As a member of the United States government that was involved in what was termed: "critical wartime employment," Jeff Whiting, Mark's father, rated a Class A gasoline ration card which allowed him to purchase up to twenty gallons per month. This was a privilege usually granted to only the wealthy and those in power. Jeff fit into neither of these categories. In days gone by, before the war, he had been a simple customs agent assigned to Sacramento International Airport and tasked with checking the baggage of travelers entering the United States from Canada. He used to joke that he was the only thing standing between civility and the utter chaos that would erupt if the smuggling of Canadian goods were allowed to go unchecked.
Jeff Whiting did not joke much these days. The death of his wife a year before had taken the sense of humor right out of him. Nor did he inspect Canadian baggage at the airport anymore. There were no more Canadian travelers to the United States; there was no more personal air travel at all anymore. The days when you could simply hop aboard an airliner and travel to a distant city in a matter of hours had ended. If you were on an airliner these days, you were either in the war or on the way to it. Jeff, like many of the customs officers nationwide, had been absorbed into the FBI and given a new task by his government; a task he found decidedly distasteful but that his president and his congress found necessary during these troubled times.
What Jeff Whiting and most of the other former United States customs agents were doing these days was monitoring. What they were monitoring were US citizens of Asian descent. They did not monitor Chinese or Japanese nationals. People fitting that description had already been rounded up and imprisoned by the FBI. It was American citizens, some of whom were of the fourth and fifth generation in the United States, who were being watched for signs of collaboration with the enemy. It had been made legal by the US Congress, the US Senate, the US President, and the US Supreme Court in the Emergency War Powers Act of 2013 for government agents to ply through the computer and Internet records of "American Citizens of Asian descent" in search of "suspicious activities or transactions". Not even the ACLU had opposed the measure, which had been proposed, written, and passed nearly unanimously in the first three months of the war. The gist of the public opinion towards it seemed to be: "If they don't have anything to hide, then they shouldn't mind us looking them over."
That was what Jeff Whiting spent his days doing: going through lists of Asian citizens in the Northern California region and checking, by means of his home computer terminal, into the most private aspects of their lives. He poured through their checking and savings account records, through their grocery and personal purchases, through their Internet usage accounts and email. Mark knew that his father, as a life-long advocate of personal privacy laws, felt soiled doing such things, felt as if he were being asked to sacrifice his soul in order to support his family. If not for the fact that they desperately needed the money in order to survive, in order to stay one step ahead of bankruptcy, he would have quit in disgust long ago.
As a reward for performing this distasteful but supposedly necessary task, the government had given Jeff and his colleagues the coveted Class A ration card. It was an almost meaningless gesture. Jeff did not have a need to commute to work. He did most of his tasks from the computer terminal in his den. When he did need to go out and contact one of his "charges" as they were called, he had access to a government vehicle. Besides, at $130 a gallon, Jeff, on his middle-class salary, could hardly afford to buy more than a standard ration card would have allowed him anyway.
When Mark came into the house at 6:30 that evening, his father had just finished up his work for the day and was relaxing on the couch with a bottle of beer. The elder Whiting had been out to make contact with a charge today and was still dressed in his going-out clothes: a pair of slacks and a sports-coat that was long and bulky enough to hide the holstered 9mm pistol he wore. His hair, which was prematurely graying, was neatly styled but his face was drawn and pale, the way it had been for the last year. It was a face that made him look more than ten years older than the forty-five he actually was. Mark figured he must have just returned from wherever he had gone since the sport coat and the gun were still attached to his body. But he knew better than to ask any questions about it. His father did not enjoy talking about his work.
"How's it advancin', Dad?" he asked, unshouldering his school backpack and hanging it on a hook near the door.
"I'm fine," he answered mechanically, taking a sip out of his beer. Since the death of his wife, Jeff had been drinking a lot of beer. He was not a raving drunk by any means, but he did swill down four or five bottles a night after work. Mark, though he missed his mom just as much as his father did, worried about the depression the man seemed to be engulfed in. He had found himself hoping lately that his father would begin dating again. But he had not been out to so much as a party since that awful day when the news came to them. "I picked up a pizza on the way home," he told his son. "I hope you don't mind having it again but I really didn't feel like cooking tonight."
