“Jesus . . . What the fuck is going on, Major?” said the colonel. His tone sounded almost accusatory, as if Tyce himself were responsible for the blast.
“It’s an attack, sir,” said Tyce, too busy to look up at the colonel.
Tyce had a handheld radio in one hand and was attentively watching the men below as they recovered the bodies and weapons. Two Humvees and an LAV had lowered steel ropes from their towing winches, and both below and above, troops were maneuvering the ropes into place to move the stack of vehicles to get to the survivors—or, more likely, the bodies—in the lower vehicles.
The colonel peered over the edge and watched the men working for a moment. Two were wading through waist-high water and picking their way across bridge debris. Two more were kneeling atop the blue Porsche, staring upwards, their arms held up and wide to snatch big hooks dangling on steel cables from recovery vehicles that were being slowly lowered down. Once they grabbed them, and satisfied the two men were secured from falling into the freezing river, Tyce turned his attention toward the colonel.
U.S. Army Colonel David Nepo was the joint forces commander for their exercise in the woods and was therefore Tyce’s boss. At least temporarily. For the past several months, they’d trained together in a Joint Interoperability and Readiness Exercise, which really just amounted to Tyce’s Marines being added to the ranks of the West Virginia’s 150th Cavalry Regiment.
It had been a great opportunity on paper, but Nepo was an egotistical boss who bristled at every slight—real or imagined—from the Marines. Several of Nepo’s National Guardsmen confided to Tyce that the daily anguish, harsh leadership, and generally unsupportive atmosphere all stemmed from David Nepo’s narcissism. Still, Tyce had risen to the task and was serving as the interim executive officer, called the “XO” and who was second-in-command. It put him under Nepo’s gun on a daily basis even more during the exercise but also put him in a spot to keep the training exercise flowing, and to keep both U.S. National Guard and U.S. Marine Corps troops happy and gainfully employed.
“Sir, we need to get you back to Morgantown,” Tyce said matter-of-factly. Right at that moment, he couldn’t have cared less about the colonel; he was more worried about the remains of the men, yet to be recovered from the pit at the bottom of the bridge.
He continued. “Back at your command post, you can prep and issue orders. I sent the forward half of the convoy back already, before the bridge collapsed.” He glanced below. “All except the one LAV that . . . didn’t make it. The rest are on their way, and I instructed them to get comms with your headquarters before approaching Morgantown. No telling what might be waiting for us back there after this surprise attack. I’ll remain here to supervise the recovery of our fallen and to intercept the rest of the regiment as they come through the hills. Then we can join you at the Morgantown reserve center.”
The colonel’s eyes widened, and he stared at Tyce. “To do what, exactly, Major Asher?”
“Fight back, sir. Defend our homes, I guess. Maybe see if there are any orders waiting for us at headquarters.” Tyce remained stone-faced.
“From who? What orders?” The colonel looked as if his mind was spinning out of control. His eyes glanced furtively from side to side. He removed his helmet and clutched at his forehead with his fingers.
“Sir, I have no idea at this point. Right now, we need to gather our fallen. But the next thing is to take stock and prepare our troops.”
“Prepare for what? With what?” The colonel glanced around at the mixed unit of Marines and soldiers, then down at Tyce’s prosthetic leg. “The rest of the regiment is just as unfit for any real combat duty, Major. And if what is happening is what I think is happening, we need real gunfighters, not reservists.”
Tyce’s narrowed his eyes a bit. Any of Tyce’s 4th Light Armored Reconnaissance men, or even the guys from the 150th, would have taken exception, but it was clear the colonel was practically out of his wits—and certainly out of his depth. Tyce had seen it before, in Afghanistan and Iraq. Some leaders’ initial reactions to unexpected combat situations were not exactly Hollywood’s version of heroism, all bravado and testosterone. Tyce himself had felt it before, that sudden rush of anger and confusion. A spike in adrenaline, the realization that all decisions rested now with you—and the men’s eager but chaotic anticipation of orders, awaiting basic directions to provide purpose, order, and calm.
