Power Games: Operation Enduring Unity I

by R A Peters

Fifty yards away from the melee, Jessica begged her camera guy to leave, but he just shrugged her off his arm.

  “Jessie, are you nuts? This is career-making footage here! This friendly fire is going to land me in the history books!”

  He pivoted slowly with the video camera on his shoulder, trying to cover the Hell breaking out around them. He panned back and forth frantically, capturing every gruesome detail as Floridian militiamen swarmed over the squabbling Georgian National Guard troops. Every pic of a sullen prisoner was a cash bonus, every shocked death mask a magazine cover.

  Congressman Eliot was a lot less concerned with history and much more interested in saving his dear ass. He ran back to his car the second the shooting started. Jessica watched the real story moving away.

  “Well, good luck with that!” She clapped her cameraman on the shoulder and chased after the congressman’s entourage. She hadn’t planned to ride in the SUV with him, but as she drew near, stray rounds cracked overhead.

  “Get in and stay down!” One of Eliot’s security people snagged her arm and shoved her into the backseat out of reflex. She didn’t even have a chance to object before the driver gunned the engine and the Mercedes peeled away from the chaos.

  The two SUV mini-convoy swung west on the big highway, only a few seconds ahead of a dozen pickups loaded with whooping rebel militia folk. Jessica’s story eye noticed the mixture of civilian and military weapons, rudimentary organization and the extra antennae masts on the trucks. All that equipment and semi-professional discipline implied a much higher level of coordination between these “rag tag” mobs the Army joked about and the professional Florida Defense Forces.

  Coordination implied a plan, and plans were dangerous.

  She didn’t have long to ponder the threat before she came face to face with a bigger one. Chased by rebels who thought the twin black SUV’s were leading the charge, the security crew in the lead vehicle headed straight towards the first clump of federal soldiers they saw.

  The US combat engineers, busy trying to set up hasty vehicle barricades, were shocked to see the rebels so close already. They were amazed at how quickly the militia turned to insurgent tactics. In line with their training, they took cover and engaged the apparent suicide car bombers.

  The bodyguards in the second car, ignoring the frantic congressman in the back, were damn good. The driver didn’t flinch when the lead vehicle was Swiss-cheesed at close range. He didn’t hit the brakes or even try a U-turn. He just dropped to a lower gear, banked gently to the right and shot off the road and out of the kill zone as fast as possible. The turbocharged and under loaded “off-road” vehicle still wasn’t able to clear the draining ditch completely. They cracked the muffler and the rear fender flew away, but they squealed the SUV behind some seafood restaurant and out of sight in seconds.

  There they took a breather. The driver jumped out and confirmed the rental car still had a few miles left in it. Probably. The shooting on the other side of the fish joint wasn’t getting closer, at least. Of course, any closer and they’d be a target. Time to find a way back to friendly lines, if such a thing still existed. The survivors of the private security detail didn’t waste a moment to check on their fallen comrades. Bodyguard work was a nasty business. Their leader sighed and nodded at the driver. He pulled out of the back lot unto a deserted side street in search of a quick way west.

  Kadush!

  A speeding pickup truck sideswiped them immediately. The security chief wiped some of the blood from his busted nose and hacked at the air bags around him with his always-handy blade. His field of vision didn’t improve much. Some young guy in old-fashioned BDUs squirmed on his back on the hood of their car. He kept banging his good arm against the windshield. Someone else stuck his head in the passenger side window. The bill of a camouflaged hat bobbed inches from the bodyguard’s face.

  “Are you fellas all rig–pop, pop!” A pair of 9mm rounds from the stunned and startled security man was the only answer.

  Blood and brain matter covered the windshield of the truck that hit them. Someone hopped out of the mangled pickup and fired wildly as soon as his buddy’s body fell out of the way. The M16 rounds ripped just as easily through the aluminum SUV door as through the organs of the security guard and driver, before flying out the far side and ricocheting off the pavement.

