by A. J Tata
Jennings praised the actions of the submarine commander, realizing it was a “no-brainer” mission. They had been concerned about the modest Japanese submarine force, but intelligence indicated that the entire submarine fleet was operating somewhere between Taiwan and Japan, as was the rest of the Japanese Navy.
The American carrier battle group had stopped in the East China Sea near Okinawa with a threefold purpose. Its primary mission was to isolate all Japanese units from reinforcing the Philippine Theater of Operations (PTO). A secondary mission was to protect American forces stationed on Okinawa and in American bases on Japan. While the Navy would never admit it, the Japanese could safely assume that some of the ships in the carrier group contained nuclear weapons capable of targeting Japan. The last mission was to act as a deterrent to Chinese and Korean aggression in the area. While they were unprepared to complete that mission, the nuclear card again came into play in a big way.
President Davis had talked to the Korean and Chinese ambassadors, who were noncommittal in their response to him concerning their own security plans.
Then the president had called Mizuzawa and asked him to withdraw his troops from the Philippines. Mizuzawa told him not to waste his efforts, that Japan would rid the Philippines of the Islamic plague spreading across the island and restore the legitimate government of the Philippines.
“You have no right to intervene,” he had told the president. “Did we stop you from invading Afghanistan or Iraq or Panama?”
“We have every right to stop you from terrorizing the world again. I won’t let it happen,” the president had replied to Mizuzawa.
“We’re doing nothing more than you’ve done in the past. You need our help in this Global War on Terror, as you call it.”
“We can still negotiate this thing,” Davis had said, trying to calm and reassure the minister-run-amuck, as the other two battalions from the Twenty-fifth Infantry Division’s light infantry brigade were flying in C-17 aircraft, awaiting the clearance of the runway. And as the two Ranger battalions were jumping into Fort Magsaysay to stop the terror, the Marine expeditionary force sped toward the southwestern coast of Luzon to encircle the advancing Japanese divisions. U.S. Air Force and Navy pilots, as well, began the long and arduous process of fighting American-made, Japanese-flown jets to try to establish air superiority so the ground forces could conduct their business under an umbrella of protection.
Jennings sat in the command-and-control cell of his command ship off the western coast of Luzon, listening to spot reports as they came in from the J-2 (intelligence) and J-3 (operations) officers. There had been no time to establish massive forces as America had done during Operations Desert Shield and Desert Storm. This was a joint contingency operation all the way, not unlike the recent action in Afghanistan. The Rangers had flown in from the Continental United States, the light infantry soldiers from Hawaii, the Marines from Okinawa, the Air Force from Guam and the continental United States, and the Navy from the Indian Ocean and Hawaii. All were supposed to converge on the island of Luzon, like dancing on the head of a pin, and mesh and coordinate and synchronize and come together as if they had practiced it a hundred times the night before.
Of course, they had not. And it did not.
The Rangers had landed and were experiencing heavy resistance from a large armored force, nearly a brigade of two hundred tanks. Caught off guard, and perhaps inserted by a naval commanding officer who did not quite understand their purpose, the Rangers were moving into the jungle, where they were more effective. But their mission had been to secure the prison camps that the ever-faulty intelligence system had declared “lightly defended.” Perhaps to a navy officer used to traveling on aircraft carriers, a brigade of tanks was no big deal. But it was devastating to the lightly armed Rangers, as they made their way back across muddy rice paddies and over the gently sloping terrain until they could blend into the jungle.
Lieutenant Colonel Buck’s light infantry battal-ion had the mission of securing the airfield at Subic Bay so the American forces could establish initial lodgments and receive additional forces. An armored brigade guarded that area as well and would be a tough foe for a light infantry brigade.
The Marines had been joined by another two brigades from Okinawa and were operating as an expeditionary force. They had the mission of destroying the two Japanese divisions that were guarding the Presidential Palace and the major financial institutions in the downtown district. Jennings had planned for them to attack from either side of Manila, performing a pincer movement to squeeze the Japanese out of the city and into the countryside, where their tanks would be forced to stay on the roads, providing easy targets for the aircraft.
