“No, sir,” said Defense Minister Carter Wingfield, sitting across from the president at a narrow table.
“How are we coming on those?”
“The last of them should be mopped up before dark, Mr. President,” Wingfield told him. “They tried to dig in at a couple of places, but our field artillery was able to blast them out before they had time to get too entrenched. It was a damned good idea assigning every battalion its own cannons, and it’s paying off. The paratroopers haven’t been able to hold on anywhere, and it looks like what’s left of them are breaking up now into platoon-sized groups and trying to E & E. Most of them seem to be heading for the border, possibly looking to hook up with their own columns, but I doubt many of them will make it. There’s just too many battalions of NDF scouring the countryside for them. The Americans not only have our own troops all around them, but the local people are all over them as well. Civilians are calling in enemy sightings to the NDF, and in a lot of cases picking up their own weapons and firing on them. Those poor bastards dropped into in a hornet’s nest. They must feel naked without their air cover.”
Annette Sellars was in uniform now, of semi-dress dark gray, wearing on her shoulders and garrison cap the oak leaves of her reserve rank of major in the NDF, as well as her own tricolored War of Independence ribbon. She looked up from her computer screen. “Sir, Admiral Leach reports that Operation Sea Lion is ready to roll. Weather reports indicate it will be cloudy in the north Pacific tonight, no moonlight, and so he recommends launching the attack fleet at sunset.”
“He doesn’t want to give his vessels at least a few hours of daylight to get into the combat zone?” asked Morehouse. “Some of those boats will be having to get up there from as far south as Coos Bay and as far north as Whidbey.”
“No, sir, he wants to avoid possible spotting aircraft launched from the enemy aircraft carriers. He’s staggering the departure times of each flotilla so they can all rendezvous at around oh-two-hundred hours and attack in the dark.”
“All right, if Leach is good with it, tell him it’s a go,” said Morehouse with a nod. “Carter, how’s the southern front looking?”
“Our Lazarus Birds are on the Mexicans like ugly on an ape. They’re pouring up the old Interstate Five like ants, more a disorganized mob than an army, with a smaller force heading up through Nevada on old Eighty, from which they will presumably get onto old U.S. Ninety-Five, and try to enter eastern Oregon that way. Air Marshal Basquine figures the best place to hit them is the mountainous stretch between Yreka and Hornbrook, at dawn tomorrow, right before they enter the Republic. The way they’re going, they’ll be all bunched and tangled up along that twisty-turny road, in some places with nothing but sheer cliff on one side and sheer drop on the other. The Songbirds and Starfighters should be able to rip ’em up pretty good. Not much cover or room for evasion on those mountainsides along that stretch. The pilots have all been trained running simulation flights in similar stretches of the highway on our side, for years now.”
“You forget all those goddamned Chinese copters and pilots,” said Morehouse. “The Aztecs may be thick, but the Chinese aren’t, and they knew any invasion force moving into the Northwest Republic up I-5 through the mountains would be vulnerable as hell from the air. That’s why they brought in all those gunships, to help out their beaner buddies and cover the main ground force from the south. It’s going to be a bloody mess.”
“The Starfighter pilots have all been given crash training courses in copter-fighting ever since we spotted those things coming in down at San Diego, Mr. President,” said Wingfield. “We’ll have to hope it turns out to be some use. The Nevada-Oregon column from Aztlan will be harder to impede. There’s a lot of flat or rolling countryside out there, and the Mex will be able to spread their vehicles out overland and make it harder for the Songbirds to hit them on the move. On the upside, it’s damned near uninhabited down there, so there are fewer civilians to get in the way and less collateral damage to worry about. We’ve got forward airfields in the Crooked Creek Range and the Catlow Rim, but only about a hundred aircraft, all told. We’re spread too thin to allocate more.”
Morehouse sighed. “I know. We’re light on ground troops in that sector as well, but looks like Bobby Bells and his Sixth Army are going to have to close with them and fight a long running battle. Most of that column of beaners will probably get through into the Republic, but as you said, that’s mostly a lot of empty space and we can afford a certain degree of strategic retreat there. It’s our weakest area, and I’m surprised the Chinks didn’t spot it. The Aztecs must be stopped from linking up with the Americans coming from the east and north.”
