Standing at the Edge

by William Alan Webb

  “Have we heard from General Fleming?”

  “The plane’s in the air, sir, headed north. They took off an hour late.”

  “Damn! What else did General Fleming say?”

  “I… General Fleming didn’t speak with us, sir. The recon sergeant did.”

  “Why? Is General Fleming all right? He’s not injured, is he?”

  “Not that we know of, but… but he’s on the plane, sir. With a parachute.”

  “Shit. I’ll be right there.”

  He turned and found his wife giving him the cold look he’d seen many times before, her left eyebrow raised and her arms crossed. Janine Angriff had a love-hate relationship with cursing; when someone else cursed she said nothing about it or reassured the speaker, but when her husband forgot, she hated it.

  Holding up a placating hand, he gave her a hug. “Sorry. I’ll get better about that.”

  #

  “What in the hell does he think he’s doing?” Angriff paced beside his desk. “Norm’s not a combat commander. That’s not where his talents are. I thought he knew that!”

  Sitting on the couch with a laptop on one side and several handheld radios on the other, B.F. Walling made for a pale shade of his former vigorous self. Under loose fitting ASUs, his body seemed gaunt and his face wan and tired. “He told the battalion commander something about the Congo, and if you can do it so can he. Do you know what that means, General?”

  Angriff froze in place and stuck a cigar in his mouth. It took a few seconds for a grin to widen around his clenched teeth. “I never thought Norm could be such a smart ass.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “You don’t need to.”

  #

  Chapter 79

  Success is not final, failure is not fatal: it is the courage to continue that counts.

  Sir Winston S. Churchill

  West of Carson City, NV

  0634 hours, April 21

  “This thing’s a beast!” Joe Randall said. They’d taken off the noise cancelling headphones once they’d hit 5,000 feet, flying higher than the drop altitude to avoid ground fire. RPGs in particular posed a major threat.

  Normally the altitude for a combat jump would be lower than 1,800 feet, but the C-5 they flew hadn’t been rigged for paratroops and had no static line, so the jump would be out the back with each man opening his own chute. The extra 500 feet of altitude would keep them in the air longer and make them better targets, but also gave them more time to get the chutes open and to deal with any problems.

  “Beast is the word,” Carlos said. “What’s our location?”

  “That should have been Carson City off on our left a minute ago, which puts us close to changing to course three-two-zero. Another ten minutes and we should see Reno off to the northwest. We’ll turn then.”

  “Hey, Joe, do me a favor, will ya?”

  “You know I will.”

  “If something happens… if I don’t make it back, promise me you and Morgan will watch out for Frame and the kid.”

  “Don’t be an idiot. Nothing’s going to happen.”

  “Yeah, but if it does, just promise, okay? Make me feel better.”

  “Sure, if it makes you feel better, I promise. But you’re still being an idiot.”

  “And tell my son what a great dad he had.”

  “Yeah, sure.”

  #

  Sierra Army Depot, Herlong, CA

  0636 hours

  Vapor used a dented metal cup and drank from the water bucket in the main headquarters building. He’d spent the past three hours inspecting their defenses and cheering everybody up as much as he could.

  “The Americans are coming,” he’d told them. “I’m living proof.” He’d made suggestions on how to improve their station, but the truth was that calling most of the foxholes defensive positions exaggerated their usefulness. Even rifle pits overstated their defensive value.

  “Think we’ve got a chance?” they’d all asked him.

  “Hell, yes, even without my buddies. Those Gustavs you’ve got are wicked as shit.”

  That part was true; the Gustavs were badass killers and the base had lots of them. What it didn’t have was most everything else it needed to survive, like trained soldiers and air support, but he left out that part.

  After draining his cup, Vapor exited the building’s front door into the cool air and graying light of pre-dawn. The sun would be up in a matter of minutes.

  “They’re not here yet,” Claw said. He slouched near the slit trench twenty feet in front of the building, peering into the dim light toward the defensive line to the south.

  “Us or the Chinese?”

  “Both.”

  “They’ll both show up. I don’t know how, but our people will be here.”

