Shanghaied - 2ACW

That's the problem of creating a new country. If no trade is established, it's gonna collapse from within. Since the U.S. told another countries not trade with the DAR less they suffer economic sanctions, then the DAR is on its own.

127 – The Point Mugu Eight

The Dry Combat Submersible (DCS) was a mini-sub in the service of the US Navy and available for operations by Navy SEALs. There were only a handful in service during 2029 with one of them deployed from the Virginia-class boat USS Delaware when the submarine came close to the Pacific Coast and deployed the vessel. A pair of crewmembers and eight passengers were aboard. Two separate rendezvous were tabled in for a post-mission meet so that the Delaware could head back out into deep water while the mini-sub took the SEALs towards their target. Their delivery was perfect. The DCS took them the significant distance to land and to the correct spot. The SEALs departed, leaving their ‘taxi’ behind, and undertook Operation Fairytale. Eight of them, from a platoon with SEAL Team Four, an East Coast unit sent to the Pacific just like the Atlantic-assigned Delaware, used scuba gear to make the final approach to land and then came out of the water unobserved. Where they made it to shore was located between Malibu and Santa Barbara, to the northwest of Los Angeles. Naval Base Ventura County was where they headed to once out of the water, the portion of that DAR-controlled facility which was NAS Point Mugu. It took them some time to get there when they travelled by night when first ashore and couldn’t move in daylight. Their route was long and careful: the avoidance of eyes, human and those of drones, was the reason for the length of time it took to get them in-place. They went first to an observation point where the SEALs confirmed what the satellites were seeing. Point Mugu was home to a trio of secret stealth bombers hidden within camouflaged shelters. The DAR Air Force was flying its B-21A Raiders from Point Mugu’s runway while hiding the aircraft on the grounds of the California Air National Guard a-joining portion of the coastal military base. Only at night did those aircraft fly and they weren’t always housed in those shelters during the day – it was unknown to the US military where else they were also flying from when it wasn’t from Point Mugu – but the naval airfield on the coast was one of their temporary home bases after they had been seized from Edwards AFB ahead of the civil war starting.

When two of the B-21s flew out of their hidden base, everything happened very fast. The SEALs were impressed with how quickly the access points to the well-built shelters were opened and the bombers were rolling down the runway. It took only a few minutes. Away they went afterwards, off to drop bombs or launch missiles against United States targets within North America. Everything seemed to return to normal afterwards. Nothing outward gave the impression that Point Mugu was anything other that a military base being used rather sparingly by the DAR Air Force. Those bombers went straight out over the water rather than above land and near quiet descended upon the place from where they left the other bomber behind. That aircraft wasn’t seen directly by the SEALs but where it was hidden was. They knew it was in the metal frame and canvas-covered improvised structure just like the two others had been in theirs with all three placed next to base housing. Those dwellings were empty though and the SEALs had been told to expect that during their mission brief for Fairytale. The head of Task Force Dustland himself, a three-star general conducting the remote briefing for them when they were aboard the Delaware, had told them that and his information had been correct like it was on so much else with regards to what could be observed going on at Point Mugu. Respectfully, the SEAL commander had asked why they were being sent in and the task of doing what Fairytale called for wasn’t given to stealth bombers in US Air Force service or the US Navy launching dozens upon dozens of cruise missiles. There was plentiful intelligence and did it really need them on the ground? SEALs would go anyway and do anything – within reason anyway – for their country if called upon... yet there was a time and a place for their operations: doing the job that a stand-off strike could do was something tactfully questioned. The general told them that he wanted them to destroy those bombers as well as killing as many aircrews as possible with there being an assurance that those mission goals were met. An air strike or a missile attack couldn’t provide such guarantees. One of the other SEALs afterwards took his commander aside and informed him that he didn’t believe that. There had to be another reason why an attack from above wouldn’t be something that would work, something that they weren’t being told about.

