Invasion: California

-1- The Stumble

The stumble into war began in the bedroom of Colonel Peng of the Fifth Transport Division. He lay naked on top of Donna Cruz, a Mexican teenager with raven-colored hair and the sensual moves of a serpent. The moment of ecstasy quickly arrived and Peng cried out in release.

He rolled off her, yawned and closed his eyes. No wonder soldiers volunteered for duty in Mexico. Yes, war loomed, but the abundance of willing and attractive females in this land was truly staggering. Peng had never won a marriage permit as Chinese law dictated. He wondered if that had been a mistake.

“Colonel?” the girl asked. “Are you asleep?”

He opened his eyes. She sat beside him. What marvelous breasts and such a flat stomach with its outie bellybutton. Oh. The flatness of the stomach was because she seldom had enough to eat.

The rationing in Mexico was strict. The country’s painfully-grown crops first fed the “invited” soldiers protecting the Socialist-Nationalist Revolution. That meant nearly ten million mouths, ten million hungry foreigners. Afterward, the Mexican government employees took precedence, the Mexican Home Army and then munitions workers. Every Mexican possessed a ration card. Peng’s young temptress had a third class card, no doubt why she supplemented her lifestyle as his girlfriend.

Does she have other “boyfriends?”

“Colonel?” she asked again.

It was atrocious Chinese, but at least she could speak it. Actually, it was much better than most Mexicans achieved.

Peng yawned, idly wondering why he became so sleepy after doing it.

“Do you have a present for me, Colonel?” she asked, smiling as she batted her eyelashes.

“Yes. It’s in the third drawer, my dear. I have a package for you. Why don’t you get it?”

She scooted off the bed. Peng raised his head to examine her wonderful butt. It swayed seductively as she padded across the floor. Only in Mexico could he have won such a beauty.

She opened the third drawer and squealed with delight, taking out a large package wrapped in red paper.

“It’s heavy,” she said.

“I have sausages, whiskey for your father and other delicacies for you. There are also several hundred pesos within.”

“You are kind to me.”

He closed his eyes and lay back. Kindness had nothing to do with it. He was a supply officer and had learned a long time ago that spreading delicacies around solved many problems, including a loveless life. Let the fighters win glory on the battlefield. He would use his position to “buy” what he needed.

“I can return four days from now,” she said. It was a long bicycle ride from Mexico City where she lived. He had been thinking about purchasing a room for her nearby. Many officers did that, but Peng had been saving his money, sending it to his aging mother in China.

Peng smiled as he became increasingly sleepy. Four days from now and he would neigh like a stallion as he enjoyed another night with this amazing creature. Yes, four days and—he frowned.

“Is something wrong?” she asked.

Through the mattress, he felt her climb back onto the bed. Her warm hands rubbed his chest. She always told him how she loved his smooth skin. It wasn’t hairy like a gorilla.

“I’m going to be busy four days from now,” Peng told her.

“Oh,” she pouted, taking away her hands.

Peng yawned. It was getting hard to stay awake. “I’m going to be very busy moving Blue Swan. Another shipment arrives, from Japan this time.”

“Couldn’t you get away for just a little while?” she asked. “I really want to see you again, Colonel.”

Peng smiled faintly. The girl was amazing in bed but otherwise unimaginative. She never seemed to understand he had tasks to perform.

“No, my dear,” he mumbled, beginning to fade away. “I have to oversee everything.” She probably couldn’t understand that. “Blue Swan is critical,” he explained. “It is the can opener that will pry apart American defenses. It would be my death to slip away to see you, delightful as that would be. I…”

Colonel Peng’s head tilted until his right cheek sank against the pillow. He drifted to sleep. Thus he never saw Donna Cruz stare at him in amazement.

The next night, Daniel Cruz stared bleary-eyed at his teenaged daughter. She paraded through their tiny living room in a red dress. She was stunning, his daughter. It amazed Daniel that he had ever produced such a pretty girl with such long, raven hair.

“Where did you find the money to buy that?” he asked.

She frowned.

It hurt Daniel’s heart to see that. He should have told her how beautiful she looked. It’s what he would have told his wife. She had died three years ago. Everything had gone sour afterward: his wife dying and his daughter learning to whore herself out to the Chinese. He knew where she’d “earned” the money to buy a red dress like that.

Daniel picked up a glass, swirling the brown-colored whiskey at the bottom. He sipped, letting the alcohol slide down his throat. A moment later, the pleasant burn and the numbing in his mind began. This was good whiskey, better than he’d had in a long time.

“You’re pretty,” he muttered.

Donna swirled on her toes. She had such slender legs, perfectly muscled from all the bicycling she did. Wherever she rode, Daniel knew his daughter turned heads.

“Do you sleep with them?” he asked bitterly.

Anger flashed in her eyes. She strode to the nightstand and grabbed the whiskey bottle by the neck. “I brought you this! Drink it and drown your sorrows. But do not ask me what I do as if you’re a shocked priest. You work for them, Papa! I work for them! So do not judge me.”

Daniel wanted to surge up and slap her across the face. He had bad knees, hobbling like an old man wherever he went. Bicycling to the office every day only made his knees worse. They popped and crackled horribly when he pedaled. He held out his glass to her, deciding silence would be his whip.

She poured, slammed the bottle onto the nightstand and strode across the living room. Before leaving, she whirled around. “You should thank me and you should thank Colonel Peng for his generous gifts.”

Daniel sipped whiskey, looking away. He would ignore her. She knew better; thus, he would let her own conscience whip her.

“The colonel is an important man!” she declared.

Daniel snorted. They were always important.

“He’s in charge of Blue Swan,” Donna said.

“Birds?” asked Daniel, letting his voice drip with mockery.

“No! Blue Swan is the can opener that will pry apart the American defenses.”

Daniel’s head swung around. With the whiskey in him, it felt like a long journey. He stared at Donna, standing there so fiery, with her fists on her hips.

“What did you say?” he asked.

“They’re from Japan,” she declared. “He’s moving them. He is very important, Papa, and he loves me.”

Daniel blinked heavy eyelids. He knew this Colonel Peng. His office in the city had dealings with Chinese supply, in charge of traffic control. Daniel worked in the Mexican government, what had become the puppet régime for the foreigners. Once he had believed in the SNP. Now his wife was dead and his daughter slept with the enemy. She had become little more than a whore. Even though he loved her dearly, he recognized the truth. Because he made too little money and drank too much, he couldn’t give her what she needed and had to take what she gave.

“Drink your whiskey,” she said, interpreting his silence the wrong way.

“Donna,” he whispered.

She ran from the living room. Seconds later, the front door slammed as she fled the apartment.

Daniel stared at the glass with the brown-colored whiskey. It was Japanese, too, the alcohol. What his daughter had just told him…if it was true…

He grabbed the bottle from the nightstand and as carefully as possible, he poured the whiskey in his glass back where it belonged. A few drops spilled onto the carpet, but that couldn’t be helped. He corked the bottle, set it on the nightstand and went to the fridge. He drew two bottled waters, opening the first and beginning to guzzle. Tomorrow, he needed to be as sober as possible.

Afterward and in a daze, he went to bed. Sleep proved difficult. Five times, he woke up, shuffled to the bathroom and dribbled into the toilet. He hated being old.

