The Siege
Chapter 11: Rocket Fire
By JagdPanther
Sergeant, First Class Earl Morris tripped over an object he couldn't see and fell flat on his face. His left eye opened, but his right eye remained swollen shut behind a large bandage. Morris turned his head to look at the black boots s few inches from his face.
Colonel Nakatani looked down at the American at his feet. He put one boot under the man's tied-up arms and flipped him over with a good kick, and then motioned for his aide to bring the man to his knees.
"You're American Delta Force, are you not?"
"Sergeant, First Class Earl Morris, 5-4-4-9-0."
Nakatani frowned. "I asked you, are you American Delta Force?"
"Sergeant, First Class Earl Morris, 5-4-4-9-0."
The Japanese 2nd Brigade, 1st Division commanding officer slapped Morris, and asked him, "I am not a patient man when it comes to questions, Sergeant. Are you American Delta Force?"
Again, the response was the same. "Sergeant, First Class Earl Morris, 5-4- 4-9-0." According to the Geneva Convention, soldiers captured during conflict are required to give only their name, rank, and military identification serial number. For American personnel, the response to virtually every question a captor asks is that response.
Nakatani sighed. "You will talk. You will tell me how many of there you are, what your supply situation is, what your radio codes are, and whatever else you know. After all this, you will perform a most important task. You will be my bargaining chip to get what I want. I hope you understand that, Sergeant."
Morris lifted his head and started defiantly into the Colonel's eyes. "Sir, with all due respect, fuck you." Then he spit in on Nakatani's shoes and smiled.
Nakatani's eyes flared and immediately kicked Morris head. He then grabbed the American by the shoulders and forced Morris into his quickly moving knee. Grabbing the back of Morris' head, Nakatani slammed Morris' face into a nearby table. He left the Delta Force Sergeant bleeding and whimpering on the floor. "Are the others talking?" the colonel asked Tanaka.
"No, Colonel. There is another high-ranking sergeant that is also probably Delta Force. The other two appear to be low ranking soldiers, one from the Marines and another from the Army. They are only giving their name, rank, and serial numbers, also. The two others that were killed also appear to have been low Army personnel." Tanaka glared down at the whimpering American, and gave him a swift kick to his exposed stomach. Morris vomited on the floor, and Tanaka reached down, rubbing Morris' face in the debris.
"That's enough for now, Lieutenant." Nakatani led his aide into the operations room. "How is my battle progressing, Captain?"
The Brigade operations officer, or S-3, turned to face his commander. "Sir, there are some problems."
Nakatani grunted. "Such as?"
"Well, sir, the defenders are putting up a much stronger fight than we anticipated. Their air and artillery support was resumed almost immediately after the lead elements of 3rd Battalion's assault force was ambushed by a small American force, the one that we captured, I believe. Shortly thereafter, another ambush was thrown along the northern route to the station. They destroyed several vehicles, including a tank with a homemade booby-trap. The assault was forced to proceed with only foot soldiers while the armored units found a way to clear the road of the destroyed units. The groups are constantly under air and artillery attack, but they still have managed to push their way to the outskirts of the station. They are under intense small arms fire. Some units have taken up position in buildings opposite Bokuto station to even the playing field, so to speak."
"What about casualties?" Nakatani's mood was not improving.
"Initial reports indicate that the 3rd Battalion has lost roughly 75 killed and 150 wounded. The report is a half-hour old, though. And that is just our forces. There is no way of telling how many the insurgents have lost."
Nakatani clenched his teeth and forced out. "Very well. How is 1st Battalion faring?"
The S-3 gulped. "They haven't even come within two kilometers of the station."
"Why not!" boomed Nakatani.
"A third ambush was thrown on their lead element. They managed to surround the ambush force, but they cannot dislodge it. Constant air and artillery attacks have removed the armor units from the equation for the time being until they can clear the road. The insurgents are mounting frontal assaults on the position while our forces attempt to flank. Both are meeting with failure. As near as we can assess, the 1st Battalion's combined group with the insurgents started with 1,400 men and has lost 250 killed and 150 wounded."
Fuming, Nakatani punched the map table, spilling several cups of coffee that were sitting on it. "And just how many soldiers are inflicting those casualties?"
"A company commander in 1st Battalion reports that he can only see at most seven distinctive muzzle flashes from the tiny perimeter being assaulted by our combined forces."
"Seven damn soldiers are holding up over a thousand men! How is that possible!?" Blood vessels were popping out of Nakatani's neck. This was going terribly wrong. He should've taken the station by now. "What is the problem here? Can my men not fight!"
"Sir, their air and artillery is accurate and relentless. They are desperately trying to defend their soldiers on the ground."
Tanaka spoke up. "Sir, if I may suggest, we could use Commander Tonishi to eliminate the American naval artillery. At least we wouldn't have to deal with that, then."
Nakatani looked up, eyes blazing, at his aide. "No. Tonishi cannot be wasted like that, not now. We need him later. If he takes out the artillery, then he is compromised and this whole mission will be a failure."
"I'm sorry, Colonel." Tanaka lowered his head.
"Don't be, Lieutenant." Nakatani pondered for a moment. "We absolutely must take the station. I want two companies of the 1st Battalion to bypass the ambush and head directly for the station. Seven Americans are not as important as what is inside that police station. Leave the insurgents and the other companies to deal with the ambush." He looked at the map in front of him. "Lieutenant, I want you to contact the insurgent commander and request that he provide the machine guns off of the backs of his trucks. I want them. We're going to shoot down some of those American helicopters. If he doesn't comply, take some machine guns off of our trucks and tanks. Then get them to the tops of buildings around the station and the 1st Battalion ambush site. When American helicopters come in, rip them from the sky."
"Yes, sir." Tanaka saluted and left to confer with the insurgent leader.
"Captain, tell the unit commanders to throw everything they have at the station once the reinforcements arrive and the anti-aircraft machine guns are in place."
"Yes, Colonel." The operations officer saluted and began issuing orders to his radio operators.
Nakatani looked at the map, with red marks surrounding a station and a field in the middle of the Sumida Ward. "We cannot lose."
Miyuki Kobyakowa shot a shadow. "Damnit! A wasted magazine!" she cursed as she reloaded the 30-round magazine of 9mm rounds into her German-made MP5 submachine gun. Now over her clothes that she had acquired the previous day (it was past midnight) she had a SWAT-team issue web-gear set. The webbing was festooned with fifteen magazines for her MP5, two pouches of loose rounds for the American M24 sniper rifle she still had with her, seven magazines for her Italian Beretta 92 pistol. She pulled back on the charging handle to chamber a round from the new magazine into her MP5 when bullets stippled across the wall behind her, sending her to the floor. The bullets grouped around where she had been standing and then ceased.
A short way down the hall, a Marine yelled, "Third floor, fifth window from the right!" He jumped up and fired a 40mm grenade into that particular window. The fire coming from the building across the road from the station now fixated on where the Marine had been standing to fire the grenade.
Miyuki rose to her knee and peered over the edge of window frame. The building seemed almost ablaze with all the muzzle flashes from weapons being fired from it. More bullets found their way to where Miyuki knelt and she dropped down again, cursing.
An Army Lieutenant and his radio operator low-crawled down the hall past Miyuki. She noticed that the Lieutenant was trailing a bloodstain from his pant leg, but it was bandaged. 'How the hell do you get a lower leg wound with a three-foot wall from the floor up? Ah, hell, nothing's impossible now.' She scuttled down the hallway to side hall where she entered an administrative lounge where Navy Corpsmen and Army medics were furiously working on wounded personnel, Army, Marines, and police alike. Miyuki crouched beside a table and retrieved a roll of ACE bandages on top of it. The medical personnel continued to work, despite the enemy rounds sailing through down the side hall, snapping and striking the floor near the door. Miyuki taped up a small laceration on her right forearm. An enemy rifle round had grazed her. It wasn't a debilitating wound, but it hurt like hell when it pressed up the stock of the MP5 or the M24.
Specialist, Fourth Class Ryan Ida came over and handed the female police officer a canteen. "Here, drink of this and let me look at that wound," he said in Japanese.
Miyuki waved him away and responded in English. "I'm fine. I have to get back out there."
Ida stopped her. "Let me look at the wound. Yeah, sure, you bandaged it, but it can still get infected."
Reluctantly, Kobyakowa sat back down as Ida undid the ACE bandage wrap. She took a gulp of the water. Miyuki cringed a bit as Ida applied antiseptic rinse to the wound. After getting the wound re-wrapped, she handed back Ida's canteen.
"Nah, keep it. You don't have one. I've got a couple extra ones."
