Soldier Up (18 page)

RPG! RPG! Left yelled out the tank Commander in the lead vehicle into comm’s.  He quickly turned his machine gun and fired in the direction of the RPG launch cutting down two men, one of the men holding the launcher.  Two Bradley’s moved toward the area where the RPG was launched hunting for potential targets with their 25 mm guns.  Then small arms fired on the vehicles, the bullets easily bouncing off the armor.  The 25mm gun’s let loose toward the gun fire ripping to shred’s the men that fired them.

              The rear ramps of the two Bradley’s dropped and Soldier’s quickly exiting while engaging fire coming from there left and right,  one of the Abrams fired a round at several men firing at the Soldier’s, those men ceased to exist.   The Soldiers moved quickly to dispatch their attackers while being covered by the Bradley’s and Abrams.  It took about ten minutes to kill all of them and capture one,  SSG Erikson looked at all of the attackers, “You notice anything special about all of them?” he asked Specialist Thomas.

              “Yeah, there all Hispanic, what the fuck?” replied Specialist Thomas.

              “Let’s go talk to the one we captured.  The man was brought back to the Bradley’s SSG Erikson was senior man present, he stared at the man, “Why did you attack us?”

              “No habla English.” said the man.

              SSG Erikson shook his head thinking, Ok he wants to play games, “Get Cruz,” he said to Corporal Ramadi.

              A few moments later PFC Cruz arrived, SSG Erickson said, “The guy wants us to believe he doesn’t speak English, only Spanish.”

              PFC Cruz nodded then started to rattle off Spanish to the man who was caught off guard.  The man didn’t answer, Cruz then pulled out his pistol and pointed it at the man’s head and rattled off some more Spanish.  The man still didn’t say anything, PFC Cruz cocked the hammer then rattled off some more Spanish, and still the man didn’t say anything.  He then fired and took off part of the man’s ear; the man grabbed his ear yelling and screaming dropping to the ground. 

              Two Soldiers grabbed the man and lifted him up, PFC Cruz pointed the pistol at then man’s head again and cocked the hammer, he told him in Spanish the next round goes into his forehead.  The man then startled talking, as it turns out his English was good, “I knew it,” said SSG Erikson.

              The man was part of a gang MI-13 that was moving up the coast from Los Angeles, they had been on the move for weeks basically murdering and raping their way up north.  He was asked if there were anymore, he said yes about two dozen more near a bridge about half mile away.  PFC Cruz thanked him for the information and pulled the trigger.

              Captain McCabe was the Company Commander for the Column of tanks that was moving toward Camp Parks, he was watching what was going on with the Bradley’s when he heard over his helmet intercom, “Sir we have eight to nine vehicles heading towards us fast, dumb and stupid.” said Sergeant Landau.

              “Type of vehicles and weapons?” asked the Captain.

              “Sir three trucks with what look like m249’s mounted in the rear and the rest are cars, but they look to have four to five people in them apiece.”                            

              Captain McCabe raised his binoculars to see the approaching vehicles, and then he heard plink, plink, blink against the armor of his tank.  “Sir,” said Sergeant Landau. “We’re taking fire.”

              “No shit Sergeant, so they want to play.”  Said Captain McCabe.  “He radioed the first three tanks in the column and told them to engage the trucks and make their shots count.”

              Within sixty seconds three trucks were engulfed in flames, well what was left of them after being hit with a 120mm cannon.  The other Bradley’s that were in the column who didn’t go out to deal with the first encounter were able to flank the vehicles that were left.  The men in the vehicles stuck their weapons out the windows and fired at the vehicles.  The Bradley’s racked the vehicles with 25mm fire, the vehicles slowly veered off and stalled.  The vehicles were peppered with holes the men inside were bloody messes.

              Captain McCabe ordered cease-fire and all vehicles back into formation; they then continued their march without another thought to just what happened.  The weapons the gang had was not unheard of, they had been briefed before they left Fort Irwin that gangs for years had been collecting machine guns, RPG’s, grenades and other automatic weapons, but as far as anyone knew they had no anti-armor weapons.

