"Captain, you cannot understand. The armies of the Prophet cover the ground like the sands of the desert . . . !"
We know your strength to the last Nepo. You're badly outnumbered and we're going to kick your ass.
All I could do was fall back on something I'd heard back in ROTC and many times since over the years.
"Convey my message to your commander exactly. This is the message. Nuts."
Okay, so it was an airborne unit. Big fucking deal. It was a good line.
What wasn't good was what we didn't know. The Commander of the Faithful was not an idiot. We had a fairly good feel for the numbers in Abadan at that point. The Warriors, if they hadn't taken a bunch of casualties, could field maybe six, seven hundred troops. The SLF had been about a hundred. From the count of vehicles going to Abadan, we were looking at, at most, another hundred or so.
Okay, say a thousand against our one company. Two tanks. I knew how we were going to deal with them. Adverse correlation of forces, but we had pretty good positions and good vehicles. And we had them in view the whole approach. They were going to get slaughtered.
Well, I thought they were going to get slaughtered. But I hadn't figured on the Commander of the Faithful being smart.
Ahwaz wasn't on the Shat, but it wasn't all that far, either. You had to cross into Iraq to get to the river (the Tigris, actually) but nobody gave a shit about borders. Turns out he'd sent a bunch more fighters down on barges. And we didn't know about them. The refugees had cut off to nothing. No satellite intel . . .
Okay, I had a couple of UAVs in the place. I'd even gotten a couple up and ready to go. But they weren't Predators, they were short range and duration. Even if I had gotten them out and done some surveys, I wasn't going to get any more intel.
Now, a thousand vs. a little short of two hundred with the Nepos might have been enough to change a guy's mind. Maybe should have been. But American forces had faced odds like that before and won.
Problem being we were going to take casualties. And there wasn't a doctor nor any evac.
That was going to purely suck.
So I called home. I didn't bother with calling the BC.
"Brigade S-3. Assistant S-3 speaking. How can I help you sir or ma'am?"
"Tell me to cut and run."
"What's up?"
"Security is no longer nominal."
Thousand of them. Two hundred, sort of, of us. Three days.
"What did you tell them?"
"Nuts."
"That's what the 101st said!"
"I couldn't think of better line. Go fuck a camel just wasn't as succinct." (Heh. I used a big word.)
Chain of command.
Duck's bottom.
Call you back.
Ring, Ring!
"Fort Lonesome. We've got the ammo if you've got the money. If not: Go fuck yourself."
Call your boss. Brigade Commander said "Nuts" though and he couldn't think of a better line, either.
Yo, BC, security situation no longer nominal.
You're a bad boy! You should have negotiated! Bad boy! Bad boy! No biscuit! Take off your skin so I can use it as a shawl!
Gotcha. Give 'em the stuff.
Calling higher.
"Fort Lonesome! Security situation is in degradation mode and headed for sucky!"
Brigade Commander said "Nuts."
The 101st said that. Couldn't he think of a better line? Medevac?
Nope.
Reinforcements? Fighting soldiers from the sky?
Nope. Get fucked. Bad things here. And where's that human skin I ordered?
Blow it and run?
Maintain and secure.
So then things went from weird to weirder.
Friday, I think, evening, anyway, I was "pondering the security situation" when I got a call at the office.
"Bandit, sir, there's a reporter on the video link. She wants to talk to you."
Now, this is a secure military video link system. How the fuck a reporter could have gotten onto it was beyond me.
I never considered the incredible boneheadedness of my boss.
So some reporter from CNN is chatting him up as he is delivering "aid and comfort" to the voodoo doctors in Savannah. (There's another essay there, but it's not mine. Things got very weird in Savannah at one point.) Good people doing good work for good people who are all good and it's all good and we all love each other.
(The battalion took more casualties in Savannah than we did during most of this mission. Khuwaitla, Instanbul and all.)
And somehow the point that he's only got two companies helping comes up. And, wow, there's a company in Iran? Really? Could I talk to the commander?
I don't know how she sweet-talked the BC into that. Bandit Six was the last guy he'd ever want to give air-time. That would take it away from him. And I don't know what strings he pulled to get her on our vid-link. Maybe CNN did it.
Fuck.
I got out of bed with Shadi, checked to see I was shaved, put on my battlerattle and went over.
"Captain Bandit Six. What's it like in Iran?"
"Our mission plan is to maintain and secure."
"Have you had any problems?"
"We have rectified all our action issues with transformational deconfliction."
(That one I remember. What a classic. I saw it one time on a poster and nearly shit myself.)
Refugees?
Adjusted with transformational synergy. (I think. Something like that.)
The last fucking thing I wanted to do was tell a reporter:
"Well, we're outnumbered something like five to one, and some of our 'one' are Nepalese tribesmen that just learned to turn on a light-switch and you got me out of bed when I was 'aiding and comforting' a refugee. And if we get hit we're going to blow this pizza joint sky high."
I doubt she understood word one of any of my replies. I don't think I understood most of them and I'm pretty good at buzz-word bingo. I do know that the troops were laughing next door so hard I could faintly hear it through the extremely soundproofed walls of the commo van.
We were deconflicting and transforming faster than a battle-bot. We were synergizing and action iteming like a couple of water beetles in mating season. We were defenestrating obstructors at one point, I think.
Went on for about fifteen minutes of me just a shuckin' and jivin' as fast as I could.
There's a point to the media in a democracy. It's there to make sure that people have the information they need to make rational decisions about their actions. Especially their actions in regards to who is going to be elected King or Queen or Duke or whatever.
I won't go into media bias. There's reams and reams of papers on it at this point. And it's still biased. It's going to stay biased for another fifteen years or so until the people who have lived through the Time end up as bosses in the media and start choosing different producers and editors. Hopefully, they'll choose wisely.
But at that point, the media was the military's worst enemy. They were the enemy, no more and no less. They never reported anything straight and always took the side of whoever was shooting at us.
They weren't fucking murdering terrorists who killed their own people faster than they killed us. They were "freedom fighters" or "irregulars." We weren't the freedom fighters, oh no! How could we be? It was rare that they called us what they really thought of us, but every now and then one would slip. Mercenaries. Murderers. Continue in M and go back and forth for every evil word for people you can dredge up.