GWOT II - Reaction Team

GWOT II - Reaction Team

I had to train our security personnel carefully and in detail with respect to the client's Reaction Team or, in shorthand form, REACT.

Most employees and even some Reaction Team members didn't fully grasp the nuances.

If it wears a uniform and carries a gun, it must be Security, right?

Wrong.

Very, very wrong.

The CLIENT and COMPANY had a contract. It was very vague. We'd added a number of addendums to that contract. The post-Firecracker ones were schitzophrenic at best. Arguably highly illegal, depending on how you viewed weasel wording such as "use force to exclude trespassers" and "reasonable efforts to provide services under any and all conditions" and especially "the terms 'force majure' and 'act of war' and 'act of God' shall not be reasons that justify nonperformance under this contract."

Under that contract, COMPANY had agreed that it would supply a certain level of 'security services' which obviously have to be performed by 'security personnel' equipped with 'mobility equipment' and 'tactical equipment.'

This did not get CLIENT off the hook for providing for its own security, especially under disaster conditions.

Pre-Firecracker, one could call the police. The police could call SWAT. The Incident Commander could request mutual aid through multiple levels of government, ultimately the National Guard or even the Army.

Post-Firecracker, none of that was happening. None of it. We'd had a sheriff's deputy visit. Once. We'd had San Jose Police visit several times in the first three weeks, each time in fewer numbers, and then they were too far away to come back again.

What we had instead was Homeland. The one time we'd asked them to come out - to take custody of a terrorist prisoner - they'd shot him to avoid the nuisance of transport.

The propaganda said Homeland was our brave defenders. By reputation, Homeland was much better at gathering up refugees and putting them on buses than they were fighting anti-American partisans.

Even if they felt like helping, and were able to help, they would be far too late.

Staffing up the contract security force to answer all the threats was just not tenable. Even the CLIENT - wealthy as they are, providing essential services in the War On (Of?) Terror - can't afford to have hundreds of people standing around with guns just in case something bad happens. Again.

So they had chosen, with some prodding, to cross train their own employees as combatants.

This is the literal definition of a militia. In this case, a corporate militia. Lots and lots and lots of issues there.

I am continually amazed by the number of people who think that soldiers and police have unlimited access to the weapons they use on duty. Nothing could be further from the truth.

The VP of Human Resources had expressed ... concerns ... about her problem children having access to firearms. She could kind of wrap her head around the idea that security personnel needed to have firearms because the bad guys did. She could not appreciate that security guards armed with pistols were outclassed in every way by intruders with rifles.

That her Employees might be trusted with rifles hurt her brain.

So we had strict weapons controls.

Security carried handguns and would be issued appropriate longarms as needed, based on duties and role. But the big toys would be turned in between occasions.

REACT members carried no weapons at all. But when gathered together and issued weapons, would considerably outnumber and also outgun Security. However, they also would need to turn in their weapons when not needed. ALL their weapons.

To who? An armory, of course, staffed by a mix of CLIENT and COMPANY personnel who thoroughly understood the tension, with procedures written that would allow COMPANY to audit and maintain control but CLIENT to seize control if it ever became necessary.

Each REACT team consisted of five personnel. Four gun toters and a team leader. The team leader was always a manager. Leadership is leadership, except when it isn't. So the SLE, VP HR and VP Operations formed a panel and personally up-checked every REACT team leader, and occasionally removed one from REACT when necessary.

The gun toters could be ordinary Employees. They could not be Contractors. Ever. They were required to participate in trainings, be vetted by a process that had Security as well as their line managers and HR involved, and meet a couple other criteria that weren't ever shared with me.

Most importantly, they could go nowhere and do nothing without their Team Leader, who wore TL armbands as part of their REACT uniform. They could do nothing alone. Only in pairs or more could they possess firearms. But any configuration but the five-pack with a TL present was automatically suspect.

How many REACT teams did the Client field? That would be telling, but well over a dozen.

