Paul remembered the captain’s words: Keep it simple stupid.
The captain had gone on to explain the situation. They were stretching a line in front of the Chinese like a net to catch tuna. They were supposed to burn out as many of the hovertanks as they could. If the Chinese tried to go around them, they were supposed to hit them in the flank as they passed. The key was to kill hovers and later walk back if the choppers failed to survive to pick them up again.
There had been plenty of questions afterward, but none of those had come from Paul.
Red Cloud now tapped Paul on the shoulder.
“It’s payback time,” Paul said, as his gut tightened. Across the ice ahead of them approached a mass of the enemy, moving fast.
Red Cloud activated the M220 Launcher.
“This is for you Murphy,” Paul whispered. He watched through his scope, picked his target and waited until the target was at extreme range. The distance was a running green number in his scope. Four thousand five hundred meters was four and a half kilometers. That was about two and eight tenths miles away. That was a nice range, especially out here on this flat tabletop of pack ice. He waited as he let the spread-out Chinese formation come in a little closer.
“You ready?” asked Paul.
“Yes,” Red Cloud said.
Paul pulled the trigger, and in seconds, their TOW sped away. Then all over the landscape, more ATGMs lighted up as the missiles raced toward the forward hovertanks. Each missile uncoiled and trailed its twin wires, receiving constant course corrections. As fast as the missiles flew, it took time to speed over two miles. Enemy heavy machinegun-fire began almost immediately, but it couldn’t reach this far. Still, seeing those flashes was disconcerting. It was meant to frighten the TOW operators so they wouldn’t keep the optics on target. It made Paul’s heart pound, but he kept telling himself the machineguns lacked the range. Then the 76mm cannons began firing. The flashes were bigger, and the igniting shells moved in a flare toward them.
Paul tracked his chosen hover as he moved his optics. Then…slam, the missile impacted. There was brilliant flare of light on the ice over two miles away.
Before Paul could rejoice, a 76mm canister flashed near and exploded. Hot shrapnel scarred the ice, but the shell had missed.
More explosions occurred out there as Red Cloud grunted, lifting and loading another missile into the tube. When he was ready, Red Cloud slapped Paul hard on the right shoulder.
Paul thrust his eyes against the scope, choosing another hover.
Despite the TOW-2B Aero’s extreme range, the battle was short and intense. The hovers moved at combat speeds now, over seventy mph. The Chinese had the advantage of long association with their machines. The American ATGM crews were raw, even if most of them had former combat experience. Paul and Red Cloud did better than most of the others, scoring two kills. Every one of them out on the ice was a hard-bitten man, but panic set in among some of the teams.
“They’re not veering away!” shouted Paul, as Red Cloud loaded the fourth missile into the launcher.
“It’s an overrun,” Red Cloud said.
Paul could hear the lead hovers now. The machines were loud and they were fast, gliding like ghosts over the white plain. The 76mm guns boomed, and gouts of snow and ice showed where canisters scored hits. The wave of vehicles remorselessly moved against their thin line.
As Paul sighted the next enemy, machinegun bullets hammered nearby into the pressure ridge. Chips of ice sprayed, one of them stinging Paul’s cheek as it furrowed across. An exploding grenade flashed nearby, hissing its shrapnel over them.
“Down!” shouted Paul, who dove behind the pressure ride and hugged the ice. Red Cloud did the same. They crawled, moving away from their sled and tube-launcher. Each found a depression and froze. Paul did so because he remembered Bullard’s words.
“With these suits, you hide and freeze like a possum. They’ll never see you until you pop up later and cut them down from behind.”
Soon, the approaching hovers roared with deadly sound. The gliding machines were almost on top of them. Then a hovertank went into high gear as it whined with power, lifting higher as it topped over the pressure ridge.
Paul trembled as fear washed through him. He had his vow, but he didn’t want to die. He wanted to live, call Cheri later and talk to Mikey. He wanted to go home. What their side needed out here was more soldiers armed with grenade launchers, heavy machineguns and recoilless rifles. Then they would have obliterated these hovertanks. How had the Chinese commander known they just had TOWs? How had he known the best tactic was to smash through?
