More and more desperate, starving people began streaming from the buildings all around them. The growing noise of the panicked civilians began to seriously compete against the scream of the missiles and roar of the jets overhead. Only the explosions—temporarily—silenced the river of humanity that was beginning to flow down Orlando's streets.
Pinner cursed again and the M-ATV shuddered as they ran into another pedestrian. Erik closed his eyes at the heart-stopping sound and prayed that he would live to see Brin again. He gritted his teeth and swore he would do everything in his power to reach her and see her to safety, if only God would do everything in His power to clear a path through the civilians.
CHAPTER 8
Quagmire
ROB REMOVED HIS STETSON and took a knee in the hard-baked dirt outside the burned home. He wiped the sweat from his forehead and glanced at the noon-day sun in the azure sky. Another scorcher of an early-autumn Arizona day.
He sorely wished that the heat was the only problem he had to worry about. He, Lance, and a hand-picked group of Regulators were standing on the outskirts of town. It was the nearest town to the mountain fortress the Regulators now called home.
Reports had come in the previous day that military units of some kind were moving through town ransacking the place. Some civilians had been killed. At first, Rob had discounted the rumors as an attempt by the Chinese to draw his men out in force and trap them.
Rob knew the Regulators who had survived the early days defending Nogales were a hard group of veterans who wouldn’t hesitate at the opportunity to get some payback with the invaders. Now that the Regulators had been forced to retreat into the mountains in order to escape the Chinese army, every single man was a precious commodity.
Rob sighed and brushed the soot from his hands as he stood. Before all the trouble had started, before the Mexicans had crossed the border en masse, before those terrorists they’d captured and executed had told them about the coming invasion…everything had been so easy. When a Regulator had needed to move on to other pursuits, they just let Rob know, then up and left. New blood was always joining up to help patrol the border. Back when the power was on, back before the invasion. Back when things were normal and all they had to worry about were a few border-jumpers.
Now, hidden in the alpine forest of the high country, the Regulators acted more like guerrillas. It made them infinitely harder for the Chinese to find—but on the other hand, Rob soon had realized it made it equally hard for new recruits to find them. Every man who went down with an injury was another man lost. The men that Lance and his team—indeed all the Rapid Action Force teams—had lost…those men could not be replaced so easily any longer.
Rob sighed. He had been sucked into a war of attrition. The Chinese, despite having to ship everything halfway across the planet, seemed to have a never ending flow of soldiers and supplies. Yet the Regulators slowly dwindled in their own country. Every engagement cost Rob and the Regulators more than they could afford in supplies and ammunition. Without the bountiful loot they were collecting from the Chinese, Rob had come to the conclusion the Regulators would be out of commission in a month.
What good is all the guns and ammo and gear we’re collecting if there’s no one left to use it against the Chinese?
“Same thing at the other houses…” Lance’s quiet voice startled Rob back to the unpleasant task at hand.
Rob picked up some of the red, crusty dirt that held a thin layer of ash and soot. He rubbed the fine granules between his fingers and felt the silky-smoothness of the superfine ash.
What a waste.
“How many were in this one?” he asked. Rob sighed as he brushed his hands on his jeans.
Lance looked down at the notebook in his hand. “Family of seven. Surviving family lives over yonder,” he said, gesturing down the street towards another charred pile of rubble that was once a family’s home. “Said they buried these ones already.”
Rob shook his head. “These people are paying a high price…”
“Because of us,” said Lance.
“Yeah,” whispered Rob. Guilt washed over him. “Because of us.”
A commotion behind them caused both men to turn and look. The rest of the Regulators were standing around a woman with two children who was screaming and waving her arms. Some locals were behind her, trying unsuccessfully to calm her down. Rob noticed they weren’t trying too hard—they all wore angry expressions on their faces.
As Rob and Lance approached, the locals began to express themselves even louder:
“—hadn’t come here, they’d still be alive!”
“He’s right,” shrieked the hysterical woman. “My husband would still be here to hug his children if you survivalist assholes hadn’t taken up shop in the mountains and led the Chinese straight to us!”
