Deep War: The War with China and North Korea - The Nuclear Precipice

by David Poyer

  The squad was dying. One by one, like teeth from a beaten-in mouth. War was processing them one after the other. Disassembling their bodies into burnt blood and mangled flesh. Hanging them up to die. Like chickens on the Line …

  The roar grew louder. The mortaring was sliding back toward the rear. A creeping barrage, to keep their heads down until the assault rolled over them. Grinding them into dirt and mud and blood.

  He lifted his face to the rain. Watched it fall silver, endless, cold. He tongued his mike, then tried the PRC again. “Rampart 1, this is 1-2. Under attack. Troops and light armor. Need support. Artillery. Helos. Air. A missile strike. Anything. Over.”

  But all he got back was the drone and buzz of jamming.

  A beetle thrust its nose over the edge of the cliff, hung there, treads scrabbling, then fell back. Hector slapped the cover down and pulled the bolt back, charging the 240. The C held the belt up and shook it in its metal hands, flinging the water off in a pewter cloud. They waited for an endless second.

  The machine lunged up again, nose to the sky. As it exposed its underbelly Hector depressed the trigger. The butt of the gun jackhammered his shoulder as muddy spray obliterated the target. Every fifth round was tungsten cored. From up and down the line rifles banged, discharging projectiles fuzed to penetrate metal. The beetle faltered, quested this way and that, and at last exploded in a gout of orange fire. Burning, it toppled back out of sight.

  But others were shouldering up behind it. The rain danced on their hulls. Their oculars searched the Marine line as they crunched heavily back down on rubberized treads and began to chew their way forward. As soon as they oriented they began firing. Their bullets kicked up mud and spray around the fighting holes.

  The recruit bolted up and scrambled out of the hole. Hector grabbed for his harness, but missed. The coward pelted away.

  Hector got back on the Pig. Firing and firing. Taking one target after the other. He was gunning for a mud-smeared machine on his right when another lurched up over the lip of the slope, rocked down, then spun its turret and charged for his hole.

  At that moment the Pig ran through the last of its belt and stopped. Hector pulled a grenade and yanked the pin. He had his arm back to throw when something hit him.

  The blow staggered him back, paralyzing him. The grenade dropped from his lifeless hand, puckered the mud, and slid gracefully down into their hole. Karamete shouted and kicked it into the sump. But too much dirt had fallen. The sump was full. The grenade lay exposed, and they all stared at it, horrified, unable to move.

  “I have it,” said 323. The Chad pivoted around Hector, pushed Karamete aside with a stiff-armed thrust, and fell on the grenade.

  A hollow, subdued bang blew half its head off, and the side of the hole collapsed and caved in on top of it.

  Screams rose from down the line as the beetles rolled over the fighting holes. One halted and spun, treads grinding down through the thin soil and mud like a mill to crush the screaming humans beneath. The marines fired from both sides, and its oculars flashed into splinters. Blinded, the machine charged uphill. One tread ran up a fallen tree and it tipped over, crashed down a short drop, and landed on its side. Its tracks spun with a gnashing roar, like the grinding of steel teeth. Then it began crying out, a shrill, insistent beeping that went on and on beneath the clatter of fire and the growl of motors.

  Hector lay half in and half out of the hole, dazed, gripping his arm. When he lifted his glove, blood pumped from the torn flesh beneath.

  Beside him the C was stirring, digging itself out from the mudslide with finlike motions of its hands. Its wrecked, muddy head drooped askew. One eye was missing. Cables hung from its neck. Hector extended a hand. The head came around and studied it for a second before it seemed to recognize the gesture.

  Hector pulled 323 to a sitting position, but when it tried to hoist itself one leg buckled. It sagged against the side of the hole.

  He must have blacked out for a second or two then, because when he came back the assistant squad leader was working on his arm. “Hold it fucking out, Sergeant. Hold it straight.” She slapped her belt around it, threaded the buckle, and yanked it tight. The arm felt weak. Dead. But it wasn’t pumping blood now. Just a slow oozing. He blinked at the sliding orange mud in the bottom of the hole. His own blood, dripping into it. Turning it red.

