The Last Centurion

by John Ringo

  Burns, shrapnel. Most of the guys who weren't sedated were in great spirits. "We really kicked ass, didn't we, sir!" This from a guy waving the stump of an arm.

  There were a couple that just weren't going to make it. They were out in a bliss of morphine. One of them was less out, sort of one long quiet moan. Unconscious and still moaning.

  Yeah, son, we really kicked ass.

  Centurions one and all.

  Chapter Nineteen

  There Was an Issue

  The guys were resting up after their travails. I was getting some rest, starting to pine for Shadi and considering the beauty of Kurdish women, but mostly waiting for the other shoe to drop.

  We could get out via the local airports. It would be "logistically difficult" given that most of the airbases that the U.S. depended upon for "global dominance" weren't available. But you can refuel a C-17 in-flight. Hell, there were planes that could fly in non-stop from Britain, which had some functioning airports. There was fuel here. Irbil was well on the way to becoming the best place to land between Britain and India.

  The other shoe dropped.

  I got called to come over to the commo van. Everybody was "taking a break" from cutting the next episode. They'd been tossed out. The BC was on the video conferenced in with the brigade commander and a couple of other people I didn't know. One of them was a suit. Another was a lieutenant general, Air Force no less.

  Uh, oh.

  The good news.

  C-17s configured for medical evac were on the way. Ask the Kurds if they have any casualties that would respond better to top-flight treatment. Everybody's coming to Walter Reed.

  Thank fucking God. I'll get right on that, sir. What about . . . ?

  There was an issue.

  We'd finally picked sides in Turkey. The side we'd picked had, according to them, most of the territory that used to be Turkey. And it was kinda, sorta, stabilized. (Yeah. Right. More on that later.) They had Ankara, the Turkish capital. They had most of the Anatolian Plain. (Arguable as we'll see.) They were leaving the Kurds alone. The Kurds had their area stabilized and that was good enough for now. (And they're going to keep it, suckers.)

  They were mostly Turkish military which meant secular. They wanted to restore freedom and democracy and all good things to Turkey.

  But there was an "issue."

  A fundamentalist group had some territory. Notably, they had most of the territory around Istanbul and the Bosporus. The big problem being Istanbul.

  History again.

  Byzantium, Constantinople, Istanbul. Hell, I think there's a name before Byzantium.

  The Bosporus is actually a big fucking river if you think of the Black Sea as being a big fucking lake. It consists of the Bosporus which is a narrow bit exiting from the Black Sea that Istanbul straddles, the Mamara Denizi which is a big lake, then the Dardanelles, which is another narrow bit by the Med (okay, Aegean, same diff). Rivers from Eastern Europe to the Stans dump to the Black Sea and the water, in turn, dumps through the Bosporus (I use it as a general name for the whole thing) into the Mediterranean. (In fact, there's a continuous outward current. It really is a river.)

  Rivers have always meant trade. So the choke point, from back before there was history, for all that trade is the Bosporus. And people have been plying their trade on the Bosporus since they were moving better flints down from the Volga region. (Seriously. They've found sunken boats that had cargoes of flints. Like for making chipped stone knives and stuff. Way before history.)

  Remember Troy? Forget all that shit about it being about Helen. Troy was one of the first major cities to control Bosporus trade. It got really rich on it, and the Hellenes decided they wanted the money. Simple as that. It's over at the entrance to the Dardanelles on the Aegean/Med side. Guy named Schliemann found it in the late 1800s using mostly The Illiad as a guide. Well, he found one of the cities that was, sort of, Troy. There were layers and layers he never got to.

  Anyway, The Big City for controlling Bosporus trade pretty much since history had been written was Istanbul. And it had a special significance to the Turks.

  The faction that had taken most of Turkey was never going to be able to really control things until they controlled Istanbul.

  And whether they had the forces to take Istanbul or not, they didn't have the moxie. They needed stiffening up. They needed a little Viagra in the old pencil.

  We were the Viagra.

  The Air Force general burbled. Airbase in Incirlik was available as soon as they took Istanbul. How the two were linked I had no idea; they were about seven hundred miles apart.

