Before the attack, pamphlets had dropped into the village, telling people they should go to Beijing, where they would be safe. The local commissar told them not to worry about being attacked. Their village was of no concern to the Americans. After all, all they did was produce food; they were not a military target. They should not worry. But even the commissars could not comprehend the barbarity of the American invaders. As far as Zhiqiang knew, he was the only one from his family to survive. His village had been completely destroyed. First, bombs were dropped and everything exploded. Then the drones came in, followed by helicopters and then the Marines. They killed anyone that offered resistance. They burned any building still standing after the bombs. They killed any animal that had not yet died. They drove the Chinese from their land. Zhiqiang could see no explanation for why they would kill other than their natural thirst for blood.
Before the attack they had been warned by political officers not to trust the Americans and their overtures offering food and protection. United States Marines were taken from the American penitentiaries. They had to have been convicted of murder, rape, or arson to even be considered for service. Zhiqiang had seen the American pamphlets warning people to leave, but he and his family had followed the PRC’s advice to ignore them.
When the Americans did show up, Zhiqiang was the only one able to escape. His grandparents and parents were too old and too slow. His cousin was killed in the bombing. He’d hoped that he would run into other survivors from his village, but he did not. Instead, he ran into three men, also refugees, who raped him. They had promised him protection, but then that night he awoke when one man was climbing on him. He screamed for help from the others; instead they held him down. One of the rapists, a man with a hideous mole on his chin and missing a front tooth, shoved the tip of a knife into Zhiqiang’s face, cutting his cheek. The vile man yelled at Zhiqiang to stop making it so difficult for himself, but he would not stop fighting his attackers. They beat him unconscious.
Zhiqiang came to sometime the next morning. He had hoped in his semiconsciousness that this had all been a bad dream. As he fully woke up, he painfully realized it had not been a bad dream. The cut on his cheek was deep, so he tore a sleeve off his shirt to use as a bandage.
Two days later, Zhiqiang was following a mob of refugees on the way to Beijing. A man squatting behind a broken-down car in the middle of a bowel movement caught his attention. He thought the man looked familiar. As he got closer, he recognized the ugly mole and the lack of a front tooth. The man had not noticed him. Zhiqiang walked by as if it were any other man taking a crap at the side of the road. Once past, he doubled back. He scanned the ground and found a stone the size of a grapefruit. That would work. He crept up behind the squatting man, who was too involved in his business to notice until Zhiqiang had walked right up behind him, but it was too late. Zhiqiang brought the stone down with all his might on the back of the man’s head. However, his swing was awkward, and it was not a fatal blow, but the rapist had his pants around his ankles, what could he do? He stumbled and screamed in fear and pain. Zhiqiang followed in quickly for another blow. The rapist screamed for help, but none came. Zhiqiang moved with the speed and ferocity of a wild animal in the eyes of some of the onlookers. Zhiqiang pulled his third blow, inspired by a sudden thought. He brought the stone down on the side of the rapist’s jaw, shattering bone and teeth. Now the rapist’s screams were muted and blood poured from his mouth.
“Quit fighting and making it so difficult for yourself,” Zhiqiang mocked the rapist as he grabbed him by the back of his shirt. He dragged the rapist over to his own pile of feces and shoved him in face-first. Zhiqiang brought the stone down again and again until the rapist’s skull had been shattered and his brains scattered among the human waste. Zhiqiang looked up at the refugees who had stopped and watched. He was surprised and relieved that they looked at him with fear and scurried away as if he might hurt them next.
Zhiqiang felt exonerated. He had righted a wrong. Even more, through violence he had risen to dominance. He was not a boy to be taken advantage of, but a man to be feared. Zhiqiang felt the kind of satisfaction that comes when one thinks he has discovered his calling and the secret to his success.
He went through the dead rapist’s bag and clothing. He took food, money, and the man’s extra shirt. He left the shirt that was on the rapist’s corpse. Despite his new sense of empowerment, Zhiqiang was robbed while he slept at night and lost all his food.