"Uh, thanks." She picked up her MP5, and made her way back to the door. Before leaving, she took a moment to look at all the wounded in the room. A Marine to her left was in shock from two bullet wounds to the abdomen. An Army machine gunner past him was being held down as a Navy Corpsman attempted to remove a bullet from the gunner's shoulder. There were even a few of her fellow police officers wounded. And then there were the dead. This was just one medical station out of several across the station. If one looked at the exact casualty reports for the enemy troops and the defenders right now, it would seem as though the enemy was being taken behind the woodshed and beaten terribly. But the problem was that the enemy was far, far more numerous than the defenders. The defenders could ill-afford to lose people, but they were. Too many. Miyuki took another small sip from Ida's canteen and thought back. She had been awoken by Ken not even an hour before. The LPs had blown their ambushes and it was time for the enemy to hit Bokuto itself. After that, she had lost Ken, Aoi, Yoriko, and Natsumi in the confusion following that. She made her way to the TOC, but Surai told her she was needed more out on the perimeter than inside the TOC. Kinoshita could handle everything that needed to be done in there. Now here she was, fighting for her life.
'Oh, well. Time to go back to work.'
She ducked out the door and was just about to make it to the main hallway around the building when a powerful explosion happened almost directly above her. Ceiling came crashing down. She was knocked to the ground by a section of two-by-four framing. The pain was not sharp, but quite dull, actually. Miyuki got up under her own power as the Marine grenadier from before moved over to help her. She waved him off and told him to help another Marine clutching his leg from where another two-by-four had smacked his leg, probably fracturing it. As she began to return to her position, it dawned on her that if the ceiling had fallen, that meant the floor above was dangerously weak and anyone who stepped on it would fall through. Miyuki spun on her heels and ran towards the stairs back down the hallway. Army grunts, Marines, and other police yelled at her to get down as enemy bullets followed closely behind her. But she made it to the stairs without sustaining injury.
Upstairs, she found the devastation. An RPG round had detonated inside the hallway. All the previous shots from the grossly inaccurate anti-tank rocket system had impacted on the thick face of the station, but this one had found its way inside. She crawled down the hall to find some Army personnel dragging a wounded comrade away towards an aid station. Miyuki yelled for people to get away from the area where the rounded detonated because the floor had not support. A Marine Lieutenant, Alpha One-Six, quickly vacated his spot with his radio operator, close to the spot. Then Miyuki realized that the round had detonated on the TOC wall.
"Son of a bitch!" She quickly rushed in the open door. Smoke filled the room and she could hardly see anything in the darkness. Either the explosion had cut the power or someone had turned them off to reduce the temptation for the enemy to shoot there.
She found Assistant Inspector Kinoshita huddled against the far wall, blood streaming down her neck and back. Helping Kinoshita up, Miyuki looked around and couldn't see Captain Surai or his Marines anywhere, not that that was saying much since the smoke was so thick.
"No! I'm not going! I'm staying right here." Kinoshita was adamant. "No way." She forced herself out of Miyuki's grip and set-up the laptop and radio which had fallen over in the explosion. Both were working fine. As the smoke began to clear, she noticed Surai and two of his Marines on the floor. At first she feared they were dead, but once she got to them she found they were just dazed.
Surai sat up and fumbled around for the radio handset. "Thanks, Kobyakowa." The Marine Company Commander flicked the talk-button, grunting and rubbing the bruise on his head. "That sucked."
Miyuki helped one of the Marines with a stomach wound up and out the door. As she was leaving, she heard Surai yell over the din into the handset, "The weather couldn't be better! Damn, I wish I could be in this place everyday! It's great!" She thought the American had lost his mind.
After helping the Marine into the aid station, Miyuki headed back downstairs to her spot. When she got to the landing, she noticed that if she got on her stomach, there was an unobstructed view of the building across the street. So she got down and took the M24 off of her back. Bullets zipped in through the window, but landed harmlessly on the stairs in front of her. She set the bipod and sighted a man with an RPK reloading his light machine gun while crouching.
Viewing from the third floor, the RPK gunner wouldn't have been seen. But the height advantage Miyuki held by being on the stairs landing was all she needed to see the terrorist. She squeezed back on the trigger, sending the round screaming across the street. It literally took the man's head off, dropping him in a pool of blood before he even hit the ground. Miyuki cycled the bolt and took aim at another man, this time a JSDF soldier with a Type-89. She stopped before pulling the trigger.
'This guy wears a uniform just like I do. Why is he doing this? Why would he want to kill his fellow countrymen?' She sat there for a moment, trying to decide whether or not to let him go or not. 'No, I can't. The fact remains is that he is trying to kill my friends and me, plain and simple.' Without further ado, she fired off another 7.62mm round, which impacted in the soldiers' chest, exploding his heart and lungs.
Another soldier fell to her accurate fire before she decided to test out her new found trick elsewhere. She crawled down the rest of the flight of stairs and began working her way across to the other side of the building and another stairway. Soon she was set up again, scanning buildings across the street. She was just about to fire when Ken happened by, carrying a box of ammo for M240 machine guns on his back. He was crawling across the third floor corridor, directly below Miyuki.
"Miyuki, what are you doing!"
"What does it look like, Ken?" She squeezed the trigger, dropping another JSDF soldier, this one with an FN Minimi light machine gun.
"Be careful! You're shooting down a stairwell and across a hallway where friendlies are!"
"Everyone is keeping down. I'm shooting way to high to hit anyone here on the stairs." Miyuki reloaded the 5-round magazine, one round at a time, and closed the bolt.
"Still, people could be going up and down the stairs and you wouldn't notice if you have your eye in the scope!" His sentence was punctuated with another shot from Miyuki's rifle, this one dropping a terrorist with an RPG. The windows were not safe for terrorists and JSDF troops with Miyuki Kobyakowa sniping.
"I know what I'm doing, Ken. Now American troops need that machine gun ammo. Get it to them." She decided that she couldn't hit any more targets here and scuttled off to another landing, hoping to get more shots in.
Ken shook his head and slid himself down the hallway with the ammo box in tow.
Miyuki continued her process for a while longer. Eventually, the Marines and Army personnel picked up on what she was doing without asking. One of the Delta Force operators, Sergeant, First Class Smith, who had been forced off the roof by the constant fire from Japanese APCs joined Miyuki. Together they scouted out targets around the buildings and attempted to eliminate them from the stairwells. The darkened stairwells provided excellent cover, and unless someone was looking right at it, they couldn't tell where the rifle shots had come from.
Eventually, Miyuki had to go for more ammunition. She calculated that she had probably killed or severely wounded about twenty enemies by sniping from the stairwells. Around one in the morning, she arrived at Delta's ammunition trailer. Smith grabbed a box of loose rounds and handed it to her so she could replenish her stock. On her way back, she decided to go downstairs and refill the canteen Ida had given her. She found Aoi and Yoriko tending to wounded who had been removed from the aid stations and brought downstairs to free up room.
"How bad is it up there, Miyuki?" asked Yoriko.
The black-haired officer wiped her forehead and responded, "It's died down a bit. It was pretty bad right after we woke up until about twenty minutes ago." She stretched her arms, which were getting a bit stiff from crawling around to stay in cover. "The enemy is probably holding and regrouping right now. We didn't face nearly as many troops as the satellite photos showed. I caught a glimpse of them after the operations room got hit by a rocket. There's supposed to be a lot more guys coming."
"How's Arleigh?"
Miyuki stopped. "Actually, I don't know. I haven't seen him around. I don't think he made it back." She thought for a moment. "You know, I think he's held up somewhere around where he went out. When the operations room got hit, I rushed up to help and as I was leaving, Captain Surai was talking with Arleigh over the radio. So, he's still out there. If he were dead, everyone would know by now. I'm going to go up there and ask Surai where he is."
And so Miyuki did exactly that. She went up to the TOC and found Surai talking with Arleigh over the radio.
"Five-One, Alpha Six. Things quieted down here a bit. We're receiving sporadic attacks, but for the most part its quiet. A U.S. Navy F-14 Tomcat running reconnaissance flights over the Ward with a LATIRN pod reports that it has enemy units stalled around our position, probably regrouping. How is it over your way? Over."
"Six, Five-One. We're doing okay. They're taking up position in buildings to our front and left flanks. They're intent mostly with taking pot shots at the choppers, but as soon as the choppers are out of sight, they begin shooting at us. I think they're waiting for the road to be cleared of wreckage so they can move up more armor. But for the time being, we're good. Over."
"Okay, Five-One. Be careful, though. They could strike at any time, and strike hard. Is there any way that you can E&E back here now? Over."
"Negative, Six. With them up in the buildings we're pressed into our position pretty tight. It'd be suicide to leave. Over."
"Ah, damn. Okay, Six out." Surai set down the handset and turned to see Miyuki. "Ah, Kobyakowa. Need something?"
"Yeah, you were just talking to Arleigh, right?"
"Uh huh."
"Is he okay? What's going on?"