  “Another wave,” the assistant squad leader shouted in his ear. Her voice was thin, almost inaudible over the roar of battle. “Milliron spotted another wave. Coming through the woods.”

  Hector shook rain off his Glasses to see that 323, mangled as it was, had worked itself upright. It stood half-propped against the front of the hole, one buckled knee thrust deep into the mud to keep it vertical. It patted the Pig. Brushed mud off the feed cover, inserted the end of a belt of linked cartridges into the feed tray, and charged the weapon.

  It picked up the butt, and placed it carefully in its shoulder.

  Snuggling its single good optic behind the rear sight, it traversed and pressed the trigger. The burst ripped into the turret of a beetle heading for the right flank. The armor-piercing slugs stitched its side, and the thing rolled to a stop and began its plaintive crying. A second burst silenced even that.

  Hector hammered the robot’s back with his good hand. “Nice shot. Just keep those bursts short,” he yelled when the Chad’s mangled head turned. He tucked a severed wire back into the chest armor. “Short, asshole, short bursts, you’re gonna melt the fucking barrel.”

  His line was thinning. His guys were dying. Another assault would overrun them. Hector called Tac again, got nothing, tried the PRC but got only a thin high tormented squeal. “Fucking useless shit,” he growled, and stood in the hole. “Fall back!” he screamed.

  The order caromed down the line. Marines began scrambling out of their fighting holes, so coated with mud they seemed to be born of the earth. The rain increased. He jerked the Pig out of the mud. Then rethought, set it back down, and told the C, “You’re the king. Machine gunner, he’s the king. The king fucks the queen. Copy me? You stand fast. You die, you die right here. At your weapon.”

  It nodded, once, and slid behind the gun again. Hector yelled to Karamete, “If I don’t make it, set up at the military crest. Stand fast. Fight till we’re overrun. Then play dead. Maybe you can join up with Third Platoon after these things go past, take ’em from the rear.”

  She nodded and turned away to climb, lurching uphill over the cratered, slippery ground.

  Like maggots emerging from a rotten corpse, the rest of the platoon squirmed out of their holes and staggered, limped, crawled up the slope. They supported each other, or leaned on their rifles. Niegowski was dragging a body, one of his fire team guys. “Hustle, marines, hustle the fuck up!” Hector screamed. “Leave your claymores, wire ’em up.” A rifleman staggered past, gaze welded to some point in the infinite distance. He moved like one of the Chads, dragging his rifle-butt in the mud.

  Hector grabbed him and shoved him along. “Move it!” he screamed. He walked the line again, making sure everyone got the word, then followed them up the hill. Pulling back, the marines clambered over fallen trees. They set up remote-det claymores as they went, antipersonnel charges that sprayed shrapnel when the integral radar sensed motion. They reached the top panting and scrambling on all fours, fell on their knees in the rain, and seized their entrenching tools once more.

  * * *

  WHEN he stumbled out at the crest the ridges spread below him, around them, open and exposed and rounded and smoking under a charcoal sky. Rain churned the ocher mud Chinese mortars had plowed. Jets thundered invisibly far above. Another battle, detached from yet somehow probably related to their lack of air support. All Hector could see was the clouds, lowering and black as Marine dress oxfords.

  He trudged from one end of the line to the other, pegging each grunt to his or her place. His head reeled as if he’d been drinking. Sometimes he fell, but pushed himself to his feet again and went on. Th
e grunts were too exhausted to dig, but he chivvied and kicked them into it. Those who’d lost their e-tools scooped with hands or Ka-Bars or rifle butts. He linked up his flanks with the squads to left and right. Several minutes went by without any hellish new development. It was actually a little breathing spell.

  He tried to call Tac again, and to his astonishment got an only partially jammed channel. “No, Sergeant. No more reinforcements available. Ammo’s running short too. All we can do is pass requests for air support and artillery up the line.”

  Just then he recognized a lone figure scrambling over an explosion crater to where he stood.

  The recruit who’d run. White-faced, shaking, biting his lip. He carried two green steel ammo cans. Another was clamped under his arm. Hector waited, thumbs in his webbing. Said nothing. Until the guy blubbered, “Sergeant.”

  “Private.”

  “I’m sorry, I … lost it up there. I really—”

  “You back now?” Hector snapped.

