Life as a New Hire Ch. 43

I didn't count my 'hook-ups' and I wasn't sure how to qualify Nicole.

"Ex's?"

"'No' is not a word in common usage in my vocabulary. I've dated a best friend's girl, a mother, sister and aunt of the same girlfriend ... basically, I'm either highly immoral, incredibly loose, or a letch."

"Don't you take responsibility for any of those ... relationships?"

"Hell yeah," I tilted her chin up so that we could make eye-contact. "I've never blamed a woman for taking out her frustrations on my flesh, ran away from a screaming fit [Big Lie!], or blamed them for any failing in our relationship. It is always my fault because I can't stay loyal."

"That's depressing," Zelda moped.

"Don't get me wrong. I don't find fault in any of the women I have spent time with. That is my problem - I find women fascinating; never boring, or bland. Quite frankly, it is a gift that I don't regret having. I may be a fuck-up, but I'm a fuck-up who will give you the very best attention."

"Full of yourself - much?" her attitude shifted. I had short-circuited her fears; I was a cheater - I confessed to it without shame because I was inexorably drawn to her beauty, personality and charm. With Anais around, I couldn't claim to be solely enchanted with Zelda, so I had to think quickly on my feet. After all, Zelda was energetic and had great stamina.

"I promised you pleasure," I countered. "Did I deliver?"

"Yes, you are full of yourself," she slapped my stomach. I wasn't full of myself. I was a confident sex machine.

"Thank you."

"Huh?"

"Wonderful sex - taking a chance with me - agreeing to a three-way - being awake after," I looked at the bed-table clock, "six hours."

"I run five miles a day," she bragged.

"I try to have ten hours of sex a day," I teased. Zelda slapped my stomach again. Anais stirred.

"Do any women like you ... for any reason beyond your dick?"

"I'm considered loyal where sex is not concerned, reliable and brave," I offered.

"What happened in Romania?"

"Have you ever been in combat?"

"I've been in violent confrontations, but not a true firefight," she admitted.

"Hmmm ..."

"Is it something that you can't relate?" she asked.

"No. You are a soldier so you probably know more about combat than I do. It was ... not chaotic at all. I never lost perspective of what was going on despite the bullets flying around. The Romanian Captain in charge knew his stuff, directed his company well and all I had to do was figure out where the terrorist leader was."

"What happened?" she perked up.

"I am here talking with you and he's in a morgue in Bucharest."

"Oh ..." She wanted more.

"I have to live with the knowledge that I set all of that in motion, Zelda. I convinced the Romanians that they had to confront that terror group before they moved on to their next target - me."

"I knew they would come after me and my friends, no matter where we were. Which would have ended up as a blood bath in some urban center. So I felt compelled to strike first. Based on information I provided, the Romanian Army sent two battalions - the 22nd and 24th - of the 6th Mountain Troops Brigade into battle."

"It was a massacre," I remembered sadly.

"But you won," she tried to comfort me.

"Of the four companies involved in the battle, the Romanians suffered nearly two hundred dead and wounded. I hardly consider it anything other than a massacre. Yes, we won. Only three of the terrorists escaped. Their leader died. I don't think I've ever felt so hollow in my life," I finished.

"Forty percent losses ... that is horrific," she crawled on top of me.

"The kicker is the Romanians sent some men of the 24th to hunt me down when I was kidnapped. A squad was in the group that rescued me and my companion from Johnston Island. I thought they would never want to deal with me ever again."

"Don't be so hard on yourself. If they thought well enough of you to send their men out to rescue you, then you must have done right by them."

"Chaz said something like that too," I felt sheepish and sleepy.

"Chaz? Who is she?"

Honest to God, one day I want to find a girl who thinks I'm talking about another girl and asks if we can have a three-way, instead of trying to compare herself to this unknown person. Wait... I already had someone like that. Her name was Odette.

"Chaz is Colour Sergeant Charles 'Chaz' Tomorrow of Her Majesty's SSR," I corrected her assumption.

"SSR? Those are some tough people. How do you know him?"

"Black Bag directives from the National Security Council - sworn to secrecy upon penalty of death - pinky-promise kind of stuff," I grinned. Maybe I wasn't all that sleepy after all.

