Peter Nealen's Blog, page 18

Crimson Star Chapter 1

The desert felt downright cold in the hour before dawn.

Hank Foss drew back the cutoff sock cuff on his wrist just far enough that he could make out the faintly luminous hands on his watch dial.  Five more minutes.  He slipped the cuff back in place and looked over at Cole Spencer, who lay in the shallow wash next to him.

Spencer’s pitch-black face was obscured by a mottled pattern of sand and loam camouflage paint, just as Hank’s considerably lighter complexion was.  He met Hank’s eyes and nodded.  Hank nodded back, then started double-checking himself.

He’d handed his rifle, a thoroughly customized 7.62 battle rifle that had started its life as a DPMS Oracle, off to Spencer, along with his assault pack.  All he had left on was his chest rig, his belt kit, and his pistol, a suppressed SIG Tactical 1911.  The holster was a miserably large chunk of nylon strapped to his thigh, but he found it preferable to any of the other carry options, and he couldn’t just carry the damned pistol as his primary.

At least, once he was done with this first phase of the operation.

Every strap had been taped, every buckle muffled.  His pat-down in the wash was only to make sure that nothing had worked its way loose on the movement into position, along with giving him something to do while the last couple of minutes of the countdown ran out.

The Triarii were not above using radios for coordination, but there was a reason that Hank had left his turned off in his assault pack.  Events of the last couple of years, since he’d retired from the Marine Corps and joined the Triarii, had convinced him that only a force able to operate without the technological toys that the US military had become so attached to was going to ultimately come out on top when everything really went pear-shaped.  Furthermore, he knew that the bad guys had a lot of electronic listening devices and encryption cracking on their side.  The bunch of terrorists, activists, and cartel sicarios in the three target buildings about two hundred thirty yards away were no exception; in fact, they probably had more than the Arizona cops had.

Even if they couldn’t listen in, the bursts of electronic noise that would mark nearby transmissions, that far south of Phoenix, might give the game away.  And Hank wanted these bastards inside.  So, they’d planned the hit the old-fashioned way, using phase lines, time hacks, and specific non-electronic signals.  He and Spencer had worked out the times to give each squad plenty of time to get into position from their respective attack positions, the farthest out being two miles away.

He checked his watch one more time.  Thirty seconds.  He covered the watch and started the countdown in his head.

As Papa Two Four’s section leader, technically he should stay back with the rest of the assault element, letting the scouts move in and deal with the exterior security.  But even as an 0369, Infantry Platoon Sergeant, he’d never been good at staying back and just coordinating.  He’d developed the skill to be right up in the thick of things, leading the way—often when his butter bar platoon commander was completely lost—while still maintaining enough situational awareness that he could direct his squads as needed.

Hank Foss had never been good at directing rather than leading, even when that was what he was supposed to be doing.

His mental countdown hit zero, and he was out of the wash, crawling forward on hands and knees, keeping the creosote bush he’d picked out as his first bit of concealment between him and his target.

It took a couple of minutes to reach the bush.  He was still far enough away that he could move more quickly without making so much noise that he was going to alert his quarry.  As he got closer, his movements were going to have to get slower and more deliberate, and he was going to have stay lower.  After all, he’d already seen the night vision tube jutting from the man’s face.  The Triarii didn’t have the nighttime advantage that American shooters had gotten used to over the first couple of decades of the GWOT.

Of course, the Fourth Balkan War had disabused most of those paying attention of the idea that the Americans would always own the night.  The Serbs had been well-equipped and savvy; they should have been, given that the Russians were passing some of the best of their previous generation of kit along.

Hank hadn’t liked fighting the Serbs.  None of the old-timers who’d been involved in the peacekeeping in Kosovo in the ‘90s had still been around, but he’d quickly learned the hard way what those guys had figured out; the Serbs might be thugs, but the Kosovars were worse.

That experience, most notably one particular night outside of Lipljan, had taught him a lot.  Which was why he was being so careful tonight.

He’d thought about going without NVGs altogether; they were a notorious bastard to wear while crawling or in the prone.  But while he might have gone old-school, he wasn’t willing to give up the advantage entirely.  This despite the fact that his own PVS-14s, as ancient as they were, were dragging his helmet down and trying to put his face in the dirt, giving him a crick in his neck as he craned to see his target around the base of the creosote bush.

There.  The man was as geared up as any of the Triarii hidden in the desert around the place; his chest rig and body armor doubled his bulk, and the M249 SAW’s form was distinctive even from just shy of two hundred yards away.  The desert camouflage he was wearing looked pale in the NVGs’ green image, including the balaclava that covered his face.  He looked like a soldier, not a thug for hire.

With his quarry spotted, Hank could look for the route to his next bit of concealment.  He’d have to cross a short open area before he could reach the next bush.  So, he got down flat, his head turned so that he could watch his target without lifting his profile further, and started to creep forward.

It felt like a lot longer crawl than it was.  Part of that was because he was so exposed; there was no cover or concealment between him and the man with the SAW other than the darkness and the man’s complacency.  Which Hank wasn’t going to bank on, given the fact he was patrolling with a SAW and wearing NVGs.

He kept watching the man as he crept forward, inching ahead with as little overt movement as possible.  If he could see the man with the SAW—not to mention the two others to his right and left, the one on the left being a good fifty or sixty yards farther away—then the man with the SAW could see him.  Just don’t look too closely over here for the next few minutes.  Keep looking farther away.  Look for headlights, or silhouettes advancing out of the desert.  Better yet, keep thinking about how much it sucks that you’ve got rear security, where nobody is going to come at you.

