by James Rosone
“I know. I’m flying to Washington to meet with the Americans’ new Secretary of Defense and President Sachs,” Sitharaman announced. “I’m going to ask them if there is a way they can help us neutralize the Pakistani threat so we can have a freer hand in dealing with China.”
“Really? And the PM is OK with this trip?” Gandhi asked, skeptical that he would authorize such a trip.
She shrugged her shoulders. “I told him if I could not work out some sort of arrangement with the Americans to help us deal with Pakistan, then I’d back his position to remain neutral.”
Gandhi’s eyes went wide as saucers. “That is a big risk. You’ve already moved several divisions to the border. We’ve been activating our reserves in preparation for an invasion. If the PM completely walks away from this threat, it’ll have long-lasting repercussions.”
She sighed loudly. “I know. But you live in the world of spies and espionage. I live in reality, and I have to face the fact that right now we have a divided government. There is little appetite for war with Pakistan or China, especially since it’s already turned nuclear. If the Americans want our help, then they need to provide us with some military assurance against Pakistan, or it isn’t going to happen.”
*******
Kankakee, Illinois
Kankakee Country Club
DeShawn had always wanted to go inside the Kankakee Country Club. However, being a poor kid from the wrong part of town meant he’d never be allowed inside. But that wasn’t the case today. Today, DeShawn and thirty others from his Section 8 housing development were being fed a stellar meal by the kitchen staff. Of course, about thirty German soldiers and roughly the same number of Russians were enjoying the same feast.
DeShawn and his friends, mostly gangbangers, had been told by the Germans that if they agreed to fight with them until the end of February, they’d each be paid five thousand dollars, and they’d get to keep whatever guns they were given to fight with, no questions asked.
Halfway through this splendid dinner, one of the German officers received a phone call. When he got done with the conversation, he started shouting orders to his men and the Russians. One of the Germans walked over to DeShawn.
“Your crew needs to get to your positions,” the man ordered. “The Americans aren’t far away from the city.”
DeShawn just nodded. He started barking orders to his guys to get them moving. As they left the table, he made sure to grab a couple of rolls and stuffed them in one of his pockets.
A few minutes later, they were trudging through the cold to get down to their positions along the Kankakee River. When the Germans had hired DeShawn’s crew, they’d ordered them to dig some trenches and bunkers there. Now that they’d been activated, it was time for them to shoot at any of the American vehicles or soldiers that tried to cross the river on Interstate 57.
The river was the last major natural barrier between southern Illinois and Chicago. If the Americans made it across the Kankakee, they’d have a clear shot at either taking the city or cutting the UN forces off from Indiana and the supply lines that ran all the way back to Canada.
DeShawn plopped himself down in one of the bunkers and pulled out one of the rolls he’d grabbed from the restaurant. As he scarfed it down, the other three guys looked at him with hungry eyes, ticked that they hadn’t thought to grab a roll for themselves.
Three long hours went by without hearing or seeing anything. The men in the bunker were getting tired, and they were more than a bit annoyed that they had been dragged away from their dinner only to sit in the cold.
Where are they? thought DeShawn. The Germans had made it seem like they’d barely have enough time to make it to the river.
Then they heard an explosion in the distance. Another blast erupted—this time, much closer. The four of them looked out the slits in the bunker to see if they could spot where the explosions were coming from.
“Over there,” one of them said excitedly.
Before he could spot the source of the attacks, DeShawn’s ears registered a giant boom. Something had really gone up a few miles in front of them. Then he saw strings of red and green tracer fire start to crisscross the sky. Every now and then, he’d see some red tracer fire pelt the ground. Some kind of rockets or missiles ignited from the black sky to race down to an object in the dark and blow up.
Suddenly, the five thousand dollars the Germans were paying him didn’t seem like very much. DeShawn could see his guys starting to get anxious. As each explosion got closer and the reports of the machine guns inched closer to them, they were visibly nervous. One of his friend’s hand was shaking so obviously, there was no hiding it.
A German soldier walked into their bunker. He seemed to sense that they might be losing their will to fight. “The Americans are a couple of miles away,” he announced. The soldier pointed at a spot in the dark. “They will try to rush their tanks and infantry fighting vehicles across the bridge here. When they do, you need to use that gun,” he directed, pointing at the Heckler & Koch MG5. “Shoot their vehicles up.”
DeShawn crossed his arms. “How is that gun going to stop a tank?” he asked, obviously doubtful.
The German smiled. “It won’t. But it will give our rocket teams that are hiding near the bridge covering fire to disable them.”
“What about that rocket or missile thing over there?” one of DeShawn’s men asked as he pointed to a nearby position that was being manned by a couple of German soldiers.
“Ja. We’ll be using that too. Just do your jobs, we’ll do ours, and we’ll stop them here at the river,” the German replied nonchalantly. Then he left to go back to his position.
The minutes felt like hours as the battle continued to inch closer and closer to the river. Then DeShawn detected a noise he’d only heard before in movies or video games—the mechanical grinding and crunching of tank tracks. He wondered if it were closer if he would have felt the ground tremble. DeShawn hadn’t allowed himself to be easily intimidated in life, but with each boom from a tank’s cannon, his heart skipped a couple of beats.