We didn't dare have them all go to a central armory to get their weapons every time. So instead, we had lockers set up that were under the control of the central armory. The lockers would only unlock if the site alert conditions allowed for it, or someone took bolt cutters or a combination saw to the emergency locking pins. We didn't want anyone taking over the armory and therefore the whole site, but we also didn't want an Employee helping themselves to their gear and deciding to re-negotiate the terms of their employment. It did happen a few times, because security procedures are never perfect, but never worked out well for them.

On the command and control side, the SLE had been very blunt. I call out the Reaction Team. _HE_ owns it. I can borrow it but I have to give it back.

I tell them what needs to be done, and they do it according to their procedures. A blunt instrument. If it's a delicate problem, it should be within Security's capabilities, right?

There was another issue there. There is a rich and majestic (literally) history of security personnel taking over from the people they used to work for, prior to self-promotion through use of force. The CLIENT wanted to stay in control of its own Employees and premises and assets.

A quick way to do that, that did not depend on whether I personally tripped in front of a bullet, was to make that a fight between REACT and the security force would not be a fair fight.

We'd even written a procedure for what to do if the contract security force went off the reservation. In a few words, RT kills us all.

However, the integrity of the Reaction Team and the behavior of the individual Employees was very much a security, or Security, issue.

The effectiveness of the RT was directly linked to quality of training, past and present. That wasn't my issue. A stable of Employee line managers, some ex military and some not, took it in turn to "administer" the RT.

The big advantage Security had over REACT was that we trained all the time, and they could only train in what time could be spared from coding. But some of them were former military - more on average than in Security - so some of them started from a higher baseline.

The great equalizer was the Kill House. A training course type experience, with subcaliber ammunition, that Security and REACT both made use of, a lot.

The training facilities were shared by Security and RT but were owned and developed by the Client.

Why? That would be telling, and telling would be followed by sudden unhappy ending. Something something coding something the War something cutting edge.

I'd helped with their procedures book. I had to know their tactics.

They were deliberately modeled on the needs of a pre-Firecracker Police SWAT team. SWAT stands for Special Weapons _a_nd Tactics. The SLE had determined, in logic that followed from our situation, that the situations that exceeded Security's capability would therefore demand an advanced response not a basic one.

Given the limitations of time and training, there were a lot of the classic SWAT missions that they didn't have time to train in.

High Risk Warrant Service? Not happening. No courts, no warrants. Security could handle any locker or area searches, using REACT as the heavy if more force was needed.

Barricaded suspect? Sort of. The 'no hostage' policy meant that we would just go in and kill them. But that didn't mean we would have to be stupid about it. All the departments would contribute to solving the problem according to their talents. Facilities could do some interesting things to modify the environment. Fire Brigade would breach doors and force barriers. Security would handle the OODA loop - observe, orient, decide, act. But REACT would go in and kill them.

Hostage rescue? See 'barricaded suspect,' with more casualties.

Vehicle assault? Basically a barricade or hostage situation aboard a bus, or armored truck, or other small enclosed space. That would be a "nice skill to have" but we just didn't have time. So I tried to make damn sure that any time Security took control of such a vehicle, that we would either keep control of it or practice dumping people out of it so fast that a bad guy couldn't take it over any way but empty. Then we blow it up and problem solved.

Riot work? Our employees were just not that tough a crowd. So REACT didn't carry much less lethal. What they did carry was batons for beating people and zip ties for temporarily securing prisoners.

Armed intruder / active killer? That response was the bread and butter of the REACT teams. They would get their weapons, go to the sound of the guns, and at the end of the engagement they would have fired the last shots. It's a lot more complicated than that, it always is, but it disconcerts a murderer to have his would-be victims shoot back, and while he is disconcerted he can become discorporeal.

Dignitary protection? Supposedly. I wasn't allowed to know anything about that aspect of things, because REACT might be protecting the SLE from the Security group. The one guy I could have asked is dead now. But when the SLE had his doubts, a REACT team or two would be present as if by magic.

I resolutely refused to allow REACT to be used on convoy protection operations. Their strength was on Site in defensive roles. Taking them off campus put them at great risk for little reward.

