Locals called the peak they were on Sugar Loaf. It stood at the southern end of a ridge cut with deep ravines. Pine trees dotted the top but not the southern slope. The ground between them and the Chinese was open and clear.
Bear slid below the crest of the hill, hidden from Chinese lookouts. “It makes sense now. They’re building bridges so those fuel trucks can get to the army base.”
“I still don’t get it,” she said. “Why not go cross country, capture the base, and build the bridges afterward?”
“I’m guessing they don’t know what’s there, so they’re keeping the tanks and AFVs with them for the firepower. Us attacking them must have convinced them the base defenses are stronger than they really are, so they’re gonna keep together.” He paused and scratched the stubble on his jaw.
“That’s a lot of firepower down there,” Artu said. “I wish we still had the RPGs. Even with these rockets Jane brought, we can’t hurt them — we’re not in range.”
“No, we’re not…”
“What do we do, Bear? Go back and try to blow up one of the bridges they’ve built?”
“I think we’ve done everything we can do,” Artu said. “It’s time to cut our losses.”
“Go home?” Jane grimaced.
“What else can we do?”
Bear’s scowl folded his face inward. He bared his teeth in a snarl like his namesake animal. “Do whatever the hell you want. But those fuckers haven’t begun to pay for what they did to Lissa and my baby.”
“Hey, man, you know I’m with you as long as it’s not suicide. What’s your plan?”
“I’m heading to Clio.”
#
Chapter 32
I never chased trouble, but if it found me, I made it sorry for doing so.
Funerary inscription believed to be for Tudiya, King of Assyria, circa 2500 b.c.
Operation Overtime
0941 hours, April 16
Tom Steeple refused to show fear in front of subordinates and his iron self-control allowed him to appear calm. But in truth, the assassination attempt had left him traumatized and terrified. Although he’d technically been in combat before, it had always been behind the action, where the biggest danger was a random mortar shell. Nobody had ever before targeted him personally and he couldn’t understand how Angriff remained so calm about it. He talked to hide his nervousness, telling stories and acting like the stoic commander he thought of himself being, but deep down inside he knew the truth.
“After we’re done at the hydroponics farm and reviewing the troops, I thought we could adjourn to the Crystal Palace, show you the best view you’ve ever seen,” Angriff said.
“Crystal Palace?”
“Headquarters. The terraced levels are called the Clam Shell and my office is the Crystal Palace.”
“Clever.”
The emvees stopped at the main gates of the hydroponics farm. The doors slid to either side as they did at the Clam Shell, except these were titanium blast doors, not glass. Twenty feet wide and thirty high, the design allowed vehicles to pull into a parking area inside. Once Green Ghost and Vapor had gone ahead and cleared the area, they waved the rest of the little convoy through.
The director of the farm, Dr. Sharon Goldstone, heard the clatter of the emvees on the metal flooring and looked up from two levels below. As Steeple watched, she handed a clipboard to someone and then climbed the stairs. He wondered if she had recognized him yet. Maybe they could steal a few minutes alone somewhere. After all, his wife hadn’t thawed yet. He climbed out of the emvee and leaned on the wire fence that separated the landing from the farm itself.
The cavern measured five hundred feet at its widest point. From bottom to top was three hundred twenty feet. Each level contained thousands of containers with various plants growing in them. Tubes, pipes, and valves stood beside each section of containers. Natural lighting flooded the chamber through a series of mirrors, while LEDs augmented the system. The beauty of the LEDs was the ability to tune each light frequency to the optimum wavelength of the plants it fed.
Even distracted by the familiar form of Sharon Goldstone, Steeple couldn’t help being awed by the immensity of the hydroponics farm. “I knew what it looked like,” he said. “But it’s like watching a football game live and watching it on T.V. No matter how good the picture, or how big the screen, T.V. doesn’t capture the sense of space you get from actually being there. Seeing the hydrofarm in person… this is incredible.”
