The Rangers Are Coming (62 page)

“Destroy the threat!”

“Wipe out their Army!”

“Bring Iran to its knees!”

“Kill all the Persians!”

That was just a sample of what Susan Moore heard.  “We will not mindlessly kill innocent non-combatants, including women and children, “she said.  “If it is the will of the General Assembly, and the vote must be unanimous, the Rangers will repel the attack at the border, destroy Iran’s capability to rearm and attack again in the future, and force their surrender.  The United Nations may demand reparations of Iran by confiscating all their oil production for a period to be determined by the Executive Committee when the operation has been completed.”

“Madam President,” said the Turkish delegate, “I move that your plan be adopted by the United Nations!”  There were half a dozen seconds from around the room.

“Very well,” said President Moore, “will any country with a dissenting vote please stand.

Everyone looked around the room.  President Moore said simply, “Consider well, my fellow delegates, the carnage will be more terrible than you can imagine.”

No delegate rose to his feet.

Moore said, “May God have mercy on those who are about to die.”

Two weeks later, General Compton, one of the original group that had come with Arcadia and the Commander of all the Rangers was on a video conference call with Arcadia.  “As soon as we heard the United Nations vote, we started moving all the heavy weapons.  We now have all the Humvees, Bradley’s, and our Artillery on the ground in Basra, which we are using as the headquarters and staging area.  We have  broken down the Black Hawks and the Huey’s and put them in the big C-130’s, the Chinooks are too big to transport, so we have been hopping them across the Atlantic with extra fuel tanks aboard.  They will be on station in about a week.  The troops will come last in the 130’s.  It will take a week to move all three brigades.  The entire command will be in place and operational in 24 days.  During the past several years, we have been able to use our better technology to build more Humvees, Bradley’s and three more batteries of 105 howitzers.  We have a hundred bunker buster bombs available for use.  They have a yield of 1000 kilotons, which will tell you, Arcadia, what kind of conventional weapon we have.  When the entire force is ready, we’ll have 25 Blackhawks with two mini-guns each, they will fire 3,000 rounds per minute.  They also launch 30 rim fire missiles.  We have 40 Huey’s all with mini-guns.  We are moving our entire arsenal of drones.  We have several hundred of them.  Our basic tactic will be vertical envelopment using company-sized forces from 4 Chinooks and working in close cover with the Black Hawks and Huey’s.  Artillery will engage at 10 miles and begin walking through the main force toward the envelopment firebases.”

“We estimate the Iranians will attack along this route,” he put it up on the screen “We believe they will attack along a 20 mile front with 20 divisions and their motorized elements.  They are expecting to use the artillery in advance of their ground assault, but we have all of their emplacements plotted and will use our own artillery to neutralize them just before the ground troops begin their assault.  I’m positive the Iranians have no idea they are walking into a trap.”

“When the retreat begins we flank their army in a pincher and link up at the center.  We will then simply wipe out their army and follow up with airstrikes on their entire military infrastructure located around the country.”

“Any questions?”

“I wish I could say I understood everything you said in your briefing, General,” said the President, “I’m sure Arcadia took it all in.  I guess the only question I have is this, if the Iranians really send a million men across the border, how many will be killed?”

“All of them,” said Compton.

“Oh God,” said Susan.

“We’ve been pleading with the Iranians for a month to call off their invasion and have told them that their losses will be horrendous,” said Arcadia.  “They just don’t believe us.”

“We’ll record a complete record of this operation from the beginning to the bitter end.  It will be shown on television worldwide.  We think it will be very instructive to help people understand how terrible war actually is.”

“Not to mention bringing home the line ‘The Rangers Are Coming’ to graphic reality,” said the President.

    53                              

Washington, D.C.

Video receivers were on all over the United States to see the Ranger operation in Iran.  Nobody had ever seen the Rangers in action.  The same was true for the rest of the world.  The Rangers just had a mystique and a reputation.  None of the countries of the United Nations, who ordered the Rangers to battle, had ever seen them.

              Arcadia and President Moore made live, real time coverage available for every country in the world.  Not all the people would see it, but the leaders certainly would.

              Kaiser Wilhelm II and his senior military staff were grouped around a large, plasma screen that showed very clear high definition pictures.  They watched as the massive Iranian army poured across the border into Turkey.  Wilhelm’s practiced eye told him that there were at least twenty divisions in the initial assault.  He wondered where the Iranian artillery was.  He got his answer as the scene shifted to the masses of artillery batteries behind the lines in Iran.  Suddenly they begin to blow up.  Wilhelm could not see the source of the fire, but it was devastatingly effective.  The advance Iranian divisions were on their own.

              Suddenly Black Hawk gun ships were flying along the Iranian line spreading death.  Ranger artillery opened up.  The rounds did not hit the ground, but burst above the Iranians mowing them down by the thousands.

              Humvees and Bradley Fighting Vehicles moved into the thickest concentrations of Iranians and left the battleground littered with bodies.

              Iranian troops who were still in formation suddenly found themselves surrounded by Chinook helicopters from which Rangers flew out and closed with the Iranians.  Their weapons were deadly in the hands of the camouflaged Rangers.  They moved with astonishing speed.  Wilhelm saw one Ranger take two rounds directly in the chest and he didn’t even slow down.

              The gunships, artillery, and clusters of Chinooks with companies of Rangers repeated the maneuvers over and over.  In some cases, the Rangers fought hand to hand with the Iranians.  They were all short bloody fights with the Rangers performing complex personal movements that were almost faster than the eye could follow.

