GWOT V - MexiCan
Jun. 7th, 2022 06:52 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
drewkittyGWOT V - MexiCan
It only took me three days of patrols to figure out that I was up against superior firepower, numbers and tactics.
1) Every patrol I ran was paced, on the opposite side of the border I could not cross, by a Cartel or Mexican Army patrol.
1A) That meant a parallel road net.
2) Our vehicles had to stop repeatedly to clear obstacles, natural and man made.
2B) Our shadows to the south did not.
3) The UN forces who had allegedly been patrolling hadn't. Otherwise the roads would have been in better shape and the maps might have been a little more accurate.
4) Much intel could be gleaned from the trash on the ground. The flows of smugglers north and south continued constantly, in some cases within minutes of our passage.
That was how we thought we made our first arrest.
And how I was nearly captured, and my entire force almost destroyed.
###
Less than an hour out, one of my platoon commanders had realized that she'd made a bad mistake. Not enough drinking water.
A bad commander plays out a bad hand. She decided instead to turn around and go back.
The smugglers hadn't expected that, thus were still in the open when we gave chase.
One got away by driving his high clearance stripped pickup truck through a winding set of interconnections we didn't know yet.
Another had a blown engine and cheerfully put his hands up.
The third flipped end over end.
That got ... ugly.
###
By the time I arrived, one medical evacuation helicopter had already left, carrying two badly injured children to Arrowhead. A second was twelve minutes out. There was not a third.
Seven more seriously injured migrants were on the ground being treated by three of my five medics. But not my surgeon. She was too far away, literally on the other side of the Sector, and by the time she got here any survivors would be stable or deceased. So she was headed to McNasty instead.
They'd been smuggling people. North.
Three families with children. Two military age men. A dead driver (the flipper) and a bemused but very quiet one (the blown engine.)
It was the two military aged men who worried me. They were in very good shape, appeared to be of Mexican ancestry, spoke fluent English (based on their inability to hide having any reaction to what they overheard), and last but not least, they had the calluses. Not of farm work, not of people who dig trenches, but of people who spend too much time pulling trigger.
People like LAPD. Not people like us; we didn't have the ammo.
My driver had her hands resting easily on the wheel.
###
"Him?" one murmured to the other.
The reply was a grunt.
###
It all struck me as very wrong.
###
"Punch it!" I roared as I slapped the machine gunner's leg above me from my position in the front passenger seat.
OPEN FIRE NOW.
Caught without a target, he slewed sideways at the mid range - the bushes from which any ambush must come. But there was no roar from the gun and no fall of casings all around us.
My driver didn't know anything. But 'Punch it!" was an order not a question, and she did exactly that. Applying power smoothly and quickly, swerving first left then right then right again.
"Fire! FIRE!!!"
My command was not heeded. No target.
But it was as if the enemy had heard me.
There was fire. Lots of it, all around, pointed at us. The windows shattered, the gunner screamed and dripped hot blood and urine all over me, the driver screamed in terror yet had the presence of mind to hit the SMOKE DISCHARGE button as she swerved the other way.
I pulled the gunner down. I took his place. He tried to fumble for his personal aid kit, but I didn't have time to see if he would win his fight to save his own life.
The machine gun had to be served. Now. So I started walking bursts forward in the direction we were driving. The roar of our own fire, PING PING THUNK PING PING Shit shit Shit! THUNK groan whimper.
We kept going.
When ambushed attack. I keyed my radio.
"Echo 18 Actual, dustoff, wave off, wave off!"
I had to save that second medical helicopter before it got into range. Even if it meant the gunner at my feet trying to tie a tourniquet around what was left of his missing leg bled out.
"Arrowhead, we are under attack, enemy ambush, at least thirty effectives with medium weapons, I need air cavalry and I need it now."
Just for giggles I reached into the box of grenades and started donating them at random, port and starboard. Then racked the charging handle and fired a short burst at nothing to make sure the MG still worked.
"Go back into the kill zone," I ordered.
The driver looked up at me, her bladder and bowels cut loose, and in the resulting puddle made a three point turn, shifting gears as if velocity was a myth.
I opened fire again, trying to keep my bursts off our own line in hopes of missing our own civilians and medics.
Shitfuckdamnpisshellrapepusnuts. I almost hushed the driver before I realized the cursing was actually me.
The gunner finished tying the tourniquet, dragged himself up on his remaining knee, and linked the end of the box of ammo to the next full box. I hadn't even noticed I was almost out.
One of the families was in our way on our return pass.
We ran them down.
Sorry, no time for niceties.
I'd have run down my own mother even if I'd known who she was.
###
"Arrowhead, Red Dog Six, we have a gold vehicle in motion and bandits all around. In hot with guns."
The close-support fixed wing fighter banked sharply and stuttered its way behind and beside, lancing the desert and the bushes with lines of tracers. Six minutes of help that saved our lives.