In the morning he ate a tasteless burrito, shaved his face with a shaking hand and chose his cleanest uniform.

He pedaled through the city, listening to his knees crackle and pop. He had to ride slowly; otherwise, the pain became too intense. Thousands pedaled with him, hordes on two wheels. At a thirty-story glass tower, Daniel parked his bike in an outer rack, locking it with a chain.

He took an elevator to the twelfth floor. There he worked diligently in his office, only later finding an excuse to head to the fourteenth floor and speak there with Pedro, who was in charge of scheduled routes in the countryside. Pedro was an old friend from elementary school, so many decades ago.

In a storeroom with a single bulb in the ceiling they played checkers. The ivory pieces had an unusual heft to them and were always cool to the touch. The design etched onto the backs showed the ancient Castilian crown from the old country. The ivory pieces came from Daniel’s grandfather, inherited at his death. Pedro and Daniel usually played around this time.

After moving a piece, Daniel looked up and told Pedro, “I had forgotten, my friend, that you introduced me to my wife.”

“That was long ago,” Pedro said as he eyed the board.

“Hmm. It is our anniversary today.” That was a lie, but Pedro would never know. “Since my wife is gone, I wanted to celebrate with someone. Would you share this with me?” Daniel asked. He produced the whiskey bottle, which was three-fifths full.

Pedro looked up and his eyes widened. He grinned. He had a silver-colored crown among his yellowed teeth. Pedro was an alcoholic, although he’d never admitted that to anyone, certainly not to himself. “Just a quick sip, si?” Pedro asked.

“Yes, a quick one,” Daniel agreed.

A half hour later, the bottle was empty, Pedro having consumed most of it.

“Oh,” Daniel said, as he shelved the game in its hiding spot. “I just remembered. Senor Franco is planning a surprise inspection today.”

“You lie!” Pedro said.

“I’m only wish it were so.”

“He’ll smell the whiskey on me.”

“I’m sorry, my friend,” Daniel said. “If Franco is coming, I must leave for an early lunch.”

“Yes, yes, an excellent idea,” Pedro said.

The two men departed from the storeroom. Pedro hurried to his office down the hall. Daniel went in the other direction, turned the corner and waited. After ten minutes had passed, Daniel headed for Pedro’s office. Upon his entrance the secretary looked up, an old lady whose son, Senor Franco, ran the department.

“I forgot my keys in Pedro’s office,” Daniel said. He meant the keys to his bike-chain and apartment.

Mrs. Franco indicated that he could go in and retrieve his keys.

Daniel entered the office, leaving the door ajar so she wouldn’t become suspicious. Despite her inquisitive nature, old Mrs. Franco was absent-minded and would likely forget about him soon. She was playing a computer game and she often spent hours at it, building her internet farm.

After a short wait and taking a deep breath, Daniel sat down at Pedro’s desk. The swivel chair creaked and Daniel paused, but Mrs. Franco did not come in to investigate.

As he’d hoped, Pedro’s computer was still on. Daniel pressed a key and the screen awoke. For the next twenty minutes, Daniel examined scheduled route shutdowns. Pedro was in charge of them, meaning certain routes and roads were closed to civilian and sometimes to Mexican Home Army usage. During those times the Chinese Army used the roads and routes, often for “secret” convoys.

Daniel searched, and he discovered a route from the main port at Baja Bay to the First Front on the Californian-Mexican border. The route used a code word. From experience, Daniel knew the Chinese often used the main article being ferried as the code. This route word or code was “Blue Swan.”

Daniel’s heart thudded. According to Donna, this was a secret weapon, one critical to smashing the vaunted American defenses on the border.

With shaking hands, Daniel took out a pencil and paper, copying the route information. Several minutes later, he shut off the computer, said good-bye to Mrs. Franco and headed to his office one floor down.

He would compose a carefully worded report and leave it at a letter-drop near Santa Anna Park. His control was a Swiss national in the ambassador’s office. Daniel believed the man was actually a CIA case officer. Whoever he was, the man paid well for good information, which helped Daniel buy cheap whiskey. More importantly, with this he hoped to hurt the Chinese, to strike back at the foreigners who had corrupted his beautiful young daughter.

Anna Chen rubbed her eyes. They were gritty from too much reading and too little sleep. She sat in front of an e-reader in a cubicle in the Central Intelligence Agency, one of the analysts working the night shift.

She had come down a long way in the world since President Clark’s reelection defeat after the Alaskan War seven long years ago. From working on the President’s staff Anna had fallen into unemployment. This was due to her membership in a new undesirable caste in America: those of half-Chinese ancestry. It had been a rude shock.

Years ago, she had written the tome on the Chinese: Socialist-National China. It had been a bestseller, had won her a professorship at Harvard and then a spot on President Clark’s staff. None of that mattered now. She was half-Chinese. In besieged America that made her suspect. It didn’t help that Tanaka—her former bodyguard/lover—had died defending her in Obama Park. Tanaka had killed three muggers, shooting two in the head and breaking the neck of the third. The fourth had stepped out from behind a bush, shot Tanaka in the back and stolen Anna’s purse.

Sitting in her CIA cubicle, Anna rubbed her eyes harder, blinked several times and concentrated on the reports. A lamp provided light and several computer scrolls waited for her use. If there was anything in a report she didn’t understand, Anna looked it up.

Her life had spiraled from one tragedy to another. After her mother’s death, Anna had begun a blog on Chinese affairs, winning syndication on National News Internet (NNI). The mass Chinese cyber-assault three years ago in 2036 had ended that. The nuclear terrorist attack in Silicon Valley had ripened the latent Chinese racism into ugly fruit indeed. The only bright spot had been the election of President Sims. They said he was superstitious, in a baseball sort of way. Keep everything the same, if you could, when you won the big game. She had been in the government during the Alaskan War that Sims had won. Therefore, after gaining an interview with him, Anna had received employment with the CIA, as a lower grade analyst. It was better than unemployment and she was good at analyzing and interpreting data.

Anna sipped tea and leaned back so her chair squealed. She reached up and undid her hair. It was long and dark. She opened a drawer and took out a brush, letting the bristles run through the long strands.

She was seven years older since the Alaskan War. Yet she was still slender, keeping fit primarily because of her sparse diet and her pedal-power plan. In her apartment, she supplemented the energy requirement—provided by a nearby coal station—through stationary cycling. She also practiced the martial arts techniques Tanaka had taught her, which kept her amazingly limber.

She missed Tanaka. It was a hole in her heart. Would there ever be a man like him again for her?

Her brushing hand froze. Anna sat up, removed the brush from her hair and set it on the desk with a soft clunk. She concentrated on the report.

Clicking the e-reader, going back two pages, she noticed it came from Mexico City. From the beginning now, Anna read the report slowly. Was this right? The Chinese were moving a convoy to the front near the Californian border. The convoy carried Blue Swan.

“Blue Swan,” Anna whispered. “Where have I seen that before?”

She continued reading and wondered how this person code-named “Spartacus” had known “Blue Swan” was important to the Chinese. There was something missing in the report. She could feel it. It was rated “Yellow.” That meant it was considered third class and only slightly reliable.