"That's static, Dad," Mark answered politely, although in truth he was actually quite tired of pizza. They had it at least three times a week, always from the same establishment, always picked up by his father at the end of the workday whether he had gone out or not. "I'll go grab some. You having any?"
"Not just yet," he said. "But I could use another beer if you're going that way."
"Sure, Dad," he said, suppressing a worried look. Two beers before he even changed out of his clothes? What was up with that?
Putting these thoughts aside, he walked into the kitchen. Though the house had been built back in the early nineties, the kitchen had since been remodeled and equipped with more modern appliances. Currently it was sparkling clean except for the grease-stained pizza box sitting on the tile kitchen island. He pulled a plate out and helped himself to two large pieces of the cheese and soy meat concoction. He then opened the refrigerator and pulled out a soda and a beer, both in bottles of course. When he returned and handed the icy bottle of Coors to his father, Jeff thanked him absently and then picked up the remote control. He flipped it to the local channel just as the opening theme of the nightly news came on.
"You heard about the new offensive?" Mark asked him, grabbing a seat on the couch and setting down his plate.
"Who hasn't heard about it?" Jeff replied, opening his fresh beer. "It's all anyone has been talking about all day." He grimaced a little. "I hear it's been pretty costly."
"But we're holding them," Mark put in enthusiastically. "Our guys held those chink fuckers back."
"Yeah," Jeff said, giving his son a strange, worrisome look. "We're holding them all right. And don't say 'chink'. You know I don't like that word."
"Sorry, Dad," he said, thinking that his father was perhaps the only citizen of the Western Hemisphere who took offense to that term, the only citizen who wasn't a chink anyway. Of course Mark said nothing about this. He simply picked up his pizza and took a bite, chewing slowly as the commercials ended and the news came on.
Though it was a local newscast, the spring offensive by the Chinese was the top story.
"Good evening," the stern-looking, solemn-voiced newscaster greeted from behind his podium. "On the domestic front today, the Chinese forces in the occupied area launched a broad offensive at the Western Hemisphere forces entrenched against them. The attack began in the pre-dawn hours with heavy air and artillery attacks all along the Idaho and Oregon fronts. At dawn, Chinese tanks and infantry carriers began to move against our troops in numbers not seen since the Battle of Viola. Casualties were regretfully high and our troops were forced to withdraw several kilometers in a few locations but, as of 6:00 PM, mountain time, the WestHem lines were holding strong and it appears that the worst of the initial enemy thrust has been halted. At this time there is still heavy fighting occurring at several points along the front, particularly artillery and tank battles, but our best information is that there is no immediate danger of a break-through. For more on this we have Annie Durant, our Channel 7 war correspondent, near the scene of the heaviest fighting today. We'll now go live to her. Annie?"
The scene switched from the news desk to a view of an attractive blonde newscaster standing outside in the fading daylight. Her hair was pulled back in a ponytail and her clothing was the green and brown summer camouflage uniform the soldiers wore. There was, of course, no earthly reason for her to have to camouflage herself. She was reporting from miles behind the lines and far from any danger that being camouflaged would protect her from, but television news, just as it had been before the war, was mostly about putting on a good show. She was standing on a small rise overlooking a green valley that was out of focus in the camera. Walking to and fro behind her, also slightly out of focus, were armed American soldiers, most in packs and carrying M-16 rifles slung over their shoulders.
