GWOT IV - Detail
Sep. 27th, 2019 03:12 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
drewkittyGWOT IV - Detail
One of my most important tasks at Alviso Prison was to actually be Warden. Not to be on the Commission, not to make political capital as an officer in the California Republic, not to recover from my injuries or put together the shattered remnants of my sanity ... but to be the Warden.
That meant physical security, and lots of it. I realized finally that it made total sense that I'd been drafted to this role. Very few trained correctional personnel were available to the Republic - the honest ones had objected to some atrocity or another and been sidewalked, the dishonest ones had become genocidaires, and many of the best had been sent as cannon fodder to China anyway. But conventional security managers don't have to think about gunfire from all sides, and we did.
I used every trick I'd learned at Site, plus a few, and tightened the perimeter hard. This was a military installation and a lawful military target. Only the infirmary and the POW barracks were not, and that only because the enemy would not want to wantonly murder their own people.
Accordingly, I'd demanded reaction force drills. Once a week, a company of California Republic troops - infantry, armor, artillery, I wasn't picky - would show up and take over the place. The security procedures for that were truly paranoid. At one point I'd ended up in a screaming match with a CA Colonel until he realized that the guards really would shoot him unless he came up with the stupid password.
We'd also taken extensive security precautions against rescue. The exercise yard was filled with metal junk. I accepted that this meant a ready supply of potential shanks and other improvised weapons, but I'd accepted that anyway with the rough and ready construction of the barracks to get the POWs out of the weather. We still had tool control, we're not idiots.
But no one was going to be landing a helicopter in the yard, even if they were willing to combat loss it, because there wasn't room and there were enough vertical projections to tear off rotor blades. The same logic applied to HAHO and HALO jumpers, and I hoped to paragliders.
I didn't know the exact capabilities of American brilliant weapons, but I knew they could fly down ventilation shafts and through bunker slits. There were strict rules about the use of POW labor, you could not use it for military purposes. So I had the POWs build themselves air raid shelters. Then, had them build better ones for themselves. Then I repurposed the old shelters - which is entirely lawful - as our own air raid shelters, changing the markings accordingly.
The most important anti-rescue precaution was the simplest. The only vehicular entrance to the prison, the vehicle sally port, had kick out rollers under the J barriers. The only heavy forklift that could lift them was parked in a bunker when not in use. The keys for both the forklift and the padlock securing the bunker chains were in my pocket when not in use.
I had also, in the middle of the night, wired in my own concealed flick switch to the forklift controls. Then I had told each driver, verbally, about the flick switch and never to tell anyone else. Just the drivers, no NCOs and no officers.
So if someone took the keys from my pocket, which would not happen while I breathed, and got to the forklift, they still wouldn't get it going and probably wouldn't live to find out why.
Imagine the situation. You are a dedicated American hero and four thousand of your countrymen are languishing in durance vile. The site is surrounded by razor mesh, chain link, moats (sadly lacking sharks, let alone forehead lasers), ad nauseum. So you have to get them out through a narrow dog leg channel, deliberately six feet wide and ten feet high, that went literally underground through the defenses ... you just don't have time. We've already eliminated helicopters. Heavy bombs that could blast a hole in the defenses would destroy the surface buildings and possibly even breach the bunkers.
So you have to get everyone out that sally port, and you have to do it fast. Commandos can carry all the cool tools they want: explosives, blowtorches, lock pick guns, Hurst tools, you name it. But none of that lifts thirty concrete blocks out of the way in the ten minutes they would have before the reaction force showed up.
Sure, the prisoners could scramble over the blocks. But that would fatally slow down the entire operation, even with AC-130 gunships making everyone else in sight do the Somali Dance to open the road to the nearest helicopter landing zones.
Come on down, hero. Show us how it's done. Bring your A game.
Obviously I'd taken a number of other precautions that I won't disclose here, even now. But your millions of dollars in night vision equipment doesn't mean shit when magnesium flares are involved.
A failed attempt would itself wound the Americans, just as had happened at Son Tay (successful operation, the prisoners weren't there) and Desert One (hadn't even gotten into the _city_, lost several aircraft and eight dead before the first enemy shot was fired).
I might not survive it. But I looked forward to it.
###
"Sir, wake up. Urgent operational message!"
I took one look at the tablet and my hand slammed down the MASTER ALARM panel in my quarters. My bad hand. It hurt a lot. Too bad.
