The Last Centurion

by John Ringo

  We checked out the Stryker. It was toast. They don't have much in the way of internal blast control. The Javelin had hit just behind the commander's cupola and just blew the Stryker up like a child's toy. You could see the little-ass hole where it hit. Little hole, big boom.

  We pulled every last body out and into body bags. They went on the supply truck.

  I thought about Javelins as we rolled. That and the reporters. At one of the "rest" stops I tossed everybody but Graham out of the commo van and we "talked."

  I said "rest" stops because we never really rested through those few days. It went like this. The Strykers had to fuel. Drivers got tired and logy and that led to accidents. Etc.

  The guys could sort of rest riding in the Strykers. Not well, but it was "military rest." Like "military law" and "military music." You could close your eyes. If you were very experienced you could sleep the sleep of the just. Generally you sort of floated in a white daze that sort of helped.

  Most of the infantry could come out of it fighting as fast as if they'd been awake.

  But the drivers had to work, constantly. You had to rotate them. The AFV and the truck and the rest.

  We'd gotten it down to an art. I'd order a rest stop at a certain point followed by "Logging." That's what it's called. As in "Logistics resupply."

  We'd stop. Drivers would switch. New driver would hop in the seat, old driver would grab a spot and we'd roll on. Took about ten seconds. Think "Chinese Fire Drill."

  Then we'd roll slowly. We had four trucks lined up. Food truck, ammo truck, fuel truck, supply (trash) truck.

  Stryker would come up on either side of the food Hemmitt. Track commander would hold up fingers if he wanted cases of MREs. Number would be tossed. Speed up a bit to the ammo truck. Shout what they needed. Cases of ammo would be tossed. Speed up to the fuel truck. Grinning Nepo would toss a fuel line. Guys would drag it to the fuel point and fuel as the truck and the Stryker drove alongside. Fueled up, fuel line goes back, roll up to the (supply/trash) truck. Any critical supply needs? No. Toss me your trash. Bag of trash (mostly MRE bags, empty) would go over. Stryker would speed up and get into security position.

  We only had to stop moving to change drivers.

  The Navy calls it "UNREP," underway replenishment. We called it "logging."

  When we had eight trucks and plenty of room, we could do two simultaneous loggings. Later we only did one. Eventually, we'd do a halt. Things were just too fucked up, guys were too tired, to trust logging.

  But for then, we could unrep fast.

  And later, well, there weren't as many Strykers to fuel.

  So while I thought about the fucking bind I was in, I talked with Graham. And, yes, I could multitask it.

  I asked him what the normal method of sending out this sort of stuff was. Turned out the answer was "it's complicated." Generally is.

  There are two sources of any news, print, video, whatever. The first is "primary source" news reports. That's when you've got a known person standing in front of a news camera or a known "byline" reporting in paper or a known voice doing radio. Twenty-four-hour news cycle, they get a few minutes a day. Unless they get really popular, then they get their own show and eventually become an anchor and senior producer and such. Won't go into career progression in the news field.

  But most video people saw on TV, and most news stories and most written stories that got converted to voice, was done by "secondary" sources. Stringers. Stringers were usually locals who had developed some connection within their news area. I'm going to stop talking about print because here's where it got interesting.

  Stringers didn't sell to the networks. A bit more about print. AP got most of the news from stringers and then sent it on, sometimes with editing that was a bit, ahem, slanted and getting to pick and choose what was going to be news (people defending themselves with guns was never news, gays beating up straights or blacks attacking whites for hate reasons was never news). That was print. Also much of the Internet news and news reports read on radio. About eighty to ninety percent.

  AP controlled all of that news. If they didn't think it was news, it wasn't news. Talk about a monopoly.

  Video had avoided that for a long time. In the '60s and '70s, TV news was the networks and they filled a bare hour or two of mostly repetitive news. News from distant lands came in by film and then video tape. It was edited at the national studio, script was written and then broadcast. Local news followed the same pattern but without the flying it in. They got that from their parent network.

  And all the networks had fair sized "bureaus" in major capitals. So did print.