Tyce decided to switch gears to get his boss back on track. “Hey, sir,” he said, letting the anger subside and gesturing around him. “We are none of us ready for whatever this is. But you are in charge, and we trust you to figure out our next course of action. If you and the Headquarters companies can head back to HQ, I think we’ll all feel a bit better that our leadership is where it needs to be to best make sense of all this and issue the proper orders. Besides that, if it is a full-blown attack, we have a duty to the citizens of Morgantown . . . to all of West Virginia, for that matter.”
Tyce’s words seemed to have the desired effect. “Yeah,” the colonel said, looking around a bit uncomfortably, still clutching his forehead, squeezing and contracting the skin into wrinkles with his fingertips.
Tyce thought, He may only now be realizing his position and the effect his momentary stupor could have on the troops.
“Yeah, that’s what we’re gonna do,” said the colonel slowly. “I’ll get the HQ company back to base.” He stopped squeezing his forehead and looked down at his helmet. He ran his finger almost lovingly over the black eagle on the brim, the rank insignia of a full bird army colonel. He stood up straighter, lifted his chin, and seemed to regain an air of authority as if seeing the symbol of his rank had reminded him who he was, or at least who he needed to be.
“Asher, I need you to remain here. Then I want you to get everyone back as best as you can.” The colonel basically repeated Tyce’s words, his voice still sounding a bit distant. “And I’ll have your assignment waiting for you.”
The colonel put his helmet back on, pulling the leather chin strap down. Then he seemed to realize there was more to be said, especially given that Tyce was clearly the person in charge here and was doing well, dealing with some of the colonel’s own casualties. “Umm, good work in taking charge of the rescue. Carry on, Major Asher.” He seemed to be waiting for something. Tyce came to attention and saluted.
The colonel saluted back. Then he turned to his Humvee and climbed aboard, and he and his section of twelve Humvees headed southwest toward the longer but safer route back into Morgantown.
SSgt. Diaz came over to Tyce. She had been standing a respectful distance away from the two officers—an old trick used by the senior enlisted. She’d not been quite close enough for the colonel to notice, but just close enough to hear everything.
“What the fuck was that?”
Tyce sighed heavily. “SSgt, you were in Fallujah back in the day, right?”
“Yeah, so what?”
“Do you remember your first day of combat?”
“I’ve tried pretty hard to forget that shit.”
“Well . . . this is the colonel’s first real day of combat. Might be the same for lots of the men from the 150th. But they are a solid regiment with a long and storied history dating back to the Revolutionary War.” Tyce looked solidly into SSgt. Diaz’s light brown eyes, punctuating his next statements by speaking in a slow and measured tone. “He needs us, you and me, all his combat vets, to keep everything in order until he has the time to . . . bring everything into focus.”
“Hope he doesn’t barf,” Diaz said, shifting her machine gun with a grimace to the other shoulder. “Or worse . . .” She smirked and winked at Tyce.
Officers played a game of undermining their leaders, but generally not so for the Staff Non-Commissioned Officers, or SNCOs, like Diaz. Basically, these lifers among the enlisted troops had been through enough bullshit in their careers that they were much more interested in getting the job done than posturing.
Tyce couldn’t suppress
a small smile. The senior enlisted troops in both the army and Marines always spoke the truth. Even when officers couldn’t or didn’t because of an unwritten code of decorum between the ranks.
His smile quickly faded, though, as he watched the soldiers and Marines pull out the first waterlogged and mangled corpse from the vehicle on top of the heap, the blue Porsche. It was a female. Probably in her fifties, as far as Tyce could discern.
And now, once again, things were real.
CHAPTER 10
South of Morgantown
It was a full four hours before Tyce finished recovery operations below the bridge. Civilian and military bodies lay nearby in body bags, some badly mangled beyond all recognition. Twelve in all. He carefully handed the civilians over to a fire rescue crew, who had arrived in the meantime. Gunny Dixon also came back with his LAV section and a bundle of body bags. They respectfully sealed up the fallen men.
