BartBurt12
That's all, folks. An even dozen. Six today. I'm officially retired.
Glossary of Terms (not all appear in this installment but this will appear in each future installment and expand to include new and interesting terms).
FOB (Pronounced FAWB) Forward Operations Base
Ell-Tee (Pronounced like it looks) LT is abbreviation for Lieutenant. Most troops call a Lieutenant Ell-Tee if he's a dickhead or if they like him.
CO (Pronounced Cee Oh) Commanding Officer
XO (Pronounced Ecks Oh) Executive Officer; 2nd in command; does the crap admin work.
Habib (Haw Beeb) Derogatory generic terms for indigenous people of Afghanistan. Sometimes Hadji (Haw Gee) from Hadji Baba a character in a movie about desert peoples, mostly used in Iraq.
Hum-V, Hummer, HumVee – The military answer to the SUV. IED food.
TDY (not Tidy…Tee Dee Why) Temporary Duty
NKs (Just say the letters) North Koreans
MBT (Just say the lettes) Motherxxxxing Big Tank or Main Battle Tank
AFV Armored Fighting Vehicles – Army talk for armored cars, not quite tanks and other stuff that carries troops into battle and shoots at other AFVs
Bradley AFV – Tracked multipurpose vehicle replacing the Armored Personnel Carriers like the M-113s. Thick armor, carries 12 troops + crew and has a nasty 25mm chain gun that can tear things up right nicely.
Stryker – Armored wheeled-vehicle. Carries troops and is used to screen armor. Mine resistant but crumple from a main gun hit. Goes really fast on highways.
Fire Road
North of Line of March
3:49am
The fire road crossed the paved road in a dip in the road. Chuck assembled his force in the dip and then sent half his tanks to the south and the other half, hull down, to the north. He'd left 1/3 of his Bradley AFVs 300 meters down the fire road to serve as flank security. He sent another third ahead to perform the same task. The remainder he split between the two tank groups.
Night vision goggles, infrared and thermal sights were advantages the NKs didn't have. Unless they were using heat-sensitive devices, the forces were invisible.
At precisely 3:50 the southern group fired two rounds each into the motorized rifle regiment's positions, walking the rounds south hitting foxholes and vehicles with great accuracy. They pulled back into the depression and waited. At 3:55 the northern group of tanks, already alerted by the tank fire going down range to the south, fired on the laagered NK MBTs and personnel carriers. They fired twice as many rounds and then Chuck signaled the Bradley AFVs to the west to roll back to the rendezvous point.
Once the Bradley AFVs were clear, Chuck ordered another volley from the combined tank force and then ordered a general withdrawal eastward.
The NKs to the south started withdrawing to the south when the northern force charged down the road, guns blazing at the retreating southern force. As the last tank rolled south, Chuck signaled Major Lee to bring the column to full alert in case any of the motorized regiment survivors decided to split to the east.
Chuck pulled his units back to the column to prepare to advance again westward but he kept a trio of Bradleys and pulled out and down the paved highway on a recon of the motorized regiment. The entire intersection between the road to Inchon and the road to the DMZ looked like the Highway of Death leading out of Kuwait. There was no sign of the armored unit. They must be chasing the remains of the regiment.
The chemical alarms began wailing and Chuck ordered the recon team to turn around and head back to the fire road. He didn't have a MOP suit for Sarah and he didn't want to risk her life for something he could obtain using one of their 3 precious mini-drones.
"OK, let's join up with the column." Apparently the NK armored guys used chemical weapons or the infantry used them or someone had them and they breached containment.
In a staff meeting, Chuck broached the problem caused by the chemical spills. There weren't enough MOP suits for everyone in the column so Chuck proposed splitting the column with Major Lee taking the unprotected crews, vehicles and the civilians and wounded up the fire road and across the dip and then on until they could turn south and join up with the main column.
There were a lot of differing opinions and Sarah even questioned the wisdom of detaching the civilian vehicles on a road of questionable quality.
It was decided at 2pm by a tired Chuck simply saying 'enough'.