The SEALs got ready to strike while the pair missing aircraft were off doing whatever they were doing. A trio of two-man detachments infiltrated Point Mugu leaving the last two SEALs outside in over-watch positions with long-range sniper rifles. There was security at Point Mugu in the form of DAR Marines. Those ‘jarheads’ weren’t real marines though as far as the SEALs were concerned. Instead, they were from that security battalion that had been at Bangor in Washington state guarding the nuclear stockpile there when it was taken over back in January. Without a fight, those there had rolled over and given up the mass of nukes. The unit had been broken up – why would anyone trust them to keep on guarding such weapons they’d readily given up? – with detachments spread across the West on guard duty all over the place. The SEALs who infiltrated Point Mugu knew that it was the battalion commander who gave in without a fight at Bangor rather than his marines but they still didn’t have much regard for those they easily evaded to get inside Point Mugu proper. Several exfil routes were selected and the plan of action to deal with any conceivable situation was followed. The SEALs then waited for the missing B-21s to return. That wait wasn’t that long. Everything sprung to life just ahead of the two inbound bombers and in they came one after the other. Once down, they taxied fast up the runway towards where their shelters were, at that corner of the base not used by the DAR Navy but supposedly only a transport unit of the California Air National Guard. The two empty shelters were opened up ready to receive them and get them out of sight. At the allotted time, when everything looked ready, the SEALs struck. They did just what they had been sent to Point Mugu to do. Using single shot, man-portable anti-armour projectiles in the form of AT4s (similar to an RPG) the two B-21s which had just landed where taken out. Those bombers had avoided missiles and stealth fighters while in the air yet on the ground they were blown up by cheap yet dependable low-tech weaponry. Billions of dollars worth of the very best aircraft ever built were so easily destroyed. The third bomber was no safer in its shelter. The SEALs smashed in there and threw a couple of satchel charges underneath it. Shouts of ‘fire in the hole!’ came before the third and last bomber was destroyed as well. The DAR Air Force no longer had a stealth bomber force capable of repeating anything like its recent attack to devastate the Pentagon.

Security marines were engaged with several of them setting off carefully-positioned anti-personnel mines before they managed to get into action. A stand-by accommodation facility for B-21 aircrews, where they rested right next to where their aircraft were so if called upon they could race to get into them, was attacked by two SEALs using their SAW light machine guns and throwing grenades into sleeping quarters. The aircraft which those aircrew flew were all destroyed but almost a dozen of them were killed without knowing what was really going on. Aided by the snipers doing their best from afar, out of Point Mugu went the six SEALs who had gone in. One SEAL had a serious wound to a hand after a bullet had gone clean through but that was the extend of their casualties. They’d taken out three priceless aircraft and killed dozens upon dozens of the enemy. The getaway was clean too. They made it out of Point Mugu and towards the rally point. When a DAR drone was getting ready to lift off and try to track them from above, it was taken out by a lone shot from distance before it could get off the ground. A fuel truck was also snipped at and the blast from its contents did wonders to aid the SEALs in their escape. They went back to the shoreline and into the water to meet the DCS and, ultimately, the Delaware too. Their mission would later become one of legend. Those eight SEALs at Point Mugu had pulled off a first-class operation and gotten away clean after doing so much strategic damage to their opponents. In later years, there would be a book and talk of a film too about the whole escapade.


There were other Navy SEALs active on the Pacific Coastline acting against the Democratic American Republic. More SEAL Team Four operators were sent to cause chaos around San Diego to keep drawing attention towards there. The multi-faced deception about a possible US landing there using paratroopers and marines out of Hawaii was continued. That came in many forms – ‘intercepted’ communications and naval manoeuvres mostly – though the SEALs there did their bit too. In addition, a whole platoon of SEAL Team Five remained up near Bangor. They had been in Alaska when the rest of their unit went over to the secessionists in the DAR and later made that jump into the Olympic Peninsula to keep watch upon the strategic missile submarine at anchor partially submerged within the outer reaches of the Puget Sound. That boat was the USS Nebraska as far as those SEALs were concerned though it had been renamed the DARNS Las Vegas by the DAR Navy. A full load of Trident missiles, each with multiple independently-targeted nuclear warheads, was aboard the Las Vegas. The SEALs were there to observe and prepare for action against the boat should the need arise. For several weeks, those watching the submarine reported-in that it was still where it was. The day that Point Mugu was struck at though, there was extensive activity which they were able to see. Minehunters were active and the boat prepared to set sail. With haste, an emergency message was sent out via a burst satellite transmission requesting permission to strike. The time window was short for them to act. They were told not to though. Instead, the SEALs there were to use other equipment that they had with them, the non-lethal kind, to guide an air strike reportedly coming in from a carrier. Those jets didn’t show up. No bombs nor mines fell from attacking aircraft. Out away from them, past un-primed weapons they’d laid, went the Las Vegas without the SEALs there knowing what had gone wrong. Those men and women up there in the Puget Sound missed the only opportunity that they had, one given to those down at Point Mugu to also eliminate such significant enemy weapons of war.

