Thornton had picked off seven PLA soldiers before anyone began to fire at his position. Seconds later, a Marine gunship flew nearby and fired off several anti-personnel rockets in the direction of the PLA soldiers, blowing them up. Joe saw one enemy soldier get thrown in the air, landing maybe ten feet from where he had just been standing. He saw the man desperately grab for his left arm, which had just been ripped off by the explosion. Joe took aim and shot him in the head, ending his misery.
The attack helicopter that had randomly appeared near them quickly darted off to find another target to attack. Now that the enemy had been neutralized, Thornton and his men continued to clear the area for the follow-on forces that would arrive soon. They needed to push several vehicles in the parking lot to the outer edge and create a clearing for additional helicopters to land. Once they finished, the parking lot would have enough room for two Razorbacks to land at a time.
When Joe walked into the reception area of the office building, he saw his two coms Marines had their laptops up and running and had pulled up the portable digital map board. As he began to study the map board, he learned the current positions of the Marines in his battalion and company. A couple of drone feeds were also being piped in. The drones were identifying pockets of enemy soldiers and overlaying them on the map in relationship to the Marines’ positions. Several red flashing symbols represented the battalions’ primary objectives and targets that had not yet been neutralized, while others were now listed as blue, indicating that they had been destroyed.
Studying the map for a second, he could see that the third platoon had successfully taken out those enemy anti-aircraft guns and were now en-route to his position. First platoon appeared to be bogged down, still trying to accomplish their primary objective. It looked like most of second platoon had been killed after two of the three Razorbacks carrying them had been shot down. The remaining squad of soldiers was still pressing on with their mission, securing a nearby road junction. He was going to need to detail off a squad from third platoon to assist them once they arrived. As he located his fourth platoon, he was able to determine that their first and second squad had secured one of the key bridges near the S324 highway.
An hour after their crash landing, a steady stream of Razorbacks and heavy helicopter transporters began to arrive at Thornton’s position. Nearly four hundred additional Marines arrived, along with eight Wolverines. Captain Thornton’s Company had cleared one of five initial landing zones, to assist the incoming battalions of Marines in securing the rest of the city. The rest of his battalion had secured three ports, which were now being used to offload the more heavily armored Pershing tanks and other armored vehicles that would begin to make their way to Nantong and the Yangtze River.
General Li Zuocheng had been promoted to Eastern Theater Commander two months ago. He knew this was an important promotion because he would most likely be defending against an American invasion, one that could take place anytime. He was not without resources. He had 1,300,000 soldiers to defend nearly 500 miles of shoreline, along with some of the most important industrial cities and sectors in the country. His force was broken down into 82 divisions; 14 of them were heavily armored divisions, while the rest were a mix of mechanized and light infantry division. To augment his force, he had 22 PLA militia divisions, which were lightly equipped and poorly trained infantry.
He knew the Americans were going to launch an invasion of mainland China, the question his officers and planners were trying to decipher was when and where. They knew that Nantong had the majority of the deep water heavy ports in Jiangsu Province, a key foothold to Shanghai; this made it a prime target. The capture of Shanghai and the industrial centers around it would be a big blow to China. General Zuocheng knew the American President wanted to break China up because they had grown too powerful; he could not let that happen.
At 0300 in the morning, one of his aides knocked on his door and woke him up. Li was upset. He had been getting one of the best night’s sleep he had had in the past week. The Americans had been attacking the various airfields in his military district with high altitude bombings and cruise missiles. Most of the cruise missiles were shot down, but the F41s had been modified to now carry two 500 lb. Joint Direct Attack Munitions, an old-fashioned dumb bomb with a specialized GPS and laser-guided nose, and guidable tail fins. It was fortunate that the Americans only had a few hundred of these aircraft, or they could single-handedly dismantle his armored forces. Once it became clear what the Americans were doing, he had ordered his forces to disperse into the cities.
There had been a lull in the bombing the past couple of days as the Americans shifted their bombing attacks to Taiwan. It was during this lull that Li had ordered 34 divisions to the Shanghai area. His gut was telling him the Americans were about to attack. When his aide had knocked on his door, he just knew that the Americans must have launched their assault. After he hurriedly got dressed, he followed his aide down the hallway, to the stairs that would lead to where his operations center was set up.
Several guards at the entrance to the operations center snapped to attention and saluted General Zuocheng as he arrived. He returned their salutes and continued into the nerve center of his command. What he saw when he entered was controlled chaos with officers on the phone obtaining status reports from various sectors, and others analyzing the dozens of live drone feeds being piped in from Rudong and the nearby ports and harbors. He stood there for a second looking at the drone feeds of the Rudong. He saw the sky was lit up with tracers, flying in nearly every direction. He also saw what appeared to be hundreds upon hundreds of helicopters arriving from the direction of the sea, landing in dozens of areas across the city.
One of his generals walked up to him asking, “General Zuocheng, I would like your permission to order the 14th Army to Rudong and Nantong to throw the Americans back into the sea.”
General Zuocheng just nodded his approval, leaving his subordinate to make it happen while he moved over to the PLAAF liaison. “General Feng, I need your forces to start attacking those American helicopters,” he said as he pointed to the drone feeds and radar screens showing hundreds of helicopters and aircraft over the city.
The Air Force liaison replied, “Yes sir. We are scrambling aircraft and drones from across the military district to head towards the Americans now.” The invasion was still in the first hours, so Li knew things were fluid and likely to change quickly. What he did not want to do was make the same mistakes the Germans did during the Normandy invasion. They had not rushed all of their forces to the beach, and by the time they had realized that this was the main Allied attack, the Allies had landed too many soldiers and tanks to be pushed back into the channel.
Zuocheng turned to one of his other generals. “I want the militia divisions rushed forward as well. Have them try and break through to the ports and interrupt the enemy operations.”