Invasion: Colorado ia-3 Page 5

  One of the remaining U.S. soldiers let out a rebel yell.

  Jake slid to a halt and looked up. Burning Gunhawk chopper lit the night sky with illumination like an old-time Very flare. Now he could see some of them flying Eagle jetpack whores.

  Jake lifted his M-16, sighted the nearest, led the freak and started firing. In seconds, the flyer did a flip and plunged earthward. Oh, but that was a sight, and even though Jake didn’t know it, he was grinning from ear-to-ear.

  From on the ground, other American guns opened up.

  The Eagle Team flyers fled, but not before two more of them went down.

  After the last of those thudded hard, bouncing up and crashing again, Jake turned to the others.

  “Let’s go!” he shouted. “They’ll be coming back with more. We can bet on that.” He had to shout again until the two remaining Americans lowered their weapons and listened.

  “What are we going to do?” asked a short Alabamian with a pimpled face. He’d been the one to give the rebel yell.

  “Let’s check the dead,” Jake said. “But we have to move fast after that. First we pick the best weapons and—”

  “We can’t head west anymore,” the Alabamian said.

  “You want to play guerilla with the Chinese until we’re dead?” Jake asked. “Or do you want to get back home?”

  “Alabama?”

  “No, you idiot, the American Army,” Jake said.

  “We’d better quit jawing about it,” Jamal said. “The Chinese will be back soon. They don’t like seeing their boys die to us.”

  The last three Americans hurried, checking their buddies and the dead flyers.

  “Maybe we ought to use these jetpacks,” Jamal said.

  “You know how to fly one?” Jake asked.

  “Naw,” Jamal said. “But I bet I could learn.”

  “Look at this,” Jake said. “Jackpot. This one is carrying food.”

  Soon the three of them stuffed their faces with Chinese rations. Jake kept chewing and swallowing rice. Then he heard the distant sound of helos.

  “We have to go,” he said.

  They did. The three of them strode away in the night, trying to put as much distance as they could between them and this latest ambush. It was now or never to get to the 285, cross it and head for the Rio Grande National Forest.

  -2-

  Plans

  SMITH’S FARMHOUSE, SOUTHERN COLORADO

  Paul Kavanagh stared at the angry, desperate old men. They sat in metal fold-up chairs in the cellar of an ancient farmhouse. A single naked light bulb dangled from the ceiling, providing the illumination. Behind the men, the harsh glare of light reflected off stacks of mason jars filled with preserves.

  The basement was damp, cold and moldy. It belonged to a lonely dwelling at the southeastern tip of Colorado where the state met Kansas and Oklahoma. Each of the men wore winter jackets and all had wet pants. They’d trekked here on foot in the rain and through muddy fields to avoid Chinese patrols. Soon this wicked rain would stop and it would become cold again. True winter would howl down with freezing bitterness, hardening the ground and giving mobility to the stalled armies.

  Romo sat in a chair behind him. Paul could hear the assassin’s harsh breathing. Romo had a fever and glassy eyes, but at least this was better than slogging outside. The truth was Romo should be sleeping in a bed upstairs or better yet, receiving medical attention in a hospital. But that would have to wait.

  Each of the old civilians had a rifle or a shotgun. Some laid the weapons across their knees. Others clutched them upright between their legs. The point was: each carried, to Chinese ways of thinking, an illegal weapon. If caught by the enemy, these men would hang by the neck.

  “It’s going to get worse,” Paul told them. “That’s the first thing you need to understand.”

  The seven men stared at him. They didn’t want to hear that.

  “If you’re not in for the long haul,” Paul said, “get out now while you can.”

  “I’d rather die than be Chinese,” one of them said.

  “Probably you’re going to get your wish,” Paul said.

  “Hey,” the farmer named Smith said. “I didn’t bring you here to listen to defeatist talk. We mean to fight. We’re too old for the front lines, but most have us have been hunting since youth.”

  “You’re not too old,” Paul said. “You could join the Militia. They’re taking anyone who’s willing.”

