The lecturer had shown them the holes for a reason. He and various combat psychologists continuously warned the powered armored Marines about developing a god complex. As in, suited in these babies, Marines might begin to feel like gods and make stupid decisions during a firefight. They were supposed to play it safe when the time came and pretend they were as vulnerable as ever.
The lecturer had pointed at the holed vest, saying, “The god complex, don’t get it or we’ll hold up your suit as the example next time.”
The outer armor of the suit was only the beginning. This thing had spacing, with other exotic materials between the layers. That would especially help against enemy RPGs and their shaped-charged munitions. Spacing would also help against high-energy kinetic penetrators and explosive charges.
Underneath the multilayered body stockings of armor, the Marines wore an orthotic frame exoskeleton. The last coat was flexible Kevlar. That would protect a Marine from spalling or anything else that managed to penetrate the outer shell.
The powered armor also provided Paul with strength augmentation. This came from fibers that contracted when electric currents passed through them. The advanced electro-elastic fibers mimicked the natural pattern of human muscle. That helped ease suit control and helped to produce natural movement. It meant he didn’t really have to learn the systems, as the systems had to learn him.
That’s where the rub came in.
“I have discovered the source of your troubles,” Dr. Harris told Paul. “Your neural net is off. We will have to realign it.”
“Do I have to begin the entire process from scratch?” Paul asked.
“I should hope not.”
“Yeah,” Paul said. Calibrating the neural net had taken boring weeks of detail.
In essence, the suit’s helmet read his mind. It was called SQUID—Superconducting Quantum Interface Device. The array in his helmet detected the minute magnetic fields produced by brain electrical activity. To interpret and run the brain signals took a neural net computer in the control systems. Months ago, Paul started operating the suit with the detection system running, performing simple tasks. The neural net compared the brain’s motor center activity and built its own operative pathways. With each use, the computer learned better ways of performing tasks. In this way, it optimized itself. That made the battlesuits extremely individualistic.
As Dr. Harris led the techs, Paul thought about that. He was in for the duration, obviously. The time it had taken them to train him and train his suit about him, meant it would take a long time to find a replacement. They’d have to take his powered armor for that, and that would leave the US with one fewer Marine for the nine months of preparation.
There aren’t too many drop specialists, fewer than a thousand so far.
What could one battalion of orbitally dropped commandos do? It was going to be something wild, he knew that. One of his crazier weapons was a small nuclear-tipped missile, with .3 kilotons of killing power. It was a super-RPG.
Paul smirked to himself. In Toronto and New York in 2040, many American soldiers had referred to the GD drone battalions as Terminators.
We’re the real Terminators.
What would that mean on the battlefield? The training was winding down. Soon, now, they would enter the fight. So far, General Allenby had demanded ultra-secrecy. He and other brass hats wanted to lay this on the Chinese as a total surprise. Paul could appreciate that. What he disliked was the security details, one in particular. No Marine had been able to talk to anyone but the training personnel for endless months on end. Paul had gotten sick of that, more than he’d expected at the start of this business.
How’s my Cheri? I know she needs to hear from me.
He’d talked to the general about it. The man shrugged, told him to can that kind of talk. He was a drop specialist and he’d just have to suck it up.
No, Paul told himself. I want to talk to my wife and I’m going to talk to her.
First, though, he’d give it a few more weeks, maybe a month. Then he’d put some pressure on them, on General Allenby. They wanted him to drop from low orbit in a tin can. Well, baby, they had better find him an open line so he could speak to Cheri and find out how she was doing. Probably, he’d have to reassure her. He couldn’t put the pressure on them just yet, though. That would be tactically foolish. He had to retrain his suit first, and make sure he was indispensable.
Besides, Paul wanted to go to the finish on this one. He had to be there in the end. That’s why he’d joined the Marines in the first place.
“Try lifting your right arm now,” Dr. Harris said.
Paul tried, and he did it.
