by James Rosone
*******
Lieutenant Slater was sitting in the back of the Stryker vehicle as they raced down Highway-1 to Jakarta. “Lieutenant, you think we’re going to see any action when we get to Jakarta?” asked one of the young privates. He fiddled with one of the ammo cans, grabbing an extra hundred-round belt for his M249 machine gun. The kid was young, but he was built like an ox—a true corn-fed farm boy from Kansas.
“Private Anderson, if everything goes well, we won’t have to fire a shot, and the enemy will surrender,” he replied to the obvious dismay of the young soldiers surrounding him.
Slater had to remember that these young guys had just graduated from basic training, and they hadn’t experienced the horrors of combat yet. “To be young and naïve like that again…” he thought glumly.
His radio crackled. “Alpha Four Six, this is Alpha Six,” said Captain Wilkes. “The Aussies ran into some enemy units near the outskirts of Jakarta. They’re moving now to encircle the city. We’ve been directed to head straight into the city. I’m sending you the grid. You’re the lead platoon for the company, and we’re guiding the battalion into the city. Stay frosty and lead the way.”
“Copy that Alpha Six,” Slater responded. “We’ll keep you apprised as we enter the city.”
“So, where are we heading, Sergeant?” Lieutenant Slater asked Staff Sergeant Nassem, his platoon sergeant, who was busy entering the coordinates into their navigation system. They were only an hour away from the outskirts of the city at this point.
Nassem let out a soft whistle. “You aren’t going to believe this, LT. We’re going straight for the president. The coordinates they sent take us right to Istana Merdeka, adjacent to Merdeka Square. It’s basically the Indonesian version of the White House,” he replied. The men in the back of the vehicle went through a series of emotions from excited to terrified and everything in between.
Slater knew they’d be driving into a firestorm. He immediately switched his radio frequency over to the platoon net to let everyone know what was going on.
“Listen up, Bulldogs,” he announced. “The captain just sent us the coordinates for our next objective. Our battalion has been given the task of securing the presidential palace and capturing as much of the government as possible. That means we’re going to be driving right into the heart of the city and will most likely meet resistance from the security forces assigned to protect the president and other members of the government.”
He paused for a second, wanting to let some of that information sink in. “All drivers, you need to stay frosty on this. Speed is the key to our success. I need you to do whatever you have to in order to keep us moving. We’re going to hit a lot of traffic and a lot of panicked civilians. Drive on the sidewalks, medians, opposite lanes of traffic if you have to, but do not stop. We cannot allow ourselves to get stuck and not be able to move, or worse, get trapped. If you have to run over a few cars to keep us moving or push them out of the way, then do it.”
A few of the men in his Stryker started to look a bit nervous as they overheard these instructions. It was going to be a bumpy ride.
“When we get close to the residence, I want the lead vehicle to breach the gate or walls or whatever you have to, but drive straight up to the entrance of the building,” Slater continued. “Once we’re there, whichever squad it is that makes it there, you need to secure the area. The next two squads to show up are going to breach the building, and we’ll move as quickly as possible to find the president and round up prisoners. We can do this. Out.”
“Thank God for frequency-hopping radios,” thought Lieutenant Slater. That would have made a very long transmission. Slater laughed to himself about how he’d just broken every radio protocol he’d ever been taught. Brushing that thought aside, he knew it was imperative his men knew what to do, and if breaking the norms saved a few of his guys from getting killed, then forget protocol. “I’m the guy in charge of this platoon, and I’ll run it as I see fit,” he thought, standing up straighter.
Ten minutes later as they neared the outer ring road of the city, they caught their first glimpses of combat. Several Indonesian armored personnel carriers were burning wrecks on the side of the highway. There were also a number of dead enemy soldiers strewn about the area, as well as at least one Australian armored vehicles burning along the road. When their platoon got closer to the first major ring road, they saw a couple of Australian tanks and infantrymen fighting it out with a small contingent of enemy soldiers.
