Foreign Enemies and Traitors (66 page)

The junior officer gave his report while standing close to the rear of the command vehicle, trying to absorb some of the heat given off by its diesel engine without breathing its smoke.  “Our reconnaissance platoon found fresh automobile tracks nearby in the snow and mud.  They followed the tracks to this farm road, and these woods.  Here they discovered a vehicle, very cleverly hidden beneath what is left of those two trees.  They are called ‘holly’ trees, and they keep their leaves all winter.  They have very dense waxy leaves, with small thorns on them.  It was an excellent hiding place for a small vehicle.  Unfortunately, the automobile exploded.  Three men were killed, and two were wounded.  One will die.”

“Those fools,” muttered Burgut.  “Why didn’t they follow standard procedure for approaching an abandoned vehicle?”

“I can’t say, Colonel; perhaps they did, but…”

“Then why the devil did they detonate the bomb and get themselves killed?  Why didn’t they wait for your sappers to arrive?”  From Burgut’s command vehicle, it was no more than thirty meters to the scene of the blast.  In the last light of day, he could make out that two thick tree trunks had been shattered.  The car that had exploded had been concealed in a hiding place beneath the branches of the two trees.  Now it was just a blackened metal hulk.  The branches were now almost bare of leaves and hanging in broken shreds.  The corpses and most of the body parts of the dead had been collected and placed into three black body bags. 

Colonel Burgut could easily imagine why the dead men didn’t wait for the explosives disposal sappers: greed.  They probably saw something of value in the automobile, and wanted to keep it for themselves, without sharing.  So typical of the cocky and egotistical reconnaissance soldiers, who thought they knew everything, including the job of detecting and disarming bombs.  In his more cynical moments, he thought that soldiers volunteered for recon because it gave them more opportunities for unobserved looting.

“Colonel, we are still examining the site, but a more complete answer as to exactly what happened must await tomorrow’s daylight.” 

“Yes, yes.”  It would be fully dark in just a few more minutes, and it was obviously too dangerous an area to set up visible working lights. 

“From this location we found signs of several insurgents on foot, and tracked them to a cave two kilometers from here.  Our sapper squad is now moving very slowly with the recon platoon, as you might understand after what happened here.”

“Thank you, Lieutenant.  Send only one man inside the cave, and keep me informed.”  Burgut climbed back into the warm and dry interior of his command vehicle, and settled into his padded swivel seat with a sigh.  The first sergeant climbed in behind him and closed the two-part armored door.  The command car was longer between the wheels than the other ASVs, and lacked a turret well taking up the center of its space.  Instead, this open central area contained four comfortable seats for staff officers and radiomen, radio equipment, swing-out flat computer screens, and two folding desktops. 

The American armored security vehicles were luxurious compared to the Russian equivalents he was familiar with from serving almost thirty years in the Soviet, the Russian and then the Kazak armies.  The American M-1117 “Guardian” vehicles even had automatic transmissions, and could drive 110 kilometers per hour on paved roads.  But the American vehicle had several major flaws, the worst of which being that it could not ford a river, unlike the similar but lighter Russian four-wheeled BRDM amphibious scout vehicles.  A stream only one and a half meters deep was enough to stop the American ASVs, and in Tennessee such streams bisected the countryside every few kilometers. 

With only four tires, both the American and Russian armored scout vehicles were frequently trapped by deep mud.  The ASVs, intended for Military Police units and convoy escort duty, were really meant for roads.  But because they were the most potent weapon platforms the foreign peacekeeping battalions had been provided by their American hosts, they were often put to the test pursuing rebels across rough ground.  Frequently they failed these off-road tests, and so the drivers were under orders not to stray far from solid paving.  To enforce this policy, severe disciplinary measures were enforced against the crews of the armored vehicles when they managed to get them stuck in bog mires.

It was the mission of the mounted horse troops of Saber Company to pursue rebels through thick woods and across streams and muddy or broken terrain, when wheeled vehicles could advance no further.  Best of all, the horses could be obtained locally, and they required no supply lines for diesel fuel or spare parts.  Tennessee had no shortage of excellent horses for the taking.  Within their obvious limitations, they were still useful in a military role.  It warmed Colonel Burgut’s Kazak heart to see cavalry employed in the twenty-first century.  “Around the corner, we shall meet the past,” the old proverb went. 