Surai beckoned her over to the map. "Arleigh and six other soldiers are held up here in a tight perimeter across from where they set up their listening post. Now, for the time being, they're okay. They have air and artillery keeping them safe. Someone is going to have to fly out there and get them ammo, though. They're running pretty low. But the problem is that enemies occupy all the surrounding buildings. Also, they still have technicals in the area. So if a chopper gets caught hovering over their perimeter to drop ammo will most likely get shot out of the sky. That's also why they can't attempt an extraction by chopper. They'll have to slug it out for now, but if too many troops attack at the same time, they'll be mincemeat." He sighed. "Unfortunately, there's nothing we can do about it, either. Our mortars are working overtime to cover us, and any ground unit I send out will be annihilated."
Miyuki stared intently at the map. There were two blue circles on the map. One was very small. That was Arleigh's position, two kilometers away. The other was much larger, and Miyuki figured it was the station. Tons of red dots surrounded the two blue dots. These indicated enemy positions. With a grease pencil, Surai had marked the acetate-covered map with several artillery plots for the naval ships to fire on. The other plots showed where the choppers were making their runs during attacks. "What are these blue dots across the Sumida?"
"Those are the lead elements of the 25th Infantry Division's cavalry unit and the 3rd Marine Expeditionary's armored battalion. They're getting ready to move out at dawn with tanks, APCs, trucks, everything. They're supposed to fight their way to our position and then we'll all clear out the rest of the Ward. I hope I live to see that. The enemy is massing for another assault very shortly." The Captain drank some water from his canteen.
Miyuki gulped at Surai's last sentence. "Well, I think we can hold them back. We did pretty well with the first attacks."
"Yes, we did. But we lost people, Kobyakowa. Too many. I hope air and artillery comes through for us again and keeps them back. This next attack is going to be huge. They're going to throw everything at us."
Miyuki looked down at her feet and then back up at Surai. "We'll make it."
"For your sake, I hope you're right."
With that, Miyuki left and made her way back to her position. She un- shouldered her MP5 and got it ready for the coming fight.
"Incoming! Move it! Move it!"
Natsumi Tsujimoto literally fell out of bed.
The Chief had barreled into the sleeping quarters rousing everyone. An RPG detonated on the outside wall of the station, shaking the room. As the Chief passed Natsumi and Miyuki's bunk, Natsumi rolled over, at first disoriented, and promptly tumbled several feet to the ground, landing with a distinctive thud.
"Ah, shit..." she moaned as she massaged her right arm. Miyuki was already out the door, followed by Ken and several other officers. Several more officers bounded over her as she lay in the aisle between the rows of bunks. A few seconds later she recovered from the fall and stood, grabbing her Type-89 rifle and SWAT webbing containing extra magazines and her Beretta 92 pistol. After exiting the quarters, the Chief met up with her and the two began working their way to their positions in the back of the station.
Along the way they met up with two other officers, one who had been assisting an American officer when the reports from the LPs came in that the ambushes had been sprung. The four ran upstairs and to the back of the building. One of the officers mentioned that, "LP Two got hit hard. They think everyone there is dead. LP One is on the way back from their ambush. They stopped the tanks dead, but the infantry are still pouring in towards the station."
"What about the third post?" questioned Natsumi.
All the officer should do was shrug.
The four got to the rear just in time for two RPK machine guns to begin pounding the third floor windows. Natsumi flicked the selector switch over to full automatic and let two 4-round bursts go at group of soldiers reloading an RPG. The gunner went down, and in a dying spasm, pulled the trigger on the rocket launcher. The RPG went straight into the ground, detonated, and killed everyone within 10 meters.
Farther down the hall, an Army machine gunner opened up with an M249 S.A.W. He tore into the trees behind the station. Round after round plunged through the canopy at unseen enemies. Other soldiers saturated the trees with launched grenades.
Natsumi noticed more soldiers moving down the road and ducking into buildings. She thought they had just been taking cover until they opened up from the windows of buildings. Unlike where Miyuki was, these buildings were much farther away, since a forest separated the station and the buildings, as opposed to a small road. Flipping back to single-shot, Natsumi expertly placed several rounds into the windows across the way. She couldn't exactly see the enemies, but they were getting silhouetted each time they fired because of the muzzle flash. Fire from two windows ceased after Natsumi fired another eight rounds. The she shifted back to full auto and sprayed the remaining rounds at what she thought was another terrorist moving through the trees directly below.
She dropped to a knee and began to reload her rifle when she heard the clink of metal against the floor to her left. Everything began happening in slow motion. Her head seemed to take an hour to shift, and when it finally did, she saw the source of the noise. A single fragmentation grenade lay in-between her and the Chief. At that moment she saw her life end. But it didn't.
The Chief dove for the grenade, and in one smooth motion, flicked his wrist and sent the explosive device floating out the window, where it exploded harmlessly behind the perimeter wall, wounding the terrorist who had thrown it. The Chief scrambled back to his feet and continued firing an AK-74 out the window on full auto.
Every time Natsumi pulled the trigger, she remembered what Arleigh had told her earlier in the day. 'If I don't kill them, they'll kill me and my friends.' She found it disturbing that someone as herself, who was usually so strong mentally and physically, needed to tell herself each time that what she was doing was right, despite how she might be feeling.
The bullets kept flying. American and Japanese machine gunners did their dances of death with their weapons, each pouring out hundreds of rounds. RPGs sailed in at the station while 40mm grenades arced back out the windows. The difference was amazing. The Americans and police were effectively holding back a much larger force. Simply, between the terrorists and the Americans, it was bad quality versus good quality, while between the JSDF and the Americans, it was one training versus another.
The terrorists were amateurs. They're style of fighting was crude and a good way to get themselves killed. On the other hand, the Americans were some of the best fighters in the world. As with times before the siege of Bokuto, the Americans had dealt with terrorist and militia forces who did not have the resources of a well-trained military. Then there were the JSDF troops. After World War II, the Americans disbanded the Japanese military. What rose from the ashes was the Japanese-Self-Defense-Force, and that's exactly what it was. The Japanese troops were far inferior to the Americans in terms of training. Virtually all their training was in defensive tactics and peacekeeping. The Americans were trained to do that and a whole lot more. Unaccustomed to assaulting anything, the Japanese troops employed tactics that no American would ever think of doing, such as exposing troops in line formations, something that defenders do to maximize firepower. But the terrorists and the Japanese troops still had one ace. They were far superior numerically to the besieged defenders. Plus, they had on-site armored units.
At this point, the APCs and tanks had moved up in the rear. They were still stuck along the route LP One had held earlier. The armored units still did not attempt to blow the building up, which they could easily have done. This contributed more to Natsumi's feeling that there was something very important to them inside the station. However, the APCs did use their 35mm cannons to suppress sniper fire from the roof. That took away a distinct advantage that the Americans had, which was the high ground. 'He who holds the high ground usually wins,' as the saying went. The tanks primarily sat back and fired their machine guns, uninterrupted, at the station. Soon, however, they realized their mistake in pulling up to the station. By showing themselves, the tanks opened themselves to American officers calling in artillery strikes from the U.S. Navy cruisers and destroyers out in Tokyo Bay firing in support of the defenders. Japanese trucks and technicals hung back, too, pounding away with their heavy machine guns. Every now and then an American would attempt to take one out with an AT4 rocket launcher.
Natsumi reloaded yet another magazine and noticed that she was down to three. She glanced around and noticed that everyone was running pretty low. The attack had been relentless, and everyone was firing as fast as they could. "Hey, Chief! We need to go get more ammo." An AH-6 Little Bird buzzed by, spraying minigun rounds and rockets into the fray of enemy soldiers behind the station.
"I know, Tsujimoto. I'm way ahead of you." The Chief got up and sprinted towards the stairway.
Swearing, Natsumi stood, fired a burst in hopes of hitting something and took off down the hallway. She caught up with the Chief on the stairs and the two ran out a back door that led to road inside the station's perimeter wall. The roar was deafening, but they pressed on, hoping not to pop an eardrum or two.
"Over here!" Natsumi shouted above the din. The two officers ran up to one of the trucks the Marines had ridden in on. Inside were boxes of ammunition. "Okay, let's take these." She slid several boxes of ammunition for the M-16A2 and M4A1 rifles, which most of the Americans were using. She grabbed a box of loose rounds, too. The same 5.56mm bullets the American weapons fired was what her Type-89 fired. She could reload her empty magazines with the loose rounds. The Chief grabbed two 1,000- round boxes of ammo for the M249 machine gun. He also took hefted two boxes of 40mm grenades.
With their extremely heavy cargo, the two made their way back inside the building, which took them past the Marine mortar team, which was frantically firing 81mm mortars as Marine officers and radio operators up above called in enemy positions. Making their way up the stairs, the two spaced out the boxes evenly along the length of the hall. Almost immediately, soldiers dived for the boxes to grab more magazines. With only 40 per box, they went pretty fast. More boxes would have to be brought up. One Marine turned around and calmly said to the Chief, who he remembered from earlier in the day spoke English, "You know, there's a bunch of ammo boxes two rooms down from the aid station on the other side of the building on this floor. We brought a bunch up earlier." The Marine, completely oblivious to the battle raging, explained exactly where the crates were. He also said he thought he saw some boxes of AK and Type- 89 magazines in the same room.
