“Bill,” said Carlos. “We can’t go on like this.”
“The corpses,” Bill whispered.
“You ought to rest.”
“The corpses,” Bill whispered again. He’d seen more today dangling like frozen icicles. It had filled him with the same anger as when he’d watched the T-66s destroying Stan Higgins’s company of Abrams tanks. That had caused him then to wire grenades to a sticky bomb. He’d charged the Chinese monster. There was something in him that maybe only Stan Higgins knew about. It came upon him after losing game after game. Too much defeat would ignite a fire in him. He couldn’t talk then. He would be too angry, too wound up and driven to win. Then he’d drive for the hoop, making his lay-ups. Then his three-point shots swooshed in.
The anger, the fire, after knowing that he was going to lose his dead feet…it had ignited him seeing those frozen bodies dangling from the pines. He’d been a free man all his life. He didn’t plan to play the slave now to some invader, especially not with amputated feet! There were times you had to fight. It was better to fight on your knees than being a slave. But it was best to fight standing while you still had feet.
“That’s what I’m going to do today,” Bill whispered.
“What’s that, Pastor?” asked Carlos.
“Here,” said Bill, indicating the hill. “Here’s where I’m making my stand.”
They were on a hill in the shadows of ice-laden pines. Below was the snow-packed Number One Highway.
“You take the others and go,” Bill whispered. “Just leave me the M2 and the ammo.”
Carlos stared at him. “If you’re staying, I’m staying.”
“Choppers can get us pretty easy if we’re up here,” the youthful pilot said, adding his opinion as he always did.
“With the M2 Browning….” Bill smiled as he might have after making a winning three-point shot.
“You don’t think we’re going to make it out alive, do you?” asked Carlos.
“I don’t know,” said Bill. His eyes felt hot again. It put splotches before his vision. “I’ve seen a lot of corpses lately hanging from trees. I figure the Chinese are killing off all the real Americans. I don’t know if I want to be around once those people are gone.”
Carlos nodded thoughtfully. “If we’re going to die, let’s make it worth something, huh?”
“I’m not committing suicide,” Bill said feverishly. “I’m just sick of seeing those corpses. And my feet—I’m going to hit back as hard as I know how.”
“What about your feet?” the pilot asked.
“Nothing,” said Bill. He shouldn’t have said anything about them. It was a mistake.
“Do you hear that?” asked Carlos, his voice muffled by his scarf.
Everyone in the small band listened.
“Those sound like trucks,” the pilot said.
“Go,” whispered Bill. He crouched by his M2 and used his freezing fingers to fumble at the ammo belt, soon racking a bullet into the firing chamber. He looked up at the others. They had intense frowns, those that had pulled down their scarves. “Go,” he said again. “Save yourselves to fight later.”
“Look,” said Carlos, pointing.
They did, including Bill. A snowplow appeared from around a bend. Snow and ice roared from it as it cleared the highway. Behind the snowplow were Chinese Army trucks and ordinary commercial vehicles, including a tanker.
“They must be running out of trucks,” said Carlos, “if they’ve begun stealing ours.”
Bill had a crazy idea. He was so desperately cold. He wanted to see a fire, a real blaze. He forgot about his friends as he tried to judge distances to the tanker.
“What was that?” the pilot asked, turning around toward the pines behind them. Before anyone could answer, assault-rifle fire cut the pilot down. He crumbled onto the snow.
“Ambush!” cried Carlos. He twisted around and raised his rifle, managing to get off three shots. He shot into the trees they had come out of earlier. Then a well-placed round made a hole in his forehead. He slumped to the cold snow beside the pilot.
“The Alamo,” whispered Bill. He ignored the gunshots from the pines, his back aimed at the hidden enemy. He concentrated as he sighted upon the shining tanker with its metal storage unit. The tanker was near the front of the convoy line. Then a bullet smashed through his shoulder blade, pitching him onto the M2. For a moment, he lay in shock.
I’m hit, Bill realized. He’d tossed away the durasteel armor a day before the storm. It had been too heavy to lug around. Now he wished he was still wearing it.
