Shanghaied - 2ACW

[James G]

106 – Targeted killing

Admiral Miller’s Department of Homeland Security sent a small team to Hawaii to talk to Governor Ito. Whereas under the (short) Roberts Administration, the DHS would have had control of the entire process of debriefing, the Mitchell Administration had put Miller’s people ‘back in their place’ and it was a combined effort of the US Intelligence Community. Miller had stomped his feet but in private. He had come to the belief that there would be an eventual return of the powers so recently held for the DHS. He waited for other agencies to mess up and he would swoop in. The DHS headquarters at St. Elizabeth’s in DC had been bombed in that air attack by stealth bombers and so when he monitored what had gone on with Ito, Miller had been at Mount Weather where the highest level DHS operations had moved to. Communications flowed in from there of everything that went on in Hawaii and there was also the extensive data analysis continuing of everything that had come from the governor’s phone. That was of more interest to Miller than what Ito said herself. The CIA had taken some time to share what they had gained when they had cloned her phone before Hawaii’s re-defection yet, eventually, the data had been handed over. The military-related stuff was of interest to Miller – he had once been a senior US Navy officer, more than a dozen years beforehand – though he was really fascinated by all of the political-intelligence content. In his view, Ito and Hawaii were brought back over to the United States’ side far too soon. There was a haste in the White House to make everything happen so quick there. Ito had only for a few days been playing both sides. Once Operation Blue Eagle got underway, that was the end of everything that could be gained from her having feet in both camps. It hadn’t been his decision to make though. Mitchell hadn’t wanted to drag things out less it all go wrong and SecDef Ferdinand had pushed for the re-establishment of the US military presence on Hawaii at the earliest opportunity. Miller’s desire, one he knew was shared by other intelligence chiefs, played no part in the decision made by the president to go quickly on the matter of taking back Hawaii. Such a great opportunity as the flow of information that Miller wanted held no weight when it came to politics and military necessity.

Among all the intelligence gleamed, there were two separate matters when it came to internal matters within the Democratic American Republic which Miller focused upon in the aftermath of what went on out of his control. The first was that key people within the DAR had been pushing for that country to create an intelligence agency. It was something that Miller had already gotten wind of in part through other sources but there was definitive confirmation from what come out of Ito’s phone. Messages exchanged on the Panda encrypted app which those at the top in that illegal country used showed how there was a need identified for one. Those who supported it, those who opposed it and those who were neutral on the idea were all identified. The justification by proponents was what Miller had his DHS intelligence staff study closely. There was not just internal threats to the DAR which those in Las Vegas were worried about but external ones. That country had the presence on-the-ground of foreign intelligence operatives who had come across from Mexico where there was little control over the border. Chinese and Russian agents had been spotted and caught once they were inside the DAR seeking to gain access to secrets and looking at infiltration. Those that the DAR caught had been deported back to Mexico. It was clear to the DAR that there would be others they had no idea about and that was something that Miller fully agreed with them on. He knew too, just as those in Las Vegas did, the motivations behind that foreign spying effort. There was a wish in Beijing and Moscow to take advantage of the situation with Americans at war with each other and fulfil long-held goals of gained discreet access to information they shouldn’t have as well as people too. In one of his executive orders, President Roberts had authorised the DHS to take ‘extraordinary measures’ to defeat foreign intelligence operations within the DAR: Mitchell hadn’t retracted that mission though had given prominence for the CIA and NSA to take the lead on that effort. It wasn’t a matter of protecting the DAR but instead ensuring the security of the United States because the intention in DC was to liberate the West and get rid of the secessionist regime. The door for infiltration had been opened but Miller was determined that if that couldn’t be shut until the military got around to it, then the DHS would. Efforts were made to stop those foreign intelligence activities. Those spies wouldn’t be sent back to Mexico as the DAR had done but instead would either find themselves in a deniable black site somewhere under DHS control... or six feet under the desert.


Lauren Quiroz was the other matter. The DAR’s Minister for Public Safety was someone whom Miller had spoken about with his predecessor back in January before the change of leadership at the DHS. Miller had personally spoken with the Acting Secretary to call upon the detention of that Arizona former public official who had been a key agitator in her home state ahead of secession. The Acting Secretary had refused to do so, claiming that Quiroz hadn’t at that point committed a criminal act which could be successfully prosecuted. Moreover, he politely told Miller – then a private citizen – to mind his business. Quiroz had gone on from being a rabble-rouser in Phoenix all the way to the top of the DAR’s government. She was doing things with her position which Miller was secretly jealous of because neither Roberts nor Mitchell would let him do anything like what she did! Regardless, he kept that envy to himself. Exchanges of messages which Ito had had on Panda in group-chat fashion with several members of the (then) Council of Thirteen concerned what was happening in Utah. Quiroz had sent officials from her ministry to that DAR state to involve themselves in what was going on there with the campaign against the rebellion which had started the moment that Utah was taken out of the United States. She supported to the leadership what was happening with ‘revolutionary justice’ being melted out while lying about the extent and severity of it all. Governor Clarke was behind it all yet she deceived the other governors on that council as she made false reports to them of what her people there were seeing. Miller knew this because he had Quiroz’s reports delivered to the leadership and then also US-gained intelligence of what was really going on. In addition, Clarke had told those in Las Vegas that a lot of the violence which they heard about was actually the work of agent provocateurs in the service of the DHS. Quiroz had supported that assertion. That was a lie! It made Miller mad to hear it. He might have liked to have done such a thing, though not killing innocent American civilians, but wouldn’t dare. Others bought the lie. Ito had been one of them who told the debriefers sent to Hawaii that she believed it was true. Miller’s reputation long preceded him yet there were certain things that he wouldn’t do. Some very important people in Las Vegas still believed he would though.

Not everyone had been so willing to be tricked on that nor was willing to accept everything that they heard about Utah. Maria Arreola Rodriquez had told the council members (Miller read the message from her sent to Ito and the others) that she wanted the violence to cease and instructed Quiroz to go to Utah herself to put an end to it all rather than directing matters from distant Las Vegas. It had been one of the last messages from MAR which Ito had received, the night before she took Hawaii out of that country which MAR had appointed herself president of. Miller’s first thought had been an intelligence operation against Quiroz when she was in Utah. He had began the groundwork to get that started, savouring over what could be gained. Alas, the same information on Quiroz’s trip had been in the hands of the CIA before he received it. At a Homeland Security Council briefing (which Miller attended remotely rather than be present in the White House Situation Room), the CIA Director brought that to the attention of the president along with everything else known about Quiroz’s activities in relation to details of events in Utah.

Mitchell had declared that ‘fascists’ were killing innocents they called ‘enemies of the people’ in that state which had been ‘Shanghaied’ to the DAR and he wanted it stopped. No disagreement from Miller had come to that assertion but he objected at once to what the president’s Homeland Security Advisor suggested as a solution. Mitchell had put someone new in that role, someone whom Miller had been at odds with since the get-go. Killing Quiroz was the solution proposed. The president, the CIA and the military all supported that. Miller had tried to oppose the idea but got nowhere. Then he was told that the DHS was to carry out that black operation.

How he had longed for Roberts to still be president.


Created by Marcia Arguello had been the Special Projects Office. That was a DHS top-secret directorate under the supervision of the then secretary, two years before her assassination. The Special Projects Office had coordinated high-level anti-terror operations undertaken by the DHS when the Years of Lead had been at their worst during the Walsh Administration. There had been black operations undertaken then at Arguello’s direction yet none of them had involved the killing of Americans on American soil. Walsh never would have authorised anything like that, anything that involved the targeted killing that the CIA did overseas. However, upon Miller taking up the post vacated by the Acting Secretary when he was in office between Arguello and Miller, there had been preparations to do that due to the activities of the secessionists out West. Miller had overseen the transfer of drones from the US Customs and Border Protection and the arming of them so that they could be used in deniable fashion across the DAR. He’d done so less the CIA try to do that themselves when he had convinced Roberts that all intelligence operations of such a nature should be done by the civilian DHS. No strikes had taken place ahead of Mitchell ordering Miller to make the first one against Quiroz and it was almost as if the Gods had it in for Miller!

