Strike Force 11

by Forest Getter

  “You just completed the quest for the Holy Grail 10,000 bonus experience points Go-go,” The Dungeon Mater said.

  “Did I level up?” I asked with a laugh.

  “I think you may have. You sure brought back the good loot,” John said.

  We loaded up in my hummer and headed over to medical to see how everyone was. We discovered that everyone was recovering well Gunny west would be down for a few weeks, but all the others would be released tomorrow morning. I found LtCmdr Rogers laying in a bed with his foot propped up

  “I told you if you would stop letting them give you Purple Hearts you would stop getting shot.” I said to him.

  “I think you got that backward Go-go, it’s if I stop getting shot, they will stop giving me the medal.” He replied.

  “If that’s what you want to believe go right ahead but remember I warned you,” I said to him with a smirk on my face.

  “Get out of here you old salt,” he said to me and laughed

  “Good pain, Meds?” I asked him.

  “The best,” He replied. We both laughed.

  “See you tomorrow Cap,” I said as I headed out to go meet with the Skipper.

  From medical, we headed to the admin building to meet with the Skipper. When we walked into Skipper’s office, he had a bottle of Scotch out. I walked up, poured myself a glass, and took a seat on the couch in his office.

  “Great job out there all of you, and an extra thanks to you Terror for helping us capture the gate. Why did you help us to capture it?” Skipper asked.

  “My oath is everything to me I do not just act as my oath requires of me, but I act in the spirit of my oath I swore myself to Go-go, so all my actions are made in his best interest.” Terror said.

  Our debrief with the Skipper lasted about twenty minutes. Then we all headed back to our rooms to get some sleep, it had been a long night.

  54.

  Training

  My team and I spent the next few days looking over all the satellite videos and images of Swaziland to see what we could discover. We were able to confirm that there seemed to be around thirty gnomes working at the base and about one hundred others. We still did not have any idea on the location of General Fubar, Terror and Kevlar had guessed that he was either still on their home world or maybe on the moon base. Terror theorized that the General would want to stay as far away from the actual combat as possible. While we had a good look at the outside of the base, we had no way of telling what may be inside the buildings or underground even with the best satellites in the world there was still a limitation to what we could find out without boots on the ground.

  “Well, I think we have learned all we can from the satellites I’m going to send Echo to do reconnaissance on the base. Have them ready to head out at 0600 tomorrow morning.” Skipper said.

  “I’ll get them moving and ready to go,” I replied.

  “Turn the range into a replica of the base and start working everyone else through it have the Rangers not on duty play the defending forces. I want everyone going through it until you can do it blindfolded. Run it by platoons first than then run it full scale and every time Rogers gets shot Team 11 runs five miles. If he makes it through without getting shot the Rangers run five miles,” He said.

  “So how do I transfer to the Rangers?” I asked

  It was just then that Holly’s drink came shooting out her nose as she burst into laughter and then everyone but LtCmdr Rogers broke into laughter. I sent Echo platoon their new orders over the battlenet then I headed over to the armory to meet up with Gunny Easter. While we drove over, I called up the SECNAV’s Secretary

  “Linda, I need a favor I need you to issue a set of temporary orders assigning myself and some of my team to our Ranger battalion. Why? Oh, because Hicks is getting all drill sergeant and I want to mess with him so when your done have them sent to him. I just need them for a week. Thanks,” I said as I disconnected, and Had RANDI send a list of all the Raiders to her.

  “You are evil,” Holly said. And laughter erupted from the hummer.

  “Maybe just a little,” I replied.

  When we arrived at the Armory, I gave copies of all the satellite images to the Gunny and asked him to reconfigure the range. He said he would have it ready after lunch tomorrow if he could borrow a few of the marines.

  “You can have all of them for the morning the rangers will be playing the bad guys so get with Col. Ryan for duty assignments,” I said.

