When they got to Pearson Field, an NDF sergeant in tiger stripes was staggering off the back of a pickup truck, which had been re-painted flat gray with a blue, white and green roundel on the doors and with a bright red cross in a white circle on the hood. He was carrying a wounded comrade over his shoulders. An NDF paramedic and a young, pretty blonde nurse in camos and a Red Cross armband ran out the door of the hangar pushing a gurney. “Put him on here,” commanded the nurse.
“He’s a she,” said the soldier from the bridge, helping the nurse ease the unconscious body onto the gurney. “She was crawling to the edge of the bridge to toss one of the charges into the river and one of their snipers hit her. For Christ’s sake, help her!” he burst out.
“Do you know her blood type?” demanded the corpsman.
“A-positive,” came the reply.
“You sure?”
“Yeah, check her arm.” The medic quickly rolled up the girl’s right sleeve and saw A+ written in black on the inside of her forearm, along with “Arnold, B.” The NDF hadn’t been able to make up dogtags for its soldiers yet, and so most of them wore their names and blood types inked on their bodies with Sharpies.
The paramedic said, “Kelly, start her on a plasma IV, then let’s get her in to your dad.” The nurse quickly raised the IV rig over the gurney and hooked a plastic bag over the hook.
Wingfield looked down at the wounded Volunteer while this was being done, and he saw a single long blonde braid coming out from under the woman’s cap. “Did this comrade not receive my order regarding no female personnel under direct fire?” he demanded in exasperation.
“Yes sir, she did,” responded the sergeant wearily, “She just ignored it. Don’t go too hard on her, sir. Brooke’s Mandingo.”
“Ah.” No one commented; they now knew that the bleeding woman on the gurney was wearing the Northwest uniform and she had been out on that bridge because she had been raped by blacks or Mexicans. No one knew how many female Northwest Volunteers were Mandingo, nor did anyone ever try to compile any statistics; it was something that was understood to be the case, but never discussed. There was blood running down the left side of the sergeant’s camos, and Wingfield saw that wasn’t all the girl’s, but was burbling out from beneath the male trooper’s arm. “Looks like you stopped one yourself, sarge,” said Wingfield. “What’s your name?”
“Art McBride, sir. It’s just a bee sting. A Dick Tracy special. Don’t worry about it.”
“Bullshit,” said the young nurse as her companion wheeled the wounded woman into the hangar. “Get your ass inside and let me look at that, troop. You’re lucky, you’re getting in before the rush.”
“Wait a minute, I need to talk to him a bit, Nurse…”
“Shipman, sir. Kelly Shipman. I’m not a real nurse, I just learned a lot from my dad. I guess I have a military rank, but nobody’s told me what it is. Take off your shirt while you’re talking,” she ordered McBride, helping him off with the bloodstained camo tunic.
“Did you get all the charges off the 205?” demanded Wingfield. “Which lane were you on?”
“Northbound, sir. Shit!” The nurse had just slapped an alcohol-and-iodine-soaked gauze pad over the bullet graze. “Brooke and I got three between the middle span and their first barricade. About twenty pounds of Semtex and a dozen sticks of C4 apiece. They had them packed into hollowed-out holes right over the section joins. They would have leveled the whole bridge, no question. Third Section told us that’s all there was on northbound. If that was good intel, then we got them all.” He held up three long, thin brass detonators with power bulbs attached. “Pulled the dets, cut the strapping with tin snips and dropped the charges in the drink.”
“How hot was it out on the bridge?” asked Wingfield.
“Not near as hot for us as it was in the southbound lanes. I think those are Rangers on the 205, but whatever they are, the SS guys covered us pretty good and made them keep their heads down. But one of them got Brooke, God damn him to hell!”
“I was there, sir,” spoke up the driver of the pickup truck, a young man wearing blue jeans and tiger-stripe camo shirt with SS tabs. “The sarge here carried that girl a good quarter mile to our first barricade on the 205.”
“Well, we’re sort of engaged,” explained McBride. “I figured it was the considerate thing to do for my bride-to-be.”
