by James Rosone
“Grenade!” shouted Dawson.
A dark object landed in front of the log where Andrews was. The grenade exploded before Andrews had a chance to duck. When it detonated, it ripped his right forearm off his body, along with his right leg from the knee down. The severed parts of his body fell to the side, his right hand still gripping the Pig but no longer shooting it. A horrible scream emanated from the piled mass of flesh that was the remnants of Andrews.
“Cover me, Currie!” shouted Dawson as he ran over to Andrews, emptying half of his magazine as he ran.
Popping out from behind another tree, Currie unloaded half a magazine into two enemy soldiers who had tried to flank their position. He felt the bolt lock to the rear, letting him know his magazine was empty. He hit the release and pulled the spent magazine out, dropping it into the pouch on the left side of his leg. Changing hands, he grabbed for a fresh magazine from the carrier on his body armor and was just about to slap it in place when another soldier popped out from behind a tree no more than ten or fifteen feet from Currie.
The enemy soldier looked about as surprised as Currie was. He tried to swing his rifle up to fire on Currie, but Currie ran right at the soldier. His hand was still trying to seat the magazine on his gun when his right shoulder plowed into the man. The five-foot-six Chinese soldier was thrown backwards, spraying bullets everywhere while his body flew through the air.
Currie felt something graze his right arm and then something else slammed directly into his chest. Staggering backwards from the hit, Currie brought his own rifle up and fired three rounds into the upper chest and face of the man who’d just shot him. The enemy soldier’s face imploded from the 6.8mm slugs, nearly decapitating him.
Currie practically fell backwards while he was shooting, until his body hit the tree behind him, which helped to stop his fall and stabilize him. It took him a second to catch his breath, though. The round had knocked the wind right out of him.
Then he remembered Dawson and Andrews. Turning on his heel, he ran around a couple of trees to where he had last seen the two of them. Dawson had turned Andrews over to work on him. Currie almost had to look away when he saw how messed up Andrews was. He was in really bad shape. Aside from his arm and leg, the right side of his jaw was ripped open. His eyes still looked good, but Currie could see the fear in them. Andrews was scared; he knew he could die, and he didn’t want to.
“Hang on, Andrews. We’re going to get you out of here,” Currie heard himself saying as he ran towards the two of them.
Currie heard more shouting in Chinese. It was getting closer. A loud boom from the sniper echoed through the jungle. Hawk was still shooting, only now he was helping to cover them.
“Two, Six. What’s the holdup?” barked the captain.
“Six, Two. Andrews is hurt,” Currie replied. “He’s bad. We need help.”
“Watch out!” shouted Dawson as he saw movement to the right of Currie.
Currie dropped to a knee as he turned to the right, then cut loose a controlled burst from his Sig into the enemy soldier who’d snuck up around them.
“I need to clear this place out. Keep him alive; help is on the way!” Currie yelled as he moved to his original position a few meters away.
When he reached the fallen tree he’d first hidden behind, he saw his extra magazine was still there, as well as the WP grenade. He also saw a group of seven enemy soldiers moving around to his right while another group of eight soldiers was advancing to their left. Now that they’d gotten themselves a bit more organized, they were trying to encircle the American positions.
Reaching for one of his fragmentation grenades, Currie pulled the pin and gave it a good throw at the soldiers to his right. Then he grabbed the WP grenade and ran to his left. He sprinted past Dawson, who was tying off a tourniquet on Andrews’s arm to go along with the one he’d already finished tying on his leg.
Crump. The first grenade exploded.
“We got guys moving to our right, Dawson!” Currie yelled.
When Currie reached the spot he was looking for, he saw the cluster of soldiers fanning out as they prepared to bum rush their position. Currie threw the Willie Pete grenade, trying to do his best to lob it high in the air over top of their position.
The soldiers saw the object fly into the air and stopped just long enough to see that it was probably going to fly over their heads. As they returned their gazes to Currie and brought their rifles up to shoot him, the WP exploded over them, dousing the area with a chemical cloud that would burn everything it touched.