“Excellent,” Harris said. “We’re making progress.”
“That’s great,” Paul said.
The scientist ignored him. Instead, Harris lifted the slate near his lips as he spoke into it, making notations. It made a front tooth more noticeable, a shinier tooth, a crown no doubt.
That was okay. Despite the boiling in his gut wondering about Cheri, Paul bided his time. Soon now, very soon, he was going to find out about his wife.
-11-
Drive on Harbin
TIAN VILLAGE, HEILONGJIANG PROVINCE
Jake kept his eyes peeled as he moved down the village’s main street. Snowy mountains rose to the east behind the place. A highway passed to the west. It was more than a huddle of houses and a store, having a temple, some storage facilities and a factory to the north.
Battalion had already secured the huge chicken processing plant. Lieutenant Wans’ platoon had the job of sweeping the village, making sure the civilians understood this had become US conquered territory. The point was the highway to the west. It had become the key supply trunk to the US 3rd Army Group. Every village, town and city along the way had to be secured.
Battalion had taken the chicken plant with a minimum of effort. That meant almost no ammo expenditure, one wounded sergeant and three dead Chinese workers who had attempted to protest. For some reason, though, the lieutenant had told them to be careful with this one.
“There’s something wrong about this place,” he’d said.
So Jake didn’t saunter in the middle of the paved lane or swagger like a conqueror. He agreed with Wans. Something felt off in this place. Instead, Jake edged along a building as if he starred in some Wild West TV show and this was the final showdown with the bad guys.
Behind him came Chet and Grant. Each of them wore body armor. Across the street on the other side were Cowboy, MacDonald and Bradbury, the rest of the squad. Tiller and Lars were too sick with stomach flus to help today.
The platoon swept through the town from north to south, and there hadn’t been any gunfire so far. No one had shouted and neither had any Chinese appeared to surrender.
This place felt wrong, haunted maybe, filled with bad luck. Jake was starting to hate these small, out-of-the-way places the infantry always had to clear out the old-fashioned way. You never knew what these kinds of backwater joints hid. Yeah, battalion was half a mile away, and mortars and heavy machine guns could take this place apart. That might even be fun. But what if a nasty surprise shocked the first ones in? Jake hated surprises. Surprises could kill you.
“If you ask me,” Chet said. “They’re going about it the wrong way.”
Jake scowled. Two things made him especially edgy today. One, he was bone tired. He hadn’t slept for…oh yeah. He hadn’t slept for over thirty-six hours. Man, he was ready to collapse and call it a week right here. High command kept demanding, though. This was an around-the-clock offensive, don’t you know. It was old shock and awe, making the Chinese piss themselves. The Americans just kept grabbing more territory and blowing everything up that resisted.
The second thing that bothered him was listening to Chet’s philosophies about anything.
Each of them cradled an assault rifle. Each wore a pack. Jake was ready to ditch his. Together with his body armor, it was too much already. Battalion needed to get them rides. Th
ey’d been doing far too much walking—the “Tour of Manchuria” the guys were already calling it.
“Why do the Chinks fight us up front?” Chet asked. “I don’t get that.”
“Uh…” Grant said, “Because we’re invading their country.”
“You’re not listening to me,” Chet said. “I’m not saying they should let us walk all over them. I’m talking about smart tactics. See. These people here, they should lie low. After we’re away, then they hit the supply columns.”
“Listen, you idiot,” Jake said. “That doesn’t do us any good in the long run.”
“You want to keep patrolling these shitholes until one of these fools kills us?” Chet asked. “I don’t. We’ve done our duty. Let some other sucker take a bullet in the chest. I’ve had it with stalking empty buildings up to here. Too many chances for booby-traps. They’re the worst.”
“I’d rather die in a firefight than find myself stuck deep in China with our supply lines cut and have to surrender,” Jake said. “I’m never surrendering. I’ve heard what they do to prisoners.”
“You don’t have to worry about that,” Chet said.
