by Unknown
Two hours later the Sultan and General Harb received word that the Garrison in Lansing had been bombed too. The reports they received stated that the Garrison had been removed from the face of the earth and that the surrounding neighborhoods were also leveled and parts of the city were on fire. This was bad news Lansing was going to be the model Islamic City within the ISA and now the Americans had taken that away; they would also pay for this.
Chapter Thirty-Four
Four out of the five A-Teams had returned to Camp Grayling the fifth team the one that had dropped into St. Louis hadn’t been heard from. The A-Team that had been in Detroit reported that the Sultan and Supreme Commander a General Harb had escaped the bombings in Dearborn. They don’t know how they found out or figured it out but they escaped to a secondary CC or Command Center in Ann Arbor.
The Detroit team had also passed on that there was an Army Training center about miles out of Dearborn and at some point during the storm they vacated it probably suspected it was going to be bombed too. The team was told that there was up to 90,000 men in that center getting ready for the assault on Camp Grayling. That number sent a shockwave though the US Military Command; with the estimated 10,000 they suspected they were fighting now that would bring the total up close to 100,000 men under arms. They knew that with that many men they didn’t have to be that good they had the numbers. At most they were going to be able to put 50,000 combat troops in the field they would be outnumbered 2-1 this wasn’t good news.
They reported that the morality police were still using the Garrison they were the only thing standing in the way of securing the port and the city, they estimated there were maybe 15,000 of them. There was good news and that was most of the police would be in Garrison, they were a lazy bunch and very reactionary. Meaning that they did routine patrol but that didn’t take a lot the police were there to react to a much larger crisis in the event the infidels who worked for them got out of control and perhaps rioted which had happened about a month ago. The police gunned down over 2000 rioters and didn’t think twice about it.
The Ohio team had a lot of success they had found two Garrisons one in Columbus and Dayton they were considered Sister Garrisons as they weren’t too far apart. Toledo had a Morality Police training facility. However, like the Garrisons in Detroit and Dearborn the Army had vacated and headed north they believed to the training center outside of Dearborn. The two Garrisons were still being manned by companies of morality police who were a brutal bunch, they estimated here were about 3000 men combined and the Police training facility was still up and running it was a large complex housing a several hundred men who were going through training.
The Minneapolis team reported of no ISA sightings at all the city itself was largely vacated for the smaller towns. The team had made contact with several communities who were actually happy to see them; they feed them and gave them a place to sleep. They were very interested in what was going on outside of Wisconsin they was a lot of discussion within the communities who had finally settled in and were policing themselves, whether or not the federal government getting involved in their lives again was good a thing.
What these people didn’t know was that there was a large militia about four hundred miles south of them that was terrorizing the towns and villages. They were robbing, raping and murdering anyone who stood up to them. This was not welcome news to the communities that thought they were living in nirvana. They didn’t have the means to stand-up to something like the militia. The civilians wanted to know if there were going to stop them. The A-Teams detachment Commander Captain Pallit explained that there was only twelve of them and there was no way there were going to stop over four hundred men on horseback. Their mission as he explained it a dozen times was to collect information on the ISA, their secondary objective was to make contact with civilians such as them to find out any additional information regarding the region. They were to go as far as Green Bay which was getting more and more difficult because of the weather.
The team made it to Green Bay as the storm hit they didn’t know that it turned out to be one of the largest and coldest storms on record. Like many of the cities they had encountered there wasn’t much to Green Bay. They stayed at Lambeau field; Captain Pallit was a huge Packer fan, it was sad for him to see the sad state the stadium and field were in. The Field was completely over grown and the stadium over the last year was falling about due to lack of attention.
When the storm ended they ventured into Green Bay and found literally no one around. It’s possible that no one wanted to venture out of whatever warm spot they had found. With that they made their way to Austin Straubel airport to see if they could find any civilian aircraft they could terminally borrow. Once there it didn’t take long to find what they were looking for and were winging their way back to Camp Grayling.
The four teams had arrived back three to four days after the storm had ended except for team in St. Louis. There was some discussion by Colonel Clayton and LTG Watkins about sending another team in to find out what happened. They decided they would do it but give the team until the end of the week to get back, after that another team would be sent it to try to determine what happened.
As each team returned Colonel Clayton placed each one into isolation and had a group of intelligence analysts from Fort Huachuca debrief them. It took about three days for them to be debriefed and present the information to LTG Watkins and his staff. The briefing lasted for several hours and the final group decision was to bomb the Garrisons and the Police training facility in Detroit. They decided for now to let the Army training facility to be there wasn’t anyone home for now, they reserved the right to change their minds a bit later.
The one piece of news that was a surprise and unwelcomed was the news of the militia in Wisconsin it was very disappointing. LTG Watkins and the others felt if it wasn’t one thing it was another but they were all aware they would be frightening these types of battles for the foreseeable future. It was unfortunate that so many felt that when a national crisis hits that they can take advantage of it and hurt people. They needed to deal with this crisis first and it wasn’t all that clear how successful they were going to be outnumbered 2-1.