They still had to train in certain light infantry operations that most SWAT teams don't spend much time on. Patrolling, movement to contact, sniper suppression and defending fixed positions from military attack.

The thing that I wouldn't let Security do, that REACT had to do, was room clearing and close quarters battle.

We trained on it, of course, because we might have to do it in a pinch, and in fact did it an awful lot. But it was always a high risk low reward evolution, and on the numbers killed almost as many security personnel as our other big killer, IEDs.

Details matter. The problem was the 'fatal funnel.'

I assume that you have at some point in your life visited a restaurant. There is typically a clear delineation between the public spaces of the restaurant, mostly seating, and the working areas of the restaurant, mostly the kitchen. This doorway typically does not have a door because people are carrying stuff back and forth. Food the one way, dirty dishes the other way.

Imagine that there is a bad problem in the kitchen. A cook who throws knives, say.

If you have to go through that door, and you know it, and the cook knows it, he can put a dozen knives in you before you can say sashimi. Or get off a single shot.

So you go around. Go through the back door. Climb up on the roof and come down. Get down into the basement and come up the stairs from behind. Take a card from the Kool Aid Man's playbook and go through the wall. Or the window if you're less into that brick breaking thing.

But if you can't go around and have to go through that doorway, you are in the 'fatal funnel' and the funneling is generally fatal.

Now add a door. Opens in? Opens out? Left hinge or right hinge? Metal, wood framed or wood?

We used this trick defensively all the time. An invader of our premises would now find every doorway and many corridors exacting a price at every turn and twist. Security personnel would kill one or two, fall back to the next, kill one or two, rinse and repeat.

Offensively, however, we lacked the cheat codes to overcome a nominal defender.

Distraction devices? When they worked. But even a "Mo Special" could not be as reliable as a manufactured dazzle munition. Some people, especially those with training, just don't distract. They ignore the flash and the bang and fire at where the door was before the explosion.

Shields? Unobtainum. Even if they stood up to heavy weapons which they would not.

We did have one cheat code. Fur missiles.

Alvin and our dogs. Not K-9s, that was a different level of training and utilization.

But a dog will go through the door and bite the SOB(s) on the other side, allowing entry to happen.

But Alvin couldn't be everywhere and the dogs were a finite resource. Given a choice, we'd rather lose a dog than a person.

Sometimes we didn't get that choice.

What we could always rely on spending to get through the fatal funnel was blood. Violence of action. Speed. The willingness not merely to roll to the sound of the guns, but charge them without thinking.

If you tried going through one at a time, you would be killed one at a time, and fail.

If five of you went through together, the enemy would kill two or three, and the survivors would be in an even fight. Then the next REACT team would enter and that particular fatal funnel would be overcome. Then do it again, and again.

Very expensive of personnel.

Also the reason why REACT teams were in groups of five.

Sometimes you win by stealth and speed and skill. That was Security.

Sometimes you win by taking a sledge hammer to the problem.

That was REACT.

But when you break a sledge hammer, you don't have to tell the factory or little Baby Hammer that Sledge and his friends won't be coming back to the toolbox.

GWOT V - The Great Rescue

GWOT V - The Great Rescue

It started out as an ordinary day, as these things so often do.

Then it was a routine call.

Then it was balls to the wall, fangs out and hair on fire.

Then it got weird.

###

"Rampart, this is Echo 18 Actual. Priority operational traffic."

The controller was clearly bored.

"Echo 18 Actual go."

"GPS coordinates. 32 degrees 35 dot seven six minutes north. 116 degrees 23 dot seven seven minutes west."

I made him confirm the coordinates. He did.

"Level Seven repeat Seven Mass Casualty Incident at these coordinates. Prepare to copy a large resource order."

There was a reason I had sent the coordinates first.

"Say again level of MCI?"

"Seven repeat seven."

An audible gasp.

The voice changed to the duty officer. She was crisp and efficient.

