Fly us out?
From where? Abadan airport was too big for us to hold. Any airport capable of supporting planes big enough to fly us out was too big for us to guarantee security.
I got told by the 3 that somebody, I think it was the BC, had suggested dropping a Ranger Battalion in to hold the airstrip while we evacced.
Look, Rangers are tough. I went to the school. Yada, yada. But my fucking company had more firepower than a Ranger battalion. Rangers are always portrayed on the news like they're the heaviest infantry in the world. Not hardly, brother. Heaviest infantry in the world was a full up Mech unit with Bradleys. Next down the way is us. The Stryker boys. When you care enough to send the very best. Sending a Ranger unit to "support" a Stryker unit is like sending a PeeWee league to pitch for the Yankees.
The order, for once, was not micromanagement on her part.
"Tell them to get out of Iran and off of the news."
We were headed home.
But how?
Israel was saying not only no but hell no.
There was a port in Jordan down on the Red Sea. There was a bare possibility of getting a ship in there.
Only problem was, it was held by the wrong faction. And they were tough. We, possibly, with the help of Hussein, Junior, could have shifted them out.
But we'd take casualties.
And there weren't many ships.
Fly out from Jordan?
Again, no good airstrip and birds were blocked out, big-time. I think that the brass were, at that point, using us to stick it to the Bitch. Just being passive aggressive. "Can't do that, can't do that . . ." Wasn't sure how I felt about that at the time. Despite the hell we went through, I'm good with it, now.
Why? Because the Bitch needed to be taken down. Not by a military coup. By showing the American people what a fucking fruitcake they'd elected.
I don't get or like human interest. Back before the Plague, it had ruined all sorts of stuff. The Olympics for one. Back when I was a kid, you'd watch the Olympics and it'd be about sports. By the time I was a teenager it was all about "poor Bobby was born with a heart defect but he managed to overcome it and become an expert male syncronized swimmer!"
The fucking Olympics are about who wins and who loses. Period fucking dot. I don't give a shit if Bobby has a heart murmur. Did he get a gold? No. Fucking loser.
But, I don't get most people. The world's a very black and white place to me. That's good in a soldier. Not so good in a politician. And to be a senior general you have to be a politician. It just goes with the fucking job. You cannot do your job if you're not one.
Well, we were good human interest. Poor homeless waifs that, nonetheless, were carrying the flag. Good boys. Have a biscuit.
It pissed the hell out of me, but there you are.
Questions about the Battle of Abadan were opening up other questions. Why had the immunization distribution been fucked up? Why weren't we cracking down on the violence in the cities?
The latter had started to spill over. With most of the food shipments cut off, the gangs had been moving out looking for food, loot, women, whatever. There had been "encounters" between them and not only military and police units but some of the "random associators."
(Fox called them "local volunteer organizations" which was pretty accurate. Every other broadcast and print news organ seemed to call them "right-wing militias." This, of course, being a code for "Bad Dog! No Biscuit!")
Warrick realized her orders were being circumvented. But even the Mainstream Media couldn't always cover up that the people she wanted supported were mostly murderous thugs. So she didn't push the issue.
But she also didn't push for a crackdown. "Negotiate." "Collaborate." "Minimal force." Kumbaya. Whether, at that point, it would have worked or not, I'm not sure. But the point was, she was sitting on the fence as much as possible.
And things were getting ugly. Er.
So more and more questions were getting asked. Not congressional investigations. Oh, no. Democrat Congress. They could squash those.
Right wing radio? Oh, yeah. Fox? Some.
Internet?
Oh. My. Fucking. God.
It seemed like the whole Internet had shifted. Most places it still wasn't up. But the places it was up all seemed to be in the "red" zones. That is, fly-over country.
Things were coming up in fly-over country much faster than in the kumbaya lands. This was pitched by the media as some sort of plot. Possibly by the military.
Nope. It was just that the people in fly-over country weren't taking the shit that the "blues" were accepting. Governors were using state police, National Guard where they could get away with it and even "right-wing militias" to take back their cities. With very liberal Rules of Engagement.
Things were starting to resemble civilization in parts of fly-over country again.
The lower population density and survivablity, in general, also worked.
And in "blue" country, times they were achangin'.
Okay, maybe it's time to talk about California.
California is a desert. Not quite, but close enough. Southern California, at least. Northern much less so especially in the Valley. But southern California is a desert made green by much effort.
California was also densely populated. After the Plague it was still pretty densely populated. Temporarily.
Most of southern California's water came from a very complicated system of canals, tunnels and pumps. They had some local reservoirs, but mostly it came from way back east. They'd been in "drought" conditions (actually, quite normal conditions) for fucking ever. They were always short on water. And power. And everything else that makes for a modern industrialized society except people.
When the Plague hit, they lost a good half their population. It had a lot of people. It even had areas of high trust. But they were, pretty much, fucked.
California had a lot of agriculture, too. But much of it was dependent on irrigation. The whole Imperial Valley for starters. And there had to be people to run the irrigation canals and weirs and locks.
So they ended up short on food and short on water. Things got very ugly very quickly. Lots of low trust areas. Borderline civil control in a lot of areas already. No food. No water.
L.A. pretty much started to empty out by May. The only problem being, there weren't any better areas around. Water was scarce everywhere. And going east was just going into areas with less water.
San Diego was a bit better off. They had Pendleton Marine base and a Navy base there. The Navy ships, those that weren't tasked elsewhere, had big desalinators for water. Between the Marines and the Navy they managed to keep civil order. Wasn't easy. There was pretty much an invasion going on from Mexico. The Marines had machine guns.
A lot of people from L.A. headed south. Not all of them bad people, mind you, but there were enough that it mattered. There was a lot of killing in the areas south of L.A..
But it's a long way to San Diego on foot. And much of it is Pendleton, which isn't exactly overrun with food and water. There are a few streams. The term here is "dysentery." Which means you dehydrate faster than you consume.