Rage & Fury

by Darryl Hadfield

  Now, let me be clear about this – we weren’t smuggling. We just made the connection between a group who had access to raw materials in South Africa, and a group back home in the United States who happened to want to purchase those raw materials. The government – ostensibly, us – had already seen what was going on, so we didn’t feel it was necessary to encourage other government agencies to intrude on private commerce. That idea would have shocked several others, but we did it on the up-and-up. Mostly. Okay, sometimes. Alright, not at all. We used military aircraft with sealed containers to get it back home and then handed off to other…. Let’s just call them ‘friends’ of ours, who in turn made those materials available to people who were willing to pay outrageously for them. We didn’t touch anything that the powers-that-be were interested in (i.e. Uranium and Diamonds) but a lot of other stuff, like Palladium, Platinum, Gold, Silver, etc… were heavily regulated back home. Since those metals came mostly from here – but weren’t of significant interest to the government – we took advantage of that. The villagers made a lot more money selling to us, which we then sold at home without oversight, and we ended up getting filthy stinking rich.

  But James, how is that possible? Everything was so tightly regulated!

  Ah, dear reader, when you have friends who have… let’s just say less-savory friends who want those things for.. other purposes? They’ll pay. The coffee, hilariously, actually made more for us than what anything else did – although that was of course mostly due to there being more of it than anything else, coupled with the fact that what few people still lived in Africa were more interested in staying above ground, than risking the silica dust present in most of the mines where the heavier metals and diamonds came from.

  Everywhere we’d went, “The Jew” was thanked by damn near everyone. South Africa not so much, but that was because we were watching the heavier commerce there, watching the Chinese “protect” (read: extort and threaten) companies to sell only to them, and not to the United States.

  We slowly started a guerilla campaign against the Chinese infiltrators, as we fed data on unit strengths, deployment patterns, engagement, who they were dealing with, etc… all back to the commanders, state-side.

  A few months into this process, we started running out of what we’d brought with us, and what we could legitimately scrounge, steal, or in most cases, buy – especially ammo. At the same time, we’d all trained with the M26 (hah! I’d probably used one a lot more than any of these guys had!), so we’d been carrying around spare rifles as we collected them, enough for a 1:1 swap or close to it – and keeping the older brass-cased 300 Blackout ammo that was so ubiquitous for them, as we took it from Warlords and their soldiers who no longer needed it.

  By June of 2117, things were ready to start kicking off, and I received the warning order for my troops to shelter in place, along with recognition signals that meant the incoming American troops wouldn’t try to kill us.

  It was relatively easy; the hard part was not letting that shit-for-brains Lieutenant General Kennedy use my troops however he wanted. He was the in-theater commander, appointed directly by THE Commander rather than the usual committee vote of the Generals, one of each appointed by The Commander to run each of the eight commands (Infantry, SF, Artillery, Armor, Aviation, NavOps, Intelligence, and Logistics).

  He’d been a Logistics commander, and posted to nearly all logistics roles throughout the duration of his military career. That’s all well and good – an army runs on beans, bullets, and other stuff that you need someone to understanding how much to get to you, where, and how to do so quickly and efficiently.

  That said, there’s also a big difference between feeding and fighting – and this guy had little to no comprehension of the latter other than what he’d learned in Basic Training, god knows how long ago. I suppose I shouldn’t criticize, but even at the ripe old age of 47, he was older than I was – which meant Basic Training was longer ago for him than for me, and I’d been in combat operations long before I’d gotten in the army – and had been in more combat operations, many times since then.

  I’d built a nice tidy little power base in Africa – nothing so pervasive as a country dedicated to doing what I dictated, but at the same time, I’d provided a lot more support to these people than their warlords had, I’d provided a lot more protection than the Chinese had, and I’d sure as hell provided a lot more opportunity than the US would.

  As Kennedy rolled around the country in a tank (that, I hasten to note, was far, FAR behind enemy lines where his head would have been blown clean off of his shoulders, perched in the tank commander’s seat with the top open!), getting his photo taken, JTF6 used the opportunity to resupply with USCA gear so we could drop the older M26’s. Things had been a little touch and go for a while, and the M26 rifles that had been “donated” to various nations on this continent, while effective, were not a weapon we wanted to use if we had better available to us.

  Our op tempo slowed, as the US Military had shifted into a formal offensive, away from covert / direct action. This was okay by me; it gave us all a chance to put a bit more effort into our… resupply.

