Invasion: Alaska (38 page)

Commodore Yen’s thoughts seemed to be elsewhere. Then he spoke about the tanks, revealing his preoccupation. “I had thought you were going to save the Army tanks for the actual storming of Anchorage.”

“I can no longer afford that option. Since we failed to capture Seward’s storage depot, we must reach Anchorage before the real cold descends on us. Once we take the city, then the State will fall to us like a ripe pear.”

Commodore Yen sipped his
baijiu
. “I suspect your analysis is correct. You took Taiwan for Greater China. Now it is time to take Alaska. You will win.”

“I will win,” agreed Ling, “
provided
we continue our advance at the present speeds. I will keep a fire lit under the ground commanders. Whatever the price, we must reach Anchorage in two and no later than three weeks.”

The two clinked glasses, drank and listened to the hail battering the great ship.

The weather must hold
. Ling shook his head. Whatever had possessed the Chairman to attempt this invasion now, this near winter? It was risky, and it was simply another reason why they needed to proceed with all speed.

COOPER LANDING, ALASKA

The National Guard armor company left Anchorage with Stan Higgins, their modified M1A2s riding piggyback on the Heavy Equipment Transporters. Unfortunately, they never made it to the main line of defense near Tustumena Lake, which had been shattered in a night of deadly combat. Two days of journey brought Stan and his tanks to the Number One Highway before Cooper Landing. The shattered remnants of the western front of the Kenai Command had reached a new defense line. Here, bedraggled airborne, National Guardsmen and Militiamen, many half-frozen and too many with black toes or frostbitten noses, found themselves willy-nilly formed into ad hoc formations.

Stan knew it was no way to run a defense. Already, however, he understood a hundred historical military incidents better because of what he’d gone through. War was chaos. The actual U.S. military term was friction, the physics kind that caused an object to slow down and stop. If you pushed a piano, say, friction made it nearly impossible to move unless it had wheels. If you attempted to move your company of tanks on HETS, friction made it hard to get anywhere. A hauling cable snapped, meaning wasted time as mechanics installed a new one. A tire blew. Time passed as men put on a spare. One of the haulers ran out of gas. They towed it to a gas station. They took the wrong route at Portage, where a massive traffic jam had halted Militiamen trying to get to the battlefield in their battered pickups and sedans. Friction grew the more soldiers and vehicles one attempted to move from A to B.

It was a good thing friction hurt the other side, too. Stan recalled a saying.
Battle
was easy, except that war made the easy difficult
. An army that was fifteen percent effective wiped the floor with an army only seven percent effective.

The Chinese naval infantry were well-trained and had good morale, at least the ones coming up the Number One Highway did. The Chinese had the element of surprise, superior weapons and tech. They had better and more aircraft. The Alaskans knew the terrain better and they had lived with snow and ice all their lives. Most of the Militia and National Guardsmen had hunted or fished in the Kenai Peninsula at least once before.

If we don’t hold somewhere, we lose
.
We have to slow them down. It’s only one hundred and nine miles to
Anchorage
from here
.

The Chinese had first landed at Homer. From there by road, it was two hundred and twenty-six miles to Anchorage. In this past week and a half, the Chinese had already traveled half the distance to the city. Historically, that was a tremendous daily advance.

The HETS unloaded the tanks and returned to Anchorage. Later, Stan and his tankers briefly contacted the enemy. The tanks waited in a flattened corral as Stan and his men used the latrines in some old buildings nearby. Bill came sprinting to them.

“Chinese infantry!” Bill shouted.

“Where?” asked Stan, alarmed.

Bill unrolled his computer-scroll. “Here,” he said, pointing.

Stan stared at the scroll, and he looked up. The Chinese were on the other side of that hill over there, the hill with the boulders that looked like three giants huddled together. “What are the Chinese doing out here?” he asked.

“There’re some Militiamen outside. They’re exhausted and only half of them have weapons. Their lieutenant said the Chinese have been chasing them for half a day. Stan, they’re terrified of the Chinese.”

“Okay,” said Stan. “We’d better rig a little surprise for them. I still don’t know how those Chinese made it around our lines.”