Anna swiveled her chair and used a computer scroll’s touch screen. America was a land of great contrasts these days. Coal fed much of the nation’s energy needs and yet some places used the latest technology. Anna put in Spartacus’ name and read other reports written by him.

Why is this one coded “yellow?” Spartacus had proven reliable in the past.

Anna typed in “Blue Swan,” watching the words build on the screen. After typing the “n,” a little yellow note-symbol appeared in the left-hand corner. She moved the cursor over the “note” and clicked. Hmm, it was a reference saying “Blue Swan” concerned Chinese R&D. Where had the note originated?

She attempted to find out. Seconds later, her screen flashed red and the words appeared, sorry, classification exceeds user clearance level.

Anna sat back, picked up her teacup, sipped and grimaced. The tea had become cool. She liked hers hot.

So, what do I do? Let this go or make waves trying to find out what this “Blue Swan” is?

Anna sat staring at the e-reader. Slowly, she clicked back to the beginning of the report. She wished Spartacus had been more honest and put in exactly how he’d come to suspect Blue Swan.

How important is this?

If it proved to be insignificant, eyes might raise and suspicions become whetted. Why did the half-Chinese woman seek higher clearance? Her position in the CIA was tenuous at best.

“I’m an American,” Anna whispered to herself. “This is my country.” Each person had to fight his or her personal battles in life. Some had physical ailments, others fought psychological problems and some had to walk uphill against racism or ageism. She had found it better to do and struggle than to accept these limitations.

Standing, blowing out her checks, Anna picked up the e-reader and headed for her boss’s office. She passed others in their cubicles, reading reports, typing or eating a snack. A few looked up. Two nodded a greeting.

Anna reached the door, hesitated and let her delicate knuckles rap against wood.

“Enter,” a man said. Ed Johnson was the chief analyst of the nightshift. He had gray hair and wore a white shirt and tie, one of the old guard. She had heard others say before that Johnson didn’t like her.

“Yes?” Johnson asked, scowling up at her.

Anna hesitated.

Johnson’s scowl grew, and he eyed her up and down.

Anna felt soiled by it, remembering how Tanaka’s killer had looked her up and down that night in the park. With the smoking gun in his hand—the one that had shot Tanaka in the back—the murderer had stepped up and snatched her purse. His eyes had lingered hungrily. She’d seen his desire to rape. It had frozen her. For months afterward, she had stood before a full-length mirror at home, practicing what she should have done.

At his desk, Ed Johnson scowled, eyeing her as if she was a piece of meat to devour. She wasn’t going to accept it.

With a force that surprised her, Anna slapped the e-reader onto Johnson’s desk. “I’d like you to read this,” she said.

His gray eyebrows lifted. Maybe he hadn’t expected such forcefulness. He took the e-reader and went through the report. When he was done, he set the e-reader down, turned it to face her and shoved it across the desk to her.

“Did you see the reporter’s grade?” he asked.

“Third, yes,” she said. Anna explained about the “Blue Swan” reference to Chinese R&D and that its classification was higher than her clearance.

“What am I supposed to do about it?” Johnson asked.

“Give me higher clearance so I can properly analyze the data.”

He folded his thick fingers together, staring at her. He shook his head. “I can’t do that, Ms. Chen.”

“Then phone someone who can.”

“Are you trying to tell me how to do my job?”

“I’m trying to do what’s best for my country. I think this could be important. Obviously, Spartacus left out a critical piece of information. It’s the R&D information that I need to see in order to make a better-informed judgment on what he is telling us. This is time-sensitive data.”

Johnson’s scowl intensified, and he nodded now. “You’re gambling. You have the guts to back up your gamble, to barge in here and try to face me down. Okay, little girl, I call and raise your stakes. You want to burn yourself, go right ahead.”

Ed Johnson, Chief CIA Analyst of the nightshift, put a call through to his superior. He told him the pertinent information, nodded, saying “yes, sir,” and handed the phone to Anna.

She found herself talking to the Director himself. Anna stared at Johnson. He grinned like a shark.

“I’m hope this is important,” the Director said. “Sleep is a precious commodity, and Johnson’s call has just stolen some of mine.”

“Yes, sir,” Anna said. She explained the situation once again.

“Anna Chen,” the Director said, “the Anna Chen on Clark’s staff, the one who tried to warn him about the Alaskan Invasion?”

“Yes, sir,” Anna said.

“I’ve read your file. You have good instincts. Hand the phone back to Johnson.”

Anna did.

Johnson listened, and his eyebrows thundered. “Yes, sir,” he said, hanging up afterward.

“Round one goes to you, Ms. Chen,” Johnson said. “You have provisional clearance until I say otherwise. I’m adding the condition that you can only look at it here with me.”

Soon, in a chair to the side, Anna read the Chinese R&D report. Johnson informed her it came from the Yuan Ring, a spy high in the Chinese military. The informant didn’t know what “Blue Swan” was specifically, but it was supposed to be a weapon of special significance against American defenses.

Anna looked up. “Sir, I think you’d better listen to what I have to say.”

“Is that so?” Johnson asked.

“If you don’t think so,” she said, “call up the Director again.”

Johnson decided to listen to Anna. Afterward, he told her, “Are you sure you want to raise the stakes again?”

“Aren’t you?” she countered.

Johnson shrugged, and he called the Director. The Director listened to Anna and then asked to speak to Johnson. Shortly thereafter, two security officers escorted Anna to a waiting car. They drove to Special Operations Command (SOCOM) so Anna could speak to General Ochoa. All American commandos fell under his orders. That included Green Berets, Rangers, Delta, SEALs, Air Commandos, Psyops, and Marine, Force Recon and Civil Affairs and special aviation units.

Rain struck the windshield of Anna’s car. The water distorted the street lights shining into the darkened vehicle as the tires hissed over wet pavement. One of the security officials drove, allowing Anna to read more about the Yuan Spy Ring in Beijing. After speaking with the Director a second time, she’d gained a higher security clearance.

The clock was ticking on Spartacus’ data and the Director wanted to make a stab at finding out what made “Blue Swan” so important.

In the swelter of an unusually hot Mexican night, Paul Kavanagh’s shoulders ached because of his heavy rucksack. His thighs burned as he stormed up a stony hill. With the ruck, special weapons, extra ammo, canteens and equipment, he lugged over eighty-seven pounds. It had been a grueling march since the insertion, sixteen miles of rough terrain and a Chinese patrol they’d had to avoid.

I’m getting too old for this.

The stars shone like hot gems, made more prominent by the moon’s absence. The air was raw going down Paul’s throat and sweat kept trickling under his night vision goggles. He lifted the device and wiped his stinging eyes.

Because of that, Paul tripped over a hidden rock. He stumbled, his equipment clattering, and he went to one knee at the top of the hill. He sucked air and shifted his rucksack, trying to ease the straps. Putting the goggles back over his eyes, he studied the situation. The twisting ribbon of blacktop down there was empty. The road snaked past boulders and a parallel ditch.

Had the Chinese convoy already come and gone?

This felt too much like Hawaii three years ago, which had been a series of disasters and dead commandos. Paul had the dubious honor of being one of the last Americans to slip away from the islands. He’d fled while under Chinese machine gun fire, tracers slapping the water as he gunned their inflatable over an incoming wave. Lieutenant Diggs had pitched overboard, leaving only two of them to reach the waiting submarine three miles offshore.

