The Last Centurion

by John Ringo

  The point being, this was not a normal deployment. Hell, women cooking and washing and providing "aid and comfort" weren't a normal deployment. I cannot for the life of me recall where I heard the line. Something about "and the last centurion took a barbarian wife . . ."

  That was us as far as we could tell.

  I didn't want to start up a local dynasty. But if I did start one, I wasn't going to let all this ammo and gear fall into the hands of my enemies. And it was way more than I could ever use.

  And if we did what I figured was most likely, the bug-out boogie to Israel, I wasn't going to leave it to the RIFs. Surely there was an adult in my chain of command who could get that logic.

  The problem being, the next guy in my chain of command was the battalion commander.

  Chain of command is holy writ in the Army. You do not violate the chain of command.

  But I was getting dick all from the BC. I violated the chain of command.

  We had commo information for higher command levels. Hell, this thing had a commo link to the National Military Command Center but I wasn't going to call NMCC. I called the Brigade S-3.

  Yo, Bandit, wassup? (He'd been a company commander in a sister battalion when I was a lieutenant. He could call me Bandit, too.)

  What the fuck? No medevac. No deadline for "replacement"? What the fuck?

  No medevac?

  Appendicitis, we thought. Got over it. No evac.

  Fuck. Bad shit here.

  Bad shit everywhere. Refugees. Attacks. Replacement?

  No fucking idea.

  Plan if we get hit bad? Bombers? Nukes?

  No fucking idea. Battalion?

  ()

  Okay, point. Plan?

  Blow and run.

  ()

  Go-To-Hell-Plan. Replacement. Reinforcement. Redeployment. What The Fuck Ever. None? Blow and run.

  Battalion? Told?

  (Video link. Stand up and wave hands around ass.)

  Okay, point. Send memo. Chain of command.

  (Stand up . . . )

  Situation? Seriously.

  Official or unofficial.

  Official then unofficial.

  Official: Nominal. Security Threats. Action plan. Insufficient force. Unofficial: If we knew when we were going home and weren't worrying about getting overrun, not bad. Nepos and local civilian personnel left behind. Gets weird.

  Try Savannah. Voodoo doctors. Send memo. Stay frosty.

  Fuck you.

  Sent the memo. I attached my full "action plan" in the event of "action by superior enemy force." Which amounted to "kill as many as we can, blow the place the fuck up and run like hell."

  Rigging the place had required a detailed destruction plan. I attached it.

  Got a call two weeks later from the brigade commander.

  "Bandit, Colonel Collins."

  "Yes, sir."

  Shit bad here. Unofficial: You're fucked.

  How fucked?

  "There are no forces capable of evacuating your unit closer than Japan. And they're not going to be redeployed to pick up a straggler company of infantry. The shit everywhere is just too screwed up. There's a MEU (Marine Expeditionary Unit: Brigade of marines and ships) in the Med but they're tasked out. The official line continues to be that all stored material is to be "maintained and secured." Think you're bad off? We left a damned unit of SF in Colombia. They've dropped completely off the net; no clue what happened to them. Unofficially, and I'm told from a very high level, in the event you are hit by forces you cannot resist, blow it the fuck up and run. But you'd better be able to justify it pretty well. And even then, I can't guarantee that you won't end up in Leavenworth even if you do make it back to the States."

  "Yes, sir. Can I get an official order to implement my action plan in the event this unit is faced by an overwhelming force?"

  Long silence. Much forehead rubbing.

  "Send your action plan to your battalion commander." Hand goes up to forestall protest. I wasn't planning on making one except in my head but he must have seen my face. Of course, he also had to deal with my BC on a daily basis. "Send it to your battalion commander. It will be approved."

  "Thank you, sir."

  "What, you think I like one of my fucking companies being left out to rot? But shit's bad everywhere. If you lose commo for any reason, all I can say is good luck and good hunting."

  So I sent the action plan to the battalion commander.

  What the fuck? No fucking way! Are you crazy? If you were here you'd be relieved and I'd make sure you spent the rest of the emergency as a private, you complete dickhead moron, who the hell could think you had the authority to blow up nineteen billion dollars worth of . . .