  Before we left, I turned to the Gunny and said, “The rain was pouring, and there was a big puddle in front of the pub just outside the Navy Base. A ragged old Marine Gunnery Sgt. was standing near the edge with a fishing rod, his line in the puddle. A curious young Navy fighter pilot came over to him and asked what he was doing. ‘Fishing,’ the old guy simply said. ‘Poor old fool,’ the Navy officer thought, and he invited the ragged old Marine into the pub for a drink. As he felt he should start some conversation while they were sipping their whiskey, the smart-ass fighter pilot asked, “And how many have you caught?”

  “You’re the eighth,” the old Marine Gunny answered.” We both laughed.

  From the armory, we headed over to The Grinder and worked out a rotation for the range. I was just starting to enjoy my coffee when my phone rang

  “You wouldn’t happen to know how it is that I have a set of orders that just arrived from the SECNAV’s office assigning you and the rest of the raiders to the Ranger Battalion for the next week would you?” The Skipper said.

  “Really I wonder how that happened?” I replied while struggling not to laugh.

  “Well, if you don’t know anything about them and neither do I, I’m just going to assume that it’s an error and ignore them,” He said.

  “Are you sure that is a good idea the SECNAV may have had a good reason for issuing them,” I replied.

  We both laughed, and then he hung up. “Alright everybody we have an important mission ahead of us. We must figure out a way to keep Captain America from getting shot during these training exercises,” I said.

  “I could hack the pickup sensors in his vest,” Kevlar said.

  “No, we are not allowed to cheat,” I told him. Just then, Rogers walked in.

  “We could break his leg just before the exercise starts so he can’t enter,” Holly said.

  “Whose leg are we breaking?” LtCmdr Rogers said.

  Holly looked at him with a fiendish grin. “Oh, Hell, No! No one is going to break my leg on purpose,” Rogers said.

  “Well grab a coffee and a seat and let me explain what’s going on,” I said to him then I filled him in on the condition the Skipper had set for the training.

  “So how do we keep from having to run an extra 5-miles every time we run a training exercise? We need some ideas that are going to work.” I said to the group gathered in my office.

  “Well you won’t let us cheat, and Rogers won’t let us break his leg. I guess I am out of ideas,” Kevlar said.

  “How about we equip him with a riot shield coated with stealth paint,” Leroy suggested.

  “Now that is genius the stealth paint will absorb the lasers while it won’t completely protect him; it will give him the edge we need,” Holly said.

  “Ok, Leroy get a shield and get it painted and ready to go by tomorrow morning. Cap, grab a shield and meet up with Holly in the gym to get some training in using it,” I said.

  “I’ll train him. I have quite a bit of experience using the shield in combat,” Kevlar said.

  “Can we get him around one and paint it red, white and blue?” Gili asked.

  Holly, Rogers, and I all said no at the same time. I had to admit that the thought of LtCmdr. Rogers carrying a shield into battle at a certain amount of comedic value and would ensure that he would never get rid of the nickname Captain America. I slipped a note to Holly telling her we should have a Captain America costume delivered with the shield. She was drinking her coffee as she read the note, and it nearly caused coffee to come shooting out
of her nose for the second time today.

  I looked out into the central area of The Grinder and saw Blades sitting down drinking a cup of coffee. Warren Officer Three (WO3) Collin “Blades” McKellar was the best pilot I had ever met; he could work magic behind the stick. The Man was not only the top pilot in a helicopter. He could also get in the cockpit of any plane and fly circles around the pilots coming out of Top Gun training. Our meeting was over, so I walked out and sat down next to him. “I got a good one for you,” I said. “An Airbus 380 is on its way across the Atlantic. It flies consistently at 800 km/h in 30,000 feet, when suddenly a Eurofighter with Tempo Mach 2 appears. The pilot of the fighter jet slows down, flies alongside the Airbus and greets the pilot of the passenger plane by radio:

  “Airbus flight, boring flight isn’t it? Take care and have a look here!” He rolls his jet on its back, accelerates, breaks through the sound barrier, rises rapidly to a dizzying height, only to swoop down almost to sea level in a breathtaking dive. He loops back next to the Airbus and asks,

  “Well, how was that?”

  The Airbus pilot answers: “Very impressive, but now have a look here!”

  The jet pilot watches the Airbus, but nothing happens. It continues to fly stubbornly straight, at the same speed. After five minutes, the Airbus pilot radioed, “Well, what are you saying now?”

