GWOT V - Full Court Press
Sep. 19th, 2023 03:10 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
drewkittyGWOT V - Full Court Press
"Echo 18, Rampart, priority."
I wasn't in the thick of things. I would much rather be in my command car - that first beat up pickup truck, since much upgraded, that I had nearly been murdered in during my first Border op. Or on an overlooking hilltop, or even in a helicopter even though I hated the pesky eggbeaters.
Instead I was in the ICP, or Incident Commmand Post, that we had set up in a convenient ravine just north of CA-8. It was unlikely that it would rain water, and somewhat likely that it would instead rain steel.
Overhead was fabric, which might shed water but wouldn't help with the steel.
"Rampart, Echo 18, go."
I held the mike loosely, it was important that I speak calmly.
"We have a major incursion south south east of Campos. Presently on tribal territory but approaching the California demarcation line. Break."
Major incursion was a magic word. Sirens were going off from San Diego to El Centro. Pagers were going off all over Southern California. The Governator was being dragged off to one of her bunkers. Alert aircraft were ripping off the tarmac and our armor units were drawing weapons and equipment and moving to staging areas.
Because Mexican armor was already fully equipped and in motion.
"Go."
"Numbers seventeen main battle tanks, T-80 with reactive armor and upgunned. Numbers fourteen APCs, seven BRDM and seven mixed, possibly air defense artillery. Numbers about forty trucks. Estimate 600 troops. Mexican Regular Army elements, identified as Third Armored. Troops are Tijuana Ready Reserve. No air cover or mobile gun artillery observed. Tanks in lead, sawtooth formation, not buttoned up. No logistics support observed. Break."
That last was important. They hadn't brought fuel trucks and we hadn't seen a logistics tail behind them. So unless they planned to do a U-turn and go home soon, they would run out of gas.
Or they would seize Campos Nation and refuel off the gas station. I knew that Campos Nation would blow up their only livelihood before letting the Mexicans take it, but maybe there was something the Mexican commander knew that I didn't. Or his balls were itching and only Campos hookers could scratch them.
Or this was the first move in a major war and the logistics tail would be supporting the invasion of San Diego instead.
They didn't need to bring artillery. We were in rocket assisted shell range of two Mexican artillery bases. I had nothing that could range that far.
"My operational intent is to contact and tripwire at the California line. Break."
"Rampart, Echo 18, confirm your order of battle?"
"Two armored cars, six trucks, two towed mortars."
"Copy and good hunting."
Fucking California. I was morally certain that someone at Rampart - Los Angeles Center to be formal about it - was saying something about an even match, a fair fight and a little dog telling a big dog to get the hell out of its yard.
No, I didn't need to be in the ICP. I needed to be standing in front.
"Take over," I directed my MP platoon leader. Another three weeks and she'd have been safely on maternity leave. Could still happen, or she could be dead with the rest of us within the hour.
I strode out to my command car.
"Campos lines," I directed my driver and marked waypoint on the GPS.
ETA ten minutes. Mexican ETA to the same point, twelve minutes.
###
Our six trucks were reverse herringbone parked, as if they could drive away under modern armor observation. They would burn fiercely before the engines started.
The armored cars were parked in a loose wedge across the road. We wouldn't move them out of the way. The invaders would have to drive around the burned-out hulks on the shoulder, which is exactly where we thoughtfully were laying anti-armor mines.
Scrub desert is a poor location for digging in, but while tanks are off road capable, the trucks wouldn't like pushing through sand and sagebrush much.
At a word, one of our troops broke off and tied a yellow CRIME SCENE DO NOT CROSS ribbon between the weathered Campos-California border posts.
I strode forward to stand just behind the ribbon. My RTO - radio telephone operator - stood behind me and to the left, half turned so I could pick up the mike at any instant if my handpack wasn't enough to talk to who I needed to talk to.
From the naked eye, what approached us was an awe inspiring dust column.
It slowed as we watched. The dust diminished.
The lead T-80 came to a shuddering halt, as all tanks do, and I could hear the turret whine from the hundred meters away as it leveled its main gun.