It was a risky plan, particularly the Ranger action. He hoped they would be safe until he could shake some fighter aircraft loose to start hammering the tanks around Fort Magsaysay. He slowly shook his head, wondering about the Army’s light forces.
What use are they? He vowed to get them some air support as soon as they could achieve air superiority.
The Marines had landed in the darkness of the night and were advancing smoothly on either side of Manila Bay with their 25 series Light Armored Vehicles and M1 tanks. The crew-cut marines followed the roads to Manila, peering through their sights like watching television.
Jennings realized that air power was going to have to play the critical role in the highly decen-tralized operation. They needed to destroy the scrappy Japanese Air Force before they could expect to reinforce the infantry on the ground, but the fact of the matter was that two Ranger battalions were already decisively engaged. Had they miscalculated as to how much they needed?
Did they have enough forces, he wondered?
And why had his requests for more troops been denied?
CHAPTER 82
Island of Luzon, Philippines
Through the greenish hue of his night-vision goggles, Captain Zachary Garrett could see about thirty tanks from where he was sprawled in the prone position atop a jagged ridge to the west of the airfield—the same direction from which Ayala had attacked his company and ultimately died. The early-morning air was relatively cool and damp with dew, but Zach knew that the steaming heat would quickly arrive with the sun.
The unsuspecting Japanese forces had not secured their rear area very well, unlike Zachary. The tanks he saw were lining up to move out in single file, practically in an administrative mode. He could see short men running about wildly waving their arms as if they were reacting to an emergency. The tanks were only five hundred meters away, and his Javelin tank-killing missiles should destroy them with ease. His company had procured twenty sights and over sixty rounds from the ammunition stockpile. There were more, but his men could not carry all of them.
Still, with his original nine sights from Hawaii, that gave him almost one weapons device per tank. Looking to his left, he saw Barker’s platoon lined up along the ridge, his men peering through the thermal sights, waiting for the signal. Taylor’s platoon was to the south, beneath the ridge, while Kurtz’s men were opposite him on the other side of Barker.
The other three companies from the battalion were prepared to assault from the North, across the airstrip, toward the pier. Garrett’s company was providing supporting fire for the attack. He was glad that he had a support-by-fire mission for a change. His men would welcome the relative safety of covered and concealed fighting positions as opposed to advancing on the enemy again.
Morale had risen significantly when the rest of the battalion had arrived. The men ate the extra rations that had been dumped by helicopter into their position the following morning. Their stomachs full, and their minds rested, they relished the thought of avenging the losses of Teller and Rockingham.
And then there was Matt, his brother. They had received word of the three hostages, and Zach had heard that Matt was one of the detainees. The thought of Matt as a hostage had worn on him, sapping his strength and diverting his attention. But something had transpired in him, temporarily at least, to allo
w him to command his soldiers. Partly, Zach knew that if anyone could survive in the Philippines, it was his brother. And partly, despite the pain, worry, anxiety, and frustration, he could feel the hand of God inside him, hammering the molten ore of his character and dipping another red-hot rod of support into the reservoir of his strength and pulling it out, steaming and rigid, once again allowing him to be himself.
Matt. Where could Matt be? Is he alive? Bastards! The thought shot through Zachary’s mind like the boomerang from hell. In and out, back and forth, ricocheting from side to side, angling to the nether regions of his mind, then soaring to the frontal lobe, striking pain and fear and hate and vengeance into his heart, kick-starting an emotional, instinctive reaction to kill every last Japanese invader. He knew by then that the Japanese were behind the whole fiasco. Yes, kill them all.
