Peter Nealen's Blog, page 9

The Explosive Conclusion – Option Zulu

 

The lead elements of the PLA assault took their time approaching the university. Hank was up on the top floor, all too aware that he was a lot higher up than he wanted to be if the shelling started in earnest, watching as the first armored vehicles edged out of the trees and began spreading out across the fields to the north of the campus. Mostly painted in the weird blue, green, and gray PLAN marine camouflage, the first ZBD-2000 light tanks and ZBD-05 amphibious assault vehicles crept out onto the open ground, PLAN marines using the vehicles for cover as they advanced.

They were moving more slowly and cautiously than Hank had expected. Maybe they’d taken more losses on landing than they’d anticipated.

That slow, cautious advance wasn’t going to help them as much as they might have hoped.

A tank’s main gun thundered off to his left as one of the dug-in M60A3s opened fire at what amounted to point-blank range for a tank.

The Taiwanese had been upgrading their aging M60 and M48 tanks over the last few years. That particular M60A3 down there was covered in reactive armor and sported a 120mm main gun, instead of the 105mm gun that it had originally been built with, decades before. At that range, it was more than enough punch for the lightly-armored ZBD-2000 trundling across the muddy fields to the front.

The angular light tank blew up with a spectacular fireball as the penetrator round slammed into it just at the turret ring. The turret itself tumbled skyward on a column of flame and smoke as the tank’s magazine brewed up.

***

The War Reaches a Fever Pitch…

…Desperation Reigns On All Sides

Can it End Short of Annihilation?

From the beginning, the People’s Republic of China has been working behind the scenes, sponsoring the EDC’s cyber attack on the US and taking full advantage once the lights went out.

They’re not in the shadows anymore.

Hank Foss has fought them on American soil and in the South China Sea. Matt Bowen has fought them in Europe. Now, the war gets closer and closer to the Chinese mainland, as the final offensive against Taiwan is launched. Hank and his section go to work to head off the invasion.

The South China Sea is no longer their lifeline.

And they’re getting desperate.

Desperate enough to do the unthinkable?

***

So it comes to an end. Three years, nine books. The Maelstrom Rising series has concluded, perhaps not quite the way that I had initially anticipated when I started back in early 2019. A lot has happened to alter the geopolitical landscape since then. Yet some things have stayed the same in essentials, if not details. And while I’ve just about avoided being overtaken by events, it seems to be a bit of a near thing. Even as I write this, the war in Ukraine rages, and China rattles the saber at Taiwan even harder.

The idea for Option Zulu came from a conversation around a helicopter landing zone in Iraq in early 2006, as several of us talked about the possibilities by which small teams of dedicated, highly-trained light infantry could effectively paralyze a country. The name came from a John Ringo essay written shortly after 9/11 (though he called it Option Zero). The logistics turned out to be rather hairier than I’d anticipated, but desperate times can call for desperate measures.

Most of my military fiction takes the form of cautionary tales written as action thrillers. This one is no different. Let’s hope that the events of Option Zulu don’t end up coming to pass in the real world.

Option Zulu is out today on Kindle and in paperback.

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Option Zulu Chapter 1

Approximately 13 hours before Grex Luporum Team X, assigned PSD duties for Wenzeslaus Gorman, takes contact on the bridge over the Ochtum.

 

The Jacqueline Q might have changed her digital identifier so that she now appeared to any nautical tracking programs as the Maureen, but there hadn’t been the time nor the available equipment to change the lettering on her bow. They didn’t know that the PLAN had fingered her as the privateer she was, but as things stood, it wasn’t a great idea to take chances. So, she was well out at sea, south of Taiwan, while Hank Foss and his section rode the Zodiacs toward their target.

Hank had essentially pulled rank as the section leader and had appointed himself coxswain. That was normal, but there was an added benefit on a long transit like this. He was still taking a beating, and he’d been soaked to the bone for the last two hours, but he wasn’t getting knocked around nearly as badly as Brule and Carrington up in the bow. Riding the bow in a Zodiac Combat Rubber Raiding Craft for a three-hour over the horizon transit to target was beyond miserable.

The ocean around them looked all but empty, aside from a handful of ship’s running lights on the horizon. It was a startlingly low amount of traffic for one of the primary sea lanes in the world but, given the events of the last couple of weeks, the sparse numbers of ships weren’t all that surprising.

The Western Pacific had become extremely non-permissive lately, though this particular shift in nautical traffic didn’t even have much to do with the maritime guerrilla warfare that Hank and his fellow Triarii had been waging against the PLAN and her proxies in the South China Sea for a couple of months. A lot had happened since a Triarii drone swarm had devastated the carrier Shandong and the Triarii infantry sections had smashed the infrastructure on several of the Chinese’ artificial islands in the Spratly Island chain.

One of those events had led directly to this night’s mission.

The wreckage of the bulk carrier CSC Victor, sunk by PLAAF J-16s, was still drifting only a few dozen nautical miles away. She’d been heading for the Port of Taipei, and that sinking had finally given the Triarii the green light to wreck house.

If the ChiComs were going to play hardball, so would the Americans and the ROC.

They were getting close to their planned staging point, if his navigation was on, and he was pretty sure it was. He throttled back, slowing and finally letting the Zodiac bob on the waves in place as the other boats closed in.

Scanning the darkened horizon beneath the stars and broken clouds, he looked for running lights. He could see a few to the north and west, but none that looked like their target. He checked his watch. They were in position on time, but the target was late.

He was as sure of their position as he could be without GPS. The Triarii flotilla in the Western Pacific had set up something of a mesh navigation network, which allowed anyone with a terminal to use the bigger ships’ stellar navigation computers and relative positions to determine their own coordinates. That required a screen, though, and Hank wanted to avoid showing any light out on the water that night.

The Chinese had to know that their fighter jocks had escalated the already dangerously tense situation in the Taiwan Strait to the breaking point. Not that it had needed too much of a push. The accelerating mobilization of PLA ground and missile forces on the mainland had been hard to miss.

With the Korean peninsula blowing up over the last week, it looked like the PRC was about to make a play for all the marbles.

Which was what brought Tango India Six-Four out onto the water tonight.

“Contact. Port side, third set of lights from the left.”

Keith was on the gunwale, just ahead of Hank, scanning the water through his M5E1’s scope. He’d spotted their target.

Hank lifted his own rifle, letting the engine idle. If not for his gloves, he’d probably have had a hard time holding onto the weapon, given how much silicone spray he’d doused it in to keep the salt water off. That rifle had been through hell since they’d left the States, but it was still running like a champ. He wanted it to stay that way.

He had a feeling that it was going to have a lot more work to do soon.

Finding the lights, he cranked up the magnification. Sure enough, that was the Hong Yun, the letters standing out in white on her red and black bow. She was a few minutes behind schedule, but she might have slowed down based on the maritime security warnings for the Strait.

It was a good thing Hank was a patient man.

Lowering the rifle, he twisted the throttle again, slowly bringing the Zodiac back up to speed. He was still keeping the speed low, avoiding too much noise or too much of a wake, slowly stalking their prey. They’d let the tanker get past, then the boats would move in from her stern.

Brule and Carrington would have to be on the ball during the next few minutes. Intel hadn’t received any reliable reports that the PLAN marines had put security teams aboard any of the ships moving into Xiamen or through the Strait to any of the other ports along the eastern seaboard, but it was probably a decent possibility. Given the advantage of height, a handful of men on the fantail could easily lay waste to men in combat rubber raiding craft on the water below. Thanks to the amount of noise a tanker makes on the move, though, and the suppressors every man had mounted on his M5, there was a chance, if they were on the ball, that they could eliminate any security before they were spotted.

Both men adjusted their positions as they got closer, getting down into the boat itself instead of riding the gunwales. Brule tried lying on his belly, his rifle resting on the gunwale, for about thirty seconds before he reconsidered and followed Carrington’s lead, getting into more of a sitting position with his boots up on the gunwale, leaning back against the assault packs stacked in the middle of the deck. He could shoot at a higher angle a lot more easily that way.

