Uprising. Douglas L. Bland
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Ian. The MP commander was called into his office about 0330 after his people couldn’t raise this MP, Corporal Joan Newman. The desk sergeant already spent about two hours pissing around trying to find the car – figured it was broken down somewhere, had another car retrace the route she was on, the usual. They found nothing. Checked the guard house; she never left the base. And she’s not shacked up for a quickie with her boyfriend – checked that too. Then the sergeant called his CO, who went over the same searches again with more people. Still nothing. So he called me. We’re still looking. That’s all we have.”
“What do you know about the MP?”
“Good record, smart and reliable – this is way out of character.”
“So what are we dealing with? Has she gone over the hill or had an accident, or is this some criminal act? What?”
Neal bit his tongue. He’d just said they didn’t know what was happening. “Don’t know, Ian. But shit, who’d take off with a police officer?”
“Has the media caught wind of this?”
“Not so far,” Neal responded, refraining from pointing out that as it was 6:15 a.m., the only journalists out of bed were radio drive-in-show people too busy catching up on the morning papers to notice if the building they were in was on fire. “But the search has started the rumour mill and they probably will in short order.”
“Yeah, okay. Keep me posted. I have to give this to the boss ASAP and then to morning prayers. The base commander can expect a call from the DCDS in thirty minutes. You guys are top of the hit parade again. Good luck, Bob.”
Dobson put down the phone and called to Noble, “Keep on top of this; make copies of the SIR for the usual list of people but don’t send it out until I speak with the general. Call the provost marshal and ask her to be at prayers – give her the bare facts. We need a complete description of the MP detachment up there and this Newman person’s file. Now!”
Turning to the Canada Command desk officer, Ian warned her, “Cindy, get ready for an overlap in shifts for a few hours until this thing is cleared up and put away.” As he turned back to his report, he thought, not for the first time, that if the military wanted you to have a family life they would probably have issued you one … an all-purpose, completely flexible one.
Monday, August 30, 0625 hours
On the Ottawa River, five kilometres south of Fort William, PQ
Alex Gabriel’s flotilla touched down on the Quebec shore across from Petawawa. An assortment of trucks and pickups rolled down along a trail through the bush off Chemin Fort William to take on the precious cargo. A tall, sour-looking man walked towards Alex, and, pulling him aside, glanced over the packs, boxes, and weapons crates.
“What did you get?” he asked sharply.
“Much as we planned. We found the stores as described, carried away what we could and got out. We had a run-in with an MP, but she did no harm.”
“Did you shoot her?”
“Of course not! What’s the matter with you? We don’t go around shooting people out of hand.” Alex’s instant dislike for the guy grew legs. He turned to walk away. “I’ll count the stuff off the beach once I’ve seen to my people.”
“Nope. You leave that to me. My guys will take the loads from here on and we’ve got plans for the team.”
“I thought we were going to use this stuff locally. Why the changes? And what plans for my team?”
“Best you remember not to ask such questions. I’ll have your second-in-command get your people into those two trucks there, and you get in the van here. Someone wants to see you elsewhere.”
“What’s happening to the team?”
“I told you not to ask about things that aren’t your business. Anyway, they’ll be taken to a camp somewhere to eat and sleep, then we’re going to prepare them for something else. We can’t just let them go wandering around town. They’ll get drunk or start fighting or bragging to who knows who about the whole exercise. The Mounties will be out in force soon enough without us spreading the word.”
The late summer sun broke over the eastern hills, sending long shadows across the beach as strangers jumped from the trucks and grabbed the cargo, roughly pushing Alex’s warriors to the side. He took one step to intervene, but the tall man grabbed his shoulder and pulled him towards a van parked near the road. Reflexively, Alex seized his arm and started a palm-strike but checked himself. For a moment they stood frozen, glaring at one another, then from the corner of his eye Alex saw Christmas step between the strangers and the team and start coaxing the warriors into the trucks. Christmas turned, flashed Alex a thumbs up, then jumped in the lead truck and slammed the door. Alex released the tall man’s arm and started toward the van. The last he saw of his little team’s effort was their boats being loaded into trucks and driven off the beach eastward towards the village of Sheenboro.
Monday, August 30, 0730 hours
Ottawa: NDHQ, Thirteenth Floor, Conference Room B
The room was arranged as usual for morning prayers. Name cards ranked in a never-changing order sat with parade-ground precision down each side of the long, dark, rectangular table. This odd habit always amused Ian – these people know each other, he thought. But the staff was simply doing what the staff had always done. A pad of paper and two sharpened pencils sat ready for each principal, although these pads were never used. No one took notes so access-to-information prowlers couldn’t demand them.
Ian tapped his few pages of notes into order on the lectern at the front of the room as he looked down the table towards the chairs at the opposite end set aside for the chief of the defence staff – the CDS – and beside him, the deputy minister, the public service head of the Department of National Defence. Senior officers and officials moved into the room, dropping their own note pads at their usual places along the sides of the wide table. The room felt crowded, though it was actually less full than usual. It had been cleared of the hangers-on, the aides and staff officers who normally sat on the side walls, stationed and ready to provide their bosses with the details of any issue. In private, they called themselves ventriloquists. Ian was not the only one who wondered why they were not at the table with the generals and civilian officials.
Today, tension filled the room. People gathered in small factions, immersed in separate, tense conversations, and the absence of the customary banal chatter made the space feel cramped and airless. Ian shuffled his papers again, checked the slides and his boss’s short briefing notes, which sat on the simple podium. As he glanced up, the DCDS was gesturing earnestly to Vice Admiral Marie Roy, the vice chief of the defence staff.
The CDS was late. That, Ian reflected, was rare, and meant bad news.
A few minutes later, General Andrew “Andy” Bishop marched through the door with Deputy Defence Minister Stephen Pope and, unexpectedly, the minister of defence himself, James Riley, Member of Parliament for Winnipeg South. General Bishop motioned the minister into his own chair while a staff officer hurriedly brought another to the head of the table for the CDS as the attendees quickly took their places.
The CDS sat down, looked at the DCDS, and commanded immediately, “Let’s hear it.” His sharp tone brought all eyes to Carl Gervais as he stepped up to the podium.
“Minister, General Bishop, I’ll begin with a television clip which we recorded an hour ago. Then I’ll provide a brief situation report on last night’s incidents. Colonel Dobson will provide greater detail on the intelligence background, and then the CDS will give us his thoughts on future operations.” He looked down at his script while the staff in the next room clicked on the television monitor.
“This clip,” Gervais continued, “was recorded at 0700 hours from the First Nations’ Television Network. We do not know whether FNT was complicit in this broadcast or whether they were taken over electronically for the period by the so-called Native People’s Army, but we suspect the latter.”
Riley