“Ma’am,” said Nate, reaching out a hand to try and keep her from slapping him. “I sympathize with your loss—hell, we’ve lost a lot of good people lately—but—”
“You sympathize with my loss? My husband of twelve years is dead because the Chinese came through here looking for you!”
“Yeah!” said a man behind the screaming woman who looked to Rob like he could have been her older brother. “You boys come in here with all your guns and horses and cowboy hats and the damn Chinese came in with tanks!”
“Did they tell you they were looking for us?” asked Rob in a measured tone.
That put the locals back on their heels. They glanced at each other. One man shrugged. “Does it matter? You show up and then less than a month later, the damn Chinese army shows up and starts to burn down the town. It’s obvious they were looking for you!”
A shorter man at the back of the crowd pushed his way forward. His face was a mess of bruises and cuts. It looked like someone had used his face for a hockey puck in the Stanley Cup Finals. “You’re damn right they were looking for you—look what they did to me! Tried to beat it out of me. If I knew where you were at, I’d have drawn them a map!” He spat into the dirt.
“You folks hear about Nogales?” asked Lance. “We used to live there. Protected the border. When all this mess started,” said Lance. He put his hands on his hips, brashly displaying the six-shooter holstered low on his hip. “We were fighting illegal aliens. Then we ran across some terrorists that were using the Mexicans to break down the border—for their own reasons. When the dust settled, we saw the Chinese comin’ up out of the desert like a damn snake. We knew we couldn’t fight them by ourselves—”
“Because let me tell you, there ain’t no one else out there anymore that gives a damn about Arizona. We used to work pretty close with Border Patrol—even they got left out to dry by Washington,” added Rob.
“And we left Nogales before the Chinese even knew we were there. They didn’t follow us—they were coming north on their own,” added Lance. “Only thing we did was delay the inevitable. They would’a been here two weeks ago if we hadn’t slowed ‘em down some.”
“Yeah, well, they may not have followed you, but you sure pissed ‘em off! They were asking everyone about the location of the ‘local extremists’. Yeah, they asked if we knew any gun nuts around here,” one of the locals said. He wiped the sweat from his brow with his forearm.
The woman glanced at the Regulators, all sporting ARs or AK-47s liberated from the Chinese they’d killed. “You guys sure fit that bill pretty well,” she spat.
Rob glanced at his camo-clad men and took in the rifles, pistols, day packs, ammo pouches, tactical vests… She’s right, he told himself. If anyone fits that bill, it’s us. He looked down the dusty street at the destroyed homes. Most were burned to the ground, but some had walls blown in and were only partially collapsed. The entire town only had maybe a hundred homes. Rob could count upwards of seventy right in front of him that had been reduced to charred rubble. The sight sickened him and left a foul taste in his mouth, but he forced himself to look.
“You get off on killing their men, and now they’re gettin
g off on killing us.”
“And what are you gonna do about it?” asked the woman, clutching her children close. “My house is gone, my husband—” her voice faltered. “We have no place to go, no food, no…no nothing.” A fresh wave of tears left water-tracks on her soot-smeared face. She hunched over the sad faces of her young boys, her body shaking with silent sobs. The stone-faced man Rob figured for her brother stepped up behind her and put a gentle hand on her shoulder.
“She’s right. The hell you think you can do—beat all those Chinese guys on your own? Shoot,” he said, his voice filled with contempt. “If I’d known where you jackasses were hiding, I’d have told the Chinks what they wanted to know in a heartbeat.” He crossed his arms, as if daring Rob to offer a rebuttal.
Rob looked at his own scuffed, dusty boots. He had no answer. They were right. He had led the Regulators out of the forest and down the mountain to attack the Chinese. The Chinese had then started hunting the Regulators, tracked them up into the forest. Lance and his team had struck the first blow and wiped out a few Chinese patrols—which were then increased in size. Rob had responded by creating the RAFs and countering the larger Chinese patrols. More skirmishes, more death. The Chinese sent even larger groups of men—the Regulators countered again, always hitting hard and fast and disappearing into the trees and up the mountains.