With a groan, Bill dragged himself upright behind the M2 Browning. He grabbed the V-shaped “butterfly” trigger, swiveled the heavy machinegun and sighted the tanker. It was far away. That didn’t matter now, he didn’t have any time left to be fancy. He felt lightheaded, but he felt sure he could make the shot, just like a distant three-pointer in basketball. He pressed both thumbs on the buttons and heard the heavy hammering sound.
Tracer rounds hosed out in a line. Bill adjusted as he held his body stiffly. Another bullet slammed into him, but he kept his position and only grunted. His incendiary rounds smoked against the tanker’s metal skin. Then the greatest fireball of his life mushroomed up in an orange roar of flame.
Militia Sergeant Bill Harris’s eyes were shining. Then his head exploded in a rain of blood, brain and skull-bone as a White Tiger dum-dum bullet ended his existence in this world.
***
Lu Po stared at the dead Americans. Down below, the fuel tanker still burned. It had backed-up traffic as explosions still cooked off from other trucks. The snowplow was on its side, the dead driver hanging out of the broken windshield.
“High Command won’t be pleased with this,” said Wang.
“Fools,” said Lu. “Why did they put the tanker so near the snowplow?”
“Maybe they need the fuel up at the front.”
Lu shrugged. It didn’t matter now.
“What about these corpses?” Wang asked, pointing with his rifle at the dead Americans.
“Hang them like the rest and put on the placards,” said Lu. “If we have to kill every one of these Americans before they learn, we’ll do it.”
Wang shook his head. “They’re like rats. They just keep appearing. Don’t they know when they’re beaten?”
Lu had no answer for that as he watched the tanker burn.
ANCHORAGE, ALASKA
Captain Stan Higgins and Brigadier Ramos trudged through the snow. They struggled through big drifts to a nearby overpass.
The blizzard had left a heavy covering of snow, making it a seeming pristine wonderland. To the far north of the city rose the majestic mountains of the Alaska Range. To the immediate north were the military bases. To the immediate east was the Chugach Foothills, part of the Chugach State Park. It was the third-largest park in America and comprised nearly a half-million acres. Cook Inlet lay to the west, while ten miles from the heart of downtown Anchorage to the south was Potter Marsh.
It was a gray morning, with heavy clouds overhead. The wind whistled, but it didn’t howl or shriek. Bits of snow swirled, but not the whiteout that had brought everything to a standstill for the past few days.
The airport was on the opposite side of the city as the approaching Chinese. The main arteries leaving Anchorage were also across the city from the front line.
Stan’s three Abrams were ready, joining the skeletal remains of Brigadier Ramos’s 1st Stryker Brigade. The attrition of battle had whittled the brigade down to little more than a company of soldiers and machines. The 4th Airborne Brigade was gone, its dead officers, NCOs and soldiers scattered along the Number One Highway, having made the Chinese pay for each mile they advanced. Few Alaskan National Guardsmen remained, although a higher percentage of Militia had made it back to the city. They had broken more quickly, and run away faster. Some had regrouped, bitter about the war and their seeming lack of courage. Those men were determined to halt the Chinese now. Others cowered s
omewhere in the city, often hating themselves because of their fear.
During these past weeks, others in Anchorage and around the State had picked up their weapons and reported to the officers in charge of defending the city. A trickle of reinforcements from the bottom states had continued to enter the city from Fairbanks, often leaving for the approaching front. Now that front was just outside the city limits.
Two new laser battalions had set up their heavy equipment at the slowly repaired airport. One of those was a Canadian battalion. The lasers would make any Chinese aircraft and helicopter assaults pay a bitter price if they attempted to fly over the coming battlefield. The surviving American airmen knew all about the Chinese Red Arrow anti-missile rounds, as well as the bigger SAMs the enemy had brought forward with each lunge closer to Anchorage.
Despite the hard weeks of battle, the Chinese still had more numbers, superior tech, weapons and training. What they lacked was reserves of munitions, fuel and even more soldiers. Worse, they were about to attempt the hardest type of warfare possible: storming a city.