Hank knew that thinking at the enemy wasn’t going to do shit.  He didn’t believe in telepathy or any of that kind of woo.  He’d seen some weird stuff in Kosovo, but not weird enough for him to genuinely think he could Jedi mind trick the enemy.  That didn’t stop him from thinking really hard at the soon-to-be dead man ahead of him anyway.

He reached the next bush, and almost put his gloved hand right on a cactus growing around the base of it.  As it was, a couple of the spines poked through his shooting glove a little, anyway, and it took every bit of self-control he had not to jerk his hand back with a curse.  That was going to sting for a while.

Looking up, he saw that his route selection had paid off.  He hadn’t just been looking at the angle from the current bush; he’d been thinking ahead, gauging the route by the tiny bits of concealment between him and the target, along with the movement patterns of not only the man he was stalking, but the others off to either side.  Now, he had a low, scrubby tree between him and the man with the SAW, and would for about half the remaining distance.

He got up and started forward in a low crouch, carefully placing each step and rolling his foot so that his soft-soled boots made almost no noise against the gritty desert floor.

A quick glance to either side showed him that the others were doing well; he couldn’t see anyone off to the south, and he just barely made out the low lump that must have been Carrington creeping in from the north.  He couldn’t hear anything from either man, either, which was also good.  They were also roughly the same distance from their targets; timing would work out right.

The next step after he reached the tree and sank back down onto his belly was going to be a little trickier.  If the man had been closer to the house, he would have had more options.  There was another shallow wash running alongside the circular driveway, studded with more trees.  But the man with the SAW was outside the wash, which meant there was still a wide swath of open ground between them, with little in the way of places to hide.

It didn’t matter.  It was time for misdirection.  He’d been keeping a count in his head the entire way in; he was on schedule.  His diversion was about to come…any…minute…now.

An engine roared in the night and headlights shone on the road to the west.  The lights turned in through the gate on the south side of the property; Hank could see the glow over the low mound of the underground house in front of him.  And just for a moment, his target turned to look toward the south, just like they’d hoped he would.

It wasn’t absolutely vital to the plan that all eyes look toward the lights.  Each of the scouts moving in on the three target buildings had multiple means of eliminating the sentries.  Hank had his knife, a garrote wire wrapped around his wrist, and the suppressed .45 on his hip.  He was close enough to take a shot right then, though he’d have to dump several rounds into the target to make sure of the shot, and he couldn’t guarantee that he wouldn’t make any noise.

But the man turned and started to move along the edge of the wash to try to see what was going on, even as Hank got up and moved toward him, quickly but silently.

Voices rose out front.  The young men in the lifted Bronco were armed and ready if things went sideways, but their primary purpose was to cause a disturbance, to act like drunken assholes who thought they would invite themselves to a party.  They expected to be met with hostility and to be turned away; they’d pull off in another couple of minutes.

In the meantime, Hank closed in on his prey, his knife already in his hand.

He slipped down into the wash behind the SAW gunner’s back, and moved quickly from shadow to shadow.  In a few seconds, he was right behind the man, who was yelling something in Spanish toward the sentry off to the south.

Hank waited until the other sentry had replied dismissively, then he struck.

He hit the man from behind, clapping a hand over his mouth and nose under the NVGs, twisting his head hard to the side as his boot went between the man’s legs, throwing him off balance even as the knife tip went in under the jaw, severing the carotid artery at the same time that six inches of blackened steel punched up into the brain.

It was all over very quickly.

He lowered the body carefully into the wash under a tree as he looked up just in time to see Michaels nearly decapitate the other sentry with a garrote wire.  The two forms went down into the scrub, and then Michaels came up, giving him an “all clear” hand and arm signal.

He looked back toward Carrington’s position, but couldn’t see the other scout.  Nor could he see any of the others who were currently killing the rest of Jose Ravela Muñoz’s outer security.

He waited, stock still and listening as the truck pulled away, the headlights dwindling down East Old Highway 84.  If something was going to go wrong, it would be now.  He was sure that something was going to go wrong; he’d been at this far too long to believe that it would all go according to plan, no matter how well they’d planned or how thoroughly they’d rehearsed.  And they had rehearsed this part; rehearsed it over and over and over.  Most of the last week had been devoted to rehearsals for this handful of minutes.  But reality never really corresponded with the conditions in rehearsals.

He thought he might have heard a faint yell, suddenly cut off.  That definitely had been a couple of pops, the sounds of suppressed pistol shots.

Somebody had heard something.  A door slammed, and a querulous shout in Spanish sounded faintly from the northernmost house.  The front door of the underground house opened a few yards away from where he crouched, and a head poked out, peering into the desert night, but without NVGs, the guy wasn’t going to see much.

Hank was suddenly tempted to draw his suppressed pistol and take the shot.  The guy in the doorway had an Uzi in his hands, making him a target.  But it was too long a shot, and he didn’t want to risk blowing the whole thing now.  Especially since the rest of the assault element was supposed to be closing in in the next thirty seconds.

The faint rustle and thud of boots on the sand reached Hank’s ears.  He glanced over his shoulder, to see the assault element running toward him in a file, Spencer in the lead.  They’d moved off to the northeast enough that their approach should be mostly shielded by the trees along the shallow wash just outside the underground house.  That they were moving in a ranger file helped keep their footprint to a minimum.

Spencer reached him first, skidding down into the wash.  He looked like a hunchback because he had slung Hank’s pack and rifle over his own, adding to his load and forcing his head down.  But Spencer was a hunter and a backpacker; the weight had barely slowed him down.

It took seconds for Spencer to shrug out of the pack and hand it over along with Hank’s rifle.  Hank took the rifle, checking it by feel in a handful of seconds, while the rest of the two assault squads broke up into three seven-man assault teams in the wash, and got set for the final push.

Things were about to get loud.