"Good evening," Annie said as scripting on the screen identified her by name and proclaimed that the footage was LIVE. In the background the clatter of tracked vehicles rolling across the ground and the rhythmic thumping of nearby artillery weapons could be plainly heard. "This is Annie Durant and I'm reporting from one of the staging areas of the 103rd Armored Cavalry Division just outside of Caldwell, Idaho on the western edge of the active American front. The 103rd is responsible for a large section of this front and today they were hit very hard as Chinese forces attempted to break through the lines to the open desert beyond. This was but one section of the front that was attacked at dawn today in what seems a renewed major offensive by the Chinese Army. I spoke earlier to Lieutenant Colonel Ralph Hennesy, the public information officer for the 103rd, and he told me that after a massive air and artillery attack before sunrise this morning, Chinese tanks in large numbers began to roll on their positions. They were supported by attack helicopters and infantry troops with shoulder-fired anti-tank weapons. The Chinese were engaged by our own tanks and by entrenched infantry troops with AT-9 anti-tank weapons. As you are aware from previous major battles, these laser guided, shoulder-launched missiles in conjunction with our own tanks, were largely responsible for stopping the Chinese in place and preventing the breakthroughs both in Portland at the Columbia River and here on the currently active front. It seems these AT-9 crews have saved the day again. Let me show you what the battle area looks like at this moment."
Her cameraman panned off of her and into the valley beyond, zooming closely. Though the floor of the valley was some miles away, and though it was bathed in shadow due to the rapidly encroaching twilight, a number of bright orange sparks of light could be seen littering the interior. A haze of black smoke was rising from these points and spreading into the sky above.
"That low ground down there," Annie Durant's voice explained, "was the main battle area during the day. Our forces hold this side of the valley and the Chinese forces hold the other. Behind us, the apparent objective of the Chinese, is a strategic road junction in the small town of Mansing that has been in WestHem hands since the lines stabilized. Now all of those rolling hills you see on our side are filled with entrenched AT-9 crews and protective infantry. When the Chinese armor began to pour into that valley in an attempt to close on the WestHem positions, those crews opened up on them and destroyed many of their tanks before they could engage our own tanks. Though the crews themselves took a fierce pounding from Chinese artillery and air attacks, including, I'm told, the use of napalm, they held firm, not abandoning their positions until the loss of them became inevitable. By the time the main tank battle took place early this afternoon, the Chinese armored forces had already suffered heavy casualties and were unable to press their advantage when WestHem units were forced to pull back. Those sparks of light you see down there are Chinese tanks and APC's that are still burning from the last engagement. For every burning piece of Chinese armor that you see, there are at least five that have already burned themselves out. Colonel Hennesy estimated that the 103rd alone destroyed more than five hundred tanks and more than three hundred infantry carriers today. The 103rd was forced to withdraw two kilometers to the rear in order to avoid being overrun, but it was an orderly, fighting withdrawal to pre-planned positions and the Chinese were not able to insert any forces into their rear."
"How about friendly casualties?" the newscaster back in the studio asked her. "Reports are that they were heavy."
The cameraman cut back to Annie, whose face was looking properly sad for the occasion. "Unfortunately," she said, "casualties are an inevitable part of repelling an attack of this nature and they were somewhat high. According to Colonel Hennesy, the latest figures, theater-wide for friendly casualties, including air crews, is approximately five thousand killed and four thousand wounded."
"Jesus," Jeff Whiting proclaimed, staring at the screen and shaking his head.
"Dad?" Mark asked, looking at the troubled face of his father. "Are you okay?"
"Five thousand people killed," Jeff said softly. "Just on our side. And how many Chinese? Five times that many?"
"Dad," Mark said carefully, as if he were speaking to a madman, "they invaded our country. They're trying to take over the rest of it. What else can we do? We have to fight them and make them leave, don't we?"
"Yeah," he said, looking at his son with an expression of fear in his eyes. "I guess we do. I guess we do."
The newscast covered the spring offensive for the better part of ten minutes. Video clips and live shots were shown of a field hospital where wounded American, Mexican, Venezuelan, and Brazilian soldiers were stacked up outside in staggering numbers. They lay on litters and blankets on the ground, their breath rising into the chilly air. Weary looking nurses and doctors could be seen filtering through them while in the background the constant clatter of helicopter blades could be heard delivering more. They showed a few close-ups of soldiers who had relatively minor wounds. One had a bloody bandage wrapped around his forehead and arm; another was lying with a trauma dressing on his upper thigh. They did not show close-ups of the burn victims, those who had been inside the tanks when they had been struck by high-explosive rounds from Chinese tanks or by high-explosive warheads from anti-tank missiles. The media had done that a few times in the past and the public reaction had been outrage. The public did not want to see what was happening to its young men on the battlefield. Nor did they show a close-up of anyone who was dead or who even looked like they were going to die. In the past they had done such things and shocked mothers or wives, watching the television back home, had received the first news that their loved ones had been killed in this manner. It was a live and learn environment in the television war coverage business, just like in any other.
