The cigarette dangling from the man’s mouth smoldered. He stopped before Red Cloud and studied him. “You are not Basque,” the man said in French, speaking crisply.
John shook his head.
“The Basque died in Halifax,” the Frenchman said. “Someone cut his throat.”
“I did,” John said.
“To gain his ID, I presume.”
“Yes.”
“You killed two CID men several days ago?”
“I left them in the BMW.”
“You’ve left quite a trail of death,” the Frenchman said. “And you frightened my agent’s mother. Neither he nor I appreciate that.”
“I understand.”
Ashes fell from the Frenchman’s cigarette, landing on the carpet and beginning to smolder. He stepped on the spot and turned his foot. Then he took the cigarette from his mouth and dropped it onto the coffee table. While unbuttoning his coat, the small man sat in the sofa chair. He never took his eyes off Red Cloud.
“You are an Indian,” the man said.
“Algonquin.”
“Call me Mr. Foch,” the man said.
“John Red Cloud.”
Foch did not hold out his hand. Since this was his land, John followed the man’s example and did not hold out his either.
“Why did you come here, John Red Cloud? Why did you pester my agent’s mother?”
John glanced at the three Serbians.
“They understand nothing of what we say,” Foch told him. “But if I snap my fingers, they will kill you without hesitation. Perhaps I should tell you, I am inclined toward snapping my fingers. Everything I know about you so far smells of desperation and stupidity. I like dealing with neither.”
“I am on a quest,” John said. “I have come to Europe to kill Chancellor Kleist.”
Foch laughed softly. “That is ridiculous.”
“It is the truth. I am on a quest.”
While shaking his head, Foch asked, “Why would you come to a French secret service agent’s house then? It does not make sense.”
“The French hate the Germans, is that not so?” John asked.
“Ridiculous,” Foch said. He stood up, beginning to button his coat with one hand.
John stood too.
The three Serbians also stood, and they readied their weapons.
Once more, Foch studied Red Cloud. “I am to believe you truly killed the Basque for his ID?”
“The German Dominion offered my people their freedom,” John said. “Because of that, I helped the GD sway the Quebecers.”
“Sway how?” Foch asked.
“By killing rebel Quebecers who wished for Chinese aid,” John said.
“Ah. I see. This is more ridiculous by the moment. Go on.”
“When the time came for the Dominion to grant us our freedom,” John said, “the GD ambassador told me to go away. He insulted us and reneged on his promises.”
“Hmm, I recall something about our ambassador dying several months ago in Quebec.”
“I killed him,” John said. “That was my declaration of war against the GD.”
“That part makes sense at least. The ambassador was the Dominion representative. He insulted you—your people—and you killed him, insulting the GD. Still, I fail to see why you would come to us. We are part of the Dominion.”
“Do you want Kleist to succeed in his endeavors, cementing German dominance over Europe, over the world?”
Foch stared at Red Cloud until he said, “The Expeditionary Force is winning. If Kleist dies, nothing changes. Another like him will rise up.”
“You do not know that.”
“But I do,” Foch said. “No. We cannot help you. Neither can we let you go.”
Red Cloud grew tense, and there was a tightness under his heart, a sudden prick of pain. Perhaps it would be better to attack now and end the waiting.
Foch might have seen him tense, or seen something about Red Cloud to trouble him. “However…” the Frenchman said.
Red Cloud let his shoulder ease, and the pain under his heart receded.
“If something dramatic should happen to change the North American situation…” Foch said. “I will have to ponder your information. It is very odd, very strange.”
Red Cloud couldn’t think of anything wise or even pithy to say. He sat down. Once more, it was time to wait. He was willing to die, but he wanted to make his death worth something.
The small Frenchman nodded to the three Serbians and headed for the door. He exited the safe house and turned the key, locking it again.
The Serbians glanced at John.
He lay down on the sofa, closed his eyes and practiced patience one slow breath at a time.
NIAGARA PENINSULA
Jake crawled through the bomb-blasted, moonlike terrain. Behind him were coils of concertina wire and the deep trench system of the first American line of defense. Far above, a crow circled lazily. To his left, Charlie crawled through muddy ground, passing straight through a puddle. The veteran ground-pounder must figure it was safer to crawl through the muck then to go around. The longer one moved through no-man’s land the worse it was.
There were patches of dying, brown grass and long weeds here, but that was about it as far as vegetation went. Otherwise, there were shell holes, bloated, dead bodies, rusting drones and APCs and hordes of flies and mosquitoes. The annoying bugs made it a nightmare crawl.
Like the others, Jake wore camouflage fatigues and helmet, and plenty of mosquito-repellant. He clutched an RPG, and he kept his M16 with him. He slunk across the ground very slowly. This had to be about the stupidest, most harebrained scheme of all. It was murder. Once he found his spot, he was going to turn his weapon on Franks and kill the bastard before he died. Crawling out into no-man’s land was too much, and it had Jake seething with righteous indignation.
He wore face paint and he scanned the enemy trench system in the distance. The GD pricks had little black sticks in the ground: cameras or sensors of some kind.
At times, Jake watched the GD outposts so hard that it felt as if his eyes would bug out. The enemy system was different from the American trenches. For one thing, the Germans didn’t have any people in their first trench line. Automated systems watched, and they were highly effective.
A shot rang out, a militiaman shouted in pain, and one less newbie existed in the lieutenant’s penal platoon.
Out of the corner of his eye to the left, Jake noticed as the man slumped as if the air had just hissed out of him. The dead newbie had to be eighty yards away. At least the platoon was spread out. Still, wouldn’t the enemy have a computer system that realized a whole bunch of fools was crawling around out here?
“This is murder,” Charlie whispered.
