So now the UN was in a strange position: “UN troops” were again invading western Canada. But, in their classic debating-society style, the UN General Assembly adopted a “wait-and-see” posture, rather than condemning the Chinese incursion. Some of the delegations reasoned that if the invasion was not immediately countered by the U.S. there might be international trade advantages in allowing the Chinese to stay.
Phil reacted to the news. “The sheer numbers are daunting. While the French had attempted to control western Canada with just a few brigades, the Chinese are pouring in corps-size formations. By the way, the Chinese use the term brigade to designate what most other armies would call a ‘division,’ and what they call a ‘division’ most other armies would call a ‘corps.’ In their mechanized infantry brigade table of organization, for example, there are four thousand soldiers.
“As near as I can determine, there is a full mechanized infantry brigade controlling a fifty-kilometer-wide swath stretching from Bella Coola to Williams Lake. Each brigade has four battalions of mechanized infantry, one battalion of tanks, one artillery battalion, one communication battalion, and one engineer battalion. Oh, I should mention that there are two different flavors of PLA mechanized infantry: one with tracked equipment and the other with wheeled equipment. And it is obvious that the one that they are garrisoning here is the wheeled variety.
“Now, assuming that they are using their published post-2006 TO&E, then within the mechanized infantry battalions, there are three companies, with three platoons per company. Each company has thirteen infantry fighting vehicles (with four per platoon) plus one command vehicle. Now, the artillery brigade has seventy-two PLZ89 122mm self-propelled guns, and their tank battalion has ninety-nine Type 96 main battle tanks.
“So, not even counting the tanks, we’re talking about a total of 156 APCs in just our sector. That means we’re facing more armored APCs on the ground than the French had fielded vehicles of all descriptions—of which half were merely stolen pickup trucks that were turned into technicals. Add to that another ninety-nine tanks? That is a Schumer-load of armor.”
He paused to let his words sink in, and then continued. “The bottom line is that we simply cannot fight the Chinese the same way we fought the first UNPROFOR.”
Alan said, “I think they plan to treat Canada just as they have much of Africa, as a colonial strip mine. They want all of our mineral wealth, and they want our timber. Why else would they be here in force?”
The PLA timed their invasion of Canada for the period just after UNPROFOR’s capitulation, but before a Canadian Defense Force could be reestablished. China recognized that it was in a nuclear stalemate with the United States. Both nations had nukes, but both were reluctant to use them for fear of escalation to a full-scale exchange. The Beijing government, therefore, felt that they could get away with invading western Canada. Their plan was to seize all of the provinces from Saskatchewan westward, and then bargain for permanent occupation and a peace settlement with the Toronto government.
As one well-known political and international affairs blogger put it, “So the Chinese position is simple: ‘We take western Canada and keep it for our own. And if you play nice, then we promise not to nuke you.’”
• • •
When the Chinese arrived in western Canada, they had expected a level of resistance similar to what they had encountered in Africa, but they were in for a rude surprise. Not only did the resistance cells that had fought the French UNPROFOR troops have plenty of experience, but they were now very well equipped, with large quantities of captured weapons, ammunition, and night vision gear. Much of that gear was widely distributed in homes, farms, and ranches. (After the French had surrendered, the new status symbol for Canadian ranchers was to have a captured UN armored vehicle in their machine sheds, alongside their tractors.)
The Chinese had few friends waiting for them in Canada. They were almost universally despised. Even the majority of the large Chinese immigrant population hated them, since the PLA represented everything that the immigrants had left behind when they fled China.
Six weeks after the Chinese arrived, Malorie had switched from carrying her FAMAS to a captured Chinese 5.8mm carbine. Her new weapon was a QBZ-95 (Type 95 automatic rifle). Like the FAMAS, this was a bullpup-style carbine manufactured by Norinco. It shot the Chinese 5.8x42mm cartridge, which, up until the Crunch, was only rarely exported, and only for military contracts.
