Hunter Killer: The War with China: The Battle for the Central Pacific

by David Poyer

  He’s fumbling at the action, trying to clear it, but the cartridge is jammed in hard, caught on the bolt face, when a deep carmine brilliance bursts, fragments, echoes and resounds all around him. It smears cobwebs over his vision. His whole brain turns red.

  “Laser!” Whipkey screams, and claws at his face. He keeps screaming, staggering up.

  “Get down!” Hector shouts, grabbing for him, shielding his eyes with his other hand. But bullets crack, whiplashing across the hill, and then something buzzes overhead, whining in, dreadfully close.

  It cuts off suddenly and Whipkey screams again, a choked-off burst of animal terror. Ramos catches the flicker of a muzzle flash, frames it in the sight, and fires, fires, fires until the gun halts again, jammed once more.

  When he looks back his assistant gunner lies half in, half out of the caved-in fighting hole, chin back at an unnatural angle. In the light of the falling flares a scarlet well pulses at his throat, in which is wedged something small and black, with stiff stubby wings. His open eyes stare up at the stars.

  * * *

  HE’S lying in the open, on his side, hugging the Pig. Somehow he knows he’s out of ammo. Something heavy weighs down his right hand. When he lifts it the flare-light shows him his pistol, smeared with blood.

  * * *

  HE’S in a hole with three other marines. A rifle in his hands. No idea where it came from. Where’s the Pig? He has to find it. But right now he’s slapping in magazines, firing them out. The others are firing too, as fast as they can. One is Lieutenant Smalls. Face contorted, snarling, he’s firing his pistol two-handed, double-tapping Chinese after Chinese. The rifle barrels glow and smoke in the darkness. They’re not built to fire burst after burst, mag after mag. But the shadows keep coming. One ducks, straightens, flings out an arm. Smalls yells “Grenade” in a strange hoarse voice. He dives to the ground just before the explosion, and his body jumps, humps up, as Hector fires a burst over him into the grenadier.

  * * *

  HE’S hammering at something in the darkness. Without looking, he knows it’s the Pig. Hammering its butt down again and again. Grunting. With rhythmic force. Then a flashlight illuminates the thing he’s flailing at. A face. A mashed-in, concave mass of blood and bone now. But still breathing. Bubbles burst and slide. It’s still trying to get up.

  “Stand back,” Hern orders. Hector sledgehammers twice more, slowing, exhausted, and finally obeys, staggering to his feet.

  The flat final report of Hern’s rifle.

  * * *

  RUNNING. Staggering. Figures in front of him, fitfully illuminated by explosion-flashes.

  The wreck of a mule. Hundreds of cartridges lie scattered across the dirt. Brass ones, he notes dully. The driver blown into shreds of meat where he’s been perforated from above. Strips of flesh hanging.

  * * *

  AN interminable night. A night that never ends. That never will end, in the memories of those who survive it.

  * * *

  DAWN. Somehow, they’re overlooking the water. Dimly he understands they’ve crossed the island’s waist during the night. Fought their way here, to a new sea. Crouched in a shallow fighting hole, he’s obsessively, compulsively cleaning the Pig. Scrubbing burnt carbon off the bolt. Lubricating it. Reassembling it. No idea where the gun came from; at some point during the night there it was again, after he thought he’d lost it. Inexplicable. Or maybe it’s someone else’s. And maybe it doesn’t matter.

  The waves walk out of the fog, shattering on the red sand.

  The dawn is old silver. Mist seethes above the surf.

  An unfamiliar sergeant walks along, straightening the line. A net bag of liter bottles hangs off his shoulder. Two young women trail him, belts of cartridges draped around their shoulders like golden shawls. He tosses down a water bottle. Hector catches it in midair, tears the cap off, fastens his mouth to it greedily, and beckons for another. The sergeant tosses him a second liter. “Tail on to him,” the NCO tells one of the marines with him, the black woman. Then, to Hector, “A ship went down out there. Some of ’em might try to make it to shore. Gunner, your new assistant. Private Phelps.”

  “Aye aye, Sergeant. Oorah, Phelps.”

  “Oorah,” the woman mutters.

  “Ammo’s on its way. Keep an eye to seaward. Phelps, get this hole dug deeper.”