“DiBella will shred those greaseballs up into taco meat, sir!” growled Annette Sellars fiercely.
“I have every confidence he will, Major,” replied the president with a smile. “Carter, make sure Bells and all our field commanders understand that we just want to take out their vehicles during first contact. That’s the main thing. Same as with the Americans. We want all of these bastards walking through our country on long, hot summer days carrying nice heavy packs and gear. Now, the Americans?”
“U.S. Combined Group North’s ETA on the border of the Republic at Sweet Grass is in thirty-six hours, but we anticipate they won’t attempt to cross over until they hit Idaho, so they can drive for Coeur d’Alene,” Wingfield reported. “Billy Jackson is keeping his Third Army pulled back and in an extended line for miles all along the Border. No concentrations. If and when the enemy cross over, the NDF will engage in single and brigaded battalions, slow them down until we can figure out whether it’s a feint or the real thing. If it looks like they’re going to punch through to Coeur d’Alene or Spokane, we order a general engagement and we throw in the Florian Geyers right at their headquarters element.”
“Especially Coeur d’Alene,” said Morehouse. “Our nation was born there during the Sixteen Days. We don’t surrender our birthplace.”
“Of course not, Mr. President,” agreed Wingfield. “Otherwise, Jackson will try for the old Cannae trick: fall back in the center and let both wings envelop the enemy. That’s the same goal Hatfield and Drones will be trying for, although we hope we can really hammer their Group South out of action with Baumgarten’s northward attack from out of Wyoming on the enemy’s flank and rear. Then once the southernmost American column is done for, the Seventh and Fourth Armies link up with Zack Hatfield’s Second Army and turn the same trick on Group Center, and take them out of action. Then they join up with Billy Jackson and everybody lunges for Group North’s throat. That’s the theory, anyway.”
“Let’s see how the practice works out,” said Morehouse grimly. “Now the bad news. Eric, what’s our air raid damage?”
Colonel Eric Sellars brought up a screen on his computer and looked it over. “Frankly, sir, our biggest problem seems to be damage and casualties from falling debris off demolished enemy aircraft, hitting houses in the towns and cities and starting forest fires in the countryside. Eight Cruise missiles got through the Bluelight batteries along the coast, sir, with two hits on Fort Lewis, three on Seattle, and three on Portland. We lost a methane yard at Fort Lewis. There was a big-ass explosion and at least fifty casualties, but that was the worst of it. We also lost the base headquarters building and office complex, but that was so obvious a target that we evacuated it, and there were only a few wounded. One Cruise came into Seattle on fire. Apparently, a Bluelight hit it, but didn’t bring it down. It went off course and crashed into the Queen Anne neighborhood with several dozen civilian casualties, and the foundation of the Space Needle may have been damaged and undermined. They may have been trying to wipe out a famous Seattle landmark. The other two Seattle hits left craters but no casualties. Three came into Portland in a group and about eight blocks of downtown was pretty much leveled, but again due to the general evacuation, casualties were low. There were also some bomb strikes from enemy aircraft, but none on any significant targets. It looks like the Ame
rican pilots panicked and just dumped their payloads so they could turn tail and get the hell out of there, get away from the Bluelight. No more air attacks reported for the past eight hours. I guess they’re either getting the message, or else running out of planes and missiles. Sir, you know how much terribly worse this could have been. Bluelight has worked! We’ve broken American air power!”
“Praise God!” whispered Morehouse. “Is Rotfungus holding?”
“Yes, sir,” said Sellars. “TWD reports the Americans are frantically trying to re-establish communications with the satellites, trying to find some kind of back door around it, and they’re throwing every anti-virus software they’ve got up into the sky, but Rotfungus has burned out all the comm circuits. The most skillful hacker can’t wake the dead. Looks like their satellites are down for the duration.”
“Is my opposite number in the White House still barking like a dog?” asked Morehouse with a chuckle.
“Affirmative, sir, and already a lot of American media are commenting on it,” said Sellars with a grin. “Someone threw a package of dog biscuits over the White House fence this morning.”
“They’ve lost their toys, their machines,” said Wingfield grimly. “Now the world will see how tough they are as men. Or not.”