After the thread of the spring offensive was run out, the newscaster switched to more local issues. "An air-raid by a flight of Chinese F-15 Strike Eagles attempted to bomb Sacramento Executive Airport early this morning at about 3:30 AM. Executive Airport, as you know, is the base for the 314th Air Defense Wing of the California Air Guard. It is unknown just how many aircraft were in the strike but three were shot down by airport defenses and one was shot down during its egress by an F-16 of the Air Guard that had been on combat air patrol. Damage to the base was minimal as most of the anti-runway bombs that were employed landed harmlessly in the fields beside the runways. Of the planes that were shot down by the air defenses, two of them did unfortunately land in civilian areas surrounding the airport, destroying two houses in separate neighborhoods and damaging five others. Fifteen people were killed and eighteen were wounded from the crashing planes. There were six people injured at the airport from the bombing itself. Our military analysts advise that this attack on the runways of the air defense base is undoubtedly the precursor to a larger air attack that will possibly take place tonight or early this morning. So keep your ears open and be sure to head for your designated shelter when you hear the air raid sirens."
That was it for the story. There was no video, no further commentary. The newscaster simply switched to the next subject: the rounding up of draft dodgers in Sacramento County by a FBI task force.
"Isn't that amazing?" Jeff Whiting asked his son bitterly as he clicked off the television in disgust. "Two planes crash into the city, tearing up a neighborhood and killing fifteen people, and all it rates is ten seconds on the evening news."
"Are you sure you're gonna be all right, Dad?" Mark asked again. His father seemed particularly morose on this day. Was it the story about the planes crashing? Maybe. He could understand why such a thing would upset his father. After all, that was how his wife, Mark's mother, had died a little more than a year ago. That plane crash had certainly rated more than ten seconds on the news. No matter how callused the public had become to planes being shot out of the sky and crashing into their city, when a crippled Chinese A-6 Intruder loaded with two thousand pound bombs smashed into an elementary school, it was still big news.
The A-6 had been part of a flight of two that had been tasked with hitting the railroad bridge that crossed the American River near downtown Sacramento. Destroying this bridge would have impeded the flow of military supplies to the front. The Chinese pilots had taken a somewhat unconventional approach to their target by attacking during the daylight hours and by making their final run at the bridge from the east, which forced them to fly over the bulk of the metropolitan area. As they had gone screaming over the suburbs of Orangevale and Rancho Cordova at less than two hundred feet above the rooftops, a battery of infra-red guided 23mm anti-aircraft guns atop of the Sheraton Hotel had locked on just long enough to unleash thirty or so rounds at them. Two of these rounds had punched through the thin side of the cockpit of the lead plane, killing the pilot and sending the low-flying aircraft quickly to the ground where it slammed into Thomas Jefferson Elementary School at five hundred miles per hour. The school staff had been in the process of evacuating the students to the air-raid shelter in response to the siren that had just gone off. When the plane struck, its two bombs, which had just been armed in preparation for the attack, had exploded, leveling the school and killing more than two hundred children and twenty-eight teachers, including the beloved Mrs. Whiting who taught third grade.
"I'm all right, Mark," Jeff responded, offering a weak smile. "I just have a hard time adjusting sometimes to how much things have changed in the world the last few years." He took a sip of his beer, swallowing slowly, with an audible gulp. "Nostalgia I guess."
"Nostalgia?"
He nodded. "Nostalgia. To you, it probably seems like we've always been at war, doesn't it? I mean, you were only sixteen when this all started and I'm sure you remember what it was like to be at peace, but you're coming of age in this mess now. You're growing up surrounded by so much death and destruction that I'm afraid you'll think that's the way things are supposed to be."