By the time he’d made it to the outskirts of Beijing, Zhiqiang had not eaten for three days, and the wound on his face was festering. When asked by administrators what he could do for the People’s Republic, he answered that he could kill the invaders. The administrators seemed to appreciate his spunk. He was given medical treatment for the wound on his face, and at the age of fourteen he was enlisted into the People’s Liberation Army. He began training to defend his homeland and to avenge his village.
Ten months later Private Liu was stationed to defend Nanjing, and his wound had healed into an ugly V-shaped scar. His training had taught him many ways to kill and had only encouraged his desire to do so. He had also learned of how the Americans had tyrannized China for centuries. They were beasts, who would only be satisfied when they had enslaved all the Chinese. He was surprised to learn that the Americans had invaded his homeland many times during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. However, the Chinese had always prevailed and defeated them. Even now, when the Americans were using military technology they had stolen from the People, they still needed the help of Chinese traitors in order to have had the success they had up to this point.
But that was all on the verge of changing. The People would no longer be naive, and traitors to the State would no longer be tolerated. They would learn there was a consequence to their betrayal of China. Zhiqiang was trained how to identify and deal with those that put their own interests before that of the State, before that of the People.
They were told that the fate of the People’s Republic rested on their generation’s ability to hold Nanjing. If it fell, so did the Yangtze and perhaps all of China. Liu swore he’d die before he let that happen. He was taught how to kill these people, as well as the American barbarians, in such a way as to have a maximum psychological impact. The Chinese would be too frightened to put their interests before that of the People’s Republic. The Americans would become too afraid to continue their unjust war against the People.
In the People’s Liberation Army, Liu Zhiqiang felt that he had found his true calling. He no longer missed his family, nor his village. In fact, he found himself at times happy that it had been destroyed by the Americans and had thus brought all this about. He loved the People’s Liberation Army for the skills they had taught him. He loved the People’s Republic of China for the power and authority they had given him. He gleefully swore to defend his homeland and kill all the people that needed to be killed to protect the State.
Lieutenant Kai Yong, of the Republic of China, could not sleep. Staring at the night sky, he came to the conclusion that honor came with stress. More than stress, it came with fear. The taking of Nanjing was going to cost a lot of lives on both sides. Intellectually Kai had accepted that his life and the lives of his men were in God’s hands. Right now he wasn’t feeling his faith. At first he thought he was just anxious; Nanjing was where his ancestors had lived. They had been minor figures in the nationalist government. With the rise of Mao’s Red Army and the fall of the nationalist, his family had escaped to Taiwan. Generations later he was here to rid his ancestral homeland of the communist cancer that controlled it. For Kai Yong it was more than a duty, it was an honor to be involved in this assault. He still felt that way, but forty-eight hours out from launching their assault, the euphoric excitement had been replaced by fear. Now he could not sleep. He kept telling himself he needed the rest, for tomorrow night there would be none. This only made it harder for him to relax. He prayed for peace of mind, but it did not come. Finally, he got up
. He figured if God wanted him awake, there had to be something for him to work on.
Ragnarsson stared at his battle map. Something just wasn’t sitting right with him. Why would the PRC try to hold Nanjing? It was on the wrong side of the Yangtze to work to their advantage. Even if they held the city, Allied forces would cross farther west. Intel claimed Army Special Forces were already well north of the river, and he knew Force Recon and SEAL units had already crossed. Any PLA unit south of the Yangtze would eventually be annihilated. Could it be a delay tactic? It would not be the first time the PLA had sacrificed troops. Was it just a dumb move, or was he missing something? Perhaps it would be clear within the next forty-eight hours. Ragnarsson just hoped the lesson wasn’t too brutal.
