The President scowled and that tightened his skin.
“I’m afraid it gets worse,” the major said. “From our studies, it appears the Chinese have learned effective amphibious assault doctrine. Their naval infantry hit the shores and their helicopters raced farther inland to block the major arteries against us. That is, blocking us from sending quick reinforcements against their beachheads.
“Now it’s true that we’ve kept our remaining Northern California troops concentrated in the Bay Area. Unfortunately, terrain, Chinese air superiority and aggressive, inland assaults have blocked our soldiers from retaliating. That has allowed the enemy to grab the urban sites from Monterey to Santa Cruz, everywhere along the edge of Monterey Bay.”
“I understand all this,” the President said impatiently. “They’re building up behind the local mountains and will likely launch an assault against the Bay Area soon. It will give the Chinese priceless ports.”
“I’m afraid they’ve already taken port Santa Cruz. We were unable to demolish enough of the port’s infrastructure as we had hoped.”
The President stared at the major. She looked down. Slowly, the President turned his gaze onto General Alan. “Explain this to me.”
The Chairman of the Joint Chiefs cleared his throat. “Sir, it was a simple matter of miscommunication. The speed of combat caught the local commander flat-footed.”
“The Chinese have taken Santa Cruz intact?” the President asked.
“Unfortunately, sir, the speed of the Chinese amphibious assault caught the commander in Santa Cruz flat-footed.”
“Don’t repeat yourself,” Sims said. “I want facts and I want them straight.”
General Alan blushed and anger flashed across his thin face. “Yes, sir. This occurred because of a lethal combination of helicopter assaults and jetpack Eagle Teams in unprecedented numbers. Also, Chinese expenditure of cruise missiles and yet more commandos made it impossible to rush troops from the Bay Area to the affected coast. Frankly, I believe we’re seeing the entirety of the Chinese naval infantry. We’ve managed to slip a few drones out to sea and have spotted an enormous convoy of troopships approaching Santa Cruz. At least, we believe that’s their destination.”
“Continue,” Sims said. “Tell me the worst of it.”
“Sir, if those troopships unload their cargos of naval infantry and armor at Santa Cruz, they will swamp us if they can break out into the Bay Area. We entrained the bulk of the northern forces down south to stave off defeat in Palm Springs and LA.”
“We must use our submarines,” Sims said. “They have to sink the troopships. And our soldiers in the Bay Area need to contain the Chinese. The mountainous terrain between Santa Cruz and the Bay Area must become a death trap for the enemy.”
“In theory that’s an excellent idea, sir,” General Alan said. “But the truth is that we need more troops. Without a fresh influx of soldiers, it will simply be a matter of time until the Chinese grind through into San Francisco and San Jose. The great danger then is that they will head inland into Central California.”
“Yes, agreed,” the President said.
“How many reinforcements are we talking about?” the Army Chief asked. He took off his hat and ran thick fingers through his hair, scratching the back of his head. “I have to tell you, the Germans are building up fast in Cuba. By my estimates, they’re ready to go now. We don’t want to strip ourselves bare from Georgia to Louisiana just so the Germans can do to us there what the Chinese are doing here. And I don’t have to tell you about the South American Federation. They appear ready to mount a massive armor assault into Texas. They daily add to their tank formations along the border.”
“Clearly,” General Alan said, “the aggressors are trying to stretch us thin everywhere.”
“They’re not only trying,” Sims said, “they’re succeeding.”
Silence descended on the chamber as the weight of the President’s words settled.
Anna looked down as she rubbed her shoes together. They’d known the Chinese had an armada waiting out there. This went back to the Blue Swan missiles. Enough of them had hit and worked to turn the SoCal Fortifications porous. The engineers who had designed and built the defenses had boasted how they would hold back the world. That had been the great hope, and it had proven futile. For several years now, Sims had used the draft and he had created the Militia battalions. America had millions of soldiers under arms, but it still wasn’t enough.
Anna noticed Levin then. The CIA Director sat right beside her. He drew squiggles on a piece of paper. With a lifting of his chin, Dr. Levin set down the pencil and cleared his throat.