  In the backseat, Eliot shrieked and clawed at the far passenger door. Jessica saved his life by jerking him back inside and springing out herself. Her long blonde hair checked the militiamen’s trigger fingers.

  “Don’t shoot! I’m a reporter!” She gave her best camera-ready smile and gently lowered her arms. “You just captured a congressman! What unit are you boys with?”

  One of the pissed off militia fighters opened the side SUV door. A well-dressed, middle-aged fellow held an American flag lapel pin out like a cross fending off vampires. He cowered in the corner, baby raccoon-style, and babbled nonsense at the grinning militiamen crowding around. At length, he finally spit out something intelligible. “I’m a Republican too! We’re on the same side!”

  One of the men posing for pictures turned around. “What the fuck does politics have to with anything?”

  *

  The militiamen rushing headlong into Lake City and ready for their first taste of combat found exactly what they expected: the enemy falling apart in terror by the ferociousness of their advance. Better than a movie. Most of the Georgian Guardsmen either surrendered or jumped into the welcoming arms of the rebels, turning their weapons on their former brothers when needed. The few holdouts scattered or made hopeless last stands against superior firepower.

  The small Florida National Guard contingent riding along with the militia were busy mopping up, consolidating their position and trying to find out where in town the enemy was located. They weren’t in any hurry to advance. Except for turning their towed Cuban artillery section and the captured mortars on the small airfield, packed with Army helicopters on the far west side of town, they kept to themselves. Such was not the case with the thousands of militia volunteers around them.

  The irregulars, emboldened by their first “victory,” fanned out through town. A target rich town. Like a tide, they washed over the federal division’s surprised support elements. What little discipline the volunteers possessed promptly collapsed. Each rebel group tried to gobble up as much glory as they could, to hell with what the others were up to. To the support soldiers’ credit, they neither panicked nor surrendered, and even tried time and again to form defensive lines, but without much success. Their hasty fortification attempts were as effective as sand castles against high tide.

  The rebel horde’s complete disorganization happened to be their greatest strength. For the federal troops, stopping their advance was like trying to catch water with your hands. When the Fed defenders covered the streets, they would found themselves quickly surrounded as the militia poured through buildings, lawns and alleyways. Whether on foot, in convoys of pickup trucks or in captured Humvees, the enemy militia fighters were everywhere if you were trying to make a stand, but nowhere if trying to call in an artillery strike.

  At one major intersection near downtown, several federal support teams came together to make a tougher stand. An air defense company, armed only with M16’s, bravely set up a hasty ambush. A communications officer, leading a platoon of mechanics with real few machine guns, rushed up and took charge.

  The rag tag federal force got the drop on an entire militia platoon barreling down the highway. They shredded the pickups before the Floridians could get a single shot off. In their confusion, the platoon of militia amateurs following behind began a spirited firefight with some other militia group trying to flank the ambush site.

  The federal defender’s exhilaration was short lived. Their laughter died quickly when they took heavy fire from a Dollar General store behind them. Some rebel chucked grenades at them from the roof of a Subway. One squad of the surrounded soldiers tried to fall back. Abandoning their exposed
supply trucks blocking the road, they raced for safety among the brick houses across the street.

  That sound strategy fell apart when the first soldier through the door took a shotgun blast to the face. The forlorn soldiers hesitated too long before they realized the extent of their encirclement. Naked in the front yards, unseen rebels cut them down with fire from every window and doorway.

  There was no question about the rear echelon soldiers’ courage or fighting spirit, but they obviously weren’t combat troops. These narrowly trained specialists didn’t know the first thing about the organized shifting of fire, bounding and covering principles or reacting to a near ambush. As soon as they found themselves surrounded, the common glue of discipline began fraying. Instead of one 200-man unit fighting off the enemy, they were 200 one-man units, each basically fighting for themselves. As the battle coalesced around a single point, the rebel’s need to seek the safety of numbers gave them a level of rudimentary organization that was an edge in this kind of fight.