"I'm surviving, Dad," Mark said, not quite grasping what his father was driving at. "Really, I'll be okay."
"Will you?" he asked. "You're still dead set on joining that buddy program with your friend Darren, aren't you?"
Mark sighed, not wanting to have this old argument again. "Dad," he said, "it's my duty to serve our country. I'm not gonna go low-pro and I don't want you to get your friends in the selective service to get me a non-hazardous posting. If they want to send me to the line, then I'll go to the line."
"It's not a question of if they want to send you to the line," Jeff told him. "You know as well as I do that your brother virtually guarantees you'll get hazardous posting."
Mark did know this. His older brother Matthew had just graduated from college with a degree in computer programming when the war had broken out. Though the army had almost immediately drafted him, his newly acquired skills had secured him an assignment in Texas where he worked on software for M2A battle tanks. Texas, which was far from the line, was considered a non-hazardous posting. Since Mark's only male sibling had been placed in non-hazardous, that made Mark a prime candidate for hazardous posting under current selective service rules. "Dad," he said seriously, with all the emotion that late adolescence could impart upon a person. "I want to go to the line. I want to help push those chinks back. Don't you understand that? I'm not a pussy."
"And what if you die at the line?" Jeff asked him. "I've already lost my wife to this war. I don't want to lose one of my sons as well."
"Hopefully I'll be smart enough to stay alive," he replied with a shrug. "Besides, maybe the war will be over by the time I get trained up and ready for action. The news says our own summer offensive is probably going to take back Spokane. If we get Spokane it's only a short hop to Seattle. If we take Seattle back, we'll push 'em out in no time."
"Do you really believe that, Mark?" his father asked pointedly. "I know you're only a kid, but surely you're smarter than that, aren't you?"
Slowly he nodded. "I guess I am," he said. And it was true. The Chinese forces were not going to be going anywhere anytime soon, nor were the Indian forces that were dug in in the Middle East and Europe.
"Just do me a favor," Jeff said, "and think about what you're doing before you leap. I've stopped asking my friends to pull strings for you at your request. I didn't like doing it, but you're eighteen now and you're an adult and I guess I have to honor your wishes, whether I like them or not."
"And I appreciate that," Mark said.
"But you need to realize that just because you're an adult legally, it doesn't mean you have the wisdom to make such an important decision well. Don't go rushing to the front just because your friends and the media and all of those horrible propaganda television shows you watch tell you that it's the right thing to do. The front is a horrible place to be, someplace where you can die. I know they make it sound like dying for your country is a great thing to do, but try to remember that you'll still be dead and that, as far as we know, you only have one life. I know your college deferment didn't work out."
"I tried, Dad," he said tiredly, hoping they weren't going to go into that subject again. Always a good student, with a keen interest in math and engineering skills, Mark's last two semester grades had been just low enough to guarantee he wouldn't make the coveted 3.8 GPA at graduation. Mark knew his father suspected he had deliberately thrown those grades so that he wouldn't qualify for the deferment and therefore have college as an option.
"I'm sure you did," Jeff said, his tone conveying the fact that he had his doubts. "But my point is that college is not the only option open to you. You can join the navy instead of the army. The navy is a little safer and there's a good chance they may put your engineering skills to task and give you a shore assignment in San Diego or Hawaii."
This again was an old argument and one that didn't have much power to sway Mark from the path he was heading down. Didn't deliberately attempting to avoid combat duty during a time when his country had been invaded by communist aggressors smack of cowardice? Wasn't it pussy to try to get a rear area assignment? Darren Caswell surely thought it did. Darren thought the whole idea of college deferment and naval shore assignments was the most pussy thing he had ever heard of.
"I just don't understand your old man," Darren would tell him when the subject came up. "I mean, those fuckin' chinks killed your mom, sarge! His wife! You'd think he'd be proud to have you go fight those slant-eyed motherfuckers! You'd think he'd be out there fightin' them himself."
