Tenth Division Command had just radioed. The Chinese heavies were finally advancing. The realization had twisted McGee’s gut with fear. Was he going to die tonight? Was this it?
Get a grip, McGee. You’re fighting for your country. Stand your ground and kill the Chinese.
Like the other M1A3s, McGee had carefully chosen his first spot. The tank used a small, grassy dune, putting the Abrams behind it in the “hull-down” position. It meant most of the tank used the sand as a shield. The turret was higher than the top of the dune and the gun-barrel depressed so it could fire straight at the enemy. It would make him a smaller sight on enemy thermals and the sand or dune would act as a shield against enemy shells. Well, the dune would stop a HEAT round, but he wasn’t sure about the latest Chinese sabot round.
In the Abrams’s thermal sights, he saw the first enemy tank—a T-66 by its size. It was nearly five thousands meters away. Behind it, others appeared, following the first monster. A squeeze of purified terror tightened McGee’s chest. He’d heard stories about the tri-turreted tanks. The battalion didn’t have a chance against them. But so what, huh? It was time to fight.
With the pistol grip, McGee adjusted the turret and put crosshairs on the target. The enemy tank was moving fast and would soon be in range.
“Gunner, sabot, tank,” McGee said. It made him glad his voice still sounded level. Maybe he could fool the others, not letting them know he was worried sick.
The first order—“gunner”—alerted the crew. The second told them what kind of shell he wanted. The last was the target they aimed at.
McGee glanced at the gunner. The man had his own thermal sights, leaning his brow on the pad. The gunner shouted, “Identified,” and took over control of the gun. With his left hand, the gunner flipped the switch on the fire control to “sabot.” At the same time, he ensured the crosshairs were on target. He used the laser range finder. It shot a beam at the target and returned, giving them the precise distance. The M1A3’s ballistic computer analyzed the type of ammo, the wind speed and direction, humanity and the angle of the tank relative to the horizontal plane. In microseconds, the computer showed the needed gun-tube elevation, which the gunner used to adjusted the mighty 120mm cannon.
While the gunner readied the gun, the loader—to McGee’s left and below him—turned to the rear bustle. With his right knee, the loader hit a switch. A one-inch-thick blast door slid open, showing rows of main gun rounds. He pulled out a fifty-pound sabot round. With a grunt, he turned and his knee lifted off the switch. The blast door slid shut, sealing off the deadly rounds. The loader shoved the round into the breech and slid it home with his fist. The breech-lock knocked his fist out the way as it sealed the breech. Some loaders had lost fingers that way. The loader finally flipped the safety switch on the turret wall and shouted, “Up!” over the intercom.
Now McGee waited, letting the enemy come to poppa. Before the T-66 reached the gun’s range, American artillery shells began falling on the enemy. This was perfect. McGee knew all about the enemy defensive systems. The T-66 had more than great armor, but included radar-directed flechettes and auto-cannons. The artillery shells might give the radar-guided defenses too many targets to monitor. Even better, the arty shells would possibly hit against the T-66s’ tops. Just like the Abrams, the enemy’s weakest armor was there. Unfortunately, enemy defensive systems began chugging at the steel hail.
After a wait that squeezed McGee’s stomach tighter than a fist, the lead and targeted T-66 came into range.
“Fire!” McGee said.
The gunner shouted, “On the way!” and fired the round.
The M1A3 shook as the 120mm smoothbore gun fired the shell. The entire front of the tank seemed to lift.
The sabot round contained a cardboard casing around the gunpowder, which was burned up by the explosion. It meant that no hot brass shell landed inside the tank.
The kinetic energy sabot round exited the tube. The word sabot meant “wooden shoe” in French. The plastic “shoe” around the depleted uranium (DU) rod dropped away upon exiting the tube. Flight-stabilizing fins popped up, making the round look like a technological arrow. The arrow was a dense metal rod nearly two feet long.
Despite the artillery rain, Chinese flechettes flew as the round neared, but they missed, as did the auto-cannons tracking it by radar. Too many targets—this was great!