  The men glanced at each other. Their expressions had the feeling of, “Why did we come to hear this?”

  “Listen,” Paul said, “I’m telling you this because you have to want it so badly that you can’t sleep otherwise.”

  “Want what?” Smith said. He was thin and of medium height. The wrinkled, lined face said he must be sixty at least, and held an AR-15 in his gnarled hands.

  “Want to get rid of the Chinese,” Paul said. “Once you start, they’re going to hunt you night and day like you wouldn’t believe. They might even bulldoze your house or your neighbor’s house to teach all of you a lesson. They might hang your wife in front of you, or hang your kids or grandkids if they’re around. This isn’t a game and it’s not like hunting ducks. It is war, guerilla-style. Now, after you’ve thought about those things and if you’re still prepared to go the distance, then fight. Otherwise, go back home and survive this mess.”

  “Why aren’t you at home?” Smith said.

  “Of course I would like it better than doing this,” Paul said. “I haven’t seen my wife or son…well, for a while anyway. But I’m an American. For me, that means I’m either free or I’m dead. You’ve just seen that I say what’s on my mind. It’s an old habit and it’s a habit only for a free man who can back up his words. So you see, I’m not suited to being a slave to the Chinese. I might as well fight.”

  “The same goes for me,” Smith said.

  The other men nodded.

  Paul stared each of them in the eyes. They were angry and five of them looked determined. One was scared but seemed like a fighter. When Paul looked at the biggest man—a farmer named Knowles—the man dropped his gaze. Paul didn’t like that. No, he didn’t trust the big man. Knowles struck him as someone who would eventually inform on his friends to get out of trouble. It was a gut feeling, that’s true, but Paul had long ago decided to trust such an instinct. He really didn’t like the idea of helping these gentlemen and seeing a coward like Knowles turning in his friends and ruining everything.

  Maybe it was the mental image of the little girl he’d seen hanging before, the one with the red tennis shoes. He couldn’t get it out of his thoughts.

  “If you’re decided on doing this,” Paul said, “you have to figure out your objectives. The first thing is this. Don’t ever square off against the regular soldiers and never think about testing the White Tiger Commandos. If you want to drive out the Chinese, you have to stay alive long enough to do some real damage to them. That means IEDs or booby-traps. If you’re lucky, maybe it means gasoline and a match burning up supplies. If you get the chance, pour sugar down a gas tank. Heck, slash a tire. This is the death of a thousand cuts, a million cuts. Every little bit helps. But don’t think you can get in a firefight with enemy soldiers. That’s suicide. They have training, armor and much better weapons than you’ll have.”

  “You said you could give us some supplies,” Smith said.

  “I can—if you have a truck with gas.”

  “I have,” Smith said.

  “Good. You’re going to take us to a place.”

  “What place?”

  “You’re going to tell me,” Paul said. “It has to be lonely, where no Chinese would see a helo land. He and I are leaving, but we’ll give you the supplies from the helicopter.”

  Smith nodded. “Fair enough, but first you need to explain more about this guerilla work. I want specifics on tactics. You need strategy to hunt ducks. I figure that holds true with what we’re thinking.”

  For the next hour and a half,
Paul did just that. Several of the men took out notepads and jotted things down.

  Afterward, Paul said, “You ready?”

  Smith nodded.

  “It’s going to take some work unloading the helo,” Paul said. “You’re strong, why don’t you join us?” He pointed at Knowles, the big man who still refused to look him in the eye.

  Knowles glanced around at the others. He looked as if he wanted to ask, “Why me?” But he nodded in the end. He didn’t seem popular with the others, and that only confirmed Paul’s instincts about the man.

  A half hour later, Paul and Romo sat squashed in the cab with Smith. Romo radiated feverish heat. Knowles hunched in the back of the pickup, bundled in raingear. Drops hit the windshield and Smith ground the gears. They moved slowly across a gravel road, negotiating muddy ruts.

  Paul was on the radio with chopper pilot. Outside in the darkness, it was flat and lonely, the middle of nowhere, Colorado.