  Encircled, outnumbered and shocked by such massive casualties the soldiers were about to cave in. An old mechanic master sergeant gathered volunteers for a final charge that might distract the enemy long enough to allow the other survivors to escape. As he put the final touches on this frantic plan, a sidewall of the rebel’s Dollar General redoubt exploded and dropped the roof in. Some nearby drive-through liquor store and its enemy machine gun crew disappeared off the face of the earth in another cloud of smoke and splinters.

  A ragged “Hooah!” rose from the federal soldiers. Through the smoke, a battery of friendly M109 mobile howitzers rushed towards them at breakneck speed…about 20 miles an hour. Big, ugly and slow, but those 155 mm cannons laying down direct fire support made a beautiful sight. For the defenders, at any rate. The militiamen scattering ahead were less inspired. Another cannon blast annihilated a moving truck full of rebels and shredded everyone within 50 yards.

  At a range of only a few hundred meters, each round had enough kinetic energy alone to destroy a vehicle. The 30 pounds of HE packed into each shell was over the top. The artillerymen’s .50 caliber machine guns and 40mm automatic grenade launchers, which served as mere backup weapons, chugged away at the enemy. This was no fair fight; they were just kicking someone while they’re down. Which was exactly what the Feds felt like doing.

  For the first time, the floodwaters parted. The volunteers had never seen such abject destruction and rapid violence in their hours-old military careers. They didn’t have the slightest clue what to do about it. The tide melted away and gave the slow moving death mountains a wide berth. The delay gave the federal defenders time to reorganize, evacuate casualties and receive reinforcements.

  “Die, you Fedefucks!” An enterprising rebel screamed over the bedlam. He raised a captured bazooka-thing to his shoulder and fired at the lead mobile howitzer. The Stinger anti-air missile sailed a good 50 feet over his target and kept on going. A federal artilleryman swiveled his machine gun and cut the pissed off shooter into pieces. He never got to see the missile eventually acquire a target and blast apart an Apache helicopter gunship coming to back up the line.

  The exploding Apache’s undamaged wingman clipped a power line in his rush to avoid the debris. Whether thanks to the helicopter’s elaborate safety design features, the pilot’s skill or just a big slice of luck, the chopper somehow made a decent crash landing.

  As soon as the crew slipped out of their wrecked Apache, a passing federal truck slammed to a halt. Some artillery officer waved out the window. “Hey, you two! If you can walk, then mount up! You’ve just been drafted into the infantry.”

  The pilot and copilot hopped into the back of the crowded 5-ton truck, still high on adrenaline. Someone shoved rifles and sacks of ammo magazines into their laps. The senior warrant officer shook the bag of aluminum boxes. “Uh, these are empty.”

  A cook, hairnet still sticking out under his helmet, slid over a wooden crate full of loose rounds. “Better load quick. We’re counterattacking in less than two minutes!”

  The warrant officer studied the gung-ho soldiers around him. So many females and spotlessly clean uniforms for an infantry unit…

  “You got to be kidding me.”

  He chuckled at the paper pushers, medics and dismounted supply truck drivers around him. He glanced out the tailgate at the rest of the convoy of such hardened warriors. Snapping rounds into his magazine as fast as possible, he prayed some more helicopters could get airborne. Because if this was the best the Army could muster, they were screwed.

  *

  At that exact moment, shrapnel from a rebel artillery round riddled the last flightworthy federal gunship back at the airstrip. The aviation brigade commander didn’t let such petty details faze her. She kept busy dismounting machine guns from the damaged helicopters and wondered if they could somehow mount the rocket pods on the back of Humvees. She had to give up on the idea since she’d already sent most of her mechanics into town to play infantry. All she could do was find a rifle and join them.

  The Feds scored surprising success with their hasty counterattack. The rear detachment troops struck back over a wide front and spread their numbers too thin…which worked in their favor. The militia, who moments ago were trying to flank one abrupt hard spot, found themselves suddenly under attack across their entire “front.” When a squad of soldiers showed up where least expected, that force became a company by the time the report got back to the overworked and under-informed rebel command posts.

