by James Rosone
The young communications lieutenant consulted his map and then responded, “That’s 1st BN, Royal Irish Regiment, Sir.”
“They're kicking the tar out of those Russians over there,” the colonel said with a wry grin on his face.
As they continued approaching the air base, a series of heavy machine guns opened fire on the troop nearest the perimeter. Putting his binoculars to his face, the colonel could see several of his Stryker vehicles engaging the enemy positions. The back hatches had dropped, and the infantry was now disgorging from their armored chariots as they advanced on foot toward the enemy.
The infantrymen steadily advanced with fire support from the Strykers, silencing one gun position after another. Suddenly, a missile streaked out of the tree line from just inside the perimeter. At first, it was just the one missile, but seconds later, six more joined the fray. Three of the missiles were destroyed by the vehicles’ antimissile systems, causing them to swerve or veer off course at the last minute. Unfortunately for the Americans, the other missiles hit their marks, destroying four of the Strykers.
“Damn Kornets. See if we can get some mortar fire to suppress those missile teams in the tree line,” barked the colonel, angry that a dozen of his troopers had just been killed.
The fight for the airport lasted nearly three hours. The squadron had to clear each building and the area around the airfield without the use of air strikes or heavy artillery. Because the Allies didn’t know if there were still nuclear weapons stored at the facility, they were barred from destroying any buildings or munition bunkers, no matter how stout a defense the enemy was putting up in those places.
“Colonel, Nemesis Troop is requesting your presence at one of the bunkers they just secured,” one of the staff officers said, his voice barely audible over the sound of rifle and machine-gun fire that was still raging around other parts of the city.
“Let’s go, Sergeant Major,” Schoolman responded. He grabbed his own rifle and trudged off in the direction of his troop commander. Childers followed close behind.
Several additional soldiers headed out with the colonel and the sergeant major to see what they had stumbled upon. As they approached the bunker, they spotted a number of dead enemy soldiers, along with the remains of a few of their own troops. Not far from the bunker, a small cluster of wounded soldiers was being treated by a couple of the medics while they waited on a medevac helicopter to come in and take them back to a higher-level trauma center.
They walked up to the gaggle of soldiers. “Captain Taylor, what do you have for us?” asked Colonel Schoolman.
“Colonel, Sergeant Major, I think we may have found some nuclear weapons,” he said, to the shock and concern of the soldiers who had just walked up to the bunker.
Sergeant Major Childers immediately barked at the soldiers standing around. “Set up a wider perimeter around the bunker!” he yelled. “You, over there, start clearing some of the overgrowth around the entrance.”
They rushed off to follow his orders. Sure enough, as they cleared brush along the outer wall of the bunker, they found a yellow metal placard with the universal pinwheel symbol that indicated nuclear material.
“Send a message back to regiment,” Schoolman directed. “Tell them what we found, and ask them to send an explosive ordnance specialist over here to inspect them. I want to make sure these infernal things are secured and not going to go off on us.”
Every moment that passed felt like eternity as they waited for EOD to arrive. Childers started daydreaming, thinking about what Jack Bauer would do in an episode of 24, and how he would grab his flashlight from his vest and boldly announce, “Sir, I’m going to take a peek at them and make sure none of them are rigged to detonate.”
In his thoughts, all of the younger soldiers stepped aside for him, and before the colonel could object, he’d storm his way in there. He’d probably have some eager young gun follow him, and he’d ask him to hold his flashlight. He imagined searching for visible wires, LED timers, or anything that might indicate these warheads had been rigged to detonate. Of course, he’d have to open them up in some glorious show of heroism, just to be sure.
In reality, they just continued waiting until it felt like he would fall asleep. In a very anti-climactic ending, the EOD specialist finally emerged from the warehouse and announced, “Your families won’t be cashing in those life insurance policies just yet.”
Suddenly, his friend, Captain Jack Taylor, walked up and greeted him. “How’s it going, Sergeant Major?”
