Winter Kill 2 - China Invades Australia

by Gene Skellig

  Ox rushed out of his car to Constable Buchanan’s side, and found him unscathed. The constable jumped to his feet, looking wildly around. “What the fuck is going on here? Is this a terrorist attack?”

  “It’s big,” Ox answered, as he motioned Buchanan to follow him. “All those men on the airliner are armed. And a bunch are having a go at Kirkie up the tower right now!” He picked up one of the rifles the dead men had dropped on the pavement, and handed it to the constable and then picked up the other one for himself. He looked at it for a few seconds with a quizzical expression on his face and then nodded to himself after figuring out the ‘full-auto-off’ lever. The rocker was full forward, in the ‘full-fire’ mode. “Let’s go!” he shouted, his commanding voice jolting the bewildered constable up and into action. The two men then rushed through the door of the tower staircase.

  The door had been blown off of its hinges, leaving a yawning hole leading to the stairs. They’re already up there, Ox thought as he cautiously took the first steps up.

  With Constable Buchanan backing him up the Customs Inspector led the way up the stairs, unsure if there were many rounds left in the rifle’s magazine. He paused to take another look at the assault rifle in his hands and recognized that it was a Norelco M14, but with a much longer magazine than he had seen at the gun club. That’s gotta be a thirty-round magazine! Good, there must be a few rounds left, he thought, as he turned the first corner. He could hear some commotion above, as though someone was trying to bash down a door.

  Three hundred yards away, Colonel Ma stood in the cockpit of the Boeing 737 that had been pressed into service along with hundreds of other passenger aircraft as part of OPERATION WINTER SNAKE. The careful preparations had been time-consuming but now the painstaking effort was coming to fruition.

  Brigade Commander for the East – Central Occupation Sector, centered on Port Macquarie, Colonel Ma wanted to be with the first wave of assaulters from the 121st Mechanized Infantry Division, 41st Group Army, and to be on-hand to witness the men’s performance in this, the most critical of the eleven airfields in General Leung’s forces hoped to capture in the first few hours of Day One.

  He was as relieved to be on the ground as his men were. They all knew that the most dangerous part of their mission was not the prospect of ground combat in Australia but the likelihood that a number of airliners would be shot down by Australian air defense forces before reaching their destinations. He knew that as long as at least one of the three aircraft designated for this particular objective made it through they would most likely achieve all four of their Port Macquarie area tactical objectives.

  His aircraft was the largest, with a full company of Chinese Special Forces personnel to disgorge. The next aircraft, due in another ten minutes, was a Q400 with only one platoon, and then a Fokker-50, modified with extra fuel tanks, transporting another platoon of his men.

  If all three aircraft made it unscathed, then when General Leung arrived with the command element three hours later there would be almost two hundred men in place. That should be sufficient to hold their four objectives long enough for follow-on forces, which should arrive within the next five to eight days.

  As he watched his men assemble on the fly while disembarking, he was proud of them. They had trained intensely for their mission without knowing how it fit into the larger strategic vision. Now, as they seized the engineering plant, fuel farm, hangar-line and other facilities on the east side of the regional airport without encountering any resistance, he turned his attention to the airport terminal itself.

  From where the aircraft was parked, even when he opened the pilot’s window and stuck his head out, Colonel Ma could not see all of the terminal building. He saw a section of his men making their way there, but for some reason they were ducking behind parked cars in the parking lot and not running flat out as they had been trained. Are they be under fire, he wondered? He was unable to hear anything over the shrill noise of the aircraft’s Auxiliary Power Unit.

  Colonel Ma was about to head back and go down the chute when he took a quick look to his right, between two hangars, and saw two police vehicles approaching a section of his men who were making their way across Boundary Street for their objective – his future base of operations – Newman Senior Technical College.

  It had seemed strange to him at first that he was to set up Battalion Headquarters in what was essentially a high school, but when he was shown the floor-plan of the modern facility, with dormitories, kitchen and recreation facilities for the large number of residential students from outlying areas, he recognized the utility of the place. Its close proximity to the airport, where his forces would be disembarking, was an added benefit.