Minister for Defence & Security Eleanor Rawlings gave the order for the Las Vegas to set sail. The Council of Twelve signed off on that deployment to put her out in the open ocean, and risk an attack coming during that which could possibly turn the situation into a runaway nuclear war scenario as they had long feared, following the elimination of the B-21s. A major dispute had occurred during their deliberations, one where a lot of things long unsaid were spoken aloud. Personal animosity had been displayed by certain members towards others in scenes which Rawlings knew had been long in the making. She, as General Fuller did too, pushed and rushed the leadership to get that submarine to sea less it be disabled or destroyed while exposed. That had been going on for a long time and permission was only given after that attack at Point Mugu and then the argument among Council members. Other bad news had also come at the same time, something which had helped sway those unsure of the wisdom of the deployment that they really had no choice. Right after the stealth bombers were destroyed while on the ground, some of those US forces from Hawaii which a recognisable lie (in her opinion and that of Fuller too) had suggested were going after San Diego had instead struck on the other side of the Pacific. Guam had been the scene of the landings which went near unopposed. Guam and the Marinas was the eleventh DAR state to join their nation with that larger island being the key component. There were few DAR military forces there at that outpost in the Western Pacific but a submarine, the DARNS Hampton, was nearby off-shore along with a few aircraft on the ground and recently-raised Territorial Guard militia. The submarine was sunk and the militia had faced fully-trained, combat-blooded US Army paratroopers who’d conducted a landing. Rawlings was told that it wasn’t a parachute jump but rather an airmobile operation following Green Beret action to open an airhead. Regardless, Guam was at that time being overrun. Hawaii had been lost by the DAR with much of Colorado, most of New Mexico and growing portions of Arizona too falling to those supposedly ‘liberating’ the West.

Getting the Las Vegas to sea had to be done. The ‘options’ discussed about what those could mean over the matter of whether they should later decide to employ them had caused all that uproar among the leadership. Rawlings had just wanted the boat at sea. Options, the ones which came with the missiles aboard, were for later. Those Tridents were soon aboard the Las Vegas when it disappeared into the depths of the Eastern Pacific ready to be called upon if an option to ensure the independence of the West was to threaten to use them. No attack came upon the boat as it made its way out. There was protection on-hand for that from aircraft, ships and a friendly submarine. No knowledge within the DAR military high command was of those SEALs though they did detect a US Navy submarine which was chased off without either side managing to spill blood. Then there was the lack of action too from the USS Theodore Roosevelt. Northwards that carrier had sailed at speed after previous victories against the fledging DAR Navy much further south. The carrier had stayed far offshore when avoiding DAR air power out of California and Rawlings had feared (correctly, though she didn’t know that) that it was heading towards the Pacific North-West. The Las Vegas got to sea fast but not fast enough for a broadcast to have been made by that chased away US Navy submarine. Rawlings didn’t know why the Roosevelt didn’t launch an air strike. The carrier could have, should have Fuller had told her, but it didn’t. It took some time but later, when their ballistic missile submarine was at sea, were they told by the head of the Directorate of State Intelligence that that appeared to be a case of ‘Glow-worm Plus’ beginning to show itself.

That computer virus had meant that Point Mugu wasn’t bombed and why the Las Vegas while it was getting to sea wasn’t either. The United States was unable to use the very best of its military firepower where it was greatly needed.

Thank you.
Nukes, the use of or the threat, has been an option for the DAR since its UDI. That sub could have fired where it was and there are other weapons.
However, its president is a noted passivist and she doesn't want to fight a conventional war let alone a nuclear one. In DC they know that. The United States want to liberate the West and the DAR wants to keep its independence. Neither can be done with nukes being used and the leadership in each know that. Use on American soil is just what no one sensible wants to do.
What sailing that SSBN does though is gives the DAR 'options'. They believe they are being assassinated - two governors on the Council have died - and they are losing the war. A sub at sea could have any orders, those in DC will fear, and that will limit how far they can push things. It will make things dangerous now for the US to keep on doing what it is. Its movement too is part of a power play by those who - stupidly - don't think that using nukes could be the very worst thing. 

Glow-worm is like SkyNet. Holy shit. I guess some defense experts would have pointed out the U.S. could have used Glow-worm during the Taiwan conflict. Would have hurt the PLA even more.