Never liked being muzzled. Not with a pistol, not with a machine gun, and not with that thing.
If it was loaded with flechette, basically a huge shotgun round, it would mince us into pieces too small for brooms. Forensics would need sticky tape or tweezers, and identity would be DNA not dental.
I had thoughtfully set up a patch from my handpack to my vehicle PA.
"!Detener! !Envia a tu oficial!" I barked.
The tank commander took off his helmet. He had to, to take off his hearing protection.
"Territorio de California! Te dispararan si cruzas!" I warned.
I could read the look on his face.
What was I going to shoot at him with? My gringo carajo?
A stunning sonic boom roared over us, surprising him and his driver but not us.
A close support fighter of the California Air National Guard.
Someone was taking note of which of the Mexican APCs had something tracking or radiating. Those would be the first to die.
Second, actually. *I* would be the very first to die.
Not the only fighter. Just the one who had been selected to hot dog and show off precision navigation skills.
Not that it would matter if the pilot overflew Campos Nation. We had a mutual defense treaty after all.
"!Envia a tu oficial!" I ordered. Send up your officer.
Enlisted personnel don't have authority to commit their nations to war.
Contrary to my own orders, I was not wearing a gas mask. But my mortars platoon leader was dug in a couple thousand meters away, and he was certainly wearing his. No one treats nerve gas shells casually.
Intelligence said the T-80s had been exported from Russia with full NBC warfare equipment. Knowing Russia, I simply did not believe the intel. Russia is cheap bastards and most of their export tanks were so-called 'monkey models' (the Russian term!) simplified for cheap sale and wartime production.
The Mexican - not quite yet enemy - tank commander had a dust mask but not a gas mask, and was not wearing a NBC warfare suit. So he would have to button up for nerve gas protection.
We would not use nerve gas offensively. We would sure as hell use nerve gas defensively, per preapproved standing orders. My death would be the signal. Thus I had no need of a mask.
A dusty jeep vehicle broke to the side of the column and came up to the front. Words were exchanged between the man standing in the back of it - in place of the ring mount on my own command vehicle - and the tank commander.
"!Conducir en! Es solo un hombre!" I heard faintly.
"!Oficial de California!" I replied loudly, with the PA, startling the newly arrived leader.
Either he hadn't noticed or hadn't cared about the flyover.
I patched my radio to both the PA and to air-ground. This should be interesting.
"Echo 18, Air Guard, buzz us again," I said.
This time the officer watched as the fixed wing fighter roared across from the other direction, rolling slightly as if to show off its underwing ordinance. Bombs and napalm.
"Mexican officer," I said in English. The air units would just have to suffer overhearing me. "You are on our border with hostile intent. You have invaded a California ally. You are about to invade California. I have no discretion at all if you do."
He got down from his vehicle and strode towards me, stopping ten meters short of the barrier tape. Looked at me, looked at my RTO, looked at the pathetic vehicles behind me, less than a dozen.
"What are you going to do about it?" he scoffed.
"If you cross the border, we will all die," my PA voice announced. "But so will you. And a lot of your troops. And you will be unceasingly harassed until you leave California territory or until my reinforcements destroy you."
I drew my pistol. Why the fuck not?
He'd left his rifle in his vehicle.
I held it at low ready while speaking into the mike again.
"This is madness. This cannot be authorized by your government, or you would have brought artillery and regulars, not militia who probably think they are on an exercise."
Looking around, this was scrub desert as far as the eye could see. Only glimpses of mountains to the northwest and south. No particular reason this scrap of land should be worth dying for, and that one not so much.
The boundaries of the Campos Nation had been set by the American Bureau of Indian Affairs over a century ago. Nothing a California officer needed to respect. Except that we had signed treaties and pledged our nation's honor.
Our instant willingness to die didn't just keep the Mexicans at bay. It kept the Americans from coming back. And the Untied Snakes wouldn't just occupy, loot and burn. They would also intern and sidewalk.
A light aircraft flew over us, along the road rather than crossing it, into Campos Nation, and dropped fluttering papers.
