Fem War II - Chapter Three

 

 

Colonel Grappler and Sergeant Nacirema, still dressed in civvie gear, walked out of the front of that aging building , the Pentagon, with a look of disgust on their faces, and headed off to the Sine Irish Pub for a fast shot and a long beer.

 

Settled with a good Irish whiskey and a pint of Guinness each in front of them in a fine old timber booth, they let off a little steam.

 

“Damn those REMF b******s!”  Jess lead off.

 

“I’ll drink to that - morons!”

 

“Things are moving fast out there in the West and it’s hotting up - Washington may be a long way from the action, but I can almost feel the hurting and the bleeding going on out there in Cali-forn-aye-ae way!  Our guys are taking a beating - there and all across the Pacific!”

Jess said nothing - Grappler had a son out there, up North with the 173d Airborne.

 

“Yep!  And up in Canada and Mexico now.  I feel it too, and they’re just idling along  in there as if the whole thing will just run out of steam.  Christ - Japan has fallen already and the Empire is knocking on the doorstep of China right now.  Korea’s gone - that Empire deal with China to split the proceeds of a mutual invasion paid off - for them!”

 

Jess drew a long draught of Guinness, and set the glass down steady as a rock,

 

“Yeah - this whole damn war so far is phoney!  How we gonna get into this thing?  Kick some Empire A*s!”

 

“Empire!”, Grappler grunted, " Empire of the Rising Fucken’ Moon" -  can you believe that?  Some goddamned hippy, leftie, soft a*s feministy butt-chewing goddamned name for the rape of America and the rest of the world!” 

 

 

Grappler fixed every lousy low-down name that he hated on to the Empire, and piled the vitriol on doing it, too,

 

“Told ‘em all it was wrong to let all those dumbasses run their own show - give ‘em enough rope out there, and they set up an opposition government to Uncle Sam himself!”

 

Jess pulled back,

 

“Hey, ain’t no fault o’ mine I supported SOME o’ their s**t!  I just stood for right, like always.. and fair play for everyone.  Never thought those pansy-asses’d go that far with it!”

 

“OK, OK.  No use us going over past history now. We gotta get into this thing, and damned soon before the (sneers) ‘Empire of The Rising Moon’ is knocking on OUR front door!”

 

Jess snorted in disgust..again.

 

“Well, they ain’t gonna give us a shot up there in the Pentagon - not ‘til they’re down to the last ten guys n’ gals between here and the White House, seems like.  F*****g politicians in uniform if you ask me!” 

 

“We’ll go it alone, then!  F**k ‘em!  Remember Teddy Roosevelt?”

 

“Who the f**k is Teddy Roosevelt? We never had a trooper by that name!”

 

“Nah - an old President from way back.  When the Spanish-American War broke out, he raised an irregular regiment - the Tough Riders or something.. Yeah - Rough Riders.   We could raise a regiment ourselves.  Plenty of good people out there just itching to get into this and bust a cap or ten on the Empire!”

 

 

“Grappler’s Rough Riders?  Sounds like a f****n’ condom!  Jee-zuz - waddya think people’ll make of a name like that?  Laugh their heads off, and think we’re a bunch of f****n’ old pansies or somethin’!”

 

Jess again shook her head in disgust….

 

“OK - I’m right with ya on raising a regiment of our own!  But not no f****n’ ‘Rough Riders’ - OK?  Let’s finish our drinks and get goin’!  And you KNOW I got nothin’ against gays n’ stuff, that BEH was  a damned good trooper ‘til he caught that Artificial Intelligence Detonation System up the a*s in Guatemala….. I just don’t wanna be put down as wimps, you know?”

 

“Prosit!”, said Colonel Grappler.  They drank deeply, paid their bill, and left.

 

*     *     *

 

Temple was a mess.  Not a word from her parents in California, run out of food, and the dog had nothing to eat, either.  The bad news never stopped coming.

 

The Empire was over the Rockies and onto the Great Plains and into the desert country, and making headway every damned day.  They’d put a sweep on through neutral Mexico and caught everyone with their pants down in the Western Desert country, including the Mehicans, who were pretty riled about the whole thing and itching now to get into it.. big time!