The DU round struck the T-66 with the mass and pressure equivalent to an NASCAR racer hitting a brick wall at 175 mph, all concentrated in an area the size of a golf ball.
The DU round punched through a turret. As it did, particles sheared off as the round penetrated. It was like a snake shedding its skin. The enormous pressure turned the projectiles white-hot. The peeled-off skins became fiery granules and were twice as dense as the steel that followed them. Those granules zinged around the compartment like a thousand white-hot BBs. They ignited everything they touched, killing the Chinese personnel and cooking off a round. In this instance, the pyrophoric effect resulted in a terrific explosion that ripped the turret from the T-66 and flipped the one-hundred ton tank onto its side, taking it out of the battle.
Back at the M1A3, McGee shouted, “Hit! We took out a T-66.”
The crew shouted with glee, the driver pumping his fist in the air, showing off his high school ring. Then McGee targeted the next enemy tank and the procedure began all over again.
All along the line from their hull-down positions, American Abrams opened up, reaching out over four thousand meters. Some rounds hit, a few making kills like McGee. Others hit and only burned in partway. A few hit and bounced—the angle and new, super-dense skirts working as designed on the Chinese tanks. The T-66s knocked down some rounds with defensive fire or deflected the sabots just enough. A few of the sabots just plain missed.
As all this happened, McGee realized the enemy probably had as good a night vision as they had, maybe even better.
“Back her up!” McGee shouted to the driver. “And give me smoke.”
The driver revved the gas turbine engine. The mighty seventy-ton tank lurched as it backed away from its dune and backed away from the advancing horde of Chinese monsters.
The Abrams lobbed smoke shells, creating dense clouds of it between them and the enemy.
The Abrams had two ways to make smoke. The first was how they were doing it, with the turret-mounted grenade dischargers. The second way was to inject a little fuel into the exhaust. That generated a heavy cloud of smoke.
Sergeant McGee pressed his forehead against the thermal sights. Night or day, they used them. They could “look” through most smoke and other interference. These smoke shells had tiny particles, however, making thermal imaging harder to achieve.
The opening battle raged against forty-two M1A3s and fifty-nine T-66s. The Chinese tanks now opened fire. On McGee’s thermal sights, the firings were bright blooms.
Unfortunately, for McGee and his fellow tankers it wasn’t sixty gun-tubes firing at the battalion, but one hundred and eighty. The Abrams had a 120mm tube. Each Chinese tank had three 175mm tubes and more advanced munitions.
Terrific explosions occurred outside McGee’s Abrams. Titanic hammers beat at metal and it rained shattered and exploded M1A3s.
“Get us out of here!” McGee shouted, with his voice cracking.
“I’m trying, Sarge! I’m trying!”
McGee leaned his forehead against the thermal sights. When the T-66s fired in unison, it looked like Hell had erupted.
How are we supposed to stop this?
***
First Lieutenant Sheng sat in the commander’s seat of the highest turret. He had several computer screens around him and wore safety straps as the T-66 roared at the retreating enemy.
The damned Americans had knocked out one of the platoon’s T-66s. It was because of the artillery shells. There had simply been too many targets for the defensive radar to track at once. An Abrams had hit, blown a turret off one of his T-66s, which had caused the tank to fal
l onto its side, thereby taking it out of the battle.
Sheng wanted revenge, which overrode the small sense of concern humming in his head for his own safety.
These were China’s premier tank. These models were better than the ones that had gone into Alaska seven years ago. The Americans—once they had built the greatest weapons. That had been before the Sovereign Debt Depression. After the Alaskan War, America had faced growing debt, secession troubles, sanction damage and the Chinese cyber-attack. Even better, a terrorist nuclear weapon had taken out Silicon Valley, once home to the world’s highest technology. The American research and development had yet to advance as far as the great T-66. Yes, once the Americans had ruled the world’s battlefields with their superior weapons. Now China ruled the battlefields, and tonight Sheng was going to show the has-beens what that meant.
