The convoy moved along the darkened river road, the lights of the bridge just visible ahead of them. Muss had just snorted two more loads of coke, when he looked up and saw a man standing in the middle of the roadway.
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"Who the fuck is that?" he asked his driver as the man slowed the car down, caused the convoy trucks behind him to squeal their brakes.
The man was dressed in what looked like a black flight suit and he was wearing a baseball cap over his hooded mask.
He was also armed with what looked to Muss to be a rocket-propelled grenade launcher . . .
"Jesus Christ, run him over!" Muss screamed to his driver.
But it was too late . . .
The man quickly raised the RPG launcher and fired directly at the car. The projectile hit the radiator grating and exploded, lifting the car off the ground a full five feet, and instantly killing the driver with a chunk of shrapnel in his chest.
Muss went out through the windshield and was thrown off to the side of the road. Even while he was in the air, he caught a frightening glimpse of many men, dressed like the one who had fired the RPG, running up from both sides of the road, firing weapons.
Muss landed hard in a clump of grass and sticks, breaking his left arm and leg. His face and chest were covered in blood pouring out of deep cuts he received when he crashed through the windshield. Yet he was still conscious and shock had set in, effectively, if temporarily, blocking out the otherwise excruciating pain of his wounds.
From the clump of grass he watched as the armed men made short work of the Circle guards who had been driving the troop trucks. The sharp firefight lasted all of 30 seconds. Then he was suddenly aware of people running over him-step-124
ping on his face and back, stumbling over his body in the dark. They were the POWs-they were being freed from the trucks and running toward the river. All of the troop trucks were now ablaze and Muss could hear the black-suited men yelling and talking to each other.
Certain they would kill him if he made a sound, the Circle colonel closed his eyes and pretended to be dead . . .
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A North Korean regimental commander heard the noise first.
Way off in the distance, a barely perceptible pop, followed closely by two more.
It was two in the morning, and up until this time, everything had been quiet in his sector. His troops, along with a mixture of Libyans and Cubans, had taken up positions in the Circle front line trenches shortly after noontime the day before. The Circle troops were marching back toward Football City just as his troops were marching forward. The commander would never forget the look in the eyes of the Circle soldiers as they viewed his troops.
One Circle trooper had even yelled it out: "Suckers!" he had said.
Now the North Korean watched as a thin yellow streak crossed the sky. It was high up when he | focused his NightScope binoculars on it, the infra-126
red image revealing a large cylindrical object. As he watched, the tube deployed a parachute, and was now slowly dropping toward his lines.
He immediately barked out an order for all his men to hunker down in their trenches, and when he regained sight of the cylinder, it was only about 200
feet above the ground, about a quarter of a mile from his position.
Was it a camera of some kind? Or gas? Or perhaps a failed long-range rocket launch?
Just as the cylinder was 100 feet above the trenches it suddenly burst open with a deafening crack! and a flash of yellow fire ...
With a strange jingling and hissing sound, the cylinder had exploded and shot out thousands of small sharp projectiles which ripped into the hapless North Korean troops in the trenches, exploding the minefields in front of them at the same time. Suddenly another parachute cylinder burst a half mile away.
Then another even further away.
The North Korean commander felt a spray of tiny bullets rip his arm clean off his body. He was knocked backward just as another wave tore his left foot clean off. Lying in an instant pool of his own blood, the commander looked up at the night sky to see it was now crisscrossed with the yellow streaks and the hideous, slowly-descending cluster bombs . . .
One word came back to him as he slowly passed into Hell: "Suckers . . ."
The opening shots of yet another Battle for Football City had been fired . . .
Cluster 1>ombs were falling all over the front as the Western Forces prepared to jump off in their
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1
invasion of Football City.
The efforts at deceiving the Circle with the phony recon photos were now paying off. The Westerners simply launched their attack from points where The Circle had thought they'd been the weakest, ignoring the Circle's front-line concentrations that had been established across from where they had thought the Westerners were the
strongest.
