She stared at him dumbly.
“Hang her,” said Lu. “We have bigger prey to hunt. Hurry, we must leave at once.”
Rubbing his arms in a vain effort to get warm, Militia Sergeant Bill Harris looked at his ragged, ill-fed band. He had thirteen shivering men huddled under cold pines in the snow with him. Several coughed all the time and had runny noses and sad eyes. They’d been on the run in the wilds for too long and with too little food. Some wore duck-hunting camo like him, meaning they were also Militiamen. One was a pilot who had survived his ejection. He’d broken bones in his left hand and wore a heavy, dirty wrap over it. Three were National Guardsmen. The interesting and most fit member was an old hunter. They had been eating his dwindling stocks of freeze-dried food for the past few days. Without the old hunter’s cunning, they would have died of exposure or been captured by patrolling Chinese.
“Build a fire,” the old hunter said.
The pilot shook his head. Despite his broken hand, he was an aggressive young man. “We can take a little cold, but if the Chinese see us warming ourselves by a fire we’re dead.”
“I don’t like them hanging people either,” the old hunter said. “But we’re not going to do much more if we’re all sick. We need to be warm for a while and regroup.”
“Make the fire,” Bill told the old hunter. He was sick of shivering, and he was dead tired. Tramping through the snow in the wilds with Chinese chasing them—it amazed him how the tiredness sank into his bones. It gave him a new appreciation for David when King Saul had chased him through the deserts of Israel. The next time he gave a sermon on those passages, he would add these experiences to make the Bible come to life for his parishioners.
“I still don’t understand who put you in charge,” the pilot said.
“Bill is a sergeant,” Carlos said from where he squatted.
“Yeah?” the pilot said. “Well, I’m a captain.”
“Bill’s led the group successfully,” Carlos said. “We’ve destroyed thirteen trucks full of supplies. And he rigged the perfect booby-trap with Chinese artillery shells, blowing up two IFVs and their naval infantry. What have you done again?”
“I got myself shot down because it was three against one,” the pilot said angrily. “Look, I don’t want to hang from the trees. If we do anymore now, they’re sure to send patrols after us into the woods, where we’ll probably freeze to death.”
Bill had seen Americans hanging from trees. It had shocked him even more than the invasion itself. The dangling corpse had been in plain sight along the highway. He’d worked near and had read the placard around the neck. In block letters the Chinese had written, ANY PARTISAN CAUGHT WITH A WEAPON WILL HANG. He had stared at those letters, thinking about having his arms tied behind his back and a rope looped around his neck. Something dark had entered his soul then. The Chinese wanted to play rough. He’d nodded. He would play rough all right.
“If the Chinese are hanging people,” Bill now told the others, “it means they’re desperate. It means the attacks behind enemy lines are taking a toll. I say we increase that toll.”
“What are you suggesting?” the pilot said. “Have you seen the latest convoys? They’re guarded by infantry fighting vehicles.”
“That’s right!” said Bill. “That’s another sign we’re hurting them. They’re pulling back combat vehicles from the fight to make sure they get enough supplies to the front. Now we have to hit them even harder.”
“I hope you’re not talking about slipping into the big supply dump near Sterling,” the old hunter said. He clicked a lighter, touching the flame to wadded paper crumpled under a teepee of broken sticks.
“They’ve seen that supply depot,” the pilot said, jerking a thumb at the National Guardsmen. “They said it’s guarded pretty tight.”
“The smart thing is to stick with what works,” Bill said. “I don’t want to get greedy and try to swallow too much. The idea is to nibble them like mice.”
“That’s great,” the pilot said. “Mice.”
Bill sympathized with the young man. It must be a terrible feeling to be shot down behind enemy lines. He hated the fact that he’d been left behind. Sometimes he just wanted to pack it in and try to walk back to Anchorage. Remembering that hanging corpse wouldn’t let him do that, though.
“Mice can burn down a house by nibbling enough electric wire-lining,” Bill told the pilot.
“And how does that apply to us?” the pilot asked.
“It should be obvious.”
“What should we attack next?” asked the old hunter.
Bill squatted beside the crackling sticks. He held his stiff fingers before the flames. Even the trickle of heat felt wonderful, like hope. How much longer could they do this? He was out of aspirin. He wanted aspirin almost as much he wanted more food. Soon, they would be out of food, too, and their .50 caliber ammo was running low. They had plenty of shotgun shells and .30-06 cartridges. He forced a grin onto his tired face. These men needed hope. The old hunter had been right. They needed the fire.
“I’ve been thinking of a spot,” said Bill, as he dug out a worn map. “We’ll set up the M2s there and wait for a rich target like Robin Hood and his merry men.”
“So now we’re archers?” asked the pilot, squatting beside him and holding out his good hand to the flames. He stared at Bill. “I wish you’d make up your mind. Mice, men wearing tights…I need to get back to our side and see if I can get another fighter.”
Their side, Bill nodded. It would be nice to go home. It would be glorious. But right now, he was David on the run from Saul. This was the hard time when he had to prove himself.
“Build up that fire,” Bill said. “Then let’s get everyone around it. We have some hard planning to do.”
Stan’s tank rattled-clanked-squealed its way along the road as it towed another Abrams. The towing was hard on his tank, but he couldn’t leave this one behind and there was no other way to move it. It gave him three M1A2s, the last of their heavy armor.
Standing in the hatch, Stan could see the line of American soldiers marching wearily from Girdwood. On the other side of the town came flashes of red. A few big guns spoke, slowing the Chinese. General Sims had given the order. This was the last retreat to the forward defenses in Anchorage’s city limits.
It had been a long series of battles since the Junction of Highways One and Nine. Stan was sick of retreating. His eyelids drooped. He yawned. He badly needed sleep. Everyone did. The soldiers marching to Anchorage…even now one stumbled and slumped on the snow. The man didn’t move. No one helped him. Few had the strength to do more than march.
“We’re not going to hold the city with soldiers like that,” said Jose, his head sticking out of the gunner’s hatch.
Stan was too tired to reply. He was sick of retreating and he was sick of seeing men die. He just wanted this to end. He wanted to lie down and sleep for a year, maybe two.
The big guns boomed again, flashes of red. It was all that was holding the enemy back.
For the first time in thirty-four years, Admiral Ling was feeling seasick. He sat at a table in the operations room of his carrier. He could no longer study the detailed map of the Kenai Peninsula. Shoved by the raging sea, the ship tilted violently back and forth.
“We must move the fleet out of this,” Commodore Yen said beside him.
Ling felt his age today. Yen looked worse.
An Arctic storm howled upon his fleet, an ice age blizzard with sleet, hail and near hurricane-force winds. Everyone in here could hear the hail striking outside, and everyone in the operations center felt the monstrous waves heaving the carrier in giant swells.
“What will this do to our drive on Anchorage?” asked Ling. He’d been worrying about this ever since the fleet’s weathermen had told him about the direction of the approaching storm.
“Ships can’t attack in this kind of weather,” said Yen. “I don’t know about soldiers.”
Admiral Ling shook his head. “We’re close to victory. After weeks of fighting and bloodletting, we’re near our objective. Once we have Anchorage and its airport and the surrounding towns—”