One of the ChiComs just under the grenade let out a bloodcurdling scream as parts of his skin began to melt off his face. A couple of other soldiers started shrieking as the chemical landed on their clothes and exposed skin.
While the enemy soldiers were distracted, Currie began to gun them down. In the chaos and confusion, he made short work of them. Just as he was shooting at one last Chinese soldier who’d ducked behind a clump of trees, Currie heard shouting and shooting behind him.
He turned to head back to where Dawson and Andrews were and saw Dawson toss a hand grenade in the direction of their right flank before he opened fire with his own Sig Spear.
Raising his own rifle, Currie moved to the side of a tree not far from Dawson and scanned for additional targets. He found two soldiers repositioning as they sought to get behind their positions. Sighting in on one of them, Currie squeezed the trigger, sending a short burst of accurate fire at the enemy soldier, who he thought must either be a senior sergeant or an officer. The man went down in a heap.
Moments later, a volley of gunfire ripped through the area around the remaining PLA soldiers, dropping several of them.
“Two, Six. We’re coming up on your positions now,” called out the voice of their captain.
Seconds later, five of their fellow teammates emerged from the jungle, heading right for them. Their team medic ran towards Andrews and dropped his medical bag next to their wounded comrade.
“Quite the mess you created, Currie,” Captain Thorne said as several of the other teammates joined the fray.
“It looks like they’re falling back,” called out one of the soldiers.
Another guy in their team was plinking 40mm grenades at the retreating soldiers. The thunderous bang of Hawk’s sniper rifle continued to let them know he was still picking guys off.
“Thanks for coming. Andrews is in a bad way,” Currie replied as he swapped out another magazine.
“We need to move, Doc,” Thorne called out as he walked up to survey Andrews.
Andrews looked pale and pasty at this point. He had lost a lot of blood and was clearly going into shock. Captain Thorne walked up to the man and gently held what was left of the man’s face in his hand. Andrews’s eyes focused on him. “You came back for me, sir.”
Thorne chuckled at the comment. “Of course we came back for you. You still owe me twenty dollars from that Phillies game. Now hang in there. We’re going to get you patched up and then carry you back to the LZ. You got me?”
Andrews nodded. “Water.”
Doc gave him a little bit of water as best he could with the right half of his face and jaw ripped open. Then he gave him an injection of a new kind of pain medication, followed by a shot of iron. Finally, he situated an IV bag to help replace the blood volume Andrews had lost.
“OK, buddy. I’m going to throw you over my shoulder and carry you out,” Doc explained. “I’m going to keep this IV bag open wide while we move. When we get to the LZ, I’m going to give you another one. I need you to hang in there, Andrews,” Doc said.
“Sure thing, Doc. Let’s go,” Andrews replied. The pain medication had an immediate effect, and he had a dopey expression as he spoke. As soon as the fluids started going in, his complexion began to improve—he no longer looked like a ghost.
Doc picked Andrews up and placed him over his shoulder. With his other hand, he held the IV bag up as much as he could. Two of the other teammates took off ahead of
Doc, clearing him a path and making sure he was covered.
Over the course of the next few minutes, the rest of the team fell back in an organized manner. One guy would toss a grenade, then empty his magazine in the direction of the remaining enemy soldiers. Then he’d run past the next teammate and slap him on the shoulder. That guy would toss his own grenade and unload a magazine or belt of ammo, depending on his weapon. Four of the nine able-bodied teammates would repeat this process twice while the others continued to retreat as quick as they could towards their predetermined LZ.
Captain Thorne had already called in their bird and told them they had an urgent surgical patient that needed to be extracted immediately. He’d also informed their operations center that they had successfully destroyed two more of the PLA self-propelled howitzers. The SPs had been the primary targets for the battalion. The damn artillery had been wreaking havoc on the port and the nearby airport they’d seized. They’d lost two F-16s, three Apaches, and two A-10s trying to hunt them down, so the Snake Eaters had been sent in to find and destroy them.
