Focus. I ignored the details and directed my attention toward the distance. There was nothing in the tunnel to indicate a command post nearby. I began to think this was the wrong tunnel.
McCormick moved like a robot, his head constantly scanning back and forth as he moved forward at a pace just a little slower than ordinary walking. I mimicked the motion. We walked like that for a minute, then McCormick put a fist up to indicate we were stopping. He dropped to a knee instinctively, and I did as well.
We stayed motionless for fifteen seconds, and I was about to whisper a question when I heard a noise up ahead around a slight bend. An engine. The noise grew and grew.
“What the hell is that?”
McCormick looked back at me, his face losing a little of its normal calm. “Get against the wall!”
We scrambled for the right side of the tunnel, which was curving slightly right, hiding us from whatever was coming down the tunnel. McCormick said, “It’s a fucking tank.”
“Do you have anything to take it out with?” I asked.
“No,” he said. “Just an explosive charge that can’t penetrate reactive armor and a few grenades.”
“Shit,” I replied. We only had a few seconds until the tank could see us. “Run past?”
McCormick grinned. “Trying to save the Army a pension? Follow me.” He took off sprinting with me two steps behind.
The Type 99 tank was suddenly in view — a thirty-foot long, fifty-ton monster, its 125-millimeter main gun pointed directly forward and its commander manning the heavy machine gun on top. The weapon on top fired a bullet six inches long, supposed to be strong enough to penetrate lightly armored vehicles in its own right.
Beyond the tank, I caught a brief glimpse of an assemblage of officers and perhaps seven more guards. The officers were armed with pistols, the guards with rifles.
The commander atop the tank tried to swivel his weapon around to shoot at us, but he was just a little too slow. From a dead sprint, McCormick fired off twenty shots, and the commander’s body jolted with the impacts of multiple rounds. McCormick didn’t slow down and jumped atop the tank as bullets fired by the PLA guards in the command post began impacting the tunnel and tank turret.
Adrenaline surged through my veins as I followed him up, staying low atop the tank to keep the turret between me and the guards, instinctively grabbing the main gun for support. The tank’s driver suddenly realized what had happened and slammed on the brakes, throwing McCormick forward and off the tank. He hit the ground with an audible thud and rolled into a crouching position just in front of the tank, the side of his face cut from the asphalt. “Throw a grenade down the hatch!” he screamed at me.
I withdrew a grenade and pulled the pin. The body of the tank commander was slouched across the hatch opening, so I had to get on top of the turret to throw the grenade down into the bowels of the tank itself. I tossed the grenade down and made sure that it was past the commander’s body before I hopped down from the tank and threw myself on the ground beside McCormick.
A crashing sound like a massive hammer hitting metal sounded inside the tank and smoke and debris shot out from the open hatch. The thunder of the explosion might have deafened us if it hadn’t been mostly muffled by the body of the tank.
McCormick was already up, his silenced T97 assault rifle at the ready. He moved to the side of the tank and fired on the guards, dropping one with a burst of five shots. I took out another grenade and cooked it, pulling the pin and waiting a few seconds so that it would detonate shortly after landing. I threw the grenade hard over the top of the tank, and in the tunnel, the explosion sounded truly massive.
McCormick moved forward to the left of the tank, and I took the right side. There were still several Chinese officers and guards standing after the grenade’s detonation, but they seemed dazed by the explosion. Without a word, McCormick and I cut them down with aimed bursts, reloading and pouring more fire into any that moved.
The blood ran hot in my veins, and I looked for another target. “All clear,” McCormick said, and I found myself a little disappointed.
The command post had been wiped out. There were still tablets and laptops strewn around the area, some obviously broken but some apparently intact. McCormick grabbed a pack left on the ground. “Grab whatever you can and stuff it in this. I’m going to make sure they’re all dead.”
Without ceremony, McCormick moved from body to body, firing a single bullet in each soldier’s head. He needed to reload once, and mechanically put in a new clip, coldly continuing his grisly task.
I grabbed a few laptops, eight tablets, and a dozen cell phones from the area. Most of the phones were taken from the pockets of the dead. It occurred to me that the phones were probably personal, but I wasn’t the least bit sentimental about it. They fought for the wrong country, and that was that.
McCormick finished checking the bodies and reloaded his rifle with a look of satisfaction in his eyes. “Mission accomplished, lieutenant. You ready to go?”
I slammed a new magazine into my rifle and shot him a beaming smile. “Ready.”
There wasn’t much time to waste. PLA reinforcements could be on their way. McCormick and I ran through the tunnel, slowing and aiming our rifles as we neared the exit in case of an ambush outside. It had only been four or five minutes since we entered, and the PLA guards still lay dead on the ground outside.
“Where are the others?” I asked.
“Good question,” McCormick mumbled, looking down the other tunnel that Ivanov and Dietrich had gone down. The tunnel was dead quiet. “You remember hearing anything from the other tunnel while we were in ours?”
I shook my head. “I was too focused on what we were doing. Want me to go in after them?”
McCormick answered, “No, I’ll take a look. Stay out here and kill any PLA you see coming. I’ll be back quickly.” With that, he moved off into the other tunnel at a fast walk, his weapon up and aimed.
It was just a few minutes after midnight, and the area was eerily quiet. The Battle of Teatime Hill was long over by then, and my Airborne squad was no longer attacking the tunnel five miles to the north. That could mean they had withdrawn into the hills as planned, or it could mean they were all dead. Either way, there was no sound of gunfire on the breeze, just a few sonic booms over the horizon where American F-22’s fought their battles against the People’s Liberation Army-Air Force.
I didn’t hear McCormick, Ivanov or Dietrich coming until McCormick came up behind me and said, “Back.”
I turned to see that the bandage on Dietrich’s hand was bloody and a thin line of blood dripped down his face from the gash on his head, but other than that he and Ivanov appeared to have made it back without a scratch. “What took you guys so long?” I asked.
Ivanov grinned. “There’s a goddamn ammo depot in that tunnel. The guards for the depot must have been mostly out here, we only ran into five men inside. We left an explosive inside on a five minute timer.”
“So we weren’t the only ones who were busy,” I observed.
Dietrich gave a short laugh. “Clay told me you guys ran into a tank.”
“Yeah, the Chinese can even use it again if they can scrub out all the pieces of the crew.”
McCormick interjected, “Enough talk. Volodya, you’re back on point. Let’s clear the area and get to the rendezvous point.”