  A week later I got the action plan back. Redlined. That is, he was telling me all the things wrong with it and wanted me to do "corrections" of all the items.

  Which was weird because that meant it was conditionally approved.

  Of course, it was also fucked up because he'd left out blowing up half the shit and most of the changes meant nothing would get blowed up. Most of it had to do with "demilitarization" of material. Yeah. Like we had a few thousand people available to do that.

  (Demilitarization: Drill holes in the guns. Drilling holes in an Abrams gun requires very serious drills which we didn't have. Thermite barely scratches the motherfuckers. I know. I experimented.)

  And we'd already done most of it my way. Sure as shit wasn't going to do it his way.

  I sent the redlined plan off to the Brigade S-3. Then I wrote it up his way. Hell, he wasn't going to know if I did it that way or not. I was seven thousand miles away and it wasn't like the fucking IG was going to drop by.

  Two days later I got an action plan from the BC. Less redlining. Still stupid.

  Off to Brigade S-3.

  Got back the original plan. Approved. By the Brigade commander.

  Good thing, too, because we were about done.

  Talked to the S-3 later. Apparently it had gone like this.

  Battalion commander gets the plan. Throws a shit fit. Chews me out. Starts charges.

  Brigade commander, a few days later, calls him up and asks what's happening with Bravo Company.

  Battalion commander sucks ass. All good. No issues.

  No issues? Evac?

  Minor issue.

  Security situation?

  No problems.

  Any Go-To-Hell-Plan?

  No need. "Secure and maintain."

  Get Go-To-Hell-Plan. SF battalion. Bad shit. My boys. Send me copy. Out.

  I get GTH redlined. Send back corrected plan. Copy to Brigade. BC sends to Brigade.

  Brigade commander. Don't like. (He'd seen my original and the redlined one.) Like it this (my) way.

  Battalion commander sends up next plan.

  What is it about "do it this way" you cannot understand? Original plan approved.

  I now had legal authority to blow the place the fuck up if I had to.

  Which was good. Because we had to implement our "Go-To-Hell-Plan" sooner than I'd thought.

  Chapter Six

  Actioning by

  Transformational Defenestration

  of Obstructors

  What is it about Mondays?

  Okay, so you had a good weekend and maybe you had a bit too much to drink. You don't want to go back to work. Mondays suck.

  But that wasn't the case with Iran. We were working every day, more or less. Oh, there was a rotating "down-time" schedule but with increasing probes the guys weren't getting much rest.

  So what is it with Mondays?

  Guess you figured it was a Monday when the shit started to hit the fan.

  Actually, we got some wind of it early. Scatter of more refugees. Then the food detail got told there was a new problem.

  Remember the Shia Liberation Front? Seems they'd maintained communication with fellow travellers. Said fellow travellers, the "Husayn Ali Martyrdom Brigade" (HAMB) had managed to avoid enough martyrdom to consolidate
their hold in Awhaz and were now looking to establish "true shariah" in a wider region. Which really threw a monkey wrench into the whole Abadan area.

  Okay, background:

  Who or what the fuck is "Husayn Ali"?

  Husayn ibn Ali ibn Abi Talib was a grandson of Mohammed by one of his numerous wives. (Mohammed's wives that is.) Husayn is one of the guys who's a founder of Shia. Remember the whole thing about Shia and Sunni? Most Moslems are Sunni. Iranians and a cluster in southern Iraq and down into Saudi Arabia are Shia. I won't get into details about the Umaayids and shit. He revolted in favor of "true Islam" and got his head cut off. Just know he's one of the Shia's big "martyrs." Got killed near Al-Najaf where there's a big temple in his honor and, I shit you not, every year guys gather there and whip themselves with flails. I've seen weirder shit, but not much.

  But the Husayn Ali Martyrdom Brigade wasn't just religious wackoes. It had been formed around the family of an Iranian colonel up around Ahwaz. Was he a religious wacko? Sort of.