"We are red ammo and bingo fuel, RTB Arrowhead ETA 1418 hours, good luck."
###
We lurched into Camp McNasty.
The gunner was lifted from the vehicle. The medics weren't around so a combat lifesaver had to do her best instead. Several soldiers piled on with water and ammo. The driver refused replacement, "I'm just fucking peachy sir!"
A quick mechanical check and we lurched right back out again.
###
The lurking wasp-shadow of a Aerospatale light gunship waited for our return. Then it too raced away, not for the close support and casevac base at Arrowhead but for the refueling point at Miramar helitac.
Now we were the clean up crew.
All Californians accounted for. One medic and one of our drivers dead. The junior officer whose doubling back had started all this, curled up in a shivering ball overlooked by the enemy, until found in our sweep. She'd uncurled with a pistol in hand, good, and alternated between apologizing and weeping, not so good. Others unhurt.
Of the refugees, they were gone or dead bodies. No wounded. But fresh knife wounds on the ones we hadn't had the chance to fly out.
No sign of the two military aged men, but hundreds of casings near where I had seen them last. And a discarded bundle of zip ties.
Only the one thing you bring zip ties to a battlefield for.
We needed to get back before we lost the light.
There was nothing the more to do, but pick up our two bodies. Tow out our freshly disabled vehicle. Documentation, write the incident reports and the next of kin letters, casevac our remaining wounded, shower off our bodies and hose out the vehicles. And I sat up half the night turning around a junior officer's first experience of combat with equal doses of fatherly advice and strong drink.
###
The California armor unit radioed in twice the next morning, verifying the GPS coordinates.
They couldn't find the kill site.
Because in the darkness, hands and feet had cleaned up the mess. Policed much of the brass, all the bodies, even the wrecked smuggler vehicle had been dragged away. The other ... towed or perhaps even repaired and driven.
The only eventual finding had been three zip ties, tied as if around wrists and ankles and connecting same. With a piece of cardboard neatly lettered.
"Welcome to the Border. Echo 18."
And a little dollar-store style, 3 inch by 5 inch, US flag stuck in it.
###
The email from Collections had a capture from our gun camera and a point by point facial comparison to an unlabeled group photo of extremely fit young men in fatigues.
"Subjects identified as American special warfare, CIA ISA. Evaluate their objective as infiltration to enemy territory."
We'd never have seen them.
I knew better.
###
The primary objective is the capture of the renegade war criminal 'Echo 18.'
It only took me three days of patrols to figure out that I was up against superior firepower, numbers and tactics.
1) Every patrol I ran was paced, on the opposite side of the border I could not cross, by a Cartel or Mexican Army patrol.
1A) That meant a parallel road net.
2) Our vehicles had to stop repeatedly to clear obstacles, natural and man made.
2B) Our shadows to the south did not.
3) The UN forces who had allegedly been patrolling hadn't. Otherwise the roads would have been in better shape and the maps might have been a little more accurate.
4) Much intel could be gleaned from the trash on the ground. The flows of smugglers north and south continued constantly, in some cases within minutes of our passage.
That was how we thought we made our first arrest.
And how I was nearly captured, and my entire force almost destroyed.
###
Less than an hour out, one of my platoon commanders had realized that she'd made a bad mistake. Not enough drinking water.
A bad commander plays out a bad hand. She decided instead to turn around and go back.
The smugglers hadn't expected that, thus were still in the open when we gave chase.
One got away by driving his high clearance stripped pickup truck through a winding set of interconnections we didn't know yet.
Another had a blown engine and cheerfully put his hands up.
The third flipped end over end.
That got ... ugly.
###
By the time I arrived, one medical evacuation helicopter had already left, carrying two badly injured children to Arrowhead. A second was twelve minutes out. There was not a third.
Seven more seriously injured migrants were on the ground being treated by three of my five medics. But not my surgeon. She was too far away, literally on the other side of the Sector, and by the time she got here any survivors would be stable or deceased. So she was headed to McNasty instead.
They'd been smuggling people. North.
Three families with children. Two military age men. A dead driver (the flipper) and a bemused but very quiet one (the blown engine.)
It was the two military aged men who worried me. They were in very good shape, appeared to be of Mexican ancestry, spoke fluent English (based on their inability to hide having any reaction to what they overheard), and last but not least, they had the calluses. Not of farm work, not of people who dig trenches, but of people who spend too much time pulling trigger.
People like LAPD. Not people like us; we didn't have the ammo.
My driver had her hands resting easily on the wheel.
###
"Him?" one murmured to the other.
The reply was a grunt.
###
It all struck me as very wrong.
###
"Punch it!" I roared as I slapped the machine gunner's leg above me from my position in the front passenger seat.
OPEN FIRE NOW.
