Where had everyone gone? Were they all dead? Was he the last American defending Homer?
Byers scanned the water. His answer wasn’t long in coming. Twenty-three amphibious personnel carriers, Snapping Turtles, churned through the gray waves. They headed for Homer’s beach, with its lumps of coal and American dead.
Byers knew there were enemy minesweepers out there, enemy carriers, cruisers, destroyers and cargo vessels. Chinese air patrolled everywhere. This was a catastrophe. No one defended the landing zone anymore. After rushing here from Anchorage and working day and night, the Chinese were getting a free ride onto Alaskan soil.
Sergeant Byers shook his head. Maybe not altogether a free ride. He was still alive. Taking a calming breath, Byers studied the amphibious landing craft. The waves were low today. He doubted any of the Chinese riflemen were seasick.
Far out in the distance, Byers made out the silhouette of several Chinese warships.
I wonder what happened to our fleet.
He shrugged after a moment. None of that mattered anymore. He squeezed his eyes closed and picked up the Javelin launcher, almost fifty pounds in weight. With a flick of his fingers, he turned on the system. There was a frozen smile on his face as he activated the controls and targeted the nearest amphibious boat. There was a popping sound as the missile made a soft launch. Seconds later, the Javelin roared into life. It was a fire-and-forget missile, and it zoomed across the waters at a Chinese amphibious carrier.
Mentally, Sergeant Byers counted the seconds. Then an explosion over the waters showed him where the missile demolished the amphibious carrier and its invasion squads.
“Boom,” Byers whispered.
He readied another missile and targeted a second amphibious carrier, launching again. The Javelin hit and destroyed a second invasion craft. Sergeant Byers readied a third time and was busy targeting his third amphibious carrier when he heard a deadly whomp-whomp in the air. He glanced up over his shoulder. A Chinese attack chopper roared at him.
Small-arms fire popped around him. There were other Americans left. They fired at the armored chopper.
Breathing hard, Byers turned back to his controls, targeted another amphibious carrier—
The attack helicopter’s chaingun whirled into life. Before Byers could launch this third missile, steel-jacketed bullets—over two hundred of them—obliterated him and his launcher. Afterward, the helicopter hunted the Americans firing at it.
Because of the helicopter, Byers missed the initial landing. He missed the amphibious craft roaring onto the coal-dotted beach. He missed the front gates crashing open. He missed the Chinese as they waded ashore. The naval infantry wore dinylon-armor jackets and most held assault rifles. In the watery distance came the second wave, hot on the heels of the first. The corpse of Sergeant Byers saw none of these things, although one Chinese soldier emptied a magazine of bullets into his bleeding body.
The invasion of Alaska had begun in earnest.
An angry Admiral Ling, the commanding officer of the invasion fleet, sipped hot tea as he watched his bank of intelligence officers. They typed information into the operational battle screens.
The OBS took up one wall of the room in the supercarrier Sung, the largest carrier in the world. The big screens showed the Kenai Peninsula. The first amphibious assault at Homer had succeeded brilliantly, almost without cost. The second assault to take Seward at a different location on the peninsula had been botched by the Vice-Admiral in command of operations there. The Vice-Admiral was the Chairman’s nephew, however. Even now, the man was untouchable, and that galled Ling.
One-armed Admiral Ling frowned as he watched the last Chinese helicopter over Seward crash. He set his teacup into its saucer and rubbed the right side of his face, the good side that still had feeling. The attack had destroyed American Strykers defending Seward, but not all of them. The town was still in enemy hands.
Ling glanced at Commodore Yen, a tall man in his fifties wearing a VR monocle. The Chinese media loved interviewing Commodore Yen because of his good looks and military bearing. In the service, Yen was known for his political caution, always testing before making any statement. Perhaps it was the reason the Party let the media interview him so often.
“Do the Americans have our communication codes?” asked Admiral Ling. “Is that how they achieved their success in Seward?”
Commodore Yen shook his head. “Our intelligence operatives are too good to have allowed such a thing to pass to the enemy. No. I think fate aided the Americans in Seward. For reasons I cannot fathom, our helicopter assaults—”
“There was a total lack of coordination between the attack and carrier helicopters,” said Ling.
“Some unseen incident must have interrupted the good planning,” Yen said, as he glanced meaningfully at the bank of intelligence operatives at their stations.
Ling adjusted the empty left sleeve of his uniform. Then he turned on Yen. “The piecemeal attacks were a practice in stupidity.”
Commodore Yen said nothing.
Ling scowled. He had several items on his mind. The American ASBM attack had struck and destroyed two large fuel tankers. Maybe the guidance systems in the ballistic missiles had noted the large size of the tankers and assumed they were carriers. Unfortunately, the Chinese Navy only owned a few fleet tankers. Fortunately, there had been a solution.
These days, much of the world came to China for oil, and some of the trade was moved in Chinese bottoms. The Navy couldn’t use crude tankers, those vessels that hauled crude oil. It needed product tankers, those that carried refined petrochemicals. However, the nation’s oil barons had fiercely fought the Navy’s demand for commercial tankers. In the end, the oil barons—who were high in the Party hierarchy—had allowed a few of their product tankers to join the expedition, lending the Navy several of their largest. The Navy had added UNREP gear to them: defensive guns and military electronics.
Despite the size and strength of the Chinese Navy, it only had a few of its own fuelling ships or replenishment oilers as they were called. Initially, China had built a short-range coastal fleet. Only in the last decade had they truly attempted to form a blue-water navy. They hadn’t yet built-up the support ships necessary for maintaining a long-range war. One of the more critical lacks was enough replenishment oilers.
Several days ago, Admiral Ling had desperately defended his supercarriers from the ASBMs. It was almost as bitter a blow losing two product tankers as it would have been losing another carrier with its accompanying fighters and bombers. Too much of the invasion’s fuel requirements were afloat in several huge tankers. The loss of those tankers meant that the invasion’s reserves were lower than he liked. Already he’d sent word back to Admiral Qiang of the Ruling Committee on the need for more fuel. Ling wanted to build-up larger reserves. Naval Minister Qiang had told him that the Chairman had declined the request, saying the invasion fleet had quite enough fuel to achieve the task.
Ling had decided he would have more than enough reserves if he could get his hands on American fuel, particularly the big storage depots used for the luxury cruise-ships in Seward. Most of the Navy ships used diesel, as did the vast majority of the ground combat vehicles. Now the Vice-Admiral had botched his first attempt to grab Seward and its fuel. Couldn’t the man achieve the simplest tasks?