In fact, it looked like they were going to get loud sooner than planned.  The door slammed open again, and four men with rifles came out into the driveway, spreading out and scanning the desert outside as they came.  All four were wearing body armor and NVGs.  The man in the lead called out, “Emilio?”

There was nothing for it.  He’d wanted to stay quiet for a little bit longer—in fact, right up until they kicked in the doors—but there wasn’t going to be any quiet way to deal with this bunch.

No battle plan survives for long.  Period.

It was less than forty yards to the closest sicario.  As the Triarii spread out, the Bravo assault team moving closest, since they had farther to go to reach their target building, Hank leveled his rifle, finding the nearest man’s head and shoulders above the low wall that stood above the wash, shielding the driveway from flash floods.

He had the rifle canted, picking up the angled RMR red dot sight in his NVGs.  It was as easy as putting the brilliantly glowing dot on the man’s upper chest and squeezing the trigger.

The first unsuppressed shot of the night boomed in the desert quiet, and all hell broke loose.

The rest of his Triarii down in the wash had been waiting for it.  The echoing thunder of his first shot was immediately drowned out by a crackling roar as half a dozen other AR-10s spoke, spitting flame from the sixteen-inch barrels.

The four men were smashed off their feet in a split second by no fewer than three one-hundred-forty-six-grain bullets punching through their heads and torsos.  They collapsed in the driveway almost all at the same time, as if their joints had suddenly all stopped holding them together.

Hank and his boys were already moving.  Spencer was leading First Squad’s Bravo team at a dead sprint toward the far house, and Amos Lovell, at the front of Alpha, was already shooting at the next closest, the thunder of the 7.62 battle rifles drowning the lighter bark of any return fire, if there was any.  Lovell had already broken off on the movement from the first wash; he’d been within striking distance by the time Hank had opened fire.

Hank was clambering up out of the wash with Third Squad’s Alpha team at his back, taking his hand off his rifle’s forearm to grab a tree to help him haul himself over the bank, only to slap it back into position when a figure appeared in the doorway ahead, lugging what looked an awful lot like a belt-fed machinegun.  His first shot was hasty, smacking paint chips and bits of metal off the door frame, but it made the man flinch and duck, giving him the split-second he needed to get his sights on him as he glided forward, moving just fast enough that he could still shoot accurately.

His next pair smashed the man back against the doorframe, leaving a dark, wet smear on the white plaster inside.

Then he was at the door with Huntsman behind him, giving him the bump.  He went through with his rifle leveled, hunting for targets.

The post Crimson Star Chapter 1 appeared first on American Praetorians.

Crimson Star Prologue

New Wave of Murders Hits Baltimore

 

While estimates are still coming in, at least seventy-two people have been killed in a fresh wave of violence in Baltimore this weekend.  Victims include several police officers, and at least one family of four, identified as Jim and Patty Gorson and their two daughters.

Gunfire tore through the night, and social media posts have claimed most of the killings in the name of the Black Kingdom Revolutionaries.  The group’s anonymous spokespersons have said that the killings are in retribution for the Fourth Reich’s assassination of activist Kamal Lamont Granger last week.

 

Standoff in Detroit

 

The siege of Harm’s Elementary School enters its second week today.  The leader of The Martyrs of Al Gharb, Abdulqaadir Ismaili Abdi, has issued another statement, claiming that, “The sons and daughters of the filthy kufar will be returned to their unbelieving mothers and fathers one limb, one piece at a time, unless Siad Muhammad Abdi, Ahmed Abu Qadir, and Ali Omar Hersi are freed.  If the Martyrs of Al Gharb do not receive, in addition, five hundred million dollars, we will cut out their tongues before we set them free.  Allahu Akhbar!”

Local police still have the school surrounded, but are facing not only harassment from protestors and local gangs, but also political pressure from anti-Islamophobia and anti-racism groups.  A SWAT team is reportedly standing by, but has not received authorization to move in.  Sources close to the police claim that there are only about six of the “Martyrs” in the school, but an unknown number of explosive devices have been emplaced around the grounds and inside the building.

 

Is Jose Ravela Muñoz a Drug Trafficker?

 

Rumors continue to abound about the reclusive leader of the “Soldados de Aztlan” militia.  He has been seen in public only twice, and only appears in his group’s propaganda videos wearing sunglasses and a thick beard.  Some observers have claimed that the name “Jose Ravela Muñoz” is an alias, and that he is, in fact, the man known only as “El Sonrisa,” the chief enforcer and chosen killer of the Los Hijos de la Serpiente cartel.  El Sonrisa is believed to have personally murdered and dismembered—not always in that order—at least a hundred people.

Many law enforcement agencies publicly dismiss the rumors as conspiracy theories, but sources close to many authorities in Arizona admit that there are concerns.  While very little is known with certainty about the “Soldados de Aztlan,” they have started appearing in force more openly, and several known members are suspected of serious violent crimes.

 

Demonstrations Turn Violent in Minneapolis

 

Protestors were attacked by counter protestors during demonstrations calling for the exoneration of Officer Ted Lamb in the shooting death of Rafael Dumont.  Lamb shot and killed Dumont during a routine stop two weeks ago.  The shooting is being investigated by Minneapolis authorities, and Lamb is currently in protective custody.  Demonstrators had gathered outside City Hall, announcing that they were there in support of Lamb, but many of the protestors were outright calling for his exoneration.  Counter protestors insisting that Dumont was murdered out of racism.  Confrontation followed, and the street fighting that then broke out has spread to outright riots throughout much of downtown Minneapolis.  Police are still trying to restore order.