"I'll go get them," said Natsumi after the Chief translated for her. She got up and scampered down the hallway, crouching as she went to avoid the bullets flying through the window. Diving into the room, she quickly located the box of Type-89 magazines and grabbed enough to hold her for a while. She also grabbed as many AK magazines as she could carry. Apparently, the Chief wasn't the only one using an AK up here, since there were already several missing from the box. She hurried back to the rear of the building and forked over the ammo.
Once again, Natsumi selected single-fire and began trying to take shots at the buildings across the forest. The same effects were reached, as she dropped two more terrorists.
Suddenly, a technical burst out from one of the side streets behind the station. It turned directly towards the station and began accelerating. But this technical lacked a .51 calibre machine gun. The post stand was still there, but the gun was gone. Also, the truck was flaming. Natsumi flicked over to full automatic and laid waste to the driver, firing in concert with several Army and Marine gunners. To her surprise, the truck swerved as the dead driver slumped over, hit a tree, and exploded in a huge blossom of flames. The reason it surprised her was because the explosion was almost like a tank or an APC exploding. She quickly deduced that there must have been explosives aboard and the truck was going to ram the back wall and detonate its cargo. She would later discover that she was right.
The Chief shuffled over to her, keeping his head down as another RPK machine gun began shredding the wall behind. He leaned over and dragged Natsumi down as the enemy gun began targeting her general area. Pulling her close he yelled over the noise, "Here! You have to take this up to the operations room! Go!" He handed her a copy of a map, to which she thought, 'Evidently, someone has found time to use a Xerox machine during this battle.' Also, she received a casualty list. 'I guess the American commander requested this.'
Natsumi crawled down the hallway, past where an RPG had blown a sizeable chuck out of the outer wall, eliminating the three-foot cover the window frame offered. Next, she bounded up the stairs and onto the fourth-floor hallway. More Army grunts, Marines, and police were here firing away at the enemy below. She slid to the side of the hallway as two Army grunts dragged a wounded Marine to the nearest aid station. Making her way down a side hall and back out onto the main hall on the other side of the building, she found a police officer, dead, position against the wall. She didn't recognize who the man was. That's when she saw the destruction that the RPG had done to the TOC wall, which was crumbling as she crawled down the hall. Also, she noticed that several tables had their legs broken off and were laid across the floor right in front of the main impact crater. Natsumi wondered if it was still the TOC, given the damage, but made her way inside nonetheless. As she entered, an AH-64-D Longbow Apache gunship came to a slight hover over the parking lot out in front of the station and began pounding away with its 30mm chain gun. Enemies dove for cover as the rounds impacted all around them.
Across the room, Kinoshita sat, bandaged, at a table running the communications with city government, continuously giving updates on the situation. Surai, his radio operator, and an Army officer were against another wall, marking positions on a map and coordinating and plotting air and artillery strikes around the building.
"Captain! An officer sent these up." Natsumi handed the map and casualty list over.
Surai accepted the two items. "Thank you, Tsujimoto." He patted her on the shoulder, turned back around, and continued marking enemy positions with a grease pencil on the map.
"Um, sir? Have you heard anything about Arleigh, er, I mean, Lieutenant Rivera?" Natsumi tugged at the shoulder strap of her rifle while asking.
The Marine Captain slowly swiveled to face her. He took a deep breath before answering. "He and his guys are all still alive. They're pinned down near where they sprang their ambush. We can't get to them by ground and helicopter extraction is too dangerous. All we can do is bring down air and artillery all around them." He nodded and returned this his task.
Not wanting to bother him anymore, Natsumi left the TOC. Just as she got back to the stairway, a Marine to her right went down. She rushed over and quickly applied pressure to his wound. He received a single rifle shot to the chest. There was no exit wound. In military terms, it was what is called a 'sucking chest wound,' which is almost always fatal unless treated properly.
"Come on, let's get you the hell out of here."
In passable Japanese, he responded, "No, I'm fine. Leave me here. I can fight." The Marine pulled back away from Natsumi, leaving a bloody stain on webbing and rifle's shoulder strap. His movement faltered a bit and he fell in a heap to the ground. The Private, First Class attempted to get back to his knees and fire his M-16A2, but that too failed.
Natsumi looked at the man's nametag. "No, damnit. Lance Corporal Carter, get up! You're going to the aide station." Passing her arm underneath the man's arms, Natsumi got the man up and headed towards the aid station. Amazingly, the Marine still had enough energy to provide a good portion of the lift on his own. Just as the two were about to get to the side hall leading to the aid station, someone yelled, "RPG!"
Seeing the light of the rocket's tail out of the corner of his eye, the Marine used to last of his energy to push Natsumi down onto the ground and cover her body with his. The Rocket-Propelled-Grenade detonated on the inside wall of the fourth floor. The Marine absorbed almost all of the force of the explosion and the fragments. He died instantly. As the wall behind her began to fall, Natsumi quickly pushed the dead officer off of her and scuttled away as plywood, drywall, and two-by-fours collapsed where she had been lying. Natsumi sat there on the ground, stunned. "He just sacrificed himself to save me..." Dazed and confused, a couple of Marines charged past her and jumped up on the rubble. She couldn't understand why they were jumping all over their comrade's dead body until she looked at what they held.
The room, which had taken the blast, was now ablaze, but the two Marines were quick to respond with fire extinguishers that they had commandeered earlier for this exact purpose. Natsumi looked across the rubble, past the two Marines, to an Army rifleman tending to a police officer grievously wounded by the RPG. He motioned for Natsumi to help him. She commanded her legs to move and soon she scurried past the rubble and was helping the second victim in as many minutes get to an aid station. 'Maybe this one will survive.'
With Natsumi's help, the Army grunt hefted the police officer up onto his shoulder and made his way into the aid station. Natsumi followed, keeping the officer steady as they shuffled into the room with all the medics for that floor. Immediately, she realized that this police officer wasn't the only one wounded. Right behind her, a Marine was dragged in, also a victim of the RPG, which would've surely killed Natsumi if not for the selflessness of the Marine she had been trying to help. Inside the room there were already several wounded Americans and police officers. Two Army medics and a Navy Corpsman worked at lightspeed to get people treated and move on to the next person. At this point, the medical personnel were tearing up t-shirts from their rucksacks to seal off wounds, as they were running out of bandages. Fortunately, almost every soldier kept at least one or two field bandages in his butt-pack along with other items.
The two set down the wounded riot-control officer down on a couch. Navy Corpsman Petty Officer, Second Class Steven Williams jogged over and did a quick examination of the wounded man. The Army rifleman left to return to the defensive line, but Natsumi wanted to stay and make sure the officer was okay. She aided Williams in securing a few field dressings to the officer. Williams spoke good Japanese and comforted the man, saying that he would be all right. The fragments had passed through him in his left shoulder and arm been stopped over his gut by the bullet-proof vest he had worn. Williams began a Serum-Albinum drip, which was an IV-introduced blood-expander to keep patients who have lost a lot of blood from going into shock.
Natsumi turned to go, but Williams caught her.
"You're next."
"But I'm not wounded."
Williams knew it was not a rare occurrence for people in battle to not notice that they had been wounded. "Yes, you are." He motioned to her clothes. "You're covered in blood. All right, off with the webbing and the shirt. Come on."
"Oh, no, no, that's not my blood." She shook her head from side to side. "That's a... That's the... Well, there's no easy way to say this. A Marine covered me up when that RPG just hit. It killed him. This is his blood."
Williams looked down. "That was very brave of him. Sorry." The Corpsman began to turn away to deal with another patient, but noticed a trickle of blood going down Natsumi's arm. "Wait, there's no way that's the Marine's blood." He grabbed her arm and lifted the shirt above the shoulder-socket. "You're wounded, all right. Sit down."
Natsumi was confused. "I'm wounded? How did that happen?"
Williams returned with a field dressing. "The fragment must have just grazed you, but it's still a bleeder. Here." The Petty Officer, Second Class secured the dressing around her arm and tied it tight after he cleaned the wound as best he could, Natsumi wincing all the way from the sting of alcohol on an open wound. "There you go. How does it feel?"
"Besides the antiseptic stuff, can't feel it at all."
"That's the adrenaline talking. You will feel it later." Williams got back up and moved to deal with another wounded person.
Natsumi collected her rifle and returned to the rear of the building where the Chief was reloading his AK. The fighting had died down a bit. By that, it wasn't intense, constant firing, but rather sporadic shots from all over. It was still quite dangerous. The enemy was holding and regrouping for the moment. Over the relative silence, Natsumi was able to make out gunfire much farther away. 'That has to be Arleigh.'
Helicopters zoomed over head and artillery shells fell outside the station at random intervals. The mortar tubes outside were silent, except for the sounds of them cooling down from their constant use.
It was 0110 Hours. One-ten in the morning.