"You really are a Man of Mystery," Zelda purred. She had truly exceptional stamina. "Maybe I can convince you to talk."

"Maybe I can find another use for my tongue," I countered and off we went. Somewhere along the process, Anais woke up and joined in.

It wasn't all fun and games. Anais' parting words were "You are a pig," then she sauntered out of my room and out of my life. Had she remembered to take her Serge with her, I would have bought the act. As it was ...

"Is she always so volatile?" Zelda remarked.

"Volatile? That's not her being volatile. That's Anais being affectionate. Volatile usually is accompanied by thrown objects and bodily harm," I sighed happily. Meeting her one more time couldn't be all that bad, could it? Zelda looked hungry so I shoved that thought to the back of my mind and got to work.

That was the highlight of my Sunday. Zelda had to fly back to Washington D.C. and I had to go to work with JIKIT. It seemed that the Khanate and the US military were heading for a showdown. I unloaded all my Saturday's activities to the team and we got to work - no recriminations. I was the Khan's spiritual brother and sometimes that meant I had to do him favors.

I asked Addison when she thought he would return the favor. She laughed, then smiled and told me that wasn't how it worked. He was a world leader now and I was merely his kooky kinsman that he would keep throwing problems at until one day I broke. Then it would be some other poor saps turn.

Then she told me she was kidding and clearly the Great Khan thought the world of me. I chose to believe the second lie because it made me feel better ... and it was promising to be a long weekend/start of the week.

Note: Geopolitical Developments

What follows are snippets of the Battle for Thailand that takes place late in the night of September 1stand continued into the early morning of September 3rd. If this does not interest you, you can rejoin Cáel's exploits in four pages)

**On the eve of battle, the Royal Thai High Command had decided to strip all but one armored unit from the 2nd Army in order to give the First Army's offensive against the rebels more of a punch. It's decision to strip the tank battalions from both their infantry divisions as well as the armored and one of the two mechanized regiments would prove to be disastrous. It was as if the leadership of the Royal Thai military were idiots.

The least economically valuable part of the country was the northeast which the 2nd Army warded. They had severely underestimated the airlift capacity of the Khanate as well as the willingness of Laos and Cambodia to both use their armed forces in an invasion as well as their willingness to let Vietnamese troops cross their countries.

That thinking had led the Thai military to adopt a 'forward defense' strategy - the desire to fight the enemy at the borders, as opposed to having stronger formations deeper within the country. Considering the relative weakness of the Cambodian and Laotian militaries, that policy had made sense:

- The baseline Laotian and Cambodian tank was the T-54/55, a 1950's Soviet relic. The normal anti-tank capabilities in all Thai infantry formations was more than equal to such a threat.

-Neither country had an air force worth worrying about.

In contrast, the Khanate's primary tanks, the T-90SM and T-95 were resistant to most of what the Thai Army could throw at them - at least from the front. The seven hundred combat aircraft the Khanate and the Vietnamese were able to field was an equal catastrophe for the Thais. It greatly compensated for the relative small numbers of invaders.

Finally, there was a fundamental misunderstanding of what the Alliance's goals were. Military logic dictated the destruction of Thailand's mobile force followed by the capture of Bangkok. As long as the Thai regime held the capital, it would remain the legitimate power in the country.

Due to the altering political landscape, the Alliance's only option was to make the government 'look bad'. The loss of peripheral provinces, while of negligible immediate strategic value, looked great on the maps the world-wide media would be showing to their audiences. It would appear that the Thai army had failed to defend their country. That would (hopefully) make the Thai Third Army look like the legitimate authority in Thailand.

That was the plan anyway, and you know what they say about battle plans and the enemy, right? H-hour was 4 am, September 1st.*

**The commander of the Zuun stood up and waited to be recognized. The staff officer from the Yunnan Command pointed at him.

"Sir, why are we doing this? I am not afraid to fight for the Great Khan, but this action seems to be suicidal. We will be far behind enemy's lines while our offensive force will be grossly under-equipped."

"You will have to rely on our ability to supply you by air."

"We only have supplies for two days of operations. What happens then?"

"We rely on the Americans to come and save us," the senior officer responded bitterly.

"Allah save us from allies," the young commander muttered. What else could he do?