"We copy a Level 7 MCI at thirty two degrees thirty fiver dot seven six minutes north by one hundred sixteen degrees twenty three dot seven six minutes west. Clear to copy your resource order."

"Seven BLS ambulance strike teams. Six ALS ambulance strike teams. Two physician strike teams. One field hospital. Logistics in proportion for sheltering an additional five hundred endangered persons. All repeat all available air ambulances on expedite. Request that all air ambulances carry maximum stock of intravenous fluids inbound. Break."

A brief pause while they made sure they'd heard what they had heard. All on a recorded radio channel, so they could play back as needed.

"Echo 18 continuing. Security situation is stable. Moving my entire unit to this position minus a security detail at McNasty. Also requesting four potable water tenders and two non-potable water tenders, immediate need."

Immediate need meant Right The Fuck Now.

"What is the nature of the MCI?"

"Rescue from multiple containerizations."

A long pause.

"What is a containerization?" the duty officer asked.

"They locked refugees in containers and left them there. Time period unknown."

This provoked thought. But as the front of my brain was thinking about all the dying people, the back of my brain was thinking about next steps.

"Break. Alarum alarum alarum. This is not an exercise. Requesting air cavalry forthwith and a full defensive package."

"Rampart copies all."

My mobile display terminal pinged as the resource order hit and a huge number of incident templates, frequency assignments and combat intelligence updates slammed into it.

I ignored the MDT and went to my MP platoon leader.

"Put out observers and snipers. Everyone else except you and me on primary rescue. I will coordinate comms. You will set up a landing zone and serve as air rescue manager. Kids fly, adults die."

She nodded, went to the back of her vehicle, gave orders to her squad leaders, and got out her signal panels and comms bag.

A few California scout-soldiers melted into the rocks to our north and east.

The rest made a human chain and helped carry feeble people out of the double doors of the rusty ancient forty foot containers and into the shade just outside them. We'd already popped the padlocks of course, as soon as the scout had reached the first container and heard the cries for help from inside.

The medics moved from person to person wearing fanny packs with rolls of flagging tape. A touch, a moan, and a strip of colored ribbon tied around the right wrist.

Within minutes they had an exact count.

Seventy four immediates. Red ribbons. In immediate danger of death, from altered mental status related to dehydration and heat stroke.

One hundred and seventy two delayeds. Yellow ribbons. In need of immediate medical attention, but delaying that attention would not kill them swiftly. They could wait a few minutes. Not a few hours.

Sixty seven walking wounded. Green ribbons. They needed to be processed and were thirsty, but did not appear to be at risk of dying suddenly. We could be wrong though.

Not an exact count of dead. Over eighty though.

Our single ALS medic was on her knees next to a pile of IV bags, our entire stock made up of the medical kits plus the bag every scout-soldier carried in our web gear. A stretcher team would bring her a pediatric body. She would efficiently put an IV into the dying child's arm, a soldier would hold the bag high, and the child would be moved to the shade. A green ribbon would be recruited to hold the bag up, in lieu of an IV stand, which put them mostly in the shade too.

Twice she did not place an IV. She motioned and the body was carried away and dumped in the sun.

She ran out of bags before she ran out of child patients. With the help of tarps, we did not quite run out of shade.

A sonic boom announced the arrival of air cavalry.

They were very, very careful not to overfly Mexico. But they could see and their sensors could update my MDT.

Observers in the rocks and hills to our south.

Almost certainly Cartel.

What this was, was a distraction. A distraction we could not ignore, with so many lives in peril.

But the Cartels would ruthlessly expend hundreds of civilian lives to smuggle across an especially important shipment.

I was already in gross violation of my mission.

We're not out here to save lives.

We're out here to secure borders.

But they shouldn't have put me out here and expected me to turn my back on dying children.

They can court martial me tomorrow.

Not today.

"Raven Four, Echo 18 Actual on Air Ground."

I acknowledged.

"We have movement north of the Border on Shockey Truck Trail headed northbound. Four trucks no IFF."

I thought about it. Court martial if I'm wrong.