“Thanks, man.” Harris took the smoke offered by Hastings and rolled his eyes. “I need a break.” Hawke and Littlejohn, the new drivers of the new Third Squad, were going on about some kind of shooter video game, and the topic bored him. Harris’s parents had never been big on letting him play video games. His mother would make him read instead. Sometimes, as part of his homeschooling, she’d make him and his siblings watch Shakespeare plays on DVD. Harris usually found them painfully long and hard to understand. He didn’t understand them the way his mother did. The memory of her talking about Shakespeare flowed through his mind, and he found himself missing those plays. By the time he had exhaled his first drag on his cigarette, he was feeling homesick. He shook it off; bigger stakes would soon be at play.
“Oh yeah, I remember the days when I thought video games were a big deal,” Hastings casually spoke as he exhaled. “Perhaps they will be again someday.”
“I’m ready to get this show on the road,” Harris confessed to Hastings.
“I hear you. This waiting-around shit gets old fast. But it’ll happen when it happens.” Hastings looked around. Everything and everyone was darkened to blend into the night. The base, however, was loud with the buzzing of the generators that powered their lights. “Hey, how about we get in a game of chess?”
“Sure.” Harris had hesitated in answering. He was lousy at chess and really didn’t care for the game. However, Hastings loved it and had picked up a small portable set he kept stashed in his LSV. He’d promised to teach Harris the game. His teaching of Harris included whipping him every time they played.
No sooner had they started heading towards Hastings’s LSV than they saw Edwards walking straight towards them.
“Third Squad, mount up!” Edwards ordered when he saw them.
“Hastings!” Cortes yelled. Harris slapped his friend on the back of his body armor and stuck out his hand.
“Good luck, Bulldog!” His stress vanished. Harris was feeling the adrenaline for the fight.
“Good luck.” Hastings smiled, feeling the same buzz. The two Marines ran to their vehicles and headed out to battle.
Chapter Seventeen
Harris laughed from behind the gun when word came across on the radio that the bridge at Tongling was out. Hawke had been very concerned as to how vulnerable they’d be crossing a bridge. Edwards told him not to worry about it.
“If we’ve not blown the fucker up, you can damn well bet the Pricks will.” That had not settled Hawke’s mind a bit. The boot was nervous going into his first battle. They all were; some just hid it better.
Edwards didn’t mention, and Harris didn’t remind him, that one way or another they had to cross that river. With or without a bridge. No one expected this to be easy. Edwards had told him privately that he thought it was hard to see even a good best-case scenario on this one. Harris kept telling himself, It will be what it will be. All he could do was his best. Along the way, he prayed to be an effective killer.
The ride was slow and boring. Harris would have fallen asleep if not for the tension of the impending battle. Word came on the radio that First Platoon Charlie Company was engaged and needed heavy weapons. Hawke stepped on the gas and Harris found himself bouncing around behind the weapon system. He held on so as not to smash his nose into the TOW gun. Under the circumstances he wasn’t going to tell him to slow down; he’d leave that up to Edwards. Within fifteen minutes they could hear the pop, pop, pop of small-arms fire, then a roar. They had found the battle.
They could hear the tanks. Problem was it was too wooded to see the tanks let alone get a shot at them. They followed a road into a clearing looking more like some kind of dirt parking lot. They’d come across some kind of complex. In the dark, Harris couldn’t tell for sure what it was. It reminded him of the quarries along the Kansas River. Harris scanned the horizon through his night sight and could not find a target. By the sounds of it, a firefight was taking place in the woods south of them.
“Look across the river, and watch for helos,” Edwards ordered Harris and Schmitt over the radio. Harris could see movement, but no tanks, armored cars, nothing—until a round was fired.
“These bastards upgraded their thermal camouflage,” Harris yelled.
“Say again?” Edwards responded. Harris ignored the question and checked his back blast area. It was clear.
“Fire in the hole,” Harris said just loud enough for his gun team to hear, and fired. The TOW sight read that his target was 1285 meters out. Harris’s missile hit the tank, disabling one of its tracks. Edwards was out to help reload. Hawke was on the SAW. The potential for PLA riflemen popping out of the woods was a real threat. Schmitt, about fifty meters to their right, fired a missile that went straight to the turret, but the missile was blown up by an antimissile weapon. By the time Harris was reloaded and had crosshairs back on the target, he could see the tank turret turning in their direction.
