by James Rosone
“If you bastards are trying to play possum on us, we’re going kill you all right where you stand,” shouted the platoon sergeant.
Now that the shooting had largely died down, everyone could hear the groans of the wounded. Others cried out for a medic.
Walking toward the Canadians, Silverman shouted, “Y’all move over to that cluster of trees so we can search you together.” He motioned where he wanted them to go with the barrel of his SAW. “If any of you try to toss a grenade at us or do any other funny business, I’ll light you up.”
A handful of Silverman’s platoonmates had taken up covering positions around the Canadians while a couple of their guys patted them down for weapons. They took their knives, sidearms, and any other weapons from them and dropped them on the ground. Once they had been thoroughly searched and disarmed, several of them led the Canadians back to their rear area, where they could hand them off to another unit for processing.
Meanwhile, the rest of the company had advanced forward to help them. The additional medics also moved in to help treat the US and Canadian wounded. Occasionally, a medic would call out for some help to move one of the more egregiously injured soldiers back to the rear. The area was still way too active with enemy soldiers to try and call in a medevac helicopter.
“OK, listen up, guys,” their captain called out. “We’re going to wait on an ammo resupply, and then we’re going to continue clearing this sector out. It’s time we send these Canucks packing back to Canada.”
He sent a dozen guys back to their rear to go collect more ammo and water. They’d refill their canteens from the nearby creeks and rely on their water purifiers to make sure it was clean. Water was heavy, and if they had to choose which to carry more of—water or ammo—they were always going to side with ammo.
Sitting down on the ground, Sergeant Silverman opened his patrol pack and grabbed one of the fifty-round belts of ammo. He then took his empty box magazine and placed the belt into it and fed it back through the top lip, so it’d be ready when he needed it. Then he undogged the magazine he currently had in the SAW and tossed it to his assistant gunner.
“Pull one of your belts out from your patrol pack and refill this one, Leary,” Silverman directed. “I don’t want to have a half-empty magazine when we start again.”
PFC Leary nodded and went to work. While he was doing that, Silverman grabbed his last unopened pack of strawberry Pop-Tarts. He tore it open and voraciously took a bite, savoring the sugar and carbs.
God, these taste so much better than an MRE, he thought.
Silverman suddenly realized Leary was looking at him longingly. He tossed him the remaining Pop-Tart.
An hour went by before their ammo runners returned. Everyone grabbed a couple of extra grenades to replace the ones they used, along with additional ammo.
They were just about to head out when their captain got a call from battalion. After the call, he walked past Silverman to inform the platoon leader of the situation. “Apparently, this particular pocket of Canadian soldiers was a rearguard action, meant to slow us down while the rest of their unit pulled back to Warren,” Silverman overheard him say. “Charlie Company is maneuvering to get ahead of that retreating Canadian unit. We’ve been ordered to link up with Delta Company and to try to and get in touch with them. We need to move fast when we get going. Don’t slow down or stop for anything until we make contact with them, understood?”
“Copy that, sir,” the platoon sergeant answered. “You want my platoon in the lead again?”
“No, I’m going to rotate Third Platoon up,” said the captain. “I want you guys to pull rear security for the time being. You guys earned it after this engagement. Good job, Lieutenant.”
Silverman smiled at the compliment. He loved how the officers got all the attaboys while it was the NCOs who did the actual work, or in this case, fighting.
Whatever. I survived, he told himself. Plus, none of his friends had gotten killed this time, so he had to count that as a win.
The rest of the company moved out ahead of them while they got a few extra minutes to rest their dogs. Many of the guys took the opportunity to change out their sweat-soaked socks with a pair of dry ones. Most guys in the infantry learned pretty quickly that if they didn’t take care of their feet, they wouldn’t take care of them. Aside from packing as much ammo as they could carry, every infantryman made sure to carry more than a few pairs of socks, packed away in a Ziplock bag to keep them dry.