Still keeping their speed low, Hank closed in on the massive ship. The other boats trailed behind in a loose wedge, keeping well behind the lead craft, trying to hide in the darkness. Hank’s boat would be the first to make contact, and if they could avoid being spotted too early, so much the better.

The boat rocked on the massive tanker’s wake as they closed in. The running lights were on, but the crew and the security detail—presuming there was one—weren’t using floodlights. Hopefully, they thought they were still far enough out at sea that they didn’t have to worry about such precautions.

The tyranny of distance has its advantages, provided you can avoid some of its traps. Time and thousands of miles of open ocean can erode even the most intense watchfulness. Nobody can be switched on all the time, no matter how hard they try. And if the Chinese security “contractors” thought that they were now close enough to the mainland that they’d be under PLAN protection… They might have gotten sloppy.

Hank hoped so. He hadn’t planned on it, but he could still hope.

The rails were deserted as the boats closed in, Hank steering his Zodiac up right next to the steel cliff of the hull. Jim Shevlin brought his own boat in alongside Hank’s so he could cover the gunwale while Hank and his element started their boarding operation.

Handing the throttle over to Keith, Hank got ready to move. Carrington and Brule had abandoned their earlier positions, and Carrington was hauling the boarding ladder out, extending it as Keith held the boat against the tanker’s hull.

The hook went over the steel almost soundlessly. The Triarii of Tango India Six-Four had gotten a lot of practice at boarding operations since they’d sailed through the Timor Sea and into the Philippines with havoc on their minds. The next months of disruption and asymmetric warfare against the Communist Chinese had been instructive. The section was as good at maritime ops now as any dedicated naval commando unit.

Slinging his rifle across his back, Hank grabbed the ladder and started up. He was the section leader. He’d be the first one on deck. There’d been a time, especially back when he’d been a platoon sergeant and then a Company Gunny, that he would have let the younger guys go first. They were all Triarii here, though. There were billets, but no real ranks. And he wasn’t willing, after the losses they’d taken from Phoenix to San Diego to Texas to the Philippines, to let another of his guys take the chief risk.

A tiny voice in the back of his head wondered as he climbed, careful not to move so quickly that the ladder bounced against the hull and made noise, if he wasn’t halfway hoping that he’d get smoked.

Then he might not see a dead kid, torn apart by .50 caliber machinegun fire, every time he closed his eyes.

He shook the thought off as he neared the rail. Not the time. He needed to be focused, entirely in the moment.

He could worry about his mental health when his boys weren’t in harm’s way anymore.

Just before he reached the rail, he held on with one hand and brought his M5 back around, tucking the buttstock under his arm with the suppressor pointed up toward the top of the ladder and the superstructure that loomed overhead, the white-painted steel bathed in a handful of floodlights.

It took a little more doing to get up and over with only one hand, but as he lifted himself over the lip of the gunwale, he saw no one on deck. They had gotten sloppy. Probably figured that they were close enough to the mainland that they were home free and didn’t have much to worry about anymore.

After all, most of the pirate activity was in the Straits of Malacca and the South China Sea. Hank had, himself, had something to do with the specific targeting of China-bound freighters by Indonesian pirates. He couldn’t take credit for the idea, though. After all, the Chinese had been pointing pirates at the Australians for months.

When you change the rules in a war, don’t be surprised when those changed rules get turned back on you.

He got over the rail and onto the deck, dropping as lightly to the steel as he could. The ladder behind him shifted and creaked slightly as Brule mounted it, clambering up fast so that Hank wouldn’t be by himself on the deck for very long.

Meanwhile, the second boat had pulled up in front of them, and LaForce was even then clambering over the rail himself. But Brule wasn’t the type to move slowly when his section leader was already in harm’s way.

The engines chugged under him, but the deck was otherwise weirdly quiet. Either the tanker was running with a skeleton crew, or they really had gotten dangerously complacent.

He held his position, watching the hatches and portholes just over his weapon as the rest of the section, minus the coxswains, climbed aboard. There were some unavoidable noises as the ladders tapped against the hull and boots went over the rails, even the occasional clack of a rifle against the steel hull, but for the most part, the boarding was quick, smooth, and quiet.

Turning to make eye contact with LaForce, Hank pointed down, getting a slightly exaggerated thumbs up in reply. LaForce and the rest of 2nd Squad quickly vanished into a nearby hatch, leading below. They’d secure the engine spaces while Navarro took 3rd Squad forward to sweep the decks.

Hank, along with Lovell’s 1st Squad and their attachment, a short, wiry man in the same green fatigues but carrying a QBZ-191 that the Triarii had captured in the Spratlys, would take the bridge.

On paper, Xu Guang was a retired ROC Army Shàoxiào, or Major. In reality, he was an off-the-books contractor for the ROC’s National Security Bureau. Officially, he wasn’t there, nor was he going to do anything that night.

With Lovell and Carrington taking point, Lovell practically shouldering Hank out of the way as if to say, this is our job, boss, they flowed into the superstructure.

This was hardly the first ship they’d had to clear, but this was going to be a little different. This was a “Capture” mission. They didn’t want to kill anyone if they could help it. Since they appeared to have achieved complete surprise, they needed to reach the control points and secure the ship as fast as possible before the crew even knew what was happening.

They still moved carefully, soles rolling on the deck as they covered each opening with a rifle muzzle, flowing across the deck and up the ladderwells toward the bridge. They hadn’t encountered any resistance yet, so they’d move quickly instead of systematically clearing every compartment.

That part would probably have to come later, but for now, they would bypass what they could to seize control of the ship first.

Hank was right behind Lovell and Carrington as they reached the bridge. So far, so good. No alarms, no security. Carrington put his hand on the handle of the hatch, looked at Lovell, who had his rifle leveled at the opening, and yanked it open.

They went through fast, half of 1st Squad flooding into the bridge with Hank and Xu in seconds.

In fact, they moved so fast, and so quietly, that it took a second before the captain—or maybe he was just the watchstander—turned to look over his shoulder to see who’d come onto the bridge. His eyes widened as he suddenly found himself staring at men in wet green fatigues, helmets, plate carriers, “horse collar” flotation devices, and NVGs, pointing suppressed battle rifles at him and the other two men on the bridge.

One of them, wearing khakis and a black polo shirt, with a QBZ-95 in his hands, very slowly held one hand out, holding the bullpup rifle’s forearm with the other, slowly and gently lowering it to the deck. So, there were security contractors aboard, but they had gone down to a skeleton crew for the night. This guy might even be the only one up. And he didn’t want any piece of the certain death that had just entered the bridge like ghosts.

Xu moved then, stepping up to the captain. Getting a better look at the man, noticeably older than the other two on the bridge, Hank was now pretty sure that this guy was the captain. The hard little Taiwanese officer kept his voice low and calm as he carefully explained to the captain just what was going to happen next in Mandarin.

Somewhere down below, a gunshot echoed through the superstructure. “All stations, this is Six. Status?” Hank kept his own voice down as he keyed his radio, letting his M5 hang as he left security to the other Triarii infantrymen on deck.

“This is Two. Had one of the security guys get froggy. One bad guy down. No friendly casualties.”

“This is Three.” Navarro sounded almost bored. “Deck is secure.”

“Copy.” Hank looked up at Xu, who nodded. Everything seemed to be under control. He switched channels. “Juliet Quebec, Tango India Six-Four. Objective secured. Will rendezvous in six hours.” He nodded to Xu. “Let’s get things going.”

 

Option Zulu comes out on Kindle and Paperback on May 3.

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Going Live for Darkness and Stone

For those who’d like to ask questions or just listen in, I’ll be going live at 9PM EST tonight, April 19th, on YouTube and Facebook:

Be sure to tune in. This is the first of what will probably become a monthly thing. I might be winging it a bit this time. I’ll talk some about The Lost, but questions about my other stuff is also welcome. I’ll just try to keep out of too much spoiler territory, so plan your questions accordingly.

