When I own those trusted companies – and I already did own two – it meant that I could put my own people in place.
That was an ongoing process, however, and I needed to focus on my next moves.
Armor and Infantry were going to be the heavy hitters in the last portion of this campaign. North Africa, covered in desert and scrub, was an inhospitable place at best – and I knew my logistics were going to dictate the speed at which I would dominate the rest of the continent. Thankfully, I had nearly 1200 tanks at this point, another two thousand armored personnel carriers to carry nearly four thousand troops – that might seem like overkill, but bear in mind that some APCs were needed for logistics supply.
Aviation assets – mostly fixed-wing, rather than rotary or V/STOL – were going to handle resupply to the Forward Operating Bases we were going to set up to in turn resupply combat units.
We had a solid line of garrisoned troops – native South Africans, now just “Africans” – in place along that lateral border just to the south of the Sahara, and we expected they’d see some push as we were ran from west to east, pushing everything off the continent.
As we rolled east, units would break off at each of Gibraltar and Tunis, and then what was left would take Cairo and garrison there, while we trained up African troops to take over for us. We would own the continent fully at that point, and while I wasn’t a huge fan of the harsh reality of pure Democracy, it was far better than the anarchy or worse, warlord city-states that we’d already largely obliterated in most of the rest of the continent.
I wasn’t sitting this out for anything – I wasn’t about to hit the front lines, but I wanted to be there with my boys, as we rolled through the desert, forcing all to bow to the Rule of Law that we enforced.
Steve’s private jet finally landed us in Senegal, a mere 6 hours after we’d left Fayetteville – that was a hell of a lot easier than the reverse trip for me, and we discussed that more than once. I didn’t think I’d be making a trip like THAT ever again!
Once we landed in Senegal and I was firmly ensconced in the base there, I let Steve head back to CONUS – he did have a wife and kids to take care of, and I didn’t want to get in his way. I had work of my own to do, as well.
First order of business: I had Breshears, my own pet IT monster, had set up a room in the base executive officers’ quarters to function like a SCIF. Inside it were a series of Globalnet nodes that he configured, then reconfigured over time – so I made the “trip” from central Africa, deep inside the congo, back north and then carving west along the Saharan border. We controlled the nodes, so we were in a great position to ‘fake’ my proximity to each node, making it look like I’d been in the heart of the continent for the past year, presumably working on further scouring and cleansing of undesirables. We timed that carefully, and I “spent” a week until I was close to the Ivory Coast again, and then we made it look like I’d hopped a plane and zipped back to Senegal. I wasn’t thrilled about spending a week effectively confined to quarters, but at least I could open up my implant again and be “seen” – which meant I could take care of the paperwork that Steve had, unfortunately, just “missed” me when he was looking for me.
It painted a great picture, and as far as I knew, made my whereabouts look just as I’d wanted them to.
The next couple of months were spent planning and preparing for the final campaign. My generals congregated in the base in Dakar with me, in one of the Rest & Refit facilities that the military currently held, but which would become a popular resort once my Ninth Army left.
By the end of June, we were ready to roll out. We’d prepositioned a lot of gear in the forward operating bases, so that as we hit each pre-identified point, we would have refuel and rearm assets ready for us – and we could continue our roll. That wasn’t going to start until shortly into July though, as I wanted all of the troops to have a good meal, a bit of celebration for independence – not just our own, historically, but also what we were bringing to the continent-nation of Africa. They tied it on pretty good – I even partook, tossing back some shots with my troops. I kept a healthy distance – fraternization between ranks was still frowned upon, in my army – but made sure to put in an appearance so they knew I was there, that I was proud of them, and that I was going with them. I was not about to get a reputation as being a REMF – rear-echelon motherfucker – with my boys.
I gave them the rest of the week to sweat out the alcohol, and July 9th, we started our parade.
It had been years since I’d sat inside a tank, but I had my own armor and crew again for this, what I suspected would be my last great adventure. PFC Kohl was my driver, Corporal Lenoir was in the loader seat…
…And my old friend Sergeant Major Pangan was assigned as the gunner.
“Pangan, how the fuck did you get assigned as my gunner? I know Kohl and Branson are armor, but you came up Infantry.”
“Yes sir I did, but you aren’t the only person who hit up two branches in basic training.” He winked me and I laughed back at him. “Don’t go giving Kohl or Lenoir any ideas, Pangan, I don’t think they could handle as much man as you are.”
Kohl was a newly minted private, fresh out of Armor AIT, and had been assigned to me as a way of keeping an eye on him – all of our new soldiers were. Lenoir had been a Private when he finished Armor AIT and came here – and had pulled his own weight to at least an acceptable degree in the units who’d helped the east cost of the continent during the second portion of the campaign, after General Kennedy got himself removed from the gene pool.
