lifting of his chin, Dr. Levin set down the pencil and cleared his throat.
“I have a suggestion,” he said into the quiet chamber.
Sims stared at Levin. “Not yet,” the President whispered. “I don’t want to hear it yet.”
“Better sooner than later, Mr. President,” Levin said. “Let’s nip this invasion in the bud and get on with the business of defeating the Chinese in Southern California.”
With a touch of horror like a cold hand on her neck, Anna realized Levin meant the U.S. use of nuclear weapons.
“Not yet,” the President repeated, his voice firming. “I want you to work out a troop transfer,” he told General Alan. “We must send NorCal Command reinforcements. Then communicate to the Bay Area Commander that he is to bottle the Chinese in Santa Cruz.”
“There are masses of refugees clogging all routes,” Alan said. “They’re making military movements difficult.”
Sims shook his head. “I don’t want the details on this now. I want the Chinese contained on the Monterey Bay coast.”
“Sir,” Levin said. “I respectfully would like to point out the need to stamp this invasion flat instead of merely
“He has a point, Mr. President,” the Army Chief said. “If there was ever a time to use the nuclear option, this is it. An amphibious assault takes time for its commander to shake out the troops and get them into place. The Chinese are using speed to throw us back to give them that time, and they have succeeded. If they’re using Santa Cruz as the funnel point to land the bulk of their force, that is a perfect opportunity for us to smash tens of thousands of enemy soldiers and ships at one blow and free ourselves from a front we cannot afford.”
Sims rubbed his face. “I don’t understand this. We’ve put hundreds of thousands—millions—of new people in uniform. How can the Chinese swamp us so easily in these opening moves of the war?”
“It’s plain to see how it happened, sir,” Alan said. “The Chinese—or the PAA to be more exact—have hit us in a single and rather small locale. At least, this is true in continental terms. California needed more troops to hold against what appears to be one third of the PAA’s power. We believed the extensive border fortifications would allow us to use fewer troops there than we otherwise would have deployed. Frankly sir, the reinforcements you wish to send to NorCal, we need them along the Texas, New Mexico and Arizona borders. Otherwise, we risk having more SoCal situations.”
“And we need those troops in Georgia, Florida and Louisiana,” the Army Chief added.
Sims sat up as he put his hands on the table. “We have to use the Behemoth tanks south of LA.”
General Alan and the Army Chief exchanged glances.
“The, ah, Behemoths are a handful of tanks, sir,” Alan said.
“Yes,” Sims said, “they’re the handful that stopped the Chinese outside of Palm Springs. Now I need them to perform another miracle.”
“They achieved the miracle because of the range of their amazing cannons and the enemy was canalized,” Alan said. “In the desert, they could use that advantage to its full scope. South of LA and the other urban areas, I’m afraid, will nullify their extreme range. They’ll have to fight toe to toe, as it were. And we’ve already seen what that means. Once the T-66s got in range and were able to make side shots, they destroyed several Behemoths. The desert and prairies are the experimental tanks’ natural habitat. Anywhere else and we risk their destruction. We only have about fifteen of them left in working or operational capacity.”
“I understand your objections,” Sims said. “But we don’t have anything else that can smash through Chinese formations like they can. I need the Behemoths to spearhead our attack to free our trapped Army Group.”
General Alan was slow in answering.
“That is an order,” Sims said.
“Yes, sir,” Alan said.
“What about Santa Cruz?” Levin asked.
“No!” the President said, turning on the small CIA Director. “I’m not ready for your grand solution. This is a soldier’s war, not one for an atomic nightmare. Do you understand what nuclear war means? By the terms of the Non-Nuclear Use Treaty I signed in 2036, we scraped most of our remaining nuclear weapons. I also made a solemn vow never to use them first. We have far fewer now than our combined enemies. And we saw what happened in the Alaska War when we used them.”
“Most of the world turned against us then,” Levin said. “I understand that, sir. Maybe it was a mistake to use them then. Now, we don’t have any choice. The world is breaking in and we have to stop them.”
“Not the world, Director,” Sims said. “The PAA has attacked us. So far, the South American Federation and the Germen Dominion have refrained. I don’t want to use nuclear weapons and push them over the edge against us.”
“But that’s not the point here, sir,” Levin said.
“I understand the point very well,” Sims said. “If I unleash nuclear weapons, it may cause the Chinese to use nuclear weapons. They have many more of them than we do.”
“It’s a simple matter to make more,” Levin said.
“No!” Sims said. “I am not about to unleash nuclear warfare and possibly end the world as we know it.”
Levin frowned, and he glanced at General Alan. The Chairman of the Joint Chiefs minutely shook his head.
Anna noticed and she wondered what the interplay meant. It surprised her so few troops were in the Bay Area. They had rushed too many of them south, clearly. Yet if they hadn’t…Southern California might already have fallen. On all accounts, they had to break out Army Group SoCal. Could the Behemoths achieve this miracle?
“Continue your brief,” the President told the major.
She nodded, glancing at her computer scroll and bringing up another holo-image.
Martha Rios’s arms ached and fear twisted her stomach. She trudged along Highway 17, part of a mass exodus of people from Santa Cruz and the surrounding towns toward the Bay Area. Her daughter and ten-year-old son walked beside her. Each of them carried blankets and bottled water.
They had been marching for two days already, having fled the advancing Chinese. As far as she could see up the nearest hill, people marched. Behind her it was the same thing, masses, throngs of Americans trudging on foot like any third world refugee. Nearby, a man pushed a wheelbarrow, with an old Airedale sitting in it, letting its tongue loll as it panted. In the past, this would have been a throng of cars. Today, it was a massive jam of bodies, of people.
From time to time, a jet or helicopter flew overhead. Some of the people around her had binoculars. They looked up each time and reported a red star on each craft. Those were Chinese jets and helicopters.
“What if they start strafing us?” a man asked her.
“What?” Martha said.
“Shooting at us,” the man said.
“They won’t do that.”
The man looked up as something loud, screaming and intensely brief passed over them. A vast groan lifted from the masses of people.
“What was that?” Martha’s son Saul shouted.
“Shells,” the man said.
“Are they firing at us?” Martha said.
The man craned his neck. The loud sound occurred again, and once more screaming shells made brief appearances overhead. “Look, those shells are headed west,” he said. “It’s American artillery.”
“Who are they shooting at?” Martha asked. She shifted the groceries in her arms, held by brown paper bags. She needed a backpack. Many people here had those. She should have bought one a long time ago.
“I don’t know where they’re shooting exactly,” the man said, “although logic would dictate it’s somewhere
