Invasion: Colorado (4 page)

Zhu began reassembling his assault rifle. Afterward, he took off his shirt and carefully laid it on the stool so it wouldn’t get dirty.

His ribs showed, with his stomach sucked in. Some of the others in the squad said he looked like a skeleton, like a man ready to meet Yan Luo—Death. Such comments made Zhu angry.  He ate as much as he could, but extra meat never seemed to stick to his bones. He was cursed with a skinny frame.

First Rank Tian was a muscle-bound warrior of great skill. He was also Zhu’s best friend. Many times, Zhu had wondered if he should begin taking steroids. He wanted to be powerfully strong. He wanted to become the greatest warrior in the world.

In the electric lantern-light, Zhu took a Shaolin fighting stance. He’d learned the combat techniques in his youth, from a janitor in the orphanage. His parents had been old when they’d had him, and they had died shortly after his birth. In the State-run orphanage, bullies had tormented a very skinny and young Zhu Peng. Thanks to the janitor, he’d learned to fight back. Unfortunately, he had paid for his hard-won victories with beatings from the schoolmaster. They’d pulled down his pants in front of the others, caning him with bamboo rods until his butt was red. They had made him cry in front of the entire orphanage, telling him he needed to get along better.

In the tent, Zhu preformed the Shaolin maneuvers. He moved gracefully, slowly increasing the tempo. It helped calm him to do the moves. It also caused him to remember the janitor, one of his only friends in his earlier years.

How he longed to be a fierce warrior, able to dominate whomever he faced. So far, he had survived the American War, but he wanted to do more than survive; he wished to
excel
as a White Tiger Commando. He wanted to become the bravest and best of any who donned the jetpacks.

I’m too skinny and I’m still too weak. Therefore, I must practice and increase my skills. I must never let Tian Jintao or the others down
.

After twenty minutes of practice, he dropped and did pushups. Zhu didn’t have bulky muscles like Tian. His were like strings—but strings of steel. They rose up on his arms as he did one after another pushup. Soon, he panted, with sweat appearing on his lean frame. In time, his arms quivered. Yet still he went up and down. Finally, he strained to do one more rep. He gritted his teeth and continued to strain until he collapsed, thumping onto the tent’s fabric.

Zhu closed his eyes, breathing for a time. One thing he’d learned in California. Sometimes during the fighting he became exhausted, utterly and completely so. With the flights, the shooting, the running with heavy gear, the hand-to-hand combat, passing ammo packs to the others, exhaustion would rush upon him. At those times, he wanted to quit. Yet if he gave up, his squad mates might die. His quitting therefore would be cowardice.

Of all things, Zhu dreaded being a coward. Many, many times in battle, he became scared. Bullets whizzing past his head, the crump of mortars, the roar of artillery and the distinctive sound of masonry falling around him—Zhu had never told anyone how frightened he became. Sometimes, tears welled in his eyes. Sometimes, he was terrified that he would piss his pants. What if one of his
Bai Hu
mates saw that? They would despise him, and they would brand him with the hated label of
coward
.

Therefore, he must train every chance he had to become proficient with his weapons. He must turn himself into steel, into an automaton of war. Zhu attempted to beat the weakness out of his body, out of his mind and out of his soul. That meant he couldn’t join the others as they lay with American women. Oh, Zhu wanted a woman. He dearly wanted to marry a good girl and have a son. He didn’t want to weaken himself, though, by enjoying the pleasure of sex for a brief moment. That might soften him. No! He had to harden himself against everything.

With a grunt, he pushed off the ground. Sweat slicked his skinny body. He donned clothes, dinylon body armor and strapped on the jetpacks. They were bulky and heavy. Taking his assault rifle, he tramped outside the tent.

Santa Fe loomed in the distance. It had been brutal there. Most of the city was now rubble with the skeletons of ferroconcrete buildings. The Americans had died hard, although some had surrendered at the very end. Those had been dirty and tired soldiers, many with starved looks.

Would I surrender if I lacked food?
Zhu dearly hoped not. A brave soldier fought until he was dead. A White Tiger never surrendered. A White Tiger was the most ferocious and deadly soldier humanity had ever seen.