Colonel Burgut’s late predecessor as commander of the Kazak Battalion, Colonel Jibek, had repeatedly requested tracked fighting vehicles, such as the excellent Bradley APCs, but to no avail.  The Kazaks and the other international units were allegedly “peacekeepers” in Tennessee, and by the terms of the I.P.F. Agreement, they were limited to the vehicles and weapons provided to American Military Police units, including the ASVs.  The 12.7mm machine guns and the 40mm automatic grenade launchers of their armored security vehicles were the most powerful weapons they were permitted to have.  How could they be expected to pacify the rebel counties while fighting with one hand tied behind their backs?  Just so American politicians could maintain the propaganda fiction that the low-intensity war in Tennessee was a “peacekeeping” mission…

Now Colonel Burgut even suspected that the duplicitous Americans were holding back deliveries of 40mm ammunition for the  ASVs’ M-19 automatic grenade launchers.  A “clerical mistake” had resulted in a shipment of similar but not interchangeable 40mm grenades for rifle-mounted launchers.  How stupid were the Americans, to produce two very similar but non-interchangeable projectile grenades in the same caliber! 

Bradley fighting vehicles, with their all-terrain tracks, large troop compartments, amphibious capability and 25mm chain gun were what they needed!  Or the superb eight-wheeled Strykers, which carried a dozen troops inside.  Instead we were only given four-wheeled armored scout cars, humvee jeeps and unarmored troop trucks!  Colonel Burgut had been to Fort Campbell.  He had seen the hectare after hectare of tightly parked tanks and fighting vehicles.  They were countless in their hundreds, left abandoned and rusting, often stripped and cannibalized for parts.  The vast helicopter parks were even worse.  It made him sick to see the discarded weaponry of the declining empire.

The once great American military machine had been neglected and underfunded for too many years.  It was still enormous in sheer numbers of weapons, but it was a decayed and rotting shell, hollow inside.  Without money for continuous upkeep, and without enough trained professional soldiers to do the work, America’s ultra-high-tech weapon systems were not sustainable.  They were sliding from the status of temporarily not mission capable to permanently unrecoverable.  As a result, the international peacekeeping forces were reduced to fighting a counterinsurgency war with troop trucks, humvee jeeps, and a few armored security vehicles. 

It never changed: politicians dictated to soldiers, and the soldiers always died as a result.  Colonel Burgut had learned this lesson again and again over his three decades as a professional soldier.  Why should America be any different from Afghanistan, Kosovo or Chechnya?  It was time to retire, and soon he would retire on his own horse ranch in Montana or Wyoming.  “Big Sky Country,” the Americans called Montana.  “The Cowboy State,” they called Wyoming.  Colonel Arman Burgut looked forward to taking off his uniform for the last time
.

Burgut’s young enlisted radioman turned in his own chair.  “Colonel, I have been trying to contact Gray Wolf 4 and 5 for a scheduled situation report, with no success.  Now I have just heard the oddest thing.  I heard English spoken on our tactical channel—an American voice.”

“Are you certain?”

“I’m quite certain.  Positive.”

“What did this American voice say?”

“I don’t know the meaning of the words; I only know that I heard English.  But I did recognize the word ‘radio’ spoken very clearly.”

“Probably an American unit is using our assigned frequency by accident.  As you know, strange atmospheric conditions sometimes occur at twilight, and they could be quite far away.”

“Colonel, that has never happened on our tactical net before.  And why would they have our encryption key?”

“I can’t explain it, Sergeant, but such mistakes happen.  Continue trying to contact Wolf 4 and 5.”

The radioman appeared doubtful, but he answered, “Yes sir.”

Burgut further instructed him, “Send an alert message to all of the companies.  ‘We are unable to contact Gray Wolf 4 and 5.  They have missed scheduled radio contacts.  Report their position if they are seen.  Attempt to establish communications with them, physically and in person if necessary.  Exercise caution.’  All right?”