"You would think," would be all Mark would reply during such times.
Darren's older brother, Jason, had joined the navy in 2011, two years before the fighting began. He had been an enlisted sailor aboard a fast frigate of the Pacific Fleet on January 1, 2013. His ship, an anti-submarine vessel, had been one of the escorts off of Japan on that fateful day. Like all of the other ships of the task force, it had sailed towards the Yellow Sea to show those Chinese that the Americans were not going to stand for an attack on Russia. His frigate had been struck by two Kingfish missiles during the first raid by the Chinese F-111s and had exploded and sank in less than five minutes, killing every person aboard. Jason Caswell had been given the dubious honor of being among the first American casualties of World War III.
The death of his brother had made Darren particularly receptive to the anti-Asian attitude and mentality that had swept through the nation like wildfire since the war started. Only five years before, out of control political correctness had been the driving force in the national attitude. Political correctness had become such a national obsession that it had actually managed to override the first amendment to the US constitution. Less than six months before the Asian Powers attack, congress had passed a federal law making it illegal to say any sort of racially or sexually offensive term in public. The law had included a list of more than one hundred terms such as: nigger, spic, cunt, faggot, dyke, and many others that were specifically outlawed. It also included a rider for any future terms along those lines that public sentiment decided were offensive. The penalty for violating this federal law was up to a year in federal prison for each offense. Now, however, the word "chink", which had been on the list of forbidden terms, could be heard every time a television was turned on. It was used in sit-coms, dramatic productions, even commercials; particularly those for armed forces enlistment and war bonds. This anti-Asian national view, fueled by the media and taking advantage of the human race's naturally occurring prejudices, was particularly fierce among the 13-18 population. In those who had lost family members to the fighting, it was almost an obsession. Darren simply could not wait until the day he graduated so he could enlist and go to the front and begin living his dream of killing as many Chinese as humanly possible. His fantasy job in the military was to be a squad machine gunner. "Imagine," he would say dreamily, his voice taking on the tones that other males utilized when discussing how they'd like to fuck the head cheerleader, "being able to mow down a row of chinks like a fuckin' lawnmower. Being able to walk up to their trenches and kill every one of them."
This fantasy was something that Mark had found strongly contagious and he had enthusiastically embraced it. After all, the Chinese had killed his mother and it was hard, especially for an eighteen-year-old, not to harbor a certain animosity towards them. And the media blitz, which his father referred to as "mind control" was also difficult to ignore and not respond to. Respected television anchormen and anchorwomen told him every day that the "chinks" were evil, twisted, inhuman would-be conquerors, bent on forcing all non-chinks into virtual slavery. They were said to be raping and killing everything with two legs in the areas that they had occupied so far. It was said that they had summarily executed every able-bodied man in Seattle after they took that city and that they were forcing all of the women to work in the aircraft factories by day and in the whorehouses for the rear-area Chinese troops at night. It was said that they were doing similar things in Alaska in the oil fields. Sometimes it seemed his father was the only counter-influence to this barrage and, as much as Mark respected and loved his dad, it became increasingly hard to take his views seriously.
"The Chinese soldiers don't want to fight this war any more than we do," his father would try to explain to him. "They're over on their side of the trenches dealing with the same misery, the same doubts, the same fears that we are. They watch their friends get killed and they dread every new offensive, just like we do. It's our leaders that have brought us to this, not the eighteen and nineteen year old soldiers that are carrying the guns."
This argument would seem to make sense while it was being articulated to him, but the power of its message would fade and die the next time he flipped on a television and watched an episode of Idaho Platoon, the dramatic, teen-targeted series that featured Lieutenant Smith and Sergeant Collins and the brave fighting men under their command. And when his father would try to explain to him that Idaho Platoon and other shows like it were nothing but American propaganda designed to glorify front-line duty and entice young men to sign up for it, Mark would find himself thinking that his dad was getting paranoid.
After all, what did he know? He was an old man.
"Sure, Dad," Mark said, as if he were seriously considering the option of naval service. "I'll think about that."