As Paul knelt on the Mexican hill, his lips peeled back, revealing a chip in the right-hand upper front tooth. He’d gotten that in Hawaii while banging his face against a rock. With his short blond hair and angular features, it gave him a wolfish cast. Despite his years, he still had broad shoulders and trim hips. In his youth he’d been a terror on the football field, slamming running backs and receivers with bone-crushing force. As he knelt, Paul listened for the enemy, straining, cocking his head.

He heard something in the distance that could have been a big engine. Rocks and boulders littered these hills, with crooked trees and yellow grass. If he could already hear the Chinese convoy—

Paul twisted around. William Lee moved up the hill. He belonged to the 75th Ranger Regiment and was the other American on the mission, although neither Paul nor Lee was in uniform. It meant if captured they could be shot as spies or saboteurs, which Paul figured would never happen. If they survived a firefight, Chinese Intelligence would torture them until they’d extracted every piece of useful information from their brutalized bodies.

Because of that, their CIA officer—who remained safely in the States—had given each of them a cyanide capsule. Lee had asked for a false tooth to hold his, explaining that he might be knocked unconscious during a firefight. The Chinese would confiscate the capsule, therefore, before he could swallow it. Paul had quietly accepted his cyanide, pocketing it and later crushing the capsule with his boot heel on the sidewalk outside the mess hall.

Paul had promised his wife Cheri a long time ago that he would come home to her no matter what happened. It was the only way she had agreed to his reenlistment with the Marines after Alaska. Paul had also vowed after Hawaii that he was going to die in bed of old age. He’d seen too many good men butchered on the battlefield. There was nothing heroic about it, just the ugly mutilation of flesh and the pulverizing of bones. His vows meant he couldn’t die here on this mission. He certainly couldn’t take his own life.

He snorted bitterly. If only it was that easy. Likely, the vows meant he had cursed himself to a young and violent death. Well, not so young, but brutal, he was certain.

A Mexican woman followed Lee. She was thin like the others and she carried a heavy pack like them too. They were guerillas of Colonel Valdez’s Free Mexico Army. The girl, the woman, she was the colonel’s daughter, Maria, a legend among the resistance. That she was here showed the importance of the mission. The CIA officer had objected via satellite phone, saying it would be a terrible propaganda blow is she died or was captured. Besides, the mission called for Colonel Valdez’s best men, not his daughter.

If they wanted the best, why am I here?

Paul knew the answer, but he didn’t buy it. Maria was here because she believed in the romance of her existence, in the great cause. She was also here because according to Colonel Valdez she had the best small unit tactical mind of anyone in his army. Calling these ragtag people Paul had seen an army was stretching it. They were all so thin.

It was due to the Chinese occupation. Those like Maria and her six guerillas possessed fifth-class cards, if they owned a card at all. It meant they ate enough to keep breathing, but moving or working, that was another matter.

The world was starving to death due to glaciation. Because of it, the population was knocking on America’s door, demanding food.

Lee reached the top of the hill and crouched beside Paul. He mopped sweat with his sleeve and his nostrils made whistling noises. Lee was too tough to open his mouth and pant, at least beside a Marine who had beaten him up the hill.

William Lee, aka “Wolverine” to his 75th Ranger Regiment buddies. He was shorter than Paul and built like a pit bull. Those muscles were all useful, even the ones bunched on the side of his jaw. In Hawaii, Lee had bitten off the nose of a White Tiger commando, giving Lee time to draw his knife and gut the Chinese killer.

Probably because of his fanatical attitudes, Lee consistently produced results. In Hawaii, he had been the sole survivor of the “Night of the Generals.” It had been a daring mission behind enemy lines, putting five Rangers of Chinese extraction into a conference room of high-ranking enemy commanders. All the generals had died, according to Lee, one bayoneted in the throat. Since only Lee had made it back, his version of the story had become official history.

Paul and Lee were here because of General Ochoa, who ran SOCOM. Ochoa believed in an old pro football adage: get big playmakers on your team, men who excel under pressure during playoff or Super Bowl performances and let them play a lot. Guided by his theorem, Ochoa had handpicked Paul and Lee for this off-the-cuff mission.

“You two have achieved the biggest successes to date. Paul, you helped slow the enemy on the North Slope of Alaska. And Lee, killing those Chinese generals in Hawaii—it makes me smile every time I think about you sticking one of those bastards in the throat. Your task this time is straightforward. We need to find out what ‘Blue Swan’ is and why the Chinese think it’s so important. You’re going into Mexico and getting our country a Blue Swan to study.”

As they crouched on the dark hilltop in Mexico, Lee’s whistling lessened. Paul hoisted his rucksack higher on his shoulders so the straps eased some of their pressure.

Lee leaned forward like an eager bloodhound. “I hear them,” he said, meaning the Chinese.

“Be good to get an air-visual,” Paul said, “and know how they’re deployed.”

“Next you’ll be asking for a quad to drive down to the road.”

“Better get going,” Paul said.

Lee grunted as he forced himself upright. Gripping his rucksack’s straps, he began stiff-legged down the hill.

Paul could hear the convoy easily now, the roar of approaching trucks. The Chinese were coming, the Chinese who ran Mexico with an iron fist, the Chinese who had invaded Alaska seven years ago and swept every American satellite from space three years ago and who had launched a cyber-attack on his country. The U.S. had never been the same since.

Maria Valdez climbed beside him, crouching onto one knee. Sweat streaked her thin face. She never wore a helmet or a hat and she’d tied her long dark hair into a ponytail. She was pretty with those intense black eyes, but she never smiled and her voice was like a whiplash. She panted with an open mouth. In that regard, she wasn’t proud like Lee. Her eyes narrowed and she turned to Paul.

“They’re almost here,” she said.

The mission had called for plenty of time to deploy. But there had been a patrol in the way. The nine of them had detoured, eating up too much precious time.

Thinking about it made Paul weary. If they couldn’t even get this part of it right, he doubted the extraction would work.

Maria looked back the way she’d climbed. Cupping her hands around her mouth, she shouted, “Jose, Lupe, Jorge, hurry! Set up the machine gun.”

She meant the .50 caliber Browning. She would man it, as she was the best shot among the guerillas.

“Luis, Benito and Freddy,” she said, “get your RPGs ready. I want you in the ditch with the Marine.”

The six guerillas toiled up the hill. Although thin and malnourished, they were hard-eyed partisans, Mexicans dedicated to throwing off the hated oppressor. Each of them had his own harrowing tale of abuse, of soul-crushing horror that usually involved a lost wife, daughter or sister, sometimes all three. The enemy avidly sought female companions, as their country had the worst man-to-woman imbalance in the world. More than one U.S. commentator said the Chinese lust for conquest was simply a primal urge belonging to the Stone Age—a hunt for wives. The Chinese had an ironclad law, permitting a family a single child only. Too many of them yearned for a male offspring, meaning they aborted the girls, the reason for the great imbalance.

Maria turned back to Paul, blowing her breath in his face. It smelled of sunflower seeds. She had littered the spent shells on the way here like an old time baseball player.