129 – Quit

Excellent quality propaganda directed against citizens and soldiers of the Democratic American Republic was released late in February 2029 to try to bring about the collapse of that illegal country and its war effort from within. Funded specially by Congress and produced by the wartime-raised Public Information Agency (PIA), broadcasts of United States propaganda were sent towards those in the West. Multiple mediums were used to get the message to those who had found themselves within the DAR either by accident or design that the war was lost and that the cause which they were fighting for was the wrong one. It was white propaganda: its source was clear and the truth was told. Other government agencies were doing separate things, with both grey and black propaganda, respectively partial truths and outright lies, but what the PIA sent to the West was honest. That it might have been but it was hardly unbiased. The messages were designed to play on emotions and only told one side of things. Getting people to openly oppose the war and for those in uniform to quit was the desired outcome. There wasn’t any wish by those behind the propaganda for those on the receiving end to consider what was happening with the DAR was wrong yet might have some justification. Instead, it was a case of everything about that nation ruled from Las Vegas was morally wrong on every level and needed to be opposed from within.

The propaganda beamed towards those in the service of the DAR Armed Forces came over hi-jacked communications links as well as the odd ‘leafleting attack’ too. With the latter, a select few flights of US Air Force lone aircraft would bombard DAR service-personnel with paper rather than bombs: on more than a few occasions, troops in the field used such material for cleaning their behinds where there were shortages of the right paper for that yet they did often read what was printed first. In the main though, it was electronic communication that was used to reach DAR soldiers. Radio messages and internet pop-ups urged them to give up the cause for which they were fighting for. The messages were delivered often in the form of words coming from former fellow personnel who had defected back to the US Armed Forces. Colonel Guillermo Cuarón Cacho became a major part of that effort following the surrender of his unit in New Mexico. He was a well-presented and articulate California Army National Guard officer. Cuarón called upon those out West to do as he had done while explaining in detail as to why he had done what he had. In other broadcasts, there was quite the range of people involved in them. None of them were actors or were telling lies. Enlisted personnel, volunteer part-timers and senior officers all explained the mistakes they had made in believing that the DAR cause was the right one. Their eyes had been opened though and they urged the same to be done by their former comrades-in-arms. Quit the war, the messages kept on saying, either by yourself or with your units. Desertion was encouraged as well should defection not be something that those listening would want to do.

The basketball superstar Cleo Brady made appearances in propaganda directed towards citizens of the DAR. He was a point guard for the LA Lakers though hadn’t played for them – and their games had been cancelled too – since he had left Los Angeles back in January. Brady was the sport’s Most Valuable Player and a household name across both the United States and the DAR. Born in Connecticut, the young African-American had had a fantastic career before secessionist activity in the West angered him and he had gone back East. The previous year, he had been a high-profile campaign surrogate for Maria Arreola Rodriguez in her race for the presidency. Brady had long been an outspoken progressive and MAR and he had made many appearances together too when he wasn’t off speaking at events on her behalf. In the propaganda broadcasts he made, Brady assured those out in the West that he hadn’t turned his back on his political beliefs nor all of those people he had spent his career (and cash) supporting with his extensive charitable donations. What he was a supporter of too was democracy. The Democratic American Republic wasn’t a democracy: it had moved to become fascist, a complete betrayal of the people it claimed to represent. He wanted all of his fans, and those people who didn’t even like basketball either, to show their opposition to the regime in Las Vegas in any way possible. Liberate yourself, Brady urged them, even with small steps.

Using information supplied from the US Intelligence Community, all of it true too, there were PIA broadcasts directed at the people of the West which concerned Felix Jesus Carrillo Morales. Carrillo was no household name like Brady was. His face and biographical details were shown, and then there were allegations made against him. Those were of the businessman's illegal drug smuggling empire, the blackmail hold he had over Governor Pierce from California and how it had been Carrillo who had arranged for the death in federal custody on Shauna McCleary before the New Year. It was (briefly) explained that the criminal Carrillo had Pierce under his thumb and had murdered McCleary while she was then being held on federal charges so he could use the public outrage at that death for political and personal gain. Carrillo was said to be still smuggling drugs across the border, causing death and misery both sides of it with that activity. He was alleged to have manipulated public opinion and inflamed tensions by overseeing the death of McCleary – a mother of young children left as orphans too – so he could expand his business empire. The callousness of the man’s actions, and how he had wrapped Pierce around his little finger, was laid out in broadcasts directed at further DAR citizens in a different manner to what Brady’s ones did. More claims came that Carrillo’s private security company, the Vaqueros, had undertake terrorist actions in the West before independence was declared with those heinous murders being blamed on others to encourage the argument that the DAR needed founding. Carrillo had tricked so many with what he had done. Evidence to back up those allegations against Carrillo was presented as well. Californians, everyone in the West in fact, was asked to consider whether they wanted to support Pierce after he allowed all of this to happen and then helped to found a country using the circumstances of such infamy as those.