“There aren’t any lines out there,” said Bill. “According to the lieutenant, it’s a mess.”

“If you’re right, it means these Chinese are on their own. Maybe they got too aggressive. Here’s what we’re going to do….”

Twenty minutes later, using the old buildings for cover, Stan ambushed the Chinese. It turned out there was a platoon of them armed with QBZ-23s and wearing dinylon body-armor. They must have gotten lost and been separated from their battalion. This was simply more friction in action.

The Chinese looked tired, and they came in a bunch toward the buildings. They probably wanted nothing more than a good rest.

Stan ordered anti-personnel canisters. When the bulk of the Chinese platoon was halfway between the hill and the buildings, Stan gave the order.

Hank revved the engine and the tank lumbered out of hiding. So did the other M1A2s. Chinese soldiers hit the ground and began shooting. Jose fired the M256 smoothbore gun and the entire tank shook just as it always did on the firing range. However, this time it rocked Stan more than usual, and the sound of the canister put goosebumps on Stan’s arms. The canister contained hundreds of 9.5mm tungsten balls which spread from the tank’s muzzle like a shotgun blast. The tungsten balls were lethal for two thousand feet, and they mowed down the Chinese, puncturing the body-armor. It was murder as the other tanks opened up.

The lost platoon never had a chance. Then Bill and his Militiamen opened up. The Chinese twisting in the snow—it was an evil sight. Even so, Stan almost hyperventilated as he shouted.

After it was over, he told himself:
So this is battle
. He was glad they’d won, but he wondered if he’d always feel so dirty killing the enemy.

The company reached their destination several hours later. A regular Army major strengthened a perimeter several miles west of Cooper Landing. He was the highest-ranking officer in the area.

It seemed like a good place to make a stand. The slush-covered highway ran through the middle of their position. Huge granite slopes to the side of the road funneled attackers straight to them. It would have taken drills to drive foxholes into the stone, so the major had been satisfied putting artillery and mortar spotters behind boulder-strongpoints. It looked precarious on the side of the slopes, but Stan wasn’t going to argue with the man.

Snow-laden pines stood at the top of the slopes or hills. National Guardsmen were up there, stiffened by Regular Army from the 4th Airborne Brigade ‘Spartans’. Most wore body-armor. Everyone dug foxholes and firing-pits. They were supposed to protect the ATGM-teams.

ATGM, Anti-Tank Guided Missile, fired from portable launchers. These were old TOW2 launchers, which weighed one hundred and eighty-four pounds. Each missile weighed forty pounds, was shape-charged and better at longer ranges than short.

Behind the two granite slopes, Militiamen dug foxholes and trenches under the command of Reserve lieutenants and NCOs, Non-Commissioned Officers. Stan thought the position a good one, as the hills and pines helped protect them from attack choppers, unless the helicopters came straight at them. Two miles back were 155mm artillery tubes. There were some mortar-companies closer than that.

Undoubtedly, the major meant to halt the Chinese here and make them expend artillery shells and short-range missiles trying to dig out the Americans.

The major had made Stan’s tanks the core of his reaction team. As support, Stan had a National Guard platoon who fired Wyvern SAM launchers. SAM meant Surface to Air Missile. Bill Harris with his twenty Militiamen stayed with the tanks. Most of Bill’s Militia had rearmed themselves with QBZ-23s or they had been issued with grenade-launchers.

At the moment, Stan stood with the major near his data-net, a group of techs with fold-up tables, chairs and laptops. They fed information into the computers as more news kept trickling in.

“We need to ambush whatever heavies they’re going to throw at us,” Major Williams said. Williams wore a parka, with dirt smeared on his face. He had a hawkish nose and aggressively thrust his chin forward as if trying to maintain the image of a classic commanding officer. He studied a computer-scroll and gripped an assault rifle with his other hand. They stood under a pine tree that kept creaking as a cold wind blew between the two granite hills sixty feet ahead of them.

“Is this before or after they saturate us with artillery fire?” asked Stan.