When quizzed, Gunny Dixon didn’t know anything new about the situation. The colonel made it back successfully with his headquarters company, but the National Guard HQ was just as much in the dark as everyone else. TVs were out, cell and landlines were out. No one really knew what was happening. As he was leaving their HQ, the communication section had been trying to set up a radio and satellite shot to get some communications, or comms, with higher headquarters—or anyone outside of Morgantown, West Virginia, for that matter. So far, no luck.
Tyce halted the vehicles in his unit. His composite regiment in total wasn’t more than 200 men. Comprised of eighty Marines from Company D, of the Marine 4th Light Armored Reconnaissance, and one hundred and twenty National Guardsmen from the 1st Squadron, 150th Cavalry. Their sum was barely big enough to even field an active duty battalion, let alone the regiment they were supposed to be on paper. They had spent two months training in the woods together. Soldiers and Marines had taken turns being both the attacker and the defender, fighting with blank ammunition. In the second month, the units joined forces for a final graduation field exercise: a huge attack on a heavily defended and entrenched enemy. All simulated, of course, but involving an exceedingly difficult series of tactical battlefield tasks, with mortars, artillery, machine guns, and enemy snipers. The troops had given it their all and were covered in mosquito bites and completely exhausted.
By all accounts from their higher headquarters, the Army and Marine Corps reserve evaluators, the two units had performed admirably. More importantly to Tyce, they had gained a mutual respect for one another. It was true that none of the men or women were active duty, the frontline troops that lived and breathed Army or Marine Corps every day. No, these were what the active duty folks called “weekend warriors,” a group made up of men and women who held other jobs but stood in readiness to fight if the need arose. They had all sorts of other jobs, some even very lucrative in industry or business, but each had felt a calling to do a little more for their country. So they generally served one weekend a month. That is, until several recent crises and rising global tension—all stuff well above their heads—had caused a flurry of orders to activate the men and women and send them to “shake the rust out,” as most of the troops called the exercise.
At first, it had seemed like one big joke, but the veterans mixed within the ranks of both the army and Marines swiftly took charge of critical ranks and ensured they had a good exercise. At least the American taxpayers could be proud of spending the nearly $450,000 they had budgeted for the reservists to go out and play in the woods. They had fired pretty much every weapon in their shared arsenals, requalified almost every soldier and Marine on the basics of rifle and machinegun marksmanship, and remembered once again the things that had drawn them to serve. Camaraderie, brotherhood, a love of country, and the joy of being outdoors instead of caught up in some rat race, stuffed into a cubicle farm. After a few weeks, the troops started to look the part. Orders were eff iciently followed. Rivalries between services, though ever-present, were alleviated by a newfound respect.
Now, evening was falling, and the troops were fighting a battle against sleep and fatigue as Tyce pulled them onto a hilly rise in the waning sunlight near Morgantown.
These were the thoughts floating through Tyce’s head as his Humvee, the lead in the column, wound its way toward Morgantown along 79. It had been an arduous and emotional recovery, but the feeling of satisfaction for performing his duty and recovering those killed, however grim the task, was strong. That feeling faded instantly when he spotted two dark columns of smoke looming over the town. One was directly in the center of the town, the other in the vicinity of the reserve center. Tyce called over the radios for his leaders to come up to his Humvee. As he waited the few minutes for them to arrive, he pulled out his binoculars and scanned the town.
Gunny Dixon and SSgt. Diaz arrived first, soon followed by First Lieutenant Chad Zane, the B Troop commander, to join Tyce in staring across the valley. As they watched, a series of planes flew overhead—big, lumbering prop planes. Behind them, dozens of parachutes opened up.
“Holy shit, sir.” SSgt. Diaz was the first to speak up. “What is it?”
“Paratroopers,” said Gunny Dixon. “But judging by the dark olive color of their chutes, those are not ours. They look Eastern Bloc.”
Tyce pulled away from the binoculars and looked at the gathered leadership. “Okay, bring it in.” Tyce motioned for everyone to gather close around him. “Look, this is it. If you don’t have a sense of dread in your gut, you’re not a real soldier or Marine. I think we all pretty much get what’s going on, and it should make everyone’s short ’n curlies stand on end.”
