John watched on the holographic table as the two flights of three attack helicopters streaked out to meet the enemy armor. The cold war era, primarily soviet style armored personnel carriers, heavy artillery, tracked tanks, and missile launcher platforms, had nearly been wiped out by the first air support he had sent.

Those warthogs pack a wallop, John thought as he reviewed the wreckage of the enemy forces at a glance. What was left of the enemy, whoever the hell they were, had regrouped a few miles behind the crash site. Even in their much diminished numbers, they could pose a genuine threat to the fire-base if they were allowed to concentrate for another assault.

“General, Major Dawson is on the horn again. He says the interrogations have been only marginally successful.” Major Marcus Cranton, a young intelligence officer that John had grown to rely on for field reporting and incident prevention and management, handed him an old-fashioned vanilla folder. John smiled. John could probably have used the board he was standing over to pull up the report, but he had a soft spot for the old way of doing things, and not a lot of time to revamp their information-sharing processes. So Marcus obliged his old sensibilities and printed out the reports.

John opened the folder and read the report. It was short and sweet, as all of Dawson’s messages were. Right to the point, something John appreciated. “Damn it, I was afraid of this. Looks like that bastard General McOn’a is in charge of the enemy forces.” John said as he read the report for a third time, closed the envelope, and handed it back to the officer.

“Uh, with all due respect General, how do you know that?” The question was sincere, so John let it go. “I’ve read the report and Dawson’s men got virtually nothing out of their prisoners yet.”

“Right. Look at their uniforms.” Marcus opened the folder and looked at the field photos. “Tell me what you see. Pay close attention to the last one.”

“Generic camo, no armor. Barely functioning ammo pockets. The last one is wearing a ‘field dress uniform’ abomination, with nonsense medals he probably had made out of fancy car parts and jewelry. Why?” John just about laughed, but he kept himself composed.

“The uniforms. The only group anywhere near here that has an actual textile industry that is still intact after all the recent fighting is the CAR. South and North Sudan are in ruins after finally having their argument out, and from what we’ve gathered Chad is in ruins after the CAR, Cameroon, Nigeria, and Niger decided they’d had enough messing around and united to take down their neighborhood bully. Not that any of them are much better.”

“But sir, the CAR is in a fight with the DRC right now. At least, according to the latest reports from the British out of Uganda.” The British forces still in Africa had been effectively cut off from their command structure in Europe for about a month and had set up shop out of Mbarara. Uganda and Kenya were straining to maintain stability with the influx of refugees from the now destabilized southern part of the continent. But, according to the British, they were doing alright. The East African Community, the block of East African nations including Uganda, Kenya, Rwanda, and what little remained of Tanzania that wasn’t in total chaos, had set up protocols to deal with overly powered people.

Most of which included utilizing the shamanistic and tribal people who still existed in the region, who had adapted to the system’s power grants rather well comparatively. Figuring out how to use those powers responsibly and safely, to the benefit of the refugees and the people of their respective countries, had not been nearly as difficult for the East African block, then it had for the United States. Or, John realized, even his installation.

“Right. I feel like I’m still missing something.”

“General McOn’a was a no nothing middling general in the CAR for a while. Assigned duties the other generals and leadership didn’t want to deal with. Like resource logistics, and guardianship of storage lots. Nothing as nearly as glamorous as commanding armor columns. He was little more than a resource clerk, even among the middling level officers in the CAR military McOn’a was a bit of a joke.”

“Right, which is why I’m skeptical it’s him that’s in charge.”

“According to intercepted radio traffic in your reports, he is the only officer named among what remained of CAR forces for the last few months. Right?”

“Right. So, you’re thinking that after the Tuoadera government fell to the sectarians after the initial fortress debacle, he picked up the pieces of the military? And, what sir? Attacked an American installation that is clearly heavily fortified and well supplied?”

“Yes, I think it’s him. He was the only CAR general that wouldn’t have been with their people on the initial assault on the pillar’s location. I doubt any of them made it out alive, so he’s the only one with any real power left in the military infrastructure. Seeing as he was placed over the republic’s storage facilities, I’m sure he had access to plenty of this mothballed equipment we’re seeing fielded right now. What I can’t seem to figure out.” John walked back over to the table and watched as his two flights of blackhawks ripped into the remaining armored forces.

One SAM launcher got off two missiles before it was targeted and taken out. One lost targeting and flew off in a random direction. Old Soviet crap, John thought with a mental shake of his head. The second missile cleared the tube and made for the furthest blackhawk. It deployed countermeasures, but the missile kept straight at its target, not diverting. The blackhawk tried to maneuver, but it wasn’t a fighter jet. The missile struck home, and the blackhawk was engulfed in a fiery ball of death.

“Blackhawk 6 down sir. Blackhawk 6 down.” Came the young communications officer, who sat at one of the dozens of stations that ringed the command deck. It was a new creation, one that felt more like he was a commander of an aircraft carrier than an army general. But, John saw the utility in the place. Even if it took some getting used too. “Pilot and gunner both ejected, sir. Gunner is injured, deploying a retrieval team.”

John had already given standing orders for just such situations. He would only have interfered if he noticed something he hadn’t planned for, something unexpected. Losing a Blackhawk was damaging, and a bit surprising if he was being honest with himself. But every time John sent people in to fight, to kill the enemy, he expected someone, or something important, wouldn’t be making its way back. That’s what a leader did, that’s why the job was so hard. He had to risk other people’s lives in order to get to the

John saw the entire drama plaid out almost in real time on the table in front of him. The Blackhawk was designed to save the pilots’ and gunners’ lives in such situations. But engineering, planning, and training only went so far when faced with the forces of physics harnessed to the pure intent of murder. He watched with just a little bloodthirsty joy as the rest of the armor column was torn apart by the Blackhawks. Two of the attack helicopters ran out of ammunition and had to return to base before the reaping was done.

“Sir?” John shook himself mentally, pulling himself out of the table and the drama of the story unfolding before him.

“Yes major, sorry. I was . . . what was the topic of our conversation?”

“General McOn’a sir. You laid out a good explanation of how you know it’s him leading the forces, but not why. I’ll need that if my unit and I are going to do some psych mockups on him.”

“See Major, that’s the thing I don’t know. I don’t know why. I expect he’s not in charge of these forces in person.”

“If that’s the case, could he be using us to remove political or military rivals?”

“That’s my thinking. But I can’t know for sure.”

“I’ll see about getting some assets in Chad again. With the destabilization it’s been difficult. But we have made some progress with the tribal types still living in the area. Particularly in the northern desert. Sir, If I can ask, how do you know so much about McOn’a anyway?”

“Huh? Oh, I met him last time I was in the region at the tail end of the cold war. He tried to take me out to a strip club, where he had a photographer waiting to take our photos so he could blackmail me.”

“What did you do?” John glanced back at the table where he saw his five remaining Blackhawks returning to base to refill on fuel and rearm. They escorted the Ausprey of the rescue team that held the rescued pilot and injured gunner.

“I broke his jaw, and called my wife. You have the post Major, General Stevens will be up in an hour.”

“Where are you going, sir? Just in case something unexpected develops.”

“I have a meeting with our newly minted ranger colonel.”