  “If they’re not…”

  “I know. Alamo time.”

  “I wish I had a smoke.”

  “Me, too.”

  “You know we can’t hole up in that building, right?”

  “Yeah, the field of fire is too limited. Not enough windows.”

  “It’s the fall-back position.”

  “Right.”

  “You know how it’s gonna start…”

  “I don’t,” said a new voice. Jane stepped through the doorway behind them, followed by Lamar.

  The two Zombies exchanged glances and hand gestures meaning do you want to explain it? At length Claw gave a nod.

  “It’ll begin with artillery, mortars at least. You’ll hear a cough and have about two seconds to eat dirt and then the world will blow up. If they’ve got heavy artillery, they’ll start with that. Either way the buildings will be the main targets, starting with this one.”

  “Why this one?” Lamar asked.

  “The attack yesterday by those airborne boys wasn’t random. They knew who you were and the location of your headquarters, right here. They’re smart and somebody on your team is feeding them inside info. If you die, the defense collapses, and they know it.”

  “I don’t believe that! None of my people would ever betray me! And they know what the Chinese are like. They’ll fight to the end rather than be slaves.”

  Claw held up his hands in surrender. “Whatever you say, ma’am.”

  Jane paused until it was clear the others had nothing more to say. “So what should we do?”

  “Do?” Vapor smiled without humor. “Kill ’em and pray for a miracle.”

  #

  0644 hours

  A dull, distant boom somewhere to the south was followed by a muffled crack. Vapor reacted without thinking. He grabbed Aretha Lamar’s arm and pulled her into the trench twenty feet from the headquarters building, jumping in with her and protecting her injured ribs. Claw reacted identically, except Jane hadn’t needed to be pulled. She’d heard Chinese artillery before.

  Arcing toward them in a shrieking parabola, the shell hit thirty yards south of the headquarters building, across a road in a wooded field. Blast effect sent splinters spraying in a fifty-yard circle and shook the building. Two seconds later, dirt clods and branches rained on the backs of the Americans huddling in the trench.

  “Hey, Vapor!” Claw shouted after spitting out dirt. “I’ve changed my mind about being here.”

  They felt the second shell more than the first. That one had struck and penetrated several feet of dirt before the fuse set off the payload, but the second hit the parking lot behind the building and detonated on contact. The blast wave smashed into the building’s rear wall, pushing it in. The teenagers still inside poured out the front door and dove into the trench. A twelve-year-old boy started crying.

  Aretha Lamar put her hands over her ears and buried the top of her head in the dust at the bottom of the trench. The kids huddled around her and mimicked her. Jane lay in the fetal position, but her eyes met Vapor’s and he saw no fear in them.

  But the third shell struck thirty feet west of the trench. The ground wave threw them all into the air and sizzling shrapnel ripped into
flesh. One of the teens, a young girl about fourteen, landed on her back near Vapor. She blinked and said, “I think I’m hurt.” Her brown eyes showed surprise, but not fear or pain.

  He saw no visible wounds until he lifted her shoulder. A hunk of steel protruded from her mid-back up to the base of her skull. Blood spurted from several places, but she still showed no sign of pain.

  Lamar tried to reach her, but Claw held her back. He shook his head at her horrified expression and mouthed There’s nothing you can do. The girl felt no pain because the sharp steel had severed her spine. She’d be dead in seconds from blood loss and that was a mercy.

  Small-arms fire popped and stuttered during the lull between artillery rounds, and the coughs of mortars joined in. Explosions came from all parts of the battlefield, to the south and to the west, although none of the mortars fired at them yet. The Chinese attack would combine infantry assault backed by armor with mortar support against the front-line defenses. The heavy artillery aimed for whatever command and control the base defenders had left. That meant shells landing around the headquarters.

  “They’ve got us bracketed,” Claw yelled. “We can’t stay here and that building’s ground zero for the artillery.”

  “There’s nowhere else to go!” Vapor answered. “Unless we gitfoh!”

  “What’s gitfoh?” asked Jane.