“Yes sir, I’ll send it now.”  The radioman jotted down notes on a pad, then swiveled his seat around to his bank of communications equipment to begin his task.

This strange report was the latest in a string of incidents today that bothered the colonel.  First: three soldiers from his Headquarters Company had been missing since before dawn.  Perhaps they were merely drunk somewhere, having found a barn full of ‘white lightning’ corn whisky, or some American girls to amuse them.  It had happened before…but never during a major field operation.  Second: the Eagle Company recon platoon had stupidly—and fatally—triggered a booby-trapped car, instead of waiting for the sappers to check it.  Third: the two armored scout vehicles on detached patrol missed their scheduled radio contact, and now there was a peculiar report of hearing English spoken on their assigned frequency. 

Nevertheless, there was also some good news today.  The missing engine parts for the Caterpillar earthmover’s transporter truck had arrived.  The bodies of the Americans in the ravine were now covered with five or six meters of dirt, and planted over with small fir trees taken from nearby, just as General Blair had demanded.  The ravine itself existed no more.  It had been erased from the face of the earth.  Tonight the last of the American rebels in Radford County were fleeing for their lives as his battalion put their homes to the torch.  Once the rebels were moving south, out of Tennessee, they became refugees and were not to be unnecessarily harassed.  The point was to drive them out, to depopulate the county, not to cause every rebel to stay and fight to the death.  General Blair had been clear on that point, after the misunderstanding that had led to the ravine incident.

Of course, there would always be isolated excesses; they were unavoidable in the planned chaos accompanying the forced depopulation of a region.  People had to be terrorized to an extent; otherwise, they would not take to the roads in flight.  Of course, any armed resistance would be met with overwhelming force, and once firing started, it was not so easy to stop.  And naturally, his troops could be expected to collect souvenirs and trinkets, perhaps some valuables, before destroying the rebel dwellings.  Why let everything go to waste in the flames?  They were not being paid, except in promises of land and citizenship; they needed some tangible rewards in the meantime.  And if they found some pretty American girls along the way, well, Kazak soldiers were still men, after all!  This was the nature of such “pacification” operations, in any country throughout history.  The intent was to depopulate a region, and that could not be done by handing out bouquets of flowers, chocolates and calling cards!

Within a few days, he would be able to report to General Blair that Radford County and the surrounding areas had been fully pacified, speeding up the day that his battalion would be moved to Montana.  By all reports, the high mountains and wind-swept plains of Montana and Wyoming were so similar to Kazakhstan that his men would feel that they were at home.

 Like himself, most of his men could never return to Kazakhstan.  They were essentially stateless.  Most of them had been involved in the Cossack Uprising, attempting to return the Kazak border regions to the Russian Federation.  That endeavor, which only two years before had seemed so promising, had been crushed.  The Cossacks involved in the uprising, having been encouraged to separate from Kazakhstan, had then not been welcomed as new citizens by Mother Russia.  One solution to the impasse, if it could be called that, had come with the recent offer by the United States government to reward so-called “peacekeepers” with citizenship and land.  The offer was a gift from heaven for the landless Cossacks, who were a military estate, but not a people.  The Cossacks were a union of men joined only by common military tradition, not by land, blood or religion.  The original Cossacks had fled to the wide, unpopulated steppes from the Ukraine.  They had even taken their name from the Kazaks, which in the Turkic steppes had meant both fugitive and freeman.  And so it was again.  Once again they were fugitives, searching for a land to call their own.

Once in their new homeland of Montana—after helping to subdue the rebels there—his homeless Cossacks would each be granted 200-hectare land deeds, almost a thousand American acres.  As the victorious leader of the Kazak Battalion, he would receive a land grant fully one hundred times as large, as his own reward for service to the United States government.

America was truly a land of opportunity.

Colonel Burgut turned to his executive officer, seated across from him, their knees almost touching.  “Major Seribek, we shall move out right away.  Only the armored security vehicles.  I want to be rolling in two minutes.  Make the necessary calls.”  Colonel Burgut’s command vehicle always traveled accompanied by at least two other of the heavily armed and turreted ASVs.