  But they needed to capture the facility quickly, and establish a secure perimeter.

  To do that, the section tasked with storming the facility had to get past what looked like three or four NSW police officers who had responded to calls from the airport security personnel.

  They were supposed to have been taken out by the Little Dragon and his Dragonflies, Colonel Ma thought, with annoyance, as he watched the skirmish unfold. It quickly became apparent that the fire team were not long impeded by the police officers; they took them out with a few short bursts from their Type 95 assault rifles without breaking their stride. Well done, boys. Keep moving! he thought, as he turned to exit the cockpit.

  On the deck of the control tower, Kirkie Charleswood could feel the adrenalin. He was not afraid, but if he thought about things a bit he would have been. What kept him going as he unraveled the fire hose and prepared his other weapons was the idea: I’m not alone. Ox and Constable Buchanan are coming. I’ve got a chance!

  He kept an eye on the closed circuit TV cameras, first at the street-level entrance and now at the final security door, just below the narrow staircase up onto the tower deck itself. He saw that there were five or six terrorist trying to break down the reinforced door to the tower deck. Ox and Buchanan had already taken out two of the attackers, and were moving up the stairwell.

  Kirkie hoped to make things difficult for the attackers. He had just enough time to go turn open the tap and firmly grip the nozzle before the water pressure attempted to flail the hose out of his hands. He held on and waited.

  As expected, the moment the door was torn off its hinges, his attackers lobbed a couple of grenades up onto the tower deck. The concussion was deafening, but Kirkie was not hurt, protected as he was by the line of heavy metal filing cabinets he had hid behind up against the rear wall of the tower deck.

  Now it’s my turn! He thought, as he twisted opened the nozzle, sending a powerful spray of water ahead of him as he moved in on the stairwell.

  He saw a surprised look on the face of a Chinese-looking man, who was thrown backwards down the narrow staircase by the force of the water, bowling back on the two men behind him in the process.

  As Kirkie moved the water-jet from man to man, he aimed at their faces as much as possible to keep them blinded and out of action. Come on, boys, get up here!

  When he heard an uproar a few flights above him, with men screaming in Chinese and the roar of water spraying all over the place, John Oxley realized that Kirkie, was using a fire-hose on the attackers. Constable Buchanan must have realized it as well, because he was right on Ox’s heals as he raced up the final two flights of stairs to the administrative deck immediately below the control tower deck.

  It only took a moment to see what was going on. Five men in various stages of inundation were picking themselves up off the floor or attempting to crawl out of the way as an intense, sharply focused jet of water played on each of them in turn, sending them back down onto the floor in a scramble of arms and legs. A couple of them were firing in the general direction of the source of the water.

  Ox and the constable opened fire on them, killing four of them before they even knew that they had been flanked. As he moved in on the last man, Ox signaled ‘cease fire’ to Buchanan, seeing that the sole remaining attack
er had lost his weapon and had his hands raised to protect his face from the water.

  “Shut it off, Kirkie! We got’ em!” Shouted Constable Buchanan as he took out a pair of hand-cuffs and secured the assailant’s wrists.

  “What the hell do we do now?” asked Buchanan.

  “Kirkie, get the hell down here!” shouted Ox, who then grasped the bewildered man by the upper arms and yanked him to his feet.’

  “Bugger me, but you’re a tall, skinny bastard!” he said, as he shoved the man towards the staircase.

  “You don’t’ have to tell me twice, Mate!” said Kirkie, as he reached their level. He grabbed the man’s other arm and helped Ox drag the man down the stairs.

  As they exited the staircase they saw a group of soldiers at the far end of the parking lot, moving their way.

  Constable Buchanan fired off a few rounds; Ox had abandoned the rifle in favor of taking their captive.

  The heavily armed soldiers all ducked behind cars, despite the fact that constable Buchanan had only fired three or four rounds before his Glock 22 was empty. As he reloaded, Kirkie and Ox shoved their captive into the back of the assaulter’s black SUV, which still had the engine running, the keys in the ignition.

