by Billy Roper
Of course it was fish. There were plenty of fish in the sea, and Alaska’s fishing industry still kept people fed. So long as you liked fish. Rick once again held the door open, saying “I’ve always wanted to try this place, just for the Halibut.” Both girls, and Tommy, groaned in appreciation.
Tommy and Becky grabbed one booth, and he waved the other de facto couple to the next. Now, this was more like it. As they ordered their fish, fried and fried, with canned sides, Tommy took some time to really look at his date. She was cute, maybe unremarkably so, but pleasant enough to look at. Maybe he would get to know her better. Becky, for her part, carefully avoided asking Tommy about where he was from, or his family back home. Unlike most of the local girls he’d met, she didn’t badger him for news from the lower forty-eight. In fact, he was put a bit off his game tonight because, being born and raised here, she was unimpressed by the fact that his job gave him access to real news. So, she led the conversation, which was kind of a refreshing and welcome relief for Tommy. Becky talked about herself, her family, her dog, and her plans to go back to college “when things straighten out”. She had been a first year marine biology student, she confided with self-aware irony while digging into her slab of Nemo with appetite. Tommy also found that he had a renewed hunger. It was almost like he hadn’t had any fish in a long, long time, and had really been craving it. He sat and listened and nodded and chewed.
After dinner, which cost him another fifteen rounds of 9 mm for the four of them, the young Specialists dropped the girls back at their car behind the bar. While they waited to make sure that it would start in the cold, Tommy was rewarded by a quick kiss from Becky, and a promise to meet him there again next Friday after her job at the fish cannery ended its’ shift. He was smiling most of the way home, until he noticed how quiet Rick was. Normally, he would have been talking nonstop about any new girl, and all of her charms, and how much in love he was all over again. As they pulled up to their barracks, Tommy let go of his reverie over Becky, and asked his friend “What’s wrong?”
It all came out in an angry, hurt rush. Apparently during dinner, Cathy had begun to interrogate Rick over the mutinies and maroonings. As he defended their collective actions, even going so far as describing how bad he had felt when he saw the face of a nice black dude, Terrell, as they zip-tied him and whisked him away. Terrell had been his bunk-mate for three months. It had depressed Rick to talk about it. Cathy had made it worse by asking, pointedly, if he knew what had happened to his “friend”. Then she had asked Rick if he was a racist. “No”, he had told her, coldly. “I’m just a survivor.”
Chapter Six
"I will say then that I am not, nor ever have been in favor of bringing about in any way the social and political equality of the white and black races, that I am not nor ever have been in favor of making voters or jurors of Negroes, nor of qualifying them to hold office, nor to intermarry with white people; and I will say in addition to this that there is a physical difference between the white and black races which I believe will for ever forbid the two races living together on terms of social and political equality. And inasmuch as they cannot so live, while they do remain together there must be the position of superior and inferior, and I as much as any other man am in favor of having the superior position assigned to the white race.” –Abraham Lincoln
The Courtroom Was Adjourned
Gerta had been interpreting for the Marine Colonel who had just arrived from Ramstein in Germany with the ‘redeployed’ remainder of the U.S. forces stationed in central Europe. Such a casual way of thinking about the new isolationism of an imploding empire, as she had expressed to him in a bolder moment of the frank discussions of the situation. Evacuation was a better term, and more accurate. When most of the General Staff had ‘evacuated’ back stateside, he had helped coordinate the withdrawal of theater forces from their bases throughout Europe. It had been a close thing, but they had been pulled out and ‘redeployed’ to Germany before the Islamic State coordinated the attack on Israel. Having a German Chief of Staff for the multinational U.S. European Command had made that possible, in her patriotic opinion. In fact, Gerta thought that their withdrawal probably had emboldened the I.S. to green light the swarm on Tel Aviv, but with things falling apart at home, she didn’t blame them for packing up.
