Harbinger (The Janus Harbinger Book 1)

by Olan Thorensen

  Her eyes grew larger at the question and the offer—Zach wouldn’t have thought her eyes could have widened more. With a shaking hand she took the pistol, stared at it for a second, then looked up into Zach’s eyes. “Whoever is coming will try to kill us, won’t they?”

  Zach wasn’t going to lie to her. “They may, or they may be after information or prisoners. There’s no way to know, but it’s best to assume the worst.”

  Her eyes took on more focus. Maybe it was the combination of holding Bobby in her left arm, having a pistol in the right hand, and somehow reflexively knowing that she was the conduit for the weapon to protect Bobby. “What do I do?”

  Zach took the pistol back, racked a round into the chamber, and eased the hammer down. “It’s now ready to fire. The safety is off. To shoot, pull the hammer back until it clicks into place, point it where you want to shoot, and pull the trigger. Another round will automatically be chambered with the hammer back. You can keep pulling the trigger until there’s no more bullets, but don’t waste them if you don’t have a target. Remember, once you fire the first time, the gun is live until it’s out of bullets or you put the safety back on.” He indicated the switch on the handle and shoved the gun back into her hand. “Now go!” he commanded. She turned and ran into her room.

  He sprinted down the hall, out the door, and ran back toward Hindman and Swackhammer, crouched behind the bulldozer blade.

  Despite no warning signs, every instinct told Peng it looked too quiet. At four hundred yards away, he glimpsed another figure running between buildings. Again, Peng couldn’t tell if the man carried a rifle.

  There was no need for stealth. He put a whistle to his mouth and gave three short, loud blasts. Attack!

  CHAPTER 41

  FOR YOUR LIVES

  Zach was forty yards from the dozer blade when he heard the whistle. In the cold, dry arctic air, he could have heard it from five miles off. Figures rose from kneeling positions and came trotting, rifles in hand. Four hundred yards, he estimated. Then he frowned. Their numbers seemed fewer. He saw movement to his right. While he was checking the buildings, the Chinese had sent men to flank Zach’s position. He couldn’t see clearly to the east, but he assumed another group was doing the same to complete the envelopment.

  When the attackers were within three hundred yards, he thought he heard a shout behind him, but he couldn’t see anyone when he looked back. He glanced east past the main building to where Andrew was in position, checking his M4, and setting out more magazines to be in easy reach. Zach did the same with one magazine and partially straightened the pins on a grenade to make them pin easier.

  Swackhammer and Hindman copied him with their M4s. Both men were pale. Hindman’s hands trembled.

  “Set the selectors for three-round bursts,” he told them. “The magazines hold twenty-seven rounds, so you’ll have nine shots at targets before changing magazines.” There was no reason to tell them he had grabbed Willie before leaving on the search and told him to load all the magazines with 27 rounds. Despite official assurances, Zach didn’t trust the 30-round magazines’ springs not to cause a jam if fully loaded.

  “You’ve got ten magazines each,” said Zach. “That gives you ninety bursts, but don’t waste them. I expect it’ll be over before you run out, so don’t switch to single fire until the last few magazines. But just in case, if we get to those last couple of magazines, we’ll duck into the tunnels and head to the main building. The rest of the ammunition was moved there.

  “Major Jefferson will fire off his set of Claymores when the Chinese are within seventy yards. We’ll do our best to set off our four with or just after his.” He held up two of the Claymore clackers and pointed to the other two. “There wasn’t time to attach more than one Claymore to a single ignition device. One of you needs to set these two off. We need to do it simultaneously, as much as possible.”

  Swackhammer and Hindman looked at each other. Hindman said, “I’ll do it,” and took the other two clackers.

  “The Chinese may hit the ground or keep running after we set off the Claymores. Whichever it is, it’s everyone’s signal to fire at will.”

  Hindman nodded, gripped his M4 tighter, and nervously fiddled with four magazines he’d laid beside him. Swackhammer’s gulp was audible, although his expression was firm and his eyes clear.