Hope to see you soon.

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Into Shadow – Darkness and Stone is Out

The coast had just come into sight, a faint, dark line to the north beneath the lowering gray clouds, when the sea serpent hit us.

I looked up at Eoghain’s cry and saw him standing in the high, swan-carved prow, pointing off to the starboard side. I hadn’t caught the words over the wind, but the tone of alarm was unmistakable. I snatched up my M110 from the sea chest at my feet and started working my way across the deck to join him.

If it had been the marksman rifle that I’d left behind on the USS Makin Island, I probably would have had it in a waterproof bag, slathered with silicone spray. But King Caedmon’s Coira Ansec, the mystical cauldron that could produce ammo, weapons—whatever you asked for, really—produced some fine firearms. That thing was practically impervious to salt water.

The deck of Nachdainn’s ship was neat, every line, chest, and tool in its place, but that didn’t make it clear. It took me a minute to cross to the prow, where I joined Eoghain, Bearrac, and Gunny Taylor at the gunwale.

Gunny was already up on his rifle, peering through the scope. The whole platoon had switched from our M4s and M27s to M110s and Mk 48s from the Coira Ansec after we’d seen how little 5.56 did against some of the monsters in this world.

Eoghain and Bearrac simply peered out across the water. The Tuacha da Riamog didn’t use optics. Their eyes were far better than ours.

I squinted through the gloom. The overcast had thickened as we’d sailed north, and though it was about midday, the ship was wrapped in a gloomy twilight as it heaved over the gray chop of the sea.

There. A V-shaped wake cut across the waves, undulating slightly as it bore down on us. Whatever was making that wake, it was big, and it was fast.

“Brace yourselves.” Bearrac, barrel-chested and black-bearded, was holding onto the gunwale with one hand.

I was about to open fire on whatever it was, but it was apparently bigger and faster than it looked, because a moment later, something hit the ship with a bone-jarring impact.

***

Debts Owed. Debts Paid.

After the hunt for the vampire, Conor McCall’s Recon Platoon and their Tuacha allies can turn their attention to unfinished business. The Marines lost men in the Land of Ice and Monsters. They only know that those men are missing.

Without a body, ain’t nobody dead.

In search of their missing comrades—and Mathghaman Mag Cathal’s old nemesis—they return to the north.
Only to stumble into a bigger war than they’d expected. Their only allies in that harsh, frozen, haunted land are besieged by forces wielding powers they’ve only seen once before.

Now they must face terrible sorcery and horrific odds, as the question remains:

Will they accomplish their mission… Or die trying?

 

Darkness and Stone is out today, on Kindle, Audio, and Paperback!

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Shadows and Crows is Here

Weird, sonorous chanting rose from the beach. As I got behind a massive, ancient oak and got on my rifle, I saw that the corsairs had formed a shield wall in a great crescent around the largest of the beached ships. The ships themselves were high-prowed, black-painted and carved with snarling beasts. They looked a bit more Mediterranean to my admittedly unpracticed eye than Viking. But neither name had any meaning here, anyway.

The shield wall surrounded a knot of raiders, kneeling and swaying around an emaciated, hunchbacked figure draped in black rags. I couldn’t make out his face, as it was hidden beneath a deep, black cowl. But pale, crooked arms reached out from the rags wrapped around the figure’s shoulders, fingers like claws grasping at the sky as the figure twitched and spasmed, as it continued that droning, buzzing chant.

I might not have been the best-versed in the magic and monsters stuff, but I knew a threat when I saw one. And we’d all seen enough in the north to know that sorcery was a very real threat. I put my crosshairs on the twitching figure in rags and took up the slack on the trigger.

Two things happened in the next fraction of a second. As my trigger broke, one of the raiders in the circle sprang to his feet. Actually, it looked more like he was yanked to his feet by some irresistible, invisible force. And he stood up, right in front of the shot I’d meant for the sorcerer. I saw him get hit, saw the puff of blood and debris as my bullet punched through his lamellar armor and into his back. It was only about a four-hundred-yard shot.

A 7.62×51 round hits pretty damn hard at four hundred yards. Especially when it goes through a man’s heart and lungs, never mind his spine, which I’m pretty sure I’d just severed. And yet he stayed on his feet.

Then the sorcerer let out a ragged shout that buzzed and fritzed like a badly tuned radio, reached far over his head, and pulled down.

And the storm clouds above us suddenly dropped.

***

Brotherhood. Honor. Duty.

After surviving the initial horrors of the strange new world he finds himself in, Staff Sergeant Conor McCall and his Marine Recon platoon—or what’s left of it—have come to a safe haven where they and their newfound allies recover from the most brutal op of their lives.

But with MIAs left behind, there is unfinished business back in the Land of Ice and Monsters to the north.

Before the Marines can mount a rescue, the king to which they are indebted reminds them that alliances go both ways. An ancient evil has raided the Elven kingdom and carried off a priceless treasure. Only Conor and his team have any hope of recovering it.

A brotherhood was forged between the Marines and Elves while in the north. For the sake of that brotherhood, Conor and the other Recon Marines will voyage across the sea, through dark, trackless, and cursed wilderness…

To the lair of evil, in the Land of Shadows and Crows!

 

Shadows and Crows is out today on Kindle, Paperback, and Audiobook!

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The War’s Not Over – Power Vacuum is Out!

A large part of the Maelstrom Rising series has been aiming at how a next world war wouldn’t necessarily look like most people think. Power Vacuum drives that home, as it becomes clearer that Thunder Run was far from the end in Europe.

The European Defense Council Has Fallen…

…But Peace Has Not Come to Europe

Will the Chaos Only Spread from Here?

The thunder run into Germany has left Matt’s team battered and borderline combat ineffective. The Triarii don’t have the reinforcements for them to stand down, however. Commitments in the US and the Western Pacific have stretched them thin.

And with Europe in chaos, there is no rest to be had.

Jihadis have struck repeatedly, sowing bloodshed and confusion where possible, and it appears the Turks are involved. The Russians are pushing in the east, and they may have operatives in the heart of Western Europe as well.

The European Defense Corps hasn’t stood down, either.

And a new NGO that’s arrived to help might be the most dangerous enemy of all…

***

Hybrid Warfare.

It’s become something of a buzzword. There are books written about how it became a buzzword (One in particular, that proved to be a massive waste of time while doing research for this book, was entirely on the academic development of the understanding of the concept.) But it’s really nothing new. The extent to which modern belligerents might combine regular and irregular forces might be somewhat new, but it’s been going on as long as there’s been warfare.

We get to see it up close and personal in Power Vacuum. Because the instruments of war are as much political, economic, and informational as they are kinetic. And when you embark on an offensive, you’d better be prepared for the aftermath.

Because nature abhors a vacuum.

Power Vacuum is out now on Kindle and in Paperback!

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Power Vacuum Chapter 2

Almost cut off. Chris stomped on the brake and slewed the wheel over, throwing Gorman and David against me as I was crushed against the inside of the door. A moment later, he stomped on the gas again, struggling slightly against the sluggish weight of the armored vehicle, roaring up Am Pumpwerk, around the back of the “Autohaus” at the intersection. The other vehicles followed, chased by bullets and at least one rocket, which skipped off the pavement, as the idiot shooting it apparently tried to compensate for recoil that wasn’t there.

We didn’t get far, though. A black UAZ Hunter roared out into the middle of the road in front of us, the doors flying wide and an HK21 sticking out through the “V” of the door on the right. The machinegun opened up with a ripping, staccato thunder.

The gunner wasn’t very good, fortunately, and rounds sailed over our vehicle with a snarling crackle, but this wasn’t going to end well. We might be able to push past that Hunter, but then a moment later, two more shooters with LAWs came around the back.

We weren’t going to dodge those rockets, even if they flinched.

“Get out, get out, get out!” David and I kicked our doors open before the vehicle had even stopped moving, and I dragged Gorman out with me as I dove for the side of the road. Chris wasn’t far behind, dragging his go bag and his own SBR with him.