QUESTIONS & COMMENTS: Bravo26Flashpointyahoo.com
Chapter 11: Rocket Fire
By JagdPanther
Sergeant, First Class Earl Morris tripped over an object he couldn't see and fell flat on his face. His left eye opened, but his right eye remained swollen shut behind a large bandage. Morris turned his head to look at the black boots s few inches from his face.
Colonel Nakatani looked down at the American at his feet. He put one boot under the man's tied-up arms and flipped him over with a good kick, and then motioned for his aide to bring the man to his knees.
"You're American Delta Force, are you not?"
"Sergeant, First Class Earl Morris, 5-4-4-9-0."
Nakatani frowned. "I asked you, are you American Delta Force?"
"Sergeant, First Class Earl Morris, 5-4-4-9-0."
The Japanese 2nd Brigade, 1st Division commanding officer slapped Morris, and asked him, "I am not a patient man when it comes to questions, Sergeant. Are you American Delta Force?"
Again, the response was the same. "Sergeant, First Class Earl Morris, 5-4- 4-9-0." According to the Geneva Convention, soldiers captured during conflict are required to give only their name, rank, and military identification serial number. For American personnel, the response to virtually every question a captor asks is that response.
Nakatani sighed. "You will talk. You will tell me how many of there you are, what your supply situation is, what your radio codes are, and whatever else you know. After all this, you will perform a most important task. You will be my bargaining chip to get what I want. I hope you understand that, Sergeant."
Morris lifted his head and started defiantly into the Colonel's eyes. "Sir, with all due respect, fuck you." Then he spit in on Nakatani's shoes and smiled.
Nakatani's eyes flared and immediately kicked Morris head. He then grabbed the American by the shoulders and forced Morris into his quickly moving knee. Grabbing the back of Morris' head, Nakatani slammed Morris' face into a nearby table. He left the Delta Force Sergeant bleeding and whimpering on the floor. "Are the others talking?" the colonel asked Tanaka.
"No, Colonel. There is another high-ranking sergeant that is also probably Delta Force. The other two appear to be low ranking soldiers, one from the Marines and another from the Army. They are only giving their name, rank, and serial numbers, also. The two others that were killed also appear to have been low Army personnel." Tanaka glared down at the whimpering American, and gave him a swift kick to his exposed stomach. Morris vomited on the floor, and Tanaka reached down, rubbing Morris' face in the debris.
"That's enough for now, Lieutenant." Nakatani led his aide into the operations room. "How is my battle progressing, Captain?"
The Brigade operations officer, or S-3, turned to face his commander. "Sir, there are some problems."
Nakatani grunted. "Such as?"
"Well, sir, the defenders are putting up a much stronger fight than we anticipated. Their air and artillery support was resumed almost immediately after the lead elements of 3rd Battalion's assault force was ambushed by a small American force, the one that we captured, I believe. Shortly thereafter, another ambush was thrown along the northern route to the station. They destroyed several vehicles, including a tank with a homemade booby-trap. The assault was forced to proceed with only foot soldiers while the armored units found a way to clear the road of the destroyed units. The groups are constantly under air and artillery attack, but they still have managed to push their way to the outskirts of the station. They are under intense small arms fire. Some units have taken up position in buildings opposite Bokuto station to even the playing field, so to speak."
"What about casualties?" Nakatani's mood was not improving.
"Initial reports indicate that the 3rd Battalion has lost roughly 75 killed and 150 wounded. The report is a half-hour old, though. And that is just our forces. There is no way of telling how many the insurgents have lost."
Nakatani clenched his teeth and forced out. "Very well. How is 1st Battalion faring?"
The S-3 gulped. "They haven't even come within two kilometers of the station."
"Why not!" boomed Nakatani.
"A third ambush was thrown on their lead element. They managed to surround the ambush force, but they cannot dislodge it. Constant air and artillery attacks have removed the armor units from the equation for the time being until they can clear the road. The insurgents are mounting frontal assaults on the position while our forces attempt to flank. Both are meeting with failure. As near as we can assess, the 1st Battalion's combined group with the insurgents started with 1,400 men and has lost 250 killed and 150 wounded."
Fuming, Nakatani punched the map table, spilling several cups of coffee that were sitting on it. "And just how many soldiers are inflicting those casualties?"
"A company commander in 1st Battalion reports that he can only see at most seven distinctive muzzle flashes from the tiny perimeter being assaulted by our combined forces."
"Seven damn soldiers are holding up over a thousand men! How is that possible!?" Blood vessels were popping out of Nakatani's neck. This was going terribly wrong. He should've taken the station by now. "What is the problem here? Can my men not fight!"
"Sir, their air and artillery is accurate and relentless. They are desperately trying to defend their soldiers on the ground."
Tanaka spoke up. "Sir, if I may suggest, we could use Commander Tonishi to eliminate the American naval artillery. At least we wouldn't have to deal with that, then."
Nakatani looked up, eyes blazing, at his aide. "No. Tonishi cannot be wasted like that, not now. We need him later. If he takes out the artillery, then he is compromised and this whole mission will be a failure."
"I'm sorry, Colonel." Tanaka lowered his head.
"Don't be, Lieutenant." Nakatani pondered for a moment. "We absolutely must take the station. I want two companies of the 1st Battalion to bypass the ambush and head directly for the station. Seven Americans are not as important as what is inside that police station. Leave the insurgents and the other companies to deal with the ambush." He looked at the map in front of him. "Lieutenant, I want you to contact the insurgent commander and request that he provide the machine guns off of the backs of his trucks. I want them. We're going to shoot down some of those American helicopters. If he doesn't comply, take some machine guns off of our trucks and tanks. Then get them to the tops of buildings around the station and the 1st Battalion ambush site. When American helicopters come in, rip them from the sky."
"Yes, sir." Tanaka saluted and left to confer with the insurgent leader.
"Captain, tell the unit commanders to throw everything they have at the station once the reinforcements arrive and the anti-aircraft machine guns are in place."
"Yes, Colonel." The operations officer saluted and began issuing orders to his radio operators.
Nakatani looked at the map, with red marks surrounding a station and a field in the middle of the Sumida Ward. "We cannot lose."
Miyuki Kobyakowa shot a shadow. "Damnit! A wasted magazine!" she cursed as she reloaded the 30-round magazine of 9mm rounds into her German-made MP5 submachine gun. Now over her clothes that she had acquired the previous day (it was past midnight) she had a SWAT-team issue web-gear set. The webbing was festooned with fifteen magazines for her MP5, two pouches of loose rounds for the American M24 sniper rifle she still had with her, seven magazines for her Italian Beretta 92 pistol. She pulled back on the charging handle to chamber a round from the new magazine into her MP5 when bullets stippled across the wall behind her, sending her to the floor. The bullets grouped around where she had been standing and then ceased.
A short way down the hall, a Marine yelled, "Third floor, fifth window from the right!" He jumped up and fired a 40mm grenade into that particular window. The fire coming from the building across the road from the station now fixated on where the Marine had been standing to fire the grenade.
Miyuki rose to her knee and peered over the edge of window frame. The building seemed almost ablaze with all the muzzle flashes from weapons being fired from it. More bullets found their way to where Miyuki knelt and she dropped down again, cursing.
An Army Lieutenant and his radio operator low-crawled down the hall past Miyuki. She noticed that the Lieutenant was trailing a bloodstain from his pant leg, but it was bandaged. 'How the hell do you get a lower leg wound with a three-foot wall from the floor up? Ah, hell, nothing's impossible now.' She scuttled down the hallway to side hall where she entered an administrative lounge where Navy Corpsmen and Army medics were furiously working on wounded personnel, Army, Marines, and police alike. Miyuki crouched beside a table and retrieved a roll of ACE bandages on top of it. The medical personnel continued to work, despite the enemy rounds sailing through down the side hall, snapping and striking the floor near the door. Miyuki taped up a small laceration on her right forearm. An enemy rifle round had grazed her. It wasn't a debilitating wound, but it hurt like hell when it pressed up the stock of the MP5 or the M24.
Specialist, Fourth Class Ryan Ida came over and handed the female police officer a canteen. "Here, drink of this and let me look at that wound," he said in Japanese.
Miyuki waved him away and responded in English. "I'm fine. I have to get back out there."
Ida stopped her. "Let me look at the wound. Yeah, sure, you bandaged it, but it can still get infected."
Reluctantly, Kobyakowa sat back down as Ida undid the ACE bandage wrap. She took a gulp of the water. Miyuki cringed a bit as Ida applied antiseptic rinse to the wound. After getting the wound re-wrapped, she handed back Ida's canteen.
"Nah, keep it. You don't have one. I've got a couple extra ones."