Two days later B-29’s and B-52’s lifted off from Travis Air Force Base heading due east. There targets were the Garrisons identified by the various A-Teams as well as the morality police and their training center. Six hours after lift off the sites ceased to exist and the areas surrounding them which were generally heavily Muslim populated were leveled and or on fire. Four of the crews that participated in the runs were four of the original crews that participated in the bombings of Dearborn and Lansing. Their advice to the crews that were making their first runs was not to look back execute the bomb run, let the bombardier’s verify the hits, turn around and go home. Most of the crews took the advice to heart and didn’t look back those that did would never forget the rest of their lives what they saw, unfortunately it wasn’t going to end for them they knew it was going to be a long war to put the Country back together.
A few hours after the new bombings word made it back to the Sultan and the General who couldn’t believe what they were hearing. The heart of their Caliphate was being destroyed by the damn Americans and there wasn’t much they could really do about it. They had no idea where the planes were coming from; if they knew they were flying out of California they might have reconsidered their entire strategy. All they could think that the Americans were getting there’s right now as the Army of Allah was pounding and pushing the American Army back.
Chapter Thirty-Five
The Army of Allah was successful so far at pushing the US Army back twenty-five miles and in some places they had pushed up thirty miles. The edges of the American lines at Standish to the east and Hart to the west were lightly defended giving the Army of Allah the opportunity they needed to break through and flood their Soldiers into the American rear. Fortunately the US Army was able to rush reinforcement’s in and stabilize the situa
tion around East Tawas and Ludington. The US Army had lost a couple of hundred Soldiers that they couldn’t afford to lose. They knew that the AA or the Army of Allah was losing a lot more than they were, but for now they could absorb losses.
There were other areas in the US line the AA found to exploit they were around the Isabella Indian Reservation. The AA had successfully pushed about ten to fifteen miles north through the line sort of creating a bulge before US forces were able to stop them. More combat forces were being flown in from Fort Irwin to help, about two thousand more. It took time to get them there though and time was something they didn’t have.
They still had the 184th Infantry Regiment sitting on the sidelines and that was 3,500 men. The decision was made to drop them behind the AA just about Lansing to cut off their supply lines. The four A-Teams were going to be dropped in various locations behind the AA to harass and draw forces away from their main line of attack. The A-Teams for the most part knew these were one way missions they didn’t expect to survive them they were being dropped danger close to the enemy in the middle of the night and would then do what was necessary to disrupt the fight.
The Marines were sitting up in northern Grayling waiting for the fight to reach them; they were bored and wanted to get in the fight right now. LTG Watkins was now more than happy to grant them there wish. They were going to Isabella Indian Reservation to plug the gaps in the US lines and btw there were now about 5,000 pissed off Chippewa Indians who had decided it was in their best interest to join in the fight they didn’t want to become any part of any Muslim Caliphate they already had enough problems with the United States government in the past and from everything they heard about the ISA they wanted no part of that.
By the time the Marines had gotten their movement orders the 184th was four hours in the air they were loaded onto C-47’s who would drop them and continue onto the airfield in Grayling to refuel and head back to Davis-Monthan. The A-Teams were in the air now and in the process of being dropped over various areas, Colonel Claytons instructions were raise as much hell as you can, take no prisoners and Gods Speed the beer was on him when it was all over. Colonel Clayton had volunteered to jump in with one of the teams but LTG Watkins was flat out against that idea he couldn’t afford to lose one of his senior Commanders especially one of the few that had true combat experience and someone whose advice he sought out.
The plan was for the 184th, the A-Teams, the Marines and the Indians to hit the AA all about the same time to cause chaos and confusion in the lines. It was all due to kick off in three hours about the time the 184th had chutes in the air. The expectation was that they were going to come down unopposed miles behind the AA lines, there job was eradicate the AA rear echelon.
The 184th Infantry Regiment had chutes in the air it was the largest airborne drops since World War Two. There were scattered over a ten mile front, east to west, it was planned that way. It was believed that they would run into rear echelon units anywhere between two and five miles from the drop zone. Once on the ground, as most of them were now, they would regroup into their Companies and move on out hunting the enemy. This is what they had been training for months and months at Fort Irwin with regimental drops covering large areas. Granted it was the desert but it got very cold in the desert and sometimes snowed during their training exercises.
Regardless of the weather they were prepared for now for Mother Nature and what she could throw at them, fire and maneuver were the name of the game. They figured they were paratroopers and there was no tougher and hard fighting outfit. They were in their element and were going to bring the fight to the enemy. Word came down via the radios it was time to get into the war, the Companies and Platoons moved out, hunt and destroy.