Forced into action, Miller had decided that if it was going to be done, it was going to be done right. The Special Projects Office had taken control of a trio of Guardians (unarmed variants of the MQ-9 Reaper) and had already outfitted them for strike missions. One of them was sent from a DHS black site in Wyoming into Utah carrying a lethal payload, something that Arguello had once firmly assured Congressional lawmakers that those drones on border duties would never carry. Intelligence coming from the DHS’ own sources as well as what came too from both the CIA and the Pentagon led the strike. Quiroz was in the small city of Logan when the Guardian arrived above the grounds of Utah State University just as her motorcade came to a stop. She stepped out of the vehicle just as the pair of lightweight Griffin missiles arrived. There were two large explosive detonations from the missile warheads and then further smaller blasts afterwards from vehicle fuel tanks. No one saw the Guardian before or after it launched the missiles and back to Wyoming it went unmolested.

Miller watched the strike live via a satellite feed while he was at Mount Weather. He was pleased and gutted at the same time. The drones were his baby but he had not wanted to see Quiroz eliminated in such a fashion when there was so much intelligence work which could have been done. She died alongside nine others and that included a couple of senior people from her ministry as well who were at the university campus in the north of Utah which was being used for so-called ‘public safety’ purposes. It would be later discovered by the DHS that there were political prisoners held there too, ones whom Clarke’s mobs of social justice warriors – the term taken to the extreme indeed – hadn’t executed but rather locked up pending interrogation to uncover other enemies of the people. There would be further strikes to make targeted killings using those Guardians, ones which Miller wanted the Special Projects Office to undertake, though his whole feeling about the programme giving the DHS such a capability would be clouded by the circumstances of that debut in Utah. He really thought it was all so unfair.

[Brky2020]

So now they're killing political opponents. When the DAR leadership finds out and starts responding in kind...where would it stop?

Not that this sort of thing hasn't been done before, but against fellow Americans, even in a civil war; has Pandora's Box been unleashed and no one knows it?

[James G]

May 1, 2021 12:07:42 GMT Brky2020 said:

So now they're killing political opponents. When the DAR leadership finds out and starts responding in kind...where would it stop?

Not that this sort of thing hasn't been done before, but against fellow Americans, even in a civil war; has Pandora's Box been unleashed and no one knows it?

There's already black sites run by the DHS. Civil liberties have been curtailed elsewhere. The movement now to such targeted killings will just be another step in a long, horrible road.
Naturally, the DAR will respond.
Yep, its pretty bad. Neither the military nor the CIA would do that drone killing though and dumped the mission on the DHS. They'll be worrying about the future legal implications. Yet, once it is done, it can be done again and maybe in the future in a non wartime scenario too: that's the problem.

[James G]

107 – Returns

Ahead of the civil war starting, and then in its early stages, military personnel across America had not just sought to sabotage military aircraft but also flown many of them out of the country when they deserted their posts. Most of those flights were made by lone pilots or two aircrew yet there had been several instances of many personnel aboard. The Democratic American Republic and United States of America had lost dozens of aircraft that way. Neighbouring countries were neutral in the fight and they had a legal obligation to intern such military equipment until the conflict was resolved. President Roberts had been willing to see that happen but President Mitchell was in no mood to copy that approach. He piled the pressure on for a return of as many of them as possible. Aircrew were a different matter because for them to be handed back over would be too much for other countries to be able to do when faced with domestic legal complications, but Mitchell wanted the aircraft back. He had the State Department work to see the return of US military equipment – the DAR ones too because there was no recognition in DC of that regime – back home. Canada was the first to agree. Mitchell put America’s northern neighbour under immense pressure over that leading to the prime minister worrying about her own position in the long-run. Ottawa caved in though and agreed to see combat and non-combat aircraft returned to the United States. Those that had been flown into Canada with weapons attached were stripped of those munitions but back to the United States went all sorts of aircraft after American pilots arrived to fly them across the border. In Bermuda, a trio of US Navy aircraft were there after aircrews flew them to that island out in the Atlantic with the wish for them not to be used against fellow Americans. Mitchell himself worked on the British PM to see them returned and London acceded to that. Bermuda was an overseas territory of the UK with many self-governing powers making it near autonomous but not when it came to defence affairs. There were military aircraft in The Bahamas which SecState Renzi arranged for the return of too: among them was an F-22, flown by a pilot from Florida to Grand Bahama Airport. Back the F-22 went along with others.

There were countries which refused to do such a thing though. Another F-22, that one having been in Poland at the time, had ended up in Sweden. Sweden wouldn’t agree to send it – plus an A-10 which had come from a US Air Force detachment in Lithuania as well – back no matter what Renzi said. Austria had an F-35 on its soil and its foreign minister defied Renzi as well while following the example set by Sweden of quoting international law. It was made clear from Stockholm and Vienna that the moment the conflict was over, those jets would go back to the United States, and there too would be the continuing policy of not recognising the illegal Las Vegas regime, but they wouldn’t do what was demanded of them in making an immediate return. On the ground at Santiago de Cuba airbase in the south of Cuba was an F-15 which had been flown by a Florida Air National Guard pilot towards Guantanamo Bay when under the mistaken belief that the garrison there had ‘gone over’ to the DAR. Throughout January 2029, there had been rumours like that about all sorts of military bases and even on one mad occasion a widely-accepted foolish notion that the entire state of New York had seceded to join the DAR too! No such thing had happened and the pilot had realised the mistake at the last minute. He’d flown unarmed and had decided to try to make it to Haiti instead but Cuban Sukhoi-35s had forced him to land in their territory or otherwise be shot down. Cuba wasn’t returning the F-15 during or after the end of the fighting in America. Mexico had a good number of military aircraft, plus helicopters too, which had flown into the country: especially ones with DAR markings. A-10s, F-15s, F-16s, FA-18s and F-35s were in Mexico with several of them having made hard-landings. Mexican military forces had taken control of them while treating the aircrews as ‘guests’… but who were interned like their aircraft were as per international law. As Las Vegas had done, when DC requested the return of those jets – both sides asking for all of them no matter what the identifying markings – there came a refusal from Mexico City to play ball on that matter no matter what was promised or threatened.

Even if Mitchell had gotten his way and got a return of every single military aircraft which had been flown to foreign territory, it wouldn’t have been a decisive factor in the conflict with the secessionists in the West. Having them would help the air war of course. Yet the point was about politics. Strong-arming Canada’s prime minister was something that Roberts hadn’t done due to the deceased 49th President’s belief that that was counter-productive in the long-run when Canada was co-operating in so many other ways with the effort to liberate a good portion of the country from what was regarded as a criminal regime. Still, Mitchell did it. Renzi had asked him why that was the case before he put the State Department to work. All he had told her was that it was ‘necessary’. That was it. Mitchell was showing strength and a change of attitude in what he expected foreign countries to do to support the efforts of the restoration of federal control over his country. The regime in Cuba was never anticipated to do as instructed and the Mexicans wouldn’t either but Mitchell demanded, successfully, that allies came on-side. His view was that for decades the United States had defended its allies and in return, at America’s time of need, it was calling in the favours long ago given out. The British PM had accepted the reasoning of the 50th President and made sure that the Bermudian authorities fully cooperated. Up in Canada though, once it became public knowledge, the opposition and the media brought the prime minister and her government under fire. There was no support for the DAR in any of that nor any wish to see a weakened United States. Instead, the claim was made that Canada should be following international law. Moreover, there was an opportunity to strike blows against the prime minister from those who wished to see her government toppled. The outcry in Canada was something that Renzi made Mitchell aware of in the aftermath but he told his Secretary of State that he believed the government in Ottawa could weather the storm. He also once more told her that seeing those aircraft returned was necessary. Renzi had no sway with Mitchell, something she came to fully understand with regards to the issue over the return of military aircraft previously impounded in Canada. She was left thinking that her time at the State Department would last beyond the end of the civil war.