The PLA’s experience in invading Africa had helped ready them for their planned Canadian invasion. They had become accustomed to operating with a long logistics “tail,” ranging over long distances with limited resupply. The majority of their tanks, APCs, and trucks were retrofitted with trundle racks to hold fuel cans, giving their vehicles “longer legs.” While this increased their vulnerability, the longer-range capability was a must. And, since Canada was viewed by Chinese strategic planners as a vast, underpopulated expanse, it was decided that all of the vehicles sent to Canada should be similarly outfitted for long range. (The PLA borrowed the aviation term “radius of action” in their ground-combat doctrinal treatises.)
50
BLINDING FLASH
I believe that liberty is the only genuinely valuable thing that men have invented, at least in the field of government, in a thousand years. I believe that it is better to be free than to be not free, even when the former is dangerous and the latter safe. I believe that the finest qualities of man can flourish only in free air—that progress made under the shadow of the policeman’s club is false progress, and of no permanent value. I believe that any man who takes the liberty of another into his keeping is bound to become a tyrant, and that any man who yields up his liberty, in however slight the measure, is bound to become a slave.
—H. L. Mencken
United States Phil Bucklew Naval Special Warfare Center (NSWC), Naval Amphibious Base Coronado, California—July, the Eleventh Year
The air-conditioning unit was not working, but as was the tradition in the U.S. Navy, adverse environmental conditions were not an excuse to cancel or reschedule training. Rather, they were considered “an opportunity to excel.” It was ninety-five degrees Fahrenheit in the classroom. The video that they were watching was on improvised explosives and incendiary devices. A lot of the Basic Underwater Demolition/SEAL (BUD/S) students were not paying close attention to the film. They were now in the final days of phase three (land warfare) of their twenty-four-week course and feeling confident that they would beat the odds, graduate from the course, and go on to a SEAL team assignment. Many of the students were slumped in their chairs, daydreaming about cold bottles of beer. As Petty Officer Third Class (PO3) Jordan Foster was watching the video, his mind began to wander. He thought about his cousins in Regina, Saskatchewan, and he pondered their situation living first under the French Army occupation, and now under the Chinese Army occupation. He wondered how they might be fighting back. As the training film was showing a time-delay thermite incendiary device, an idea popped into Jordan’s head. He sat bolt upright in his chair, and a scatological expression escaped his lips. He stood up and walked briskly to the door. His instructor had been standing in the back of the classroom, doing his best to stay awake. Noticing the petty officer’s odd behavior, he followed him out the door, close behind. Once they were outside, the bright sunlight made them both blink.
“What’s the matter, trainee? You know, it’s not too late to disqual you and send you back to the fleet. Can’t take the heat, pogue? Attitude problem?”
“No, sir! With your permission, I need to diagram something for you.”
Jordan pulled a notebook and pen from the breast pocket of his utilities. He began sketching a long, cylindrical object.
Jordan described it as he drew. “Sir, this may not be an original idea, but I believe that its potential application may be. Here we have a hermetically sealed cylinder, say, forty millimeters in diameter and about a half meter long. A full pound of thermite is in the bottom two-thirds
of it, a time-delay electronic timer just above that, and a spring-loaded sleeve at the top end.”
The instructor removed his BUDS baseball cap briefly to wipe his brow. He asked, “What the flying fig is this all about, trainee?”
“Canada, sir. Reliberating Canada!”
51
PROJECT JORDAN
For by wise counsel thou shalt make thy war: and in multitude of counsellors [there is] safety.
—Proverbs 24:6 (KJV)
United States Phil Bucklew Naval Special Warfare Center (NSWC), Naval Amphibious Base Coronado, California—July, the Eleventh Year
Two hours after PO3 Jordan Foster had his flash of brilliance, his invention diagram was reviewed by a UDT lieutenant commander staff officer with SEAL Team Seven, also at NAB Coronado. Recognizing its potential utility, he wasted no time and picked up a STU phone to call one of his old classmates, who was now a paramilitary operations officer with the CIA Special Activities Division (SAD)—the action arm of the National Clandestine Service, in Virginia.