It was a total diversion. From the Free Canadians in the north, down through the combined Pacific American-Football City Army in the middle to the anxious Texans in the south, the democratic troops rolled through the areas obliterated by the cluster bombs, got behind the Circle-sponsored trench troops and began a series of wide encircling pincer movement.
Once the enemy's sides were "rolled up," the Westerners' air corps went to work. Attack airplanes of all types-from PAAC A-7s and F-5s to Texan Phantoms and Free Canadian Skyhawks-bombarded the trapped enemy with barrages of anti-personnel bombs and napalm. There was no antiaircraft opposition to speak of, and many of the trench troops-hired hands with little loyalty to The Circle-simply hid or fled after the initial
air attacks.
From his mobile headquarters which was now following a column of Football City tanks into the outskirts of the city itself, General Jones was on the radio constantly, directing the overall battle. Beside him were Ben Wa and Toomey, who were overseeing the air operations, and "Bull" Dozer, who was coordinating the ground attack.
Within two hours they had breached the Circle lines in a half dozen places, and Western Forces
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troops were pouring through the gaps and heading for the heart of the city.
Yet Jones and the others were far from complacent. Despite the initial successes, they knew the Circle trenches had been manned by the unreliable mercenaries and that was the reason the attack had started so well. Still ahead they knew they faced tough fighting against battle-hardened regulars of the Circle Army.
They had no idea what was happening within the city itself . . .
The Circle demolition squad arrived outside the POW compound and started flailing away at the large wooden door.
Confusion now reigned in the city-they could hear the booming of guns to their west and every man now knew the long-awaited attack on Football City had begun. Overhead, enemy jets streaked unimpeded, and it seemed like explosions were going off all over the city.
In the panic, the demolition team commander realized that no one had brought a key to unlock the massive wooden door. Now, as the troops took axes to the chains and padlock, the commander checked his watch. His orders-like those to the other demo teams now fanning out in the city-were crystal clear: kill all the POWs inside the chamber by detonating a half dozen concussion bombs just inside the entrance. Circle Army engineers had determined that the POWs deep inside the Holes would either die quickly from the concussion itself or from the cave-in which would surely follow. Either way, the commander knew he had to blow this cave and another one two miles away before he could join his main unit, which
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was already pulling out of the city.
It took five long minutes before his troopers had hacked and weakened the chains enough to finally break them with a fusillade of an AK-47.
"Quickly!" he yelled to his troops, as they pulled back the enormous doors.
"First team, set the charges. Second team, go below and make sure none of those prisoners move a muscle . . ."
He watched a pair of F-5s roar overhead, their silhouettes taking on a ghostly glow in the near-dawn darkness. Where the hell were the Circle airplanes? Or the SAM battalions?
Another huge explosion went off just a block away, showering him and his team with pieces of hot rock and metal.
"Jesus Christ! Hurry!" he called out to his men who were setting up the concussion bombs as quickly as they could under the circumstances.
Two more Western Forces jets went over, each one firing a long stream of rockets at some target three blocks away. The commander knew the enemy airplanes were roaming freely, looking for targets of opportunity. Eventually one of them would spot them at the cave entrance . . .
"Bombs set!" his sergeant called out finally.
The commander heaved a sigh of relief and started hustling all of the non-essential troops out of the cave entrance.
Just then, two troopers who had gone down | into the prisoners' cavern came running back out.
"Sir?" one of the them said to him. "There's no one down there ..."
The commander shook his head once, as if to rid himself of the nonsensical statement. "What the hell do you mean, no one's down there?" he shouted at the man. "There better well be twenty-ISO
five hundred of those bastards down there!"
The man just numbly shook his head. "There's not . . ." he said. "They must have all escaped somehow . . ."
The commander repressed a desire to slap the man. Instead he grabbed the rest of his soldiers and with them, entered the cave himself.