  “I’m glad I found you earlier today,” Smith said. “I’m a praying man, and I was asking God to send us help. I believe he sent you.”

  Paul wasn’t sure how to broach the topic, so he decided to plow ahead straight. “The man in the back.”

  “You mean Knowles?” Smith asked.

  “He doesn’t have the guts to see this through,” Paul said.

  Smith glanced at him. The old-timer wore a cowboy hat. “Are you kidding? Knowles hates the Chinese more than any of us.”

  “That may be,” Paul said. “But he’s going to fold later. It’s in his eyes.”

  “You can’t know that. You can’t predicate the future.”

  “This time I do know,” Paul said. “Fighting and soldiers, I’ve learned the hard way about this stuff. Maybe that’s the only way anyone really learns anything. Look, Mr. Smith, this isn’t a picnic. This is a fight to the bloody finish. You have to have haters and finishers on your team. That goes double with this sort of thing. Enemy Intelligence will be one of your greatest worries. You can’t have people on your side who will rat you out.”

  “Knowles is…” Smith gripped the steering wheel with greater force. “He’s a starter. He gets excited about a thing. But damn all, you’re right, he quits once he gets tired of something. Maybe you have a point.”

  “It’s a common trait,” Paul said, “getting revved up about something but getting sick of it after the long haul.”

  “What do you suggest I do about it?”

  “I don’t think you should do anything,” Paul said. “I chose him to join us for a reason.”

  Smith glanced at him. “Mister, if you think you’re going to shoot one of my friends—”

  “Hold on. No one is talking about shooting anyone.”

  “You picked him to come along for a reason, you said.”

  Paul liked Smith. The farmer had brains and he obviously had guts. Maybe these old men would make a difference after all. “I wanted Knowles along but not so I could shoot him. I’m taking him with us.”

  “Say again.”

  “We’re headed to Denver,” Paul said. “Knowles is going along for the ride. After this is over—the war—he can come home.”

  “And hate me for the rest of his life,” Smith said. “I don’t know about this.”

  “Here it is,” Paul said. “This is what I’ve been talking about. Your decisions are only going to get harder after this. If you can’t even do this with Knowles, to save your own life and his too maybe, you’d better call it quits. This is the time to back out.”

  Smith drove in silence. The truck slid once and he gently applied the brakes. Once the Chevy was steady again, he gave it a little gas. “Okay,” he whispered. “But you’re a bastard, mister, a royal bastard and I guess that means I’m one too.”

  Romo lifted his chin off his chest. The assassin chuckled hoarsely. “This is true,” he whispered. “It is why we will win. In the end, we’re tougher than the Chinese because we have Paul Kavanagh.”

  Smith glanced at Romo, looked at Paul and shook his head. “I hope you’re right, mister. Because this is probably the worst thing I’ll have ever done in my life.”

  “Then consider yourself lucky,” Paul said, “because this is nothing compared to what you might have to do soon.”

  An hour later, Paul Kavanagh rode in a helo, with the dark, wet land flashing beneath them. Romo shivered, wrapped in a blanket. Knowles sat hunched in back, massaging his jaw. He’d fought the decision, but to little avail.

  Paul wasn’t proud of what he’d done. In fact, he hated it. But he hated even worse the thought of those six old men in the cellar dangling from trees by their necks. This was a dirty war. There was no doubt about that. It meant you had to go all the way, if you wanted to win, and baby, he planned to drive these invaders into the sea where they could all drown to death.

  DENVER, COLORADO

  Colonel Stan Higgins walked through the Stone Lab Behemoth Manufacturing Plant. On the western outskirts of Denver, it was a small site really, considering that these boys and girls built the biggest tank in history.

  The Behemoth was a three hundred ton monstrosity. The first twenty experimental tanks had gone a long way toward defeating the Chinese thrust into California beginning this April. Well, maybe not defeating, but blunting it enough so the attack had finally ground to a halt.