  But with the advent of the 24-hour news cycle they needed more and more video. So there started to be stringers. They'd go through the local bureaus.

  But they needed more and more and more. And at the same time they were cutting back bureaus and foreign reporters.

  So the media got together and formed a third party that would collect all the stringer videos. Most of it wasn't used. That got cut. Unimportant? Who knows. Nobody ever saw it. What definitely got cut was anything related to context and the networks never saw any of it. All there were were clips of dramatic shots.

  The networks paid for the clips and then did voice-over based on the description the company gave of what the clips meant. That was for, call it "Western" news channels. For other countries, for more money, the company also did voice-over in local language.

  Follow the money. Here's the thing.

  Most of their clients for voice-over, more money, were in the Middle East and dictatorships with an axe to grind against the U.S. and Israel. So, you've got a clip of Palestinians shooting at Israeli soldiers, Israeli soldiers returning fire and a kid dead in his father's arms.

  You're cutting that down to thirty seconds. You've got excellent shots of each of these if each is held as a chunk: twenty seconds of Palestinian fire, twenty of Israeli and ten of the dead kid. (Which is just a shot of a dead kid and a grieving father. No clue what kind of bullet.)

  You can make one for the Western market with the Palestinians shooting and one for the Arab market of the Israelis but that takes time. And time is money.

  You're a company out to make a buck. Your best paying clients are Arabs.

  You make a clip of Israeli soldiers shooting and a dead kid in his dad's arms. The voice-over can be very plain. Just "an outbreak of fighting between Palestinian and Israeli forces left three dead including a twelve-year-old boy."

  People never see the Palestinians shooting.

  Nobody sees it. Not the networks, not the Arabs, not the Israelis who are watching "Western" TV news. As far as they are aware, the Palestinians were just peacefully singing kumbaya when the Israelis opened fire and the kid can only be dead from the Israelis because only the Israelis are shooting. Right?

  In the 1990s the company, based in London, was bought by a holding company from the network "cartel." The holding company was owned by the Saudi Royal family.

  By 2001, the vast majority of the employees of the company were Islamic. Sunni to be precise.

  And it controlled the broadcast news for the entire world.

  Plot?

  You betcha.

  During a seminar in Arab-Western relations in the 1980s, the future king of Saudi Arabia said that "nothing is more paramount than gaining favorable media attention to the plight of the Arab peoples."

  This from a guy who owned more Rolls Royces than you could stick in a very big LOG base.

  Well, the broadcast news world was in tatters. It was barely functioning even with government largesse. And the Saudis, for the moment, weren't producing oil or money or anything else. The whole region was a vastly overpopulated desert. It had been L.A. times ten and wasn't coming back soon. I had no clue what was happening with that company in London. (And, no Graham didn't tell me all that. He told me bits, how he and Skynet did things, and I had other bits and I worked the rest out in research later. But I'd heard the basics long before.)
>
  We wouldn't be going through that company, though. The way that Graham did stuff was he shot a bunch of clips, whatever struck his and his producer's fancy, then sent them back to London and Skynet. It all got edited there. They might get a request to concentrate on something after a bit. A particular human interest angle, for example.

  They'd gotten video of our blown-up Stryker. Also of the dead Iraqis. Also of the Javelins.

  We'd gotten video of them dropping out of the sky. Not as good as theirs but very close.

  And while they had good uplink/downlink, we had better.

  I also had a couple of aces in the hole.

  So I told him what we were going to do. And he got white again. Whiter.

  Chapter Twelve

  Go Do that Voodoo

  But, hell, I sort of needed permission.

  See, there's this thing. Generally, it's best to do it and ask forgiveness. Especially in the military. Except when it comes to clear and unquestionable violation of regulations. Sure, I could ask for a lawyer but I might as well ask for a last cigarette if I let Graham start broadcasting as an "embed." There was a process.

  (Okay, the girls had been a violation of regulation. If it had come up, I was debating the lawyer or the last cigarette. They're both bad for you but cigarettes kill you slower, less painfully and are cheaper.)