A moment later, one of the LAW rockets hit with boom, the vehicle rocking as smoke and frag blasted from the grill. A faint flash blasted through the interior, as the High Explosive Anti-Tank round blew a plume of superheated plasma through metal, plastic, and ceramic. It was followed a moment later by a second blast as the other LAW hit. The Land Rover started to burn.

I was already hauling Gorman through the bushes next to the road and toward the “Autohaus.” Momentarily letting my weapon hang on its sling, I keyed my radio. “Smiley, Deacon. We have troops in contact, motorcade disabled, at…” I looked up at the building, but there was no sign.

“This is the T&R Ihr Autohaus, on the intersection of Hauptstraẞe 3 and Am Pumpwerk.” Gorman was clearly scared, but he was keeping his head.

I passed the information along. Since the war had started, GPS had been entirely too unreliable for anything more than about a grid square level of accuracy. Which wasn’t going to help us when we were waiting for our QRF. “We are strongpointing in the Autohaus. Be advised, the enemy has anti-tank rockets and at least one drone.”

“Good copy, Deacon. QRF is spooling up as we speak. Fifteen minutes.” Smiley had proved himself over the last couple of months and easily a dozen incidents, though so far, we hadn’t seen anything this serious since Strasbourg.

The Autohaus was a car dealership, and while there was a lot of glass in the front—much of it probably already shattered by concussion and gunfire—the back was mostly solid brick, with only a couple of doors, all metal and windowless. I hauled Gorman toward one of the back doors, passing the double line of cars parked close together in the back. Between the cars, the big outbuilding at the end of the row of bushes, and the couple of houses and outbuildings beyond that, we had some cover and concealment for a few seconds, giving us some breathing room.

I tried the door, but it was locked. That didn’t last long. Reuben showed up with Tony and Jordan, dragging the trail vehicle’s breacher kit, while the rest of Gorman’s German PSD laid down 4.6mm fire past the vehicles, trying to keep the attackers suppressed while we found a way into the building.

Gorman straightened and knocked on the door, unwilling to just have us break it down right away. The gunfire continued to echo off the surrounding buildings, but it had slackened somewhat, as the attackers tried to maneuver, and Bachmann, Forney, and Häusler kept laying down cover fire.

I could appreciate Gorman’s sentiment, but when you’re under fire is hardly the time for sentiment. We could pay for the broken door later.

At any rate, nobody answered the door, to my complete lack of surprise. “Reuben, break it open.”

My big secondary medic, whom the late Phil Kerr had called “the biggest Mexican I’ve ever seen,” much to Reuben’s displeasure—he’d insist he was “Texican,” not “Mexican”—already had the Halligan tool in his hands, his SBR Tactical dangling from its sling in front of him, and he slammed the duckbill into the crack between the door and the jamb, throwing all his weight on the shaft as he wrenched on the door.

The door was metal-sheathed, and I could see this being harder than it looked, but again, Reuben was a big dude, and he was putting a lot of force on the Halligan, not only with just his weight. Pushing hard against the ground with his legs—and I’d seen what Reuben could squat—he strained, the veins popping on his neck as the door cracked, then the latch tore through the metal jamb with a hellish shriek.

We were in.

I went in first, David on my heels, weapons level and clearing the corners. The door opened onto a short hallway, with what appeared to be offices on one side and utility rooms on the other. I half expected some of the attackers to be coming in the front, but for the moment, we had the back to ourselves.

I held on the hallway leading toward the showroom in the front while David and Chris stacked on the utility room door. I might have been able to hear noise from the front, gunfire and smashing glass, possibly shouts, but my hearing was so brutalized by years of gunfire, explosives, and helicopters that I couldn’t be sure what was coming from in front and what was coming from the back, behind me, through the open door.

Chris reached around David and threw the door open. The two of them flowed in quickly, and I heard no gunshots. Stepping forward, I cleared the door as Greg, Reuben, Jordan, and Tony hustled Gorman inside behind me.

We needed to clear the building, but leaving Gorman outside where the bullets were flying was not going to be a good idea. I held on the hallway for a moment, until Jordan squeezed my elbow and said, “With you.” Then I was moving, sidestepping to the door to the offices—there was a narrow window above the door handle, through which I could see the desks and computers—threw the door open, and went in.

Half a dozen people were huddled under the desks, peering over the tops and past the computers as we made entry, SBRs leveled, clearing our corners quickly before we moved to one wall, carefully checking the dead space beneath and behind each desk, scanning each worker, checking hands and demeanors, just in case someone there either decided to try to play hero, or else was on the bad guys’ side.

Whoever the hell the bad guys were. The list of suspects in post-EDC Germany was pretty long.

“Everyone stay down!” Jordan had not been what I might have considered the team’s go-to public relations man. Being the sole black man on the team, and also, due to his skin color, something of a rarity in some of the places we’d been lately, he’d been carrying a chip on his shoulder the size of an Abrams tank since long before I’d met him. I knew him well enough that I knew it wasn’t entirely unjustified—the man had been recruited into the Triarii after his mother had been beaten to death by Fourth Reich neo-Nazis, after all—but it had been a constant thorn in my side, within the team as well as out. But he was mellowing a bit, and at the moment his tone was even and almost friendly. “We don’t want to hurt anyone. We’ll do what we can to keep you safe. But you have to stay down on the floor and stay in this room.”

We hit the last of the offices. There was another door leading out into another hallway, and we stacked on it momentarily, as Jordan looked back over the frightened faces huddled behind or under the desks. “Lock this door, and stay where you are.”

I led the way out into the hallway, and immediately found myself in a gunfight.

Even as I came out through the door, half a dozen men in dark clothing and balaclavas burst into the showroom. They were carrying a mix of MP5s, G3s, and what looked an awful lot like a G36. The man in the lead, the one with the G36 lookalike, sprayed bullets across the receptionist’s desk as he ran through the doorway.

Their own noise and violence distracted them just long enough to give me a chance to start shooting before any of them had a shot at me. I dumped the guy with the G36-ish thing, hammering three rounds into him as fast as I could squeeze the trigger, the red dot tracking slightly up the side of his torso with the recoil. My suppressed .300 Blackout was downright hushed after the rattle of unsuppressed 5.56 fire. But there was no missing the spatter as my third round went into the side of his jaw and blew out a chunk of flesh, bone, and fluids, splashing them into the next man’s eyes.

That guy didn’t get time to wipe the gore out of his vision, as Jordan shot him a split second later, blowing his brains out even as he tried to shove the falling body off himself. The dead man had momentarily pinned him against the doorjamb, and Jordan’s bullet shattered the glass behind him as his skull got ventilated.

I dragged my muzzle across the group while they desperately tried to get out of the doorway, riding the reset to dump the mag into them as fast as I could. Six to two is not good odds, no matter whether the two got the drop on the six or not, and I had to even things out as fast as possible.

One went down hard, a pair of holes punched in his chest, spitting blood as his heart and lungs got pulped by two 220-grain bullets. Another took a round to the shoulder as he moved, shoving his way past the dying man and deeper into the showroom. He staggered as the impact turned him partway around, and I followed up but missed as a burst of 5.56 fire blew brick and plaster into my face. I ducked back into the hallway as Jordan threw himself behind the receptionist’s desk.

The bad guys were scrambling for cover behind anything that might get between them and a bullet, from the stacked wheels along the big glass picture windows to the lime-green Porsche parked in the center of the open floor. They’d left three dead men in the doorway, but that still left three of them in front of us, along with however many more were out front, not to mention those closing in from the back parking lot.

Somebody really wanted Gorman dead.

I was covered by the corner from the guy who’d dived behind the stacked wheels, but the two behind the Porsche had me. I threw myself flat on my side, rolling over my SBR to bring the red dot to bear underneath the car, at least as best I could.

The Porsche was awfully low to the ground, which didn’t give me much of a window or much of a target. I dumped about six rounds beneath the vehicle, though I’m pretty sure at least one or two ricocheted off the concrete floor and into the undercarriage instead of into the bodies on the other side.

