The Last Centurion

by John Ringo

  The problem was, Istanbul. The city frankly sprawled. I mean, it was continuous city from the "Europe" side of the Bosporus most of the way to Izmit. Then there were high ridges, Izmit (a port city on the Marmar or whatever), then more ridges then Adapazari where the main bulk of the Anatolian range reared up.

  There was a big reservoir called the Sapanca Golu which anchored the corner of the Islamic League lines then it ran along the river from there to the Black Sea. Going back towards Istanbul and Izmit it followed high ridges.

  The Islamic League, clearly, had quite a few troops. And breaking something like that was going to require lots of street fighting. I didn't see where one unit of Strykers was going to be more than spit in a bucket.

  One unit of Strykers wouldn't be more than spit in a bucket. But I wasn't planning on just bringing Strykers. And I wasn't planning on fighting them head on.

  It would all depend on the Turks. Our Turks that is.

  Turkish troops could be very very good. Oh, not as good as American troops, not in that day and age. But very good. Disciplined, certainly. It was rumored pre-Plague that a Turkish officer didn't have to file paperwork if he only shot one soldier, below the rank of sergeant, a year. I saw one beat the shit out of a private one time.

  Didn't mean the officers were good. They were a mixed lot. Some of them were excellent, some got off on the power and not enough on the suffering if you know what I mean.

  But, generally, Turkish troops were good.

  What I didn't know was how good they were now and how good the Islamics were. They were Turkish troops, too, and presumably had a pretty serious hardcore element.

  A lot was going to depend on this Turkish general. I'd have to play it by ear when I got there. So far, though, things seemed on the up and up.

  A couple of things were bothering me, though. I was getting some strange vibes from the States. Oh, not, "as soon as you come back you're going to be hung" vibes. Once I made it clear I'd do my best to complete the mission everything was smiles and roses and "what little temper tantrum?" And the smiles and roses weren't "the long kiss goodnight." I was getting what I needed in the way of equipment and supplies. (And personnel. Get to that in a minute.)

  It was little things like the State guy saying "We also should be able to . . . handle interference above State." And who was the State guy? He was never introduced. And why did he say that he notionally could consider me for ambassador. He wasn't the Secretary of State or the President. I looked around and couldn't find him as even a deputy secretary of State. Yet, here I had the document in my hand.

  Very odd.

  And here was the answer. It wasn't "a military coup" as later historians have suggested. It was more "a coup of the adults."

  It was sort of like what the oil companies did. (And more on them later.) The Bitch was being . . . innnsuuulated. Yeah, that's a nice term. Insulated. She was under a lot of pressure. Everyone knew it. It was obvious every day. She didn't need a lot of shocks. We're . . . helping her.

  By basically telling her what she wanted to hear and doing whatever the fuck adults saw needed doing.

  It had started with the military units, ordered to deliver food to areas that were completely out of civil control but also ordered to not fire even if under attack, "using initiative in the field to complete the commander's mission concept." IOW, since they were getting arrested for defending themselves they started "breaking down" in areas where they didn't have to defend themselves. And delivering the relief supplies there.

  As time went on and the Bitch's orders got weirder and randomer higher and higher authorities started ignoring them and implementing real-world solutions. In the meantime, they were simply lying to higher about what was happening.

  Occasionally this became evident on what news the Bitch was watching. Sometimes she freaked out and called for heads. (Apparently at one point she was actually screaming "cut off their heads." I knew she was the Queen of the Reds but I never realized that meant The Red Queen.) Other times she apparently was able to rest in a comfortable state of denial.

  Why was she still in office? It was a clear-cut case where a President needed to be impeached for her own good if nothing else.

  Democrat Congress, Democrat Senate. After she started the Big Grab several impeachment bills were started up and all of them were killed. None even got to the floor. All on party line votes in committee.

