Islamic States of America (Soldier Up Book 2)

by Unknown

  “Oh, I think I understand.” said Shana. “So when you go into an area and secure it the military sets up civilian governments to oversee that area.”

  “Yeah pretty much they also help them set up civilian security forces and those security forces are overseen by the civilian authority in that area.”

  “Do they oversee the military?” asked Aron.

  “No, right now it would take federal authority to do so. Do you want a civilian authority from San Francisco dictating to you what you do here especially if you never voted for them?” Asked the Chief.

  “Well no, I see your point.” said Aron. “But don’t you think there should be civilian oversight?”

  “Yes we all do and there will be but first things first we need to get the country back to where it can operate as a country. We’ve just started to rebuild as we move forward it will happen but we need to move forward as a nation.” exclaimed the Chief.

  “Alright alright we need to get moving.” said the Captain. “It was nice meeting you both and stay safe.”

  The Soldiers moved out heading out of the downtown area towards the area where the first refinery was located. The Chief estimated it would take them a couple of hours to walk there unless they could find a truck or couple of cars that they could use. They left Aron and Shana standing next to their care which was still running. Soon the Soldiers were out of sight, Aron and Shana climbed back into their car and headed back out to the commune they would be happy to put the city behind them. They certainly had a story to tell everyone back at the farm they wondered if anyone would believe them. They hoped so because if what the Soldiers said was true they could expect company soon.

  After five miles they came to an antique car dealership Sergeant Delarosa thought was worth a look, he called a halt to the movement and asked to go take a quick look inside, the Captain shrugged and told Sergeant Hart to go with him. The two NCO’s entered the building and what they saw filled the two men with awe. All of the cars in the building were beautifully restored then they noticed in the back in the corner were two Ford 250’s from the 70’s. I guess they considered them antiques which is fine by them if they started they could put them to good use. Sergeant Hart moved to one and Sergeant Delarosa moved to the other; luck was still on their side and the keys were in the ignitions.

  Each man climbed into their respective truck and turned the key the one Sergeant Hart was in cranked over the first try. The truck Sergeant Delarosa was in took a bit more coaxing but eventually started too. The engines in both trucks sounded strong but there was very little fuel in each of them. They let the engines idle while they checked the other vehicles for fuel most of them had at least a half full tank.

  Captain Truhill and the others got tired of waiting outside for the two NCO’s to return they were also concerned something had happened to them. They entered the building cautiously and immediately heard the truck engines idling. “What the hell is going on Sergeant?” asked the Captain directing the question to Sergeant Delarosa.

  “Sir, we got two trucks that are running right now we are siphoning fuel out of the other cars to top off the trucks we could sure use some help.”

  The Chief just shook his head, “Good work Sergeant.” The Chief and the rest of the men pitched in to help top off the trucks. Once that was all done they opened the garage type doors to get the trucks out unfortunately this took a bit of time, they had to move some of the other vehicles first. Some started and some others had to be rolled out-of-the-way, eventually they got the trucks out, loaded up into them and took off to the BP oil refinery.

  The refinery was a thirty minute drive with the trucks they stopped a half mile away and approached the refinery carefully. Two of the team moved to high ground which meant to find the tallest building in the area that could look down into the refinery granted from a distance they were the over-watch team, sniper and spotter.

  The over-watch team was in position and reporting that it was all clear. The team moved cautiously into the refinery, there was no sign anyone was home. They entered the operations center and found nothing but a mess. People had certainly been there but they were long gone now, they continued the search of the administrative offices and came up with nothing. The other part of the team had been searching the grounds and found nothing, no one was home.

  They spend the rest of the day checking out the waterfront where the oil was off loaded, still a big fat zero. They bedded down in the operations center leaving the over-watch team in place for the night.

  Morning rolled in slowly like every other day the night was uneventful and they were itching to get out and check one other refinery about twenty-five miles north of them. The washed up, ate breakfast and pulled in the over-watch team who were not a happy couple, winter was coming and it was cold up there.

  They topped off the trucks and loaded into them then headed off for the next objective. Captain Truhill cautioned the men about becoming complacent they hadn’t run into any trouble; it didn’t mean that it wasn’t around the next corner waiting. It was an interesting ride to say the least it was the first time they had seen any of the zoo animals who had apparently been able to successfully breed. They ran into a small herd of zebra and were charged by a couple of rhino’s a couple of miles after that they spotted what looked to be about ten or more African elephants they wondered how they would fair during winter.

  They continued to drive on the twenty-five miles seemed to pass quickly they were at the other BP refinery within a couple of hours. They ran the same exact drill they from the previous refinery and ended up with the same results. It took them a day to clear everything and check out the waterfront from there they could see the ships waiting to come into port that never really arrived. The Soldiers what happened to the crews, once the even hit the ships were dead in the water and ended up anchored off the coast, I guess someone will have to board them to find out, it wasn’t going to be them they knew that for sure.

