“I understand your words,” Romo said. “But where are we paddling to? I don’t see any submarine coming to our rescue.”
Paul glanced at his open compass. “We’re paddling for a rendezvous point. If we quit now, it’s a certainly that we’ll never reach it. But if we do paddle, there is always a chance we’ll make it.”
Romo sighed, and almost as an afterthought, he picked up his paddle. “I killed my woman, and through it I made a bargain with the Devil. He lets me be as I bring him more sacrifices. You, my friend, cherish your life because you have your woman and your son, and it gives your heart such fierce strength that the Devil doesn’t yet have the power to destroy you. Which of us made the better bargain?” Romo shrugged. “Yes, let us row and see if we can cheat the hangman one more time.”
“Good idea,” Paul said.
The two LRSU men dug their paddles into the choppy water, and once more, the dinghy surged toward the New York shore. The race was on, and the hovercraft had all the advantages.
GDN
GALAHAD 3/C/1
Lieutenant Teddy Smith out of London piloted the Galahad 3C1 hover. The five machines of C Troop had spread out in a fan formation. Their number one machine—his—was on the farthest left of the formation.
The Galahad hovers were unique to the German Dominion military. They were fast, two-man craft, used as gadflies on any level terrain: plains, sea or ice. The commander piloted the craft, and most in the GD referred to him as a hover jockey. The other crew member was the gunner.
Sergeant Holloway had left his station and opened the outer hatch. His torso stuck out as he used high-powered binoculars to search for a boat full of enemy commandos.
Giant fans supplied the Galahad with lifting power. The machine boasted an armored skirt, an autoloading 76mm cannon firing rocket-assisted shells. It also had a 12.7mm machine gun for anti-infantry use. That made it similar to the Chinese hovers. The difference was in the smaller size, the advanced electronic gear and high-speed computers assisting in maneuver and mobile firing. The Galahads boasted greater speed than similar Chinese models, but much less armor.
Speed was the Galahad’s virtue, and aggressive tactics performed by bold young men.
Lieutenant Smith had the famous English courage. It had once allowed the tiny country to rule an inordinate amount of the world just a little over a century and a half ago. Smith knew that Holloway had eyes like a seagull hunting for scraps. If the Americans were near, the sergeant would spot them.
At that moment, a
ping
alerted Smith, a new sound for him. The noise came from just under the screen. Their craft had a new addition: sonar. Like old American destroyers, they had a towed array to put the sonar far away from the noisy fans. Its main purpose was in locating mines, torpedoes and other underwater devices. They had been practicing over the water much more lately.
“Hello,” Smith said. He studied the sonar. He wasn’t seeing a metal object. Lieutenant Smith snapped his fingers. He’d read a GDN report three weeks ago. The Americans used carbon fiber submersibles. Could the Americans have stationed such a submersible in Lake Ontario? By the sonar-pings he was picking up, the answer must be yes.
“Think you can hide from a Jack Tar, do you? I’m thinking not.” Smith leaned toward the hatch and the pair of legs standing in plain sight.
“Sergeant!” he shouted.
Holloway ducked down. The man’s brown hair was blown back on his head.
“See that?” Smith asked, pointing at the sonar screen.
Holloway’s gaze took in the images, and he nodded.
Smith gave him the object’s coordinates. “Search in that direction and I’ll think you’ll find a small boat nearby.”
“Do you actually think we can take out a submarine?” Holloway asked.
Smith shook his head. “We won’t have to.” He picked up a microphone. “Our sauerkraut commander gave us air cover, remember? I’ll let the planes destroy the submarine while I call Johnny to bring in the rest of the troop.”
“Good thinking, Lieutenant.”
“Find those commandos,” Smith said. “We don’t want to lose them.” He chuckled dryly. “Now that we know where this sneaky bastard of a submersible is hiding, we’ll play the game to our tune.”
“Roger that,” Holloway said, giving a salute in the tight confines of the hover compartment before poking his torso back outside.