He was part of the 2nd Mountain Sultan Mehmet Tumen which had just arrived in Yunnan to replace the exhausted 1st Mountain Abu al-Ghazi Bahadur Tumen. His men were from Turkey, inexperienced in combat and using new equipment they were not familiar with. They would be working with a unit he had never worked with before - the 1st Airmobile Tauekel Khan Tumen - Kazaks - who would be seizing the small airport his men needed to land in.

From there, they were to 'run amok'. That was the technical term for racing south down a highway in Central Thailand, attacking the headquarters of the 3rd Cavalry Division - an armored unit. Once that was accomplished, they were to attack the local police precinct. Provided they were still alive after that, they were to return to the air strip to resupply then they were to 'spread chaos' until they were finally hunted down by the vastly larger Thai DIVISION his 100 men would be fighting.

Of course, there was the plan for the rebel Royal Thai Third Army to force their way through the larger frontline forces of the loyalist Royal Thai First Army and come to his rescue. How would the Thai troops respond when ordered to fight their fellow Thais? No one was sure. If there was any hope in this mission, it was the knowledge that several other Zuuns had the exact same mission in other areas of Thailand. It was H-hour minus twenty-two.*

**It was 11 o'clock in the evening when the general in charge of the Royal Thai 9th Infantry Division was woken up. The Marines were leaving. That was correct; the three Royal Thai regiments were heading west to Sattahip Naval Base - because they had been ordered to by the Commander-in-Chief of the Royal Thai Navy. It didn't take a rocket scientist to realize why this was going on.

Seven hours earlier, the Royal Thai Army had seized all the Air Force bases in the 1st and 2nd Army districts as well as ordering the 4th Army to do the same thing [The Royal Thai Air Force had been trying to remain neutral in the upcoming civil war].

Undoubtedly the navy had decided to make their assets less 'hijack-able'. A few phone calls later confirmed that most of the Navy had set sail for parts unknown and the naval air units at Ban Sattahip Air Base (U-Tapao International Airport) had also departed either out to sea, or to ports and bases in the South.

He made a personal appeal to the commander of Marine Forces to no avail. They wanted no part of the upcoming struggle and advised the general to do the same. The general had other problems. The Royal Thai Marines were the frontline forces facing the southern border with Cambodia. He quickly reorganized his regiments, sending them to take the old Marine strongpoints to await further orders. Stopping the Marines never entered his mind.

That was a bloodletting he wanted no part of. The last thing he did was inform his superiors, thus avoiding any stupid orders to the contrary. Suddenly the nebulous movements along the Cambodian border developed a haunting significance. He wondered how much longer he had before something happened. It was H-hour minus five.*

**At midnight a loyalist commander of a company of mechanized infantry in the 2nd Cavalry's 11th Battle Group [named after their axis of advance - Highway 11] decided to send a motorized section of his command forward to the advance position his battalion was to occupy come sunrise. Either later in the day, or tomorrow morning, the forces loyal to the regime would launch a coordinated assault against the rebels main supply center at Phitsanulok.

He had a cot set up in his communications hut and had just nodded off when the radio squawked to life. His lieutenant in charge of the advance made a hurried report. They had encountered serious opposition in a confusing night action ... then he went silent. The captain immediately swung into action. He put the rest of his men on alert, then contacted the neighboring Tank Battalion. He needed some armored support. He made a similar call to the attached artillery component.

The Tank Battalions night officer quickly put a platoon of light tanks at his disposal. The artillery were ready for any fire mission he sent their way. Before the armor could arrive, the company commander found himself being called to the carpet by the Duty Officer at the 3rd Cavalry [two regiments of the 2nd Cav. had been attached to the 3rd's command] over his 'offensive' action and the relief mission was called off. What had happened to the patrol of 20 Royal Thai soldiers? He was ordered to wait until sunrise to find out.

Little did anyone know, these were the first combat casualties of the upcoming rebel offensive. His patrol had stumbled across a battalion of mechanized troops arriving at their jump off point for the attack that was less than six hours from beginning. Neither the commander of the 11th Battle Group, the 3rd Cavalry Division, or First Army was informed that the enemy had already advanced twenty kilometers south of where they were supposed to be. It was H-hour minus four.*

**Over the Gulf of Thailand an Indian pilot was sweating and anxious. He wasn't upset about the fact that his nation was about to intervene in the nation he was currently flying beside in an unarmed, slow moving transport aircraft. He even wasn't upset that he was about to open the rear ramp of his C-130 and unleash 64 MARCOS in an ocean insertion.