* * *
At seven o’clock that night, the sun was still fairly high in the sky over Bannack, Montana. Bannack stood beside Grasshopper Creek, a tributary of the Beaverhead River. Founded in the year 1862 by miners working a silver strike that played out within a few years, Bannack had long been a ghost town under the United States. But the Northwest Republic took the view that towns were for people, not ghosts, so after Longview the new government had run in electric power, installed sewers and a water treatment plant, patched up the old homes and built new ones. Bannack was now home to around 2,000 townspeople, mostly German immigrants who had come seeking the Wild West. They had found it in Bannack. They wore their cowboy hats to evenings in the local beer garden, and they called their local riflery clubs Schűtzbunde.
Eli’s son and Robert Campbell’s brother-in-law Edward Horakova, now aged twenty-eight and the size and build of a short mountain, presently served as gunnery sergeant in command of one of the 75-millimeter fieldpieces in the battery attached to the Eighth Battalion of the 85th Infantry Regiment, Northwest Defense Force. Their regimental badge on their left shoulders was a patch bearing the numerals 8 and 5 on either side of a battle-axe. The first three battalions of the 85th were regular soldiers, although many of them were now seconded and scattered throughout the remaining nine battalions of reservists as officers and NCOs. Most of the reservists came from the southern Montana area around Missoula, Anaconda, and the NAR sector of Butte. They had trained extensively all across this very terrain, the soil they knew they would be expected to defend when the invasion came.
Unlike the battalion’s 88-millimeter guns, which were self-propelled and mounted on half-tracked vehicles called Ground Hogs, the 75-millimeter guns were drawn into action by powerful all-terrain four-by-fours called Heeps, since their designers claimed that they combined the best characteristics of both the Humvee and the Jeep, including an astounding 44 miles to the gallon across open country, running on fuel alcohol manufactured in the Republic. The 75s were modeled on the famous French model 1897 soixante-quinze of World War One, and were of a similar general configuration. They were, however, much lighter than their great-grandfathers from the Marne and Verdun, because their barrels were forged from much superior modern steel. They were mounted on carriages with light and supple pneumatic radial tires, and as many of the other parts as possible were made from aluminum, hardened Bakelite, or even wood.
The 75s also fired much more powerful and versatile rounds than the older version, starting with a high explosive shell using SuperSem, a hopped-up version of Semtex. There was a Thermite anti-tank round that could burn through the armor plating of any known American military vehicle. The third nasty tune in the 75’s repertoire was an anti-personnel flechette round with a shell made of concentric layers of thin steel stripping that on impact would burst into thousands of tiny fragments of shrapnel the size of buckshot: it was like hitting the enemy with a giant shotgun blast. The 75’s range was five miles, and a skilled gun crew could fire fifteen accurate and well-placed rounds per minute. The self-propelled 88s were even bigger and meaner, their crews trained to fight running duels with tanks. This was good country for it. Between the two of them, the Northwest artillery had blasted from a distance what few airborne invaders had reached the ground alive out of every position they had tried to hold. Absent their own artillery and above all their own tank-hunting helicopter gunships, the American paratroopers had been blown to pieces and run down like rabbits.
The 85th was now rolling down a long road through a valley running by Grasshopper Creek, throwing up a cloud of dry summer dust. They were headed for the Border Highway, old Interstate 15, and it now looked like they would be the first NDF line unit to make contact with the actual ground invasion. “We’re going to write a little history today, boys,” their regimental commander Colonel Alfred Packer had told them over their individual headphones. “Let’s make sure it reads real good to the millions of school kids in this Republic of ours over the next couple of hundred years. Remember, they’re gonna be tested on it.”
“Yes, sir!” shouted back almost the entire regiment of a little over six thousand men.
Now the officers and men of the 85th heard their CO again in their ears. “Choppers, this is Battleaxe. I’ve just been informed by the Fourth Army Command that the enemy have crossed the Border Highway and are now on the soil of our Homeland. This sector has been invaded by one division-sized mechanized force about thirty thousand strong, which appears to have divided into three columns, two of them turning north toward Dillon and one coming right for us down the Valley Road, or what the Americans probably still designate as Highway 278. So far as we know, the enemy is still blind in the sky, and so they may not know that we are here. We’ll remedy that soon enough. Other NDF units will take care of the two enemy columns heading for Dillon, but the one heading for Bannack is ours. They’re not going to get there. Our Luftwaffe spotters are keeping us advised of their position, and it looks like we’ll beat them to Black Buffalo Bridge. That’s as far as they get. It’s show time, boys. Battalion COs meet me on Channel Two.”