Alarms hooted. I picked up the PA microphone and switched it live.
"NOW HEAR THIS, NOW HEAR THIS. MAXIMUM ALERT. MAXIMUM ALERT. LOCK DOWN LOCK DOWN LOCK DOWN. STAND TO STAND TO STAND TO."
My orderly still had to help me with my boots.
The reaction force was not available. No surprise.
We hadn't been hit. We might well get hit. But the anticipated prisoner rescue raid had fired off, and it hadn't been at us here.
Most of the POWs had been moved to Sunnyvale. There had been several reasons for this ... better security next to the San Francisco Bay, the remnants of the extremely competent and professional Sunnyvale Public Safety to run the facility, useful facilities and easy to secure streets near (but not on) the formerly American base at Moffett Field.
Their preparations hadn't been as extensive as ours. But they'd been running an ordinary POW camp, not a justice center.
I read further down.
"You are ordered and directed to respond immediately and take command of the scene."
I'm an officer, it's an order, let's go.
###
The POW camp fire station was burning. According to the shell shocked guard survivor who'd crawled into a culvert, the first warning of the attack had been everything blowing up at once all around him.
We'd found lots of dead California Republic guards, though. Many had been shot with silenced weapons. Some had been knifed and/or garrotted.
A full blown Baghdad Package of strike aircraft had shattered the Bay Area's air defenses. Precision guided weapons on air defense sites, radars, command and control facilities.
But scrupulous care had been taken to only hit military targets.
That was the other, other purpose of Alviso Prison. Any enemy pilot knew where they might end up.
It hadn't all gone one way. A literally priceless F-117 stealth fighter (America couldn't make them any more) lay shattered on the nearby golf course, and a Collections team was already taking photographs.
A combat air patrol of California Air National Guard aircraft was still overhead, just in case, but the air battle had moved east to its more typical location over the Sierras.
And every Marine Corps Osprey carrying rescued prisoners of war was a lawful military target. We had made the Americans pay for their presumption, and not just the rescue force.
The remaining POWs, the ones they hadn't had space for on the aircraft, had simply sat down where they were and refused to do anything. Neither to resist nor to comply.
They were covered by machine gun crews behind armor. That situation was unstable and needed immediate attention.
War is not just about wins and losses. It's about perceptions, morals and ethics.
I instructed that all of them would need to be safed, searched, separated and FI'd - just as if they had just been captured.
"Sir, that's a waste of..."
"You are relieved. Send me your XO and go shoot yourself or something."
The Americans had added new POWs to the mix. Ringers. Infiltrators. Volunteers to be added to the prison population. Yeast for the brew. A brave and reckless thing to do, but I understood.
That didn't mean I was going to tolerate it.
###
"Name, Rank, identification number."
The commando glared defiance at me. He'd not been one of the deliberate additions - he'd been separated from his unit, tried to E&E out on his own, and turned in by residents who saw him hide while they were gardening.
He'd only surrendered after sniping out the sergeant leading the reaction team. With one round. Even then, it had taken two bursts of machine gun fire to persuade him that he had no other option.
"Staff Sergeant Dennis F. Murray, 282-45-2213."
"Staff Sergeant, I am Captain [18] of the California Republic. I must congratulate you on a difficult operation."
"Fuck you."
Even in the grip of four burly guards, all trained to instructor level in hand to hand combat, he was hideously dangerous.
"Sergeant, that's not how you speak to an officer. Try again."
"Fuck you." A long pause. "Sir."
"Better. As a combatant prisoner captured in lawful operations, you will be repatriated at the first opportunity. You will be held separately and sent over in the next cartel. Do you know who I am?"
"Traitor. Murderer. Rebel."
He flinched at what he saw in my eyes and added "Sir."
"All true, not relevant. I am the Warden of Alviso Prison and a member of the California Military Commission. I am going to use you to carry over some information. This is one of three facilities at which the California Republic keeps American prisoners of war. No unlawful combatants are held at this site. I am going to provide you with lists of all persons held in California military custody. All persons, including unlawful combatants and Homeland genocidaires."
Now he looked shocked.
"Why?"
"The California Republic will strictly follow the laws of war. Strictly. I can think of no better way to send this message than to send it back with you. Now I need to ask you to make a personal decision.
