“Sir?”
“The air! The Chinese are swarming toward I-70.”
“We see less than one hundred aircraft, sir.”
“They’re jamming hard, but we have a satellite up giving us real-time visuals. There are over eight hundred independent aircraft converging on and around you.”
Stan felt sick. Over eight hundred?
“We don’t have enough Reflex inceptors up yet,” McGraw was saying. “Some are taxiing as we speak, but they won’t be in position in time to stop this attack cold, which is what we have to do.”
“Sir, the Chinese air—”
“Listen up, Colonel. This time we’re using my plan. I have fighters on the way, but I don’t think they’re going to make it in time, either, at least, not for the entire length of the Chinese assault on the freeway. What that means is that I’m rerouting air assets to take on the most western assaults. That leaves me with tac-lasers and SAMs in your area. We have anti-air concentrations along I-70, but not enough for this. You know we can’t afford any hits on the freeway, certainly none on the main tunnels or bridges.”
“I’ve already linked my defense-net with the strategic network,” Stan said.
“You’re not listening to me, Colonel. The bulk of the Chinese assault is heading your way. But I’m moving out all fighters to the west, to concentrate there and destroy everything. Your added tac-lasers and SAMs aren’t enough in your area. So I’m ordering you to engage with your Behemoths. I’ve read what you did in California. Your force cannons are as good at anti-air as they are at killing enemy armor. Your guns may be the margin we need for victory.”
“Yes, sir,” Stan said.
“We have to stop this attack cold. They snookered us, but I bet they didn’t think we’d have our Behemoths in the Rockies. It seemed like a stupid place to put them, but now I’m seeing it was pure genius. General McGraw, out.”
Stan dry swallowed. That was it then. The Chinese must be trying to cut off Denver’s supply route. Everyone had expected Ghosts, not this WWII-style attack with overwhelming mass.
More klaxons wailed as Stan handed the receiver to the operator. The CP captain shouted orders. He was finally receiving the real-time intelligence from the satellite. Someone shouted he spotted Electronic Warfare Anchors in the enemy formation. They must be the planes doing the jamming.
Stan used the phone to begin alerting his Behemoth crews. They needed to start up the tanks and get the force cannons pointed skyward with all systems ready.
Woodenly, Stan moved over behind a CP sergeant’s screen. He knew McGraw was ordering the right thing. Still, this was too soon to let the Chinese know the Behemoths were here. He’d wanted to keep their location a surprise. There were only seventeen of them in the entire United States. Surely, the Chinese must wonder where the super-tanks were hidden.
“Look at that,” the CP captain whispered from where he stood beside Stan.
Stan watched the sergeant’s screen. He saw it, waves of enemy aircraft.
“I’m counting over five hundred drones,” the sergeant said.
Colonel Higgins nodded. This was the right place for using the Behemoths. He just hoped he would not lose them by doing so.
PUEBLO, COLORADO
Blue light filled the large but cramped command compartment in MC ABM #3. Officers and enlisted personnel sat at their stations, checking their screens.
Commander Bao held a receiver to his ear. The Marshal’s orders came through the line firmly and quietly: “Destroy the American satellite.”
Commander Bao of the Mobile Canopy Anti-Ballistic Missile Vehicle #3 hung up the phone. He was a middle-aged man with a stomach ulcer. He kept a bottle of a thick medicine in a compartment under his chair.
The ulcer came because of his insistence on perfection, he believed. His vehicle had the best rating in the military and he planned to keep it that way. Bao knew the crew considered him a martinet, a perfectionist. That was fine with him. All his life his mother had taught him to be the best. He had achieved perfection in every endeavor: in piano playing, in Ping-Pong and in mathematics during his school years. Just as China outperformed every other country, so Bao would outperform the other MC ABM commanders. That included in how he instructed the others. For example, he had never raised his voice with them because that would indicate nervousness.
When one was the best, one had nothing that could make one nervous.
