Chapter 10
They were twelve men, all dressed in ninja black, and they were after the depot’s oil. The trains were rusting on their tracks. They hadn’t run for over a year; not since they ran out of diesel. But there was still a little left in each tank.
The men spoke quietly in Chinese as they passed an oil drum between them, siphoning the last of the fuel from each engine. When the drum was as full as it was going to get, the men hoisted and carry it between the trains to the perimeter fence. They didn’t make it very far before the doors to a dozen boxcars slid open. Armed men with Russian army tattoos were inside. “The fuel belongs to us,” announced the Russians’ leader. He was a former Starshina, or Russian Sergeant Major, but now he was just another petty warlord like Axel.
The leader of the skulking Chinese, Lieutenant Lin, stared silently at the Starshina. “Leave the drum and we’ll let you live,” the Starshina advised.
It was a generous offer, one that most men would take. But not Lin. He yelled something in Chinese, ordering his men to drop and roll under the rail cars.
The Russians reacted to the sudden movement with a barrage of automatic rifle fire.
But the Starshina immediately yelled at them to stop: “Hold your fire! Hold your fire!” The staccato reports of kalishnikov rounds ricocheting off railroad running gear suddenly halted.
The Starshina jumped out of the boxcar, followed by twenty or so ex-Russian Army soldiers.
Lieutenant Lin and his men watched from their hiding places. Under the train cars, all they could see were the Russian’s boots carefully approaching them. Lieutenant Lin unclipped a grenade from his belt, pulled the pin, and rolled it toward the oil drum.
The Starshina saw the grenade and reacted immediately. “Grenade!” The Russians dove for cover, certain that the grenade would also cause the fuel to explode. But the Grenade was a dud, and Lin and his men knew it. They rushed out of their hiding places, grabbed the fuel drum, and tried to escape between the trains.
The Starshina, realizing he was duped, was furious. “Get them!” The Russians surged after the retreating scavengers.
Lieutenant Lin and his men ran and gunned, spraying bursts from their machine pistols.
Their mass produced Chinese weapons fired silenced, sub-sonic rounds that quietly took the Russians by surprise, dropping three of them as they came around a corner. Lieutenant Lin’s men also had the advantage of operating with military precision and discipline. While the Russians came in a mob, the Chinese soldiers stayed together, covering their movement with automatic fire and obeying Lin’s Chinese commands without hesitation. As a result, Lin and his men manage to drop six more Russians before they were forced to take cover in a signal tower.
But now the Chinese were cornered and out-numbered. They put their backs against the wall and pointed their weapons at the door, ready to go down in a blaze of fire like Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid. The Russians weren’t geniuses, but they were smart enough not to come through the door one by one. Instead they fired blindly through the wall, penetrating the plaster with heavy kalishnikov rounds.
The Chinese were forced to the ground. They returned fire but the machine pistols’ sub-sonic bullets didn’t have the power to penetrate the walls. Soon they ran out of ammo. The combat grew silent.
The door squeaked open before falling with a thud off of its bullet-riddled hinges. The Starshina stepped into the doorway, kalishnikov held up in his left hand, .45 Magnum revolver in his right. “About time.” He pointed the revolver, execution-style, at Lin. But before he could fire, there was a sudden roar of engines, blinding light, and the sound of more gunfire outside. “What the hell is that?” The Starshina turns toward the sound and, bang! A dark red hole appeared in his forehead. The Starshina crumpled to the ground.
Axel, 9mm glock in his hand, stepped over the dead Russian and looked over at Lin. Lin and his men stared back at Axel, uncertain of who he was or what he wanted. “Don’t worry, I’m not here for that oil drum. I brought you something.” Axel holstered his gun and walked away.
Lin nodded to his men, who climbed to their feet and followed Axel outside. They had to step over a dozen dead Russians on their way.