Caught without a target, he slewed sideways at the mid range - the bushes from which any ambush must come. But there was no roar from the gun and no fall of casings all around us.
My driver didn't know anything. But 'Punch it!" was an order not a question, and she did exactly that. Applying power smoothly and quickly, swerving first left then right then right again.
"Fire! FIRE!!!"
My command was not heeded. No target.
But it was as if the enemy had heard me.
There was fire. Lots of it, all around, pointed at us. The windows shattered, the gunner screamed and dripped hot blood and urine all over me, the driver screamed in terror yet had the presence of mind to hit the SMOKE DISCHARGE button as she swerved the other way.
I pulled the gunner down. I took his place. He tried to fumble for his personal aid kit, but I didn't have time to see if he would win his fight to save his own life.
The machine gun had to be served. Now. So I started walking bursts forward in the direction we were driving. The roar of our own fire, PING PING THUNK PING PING Shit shit Shit! THUNK groan whimper.
We kept going.
When ambushed attack. I keyed my radio.
"Echo 18 Actual, dustoff, wave off, wave off!"
I had to save that second medical helicopter before it got into range. Even if it meant the gunner at my feet trying to tie a tourniquet around what was left of his missing leg bled out.
"Arrowhead, we are under attack, enemy ambush, at least thirty effectives with medium weapons, I need air cavalry and I need it now."
Just for giggles I reached into the box of grenades and started donating them at random, port and starboard. Then racked the charging handle and fired a short burst at nothing to make sure the MG still worked.
"Go back into the kill zone," I ordered.
The driver looked up at me, her bladder and bowels cut loose, and in the resulting puddle made a three point turn, shifting gears as if velocity was a myth.
I opened fire again, trying to keep my bursts off our own line in hopes of missing our own civilians and medics.
Shitfuckdamnpisshellrapepusnuts. I almost hushed the driver before I realized the cursing was actually me.
The gunner finished tying the tourniquet, dragged himself up on his remaining knee, and linked the end of the box of ammo to the next full box. I hadn't even noticed I was almost out.
One of the families was in our way on our return pass.
We ran them down.
Sorry, no time for niceties.
I'd have run down my own mother even if I'd known who she was.
###
"Arrowhead, Red Dog Six, we have a gold vehicle in motion and bandits all around. In hot with guns."
The close-support fixed wing fighter banked sharply and stuttered its way behind and beside, lancing the desert and the bushes with lines of tracers. Six minutes of help that saved our lives.
"We are red ammo and bingo fuel, RTB Arrowhead ETA 1418 hours, good luck."
###
We lurched into Camp McNasty.
The gunner was lifted from the vehicle. The medics weren't around so a combat lifesaver had to do her best instead. Several soldiers piled on with water and ammo. The driver refused replacement, "I'm just fucking peachy sir!"
A quick mechanical check and we lurched right back out again.
###
The lurking wasp-shadow of a Aerospatale light gunship waited for our return. Then it too raced away, not for the close support and casevac base at Arrowhead but for the refueling point at Miramar helitac.
Now we were the clean up crew.
All Californians accounted for. One medic and one of our drivers dead. The junior officer whose doubling back had started all this, curled up in a shivering ball overlooked by the enemy, until found in our sweep. She'd uncurled with a pistol in hand, good, and alternated between apologizing and weeping, not so good. Others unhurt.
Of the refugees, they were gone or dead bodies. No wounded. But fresh knife wounds on the ones we hadn't had the chance to fly out.
No sign of the two military aged men, but hundreds of casings near where I had seen them last. And a discarded bundle of zip ties.
Only the one thing you bring zip ties to a battlefield for.
We needed to get back before we lost the light.
There was nothing the more to do, but pick up our two bodies. Tow out our freshly disabled vehicle. Documentation, write the incident reports and the next of kin letters, casevac our remaining wounded, shower off our bodies and hose out the vehicles. And I sat up half the night turning around a junior officer's first experience of combat with equal doses of fatherly advice and strong drink.
###
The California armor unit radioed in twice the next morning, verifying the GPS coordinates.
They couldn't find the kill site.
Because in the darkness, hands and feet had cleaned up the mess. Policed much of the brass, all the bodies, even the wrecked smuggler vehicle had been dragged away. The other ... towed or perhaps even repaired and driven.
The only eventual finding had been three zip ties, tied as if around wrists and ankles and connecting same. With a piece of cardboard neatly lettered.
"Welcome to the Border. Echo 18."
And a little dollar-store style, 3 inch by 5 inch, US flag stuck in it.
###
The email from Collections had a capture from our gun camera and a point by point facial comparison to an unlabeled group photo of extremely fit young men in fatigues.
"Subjects identified as American special warfare, CIA ISA. Evaluate their objective as infiltration to enemy territory."
We'd never have seen them.
I knew better.
###
The primary objective is the capture of the renegade war criminal 'Echo 18.'