The ulcer now bit him with a twinge of pain. Commander Bao ignored it for the moment as he began to issue orders in a calm voice.
Each of the personnel put on huge headphones with noise cancellation technology. They had to in order to survive the next few minutes.
Bao checked with Tracking and got on the intercom with Power and Fuel. The operators from each told him they were ready. He checked his watch.
“Twenty seconds,” he said. As he said it, he meant neither nineteen seconds nor twenty-one seconds. He demanded perfect precision from everyone, including himself.
The small hand of his high-grade watch ticked away. Precisely twenty seconds later, green lights appeared on his board.
“Are we still tracking?” Bao asked into his microphone. His lips were too close and he heard blowing sounds in his ears.
“Yes, Commander,” the Tracking Officer said.
“Give me power,” Bao said.
In the other two links of the tier-system, chemical rocket fuel pumped into the magnetic-propulsion turbine—MPT. The whine was unbelievable and it quickly rose to a painful volume.
Commander Bao and his team in the laser unit winced or scrunched their faces. Firing the laser never got easier. The compartment shook and rattled Bao’s teeth. He pressed them together. For some unaccountable reason, his mouth had been open. That was a mistake. He noted it and told himself never to make that mistake again.
“Aim the focusing mirrors,” he said. He heard his voice as weak and small in his headphones, but he heard it. That was the amazing thing. Chinese electronics was the best.
Outside the three-trailer MC ABM system, the focusing mirror aimed into space. Inside the command compartment, Tracking followed the American satellite.
“Fire,” Bao said.
The MPT’s output combined with the stored battery power and pumped the laser with a strategic level of energy. A heavy beam speared into the atmosphere and climbed at the speed of light into space.
Precision targeting ensured the beam hit the enemy recon satellite. The wattage was too much for the spacecraft’s armored skin. Titanium melted away. The hellish laser devoured inner electronics. In a second of time, the irresistible Chinese weapon destroyed the American eye in the sky.
“Shut down the laser,” Bao said. “We have achieved success.” Immediately, the horrible whine of the MPT lowered. Bao’s ulcer bit once more.
Glancing from side to side, seeing that his crew personnel were busily engaged, Bao opened the compartment under his chair. He grabbed the bottle of gooey blue liquid. Twisting the cap, he took a slug, swallowing rapidly. The medical fluid took its time going down. That was fine. It would ease the stomach pain and help him operate at peak efficiency. He was the best, and he planned to win the top laser unit award so he could add to the plaques on his wall in his house. It would make both his wife and his mother proud.
BEHEMOTH TANK PARK, COLORADO
Colonel Higgins stood behind the CP sergeant, watching the screen with downloaded imaging from the satellite. A second later, the image went blank. After a half-second, the sergeant tapped the screen, switching it back to radar. A few enemy aircraft appeared, but the majority of the enemy appeared to have vanished as if swallowed by the Bermuda Triangle.
The captain shouted.
“What happened?” Stan asked. Was this Chinese sabotage? Did they have deep penetration commandos outside in the tank park? The thought tightened his chest.
“The satellite is down,” the captain said.
“Did Space Command spot anything approaching it?
” a CP officer asked.
The captain shook his head. “The Chinese must have used their best battlefield laser they had to knock it down.
“There’s heavy jamming, sir,” the sergeant said. “Those damn Anchors are pouring it out. We’re practically radar blind.”
I’m useless here. I should be with my men. “Captain,” Stan said. “I’m heading for my tank.”
The captain nodded absently.
“Good luck,” Stan said.
“The same to you, sir,” the captain said, with his face aimed elsewhere.
Stan strode to the CP door. It was heavy, and a MP eased it open. Stan sprinted up the stairs, taking them three at a time. The blast door was closed. Stan shoved it open and closed it behind him.
The stars blazed tonight and the moon looked huge in the sky. Snow covered the Behemoth Tank Park and covered the anti-radar netting hiding each giant vehicle.
