Invasion: California Read online

  “Why are those two vehicles still here?” Romo asked.

  “A thousand reasons,” Paul said. “Maybe one of the trucks had engine trouble and they stopped here. Maybe someone got sick. Maybe they were supposed to pick something up here. Maybe there are whores in the house and they wanted a quick one before heading out to battle.”

  Romo stared at the two vehicles. “I doubt the truck is a troop transport. It looks like something is in the truck.”

  A back door in the ranch house opened and three Chinese soldiers exited. One of them was talking and gesturing. Finally, the other two began laughing. A fourth man came out of the house. Instead of a helmet, he wore a hat with a single red star on it. He shut the door and inserted a key.

  “He’s locking up,” Paul said.

  Romo gripped Paul’s shoulder. “Kill them.”

  “They’re too far for me to hit all of them.”

  “I watched you in battle. You’re a good shot. Kill them and we’ll take the vehicles.”

  “And then?” asked Paul.

  “No more talking. You must kill them. Look, the one is beginning another joke. The officer appears interested. You must take them out, as we don’t have time to get closer. Besides, they’ll see us if we try that.”

  Paul didn’t like it. It was too far to take out four Chinese soldiers. Yeah, he could take out one maybe…if he had a sniper rifle and time to settle down for a good shot.

  “Now,” Romo urged him.

  Resting the barrel of the assault rifle on a branch, Paul sighted the enemy. It was ninety yards, almost the full length of a football field. He had three magazines and that was it. Then he would be down to a knife just like Romo. If he took out the officer first—

  Paul withdrew the assault rifle from the tree branch. It would be safer to let the Chinese leave. Afterward, they could break in and get some food.”

  “What are you doing?” Romo asked. “We must kill them and take their vehicles. We cannot hope to remain hidden more than a day or two. We may not get another chance like this.”

  Paul thought about that: take the vehicles. Yeah, that was a good idea. He watched the four Chinese soldiers. The joke-teller had gotten into his story. The other three watched him. The two enlisted men stood close. The officer—the man with the hat—stood farther away.

  Taking his assault rifle, Paul began walking through the orchard. He didn’t head toward the enemy, but moved parallel to them. He wanted the barn between them and him.

  “This is risky,” Romo said. He didn’t run, but walked beside Paul.

  Paul was through talking. The tingling in his arms had begun. Five more steps put the barn between them.

  “Better hope there’s no dog around,” Paul said. Or more enemy soldiers we’re not seeing. He sprinted for the back of the barn. Behind him, Romo followed. He heard the man’s footsteps.

  I hope it’s a long joke.

  As he reached the back of the barn and ran for a corner, he heard muffled laughter. Paul skidded slower and pressed his back against the barn. He peered around the corner. The back ranch yard wasn’t visible, at least the part the four Chinese soldiers stood on wasn’t. He probably didn’t have much time left.

  There was a scrape of leather against wood. He glanced the other way and saw Romo sliding along the barn with him.

  “You should have stayed in the orchard,” Paul said in a low voice. “That way, if I fail, you could get the heck out of here.”

  “And leave my blood brother?”

  Paul glanced into Romo’s eyes. That wasn’t a joke. The man was dead serious. Dead—

  Taking a deep breath, trying to steady his nerves, Paul pushed off the barn and walked for the ranch house. He passed the last corner of the barn. The four Chinese soldiers were splitting up, two walking toward the military truck and the officer and other enlisted man heading toward the Chinese Humvee.

  Paul lifted the assault rifle, aimed at the officer and pulled the trigger. The butt slammed against his shoulder. The officer went down and the others turned in surprise. Paul fired again and hit the joke-teller, making the man stagger. Paul shot a third time, putting the jokester down. The two Chinese who had been heading for the truck stared at him. One clawed for his pistol. The other whirled around and sprinted for the truck. Paul shot him in the back, putting three bullets into him. The soldier lifted off his feet and smacked his forehead against the cab of the truck. He sagged, his chin striking the truck before he rolled onto the ground. An enemy bullet ricocheted off gravel, puffing dirt twenty feet in front of Paul. Pistols were terrible at range. They were even worse when caught by surprise.