Ten minutes later, they’d probably put about a kilometer between them and the Chinese positions. No one was shooting at them anymore, and they couldn’t hear any more shouting or yelling in Chinese. They stopped for a moment, mostly so Doc could get a second IV started on Andrews.
“How long until the chopper gets here?” Currie asked, concern in his voice.
Thorne looked at his watch. “Twenty mikes. We still have another two kilometers to go before we’re at the LZ.”
“Then I guess we better get moving.”
With the second IV set up, Doc let them know he was ready to move again, and the group pressed on. They had to cover a lot of ground and didn’t have a lot of time. As they moved through the jungle, they neared an area with thinner tree cover. Eventually, they came to a spot that had only a small grouping of trees.
Their demo guy immediately started wrapping some of the smaller trees with det cord. He hooked a small triggering device and wire to it and unraveled it over to their position. Now they’d wait for their ride to come. When it showed up, he’d blow the charges, which would topple the few trees and create an instant landing zone in an area that otherwise wouldn’t have one. Creating these artificial landing zones was one way they were reducing the likelihood of their helicopters being shot down, since most of the suitable sites were usually observed by either PLA soldiers or Cuban militia units.
A few minutes later, a CH-47 Chinook headed toward them. It eventually settled down in the clearing they’d created. The team ran forward, carrying Andrews. A pair of Air Force PJs were on board and immediately went to work on their wounded comrade.
Seconds later, the helicopter was in the air and on the way to the Havana International Airport and the combat hospital that had been established there. The 82nd Airborne and the 101st had finally captured the capital a few days ago.
When their helicopter turned to head away from the valley they’d spent the last few days in, Currie saw a couple of fast movers zip through the place. They raced off in the direction of where they’d hit those two howitzers. Although he couldn’t see what they dropped, a huge string of flame and explosions rippled across the area as the two fighters pulled up and away. They’d plastered the hell out of the area, probably hoping they’d destroyed the other two self-propelled howitzers that might be nearby.
Sure enough, a handful of secondary explosions erupted in the wake of the fighters. Maybe they’d gotten lucky and hit them, or maybe they’d nailed an ammo dump. In either case, they’d blown something of value apart, and that was all that mattered.
Currie felt a tap on his knee and looked up to find Captain Thorne trying to say something to him. He leaned in closer so he could hear. “Currie, you did a hell of a job back there. You guys kept Andrews alive and you took that other howitzer out. Damn good work.”
Currie smiled. He was just glad it looked like their teammate was probably going to make it. Andrews’s color was looking a lot better. He was on his third bag of fluids, and they were only ten minutes away from the airport now. Not much longer.
Chapter Thirteen
NATO Plus One?
SHAPE Headquarters
Mons, Belgium
General Lisa Yeager wished the American delegation could be here in person instead of attending via video from NORAD and the Pentagon. She understood the need for security, but some meetings were best held in person. At least the President-elect was on the call. However, her screen showed she was muted, as she wouldn’t be participating in the call. She was still nearly six weeks away from assuming power, but she couldn’t be coming into the White House with zero support or knowledge of the world situation.
It had come as a bit of a surprise when the Vice President had lost—then again, the country was reeling from one crisis after another for the last eighteen months, and rightly or wrongly, the administration in power was being blamed for it all.
“Ahem,” said General Sir Nick Carter. “I don’t like this one bit. For all we know, the Russians are in on this.”
General Sir Nick Carter was the United Kingdom’s Chief of the Defence Staff. He’d flown in just to attend this emergency meeting of the senior NATO leadership.
“The Russian Far East has been ravaged by COVID-24, while the Chinese guest workers appear to have escaped unscathed,” countered Lieutenant General Hubert de Mauny, the French general in charge of Allied Joint Force Command out of Brunssum. “I’m not sure about you, but that seems like quite the coincidence, doesn’t it?”
