Power Games: Operation Enduring Unity I (37 page)

Shanghai had little to do with the overall campaign, but one target in the suburbs represented an opportunity Washington couldn’t pass up. If they were already hitting the Chinese homeland, why not the headquarters and main support facilities of China’s frustratingly effective cyber warfare unit?

The US wasn’t so stupid as to believe they could destroy the internet with bombs. It was just that they had no equivalent response to China’s thousands of organized hackers and cyber terrorists. In line with America’s standard operating procedure, they proceeded to bomb the shit out of anything they didn’t understand. Some would argue the attack was crude and totally out of proportion, but no one argued its effectiveness.

The rest of the Tomahawks soared at wave and then tree top height nearly 500 miles towards Beijing. An hour later, cruise missiles slammed through the roofs of more than thirty targets. Each penetrator warhead violated the upper floors of the doomed structure and spurted its 1,000 lb. HE load deep inside the packed buildings.

Only two of the targets, a senior PLA leadership bunker and an admin building, were clearly military targets. The others wrecked seemingly random political offices, private residences and a few commercial sites. Regardless of how the attack appeared, the US just killed or severely wounded more than 50 of the PRC’s top bureaucrats, generals and businessmen (in China, the last two were often the same).

The blasts wiped out a hundred more faceless, but invaluable assistants and advisors, further crippling the surviving leadership. Not a single elected PRC official was harmed. The goal was to decapitate China’s real leadership, not to kill symbolic targets. Only three out of seven members of the Politburo Standing Committee, the upper crust of Chinese powerbrokers, were killed though. The rest weren’t where intelligence claimed. As things turned out, that was okay. Those three deaths opened up more than enough opportunity for ambitious younger men.

Before ambulances and fire trucks even arrived on scene, the NSA briefly took over all digital radio and television stations across the country. Most devastatingly, they managed to hack every Chinese internet service providers, unblocking the entire internet in China. Millions of young, educated Chinese read Western news and history, completely uncensored, for the first time in their lives.

Adding yet more fuel onto the fire, the US president’s pre-recorded speech went out to hundreds of millions across the People’s paradise. His popular persona, even overseas, patiently detailed why the US struck back and promised to end all hostilities, as long as no PLA personnel crossed the International Date Line. Millions in China, who bought into their country’s propaganda about how incredibly dangerous that American president was, found his proposal reasonable and generous.

In the People’s Republic, you couldn’t just “write your congressperson” or sign a petition if you wanted change. There was only one way to get the attention of their insulated leadership: on the streets. Not by protesting, but by dragging those old men out into the open.

The president’s speech was more explosive than any nuke. With the most loyal and dangerous core of their military gone, dozens of their most dynamic leaders killed and the already restless masses swarming the streets, the country’s ultra-centralized government imploded. Succession of leadership is always the Achilles heel of authoritarian regimes.

The People’s masters might have handled an orderly transition of power better if they weren’t under such unprecedented pressure. Within hours, a military coup brought some order to the political chaos. Until it was followed by a populist counter-coup, which then sparked a counter, counter-coup from the Ministry for State Security and…well, things were confusing for a while.

Historical records from this early anarchistic period are skimpy and unreliable, but what’s certain is that within weeks this cycle of violence plunged China into a full-fledged civil war. If you can call a war between at least six different sides civil. The conflict with the US petered out in days, since neither side could effectively hurt the other without resorting to nuclear weapons and the mutually assured destruction that would entail.

The domestic effects of this mini-war on Americans were no less revolutionary. Some hardliners in Washington hoped that the slaughtered Chinese would serve as a terrifying example to the URA fanatics. They were half-right. The moderates did get scared. Scared right into the arms of the extremists who’d been warning about the Feds’ insanity all along. What little support the president still enjoyed in the West was permanently undermined.

On the other hand, except for providing a few more converts to the “freedom fighters” in the insurrectionist south, the victorious and bloodless (to America) war strengthened the president’s support among his base in the east. Americans love a winner. US news/propaganda networks relentlessly hyped up the silent role the URA played in the aborted Chinese invasion. Eastern television spun their inaction as culpability in allowing a foreign power to attack the US mainland. What more proof do you need that these people wanted to destroy America?