Three days later, “Project Jordan” went into formal planning. The first prototype “Pogo Stick” was built one month later and was approved for final design review and production soon after, under a classified Presidential Decision Document (PDD) finding. It was decided early on that the devices would be built with all-commercial off-the-shelf components so as to be untraceable. Ironically, their PROM timer chips had all been manufactured in China before the Crunch. The key component in the thermite igniters had also originally been made in China but was marketed by the Estes Rockets company as model rocket engine “Solar Igniters.” Full-scale production began in October, and the production run of eight thousand units was completed in January.
The Pogo Sticks began arriving in Canada in February. Some were parachute-dropped by B2 stealth bombers while others were infiltrated by land or sea in civilian craft. In one case, they were transported via hermetically sealed containers on the Multi-Mission Platform on a stealthy U.S. Navy nuclear Seawolf-class submarine.
The Pogo Stick incendiary devices were all timed to burn at 1212 hours on December 12—nearly a year after their manufacture. They were not programmable. To enable them, the upper sleeve needed to be depressed by one inch (or more). If the sleeve was left fully extended, they wouldn’t function. Alternatively, the spring could be removed from the sleeve cap, so that the sticks became armed without being under tension. They couldn’t be more simple or foolproof.
They were designed to fit in a standard twenty-liter Chinese “Big Mouth” plastic fuel can. These ubiquitous cans were used for gasoline, diesel fuel, and kerosene. They were quite similar in design to the Scepter cans widely used by the U.S. and Canadian militaries.
Prototype tests had shown that if a Pogo Stick was placed in a fuel can filled with diesel, when the timer went off a stream of molten thermite would quickly burn through the bottom of the can and still have the exothermal energy to burn through fourteen millimeters of plate steel beneath. Then, depending on the width of the air gap, up to twelve liters of flaming diesel fuel would follow down the hole that had been cut by the burning thermite. Alternatively, if a Pogo Stick was placed in a fuel can filled with gasoline, there would be a flaming explosion with a twenty-foot-diameter fireball.
Inserting a Pogo Stick took just a few seconds. Because they were spring-loaded and because there were internal tapers on the top and bottom of the fuel cans, the top of a Pogo would automatically wedge itself into the far corner of a can, where it could not be seen through the open spout hole.
The Chinese did not trust Canadians around their vehicles (for fear of sabotage), but it had become the norm in the lengthy occupation to send out all of their empty fuel cans to commercial fuel stations for refilling. Because the Pogo Sticks would be inserted incrementally, there would be no way of knowing whether any particular can had already been rigged. So a discreet stripe drawn with a felt-tip marker underneath the triple carry handles on the cans was devised.
Although not all of the commercial fuel contractors were “in the loop” and supplied with Pogo Sticks, more than 60 percent of them were. Between March and August, the resistance rigged the majority of fuel cans in most of the Chinese-held Canadian provinces and territories. Always well regimented, the PLA had a policy of rotating their stocks of stored fuel, so that it would not go bad in storage, and this policy was enforced quite stringently in Canada, partly as an “antisabotage measure.” As a result, even though it was more laborious, their SOP was to always use gas in cans first before filling vehicle tanks directly from pumps. This meant that eventually the resistance would get their hands on nearly every Chinese fuel can in many regions.
Then, in September, the resistance had a major coup. In the Northwest Territories, a part of Canada where Pogo Sticks had become available only late in the game, three boxcars full of brand-new empty fuel cans were received from China, all with yellow cap straps—designating them for use with diesel fuel. With the impetus of a kickback payment from a fuel contractor, the regional logistics coordinator was convinced that the new cans should be distributed full of fuel. This gave the contract operator the chance to insert Pogo Sticks in every one of those fuel cans.