Enemy machineguns hammered nearby and hovertank guns thundered. It must be a slaughter.
I’m not going to die like a coward. I’m at least going to face the enemy.
With a wrenching effort of will, Paul peeked up. The sight surprised him. The hovertanks were spread over a large area, but some had grouped together. Their guns roared, and canister shells exploded against the pressure ridge sixty feet away. Hot tracer machinegun rounds also blasted at the raised ice mound that ran for miles in either direction.
Red Cloud also looked up. The two exchanged glances.
The hovertanks blew a path through the pressure ridge. Big sleds with ski-mounts in the front and tracks in the back propelled flat sleds through the openings. Some of the sleds were obvious tankers. Others must carry ammo and the last were infantry carriers.
“Let’s wait until they pass,” Paul said.
Red Cloud answered by hugging the ice again. Paul followed his example. This wasn’t like Quebec. There, if you lay on the ice for any amount of time you began shivering. Here, their winter suits kept them warm because of the thermal heaters built into them.
Paul checked his watch. Less than fifteen minutes had passed. The sounds of the hovertanks and sleds lessened as the rearguard rapidly moved away.
“Now!” shouted Paul. He jumped up and put his shoulder against the sled. Surprisingly, it had survived intact. In seconds, Red Cloud was helping him, grunting and heaving. They turned it, and Red Cloud loaded up another missile. Paul sighted, grinning fiercely in his enclosed helmet. He pressed the firing stub.
The seconds ticked by. An orange fireball was his reward. It lit up the night in a whoosh of flame that towered higher than he could believe.
“We must have gotten one of their fuel vehicles!” Paul shouted.
Another ATGM hissed in flight, the bright contrails showing its path. Canister shells exploded in the ice several hundred yards away. The racing TOW missile lurched and harmlessly smashed into the pack ice. The Chinese had slain its operators.
Red Cloud loaded their last missile.
Paul sighted and fired, but this one missed. Fortunately, the range had already gotten too far for the Chinese to fire back.
In a matter of a few more minutes, the enemy was simply a field of bright specks. It didn’t take long until the Arctic night blanketed the world with its darkness. The only bright points were the burning hovers and sleds behind them. It put a thick stink of oily smoke in the air.
The Chinese had burst through their net, taking losses but far from being stopped.
As that thought settled in, Paul said, “We’re stuck out on the ice again.”
“Maybe we were meant to die out here,” Red Cloud said. “Maybe our fate lies here.”
Paul thought about that. Finally, he said, “Our sled has a little motive power. Let’s go see who else is left alive. Then we’ll start traveling for Dead Horse.”
Red Cloud peered at him through his ballistic glass visor. The Algonquin looked tired, although his eyes seemed harder, more determined than ever. He nodded.
“Unless you want to help fate and stay out here to die,” Paul said.
“No. I will fight to live and live to fight.”
“Sounds good,” Paul said. He himself fought to fulfill a vow and to survive long enough to make things right with his ex. He could see now that he hadn’t tried hard enoug
h with Cheri. He would woo her again. He would…if he could make it home.
“Ready?” asked Red Cloud.
“Yeah. Let’s go.”
DEAD HORSE, ALASKA
General Shin Nung swore viciously as another bomber zoomed out of the Arctic sky, launching its missiles. First, a Red Arrow slammed into the American aircraft, causing an explosion in the sky. Then a nearby hovertank exploded, killing it and the nine soldiers riding outside the vehicle.
That’s when the American artillery began pounding the location. The shots created great flashes of light on the horizon. Those flashes showed where Dead Horse, Alaska was, their key objective. As the shells screamed down, exploding over the tundra, Nung’s command hover shuddered, and shell fragments rattled against the vehicle’s armor.
