When we started operations again it was obvious that all hell was breaking loose on the front. There was no plan we could follow; all we had were targets of opportunity, and they were few and far between. The Sov's were running like school children. There were only a few units still trying to fight, and on those we reverted to our roots and just jammed the fuck out of them with raw power and kept the commanders from getting in touch with the troops. The main part of the battle was over. I searched all up and down the spectrum and couldn't find anything to work against. Suddenly the green light went off and the antenna started down. Stretch and I shut down and got out of the hut to where Lani was waiting for us.
"The LT gave out a general call to shut down operations, Sarge. There is nothing else we can do. We are to return to the collection point we used the other night. The HQ area is relocating now and when they get back up we can join them."
"Did anyone else run into trouble?"
"Apparently one of the Trailblazer squads was wiped out by an MRL (Multiple Rocket Launcher) hit. Ann said that there were a bunch of refugees at one site they wanted to use, but they relocated to an alternate without trouble."
Kat came up to me and I gave her a big hug. "It's all over for now, Hon, they are retreating all along the front. The war will go on for a while yet, but we are done for now."
The tanks of 2nd AD had broken through, and when the units north and south had tried to reinforce the breakout, 1st AD and 1st Cav had come in behind them and pushed them back. RDF had given the artillery and ground attack planes prime targets and much of the battle was over within the first few minutes of the attack.
We met up with the other teams back where we had last seen them. We spent the next few hours exchanging war stories. I was able to explain to Lani just what we had done with the Artillery unit, along with numerous asides by the other teams, who had listened in to at least some of the action.
"Deceptivor strikes again. I wonder if they will ever get that unit back together? If they do, those gun captains are going to have some explaining to do." Tom Wolfelt said.
We were not the only ones to be able to instill dissension though; Ann had tried my trick of slightly tuning off of a freq to drive a tank commander to distraction, and Tom had taken a mech infantry commander off the net by blasting static every time he spoke. The man thought that his radio was broken. He could hear everyone else, but no one could hear him.
The operations section was still trying to keep track of some of the units, but all of them were running for home. When we joined the HQ area in the morning it was one big party. My team sat in the goat and monitored both radios, holding each other and just listening. This war was pretty well done. I don't think the Soviets have a strategic nuclear threat left after our strikes against them, and the tactical threat was as good as gone too. There may be a FROG or two left, but they were some of the prime targets for the Air Force last night. I think that I may have just run the last jamming mission of this war. There were other threats of course, but China was winning too many battles with economics to step into an expensive war. As far as the North Koreans were concerned, we had just shown them that we would step up and fuck them over if they tried any more of their shit; no more mister nice guy.
The Moslem world would always give us trouble, but the biggest problem with them has always been that if we slapped them down, the Soviet Union could use that as an excuse to hit us. We no longer had to worry about that. Once again we had been bloodied in war, but unlike some of the more recent conflicts, we were going to decisively win this one.
We had allies in NATO who had a part to play in the victory, but without us they wouldn't have had a chance. The Soviets had counted on their nuclear strikes taking out our offensive capabilities, and they had been wrong. Star wars orbital defense satellites had destroyed 5 out of 6 ICBM's with solar heat. There were vast areas of desolation even with this, but not nearly what there would have been had we depended on conventional protections. Seattle, Washington DC, Boston, Miami, and Denver were glowing glass. There were other targets in the western hemisphere, Toronto for one, but those were the only ones I knew about right now. Boston had been a fluke. There was one last sub hiding in the North Sea that waited and launched when it thought our guard was down. The target had actually been Chicago, but anti-missile defenses had knocked the MIRV down too soon. The loss of Boston was the unintended result.
We had struck back too. Murmansk, Moscow, and Sevastopol were the biggest population centers hit. The key was that we had gotten to all of the small places where they thought that their nuclear weapons were hidden. Much of the infrastructure was intact; we would need that for them to rebuild the parts of Eastern Europe that they had destroyed.
The Commissars had started this war because they had been invaded so many times in history that they were paranoid and just knew that we were sizing them up for the kill. They thought that a first strike would catch us by surprise, and with the US out of the way they could just roll over all of Europe with very little opposition.
There was a knock on the side of the goat and Lt. Nichols stuck her head in. "Hello folks, good job out there. Sergeant Rodriguez is going to be okay, they want to watch for infection is all. Sergeant Hill, could I have a little talk with you in private please?"
I got out of the goat and stepped over to the side with the LT.
"Mick, the CO and I want to send you back to school. Devens is no more, but Ft. Huachuca has been set up as the new intelligence school and we want you to go there. With the support of the Division commander and his staff, you should be able to rewrite doctrine to conform to what you did here. You can make a home for Kat in Arizona."
"I'm sure that I can ma'am, but I already wrote that doctrine and everyone ignored it. The other thing is that I'm not sure that doctrine should reflect this battlefield. The likelihood of this situation ever occurring again is pretty slim."
"Yes, it is slim, but we have to guard against it. That's why you were ignored before; no one expected the situation to ever arise. Well, surprise, surprise. You are going back and teach the next generation of EW operators what to do the next time it happens, and how to work in other possible situations. Get ready to go, Sergeant, you and Kat are leaving with the wounded."
"What about the teams, LT?"
"Don't worry about them Mick. We have Sergeant First Class Christopher to train operators and run the teams. Wolfelt and Stretch will advise her and keep things going properly. This whole unit is due to rotate back to the states in a few months, so you will see us all again. Don't worry Mickey, I'll keep them safe for you."
Getting prepared to leave was not much trouble; everything we owned was in two duffle bags. I wasn't sure how they were going to react to Kat's gun, but I'd deal with that as I had to.
The saddest point was saying goodbye to Debra. Stretch and I had
been nosing around each other for years, and then only had a short time
together. I didn't even have time for more than a kiss and a sense of
loss. Kat supplanted that with her sheer joy, and fear, of going to the
states to live. There would be some adjustments to come, but adaptation
to the situation is the true mission of a Sergeant.