 

Infrastructure Attacks Are on the Rise

 

Over the last six months, watchdog organizations have recorded no fewer than seventeen physical and cyber attacks on vital infrastructure in the United States.  Bombs have been planted near power stations, two attempts have been made to poison water supplies, two car bombs have been placed near major bridges, at least one case has been recorded of a steel bar welded across train tracks, and cyber attacks have targeted power grids, food distribution systems (attempting to reroute loads), and at least one has successfully crashed the United Federal Bank’s computer system, resulting in millions of dollars of losses.

There is so far no discernable pattern in these attacks, as most of the perpetrators have either been lone wolves, or are currently unidentified.

 

Record Narcotics and Human Traffic Through California

 

There is now no disputing it; California’s “progressive” attitudes toward border security, drug enforcement, and criminal enforcement priorities in general have engendered a crisis.

While cartel activity in the Southwest in general is on the rise, despite recent Border Patrol reinforcement of the border with Mexico, California has become a superhighway for cartel movement.  DEA and Border Patrol have intercepted shipments as high as twenty tons of cocaine and methamphetamine coming through California, and captured convoys carrying human traffic, mostly young women between 13 and 17, numbering in the hundreds.  And it is assured that such busts are only the tip of the iceberg, given the dwindling resources for both agencies in the face of what amounts to a series of cascading national crises.

 

Fighting Reported at Chakothi – Salambad Crossing

 

While Indian spokesmen claimed that Pakistani Army troops attacked a border security post near Salambad, India, on Monday, Islamabad has denied it, saying that any hostilities were likely the work of Lashkhar e Taiba.  Islamabad has further denied any Pakistani casualties, or that a major LeT attack on the border with India is a sign of failure of Pakistani security forces.  Meanwhile, the Indian authorities claim that twenty of the Pakistani attackers were killed, and that Indian Army forces have seized control of the bridge, called the “Bridge of Peace” in Hindi.

This incident comes against a backdrop of rising tensions between India, Pakistan, and China, especially as the Salafist influence in Islamabad grows more pronounced.

 

Unease as US Peacekeeping Mission in Europe Nears Its Fourth Month

 

“I don’t know what we’re doing here.”  It is becoming a common sentiment among American peacekeepers in the civil-war wracked country of Slovakia.  Once a flourishing example of post-Communist Eastern Europe, the Republic of Slovakia has been shaken by riots and internecine strife ever since the government in Bratislava refused to abdicate the country’s obligations to the European Union and the newly-formed European Defense Council.  Nationalists have refused to abide by the government’s economic agreements, and began openly fighting against government forces last August.  Citing NATO treaty obligations, the United States has sent US Army and Air Force units to support the EDC’s peacekeeping mission, but the troops have been increasingly discontented since their arrival.

“I mean, there are riots in my own hometown,” Specialist Aaron Roberts said.  “And the other Euros don’t seem to want us here.  On top of which, I can’t help but think that we’d get along better with the regular Slovaks than with the French or the Germans around here, if we’re being honest.”

 

China’s Control of Overseas Commerce and Transport Gets More Aggressive

 

It has been a pattern that has been emerging for the last decade.  Not only have Chinese companies (always under the auspices of Beijing and the CCP) been buying controlling interests in ports around the world, even in Europe, but they have been using infrastructure projects in developing countries to open the door to Chinese de facto ownership of those countries’ natural resources.  As with the larger trend, the pattern has become clear; the Chinese offer vital infrastructure projects or humanitarian relief (though most often the former), and then, after the projects are completed, demand payment.  When the countries can’t pay in cash, then they cede a portion of their natural resources to the PRC’s control.

China already owns a sizeable fraction of Africa’s raw materials, along with more of Central and South America’s than are currently known.  Along with control of ports and growing influence on sea lanes, the Chinese Empire is becoming less a dream and more of a reality every day.

Crimson Star is now available for Kindle pre-order, coming out January 30.

The post Crimson Star Prologue appeared first on American Praetorians.

On Iran and Soleimani

On January 2, 2020, Qasem Soleimani, commander of the IRGC Qods Force since 1998, took a well-deserved dirt nap.

This has triggered a wave of prognostication illustrating a blinding level of ignorance of the context of the killing, or what came before it.

Soleimani joined the IRGC during or just after the original Islamic Revolution in Iran in 1979.  The Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps is one hand of the Islamic Revolution, the other being the Council of Guardians.  (More on them later.)  The IRGC is divided between the Basij (paramilitary militias raised for primarily domestic enforcement of the Revolution’s Khomeinist Shi’a ideology) and the Qods Force, which handles foreign engagement.  Which primarily consists of support, training, and direct action for terror groups, most notably Hezbollah.  The same Hezbollah responsible for the killing of 241 US Marines on October 23, 1983, in the Beirut Barracks bombing.

So, what does the Qods Force and Soleimani have to do with Iraq?  A lot.

The Qods Force being the primary foreign operations arm of the Islamic Revolution, it was instrumental in the Shi’a insurgency in Iraq following the invasion.  The EFP (Explosively Formed Projectile) IEDs used against many coalition convoys on the MSRs in Iraq came from Iran.  Guess who facilitated the traffic?

Following the general collapse of the Iraqi Army in the face of ISIS’ rise in 2014, the Iraqi government (already deeply influenced by Tehran following the departure of the majority of US troops in 2012) launched the Popular Mobilization Forces or Popular Mobilization Units.   These have also been called Shi’a Militia Groups.  Many, such as Asaib Ahl al-Haq, had previously been founded by Qods Force and were granted official sanction by Baghdad in the desperation surrounding the ISIS Crisis.  AAH had been active since 2006, and had launched over 6000 attacks against US and coalition forces before the drawdown.  And that’s just one.

One of the biggest such PMUs lately, however, has been Kataib Hezbollah, which has a history every bit as long and bloody as AAH.  And that is where we come to more current events leading up to the drone strike that killed Soleimani.