              As they were wrapping up their engagement with MI-13 the second train had already reached Fort Irwin and was being loaded up, things were moving along, so far so good.  The troops that were guarding the train on the way there were from Camp Parks and like the first group that arrived at Fort Irwin people at the Fort had a ton of questions they were starved for information from the outside.  One of the visitors was Mel who had come to meet with the Sergeant Major and several of the civilian leaders on post.  She had met briefly with the General when he was at Camp Parks who talked to her about what he thought they needed at Irwin and any help she could be would be appreciated.  Mel was more than happy to help. 

              The problem was they were trying to attack the issues as a military problem instead of a family problem.  Most families were not in the military there spouses certainly were but they didn’t operate their households like a squad or platoon.  Families were chaotic sometimes especially with kids, try getting 5 year old to fall into formation, good luck with that.  Fort Irwin had set up a family council but that was about it, there was really no heart in it.  She needed to find a leader for it that had heart and wanted to see things get done in the community, someone who was not going to sit around and wait for things to happen, but who was going to go after General Watkins relentlessly to the betterment of the community.

              Then that person would have to have a board that was the same way she was, they had to want it regardless of the shitty circumstances that surrounded the EMP event, everyone was dealing with that.  They needed to stop feeling sorry for themselves and step up for the challenges that faced them.  They needed to stop depending on the Army to do everything for them; they needed to fend for themselves within the Army framework.

The move of the 11
th
ACR from Fort Irwin via rail and road was a success, there were lessons learned and that’s how they would be marked up as.  The overall troop strength at Camp Parks and Pleasanton was now just over 5000, they had armor, artillery, infantry, special operations, signal, military intelligence, quartermaster, for the most part everything they needed to move forward with the operation at hand, they hoped.

              Special Forces teams were still deployed around the bay and gathering Intel, word had spread to everyone within a hundred miles or so it seemed that the military was getting ready for something, even the most hardened militias that thought they were unbeatable were scared and attempting to build their own defenses.  One of their biggest problems was that many of their Soldiers if you want to call them that, had little training and were forced to be there.  Lots of the militias and people in general thought military type training was over-rated all you really need to know how to do was point and shoot.

              At 1430 at the Camp Parks Movie Theater one week after the move from Fort Irwin had been made, all Officers and Senior NCO’s had a mandatory meeting there.  At the meeting the operations plans were discussed, what unit was going to do what, how they would move out, everything they needed to know.  Colonel Clayton, Colonel Boxer, Lieutenant Colonel March and others in the senior staff conducted the briefing, it lasted until 1800. 

              The entire camp was on lock down as well as the troops at the vehicle park in Pleasanton, no one was allowed on or off post without special permission.  After the meeting broke commanders moved back to their units to brief their Officers and NCO’s, in turn they would brief their people.  The operation would kick off at 0200 there would be a lighting break out of the area, lighting being a relative term meaning they would move as fast as they could.  It was roughly a twenty to thirty mile drive to various refineries located in the Bay Area. 

              They would attack them all at once, the plan was to send Special Operations as well as three companies of paratroopers that had been trained, they would jump into the refineries, secure and hold them until the main forces arrived to relieve them. 

              Planes would be in the air providing forward looking Intel to units on the ground, they found that they could use the PRC-77 within two miles for plane to ground communications and sometimes depending on the terrain and weather they could get out to five miles. There were various avenues of approach the different units would take, the I-580 would take them straight through Dublin to the Bay, they could also take secondary roads to 92 to get further south and around the bay or connect through I-850 from the 580 and there were a lot of secondary roads to be used.  Depending on the unit’s mission depended on the roads and the work around to them if they were engaged.

              Also, as they got closer they would have contact with the units inside the refineries and oil facilities assuming everything went to plan.  They estimated that it would take between forty to fifty-five minutes for a column to make it to their embarkation point and ready for their assault.  So much of this depended on if any of the militias were determined enough to take them on before they reached the point, they had to assume the worse that they would and they planned for it.

              There were twenty plus aircraft of all shapes and sizes involved in this, they had  short flight time, for the paratroopers it wasn’t the typical hook up shuffle to the door the planes weren’t that big, although the larger airplanes had all seats removed and were strictly used for cargo and troop transport, that was the plan anyway.  Most of the SF and paratroopers would be on the ground within thirty minutes of takes off and battling the militias, it was going to be a long night for them because they had no idea how long they had to really hold them once they were secured.

              The Martinez refineries were actually the closest; the first assault would start with them as other columns continued to push out to the other ones.  The refinery the furthest away was going to take the longest fortunately they column assigned to it could take I-680 just about all the way there it was Phillips 66, Rodeo San Francisco Refinery in Rodeo.  The largest refinery was the Chevron U.S.A. Inc., Richmond Refinery in Richmond up the 680 too then they would branch with one unit heading directly to the Chevron in Richmond and the other heading a bit further north to Rodeo, thank fully they wouldn’t have to pass through Oakland right now which had the largest militia in the area.  But if push comes to shove they were more than willing to slug it out through Oakland, right now the orders were to take on anyone who cared to fight.

At 0230 chutes were in the air at 0231 the fight was on!

An A-Team and Company B, 1st Battalion, 184th Infantry Regiment (Airborne) they used to be Air Assault but since there were no more helicopters were reprovisioned, jumped into the first Martinez Refinery.  They were immediately engaged in small arms fire but were quick to react and suppress the fire directed at them.  The militia members seemed unorganized and in chaos they were running around shooting at shadows, the Soldiers were able to cut the lights which gave them the upper hand with their night vision equipment.

              At the same time a second A-Team and Company A, 1st Battalion, 184th Infantry Regiment (Airborne) was in the process of securing the second Martinez refinery.  They were following the same playbook as B Company, they were running into the same problems, possibly because both facilities were run by the same militia.  With the lights out at both facilities the Soldiers went through a methodical process of eliminating the militia members one by one.  Within the hour both facilities were secure but the lights stayed off and the Soldiers took up positions around the each facility and readied for a counter attack.  Thirty minutes later they heard 120mm cannon fire, several actually.  This was followed by m249 and ma deuce machine gun fire then that was followed by the 25 mike mikes, then as soon as it started it was over, they could see fires from their positions in the refineries. 

              The two columns would remain in place around Martinez until defenses were set up and they knew for sure everything was secure.  Patrols were sent into the City of Martinez to find out what was going on there.  Prior to the event residents of the area were largely unarmed except the criminal element, San Francisco was very much anti-gun as a whole which now left most of the residents in the entire Bay Area unable to defend themselves and at the mercy of the criminal element.  The city had a population of over 37,000 prior to the event and now there wasn’t a soul on the streets to be seen anywhere.

              One of the patrols was ordered to the Martinez Police Station they approached it carefully not wanting to spook any Officers who might be in, several squads of Soldiers and two Bradley’s would be enough to spoke anyone.  They moved and stopped, moved and stopped, about a hundred feet from the entrance to the police station a single squad of Soldiers stacked on the outside against the wall, on the count of three one man pulled the door open and the others rushed in with weapons up and ready, as they entered they yelled US ARMY US ARMY.  Like many other places in town it was also abandoned, they cleared all of the rooms and did notice the weapons lockers was cleared of everything.  The weapons could have been taken by anyone to include the police and they man not even be in town anymore.  Odds are the militia had them, well those weapons were being gathered along with any ammo and everything else weapons related as they investigated the town.

              Other patrols were ordered to check out grocery stores, pharmacies, and big box stores anything that might help them.  Everything was looted, some stores still had camping gear though which they found odd people still didn’t get it, life wasn’t going to return to the way it was.  A couple of pharmacies had locked type safes for certain drugs those were still locked and didn’t look to be looted; they had ways to get into them though.  As they found these places they felt they could exploit they wrote them down and would give the lists to command and they would decide what to do.  Martinez wasn’t quite a ghost town there were lots of dead bodies every place.  The Soldiers wished they had time to bury everyone, but as they moved through the area they found hundreds if not thousands.  It was horrendous, some died violently others looked skinny, emaciated if you will.  While they were there they found no one, it’s possible that the people that were there hid from them, and they didn’t really know if they were the good or bad guys, who could blame them.

              A small part of the assets from the first and second column would remain behind to help with the two refineries security as well as general area security.  The two columns moved down the John Muir Parkway heading west, once they hit I-80 one column would head north to Rodeo and the other south to Richmond.