  The State Department guy babbled. Improved relations with the Turkish government. Stabilization of the whole region. Opening trade through the Bosporus links.

  Nobody was doing much "trade" back then. Most shipping lines weren't operative. An opening up the Bosporus was no big deal. If we really wanted to help this guy, we could send a MEU over and take Istanbul. Trust me, we wouldn't make the mistakes that the Brits made at Gallipoli.

  But for some reason it had to be "Farmer's Freaks." They wanted me to cross the Tauric range, in what was starting up to be a fucking iceage of a winter, and on the far side link up with notionally friendly forces and take a city that was a fucking fortress?

  I let them burble. The brigade commander and my BC watched me nod in agreement.

  When the two idiots wound down I nodded again.

  "No," I said and cut the connection.

  I walked out of the commo vehicle and looked at the on-duty RTO, who was looking worried for good reason.

  "When they call back, tell them I'm unavailable."

  And I made myself unavailable.

  The Kurds had some running Humvees we'd left behind. About the only thing we'd left them. I found a Kurd who knew who I was, and wanted to know if I was married because he had a cute female cousin . . . and he was talking marriage mind you . . . and rode out of town.

  I drove up to Centurion Ridge. I parked where from the marks a Javelin had been fired. I looked down at those pretty good fields covered in the wrecked trucks, tanks, Bradleys, in all the mess we'd made.

  They were pretty good fields. Not as good as Minnesota. But with the right equipment and knowledge, they could be made to really produce. And, hell, just because all that shit was fucked up now, didn't mean it had to stay fucked up. Some of the engines down there were in pretty good shape. Find a busted up tractor, put one of those truck engines in it and you'd be stylin'. Pimp my tractor, baby. Hell, I could put a fucking Abrams engine in it. Burn up the wheat as I was harvesting but, hell, that would keep down all but the grassy weeds . . .

  Might be some unexploded ordnance. French farmers dealt with that all the time.

  I wonder how cute that cousin is? And it wasn't the first such offer I'd gotten. The Kurd general, who was related to the Kurdish president, had mentioned introducing me to his sister . . .

  What was there for me in the States? What was there for most of my boys in the States? Families were dead. The government was screwed to the max. The cities were a nightmare and the Army wasn't being allowed to do anything about it.

  Things would get pretty peaceful in this region pretty soon. Especially if we helped out in Baghdad. The Kurds were mostly Hurrians but they had all sorts of tribes in truth. Maybe it was time for a tribe of Americans.

  They'd called me pretty late in their day. It was noon local when I said no. I sat there all afternoon. Watched the sun set. Watched the fields turn to silver as it got really fucking cold. I pulled out my poncho liner and wrapped up. I watched the fields get more silver as a thin moon rose over my shoulder. I slept. I dreamed and they were ragged dreams. Dreams of empire. Hell, the whole Middle East was ripe for the taking for somebody who had the right force and mentality. I saw myself on a throne. And I saw disaster and Mom calling me in from the fields and Dad's big hands working on a tractor. I dreamed of battles I'd been in and battles I'd never seen. I'd never held a shield or sword in my life
and I saw those as well as if I'd lived it. I saw cohorts and just big groups of guys with bows and ragged cavalry charges. And I woke to the birds singing outside the room of my house and knowing I was late for school. That there was something I had to do and it was nagging at me.

  Till a voice, as bad as Conscience, rang interminable changes

  On one everlasting Whisper day and night repeated—so:

  "Something hidden. Go and find it. Go and look behind the Ranges—

  "Something lost behind the Ranges. Lost and wating for you. Go!"

  They were the wrong birds. Magpies squawking in the pass. Ravens croaking their harsh cries.

  Could those green hills of Kurdistan have ever been home? I don't know. Maybe. If they pushed me, they were going to be.

  There was a radio in the Humvee. I'd had it turned off. I turned it back on, punched in the right frequency and called the commo van. I was coming back. Call the BC. I'll call back when I was ready, give me an hour or so.

