his wife, his children, his parents to the Chinese? Paul didn’t know. What had made Romo so remorseless? There was a reason. Things didn’t happen in a vacuum. The man was his blood brother. Maybe that meant it was his duty to find out.
Maybe. His first duty, though, was reaching his family. Yeah, maybe his first duty was to make sure the Chinese didn’t reach his family. This was a battle for his home and his loved ones.
How much of a say did he have now?
Paul shouldered his rifle and trudged across the dirt. He didn’t want to become a butcher. But this was a dirty fight with no holds barred. He was going to do what he had to in order to win. The Chinese would kill his family in the snap of his fingers. It was like a man invading his home at night. You don’t ask questions then—you picked up your gun and kept firing until they were dead.
Nodding, Paul could understand why Romo showed no mercy. He was fighting the invaders of Mexico. Colonel Valdez was fighting the invaders. They were shooting until the enemy was down.
Paul blew out his breath. It was his duty to fight as hard as he could. His family depended on him. Thousands, maybe millions of other American families depended on him, on all the soldiers to do their duty and defend the homeland.
“They’re dead,” Romo said.
“Grab their weapons,” Paul said. “Pick one for yourself.” He lifted the tarp at the back of the military truck. It was filled with giant crates, with missiles of some type. Paul couldn’t read Chinese script. Modern warfare devoured ammo. To keep the attack going, the Chinese would have to pour supplies to their soldiers.
“Okay,” Paul said, “which do you want to drive?”
Romo gave him a funny look.
“We’re grabbing food,” Paul said. “Then we’re heading for the front. We’re going to supply the Chinese.”
“You’re white and I’m Mexican.”
“You think there aren’t others like us transporting supplies for the Chinese?”
“Are you crazy?”
Paul grinned, although there was nothing humorous in it. “It’s balls to the fire wall. If this is the first day of the assault, believe me, there will be plenty of confusion. Now is the time to get as close as we can to our side. Once we’re close enough, we’ll hoof it the rest of the way.”
Romo shook his head.
That brought a true grin to Paul’s face. “I’ll take the truck. They won’t look as closely at its driver. You take the Humvee. Are you ready?”
Romo stared at him a moment longer before nodding.
“Then let’s get busy,” Paul said. “We got a lot of miles ahead of us.”
-7-
The Right Hook
In horror, Anna Chen watched a holo-video as she sat in White House Bunker Number Five. It was the fourth day of battle in California and desperation like a sickness ran through the SoCal Command. Disaster threatened.
On the first day of battle, after the Blue Swan missiles struck, the enemy broke through the SoCal Fortifications at San Ysidro. Chinese Marauder tanks, IFVs and remote-control drones pushed through Chula Vista, chewing apart everything in their path. Nothing could stop them as they raced for San Diego. The Joint Forces Commander of California had shifted border formations, even though everything was chaos. Too many places lacked any communications. Others faced heavy assaults. Even so, a brigade of Abrams and Bradleys finally maneuvered in front of the advancing Chinese, and old Apache gunships expended salvos of Hellfire III missiles. It looked like the thrust for San Diego would fail.
Then, early that afternoon, a vast hover-armada had left Mexico. They swung out to sea and roared north. JFC California saw what was happening and sent strike fighters to pick them off. Unfortunately, the hovers had linked fire-control systems. From a distance, the fighters launched air-to-surface missiles, keeping well out of SAM range. The hovers’ integrated air defense system shot down most of the missiles, only losing a modest number of hovers. Then the Chinese swung toward land and hit San Diego. Too many of them were infantry carriers, unloading assault troops. A portion of the hover fleet had continued to La Jolla, landing infantry there and digging in on Interstate 5.
The Chinese continued to fight at night, pushing through Chula Vista, destroying the blocking brigade and linking up with the infantry on the outskirts of San Diego.
On the second day, as fierce conflicts continued along the border fortifications, U.S. armored and mechanized infantry reserves rushed south from LA. Many of these were the mobile units saved by the decision earlier to move them back from the main defensive line. They moved down Interstate 5 and clashed with Chinese advance units in Carlsbad on the coast. For the moment, the U.S. contained the relentless Chinese advance.
The SoCal Fortifications were in serious trouble, however. Like Atlas, they were supposed to be able to carry the world on their shoulders—the military had guaranteed the people that the Chinese would never be able to crack through there. The Blue Swan missiles had changed the equation. There were too many gaps in the line and the Chinese freely expended soldiers to force through dry beachheads. Like a mass of hungry jelly leaking through— particularly in the western portion of the fortifications—the Chinese were encircling the border formations and threatening to devour them.
It had called for a total effort and reorganization from JFC California. Battles raged and American and Chinese alike consumed vast amounts of materiel: artillery and tank shells, missiles and bullets. The destruction awed the participants. Burning vehicles, smashed fortifications with littered bodies made it a surreal landscape. Modern equipment had turned war into a merciless event. Laser sighting, heavier payloads and computer-assisted fire control produced unprecedented death and destruction. The carnage bewildered the combatants, quickly tiring all but the most hardened.
By the evening of the third day, the Americans had linked up the majority of their locally encircled formations in the SoCal Fortifications and secured their internal lines. It came at the cost of operational encirclement. The JFC of California had formed a large defensive area. But his few counterattacks had failed to dislodge the Chinese soldiers guarding the thrust from Tijuana to San Diego, La Jolla, Encinitas and Carlsbad. It meant that over six hundred thousand American troops were in the process of being cut off from the freeways and rail lines leading to LA. That would make it nearly impossible to send them reinforcements and supplies.
“It’s turning into a giant Stalingrad,” General Alan explained.
Early on the fourth day of battle, the U.S. Air Force reappeared in strength. Desperate American assaults from the air and on the ground failed to reopen I-5. Fifty-three wrecked M1A3s on the freeway showed the futility of the attacks. Instead, the Chinese continued to advance, using bulldozers to shove aside the useless American hulks. The Chinese advance was slower than before. Even so, fresh units and a continuous expenditure of material wore down the defenders.
“I’ve never seen anything like it,” General Alan told those in the White House bunker. “The will to fight, to drive through—someone has inflamed the Chinese with a greater determination than we’ve ever seen before.”
If that wasn’t enough, news from the eastern SoCal Fortification had suddenly become ten times worse than the western drive on LA.
In the central to eastern SoCal Fortifications, no Blue Swan missiles had exploded. But now mass Chinese armor had broken through at Calexico. The city was near the eastern edge of the Californian border with Arizona. Instead of encircling the embattled Army Group and possibly annihilating it, the enemy armor had swept north past El Centro and raced for Brawley and the Salton Sea. According to General Alan, it looked as if the Chinese were using the desert to swing well east of the southern Californian urban areas. Instead, they were heading for the pass
