“I know how to park, nimrod,” Harris said within the confines of his own mind. Harris found this much direction, this much control, to be condescending and irritating; but it was something he was learning to deal with in the Marine Corps.
“I see your boot driver ain’t got you killed yet,” Cortes shouted across the makeshift parking lot. Harris chafed at the comment. Cortes was a good buddy of Edwards, and thus Harris had gotten to know him a bit. Harris had not expected this kind of greeting, and it pissed him off some. Before he could get angrier, Cortes shook his hand.
“Good to see you, Harris.” Cortes offered the junior Marine a cigarette. Harris’s hurt pride was suddenly mended.
“Thanks.”
“Hey, don’t fuck with my driver there, Hank. He did good. Damn good.” Harris took pride from the comment. It was the first indication from Edwards that he’d done a good job in combat.
“Thanks,” Harris responded with genuine gratitude.
“Don’t thank me,” Edwards said while jumping down from the LSV. “You get me killed, I’m going to fuck you up.” Edwards always spoke in a dry and even tone. Harris never had any idea if Edwards was joking around, serious, or what. Edwards took a cigarette from Cortes, who lit it for him from his own cigarette.
“Hoorah, Devil Dog,” Edwards said with what might have been a bit of sarcasm as he exhaled smoke. “Did we lose anybody?”
“Freedman and Marks.” Cortes’s demeanor went from jovial to stone in a heartbeat. Harris knew who they were, but hadn’t really known them.
“Fuck.” Edwards spit and kicked dirt. “Ain’t bad for flying in like we did. That’s it?”
“I heard Henry and his boot driver, in First Section, got it. Ain’t heard how.”
“Fucking boots. Probably fucked up and got Henry killed.” Edwards spat. Cortes said nothing, but did look at Harris. Again, Harris had no idea exactly how to interpret Edwards.
“Was it Jones?” Harris asked Cortes.
“Sorry, I really don’t know.”
“I went to SOI with Jones in First Section,” Harris offered while looking at the ground.
“Every Marine here went to SOI with some other Marine here,” Edwards stated, adding more awkwardness to the awkwardness.
What seemed like out of nowhere, Harris got slapped on the back.
“Good to see you, buddy!” It was Hastings, alive and well. “And I’ve got gifts.” He handed Harris two cartons of cigarettes.
“Man! Where’d you come up with these?” Harris was genuinely impressed. Most of what he’d seen other than the PLA were shacks and pigs. How’d Hastings end up with smokes? Harris had only brought one carton with him and was down to only three more packs.
“I got a little shopping done while I was getting the LSV washed and waxed,” Hastings joked with a cigarette dangling from the corner of his mouth.
Edwards and Cortes appeared apathetic, but stared at the cartons.
“No, I’ll tell you,” Hastings continued. “Sellers may be a bigheaded bastard, but the man knows how to scavenge.” Harris thought Hastings was the pot calling the kettle black, but he laughed all the same. “We drove by a half-demolished shop about ten miles from here. Sellers wants to stop and check it out. We got a bunch of smokes, some dried seaweed shit we tossed out, and some Oreos!”
“What the fuck, man! You holding out on the Oreos?” Cortes chimed in.
“Hey, you got to talk to Sellers about that.” Hastings dodged the responsibility of sharing.
“You watch yourself, Hastings,” Edwards sternly interjected, breaking the celebratory conversation. “Some Prick motherfucker booby-traps that shit, and you’ll be lucky just to get your fucking arms blown off.”
“Got it.” Hastings stared back at Edwards and then shifted his gaze down. At times Edwards could be just too intense.
“Fall in, TOW Platoon,” Staff Sergeant Anderson, Second Section leader, called out.
“Formation! Fall in, Fourth Squad,” Sergeant Bohanan quickly reiterated. The Marines broke up their conversation to find out what the Marine Corps had in store for them.
Chapter Fourteen
Harris found it ironic that his ass hurt so much. Throughout most of his training it was his feet that were his source of pain. But then he was running or hiking everywhere; now he was sitting behind a steering wheel.