  “Say again, Sergeant?”

  “If you’re done with your fucking piss break, let’s see that fucking e-tool flying.”

  The boot hesitated. Stared, then nodded over and over with pathetic eagerness. “Aye aye, Sergeant. I’ll dig you the best fucking hole—”

  “Shut the fuck up,” Hector said. “Give Milliron those cans. Fucking boot recruit. Greenie newbie asshole. Pinche estúpido. Pinche useless motherfucking abortion.”

  He was still muttering “Fucking boot” when the 240 went kack kack kack, down below, out of sight in the rain and smoke, and guilt stabbed him like a rooster’s spur. He’d left C323 behind. “Die at your weapon,” that’s what he’d told it. After the thing had fallen on a grenade, to save them.

  It felt … wrong.

  But it had never been alive. So how could it die?

  He strode along the line, kicking legs and shouting. They lay full length in the shallow scooped-out fighting holes, staring out over their weapons. They’d thrown away their useless Glasses and were blinking rain out of their eyes. Niegowski yelled that his team was out of ammo. Hector threw him the last can. The rain plonked on their helmets, mingled with their blood, trickled into the darkening mud.

  At the far right of the line he ran into Glasscock, from Third, walking his own positions. The other NCO pointed wordlessly across the valley. Smoke rose from the far ridgeline. Green shapes lumbered eastward. Troops were streaming to the rear. The Nationalists were breaking.

  Hector staggered. His head swam. He gripped his wounded shoulder with his good hand. Then forced himself on. His Pig. Where was his fucking Pig? Then he heard it again. Not short, but prolonged bursts. Practically a full belt. “Too fucking long!” he screamed, knowing the Chad couldn’t hear him.

  The gun stuttered on. And on.

  Then suddenly fell silent.

  The sky ripped open and shells screamed in. Hector couldn’t tell if they were Allied or enemy. They burst ahead of his line. So, friendly, probably. But only a dozen or so.

  Not enough. Not nearly enough.

  “Here they come!” Karamete screamed.

  Behind a walking wall of gray-white antitargeting smoke an army of green cockroaches lumbered up the slope. Gunflashes winked from their muzzles. Whistles blew. Lasers reached out, beams probing like antennae through rainfog and gunsmoke. Helmets bobbed behind the beetles. The troops were closed up on the robots this time, providing suppressing fire to keep the Gustav gunners down. Their cheers carried on the wind. The marines yelled back. Bullets puckered the top of the hill and whined overhead.

  When the lead enemy was a hundred meters away Hector yelled, “Open fire!” The line opened up with a roar. He crawled from hole to hole, telling each fire team to conserve ammo. “We gotta hold this fucking hilltop. If we retreat, they’ll fucking massacre us. Or I’ll shoot you myself, no shit. Then I’ll call in gunships on the position.”

  He didn’t tell them there was no more support. That they were on their own. What would be the point?

  Instead of a wide wave, this time four beetles came almost locked together, just enough space between them to see the troops crouching behind them, using the metal ovoids as cover. The battle-noise rose to a massive, roaring climax.

  Hector was full length behind the boll of a fallen pine, firing, when a burst tore the wood apart, slashing splinters across his face and knocking him backward in a sticky rain of sap. He lay dazed. The universe smelled of turpentine. He waited dumbly to be crushed into the red soil. For it all to at last just fucking end.

  Instead the howl of combat seemed to falter. Lessened.

  He dragged a wet sleeve across his face and pulled it back covered with blood and pale splinters the color of canned tuna. Then sat up, gripping his empty rifle.

  The beetles stood all around them. Their engines were running, but they weren’t moving. Their turrets were canted upward, and a red light blinked below their lasers. Shouts and whistles came from down the hill.

  Patterson took a knee beside him. “Sergeant. Y’okay? I’m gonna pull some of these big splinters out of your face.… Can ya stand? I’ll help you up.”

  “What the fuck … What happened?”

  “I don’t know. They were about to overrun us, but just sort of … stalled out.”

  “Where’s Karamete?”

  “I’m slapping demo on them,” his assistant yelled.