  Hector nods, fastened again to his bottle like a baby to a nipple. The private eyes him, then unsheathes an entrenching tool. The sand caves in nearly as fast as she shovels it out. But she keeps working, piling it up in front of them.

  Faintly, out of the sea-mist, voices are shouting. Many voices, raised in what sounds like pleading.

  Hector drains the first bottle and flips it over his shoulder. Eyes the second, but doesn’t open it. He sets up the Pig and slaps in a belt. “The King fucks the Queen,” he mutters.

  “What?” says the private. She stops digging, looks at Ramos. Then at the sea, then back at the blood-caked, dirt-smeared, crazily mumbling gunner.

  “M’name’s Sheeda,” she says tentatively.

  “Safety on ‘F,’” Hector says. “Bolt to the rear.”

  “What?”

  “Double link at the open end. Free of dirt and corrosion.”

  The shouting from seaward is growing louder. The private resumes digging, faster now.

  “The sear holds the bolt open,” Hector mutters. He slots the charging handle back and flips up the cover assembly. Ensures the feed tray, receiver assembly, and chamber are clear. He slaps it down and pulls the cocking handle again. Where’s Troy? Oh yeah. Troy’s dead. Orietta. Pruss, too. Smalls. Hern. All dead.

  “Gun one, Condition One, ready to fire,” he slurs.

  She frowns. “What?”

  “Now listen up. We only got the one barrel. You’re gonna pour that water on it, once I start firing, got that? Pour it on. Don’t matter if it gets in the action. It’ll cook out. But you got to keep that barrel cool. Hear me?”

  She nods, looking scared. He swings the muzzle this way and that, making sure the bipod’s dug in. Should be on a tripod in a fixed position like this. Somewhere, during the night, the optic has disappeared too. Doesn’t matter. “Fucking optics gonna go south on you,” he mutters. “Learn the fucking irons. Fuck the Queen.”

  “Huh?” Phelps looks concerned. Then shrugs as she slides into the hole next to him. “Whatever.”

  He barely notices. Out in the mist, dim figures are taking shape. They wade forward through the uneasy surf. They call out, voices plaintive, hands in the air. They stagger like zombies as they advance. Only a few carry weapons.

  “Open fire,” someone yells.

  The Pig jackhammers his shoulder as other guns along the beach open up too. He traverses, picking out clusters. Geysers of white spray burst up. Those few who still carry weapons throw them away, raise their hands too. They cry out, pleading, but he keeps firing. Under the impacts they wilt, spin, drop, sink back into the sea. The water turns red beneath the silver mist. Screams reach them. The other guns fall silent. Someone grabs his shoulder, but he shakes it off and keeps firing.

  “Cease fire. Cease fire,” comes down the line. A few rifle shots crack out, then they too cease.

  But Hector Ramos keeps firing. Traversing. Firing again, as a few belated figures coalesce from the sea-mist, staggering, wounded, some with only one hand stiffly raised.

  “What are you doing?” Phelps screams into his ear. “They’re surrendering. Cease fire. Stop!”

  But he fires that belt out and reaches for the next. She grabs his wrists to keep him from loading it.

  Then others are standing above them. The sergeant who assigned her. An officer. Hector whispers something to the ghosts around him. “What did you say?” the woman screams over the ringing in his ears.

  “You got to learn,” he mutters.

  “What?”

  “Learn to hate. Learn to kill. Bring your buddies back. Make sense of it later.”

  “He’s fucki
ng lost it,” the officer says. “Get him out of there. Phelps, take the gun.”

  Someone helps him out of the fighting hole. He sways, head bent, hands to his face. Mind echoing. Lightning in his head. He tears off his helmet and throws it into the surf. Where the bodies bob and wash. So many. Where did they all come from? But before he can ask, the hands lead him away.

  22

  Xinjiang

  SO here they were, back in the mountains after all. The mujahideen, or whoever they were, the guys who’d raided the marketplace, had blindfolded Teddy and Fierros after getting out of town. Taken their rifles. And covered them with heavy sacks of sand. Then rode for jolting miles, upgrade. The road surface had changed from asphalt to what sounded like crush and run, then gravel, and finally ungraded rock. Jolting from side to side, the pickup had climbed the last few kilometers with motor straining.

