Occupied Seattle (Occupied Seattle Book 2)

by Christopher Kennedy

  Team Top, E.J. Roberts Park, North Bend, WA, 0115 PDT

  “Wow!” thought Top as he felt the buildings blow up to the south. Those must be pretty good explosions to feel them this far away, especially since they went off inside the building.

  He and his team of six men were infiltrating the park from the north. Theirs was the most difficult mission of the evening, and the reason that the diversion had occurred on the opposite side of the field. It would be darkest here where they would be operating. He liked it that way. He and The Wall were within two meters of their targets, two guards that were patrolling around the missile transporters in the park.

  Team Calvin, E.J. Roberts Park, North Bend, WA, 0115 PDT

  “Impressive,” rumbled Tiny at the force of the concussion. He must have been impressed, thought Calvin, if he had said something without being prompted. He went back to looking through the scope. Unlike Tiny’s, his rifle did not have a suppressor on it. If he shot, there would be a muzzle blast that would be visible to anyone that was looking, which would highlight them on the roof. As that was a ‘bad thing,’ he did not intend to shoot at anything unless one of his troop’s lives depended on it. It was, however, interesting to watch professionals at work. Tiny fired, his rifle sounding like a light cough next to Calvin.

  E.J. Roberts Park, North Bend, WA, 0115 PDT

  The two Chinese guards looked at each other in surprise as explosions came from the south. Their squad was on duty at the northern end of the field, guarding the missile system command vehicle, and the missile transporters in the park and neighborhood. As more explosions came from the south, they stopped their patrol around the command vehicle and gazed in the direction of the explosions as they lit up the night sky.

  While they were watching to the south, there was a ‘thwack,’ and one of the guards spun forward, with most of his left shoulder separated from his body. As he was obviously shot, the other guard dove off to the side and spun around to look behind him for the shooter.

  Tyson Schattenkerk, part time reporter for the Snoqualmie Valley Record, had been watching out the window all night. He had several cameras with him and had been taking pictures with one of them through his window at the guards patrolling around the truck to try to stay awake. He was looking through the viewfinder as the guard was shot and saw an explosion of blood as the giant bullet hit him. He pulled out another camera with a longer lens to get a close up of the soldier on the ground; unfortunately, he had forgotten to turn off the flash, and it strobed as the remaining soldier turned to look in his direction.

  The soldier saw the flash and knew the shooter was hiding on the second floor of the house to the north of him. He sighted down his rifle as best he could with partially flash-blinded eyes and had fired off most of a magazine on full automatic before Tiny’s next round caught him in the chest, silencing his rifle. Unfortunately, it was already too late for Tyson Schattenkerk; he had been hit in the chest with three of the soldier’s rounds and was already dead.

  It was also unfortunate for the platoon. Now the Chinese were aware that something was also happening up to the north.

  Team Top, E.J. Roberts Park, North Bend, WA, 0115 PDT

  Top and The Wall paused as the gunfire sounded to the east of their position, and the men they had been about to grab jerked in surprise. The two Americans were equally surprised; there wasn’t supposed to be any firing in their area. As they were aware of the attack in progress, the Americans reacted more quickly than the Chinese. Like snakes striking, they leaped forward to grab their intended victims. Both men had fashioned garrotes with piano wire while they were at the Sommers’ house to facilitate the silent takedown of the two guards. Taken by surprise, they neither made a noise nor fired their weapons. Dead, Top and The Wall lowered them to the ground without a sound. With those two neutralized, there were only two more guards left in the park, the two guards at the tennis courts and the two pairs of guards in the cul-de-sacs with the missile transporters.

  The guards at the tennis courts were being watched by Private First Class Adam ‘Nine’ Severn and Corporal Suzi ‘Deadeye’ Taylor. The two pairs of guards in the cul-de-sacs were being similarly watched by Corporal Jimmy ‘Colonel’ Sanders and Private First Class Christian ‘Woody’ Woodard. If the soldiers left their posts, the Americans were to kill them before they could interfere; otherwise, they would be shot when the command vehicle detonated. Having disposed of their guards, Top and The Wall continued to infiltrate toward their objective, the missile command vehicle, while explosions continued to hammer away to the south. If anyone had noticed that there was firing to the north, it was not apparent to them as they reached the tree line along the edge of the field.

  They crept up to within 80 meters of the command vehicle, and Top pressed the walkie talkie twice, giving the signal. The three machine gunners and Deadeye took out the remaining guards, and The Wall fired their last RPG-69 rocket, sending a tandem-warhead anti-tank grenade into the side of the missile system’s command vehicle. Although the anti-tank grenade was unable to penetrate the armor of most modern tanks, it was able to destroy lighter-skinned vehicles like armored personnel carriers and armored fighting vehicles. It also did a terrific job against trucks, like the missile system command vehicle. It was destroyed in one shot, killing everyone aboard.

