‘Go!’ the lieutenant shouted.
Clark squeezed the trigger. The stubby carbine recoiled with surprising force. He recentered on the window and put five rounds through and two on the wall. Empty shells ‘chinged’ off the paving stones. He switched to ‘Semi’ and squeezed them off one round a second.
He released the empty magazine as soldiers dragged the fallen man to the far side. The rest of their platoon was just arriving, adding great amounts of fire.
Two men set a machine-gun down and dropped behind it. As soon as they settled on the ground, the weapon roared. Flame shot two feet from the muzzle. It was a shocking assault on your senses. An elemental eruption of noise made more dramatic by the narrow and curving canyon of walls.
The burst ended.
‘By twos!’ shouted a mustachioed sergeant. ‘Go!’
’ER-H-H-H-H-H-R-R’ roared the gun.
No riflemen even bothered firing now. A column of men sprinted down the street hugging the walls.
‘Cease fi-i-ire!’
The street was quiet save for the sounds of the front door being kicked in. Then there was no noise till the troops got upstairs. They smashed through the sniper’s door. Seconds passed. The room exploded.
Flame shot through two windows at once. Smoke poured out.
‘It’s all cle-e-ear!’ shouted a man from the dark window. ‘Sniper’s dead!’
‘Safe your weapo-o-ons!’ shouted the platoon leader. It was a command that Clark instinctively followed. He was kneeling amid brass shell casings. The stench of rifles filled the air. He rose slowly. His knee ached from the cobblestone beneath it. Joints popped. He felt no spring in his muscles. Everyone rose. Gathering themselves. Straightening their nerves out after the brief fight.
A lieutenant appeared in the sniper’s window.
‘Was it a partisan?’ the British colonel shouted.
‘No, sir!’ Hie platoon leader replied. ‘PLA regular, sir!’
‘Oh, thank God,’ the battalion commander muttered from beside Nate.
‘Have you gotten any partisan activity?’ Nate asked quietly.
‘Not yet.’
The two men looked at each other. ‘Do you have a contingency plan?’
The colonel took a deep breath. ‘Worst case?’ he asked. Clark nodded. ‘We just get out. We leave the cities. Bivouac in the countryside. If… if you say, that is, of course.’ Clark nodded again. ‘In the country we can maintain some distance. Establish clear fields of fire. Even so, there really is no effective defense against… against a billion and a half people?’ He shook his head. ‘Not if they’re roused, sir. Not if they’re roused.’
‘There’s a happy thought,’ Cuvier said to end the conversation.
‘Let me know when you hear how bad your man is,’ Nate asked the colonel. ‘I’ll want to visit him at the hospital. Now… let’s go.’
The squad reformed for the final approach to the perimeter. The ‘front’ consisted of two wrecked buses lying end to end. The crude tank trap built by Chinese defenders was blackened by fire. It provided excellent cover for their last few meters. The men jogged in a crouch down the sidewalk. After a short distance they turned through a door. The room they entered had been shot to pieces.
Four men lay against the walls. They hardly moved. Their eyes were fixed on the new arrivals. Their weapons were not far away. One clutched his rifle to his chest. Another lay cradled across its owner’s thighs. The others leaned against the wall beside them.
The dozen or so new arrivals crowded into the room.
‘How were things today, lance corporal?’ the battalion commander asked.
‘Oh, it was tolerable, sir. Tolerable. And everything is quiet now, sir. Sounded like you had some trouble on the way, though, sir. Anyone hurt?’
‘Had a chap catch a bullet — right here,’ the colonel said. He jabbed his thigh at the site of the wound.
‘They can be bad — leg wounds. Bleeders.’
Several heads around the room nodded.
‘Yes. Well…’ The colonel turned to Nate. ‘I’d like to introduce you men to Lieutenant General Nathaniel Clark, United States Army, commanding general of UNRUSFOR.’
The soldiers started to get to their feet. Clark motioned energetically for the men not to rise. ‘And it’s Nate. My given name is Nate, not Nathaniel.’
The four men all nodded and acknowledged him politely. ‘How do you do, sir?’ and ‘It’s a pleasure, sir.’
‘Lance Corporal Sheffield, sir. Edgar, sir. From Spilsby.’
A couple of the others snickered.
Nate shook the man’s hand. ‘Spilsby? That’s…?’
‘In the north, sir. Near the sea.’
‘A-ah.’ Clark said, nodding.
He then duck-walked around the room to meet the others. Like a politician he made the rounds. As he did he looked at the deeply pitted walls. The windows and doors that all lay shattered. The pieces of furniture now tossed into one corner.
Upon returning to Sheffield, he asked, ‘So how bad was it?’
‘Oh,’ replied the lance corporal, ‘not that bad, sir. Not as bad as this room makes it look. For us, that is, sir. We did all the damage in here. Killed seven of ’em, we did. Found the blokes after we tossed three grenades.’
‘Four,’ another soldier amended.
‘Four. That’s right. It was four, I remember now. We found ’em piled up on top of each other.’ His helmet dropped until Clark could barely see his eyes. ‘One at the bottom was… was still saying something, he was. Talked for quite a while. We just had time to make sure he wasn’t armed, you understand. We were going at it with some of his comrades in the next room. He was dead when we come back through.’
‘Every room’s different,’ one of the other soldiers said. He was reclined almost flat on the floor. His words were slurred from the posture… and fatigue. ‘Some of them we wreck. Others they wreck. It goes back and forth, usually. When you’re done, the whole building looks like this.’
Sheffield quickly resumed the liaison with Clark. He’d worn a worried look with every word the man had spoken. He clearly thought himself the more polished speaker, and he jumped back in as soon as he could. ‘They cut these holes, you see, sir. Through all the walls, you see, sir. It’s a rabbit warren, it is. A maze. You have to we-e-eave your way through every flat. But we cleared ’em out, sir. Used a sack full of grenades!’
‘A sack-and-a-half.’
‘Almost two sacks,’ the lance corporal amended. ‘Every time you find a door, you toss ’em in.’
‘Sometimes they’d come rollin’ back out,’ another man said. He began scraping his heels noisily — pedaling his boots like on a bicycle. They left trails in the plaster dust that covered everything — even the men. ‘They’d kick at them. Send ’em right back through the door.’
‘Took one of our men’s arms off,’ the lance corporal said — moderating the discussion. He chopped his left hand on his right biceps just under the shoulder.
‘Where’re the nearest Chinese troops right now?’ Clark asked.
Everyone had an opinion.
‘I heard some a few minutes ago!’
‘They’ve completely buggered off! Every last one of ’em.’
‘I bet they’re lying low, maybe five or six houses down. We cleared about four apartments that way before we pulled back.’