by Unknown
“Sure looks pretty.” said Captain Golan.
“Yeah but does she run?” replied Stan Rodigo.
Everyone looked at Stan for a moment, “Well let’s climb on in and see what happens?” said Captain Golan.
Stan shrugged, “Yeah - let’s do it.”
With that a couple of the engineers moved to unbutton the door and pulled down the stairs. Two more engineers went into the nearest hanger and found a mobile battery set up in the event they needed the jump. Two of the pilots went ahead and climbed in and maneuvered their way to the cockpit. They were bomber pilots and used to flying the larger planes but this was different, they were used to flying modern planes with modern avionics and computers, this had none of that. One of the older engineers who was about sixty and claimed to have worked on the B-50’s and B-29’s. The pilots took their respective seats in pilot and copilot. The engineer looked around and then explained to the pilots what they needed to do to start the plane.
The engineer looked throughout the cabin and found a checklist for the pilots and what they needed to run through. It had occurred to all of them this entire exercise could be futile they were sure the plane had been sitting out here forever and didn’t know the condition they kept it in. The pilots walked through the checklist and the engineer took a seat in the engineering chair while participating in checking everything off. The time had come to see if the old girl had any life left in her, the pilot called out for engine one, it took a moment but the propellers started to turn slowly, then faster, coughing smoke out of its exhaust located under the wing, it started, then called for engine two, three and four until all engines were actually running…it was running, they were all very excited. The pilots started to gun the engines a bit just enough to see if the old girl would move, she was currently being stopped by the blocks in front of her wheels, not to mention the fence that surrounded them.
They shut down the engines and sat there thinking about what just happened, with that one airplane they were back in business. Colonel Datak had arrived about the time they were revving the engines, a broad smile broke out across his face. He knew the ramifications of what just happened, he knew that Davis-Monthan United States Air Force Base in Tucson Arizona was back in service as an active United States Air Force Base.
The rest of the day was spent checking out the rest of the aircraft in the museum out of all of the aircraft they found they believed to be useable about seventy-five percent worked right off the bat. The others would need to be elevated to determine whether or not they could be repaired, they now had a total number of fifty aircraft that flew. It was a range of Cessna’s, fighters and bombers…this was outside of what AMARG that was now being worked on and brought back to life. Colonel Datak also knew that they wouldn’t be able to keep them all, some would go to Travis and Oakland Air Force Bases. All the pilots would have to go through training to fly these aircraft not to mention none of the aircraft had any modern type of guidance or communications.
Even with the planes that ran they needed to be inspected and run through a gauntlet of exercises to make sure they were safe. Regardless it was still good news, he was sure General Watkins had a couple of ideas from what they had learned regarding guidance and communications, they were already flying so he was sure they had solved part of the problem, well at least he had hoped so.
On the other side of post the Marines and the 184th Infantry (Airborne) had been conducting operations in securing Tucson. A company of Marines was sent to Fort Huachuca to secure Sierra Vista which turned out to be an intense short operation. They were relocated to Davis-Monthan and were placed as far away from the Air Force personnel as they could. Even with all of the death and destruction in the world the US Military was still dealing with inter-service rivalries.
Once the Marines instigated operations against Tucson they found that there wasn’t really much going on around the base. The homes that surrounded the base were largely vacant; there were dead bodies every place. Like other places the Marines had seen people that died here had died in other places for the same reasons, starvation, no water, murdered, you name it. Most people weren’t prepared for something like this and they didn’t have the ability or knowledge to survive, in most of the homes the Marines found water heaters filled with drinkable water still. People didn’t use common sense and drain them and use the water to drink. Although Tucson was in the desert it had a monsoon season where it rained a lot, people didn’t use various techniques to capture the water, my god all you had to do was open a trash can. It wouldn’t be the cleanest unless you had trash bags or the can was clean, but you could boil the water after, it was all sad, common sense goes a long way in scenarios such as these.
As the Marines cleared areas Air Force security personnel moved in to search the homes for anything that could be used, water, fuel, blankets, anything and it was taken back to base, inventoried and stored for now. Following Air Force security was grave registration, the bodies had to be collected, they ones they could ID were placed on a list, the ones they couldn’t were marked unknown, they were thankful that many at least at this point they were able to ID.
As they pushed out away from the base, half-mile, mile and so forth the Marines had to break down into platoons and then squads to cover more area. They were running into more and more gangs who were armed but not trained, they fired wildly and didn’t use any type of cover and concealment. Not to mention the Marines had body Armor, machine guns, sniper rifles, grenades and could bring mortars into it if needed. Depending on the number of gang members determined how long it would take to wipe them out. The Marines gave no quarter, if you fired on them they were ordered to confront and kill, they didn’t want to have to deal with it later on.
They were mind full of civilian casualties, the gangs used their own children as human shields the Marines did their best to ensure they avoided the children but when push came to shove and it was their lives, the children died too, as sad as it was.