  I had a leisurely breakfast. I'd taken some pogie bait with me, every soldier carries some food with him, but not much else. I was going to need the blood sugar.

  I tossed everybody out of the van again. I called back. I got put on hold, which I'd expected.

  Took about fifteen minutes for the conference to come back up. Different group. Still the BC and the Brigade. And the Army Chief of Staff. And the Air Force Chief of Staff. And a different State weanie. This one looked less Weanieish. Sharper.

  Chief of Staff, Army, opened.

  "Bandit," and he called me Bandit, "we know what we're asking. We know. We can send replacements for your casualties. We can send you gear if necessary. Supplies. Whatever. But we need this done. And you're the guy who can do it."

  "I was laying odds you were going to take a barbarian bride," the BC said. There were glares all around. Water. Duck.

  "I get that, sir. The you-want-this-done part. Note, that you want it done, not you need it done. Turkey means exactly dick to the U.S. strategically right now. The Middle East means dick right now. In five years, ten years, maybe. Right now? Diddly. So you want it done not need it done."

  "That is actually a fair assessment," the State guy said. "But there's a high probability that the Anatolian League can help with stabilization. There's an oil shortage building in the U.S. Less use but we're heading into a cold winter and we're going to need oil. We're mostly looking for the oil platform in the Black Sea. If the Kurds can get their act together and the Anatolian League can get their act together we could be shipping by January. And we're going to need it in January."

  "Uh, huh. I've done some stuff . . . Well, I've done quite a lot of stuff to stabilize the situation down in the Northern Gulf. Shia will sell you oil."

  "Bandits in the Straits of Hormuz," the Air Force Chief of Staff said, shrugging. "Maybe we could escort with Navy ships but we're still pretty tasked out. The Med is clear. Italians are sort of back up, ditto the Greeks. And the Brits took back Gibraltar so the Spanish don't matter. They're not back up."

  "The Kurds are becoming a linchpin," the State Department guy said. "They are stable. Especially after your actions at Mosul. Mullah Hamadi cannot, in the near future, take back northern Iraq. And the pipeline to the Black Sea is up. Venezuela and Brazil aren't pumping. Gulf of Mexico isn't entirely back up but it's keeping us alive. By January we're really going to need oil. So are the Europeans. So we need the Bosporus."

  "Uh, huh. MEU?"

  "That's not the only thing we're working on," ACOS said. "Screwed up as we are, we're still the World's Policeman. The Marines are way overtasked with that. This is part of being the World's Policeman. If you want a traffic whistle I'll send you one."

  "Oh, I do," I said. "To be precise, I'm going to give you my needs, wants and desires. The needs are nonnegotiable. If I don't get them, we're going to become Kurds and I wish you luck in you Bosporus adventures. The boys are getting pretty tired of being handed the shit end of the stick."

  "People?" the Chief of Staff asked.

  "No," I replied. Although, truthfully, I should have gotten more troops. But I trusted the guys I had. New troops would be an unknown quantity. And I was seeing glimmerings of ideas. "Maybe some . . ."

  See, here's the fucked up thing. Give me a problem, one that's damned near insoluble, and I start solving it. I hate that trait. Especially since the ideas are never straightforward and always have a huge number of consequences. They solve the problem but they make more problems. And then there's the whole "the reward for a job well done is a harder job."

  And you know, no matter what you do in the Army, you get paid exactly the same as some same-rank Pentagon weanie who takes a two-hour lunch?

  There's a list of staff officer sayings. One of them came to mind at that moment:

  "The secret to this shop is to find the one or two guys who are not complete incompetents and work them to death."

  Military leadership in a nutshell.

  "First, I'm going to need something like a designation as ambassador plenipotentiary to these Turkish guys."

  What the fuck does that mean?

  Back in the days when communication to a foreign country took forever, see the thing about waxed linen envelopes, the ambassador to a foreign country would be "plenipotentiary." That is, he (and it was always a he) spoke with "full power" (plenipotentiary) of the government he represented.