At least one went home, though, as the man collapsed with a scream, apparently getting in his buddy’s way, since the fire from the other side of the sports car suddenly stopped.

If I’d had a frag, I might have ended it right there. But I didn’t have one, since carrying frag grenades on PSD missions tended to be frowned upon. I still would have taken a couple anyway, except that we had some delicate relationships to think about, and if we used the damn things, we’d have the Army all over us.

So, I had to move. Scrambling to my feet, I used the momentary pause in fire—aided by Jordan’s bullets sending shattered glass cascading over the shooters on the other side of the car from behind the receptionist’s desk—to hook around the corner and go after the one who’d taken cover behind the stack of wheels.

I almost got my head taken off, as the guy fired a long burst at me as soon as he spotted movement, 9mm rounds ripping past my ear and into the wall behind and above me. He wasn’t controlling the recoil all that well, which is the only reason I survived, and he was drilling holes in the ceiling when I shot him four times in the chest, throat, and face. He crashed back against the glass and the low brick wall at its base, leaving a red smear on the plaster as he slid to the floor.

Then I was up and moving on the front of the car, even as Jordan got up and headed for the back. He held just off the corner as I went around the grill, not even pausing as I shot the man with the G3—maybe it was an HK33, since everybody seemed to be shooting 9mm or 5.56—twice in the chest and twice in the head, turning my muzzle on the second man with an MP5 and splashing blood, brains, and hair against the brightly-painted side of the car.

Being almost entirely certain that they were dead, I still stepped back around the car, ducking down to a knee behind the front driver’s side wheel while I scanned the parking lot and the road beyond for more bad guys.

I might have seen movement, but right at the moment, the road was pretty clear. The civvies had scrambled for cover as soon as the shooting had started, and nobody else wanted a piece. I was sure there was a Bundespolizei unit in Bremen, but for whatever reason, they weren’t getting involved. They’d have been here by now if they were.

I had my suspicions about that. The Bundespolizei were criminally understrength, but I suspected that while they might not be that eager to go running into a firefight with only a handful of dudes and a couple of G-Wagens, there was also a political angle there. They’d deny it, of course, but it wouldn’t matter to us if we were dead, nevertheless.

A lot of the establishment in Berlin and Paris still weren’t happy that the EDC was gone. They’d take full advantage of the power vacuum for their own benefit, of course, all the while mouthing platitudes about the Council having gone too far, but the truth was that they all tended to agree with the EDC’s goals and ideals, what there were of them. Guys like Gorman and the rest of the Verteidiger in Bayern, or Nouveau Gallia, or any number of more “conservative,” “nationalist” movements throughout Europe were persona non grata at best.

There was no way the authorities in Bremen, or anywhere else in Germany outside of Bavaria—well, a chunk of Bavaria—or a couple other minor cities were going to risk their cops to rescue the likes of Wenzeslaus Gorman. The man advocated for cleaning up the jihadi enclaves, lower taxes, and a Germany that was effectively economically independent—even from the Americans, which perhaps made our presence a little problematic, but who cared—and to them, that made him the next best thing to the return of Heinrich Himmler.

Not that they’d say that. Repeating those names was frowned upon, somewhat more in Germany than in the US. The implications could be made, though.

It was ironic, given the fights we’d already had with the Fourth Reich, which had a considerable presence in what used to be East Germany, and Gorman hated those bastards.

“Golf Lima Ten, this is Tango India Five Six.” Tyler Bradshaw led the infantry section that had been our trail unit since we’d inserted into Slovakia on a rescue mission, over a year and several lifetimes ago. Now he was our QRF. “We are five mikes out. Three trucks and an M1200.”

“Roger. Be advised, bad guys have LAW rockets and IEDs. Advance carefully. We are currently strongpointed in the T&R auto dealership.” I wasn’t going to bother with the German over the radio. “Principal is secure, and we are holding position.”

“Good copy.” Bradshaw wasn’t a particularly talkative man in person. He was even less so over the radio.

A renewed storm of gunfire sounded outside, around the back of the building. They couldn’t have that many shooters left, but a couple could still cause us trouble, especially if they hauled out any more LAWs.

More movement, in the bushes across the road. I tracked in on it, but had no target.

Anyone in that field was probably going to have a bad day. There’d been quite a few cows out there, and while they would have run from the gunfire, if there was a bull in the mix, he was not going to be happy.

I fell back from the window, moving deeper into the shadows. The staff must have turned the lights off as soon as the shooting started, which was smart. If the bad guys had started shooting at movement, it would have been harder to see any movement inside the showroom with the lights off.

“Looks like they’ve bugged out.” Jordan should have known better than to say something like that. I was too busy watching my sector to give him the stink-eye for taunting Murphy, but a moment later the thud of another explosion was followed by the crackle of 5.56 and 4.6mm fire from the back of the building.

“You had to say it.” I shifted across the room, falling back toward the hallway, while Jordan covered the front. Nobody was stirring around the semis that were still jackknifed across the road, even though there was more gunfire echoing from what sounded like the far side. Maybe Bradshaw had overestimated how long it was going to take them to reach us.

The deep-throated thumpthumpthump of a heavy machinegun answered that question, especially when several rounds smashed right through the trailers partway across the road.

Bradshaw had arrived.

If only that meant it was over.

 

Power Vacuum comes out on Kindle and in Paperback Feb 15.

The post Power Vacuum Chapter 2 appeared first on AMERICAN PRAETORIANS.

Power Vacuum Chapter 1

I hate PSD work.

One of the benefits of being in the Grex Luporum teams is that we can be mobile and unpredictable, moving quickly and often invisibly through the AO to get the mission done. When the mission is to act as a Personal Security Detachment, escorting a public figure, though, especially one who might end up becoming the next Prime Minister of Germany, it gets harder to stay unpredictable.

Which was why I wasn’t all that surprised when the lead vehicle blew up just short of the bridge over the Ochtum.

The armored Land Rover disappeared into a boiling black cloud that slammed out of the trees on the side of the road, the heavy thud of the detonation traveling through the ground toward us. I caught a glimpse of the vehicle a moment later, slewed halfway around with its back wheels against the median, the armored glass starred and a few hundred frag holes punched into the doors, as I keyed my radio.

“Contact, right.” The Land Rover that had been hit cracked its doors, the Germans who formed the bulk of Wenzeslaus Gorman’s official PSD sticking their MP7s out through the “V” and covering down on the flank the IED had hit them from. “Shift left, get off the X.” I felt for Meyer and Shultz, but the skinny, balding man with the wire-framed glasses in the back of my vehicle was the mission.

David Reyes was driving our vehicle, and he didn’t hesitate or ask questions. We all knew what needed to happen. As soon as Brian Hartrick had told us we’d be doing this, we’d practiced these sorts of scenarios until we could react to contact in our sleep.

After years of low-level warfare, and over a year of much more high-intensity warfare in Europe, we almost hadn’t even needed to practice anymore.

Bouncing up and over the curb, he sped past the stricken Land Rover, the weight of additional armor bogging our own vehicle down somewhat on the damp grass and earth in the median. We dropped into the opposite lanes with a jarring series of impacts, the other three vehicles in the motorcade following, as Meyer and Schultz covered us. So far, they hadn’t opened fire, which suggested that the attack was just the one IED.

I didn’t necessarily buy it, especially given some of what had been going on in Germany over the last three months since the New European Council had been gutted on the day of its own inauguration ceremony.

We roared into oncoming traffic, but fortunately the explosion had halted that, as nobody in their right mind wants to drive into an IED kill zone. Most of the Germans are still mostly in their right mind, never mind the influx of Middle Easterners and Balkan Islamists, most of whom were pretty close to batshit crazy in my experience. Even the ones that didn’t want to kill all the infidels. That meant we had a barrier of stopped vehicles in front of us, but we didn’t need to worry so much about a head-on collision.

