Indian Country

by Kurt A Schlichter

  “Our teams have not seen any bridging equipment,” Dale said. He had sent Liz and the kids south of town with his mother-in-law, and now he was receiving and collating reports from the recon teams the insurgents had deployed around Bloomington to monitor the 172nd Brigade’s forces. “We could blow them. We have explosives now.”

  Turnbull tapped the map. “Not now. If we do it now, we risk trapping our own people north. Plus the US forces might need them going north – assuming they come. Wire them, though.”

  Dale nodded. They had identified a couple ex-combat engineer veterans among the insurgents. They were immediately designated the explosives experts. Turnbull hoped they still remembered how to work magic with det cord and C4.

  “They’ll lead with tanks, but they won’t go into the urban areas without infantry if they can help it. Their infantry is light – no Bradley or Stryker vehicles, so it’s going to be a problem keeping up. They might try to thunder run it, just tear through and shoot stuff, but they can’t hold ground with tanks alone. They need boots on the ground. Logistics is going to be a challenge for them, especially with these chokepoints. Since we’re operating in zones, we’ve been laying up our resupply in caches inside our areas so we won’t have to resupply over distance as often.”

  Banks was there watching, having been promoted to lead two elements north of the river. “Why no anti-tank weapons for us?” he asked. “They’ll be tearing through our zone and we could get some shots off.”

  “We’ll let the armor get over the river and engage it there and starve it. They’ll get into Jasper one way or the other, so we let them. Jasper’s where we can get close and neutralize some of their advantages. Target the maintenance, logistics guys, and the fuelers north of the river. Find command posts and attack them. Locate their artillery. That’s got to be taken out. Remember, lay low, let forces that can beat you pass by, and then spring up and attack ones that can’t. They don’t have the numbers to occupy and guard everything. They’ll have to prioritize, which means roads, and long, vulnerable supply lines. You hit them where they are weak.”

  “I have lots of reports of paramilitaries, PSF and Volunteers,” Dale said.

  “I’m guessing they aren’t front line combat forces,” Turnbull said. “You can stand toe-to-toe with those bastards if you have the numbers. Those will probably be the follow on force for local security. They’re probably going to focus on civilians. You can probably figure out what that means.”

  “We’ve evacuated most of the noncombatants from north of town,” Dale noted. “We’ve got them camped out south of Jasper.”

  “So we better win,” Turnbull said. “It’s your land. It’s your families. That’s what you’re fighting for. Good luck.”

  Ted Cannon moved across the open field and dropped into a stream bed to get closer to his objective. With him were three other insurgents carrying the typical variety of AR15-style guns and civilian hunting rifles. He pulled up the binoculars and looked north toward the outskirts of the small town of Loogootee, about 20 miles north of Jasper where the north-south axis of Route 231 and the east-west Route 150 intersected. The path of Route 150 across the sector was labeled “Phase Line Orange” on the insurgents’ maps, and represented what Turnbull expected would be the line of departure for the PRA forces.

  There was an assembly area for tanks and a lot of trucks outside to the west near the high school. It was humming – they were getting ready, and he could hear the rumble of tank turbines from a half mile away.

  What was going on in the town was more troubling. There were PSF and PV units in the town itself, mostly mounted in civilian vehicles, cruisers and what appeared to be some requisitioned civilian pick-up trucks with their new owners’ initials spray-painted on in black. They were going through the town, which the insurgents had never actually held, and seemed to be torching the buildings. The old Dairy Queen and the closed down Wendy’s on the south side were in flames. And there was the crackle of gunfire. But there were no armed insurgents deployed in the Loogootee.

  “They’re shooting civilians,” the female guerrilla next to him said.

  “Yeah,” replied Cannon, not surprised. “I better call it in.”

  Inspector Kunstler was wearing his black paramilitary tactical gear and had been conferring with the leader of the People’s Volunteers element in Loogootee. The PBI agent was happy to hear that the town was completely cleansed of reactionary elements. Now the People’s Volunteers were to sweep west and then south behind the main army force. There was to be nothing left standing, or breathing.

