Jenkins chuckled in good humor. “Well, sir, you are our good luck charm. You survived the beach landing, the battle of Susitna and the last twenty-four hours. Not to mention the battle of Jerusalem and the Jordan Valley. I reckon you are at least indestructible. As for the rest of us… I think we are all up a creek without a paddle.” Jenkins laughed at his own joke as he spoke.
Sighing and sitting back against the wall, Allen was deep in thought. He had survived a lot of battles that not a lot of others had. Maybe his luck was starting to run out. Maybe today would be his last day… or maybe he’d live to see another day. Only time would tell.
Off in the distance, they could hear the Russians inching closer to their position. The last report had the Russians at least a mile down the road. They were hitting heavy opposition as they entered the city. The house-to-house, block-by-block fight had started. Despite heavy losses, the Russians kept sending soldiers, IFVs and tanks into the meat grinder that was Fairbanks. They needed to capture the city, even if they had to destroy it in the process. The airport, the Army Airfield and the Air Force base down the road were going to be critical positions for their future operations.
As the fighting continued to move closer with each hour, Allen’s men grew pensive as they waited for what felt like a death sentence, staying behind to defend the city like this. So far they had seen very few soldiers moving past their position or joining them. Several of the returning soldiers said their comrades had been completely overrun and did not have a chance to retreat. Others spoke of incredible bravery as one or two soldiers would stay behind and fight to the death while the rest of them retreated to fight another day. The hostilities were intense and brutal. Most of the combat was taking place less than twenty meters apart. Lots of hand grenades were being thrown in each direction. A number of soldiers had jerry-rigged claymore mines to the walls of some of the buildings overlooking the street, and when a number of Russians would rush the building or move through that area, they would detonate the explosives, wiping out entire squads of enemy soldiers before they even knew what had hit them.
Three hours had gone by and the Russians were still close to a mile away from LT Allen’s position. Soon though, Paul started to see a trickle of American soldiers starting to fall back to his platoon’s position. Nearly ninety soldiers joined his twelve men as they started to ready new defensive positions and re-arm. A truck had dropped off a couple of crates of claymore mines for them. Most had plenty of ammo, but they were starting to run low on grenades and claymores.
As nightfall loomed, the Russians had finally pushed their way to within half a mile of their position. As the Russians sensed victory, they rushed in several additional divisions of soldiers. Now they were attacking from three different points of the city, putting the squeeze on the defenders. By midnight, a call came across the Battle Net for everyone to fall back to the vehicles; the division was going to bug out. It took close to half an hour for his men to get ready to withdraw; they wired up a lot of booby-traps for the Russians, and also made sure to pass along as many claymores and grenades as they could to the surviving militia men who were going to stay behind.
The Russians knew the Americans were withdrawing, but did nothing to stop them or interfere with their efforts. After losing nearly 3,431 soldiers and three times that number wounded in a day, they were just happy the Americans were leaving. This was the first time they had gone up against an entire division using the Raptor suits. During the two days of combat, they had suffered some horrendous casualties just getting to the city, and then the house-to-house fighting was spectacularly brutal.
Russian soldiers had told each other stories of how they had shot an American in a Raptor suit and he just got back up and kept shooting like nothing happened. One Russian comrade said he fired nearly an entire thirty-round magazine into one soldier before he finally killed the American. If more American divisions started to field the Raptor suits, then this war was going to get a lot bloodier than it already had been.
The 32nd Infantry had earned the reputation as one of the most elite divisions in the Army after their battle in Fairbanks. They had faced off against nearly 240,000 Russian soldiers with just 12,000 men. They had suffered nearly sixty percent casualties, but had bought enough time for the engineers to seriously destroy the infrastructure in northern and central Alaska. Now it was time for them to withdraw with the Marines, get to safety, and await their next assignment.
Plans of Betrayal
Prime Minister Yasuhiro Hata had spent the last couple of months vetting and replacing a number of senior military leaders, ensuring that each and every one was loyal to Japan and would do as their government directed. He had to ask for the resignation of some, and the reassignment of others to get his key people in place. The final preparations were being made to ready the fleet and the JDF. They had the sealift capability to move up to 35,000 soldiers and their equipment. Currently, these soldiers and the navy were being led to believe that they would be attacking the Chinese fleet at Pearl Harbor and conducting a landing to secure the island from the Chinese.
PM Hata had also coordinated with the PLA to have twelve thousand soldiers and equipment hidden inside of several roll-on, roll-off cargo containers. Instead of bringing thousands of Toyota, Nissan and Honda vehicles to the Port of Oakland and Port of Los Angeles, they would be offloading air defense systems, light drone tanks and infantry fighting vehicles. The soldier’s orders were to secure the ports and then expand the perimeter as far out as they could until reinforcements began to arrive.
As part of the surprise attack, there would be nearly sixty commercial aircraft arriving in the US from Japan. They had all been timed so they would all be on the ground at the same time; once they pulled up to the terminal, they would then unload fully armed Special Forces who would do what they could to destroy as much of the airport as possible before they changed in to civilian clothes and faded into the American population. Each aircraft would carry a total of sixty Special Forces soldiers and plenty of explosives. Their secondary mission (after causing a lot of havoc at the airport) was to begin conducting sabotage operations across the American infrastructure. This included blowing up railroad bridges, highway overpasses and tunnels. This would dramatically hurt the Americans’ logistical capabilities.
The key to making this operation succeed was complete and absolute secrecy. All of the Special Forces soldiers and JDF personnel who would be involved in the initial invasion were separated from the rest of the Japanese forces, and were conducting special training to keep them occupied and get them ready for the real deal. The JDF Task Force, which included their aircraft carriers, new battleships and 35,000 additional soldiers, would turn away from the Chinese naval task force and head right for the West Coast of America once the assault at the airports begin. Their objective would be to secure Los Angeles, San Francisco and Oakland. Only Los Angeles had a military contingent near them, and they would be handled by the Chinese PLAN infantry, who would be launching a full-fledged beach assault against Camp Pendleton and the various naval bases in San Diego. If things went according to plan, they would control the ports and a large chunk of Southern California by the end of the New Year.