“I have a suggestion,” he said into the quiet chamber.
Sims stared at Levin. “Not yet,” the President whispered. “I don’t want to hear it yet.”
“Better sooner than later, Mr. President,” Levin said. “Let’s nip this invasion in the bud and get on with the business of defeating the Chinese in Southern California.”
With a touch of horror like a cold hand on her neck, Anna realized Levin meant the U.S. use of nuclear weapons.
“Not yet,” the President repeated, his voice firming. “I want you to work out a troop transfer,” he told General Alan. “We must send NorCal Command reinforcements. Then communicate to the Bay Area Commander that he is to bottle the Chinese in Santa Cruz.”
“There are masses of refugees clogging all routes,” Alan said. “They’re making military movements difficult.”
Sims shook his head. “I don’t want the details on this now. I want the Chinese contained on the Monterey Bay coast.”
“Sir,” Levin said. “I respectfully would like to point out the need to stamp this invasion flat instead of merely containing it. Otherwise, it has the potential of becoming another front that we simply cannot afford to face. Don’t we need every soldier we can spare in Southern California? You must free the trapped Army Group and you must free it now.”
“He has a point, Mr. President,” the Army Chief said. “If there was ever a time to use the nuclear option, this is it. An amphibious assault takes time for its commander to shake out the troops and get them into place. The Chinese are using speed to throw us back to give them that time, and they have succeeded. If they’re using Santa Cruz as the funnel point to land the bulk of their force, that is a perfect opportunity for us to smash tens of thousands of enemy soldiers and ships at one blow and free ourselves from a front we cannot afford.”
Sims rubbed his face. “I don’t understand this. We’ve put hundreds of thousands—millions—of new people in uniform. How can the Chinese swamp us so easily in these opening moves of the war?”
“It’s plain to see how it happened, sir,” Alan said. “The Chinese—or the PAA to be more exact—have hit us in a single and rather small locale. At least, this is true in continental terms. California needed more troops to hold against what appears to be one third of the PAA’s power. We believed the extensive border fortifications would allow us to use fewer troops there than we otherwise would have deployed. Frankly sir, the reinforcements you wish to send to NorCal, we need them along the Texas, New Mexico and Arizona borders. Otherwise, we risk having more SoCal situations.”
“And we need those troops in Georgia, Florida and Louisiana,” the Army Chief added.
Sims sat up as he put his hands on the table. “We have to use the Behemoth tanks south of LA.”
General Alan and the Army Chief exchanged glances.
He’s diverting, Anna told herself. The President doesn’t want to make the great decision yet. Therefore, he’s turning to matters he can truly control. I wish there was some way I could help shoulder his burden.
“The, ah, Behemoths are a handful of tanks, sir,” Alan said.
“Yes,” Sims said, “they’re the handful that stopped the Chinese outside of Palm Springs. Now I need them to perform another miracle.”
“They achieved the miracle because of the range of their amazing cannons and the enem
y was canalized,” Alan said. “In the desert, they could use that advantage to its full scope. South of LA and the other urban areas, I’m afraid, will nullify their extreme range. They’ll have to fight toe to toe, as it were. And we’ve already seen what that means. Once the T-66s got in range and were able to make side shots, they destroyed several Behemoths. The desert and prairies are the experimental tanks’ natural habitat. Anywhere else and we risk their destruction. We only have about fifteen of them left in working or operational capacity.”
“I understand your objections,” Sims said. “But we don’t have anything else that can smash through Chinese formations like they can. I need the Behemoths to spearhead our attack to free our trapped Army Group.”
General Alan was slow in answering.
“That is an order,” Sims said.
“Yes, sir,” Alan said.
“What about Santa Cruz?” Levin asked.
“No!” the President said, turning on the small CIA Director. “I’m not ready for your grand solution. This is a soldier’s war, not one for an atomic nightmare. Do you understand what nuclear war means? By the terms of the Non-Nuclear Use Treaty I signed in 2036, we scraped most of our remaining nuclear weapons. I also made a solemn vow never to use them first. We have far fewer now than our combined enemies. And we saw what happened in the Alaska War when we used them.”
