“Sir, sir,” squawked from the radio.
Nung lifted a mobile com-unit, tucking it under his arm. Then he staggered for the escape hatch. Upon exiting and sliding down the side of the vehicle, he winced as another hovertank howled near. The vehicle came to a stop beside him as it blew snow everywhere. Five riding soldiers slid off.
It was freezing cold out here, colder than it had been on the ice. It stung Nung’s face and his neck. His teeth began chattering. With an effort of will, as he shoved aside the pain, he shouted, “What are you doing? Don’t stand around me. We’re exposed.”
He forced himself to move, wading through snow until he got to more solid ice. After establishing control over thirty soldiers, he shouted, “Get down!”
He had better reflexes than the others did as he heard the whine of shells. The American artillery had zeroed in on the wreckage. Some of the shrapnel sliced a few of the slower soldiers. Their oozing blood looked like a sluggish stain of ink in the darkness. With another effort of will, Nung tore his gaze from the twisting soldiers. He didn’t have time for them now.
“Advance, keep advancing!” he roared into the communications unit he wore like a backpack.
With his voice lashing them, the last hovertanks continued their advance. 76mm shells, Chinese mortars, ATGMs and RGPs pounded the base that rose up like an Eskimo’s igloo in the distance. Occasionally a thunderous flash appeared there, another artillery tube firing its hated shells.
Shin Nung floundered through the snow, shaking off any helping hands. The Chairman had thought him lacking in attacking zeal. They had accused him of cowardice.
“Attack!” roared Nung, mist pouring from his mouth. It was so cold. “Kill the Americans!”
The Battle of Dead Horse was another meat-grinder. The Chinese traded blood and vehicles for ground. The hovertanks dwindled in number as they floated over the ice, amazingly swift in this land of cold. In the end, though, the Americans simply lacked enough men, enough shells, bombers and ammo. The Chinese assault carried through into the streets of Dead Horse. The massacre began then, the shivering Chinese too bitter after surviving the Arctic nightmare to grant any mercy.
The last assault took place as Chinese explosives blew open the way into the Marine command post, a half- buried bunker. In the last room, Captain Bullard fired at point blank range, killing two Chinese soldiers. Then Bullard’s automatic was empty and he drew his bayonet. The Marine captain charged, roaring his challenge. Chinese bullets riddled the body until it thumped onto the bloody floor. The Battle of Dead Horse was over, and the Chinese were victorious.
-17-
The Last Push
The terrible ice age storm that had howled down from the Arctic Circle and halted all movement on the Southern Front was beginning to die a slow death. The insane shrieks no longer whispered in First Rank Lu Po’s ears. He could think again, even though it was dreadfully cold outside the cabin that he and his White Tigers had huddled in during the blizzard.
Lu opened the front door and stepped outside into a frozen wasteland. Ice and snow encrusted the surrounding pines. A thousands branches lay on the virgin snow or were buried under tons of white. The air burned going down his lungs. Each step was a sharp crunch of his boots on the devilish substance. Lu never wanted to see snow again. Once this campaign was over and he took his discharge, he would live in the South Pacific. He would bake in the sunlight and luxuriate in warmth forever.
“What are you waiting for?” he told the Commandos emerging from the log cabin. “Don’t you want to be heroes?”
The White Tigers wore their white combat suits. After a hot morning breakfast, they cradled their weapons.
“The storm hurt us,” said Lu, “but it will have hurt the partisans even worse.”
“They’re native to this land and will have known what to do,” Wang said.
“Maybe. The key is that they’re not elite soldiers like us. If any of them were caught in the open, they’ll be frozen or half-dead by now. It’s time to finish our chore and teach these hardheaded Americans the price of not knowing when they’re beaten. You heard Command. They want every one of them hanged. All the supplies must get through to the front. The final push is about to begin, and we have to make sure our soldiers have enough ammo and fuel to smash through Anchorage.”
It was a speech, and Lu was more than tired of those. It was time to find and hang these tick-like partisans that were sucking off Chinese strength.
Half a day later, Lu knelt beside a guttered fire. His men had found six frozen bodies nearby. The Americans were stiff like boards. These bastards
“Someone was careless,” said Wang. “Usually they bury these.”
“How many do you think are left in this band?” asked Lu.
Wang shrugged. “Four to six would be my guess.” He frowned as the tracks disappeared deeper into the woods. “Do we follow the trail?”
“Of course,” said Lu. “We follow their tracks until we find and kill them.”
“I don’t know, Bill,” said Carlos. “This position is awfully exposed.” They were on a pine-covered hill overlooking Highway One. Their tracks led deeper into the shadowed forest.
An exhausted Bill Harris couldn’t feel his feet anymore. He knew they were black with advanced frostbite. Gangrene would set in soon unless they were amputated. He didn’t want to go on living without feet. He knew suicide was wrong from God’s perspective. But this wasn’t suicide. He was fighting for his country.
Bill was tired. His teeth chattered all the time and he wondered if he was beginning to hallucinate. A presence had been with him during the trek here, a light off the corner of his eye. He thought it might have been God, but when he’d turned, nothing had been there. This storm….
“Bill, you okay?” asked Carlos.
“Sure,” Bill whispered. His strength was failing. It was so cold, his feet—
“We’d better think about finding shelter,” Carlos said.
“No,” whispered Bill, with his eyes feeling as if they were burning up. Feebly, he shook his head. The storm…before the storm he’d seen too many corpses dangling from the pines. Those were American men and women, and children, too. The Chinese hanged everyone.
When he’d sat huddled under a lean-to during the blizzard, as ice howled around them, he’d remembered crows pecking at the corpses’ eyes. That had done something to him. He’d focused on that during the ice storm and had started a fire with the old hunter’s lighter. The hunter had died….
“Bill,” said Carlos. “We can’t go on like this.”
“The corpses,” Bill whispered.
“You ought to rest.”
“The corpses,” Bill whispered again. He’d seen more today dangling like frozen icicles. It had filled him with the same anger as when he’d watched the T-66s destroying Stan Higgins’s company of Abrams tanks. That had caused him then to wire grenades to a sticky bomb. He’d charged the Chinese monster. There was something in him that maybe only Stan Higgins knew about. It came upon him after losing game after game. Too much defeat would ignite a fire in him. He couldn’t talk then. He would be too angry, too wound up and driven to win. Then he’d drive for the hoop, making his lay-ups. Then his three-point shots would start swooshing in.
The anger, the fire, after knowing that he was going to lose his dead feet…it had ignited him seeing those frozen bodies dangling from the pines. He’d been a free man all his life. He didn’t plan to play the slave now to some invader, especially not with amputated feet! There were times you had to fight. It was better to fight on your knees