"Uh, thanks." She picked up her MP5, and made her way back to the door. Before leaving, she took a moment to look at all the wounded in the room. A Marine to her left was in shock from two bullet wounds to the abdomen. An Army machine gunner past him was being held down as a Navy Corpsman attempted to remove a bullet from the gunner's shoulder. There were even a few of her fellow police officers wounded. And then there were the dead. This was just one medical station out of several across the station. If one looked at the exact casualty reports for the enemy troops and the defenders right now, it would seem as though the enemy was being taken behind the woodshed and beaten terribly. But the problem was that the enemy was far, far more numerous than the defenders. The defenders could ill-afford to lose people, but they were. Too many. Miyuki took another small sip from Ida's canteen and thought back. She had been awoken by Ken not even an hour before. The LPs had blown their ambushes and it was time for the enemy to hit Bokuto itself. After that, she had lost Ken, Aoi, Yoriko, and Natsumi in the confusion following that. She made her way to the TOC, but Surai told her she was needed more out on the perimeter than inside the TOC. Kinoshita could handle everything that needed to be done in there. Now here she was, fighting for her life.
'Oh, well. Time to go back to work.'
She ducked out the door and was just about to make it to the main hallway around the building when a powerful explosion happened almost directly above her. Ceiling came crashing down. She was knocked to the ground by a section of two-by-four framing. The pain was not sharp, but quite dull, actually. Miyuki got up under her own power as the Marine grenadier from before moved over to help her. She waved him off and told him to help another Marine clutching his leg from where another two-by-four had smacked his leg, probably fracturing it. As she began to return to her position, it dawned on her that if the ceiling had fallen, that meant the floor above was dangerously weak and anyone who stepped on it would fall through. Miyuki spun on her heels and ran towards the stairs back down the hallway. Army grunts, Marines, and other police yelled at her to get down as enemy bullets followed closely behind her. But she made it to the stairs without sustaining injury.
Upstairs, she found the devastation. An RPG round had detonated inside the hallway. All the previous shots from the grossly inaccurate anti-tank rocket system had impacted on the thick face of the station, but this one had found its way inside. She crawled down the hall to find some Army personnel dragging a wounded comrade away towards an aid station. Miyuki yelled for people to get away from the area where the rounded detonated because the floor had not support. A Marine Lieutenant, Alpha One-Six, quickly vacated his spot with his radio operator, close to the spot. Then Miyuki realized that the round had detonated on the TOC wall.
"Son of a bitch!" She quickly rushed in the open door. Smoke filled the room and she could hardly see anything in the darkness. Either the explosion had cut the power or someone had turned them off to reduce the temptation for the enemy to shoot there.
She found Assistant Inspector Kinoshita huddled against the far wall, blood streaming down her neck and back. Helping Kinoshita up, Miyuki looked around and couldn't see Captain Surai or his Marines anywhere, not that that was saying much since the smoke was so thick.
"No! I'm not going! I'm staying right here." Kinoshita was adamant. "No way." She forced herself out of Miyuki's grip and set-up the laptop and radio which had fallen over in the explosion. Both were working fine. As the smoke began to clear, she noticed Surai and two of his Marines on the floor. At first she feared they were dead, but once she got to them she found they were just dazed.
Surai sat up and fumbled around for the radio handset. "Thanks, Kobyakowa." The Marine Company Commander flicked the talk-button, grunting and rubbing the bruise on his head. "That sucked."
Miyuki helped one of the Marines with a stomach wound up and out the door. As she was leaving, she heard Surai yell over the din into the handset, "The weather couldn't be better! Damn, I wish I could be in this place everyday! It's great!" She thought the American had lost his mind.
After helping the Marine into the aid station, Miyuki headed back downstairs to her spot. When she got to the landing, she noticed that if she got on her stomach, there was an unobstructed view of the building across the street. So she got down and took the M24 off of her back. Bullets zipped in through the window, but landed harmlessly on the stairs in front of her. She set the bipod and sighted a man with an RPK reloading his light machine gun while crouching.
Viewing from the third floor, the RPK gunner wouldn't have been seen. But the height advantage Miyuki held by being on the stairs landing was all she needed to see the terrorist. She squeezed back on the trigger, sending the round screaming across the street. It literally took the man's head off, dropping him in a pool of blood before he even hit the ground. Miyuki cycled the bolt and took aim at another man, this time a JSDF soldier with a Type-89. She stopped before pulling the trigger.
'This guy wears a uniform just like I do. Why is he doing this? Why would he want to kill his fellow countrymen?' She sat there for a moment, trying to decide whether or not to let him go or not. 'No, I can't. The fact remains is that he is trying to kill my friends and me, plain and simple.' Without further ado, she fired off another 7.62mm round, which impacted in the soldiers' chest, exploding his heart and lungs.
Another soldier fell to her accurate fire before she decided to test out her new found trick elsewhere. She crawled down the rest of the flight of stairs and began working her way across to the other side of the building and another stairway. Soon she was set up again, scanning buildings across the street. She was just about to fire when Ken happened by, carrying a box of ammo for M240 machine guns on his back. He was crawling across the third floor corridor, directly below Miyuki.
"Miyuki, what are you doing!"
"What does it look like, Ken?" She squeezed the trigger, dropping another JSDF soldier, this one with an FN Minimi light machine gun.
"Be careful! You're shooting down a stairwell and across a hallway where friendlies are!"
"Everyone is keeping down. I'm shooting way to high to hit anyone here on the stairs." Miyuki reloaded the 5-round magazine, one round at a time, and closed the bolt.
"Still, people could be going up and down the stairs and you wouldn't notice if you have your eye in the scope!" His sentence was punctuated with another shot from Miyuki's rifle, this one dropping a terrorist with an RPG. The windows were not safe for terrorists and JSDF troops with Miyuki Kobyakowa sniping.
"I know what I'm doing, Ken. Now American troops need that machine gun ammo. Get it to them." She decided that she couldn't hit any more targets here and scuttled off to another landing, hoping to get more shots in.
Ken shook his head and slid himself down the hallway with the ammo box in tow.
Miyuki continued her process for a while longer. Eventually, the Marines and Army personnel picked up on what she was doing without asking. One of the Delta Force operators, Sergeant, First Class Smith, who had been forced off the roof by the constant fire from Japanese APCs joined Miyuki. Together they scouted out targets around the buildings and attempted to eliminate them from the stairwells. The darkened stairwells provided excellent cover, and unless someone was looking right at it, they couldn't tell where the rifle shots had come from.
Eventually, Miyuki had to go for more ammunition. She calculated that she had probably killed or severely wounded about twenty enemies by sniping from the stairwells. Around one in the morning, she arrived at Delta's ammunition trailer. Smith grabbed a box of loose rounds and handed it to her so she could replenish her stock. On her way back, she decided to go downstairs and refill the canteen Ida had given her. She found Aoi and Yoriko tending to wounded who had been removed from the aid stations and brought downstairs to free up room.
"How bad is it up there, Miyuki?" asked Yoriko.
The black-haired officer wiped her forehead and responded, "It's died down a bit. It was pretty bad right after we woke up until about twenty minutes ago." She stretched her arms, which were getting a bit stiff from crawling around to stay in cover. "The enemy is probably holding and regrouping right now. We didn't face nearly as many troops as the satellite photos showed. I caught a glimpse of them after the operations room got hit by a rocket. There's supposed to be a lot more guys coming."
"How's Arleigh?"
Miyuki stopped. "Actually, I don't know. I haven't seen him around. I don't think he made it back." She thought for a moment. "You know, I think he's held up somewhere around where he went out. When the operations room got hit, I rushed up to help and as I was leaving, Captain Surai was talking with Arleigh over the radio. So, he's still out there. If he were dead, everyone would know by now. I'm going to go up there and ask Surai where he is."
And so Miyuki did exactly that. She went up to the TOC and found Surai talking with Arleigh over the radio.
"Five-One, Alpha Six. Things quieted down here a bit. We're receiving sporadic attacks, but for the most part its quiet. A U.S. Navy F-14 Tomcat running reconnaissance flights over the Ward with a LATIRN pod reports that it has enemy units stalled around our position, probably regrouping. How is it over your way? Over."
"Six, Five-One. We're doing okay. They're taking up position in buildings to our front and left flanks. They're intent mostly with taking pot shots at the choppers, but as soon as the choppers are out of sight, they begin shooting at us. I think they're waiting for the road to be cleared of wreckage so they can move up more armor. But for the time being, we're good. Over."
"Okay, Five-One. Be careful, though. They could strike at any time, and strike hard. Is there any way that you can E&E back here now? Over."
"Negative, Six. With them up in the buildings we're pressed into our position pretty tight. It'd be suicide to leave. Over."
"Ah, damn. Okay, Six out." Surai set down the handset and turned to see Miyuki. "Ah, Kobyakowa. Need something?"
"Yeah, you were just talking to Arleigh, right?"
"Uh huh."
"Is he okay? What's going on?"