  As bullets began to hit the rear of the SUV and the brick wall opposite the vehicle, Constable Buchanan began to drive them around the west side of the terminal and out onto the taxiway, turning north and putting the terminal building between the advancing soldiers and themselves.

  “Jesus Christ! What the hell is going on? Were those Indonesians, or Chinese?” asked the constable as he drove through the security gate in the chain-link fence and swerved onto Tuffins Road, heading towards downtown Port Macquarie.

  “I’m sure they’re all Chinese. This guys’ mates we met in the tower, and those soldiers, must be working together.”

  “So we are under attack by the Chinese?”

  “Yeah, Ox. And I think it’s worse than that.”

  “What do you mean, Kirkie?”

  “Just before I left the tower I overheard an emergency broadcast on Guard frequency. It was from the Army. They were ordering a full national mobilization of all Armed Forces, Reserve Units and Civil Defense personnel. They said that Canberra, Sydney and Melbourne have been attacked with nuclear weapons from Russia and that there are reports of attacks in smaller communities across Australia.”

  “Are you serious? Nuclear war with Russia? National mobilization? What? Are we at war with Russia or with China? Where did all of this come from?”

  “Obviously it’s a complete surprise. It doesn’t really matter if it is Russia or China. Maybe the Russians are using some of those Asian looking Russians from their far east. Maybe they’re in it together, but those soldiers are definitely Chinese. “Where we going?” asked Buchanan, slowing the SUV to a stop at Hastings River Drive.

  “What do you mean? Turn right, head for the LAC. What were you thinking? - leave town?”

  “No. I guess not,” said the young constable, now clearly shaken by the turn of events. His hands were shaking, despite the firm grip he had on the steering wheel.

  “Calm down, Peter, we’re OK. People are counting on us, and we’re not going to let them down. And you are a visible symbol of authority, so you need to pull yourself together and stand tall. Are you with me?” asked Ox, reassuringly.

  “Yes, Mr. Oxley. I am. It’s just…it’s just so unbelievable.”

  “There’s no way the Chinese will get away with this. The whole world will come down on them like a ton of bricks. I bet the Yanks are already all over them, nuking the bugger out of them. All we’ve got to do is deal with any of them that have landed here, and take care of our own. The rest of the world will take care of the big stuff.”

  “So what do we do?” he asked, as he turned left off of Gordon Street onto Hay Street and then pulled into the narrow driveway past the fire-hall, and arrived at the back parking lot of Local Area Command, North Coast District Headquarters of the New South Wales Police Force.

  “Bugger me! GO!” Shouted Ox.

  Constable Buchanan accelerated past the group of Chinese soldiers and Asian men in civilian clothes who were standing around outside the LAC office. The soldiers had been told to expect the black SUV, the Control Tower team, at some point so they did not open fire on it until they saw that it was full of white men, not fellow Chinese.

  Bullets ripped into the vehicle as Buchanan steered around the rear of the building and then out across the grass in the back yard, smashing through the hedge and bouncing through the back yard of the Port Macquarie Workwear property.

  One more hedge went under their wheels and then they burst out onto a well-manicured lawn and then onto Murray Street beyond.

  “They’ve already captured the LAC? Bugger!”

  “Head for the Depot!” said Ox.

  “What, on Munster?”

  “Yeah. Good on ya. If anybody can fight these guys, it’ll be the guys from the 41st Battalion,” said Ox.

  “I don’t know. If they’ve got the airport and the LAC, then they’ve probably gone after the armory as well,” said the constable, as he turned off Church Street and headed up Munster.

  All three men looked ahead and saw another group of Chinese soldiers getting out of civilian vehicles, moving in on the building, firing as they advanced the local reserve unit depot.

  “Mate. I think you had the right idea after all. Get us the hell out of town. Head inland. We have to get ahead of the Chinese.”

  “Too right!”

  Ox thought of another place. “Make for…” He paused, changing his mind. “No! Don’t turn that way! There’s probably more of ‘em coming from the airport. Head down Lord Street, and take the long way ‘round.”

