded as the theft of that election. When Shauna McCleary had died in federal custody in Nevada, Ramirez had overseen (but not created) the activities of Fed Watch activists. They had led the civil disobedience campaign in his city which included direct harassment of federal employees through Albuquerque and portions of New Mexico: there had even been violence against them too, all with the city’s mayor’s knowledge either before or after the fact. Ramirez had provided contacts to allow Fed Watch to access technology and funding as well as protected them against law enforcement operations. There were many ties which Ramirez had to the administration of the DAR with representatives from New Mexico sent to Las Vegas to form that government though he himself had stayed in his city rather than go there. Ignacio Gutierrez was one of them, a then-sitting US congressman who had risen high and fast to serve as the Minister for Finance & Business for the new country established in the West. Gutierrez and Ramirez were related by marriage: the latter had married the former’s sister. When Albuquerque was taken by US military forces, Ramirez could have fled. The state’s civilian government had offered him a way out via an air evacuation as tanks with the 1st Cavalry Division closed in to encircle the city rather than make a direct assault. Ramirez had stayed though, determined to make a statement by not running away. Supported by US Army military police troopers, DHS agents took him from his office in Downtown and put him in another helicopter, once more against his wishes to leave Albuquerque. Once at Location G, Ramirez was ‘induced’ to talk. His contacts beyond those at the top were sought for their names and activities. There was pressure applied to use his familial relationship with Gutierrez for the benefit of the federal government. He won’t talk though. Ramirez held out, refusing to surrender his will to those who held him prisoner. After the initial efforts failed, the pressure was upped. Breaking him became a priority for those at Location G.

Another important civilian figure in the making the rebellion against the federal government succeed and held when captured at Location G was Eloise McCormack. She was in custody due to her treason against the United States. That had been committed when she was a federal employee and the DHS interrogators reminded her that that meant she could be executed. McCormack denied that she had committed treason and repeatedly requested legal counsel: executive orders signed by President Roberts during his first hours in office denying her that right were regarded by McCormack as illegal in the United States and additionally also didn’t apply to her due to her citizenship of the Democratic American Republic. She wasn’t a citizen of the United States any more and couldn’t be detained nor punished as such! Initially captured in Denver before being flown down to Location G (via the nearby San Angelo airport), McCormack had been a senior figure at the regional office of the US Department of Veterans Affairs at the Denver Federal Centre in Lakewood. That Colorado site on the edges of Denver had been the scene of one of the first armed takeovers by national guardsmen acting on gubernatorial instructions ahead of the DAR’s unilateral declaration of independence. DHS contractors had been forced out at gunpoint when Colorado’s governor asserted ‘state’s rights’ there. McCormack had received instructions from the VA headquarters back in DC to shut down all operations after that and for there to be no cooperation with those secessionists acting just days before they took their final step. Other employees with the VA and further federal departments & agencies at Lakewood had done as instructed. She had not followed those instructions. McCormack had worked with Colorado state officials and then the DAR government in keeping administration work ongoing at Lakewood where she expanded the scope of what she had overseen beyond her previous work in managing benefit payments to veterans. There was a rebooting of the database which had been switched off at the VA office and the recovery of information stored offline to allow for access to records of recipients of benefits and other VA services. This was provided by McCormack to the DAR military authorities to allow for them to better contact retired and reserve military personnel in Colorado to entice them to serve for the DAR. She had been at the heart of all of that and what she had done was treason. Arguing repeatedly with the DHS agents who held her in custody, for that act of treason and further activities ahead of Denver being retaken by US forces and McCormack being captured, she continually claimed that they had no right to hold her and certainly not punish her either. The operational chief at Location G reported back to DC that McCormack was refusing the accept the reality of her actions and wasn’t a prime candidate for any ‘exploitation’ efforts to make use of her: in short he wanted rid of her from where she was holding up a cell that could be best used for someone else. McCormack would eventually be handed over to the Justice Department and the charges of treason were formally laid where she was granted legal counsel. There was no recognition of her status as no longer a US citizen regardless of the transfer of custody.

A temporary expansion of the prisoner holding facilities at Fort Leavenworth had been undertaken to allow for that Kansas US Army post to receive High Value Captives of a military nature to be detained there. Only those of intelligence value or high rank were sent to Leavenworth leading to others spread out across the rest of the country. Major Gemma Coughlin was one of those at Leavenworth. She had served with the US Space Force and had been assigned to Space Delta Six at Schriever SFB in Colorado. As part of that unit, Coughlin had been present when the base commander at Schriever defected from the United States to the newly-established DAR. She could have resigned her commission or deserted, as many others did, yet she chose to serve that illegal country and its armed forces. Space Delta Six did at the start of the conflict with federal military forces what it was supposed to do in wartime to foreign adversaries: conduct space-based cyberdefence and offensive cyber-warfare operations. She was one of the key people involved in the uploading of the Glow-worm computer virus into the Pentagon computers after the source code for that offensive weapon had been ‘acquired’ from the National Security Agency for the benefit of the Democratic American Republic. Glow-worm was slowly causing immense damage to US military forces while leaving those of the DAR Armed Forces untouched. Coughlin had been part of the effort to make it spread and protect DAR assets from infection considering that the equipment under attack was all the same. She had intimate knowledge of not just those figures senior to her behind the attack but the efforts to contain its spread where the DAR didn’t want it to go. Schriever was a facility close to Colorado Springs where the 82nd Airborne Division had entered the middle of Colorado via an air assault. A hasty evacuation of personnel from there had taken place with Coughlin part of that bug-out to a new base of operations at Vandenberg SFB in California. She been one of the last to leave though, following her role in helping to ensure that the last of the demolition charges at Schriever (destroying equipment, not buildings) were good to go. During her escape, she was caught along with other officers and enlisted personnel when they were on their way to a small private airport to the east of there. Alongside a few others who were the wheat separated from the chaff, Coughlin was recognised for who she was and the knowledge in her head. At Leavenworth, counter-intelligence operatives sought to break her will to resist. They wanted to get at that knowledge and use it for the benefit of US forces. Coughlin was brought before an Article 32 hearing where the charges against her for violation of her oaths of service to the United States were laid out. It was made clear that the punishment she faced was quite something indeed. After that event, those holding her in custody noticed a change in her attitude. The consequences of her actions became apparent to her. She was no longer playing the ‘no surrender’ game and instead began to cooperate. The information she spilled had to be gotten into the right hands and used in the correct manner though. That wasn’t easy but it was something that was done. Coughlin coughed up all that she knew and did the cause of the DAR Armed Forces immense harm of a nature comparable to what she had helped do to the US Armed Forces beforehand. A traitor twice she had become, leaving her with no friends at all… but at least she would live.