He was driving in a column, headed north. TOW platoon had not lingered at their last rendezvous. They were there long enough to get resupplied with food, ammo, and water. Thanks to Hastings, Harris and Edwards were now well stocked on smokes.
Harris was glad to be following somebody because he had no idea where he was. They were to head north, following along the route of a highway, G25. The PLA was disorganized and on the run. The Marines were in hot pursuit to chew their ass.
That was what they were told, anyway. Harris hadn’t told anyone except Hastings, but he had expected more resistance from the PLA. Over the last few years he had heard news stories of nasty fights with the PLA in Mexico and the Philippines. The last naval battle had been of epic proportions; some reports claimed it was the biggest naval engagement in world history. So far, Harris hadn’t considered anything he’d been involved in epic by any means. He had found moments to be terrifyingly intense; others were insanely boring. All his gunfights lasted several minutes at the most and then broke off. The PLA was falling back; some said it was a full-scale retreat. The “salty” Marines kept talking about how easy this was compared to past battles. Some said it was too easy and that the PLA was setting them up for a trap. Others swore that the PLA was broken and the war would be over within the year.
“I swear I’ll punch the next Jarhead that tells me ‘this ain’t shit! The real fight was in Luzon’!” Hastings had threatened to Harris, but Hastings was just blowing off steam.
However, Bohanan, Edwards, and Schmitt, the other gunner in Fourth Squad, agreed that if the Pricks were falling back now, it was probably to hit back all the harder later. They all hoped that the high command didn’t back off and let the PLA regroup. Bohanan and Edwards had been in this war since Mexico. They wanted it done, but done right. They wanted this war won, not postponed for another generation. It was what Harris wanted. It was what his father had wanted.
Their objective in this campaign was the Shanghai Pudong International Airport. So they headed north, taking little comfort from the PLA’s retreat. Ultimately, their objective would be the destruction of the People’s Republic of China; there was still too much war left to fight.
General Jack McCullough, Allied general-in-chief, also found PLA’s lack of fight worrisome. So far, everything seemed to be going according to plan. A best-case scenario, and this was his source of stress. Four years at the Virginia Military Institute and thirty years in the United States Army in four theaters of war, McCullough knew of no campaign where everything went according to plan.
Still, he figured if success was a problem, it was the best problem to have. The Republic of China’s (Taiwan) forces and operatives had been great. Many Chinese noncombatants seemed comfortable with being liberated by the Republic of China. Many of the industrialized cities of China’s east coast seemed happy, and some eager, to abandon the communist state if it meant they could keep what they had and gain the freedom to acquire more.
The Australian and Canadian forces were perfectly fulfilling their role as an occupation force, freeing up American troops to fight. The Philippines and Japan were hitting a home run with logistics.
He thought it was ironic, under the circumstances, that the only weak link he could think of at the moment was General Mythers, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff’s concern that things were moving too quickly. McCullough looked back at his last correspondence with Mythers, questioning whether or not it would be prudent to slow down a bit to allow for better organization and coordination.
“For who? Us or the fucking Pricks?” McCullough said to no one but himself as he puffed on his evening cigar. Jack chuc
kled. He got a kick out of the troops using the term Prick for the ChiComs. Of course, he didn’t use the term in public, but he loved it all the same.
“Slow down?” McCullough again talked to himself, then laughed. He imagined what it would be like to tell his old classmate and friend Edgar “Fast Eddie” Ragnarsson to slow down the First Marine Division. The man was like a bull terrier once he sank his teeth into something. Once he started fighting, only death or victory would stop him. Ragnarsson was a good leader, and his mind-set permeated throughout his command.
No, he was counting on the fact that nothing would slow Ragnarsson down. Still, though, McCullough had a premonition that something bad was about to happen. He poured himself two fingers of bourbon, puffed on his cigar, and stared at his giant map of Eastern China.
“What would I do if I were a Prick general?” he said to himself.
“If I were a slimy, communist bastard, what the hell would I do?” McCullough continued talking to himself.