The Americans fled from their hull-down positions, trying to use the dunes as cover for their escape. Sheng shook his head. He wasn’t going to let that happen.
At his orders, the two tanks of his platoon revved to the right. They had brigade UAVs in the sky, spotting for them. He used the computer screens, waiting, watching—
“There!” Sheng shouted. He spied the enemy Abrams, the bastard who had killed one of his tanks. He’d “painted” the Abrams, using a computer-code marker.
“I want all three guns targeted on the painted Abrams,” Sheng said.
The T-66 had three turrets and three guns, which meant a gunner and a loader for each. The main turret was slightly larger than the other two. It held the gunner, loader, Sheng and his radio operator. Each T-66, therefore, had eight crewmembers.
Now the three 175mm tubes aligned on the retreating Abrams.
The enemy tank’s cannon boomed. Sheng witnessed the fact on one of his screens. The sabot round screamed across the distance between them and likely would have hit. The radar on the T-66 tracked it and two 30mm auto-cannons fired, knocking the American round out of the air.
“You cannot defeat us,” Sheng said. “Yes, you are wise to flee, weak American tank.”
Sheng heard the three gunners shout. They were ready.
For a second, he enjoyed the sensation of knowing he was going to kill the American. It was a delicious thing. Then Sheng said, “Fire.”
The front of the one-hundred ton monster seemed to rise in air from the three cannons firing in unison. Three Chinese sabot rounds sped at hyper-velocity, rocket-assigned for greater speed and reach.
First Lieutenant Sheng watched on a thermal-imaging screen.
Sabot rounds hit the Abrams. Giant lava streams spewed out of blown enemy hatches. Those were solid columns of flame climbing into the night air. It meant one of the shells at least must have burned down the blast door to the enemy shell compartment. The American rounds began to cook off and the turret tore free from the main body, its 120mm tube spinning like a top. The Abrams engine shot out of the back like a squeezed bar of soap. Oh, this was impressive. This was pure joy to Sheng, better than porn.
“We are the conquerors,” he told the main turret crew. “We are supreme, the lords of the battlefield.”
The T-66 crew cheered.
Sheng allowed them the moment. Ten seconds later, he snapped an order. Tonight, they would smash Tenth Armor Division and open the way to LA.
***
Sergeant McGee’s corpse was gone, devoured in the inferno that had destroyed his beloved M1A3. The battalion was dying and the hated enemy bloodied but advancing victoriously on Palm Springs.
PALM SPRINGS, CALIFORNIA
Captain Stan Higgins was wide-awake and on the move, directing his Behemoth down from the tank carrier.
It was 3:19 AM, cool and dark outside. Tenth Division was gone as an organized force, the vast majority of it was dead and littered on the white sands beyond Palm Springs. That meant wrecked Abrams, destroyed Bradleys and demolished Humvees, 155mm self-propelled artillery, Strykers and supply vehicles by the hundreds. Many of the hulks burned miles outside of Palm Springs. Close to eighteen thousand American soldiers were dead. Maybe seven hundred or so fled from the approaching T-66s. Less than a hundred still fought, firing a TOW here or a Javelin missile there. It meant the Chinese crept forward instead of racing into Palm Springs.
It helped that artillery fired from within the city. Several infantry battalions were also setting up in Palm Springs. There was a woeful lack of armor and very few Bradleys with their TOWs.
The last of the Apache gunships were dying, although they had managed to kill T-66s, about a dozen of them.
The Tank Army of the great Chinese right hook followed the conquering T-66s of the first wave.
Stan knew these things, and yet he calmly motioned the driver easy does it down the carrier’s ramp.
Colonel Wilson marched up to him then. The man wore a red scarf around his neck, with the end whipping about at each step. In the wash of sodium streetlamps, he eyed Stan critically. “Your tank is down. Good. I want you to head out immediately. Captain Reece will go with you.”
“Two tanks, sir?” Stan asked.
“We want to slow the Chinese down before they hit the city.”
“This is our great moment, sir. I think—”
“Are you refusing orders, Captain?”