The next morning at daybreak, the 'soft vehicles' and their unprotected passengers and crews turned north up the fire road and then westward through blowing and drifting snow. Sarah had violently opposed being separated from Chuck but common sense prevailed. He tranked her.
"Major, your wife is going to be very upset with you. When we reach a safe haven I'd like to get one of those. I'm going into politics and Korean debates get quite lively. One of those sleep guns would come in handy."
"I'll personally see that you get a pistol plus varying dosages for the darts. And yes, she's going to be pissed but better pissed than dead. Good luck. I'll see you on the road. If we're not there in 6 hours, head to Inchon. You should make it by the end of the day since you don't have the heavies slowing you down. Keep Strykers port and starboard and in front as well. And tell her…"
"Tell her yourself…in Inchon, Major."
The soft vehicle convoy reached the rendezvous point well within the 6 hour window. The sounds of a battle to their rear chased them across the forests but no enemy units were encountered. They waited and finally the column came into view. It was not nearly as long as it had been when the soft convoy had left that morning.
There were no tanks and only half the Bradley AFVs. The newsies had been sent along with Major Lee and so they caught the whole scene on tape for transmission later. There were very few comments from them. Every one seemed subdued.
A major climbed down from one of the Bradleys and saluted Major Lee and reported.
"Major Thompson reporting, ma'am, with elements of the heavy column. The tanks and a half troop of Bradleys are fighting a delaying action to give you a chance to make the dash for Inchon. The weather's on our side for a change and they can't flank us in the snowy fields without giving us clear shots. I'm waiting here. We'll deploy across the road and give the bastards a bloody nose and slow them down again and allow the remnants of our force to pass through and set up further down the track. If we're lucky, it'll snow and the wind will reduce their visibility and give us an edge. We kicked their asses but it's an NK armored brigade. An entire brigade!"
"Where is Major Bartowski, Major Thompson? Where is the commander?"
"Right where he should be, ma'am. Now, get these vehicles ready to move out. I've brought down the wounded and I'd appreciate it if you could find room for them. We…we…we left the dead. Lots of them. Don't make it be for nothing. Make Inchon!"
Sarah had listened in disbelief to the major's report. She turned and ran to the truck that now served as a commo van and set up the satellite phone and called Casey.
"This is Casey. Chuck, how much longer you going to dick around out there?"
"Casey, Sarah Bartowski. He's engaging an armored brigade with a short company of tanks and a bunch of Bradleys. He's delaying them to give the soft vehicles a chance to dash into Inchon." She gave him the coordinates.
"What can you do, Casey? They've held them for four hours and the Badleys are deploying here to delay them again after the NKs destroy our tanks."
"Where's Bartowski?"
"Right where you'd expect the commander to be, Casey."
"OK, you tell Major Lee to haul ass and get to Inchon. The road's secure and the ROK air force will put up everything they've got left at Inchon and fly interdiction missions. The NKs are pulling back towards the north all across the line. You guys have done good."
"See you sometime tonight, John. Chuck has a sat phone. Think he'd be pissed if I called him?"
"Yep. He's busy. See you tonight."
Chuck was busy. He was about to rain death and destruction on the NK armor.
"You guys ready? You know the drill, right? No slip ups. I got a wife I need to see later. Go back to your tanks and get ready to withdraw 300 meters down the track. I'll be along shortly on foot. Don't let some dumbass shoot me."
Chuck smiled as he watched his unit pull back in parade ground precision. 'Good bunch of troops for treaheads'.
He opened up his sat phone and dialed a number and then keyed in a sequence of numbers using the keypad. 'Payback is a bitch'.
Earlier, they had shoved the commo van into the ditch and added a few smoke grenades to make it look like it was a hulk and not worth troubling about. Inside, a laptop initiated a program written hastily by a weary Major and the van began broadcasting Chuck's recorded voice transmitting and discussing various items of interest including his unit's location. His voice went out and keen ears and signals gnomes of the NK artillery heard his voice and triangulated the signal's point of origin and let fly with an awesome salvo of rockets and artillery. They finally had a fix on the 'flea' that had caused such havoc in their rear.
The NK armored brigade was strung out on the track with the center and command unit passing the commo van just as the NK artillery arrived on target.