Outside they were momentarily blinded by the source of the bright light. It was the head lamps of Axel’s technicals. Most of the pick-up trucks had machine guns in their beds, but one’s bed was covered by a tarp. Axel pulled of the tarp like an artist unveiling a masterpiece.
Underneath were a dozen barrels of cooking oil.
Lieutenant Lin and his men stared at the barrels with uncertainty.
“You speak English?” Axel wondered. Lieutenant Lin nodded. “So you know what this is?”
“Cooking oil,” Lieutenant Lin confirmed.
Axel corrected him: “Bio-diesel.” Lin remained non-committal. “I figure you mst be pretty desperate for fuel if you’re willing to try and steal it out from under the noses of twenty Russian deserters.”
Lin still didn’t trust his savior. “How did you know?”
“I got sources.” Axel stepped away from the trucks. “Go ahead, it’s all yours.”
Lin didn’t move, suspecting a trap. “You’re the enemy.”
Axel laughed. “When’s the last time you had contact with PLA high command?” Lin didn’t respond, so Axel responded for him. “Months ago. Because they’re all dead. Nuked. The war’s over, Lieutenant Lin. ‘Cause there aren’t any armies left. Just people. Like you and me.” Axel paused to spit. “Besides,” he continued, “I was never in the army. I hate discipline.”
Lin remained cautious. “What do you want for it?”
Axel smiled. “See? We’re friends already. Bio-diesel’s a gift. Free and clear.”
Lin finally moved, stepping toward the truck.
“But…” Axel cautioned.
Lin stopped.
“I figure I did you a solid. Saved you from these assholes.” Axel waved to the dead bodies. "So maybe you could do me a solid in return. I hear you got tanks.”
“Maybe,” Lin replied.
“Well I hope so. ‘Cause you see, I got myself a little tank problem.”
Hours later Axel’s convoy was motoring over the vast plains of Nebraska. There was plenty of wild grass as far as the eye could see. And the eye could see pretty far, because there were very few trees and the ground was perfectly flat.
Poking his head out the lead Humvee, binoculars plastered to his face, was Lieutenant Lin. He raised his arm and waved it in a circle. The Humvee slowed and the technicals fell in behind it. Lin opened the Humvee’s door and the rest of his men jumped down from the backs of their various vehicles. They grabbed the drums of cooking oil and begun to hump them by hand through the tall grass. Axel called to Lin from the Humvee. “Don’t you want us to take you all the way?”
Lieutenant Lin yelled back without turning around. “We’re already here!” Lin leaned over and started pulling at something in the grass. His men did the same. As they hoisted and pulled, Axel and his men realized that they were pulling camouflaged nets. And, more importantly, the nets were covering three Type 99 Chinese tanks. The war machines were hidden in specially prepared ditches, invisible even only ten feet away. The men finished removing the nets and began to pump the bio-diesel into the three separate fuel tanks.
Axel watched, both impressed and skeptical. “How long they been here?”
“Since the Final Offensive. Didn’t receive any orders to move them. And even if we did, we wouldn’t have had the fuel.”
“They still run?”
Lin yelled something in Chinese. One of his men, who had climbed into a driver’s hatch, yelled back. Everyone moved cautiously away from the tank. The engine turned over and started to run. Lin wrinkled his nose. “Smells like french fries.”
The driver put the tank in gear and its tracks churned in the soft soil. The Type 99 gracefully climbed up out of the ditch, revealing the pride of the People’s Liberation Army: a 58 ton armored behemoth painted in camouflage green with Lin’s unit insignia.
“Can it kill an Abrams?” Axel asked.
Lin barked an order and the gunner spun the turret. Kaboom! Kaboom! Kaboom! Kaboom! The 125mm main gun fired off a series of four shots in less than thirty seconds. “Autoloader fires every five seconds,” Lin explained with pride. “Can an Abrams do that?”
Axel smiled. “Lieutenant Lin, I think this is the beginning of a beautiful friendship.