The radio crackled with a whispering voice making a net call. Zachary acknowledged. He nodded when he heard McAllister’s distinctive Boston accent, comforted by his friend’s confident cadence. One night over a few beers at the Schofield Barracks O-Club, he and McAllister had waxed philosophical, something most infantry officers avoided. But out of deep respect for one another, they tried to reach out in a manly way. Each wanted the other to know he trusted the other with his life. “If we ever get on the two-way rifle range, old boy,” McAllister had said, eyes glassy from alcohol, “I hope to hear your voice come crackling over the radio.”
Zachary had looked at McAllister, wanting to say the same thing, sorry he had not used the line first. “Same here, bud. I want you on my flank.” The two warriors had stared at each other in a moment of martial kinship, an intangible combat multiplier understood by few.
And there it was. McAllister would not let him down. He knew that much if he knew nothing else. It was a good feeling.
“Cardinal, over.”
Cardinal was the code word for commencing the attack. Zachary was to initiate the fires with the Javelin antitank weapons, then lay down a base of small-arms fire to mask the battalion’s movement across an essentially open field. Zachary had recommended against going across the airfield, but Buck believed it to be the best route.
As Zachary was about to signal his unit, he heard the unique sound of an M4 weapon falling to the ground. It rattled loudly off the lava rock with the distinctive sounds of plastic and metal crunching. It was a foolish mistake. One of the small, uncon-trollable things that happen when there are 115 young men gathered together. Everybody makes mistakes.
Zachary felt his stomach tighten as he saw a Japanese soldier guarding the fence only a hundred meters to his front look up and ready his weapon. Too late, Zachary said to himself, radioing his platoons to commence firing. The word spread quickly to the Javelin antitank gunners, who squeezed the triggers of their command launch units, sending twenty-nine bright flashes arching through the night toward their preplanned targets. Zachary had identified ten tanks for each platoon to destroy to avoid overkill.
The platoon leaders had then divided the tanks by squad for the same reason. The squad leaders had done likewise.
Zachary had grabbed his M4 and leveled it at the Japanese guard who had reacted to the falling weapon. Looking through his goggles and following the infrared aiming light onto the man’s chest, he squeezed the trigger three times and watched him kick backward with each impact. It made him feel good, but he wanted more.
Seconds later, many of the tanks exploded into bright fireballs, some with turrets tipping loose. In the confusion, it was difficult to determine how many they had destroyed, but they suddenly found themselves under fire from somewhere. Large-caliber bullets were impacting all around them.
The sound of helicopter blades in the distance sent a chill up Zachary’s spine. Japanese attack helicopters were engaging them at night. The very technology that the United States had developed and employed in their state-of-the-art equipment had been cloned to the Japanese, who were at the moment using it to kill American soldiers.
That was no Abu Sayyaf unit with rented small arms.
“Net call, get your men down, engage all heli-copters if you can acquire,” Zachary said into the company radio net. Then he switched to the battalion net.
“Knight six, this is Bravo six,” he said loudly into the radio handset. Bullets were raining down on his position with heightened ferocity, streaming from behind the white huts with precision.
“This is Knight six,” Buck’s nervous voice came back over the radio.
“Roger. We have destroyed over twenty enemy vehicles, but are receiving helicopter small-arms fire from the barracks vicinity, over.”
“Roger, good job, over.”
Dirt kicked into Zachary’s eyes as a 30mm chain-gun round impacted less than two feet away.
Zachary, crouching low in a ravine, looked at his microphone and rolled his eyes. He was not looking for praise, but wanted to warn the battalion commander that they needed to wait until he could engage the helicopters and the rest of the tanks before he moved the battalion.
Too late.
Through his goggles, the green landscape showed hundreds of small black dots moving rapidly on foot across the airfield.
The suppressive fires lessened on Zachary’s position, and to his disgust, he saw orange tracers, enemy orange tracers, raking the airfield, causing the black dots to fall to the ground.
“Engage all helicopters!” Zachary screamed into the microphone, reissuing his earlier order.
On that order, he saw no less than fifteen missiles soar through the air, resulting in a fireball at the end of each smoke-filled path. The trails of spent gunpowder etched white lines in the darkness of the night, crisscrossing and merging like some crazy traffic pattern.
