Invasion: Colorado (40 page)

At that moment, the missile struck the helo. Paul heard the Blowdart warhead explode, and it created a spectacular effect. Paul watched with his night-vision visor as a fireball billowed into existence. Metal rained as the helo flipped in a seemingly slow-motion cartwheel, and then it plummeted. Going down, the burning machine shed two Chinese aircrew.

Did they bail out, or were they thrown out by the centrifugal force? Paul had no idea. He knelt in the snow, watching the spectacle. The helo hit the ground with a tremendous smash. It shook Paul so that he swayed, which seemed to wake him up.

“Are you crazy?” Romo shouted. He came running, doing it much too slowly. It was difficult to move quickly in the heavy suits and the assassin was proving it.

Paul blinked dry eyes. He was so freaking tired. He just wanted to sleep. Instead, he stood up.

Romo neared, and he inspected the shot-up, tipped-over snowmobile. “It’s ruined.”

Paul turned back to the distant specks—only they weren’t specks anymore. The hovertanks had covered ground fast. He could clearly see the smaller turret and the short-barreled cannon sticking from it. Had one or more of them seen this little firefight? Yes, of course they had. How could they have missed it in the darkness?

“The hovers are coming,” Paul said.

Romo looked up, and he cursed in Spanish. He rechecked his flipped sled, and he began pulling out Javelin launchers.

“They’re coming for us,” Paul said.

“Si. That means we don’t have much time.”

Paul glanced at his blood brother. Right. They had to fight. He lurched toward him, and he helped Romo cart Javelins to his sled. He piled the extras among his own.

Flipping up his visor, exposing his face to the cold, Paul rubbed his burning eyes. His gloves dribbled snow, which slid down to his throat. Yikes. That was cold. Blinking, he closed the visor and studied the hovertanks. They were coming on fast, seven of them. Seven armored vehicles with cannons and machine guns. It would be David against Goliath out here on the open snow.

“Let’s go,” Paul said. The sleepiness had vanished from his brain. He was wide-awake as his heart pounded in his chest.

He jumped onto the snowmobile and twisted the throttle, listening to the engine whine with power. Romo sat behind him. Paul turned the vehicle and he opened it up. The back treads clattered as they zipped, and they fled across the snow before the approaching hovertanks.

Paul contacted the air controller. “Hey AWACS!” he shouted. “Do you have some kind of air support for us now?”

“No, sorry. I already told you. There’s a big attack going on one hundred miles south of you. You’re on your own for another half hour at least.”

That was just great. Army Group Washington was supposed to have everything the soldiers needed. It looked like that didn’t include the flank guards.

As he and Romo sped across the snow, Paul gave the coordinates of the seven following hovertanks. “If they get us—”

“I’m alerting Supply Company Nine now,” the air controller said.

Paul looked back. The hovertanks were faster than the snowmobile. The mothers were catching up faster than he’d expected.

“Good luck, Kavanagh,” the air controller said.

“Sure,” Paul said. “You too.”

“We have to go to ground!” Romo shouted. “They’ll pick us off soon if we stay on the snowmobile.”

“I’m already there, amigo,” Paul said. “Do you remember the place half a mile from the farm house?”

Paul felt Romo turn and look at the hovertanks.

“We won’t make it there in time,” Romo said.

Paul glanced back. The hovertanks would be in range long before he reached the area he sought. Romo was right.

“Okay, listen up,” Paul said. “I’m going to stop and unhook the sled. You keep going and I’ll—”

“Forget it, brother,” Romo said. “If you stop, I’m jumping off with you. We’ll use the Javelins in tandem.”

Paul decided it was a waste of breath arguing with Romo. Operation Saturn—it was too ballsy. The President and General McGraw had bitten off too much. The logistical tail was too long. This was an effective use of hovertanks by the enemy, blowing up the rear areas. How did High Command figure they could guard such a large region with snowmobile patrollers and drones? Why were the infantrymen so slow getting into position?

“Okay,” Paul said. “Our suits are supposed to have camouflage gear. We stop, grab two Javelins each and split up. We crawl through the snow away from each other. Don’t fire until they’re inspecting the snowmobile. Let them think about where we’ve gone, or maybe until one of them pops out of the turret and sees our snow tracks. Then you launch a Javelin, blow up a hovertank.”