  Chapter Thirty

  All of the A-Teams arrived at Camp Grayling and received their briefing from Colonel Clayton. Each team was assigned an area of responsibility within the ISA. They were given maps and immediate objectives; they were also told they had twenty-four hours to come up with a plan and complete a brief back to him. They were also told that the two A-Teams that came here a couple of weeks ago executed their first mission returned and were sent back out on a secondary mission. He also told them one of the reasons why their team was selected out of all of the others available that at least one or two team members were fix wing certified and could fly. That since many of them if not most would have a couple of hundred miles to cover to return to the Camp they may want to consider exfiltrating by air, but it was only a suggestion.

  The teams studied the maps and operation orders as well as the parameters of their mission. Each team was prepared at the end of the twenty-four hour period and successfully gave Colonel Clayton their brief backs. There were five teams they were scheduled to deploy on their respective missions between 2300 to 0130; each would load into their plane that flew them to their destination where each team would infiltrate by air.

  Once on the ground their primary objective was to determine where the Army Garrisons where and composition of units there. Teams were designated by the name of the city they were going for instance Team Toronto who was responsible for the City of Toronto and North Eastern United States and Canada. Granted this was a huge area for a twelve man team but eventually more teams would be added in the future. They had the additional objective to try to find out what’s going on with the Canadian Military in the area.

  Teams may also be designated a state name as in Team Ohio who was responsible for the State of Ohio. They would be dropped in southern Ohio and have to work their way north by all means available to them over land. A team would also be dropped as far west as Minnesota near Minneapolis they had the same objectives as the others to gather any information on ISA Garrisons in and around the city. They were also req
uired to push out a hundred and fifty miles from the town then head east into Wisconsin towards Green Bay.

  Another team would be dropped as far south west as St. Louis which was the furthest any team was going. The team under taking this objective was the most experienced and the team members were also cross trained in more specialties than any other A-Team in the 19th. They really had no idea what to expect there the ISA claimed the area but there was no proof that they really had established any cells or garrisons there. Keeping in mind that the ISA also claimed Northern Michigan where Camp Grayling was.

  The last team was Team Detroit there obvious objective was to collect as much information about the Garrison there. Detroit was also important because it as a crossroads just about every road in Michigan led to Detroit it was important to capture the city because of the port which was the largest port in Michigan.

  This was the largest intelligence collecting mission the 19th had ever carried out also the largest area covered since the middle-east wars. This was different because of extractions back then they had an exfiltration point where a helicopter would pick them up and whisk them away to safety or at least try to. Exfiltration now meant that you infiltrated hundreds of miles away from base and exfiltration was up to you what they did was already high risk now adding that there was no sure way to exfiltrate a team made it almost a suicide mission. Fortunately so far all of the teams were able to make it out for the most part intact.

  Each team had eight days to complete their mission which was inclusive of the time they needed to return to Camp Grayling. It was going to be tight for some of the teams especially for those with greater distance to cover and or a greater landmass they had to explore. Not one team complained to Colonel Clayton about the parameters of their mission and each team believed, so they said, that each mission was doable.

  The operation kicked off on time five planes took off thirty minutes apart from each other. The men in each plane were quiet thinking about the mission at hand. It was no picnic for the pilots either who had no modern navigation to fly to their destinations. They used compasses, the roads (they had to fly low to see them) and landmarks. The pilots didn’t complain and also saw their missions just as important, because they were, and just as doable. They were professional Air Force pilots they had just as much love for their country as anyone else and they wanted to be able to contribute to the cause.

  Each team at its respective time had chutes in the air each pilot wished each team gods speed and good luck as they exited the plane into the night. History would record this date and time and what these men did as the time the United States Military stood up to the tyranny within and started to take the country back.

  Chapter Thirty-One

  The movement of Soldiers from Fort Huachuca was on with all of the intelligence coming into Camp Grayling they needed more intelligence analysts they also needed more communications Soldiers to run wire, run and monitor the radio systems. There had to be a balance from what was taken from any of the posts because they still had to be able to respond to local and regional security needs. The fighters from the Air Force bases had already transferred over to the airfield at Grayling and were involved in ground support operations against forward elements of the ISA.

  Ground combat units were also coming from Fort Irwin they were mostly Cavalry that had been re-designated light infantry. The 352nd Combat Mobile Hospital from Camp Parks was also ordered into theater and once there to immediately prepare to take casualties. The 184th Infantry Regiment (Airborne) was on standby at Camp Parks they would make a jump into the CBA or combat area ahead of any ground invasion.

  LTG Watkins and his senior staff meet at Camp Grayling to discuss how best to use the Air Force bombers. LTG Watkins told them that they needed a unanimous decision by the staff to bomb any US cities they were either all in or it wasn’t going to happen. The two A-Teams had returned from Lansing and Chicago they knew where the Garrison in Dearborn was as well as the ISA Headquarters and the Garrison in Lansing. The Garrisons and HQ were located within the cities and there would be collateral damage there was no such thing as precision guided weapons any longer. The bombs would be guided into the area by the optics used on the B-29’s and B-52’s but they would take out a large swath of area around the Garrisons and HQ.