  We were at a point where the funds that were being acquired through legitimate (well, I was the commander and signing off on it, so yeah, legitimate-ish) means were starting to get to be a bit much even for us to handle. I actually ended up sending a note to McDirk, telling him he needed to set up a shell corporation called…. I still laugh when I think about this.. Java Time Forever. The caffeine content meant we actually had to put warnings on it – more than a cup of this stuff a day and you could actually cause some damage! The current members of JTF6 were all listed as shareholders, but it really was nothing more than a shell corporation with a couple of office clerks who handled the shipments and payment disbursal – McDirk handled all of the tax issues, and made sure that each of the guys in the teams were taken care of.

  Things started getting more than a little weird towards the end of the year; I had again managed to keep all of my soldiers intact and combat effective – but that weasel, Kennedy, had managed to lose an entire division of armor, half a division of Infantry, and was getting his air support slaughtered by the squadron. The last straw had come when he figured the best strategy was to go out there and show the guys how it was done – and promptly came back in a bag.

  28 NOV 2117

  In Re:Major General James Wolf

  S/N 20690401142857

  You are hereby promoted from O7 to O8.

  You are ordered to assume command of all in-theater US Forces.

  You will retain command of Army Special Operations Joint Task Force 6.

  You will drive out or eliminate all enemy forces from the continent, organized or otherwise.

  Your return CONUS is not authorized until order is restored to the continent of Africa, and power is consolidated under the recognized government of South Africa.

  //signed//

  Commander Alfred Neuman

  US Consolidated Army

  Um. Holy shit. 48 years old and now I have command of the entire US Forces within the entire theater of combat – the Ninth Army – not to mention, I got a hardcopy order delivered by a courier that had the Commander’s signature on it. That… was not common.

  So what did I have? Three infantry divisions (well, two and a half now, after that asshole Kennedy got half of one killed), two Armor divisions (okay, one, dickhead also lost an entire division of tanks!), an Artillery division, an Aviation division, and a Logistics division. That… was a lot of troops. Factoring them as riflemen helped me to keep it straight in my own head. 4600 Infantrymen, 500 or so tanks, 600 artillery guns (with a third of them mobile), I couldn’t even wrap my head around the aircraft mix, and the logistics division was twice as big as any other division thanks to the myriad of roles that they fit into.

  In the end, I had about eight thousand troops. That might not sound like much, but when you figure barely over half of them were trigger-pullers, and t
he rest were force multipliers of various types, that was a huge difference.

  I had replacement troops coming in as well – so that when I had full strength, I was over 10,000 troops strong, with two thirds being in-your-face combat troops.

  I could do this.

  I could do more than this. I could do a lot more that this – but I need to be careful; I don’t know the political leanings of these commanders, and I can’t afford to have it all yanked out from under me. I think it’s time to do some additional planning – and my JTF6 guys are precisely the ones I want in on this with me.

  I didn’t have any secure facilities, but I did have the option to spend some dedicated time with my former – no, scratch that, with my other unit, in order to keep them effective and focused on the mission. I could legitimately claim that the discussion needed to be away from prying ears, as well.

  The plan was simple: I was going to use JTF6 troops as liaisons to the various (much) smaller groups around the country. My army unit commanders would be under strict instruction to run their operations in accordance with the guidance that my operators would give them, or advise them on. Doing this meant I could keep a realistic level of command over all activities, while not having to micro-manage the whole thing.

  There was only one snag.

  “Breshears, How far into IT and intel have you gotten? If we’re going to make this thing work, we’re going to need a fairly high degree of C3 (Command, Control and Coordination) that we don’t have leaks coming out of theater, to civilian command.”

  “It’s locked down, sir. I’m already set with the in-country Intelligence group commander, and he’s one of us. He says he’s got the ability to oversee any communications into or out of the theater, which gives us an effective lockdown over anything that might otherwise leak – well, almost anything, and anything else that leaks is going to be a personal problem...” His slow southern drawl out of a straight face made it hard to tell if he was joking about it all, or making another sexual innuendo for which he’d gotten popular.

  This put us in a position to do something that to my knowledge, had never happened in the course of human history: Full takeover – of not just a foreign nation, but an entire continent.

  “Good work, keep that up. Next, logistics….”

  I figured that if things came to a head, I wanted to be able to support ongoing operations for at least six months, without any resupply from home. That meant we had to ramp up logistics fulfillment immediately, but not so fast that we raised any suspicions.

  I figured since I had his direct attention, I might as well make use of any leeway he’d give me.

  15 DEC 2117

  In Re: African Theater Operations Support

  Sir,

  I require additional support to complete this mission as ordered.

  Additional troop strength to fulfill the full Table of Organization and Equipment (“TOE”) for this theater of combat, not to exceed current identified allocation.

  Logistical support to include: No less than six months of supply for ordered mission strength, to include at minimum: Munitions for Armor complement

  Munitions for Aviation complement.

