Power Games: Operation Enduring Unity I (23 page)

The Feds scored surprising success with their hasty counterattack. The rear detachment troops struck back over a wide front and spread their numbers too thin…which worked in their favor. The militia, who moments ago were trying to flank one abrupt hard spot, found themselves suddenly under attack across their entire “front.” When a squad of soldiers showed up where least expected, that force became a company by the time the report got back to the overworked and under-informed rebel command posts.

The now bloodied militia regiments, assuming they were about to be overrun, gave a good account of themselves. They retreated, of course, and fast, but fighting the whole way. The nervous support soldiers, some of them firing their personal weapons for the first time since basic training, gained confidence with every retaken block. No matter how many lives it cost.

Only at a strip mall on Highway 90 did the federal counterattack run out of steam. After being forced back half a mile, one Florida National Guard sergeant commanding a militia company refused to budge another step. His regiment’s commanding officer sent him the special weapons company and all the fresh men he could dig up. The NCO carefully deployed the MG’s in mutually supporting positions and fortified the buildings as best as possible. He even pushed out a few small hunter killer teams of his best fighters, armed with half their precious antitank weapons, to keep those damn howitzers at a distance.

When the Feds stumbled into the kill zone, they immediately pulled back. Their commanding officer couldn’t allow that. He took a knee behind a school bus engine block and shouted over the machine guns smashing the windows.

“Bring up the tracks! If we let up on the pressure and lose the initiative, we’ll never get it back again!” His miraculous counterattack was so damn precarious. Only momentum kept it going. The rebels were just too numerous.

His makeshift armor unit clanked past moments later. Only a few hundred yards down the road, an AT-4 rocket lanced out from behind a Taco Bell and struck one of the federal mobile howitzers. The resulting mushroom cloud as the twenty onboard artillery shells detonated flipped two more guns on their sides. The blast obliterated every soldier in three hundred yards.

The federal commander gritted his teeth. He slid around the front of the bus and fired past the carnage. He wedged the radio mike between his cheek and rifle stock so he could yell hands free.

“Don’t stop! Push through it. We’re almost on them. Go, go, go!”

The rest of the guns didn’t get much closer. Just before they had a clear line of sight and could level the shopping mall, the rebels showed off yet another surprise. From somewhere much farther down the street a blossoming salvo of Hellfire missiles raced in. Eight more mobile cannons and light APC’s turned into flaming pyres.

What shocked the federal commander the most wasn’t that the damn Floridians had figured out how to mount advanced air-to-ground missiles onto pickup trucks. Clever, whatever, but how did they have so many that they could spare them for the flippin’ auxiliaries?

He had no way to know those missiles were all the enemy could deploy in the area. Nor that his rebel counterpart was chewing his lip and hoping he hadn’t just shot his wad for nothing. Those tank busters were the last trick up the rebel militia’s sleeve. There just weren’t enough to kill all the federal armored vehicles. If he made a mistake in the timing and misjudged the battle flow, then he had merely prolonged the inevitable defeat.

Apparently, his timing was just right.

The commander of the ad-hoc Fed force reloaded. He couldn’t risk anymore of his precious guns. He sighed into his radio.

“All right. All mobile elements: fall back and rally on my position.”

A lieutenant, firing from the ground under the bus, raised his head. “Sir, they’re artillery. Why don’t we just move them out of the combat zone and pound the enemy from afar, as designed?”

The Fed commander whistled over every officer nearby. “They’re more than just big guns. This scratch force would fall apart if the troops saw their only real support flee the battle. No, we’ll have to do this the messy way. On foot. Come help me round up more fresh meat for the grinder.”

To his surprise, his troops didn’t mutiny at the idea of charging through machine gun fire across open parking lots. He hadn’t commanded these people long enough really to know their measure.

It seemed like the fighters on both sides instinctively knew that it was make or break time. The fighting was vicious, confused and, sometimes, even hand to hand. Vehicles and high-tech modern weapons aside, the best way to describe it was…medieval.

*

At one end of the mall, a petite military policewoman crossed the last few feet of the exposed parking lot in a headfirst dive, rebel rounds flying inches above her back. She rolled to cover in the crook between the wall around a dumpster and the side of a Domino’s pizza shop. Without missing a beat, she cooked off her two grenades in rapid succession. She lobbed one on the roof and the other through the shattered side windows and into the kitchen, then turned to the man behind her and screamed for more frags.

The man behind her lay face down in the parking lot, a good 20 feet away. In fact, every other member of her squad laid still or rolled in pain out there. Despite all the covering fire, she was the only survivor of that mad 50-yard dash. Which also meant she was the only one in a position to take the strongpoint.

The lock on the back door of the shop had somehow already been shot off. She inched closer. Men on the roof blazed away at far off targets, despite the grenade, but firing more or less blindly. Without sticking up their heads. At least the covering fire had some little effect. Inside, however, everything was deathly still.