  The Californian War had cost the Behemoth Regiment too many of its tanks, but they’d gotten the job accomplished. One by one, the battered survivors had left Southern California as cargo haulers laboriously transported them back to Denver.

  Stan wore a thick coat and gloves. The gloves were old, with a piece of duct tape wrapped around his left index finger. It was so cold in the plant he could see his breath. He watched as technicians and engineers worked around the latest tank. Heaters billowing hot wavy air surrounded the workers and the half-finished Behemoth, which didn’t even have its cannon yet. A rattling chain hoist with a hook moved along its track on the high ceiling, bringing another heavy component to the vehicle.

  The Behemoth was an experimental tank that used a force cannon, or rail-gun, to fire its projectiles. Before April and the war in California no one had known if the U.S. government was going to build many more of them. This lone plant built the tanks one at a time, handcrafted them so to speak. There was nothing assembly line about this.

  Stan shook his head. He was in his fifties, an aging athlete. He was still five ten, but weighed almost two hundred pounds. That was fifteen pounds too heavy, in his opinion. When he could, he lifted weights and shot a few hoops with his men in a local high school gym, but his passion was Ping-Pong, and no one in the regiment could beat him. Now that he was a colonel, did some of the younger troops pull their shots? He sure hoped not.

  Stan dyed his hair to its original blondish-brown color, although he’d be damned if he’d ever let anyone know. He had too many aches and pains in his joints and he had a bum knee. If he quit lifting and playing basketball, his minor injuries might heal up, but then he would probably turn flabby. His greatest physical dread was becoming old, fat and weak.

  Too bad those weren’t his only worries.

  His boy Jake was missing. The authorities had shipped his college-aged son straight from the Detention Center, where he’d served time for protesting President Sims, to a Militia battalion. The Chinese had gobbled up the battalion in Texas during the summer battles where they’d also devoured entire American Army corps. Was Jake dead, in a Chinese POW camp or had he become one of the thousands of American soldiers who had joined the Resistance behind enemy lines? Maybe because of the unknowing, Stan’s wife had retreated even deeper into her soaps. It was all she did: sit in front of the TV and watch make-believe because life had become too horrible for her.

  No, Stan didn’t want to think about Jake or the screw-ups who had sent an untrained youth into battle. If he did think about it, he would become by turn too sad or angry, and he couldn’t afford either emotion now.

  Focus, old man. Try to pay attention w
hile you’re here. You might learn something new.

  The plant manager—a gangling man with a billy-goat beard—stood beside him, rambling on about the newest additions to the latest Behemoth.

  Stan would have liked to tell the man that was the wrong way to build a war-winner. The Germans during World War II had dicked with their many variations of tanks. Instead of picking one decent design and sticking with it—and mass-producing it—they had frittered away numbers by trying to find the perfect vehicle. The Russians on the other hand had mass produced T-34s and done just fine.

  It would impress me better if this plant could produce more than one tank every four weeks.

  Several months ago President Sims had thrown the regiment’s twenty tanks into the cauldron of California’s spring battles. Thirteen battered semi-wrecks had made it out. Since May, the workers here had been refitting the monsters, bringing them back to battle-worthiness. In that time, they’d also added four new tanks. That meant, as of this moment in late October, the Behemoth Regiment consisted of seventeen tanks.

  Seventeen tanks, no matter how good, could not pull a rabbit out of the hat this time. The situation and weather—and the soggy soil—absolutely prohibited it.

  Stan turned up the fur-lined collar of his great coat. He nodded, hearing the plant manager, absorbing the data, but not really listening with his whole mind. He had other worries, other thoughts.

  In Alaska and during the California fight, he’d been a captain. They had temporarily upgraded him to major in California, but it hadn’t stuck. Several weeks after the end of the fight, another promotion came: to colonel of the Behemoth Regiment. That promotion had been made permanent.

  He had been in Denver for several months now. His main task had been reassembling the Behemoth Regiment and teaching the crews how to fight and defeat the enemy. He had been absorbing the information learned in California and thinking hard about it.