Far away from the West, the FBI made a string of arrests in Washington DC where a spy ring was broken up. Nine suspects ended up in detention in the first round of simultaneous arrests before another five were taken into custody in follow-up activities by agents within the capital district and the further afield into Maryland, New Jersey & Virginia. Three further suspects evaded immediate capture though significant effort was deployed into located them so they too could be brought into custody like the others. A couple of them confessed to their activities after being caught red-handed. Treason against the United States in wartime was a death penalty offence, though that ultimate outcome could be averted by cooperating with the federal government against co-conspirators. Those who weren’t willing to cooperate, or who were too late to the party to give up any useful information after a long period of refection, weren’t offered the same leniency as those willing to talk straight away. Those with in the spy ring were involved in gained secret intelligence of a political nature and supplying that to the DAR. Their targets were the FBI itself in addition to government departments & agencies such as the Departments of Energy and Transportation as well as FEMA and the Federal Communications Commission. One of them was involved in gathering intelligence upon the Senate Armed Services Committee too where the DAR had tried to get at top secret information from Congressional figures. The FBI had those confessions plus a whole load of further evidence of their activities. There was video surveillance of brush-passes, confirmation of electronic data theft and the surveillance of dead-drops where more information was also passed on from person-to-person. Getting the intelligence out to those on the other end had been done by those spying upon their own country and the FBI could prove how much of that had been done as well. Confidence was pretty high that that spy ring had been thoroughly smashed. There was a shut down of secret political intelligence coming out of DC to end up in the hands of those in Las Vegas, so said the FBI Director when he reported to President Mitchell and the National Security Council following the wave of arrests.

Taking down that pipeline of information back to Las Vegas was just one source for the DAR though. They had other networks, ones not so widespread as that one and thus likely to be broken open once exposed. Working inside the Defence Department – though not the Pentagon itself following the missile strike against it – and also the Department of Homeland Security where people betraying their country. The DAR had someone at the CIA and two more at the NSA as well. Unbeknown to him, the president himself was in regular contact with someone feeding intelligence back to the West in quite the personal betrayal. Those who spied against the United States and sought to aid its enemy did so for a whole variety of reasons. The ones which the FBI caught in their round up worked for the DAR either willingly or, in two of the cases, unwillingly: they were being forced to do so using blackmail. Politics was the motivation for most of them though money, a sense of self-righteousness and (in the case of one) a desire to see an end to the war no matter what. The same motivations were among those others which were still active and unknown about. There were a good number of people prepared to act against the United States while pretending loyalty so they could further the aims of those who had left the union and were fighting against it. They were unwilling to quit doing that unless either stopped or they witnessed the ultimate outcome which they wanted to see occur.

Good choices with those there: I like them.
Maybe too:
What if Governor Cook from Florida wasn't so damn determined to correct the mistake voters in her state made?
What if Walsh hadn't tried to defend Taiwan? What if Walsh had been removed in that cabinet coup days before his term of office was up?
What if the FBI & DEA knew about Carrillo, and the CIA didn't keep that secret for their own reasons?
What if Winter Storms Ulysses and Ted had hit the western half of America earlier?
There are likely loads more I could think of given time.

I agree. Independent propaganda efforts, even the crude and actually unhelpful kind, going West will be made in abundance.
The rest of the Democrats have disowned those out West. They called them Jacobeans, as well as traitors, to hopefully make voters forget the connection. The secession, civil war and wartime actions are seen as the worst disaster the Democrats have ever faced: some in their party are calling for a name change (the name survived ACW 1, Jim Crow and so much more but this is just too much).
The top-level of the party are acting as War Democrats and supporting the war to restore the union while shutting down noise from lower levels who argue that while the DAR is wrong, the Gov is still in the wrong too. No matter what Democrats in the East do, even if Senators & Congresspeople were on the frontlines with M-16s in their hands, Republicans and the right-wing media are still tearing them to pieces in unjust guilt by association. They can support the war all they want but still get criticised. Every legitimate concern expressed by a Democrat about how the war is going is met with howls of 'treason!'. The Republicans are having a field day.