“Get down,” Chet said.
Jake didn’t need any more prodding than that. He dropped down and crawled the rest of the way, soon reaching Chet and Grant. Each of them hefted an RPG, with an assault rifle tied to his pack. The rest of the platoon spread out and inched through the weeds, nearing the bunkers. It had taken the battalion’s engineer platoon several hours to clear the minefield with their starfish-shaped robots. The enemy finally figured out what those crawling things were and shot up three of them before the engineers brought the robots home. It was too late for the bunkers, though.
“Look,” Chet said.
Slowly, Jake eased to where Chet pushed aside prickly stalks. He peered past them at the nearest bunker, three hundred yards away—three entire football fields.
“Ain’t no way we can sprint that far in one burst,” Chet said.
Jake grunted agreement. Setting down his RPG, he took out an artillery spotter, a laser—emitting device.
“Seems like they’ll have sensors on it,” Chet said.
“Yeah,” Jake said. “Sorry about that.” He crawled backward, got up and ran thirty yards over, his boots sinking in the soft soil. By himself, he crawled through the reeds to where he could see the bunkers. Then he set the laser-spotter on the black dirt and called in to the lieutenant.
“You’re in position?” Lieutenant Wans asked.
“Roger,” Jake whispered.
“Give me a minute,” the lieutenant said.
Jake waited. He didn’t look at the bunker. He was too superstitious. It might alert the people inside and they would fire the heavy machine guns at him. Jake shook his head. You know what was crazy. The sky was the same here as in Kansas. The clouds drifted the very same way. Dirt looked like dirt and weeds smelled just as bad. So this is Manchuria, huh? Big deal.
The radio-link crackled in his ear. “Are you ready, Higgins?”
“Yes, sir,” Jake told the lieutenant.
“Do it, and be ready to back off fast.”
“Yes, sir,” Jake said. He liked Wans. The man worried about his men. That was so different from the penal battalions. It was like breathing fresh air after smelling crap for a year.
He squinted down the iron sights of the spotter, and he pressed a button. An invisible infrared dot struck the bunker three hundred yards away. The spotter datalinked the code, passing it to a special smart round in an artillery tube several miles back.
Before Jake heard any screaming shells, an enemy machine gun swiveled into position. Chet had been right. The bunkers had sensors on them and could “see” the IR spot.
The Chinese machine gun opened up, spewing red tracers. Dirt kicked up to Jake’s left. He flinched. How could he not? But he kept the IR dot on the bunker.
“Let’s go,” the lieutenant radioed.
Jake didn’t bother answering, nor did he grab the laser spotter. While remaining on his belly, he crawled backward, and heard heavy bullets hiss past his head, chopping weeds in half.
Seconds later, an American 155mm shell screamed down. In that instant, Jake wished he were curled down at the bottom of a foxhole. The shell struck the bunker. The thud and the explosion shook the earth under Jake’s stomach. More shells hammered the concrete emplacements, and then dead silence reigned.
“Second and third squads,” the lieutenant said over their links. “Let’s do it.”
With a sick feeling in his guts, Jake got up. In a bent over position, he ran back to Chet and Grant. The two crawled to the edge of the weeds. Jake scooped up his RPG and slithered after them.
“Good work,” Chet told him.
Jake poked through the weeds in time to see American soldiers crawling through black dirt, beginning the three hundred yards of open terrain. He checked the bunkers. Smoke poured out of the nearest one, and big concrete chunks lay nearby.
The two squads got halfway when Chinese soldiers showed up. They climbed through the gap, over concrete slabs, carrying heavy machine guns. As one, the Chinese threw themselves down, beginning to set up the machine guns.
With a flick of his finger, Jake armed his RPG. “Left,” he said.
“Center,” Grant said.
“I have the right team,” Chet said.
Pressing the trigger, Jake watched his shaped-charged grenade bang out of the launcher, heading toward a Chinese machine gun team. One of the suckers looked up. The man tried to run. The grenade reached them then, exploding, lifting the Chinese soldier off his feet into the air. He landed headfirst and didn’t move.