Seeing the blockage forming, Sergeant Nassem got Lieutenant Slater’s attention. “Sir, we’re about to hit a major bottleneck, and it looks like the Australians haven’t fully cleared it of enemy soldiers yet. I have an idea that might work to get us around it. Before I joined the Army, I spent a year here in Jakarta as part of a study abroad program. There’s another road we can take that’s a bit more off the beaten path, but it’ll get us to Merdeka Square a lot quicker than trying to fight it out on the major roads, which will surely be roadblocked,” he informed him.
The two talked for a couple of moments and looked at a couple of maps of the city and their Blue Force Tracker before deciding on what to do. Once they had outlined the new route they would take, they entered the path into the navigation computer and sent the proposal to Captain Wilkes and the battalion CO. Meanwhile, the rest of the battalion at this point had all caught up to them as they waited on the highway for the Australian tanks to clear them a path. The enemy had apparently set up a number of antitank missiles and other vehicles to slow the Australians down. Two Aussie tanks had been destroyed along with a few other armored vehicles while they tried to clear a path.
Fifteen minutes after proposing their plan, the battalion CO came over the radio. “Lead the way,” he ordered. “We’ll follow you.”
Smiling, Slater slapped his sergeant on the shoulder. “Good job, Nassem. Now if you just spoke the language better…,” he said jokingly. Despite having spent a year there, his skills in Indonesian and Javanese were quite rudimentary. Nassem had told him that he had spent too much time during his study abroad program chasing skirts and partying with classmates. Slater had wondered how much fun those parties really could have been, given the country’s strict rules about alcohol consumption.
In minutes, their column had found an off-ramp. They snaked their way through a number of now-empty city streets. A lot of the locals had either decided to hunker down in whatever building they were already in or were moving on foot. Any military-looking vehicles moving around on the streets were being engaged by Allied attack helicopters or drones.
When they turned down Menteng Raya Street, they hit the first major obstacle of traffic. The road heading toward Merdeka Square was packed with cars, buses and other vehicles overloaded with people trying to flee the fighting. When Slater’s six eight-wheeled Strykers turned onto the road, mass panic by the civilians began to ensue. Most of these people had never seen an American infantry fighting vehicle.
Seeing the traffic problem, Sergeant Nassem told the driver, “Veer over into the opposite lane of traffic. It’s practically empty. People are trying to flee the Allied troops, not drive into them.”
As Slater’s platoon veered over to the opposite side of the road, the rest of the company and battalion followed them. They continued moving along unhindered until they got within eyesight of Merdeka Square. Once there, an enemy armored vehicle suddenly appeared and fired a slew of machine-gun rounds at them. A couple dozen enemy soldiers also emerged and fired at them as well.
The gunner manning the 30mm autocannon didn’t need to wait to be told to fire back, and immediately sent a dozen depleted uranium rounds into the enemy armored vehicle, which summarily blew it up. The rest of the soldiers in Slater’s Stryker, who were already standing up through the troop hatches, opened fire on the enemy soldiers as their vehicle continued to race toward them. Not stopping, their vehicle zipped right past the now-burning enemy vehicle and the enemy soldiers still firing away at them and t
heir comrades.
Busting out onto Merdeka Square ring road, they gunned the engines and raced across the square toward the presidential building and the other government buildings. Slater stood up and held a set of field glasses to his eyes to try and get a better look; of course, that was challenging to do considering how fast they were racing across the square, but he spotted a couple of very expensive-looking vehicles near the entrance, with a lot of people running all over the place. Sensing that this might be the president trying to make a break for it, he ordered the gunner, “Send a few dozen rounds at those vehicles at the entrance. I want you to destroy them.”
“You’re not getting away if I can help it,” thought Slater.
