Fifteen miles farther east, an assortment of 16 prop-driven Cessna’s cruised at tree top height. They resignedly acknowledged the targeting information and began climbing as fast as mechanically possible. Each had been hastily modified to carry and fire, with somewhat reasonable accuracy, four Hellfire antitank missiles.
These top of the line and hideously expensive missiles, as well as their targeting accessories, were in plentiful supply thanks to the politicians. When the governor requisitioned the large stock of advanced ordinance at the sprawling Lockheed Martin complex in Ocala, Florida business leaders screamed murder. They were happy to contribute to Dimone’s campaign, but that sense of civic mindedness disappeared when real sacrifice was required.
Appropriate aircraft were also ubiquitous in a state full of retirees with plenty of time and hobby money. The only things in short supply were pilots willing to fly them. Donating your insured plane to “The Cause” was one thing. Risking your precious, irreplaceable ass something else entirely.
All things considered, these sixteen reasonably competent and mostly sober pilots were an impressive turn out for such a Hail Mary endeavor. Unknown to them, their “suicide mission” became a lot safer even as they popped into radar detectable height and braced for enemy jets to pounce them.
A hundred miles north, the Feds’ E-3 AWACS, watching for just such low altitude threats, shut off its powerful radar and dived for the deck. A pair of long range, PAC-2 surface-to-air missiles closed fast on its tail. The giant radar plane had been circling a few miles inside the Georgia border and over watching all of North Florida. No one on the planning staff ever expected some clever National Guard Patriot missile unit would be deployed so far forward.
The Patriot battery crew on the ground, cut off by the speed of the federal advance and temporarily forgotten by their command, didn’t wait to see if the plane and its 22-person crew survived. They packed up immediately, but it was too late. Both the plane and missile crew were already dead despite their desperate attempts to escape. An orbiting fighter spotted the outgoing smoke trail and let rip a HARM missile at the source. The pilot howled when he received permission to follow up his strike with a regular bombing run on the first call. Without the big “eye in the sky” giving him directions, he never saw the real threat below him.
The Cessna armada leveled off roughly parallel with the interstate. Impressively, the amateurs kept a tight formation. The crudely fashioned targeting displays in their cockpits didn’t allow for much manual selection. All they could do was point the mini radar in the approximate direction of the mass of targets four miles west and 5,000 feet below. They rippled off their payloads with the help of some last minute adjustments from the ground spotter network. Praying that the $100,000 fire and forget missiles had at least some targets within their narrow engagement envelope.
None of the vehicles barreling down the highway noticed the barrage. The barrage of smoke trails blazed only a kilometer away before the first soldiers noticed. A few quick thinkers popped their automatic smoke grenade launchers, hoping to blind the weapons’ sensors. That saved a few lives, but there wasn’t time to do much about the supersonic missiles homing in on them. Most of the crews never knew what hit them.
None of the giant, 72-ton main battle tanks leading the formation were hit. They all had “low profile” heat kits installed, making their thermal signature drastically smaller. To the mindless heat seeking warheads, they represented a much less inviting target than, say, the Bradley fighting vehicles packed with helpless infantrymen behind them.
A couple of missiles misfired and failed even to launch from the makeshift racks. Nearly half that launched failed to find a target and, of those that did find some prey, several rocked the same vehicle. Nevertheless, the strike utterly destroyed 16 random Bradley’s in seconds. One hundred and forty men were killed or seriously injured without ever knowing what hit them. With far more luck than the rebels had hoped for, both the battalion commander’s vehicle and the executive officer’s track were shredded as well.
Most of the task force halted and dispersed as much as possible along the road while trying to extract the wounded from the burning, twisted death traps. A 26-year-old company commander now found himself in complete command of the battalion with far from complete information. He pushed his scout platoon ahead, backed up by the tank company, while he tried to reorganize the shattered core of his unit.
The advance party encountered the first roadblock only a couple miles short of the objective. Local police and armed civilian volunteers laid down an impressive volume of small arms fire on the lightly armored scout Humvees, but quickly lost their nerve with the first blast from a tank. They scattered so fast the soldiers believed it had to be some type of trick, part of some larger ambush strategy.
The tanks were unwilling to leave the open road without infantry support and were convinced the road ahead was mined or otherwise somehow a death sentence. There was just way too much strangeness happening today. They took up a defensive posture against the unknown and radioed higher for guidance.
The young captain turned battalion commander received the report just after having his second request for air support denied, or delayed as some staff officer said. Apparently, the poor Air Force was spread a little too thin and stressed out. Helicopter support was likewise out of the question until air superiority could be reestablished. Far too many whirly birds had already been blasted out of the sky by the surprising resurgence of Florida aircraft.
The boss weighed his options. Either take the objective by driving forward into a likely dug-in enemy of unknown strength or follow the book by breaking contact, rallying in a safe area and coming back with overwhelming strength. He made up his mind when someone shouted “incoming.” A pair of stretcher-bearers nearby, and their wounded cargo, disappeared in a cloud of flame and smoke. The whole task force broke contact by companies while the mortar platoon thumped out a smoke screen to make life harder for the enemy artillery spotters.
Less than 10 miles away at the targeted road junction a river of rebel reinforcements poured into Lake City unmolested from the east. Two armed civilian “regiments” and a few light National Guard/Reservist companies suddenly entered the equation just when the Feds thought they had it solved.
To be fair, thousands of refugees headed in both directions along the highway, but those semi-organized militia regiments were clearly visible. Miles above them a pair of FA-18’s, loaded down with precision laser and satellite guided munitions, circled and reported all they could see. What was so clear to them was not so self-evident to the senior officers many miles away. To give the order to engage and risk killing innocent civilians, American civilians, was a responsibility none were willing to shoulder.
The US military had always been sensitive to civilian casualties, but previously were willing to accept the losses if they took reasonable efforts to mitigate the risk. This would be the first time they would let humanism cripple combat operations. The sad thing was, even this hesitancy, this acceptance of higher military losses in exchange for protecting noncombatants, wouldn’t save civilians from having the brutality of war dumped on them.
East side of Lake City
Embedded in a front line unit, Jessica couldn’t summon the same excitement as her editor a thousand miles away. The first armed confrontation between two state National Guard forces since the Civil War might make for a wild show, but the real story was here in the headquarters. Unfortunately, her interviewee didn’t agree. Congressman Alfred Eliot was too fired up about seeing “the rebels brought to justice” to just sit around the command post and palaver.