“Tell me about my dad,” Stan said.
“Sims learned about a huge supply convoy crawling up Highway One,” Philips said. “Our jets won’t be able to fight through the Chinese combat air patrols to get to it. Ramos believes that we can still hit them guerilla-style. Since it was his idea and it’s his specialty, he felt obligated to lead the attack.”
“My dad went with them on this one-way mission?” asked Stan.
“He didn’t have to go,” Jackson said. “We let him out and he was free to go anywhere. He said he wanted to fight.”
Stan thought about that. After a time, he nodded. “That’s my dad,” he said. Mack Higgins was a fighter.
“Okay, Sergeant,” Stan said. “My dad pointed a gun at you once. You could have held that against him. Instead, you let him go. Thanks.” Stan held out his hand. With the Chinese in Anchorage, it was time to bury their differences with each other.
Sergeant Jackson accepted and they shook hands.
“Let’s stop the Chinese,” Stan said.
“I second that,” Jackson said.
“Here’s how we’re going to attempt it,” Philips said.
It took a half hour before Stan’s radio crackled, “Here’s our chance.” It was Philips calling.
“Ready?” Stan asked his crew.
“Roger that,” said Jose from the gunner’s seat.
“Heck yeah!” Hank said, his fingers flexing at the Abrams’s steering controls.
“Let’s do it,” Stan radioed back.
“Head up Lincoln Street,” Philips radioed. “It’s coming fast. The T-66 is chasing several Anchorage PD.”
“Okay, this is it,” Stan told Jose. “We have to get close, almost on its ass,” he told Hank.
“I’ll remember to thank a police officer the next time he writes me a ticket,” Jose said. “I wouldn’t want a T-66 on my butt.”
Stan shoved up out of the hatch. He had his commander’s microphone jutting in front of his mouth. He wore durasteel body-armor, and he listened to the Abrams’s heavy clank as the tank moved into position. City buildings rose all around them. The M1A2s were great tanks—twenty years ago. Now the T-66 held the technological edge, and it was coming up Lincoln Street toward them.
Through his microphone, Stan shouted orders to the other two Abrams as they took up ambush positions nearby. Farther behind on the street, Philips’s Strykers waited to act as further bait if needed.
Then three police officers in combat gear sprinted around the corner. Stan was close enough to wave to Sergeant Jackson. The officer clutched his assault rifle as total concentration filled his face. Behind him—Stan heard heavy treads crushing pavement. Then the side of an old brick building exploded masonry. A monster tank burst into sight.
“Inch us back,” whispered Stan.
Hank did, moving the Abrams behind a building and taking the T-66 out of sight.
What happened next was hidden from Stan as he waited. Chinese machine guns chattered. A man shouted in English, no doubt an Anchorage police officer. Then a TOW missile streaked up the street. By the sound, it splashed against the T-66’s heavy armor.
“Come on,” Stan whispered. “Keep attacking.”
Then he heard the enemy tank. It fired two 175mm guns. They were two deafening booms. The shells whooshed past his ambush site and down the street at the Strykers.
At the Stryker bait, Stan thought. He didn’t hear the sound of exploding vehicles. So maybe Philips’s bait had moved quickly enough to survive.
“It’s coming,” Stan heard Philips say through his headset.
“Get ready!” Stan shouted through the hatch.
Seconds later, a huge stone gray-colored Chinese T-66 moved in front of them. Stan slid down the hatch and slammed the steel lid into place. At the same moment, Jose fired a Sabot round. A terrific explosion rocked the Abrams.
“Are we hit?” Stan shouted, his ears ringing from the sound.
“I don’t think so,” said Jose.
Stan thrust his forehead against his scope. He peered at a burning T-66.
“You killed this one from point blank range,” Philips said over the radio. “But there’s another two coming, so you’d better move. We don’t want to lose your Abrams just yet.”
“Let’s go,” Stan told Hank. “We’re moving to live again and fight in another place.”
“Roger that,” said Hank, as he began revving the M1A2’s engine.
“Major Philips,” Stan said over the radio.
“Yes?”
“Tell Sergeant Jackson and his fellow police officers that they did good, very good.”
“Will do,” Philips said. “Now let’s get moving to the next ambush site.”
Under Ramos’s command, a few Army soldiers and Alaska Militiamen—along with hard-case state prisoners—took a ferry and crossed the trickery Turnagain Arm of the Cook Inlet. In jeeps, snowmobiles and four-wheel drive pickups they overwhelmed the few Chinese soldiers in Hope. Then they moved down Highway One to the Junction of Highway Nine and Moose Pass. There they met the lead elements, including snowplows, of the giant Chinese supply convoy heading for Anchorage.
“Where do they come from?” shouted Wang.
First Rank Lu Po lay in the snow beside his friend. Behind them, trucks and transports burned. Chinese helicopters were on their way. On the hill before them, American Javelins continued to flash across the distance and hit yet more munitions trucks, causing tremendous explosions.
“We earn our glory now,” Lu told his White Tigers in their combat suits.
“There’s no more glory here,” said Wang. “High Command will skin us for allowing the supply convoy’s destruction.”
“Nonsense,” said Lu. “The Americans hit part of the convoy, not all. We must give them enemy heads or High Command will demand ours. We will fade into the trees and flank the hill.”’
“By that time the convoy will be destroyed,” said Wang.
“Follow me,” said Lu, as he rose in a bent crouch and sprinted for the trees.
Brigadier General Ramos heard the Chinese bombers. He leaped off the altered pickup truck and sprinted for the trees.
The truck was called a technical. The term had been derived in Somalia during the 1990s when certain non-governmental agencies had paid gunmen to protect them, paid out of a technical assistance grant. The chief fighting vehicles were modified Toyota pickups, and soon the word technical came to be applied to any machine gun-carrying truck. Such technicals had been used to great effect by the nomads of Chad when they’d fought the Libyans. The Libyans had used Soviet tanks and hardware. The Chad militiamen primarily used Toyota pickups with an M2 Browning, a recoilless rifle, or a light anti-air gun bolted on. In the Sahara Desert, the light trucks, with their greater mobility, had given the Chad militiamen the victory. That victory had caused many to dub the fight the Great Toyota War.
Today, Hector Ramos’s hastily-gathered technicals had hurt the enemy. Now Chinese jets streaked above. Small canisters tumbled from them. Ramos buried his head in the snow as the canisters hit and whooshed with jellied napalm. Heat blazed against his skin. The canisters had missed the center part of their team.
Ramos began to rise when he heard a noise behind him. He shouted, scrambled to his feet and cut down several Chinese soldiers with his assault rifle. They’d been about to kill an old man.
“Are you Colonel Higgins?” Ramos shouted.
The old man blinked at him. Finally, he nodded.
“Follow me!’ shouted Ramos. “We have more enemy to kill.”
“Aliens,” the old man said.