Invasion: China (Invasion America) (Volume 5) (7 page)

Yes, of course he
does
. She did shudder then. Hong would do anything for power. In that regard, the man lacked a soul.
I dearly hope his plan does not bring about the end of the world
.

Then she sat forward, listening as the Chairman went into de
tail concerning his grand idea.

COMMANDO TRAINING BASE, KANSAS

Master Sergeant Paul Kavanagh wondered what he’d gotten himself into this time.

He wore the latest American commando gear with a high-tech Chinese jetpack strapped to his back. It was a marriage of convenience, one his team had been practicing with for several months already.

Paul stood in the open bay door of an ancient Chinook helicopter. The monster hovered in the stratosphere
—at least he sure felt like it did. By craning his neck, Paul peered outside. The ground was far away in the hazy distance.

He’d never been crazy about jumping out of anything. Heights made him woozy. He had to concentrate to focus his eyes.

Take it easy. This isn’t any big deal
.

Within his enclosed helmet, Paul grinned tightly. Whenever he said something wasn’t a big deal that meant it was huge. Several weeks ago, he’d told the slick
loan officer and part-time Militia member the same thing. The man must have lifted plenty of weights and likely injected himself with steroids. Mr. Templeton had muscles, ones he enjoyed flexing, his biceps and pectorals particularly. The more Paul explained the facts of life to the guy, the twitchier he’d become. Maybe the loan officer had thought of himself as Mr. America and wanted to oil up. In the end, the no-big-deal talk had turned into a fight, as Paul had known it would.

I wonder if he’s out of the hospital yet. At least he c
an’t bother Cheri anymore.

Paul looked out
of the Chinook again, forcing himself to focus on the distant target. This was crazy. Why had he volunteered for this again?

Even though he was a Recon Marine, he belonged to SOCOM, the
special operations arm of the US military. Most of the war, he’d been behind enemy lines in a Long Range Surveillance Unit or LRSU. He was still going to go behind enemy lines, but this time as a shock commando to take out enemy headquarters.

He knew himself well enough to know that he didn’t belong in a line company. He had a
special ops mentality, liking to do things his way. Unfortunately, at his age, the long-distance conditioning had finally begun to wear him down. LRSU teams did a lot of fast trekking from one place to the other. These days, he was ready to ride into battle. Besides, by joining an experimental unit, he figured to save himself from fighting all the time. He was tired of killing, of seeing blood and guts and listening to young men scream. His boy Mikey would be their age soon. He didn’t like to think of some Chinese killer stalking his boy and doing to him what Paul did to the invaders.

“Jump in two minutes,” the colonel said over the battle-net.

Paul’s throat tightened. They had jumped before, but not from this high up.

The Chinese had developed a rugged jetpack, with
enough fuel for several minutes of flight time. Instead of building their own jetpacks, US engineers had scoured various battlefields and stripped the dead Chinese of theirs. Afterward, the techs fidgeted with the packs,
improving
the machines. The straight Chinese model demanded precision execution from its soldier. The upgraded pack used computer-assisted, stabilized flight. You could make more mistakes with the American-modified pack and still survive. That was the theory anyway. In practice, jetpack flying took intense concentration no matter which model you used.

One thing was clear. A flyer in the air made an easy target. After plenty of tests, US doctrine told the soldier to get down fast. Fight from the ground, not
while hanging up there trying to do two things at once: flying and firing. The jetpack provided extra mobility, kind of like an armored personal carrier bringing soldiers to the battlefield, but without the armored protection of an APC.

The battlesuit Paul wore was the second partner in the marriage. It had several parameters. One, the suit had various computers, giving the commando greater situational awareness, linkage with headquarters and his
fellow soldiers. The computers also helped the wearer target his weapons better. Body armor was vital to the suit. Like the medieval plate a knight used to wear, Paul had a complete outer shell of Kevlar and other fiber-ceramic protection. With the suit’s filters, he could supposedly live through chemical, biological and nuclear warzones—for a few hours anyway. The helmet’s inner visor gave him a HUD, but the suit lacked any integral weapons systems. He had to carry those, the latest assault rifle, grenade launcher, air-dart tube and a satchel charge to open any enemy bunker.

