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  Eventually the loot from the stores in and around Rodeo was found in an underground parking garage that had been converted into a huge storage facility. The Soldiers who found it also found it guarded by a dozen militia members who they dispatched after a twenty minute fire fight. Two Soldiers were wounded and one KIA. Command had decided that the loot would be returned to the community a little at a time. They would keep it in the garage for the time being and guard it with a Bradley, an M1 and some dismounted troops. After taking an inventory which would take about a week they would spread the word that there was merchandise available for the local population.

  Chapter Thirty-Five

  The battle at the Richmond refinery was raging like the others an A-Team and D Company, 1st Battalion, 184th Infantry Regiment (Airborne) dropped into the refinery at 0230, it was now 0400 and they were still battling the militia. There were hundreds of militia inside the refinery, the A-Team and Delta Company combined had a hundred and fifty men. The militia only had small arms but they had a lot of them.

  The Soldiers had M-4’s, SAW’s, m249’s and an M-107 plus an assortment of claymores and grenades. The militia was crowded into the refinery it really was like shooting fish in a barrel for the Soldiers; there were just so damn many of them. The plane flying overhead radioed down that there were hundreds more on their way. There were five Soldiers down now that were critically wounded; the medic was trying his best to treat them while under fire.

  The Soldiers were flanking the militia they then opened up with the m249 cutting down dozens before they realized what was happening, so far the Soldiers had been unable to cut the power to the refinery, in order to do that they had to have control of the operations center which was heavily guarded. Their orders were not to destroy the op’s center they would need it intact to run the day to day operations of the refinery.

  The A-Team Detachment Commander decided it was time to take more drastic measures especially with hundreds more militia members on the way. On either side of the operations center they had set up bunkers in which they were using to fire their weapons from. The A-Team had incendiary grenades with them; they started lobbing them at the bunkers hoping that one or two would make it in and or set them on fire, they were not concrete bunkers. They were made out of sand bags, trees, cinder block anything they could find, once the grenades hit them they went up like a tinder box. People ran out of them screaming and on fire they were quickly cut down.

  Two squads of Soldiers rushed the operations center firing on target taking down the armed people inside. There were a couple of men huddled in the corners beat up and bleeding with their hands up. “Don’t shoot, don’t shoot,” they yelled. The Soldiers didn’t shoot but they didn’t trust them either. For the time being they were tied up and left in the corner until they had more time to talk to them. The Soldiers quickly cut the lights to the entire refinery. The Soldiers throughout the refinery then went to the night vision equipment and went to work,

  The first eliminated the threats that were shooting at them from certain areas high in the refinery. Next, they set up claymores at the entrance so if the crowd that was coming would have a nice wonderful warm welcome. They continued to move and shoot, setting up hasty machine gun sites, firing on the militia then move to another location quickly, and then repeating this again and again. The militia numbers were seriously dwindling. Although they had the numbers they didn’t know how to use them to their best advantage, that’s the difference between a civilian organization and a professional military one.

  Almost two hours into the fight they started to hear artillery whistling overhead hitting the militia crowd just eighty yards in front of the entrance to the refinery. Once the FO reported they were spot on they started to walk the artillery out hitting hundreds of the militia. As they turned to run and scatter they were met with 120mm cannon fire from the Abrams, as they started to scatter down the side streets they were met with the 25mm of the Bradley’s all in all not a good day for them.

  Once the column arrived it was over for the militia in Richmond, the column had swept most of the city taking on the gang and militia that hadn’t joined the fight at the refinery. The militia certainly had lots of guns but they were inaccurate with their fire and just overwhelmed by the fire power.

  Richmond was the closest city to Oakland and San Francisco proper; Oakland was reported to have the largest and best equipped militia in the Bay area, possibly outside of Sacramento and Los Angeles. General Watkins realized that they were going to have to take on Oakland very soon, by now the militia in Oakland had already heard about Martinez, Rodeo and Richmond and knew they wouldn’t be far behind. There was nothing really strategic in Oakland they wanted but it did sit on the I-880 and I-580 which cut right through it. These roads also led to Camp Parks, to get to the North Bay area they took a different route but now that they had secured the refineries and their surrounding communities it was time to go after the 800 pound gorilla in the area.

  The militia controlled I-80 the Golden Gate and the bridges between Treasure Island and San Francisco. That was unacceptable to the General as well as his senior staff. They sent three A-Teams in to gather Intel for three days, this information was transmitted to the MI analysts every few hours, then twice a day they would brief the General and his staff, which now consisted as Colonel Clayton as his XO, the senior Officers in S1, S2 and S3, as well as the other senior Commanders Lieutenant Colonel and above.