  “Git the fuck outa here.”

  Lamar asked, “Where would you go?”

  “We call in the ’copter. There’s room for both of you, too.”

  They all heard the fourth shell streaking inbound and curled as low in the trench as possible, gripping the dust as if they could anchor themselves below ground. Against all odds, the missile struck the field north of the building, where only the dried stalks of last year’s corn crop occupied the surface.

  “What about them?” Lamar shouted, indicating the teens. They’d heard the whole thing and stared at Vapor in near panic.

  He shook his head. “Not all of them.”

  “Then I’m not going anywhere.”

  Through their argument, none of them heard next incoming round before it slammed into the far left end of the trench, three feet off the floor. The blast wave knocked them down. Rocks and dirt showered around them. Vapor had stashed two Carl Gustav launchers there with eight HE rounds, but now they were buried under five feet of dirt — but at least they hadn’t cooked off.

  “Shit!”

  Vapor’s ears rang from the explosion, so he didn’t hear the drone of a helicopter until it drew close. Peeking over the lip of the trench drew rifle fire and he slipped back down, leaning against the trench wall. Specks of dirt stuck to his face. “Gunship,” he said. “Theirs.”

  “Fuck!” said Claw.

  Jane risked a quick look for herself. “A friend of mine brought down one just like that with an RPG. We’ve got Carl Gustavs.”

  Vapor pointed at the smoking mound of dirt. “Under there, yeah.”

  “There’s more inside.”

  “Do you know how to shoot one?”

  “I’ve used them.”

  #

  Without waiting, Jane scrambled out of the trench. Bullets ripped into the loose soil around her. Vapor started up to pull her back in, but something struck him in the forehead and he fell back, a splotch of red marking the spot. The others all saw a bullet rip into the bottom of Jane’s running foot and exit the top. She fell and rolled, then crawled on hands and knees to the doorway and inside. Claw rose to go help her when he heard the now familiar sound of the Chinese 155mm artillery firing.

  “Jane, hurry!” he screamed, hands cupped around his mouth.

  She staggered out dragging her right foot, a Carl Gustav round under each arm and a launcher in each hand. Despite the rifle fire and incoming artillery, despite the blood trickling down Vapor’s forehead, he and Claw both climbed out. On either side, they grabbed her arms and threw her and the Carl Gustavs into the trench. Both of them then sprinted for shelter and jumped. The shell struck the headquarters building and exploded when they were in mid-air.

  Both men were half in, half out of the trench when the boiling flames of the explosion drove them downward into its far wall. Singed hair and uniforms blackened them and they lay stunned at the bottom. Jane cried out in pain and started to remove her blood-filled boot.

  Lamar stopped her. “Leave it on, Jane. I know it hurts, but if we have to run you’ll need that.”

  “Fuck.” Jane rocked back and forth. “It hurts. Shit, shit, shit!”

  Secondary explosions in the headquarters threw flaming fragments of roofing and wooden frame onto and into the trench. The Carl Gustav rounds they’d left in the building cooked off in the extreme heat, as did stores of rifle ammunition. Claw and Vapor shook themselves off, then stomped out the embers that had fallen among them and used anything at hand to push the burning boards off the trench. Then it got worse.

  Without warning, something blew up on the edge of the trench, and large caliber machine gun rounds chewed along its lip. Vapor stuck his head up and then back down like the old whack-a-mole game, drawing a new torrent of fire down on them but seeing what he’d needed to see. A shell splinter hit the back of his hand and lodged there. He pulled it out, burning his fingers in the process, then grabbed a bandage from the first aid kit on his belt and wrapped it around the hand. The blood on his forehead kept running into his eyes, but he could only wipe it away with his sleeve.

  “One bird,” he said, holding up his right index finger. “Claw! The spread of his fire seems to be about thirty feet wide. You take a CG and slide to that end, and I’ll do the same down here. On my signal, I’ll raise up and fire. You count to three and let him have another one. He’s about a hundred yards out.”

