“You have broken ribs, sir,” the medic informed him.
“Inject me with painkillers,” Williams said.
“Sir, I need to send you back to a medical unit.”
Clenching his teeth, Williams strained and grasped the medic with his good hand. “You listen to me, soldier. The Chinese are coming back. I need to be on my feet by then.”
“You’ll be dead if I inject you with—”
“I don’t have time to argue with you,” Williams whispered. “Look around. There are lots of dead soldiers. Why? Because they held their positions. Because they threw back the Chinese. We stopped them cold and that’s buying us time for reinforcements to arrive from the mainland states.” Major Williams gave the medic a nasty leer. “We’re all dead-men here. It’s just that a few of us don’t know it yet. Now inject me with painkillers so these men can see I haven’t deserted them.”
Turning pale, the medic snatched a vial from the medkit on his belt. Using his index finger, he flicked the vial and inserted a needle into the yellow drug.
Williams watched the procedure. Now he lay back with a groan and he turned his head so he could see Stan with his good eye.
“How many of your Abrams are left?” Williams wheezed.
“All of them,” said Stan.
“Don’t worry. That will change.”
“Sir?” asked Stan.
“The Chinese have to break through,” the major said. He scowled fiercely as the medic stabbed him with a needle. “Get back to your tanks. I don’t know what the Chinese have—”
“Sir!” the last data-net operator shouted, as he leaped up from his fold-up chair. “The Chinese destroyed our 155s with low-level bombers.”
“We weren’t going to keep our artillery forever,” Williams said. “The Chi-Navs are better than us at counter-battery fire.” His eyebrows thundered. “Okay, we’re down to the mortar-teams, but at least we have a new infusion of blood with—what are those men?”
“Sir?” asked the data-net operator. “Oh, I see what you’re asking.” He glanced at the soldiers climbing the hills. “They’re National Guardsmen, sir.”
“Good boys, the National Guardsmen,” Williams said, looking at Stan. “Listen, Captain, you keep your tanks in reserve on those slopes behind the trenches. The Chinese have a surprise and it ought to be coming soon.”
“What have you heard?” asked Stan, who failed to hide his worry.
Williams grabbed the edge of one of the fold-up tables and pulled himself to a sitting position. “One of our fighter jocks saw it,” Williams said. “It was huge, he said, before the Chi-Navs knocked the jet-jock out of the air. He told us the monster had three turrets.”
Stan felt faint. “One of the Chinese multi-turreted tanks, sir?”
“Can your Abrams knock it out?”
“If it’s the T-66, it has two hundred millimeters of Tai composite armor in front. That’s near the limit of what our Sabot rounds can penetrate—if they hit perfectly.”
Stan knew the key to the coming fight were the APFSDS rounds: Armor-Piercing Fin-Stabilized Discarding Sabot. After being shot out of the 120mm smoothbore gun, the skin of the Sabot round dropped away during flight. That gave greater velocity to the remaining spent uranium “bullet.” To increase penetrating power, the bullet was actually a long, thin rod. Unfortunately, long thin rods tended to tumble in flight instead of going straight. It was the reason for the fins, to stabilize the spent uranium rod. That hardened rod slammed against the enemy at hyper-velocity, boring through the armor. Whatever made it into the enemy compartment was usually enough to kill the crew or cook off any shells lying around, and those killed the crew. The Abrams only had ten such Sabot shells in each of the ten tanks.
“You’ll have to hit the T-66s in the sides then,” the major said.
“If we try to maneuver around them here, that will expose us, sir, which isn’t a good idea. What the enemy can see, he can kill.”
“You have tanks!”
“The T-66 is more than one hundred tons, sir. It—”
“I don’t give a rip about its specs, Captain. I just want it dead. Use your little tank trick to smash it and however many friends it brings along.”
“How many tri-turreted tanks did the pilot see?” Stan asked, trying to keep his composure.
Ignoring the question, Major Williams slid off the two tables, swaying as sweat trickled down his face. “We have to hold this place, Captain. We have to buy our side time. Do you understand?”
“Maybe we should pull back,” said Stan. “We’ve made them bleed here. That’s how the Israelis soundly defeated the Syrians back in 1973. During the Yom Kippur War, the Israeli tankers retreated from one hill to another, blowing away the charging Syrian tanks. Now we need to—”
Williams staggered to Stan, grabbing one of his arms. The major blew his foul breath into Stan’s face. “We can’t run forever, soldier. Sometimes you have to stand and die to win. Have you ever heard of the Alamo?”
“I’m a history teacher, sir.”
“This is our Alamo. Here’s where we make the Chinese bleed. If they want our country, they’re going to have to buy it over our dead bodies.”
Stan shook his head. “Old General Patton said the way to win a war was to make the enemy S.O.B. die for his country.”
Williams shoved Stan. “Go. I don’t think we have much time. And soldier?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Good luck, son. You’re going to need it.”
The second assault on their position was worse than the first. The Chinese had time to prepare and they poured material on the exposed areas. Rocket-assisted artillery shells screamed down, sweeping the hilltops and slopes. Low-level bombers swept through the Wyvern and Blowdart barrage to release napalm. As the napalm fires crackled, Marauder light-tank drones appeared out of billowing clouds of smoke laid down by the Chinese artillery.
Enough Americans were alive, however. They had crouched deep in their foxholes. Now a few popped up and painted the drones with laser-targeters. Seconds later, tank-killing mortar rounds rained on the drones.
The Chinese were ready for that. With radar and patrolling drone recon flyers, they pinpointed the mortar-teams’ positions and fired huge tubes from mobile guns. 200mm anti-personnel rounds whooshed over the guarding hills, plunging on the hidden mortar-teams. One-by-one the teams fell silent. Then IFVs roared out of the smoke and charged the short distance to the slopes. They clanked past burning drones and reached the edge of the granite hills. Bay doors opened on each IFV and Chinese dinylon-armored infantry poured out. They clawed and climbed the steep granite mountainside.
The last Americans on the hilltops rose up, hurling grenades, firing recoilless rockets and spraying the enemy with assault-rifle fire. They fought with bitter tenacity, and their position was a strong one, their pitted body-armor giving these soldiers another few minutes of life. At last, as the Chinese crawled near the top, the Americans couldn’t fire directly on the enemy. Each side lobbed grenades at the other.
Then attack choppers roared in. Like mechanical insects, they hung over the Americans and ripped with massed 25mm chainguns. As the chainguns fell silent, grim-faced Chinese infantry crawled the final distance to the top of the hills. They’d taken the twin positions, but at a bitter cost.
Now the Chinese battlefield commander unleashed what he considered his secret weapons. Three big T-66 multi-turreted tanks moved on Highway One. No doubt, the Chinese commander meant to finish the fight fast and reduce his losses. Maybe he was a mind reader, maybe he’d gotten an inkling of the American commander’s thinking. Either way, he was right. Major Williams was about to play his last card of this Kenai Peninsula Alamo.