We had our gear in panniers on the outside of the tank towards the rear – there just wasn’t space inside. I used to think that was crazy, but it made sense after AIT. The panniers were at the back (on both sides and behind), so the only way your ‘stuff’ was at any real risk was if you weren’t facing the enemy. None of that mattered though, since we weren’t on a tour, we were on mission.
I’m not going to bore you with the details of the long, boring, endless sweeps we ran across the desert. The tanks had great suspension so it was an easy ride, and in the second wave, we were far enough behind the first wave that we didn’t expect to get any of the sand they kicked up in our faces.
We didn’t make it a straight run; we didn’t have the equipment or the people, despite being the single largest army on the planet at the time. Do the math – the Sahara of North Africa was a thousand miles wide, and three thousand miles long. We had 1200 tanks – that means if we swept from one side of the continent to the other, we’d still have a mile (give or take) in between tanks. That just wasn’t a viable option; it left us too spread out. Instead, we used aerial sweeps for the next hundred miles or so to see who was where – and we descended on those areas with less than a hundred yards between each of the tanks in formation. The first echelon of tanks overran each position, and any sign of threat resulted in a rapid encirclement and obliteration with tank commander guns, operated remotely.
That worked great for our drive from Senegal, up to the straits of Gibraltar; we left several hundred tanks and APC with troops there to garrison, and then raced to Tunis to do the same thing. In both cases, it was a pretty quick run with very little combat.
By the time we had swept back and forth between the northern and southern edges of the Sahara several times, addressing each encirclement of potential hostiles, the boys were getting bored – there had been very little action. That all changed when we got to Egypt; this was the holdout for refugees fleeing the nuclear war from decades past, in Pakistan and India.
I’d carved off a little over a third of my force in Gibraltar, and a little less than a quarter (of the total, not the remaining) in Tunis, but Egypt – Cairo, specifically – was going to be a real pain in the ass. Djibouti, further southeast, had already been garrisoned to control any encroachment from Yemen across the Red Sea – but that was still a bit less than twenty mile distance to cross, most of it over water. Gibraltar was nearly as bad, with a simple ten
mile water crossing for the Europeans to come across from Spain.
Cairo was a different story, however. Europe was just around the corner – Turkey was fully a part of Europe now, with only Syria, and the State of Israel (which included Jordan) to cross before they were at Africa’s doorstep. Saudi Arabia had tried to play both sides of the global conflict, but eventually sided with China, since they were a lot closer than the US was – and they had remained a solid ally of China ever since. This was, coincidentally, where the majority of the incursions into my area of operations had come from – from Saudi Arabia into Africa, through Cairo – or, through Djibouti.
Djibouti had already been closed down as a passageway for Chinese troops, but Cairo was still a looming hole. I had perhaps 300 tanks, and about 2500 troops available to me to plug that hole with, and I felt the best way to handle it was going to be to arc back south, down to where the Nile branched out from the core river, slightly into what used to be Sudan. We split the force in two, there, and took half around to the eastern side of the Nile, patrolling up north back towards Cairo. The spread was pretty wide, and we tried to hit every major Wadi on the way towards Cairo, spot checking for any significant weapons presence, and any sign of uniformed combatants. There was… eerily… none.
That all changed when we got to the outskirts of Cairo.
As we hit the outskirts, a somewhat unified force again, we found ourselves up against Chinese armor, emplaced troops, and fortifications. This was not what I had in mind, and while I wasn’t surprised, I wasn’t happy about it either.
We rolled up short of engagement range, and started deploying drones. I’m sure the Chinese had something similar, but I didn’t believe they had quite as good of a technological base as we did. The smaller autonomous drones we could send in as mice, birds, and even insects – to patrol the areas we couldn’t, because of enemy presence. A week of that, and of course a few warning shots from that Chinese armor, everyone was a little on edge. I passed the order that we were going to hole up and wait while artillery could be brought in. Why fight, when I can stand off and fuck these guys up, without risking my men?
Within a week, I had artillery in place, and doing constant bombardment of the established positions that our drones had reported back. That was no small feat; it was two hundred plus square miles. It actually wasn’t one city – it was actually a dozen or so smaller ones, in close enough proximity to give a lot of American cities a run for their money when it came to “World’s largest cities.” I was, per orders, trying to avoid un-necessary damage; this was one of the world’s oldest cities and I didn’t want some social justice asshole trying to climb up my tailpipe over “needless destruction”.
There was just too much space for us to easily clear; we spent most of the rest of the year going neighborhood by neighborhood, house by house. Sometimes, we had to go back and re-visit neighborhoods we thought we’d already cleared, since we had other insurgents sneaking past our patrols to set up behind what we had considered the forward line.
Yes, you read that right. We still had artillery bombardment going on while we were clearing the city. That might seem counterintuitive, but our munitions were fairly precise, and short of a major malfunction, an artillery round was going to land pretty damn close to where it was intended to – and my doorkickers weren’t about to push too close to established fortifications.