Surai beckoned her over to the map. "Arleigh and six other soldiers are held up here in a tight perimeter across from where they set up their listening post. Now, for the time being, they're okay. They have air and artillery keeping them safe. Someone is going to have to fly out there and get them ammo, though. They're running pretty low. But the problem is that enemies occupy all the surrounding buildings. Also, they still have technicals in the area. So if a chopper gets caught hovering over their perimeter to drop ammo will most likely get shot out of the sky. That's also why they can't attempt an extraction by chopper. They'll have to slug it out for now, but if too many troops attack at the same time, they'll be mincemeat." He sighed. "Unfortunately, there's nothing we can do about it, either. Our mortars are working overtime to cover us, and any ground unit I send out will be annihilated."
Miyuki stared intently at the map. There were two blue circles on the map. One was very small. That was Arleigh's position, two kilometers away. The other was much larger, and Miyuki figured it was the station. Tons of red dots surrounded the two blue dots. These indicated enemy positions. With a grease pencil, Surai had marked the acetate-covered map with several artillery plots for the naval ships to fire on. The other plots showed where the choppers were making their runs during attacks. "What are these blue dots across the Sumida?"
"Those are the lead elements of the 25th Infantry Division's cavalry unit and the 3rd Marine Expeditionary's armored battalion. They're getting ready to move out at dawn with tanks, APCs, trucks, everything. They're supposed to fight their way to our position and then we'll all clear out the rest of the Ward. I hope I live to see that. The enemy is massing for another assault very shortly." The Captain drank some water from his canteen.
Miyuki gulped at Surai's last sentence. "Well, I think we can hold them back. We did pretty well with the first attacks."
"Yes, we did. But we lost people, Kobyakowa. Too many. I hope air and artillery comes through for us again and keeps them back. This next attack is going to be huge. They're going to throw everything at us."
Miyuki looked down at her feet and then back up at Surai. "We'll make it."
"For your sake, I hope you're right."
With that, Miyuki left and made her way back to her position. She un- shouldered her MP5 and got it ready for the coming fight.
"Incoming! Move it! Move it!"
Natsumi Tsujimoto literally fell out of bed.
The Chief had barreled into the sleeping quarters rousing everyone. An RPG detonated on the outside wall of the station, shaking the room. As the Chief passed Natsumi and Miyuki's bunk, Natsumi rolled over, at first disoriented, and promptly tumbled several feet to the ground, landing with a distinctive thud.
"Ah, shit..." she moaned as she massaged her right arm. Miyuki was already out the door, followed by Ken and several other officers. Several more officers bounded over her as she lay in the aisle between the rows of bunks. A few seconds later she recovered from the fall and stood, grabbing her Type-89 rifle and SWAT webbing containing extra magazines and her Beretta 92 pistol. After exiting the quarters, the Chief met up with her and the two began working their way to their positions in the back of the station.
Along the way they met up with two other officers, one who had been assisting an American officer when the reports from the LPs came in that the ambushes had been sprung. The four ran upstairs and to the back of the building. One of the officers mentioned that, "LP Two got hit hard. They think everyone there is dead. LP One is on the way back from their ambush. They stopped the tanks dead, but the infantry are still pouring in towards the station."
"What about the third post?" questioned Natsumi.
All the officer should do was shrug.
The four got to the rear just in time for two RPK machine guns to begin pounding the third floor windows. Natsumi flicked the selector switch over to full automatic and let two 4-round bursts go at group of soldiers reloading an RPG. The gunner went down, and in a dying spasm, pulled the trigger on the rocket launcher. The RPG went straight into the ground, detonated, and killed everyone within 10 meters.
Farther down the hall, an Army machine gunner opened up with an M249 S.A.W. He tore into the trees behind the station. Round after round plunged through the canopy at unseen enemies. Other soldiers saturated the trees with launched grenades.
Natsumi noticed more soldiers moving down the road and ducking into buildings. She thought they had just been taking cover until they opened up from the windows of buildings. Unlike where Miyuki was, these buildings were much farther away, since a forest separated the station and the buildings, as opposed to a small road. Flipping back to single-shot, Natsumi expertly placed several rounds into the windows across the way. She couldn't exactly see the enemies, but they were getting silhouetted each time they fired because of the muzzle flash. Fire from two windows ceased after Natsumi fired another eight rounds. The she shifted back to full auto and sprayed the remaining rounds at what she thought was another terrorist moving through the trees directly below.
She dropped to a knee and began to reload her rifle when she heard the clink of metal against the floor to her left. Everything began happening in slow motion. Her head seemed to take an hour to shift, and when it finally did, she saw the source of the noise. A single fragmentation grenade lay in-between her and the Chief. At that moment she saw her life end. But it didn't.
The Chief dove for the grenade, and in one smooth motion, flicked his wrist and sent the explosive device floating out the window, where it exploded harmlessly behind the perimeter wall, wounding the terrorist who had thrown it. The Chief scrambled back to his feet and continued firing an AK-74 out the window on full auto.
Every time Natsumi pulled the trigger, she remembered what Arleigh had told her earlier in the day. 'If I don't kill them, they'll kill me and my friends.' She found it disturbing that someone as herself, who was usually so strong mentally and physically, needed to tell herself each time that what she was doing was right, despite how she might be feeling.
The bullets kept flying. American and Japanese machine gunners did their dances of death with their weapons, each pouring out hundreds of rounds. RPGs sailed in at the station while 40mm grenades arced back out the windows. The difference was amazing. The Americans and police were effectively holding back a much larger force. Simply, between the terrorists and the Americans, it was bad quality versus good quality, while between the JSDF and the Americans, it was one training versus another.
The terrorists were amateurs. They're style of fighting was crude and a good way to get themselves killed. On the other hand, the Americans were some of the best fighters in the world. As with times before the siege of Bokuto, the Americans had dealt with terrorist and militia forces who did not have the resources of a well-trained military. Then there were the JSDF troops. After World War II, the Americans disbanded the Japanese military. What rose from the ashes was the Japanese-Self-Defense-Force, and that's exactly what it was. The Japanese troops were far inferior to the Americans in terms of training. Virtually all their training was in defensive tactics and peacekeeping. The Americans were trained to do that and a whole lot more. Unaccustomed to assaulting anything, the Japanese troops employed tactics that no American would ever think of doing, such as exposing troops in line formations, something that defenders do to maximize firepower. But the terrorists and the Japanese troops still had one ace. They were far superior numerically to the besieged defenders. Plus, they had on-site armored units.
At this point, the APCs and tanks had moved up in the rear. They were still stuck along the route LP One had held earlier. The armored units still did not attempt to blow the building up, which they could easily have done. This contributed more to Natsumi's feeling that there was something very important to them inside the station. However, the APCs did use their 35mm cannons to suppress sniper fire from the roof. That took away a distinct advantage that the Americans had, which was the high ground. 'He who holds the high ground usually wins,' as the saying went. The tanks primarily sat back and fired their machine guns, uninterrupted, at the station. Soon, however, they realized their mistake in pulling up to the station. By showing themselves, the tanks opened themselves to American officers calling in artillery strikes from the U.S. Navy cruisers and destroyers out in Tokyo Bay firing in support of the defenders. Japanese trucks and technicals hung back, too, pounding away with their heavy machine guns. Every now and then an American would attempt to take one out with an AT4 rocket launcher.
Natsumi reloaded yet another magazine and noticed that she was down to three. She glanced around and noticed that everyone was running pretty low. The attack had been relentless, and everyone was firing as fast as they could. "Hey, Chief! We need to go get more ammo." An AH-6 Little Bird buzzed by, spraying minigun rounds and rockets into the fray of enemy soldiers behind the station.
"I know, Tsujimoto. I'm way ahead of you." The Chief got up and sprinted towards the stairway.
Swearing, Natsumi stood, fired a burst in hopes of hitting something and took off down the hallway. She caught up with the Chief on the stairs and the two ran out a back door that led to road inside the station's perimeter wall. The roar was deafening, but they pressed on, hoping not to pop an eardrum or two.
"Over here!" Natsumi shouted above the din. The two officers ran up to one of the trucks the Marines had ridden in on. Inside were boxes of ammunition. "Okay, let's take these." She slid several boxes of ammunition for the M-16A2 and M4A1 rifles, which most of the Americans were using. She grabbed a box of loose rounds, too. The same 5.56mm bullets the American weapons fired was what her Type-89 fired. She could reload her empty magazines with the loose rounds. The Chief grabbed two 1,000- round boxes of ammo for the M249 machine gun. He also took hefted two boxes of 40mm grenades.
With their extremely heavy cargo, the two made their way back inside the building, which took them past the Marine mortar team, which was frantically firing 81mm mortars as Marine officers and radio operators up above called in enemy positions. Making their way up the stairs, the two spaced out the boxes evenly along the length of the hall. Almost immediately, soldiers dived for the boxes to grab more magazines. With only 40 per box, they went pretty fast. More boxes would have to be brought up. One Marine turned around and calmly said to the Chief, who he remembered from earlier in the day spoke English, "You know, there's a bunch of ammo boxes two rooms down from the aid station on the other side of the building on this floor. We brought a bunch up earlier." The Marine, completely oblivious to the battle raging, explained exactly where the crates were. He also said he thought he saw some boxes of AK and Type- 89 magazines in the same room.