“Why not?”
“Because you can always shoot yourself before waving the white flag,” Chet said. “See what I mean?”
Jake halted. Holding his rifle one-handed, he dug into a pouch and extracted a discolored jawbreaker. They had found a Chinese candy store two days ago. Everyone stocked up, Jake on bags of jawbreakers. He sucked on one twenty-four-seven. The sugar helped keep him going. The strong cinnamon taste kept the boredom from closing his eyes.
An ear-link crackled. It was the lieutenant. “Stay sharp. Jenkins spotted movement near the temple. He counted seven hostiles trying to be sneaky.”
Jake craned his neck to look ahead. Most of the village was old homes with slanted roofs. They’d passed a brick bakery. Near the southern edge of town was a three-story building, a pagoda or something. The temple, as they called it.
Suddenly, a gong boomed from there. It sounded like something from an old kung-fu movie.
“Right,” Jake said. He faced his house, a small store, actually. With his free hand, he tested the door. It was locked. Screw this. Using his rifle butt, he smashed the display window. The tinkle of glass didn’t drown out a second gong from the temple.
“Fire in the hole!” Chet shouted. He tossed a grenade through the window into the store. It exploded, and Chet jumped through the opening into gloom.
Jake followed, scanning back and forth down junk food aisles. Most of the time there was an unspoken rule in villages. No. He took that back. It was a printed rule, dropped onto Chinese cities with millions of leaflets. If the Chinese civilians didn’t fire at the Americans, the Americans didn’t kill them.
Live and let live or something similar to that.
A door in the back of the store opened, and a man shouted at them in Chinese.
The double gongs had made them nervous. Jake raised his rifle at the man. Chet didn’t wait. He fired, and the old man crashed back through the door he’d opened, falling onto a rug.
Jake rushed forward, screaming orders in case anyone else was in the other room. Again, Chet refused to wait. He lobbed a grenade past Jake and through the open door.
“There could be kids in there!” Jake shouted, twisting away at the last second.
The grenade exploded, a man screamed with pain.
Jake gripped his assault rifle and nerve, plunging into the room, jumping over the dead man. A second man lay on a bed against the wall, holding his guts with his hands. Blood poured between his fingers. Beside the man on the bed lay three Chinese grenades. Son of a bitch, Chet was right. Jake shot the man. A creak warned him. The bathroom door inched open. Jake emptied his magazine, splintering wood, causing the door to swing open. A Chinese man staggered against a toilet, sliding to the tiles.
“He has a grenade!” Chet shouted as he entered the bedroom.
Jake turned his back to the Chinese man and crouched low. The grenade in the dead man’s hand went off. Something peppered Jake’s back, but the body armor saved him from harm.
“They’re attacking outside!” Grant shouted, who had stayed by the store’s display window.
Chet stepped into the bathroom, looked around and darted out. “He’s never getting up again.”
Jake used his left sleeve to wipe his mouth. He was shaking. He hadn’t expected a firefight. Well, it hadn’t been one. They’d only had grenades.
“Come on,” Chet said. “Grant’s at the front.”
The two of them rushed to Grant, crouching down on either side of the big window. They saw a weird spectacle. This place was living up to the haunted feel. To Jake’s amazement, regular Chinese people in ordinary clothes charged down the street.
“Are they drugged?” Chet asked.
“Look at their hands,” Grant said. “They have grenades.”
“They’re crazy,” Chet said.
Jake sucked on his cinnamon jawbreaker. He didn’t want to fight this kind of battle. The US Army and Marines had come to fight enemy soldiers, not butcher stupid civilians.
A sprinting Chinese man on the main street pulled a pin. He skidded to a halt, turned so he faced the temple and cocked his arm, ready to hurl the grenade back the way he had come. Gunfire from the temple cut him down. Civilians around him screamed. He went down in a flopping heap. So did his grenade. It went off, and two women howled in agony, with shrapnel in their bodies as they staggered backward and fell.