  The jet pilot asks confused: “What did you do?”

  The other laughs and says, “I got up, stretched my legs, went to the back of the flight to the bathroom, got a cup of coffee and a cinnamon cake and made an appointment with the stewardess for the next three nights - in a 5 Star hotel, which is paid for by my employer. “

  The moral of the story is: When you are young, speed and adrenaline seem to be great. But as you get older and wiser, comfort and peace are not to be despised either. We both laughed. I noticed Gili walking Leroy to the door and talking to him in a whispered tone; I knew by the way he was acting that jarhead was up to something.

  I got a call from Melissa, she let me know that they had dinner at the house for everyone. She said that PO1 Jones and assigned a three-man team to cook dinner at my home for all of us.

  “He said to let you know that he would make sure that there would be dinner for you and your senior staff at our place in the evenings, but we would have to have breakfast and lunch with everyone else at the mess,” she said.

  “That sounds great I am bringing Holly, Kevlar, Var, Terror, Leroy, and Rogers with me we will be there soon,” I said to her.

  “I’ll make sure there is fresh coffee, love you see you soon,” She replied.

  “Alright, team grab your gear and the hardcopies and let’s head over to my house for dinner. We can finish our planning there. Knowing the Skipper, he is going to send the two teams that do the best by the end of the week on the mission, and I am not planning on staying home for this one,” I said.

  Everyone sounded off with a “hooyah,” and we grabbed our stuff and headed out.

  We all had dinner together. After dinner was cleared away, I discover that the table had a built-in Holographic projector. We brought up a display of the Swaziland base. I had RANDI place in red dots that showed guards and patrols. RANDI used the streaming satellite data to add in all current troop placement. We placed in Alpha Platoon and began running through possible approaches and attach patterns. After each setup, RANDI would run a simulation and show us the outcome. Every attack we through at the base with just Alpha Platoon resulted in the defenders winning the encounter. We then added in the marines, and We were able to win the battle, but we took heavy losses. It wasn’t until we added in both Bravo and Charlie Platoon that we were able to overwhelm the defenses and take minimal losses. It turned out that our best chance of success was to attack with all of Team 11 and the Marines. It was midnight when we came up with a plan that had a 95% chance of success. I sent out a message to all senior staff of team 11 and the Marines to meet at the Conference room in the admin building at 0800. We had a plan for training that would work, we would adjust the plan based on the new information that would come in from Echo Platoon once they were on station in Swaziland.

  The next morning, I met up with Lt. Dakota and Chief Ramos at the helicopter pad. “Keep your heads down and don’t stir up any trouble you two. We are going to need Echo when it comes time to assault the base. Three days on station then you will head back to the Carrier and wait for the rest of the team. Keep everyone streaming while you are on station,” I said and extended my fist.

  We fist-bumped, and Lt. Dakota said, “hooyah, Go-go. See you guy in a week.” They loaded into the helicopters, and I headed off to breakfast.

  At 0800 all the senior staff was gathered in the conference room for the briefing. We ran everyone through the plan getting input from everyone and adjusting the plan based on that input. It was 1100 when we finally came up with what I felt was the best possible starting plan. We would all meet again at 1600 for a short debrief. Our morning briefing would take place at 0700 starting tomorrow, and we would adjust the plan based on the previous day’s training results and the intel gathered by Echo platoon. For training we would break it down into platoon size actions until everyone was flawless on their part of the plan then we would bring everyone together and begin running it at a full team less Echo platoon, Echo platoon would act as the rear guard since they would not be with us for the training. Alpha Platoon with the addition of all my raiders would be the first group to go up against the Rangers today followed by the Marines. Even though the Marine unit was the size of four platoons, their primary purpose would be fire support with mortars, rockets and heavy machineguns. They wouldn’t be going against the Rangers. They would be going against fixed targets and developing lines of fire while the rangers would act a friendly’s and move through the field allowing the Marines to make sure they didn’t take out any of them. We would begin running drills at 1300 today. We would plan to run unit drills through Wednesday and then on Thursday, Friday, and Saturday we would run drills with the entire team. We would have Sunday off and fly out to meet up with Echo platoon on Monday.