Within a week and a half of beginning the operation the Marines found themselves seriously over extended, the realization came when a squad was caught in an ambush and reinforcements were too far away to help and the squad was wiped out. General Watkins ordered a 1st Battalion, 184th Infantry Regiment (Airborne) to Davis-Monthan and further ordered them to secure the city within the next week he would give them everything they needed but he wanted the operation wrapped up.
Once 1st Battalion came in they were required to set up with the Marines; Paratroopers and Marines didn’t always get along, but they got along better than they both did with the flyboys. The Paratroopers like the Marines had extensive experience with clearing towns and cities, due to the event there were now a lot of towns and cities to clear. For the most part it wasn’t too bad most of the towns and cities now had very small populations and the armed gangs were not really much of a match. There were a few instances were groups were calling themselves Militias and they had anywhere from 100 to 1000 people under arms but it was nothing compared to the pain that could be brought down on them by the US Military.
The Paratroopers had an immediate effect they circled around to the far east of Tucson taking side roads on the edge of town or plowing a path through the desert, once in place they began to enter town via interstate ten. They had no issues for the first several miles into town, then fanning out into the residential areas where they found a lot of death, it wasn’t unexpected. There were a few times they came under fire from snipers but they had effective counter sniper operations and within minutes the sniper was dispatched. They were able to cover more ground than the Marines had primarily because much of the east side was industrial, but they were now encountering more resistance as they pushed into the neighborhoods also they left platoons behind to clear industrial parks and the rest of the Battalion kept pushing forward. Not to mention they were under orders to wrap this all up in the next five days.
The Marines continued to push west the plan was to meet some place in the middl
e. Throughout the next several days the people on the base could hear gunfire and explosion some very loud emanating from the city. There were no further reports of casualties or at least deaths, if there were serious injuries or deaths they would have been brought back to the medical facilities on base. Now on the fourth day of the operation no one had returned any bodies or wounded to base. They had returned for more ammunition and different types of weapons, mostly the heavy mortars, and odds are responsible for the loud explosions.
By the end of the week the Paratroopers and Marines started to return to base they were dirty, unshaven, uniforms covered in all sorts of stuff, some in blood, many of them were bandaged but looked like they stuck to the fight. They all had that ‘stare’ like they were lost in thought, it was always like this when an operation ended, the first couple of hours it took the troops to settle down, clean weapons, get some chow, a clean change of uniforms and some rest. After that it seemed to the Air Force service members they were all back to normal, it was lost on them how the Soldiers and Marines could go through all that and then act like nothing had happened. They didn’t understand that if the Soldiers and Marines dwelled on their actions and combat it would drive them insane.
As reporting of the securing of Tucson started to reveal themselves to the Air Force people they realized that the Marines and Soldiers left a path of carnage through the city in order to secure it. There was a rather large Hispanic gang or militia they encountered in the center of town, the Marines estimated there numbers in the area of 1500 people under arms and that didn’t include their families. The Soldiers and Marines had laid waste to the entire area ensuring there would be no resurrection of the problem. It was a sad state of affairs to see it happen, it was a demonstration of what had happened to the country after the event and what it was going to take to get it back.
The Marines had left a platoon back at the main train station to keep it secured they were expecting a train to arrive from Fort Irwin the following day. The train would be carrying a company of Paratroopers from 2nd Battalion, 184th Infantry Regiment (Airborne) and in a first the train would have continuous fighter cover overhead who was ready to attack any aggressive act on the ground against the train. The fighters would land at Davis-Monthan for refueling and stay there until the train returned to Fort Irwin.
A company from 1st Battalion would stay at the Airport and ensure it stayed secure. Pilots and other technicians were on their way there now to see what could be salvaged, if anything. An airport held lots of things then just planes; it also had food stored all over the place, water, fuel, you name it, the question was how much was left over after any looting. Anything found would be cleaned, recorded and placed in storage on base until needed.
Chapter Nineteen
The maiden voyage of the train leaving Fort Irwin was underway; it had left the Fort with Bravo Company from 2nd Battalion, 184th Infantry (Airborne). They had retrofitted the train with machine guns, M249 and M60’s at either end of the train, as well as gun ports throughout the train the Soldiers could fire through. It was also pulling its own water and coal/ wood for fuel for the boilers. They had sent in A-Teams who were dropped with the desert rails who scouted most of the rail line, there were areas that were inaccessible due to the mountains and hills that they chose not to recon. They marked out water points that were still good and really didn’t see any threats, but they only checked the wilderness areas. There were towns it would need to pass through, to get to it the largest being Phoenix which they had actually found a rail line that would easily get them by on the outskirts of the city. The fly overs that were done by the Air Force in those areas didn’t show any threats but that didn’t mean they weren’t there. They just weren’t there when they flew over but with planes in the air people would have come out and look just to see that these days so they felt it was worth the risk.