While it would seem on the surface that the Coalition and the PMF/PMUs had a common enemy in ISIS, which is an even more extreme Sunni Wahhabist offshoot of Al Qaeda (in fact, ISIS’ progenitor was Al Qaeda in Iraq, led by Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, who was enough of a savage to get rebuked by Bin Laden himself), that kind of “the enemy of my enemy is my friend” logic doesn’t go far in the Middle East.  Especially not with the Islamic Revolution.

The PMF units have made no secret of their hatred for Americans.  And on December 27, 2019, KH forces launched 30 rockets at K1 Airbase outside of Kirkuk, killing an American contractor as well as wounding several American and Iraqi military personnel.

Tensions with Iran have been elevated for most of the last year, as the Iranians have conducted more and more provocations, including seizing oil tankers and shooting down an American drone during the summer.  A retaliatory strike for the drone was called off, purportedly because President Trump decided not to kill people over a drone.

But this time, an American was killed.  So, several Kataib Hezbollah camps were struck by airstrikes over the following couple of days, killing an estimated 25-30.

Now, before we get to what comes next, there is some added Iraqi context that needs to be addressed.

Starting in October, Shi’a Iraqis throughout Baghdad and the south of the country began demonstrating, calling for the resignation of the Iraqi government, which they accused of being corrupt and puppets of the Iranians.  Even the Shi’a in Iraq don’t want to bend the knee to Tehran; the older people remember the Iran-Iraq War.

What ensued was chaos.  Large portions of the Iraqi Army sided with the protesters, and were therefore disarmed by order of the government, and the task of suppressing the riots was turned over to…the PMF.

What followed was bloody.  It is estimated that over 500 Iraqi civilians have been killed by PMF since October, 2019.  They have opened fire with live ammunition, when they weren’t killing people with direct hits to the head with 40mm smoke grenades.  Yet the protesters have hung in there, still gathered at Tahrir Square, kept out of the Green Zone by Iraqi security forces and PMF.

Then, on December 31, 2019, uniformed crowds of PMF entered the Green Zone under orders from Abu Mahdi al Muhandes, and besieged the US Embassy in retaliation for the airstrikes on Kataib Hezbollah camps previously mentioned.

They set guard posts on fire, tried to climb the walls, and lobbed Molotov cocktails and rocks inside the compound.  Graffiti spray-painted on the gates said, “Qasem Soleimani is our leader.”

Leaders were calling for a siege to last until all American presence was removed from Iraq.  Others vowed to take revenge on every American employee within the Embassy compound.

Meanwhile, Soleimani was calling for attacks on the British and Bahraini Embassies as well.

The Tahrir Square protesters were quick to point out that they had nothing to do with the riots; that in fact, the militias besieging the Embassy were the same ones responsible for murdering 500+ Iraqi civilians in the last several months.

At the end of the second day, the militia rioters had moved away from the Embassy, but the assault wasn’t one that could be ignored.  On January 2nd, after landing at Baghdad International Airport and meeting with Abu Musab al Muhandes, Soleimani’s motorcade was hit, killing him and al Muhandes.

This has since been characterized as an assassination.  I’ll let Brad Taylor, former SFOD-D officer and fellow thriller author, put that one to bed.  He does it better than I would.  Short version, Soleimani wasn’t assassinated any more than Isoroku Yamamoto was when his Betty was shot down over the Solomons.

Which finally brings us to the question.  Are we about to get into a war with Iran?  The recent missile attack on Al Asad Airbase and Irbil from Iran certainly makes the matter seem even more urgent.

To which I say, “Haven’t you been paying attention for the last forty years?”

We have been at war with Iran ever since the Islamic Revolution in 1979.  It has been a war mostly fought by Iranian proxies, proxies marshaled, directed, and supported by the IRGC Qods Force.  Prior to 9/11, Iranian proxy forces had killed more Americans than any other terror group.

This is an escalation.  Only time will tell where it leads; whether we will descend back into the low background roar of sanctions, terror attacks, and the occasional airstrike in retaliation, or if the final reckoning is at hand.  But it isn’t new, and it isn’t coming out of the blue.

There are those saying, “We don’t need a war with Iran!”  They are operating on a couple of mistaken assumptions.  One is that all wars can be picked and chosen.  Wars aren’t video games, that you can shut off.  Wars don’t actually need “two to tango.”  All a war really takes is one belligerent.  Then the alternatives are to fight, or to surrender.  The other mistaken assumption, of course, is that we haven’t already been at war with Iran.

If this is the “final reckoning,” will it be quick and victorious?  After all, while little word has been getting out, the Iranians have been rising up much like the Iraqis of late.  They burned the Iranian Central Bank in Behbahan to the ground in mid-November.  The Council of Guardians has a lot of domestic unrest to worry about, as well as their foreign adventures.  They are in a fragile position.

But that doesn’t mean that what is to come is going to be quick or clean.  War is destruction and chaos, and the IRGC is already skilled in assymetrical warfare.  Even if the regime collapses in the next few months, expect a continued guerrilla offensive from the remnant of the Qods Force, as well as the wider Shi’a “resistance,” (al-Muqawama al-Islamia) led by Abu Dua and Moqtada al Sadr (remember him?).

This has been a long time coming.  And it isn’t over.  To quote Churchill, “This is not the end.  It is not even the beginning of the end.”

The post On Iran and Soleimani appeared first on American Praetorians.

Setting the Stage: Peter Zeihan on Economics and Demographics

This video came across my radar a week or so ago.  It’s a long listen, but well worth it.  Dr. Peter Zeihan goes into some of the economics and demographics of the collapse of the post-war world order.  Some of these trends have gone into the background to the Maelstrom Rising series already.  Zeihan’s talk has further fleshed some of them out.