Chuck laughed and then stowed his equipment and pulled himself out of the ditch and jogged down to meet his tanks. There would be little left in the way of pursuit. They'd decapitated the command structure using NK artillery, blocked the road and delayed the NKs for hours.
Inchon Harbor
Republic of Korea
The battered column pushed through the enemy's abandoned positions and entered the base, 11 days after leaving the bridgehead. The Bradleys had caught up with the soft column and pushed forward to screen the column from surprise attack but the enemy seemed to have disappeared.
The last tank was 12 klicks from the base when it ran out of fuel. No one remembered the Major sitting behind the turret enjoying the warmth from the big gas turbine engine. It was the warmest spot he could find. He wrapped up in his thermal sleeping bag and fell asleep, confident that the column had reached Inchon safely and that the last of his men were on their way to safety. He wasn't thinking rationally. He was too tired.
The 8 remaining tanks of the company maintained a rearguard and one by one they ran out of fuel and were destroyed in situ except for the final tank. An Abrams is hard to kill so the crew just pulled the electronics and sights and walked to the waiting Stryker. The crews rode into Inchon in the dark in Strykers several hours after the main column had reached the base. No one noticed that they were missing a Major.
"What the hell do you mean 'you can't find him'? He's the frikkin' commander of the task force. Surely someone saw him come back onto the base?" John Casey was angry. He'd been ordered back to DC and he'd promised Chuck he'd see him in Inchon. He needed to arrange for the immediate return of the Bartowskis to the US and no one seemed to be able to remember seeing the Major after the NKs shelled their own column and the blocking force had withdrawn to Inchon.
"General Casey, we're sending out a recon force at first light to search for his…that is, I mean, to find him. The last anyone remembers seeing him was when he sent the last of the tanks up the track while he set up the bogus transmission. He said he'd be along and not to let some dumbass shoot him in the dark."
"Report your findings via satellite phone immediately, Major. This is incredible. Find him!" Damn him. He pulls off a march across most of Korea and then disappears 12 klicks from the base?
"You think he's dead, don't you, Major Lee. You said 'to search for his' and you meant to say body but didn't. He's not dead, Sun. I'd know if he were dead. I'd feel it. He's alive and we're going to find him. What is the earliest we can leave?"
He awoke cold and stiff. He wasn't 25 anymore and sleeping on the hard metal deck of a main battle tank was definitely something for a younger man to do, not a man pushing 39. It had snowed during the night. He had a nice dusting of snow covering his waterproof arctic bag and he just knew that if he moved the wrong way, he'd get a large clump of snow down his neck.
He carefully got out of his bag, pulled his weapon out and checked the magazine and safety and then stood on the turret to take stock of his surroundings. He'd fallen asleep on a moving tank but this tank had been abandoned and the electronics shorted and removed and the sights were gone. Someone was thinking for a change. Too bad it wasn't him.
He'd kill someone for a cup of coffee. He looked around and saw a string of burning Abrams down the track. That's right, he remembered ordering the other tanks to fire on them to render them useless to the enemy.
He knew the base was 12 klicks away. He could make that in 4 hours easily and he hopped off the decking and started walking westward. He let his mind wander and he rethought all the decisions he'd made, second guessing himself with the advantage of hindsight. He estimated it would another hour until sun rise but it was easy to follow the tracks of the Strykers and he set off at a brisk pace figuring he wouldn't freeze to death as long as he kept moving.
He wasn't paying attention to anything, just the effort of putting one foot in front of the other was tiring and he had to will himself not to lie down in the snow and go to sleep. He was so damned tired. He figured he'd gotten 12 hours of sleep out of the last 72 hours and he couldn't remember when that was. And that included the 4 hours he'd slept on the tank.
He heard the sound of diesel engines and immediately thought of NK tanks and so he dove into the ditch and covered himself with his white sleeping bag. He must have dozed off because when he jerked himself awake, it was daylight and there was no sign of the NK armor. Oh, yeah. And it was snowing again. Hard.
The Bradley AFVs came upon the last tank, abandoned and it's electronics shorted out and it's classified sighting devices removed. One of the troops dropped a thermite grenade down the hatch and hustled back to the waiting Bradley. There was no sign of the Major.