Chet and Grant’s grenades took out their enemy machine gun teams too.
“We’re the A-team, you bastards!” Chet shouted at them.
Jake wondered if that was true.
“Down,” Jake heard on his radio-link. It was the lieutenant. “Give them another dose.”
The seconds ticked away.
“Bravo Company,” the lieutenant said.
“Sorry about that,” the artillery captain said. “We’re already headed elsewhere. I thought it was one salvo and scoot.”
Lieutenant Wans swore profusely over the radio.
“Not good,” Chet told Jake.
Jake kept his eyes on the lieutenant. He was out there on the black dirt. The man actually stood up. Was he insane? He shouted at the two squads of soldiers around him. Finally, they stood up too, and they began sprinting for the bunkers.
“No, no,” Chet said. “You’re going too soon.”
“Come on!” Jake shouted. Before he knew it, he stood and burst out of the reeds.
“Get back here, you idiot,” Chet shouted.
“All for one and one for all,” Jake shouted. “They’re our guys!”
Jake didn’t look back. He dug the toes of his boots into the dirt and ran, and he knew this was stupid. The lieutenant should have backed off. The artillery screwed up. They could do this over later. But it wasn’t that kind of war, now was it? They had to take Manchuria on the run, or it was never going to work. The officers had been pounding that into them for some time already.
The air began burning down Jake’s throat. His pack was heavy, and three football fields was too far. The back of his head began to pound from the exertion. Sometimes, Jake wondered if he was fully recovered from the radiation and Detention Center holiday. Probably not.
One of the back bunkers fired its main cannon. A massive shell flew straight, plowed into the ground and exploded. A sergeant sailed into the air, tumbling a good twenty feet. When he landed, the man didn’t move. As bad, the shell had wiped out one whole squad.
“I told you this was stupid!” Chet roared from behind.
Jake twisted around. Chet and Grant had followed him. Dropping to the ground, Jake wondered what he should do now.
From two miles away, American artillery had already opened up. Bravo Company must have changed its mind. 155mm shells began hammering the back bunkers. Then smoke shells landed between the bunkers and the remaining squad. Heavy smoke billowed into existence.
“That’s our cue!” Jake shouted. “Let’s go.”
Chet groaned, but he got up. So did Grant.
Half a minute later, Jake reached the surviving squad. “Which of you bastards wants to die an old man?”
“What?” a soldier shouted at him from the ground.
“Get up!” Jake roared. “Follow me. We’re going hunting today.”
Luck, stupidity, what was the difference? The artillery quit laying down 155s as Jake led an angry squad of soldiers among the shattered bunkers.
Tossed hand grenades, quick bursts from the assault rifles, a jump around a corner and the thrusting of a bayonet tore a Chinaman’s stomach open. It was bloody work, terrifying and strangely exciting.
Something must be wrong with me, Jake thought.
In the last bunker, after smoke drifted from his rifle barrel and a Chinese soldier twisted in agony, Jake finally realized a truth.
The dead were young teenagers and old farts. There wasn’t a regular soldier among th
e enemy. The Chinese had scraped the bottom of the manpower barrel, using the young and old to man their bunkers. It made him wonder if maybe America could do this after all.
JIAMUSI, HEILONGJIANG PROVINCE
On the fifth day of the offensive, Stan’s division stormed the city of Jiamusi.
It was ballsy, and he wouldn’t have done it like this on his own, but the order came straight from the top, from General McGraw. That was a screwy way to run an Expeditionary Force. McGraw should be here if he wanted to run the show. Instead, the man stayed back in the States, covering his bases. Otherwise, McGraw likely wouldn’t remain in the ruling triad, and coming home again for him might be dangerous.
Today, instead of running around in an observation helo, Stan used his Jefferson’s extendable inner wheels for highway movement. They sounded like giant bowling bowls moving down a lane. The wheels let him move the tanks fast along the city streets. Compared to Behemoth dinosaurs, the Jeffersons where nimble mammals.
Stan stood in the commander’s hatch, mopping his sweaty face with a rag. He wore heavy combat armor and a thick helmet, but he still felt exposed out here. Behind him followed more Jeffersons and infantry carriers. He passed brick buildings with empty windows. He hoped they stayed that way.
