Winter Kill 2 - China Invades Australia

by Gene Skellig

  “Knock it off, Radar O’Reilly! I know the regs!” He had read them. Just not as closely as Steve, apparently. It rankled him a bit, and he was already chafing over the uncertainty he was feeling. “Just tell me what’s changed, will you? Otherwise I’m going in there blind, and you know how Cheryl is about this sort of thing. Come on, make it easy on me. What’s changed that matters to me?”

  “Well, if you don’t like what’s in your AI, you can’t pull a compassionate as easily as before, that’s for one thing. Now you’d need a colonel / O-6 endorsement, at least in the case of outside the continental US - based unit.” Steve looked Peter in the eye and with emphasis added: “ – if that’s what we’re talking about.” Steve paused a beat, waiting for Peter to react to his fishing. But no response came, simply because Peter still did not know what was in his AI. Steve carried on. “And you have to ask for an involuntary foreign service tour extension in lieu of an operational deletion or deferment now. Oh, and they also added an internal control evaluation to cut down on CO’s playing favourites and re-shuffling the post-plots. Now only the DCOS G1 has the authority to approve exceptions or waivers.”

  Peter understood what that meant, “So no matter what my reassignment, I’m stuck with it. No room to maneuver anymore?”

  “Sorry to say so, but yeah, that’s how it adds up now. Of course, you could throw the medical. They’ve also added that PRWC’s have to incorporate our medical readiness classification into the reassignment process, but that’s based on your med status before you get your AI, so not much you can do with that. Even playing the family crisis card, and any other compassionates, is basically a non-starter these days.”

  “Why all these changes? They having more trouble fitting pegs into holes, or what?”

  “No, Pete, it’s all about velocity. How fast they can move people about. They keep changing our strategic focus. One day it’s the ‘pivot to Asia’, the next it’s cranking up readiness in eastern Europe. Now it looks like they’re trying to do both. That’s what I think is behind these changes, they have to be able to reassign us faster, in weeks rather than months.”

  “Like we are on a war footing again?” A year or two back Peter would have asked a question like this with a gung-ho, ready-to-jump attitude. The eagerness of the soldier was still there, but there was a slight weariness tinged with dread in his question now. Too much had happened in the world lately; the subtle shifting of attitude was creeping across military men everywhere.

  “Exactly, buddy. Steve said with bravado, but his eyes shared the same attitude. “So what gives, where are you going?”

  “Can’t say. Don’t know. Believe it or not, I’m not going to read my AI until I’m with Cheryl.” He stared down in his lap as if preparing for a profound disappointment. “I don’t have a good feeling about it. I think I’m going to lose my promotion.”

  In the silence that ensued Steve shut off the car and sat with his best friend, unsure of what he could say. He knew how keenly Peter felt about this, and how much he wanted to please Cheryl and everyone else. Everywhere else, Peter was solid as a fuckin’ rock, Steve thought, but when it comes to Cheryl…but what can I say to Pete about that? Deep down, everybody was getting a little scared these days. But who would ol’ Pete have to look to for strength if not his pal Steve? I gotta help the poor guy, somehow. Steve was too good a friend to ignore what Peter was going through. No, it was his place to buck him up, give him the spirit to do what had to be done.

  “Into the breach, then, buddy,” Steve said, suddenly, before elbowing Peter sharply in the ribs to break him out of his funk. “Get the hell out of my car and call me when you need to get drunk!”

  Peter turned to Steve, surprised. “Screw you too, pal!” he laughed. It worked.

  “Get out of here, ya bum,” Steve smiled.

  After meeting her husband Peter at the door and giving him her customary, passionate kiss, Cheryl gave him the ‘I’m annoyed with you’ look.

  “So were you celebrating with the boys at the Brew Pub while I was dying here, or what?”

  “No, Sugar, I had to wait for Steve. He was held up with the CO. You know what? He got the Russia Desk at the Pentagon! Svetlana will be so pleased.”

  “That’s a good move for them, right?”

  “Oh yeah, he’ll be a full-bull within three years in that job.”