In a matter of minutes, they were at the gates of the building, next to the vehicles that were probably meant to whisk the president and his staff away. They weren’t going anywhere—they had all been engulfed by flames. Bulldozing their way through the front gate, Slater’s group of six Strykers drove right up to the front of the building before they finally stopped. They all jumped out of their vehicles. Slater’s first squad engaged the remaining security personnel outside the building, while the other three squads busted their way through the front door of the government edifice. As they ran into the entrance, two of his men were gunned down by a slew of gunfire from the security guards inside.
“Hold up, guys!” yelled Lieutenant Slater. “Toss some grenades in the room, and then we’ll charge in.”
Sergeant Nassem grabbed two grenades from his chest rig and handed one to the soldier standing next to him. They both pulled the pins on the grenades, counted two seconds and then threw them in.
Boom! Boom!
“Now!” yelled Slater as Sergeant Nassem led his squad into the room. Confusion reigned as many machine guns started firing and voices in both English and Indonesian were shouting to be heard above the din of battle. Seconds after Nassem’s squad entered the room, the next squad went in to support them. In less than two minutes, they had cleared the first room and fanned out inside this massive building.
Lieutenant Slater told Nassem and his squad, “Follow me to the roof. We might by chance catch the president trying to escape using a helicopter.”
Before they moved, he ordered the other two squads to begin clearing the rooms and rounding up prisoners. As Slater started to head to the stairwell, he spotted Captain Wilkes entering the building from the corner of his eye.
“Good, the rest of the company is here,” he thought. “That’s a lot more soldiers to add to the mix.”
Huffing and puffing by the time they got to the top landing of the stairwell that would open up to the roof, they paused to catch their breath and then tossed a couple of grenades through the door. Seconds after the explosions, they ran through the opening onto the roof, expecting to be surrounded by security guards. Instead, there was no one up there at all. They had just blown up the air conditioning units.
Once he realized there was no danger, Lieutenant Slater plopped down on the ground. “Hmm…I guess they either got out another way, or the president had been evacuated before we got here,” he said to the soldiers around him, who likewise had sat down on the ground to rest for a second and catch their breath. Lugging eighty pounds of body armor and weapons and a CamelBak up four flights of stairs while fighting your way through an enormous government building was extremely physically exhausting.
After a moment of rest, Slater recovered enough to come up with a new plan. “OK, guys, let’s head back down and help the rest of the platoon and company clear the building and round up prisoners.”
Before walking down though, Slater took a quick look across the city from the top of the building. He could see black pillars of smoke rising from many areas of the metropolis. He could also hear tons of machine-gun fire and see dozens of red and green tracers bouncing off buildings and armored vehicles, adding to the chaotic scene unfolding all around them. He glanced to the side and saw that most of the other men were likewise transfixed by the scene.
“As much as I want to stand here and look at everything going on, we all need to get back downstairs,” Slater said, breaking his own trance. “We still have a job to do, guys.”
It took them another hour to round up all the people from within the building. They herded them all into a couple of large rooms and then slowly identified who was who and moved the high-value individuals to a few separate rooms the battalion intelligence folks had set up to question them.
Many of the new prisoners were clearly stunned to see American and Australian soldiers standing in the presidential building. They couldn’t fathom how this could have happened so quickly, or how their military had so epically failed them.
*******
During the mad dash to capture Jakarta, the US, Australian and New Zealand forces managed to catch the bulk of the government by surprise with the swiftness of their landing at Cirebon. From the time they landed and secured the port and beachhead to the time they advanced on Jakarta, only roughly nineteen hours had elapsed. The Indonesian Army had been confident the Allies would wait to advance on the city until they had offloaded all their armored units and other forces, and they had figured they would have at least two full days to get the city prepared to meet the invaders. They were caught completely by surprise by how fast the Allies just rushed units straight from the port to the capital.