In the second week of February, ships arriving from Europe laden with military equipment and stores arrived in ports along the Eastern Seaboard and down along the Gulf Coast too. The airlift was by that point coming to an end. Troops rather than cargo were being flown across the North Atlantic and that was far easier. What came by sea was what couldn’t be sent by air (a few exceptions aside) due to its bulk and weight. The ships involved had been loaded in a manner to speed the build-up of reinforcing US forces taking the war to the DAR with everything arranged on the American end of their voyages to make it all work. Every item sent was loaded into a computer system so that it was expected where it arrived and could be sent onwards from there to where it was needed. That included M-1A3 tanks & M-2A4 infantry fighting vehicles, M-9 combat earthmovers & M-1150 armoured engineering vehicles, and pallets of ammunition & disposal stores. Warehouses across Europe had been emptied of what remained in them after the deployment of US forces into Eastern Europe with the latter having been returned home too. There were trucks on the ships, plenty of them, along with trailers. Towed artillery pieces came by sea back home. So too did bulky communications gear and bridging equipment. Shells, bullets and missiles were on pallets and there were also tents, shovels & chemical warfare suits. Heavy machine guns, man-portable rocket launchers and anti-armour mines were stacked high as well. The US Army wasn’t the only uniformed service which had military equipment and stores in Europe. The US Air Force had flown home its combat aircraft and some equipment but they shipped home a lot more equipment as well as stores. In addition, the US Marines emptied their warehouses across the continent and even the caverns in Norway of all that was in them to be sent via those ships making the North Atlantic run.

On February 10th, a convoy of ships involved in the ‘REFORGER in reverse’ (as named by SecDef Ferdinand) arrived at the Port of Houston in Texas. There were five ships laden with weapons and stores to be used in the fight to finish off the Democratic American Republic. Two of those ships had come from ports in the north of Italy and the other three had been loaded in Rotterdam. They had linked up before entering the Florida Straits and gone through there to Texas while escorted by a US Navy warship. Cuba wasn’t really a concern which required the escort – though not ignored – when instead the issue was that of a DAR air or missile strike during the final stages of their voyages. The Gulf of Mexico was a long way from DAR-controlled territory yet certainly not out of their reach: they had struck the East Coast several days beforehand and also hit targets in East Texas and Louisiana. USS Ted Stevens was that escort, one of the shiny new Arleigh Burke-class Flight III missile-destroyers fitted with the very best air defence system available. Before entering Galveston Bay, the unarmed cargo ships left behind the Ted Stevens. The warship remained close by though. The two Fast Sealift Ships (huge ships) went to the Baypoint & Barbours Cut Terminals while the other three vessels were taken by local pilots into additional terminals. Houston was a major seaport and everything was ready for the arrival of those ships to send their cargoes onwards with speed yet to the correct location. USS Pollux, one of the Fast Sealift Ships, and having provided more than fifty years of service, was just being positioned at the quayside at Barbours Cut when the call came of a missile attack.

The US Air Force had an E-3G Sentry on AWACS duty flying over South Texas with the mission of watching for DAR air and missile strikes coming in from the west making use of Mexican airspace. Mexico had been unable to stop previous strikes – and also US incursions going the other way too which DC denied when complaints were made – and military facilities in Texas had been hit hard before there was a dedicated early warning platform in-place to give timely warning. Tomahawk cruise missiles fired from either Arizona or New Mexico were detected going over the Rio Grande in the area around Eagle Pass and entering the skies over Texas. There were many places to which they could have gone with no guarantee that the Port of Houston was at the top of the DAR’s targeting list. Nonetheless, after recent bitter experience of not doing so, the warning went out far and wide. The AWACS directed air defences towards those missiles spotted, and was on the look out for more, while the Ted Stevens moved in closer than it had been. The SPY-6 radar was powered up. That system was far more powerful than previous AEGIS systems on US Navy warships. The electromagnetic radiation was quite something. Across Houston, civilian cell phone and wireless internet services were cut out as an indirect result. The US Navy would never do such a thing so close to a major population centre in peacetime and, in addition, the DAR Navy had been reluctant to do that in wartime near to Honolulu costing them much. However, the defence of those ships and the port facilities trumped the disruption to civilian communications and the inevitable political backlash from that.

Tomahawks heading for other targets in Texas, towards Fort Sam Houston and Kelly Annex inside San Antonio, were left to the US Air Force while the Ted Stevens took on those racing for Houston’s seaport. Nineteen were identified as inbound. The US Navy warship could handle them almost with ease. It’s air defence system was designed to defeat a hypersonic missile attack of more than a hundred missiles using AI to take evasive action. Less than twenty subsonic Tomahawks manoeuvring about on a pre-planned flight path, not one driven by the desire to escape being shot down, were dead meat. From out of the vertical launch missile tubes on the destroyer’s foredeck, SM-6 missiles went up. They raced across the evening sky and were guided into the Tomahawks long before they reached Houston itself. Missile-on-missile kills were made north and west of the city with plenty of time to spare. When the distant AWACS confirmed no more Tomahawks were inbound, the massive radar was powered down. The Ted Stevens had achieved nineteen kills and remained on-station to undertake any more. Meanwhile, the Pollux, her sister-ship USNS Antares and the three other smaller cargo-laden vessels began unloading what they had returned home from Europe. There was a lot to do. Texan politicians, including Governor Garner, would have much to say about what happened with the effects upon communications in Houston, but at least they didn’t have their port facilities at the state’s largest ship facility blow to bits. That was something that they should have been pleased with because it wasn’t just military cargo which went through the Port of Houston. Still… they had a moan.

[James G]

108 – Gotcha

Late on a Sunday night, his damn birthday in fact, Trooper Cobb from the Virginia State Police’s highway patrol unit received a radio call to attend Marcy’s Bar on the very edges of Dinwiddie County in the south of Virginia. There’d been an altercation there and people were hurt, at least one seriously. Because he was nearby observing traffic for speeding violations, Cobb got that call. He wasn’t happy about going. Marcy’s was a known trouble spot and every call made to attend there was regretted by Stateys like him. It was his birthday too, a night which he’d been refused time off for. Within less than ten minutes, Cobb reached the known trouble spot. It was just off Interstate-95, on the northbound side, and attracted travellers, truckers and locals. Cheap alcohol, loud music and dark corners brought in often the unwary who met with violence from regular patrons. Cobb would have liked to have seen Marcy’s shut down. It was a bad news type of place. He pulled up on his motorcycle and found a crowd of people outside. Cobb was surprised to see that they weren’t fighting in the car park: that was usually the case. He hit his lights rather than the siren and, as if they were the waves of the Red Sea, the crowd parted for him to ease his bike forwards closer to where whatever had gone on was before he then dismounted. He could see three men on the ground, all of whom weren’t moving. Next to one of them was Jim. He came over towards Cobb with something in his hands. After a few moments, Cobb saw that it was one scary-looking knife but Jim, Marcy’s bouncer, had it pointed downwards and he had also donned a pair of cheap latex gloves.

