Brown asked, “What could we do to foil a PLA attack to the west?”
I examined the problem. We couldn’t move reserves, but there were a thousand men on the west side already.
The solution struck me like a lightning bolt. “How many Taiwanese civilians are left in the town?”
Two hours later, I was crouched in a foxhole on the western side of the town. The defensive line here was anchored on an ornate Chinese gate that stood astride the road leading into Citadel. On one side of the gate was the river, and on the other side a short road leading north that eventually curved east and up Teatime Hill. The foxhole I was in was just to the west of that road, at the northern extreme of our line.
It was still pitch dark outside, but dawn would be coming soon. The air had the chill of early spring, and from the lack of stars overhead, I guessed that there were clouds overhead. There was only a thin gibbous moon, meaning the night was particularly dark. A perfect evening for my little trick.
“We’ve got to move soon,” I said to Major Wittmann, who nodded. Wittmann commanded the companies forming the western defensive line. Though I had assumed control of his units, he was functionally my second-in-command, and I found that I liked him. He was quiet, at the very least.
I radioed back to Lieutenant Williams, who I had taken from my company as an aide for my new role. “Yankee 4, this is Yankee 6, is Potomac in place?” (I reveled in my new power to choose call signs, ditching “Empathy” and “Progress” and using mostly Civil War references.)
Williams answered, “Roger, Potomac is ready to move when you move, over.”
“Roger, stand by. Nova is moving out momentarily,” I replied.
Nova (as in “Northern Virginia,” as in “the Army of Northern Virginia”) and Potomac (as in, “the Army of the Potomac”) were the two key groups for this operation. Nova had to move farther, but theirs was a much simpler task. Potomac only had to move a few tens of yards, but they had to do it in just the right way.
The movements had to happen quickly and smoothly. I looked at my watch. It had to be now. Everything was in place, everything was ready.
I keyed my radio. “Lucifer, start the music.”
“Roger.”
Across town, thunder pealed in the night. A thousand rifles fired from Devil Hill, aiming near-blind fire on the heavily-wooded Teatime Hill a few hundred yards away. Airborne soldiers fired three dozen of our old (and useless) antitank rockets at Teatime Hill. Some of the PLA on Teatime Hill returned fire, betraying their positions to the Airborne soldiers on Devil Hill. The two sides rattled machine guns back and forth.
“Nova, Potomac, go,” I said into my radio, and climbed out of the foxhole with everyone else in Nova, the thousand-strong garrison in western Citadel. We quickly made our way into the deep brush that ran alongside the western road, burying ourselves in dense leaves and forest. In four minutes, all thousand men had redeployed from a line running north to south perpendicular to the road to a line about half-a-mile long running parallel to the western road.
The firing continued on Devil Hill, and the newly established line at the base of Teatime Hill let out a roar, the Airborne soldiers shouting at the top of their lungs as if they were about to launch an attack. By that point, I was certain that the attention of the Chinese drones and satellites was focused squarely on Teatime Hill, where it looked like we were about to launch an attack.
Now it was time to check on Potomac. Of course, I was in cover in the brush now too, so I had to rely on Lieutenant Williams’s report. His answer to my query: “In position.”
All I needed to do now was wait. We were betting a lot on my hunch that Colonel Fong was going to make a try for the western side of Citadel. An hour passed, and I began to wonder whether I had completely misread the situation. Maybe the Chinese aren’t coming.
My eye socket itched and ached beneath the eye patch, and I resisted rubbing or scratching it for as long as I could. As annoying as that habit was, it was less agonizing than just waiting to hear from the scouts.
Another forty-five minutes. Whatever the Chinese were going to do, it had to be soon. Either that or the war had ended and no one bothered to tell me.
I radioed Brown and whispered, “HQ, this is Yankee 6, any updates?”
“Negative, it’s quiet here. Devil Hill and the Coffee Line are quiet.” The Coffee Line was the term given to the new defenses that had cropped up at the base of Teatime Hill. The name had come about both because of the relation to tea and because the companies assigned to the Coffee Line were only about a hundred yards downhill from the PLA. The proximity had made them jittery, as if they’d had a few too many cups of coffee. The joke was funny to us, at least.
I kept waiting. They’ve got to be coming. It’s just a matter of time.
Finally, a call came in from the commander of scout team “Sheridan” in front of our line. “Yankee 6, this is Sheridan 3. We’ve got movement in the trees to the north. At least a platoon of Chicoms heading east.”
Chicoms were, of course, Chinese Communists. They were walking straight into our trap.
The sighting by the scout relieved the lesser of my major concerns about the operation. They had spotted the PLA infantry before the enemy figured out that the western garrison was no longer deployed behind a static line. The more important major concern was that the Chinese would figure out what Potomac Force was up to. If their intelligence people picked up on it in time, the Chinese might very well take Citadel in the next hour.
A minute passed, and the PLA line continued moving forward. I could see glimpses of the Chinese infantry moving through the forest. Their line was not quite parallel to ours, but it was close.
The PLA moved cautiously, of course. They were only a few hundred yards from the western defensive lines, where even now their drones and spy satellites saw what appeared to be an Airborne garrison. But there was a certain arrogance in their movements. They thought they could move about at will outside of Citadel. Their spy platforms confirmed what had become an axiomatic truth in the PLA command: the Airborne was on the strategic defensive, and hence would not leave its heavily fortified positions inside Citadel.
We were about to show them what happens when you assume an American soldier will follow the script.
“Let them walk past you,” I radioed to the scouts. To everyone else, I said, “Nova, do not fire until I give the command.” The men were all prone, lying down as far as they could in the deepest brush they could find. It would only take one screw-up, however, to alert the PLA infantry and throw away the element of surprise.
My heart thumped in my chest. The moment was close at hand. From my vantage point, I could see perhaps thirty Chinese moving slowly toward the western defenses of Pinglin. They were only a few dozen yards from the invisible line of Airborne soldiers in deep cover.
I had no idea how many Chinese soldiers were in this attack presumably being led by Colonel Fong. If the surprise was good enough, it wouldn’t matter, I told myself. The defense of Citadel hung in the balance. The war hung in the balance.
God help us.
Calmly, and coldly, I said into the radio, “Nova, fire.”
A thousand rifles fired at once, including mine. I was right in the middle of the line, and the sound was an ear-splitting roar, a world-ending crash, the devastating crash of a tidal wave. The forest ahead shredded into wood chips, ripped leaves, and torn flesh.