Williams scowled. “I’m not a magician, son. I don’t know how they’ll react exactly. It’s what they’ve been doing, however. Whenever they hit a strongpoint, they rush up artillery and try to smash through. The raining artillery breaks our Militiamen every time and the National Guard troops about half the time. Seems to me the Chinese are eating up their supplies fast, however, supplies they’ll need to take Anchorage.”

“We’re not going to let them get to Anchorage, are we, sir?” asked Stan.

“Do you have any bright ideas on how to stop them?” Williams asked.

Stan looked around, studying the terrain, particularly how the road behind the trenches curved under a slope about a hundred yards to the rear. He’d been questioning soldiers and militiamen wherever he had the chance. This was such a historical opportunity. He’d been speaking into his recorder in the interests of writing battle memoirs someday. The men who had already faced the Chinese had told him some incredible tales, stories that had scared the crap out of him. By their accounts, the Chinese were ten feet tall and never made a mistake. He was glad for that run-in earlier today. Seeing the Chinese die had bolstered his confidence in these supposedly outdated tanks.

“Okay, up there,” said Stan, pointing at the slopes behind the defensive position.

“That’s too far behind the strongpoint,” Williams said.

“You’ve said it yourself, sir. You don’t think we’re going to hold this spot forever. We’re trying to bleed them and force them to use up precious supplies. I can understand that, sir. It’s good tactics. But how do we save our survivors once they break? They need covering protection in order to get away.”

“What kind of defeatist talk is that?” shouted Major Williams.

One of the data-net operators looked up. A scowl from Williams and the man quickly turned back to his computer.

“I’m only saying that because I’ve been listening to you, sir,” said Stan.

“Don’t blame me if you want to run.”

“Sir, as you said, the Chinese are mopping up places like this. They use artillery to make us run. Okay. We didn’t run this time, but instead made them bleed. It’s only logical that they’ll bring whatever heavy vehicles they’ve brought along with them for the second try. They might attempt an overrun assault to drive us from our position.”

“And how did you come to this glorious conclusion, Captain?”

“I’ve been talking to everyone I can, sir, learning about the enemy and his habits.”

“You’re an intelligence officer, are you?”

“No,” said Stan, “just a soldier.”

“You’re not even that. You’re just a National Guardsman.”

The oldest data-net operator muttered, “It was his National Guard tanks that killed a platoon of Chinese, sir.”

Major Williams glanced at the master sergeant and began nodding. “You’ve got a point, soldier. Sorry,” he told Stan. “I haven’t slept for two days. It wears on you. I’m sick of running, of trying to build a defense and then watching my men sprint away so I have to start running again myself.”

“We’ve been running, but we haven’t been overrun, sir,” the master sergeant said.

“Damn straight we haven’t been!” Williams said. With the back of his hand, he rubbed his forehead. “You’re right,” he told Stan. “We’re not going to be able to hold our position here forever. I like your point. Ambush them while they’re chasing us out of here, huh?”

“Seems like the best time to do it is when they think they’ve got our boys beat. Whatever heavies they have will likely come roaring up to kill us. They’ll think to do it easily. That’s when I send our shells into them. Boom—” Stan said, clapping his hands. “End of the Chinese heavies.”

“I like it. Not too fancy and it uses how we’ve been reacting—running like mad. This has to stop, Captain. We can’t let them into Anchorage.”

Stan thought about his dad sitting in jail, and about his wife at home. He thought about the Boones and the people of the Rock Church. What would the Chinese do to them once they reached Anchorage? “I agree with you, sir.”

“Okay then,” said Williams. “Let’s hurry it and get ourselves set up for round number nineteen.”

***

Speaking with the data-net master sergeant later, Stan learned some valuable information. According to what they knew, the Chinese hadn’t landed many heavy vehicles, or they hadn’t so far. Stan had also learned they weren’t facing the Chinese Army but the Chinese Naval Infantry, which was much like the Marine Corps in structure and design. The Chi-Nav as men had started calling them—it had been Chi-Com during the Korean War, which had meant Chinese Communists. In any case, the naval infantry were independent of the Chinese Army and lacked the heaviest tanks.