*******
The next twenty-four hours saw some of the fiercest fighting of the war between the 504th Infantry Regiment of the 82nd Airborne and the Canadian 48th Highlanders. By the end of the second day of fighting, the entire Canadian unit had either been killed or captured. The rest of the Allegheny National Forest was finally retaken by American forces after more than a month of back-and-forth fighting. The heavily wooded area made for a defender’s paradise, but with it now securely back in American hands, they could focus on pushing the rest of the UN forces in this sector back toward the border. The remaining Blue Helmets fell back to a new defensive line south of Buffalo in the city of Hamburg.
*******
Arlington, Virginia
Pentagon
Admiral Chester Smith was going crazy with the constant hammering and banging just down the hall. While his office had not been hit during the cruise missile attack on the first day of the war, a section of the Pentagon just down the hall from him had been damaged. Construction crews were working around the clock, getting the exterior of the building patched up and at least closed off from the environment while other crews began the laborious task of fixing all the plumbing and electrical wiring. The clatter was a constant reminder to Admiral Smith of the loss of friends and the failure of the military to protect the country.
When Flight 77 had crashed into the western façade of the Pentagon on September 11, 2001, it had caused a lot of damage to the first two rings of the building there. This new attack had caused even more devastation. When the French cruise missiles had hit, they punched through the first ring before detonating in the second. The resulting enormous explosions had damaged both the inner and outer rings of the building near the points of entry. A lot of good people had been killed.
Smith tried not to let the noise bother him, but the constant pounding was starting to drive him nuts.
One of his aides walked in and handed him a SIGACTS. “Sir, I have that report on the latest attack on the blockade you asked for.”
Admiral Smith nodded and immediately began to read. He felt his expression sour. “So we lost the San Jac and the Nitze?” he asked, disappointed and angry.
“I’m afraid so,” the aide responded. “The Gonzalez and the Stout each took a hit but managed to stay afloat. They are both headed back to port for repairs.”
“Tell me we at least shot down the Backfires that hit us?”
The aide smiled. “We did. Fourteen of the sixteen that attacked our ships were splashed.”
Smith sighed loudly. He felt helpless at that moment. In the span of four weeks, he’d lost more than twenty thousand sailors—nearly a third of the total number of sailors who’d died in all of World War II. Two carriers had sunk, one with all hands. Four other carriers had sustained considerable damage and would be in the shipyards for several months before they could be made ready. Then he had two other carriers still in the process of being brought out of their programmed refueling and retrofitting. That left him with three operational carriers: two on the Atlantic side and one in the Pacific.
In addition to the carrier losses, they’d lost twenty-six Arleigh Burke destroyers and eight Ticonderoga-guided missile cruisers. The subsurface fleet losses were just as bad. Sixteen Los Angeles fast-attack subs and seven Virginia-class subs had been sunk. There wasn’t a facet of the Navy that hadn’t felt the loss of the past five weeks.
Couple all of that with an EMP detonation over Hawaii, and the US Navy was in a world of hurt. The two carriers Admiral Smit
h had in the shipyard at Pearl were now more or less dead in the water until they could get parts flown in from the Mainland to replace many of the electronics being used to operate the equipment that they needed to repair the flattops. It was an utter mess. There was a debate underway as to whether or not the carriers could be towed back to Bremerton for repairs since Washington State had mostly been recaptured.
The more immediate challenge Admiral Smith faced was figuring out how he could maintain a blockade of North America and continue to protect the US coastal areas. Considering that Hawaii was no longer an effective forward operating base, it would be tough to prevent the Chinese from being able to ferry more troops and equipment to Mexico and the rest of Central America.
While the Navy had reactivated its entire Ghost fleet, it was going to take time to get many of these ships operational. To further add to his headaches, the Navy had to expedite its training programs in order to have these new ships crewed and ready for combat. To make things even more complicated, they’d lost access to Naval Station Great Lakes at the outset of the war, which meant they had to find and set up a new training facility. For the time being, they were turning Naval Station Mayport in Jacksonville, Florida, into their new training facility.