  I'm not going to flay the Democrats entirely. There were Democrats amongst the "adults" who were performing a de facto if not de jure coup. But what should have been done was impeach her and get someone in office who could handle the, crushing, pressure. I don't think her running mate would have been a good choice, either. But, Jesus, somebody who wasn't going totally fruitloop.

  Instead they let her fiddle while America . . . well . . . froze.

  She was even running for reelection.

  It was the adults who saw we needed oil, desperately. And if they could free up Istanbul (actually, we just needed Ismali but the Turks were bargaining for the whole shooting match or at least the south side of the Bosporus) we could start getting tankers moving with Kurd sweet-light crude. Pumped over the Anatolian plain to Ismali then on to the good Ole USA.

  What we were going to pay for it was an interesting question. But the Kurds knew we were good for it and we still had stuff to offer. Like, well . . .

  I was a bargaining chip. Hell, soldiers often were. I could live with that.

  On actual "stuff" I asked for there were two notes.

  I'd said I didn't need troops. That wasn't quite true. With this op in the works, I started backpedaling and negotiating all over again. What I needed was tanks. And tankers.

  My guys were having a lot of fun driving those Abrams. But they really didn't know what they were doing. I was going to need at least the six I had left, preferably ten or more, to do this op. I had a notion what I was going to do and I was going to need tanks. And guys who actually knew how to shoot, drive and fix them.

  So that was one thing I got. What I asked for was:

  "I need a tanker unit. Enough for ten tanks and all the support they're going to need to keep them running in the field under awful conditions. And I need guys who can, no shit, no question, no ifs ands or buts, go wherever I tell them to go however I tell them to and can fight like motherfuckers when they get there. I need the best tank platoon in the Army and a couple of extras for spice."

  I don't know if the Mongrels was the best tank platoon in the Army. I do know they were very good.

  Second Platoon had liked their tanks and didn't like giving them up. They felt they'd proven their worth.

  I had the Mongrels take them out and show them something about the systems they'd been using.

  Technically, an M-1 has 4000 meters of range.

  One of the Mongrel crews went over the pass and, with intent, went off a small cliff on the south side. Fired in air, gun pointed sideways. Hit one of the, admittedly stationary, Abrams that was out on the plain from nearly 5000 meters.

  Before it hit the ground. Then it fired four more shots in about ten seconds as it headed down the, very bumpy, ridge. Three of the four hit other targets. Most at very near max range.

  Second Platoon stopped bitching and went back to their Strykers.

  The Mongrels were a "reinforced" platoon under a first lieutenant. He quickly learned about "coffee."

  Chapter Twenty

  Adana, Van, Christ It

  Sounds the Same with

  a Turkish Accent

  Meanwhile I was shucking and jiving.

  I offered all the Brads and the Abrams I'd left in the desert to the Kurds. Almost all. I needed to rebuild my losses. I also needed other things.

  Most of the Kurds in the Mosul area came from that general area of Kurdistan. The tribes in the immediate "Iraqi" area.

  I asked for, and got, Perg Mersha to "assist me in actions in the Anatolian region." But.

  This is where I needed negotiation room.


  I pointed out to the Turkish general that I was going to need some things if I was going to do this op. And he'd been informed that if I didn't get what I wanted, I had the final say-so on conducting my operation. Basically, he'd better geek or I'd pack up and go home.

  Which is why the Kurdish areas of what was once Turkey are now "Kurdistan." (The Iranian areas came later.)

  Also why Istanbul is named, again, Byzantium. (I wanted to go for Constantinople but my own guys talked me out of that one.) That one was kind of silly, but it had bugged me for years.

  I didn't ask for the statue. I didn't know about the statue until it was practically done. That Turk general had my number. If he'd asked me I'd have screamed blue blazes. Fucking thing is a nightmare. Every damned ship, including cruise ships, that goes through the Bosporus can see the damned thing. I mean you can't fucking miss it. As an engineering work, it's pretty fucking impressive. Pissed me off, though.

