One of the tall ones shouted in my direction in a German accent, “Your asses are saved! Don’t shoot ours!”
The other tall one put an embarrassed hand to his face, and the short one bellowed a laugh.
I called out, “Captain Tom Concitor, commander, Third Company, 1st Brigade Combat Team, 101st Airborne. Who the hell are you guys?”
The three walked over to my building, and one of the tall ones answered my question in a Midwest-American accent, “Sergeant Clay McCormick, Knights.”
The shorter one interjected, “Not giving your most recent title, sergeant?”
I could hear the annoyance in McCormick’s voice. “OK, we’re the Lafayette Initiative. What’s left of it, anyway.” Another pause. “Look, we saved you, so that’s all you need to know. What the hell were you doing here anyway, why didn’t you use a reverse-slope defense?”
I explained how Colonel Brown had maintained command of the Battle of Farmers’ Ridge from his command center in Pinglin, and how he had forbade a reverse-slope defense.
The shorter one snorted. “I enjoy this window into the American Army. It must make my friend Clay nostalgic for his misspent youth.”
“Weren’t you also in the Army?” I asked.
“Not your army, captain. I am Volodya Ivanov. And following the example of my American friend, my former title was sergeant in Spetsnaz, the Russian special forces.” Ivanov introduced himself without a hint of a Russian accent.
“Hans Dietrich,” the other tall one said. “Bundeswehr.”
I noticed his long hair brushing against his shoulders and commented, “Couldn’t that billionaire Cortez afford to get you a haircut?”
Dietrich answered, “Couldn’t that trillionaire government of yours afford to get you a real anti-tank weapon?” He looked me up and down. “Or maybe they’ll give you the money in a year or two when you’re on Social Security, captain.”
“Enough,” McCormick said, and the older German nodded in acknowledgment. “We were dropped off a few miles away by a Taiwanese army driver and just kept heading toward the sound of battle.”
I asked, “How come your missiles knocked out the Type 99’s and ours couldn’t?”
McCormick answered, “Back in the nineties, the U.S. military was working on an amped-up AT-4 with a dual warhead design. One warhead blows a hole in the armor, the other vents its explosive force directly into the tank’s interior. The U.S. never bought any, but Taiwan ended up with the design and took it one step further. So much for the tough new armor on the tanks.”
“What about the active defenses on the tanks? They were knocking our missiles out of the air, but yours made it through.”
A smile. “Another tricky innovation by our Taiwanese friends. The launcher has an attachment for a compact, directed electromagnetic pulse. The tanks themselves have shielding to protect from EMPs, but the active defense systems on the Chinese tanks are mounted on the hull, outside the shielding. When a missile is fired, the launcher also fires a directed energy pulse at the tank, frying the active defense system before it can take out the missile.”
“Jesus,” I said. “How many more of those things do you have?”
“The Taiwanese should be dropping off every single one in existence in Citadel right now, which amounts to a couple dozen.”
Ivanov noticed my disappointment and added, “They’re putting everything they’ve got into the defense of Pinglin, captain, scraping the bottom of the barrel. Their army was shattered by the atomic bombings. You haven’t seen many Taiwanese stragglers coming down the road, have you? That’s because the PLA rolled up the Taiwanese line after the bombings. They hunted the survivors down.”
“OK, so what do we do?” I asked. “There have got to be a few tens of thousands of PLA heading for Farmers’ Ridge right this minute.”
McCormick looked to Dietrich. “You’re the strategist, Hans. What’s the gameplan?”
The hirsute German looked around the hills and mountains to either side of Farmers’ Ridge. “If the Americans halt the Chinese outside Pinglin, the PLA will send its infantry around the city over the mountainous terrain to cut off resupply to the town. It would not surprise me if the Chinese forces are already carrying out this step. The longer the supply lines stay open to Pinglin, the better chance the Americans will have to hold the town until armored forces from America arrive. ”
Dietrich glanced at me, then said, “Judging by the performance of the American Army at Farmers’ Ridge, we should not trust that they will be able to stop a mobile Chinese infantry force.”
“Bullshit,” I said, knowing that he was right but not about to admit it.
The German ignored my comment anyway. “If the Americans won’t stop the PLA from cutting off Pinglin, then we must be the ones who slow the Chinese down.”
Sergeant McCormick said curtly, “Agreed. Volodya?”
Ivanov nodded agreement. “Let’s get back to work.”
The three began walking off to the southwest, toward the tea plantations that lined the hills north of Pinglin.
Startled at the abruptness, I started walking with the trio. “Shouldn’t you get back to Pinglin quickly, then, to coordinate your activities with our command?”
McCormick answered without turning to look at me, “Given what you told us about Colonel Brown, I think I’d rather not submit to the 101st Airborne’s command. You can keep them advised of what we’re doing.”
“Me?” I asked weakly.
“You’re coming along with us, of course,” Ivanov said.
“What? No I’m not!” I protested angrily, continuing to walk a pace behind the others.
Volodya bellowed a laugh. “At this moment, you quite literally are.”
Recognizing the truth in that statement, I sputtered, “I’m trying to talk some sense into you! As the ranking officer here, I demand that we go back to Pinglin.”
Dietrich said with a straight face, “We are not American soldiers, we are not under your command — and you don’t even outrank me, you son of a bitch.”
“I will not abandon the soldiers of my company,” I said more resolutely.
That finally stopped McCormick. He turned and said, “That’s a sentiment I understand. You have to watch out for your people. But you have to ask yourself — are you going to be more useful with us or as one more company commander in Pinglin?”
After a moment, he began walking again. Without explicitly answering McCormick’s question, I filed in next to the survivors of the Lafayette Initiative.
As we walked, I took in the terrain. Thickly-wooded forest dominated the mountains, but tea plantations dotted the area as well, with neatly-terraced rows of short plants and picturesque Taiwanese farmhouses. We avoided the open fields of tea plants assiduously, keeping strictly to the woods that would help us evade Chinese drones and satellites.
Within minutes of leaving Farmers’ Ridge, the three former Lafayette Initiative members had unslung their weapons and stopped any extraneous conversation. Our pace slowed noticeably, and the Russian Volodya Ivanov moved about fifteen yards ahead to carefully examine the path ahead.
McCormick intermittently spoke quietly into a radio microphone, asking someone in Taiwanese high command for intelligence. Presumably, the Taiwanese had satellite and drone support overhead and were telling McCormick about the location of PLA forces. After forty minutes of walking, we came across a narrow, one-lane road winding its way down the far side of the mountain from Farmers’ Ridge. On either side of the road was a steep forest, and a few hundred yards down the road, we could see a single stone building built into the side of the mountain.