“Don’t talk,” Jake whispered. “And for Pete’s sake, don’t move right now. Stay still. Give it time to rest.” He meant give the enemy system time to dull down. From observation, they knew that once the GD system fired a weapons system, it was much more likely to do it again really soon.
As if on cue, another shot rang out. This time, the targeted militiaman didn’t shout or yell. The bullet punctured his helmet and spilled his brains like jelly. He just stopped, end of reality that fast:
snap, snap
.
The enemy trench system was higher up than they were. It gave the GD yet another advantage. Hadn’t the Germans had that advantage in WWI, in the trench systems in France? His dad would have known the answer. Jake remembered something about the Germans being able to look down into the Allied trenches, at least most of the time.
For now, Jake remained motionless and it set his mind to whirling, thinking. He couldn’t believe he had survived this cockamamie penal screw-job for as long as he had. Franks had a death wish going for him, and higher command used the penal units for the dirtiest tasks.
As he lay still, Jake used to his eyes to scan the situation. Nearby, Charlie waited like a mannequin. One thing the penal screw-job had done was turn Charlie into a decent soldier. In this outfit, either you got good fast or you died. It had been that way in Russia during WWII against the Germans, at least in the early years of 1941 and ‘42. Corporal Lee had already been good at this. Jake’s two new best friends were survivors, and they’d become canny in many different ways.
“Can we move now?” Charlie whispered.
“Give it a full twenty minutes,” Jake whispered, “and don’t get antsy.”
A couple of minutes later, a fly buzzed near, and of course it landed on Jake’s cheek. He didn’t twitch a muscle and for sure he didn’t move up his hand to brush the fly away. He endured, and told himself he liked the feeling of the fly’s legs crawling over his skin. The thing crawled onto his eyelid. He wanted to roar curses and brush the fly away. He’d be dead if he did that, so Jake merely flicked his eyelid, and the creature buzzed away, to return soon and start the process all over again.
The minutes ticked by in agonizing slowness. Finally, Jake continued his crawling trek. Maybe he was the fly, and he crawled upon the Earth’s face. Naw, that was stupid. One thing was certain; he knew where he planned to go. There was a shell hole thirty yards away. It looked deep. Likely it had water in the bottom, as it had been raining on and off for several days.
Every night Jake took off his boots and socks and checked his feet. He dried them all the time and used the tip of his knife to scrape dirt from under his toenails. He told Charlie and Lee to dry theirs. Fungus had started to spread among the newbies, that and athlete’s foot. If your feet went, you were done, kaput. Was kaput anything like Kraut?
Jake sighed. The word was that the Krauts had landed in Rochester. That couldn’t be good. He wondered what his dad was doing now. How was his mother? He thought about his old buddies. Man, Denver seemed like a lifetime ago. The strip club…what had ever happened to the girl he’d talked with? She’d been a babe, all right.
Will I survive the war?
He didn’t see how. He didn’t see how America would, either.
We’re not the nation we used to be
. How could he help America once again become the land of freedom? First, they had to stop the Krauts and throw the Chinese and Brazilians back home. Then, eventually, the real, old-fashioned Americans needed to take care of those who wanted to enslave the rest of them.
Maybe once this is over it will be time for a civil war. The Davy Crocket Americans can set up their own country and the communist types can have their country, which won’t be America, but what the heck. It’s what they seem to want
.
Jake decided that as much as he wanted to, he couldn’t afford to use his last RPG to kill Dan Franks. The sergeant was a grade-A bastard. In Jake’s experience there was none worse. Franks deserved to die for the Americans he’d killed. The penal battalion militiamen were the real Americans, the kind who spoke up when those in power did something wrong.
For evil to triumph, all good men must do is to do nothing
. Some English theorist had said that a long time ago.
The statement told Jake several things. One, there were good men and there were evil men. Those who said otherwise were idiots. Those who said ideas and culture were relative and equal to each other didn’t know what they were talking about. Those who said people should accept everything as being equal to everything else were straight up fools, and America had been listening to the fools for far too long now. Why didn’t they listen to the Daniel Boone types? That’s why it had come to this. Having penal battalions was the socialist thinking of the schoolmen who wanted to brainwash the rest of America.
For evil to triumph, all good men must do is to do nothing
.
Jake had spoken up, and that’s why he was in a penal unit. America, America: what had happened to the land of the free and the home of the brave?
If I survive this, I’m going to change my country. I’m going to bring back Daniel Boone America. I’m going to fight to free her from the invaders, and then I’m going to fight to free her from the homegrown tyrants and their useful idiots
.
Thinking such thoughts made Jake feel better. Then enemy artillery opened up. There were loud, thunderous booms in the distance. Giant flashes told of big shells on the way.
“That can’t be good,” Charlie said.
No. That wasn’t good. Jake wanted to speed up, but he continued the slow crawl. If he moved too fast, he was dead. So slow and easy won the game.
The enemy shells howled over them. Big, car-sized hunks of metal tumbled overhead. None landed among them. Was that a miracle?
Who knew?
Finally, Jake gained his great reward: a waterlogged shell hole. With infinite patience taught from the school of hard knocks, Jake slipped into the watery hole. The yellow water came up to his hips. Soon Charlie and Lee joined him, making tiny splashes as they hunkered down in the hole with him.
“Now what?” Charlie asked. “We made it and the enemy is pulverizing our lines.”
Jake squinted. He knew which outposts on their trench line were dummies and which were heavy machine guns and rocket launchers. He was pretty sure he knew the one that Sergeant Franks hid behind. If he lifted the RGP…
Don’t be stupid,
Jake told himself.
Franks has been watching me the whole time. He expects me to shoot at him. If you want to kill the sergeant, you’ll have to let the Sigrids pass and attack Franks for you
.