“He also went back for the last charge, and when the Rangers came up over the barricade to try and stop him he killed two of them with a pistol,” the driver added. “Captain Kannino said to tell you that if there’s any medals going for today, these guys deserve two of them. He’s right.”
“Good man,” said Wingfield with an approving nod. “Well done, both of you. How’s she looking?” The paramedic had come back out of the aircraft hangar.
“Not so good,” said the man. “Because she was in the prone position when she was hit, the bullet got past her vest and into her chest cavity. She’s going on the table now. Kelly, your dad wants you in there.”
“God, do we even have any real doctors yet in this so-called MASH?” wondered Wingfield.
“We have at least one, sir,” replied the blonde. “My father, Doctor Edward Shipman. I called him in Seattle and told him that we needed him, begged him to come, and he came down. The NVA did our family a favor a while back. A Jew did something real bad to me, and you guys took care of it. We’re grateful and we owe you, and I was able to make my dad see that. He still won’t wear the uniform, though. Can’t handle the eagle.” She escorted the wounded Sergeant McBride into the hangar.
Wingfield scowled after her. “I’m sorry if my order to keep our female comrades out of direct combat ruffled their feathers, and I know they’re all as brave as lions or they wouldn’t be here, but dammit, Shane, I’m just one of these old dinosaurs who doesn’t believe men should send women to do their fighting for ’em!” he groused. “You of all people know I had two daughters in the Volunteers back when it was necessary, and one of them died. I saw what losing Rooney did to you, and I know what it did to me, what it still does to me every day. I’m sorry, but I won’t inflict that grief on any other father or husband if I can help it. [See A Distant Thunder by the author.] Now, I wonder if China is bothering to follow my order, or has she done crept off to the line somewhere as well?”
“China might well disobey a general, but don’t worry, sir, she wouldn’t disobey her father,” said Ryan. “You raised her too good a Christian to violate the commandment.”
Wingfield sighed. “Shane, I know this isn’t the time or the place, but once we get on top of things from the command post I intend to get my own ass over that bridge and lead from the front, and you’ll be with me. We don’t know how that’s going to play out, so I guess I better have a quick word I been meaning to have with you now. I just want to tell you that whatever you and China decide to do about your lives together in the future, if there is anything that’s gonna happen there, then it’s all right with Racine and me.”
“I don’t know, Carter,” said Ryan shaking his head. “Uh, you know, we’re…”
“Yeah, I know where my daughter spends her nights, and my wife damned sure knows,” said Wingfield with a sour grin. “You know how we feel about that, but we just got too much else to worry about right now.”
“Well, Chine and I have talked about the future, some,” Shane told him. “I feel like I want us to get married, but I have to be really sure I’m doing it for the right reasons, because I want her, not because in some creepy way I’m trying to raise Rooney from the dead.”
“We get that. Well, I hope it works out for the two of you, son. Racine and me both want to keep you in the family.”
Ryan looked at his watch. “Almost time, sir.”
“Right. Let’s get up in that control tower. That should give us a bird’s-eye view. I want to watch the first shell hit.”
* * *
Frederick the Great once said “artillery lends dignity to what would otherwise be a
vulgar brawl,” and the pride of the fledgling NDF was their captured or surrendered artillery and armor. The First Army was the proud owner and operator of fourteen M198 155mm howitzers, twelve M110A1 self-propelled 203mm (8-inch) guns, three British 105mm light howitzers that no one had the slightest idea where they’d come from, and six M109A6 self propelled 155s. The M198s had a standard crew of nine men, but could make do with five in a pinch. The M109s were designed for a crew of four and needed all four bodies. Fortunately for the NDF, America’s endless wars in the Middle East had spat out enough disgruntled white veterans from the artillery to provide gun crews for the fieldpieces. It was a motley collection and scarcely equivalent to the standard TO&E of an American infantry brigade, but it was the only heavy artillery the NDF had. Gair’s Second and DiBella’s Third Army had nothing larger than mortars and RPGs.