One unspinable result of the nuclear strikes was eliminating any chance of further foreign interference in the American conflict. All talk of deploying UN peacekeepers, or any type of unilateral or multilateral military intervention, abruptly stopped. Not even America’s allies were willing to get too deeply involved with these nuclear cowboys.

For better or worse, the Second Civil War would remain a purely American disaster…or opportunity.

The Beginning

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Please read on for an excerpt from “Shock and Awe,” Book 2 in the Operation Enduring Unity Series. Available from
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Just Another Day in Paradise

Private First Class Jacob Parrott hated manning the rear-facing machine gun on the last truck in the convoy. Especially when patrolling the streets of an insurgent stronghold after midnight. What a crap job. How was he ever supposed to see what was happening ahead? Of course, if something did go down behind them, then guess who would be facing that danger all alone? As the vehicle under him made another gut-wrenching turn, Parrott leaned against the g-forces. He locked his swiveling turret ring in place fast enough to keep his machine gun exactly at a 6 O’clock position.

His driver always took the turns either too sharp, too fast or drifted comically wide. The kid drove this 10-foot high armored vehicle like he raced his worn-out Mustang back home. The idiot was going to flip them all on their heads one of these days. Over the roaring from the unneeded sudden acceleration, Parrott heard his sergeant below holler, “Which damn Wal-Mart did you get your driver’s license from?”

The Georgian behind the wheel was unfazed. “Laugh all you want, but I’m crazy like a fox. If I don’t even know what I’m going to do next, do you reckon any insurgents watching the convoy could adapt fast enough?” He tapped his helmet with sage wisdom. “That space ain’t just for keeping my ears apart!”

Parrott clicked his internal radio mike on and laughed. “God himself doesn’t know what you’ll do ne–”

Kadush!

An explosion lifted the night’s skirt behind them and from the far side of the curve. Had they driven like normal people, they would have been dead center in that blast. As it was, Parrott only believed he slipped into the next world as a tsunami of smoke and dust engulfed him. Reality snatched him mercilessly back as the driver crushed the brakes and ground the truck to a squealing halt.

Parrott pinched his radio mike switch and pleaded with the driver below. “What the hell? You know the standard operating procedure (SOP): Get us out of the kill zone, man! I can’t see shit here!”

Through the swirling cloud of smoke and fear around him came a whooshhhhhh. An RPG warhead flashed through the night a few yards ahead of them… exactly where the truck should have been if they followed standard procedure and sped out of the kill zone. Parrott gave up questioning the oracle driving him around. Disciplined bursts from an enemy machine gun ahead began raking all three Joint Tactical Vehicles in his convoy.

“Contact, 11 O’clock! Dismount right!” screamed his NCO. It took all of Parrott’s willpower to avoid swinging around and covering his buddies as they surged on foot towards the enemy. The never-ending suppressive fire his section’s nine dismounted riflemen poured up-range made him grit his teeth. “Shit, I miss everything!”

Parrott was about two seconds away from breaking discipline and swiveling around to help when the storefront lights behind the convoy lit up. The street had been pitch black the whole time. The perfect environment for their night vision gear. With the sudden glare, all the expensive optics weren’t worth a damn. As Parrott fiddled with the contrast on his eyepiece, something briefly blocked one of the bright lights in the opposite direction his M240 machine gun pointed. He didn’t waste a second with positive identification. There was a curfew in place, after all. Civilians had no business wandering around a gun battle anyway.

Completely ignoring the strict rules of engagement saved his life. He reflexively fired three pairs at the mysterious silhouette with his M4 rifle. The dying shadow squirted off an RPG wildly. The rocket missed Parrott’s truck by a good ten yards before obliterating some parked civilian car nearby. Parrott didn’t have time to enjoy the fireworks display. Something cracked passed his ear way too close for comfort.

While hosing down the storefront to his 3 O’clock with his rifle, he emptied his machine gun’s belt at the muzzle flashes to his 10 O’clock with the other hand. From a distance, Parrott’s double-weapon firing put Rambo to shame. The very picture of American badassery. In reality, this 21-year-old kid literally pissed his pants as insurgent rounds dented the thin armor plating around his gun shield, just inches in front of his face. Every near miss drained his bladder even further. Terrified or not, he stood his ground and kept returning the favor in both directions.