Every time Smith thought they were going to make it—that the worst had passed them—he’d get handed a report like this one. More and more, he just wanted to quit, but he knew he couldn’t do that either. His country still needed him, and Admiral Smith knew he couldn’t look at his wife if he quit—not after their eldest son had died on the Truman. No, he was in this fight to the finish.
Just as his mind was about to slip off into a dark place, he heard a knock at the door. Looking up, he saw Admiral Thomas Ingalls. Smith stood up and waved his friend in.
“It’s good to see you, Tom. How are the hell are you?”
Admiral Ingalls smiled and shook his friend’s hand. “I’m good, Chester. How are you holding up? I heard we lost a few more ships today.”
Admiral Smith grimaced. “We did. I won’t lie and say it hasn’t been tough, Tom. But what can you do? We have to keep fighting.”
“I hear you. How’s the wife holding up?”
Admiral Smith sighed. He closed the door and guided his friend over to the set of couches. “She’s doing the best she can. It was tough losing Jerry, but the rest of the family is helping her get through it.”
Admiral Ingalls nodded and took a seat. “Well, I don’t want to dwell on the loss of your son, Chester, so I’ll get right down to it. I wanted to provide you with an in-person update on that report you’d asked about.”
Smith leaned forward, perking up at the mention of their secretive pet project. “Please tell me the ships are still on schedule,” he implored.
Ingalls shook his head. “We’re falling behind; that’s why I wanted to talk in person. I’m having a hard time sourcing some equipment and getting the skilled labor I need to get them finished.”
“What’s the problem?”
“Armor plating, reactor fuel, and skilled technicians to work on the ship, for starters.”
Admiral Smith rubbed the back of his head, anxiously. “How are we short on those items? I thought I had given your program priority. What’s going on?”
Ingalls let out a forceful sigh. “Nearly half of my workforce has been pulled off the project to work on the ships coming back to port for repairs so we can get them turned back around and out to sea again. Plus, the reactor fuel that was slated for my program was reallocated to get our two other carriers refueled and operational. The shipyards have most of my workers crawling over those two ships, and then you add the mess of everything out at Pearl, and you can see why I’m strapped for skilled workers. And then there’s the challenge of armor plating.”
Admiral Smith held hand up to stop his friend for a moment. “What’s the matter with the armor plating? I could have sworn we had that problem corrected several months before the war even started. This shouldn’t even be an issue.”
Ingalls shrugged. “Well, let’s just say the mills are having a hard time sourcing the raw materials right now since most of our suppliers are currently at war with us.”
Smith blew air through his lips as if he were creating a smoke ring. Then he leaned back on the couch, thinking about the problem.
“What if you move all the personnel and supplies to just get the first ship operational? Could that solve part of your problem?”
Ingalls shook his head. “No, not entirely. Some of the work needs to be done by skilled labor. Each ship has nearly six hundred electricians running wiring and cabling throughout the superstructure and hull. Then we have another four hundred pipefitters and plumbers that follow in behind them. Until those functions are complete, we can’t close many of the floors or the walls up. Also, I’m missing most of the nuclear technicians needed to get the reactors put in place and the fuel to get them started. Until those pieces fall into place, I can’t even test the ship’s power generation or electrical systems. And we haven’t even gotten to the point of testing her weapon systems yet. That’s going to be an entirely different problem set we’ll have to deal with.”
Smith realized that Ingalls looked exhausted and frustrated, just like him. There were too many tasks to handle and not enough hours in the day or people to manage them.
“What if we pulled the work crews from the shipyards in the Gulf and Pearl and sent them up here to you?”
Ingalls’s left eyebrow rose skeptically. “You thinking of towing the ships in Pearl back to the Mainland?”