 

On top of that, they’d pulled a surprise sweep through western Canada, neutral again, and swept down from the North like a howling winter gale on the open end of the BEF’s defence line.

 

Latest news was that the Border Exigency Force, the BEF, was having to pull back to the Missouri/Mississipi along with a bunch of Canucks - fast, and leaving all their heavy hardware behind, too.  With their backs to the Miss, nobody knew what was gonna happen… and it was only a matter of a few days until they were forced back to Ol Man River.

 

Temple figured the best thing she could do was take it on the road, and become a hobo of sorts, until she found somewhere with food and some organisation.

 

She fed old Buffy the last of the rice crackers, the dog looking at her like she was  Lucretia Borgia or something, but scoffing them down regardless, then loaded up a pack. 

 

Just a few essentials - her years of camping out had taught her what not to carry, and she started off light - warm clothes and a woollen hat with a peak, change of clothes, socks, some foot powder and soap and stuff, waterproof sleeping bag and groundsheet that doubled as a half tent, a good pair of hiking shoes, and, of course, Dad’s faithful old rifle and a hundred rounds of ammo for it.

 

She didn’t bother to lock the house up - why rile ‘em up and make ‘em smash their way in - then they’d be more likely to torch the place for fun… nothing there much they could carry off anyway….

 

She headed off down that long highway, not a vehicle in sight, her old dog at her side…

 

*     *     *

 

Hustler Hiwatt stepped off the ship in New York Harbour, after his fine view of the Statue of Liberty. 

 

“I’m the King of The World”, he thought, "and now let’s see what we can do to get up a little hustle going.  Need to sign up with one of those military outfits for the War out West - not a rough tough one - just some nice, comfy supply job will do nicely thanks… somewhere where he could just make a nice living and maybe even get US citizenship without putting himself in too much harm’s way.  Yeah - dual citizenship never went astray!"

 

The fact that the British had signed on with the United States, as an ally of Canada, would help there.  He was a True Blue Brit through and through, and he was sure they’d leap at the chance to sign up any extra warm body, especially one of their new Allies….

 

He set out to find a nice recruiting office and offer his services…..

 

*     *     *

 

Ex-President Serena hadn’t needed to go and find a recruiting office.  The moment she made her announcement she was offered all sorts of nice, cosy military jobs - and she rejected them all.

 

“I want a combat job - same as anyone else!”, she said, so they whipped her through
Basic Training and set her up in a pool of reinforcements ready to go. They also figured that a Corporal’s stripes would help an ex-President, too, so she was already on her way to the higher ranks, as many automatically assumed she would want and would achieve.

 

They just didn’t know Serena.  She was determined to avenge her brother, and had no aspirations to rank if it meant taking her away from the chance to kick back at that upstart bunch of murdering rats - this was not only a matter of national policy, but also, for Serena, very personal.

 

*     *     *

 

Grappler and Jess set up their own recruiting station - right there in Jess’ central Washington house - and advertised for volunteers in the national papers and on the internet and television.

 

They made it clear that they already had a battle-toughed and trained core cadre, and were only taking the very best.

 

Even so, they were overwhelmed by applications from people from all walks of life, and had to sit down for nights and days just to sort through them.  Many of these people hadn’t had much success with the recruiting offices, which were understandably still overwhelmed by qualified reservists and enlistees, so they were itching to get a shot at The Empire any way they could.

 

Jess shook her head to clear her mind that felt like cotton wool after hours of going through application after application,

 

“Looks like we’re gonna have plenty of good people for this Legion!  What the hell are we going to call it anyway?”

 

“I still haven’t figured that out yet.  Damned hard to come up with something that doesn’t sound stupid.  Let’s leave out Legion of the Damned, shall we?  How about Patriotic Legion or something…something simple?”

 

“Jeez, Colonel, that’s a bit corny, don’tcha think? Let’s just call it the Volunteer American Light Legion.. VALL.. sounds  easy enough.  Better than say, Duke of Grappler’s - DOGs or similar… American Volunteer Regiment..simple enough!”

 

“Yeah - I reckon AVR’ll do.  Name’s nothing anyway.  We need to get our selections training fast.. that situation out West isn’t getting any better.  Let’s get down to some final selections tomorrow morning - I’m beat.”