  Having completed their mission, Top’s team withdrew to the north. Fire began lashing out at them from the soldiers in the center of the field as the missile command vehicle burned brightly, highlighting everything in its vicinity. The team vanished into the woods and jogged north past the Sommers’ house. They did not go into it, or even near it, so as to not draw undue attention; however, as they went by, Top saw what looked like a Chinese man exiting the front door. The man looked furtively left and right before running off down the street to the west. Something was wrong. Top sent The Wall to check on the Sommers and chased after the man. They would meet up again at the rendezvous point.

  The chase didn’t last long, as the man went into a house three doors down. Top jogged up to the door and tried the knob. It was locked. The fire was slackening to the south and he didn’t have long before soldiers would come investigate the destruction of the command vehicle. He kicked the door in to find the man drawing a pistol from a desk in the hallway. As the door slammed in, the man spun and fired. Top dove back out of the doorway, the bullet drilling a hole through the bottom of his uniform pants, but missing his leg. Top stuck his rifle into the hallway about a foot off the ground and fired a sustained burst. He heard a scream and then the sound of a body hitting the floor.

  He glanced in through the door and then dodged back out of the way. In his brief glimpse, he saw that the man was on the ground, holding his stomach. Coming back into the house, he approached the man and kicked away the pistol lying nearby. Judging by the amount of blood, the man was hit at least twice in the stomach. He must have tried to dive out of the way when Top pointed his rifle into the hallway; it hadn’t worked.

  The man looked up and laughed, despite the obvious pain he was in. “Ha, ha, ha,” he said. “They’ve taken away your friends! I reported them, and they took them.”

  “Who took them?” asked Top.

  “The captain,” said the man, losing strength. “You’ll never see them again. They went to the command center…” He passed out, dead or dying.

  Worried now, Top went out the back door and north one block, before heading back east. He had to find the lieutenant.

  Team Calvin, E.J. Roberts Park, North Bend, WA, 0130 PDT

  Calvin and the sniper team had just climbed off the roof and were about to leave for the rendezvous point on the bank of the Middle Fork Snoqualmie River when, without notice, Ryan appeared at Calvin’s shoulder, startling him.

  “Damn it! I hate it when you do that!” Calvin exclaimed.

  “Maybe you’ll forgive me if I give you a present?” asked Ryan, handing him a little box. The box had a push button on it, with a cage over the top of it.


  “What’s this?” asked Calvin suspiciously.

  “Well, you know how you’re always giving me a hard time about being nice to authority? I thought I’d try it out once.” Master Chief pointed out over the field to where the outline of one of the radars could be seen in the light from the fire that was still burning at the barn. “I’m giving you the honors. Look that way and push the button.”

  Realizing that they didn’t have a lot of time to fool around, Calvin flipped up the cover, looked out over the field and pushed the button. He stared in awe as a temporary second sun illuminated the earth. For a few moments, night turned into day as the two radars went up in supernova explosions that were guaranteed to cook anyone unfortunate enough to be standing anywhere in the vicinity of them. Even four football fields away from the twin blasts, Calvin could feel the heat and concussion. The engagement radar antenna, a flat piece of metal about 10’x6’x9” weighing hundreds of pounds, was blown off its vehicle and flung over a 100 feet into the air, fluttering back down like an overgrown steel leaf. The massive tractor that had been carrying it was obliterated, blown into so many pieces that the farmer would be finding them in his field for years to come.

  When the fireball cleared, there were two small pieces of the vehicles remaining and a field strewn with soldiers dead and dying from all of the shrapnel that had just swept through them.

  “Holy shit!” mumbled Calvin in awe. “What the hell was that?”

  “Well, you said you wanted to blow up the radars so that the Chinese could, and I quote, ‘never use them again.’ I was trying to do what you ordered. I don’t believe that they will ever be able to use those radars again.” Master Chief looked smugly confident.

  “They won’t be able to use any of the houses nearby again, either!” Calvin yelled, forgetting that there were still enemy soldiers in the vicinity, even if most of them were currently deaf and flash-blinded.

  “Now, sir, you said, and again I quote, ‘a little bit of collateral damage is OK if we get the people out ahead of time.’ With your great plan, we got everyone out, so I figured a little breakage was authorized. If nothing else, it certainly sent the Chinese a message.”

  “Master Chief, I think the term I’m looking for is ‘passive-aggressive,’ which is where you appear to go along with something, but still continue to do what you want. Or maybe you’re just ‘oppositionally defiant.’ I’m no psych major, and I don’t know. Regardless, I’m pretty sure you know that wasn’t what I was looking for. I just wanted them unusable, not vaporized.”

  Master Chief sighed, shaking his head. “You try to do what an officer wants, and look at the thanks you get…” He shrugged. “You have to admit, though, the Chinese must have gotten the message.”

  “Yeah,” said Calvin, “they probably got the message that it’s time for them to leave. Assuming anyone survived the blast to get it, that is.”

  As they started heading east to the rendezvous, Top ran up. “Sir, we’ve got a big problem.”

  South China Sea, South Pacific, 1700 China Standard Time (1400 PDT)

  The war for the South China Sea raged on. The United States Navy had given far better than it had received, but it had lost both of its submarines. The Seawolf and the North Carolina had sunk 26 transports and nine escorts, including China’s only operational aircraft carrier, but they had also been sunk in turn.