  The now bloodied militia regiments, assuming they were about to be overrun, gave a good account of themselves. They retreated, of course, and fast, but fighting the whole way. The nervous support soldiers, some of them firing their personal weapons for the first time since basic training, gained confidence with every retaken block. No matter how many lives it cost.

  Only at a strip mall on Highway 90 did the federal counterattack run out of steam. After being forced back half a mile, one Florida National Guard sergeant commanding a militia company refused to budge another step. His regiment’s commanding officer sent him the special weapons company and all the fresh men he could dig up. The NCO carefully deployed the MG’s in mutually supporting positions and fortified the buildings as best as possible. He even pushed out a few small hunter killer teams of his best fighters, armed with half their precious antitank weapons, to keep those damn howitzers at a distance.

  When the Feds stumbled into the kill zone, they immediately pulled back. Their commanding officer couldn’t allow that. He took a knee behind a school bus engine block and shouted over the machine guns smashing the windows.

  “Bring up the tracks! If we let up on the pressure and lose the initiative, we’ll never get it back again!” His miraculous counterattack was so damn precarious. Only momentum kept it going. The rebels were just too numerous.

  His makeshift armor unit clanked past moments later. Only a few hundred yards down the road, an AT-4 rocket lanced out from behind a Taco Bell and struck one of the federal mobile howitzers. The resulting mushroom cloud as the twenty onboard artillery shells detonated flipped two more guns on their sides. The blast obliterated every soldier in three hundred yards.

  The federal commander gritted his teeth. He slid around the front of the bus and fired past the carnage. He wedged the radio mike between his cheek and rifle stock so he could yell hands free.

  “Don’t stop! Push through it. We’re almost on them. Go, go, go!”

  The rest of the guns didn’t get much closer. Just before they had a clear line of sight and could level the shopping mall, the rebels showed off yet another surprise. From somewhere much farther down the street a blossoming salvo of Hellfire missiles raced in. Eight more mobile cannons and light APC’s turned into flaming pyres.

  What shocked the federal commander the most wasn’t that the damn Floridians had figured out how to mount advanced air-to-ground missiles onto pickup trucks. Clever, whatever, but how did they have so many that they could spare them for the
flippin’ auxiliaries?

  He had no way to know those missiles were all the enemy could deploy in the area. Nor that his rebel counterpart was chewing his lip and hoping he hadn’t just shot his wad for nothing. Those tank busters were the last trick up the rebel militia’s sleeve. There just weren’t enough to kill all the federal armored vehicles. If he made a mistake in the timing and misjudged the battle flow, then he had merely prolonged the inevitable defeat.

  Apparently, his timing was just right.

  The commander of the ad-hoc Fed force reloaded. He couldn’t risk anymore of his precious guns. He sighed into his radio.

  “All right. All mobile elements: fall back and rally on my position.”

  A lieutenant, firing from the ground under the bus, raised his head. “Sir, they’re artillery. Why don’t we just move them out of the combat zone and pound the enemy from afar, as designed?”

  The Fed commander whistled over every officer nearby. “They’re more than just big guns. This scratch force would fall apart if the troops saw their only real support flee the battle. No, we’ll have to do this the messy way. On foot. Come help me round up more fresh meat for the grinder.”

  To his surprise, his troops didn’t mutiny at the idea of charging through machine gun fire across open parking lots. He hadn’t commanded these people long enough really to know their measure.

  It seemed like the fighters on both sides instinctively knew that it was make or break time. The fighting was vicious, confused and, sometimes, even hand to hand. Vehicles and high-tech modern weapons aside, the best way to describe it was…medieval.

  *

  At one end of the mall, a petite military policewoman crossed the last few feet of the exposed parking lot in a headfirst dive, rebel rounds flying inches above her back. She rolled to cover in the crook between the wall around a dumpster and the side of a Domino’s pizza shop. Without missing a beat, she cooked off her two grenades in rapid succession. She lobbed one on the roof and the other through the shattered side windows and into the kitchen, then turned to the man behind her and screamed for more frags.