It took a minute to run down into the huge cavern, but once he got there, he found out his trooper had been right. The cavern's gas lanterns were still lit, casting a dim light around the Hole. And there was evidence of the POWs-clothing, broken bowls, a pile of dirty blankets. But not a single prisoner remained . . .
"Sir, over here!" one of his troopers called out. The commander ran to the spot and found a narrow metal pipe had been wedged into the side of the cavern. At the other end he could see a large room with concrete walls, pipes and various dials and switches.
He was about to send a man through the pipe when he heard a rumbling coming from the entrance way. Suddenly the whole cavern seemed to be shaking, clumps of dirt started to fall. Then the gas-powered arc lights went out and the cavern was plunged into a frightening darkness.
"The bombs!" the commander screamed out. "Something set them off!"
Those were his last words. Three seconds later a massive concussion ripped into the Hole so powerful it violently threw several of the troopers against the cave wall. Others felt their heads split open. Moments later the cavern's roof fell in, burying the commander and his remaining troopers alive . . .
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Colonel Muss was still conscious an hour after the POW convoy had been attacked.
He had yet to feel any pain, a fact he attributed to his non-stop ingestion of the cocaine stash which had survived intact in his boot. But the cocaine could not stop the pandemonium that was going on all around him.
The sky was filled with enemy jets. He could hear and sometimes feel the explosions go off in the city a half mile away. The commandos who had attacked his convoy had left the area, moving off toward the river as had the freed POWs. But the sound of nearby gunfire was still very much in the air.
Muss knew he had to get to the river, too. He was covered in the blood from a hundred separate glass cuts and his arm and leg were numb. In his drug-induced state, he felt that if he could make it to the water's edge and wash his wounds, they would heal and he wouldn't feel any pain-ever. Slowly, he set out. Using his good elbow and his good leg to propel him, he crawled across the rubble-strewn river park and down the embankment to the muddy water of the Mississippi.
A patch of river weeds provided him adequate cover. Once in the water he washed the dirt and caked blood from his eyes, allowing him to see more than 10 feet in front of him. His ears were stinging, so loud were the sounds of explosions and gunfire. Now, looking up from the weeds, he saw why the noise was so intense: he had crawled right into the middle of a battle . . .
No sooner had he poked his head up out of the weeds than he was pulling it back down again. The scene before him was so outlandish, so crazy, 132
he was sure that all the cocaine was making him hallucinate.
First of all, he had a clear view of three of the bridges that spanned the river. The two farthest away from him were presently jammed on both levels with fleeing Circle Army vehicles. Even in his shocked state, he knew he was watching Viceroy Dick's vaunted "Tactical Defense" in action. Back in the old days, it was simply called a "bug out." The once great Circle Army was retreating once again, and right behind them was another army-these were the hustlers, the criminals, the ./ human leeches and the leftover mercenaries who were also fleeing in the face of the oncoming Western Forces. Even from this distance, Muss could sense their panic . . .
On the bridge closest to him, there were no marching troops, no fleeing human wreckage. Instead it was filled with a strange conglomeration of tractor trailer trucks, all moving at full-speed, their cabs and trailers covered with Soviet soldiers, most hanging on for dear life. In the midst of this parade was an odd-looking white and gold tracked vehicle which bristled with radio antennae. It, too, was carrying a number of Soviet soldiers, all of them wearing uniforms made of black leather.
As this flight went on, advance elements of the Western Forces-soldiers of the Football City Army mostly-had taken possession of various points along the river's edge and were firing nearly point blank at the bridges carrying the retreating Circle Army troops.
But the weirdest thing of all was what was happening underneath the bridges.
It was so bizarre, Muss shook his head a few times, so sure was he 133
that he was seeing a vision . . .
In the middle of all the confusion on the spans, the explosions coming from the city, the enemy jets streaking overhead in the pre-dawn sky and the gunfire rippling down the water's edge, there were hundreds, possibly thousands, of people, floating down the river. On inner tubes.