Childers smiled. “It looks like we’ve just been given a new lease on life,” he answered.
Taylor came over, and then, before anyone could object, he poked his head into the warehouse. He must have known he was breaking all kinds of protocol, because he snapped himself back outside before there was a chance to complain. “I just had to see them,” he mumbled. “They really do look like in the movies…it’s hard to believe that such a small device can wipe out an entire city.”
Schoolman must have overheard Taylor talking. He walked over. “It was a device a little larger than this that wiped out San Francisco. My wife, my daughter, and my twin boys were visiting my parents in Alameda, near Oakland,” he said quietly, wiping a tear away.
The colonel had been carrying a heavy burden of guilt for some time now. When the war in Europe had started, he had sent his wife and kids to stay with his parents in California; he’d figured they’d be safe there, far away from the fighting. As things heated up in North Korea, he decided it might be better for them to go stay with his brother in Montana, but he was unable to make a call back home, and less than 24 hours later, his wife, children and parents were all dead, part of the hundreds of thousands who had been vaporized when the bomb had gone off over the port of Oakland.
Taylor didn’t know what to say. The awkward silence hung in the air. Finally, Schoolman cleared his throat and addressed Childers. “I want the squadron to bivouac here for the night while we wait for new orders,” he said.
“Yes, Sir,” Childers answered.
They went around the corner to start issuing the new orders and saw that a small group of Russian prisoners had been collected and were being questioned by a couple of the intelligence members of Schoolman’s staff. Lieutenant Colonel Schoolman walked over. “Have you gotten anything useful from them?” he asked.
Chief Warrant Officer 3 Fillips just shook his head. “Nothing yet, Sir. From what I can gather, none of them were even aware that there were nuclear weapons still being stored here. Then again, my Russian is a bit rusty. Regiment said they’re sending a couple of Russian translators and an interrogation team over here ASAP.”
“I speak Russian pretty well. Let me give it a try,” Schoolman responded. He walked toward the prisoners, with the warrant officer quickly following him.
Childers sensed something wrong in the way his boss said he wanted to “try” and talk to the Russians, so he followed him to the group of prisoners. He didn’t know Schoolman very well, but he could tell that he was obviously emotionally distraught over the loss of his family.
When the colonel approached the group of prisoners, he identified the two officers among the gaggle of prisoners and proceeded to single them out. He grabbed what appeared to be a young private to join the group and lined the three of them up.
Luke didn’t like the look of this and moved toward Schoolman, whispering softly, “Don’t do anything you’ll regret, Sir. It isn’t worth it.”
Colonel Schoolman looked angrily at him. “Enough, Sergeant Major!” he yelled. Then he turned back to face the prisoners.
“Are there other bunkers with nuclear weapons?” he asked them in Russian. His hand was fiddling with the SIG Sauer in his leg holster as he grilled them.
The prisoners shook their heads, acting surprised.
He pointed to the bunker with the warheads, where several of his soldiers were standing guard. “Are any of the nuclear weapons in that bunker boobytrapped or rigged to explode?” he
shouted.
Now the prisoners looked concerned, but again they said they had been unaware that nuclear weapons were still being stored here. One of the officers, the oldest looking of the two, said in rapid-fire Russian that they had been told all the nuclear warheads had been moved back to the Motherland prior to the war.
Schoolman, now confident that he had gotten a straight answer from the two Russian officers, turned and headed back toward the tactical command center his staff had now set up. As he walked, his signaled for Childers to come closer.
“What did you mean, ‘it isn’t worth it’? Did you believe I was going to shoot those prisoners?” he asked, surprised that his sergeant major would think that lowly of him.
Childers stopped walking for a minute, forcing the colonel to stop as well. He wanted to have this conversation out of earshot of any of the other soldiers. “Sir, when we were in the bunker, and you told us about your family, I honestly didn’t know they had died in Oakland. You had never spoken of them before. When you said you wanted to talk to the prisoners, I wasn’t totally sure where your head was in that moment.”
