I slowly drove along Wilmington boulevard, seeing the hundreds of people. walking about like it was a normal day. Sure the distant sounds of rifle, machine gun, and artillery fire was an oddity to the city of LA… but the constant work, and now success of Operation Fortitude had saved thousands of lives. People caught right before they crossed the rubicon.
Now they were soviet citizens, helping their new neighbors. A semblance of a life similar to their old ones. Sure the food was old or close to expiring, they might be eating shitty soviet MREs. they might not be able to drive freely, or leave the fob permeriter line without taking a gun with them. But near Firebase Fyodor in downtown wilmington… if you ignored the occasional soviet vehicle driving around, the soldiers walking around off duty, you could pretend the apocalypse never happened.
There was power, limited though it was. The city twinked with light from the sky at night once again as old power plants were once again reactivated, fresh water flowed through the city's pipes, dozens of buses drove around, taking the people to and fro. Across hundreds of homes citizens grew small gardens, children ran about and played once again.
I glanced at my wife in the passenger seat, watching her as I drove through several neighborhoods. The soft smile that played across her face, that sad look deep in her eyes. I slowly accelerated as I approached the highway, driving further from Firebase Fyodor. Some buildings were still blasted, shelled remains from the siege over a month ago. Scorch marks and bullet holes marred dozens of buildings. Occasional fires, ones too far and isolated from the populated areas still burned.
The highway was cleared along the edges, the areas away from the common destinations had the vehicles piled towards the middle of the median. As we drove down the highway a convoy of T-72s came past us on the other side.
"You did it…" Veria quietly muttered.
"No… we did." I replied while I continued looking ahead.
"Andrew… there's around forty eight thousand people here… you really think anyone else could do this? I mean, yeah, you have that system. There are thousands of soldiers that serve you without question… who else could have done that. You inspire them. The soldiers, the citizens…." she countered.
"I couldn't have done this… we would all be dead or you'd be doing this in a roundabout abstract way. I couldn't… my family couldn't… she trailed off as i merged onto another highway, passing a column of supply trucks.
"I mean look at those trucks we just passed. They are filled with supplies gathered from across the city you've brought together everyone from the gangs to executives and everyone in between."
"You think I could have done any of this without you?" I asked.
"Even if i'd have gotten the system, I would have been back with my family… What good would two system users in the same spot be? Virginia and Maryland would be crawling with British and Soviet troops by now if that was the case." I replied. I thought back to my days before the apocalypse, we'd taken some offset leave prior to leaving for a rotation. As much as I hoped some of the guys from my unit were okay, I didn't hold much hope.
I pushed the thought aside as our destination came into view. LAX, or Fob LA. I drove through the security checkpoint, having a brief conversation with the guard before driving to the main terminal. I parked the uaz next to several others and headed inside, following a few soldiers as they led us to the command center.
Inside the highest ranking members of the army, air force, and navy greeted me. I gestured for everyone to take a seat. This looked like a break room, modified to become a command center. I mean the one back at Firebase Fyodor was three offices with their walls knocked out…
Colonel Erik, George, Joseph and Luka were quietly talking to one another. Meanwhile commodore Gena was discussing with Colonel Thomas, sounded like something about a joint clearing operation of the gulf? Meanwhile lieutenant Colonel Ivanov and Major Ivan were busy setting out the planner for the meeting.
I planted a kiss on my wife's forehead and seated her next to me as everyone sat around the table. Ivanov cleared his throat and began. "Gentlemen, and lady. Today's briefing… discussion will be going over the following topics, Operation Iron Curtain, Operation Forge, Operation Black Eagle, Operation Crimson Wave, Operation Iron Gauntlet, and Operation Silver Shield."
My wife looked at me in confusion but I pointed to the covered folder in front of her. Everything she needed to kno was inside of it. The rest of us all had copies. Ivanov continued leading the discussion. "Let's start with Silver Shield… does anyone have any objections or alterations to the plan?"
"I don't have anything against the plan, but I do have a concern…" Joseph said.
"My regiment is already split between fob Dominqez and fob Alimitos, with the amount of gangs and raiders in the vicinity of fob Dominqez. They'll likely see it as an opportunity to continue attacking our forces…" Joseph said.
"Your concerns are valid, but the purpose of Silver shield is to prepare Dominguez for Operation Iron Fist, appropriate countermeasures against the riff raft will be taken." Ivanov replied.