  Willie finished placing the last charge inside the Level 3 building section. Although from the outside all the structures appeared to be constructed the same, the Level 3 and main buildings were built as fortress-like as possible without being obvious. In addition to the inner walls of the buildings’ sides being thicker than the other structures, within the walls was a hybrid armor system with two layers. An incoming projectile would first make contact with electric reactive armor where two conductive plates separated by insulation formed a capacitor that discharged upon penetration, vaporizing or diffusing by the sudden energy transfer the penetrator’s shape-charge plasma. The system was too bulky for armored vehicles but was practical for static defense, especially one with a good power supply such as the site’s nuclear reactor.

  A second armor layer was composed of nonexplosive reactive armor. An insulation layer would absorb part of a penetrator’s energy, causing the plates to bulge apart and increasing the armor’s effective depth. The extreme construction of the building was a gross example of military overspending when funds were unlimited . . . an evaluation about to be tested.

  If the situation deteriorated to the point that the Chinese threatened to occupy the building, the thermobaric charges Willie had placed inside Level 3 would destroy everything related to the Object, except the Object itself—as far as they knew. The armored walls would serve the reverse purpose of magnifying the effects of the thermobaric charges, resulting in the building’s interior being vaporized. A ten-second delay gave Willie and anyone with him a chance to get out of the building or into the tunnel system.

  Willie opened the outer door and looked south. That’s when he heard Peng’s whistle, grunted, and hustled to join Sergeant Harris and Yolanda Brown, the African American technician from Level 2.

  Zach lay on the ground with one eye peeking around the dozer blade. Swackhammer started to raise above the blade to also look. Hindman jerked him back. “Not on top, you idiot. Your head would be outlined and easy to spot. They’re less likely to notice if you look around the end like Zach is doing.”

  The camp’s position was slightly elevated from where the Chinese approached. Zach saw the main Chinese force coming directly at the site in two parallel lines of about ten men each, the lines separated by twenty yards.

  At two hundred yards, the Chinese picked up the pace and ran full bore. Zach glanced west. The view of the flanking group from their position was blocked by storage and waste buildings. He couldn’t worry about them. The three men stationed on that side would have to handle the flankers. His problem was coming hard straight at him. He looked east seventy yards to where Andrew held up two claymore clackers. Next to the army major, Alice Marstyn held up a third device. Andrew nodded as Zach reciprocated and checked that Hindman was ready with his two clackers.

  Zach didn’t look again at the Chinese. Andrew rose from his prone position and gave an exaggerated nod, meaning the Chinese were coming up to seventy yards, and he was about to light off the mines. A second nod. On the third nod, Andrew held his two clackers out from his body so Zach could see them and squeezed. Zach’s squeezes followed a fraction of a second behind, Hindman’s fractionally later. Six of the seven claymores exploded within a tenth of a second of one another. The seventh was a dud.

  A deadly spray of 4,200 1/8-inch steel balls roared south at 4,000 feet per second, each ball covering the distance to the Chinese forward line in less than 0.04 seconds.

  Each of the fifty-four Chinese went from upright to prone. What Peng couldn’t immediately see was that of the twenty men making the frontal assault, six were dead and four wounded. In the next three seconds, the Chinese and
the Americans were engaged in a furious firefight. The American advantages were they knew what was coming and could fire from behind protection. The Chinese disadvantage was that they were in exposed positions. However, they outnumbered the defenders three to one and had two machine guns whose crews were not in the blast path of the Claymores. Four more attackers were hit by M4 fire before the two machine guns came into play.

  Scott Goustin, a Canadian radar man, was the first defender to die. When the two soldiers he shared the west flanking position with began firing at the Chinese squad now only sixty yards away, Scott forgot to release his M4’s safety. It took several reactionless presses on the trigger for him to realize the problem. In his lapse of focus as he fumbled with the switch, he inadvertently rose slightly from behind the boulder and barrel shelters where they crouched, exposing his head from the chin up. Two 7.62 mm rounds from a machine gun struck him under the left eye and temple—the double hit superfluous because either was fatal.