Leaflets. Flyers. Preprinted warnings in three languages, Stay Out Of California, Do Not Start A War. I'd been planning for this kind of situation for weeks, not knowing exactly where or when.
If a Mexican air defense gunner fired on that aircraft, technically reasonable under the self defense provisions of the laws of war, that would be sufficient justification for our air defenders to put in the boot on that column. The column in turn would be justified in wiping us ground pounders out. Then our nerve gas would drop on the militia, who definitely did not have chemical warfare protective gear, and hundreds of grieving families in Tijuana would hate California forever for suffocating their sons and fathers. Then the armor would crush the mortars, our attack helicopters would come up, and it would be Dances With Rockets all across this scrub land.
Once people start killing people, it's very hard to stop. America had proved that in China, and also in San Francisco.
The officer listened to his radio headset. Someone had already retrieved and read one of the many flyers.
I shrugged and pointed my pistol.
"Get back in your vehicle and return to Mexican territory," I ordered. In English to spare some fraction of his massive ego.
He shook his head.
"Get out of the way!"
"Over my dead body. Captain Echo 18, 3rd California Border Regiment, Army of the Republic of California."
If I said "Viva California," my troops would open fire on a force many times their size. It would be brief, pointless and over very soon - but there would be plenty of dead on both sides.
He turned and stalked back to his vehicle. Waved his driver forward.
The driver stopped before the ribbon line, but closer than the officer had walked.
I couldn't hear the conversation between the officer and his driver, but I'd bet it was both entertaining and scatalogical.
I was willing to die for California. The officer was willing to die for Mexico - or he wouldn't be an officer.
His driver, on the other hand, wasn't willing to die for his officer's self image.
And I was dismounted. My driver, likely sobbing to herself but hands steady on the controls, was not a factor in this equation.
I did not yet level my pistol. And the presence of the Mexican jeep in the way protected us somewhat from the tanks.
The driver got out of the jeep. The officer got into the driver's seat.
The jeep lurched forward until it was nearly touching the ribbon.
I was also nearly touching the ribbon, so the jeep's bumper was only a few feet from me.
I wasn't going anywhere.
He could run me down and be killed moments later. That was always an option.
But that still didn't make me move.
The passenger in the jeep put on the emergency brake and started arguing with the officer. The driver held his hands out to the side as if to say, innocent bystander, and walked to the vehicle's new position.
The officer got out.
My eyes met his. Now I leveled the pistol in his face.
"Your name, sir? I like to know the names of the people I kill."
I hadn't turned off the PA and air-to-ground patch.
Now I could see his rank tabs. Major. And way over his head.
"Major, your name please? Any last words for your wife?"
I think if he'd been carrying a pistol, he'd have drawn at that. And I'd have shot him, and his crew shot me, and the T-80 with the flechettes, and the nerve gas, and the aircraft and helicopters and the Dances With Rockets, and fifty California dead soon enough followed by six hundred Mexican dead.
Instead he spat, ordered the driver to get back in. That worthy soul shifted to reverse and did a smooth three point reverse.
The tank commander watched as the jeep drove away towards the back of his column. He did not advance, but nor did he retreat. Just waited, with the pinging of cooling metal the only sounds.
The tanks behind him could not move forward past him on the narrow road.
Then he held his helmet to his ear. Orders.
Waved casually. The tank reversed tracks and spun in place, a smooth move. Showing off.
The column departed. It was a slow process but inevitable once it had started.
My RTO put down her backpack, walked three paces away, dropped her trousers, squatted in the dust and pissed.
If I whipped it out and did the same, no matter how tempted I was, it might be misinterpreted. Rank has obligations as well as privileges.
Then the RTO handed me the mike.
"Rampart, Echo 18, you are ordered and directed to enter Campos Nation territory. Chase them to the Mexican lines. Authorization Sierra Tango Four Seven."
It was an order. It would be obeyed. But there was no particular rush. So I untied the ribbon, looped it - enviromental consciousness meant not leaving trash in the desert - and walked forward.
No need to leave a dust cloud. It was a nice day for a walk.
With luck, the Mexican column would RTB - Return To Base - before I walked from here to the Mexican lines.