  Ordered out, the two captives, or hostages, or whatever they were now, had had their blindfolds checked and tightened. But—and Oberg had taken this as a good sign—no one had yet offered to tie their hands. Instead, someone had thrust a piece of bread into them. He’d gnawed it hungrily. Thick fried dough, sweetened with honey and garnished with nuts. It had to be what angels ate in heaven.

  “Hao,” he grunted. Nice. Then, in an undertone, “Fierros. Ni zai ma?”

  “Horosho’.”

  Oh yeah. Right. They were supposed to be Russians hunters. Or at least ethnic Russian Tajiks.

  Teddy was rethinking that now. That had been in case they ended up in official Chinese hands. Maybe Russian wasn’t the right way to play it with these guys. Or even Tajik.

  Of course, that depended on exactly who their captors were.

  They climbed a rocky path for what felt like hours. The air grew cool. Evening, or they were really gaining altitude. Maybe both. He grew weak, dizzy. He could hear the airman’s harsh breathing ahead, making heavy weather of it too, but didn’t dare ask for a break. They might get a permanent rest. With a bullet to the head.

  * * *

  THE entrance to the cave was so low they had to crawl in on hands and knees. Straightening, Teddy grunted as rough hands jerked the blindfold off, taking some of his hair with it. Suppressing a yelp, he blinked into the guttering orange light of torches.

  The cave went back into darkness. Bats twittered and squeaked far above. Down here camping gear, camp beds, and tables of rough wood were scattered across water-eroded limestone.

  To his left spilled a tumbled mass of masonry and statuary. Dozens of ancient Buddhas lay toppled and shattered, their heads scarred and gouged into facelessness. The rock itself had been carved, obviously centuries before, into a haunting, eye-seducing frieze of … Dancers? Gods? Demons? Whatever they once had been, their images had been hammered apart in a lynch-mob ecstasy of destruction. When he looked down, his feet were shuffling through a crushed mass of ancient parchments, trodden in with centuries of bat excrement.

  Ahead, in the direction they were being shoved, the same black banners as had flown from the pickups were draped behind a stone lectern that looked as if it had stood in the same place for at least a thousand years. A book lay open on it, with a Kalashnikov propped against one side. Teddy was pretty sure the book wasn’t The Lord of the Rings.

  He turned his attention to the men shepherding them forward, senses sharpened by the knowledge that in the next few minutes he would live or die depending on what his captors decided. The men were all young, and all black-bearded, or trying hard to grow beards and mustaches. Bandy-legged, but with the suggestion they were going to be husky lads. They had the flattish features and darker coloring of the crowd that had oohed and aahed watching the red-clad dancers, not the look of the more slightly built, lighter-complexioned security troops.

  Actually, they reminded him of the guys on the caravan ponies. So, obviously, these were the Uighur bandits-slash-terrorists he’d heard about back at the Team briefings. How long ago that seemed.…

  The Central Asian states had been fighting Islamic insurgencies long before 9/11. Spilling over China’s western borders, the rebels were giving Beijing a hard time too. The local version of the al-Qaeda and Taliban he’d fought, himself, in Afghanistan.

  The terror attack in town squared with that. It suddenly registered that the old merchant had known about it too. He’d warned them not to be in the Han part of town that day.

  Teddy was still mulling all this when they shoved him to his knees in front of the lectern. Their captors settled on blankets and began chatting in low voices. One kept working the bolt on his AK, and complaining in a whine. Jerking the bolt, and flipping cartridges out. Making a wagging motion with his hand, as if the rifle wasn’t ejecting right.

  Now, to the side of the stone lectern, Teddy noted a large curved sword. Fierros cleared his throat. Breathed, so low Teddy could barely hear him, “Who are these dudes?”

  He must be getting nervous. Well, Teddy was too. That was a hell of a mean-ass sword, and it looked well used. The tripod-mounted videocam next to it didn’t look promising either.

  Well, at least Trinh had missed this. A bullet in the brain was better, any day, than a twitchy amateur executioner with a dull blade and bad aim.

  Fierros whispered, “Al-Qaeda? ISIS?”

  Teddy pitched his answer so low he could barely hear himself. “Islamics. Not sure what brand. Better let me do the talking.”