OTTAWA, ONTARIO
“General,” a captain said.
Walther Mansfeld sat outside on a fourth-story veranda, with his legs crossed as he smoked a cigarette. It was pretty out here in his immediate vicinity, with red, yellow and purple tulips. A cool breeze blew over devastated Ottawa, the captured capital of Canada. The tallest buildings were shells now, many with only one side. The Canadians had fought stubbornly here a few weeks ago, but had finally run out of ammunition and food. Those soldiers now languished in a prisoner of war camp in Newfoundland.
Several other officers sat at glass tables, with uniformed young women acting as waitresses. The soft murmuring from the tables continued even as the captain waited before his commanding general.
Mansfeld drew a deep breath of cigarette smoke into his lungs. Normally, he didn’t indulge. It was a vulgar habit and the nicotine overstimulated his mind. The commando attack behind the lines in Toronto troubled him. Right now he had a decisive edge over the Americans, but if they ever learned to jam enough drones well enough—he needed to begin reconfiguring the operational strategy, given better American electronic warfare. He had a feeling the Americans would win this little commando game this round. The optimum reconfiguration would include even greater speed of attack. The longer the campaign lasted, the more likely became the possibility of the Americans gleaning the information or components they needed to begin serious drone jamming.
The captain cleared his throat, and he moved nervously up and down on his feet.
First mashing out the half-smoked cigarette, Mansfeld looked up and said, “Yes?”
“The hover troop has spotted a submersible, General,” the captain said.
“Interesting,” Mansfeld said. He hadn’t expected that.
“We have three UAVs on task,” the captain said.
“Call in fighter-bombers,” Mansfeld said. “Destroy the submersible and capture the commandos. I want to discover what they know.”
The captain saluted and hurried back to the operations center.
Mansfeld glanced at the crushed cigarette, with smoke curling from the mashed end. He must nip this in the bud, and Army Group A must leap forward and capture Detroit, sealing the Southern Ontario Peninsula from the Americans. Then he would unleash the real attack and catch the enemy with their trousers around their ankles.
USS
KIOWA
“Do you think they know we’re down here?” asked the first mate, Sulu Khan.
Captain Darius Green rested his big hands on either side of the screen. It showed ships in fuzzy red or blue shapes that pulsated as they moved. Deep scowl lines showed on his forehead. Two hovers waited out there, a little outside the range of his modified Javelins. If he surfaced, the hovers could swoop in fast.
“If they know we’re here,” Sulu said, “there might be more of them on their way. We have four missiles and that’s it, Captain.”
“They don’t know we’re down here,” Darius said. A hover wasn’t a destroyer or even an advanced patrol boat. Would a GD hover have underwater detection gear? It seemed unlikely.
Darius noticed Sulu glancing at him. Sweat beaded the small man’s forehead.
“How do you
know
they don’t know, sir?”
Darius grinned tightly. “What’s our boat made of?” he asked.
“Uh, carbon fiber, sir,” Sulu said.
“They can’t see carbon fiber on sonar or radar.”
“You don’t know that.”
“Our side couldn’t see us,” Darius said.
Sulu laughed weakly. “Hello, Captain. Where have you been the last few weeks? These Germans—”
Darius slapped one of his big hands against the console. “Keep a civil tongue in your head, mister, or I’ll make you wish that you had.”
Sulu gulped nervously before bobbing his head. “Yes Captain.”
“They don’t know we’re here,” Darius told him. “They must see the dinghy.”
“Uh…can I ask a question?”
Darius glanced at the little man.
“If the German can see the dinghy, why aren’t they swooping in to capture them?”
Darius rubbed his chin. He could reach the commandos in minutes. He hadn’t done so yet because those two hovers troubled him. Were the hovers waiting for backup?
“We don’t have a choice,” Darius finally said. “We’re surfacing and picking up the cargo.”
Sulu glanced at him sidelong, hesitating before saying: “I hope you know what you’re doing, Captain.”