“Most of the world turned against us then,” Levin said. “I understand that, sir. Maybe it was a mistake to use them then. Now, we don’t have any choice. The world is breaking in and we have to stop them.”
“Not the world, Director,” Sims said. “The PAA has attacked us. So far, the South American Federation and the Germen Dominion have refrained. I don’t want to use nuclear weapons and push them over the edge against us.”
“But that’s not the point here, sir,” Levin said.
“I understand the point very well,” Sims said. “If I unleash nuclear weapons, it may cause the Chinese to use nuclear weapons. They have many more of them than we do.”
“It’s a simple matter to make more,” Levin said.
“No!” Sims said. “I am not about to unleash nuclear warfare and possibly end the world as we know it.”
Levin frowned, and he glanced at General Alan. The Chairman of the Joint Chiefs minutely shook his head.
Anna noticed and she wondered what the interplay meant. It surprised her so few troops were in the Bay Area. They had rushed too many of them south, clearly. Yet if they hadn’t…Southern California might already have fallen. On all accounts, they had to break out Army Group SoCal. Could the Behemoths achieve this miracle?
“Continue your brief,” the President told the major.
She nodded, glancing at her computer scroll and bringing up another holo-image.
HIGHWAY 17, NORTHERN CALIFORNIA
Martha Rios’s arms ached and fear twisted her stomach. She trudged along Highway 17, part of a mass exodus of people from Santa Cruz and the surrounding towns toward the Bay Area. Her daughter and ten-year-old son walked beside her. Each of them carried blankets and bottled water.
They had been marching for two days already, having fled the advancing Chinese. As far as she could see up the nearest hill, people marched. Behind her it was the same thing, masses, throngs of Americans trudging on foot like any third world refugee. Nearby, a man pushed a wheelbarrow, with an old Airedale sitting in it, letting its tongue loll as it panted. In the past, this would have been a throng of cars. Today, it was a massive jam of bodies, of people.
From time to time, a jet or helicopter flew overhead. Some of the people around her had binoculars. They looked up each time and reported a red star on each craft. Those were Chinese jets and helicopters.
“What if they start strafing us?” a man asked her.
“What?” Martha said.
“Shooting at us,” the man said.
“They won’t do that.”
The man looked up as something loud, screaming and intensely brief passed over them. A vast groan lifted from the masses of people.
“What was that?” Martha’s son Saul shouted.
“Shells,” the man said.
“Are they firing at us?” Martha said.
The man craned his neck. The loud sound occurred again, and once more screaming shells made brief appearances overhead. “Look, those shells are headed west,” he said. “It’s American artillery.”
“Who are they shooting at?” Martha asked. She shifted the groceries in her arms, held by brown paper bags. She needed a backpack. Many people here had those. She should have bought one a long time ago.
“I don’t know where they’re shooting exactly,” the man said, “although logic would dictate it’s somewhere directly behind us. The ‘who they’re firing at’ is easy to answer: they’re shooting at the Chinese.”
Twenty minutes later appeared a more exact answer. Horrified screams occurred from the back of the horde. People there began to flee off-road and into the nearby woods.
“What’s going on, mom?” Saul asked.
Martha shook her head and looked back. Thus, she saw Chinese Main Battle Tanks clank up the last hill behind them. Machine guns opened up and American civilians fell by the hundreds. Then loud shells screamed overhead, and this time, Martha saw their target: the same Chinese MBTs. None of the artillery appeared to hurt the enemy, as the Chinese tanks shot the shells out of the air.
“Mom, I’m scared,” Saul said.
Martha blinked in horror, and she moaned along with thousands of other American refugees. The Chinese tanks roared down the hill, with their rattling, clanking treads. Some of the horde weren’t fast enough to escape, and the tanks rolled over them, squashing people in an orgy of bloodshed.
