Now it was time to commit the final reserves. He had many fresh divisions left and it would take a day or two to deploy them at the front. They would have to grind through the defenses in the great urban sprawl that was Los Angeles.
Another bitter pill had been the failure of the Navy to capture the Bay Area and drive through the delta into Central California. The naval infantry was bogged down now in the Bay Area, crawling toward San Francisco. They tied down some U.S. formations, but they did not threaten the state with sudden capture. The nuclear missiles there had won the Americans a great reprieve.
It was time to return them the favor. It was time to beseech the Leader and gain approval to use nuclear weapons against the U.S. He would not use them on American cities nor would he use them on American formations. He would not give China a nuclear black eye. But with nuclear weapons he would cut off the Los Angeles troops from reinforcements.
Marshal Nung sighed, rubbed his eyes and picked up his e-reader. He had a few more reports to digest. Then he needed to speak to the Leader. He could no longer spare the Eagle Team troops. He was going to need every one of them to outmaneuver the enemy in Los Angeles.
The answer was there, in the heavy American losses in air assets,. Nung hadn’t expected the enemy to use his air so freely and let it dwindle to almost nothing. That was the opening he needed for something new.
Nung began reading again, clicking his e-reader, and soon he smiled. This could work. This would ensure that the Americans holding Los Angeles would wither on the vine. The battle had been costlier than expected, but it was still possible to win the entire state with the troops he had remaining. What he needed to do was gain the Leader’s permission and then begin the last leg of the Southern Californian assault with his last fresh formations.
“Yes,” Jian Hong said. He spoke via a computer screen to Marshal Nung. The entire Ruling Committee attended, listening to the exchange. Nung had been most persuasive regarding the need for nuclear weapons.
Naturally, Marshal Kao and Foreign Minister Deng had disagreed. Jian had sat back and let Nung argue with them. Kao and Deng feared nuclear escalation, or so they said. Jian was beginning to wonder if those two feared nuclear usage because they secretly wished for the California attack to fail. Well, he would put an end to this right now.
Jian sat stiffly in his chair as the old Chairman used to do in these situations. He said, “It is time to teach the Americans that they are not the only ones who can unleash nuclear fire.” Jian directed his words to Nung but wanted Kao and Deng to understand why he was giving the order. “You have my go-ahead, Marshal Nung. Teach the Americans a most bitter lesson.”
Captain Lee of the Chinese Air Force glanced out of his Ghost aircraft canopy. Stars twinkled overhead, while pines carpeted the nearby mountainside. In the distance loomed giant peaks.
He went from south to north along the Sierra Nevada Range along with six other pilots in their ultra-stealthy bombers.
Thirteen paved roads crossed the mountain range east to west into California. Due to glaciation, most of the passes proved treacherous even in summer. By fall, they were snowed in except for the Donner and Beckwourth Passes. Snowplows working day and night kept the two passes open. The Central Pacific railroad used the Donner Pass, while the Western Pacific used Beckwourth.
Marshal Nung wanted both the Donner and Beckwourth Passes unusable, particularly the rail lines running through them. In the past twenty years, with the continually rising cost of gasoline, railroads had taken on greater importance in America.
To that end these seven upgraded and highly-modified Ghosts S-13E3s had slipped past American radar guarding the Greater Los Angeles area.
During the Alaskan War the original Ghosts had been the latest in ultra-stealthy tech. These seven used technologies perfected since that conflict. These Ghosts were also bigger and had greater range than those used in Alaska. They used air-to-ground missiles that the pilots would fire from a safe distance.
Captain Lee took his Ghost lower. He led the attack, and he was nervous. This was a great honor and it was a dangerous task. Each of his missiles carried a nuclear warhead. China was finally going to retaliate for the treacherous nuclear attack in Santa Cruz.
Under most conditions, High Command would have sent drones for such a mission. But secrecy was critical, and drones needed radio guidance, which the Americans might have been able to trace.
Chinese stealth technology was advanced, but there were rumors that the Americans had perfected a new surveillance system. Captain Lee had heard the rumors from his wife who worked in Intelligence. According to her, that’s why China had helped terrorists explode a nuclear device in Silicon Valley.
China’s leaders wanted to keep its technical edge over the Americas. Once, America had possessed the best tech. They used to be an innovative people and China’s leaders didn’t want to allow the enemy to climb back up the tech tree.
Captain Lee grinned. It was a good thing, too, good for him, this technological edge. Otherwise he would be in even more danger flying this boldly and deeply into enemy territory. All he needed was another sixteen minutes and he could launch the missiles. He was here to teach the Americans a bitter and deadly lesson.
In NORAD Command, an air control officer frowned at the strange images on his screen. Finally, he signaled the colonel, motioning him near.
“Sir, I’m sorry to trouble you, but I don’t understand these signals.” The air control officer tapped his screen.
The colonel frowned as he leaned down to study the images. His aftershave was strong and enveloped both men.
“This is the Sierra Nevada Range, sir,” the air control officer said with a hand before his mouth.
“Show me the pattern since you first spotted these.”
The air-control officer held his breath and manipulated his screen as ordered.
The colonel straightened. “Are there any Reflex fighters in range?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Alert them and burn whatever they are.”
The air control officer twisted around in his chair to look up at the colonel. “What if they’re our planes, sir?”
The colonel didn’t look at the air-control officer, as he was too busy staring at the faint, intermittent images on the screen. “God help us if they are, but I doubt those are our planes. They have no IFF. Order the Reflexes to intercept them and burn them now!”
As the stars slowly wheeled across the heavens, minutely shifting their patterns, Major Romanov’s Reflex interceptor picked up speed and began climbing. Romanov belonged to a trio of aircraft. The three planes had been cruising, part of the North American Defense Net. Twenty-two such craft were up at all times around the continental U.S.
Each interceptor was larger than a Galaxy cargo plane. Each carried an ultra-hardened mirror on the bottom of the aircraft, the reflex of the strategic battle system.
Giant Anti-Ballistic Missile (ABM) stations ringed the country. Their task was to stab the heavens with a powerful laser and burn down incoming warheads. These stations made an ICBM exchange between the North American Alliance and China nearly impossible. In 2038, President Sims had used the strategic ABMs to destroy every enemy satellite the lasers could reach. No one was going to monitor the U.S. or use space mirrors to fire enemy lasers down into America if he could help it.
Instead of ICBMs, the danger now came from slippery cruise missiles and low-level stealth bomber attacks. The strategic ABMs could not hit those unless they were in direct line of sight to the particular station. The Reflex interceptor changed the equation, as the ABM station could bounce the laser off the plane’s mirror and hit a low-flying target. The trick was making precise calculations and getting the Reflex high enough and in exactly the right position.