Then there were the rockets, on which Wingfield was placing more hope for this particular mission, i.e. getting his 45,000 men across the river. By hook or crook the First Army accumulated sixteen M270A1 70mm 12-rocket launchers and eighteen M142 270mm HIMARS (High Mobility) launchers that only packed six rockets, but those six were larger and had a longer range. Added to those were a number of truck-mounted Katyusha rockets provided by the aforementioned mysterious Russian sympathizers, as well as homemade weapons the NVA had used during the guerrilla campaign, called whizz-bangs. Even the higher-tech rockets were not precision weapons, but used as an area weapon, they could be devastating, and one big heavy sustained blast was all Wingfield really needed—just enough to keep the enemy’s heads down and get his first wave alive across the bridges.
Then there were the NDF’s captured Stryker armored combat vehicles, M2 and M3 Bradleys with 25mm cannons, and even a few venerable Abrams M1 tanks. Each of these vehicles had been repainted in flat battleship gray, with blue, white and green roundels sprayed on them, or in some cases Iron Crosses in green or blue. Wingfield was confident his men and their equipment could defeat the Americans, if only he could get them across the river in one piece.
* * *
At 7:30, Wingfield stood in the airfield’s control tower and took a deep breath. “Right, let’s get this show on the road.” He spoke into his phone. “Let ’er rip,” he said calmly. There was a long moment of silence, until a single M110 self-propelled gun in Vancouver’s Esther Short Park on the 6th Street side fired the shell that nailed Abdul Malik Johnson in the butt and took off Pettibone’s nappy head. Then all hell broke loose from along the Washington side of the river.
Cannon, mortar and rocket fire ripped and slashed through the air and slammed into the Oregon shore, flashing on impact and throwing up columns of smoke and dust and debris. Partman’s guns responded and a few shells began streaking overhead and crumping into Vancouver along 15th Street and McLoughlin Boulevard. Partman’s gunners apparently thought the bulk of the Nationalists were further back from the shoreline than they were, or else they were overshooting due to bad intel and a lack of spotters. Wingfield watched some of the shells hit far behind them. “If they got satellite surveillance it don’t seem to be doing ’em much good,” he commented. At any rate, they were missing the bulk of the NDF troops who were dug into foxholes and hunkered down in buildings and behind cover along the northern edge of the river.
All along the Lewis and Clark Highway, and along the shore across from Hayden Island, a series of whistles blew loudly, piercing even the thunder of the cannon and rocket fire. Around 22,000 armed men of the first assault wave rose from their dugouts and from the cover of the buildings where they had sheltered, and started walking. With few words they formed into files and began walking up the on-ramps and across the bridges at a steady pace.
The men on the I-5 bridge had the shortest walk, but it was long enough. The aging steel beams and columns of the suspension served as partial cover from indirect fire, but also had a nasty tendency to send ricochets down into the marching column. The men on the I-205 bridge had the longest walk, well over a mile, and they were the most exposed to enemy fire because their bridge was much more open, but the men on the railroad trestle bridge were at the greatest risk, almost completely exposed to enemy fire. From the Oregon shore, audible even over the crash of the artillery, came the popping of American small arms. Partman’s Marines were opening up on the men on the bridges.
The Northwest Republic’s new army marched only in the right lanes, leaving the left lanes clear for medevac vehicles that scooted up and down to pull wounded men out of line and rush them back to the MASH units. It had been decided that the first crossing had to be made almost entirely by the men themselves, because of the risk that demolished and burning vehicles might end up blocking the bridge just as effectively as a Bremer wall.
On the 205 and I-5 bridges, each column was headed by a single huge Caterpillar front-end loader with crudely shaped armor plating bolted around the cab. The driver was able to see only through slits in the steel that covered his windshield. Both machines had large heavy steel plates welded and clamped to their blades to stop rifle and machine gun fire, RPGs, and 40mm grenades, and to give the men at least some protection from direct fire on their front. On the railroad bridge, a special armored and motorized boxcar had been built for the same purpose. The right flank men on the southbound bridge and the left flank on the northbound carried captured police mantlets and homemade shields slapped together with miscellaneous pieces of Bakelite, Kevlar, or steel plating, anything that might stop a bullet. The long lines of men walked stolidly forward, steeling themselves for the artillery they were sure would come and possibly the explosion and collapse if the special squads had missed any of the explosive charges the Americans had planted on the bridges.