“This f*cker,” Jim nodded towards one of those lying on the ground, “done the other two in with this. Evil b*stard and he didn’t give ‘em a chance.”

In his twenty-three years in uniform, Cobb had seen a lot. He’d served in five different police departments throughout the Commonwealth of Virginia before joining the State Police. It had been said that Cobb was a ‘gypsy cop’ but he didn’t regard that as true. He knew of gypsy cops and they were Bad Guys. He was a Good Guy… so he told himself anyway. Before becoming a Statey, he’d done his service with three local sheriff’s offices in the south of Virginia as well as being a beat cop in both the urban police departments of Norfolk and Richmond. It had been back in 2026 when he had joined the State Police, when the then governor expanded the organisation during the Years of Lead which required Virginia needing more law enforcement personnel. Cobb had moved about like he had before becoming a Statey because he was unlucky. He’d ended up in trouble wherever he’d gone and none of that he considered to be his fault. If the situation in Virginia hadn’t been so bad with people killing each other over politics, something he seemingly alone had no interest in, then the State Police might never have hired him. Seven hundred extra officers had been employed that year though with Cobb among them. He had made sure that he hadn’t been ‘unlucky’ since. No more would he take a bribe nor look the other way. He kept his flies done up and cut his drinking back. Trying to do the right thing, Cobb had told himself since his change in behaviour, wasn’t easy but he could do it.

Jim was a former boxer. He was a big guy who Marcy’s needed. When he’d picked that knife up using the gloves he had on, he shouldn’t have done that yet Cobb knew that he would have because there were people about who might have done so themselves. If he was right and two people were dead, then keeping hold of the murder weapon even in such a fashion would be important. Cobb went through with him what had happened. Marcy had come out and interrupted him, so too did a couple of the friends of the two dead local patrons who’s been killed by what Jim had called ‘the outsider’. The story was one which Cobb made sense of before he made the call for further back-up. He’d wanted his facts to be straight ahead of that. It was going to be a long night and his birthday was utterly ruined too!

The third man wasn’t dead like the two he had fought with. He’d been knocked out cold by Jim – ‘One Punch Jim’, so said Marcy – and plasticuffs thrown on him. Cobb added his own pair of metal handcuffs to keep him secure. He searched him afterwards looking for more weapons and also identification too. None of the former were found while there was a recovery of the latter. Cobb caught sight of several tattoos where the unconscious man’s shirt was ripped after the fight he’d been in. There were US Navy tattoos and one on a bicep which Cobb thought might have been a Navy SEAL tat’ too. In the wallet which Cobb searched, he found I.D. in the name of ‘Christopher Waite’. He was a private security contractor for the Defence Department with a security access card for somewhere called Mark Centre up in the north of Virginia. Marcy stuck her nose in and read the card over Cobb’s shoulder under the glare of his flash-light. She said that was a big Pentagon off-site outside of Alexandria. Cobb had no idea if that was true or not. Soon after that, with the Waite character still unconscious from the efforts of One Punch Jim, back up arrived. Further Stateys including a supervisor turned up. What had been first reported as a bar fight with someone badly hurt had been corrected by Cobb to a double murder with the perpetrator in custody. That wasn’t something that a lone Trooper dealt with on his own. Cobb reported what he knew to the Sergeant who showed up. The two dead victims had apparently tied to rob Waite which he was in the car park. None of them had been in the bar itself though the robbers were known by the bouncer and bar’s owner as criminals, albeit not the smartest of characters. Waite had turned the tables on them and knifed each of them with one wound at the rear base of the skull and the other in the neck. He was cleaning the blood off his knife using his ripped shirt when Jim, who’d seen the whole thing, came up behind and give him one of his famous left hooks to the face. The Sergeant looked over at One Punch Jim and told Cobb that by the size of him, that name looked pretty accurate. Cobb had checked the perp’ for identification and weapons as well as to make sure the bouncer’s smack hadn’t killed him or done him real damage. An ambulance showed up at that point.

The paramedics confirmed that the two dead men were such and gave Waite a look over. He was coming out of it at that point and Cobb volunteered to go with him to the hospital. The Sergeant agreed that that was a good idea. The damage that Waite had done to those two robbers, neither of whom were weaklings, plus what Cobb was more certain that he had been at first was a Navy SEAL tattoo, drove that decision where it was thought best not to leave the paramedics alone with him during the drive. Waite had been unlucky to get taken down like he had been and if he was able to, the worry was that he might do the paramedics some harm as well. The car park at Marcy’s remained a crime scene and other Stateys turned up including the First Sergeant who was the area commander before Cobb went off with the ambulance. Another motorcycle patrol officer was sent to follow the ambulance as well. Away the two vehicles went with Cobb in the back alongside the handcuffed Waite. Five or so minutes into the journey, when he was still bound like he was, the perp’ came fully around and at once went on the attack. Cobb had thought that he was ready for anything the killer cuffed to the gurney might try but he was left mistaken in that belief. Waite slipped one hand out of the cuff – something Cobb had thought was impossible! – and went for his gun. The SIG Sauer remained with Cobb though, just, and he put it against the perp’s forehead as he forced him to lay back down. The ambulance driver flashed his lights and pulled up. On signal, the second Statey opened the rear door with his own pistol drawn and helped re-cuff Waite. He left his bike beside the road and went with Cobb to the hospital. With two guns on him from those who couldn’t allow themselves to be distracted, Waite stayed still throughout the rest of the journey. More officers met them there. After that, no one took any more chances at all with the perp’. He was considered extremely dangerous.


A day later, the perp’ known as Waite was transferred from Virginia State Police custody to that of the Department of Homeland Security on a federal warrant. His identification had held up to scrutiny for some time, even the fingerprints supplied, but his DNA hadn’t. A black helicopter came to pick him up from Richmond Barracks and flew him to a secure site West Virginia. The DHS personnel wore full body armour and carried carbine assault rifles. They hooded and shackled their prisoner and, after he gave them what they considered a bit of attitude, tasered him too. The prisoner’s ‘no surrender’ attitude was rewarded in that fashion. Cobb heard about that not long afterwards and was then told that the man whom as Waite was the most wanted fugitive in America. There were two rewards for his capture totalling $31million. He at once tried to see if he could claim that money. Hadn’t he taken the guy who was using the name Waite was into custody? Hadn’t he stopped him from fleeing that ambulance? Cobb was hauled before Deputy Superintendent and told to put a stop to his silliness. As a serving Statey, he couldn’t claim that reward and was putting his career at risk by seeking to. Moreover, One Punch Jim, the bouncer from Marcy’s Bar down in Dinwiddie Co., would likely be entitled to that money offered by the Department of Justice for the capture of that wanted suspect. Cobb was instructed to just suck it up. He was left as mad as hell and even went to the address on file for Jim to ‘talk’ to him… violating protocol by accessing the man’s personal information in the process. Cobb was arrested by fellow officers at the request of the FBI before he could reach that address – Jim wasn’t even there – and then suspended from duties. He hadn’t been able to let the matter drop and would pay for that.

The thought of thirty-one million dollars had sent him a bit crazy.

The killer of those two dumb criminals was none other than Boatswain’s Mate Noel Reed. The Navy SEAL who’d long ago gone AWOL and committed some of the most infamous domestic terrorist attacks in United States history had been taken into custody after tangling with One Punch Jim. It was the stuff of legend, of an unbelievable fictional tale. Reed was wanted for – among other things – the slaying of members of Congress on January 6th 2029 as well as the attempt on then President Walsh’s life at Camp David a few days later. The year beforehand, he had assassinated the serving Homeland Security Secretary when she was in Michigan. There were all sorts of other killings attributed to him including victims of bombings. His attacks, alone or as part of varied group of fellow American Insurgent Army terrorists, had occurred across nine states. He had been up to something with that forged I.D. to give him access to the Mark Centre Building and so those who had attempted to rob him, and Jim who had knocked him down, had inadvertently stopped whatever attack was in the works there.

