CRACK. My shot hit the officer square in the head. I fired another at the man next to him, another hit. Then my whole squad opened fire. The chatter of light machine guns mixed with the bark of the rifles. Grenade launchers coughed rounds out to explode among the squads on our side of the river.
The PLA were surprised by the initial volley, but they quickly rallied. This was the kind of surprise they had been expecting. The remaining PLA on the far bank looked for targets, but we were too far back into the brush to easily hit from the other side of the river. They eagerly ran for the bridge, ready to come to the aid of their friends.
The PLA commander had known not to bunch his men, but he couldn’t stop their natural reaction to their friends being ambushed. Almost all of the 75-odd PLA infantry on the north side of the river came running for the bridge.
That was when McCormick and his men opened fire. They raked the bridge with grenades and rifle fire, tearing bloody swathes through the ranks of men making their way across. The PLA on the bridge panicked, running for our side of the river, where even more fire awaited them.
Those surprises weren’t enough. Dozens of PLA had fallen, but they still had about half of their original strength, and they had figured out that we were hidden in the brush. They watched for the flashes from our weapons and fired in the right general direction. Two of my guys were hit and their friends reported the fact over the radio.
We were losing momentum. I could feel it. McCormick and his men were still cleaning up the last of the resistance on the north side of the river, but the PLA on our side were settled down, ready to fight it out.
“Coming down to the bridge,” McCormick called over the radio.
Volodya instantly replied, “Negative, still too many on the north side.”
But McCormick was already on his way down. I watched from across the river as he sprinted for the larger rocks on the riverbank. Bullets whipped by him and shattered rocks near his feet, but he kept coming. It was beautiful. He hit the ground and started firing at the PLA on our side of the river, who had taken cover against the fire coming from the south but were unprepared for this new threat from the north. All the while, Volodya and Dietrich were firing on PLA soldiers twenty or thirty yards from McCormick who were slowly realizing that there was an enemy in their midst.
I wasn’t about to let McCormick win the battle single-handedly. “Barker heading down to the river,” I announced on the radio for my squad’s benefit.
The riverbank was about ten yards of open ground which turned relatively quickly to dense foliage. I was on the western end of our line, about fifty yards west of the bridge. I ran to the edge of the foliage, managing not to attract any fire from the western edge of the Chinese line.
I could see how the battle was unfolding. The PLA infantry had an idea in their heads of how the battle would go. We were dug in and immobile, and they would flank us and root us out. Now, I was flanking them.
I ran out into the open, my rifle at my shoulder. Through the chaos, I was careful to target the closest Chinese first, only about a dozen yards away. I had only gotten through three of them when serious return fire started coming my way.
But now it was a race against time. With me pushing on the west flank on the southern side of the river and McCormick pushing from the north, the PLA were confused, on the edge of panic again. Their west flank fell back toward the bridge, but they ran into the survivors from the north side coming the other way. The ultimate result was chaos, and the crossfire from both sides of the river began to tell.
Volodya and Dietrich, having finally cleared the northern bank, came down to the river to support McCormick. They seamlessly rejoined the American sergeant, pushing ahead one at a time while the other two gave covering fire.
Aside from me, the Airborne soldiers stayed in cover. They were not as skilled as McCormick and his friends at fighting on the run, but they didn’t have to be. After all, they were the anvil. They continued to offer withering fire against the Chinese.
At this point, the writing was on the wall. The Chinese commander was dead, dropped by my bullets in the first moments of the fight. I’m not sure if there was enough time for anyone else to even formally claim command. Inside of three minutes, there were only 39 of the original 150 PLA soldiers left, and they were lying prone on the bridge, wholly without cover. They didn’t need a commander to tell them the situation was hopeless.
A PLA soldier threw down his Ak-2000 and covered his head. Three more followed, and soon the firing had ceased altogether.
I called to my squad, “All, come down to the bridge and start taking their weapons away and checking them. Brosnan, keep them covered. Any of them moves, kill ’em.”
I ran over to check on our two wounded. One of them had taken a round to his chest, and his breathing was labored and heavy. I had our medic check him out. “Not sure if he’ll make it,” the medic judged. “Needs surgery quick.”
I assigned two big men to carry him back to Citadel. Then I saw the three Lafayette Initiative soldiers walking down from the far side of the bridge. I jogged over to meet them halfway near the prostrate bodies of the PLA prisoners.
McCormick spoke first. “Nicely done, lieutenant. That charge of yours broke their back.”
For the first time in years, I blushed. “Gotta hit ’em while they’re hurt, Clay.”
“I feel like no one ever calls me that anymore,” McCormick said with an odd smile.
“No one’s called me ’Amy’ since I knocked some asshole out in basic. But you seem like a trustworthy sort.”
“Alright, Amy.”
The moment might have grown awkward if Volodya hadn’t quickly added, “I saw you dispatch your wounded man back to Citadel. I’d suggest you send four or five guys back with our prisoners. Meanwhile, we should probably clear the area.”
McCormick nodded. “The PLA are going to send a much bigger force in a few hours, coming down both sides of Citadel. We’ve bought another four or five hours for the Taiwanese to bring more food, ammo, and weapons to the Airborne. They’re going to need everything they can get.”
A sound like thunder rumbled to the west.
Chapter 3: Concitor
Between Farmers’ Ridge and my adventures with McCormick, it’s easy to forget that we’re still just talking about one day — the first day of the Battle of Pinglin. The Chinese hadn’t yet had time to make a real conventional attempt to take Pinglin, our Citadel. The PLA had nuked Taiwanese lines a fifteen minute peacetime-drive to the north not seven hours earlier, and it took them a while to punch through the remnants of the Taiwanese lines and reorganize their forces on the other side. But now they were ready.
We were also ready. With the time purchased by the defense at Farmers’ Ridge, the Airborne soldiers had built dense defenses blocking the northern route through the town. The men and women of the Airborne had furiously dug trenches, placed mines, and excavated antitank ditches using equipment brought in from Yilan by Taiwanese civilians. The defensive lines were as strong as any static defenses I’d ever seen thrown up in so short a time.
Lieutenant Williams’s smartphone had a strong wireless Internet signal from the Taiwanese mini-satellites that beamed high-speed Internet everywhere on the beleaguered island. He told me that CNN had already dubbed the Airborne defenses the “Equality Line.” That was, of course, an homage to Gutierrez, whose TV interviews had been frequently peppered with the term.
(A typical example: a Fox News correspondent had asked him how he would defeat the Chinese with such a numerical disadvantage, and Gutierrez had bafflingly answered, “The equality and open-mindedness of our soldiers allows them to respond effectively to new challenges.”)