  We began our training that afternoon after lunch as planned my Raiders and Alpha Platoon faced off against the Rangers for the first round. The Rangers had us out number three to one our first round lasted twenty minutes and, in the end, we won the first round but, in the end, it was just Kevlar, Holly and I left standing. After our turn ended, we were off for our 5-mile run. While I usually enjoyed a good run when you are in the swamps of south Florida, and it was 1400, and the heat index was 110 running 5 miles was a grueling test of endurance. When we finished our run, we all hit the pool to cool off and unwind a little until it was our turn to go again our second run would be at 1830. Starting tomorrow, we would run the drill 3 times a day at 0800 1300 and 1830. We would have a morning briefing at 0700 over breakfast and an evening debrief at 2000.

  As the training went along, we adjusted as information came in form Echo and the training got harder. It wasn’t until our second run on the second day that Rogers managed to make it through to the end without getting shout, this was mainly due to the constant drilling he would do with the shield with Kevlar in between runs and partially due to the fact that we told him that if he got shot again he was going to start practicing with Kevlar and Holly at the same time. By the end of day three, we had mastered our part of the mission ending training with zero dead and only two injured. In total, after all of Team 11 had finished their platoon level drills, we had only taken 3 losses and 6 wounded. For an operation this size that was, and the fact that our Rangers were the best the army had to offer we felt good moving forward to the full team training.

  As we began full-scale training, we added four tanks to the defenders because Echo had spotted several tanks in one of the buildings. The tanks had not been detected by the satellite because they had not left the building. Our first run-through was ugly and resulting in deaths to friendly fire and the tanks, but by the end of the first day, we w
ere running like a well-oiled machine. It was the middle of day three when we had a perfect run, we took out the entire enemy force without a single loss on our side. “Great job team I think we are ready. Hit the showers and take the rest of the day off and stand down tomorrow we fly out Monday morning at 0600. Senior staff briefing Sunday at 2000 in the conference room.” The Skipper said and dismissed everyone.

  55.

  Swaziland

  “You will all leave here tomorrow morning be Helicopter to Homestead, from there you will be flown to the Navy’s newest Carrier the USS Saratoga (CVP-60) it is the Navy’s first Ship to be powered by Plasma Reactors and is sitting off the Coast of Mozambique waiting for your arrival. From the Sara, the marines will be flown into a staging area where they will mount up on APC’s and secure the perimeter of the base. All of Team 11 will assault the base from helicopters. Go-go, you and your raiders will be on the lead helicopter I want you to take Papa Smurf with you he may be of use once we take the base, especially if we manage to capture the leader of the gnomes. Your team will fast repel on to the roof of the command building and move in as planned,” The Skipper said as he started the 2000 pre-mission briefing. The briefing lasted for about an hour.

  After the briefing, the Skipper and I walked up to his office. He poured us both a glass of scotch. “I have a bad feeling about this one Go-go. I spent most of the day looking for a reason to cancel this mission, but you know as well as I do there is none,” He said.

  “Yea I don’t think any of us will be getting much sleep tonight; everyone one is ready, but it also seems that more people than normal are on edge,” I replied.

  “Well here’s to those that went before us,” He said, lifting his glass.

  “And to those that walk in or footsteps,” I replied, and we both drank.

  It was 0430 when I found myself standing at the coffee pot in the kitchen, waiting for the coffee to finish brewing. Over the next thirty minutes the kitchen began to fill around me first Melissa, then Daniela, Terror, Holly, Kevlar, Var and finally Gili. No one said a word as we all began to pour our cups of coffee. Everyone was focused on the mission that was to come. Anderson walked in just then with a couple of boxes of donuts. “Breakfast?” He asked. Mumbles began to come from everyone as we grabbed donuts and sat at the table. It’s something about doughnuts that don’t allow you to be too serious while eating. I could see the tension in everyone beginning to lessen as we ate. Everyone knew, but as it was with every group of soldiers before a mission, everyone knew that this could be your last chance to be with your friends drinking coffee and eating, but no one wanted to talk about it.