The forty-something squirmed uncomfortably. Yet he still managed to say, “We have to preserve ourselves so we have soldiers to keep the Chinese at bay.”
“The Lieutenant still doesn’t understand,” Romo whispered. “But I will show him.” The Mexican assassin rose from where he couched beside Paul. They had their own .50 caliber to serve and several RPGs, the last ones.
Romo sauntered beside the Lieutenant. “Can I speak to him, sir?”
The Lieutenant eyed Romo, finally nodding.
Romo crouched beside the wary, forty-something private. He began whispering, going so far as to pull out a knife and show it to the private. The older man paled, and he would no longer look in Romo’s eyes.
“Si?” Romo asked him.
The forty-something private nodded quickly.
Romo rose, touched his helmet in respect to the Lieutenant and then sauntered back beside Paul.
“What did you tell him?” Paul asked.
“If he runs during combat I will feed him his balls.”
“You showed him the knife you’re going to do it with?”
“It always helps to show them the knife.”
“I’m sure it does,” Paul said. “Oh-oh, you hear that.”
“Incoming!” Romo shouted.
“Everyone down!” the Lieutenant shouted. “And don’t get up until you hear my whistle.”
Paul crawled into a narrow slit trench. Seconds later, shells went screaming in and blew up rubble, dust, men and weapons. Concussions washed over Paul. Debris flew everywhere. The enemy pounded their position and likely all along the line and the mortar and artillery sites. No doubt drones buzzed up there, helping the enemy sight them.
Screwing his eyes shut, Paul endured. He hated artillery. It was so impersonal. It was just stupid fate and luck. Someday, his luck would run out, just as it had for Maria Valdez. Colonel Valdez should never have sent his daughter along.
Then an arty shell landed too close. The blast hurled Paul against the side of his trench. Hot shrapnel flew over him. He began shivering uncontrollably. Cheri, Cheri, Cheri, I love you, babe. Can you ever forgive me, my love?
“God!” he screamed, although he couldn’t hear a word. “Let me live! Let me be with my wife again! God! Are you listening?”
Another shell came down. The explosion hurled Paul against the other side of his slit trench. He wore armor, a mesh vest. He wore a helmet, tough pants and heavy-duty boots. It would be like wet toilet paper if a piece of shrapnel caught him.
Suddenly, the artillery barrage ended.
Paul knew what it meant. The Chinese did these things like machines. Their attack procedure never varied. The trouble with him was that he just wanted to lie there. The peace of no shells coming in…he couldn’t take any more of this. He didn’t want to face yet another Chinese wave assault. He wanted—
Gritting his teeth, Paul rose to his knees. He was the first up. With ringing ears and moisture in his eyes, he crawled to the .50 caliber and set it back up. It had survived, although there were dings in it. He put it on the tripod mount and manhandled it to a position behind a smoking piece of rubble.
“Lieutenant!” Paul shouted. “The artillery prep is over. They’re going to be coming soon.”
Romo appeared beside him. The lean face looked more hollowed-out than ever and dirt smeared the assassin’s face. The eyes lacked their normal wolfishness. The artillery shelling had shaken Romo. Who wouldn’t be shaken by that?
A whistle blew. A turn of his head showed Paul the Lieutenant was up. The officer began kicking prone and shaking soldiers. The Lieutenant bent down, yanked a kid up and screamed in his face.
“Mother Mary,” Romo whispered.
Something about the way Romo spoke made the hairs on the back of Paul’s neck rise up. He didn’t want to look, but he did. What he saw…
“No,” Paul whispered. “They can’t do that.”
Except these Chinese were doing it. Soldiers herded civilians, American women and children straight at them. The enemy poked bayonets at the civilians. One of the soldiers drove his bayonet into a young woman, between her shoulder blades so the point jutted out of her chest. Her scream was paralyzing. Paul had never seen something like this, such gruesome barbarity.
“They’re going to stumble over the minefield,” the Lieutenant said.
Paul could feel the officer’s hand on his right shoulder as the Lieutenant crouched behind him.
