Occupied Seattle (Occupied Seattle Book 2) Page 8

  Looking up past the rifle, Calvin saw the soldier’s face. He looked angrier than anyone Calvin could remember seeing in his life, even Calvin’s father the time Calvin had borrowed his sports car without asking and had totaled it. This guy was madder. Calvin couldn’t know it, but Calvin had just killed the soldier’s best friend. The soldier’s thoughts warred within him; his orders were to capture if possible, not kill. Colonel Zhang had said they needed info on the group that was operating behind the lines, but the American had just killed his best friend, and no one would ever know…He finally decided that he would kill the American, and his finger began to tighten on the trigger. Calvin could see the decision in the soldier’s eyes and knew he was dead. He wanted to pray, but nothing came to him except, “Help me, Lord.” He started to close his eyes, but then saw the soldier’s head explode as Ryan shot him from the next hill over. The soldier’s finger spasmed on the trigger, and the gun fired. Calvin jumped as the bullet buried itself into the ground, an inch to the left of his head.

  After a pause, Calvin started to breathe again and watched as the soldier’s body toppled over. He laid there panting as Ryan jogged up. “Are you hurt, sir?” asked Ryan.

  “No, I’m not,” groaned Calvin. “Thanks to you. Another second or two later, though, and I’d have been dead.” He looked at the blood stain on Ryan’s side. “Oh, shit! You’ve been hit!”

  “I’ve had worse,” said Ryan. “If you’re all done resting, sir, we really have other things that we ought to be doing than just lying around.” He helped Calvin up.

  “Indeed we do, Master Chief…indeed we do.”

  Joint Base Lewis-McChord, Tacoma, WA, 1445 PDT

  Colonel Zhang Wei was frustrated. The Special Forces commander had more tasks than he had people. Too many things to do and not enough assets to do them with. He could feel the momentum slipping away from him…and it was only the second day! He currently had almost 12,000 men and women in-country, but it wasn’t enough. Two thousand to guard this avenue of approach, one thousand to guard this base; pretty soon there was no one left.

  How his men had lost the nuclear weapons was beyond him. Yes, he would have liked to have had more men to guard them, but he needed men to guard the roads, he needed men to guard the surface-to-air missiles, and he especially needed men to guard the bases. He absolutely could not allow the Americans to get their weapons or their aircraft; that would change the balance of power immediately.

  He had to find the group that had taken the nuclear weapons and put a permanent stop to their activities. They could not be allowed to undermine Chinese authority; if the Americans thought they could fight back, there were far too many of them for his men to stop. He had sent out a squad of men to follow up on a lead but hadn’t heard back from them yet. It had also just been reported to him that someone had set up a road block on I-5. That could not be permitted!

  The whole plan was predicated on having the nuclear warheads to hold the Americans hostage. Without them, the U.S. forces were free not only to attack here in Seattle, but also to help in the defense of Taiwan. He had to get the nuclear weapons back, or he had to get more. If he didn’t, the Chinese were going to lose, and he was going to be the one to blame. That was not acceptable. The navy was going to go get more of the warheads; they’d better not return empty-handed. For his sake.

  He’d handle the road block, himself.

  Sommers’ House, North Bend, WA, 1500 PDT

  “Hey sir, we’ve got a present for you!” Private Li said as Calvin and Ryan walked into the Sommers’ house. The Rangers had returned from the gun shop about 45 minutes earlier and were working on options for destroying the HQ-19 battery. Currently waiting for the navy men were Top, Shuteye, Tiny, BTO, Deadeye, and Jet. There were also several staff sergeants and a corporal in attendance.

  “You got a present for me, Jet? Why does that scare me?” asked Calvin.

  Jet continued, “Yes, sir. The Colonel thought that if you were going to be our platoon leader, you ought to look the part.” He nodded at the corporal, who was one of the people Calvin had seen but hadn’t really met yet. He was about six feet tall and deeply tanned. Calvin didn’t understand why the Colonel was wearing the insignia of a Corporal.

  “He’s a Colonel?” asked Calvin. “Why isn’t he in charge then?”