  Okay, one of the "lessons" we learned in Iraq was "don't completely dismantle the standing government and military." We shut down the Iraqi Army in Iraq and then tried to rebuild it "right." The problem being, that when soldiers are out of work they'll work for anybody. And a lot of the guys we were fighting, at first, were former soldiers all the way up to senior officers.

  So when we went into Iran, we kept the Army together as much as possible. Oh, some of the units like the Revolutionary Guard and stuff were stood down and mostly rounded up for questioning, etc. But we didn't stand down the whole Army.

  Well, the mullahs had wanted to keep the Army under their thumb as much as possible. So a bunch of senior commands were held by "fellow travellers," guys who thought the way the Mad Mullahs in charge thought or were family. (Which amounted to the same thing.)

  Farid Jahari was one of the guys who wasn't rounded up for questioning. Oh, later, I found out he had been tagged as hard-core Islamic, but he was making all the right noises and following the New Way so nobody fucked with him. Despite "credible" reports that he had maintained contact with the RIFs and might be supporting them.

  Whether he'd been playing both sides against the middle or what, when the shit went down, he managed to hold together a "coalition" in Ahwaz. It had taken him several months to consolidate his power and get things functioning. Now it was time for the next step.

  Shooters he now had aplenty. What he didn't have was equipment.

  And guess where the biggest store of equipment around was?

  The "probe" with the truck was probably his idea. And they'd apparently been watching how we were guarding things.

  The first inkling we had that things were going to be going astray was increased traffic on the Ahwaz Road. (Highway 9 for people who care.) Vehicles were headed into Abadan. And then the flow of refugees picked up as street fighting broke out.

  The good colonel had the cachet of being military. The Warriors and the SLF, now a branch of HAMB, called a truce. Together with some "special warriors" from HAMB they took down the Mahdi Army in about two days' fighting.

  Didn't hurt that they took out the command structure, first. They called for peace talks to "begin the reunification of our peoples." Not all the senior people from the Mahdi Army turned up, but enough that it mattered. They weren't trusting, mind you, but they also weren't expecting a big truck bomb.

  We heard that on Monday. Big ass explosion down in Abadan kind of near the docks as far as we could tell.

  Took the Warriors, SLF and HAMB about three days to clear out the Mahdis. Some of the refugees we got were "dependents" of the Mahdis. That's where we got the story. (Also a couple more workers. The Mahdis had clearly been picking and choosing carefully. Woof!)

  (Wife Edit: It's amazing what you've left out over the years. I thought I knew all your stories.)

  Fuck.

  Anyway, we really knew shit was bad mid-week when two T-62s and some trucks came rolling down from the direction of Ahwaz.

  Found out, later, that was the sign Herr Colonel had come down to show the flag. Until Abadan was "secured" he'd stayed up in Ahwaz. Now it was time to spread the joy.

  So we got another delegation.

  This time it was a civilian truck but the guy who got out of it was in uniform. Pretty correct. Unlike the first joker he seemed to fit it and it wasn't exactly loaded with medals.

  I got called out.

  "General Farid Jahari, Commander of the Faithful, Sword of The Prophet, Warrior of Islam . . ." etcetera, etcetera, etcetera, "sends you his greetings. In his beneficience and munificence, his overriding goodness that extends beyond the ability of mortal men . . ."

  We had three days to pull out. We could take anything we could carry. We had to leave all the rest and open the gates.

  Took, like, fifteen minutes for the guy to get to the point. I said: "Ain't happenin'."

  "Captain, you cannot understand. The armies of the Prophet cover the ground like the sands of the desert . . . !"

  We know your strength to the last Nepo. You're badly outnumbered and we're going to kick your ass.

  All I could do was fall back on something I'd heard back in ROTC and many times since over the years.

  "Convey my message to your commander exactly. This is the message. Nuts."

  Okay, so it was an airborne unit. Big fucking deal. It was a good line.

  What wasn't good was what we didn't know. The Commander of the Faithful was not an idiot. We had a fairly good feel for the numbers in Abadan at that point. The Warriors, if they hadn't taken a bunch of casualties, could field maybe six, seven hundred troops. The SLF had been about a hundred. From the count of vehicles going to Abadan, we were looking at, at most, another hundred or so.