“This is murder,” Paul heard himself say.
Romo cursed in Spanish. He turned to Paul, and there was fire in his eyes. “We cannot let them approach.”
Paul felt the heart go out of him. “What are you suggesting?”
“Start firing, amigo. We must stop the Chinese.”
“We can’t fire on women and children,” the Lieutenant said.
Paul found himself agreeing internally.
“Let’s get out of here,” the forty-something private said.
Romo cursed again. Using his elbows for propulsion, he slithered across shale, one of the dislodged stones tumbling into a shell-hole. Romo reached a forward observer. He grabbed the man’s speaker and shouted into it. After he was done, Romo slithered back to them behind the low wall of rubble.
“What did you report?” the dazed Lieutenant asked.
Seconds later, the answer came in a hail of mortar rounds.
“No,” Paul said, staring at Romo.
The Mexican assassin stared hard at the wall of rubble. He seemed to be in another world right then.
The mortar rounds howled down, and soon the sounds of the wounded, dying and screaming civilians drove Paul to madness.
He went to the .50 caliber, to the butterfly button triggers. He aimed at the dinylon-armored Chinese and he fired at the enemy. He also hit American civilians, putting many out of their misery. All along the line, other Americans opened up. The Chinese climbed to their feet and they kept coming. Far behind them watched robots or at least they looked like robots.
“Battle suits,” Paul said. He aimed his machine gun at them, but after a single burst, they moved out of his line of sight.
The other Chinese refused to break, firing assault rifles and grenade launchers in a suicidal frenzy. One by one, the defending Americans hiding in the rubble died, killed by bomb, lobbed grenade and bullet. In return, the few survivors reaped a dreadful harvest of Chinese penal soldiers.
Then all at once, even though they had worked far forward, the remaining wave assaulters threw themselves flat.
“Incoming!” Paul screamed in a raw throat. He fell flat, too, and a missile barrage thundered upon them. He felt himself lift and slam back against the ground. It left him limp, and then he lay still as one dead.
Soon, he heard the march of enemy feet. He heard Chinese curses and then he heard them crunching over rubble and climbing into their positions. Some Americans farther away took potshots at the enemy.
Harsh Chinese commands boomed nearby. It must have come from the battle-suited soldiers, the officers, likely.
Paul lay still like one dead. A Chinese soldier kicked him in the helmet, but Paul never flinched. He waited. He couldn’t do anything more now. He waited as the soldiers moved past. Like a beast, a deadly wolf playing a last trick, he bided his time.
Then some instinct rose in Paul. He grabbed his assault rifle and lifted up to one knee. Enemy soldiers had their backs to him. Without hesitation, Paul opened up, cutting down the wave assaulters. Beside him, Romo did the same thing, together with the Lieutenant and a handful of others. Paul lobbed grenades and shot the enemy.
“We’re doing it. We’re—” Those were the Lieutenant’s last words. He crumpled, torn apart by machine gun fire.
Time seemed to slow down for Paul Kavanagh. He whirled around. One of the battle-suited soldiers was less than fifty feet away. The man’s armament was crazy. The machine gun was perched on the armored shoulder. The muzzle blast made the Chinese killer take a step back, and that produced a wh
ine of motorized power.
It’s powered armor. Paul didn’t have any more time to think. He acted. He picked up his last RPG and didn’t even bother with the iron sights. He did this the natural way by feel, and he pulled the trigger. The backblast felt good. The shaped-charge grenade did its trick. It blasted the powered-armored soldier and tore him apart.
***
Captain Wei of East Lightning flew backward, blasted off his feet by the crazy American with the RPG. His chest was wet and the world spun out of control.
Is this you, Maria Valdez? Is this your curse?
Then Captain Wei died, his soul headed to the next world, there to learn one of the most terrible truths of existence.