  The Colonel looked a little sheepish and quickly developed a blush that was visible even under the tan. “No, suh,” he said with a pronounced Southern accent. “That ain’t mah real name.” The way he pronounced them, both ‘real’ and ‘name’ had two syllables. “Mah real name is Jimmy Sanders; the boys just call me ‘Colonel’ ‘cause ah likes my chicken. And prob’ly ‘cause of mah last name, and ahl, too, ah ‘spose.”

  Top, seeing Colonel open his mouth to continue talking, broke in. “As slowly as the Colonel talks, we’ll be here all day if he explains. The bottom line is that Corporal Sanders thought, and the rest of the platoon agreed, that we can’t have you running around in clothes that don’t fit you. It’s bad for our image.” Now Calvin was the one to blush. Top continued, “So we got a few things for you while we were out.”

  He handed Calvin a bag. When Calvin looked in, he saw a camouflage uniform and boots, like what the Rangers were wearing. “That will help you look the part,” said Top. “They’re actually the Colonel’s, since you two are about the same size. If we ever have time to get you a name tag, we’ll get that put on, too, but for now you’ll just have to be ‘Sanders.’

  “Thanks,” said Calvin, who had felt somewhat uncomfortable in combat without a uniform to identify him as a soldier. “That’ll work.”

  “Oh, that’s not all,” said Top. “Officers are supposed to have pistols, so we picked you up one. It’s a Glock 20C, chambered for 10mm rounds, with a 4.6 inch barrel. We figured you’d want something with a little bit of stopping power. The best part was, since we didn’t know if you could shoot, that it came with two 15-round magazines; hopefully, that will be enough to hit whatever you’re aiming at. We picked you up an extra two magazines, too. Sixty rounds ought to be enough to make you dangerous.” He handed Calvin a big shopping bag containing the box the pistol was in, as well as a holster, the extra magazines and several boxes of ammunition. “Dangerous to the enemy, that is, and not to us. If you need more than that, we’re not doing our jobs very well.”

  “This is cool,” said Calvin. “Thanks, guys.”

  “No worries, sir. We just put it on your tab, since you were paying for it and all, but that’s still not it. Wall, front and center!” A huge man came forward. Though not as big as ‘Tiny,’ Calvin could see how the Staff Sergeant that came forward could be called ‘The Wall.’

  “Hi, sir,” said Staff Sergeant Patrick Dantone. “They call me ‘The Wall’ because people are always trying to hide behind me in combat.”

  “I can see why,” said Calvin. “You’re not Tiny, but you’re not tiny, either.” Calvin smiled at his own play on words.

  “Yes, sir,” said The Wall with no emotion. He had heard that joke, or a variation on it, about a thousand times. “I didn’t figure that you had a lot of time with the M-16 or any of the combat rifles we have, being an aviator and all, but I wanted you to be able to defend yourself. So, since you were buying, I picked this up for you, too.” He handed Calvin a shotgun that he had on a sling.

  Calvin took it with a word of thanks. As he looked at it, he saw that it looked nothing like any shotgun he had ever seen. “That has got to be the shortest barrel I have ever seen!”

  “Yes, sir,” explained The Wall. “The Marksman has a gunsmith in the store that does repairs and modifications, pretty much anything you need. I had him cut the barrel down to make it into what I like to call the ‘Street Sweeper.’ It isn’t going to be much good at a distance, but you’ve got us for the distance work. If someone gets up close it’s going to give you a big blast pattern that ought to give you a little room for error. With the barrel sawed off, it’s also pretty easy to handle.” He chu
ckled. “More importantly, it also comes with a 10-round drum magazine, so you’ve got a good number of shots with it before you have to reload. We loaded it with double-ought buckshot, but we also got you a couple of boxes of slugs, too, in case that’s the way you want to roll.”

  “That’s awesome.” said Calvin, “Thanks.”

  Top smiled, “Well, before you get all mushy on us, most of this is so that you aren’t a hindrance to us. We all have our own jobs to do, and we wanted you to be able to take care of yourself without having to detail someone to babysit you. My job is to make sure you don’t come face-to-face with the bad guys, but if you do, you need to have the ability to deal with them.”

