Grant fed Chet’s machine gun as the former rabbit hunter worked his section of the Bulldozer Works. Puffs of concrete showed where the rounds stuck. Then some American artillery tubes got into the game, firing in direct line of sight. Loud crashes sounded. Shells screamed overhead. Booms told a wonderful story as they wrecked more of the mighty building, killed some of the defenders and allowed half the Marines to make it to the base of the Bulldozer Works.
“Get your people ready,” the lieutenant told Jake. “It’s our turn next.”
“Roger that,” Jake said. He crawled along the line. At one point, he watched the last Marine disappear through a huge hole in the wall into the factory.
Gathering his squad, Jake waited for the lieutenant to give the word. It came too soon, and Jake found himself making the long dash across the open terrain. Enemy bullets scored near his feet. A man yelled.
“Grant’s hit!” Chet shouted.
Jake wanted to keep running toward the factory. The need to escape consumed him. He could hear the Chinese machine gun firing and see spouts of dirt shoot up near him. But he was the sergeant, and Grant was his friend. With an effort of will, he stopped, turned around and took the steps needed to reach the wounded soldier lying on the ground.
“Ain’t no big deal,” Grant told him. Then three more 12.7mm bullets stitched across him. One drilled a hole in his helmet, making brains squish out. Two others tore into Grant’s chest. He twitched several times. Then he died as the lights went out behind his eyes.
Jake didn’t remember much after that. It was a lot like a drunken blackout. Only this was combat madness. Scenes flashed before his eyes. He saw jagged ground as he sprinted. Air hurt going down his throat. He felt something hot in his side and heard a man cry, “Medic!” He touched his side, flinched because it hurt, and looked at the blood on his fingers.
“Ain’t no big deal,” he said. Jake remembered saying that; he sure did. It was something Grant might have said, did say. This was so screwed up.
Scenes, right—there was jagged ground, a hole in the Daoyizhen Bulldozer Works and him jumping through. Twilight zone time: or maybe it was just the odd lighting. Smoke drifted. Sunlight slashed through gaps, only there was no sun, but a strange, fumy unreality. Jake heard laughter, crazy sounds of someone going insane. At his side, an assault rifle kicked. Oh right, he fired the weapon. He went through rooms, through chambers, putting down enemy soldiers so they could never brain-pop a guy like Grant again.
“Slow down, Sergeant! We can’t keep up with you.”
Brave Chinese showed their faces as they tried counterattacks. Jake shot them. He hurled grenades. He felt a hot stain on his neck. No blood this time, felt like a rug burn—a bullet burn.
You’ve been burned, baby.
He heard more crazy laughter, and he felt hands on him, pulling him back. Then a terrific explosion caused wood and bits of concrete to rain on them. Jake looked up, and he saw a fist-sized chunk of something. It fell straight down, and it hit his helmet, dashing him onto the floor, ending his strange dream scenes.
Jake groaned, and his head throbbed.
“Is he dead?” a man asked. It sounded like the lieutenant.
Chet looked down at him. For some reason, his best friend looked as if he was far away up a tunnel.
“Jake?” Chet asked.
“Yeah?”
“You feeling okay?”
“My head hurts.”
“Let me take off your helmet, okay?”
Jake frowned, and that made his headache worse. Chet almost sounded scared. “Sure,” Jake said. “Remove my helmet.”
“He’s back, Lieutenant.”
What did that mean?
Jake winced as Chet took off the helmet. “Is it bad?” he asked
“You could only hope,” Chet told him. “No. There’s a bump, but that’s it. Maybe it will knock some sense into you.”
“What are you talking about?”
“Crazy man, you’ve been charging through the Bulldozer Works, trying to win the war all by your lonesome. You went berserk after Grant died.”
“Oh,” Jake said. After a few seconds, “They killed Grant.”
“I just said that. Well… never mind. It’s a madhouse in here.”
“I thought you liked the war,” Jake said.
“No… I think I’m getting a little tired of this.”
Jake tried to sit up, and everything went spinning. He groaned, and he threw up a bit in his mouth. It tasted awful.
“You might have a concussion. So you want to take it a little easy, okay?”
“Did we win?” Jake asked.
“How do you tell?”
“Did we take this place?”
“We’re still in the middle of the battle. But I’ll tell you one thing.”
“Yeah?” Jake asked.
“We got ourselves a piece of it anyway. And it sure was something seeing that THOR hit.”
“Yeah,” Jake said. Then he closed his eyes, deciding he deserved a break from the war, maybe a real long break.
From Military History: Past to Present, by Vance Holbrook:
2042, August 3-10. Chinese Counterattack in Inner Mongolia. Halting the Americans and Russians before Shenyang, Chinese High Command scraped the last reserves into one strike force. Instead of sending them against the entrenched enemy in Shenyang’s suburbs, Marshal Kiang launched an infantry-heavy offensive against the German and Russian forces waiting at the farther edge of the Khingan Mountains in the 9th Army Group. Russian High Command was divided on the army group’s next objective: Beijing to the south or a dash through the mountains to add their considerable weight to a new Shenyang offensive.
Chinese wave assaults backed by ballistic and cruise missiles proved deadly but exceedingly costly to execute. The wave assaults took the Germans and Russians by surprise. Wisely, the mobile forces retreated as they took a bloody toll of the enemy infantry. In places, Chinese casualties were ten to one of the Russians and German machines. Yet they forced the 9th Army Group to backtrack, sometimes as much as fifty miles. By August 10, the Sino offensive came to a grinding halt. The Chinese armies were mere shells from their beginning strengths, but for the first time in the campaign, they had forced the Russians and Germans to retreat, causing the 9th Army Group to expend a costly amount of fuel, ammunition and materiel.
COMMENT. Much like the Tet Offensive in Vietnam in 1967, the Inner Mongolian Attack was a tactical failure. The Chinese gained sand and wasteland in exchange for grim losses. Once restocked with supplies, the Russian 9th Army Group could easily advance at leisure, pushing aside the bled-white Chinese divisions. But, like the Tet Offensive did to American leadership in ’67 and beyond, the Inner Mongolian Attack shook Premier Konev’s confidence. Russia had sustained more losses than he had anticipated to this point. It began to dawn on Konev that Russia would not be able to pay the human costs of extended occupation of conquered Manchuria for more than one or two years. Unknown to American leadership, Konev sent a secret envoy to Beijing to sound out Chairman Hong on a peace treaty that recognized the Russian conquest of Siberia and Kazakhstan in return for an exit from Inner and Outer Mongolia and Manchuria.
“What’s this about, sir?” Stan asked.
He’d driven from his division stationed west of Daoyizhen, a suburb of Shenyang. The tanks held open ground. High Command was still wise enough to keep his Jeffersons out of giant urban areas. Stan was here because General Taylor had ordered him to drive the ten mile from 10th Division to V Corps HQ.