When Reed (AKA Waite) was at that black site in West Virginia, located within the confines of the state’s National Guard-operated Camp Dawson, he was held in a completely dark cell with insanely loud heavy metal music played. Contact with him was heavily restricted and the guard force for him – and another trio of captives on-site; ones with less of a high-profile – handpicked by DHS high-level officials. Interrogation of Reed didn’t begin at once, not until those who had him in custody were ready with all information gathered. Flying into the site known as ‘Location D’ by the DHS within hours of Reed’s arrival though was the Secretary himself. Admiral Miller showed up and had the music stopped for a moment. He ordered the observation hatch to be opened and the lights turned on. Using the speaker system, Miller had only one word to say to the man who couldn’t see him.

“Gotcha.”

[Brky2020]

"Gotcha."

One less psycho on the streets, one less headache for the feds to worry about...unless Reed somehow escapes...?

Of course, I'm sure there are plenty of psychos to go around for both sides...

[jedicommisar]

May 3, 2021 14:06:59 GMT Brky2020 said:

"Gotcha."

One less psycho on the streets, one less headache for the feds to worry about...unless Reed somehow escapes...?

Of course, I'm sure there are plenty of psychos to go around for both sides...

I doubt he would escape without help or "help" i.e. someone from the Alphabet Soup agencies goes to this guy and makes an offer that for an exchange for a lighter sentence he goes into DAS territory and runs merry hell on the traitors.

[James G]

May 3, 2021 14:06:59 GMT Brky2020 said:

"Gotcha."

One less psycho on the streets, one less headache for the feds to worry about...unless Reed somehow escapes...?

Of course, I'm sure there are plenty of psychos to go around for both sides...

He isn't going nowhere apart from an even darker, deeper black hole.
A pyscho, yes, but a motivated one with massive connections

May 3, 2021 21:41:42 GMT jedicommisar said:

I doubt he would escape without help or "help" i.e. someone from the Alphabet Soup agencies goes to this guy and makes an offer that for an exchange for a lighter sentence he goes into DAS territory and runs merry hell on the traitors.

Ah, his motivation would be nothing like that. He and the AIA are only interested in killing 'big government', whether that be in DC or Vegas.


The American Insurgent Army is a death cult and Reed would willingly take a bullet first before 'selling out'. Reed did the most-recent high-profile attacks against the then DHS Secretary, the killing inside Congress and trying to get the then president but before that, other AIA attacks were just as horrendous. They killed 100 people plus the Dems VP candidate in the Omaha Bombing and slaughtered FBI agents investigating them when raiding at a field office before (the killers there) blew themselves up. They've gone after family members of politicians and government officials too.

None of their previous success, prior of Reed losing his gun partner at Camp David and him getting caught in Virginia, has been through luck though. Military and Intelligence people have secretly supported them. That is who the Gov now wants to know about: who gave them all the info and opened the doors - literally in the attack on Congress - to achieve all that they did. The names of Reed's comrades and controllers will be what the investigators want. To get it out of him, they will have to torture him.

[James G]

109 – War crime

The Chief of Naval Operations, Admiral Daniel ‘Frenchie’ Deschamps, quit his post on February 13th. A member of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, appointed by President Roberts during his short time in office and serving without Senate confirmation, the CNO wasn’t in the direct chain-of-command for operationally deployed elements of the US Navy. Regardless, Deschamps had major input in what the US Navy was up to during the Second American Civil War by his position at the Pentagon among the decision-making body. He and the other Joint Chiefs were there to advise President Mitchell. Deschamps absolutely opposed the attack upon the DARNS Midway. Mitchell, SecDef Ferdinand and his fellow service chiefs didn’t agree with his opposition and Deschamps felt that the best thing he could do, morally but also for his country, was to resign. Ferdinand did try to talk him out of it but the CNO had made up his mind and went. Quietly he went too, without a fuss. After a Pentagon spokeswoman confirmed his resignation to a questioning journalist who had gotten wind of it through a White House leak, the media sought to ask Deschamps why he had gone. He said nothing on the record, nor off the record too. Others spoke up on his behalf though. They claimed that Deschamps hadn’t been prepared to be in-place when the Midway was attacked and ‘thousands of good boys and girls led astray would be drowned’. No once did Deschamps, even when arguing with others on the Joint Chiefs nor talking to his political masters, use the term ‘war crime’ when it came to that attack against the Midway. It would be alleged that he said it though. Comments were made by Mitchell’s chief-of-staff that Deschamps had said that and so too would a senator as well. He didn’t consider what was done a war crime because it wasn’t. It wasn’t even he who warned that critics would call it that: the Commandant of the Marine Corps raised that worry about something like that latching on and being ingrained in the public’s imagination. Still, because DC politics were never fair and full of some of the most awful people, Deschamps was believed to have said it. His principled opposition became something different where it was alleged he used hyperbole and acted irrationally. Part of that was because he was a Westerner, a California native; he had also called out the president’s bad judgement. Therefore, in reply CNO was used, like so many before him in uniform, as a political football in DC. That was just how things were.

Seventeen hours before the Midway was attacked, with all of those sailors aboard whom Deschamps had been so concerned about the fate of, a different aircraft carrier in the Pacific had been struck against. The USS Theodore Roosevelt was torpedoed while in the Eastern Pacific and about two hundred miles off the coast of Washington state. That US Navy ship at the centre of her battle group first faced a multi-faceted air attack which failed to hit her but was only a complicated ruse for the underwater strike. Aircraft in the service of both the DAR Air Force & Navy flew from land bases in the Pacific North-West to draw attention towards their efforts. They fired LRASMs from high altitude and then also went in low trying to get more missiles towards the carrier from shorter range. Fighters and missile-escorts with the Roosevelt defeated that effort. A US Navy carrier group was never going to be taken down by land-based naval air action even if it was Americans themselves trying to do that. It just wasn’t feasible to see an air strike get through. In doing so, to protect the carrier, it was moved to the rear when the escorts came forward into the firing line. There was protection alongside the carrier but it was moving fast and there was a lot going on. An escort, the destroyer USS Shoup, was hit first by two torpedoes head-on and then more torpedoes came at the carrier: two first and then a second volley with four. Only three hit the Roosevelt, but that was enough. The carrier was hit in her rear with explosions striking her propellers and rudder. The DARNS Oregon had used Mk.48 heavyweight torpedoes to do the damage that it did and the attack wasn’t something that could be brushed off. The carrier wouldn’t sink but propulsion and steering was lost. Oregon fled, going fast and deep afterwards, and wouldn’t be found no matter what was tried to locate her. It was one of the few fast attack nuclear submarines that the DAR Navy had retained in service and would show up again during the conflict.

