“Ok. Let them be the ones to carry out the attack,” said the President hesitantly. Then he unfolded his arms before changing the topic. “I want to move to Taiwan,” he said. “How are the landings progressing?”
The staffers changed the maps to show Taiwan. The scene looked like a hot mess with a swarm of red and blue icons all over the place and arrows to match.
Clearing his throat before proceeding, Admiral Meyers began, “Forty-eight hours ago, we began the liberation of Taiwan. The force we landed in Taitung City on the southeast side of the island has secured our first beachhead. The Australian Army captured the city while our paratroopers secured the enemy air base and the city airport. The paratroopers are now moving to secure the mountains that overlooked the valley and city below. Once this area is captured, it’s going to create a safe corridor for us to position ground-attack aircraft and helicopters. It’ll also provide us with a buffer zone to start landing more heavy armor units. As we get more troops ashore, they’ll move up Highway 9 and the coastal highways to link up with our northern force.”
Meyers hit a button to zoom into a different area of the map. “Moving to the landings further north — we hit Yulan County with multiple landing points, so our forces wouldn’t be bunched up.” He paused for a moment, taking a deep breath. “Our forces are taking a beating there right now, Sir. We’re two days into the landings, and the Marines have only captured roughly a kilometer inland in some areas, and as far as six kilometers in others. We’re in the process of moving more naval and air assets to support the ground attack now—”
The President interrupted, “—What’s the holdup? Why are our forces still stuck on the shoreline?”
“The city of Yulan sits in kind of a low-lying basin if you will. On nearly all sides, it’s surrounded by large ridgelines and mountains. The PLA has built a series of bunker complexes throughout this area, and they’re able to rain down a lot of death and destruction on our forces. Our Marines have to fight their way to the ridgelines and mountains, and then fight their way into these bunker and tunnel complexes to clear them out. It’s going to take us a little while to root them out and secure the area. Depending on how many soldiers the PLA wants to commit to this battle, it could take us several weeks or even a month,” he replied.
The President squirmed in his seat uncomfortably, then seemed to be lost in thought for a moment.
After an awkward pause, the President had a look as though a lightbulb had just gone off in his head. “Admiral, when my father was in World War II, he said they had some guys in their unit that used to use flamethrowers against these bunker complexes,” he explained. “I don’t mean to micromanage, but are we using some of these older weapons that worked well during the past wars to help solve this problem?” Foss clearly wanted to look for a way to contribute to the effort rather than just giving permission for the generals to do something.
General Kyle Stirewalt, the Chief of Staff of the Army, jumped in to answer this question before anyone else could. “We are using some of the older weapons of the past, Mr. President. However, we also have some newer stuff we are using as well. I will admit, at first, we didn’t realize how difficult of a problem these bunker complexes would be. We’d been hitting them with bunker-busting bombs, but some of these complexes are dug so deeply into the mountains that they aren’t easily destroyed. While we may demolish an entrance or outer bunker, we haven’t been effectively striking deep inside them. Short of using a nuclear-tipped weapon, it’s hard to reach that far down. So, yes, Sir, we have started to reissue flamethrowers again — albeit, much safer and better versions of those weapons, but yes, we are reissuing them. Another new weapon we’re also looking at using is gas.”
The President stiffened when Stirewalt mentioned the word gas, but he didn’t stop the general from speaking, and neither did anyone else.
“We’re going to try an experiment down in the south to see how it will work,” the general explained. “The type of gas we’re going to test is called SP-5. When a person breathes it in, it immediately renders them unconscious for several hours. It won’t kill them, but it will put them to sleep for a while. Our intention is not to slaughter everyone inside the bunker if we can avoid it, but rather to render them incapacitated until our troops can get inside and take them prisoner.”
Foss let out a short breath and smiled once he learned the general wasn’t proposing they use some sort of WMD. He would’ve shut that down in a New York minute if that had been Stirewalt’s intention. But a gas that would render a person incapacitated until they could be taken prisoner, that was something he could live with, especially if it saved American lives.
“OK, General, you have my permission to move forward with that option,” Foss responded. “However, I want to know immediately how effective it is, understood? If it does work, let’s see if we can look to incorporate it in some other manner that might allow us to incapacitate the enemy elsewhere. Perhaps we can find a way to end this war soon without it getting any further out of control.”
Foss turned to eye Admiral Meyers. “What are we going to do about India? They’ve sided with the Eastern Alliance, and that’s a problem for us. With India and China inexplicably working together now, nearly half of the world’s population is now at war with the West. Our troops are already fighting each other in the Russian Far East and now in Europe. What are our options?”
Katelyn Mackie, the President's Chief Cyberwarfare Advisor, responded, “We’re working on that right now, Mr. President. Our hackers are going after their logistical network and doing what they can to infiltrate their network-connected technologies to shut down various segments of their economy. We’re pinpointing our efforts to disrupt the production of war materials that are dependent on one or more components — for example, a special computer component used in a surface-to-air-missile that’s also used in a tank, or an aircraft. If we’re lucky, we can cause a shortage of the part, or hamper the production of the part entirely. We’re also looking for ways to insert malware code or kill codes into the software or hardware of the components of these types of systems. It’s a very technical process, but it will have an effect on their ability to produce their war materials and to sustain the war long-term.”
Admiral Meyers added, “While the introduction of Indian troops in Russia has complicated things, I’d like to note that we handed them a crushing defeat in Siberia over the summer. I won’t dismiss their impact in Europe, but it’s been a year since former president Gates reinstituted the draft. It had been slow at first, getting troops trained and to the front lines. However, they’re now starting to show up in much larger numbers. In Siberia, our forces have hunkered down for the winter. We’re still sending replacements for the losses they took, but they’re nearly back to one hundred percent strength. In Korea and northern China, we’ve also suspended our offensive operations for the time being. We’re consolidating our gains and continuing to hit them with precision-guided strikes with our B-2s and B-1s.
“Our focus now is on supporting the liberation of Taiwan, and Russia,” Meyers continued. “The US Ninth Army in Europe has now surpassed 280,000 soldiers. The Fifth Army, which is still marshaling in France, has now reached 195,000 soldiers. This latest attack by the Russians and Indians is a last gasp, a desperate gamble on their parts to put us on defense. We may lose ground, but it’ll be recaptured in the coming months. The Russians know that, and the Indians know that,” he concluded.