  “I get that,” said Calvin, somewhat chastised. “I just had a close encounter of the too personal kind with a Chinese soldier. If you want to keep them off my back, I’m way good with that.” He explained what happened on the way back from Ryan’s house. Even though the clean-up process had been expedited by the arrival of the SOAR aviators, who had come out to help when they heard the shots, it had delayed their return to the Sommers’ house by over half an hour.

  When he finished, Top gave the two navy men the details of the Rangers’ trip to the gun shop, which had been a huge success. In addition to the weapons that they had brought back for Calvin, they also had picked up some extra rifles for the men in the platoon that were out of belt-fed ammunition. At the shop they had picked up several Bushmaster rifles and a Century Arms C93, all of which were chambered for the 5.56mm NATO round. They had also bought every round of ammunition that fit any of their weapons, including the Varmint Express and Zombie Max brands.

  Several of the soldiers were looking forward to trying out the specialty loads, especially the ones labeled for the Zombie Apocalypse. Those bullets were heavier and should possess a lot of stopping power, especially at shorter ranges. If they worked on the undead, they ought to work on the living, too. What they gained in weight, though, they lost in muzzle velocity, which would somewhat decrease their effectiveness at longer ranges.

  The Rangers had put their extra time at the Sommers’ house to good use. Although all of the Rangers were physically fit, BTO in particular was an excellent runner and had been sent out on a jog to locate all of the HQ-19 missile system’s components. As part of a sniper team, he was conditioned to lie hidden for hours, or even days, if needed. In the lead up to a mission, though, he was like a little terrier, full of boundless energy and needing an outlet; the long run did him good. Although the Chinese security had been tight around the park, and BTO had been forced to run a wide loop around it, he had been able to determine the whereabouts of most of the Chinese vehicles. As the spotter on a sniper team, he was also used to looking at something, and then being able to describe it so that someone else could understand.

  A former intelligence specialist before becoming the Army’s first female Ranger, Deadeye Taylor gave them the information on the missile system. “A Chinese Growler battery, like the Russian S-400 system from which it was derived, consists of eight missile launchers with four missiles each, a truck-mounted ‘Big Bird’ acquisition radar, a truck-mounted ‘Grave Stone’ engagement radar, three support vehicles and a mobile command post,” she told them. “While blowing up the missiles would ensure that they couldn’t be fired, it is more important to blow up the radar and the command post trucks, leaving the system blind and dumb. It would also be a lot easier to blow up a couple of radars than to target all eight of the missile launchers.”

  “Any chance of waiting until tonight to do this?” asked Top as they started looking at their options. It was obvious that the mission would be far easier to accomplish at night, through stealth, than during the day. Unfortunately, it wasn’t going to be dark until about 2200, which meant losing most of the afternoon.

  “If we have to, because we can’t get it done any earlier than that, we will,” answered Calvin. “I know that the air wing and the Air Force are trying to get in here, and it will be a lot easier if the missile system is gone.”

  “All I’m saying is it would be a lot easier to do it at night, and we’d probably lose fewer men,” Top replied, looking Calvin in the eye. “If we have to do it now, though, we have to do it now.”

  Calvin’s phone buzzed as he got a text. He read it, frowned and looked at Top. “Looks like you may get your wish. Our tasking just changed.” He turned to Ryan. “What do you know about taking over a ship?”

  “Taking over a ship?” the SEAL asked. “We’ve done some things involving ship take-downs. How big is the ship?”

  “Ummm, I think it’s pretty big,” answered Calvin. “Would you consider a LHD to be big?”

  “Since we don’t have any LHDs in the area, I’m guessing that you mean the Chinese one,” said Ryan. “If so, yeah, it’s pretty big. It’s almost as big as an aircraft carrier. What is the mission?”

  “Apparently, the Chinese had a party yesterday onboard the Long that all of our big wigs and senior brass in the area attended. When the invasion started, they captured the governor, a couple of senators and all of the navy leadership in the area. The Chinese are holding them onboard the LHD, using them for propaganda. The Joint Chiefs of Staff wondered if there was any way we could get them back.”