Back up in the control tower on Pearson Field, Wingfield put his field glasses back into the case. “And they’re off to the races. Come on, Shane. We can’t see shit from here, so let’s get to the command post.” They climbed down from the tower, got back into the Humvee, and took off for a brief ride northward.
The NDF’s command post for the assault on Portland had been set up inside the Marshall House, on Officer’s Row in the Fort Vancouver National Historic Site just north of Pearson Field. What had once been General Marshall’s main dining room, where he had feasted blue-coated officers of the nineteenth-century United States Army, was now in the hands of white men who hoped to defeat the descendants of those officers. A mass of tables and electronic communications gear filled the room, with the biggest map of Portland anyone could find hanging on the wall. A huge blue, white and green Tricolor flag hung along another wall of the dining room, and a number of large-screen televisions had been set up along another wall, most showing split screens and taking feeds from a variety of videocams out in the field, some mounted in stationary positions and others held by cameramen advancing with the troops. Wingfield had a much better overall view of the action from this room than he could get from the river shoreline itself. A number of Nationalist soldiers wearing NDF tiger-stripes—mostly female, in view of Wingfield’s ban on women in direct combat for the operation—were manning the electronic gear and talking into microphones, wireless phones, and typing on laptops.
“All three assault columns are now moving onto the bridges, General,” said one of the women soldiers, former NVA Volunteer and now NDF Lieutenant Jennifer Campbell, who was in charge of channeling communications between the NDF columns. Jenny was 19 years old, a slim and feminine girl with dark brown hair, a pixie face and lustrous brown eyes, who looked way too sweet and virginal to possibly be a terrorist. It was a mistake that had cost a number of minorities, policemen, FATPOs and an FBI agent their lives. “General Gair and General DiBella are also beginning their advance inside the city, and Commandants Coyle and Jackson report their men are out in the streets and are moving to secure their objectives. They say it’s pretty heavy going. There are thousands of the enemy jammed into a fairly small area of the city center, and they’re coming up against mass fire from entrenched positions.”
> Wingfield nodded. “Mmmm. Partman is smart enough to maintain a tight interior lines sitch and not spread his men out too thin and leave too many gaps we can work our way through, or bop our way through. I’ll want to talk to both field commanders in the city in a minute, so stand by. First things first. How bad is the enemy fire on the bridges?”
“It’s there, sir, but our artillery and mortars seem to be keeping most of their heads down. It’s getting over the barricades that will be the problem,” replied another staff officer, looking up from her monitor.
“None of the Union guns firing on the bridges yet?” asked Wingfield.
“Negative, sir. Not yet.”
A low thumping groan shook the floor and was audible even above all the cannon and rocket fire. “What the hell was that?” demanded Wingfield.
“General McCann reports they’ve blown the railroad bridge, sir,” called out Lieutenant Campbell.
“Damn! Looks like we didn’t get all the charges, then. Is McCann on visual?” asked Wingfield.
“No, you said not, sir, too much chance of interception since the cell tower is in Portland.”
“Yeah, that’s right. Sorry, I forgot. Get him for me on the radio.”
Campbell spoke into a field phone. “Badbreaker, this is Sunray. Come in. Over.”
“Sunray, this is Badbreaker,” came Big Jim McCann’s voice. “I guess you heard that all the way back there? Over.”
Wingfield took the handset. “Badbreaker, this is Sunray. Yeah, we heard. Jim, can you read me? Over.” The noise of the artillery and rockets up and down on the river shoreline was deafening even over the radio.
“Yes, sir, just barely,” shouted back McCann. “It’s kind of loud out here. Over.”
“How’s it look? How many did we lose on the railroad bridge? Over.” asked Wingfield.
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