  All ambassadors these days are, technically, plenipotentiary. The reality is, State does whatever it damned well pleases with or without the ambassador's say-so. Probably a better system, but I wasn't having it.

  "If I'm going to do this, I'm going to need concessions and support from a lot of local groups. I have to be able to negotiate with full powers to get it. And I'm going to be negotiating with the Turkish guys, not some State suit. State doesn't joggle my elbow. State doesn't back-channel. State doesn't back stab. State stays the fuck out of the way and you get what you get when I'm done. The same goes for anyone above State."

  The only person above State is the President.

  "I am notionally accepting of you being an ambassador," the State guy said. "Although that is rarely a military post it has precedents. I cannot guarantee it being done. I also cannot guarantee lack of any interference. But if you detect interference from State we should be able to work that pretty hard. We also should be able to . . . handle interference above State. May I ask, in general, what you are going to be negotiating?"

  "No."

  "What else do you require?" the ACOS asked.

  "Really, that's it, General," I replied, shrugging. "I would like a bunch of other stuff. But that's the only requirement. Fly my wounded out. Be ready to do that again when it becomes necessary. I'd like air support. I don't see why we can't get a wing of something over to Irbil and have them work out of there. We've got plenty of fuel here. Might have some parts needs, but last time I checked we're good on that. But I need serious room to negotiate and I don't know for what. I won't put the U.S. in any binding treaties and you can be sure I won't promise anything I can't deliver myself. Given that I've gotten nothing delivered to me this whole time, like, you know, redeployment to the States or some fucking air support, promising anything to the Turks would be silly. Although the way that things have been going, why would it surprise me if they got more support than we have."

  "Major," the ACOS said, sternly, "I have been, I think, very accepting of your attitude in this discussion. But I will remind you that things are tough all over."

  I looked at the cut-off button for ten seconds then looked back up, right at the Chief of Staff of the Army.

  "You want 'tough,' General? General, I'm sure that you still have access to satellite imagery. I invite you to task one of those satellites on the fields outside of Khuwaitla. General, a company of Stryker infantry, some of them in tanks that State O so kindly gave to the enemies of the United States and that we took away from those enemies and that they had never before driven or fired along with a group of
Nepalese tribesman who had not worn shoes a year ago and were asked to use practically every weapon in the U.S. infantry inventory took on an armored brigade in more U.S. inventory that State gave to our enemies and crushed them."

  I grabbed my somewhat too long hair and screamed.

  "I KNOW THE PENALTY FOR A JOB WELL DONE IS A TOUGHER JOB BUT THAT WAS A PRETTY FUCKING TOUGH, GENERAL!"

  Short answer? I got what I wanted. Every bit. Surprised the hell out of me.

  Oh, I asked for and received other stuff. I got a C-17 loaded with Javelins and another with ammo. I didn't, then, ask for food. I knew it was in short supply in the U.S. But I told them I was going to need quite a bit at some point. At least a freighter's worth of grains and suchlike. They sent me some MREs which was nice of them.

  I said I might need heavy duty air support at some point. I'd give them time, but there might be a point where B-52s would be a good thing. The Air Force COS said he'd get working on it.

  And one of the C-17s that got blocked for us carried a courier with a piece of paper signed by The Bitch calling me "envoy" and giving me "all the authorities of ambassador plenipotentiary of and for the United States to the nation of Turkey and the Anatolian League."

  When I had that in hand and the sat-phone number to the military leader of "The Anatolian League" I got on the phone and started negotiating.

  The problem was somewhat similar to Iraq. The mullahs in Istanbul had grabbed a bunch of hardware. And there were some Turkish officers who were less secular than the Turkish military liked. And some of them had survived the Plague and now worked for the mullahs.

  The Anatolian League, according to this Turk, controlled the Anatolian Plains and the high ground over the Bosporus Plains. But their lines stopped at Adapazari and it was another stalemate. The Islamic Caliphate held the whole narrow tongue all the way over chunks of what had been Greece and Bulgaria. The Greeks were still consolidating and not willing to get in a row with the Islamics as long as they didn't try moving more in that direction.