Now, I don’t necessarily agree with his entire forecast.  I think he’s overlooking a number of, shall we say, violent variables.  His outlook is almost entirely economic and demographic, leaving aside some of the potential impacts of violent ideology, desperation politics, terrorism, and “hybrid” Fourth Generation Warfare.  Many of these variables have the potential to derail the economics he’s talking about.

The demographics can also lead into some of these problems.  As was mentioned in a discussion of this video, the solution to demographic problems has occasionally been “foreign adventures.”

All of that said, the Maelstrom Rising series is predicated on the trends that Zeihan outlines.  The difference is, the crisis brought about by these trends leads to desperation.  And desperate governments can do things that, in the long run, are extremely destructive and stupid.  Maelstrom Rising is about the consequences of that desperation.

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More Audio is Here!

Tantor Media has just released the audio version of Holding Action, Book 2 in the Maelstrom Rising series.  Steve Marvel read it, and as I’ve said before, I’ve been quite impressed with his attention to detail.

Buying time with blood….

Matt Bowen and his team made it out of Slovakia by the skin of their teeth.

But the fight’s not over. And there’s no rest for the weary.

The European Defense Council, desperate to salvage their dream of a Europe reshaped in their image, threaten invasion of Poland.

The Triarii and what is left of American forces in Northern Europe stand by their Polish allies. But they’re outnumbered and outgunned.

And they might well be watching the wrong part of the border.

Get it today!

As for Crimson Star…I’m still working on it.  Just passed the 91k word mark.  This has turned into a bit more of a “discovery writing” experience as I’ve gone along.  I should have a cover soon, and be able to get the preorder up for release sometime in late January.  (Hopefully Tantor will be willing to pick that one up, too.)

Also, my apologies for not keeping up on the blog.  It’s been busy; I’ll try to start posting more often.  Having Crimson Star take as long as it has has put a damper on blog posts.

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Escalation is out on Audio!

I’ve had people asking about getting my books on audio for several years now.  I’ve given it a shot a couple of times, but things haven’t worked out to continue with the ACX Royalty Share arrangement.

However, a couple of months ago, I was contacted by Tantor Media, asking if the audio rights to the Maelstrom Rising series were available.  Tantor’s not a small company; they’ve got thousands of audiobooks in their catalog.  So, I signed on.

Escalation is out today.  Holding Action is in production, and will be out on the 10th of December.  Steve Marvel is narrating, and while I haven’t had a chance to listen to it yet, I’ve communicated with him some, and his attention to detail is admirable, and his rendition of the news stories in the Prologue (in the Sample) is spot on.

Meanwhile, I’m hammering away at Crimson Star.  It’s being a bit of a bear, but I’m getting a handle on it.  Taking the scene back to CONUS presents a whole new set of complications.  Preorder and release date are still yet to be determined; I’ve got to get closer to finishing first.

Kill or Capture‘s been out for a bit now.  If you’ve read it and enjoyed it, I’d appreciate it if you’d go on Amazon and leave a review.  Reviews help establish “social proof” especially for us indie authors.

There’s also a promotion going on on Bookfunnel (some of you are receiving this because of it).  There are eighteen free stories available, so head over and check it out.

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The True Legacy of the Cold War

A lot of people see the Cold War as distant history.  There was even one political scientist/economist who wrote a book in 1992 claiming that the end of the Cold War was “The End of History.”

Obviously, that thesis didn’t age well.

But even leaving aside the nonsense that with the collapse of the Soviet Union, a new age of democracy and peace had dawned, a lot of us still see a rupture between the Cold War and the present strategic situation.  There is no such rupture, though.  History doesn’t work in “eras” except in high school textbooks.

Yes, this is in reference to my last post.  An expansion, if you will.  If you want to understand why we seem to be trapped in “endless war,” then you need to understand what happened since World War II, and how that has contributed to where we are now.

The Cold War has been described as the multi-decade tensions between NATO and the Warsaw Pact, marked by espionage, massive conventional forces staring at each other across the Iron Curtain, and the Mutually Assured Destruction of thousands of nuclear weapons pointed in both directions.  And those were part of it.  But the Cold War wasn’t really all that “cold.”

Proxy wars are nothing new.  The Persians were practicing it against the Greeks for the 27 years of the Peloponnesian War.  But the Cold War saw it elevated to new heights due to the aforementioned Mutually Assured Destruction.  Open warfare between the major powers became too risky, largely due to the massive nuclear arsenals aimed at major population centers as well as military targets.  So, the war happened on the peripheries, with revolutions, civil wars, and foreign interventions.

Because of the irregular nature of most of these “shadow campaigns,” which were simultaneously local wars and battles in the larger, global war between the West and the Communist bloc, it’s hard to say just how many casualties resulted from the Cold War.  Some have estimated up to 25 million dead in the Cold War, making it the 9th deadliest war in history.

But where we really start to get into the weeds is the nature of the actual combat in the Cold War.

Proxy war, guerrilla war, and terrorism became the norm.  And they still are, for a couple of reasons.

One, while Mutually Assured Destruction is no longer quite the threat it used to be, high-tech direct warfare is expensive.  Very expensive.  And with the US outclassing just about everyone for sheer high-tech conventional combat power, it’s usually a losing proposition, as the Iraqis found out the hard way.  Twice.

So, proxy wars using irregular forces, separatist groups, and “volunteers”/mercenaries are less expensive monetarily, as well as in terms of political capital.  Lots of friendly casualties cost a government.  Keep casualties low through sleight of hand, using proxies and SOF acting under the aegis of “volunteers” or mercenaries (Looking at you, Wagner.) keeps your own population from getting restive as quickly.

