by Adam Yoshida
As he reached the crest of the hill, his phone caught LTE service for the first time all day. With that available, he began to grab the attachments sent to him. The pictures, he now saw, were from his mother's birthday party. With a moderate level of interest he began to flip through them. He was on the third of six pictures when a tremendous force knocked him flat on his face.
Though slightly dazed, Jackson was able to quickly jump to his feet and turned around to find the building that had been serving as his and Wayne's joint headquarters blown apart, the ruins in flames. Jackson began running down the hill in the direction of the fiery ruins – together with two-dozen sentries who had been guarding the secluded location – but as he approached his eyes told him that there was almost no hope for anyone who had been inside the building. The wooden structure had been intended to be a concealed headquarters, not a fortified one. The thousand-pound bomb that had struck it had simply blown the place apart.
"It looks like we got them, General," the Air Force Colonel reported to General Price as they watched the fresh video from the CF-18's cameras on their computer screens.
"That's the problem with having so many mercenaries – they're people who you know have a price," replied the General nonchalantly.
"What did we have to promise them anyway?" an aide asked.
"It doesn't really matter," replied Price, "he was inside there."
General Jackson found a vehicle with a working radio at the side of the road. Other rescuers had already arrived on the scene, but it hadn't taken them long to confirm Jackson's snap conclusion: he was the only survivor from the Command Post.
Sloppy, sloppy, sloppy. Fuck. Jackson cursed inwardly while struggling to maintain outwards composure. They should have been in a fucking bunker – and they certainly shouldn't have had their staffs together, chatting and laughing like they were doing some sort of table-top exercise. In addition to General Wayne, they had just lost a lot of the men who knew how to keep food and fuel flowing to this army. None of those people would be easy to replace. Whoever had had planned the operation must have known that.
They could scratch together a staff from the rest of the Corps' officers, but that would mean stealing the men and women who kept brigades and companies running effectively. Jackson made some rapid mental calculations. There had been no signs, before the bombing, and there were no signs now of a general advance by the Federal Army. They intended to hold, poke at them, and hope that politics would achieve the rest of their objectives. Well, he thought, fuck that.
"All units," he broadcast from his radio and in the clear, "this is General Jackson. You are ordered to commence the attack."
A fearful artillery barrage began to strike at the First Brigade, Quebec Volunteer Infantry Division. The unit, quickly constituted during the rapid Federal buildup after Second Vancouver, had a high percentage of veteran soldiers in its ranks in addition to a number of ardent volunteers. However, even the most-hardened veterans of the brigade – men who had served in Afghanistan for years – had faced anything like what was raining down upon them now. The Western artillery batteries held nothing back, maintaining a continuous rain of high explosive 155mm projectiles upon the forward positions held by the Federal army. The intensity of the shelling would have been more familiar to the great-grandfathers of those veteran soldiers who had served on the Western Front during the Great War. The shells burst over the well-dug trenches, inflicting fairly light casualties by shaking the earth anew every few seconds.
Sergeant Will Grayson had served in Kandahar and had been under fire dozens of times. As the artillery fire continued – though it had now seemed to shift to more distant targets with fewer bursts overhead – he moved up and down the trench line that had been dug, seeking to comfort men who were clinging to the ground.
"Jack?" he asked one weeping teenager. The boy looked up at him.
"Man," he breathed, wheezing as he spoke, "I didn't think that it would be like this."
"No one ever does," he replied.
The teenager sobbed and held his arms tightly to his chest.
"But what we're doing here is important. We're fighting to hold a country together. Do you understand that? Our fathers and grandfathers built this country and now these people," he gestured towards the Western Army, "just want to take it, without a real vote even, and walk off with so much of what they built and fought for. And we can't let that happen."
The teenager was rocking back and forth. But he was also listening.
"I know that you're scared. Everyone here is. But it's what we do when we're frightened that does us the most credit."
The teenager nodded. He said nothing, but he picked up his rifle. Grayson patted him on the shoulder.
"Ok. That's good," he said.
Grayson made his way up and down the line. Visibility was terrible. He could hear his own artillery shooting back – he could see some of the rounds tracing across the sky – but he couldn't make out much more than that. As shells continued to burst over his position, he and his men continued to stay as low as possible.
After nearly an hour, someone began dropping smoke rounds directly on his position. Realizing what this might mean, he and the Lieutenant in command of the platoon began to move up and down the line, checking in with men and preparing them for an assault that they knew had to be coming.
The first round of smoke came and went. The shelling continued. Even Grayson began to tire as the night wore on.
At 3AM a fearful blast of fire began to rain down upon the Federal trench. In addition to the long-range artillery fire, short-range mortars began to fall upon it. Soldiers who attempted to get up to take a look were shot by snipers. Two minutes later, with vehicle engines audible over the din, a steady rain of machine gun bullets fell upon the position. Their cameras and sensors reported tanks nearby and a few were sighted on infrared sensors, but no one was able to get up and survive long enough for an anti-tank missile to be launched. Frantic, they began to radio command for support. There was none available, the high command radioed back, and anyway other units elsewhere along the line reported far larger concentrations of armor. The smaller Federal tank force would have to be held back to cope with a massed attack, not to deal with well-dispersed penny packets of the things.