"I know that American troops are forbidden to give personal parole. I'm going to give you a choice. If you give me your parole, I will give you a personal tour of Alviso Prison. There is certain information about the facility which it is my duty to convey to the enemy, both under Geneva and to prevent unnecessary loss of life in failed military operations against it.
"If you do not give me your parole, which is your right, and possibly your duty, you will not visit Alviso Prison and I will have to settle for putting the information in writing to send with you. I much prefer having a living witness.
"What is your decision? Parole and a tour? Or no parole and no tour?"
He barely hesitated.
"Parole."
"Release him."
The guards did so and backed away warily.
"Let him clean up. Get him a clean uniform. PW armband only. Continuous escort. My duties require me to be here for a few hours, after that we will go to Alviso Prison, give you a tour, then turn you over to the International Red Cross representative for immediate repatriation. As you likely know, we have been using Susanville as a neutral town; the Red Cross rep will drive you there with an escort."
###
Sergeant Murray kept his word. So did I.
He saw only what I wanted him to see. That was part of the game, of course.
Last I took him to the execution field.
I had already handed him several documents. Now I handed him the last one.
"These are the names and crimes of all persons who have been executed here."
He read the document. Or started to.
Then he got to the third page and stopped.
"You believe all this?"
"Yes. I do."
"At Gerlach, Nevada ..." he started.
"I saw it with my own eyes. That's in the American sector, go look for yourself."
"I have my duty."
"As do I. We tell the world what happened here. We weren't lying then. We aren't lying now. Tell your superiors, which is your duty. Whoever else you tell, is between you and your conscience."
The Red Cross representative walked up, as had been arranged.
"Goodbye, Sergeant. Strongly recommend that you never attempt to return."
He looked at me one last time. His eyes strayed to my ruined hand.
Against his will, he saluted.
I returned it.
He walked off with the Red Cross rep.
I never saw him again.
###
"So, [18], a tidbit for you."
Agent Knight passed me her laptop. American propaganda, analyzed for tidbits.
"KIA: Sgt Murray, Dennis A. In the heroic rescue operation to save American POWs from unlawful custody..."
"Shit."
"Obviously he pissed someone off. Probably told the truth or something."
Good men die for their duty.
The rest of us have to do the best we can in the meantime.
One of my most important tasks at Alviso Prison was to actually be Warden. Not to be on the Commission, not to make political capital as an officer in the California Republic, not to recover from my injuries or put together the shattered remnants of my sanity ... but to be the Warden.
That meant physical security, and lots of it. I realized finally that it made total sense that I'd been drafted to this role. Very few trained correctional personnel were available to the Republic - the honest ones had objected to some atrocity or another and been sidewalked, the dishonest ones had become genocidaires, and many of the best had been sent as cannon fodder to China anyway. But conventional security managers don't have to think about gunfire from all sides, and we did.
I used every trick I'd learned at Site, plus a few, and tightened the perimeter hard. This was a military installation and a lawful military target. Only the infirmary and the POW barracks were not, and that only because the enemy would not want to wantonly murder their own people.
Accordingly, I'd demanded reaction force drills. Once a week, a company of California Republic troops - infantry, armor, artillery, I wasn't picky - would show up and take over the place. The security procedures for that were truly paranoid. At one point I'd ended up in a screaming match with a CA Colonel until he realized that the guards really would shoot him unless he came up with the stupid password.
We'd also taken extensive security precautions against rescue. The exercise yard was filled with metal junk. I accepted that this meant a ready supply of potential shanks and other improvised weapons, but I'd accepted that anyway with the rough and ready construction of the barracks to get the POWs out of the weather. We still had tool control, we're not idiots.
But no one was going to be landing a helicopter in the yard, even if they were willing to combat loss it, because there wasn't room and there were enough vertical projections to tear off rotor blades. The same logic applied to HAHO and HALO jumpers, and I hoped to paragliders.
I didn't know the exact capabilities of American brilliant weapons, but I knew they could fly down ventilation shafts and through bunker slits. There were strict rules about the use of POW labor, you could not use it for military purposes. So I had the POWs build themselves air raid shelters. Then, had them build better ones for themselves. Then I repurposed the old shelters - which is entirely lawful - as our own air raid shelters, changing the markings accordingly.