  “Drop your gun!” Paul shouted.

  The Chinese soldier brought up his other hand, clutching his pistol two handed, aiming at Paul.

  “Drop it!” Paul shouted.

  The soldier fired. This time there was no ricochet. Instead, wood splintered in the barn. A quick-glance showed a bullet-hole ten feet up. The man had aimed far too high.

  Paul fired, putting several slugs into the soldier’s chest.

  Romo clapped Paul on the shoulder. “Excellent.”

  Paul almost turned on him with a snarl. Instead, he nodded, feeling hollow inside. Those four, they never had a chance. They weren’t all dead yet, but they were all down.

  Romo strode for the four. Paul watched him. After Romo reached halfway, Paul realized what the man was going to do.

  “Wait!” Paul shouted.

  Romo never even turned around.

  Paul wondered if he should do anything to stop Romo. This was war, right? The Chinese were invading America. They were heading for LA. They had to be. He hadn’t started this. Then again, neither had those four started the war. He doubted they had any or much say in where they had ended up. Now it was over for them and over for their jokes.

  Almost, Paul turned away. He stood there, holding his assault rifle as Romo checked each Chinese soldier. With two of them, Romo cut their throats, using his weapon, his knife.

  The Chinese had stolen Romo’s country. There was no pity in the man. Paul wondered what he would feel like if the Chinese, if the Pan Asian Alliance, the South American Federation and the German Dominion, conquered America. Maybe he would cut every enemy throat he could by that time. What had happened to Romo? Had he lost his wife, his children, his parents to the Chinese? Paul didn’t know. What had made Romo so remorseless? There was a reason. Things didn’t happen in a vacuum. The man was his blood brother. Maybe that meant it was his duty to find out.

  Maybe. His first duty, though, was reaching his family. Yeah, maybe his first duty was to make sure the Chinese didn’t reach his family. This was a battle for his home and his loved ones.

  You’d better toughen up, Kavanagh, because if you lose this fight, if America loses it, then you’re going to be ruled by a conquering power. Then you’re never going to have a say in how your country is run.

  How much of a say did he have now?

  Paul shouldered his rifle and trudged across the dirt. He didn’t want to become a butcher. But this was a dirty fight with no holds barred. He was going to do what he had to in order to win. The Chinese would kill his family in the snap of his fingers. It was like a man invading his home at night. You don’t ask questions then—you picked up your gun and kept firing until they were dead.

  Nodding, Paul could understand why Romo showed no mercy. He was fighting the invaders of Mexico. Colonel Valdez was fighting the invaders. They were shooting until the enemy was down.

  Paul blew out his breath. It was his duty to fight as hard as he could. His family depended on him. Thousands, maybe millions of other American families depended on him, on all the soldiers to do their duty and defend the homeland.

  “They’re dead,” Romo said.

  “Grab their weapons,” Paul said. “Pick one for yourself.” He lifted the tarp at the back of the military truck. It was filled with giant crates, with missiles of some type. Paul couldn’t read Chinese script. Modern warfare
devoured ammo. To keep the attack going, the Chinese would have to pour supplies to their soldiers.

  “Okay,” Paul said, “which do you want to drive?”

  Romo gave him a funny look.

  “We’re grabbing food,” Paul said. “Then we’re heading for the front. We’re going to supply the Chinese.”

  “You’re white and I’m Mexican.”

  “You think there aren’t others like us transporting supplies for the Chinese?”

  “Are you crazy?”

  Paul grinned, although there was nothing humorous in it. “It’s balls to the fire wall. If this is the first day of the assault, believe me, there will be plenty of confusion. Now is the time to get as close as we can to our side. Once we’re close enough, we’ll hoof it the rest of the way.”

  Romo shook his head.

  That brought a true grin to Paul’s face. “I’ll take the truck. They won’t look as closely at its driver. You take the Humvee. Are you ready?”