Colonel Wayne Kemp wouldn’t. He was told that he would be executed for his treason against his country. He had taken up arms against the United States and would be duly punished. After being transferred to Leavenworth from where he had been captured down in Oklahoma, the DAR Air Force flying officer was informed that it would be very likely he would be shot. He made a mock attempt to rip open his prisoner attire on the chest region with the passion-filled declaration made of ‘shoot me here then, you b*stards’. A native New Yorker, Kemp had been serving with the US Air Force’s 325th Fighter Wing in Florida while flying F-35A Lightnings. Upon the UDI made in Las Vegas to form the Democratic American Republic, he’d deserted US service and made his way to the DAR to join the DAR Air Force. They had an opening in Arizona with the 56th Operations Group who needed a commander when the then-serving colonel resigned his post rather than fight against the United States. Kemp flew F-35s for the DAR Air Force on offensive air operations once the shooting started. He’d done so until shot down when outbound from a raid against Tinker AFB in Oklahoma bombing the first wave of reinforcements coming home from Europe. CSAR personnel had been searching for a US Air Force pilot lost from his own F-35 in the same engagement when they came across Kemp beside the Canadian River outside of Camargo. He’d put up a fight and nearly escaped custody: his aim had been to keep walking west until he reached friendly lines. That would have been a long walk! After knocking him out with a rifle butt applied with force to the back of the head, his captor had been asked by his own commander why he didn’t just shoot Kemp due to all of the effort needed to detain him. That airman didn’t like the idea of killing fellow Americans though, even traitors, unless there was no other choice. There was also the rank insignia which Kemp had chosen to have prominently displayed on his flight suit (his fellow pilots thought him asking for trouble) which marked him out as a High Value Captive. When taken to Leavenworth, Kemp was told in an off-the-cuff manner that high-ranking captives such as himself, deserters of such rank as his going from O-6 upwards, were going to be shot as general policy. That was when he made his dramatic outburst to express his willingness to die for what he thought a worthy cause. Kemp was questioned about that by military intelligence interrogators. He explained why he had defected to and then fought for the DAR. His political inclinations disturbed the US Air Force higher-ups when they heard about them. Kemp expressed a firm belief that the terrorist organisation known as the American Insurgent Army was a front for the CIA and the ‘deep state’. They’d killed his fellow New Yorker DaJuan Anderson – the Democrat’s vice presidential nominee slain in the Omaha Bombing – as well as eliminated McCleary in Las Vegas. Those two politicians, each on the presidential ticket with Maria Arreola Rodriguez one after the other, where like his new country’s president fighting for the American people. Secret conspiracies to murder them and establish an oppressive police state, using violence committed by false flag operations like the AIA were all part of that. Kemp really believed that narrative, and a whole load of other conspiracy theories, with the feelings about that suppressed for some time long before he left his post at Eglin AFB in Florida to go to the West. None of that had been apparent beforehand and he’d kept it well hidden even through an investigation in the aftermath of his then unexplained desertion. He refused to talk to interrogators at Leavenworth about anything he knew about DAR Air Force operations and remained committed to the cause. Shoot me, he said several times, and make me a martyr.

The DHS and the US Armed Forces held many prisoners like Ramirez, McCormack, Coughlin & Kemp. Black sites such as Location G were spread across US-controlled portions of the country and Leavenworth was full of top-tier uniformed prisoners as well leading to the hasty construction of new temporary holding facilities in Upstate New York near to West Point. High Value Captives aplenty were held due to their associations with the secessionists out West. A whole load more of them were expected to be taken long before whenever the end came of fighting to eliminate the Democratic American Republic. Many would be transferred to the civilian justice system (like McCormack) or turned back against the DAR (as Coughlin was). However with others such as Ramirez there would be continued detention, and prisoners such as Kemp who were both unrepentant and of high rank were due to be shot. Many, many more captives didn’t receive the same degree of attention as selected ones of an important nature did though. They were held in custody with a fate undetermined at the end of January 2029.

Those territories are all remaining part of the United States, staying with the government in DC.
The others are independent nations and didn't join the DAR, unlike Guam and the Marianas which achieved statehood as one. I'm thinking that without a DAR military presence in the Western Pacific beyond local defence forces on Guam and Saipan, they remain allied to the United States.