Invasion: Alaska (32 page)

Instead of a hero’s welcome back home in China, Lu Po and Wang found themselves unceremoniously joining the submarine’s Commando team.

“You will be with us for the duration,” the captain had told him.

That had been four thousand kilometers ago. Now the invasion fleet used its strike-craft to pound military targets all along the southern Alaskan coast. The submarine presently negotiated the entrance to Cook Inlet. The body of water went all the way to Anchorage. Lu had heard one of the submariners say the Americans had mined Cook Inlet, at least the northern half past the town of Kenai. Maybe they’d put a few stray mines out here.

The idea of drowning in a submarine churned within Lu. The good news was the invasion fleet’s aircraft had demolished countless American airbases along the coast, although Lu had heard they’d only gotten a few parked planes. Apparently, the Americans had been wise enough to ferry the aircraft farther inland. According to what Lu had heard, the carrier bombers had sunk any ship or sub daring to challenge Chinese naval supremacy. Now came the hard part, however, taking the land.

“I’ve heard every American in Alaska is a deer-slayer,” Wang whispered as he sat on the bench.

Lu shrugged as he glanced at the others. They all seemed self-absorbed, either donning or re-checking their equipment. Leaning near Wang, he whispered, “It is wrong making us take part in this dangerous task.”

“Why do you fear?” whispered Wang. “After destroying two carriers in the middle of an American harbor, this should be easy.”

“Do you think it works like that?” whispered Lu. “We’ve used up our luck surviving San Francisco. Hard task—great luck. So-called easy task like this—bad luck.”

Wang shook his head. “We’re heroes. Heroes always survive. You must cheer up.”

“How do you expect me to do that?” whispered Lu. “We should be home, paraded on TV. A Politburo minister should be handing us our marriage permits. Girls should be lining up for us to inspect them. Now we’re risking our necks after we’ve used up more luck than most people have in a lifetime. It is wrong for them to be doing this to us.”

Wang glanced around at the others. “You must be careful what you say. We’re not on our own anymore, at least, not until they send us ashore.”

Lu nodded. It was good advice. These fellow White Tigers would surely not report on them. However, there could be listening devices as an East Lightning political officer gauged their morale. It would not do if theirs was found wanting.

“If it is girls you desire,” Wang said in a lighter tone, “you may find some sooner than you think in Anchorage.”

Despite his worries, Lu grinned at the idea. He’d thought about girls while trawling through San Francisco Harbor. He’d heard many stories about American women. They were very easy, giving themselves to any man who bought them alcohol.

“I know how we could conquer Alaska in a minute,” Lu said loudly.

The other White Tigers looked up questioningly.

“Tell us,” Wang said.

Lu grinned as he looked from Commando to Commando. “High Command should promise each soldier that he can keep the first girl he captures.”

Several White Tigers laughed. Others nodded. Two appeared thoughtful.

Wang also laughed as he adjusted his weapons belt. “That is an excellent idea. I would race to one of their strip clubs.”

That brought out a few more laughs.

“Yes,” said Lu, liking his idea the more he thought about it. “I would make my captured girls twirl around a dancing pole. I’d watch with a gun held in my hand as I drank American whiskey. I would tell them I’d shoot the worst dancer. Then those easy American girls would twirl around the dance pole for me, trying their hardest to please me. The one that pleased me the most, I would mount her there to test her quality.”

“Why don’t the leaders think of things like that?” shouted a White Tiger.

Lu shrugged as he headed for the hatch. “Maybe they have. Maybe that’s why we’re invading Alaska. China lacks women. Now we shall use our excess young men to grab the prettiest women in the world, starting here.”

“To victory!” shouted Wang.

“To victory and much American tail!” shouted Lu.

The rest of the White Tigers roared approval. Then as a group, they headed for the airlock.

***

Kicking through the frigid water wearied Lu. His face quickly became numb. This was nothing like San Francisco. Crawling onto the snowy gravel shore was a relief. In the darkness beside him, Wang looked like a watery monster with a grotesquely humped back.