With a few dozen Marines left as guards at each of the core embassies which had remained open in European capitals, sixty thousand U.S personnel were counted in Europe. U.S. command and control at the administration levels were still intact in Germany. The first couple of waves of redeployments of U.S forces to the northeast went smoothly enough, from a logistical standpoint. Air Force assets were re-stationed at Hanscom and Westover in Massachusetts, while Marine and Army units were initially regarrisoned at Fort Devens, to slowly begin taking over peacekeeping duties in Boston from the British. Because the U.S. European forces had not been segregated, they were still mixed race and fractious. Mutinies and fraggings had been relatively minor on the continent, compared to what had happened in the Pacific. When they got back stateside, however, desertions became rampant. Subsequent redeployments to Fort Drum and Fort Hamilton, on opposite ends of New York, were designated for minority and White Marines and Grunts, respectively. This resulted almost immediately in the loss of Fort Drum. After its’ takeover by the mutineers, the facility had to neutralized by air assets from Hanscom.
This slowed the follow-up flights considerably as the racial segregations then happened at Panzer Kaserne for the Marines and at Hohenfels and Schweinfurt and Ansbach for the Army. In some instances the segregation of individual units by race was met with resistance. German forces had to assist when armed mutinies began at Patrick Henry Village, and air strikes from Aviano Air Base in Italy quietened a temporarily successful takeover of Camp Bondsteel, in Kosovo, by black and Latino insurgents. NonWhite U.S. military personnel were left locked in base stockades, isolated in barracks, or simply released into the local population, depending on the personal command decisions of base commanders sorting out their problems locally. The latter solution made many Europeans hostile to the U.S. in general and the U.S. military in particular. Hundreds of former U.S. servicemen were hunted down and summarily executed by local citizens in Germany, Italy, and Yugoslavia. But whatever the price, there would be no more cases like Fort Drum.
In the end, U.S. Forces from Europe who made it back stateside numbered around 47,280. After the mass desertions, executions, court martials, and ‘releases’ of September and October, approximately 32,500 remained, top heavy with Air Force units. Throughout November and December reassignments and unit restructuring recreated some cohesiveness of command. Local patrols gave them something useful and patriotic to do, except for when it required shooting civilians. That occurred all too often, during that hungry winter. Every incident was mediated and adjudicated by the U.N. umbrella command, of course. Meet the new boss, same as the old boss.
Part of Gerta’s overview of the status of U.S. forces in Europe included the debacle in Turkey. When the redeployment of overseas U.S. forces began, the Islamic State struck, and struck hard. They had already coiled to strike in righteous zealotry, when the U.S. collapsed and began to break up. The loss of D.C. and the death of the President had made them tingle with anticipation. When the first U.S. flights out of Germany began, Incirlik Air Base in Turkey was hit by a weeklong hellstorm of I.S. rocket attacks from the outskirts of Adana, which grounded all flights. F-16s from Izmir pounded the rocket positions day and night in retaliation, with limited effectiveness. Crowds of angry Muslim Turks besieged the gates of both bases. Islamic State ground units then crossed the border and converged on Incirlik from the south and east, as Turkish Air Force units turned on the U.S. forces at Izmir, attacking them from the nearby Cigli air base. This took Izmir out of the fight. The primitive but effective rocket salvos were followed by successive human wave attacks over the wire, which overwhelmed base security. In the fall of Incirlik 1,500 military personnel, over 1,000
dependents, and nearly 2,000 civilian contractors were massacred. The government of Turkey formally requested that the U.S. Air Force Base at Izmir be evacuated, in order to bring an end to hostilities in Turkish territory. They began transferring personnel to Aviano. The Islamic State had won, all the way to the Black Sea.
I Saw Satan Laughing With Delight
What the loss of Turkey meant for U.S. forces in the Middle East was that the door to Europe, and evacuation from that route, was closed to them, effectively. The Fourth fleet from Mayport was busier than a one legged man in a butt-kicking contest helping with the redeployment of continental Europe based U.S. personnel from their disembarkation point in Kiel, Germany. There just weren’t enough planes to move that many men fast enough, so many would have to go by ship, the long way. It would be a cramped and melancholy ride home.
The Fifth fleet was already on their way to Australia after trying unsuccessfully to guard the flank of the retreating Seventh in the south Pacific. This left the Sixth. So, the U.S. Sixth fleet, headquartered in Naples, bluffed their way through the Suez canal to help evacuate U.S. forces from the Middle East. However, the victory of the martyrs for Islam in Turkey had inspired jihad envy all throughout the Muslim world. With few exceptions, U.S. bases were all locked down and bracing for attack. They didn’t have to wait long.
