Anyway, McCormick and I were not there. After we sent the prisoners back to Citadel, we headed north and east, moving further from the town and into the hills and mountains.
We could hear the mine fields detonating and the Chinese tanks firing at Devil Hill and being hit with missiles. McCormick called a halt to our march, and he, Dietrich, Ivanov and I talked about our next move.
McCormick began, “Taiwanese intel says there’s a brigade-level or higher command center set up in the Route 5 tunnel a mile northeast of Farmers’ Ridge. Could be a chance to take out a general or two.”
I asked, “Why don’t the Chinese use the tunnel to move their armored forces south to Yilan and bypass Citadel entirely?”
McCormick said, “Taiwanese forces collapsed the tunnel further to the south a few days ago. The Chinese put the command center there because the tunnel is under a mountain. It’s completely impervious to air or artillery attacks, and it shouldn’t be too hard to fortify the place against a ground assault.”
Brushing long hair out of his face, Dietrich said, “And a ground assault is exactly what you have in mind, yes?”
Shrugging, McCormick replied, “I don’t know. I just know that I want to figure out a way to get the command center. The Airborne’s getting its ass kicked with the Teatime Hill debacle. If we can shift the public’s attention, it might quiet down the prominent public figures calling for the surrender of Citadel.”
“But a ground assault into a tunnel is a tricky business,” Dietrich noted. “The PLA only has to guard two directions, which are presumably clear of cars and offer no meaningful possibility of cover or surprise. There might be ventilation shafts, but those could not possibly fit a person. So how do we attack the command center?”
No one spoke for a minute. Dietrich suggested, “Could we just bring down the tunnel on both sides? It might be better to trap the Chinese generals inside than kill them, it would probably take days to open the tunnel back up and would distract effort from attacking Citadel.”
“Anyone ever bring down a tunnel?” McCormick asked.
We all looked at Ivanov. He’s forty-ish and looks like he’s seen everything that can possibly happen in war. He shook his head. “I studied this problem once at Spetsnaz. We would either need to drill into the walls to plant explosives or use a prohibitively large amount — thousands of kilograms. So, no, we can’t destroy the tunnel.”
“Then we’re back to a ground assault,” McCormick declared. “We hit the tunnel entrance, a few of us go in, and the rest hold the entrance until we can get out.”
Dietrich looked skeptical. “They will overwhelm us. The PLA must have thirty or forty thousand infantry in the area by now, not to mention tanks.”
“So you’re saying we need a diversion,” Ivanov said. “We need to do something to call their attention away from the command center at the same time as our attack.”
“With that many infantry, it’d have to be a very large event to divert enough of them to give us a chance,” Dietrich observed.
Realization dawned on me. “There’s only one thing important enough to generals that they’d send their own guards after it: their own skins.”
The others laughed, but I continued, “My Airborne squad can hit the tunnel from the other side. The guards will swarm over all that, and in the confusion your team can go in with silenced weapons and take out the generals.”
The survivors of the Lafayette Initiative considered the suggestion. Dietrich asked, “How far away is the other tunnel entrance?”
McCormick pointed to the map on his phone. “Three or four miles. Far enough that reinforcements sent there wouldn’t be able to get back to the other side in time to stop us.”
Ivanov said, “So the Airborne squad hoofs it the three or four miles, opens fire, and pulls out after a ten minute firefight. We three sneak in the front door.” Despite his American accent, Ivanov gave a very Russian shrug. “It could work, but I think we need one more gun on our end. We need to leave at least one person at the entrance to the tunnel to secure an exit after we’re done.”
“It has to be Barker,” McCormick said as if the choice were entirely obvious. “She’s a better shot and more aggressive than the others in her squad.”
Ivanov and Dietrich grunted their agreement and I took quiet pride at their faith in me. McCormick had never been in combat with a woman before, but his choosing me wasn’t affirmative action or everybody-gets-a-medal bullshit. He’s above that.
“I’m in,” I said solemnly.
Grinning, McCormick said, “I wasn’t even going to bother asking.”
I passed the orders along to Sergeant Moore, the next most senior Airborne soldier in the squad. McCormick advised him to stick to the trees as much as possible to hide from drones and take an indirect route to the other end of the tunnel to lessen the chance of contacting a Chinese patrol. No one was under any illusions of how such an incident would play out when neither I or the Lafayette Initiative men were around.
McCormick, Ivanov, Dietrich, and I would initiate our attack in two hours, six minutes after midnight local time. The Airborne squad was to attack the far end of the tunnel at midnight on the dot. They would keep up a firefight for ten minutes, then retreat back into the hills to rendezvous with us at a mountain five miles away at 6 AM. We hoped that the PLA reinforcements would be caught moving toward the Airborne squad when news broke out of the fight at the other end of the tunnel, then abandon pursuit of the Airborne squad and focus on us. With more experience than the Airborne squad, we had a reasonable chance of getting away in the dark.
Then there was nothing to do but wait. We were in densely forested terrain, but there wasn’t much we could do. Obviously, we couldn’t light a fire, but we also couldn’t use a cell phone or any device that gave off electronic emissions. Ivanov and Dietrich slept a few feet away, and I wondered how many fights you have to be in before you can sleep right before a battle.
McCormick and I shared one of the Army's awful “meals ready to eat” (MRE) and talked, first about tactics and the coming battle, and then the conversation turned to the ambush at the river crossing. “It was a hell of a charge you had there at the end,” McCormick said. “I could see the Chinese panicking. A sweet moment.”
I said, “That it was.” With a grimace, I added, “It’s the first time in my career I’ve felt like I made the right decision joining the Army. Most of the time it’s just bullshit and paperwork.”
McCormick nodded as if it was a thought he’d had many times. “Why didn’t you try for special forces? That’s how I got into the Knights.”
I shook my head. “Women aren’t allowed in special forces.”
“Oh, right, that rule. Everybody’s going to be talking about that after Concitor lost all those women in the bayonet charge on Teatime Hill.”
I spat. “War is about courage and will and decisiveness. I would have ripped those Chinese apart on Teatime Hill.”
“I believe it,” McCormick said without a smile. “You’re an unusual woman.”
Missing the compliment, I replied hotly, “A lot of the men there weren’t born for war. I was.”
McCormick asked, “Were your parents in the military?”
“No,” I said. “My mother’s a nurse and my father… he was a governor.”
Arching an eyebrow, McCormick inquired, “With connections like that, why are you only a lieutenant and not a damn general?”
“Mom was an intern. He didn’t stick around.”
McCormick nodded, knowing I wasn’t looking for condolences. “Whatever happened, you grew up strong. You should have been a Knight.”