Stan kept sprinting. He didn’t know how much time was left. The seventeen big vehicles rumbled with sound. The engines were massive. They needed to be to move the three hundred tons of reinforced steel.
Stan’s tank was like the others. It was fifteen meters by six by four and mounted 260cm of armor. It had nine auto-cannons, seven auto-machine guns and an onboard radar and AI to track enemy missiles and shells. Given enough flight time, the Behemoth could knock down incoming missiles and most shells aimed at it. Whatever came close had to survive forty beehives launchers. Those fired tungsten flechettes, a spray of shotgun-like metal that often knocked down or deflected an enemy projectile enough to skew its impact against the heavy armor. It was the super-thick armor and the sheer mass of beehives that was supposed to make the Behemoth more than a big, expensive target.
Stan climbed outer rungs to the commander’s hatch up top. He knocked on the steel portal. A second later, it popped open, and Jose looked at him. The man wore his lucky scarf around his neck.
“I was wondering when you’d show up for the fun,” Jose said.
Stan’s mouth was too dry to reply. The run combined with worry had winded him. Stan squeezed through the hatch, closing it, keeping in the compartment’s warm air. Soft green light lit the compartment.
He opened channels with the CP captain as he settled into his commander’s chair.
The images had begun to reappear. The U.S. Air Force had switched to high-flying stealth drones to provide real-time intelligence.
Stan watched spellbound on his commander’s screen. If those drones reached I-70—
“Slick bastards,” Jose muttered from his location. “Thought you could trick us, huh? But we know you’re there.”
“What’s that behind them?” the captain asked someone in the CP.
Stan noticed it on his screen. Yes, farther back appeared new blips, hundreds of them.
“Looks like the Heron bombers, sir,” the CP sergeant said. “They’re using the big boys tonight.”
The Chinese were doing it right, Stan realized. Hit hard at the start. The siege of Greater Denver was barely five days old. Already, the enemy knocked at the city gates. Soon, the leading Chinese formations would be inside the city.
I-70 was like the Trans-Siberian Railroad during the Russian-Japanese War of 1905. Then, the Japanese fought the Russians in Korea and Manchuria. A single line track had connected European Russia to their army in the East. In same places, the line hadn’t even connected. Meaning the Russians had to load and unload railcars. It had been a tenuous supply thread. If the Chinese could destroy enough bridges and tunnel entrances here in the Rockies, I-70 would turn into something worse than the 1905 Trans-Siberian Railroad.
“The leading drones are in range, sir,” the Gunner said. He was a new man named Greg Zane, twenty-four years old.
“Get the cannon ready,” Stan said. He spoke similar words to the other tank commanders.
All over the Tank Park, huge cannon barrels ripped open the anti-radar netting. Turrets swiveled as targeting computers began to analyze the situation.
The rail-gun or force cannon was the heart of the Behemoth system. Unlike conventional tanks, the X1 Behemoth X1 didn’t use gunpowder shells. That was so out of date and frankly, old-fashioned. The rail-gun had two magnetized rods lining the inner cannon. The projectile or “shell” completed the circuit between the two rods. The direction of the current expelled the round, firing the shell and then breaking the circuit. It gave the shell incredible speed, one of its greatest powers.
Like an M1 tank’s sabot round it used pure 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 meters per second, over three times as fast. That was approximately Mach 10 at sea level.
The rail-gun had much greater range, less bullet drop, faster time on target and less wind drift than a gunpowder shell. In other words, it bypassed the usual limitations of conventional firearms. In fact, the rounds flew so fast, they ionized the air around them.
The Behemoth rail-gun theoretically fired farther, faster and with greater penetrating power than any comparable conventional gun. Its range was also much greater than its targeting precision, meaning it was easily possible to fire a Behemoth round over one hundred miles.
Stan had used his Behemoths in California to help shoot down incoming missiles. This time, they would help defeat the Chinese air assault.
Stan picked up his receiver and clicked the switch several times. He shook it and finally the green light appeared. He spoke to the tank crews. Soon, he switched to the air-defense captain. “Our cannons are ready to go and linking with your fire-control.”