“Ten seconds,” the colonel said over the headphones.

A tap on Paul’s shoulder caused him to turn. A commando in a full battlesuit stared at him. With a whirr, the faceplate lifted. His best friend Romo stared out at him.

The man used to be an assassin for the Mexico Free Army, working for Colonel Valdez, the leader of the
southern resistance. Romo was part Apache and part Spanish-Mexican. He happened to have the darkest eyes Paul had ever seen—those of a cold stone killer. During the California campaign, they had become friends. At first, Romo’s assignment had to been to kill Paul. It was a long story, but Colonel Valdez hated the Master Sergeant for personal reasons. Caught behind enemy lines, Paul and Romo had worked together to survive. After the ordeal, they had become inseparable. Later, Paul saved Romo’s life from another Valdez assassin, sent as a lesson to any who supposedly
deserted
the colonel.

Paul didn’t know a better soldier than Romo, but the man lacked something essential, a soul or heart maybe.
Romo had lost any purpose in life other than killing Chinese. After two years of witnessing what unchecked bitterness could do to a man, Paul knew he didn’t want to fall into the same pit. If there was a way to save his friend, he wished he knew it. Maybe there was still time to save himself.

“Why isn’t the colonel jumping with us?” Romo asked.

Paul shrugged, making his body armor creak. Some men were too important to risk. You could tell who they were, because the important ones worked overtime staying out of danger.

“Jump,” the colonel said over the battle-net.

Paul chinned a control.
His visor closed. He faced the open bay door, rested his right elbow on the adjustable control pad and clutched the upright throttle on the end. He twisted the rubber-coated grip and listened to the jetpack’s engine rev. It made the entire battlesuit shiver with power. Then he took two steps and launched himself out of the opening.

He
plummeted. Because cameras and a computer let him see the Chinook on the HUD, he didn’t have to crane his neck to check his position. Three seconds of drop gave him plenty of distance from the big machine. Paul twisted the throttle and power roared out of his nozzles. It gave him lift, and he felt the thrust most around his shoulders. A computer and gyros helped him remain vertical during flight, with his head aimed at the clouds and his feet aimed at the Earth.

All right, I have the hang of this
.

Even as he thought that, a
battlesuited commando plunged past him, gaining speed as the man fell headfirst. Soon, he’d be at terminal velocity.

“Ned’s gyro
quit working,” Romo radioed.

Paul cursed, and he cut power,
letting himself drop after Corporal Ned Tarleton. In an instant, he realized he couldn’t fall fast enough to catch up to Ned.

What if I
rotated around and flew down like Superman?

Paul
didn’t remember the override codes to cut his own gyro program. None of them had practiced that type of flying yet. It was incredibly risky.

“Ned, you have to kick your legs,” Paul said
. “You have to get your nozzles pointed at the ground.”

Paul heard hard breathing and bitter curses
in his headphones. It sounded as if Ned struggled to regain control but couldn’t do it.

“Sergeant Kavanagh, engage your jetpack,” the colonel said.
He was in the Chinook monitoring the situation.

“I’m going to try to catch Ned,” Paul said.

“Negative,” the colonel said. “You can’t.”

“If I dive
after him—”

“Kavanagh, you son of a bitch,” the colonel said. “You will not attempt any heroics. I forbid you to dive.”

The order tasted bitter to Paul, but he knew the colonel was right. He’d lose control, crash, die and break his promise to Cheri.

“Ned,” he radioed. “Restart your
flight computer. You might have time for it to reboot and kick start the gyro program.”

“
Master Sergeant?” Ned asked. He sounded frightened.