After the Roosevelt had been put out of action (major repairs in a dry-dock would be needed), the US Navy still had two carriers in the Pacific. They had re-established control over Hawaii too while also retaining Alaska throughout. The USS Gerald R. Ford had defeated DAR Navy efforts to stop the flow of reinforcements in terms of a couple of dozen major warships into the Pacific via the Panama Canal: the USS John F. Kennedy was ready for action too after helping secure Hawaii. Naval dominance in the Pacific would return to the US Navy despite the (shrinking) presence of vessels and aircraft in the hands of the Western secessionists. It was a war which would be won by the US Navy. Only the Midway was left as a major challenger to that assured victory and the Ford had that vessel pinned in place up against the coastline of Central America. The Midway had major problems with crew morale, no resupply and no friendly air support. It would have been left where it was to wither on the vine. Any attempt by its commander to try and use bad weather or a distracting attack would have been defeated, leaving the West Coast open to US Navy attacks almost wherever they wanted. A plan of action had been crafted by Indo-Pacific Command to force the DAR to defend the San Diego area against a hypothetical combined airborne/amphibious assault. They planned to use deception and false information to make the DAR believe that US forces in Hawaii – paratroopers and marines – were planning to land there on the West Coast a force a salient in the rear. Nothing like that was on the cards but the idea was to send the enemy into a panic at the thought of it being attempted. Deschamps had been one of the big proponents of the San Diego lie and also leaving the Midway where it was. He, and the wider US Navy leadership, wanted the Midway back after the conflict with the illegal regime in Las Vegas was completed. A vessel like that was completely irreplaceable! Short on crew (with so many overworked doing the job of others), there were still five thousand aboard with so many of them not wanting to be in that situation: the Midway had been at sea when the war had started with crew transfers in and out made. Mutinies had been attempted, defections made of pilots complete with jets and sabotage done.

But then the Roosevelt was torpedoed. The loss of life aboard that US Navy carrier was no more than a dozen. The carrier would sail again despite the severity of the damage done. To Deschamps, that was a strike which didn’t need answering in the manner which President Mitchell wanted it to be. It wasn’t his choice though. What the 50th President wanted to do was to see the same done to the Midway. He wanted it torpedoed by one of the several US Navy submarines shadowing it so as to put it out of action for good. The expressed desire was that with it hit, there would be a surrender from the carrier with the vessel disabled by surgical strikes similar to what had been done to the Roosevelt. Deschamps didn’t believe the president though. He came to feel that Mitchell wanted to see it sunk. While he didn’t say that aloud, he told Mitchell and those at a White House Situation Room briefing on the matter after the Roosevelt was hit that there was a good chance that the Midway could be lost to the sea if struck at. The weather at that time down where it was – west of Costa Rica – was pretty rough and the situation aboard might not see those within be able to save her. Joint Chiefs Chair Dowd and Ferdinand both had dismissed such an idea. US Navy aircraft carriers were near impossible to sink! They pointed to the scuttling of the former USS America in 2005 and how difficult that had been to achieve then also the Chinese missile hits upon two carriers in January 2027 which didn’t sink either vessel. Deschamps had refused to budge from his belief that thousands of lives, most of them innocent sailors forced against their will to fight for a regime they had no wish to, would die. He lost that argument and so quit.

USS Connecticut made the attack. The Seawolf-class boat had twice the number of torpedo-tubes as the Virginia-class Oregon. All eight were flooded at once and there was a mass firing of Mk.48s into the Midway. Connecticut evaded a counterattack, one covered by the USS Tucson firing more torpedoes and Harpoon missiles in a scatter-shot fashion. Only one of the Connecticut’s torpedoes failed to make an impact. The other seven did spectacular damage to the DAR Navy’s lone at-sea carrier. The rear impact strikes saw the propellers and rudder put out of action and holes torn in the hull. Her keel didn’t snap as Deschamps had feared it might but that was a close run thing. Serious shock damage was incurred throughout too. As planned, the Midway was left disabled. No longer could she provide wind over her deck to allow for flight operations and there was no way that the carrier would be towed to a friendly port for an attempt at repairs. Almost seventy lives were lost and the carrier wasn’t sunk, leaving the fears of Deschamps unfounded, but she was out of the war. At the Pentagon, they waited afterwards to see if the battle group commander would surrender and turn over the carrier.

The ‘war crime’ allegation which Deschamps was falsely alleged to have said, where it was suggested that he foolishly remarked that an attack on the Midway would be a war crime, was something picked up by General Fuller and the Council of Twelve. They used that to their advantage. An official announcement was made that the aircraft carrier DARNS Midway had been torpedoed while at sea and defending the independence of the Democratic American Republic. No number of casualties was given out nor the fate of the vessel afterwards. Minister for Defence & Security Rawlings claimed to the state media (that was the only was to accurately describe what had become of the news networks in the West) that the attack had been a war crime. There was no factual basis for that. It was in no way true. The Midway had been engaged in wartime activity and was a legitimate target… like the Roosevelt had been when the DAR attacked that carrier. Nonetheless, the propaganda blow was delivered in that fashion. The lie was one which wasn’t meant to fool the knowledgeable but instead the uneducated. It was designed to put political pressure on the Mitchell Administration while making a victim of the DAR once more. Throughout the conflict, especially when aiming at foreign audiences, the DAR had been doing such things. They’d continue after that little saga. Short an aircraft carrier their country was and a naval war in the Pacific lost and all over bar the shouting, but they landed a blow with the war crime claim. Too many people wanted to believe that, so many had in themselves an idea that the conflict had gone too far and when it moved to ‘sinking’ aircraft carriers – or at least trying to – maybe the US Government had gone too far…?

[James G]

110 – Blow for blow

After the air clashes between Polish and Russian air forces which had resulted in the loss of a trio of aircraft over the Gulf of Finland and then the Gdansk Bay, NATO aircraft deployed into Eastern Europe didn’t fly up close to Russia’s borders. There were flights maintained over Poland, the Baltic States and the eastern reaches of the Baltic, but no aggressive forward flights almost touching Russian airspace. British, Canadian, Danish, Dutch, French, German, Italian and Spanish jets, even US Navy ones from the USS George H. W. Bush in the carrier’s last days before it departed European waters, kept their distance. There was no desire for another ‘accident’ to occur. Air sovereignty missions focused on just that and not pushing the envelope. The Poles did the opposite. They put their jets right up against the Russia frontier east of the Baltic States and all around the Kaliningrad exclave too. NATO partners called repeatedly upon the Poles to back off, to not give the Russians another excuse to open fire. Poland’s president saw things the other way though. Supported by allies in the Baltics as well as further south (the Hungarians and Romanians especially), there was a facing down of the threats from the Kremlin for retaliation if Russia’s borders were breached. Public and private warnings came out of Moscow of what would happen. The war fears in Europe were stoked by those but the Poles carried on. Another accident, a third deadly incident, was feared and those worries came to fruition.

Polish F-35 White Eagles with their 40th Tactical Squadron crossed into the skies above Kaliningrad from out of Lithuania as they flew home from a NATO air sovereignty mission. Just to the west of the Suwalki Gap – where there were Canadian and French troops below at such a military strategic point between Poland and the Baltics – a flight of four White Eagles ‘cut the corner’. Their intrusion was only minor and also short but they went through Russian airspace rather than going around it. From down below, in a hidden location which NATO reconnaissance efforts hadn’t detected it, an air defence battery opened fire. A Buk-M3 system (NATO codename: SA-17 Grizzly) put half a dozen missiles into the sky. Three of them struck Polish jets while the White Eagles were back inside friendly airspace. Two of the White Eagles were brought down with the third damaged and the fourth escaping unscathed. The Grizzly shut down and was quickly on the move – shoot and scoot it was – but within less than twenty minutes, missiles were inbound upon the missile launcher. Poland’s president gave the instruction for a return fire following established protocol to do that if Polish aircraft were fired upon: NATO partners were informed only after the event. The Poles tracked the underway Grizzly themselves using a stand-off reconnaissance drone and from that PrSM missiles fired form their own mobile ground launcher slammed home. The PrSM was an updated version of the ATACMS system both of which were American-supplied weapons in Polish hands. Russian camouflage techniques and electronic jamming attempts were good, but not enough to defeat that attack. Not just the offending launcher but two additional vehicles in support of the Grizzly launcher was taken out as well. They were all on the move and still eliminated.