By Christmas – comically, close to the center of that holiday’s source in Israel – we were down to just a few solid Chinese positions in the Delta portion of the Nile River.
At that point, we were operating mostly dismounted, with units down to the platoon level patrolling on foot. It was probably stupid, but I was out there with my troops as well, not kicking doors, but certainly in the stick that piled in after someone else dropped the door. I still had Pangan, Lenoir, and Kohl with me – we were operating as a squad, within a full infantry platoon.
Things started going sideways when we started taking fire not just from some Chinese troops holed up in the hospital we were trying to clear, but also from some hidden mortars those fuckers had set up on the roof of a school down the road. We left the building in a hurry, not wanting to get trapped inside, but when we got out, the Chinese had decided to make one last breakout push. Just like that, I found myself in a pitched battle for the second time in my life, without superior firepower, and far more targets than I could service on my own.
I could feel the heat of my rifle’s barrel through my gloves, and decided I had to give it a rest for a moment – Pangan was next to me, and Lenoir was on the other side, Kohl on the far side of him. We were, all things considered, doing fairly well.
Then Kohl lost it.
I’m not quite sure what it was… he hadn’t been hit, all four of us were grouped somewhat closely together and watching out ahead of us and on our sides, working to find the platoon we were deployed with so we could link up – but they weren’t readily visible.
“Sir, We should maybe consider advancing towards the rear – at least until we can find a clear visual of the rest of our platoon.” Pangan was pretty cool and collected. All four of us were in a row, facing away from the action, leaning back against a large pile of rubble that used to be the side of a building before the Chinese Mortars made a mess of it.
Lenoir seemed a little shaken, but Kohl, Kohl was already looking like a problem to me. Looking at him, I told him, “Son, keep your head down, just breath. We’re fine where we are – short of an overwhelming force, we’re okay.” I was already using my implant to determine where the rest of our platoon was – not in reach, visually, but I could ‘see’ them on the map I had in my head. We were actually at the bottom of a “V”, with the platoon spread ahead and to either side. Most of the fire we were taking was actually fairly calm.
“No sir, we aren’t fine, we’re surrounded! OH my god, we’re gonna die, I never wanted to die, my mom is gonna be so pissed if I get killed!” His hysterics, if we hadn’t been in a warzone, would actually have been funny. I glanced over at Pangan who just rolled his eyes.
“PRIVATE KOHL!” I had to yell at him to get his attention. “You will unfuck yourself right goddamn now! Look at a tactical map; we have nothing to worry about.”
Instead, that stupid kid stood up and started running. “KOHL, GET YOUR ASS BACK HERE RIGHT GODDAMN NOW!”
I could hear him screaming, “no fucking way!” but I knew he was running towards another several units of mine that were coming up.
Goddammit.
I raised my rifle and put a round through his neck as he ran, dropping him like a sack of wet clothes.
“Now, let’s quit fucking around and get this show on the road. I have a continent to finish pacifying.” Pangan had raised one eyebrow at me, and Lenoir had a wild look in his eye. “Lenoir, can it. That was pusillanimous conduct in the face of the enemy, and that stupid kid wasn’t just running away, he was disobeying a direct order to stand down. Cowardice is ugly, and it needs to be stomped on immediately. Now, YOU unfuck yourself; tell me what you see in the tactical map.”
He was stuttering and shaking, but it was obvious he understood that we weren’t in any significant danger – and in fact, I could see reinforcement troops running towards us already. When you stopped to listen? You couldn’t even hear any gunfire in our immediate vicinity.
By late January of 2126, the last holdouts were gone, and I put the Ninth Army into garrison mode.
Chapter 39: Do as I Say, Not as I Do.
I’d returned to my R&R base in Dakar. It was time for calls to unit commanders commending them for their troops’ service, calls to Az (who had delayed elections because the continent was not yet unified), and most importantly, calls back to the US to speak with my boss, Commander Neuman. There was a lot of work still to be done; we’d driven the invaders out of the country, and now I had to play nice for my boss’ sake – to keep him from suspecting what I was really doing – and had to get with Az to start working towards the transition of p
ower so the ninth army could return home.
A number of troops had been injured when we were taking Cairo, and they needed replacement – I wasn’t authorized to return home yet, and, I needed to continue operations in the event that the Ninth would stay here – or, that another unit would replace it.
We spent nearly all of 2126 and into 2127 working on training African troops to a minimum standard, getting them “dialed in” to how we did things… and getting the more senior of them to understand that there was a bigger picture still at stake here.
Training was underway across the entire country, and we saw a lot of relocation of troops. That was by design; Az had gotten himself elected – again - and was working to consolidate that power and show Africa as a country in its own right. The status of the country was something of an open secret; everyone in Africa was pushing the attitude of, “President Balewa is ruling our country, and the Americans are here to help and will then leave.” The story being promoted back home was similar – but the ruling class were of the opinion that whatever they dictated to Az, he’d do.
Rage & Fury Page 39