  “So what’s he got to complain about?”

  “He has to go on another one of those solo deployments, so another six months away from Svetlana and the twins before he can take the job.”

  “Where to?”

  Peter shrugged. “Can’t say.” Cheryl understood, she’d heard Peter say that simple phrase before. “Somewhere he can bump up his Russian language skills to ‘working proficiency’ before he takes the desk job in Washington,” he offered to her. It was the best he could give her. Peter could not divulge the actual assignment his buddy was given, that of spending two months in pre-deployment training and then ultimately another four months inserted into the Russian version of the United Nations Military Observer Course.

  As a foreign officer in the RUSUNMOC program, Steve would have a great opportunity to rub shoulders with a few dozen Russian officers in Solnechnogorsk, the sprawling Russian military base outside of Moscow.

  Ostensibly an opportunity to contribute to a Confidence and Security Building Measure, CBSM, and polish-up on his Russian language skills, it was really all about putting Steve in the Solnechnogorsk region. While he was officially going to be attending the harmless UN-related course at the Russian Federation’s ‘Higher Officer’s Academy, VYSTREL, he would also have a plausible explanation for spending his off-duty time poking around the roads and towns in the Solnechnogorsk region at large.

  Despite being an Army officer with no overt connection to USSTRATCOM, Major Weir understood the significance of his pal’s assignment. He and Steve had both studied the Russian military earlier in their careers in preparation for duty as Arms Inspectors. The two Rangers were supposed to focus on the security protocols the Russian Federation were developing to watch over the warheads stripped off of the missiles as part of the START-III treaty, but that had been cancelled after the Putin assassination, when the relations with Russia had taken a turn for the worse as Russia went through another period of instability.

  Peter knew that the bunker where Russian President Dvorkin would evacuate to in time of war, the massive underground complex of 1st Missile Attack Warning Division, just happened to be buried deep under the Vystrel Academy in Solnechnogorsk, where the innocent-seeming RUSUNMOC program was hosted.

  Peter did not envy his buddy’s assignment, as he now saw the Russian angle to be something of a dead-end, career wise. The heady days of the Cold War with Russia were over. Russia would never be strong enough to compete with the USA. To Peter, the Russians were the ‘old red’. But he could not discuss this with his wife, as Steve’s assignment was highly classified, and even he himself already knew more about it than he should.

  “Inside Russia, I bet,” she guessed, accurately, before moving on to what really mattered to her. “So what did we get? - Tell me. TELL ME!” She jumped at him, laughing like a little girl on Christmas morning.

  “I can’t tell you. I have to show you.”

  After fighting her off for a few seconds, as she dug her hands into his shirt, his pants, and mussed his hair as if she were giving him a body-cavity search, he pulled out the AI message from the breast pocket of his fatigues.

  “Here it is. I haven’t read it Cheryl, so I don’t know if it is good news or not.”

  Cheryl released him and moved back a step. Their world went dead quiet in that moment. Her eyes bore into his with a meaningful intensity.

  Her voice was low but it cut through the stillness. “Go ahead. Read it out loud. You tell me where we’re going.”

  Peter began reading out loud, and then froze, silent, with the paper sagging in his hands. Cheryl hesitated for a moment, then snatched the documen
t and read the message for herself. It was in ALL CAPS, confusing to read at first, even though she had read several of her husband’s previous career related messages.

  After scanning through several lines of incomprehensible addressee lines, she read out loud: “Assignment Instructions, Weir, Peter, Major, Serial Number… blah blah….Sydney, Australia! What the fuck is this, Peter?”

  “Give it back,” he grabbed the message from her and read it again more carefully, from end to end.

  Cheryl was sideswiped by this. Australia might as well have been the moon to her. “Is this some kind of mistake? What does that do for us? You said it would be a front-line unit. What is this, another school or something? What’s that going to do to Jake?- It’ll ruin his university plans! What…?”

  “Stop! Let me work through this a second,” Peter snapped at his wife, uncharacteristically, but it had no effect on her.