“After that we die,” Romo said.

“No one lives forever, brother.”

Romo put a hand on Paul’s armored shoulder. “You are a good brother, my friend. It has been a pleasure knowing you.”

“We’re not dead men yet.”

“Si, but we will be soon.”

Paul didn’t want to think about that. He wanted to hold and kiss Cheri again. He didn’t want his son to be an orphan. This was screwed up. Stupid hovertanks.

“Are you ready?” Paul asked.

“Si.”

Master Sergeant Kavanagh throttled down. In seconds, they stopped. He shut off the machine and hurried to the sled. Paul flipped open the lid and grabbed two Javelins. In the starlight, he stared at Romo.

“Good luck, you stubborn Apache bastard,” Paul said.

“You were right before. We’re not finished yet, my friend.”

Paul ran away in the heavy suit. Then he dove onto the snow and started crawling. He dragged the two Javelin launchers, so he didn’t move fast, that’s for sure. Then he found a small dip in the terrain. He swiveled around and crawled to the lip. He was a football field and a half away from the snowmobile. He couldn’t spy Romo. This was Apache-style warfare, wasn’t it?

Paul breathed heavily, and he hoped this special suit did indeed camouflage him from the hovertanks’ sensors.

In the distance a hovertank cannon roared with a belch of flame. Its shell howled in flight, and it blew up the snowmobile, making it jump and turning it into a mess of flying junk.

Paul readied a Javelin launcher. Through his visor, he watched the hovertanks approach the crumbled snowmobile. Each battle-vehicle rode on a cushion of air. The things floated like science fiction machines. Some of the armored skirts looked shot-up. One of the machine guns on a turret had crumbled. These Chinese hovers had been through a lot of wear and tear. That was something at least.

Paul waited. What a war. The Chinese and Brazilians tried to conquer a continent. That was just too much territory. How many hundreds of thousands of soldiers had died already? Maybe millions had perished, or they would before this was over. This crazy new Ice Age with its mass worldwide starvation…was U.S. land worth this much blood, sweat and tears? His own—yeah, it was worth it. But why did the individual Chinese soldier bother? He’d heard about the need for marriage permits. Did the Chinese want hot American babes for wives?

Once he died, was one of these grasping invaders going to get Cheri?

“I don’t think so,” he muttered.

He could hear the hovertanks now. They were loud. The engines whined like giant snowmobiles.

A flash of light erupted to the west of the first hovertank. Romo—the idiot—he fired too soon.

The flash or sprouting flame kept going, and it wasn’t bright enough to be a Javelin launch. Paul heard hammering bangs—bullets striking hovertank armor. There were
pings
and a crash of reinforced plate glass.

That’s a heavy machine gun firing. Someone else is out here with us. Is that who the helo had been hunting? Partisans?

Machine guns returned fire from the hovertanks. It took all of ten seconds. The flash of heavy machine gun fire in the snow ended as quickly as it had begun. Hovertanks one, partisans zero.

That’s it then
. Paul aimed a Javelin, and then he pulled the trigger. The missile popped out and whooshed away in a rush.

Dropping the empty launcher, Paul rolled and grabbed the other one. Then he crawled like a man possessed. Machine gun fire opened up around him. Bullets whined overhead. Others thudded into the ground uncomfortably near. Fortunately, he’d chosen his location well. None of the slugs hit him because he had this concealing fold of ground. Paul kept crawling until sweat beaded into his eyes.

He swiveled around, and he dared to look up over the lip of terrain. Two of the hovertanks burned nicely. One had a thin oily fume spiraling into the night sky. Two hits, but he’d only fired one missile.

The other one must be Romo’s Javelin. Good shooting, Tonto
.

Now another heavy machine gun opened up from the ground. There came more bright flashes of light and more hammering strikes against enemy armor.

The remaining five hovertanks opened up again, silencing this machine gun as well. Hovertanks scored two against the partisans. Marine recon tally was two against the hovertanks. It sucked to be a partisan.

Paul waited. Romo must have waited as well. Either that or the Chinese had already killed his blood brother. Paul could have called on the radio to check, but he was sure the Chinese would have a locator to pinpoint their positions then.

Five hovertanks now approached the blown snowmobile.