 

“OK, Colonel - I’m the same - off for a few hours sleep and not even a drink.  We’ve got a pretty good short list, and I reckon it should only take a coupla hours tomorrow… then we can start.”

 

“Yeah - I’m with you there.  Jess… how do you reckon they’ll go.. when the s**t hits the fan for real?  I’ve never handled amateur troops before.. you did that stint in
Sierra Leone with those irregulars.  Give me some views.”

 

Jess didn’t need to think much about that.

 

“Colonel - well, let’s just say that when the metal meets the meat, there ain’t much difference between a regular trooper and a pure volunteer.  They’re both volunteers, and we know that volunteers are the best material to make a good trooper, and you get just as many failures and funk-outs with regulars as you do with irregulars… that’s all I can say.   We won’t really know until we’re in it - and then we’re gonna want to know about every one of ‘em - mighty fast!  Let’s just sleep on it, and forget about possible failures until we’re there.  We’ll just pick the best we can and just go with them - no point wasting time seconding-guessing who will and who won’t make the grade.”

 

“Yep, you’re right - I know it!  Guess I’m just getting a little old and trying to think too much.  See you in the morning… I’ll walk home.  Need the air to clear my head. ‘Night!”

 

“Night, Colonel.”

 

*     *     *

 

Rubin Carter nodded to his aide to leave the room as Colonel Doolittle was ushered in.

 

“Mr President!”

 

“Colonel " take a seat.  Now .. what have you got for me?”

 

“Sir - I’ve been stewing a lot over that sneak attack on Washington, and so far we haven’t laid a glove on The Empire.  They just go on calling the shots and we just keep responding.  I know that’ll change as we swing into full focus on this War, but it just feels wrong to me that they can just get away with a sneak attack like that, and we can’t throw anything back at them.”

 

“Yep, Liza - I know exactly how you feel.  It’s been grating on me, too.  Just goes to show that sometimes being the good guy and abiding by the rules just gets your a*s kicked.  Continue.”

 

“Sir, I’ve been talking with one of Admiral Rickover’s on the beach submarine officers, and we’ve come up with a scheme that might work.  Briefly, Sir - we want to use one of our TRACs to launch a raid on Los Angeles - and hit back at those b******s right where they think we can’t!”

 

“Sure - but how are we going to do that?  We don’t have aircraft on our TRACs with sufficient range, and that range gets longer every day as we are forced back from The Rockies.  How do we get around that?”

 

“Sir, we have one rail line that so far seems to have little or no Empire activity, and we figure that we can sneak our TRAC through close enough to launch against LA - on a one-way mission”……

 

Doolittle paused for a few seconds, then went on,

 

“…and we are going to use bigger aircraft - twin engined jobs with extra range and carrying capacity !  I have a map here, Sir, if I could just lay it out for you!”

 

“By all means, Colonel!  Lay it out!”

 

Doolittle unfolded a map and laid out her plan for an attack on The Empire home base.

 

“If we can push our TRAC up this rail line here - you can see that the Empire forces are North and South of it in numbers - but we have a window right there to push all the way to the Californian border - quickly before that gap closes - and hit those b******s.. sorry, Sir.. hit them where it’ll hurt - and show them that we can still give as good as we get!”

 

 

“OK, Colonel.  You have my approval so far, but I want those people back.  You said this would be a one-way mission.  Does that mean we will lose the crews?  Or is there a plan for recovery of the strike?”

 

“Sir, we plan to recover them in Baja - the Mexicans still hold that and The Empire isn’t interested in it - just something they can clear up at their leisure and no threat to them at the moment.  We can get the crews back even if we don’t get the aircraft back.”

 

“ Colonel, it’s a go!  Be ready to present this to the Joint Chiefs at 8 am sharp - we’ll get their approval, you’ve my word on that!  Who’s leading this mission?”

 

“I am, Sir!  Wouldn’t send anyone else on a possible suicide mission.  It’s a volunteer only mission, Sir - and our TRAC, Hornet is ready as soon as we have approval!”

 

Carter took Colonel Doolittle’s hand and shook it warmly,

 

“God speed to you all then, Colonel!  God speed!  And go kick some Empire a*s!””

 

*     *     *