“We must kill every one of them,” Maria said, with her eyes flashing as she spoke.

Paul cocked his head. He heard grinding gears. The big vehicles downshifted as they toiled uphill. General Ochoa’s people had chosen this location with care.

Kill every one of them.

Lee was two-thirds of the way down the hill. The Ranger had an custom-built mine to deploy. He had two, but by the sounds, Lee would be lucky to get one emplaced.

“Over there,” Paul said, pointing halfway down the hill. “That position will give you—”

“I know where to put my machine gun!” Maria snapped.

Sure, lady. “Wait until Lee explodes the first mind before you begin firing,” Paul said.

Maria grabbed a fistful of his jacket and leaned close so their lips almost touched. “We’ve gone over the plan, amigo. Now you’re wasting time because you insist on treating me like a child. Go! Get set up so we can kill Chinese.”

This wasn’t about killing Chinese, although Paul didn’t tell Maria. “Good luck,” he said.

Maria sneered. “I am not a pagan. I do not desire luck.” She pulled a gold chain from around her neck with a small crucifix on the end. She kissed it. “I pray that Christos bless us against the atheist invaders. Tonight, let us send them all to Hell!”

“Works for me,” Paul said. He gripped his AT4, grunted as he stood and started down the hill.

Behind him, three guerillas followed, each of them carrying a Chinese RPG, long ago patterned off the successful Russian RPG-7. Maria and her team started for a position midway down the slope.

Lee had already dumped his rucksack in the ditch and knelt on the road. With a drill, he bored into the blacktop.

Can he get two mines in? We need two if we’re to have a hope.

Long yellow grass rustled against Paul’s jeans, while his boots scraped over half-buried rocks. He was dressed like a civilian, but it would fool no one. He’d declined regular body armor. It would give him away as an American but more importantly, it would rob him of mobility, maybe the ability to have made the 16-mile march this quickly.

In the darkness, gears ground once more as trucks downshifted yet again. It was an ominous sound. The convoy, the armored trucks and IFVs, were almost up into sight from their steep climb. In their entire route, it was steepest over that lip, meaning the convoy would be down to a crawl once they reached this location.

Paul raised his AT4 and broke into something resembling a sprint. The rucksack bounced up and down, causing brutal agony to his shoulders.

The AT4 was an 84mm unguided, portable, single-shot recoilless smoothbore weapon, a successor to the old LAW rocket. It weighed nearly fifteen pounds and his fired a HEAT projectile that could penetrate up to 16.5 inches of steel. The tactical trick tonight was going to be a simple one. The mine would blow the first vehicle. Paul’s AT4 would take out the last one, trapping the rest between them on the narrow road. The guerillas, Maria with the Browning, and U.S. Air Force drones would kill the rest. It was a KISS plan: Keep It Simple, Stupid. That was the best kind of plan in battle where the simple became difficult.

The air burned down Paul’s throat as he ran down the slope and his legs wobbled. Damn, he was tired. He needed to get into position. He—

The first Chinese vehicle climbed over the lip, appearing on the road below. It was an armored hover and by the mass of antenna on top, Paul bet it was a drone. The hover would be worthless off-road, but it had come quietly and faster than any truck or IFV. What a balls-up. Chinese convoy operations called for a drone crusher to lead. Everyone knew that. The planners had expected a crusher, not a hover.

No! Lee was still on the road. The hover likely had motion sensors, as much a robotic vehicle as an operator-driven drone.

Paul dove and he splayed his legs, dragging his feet, hoping to keep from tumbling. He grunted as the slanted ground slammed against him and his rucksack drove him down harder. He bounced and his steel-toed boots dragged in the dirt, kicking up stones.

Lee sprinted for the ditch. The Ranger pumped his arms as his feet flew. The hover’s heavy machine gun opened up with a stream of red tracers. Lee dove and jerked in the air as bullets ripped into him. The dive became a ragged tumble. He hit the ground and more tracers riddled his corpse, each one like a giant repeatedly slapping a doll, turning him over, and over.

Why had the Chinese brought a hover drone?

Paul didn’t have time to shake his head. The answer was too obvious. The mine was now out of play, as Lee had the activation-switch. Maybe one of the operators in Arizona could trigger it. First, the stealth drones would have to be in position. Paul hadn’t seen nor heard anything in the starry sky, nor had he communicated with the operators lately. Chinese detection gear was among the best and they therefore had decided to keep talk to a minimum.

Letting go of the AT4, Paul jerked quick-releases, shifted his shoulders and rolled the rucksack onto the ground. His fingers roved over pockets. He’d practiced this drill a thousand times. He ripped open a zipper and dragged out a laser-designator.

One of the guerillas crashed onto the ground beside him, readying a RPG. On the road, the drone raced for Lee’s corpse.

Cursing silently, Paul shoved the designator against his shoulder. It was built like a small carbine. He dug out a satellite phone and jammed it against his right ear. He punched the auto-dial, hearing it buzz.

“Echo one?” an operator asked.

The hover slowed as a port opened. Was it going to collect Lee? Before Paul could learn the answer, Lee rolled over so he faced his killer.

No way. Paul watched. It was ghastly. Lee smiled with red teeth. That’s blood. His mouth is full of blood.

Lee gripped something with both hands. His thumbs jammed down. The mine he’d planted in the road did its job as a coiled spring launched it airborne.

Paul thrust his face into the ground. An explosion rocked the world. Seconds later, debris rained with heavy pelting sounds.

After counting to three, Paul lifted his head and spotted the drone. It burned, flipped onto its side, a pile of junk now. Of Sergeant Lee of the 75th Ranger Regiment, there was no sign. In the end, Lee hadn’t needed the false tooth and cyanide capsule. The Ranger, he’d never have to worry about torture.

Paul blinked several times, hating the suddenness of the loss. Then he realized he heard heavy trucks braking, doing it out of sight. Did they stop on the steep part of the road just out of visual? He heard a clang. It sounded an awful lot like an IFV’s ramp crashing down. The shouts of Chinese infantry confirmed Paul’s suspicion.

The IEDs and the RPGs, together with the AT4 and Hellfire III missiles—

The first Chinese soldier climbed into view onto the road. He moved in that crouched-over manner of cautious soldiery. Helmet, body armor and cradling a QBZ-95 assault rifle—it used a caseless cartridge, the propellant a part of the bullet. That meant more ammo per magazine.

A second soldier appeared. They scanned the road and began eyeing the stony, grassy slopes on either side. Surely, they could see how beautiful of an ambush site this was. A third soldier appeared over the lip.

How many were there? Six per Infantry Fighting Vehicle meant—

The game changed then. Maybe opening communication with the operators—the drone pilots—in Arizona did it. How long had the American stealth drones been waiting? The CIA officer had told them the ones for this mission were super-quiet. But Paul figured he should have at least heard something up in the darkness if the drones were here. The Marine Corps used drones and Paul always heard them long before he’d seen them. Tonight, it was different, very different, a good surprise.

Maybe America finally had a few secret weapons of its own.