The noise of the engines drew closer. Grayson poked his head up to look. He couldn't see through the smoke, but he could hear. In frustration, be blindly fired a clip from his rifle in the direction of the enemy before diving for the cover of the trench.
Distant sounds began to reverberate closer as Grayson gritted his teeth in frustration. To attempt to mount a counterattack versus the level of incoming fire they were facing would be suicidal, but to do nothing was incredibly painful. He popped his head up over the edge of the trench once more, surveying the scene for a few seconds before once more seeking shelter.
"We have tanks approaching our lines. They're within a few hundred meters. We need support now," he hissed into the radio receiving static as a response.
He listened closer. Not only were the tanks coming, but they were coming in fast. Something in the back of his mind leaped to something from the distant past, something that he'd read in a history book about the Gulf War.
"Get out of this fucking trench now, if you want to live!" he shouted, grabbing his rifle and attempting to lead his men over the top. As he scrambled over the edge, he got his first clear glimpse of the tanks, now just barely in front of him and coming in at high speed – they'd had improved bulldozer blades attached to them, which they were now driving into the earth before them. Grayson charged forward almost two feet before a portion of his head was cleaved away by a .50 caliber machine gun bullet, throwing what was left of him backwards into the trench. The Private who he had comforted earlier lingered for some hours longer, breathing his last labored and terrified breaths below the tons of dirt that the Western bulldozer blades had managed to dump upon him and the rest of his comrades.
Mark Varro watched th
e latest news from Canada with grim satisfaction. Perhaps, he thought, I ought to have joined the forces over there – there might have been something to be gained from that. In any case, it was too late for regrets. As he drove his stolen car to the campus of the American University, he turned every few seconds to look at the sword which lay slung across the passenger seat.
It was, he reflected, rather foolish to leave it sitting out there in the open as it would be very difficult to explain to any police officer who happened to pull him over why he was driving around with a sword in his passenger seat, but it was just too cool-looking to not leave it there. He had contemplated making the act a fully public one. Completing the execution of this particular criminal in the middle of one of his communistic anti-American lectures would be genuinely satisfying. But he had to weigh that thought against the certainty that, were he to do so, he would almost certainty be caught and consequently prevented from carrying out other executions. Therefore, he had had to monitor the Professor's classroom and find a time when he was sure he would be alone. Also, rather than appearing, as he would have preferred, in full dress uniform to carry out this particular act it was necessary for him to adopt a disguise.
As Varro stopped in the university parking lot he opened up the guitar case that was also sitting on the passenger seat and placed the sword inside. Getting out of the car, he stopped to check that his wig was in place and to admire his Metallica T-shirt. Carefully gripping the case so as not to jostle the contents, he gave himself one last once-over and smiled.
He walked casually, as he imagined that a slacker might, from the parking lot into the hall where he knew that Professor Anderson was finishing his lecture. Based upon the few times he had already sat in on it, he knew that students wouldn't be eager to hang around and chat afterwards and that both of his teaching assistants had to quickly move on to lead tutorial sections. Quietly, he slipped into the back of the class and waited for the room to clear.
Once the last student had left, Varro sat and watched as Anderson methodically collected his papers. Varro went for his case and snapped it open, collecting up the broadsword with both hands. He raised it and began to move towards the Professor, who wasn't paying the least attention.
"Professor Anderson!" he shouted, jolting the man to attention. The Professor looked up and adjusted his glasses, before startling and falling backwards.
"Professor Anderson!" he repeated. "You have been tried before the court of the American people. Your crime is treason! Your punishment will be death!"
"What?" cried out the mystified Professor, "I have always..."
Varro swung the sword at Anderson's side. He had hoped that the blow would cleave the man in half. Instead, however, it left a huge bloody gash in his side. Blood spilled across the classroom floor as the Professor desperately crawled away.
"I..." he coughed and struggled for words, "I've always been an advocate of the people..."
Now Varro swung for his head. The blow caught Anderson along the side of the neck, inflicting a mortal wound that went a long way towards severing the head from the body, but not quite killing the professor instantly. Varro raised the sword with both hands and drove it into Anderson's chest. He paused for a moment to catch his breath, before pulling a note from the interior pocket of his coat and using a hunting knife to pin it to Anderson's chest.
"Fuckers!" General Price cursed as he looked at the latest situation reports from the front. He had expected an attack. Perhaps he had even desired one. What he had not expected was for the Western force to hurl itself upon his lines in such a sudden and fierce fashion. Burying hundreds of men and women alive might have been cruel, but it had also cut large holes in his defenses, holes through which several hundred Western tanks had poured. He had counted upon them to attempt a systematic reduction of his defenses. Now, instead, the Western Army had already punched a major hole in his lines and had passed thousands of his men into the heart of his works. The grim reality that now existed was that many of his fixed defenses had become an impediment to holding the city as they tied down substantial forces in easily bypassed strongpoints and left those men and women in a position where, when they attempted to break out of defensive works that had become prisons, they would be slaughtered due to their lack of mobility.