It was about the timing.

The refugees were not all dead. So they hadn't been here for three days or more.

The refugees were dying. So they'd been locked in the containers for several hours, possibly a day or two.

"Are the trucks tractors?" In other words, could they tow container trailers like the four I was looking at?

"That's affirm."

"Fire mission in hot with guns. Kill them all. Strafe the survivors until you are bingo munitions. War code Anetsky Four."

This wasn't technically a war, so the containerization was not technically a war crime.

I didn't care. They were therefore mass murderers fleeing the scene of their mass murder.

"Kill them all," I repeated brutally. "Break. Echo 18, California Eight Control."

That was the border checkpoint. West/East not direct. Protecting San Diego from the wretched hive of scum and villainy that was the California deserts.

"Shut it the fuck down. No traffic except emergency and military and resource immediate need. Deadly force authorized. We have a potential major incursion."

That cut off a third of the sector and a third of the problem.

It also cost the California Republic thousands of dollars - even if inflated CAD - per minute that traffic was interrupted.

Fuck 'em.

The first ground resource other than my MP company arrived.

A single CHP unit with a single CHP trooper.

I flagged him over.

"Officer. This is a complex crime scene. Process the ever living fuck out of it."

This may be the Border, but this is the California side, and this is not lawless territory.

The CHP officer nodded, got out his digital camera and crime scene tape and notepad, and started a task that would take a war crimes investigative cell weeks. But evidence was perishable, if not as perishable as the victims.

A second ground resource. A single battered fire engine. Campos Indian Reservation volunteers. Three wildland firefighters.

"For this purpose your water is potable. Your rule is, everyone who can swallow gets water. Figure it out. We have medics, we will keep doing patient care. All I want you to do is water these people. How much water do you carry?"

"Five hundred gallons," the weather beaten volunteer driver said. They had already unloaded their ice chest and ran it to the ALS medic, who started using ice and water bottles on pediatric victims at once. Now, moving with the quickness, they hooked up hoses and connectors and made their engine into a forest of small diameter garden hoses flowing water to fill containers people could drink from. More walking wounded were pressed into holding hoses and being human water fountains.

"I've requested four potable and two non-potable water tenders. Use all yours up, more is coming."

A single Red Lion medical helicopter made a smooth landing but kicked up a plume of dust. The flight medic paused and the air ambulance crew stripped all their portable equipment and made a pile of it. Gear weight for lives per pound. Four babies were loaded and the helicopter took off immediately, running west to El Cajon instead of north for once. Basic care now was better than advanced care too late.

I checked the MDT for deployments. The air cav had worked over the putative enemy convoy. My reaction platoon was headed right for them but would take another hour to get to the burning hulks and search for any survivors. Once caught they would be interrogated, tried and hanged. I wouldn't allow them to be merely shot. Not for this.

Soon we had an air game above us. Circling fixed wing aircraft on one side, circling rotary wing aircraft on the other.

"Hellguard on Air to Ground Three, incident commander, your wishes?"

Callsigns Hellguard, Hydra and Horatius were incident command aircraft. Their role was to keep the military and civilian aircraft from "conflicting" i.e. crashing. They would keep track of all that for me.

"Air cordon, report vehicle movements especially north. Maximize throughput of air ambulances, we have a major MCI here."

I listened distantly as Hellguard and my MP platoon leader made a landing zone into a field helibase. Three pads, to minimize helicopter loiter times.

The next helicopter to land disgorged California Republic soldiers.

Not mine. Not scout-soldiers at all, although they wore scout soldier insignia to which I knew they were not entitled.

On our side of the border they wore uniforms. Not on the other side.

"Operative Ramos," one saluted.

"Take two of our vehicles. Push a roving patrol west and another one east. Engage what you find. Put air cav on them. This is a distraction for smuggling. Whoever is doing the smuggling ordered _this_," I waved my hand at the bodies and frantic activity. "So fuck them up like angry bears do."

"Hooah! Bear Force!" they barked as they complied.