“We’ll make this their Stalingrad,” Ramos told Stan.
The two officers had crawled to an overpass, using special trench telescopes to peer over the earthen lip and study the enemy line beyond.
“Are you sure you have your history right?” Stan asked.
“What do you mean?”
“The Germans almost drove the Russians out of Stalingrad. They were about to win the fight, when the Russians launched their biggest assault yet. The Russians smashed the Rumanians and Italians holding the extended front leading to the city. The Russians thereby encircled and trapped the German army fighting in the city. Where is America’s counter-offensive to save us from the Chinese?”
“Are you saying we can’t win?” Ramos asked.
“No. I’m just not sure I like your analogy.”
Ramos was quiet for a time. Then he glanced at Stan. “Intelligence says the Chinese have four to five times our number in fighting men. It’s probably just a matter of time before they take the city and send for Army formations from mainland China.”
“What does HQ say?” asked Stan. “Have they spotted new Chinese troop convoys crossing the Pacific?”
“Not yet. But it seems inevitable.”
Stan pulled down his trench scope and rolled onto his back. He wiped his mouth with his gloved hand. “We have problems, but so do they.”
“How do you know that?” asked Ramos, who continued to use the scope. The scope had a right angle at the top and was similar in principle to a submarine’s periscope, thus allowing a man to study the enemy without exposing himself to direct fire.
“Military history tells me that,” said Stan. “We just see our problems because we’re so focused on them. Our problems here are big, no doubt about that. But the enemy has his own set of problems. Sometimes it’s just a matter of whose will fails or whose nerves crumble first.”
“My nerves are close to shot,” said Ramos. “We don’t really have anything that can handle the T-66s. Fortunately, the Chinese don’t seem to have a lot of them, and that’s something. But I’ve read the reports. It seems the Chinese have scoured each battlefield, dragging any wrecked T-66 to the repair vehicles. That’s a serious problem when fighting a rearguard action as we’ve been doing for weeks. We always leave the battlefield in their possession. Their repair vehicles can pick up the broken tanks while we leave ours behind.”
“I’ve been thinking about those T-66s ever since we faced them in Cooper Landing,” Stan said. “I think the answer is obvious. We lure the monsters into the city and try to separate them from their infantry. Then you let my tanks take them on one at a time.”
“The T-66s will crush your Abrams.”
“In time they will,” said Stan. “So we have to make sure we take them out first.”
Ramos lowered his scope. “How can you sound so confident? I don’t get that, Professor.”
Stan shrugged. “It’s simple. If seven tri-turreted tanks come after me, I have to destroy seven tanks. If I destroy six, I lose. So I’ll try to destroy all seven and win.”
“If you’d told me that a few weeks ago, I’d have agreed,” said Ramos. “Now….”
Stan glanced at Ramos. The man still had dark circles around his eyes. The brigadier had fought hard, bitterly hard in Moose Pass and later, but now he was exhausted from the endless battles.
“Have you even been home to sleep?” asked Stan.
“Didn’t have the time. There’s too much to do.”
“You ought to take a little time off this morning. The Chinese won’t attack yet. My guess is they’ll start by pounding us with artillery first. Use that time to recoup. We need you at your best, sir, not filled with morbid doubts.”
Ramos breathed the cold morning air. “Let’s get back to our vehicles. Then I’ll see.”
PRCN SUNG
Admiral Ling spoke to the Chairman via his computer screen in the supercarrier’s ready room. Commodore Yen sat out of sight to the side.
The Chairman appeared angry. Ling was weary and his bones ached this morning.
“I do not understand this delay,” the Chairman was saying. “The Army’s cross-polar taskforce has achieved its first objective, the town of Dead Horse and its accompanying oilfields. With the deep discoveries, it is presently the largest single oilfield in the world. The Navy with its lavish fleet and precision-drilled naval infantry has crawled these past weeks through an American wildness playground. Unlike the cross-polar soldiers, you have modern roads to carry your supplies, near total air superiority and more numbers of trained soldiers than the enemy has. Yet what do I hear? You constantly plead for more ships, more munitions, more soldiers and more fuel, always more, more, more.”
