GWOT VI - Confrontation

GWOT VI - Confrontation

"Ye shall know them by their fruits. Do men gather grapes of thorns, or figs of thistles?

"Even so every good tree bringeth forth good fruit; but a corrupt tree bringeth forth evil fruit.

"A good tree cannot bring forth evil fruit, neither can a corrupt tree bring forth good fruit.

"Every tree that bringeth not forth good fruit is hewn down, and cast into the fire.

"Wherefore by their fruits ye shall know them."

-- The Christian Bible, Matthew 7:16-20, King James Version (KJV)

"The devil can cite Scripture for his purpose."

-- Shakespeare, "The Merchant of Venice," Act 1 Scene 3


On a mobile battlefield, I have to keep moving.

I've lost one helicopter and two gun trucks. That leaves me with only four gun trucks, and I need them out gunning.

I've got eight mortar trucks, which is eight more than I came to Iowa with. Neat trick, huh? But they are very busy, sharing the love with everywhere in Iowa that I can't engage safely with direct fire.

But I keep coming back to the same three medical field hospitals. The one at North Fork, which will ultimately be our final bastion. The one further west, convenient to Camp Golf - we call it Camp Snoopy - which is the one we can slowly and painstakingly evacuate a handful of wounded from. The one furthest east, which we are prepared to move at any moment, Camp Potato.

(Mobile Army Surgical Hospital - M.A.S.H. What happens to potatoes? They get MASHed.)

So I am at Camp Potato planning the next day's forays when the column of casevac vehicles arrives from what had been Rodeo Gulch.

Where the whole genocide had kicked off.

A single California scout-soldier salutes me with her off hand. I'm not offended - her dominant hand is in a sling. I return it.

"Major, we have Captain Solon with us, of the Moldavian contingent."

"His men?"

"No."

The one word shakes me. He deployed with a platoon of forty.

She is led to triage. I opt in favor of cowardice, as well as proper preparation of the battlespace, and retreat to my tent.

This is set up and taken down several times a day. I have a cot and sleeping bag, my personal fighting equipment. My one indulgence, a milk crate of various military books. (Which titles would be telling - I might have packed for this particular conflict.) Constantly refreshed bottles of iced tea. A few bottles taken from Camp Golf's liquor supply. Not for me. For guests.

I have a bit of whiteboard and a projector hooked up to the laptop. When I have to debrief someone, and I do rather often, I pull up what they need to know, then turn the projector on, then take notes directly on the screen. Dismiss them, transfer what is needed, erase. Combines efficiency and operational security.

So far I've had fourteen scout-soldiers collapse in tears or hysteria, two try to beat me up (not fight me, there's a difference), and one collapse from their wounds. Better than the one who went catatonic and the one who attempted self-harm.

I'm asking these people to not only endure the unendurable, but all too often, relive the unendurable.

Captain Solon has been given an opportunity to wash up, water and a bite to eat, before he is brought to the tent.

I am armed, but I make sure my machine pistol is casually left on my cot, under the sleeping bag, fully loaded with a round in chamber and safety off.

He salutes wearily. I return it and dismiss the orderly.

"Captain. Thank you for getting my scout troops back. I was expecting to lose them."

"Where. Was. Your. Mortars," he bites out.

Shouldn't have dismissed the orderly.

"Other missions, Captain. All over Iowa. And yes, I made a deliberate choice not to use artillery to support you ... or the battalion sized engagement with Army of God at Camp Twelve. Or half a dozen other refugee camps and massacre sites."

"Do you know how many people died in my retreat?"

"However many you brought back, is fewer than I thought I was going to lose."

He took a moment to parse that out.

"You wrote off Rodeo Gulch ... you son of a harsh Slavic syllable, you tracksuit wearing white sneaker shod ..."

I have necessarily paraphrased. All the words were insults, only half were in English.

"Captain!"

He subsided.

"I did not know that camp was under the protection of Moldavian troops. My informant said 'U.N.' forces. Where are the rest of your men?"

"I had four sections. The largest and frankly weakest with me. They are all dead. Another section was in Council Bluffs when this kicked off. They were under orders to cross into Nebraska and demand repatriation. All my married men, you understand. A section with Langar Aid's logistics base, a section guarding Medicos Sin Fronteres."

"Langar Aid was overrun by enemy heavies. They lost most of their food and over half their rolling stock. However, they did break contact without casualties so your section there is likely safe. Medicos Sin Fronteres ran for the Nebraska border as well. So their guard section either crossed with them or is at the frontier."

He nodded. Better than he'd feared, worse than he'd hoped.

