by Peter Nealen
The gunner had his head out of the hatch, rubbernecking at the “fire” on the pier. He hardly noticed the figures in friendly camouflage until Faris ducked inside the hull and prodded him with his suppressor.
The gunner had been the only one on the vehicle, and he’d put his radio down below him. Faris had grabbed it before he’d poked the gunner. The whole capture took seconds.
As Winkler zip-tied and gagged the man, Faris climbed up into the turret. “Need the engine started.” That was no surprise. The odds of an armored turret of that weight being manually operated were pretty slim.
“Winkler, start the engine, then hold security.” Hank spared a glance above, at the 30mm point defense towers stationed around the main building, which looked pretty swank for an artificial island in the middle of nowhere. So did the landscaping for that matter. But if the gunners on those 30mms saw what was going on beneath them, then things could get really interesting, really fast.
Lind’s squad rushed past them, having already split off a trio to take the ZBD-05 on the far end of the southwest pier, now heading for the next corner vehicle. Hank made a decision.
“Faris, Winkler, you’ve got this vic. If you have to, burn it and jump into the water. We’re moving on the fort.” It was a risk, but the longer he was under those 30mm turrets, the less he liked it.
The radio at Faris’s feet squawked, the transmission unintelligible as the infantry fighting vehicle’s engine caught and roared. But the message was clear enough to Hank. The Chinese knew something was up.
It was a short dash to the door in the side of the concrete edifice that rose above the South China Sea like a weird sort of castle. Even as they rushed the door, though, it swung open and half a dozen men in gray, tan, and blue cammies and helmets, wearing green, tan, and brown load bearing gear and carrying QBZ-191s, came barreling down the steps.
None of the Triarii hesitated. This was solidly Chinese-held territory, and everyone there was presumed hostile. The PLAN wasn’t using civilian labor on the artificial islands, except for the militia. And even if they had been, the rules of engagement had been simple: anyone with a weapon dies. Anyone without a weapon might still die, but it would take longer, and depend on what else they were doing.
A ragged fusillade of suppressed 7.62 fire tore through the Chinese marines before they even realized that their enemy was right on their doorstep. Bullets tore through chests, throats, and skulls. At less than fifty yards, none of the Triarii should have missed. None did. In seconds, the six PLAN marines were down, either already gone still, or else shuddering out the last of their lives, gurgling their last breaths out through lakes of their own blood, which ran down to stain the white concrete beneath them.
The Triarii had barely broken stride, muzzles shifting to cover the windows to either side of the door. Hank and Evans reached the doors first, pausing to stack to either side. Hank let his rifle dangle as a ragged crackle of 5.8mm fire rattled through the open doors, yanked a frag out of his vest, and pulled the pin, letting the spoon fly.
Evans had just yanked his head back as a bullet spat fragments of concrete into his face, but he saw what Hank was doing and hurried to follow suit. Hank wasn’t going to hold onto that egg longer than he had to, and he lobbed it inside after a two-count, bouncing it off the ceiling to fall deeper inside the entryway. Panicked shouts in Mandarin were suddenly cut off by the thud of the explosion, followed a moment later by another as Evans’ frag sailed inside and detonated.
The two of them rolled inside right after, having paused just long enough to avoid catching a face full of whickering shrapnel, shouldering the doors out of their way as they went.
It was darker inside, especially since the grenades had shattered the lights overhead. The tiled floor was scarred and blackened by the twin grenade blasts, and was now stained with the blood of the PLAN marines who had been trying to shoot them through the doorway. Both of those men were sprawled like ragdolls on the floor, one crumpled against the wall where he’d tried to take cover. Shrapnel had opened his neck, peeling the flesh back in a bloody fan.
There was a lot of red on the floor underneath him.
All of that was taken in with a glance, as they went through the door. Hank and Evans split, Hank going left, Evans going right. Hank stepped through the still-roiling smoke from the frags and found himself facing two more PLAN marines, both crouched beneath the windows as if ready to engage on the yard. They were turning back toward the doors, stunned, one of them bleeding from what appeared to be an easy dozen shrapnel wounds.