  I wasn't going to ask full permission, mind you. I was going to present it as a fete accompli. But sending anything out needed some sort of stamp of approval.

  Turned out it wasn't as hard as I'd thought.

  Brigade S-3: No, we don't have any help to send you. Would you like to call back again when we have some?

  Bandit: Bandit.

  Wassup?

  Know that drop I asked about? Reporters. Skynet. Murdoch. Embed. Kill them? Nobody know.

  Shit me?

  Shit not.

  Be back.

  In the meantime, I got my satellite/commo . . . I got the geek.

  Here's what we're gonna do . . .

  Boggle. No fucking way!

  Authority. Boss. Bad dog!

  Oh, then "No fucking way, sir!"

  Did before.

  Geek babble saying "No fucking way, sir! Other simple. No way. No how. No can do. Nada. Zip. Nichts. Nein. Nyet. Impossible."

  Don't talk geek. Do.

  Try.

  There is no try.

  That is geek-speak, sir.

  No. Because there is no do or do not. There is only do. That is Army-speak.

  In the meantime Graham had a chat with his chaps.

  You might wonder, as I often have while driving a combine or worrying that some Afghan who knows this terrain much better than me is going to hear or see me sneaking up on his lines not that I've ever done that, how a scene in the news is actually shot.

  Here's how it works. There is normally a four-man crew. They have a mobile system that can move the video, live or "canned" (prerecorded) back to the studio, home-office or that place in London. (Which, I found out later, was still in business but now owned by the BBC. Sigh. I suppose it's better than the Saudis.)

  The crew consists of the reporter ("the dummy" in news-speak), a sound-man who is almost invariably between the ages of nineteen and twenty-six, has acne that he covers with a scraggly beard and in his off-time is a world-reigning champion at God of War, the cameraman, often on his second career, who is between twenty-three and fifty and whatever his age is developing a beer gut, and the producer, who is either a former dummy or a female "communications major" from a school to the left of Lenin. The producer is, in either case, generally to the left of Lenin or his or her bosses wouldn't let him or her be a producer.

  Six is a bit odd.

  In the case of Graham's chaps, the producer was a former dummy from the BBC. Never a star dummy (as in a ventriloquist's dummy) he got into producing and jumped to Skynews for the better pay just before the Plague. Nice chap. Bright. Amenable. Ambitious. Which was the card I played.

  The sound-man was 22, developing a gut, had a straggly beard and was a world reigning champion at HaloV. I know because I tried to play the bastard in deathmatch and despite the fact that he had the good grace not to respawn camp he waxed my ass so hard I gave up the game in disgust and have never played it since.

  Camerman. 28. Second career. First career was British Royal Marines. Six years. Did a stint in Basra. Thought he'd see how Iraq was shaping up, don't you know? Wasn't Para. Silly of me. Better out a fucking plane than bobbing around on a small boat!

  He had a beer gut. He looked as if he could chew railroad spikes. I eventually realized that he was wasted on England. He needed to move to Texas.

  The other two?

  Half-trained camerman and a guy who was sort of thinking about getting into the sound business and could sort of run the equipment. Sort of porters. Sort of supernumeries. Sort of spares "in case."

  Sort of dead weight?

  Former SAS. (Special Air Service. Brit version of Delta.) Former SBS. (Special Boat Squadron. Brit version of SEALs.)

  Told you Murdoch was a character.

  Of course they didn't have weapons. Didn't do with reporters old chap. Until I bundled some out along with spare gear and told them to rig the fuck up.

  Graham had a powwow with them. I had a powwow with them. The only slight balk was the sound-man who started babbling geek.

  I don't speak geek. There is no try. There is only do.

  Cameraman? Grin.

  "Oh, bloody yes, I think."

  SAS? SBS?

  Sleepy-eyed stares.

  I'll take that for a rousing applause.

  Producer?

  "This will either make us all bloody famous or out on the street or possibly both . . . I'm in."

  They were going for the "it's better to ask forgiveness than permission." I still needed permission.