Nung swore. He was in a foul mood. He had been ever since the deadly TOW2 missiles had struck his force out on the ice. It had been a costly battle, a nasty surprise. Only fifty-one hovertanks had made it past Cross Island and to the North Slope. Every time he thought about those flashing missiles hitting another hovertank—
Nung struck his armrest. He had to put that battle behind him and concentrate on here. Technically, they had made it to the oilfields outside of Dead Horse. If Nung had desired, he could have begun blowing the wellheads. What he wanted was Dead Horse, the enemy airbase and garrison stationed there. Once he had Dead Horse, the victory would be his.
If he had air cover, the few America jets couldn’t have rushed down at his vehicles in a near suicidal frenzy. The helicopters couldn’t shoot their Hellfire missiles at his sleds. The hovertanks had destroyed most of airborne attackers, but at a bitter cost. The combined total of enemy assaults had destroyed nearly half of his original attacking vehicles.
He kept thinking if, if, if…if Commissar Yongzheng this, the High Command that, the nuclear-tipped torpedo…. He shook his head. War wasn’t a matter of ifs but of accomplishments. He’d made it to the American coast. Now he was going to smash through and take Dead Horse. Then it would be just a matter of waiting for the snowtanks to complete his conquest.
“Go in by lances!” Nung shouted into the microphone. “Infantry, follow on ski.”
Dead Horse was on a flat tundra plain surrounded by American bunkers and command posts. The enemy had mortar-teams and artillery inside the town. Nung had speed, tired hover-pilots and cold soldiers. There wasn’t any finesse to the assault.
The smallest formation among the hovertanks was a lance: three vehicles. Three hovertanks would stop on the cold tundra to provide over-watch fire. They tracked and plotted, shooting at anything that moved. A different lance sped to an outcropping, using every fold in the terrain to escape destruction. From the hovertanks slid off Chinese infantry. Some set up mortars and began peppering the Americans.
Then a shell found Nung’s hover. The scream of twisted metal began it. The vehicle slewed wildly and with a terrific thud crashed against a snow bank. Nung grunted as he slammed against his restraints. Groggily, he looked around. The communications officer was dead, his head a bloody mess. The pilot’s arm was broken as the man sobbed quietly.
“Sir, sir,” squawked from the radio.
Nung lifted a mobile com-unit, tucking it under his arm. Then he staggered for the escape hatch. Upon exiting and sliding down the side of the vehicle, he winced as another hovertank howled near. The vehicle came to a stop beside him as it blew snow everywhere. Five riding soldiers slid off.
It was freezing cold out here, colder than it had been on the ice. It stung Nung’s face and his neck. His teeth began chattering. With an effort of will, as he shoved aside the pain, he shouted, “What are you doing? Don’t stand around me. We’re exposed.”
He forced himself to move, wading through snow until he got to more solid ice. After establishing control over thirty soldiers, he shouted, “Get down!”
He’d had better ears than the others did and had heard the whine of shells. The American artillery had zeroed in on the wreckage. Some of the shrapnel sliced a few of the slower soldiers. Their oozing blood looked like a sluggish stain of ink in the darkness. With another effort of will, Nung tore his gaze from the twisting soldiers. He didn’t have time for them now.
“Advance, keep advancing!” he roared into the communications unit he wore like a backpack.
With his voice lashing them, the last hovertanks continued their advance. 76mm shells, Chinese mortars, ATGMs and RGPs pounded the base that rose up like an Eskimo’s igloo in the distance. Occasionally a thunderous flash appeared there, another artillery tube firing its hated shells.
Shin Nung floundered through the snow, shaking off any helping hands. The Chairman had thought him lacking in attacking zeal. They had accused him of cowardice.
“Attack!” roared Nung, mist pouring from his mouth. It was so cold. “Kill the Americans!”
The Battle of Dead Horse was another meat-grinder. The Chinese traded blood and vehicles for ground. The hovertanks dwindled in number as they floated over the ice, amazingly swift in this land of cold. In the end, the Americans simply lacked enough men, enough shells, bombers and ammo. The Chinese assault carried through into the streets of Dead Horse. The massacre began then, the shivering Chinese too bitter after surviving the Arctic nightmare to grant any mercy.