What he was upset about was flying so close to his companion C-130 that they appeared to be one aircraft to the civilian air traffic controllers. After all, there couldn't be two Indian passenger planes flying the same route to Phnom Penh one right after the other.

The 128 MARCOS Special Operators were past worrying about 'The Plan'. In the 1st phase, they were HAHO-ing (High Altitude High Opening) because they had to glide nearly thirty kilometers before landing at night into a body of water. That accomplished, they had to swim the last two kilometers - with gear - to the Thailand coast. Then they had to sneak up on a guarded compound - the U-Tapao Royal Thai Navy Airfield - and hold it until the Khanate could land reinforcements ... and all before sunrise.

The second phase of the operation was a tad nebulous and not tied to any particular time table, or location. It required a good deal of guts and initiative and he and his men had that in spades. They were in the rear area of the 9th Royal Thai Infantry Division.

The MARCOS with approximately 500 Khanate soldiers were to locate any and all elements of said formation, wherever they might be, and destroy them. The enemy had 36 1960-era tanks. The Khanate had promised to bring 11 of their own (hopefully more modern) tanks. The INS promised naval and air support. Things were going to get 'interesting'. It was H-hour minus two.*

**The first planned combat action of Operation Pridi Phanomyong, the name for the combined Thai, Cambodian, Khanate, Laotian and Vietnamese offensive to topple the military dictatorship ruling Thailand, happened at Nong Khai, Thailand.

The commander of a battalion of the 3rd Infantry Division had been denied permission to wire the '2nd Thai-Laos Friendship Bridge' with explosives, so he had targeted it with his mortar team instead, despite the reality that his 81mm round were likely to have negligible impact on the structure.

At 3 am, he was awoken to the sounds of automatic weapons fire far too close by. 'Him' stopping to get dressed saved his life. As he was exiting the private residence next to his Command Post, the Post erupted into a fireball. He even made out the whoosh of the cruise missile impacting. He had planned for that contingency. The man raced back into his home and accessed the public telephone network.

His first call to the mortar platoon went unanswered. His next two calls to the two infantry companies manning positions adjacent to the bridge also went unanswered. His fourth call was to his reserve company. They responded, so he directed them to retake the southern end of the bridge and hold it at all costs.

His fifth call was to regimental command, 100 km safely to the rear, to inform them that his position was compromised. He needed immediate support or he believed his position would be overrun. If assistance wasn't coming, he wanted permission to withdraw with whatever he could salvage.

Before he could get his reply, his residence was rocked by a grenade explosion. As he struggled back to his feet, machine gun fire ripped through the place. His attendant and two security troopers fell back down. The door was kicked open. Though wounded, he scrambled to pull his pistol out. A hammer blow hit his chest. His last memory was of a camouflage-painted Mongolian face looking down at him. It was Hour minus one.*

**The Royal Thai Armed Forces were not designed around a robust anti-aircraft program. Their few advanced systems were around the capital, not in the field with the troops. They had to use more primitive systems and relied heavily on the civilian air traffic controllers for much of their data. A phone call from Khon Kaen International airport operator alerted the area army commander that something ominous was coming their way.

Dutifully, the military officer ordered his radar operators to cut on their search radars to analyze the threat. They found it. At the same time, the waiting Khanate Su-27 pilots registered the range and location of the enemy radars and promptly send radar-seeking missiles their way. Those two aircraft were tasked with anti-air suppression. Behind them, an air armada was descending on Thailand and it would be a disaster if their lumbering Il-76's and An-70's and -74's were blasted out of the sky in a rain of burning men and material.

Patrolling several thousand meters above were two Thai Royal Air Force F-16's. They spotted the Su-27's activating their search radar, identified them as 'hostiles' who had penetrated Thai airspace and dove to the attack. They kept their radars passive, waited for the IR missiles to 'beep', letting the pilots know they had locked on to their targets, and then let loose.