That attack took side inside the Kaliningrad Oblast, somewhere the President Makarov had been passionate reminding the whole world about was an integral part of the Rodina.

Several hours later, NATO leaders, President Mitchell in DC too, were meeting remotely to discuss the situation, and that included listening to tirades from Warsaw about Polish sovereignty needing to be defended less the Russian Bear make a dash for the Rhine, when Makarov responded. He launched a significant missile attack upon Poland. Short-range ballistic missiles – firing on depressed trajectories – came out of Kaliningrad and Russia proper to smash into Polish military targets. Locations where there was the presence of military personnel from other countries weren’t touched: it was just Polish-only ones. All across Poland, there were huge blasts when Iskander missiles slammed into radar stations, command centres and rear-area supply dumps. Twenty-four launches were ordered by the Kremlin though only twenty-two made it off the ground. Of those, one more had a ‘bad launch’ and blew up a few hundred feet up. The other twenty-one struck Poland though. They were fast, devilishly so, and on the low altitude they took, the Iskanders went right under Polish and NATO anti-missile defences. It was all over so quick. Those distant leaders of Poland’s allies barely knew what was happening before the attack was done with and Makarov was sending out messages to the governments in Berlin, London and Paris as well as DC. He stressed that the attack was retaliatory for the missile attack against the Rodina and would only be repeated if Poland once more opened fire attacking his nation.

Get your allies to back off, was the message, before things get even worse.

The Russian strike could have been a nuclear one. If those Iskanders had been fired on a ‘traditional’ flight path, going up into orbit and then back down again, the attack would have looked that way even if it wasn’t. That was why the missile attack was done in the manner it was though with the depressed trajectories and NATO leaders only finding out after the fact. That really didn’t give much comfort! For the Russians to do that with a conventional attack meant that it could be done with a nuclear one too. The expensive and controversial missile shield in Eastern Europe was shown to be useless. The Russians just worked around it. The long-term implications of all of that were quite real in the strategic sense yet there was a rush on in the aftermath to deal with the pressing matter at-hand: stopping the Poles from making a counter-strike. Closest to him on a personal level of all the leaders in Western Europe was Britain’s PM. He practically begged for there to be no return fire made. The whole thing could explode if Poland carried on with the blow for blow exchanges and drag Europe into World War Three. It was no easy feat, and saw further security guarantees made backed up by troop deployments – this was 2029, not 1939, and Warsaw wasn’t about to be left hanging out alone like it had been ninety years beforehand – from London made unilaterally to stop Poland blasting Kaliningrad with every missile and bomb it could get its hands on. But it worked. There was no further missile exchange. Not everyone was happy at that though, especially Poland’s closest allies in Eastern Europe. They watched Russia blast Poland like that and Western Europe stop a counterstrike. Concerns were raised that if the same happened to them, would the fears in Berlin, London & Paris of a bigger conflict see them sacrificed? It had always been said that that would never happen yet they witnessed what Russia had done to Poland – the attack was out of all proportion – in terror.


The private diplomacy of Britain’s PM had saved the day. He had done one heck of a job in getting the Poles to hold their fire. A counter-counter reply to that would have come if he had failed and there was a lot of congratulations from foreign allies and domestic supporters. That video call he’d made to Warsaw was one which had been recorded. The Prime Minister didn’t want the public to see it. National security was the given reason why it couldn’t be, yet he had rather embarrassed himself with how he had behaved. Some of the things he had said didn’t gel at all with his strongman image: he told his chief-of-staff that he looked like a ‘little girl balling her eyes out’. An edited cut of the recording, sexed up in Moscow, was later released anonymously. In the UK, the government used pre-existing national security legislation to stop any mention of the video in the media, let alone the footage being broadcast. Rumours on the internet turned to seemingly everyone talking about it yet, regardless of that, there was a clampdown on the recording. Even using VPM proxies, it was unable to be seen by anyone in the UK even when attempts were made to share it on social media sites in a disguised fashion. AI-driven electronic silencing shut down sharing of the footage. Across the EU and elsewhere, the recording went out but not in the UK. Criticism came from opposition politicians of national security concerns being exploited to protect the ego of the PM and there were allegations that the country was getting more authoritarian every day.

While that drama swirled, a more significant diplomatic dispute erupted as part of the fallout between Polish and Russian military clashes. The EU’s president spoke with Makarov afterwards. Their conversation was private and not something which the Kremlin leaked to the mocking world. In Warsaw, the Polish president went a bit nuts when he heard one side of the story and didn’t believe the other. He accused the German woman who led the EU of selling out Poland to the Kremlin: once more, Berlin and Moscow were conspiring against his country. There would be no surrender of Poland’s right to defend itself again! Interventions from Berlin with the chancellor there got nowhere and neither could either London, the French nor Brussels solve the dispute. As far as Warsaw understood what had been discussed in a meeting which they weren’t aware of until long after the fact, the EU’s president promised to intervene directly to stop the Polish air missions encroaching into Russian airspace and to ensuring that Poland was well aware it didn’t have European support for any further acts of ‘aggression’. Poland’s leader publicly told her to back off and affirmed Polish sovereignty. Moreover, the whole thing was NATO business and not an EU matter. Britain’s PM took Warsaw’s side when Brussels hit back – as everyone expected to be done when there was a goal to score away on EU territory – to make matters only worse. While Mitchell tried to keep clear, Canada’s PM was drawn in as well where she criticised the EU leadership for stepping outside its boundaries and making private agreements with Moscow at a time when the independence of Eastern European countries was threatened. Those nations were the Baltics which, like Poland, were members of both the EU and NATO. What they wanted was all the protection that they could get and instead of remaining on-side with Warsaw, there was an embracing of all efforts, from anyone who could do so, to see a situation where Russian tanks wouldn’t be rolling into their countries.

The whole thing became one giant diplomatic mess. All the parties involved – west of the Russian border that was – wanted the same thing: unity against the Moscow menace. What they did was argue among themselves with some seeking one-upmanship in that. Makarov could only smile in the Kremlin at it all. He knew that things would be different if the Americans stepped in…

...but they were having their own little civil war away from the devastating divisive diplomatic spat taking place between allies.

[James G]

Next update will be back in the US and the restarting of the offensive to liberate the West.

[James G]

111 – Across the Rio Grande

Where the Poles used PrSMs (Precision Strike Missiles) against Russian soil, with ATACMS missiles also waiting in the wings, US forces fighting on their own soil used only a limited number of them when the long-awaited offensive across the Rio Grande got underway come February 14th. Just had been the case with airborne cruise missiles, those tactical missiles for ground use had guidance ‘issues’. The problem had approached slowly but surely for the US Army in the same manner as it had done for the US Air Force and the US Navy with their long-range stand-off weapons. The computer virus Glow-worm continued to wreak havoc, affecting what US forces could use in combat against those who had unleashed it against them. The Pentagon continued to throw every effort at trying to reverse the damage while keeping the matter top secret. The NSA had said again and again that there was no kill switch and also denied – in the face of clear evidence that it was the case – that the DAR Armed Forces had managed to successfully stop it affecting their own systems. As far as those at the Defence Department were concerned, they had to find that magic solution themselves and the way to do that was to ignore the NSA and focus on what the Democratic American Republic had done to protect themselves. Their defences would be copied. SecDef Ferdinand privately believed that the NSA didn’t want a solution to be found because they wanted to show that Glow-worm was so effective and that would allow praise to fall upon them for designing such a weapon. It was meant to be used against foreign adversaries though. Project SPEEDWAGON was the name of the Pentagon effort to beat Glow-worm and there were a lot of hopes for success there. Ferdinand and the Joint Chiefs feared that if SPEEDWAGON failed, within months nothing would work properly when it came to America’s military arsenal… including its nuclear weapons-carrying munitions.

