The eyes of about half of the cherries — male and female — teared right up, and their voices thickened as they pledged their lives in trembling, nasally tones.
“I got movement!” came the point man’s voice.
Fear shot through Stephie’s every nerve ending, assaulting her bodily. Her ears popped. Her head rushed. Her lungs froze. Her throat burned. Her stomach churned. And her limbs shook with full-body fear.
“Did they see us?” John whispered over the MES.
Stephie cringed at every word spoken over the radio, even her own.
“Negative, negative,” came point’s reply. “We’re good. Out.”
Stephie’s earphones suddenly began emitting a steady beeping. Everybody’s did. Enemy radio net operating in area. Probably not more than a few hundred meters. The tiny electronic warfare packs mounted to their shoulder straps didn’t know what the Chinese were saying on their own digitally encrypted, wireless local area networks. They could, however, reliably tell you that their LAN was very, very close.
Two hundred meters ahead lay a strip center with a large, empty parking lot. Stephie keyed the platoon talk button. “Dig in. Dig in.” She didn’t identify herself. They all knew her voice.
John didn’t countermand Stephie’s order, and fifty shovels were pulled like swords from backpack sheathes. Stephie flipped the blade to ninety degrees and with grunts and all her might gave the earth a few, hard chops. Her example was soon followed by all within sight, as cherries redoubled their efforts.
The strip center had a video rental store, a bike shop, a children’s hair salon, and a Chinese restaurant. Stephie’s blade hit rocks eight inches below ground level. She didn’t try to go deeper, but chopped and scraped to lengthen the scratch in the ground. The shopping center ahead was anchored by a chain grocery store. Stephie kept her eyes on the storefronts but saw nothing.
The first Chinese soldier appeared at the far corner of the strip center.
“Drop!” John snapped.
The Americans dropped. Not all at once, but within a second or two.
A long line of Chinese soldiers followed their point man. One by one, the soldiers in Third Platoon settled in behind weapons. Some were raised so quickly that Stephie worried they would be noticed by the Chinese, or that an idiot would accidentally loose a round. She keyed her mike and reminded them to, “Hold your fire.”
The enemy soldiers were tense. But when they saw the Chinese characters on a sign outside the restaurant, they pointed and laughed until an officer started shouting. His voice was loud enough to carry the distance to the Americans as he berated troops, who came to parade-ground attention. They weren’t nearly as professional as the Chinese troops Stephie had encountered before. The officer grabbed men, physically spread them out, and delivered a high-pitched scolding before the march finally resumed. It reminded Stephie more of a prewar field training exercise than a serious combat patrol.
So the Chinese have cherries too, she thought, calming.
John began assigning fires to targets over the radio, taking a risk with every word. “First Squad, you take the lead. Third Squad, the center. Fourth, you take the rear. Second Squad’s machine gun, take out that officer, then fire at targets of opportunity. Commence firing when I open up. Out.”
He gave the squad leaders time to relay more specific targeting down to their fire teams. The Chinese officer stood in the parking lot next to his radioman, watching his men instead of his front. His men were distracted by sights in display windows and were angrily rebuked by NCOs.
They’re green, like us, Stephie thought. Maybe greener.
A second Chinese platoon fanned out across the open, concrete parking lot. John quickly reallocated the fires to include them. Stephie looked over her shoulder toward their rear.
“Listen up,” she said when John was finished. “The rally point is the far side of that stream three-quarters of a mile back. The far side of the downed bridge. Rally there on command if we have to pull back fast.”
That done, she turned her attention to the enemy. The hundred or so men had absolutely no cover in the parking lot and couldn’t possibly dig in. Their CO was easy to pick out. He shouted unrelentingly at his troops. Stephie didn’t speak a word of Chinese, but the order was clearly understood. They were all bunched up. Almost shoulder to shoulder. “Spacing!”the officer shouted. In soccer, bad spacing gave up goals. Here, the mistake doomed them.
John Burns fired a three-round burst
Every last man and woman in the platoon fired. Fifty weapons roared simultaneously. Display windows collapsed in avalanches of glass. Chinese soldiers spun, twisted, tossed their weapons in the air, and died. Twice, Stephie had targets blown out of her sights before she finally found one helpless, weaponless man crawling across the pavement.
Her first round struck him near his kidneys. He rolled over and frantically patted his side and waved his hands in air, not knowing what to do. Another Chinese soldier lay facedown on the concrete blindly firing his rifle above his head on full auto. Stephie’s first shot knocked the rifle to the pavement. He grabbed his hand and might have lost a finger or two. Maimed and disarmed, he held his helmet to his head with his one good hand. Stephie’s next shot glanced off his helmet and struck his shoulder. Her third shot struck his neck and killed him.
All eighty Chinese soldiers at the strip center lay grievously wounded before the first armored vehicles appeared. Five lightly armored, wheeled scouts with sharp-edged, amphibious hulls sped down the street just beyond the parking lot. Tracers from their 25 mm cannon streaked straight toward Stephie. Grenade-sized explosions tore sheets of asphalt from the road at face level, but four American missiles struck the first three vehicles. The fourth and fifth vehicles retreated behind the screen of smoke from their comrades’ burning vehicles. Several American infantrymen fired ballistic rockets, but the unguided missiles all missed. The scouts roared away down the county road past a service station on their way toward threatening the Americans’ rear.
John shouted orders over the radio. “Chambers! Take Third Squad with your and Dawson’s weapons crews through the woods to the road behind us and nail that fucking armor!” Stephie twisted around to confirm that they complied. The dozen soldiers rose and sprinted through the trees toward the rear. The residential street behind them was barely visible through the thin stand of slender pine trees.
Flames sparked from dozens of trunks as the two scout vehicles opened fire into the woods with explosive shells from their turret-mounted automatic cannon.
She could no longer see Third Squad, which had gone to ground.
“I’m goin’ to check on Third Squad!” Stephie shouted over the platoon net.
“Stay where you are!” John ordered, but Stephie was already up and running. “Stephie!” he shouted as she headed toward the blistering swath of fire. Pops of flame randomly blasted tree trunks and limbs. She dropped to the ground just ahead of raking fire from a 25 mm cannon, whose glancing blows off trees showered her with stinging splinters. But the whooshof American antitank missiles and solid thumps of shaped charges ended the rain of cannon fire.
She scampered forward through the trees, stooped and low until she saw — on either side of the smoking hulks — a dozen assault rifles blazing straight toward her. Bullets snapped through brush, creased bark, and zipped by her head as she flattened herself onto the ground. The Chinese armored cavalrymen had dismounted before their rides had been hit. They were well led — leapfrogging by fire and maneuver — on a headlong charge into the woods.