Eric L. Harry
Protect and Defend
About the Author
Eric L. Harry graduated from the Marine Military Academy and holds BA, MBA and JD degrees from Vanderbilt University. He has also studied at Moscow and Leningrad State Universities. A corporate securities attorney and expert on military affairs, he lives with his wife and two sons in Houston, Texas, USA. He is the author of the bestselling novel of a Third World War, Arc Light, and of the acclaimed cyberthriller Society of the Mind.
Acknowledgments
No words of thanks would be appropriate unless they began with my wife Marina, who nurtures both me and my children as we all go through the sometimes arduous process of writing a book.
I am also indebted once again to the U.S. Army Reserve’s 147th IMA Detachment, who wargamed this book… twice. (The first time, the war didn’t go so well for the United Nations’s forces.) And finally, a special word of gratitude to a select group of men whom I have never met. They did in real life what I described in this work of fiction. In a cold so bitter the saliva froze on the roofs of their mouths, 25,000 U.S. Marines were suddenly and unexpectedly attacked by 120,000 Chinese soldiers. Under the most brutal conditions ever visited upon man they exhibited extremes in bravery and military prowess not soon to be repeated. What began for me as research for a novel now ends with these humble and inadequate thanks to the men of the 1st Marine Division — living and dead — who fought at the Chosen Reservoir in Korea from November 27th to December 10th, 1950.
Dedication
To God’s most beautiful wonders, and the two greatest joys of my life: Ethan and Jordan.
Epigraph
‘Our first work must be the annihilation of everything as it now exists. ’
Prologue
The only signs of man were the huge black pipes running undefended from horizon to horizon. The man atop the shaggy native horse turned his collar up against the chill. Nightfall came slowly in that northern clime, but the wind began to bite long before dark. He eyed the featureless dark blue sky. It seemed to weigh down on the earth, pressing the horizons below their accustomed positions. He had never seen true wilderness before. The sky there seemed to assume a greater prominence in the order of things.
With a gentle prod of his heels the horse started forward. Its rider had been awkward at first. He’d dug his heels into the horse’s flanks then yanked back on the reins to slow the beast. Over the weeks of his trek to this remote spot, however, horse and rider had become one. He now sat comfortably in his saddle — his body attuned to the gentle sway of the animal’s motions. A slight tug on the reins pulled the horse to a stop, and he climbed down.
He paused beside the horse to listen. The jet-black cluster of pipes and a few others like it supplied the homes and factories of Western Europe with almost half their energy needs. The massive volumes of natural gas rushing across the Eurasian plain made no sound. But as he moved nearer to the pipe, he could feel the heat.
Friction, he thought. It’s in there. He untied the faded blue bedroll lying across his horse’s rump and laid it on the ground with a faint clanking sound. When the coarse blanket was unrolled, the tools of his new trade lay spread before him as if on a surgeon’s tray.
The emptiness swallowed the few sounds he made in the same way that it swallowed his thoughts. His mind wandered. The swiftly flowing stream he’d crossed a few kilometers back. The view of the night sky from a dozen camps in as many days. The perfect stillness of the deep woods on a windless evening.
The crisp, clean air of Siberia constantly bathed him with its ebb and flow. He breathed of it deeply, filling his lungs through his dry nose. The weather had cooperated. He’d never seen a more beautiful day than the one that was just ending.
The man forced himself to concentrate when he came to the delicate part of his long-practiced routine. Time passed — not quickly, but without notice of its passage. All the while memories made fleeting forays into the periphery of his consciousness. The bath he’d taken in a frigid stream. He had emerged to dry on the bank. The sun was hot on his bare skin. His horse had wandered out into the water, pausing to lap the cool liquid and then darting through the shallow stream every so often with surprising vigor, chasing and chased by the dragon flies. He would miss the horse, the summer nights.
As he had lain on the bank with the sun shining red through closed eyelids, other memories had come. Each roused him from his slumber with a start. That night they had come again. He had awoken in a full sweat — shivering from the cold. He had clutched his blanket to his chin — staring out with pounding pulse at the blackness that surrounded the small bubble of light from his campfire.
He took a deep breath and paused to look up at the sky. He felt drawn to the reddish hues of the setting sun. Maybe here, in the great nothingness, he could change. He would remain in the wild, live off the land, suffer the immense hardships of a winter, maybe two. When he emerged, he would be a new man. Maybe the harshness — the sheer dominion of Siberia over all creatures great and small — would kill the old human and give birth to a new one. A new man cleansed of all that had passed.
It was at that moment he realized the truth. That no matter where he was or how far his travels took him, he would carry with him the baggage of all that had passed. All he had done. It was the punishment of God or of nature; it made no difference which.
He mounted the horse — the effort made greater by the burden of his memories — and rode a short distance alongside the pipeline. He pulled a crinkled piece of paper from his pocket and wearily climbed down. He opened a small can of thick white paint with his knife. He held the paper in one hand and a brush in the other, carefully copying the words from the paper onto the pipe.
Rising again to his saddle, he spurred the horse and slowly ascended a low hill. There he waited. He caught himself looking on instinct to all corners of the horizon. A habit born of life in the other world. The world of humankind. He saw nothing, of course; nobody.
A chill passed over him as the last sliver of blood-red sun sank into the West, and he wrapped his arms around himself, shivering. The cold would come early that night.
Four small charges popped within milliseconds of one another. Natural gas gushed from the torn pipes in phenomenal volumes. The tiny explosions had depleted the nearby atmosphere of oxygen. But when the heated and compressed gas jetting from the pipes found air, a mammoth fireball erupted. Like a giant can-opener, the burning gases expanded and split the pipe for a hundred meters in each direction.
The jarring boom rolled over the barren landscape and startled the horse.
‘Spokoyno,’ the man murmured. He patted the horse’s hard neck that lay just beneath the short bristles of its coat. There were no echoes on the tabletop-flat terrain. After the first concussive shock wave had passed, the only sound was from the burning gas. It filled the normally quiet world with a sonorous roar like that of a speeding train. A pall of black smoke rose high above the conflagration and blotted out the darkening blue sky.
The man scanned the now devastated length of black pipe.
For a hundred meters in each direction, it was twisted and split and broken. But the large block letters he’d scrawled lay undisturbed just beyond the limit of the explosion’s violence. The paint ran like white blood beneath the words. ‘Destruction is the mother of all creation!’ he mumbled out loud as he read. A single ear of the agitated horse twitched to take in the sound of his voice.