“Sergeant!” his driver yelled up from within the tank.
McGee was resting in the hatch, with a pair of binoculars on his chest. He dipped down inside the tank. “What are you hollering for?”
The driver looked up. “The Chinese, Sarge, they’ve been spotted.”
“Yeah?” McGee asked, trying to sound cool. He was twenty-three years old and was finding that hard to do right now.
“It looks like their advance elements will be in range of the Bradleys soon, maybe in twenty minutes, maybe sooner.”
“T-66s?” McGee asked.
The driver shook his head. “Marauder tanks, Sarge.”
McGee had to turn away from the driver, as the driver looked too scared, and that could be infectious. “We’ll show them.”
“Do you think so?” the driver asked.
“Yeah,” McGee said, looking at the man again.
“They say a whole tank army is coming behind these vehicles. How are we going to face an army of enemy tanks? We’re just a division, Sarge.”
“Yeah, but we’re Tenth Division. They’ve beefed us up to twenty thousand soldiers. We’re going show the Chinese what it means to take on the Tenth.”
The driver blinked so his entire face scrunched up. “I hope you’re right. I don’t want to die out here.”
“No,” McGee said, “neither do I.”
Flight Lieutenant Harris shook his head. He wore VR goggles and sat in his chair in an Air Force bunker. Onscreen, he looked out of his new V-10 UCAV. He flew over the Coachella Valley, hunting for enemy fuel carriers.
What he should be doing was hunting for Chinese amphibious vehicles heading for San Diego. He and the other drone pilots were presently trapped behind enemy lines. It made him nervous. The idea of being shipped overseas to a Chinese POW camp terrified him. The Japanese of World War II, the North Koreans in the 1950s and the Vietnamese during the 60s all had terrible records as prison wardens. Harris didn’t see why the Chinese would be any different.
He shook his head again, trying to drive the idea away. He needed to concentrate on the task. The Chinese were heading for Palm Springs, trying to slip into LA through the side door.
A ping in his ear alerted Harris.
Flipping on a different camera on his V-10, Harris looked down on the white sands below. It showed a billowing dust cloud. He used a thermal scanner. The image told him he could possibly have a fleet of fuel carriers. Unfortunately, air-defense vehicles roared alongside them.
Harris didn’t want to lose another V-10. It would look bad on his record. But he knew this was important, critically so, he’d been told.
He chinned on his radio to the colonel in charge here in the San Diego bunker.
“You see them, sir,” Harris said. “Do I wait for others or—”
“Kill them now, Lieutenant. Don’t waste time. We have to stop the Chinese from refueling their heavies, if they haven’t already done that.”
“Yes, sir,” Harris said.
If he’d been flying an F-35 or a ground-attack plane, the order might have been different. The Air Force didn’t like suicidal pilots. UCAVs changed the rules.
“Here we go,” Harris said to himself, using his joystick thumb-control. He piloted the V-10 down, down, down toward the fuel carriers. As he did, he primed the V-10’s Hellfire III missiles.
From below and hidden in the dust cloud, enemy chain-guns opened up. They were like mini-volcanos and soon he spied eruptions of flames. They were hypnotic if he looked at them too long. He heard a growl in his ear from the threat indicator. The Chinese had radar lock on him. This time it didn’t change a thing. Harris increased speed as he launched Hellfire after Hellfire. Their contrails burned brightly on his screen.
“Come on,” Harris said, trying to get within cannon range.
On his thermal scanner, he saw the first hit. It was a massive explosion. He’d gotten a fuel carrier. Then came another explosion and another. He’d hit pay dirt, this time.
Harris whooped with delight. This would go on his record, too. He was making kills, critical kills.
At the last moment and on his screen, he saw a Chinese SAM barreling up at his craft. He hit a button, expelling chaff. This time it was too late. The SAM destroyed the V-10 and Harris lost his link to the Coachella Valley. He was back to being a pilot without a drone, but at least he was alive and he had helped the Army out there on the white sands facing the enemy sneak attack.
On the flat Highway 99 north of Bakersfield, twenty massive tank carriers hauled twenty Behemoth tanks. It was the whole complement of the experimental vehicles. They were spaced far apart on the highway and moved at a mere fifteen mph. If they tried moving any faster, they would risk blowing tires and tipping over.
Captain Stan Higgins sat in the back of the cab of the fifth hauler. He listened to reports from Tenth Armor Division outside of Palm Springs. They were supposed to delay the Chinese tank advance, giving the reinforcements from Central California time to reach Palm Springs.
Studying the desert terrain of the Coachella Valley, Stan realized it would be the perfect place for the Behemoths—if the tanks worked how they were supposed to, and if they had enough air cover.
Could Tenth Division halt the Chinese? Could the lone American formation give the rest of them enough time to get there and set up?
Time for what, though? What could twenty experimental tanks do against thousands of Chinese T-66s, the Chinese MBTs and the light Marauder tanks?
We need a miracle, Stan realized. We need our own Blue Swan missiles.
With his head and shoulders outside the main hatch, Sergeant McGee heard the distant thunder of divisional artillery. There were flashes in the night. Seconds later came the booms.
Dark twilight had come over the desert. Several hours earlier, Bradley Fighting Vehicles had launched a salvo of TOW missiles at advancing Marauder tanks, killing some and driving the others back. It had brought about visible air duels above, more waiting and finally an enemy battalion of what command now knew had been drone light tanks. They had driven at the Bradleys at over forty mph. That had been a mistake: the head-on attack. The TOWs had demolished the drones, although it had seriously depleted the number of missiles the Bradleys had. Maybe that had been the idea.
McGee took comfort in the fact the Chinese could make mistakes. A tank drive against unknown forces…he could only imagine how difficult it was to coordinate everything.
Now word had come down. A large force of T-66 tanks was massed before the Bradleys and the enemy was massed against the flanking forces, too. In other words, there weren’t going to be any American surprises. Instead, it looked as if a slugfest was in the making.
“Are they going to try to overrun us?” the driver asked McGee.
McGee had dropped down into the M1A3 tank.
Two low-powered blue lights lit the Abrams’ interior. The blue light didn’t steal their night vision. Of course, other lights glowed on the panels: red, green and yellow.
“The Chinese waited too long,” McGee told the crew. He had to tell them something to cheer them up. “I don’t know why they waited. They should have rushed us earlier when they had the chance. Now we have more artillery. Our side must be laying down sleeper mines. That will give the T-66s something to think about.”
“You sure, Sarge?” the driver asked. “You don’t think the Chinese have them a good plan?”