"I'll go get them," said Natsumi after the Chief translated for her. She got up and scampered down the hallway, crouching as she went to avoid the bullets flying through the window. Diving into the room, she quickly located the box of Type-89 magazines and grabbed enough to hold her for a while. She also grabbed as many AK magazines as she could carry. Apparently, the Chief wasn't the only one using an AK up here, since there were already several missing from the box. She hurried back to the rear of the building and forked over the ammo.
Once again, Natsumi selected single-fire and began trying to take shots at the buildings across the forest. The same effects were reached, as she dropped two more terrorists.
Suddenly, a technical burst out from one of the side streets behind the station. It turned directly towards the station and began accelerating. But this technical lacked a .51 calibre machine gun. The post stand was still there, but the gun was gone. Also, the truck was flaming. Natsumi flicked over to full automatic and laid waste to the driver, firing in concert with several Army and Marine gunners. To her surprise, the truck swerved as the dead driver slumped over, hit a tree, and exploded in a huge blossom of flames. The reason it surprised her was because the explosion was almost like a tank or an APC exploding. She quickly deduced that there must have been explosives aboard and the truck was going to ram the back wall and detonate its cargo. She would later discover that she was right.
The Chief shuffled over to her, keeping his head down as another RPK machine gun began shredding the wall behind. He leaned over and dragged Natsumi down as the enemy gun began targeting her general area. Pulling her close he yelled over the noise, "Here! You have to take this up to the operations room! Go!" He handed her a copy of a map, to which she thought, 'Evidently, someone has found time to use a Xerox machine during this battle.' Also, she received a casualty list. 'I guess the American commander requested this.'
Natsumi crawled down the hallway, past where an RPG had blown a sizeable chuck out of the outer wall, eliminating the three-foot cover the window frame offered. Next, she bounded up the stairs and onto the fourth-floor hallway. More Army grunts, Marines, and police were here firing away at the enemy below. She slid to the side of the hallway as two Army grunts dragged a wounded Marine to the nearest aid station. Making her way down a side hall and back out onto the main hall on the other side of the building, she found a police officer, dead, position against the wall. She didn't recognize who the man was. That's when she saw the destruction that the RPG had done to the TOC wall, which was crumbling as she crawled down the hall. Also, she noticed that several tables had their legs broken off and were laid across the floor right in front of the main impact crater. Natsumi wondered if it was still the TOC, given the damage, but made her way inside nonetheless. As she entered, an AH-64-D Longbow Apache gunship came to a slight hover over the parking lot out in front of the station and began pounding away with its 30mm chain gun. Enemies dove for cover as the rounds impacted all around them.
Across the room, Kinoshita sat, bandaged, at a table running the communications with city government, continuously giving updates on the situation. Surai, his radio operator, and an Army officer were against another wall, marking positions on a map and coordinating and plotting air and artillery strikes around the building.
"Captain! An officer sent these up." Natsumi handed the map and casualty list over.
Surai accepted the two items. "Thank you, Tsujimoto." He patted her on the shoulder, turned back around, and continued marking enemy positions with a grease pencil on the map.
"Um, sir? Have you heard anything about Arleigh, er, I mean, Lieutenant Rivera?" Natsumi tugged at the shoulder strap of her rifle while asking.
The Marine Captain slowly swiveled to face her. He took a deep breath before answering. "He and his guys are all still alive. They're pinned down near where they sprang their ambush. We can't get to them by ground and helicopter extraction is too dangerous. All we can do is bring down air and artillery all around them." He nodded and returned this his task.
Not wanting to bother him anymore, Natsumi left the TOC. Just as she got back to the stairway, a Marine to her right went down. She rushed over and quickly applied pressure to his wound. He received a single rifle shot to the chest. There was no exit wound. In military terms, it was what is called a 'sucking chest wound,' which is almost always fatal unless treated properly.
"Come on, let's get you the hell out of here."
In passable Japanese, he responded, "No, I'm fine. Leave me here. I can fight." The Marine pulled back away from Natsumi, leaving a bloody stain on webbing and rifle's shoulder strap. His movement faltered a bit and he fell in a heap to the ground. The Private, First Class attempted to get back to his knees and fire his M-16A2, but that too failed.
Natsumi looked at the man's nametag. "No, damnit. Lance Corporal Carter, get up! You're going to the aide station." Passing her arm underneath the man's arms, Natsumi got the man up and headed towards the aid station. Amazingly, the Marine still had enough energy to provide a good portion of the lift on his own. Just as the two were about to get to the side hall leading to the aid station, someone yelled, "RPG!"
Seeing the light of the rocket's tail out of the corner of his eye, the Marine used to last of his energy to push Natsumi down onto the ground and cover her body with his. The Rocket-Propelled-Grenade detonated on the inside wall of the fourth floor. The Marine absorbed almost all of the force of the explosion and the fragments. He died instantly. As the wall behind her began to fall, Natsumi quickly pushed the dead officer off of her and scuttled away as plywood, drywall, and two-by-fours collapsed where she had been lying. Natsumi sat there on the ground, stunned. "He just sacrificed himself to save me..." Dazed and confused, a couple of Marines charged past her and jumped up on the rubble. She couldn't understand why they were jumping all over their comrade's dead body until she looked at what they held.
The room, which had taken the blast, was now ablaze, but the two Marines were quick to respond with fire extinguishers that they had commandeered earlier for this exact purpose. Natsumi looked across the rubble, past the two Marines, to an Army rifleman tending to a police officer grievously wounded by the RPG. He motioned for Natsumi to help him. She commanded her legs to move and soon she scurried past the rubble and was helping the second victim in as many minutes get to an aid station. 'Maybe this one will survive.'
With Natsumi's help, the Army grunt hefted the police officer up onto his shoulder and made his way into the aid station. Natsumi followed, keeping the officer steady as they shuffled into the room with all the medics for that floor. Immediately, she realized that this police officer wasn't the only one wounded. Right behind her, a Marine was dragged in, also a victim of the RPG, which would've surely killed Natsumi if not for the selflessness of the Marine she had been trying to help. Inside the room there were already several wounded Americans and police officers. Two Army medics and a Navy Corpsman worked at lightspeed to get people treated and move on to the next person. At this point, the medical personnel were tearing up t-shirts from their rucksacks to seal off wounds, as they were running out of bandages. Fortunately, almost every soldier kept at least one or two field bandages in his butt-pack along with other items.
The two set down the wounded riot-control officer down on a couch. Navy Corpsman Petty Officer, Second Class Steven Williams jogged over and did a quick examination of the wounded man. The Army rifleman left to return to the defensive line, but Natsumi wanted to stay and make sure the officer was okay. She aided Williams in securing a few field dressings to the officer. Williams spoke good Japanese and comforted the man, saying that he would be all right. The fragments had passed through him in his left shoulder and arm been stopped over his gut by the bullet-proof vest he had worn. Williams began a Serum-Albinum drip, which was an IV-introduced blood-expander to keep patients who have lost a lot of blood from going into shock.
Natsumi turned to go, but Williams caught her.
"You're next."
"But I'm not wounded."
Williams knew it was not a rare occurrence for people in battle to not notice that they had been wounded. "Yes, you are." He motioned to her clothes. "You're covered in blood. All right, off with the webbing and the shirt. Come on."
"Oh, no, no, that's not my blood." She shook her head from side to side. "That's a... That's the... Well, there's no easy way to say this. A Marine covered me up when that RPG just hit. It killed him. This is his blood."
Williams looked down. "That was very brave of him. Sorry." The Corpsman began to turn away to deal with another patient, but noticed a trickle of blood going down Natsumi's arm. "Wait, there's no way that's the Marine's blood." He grabbed her arm and lifted the shirt above the shoulder-socket. "You're wounded, all right. Sit down."
Natsumi was confused. "I'm wounded? How did that happen?"
Williams returned with a field dressing. "The fragment must have just grazed you, but it's still a bleeder. Here." The Petty Officer, Second Class secured the dressing around her arm and tied it tight after he cleaned the wound as best he could, Natsumi wincing all the way from the sting of alcohol on an open wound. "There you go. How does it feel?"
"Besides the antiseptic stuff, can't feel it at all."
"That's the adrenaline talking. You will feel it later." Williams got back up and moved to deal with another wounded person.
Natsumi collected her rifle and returned to the rear of the building where the Chief was reloading his AK. The fighting had died down a bit. By that, it wasn't intense, constant firing, but rather sporadic shots from all over. It was still quite dangerous. The enemy was holding and regrouping for the moment. Over the relative silence, Natsumi was able to make out gunfire much farther away. 'That has to be Arleigh.'
Helicopters zoomed over head and artillery shells fell outside the station at random intervals. The mortar tubes outside were silent, except for the sounds of them cooling down from their constant use.
It was 0110 Hours. One-ten in the morning.
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