President Zhang Min entered the conference room. He was wearing a military uniform and carried a holstered pistol on his belt. He wanted to emphasize to his audience that he was the supreme commander. He knew his position was tenuous at the moment. He had another pistol concealed under his military blouse, because a dictator could never be too complacent. He had already chosen his target. He’d rehearsed how he wanted events to unfold for maximum effect with his generals and other political leaders.
General Ding Yong had served thirty-five years in the People’s Liberation Army. It was in his blood; he was third generation PLA. His paternal grandfather had even survived the Long March and was a fervent Maoist. Ding considered himself a patriotic son of the People’s Republic. He had had a central role in the takeover of the South China Sea, Luzon, and the North American invasion. While he had not always agreed with Zhang’s agenda, he felt it was his duty to serve the PRC to the utmost of his ability. He had managed a long career by keeping his mouth shut, or at least being discreet in voicing his disagreement with political leadership. Yet he had been overheard stating to his junior officers that the PRC was in the predicament it was in because of its lack of allies: a political comment. Thus Zhang had targeted him for execution.
“Why, after three months, is our army still in disorganization and laowai still in our homeland?” Zhang paused and looked around the conference table. “Why are our people choosing corrupt democracy over communist virtue? Why is our brave People’s Liberation Army either in retreat or surrendering to the American barbarians?”
“General Secretary—” General Fu Gang began to answer.
“Could it be that some in here would prefer to serve the capitalist bastards than the People’s government?” Zhang was not interested in explanations. He had already decided what had gone wrong. He understood that most Chinese, given a choice of freedom or repression, would choose freedom. Zhang’s first priority was not the people of China, but his political career. His first priority was the feeling of power that he had craved his entire life. Today’s show wasn’t about the laowai invaders, it was about him maintaining control of the People’s Republic of China, no matter how diminished it was.
Zhang walked around the conference table as he spoke. He preferred to look down on people when speaking to them. When he came to General Ding Yong, he swiftly, but calmly, pulled his nine-millimeter pistol from its holster and shot Ding in the back of his head. Zhang could not have asked for a better reaction from the others. Everyone visibly jumped in their seats. The sound of trickling fluid told Zhang that someone had urinated himself. Zhang thought his performance was perfect. Most likely, he thought, they expected someone to be arrested and executed at a later date. Zhang, however, wanted to do the unexpected and make the biggest political impact among China’s elite that he could.
He read once of the American gangster Al Capone, who actually smashed the skull of an underling to scare others into compliance. Zhang had loved that kind of execution of power and control. Ding had displayed what could potentially be seen as political dissent. That was enough to get Ding killed. He thought this provided the perfect opportunity to exercise such a show of strength. So far, he was thrilled with his performance, but he had one more card to play.
“Given the danger of these times, comrades, I took the liberty of ordering the families of all key political and military leaders to be gathered into a secure location. As we are speaking, your wives, children, and, for some, your grandchildren are being escorted to a bunker at an undisclosed location. This is where they will be safe”—Zhang looked around at his commissars and generals—“under my supervision and care. It is up to all of us to protect them, to protect our China. My countrymen, will you fail them?” Zhang asked as blood flowed from Ding’s shattered skull over the elaborate wood of the now ruined table that was worth about seven years of wages to the average Chinese worker.
“President Zhang, if I may speak, sir?” Zhang was satisfied with General Wang Tao’s timidity.
“Please, General.”
“General Secretary, General Ding, myself, and some others have devised a plan to defeat the laowai invaders. It may be a good one, sir. If I may explain it.”
Curse Ding, Zhang thought, for not telling me about this before I killed him. And this Wang has to bring that part of it up! Zhang decided who would be his next example.
“Please, General Wang, enlighten me. Enlighten all of us, and perhaps save the People’s Republic of China,” and by that he meant his political career.