The King of Saudi Arabia publicly requested that all U.S. military aircraft at King Abdul Aziz air base remain on the ground due to growing local animosity towards the American presence there. The local base commander, knowing what had happened at Izmir, saw the writing on the wall. Things were also tense at Eskan Village, near Riyadh. A flurry of communication between the USAF joint command in Saudi Arabia and the southwardchugging Sixth fleet’s command ship USS Mount Whitney commenced. Both bases evacuated under pressure, and their fighter wings headed west and south. The Saudi Air Force engaged them from Riyadh, with both forces losing several craft before pursuit broke off.
A dozen surviving U.S. fighters continued to the inactive King Fahd air base, where they forced the airport administration to refuel their flights. The Saudi Air Force hung back, warily, unsure of how to respond or what the next action by the diminished U.S. forces might be. After the overnight refueling stops, protected by sentry overwatch assignment flights, most of their craft which were able to continued west to the Red Sea. One was abandoned due to a refueling issue at Faud, and another, acting as a suicide decoy chosen by lot, took off headed back east twenty minutes before the remaining ten.
They dropped all of their remaining ordinance on Mecca in frustration, along the way. Five U.S. F-16s and two F-15s successfully landed aboard the USS Gerald R. Ford, the supercarrier at the core of Sixth fleet. Three more craft were forced to ditch, and all but one of the pilots were recovered by the fleet. After a brief but fierce resistance, U.S. forces at Eskin Village were annihilated by Saudi commando assaults, and the American personnel remaining at Aziz and elsewhere throughout Saudi Arabia were forced to capitulate. A week later, declaring his Kingdom free of the infidel, King Saud held public executions of nearly fifty surviving American servicemen, and advertised the fact that all of the surviving American females, (the wives and daughters of military personnel, as well as some civilian contractors and some female personnel) under the age of thirty would be made available for purchase. His nation’s economy had long been dependent on selling oil to the Americans and Europeans. Now, I.S. was the only game in town in the Middle East. If he wanted to keep his throne, and his head, he had to play ball.
The U.S. Air Force, along with help from the Australians and British, were able to hold Al Udeid Air Base in Qatar despite local riots and daily protests outside the perimeter. The Victory Base Complex and COP Shocker were the only two remaining U.S. installations in the former Iraq. Taji, Sykes, Grizzly, and Balad bases had been closed following I.S. annexations of territory to within fifty miles of Baghdad, the year before. Victory Base fought a Quixotic rear guard action against the I.S. assault that signaled their final grab for Baghhad while King Saud was cutting off heads. This gave time for flights from Camps Wolf, Patriot, and New York in Kuwait to carry out roundthe clock evacuations to Al Udeid.
By the time the Sixth Fleet motored into the Persian Gulf, they were able to pick up over 5,000 U.S. military personnel from NSA Bahrain and Al Udeid, combined. These had already gone through the service-wide segregation process which had cost so much blood elsewhere, and the heavily White majority U.S. Air Force contingent had been able to sort itself out first, then dictate that only segregated units would get a ride out. That greatly reduced the drama. Only limited mutinies and rebellions occurred in the most diverse infantry units within the redeployment staging areas outside Kuwait City. These were quickly put down by pre-segregated units. Approximately 1,300 servicemen of minority status were locked down and left behind during the evacuation of the Middle Eastern Theater, and another eight hundred died due to injuries sustained during combat, either from I.S. or from “friendly” fire. White military losses numbered around six hundred, overall.
The Sixth fleet was over capacity already after evacuating their base at Milan, so the navy took the simple measure of commandeering the oceangoing cruise ships MS Europa 2, Artania, Amadea, Azamara Journey, and MS Deutschland from Doha. A week after arrival, they were ready to leave, expecting to have to fight their way through the Straits of Hormuz, but Tehran was quick to contact them, saying bluntly that the Islamic State was a greater threat to Iran than the United States was or would likely be again, so they would not impede their withdrawal.