  Claw gave him a thumb’s up. At the count of three, Vapor stood, took aim, and fired. Even as smoke trailed the rocket speeding for the gunship, Claw stood in turn. But as he fired, an incoming round from the helicopter’s 25mm cannon smashed into Claw’s chest and drove him back. He struck the trench wall and collapsed.

  Vapor’s shot missed low and sped off into the desert. Claw’s zoomed at a shallow angle from the helicopter’s right. The pilot had expected it and kept enough altitude to veer left. The rocket missed the bird’s fuselage and percentages favored it passing through the whirling blades without being struck by one, but sometimes the dice come up craps. It smashed into one of the blades and the explosion sheared it off, throwing the helicopter harder to the left and puncturing it with hundreds of shrapnel bits. The smashed rotors threw it further sideways and it lost altitude. A few seconds later, the rotor blades slapped into the ground and snapped off, and the helicopter crashed.

  The explosion incinerated both pilot and co-pilot. The flaming mass cartwheeled, flipped over, and smashed into the desert. Burning fuel spread like water from a broken dam and poured into a nearby rifle pit. The shrieks of two burning defenders who tried rolling on the ground died quickly under a fusillade of rifle fire.

  Intense heat from the flames distorted the air like heat waves in the desert, but even so Vapor could make out Chinese armor closing in, surrounded by advancing infantry. Another artillery round struck near the northern end of the trench, knocking everyone to their knees and collapsing it. When debris quit raining, the two teenagers on that end had disappeared under a mound of sand and dirt.

  Cracked ribs or not, Aretha Lamar threw herself at the mound and frantically dug into it, along with the two remaining teens. “Help us!” she cried. “They’ll suffocate.”

  They’re dead already, Vapor thought, and checked Claw instead. Shallow respiration showed life but the shell had ripped a hole in his armor, doing unknown damage to his chest and torso. All he could see was blood. “Jane,” he shouted. “We’ve gotta get outa here. Can you run?”

  “I think so!”

  Vapor tugged the handheld radio from his belt and was about to key the mike when it spoke first. “Vapor, this is BH-1. Do you copy?”

  “Roger that
, BH-1, Vapor here. C-people are closing in. We need pickup behind the big burning building a-sap. Have wounded.”

  “Negative function, Vapor. You have three APCs flanking the southern defense line and moving straight for your position, two miles out and closing fast. ETA less than five minutes. We can’t get in and out that fast.”

  “BH-1, we need pickup!”

  “I’m sorry, no can do. We had all weapons removed to get the fuel tanks onboard. We have nothing to fight with.”

  So that was it. Chinese infantry had closed within two hundred yards and at least one tank rode close behind them. Firing on the southern flank had grown closer, which meant that line was being overrun, and now they were flanked on the east, too. With the second defensive line to the west, the only potential escape route appeared to be north, but there open fields stretched all the way to the ammunition bunkers. Carrying wounded, they’d be easy targets. No, there would be no escape, no Saint Nick riding to the rescue or Green Ghost conjuring a miracle. It was time to sell his life as dearly as possible.

  He patted Claw’s cheek. The wounded man’s eyes cracked open and Vapor stuck a Beretta in his fist. Both understood the meaning: shoot at the Chinese, but save the last round for yourself. Jane held up her rifle; she was ready. Aretha Lamar had dug out one of the teens and was giving CPR while the others kept digging. They’d be no help.

  He’d done all he could do. “BH-1, do you read?”

  “I read you, Vapor.”

  “We’re in deep shit here. Two Gustavs left and nothing else. Tell the girls back home we died with our boots on.”

  “Roger that, Vapor. Save me a bowl of chili.”

  “With cheese and onions.” Wiping blood away one last time, Vapor met Jane’s eyes. “On three.” He started counting with his fingers. One… two…

  “You might not have anything to kill these fuckers with,” said a new, female voice on the radio, “but I sure as hell do!”

  Vapor snatched up his radio. “This is Vapor, in tactical command. Identify yourself!”

  “Vapor, this is Ripsaw Two. Am starting attack run on three APCs headed your direction and I’m bringing Hell’s Hammer with me.”