David still had to get onto the brick sidewalk to the side of the road, since there wasn’t exactly a lot of room to maneuver, with both oncoming lanes taken up by traffic. We raced past two big BMW semi-trucks, then had to squeeze past a trio of sedans and smart cars to avoid hitting the light pole in the middle of the sidewalk.

Horns honked at us, but no more explosions rocked the midday bustle of Bremen, and I couldn’t hear any small arms fire, either. Maybe it had just been the one IED.

For his part, Gorman was calm. This wasn’t the first attempt on his life. It seemed that espousing common sense and a more decentralized Europe didn’t make a man particularly popular among some of the more violent groups running around since the fall of the EDC.

Not least, the remnant of the European Defense Corps itself. They were still lurking around Chemnitz, still a threat, but one that nobody wanted to deal with. Least of all the US Army, which was currently busily repeating every mistake we’d made for the last thirty years as they tried to hold down the violence in Germany and France in the aftermath of the war.

Some of them were even still insisting that the war was over. The wreckage and rising smoke behind us suggested otherwise.

People yelled and more vehicles honked their horns as we kept moving along the sidewalk, pedestrians jumping out of the way. I twisted in my seat to check behind us, seeing the follow vehicles still all behind us and staying close. Probably too close, given the IED threat.

David found a gap at the intersection and stomped on the gas as he pulled the wheel over, getting us back on the southbound lanes as we passed a massive IKEA and headed out of the commercial section of town, making for the overpass that arced over the autobahn. The other vehicles followed, even as Gorman got on the phone. From the sounds of it, he was talking to Meyers and Schultz, making sure they were okay and could get clear.

That said good things about the man. Despite my general distrust of politicos, I had to admit that what I’d seen of Wenzeslaus Gorman over the last week had somewhat impressed me.

I started to tense up as we got closer to the overpass. It was a choke point, and while we were now almost half a mile away from the kill zone, and no follow up attack had hit us yet, that did not mean I was going to relax. We’d been through too much since everything had gone sideways in Slovakia the year before.

David was driving fast, probably right at the edge of where he could keep the heavy Land Rover under control. Up-armored SUVs tend to have an even higher center of gravity than most, and if you maneuver too quickly, you can lose it fast. David was a hell of a driver though, which was part of why he was driving and I was riding shotgun. Sure, I was the team leader, which meant I had to keep track of everything and run comms, but Tony was my assistant team leader since Scott had gone down on the back stairway of the European Defense Council building, and he wouldn’t let Jordan drive the trail vehicle. He’d shoved his way behind the wheel himself as soon as we’d gotten ready to move out.

Scott’s death still stung, months later. Along with Dwight’s, and Phil’s, and a lot of other people’s.

We roared over the autobahn and kept going south. We’d planned on hitting the autobahn itself and heading east, toward Wildeshausen, where Gorman had his next meeting with several industrialists, but with the IED strike behind us, that plan was out the window. We kept going south, toward Brinkum.

“We’ve got a drone overhead.” Jordan was keeping an eye out. I craned my neck to try to see, but the reduced interior space on the inside of the Land Rover thanks to the armor package, never mind the distortion brought on by the thickness of the laminated armored glass, meant I couldn’t see much. It was a partly cloudy day, and the sun was shining brightly on us at the moment.

“Roger.” I switched channels for a moment. “This is Deacon. I need some counter-drone coverage over Brinkum, time now.”

“Deacon, this is Smiley.” Don Charron was one of our recent recruits, having hit his end of service in the Army, which hadn’t instituted a Stop/Loss for some unknown reason. Instead of heading home—which had been a bit of an issue with the airspace problems during the war—he’d joined up with us, and now he was holding down the Northern Germany TOC. “We’ve got a counter-drone swarm on the way, but it’s going to be at least fifteen minutes.”

“Roger.” Nothing to be done about it. The logistics and the time and distance were what they were. We’d already known we’d be on the outside of what drone coverage we could manage before we’d left Hanover that morning. I switched back to the team net. Unfortunately, the vehicle didn’t have a built-in radio—a major oversight, from my point of view—so we had to rely on our personal rigs, and the armor made those spotty.

We sped past Brinkum without incident, but that drone was still shadowing us. I got a glimpse of it as we went around the curve to the south of town. It didn’t appear to be armed, or one of the warhead-bearing kamikazes we still had nightmares about after the battle for Nitra. But it didn’t need to be. All it needed to do was tell the bad guys where we were.

“Is it still there?” Gorman had heard enough that he knew we were being followed.

“It’s still there, sir. We’ve got countermeasures coming.” I didn’t look back at him, but kept my eyes forward, watching the road and our surroundings. The good news was, we were on a highway, and unless they had IEDs set in all over the place, just in case, we’d be difficult to ambush.

Didn’t mean it was impossible, especially not with that damned drone up there.

“Should we take shelter until the drone is eliminated?” Gorman might be surprisingly common sensical for a pol, but he still wasn’t a shooter, and he didn’t understand a lot of this stuff.

“No, sir. That drone’s probably sending a live feed to whoever’s controlling it, so stopping and sheltering in place will only give them a stationary target.” As the team leader, I was stuck doing most of the talking. David had to concentrate on the road, anyway.

We were moving fast, weaving through the traffic, which was still pretty thin for the time of day. At least, it seemed that way to me, but some things still hadn’t stabilized in the New Germany. Or the New France, for that matter. That IED back there hadn’t been a unique occurrence. A lot of people were still being very cautious on a day-to-day basis.

We almost made it. But the highway opened up a bit at the intersection with Delmenhorster Street, and that was where they hit us.

A big semi-truck pulled out into the intersection and stopped, the driver’s side door opening and a figure pulling out what looked like an old M72 LAW, shouldering the tube before he was even out of the cab.

David hauled the wheel over, almost rolling the vehicle, as the guy in the cab fired the LAW. The rocket slammed past us, missing the rear of the Land Rover by inches, exploding against the low wall alongside the road. I caught a glimpse of the truck’s cab filling with smoke as shattered glass cascaded to the pavement.

Unfortunately, this had been better planned than we’d expected. Two SUVs swerved across the road to block the lane right in front of us. We were boxed in.

The traffic around us scattered like quail, as the SUV doors opened and several men piled out, one of them putting an MG4 in the “V” of the door and opening fire.

Muzzle flash strobed in the gap, and our windshield starred and clouded as bullets rained against the front of the Land Rover, hitting with a thunderous chorus of brutal thuds and bangs. “Get down!” I reached back to shove Gorman as low as possible even as David ducked below the steering wheel and stomped on the gas.

They weren’t expecting us to charge them. The machinegun fire slackened suddenly, and David yelled, “Hold onto your nuts!” Then we hit.

The impact rocked us, and I felt Gorman bounce off the seat behind me. I had braced myself, so I didn’t hit the dash too hard. David kept the gas pedal down, but while the Land Rover with its ten thousand pounds of extra steel and composite outweighed the two civilian SUVs, we still hadn’t been moving quite fast enough to shove them out of the way. We were stuck.

I’d already pulled the cover off my Wilson Combat SBR Tactical, and now I snatched it out of the gap between my seat and the center console. The need to stay somewhat low-profile—we were all in civilian clothes, for one thing, instead of our Triarii greens with the crossed-rifle patches—had precluded bringing our full-length LaRue OBRs on this op. So, while I would have preferred the full-power 7.62 NATO, the .300 Blackout was going to have to do the trick.

More bullets smacked into the laminate windshield, and I thought I heard an alarming crack. The armor wasn’t going to hold up much longer. “On three!” I had my weapon in one hand, my other on the door handle.

“One!” David was just as ready, his own SBR tucked under his left arm, the muzzle pointed at the ceiling.

“Two!” I already had the door unlatched. Gorman was down on the floor in the back, doing what he was supposed to do. A different sort of principal might be freaking out right then, demanding to know what was going on, but again, this wasn’t the first time someone had tried to kill Wenzeslaus Gorman.

“Three!” We threw our doors open at the same time, immediately dropping our weapons as we pushed out, fingers tightening on triggers before our muzzles had even come level.