The last assault took place as Chinese explosives blew open the way into the Marine command post, a half-buried bunker. In the last room, Captain Bullard fired at point blank range, killing two Chinese soldiers. Then Bullard’s automatic was empty and he drew his bayonet. The Marine captain charged, roaring his challenge. Chinese bullets riddled the body until it thumped onto the bloody floor. The Battle of Dead Horse was over, and the Chinese were victorious.
-17-
The Last Push
STERLING, ALASKA
The terrible ice age storm that had howled down from the Arctic Circle and halted all movement on the Southern Front was beginning to die a slow death. The insane shrieks no longer whispered in First Rank Lu Po’s ears. He could think again, even though it was dreadfully cold outside the cabin that he and his White Tigers had huddled in during the blizzard.
Lu opened the front door and stepped outside into a frozen wasteland. Ice and snow encrusted the surrounding pines. A thousands branches lay on the virgin snow or were buried under tons of white. The air burned going down his lungs. Each step was a sharp crunch of his boots on the devilish substance. Lu never wanted to see snow again. Once this campaign was over and he took his discharge, he would live in the South Pacific. He would bake in the sunlight and luxuriate in warmth forever.
“What are you waiting for?” he told the Commandos emerging from the log cabin. “Don’t you want to be heroes?”
The White Tigers wore their white combat suits. After a hot morning breakfast, they cradled their weapons.
“The storm hurt us,” said Lu, “but it will have hurt the partisans even worse.”
“They’re native to this land and will have known what to do,” Wang said.
“Maybe. The key is that they’re not elite soldiers like us. If any of them were caught in the open, they’ll be frozen or half-dead by now. It’s time to finish our chore and teach these hardheaded Americans the price of not knowing when they’re beaten. You heard Command. They want every one of them hanged. All the supplies must get through to the front. The final push is about to begin, and we have to make sure our soldiers have enough ammo and fuel to smash through Anchorage.”
It was a speech, and Lu was more than tired of those. It was time to find and hang these tick-like partisans sucking off Chinese strength.
***
Half a day later, Lu knelt beside a guttered fire. His men had found six frozen bodies nearby. The Americans were stiff like boards. These bastards had been caught in the storm. He could almost pity them. After examining the tracks of the survivors and their direction of travel, he followed until the forward scouts spotted three unburied candy wrappers.
“Someone was careless,�
�� said Wang. “Usually they bury these.”
“How many do you think are left in this band?” asked Lu.
Wang shrugged. “Four to six would be my guess.” He frowned as the tracks disappeared deeper into the woods. “Do we follow the trail?”
“Of course,” said Lu. “We follow their tracks until we find and kill them.”
***
“I don’t know, Bill,” said Carlos. “This position is awfully exposed.” They were on a pine-covered hill overlooking the Number One Highway. Their tracks led deeper into the shadowed forest.
An exhausted Bill Harris couldn’t feel his feet anymore. He knew they were black with advanced frostbite. Gangrene would set in soon unless they were amputated. He didn’t want to go on living without feet. He knew suicide was wrong from God’s perspective. But this wasn’t suicide. He was fighting for his country.
Bill was tired. His teeth chattered all the time and he wondered if he was beginning to hallucinate. A presence had been with him during the trek here, a light off the corner of his eye. He thought it might have been God, but when he’d turned, nothing had been there. This storm….
“Bill, you okay?” asked Carlos.
“Sure,” Bill whispered. His strength was failing. It was so cold, his feet—
“We’d better think about finding shelter,” Carlos said.
“No,” whispered Bill, with his eyes feeling as if they were burning up. Feebly, he shook his head. The storm…before the storm he’d seen too many corpses dangling from the pines. Those were American men and women, and children, too. The Chinese hanged everyone.
When he’d sat huddled under a lean-to during the blizzard, as ice howled around them, he’d remembered crows pecking at the corpses’ eyes. That had done something to him. He’d focused on that during the ice storm and had started a fire with the old hunter’s lighter. The hunter had died….
Invasion: Alaska Page 45