The first that Paul, and likely those soldiers down there, knew about the drones was the flare of a launching Hellfire III missile as it appeared in the dark sky. It blossomed into existence like a shooting star. There was a streak as the missile sped earthward and then out of sight. Paul figured the Chinese vehicles had stopped on the steepest part of the road, warned by the hover that enemy combatants waited for them here. A terrific explosion illuminated the night as if a giant had lit an arc welder. It was brightly white and hurt Paul’s eyes. The Chinese that Paul could see—their bulky armor with the oversized chest plates starkly visible now—glanced back and then hit the ground. They crawled away from the strike.

Another Hellfire III erupted into existence. Did that mean there was a second circling stealth drone, or did the missile come from the same craft that had fired the first? One thing was certain, the Air Force had made it here without a hitch. It was good to know something worked right on their side.

Several new Chinese soldiers appeared on the road. They ran up over the lip at speed. Two of them dropped their assault rifles and leaned over as they gripped their knees, panting. A different soldier appeared, striding into view. He blew a whistle. The noise was sharp and commanding. The others straightened, the two picking up their dropped weapons.

On the other side of the lip, out of Paul’s sight, Chinese anti-air rockets fire-balled upward into the darkness. Maybe to show them who had the biggest balls tonight, two more Hellfire missiles appeared, streaking down.

An explosion in the starry sky—brief but deadly illumination—showed a Chinese hit.

“Sergeant Lee?” the operator asked.

Paul realized he still held the satellite phone against his ear. “Gunnery Sergeant Kavanagh here,” he said. It always surprised him how calm his voice sounded during these things.

“You blew the mine too soon,” the operator said.

Did they have a higher drone up there watching the proceedings? Just how many drones had the Air Force been able to slip through the Chinese defenses? The enemy border bristled with radar, missiles, lasers, flak guns, AWACS planes and jet fighters and even with “distant” satellite recon. If the Air Force could get all these stealth drones through, why had they used only two commandos?

“Looks like you’re right about the mine,” Paul said.

“Is your screen up?”

“Just a minute,” Paul said. This felt too surreal, it always did. He pulled a computer scroll out of the rucksack, flicking a switch that stiffened it. A second later he viewed the situation from one of the drones that used night vision. Trucks burned on the steep road. Chinese infantry fired assault rifles into the air. Each shot looked like a spark on the screen. Paul spotted a Marauder-sized light tank. No, not a tank. The vehicle swiveled a pair of anti-air cannons and began chugging radar-guided flak into the sky. Out of the corner of Paul’s eye, he witnessed an explosion, which indicated a hit, another dead American UCAV: Unmanned Combat Air Vehicle. A different drone targeted the enemy. Paul watched his screen as crosshairs centered on the Chinese vehicle and as a Hellfire streaked down and obliterated the cannons.

“Do you have visual?” the operator asked.

“Sure do,” Paul said.

“We’re putting down another barrage,” the operator said. “Then you have to go in, finish them and find the Blue Swan container. We have to take care of some enemy air headed your way.”

Oh yeah, sure, no problem. “Have you counted the number of enemy infantry?” Paul asked.

“That’s going to change right now,” the operator said. “Keep your head down.”

Several things happened at once. Maria Valdez on her midway position on the hill opened up with the .50 caliber Browning. She was four football-field lengths away from the nearest enemy. The Chinese officer with the whistle went down in a heap. The others hit the dirt a second time and swiveled on their bellies toward the machine gun. Several crawled like mad for shielding rocks. Others opened up, firing back at Maria.

That’s a mistake. The Chinese were pinned on the road, easy targets for the Browning, which had greater accuracy at range than the assault rifles. In the next eight seconds, Maria killed two more enemy as her slugs ripped through body armor like pencils through paper.

Then the sun appeared—a monstrous light half-hidden by the steep slope. Paul clawed the earth, pressing his body against its protective soil. Concussion arrived with the sound. It lifted Paul, flipped and threw him against the soil so he rolled. Thunder boomed and shook the bones in his body.

No one had told him about this. Was the Air Force using nukes? Or was this one of their nifty fuel-air bombs, the kind that sprayed a mist of explosive gassy liquid and ignited?

“They’re all yours now,” a gloating man said into his ringing ear.

Paul was only vaguely aware that he still held onto the satellite phone. All mine? What do I want with them? “Roger,” he said. “How about keeping the spy plane up there so I can see what they’re doing?”

“We still have to extract you,” the operator said.

Paul scowled. That wasn’t an answer. Then he realized it was. The spy plane—the drone—would stay to guide the extraction vehicles. They had to get “Blue Swan” back into America so the techs could pull it apart and figure out its great secret.

Maria’s Browning kept chugging. Every fifth bullet was a tracer—a red light—helping guide the thin deadly line into desperate Chinese.

That was a problem, as desperate soldiers made dangerous ones. Several fired back from rocks near the lip. One of them, probably more, had radios. They would summon help, which might be helos, enemy drones or even jets to lay down old-fashioned napalm.

Paul checked the screen and choked on what he saw. While coughing, he saw movement among the burning Chinese vehicles on the steep part of the road. That was the problem with resorting only to bombs. The earth was a big place, with many folds and seams for anxious men to hide. It meant, as it always had, that infantry needed to go in to finish a task. Trouble was, his infantry was six skeletal guerillas and one bloodthirsty chick against—Paul counted at least ten more Chinese on the screen. Those in the rocks made another four. Fourteen alerted, body-armored enemies against their eight were poor odds.

It was only a matter of seconds before the Chinese in the rocks spotted him out here in the open. Some of them, at least, must have night vision equipment.

“Yeah,” Paul said.

He dragged the fifteen-pound AT4 to him. It had a HEAT round, made to disable an armored vehicle. He removed the safety pin at the rear of the tube. That unblocked the firing rod. He lifted it over his shoulder, moving his legs to the side. Otherwise, the back-blast would burn them. He moved back the front and rear covers so the iron sights popped into firing position. With quick precision, he moved the firing rod, cocking the lever forward and over the top to the right side. He sighted the largest boulder behind which the four Chinese hid. Taking a breath and holding it, Paul used his thumb and pressed the forward red firing button.

With a whoosh and the heat of back-blast, the round blew out of the tube. Time seemed to stand still. The 84mm round struck the boulder, exploding it and killing several Chinese.

Maria swung the tripod-mounted Browning and worked over the dead. She caught one man crawling for new cover.

“Let’s go!” Paul shouted. “We have to beat the others who are trying to climb up to the lip. If we do, we can pick them off.”

He grabbed his assault rifle and ripped open a flap on his belt as he ran. Lee had loved bayonets fixed to the end of his assault rifle. The idea of sticking the enemy had always seemed to excite the Ranger. Paul had read studies. Less than one percent of combat deaths were due to bayonet. The gleaming blade on the end looked fierce, but that was about it.

Paul drew a long sound suppressor out of his pouch. On the run, he screwed it onto his assault rifle. The “silencer” tonight had little to do with quiet shots and everything toward hiding muzzle flash. If he used full auto-fire, the sound suppressor would quickly overheat and become useless. His idea was aimed fire while keeping hidden from the enemy, hopefully long enough to kill all of them before they figured out his position.

Paul heard his own labored breathing and the crunch of his boots. Behind him followed three guerillas. He glanced over his shoulder. Two carried their RPGs. The smart one had a submachine gun out. Could he count on them to help him? A further twist showed him Maria on the slope. Her team dismantled the .50 caliber. That was a mistake. He could have used her to give fallback cover. She wanted to kill Chinese, however, and that meant moving the heavy machine gun forward. It was hard to fault her desire.

