General Ayad was shouting orders over the radio until he was hoarse, ordering his battalions to get off the open ground of the Tuba Fields and fall back on As Zubayr and the Shaibah air field to the northwest. The men straggled back across the Shaibah airfield, occupying a factory and refinery area near the town of Tuba al Hamra. The rest of the Andan division, remnants of the 12th MR Brigade, joined the defense of Zubayr.
Only in the West Qurna Field did he try to stand fast, committing the 10th Armored Brigade there as US forces were impeded by that canal. As more US troops crossed the two bridges that had been laid down, the weight of that attack began to build, and the Abrams tanks began tearing up the platoons of Iraqi tanks from 10th Armored, bringing their counterattack to a halt. The 10th Brigade was not going to stop the powerful American armored forces, but it was trading blood and steel for time.
As the scattered Iraqi companies fell back, the General noted that Basrah itself had very little in the way of regular army defenders at that hour. The Mahdi Militias had all risen from the Mosques, their eyes glowing with the newly fanned flames of jihad. They were irregular forces, none heavily armed, but the urban maze of the city would make them a great nuisance if the enemy came there. The Iranians had moved the last three companies of the once vaunted 92nd Armored, all to guard the three main bridges over the Shatt al Arab. This was the best position forward of the Iranian border, so it was better to fight there than anywhere else.
General Ayad knew that none of those forces would be enough if his troops near As Zubayr were destroyed and the enemy came here in force, but he was playing for time, hoping they could hold the Coalition forces off long enough for more help to arrive.
That night, the Chinese General Staff finally obtained permission from the General Secretariat and Party elite in Beijing, and orders were sent to the 13th Army to cross into Iraq and secure the interests of the People’s Republic of China. That sent two long columns moving in the darkness, one from Amara on the road to Al Qurna, with the 37th MR Division and 17th Armored Brigade, and the other on the road to Abadan further east.
A little after midnight, a flight of four Strike Eagles that had been up flying support missions for the Marines was given the order to strike that column as a warning shot. But when a plane was shot down by an unseen J-20 fighter, the Eagles had to retire. The Chinese weren’t stopping, and the ground war in the south would soon evolve into a new monster that neither side really wanted or anticipated when all these plans were drawn up months ago around the map tables.
Instead of a well-justified reprisal for the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait and Saudi Arabia, the US had morphed its operations into a grab for those oil fields. The West had already cleared the Suez Canal, opened the Red Sea, and liberated both Kuwait and the Saudi Kingdom. Now it wanted more, and for that, it was looking at a great power war on the ground in the Middle East. Chinese J-20’s had risen from fields in Iran, and the heretofore uncontested airspace would soon become heavily embattled again by dawn on the 23rd of January. The dominoes had fallen, one oil field after another, but now China was making its great gambit to salvage its overall political position in the Middle East and “get some” where all that oil was concerned.
Far to the north near the Iraqi capital, the hard nut of Fallujah fell that night as a full brigade of the 101st Airborne Division swept through the town like a hard wind. That city had anchored the Iraqi defense on the Euphrates River west of Baghdad, and behind it there was open desert, with the next hard point being Abu Ghraib and its nefarious prison site another 25 kilometers to the east.
From Fallujah the US line extended northeast with 3rd Infantry holding the ground between Fallujah and Al Karmah, and then 1st Armored on the line Al Karmah to Al Taji. All the ground between that city and the great Tharthar Lake was now US controlled, and the two reserve Stryker Brigades had swept north to take over Balad AFB and screen off Iraqi forces mustered in Samarra.
As for the two BCTs of 1st Armored Cav, they were relieved at Balad and given a new mission, just as Sergeant King and Corporal Neal had surmised. A big operation would be staged across the Tigris River, with the aim of cutting off Baghdad from the north, and encircling the city. So that night, the Light Troops of 1/7th Cav moved south from Balad through big fields of thick stalked sunflowers. Their mission was to identify possible crossing sites for the engineers, and on the map, the town of Tarmiyah that Neal had fingered earlier offered a makeshift ferry site across a narrower segment of the river that was only 550 feet wide. On the far side of the river, there was a small road that led east through a heavily cultivated area, dense with orchards and olive and date groves.
“We got us a river crossing operation,” said Sergeant King, smiling broadly.
“But there’s no bridge here,” Corporal Neal complained.
“That may be so, Neal, but there are boats, and we’re gonna e-ffect a rapid cross river assault here, just like we trained. So we’ll line up the Humvees and leave the gunners, then the rest of us round up those boats and get on over.”
“Oh great,” said Neal. “Now we get to walk to Baghdad. What about our VIP? The CIA guy gets to walk too? It’s a perfect way to meet all the locals and see the countryside.” He smiled, feigning excitement.
“Don’t get loopy on me, Neal. We ain’t walking anywhere. Our mission is to cross this here river and then strongpoint on the other side. The brigade engineers are coming up here to lay down a pontoon bridge, and then you can walk back with Sanchez and lead the vehicles on over.”
That was the plan, simple enough it seemed, and the darkness of the night was offering good cover. They got all the vehicles lined up, their guns pointed across the river and the troops scanning the far bank with night optics. All seemed empty and quiet there.
“What about me?” asked the Weasel.
The Sergeant frowned. “Was you at Fort Chaffee, Arkansas for Operation River Assault 2024, Mister reporter? If you were, I didn’t read nuthin’ about it in the papers. So you ain’t qualified. Stay here with Duran and pass ammunition if he needs it. You can come on over when Neal comes back for the vehicle.”
Todd frowned, folded his arms in resignation, and settled in for the wait. He wouldn’t get any good photos in this darkness anyway, and of course the Sergeant wasn’t going to let him use a flash while his men were supposed to be making a surprise river crossing. So he watched as the men all moved down to the west bank, commandeering any boat they found there, about eight or ten as he counted them, There were two short wooden piers extending about 60 feet out into the river, and they used them to board the boats.
Sergeant King quieted everyone down, and from then on they were all business, making the swift crossing with paddles and without a single shot being fired by anyone. They reached the far bank, leaping out of the boats and then running ashore to secure the road where it met the river there. Peering through some night optics, Todd could see the men fan out to either side of the road, and then they slowly disappeared into the thick groves. The three light troops then took up defensive positions about 350 meters further on, where the dirt road ran into a paved road that ran north to south.