As my vision cleared the smashed and clouded armored windshield, I spotted one of the shooters. Dressed in dark clothing and a black balaclava, he looked a little banged up, almost as if he’d been knocked down when we’d hit the crumpled Volkswagen Tiguan. He wasn’t moving all that well as he tried to bring his MP5 up to shoot me.

He was far too slow. I Mozambiqued him from about ten feet away, my first two shots hitting so close together that they sounded like a single report, just before I blew a smoking hole between his eyes, knocking him over backward and out of sight.

The SBR Tactical was suppressed, but we were running the supersonic .300 Blackout rounds. There wasn’t currently a lot of need for the subsonic, and the supersonic hit harder. The suppressors just meant we didn’t need earpro.

I stepped out, using the vehicle as cover, even as David’s rifle cracked off to my left, and more fire poured into the SUVs from my right, as the rest of the motorcade set up and broke seal to lay down cover fire. I spotted the Tiguan’s driver, looking a little dazed, as he tried to bring a G36 out to shoot at me through the cracked windshield. I shot him in the face, my first rounds going high and punching into his forehead as the glass diverted my rounds. Red spattered on the cracked and starred window glass.

Then I was rolling out as more bullets smashed into the attackers’ SUV, a hail of 7.62 fire punching holes in metal and plastic and shattering more glass. Jordan must have hauled Tony’s Mk 48 out of the back of the trail vehicle. We might have been rolling with lower profile weapons for the most part, but Tony hadn’t been willing to cover a couple hundred miles of still-unsecure German territory without a belt fed.

Yanking the rear door open, I grabbed Gorman. “We’ve got to go!” Chris and Greg had pulled up in the next vehicle, and they already had the doors open, Greg yelling at us to get in.

Keeping Gorman’s head down, I hustled him around the back of the smashed-up Land Rover. The front was riddled with bullet impacts, the hood and bumper crumpled from the collision with not just the Tiguan, but the older BMW next to it. The up-armored vehicles only had armor around the passenger compartment, not the engine.

Greg was shooting over his own open door at the SUVs. The man who’d fired the LAW at us lay on his face in the road under the semi’s cab, red spreading slowly out onto the asphalt, a gaping exit wound in the back of his head.

David crossed to the second vehicle with us, still slamming rounds at the bullet-riddled SUVs. More glass cascaded onto the road, and a car alarm was whooping, as I piled into the back of Chris’s and Greg’s vehicle, dragging Gorman with me. David piled in a second later, slamming the door and yelling, “Go, go, go!”

Chris already had the vehicle in reverse as Greg slammed his own door shut rather than risk having it swing closed on his leg. He pulled back and started a J-turn to get us going back north.

Just as he got us turned around and heading back the way we’d come, though, as the other three vehicles in the motorcade started to turn to follow, three more big trucks came down the pike, turning to block the road only a hundred yards away, men piling out of the back to spread out around them, taking cover behind the vehicles and their trailers. The first shots snapped past us, though they were shooting high, and hadn’t struck the vehicle yet.

We were cut off.

The post Power Vacuum Chapter 1 appeared first on AMERICAN PRAETORIANS.

Badass or Buffoon? INFOSEC and Going Gray

The Europe of Power Vacuum has changed considerably. So has the war. The Triarii’s operational constraints have changed with the situation, and Matt and his Grex Luporum team have to adjust and reset to many of the tactics and techniques they had to use Stateside, before the war kicked off in earnest. There’s a lot more gray man stuff in Power Vacuum, so I’m happy to bring a guest post from Steve Tarani about how INFOSEC and physicality are a part of truly going gray.

In today’s world of open-source accessible information, perception is reality. People look at your physical and digital footprint and may think ‘Hey what’s this person all about.’ Whether you are aware of it or not, how you are perceived by potential predators, opportunists, co-workers, family members, passers-by, social media monitors and others, is what contributes to their subjective evaluation. 

Badass or Buffoon?

Steve Tarani

Ranging from the bumper stickers on your pickup truck to what you post throughout all your social media platforms, all kinds of data are readily accessible to the entire planet rendering them plainly observable. To the outside observer, these all paint a picture of who and what you’re all about. You can be physically (verbally, visually) and digitally observed. You have no control of how these perceived, but you certainly have control of what you put out there for the world to see and evaluate.

Placed on a graph as a spectrum ranging from Badass to Buffoon, on one end of that spectrum you have the quintessential gray man. He’s a guy that produces so little verbal, visual or digital output that he’s like Jason Borne.

He has no bumper stickers placed on his home or vehicle(s), if he does have any social media presence it’s at a bare minimum with little or no exploitable information. Looking at it from a defense intelligence community perspective, you might label this end of the spectrum ‘Badass.’

Becoming one with the crowd, having nothing overt, obvious, or obtrusive to stand out…that is on the BADASS end of the spectrum.

At the opposite end of that same spectrum, you’ve got a guy with a plethora of verbal, visual and digital footprints such as bumper stickers plastered all over his home and vehicle(s) proclaiming to the world that he’s got plenty of guns at home and/ or stored in his vehicle, how many and who are all his family members, where they live, and where his kids go to school.

Throughout his entire social media platform, he openly posts richly exploitable information such as online video and selfies of his gun safe(s), firearm collection, how much ammo he’s so craftily bought at a discount or reloaded and exactly where it’s all stored replete with geotags (accessible data packs stored within each photo file).

This is a very nicely composed and compelling picture. Posting it to a person al Instagram account, however, is antithetical to being the “Gray Man”. Your digital footprint matters.

As proud as he may be of his stellar hardware collection, he has unwittingly notified the known universe that he’s a gun guy with a very large-scale repository of expensive firearms and tens of thousands of rounds of ammo stored at his home where his spouse is usually alone because he’s out either hunting or camping. Additional observable information indicates that they have 3 kids attending the ABC School on 123 Main Street and the family dog is a chihuahua so other than an early-warning sound system, it cannot provide physical or property security protection. Again, looking at it from a defense intelligence community perspective, you might label this end of the spectrum ‘Buffoon.’

Indicators for TargetingVerbal, Digital, Physical

The predator sees you as either a soft target or a hard target based on observable physical and digital target indicators. Looking at it strictly from the opportunists or predator’s optic, the closer you are to the Badass end of the spectrum, the harder you appear are as a potential target as there’s little or no exploitable information. The closer you are to the Buffoon end of the spectrum, the softer you appear as a potential target.

Predator and opportunists alike (bad guys) seek and reach for the lowest hanging fruit. The greater your number of soft target indicators the higher likelihood of your being targeted. Predators tend to shy away from harder targets and are drawn to softer targets, as they are much easier to victimize. A popular soft target indicator utilized by bad guys (BG) to identify prey, is a breach in information security otherwise known throughout the defense intelligence community as INFOSEC. We as a nation have become desensitized to information sharing – a condition rendering us prone to compromising INFOSEC.

Digital and verbal indicators can be as bad or worse than the physical ones. Granted, seemingly simple things can begin hardening you and your domicile as targets – but the physical side of things should be just one part of your transition from buffoon to badass. 

BGs scan their environment and online for soft targets like it’s their job. Because it is.

What they look for are physical and digital soft target indicators, monitor for ripe opportunities and evaluate whether you are a soft or hard target. You don’t want to yell over your neighbor’s fence, “Hey Joe, we’re going on vacation for the next two weeks and there won’t be anyone here at the house at all for the entire time, would you pick up our mail?” (verbal)

Burglars use online real-estate virtual tours to do their casing. Predators also scan the internet for low hanging social media fruit. A classic example of a post on Facebook replete with photos is, “We’re so excited about our brand-new in-home theater oversized flat-screen TV plus state-of-the-art audio, but we’re going to have to leave it for an entire month as we’ll be vacationing in Mexico starting tomorrow!!!!” (digital)

It makes little sense to try to fortify your home if you are going to broadcast what is in it, how it is laid out, or when it will be (un)occupied. Poor INFOSEC can contribute to the identification or your person or your “location” as a soft target. 