“Bullshit, Arty!” Lieutenant Colonel William “Bulldog” McGregor expressed his exacerbation to his superior, Colonel Arthur “Lucky” Liddell, commander of First Marines. McGregor only exercised this privilege in private. He was only allowed to do that because he and Liddell were in the same NROTC company at Texas A&M. They were also cousins.
“Settle down, Billy.” Liddell was a bit patronizing, McGregor hadn’t gone by “Billy” since grade school.
“Taking Shanghai is arguably the biggest campaign of the war. It’ll be second only to the fall of Beijing, and we’re stuck in goddamn reserve! What the hell is Ragnarsson doing?”
“Your daddy would whip your butt with a belt for swearing like that.” Liddell was a bit patronizing, and he was enjoying tweaking his cousin. The men shared a grandfather, who had been a Southern Baptist preacher. Generally speaking, swearing wasn’t tolerated in the family, especially on the McGregor side. Ironically, as men, it was William who was foulmouthed and Arthur who had a disdain for cussing.
“Come on, Arty.” McGregor wasn’t feeling the humor. “You got 1/1 way out on the left flank and rear. We’re the reserve of the reserve. What are we going to be doing? Filling sandbags?”
“If that’s all you got your Marines doing, I’ll fire your butt and you’ll be commanding animal control back at Camp Pendleton.” Liddell’s tone had gotten serious. “Ragnarsson is not a detrimentally cautious man. You know that. If he thinks we’re the best to watch the division’s rear, we do that. I think you’re the best to watch the regiment’s rear, you will do that.
“If Shanghai falls like the rest of the coast, 1/1 is going to see plenty of action between here and Beijing. If Shanghai turns into an urban dogfight, we’re going to need 1/1, First Marines, and a whole lot more. In the meantime, Lieutenant Colonel, you best be focused on who and what might just slip up our left flank and our rear.”
“Aye, aye, sir.” McGregor would carry out his orders or die trying.
Chapter Fifteen
“Take a turn behind the gun. I want to take a piss and have a smoke,” Edwards ordered. Harris was always anxious to get behind the gun. While both positions were essential to a TOW gun team, Harris liked the idea of being a gunner better. Besides, both wanted a change in the action. They’d watched American bomber groups flying north and back all day. While not engaged in combat, they were close enough to hear the bombing. It sounded like the low rumble of distant thunder. From their position they’d seen some ROC (
Republic of China) patrols and convoys, but nothing else. They weren’t in the action and they knew it.
Most of Second Section had had a sense that they were on a back burner for Shanghai. For some this was a good thing; they’d had enough of war. However, for most of the section, it was a blow to their morale and collective ego. Those who wanted to avoid action typically did not volunteer to be infantrymen in the United States Marine Corps. It was harder for a unit to stay sharp and focused when the members thought they’d been given a nonessential assignment. This was where Second Section found itself. Harris and Edwards were no exception.
Edwards lit a cigarette with a match and inhaled deeply. He liked the way the sulfur from the match tasted on that first inhale. He slowly let the smoke out of his lungs and scanned the sky.
“Not a goddamn drone in sight. Unless the Pricks finally came up with the mosquito-sized drones we keep hearing so much about.”
Harris had been working with Edwards for almost a year and had never seen him act so agitated.
“So fucking Sellers thinks we’ll be home by Christmas or some such shit?”
“That’s what I heard. Second hand,” Harris answered while scanning the terrain through the TOW’s sight.
“The fucker’s been smoking crack. Ain’t gonna happen that soon. I’ve been fighting these Pricks for nearly four years. In this big-ass country I don’t see the ChiComs going down by Christmas. Hell, we’d be lucky to have it won by the following Christmas. They’re a tenacious people. Some are flat-out fanatics. We’ll have to kill a shitload of these communist bastards to break their will to fight.”
“But we will,” Harris added from behind the gun.
“Goddamn straight on that.” Edwards smiled a bit. “You might just evolve into a hard-charger yet with that kind of attitude. Provided you don’t get your fucking ass killed, anyway.”
“Hey, one way or another, as long as I take two Pricks out with me, it’ll be worth it.”
The Last Marine Page 13