With his mouth open, as hot air burned down his throat, Paul sprinted for the lip, the edge that would show him the steep road and the burning vehicles. Ten Chinese soldiers were coming up, and he was sure that reinforcements were on their way from somewhere. He had to get this “Blue Swan” and be long gone, or he was going to end up in a torture chamber, worked over by experts.

He failed to win the footrace. A Chinese soldier stumbled over the lip and onto the visible road. If Maria still had her position, she could have killed the man.

Paul slid to a halt while still on the slope, tore off the night vision goggles and brought the assault rifle’s butt to his shoulder. He panted, knelt and winced as a stone pressed painfully against his kneecap. He shifted his position and peered through the night vision scope. The man kept moving in his scope, in and out of sight because Pau’s hard breathing moved his rifle too much. Paul took a deep breath, let it halfway out and held it, feeling as if he was underwater while trying to do it and while desperately needing air.

Concentrate. Squeeze the trigger.

The kick slammed against his shoulder. The soldier went down. Paul strained to see through the scope. The soldier crawled for cover. He’d just knocked the man down, likely hitting body armor.

Like a basketball player taking his second free throw—one who had missed the first shot—Paul aimed with greater deliberation and squeezed the trigger.

The Chinese soldier jerked and sagged, and half his face was missing as he lay on the ground.

War is Hell.

Paul glanced back at his help. The three guerillas lay on the ground. They must have stopped when he stopped, which was a natural reaction. That wasn’t going to win them the needed position, nor garner them the “Blue Swan” whatever it proved to be.

“Go, go, go!” Paul shouted at the three.

Time was everything now. Forgetting to pick up his night vision goggles, Paul stood and ran for the road and for the lip. After four steps, he realized his mistake, but it was too late to go back. He had nine Chinese soldiers to kill if he was going to get home to Cheri and his son Mike.

Enemy gunfire erupted from the lip, each barrel blazing flame as several Chinese shot at once. They had to be on their bellies, wisely using cover.

Paul dove for the second time tonight. This time, he was hardly aware of striking the ground. Without the rucksack, it was like jumping onto a mattress. Behind him, a guerilla cried out in mortal agony. Paul didn’t need to look back to know one of the guerillas was down.

Paul crawled and the dirt around him spit. A bullet whined past his head. Paul jumped up and ran crouched-over, yearning to reach a half-buried boulder. Something hot struck his left leg. He stumbled, but managed to keep his feet. Then he jumped, pulled the assault rifle close to his chest and shoulder, and rolled. More bullets hissed like wasps. Chips of rock struck his face.

He looked back and couldn’t see the three guerillas. He lay stretched out behind his boulder, momentarily safe from Chinese fire. He checked himself, but couldn’t find the satellite phone. He must have dropped it somewhere. Fortunately, he still had the scroll. Rolling it open, he studied the situation from the vantage of the patrolling drone. The nine Chinese were lying in a line on the lip, using it like a trench. Each wore body armor and each fired a QBZ-95. The only good thing was Maria. She’d set up the Browning again.

Paul glanced behind him just as the Browning opened up. The .50 caliber had much greater range, greater reach, than the enemy weapons.

“Okay,” Paul whispered to himself, looking at the screen again. His three guerillas were down. By the angle and stillness of their bodies, they each looked dead.

How much ammo did Maria have? The answer would be the same every time: not enough.

“You have to use her Browning while you can,” he told himself.

Paul pressed his forehead against the hard-packed ground. He had to think. He had to use what he had, which was what exactly? He had intel on the enemy, suppressing fire for a few more minutes and some night vision with his scope. The enemy must have night vision, too, but they couldn’t see him here behind the rock. For the moment, they didn’t have any UAVs. He had to use that against them. What made the most sense?

It came to him. It was obvious.

Paul took a deep breath, rolled the scroll and jammed it back into a pouch. Then he began to slither on his belly, using the rocks and boulders as a shield. His goal was simplicity. He had to get behind the Chinese and pick them off.

The next few minutes strained Paul’s stamina. Sweat kept dripping into his eyes. The rough ground tore through the fabric of his shirt at the elbows. The stony ground did the same to his flesh. He bled, but that didn’t matter now. Maybe in some future life it would matter. In the here and now, he kept using his elbows as he slithered for his destination.

Fortunately, Maria kept the enemy busy. Her team had carried extra ammo, which she now used prodigiously. Maybe she was smart after all. Maybe the colonel had known what he was doing sending his little girl.

Did Colonel Valdez love America? Paul had his doubts. Instead, the colonel’s logic must have been cold and inflexible. On her own, Mexico could never free herself from the Chinese. The country was prostrate and shackled: a victim to the world’s greatest power. To gain freedom, Mexico needed America as strong as possible. If the Chinese could breach the US’s “Maginot Line” on the border and begin tearing chunks of agricultural land from the U.S., it would show the rest of the world it was possible. The South American Federation would join in the attack. The German Dominion would likely drop airmobile brigades to secure an eastern state for itself as it launched its hovers from Cuba. If “Blue Swan” really was a weapon that could allow the Chinese to breach the world’s strongest defensive line, Colonel Valdez would want the Americans to find out about it so they could fix the problem. That would be enough of a reason to send his little girl into the fray.

Victory can’t come down to this little firefight, can it?

Paul gripped his assault rifle as he eased onto his feet. Blood dripped from his elbows. Below him to the left, he spied the burning vehicles on the steep hill road. They were all in a line, and they illuminated the nine Chinese prone on the road’s lip and to the right and left of the road. Straight below Paul were rocks and shale. He was roughly three hundred yards away from the Chinese.

Gripping the assault rifle, Paul began to climb down the rough slope. He should have kept his night vision goggles. Instead, he had to move slowly, testing rocks with his feet, pulling back when one shifted. If one clattered too loudly, one of the Chinese might look over and see him.

How long did he have until enemy reinforcements showed up? The fact this was a “Blue Swan” convoy probably meant not long. He might already be out of time.

Paul blinked sweat out of his eyes. He wasn’t going to get it done like this. He was going to have risk to win. First taking a deep breath, he propelled himself off his rock, jumping down. He strained to see in the darkness, using the distant firelight as best he could.

He landed on a boulder and almost pitched off it. He couldn’t windmill his arms to keep his balance—they gripped his rifle—so he jumped again, sailing downward. He landed and a rock slipped out from under his left foot. His ankle twisted and he let himself go limp, crumpling onto the boulders, landing on his side. He crawled, panting, expecting bullets to rain against him. When they failed to materialize, he climbed to his feet. His left ankle throbbed. He set down the rifle and untied the boot’s laces. His fingers felt thick and useless. His heart hammered.

You have to keep moving. You can’t stand out here exposed like this.

With stiff fingers, he jerked the laces tighter, knotting them quickly. He grabbed the assault rifle, jumped down ten feet and landed hard on a flat boulder. He winced at the pain shooting up his left leg. He plopped onto his butt and slid over the boulder’s side, landing on dirt. Using the night vision scope, he examined the terrain. Okay. He began trotting. Each time he put pressure on the left foot, his ankle flared with agony. Sweat streaked his face and his left hip began to hurt.

