“I’m not doing it,” Deloitte said.
“You’re what?” asked Kunstler, not surprised.
“I’m not having any part of your scorched earth killing spree. My troops are soldiers, not murderers.”
“Frankly, I expected this,” Kunstler said. “I hoped you might see the error of your ways, but it’s clear you won’t.”
“There’s no error. I won’t do it.”
“Principle, or preference, Colonel?” Said Kunstler. “I think the latter. You see, Major Little informed me that you actually met with the terrorist leader last night. You’ve colluded with them, Colonel. In a way, you’re complicit in this rebellion. Fortunately, the order also places all military forces under my overall command. So I am relieving you of command. Major Little will take command of the PRA force during the operation.”
Little grinned widely.
“And you, Colonel, you’re under arrest. For insurrection and disobedience to the laws of the People’s Republic,” the Inspector said.
“Treason,” Major Little said, still grinning.
Three members of the tactical team took a hold of Deloitte; one relieved him of his Beretta. The ops officer and some of the troops reached for theirs and the other tactical team members took aim with their M4s. The tent was dead silent.
“No,” Deloitte said. “Put your weapons down. Do your duty.”
His troops relaxed slightly. The tactical team kept its weapons up; a fight would be a bloodbath. Deloitte would not do that to them.
“I’ll be all right,” he said to his operations officer.
“No, you won’t,” said Major Little as the PBI tactical team hustled Colonel Deloitte out of the tent.
“The East Fork of the White River,” Turnbull said, standing with his assembled field commanders in the bank headquarters. It was the last briefing before they returned to their units.
“Between I-69 and the Hoosier National Forest,” he continued, “there are three crossings, three bridges. Route 231, Route 257 and North Portersville Road. So those are the choke points for forces coming straight south. They could get around our flank through Hoosier, but that’s a seam with their unit to the east and the woods are a death trap besides. On the west, we blocked I-69 pretty good. So I think they’ll come straight down on those three axes.”
“Our teams have not seen any bridging equipment,” Dale said. He had sent Liz and the kids south of town with his mother-in-law, and now he was receiving and collating reports from the recon teams the insurgents had deployed around Bloomington to monitor the 172nd Brigade’s forces. “We could blow them. We have explosives now.”
Turnbull tapped the map. “Not now. If we do it now, we risk trapping our own people north. Plus the US forces might need them going north – assuming they come. Wire them, though.”
Dale nodded. They had identified a couple ex-combat engineer veterans among the insurgents. They were immediately designated the explosives experts. Turnbull hoped they still remembered how to work magic with det cord and C4.
“They’ll lead with tanks, but they won’t go into the urban areas without infantry if they can help it. Their infantry is light – no Bradley or Stryker vehicles, so it’s going to be a problem keeping up. They might try to thunder run it, just tear through and shoot stuff, but they can’t hold ground with tanks alone. They need boots on the ground. Logistics is going to be a challenge for them, especially with these chokepoints. Since we’re operating in zones, we’ve been laying up our resupply in caches inside our areas so we won’t have to resupply over distance as often.”
Banks was there watching, having been promoted to lead two elements north of the river. “Why no anti-tank weapons for us?” he asked. “They’ll be tearing through our zone and we could get some shots off.”
“We’ll let the armor get over the river and engage it there and starve it. They’ll get into Jasper one way or the other, so we let them. Jasper’s where we can get close and neutralize some of their advantages. Target the maintenance, logistics guys, and the fuelers north of the river. Find command posts and attack them. Locate their artillery. That’s got to be taken out. Remember, lay low, let forces that can beat you pass by, and then spring up and attack ones that can’t. They don’t have the numbers to occupy and guard everything. They’ll have to prioritize, which means roads, and long, vulnerable supply lines. You hit them where they are weak.”
“I have lots of reports of paramilitaries, PSF and Volunteers,” Dale said.
“I’m guessing they aren’t front line combat forces,” Turnbull said. “You can stand toe-to-toe with those bastards if you have the numbers. Those will probably be the follow on force for local security. They’re probably going to focus on civilians. You can probably figure out what that means.”
“We’ve evacuated most of the noncombatants from north of town,” Dale noted. “We’ve got them camped out south of Jasper.”
“So we better win,” Turnbull said. “It’s your land. It’s your families. That’s what you’re fighting for. Good luck.”
Ted Cannon moved across the open field and dropped into a stream bed to get closer to his objective. With him were three other insurgents carrying the typical variety of AR15-style guns and civilian hunting rifles. He pulled up the binoculars and looked north toward the outskirts of the small town of Loogootee, about 20 miles north of Jasper where the north-south axis of Route 231 and the east-west Route 150 intersected. The path of Route 150 across the sector was labeled “Phase Line Orange” on the insurgents’ maps, and represented what Turnbull expected would be the line of departure for the PRA forces.
There was an assembly area for tanks and a lot of trucks outside to the west near the high school. It was humming – they were getting ready, and he could hear the rumble of tank turbines from a half mile away.
What was going on in the town was more troubling. There were PSF and PV units in the town itself, mostly mounted in civilian vehicles, cruisers and what appeared to be some requisitioned civilian pick-up trucks with their new owners’ initials spray-painted on in black. They were going through the town, which the insurgents had never actually held, and seemed to be torching the buildings. The old Dairy Queen and the closed down Wendy’s on the south side were in flames. And there was the crackle of gunfire. But there were no armed insurgents deployed in the Loogootee.
“They’re shooting civilians,” the female guerrilla next to him said.
“Yeah,” replied Cannon, not surprised. “I better call it in.”
Inspector Kunstler was wearing his black paramilitary tactical gear and had been conferring with the leader of the People’s Volunteers element in Loogootee. The PBI agent was happy to hear that the town was completely cleansed of reactionary elements. Now the People’s Volunteers were to sweep west and then south behind the main army force. There was to be nothing left standing, or breathing.
“We’re ready,” Major Little, the new brigade commander, reported.
“Then attack,” said Kunstler. “Take Jasper.”
“Movement south all over Phase Line Orange,” Dale reported to Turnbull. “They are moving on 231, and all the county roads south.”
“It’s on,” said Turnbull. He picked up his M4 from the table. No sense in being in the command post – this was not going to be a synchronized battle with a general moving pieces around a board, at least, not for the insurgents. This was going to be a decentralized fight, a series of separate battles between the enemy and independent guerrilla groups. There was nothing much that he could do to influence their outcomes now. At this point, Kelly Turnbull had more to offer pulling triggers than listening to reports. He headed out the door.