  There were tough decisions to make there they still didn’t have the big picture and they wouldn’t until the Special Forces teams returned from the field and the intelligence they gathered was collected, analyzed and then the Command Staff briefed that was weeks away. However, they felt they had to do something they couldn’t wait around and do nothing. Reports that the Garrisons in Dearborn and Lansing were on the move towards them with at least ten thousand men was very worrisome.

  LTG Watkins knew that at some point in time, in the future, that he as well as the men and women who served under him would have to answer to some civilian authority for the things they did. In his experience although some things seem justified now to civilians who may at some point have authority over him and the others will disagree. In the past when these civilians tried to make a big deal out of it and bring those Officers and other military members up on charges. In most cases these things failed but they were now talking about bombing American and possibly at least one Canadian city, they all needed to be on record and it needed to be unanimous.

  After hours of bickering and arguing over the issue LTG Watkins called for a vote. After everything that was said pro and con the vote was unanimous, but there were caveats for instance there had to be an ISA military or morality police presence in the city, town or village. They agreed the first three targets would be the Garrisons located in Dearborn and Lansing followed by the ISA HQ in Dearborn which included the mosque.

  LTG Watkins then ordered Brigadier General Datak to get with his Commanders and come up with a plan within seventy-two hours. Then brief the Command Staff on it after that they would have another round of discussion and voting. Some of the Staff who saw this as a black and white situation and wanted the LTG to make the decision, he after all was the man in-charge and should just order it but they were also under his command they would follow his orders regardless of how they felt.

  At this time the US Army units had solidify their lines along ten miles south of Harrison. Those lines stretched from east to Gladwin to Standish and west to Big Rapids to Hart. It was a large rugged area from town to town and a lot of unpopulated area between the towns. This largely benefited the US Army who had trained in these types of areas for many years and with the onset of winter they were prepared. The ISA had been probing their lines and there had been many firefights with the ISA Soldiers taking the brunt of it. There were no prisoner’s being taken by either side the US Soldiers reported back to command that the ISA dead were lightly dressed.

  The ISA Soldiers that they were coming up against seemed a lot better trained then the ones who chased the Marines north from Lansing. They were able to hold ground and fight as a unit they were using ground communications, runners or radios, successfully. That doesn’t mean the US Army wasn’t able to fight effectively far from it. The first engagement with the Army of Allah was near Houghton Lakes the US Army was able to drive them past Harrison and on the western side of the line they were able to secure the area all the way down to Hart. These were the first losses by the ISA Commanders General Harb had warned them that up to the point where they left the Garrisons and headed north they had fought armed civilians and he reminded them again that the Army/Marines Reserve and National Guard units they engaged they had never really defeated, yes it’s true they pulled back, tactically redeployed, and retreated north, but they never beat them there was no surrenders.

  To varying degrees this helped bolster his claim that the Soldiers coming from the other Garrisons needed a couple of more weeks of training prior to heading off to fight the US Army and perhaps more Marines.

  The first big snow storm hit the area and dumped almost three feet of snow in northern Michig
an. Since there were no more meteorological sciences or no way to forecast the weather outside of knowing winter was coming, the storm was a surprise to both sides. It would also hold up the possible bombing of the cities. The pilots had become more and more confident at flying at night and some inclement weather but they couldn’t fly through and snow storm.

  The briefing to LTG Watkins and the rest of the Command Staff took place a week after the orders went out to Brigadier General Datak. General Datak and his staff arrived early that morning and headed straight to the HQ conference room to set up. They brought a couple of overhead projectors that they found that actually worked and had a laptop given to them by Colonel Clayton. This was going to be the first power point presentation since the event, now all they needed was for them to kick on the generators unfortunately they still needed electricity.

  The General and his staff had arrived the morning before the storm hit that evening. Since the storm hadn’t hit the briefing went on they could see the bad weather moving in and it was cold, damn cold. LTG Watkins ordered more heat gear to the field for the Soldiers he wanted it out to them by noon he was asked if they could airdrop it to them. He told them yes if they had accurate safe way to do it. This would be the first air drop of equipment and supplies to military units in the field since the event. The Air Force Officers and NCO’s felt confident they could do it most had done it prior to the event and it didn’t take much technology outside of the airplane.

  On with the briefing the power point presentation brought a lot of smiles to the group it was always nice to have some of the previous modern technology return. The problem was always that once the cat was out of the bag everyone felt they needed it. The truth of the matter was that there wasn’t enough of it. The laptop was from the 19th ‘s stash of computers they had in large faraday cages underground. Colonel Clayton was pretty tight with them and it was difficult to get anything out of him, LTG Watkins wouldn’t order him to give any of it up. Colonel Clayton did mention time and again other Special Forces units had the same storage facilities, the 1st Group at Fort Lewis Washington, 5th Group at Fort Campbell Kentucky and lastly 7th and 3rd at Fort Bragg North Carolina. Then there were the other various Special Forces units in the National Guard spread around the other states. Unfortunately there had been no contact with any of them.