Riding in the rear echelons, but still far too close to the dying for comfort, Jessica marveled at the real heroes. While the militia’s corporate masters tried hard to keep their armed affiliates’ contributions on the down low, Jessica hastily prepared their first-ever expose.
General Lyon had to get up and walk around. He couldn’t focus on the evil map any longer. “Christ, what a mess. We have to slow down this assault in Colorado Springs. Buy some time.” Just two days ago, his staff debated the best way to trap the rebels. Now they were frantically trying to keep their own army from being cut in half.
The whole “network centric” nature of modern warfare caused as much chaos as it cleared up. While most of his operations staff were too young to remember, General Nat Lyon longed for the days when troop movements could only be tracked with pins on a map. Once upon a time, detailed tracking of a fight stretching across 1,000 square miles would have been impossible. When reports finally reached headquarters, they would have been sanitized to the bare-bones basics. Now he could tally his losses in real time. A depressing improvement.
“Sir, we could deal with these surprises if it wasn’t for all those goddamn air strikes. Rebel aircraft keep screwing everything up and turning a tough situation into a disaster. The US Army hasn’t fought a war where we had to worry about enemy air power in generations. Turns our whole doctrine on its head.”
The Army operations major pinched another dip of chewing tobacco. He hated the nasty stuff, but smoking was forbidden in the TOC. So he stuck with the enlisted man’s method to get his badly needed nicotine fix. Turning to his Air Force counterpart, he whined some more.
“I thought we retained 2/3rds of the Air Force after ‘The Split.’ Where did the rebels get so many damn planes? When the hell will our colleagues in blue spare a few of their precious aircraft for close air support (CAS)?”
The Air Force liaison colonel actually had some respect for the Army major, which was the only thing tempering her anger. “You never saw the satellite images of the Davis — Monthan Air Force Base out in Arizona, did you, Major? The aircraft boneyard? Three months ago, that place was packed with thousands of craft. Everything from FA-18’s to Vietnam-era F-4’s. The photos from last week show just an empty desert.”
The Army officer had no idea what she was talking about. She cut him off before he could say a word. “Now I understand your frustration, but we’re doing everything we can. We are still squeezing in quite a few close air support sorties.” The colonel ground her teeth.
“And paying one hell of a price for them. Every plane dropping bombs is one less fighting to establish air superiority. Since we’re trying to cover two separate missions at once, we aren’t able to give maximum support to either. Think about it. We have squadrons going on air-to-air combat patrols at half-strength, because you need front line CAS. Those same mud-pounders are hitting the enemy’s lines without any preparatory Suppression of Enemy Air Defense (SEAD) missions. All of this translates into unnecessary losses.”
The Army major spit into his bottle. “Cry me a fucking river. Things don’t go to plan and you take a few more casualties. So what? War is hell. You still need to get the job done. Go tell your troubles to my troops on the ground. Especially when they’re charging through massed artillery and tank fire that you people are supposed to be suppressing! Or getting hammered by URA aircraft. You lose a few dozen pilots and you want to scale down all strikes? We’re losing thousands of troops on the ground every day! Those casualties will only get worse if you all can’t get your act together!”
“Jesus Christ, Major! Can you even comprehend what our losses mean? The Air Force is much smaller than the Army.” She was too shocked at his ignorance to be offended.
“Losing 50 pilots a day might seem like chump change to you, but they take years to train up to basic proficiency. These aren’t simple infantrymen you can replace with a free bottle of Jack and three months of training! You have hundreds of thousands of soldiers to spare, because you can spare them. It’s a different world for us. Every $50 million plane and ultra-specialized crewmember we lose is irreplaceable. Even with infinite money to build new craft and recruit fresh crews, the war will be over long before we can fully train the pilots. Our losses are unsustainable. At the rate we’re being chewed up, there won’t be an Air Force in just a few more weeks!”
Both senior officers jumped out of their chairs to scream at each other face to face. The unprofessional argument might have turned violent, if their general hadn’t personally intervened.
“Check fire you two! This is kindergarten bullshit! We’ve all made sacrifices. Major, this is a new kind of war. This isn’t Afghanistan, where we could always count on fast movers to vaporize any large enemy mass. Adapt and overcome. Colonel, while I’m sorry about what it will cost, we need everything you can get airborne within the next hour. The rebels are hitting back harder than we ever imagined. If we don’t win over these next few days, what happens next week really doesn’t matter.”
General Lyon had the undivided attention of the whole headquarters by now. “Ladies and gentlemen, it’s time for us to earn our pay. Make no mistake; the enemy is putting everything they have into their counterattack, but that makes this an opportunity. No more chasing them, no more trying to dig them out of Denver. They’re coming to us and we still outnumber them. We have a lot of moving parts in play here, so I need everyone to stay focused. You give me a hundred percent, and I’ll give you the end of the rebel army by nightfall!”
Hundreds of voices screamed “Hooah!” in unison. A congressman in the back flashed two thumbs up, but then put both to use furiously tapping on his phone. Trying to get the general’s quote out on the internet before anyone else.
Even the Air Force officer was caught up in the excitement. “All right, sir. I’m getting on the radio now. If the rebs thought the strategic bombing was bad, they haven’t seen nothing yet!”
KADUSH!
A colossal blast vaporized that same colonel with the secure phone halfway to her face. Not that anyone noticed. Everyone else within 100 yards was ripped apart just as quickly. 150 miles away, the rebel MLRS rocket launchers had long since moved on to new targets. Not a clue what they fired on 10 minutes earlier. Just the first checkmark on a long to-do list.
They didn’t know that a Patriot unit near their target swatted the first four ATACMS ballistic missiles right out of the sky. The air defense crew didn’t bother with high fives though. They were too busy trying to reload their giant anti-air missile launchers. Four more radar tracks were still inbound. In one of those silly little snafus that decide the fate of armies, even though they screamed warnings up and down the air defense net, the sprawling headquarters complex only a few miles away was never informed about the threat.
The first two impacts on the federal joint command center were simple 500 lb. HE bombs. The real fancy followed 60 seconds later as the survivors crawled around the wreckage of their tents and burning vehicles, trying to help the wounded. As if the slice of hell these rear echelon staffers and senior officers witnessed wasn’t enough, the next round of missiles blasted apart above their heads. Each released 275 tiny M74 sub munitions. The devil’s popcorn. There weren’t many survivors in the sprawling headquarters compound after that, regardless of rank or elected office.