  “We’re ready,” Major Little, the new brigade commander, reported.

  “Then attack,” said Kunstler. “Take Jasper.”

  “Movement south all over Phase Line Orange,” Dale reported to Turnbull. “They are moving on 231, and all the county roads south.”

  “It’s on,” said Turnbull. He picked up his M4 from the table. No sense in being in the command post – this was not going to be a synchronized battle with a general moving pieces around a board, at least, not for the insurgents. This was going to be a decentralized fight, a series of separate battles between the enemy and independent guerrilla groups. There was nothing much that he could do to influence their outcomes now. At this point, Kelly Turnbull had more to offer pulling triggers than listening to reports. He headed out the door.

  C Company had been nicknamed “Crusader” when it was a US unit. That, of course, was a no-go now. Nor could the tank unit be known as Charlie Company anymore either – that phonetic designation was sexist, as were those of its sister units, Alpha and Bravo Companies. Alpha was patriarchal, and Bravo was too much like “Braves,” which might offend Indigenous/First Peoples. Also, they were not referred to as “sister” units anymore; they were “sibling units,” since “sister” imposed a narrow gender identity on the units of the armor battalion.

  Colonel Deloitte had tolerated the Crusader and other traditional nicknames, but a tirade about those regressive, oppressive nicknames had taken up half of Major Little’s final orders briefing to his subordinate leaders. They would use the official nicknames, he proclaimed. So, it came to pass that Caring Company’s commander, Captain Jack Cardillo, stood up in the roof hatch next to the mounted .50 caliber machine gun mount, second in the line of vehicles rolling down Route 231, watching for enemies across the flat, open fields.

  There were ten tanks in his company, less than the 14 at full strength. His company was followed by a dozen 5-ton trucks packed with infantry, plus a logistics train including a fueler. They had a rougher ride – the tracks of the nearly 70-ton tanks were tearing up the road pretty well.

  They were five miles past the line of departure/line of contact and nothing. No people at all, and no opposition. He checked his watch – on schedule, which was good. Route 231 was the key MSR – main supply route – into Jasper, and they could not let it get backed up.

  The little hamlet of Whitfield – no more than some houses, barns, and buildings sitting at an intersection with another county road – lay ahead. The woods were getting closer to the road, which made him nervous. He’d prefer to stop, dismount infantry and clear them, but the commander was unequivocal about his commander’s intent – don’t slow down on the way to Jasper. And also, don’t engage in cis-het normative stereotyping.

  The second point seemed most important to Major Little.

  Cardillo didn’t hear the shots behind him over the roar of the 1500-horsepower Honeywell AGT1500C turbine engine and the clack of the tracks beneath him. The call came over his radio headphones on the company command net.

  “Crusader Six, Crusader One-One, contact left! Engaging!”

  The first tank of first platoon was under fire – and replying.

  Captain Cardillo turned around to see several M1s stopped and firing their .50 cals into the woods on the east side of the road. One of the turrets rotated its 120 millimeter smoothbore gun left.

  “Oh, shit,” Cardillo hissed.

&
nbsp; Crusader One-One’s main gun fired into the trees, and the captain could hear the roar even through his hearing protection. The shell detonated inside the woods – a M830 high explosive anti-tank (HEAT) round meant for enemy armor. The People’s Republic had not bothered investing in the canister rounds that essentially turned the massive cannon into a giant shotgun.

  Using a HEAT round on guerrillas was like using a sledgehammer for a gnat. And they didn’t have enough shells to spare.

  “Crusader elements, this is Six! Cease fire main guns, I say again, cease fire main guns! Suppress and move, over!”

  He took his own M2 machine gun turned it toward the woods. No targets. The other tanks were moving again now, accelerating to catch up with the rest. But behind them, the infantry trucks were stopping and troops were dismounting. Behind them, the column was halted.