“Nick, what a surprise!” Sharon Goldstone said. “And Tom Steeple, as I live and breathe. Where did you come from?”
“Hello, Sharon. It’s nice to see you again,” Steeple said.
“Nick.” She touched the dried blood on his forearm. “What happened?”
“Somebody tried to kill us,” he said.
“Again? I thought that was all over with.”
“As did I.” Angriff glanced aside. Colonel Walling edged close to Angriff’s shoulder, a sure sign he needed to speak to the general. Not a flicker of expression crossed Angriff’s face. “Since you two know each other already, why don’t you give Tom the nickel tour of this place?”
“Sure,” she said. Steeple noticed Angriff’s expression when he looked at her and smiled a tiny smile. “Let me show you around the place, Tom.”
#
“What happened?” Goldstone said.
“Suicide bomber from the RSVS. We barely got away.”
She paused and Steeple felt the odd sensation of her inspecting his face. “I thought they cleaned all of that up last year,” she said after a moment.
“Apparently not. Now fill me in on everything that’s happened here, but make it fast. I figure we’ve got about ten minutes. I saw the look Nick gave you. How’s that going?”
“It’s going.”
“What does that mean?”
“It means you can’t rush this sort of thing, Tom, especially not with Nick Angriff.”
“Hurry up and sleep with him. I may need your influence sooner than I thought.”
“I’m telling you it’s not that easy. He’s still in love with his wife. Just know that I’ll do anything I have to do to make sure you wind up in command.”
“Anything?”
“Anything.”
“You’re the best. I’d kiss you but somebody might see. Now tell me what happened to Bettison.”
#
Angriff had gotten to know his chief of staff well over the previous nine months, and now he recognized that Walling wore his important news expression. “Good, bad, or indifferent?”
“Sir?”
“Your news, is it good, bad, or indifferent?”
“Oh. I think it’s bad. It’s Task Force Quarterback, sir—”
“Is that the Yuma lurp?”
“The Marines reconnoitering Yuma, yes, sir, they’re within twenty miles of the city and saw some sort of patrol flying the Mexican flag. They request orders.”
“Is this the Mexican military?”
“Unknown at this point.”
“But they’re on U.S. soil…”
“I’d say that’s correct, General.”
Angriff rubbed his chin. He wanted a cigar. “Tell them to take prisoners if possible, but under no circumstances are they to reveal their presence or risk engaging the enemy.”
“Enemy, sir?”
“If the Mexican military is on American soil, then yeah, they’re the enemy.”
Walling hated the part of his job that required him to say what he said next. “Sir, as your chief, I have to point out that the Mexicans might have filled a power vacuum to protect innocent people. We can’t know their intentions.”
Angriff’s face twisted into both anger and amazement. Amazement that Walling found the balls to put up resistance, even though it was one of his duties, and anger that he was right. Walling fought closing his eyes in anticipation of the shit storm heading his way.
Looking for all the world like the feared Nick the A, Angriff pointed at
him. “It’s a good point, B.F. Tell Task Force Tijuana not to reveal their presence either to potential enemies or friends.”
Walling exhaled in relief. “Yes, sir.”
“And B.F.?”
“Sir?”
“Good job.”
#
Chapter 33
No proceeding is better than that which you have concealed from the enemy until the time you have executed it.
Nicolo Machiavelli, from The Art of War
Near Clio, CA
0719 hours, April 16
In the No Man’s Land beyond Chinese-controlled territory, old California Highway 70 had not fared well during a half-century of neglect. Cracks that the county highway department once repaired had widened, and the shoulders had crumbled away. Sinkholes pitted long stretches of roadway. The chain-ganged repair crews forced to work by their Chinese overlords didn’t come this far north.
At one point, dense forests of pine trees lined both sides of the highway where a straightaway exited a sharp curve. A knoll dotted with California pines overlooked the curve where vehicles had to slow down. It was the perfect spot for an ambush.