In his armor and Eagle Team jetpack, Zhu knelt and pinned a paper target to the ground.

He looked again at Santa Fe in the distance. Much nearer was the freeway looping around the city. Trucks moved on it day and night. American partisans often attacked those trucks, even though hundreds of partisans died attempting it. The survivors learned, and attacked again, doing the real damage.

Zhu and his squad-mates had been partisan-hunting for two weeks already. High Command wanted every shell and every bullet to reach the front, not burning in exploding trucks due to partisan ambushes.

Putting on his helmet, Zhu radioed the nearby outpost and the First Rank in charge of security. He didn’t want them to begin firing at him.

“I’m practicing,” he said.

“Is that you, Zhu?”

“Yes,” Zhu answered via the helmet’s radio.

“I thought Tian went to town for some skirt,” the First Rank said.

“He did.”

“Why didn’t you go with them for once?”

Zhu looked away. He couldn’t tell anyone that he practiced so much because he feared that deep inside he was a coward. “I’m trying a new technique,” he said.

“You work too hard,” the First Rank radioed. “You need to rest sometime. You’re supposed to be relaxing tonight.”

“This…this helps me relax,” Zhu said.

“You’re an animal. Go ahead then, practice.”

Zhu put his elbows on the armrests and activated the jetpack. The Qui 1000s purred with power. After years of effort, Chinese scientists had finally produced a rugged, fuel-efficient, battlefield jetpack. That had given China the Eagle Teams, the elite of the elite. Each Eagle Team flyer was a White Tiger, although not all White Tigers were Eagle flyers.

With a twist of the throttle and a spring with his legs, Zhu Peng shot into the air. He moved fast, gracefully and under perfect control. This was Zhu’s element. He might not have big muscles, but his flight-control was phenomenal. No one in the company could fly as well as he could.

A sense of well-being flooded through Zhu. He performed tricky maneuvers, going sideways, flipping, abruptly stopping his forward momentum and zooming away backward.

After each twenty-second interval of flight, Zhu automatically checked his fuel-gauge. Eagle Team flyers had died before, crashing to the ground because they ran out of fuel. There was probably nothing in the Chinese Army harder to perfect than flying and fighting during combat in a jetpack.

Now, Zhu focused on the target on the ground. He’d been thinking about this for some time. Usually, during flight, Eagle Team commandos used a grenade launcher carefully fitted to their left shoulder. Grenades were area-effect weapons. A commando was supposed to clear a landing zone for himself. Aiming with an assault rifle in flight took too much concentration. Eagle Team doctrine called for short, hopping flights because a flyer caught by the enemy in the air was soon dead.

Zhu had been thinking about that. He was good with a grenade launcher. But the partisans had learned to distinguish the whoosh of approaching Qui 1000 jets far too well. He wanted to be able to snipe them from the air as they ran away.

Building up speed, flying one hundred meters above the ground, Zhu turned off his jets. He went silent, using stubby glide wings. If the jets didn’t whoosh, the partisans had nothing to hear. Taking his elbows off the armrests, he grabbed his QBZ-95. It was attached to a side-rack. He saw the paper target in the dark and began firing. Unfortunately, he did it too long.

The realization struck him powerfully as he realized he headed down fast. He tried to rack the assault rifle—failed—and let it drop. He didn’t have any more time to stow it. He put his arms on the rests and grabbed the throttle. With a flick of his thumb, he turned the jets back on and gave them fuel.

The jets whooshed and he shot up. As he climbed, Zhu thought about what had just happened.

I almost panicked. How would that have helped me? I must train harder and learn to act calmly in ALL situations. Only then will I be worthy of being called a
Bai Hu Tezhongbing.

Zhu turned in flight and began sweeping the area, searching for his gun. He didn’t see Tian watching him from a hidden position behind a large set of bushes. He didn’t see the other man with First Rank Tian Jintao. He didn’t hear the words Tian said, either.

Likely, the words would have surprised Zhu Peng. Even more likely, he would have thought they were joking about him.

Tian said, “There goes China’s most fearless warrior.”

“Why didn’t he join us tonight? The women were very eager to please.”

