James Rosone - Battlefield Russia

He spent roughly ten minutes examining the entire area before he made the call that it appeared to be abandoned. Price ordered his team to move across the street so they could begin to search the structure.

Running past the base sign, he read, Welcome to Arakkonam Naval Air Station. Home to the longest runway in Asia. In minutes, his team was in the ground floor of the building, moving from blown-out room to room and finding nothing. They went to explore the second floor, but both stairwells had been destroyed, leaving them no viable way to access the upper floors.

Once this first building had been searched and cleared, they moved to the next set of buildings, and so did the other teams. It took them nearly an hour to clear through the building, but the only notable thing they found was the burnt-out wrecks of half a dozen Indian Navy Tu-142s, one newer Poseidon P-8I, and half a dozen helicopters. They also found a lot of dead and charred bodies in the various buildings and maintenance hangars.

Seeing no obvious signs of danger, he radioed in for the rest of the platoon to bring the vehicles on in. Twenty-minutes later, they consolidated their vehicles in the tree line, near the bombed-out headquarters building. With the rest of the platoon present, they finished doing a more thorough sweep of the buildings and the rest of the perimeter, ensuring Price’s initial team hadn’t missed something.

Lieutenant Martinez walked up to Sergeant First Class Price. “This place gives me the creeps,” he said. “It’s almost like something out of a zombie apocalypse or the Walking Dead TV series or something.”

Price smirked. “You have a wild imagination, LT. It just looks like a bombed-out air base to me. Did you call it in yet? What did Major Fowler say?”

“I called it in ten minutes ago,” Martinez replied. “He said congrats on the seizure and to hold on to it. He told me the rest of the company is stuck pulling security for that artillery firebase until they’re relieved by another Army unit. He did say he passed our situation on to battalion, and they’re going to see if a regular Army unit can relieve us. The Air Force is apparently eager to get this base operational; they want to move an engineering unit out here ASAP.

“In the meantime, I want everyone to try and get some sleep for now,” Martinez ordered. “Once sunup comes, I think this place is going to get a lot harder to defend. This is an enormous base, and we’re just a platoon.”

Price nodded, then went to work getting a guard rotation set up for the platoon.

Adyar Police Station, Chennai

It was nearly two in the morning when Captain Wilkes got a call from the battalion commander, ordering him to have his company stop everything they were doing and head out to a new location seventy-something kilometers outside the city. Apparently, a platoon of Rangers had seized an opportunity to capture an enemy air base, and now the brass wanted it properly protected so the Air Force could get it up and running ASAP. The following hour was a rush of controlled chaos as he ordered his platoons to wrap up whatever they were doing and join his position near the Adyar police station.

Wilkes felt lucky that the entire movement was happening in the wee hours of the morning, when the citizens of Chennai would still be largely asleep. Unfortunately, so were most of the soldiers, who now had to be roused from their slumber and made ready to fight. It hadn’t even been twenty-four hours into the invasion of India and they were already receiving their first fragmentary order or FRAGO, and it was to go reinforce a platoon of Rangers deep in enemy territory.

Spotting Lieutenant Slater, Captain Wilkes walked up to him in a hurry. “Are your troopers ready, Lieutenant?” he asked, looking at his watch. “I think we’re starting to fall behind schedule.”

Slater nodded. “My guys are ready to roll, Sir. We’re packed up. My only question is, since I’ve been able to establish a reasonably friendly relationship with the local police captain, do we know who’s going to take our place? I’d at least like to tell them who they’ll be working with.”

“I don’t have a lot of details. The battalion CG said something about a New Zealand unit moving in to take our place, but I have no idea what unit or who they are.” He paused for a second as he guided the two of them away from the soldiers nearby. “Look, I have no idea who’s running this mess right now or what’s going on. All I know is I was at battalion headquarters to pick up some supplies and the commanding general was pipin’ hot about something. One of the orderlies told me the brigade commander got a FRAGO order from the Ranger battalion that they were in some sort of trouble and had a platoon way out deep in enemy territory that stumbled onto an empty airfield and took the opportunity to seize it. Now the Australian general in charge of the ground operations here ordered it reinforced and turned into forward operation base. We’re the first unit to head out there, but from what I gathered at battalion, it looks like the rest of the unit will be joining us out there over the next couple of days, along with a few artillery units.”

Slater kind of slumped his shoulders at the news. Captain Wilkes understood; like many of the soldiers in their unit, he had hoped they’d be assigned to garrison duty in Chennai. That would have been a relatively safe duty assignment, and it would have meant they wouldn’t see a lot of combat unless things completely turned to crap with the locals, which seemed to be relatively low-risk given their current relationship with the local government.

Slater shook out his shoulders, then stood up straight and tall. “Well, look at it this way, Sir,” he said. “We’ve been selected to go save the Rangers. We’ll be able to brag about that to these guys forever once we get back to Fort Lewis.”

Wilkes laughed, and for a moment, the tension in the air was lifted. The captain had even more reason to avoid combat than Slater at the moment—his wife was expecting twin boys any day now. All he wanted to do was survive this war and get home to them. His poor wife was already trying to deal with their other two girls, ages two and three, and now twins. Thank God her parents had come to live with them while he was gone. He wasn’t sure how she would handle it all.

“Thanks for lightening the mood, Ian,” Wilkes responded. “I suppose I’m just distracted with the twins coming any day now. I know I need to keep my head in the game, but it’s so hard right now. I just wish I could be there with them, and frankly, there isn’t anyone I can really talk to about this.” He wiped a tear away, making sure none of the men could see them.

Ian just nodded. “It’ll be OK, Sir. You can always talk to me. I’m not going to judge you or think less of you. You helped me out a lot back in Washington when I was mentally heading in the wrong direction after I returned from Korea. For a while, I really thought I was going to go AWOL or shoot myself. You gave me a mission and a purpose, and that helped turn me around.”

The two talked for a couple more minutes, then headed back to their soldiers to get ready to meet whatever was waiting for them at this airfield the Rangers had captured.

The sun crept up slowly at first, then before Wilkes knew it, the sun was up, and the darkness of the previous evening was all but gone. Alpha Company continued to race down what was largely a deserted highway toward the Arakkonam Naval Air Station. With the brighter light, Wilkes and the rest of his soldiers took in the opportunity to see the Indian countryside.

Within two hours of leaving Chennai, they arrived in the city of Arakkonam with little to no fanfare. While they hadn’t run into any enemy resistance up to this point, Captain Wilkes noticed they were getting the stink eye from the locals once they realized the soldiers were Americans.