“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 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.
The master sergeant had looked up on the Internet for Stan facts about the Chi-Nav. Their TO&E charts helped Stan breath easier. The naval infantry was lightly armed compared to the regular Chinese Army and compared to the U.S. Marines. Their heaviest combat vehicles were infantry fighting vehicles (IFV) and some light Marauder tanks, at least light in terms of Chinese advanced armament.
As Hank brought Stan’s tank into position, Jose Garcia arranged his shells in order. They had an automatic loader, an improvement compared to twenty years ago when a manual loader had shoved shells into the chamber.
“We’re ready,” said Hank, who had hung his cowboy hat to the side, where he kept an illegal .55 caliber hand-cannon.
Stan opened the commander’s hatch, popping his head and torso outside the tank’s protective armor. There was a heavy M2 .50 caliber machine gun here for his use, and two Blowdart tubes secured nearby for quick release. The Blowdart was one of the few modern pieces of American equipment, and with the larger Wyvern SAMs, it helped keep aircraft and choppers from simply mowing them down, at least when the Americans deployed the missiles properly.
Stan had read many times that a tank army’s effectiveness was in direct proportion to the number of tank commanders it lost during combat. In other words, to “see” well, a tank needed its commander in this position, half in the tank to shout orders to his men, and half out so he could see what the heck what was going on around him. He would strap on body-armor later and a bulky helmet. It was some of the latest in American battle-wear. For torso protection, he had durasteel plates inserted in a compound fiber mesh, with armorplast plates and compound fibers on his head, hands and arms.
They were on the reverse side of a slope, meaning the highway was presently hidden from sight. Snow-laden pines loomed all around the tanks. Stan had talked to Pastor Bill, and Bill had his Militiamen sawing off branches to cover the tanks, to help camouflage them from air recon.
The massive vehicles were in a line, waiting for the command to clank near the top of the hill. They would roll forward then and depress the gun as far as it would go. Then the long barrel would poke over the top of the hill. Each tank would defilade in order to present the smallest target possible. As they fired from the hull-down position, the enemy would see little more than the gun and part of the turret. Using the terrain to its advantage, a tank was an ideal defensive weapons system. Any enemy vehicles roaring through the pass would be perfect targets, especially after Stan sighted the guns.
Stan climbed out of his tank and crunched through the snow to the top of the hill. There he tried to imagine what it would look like if the Chinese came charging through the pass. After a time, he muttered, “No plan survives contact with the enemy.”
“What’s that, Captain?”
Jose Garcia ambled up to stand beside him. It was colder here under the pines. The short gunner with his green scarf wound around his nearly nonexistent neck was also their tech and their best mechanic. Keeping their tank running was a twenty-four hour maintenance chore.
“What do you think?” asked Stan, as he indicated the road below.
Jose squatted on his thick hams. He dug through the snow until he picked up a pine needle and sucked on it like a toothpick. Nodding, he stood up, dusting his hands together so snow fell.
Four hundred yards away and ninety degrees from them—the curve of the highway did that—was the American strongpoint. Soldiers waited in foxholes and built-up points. At the top of the higher slopes waited recoilless gunners, recently sent there to reinforce the ATGM-teams.
Stan perked up. He took out his binoculars. In the distance, he spotted a Marauder tank.
The newer Chinese vehicles were at least a generation ahead of what America possessed up here. Earlier, Stan had checked the specs on the Chinese light tanks. The Marauder in the distance was the size of a regular Ford sedan. It had advanced multi-flex Tai armor and a130mm un-turreted cannon. That meant it only had one hundred and twenty degrees traverse. Combined with attack choppers, the Marauders were the extent of the Chi-Nav heavy vehicle power.
“We’re too few to hold long against a major attack,” said Jose, “but you already know that.”
Stan lowered his binoculars. “We’re trying to buy time for our side.”
Jose squinted one eye at him, as everyone who’d had a car or truck serviced in Jose’s shop would have recognize as his trademark “thinking” look. “Do you believe we can win?”
“You mean this battle or the war?”
“Let’s start with the battle.”
“We’re sure going to find out,” said Stan, trying to pump enthusiasm into his voice.
Jose shook his head. “That’s not what I want to hear. When this is over, I want to go home to my wife and kids. Do you think we’ll still have wives and kids afterward?”
“How am I supposed to know that?”
Jose moved his “toothpick” to the other side of his mouth. “You know, Professor, sometimes you’re too honest. How about you tell me something good.”
“We’re going to kick their butts.”
Jose nodded.
Stan took out a small computer-pad and brought up a video image of a Chinese IFV, showing it to Jose. Each had four 30mm auto-cannons and a Hung missile-tube for anti-air. The tracked vehicle carried six infantrymen inside, had half the armor of a Chinese main battle tank and moved fast with its powerful rotary engine. With that engine, the IFV had worked up and down the slopes that abounded in the peninsula. That had turned out to be a critical feature of the Chinese attack.