Childers paused for a second. “When I was a young Ranger on my second combat deployment, we suffered a terrible loss in the Korengal Valley of Afghanistan. Our captain and platoon sergeant were killed, and we captured a couple of prisoners following an extended battled with the Taliban. One of the Taliban prisoners had been wounded, and our lieutenant at the time was determined to get some useful information out of him before we provided him treatment or brought him back to headquarters. They dragged the prisoner away from the rest of us to question him away from prying eyes. We heard a lot of screaming going on and a lot of yelling. Eventually, we heard a single gunshot, and our lieutenant, and two other soldiers appeared from where they had been questioning the prisoner. They said the prisoner gave up the location of where other fighters were hiding, so we moved out to engage them. The next thing I knew, we were in another gun battle; eventually, we killed a few dozen more Taliban fighters later that day.”
The colonel could see his sergeant major was getting emotional about the story and placed his hand on his shoulder. “It’s OK, Luke. You can tell me what happened next. I need to know.”
Looking up, he nodded. “When we got back to base, one of the sergeants lodged a complaint against the lieutenant. The next day, our entire company was taken off rotation, and we were all interviewed about the situation. I was the youngest and newest sergeant in the company, so I wasn’t held responsible for not trying to stop it. But several of the sergeants first class were. The lieutenant was charged with conduct unbecoming an officer and kicked out of the Army. The two other sergeants and one other soldier that was with him were drummed out too. Sometimes, when I sleep or just have a moment to myself…I can still hear that man screaming. I couldn’t understand anything he was saying, but I could tell he was in terrible pain.”
Childers then looked at Schoolman. “When I heard you tell us about your family, I could see that same rage in your eyes I saw in that lieutenant, and when you said you wanted to talk to the prisoners and had your hand on your sidearm…I just wanted to make sure you didn’t do something you would regret. You’re a good commander, and we need more like you,” Childers finished.
“That could have been me. It probably was going to me…” Colonel Schoolman realized.
“Thank you, Sergeant Major, for sharing that. I can’t imagine how hard that has been for you to carry that burden. I wish your lieutenant hadn’t failed you guys like that and had been a better leader. We’re all humans, and we make mistakes. You saw me losing control, and you interceded in a way that prevented me from doing something I’d regret, and you did it in a manner that no one else saw or noticed. I owe you for that. You’re going to make a great sergeant major,” Schoolman said. He extended his hand, and the two of them shook hands.
They continued on toward the command center. When they arrived, they found the regiment commander had arrived, along with a few weapons experts. They talked for a few minutes and showed them the nuclear weapons. Everyone breathed a sigh of relief when they learned that none of the weapons had been rigged to detonate and were, in fact, in safe storage and could be transported without fear of something going wrong.
One of the staff officers got the attention of his regimental commander. “What in the world happened with our drones attacking us, Sir?” he asked.
Colonel Hastings answered the question on everyone’s minds. “What a cluster mess that was. I was told a Russian hacker group, probably their intelligence directorate, had gained access to our C4ISR network and essentially turned everything off. The Division CG said they lost contact with GDF HQ, and then the Reaper drones in the area that were supposed to help provide us air support were taken over by the hackers who turned the weapons on us. Luckily, the Air Force had some fighters in the area that were able to locate and destroy the drones before they could fire any more of their missiles.”
Lieutenant Colonel Schoolman asked, “Are comms back up and running with headquarters, or is our division essentially operating on our own?”
“From what I’ve been told, the problem was largely isolated to GDF HQ and US Army Europe headquarters staff. We lost our surveillance and digital links, but it hasn’t interrupted our HF or UHF radios, so we’ve switched over to our backup systems,” Major Montanya, the regiment’s communications officer, replied loud enough for everyone to hear. “Don’t ask me when they’ll have everything sorted out—I have no idea, but I’ll make sure to pass along any additional information we learn,” he added.
The Russians had been wreaking havoc on the Allies’ communication and computer systems with their army of hackers. While the US forces had largely closed off a lot of the vulnerabilities discovered during the outbreak of the war, several of the Allied nations were still struggling to keep up.