Other White Tigers emerged from the frigid waters. It seemed to Lu that it would have been wiser to attack Alaska in the summer.

Evergreen pines abounded here, with boulders, ice and snow making a treacherous beach. They were to seek out and destroy American observation posts. The main invasion would occur to the south, but they were here to spread confusion among the Americans.

“Hurry,” said Lu.

Each of the White Tigers divested himself of his wetsuit. Each then donned a dinylon body-armor suit and a HUD helmet linked to his chosen weapon.

Taking out a computer-scroll, Lu checked his map. The Alaskan State Highway One was up and over the slope. To the south of them was the town of Homer.  Lu pointed at the scroll-map to Wang. They were north of Ninilchik but south of the bigger and slightly inland town of Soldotna.

Their briefing had been intense. The Americans used a Militia organization to help them fight. Militiamen often used civilian vehicles and civilian weaponry. Their secondary mission was to destroy patrols. It was felt that every vehicle they encountered would belong to the Militia or the Alaskan National Guard. Once the spotted observation posts were eliminated, they were to destroy vehicles and kill passengers. Spreading confusion and fear would help destabilize the enemy in the invasion areas.

“I hear a vehicle!” shouted a White Tiger.

“Hurry,” said Lu. He charged up the snowy slope, having donned his body-armor suit and calibrating his weapon with his Heads Up Display faster than most.

Wang hurried beside him. “This is like our training in Siberia.”

Lu grunted. He remembered that grueling time. Fifteen seconds later, he threw himself onto the snow. The highway was below, a thin ribbon of blacktop. He spotted a darkened vehicle. It was an SUV, with a heavy machinegun bolted to the top. A man stood behind it.

The American shouted to those in the SUV. It stopped. Doors opened. Men with rifles stepped outside.

“Destroy it,” said Lu.

Lying on the snow beside him, with pines on either side of them, Wang lifted a magnetic-pulse grenade-launcher. The targeting information was on the visor of Wang’s helmet, a crosshairs appearing at whatever he pointed his grenade-launcher at.

There was a whoosh, and something dark flew. It hit the SUV and exploded. The vehicle made harsh metallic sounds, with shouts added from the men trying to climb out.

“Excellent!” shouted Lu. He swiveled around and pointed at two slope-climbing White Tigers. Then he pointed down at the flipped SUV.

Two white-camouflaged Commandos ran down the slope. They shot American survivors.

Lu was already watching north along the road for more vehicles. There were crackling sounds in the woods then.

“What was that?” asked Wang.

“Militiamen are firing at us,” said a Commando. The words came over Lu’s helmet.

“Give me your position,” said Lu.

“Nine-five-A,” the Commando said.

Lu checked his grid map. “Come with me,” he told Wang. “Chin has found enemy combatants.”

Lu ran toward Chin, with his assault rifle ready. It was a QBZ-23. These had special cartridges. Ignoring the Geneva Convention, they had dum-dum bullets. A tiny piece of mercury was in a cavity at the front of each bullet. When the lead of the bullet struck an object, the mercury thrust forward, exploding outward and making the bullet like a fragmentation device, like a grenade. Dum-dum bullets made horrible, intimidating wounds.

“Down, First Rank!”

Lu heard the words in his helmet. He hit the snow and used his chin to switch his helmet sighting to infrared. Several manlike shapes hid among nearby pines. He counted them. Five American Militiamen fired into the darkness.

“Wait,” Lu whispered to the others, using his microphone to whisper into their helmets.

The Americans stopped firing and began moving single-file. They wore assorted clothing, one of them a bright yellow color, visible in the moonlight. A different American spoke on a cell phone. No doubt, they were reporting the grenade-fire and were now checking to see what had happened.

“They have no tactical sense,” said Wang.

“They are stupid Americans,” Lu agreed. He clicked a switch on his assault rifle, going to full auto. “Ready?” he said into his microphone.

