Unfortunately, the divisions committed to the defense of northern Virginia had only begun to become coherent when the Posleen landed. Training had been sorely lacking. Maintenance had been worse.
Of the four armored mortar carriers the platoon had possessed at the start of the bugout, only two remained. The Fire Direction Center track had been the first to succumb, dying of a failed track bearing before they were five miles down the road. But the Three Gun track had been destroyed soon after, casualty of their one close brush with the Posleen.
The FDC section had packed into the Two Gun track, still humming along like a top, thanks in no small part to Keren’s efforts before the battle, until they found the diesel Suburban by the side of Prince William Parkway. The SUV had turned out to be victim of simple lack of fuel, and a few five-gallon cans of premium military diesel fixed that.
But hundreds of other tracked vehicles had failed to survive, and the troops from those Bradleys and M-113s were strung along both sides of the road, marching as fast as they could to try to outrun the oncoming horde. Both gun tracks were covered with personnel, and wounded were packed all around him in the Suburban. This really is “Needs must when devils drive,” Keren thought.
But the problem of friendly-fire was on his mind with the last call for fire. He looked out the window. If there were this many personnel along the road here, the roads had to be packed back there.
“Boss, are there friendly troops in the area, over?”
Their mortar platoon leader was the last officer in the battalion and had taken command of all the line tracks he could find. A few tracks had bugged out, others had died from mechanical failure, but seven remained from the battalion, with about half the crews for them, and the lieutenant had picked up replacement personnel as he went. The deal was simple, you could ride if you would fight. If you wouldn’t fight, you could walk. After the last Nineteenth Armored Division unit was destroyed, the scratch unit continued a nearly single-handed rear-guard throughout the afternoon and simultaneously replaced all its casualties. Along the way, “Puppy-Dog” Leper had been forever changed.
“Not any more. Engineers just blew the bridge with the last few stragglers on it. The horses are bunching up on the other side. Fire ’em up, Keren, ten rounds per gun then move on back.”
“Roger.” He popped up through the sunroof and waved to the gun tracks on either side. “Fire mission, hip shoot!” As he did he noticed a Humvee in the woods to one side, with a soldier leaning against the hood. Well, if the stupid bastard can’t figure out to run like hell, that’s his problem.
Arkady Simosin silently watched the last unit crossing the Davis Ford bridge. Whoever it was had fought a hell of a rearguard action after the last of the Nineteenth Armored expended itself. “The Last Charge” would probably be forgotten in the throes, but the final company of the armored unit had shattered a flanking movement that would have cut off half the survivors of the corps. It had been a heroic and ultimately suicidal charge.
He had come to the conclusion that military disasters follow certain prepared scripts. There is ample warning of the danger. There are critical moments, even after the disaster is clear, where proper orders and actions can correct the situation. And there is a reactionary political response in aftermath.
Given the modern speed of information transfer and decision making, it appeared that the reactionary aftermath was not even going to await the end of the battle. He looked again at the bald prose ordering him to turn over his command to his chief of staff and report to First Army Headquarters in New York. The e-mail continued with the comment that a replacement was on the way. He knew the general, a crony of General Olds; Olds would have done better to leave the COS in charge.
So, he thought, this is what a thirty-year career comes to. Better than the poor bastards caught in the political-correctness witchhunts of the ’90s.
He crumpled up the flashpaper and dropped it on the ground, adding one last bit of litter to the battlefield. He turned and climbed in the Humvee as the first crump of departing mortar rounds filled the air.
CHAPTER 52
The White House, Washington, DC,
United States of America, Sol III
2045 EDT October 10th, 2004 ad
“That’s it,” said General Taylor, glancing at the e-mail brought in by a communications technician. He looked over to where the President was hunched into his chair. “All the remaining units of Tenth Corps are through the Ninth Corps lines.”
“How many are left?” asked the Secretary of Defense, staring at the electronic map on the wall.
“Of infantry, armor, engineers and other front-line units, there are less than two thousand accounted for.”
“Okay,” said the President, in a harsh voice, “put another way, how many did we lose?”
“Over twenty-five thousand…”
“Twenty-five — ?”
“We sent in a heavy corps, Mister President,” said the general, in tones to bend metal. “Five heavy divisions with full support. Of front-line troops we’ve gotten back less than one battered brigade! We lost half the total number of casualties in Vietnam; five times the estimate for the first day of the Normandy invasion. We killed approximately nine thousand Posleen, according to the last and only reports we received. All that did was add to their goddamn supplies.”
“If it hadn’t been for the hacking…” said the secretary.
“If it hadn’t been for the hacking,” interrupted the general, “we would have killed more Posleen. We still would have taken these losses.”
“We’ll never know,” said the secretary.
“Yes… we… will, Mr. Secretary,” responded the general, suddenly tired of the whole game. “There’s Ninth Corps.” He gestured towards the screen. “It’s had hours to dig in, lay wire and mines, which Tenth didn’t, and it has nearly secure flanks, which Tenth didn’t, and it is not being hacked, which Tenth was, and it is not going to be pasted by its own artillery and mortars, which Tenth was, and we are going to lose them, too! Oh, they’ll kill more Posleen, but it doesn’t damn well matter, Mr. Secretary, sir, because the Posleen can afford to lose a million troops to destroy one of our corps! This is just the start of the damn war! The only way we could win it from the beginning was to kill over a hundred Posleen for every guy assigned to a gun! And we just took about twenty casualties for every Posleen killed! At that rate we’ll lose every goddamn soldier in the eastern United States to this single landing!”
The High Commander suddenly realized that he was shouting at the secretary of defense. On the other hand, no one seemed to care if he was. He also realized that the secretary was not the one to be shouting at.
“What if we recall Ninth Corps?” croaked the President, looking up at the map for the first time in nearly an hour. His eyes burned. He had spent twenty years trying to get into this chair. It had cost him most of a stomach, a marriage and his children. And one mistake was all it took.
The general shook his head in resignation. “Too late.” He looked down at the briefing papers. The critical information on maintenance was damning. “The Posleen can move faster than those units.”
“Tactical mobility is one of the American Army’s strong suits,” said the secretary, his tone resounding with surety.