They didn’t turn quite fast enough, though Hank suddenly found himself faced with two rifle muzzles, and he was sure in that split second of awareness that he wasn’t going to be quick enough. He double-tapped the bleeder as he stepped out from the wall, smashing the first round into his chest and the second into his collarbone, blasting through the man’s windpipe and his spine. He dropped, aspirating blood, choking but unable to do anything about it as every nerve from his throat down was dead.
Sure that he was too slow, Hank was transitioning to the second man when Taylor stepped through the door and inside the wall, and shot the second PLAN marine through the eye.
The gunfire behind them had stopped. Hank stepped back and let Taylor take the long hall while he quickly looked around and got his bearings.
“Command center should be that way.” He pointed deeper into the building. “Somebody get up there and secure that point defense weapon system before they turn Faris and Winkler into hamburger.”
“I’m on it.” Evans was already heading down that hallway, his weapon up, watching every opening as he moved, Reisinger right behind him.
“The rest, on me. Let’s see if we can shut this place down before they can figure out what’s going on.” Hank was already moving, LaForce, Taylor, Bishop, and Huntsman right on his heels.
They paced quickly through the stark corridors, almost moving faster than they should have under the circumstances. The CQB training they’d gotten back in Texas had emphasized continuous, three-hundred-sixty-degree security, moving deliberately through a structure with muzzles constantly covering every opening. But Hank knew that time was not on their side, and he’d been on enough ops where speed was security. So, while they didn’t just put their heads down and run, they moved fast, knowing full well that they’d have to slow down to shoot, still keeping their muzzles and their eyes up as they sped through the building.
A door opened a dozen paces ahead, and a wide-eyed face peered out, only to slam the door as it quickly ducked out of sight. Several more unarmed Chinese dashed out of their way, but the Triarii held their fire, as easy as it would have been to cut everyone down, just to be safe.
They reached the stairwell at the corner of the well that sank through the building, and were soon moving up toward the top floor, slowing down out of sheer necessity. Stairwells are CQB nightmares, and Hank had been through enough close quarters fights to know that from personal experience as much as training. The Triarii had to step carefully, keeping both the high and low angles covered as they climbed, and they couldn’t afford to ignore the doors as they passed, either.
Still, no PLAN marines came bursting into the stairwell after them. They were six flights up when the radio crackled in Hank’s ear.
“Actual, this is Chunky.” Evans had picked the callsign himself, unlike Faris, who’d gotten stuck with “Sparky,” simply because it was the least insulting that had been devised. Most of the old guard in First and Second Squad still remembered what Faris had been like as a squad leader.
Callsigns had become necessary on this op, simply because trying to use squad numbers when dispersed like this would have become disastrous.
“Send it, Chunky.” Hank had to step back and let Taylor take the high axis so he could key his radio. He’d known guys who had affixed radio switches to their weapons, and right then he was wishing he’d done it, too.
“The point defense turret appears to be sealed up a
nd probably automated or at least remote controlled. We can’t make entry.”
Hank grimaced. Shit. “All right, fall back and hold the entryway if you can. We’ll proceed to the command center and then work on linkup afterward.” If there is an afterward. He had to force that particular thought to the back of his mind. This wasn’t the time for classic Hank Foss pessimism. That could come later.
They passed the last main floor. Two more to go. Naturally, that was where things went wrong.
The door on the landing slammed open and a fire team of PLAN marines stormed out into the stairway, just as Hank and Taylor reached the turn just below.
Hank shot the first one through the chinstrap, blowing his brains all over the inside of his helmet. The man crashed down the steps, immediately clearing the man behind him, who opened fire in a near panic, spraying 5.8mm fire down the stairs as Hank threw himself into the corner, tracking in toward the second marine. He dumped most of the rest of the mag into the blue, gray, and tan shapes on the steps above him, dragging the muzzle across the narrow space, riding the trigger’s reset as fast as he could. Bullets tore through cloth, flesh, and bone, smashed into magazines and weapons, and a few even skipped off the concrete to either side and overhead.
