“Until the men for the new battalion start to arrive, I want to move you to my staff so we can spend some time getting you ready to take command,” Colonel Tilman explained. “You know the field side of command, but we need to get you up to speed on the garrison side of running a unit. We’ll be back in combat by spring, but until then, you’ll be spending a lot of your time getting your new unit ready to fight.”
Captain Long’s brow furrowed as a reflex as he thought about the enormous weight of responsibility. Tilman must have seen the change in his expression. “Listen, Tim,” the colonel said, “I know you’re nervous, and rightly so. But I’m going to take care of you. I’m going to give you your current battalion sergeant major to help you run things. I’m also going to make sure you are assigned half of your officers from those who fought in the Philippine or Taiwan campaigns, so you won’t have an entirely green command structure. This position is definitely going to force you to grow, but we need competent combat veterans in command, not guys who have the right rank but have never seen battle. My regiment is the toughest, most combat-tested regiment in the Corps right now, and I want to keep it that way.”
Captain Long nodded. If the colonel was going to look out for him, then he knew he’d be OK. “I heard a rumor that you might be taking over the division. Is there any truth to that Sir?” he asked.
Tilman snickered for a second, then leaned in closer. “Between you and me, it’s true. They aren’t certain on the timing just yet, but yeah, I’ll be taking over the division for the invasion of China. I still have no idea when or where we’ll be fighting, but I do know this next round of fighting is going to be bloody, probably bloodier than anything we’ve seen up to this point. That’s why I’m going to need commanders who know how to fight and win when the time comes.”
President Hung Hui-ju was horrified as she walked along Bo’ai Road toward the capitol building. The glass windows of nearly every edifice nearby had been shattered, and the shards lay on the ground below. Debris from the torn and blown-out buildings was also strewn about, littering the sidewalks and street. Seeing such destruction was unnerving. As she thought about all that had happened to her beloved city, she could not help but cry. She could only hope the other parts of the city and the rest of the country had not sustained such appalling devastation as well.
Even now, crews of waste management workers were out doing their best to clean up the debris. Several large trucks had dropped off enormous dumpsters at varying intervals to give the work crews somewhere to collect the debris. As she observed a few more moments, President Hung was reminded that the cleanup effort was in fact an international one.
With Taiwan’s economy in tatters, many of the government services were in complete disarray. Tens of thousands of contractors from the US, South Africa, South America and many other countries had been being flown in to help stabilize the country and get it back on its feet. The US, for its part, was providing a steady supply of food, fuel, and other support to aid the remaining people still on the island.
Despite the devastation around her, there was still hope. Many of Taiwan’s citizens who had fled prior to the fighting were starting to return, bringing with them their intellectual capital and know-how to get parts of the country running again. It would be a slow process getting the country moving again, but many nations had pledged support, and in time, it would happen.
Wiping away her tears, President Hung stood up tall. She resolved herself to rebuild the country and prepare to become the eventual leader of a unified China once the communists had been defeated.
Occupation Duty
Ambassador Ava Hicks cleaned her desk. The clutter on it was distracting her, and she could not afford to walk into this next meeting with General Sobolev unprepared.
The new ambassador to Russia was a stunning woman with an impressive work and academic background. Ava had been born to a working-class family in Michigan in 1972, during the high time of the automotive industry. Her father was a union member who’d worked on the Ford assembly line, building the Ford F-150 series trucks. Her mother had worked as a middle school teacher in Canton, halfway between Detroit and Ann Arbor. Growing up, her father instilled in her, “You can be anything you want to be, Ava, if you work harder than everyone else and take jobs no one wants. You just have to try your hardest and never give up, no matter what obstacles get thrown at you.”
When she was a senior in high school, she’d applied to the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, to study civil engineering and had been accepted. Unfortunately, that was also the year that her father was diagnosed with stage four lung cancer; he died just weeks after she’d graduated high school. With the death of her father, her mother was not able to pay for her college as Ava still had three younger siblings her mother had to think about. Not wanting to give up on her aspirations, she’d joined the Reserve Officer Training Course or ROTC on campus. Her plan was to finish college, go into the military for her obligatory four years, hopefully in civil engineering, and then get out and pursue a career in the automotive sector like her dad.
What she hadn’t counted on was being deployed to Bosnia during the height of the Bosnian-Serbian War in 1995-96. As a first lieutenant in an engineering battalion, her job was to help rebuild roads, bridges, schools, and medical clinics. She couldn’t believe how brutal and savage the warring parties had been to each other. Every chance she got to do something kind for a child, or family, she did. She also worked with her family and church back in Michigan to send care packages, school supplies, clothes and anything else she could give away.
While building a school in a small city outside of Sarajevo, she’d met a cadre of people from an organization she knew little about, the United States Agency for International Development. They brought with them experts and funds to help rebuild the small community. During the remaining time her unit was deployed to Bosnia, she routinely worked with USAID, making many new contacts and friends within the organization.
When her contract with the military expired in 1998, Ava went to work for USAID for several years before later joining the State Department and becoming a political officer in 2002. During her time at the State Department, she’d spent four years working in Iraq, three years in Paris, two years in Moldova and two years in Belarus before she’d returned to headquarters in D.C.
She’d become a bit of a Russian expert over the years and moved quickly through the ranks by following her father’s advice and taking jobs no one else wanted. All those years volunteering to work in Iraq, Moldovia, and Belarus had let her shine. She became the youngest ambassador when she was sent back to Moldovia, and she was on the fast track to become a deputy assistant secretary when President Gates became president. When the war with Russia started, she immediately became the go-to person for all things Russia, especially after Ambassador Duncan Rice had been assassinated in Ukraine.
When President Gates approached her about a postwar Russia plan, she was thrilled to have been chosen to lead what could arguably be the largest occupation and political restructuring of a nation since the end of World War II. The Allies’ approach to postwar Russia was complex yet doable. Throughout the war, the CIA, MI6, and BND had found and cultivated political opposition groups to the Petrov regime. As a credible leader became clear, they worked with that leader to begin identifying and recruiting a postwar government.