The other reason lies in the nature of the thing.  By creating a proxy force, you’re effectively creating a fire-and-forget weapon, and one that you really don’t have a lot of control over.  Particularly not if you’ve convinced yourself that it’s really all about “liberation” and that the proxy force are your little brothers and sisters, so you haven’t put enough leverage in place to act as a “kill switch.”  (Which, really, nobody’s ever done effectively, anyway.)  Not really understanding the proxy force’s culture and motivations only makes matters worse.  The most glaring example would be the jihadis, many of whom got training and equipment from the US through Pakistani ISI during the Soviet-Afghan War, and then have used it in the wave of jihad that followed.  To them, once the Lesser Satan was defeated, it was time for the Great Satan to go down.

It doesn’t just go against the West, either.  The Soviets used jihadist terror organizations as well, and the Russians have similarly found themselves embroiled in jihadi insurgencies in Chechnya and Dagestan (though partially of their own making).  The PLA provided a great deal of assistance to the Viet Minh and North Vietnam, only to become long-standing enemies of the Vietnamese after the war.

The thing here is, the Cold War developed tactics and strategy just like any other war before it.  Particularly strategy.  Irregular warfare worked; it took longer, dragging out the misery, but at less cost to the sponsors and to the irregulars.  And therefore, it has become the norm.  The genie is out of the bottle, and there’s no putting it back.  Especially as war has become the realm of non-state actors as well as nations.  Anyone with enough money and organization can start a war (which, really, is the way it always has been; war being solely the business of nation states was always a fantasy), and if they don’t have enough money, they can probably find somebody who does.

Add in the ease of travel and communication, and the scope of the problem should become obvious.

This is the true legacy of the Cold War.  It’s not the New World Order of globalist democracy that was touted in the early ’90s.  It’s instability and irregular war, war that can be exported anywhere on a shoestring.  And it is being exported everywhere.

There are still those who think that we can just refuse to play the game.  These people are still operating on the same flawed premises that many of the interventionists are.  They don’t understand the fluid nature of war as it exists now.  (Granted, as I said above, none of this is exactly new; some of the applications are, but the principles are the same as they have been for centuries.  We just aren’t used to viewing the world this way, in the West.)  There’s no avoiding it by rolling up the carpet and locking the doors, any more than there is by trying (and failing) to force stability by democracy in places that have no tradition of it, or interest in it.

To quote an old saying, “You may not be interested in War, but War is interested in you.”  And there are a lot more ways that War can look you up halfway around the world than there were a century ago.

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On Endless War

A recent headline about the failure to withdraw from Afghanistan got me thinking about the “endless war” talk that’s been going on for at least the last decade.  It ties in with the “war weariness” narrative that started less than two years into the Iraq War, a war weariness felt by a population that sacrificed little or nothing.  They were just tired of seeing it on the news.

But there’s something there.  The point just is not necessarily what the pundits think it is.

“The Long War” as some have called it didn’t start on September 11th, 2001.  We’d been clashing with jihadi elements for a long time before that.  The Iranian Hostage Crisis began with a Shi’a jihadist revolution, that immediately targeted Americans.  It has been pointed out that the US directly supported the Shah, whose Savak secret police could rival the KGB for brutality at times, thus making the US the revolutionaries’ enemy, justifiably.  (It should be pointed out that most countries in the region have equally repressive police forces, including the “good” ones who are still our allies.)

But the Islamic Revolution, like just about every other revolution in history, promptly proved itself every bit as bad, if not worse, as the Council of Guardians and the Pasdaran promptly took control of 90% of the country’s wealth, instituted a Shariah regime every bit as repressive as the Savak, only more ubiquitous, and, like revolutionaries everywhere, promptly set out to export the revolution, violently.  Hezbollah killed more Americans prior to 9/11 than any other terror group.  The Embassy Bombing in Beirut in October of 1983 was theirs.

It’s still going on, in Iraq, Yemen, Syria, and elsewhere.  And that’s just the Shi’a side.

The Sunni had less reason to come after us; after all, the CIA unwisely deferred to the Pakistani ISI during the Soviet-Afghan War, resulting in the majority of US funds going to Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, who was far more of a hardline Salafist jihadi than the other major muj leaders, such as Massoud and al Haq (both of whom were later assassinated by the Taliban).  The US aided Saudi Arabia and Kuwait in ’91.  And yet, Al Qaeda targeted Americans in Somalia in ’93 (the Battle of the Black Sea in Mogadishu, immortalized in Blackhawk Down, was later cited by Bin Laden himself as the proof that the Americans were a paper tiger, and therefore the next major target, since the Soviet Union had folded), in Nairobi and Dar es Salaam in ’98, and the USS Cole in Aden in 2000.

The point above is twofold.  First of all, we’ve been at war with fundamentalist Islam (leaving aside the examination of the fact that “fundamentalist” Islam is true Islam as it was taught from the seventh century on) for a lot longer than just the last eighteen years.  Second of all, the wails about “endless war” and “end the wars in the Middle East” leave aside one basic fact that I’ve been harping on for years:

It only takes one side to start a war.  It takes both sides to end it.

There is no way to unilaterally “stop” a war.  The belief that we can do so is as misguided as the belief that we’d overthrow Saddam in a few days, be welcomed as liberators, and Iraq would suddenly become a flowering Jeffersonian democracy between the Tigris and the Euphrates.  It is superpower hubris at a far higher level than the “imperial hubris” that was often bandied about in the early ’00s.

Both sides have to agree that there is nothing further to be gained by the war.  And the other side isn’t going to do that.  They’ve demonstrated it over and over and over.  And there are two reasons for that.  One is religious.  The other is cultural.