Bear spread his little group from forty yards ahead of the curve, around it, and then for thirty yards along the straightaway beyond. They had chopped through four large trees and supported them with ropes to keep them from falling. Cut the ropes and they’d fall across the highway, blocking it.
One convoy had already passed. It was guarded by four IFVs, each mounting two cannon. Such firepower was too much for them, even with the anti-tank rockets, so they let it go. The afternoon sun had begun its descent into the west, throwing shadows over the road, when they saw the next vehicles coming from Chinese territory to the southwest.
“There’s something in front I’ve never seen before,” Bear said as he watched them approach through the binoculars. Only Jane lay beside him and she watched through her own set. “It’s square and has a turret on top. There’s two of them, then two trucks. I can’t see anything behind that.”
“That front thing looks a lot like an American Humvee, but Humvees don’t have turrets that I’ve ever seen.”
He gave her an odd look. “How do you know this stuff?”
“I get around.”
“This is the one we’ve been waiting for.” He cupped hands round his mouth and shouted to the rest of the team. “This is it! Get ready!”
“I hope they can handle those Carl Gustavs,” Jane said. “General Lamar said they’re a lot trickier than an RPG.”
“It’s too late to worry about that now.” He moved around the little mound to a position where his squad could see him but the oncoming Chinese could not, and raised his right arm. Bear knew they had to time this perfectly. If they didn’t knock out the two armed vehicles right away, they’d never get another chance. With his chin in the dirt, he watched them approach.
Jane lay near his feet. She held her M-16 braced with the muzzle up, locked and loaded. With a quick glance backward, Bear winked at her, and she smiled. Sweat rolled into his eye but he ignored it. Any movement now could be misunderstood as the signal to release the trees.
As the wide car with the turret on top passed him coming out of the curve, he counted to five and then dropped his hand. Forty yards down the road, a sixty-foot pine tree began falling. Twenty yards closer a second fell, and then a third almost on top of him, and the last toppled into the middle of the curve.
One after another, the trees crashed to the pavement. Coming out of the curve, the lead Chinese vehicle had accelerated to over thirty miles an hour when the pine slammed to the ground twenty feet ahead. Pine needles and branches sprayed in all directions, blinding the driver, and he smashed into the trunk. The car’s crew hadn’t been wearing restraints and were all thrown forward and then back like sacks of flour.
From the roadside came the flash of a rocket as Bear’s team fired the first Carl Gustav. But instead of hitting the car, it struck a large branch and blew up, spraying more splinters over the vehicle. Then behind it, the other trees fell while the rockets screamed toward their targets and the second car and both trucks exploded and crashed. Bear and Jane rose from their hiding places and waited for targets to emerge from the wreckage.
Fire engulfed the two trucks as soldiers jumped out of the back and through the flames. None saw the man and woman hiding in the dense underbrush, so the pair took their time and made their shots count.
One man’s hair was on fire. He dropped to his knees at the road’s shoulder and rubbed his head in the dirt, trying to extinguish it. Another’s pants had caught fire and he tried to get them off, but the flames spread up his cotton uniform and engulfed him. Those two they let burn. As ammunition began to cook off and secondary explosions added to the chaos, they dropped every Chinese soldier who wasn’t already on fire. The man rubbing his head in the dirt had somehow extinguished the flames. Blackened skin covered the crown of his skull but he had the presence of mind to pick up a rifle, so Jane put two rounds into his forehead.
Bear inhaled the putrid smell of roasting flesh with grim satisfaction. He watched one man crawling along the pavement with no legs and no hands, using his elbows to drag himself away from the truck even as fire consumed him. Jane raised her rifle to put him out of his misery but Bear pushed the muzzle down.
“Let him burn,” he said. Jane’s horrified expression might once have bothered him, but not now. The bastards had killed Lissa, and they would pay.
Along with the rest of his team, he and Jane broke cover to check for signs of life among those they called Chinese. In fact, only the drivers and officers had been Chinese; the rest were all either black, white, or latino, but that didn’t matter to Bear. Dead or not, he put a bullet in every head, just to be sure.
