Bill had a crazy idea. He was so desperately cold. He wanted to see a fire, a real blaze. He forgot about his friends as he tried to judge distances to the tanker.
“What was that?” the pilot asked, turning around toward the pines behind them. Before anyone could answer, assault-rifle fire cut the pilot down. He crumpled onto the snow.
“Ambush!” cried Carlos. He twisted around and raised his rifle, managing to get off three shots. He shot into the trees they had come out of earlier. Then a well-placed round made a hole in his forehead. He slumped to the cold snow beside the pilot.
“The Alamo,” whispered Bill. He ignored the gunshots from the pines, his back to the hidden enemy. He concentrated as he sighted upon the shining tanker with its metal storage unit. The tanker was near the front of the convoy line. Then a bullet smashed through his shoulder blade, pitching him onto the M2. For a moment, he lay in shock.
I’m hit, Bill realized. He’d tossed away the durasteel armor a day before the storm. It had been too heavy to lug around. Now he wished he was still wearing it.
With a groan, Bill dragged himself upright behind the M2 Browning. He grabbed the V-shaped butterfly trigger, swiveled the heavy machine gun, and sighted the tanker. It was far away. That didn’t matter now—he didn’t have any time left to be fancy. He felt lightheaded, but he felt sure he could make the shot, just like a distant three-pointer in basketball. He pressed both thumbs on the buttons and heard the heavy hammering sound.
Tracer rounds hosed out in a line. Bill adjusted as he held his body stiffly. Another bullet slammed into him, but he kept his position and only grunted. His incendiary rounds smoked against the tanker’s metal skin. Then the greatest fireball of his life mushroomed up in an orange roar of flame.
Militia Sergeant Bill Harris’s eyes were shining. Then his head exploded in a rain of blood, brain and skull-bone as a White Tiger dum-dum bullet ended his existence in this world.
Lu Po stared at the dead Americans. Down below, the fuel tanker burned. It had backed-up traffic as explosions still cooked off from other trucks. The snowplow was on its side, the dead driver hanging out of the broken windshield.
“High Command won’t be pleased with this,” said Wang.
“Fools,” said Lu. “Why did they put the tanker so near the snowplow?”
“Maybe they need the fuel up at the front.”
Lu shrugged. It didn’t matter now.
“What about these corpses?” Wang asked, pointing with his rifle at the dead Americans.
“Hang them like the rest and put on the placards,” said Lu. “If we have to kill every one of these Americans before they learn, we’ll do it.”
Wang shook his head. “They’re like rats. They just keep appearing. Don’t they know when they’re beaten?”
Lu had no answer for that as he watched the tanker burn.
Captain Stan Higgins and Brigadier General Ramos trudged through the snow. They struggled through big drifts to a nearby overpass.
The blizzard had left a heavy covering of snow, making it a seeming pristine wonderland. To the far north of the city rose the majestic mountains of the Alaska Range. To the immediate north were the military bases. To the immediate east was the Chugach Foothills, part of the Chugach State Park. It was the third-largest park in America and comprised nearly a half-million acres. Cook Inlet lay to the west, while ten miles from the heart of downtown Anchorage to the south was Potter Marsh.
It was a gray morning, with heavy clouds overhead. The wind whistled, but it didn’t howl or shriek. Bits of snow swirled, but not the whiteout that had brought everything to a standstill for the past few days.
The airport was on the opposite side of the city as the approaching Chinese. The main arteries leaving Anchorage were also across the city from the front line.
Stan’s three Abrams were ready, joining the skeletal remains of Ramos’s 1st Stryker Brigade. The attrition of battle had whittled the brigade down to little more than a company of soldiers and machines. The 4th Airborne Brigade was gone, its dead officers, NCOs and soldiers scattered along Highway One, having made the Chinese pay for each mile they advanced. Ramos had done the same along Highway Nine. Few Alaskan National Guardsmen remained, although a higher percentage of Militia had made it back to the city. They had broken more quickly, running away faster. Some had regrouped, bitter about the war and their seeming lack of courage. Those men were determined to halt the Chinese now. Others cowered somewhere in the city, often hating themselves because of their fear.
During these past weeks, others in Anchorage and around the state had picked up their weapons and reported to the officers in charge of defending the city. A trickle of reinforcements from the bottom states had continued to enter the city from Fairbanks, often leaving for the approaching front. Now that front was just outside the city limits.
Two new laser battalions had set up their heavy equipment at the slowly repaired airport. One of those was a Canadian battalion. The lasers would make any Chinese aircraft and helicopter assaults pay a bitter price if they attempted to fly over the coming battlefield. The surviving American airmen knew all about the Chinese Red Arrow anti-missile rounds, as well as the bigger SAMs the enemy had brought forward with each lunge closer to Anchorage.
Despite the hard weeks of battle, the Chinese still had more numbers. What they lacked was reserves of munitions, fuel and even more soldiers. Worse, they were about to attempt the hardest type of warfare possible: storming a city.
“We’ll make this their Stalingrad,” Ramos told Stan.
The two officers had crawled to an overpass, using special trench telescopes to peer over the earthen lip and study the enemy line beyond.
“Are you sure you have your history right?” Stan asked.
“What do you mean?”
“The Germans almost drove the Russians out of Stalingrad. They were about to win the fight, when the Russians launched their biggest assault yet. The Russians smashed the Rumanians and Italians holding the extended front leading to the city. The Russians thereby encircled and trapped the German army fighting in the city. Where is America’s counter-offensive to save us from the Chinese?”
“Are you saying we can’t win?” Ramos asked.
“No. I’m just not sure I like your analogy.”
Ramos was quiet for a time. Then he glanced at Stan. “Intelligence says the Chinese have four to five times our number in fighting men. It’s probably just a matter of time before they take the city and send for Army formations from mainland China.”
“What does HQ say?” asked Stan. “Have they spotted new Chinese troop convoys crossing the Pacific?”
“Not yet. But it seems inevitable.”
Stan pulled down his trench scope and rolled onto his back. He wiped his mouth with his gloved hand. “We have problems, but so do they.”
“How do you know that?” asked Ramos, who continued to use the scope. The scope had a right angle at the top and was similar in principle to a submarine’s periscope, thus allowing a man to study the enemy without exposing himself to direct fire.
“Military history tells me that,” said Stan. “We just see our problems because we’re so focused on them. Our problems here are big, no doubt about that. But the enemy has his own set of problems. Sometimes it’s just a matter of whose will fails or whose nerves crumble first.”
“My nerves are close to shot,” said Ramos. “We don’t really have anything that can handle the T-66s. Fortunately, the Chinese don’t seem to have a lot of them, and that’s something. But I’ve read the reports. It seems the Chinese have scoured each battlefield, dragging any wrecked T-66 to the repair vehicles. That’s a serious problem when fighting a rearguard action as we’ve been doing for weeks. We always leave the battlefield in their possession. Their repair vehicles can pick up the broken tanks while we leave ours behind.”