  “We’re not still Russians, are we?”

  “No, that wouldn’t be smart. Like I said, let me talk.”

  One of their escorts said something in the language he didn’t know—not Han, probably Uighur—and slammed his shoulder with a rifle butt. The message was clear: You guys, shut the fuck up. Which he did, trying to sit back in a way that hurt his leg as little as possible.

  Not too long after, three men came in carrying AKMs. They set them against the cave wall and eased themselves down on the blankets. They looked terribly tired and two were wounded, to judge from the bloody bandages and the wincing as they adjusted their crossed legs. Teddy recognized the one in the center. The driver of the pickup, the guy who’d gestured him aboard with the pistol. The one with the half-white mustache. The handgun was stuck into his belt now, one of the old high-velocity Tokarevs that made you deaf shooting them, but that penetrated helmets and body armor. Not a bad choice for a gunfight, actually. The guy pulled down the book, and Teddy nodded. He’d seen this before, with the Abu Sayyaf in the Philippines. On the operation to steal the rocket torpedo, with Commander Lenson’s TAG team.

  It was a drumhead court. The kind that really only pronounced one sentence, and finished up with somebody’s noggin bouncing on the floor.

  The Uighurs conferred among themselves, glaring at the captives. Teddy kept glancing at the guy who was fiddling with his rifle and complaining. Finally he reached over and took it out of his hands.

  Before they could react he had the magazine out, chamber cleared, and top cover off. He flipped the rifle upside down and shook the piston assembly out onto the blanket. Just as he’d figured, a handful of crud fell out with it. Somehow, probably by dropping it, the guy had gotten sand inside the gas port holes, clogging the piston inside the tube. Which meant it stopped feeding. Yeah, that happened, even with Kalashes. But it was super easy to fix. He stripped the grit off the piston with his sleeve, blew the tube clear, and squinted through the barrel to make sure it was clear too. He reassembled the weapon, worked the action, and laid it back down in front of the rebel.

  Who looked with astonishment from him to the judges. Who were also staring, no longer whispering among themselves.

  After a few seconds they cleared their throats and seemed to regain some self-possession. The questioning began with the guy on Teddy’s left, in Han Chinese. He wanted to know who they were and why they’d been firing at the police. Or at least, Teddy assumed that was what he meant by jingcha.

  He’d been doing some thinking about this even before Fierros surfaced the issue, but held up a hand while he
formulated his answer. Trying to project confidence. Dignity. Finally he said haltingly, in his prison Chinese, “Women shi mengyou. Wo shi meigyo ren.”

  We are allies. I am an American.

  The judges gaped, lifting their eyebrows. White ’Stache looked especially doubtful. He shot some rapid Han Teddy only partially caught. He leaned to Fierros. “Ragger, did you catch that?”

  “Something about … how we got here? How we came to Xinjiang, I think.”

  The judge on the right put his oar in, jabbing a finger threateningly. “Zhe shi shui de ne? Ta shi meiguo?”

  “I think he wants to know if I’m American too. These guys have a way different accent than the guards.”

  “Well, goddamn it, answer him.”

  Bit by bit, fumbling with a language neither was overfamiliar with, they managed to get across that they were both both fighters, prisoners, captured in the great war raging far to the east and south. They had escaped from the prison camp, and fled over the mountains. “If war still on, we are on same side. We, and you, all brave fighters.” Or at least, that was what Teddy hoped he was saying.

  The center guy cocked his head. He seemed to have as much trouble following what they were trying to say as they had putting it out. Their interlocutors conferred in mutters. Then one said something that Teddy made as, “What camp?”

  “Camp 576.”

  Impressed looks. “That is a hard place. Much sickness. They mine the rock that rots the bones. No one escapes from there.”

  “We did,” Obie told him. “But we were five in number when we started.” He explained about Maggie and Vu and Trinh: one giving his life on the live wire, to help them escape; one lost in the mountains; the third shot by the Chinese in town.

  The judges nodded, apparently reassured by the high loss rate. White Mustache pressed, “You are American. Army? Air Force?”

  Teddy had thought about this. He figured guys like this, out in the hinterlands, might know what U.S. Navy SEALs were. Then again, they might not. There were three initials, though, that pretty much everybody in the world recognized.