A movement down the road caught his eye. The lead vehicle lay buried under heavy limbs and pine needles as the tree burned where the rocket had struck it. Someone inside had restarted it and was trying to free it before the flames engulfed it, too. Then Artu darted from cover and disappeared into the foliage hiding the vehicle. Three quick shots were followed by three more, and then silence.
Seconds later Artu stepped into view. “This thing still runs!” he yelled to Bear. “But if we want it, we’d better hurry!”
“Anybody get hit?”
“No!”
Green pine needles sizzled as they burned, while the resin in the wood bubbled and spat. Orange embers floated overhead. All nine of the team stood on the opposite shoulder to the rapidly spreading fire.
“Any idea how to get it out of there?” Bear yelled over the roar and crackle of the inferno. The rising heat had become dangerous.
They all looked at each other, at the tree and the mound of the vehicle under all the debris.
Jane spoke first. “We still have four rockets left. Let’s use one to blow off the top of the tree, and then maybe we can push it out of the way to open up the road.”
Bear nodded once. “Anybody else got a better idea? Then let’s do it. I’ll get in and drive.”
“I’ll do it,” Artu said.
“No, I’m doing it.” With that he handed Artu his rifle, raised an arm to shield his face from the heat, and plunged into the branches and needles.
#
Jane moved everybody clear of the tree trunk and tried to find an aiming point that promised to cut the thick bole in two. With the fire spreading, she knew time was short, so when everyone was clear she directed a stout young man holding the loaded rocket launcher where to hit the pine tree. Then she slid behind cover.
The characteristic crack-whoosh of the Carl Gustav was followed by a much louder bang! Fragments of wood showered the undergrowth. Some pine needles smoldered from the blast and Jane couldn’t see through the smoke, but when she ran to the tree, she let out a whoop.
“It worked! Over here, everybody!”
The rocket had blown the crown of the tree away from the bole, and they all pushed to create an opening for Bear to drive t
hrough. The weight was too great despite their best effort, however, and branches on the far side dug into the pavement. Using all their might, they managed to create a two-foot separation, but the effort left them exhausted and drenched in sweat from the fire’s heat.
#
Meanwhile, Bear could feel the heat rising within the Chinese vehicle. It had an automatic transmission and after grinding the gears a few times, he figured out which was reverse and which forward. He gunned the motor, crushing branches behind him, and tried not to hit the tree in front, but his desperation increased with each passing second. He could feel his skin beginning to cook even through the heavy window glass.
Time was up. He either had to break free or abandon the armored car. Slamming into reverse, he leaned on the brake with his left foot and floored it with his right. The tires spun and smoked and squealed. Burning rubber rose in a black cloud and blotted out everything else. Finally he let off the brake. The heavy vehicle scraped and crushed branches until its rear end was almost in the fire. Bear shoved the gear into forward, turned the wheel, and floored it again. It bounced and jounced and several times seemed to be stuck in the tangle of foliage, but then burst into the clear and nearly ran Jane down.
Bear pushed the door open as branches screeched against the hull. He jumped out and ripped off his scorched and smoldering shirt, running to the cooler air under the trees beside the road. Jane handed him her canteen. He could see in her eyes how badly he must have been burned.
“Oh, Bear,” she said, lightly touching the blisters on the left side of his face. He winced and pulled away. Blisters lined his left leg and arm. His chest hurt when he breathed and he could feel the damage to his lungs, but he tried not to show it.
After draining half of Jane’s canteen, he handed it back to her. He bent over, hands on knees, and spoke in clipped phrases, all he could manage. “Here’s the plan… I want you all… to go back the way we came. I’m taking… the car. The Chinese will think I’m… one of them until it’s too late… I’ll hit one of the tankers… with a rocket. When they’re all blowing up… I’ll run for the trees. You all cover me from there.”
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