"Against the raiders…" I corrected Ivanov.
"They are still human, much as we may think less of them, we can not afford to underestimate them." I continued as I looked at the Colonels reminding them of the recent supply convoys that were being hit.
"I'll see to it that our supply convoys are more heavily guarded sir." Luka replied. I gave him a look but didn't press the issue further.
"With that settled let us move along to the next issue, Black Eagle… Do you have alterations to the plan… Colonel Thomas?" Ivanov asked.
"Not in principle no… expanding the pair of hind squadrons toa full regiment, adding a regiment of Mig-23s… I see nothing wrong with it. I'm worried that I may not be able to fully keep up with the army's need for ground support. A regiment of su-25's would go a long way in that regard if it is within the budget…" Thomas siad.
"With the large surplus of credits available, it shouldn't be a problem, add a regiment of su-25s to the acquisition plan." I said in reply, then informed major Ivan to add the rest to the plan so I could quickly copy the list into the story later.
"Commodore Gena, you wished to alter the plans for Operation Crimson Wave?" Ivanov asked.
"More so the scope of the operation Colonel, with the aid of the naval infantry battalion I have no doubt we can clear the channel islands before winter. I want to expand our operations, a few destroyers and extra frigates to patrol further out to sea, and possibly scout the other coastal cities nearby. San Francisco, San Diego, Ensenada, possibly as far north as Astoria and as far south as Puerto Vallarta. If it is permissible i'd like to send a group into the Pacific, specifically Hawaii…"
I leaned forward, Gena's ambition stirred something within me. "How much do you want?"
"A Slava, three Udaloy 2s, four Udaloy 1s, seven more Krivaks, all with their helicopters…" Gena replied. I let out a small whistle but nodded and looked to Ivan to note that down.
"We will look at the budget, if something has to go we'll cut a few ships, but the expanded mission scope, that is approved." I replied as I finally picked up the manila folder and pulled out the documents.
"Lets go over Operation Iron curtain… we are looking at doubling the current size of the army, adding another four regiments in a mirrored division… 2nd division will focus its efforts securing the remainder of Long Beach of the gangs before moving into Anaheim and Santa Anna, possibly moving as far south as Irvine." i said.
I looked at the regimental commanders. They would be taking command of the divisions as I moved to taking over corps level command. As always they seemed somewhat daunted by the prospect but looked at each other. "Shall we keep with our little tradition?" George asked, they looked at each other before slowly nodding.
"I'll command 2nd division sir." Joseph said.
"I'll take over command of the 1st when you relieve yourself of the position sir." George added.
"So Erik and Luka will wait for Operation Iron gauntlet for the 3rd and 4th divisions?"
They nodded. I shrugged, not having a problem with their arrangements. The plan was to copy the existing division anyway, leaving that 5th regiment slot open for now if it was needed.
"Operation Iron Gauntlet will likely be put on hold or delayed, waiting for Silver Shield to be fully complete before it can get underway." Luka brought up.
"We'll have to use our reconnaissance assets and reconiter the area ahead of the main offensive into Commerce and then shift focus to San Bernardino. That should put us in a good position to move into the valley and secure farmland come February, if we can push as far north as Bakersfeild by then we should be able to feed at least half of the projected population by our own produce instead of continually draining credits to feed everyone." Ivanov added.
"Speaking of credit drains. Operation Forge…" I said, bringing everyone's attention to something critically important.
"We've identified several key facilities sir, but the most promising is the El Segundo refinery, given a month or two it can be converted to refine the heavy oil the local fields produce. By winter we should be able to completely fulfill our needs based on our production. There are a couple factories within the fob line we've identified as well, mostly to produce for the population… there's a few in Commerce that can be converted to suit military needs, once Operation Iron Gauntlet brings them under our control that is…" Ivan stated.
"Very good. We will proceed with restarting production at our current facilities, beginning by training the citizens to work at the plants. Our largest population center is around Fyodor but we have smaller groups around LAX and Dominguez…" Ivanov said.
Does this bring the meeting itself to a close? Do I now need to go spend my credits?" I asked with a wry smile. A few chuckles replied to my humor. My wife looked at me again. Some of the conversation had been in English, but my command team didn't speak it well, flipping to Russian often. She'd followed along well enough by reading the documents, but she'd probably missed quite a lot.