  The Seawolf was caught by surface forces as it attacked its third convoy and went down for the last time with all hands, a victim of a helicopter-borne torpedo. The North Carolina had sneaked up on the Chinese aircraft carrier Liaoning and had put two torpedoes into it and a torpedo into each of her destroyer escorts. Unfortunately, the North Carolina hadn’t noticed the quiet Kilo-class submarine that was with the carrier, and it had fired two torpedoes from close behind the North Carolina. Although the North Carolina was able to fool one of the torpedoes with a decoy, the other one hit the submarine. She was also lost with all hands.

  Although the situation on the island of Taiwan was dire for the allies, the Taiwanese had managed to fortify the northern tip of the island and still held both Taipei and New Taipei. Those two cities were extremely important, as they were the largest and fourth largest cities on the island, with over 1/4 of the island’s population living in them. If help could arrive soon, they might still be able to hold onto the island. The sacrifice of the two U.S. submarines had curbed, but not stopped the tide of Chinese forces that continued to come ashore on the island. Fighters from the U.S. base at Okinawa were beginning to strike back at the Chinese, although they were taking heavy losses going up against equipment that was nearly as good as their own. Troops were being forward deployed to the Philippines and Okinawa. Help was coming, if only the Taiwanese could hold on long enough for it to arrive.

  With the entrance of the United States into the war in Asia, Japan had redefined its treaty obligations and entered the fray. The Japanese Maritime Self-Defense Force was one of the largest navies in the world and the second largest in Asia (after the Chinese PLAN). They moved five of their large Aegis destroyers to the Okinawa area to provide an air umbrella for the base. The Japanese also launched their attack subs into the South China Sea waters to replace the submarines the United States had lost. Although all 16 were unable to get underway at once, they were able to get 10 on patrol. The Taiwanese wondered whether 10 would be enough to stop the Chinese tide; the Japanese wondered whether the South China Sea would be big enough for all of them to operate at once.

  Middle Fork Snoqualmie River, North Bend, WA, 1400 PDT

  “All right,” said Calvin, “give me the whole story where everyone can hear it.” The platoon had retreated northeast to where one of the neighborhood’s roads met the banks of the Snoqualmie River and had rendezvoused there. Shuteye and Jet weren’t there, but Top had said they should start the briefing without them.

  “When we were withdrawing after we blew up the command vehicle, I saw someone coming out of the Sommers’ house,” said Top. “I asked The Wall to go and check on the Sommers while I chased him down. As it turns out, the man only lived a few doors down, but he was a Chinese sympathizer, who turned the Sommers in for dealing with the military. He said that the Sommers got taken away by some ‘captain’ to some ‘command center.’ He traded gunfire with me, and my rifle beat his pistol. He died before he could tell me anything else.”

  Calvin looked at The Wall. “I take it they weren’t in the house when you went to check on them?”

  “No, sir,” replied The Wall. “It looked like someone had tossed their house looking for something. I don’t know if it was the Chinese soldiers looking for information or the Chinese neighbor looking for their valuables to steal. Regardless, they were gone, and their house was in a shambles.”

  “Has anyone heard of this command center?” Calvin asked the group. Some shook their heads, while others just returned blank stares. None replied in the affirmative. Calvin began to worry that he had been responsible for getting the family taken away to somewhere the platoon couldn’t get them back from.

  “Aha,” said Top. “I know someone that might have that info.” Calvin followed Top’s gaze to find that Shuteye and Jet were returning to the group. Top asked them, “Did you have any success?”

  Shuteye nodded his head and explained. “Top asked us to go back and see if we could find a soldier that we could capture and question. There were a lot of soldiers around the field that were somewhat dazed after the explosions, especially that last blast, so it wasn’t too hard to capture a soldier that we could talk to. After a little...persuasion…he decided that it would be better to tell us than to make us any angrier than we already were. The command center is where their headquarters is. It’s at some sort of truck stop on the highway.”

  Calvin turned to Ryan, who lived close by. “Do you know where he’s talking about?” he asked.

  Ryan looked thoughtful. “Yeah, I know where that is. Remember when I said I blew up an anti-aircraft gun? It was in t
he truck stop parking lot.” He paused. “If they’re being kept in there, they may not be easy to get to.”

  “I don’t care,” replied Calvin. “They got taken away because they helped us. We’re going to get them back.”

  “And the fact that they have a young, cute daughter that likes you?” asked Ryan.

  “Has nothing to do with it,” answered Calvin. “Wait, she likes me? How do you know?”

  Top sighed loudly. “Youth these days are so stupid,” he commented to Ryan. “Still, the Sommers did help us, and we should get them back if at all possible.”

  “I know,” worried Ryan. “It’s the ‘if at all possible’ that worries me.”

  He was interrupted as an HQ-19 missile transporter came roaring up to them and parked close by. The platoon readied their weapons, expecting an attack. A bigger surprise followed, as the doors to the cab opened, and the twins jumped out, followed by Reggie and Macho. The platoon noticed that Macho was walking with a limp.