"Where are our own tanks?" he asked, attempting to sort out a battlefield map that was a masterpiece of confusion.
"The Armoured Regiment is four kilometers to the south of the town. They're gassed up and ready to go," came the reply from an anonymous staffer.
"Ok. Order them forward," replied Price.
The 1st Canadian Armoured Regiment (Provisional) was made up of every Leopard 2 hull and every person with tank experience or anything like it that the Federal government could pull together in a hurry. The Federal Government had sought to purchase additional tanks and vehicles abroad but, with its credit now very shaky, this had proven to be difficult. While some had eventually been secured, even if they came with usurious financing terms, none of those had reached the front yet. The tanks that the Army of Northwestern Ontario threw into the Battle of Thunder Bay represented, aside from a few training units and other odds and ends held at various depots, the whole of the armored strength of the Federal Army.
Major Dunford's company, rested and refitted after having participated in the opening engagement of the battle, had been assigned to spearhead the First Brigade as it led the breakthrough after the engagement along the forward trenches. Speed was all that mattered at the moment. The scattered men and women who manned the outer ring of the defenses built up around Thunder Bay could go two ways in the hours ahead: they could break apart into smaller-but-deadly meteorites that would strike all portions of the Western Army with terrible force, or they could prove to be so divided and dissipated that they would dissolve harmlessly in the atmosphere. The latter outcome would be most likely if they found, once they were able to raise their heads and look around, that the Western Army had already shattered the second ring of defenses, leaving them genuinely isolated and alone.
Every available air asset that the Western force had was now being devoted to clearing a path for the tanks trying to reach the centre of the city. Forward Air Controllers flew light aircraft that were practically invisible in the night sky, transmitting GPS locations of enemy forces back to the high command for air targeting. As Dunford's Merkava drove forward he saw, just ahead of him, one missile and bomb and another descend from the heavens to light up the darkness and shatter some hapless enemy below.
On the road just to the east of the city, the Federal Leopard 2 tanks, still an intact formation despite being hit by two rounds of air strikes that had destroyed eleven vehicles, made contact with the First Armored Division, led by Major Dunford's company of the First Brigade.
The Federal tanks were coming at him at full speed.
"That's not very good for fire control," commented Dunford's Merkava driver. The Leopards were nearing the edge of their engagement range but, driving forward at maximum speed, their first shots proved to be wholly inaccurate.
"They ought to have slowed down by now," agreed the Loader.
Dunford held back for a second before speaking.
"They don't want us to be able to engage them by air. They're going to try to close distances with us in order to make artillery and close air support almost impossible without causing friendly casualties."
"How do we respond to that?" asked the driver.
"We let them," answered Dunford.
The fire of the fast-moving Leopards had, so far, proven to be fairly inaccurate. The fire of the Merkavas on the other hand, holding in place and taking their time to find their targets, proved to be superlatively accurate. One round after another struck the Federal tanks as they desperately attempted to close the range in order to deprive their enemies of the invaluable assistance that they received in the form of air and artillery support.
Within seconds, the Eastern and Western tanks were fighting an
armored engagement at practically point-blank range. The battle quickly degenerated into a murderous close-range street fight being fought with seventy-ton chunks of steel. Fire, fragments, and flesh coated the battlefield as the intensely bright fires of close quarters combat between tanks set the night ablaze. Within a minute, the numerical superiority of the Federal force over Dunford's company began to tell. As the tanks continued to hammer away at one another, the number of friendlies dropped. One minute there were eleven tanks on the battlefield. Then eight. Then four. As the superior size of the Eastern force began to tell, General Price and everyone else watching events live began to entertain hopes of a wholly different outcome than that they had expected a few minutes ago.
"Numbers and tactics both tell," Price announced to his headquarters staff.
Major Dunford knew that he couldn't last much longer. He and his men were outnumbered. They had inflicted casualties far out of proportion to their numbers, but they did not have the strength to overcome everything. Finally, mentally conceding the inevitable, he flipped a few pages on his computer and called for every form of support that he could.
"Outback," his command radio cackled to life, "you have called in air strikes upon your own position. We can't do that."
"Command," Dunford radioed back with a slight chuckle in his voice, "none of us are going to be here much longer. Deliver the strike."
It was Colonel Stern's eighth air mission in forty-eight hours. He could barely keep his own eyes open. But he was still a combat pilot and determined to carry on. He suppressed a yawn as the forward air controller ordered the strike package that he was leading to divert from their planned attack upon a strongpoint erected closer to the centre of the city in order to provide close air support instead.
"Shit," one of his wingmen radioed, abandoning all pretense of discipline, "those look like our fucking tanks!"