  “You gotta call the CO. Better yet, I’ll call his wife,” she said, her voice rising with her increasing panic. “This has to be all about all your bullshit with Gary, you guys were way too outspoken about Ranger Training Battalion being ordered to admit women to the Training Brigade back in 2013.”

  “That wasn’t it,” he replied. Peter and Gary had never said a thing about women as Rangers, only that it was bad policy to direct that RTB to pass all the female candidates, regardless of performance. That would have made it impossible to flush out any under-performing candidates. They felt that such policy would have been a cancer to the profession and they spoke out about it. Sure, it may have been a dicey move in a politically-correct climate, but it couldn’t have screwed me here – could it?

  “Yeah, well, you screwed us somehow, Pete. And this shit reassignment is the consequence,” she accused him, remembering her father’s disappointment at her husband’s activism. I’ll never be a general’s wife now! she thought, tears welling up on top of the anger still pulsing in her face. She threw her forearm across her face to hide her tears.

  Peter would sooner have faced a dozen enemy hand-to-hand than disappoint Cheryl. In the Army he was as manly as the rest of them, but with his wife he was vulnerable. He was determined to stay calm. “Enough! Just let me think,” he said, his eyes poring over the document. “Don’t go jumping to conclusions. This could be good...”

  “What do you mean?” Cheryl asked, her voice thick with despair.

  “This is a LnO posting.”

  “What’s that?”

  “Liaison Officer. This is way more important than an S5 planning billet. Don’t worry. It could ultimately lead to a Military Attaché assignment, as a full bull Colonel. This really is a stepping stone, Cher.”

  Cheryl lowered her arm from her eyes and looked at him.

  “Explain,” she commanded.

  “I’m going to work as the US Army Liaison to the Special Ops Command of the Australian Army for the next three years. I’ll be officially attached to 2 Commando Regiment, and serve as their deputy Ops O, based in Holsworthy. That’s in Sydney – a world-class city. In fact, it’s the hometown of your favorite actress, from that film we watched last week. Anyhow, you’ll love it there, so will Jake.”

  Speechless, Cheryl Weir was skeptical, and just looked at him with an expression that said: “Bullshit!”

  “This is an important job. I’ll be sharing tactics, techniques and procedures, helping them with their exercises, and being the link between our 75th Rangers and their Special Ops Command. That puts me in the loop with their four-ringers and above on a daily basis. I’ll be reporting to General Wattley directly. No, Sugar, this is actually good news for us.”

  “Well, if you say so. I personally think Steve and Svetlana are going to get their Colonel’s way faster, using that Russian angle. Maybe you should put more effort into learning Chinese,” she said.

  “Why?”

  “Well, you and Steve used to joke that if you learned enough Russian then you could get a job with the Red Army when they take over. But now that the Russians are in such a mess, and it’s all about China, maybe we should map out your career prospects with the People’s Liberation Army,” she said, sarcastically.

  Peter continued to scan the document and suddenly he relaxed. He looked up at her with a little smile.

  Cheryl saw his sudden change. “What?”

  “Aren’t you going to congratulate me?”

  Her brow furrowed more deeply. “For what, this career-ending banishment to the outback?”

  “No, my dear. I think you better read paragraph 10 again,” he handed her the message and then went over to the bar to fix them a couple of drinks.

  Unable to believe her eyes as she read it over and over, she stammered: “So this means…”

  “Yup. I leave Ranger Training Battalion a Major, and arrive in Australia a Light Colonel. I got it, Sugar Pie, I’m promoted!”

  Later that night, after making love to the wife of a Lieutenant-Colonel, soon-to-be LCol Weir sat at his desk in the study, and poured over his atlas. He looked at China from the Australian perspective and wondered how it must feel to the twenty five million Australians to have over a billion Chinese so nearby, so hungry for their resources, and so capable of simply coming down and taking what they want at any time.

  What have I gotten myself into? He thought, taking a long drink of whiskey before going back to bed.