“No sir,” Stan said. “I’m just thinking—”
“You leave the thinking to me,” Wilson said. “I want you to obey orders for once.”
“Yes sir,” Stan said.
“Get out there and stop the forward advance. But don’t go farther than our artillery shells can reach.”
“Yes sir,” Stan said. He hadn’t intended to do that anyway.
Wilson eyed him critically, waiting. He finally asked, “Haven’t you forgotten something, Captain?”
“No sir,” Stan said, knowing what Wilson expected. “It isn’t good practice to salute near the forward lines. The enemy likes to take out the officers. If I salute you, sir, I’m marking you for death.”
Wilson blushed and nodded sharply. Without another word, he turned and strode away.
“The man’s an ass,” Jose muttered from behind Stan.
Stan shrugged. “He’s our commanding officer, so we’ll give him the respect he’s due.”
“Which is nothing, right?” Jose asked.
“Wrong,” Stan said. “His commission and rank deserve respect. Now let’s get going.”
“Alone to face the enemy?” Jose asked.
“Didn’t you hear? Captain Reece’s Behemoth will be joining us. Now let’s quit jawing. We have a job to do.”
FIRST FRONT HEADQUARTERS, MEXICO
“I have reports, Marshal,” General Pi said.
Nung blinked his eyes and lifted his chin off his chest. “What was that?” he asked groggily. Had he been sleeping?
“The American Tenth Division has been destroyed, sir. Our lead tankers have spotted Palm Springs. There are reports of new American formations setting up within city limits.”
Nung nodded and smacked his lips before speaking. “I expected that. The Americans will have poured whatever they could find to block us. Now is the moment to shatter them just as we have destroyed the armored division. Afterward, we will drive onward to LA and greater glory.”
“The attack is for China’s greatness,” Marshal Gang said in his deep voice.
Nung nodded, not for the first time hating the man’s presence. “Here,” Nung said, stabbing a finger on the computer map. “Here is the beginning of the march to American dismemberment. Once we are in LA, then we will turn our attack onto annihilating the trapped Army Group.”
“Let the trapped troops wither on the vine,” Gang suggested. “That is the wise move. As Sun Tzu has said, ‘If the army does not have baggage and heavy equipment it will be lost; if it does not have provisions it will be lost; if it does not have stories it will be lost.’ Therefore, the trapped Americans are now lost to their cause.”
Nung scowled. Instead of answering with a sharp rebuttal or a Sun T
zu quote of his own, he let the statement go. The marshals who quoted the ancient sage on war didn’t impress him. The Americans had said it better long ago: shock and awe. He had shocked the enemy, would continue to do so, and that awed them and made men’s knees weak. That was the time to strike.
“Here,” Nung said for the third time. “Here at Palm Springs is where the Americans will truly realize that we are invincible in battle and their cause doomed to ultimate failure.”
PALM SPRINGS, CALIFORNIA
Stan sat in the commander’s seat. For a three-hundred ton monster, there was surprisingly little space within the Behemoth.
So far, the engine worked and the treads stayed on the suspension system. They had been working hard these past days in Fresno, making sure all the little problems stayed away.
The Behemoth was something completely new. It was big because its engine was massive. The power plant had to be that way to feed the rail gun.
The Behemoth didn’t use conventional gunpowder shells, although it had several .50 caliber machine guns and used the auto-cannons and beehive flechette launchers. It was a walking—rolling—supergun. There was nothing like it on Earth.
The rail gun was simple in a way. It had two magnetized rods lining the Behemoth’s cannon. The projectile or “shell” completed the current between the two rods. The direction of the current expelled the round, firing the shell and breaking the current. The great difference was the incredible speed at which the electromagnetic cannon could eject the solid metal round.
Like the Abrams’s sabot round it used kinetic energy, the same kind of energy that sent a bullet smashing through a man’s body.
An M16 rifle fired a bullet at the muzzle velocity of 930 meters per second. The Behemoth’s cannon fired its round at 3,500 m/s, over three times as fast. That was approximately Mach 10 at sea level.
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