The recon patrol turned around and headed back to the base at Inchon. The blonde woman in the crew compartment was quietly weeping and the crew did their best to respect her privacy and grief.
"Casey, Sarah Bartowski. We've returned to Inchon. We swept the road from as far eastward as we could back to the base. There's no sign of Chuck. He's either dead under the snow or he's been captured by the NKs. I don't know what to do, John. He's alive, I know it."
"The Chinese have turned over administrative control of the north to the ROKs and they'll be busy sorting out prisoners. We might know something in a few days. American prisoners will stick out like sore thumbs. We've put the word out. They'll find him, Sarah. I know they will."
"I'm staying here in Korea, Casey, until we know something one way or the other. Major Lee has secured a chopper for us and we're going to go out again in case we can spot something from the air. It has finally stopped snowing."
"Keep me advised." Christ. Now I know why Beckman didn't get emotionally involved with her assets.
Chuck's POV
One foot in front of the other. That's all it will take. Just one numb foot in front of the other numb foot. At least it quit snowing. I'm too damned California to enjoy snow. I need the beach, the warm sun, a hot babe and some ice cold beer and I'll be happy. Yeah.
I got supplies for two days. I got pop flares, I got a bandolier for my trusty stubby, I got MREs so I won't starve. I would kill for a cup of coffee or even a flask of that damned green tea Sun's always shoving into my hands. Oh, yeah, I got a wife somewhere in Korea. I wonder if she's warm? I hope so. Jerome walked quietly beside him, whole again. They'd shared the usual banter and told each other lies about what they'd do when they got home and warm again. At least there were no Taliban driving pickups up and down the road.
Shit, a chopper!
Once more into the breach only this time it's back to the damned ditch. He turned to tell Jerome to hold his fire but his friend was gone again.
Sarah's POV
We're too damned high to see a damned thing. I can't see anything at this speed. We need to get low and slow. I know he's down there and I know he needs me. Good! We're landing.
Oh, shit. Burned out Abrams. This is the line they drew in the sand…er…snow. I know the crews all got out but still, what if he was in one and it got hit? What if he's lying out there freezing to death and I just flew by him?
"Sarah, we know he was alive when he mounted the last tank. We're going to fly up the road, low and slow as you requested, and hope to see something. You need to have faith in the Major."
"I do. Let's go. It's cold and he's hates the cold, Sun. He loves the summer, the beach, the surf…he hates the cold."
We fly low, really low. I can look up and see the treetops. The prop wash from the rotors creates a blizzard but it can't be helped. Damn, it's cold!
The pilot yells something into the commo system but it's Korean. I look at Sun and she's smiling broadly.
She says "Pop Flares!" over the intercom.
We land and Sun stops me from getting out. The look I give her could kill but she says that they need to make sure it's not an NK trap. It makes sense to part of me but the rest of me makes an emotional decision.
I rip off the headset and jump from the chopper and run towards the tall figure standing in the road. He's too tall to be Korean. He's too stubborn to die. It's him.
Sun grunts in exasperation and she and the security team leap from the chopper and run towards the embracing couple. She halts the team and disperses them in a defensive circle and waits. And waits.
"Chuck…"
"Sarah…"
"Let's go home, Chuck."
Inchon Naval Base
"We need to get one of these for the house, Chuck. The sauna is nice but this…this is just heaven on earth." The stone and wood tub is full of hot water heated by convection through channels under the flooring. Korean central heat. Even the beds were warmed the same way.
"OK."
"We really should get out and get dressed, Chuck. I'm starting to prune and Casey's due in any time now."
"Screw Casey. I'm retiring. Let someone else carry the burden. I'll…consult…yeah, consult, from now on. I'm too old for this shit. I'm tired of deployments and the cost that comes with them. Let the kids have the fun. I'm 'funned' out."
"I want you to quit the Agency, sell your business and come work with me as my partner. That way we can be sure there are no more problems between us. And…you quit drinking. I mean not a single drop. And you support my decision to resign my commission and retire. Deal?"
"You want to quit the Army?"