  I also didn't ask for the sword. Still got it over the mantelpiece, though. Heirloom and all that.

  And I'm actually sort of surprised at the statue. When we left, the Turks were a little pissed at us.

  But that's for later.

  The Kurds were, basically, attacking in two directions with damned little in the way of logistics. Very Kurdish in that.

  It took two weeks to get everything in place. Including plane loads of gear. I'd said I didn't need it then got pack-rattish. But, fuck, I needed it.

  Then we set off to waves and yells from the Kurds. Somewhere they'd found flowers and all that stuff. The troops were getting kissed by girls and it was a grand send off.

  It was snowing like a bitch. Nice of them to turn out in all that snow.

  It snowed harder. And more and snowed and fucking snowed.

  The first part was easy-peasy. The Kurds controlled all the territory up the Tigris well into what used to be Turkey. And the Tigris went way into Turkey. Since it cut through the mountains down that way, the roads and railroads kinda followed the same line.

  Yeah, there was a railroad. I'd thought about loading the Abrams on it but things were kinda messed up and I was only a company. I couldn't get a railroad running. So we drove.

  We'd gotten tank-carriers, though, for the Abrams. The Iraqis had them. We had to unload sometimes when shit got bad. The Abrams made dandy snow plows.

  The shit got very bad. The Taurus mountains are not exactly Alpine but they are very rugged. And they're very volcanically active. We ran across the hot-spring we based "Elephants" around up in the Taurus and decided it was a good place to lay up for a couple of days. The guys camped (not CAM(P)ed, that was later) and warmed up in the water. "Battery" was later, too. But that was in Turkey. When it got worse.

  There was actually a border post when we passed out of the Kurdish region. By then we not only had the "task force" of Bravo and the Mongrels and the Nepalese, we'd picked up a fair trail of Kurds. About a battalion of infantry under a tough old guy from the Turkish regions. The Turks really didn't like it when we turned up with him. Turns out he was wanted as a terrorist. Looked like one. But we were all friends now. I invited him to "coffee" and he brought a couple of lieutenants and the commo trailer was getting really overloaded. Since we were having to stop to log these days, we just scheduled a log-stop for "coffee" time and did it then. I missed the old "Bravo Company . . . arriving" thing but if they ever build a commo van large enough to hold an officers' call for a short brigade I don't want to be in it.

  Once we passed out of the Kurdish region, though, things got tougher. The Kurds had been keeping some of the roads open. None of these were. And although the Turks said that this region was "under their control" there were, to say the least, areas where control was spotty. We got ambushed about every other day. Mostly it was the equivalent of bandits, guys trying to steal our shit. But getting hit by bandits isn't much different than getting hit by muj. And quite often you can't tell the difference in places like that.

  Hell, there was a reason to hit us. We had food. Most of the region was starving already. What they were going to do in the spring and summer I had no idea. Assuming there was a spring and summer.

  There was a main road running from Van to Ankara, where the Turk general's capital was. I thought he said they had it all under control and that it was open. Problem was, there was no good way to get to it.

  Last Kurd control was the edge of Diyarbakar province. We were on little fucking hairpin roads trying to get to Mus, where the "highway" was. Passed the Kurd outpost in the pass above Mus. Fucking bunker with a stove going for all it was worth and the pass was already under six feet of snow. The Abrams were off their carriers and towing them.

  Then they were trying to keep them from sliding off the mountain on the other side. I'd thought we'd hit some mountains in the Kurd region, got a new appreciation for the term in the fucking Taurus.

  The Nepos, of course, loved it. Oh, they called them "hills" and said they weren't "real" mountains. But they were running around at every stop, and there were a lot of them, like little kids. We hit places where you had to sort of gasp for air. They said it was still too thick but getting better.

  Runty Himalayan fuckers.

  We finally made it to Mus. Not much to see. It was just another Plague-ridden city with a crashed population and, at that point, a serious weather problem. And, as it turned out, a group of hardcores that were more of a gang than anything. See "Battery."

