The Caliphate forces broke and ran. They had to go around us. Roads got choked. Control disintegrated.
We got relieved on day six of taking the base. A bunch of stuff on the base was fucked up. But we had an airstrip and logistic materials for the Alliance forces.
Then we moved out. We'd barely gotten over getting hammered and we moved.
Straight to Istanbul, right?
Give me credit for sense. The Caliphate was hurt, its main force was retreating, but it wasn't licked. And it had most of its functional forces defending the E80 and E100 to Istanbul.
We went for the side roads.
The Alliance forces ground forward towards Istanbul. The main line of resistance was on the hills near Hereke with the main supply and control base at Gebze.
Guess what we went for?
Up through more fucking mountains. And they were defended. A lot of the Caliphate forces were in full-out retreat but there were enough hardcores, and hardcore formations, to make our life miserable. And the weather still sucked.
On the other hand, we were in mountains and we had Nepos and Kurds.
Hit a defense point in a pass. Lay in intermittent fire. Send the Nepos up the hills on one side and the Kurds on the other. Tell them whoever got the pass cleared got priority on the trucks to ride. The other formation got to walk.
They'd race each other to clear the pass.
Move on.
It was at one of those passes that we had "coffee" while under artillery fire. Was dick all we could do about it. The Nepos and the Kurds were flanking and our job was to be targets and smile. "Would you care for a (FUCKING WHAM! as an artillery round landed) finger cake?" Veddy British.
We took Gebze. Bit of a battle with some remaining Leopards near Pelitli. But the Mongrels, those who were left, were very much their betters. Like "Who's your Daddy?" their betters. Which is what the Mongrels painted on their tanks after Pelitli.
This time we didn't hold it. We hit the Caliphate defenders in Hereke from behind. Lots of surrenders.
By then we were getting into serious urbanization but we kept doing the same thing. Hit a defense point? Swing short, swing long, whatever. Hit them from behind or in the flank. Move on. Alliance forces pushed straight in since they had a harder time with command and control. We'd swing wide and low sweet chariot.
Push 'em back, push 'em back, waaaay BACK.
There was a whole nother Caliphate "Army," more like about a division, up by the Black Sea. They got cornered and surrounded by Alliance forces at Bali Bey and surrendered en masse.
We hooked and we flanked and they fell back. They were dealing with desertion en masse and we occasionally routed forces and "had a good killing."
The Caliph blew the Abdullah Aga bridge leaving a shitload of forces on the "Asia" side of the Bosporus. They surrendered. We hooked up to the E80 bridge and, lo and behold, it was still up.
Hooked back down.
We were outrunning most of the Alliance forces at this point. Okay, I was going a bit hog-wild. But, hell, how often do you get a chance to take a major historical city?
Fuckers tried to blow up the Hagia Sophia. Man, that pissed me off. I sent in the Nepos with orders to prevent it with extreme prejudice. There went a bunch of their remaining hardcores.
The Caliph made his final stand, with a core of about a battalion of hardcore Sunni fundamentalist motherfuckers, in the Topkapi Palace. It was mostly a museum before the Plague but it had been the palace of the Ottoman emperors for four hundred years.
The motherfucker was big. And there were about a billion fucking rooms. Turned out the Caliph had turned the harem back into a harem. That was really damned interesting when we hit it but we were just passing through, alas.
(Me? Running around in the Topkapi? When I should have been carefully controlling my elements? They all knew what to do and I had a good commo guy. Used to work for a satellite company.)
Found the Caliph, finally, in a throne room. Called the Hunkar Sofasi, which apparently means "Throne Room." I'm afraid to say that it took a certain amount of damage. That's what plaster masons are for. And, okay, you're going to need some lapis lazuli to patch the murals. Sue me.
It took most of the night to run down the last holdouts. Most of them weren't asking for quarter and we weren't giving it.
Okay, let me say a little something on the subject of "looting." Yes, there did seem to be some trinkets missing from the Palace when the Turks, finally, showed up the next day. I performed a very thorough shake-down of my Nepo, U.S. and Kurdish troops. None of those trinkets were found. Given that the Caliph had the palace for months, I suggest you ask him. Except you can't, he's dead.
As to the various shopkeepers along the way that accused my Kurds and Nepos of looting, fuck 'em. We hadn't been paid in months. And I never saw looted item one. I've so stated in various reports on my honor as a U.S. Army officer.
WE TOOK ISTANBUL YOU IDIOTS.
OF COURSE WE FUCKING LOOTED.
Jesus.
Chapter Twenty-Two
Been Down So Long Looks Like Up to Me
Can we go home now?
The Turks couldn't get rid of us fast enough.
Here's a very nice gold-encrusted sword that was carried by Pasha (I'd have to look it up) in his great battles against the (I'd have to look it up, it was Europeans is all I remember; I think there was a subtle insult there) to go along with all the other shit that's missing now get the hell out.
The Air Force, again, came in and picked up all the Kurds. Food was going to be delivered as soon as a couple of passes got cleared. There was already a ship in the harbor. They dropped off technical specialists in oil pumping to help get the pipelines back up. They took the Kurds home. Wounded were flown to England for treatment then U.S. and Nepos went to the States. (Oh, clearance for the Nepos to immigrate had been granted. Thank you INS or whatever. The acronyms keep changing.)
Incirlik was back up. It started getting more back up.
There was a very nice ceremony where they gave me the sword. All the other officers got similar stuff except Samad who they barely deigned to recognize. It was okay. I believe he'd picked up a couple of souvenirs. Sentimental value only, of course.
The ceremony was somewhat marred by the fact that the Mongrels, who had somewhere found some huge fucking concert speakers, were playing Manowar so loud you could, literally, hear it on the other side of the fucking Bosporus. The tanks were lagered about a klick away but it didn't matter. I rather liked their taste in music but "Swords in the Wind" clashes, badly, with the Turkish national anthem.
However, I do think just about everyone in the formation got tears in their eyes when they started playing "The Fight for Freedom" over and over. The Turkish general trying to be heard seemed somewhat pissed. Especially when we started singing along to the chorus.