  Ryan considered. “So, they want the group of us to break onto a base being held by the Chinese, sneak onto a Chinese boat full of Chinese soldiers, find where the hostages are being held, if they are indeed still being held on board, break out some unknown number of them, sneak them out past the aforementioned Chinese soldiers, and bring them to safety? Does that about sum it up?”

  Calvin looked as sick as everyone felt after hearing Ryan describe it. “Ummm, yeah,” he sighed, “I think that about covers it. I’ll tell them to forget it.” He pulled out his phone.

  Ryan smiled. “Now, sir, why would we want to do that and miss out on our chance to be bona fide heroes? Of course we can do it. Nothing could be easier. We can probably even be back by dark so that Top can get his night direct action strike on those missiles out there.”

  “Wha..what?” asked Calvin, incredulous.

  “SEAL, have you lost your mind?” exclaimed Top. “You must be woozy from blood loss!” The rest of the Rangers just stared at Ryan, wondering whether he was insane or just having some fun with them.

  “OK,” said Ryan, “I agree that infiltrating their base, storming their ship and trying to find and release an unknown number of hostages would be pretty near impossible, especially with the entire Chinese navy after us.” He looked at Sergeant Chang. “But, what if I could magically get you onboard the ship without anyone knowing you were there? Would we have a chance then?” A small smile appeared on Shuteye’s face.

  “Well, yeah, maybe,” said Top with no small amount of exasperation. “How are we supposed to get onboard without anyone knowing, though? Hide in boxes and Fedex ourselves onboard?”

  “Nope, I’ve got a much better plan, one that our esteemed lieutenant might even call a ‘tactically elegant’ solution.” He looked back at Sergeant Chang to see him grinning. “Hey Shuteye, do you suppose Private First Class Wu Tao would drive us there for $1,000,000 dollars?”

  Sergeant Chang nodded, seeing where this was going. “He might just do that, indeed, if you asked nicely.”

  “I don’t get it,” said Calvin. “Who is Wu Tao?”

  “Gee, sir, you should learn to make more friends, get around a little more, maybe even spend a little time with the people you meet. You actually met Wu Tao today. He is a poor, disenfranchised young man who was drafted and made to leave his home and everyone he loved.” Seeing that Calvin and Top still didn’t get it, he added, “He used to drive a LCAC in the service of another country’s navy.”

  Both of the other men smiled, catching on. It might be possible after all.

  “You’re just going to have to make one little phone call first…”

  48th Street Underpass, I-5, Tacoma, WA, 1600 PDT

  “That’s it!” yelle
d Trooper Bob Davidson to the logger, who shut down his truck. With the addition of this truck, the blockade of I-5 was now complete. The city police might be stymied by the invasion of a few thousand Chinese, thought Davidson, but not the Washington State Patrol. District One had always owned the highways in the Tacoma area…and we always will.

  Made up mostly of retired military veterans, the State Patrol had strong ties to the local National Guard unit, and every one of them owned at least one rifle. With a liberal in the Oval Office, most of them now owned at least three and had stockpiled thousands of rounds of ammunition, just in case.

  The Chinese weren’t taking their city without a fight.

  They had barricaded the 48th Street underpass of I-5 as their ambush site. It was a natural chokepoint, with 20’ high hills and fences on both sides of the highway, and a concrete divider between the northbound and southbound lanes. Seeing the State Patrol blocking the road with their squad cars and armored SWAT vans, several loggers that were driving past stopped and offered the services of their logging trailers to help with the barricade. The trucks had been incorporated into the barricade, and the logs they carried provided excellent firing positions for the troopers to hide behind.

  Trooper Davidson of the Special Weapons and Tactics (SWAT) team had taken over command of the road block. His men were trained to assault and dismantle methamphetamine and other types of dangerous drug labs, as well as to manage barricades, snipers and other high-risk situations. The SWAT troopers were also armed to the teeth, and they had several skilled snipers on the team. He had deployed his men, and the National Guardsmen that they had been able to get hold of, along the hills ringing the barricade, closing off northbound travel on I-5. No Chinese would be able to venture north from Joint Base Lewis-McChord on his watch.