              The slaughter went on all that day, all night and all the next day.  The Rangers literally wiped out the lead divisions and were now carrying the fight into the Iranian rear and all the waiting divisions.  The pictures cut away now and then to see gunships and strange looking flying craft, using rockets and bombs destroy the factories where the arms had been built.  A dozen Chinooks flew in from high altitude, over the steel mills and the big military complexes and dropped bombs on them that were the biggest explosions anyone in the world had ever seen.  Destruction spread out from these explosions for nearly a mile.

              In three days, there was nothing left for the Rangers to fight.  The Iranians used their radio stations to signal that they were surrendering and for the death to stop.  General Compton ordered an immediate ceasefire.

              For the next week, the Rangers planted millions of mines across the access to the main oil fields and pumping stations of the Iranians.

              An Iranian secretary of one of the departments, the only living senior official in the entire government, met with General Compton and heard the surrender terms.  The United Nations would supply humanitarian aid to keep the civilian population from starving.  The army and all military installations were disbanded and closed.  The curtain of steel surrounding the oil fields would be monitored.  Any person coming into the field would be killed.  All of Iran’s oil reserves were confiscated by the United Nations and used to provide reparations for the damage caused by the Iranians to Turkey and to the Ranger force, for a period of ten years.  Moreover, the Iranians would be required to clear the battlefield and dispose of all the bodies.

              The entire world had watched and seen the most lethal military force in history in action.  The devastation, firepower, and destruction the Rangers could inflict was now a known fact.  The personal effectiveness and precision in which the individual Rangers could function became the stuff of legends.

              The final tally turned out to be a death toll for the Iranians of approximately 1 million men and all their equipment.  The Rangers had lost 115 dead and 257 wounded.

              For the Iranians, the strangest thing of all was a huge cadre of men and machinery moving into Iran and constructing an airport and a highway all the way from Basra to Tehran.  When the construction was finished, thousands of American citizens poured into Iran with food, clean water, medical supplies, and doctors.  They all wore armbands with a Red Cross on it.  The only Farsi they could speak was
“Please, Thank You, How can I help, and We are sorry for your loss.” 
When they were asked why they were doing this, the answer was always the same, “Allah has commanded us to render aid, treat you with kindness, and respect.”
 
A great many of the first responders were women and they did not hesitate to tell the Iranian women the conditions under which a majority of the women in other countries lived.

              The Americans rebuilt the government buildings that were destroyed.  They constructed two new and very big power plants, and a pipeline of natural gas was tapped in the oil fields and brought in to power the plants.

              It took two years to complete the work, and to the credit of the Iranians, not a single American was ever attacked or abused, despite the fact  the Ayatollahs screamed the American invaders should be killed and thrown out of the country.  The public could clearly see that the Americans were not invaders, but angels of mercy.  The power of the clergy was broken and the resulting secular government that took charge made it clear that the clergy’s job from now on was to tend to the religious needs of the people and stay out of the government.

              When the work was completed, the Americans left without ceremony or fanfares.  However, they’d made many friends and the country was clearly better because of their efforts.  Crowds cheered them as they departed

              The United States returned to the quiet neutrality that had marked their existence since 1770.  There was one very large outcome to the relief effort that the Americans had done in Iran.  Other countries, struggling to pull themselves out of poverty, disease, and a lack of modern improvements, began to ask the United States for a repeat of the humanitarian effort accomplished in Iran.  President Moore talked it over with the American people and a referendum was held to find out if there was an interest in doing this.  It represented a kind of violation of the neutrality that was stitched into the minds of all 200 million citizens from the Panama Canal to Dutch Harbor in Alaska, so it was not a matter to be approached lightly.

              Susan Moore consulted Arcadia on the subject.  “I did the Iranian relief effort for entirely different reasons,” she said, “it was just one more way to keep Islamic Terrorism from getting a place to start.  It, frankly, never occurred to me that it would produce an outcry from third world countries for this kind of aid.”

              “It’s not without precedent, you know,” said Arcadia.  “Somewhere in your old world history books you must have run across an effort by an American President to do exactly what is being asked.  It was called the Peace Corps and it was a stunning success from the beginning.  We would just give it a lot more firepower.”

              The referendum by the voters of the United States was overwhelmingly in favor of establishing a Peace Corps. 

The President took the proposal to the next meeting of the General Assembly of the United Nations, now 88 nations strong.  The United Nations was a true force in the affairs and politics of the world.  With the partnership of the United States and the clear means of backing up their decisions, national governments routinely came to the United Nations to solve disputes and to referee issues when one country had a problem with another country.  The final arbitration by the United States was seldom employed.  There were few countries or people that would go back to the chaos of the previous century.  The United Nations was perfectly happy to continue into the future with the stability of America’s steady grip.

The General Assembly considered what to do with that part of the world that had thus far been beyond their reach, The Pacific Rim, principally, China, Japan, Korea, and Southeast Asia, minus Burma and Thailand, who had joined the United Nations.  The hands-off policy adopted by the European countries beginning in the 1870’s, toward other countries had left a huge vacuum in China and Korea.  They had been mostly isolationist themselves.  China was still ruled by an Emperor, as was Japan with a strong group of Shoguns, or feudal lords, which fought ceaselessly with each other.  They had sailed into the 20
^th
century with big populations of very poor people and a ruling class that liked it that way.  The only nationalism China had contemplated was a massive invasion of Russia.  All thoughts of that had dissolved when the Chinese watched the Rangers in action in Iran.  Of course, they never disclosed that such a plan was being deliberated.