Smith sighed. “I think we’re going to have to. The island’s a mess. The entire power grid on the bases, with the exception of our microgrid, is out. Heck, we can’t even operate most of the cranes or heavy equipment needed to keep the repairs going. If I can’t use the shipyard, then there is no reason to leave the ships in port if they can’t get repaired. However, right now, I’m not sure we could properly protect the ships if we towed them to Washington. If a Chinese or Russian sub found them, we’d have no way to maneuver them if they were fired upon.”
Ingalls laughed uncomfortably. “Man, and I thought I had problems to deal with. But back to your offer—yes. It would help. What could speed things up more is if you could either waive or expedite the security clearance required for many of the electricians and plumbers I need. We can advertise the job positions and high-paying salaries all we want, but right now, we have a serious bottleneck when it comes to getting these new hires cleared so they can work on the project.”
“I’ll see what I can do about that,” Smith countered. “In the meantime, you have to find a way to get those ships done. I know we hadn’t planned on fielding them for several more years, but the situation has obviously changed, and we need those ships…especially in the Pacific.”
“Are you sailing them around Argentina, or are we planning to take Panama back?”
Smith smiled. “Let’s say we have a few plans in the works. You just make sure those ships are ready by the end of the year.”
Chapter 11
Round One, China
February 13, 2021
Santa Teresa, New Mexico
A day earlier, 1st Battalion, 37th Armor had crossed some thirty miles deep into Mexico looking for the Chinese. They had been told the enemy army group had been hit by a tactical nuke, and this would be a cleanup operation. What they’d found instead was two brigades’ worth of tanks and mechanized infantry waiting for them.
The subsequent twenty-four hours had been fought as a delaying action as they waited for the rest of their brigade to get formed up and ready to defend the border. They had been doing what tankers do best in wide open spaces—fire and maneuver—something the American tankers excelled at.
*******
“Tank, ten o’clock, 3,200 meters,” Sergeant Gomez called out as he found the next T-96 charging toward them.
“I see it. Fire!” yelled Staff Sergeant Melton, sweat dripping down his face.
“Firing!”
Boom.
The cannon recoiled inside the turret, and the tank rocked back on its springs.
“Load sabot!” shouted Gomez. He watched the round they’d fired reach out for its intended target. The projectile slammed right into the base of the turret, missing the tank’s reactive armor. The sabot punched a hole right through the weak spot where the turret and the chassis connect. The force of the projectile and the internal explosion blew the turret right off the tank, cartwheeling a hundred or more feet into the sky.
“Good hit, Gomez. Driver, back us the hell out of here and find us another firing position.”
While their driver was backing them out, Staff Sergeant Melton was hard at work trying to find them another target. In the span of two hours, they’d taken out twelve T-96s as they continued to fall back into New Mexico and Texas.
“Ranger Actual to all Ranger elements. This is our line in the sand. We hold them here. Thunderbolt element is moving to join us in twenty mikes. Let’s try and save a few tanks for them. Out.”
“You hear that, Staff Sergeant? Line in the sand. This is it for us, isn’t it?” Pittaki asked sarcastically.
Private First Class Andy Pittaki was their loader—the most junior guy on the tank and a real pain in the butt. The guy was a total Debbie Downer. If you asked him if the glass was half-full or half-empty, he always said half-empty.
“Just shut up and keep loading,” quipped Sergeant Gomez. “Melton will see us through this, OK?”
“I’m going to park us behind that F-150, Staff Sergeant,” their driver announced as he pulled the tank up a few feet behind the truck. They still had plenty of room to let the gun traverse without hitting the cab of the truck or anything nearby.
“That’s fine,” Melton responded. “Just make sure you don’t get us too close to it and be ready to move if I tell you.” He scanned for targets from their new vantage point.
They heard some rounds blow up, not too far away. “Hey, is that artillery outgoing or incoming?” asked Pittaki nervously.