Machine guns, beehive flechettes and cannons were all primed for firing. He studied red-painted houses and tall office buildings. This would have made a good fortress city. Why had the Chinese run away so fast?
Could we have caught the country by surprise?
He’d like to believe so. The Russian and American armies were hard-hitting, mobile forces. They were well supplied with air and artillery support. Heck, they even had paratroopers for seizing vital objectives. The bad thing, though, was that all the fuel and ammunition for their form of warfare had to be carried from Russia. That was a long thin stretch across the Trans-Siberian rail and road net. To win, they would have to duplicate the German art of blitzkrieg as practiced long ago in Poland and France. If they practiced the type used in Soviet Russia by the Germans in WWII, they could easily lose this campaign.
If we spread out our forces too widely, we won’t drive deep enough fast enough.
The AI Kaisers and majority of Russians smashed through Mongolia. They were going to drive through the Gobi Desert, heading for Inner Mongolia and Beijing on the other side of the Khingan Mountains.
We’re shaking the dice and hoping for a seven. Otherwise…
Stan mopped his sweaty face. He didn’t want to think about otherwise. They were involved in a land war in Asia, the biggest there could be—against China.
“Sir,” Stan heard from his headphones.
“What’s up, Marvin?” Stan said into his microphone. Marvin Buckles was one of his battalion commanders.
“There’s some rifle fire from a massive block building ahead of me.”
“Are they shooting at you?” Stan asked.
“Negative,” Marvin said. “Oh. I take that back.”
Stan heard the boom of enemy artillery. Like a gopher, he ducked into the interior of his Jefferson, closing the hatch with a clang. The tank’s cannon barrel was fake. He had no gunner. Instead, he had communication equipment and a bunch of displays scattered around the interior of his Jefferson.
“Give me a visual of those guns,” Stan said.
It took ten seconds. Then he was seeing real time from a 10th Armored drone. The enemy artillery was three miles outside Jiamusi behind some hills. It was harrassing fire. He could see Chinese sappers digging holes and a trench in front of the artillery.
Why would the enemy give himself away like that?
“Are those shells landing near you?” Stan asked Marvin.
“I’m already backing up, General.”
“Show me the block building where you heard the gunfire.”
A second later, Stan got a video shot of a three-story building two blocks long. Black bricks— “Wait a minute,” Stan told Marvin. “Zoom in on that sign in front.”
“Which—oh, I see it. Sure.”
Stan saw it, too, a second later. He ran the Chinese symbols through a translation device. He swayed a moment later.
“That’s Jiamusi Police Headquarters,” he said.
“Is that important?” Marvin asked.
“Do you still hear gunfire?”
“I’m backed up too far for that.”
“All right,” Stan said, beginning to get a suspicion of what went on. “We’re going to silence those tubes.”
It took fifteen minutes on the horn as the division’s tanks swept through the rest of the town. Either the people stayed inside or they were already gone. Through radio communication, Stan maneuvered his tanks around the Police Ministry Building, although out of direct visible range.
Thirty minutes after his first argument with the Air Force, drones screamed down. They attacked, bombing the Chinese artillery tubes into silence.
“Stan!” It was Colonel Marvin Buckles again. “I see people. They’re fleeing out of the back of the police building.”
“Are they soldiers?” Stan asked.
“Sure don’t think so. They’re all wearing dresses.”
Stan scowled for just a moment. Then his heart went cold. “Kill them,” he said.
“What? Why?”
“Those aren’t women.”
“How can you know that?” Marvin asked.
“Why do you think you’ve been hearing gunfire from the Police Ministry building?”
“I don’t have any idea, sir.”
“I do,” Stan said. “China is a police state. That means political prisoners. I think East Lighting personnel have been slaughtering people down there.”
Colonel Buckles swore.
“Kill them,” Stan repeated.
“I’m not sure I can do that, General…” Marvin said.
“I appreciate your ethics.”
“It’s on my head if I fire.”
