“I know,” Stan said, “me, too.”
-3-
Operation Reclamation
From A Secret History of the North American War, by Captain Fan Kai:
The next actions of Chairman Hong harkened back to the emperors of old who believed themselves protected by a heavenly mandate. Such men conceived an action in relation to their position and power, never considering the results in human suffering for others.
The military clique headed by Marshal Chao Pin thwarted what Hong considered his birthright. The fierce desire to topple the marshal and his supporters guided the Chairman’s actions. In this case, a devastating Chinese defeat in North America meant nothing, as long as it helped catapult Hong back to supreme power.
The intermediate-range nuclear missiles hidden in northern Mexico would stem the Americans later. At least, so Hong envisioned. Some have suggested he already lived in a dream world of his own devising. If the Chairman willed a thing, these people say, it became reality to him. Yet the cunning and success of his murder squads suggest otherwise. Hong still maintained a keen grasp on reality.
As the Americans unleashed their fated offensive in Oklahoma, twenty, perhaps as many as twenty-three teams of East Lightning operatives headed for various Chinese frontline Army Headquarters. From May 11 to May 14, the murder squads killed seven Chinese generals, nineteen colonels, forty-three majors and their accompanying aides and security personnel. The victims were some of the best tactical leaders and logistics experts. Several EL teams blew up critical depots or rail lines. They sowed confusion during the initial desperate days, and gave the Americans incredible aid. The ensuing enemy destruction also hid the activity from the vast majority of PAA soldiers.
Yet such a scheme proved impossible to hide altogether. Chinese Army personnel captured members of five different murder squads. Several of the East Lightning operatives immediately ingested poison. They died before anyone could interrogate them. Several others cracked under torture, telling wild stories of Chinese secret police sabotage. The Army personal refused to believe the truth, shooting the operatives instead as American spies.
Two of the captured assassins survived the battle and left a gory account of their wartime activities. (See: We Worked for Police Minister Shun Li, 2045.) These stories substantiate the Chinese belief that underhanded forces worked against them during the McGraw Offensive. These forces paved the way for the stunning American victory. Otherwise, the ensuing combat lacks sense. Chinese arms had driven the Americans headlong only two short years ago. Such a US turnaround could only be understood by the devilish interference of Chairman Hong and his villainous Police Chief, Shun Li.
From Military History: Past to Present, by Vance Holbrook:
2041, May 9. The First Offensive. American preparation, carefully assembled men, materiel, and improved technology, proved devastating to the Chinese. In heavy fog, the Americans began their drive at dawn, using the latest jamming equipment to render forward Chinese robotics inert.
The proceeding “avalanche assault” against the “Great Wall” surprised the Chinese. Special Marine shock brigades and Militia penal battalions stunned the enemy by their savagery and bitter determination. The succeeding Chinese lines collapsed in days. The cost in American lives—particularly to the penal battalions—proved staggering, at times approaching seventy-five percent casualties.
This was the bloodiest phase for the Americans, recalling Civil War battles two hundred years earlier.
McGraw now proved his brilliance and resolve in two areas. First, the ability to move the exhausted breaching divisions out of the way without stalling the next wave showed exquisite staff work and execution. Second, while others urged caution—saying America should husband its painfully reconstructed armies—McGraw recognized the chaotic enemy situation and boldly unleashed the exploration formations much earlier and far deeper than planned. The massed Behemoths spearheading the attacks proved shattering against Chinese counter assaults.
Four American armies—Tenth, Second Militia, Fifteenth and Eighteenth—burst through the enemy right flank—the First, Third and Seventh PAA armies—on a sixty-mile front. They rolled up and pulverized Army Group Zhen, splitting the Chinese from the Brazilians to their east. Driving into open country, American Behemoths, Jeffersons, heavily modified M1A3s and other tracked vehicles spread havoc and destruction. The great battle of annihilation Americans had dreamed of for years seemed on the verge of success as the entire Chinese First Front threatened to collapse.
The mass of Chinese and allied armies on the front line—on either side of the sixty-mile breakthrough—faced encirclement as American forces swung around them from behind. The Chinese and allied formations were uncommonly sluggish to react to American vigor. It surprised McGraw. Many of his officers suggested this was a trap. Brushing aside such talk, McGraw told his men that this gave US armor the chance to inflict a historically strategic victory, possibly netting 700,000 to 1,200,000 enemy soldiers.
“The end of the invasion is near,” he said. And in those heady days, his words certainly seemed prophetic.
Corporal Jake Higgins wore goggles and a jacket. The goggles pressed against his skin. They hurt his head after a while. He clutched the sides of the commander’s hatch of his Behemoth tank while sticking halfway out of the turret. He enjoyed the view, shivering at the cold rush of air.
The deceptively flat ground with its riot of spring flowers was perfect terrain for his three-hundred-ton tank. But it was also the right place for the enemy’s Mobile Canopy AntiBallistic Missile vehicle, or MC ABM for short. The Chinese laser tank outraged them, and that was bad out here on the prairies. Any day now, the enemy would deploy the feared weapon system, and the Behemoths would have to face them.
Jake’s Behemoth was like the others stretched out on either side of him. Fifteen monsters in a row clanked for Oklahoma City. There waited Chinese First Front HQ, a mountain of supplies to destroy, a railroad nexus node and the last enemy armor concentration along with the dreaded MC ABMs. Their task was to demolish everything, the fifteen of them and the following Jefferson tanks and infantry carriers behind them on the horizon.
In four days of intense exploitation battles against Chinese reserves—the eighth day since the beginning of the offensive—five Behemoths of their regiment had eaten it or developed mechanical problems and dropped behind. Other Behemoth regiments had their own objectives. Oklahoma City was their personal El Dorado of martial glory.
There was a reason why nearly one hundred and eighty Behemoths had torn the Chinese a new one.
Jake’s monster was fifteen meters by six by four and mounted 260cm of armor. It had nine autocannons, seven auto-machine guns, and an onboard radar and AI to track enemy missiles and shells. Given enough flight time—like out here on the Great Plains—this baby could knock down incoming projectiles. Whatever ordnance slipped through had to survive forty beehive launchers. They fired tungsten flechettes, a shotgun-like spray of hooks that deflected enemy shells enough to skew their impact against the heavy armor. The super-thick armor and the sheer number of beehives made the Behemoth more than a big, expensive target. It made it the King Kong of the battlefield.
From his spot high on the turret, Jake winched as the tracks squealed. The Behemoth made a terrible racket while on the move. The land whale creaked, clanged, squealed and rumbled: a symphony of metal. Yet for all that, it was the frontline marvel of the war.