“If you have any doubts, pray to Allah,” Darius said.
“Is that Navy regulations, sir?”
Darius sneered at Sulu. He was in the white man’s Navy, and he listened to most of the orders given him. But no man or woman could order or enforce the order for him to stop praying to Allah. There were some things outside the bounds of political entities or military law. They could task his body, but not his soul, never his soul.
GDN
GALAHAD 3/C/1
“They’re making their play,” Smith said, as he watched the sonar.
Holloway sat in his gunner’s chair to the right, behind and above Smith. The gunner controlled both the 76mm cannon and the heavy machine gun.
Smith glanced back at his sergeant, grinning. “We have them.”
Holloway nodded tightly.
Smith faced forward again. The sergeant was good with his weapons, but the man was wound too tightly for comfort’s sake. It was as if they played rugby for his sister’s virginity. Holloway never smiled during action and said even less.
Smith picked up the microphone and alerted the operators controlling the UAVs. One patrolled almost overhead. The second sped here and the third was minutes away. There were fighter-bombers coming, too, but Smith doubted they would need the bigger planes. After switching off the UAV channel, he called his mates. The rest of the troop—the other three hovers—raced across the waves to join the two of them stationed here.
First wiping the palms of his hands across his trousers, Smith re-gripped the controls. The Galahads used speed, as they had little armor and no beehive flechettes to knock down incoming missiles or shells like the tanks did or the overrated Kaisers. The hovers could spew anti-radar packets and had a nifty jammer, but mainly they had the world’s best jockeys and the nimblest craft in any military.
“There’s a good fellow,” Smith said under his breath. “Get ready for the show.”
LAKE ONTARIO
Paul lay flat in the bobbing dinghy, with his binoculars trained on the nearest hovercraft.
“They’re still out there,” Paul said.
“I see the bird,” Romo said.
Paul glanced at him. The assassin lay on his back, with his binoculars aimed at the sky.
“L-look,” Hans stuttered in English.
Paul and Romo glanced at their captive and then stared where he looked. Water stirred at the spot.
Romo cursed in Spanish.
Paul’s eyes widened. A blue-green submersible pushed out of the water, surfacing fifty feet away from them.
“I hope it’s ours,” Romo said.
“It is,” Paul said. “See the little flag over there?” An American flag had been painted on the craft.
“You have good eyesight for an old man,” Romo said.
A hatch opened on the submersible, and a man with a bloody bandage popped up. He waved at them, and shouted across the water.
Before answering, Paul resumed his former position and trained the binoculars on the hovers. They still haven’t moved. Could it be the hovers didn’t see them? No. He doubted that. The GD invaders played their own game.
“It’s coming,” Romo said.
Paul craned his neck, staring up into the sky. He looked in the general direction where Romo trained the binoculars. He saw it at the same instant he heard the distant whine. With his own binoculars, Paul looked up. A knot tightened in his gut. The UAV carried bombs or torpedoes.
Dropping the binoculars, pitching them a little too hard, Paul heard them plop. Damnit, he’d thrown them overboard. The binoculars sank out of view. He’d never get those pair back. Paul lunged and grabbed a GD portable antiair missile. While on his belly, he flipped open the control panel.
“It’s diving at us,” Romo said, with his binoculars still trained on it.
Paul twisted around and surged up to his knees. The rubber dinghy was an unstable platform and wobbled. Paul fought for balance and his fingers loosened their grip. If the missile went overboard like his binoculars…they’d never get out of his this one alive.
Their captive made gobbling noises.
The German understood their danger. Paul didn’t have time to shrug or worry. His fought for his balance, almost let go of the trigger, but brought the wobbling dinghy under enough control to stabilize himself. He settled the portable tube onto his right shoulder. The GD version was a lot like the latest Blowdart. First glancing back, Paul shifted his position a little. He had to make sure the back-blast didn’t destroy the rubber boat or flame one of them.