“Screw this,” Paul muttered. He sighted his last Javelin, and he fired. Another Javelin from the right appeared.

That’s all Paul had time to see. He crawled away again. Now he had nothing but a sidearm. The M-16 was on the snowmobile. He realized as he crawled that Romo must have waited each time for him to fire. Give the enemy two missiles at once to worry about—that was battle wise.

Paul heard an explosion. Scratch one more hovertank, he hoped. He waited for the second explosion, but it never came.

Finally, from his new location, Paul stopped and eased up to look. Another hovertank burned. Good. That left four. Those four—

The hovertanks whined with loud engine revs. They zoomed away across the snow, floating away from the wrecked snowmobile and toward the American rear areas. Perhaps they wanted to hunt easier game.

Paul grinned tightly. Maybe the hovertank commander figured this was too costly, fighting invisible Americans who kept taking out his vehicles. The enemy commander couldn’t know they were out of Javelins. All the Chinese commander knew was that three of his hovers burned from “partisan” attacks.

Paul watched the hovertanks float away. After a time, he stood, and he saw others stand, four men. He used the night visor to see them. Make that one man and three women in thick parkas. They carried hunting rifles and shotguns, and they advanced on the burning hovertanks. He saw Romo stand next and wave to him.

The partisans killed the Chinese who survived the burning vehicles. They were a hard-eyed group, taking the rest of the Javelins for themselves, as well as Paul’s M-16. He let them. A helo was on the way to pick Romo and him up. His blood brother had survived, thank God.

When he approached them, the partisans didn’t speak much to Paul or Romo. They had lost three older men, who had been firing captured Chinese machine guns at the hovertanks. Their looks accused him, as if to say, “Why can’t you defeat these invaders? Why are you leaving it to us to do your dirty work?”

It was a good question, even if it was unspoken. Paul thought about it during the ride back to SOCOM HQ, Army Group Washington.

This was a bitch of a war.

Are we winning or losing? And when will we know?

Paul shrugged as he sat at the door of the helo. The snowy ground rushed past one hundred feet below. Someone would tell him when America had won. Until then, he’d keep fighting. What else could he do?

LAKEWOOD, COLORADO

Corporal Jake Higgins threw up his hood. It was bitterly cold this morning in the trench. He slapped his gloved hands together, rubbing them. When he was finished with the exercise, he used his teeth and pulled off the right glove. Using his finger, he tapped a computer scroll.

It was a tech gift from their neighboring Mexico Home Army battalion. Really, the battalion was down to a platoon in strength after the bitter weeks of defending Greater Denver. The Home Army Mexicans were a tough group, excellent soldiers.

The scroll was linked to an armored video camera at the top of the trench. It beat using a periscope, which is what they had been using until this nifty little device.

Jake scanned the blasted cityscape. Only a few skeletal buildings remained. Mostly, he saw was snowy rubble and frozen body-parts of Chinese and Americans alike. Artillery shells had turned over the terrain a thousand different times these past weeks.

He recalled the first week of battle. What a difference. Only a few of those Militiamen still lived. He wore Chinese body armor. Everyone did, including the Lieutenant.

Oh-oh, what was this? Jake spied movement on his scroll. “Goose,” he said.

Goose poked his head out of a hole in the side of the trench. The man was gaunt and dirty. They all were. Goose had the far-off stare in his eyes. They all had that too, including the Lieutenant.

“What’s up?” Goose asked.

Jake pointed toward the enemy line.

“I thought it was your turn,” Goose said.

Jake shook his head.

Goose crawled out of the small cave. He used the steps, climbing up to the machine gun platform.

“They’re getting clever,” Jake said. “It’s a robot. I’ve never seen one like this. Mark seven-three-seven.”

Goose checked his tablet, nodding as he tucked the device away in a cavity in his body armor. He exhaled, blowing out white steam. Then he grabbed the butterfly controls and surged upward.

Jake watched on the computer scroll as the heavy machine gun chattered hard. Bullets whizzed across no-man’s-land, hammering at the target. The small, turtle-like robot blew out metal parts. A gun appeared from its turret, but he steel-jacketed .50 caliber bullets didn’t give the Chinese robot time to fire. The robot scout stopped, frozen in time.