Several of the PLAN marines fell. Two scrambled back through the doorway as if they’d been burned, one dragging a third who was still alive but down and screaming in agony. Only after the last had disappeared through the doorway did Hank notice the burn alongside his neck, leaking blood down onto his cammies. More points of fire on his neck and wrist told him that he’d taken a bit of frag off the wall behind him, too.
Taylor had taken far worse.
The irascible, balding man lay crumpled on the steps, a bullet hole through his throat, the crimson pumping out and down the steps already slowing to a trickle.
Bishop had bent to check him as soon as the gunfire had halted. He stopped. Just for a moment, the big man didn’t move, his head bowed. Then, as was necessary, he started to strip Taylor’s gear and weapon, slinging the unloaded rifle across his back.
If the next few steps went according to plan, they’d have to come back and retrieve the body later.
If they didn’t, retrieving the body was going to be the least of their worries.
Bishop’s eyes were red as he reached up and gave Hank the squeeze to indicate they were ready. He was otherwise impassive. He’d compartmentalize, cram the pain deep down, and deal with it later.
Later might be after the war. It might be never.
Hank knew they needed to drive all the way to the top, take the command center. But they couldn’t afford to leave those PLAN marines at their backs, where they were probably regrouping right then. He kept his muzzle trained on the upper flights, and signaled Bishop to frag the door.
Bishop cooked the grenade for a three count before he hooked it through the doorway, over Hank’s head. Hank would have admitted right then that he was getting a little nervous.
The frag went off with a thud, shattering glass and sending a gray cloud billowing out of the doorway, shrapnel pattering off the opposite wall. Then Hank was driving up, still covering high, while Bishop, Huntsman, and LaForce went through the door, LaForce grunting, “Last man,” as he went past. Hank hooked around and joined them, just as the gunfire erupted in the hallway.
It was short. By the time he dropped his own muzzle level, it was all over. Three PLAN marines, bleeding from shrapnel wounds, lay dead in the hallway, still wreathed in smoke from the grenade blast. But still more were coming out of the far end of the hallway, just as Hank looked back and saw more movement on the stairs behind them.
He didn’t have another frag, but as Bishop and Huntsman opened fire down the hallway, Hank shifted position to give himself a good shot down at the lower landing without exposing himself too much, and shot the first PLAN marine in the chest, just above where his plate would be, if he’d been wearing any. None of these marines seemed to be wearing body armor, which was just as well.
The man crashed down the steps, on top of Taylor’s body, and then the rest of the PLAN marines apparently decided that discretion was the better part of valor.
“We’ve got to keep going up!” LaForce was right at his elbow. “We get pinned down in here, and we’re screwed!”
He was right. “On me!” Hank roared loudly enough to be heard over the sporadic, suppressed gunfire behind him. It sounded like the Chinese soldiers on the other end of the hall didn’t want to push their luck, either.
Then he was heading up the steps, LaForce covering down the way they’d come, though he held his fire, telling Hank that the PLAN marines had fallen back even farther. Huntsman and Bishop followed, passing through the careful dance of getting out of the hallway and onto the stairwell without turning their backs completely to the enemy.
Hank kind of wished he hadn’t split Evans and Reisinger off to try to take that 30mm. He could use two more rifles in that stairwell right then.
They managed it, though, with Huntsman kind of pulling LaForce off the lower stairs while he tried to cover both the doorway and then the stairs himself. Hank was already up on the next landing by the time they cleared both danger areas and continued up.
Bypassing the second to last door, Hank and Bishop stacked on the final landing. He’d been worried that they might find themselves facing a SCIF door, an armored portal that they’d need heavy breaching equipment to get through. That would have been the death knell for that part of the plan, and they would have needed to fight their way back down and just try to do as much damage as possible.
