Stan was in the forward lines as dawn came late the next day, as it had been doing for some time.
There was activity on the Chinese line. Then 200mm self-propelled tubes began to fire. It was thunderous. From a drone’s cam, Stan saw a tank-like vehicle with a long artillery tube shake and rock. The enemy used computer-directed fire control, with target acquisition and laser ranging. Most fired high explosive—HE—shells. Others shot HEAT with guidance systems for homing in on bunkers and command posts. Many had proximity fuses for creating an airburst over the trenches. The falling shells hammered Stan’s area. He crouched in a foxhole, covering his head.
Enemy missile-launchers added their rockets. Stan could tell by the sound. The rockets were lower velocity than the shells and therefore had lighter casings, able to add more high explosive per projectile. The missile launchers also saturated an area faster, hitting a place in seconds what would take an equal amount of artillery six minutes to achieve.
It was a sweeping, pounding attack, and it lasted a half hour. Afterward, Chinese shells created dense clouds of smoke between the American defenses and the Chinese. Through experience, Stan knew the clouds would last twenty minutes or more. They would also shield the Chinese from thermal sensors.
By his radio, Stan heard the word from a surviving CP. All across the front, the Chinese naval brigades were moving. Marauder tanks led the charge, with IFVs following behind.
Now an American artillery company began to fire. They had arrived from Texas via air to Fairbanks, and had taken the train to Anchorage. Their gun tubes fired artillery-emplaced minefields. The tubes fired and moved to a new location, hopefully before the Chinese counter-artillery could zero in on them. The Americans rained the selected approaches with mines, both anti- personnel and vehicle.
Stan stood up and checked his assault rifle. He had to get back to his tanks. Big oily clouds of smoke billowed before him.
The Chinese charged against a thin crust of American defense located in the outskirts of the city. By the sounds, some of the attackers moved through the emplaced minefields. Others emerged from the choking smoke, looking unscathed.
At that point, the true battle took place. Remaining National Guardsmen, Militiamen and U.S. Army soldiers fought the battle-hardened naval infantry from the East. The Americans hid behind rocks. They waited in buildings and foxholes. The Chinese crawled across the snow or they raced from rock, shell-hole to shell-hole, to the ruins of a Burger Palace and then to a clump of scarred trees, firing all the time.
Each side had a bewildering array of weapons. Soldiers fired assault rifles, light machine guns, and heavy machine guns, throwing and firing grenades for good measure. The whoosh of recoilless rifles mingled with the sharp retort of exploding mines, often launching the Chinese attackers into the air. The whine of falling trench-mortar rounds, the roar of RPGs, LAWs rockets and the loud slamming noises of ATGMs added to the horror of long, squirting jets of fire hissing from flamethrowers. When the Chinese finally reached American strongpoints, desperate men fired pistols. They stuck enemy soldiers with bayonets. They swung spades whose edges were sharper than axes.
Stan gripped a bloody entrenching tool, having helped clear a trench of attacking Chinese.
Into the tangled mix came helicopters and bombers. Defensive lasers stabbed into the gray sky. Red Arrow shells zoomed upward. Wyvern missiles exploded and the last of the Blowdart tubes expelled their deadly cargos. The caldron of war boiled in Anchorage.
The final battle had begun. The defenders fought for their homes, their mothers, fathers, children and wives. The attackers surely yearned for an end to the icy campaign. Stan knew that many thousands of young Chinese sought marriage permits through the fastest manner possible in China: martial feats of madness. It was war in the worst sense, man killing man, with the fate of a continent resting on the outcome.
Later in the day, the Chinese broke into the city, but the Americans still fought with bitter tenacity. They used the concrete buildings, firing from rooftops and windows. The tactic took a grim toll on the Chinese, until finally the remaining T-66s clanked into battle.
So far, they had been kept in reserve. Now an approach had been cleared to the city and the monstrous, tri-turreted tanks moved in. Previous shells and near-miss rockets throughout the weeks had scarred each. From captured enemy soldiers, American Military Intelligence—and then Stan—had learned that many T-66s had received emergency repairs. An entire Chinese Army regiment had been shipped to Alaska, forty units of the once experimental tank. Like most such tanks, there had been teething problems only discovered in the heat of battle. Weeks of war had brought wear and tear, and that had caused many mechanical breakdowns. Day and night, the mechanics had slaved in order to fix the problems.
It was late in the campaign and after a grim arctic storm. Now, fifteen of the big tanks clanked to add their weight to the Chinese assault. That fifteen came was a testament to Chinese technological effort and hard work.
Fifteen monster tanks used together in close coordination began to blow apart the concrete buildings. American ATGMs scored hits, but no kills. Any Army Rangers trying to crawl near with land mines received a hail of gunfire. The Chinese moved deeper into the city.
“Are you ready?” Major Philips asked Stan.
During one of the lulls, Stan had made it back to his tanks. Now, several blocks ahead, the fighting was intense. Back here in the financial district, Stan’s three Abrams waited beside five smaller Strykers. Three of the Strykers were armed with grenade launchers. The last two had TOW2 ATGMs.
Stan had expected to work with Ramos, but Philips had informed him the brigadier general was presently engaged elsewhere.
Stan hated the T-66s, but he had tasted greater victory against them than anyone else in Alaska still living. “I don’t know about ready,” he said, “but I’ll fight.”
“You won’t fight alone,” a man said.
Stan turned, and he blinked in surprise. It was Sergeant Jackson of the Anchorage Police Department. The police officer wore durasteel body-armor with a combat helmet. An assault rifle was slung on his shoulder.
“What’s going on?” asked Stan. “What are you doing here?”
“The same thing as you,” Jackson said. “I’m fighting for my home.”
“The police are trained at riot control,” Philips said. “It means they’re trained in group action. That should make them better at this than just a group of Alaskans picking up their hunting rifles and taking potshots at the enemy.”
“I know you and I have had our differences,” Jackson said. “That’s over now. We let your dad go along with others. He immediately volunteered.”
“Volunteered for what?” Stan asked.
“It was Ramos’s idea,” Philips said. “He spoke last night with General Sims. Afterward, Ramos asked for volunteers among his surviving crews and Militiamen. There weren’t enough. So he went to the jail looking for others. The brigadier general is taking a makeshift ferry and crossing over to Hope.”
“Why do that?” asked Stan.
“Both Sims and Ramos agreed that a behind-the-lines raid might hurt the enemy supply situation enough to slow him down,” Philips said. “At this point, anything is worth a try. I also think Ramos went because he hates city fighting and much prefers to maneuver against the enemy.”