Then Zachary heard helicopters behind him.
They’re everywhere!
He turned and saw four to his right flank and noticed his antitank gunners whipping around to engage them.
He could make out two hellfire missile racks on either side and the two Hydra 70 rocket pods balancing the stubbed wings. Beneath the belly of the ship was the 30mm chain gun, hanging low. He watched as a hellfire let loose from its rack and scorched a hot path into an enemy tank that had turned on his position. The two turbines rode high in the back near the tail rotor, making the craft look like a hovering wasp.
They’re friendlies!
Too late.
He watched in horror as a young private first class gunner followed his commander’s orders to “engage all helicopters.”
“Cease fire! Cease fire!” Zachary yelled into the radio to no avail.
The Javelin missile screamed upward in a flash and impacted with a silent thud into the Apache helicopter, jarring it from its aerial fighting position. The helicopter shuddered once, then began to lose altitude rapidly. He heard the engines quit and watched as the pilot turned his head frantically to see what had hit him.
Fortunately, the gunner that had fired was within the sixty-five-meter arming zone for the missile. Outside of sixty-five meters, and the missile would have armed and exploded into the helicopter, vaporizing the two-man crew.
The pilot auto-rotated the main blade and achieved what his aviator buddies called a “hard landing.” The tail boom split in two, sending the tail rotor whipping through the Japanese positions like a circular saw blade. Eventually the fuselage of the helicopter stopped spinning and Zachary sent a squad from Kurtz’s platoon—SSG Quinones, who had acted so brilliantly during the defense of the pier—to gather up the copter crew, if they survived, and reel them back to safety.
“Bravo six, this is Alpha six, over!” came McAllister’s voice.
“This is Bravo six, go, over,” Zachary replied.
“The old man’s gone to yellow brick. I’m in charge of the maneuver element now until I can talk to his second-in-command.”
Buck’s dead? This can’t be happening!
Zachary had no great affection for Buck, but he was a nice guy. The man had a wife and four sons. Now what?
“This is Knight five, copied last message, moving into position now.”
Knight five was the battalion executive officer, who was second-in-command during the maneuver phase. The battalion operations officer was positioned with Zachary’s unit and was responsible for controlling the supporting fires. With Buck dead, Major Kooseman stepped into the saddle to gather in the reins of a horse that could quickly get out of control.
Zachary watched through his goggles as the remainder of the battalion performed fire and maneuver across the airfield, through the high brush and into the Quonset hut area, where his company had defended only days earlier. He thought he could see McAllister with three radio operators hovering around him and wanted to tell him to be careful, that someone might come surging from the water with a pistol in hand trying to kill him. He rubbed the clotted scar above his left ear as he gave the order for his men to lift their fires.
The bulk of the Japanese helicopter force had reacted to the Marine landings on either side of Manila Bay, allowing Buck’s battalion to seize the critical airfield at Subic Bay. They needed to secure the area quickly, call the C-17s circling in the sky, and prepare to defend against a heavy counterattack.
As quick as it had begun, the battalion’s first battle had tapered off. Casualties had been heavy on the airfield, as Japanese AH-X 30mm chain guns had formed a curtain of steel, killing Buck and at least thirty others. The light infantrymen had to contend with the forty wounded first, though.
With Buck dead, a young major fresh out of the Army Command and General Staff College was commanding the battalion. He spoke to the attack helicopter battalion commander, asking him to expand the security zone to the south so that the circling C-17s could land and discharge the combat troops waiting at the back ramps, rifles in hand, faces painted, adrenaline pumping, ready to go at it and kill the bastards that had once again forced them to fight and try to steady the tumbling play blocks of world power.
The C-17s came screaming in from above, landing almost atop one another. They received some small-arms fire from isolated pockets of Japanese soldiers not yet quelled. The Apaches fired Hydra rockets and let loose with 30mm chain guns on the enemy, driving them from Subic Bay Naval Base.