The affirmatives told him what he needed to know.

“Fire,” said Lu.

From three directions, bullpup assault rifles opened up. The five Americans went down. None of them returned fire.

“Truly they are fools,” said Wang.

“Surprised fools,” Lu agreed. “Now go, check them.”

Wang leaped up and hurried there. Moments later, he returned to report they were dead.

“We must complete our mission,” said Lu. “Come. It is time to eliminate the observation posts.”

HOMER, ALASKA

Two hundred and twenty-six miles from Anchorage was the town of Homer. The Great American Highway System stopped here at the base of a narrow spit that jutted four miles into Kachemak Bay. There were chunks of coal along the beaches. The lumps had washed up into the bay from nearby slopes where the coal seams were exposed. In the late 1800s, Homer had first been a gold mining town and then a coal-mining headquarters for the region. Now the small town was a mixture of rundown tourist shops, a few fisheries and old repair yards. It used to boast a thriving community of artists, sculptors, actors and writers, but that had passed during the Sovereign Debt Depression.

Homer possessed one of the few good beaches on which to land an invasion force of naval infantry. Therefore, the C-in-C of Alaska, General Sims, had rushed south an Airborne battalion and a National Guard battalion. He’d also sent several companies of Militia with them. Above the beach, combat engineers with armored bulldozers feverishly created shelters for M2 Bradleys. The infantry dug holes for heavy machineguns and ATGMs. Behind them were SAM emplacements and Blowdart missile teams. Several miles back rose artillery tubes.

“Hit them before they get ashore,” General Sims had told the airborne general in charge of Homer.

“What if they hit us first?” the general asked.

“Disperse your troops as you see fit,” said Sims. “Make a layered defense and make sure you dig.”

The airborne general had done just that. He had a little less than fifteen hundred soldiers of varying quality to halt a crack Chinese invasion force. But he was determined to make the Chinese pay for whatever they hoped to achieve.

***

The Chinese Fleet moved into position as over five hundred aircraft and helicopters took up station in the air. The landing area was five kilometers wide by four kilometers deep. Three primary control ships marked the area. The carriers remained well out of this zone, staying fifty kilometers off the coast. Large ships carrying the landing craft entered the invasion zone. It took ninety-five minutes for them to launch the landing craft.

Cruisers and destroyers began to pound the beach with their missiles and cannons, raining a hail of computer-directed munitions, guided by GPS satellites and drones. As this occurred, the amphibious boats lined up three-and-half kilometers from shore.

Now bombers, fighter-bombers and assault helicopters attacked the two American battalions defending the beach and the slopes behind the beach. Some Wyvern and Blowdart missiles roared out of their launchers, but it proved hard for the National Guard operators to burn through Chinese jamming. Unfortunately, the American radar signals brought Hell down onto them, guiding air-to-surface missiles with unerring accuracy. That opened the defenders to a rain of terror. Bombs, napalm and guided missiles murdered the Americans in their hastily built bunkers and foxholes.

Some soldiers fled. Many fired back. That’s when the Chinese helicopters dropped into attack mode. They looked like armored insects, with stubby little wings with missiles attached. The armored choppers were ugly things that could spew death better than any old-time Apache helicopter. They hung in the air, launching missiles, destroying the remaining Bradleys and Humvees. At that point, they roared forward as their 25mm chainguns hosed the remaining Americans brave enough to fire heavy weapons up at them.

As attack-choppers hunted for anything moving, Chinese infantry-carrying helicopters flew over the beach and over Homer. They stayed higher up and looked heavy and deadly. None landed on the beach. None landed in Homer. The big choppers flew past the old town and soon disappeared over the mountains. They would spill their cargoes farther inland, cordoning off the amphibious-assault landing zone.

The chief control officer out at sea now ordered the first amphibious wave. A swarm of the landing boats, all carefully lined up, steamed for the coal-littered shore.