  “Christ!” exclaimed Sergeant Schmidt, as Goustin’s blood washed across his right cheek, and Goustin’s body fell on its back. Machine gun rounds chipped away at rocks and metal all around them, showering them with rock fragments. Schmidt chanced firing at the flankers. He glimpsed the Chinese shooting and moving toward the bottom of Baldy Ridge.

  “We have to pull back, or they’re going to get behind us!” he screamed at Sergeant Shalton, who had never stopped firing. Yet most of his shots were blind as he stuck his rifle above their protection and sprayed outward in three-shot bursts.

  “If even one of them gets behind and above us, we’re dead,” said Schmidt. “Let’s go!”

  Together, they left their position and raced toward the recreation building. The flanking Chinese squad rushed to get behind the two men’s position and didn’t fire immediately at them as they ran. Reacting faster was the two-man machine gun crew who had been firing to suppress Schmidt and Shalton’s fire. The gunner followed the two men, catching Shalton just before he reached the cover of the recreation building’s corner. A round hit his ankle, and he fell six feet from the building. Schmidt heard Shalton yell and turned in time to see the machine gun walk rounds from the edge of the building back to Shalton, hitting him enough times to kill three men.

  Furious, Schmidt momentarily forgot his own safety and leaned enough around the corner to fire an entire magazine at the flankers before they and the machine gun returned fire. He ducked and ran along the back of the recreation building. All he could think of was getting to a dormitory’s rear door to get inside and access the tunnel to the main building. He didn’t see that his magazine’s twenty-seven rounds had brought down two attackers.

  Zach saw too late the events to the west as Schmidt’s position crumbled. Although he couldn’t see Schmidt and Shalton race to safety, the stream of tracers from the machine gun told him the story. However, the tracers provided enough distraction for him to poke around the dozer blade and fire half a magazine at the machine gun crew. The machine gun’s ammunition feeder slumped, but the gunner spun the weapon toward Zach’s position. He ducked behind the blade as rounds struck metal and vibrated the blade.

  A hand grabbed Zach’s foot and tugged. “Hindman’s hit!” yelled Swackhammer. Zach turned his head. Hindman lay looking skyward, his eyes blank, one hand pressed to his upper right chest.

  One look told Zach that Hindman was out of action. “Hit his collarbone. Probably not fatal, but he’s in shock. We’re about to be flanked and have to move back. Let’s get him into the lab building, and you take him to the main building through the tunnels. Tell Sinclair to expect bad guys to come at him from the west side and rear.”

  Zach fired the rest of the magazine at the machine gunner, forcing him to duck and stop firing. In the brief lull, they pulled the unconscious Hindman through the lab building’s door. Zach helped Swackhammer put Hindman into a fireman’s carry and urged them repeatedly to warn Sinclair. He exited the building again, just in time to see the remaining Chinese in the west flanking group run toward the recreation building. Zach flicked the switch on his rifle and emptied half a magazine at them before he lost sight. One Chinese fell lifeless, while a second was hit and stumbled, then continued on.

  As far as Zach he knew, he was the last defender on the site’s west flank. He didn’t know what was happening at the east flank, but his sense was that Sinclair’s people were keeping the Chinese at bay on the frontal attack. The situation would change if the Chinese flankers breached the main building. Zach reentered the lab building and headed down the tunnel toward the recreation building. Swackhammer was already out of sight. If the Chinese knew about the tunnels, he could be trapped. If not, he planned to let the flankers pass, and he’d come up behind them.

  Andrew believed they were keeping the east flankers from advancing. In the first raging exchange of gunfire, three Chinese had gone down. The rest had taken cover behind boulders and in depressions. Thus far, the only casualty from his team was Alice Marstyn—hit in the leg while running between a tractor and one of the snowcats. She was in pain but bound the wound herself and continued firing. He glanced back, looking for Willie. The big man kept up slow but steady fire at the Chinese. Andrew hadn’t seen him show up after setting the thermobaric charges in Level 3.