A few troops looked about to interrupt, but Tyce held his hand up. “We’ve been hit. We’ve been invaded. Whoever it is has just hit several bridges and is invading our town.” Over the town, more parachutes opened and drifted toward the ground. “We have to get moving. It’s not safe here in the open. But I want hasty consensus. I want to hear from you, briefly, but then we need to act.”
SSgt. Diaz was the first to speak. “We need to attack these fuckers, sir. No mercy. Whoever them bitches is, we kick them the fuck out of America.”
A few shouts of “hell yeah” and “that’s what I’m talkin’ ’bout,” erupted from the gathered leadership.
Gunnery Sergeant Dixon spoke next. “Sir, by my math counting ’chutes, that’s about a regiment, maybe more. That’s a full-fledged combat organization. If you look in between the men coming down, see those large grey cylinders, those are full of heavy weapons and ammo. Those guys are here to stomp some ass, and last I checked, we have next to zero ammunition.”
Emphasizing Gunny’s point, the staccato of gunfire erupted across the valley, with tracers arcing across the sky in different directions.
Everyone turned to watch, but Gunny Dixon continued speaking. “We turned in everything besides a few mags for the security of the convoy. Pretty sure we don’t have any heavy ammo at all.” He paused as everyone’s attention turned away from the gunfire and back to him, “We need to head for the hills, sir. Restock, rearm as best as able, and attack this problem like the legit operation it is. If we run into that”—he pointed back to the town—“willy-nilly, we are gonna lose a whole lot more men than those who perished at the bridge. At this point, and up against a regiment, I don’t think many will survive, and I don’t see what we could gain.”
“Why we standing ’round talkin’ about it?” exclaimed one of the army sergeants.
Tyce ignored the outburst. “Okay, who else has something they want to say? This is a heavy decision. We’re ignoring our own base in Morgantown and running. I want to hear from others.” Tyce looked back now to the sergeant. “And I want calm and reasoned ideas. Not panic.” Tyce’s sharp words told the story: no time for nonsense.
“Is this leadership by consensus?” Lieutenant Zane asked. “That’s not the army way. Besides, I think we’re all just ready to do whatever you think we gotta do, sir. We are out of time and out of Schlitz. I’m still trying to take stock of
what happened along the route as my guys arrive, but the best reports I have say I lost almost all my armor. My Bradley Fighting Vehicles got wiped out in that initial missile attack.”
This was news to Tyce, and he and others looked on with shock.
“The men are mostly okay, sir. Thank God they were in the trucks, or we would have lost them, too. I’ll get a firm report and let you know once I have the details.” He looked around, “But I agree with the Major. We need to get out of Dodge and assess the situation.” He looked at Tyce, “Besides, sir, we’ve watched you in action for the past couple o’ months. We know what you’re capable of.” It seemed like he couldn’t refrain from looking at Tyce’s prosthetic leg as he continued, “We know about your combat experiences in Iraq, too. Know you’ve been there, done that. Lead us, sir. Just don’t fuck it up.”
Tyce frowned, fighting the mixed emotions of pride in the trust he’d been given but deeply concerned about the reports of losses.
At least most of the men are okay, Tyce thought, but for how long if we linger. He felt like a cursed man. Death and bad decisions followed him like virus.
“Okay,” he said finally, “Here’s what we’re going to do. First, we need to get off the road and into the trees. It’s been a while since I’ve seen any U.S. aviation, and if my guess is right, we no longer own the skies.”
Tyce pulled a map from his flak jacket’s cargo pouch. “Second, we take to the hills. Travel in small groups. Squads and vehicle sections of no more than about four vehicles. Any larger than that and we’ll attract a lot of attention. We’re a juicy target, and I’m sure once those . . . enemy get their shit squared, or demolish the Morgantown HQ, they’ll go hunting for other targets.
Tyce pointed to the map. “Here. The city of Parsons.” He’d never been there, but it looked far enough into the valley, but not so far that they couldn’t return if they got reports that might force a return.
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