Wu looked at the nine souls left under his command. They slumped against the rough, white rocks seemingly content to survive the war. Dirt from flower beds overhead — churned by steady steel rain — splashed in the air and rained onto heads.
Wu unexpectedly dashed past the camera out into the open. He didn’t head up the street, but across it, where he retrieved his helmet and rifle. When he returned, he shouted in a raspy voice words that were, by now, familiar to all. “Everybody up! Advance toward the bunkers!” he yelled. But the words that magically drew everyone to their feet were, “Follow me!”
Nine soldiers, a medic, and a cameraman rounded the retaining wall. Six soldiers and the cameraman rejoined Wu amid the rubble just beneath the dominating bunker. The behemoth’s concrete hide — now charred and gashed — had been poured into the ruins of a demolished house, which had been built at a tactically commanding bend in the street at the top of the hill. Wu stacked grenades in piles while lying low beneath remnants of the brick and stone house. A steady rain of bullets chipped at his cover. His men did the same, and on Wu’s signal each hurled a grenade toward the firing slit. Six grenades missed. One went in.
After the seven grenades went off, the high-pitched scream of a woman caused all to hesitate until exhorted anew by Wu. The remaining defenders of the bunker fired furiously into the rubble, spraying chips onto the attackers. The American machine guns in the bunkers to either side of Wu’s target couldn’t slew their weapons enough to give their comrades supporting fire. The Chinese attackers were in a gap between interlocking fields of fire. That gap was filled by riflemen in open trenches. But open trenches had been a poor place to weather the barrages, and the fire of the few defenders was sparse.
Two of the next seven grenades made it into the firing slit, although one was hurled back out. Flames shot from the bunker. Screams followed close behind. On the third salvo, one of Wu’s men lost his life along with most of his head. After three more barrages of spinning hand-hurled explosives, the smoking bunker fell deathly still.
On Wu’s hand signals, the five soldiers followed him straight up to the bunker’s hard wall. The last man in line flew to pieces when he stumbled and tripped a mine. Some of the pieces of him landed in the path of the trailing cameraman, who caught up with Wu at the rear of the bunker where it opened into the trench. The journalist and camera slid down the sloping walls of a crater that had once been the vertical walls of a trench.
Wu’s platoon, now a squad, pumped rounds into the bunker’s concrete hollows. A ricochet struck one man in the hand. He dropped his rifle and shook his hand as if he’d been stung by a bee. His palm had been holed straight through.
A swarm of Chinese gunships buzzed low overhead. Their rockets blazed at the next line of defenses. One of the follow-on troops joined Wu’s men and pulled a small cannister out of his pack. Everyone fled to the safety of a deep crater as the man fused the fuel-air explosive and tossed it inside the bunker, then scampered away. The cameraman slid in just behind. The camera spun toward the sky, which exploded in flame as the bunker and all within it were fried.
The cameraman panned across the half dozen survivors from Wu’s original platoon of forty. They lay beside Wu at the bottom of a huge crater blasted out of the soft, streaked earth. In the background, water gushed down the hill from a hundred ragged punctures — large and small — in a green water tank.
A new line of Chinese troops rushed past the crater. American heavy machine guns opened fire as the first men crested the hill. Soldiers tumbled backwards from the ridge as the second echelon carried the battle on to the second line of American bunkers. Medics fought desperately and mostly unsuccessfully to staunch the fountains of blood. The scene was a repeat of the hell Wu’s lucky few had just survived.
And there were still three lines of bunkers left to go.
General Sheng — followed by Colonel Li — strode into his forward headquarters with a scowl on his face. The middle school basement was filled with broken, dusty desks and scattered high-tech accouterments of command. General Sheng’s gaze was drawn not to the glowing computer displays but to an ancient fallout shelter sign on the wall. He shuddered involuntarily.
Despite the enormity of the Battle of Washington — on which, General Sheng felt, the fate of the war surely hung — he was transfixed by the scenes on a small television monitor. He ignored the glowing field maps, whose unit markers seemed stuck in cement. A group of officers was gathered before the television, on which the roar of battle could clearly be heard. The officers parted as General Sheng approached the screen. That’s when he saw Lieutenant Wu. The boy slumped — exhausted — in a crater. He was breathing heavily and was visibly drained, both emotionally and physically. A massive bandage covered the right side of his face.
Colonel Li demanded to know who had authorized the civilian telecast to be broadcast from the front. “Where is their goddamned control van?” he railed. “Do you mean it’s being microwaved out live? Find out where it’s being recorded and…! What the hell do you mean it’s being fed straight to the subsea cables! Who approved that?”
“The defense minister,” General Sheng answered from behind. Colonel Li turned to look at Sheng in shock. “The defense minister authorized the broadcast,” Sheng repeated in a lifeless, defeated tone.
All of the officers turned to the screen and waited to see what Wu would do next. The legs and boots of the second wave up at ground level were clearly visible as they sprinted past Wu’s crater. The camera expertly panned across the dismally few survivors, always returning — adoringly — to the star. To the bandaged face of the brave young lieutenant.
Colonel Li was back on a different phone. He cupped the receiver and whispered to Sheng. “The national networks have all interrupted regular programming. They’re broadcasting completely uncensored!” Sheng’s aide again listened to the phone, then reported, “They’re all ‘Wu-this’ and ‘Wu-that’! His history! His family history! Who his father is!”
An annoyed Sheng just waved Li to silence.
“Sir,” came the new voice of Sheng’s general in charge of operations. “The attack has bogged down on our left. The 412th and 526th divisions are not going to reach their objectives. They’ve been badly mauled by the first belt of the American defenses.”
“Send the 131st and the 1107th,” Sheng ordered, still watching Wu on TV. Wounded men were being dragged back over the ridge on which Wu took cover. Others — unwounded — were returning as well. The second echelon’s attack was losing its momentum.
“The 131st has already been committed in the middle,” Sheng’s operations officer reminded.
“Then send the 305th,” Sheng ordered.
“But they’re not yet up to full strength,” began the two-star general.
“Send them anyway!” Sheng snapped. The officer nodded before departing.
Over the television’s speaker, Wu’s radio was alive with orders from some officer far down the chain of command from Sheng, but far above the lowly lieutenant. Everyone’s attention was riveted to those shouts over the radio.
“Attack! Attack! Attack!” came the tinny shouts over Wu’s field radio. The orders were plainly heard by the half dozen men in the crater.