***
In El Cajon, among the littered dead, Paul Kavanagh and Romo crawled through gory rubble. Enemy machine gun fire from the surviving battle-suits sought to end their lives. Like hardened rats, like junkyard dogs, the two soldiers fled from superior armaments and firepower. The Chinese had broken through here, killing everyone in the Anaheim Militia Company except for these two interlopers, two killers who were turning out to be harder to butcher than an old governmental tax.
-9-
Amphibious Assault
PRCN SUNG
Old Admiral Niu Ling commanded the invasion fleet from the supercarrier Sung.
The ship was massive, displacing one hundred and eight thousand tons. It was seven years older since the last time it had been in battle during the Alaskan War. The supercarrier had missed the Battle of Oahu in the Hawaiian Islands where the Chinese had annihilated the last American flattops. Instead, the super-ship had been near the coast of Australia with the waiting Chinese invasion fleet.
During the Alaskan War, Sung held ninety modern fighters, bombers, tankers and electronic warfare planes. This time, it held one hundred and sixty smaller UCAVs, giving it nearly double the punch it had seven years ago. There were five other supercarriers in the invasion fleet, giving China six altogether and a heavy influx of air power. Each floating airfield had its escort of cruisers, destroyers, supply-ships, submarines, helicopter-tenders and other necessary vessels.
Admiral Ling was old and he was still missing his left arm, as he’d rejected a prosthetic replacement. He’d lost the arm many years ago in a flight accident while he had attempted to land his plane on a carrier. The left side of his face was frozen flesh, although he had a new eye that gleamed with hideous life. Ling had found that the eye intimidated people more than his rank or age did.
He presently stood in the ship’s command center, watching via screens as his UCAVs swept the San Francisco coastal regions, particularly the shores along Monterey Bay. The last time he’d led an invasion fleet against American territory, the enemy had launched Anti-Ship Ballistic Missiles (ASBMs) against his vessels. It had been a terrifying experience. This time, his fleet was better protected against such an attack. He wondered if the Americans realized this. Perhaps it was the reason why they had not yet launched a mass missile-assault against him.
The greater protection was due to new, laser-armed cruisers. Destroyers still used the SM-4 missiles and the fleet possessed COIL drones with chemical lasers that could shoot down incoming ballistic missiles. The cruisers were the latest in ASBM protection, their lasers heavier than the tactical variety used by the Army. These were midway in size and power between the strategic lasers for continental defense and the mobile lasers beaming targets on the battlefields of Southern California.
Even so, Ling’s stomach churned with worry. He was far too old for this, but the Leader had insisted he command the assault. Now Ling had to risk his reputation one more time. Maybe if he had been younger, he would have liked the idea of a rematch against the Americans. All he could think about now was what a failure would mean for his son and grandson.
Yet how could he fail? The American Fleet of old was a dinosaur of the history books, its brittle bones littering the bottom of the oceans. From its glory days of invincible power, the vaunted American Fleet had become little more than a handful of fast attack boats like the Iranians used to use, and the still potent but far too few submarines. Yes, the Americans had air power, and they could surely gather it here in overwhelming strength and drive him away. But those airplanes and drones fought in Southern California in a life-or-death match or they waited in Texas and Florida for the great hammer to fall.
Ling smiled bleakly as he watched the screens. Chinese UCAVs blasted runways and destroyed radar installations. He watched a missile enter a large shack through the window and explode. The radar disk rotated wildly in the air before landing and shattering into pieces. The UCAVs shot down the few enemy drones that came up to challenge Chinese air superiority. Even better, they hunted for mobile military hardware to destroy and concentrated on American SAM and laser sites.
“The enemy appears to be defenseless before us, sir.”
Ling didn’t bother glancing at the Commodore who stood beside him. It was a younger, newer man, not his old friend who had been with him in Alaska. This man was far more political and lacked wisdom.
Still, Commodore Wu spoke truth. They had caught the Americans with their pants down around their ankles. Hmm, perhaps it was even worse than that for the enemy.
“Do you think this is a trap, sir?”
“No,” Ling said.