You have full control of all your outgoing information. Use that control with discretion, as there are bad guys out there who’s full-time occupation is to use it against you and your family. Keeping good INFOSEC accounts for only one of many proactive measures you can employ to keep yourself off a predatorial selection listing.

Bottom line about affecting BG target selection is to remain unattractive to the predator. Be like the gray man and blend into the environment. Be the Badass who, by practicing good situational awareness, remains a hard target causing the predator to ask the question, “Are there softer targets?” and provide the answer, “Yes.”

Whether or not you choose to accept it, BGs will observe you both physically and digitally and decide if they are interested in you based on your soft target indicators and their personal perception thereof. If you do everything in your control to avert that interest, then you lean closer to the Badass end of the spectrum.

Posting the likes of “My dog is smarter than your honor roll student” and “Yay! I pooped today!” provide no usable information to either a predator or an opportunist.

Window stickers used as urban camouflage? None of these betray actionable intelligence to a bad guy.

If on the other hand you needlessly and carelessly provide them exploitable physical or digital open-source information, then you violate INFOSEC and present soft target indicators placing you closer to the Buffoon end of the spectrum.

We are always free to choose, but we are not free from the consequence of that choice.

Badass or Buffoon, the choice is always yours to make.The term concealed carry starts with concealed for a reason – almost without exception, the first time someone should have any idea you’re carrying a firearm is the moment you are forced by exigent circumstances to deploy it. Similarly, announcing to the world via social media what weapons you have in the home is contrary to good INFOSEC. 

 

About the Author: Steve Tarani is a former fulltime CIA protective programs employee, small arms and defensive tactics subject matter expert who served on POTUS 45 pre-election executive protection detail. He is the lead instructor for NRA’s non-ballistic weapons training program offered nationally. Tarani is also a DoD and FLETC-certified federal firearms instructor who has been on staff at Gunsite Academy (AZ) as a Rangemaster for over twenty years. Formerly sworn, he is also a former federal contractor and service provider for the US Defense Intelligence Community, US Naval Special Operations Command and other government agencies. Tarani additionally serves on the National Sheriffs’ Association Committee for School Safety and Security. In addition to his teaching and consultation, he  writes for a number of publications, including The Mag Life, the official online publication of GunMag Warehouse.

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Power Vacuum Prologue

New Russian Military Exercises in Serbia

 

Recent reports indicate that what appears to be an entire Russian airborne battalion from the 7th Guards Air Assault Division has entered Serbia and is conducting joint exercises with the Serbian Army near the Hungarian border. So far, there have been no border crossings, but there are reports of live fire near the border. Hungarian Defense Forces are on high alert.

Serbian relations with the West soured considerably following the Fourth Balkan War, in which Western forces intervened in the dispute between Serbia and Kosovo for the second time. The aftermath of that war saw Serbia drawn far more firmly into Russia’s orbit.

With Russian forces pushing along the borders of Slovakia and Poland, ostensibly to create a “security buffer zone” between Russian-occupied territory and the war that erupted in Slovakia last year, this new movement presents a matter of some grave concern.

 

Chinese Naval Forces Shift Focus

 

Following reports of violence on and around the Spratly Islands in the South China Sea, including the reported—though vehemently denied by PLAN spokesperson Bai Guanting—sinking of several PLAN destroyers and severe damage done to the PLAN aircraft carrier Shandong, it appears that the People’s Liberation Army Navy has, for the most part, withdrawn from the South China Sea, leaving the bulk of the Spratly Islands to the Philippines.

Beijing insists that this is and will remain only a temporary redeployment of forces, due to growing Japanese naval activity in the Senkaku Islands and off the coast of Taiwan. Bai Guanting did allow that there had been an uptick in what he called terrorist and pirate activity in the South China Sea, aimed at legitimate Chinese security operations. However, he insisted that the terrorists were being dealt with and that there is no correlation between that activity and the redeployment north, closer to the mainland Chinese coast.

 

Increased Chinese Presence in Kashmir and Pakistan

 

While a series of bombings and growing violence between not only Pakistan and India, but also Pakistani authorities, the Pakistani Taliban, and Lashkhar e Taiba has been cited as the reason for the increased security presence of PLA soldiers in Pakistan, some analysts believe that China is making a move to completely control lines of communication through Central Asia, particularly after the recent withdrawal of PLAN forces from the Spratly Islands.

It does appear that most of the Chinese security forces in Pakistan and Kashmir are concentrated along railroad and ground transportation routes, as well as protecting the new oil pipeline coming from Karachi, as well as mineral routes out of Afghanistan. There are even reports of PLA Special Forces infiltrating into Afghanistan, ostensibly to advise local security forces of the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan, though many analysts suspect they are moving in to strike at any threats to Chinese mining interests in that country.

While many deny its plausibility, especially given the ruggedness of the country in between, it appears that the People’s Republic of China is actively working to secure a new logistical route for strategic materials, separate from the Straits of Malacca and the South China Sea. Time will tell.

 

New Wave of Terror and Infrastructure Attacks Rock East Coast

 

Power went down across large swathes of New Jersey, Pennsylvania, West Virginia, and Ohio, as a cyber attack struck the RFC in conjunction with multiple bombing and arson attacks on major substations. Shortly thereafter, drone strikes on Capitol Hill in Washington DC killed three and temporarily forced lawmakers to take cover in a secure area. No one has taken responsibility for the attack, though Representative Claire Wolverton immediately called a press conference to call for further sanctions and the mobilization of the National Guard to quash the “right-wing terrorist militia” known as “The Triarii.” Senator Trent Corwin, however, pointed out that it was Triarii counter-drone teams that kept the attack from being much worse.

Unrest, instability, supply chain and energy grid disruptions, as well as out-and-out terrorism continue to be facts of life for much of the United States, now a year after the cyber attacks that crippled nearly sixty percent of the power grid in the Lower 48. The worst part of this chaos, however, appears to be an ever-widening rift between states, as more and more Americans blame each other for the disruption and the violence.

 

Balkanization Continues to Harden in the Lower 48 States

 

While it could be argued that the United States has been in a cold civil war for the better part of a decade, it has always been a relatively low-intensity conflict, largely carried out on a social and political level—even if that “social level” included riots and mass demonstrations. For the most part, while there has been plenty of political warfare between various states and the federal government, it always stayed mostly within the realm of rhetoric and legal wrangling, if occasionally spilling over into the realm of economics, as state governments attempted to place boycotts on other states with different politics.

All of that has changed over the last two to three years. Not only has political violence intensified—and there is no mistaking the fact that, despite known foreign activity behind many of the terrorist incidents since the cyber attack last year, much of it has been fed by domestic organizations for political purposes—but the divisions between states have become far sharper.

With the non-governmental organization known as “The Triarii” taking on more and more local and interstate security tasks, and the country appearing to fall into “Triarii States” and “Federal States,” this divide can only get worse.

 

Months after the Fall of Brussels, Europe still has no Peace

 

While it appeared that the war between the US and the European Defense Council ended with the capture or death of the permanent members of the Council itself, stability has not followed the fall of the EDC.

Crime is rampant throughout the former EDC countries, particularly Germany and France. An uneasy truce has been declared along the line running from Toulouse to Marseilles, while the Nouveau Gallia group refuses to stand down. Rumors abound of a separatist movement in Bavaria, while the crime wave throughout the rest of Germany hits new heights.

US Army spokesperson Major Jane Kinsey refused to consider parallels to Iraq from 2004 to 2007, insisting that the Army is working closely with the Bundeswehr and Bundespolizei to ensure stability and peace in the region, and that while the European Defense Council might be no more, the German government is still intact and working toward a new Europe, despite those rare opportunists who would try to use the chaos to further their own goals. While Major Kinsey did not specifically name Russia, the implications, given the growing Russian advances in Poland and eastern Slovakia, are unavoidable.

 

Power Vacuum  comes out on Kindle and paperback February 15.

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