The most important anti-rescue precaution was the simplest. The only vehicular entrance to the prison, the vehicle sally port, had kick out rollers under the J barriers. The only heavy forklift that could lift them was parked in a bunker when not in use. The keys for both the forklift and the padlock securing the bunker chains were in my pocket when not in use.
I had also, in the middle of the night, wired in my own concealed flick switch to the forklift controls. Then I had told each driver, verbally, about the flick switch and never to tell anyone else. Just the drivers, no NCOs and no officers.
So if someone took the keys from my pocket, which would not happen while I breathed, and got to the forklift, they still wouldn't get it going and probably wouldn't live to find out why.
Imagine the situation. You are a dedicated American hero and four thousand of your countrymen are languishing in durance vile. The site is surrounded by razor mesh, chain link, moats (sadly lacking sharks, let alone forehead lasers), ad nauseum. So you have to get them out through a narrow dog leg channel, deliberately six feet wide and ten feet high, that went literally underground through the defenses ... you just don't have time. We've already eliminated helicopters. Heavy bombs that could blast a hole in the defenses would destroy the surface buildings and possibly even breach the bunkers.
So you have to get everyone out that sally port, and you have to do it fast. Commandos can carry all the cool tools they want: explosives, blowtorches, lock pick guns, Hurst tools, you name it. But none of that lifts thirty concrete blocks out of the way in the ten minutes they would have before the reaction force showed up.
Sure, the prisoners could scramble over the blocks. But that would fatally slow down the entire operation, even with AC-130 gunships making everyone else in sight do the Somali Dance to open the road to the nearest helicopter landing zones.
Come on down, hero. Show us how it's done. Bring your A game.
Obviously I'd taken a number of other precautions that I won't disclose here, even now. But your millions of dollars in night vision equipment doesn't mean shit when magnesium flares are involved.
A failed attempt would itself wound the Americans, just as had happened at Son Tay (successful operation, the prisoners weren't there) and Desert One (hadn't even gotten into the _city_, lost several aircraft and eight dead before the first enemy shot was fired).
I might not survive it. But I looked forward to it.
###
"Sir, wake up. Urgent operational message!"
I took one look at the tablet and my hand slammed down the MASTER ALARM panel in my quarters. My bad hand. It hurt a lot. Too bad.
Alarms hooted. I picked up the PA microphone and switched it live.
"NOW HEAR THIS, NOW HEAR THIS. MAXIMUM ALERT. MAXIMUM ALERT. LOCK DOWN LOCK DOWN LOCK DOWN. STAND TO STAND TO STAND TO."
My orderly still had to help me with my boots.
The reaction force was not available. No surprise.
We hadn't been hit. We might well get hit. But the anticipated prisoner rescue raid had fired off, and it hadn't been at us here.
Most of the POWs had been moved to Sunnyvale. There had been several reasons for this ... better security next to the San Francisco Bay, the remnants of the extremely competent and professional Sunnyvale Public Safety to run the facility, useful facilities and easy to secure streets near (but not on) the formerly American base at Moffett Field.
Their preparations hadn't been as extensive as ours. But they'd been running an ordinary POW camp, not a justice center.
I read further down.
"You are ordered and directed to respond immediately and take command of the scene."
I'm an officer, it's an order, let's go.
###
The POW camp fire station was burning. According to the shell shocked guard survivor who'd crawled into a culvert, the first warning of the attack had been everything blowing up at once all around him.
We'd found lots of dead California Republic guards, though. Many had been shot with silenced weapons. Some had been knifed and/or garrotted.
A full blown Baghdad Package of strike aircraft had shattered the Bay Area's air defenses. Precision guided weapons on air defense sites, radars, command and control facilities.
But scrupulous care had been taken to only hit military targets.
That was the other, other purpose of Alviso Prison. Any enemy pilot knew where they might end up.
It hadn't all gone one way. A literally priceless F-117 stealth fighter (America couldn't make them any more) lay shattered on the nearby golf course, and a Collections team was already taking photographs.
A combat air patrol of California Air National Guard aircraft was still overhead, just in case, but the air battle had moved east to its more typical location over the Sierras.
And every Marine Corps Osprey carrying rescued prisoners of war was a lawful military target. We had made the Americans pay for their presumption, and not just the rescue force.
The remaining POWs, the ones they hadn't had space for on the aircraft, had simply sat down where they were and refused to do anything. Neither to resist nor to comply.