  Days later, after the shock of the unexpected posting to Australia had sunken in, Major Weir got into a discussion about China with some of his friends in 3rd Btn, 75th Rangers, who would be next in rotation for the high readiness duty as the Ranger Ready Force.

  “So if we ever do go to war with China, how are we set for Chinese language in 3rd Battalion?” Peter asked.

  “I know we have some Chinese names on the rolls, and I’m sure at least some of them speak Chinese. We’ve probably got at least a dozen Chinese speaking Rangers. Mostly comms types, actually,” said the unit’s S1, Personnel Admin O.

  “What about white guys? Have we got any white guys who speak Chinese?”

  “Actually, Pete, now that you mention it, I don’t think we do, at least not with the Officers. I’ve read all their pers files and something like that would have stood out. Mind you, I was not really thinking about China. Maybe I could go through them again, or get the CO to approve a call for Chinese speakers within the unit. Too bad you’re not going to be with us in the ‘third’. So what are you thinking, Pete? – getting some of the boys to do some professional development with China in mind? Could be a good idea…. ”

  When Major Weir got home that night, he found that Cheryl had out-done herself cleaning the house and meeting him at the door dressed as if they were expecting house guests. Her excited, friendly manner made him feel like the astronaut in the 70’s show, I Dream of Jeannie, by the way she seemed to be so eager to please. He sensed that she had begun to see herself as a Colonel’s wife, fully embracing the obligation to be ready at the drop of a hat to entertain other senior officers, generals and the occasional diplomat. She certainly has adjusted fast, Peter thought.

  At about the same time as Peter and Cheryl Weir were getting used to their news, in their military home in Battle Park, Fort Benning, another military family was having a similar conversation in their nearly identical military home in the military housing community at Joint Base Lewis McChord, in Washington State.

  The two families had never met, living on opposite sides of the country, and yet they had a lot in common. On the other hand, the differences, between the Ranger Major and the Marine Corps Captain were stark; they lived in completely different military cultures.

  For Captain Joseph Blakely, his Permanent Change of Station Orders were not a surprise. He knew that the 3rd Marines were looking for augmentation to fill a variety of positions as they ramped up their numbers in the Marine Air Ground Task Force – Australia, MAGTFA, pronounced ‘MAGTAF’. They also had to back-fill positions made vacant in Okinawa and Honolulu, where the bulk of the personnel assigned to the MAGTF
A came from.

  Also up for an operational tour and hoping for one that would fit his career plans, Blakely and his wife knew right away that their posting to Darwin, Australia was career-positive. It meant a promotion to Major fully a year ahead of schedule. After three years with USSOCOM’s 1st Special Forces Group out of Joint Base Lewis McChord, JBLM, Captain Blakely had yearned for a better assignment.

  His current job was leading a small detachment of US Marines fitting into a larger US Army formation. His USMC Special Operations Capable Force Recon Detachment was MARSOC’s contribution to a larger Special Operations force, 4th Battalion, 1st Special Forces Group, a formation of “Green Berets”, in the US Army, and not part of the USMC itself.

  Leading a USMC unit of any size is an honour. However to have his unit embedded with Green Berets of the US Army, with their lumbering, constrained operating procedures, frustrated Captain Blakely and his Recon Platoon to no end. He felt completely cut off from the fold of the USMC, as did his men. He was orphaned from other Marines, both geographically and in terms of mission.

  The one thing he really did enjoy about working with the US SOCOM was their focus on Foreign Internal Defense, or what was more commonly known as “counter-insurgency”. The doctrine of working closely with a nation to help them fight off an occupation or insurgency had great strategic appeal for the United States. This was especially true in the context of the ‘pivot to Asia’, where the seven or eight US-friendly “Host Nations” in the Asian Pacific region were hoped to fight off the Chinese. So supporting Foreign Internal Defense, FID, was expected to be a force multiplier for the US. In this larger picture, despite his misgivings as a Marine, Captain Blakely found common cause with his US SOCOM counterparts, along with other intangible benefits as a professional Special Forces operative, but that was not enough. He missed being with his fellow Marines.