  Peng took in as much detail as he could with his eyes, while simultaneously listening with his earpiece to the clamor of reports from his squad leaders. He was shocked at the furious defense, far beyond what they had been briefed on. He had already lost a third of his men, killed or wounded too severely to be of use. The east flanking group seemed stalemated by a set of defenders. To his front, fire from the main building kept the rest of his men from advancing. The only progress was with his west flank. He needed to suppress enemy fire so the rest of his men could advance and provide a distraction for the remaining men in the west squad, who were now among the objective’s buildings on that side. He briefly considered having that squad come up behind the defenders on the east flank but decided the highest priority was getting into the main building.

  “RPGs!” he shouted. “Two rockets each to the large building. We have to suppress their fire.”

  Peng expected the RPGs to punch through the walls and detonate inside, stunning the defenders without killing too many. He needed prisoners.

  Sinclair saw two flashes and knew the source. “Incoming!” he shouted. “RPGs! Away from the windows!”

  The first rocket-propelled grenade hit six feet from a window, shook the building, and penetrated only the outer wall layer before its force was dissipated by the reactive armor. The second rocket hit an upper corner of a window, blowing it inward. Pedro Laporta had peeked out the window, saw the rocket, and ducked, dropping the Mossberg shotgun he’d been issued. The blast knocked him ten feet, stunning him without causing serious injury. The vagaries of fortune were not so kind to Marylou Stebbins. An eighteen-inch piece of the polycarbonate windowpane scythed from the right side of her neck to her left armpit, killing her before her body hit the floor.

  The next two rockets impacted near windows, shaking the building but not penetrating.

  “They have to hit the same spot twice to get through,” said Sinclair to Whitey Kolzlowski. “They can’t have too many more of the damn things.”

  The words had hardly left the general’s mouth when twin shocks reverberated throughout the building.

  “It’s the main door,” exclaimed Whitey. “They’re trying to breach it.”

  Two more shocks followed, both blasts indicating they had missed the door and impacted the building’s wall.

  One RPG rocket missed the target, sailed over the main building, and hit the building in the rear.

  Peng screamed at the rocketeer. “You idiot! If you cannot use the weapon properly, I will send you unarmed to charge the American positions!”

  “Cào nǐ mā!” cursed a soldier holding another RPG launcher to Peng’s right, referring by implication to performing a certain act on the Americans’ mothers.


  “What’s that building made of, Major?” asked a sergeant. “It must be some type of reactive armor and not just ordinary construction material.”

  “In that case, the RPGs are worthless for getting inside,” said Peng, turning to the nearby men. “You with the launchers, drop them and reinforce the squad on the west side. We will continue firing to keep the Americans’ attention while the men carrying satchel charges are to place them against the main building’s wall. Reactive armor will not stop breaching charges. Once they are in position, they are to set off two charges at one spot. Then, if no hole is blasted through, set off the other charges at the same place. Both machine guns are to concentrate on the main building’s windows to support the men with the charges.”

  Peng wished he hadn’t changed his mind about including a Russian 9M133 antitank missile two-man crew and their loadout for the mission. The weight and the expectation of minimal resistance had led him to decide not to include it. The guided missiles would already have breached the walls, killing and incapacitating many of the people inside through blast debris and concussive shock.

  Everything depended on the west flank. Most of the men in the frontal assault had been decimated—seven men remained alive. Three of those were wounded, two of whom were able to fight. The west machine gun continued a measured suppressing fire at the main building, but the east gun suddenly went silent. Peng feared it had run out of ammunition after keeping up nearly continuous firing, alternating between the main building and the east flank defenders.

  He pulled the east gun crew to his own position and had them arm themselves from the dead bodies. They joined the firing but stayed near Peng, giving him six men as a reserve.