  His radio came to life again, this time on the brigade command net. “Caring Six, this is Blue Falcon, you will use the proper call signs! Acknowledge!”

  “Shit,” Cardillo said, watching the movement descend into chaos behind him and the casualty reports began coming in over the company command freq.

  When the tank round hit the tree and detonated, Banks was sprayed with some pieces of wood but luckily he was far enough away that he wasn’t sliced by splinters. No one had been hurt by the fusillade of return fire the convoy had laid down after their initial assault on the column. Banks rose up and gestured to his guerrillas to fall back to their alternate positions, just as they had rehearsed. Through the trees, he could see trucks stopped and infantry dismounting. All was going as planned.

  The insurgents would be long gone before the infantry organized themselves to sweep through the woods.

  The guerrillas had initiated the ambush after letting half the tanks pass by unmolested. The initial volley was some rifle fire, both from the lighter AR15s and various hunting rifles, aimed at the crews riding exposed out of the turret hatches. Four of the tanks actually took fire. One of the crewmen got hit in the arm, and then the trail tanks stopped the convoy to engage the guerrillas while the infantry dismounted to clear the woods adjacent to the road.

  But the guerrillas cleared themselves out of the woods. They couldn’t win that fight, so they weren’t going to fight it.

  Farther back to the north, the logistics portion of the convoy was held up too. It sat there, waiting for the road ahead to clear. That was when the second group of guerrillas attacked.

  This time the insurgent force was heavier, and reinforced with the two HUMVEEs liberated at the airfield. Their .50 caliber machine guns began sweeping the trucks, wreckers, and fuelers that formed the combat trains of Crusader Company and its attached infantry company. At the same time, riflemen engaged from 500 meters or further. The support soldiers attempted to return fire with M4s, but this was pushing the maximum effective range of their carbines. Outgunned, the support soldiers took cover as their trucks were riddled. The fuelers especially drew fire, one eventually bursting into flames.

  After a few minutes, the guerrillas withdrew. By the time reinforcements arrived, the enemy had vanished. The PRA forces collected up the dead and wounded, then pushed the wrecked vehicles off into the ditches at the side of the road and began moving forward again. Now they were behind schedule.

  Bravo Company’s tanks and infantry rolled through Alfordsville, which sat astride the county road that was one of the three major north-south arteries in the sector. The town was a collection of rustic homes and a church, with a population of about 100 before the evacuation. About two dozen people had stayed behind, the others having gone south or into the woods to fight. Once the army units moved out southward, the PSF and the PVs moved in, about 50 of them. They went house to house, the PSF mostly focused on dragging the civilians to the center of town. A pair of citizens did decide to run; the Volunteers caught them and shot them dead.

  Kunstler and his tactical team, in a convoy of four black SUVs, pulled into town and stopped. Kunstler got out and the senior PSF officer approached.

  “We have about 20 prisoners,” he said. “Old men and women.”

  “So the young ones are out in the woods,” Kunstler growled. There were several bullet holes in his armored Blazer.

  “They deny it. They say no one from here’s a terrorist. They say all the younger people went south when they were warned what was happening.”

  “Of course they did,” Kunstler said. “Shoot them all.”

  He went back to his vehicle as all around the PVs carried loot out of the houses that they had not yet torched.

  Turnbull watched through the binos as Caring Company’s tanks took up defensive positions in an open field on the northwest side of Route 231’s bridge over the muddy White River. A quarter mile south were the northernmost reaches of Jasper, with the narrow road lined with cement companies, stores, and abandoned gas stations. It was hilly, with the sight lines broken up by trees.

  No wonder the tanks were reluctant to come.

  The PRA infantry and the logistics elements were arriving, but for the moment no one was making an effort to advance over the bridge.

  Davey Wohl lay beside Turnbull with his Winchester 700 rifle, peering through the Nikon Buckmaster scope. Another three dozen guerrillas were deployed within a quarter mile of them.