  The A-Teams were reporting that militia was between 1500 to 2000 strong; they carried AK-47’s, AR-15’s and hunting rifles, along with that many in addition, carried pistols and hunting knives. They did report seeing half a dozen people carrying RPG’s and they say three trucks with M-60 machine guns mounted on them. They had several jeeps they had outfitted with some type of armor; basically what they did was to weld metal plates which wouldn’t really stop any armor penetrating rounds. The militia had four camps with about 500 members at each location. They observed the militia coming back into the camps everyone now and then bloodied in the evenings. They followed one such militia team one of the days to see what was happening, they were fighting for more area and running into the gangs that controlled those areas. The militia was coming in and butchering the gangs, they would give them the choice to join them or die. Many of the gangs were very territorial but their own numbers had significantly dwindled that they were not match for the militia, yet they put of a fight and lost about ninety percent of the time.

  The militia Achilles heel was that they locked themselves up tight in these camps at night, like an old fortress where they had people patrolling the walls. To be sure the walls where were huge metal monstrosities protected them from anyone wanting to do them harm that wasn’t the military which could easily lob cannon fire into the camps. Essentially that’s what the planned turned out to be, a stand-off artillery barrage using the 105 Howitzers and 120mm cannons of the Abrams. Machine gun crews would, under the cover of the barrage, move towards the entrance and under cover fire at anything that comes out of the camp.

  Each of the four camps was surrounded by the Army and Marines there was nowhere for them to run. To ensure the camps were full and locked up for the night the attack wouldn’t kick off until 0200, an ungodly hour for most, but business as usual for the military.

  Sharply at 0200 the first shells landed right in the middle of each of the four camps, it was a wake-up call which certainly got everyone’s attention. The following rounds hit fuel reserves causing tremendous explosions, various buildings which were used for living quarters, dining facility and headquarters. The militia rushed to the walls to defend that camp, not really sure what to do as most if not all of their leadership was killed.

  As they stepped up to the landing around the wall the militia members started to take fire from the machine guns that had worked their way close under the artillery umbrella. The militia didn’t really have a chance as soon as they popped there head up to take a look it was shot off.

 
; The barrage lasted until 0300, then the 11 ACR started to maneuver their way to them, with a single cannon shot from the Abrams they were able to breach each gate at each camp. There were occupants of the camps that had survived the artillery assault as the tanks rolled into the camps the militia what was left of it started to fire their weapons at the armor, which did no good. The tanks lined up their cannons each time and fired, up and reload and fire again, five tanks per camp were taking a terrible human toll. The Soldiers didn’t care they had seen the brutality the militia had brought to the area and its occupants.

  Chapter Thirty-Six

  With the current operations all but wrapped up it was time to regroup, treat the wounded and bury the dead. It was also time they started to think about training a security force that was representative of the people, not necessarily a police force, people over the years prior to the event had really grown to distrust the police, this had to be new something they could get behind and support. They couldn’t keep the Army and Marine forces in the area forever, the purpose for the operation was to secure the refineries and ensure the military had enough fuel to operate for the foreseeable future.

  The A-Teams would train the new security forces, like they had done back at the camps at Camp Parks. The 63rd Regional Support had just added a Civil Affairs unit they would handle the recruitment and testing, it also included a psych evaluation. They didn’t want to bring on the type of people they just got rid of.

  The units there that were there started the task of cleaning and clearing as well as accountability. All militia weapons and ammunition would be collected logged and placed in a makeshift armory. These weapons and ammunition would be used for the security forces, outside of the m249 or RPG’s which the military would keep. They would be allowed to keep the SAWs, AK-47, AR-15, the occasional Thompson, shotguns and everything else.

  It turned out the two men at the Richmond operations center were beat up and sitting in a corner actually did turn out to be Engineers who knew the day to day operations of a refinery. When they were interrogated they led the interrogator to believe there were other Engineers and staff still living close by and would be interested in coming back if they could guarantee their security.

  They meet with General Watkins and Colonel Clayton who assured them ultimately there would be security forces here to take over but they would for the time being answer to the military authority in the area which at this time was General Watkins. After the Engineers saw what the military did to the militias they had no reason to disbelieve him. The following day the two Engineers left the refinery with a military escort to find and convince the old staff, the ones that were still alive, to come back to work at the refinery.

  By late in the afternoon they were returning with a dozen or so of the staff, about quarter of them were engineers, the other quarter were operations specialists and the other half were the rig workers, the guys who did the nitty gritty work around the refinery. “It was all a start,” thought General Watkins.

  On the third day in the Bay area Colonel Clayton had sent a platoon of men with two Abrams and a couple Bradley’s to check out the railroad station then the tracks out-of-town to check on their condition. He had sent two squads back to Camp Parks and asked for them to send one of the trains up if it was possible. Within four hours a train whistle could be heard throughout the area, people who had been hiding came out to see what it was, they were awe struck to see a real life train moving down the tracks. It in its own way it brought them comfort a piece of the old world that they knew.

