The President spoke first, saying, “This is another colossal screw up General. How in God’s green Earth were they able to fly that many aircraft this close to our shores without us even seeing it? Then we have the Japanese task force getting its butt kicked and heading towards the West Coast for safety. Can we at least get our F41s over there to start giving us some real-time intelligence and engage those transports?” The President’s face was red with anger as he spoke.
“The F41s are being scrambled as we speak, and will be over the area within the next hour. We should have more intelligence then. In the meantime, we are moving our forces around to engage them,” Branson said, trying to reassure his Commander-in-Chief that the military had the situation under control.
Patrick Rubio, the Director of the CIA, interjected, “Mr. President, this may be the invasion force our analyst had been warning about,” he said.
Admiral Juliano still could not believe the PLAN could launch such an invasion. He did not believe they had the logistical capability to pull it off. Now he was starting to have some doubts. What worried him the most was the loss of the four SUDs and the destruction of the command center controlling them. They had no idea right now what the fifth SUD had seen or what was really going on… something else just did not seem right with the Japanese task force. They had more than enough firepower to destroy the PLAN in the area. Their new battleship alone packed a huge punch, and they had both of them present. He needed to get down to the bottom of this and soon.
The President turned towards Director Rubio and responded to his assertion. “You may be right, Pat. I honestly did not think they had the logistical capability to pull something like this off, but then again, who would have thought they could fly their transport craft completely under our nose like they have. Right now, I want answers people. Figure it out and let’s meet back here again in the next two hours. I want an update then.”
“Yes Sir,” echoed the room.
The President got up and left the room; he needed to go for a walk to clear his head. He had to figure out what to do next, and that was going to require some alone time to think.
General Gardner walked in to the command center abruptly. In his usually booming voice, he bellowed, “Ok, people-what in the world is happening out there? How in the heck did the PLAAF manage sneak over 500 aircraft in to American airspace?”
A Colonel who was in charge of managing the airspace for Third Army spoke up. “Sir, the Chinese hit us with a major cyber-attack; they blinded us, and then when we did see something they were suddenly heading towards San Diego. We’ve sent a FLASH message to get the F41s airborne. They are scrambling them now as we speak.”
Sighing before continuing on, General Gardner replied, “All right, here is what I want to have happen. I want General Smith’s Sixth Corps to begin moving from Colorado to LA immediately. Tell him he has to be in LA with his entire Corps in five days. I don’t care what he has to do, but he needs to have them there immediately. Next, I want Third Marines at to move immediately to a position between LA and Camp Pendleton. I want them standing by to support whatever happens next. I also want LTG Peeler on the phone as soon as possible. He’s the on-scene commander in California, and I need him to take charge of the situation until I can get my headquarters moved. We are going to pack everything up and move to Twenty-Nine Palms immediately. I want the HQ up and running in twelve hours, understood people?!”
“Yes Sir!” responded the men and women in the room.
A Day to Live in Infamy
Admiral Tomohisa Kawano’s fleet was still a long way off from California, but the cyber-attacks had bought him some time. He had just received a message that the Americans had restored their DoD communications system across the country, with exception of the West Coast. The report also said the Americans had scrambled their F41 hyper sonic fighters to intercept the fake transports and fighters. Once they discovered it was fake, they would immediately report their findings, which meant he had precious little time until it was discovered that his task force was not retreating to the West Coast, but was rather the vanguard of a massive PLAN invasion force.
Their intelligence indicated that a large force of Marines had moved from Camp Pendleton to the initial drop zones and was awaiting the Chinese paratroopers, who would never show. His task force was now in range of their cruise missiles, and he was ordered to launch them at the Marine force, which was out in the open and completely unprepared to defend against such an attack. With a bit of uncertain reluctance, he gave the order to launch 150 cruise missiles at the Marine positions. He then gave the order to launch another 200 cruise missiles at Camp Pendleton, and 100 cruise missiles at the naval facilities in San Diego. If the Americans were able to get their radars operational within the next three hours, they would be able to identify and engage the incoming cruise missiles and would know they came from the Japanese task force. If not, then the likelihood is they would assume the missiles came from the PLAN task force.
While this was taking place, their surprise invasion against the Port of Los Angeles and the Port of Oakland had just started. In addition to the port attacks, thirty civilian Boeing 787s landed at thirty different major air hubs across the country at essentially the same time. As they taxied toward their positions within the terminal, they would unleash the greatest Trojan horse attack against America in their history. Today was truly going to go down as a day that would live in infamy as President Roosevelt had once said on December 7th, 1941, 99 years ago.
West Coast Landing
While the DoD was experiencing a massive cyber-attack against their communications network, twelve Japanese freighters had arrived at the Port of Los Angeles over the past four days. Since December 24th was Christmas Eve and the Japanese did not celebrate that holiday, they used that day to launch the greatest sneak attack in American history. They started to unload their freighters, taking over control of several unloading shipping containers filled with military equipment and munitions, and connecting the roll-on, roll-off bridges to the ships. Within twenty minutes, they had unloaded nine infantry fighting vehicles and three tanks. Next came a dozen light drone tanks followed by nearly three thousand soldiers per ship. They quickly began to unpack their gear and vehicles, getting them ready for combat. A platoon’s worth of troops and one IFV along with a mobile air-defense vehicle moved to each corner of the port to establish an initial air defense umbrella over their operations.
At first the sight of military vehicles driving around inside the port did not attract attention; the few workers slogging it out during the holiday had seen this before. What attracted attention was the markings on some of the vehicles and uniforms. Many of the vehicles and soldiers had Japanese flags identifying them, which made sense, since Japan was an ally. However, some of the vehicles had the Chinese flag on them, and America was at war with China. So why would Chinese vehicles be inside the port?
Some of the port security guards moved towards the soldiers to identify who they were and ask their intentions… they were quickly shot and killed. Once the first shots were fired, the on-scene Japanese Commander ordered his forces to move quickly to secure the rest of the port and prepare to move to their secondary objectives.