"Yep. Too old for this shit. Too many deployments and too little time at home. Casey will have a fit but I want to cut back on my involvement with the whole Intersect Project, too."
"We'll talk about this after we get home, OK?"
"Fine. But I'm retiring. No more walks in the snow. I've had it."
Three years later
Xmas Eve
Los Angeles, CA
Bartowski Residence
"God, I'm tired. Are they finally asleep?" Their three daughters were wearing him out. He had a new appreciation for fathers at Christmas time.
"Yeah. Ellie and Josie are watching TV in the guest room and the munchkins are asleep. Sunni asked me to remind you to leave out the goodies for Santa. Lee just smiled and rolled over and went to sleep."
Ellie was spending the night since her daughter was with the Devil and his parents. She didn't mind, really. She considered her niece one of her own, any way. Her daughter and Josie had become instant best friends despite the initial language barrier. Now, you wouldn't know that Josie wasn't a born-and-raised California 8-year old.
Chuck and Sarah had adopted a 4-year old Korean orphan but when they went to pick her up at the orphanage, they found her hanging on to a younger girl. The social worker said it was her younger sister.
"Chuck? Please…"
"Of course. It wouldn't be right to split them up."
The social worker made some notations and then explained to the two girls that they had new parents to love them and care for them.
While Sarah fussed over the girls and explained through a translator that they'd be flying to America, Chuck wandered out into the playground. A jet flew overhead and Chuck noticed one child run and hide. Curious, he walked over to her 'hiding place'. She was about 5 years old and pretty as a picture. He accessed the language file.
"Don't be afraid. It's just a jet plane. It won't hurt you, I promise. I'm Chuck from America. What's your name?"
He spent 30 minutes talking to his new friend, Jo. She hated planes because they'd killed her family. She was afraid they were looking for her to finish the job.
"Jo, would you like to have a new family? I have two new daughters and I'd love to have someone like you that I could talk to and be a father to. Would you like to come home with me and my wife and be part of our family?"
Sarah found her husband sitting in a ditch with a little girl sitting on his lap wrapped around him. They were both soaked from the water in the ditch but there was something about how he was holding her…
Sarah went back into the orphanage and told the social worker to 'add one more, please'. She knew her husband. He had a thing for women he found in ditches.
"Lee has the right idea. I'm bushed. Sarah? Sarah? Where are you?"
"Right here. Throw on jeans and a sweat shirt. I want you to unwrap your present early."
The light was out but he had no problem finding her in the dark. "What the hell? What are you wearing, Sarah?"
"It's part of your Christmas present, sweetie. Now c'mon. Close your eyes and I'll lead you to the rest of it." She took him by the hand and led him downstairs and out to the driveway.
"Open your eyes, Chuck."
She was standing beside a military HummV. And she was wearing Afghan robes and headgear almost exactly like what she wore in Afghanistan when she and Larkin…
"What's going on here, Sarah?" He was trying not to be angry but his memory of that meeting was far from pleasant.
"That night in Afghanistan, in the ditch when you got hurt, that was the first time I ever told you I loved you. I wanted to make love to you so badly, Chuck, and you thought I was with Larkin. I want to make that wrong right, OK? I borrowed this from the post. You got a friend who runs the motor pool and I've got this until the weekend."
"So you want me, us, to climb up into that uncomfortable truck and fuck like bunnies when we've got a bed upstairs?"
She looked stricken and couldn't meet his eyes.
"Cool!" He scooped her up and tore open a door and dumped her inside.
Sometime later she broke off a kiss that still made her want more. She could taste herself on his tongue and they'd made love with her skirts pulled up and then totally naked. She hoped he had enough strength left to carry her because she was sure her legs wouldn't work.
They'd come so far since the foxhole and overcome obstacles that would have killed most couples. Now they had a family and a secure future and everything was right with her world.
"Merry Xmas, baby, I love you." He was asleep, just like the first time she'd told him she loved him in Columbus. She snuggled down into his warmth. Home in so many different ways. She'd let him sleep a few minutes longer and then they'd have to get up and make themselves 'presentable' and wait for their kids to discover what Santa had brought them. She already had everything she ever needed and wanted.
End