  “If they come, we can’t stop them,” Turnbull said, counting the armor. “And I don’t want to.” The enemy was concentrating in that field, with infantry and the surviving logistics elements moving in. “I sure wish I could call in an air strike right now. They’re all clustered up. Just sitting there.”

  “I can drop one from here,” Wohl suggested.

  “Look for an officer. He’ll be the one moving around a lot and not accomplishing much.”

  “I got one,” Wohl said. He exhaled and fired. Through the binoculars, Turnbull saw one of the tankers stagger and fall. The whole field turned into chaos as troops ran for cover and one by one the PRA machine guns started firing back in their general direction.

  “That should set them back an hour or so,” Turnbull said, watching with satisfaction. One man with a deer rifle had held up an army.

  Ted Cannon placed the butt of his AK on the ground and knelt. The old woman was still breathing, but how he didn’t know. With four bullet holes in her, she would soon join her fellow townspeople in the afterlife. He held her hand until the bewildered medic joined them.

  “Do what you can,” Cannon told her as she opened her aid bag. “But don’t use any plasma or anti-coagulant bandages.” The medic nodded. Those would be needed for the people who had a chance.

  None of his team were from Alfordsville – the town’s unit was further south in the area north of the Portersville Road Bridge over the White River – but the massacre still hit them hard. They had moved into town silently from the north after seeing first the black SUVs and then the majority of the paramilitaries leave. They took advantage of the smoke and maneuvered quickly and quietly, catching unawares eight PVs who had found a case of beer and lagged behind the rest.

  The Volunteers died in a hail of rifle fire. No quarter went both ways.

  The team finished the sweep of the town. No more paramilitaries and no more survivors. He rubbed at his face – he still looked like hell and his jaw ached. But that didn’t matter. The policeman in him was arising again. Someone had to account for this. Someone had to pay.

  It wasn’t about revenge. It was about justice.

  “We’re hunting PV and PSF,” Cannon said. The other guerrillas nodded solemnly. The medic rejoined them, her work finished, her patient passed.

  “Let’s move out,” Cannon said, heading back out of town and into the wild.

  Route 257 was the third major axis of advance south, and the farthest west. Alpha Company, now known as Accountability Company under the new nickname regime, approached the bridge over the White River at high speed. It had not taken any fire at all on its movement south, and its commander hoped she could race across the 200 met
er bridge that loomed 20 meters above the dark green water before anyone could stop her.

  She had sent scouts ahead in hummers, who reported a huge open field to the south past the wall of trees that lined the bank. There were no guerrillas in sight.

  As she approached down Route 257 from the wooded north down a low hill that sloped to the bridge, she ordered her tanks to accelerate to 40 kilometers an hour. It was a large, reinforced concrete bridge, and the engineers had assured her it would support their weight.

  The first platoon, short with just three tanks, entered the bridge, kicking up chunks of asphalt. The commander’s tank was next, followed by second platoon.

  There were six tanks on the bridge, with the lead tank was just yards from the opposite shore, when the guerrillas blew it.

  The explosives went off simultaneously across the underside of the bridge – the saboteurs had cut the detonator cord into precise lengths to ensure that happened. The special purpose shaped demolitions had been carefully placed by the former combat engineers to scythe through the concrete supports and to shift the bridge off balance. The supported road bed immediately sagged on the right side, and the 420 tons of armored weight on top of it slid in that direction.

  There was no stopping it after that. The roadbed cracked and collapsed. Six M1 tanks tumbled over the side, falling ten to twenty meters, landing upside down. Some were not entirely submerged; others disappeared completely into the muddy water. The seventh tank, seeing the road to its front disappear, along with the armor on it, braked hard, but it was following too closely too fast. It skidded forward on its locked tracks and flew forward off the embankment into empty space, its 120 mm main gun stabbing into the mud and bending on the bedrock beneath.