  Romo stared at him a moment longer before nodding.

  “Then let’s get busy,” Paul said. “We got a lot of miles ahead of us.”

  -7-

  The Right Hook

  WASHINGTON, D.C.

  In horror, Anna Chen watched a holo-video as she sat in White House Bunker Number Five. It was the fourth day of battle in California and desperation like a sickness ran through the SoCal Command. Disaster threatened.

  On the first day of battle, after the Blue Swan missiles struck, the enemy broke through the SoCal Fortifications at San Ysidro. Chinese Marauder tanks, IFVs and remote-control drones pushed through Chula Vista, chewing apart everything in their path. Nothing could stop them as they raced for San Diego. The Joint Forces Commander of California had shifted border formations, even though everything was chaos. Too many places lacked any communications. Others faced heavy assaults. Even so, a brigade of Abrams and Bradleys finally maneuvered in front of the advancing Chinese, and old Apache gunships expended salvos of Hellfire III missiles. It looked like the thrust for San Diego would fail.

  Then, early that afternoon, a vast hover-armada had left Mexico. They swung out to sea and roared north. JFC California saw what was happening and sent strike fighters to pick them off. Unfortunately, the hovers had linked fire-control systems. From a distance, the fighters launched air-to-surface missiles, keeping well out of SAM range. The hovers’ integrated air defense system shot down most of the missiles, only losing a modest number of hovers. Then the Chinese swung toward land and hit San Diego. Too many of them were infantry carriers, unloading assault troops. A portion of the hover fleet had continued to La Jolla, landing infantry there and digging in on Interstate 5.

  The Chinese continued to fight at night, pushing through Chula Vista, destroying the blocking brigade and linking up with the infantry on the outskirts of San Diego.

  On the second day, as fierce conflicts continued along the border fortifications, U.S. armored and mechanized infantry reserves rushed south from LA. Many of these were the mobile units saved by the decision earlier to move them back from the main defensive line. They moved down Interstate 5 and clashed with Chinese advance units in Carlsbad on the coast. For the moment, the U.S. contained the relentless Chinese advance.

  The SoCal Fortifications were in serious trouble, however. Like Atlas, they were supposed to be able to carry the world on their shoulders—the military had guaranteed the people that the Chinese would never be able to crack through there. The Blue Swan missiles had changed the equation. There were too many gaps in the line and the Chinese freely expended soldiers to force through dry beachheads. Like a mass of hungry jelly leaking through—particularly in the western portion of the fortifications—the Chinese were encircling the border formations and threatening to devour them.

  It had called for a total effort and reorganization from JFC California. Battles raged and American and Chinese alike consumed vast amounts of materiel: artillery and tank shells, missiles and bullets. The destruction awed the participants. Burning vehicles, smashed fortifications with littered bodies made it a surreal landscape. Modern equipment had turned war into a merciless event. Laser sighting, heavier payloads and computer-assisted fire control produced unprecedented death and destruction. The carnage bewildered the combatants, quickly tiring all but the most hardened.

  By the evening of the third day, the Americans had linked up the majority of their locally encircled formations in the SoCal Fortifications and secured their internal lines. It came at the cost of operational encirclement. The JFC of California had formed a large defensive area. But his few counterattacks had failed to dislodge the Chinese soldiers guarding the thrust from Tijuana to San Diego, La Jolla, Encinitas and Carlsbad. It meant that over six hundred thousand American troops were in the process of being cut off from the freeways and rail lines leading to LA. That would make it nearly impossible to send them reinforcements and supplies.

  “It’s turning into a giant Stalingrad,” General Alan explained.

  Early on the fourth day of battle, the U.S. Air Force reappeared in strength. Desperate American assaults from the air and on the ground failed to reopen I-5. Fifty-three wrecked M1A3s on the freeway showed the futility of the attacks. Instead, the Chinese continued to advance, using bulldozers to shove aside the useless American hulks. The Chinese advance was slower than before. Even so, fresh units and a continuous expenditure of material wore down the defenders.

