The main trench was little more than a collection of interconnecting, rainwater-filled craters. The only hints of where the original earthworks had been were burst sandbags, broken wood bracing, and dozens of strands of field telephone wire that had been run, cut by shelling, and run again and again.
The entire crest of the ridge was now a moonscape. The once forested hill provided no shade. The shattered trunks of pine trees were stripped bare of bark. Midway up their trunks, fingers of wood spiked skyward, attesting to the fury of heavy artillery.
The six soldiers marched single file down the hill toward the rear through the slit trench. Their heavy loads made climbing over collapsed walls and crawling under fallen trees far more difficult than it had been a week before. No one said a word. All was quiet. Stephie began to wonder whether they were all alone. Maybe everyone else had deserted.
The ladder lay in pieces, but it wasn’t needed. A large shell crater presented a gentle, smooth slope. The sickly-sweet stench of death hung thick in the air. They covered their faces with their scented kerchiefs and wound their way carefully down the well-trod path through the mines. Flies buzzed thickly around the blackened and bloated bodies of the Chinese soldiers who had fallen in the minefield, some just a few feet from the safe pathway. No one had risked policing them up.
Suddenly, they all dropped to the dirt on hearing shells rattle through the air overhead. But these were “friendly,” and even more important they were on target. American artillery began to pummel the far side of the Savannah River to cover their withdrawal. They rose, didn’t bother to dust themselves off, and continued on toward the road. Every so often low-flying Cruise missiles shrieked overhead causing everyone to duck. But these were American missiles sent against Chinese artillery batteries, Stephie guessed, who were forced to displace but might otherwise have shelled their retreat.
At the road they finally saw other soldiers. Their battalion formed into companies to board waiting trucks. Fewer than two hundred of the six hundred with which they had begun the fight stood in the loose ranks for a final head count. Some companies, which with attached weapons crews had numbered 180 men and women, now had only a dozen or so bedraggled, bandaged survivors. Almost everyone, Stephie noted, was wounded in some way. Some officers and senior NCOs issued orders from stretchers.
Ackerman was the last surviving officer in their company of fifty slumping soldiers. Their platoon was down from thirty-one to eighteen, and that was after being reinforced with replacements. Twice. Third Squad had been wiped out to a man. No one said a word, but everyone’s head was on a swivel. People in the surrounding platoons stared straight into each other’s blank eyes. Stephie didn’t know what everyone else was thinking, but she had only one thought. How the hell did I survive?
John Burns helped Stephie climb aboard the back of the truck, but she halted halfway up. A single white cross had been planted on the opposite side of the road. Beyond it lay a long mound of freshly turned earth. Everyone in First Squad noticed. Stephie had no trouble imagining that she now lay in the mass grave in which her comrades were buried. So little seemed to separate the living from the dead.
She sat in the mostly empty truck amid her taciturn and morose comrades. Their heads drooped and their eyes were downcast. They had won their battles and yet they were retreating. The canvas-covered truck began to roll.
“We’re gonna win this war!” Stephie said to her surprised squadmates. What began as a blurted bolt out of the blue rose in energy and conviction until it became an impassioned plea. “I can feel it. They hit us with everything they’ve got, and we didn’t break. We held! They hurt us bad, but we hurt them worse! There’s no way any army can keep taking casualties like the Chinese took here! No way!” They all looked at her now. “We won this battle! And we’re gonna win the next! And the next! And the next! We’re gonna win this war! I can feel it in my bones! This is our country, and nobody takes it from us! Nobody!”
“Fuckin’ A!” Animal replied, roused as if by an inspiring speech before a big game. He smiled, looked around, and pulled an oily cloth from his pocket and began to clean his filthy machine gun.
“We’re gonna kick their fuckin’ asses!” Dawson chimed in, slapping his forward rifle grip with a pop.
Melinda Crane looked back and forth from face to face, a faint spark returning to her dark eyes.
Becky furtively — sheepishly — glanced up at Stephie.
John eyed Stephie with what looked to be surprise.
The South Carolina woods streaked by as the truck rumbled in retreat ever northward, toward Washington, DC. Stephie vowed secretly to make herself believe the inspiring prediction she had just made, but found herself consumed by doubt.
A stiff wind carried the approaching cold front. The frigid air curled under Captain Jim Hart’s collar, forcing him to take his helmet off and don wool headgear that left only his face exposed. When he reseated his helmet on his head, he returned to his watch of the modest house. He’d had it under surveillance off and on for a week.
There were plenty of abandoned houses, but signs of life in them would instantly be noticeable to Chinese military police. He couldn’t risk holing up in an abandoned house.
The family below lived far off the beaten path down a private drive road so overgrown with foliage as to be nearly invisible. The driveway’s gate at the seldom used county road was kept chained, and there was no mailbox or other sign that a residence was nestled in the hills a few hundred yards distant.
The family that lived in the out-of-the-way place kept their heads low. Hart had observed at various times the father, mother, and teenage boy and girl shuttle stocks of food and supplies from the storm shelter to the roomy, two-story house. They had a greenhouse and a generator, which they had used when the power was off, like now. Hart had felled the high-tension power lines two nights ago.
He had chosen this house for a simple reason: he hadn’t seen a Chinese soldier within miles. He shivered from the chill, which was gripping the hills every morning. He was hungry, tired, and filthy, but more than anything else, Hart was extremely lonely. In the last three weeks, Hart had either hidden from the only people he had seen, or he had sent them to their graves.
He took one last check of the road, then struggled to his one good foot. Using a branch for a crutch, he hobbled down the hill for the front door with his broken or severely sprained left ankle. He had, days before, lain in wait along a road with monitors in place, mines laid, and field of fire planned. But no convoy had rumbled past in two days.
Finally, he had given up. On his way back to his nearest cache of supplies he had stumbled upon a line of vehicles. He had hastily set up and fired at the target of opportunity — a convoy in the darkness — without the preparation that his training dictated. He was motivated to act, he realized, out of frustration, and it had been a huge mistake.
Hart had thought the vehicles were all soft trucks, but two tanks had begun firing back at point-blank range. They had forced him to make a life-or-death decision. He had clung to the shuddering earth while explosions erupted all around. Heavy machine guns had raked the rocks and trees surely as covering fire for maneuvering infantry. If he had stayed there, he would’ve died, so he had risen and run blindly leaving much of his equipment behind. He had survived, but in the darkness he had hurt his ankle in the rocks.