By the tunnel entrances, two heavy machine guns in sand-bag emplacements were manned by PLA infantry. A dozen or so guards supported those emplacements, and the remainder were scanning the area with nightvision scopes or walking patrols. It would probably take them only a few minutes to discover Dietrich and I lying prone on the mountainside.
Dietrich whispered, “Ten seconds until the Airborne squad opens fire.”
For a brief instant, I wondered how McCormick viewed the scene. Then I shook my head.
Time to fight.
From three or four miles away, the battle to the north was not loud, but it was very distinct. The guards reacted visibly, straightening their backs and listening in the distance. With the surrounding mountains, a few would be asking whether they were hearing something to the north or the echoes and reverberations of the Battle of Teatime Hill.
They didn’t have long to wonder. My eyes detected movement near the tunnels, and in a second two explosions rocked the machine gun emplacements, presumably grenades thrown by McCormick and Ivanov.
I had already picked my target: a patrol of five soldiers, almost invisible in the trees about seventy yards away to our right. Whenever the PLA infantry figured out what was going on, the most dangerous Chinese in the battle would be the ones away from the main killing field in front of the tunnels. McCormick and Ivanov could probably sense when they were being flanked, but Dietrich and I needed to make sure we weren’t attacked from the side or rear during the assault.
The five men were spread over about twenty yards, and I started with the one in front, assuming he was the most likely to be an officer. I aimed for his chest and pulled the trigger three times. Our intelligence officer in Citadel had told us that the PLA ballistic armor was marginally capable of stopping a 5.56 millimeter round from our M-4 rifles. With a silencer attached, the muzzle velocity of my rifle had gone down to the point that the ballistic armor had a reasonable chance of stopping a single shot. Multiple impacts in the chest would guarantee a kill.
As the first man fell, I fired on the next one in line. I fired four times at him, hitting him twice. I decided that was probably enough. The third, fourth, and fifth men had hit the dirt and were looking around to figure out who was firing at them. I waited a second to line up the next shot and carefully put a shot straight into the face of the third man, the bullet traversing through his head and out the back of his helmet.
Two left. One of them saw the flash from the muzzle of my rifle and returned fire. Bullets smacked the trees behind me, but I was cold and calm. I sighted on his muzzle flashes and fired ten shots in rapid succession. I couldn’t see the individual impacts, but the man didn’t return fire, so I considered him dead.
The last man in the patrol still didn’t see me, but he could see that a major attack had been launched on the tunnel. He fired randomly into the tree line, trying to make us put our heads down. It didn’t work. I emptied the rest of my clip into him, and he lay motionless on the ground.
I knew that with the number of enemies we faced, I didn’t need to take any time to assess how McCormick and his men were doing; I just needed to focus on killing as many guards as possible. As I reloaded, I saw guards lying prone in front of the tunnel, firing to the north seemingly at random. I picked off one after another, seeing their bodies twitch with the bullet impacts through my red-dot sight.
After taking out four men in front of the tunnel entrances, I couldn’t find any more in that area. I took my eye off my sight to take in the whole scene. I spotted a muzzle flash in the trees off to the left just twenty or thirty yards away from the entrances. The whole area was alive with the thunder of gunfire, so I couldn’t be sure whether the flash I saw was McCormick, Ivanov, or a PLA guard.
I looked to the left and saw movement. Three PLA were running across the mountainside to the left of the road. As Dietrich fired at a target elsewhere on the battlefield, the three-man PLA patrol stopped and hit the deck, having evidently seen Dietrich’s muzzle flashes.
“Hans, heads up left!” I shouted and fired at the same time. Instinctively, I loosed half of my thirty-round clip into the woods so that the PLA infantry would be forced to duck behind trees. I was too late, however. All three of the PLA infantry were firing in our direction, at Dietrich in particular because they’d seen his muzzle flashes.
Two bullets hit the German, and he stopped firing and lay motionless. I didn’t have time to mourn. I was in the zone, and the world slowed for me as I aimed carefully and emptied an entire clip into the three PLA soldiers one shot at a time over a span of about ten seconds. The last began firing wildly in my direction — far too late to stop me.
The battle was about 90 seconds old at this point. I scanned the battlefield for more enemies. The PLA rifles had gone silent, I realized. For at least a moment, the area was quiet.
I stood up slowly and walked over to Dietrich. After seeing him go slack after the two bullets had hit him, I held out little hope that he was alive, but as I knelt beside him, he was still breathing.
One bullet had smashed through the pinky and ring fingers of his right hand on the rifle’s grip, severing them and denting the rifle. The other gashed a furrow atop his head going from left to right, a grazing shot that nevertheless knocked Dietrich senseless.
The head wound wasn’t bleeding badly, so I slapped Dietrich in the face. He slowly came to, mumbling something in German. “Wake up, you lazy bastard, the fight’s over,” I said.
Dietrich shook his head, then said with a moan, “Was zum Teufel ist passiert?”
I didn’t understand. “You ain’t in Germany anymore, Hans. You’re in Taiwan, and you’ve gotta get in the damn tunnel.”
As consciousness returned, Dietrich said, “My fingers… my goddamn fingers are gone.”
“You’ve got eight left,” I pointed out helpfully. He didn’t appreciate the contribution. “Put some desinfektionsmittel on them and bandage them, for Christ’s sake.”
I didn’t need a translation. With disinfectant from a small first aid kit in my pack, I sterilized the wound, eliciting a restrained howl of pain. Then I wrapped the finger stubs as best I could. I also spread some disinfectant on the gash on Dietrich’s head, though it would probably need stitches that we didn’t have time to worry about.
Finished with that bit of nursing, I looked down and saw McCormick and Ivanov in front of the tunnel, looking back to our position. “We’ve got to get moving. You ready to take the command center?”
“Ja,” Dietrich said. “I can still fight.”
I helped him to his feet and we hurried down the mountainside.
McCormick and Ivanov met us in front of the tunnels, flames still burning bright at the machine gun emplacements. We could still hear the sounds of heavy fighting at the other end of the tunnel, which were supposed to continue for another few minutes.
As we approached, McCormick saw the bandages and didn’t ask whether Dietrich could go on. He simply asked us both, “Ready?”
“Hell yes,” I said, drawing a smile from McCormick and a scowl from Ivanov.
McCormick and I angled toward the left tunnel, Dietrich and Ivanov the right. McCormick was in front, his weapon up and aimed, just as mine was. There would be more guards inside, and they would know from the silencing of the Ak-2000 fire outside that they’d soon have unwelcome visitors.
The tunnel itself was two lanes wide and lit with white LED light. The ceiling was about thirty feet overhead, and the walls were painted white with yellow and green stripes at the bottom. The white was probably meant to reflect more light and save energy, the stripes meant to prevent Taiwanese drivers from running into the side. There were only one or two abandoned cars on the road. I guess there had been enough warning for the Taiwanese to get home when the invasion started, I thought.