We all left the room, heading to the wide open runways. As I began adding everything to the list… I frowned, had I been overestimating how expensive everything was again? I started going through the list and realized I forgot to add the supplies I would have to purchase…
I watched the cost begin to balloon… goddamn… 1,578,149 credits… I sighed. A month of constant future operations what comparable to most of what i'd made in profit over the last month… to think in a month or two i'd add another two divisions to this cluster fuck… I need to become self-sustainable as soon as possible. Just cutting out all the MREs would save hundreds of thousands of credits.
I hit purchase, watching my account drain as that familiar blueish circle appeared. All across the tarmac and runways soldiers, vehicles, aircraft appeared between practical mountains of supplies, a short distance off shore a squadron of ships were suddenly moored at anchor.
I looked at the sad faces of my officers. The only upside was that we had experience with this now… hopefully we wouldn't need all day and night to complete this. My wife left while we set to work.
Supply companies were called from across the various bases, supplies were loaded and convoys departed, T-72s and BTRs leading the way. Meanwhile the logistical companies from Fyodor came up in massed convoys and the supplies for the navy were loaded aboard and sent back, hinds flying overhead.
Gena had taken a helicopter out to the fleet at anchor and was coordinating the squadron to head for the port facilities around firebase Fyodor. The ships were slowly getting underway while aviators used the massive number of aviation vehicles around LAX to push the mig-23s and su-25s into hangars. Armaments and ordnance were being directed to hastily constructed bunkers.
Slowly over the afternoon most of the new division's worth of soldiers emptied out of the airport and began moving to staging areas near and around Los Alamitos for Operation Iron Curtain. Veria should be getting ready to deliver the town hall address tomorrow on my behalf. I'd be busy in the command center organizing the efforts to organize this mess of a force.
I headed back late in the evening, returning to my command center at Fyodor. There I met with Commodore Gena, discussing the fleet's operations. "We can split the fleet into three squadrons and a task force, the Los Angeles defense squadron will patrol the local area and the Channel islands, keeping the convoys safe. They've done a fine job so far, no reason to change that now."
"Then we'll split the corvettes, frigates, destroyers, and the Slava into three task forces, I figure it as TF North, TF Pacific, TF South. Though we can change the names if you wish, sir?..."
"No, leave them for now, we can worry about that later. How do you propose splitting the fleet?" I asked while gazing out of the window as the dozens of frigates now clustered in the west basin.
"There was a navy base in San Diego, so TF South should be our largest force, enough to protect itself but not enough to cause anyone left to shoot us when we near the harbor… we'll send the Slava, several Udaloys, some Krivaks and a Grisha…"
"TF North is our next priority force, a pair of Udaloys and a trio of Krivaks, then TF Pacific can take the rest, the other 2 Udaloys and the remaining Krivaks."
"Alright… if that's the case. As soon as the ships are fully supplied and the commanders briefed, ships are named. Get them underway. Commodore, take command of the Slava, there can be no mistakes at San Diego. If the Navy is there do not fire until fired upon. Make sure everyone is aware of that."
"Sir, I understand caution, but our missiles can easily sink any carrier group." Gena protested.
"Maybe you forgot, the latest tech on those ships is from 1995… the US navy is in the current year, 2024… try looking into the new tech they've cooked up since then. I'll wager that if they want the task force dead they'll barely have to try."
"It can't be that bad sir." Gena protest again.
"My service in the army told me one thing, if the US military wants something. They'll get it done, and it'll be some whack ass, fuck backwards things you'd never have considered that left your ass sprawled across at least the next mile of highway." I replied dryly.
"Do not engage, unless fired upon." I reiterated again. Gena seemed off out by my stare but nodded.
"Yes General. I will ensure that your orders are conveyed." He said formally.
"Gena, I don't need obedient soldiers, I need loyal soldiers." The commodore nodded, saluting before he departed. Likely to have a meeting with the captains aboard the Slava.
I mused for a while. This state, the USSR needed loyal citizens. I could institute police, propaganda, parades, pay people to speak well of the government… so many tools I could use… but that wouldn't help. No. That would make me like them. The people they feared…
Best to earn the loyalty and trust of the people the hard way, though my own blood sweat and tears. That they see me work like them, for them. I found myself nodding a bit… my wife ran these food drives… maybe I'll attend one tomorrow…