It took less than a minute for all the soldiers to get off the choppers and place some distance between themselves and their airborne chariots.
Zip, zip, crack, zip.
Bullets zinged right over their heads. Enemy soldiers nearby did their best to shoot down the helicopters before they could get away.
“Enemy soldiers, six o’clock, three hundred meters!” shouted one of the sergeants.
Ratatat, ratatat, ratatat.
Several of the M240G gunners opened fire on the small band of enemy soldiers.
Corporal Webster ran for cover next to a row of trees.
Snap, snap, crack.
Several bullets hit the tree trunk just as his body slammed against it. A single bullet zipped right past his head, close enough for him to hear the bee-like buzzing sound as it flew past him. He quickly brought his M4 to his shoulder and found the source of the gunfire. Several hundred meters below them was a small dirt trail, and from the looks of it, a squad of Chinese soldiers must have been patrolling there before their helicopters had suddenly showed up out of nowhere.
Taking aim at one of the soldiers, Webster squeezed off several rounds, forcing one of the enemy soldiers to duck behind a tree. In response, one of the PLA soldiers turned the PKM machine gun he was brandishing toward the section of trees Webster and his squad were using for cover. Rounds slapped the trees and brush around them as they ducked.
Before any of Webster’s men could return fire, one of the Apache gunships that had been escorting their rides opened up on the dirt trail with several antimaterial rockets. Showers of flame, shrapnel and dirt peppered the area. An eerie calm replaced what had been a chaotic scene seconds before. Everyone held their fire to see if the gunships had killed them all. When no one fired back, one of the officers yelled, “Hurry up and get your positions set up!”
The soldiers moved swiftly, as though they had suddenly awoken from a dream. They had no idea how long it would take for the enemy to find out where they were and send them another welcoming party, and they needed to do their best to prepare.
Five hours went by as Corporal Webster and his fellow soldiers worked on digging their fighting positions. They moved down the ridge a few hundred meters to the dirt trail where they’d first encountered the enemy soldiers. Since the underbrush had already been cleared there, that trail would make an excellent front edge of their lines; they’d have an open area in front of their firing positions while remaining tucked away just inside the tree line.
While many soldiers were tasked with digging three-man fighting positions or four-man machine-gun positions, others unraveled rolls of concertina wire roughly forty meters in front of their new fortifications. Just behind the rolls of razor-tipped wires, some of the other soldiers set up and concealed Claymore anti-personnel mines and other nasty surprises some of the engineers were rigging up. Further out, about a dozen meters in front of the razor wire, a few soldiers strung up trip flares with some Claymores — those would act as an early-warning system of sorts once the sun went down.
Corporal Webster took a break for a moment to stretch and crack his back and smiled at all the bustling activity and layers of defense they were building. They had no idea how long they’d have to hold this position; they might as well do their best to make it as tough on the enemy as possible.
He looked back. Roughly three hundred meters below them was the bottom of the ridge. The trees there opened up to reveal relatively flat farmland and the edges of a small village or city another seven to ten kilometers away. That was where their armored reinforcements would be linking up with them from.
“I hope we can hold out long enough,” Webster thought.
Staff Sergeant Sanchez was walking the line his platoon was responsible for when he came upon Corporal Webster, Specialist Ryle and Private First Class Miller, all sitting with their feet dangling over the edge of their foxhole and their MREs in their laps.
“You guys look like the Three Stooges — you know that, right? Your fighting position looks like crap,” he proclaimed. He proceeded to point out the fact that their foxhole was still only a meter deep, the edges were falling in on it and they had little cover in front of their fighting position.
“We’re taking a break, Sarge. Can’t you see we’re eating?” Ryle retorted.
Sanchez snickered. “Five months ago, you guys hated each other, now you’re all jokes and sharing an MRE. Never mind. Get this position ready. I’ll give you guys another five minutes to finish your food, then I want to see you guys clean this up. Most of the platoon is already done.”
When he’d left, Corporal Webster asked, “You guys think this war is almost over? It’s practically November, which means winter is almost here. I really don’t want to be sitting in a foxhole when it starts to snow.”
“How should I know? I’m just a dumb guy from Compton,” replied Ryle in his usual manner.
“You’re lucky, Ryle. You didn’t spend months on end pulling occupation duty,” Private Miller responded. “I’d rather be out here in a foxhole facing off against enemy soldiers than patrolling through one of those Chinese urban jungles.” With that, he finished off the last bite of his cheese tortellini and stuffed the empty pouch back into the MRE bag.
“Hey, if you’re done, get back to work,” gibed Corporal Webster, who was still finishing off the last of the cheese spread on his crackers.
“I wouldn’t call getting shot lucky,” Ryle shot back, “but the ice cream and pretty nurses were a nice break from looking at your ugly mugs.” They all snickered at the joke.
“OK, guys, let’s finish off this position,” said Corporal Webster. “We’ve delayed long enough to avoid getting picked for any special duties Sanchez or the lieutenant might have for those overzealous gophers who already finished their positions.”
The three of them chuckled at that. They’d learned early on that if you finished your task too quickly, you could find yourself “voluntold” to go work on another task, so they’d learned how to milk a project just long enough not to get in trouble.
Slowly and steadily, the day turned to night as the soldiers of 2-14 Infantry settled into their newly dug fighting positions and waited.
Corporal Webster wondered if they’d be attacked during the night, or if their luck would hold out and the enemy would decide they weren’t worth the trouble.
“Stay frosty, and get ready for stand-to,” Staff Sergeant Sanchez announced. “Several of the LP/OPs radioed in a large concentration of enemy troops headed our way.” He quickly moved down the line to the next foxhole to spread the word.
The three of them exchanged nervous glances as they readied their weapons, shifting uncomfortably in their fighting position.
“Maybe we should have made this thing a little bigger,” thought Webster as he placed a couple of hand grenades on the ground in front of him, ready in case he needed them.
“You think the sarge could be any more vague with his description of what’s out there?” asked Specialist Ryle. He pulled himself up and stood behind the squad’s heavy machine gun.
“Maybe the LP/OP spotted a squad or platoon and thought it was larger than it really was. It’s dark out,” replied Private Miller nervously. He pulled another hundred-round belt for the M240G out of his ruck and began to link it together with the one already fed into Ryle’s weapon.
Before any of them could say anything more, what sounded like a freight train zoomed right over their heads, then impacted violently several hundred meters up the ridge.