On Valentine’s Day – the six year anniversary of the death of the 46th President – the Rio Grande where it ran through New Mexico was crossed. Both the III Corps and the VII Corps under the command of US Army North went over into the western half of New Mexico with the XVIII Airborne Corps waiting behind them to strike when Lt.–General Lambert believed a breakthrough was in-sight. Without an abundance of missiles, air strikes and a mass of artillery was used instead. There were free-fire zones west of the course of the river due to the emptiness of the terrain with no civilians about. Immense explosions tore apart targeted areas. Aircraft zoomed in dropping bombs and firing unguided rockets at low altitude while up above them others unleashed their heavier payloads. Howitzers and multiple-barrelled rocket launchers fired near and far from where the no man’s land had run, aiming to strike enemy forces positioned in the rear. The actual river was no serious impediment to a prepared military force ready to cross it due to its narrowness and shallow state. In certain places, there weren’t any good spots to go across but in the main, the Rio Grande was a terrain feature, not an obstacle. ARNORTH forces lined up to go across it following the barrage of supporting fire underway. Assault parties of infantry went over first followed by combat engineers to get crossing points underway. The bombing and shelling moved ahead of them once they were on the other side. However, a couple of foolish mistakes saw friendly fire fall upon US troops from US weapons. It could have been far worse than it was and so much care was taken to avoid any more than the little that there was. Nonetheless, that mattered nought to those killed and maimed by their own side.

The western side of the river wasn’t properly defended as a forward position by the DAR. Special forces recon teams sent forward by ARNORTH had reported what air and satellite observation had shown with regard to that. Green Berets and Marine Recon teams spend their time ahead of the massive crossing engaging DAR commandos instead. That was something new, something unwelcome too. Special forces rarely fought special forces on the battlefield – it was preferred to engage the unweary and minimally-trained – unless the situation was particularly special. It was that in western New Mexico. The DAR had forward elements there for their own observation with orders to stay in cover while the weight of the ARNORTH attack passed them by before emerging and targeting weaker units in the rear afterwards. The ‘stay behind’ mission that they had there was something that Lambert knew all about. That was why after the two terrible winter storms, Ted and then Ulysses, had had spent almost a week having New Mexico across the Rio Grande blasted to pieces and then increased the scale of the unleashing of tremendous amounts of firepower when his heavy forces moved forwards. The final massive strikes using all of that ordnance was targeted where reports were that the DAR special forces might be as well as hitting forward ‘regular’ elements of the DAR’s New Mexico Corps behind them. He made sure that AFNORTH, providing his air cover, filled the skies with jets laden with anti-armour cluster bombs too – ‘smart’ versions of them, nothing ‘dumb’ – when there were F-16s and F-35s sent seeking enemy tanks. The worry in Lambert was that just as the crossing began, the 11th Armored Cavalry Regiment (what was left of it anyway) would begin moving out of cover and charge straight for the main crossing points to make a spoiling attack towards the bridgeheads. That unit had been used in similar fashion in eastern New Mexico at the end of January and there were signals intercepts to suggest that it would be employed in the same manner again. Even defeated in the effort as it surely would be, Lambert’s concerns were strong: the M-1A3 tanks fielded could run wild if they got the chance and cause great destruction to exposed units. That didn’t happen though and those aircraft sent forward loaded with such weaponry soon jettisoned those war-loads of theirs when they came under attack.


Promises had been made from AFNORTH that the skies across New Mexico as well as across into Arizona and up into Colorado would be free of the DAR Air Force. To stop them getting jets up, the US Air Force was joined by large numbers of Air National Guard and US Marine Corps aircraft. Long-range SAMs – not at that point affected by Glow-worm – were made use of extensively as well, many of their launchers having recently returned from Europe. Airbases were targeted for attack and roving fighter patrols were sent deep into DAR airspace on fighter sweeps. That all happened but those promises couldn’t be fulfilled. The DAR Air Force took to the skies and defended them. They engaged US aircraft and also made dashes towards the crossing points over the Rio Grande. Jets of all types from the two sides went down in multi-million dollar right-offs as a consequence. Dozens of air kills were made in the daylight clashes while others limped home with combat damage. Rather than tanks making it to the crossing sites, on several occasions the DAR got aircraft on attack missions through. They dropped bombs and fired tactical missiles into ARNORTH forces which had crossed and were waiting to as well. It cost them dear and overall didn’t bring the crossing to a stop, but they put a hurting on Lambert’s forces. DAR cruise missiles came in afterwards and they were unaffected by guidance problems. With near pinpoint accuracy, devastating blasts rippled down the river from north as far as Albuquerque down to Las Cruces in the south. The display of firepower was nowhere near as strong as that which the US employed but it did have accuracy and was where it was needed.

The reorganised VII Corps put the 35th Infantry Division across the Rio Grande in its corps’ operational area. Those national guardsmen had fought in Colorado and not had the best of times yet the unit was in good shape. DAR air strikes hit mainly the engineers supporting them along with some of the national guardsmen going over. The latter were from the 1/65 INF out of Puerto Rico. It was quite the baptism of fire for them. Yet, like their forefathers who’d served in the same unit in previous wars fighting for the United States, they did handle themselves well in the face of what came their way. Texan national guardsmen down with the 36th Infantry Division in the III Corps’ sector didn’t. There was a lot of panic and unprofessionalism when those with several infantry units were hit like they were. Already elements of that division’s 71st Airborne Brigade had faced DAR air strikes, back near Holloman AFB in January, and not come off good from them. That was repeated when going over the Rio Grande.

Lambert wasn’t going to be deterred. From his forward headquarters, a mobile column moving through the Sandia Mountains, he issued firm instructions for his forces to keep going once the worst of the air and missile attacks were over with. He’d expected opposition on the ground, not from above, but was willing to accept losses rather than stop. Callous he might be called: a butcher others might say. The ARNORTH commander, charged with leading the ground war to liberate the West, was neither. Those losses – human lives – upset him but he put that out of his mind and had everyone else do the same. The only reason that the DAR used so much firepower along the river line was because they were weak behind it. He wanted to get his heavy ground units in among theirs to defeat them and that meant that the Rio Grande must be crossed even when that was so strongly opposed. Off in distant Las Vegas, Lambert had been told that those there had tried to instil a ‘no surrender’ attitude in their military commanders and see that trickle down to those on the front-lines. He considered that to be a load of bull. Faced with what he was about to through at the New Mexico Corps once his own forces fully assembled went tearing across the west of New Mexico and into Arizona, Lambert could only see hands thrown up as weapons were dropped. The US Army doing its thing, making a full-on mechanised attack in multi-corps fashion, with all supporting arms playing their role too, was considered by Lambert to be unstoppable.

Over the Rio Grande the US Army North started to go with their destination being the Pacific shore.


End of Part Five

[gillan1220]

Just caught up with the latest chapters. Things are heating up in Europe while America is distracted.

[gillan1220]

How would the U.S. Space Force be like in this 2ACW? They are only 10 years old since activation at this period.

[James G]

May 7, 2021 8:00:26 GMT gillan1220 said:

Just caught up with the latest chapters. Things are heating up in Europe while America is distracted.

Big time distracted!
Europe won't go full on WW3 but there will be some bad things seen there including a full-on air war.

May 8, 2021 11:21:57 GMT gillan1220 said:

How would the U.S. Space Force be like in this 2ACW? They are only 10 years old since activation at this period.

Most of their bases in Colorado and California ended up in DAR hands. The US re-took control remotely of many USSF assets and then advanced into CO. Still, immense damage has been done and the pain for US space efforts is real.