John hunched lower over his black automatic weapon, tapping the box magazine to ensure that it was seated. Stephie raised her M-16. Tiny phosphorescent dots on the front and rear sights gave her an aim line lit to brilliance by her light amplification goggles.
Two six-wheeled amphibious scout vehicles crawled down the center of Mason Street, stopping well short of the two fallen trees. The first vehicle continued on alone. Mechanical lifts in the second smoothly and swiftly raised two box-shaped missile launchers, which pivoted to point up the street. When the lead vehicle reached the first tree, it traversed the trunk at an angle with one huge tire independently climbing over before its opposite did the same. A slender black barrel protruded from a small turret atop the vehicle, swivelling left and right as its last tire descended the second and last tree.
Stephie was shivering. Freezing. Her teeth were chattering. A second angry firefight broke out, this one to their right and close. Probably Second Platoon. The trailing Chinese scout revved its engine up and followed. When it was halfway across its second obstacle, Stephie heard whooshing sounds. Streaks of brilliant exhaust were followed by thumps as sparks flew from both vehicles. Their turrets and wheels were stilled. A crew hatch flew open, and a glow of white fire inside lit Stephie’s goggles. A burning Chinese soldier swatted at his radiant clothes as he stumbled and rolled and finally lay burning on the street.
“Get down!” John Burns shouted as he dove, reaching out for Stephie. In the next instant, a dozen shrill, whistling artillery shells shattered Mason Street. Shrapnel peppered the living room. Screams came from terror or from pain. Debris shot through dust and smoke as sheets of plaster were shorn from walls and ceiling. In the distance — somewhere through the open window — a man screamed shrill but in a dying voice. John raised his fiber optic periscope. Rapidly moving vehicles filled his screen and Mason Street.
American missiles hissed through the air past their house. Thump! Thump! Thump! went half the Chinese vehicles. But from the others rose multiple rocket launchers.
“Take cove-e-r-r!” John shouted.
He dove on top of Stephie. Thudding missiles hit the bricks just outside. The floor bounced underneath Stephie and John. Hellish screams echoed through the house. The living room and dining room behind them exploded. The flames that shot through air quickly dissipated, but not before maiming and burning. Stephie couldn’t breathe. She was dead. She was alive. She couldn’t tell.
She pushed John Burns off of her. He didn’t look to be wounded, but he couldn’t seem to focus his eyes.
Sergeant Collins and Peter Scott lay beside Stephie and John, cleaved into large pieces.
Animal’s M-60 blazed. Friendly missiles streaked down the street. In the study, Fire Team Bravo fired furiously. John slid the rest of the way to the floor moaning as Stephie grabbed her rifle and rose to her knees. Through the smoldering window frame, she had a perfect view of hell. She shouldered her M-16 and fired a fragmentation grenade. It exploded at the base of a tree and felled three men who were firing from the kneeling position sixty yards away. One struggled — stunned — up onto his knees. Stephie squeezed off a three-round burst and killed him. She had nine more three-round bursts left in the full, 30–round magazine. She grew more expert at killing with each pull of the trigger. She had survived the first, worst tidal wave. In the ebb and flow of small unit warfare, she now joined the surviving Americans in the extraction of the price that the Chinese would pay in taking Mason Street.
No vehicles could make it through the flaming traffic jam. No Chinese aircraft survived even a single overflight. Helicopters from both sides crashed into unlucky houses like meteors on an alien landscape. Missiles flew from the ground like shooting stars in reverse. Artillery batteries began their devastating, war-winning barrages but were blown to oblivion fifteen seconds later by pin-point, massed counterbattery fire. Using a radio to communicate meant risking that enemy computer screens as far away as Beijing would nearly instantly show exactly where you are. That block. That house. That room. Commence firing. The weapons systems of the two armies clashed and canceled each other out. War returned to square one and tested its most primitive fighting system.
Chinese infantry appeared. Not a squad, or a platoon, or a company, but several infantry companies. Easily a battalion. Hundreds of men, bobbing and weaving behind abundant cover, advanced up Mason Street past bonfires from vehicles that consumed their comrades.
Stephie aimed and fired. When her ten pulls of the trigger emptied her first magazine, Stephie grabbed John’s squad automatic weapon and went full auto with six hundred rounds. Animal yanked the M-60 off the ground under Stephie’s covering fire and slogged through the muddy slit trench toward the retaining wall, the side yard, and ultimately escape to the rear. Limbs and branches fell onto his rounded back as bullets shot from over a hundred bobbing and weaving fireflies clipped through trees. Over a hundred Chinese automatic weapons flickered orange and roared at Stephie’s ears from 300 meters, and 200 meters, and 150 meters. Rifle range distances.
Stephie stood nearly oblivious to the gale of bullets that buzzed through the window and clapped into the sheet-rock walls behind her head as she emptied the 600–round box.
She hunched over the ripping weapon, which vibrated nearly uncontrollably atop the window sill. She misused the weapon, firing it in continuous full auto, cutting great swaths, she felt sure, though she could see almost nothing save the winking fireflies. The weapon’s lubricants began sizzling on the white-hot receiver, rising in a smoking stench above the rocking gun. The pistol grip in her itching hand was almost too hot to touch, but she gripped it with all her might.
When the magazine finally ran dry forty seconds later and the gun ticked and hissed like a teakettle, Stephie saw Massera, Animal’s abandoned assistant machine gunner. Massera didn’t rise from the machine gun pit. He could barely raise his head.
All of the sudden Stephie saw pinned Chinese infantrymen launch two dozen grenades into the air. She dove like a goalkeeper to the floor. The walls, roof, and lawn were struck by half a dozen 40 mm grenades. The study from which Fire Team Bravo fought fiercely — weapons blazing — burst into flames. When the smoke cleared, the study was still.
“Let’s go!” John yelled. He snatched up Stephie’s M-16 and pulled her toward the rear. Stephon Johnson hobbled along with them, ducking low under a flaming kitchen ceiling. Just behind them, the living room erupted. The overpressure blew the rear windows out and sent them tumbling into the back yard. The barrel of the SAW that she was dragging one-handed, muzzle down, landed against Stephie’s left leg and scorched her trousers. She yelped and rolled away. John took the weapon from her, burning his hand and cursing. Stephie grabbed her M-16.
“Over here!” Becky shouted from the hole John had made in the fencing at the rear. The backyard was becoming dangerously well lit by the home’s blaze. After a sustained burst along the side of the house, Animal — who had been firing over the retaining wall at the side of the house — joined them in flight with his big-60 at port arms and 100-round brass belts flapping and glinting in the light from the fire. From the house you could hear confidant commands being given in Chinese.
The American survivors descended into the refuse-filled drainage ditch and ran — splashing — as far away and as fast as they could. They had no plan other than to escape. Suddenly, the air above Atlanta became the battleground. At the eruption of repeated, low-altitude explosions, Becky shrieked “Jesus!” and ducked her head. Missiles streaked up from American launchers all around the city. Chinese jets, missiles, and helicopters exploded in stunning bursts.