But this door was just an ordinary ship’s hatch, and while it was closed, it was still unsecured when Hank turned the handle.
He glanced at Bishop, who looked as surprised as he felt. There was a reason they’d brought several tape charges with them, and Huntsman had the torch on his back. But someone must have wanted a way out, and now they had a way in.
Throwing the door open, Hank and Bishop went through like a hurricane, guns up and searching for targets.
The command center looked like a high-end ship’s bridge, with consoles set in several concentric half-circles behind a large set of picture windows. As Hank swept his muzzle from the corner across the room, he saw that most of the men in the room were techs, wearing the white shirt and dark blue slacks of the PLAN’s summer service uniform. None of them appeared to be armed.
Except for one.
One of the men near the front was crouched behind a console, with what looked like a QCW-05 submachine gun in his hands. He started to pop up at just the wrong time, trying to draw a bead on Huntsman.
Hank shot him through the skull from fifteen feet away, spattering his brains on the console behind him.
As the others herded the frightened PLAN sailors into a corner, Hank moved to what looked like a communications console. He couldn’t tell if a message had been sent or not. As he looked out to sea, though, it appeared that the naval confrontation between the PLAN and the VPN was still going on.
Now to move to the next phase. Because from what he could read, it looked like a lot of what they needed was right there in that room. “This is Actual. Command post secured.
“Seven Two Actual, get your ass up here.”
Chapter 27
Gaven Reef seemed to have gone quiet. Smoke still billowed from the pier, as Chan’s Triarii continued to add to the smoke screen with more HC smoke grenades. Hank couldn’t tell if they’d captured or killed the fire crew, but the trawler was still “on fire.”
They hadn’t gotten good intel to indicate the actual numbers of PLAN marines on Gaven Reef. Hank had seen what appeared to be most of a platoon, and there was a platoon’s worth of ZBD-05s parked on the shore. And the Triarii had certainly killed or maimed enough to render a platoon combat ineffective.
Provided these PLAN marines weren’t the kind of fanatics that had been described the last time Americans had faced Red Chinese with bullets and bayonets, in Korea. B
ut that had been the better part of a century ago, and they hadn’t seen that kind of to-the-death tenacity during the fights in the Southwest. This was the “Little Emperor” generation, the result of an entire generation of Communist Chinese only children, thanks to Beijing’s generation-long “One Child Policy.”
So far, that, plus the fact that they were on an isolated platform in the South China Sea, where the PLAN marines really hadn’t been expecting anyone to hit them this way, seemed to be keeping things quiet on the reef. How long that would last, if the commissar Hank had shot had gotten a message out to the Dalian, was anyone’s guess.
Chan came hustling up the steps with two of his Triarii, Kane and Ferguson. “The ZBD-05s are all secured.” He moved quickly to the consoles, reading the Mandarin readouts almost as fast, as he reported. “So far, the noncombatants seem to be trying to stay out of the way and get under their desks, in the hopes that this will all go away.”
“So far.” Hank pointed to the body on the deck, the QCW-05 5.8mm submachine gun now slung around Huntsman’s neck just to be safe. “That one tried to be a hero. And we don’t have time to try to secure everybody in this place.” The main building was a fortress, and at a good six stories tall, there were a lot of places in it for someone to hide. Especially an armed someone regrouping to hit the invaders.
“It’s always been a possibility.” Chan wasn’t trying to be dismissive, Hank knew, though he sounded a bit distracted as he looked over the consoles. “Huh. They’ve got a whole message log here. Not only that, but…” He tapped a key, and one of the screens lit up with over a dozen separate windows, each showing a part of the interior of the complex in real time. Yet another covered most of the exterior. “Typical Commies. Got to be watching each other all the damned time, even in the middle of fucking nowhere.” The bitterness was there in his voice for anyone paying attention. Chan had been pretty young when his family had gotten out of Hong Kong, but his father must have had some stories.