Fine, fine, but we need to find somebody who has a clue about generators . . .
Hello. Commo. We had one radio tech. He was not a satellite radio tech. We had this big fucking communications van and no clue how to run most of the shit.
Fortunately, one of the privates in the company had spent time before enlisting working in a satellite shop in a cable company. He wasn't a satellite engineer, by any stretch, but when we lost commo with home for three days he finally figured out how to get us back up. (Without SkyGeek, in fact, this book would never have come about.)
The water for the base was a pipeline from the Shat that ran to a water processing plant. The plant was called a ROWPU. I had to look that one up. Reverse Osmosis Water Purification Unit.
About week three some bastard cut our water line. We had water for about three weeks at current use (big fucking tanks) but after that we were going to be dying in the desert.
Turned out the original base had been supplied by a deep bore well. There was water down there. We weren't all that far from the Gulf and the Shat. Water percolates. There were even limestone layers that carried subsurface water from the Zagros. That was actually what the well was tied into. Crisp, clean water. Don't know why they ever put in that fucking line. It was a tactical weak point.
Only one problem. The well had been rather radically disconnected from the water system. It wasn't even left as backup. Don't know why.
So we had to figure out how to reconnect it. We were not plumbers and so proved figuring that out. And then figure out how to get the very deep water up to the surface.
"Head pressure" does not always have to do with something obscene. I'm a farmer. I understand head pressure. Farmers use wells a lot. However, this one was a holy mother of a bitch of a big, deep well. We got it done.
React, adapt, overcome. We did one hell of a lot of that.
We got the mines laid in. We even found a stack of signs that warned of mines in multiple languages. We shot some guys in a pickup truck who were trying to sneak in the back way. We filled in all but the main gate entrances to the base.
It took two months of work, mostly by the Nepos. But we got the base surrounded by multiple lines of fencing, mines and such whot. We even found a complete "video surveillance" system that had never been installed. We installed it. The reserve platoon monitored.
We fed and watered refugees. There had gotten to be a fuck-load of them. And they'd apparently established some sort of governance body. At least there were guys with guns (scavenged from attackers) who strutted around with angry expressions on their face.
Feeding and watering of the refugees had gotten to be a massive chore. Again, handled mostly by the Nepos. We now had to send out two mortar carriers to carry all the rations. Each of them towed a water buffalo. (A large water tank that had spigots on it.) The refugees would get handed a meal. (We'd found the yellow stuff by then. Some people waved the old MRE wrappers after the first couple of "refugee" meals. Apparently they hadn't realized that was a pork patty and wanted more.) They had to figure out how to get their own water. Doing it that way increased the time but just handing out that many meals increased the time.
Sometimes the guys with guns took a meal away from somebody right in front of our eyes. That really stuck in people's craws. But we weren't going to get off the tracks to give the meal back.
A couple of weeks after that sort of thing started to happen, one of the guys with guns took away a meal from a woman and then started beating on her.
Each of the tracks was manned by a track commander at the .50, two Nepos to hand out meals and three guys with rifles for security.
One of the guys with a rifle shot him.
There was a lot of shouting. More guys with guns came out. The woman ran to the track. The TC jacked a round into the .50 and fired a burst over the camp. The Stryker that was sitting back on overwatch gunned its engine and rolled forward a couple of feet.
Things settled down. The lady was allowed to scramble on the track. Others came over. They were shooed away. Meals were passed out until they were gone. The tracks came back to base with an extra body.
That was the first refugee we let in. It wouldn't be the last and, yeah, that had issues, too.
Specialist Stephan Noton's ass was in a very deep crack and he knew it. The track commander wasn't real happy, either. He had just brought a refugee into the camp.
What was worse was, well . . .
Salah wasn't gorgeous. But after this long in the desert and no fucking women around at all . . . She was seventeen according to the translator and as far as she knew all her family was dead. She had lived in Abadan all her life and was a very good Moslem as far as that sort of thing went. She was a nice girl. We didn't question her about specific events. I didn't want to know if she'd been raped or how many times. Yes and many was probably the answer. I also didn't want to know how she'd been surviving in the camp. But apparently whatever she'd been doing wasn't good enough for at least one of the guys with guns.
I could see the thought percolating through the heads of the troops. Most of them had, at this point, been out feeding the refugees one time or another. And despite the conditions there were quite a few females out there better looking than Salah. And we'd been away from women a long time.
And when you've been starving to death in a desert, you'll do a lot for a cracker and a bottle of cold water.
Hell, I was thinking it.
But I had some capacity to think with my topside head. And various thoughts were percolating. Some of them had to do with maintenance and support.
The Nepos were doing most of that. But as the major construction ran down, I'd been thinking about other uses for them. A company was not enough guys to hold this place against any sort of serious attack. Yes, we could draw back into Fort Lonesome but that wasn't the mission.
We believed as an article of faith that sooner or later we'd be "relieved." Maybe some other unit would be sent out to replace us. Maybe we'd be ordered to just leave all the shit behind. My personal choice was to destroy most of it in place. But something was going to happen. Uncle Sam was not going to leave us out here to grow old and die.
But if we got a serious attack, and one was bound to happen sooner or later, we couldn't do much about it. Unless we had more troops.
And the Nepos were just sitting there.
Well, no, they weren't. They were cleaning our clothes and fixing our food and maintaining some of the support equipment while we were defending the base. Sidenote: It takes ten people to keep one infantry soldier functioning in battle. Yeah, many of those are really "rear echelon motherfuckers" (REMFs) but that also includes cooks, techs and whatnot that are absolutely vital to an infantry unit. We'd been left with a few techs but damned little "other support." "Other support" was what the Nepos were doing.
But as the main job of getting the defenses in place was winding down, I started to give some thought to other uses for them.
Yes, they weren't Ghurkas. But at this point I trusted them to hold a gun while behind me. At least if they could hold a gun and not have an AD. Thing being, I wasn't going to tell the troops they now had to cook. Laundry, sure. Cooking? Not these guys. And the troops were already busy.
Women could probably figure out how to cook and clean. And, hell, it would relieve some other pressures. Might create new ones, but there were some pressures building up right before my eyes I did not care for.