She wasn’t fool enough to think her grenade had killed everyone, or even anyone. They were waiting for her pretty little head to pop in there. Well, she wasn’t the type of girl to keep a guy waiting. She reached into her web pouches and yanked out the only grenade left: a green smoke for marking purposes. Without wasting another second thinking about how stupid this was, she just popped the smoke and rolled it through the door.

The men barricaded inside half expected another grenade, but not this. The sickening phosphorous stink from the deep green cloud disrupted them more than HE would have. They fired blindly at the entrance. Through the ruckus, they didn’t hear the MP dash around the side of the building, strut right through the front door, take a knee and raise her weapon.

The SAW is not a preferred close combat weapon. Something lighter with more stopping power, say, a shotgun or revolver would have been a better choice. However, you work with what you have. Besides, an automatic weapon firing in long bursts into a 40 square foot space still got the job done, but what a messy job.

Feeling around the six bodies, she found all the frags she needed. One by one, she chucked them up the access ladder and among the oblivious guys above. She planned to sit back and use them all up. Kill in style. After the third explosion though, the whole north end of the roof, already stressed with nearly a ton of sandbags and way too many men, collapsed and brought the enemy to her. Picking off the shocked and wounded men trying to climb out of the rubble might have been as fair as shooting fish in a barrel, but she loved to fish.

She kept firing short bursts until the belt ran out, long after the last enemy stopped twitching. While loading her remaining 200 round box, the rest of her platoon came rolling in. She’d been so focused on staying alive she forgot all about the point of the operation. Taking this strongpoint on the wing of the enemy’s position created a gap in those deadly interlocking fields of fire that the rest of the unit could funnel through.

One of her platoon mates snapped a quick photo of her at that moment of exhaustion. She stood in the rubble, surrounded by more than a dozen bodies, and innocently redid her ponytail. It wasn’t the Medal of Honor she would later receive that made her famous, but that “Fucking PMS” photo. By nightfall, she’d be an internet sensation.

*

The chaplain said a prayer for the young rebel under him, even while still untangling his bowie knife out of the man’s lower intestines. He finally got it loose, wiped the blade on his victim’s shirt and slipped it back into his vest sheath. He gave the terrified boy a mercy double tap to the head and then another pair for his fallen compatriot next to him.

That probably wasn’t even necessary, but he was a thorough man. The preacher had shot him twice point blank in the chest before the now gutted kid jumped over the cash register and surprised him. Few of these rebels wore any sort of body armor. He even thanked the Prince of Peace for sparing his life by giving him the strength to kill these people. After tactically reloading his M16, he repositioned the rest of his grim flock and waited for the next rebel counterattack.

Things were usually pretty bad if the chaplain was the only officer left in a unit. On the other hand, he was one of the few officers anywhere that still held the respect of the desperate support personnel following him. Whether a result of luck or a side effect of being crazier than your enemy, either way, he had an aura of invincibility. He had protection from On High, and everyone wanted a share in it.

In the shaky condition his people were in, that was all it took to command. What made him a real leader though, one that might just inspire his people to overcome all odds, was that he didn’t ask his people to do anything he wasn’t already doing.

5 March: 2230

The luckless 1-6 Infantry always seemed to miss the fighting. By the time they were ordered to abandon their blocking position on the wrong side of Lake City, the battle had already moved downtown. That didn’t faze the pissed of troops though. It was payback time.

Despite losing a third of their manpower, they were still the largest federal combat force in 20 miles. As they entered the north side of town, they were surprised to see the Georgia Guard battalion still active and moving around. The Georgians apparently weren’t overrun at all. What was all the fuss about?

While the new battalion commander tried to wrap his mind around that, four F-15E’s roared in and hammered them from the air. This time a large Abrams tank drew the attention from a volley of Maverick missiles. The first pass from the fast movers annihilated five of his tanks. The next pass cost two more and a Brad.

As if they didn’t have enough problems, the Georgia Guard laid into them with TOW missiles and 25mm auto fire. Apparently, the battalion bumped into yet another ambush. All they could do was begin breaking contact. Orderly, but quickly. At least they finally had something they could shoot back at, even if retreating.

Thankfully, there wasn’t a third pass from the Screaming Eagles. Someone up at Division HQ heard the battalion’s desperate calls for air cover at the same time and place the forward air controller rattled off kill tallies. It was disturbing how long it took to put two and two together, but eventually some genius up there decided to halt all close air support missions until targets could be positively identified.

The frustrated pilots, still with plenty of munitions aboard, gawked at all those targets moving around below. Maybe they had just whacked a friendly unit, but most of those vehicles down there couldn’t be friendly’s. After 20 minutes of circling, they watched helplessly as a company of IFV’s slaughtered an artillery battalion in town.

By the time the ground based command center finally sent them targets again, it was too late to make a difference. The same scenario was being played out across the sunny skies of Florida. All those war birds could hurt and harass the enemy, but by the time they were finally turned loose the chance to decisively influence the battle was past. That was the exact quote the history books would use to explain the limited role air power played in the entire Florida campaign.