Free Power Games: Operation Enduring Unity I by R A Peters

return fire. He was a little too pre-occupied dragging his partner’s headless body behind the Humvee.
    An ironic calm radiated from the skirmish. Action, so long delayed, left everyone in a thousand yards from the explosion unsure how to take the initiative. Well, almost everyone.
    Florida National Guard Colonel Beauregard wasn’t sure himself who had the initiative, but he knew who had the artillery. He issued a string of long awaited orders. For the first time in this busy night he strapped on his body armor. Noticing the quiet around him, he added a little heat in his voice.
    “What the hell are you waiting for Captain? You heard me. Execute the prepped fire mission.” Keeping the order in familiar, safe military terminology sanitized the thought enough for the young Fire Support Officer to suppress his doubts and obey.
    “WILCO, sir.”
    Unlike most of the guardsmen under his command, Beauregard didn’t find it hard to believe the president was trying to seize complete control of the country. A megalomaniac himself, the political chaos gripping the nation presented an obvious opportunity to grab power. He was even in the same party as the president. Were he in the White House, he wouldn’t have hesitated to do the same thing.
    In fact, the only thing that pissed him off was knowing that Guard officers from an opposing state would probably never rise high in the new regime. If only he’d been approached personally to assist with the coup, well…that’s not how it happened. Being on the other side, his only route to power and fame lay with being the man that decisively halted the dictator’s ambitions.
    None of this meant anything to the men he so poorly led and even less to the battalion of US paratroopers on the receiving end of his massed artillery. Not one known for noble gestures, the hour cease-fire he granted was spent arming and sighting his 18 heavy 155mm howitzers and the 8 lighter, but faster firing 120mm mortars. The next hour would be spent killing more Americans than died in the First Gulf War.
    The men of 2-6 Airborne gritted through three end-of-the-world volleys before they realized that time and ammo were on the enemy’s side. There were no senior leaders left to order an advance. Colonel Anderson and most of the unit’s core leadership were powwowing in the exact center of the incoming Steel Rain, apparently trusting too much in the armistice. They hit the dirt at the first whistle of incoming, but there wasn’t much cover around.
    None would get up again.
    Still, you didn’t need an officer to point out that the only way to survive the hell storm around them was to close with the enemy as fast as possible. If they could get close enough, maybe they could fight their way through the scores of armored vehicles ringing their position. It was more a collective hope than a plan, but in the absence of heavy weapons, hope was all they had.
    The survivors began bounding forward by squads and fire teams, laying down suppressive fire as they went. That subtlety didn’t last long. The overwhelming urge to get close enough to the surprised guardsmen, to get out of the hammering artillery kill zone, culminated in an old-fashioned charge. With a collective shout of “Airborne!” heard even over the artillery and machine guns, they surged forward all across the perimeter. Their “wild” firing was not only intense, but also incredibly accurate. These were some of the Army’s most experienced troops, after all. Elite men with a narrow mission and only a few hundred yards till revenge.
    They almost made it.
    The scout platoon charged down a dirt back road towards the maelstrom. The fear of missing the big fight, of letting their brothers die without them, was a horror worse than the slaughter itself. Everyone rushed to the battle except the sergeant major. He stopped his Humvee and contemplated the tracers, all the same color, in the distance.
    Despite the personae he’d cultivated for years, he