A thunderous blast erupted along the crest of Owens Ridge followed by a giant fireball. The fighters were going for the artillery positioned on the mountain that the choppers had failed to take out. And that tingling feeling on the back of John’s neck told him things were about to get a whole lot worse.
Chapter 48
The bombing lasted another hour. By then the reports coming in had gone from bad to outright depressing. All of the 155mm howitzers atop the ridge had either been destroyed or otherwise put out of action. That meant they only had a handful of artillery left, most of it concentrated and camouflaged near the high school.
But that wasn’t all. Before long, forward observers began radioing in to report that Chinese armor was gathering along every major road leading into town. The enemy’s plan aimed to cut off any American attempts to escape or call in reinforcements. It seemed that the Chinese had learned a thing or two from the mistakes of their initial attack and were determined to overwhelm Oneida’s defenses by sheer force of numbers.
John hated to admit it, but it was starting to look as though Jerry’s suggestion of doom and gloom was coming true.
The lull in the bombing also provided a narrow window for non-combatants to get down into the storm drains again. John found Diane and Emma making ready to lead some of the others underground. John stopped briefly and gave Diane a kiss.
“Don’t you dare try to be a hero,” she told him sternly. “I need you back in one piece.”
“What do you take me for?” he teased, trying to hide the butterflies fluttering in his belly.
John hugged Emma and told them he loved them both.
Leaving General Brooks and the others at the headquarters behind, John hurried to meet up with Moss and Captain Bishop, who were dug in over at the veterinary hospital.
The four major state routes and highways leading into town converged on Oneida’s main thoroughfare, Alberta Street. The abandoned cars and debris put in place had all been designed to channel the enemy into this killing zone of fortified buildings. Lying in wait in and around every structure sat tank-killing teams as well as fighters armed with heavy and light machine guns, grenades and in some cases mortars.
This narrow strip was where the bulk of the fighting would take place, where the battle would be won or lost, and it was exactly where John wanted to be. Let General Brooks sit things out at the headquarters, shuffling reinforcements here and there.
The veterinarian’s ground-floor entrances were blocked with furniture and barbed wire. As per John’s instructions, even the stairs had been rendered impassable. The same was also true for every house and business along the main strip, whether occupied or not. Denying the enemy infantry as many safe havens as possible was just as important.
A ladder led up to a second-story window and John climbed it, feeling the weight of his armored vest and weapons fighting him with every step.
He entered into what was once a post-operation recovery room back when the vet hospital had still been functioning. Before any medicine of value to humans had either been stolen or, in some cases, salvaged by Dr. Coffey.
Gathered before John now were a mishmash of soldiers and armed townspeople, several in torn and bloodied uniforms. Ironically, many of the soldiers were quiet and thoughtful, while members of the town’s militia paced back and forth excitedly, expressing their eagerness to kill themselves a ‘Chink’ and other such racial slurs. It was all a way of psyching themselves up for battle. John understood that as well as anyone. In fact, he’d seen quite a bit of it in the early stages of the Iraq invasion when most of the military were little more than young men who’d never seen combat. But it was the sort of display you rarely saw from veterans. Not from a professional who’d seen the awful effects of war firsthand.
Some of these men and women were still green, but after today that would all change and in ways they could hardly imagine. At least it would for the ones who made it out alive.
Moss and Captain Bishop came over as John was pulling the ladder up and into the room.
“Any word from headquarters?” John asked.
“Not yet, Colonel,” Captain Bishop replied, and it took John a second to figure out Bishop had been talking to him.
“Just call me John,” he told him.
“I’d sooner call you Colonel, sir, if it’s all the same to you.”
Moss grinned, flashing a newly dyed mohawk. The strip of hair that ran across Moss’ scalp was now a mix of red, green and black.
“I hope that’s not for camouflage,” John quipped.
The three of them laughed.
“I’ve always had a fascination with the Maori warriors of New Zealand and wanted something that would scare the pants off the enemy.”
“Or give them hunger pangs,” Captain Bishop joked. “Since you kinda look like a giant rooster.”
The visual was gut-splitting and John slapped Moss’ back, unable to contain his belly laugh.
All joking stopped when the mechanized growl of Chinese armor came into earshot. The howitzers located near the high school opened fire. Not long after, the blasts from the howitzers mixed with the sound of 60mm M224 mortars being lobbed toward the enemy.
The mortar’s maximum range was a little over two miles, which meant the tanks and fighting vehicles were drawing closer.
“Any visual yet?” John asked Moss, who was over by the corner window, peering out through a pair of binoculars.
“Nothing yet. All I see is a bunch of dirt and smoke being kicked up. Oh, wait a minute, here they come. Looks like a column of Type 99s, 96s and a ton of ZBD-08s.”
A similar description came from Captain Bishop, who was watching through the window on the north side of the building.
“It’s gonna get busy real soon,” John told them. Another ladder led from the room they were in to the roof of the building. He climbed it and crawled over to the three AT-4 teams positioned there.
“Remember,” he told them. “Aim for the top and rear of the vehicles. And whenever you can, fire all at once. You three with the heavy machine guns, it’s your jobs to keep the heads of those infantrymen down.”
They nodded just as the howitzers and artillery let up. John crawled to the rooftop edge in time to see the enemy column snaking its way through the cluttered streets.
“Just a little bit further,” John whispered.
Running along the sides of both buildings were rows of Chinese infantry, scanning the tops of buildings for any targets. The Americans hadn’t given themselves away just yet. The enemy knew the city was occupied. The battle earlier, the thorny reception the Z-10s had received as well as the artillery barrage were all confirmation of that. But that didn’t mean the Americans intended to stand out in the open and wait to be shot. Combat was as much a chess match and a waiting game as it was a race over who could shoot first.
The southern vantage point from atop the veterinary hospital gave John a glimpse of another Chinese column approaching from the west. Each consisted of at least two dozen vehicles. A sobering thought when you considered there were two more columns just like it entering from the east and the north. Then John spotted an armored vehicle in the enemy column he didn’t recognize at first. Short, squat and armed with four cannons, it seemed out of place. Could it be an anti-aircraft gun?
Soon his focus was yanked back to the southern spearhead as it wound further and further into town. The lead Type 99 main battle tank was crushing a wrecked Chevrolet when a high-explosive round from a concealed M1A2 impacted the side armor, causing a blinding explosion. That was when all hell broke loose. Rounds fired from the nearby buildings poured down into the infantry below. Dozens of AT-4 rockets streamed from alleys and rooftops, bursting in a violent hail. Many of the anti-tank rounds hit reactive armor and failed to cripple or destroy the vehicle. But there was one unexpected consequence. When the reactive armor exploded to neutralize the incoming rocket, it also peppered the supporting Chinese infantry marching along their flanks. In many cases the result was pure carnage.