The A-teams that had been deployed throughout the area were already having success they were creating havoc in the lines. They were unshaven and had beards by now; they were armed like the AA and dressed in the same manner. The good thing was that just about every AA Soldier spoke English so the A-Teams fit right in and were able to move freely within the AA lines. There primary objectives were near Hart and Standish where the ISA was continuing to drive hard forward with little to stop them. The A-Teams were able to get ahold of three SAW’s that they liberated from three AA machine gun teams. They got into the AA lines and using the machine guns were able to cause enough crossfire confusion that the AA Soldiers were firing on themselves killing each other.
Another A-Team found the water buffalos they were using for water and poisoned them the made their way out of the AO. Hours later twenty to thirty AA Soldiers were found by some of their compatriots dead with no apparent wounds.
Another A-Team moved into sniper positions where they would fire and kill two or three AA Soldiers while the rest of the team pulled security. Once they did that they would move to another firing position and repeat.
Another A-Team found vehicles that the AA was using and either disabled them or booby-trapped them. This caused a few issues after truck and Humvees started exploding. At a minimum it taught them not to leave their vehicles unguarded its overall effect was to cause AA troops to use a lot more caution and take men off the line to guard the vehicles.
The A-Teams were also setting up IED’s along routes that they believed the AA would use to advance they weren’t big on walking. The AA Soldiers were suffering from frostbite and pneumonia from the cold and that being the case they were using the vehicles more and more to transport the troops. Now that the vehicles were exploding from traps or running into IED’s they were forced back into the forests and fields to walk, they weren’t happy campers.
The Chippewa were not trained Soldiers but there were thousands of them and they were dedicated to protecting what was there’s. They knew the land and the area they were fighting in, they were hunters and could set up traps to capture and kill game, they were not going to do it to kill AA Soldiers. The Chippewa could move quickly, make contact, then disappear it was driving the AA Officers crazy they had no idea it was the Indians. When the ISA entered the reservation they found all of the communities they went through vacated they had no idea where the people went. The Chippewa had retreated to their ancestral homes in the mountains where they could hold up indefinitely but in doing so they surrendered all of their land to the ISA which was unacceptable to the tribe.
They were now running a guerrilla war against the ISA and were being armed the US Army. The Chippewa were using ATV and dirt bikes to carry out some of the attacks but these vehicles were noisy and the noise carried in the snow. They turned to more traditional modes of transportation, horses something that was always reliable and they could depend on.
The first time the AA Soldiers saw a group of Chippewa attacking them on horseback it seemed surreal to them something out of the Wild West. The AA Soldiers didn’t know what to think or how to react they dropped their weapons and ran the Chippewa caught up with them easy enough and killed them all. The ISA Officers spread the word about men on horseback attack their lines they told them they believed it was the Indians, as the Officers explained the situation to their men it even sounded crazy to them, the men thought it sounded even crazier.
Regardless they were having an impact and a positive one but they were taking losses and in some cases they were heavy. They needed help; they needed to better understand the concepts of modern warfare so they approached the US Army. They sent a delegation to the American lines and asked to speak to someone in charge. They were escorted through the lines and were handed off from unit to unit, Soldier to NCO, NCO to Officer finally ending up with Colonel Clayton. The Chippewa delegation had no idea who Colonel Clayton was and had no clue how he was going to help them.
When they met with him he told him he was responsible for Special Operations which didn’t mean anything to them. Then he told them he commanded US Army Special Forces, again it didn’t mean anything to them; he had to think about it and how to convey what he did. He then asked them if they knew what Army Green Berets were, the
y all nodded they did and told the Colonel they knew the Green Berets were incredible warriors and could he get them some of them. Colonel Clayton chuckled at that, he reached into his cargo pocket pulling out his Beret and put it on. “I think I can help,” the Colonel told them.
The Chippewa stood staring at the Colonel, the Chippewa delegation leader stuck out his hand to shake the Colonels, they shook hands and the Chippewa leader told the Colonel I think we can do some business now and the Colonel responded that he would be more than happy to help anyway he could.
Chapter Thirty-Six
Sub Colonel Mahir Ganem was the Officer responsible for the breakout from around Hart and pushing the godless American Army further and further north. He and his men had found the weakness in the infidel’s lines and exploited it and they were continuing to follow through will killing as many of them as they could. One of his best Officers was Major Tohan who recognized the problems in the American lines and personally led the first charge into them. He ran at the American Soldiers screaming and firing his weapon like a wild man, it wasn’t the best tactic but it had seemed to scare the US Soldiers and encouraged his own men to follow him. Yes, yes they had suffered a large number of casualties it didn’t matter they had achieved their first victory.
His Company Commanders were Captain Nasar, Captain Wasem, and Captain Koury all of them fine men and great Commanders. Each Company consisted of 300 men with the three Companies they had 900 men compared to the 150 – 200 US Soldiers that were spread across ten miles. It was easy to understand how the US lines were stretched thin and how it was relatively easy to breach them. Once Major Tohan and his three Companies had breached the American lines it was easy for them to exploit the rear and come from the rear and attack the other US units on the line were not expecting to be attacked from the rear.