“What’s going on with this freak show?” Chet asked.
Jake thought he knew. He’d fought in the penal battalions back home. The worst had been in New York State. The Chinese must have their own form of penal battalions, and some civilians didn’t like it.
The civilians who survived the temple gunfire and grenade charged down the street. Those in front pulled pins. American gunfire cut them down. Someone used a grenade launcher. The civilians scattered. Two grenades flattened most of them. Maybe three civilians darted into hiding in the nearby homes. The wounded on the street began to groan or scream, depending on the injuries.
“That’s jacked up,” Chet said.
Silently, Jake agreed. “I have an idea,” he said. “Let’s head out the back.”
“Care to share your idea with us?” Chet asked.
“I think the Chinese police, or somebody, are driving the ordinary people to attack us.”
“Why would they do that?”
“To drown us in a sea of bodies would be my guess,” Jake said. “What do the Chinese leaders care as long as enough US soldiers die?”
“Pretty ruthless,” Grant said.
They’d moved to the back as they talked. Jake unlatched the rear door.
“Better inform the lieutenant what we’re doing.”
“What are we doing?” Chet asked.
“Trying to come on the police from behind,” Jake said. “Kill them and we win this village.”
Chet blinked at him three times. “Okay. I’m with you.”
They raced down an alley, their gear making muffled sounds on their back.
“We’re not supposed to play heroes,” Chet panted. “Remember?”
Jake was thinking back to New York near Buffalo, his worst days in the penal battalions. He saw red today. He hated the Militia MPs who had forced them into crazy combat situations. This should be a fight between free men—those that loved their country.
“Jake,” Chet said. “Slow down. This is too risky.”
Jake saw something out of the corner of his eye. Grenade! He darted behind a barrel. The grenade landed and it rolled right up to him. He just stared at it as a cold sweat broke out over him.
After a few more seconds, Chet appeared. He laughed, picked up the grenade and said, “The fool forgot to pull the pin. You’re one lucky sorry mother.”
Jake swallowed what remained of his jawbreaker. His jaw clenched. With a grunt, he stood. Then he began to stalk purposefully towa
rd the temple. A crazy feeling on invincibility consumed him.
I’m alive for a reason. Otherwise, I’d be dead right now.
He turned the corner and he saw seven Chinese men climbing into a big SUV. They wore brown uniforms with red belts. Somewhere, he’d been briefed about that.
Oh yeah, those are East Lightning bastards: Chinese secret police. I bet they’re the ones who forced the civilians to rush us.
Jake set his assault rifle on the ground, reached back and unhooked a LAW tube. He readied it as the SUV gunned to life. The last doors slammed shut. Lifting the launcher so it rested on his shoulder, Jake sighted and fired.
The SUV began backing up, and the shell slammed against it and exploded. The SUV crashed onto its side.
Dropping the tube, Jake scooped up his assault rifle. He knelt, raised it and shot each survivor trying to climb out of the wrecked vehicle.
For them, the fight for Tian Village ended. Intelligence learned later that Jake had guessed right. The seven policemen had forced the villagers to attack with hand grenades. Inside the temple were the villagers’ children, alive, thank God.
The war for Heilongjiang Province continued.
G1011 EXPRESSWAY, HEILONGJIANG PROVINCE
Stan Higgins stood in the temporary V Corps headquarters building, an abandoned Manchurian barn. General Taylor ran the corps, which belonged to First Army.
Taylor’s people spread a computer scroll over a foldup table, tacking it into place. Stan and his two fellow V Corps generals stood around it, waiting.
Stan sipped coffee as he looked around. Portable heaters warmed the barn, but nothing helped like warming his insides. Ah, the first gulp always tasted the best.
“Ready, Mike?” General Taylor asked one of his people.
A short man with a buzz cut nodded curtly. He then turned and snapped his fingers at the data-net personnel.
Invasion: China (Invasion America) (Volume 5) Page 29