52
TIEBREAKER
Most people can’t think, most of the remainder won’t think, the small fraction who do think mostly can’t do it very well. The extremely tiny fraction who think regularly, accurately, creatively, and without self-delusion—in the long run, these are the only people who count.
—Robert A. Heinlein
Prince George, British Columbia—September, the Eleventh Year
The first wave of China’s invasion had largely ignored the importance of the Canadian rail network. But in the second wave, the Chinese clearly planned to use the railroads extensively to “vigorously extract” Canada’s mineral and timber resources. Some key mineral resources were the zinc, lead, copper, and molybdenum mines in British Columbia and the base-metals mines of Ontario, the Yukon Territory, and British Columbia. With many decades of reserves, the Leduc oil fields and the more recently exploited oil sands in Alberta were also considered strategic. Saskatchewan also held uranium and the world’s largest deposits of potash. The gold mines in northern Saskatchewan and British Columbia were considered plum prizes, especially the extremely rich Eskay Creek gold-silver mine. The former Nickel Plate gold mine in British Columbia was reopened. There was also diamond ore to be exploited up in the Northwest Territories and Nunavut.
Although Canada had no bauxite reserves, the Chinese had plans to expand British Columbia’s aluminum industry, to take advantage of the region’s plentiful hydro power. The bauxite ore would be hauled by ship from their newly seized mines in Guinea and brought across the Pacific to Vancouver.
Because China and Canada used the same standard “1435” rail gauge—1,435mm (or four feet, eight and a half inches)—their rolling stock was mostly compatible. (Their car couplings and brake hose fittings were different, but they had brought plenty of adapters.) Within the first week of the Chinese invasion, Chinese rail speeder trucks were seen operating. A few weeks later, there were Chinese-built switch engines and flatcars in operation that came in through the Port of Vancouver, which was accessible by railcar ferry ships. The PLA commandeered all of the railroad rolling stock that was within their reach.
The hundreds of miles of rail lines that connected Jasper to Prince Rupert and Jasper to Vancouver were repeatedly severed by the resistance. Both the Canadian Pacific Railway (CPR) and Canadian National (CN) rail lines were broken, often for days or weeks at a time. Harassing fire on the crew responding to the first break changed everything. They insisted on having security posted before they would go out for another repair. This added several days to all subsequent repairs, since PLA forces had to be sent out in advance to set up a security perimeter.
Most of the rail breaks were made on curved sections of tracks, over trestles, and on grades to make repairs more difficult. Explosives
and thermite were used sparingly in destroying tracks. The resistance found that “borrowed” Cat D8 or Komatsu D155 bulldozer could do the same work, leaving their initially small supply of donated, improvised, and stolen explosives and incendiaries for more important uses—primarily for targets that were under active guard.
The resistance also had hopes of derailing trains, but modern rail-signaling technology often prevented this. Electrical continuity checks detected breaks in the rail miles in advance of approaching trains. The resistance cells learned to overcome this technology in two different ways. First, if they blew up tracks immediately in front of a train on a curve, there was no way that a train could come to an immediate stop. (Stopping distances for laden trains at full speed were measured in miles, not feet.) Second, they learned to use heavy-gauge electric cable to “splice” circuit continuity, so that if a section of rail was loosened, it would still show a complete circuit.
Inevitably, the industrious Chinese began repairing the rails nearly as quickly as the scattered resistance cells could break them. The war against the rails had reached a stalemate. While the resistance succeeded in degrading the efficient use of the railroads, they could not quite deny them to the Chinese.
Alan McGregor, who was an avid reader of U.S. Civil War and American frontier books, came up with an invention that would almost permanently deprive the Chinese use of one long stretch of railroad from Prince George to the outskirts of Vanderhoof. His brilliant idea, “The Claw,” was based on accounts that he had read of the Union army’s destruction of Confederate railroad lines.
Liberators Page 35