“Right now, we need to address the growing problem of these Chinese submarines sinking our commercial ships in the Indian Ocean and the Red Sea. We’ve seen an incredible number of ships sunk,” declared General Markus Kneip from the German Army. “The sinking of these freighters and oil tankers is going to have a seriously negative effect on the continent in the coming weeks. If the Russians were really in cahoots with the Chinese, then why would the Russians not only sell European oil and LNG, but make even more available to fill in the gaps the sinkings have created? Therefore, I think it is safe to say the Russian offer is legitimate and something we should consider.”
Chancellor Helmut Zimmer pushed his chair back and stood for a moment. Everyone stopped talking and looked at him, waiting to see what he was about to say.
“What we have been discussing is important. But what no one has talked about yet is why the Chinese are waging a war against NATO and the West. When the Chinese launched their surprise attack against the United States, they also carried out a surprise attack against Europe. Not only was it a military attack, but they also systematically attacked our people on social media and the internet. In the span of less than an hour, social media was blanketed with all sorts of these deep fake attacks, depicting our forces carrying out coordinated first-strike attacks against their country, therefore justifying their own use of force against us,” the Chancellor angrily explained.
“I think we need to figure out why the Chinese did this so we can determine how best to counter it,” he continued. “Clearly, they have a purpose in mind with these attacks, so what is it?”
No one said anything for a moment. It was a good question the Chancellor had asked. People largely understood why the Chinese had attacked the US—the two nations had been engaged in an on-again, off-again trade war for the better part of six years—a trade war that had had huge repercussions on their own economy. But why attack Europe? Why start to threaten Russia?
President Jean Lemieux of France chimed in to add his own thoughts on the matter. “I think it has something to do with the Chinese wanting room to expand and grow.”
“But why now?” asked Vanessa Dunn, the UK Prime Minister. “What made now the right time to start a world war?”
US President Frank Alton finally joined the conversation. “I think it’s pretty obvious,” he asserted. “COVID-24. When this virus first hit the world some eight months ago, it caught like wildfire. It spre
ad even faster than COVID-19 had four years earlier. Our experts at the CDC, in coordination with our intelligence experts, believe COVID-24 is a lab-engineered virus. We know this because the Chinese had developed and distributed a vaccine to their allies prior to its release—that couldn’t have been done if they hadn’t created this virus themselves to leverage for some nefarious purpose. We believed this virus was created to go after specific segments of the global population—the elderly, and those individuals with specific comorbidities.”
President Alton held his hand up toward the video camera, letting the others know he wasn’t done speaking and wanted them to hold their questions. “I know there are arguments that have been made against the claim I have just made. But hear me out. I think the COVID virus was meant to do more than just attack our societies and destroy our economies. I think it was also meant to solve a very real and serious problem in China.”
“What problem could that possibly be?” asked the Dutch Prime Minister skeptically.
President Alton leaned forward, looking into the camera as he spoke. “The Chinese population has surpassed 1.9 billion people. That is a lot of mouths to feed. They also have a very old population, with more than sixteen percent of their people above the age of sixty-five. By comparison, in India, that same demographic is only seven percent of their population. In a few years, the elderly in China will account for twenty-two percent of the population. In economic terms, feeding their people and meeting their medical needs when nearly one-quarter of their population is elderly and retired is beyond what they can sustain. The COVID-24 virus effectively wiped out a huge majority of this aging population, leaving China with a relatively young and healthy population.”
Alton continued, “When the virus made its way to Europe and America, it ravaged our countries. Nearly 1.5 percent of our populations have died from the virus. Fortunately, the CDC was able to replicate a stolen copy of the vaccine we obtained from Cuba prior to the war. We’re also lucky that the virus has largely burned itself out. But this left our nations in a precarious position. Our economies have been ravaged for months, our people are restive, and these deep fake attacks have sown chaos and discord within our countries. I couldn’t think of a better time to initiate a war to dominate the globe, militarily or economically, than right now.”