If not, I could taunt them again with a pistol.
Hey, it worked once.
"Echo 18, Rampart, priority."
I wasn't in the thick of things. I would much rather be in my command car - that first beat up pickup truck, since much upgraded, that I had nearly been murdered in during my first Border op. Or on an overlooking hilltop, or even in a helicopter even though I hated the pesky eggbeaters.
Instead I was in the ICP, or Incident Commmand Post, that we had set up in a convenient ravine just north of CA-8. It was unlikely that it would rain water, and somewhat likely that it would instead rain steel.
Overhead was fabric, which might shed water but wouldn't help with the steel.
"Rampart, Echo 18, go."
I held the mike loosely, it was important that I speak calmly.
"We have a major incursion south south east of Campos. Presently on tribal territory but approaching the California demarcation line. Break."
Major incursion was a magic word. Sirens were going off from San Diego to El Centro. Pagers were going off all over Southern California. The Governator was being dragged off to one of her bunkers. Alert aircraft were ripping off the tarmac and our armor units were drawing weapons and equipment and moving to staging areas.
Because Mexican armor was already fully equipped and in motion.
"Go."
"Numbers seventeen main battle tanks, T-80 with reactive armor and upgunned. Numbers fourteen APCs, seven BRDM and seven mixed, possibly air defense artillery. Numbers about forty trucks. Estimate 600 troops. Mexican Regular Army elements, identified as Third Armored. Troops are Tijuana Ready Reserve. No air cover or mobile gun artillery observed. Tanks in lead, sawtooth formation, not buttoned up. No logistics support observed. Break."
That last was important. They hadn't brought fuel trucks and we hadn't seen a logistics tail behind them. So unless they planned to do a U-turn and go home soon, they would run out of gas.
Or they would seize Campos Nation and refuel off the gas station. I knew that Campos Nation would blow up their only livelihood before letting the Mexicans take it, but maybe there was something the Mexican commander knew that I didn't. Or his balls were itching and only Campos hookers could scratch them.
Or this was the first move in a major war and the logistics tail would be supporting the invasion of San Diego instead.
They didn't need to bring artillery. We were in rocket assisted shell range of two Mexican artillery bases. I had nothing that could range that far.
"My operational intent is to contact and tripwire at the California line. Break."
"Rampart, Echo 18, confirm your order of battle?"
"Two armored cars, six trucks, two towed mortars."
"Copy and good hunting."
Fucking California. I was morally certain that someone at Rampart - Los Angeles Center to be formal about it - was saying something about an even match, a fair fight and a little dog telling a big dog to get the hell out of its yard.
No, I didn't need to be in the ICP. I needed to be standing in front.
"Take over," I directed my MP platoon leader. Another three weeks and she'd have been safely on maternity leave. Could still happen, or she could be dead with the rest of us within the hour.
I strode out to my command car.
"Campos lines," I directed my driver and marked waypoint on the GPS.
ETA ten minutes. Mexican ETA to the same point, twelve minutes.
###
Our six trucks were reverse herringbone parked, as if they could drive away under modern armor observation. They would burn fiercely before the engines started.
The armored cars were parked in a loose wedge across the road. We wouldn't move them out of the way. The invaders would have to drive around the burned-out hulks on the shoulder, which is exactly where we thoughtfully were laying anti-armor mines.
Scrub desert is a poor location for digging in, but while tanks are off road capable, the trucks wouldn't like pushing through sand and sagebrush much.
At a word, one of our troops broke off and tied a yellow CRIME SCENE DO NOT CROSS ribbon between the weathered Campos-California border posts.
I strode forward to stand just behind the ribbon. My RTO - radio telephone operator - stood behind me and to the left, half turned so I could pick up the mike at any instant if my handpack wasn't enough to talk to who I needed to talk to.
From the naked eye, what approached us was an awe inspiring dust column.
It slowed as we watched. The dust diminished.
The lead T-80 came to a shuddering halt, as all tanks do, and I could hear the turret whine from the hundred meters away as it leveled its main gun.
Never liked being muzzled. Not with a pistol, not with a machine gun, and not with that thing.
