than being a slave. But it was best to fight standing while you still had feet.
“That’s what I’m going to do today,” Bill whispered.
“What’s that, Pastor?” asked Carlos.
“Here,” said Bill, indicating the hill. “Here’s where I’m making my stand.”
They were on a hill in the shadows of ice-laden pines. Below was the snow-packed Highway One.
“You take the others and go,” Bill whispered. “Just leave me the M2 and the ammo.”
Carlos stared at him. “If you’re staying, I’m staying.”
“Choppers can get us pretty easy if we’re up here,” the youthful pilot said, adding his opinion as he always did.
“With the M2 Browning….” Bill smiled as he might have after making a winning three-point shot.
“You don’t think we’re going to make it out alive, do you?” asked Carlos.
“I don’t know,” said Bill. His eyes felt hot again. It put splotches before his vision. “I’ve seen a lot of corpses hanging from trees. I figure the Chinese are killing off all the real Americans. I don’t know if I want to be around once those people are gone.”
Carlos nodded thoughtfully. “If we’re going to die, let’s make it worth something, huh?”
“I’m not committing suicide,” Bill said feverishly. “I’m just sick of seeing those corpses. And my feet—I’m going to hit back as hard as I know how.”
“What about your feet?” the pilot asked.
“Nothing,” said Bill. He shouldn’t have said anything about them. It was a mistake.
“Do you hear that?” asked Carlos, his voice muffled by his scarf.
Everyone in the small band listened.
“Those sound like trucks,” the pilot said.
“Go,” whispered Bill. He crouched by his M2 and used his freezing fingers to fumble at the ammo belt, soon racking a bullet into the firing chamber. He looked up at the others. They had intense frowns, those that had pulled down their scarves. “Go,” he said again. “Save yourselves to fight later.”
“Look,” said Carlos, pointing.
They did, including Bill. A snowplow appeared from around a bend. Snow and ice roared from it as it cleared the highway. Behind the snowplow were Chinese Army trucks and ordinary commercial vehicles, including a tanker.
“They must be running out of trucks,” said Carlos, “if they’ve begun stealing ours.”
Bill had a crazy idea. He was so desperately cold. He wanted to see a fire, a real blaze. He forgot about his friends as he tried to judge distances to the tanker.
“What was that?” the pilot asked, turning around toward the pines behind them. Before anyone could answer, assault-rifle fire cut the pilot down. He crumpled onto the snow.
“Ambush!” cried Carlos. He twisted around and raised his rifle, managing to get off three shots. He shot into the trees they had come out of earlier. Then a well-placed round made a hole in his forehead. He slumped to the cold snow beside the pilot.
“The Alamo,” whispered Bill. He ignored the gunshots from the pines, his back to the hidden enemy. He concentrated as he sighted upon the shining tanker with its metal storage unit. The tanker was near the front of the convoy line. Then a bullet smashed through his shoulder blade, pitching him onto the M2. For a moment, he lay in shock.
With a groan, Bill dragged himself upright behind the M2 Browning. He grabbed the V-shaped butterfly trigger, swiveled the heavy machine gun, and sighted the tanker. It was far away. That didn’t matter now—he didn’t have any time left to be fancy. He felt lightheaded, but he felt sure he could make the shot, just like a distant three-pointer in basketball. He pressed both thumbs on the buttons and heard the heavy hammering sound.
Tracer rounds hosed out in a line. Bill adjusted as he held his body stiffly. Another bullet slammed into him, but he kept his position and only grunted. His incendiary rounds smoked against the tanker’s metal skin. Then the greatest fireball of his life mushroomed up in an orange roar of flame.
Militia Sergeant Bill Harris’s eyes were shining. Then his head exploded in a rain of blood, brain and skull-bone as a White Tiger dum-dum bullet ended his existence in this world.
Lu Po stared at the dead Americans. Down below, the fuel tanker burned. It had backed-up traffic as explosions still cooked off from other trucks. The snowplow was on its side, the dead driver hanging out of the broken windshield.
“High Command won’t be pleased with this,” said Wang.
“Fools,” said Lu. “Why did they put the tanker so near the snowplow?”
“Maybe they need the fuel up at the front.”
Lu shrugged. It didn’t matter now.
“What about these corpses?” Wang asked, pointing with his rifle at the dead Americans.
“Hang them like the rest and put on the placards,” said Lu. “If we have to kill every one of these Americans before they learn, we’ll do it.”
Wang shook his head. “They’re like rats. They just keep appearing. Don’t they know when they’re beaten?”
Lu had no answer for that as he watched the tanker burn.
Captain Stan Higgins and Brigadier General Ramos trudged through the snow. They struggled through big drifts to a nearby overpass.
The blizzard had left a heavy covering of snow, making it a seeming pristine wonderland. To the far north of the city rose the majestic mountains of the Alaska Range. To the immediate north were the military bases. To the immediate east was the Chugach Foothills, part of the Chugach State Park. It was the third-largest park in America and comprised nearly a half-million acres. Cook Inlet lay to the west, while ten miles from the heart of downtown Anchorage to the south was Potter Marsh.
It was a gray morning, with heavy clouds overhead. The wind whistled, but it didn’t howl or shriek. Bits of snow swirled, but not the whiteout that had brought everything to a standstill for the past few days.
The airport was on the opposite side of the city as the approaching Chinese. The main arteries leaving Anchorage were also across the city from the front line.
Stan’s three Abrams were ready, joining the skeletal remains of Ramos’s 1st Stryker Brigade. The attrition of battle had whittled the brigade down to little more than a company of soldiers and machines. The 4th Airborne Brigade was gone, its dead officers, NCOs and soldiers scattered along Highway One, having made the Chinese pay for each mile they advanced. Ramos had done the same along Highway Nine. Few Alaskan National Guardsmen remained, although a higher percentage of Militia had made it back to the city. They had broken more quickly, running away faster. Some had regrouped, bitter about the war and their seeming lack of courage. Those men were determined to halt the Chinese now. Others cowered somewhere in the city, often hating themselves because of their fear.
During these past weeks, others in Anchorage and around the state had picked up their weapons and reported to the officers in charge of defending the city. A trickle of reinforcements from the bottom states had continued to enter the city from Fairbanks, often leaving for the approaching front. Now that front was just outside the city limits.
Two new laser battalions had set up their heavy equipment at the slowly repaired airport. One of those was a Canadian battalion. The lasers would make any Chinese aircraft and helicopter assaults pay a bitter price if they attempted to fly over the coming battlefield. The surviving American airmen knew all about the Chinese Red Arrow anti-missile rounds, as well as the bigger SAMs the enemy had brought forward with each lunge closer to Anchorage.
Despite the hard weeks of battle, the Chinese still had more numbers. What they lacked was reserves of munitions, fuel and even more soldiers. Worse, they were about to attempt the hardest type of warfare possible: storming a city.
“We’ll make this their Stalingrad,” Ramos told Stan.