  “Yeah. Blow the fuckers to hell, ASAP. Before they wake up again.” He staggered up, clinging to the runner, and hobbled along the line. More wounded. Two more dead. He wasn’t even sure who he had left anymore.

  Leaning on Patterson, he tried to raise Tac again. The answer was nearly obliterated with static, but they seemed to be able to hear him. He reported casualties. Asked for ammo and water and reinforcements again.

  Then he slumped to the mud, and nodded, stunned for a timeless time as the world spun viciously around him but he, himself, floated at a detached and motionless center.

  * * *

  A corpsman was bending over him. He took off the belt tourniquet, poured in clotting powder and antibiotic, and applied a field dressing. “Gonna have to evacuate you, Sergeant,” he murmured.

  Hector winced away as the medic plastered another bandage over his face. He shook his head. “No.”

  “Sorry, dude. Sendin’ you to the rear.”

  “No, fuck that. Ya valí madre. Stayin’ here, Doc.”

  The corpsman started to argue, then shrugged. “At least, some morphine.”

  “No. Gotta stay sharp. Gotta hold the line.”

  “Here, drink this. Drink it all. Hear me? Sergeant, can you hear me?”

  Hector shook himself. Something was cradled in his hands. Something … to drink? He’d almost been asleep. “Gotta … hold. Take care of the other guys, Doc. Patch ’em up, so we can keep fighting.”

  * * *

  ANOTHER hour crept past. The rain kept falling, now light, now heavy. His face was numb, as if a dentist had novocained it all over, but his arm was starting to really ache. A guy from H&S drove up with a cart. Rounds for the recoilless Gustavs, rifle ammo, flares, batteries, MREs, water. Hector yelled over to Glasscock, to coordinate, then told Karamete to move the platoon back down to the edge of the rise.

  Stumbling, weaving between fallen trees, they filtered down toward their old holes. He could only stagger a few steps before he had to collapse and rest, head propped in his hands.

  Corpses and parts of bodies lay tumbled along the bench where they’d fought. Below and around the fighting holes wrecked beetles stood burning, farting sparks as ammo cooked off.

  Hector paused next to a twisted mass of metal and wires, torn apart and crushed into the mud behind a wrecked machine gun. He looked down at it for a few seconds.

  Chads didn’t have helmets, though their heads were vaguely helmet shaped, if you glimpsed one in the red-lit dark of an aircraft fuselage, hurtling toward battle.

  They didn’t have boots. Just plastic and alloy lower limb termin
ations that splayed out slightly when they pressed into soft ground, on the march.

  He bent, and picked up a discarded rifle. Sorted through the wreckage in the hole.

  When he stepped back the rifle stood upright in the mud, muzzle down. On top of it he hung the mangled wreck of what had once been 323’s head. On the ground, he arranged a mangled foot assembly.

  He stood there for a moment more, but found no words. What could he say? How could you envision an afterlife for something that had never lived? At last he just sighed and turned away, digging his fingers into his arm, which now felt like it had been plunged into boiling grease.

  Their old fighting pits were shallow puddles now, nearly erased by treadmarks and shell-gouged craters. He ordered the fire team leaders to stack the dead, Marine and enemy both, in front of their positions for cover.

  He sagged to half sit, half lean at the cliff, boots dangling over the edge, staring down at a smashed, annihilated forest. Quads and Gammas lay tumbled broken in the red mud. More dead lay down there too. Except for the rain falling on them all, the sky was empty.

  * * *

  AN hour later far-off whistles blew again. The grunts rousted from whatever rest they’d found, and charged their weapons. But Hector still sat by the cliff, contemplating his fields of fire as the whistles and cheers grew closer through the smoke and mist and rain.

  He couldn’t hear any more beetles. But another wave of troops was pushing up from the rising ground, as if growing from the soil itself up through the stumps and craters of the shattered jungle. But these shadowy forms looked different. Helmetless. Weaponless. He adjusted his Glasses.

  No. Not troops. Old men, kids, women. Not uniformed, but in colored shirts and pants and dresses. They stumbled forward, glancing back fearfully as someone screamed at them from behind.

  Hector pressed Transmit on the radio, and sent it in. He dragged a sleeve across his face, wiping away blood and tears, sweat and powder-grime.