The Germans fired multiple illumination flares across the river. Some came from small flare guns, and some were fired from the mortar teams further inside the country club. As the illumination rounds descended back to the ground on their little parachutes, they provided light to what was happening on the other side of the river. It was terrifying.
Small pockets of Russian or German soldiers were fighting ferociously against an advancing force, but many of their silhouettes were getting ripped to shreds, torn apart by infantry fighting vehicles. DeShawn watched in horror as several of them were run over by a tank as their bullets bounced uselessly off its armored shell.
“How the hell are we supposed to stop those things?” one of the guys in his bunker exclaimed.
No one said anything for a moment. Then they heard a loud popping noise nearby. A small rocket raced across the river toward one of the armored killing machines. It felt like it took forever as they watched it close the distance with the armored beast. When the rocket connected with its target, DeShawn saw a small flash. That was soon followed by a much larger explosion as the vehicle blew up.
“That’s how we stop it,” one of the other guys remarked. They all nodded in satisfaction.
Just as they were feeling good about the enemy tank getting blown up, their entire world lit up like the Fourth of July. Red tracers that looked like giant balls started flying right at their position from across the river. They instinctively hit the dirt, lying flat on the ground as whatever was being shot at them tore into everything around their bunker. Occasionally, a few rounds would slap the sandbags that made up the barrier in front of them, scaring them half to death.
It was the most terrifying thing any of them had ever encountered in their lives. Sure, they’d been shot at from time to time in their neighborhoods, but this was something they had never envisioned.
Boom, boom, bang.
Now things around them sta
rted to blow up. It wasn’t just their side that was throwing rockets across the river—the soldiers on the other side fired their own missiles right back at them.
Suddenly, a towering figure appeared in the entrance to their bunker. “Get up! All of you,” the German soldier bellowed. “Someone start manning that machine gun and shoot back! They’re going to cross the river soon. You need to start shooting.” Then he left their bunker to go get the other groups of DeShawn’s crew firing.
“Aw, man. Five G ain’t worth this. We have to get out of here,” one of his guys grumbled.
DeShawn shook his head. “If you try and run now and those Germans see it, they’ll shoot you in the back. The best way for us to stay alive right now is to make sure we keep those bastards on the other side of the river.”
Before anyone else could argue with him, they heard the thumping sounds of helicopter blades overhead.
“Get on that gun. Start shooting at them already!” DeShawn barked.
They hadn’t fired the machine gun more than ten seconds when a rocket from one of those helicopters blew them all to pieces.
*******
Two hours later, the 155th Armored Brigade Combat Team crossed the Kankakee River. It was now a race to get their brigade sixty miles north to Gary, Indiana, and in a blocking position. Once they had the UN forces in Illinois and southeastern Wisconsin cut off from their supply lines in Michigan and Canada, Lieutenant General Hightower’s III Corps could begin the job of picking them off one at a time as they ran out of fuel, munitions, and other logistical support an army needs to function.
*******
Washington, D.C.
White House
Vice President Luke Powers walked past the map room in the White House. The President was scrutinizing one of the large maps on the wall. Powers took a step back and stopped in the doorway for a moment, trying to figure out what Sachs was staring at. Then he realized it was a map of China. He saw the President reach up and touch part of the map briefly before pulling his hand away. His shoulders slumped, and he looked like he might have cried.
Sachs suddenly realized he wasn’t alone and turned around. He hurriedly wiped a tear from the side of his face and mumbled something about letting his emotions get the better of him.
The Vice President approached his friend and put his hand on Sachs’s shoulder. “It’s OK to cry every once in a while, sir. This war is doing terrible things to us and our country.”
The President wiped away another tear before it could streak down his face. “Luke, I just can’t help but think of the millions of people that died when I ordered the dam destroyed.” Unable to control the flood of emotions any longer, he put his arms around his friend and cried on the Vice President’s shoulder.
Powers tried his best to fight back the tears himself. He couldn’t imagine surviving an assassination attempt like Sachs had—and then being trapped in a bunker, on top of it. He knew the poor man was suffering—yet he still had to lead the nation in spite of it all.
“They forced your hand, Jon,” Powers said reassuringly. “It wasn’t your fault. When they launched those nukes at us, we didn’t have a choice anymore. We had to react.”
He paused for a second as the President pulled away and removed a handkerchief from his pocket and wiped away a few more tears. Looking at the President’s eyes, Powers saw sorrow and anguish. He saw how tired and exhausted the man was, and he almost wondered how much longer Sachs would be able to go on like this.
The President took a deep breath and let it out. Then he seemed to steel his nerves. “We have to win this war, Luke,” he said. “No matter what happens, we have to win. This can’t have all been in vain.” He then stood up a little taller. The fire in his eyes had returned and so had the energy that always seemed to surround the man. It was like he’d unburdened himself and now he was ready again to be the Commander-in-Chief.