  Okay, say a thousand against our one company. Two tanks. I knew how we were going to deal with them. Adverse correlation of forces, but we had pretty good positions and good vehicles. And we had them in view the whole approach. They were going to get slaughtered.

  Well, I thought they were going to get slaughtered. But I hadn't figured on the Commander of the Faithful being smart.

  Ahwaz wasn't on the Shat, but it wasn't all that far, either. You had to cross into Iraq to get to the river (the Tigris, actually) but nobody gave a shit about borders. Turns out he'd sent a bunch more fighters down on barges. And we didn't know about them. The refugees had cut off to nothing. No satellite intel . . .

  Okay, I had a couple of UAVs in the place. I'd even gotten a couple up and ready to go. But they weren't Predators, they were short range and duration. Even if I had gotten them out and done some surveys, I wasn't going to get any more intel.

  Now, a thousand vs. a little short of two hundred with the Nepos might have been enough to change a guy's mind. Maybe should have been. But American forces had faced odds like that before and won.

  Problem being we were going to take casualties. And there wasn't a doctor nor any evac.

  That was going to purely suck.

  So I called home. I didn't bother with calling the BC.

  "Brigade S-3. Assistant S-3 speaking. How can I help you sir or ma'am?"

  "Tell me to cut and run."

  "What's up?"

  "Security is no longer nominal."

  Thousand of them. Two hundred, sort of, of us. Three days.

  "What did you tell them?"

  "Nuts."

  "That's what the 101st said!"

  "I couldn't think of better line. Go fuck a camel just wasn't as succinct." (Heh. I used a big word.)

  Chain of command.

  Duck's bottom.

  Call you back.

  Ring, Ring!

  "Fort Lonesome. We've got the ammo if you've got the money. If not: Go fuck yourself."

  Call your boss. Brigade Commander said "Nuts" though and he couldn't think of a better line, either.

  Yo, BC, security situation no longer nominal.

  You're a bad boy! You should have negotiated! Bad boy! Bad boy! No biscuit! Ta
ke off your skin so I can use it as a shawl!

  Gotcha. Give 'em the stuff.

  Calling higher.

  "Fort Lonesome! Security situation is in degradation mode and headed for sucky!"

  Brigade Commander said "Nuts."

  The 101st said that. Couldn't he think of a better line? Medevac?

  Nope.

  Reinforcements? Fighting soldiers from the sky?

  Nope. Get fucked. Bad things here. And where's that human skin I ordered?

  Blow it and run?

  Maintain and secure.

  So then things went from weird to weirder.

  Friday, I think, evening, anyway, I was "pondering the security situation" when I got a call at the office.

  "Bandit, sir, there's a reporter on the video link. She wants to talk to you."

  Now, this is a secure military video link system. How the fuck a reporter could have gotten onto it was beyond me.

  I never considered the incredible boneheadedness of my boss.

  So some reporter from CNN is chatting him up as he is delivering "aid and comfort" to the voodoo doctors in Savannah. (There's another essay there, but it's not mine. Things got very weird in Savannah at one point.) Good people doing good work for good people who are all good and it's all good and we all love each other.

  (The battalion took more casualties in Savannah than we did during most of this mission. Khuwaitla, Instanbul and all.)

  And somehow the point that he's only got two companies helping comes up. And, wow, there's a company in Iran? Really? Could I talk to the commander?

  I don't know how she sweet-talked the BC into that. Bandit Six was the last guy he'd ever want to give air-time. That would take it away from him. And I don't know what strings he pulled to get her on our vid-link. Maybe CNN did it.

  Fuck.

  I got out of bed with Shadi, checked to see I was shaved, put on my battlerattle and went over.

  "Captain Bandit Six. What's it like in Iran?"

  "Our mission plan is to maintain and secure."

  "Have you had any problems?"

  "We have rectified all our action issues with transformational deconfliction."

  (That one I remember. What a classic. I saw it one time on a poster and nearly shit myself.)