Finally, Paul lay behind a boulder, below and to the side of the nine Chinese by about one hundred and fifty yards. His mouth was bone dry so that his tongue felt raspy against the roof of his mouth.

He climbed to a crouch behind a boulder, unhooked a canteen and guzzled. He waited, and he guzzled again. Sweat drenched his clothes. He was shaking. The idea of crawling away and getting the hell out of here kept appearing more appealing by the second. White Tiger commandos were surely on their way. Enemy jets could drop napalm on everything. The Chinese were ruthless that way.

“Bastards,” he muttered, picking up the assault rifle.

He rested his bloody elbows on the boulder, bringing up the scope and taking several deep breaths. He needed calm. He needed steadiness. He put two extra magazines beside him. He didn’t want to waste time later unhooking them from his belt. He peered through the scope, judging the situation. Maria must almost be out of ammo by now. Once he started firing…

“Get it done,” he whispered.

Through his night vision scope, Paul Kavanagh sighted the leftmost Chinese lying on the ground. The soldier had pulled back from the lip, clutching his QBZ-95 between his knees.

Carefully, slowly, Paul squeezed the trigger. The assault rifle kicked, and the Chinese soldier lay back, his throat obliterated.

Paul was in the zone and continued firing with deliberate precision. When the third Chinese soldier shouted, standing up before Paul’s second shot put him down forever, the others finally noticed. The fourth went down with shattered teeth and a gaping hole in the back of his neck. The rest began firing downslope, spraying bullets, seeking Paul. It was a good thing he’d screwed on the sound suppressor, hiding his muzzle flashes.

It took the entire second magazine to kill the fifth and sixth soldiers.

Maybe the remaining three Chinese had enough of the silent killer who hid behind them. One bolted up over the lip. Maria’s Browning chattered a long burst and there came a terrible scream. She still had bullets.

The last two Chinese took off running away from Paul. He stood up and fired fast, sending bullet after bullet, chipping rock beside them and spitting dirt by their feet, but failing to nail either. They got away and both of them carried weapons.

Will they double back to fight?

Paul shook his head. He didn’t know, but he felt soiled by the encounter. Sniper-fire killing always did that to him. The day he truly began to enjoy deliberate butchery, he felt, would be the day he was a destroyer and no longer a soldier simply doing his duty.

Blue Swan. It was time to search for the miracle weapon.

Slinging the rifle’s strap over his shoulder, Paul limped toward the burning vehicles. It would be just his luck that this was the wrong convoy. There was only one way to find out.

By the time he reached the Chinese vehicles, his bad ankle made walking an act of pure will. He didn’t need to check the IFVs or the big troop trucks. The smell of cooked flesh coming from them nauseated him. He’d never gotten used to that, or the look of the dead, some with melted faces or bone sticking up around blackened flesh.

Whatever bomb the Air Force had used was brutal. Likely, it was one of the new secret weapons people blogged about these days. America had lost the Arctic Circle oil rigs and Hawaii, but they weren’t going to lose the mainland. Soon now, the world and the Chinese in particular were going to learn what old-fashioned Yankee ingenuity meant. That was one of the problems, however. The East—meaning the PAA and sometimes India—had greater manufacturing ability than the rest of the world. The East had also shown the niftiest battlefield hardware in both Alaska and Hawaii.

Paul limped toward a long-bed vehicle, what looked like a big missile carrier. This must be “Blue Swan,” a new kind of missile. Pulling out a digital camera, Paul began taking pictures. The thing was huge.

A shout brought him around.

He spied Maria on the lip of the road. She waved, and Paul realized the last burning vehicles illuminated him. It showed, at least, that the two surviving Chinese hadn’t doubled back. Only one of the original six guerillas stood with Maria. The two of them began down the road toward him.

Paul heard approaching helicopters then, a loud whomp-whomp sound. Those couldn’t be the Air Force, at least not the American Air Force.

Biting his lower lip with indecision, Paul stood beside the damaged missile carrier for three seconds. Then he bolted toward the carrier bed. Despite his ankle, he climbed the flatbed and took close-up shots of the crumpled nosecone, the warhead. Fluids leaked from it. He poured water out of a canteen and collected some of the warhead fluid. He also aimed the camera at Chinese characters on the warhead, clicking like mad.

Maria’s shout brought him around. She cupped her hands, yelling, “The White Tigers are coming!” Then she pointed up into the air.

Paul needed the satellite phone. Did America have any more air-fighting drones here? What was he supposed to do now?

Then Paul received the greatest shock of the night. He looked up sharply as he heard a faint sound. The strangest helicopter he’d ever seen hovered about sixty feet above him. It had four rotors at four equidistant points. Did it have a cloaking device? Or had it moved soundlessly? He heard it now, a whispering noise. This was incredible.

It dropped lower so he could see an undercarriage bay door open. A rope ladder slithered down toward him.

The CIA officer hadn’t said anything about this. Was he supposed to climb up into the helicopter?

The rope ladder almost struck his shoulder the first time. The craft maneuvered into a better position and now the ladder touched his shoulder. Paul didn’t need any more invitation. He grabbed rope, hoisted up and got a foot onto a rung. He climbed toward the bay door. It took him a second to realize that as he climbed the craft lifted higher.

“What about Maria?” he shouted.

No one poked a head out of the bay door to look down and answer. There was only the whistling wind and the dropping ground. It was too late to let go, so Paul kept climbing. He looked down and saw Maria staring at him. She turned to the guerilla. They talked, and they ran back up the road.

Paul saw the first enemy helicopter. It was small and black, with a machine gunner sitting with his weapon to the side. The vehicle belonged to the White Tigers. Paul knew because he’d seen these in Hawaii hunting American commandos.

A second helo appeared. The machine gunners didn’t blaze at Maria. She kept sprinting for safety as the guerilla beside her stopped, knelt and aimed his assault rifle at a helo. The two gunners opened up then. One of them at least proved himself a marksman. The guerilla pitched violently to the ground, riddled with exploding bullets as his body turned into gory ruin.

Do they know it’s Colonel Valdez’s daughter?

Paul shuddered and he kept climbing. He stopped just before reaching the bay door, because he spied Chinese characters painted on the bottom of this machine.

They tricked me.

He went cold inside until he wondered if Americans had painted that on the drone in order to fool the enemy.

Paul stared at the ground. It was a long drop. The wind whistled past his face, making his eyes water. It wasn’t hot anymore, but getting cold.

I guess there’s only one way to find out. Paul climbed the last few rungs of the ladder and reached the door. He pulled himself within.

The rope ladder coiled in fast, a roller whizzing with automated speed. His last sight was a concussion grenade knocking Maria off her feet. Then the hatch shut with a clang and a light appeared. Paul spied three small seats and little else, no windows, no speakers, just walls. He secured himself in a seat, buckling in. Either this was a clever enemy trick or the newest American extraction drone. The idea of waiting to find out made Paul’s gut seethe.

“How about telling me what’s going on?” he said in the cramped area.

No one answered.

Scowling, Paul folded his arms and tried to make himself comfortable. It was impossible. He kept thinking about Maria Valdez in the hands of Chinese Intelligence.