If it was loaded with flechette, basically a huge shotgun round, it would mince us into pieces too small for brooms. Forensics would need sticky tape or tweezers, and identity would be DNA not dental.
I had thoughtfully set up a patch from my handpack to my vehicle PA.
"!Detener! !Envia a tu oficial!" I barked.
The tank commander took off his helmet. He had to, to take off his hearing protection.
"Territorio de California! Te dispararan si cruzas!" I warned.
I could read the look on his face.
What was I going to shoot at him with? My gringo carajo?
A stunning sonic boom roared over us, surprising him and his driver but not us.
A close support fighter of the California Air National Guard.
Someone was taking note of which of the Mexican APCs had something tracking or radiating. Those would be the first to die.
Second, actually. *I* would be the very first to die.
Not the only fighter. Just the one who had been selected to hot dog and show off precision navigation skills.
Not that it would matter if the pilot overflew Campos Nation. We had a mutual defense treaty after all.
"!Envia a tu oficial!" I ordered. Send up your officer.
Enlisted personnel don't have authority to commit their nations to war.
Contrary to my own orders, I was not wearing a gas mask. But my mortars platoon leader was dug in a couple thousand meters away, and he was certainly wearing his. No one treats nerve gas shells casually.
Intelligence said the T-80s had been exported from Russia with full NBC warfare equipment. Knowing Russia, I simply did not believe the intel. Russia is cheap bastards and most of their export tanks were so-called 'monkey models' (the Russian term!) simplified for cheap sale and wartime production.
The Mexican - not quite yet enemy - tank commander had a dust mask but not a gas mask, and was not wearing a NBC warfare suit. So he would have to button up for nerve gas protection.
We would not use nerve gas offensively. We would sure as hell use nerve gas defensively, per preapproved standing orders. My death would be the signal. Thus I had no need of a mask.
A dusty jeep vehicle broke to the side of the column and came up to the front. Words were exchanged between the man standing in the back of it - in place of the ring mount on my own command vehicle - and the tank commander.
"!Conducir en! Es solo un hombre!" I heard faintly.
"!Oficial de California!" I replied loudly, with the PA, startling the newly arrived leader.
Either he hadn't noticed or hadn't cared about the flyover.
I patched my radio to both the PA and to air-ground. This should be interesting.
"Echo 18, Air Guard, buzz us again," I said.
This time the officer watched as the fixed wing fighter roared across from the other direction, rolling slightly as if to show off its underwing ordinance. Bombs and napalm.
"Mexican officer," I said in English. The air units would just have to suffer overhearing me. "You are on our border with hostile intent. You have invaded a California ally. You are about to invade California. I have no discretion at all if you do."
He got down from his vehicle and strode towards me, stopping ten meters short of the barrier tape. Looked at me, looked at my RTO, looked at the pathetic vehicles behind me, less than a dozen.
"What are you going to do about it?" he scoffed.
"If you cross the border, we will all die," my PA voice announced. "But so will you. And a lot of your troops. And you will be unceasingly harassed until you leave California territory or until my reinforcements destroy you."
I drew my pistol. Why the fuck not?
He'd left his rifle in his vehicle.
I held it at low ready while speaking into the mike again.
"This is madness. This cannot be authorized by your government, or you would have brought artillery and regulars, not militia who probably think they are on an exercise."
Looking around, this was scrub desert as far as the eye could see. Only glimpses of mountains to the northwest and south. No particular reason this scrap of land should be worth dying for, and that one not so much.
The boundaries of the Campos Nation had been set by the American Bureau of Indian Affairs over a century ago. Nothing a California officer needed to respect. Except that we had signed treaties and pledged our nation's honor.
Our instant willingness to die didn't just keep the Mexicans at bay. It kept the Americans from coming back. And the Untied Snakes wouldn't just occupy, loot and burn. They would also intern and sidewalk.
A light aircraft flew over us, along the road rather than crossing it, into Campos Nation, and dropped fluttering papers.
Leaflets. Flyers. Preprinted warnings in three languages, Stay Out Of California, Do Not Start A War. I'd been planning for this kind of situation for weeks, not knowing exactly where or when.