Jihadis are fanatics by nature.  They have expressed their hatred for all not of their particular sect of Islam in no uncertain terms since the beginning.  And despite what has happened in the last 18 years, they haven’t been broken.  Even in the places where some of their groups have been, they’ve only bounced back.  (ISIS is regrouping as we speak; their “caliphate” might be dead and buried, but the group isn’t gone.)

But that’s only the first part.  The second, as I said, is cultural.  And it’s a cultural blind spot that’s already hobbled us, and that we can’t seem to get past.

These societies are primarily tribal.  In one sense, that’s an advantage for our side; tribal groups don’t tend to get along with anyone outside the tribe.  It’s also been a liability, as we’ve ignored that tribal “human terrain” in large part, thinking that if we just made them mingle, they’d learn to be a melting pot like us.  So, we’ve brought ANA units consisting of Tajiks and Uzbeks down into Pashtun territory, where the hatreds can flare up.

But deeper than that is the lack of understanding that many of these tribal societies live by feud.  Blood feuds are something that some Americans used to understand; look at the Hatfields and McCoys.  But those days are largely over, in some respect because the high-tech atomization of American society has reduced the cohesive nature of extended family.  Even as Western telecommunications become widespread in the Middle East, Africa, and Central Asia, the cultures are not magically changing.

Which means that blood feud is still a factor.  Regardless of the cause, Americans have killed their kin, which means that the feud must go on.

The wars aren’t going to just end because history shows that feuds only end when one tribe or another is wiped out.  And that’s not likely to happen in either direction.

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New Paperbacks and Audiobooks Incoming

Some big news this week.  As you can see from the photo above, the paperbacks for Kill or Capture and the redesigned cover for Fury in the Gulf came on Friday, so signed copies are now available in the store.

In bigger news, back in August I signed a contract with Tantor Media for audiobook versions of the Maelstrom Rising series.  Production is now in full swing, and they’re being narrated by Steve Marvel, who has also done audiobooks for my friend JT Patten, author of the Safe Havens and Task Force Orange series.  I’ve been talking with Steve in some detail, and I think they’re going to come out well.

Escalation is due out on audio on November 12th, and Holding Action on December 10th.  So, mark your calendars, especially those who prefer audiobooks.

Now, I don’t have a contract for Crimson Star yet.  The official word I’ve gotten from Tantor is that they’ll have to see just how well the first two books do before they commit to further volumes.  So, if you’ll all spread the word when they come out, I’d appreciate it, since that will go a long way toward ensuring that the rest of the series gets audio versions, too.  (This has been a long-standing problem with audio for indies, in general; the two I’ve already had done have been through ACX’s royalty share agreement, which can undercut the narrator’s income for the amount of work they put in.  It’s a lot of work, too; I’ve seen estimates of six hours of work per completed hour of audiobook.  For a 13-hour audiobook, well…I’ll let you do the math.)

As for Crimson Star itself, it’s in-progress, and just about to the 20k word mark.  It’s a bit of a change; we’re shifting the Area of Operations from Europe to CONUS, which means a new set of characters to explore another facet of the war.  Don’t worry; we’ll be getting back to Matt and Grex Luporum Team X, but there’s just too much going on in the series to stick to just Matt.

Now, back to the word mines…

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SOBs – Some Choose Hell

Some Choose Hell is the 9th Soldiers of Barrabas story, and takes the SOBs to South Africa.  South Africa in 1985, when apartheid is alive and well.  This time, they are hired to protect Bishop Toto, the new black Bishop of Johannesburg.

What they don’t know is that they’re intended to be patsies.  The South Africans are intent on assassinating the bishop, even as they’ve invited the SOBs in to protect him.

It gets more complicated than that; by the time Barrabas, Nanos, Hatton, and Bishop arrive in South Africa, the real Bishop Toto has already been imprisoned by BOSS (the Bureau of State Security), and an impostor put in his place.  The impostor immediately begins making all sorts of concessions to the white government, sowing discontent, which will peak with his assassination, after which the real Bishop Toto is to be quietly eliminated.

Needless to say, the SOBs interfere, finding themselves at odds with their “employers.”

There’s a significant side plot in this one, namely that of Claude Hayes.  It had been revealed in earlier books that Hayes spent some time in Africa after Vietnam, though in more of a revolutionary role than the more common anti-Communist mercenary role that many Vietnam vets took up in Africa after the war.  We get to see some more of Hayes’ past in Mozambique at the beginning.  Along the way, we find out that he wasn’t just a regular fighter.  He was good enough that he’s attained near-legendary status in FRELIMO.  He even has another name: Kwati Umba.

Hayes is visiting his friends in Mozambique when the story opens.  He agrees to go along on a “perfectly safe” op that goes sideways, and is reported killed.  But Hayes isn’t so easily done in.  And he reappears at an opportune time to help the SOBs and join the mission.

There’s a lot going on in this book.  It’s lighter on action than some of the others, but fills in with intrigue.  There are plots, counter-plots, and betrayals.  Trust is in short supply.  Murders are plotted, executed, and fumbled, including of family members who get in the way.  Characters are revealed to be working against their public personas.  It’s quite a complex bit of storytelling, but Hardy pulls it off.

In the end, of course, the bad guys get theirs.  As always with the SOBs series, there are more shades of gray than out-and-out black and white, animalistic bad guys and saintly good guys.  It perhaps errs a bit more on the side of pure evil in the form of the BOSS conspirators than in some other Africa-set stories.  It takes on even more shades of gray when the current unrest and violence in post-apartheid South Africa is set against it.  But this was written in 1985, and as the writers of this series have tended to show, bad guys can often be fighting worse guys.  And in this case, BOSS is definitely the “worse guys.”

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