The enemy’s fire never slackened… it just shut off. One minute the barely-seen insurgents rained lead on Parrott’s team and the next they were gone. Breaking contact as smoothly and efficiently as any professional soldier could. “Shift fire right! Three friendlies coming through!” The steady voice of his NCO reminded Parrott that he wasn’t completely alone. “Where did they go, Parrott?”

Despite the pee running down his leg, Parrott couldn’t help but gloat a little. Hard not to brag when you’ve stared death in the eye and kicked him in the balls. “There’s not many left to go anywhere, Sergeant. I tagged at least two. The rest must have retreated down the alley. Bastards didn’t know who they were fucking with!”

His sergeant simply nodded and snatched extra magazines from inside the truck. Parrott whistled. Had his boss really emptied six mags in that two-minute shootout up front? Parrott’s rising feeling of herodom vanished. Had he missed the real fight?

His sergeant slammed a 30-round magazine against his vest to seat the rounds and tactically reloaded. “All right, we don’t have the manpower to pursue the enemy. The rest of the section are securing the four hostiles we bagged up front. Tamajo, Jackson, on me! Let’s police up this mess back here. Grab the enemy bodies and gear and then we’ll get the hell out of here. Parrott, keep us covered.”

Parrott muttered “Roger” as the rest of his fire team ran down the block. He wished he had their driver back up the truck first. Always so close, yet still so far from the action. Up there in the turret, he was part of the team, but never actually with the team. Knowing the streets were clear, he tried to scan every window and rooftop in his line of fire. He slowly became conscious of the now-cold stain down the front of his pants. Maybe he could spill his water bottle to hide the embarrassment.

His sergeant yelled from down the road. “We got a live one here… FRAG OUT!”

The wounded insurgent must have cooked the grenade off before rolling it towards the American troops. There was no time for them to do anything. A small bang knocked all of Parrott’s teammates off their feet 30 meters away from him. Specialists Tamajo and Jackson jumped back up with only superficial shrapnel injuries, but their NCO couldn’t. Hard to stand when both feet were only bloody stumps.

“Medic!” Parrott’s stomach wrenched as he jumped from the truck and found the action he was always missing.

*

As far as headquarters was concerned, this patrol had been a spectacular success. Six enemy KIA for one friendly WIA. A clear victory. Oh, and what a victory it was. The US Army killed six insurgents. Which meant that eight-man terrorist cell later recruited two vengeful brothers, a bereaved father, a bitter wife, two devastated teenage sons and six angry friends and neighbors. 8-6 = 12 bad guys… welcome to Counterinsurgency Calculus 101.

Thankfully, for the munitions makers and mortuaries at least, it was a non-linear function. You could get ahead of the curve… if you did enough killing.

Busy as Parrott was calling in a medevac request and slapping on tourniquets, he paid no attention to a lone civilian armed only with a camcorder. The mysterious figure peering out of a third-story window down the street was neither a curious bystander nor some perverted war voyeur. He used to be a lieutenant in his country’s military, before the American Army invaded and forced him and so many of his compatriots into the underground resistance.

Thanks to the video, his fallen fellow insurgents did not perish in vain. His leaders would pour over the footage to study the American army’s drills and reactions in detail. Next time the guerrillas would be better prepared. In addition, thanks to the judicious use of editing software and the internet, they’d post a great propaganda video to YouTube by the morning.

Within a quarter mile radius, over a thousand confused and terrified civilians huddled in bathtubs and under tables. Forbidden to go outside after midnight and too scared to peek out a window, they didn’t have a clue what was going on in the streets. The explosions and shooting stopped, but what did that mean? Some would wonder who won the fight. The military or the terrorists? Most didn’t care one way or the other. They hated both sides just as intently. All they wanted was for the death and destruction to end so that life could get back to normal.

How naïve they were. For the last three months since the US invasion, war was the new normal in Miami, Florida.

Nothing could change that anytime soon.