If a Mexican air defense gunner fired on that aircraft, technically reasonable under the self defense provisions of the laws of war, that would be sufficient justification for our air defenders to put in the boot on that column. The column in turn would be justified in wiping us ground pounders out. Then our nerve gas would drop on the militia, who definitely did not have chemical warfare protective gear, and hundreds of grieving families in Tijuana would hate California forever for suffocating their sons and fathers. Then the armor would crush the mortars, our attack helicopters would come up, and it would be Dances With Rockets all across this scrub land.
Once people start killing people, it's very hard to stop. America had proved that in China, and also in San Francisco.
The officer listened to his radio headset. Someone had already retrieved and read one of the many flyers.
I shrugged and pointed my pistol.
"Get back in your vehicle and return to Mexican territory," I ordered. In English to spare some fraction of his massive ego.
He shook his head.
"Get out of the way!"
"Over my dead body. Captain Echo 18, 3rd California Border Regiment, Army of the Republic of California."
If I said "Viva California," my troops would open fire on a force many times their size. It would be brief, pointless and over very soon - but there would be plenty of dead on both sides.
He turned and stalked back to his vehicle. Waved his driver forward.
The driver stopped before the ribbon line, but closer than the officer had walked.
I couldn't hear the conversation between the officer and his driver, but I'd bet it was both entertaining and scatalogical.
I was willing to die for California. The officer was willing to die for Mexico - or he wouldn't be an officer.
His driver, on the other hand, wasn't willing to die for his officer's self image.
And I was dismounted. My driver, likely sobbing to herself but hands steady on the controls, was not a factor in this equation.
I did not yet level my pistol. And the presence of the Mexican jeep in the way protected us somewhat from the tanks.
The driver got out of the jeep. The officer got into the driver's seat.
The jeep lurched forward until it was nearly touching the ribbon.
I was also nearly touching the ribbon, so the jeep's bumper was only a few feet from me.
I wasn't going anywhere.
He could run me down and be killed moments later. That was always an option.
But that still didn't make me move.
The passenger in the jeep put on the emergency brake and started arguing with the officer. The driver held his hands out to the side as if to say, innocent bystander, and walked to the vehicle's new position.
The officer got out.
My eyes met his. Now I leveled the pistol in his face.
"Your name, sir? I like to know the names of the people I kill."
I hadn't turned off the PA and air-to-ground patch.
Now I could see his rank tabs. Major. And way over his head.
"Major, your name please? Any last words for your wife?"
I think if he'd been carrying a pistol, he'd have drawn at that. And I'd have shot him, and his crew shot me, and the T-80 with the flechettes, and the nerve gas, and the aircraft and helicopters and the Dances With Rockets, and fifty California dead soon enough followed by six hundred Mexican dead.
Instead he spat, ordered the driver to get back in. That worthy soul shifted to reverse and did a smooth three point reverse.
The tank commander watched as the jeep drove away towards the back of his column. He did not advance, but nor did he retreat. Just waited, with the pinging of cooling metal the only sounds.
The tanks behind him could not move forward past him on the narrow road.
Then he held his helmet to his ear. Orders.
Waved casually. The tank reversed tracks and spun in place, a smooth move. Showing off.
The column departed. It was a slow process but inevitable once it had started.
My RTO put down her backpack, walked three paces away, dropped her trousers, squatted in the dust and pissed.
If I whipped it out and did the same, no matter how tempted I was, it might be misinterpreted. Rank has obligations as well as privileges.
Then the RTO handed me the mike.
"Rampart, Echo 18, you are ordered and directed to enter Campos Nation territory. Chase them to the Mexican lines. Authorization Sierra Tango Four Seven."
It was an order. It would be obeyed. But there was no particular rush. So I untied the ribbon, looped it - enviromental consciousness meant not leaving trash in the desert - and walked forward.
No need to leave a dust cloud. It was a nice day for a walk.
With luck, the Mexican column would RTB - Return To Base - before I walked from here to the Mexican lines.
If not, I could taunt them again with a pistol.
Hey, it worked once.