  “I’ve never seen anything like it,” General Alan told those in the White House bunker. “The will to fight, to drive through—someone has inflamed the Chinese with a greater determination than we’ve ever seen before.”

  If that wasn’t enough, news from the eastern SoCal Fortification had suddenly become ten times worse than the western drive on LA.

  In the central to eastern SoCal Fortifications, no Blue Swan missiles had exploded. But now mass Chinese armor had broken through at Calexico. The city was near the eastern edge of the Californian border with Arizona. Instead of encircling the embattled Army Group and possibly annihilating it, the enemy armor had swept north past El Centro and raced for Brawley and the Salton Sea. According to General Alan, it looked as if the Chinese were using the desert to swing well east of the southern Californian urban areas. Instead, they were heading for the pass in Palm Springs on Interstate 10. If the massed armor could break though there, they would find LA nearly defenseless, as those forces had headed south to stave off the Chinese on Interstates 5 and 15. If LA fell now, that would irrevocably trap Army Group SoCal and possibly net the enemy nearly eight hundred thousand American troops.

  General Alan explained why the fortifications at Calexico had fallen, showing them with the holo-vid. Like everyone else at the conference table, Anna knew the U.S. could not afford such losses this early in the war. It could mean having to retreat from California altogether.

  Anna, President Sims and the others watched a Chinese wave assault. The Chinese attacked the fortifications like a horde of ants,. A steel curtain of enemy shells advanced ahead of the Chinese hordes. Missiles came down on the battered fortification in what must have been thunderous salvoes. Then Chinese died as American machine-gun strongpoints began firing. Mines blew up in a portion of the defenses. Still the Chinese came, hunched like turtles with their rucksacks and in their body armor.

  “Look,” the President said, pointing. “What’s happening over there?”

  General Alan—Chairman of the Joint Chiefs—nodded at his aide. She adjusted the holo-video. Where the President pointed, it now zoomed larger.

  Anna watched in sick fascination. Heavily-armored Chinese—in some kind of exoskeleton-enhanced body armor—fired integral machine guns. The gun was part of the battle-suit. They shot down their own soldiers who had turned and fled from the exploding minefield. A few of those unlucky Chinese fired at their tormenters. One exoskeleton-enhanced soldier staggered backward from the slam of bullets. Once he righted himself, he continued to gun down the “cowardly” offenders.
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  “Those are Chinese officers killing their own men,” the President said. “Is that correct?”

  No one spoke until Anna felt compelled to say, “Yes, Mr. President. If you’ll notice the insignia of the heavily-armored Chinese—the lightning bolt—those are East Lightning officers.”

  “Yes?” the President asked. “Is that significant?”

  “The soldiers marching over the minefield must belong to a penal battalion,” Anna said. “They are controlled by East Lightning political commissars. Some of the soldiers…it looks as if they’re trying to run away and that is not allowed.”

  “Incredible,” the President said. “Why not capture and discipline them, using the soldiers again?”

  Anna could have told him that the Chinese had more political offenders than they knew what to do with. In fact, they had too many males in general. Shooting them down like this was much easier and served as a bitter lesson to the others.”

  After another few moments, the President nodded to the major.

  She adjusted the controls and the holo-vid resumed as before. Despite staggering enemy losses, the wave assault reached the Americans, swamping the defenders. Enemy armor now began to reinforce the attack.

  General Alan spoke up. “Word of these wave assaults has spread among our troops. I have seen more than one report of badly shaken morale.”

  The President’s features hardened. “This is an opportunity for us to bloody the Chinese. Surely our soldiers can see that.”

  “Maybe,” General Alan said. “Mostly, they’re terrified of finding themselves surrounded by the Chinese. There are already reports of enemy atrocities. The Chinese are letting some of their soldiers butcher prisoners.”

  President Sims rubbed his chin angrily. “We need to spread those reports far and wide to ensure our soldiers fight to the death and don’t surrender.”

  Alan nodded.

  “Continue with the battle report,” the President said.