Now it was clear the Chinese were adopting an age-old strategy to flush out insurgents. Destroy the communities the insurgents needed to survive, turn the local population against the ‘freedom fighters’ and just plan outlast them.
Rob continued to think, his mind racing in many directions at once as the locals continued to berate him and the other Regulators. He glanced back at the burned house and saw a charred crib. A small bundle of black soot was in the crib. Rob nearly lost his breakfast at the pathetic sight of the dead child’s burned body. Just a shape really—he couldn’t see the actual body, but he knew what that black lump in the burned, half-collapsed crib was.
My fault. All this…my pride led me to think the Regulators were…what…? An army of patriots? He tasted bile in his mouth again. That poor child…dying alone and likely scared out of its mind…
“—leave and get the hell out of here! All of you! Maybe if you just go the other towns around here wont’ suffer as bad as we have…” said the distraught woman.
“I am so sorry,” said Rob softly.
“You can take your apology and stuff it up your ass!” said big brother.
“All of you are welcome to…” Rob looked at the hard faces arrayed against him. They’d never come to the Regulator camp, if nothing else than out of spite. There was nothing but hatred, loss, and grief left in this little town. He sighed and took one last glance at the burned crib and it’s tiny, pathetic occupant. “If there’s anything—”
“Shut up!” screamed the woman. She lunged for Rob and was caught by Nate and Lance. “Let me go!” she hissed, struggling like a wet cat. When she realized she’d never break free, she screamed in frustration. “Just leave! Get out of here! Now!”
Defeated and utterly sick to his stomach, Rob nodded and gave the signal to the rest of the Regulators to saddle up. He walked back to his truck, trying to ignore the shouts and jeers hurled at him from the locals. Where once he and the Regulators were hailed as patriots and even saviors back in Nogales, now they were traitors, criminals. Baby-killers.
Safe in the cab of his truck, Rob looked over at Lance as he climbed aboard and shut the door. The noise of the locals was muffled, but still there. They began approaching the Regulator vehicles. A rock bounced off Lance’s door.
“Let’s roll, boys,” said Lance into his radio.
Rob started the truck and led the sad procession out of the shriveled, burned husk that was once known as Pine Bluff, Arizona.
THIS REPORT IS UNACCEPTABLE Minister Po,” said Shin Ho formally. He looked at the report in his hands and slammed it down on the expensive wooden desk. “These Americans are resisting more than we thought possible.”
Po Sin spread his hands in a wide gesture that was meant to convey a shrug. “How could we have possibly known that these cowboys would decide to fight an army? An army! It’s ludicrous!”
“This resistance is costing us soldiers and supplies that we can ill afford to lose—”
“We have plenty of everything—including men,” said Po Sin with a confidence that he wasn’t sure he felt anymore. “It is more an irritation than anything. They are as so many mosquitoes biting a rhinoceros.”
“Whatever you want to call it, they are slowing down progress—and that,” said Shin Ho pointing a finger into the face of his subordinate, “is patently unacceptable to the Supreme Leader.”
“You think I do not know this?” shouted Po Sin, taking his argumentative former friend off-guard. “My neck is on the line as much as yours, Mr. Undersecretary.” Po Sin shook his head in disgust. “These Americans—they don’t know when to give up! Anyone one else would have surrendered and been happy to receive our mercy, our food, water, and medical supplies. But no! They must fight us tooth and nail over land that is little better than desert. It makes no sense.”
Shin Ho, the nominal regional leader of the Communist Party of the People’s Republic, looked down at his manicured hands. He was quiet for a moment. Po Sin studied the slightly overweight man whom he had counted as a dear friend just some months ago. They had been good-natured rivals when the conquest had started. Now, Shin Ho had begun to climb the political ladder and was just a few heartbeats away from becoming Supreme Leader in his own right.
