“Let’s begin with why you were flying over Oneida.”
“Our mission was not Oneida. We were sent to scout and disrupt supply lines. There are not supposed to be enemies in Oneida.”
“What do you mean?”
“Intelligence briefing told us that we controlled the town.”
Suddenly it made sense. The enemy didn’t know the Chairman was dead. As far as they were concerned, Oneida and many of the smaller towns just like it situated in strategic locations were under their control.
“Was attacking supply lines your only mission?”
Huan shook her head just as a nurse from the clinic came in with a change of clothes and a fresh towel and placed both on the edge of the table. Huan reached for them before John stopped her hand.
“A few more questions and then I’ll leave you to get dried off and changed.”
Huan’s eyes flicked between the table top and the towel. “Secondary mission was to scout and report enemy activity at the Y-12 National Security Complex.”
John’s ears perked up. “In Oak Ridge? Why?”
“We were not told.”
John’s best guess was that it had something to do with the nuclear work being done there, at least up until recently. Were the Chinese wondering if the Americans had enough parts to put together a crude atomic bomb? Chinese and Russian forces were stretched along the Mississippi river. Even if dropping a bomb or activating a missile silo was possible, the damage radius wouldn’t deal a devastating blow to the enemy.
“Why have you attacked us?” John asked.
“We were attacked first,” she answered. “We have the right to defend ourselves.”
“You say we attacked you first?” John spat. “That’s a lie.”
Huan grew quiet and he realized that as far as foreign media was concerned, the People’s Republic of China was a closed system. The government could create any story they wanted and probably even supply the doctored digital video to convince the population that retaliation was necessary. Hadn’t Americans accused a former president of doing the same thing?
“How was it you attacked us?” he asked her.
“A Jin-class nuclear submarine off the coast of Washington State launched a CSS-N-5 Sabbot armed with a super-EMP warhead. The missile detonated high in the atmosphere over Kansas, destroying the communication, power and transportation network on the continent.”
John nodded, feeling numb. It was one thing to speculate about what had happened and another thing entirely to have the plan laid out before you.
“And how long after did your army reach American soil?”
“One month.”
“Why so long?”
Huan reached for the cup of water and this time John let her drink. When she was done she put it down and spoke. “We had to wait for the nuclear fallout to clear.”
“The what?”
“The Russians used nuclear warheads to take out each of your missile silos so they couldn’t respond.”
John swallowed hard. “How many nukes did they use?” he asked.
Huan shook her head. “I don’t know. Dozens. Mostly in the Midwest.”
“Lord have mercy,” he said, feeling the room spinning out of control. It made sense, but one always assumed getting nuked wouldn’t go unnoticed. Perhaps the military brass he’d spoken to hadn’t bothered to mention it, since news that the country’s missile silos had been hit with nukes might demoralize the population.
“There’s something else I need to ask you,” John told her. “I’ve heard rumors about prison camps behind enemy lines.”
“I don’t know anything about those,” she answered quickly. Huan’s eyes found his and the look of shame John saw confirmed not only that the camps were real, but that the atrocities being committed there were far worse than he’d imagined.
Chapter 27
The convoy of heavy diesel M35 transport trucks containing Brandon and Gregory along with a dozen other soldiers rumbled west along the 104 on its way to the front. The M35 was an old vehicle Brandon was told had last seen action sometime before the Vietnam War, but had been thrown back into service since many of the newer transports no longer worked. The military had seen fit to begin protecting weapons platforms such as tanks, APCs, jets and helicopters against EMP strikes, but had failed to do the same for the vehicles that brought the fuel and parts that kept them all running. It was a colossal oversight and one it seemed that armies around the world were guilty of.
Back in Dyersburg before they left, O’Brien had led the boys to the quartermaster who had issued both of them a uniform. There hadn’t been anything that quite fit Gregory and so he’d been forced to roll up the cuff of the smallest fatigues available.
The quartermaster’s next question to Brandon had been his familiarity with using an M4 rifle. He explained that he’d fired an AR-15 many times, a handful of which had been in combat.
“Well, this one goes full auto, son, so you better be careful,” the quartermaster had admonished.
“Yes, sir,” was Brandon’s sheepish reply.
As they headed for the M35, Gregory looked like he’d just had the guts ripped out of him.
“What’s wrong?”
“Don’t I get a weapon too?” he asked.
Brandon put an arm around his shoulder. “They’ve given you a much more important job. Those soldiers need that ammo delivered pronto or it’s game over.”
The little speech wasn’t doing much to convince Gregory and Brandon couldn’t blame him. If the tables were turned, he’d have been devastated too.
Not ten minutes later, they were rolling down the 104, the culmination of what they’d travelled all this way to do. The butterflies in Brandon’s stomach had just started to subside when the first artillery shell whistled overhead and exploded a mile behind them. A thick orange and yellow fireball billowed into the air, followed a second later by the sound of the explosion.
A soldier sitting next to Brandon was chewing gum, his eyes vacant, his uniform covered in dry mud. The soldier pulled on a dying cigarette before flicking it over the side. “Here we go again,” he said.
“What do you mean?” Brandon inquired.
The name tag on the soldier’s uniform read Dixon. “Those ChiComs always start with an artillery barrage before an attack. Probably a tactic they got from the Russians. It’s a bad tell, if you ask me.”
“A bad tell?”
Dixon glanced over at Brandon. “How old are you, kid?”
“Fifteen. Well, nearly.”
“Recruiting toddlers, is that what the army’s come to?” That was when he leaned forward and saw Gregory sitting one seat over, the pants of his uniform rolled up. “Lord have mercy.”
“You never answered my question. What’s a tell?”
Dixon laid his head back as another shell swept over and detonated somewhere out of sight.
“Well, you’re too young to play poker, kid, but a tell’s a dead giveaway. Sorta like a fighter who always leads with a left hook before he goes in for an upper cut. Those Chinese have been trying to fight their way across the Mississippi for the last few days now and every time we keep beating ’em back.”
“Maybe with all these reinforcements we can hold them off forever,” Brandon said and immediately realized he probably sounded like a real noob.
“We’re gonna be there any minute, kid. Just lie back and enjoy the peace and quiet while you can.”
The artillery barrage only intensified once they reached the front lines. But now shells weren’t sailing overhead, they were landing all around them, throwing up mounds of dirt and deadly shrapnel.