The A-Teams took fuel from abandoned cars they found and gas stations where they could use their pump to retrieve the fuel in the underground containers. It was a lot of driving over rough terrain. The A-teams would send radio messages back to overhead aircraft at certain times of day that would pick up their reports and they would pass them back to General Watkins HQ to be analyzed by the MI Soldiers. The plan to retrieve A-Teams was that once the train was underway the teams would go to the nearest rail head and wait to be picked up.
The train pulled out from the Fort at 0500 they didn’t expect any potential issues until they got over the mountains and into the desert which would take about four hours, they estimated the entire trip this first time would take twelve hours or longer depending on what happened along the way. Regardless it was going to be a long an interesting ride. This was also the first time they would use air cover that would escort the train the entire way, the planes would have to do it in shifts as the planes flew a lot faster than the train, so the aircraft would rotate in and out of the areas. This was also a test run for the Air Force it was their first real world combat mission since the event and flying aircraft that was a lot older than the men and women who were flying them.
The aircraft would rotate out of Travis AFB and as the train got closer they would then switch to flying in and out of Davis-Monthan so this was also a test for them as well. Everyone in the Air Force was excited and looking forward to it.
So far the train had made it over the mountains with no incident and was two hours into the desert it had made its first stop to take on water with no problems. They had passed through a couple of small towns or encampments that were near the rail lines. People were startled to hear the whistle blow and jaw dropping stunned to see the airplanes flying over. Children ran out to the train as it passed waving at the Soldiers, as innocent as this was, it did make the Soldiers nervous. Most if not all of them had been in enough skirmishes and battles in their lives they knew that children could be used as a devastating weapon.
The train kept pushing forward through the next dozen stops with no incidents at all, they were twenty miles out of Tucson almost home free when the engineer noticed at least two rails had been removed from the track which of course meant that they were no longer able to proceed. The train came to an abrupt halt. Two squads of Soldiers disembarked from the train to inspect the area around the missing rail and to take up positions further out for security purposes. The odd thing noted by the NCOIC was that not only was rails off but they were gone entirely. He thought it odd that if someone wanted to stop them why not remove the rail and leave it the same thing would have been accomplished, but whoever did it took both rails.
Fortunately this was a foreseen incident they had planned that rails might be missing the A-Teams didn’t scout every mile of rail and the recon planes flying at a hundred miles an hour or faster don’t see everything. They had brought extra rails, ties, bolts you name it, everything they needed to repair a section of track up to five hundred yards. Another platoon of Soldiers that had been trained to replace the rails disembarked from the train, turned and went to the rail car that had all of the equipment they needed and got to work repairing the missing rails, two hours later it was all said and done, the platoon loaded back up, security pulled in and the train was back on its way, granted a little more alert, twenty more miles they would be at the Tucson rail head.
The senior officer onboard the train was also responsible for the Soldiers and its passage from Fort Irwin to Tucson. She was in constant contact with their escort overhead and was getting reports every fifteen minutes or so from them. Her most recent report was that the Marines had secured the Terminal in Tucson and as far as they can tell right now it was all clear, however to remain alert. She was also notified that the Marines and Paratroopers had secured Tucson, but again there may be rogue gang elements out there still that they couldn’t find, again be alert.
At just over thirteen hours the train pulled into the station at Tucson with no further incidents they had one day to regroup and prepare for the second part of their trip, final destination Fort Huachuca. Although
the Marines and Paratroopers had cleared the eastern edge of town heading east on the I-10 there were still several small towns along the way that may or may not cause some problems. Also, there was no intel at all regarding the status of the rails up to Huachuca City, which is as far out as the post had secured up to this point.
The Soldiers exited the train to stretch their legs, get some hot chow, wash up and bed down for the night. They would be leaving at 0500 the following morning if everything went well they would be at Fort Huachuca within three hours after leaving Tucson. Prior to leaving the Marines that were guarding the train station would check the rails one more time up to five miles out using their Humvees to accomplish that mission. As 0400 rolled around a squad of Marines left in three Humvees to check the line to make sure it was intact and clear.
They had gotten three miles out when they noticed that several of the rails had been loosened the bolts had been removed but the rails left alone. This was different from what the other Soldiers on the train had encountered the previous day in the desert. This was deliberate sabotage and the only reason to do it was to cause the train to derail and hurt and injure the Soldiers on board, possibly even attack them once the train was off the rails.
The Marines dismounted the vehicles and set up a security zone, they radioed back what they had found and were told to sit tight help was on the way. No sooner had they completed the radio call they started to take fire from a sniper located somewhere to the north of their position. Some of the Marines took up positions behind the Humvees which were armored others took up positions behind a couple of berms that were next to the tracks. Staff Sergeant Kurt Morgan was the squad leader he was one of the Marines who took cover behind a Humvee, he kept peering over the hood of the vehicle attempting to find the exact location of the sniper. On his third look the sniper fired at one of the Soldiers on the berm barely missing him, but it gave him the location of the sniper who was located in the second floor third house from the left in a group of homes not far from the tracks.