They were covered by machine gun crews behind armor. That situation was unstable and needed immediate attention.
War is not just about wins and losses. It's about perceptions, morals and ethics.
I instructed that all of them would need to be safed, searched, separated and FI'd - just as if they had just been captured.
"Sir, that's a waste of..."
"You are relieved. Send me your XO and go shoot yourself or something."
The Americans had added new POWs to the mix. Ringers. Infiltrators. Volunteers to be added to the prison population. Yeast for the brew. A brave and reckless thing to do, but I understood.
That didn't mean I was going to tolerate it.
###
"Name, Rank, identification number."
The commando glared defiance at me. He'd not been one of the deliberate additions - he'd been separated from his unit, tried to E&E out on his own, and turned in by residents who saw him hide while they were gardening.
He'd only surrendered after sniping out the sergeant leading the reaction team. With one round. Even then, it had taken two bursts of machine gun fire to persuade him that he had no other option.
"Staff Sergeant Dennis F. Murray, 282-45-2213."
"Staff Sergeant, I am Captain [18] of the California Republic. I must congratulate you on a difficult operation."
"Fuck you."
Even in the grip of four burly guards, all trained to instructor level in hand to hand combat, he was hideously dangerous.
"Sergeant, that's not how you speak to an officer. Try again."
"Fuck you." A long pause. "Sir."
"Better. As a combatant prisoner captured in lawful operations, you will be repatriated at the first opportunity. You will be held separately and sent over in the next cartel. Do you know who I am?"
"Traitor. Murderer. Rebel."
He flinched at what he saw in my eyes and added "Sir."
"All true, not relevant. I am the Warden of Alviso Prison and a member of the California Military Commission. I am going to use you to carry over some information. This is one of three facilities at which the California Republic keeps American prisoners of war. No unlawful combatants are held at this site. I am going to provide you with lists of all persons held in California military custody. All persons, including unlawful combatants and Homeland genocidaires."
Now he looked shocked.
"Why?"
"The California Republic will strictly follow the laws of war. Strictly. I can think of no better way to send this message than to send it back with you. Now I need to ask you to make a personal decision.
"I know that American troops are forbidden to give personal parole. I'm going to give you a choice. If you give me your parole, I will give you a personal tour of Alviso Prison. There is certain information about the facility which it is my duty to convey to the enemy, both under Geneva and to prevent unnecessary loss of life in failed military operations against it.
"If you do not give me your parole, which is your right, and possibly your duty, you will not visit Alviso Prison and I will have to settle for putting the information in writing to send with you. I much prefer having a living witness.
"What is your decision? Parole and a tour? Or no parole and no tour?"
He barely hesitated.
"Parole."
"Release him."
The guards did so and backed away warily.
"Let him clean up. Get him a clean uniform. PW armband only. Continuous escort. My duties require me to be here for a few hours, after that we will go to Alviso Prison, give you a tour, then turn you over to the International Red Cross representative for immediate repatriation. As you likely know, we have been using Susanville as a neutral town; the Red Cross rep will drive you there with an escort."
###
Sergeant Murray kept his word. So did I.
He saw only what I wanted him to see. That was part of the game, of course.
Last I took him to the execution field.
I had already handed him several documents. Now I handed him the last one.
"These are the names and crimes of all persons who have been executed here."
He read the document. Or started to.
Then he got to the third page and stopped.
"You believe all this?"
"Yes. I do."
"At Gerlach, Nevada ..." he started.
"I saw it with my own eyes. That's in the American sector, go look for yourself."
"I have my duty."
"As do I. We tell the world what happened here. We weren't lying then. We aren't lying now. Tell your superiors, which is your duty. Whoever else you tell, is between you and your conscience."
The Red Cross representative walked up, as had been arranged.
"Goodbye, Sergeant. Strongly recommend that you never attempt to return."
He looked at me one last time. His eyes strayed to my ruined hand.
Against his will, he saluted.
I returned it.
He walked off with the Red Cross rep.
I never saw him again.
###
"So, [18], a tidbit for you."
Agent Knight passed me her laptop. American propaganda, analyzed for tidbits.
"KIA: Sgt Murray, Dennis A. In the heroic rescue operation to save American POWs from unlawful custody..."
"Shit."
"Obviously he pissed someone off. Probably told the truth or something."
Good men die for their duty.
The rest of us have to do the best we can in the meantime.