  Munitions for Infantry complement

  Munitions for Artillery complement

  Appropriate fuels and consumables for mechanized elements of all complements

  Fifty Percent Spares of primary equipment for Armor, Aviation, and Artillery complement.

  No less than one year of supply for ordered mission strength, to include at minimum: Medical supplies and equipment for all elements of all Army complements

  Consumables for all elements of all Army Complements

  Specific orders to each element commander that identify and place referenced commanders unconditionally subordinate to LGen James Wolf as the in-theater commander.

  //signed//

  Lieutenant General James Wolf

  African Theater Commander

  I didn’t expect to get all of it – and I didn’t.

  What I did get, however, surprised me.

  18 DEC 2117

  In Re: African Theater Operations Support

  Troop Strength request granted. Contact USCA Logistics to request for Infantry, Armored, Artillery, and Aviation assets; consent provided to that command under separate cover.

  Logistics supply request partially granted. Contact USCA Logistics to request Munitions, Fuel, Spares, and other consumables; consent provided to that command under separate cover. Current strength dictates a ready reserve must be maintained; Your spares will be limited to only 25% of in-theater assigned strength in order to assure homeland security concurrent to overseas operations.

  Current available stocks and lead times are not available to the quantity you have requested without sacrifice to homeland security; you will be provided a 3 month supply of munitions and fuels, in addition to two industrial-grade prototype Molecular Compilators and necessary support staff. Details under separate cover.

  All other requests granted as requested.

  Clarification of TOE and subordination granted. Orders issued under separate cover.

  You are brevetted to O9 for the duration of this conflict.

  Per prior orders, your return CONUS is not authorized until order is restored to the continent of Africa. You are hereby also ordered to liaise with the recognized government of South Africa for furtherance of their assumption of control of the continent, once your pacification efforts are complete.

  //signed//

  Commander Alfred Neuman

  US Consolidated Army

  I didn’t get everything I asked for – but only because resources were apparently stretched so thin that giving me all of what I asked for would have compromised national border security at home.

  That was okay, though. The molecular compilators were indeed prototypes; I’d heard of these being in use in some of the larger arkscrapers – you dump in whatever, and out comes, magically, what you tell it to make. With that in place, as long as I had them running, I had an effectively unlimited supply of what I needed. A little checking uncovered that there were only several dozen in the entire United States – and only four that were ‘military industrial grade’ – which is to say, they would literally make whatever you want – unlike the civilian models that had some key restrictions built into them to prevent unauthorized fabrication of weapons or components.

  The last two bits were a big surprise, however. The brevet to O9, General, meant that there was literally only one person in the world I had to take orders from – Commander Neuman. He was a bit of a clown, and frankly, I suspected he was only in that role because the civilian power thought they could control and manipulate him easily.

  I was okay with that – because I wasn’t someone who could be controlled or easily manipulated.

  Being the sole liaison with the South African government was the only piece I hadn’t been sure about – and now that I had formal recognition in that area, I could make the last few connections to really make this place into something that people would want to be in.

  They’d just given me the continent on a silver platter.

  Chapter 35: Homecoming, No parade.

  Those Molecular Compilators… damn. With those things available to me, especially in “military industrial” mode, there was literally nothing I couldn’t fabricate.

  So? We did. I’d taken all forces to a ‘shelter in place’ stance – everyone was garrisoned and defending what they had, but not actively pursuing insurgents, the Chinese, or the European combatants that had started filtering down in small groups.

  The reasoning behind that was that they’d been scattered (and I don’t mean just geographically) thanks to General Kennedy’s efforts to subdue the continent. Many of the units were down to unacceptable levels of supply (I wasn’t making it up when I said I needed supplies, and ASAP). In order to correct that, I wanted them in known, secured locations (sometimes of their own manufacture), so that I could get them
provisioned and equipped the way they needed to be to fight a war successfully.

  It took us a little over three months, but we *did* get everyone fully provisioned, refitted, and ready to fight – and then we started a methodical approach to pushing out anyone who didn’t belong.

  That was easier, down in South Africa, where they already had an existing military, and we could bolster their efforts, push in areas where they didn’t have the capabilities we had, or sometimes, step back and simply backstop them while they did bad things to bad people.

  That third point is what I wanted in place, before I met with President Azizi Balewa. “Az” for short, he was a tall, thin man who had been elected through a democratic process the prior year, but who’d gotten a less than pleasant reputation of being little more than a pawn of the United States, despite the fact that we were their major trading partner far more than any other single country. His face easily smiled, showing bright white teeth in contrast to his dark mahogany skin.