I said I might need heavy duty air support at some point. I'd give them time, but there might be a point where B-52s would be a good thing. The Air Force COS said he'd get working on it.
And one of the C-17s that got blocked for us carried a courier with a piece of paper signed by The Bitch calling me "envoy" and giving me "all the authorities of ambassador plenipotentiary of and for the United States to the nation of Turkey and the Anatolian League."
When I had that in hand and the sat-phone number to the military leader of "The Anatolian League" I got on the phone and started negotiating.
The problem was somewhat similar to Iraq. The mullahs in Istanbul had grabbed a bunch of hardware. And there were some Turkish officers who were less secular than the Turkish military liked. And some of them had survived the Plague and now worked for the mullahs.
The Anatolian League, according to this Turk, controlled the Anatolian Plains and the high ground over the Bosporus Plains. But their lines stopped at Adapazari and it was another stalemate. The Islamic Caliphate held the whole narrow tongue all the way over chunks of what had been Greece and Bulgaria. The Greeks were still consolidating and not willing to get in a row with the Islamics as long as they didn't try moving more in that direction.
The problem was, Istanbul. The city frankly sprawled. I mean, it was continuous city from the "Europe" side of the Bosporus most of the way to Izmit. Then there were high ridges, Izmit (a port city on the Marmar or whatever), then more ridges then Adapazari where the main bulk of the Anatolian range reared up.
There was a big reservoir called the Sapanca Golu which anchored the corner of the Islamic League lines then it ran along the river from there to the Black Sea. Going back towards Istanbul and Izmit it followed high ridges.
The Islamic League, clearly, had quite a few troops. And breaking something like that was going to require lots of street fighting. I didn't see where one unit of Strykers was going to be more than spit in a bucket.
One unit of Strykers wouldn't be more than spit in a bucket. But I wasn't planning on just bringing Strykers. And I wasn't planning on fighting them head on.
It would all depend on the Turks. Our Turks that is.
Turkish troops could be very very good. Oh, not as good as American troops, not in that day and age. But very good. Disciplined, certainly. It was rumored pre-Plague that a Turkish officer didn't have to file paperwork if he only shot one soldier, below the rank of sergeant, a year. I saw one beat the shit out of a private one time.
Didn't mean the officers were good. They were a mixed lot. Some of them were excellent, some got off on the power and not enough on the suffering if you know what I mean.
But, generally, Turkish troops were good.
What I didn't know was how good they were now and how good the Islamics were. They were Turkish troops, too, and presumably had a pretty serious hardcore element.
A lot was going to depend on this Turkish general. I'd have to play it by ear when I got there. So far, though, things seemed on the up and up.
A couple of things were bothering me, though. I was getting some strange vibes from the States. Oh, not, "as soon as you come back you're going to be hung" vibes. Once I made it clear I'd do my best to complete the mission everything was smiles and roses and "what little temper tantrum?" And the smiles and roses weren't "the long kiss goodnight." I was getting what I needed in the way of equipment and supplies. (And personnel. Get to that in a minute.)
It was little things like the State guy saying "We also should be able to . . . handle interference above State." And who was the State guy? He was never introduced. And why did he say that he notionally could consider me for ambassador. He wasn't the Secretary of State or the President. I looked around and couldn't find him as even a deputy secretary of State. Yet, here I had the document in my hand.
Very odd.
And here was the answer. It wasn't "a military coup" as later historians have suggested. It was more "a coup of the adults."
It was sort of like what the oil companies did. (And more on them later.) The Bitch was being . . . innnsuuulated. Yeah, that's a nice term. Insulated. She was under a lot of pressure. Everyone knew it. It was obvious every day. She didn't need a lot of shocks. We're . . . helping her.
By basically telling her what she wanted to hear and doing whatever the fuck adults saw needed doing.
It had started with the military units, ordered to deliver food to areas that were completely out of civil control but also ordered to not fire even if under attack, "using initiative in the field to complete the commander's mission concept." IOW, since they were getting arrested for defending themselves they started "breaking down" in areas where they didn't have to defend themselves. And delivering the relief supplies there.
As time went on and the Bitch's orders got weirder and randomer higher and higher authorities started ignoring them and implementing real-world solutions. In the meantime, they were simply lying to higher about what was happening.
Occasionally this became evident on what news the Bitch was watching. Sometimes she freaked out and called for heads. (Apparently at one point she was actually screaming "cut off their heads." I knew she was the Queen of the Reds but I never realized that meant The Red Queen.) Other times she apparently was able to rest in a comfortable state of denial.
Why was she still in office? It was a clear-cut case where a President needed to be impeached for her own good if nothing else.
Democrat Congress, Democrat Senate. After she started the Big Grab several impeachment bills were started up and all of them were killed. None even got to the floor. All on party line votes in committee.
I'm not going to flay the Democrats entirely. There were Democrats amongst the "adults" who were performing a de facto if not de jure coup. But what should have been done was impeach her and get someone in office who could handle the, crushing, pressure. I don't think her running mate would have been a good choice, either. But, Jesus, somebody who wasn't going totally fruitloop.
Instead they let her fiddle while America . . . well . . . froze.
She was even running for reelection.
It was the adults who saw we needed oil, desperately. And if they could free up Istanbul (actually, we just needed Ismali but the Turks were bargaining for the whole shooting match or at least the south side of the Bosporus) we could start getting tankers moving with Kurd sweet-light crude. Pumped over the Anatolian plain to Ismali then on to the good Ole USA.
What we were going to pay for it was an interesting question. But the Kurds knew we were good for it and we still had stuff to offer. Like, well . . .
I was a bargaining chip. Hell, soldiers often were. I could live with that.
On actual "stuff" I asked for there were two notes.
I'd said I didn't need troops. That wasn't quite true. With this op in the works, I started backpedaling and negotiating all over again. What I needed was tanks. And tankers.
My guys were having a lot of fun driving those Abrams. But they really didn't know what they were doing. I was going to need at least the six I had left, preferably ten or more, to do this op. I had a notion what I was going to do and I was going to need tanks. And guys who actually knew how to shoot, drive and fix them.
So that was one thing I got. What I asked for was: