Soldier Up (19 page)

Like the other refineries an A-Team along with C Company, 1
st
Battalion, 184
th
Infantry Regiment (Airborne) jumped into the refinery at Rodeo at the same time the others executed their infiltration. They followed the same playbook, except when they took out the lights the militia was ready and had lights in areas that had their own generators, there were dozens of them located throughout the refinery.  The Soldiers also found booby traps and snipers the Soldiers reasoned that this militia must have some ex-Army or ex-Marines helping them.

              The A-Team carried an M-107 .50 Cal sniper rifle they said they would take care of the snipers, the M-107 gave them a lot more distance and hit, ruin your day if they found you with it.  The A-Team said they would take care of the booby traps, each team had an 18C – Special Forces Engineer who dealt with demolition and other aspects field fortifications and topographical surveys.  The A-Team Detachment Commander realized that his after action report would include the training of both Army and Marine infantry on how to disarm the booby traps; they had no EOD to call on so it was up to them.

              Several Soldiers had been wounded by the snipers, but not killed; they were quickly treated and put back in the fight.  Within minutes a loud thunderous rifle discharge was heard, it was the .50 cal, scratch one sniper.  It also alerted the militia that there was a new challenge for them to overcome, and then another round from the .50 cal was fired, scratch another sniper.  This was repeated a few more times than the sniper fire stopped.  A machine gun opened up on the Soldiers, it was either a SAW or an m249, and the boom the .50 cal fired again, the machine gun fire stopped and was subsequently overrun by the Soldiers who killed the two remaining militia men.

              As the Soldiers came up on the generator lights they found if they rolled a grenade under them it did a nice job of taking them out, the A-Team had reported that they had taken care of all of the traps they could find but to keep aware of their surroundings.  All of the lights were finally knocked out and the Soldiers switched to their night vision equipment.  It was easier now to secure the refinery the militia men were blind, it was pitch dark they couldn’t see a thing.  They were being pushed back into the far corner of the refinery and cut to shreds as they continued to fire.

              It took them an hour and a half to secure the refinery, word had come from the plane though that there was a large, very large militia force moving towards them.  All they needed to do was to hold the refinery and not let anyone else in it.  They sure hoped the column would get here soon, what they didn’t know was that the column was still about thirty minutes out, they had wrapped up in Martinez about fifteen minutes ago and were on John Muir heading towards them, as long as they didn’t encounter any problems they would be there soon.

              The A-Team sniper turned around to face out towards town where the threat was coming from, through his scope he could see quite far considering the people that were coming had lights with them, it was about 0400, the sun wouldn’t be coming up for another two hours.  Charley Company took up positions at the entrance to the refinery and other areas they believed to be ideal avenues of approach or places that might be easily breached, as they got closer they could tell there were hundreds of them, they were easily outnumbered.

              They set up the two m249’s one at the entrance with cider block and sand bags around their position, the sand bags were from the militia positions.  The other m249 was set up on the second floor of a building that had a view of the entrance and the street leading down it.  The sniper radioed down the types of weapons they had and number of vehicles, for some reason they stopped the approach two blocks down, they sent a couple hundred down each side street, this wasn’t unexpected so the Soldiers had set up several claymores that should blunt the advance once they trigger the traps.  It wouldn’t be pretty.

              They also had two three SAW’s two they brought with them and the other they took off the dead militia man.  Two of them were placed within the refineries in the event they were able to breach the front entrance; the third was being carried by one of the Soldiers so they could set up a hasty machine gun fighting position.  The A-Team Engineer had taken the booby traps he had disabled and placed them at various positions down the street from the entrance.

              Everyone was told to hold their fire by Charlie Company Commander and the Detachment Commander.  However, the A-Team sniper had reported men with RPG’s and was asking for approval to engage, the Detachment Commander gave the sniper and only the sniper permission to engage the RPG teams. 

              The shot from the M-107 rang out; he wasn’t so much shooting for the man firing the weapon as the weapon itself.  He was trying to either disable the weapon or destroy it, if he could destroy the weapon and kill the firer even better.  His shot was aimed at the actual grenade that was loaded into the weapon, direct hit to it and it exploded in a ball of fire killing four people next to it.  He quickly shifted fire to the next one, fired and hit the man who was preparing to fire it knocking him several feet backwards.  Now the crowd that was heading for them was running for cover but the RPG was still laying there in the street, the A-Team sniper had a bead on the grenade but was waiting for someone to make the move to pick it up, when that happened he would fire taking at least one more militia man with him.  He didn’t have to wait long, two men ran out from cover they sprinted for the weapon and got within reach of it and the sniper fired hitting the grenade, it exploded killing those two men instantly.

              With that the militia started firing in the direction of the refinery, but no one in the finery was firing back.  The Soldiers had still not received permission to engage the enemy.  Then a claymore went off down the street to the left followed by two more in the same location that was a lot of metal balls flying.  The load explosions got the attention of the militia directly down the street.  The claymores on the streets to the right went off causing more death and destruction.  Some of the militia started to pull back, their leaders started yelling at them to keep moving forward or they would kill them anyway.

              The A-Team sniper saw this and asked permission to engage the leaders, permission was given.  A shot rang out dropping the first leader, then another shot dropping the second and the final shot dropping the last leader.  Now the militia was scared and trying to figure out what to do, then the Soldiers heard it and recognized the sound they all knew so well, it was the sound of a 25mm gun humming away firing burst after burst, then another 25mm gun was heard, the militia members started dropping dead in the street, many tried to run but there was a huge explosion in front them spewing shrapnel, it was from a 120mm canon.

              Apparently the column from Camp Park had arrived, on the streets to the left and right .50 cal and m249 machine guns could be heard, it was the machine guns on the M1 Abrams, they were lighting it up.  This was only half the column the other half moved to north Rodeo and would circle back in to clear any militia from that area.  It was also what they did for Martinez too, but they had a lot more power than. 

              Although the militia had some military help from prior service members they really had no idea what they were up against.  It was learned later on by captured militia members that they thought the entire force consisted of the Soldiers at the refinery.  When they were asked wouldn’t that have been stupid if they didn’t have any back up, they simply shrugged their shoulders and said, “I guess.”

              The column that had moved to the northern areas of Rodeo engaged the main militia fortress.  This time the Army took its time, from a mile away it set up its artillery and sent out its FO’s.  The Soldiers never got close enough to engage the men and women in the militia fortress, it was leveled within thirty minutes by an artillery barrage that the occupants of the fortress thought was hell on earth.  By the time the Army was done not a sole was living in the fortress, when the Army finally did enter the camp they found men and women but no children.  Everyone was armed but dead; the Army knew what had happened too many of the families as they found mass graves on the way in that had bodies in them and they hadn’t been covered yet. 

              The Soldiers spent the rest of the day mopping up the militia they then went to work covering the mass graves; they wondered what kind of people could do this.  Although they thought it would be a useless exercise the orders were to gather what they could from local grocery stores, pharmacies and the big box stores.  They were right the militia and gangs had gotten everything, but where did they put it? That’s what command wanted to know.  The logical place to start was at their fortress, most leaders such as militia war lords would want to keep everything close fearing everybody and trusting no one.

              They had searched all of the buildings that were left standing, which weren’t many and sifted through the ruble of the others and found nothing.  There was a lot of self-storage around this area they broke out the bolt cutters and sent squads out to check them.  What they found astonished them; they didn’t find the loot they were looking for but found people living in the lockers.  It made sense to varying degrees, if they were threatened they could retreat back into the locker and lower the metal door and secure it from the inside.  Except in this case the Soldiers had metal type saws the fire departments used to cut open cars.  The first couple of times they cut open a locker they found a woman and her three children huddled in the back, the Soldiers stared, leaving the family they cut open the next one and next one and found something similar.  After that they started knocking first and announcing US ARMY they got a lot of them to open up the ones that didn’t open took some convincing from their neighbors that it was really the US Army, eventually they all opened.

              The find was radioed to command that sent over an A-Team Doc and several medics to check everyone out.  They also bought with them a hundred boxes of MRE’s to give out and water,  essentially they ended up setting up and aid station for the civilians in the area.

              Word spread through Rodeo and the surrounding communities that the militia had been eradicated and the US Army was hunting the rest of the gangs.  People started to come out of hiding and they found they needed to move the aid station out of the public storage areas with all of the new people arriving it made the occupants of the lockers nervous.

              Eventually the loot from the stores in and around Rodeo was found in an underground parking garage that had been converted into a huge storage facility.  The Soldiers who found it also found it guarded by a dozen militia members who they dispatched after a twenty minute fire fight.  Two Soldiers were wounded and one KIA.  Command had decided that the loot would be returned to the community a little at a time.  They would keep it in the garage for the time being and guard it with a Bradley, an M1 and some dismounted troops.  After taking an inventory which would take about a week they would spread the word that there was merchandise available for the local population.

The battle at the Richmond refinery was raging like the others an A-Team and D Company, 1
st
Battalion, 184
th
Infantry Regiment (Airborne) dropped into the refinery at 0230, it was now 0400 and they were still battling the militia.  There were hundreds of militia inside the refinery, the A-Team and Delta Company combined had a hundred and fifty men.  The militia only had small arms but they had a lot of them.

              The Soldiers had M-4’s, SAW’s, m249’s and an M-107 plus an assortment of claymores and grenades.  The militia was crowded into the refinery it really was like shooting fish in a barrel for the Soldiers; there were just so damn many of them.  The plane flying overhead radioed down that there were hundreds more on their way.  There were five Soldiers down now that were critically wounded; the medic was trying his best to treat them while under fire.

              The Soldiers were flanking the militia they then opened up with the m249 cutting down dozens before they realized what was happening, so far the Soldiers had been unable to cut the power to the refinery, in order to do that they had to have control of the operations center which was heavily guarded.  Their orders were not to destroy the op’s center they would need it intact to run the day to day operations of the refinery. 

              The A-Team Detachment Commander decided it was time to take more drastic measures especially with hundreds more militia members on the way.  On either side of the operations center they had set up bunkers in which they were using to fire their weapons from.  The A-Team had incendiary grenades with them; they started lobbing them at the bunkers hoping that one or two would make it in and or set them on fire, they were not concrete bunkers.  They were made out of sand bags, trees, cinder block anything they could find, once the grenades hit them they went up like a tinder box.  People ran out of them screaming and on fire they were quickly cut down.

              Two squads of Soldiers rushed the operations center firing on target taking down the armed people inside.  There were a couple of men huddled in the corners beat up and bleeding with their hands up.  “Don’t shoot, don’t shoot,” they yelled.  The Soldiers didn’t shoot but they didn’t trust them either.  For the time being they were tied up and left in the corner until they had more time to talk to them.  The Soldiers quickly cut the lights to the entire refinery.  The Soldiers throughout the refinery then went to the night vision equipment and went to work,

              The first eliminated the threats that were shooting at them from certain areas high in the refinery.  Next, they set up claymores at the entrance so if the crowd that was coming would have a nice wonderful warm welcome.  They continued to move and shoot, setting up hasty machine gun sites, firing on the militia then move to another location quickly, and then repeating this again and again.  The militia numbers were seriously dwindling.  Although they had the numbers they didn’t know how to use them to their best advantage, that’s the difference between a civilian organization and a professional military one.

              Almost two hours into the fight they started to hear artillery whistling overhead hitting the militia crowd just eighty yards in front of the entrance to the refinery.  Once the FO reported they were spot on they started to walk the artillery out hitting hundreds of the militia.  As they turned to run and scatter they were met with 120mm cannon fire from the Abrams, as they started to scatter down the side streets they were met with the 25mm of the Bradley’s all in all not a good day for them.

              Once the column arrived it was over for the militia in Richmond, the column had swept most of the city taking on the gang and militia that hadn’t joined the fight at the refinery.  The militia certainly had lots of guns but they were inaccurate with their fire and just overwhelmed by the fire power.

              Richmond was the closest city to Oakland and San Francisco proper; Oakland was reported to have the largest and best equipped militia in the Bay area, possibly outside of Sacramento and Los Angeles.  General Watkins realized that they were going to have to take on Oakland very soon, by now the militia in Oakland had already heard about Martinez, Rodeo and Richmond and knew they wouldn’t be far behind.  There was nothing really strategic in Oakland they wanted but it did sit on the I-880 and I-580 which cut right through it.  These roads also led to Camp Parks, to get to the North Bay area they took a different route but now that they had secured the refineries and their surrounding communities it was time to go after the 800 pound gorilla in the area.

              The militia controlled I-80 the Golden Gate and the bridges between Treasure Island and San Francisco.  That was unacceptable to the General as well as his senior staff.  They sent three A-Teams in to gather Intel for three days, this information was transmitted to the MI analysts every few hours, then twice a day they would brief the General and his staff, which now consisted as Colonel Clayton as his XO, the senior Officers in S1, S2 and S3, as well as the other senior Commanders Lieutenant Colonel and above.

              The A-Teams were reporting that militia was between 1500 to 2000 strong; they carried AK-47’s, AR-15’s and hunting rifles, along with that many in addition, carried pistols and hunting knives.  They did report seeing half a dozen people carrying RPG’s and they say three trucks with M-60 machine guns mounted on them.  They had several jeeps they had outfitted with some type of armor; basically what they did was to weld metal plates which wouldn’t really stop any armor penetrating rounds. The militia had four camps with about 500 members at each location.  They observed the militia coming back into the camps everyone now and then bloodied in the evenings.  They followed one such militia team one of the days to see what was happening, they were fighting for more area and running into the gangs that controlled those areas.  The militia was coming in and butchering the gangs, they would give them the choice to join them or die.  Many of the gangs were very territorial but their own numbers had significantly dwindled that they were not match for the militia, yet they put of a fight and lost about ninety percent of the time.

              The militia Achilles heel was that they locked themselves up tight in these camps at night, like an old fortress where they had people patrolling the walls.  To be sure the walls where were huge metal monstrosities protected them from anyone wanting to do them harm that wasn’t the military which could easily lob cannon fire into the camps.  Essentially that’s what the planned turned out to be, a stand-off artillery barrage using the 105 Howitzers and 120mm cannons of the Abrams. Machine gun crews would, under the cover of the barrage, move towards the entrance and under cover fire at anything that comes out of the camp.

              Each of the four camps was surrounded by the Army and Marines there was nowhere for them to run.  To ensure the camps were full and locked up for the night the attack wouldn’t kick off until 0200, an ungodly hour for most, but business as usual for the military. 

              Sharply at 0200 the first shells landed right in the middle of each of the four camps, it was a wake-up call which certainly got everyone’s attention.  The following rounds hit fuel reserves causing tremendous explosions, various buildings which were used for living quarters, dining facility and headquarters.  The militia rushed to the walls to defend that camp, not really sure what to do as most if not all of their leadership was killed.

              As they stepped up to the landing around the wall the militia members started to take fire from the machine guns that had worked their way close under the artillery umbrella.  The militia didn’t really have a chance as soon as they popped there head up to take a look it was shot off.

              The barrage lasted until 0300, then the 11 ACR started to maneuver their way to them, with a single cannon shot from the Abrams they were able to breach each gate at each camp.  There were occupants of the camps that had survived the artillery assault as the tanks rolled into the camps the militia what was left of it started to fire their weapons at the armor, which did no good.  The tanks lined up their cannons each time and fired, up and reload and fire again, five tanks per camp were taking a terrible human toll.  The Soldiers didn’t care they had seen the brutality the militia had brought to the area and its occupants.