The news hit the Internet before we were even starting to move out. Actually, while negotiations were still going on with the networks. From the way it was sounding, it was coming from our side. Hit the conservative blogs first. I figured it was someone in the battalion. I didn't care. It was creating "buzz."
But what the operation was was still secret. When we moved out, we moved out at night and spread out our units so we could be going anywhere.
Three days later, all the units were assembling in a state park near Lansing.
Chapter Five
I Am Your Centurion
"Rubble" was our first episode.
We moved out from our assembly areas at dawn. It had been determined that for reasons of "reduction of collateral damage" we should do most of our fighting during the day. Also, because that way we were able to "craft the image."
There were reporters on scene by the time we hit the edge of Detroit. They'd been told we were coming and punched out crews immediately. The command track I was using had, besides all the usual shit, four TVs in it tuned to every major network. We had the "regular" networks split and one for Fox and one for CNN. Graham had done one bit for us then faded out. He was actually on the "other side" of this war.
There were actually reporters "embedded" with the Caliphate forces to show the "truth" of this "unconscionable use of force" against "peaceful Muslims" who were being "oppressed" for "voluntarily choosing" an "alternative lifestyle" to the "Fundamentalist Christian orthodoxy." Graham wasn't with those idiots, but he was still on the other side of the propaganda war.
I didn't spot the shot. But one of our "savvy eyes" did. CNN had broadcast a touching piece while we were still on the outskirts of Detroit about the "horrific collateral damage" of our "military assault." As far as I knew, nobody had fired a shot, yet, and there was a female CNN reporter standing in front of a pile of rubble we had presumably made.
And right behind it came the "alternative view" from an Army videography team. The guys on the team had the right idea. They stayed on the reporter though most of her bit then zoomed in, so you could still see the reporter's shoulder out of focus, on some rebar sticking out of this rubble we had, presumably, made that day. It was rusted.
"Get me all the information we can about that building," I snapped. "I need to know when it fell down and why."
Sure enough, it was a lead-in shot for most of the evening news shows. And they were all over us like stink. We were barely fighting and they already wanted us to surrender.
Hell, no. I haven't yet begun to fight. Either war.
"Rubble" talked about how "Caliph Ali" had been tearing down buildings to build a mosque. The "Martyrs of the Great Jihad of September 11th Mosque." We had overhead of "people" still working on it (more on that later) even as we did our approach. Also dated satellite imagery showing that particular building standing, then being pulled down. Nearly a year before.
We discussed the basis of Islam and, notably, the way that the Koran talked about slaves. Because we already knew where we were going with the overall story.
We took the outskirts of the area "Caliph Ali" held with fairly light fighting and about no casualties. We put out sniper teams to counter their sniper teams. And we bunked down for the night.
Normally, the U.S. Army fights at night. We've learned to own it. But we wanted the news media to get good video. So we could hammer them with it.
Two-front war. The main front was taking down Ali. The second front was showing the media we could fight that war, too. I'm not even sure they shouldn't be reversed.
Second day was "Collateral."
The main shot for that was a shot of one of the Mongrels' Abrams taking out a building. And the line of dead bodies, females and kids, that were outside the building. Clearly dead because of those evil U.S. Forces since nobody else was shooting, right?
Another shot from CNN, broadcast all over the place as we expected. It was the most newsworthy shot of the day and we were pretty good at figuring out which would be the lead-in story for the news at that point.
We showed the heavy weapons emplacement in the building. And had Predator video of the women and children being shot, by Caliphate forces, as they tried to get out of the way of the battle.
The Caliphate was using human shields all over the place. We showed just how very hard it was to avoid collateral damage. We had video of soldiers taking fire and casualties and not returning it until they could target the actual fighters. Also of kids being used as spotters.
Body slammed them again.
The third was "Tangled."
The shot for that day was an Abrams with a plow ripping down a building. Urban renewal indeed.
The Caliphate had laced their penultimate defenses with IEDs. Most of them anti-personnel.
We had one, unfortunate, shot of a civilian trying to escape who ran into one and got blown to rags. Sniper overwatch and we were gathering everything in realtime.
We had graphics of how they were laid out and how we took them out, mostly by going through buildings.
Of course, we were also showing the Caliphate how we were coming, but I didn't really care.
We were picking up lots of video of some horrific stuff that we weren't showing. That was for the last segment.
The last day we did start out before dawn. I took the Bandits, the Scouts and the Mongrels on a sweep to the east.
While the main force of the battalion, and most of the media, were concentrating on the main fighting, we swept around in our standard flanking maneuver. There were defenders in that area but they weren't numerous. Also IEDs but we had those licked.
We breached their final defenses and shoved, hard, for the central command post.
Why?
Hostages.
The "Caliph" had gathered many of the "dhimi" (cover that in a bit) as well as all of his slaves around him. Well, most of them were packed into the roads that the battalion was slowly and with much noise and commotion grinding forward on.
They were forced to stay in place with chains on their legs as well as guards behind them with machine guns.
We swept in behind them. And we got the guys with machine guns, mostly, before they could open fire. At which point I told the battalion to speed the fuck up and watch out for civilians. And handle casualties.
The "Caliph" had taken refuge in a former library that was, for the time being, the most palacious building he could find. It was, he considered, heavily defended. And he, again, had hostages.
I had the Mongrels take out the forward defenses and then the Bandits unloaded and started raising all kinds of hell.
Our intel was that his "throne room" was in an upper lobby. I had Third Herd assault the front while the rest of us went around the side and up the fire stairs.
The "Caliph" was on his "throne" (a canopy bed) surrounded by his harem, not one of which was over sixteen. He had his "martyr guards" oriented to take Third under fire.
When we came out of the stacks, everybody was looking towards the main stairs.
Second Platoon lit them up. They want their 72 virgins, we'll make that easy for them.
Which left the caliph surrounded by terrified teenage girls and holding a naked ten-year-old up as a human shield.
I was a commander. I didn't shoot people if I could avoid it. That's what snipers are for.