Tian laughed, although with a sneer. “Join the likes of us? We’re ordinary mortals. Zhu, he is something that comes along only once in a generation. I’ve never seen a flyer like him. Does that satisfy him, though? No. He demands godlike perfection in everything he does. Don’t let that skinny body fool you, or his meek attitude. Zhu Peng is the best White Tiger commando China possesses. Of that, I have no doubt.”

The two continued to watch Zhu fly in the darkness, their eyes shining with envious admiration.

USS
MERRIMAC

Captain John Winthrop sat in the submersible’s command chair, with a cushion propped against the small of his back. There was a lump in the cushion. It always pressed against him too hard, constantly making him change position. His back had been hurting for months now and no matter what he did or how he sat, nothing seemed to help for long. The cushion was the latest experiment.

He sat ramrod straight even though that usually made it worse. A sub commander needed to project a certain image, especially during a combat run. He hadn’t slouched several months ago when he and the three-man crew had launched nuclear-tipped missiles at Santa Cruz, California. Those nukes had helped blunt the Chinese amphibious invasion of Monterey Bay. Yes sir, he had sat straight then and he certainly wasn’t going to slouch now.

The Santa Cruz attack had won him and the crew a promotion. It had also gotten them a fast refit of their small carbon fiber submersible. The upgrade had occurred in Seattle. It was an experimental addition and a new way for submarines to go about their business of ship destruction.

For the past two weeks, they had crawled along the bottom of the continental shelf toward Mexico, toward the Baja Peninsula and Mazatlan. The port was outside the Gulf of California and opposite the inner side of the Baja Peninsula in Mexico proper. Mazatlan was a major port for Chinese supplies used in the Midwestern invasion.

Tonight, they would test the experimental adaptations and see if and how they worked.

Captain Winthrop forced a smile onto his narrow face. Because of his back, the smile was painful but heartfelt. Truthfully, he’d like to launch another trio of nukes aimed smack-dab at the port. He wasn’t sure why High Command didn’t give the orders—not that their little submersible had nuclear-tipped Tomahawks anymore. No, such a privilege would have to go to someone else now.

Winthrop’s reasoning was straightforward. The Chinese used nukes. The U.S. should do the same thing, but with more of them. Well, the Chinese
had
used nuclear weapons. He hadn’t heard of them using anymore since the end of the Californian invasion. Maybe the Chinese and their South American allies figured they didn’t need to use them anymore to win.

“We’re in position, sir,” Warrant Officer Stevens said.

“Good,” Winthrop managed to say without any back-pain entering his words.

Stevens swiveled around. “Do you want me to launch the scout, sir?”

“No. I’ll do that.” With both hands on the armrests, Winthrop pushed himself to a standing position.

Merrimac
was tiny as submarines went. It carried more fuel because the former Tomahawk launch tubes had been refitted into diesel tanks. Instead of the tubes as armaments, four drone vehicles resting on outer hull-racks rode with the submersible like pilot fish on a shark. Three crewmembers and a captain maintained everything, which meant they were all extremely overworked. High Command had refitted
Merrimac
for something the designers had never intended it to do: long-range attack runs.

Maybe not too long-range
, Winthrop told himself.

The carbon fiber construction meant the sub couldn’t take hits or withstand the normal concussions a regular submarine could. Concussions came from anti-sub weapons such as depth charges. The Chinese had begun using nuclear charges, or they had for a little while. Maybe they would again. If that happened near the sub, they were all dead.

For protection, the boat used stealth instead of armor.
Merrimac’s
carbon fiber construction meant it had practically zero radar and very little sonar signature. The boat also ran silently on batteries; well, most of the time. It used a quiet diesel engine the rest of the time. That meant the little craft was nearly impossible to hear or spot. Now High Command had added another layer of deception and therefore protection. What you couldn’t see, you couldn’t hit, except with extreme luck. Submarine warfare was a giant game of percentages.

“We’re on the surface, sir,” Steven said.

Captain Winthrop strode stiffly out of the tiny command center, down a corridor and up a plastic ladder. When he reached up with a hand, the small of his back shot an agonizing twinge through his body. For some unaccountable reason, it made his jaw ache.

You stupid body. Why don’t you work right for once?