From the Arabian Sea, into the Indian Ocean the huge armada steamed. They had not heard from any confirmed naval authority above the rank of their own rear admiral in two weeks, despite continued efforts on their part to make contact up the chain of command. Civilian authority in the states also seemed to have fragmented. With no secure bases remaining open on the U.S. Coast on the Pacific side, they continued on to Garden Island, the Australian Naval center and submarine base near Perth, in Western Australia. Because they swung wide of India to avoid a showdown with that new superpower, the trip was almost 6,000 miles. It took them eleven days, since they could not leave behind the slower Cruise ship. There, they rendezvoused with the Fifth fleet, and entered a joint command agreement with the Australian Secretary of the Navy. Australia had just become the third largest naval power in the world. For the tens of thousands of American men and women in the Fifth and Sixth fleets, however, home was still a climactic clash with the Chinese away.
Helter Skelter, In The Summer Swelter
The situation in Afghanistan was even worse, for U.S. forces there. Like the five or six million other Americans caught travelling or overseas at the time of the collapse, the twenty-eight thousand men and women of the U.S. Air Force, Marines, and Army in the northern sandbox were stuck. Logistically, they lacked the fuel, food, or ammunition to sustain campaign in-country for more than thirty to sixty days. Even ratcheting back on offensive moves and conserving nonessential fuel consuming operations, they were looking at ninety days, max, from the date of the last major resupply at the end of May. There was nothing else in the pipeline headed their way from stateside, no way to withdraw, and friendly faces were few and far between. Everybody wanted to kick us, now that we are down, though Major General Gerald “Ferocious” Ferguson. His nickname had started out as a goodnatured ironic joke, given Ferguson’s placid demeanor and appearance. It had stuck, though, because of his relentless, unflagging work ethic and dedication to detail in every plan of every action. That attention to specifics would be crucial now, when every gallon of fuel and every MRE and round of 5.56 counted. U.S. forces on the ground could force their way through in any direction. His only problem was, just where did they want a door?
Ferguson had read his military history. He knew that Alexander the Great, and the British, and the Russians had all broken their backs on these mountains. That gave him an idea. They needed to link up with the nearest non-Muslim mil
itary force, in order to survive. Otherwise, the escalating attacks on U.S. officers and patrols by supposedly friendly Afghan Army troops would flame into a shooting war they couldn’t win. Or walk away from, even if they won. So be it.
“Sir, you want me to get in contact with WHO?”……”Yes, Sir”….. “Yes, Sir.”… I understand, Sir.”….the second lieutenant stared at his telephone is disbelief. One minute he had been trying to figure out where to house the mixed race soldiers who didn’t want to be housed with either the White or the black or the Latino or the Asian soldiers, and then trying to segregate the most racially diverse army in the world seemed like a vacation from what he had just been asked to do. But, he Captain had been passed it by his Major who had been passed it by his Colonel who had been passed it by General Ferocious, himself, so Jake Lastern wasn’t about to question it. Ours is not to reason why, ours is but to do and…hey, hadn’t that been written about the Russians, too? He wondered.
The U.K. and Denmark were too busy at home putting down rioting Muslims in the streets of Copenhagen and London to be able to help with any evacuation of their own soldiers, much less anybody else’s, he knew that. So would the Germans, French, Italians, and Bulgarians, be, for the same reason. Lastern knew those boys would be on board with the plan. So would the Canadians, with their country breaking up a half step behind the U.S., and the other coalition forces would follow the U.S.’s lead. They knew they would either hang together, or hang separately. Even the French had quickly shut up about the ordered segregation of U.S. units, after the eleventh or twelfth black groundpounder Bergdhaled over to the Taliban. There had been two suicide bomb attacks and seven fraggings of coalition personnel by Afghan soldiers or policemen in the last week. The Afghan President had apologized, but added that he was powerless to oppose the will of the people, in these uncertain times. That meant to Jake that they had been on a good run, but the jig was up. So, in between sorting out one unit racially and ordering it to detain the minority members of another unit, then reassigning those two units to do the same to two more units in a cascading campaign, he had another fish to fry. A big one.