  I had a call.

  It was a lieutenant colonel. It was my new battalion commander.

  I didn't know him. I pieced some stuff together later.

  He wasn't a mech-head. He was light infantry. Airborne and Ranger to be precise.

  He'd been transferred to the Corps G-3 shop for his "staff" time. It had to be done, no matter how good you are. They make you do staff. Especially if you're any good at it.

  Look, there are probably guys who can only command. I don't know any. Every good commander I've ever met was good to excellent as a staff guy. The reverse is not true. That is, a Fobbit is a REMF is a Fobbit. They may be great at staff, but they cannot lead for squat.

  I wish they'd learn to weed them out, better. Last BC? I hear he was great at staff. Lousy at command.

  Anyway, this guy was, I found out later, an absolute fucking genius at staff.

  As a commander?

  "So here I sit. With two companies of line trying to play nursemaid the insane and one I can't affect, at all, under a former assistant S-4 with . . . scattered reviews on the other side of the world. What say you?"

  "Not much you can do from there, sir."

  "For or against?"

  "We do intend to make it back, sir."

  "I've seen your intel analysis. And the analysis of your analysis which wasn't actually bad. And now you're telling me they have Javelins. That is a badness thing."

  (I pulled some of these from archive. He actually said that. "A badness thing.")

  "We will continue the mission, sir."

  "Sorry about the scouts. Get me their names and I'll write the letters. If there are any to write the way things are. But you've got enough on your plate. Look, I've got a meeting with the division commander in a bit. New battalion commander and all that. Hail, fellow, well met. Screw that. I don't see why we can't get some sort of air support for you. A damned news company flew in reporters. Surely we can get a B-52 or a B-2 or something overhead! Some damned support! This is just silly."

  "Thank you, sir."

  "Yeah. Well, I'm not going to joggle your elbow. Good luck and good hunting and all that. Now
go dooo that voooodoooo that youuuuu do so welllll!"

  Screen blanked.

  Holy shit.

  Screen came back up.

  "Oh. By the way. You just made major. And you've got an okay on the embeds. See ya."

  Screen blanked.

  Holy shit.

  I couldn't figure out if my new battalion commander was a nut or what.

  I found out fairly quick.

  Graduate of MIT no less. IQ so high he should have had a fucking nose bleed. Spells geek with a capital K. Geeks rarely can command for shit. Infantry don't speak geek, geek don't speak grunt. Me grunt. No speek geek. That worried me when I saw it.

  Captain of the MIT football team. I didn't know MIT had a football team.

  Former Ranger company commander.

  Passed Delta Qual and training. Went "over the wall."

  Rotated out as LTC for lack of slots. Longest running field grade officer in Delta history. No notations on that but turned out later he'd been a "squadron commander," Delta's version of a battalion.

  Went to Corp G-3 for operations.

  He's already on the colonel's list but the Corps commander has a problem. A battalion so fucked up that you can't even call it mutinous. They're just playing whatever rules they want to play because their commander's having a nervous breakdown and everybody has been watching it in slow time. Know you haven't been here long but you seem like the kind of guy could get this battalion going again. Oh, and one of the companies is the guys over in Iran. What do you say? Help me out, here.

  Guy's evals didn't walk on water. He walked on the fucking clouds and angels sang around him. His superiors seemed to be writing that they really didn't deserve to be evaluating the messiah.

  Nobody was that good.

  He was that good.

  Was our luck turning?

  He couldn't effect diddly except maybe air support. We were facing an unknown but large enemy force ahead and they had anti-tank weapons that were state of the fucking art.

  Our luck was turning.

  Chapter Thirteen

  The Last Centurions

  "Welcome to Skynews!

  "This evening we have a special report from a team of intrepid reporters embedded with the American and Nepalese unit cut off in the middle east. As many of you know, this unit is attempting to replicate the famous march of the Ten Thousand of storied history. Instead of a dry report, we will be bringing you, weekly, a documentary intended to both entertain and educate. We bring you, now, The Last Centurions."