"Your informant ..."

Then his face really did darken, and he said nothing.

I made very sure in my mind that I visualized exactly where the grip and trigger assembly of that machine pistol was. Because in a bare handed fight, he would snap my neck with two big mitt-hands against my one and a ruin, and I certainly wouldn't have time to draw either the pistol or the fighting knife.

"... you knew. You knew they were going to hit Rodeo Gulch. That's how you could hit Midland so fast."

I nodded.

"And you didn't try to move them, or guard them. You let it happen."

I nodded again.

"So that you could use it."

"Midland is combat ineffective, over 80% casualties, plus their noncombatants are all refugees and all the officers who didn't go on the raid have given parole. And their church is a wreck. Most importantly, all Iowa watched."

"Like Churchill and Coventry. Are all Californians as ruthless as you?"

"Only those who are soldiers."

"Drink," he ordered imperiously.

I pulled out a bottle of Iowa vodka and handed it over. I pulled out an iced tea.

He took a long swig, as I did.

"I could have broken contact with them half a dozen times, if you'd given me two tubes. Maybe even one tube. As it was, you lost your scout-sergeant. He was on the captured Javelin. None of us would have made it if it weren't for him."

"Put it in writing and I'll put him in for a medal."

"Who's going to put you in for yours?"

I shook my head.

"You know better. Every refugee who crosses Highway 24, that's my victory condition now. Army of God has agreed to stay east of 24."

"How the fuck did you manage that?"

"By terrifying the living shit out of every wavering Church group and non-aligned town in Iowa. With those mortars I didn't use to help you."

"So the fight continues."

"Until we're all dead, yes."

"How long?"

"I give the militias about six days to get their shit together. We'll try to lengthen that, of course. If there's a gas station intact between here and the outskirts of Davenport, someone died trying to take it out."

"Logistics war."

"And morale war and lawfare and information warfare. Cyberwar if they had enough tech to be worth hacking, which they don't."

"They were raping children," he said parenthetically. As if it were a normal continuation of the conversation.

"Go on," I said mildly.

I didn't think Captain Solon needed to talk to a chaplain.

Although he might want to have some words with a few priests.

"We are men of the world, you and I. We know what troops do, far from home, unless you take correct measures to stop it. But these are militia, in their own lands. Women, yes. Girls, well, old enough to bleed..."

I nodded, not finishing the obscene adage for him .

"They were ten and six and eight. Kids. And it was damned priests, and I swear to you by whatever might still be holy in this fallen world, they were blessing the act."

"How did you watch?"

"I was under a pile of bodies, Major. I did not watch. I had to listen. And not move."

"They left."

"Yes."

I opened the laptop, fired up the projector. Showed the animated model projection of the Midland unit that had hit Rodeo Gulch.

And not just Midland. Two other churches had participated.

The sanitized dots marched through the flat fields of Iowa.

I'd counter-ambushed the Midlanders with mortar fire. Then they'd retreated through an offensive minefield they weren't expecting. Harassment by snipers ever since.

The other churches hadn't tried for bear meat. They'd spread out to keep hunting 'G's. I'd let them break contact for the moment.

And now that I knew something I hadn't before... I looked again at my force mix.

"Captain. Are you a ranger, or a hunter?"

He bared his teeth, which was answer enough.

"I can give you one gun truck and two technicals, and ten soldiers. I need the gun truck back intact even if it costs you the mission. You can lose the technicals if the objective is met.

"Mission: go kill these baby fuckers. Hunt them to ground and destroy them."

He nodded. I wrote out his orders and the unit mix. Two copies, one for him so my troops would take the orders, one for the command post so they'd know how I'd squandered and wasted some of my force.

But there are times that men have to be men.

It is a logic deeper and darker than mere war to the knife.

We could kill them all, or we could destroy their homes and kill their families. Both was OK too.

But if we let them survive their crimes and "go home", their taste for atrocity would continue, even after the war ended. They would know what they had done - and liked doing - and each new crime whether in the war or after it, would leave its wake of terror and suffering and broken minds and bodies from generation to generation.

I couldn't task Bear Force for something like this.

I was too busy to do it myself.

And Captain Solon had new demons to exorcise.

I shook his hand. He hesitated to take it at first.

His hands had only had real blood on them. Honest blood.

My hands had the blood that leaks from keyboards and smears papers and maps, that is flicked by tongues and carried through the ether by radios and E-mails. Invisible but no less real, for those who suffer and perish.

But we could agree that those who did such things had to be cut from humanity, root and branch, stem and stalk.