“I’ve giving you a direct order. I’m responsible for this.”
“Yes, sir,” Marvin said. “General, I sure hope you know what you’re talking about.”
Stan watched on his screen, forcing himself to see what happened. If he was wrong, he wanted his conscience to torment him. Before the dress-wearers could duck out of sight, Jefferson tanks cut them off. The vehicles’ heavy machine guns and flechette launchers took them down. It was bloody, a real gore-fest. People blew apart, their dresses disintegrating. A silver brooch tumbled down the street. None of the enemy survived. They lay dead in the street, their clothes in bloody tatters.
Ten minutes later, American infantrymen left their carriers. Stan’s shoulders slumped with relief when he heard, “Hey, the General’s right. These are a bunch of guys. They’re wearing East Lighting uniforms under the dresses.”
Stan expelled air from his lungs, and he told his driver to head straight for the Police Ministry Building.
Fifteen minutes later, with an armed escort of tankers on foot, Stan marched into the empty building. Papers were strewn everywhere. Most of the computers were still on.
“What’s that smell,” Marvin asked. He was a tall man, missing an upper front tooth.
“It’s coming from that way,” Stan said, pointing left down a dark hall.
Soon, they found heavy doors. Opening one, Stan shined a light into a dark basement stairwell.
“You shouldn’t go down there, General,” Marvin said. “Let me send one of the boys.”
“Forget that,” Stan said. “Follow me.” With his flashlight shining and pistol ready, he descended the stairs. They creaked at his weight. It stank like a slaughterhouse down here. Soon, the beam shone on bloody walls. Stan found the first cell. Dead men and women filled them in grotesque postures. The police must have machine gunned them.
“Some of these people are still alive,” Marvin said.
Stan couldn’t take it anymore. He staggered up the stairs and vomited. Panting, he gave the order for medics to hurry here.
“Why did the Chinese bother doing that?” Marvin asked.
“Don’t know,” Stan said. He wiped his mouth. “This is a police state. That’s how they play the game.”
“It’s not like America.”
Stan frowned, not so sure. Director Harold ran the show now. His Homeland Security people had Detention Centers. With his lips firming, Stan made a silent vow. Come what may, he was going to do something about America, to make sure his beloved country didn’t turn into a police state that butchered its own people like this.
MARINE TRAINING BASE, MONTANA
Paul Kavanagh was having problems with his battlesuit.
Encased in the metal thing, he felt like a cocooned larva and looked like a giant gorilla. A warehouse filled with electronic gear, lifts, computers and diagnostic machines produced a host of strange sounds. Over a dozen techs hovered around his suit or sat at stations trying to figure out what was wrong.
Huge lamps glared their light. Sometimes, Paul felt as if this was a surreal Home Depot nightmare of the distant future.
Black cables slithered away from him. Dr. Harris with his thick lenses and white lab coat stood in front of his powered armor. The skinny man examined an electronic slate.
“Lift your right arm,” Harris said.
Inside the battlesuit, Paul tried to lift his right arm. Instead, his right-hand fingers straightened. He wasn’t ready for that, and it almost torqued the middle finger.
He told Dr. Harris that.
“Ah-ah,” the man said. “I think I might have it.” The scientist began speaking rapid-fire technobabble through a throat microphone.
Paul had become used to this. The powered armor was amazing, and he still studied at night to figure out every system.
The outer armor was made of single-walled carbon nanotubes, or SWNT, also nicknamed Buckytubes. They made the armor light and puncture-resistant, but only by comparison to steel or titanium. One centimeter of SWNT equaled ten centimeters of RHA: rolled homogenous armor. It made this thing tough.
Paul had listened to the lectures on the battlesuits and laughed to himself. Sometimes, the speakers had told old tales of men in armor, from times he hadn’t expected. Apparently, during the American Civil War, some cavalry officers had worn steel vests, like the cuirasses of an earlier era. The lecturer had showed them a slide of one with dents and two large holes. Usually, such steel vests had halted the soft, pure lead bullets of the time—but the two holes showed they hadn’t always done so.
Invasion: China (Invasion America) (Volume 5) Page 28