  The purpose of bringing the train up was to rotate some troops out and bring in fresh ones; they also needed the Civil Affairs Soldiers here. There were lots of goods that needed to be moved back to Camp Parks and Fort Irwin. They needed to load up several of the railroad fuel cars but first they had to move them to the refineries, load them and get them back to Fort Irwin who was in a lot more need than Camp Parks. With all of the refineries secured and the fuel inventoried they realized they had enough perhaps for years with the current populations in the areas under their control which actually seemed to be growing weekly.

  The next military step was to send units across the I-80 into San Francisco; they had been sending A-Teams across at the 92 to San Mateo, then into San Bruno and South San Francisco. The Intel they had gathered from the earlier excursions was bad, not because of gangs or militia’s they hadn’t found a lot of those, just a lot of wannabes who would run away when confronted. What they found was a lot of death and sorrow. People starving for lack of food and water, and an inspection of clinics and medical centers showed hundreds of people dead. All the stores had been looted nothing of real use could be found. Most of the people possibly headed south or east back across the 92 or north up into San Francisco, which would seem like a bad idea on the face of it.

  The people they did run into ran away, when the Soldiers saw them the people were skinny, sickly looking, dirty and clothes were torn. They also had a terrified look on their face which was understandable, odds are there had been some gangs or even militia through here at one time who raped and pillaged their way through the towns. As the Soldiers have been finding out everyone believed that the United States was gone, the only Law and Order were those with the guns and a willingness to use them. No one thought the US Military survived but it had and was on the move to do their best to bring society back under some control and in the name of the United States.

  General Watkins and his staff had come up with a plan that would put more Soldiers and Marines into these areas; like in Iraq and Afghanistan they had FOB’s, forward operating base. They would establish a FOB in the outlying reaches and conduct daily patrols of the areas they were in. Back up would be twenty to thirty minutes away so they had to have enough firepower at each base to be able to hold off an assault for that long. The Seabee’s were brought up by train with their equipment to start setting up the FOB’s once they were determined where they were going to be. That’s what the A-Teams were determining; ideally they wanted to build it on terrain and high ground, which of course was hard to find in any town or city. They didn’t want to occupy a police station (at least that wasn’t the plan) because then they would have to provide electricity, running water for plumbing and more. The FOB’s were going to be primitive at best.

  Units at the FOB’s would be rotated out every week and returned from their current base in Martinez, Rodeo, Richmond or Oakland, the troops in those towns were being rotated with fresh troops from Camp Parks and Fort Irwin. New Soldiers and Marines who had finished Basic / Boot and AIT were being sent out to forward units as soon as they graduated. However, there were some that volunteered to become paratroopers, they went to jump school right after AIT, and at that point they had the opportunity to go to the Special Forces Qualification Course. All of this was new and was either now located at Camp Parks and or Fort Irwin, right now these units, especially SFQ Course was playing a lot of this by ear and just going with it.

  The Army element under Colonel Clayton was starting to develop plans to bring back Ranger Schools. There were a lot of people interested but not enough time right now, they needed the civilian security forces trained and to replace the Soldiers and Marines. As the civilian security forces were trained and released they would take over the FOB’s, the long term plans was to return electricity and running water to as many places as possible but that was too big of a job with the resources they currently had.

  Within the first week they were in the Bay area FOBs had been set up in San Mateo, San Bruno, South San Francisco, Redwood City and a few smaller towns. At each FOB they installed a large flag pole, which flew the red, white and blue. Again, Colonel Clayton believed in showing the colors whenever possible. FOBs were either all Army or all Marine seldom did the two mix which was best for Esprit de Corps and of course inter-service rivalries. Patrols left the FOB’s in the mornings and in afternoons; they did their best to patrol a different area each time, after several days of patrols regard
less of the FOB people who had been hiding started to come out to see what was going on.

  Then a few days later those people started to approach the patrols, carefully and slowly, after all they the patrols were heavily armed. People started to get the sense that these Soldiers or Marines were not out to hurt them or they would have by now. People wanted to know who they were and why they were here, simply put they were the US Army or the US Marines and they were here to protect them. Some people just stopped and stared at them, some people started to cry and hug them, others were angry.

  The angry ones wanted to know where they were when all hell broke loose and people were dying, they didn’t take into account that the Soldiers and Marines had lost loved ones too. The Soldiers and Marines let them vent and kept moving, there was nothing they were going to be able to tell them that would calm them down.

  People also wanted to know what happened why everything all of a sudden stopped; the Soldiers and Marines told them they were told it was an EMP event what type no one knew for sure. They wanted to know when the power was coming back on, when there was going to be running water, when food was coming, the Soldiers and Marines told them they didn’t know, that as far as they knew their Commanders were doing everything they could.

  A few days’ later people started to come to the FOB with their children, this was an eye opener for the Soldiers and Marines this was the first time they had seen any children alive. They were happy to see them and offered them the candy out of their MRE’s. This was repeated at all of the FOBs regardless of the area they were in. People started to feel comfortable with the Soldiers and Marines, they also felt safe and secure when they were around.