“It’s a good thing we practiced this before, sir,” the captain said. “With our SAMs and tac-lasers, and given the fact they’re going to shoot back fast at us, I think we should let them get as close as possible. The Behemoth’s range and rate of fire is our only chance to do this, sir.”
“Don’t fire until we see the whites of their eyes, is that it?” Stan asked.
“Sir?” the captain asked over the line.
“The phrase doesn’t ring a bell?”
“No, sir,” the CP captain said.
“Where did you go to school?” Stan asked.
“New York City, sir. The public school system.”
“And no one ever taught you about the Revolutionary War? Bunker Hill?”
“Some. I remember my teacher saying George Washington owned slaves.”
Stan rolled his eyes. Owning slaves was obviously bad, but you had to judge a man by his times. In Stan’s historical opinion, George Washington was the greatest American who ever lived. In large part due to him, the American Revolution hadn’t turned into a blood bath afterward for those who had won it. In the French, Russian and Cuban Revolutions, the victors had devoured each other, killing former friends in a power struggle. That didn’t happen in the American Revolution—it had been unique in world history.
As a former high school teacher, it angered Stan how students were normally fed these days; they weren’t taught real American history. George Washington, Thomas Jefferson—the list could go on of the great men who had forged this exceptional nation.
“Don’t fire until you see the whites of their eyes,” Stan said. He kept his gaze on his screen. They had several minutes yet, and he didn’t want to watch in silence. Talking helped ease his nerves.
“That’s what the colonial soldiers told each other on Breed’s Hill in 1775. It was called the Battle of Bunker Hill, even though it was mainly fought on Breed’s Hill. The saying—‘Don’t fire until you see the whites of their eyes’—wasn’t original to the colonists. General James Wolfe said it to his British troops in the Plains of Abraham during the Battle for Quebec. Soldiers fought with flintlock smoothbores back then. They were single shot muskets with bayonets attached. You had to make your shot count. That’s the reason for the saying: wait to fire until the enemy is right there so you can’t
miss. The British won the Battle of Bunker Hill, but they took heavy losses and learned the American colonists knew how to fight hard.”
“I understand your reference now,” the CP captain said. “Thank you, sir.”
And that’s why I have the nickname of the Professor. When will I learn to keep my big mouth shut?
FORWARD EDGE OF THE BATTLE AREA, COLORADO
Captain Ray Smith flew an F-22 Raptor. His wingman was beside him and a little to the left. On both their fighter jets, they used super-cruise power to stay supersonic. They came from Idaho Springs, which was west of Denver. They headed west over I-70. They burned fuel in order to engage a host of Goshawk drones.
“Permission to engage,” Smith heard over his headphones.
“You are clear to engage, weapons free,” an AWACS controller said.
Within his breathing gear, Captain Smith grinned tightly. That was a Reflex interceptor pilot asking. Good. They were hitting the enemy. Captain Smith knew the importance of this mission.
“Even if it kills you,” the briefing officer had said, “stop those drones from reaching I-70.”
“We’re getting short of fuel,” his wingman said over the radio.
“Yeah,” Smith said. It was a rocket-ride to battle. There was little time left and time was on the Chinese side.
BEHEMOTH TANK PARK, COLORADO
Stan judged ten miles as the optimum firing mark. He’d told his tank commanders that, and the CP captain.
“Thirty seconds,” Jose said.
“I don’t think they know about us,” the CP captain said over the open link. “They’re heading straight into your guns.”
“Captain,” Stan said. “I think you should leave this wave to us. Save your SAMs and tac-lasers. We’re going to need them for the bombers. And this way they don’t know you’re there yet.”
“You’re talking about almost two hundred drones,” the captain said. It was the number in their sector. There were other drones headed elsewhere along I-70.
“Yes,” Stan said. “Leave these drones to us.”
“Yes sir, Colonel,” the captain said.
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