Martha began screaming and she dropped her groceries and picked up her son. He was heavy, but she didn’t care. She ran for the woods to escape the metal monsters that simply crushed people like so many ants. The Chinese were here and they were massacring everyone.
PRCN SUNG
Admiral Ling allowed himself a congratulatory smile. He sat in the command center, watching as the naval infantry’s advanced armor crushed a mobile American artillery company along Highway 17.
Already, his carriers sped away from the American coast, no longer staying within forty kilometers of shore. It was time to get into the real ocean as naval doctrine directed. Many of Sung’s UCAVs flew out of the Santa Cruz and surrounding airports. The amphibious assault had been a startling success. Marshal Nung had been correct in his pre-battle assessment. The Americans had stripped this area and likely sent the soldiers as reinforcements to the raging southern battlefields. Now, the Chinese Navy was on the verge of capturing the Bay Area. Once they secured the vast urban region, they would begin the critical drive into Central California.
The remaining troopships waited off Santa Cruz to unload tanks, artillery, mountains of supplies and yet more naval infantry. Soon, one hundred and fifty thousand troops would be ashore, conquering faster and farther than he had accomplished in South Central Alaska seven years ago. This was a great and glorious day. He was glad that he had accepted the assignment.
It was thirteen days already since the beginning of the grand assault into California and two days since the first Chinese naval infantry officer had set foot on American soil.
Ling reached into his uniform and extracted a thin flask from an inner pocket. He deftly unscrewed the cap with his fingers as he held onto the container. Then he sipped the contents, a trickle of baijiu. The white liquor burned against his throat going down. Oh, but that felt good.
“To the Chinese Navy,” Admiral Ling declared.
Officers glanced at him, and for once, they grinned with delight in his presence.
“This has been a glorious day,” Ling said.
Officers nodded. A few even nudged each other.
The Admiral took another sip and offered the flask to Commodore Wu. The short man accepted and sipped lightly, vainly trying not to screw up
his face in distaste.
“We sank two Virginia-class submarines trying to penetrate our defenses,” Ling said. “The Americans cannot spare many of those.”
“No, Admiral.”
“I, on the other hand, have not lost a troopship.”
Commodore Wu nodded.
“Guarding those troopships cost us four destroyers and a cruiser,” Ling said. “Our Blue Water Nay has taken a cut but it is more than ready for its next assignment.”
Once more, Wu nodded.
“Perhaps I have allowed the Navy to lose too many mine-sweepers, but that came at the order of the Leader himself.”
“Speed will neutralize the Americans,” the Commodore quoted.
“For a land-fighting man, Marshal Nung is perhaps the greatest Chinese commander we have,” Ling said.
Commodore Wu appeared surprised at this praise for a competing service.
“I salute him,” Ling said. “Marshal Nung predicted that what is occurring would happen. At first, upon hearing his bold plan, I had my doubts. Now, I do not doubt. Our carriers are safe, the troopships have already begun deploying their masses and the advance armor bores into the American positions, meaning that soon the entire delta region will belong to us. Then California falls and the glory will accrue to the Navy where it has always belonged.”
“Victory tastes sweet, sir.”
Admiral Ling nodded, turning his head, taking in the officers and the command center screens. He would keep today’s eye-recorded video for the rest of his life. The carriers were safe and the troopships were landing well ahead of schedule. The Americans had missed their chance of stopping the greatest Chinese amphibious assault in history. Now it was too late.
WASHINGTON, D.C.
It was a grave meeting in Underground Bunker Number Five. Anna listened as the major explained the disaster in minute detail. The critical element had been speed, gained by the Chinese by accepting tremendous losses in minesweepers. Most of the best formations of the Northern California Command were already deployed in SoCal. That meant there had been little to stop the Chinese once they reached the Monterey Bay shore. Small U.S. formations still plugged the gap between Santa Cruz and the Bay Area, but they wouldn’t last long. Chinese reinforcements already poured in and they would reach the battlefield sooner than entrained forces from Texas would pass through the Rocky Mountains.
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