“Fuck! Tell Schmitt to move it!” Harris yelled right before he fired. Shortly after Harris hit the trigger, he was blinded through his thermal sight from the missile’s back blast.
Private Zhiqiang Liu watched Sergeant Zhang Jing set the final wires. The man seemed to move with such grace. He exhibited such passion while he would scout and plan where to plant his bombs. Liu was fascinated with his sergeant’s thought process in killing the maximum number of people while creating the greatest amount of chaos. Liu was anxious for the attack so he could witness the effects of his work.
“Now all we do is go back and wait for orders,” Zhang told his protégé. He loved the boy’s enthusiasm. At a time of so many desertions and uncertainties, Liu gave him some hope for the next generation.
“When do you think it will start?” Liu’s excitement could barely be contained.
“Who knows? My guess is it won’t be much longer. They’ll move out before daylight most likely. They’ll start bombing us before that. If the captain is right, they’ll avoid bombing the city, which is why we’re planting these bombs.
“Come on, let’s head back. As I was saying, they’ll look to strike our defenses south of Nanjing. Perhaps to the north as well. Just remember, our mission is not to fight the Americans or ROC. Our mission is in the city. When that is done, no matter what happens, get yourself north of the Yangtze by any means necessary.” Zhang spoke with almost a fatherly affection for the young soldier of the PLA.
“Yes, Sergeant. I will stay focused. I look forward to the mission with enthusiasm and the opportunity to serve the People,” Liu said with complete honesty.
The attack was launched. Lieutenant Kai buzzed with adrenaline. The PLA was falling back. Everyone was concerned about greater resistance, but the ROC forces were advancing. They had coordinated an assault from the south at the moment the ROC marines had launched an attacked from the north via the river. The only things slowing his troops down were the compliant civilians looking for protection and PLA trying to surrender. As had been the case in Southeast China, many of the civilians were not interested in resisting. In fact, many seemed eager to comply with the ROC and US forces. In Nanjing’s suburbs many people had hung white sheets, pillowcases, shirts, etc. to show their compliance. Those who had electricity had kept houses and streets lit for the Allied forces. Despite the ai
r pamphlets’ instructions to the contrary, many civilians were flooding the streets, looking for refuge. This had started to become a problem.
Kai’s rifle platoon would disarm the surrendering PLA and hold them until military police showed up. Kai was worried that they could be attacked by hostile PLA while occupied with enemy prisoners of war, EPWs.
Suddenly his worries became reality when his platoon received fire from their left flank. He saw some of his men go down along with the EPWs that they were patting down for weapons. Naturally, his men began to return fire, but at what? Kai saw more EPWs and civilians being shot. By his men or the PLA? People scattered and took cover. Kai looked for incoming tracers, but couldn’t see any. His mind was screaming to figure out where the enemy fire was coming from, but he couldn’t make an assessment. Were the EPWs just a cover for the assault? Were the civilians? Meanwhile civilians were dying; his soldiers were being killed. Shots were definitely coming from the west. He ordered an airstrike on the area he thought the attack was coming from, and prayed the helos would take them out. Meanwhile he directed his platoon’s fire in that direction. Kai hated to see that his troops had killed the EPWs that hadn’t already run away. But his mind processed that this was war and men got killed. He focused on his enemy.
The attack helicopters quickly arrived and devastated an entire block of the Nanjing suburb in less time than it took them to arrive. Enemy fire had ceased. Lieutenant Kai and his platoon moved on.
Liu had never been happier in his entire fifteen years of life when the word came that the PLA was falling back to the river. He was on the Allied side of the battlefield. He and the others of his squad changed into ROC uniforms. Sergeant Zhang did a quick weapons and uniform inspection; then the band went out into the Nanjing suburbs to wage violence against the enemies of the People’s Republic.
The Last Marine Page 16
