The Next Warrior

Disembarkation - Part 16

Only one among them had seen a real war. He'd seen several, in fact. He alone knew well the feeling when the treads met the sand of a hostile beach. It was similar to when he had first set foot in a conflict zone many years ago. That singular Marine with any real sense of what it meant to be a warfighter was Gunnery Sergeant Emmanuel Yafante.

Yafante, "Manimal" to those closest to him, none of which he counted in this boat, was a veteran of the latter years of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars. With the infantry, he excelled in hand-to-hand martial arts and as a trainer with the Marine Corps Martial Arts Program. This helped him land a seat with the US Joint Special Operations Command, JSOC, as a member of the Marine Corps' elite special operations direct action force, the Raiders. The JSOC is the de facto branch of the US Military above and beyond those you sign on for at the mall. This is where the greatest talent in the US war machine gather, from the archangels of death and destruction to more subtle masters of black operations, snatch-and-grabs, and signals intelligence operators. This along with specialized logistics, such as the Night Stalkers, to get them anywhere in the world in a matter of hours, comprise the tip of the spear of American military dominance. While each member technically belongs to their mother branch, once joining the JSOC, they all fall under an intermingling mass of lethal skill sets; lethal in a manner non-existent anywhere else in the world. Yafante was in his element.

As a Raider, Yafante had been a member of missions none of the other 2/2 Marines would learn of until his exploits were memorialized in Marine Corps history. That wouldn't happen, though, until the files containing details of their missions would be declassified a quarter century after the fact, unveiling to the world acts he and his fellow operators in battles conducted so secretly; most of the world never even knew they happened at all. Only then would the world would begin to see the actions they had undertaken. Of course, by that point, the wider world will have lost their interest, and the truth, as it always has, will fade away in the sea of open information. This was fine for most operators. You don't become an operator looking for acknowledgment or fame.

With the Raiders he conducted covert operations in Pakistan against Taliban and then seeking to mitigate the rampage of the Sindi pogroms. He was even present in Odessa, following the uprising that claimed more than seventy-three Russian expatriates and the riots, which followed. It was well known that at least one of the Raider battalions were present, assisting Marine embassy security details in Odessa. It was odd, however, to have such a strong force so gifted in insurgency warfare called in to assist the embassy in the Ukraine, particularly during a time of relative calm in the city. More interesting, though some would not use that word, was the timing, officially arriving on the manifest only days after the sudden and unexpected revolt of thousands of anti-Russian protesters, all with a remarkably high level of coordination, and a remarkably high level of armament.

It was a remarkable event, if not just for the Ukrainian people, then also for the Raiders involved. Odessa was a successful mission. In spite of its mystery, intrigue, and suspicion, it was still officially known for nothing more than a successful and noneventful security mission for the Embassy. Odessa was noteworthy, at least for Emmanuel Yafante, for another reason. It was his last with the Marine Special Operations Command.

In the decades of relative peace, the Marines and the rest of the United States military, though none would admit or accept it, lost much of their combat potency. It wasn't that the technology hadn't improved to provide them the lethality necessary. There was always someone with a clever idea to end the lives of thousands. Nor was it in the Special Forces themselves. The Americans still had the most deadly collection of elite warriors on the planet. For the average Marine, it was simply a lack of experience.

There is only so much efficacy a combat unit can have from constant training, even the best training in the world, but having no members of their units which have seen combat. Their teeth had dulled in the long operational pause following the wars. It wasn't that the United States no longer had teeth, just that so few of them outside the Special Forces saw action that gave a well-trained warrior the true test of virtue necessary to complete their transition into being a real war fighter.

This is the nature of peace, but some see peace for what it is. It was as Yafante once told the Marines who trained under him. "Peace is a myth. It is only a temporary period of pleasantness where the conflicts are less intense, more clandestine, or so far away that the peaceful remain ignorant of the violence that occurs as they sleep quietly, in quiet homes, and on quiet streets. It is a time for militaries to become weak and underfunded, as well as an opportunity for unresolved conflicts to stack-up, one atop the other, until they all fall down. It is this reality that gives way towards war. So those who refuse to be sheltered by the lie of peace prepare their bodies, and their minds, for the inevitability of war – the natural state of man. Then again, it is only when a few embrace the natural state that the lie of peace is preserved for the many others."

They ran for six hours straight following that particular speech.

In keeping with this mentality, the US military focused its strength away from large units like 2/2. The traditional unit structure was built around a WWII framework, requiring a massive bulk of logistical support including the deployment of entire soft skinned "non-combat" military units to provide a base for their operations. These units required countless millions of dollars to deploy for the Marine Corps, to say nothing of the Army. Instead the practice shifted to the incredibly small teams of elite warfighters, like the Raiders and the rest of JSOC. With sayings like, "Pack light – Freeze at night" these warriors were capable of disruption on untold scales, all at a fraction of the cost of deploying a whole regiment for upwards of a year. They could detain, demolish, and devastate anything they were directed to. They could fight.

But they weren't enough to win wars. The Special Forces community, as renowned as their skills were, they were not enough to win any full scale war. There were simply not enough of them to saturate a conflict zone with the policing, intervention, and stabilizing strength that a peacemaking force needs to be capable of to end a real war, should one arise again.

The larger regular forces, like Romero's unit, were too large, slow, and expensive that they were unsuited to the numerous small wars which America had opted to participate in during the last decade. It was decided, for that reason, that experienced warfighters, such as the Gunnery Sergeant, would leave the Raiders and pass on their experience and expertise to the regular Marine Corps, as new faces joined the aging ranks of the Marine Special Operations Command.

After Odessa, Yafante was sent to join the Warlords. It really wasn't his call, though. He didn't relish the idea of leaving the Joint Special Operations Command. To the Special Forces community, returning to the line companies was a step down, and a waste of their skills and talents. Over the years, those forces far away from the Recon or Raider teams could expect very little from their four years in service. They maintained gear, trained, rehearsed, trained, maintained gear, and sat through power point presentations warning themselves how not to abuse their privileges in town on a three-day weekend. Then the cycle would repeat again on Monday morning. It was a slow death to people like Yafante. Likely, he would lose a whole enlistment period to the mind numbing monotony of it all, if he ever got back to the Raiders at all.

Combat was simply not in the cards, that is, unless something extraordinary happened. Of course, something extraordinary did happen. Venezuela happened. Against all the odds, the Manimal was going back to war.