One of the captains piped up. “Well, if this was a dress rehearsal for the summer offensive, I’d have to give us a C. Our surveillance and communications were all sorts of screwed up,” he said.
Colonel Hastings looked at his officers and senior NCOs, then added, “Kaliningrad was an easy objective to take, but it still cost us nearly three dozen soldiers killed and four times that number wounded. That’s unacceptable. We have a couple of more months before the summer offensive starts. I want to figure out what went right, what we screwed up, and what we should have been better at forecasting. Make sure those lessons are gone over with everyone. Be sure your junior officers and NCOs correct those issues, and let’s hope we’re able to incur fewer casualties when the big show finally does begin,” he concluded.
Pacific Invasion
Angeles, Philippines
Clark International Airport
It was nearly dawn. There were only a few clouds in the sky as the first wave of Xian Y-20 transport aircraft steadily moved closer to the drop zone. The predawn light was slowly increasing, revealing the image of twenty transport planes approaching Clark International Airport, formerly Clark US Air Force Base. The sky was about to be flooded with thousands of paratroopers; the next step in the Chinese plan to expand their sphere of control in the Pacific was now fully underway. Once they had captured this critical airport, they would have Chinese soldiers positioned less than one hundred kilometers from the Philippine capital of Manila.
As Captain Ma Qiliang sat in the dimly lit bay of the plane, he could feel the pitch in the aircraft's engines change as they made one final turn, lining themselves up for the big drop.
The jumpmaster called out, “Everyone stand up! It’s almost time to jump.”
The paratroopers dutifully listened and went through their prejump checks of each other’s equipment. A few minutes later, the doors on the side of the aircraft opened. Cool air quickly swirled around the cargo bay, adding to the excitement and thrill of yet another combat jump for this battle-hardened battalion.
Less than a minute after that, the jump light turned from red to green, and the m
en shuffled out the door for what was now their fourth combat jump since the start of the war. Ma surged forward with the men around him. After hours and hours of being cooped up in the plane with all their equipment tightly packed on their bodies, he was eager to jump and get back on the ground.
As Captain Ma Qiliang leaped from the aircraft, he marveled at the beauty of the morning sun, which had finally crept above the horizon. The air buffeted his face as he flew steadily toward the ground. Seconds later, he felt the sudden jerk as his chute fully opened, and he began a much more leisurely descent to the earth below. Looking around him, Ma could see that all the men in his transport had exited safely and were likewise dangling below their parachutes, traveling toward the airport below.
Captain Ma smiled. Everything was going according to plan. An hour before his paratroopers had entered Philippine airspace, the PLA Air Force and Navy launched a surprise attack, hitting many of the country’s air and naval bases in preparation for the invasion. While those assaults were underway, the three Chinese carriers operating in the South China Sea had launched their own fighters, to clear the skies of potential threats to the airborne forces. Ma’s crew had anxiously listened for updates while waiting to jump, and so far, everything had gone off without a hitch. Once his men had secured the airports, hundreds of Chinese civilian airliners would ferry tens of thousands of PLA soldiers to the Philippines. Captain Ma felt a surge of pride in being a part of this mission.
As the runway got closer, Ma could see five commercial airliners docked at the terminal. Otherwise, the airport appeared quiet. Either there were no flights this early in the day, or they had been grounded once the airport had been made aware of the Chinese invasion. Once Captain Ma reached the ground, he rushed to retrieve his drop bag. He and his fellow soldiers moved to assemble their equipment, and then they were ready to capture their assigned targets.
Ma’s unit had been charged with securing the runways and establishing a one-kilometer perimeter on the east side of the airport. He had been told in no uncertain terms that his group had to complete their mission within three hours, because then the civilian airliners would start arriving with all of the PLA troops. They needed to get as many soldiers in place in the Philippines as possible, before the Allies found a way to intervene and interrupt their plans.