“We’ll win this war, sir. No doubt about that. Would you like me to sit in on this next meeting with you?” Powers asked. Lately, the President had him sitting in on almost every military meeting since he’d been rescued from the tunnel. More often than not, Sachs had turned to him for advice on a host of military options, really using him as a sounding board and partner.
“Yeah, this would be a good one for you to join, Luke,” the President replied.
Powers could see that the President wanted blood, but he’d been relying on him to rein him in at times. The war was eating the man up—shoot, it was eating the country up—but deep down, the Vice President was confident they would win.
Chapter 10
Allegheny Bloodbath
February 13, 2021
Northwestern Pennsylvania
Allegheny National Forest
“Contact front!” the point man shouted. Then the entire world in front of them erupted in gunfire.
“Get down!”
Crack, crack, zip, zip.
Bullets flew back and forth between the two groups, and a chorus of orders and angry shouts echoed throughout the woods.
Sergeant Silverman took a knee next to the side of a tree. He calmly leveled his M249 squad automatic weapon at a cluster of enemy soldiers, maybe two hundred meters to his front, and fired several controlled bursts. Silverman saw several of the enemy soldiers go down. Then he lifted up his SAW as he pivoted to the opposite side of the tree—a string of bullets hit where he had just been.
Realizing the enemy knew where he was, Sergeant Silverman dropped to the ground and rolled awkwardly to the left a couple of times to put some distance between himself and his last firing position. Then he popped up with his weapon at the ready and cut loose on four enemy soldiers he saw bounding forward toward his platoon.
Bang, bang, bang.
He stitched the four of them up as they tumbled from their forward momentum. Silverman then dropped to the ground and low-crawled forward to a fallen log he’d spotted. He needed to change firing positions again.
Crump, BOOM.
All around him, grenades went off, and mortar rounds hit. His fellow soldiers fired their M203 grenade launchers. It was pure chaos as his platoon attacked this position for the second time in two days.
Earlier in the morning, they had hammered the place with a battalion of 155mm Howitzers. Now it was time for them to make another attempt at dislodging this Canadian unit that was hellbent on maintaining control of Allegheny National Forest.
“Frag out!” called out one of his platoonmates. Seconds later, Silverman heard the explosion and chose to pop up at that moment to find another target.
Silverman saw two Canadian soldiers reloading one of their FN MAGs. Moving his barrel to face them, Sergeant Silverman let loose a four-second controlled burst and saw both of them get hit with multiple rounds and go down. He also heard and felt the bolt lock to the rear, letting him know he was out of ammo.
Silverman ducked back down behind the fallen tree. He removed the empty box magazine and unfastened another one from his vest. He swiftly seated the new one in place, making sure he stayed ready to keep providing fire support to his platoon.
“Shift fire to the right and advance!” yelled someone down the line.
“Covering fire!”
“Damn, I’m hit. Medic. I need a medic!”
“Grenade!”
“Reloading. Cover me!”
Sergeant Silverman popped back up from behind his log and saw four of his guys bounding forward toward the enemy position. Several meters in front of them, enemy soldiers were shifting their fire toward them.
Silverman pulled the trigger, hitting two hostiles and causing the third guy to duck. Then something out of the periphery of his vision caught his attention, and he turned to see what it was, swinging his SAW around with him.
“Crap! I nearly lit you up, Leary,” Silverman exclaimed. Then he ducked back down behind the fallen tree.
“Sorry, man. You move too damn quick for me to keep up, Sergeant,” replied Private First Class Leary, his assistant
gunner. He was carrying the extra barrel and two extra box magazines of ammo for him.
“Cover me, Leary,” Silverman ordered. “I’m going to move up to that next cluster of trees.” Then he jumped up and bounded over the fallen log he’d been using for cover.
Leary popped up and fired off a handful of rounds at the enemy position with his M4 before he ducked back down.
“Your turn. I’ll cover you!” yelled Silverman. He let loose several controlled bursts from the SAW, and Leary raced forward to try and keep up.
Crump.
“Damn, that was close,” Leary remarked. “I think I caught a piece from that grenade.” He wiped some blood from his cheek.
“Stop shooting! Stop shooting, you bloody Yanks! We surrender!” a loud voice called out from not too far away.
“You hear that? I think they’re trying to surrender,” Leary echoed.
It took a couple of attempts, but eventually, a lot of the shooting died down, and it suddenly became quiet.
Poking his head around the tree, Silverman saw several soldiers trying to wave something white as they kept calling out that they were trying to give up.
Taking up a better firing position at the now-exposed enemy soldiers, Silverman yelled to them in his southern accent, “Y‘all stand up. Throw your weapons down and walk toward us, nice and slow like.”
Then he turned to Leary. “Cover my rear. I’m going to move forward.”
Leary nodded.
Sergeant Silverman stood up with his SAW at the ready and slowly advanced. Several other soldiers in his platoon did the same. Silverman counted eleven enemy soldiers standing with their hands held high, slowly walking toward them.
“OK. That’s close enough,” shouted their platoon leader. “You guys stay right there while we check you for weapons. Are there any more of you?” He moved forward with a couple more soldiers in tow.
“We have some wounded, but I think we’re all that’s left,” called out one of the Canadians.