Po Sin would never forgive his old friend for leaving him behind. It had been his plan, after all. If anyone, it was him who should be sitting behind the desk that Shin Ho now occupied.
“Would we?” said Shin Ho softly.
Po Sin rolled his eyes and sighed. “I don’t have time for this, Mr. Undersecretary. I’ve got to get the updated recommendations to—don’t look at me like that.” He sighed again. “Very well…Would we what?” He lit an Arktika—his favorite Russian cigarette—and inhaled deeply, letting the unfiltered nicotine do its work and sooth his throbbing nerves. He exhaled the plume of pale smoke and marveled at how much flavor the Russians imparted into their cigarettes compared to the Americans.
“Would we give up? Or would we order our people to resist to their dying breathes?”
Po Sin laughed around his cigarette and clapped his hands. “Oh, yes, we would crack the whip and order our people to throw themselves at our enemy. And why not? We have plenty to spare. But these Americans,” he said, taking a deep drag, “They do this willingly, in some perverse idea that they are defending their country. Their own government doesn’t lift a finger…it’s madness, sheer madness.”
“That is what makes me nervous, old friend.”
Po Sin examined the glowing tip of the cigarette in his hand, then shifted his gaze through the light haze of smoke towards the Undersecretary. “They are rabble, Shin Ho. They lack coordination—” he waved his left hand. “Aiya! They live in the woods like Robin Hood for goodness sake!”
“A fairy tale?”
“Yes!” hissed Po Sin. “Something to be dismissed and forgotten as one matures into adulthood.” He leveled his sternest glare at his waffling friend.
Shin Ho picked up a report and scanned it with his hooded, sleepy-looking eyes. “This is the latest report from the commander in Arizona. It seems we have lost a total of 124 men, enough supplies and weapons to outfit an entire infantry company and two scout vehicles.” He looked up. “I would not call that a fairy tale.”
Po Sin leaned back in his chair, rubbing his forehead with his left hand while the cigarette dangled from his right arm. He closed his eyes. “This is getting us nowhere. Just tell me what the Supreme Leader wants.”
“He wants a swift victory.”
“I know that.” Po Sin needed another drag to keep his temper in check. He exhaled and watched the smoke swirl in the office air. There,
that’s better. He continued: “I mean, I want to know what he expects of me? Initiative or by-the-book?”
Shin Ho stared at him with a gaze that suggested nothing and gave away nothing. The man was impossible to read. It was as if he were in a staring contest with his wife’s cat.
At last Po Sin leaned forward and snubbed out his cigarette in the pristine ashtray on Shin Ho’s polished desk. “Here is the situation. We can do one of two things, the way I see it. One,” he held up his left hand. “We continue the push on to California, ignore the losses we’re taking and leave these cowboys in our rear—hoping they don’t do too much damage to our supply train...or raise an army behind us.”
He held up his right hand. “Or two, we split our forces. One half—the bigger half—proceeds as planned toward Tucson and on into California. The other half focuses on rooting out these barbarians and killing them all.”
Shin Ho leaned back in his executive chair and clasped his hands over his paunch. He pursed his lower lip and blinked, looking for all the world like a confused koi. At length, he spoke: “This second force you speak of—what are the plans to, as you say, root out these troublemakers—these…what do they call themselves?” He leaned forward and glanced at the report. “Ah. Regulators.”
Po Sin grinned. “That’s the best part—we’ll let the local civilians flush them out for us. We’ve already started, in fact. I had the area commander assault a small town near where we think these cowboys are operating. Burned it to the ground, made a show of killing the adult males and older boys. We demand knowledge of these Regulators in return for leniency. It has worked in the past. In the end, the locals will sell out these freedom fighters for a chance at peace. Look how it worked in Cambodia.”
“I don't know,” muttered Shin Ho. “Cambodians and Americans are two different creatures.”
“True enough,” replied Po Sin. “Perhaps it will just take a little longer, cost a few more soldiers.” He waved a hand in dismissal. “In the end, it’s simply human nature. You’ll see.”
Sic Semper Tyrannis Page 12