The lightning dash netted the Allies the Vice President of Indonesia, the Indonesian Minister of Defense, the Minister of Foreign Affairs and the majority of the cabinet. The president had been able to escape and had made it to Malaysia before being flown away to China, where he’d attempt to set up a government in exile. With the capture of the majority of the government officials, the Vice President, who was considered the leader of the country by the majority of the people, ordered the Minister of Defense to order the surrender of Indonesian forces to the Allies. There was no reason to lose any more civilians or soldiers to a war that, for them, was already lost.
Eastern Alliance Reckoning
Beijing, China
President Xi wasn’t in a panic just yet, but he was having some serious doubts about the outcome of the war. Just one year ago, it had looked like Operation Red Storm was truly going to prevail. While defeat was not certain, victory was not nearly as guaranteed as it had been just a few months ago. The loss of their navy meant they could not keep control of the Philippines. It also meant holding on to Formosa was going to be incredibly difficult. His generals had told him the Americans would probably launch an invasion of Formosa before the beginning of the typhoon season, which meant they didn’t have a lot of time to prepare. As it was, they were using nearly every vessel they could to ferry munitions, food and other supplies to the island before the Americans completely cut it off.
Sensing his generals staring at him, President Xi stared back at Vice Admiral Ning Sheng, the head of the PLA Navy, and then General Xu Ding, the head of the PLA Air Force.
“I’ve got half a mind to have these men shot,” he thought, “but I need their expertise if we are to try and salvage this war.”
He took a deep breath and tried a more constructive approach. “Admiral, what more can the Navy do to prevent, or at least contest, the inevitable American invasion of Formosa?” he inquired, not taking his eyes off his top navy man.
Shifting uncomfortably in his seat, Admiral Shen obviously knew he’d have to account for his defeat in the Philippine Sea. Even though his forces had sunk a second American carrier and severely damaged two more, they had been unable to defeat the Americans, and as a consequence had lost nearly eighty percent of his entire surface navy—the navy they had spent the last twenty years building.
“I have ordered our forces to defend the coasts,” Admiral Ning responded. “The few remaining submarines I have will operate near our waters and will focus on attacking the American invasion force. We’ve also moved the remaining Dongfeng-21 anti-ship ballistic missiles to protect Formosa. I’ve commandeered nearly ev
ery ship I could to transport as much supplies as we can to our ground forces there as well. I can’t guarantee that the Americans won’t severe our supply lines once they begin their invasion, so we’re doing our best to make sure the army has as large a supply store built up as possible.”
Xi took the information in and briefly made eye contact with Chairman Zhang, who was taking notes, before he turned to look at his Air Force general. “The Americans are gearing up for a major offensive in the Russian Far East and look to make a second attempt to break out of the Korean Peninsula. What is the status of your forces, and what are you doing to slow or stop this from happening?”
General Xu puffed his chest out a bit. “Mr. President, while we haven’t secured air supremacy over the Korean Peninsula, we’ve achieved near parity with the Americans, South Koreans, and Japanese Air Force through working in concert with our surface-to-air missile systems. We’ve built a multilayered air-defense system that has made it nearly impossible for the Allied air forces to attack further than ten miles from the front lines.”
President Xi’s face soured. “General, if that were true, then why are American stealth bombers and their B-1 Lancers still hitting our factories and other critical aspects of our economy? The continued destruction of key rail tunnels, roads, and bridges is making it incredibly difficult to transport goods and materials around the country, let alone to support our military fronts. What are you doing to stop this?” he demanded.
“We’re working on that, Mr. President,” said Xu, a bit more conciliatory. “We know the location the Americans are launching their stealth bombers out of now, and plan on hitting those bases with our new H-20 bombers. We just took delivery of six more a month ago, and now have them ready for combat. We’ve been hesitant to use them up to this point because we didn’t have enough of them to really carry out an effective raid on their bases. My intent was to wait until we had enough H-20s to deliver a devastating blow to the American stealth bombers. Now that I am confident we can do that, I am establishing the plans for a raid that will take place within the month.”