“I am pleased with the northern victory of Chinese arms,” Admiral Ling said. “Yet if I could point out, sir, they had enough fuel to—”
“Don’t speak to me about fuel!” the Chairman said. “A nuclear-tipped torpedo struck the polar taskforce. Snowmobile raiders afterward hit other supply dumps. Percentage-wise, I am told they’ve lost much more of their reserves than you ever had.”
“Sir,” said Ling, “most of our fuel requirements go to the fleet. The land—”
“Why haven’t you protected your tankers better?”
Admiral Ling hesitated. This was an odd situation for the richest oil-nation in the world. Because of Siberia, Chinese oil refineries brimmed with petrochemicals: with diesel, kerosene and gasoline. What the Navy lacked was enough transport tankers to bring those fuels across thousands of kilometers of ocean to the battlefield. The Chinese merchant marine was too small and until only a few years ago, the Navy had never been designed as a blue-water fleet. As it was, the supply line had been stretched. Then the Americans had continually destroyed tankers, zeroing in on them with ruthless efficiency. That had created real difficulties. The torturous land route through the Kenai Peninsula only added to the supply nightmare.
“I have tried to protect our tankers, sir,” Ling told the Chairman. “The Americans are cunning, however. They have attacked our fuel transports, preferring to destroy them to carriers. Through espionage, CIA spies must have learned about our fuel troubles.”
“I hope you are not accusing anyone, Admiral.”
“Sir?” asked Ling, wondering what the Chairman was driving at.
The old man in the wheelchair leaned forward, staring at Ling through the screen. “My nephew has spoken to me.”
The Vice-Admiral, Ling thought to himself. Nepotism has crippled the war effort. I should have never agreed to this command while saddled with his fool of a nephew.
“My nephew has informed me that you gave him the toughest route and yet you withheld the needed soldiers,” the Chairman said.
“Sir, I must object. It is your nephew’s incompetence that has cost us dearly.”
“What are you saying?” the Chairman asked ominously.
Commodore Yen shook his head, b
ut the bile in Ling from the Vice-Admiral’s blunders welled up in a rush.
“Your nephew first lost all his helicopters trying to storm Seward,” Ling said. “Next, his drive up Moose Pass has become a study in wasteful frontal charges. I could use those dead soldiers now as we attempt to grind down the remaining Americans. Then his bungling charge through the Junction that entangled our troops at the precise moment I—”
“I have heard enough,” the Chairman said. “This slander mars your reputation. You will not grind the enemy. That is not how you win. You must shock him, bewilder him by the power of your assault. Storm Anchorage with Chinese fury as General Nung took Dead Horse. Then I shall send you Army reinforcements.”
“I would rather that you send me fuel first, sir.”
“Bah!” the Chairman said. “My nephew has assured me he could take Anchorage like that.” The old man snapped his fingers.
Admiral Ling’s eyes bulged. He opened his mouth.
“Sir,” whispered an obviously worried Commodore Yen.
Admiral Ling turned to his friend and advisor, noticing the worry on Yen’s face. Ling closed his mouth, even as a vein on the side of his head pulsed with shame.
“Is there someone else with you in the room?” asked the Chairman.
Admiral Ling spoke in a mumble. “I shall take Anchorage, sir. I shall give China another glorious victory, another superlative feat of arms as I achieved in Taiwan.”
“…do you promise this?” asked the Chairman.
“It is already done,” said Ling, his humiliation turning to anger. Yet he was still practiced enough to contain his words. For the sake of his family in China, he must attempt to please this old, old man in the wheelchair.
“Take Anchorage and all your sins will be forgiven,” the Chairman was saying.
“Yes, sir,” said Ling.
“Fail in your appointed task—”
“I have already said it is done, sir.”
Instead of anger at being interrupted, a slow smile spread across the Chairman’s face. “So you have, Admiral. So you have.”
Invasion: Alaska Page 46