  Ten minutes later they had reached the small community of Wauchope and found that the local detachment of the New South Wales Police Force was intact.

  The community must have gotten word that war had broken out, but the detachment’s five or six police officers were clearly in the dark as they attempted to settle the growing crowd of citizens who had gathered in the parking lot outside the small police station.

  The otherwise quiet night air was interrupted by the roaring engine and squealing tires as the black SUV screeched to a halt in front of the crowd. The citizens of Wauchope turned to look at the men inside.

  Sergeant McCreary, the NSW Police Force detachment commander, stormed up to them, about to shout at them for reckless driving. Ox got out of the vehicle, dragging his prisoner with him. He threw the Chinese to the pavement, getting everyone’s attention. McCreary recognized Oxley and decided to shut up and let him speak.

  In the perhaps fifteen minutes since World War Three had broken out, John Oxley had abandoned his civilian personality of a friendly Customs Inspector, and had re-activated his long-dormant persona, that of a confident and aggressive infantry Warrant Officer, 41st battalion, Royal New South Wales Regiment. He did not need any paperwork, permission or invitation. His country was at war. Besides, he thought to himself as he prepared his words, a general order to mobilize Australia’s armed forces has been given. He was needed.

  “Take a look at this man” Ox said, pointing to the man he had just thrown to the ground. “He’s our enemy. Himself and a planeload of his kind, Chinese soldiers, have just taken over Port Macquarie.”

  “Bonkers!” a man spoke up from the crowd. “You can’t be serious! I mean, we heard that we’ve been attacked, that there are a half-dozen mushroom clouds over Sydney, but how can the Chinese be here already in our little county? There’s nothing important hereabouts. This can’t be happening so fast!”

  “Listen, there’s no time to debate. My name is John Oxley. I’m going to tell you what’s going on, and what you need to do, and you are going to do as I tell you. You got it?”

  “By what authority?”

  Recently self-re-enlisted Warrant Officer John Oxley walked up to the man who had spoken out, someone he did not recognize. Th
e man stood in front of the others, hands on his hips, as if he was entitled to get his way.

  Ox did not answer the question. He punched the man square in the face, sending him reeling back into the crowd. His mates grabbed hold of him, helped him up, and kept him quiet. Probably one of those hobby farmers who has moved to the region after a life of selfishness in the big city, Oxley thought to himself. Ox was angered by the type, more interested in arguing than doing their part.

  NSW Police Sergeant McCreary was impressed. “Go ahead, Mr. Oxley. You’ve got our attention. Tell us what’s for.”

  “Thank you, Sergeant McCreary.”

  “Folks. Australia is at war. This is not an overseas war, like Afghanistan or Iraq, which had nothing to do with Australia. It’s not like the great war, where so many of our young men shipped off to join the Australian and New Zealand Army Corps, ANZAC – to die for the folly of British officers at Gallipoli. No, friends, this is on our homeland. Our homeland has never been invaded before, so we have no historical precedence. But what we are facing is what they call a ‘war of national survival’, and the Chinese have fired the first shots, at least here in New South Wales. We don’t know how that fits in with the nuclear blasts, but I for one believe that the Chinese were behind those as well. And if so, they have already killed millions of our citizens. And these are crack troops. They took Port Macquarie in a matter of minutes. I saw it with my own eyes, me and Constable Buchanan over there,” he indicated. “They moved with precision, and clearly knew their objectives. That can mean only one thing: they’ve planned this thing to the most minute detail,” he paused, looking at his prisoner, on the ground.

  The man was dead.

  Ox rolled him over, and the crowd let out a collective gasp at the foam coming out of the man’s mouth.

  “This man was a spy. He and a bunch of others were trying to take over the Control Tower. They were there before the Chinese soldiers, in their Chinese ‘unis, even got out of their aircraft. The soldiers arrived by an unscheduled landing, what they call an ‘air-land assault’, using a Boeing 737 if you can believe it. Then they raced to capture their objectives. They have already secured a beachhead in this region. I’m sure that they mean to use the airport to build up their forces in this area, and then move inland. That means your town is next.”