“You have time
to reboot,” Paul told him. Would the corporal even try?

“I’m
all out of time, Sergeant. You tell my boy— Promise me you’ll tell my boy I died fighting the Chinese.”

“I will,” Paul said. “Now
you listen to me, Ned.”

“This jetpack is
lousy piece of junk, Sarge. I never should have joined up for this.”

Instead of using a camera, Paul peered down. Despite their initial height, the ground rushed up with ridiculous speed. His stomach lurched, and he twisted his throttle. Power roared into his jetpack
and out the nozzles. Thrust slowed his sickening drop. He twisted the throttle harder, and now he floated toward the earth. This was the wrong way to do it, he knew. A flying commando was supposed to drop fast and land lightly at the last second. Get onto the ground as fast as you could was the idea.

W
atching Ned plummet stole some of Kavanagh’s courage.

The co
rporal struck the ground. The body armor didn’t help in the slightest. Part of the jetpack flew one way and computer pieces the other. Ned bounced like a ball, and the ways his arms and legs flopped, the corporal was already dead.

Paul closed his eyes. How was he supposed to keep his promise to Cheri when he had so little control over his destiny? Maybe a glitch would kill his gyro
program. Maybe dirt would plug the turbofans during flight. A hundred little things could go wrong. Maybe he should leave the outfit and return to the LRSU teams.

Keep your two feet on the ground. Less can go wrong that way
.

Thirty seconds later,
Paul landed gently beside Ned’s corpse. He stared at the broken suit as blood leaked out. This was a rotten war.

One by one, the other commandos landed nearby. No one shed his jetpack and raced for the next part of the exercise.

Paul knew he should give the order. Instead, he knelt on one knee and bent his head. A friend had died today. More of them would die a few weeks from now.

I’m
going to try to come home to you, Cheri. I want to hug you again. But I don’t know if I’m strong enough to defeat every challenge and screw-up, so that I can keep my promise.

The colonel shouted at them over the battle-net. Romo put a hand on Paul’s shoulder. Stirring himself, Paul stood, and he gave the orde
r for them to move. A moment later, he shed his jetpack. The others did likewise. Then they continued with their training exercise.

WINFIELD, KANSAS

With frank admiration, Stan Higgins eyed the major as she got up from her desk. The woman had large breasts straining against her uniform, shapely legs and definitely knew how to walk. She opened the door to General Tom McGraw’s office.

“Colonel Higgins is here to see you, sir,” she said.

“Send him in,” McGraw said in a gruff voice.

The major turned around and smiled at Stan, motioning for him to walk in.

He felt guilty then for having eyed the major because technically, he was still married.
His wife and he were estranged. It had started several years ago with Jake’s interment in the Colorado Detention Center. That had been before the start of the California invasion. The Militia people ran the center. Jake had gone because he’d protested some of President Sims’ most dictatorial laws. Jake had been in college then, and had lost the right to attend. Since the interment, things had deteriorated between Stan and his wife. She talked about divorce, but had never filed. Until she actually cheated on him, Stan didn’t feel he could divorce her. The marriage oath meant something to him. The only out to him would be if his wife committed adultery. So, he endured, but it was hard sometimes, especially seeing women like the major. Clearly, McGraw had no such qualms. How many great military men, now and in the past, kept mistresses? The vast majority of them, no doubt.

Stan entered the office as
the major closed the door behind him.

“Sit,” McGraw said, without looking up
from his desk.

It was a large office, with boxes piled to the side
s with white patches on them and words in block letters describing the contents. Southern Front Headquarters had only recently moved from Wichita to Winfield. The general had already put up several photographs. They showed him shaking hands with President Sims in one, with Director Harold in another and with Jennifer Love the movie actress in a third. There were citations too, a shelf with several mementos and a computer screen on the desk. McGraw typed on a keyboard, grunting as he finished with a flourish. His fingers looked too big for the keys, but somehow he managed.