  We rolled out of Mus with less of a security problem and food eating problem, for them, than when we arrived. There is little good that soldiers can do but we can, occasionally, reduce the bad.

  So much for the Turks having "control" of the whole road. Also so much for the road being open. It was just as choked as the little ass ones we'd crossed. Just a bit wider which was nice.

  We still lost two Abrams and a carrier trying to get to Ankara. And the HERCULES of course, but that wasn't really anyone's fault but the Nepos.

  I forgave them two days later.

  We were just out of Erzincan near the town of Goyne. This, by the way, was, like, the headwaters of the Euphrates. There had been a route up that but it looked worse. Probably was.

  Anyway, lots of little valleys and pretty major rivers. All frozen solid. Ish. The road we were on had good bridges, thank God. Turned out the Turkish military had a big mountain-training base not too far away, pre-Plague.

  And apparently a depot or something in the area. Because as we came up to the pass, lo and behold it was defended.

  Our first inkling of this was the Scouts yelling like hell and backing up. And then, over the yells, we heard the echo of a big gun firing.

  Up in the pass were a couple of tanks. Dug in. Getting up to it was a long damned switchback. They had it covered.

  We tried Javelins. They couldn't get a lock. The tanks were in revetments looking down at us. The Javs needed more of a view.

  The Abrams guys looked at the situation and shook their heads. They'd go. But they figured they were going to get whacked and whacked hard. Most of the way to where they could get a good firing position they'd be driving with their flank to the enemy. And if those were Turkish tanks, which was the only thing that made sense, they were Leopards. And Leopards are just about as good as Abrams. (Just about. Not as good. I don't care what the Krauts say.)

  Get some infantry up on the pass? Brother, those mountains were steep! And high. It would take a couple of days. And my guys weren't trained mountain troops they were . . .

  Wait.

  It took me, seriously, about ten minutes to slap my forehead. Sometimes, most of the times, a solution that easy comes to me fast. Then other times I'm pretty damned dense.

  "Samad!"

  Assault the pass? Tanks? Possible infantry? Carry Javelins up there where eagles dare? Of course, Sahib. I will arrange.

  Ever seen a goat trail? I mean one in a mountain?

  They're switchbacks, too. And about two inches wide. Back and forth, back and forth,
occasionally punctuated by spots that the goats jump lightly from the path to a small rock and then on to the path again. There being no other way to make their way across a sheer cliff.

  Ever seen guys trot up a goat path. For hours? Carrying, like, more than their body weight of gear? I mean, the Nepos were carrying not only personal weapons but Javelins, which are heavy motherfuckers, and medium machine guns and ammo and even some light mortars. It was a motherfucker of a load.

  I began to understand Sherpas. Even the Kurds, who looked a bit pissed at first to be left out, were getting impressed quick. They were "mountain" fighters, they thought. The Nepos were still referring to these as "hills."

  There was an area to the north that it looked like the guys up on the pass couldn't observe. Goat path up to the ridge. Ridge up to the cliff overlooking the path. Presumably Javelin into the pass. Trot, trot, trot . . . Who is that I hear trotting on my ridge?

  Wait, hope they're not Turkish military. That would be embarassing.

  I called ahead.

  No, they are not ours.

  I thought you said this road was a) clear. Which it is not. And b) under control. Which it is not.

  I thought you were going up the Adana road. Why are you in Erzincan province? We haven't even tried to get control in that area. All the roads are blocked by the snows!

  Mus looked closer and I thought you said the Van road was open and . . .

  Fuck me.

  We're going to be a while.

  Did I fuck up? I don't know. I do know that there wasn't Kurd control over to Adana and from what I gleaned later the "control" of the Adana road was spotty. But . . .

  And I swear he'd said the Van road. I didn't keep a copy of the conversation, though, so it's his word against mine.

  Clearing the pass.

  We parleyed while the Nepos climbed.