The Americans did not have a monopoly on special operation personnel, and I had ordered ours to go hunting.

Their helicopter lifted with several casualties and one of mine with a sprained ankle. Someone had to keep them under control during the flight.

That was a patch on the problem. We needed more. A lot more.

My duties were to wrestle with the Mobile Display Terminal. Incident Command. Set this shit up.

So much as I longed to make sure that the babies got water, my job was to see that their torturers got lead. Or hemp.

When I stuck my head up from the terminal, hours had passed. I was very thirsty and had to drink water from my own field pack's canteen.

This was now a forward operating base of the California Republic.

Two Cougar medium battle tanks now faced south, turrets quivering as they scanned the opposite side. Any cross border sniper would not survive to make a second shot.

Ground ambulances pulled in, were loaded, and left. The air game continued, if more slowly now that every air ambulance in a hundred mile radius was now in the cycle. Fly here, load, fly to hospital, dip out to refuel, fly here again. Repeat until out of sunlight.

In addition to the logistics support, the armor, the infantry, the mortar section... we had reporters.

Escorted by a Collections agent, of all things. His business suit was horribly out of place in our desert and already dusty.

I had no PIO. I was trained in some things before the War. I thought about where we were. Could I spare half an hour?

Yes.

"I can make a statement and take a few brief questions." The reporters pounced. I identified myself and my unit. "At 1145 hours this date, scout soldiers on border patrol discovered these four forty foot containers dumped at this location. Upon hearing cries from inside, we breached the doors and found that they had been packed full of people. Over one hundred of them are confirmed to be dead and another three hundred seriously injured by heat exhaustion and dehydration. This is an atrocity and the full weight of the California Republic will land upon those who ordered it, who assisted in it and who knew about it in advance but did not report it."

I paused. Then I used some magic words.

"Justice will find them, whereever they may be, anywhere in the world, by the ghosts of Alviso."

The Collections agent flinched. He knew what I had just said.

I wasn't still on the Commission. But I had said what I had said, and I knew what I knew, and the Governor had chosen to allow me to continue to have the authority to say things like that.

"Do you think this is the work of the Cartels?"

"No opinion." Of course.

"Was anyone taken into custody outside the containers?"

"No." No. If we had, they would be having a talk with me right now, possibly up in the rocks where their body could be discreetly recovered later.

"Why do you think this was done?"

"We are conducting a full investigation, there are several possibilities." The Cartels wanted to flex and wrote their message on the bodies of migrants.

"How do you feel?"

I felt like a broken record trapped in a vicious loop.

How do I feel? What does that have to do with anything? Feel? You want me to feel? Like that mother over there wondering which of the little bodies being flown out is her son or daughter or both? Like that father who is holding a garden hose because that's all we can trust him to do, but is saving lives by doing it? Like that man who clearly clawed at the interior and broke his fingers scrabbling at the seal, possibly when it was slammed on him so many hours ago?

"The Republic has asked us to uphold her honor." I found myself saying. "This is a despicable dishonorable deed that soils all that it touches. Blood washes off. Guilt does not. Whoever did this has no honor. This is not our culture. This is not Mexico's great culture. This is American styled skullfuckery, a poison of atrocity and genocide that has infected whoever thought of this. Anyone who loves California or loves Mexico would literally take the person who thought of this crime and take them outside and kill them. Right the fuck now. That is what I feel. No further questions."

###

She turned from the screen, looked at her associates, put away the gold and jewel encrusted iPhone, motioned to her most loyal bodyguard.

"Enrique, my associate, my dear associate."

Cruel, strong men turned as pale as their ancestries would permit.

"This ... was a misstep. An embarrassment. I do not like being lectured to about honor by a Goddamned gringo Californicator. Especially when he is right and you were wrong."

"Take him out back and beat him to death. Send the BBC the video. Express our fury and that we had nothing to do with it."

Enrique knew he was dead.

But there are deaths and deaths.

He stood, bowed, and walked out to the back courtyard with an entourage.

He did not start screaming until the third blow from the baseball bat.