"Sorting things out" took a couple of days and one or two skirmishes. We also had to leave a bunch of Kurds behind. And they didn't interact great with the locals but we pointed out that they were just there to guard the prisoners and we'd get Turks over to straighten things out shortly.
Bandits by day, sneak thieves by night, occasional feudal lords. Some we could negotiate with, they were trying to decide which way to hop on the whole "who's in charge" thing. Some we had to fight. They lost. We took almost no casualties because a) I never fight fair and b) when the Nepos couldn't flank someone the Kurds could. In retrospect, it was good training for what was to come.
Turned out we didn't hit the first outpost of "order" until we got to Kirkkale. Actually west of Kirkkale. Ankara was near the back side of what the Turkish general controlled.
But I rolled in with seven more Leopards than I'd had at the beginning. Also down two Abrams, a HERCULES and a carrier. Five WIA, two KIA. Two cases of frostbite. One guy lost toes.
Maybe I should have taken the Adana Road. But I swear he said Van.
Chapter Twenty-One
Of Course We Fucking Looted
So there we were ready to perform our heroic . . . What do you mean you can't fight in this weather?
Okay, the weather was rather bad. We'd explained that to the world. Well, not all of it. We only had an hour.
Go back to the Global Warming thing. One of the things that was raised about why Global Warming was going to Destroy Civilization was that Storms Got Stronger.
Uh, huh.
Maybe, maybe an argument for hurricanes. (I can argue ag'in it. And so would most paleoclimatologists and even hurricane experts.) But hurricanes don't affect most regions of the world. Very few, actually. Oh, they're big news in the U.S., but they don't hit most parts of the world, period.
Cold fronts do, though. And warm fronts. And they can be pretty fucking powerful. See "Storm of the Century." Well, it might have been for the 20th Century, but in the 21st we've learned a whole new definition.
Why?
Meteorology 101. "Storms are governed by differences in temperature between the polar regions and the tropics."
Global Warming would have meant warmer temperatures in the polar regions and pretty much the same in tropical regions.
Global Cooling meant much colder temperatures in the polar regions and pretty much the same in the tropical regions.
Oops.
And, yes, that meant the weather was a bitch. Especially since weather is always worse when there's a big change going on. All those thunderstorms you get with a cold front are because the air temperature is suddenly changing. It gets colder, air condenses, storms build up, ice movement makes static electric-icity, water falls, lightning strikes.
The air temperature all over the world was suddenly changing. We'd gone through some motherfuckers of thunder snow storms in the Taurus. Those are not regular occurences. I'd run across, maybe, two the whole time I lived in Minnesota.
The weather was a bitch.
And bitchy weather favors defenders. And for the plan I had in mind to work, it was going to take our friendly Anatolian Alliance fighters climbing out of their trenches and bunkers and assaulting.
Which was going to suck. No question.
It also was the only way to get the oil flowing by the end of December. Which was the "drop dead" date for the U.S. Somewhat literally.
Things had never gotten anywhere near pre-Plague normal in the U.S. and now we were going into "the Mother of All Winters." It had taken a fucking Brit news crew and a bunch of infantry stuck in the middle of nowhere to get people to stand up and notice but it was finally happening. And now everyone was going ape-shit because they realized we didn't have the fuel or food to carry us through.
We eventually realized that was bunk, but in November of 2019 it really looked like total Disaster. This is the Big One. End of Civilzation As We Know It. Here come the glacial sheets! Fuck you, buddy, I'm heading for the hills!
(It did suck if you lived in Canada. But, hey, Canoeheads are tough. They tell us that all the time.)
I hadn't traveled all this way through those fucking mountains, okay, okay, maybe you did say the Adan road, just to sit on my ass and let my country freeze to death. We were here to open up the spigots. And we can't do it on our own. Get off your ass or I'm going over to the Dardanelles and catching a ship for Greece. And, no, I won't be leaving useable equipment. I'll send it back with the Kurds. Don't try to stop them.
I didn't need a full-court press. All I needed was for the Caliphate to be using a lot of supplies and concentrated on Adapazari.
The E80, in that area a full-up interstate, ran from Istanbul through Izmit and to Adapazari where the bulk of the fighting was centered. The main log base for the fighting, though, was at Izmit.
On the south it was well protected by a range of high ridges that were strongly held by Caliphate forces. South of those ridges was Alliance territory.
What I proposed was to take Izmit. If we could cut the E80, Adapazari would become untenable to hold. The Caliphate forces would have to fall back and either retake Izmit or, if it worked properly, be forced back beyond.
The general pointed out that trying to take the ridges would signal the Caliphate that I was coming and then we'd have to fight heavy forces all the way.
I pointed out that a B-52 strike would clear the way long enough for us to dart down to Izmit. All he had to do was reinforce us. Fast. Please. Don't dawdle.
It was a Japanese technique called the roadblock. It wasn't the cavalry raid of old. The idea was to get a force across your enemy's resupply and hold there. Don't let anyone past. There were ways for the Caliphate to resupply around Izmit. But the intel said the bulk of their military stores were in Izmit. And getting around it was difficult. Think "Ruffles have ridges." And all that snow.
Just east of Izmit the E80 and the E100 crossed. Between them was the Izmit airport which was where the main log depot for the Caliphate forces had been established.
That was our target. We were going to blow a hole through the Caliphate forces on the ridges, dash down to the Izmit depot and take and hold it against all comers.
Sounds easy, right?
God, it fucking sucked.
It took a week to arrange. B-52s had to be flown back to England; closest bases that could take them. The Alliance had to get their guys ready to charge. Build up artillery supplies.
The good news was that the bases the B-52s were returning to were the same ones they'd used pre-Plague. And the Brits never really lost control of them. So there was plenty of ordnance on site. If we'd had to move ordnance it would have been impossible.
I also arranged for resupply drops. We were going to be using a lot of ammo. We might be able to use some of the shit in the depot but I wasn't going to count on that. We hoped we wouldn't have to blow it all up again. The Alliance could use it.
So we got into position and we struck. Easy, right?
Fucking ridges south of Izmit are motherfuckers. I mean motherfuckers. We could barely get the Abrams up them.