“But why are they conceding—”
Short Commodore Wu failed to finish his thought as Ling turned his gaze upon the man. It was the left eye, of course. It gleamed with a metallic color. Worse, it moved like a twitching eyeball. It was a video recorder. In his quarters at night, Ling often downloaded the video and watched what had occurred around him during the day. It meant, in effect, that he had a photographic memory. It also seemed to terrorize his underlings as if he was a superior being, or as if perhaps he was a demon.
The knowledge gave Ling cold comfort. At least it stopped the otherwise endless chatter from these younger officers. Far too many of them had gained rank through political connections and knew how to scurry for favor. Too few of them had a warrior’s instincts. Too few cared to risk an independent comment. Instead, they sought to figure out how he felt about a situation and then parrot it back to him.
“Where are their lasers?” Ling asked.
“Shipped south to the cauldron,” Wu suggested.
“Or waiting until our amphibious boats, hovers and helicopters race for shore,” Ling said.
“A grim possibility,” Wu agreed.
Admiral Ling watched the UCAVs. His carriers were far too close to shore, but they had to be in order to give full air support to the landing. This was the most dangerous operation of war: landing on an enemy shore. So much could go wrong, and if it went wrong, it could go badly wrong. If that happened, there could be staggering losses to report to Chairman Jian Hong.
“It is time,” Admiral Ling said.
“Sir?”
“Send the signal. It is time to unleash our amphibious assault against the Americans.”
WASHINGTON, D.C.
Anna Chen entered the hushed command chamber together with Director Levin. They sat down at their places. Anna noticed that people avoiding looking at each other today. This was the great crisis, greater even than the encirclement of the SoCal Fortifications. The soldiers in SoCal fought an unequal battle, but they fought with courageous zeal and inflicted heavy damage on the enemy. On the Northern Californian coast it was different, turning into a full-scale rout and disaster.
The door opened and a powerful Marine entered the chamber. He said in a deep voice, “The President of the United States.”
Chairs scraped back and everyone stood. President Sims strode in, with General Alan following. Sims had red eyes and he slumped his shoulders, as if the burden had become physically too much. He stared straight ahead, moving to his chair.
The Marine advanced and pulled the chair out for the President.
Sims sagged into his seat and slowly lifted his head. During most of the meetings,
he had tight facial features. Today, his face looked doughy.
This is grinding him down, Anna realized. The responsibility is devouring his strength.
General Alan moved to his seat, conferring in a whisper with his aide, the major. Soon, the general looked up and said, “Sir?”
“Report,” Sims said in a quiet voice.
The voice calmed Anna. It held power and it told her the President was far from giving up.
General Alan motioned to his aide. She turned on the holo-vid and began to speak in her professional style:
“The Chinese have made a massive amphibious assault into Monterey Bay. It’s still unknown the exact number of naval infantry they landed. We mined those waters heavily, but the Chinese cleared paths through them at unprecedented rates. They did lose ships. If you will notice…”
She pointed at the holo-vid in the center of the conference table.
Anna watched absorbed. A squat-looking vessel moved through the water. Suddenly, a geyser of water blew thirty feet high beside it.
“One of our mines struck and destroyed a mine-sweeping ship,” the major said. “The trouble is that the Chinese seem to have decided on an aggressive new policy.”
“Meaning what?” Director Levin asked.
“Meaning that what we’ve seen in Southern California is holding true here, too. The Chinese seem to be accepting heavier casualties in the interest of speed. In Monterey Bay, they rushed minesweepers into the selected areas. That’s interesting for several reasons. First, until quite recently, the Chinese possessed few minesweeping vessels. Now they have deployed them in great number and engaged them aggressively. We have reports, too, of many enemy underwater demolition teams. They saturated our shores with them to blow beach defenses and to climb onto land to patrol. Our people, particularly the local Militia companies, have inflicted losses on those demolition teams. That brought immediate air attack against the Militiamen.”
Anna watched as two Chinese UCAVs flashed onto the holo-vid. Silvery containers tumbled from their underbellies. The containers exploded onto American troops. The militiamen burned up in a holocaust of napalm. It was awful.
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