“Don’t the Zoggies have any air support at all?” asked Corporal Gunther Eckhardt of Ed Horakova’s crew as they rolled down the road, their gun bumping along behind them on its caisson. “You’d think we’d see a few copters by now.”
“I heard they’re actually bringing in their helicopters on the backs of big flatbed trucks,” said Eddie. “Those new energy weapons have scared the shit out of them, and they’re hoarding their gunships like gold, scared to send them into the air, which kind of defeats the whole fucking purpose of having them.” Eddie’s speech was still the flat dialect of Chicago even after twelve years surrounded by cowboys and European expats in Montana.
Colonel Alfred Packer shared his command Heep not only with his driver, but with Technical Warfare Department Sergeant Joanna Sedley, who was sitting in the back with a large laptop computer linked to a Lazarus Bird. She also had a chat room opened with the Luftwaffe intelligence officer at a nearby forward airfield. “Our guys are just using microlights to scout the Zoggies, Colonel,” she reported to Packer. “No combat aircraft yet. But Major Glimco says they have a whole squadron of twelve Songbirds revving up on the field, ready to go when you call them in.”
“Outstanding!” said Packer. He hit the button on his commpack for Channel Two. “Hatchet Men, this is Battleaxe,” he said to the majors commanding the battalions. “Our ETA at the bridge is four minutes for the forward units.”
“Battleaxe, this is Hatchet Three,” said Major Wilkie Collins. “Do we take the bridge, blow the bridge, or rig it to blow?”
“No, the local people will still need to use it when we’re d
one here,” Packer told him. “Let the Zionists try to force it. That’s a good narrow kill zone, a bottleneck, and we’ll stop it up by filling it with their dead. Okay, boys, here’s how we roll. First, Sixth, Seventh, and Eighth Battalions will occupy the high ground on the west side of Black Buffalo Bridge, along with all, repeat, all of the regimental artillery. That’s our center. Second, Fourth, Fifth, and Twelfth Batts will move south a distance of approximately two miles, where you will cross Grasshopper Creek and move eastward in battle order for another three miles, detaching companies at four-to-five-hundred yard intervals, where they will sit tight for a while, unless the enemy discovers them and attacks. Third, Ninth, Tenth, and Eleventh Batts will do the same, only they will cross the Grasshopper two miles to the north, then move three miles eastward, again detaching individual companies as they move. Since the enemy are blind in the sky and we’re not, we should be able to pull this off while maintaining an element of surprise, at least until we all get across the creek.
“The enemy will almost certainly attempt to force the bridge and attack our center. They are to be met with the entire force of our artillery when they do. When they fail to break through in the valley and over the bridge, they will attempt to flank the center’s position, and that’s where the two wings come in. When the Americans try to get around us, they run into our right and left flanks on either side of them. We put them in a straitjacket, hold them down so they can’t move, and then we beat them to a bloody pulp.
“The guns will set up covered firing positions along the ridgeline at approximately fifty-yard intervals or as close as you can get to it. We will hold them on the east side of the Grasshopper while they pile up on the other side of the bridge. If the enemy do not attempt an immediate flanking maneuver, then as soon as the sun sets, the detached companies on both the right and left flanks across the creek will move toward the enemy and engage them. Do not attempt to overrun them, and do not allow yourselves to be overrun, either. Do not cross Valley Road in either direction even if the opportunity offers. Night fighting is tricky, even with infrared vision gear, and we don’t want our own guys running into each other and firing on one another in the dark. If it looks like you may be surrounded or if there are just too many of them, fall back, then circle back in and hit them again from another angle. We don’t want any wild abandoned attacks against superior forces and firepower here. We’re not going to wipe them out, not yet anyway. We’re going to bleed them, pin them down, confuse and demoralize them, and above all, we are going to destroy as much of their motorized transport as we can. Concentrate on taking out their vehicles. Remember, Montana is a mighty big place. We want them walking across it.”
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