That wasn’t a bad idea, but he kept it to himself.
The enemy artillery thundered. The shells hammered the ground, searching for puny men hiding in the Earth.
“Do you hear that?” Charlie asked ten minutes later.
“All I hear is pounding in my ears,” Jake said.
“Listen,” Charlie said.
“Get down,” Lee hissed. The corporal lowered himself into the yellow water until only his head remained above it. The RPG lay higher up beside the shell-hole lip. Lee must have figured he could pick it up later.
Jake still couldn’t hear a thing except for the artillery, but he followed Lee’s example. Charlie did likewise.
Soon enough, Jake heard the squealing, clanking noise of Sigrid drones. His stomach tightened and fear began to claw for his attention.
This is wrong. This is murder putting us out here. I should be safe in the trench. Why does it make any difference if we fire these from the front or the back of the machine?
“Sometimes,” Jake said. Then his mouth dried up. The words wouldn’t come now. He wanted to close his eyes and just slip his head underwater.
An AI Kaiser HK appeared in his limited gaze. The thing was monstrous, and it had a squat, ugly cannon. The 175mm gun was like a short stogie clenched between the teeth of a psychopath. The Kaiser had a host of antennae sprouting from its top. Jake had never been this close to one before. The monster had poking autocannons everywhere and heavy machine guns, and beehive flechette launchers up the ying-yang. The HK could murder them all, no sweat. The good guys didn’t have any heavy stuff, not out here in no-man’s land to take out Kaisers.
Behind the Kaiser appeared another, and then a third and a fourth.
Now we know where they enemy is making his main assault
.
“What do we do?” Charlie whispered.
Jake stared at his friend from Idaho. The look said one thing: keep your yap sewed shut, thank you oh-so much.
The three penal militiamen waited in their watery slop-hole. Three puny RPGs waited below the lip like metal sandbags.
Trying not to look directly at the things, Jake counted seven Kaisers. There were probably more. He could only see so much ducked down in his hole. It was like being mice as a herd of elephants walked by, or being antelope as a hungry pride of lions trotted past.
Treads clanked. Gun turrets rotated and barrels elevated. The ground shook and trembled as the big tanks passed. Bits of dirt from the edge of the shell hole plopped into the yellow water. It was like doom coming, and Jake feared the three of them would be buried alive as a Kaiser squashed them as he might squash a beetle with his heel.
In the distance, artillery boomed.
Is that theirs or ours?
The artillery ended up being American, and it was aimed at the Kaisers, meaning the shells screamed down onto no-man’s land.
We’re dead
, Jake thought.
It looks like our side is going to kill us after all
.
As the HKs rumbled past their shell hole—big, looming machines casting them in death-shadows—their flechettes hissed and machine guns chattered relentlessly. The autocannons chugged, spewing shells skyward. Jake saw a sight of a lifetime. The metal monsters knocked out the incoming artillery tank-killers. Black ink seemed to explode in the sky, violent art like an anti-Fourth of July. It was crazy-sick and it likely saved his life by keeping the Kaisers busy, even as shrapnel plunked and rained like hail into the soggy ground of no-man’s land.
What am I supposed to think about this?
Jake might have heard a man wail in agony. Had a piece of shrapnel killed the sucker? He had no way of finding out. His nostrils were just above the water so he could breathe.
Then a Kaiser clanked its way directly over their hole. The two sets of treads passed on either side of them. They saw up into the oily underbelly. Maybe they could have fired a rocket and done some damage. Each of them just stared upward in shock and disbelief.
The machine passed, and they breathed normally again. Shortly thereafter, the American artillery stopped firing. The Kaisers obliged and likewise quit shooting. Soon, the last Kaiser clanked out of no-man’s land and reached the first American trench.
A few of the newbies must have had no idea of the AI tanks’ deadliness. Jake couldn’t believe it. As the last Kaisers clanked away, several unthinking newbies put their RPGs on their shoulders, aimed and fired at the enemy backsides.
One Kaiser paused. Autocannons knocked down the shaped-charge grenades flying at it. It was like swatting fleas. Machine guns chattered for less than ten seconds. Every militiaman who’d fired a rocket died in no-man’s land.
Jake, Charlie and Lee continued to wait. They eased up from time to time and watched the Kaisers take out the few MDGs who remained at their posts in the forward trench.
Charlie looked at Jake as if he wanted to comment. Jake already knew what the potato-grower was going to say. “Where did all the MDG sergeants go?” Too few of them had remained at their posts.
Jake could have told him where the others had gone, and no, it hadn’t been their own artillery killing them. Most of the MDGs took off before the Kaisers reached the trench system. It was suicide to fight the un-killable, and the detention guards certainly weren’t suicidal.
After the Kaisers trundled out of sight, heading deeper into the American defensive system, Charlie finally spoke:
“Now what do we do?”
Jake was ready to tell him.
“Wait,” Lee said. “I hear more coming.”
Charlie turned pale. “Come on. That isn’t fair. Do you guys think that’s fair?”
“These sound smaller,” Jake said, who had his head cocked.
“Yes,” Lee agreed. “These are the Sigrids.”
“Wonderful,” Jake said.
“What are we going to do?” Charlie asked.
“For one thing,” Jake said. “We’re going to wait right here. The Kaisers left us alone. I doubt the Sigrids will look for us either.”
But Jake was wrong: not dead wrong, just wrong.
Five Sigrids squealed and clanked into view. Each of the smaller vehicles had its special tri-barrel, and they hosed bullets into the first penal militiaman, slamming an older man with white in his hair and blowing his head clean off.
“They know we’re here!” Jake shouted. “Fire! Fire at them!”
He didn’t know if anyone other than Charlie and Lee heard him. Maybe waiting out in no-man’s land had changed some of the newbies. Maybe watching Kaisers roll past had changed them.
Five Sigrids faced a host of RPG-armed Americans in shell holes.
“One, two, three, four, five!” Jake shouted.
“I’ll take one!” Charlie shouted.
“Two,” Lee said.
“Yeah, I’ll take out number five,” Jake said. “It’s the farthest away.” He didn’t want them to all shoot at the same machine.
Jake took a deep breath. “Ready?”
His two best friends nodded.
“Go,” Jake said.
Each militiaman slipped up and took his RPG. The five Sigrids hosed death at everything. Their tiny turrets swiveled and the tri-barrels rotated as they spit flames and lead. Despite their smaller size, the things were living mayhem.
With practiced skill, Jake readied his RPG, aimed it at the number five Sigrid and pulled the trigger. The shaped-charge grenade whooshed out. Beside him, Charlie and Lee’s rockets did the same thing. Other militiamen must have heard Jake’s instructions, because now all over the shell holes in no-man’s land, penal militiamen popped up and fired.
These weren’t guided missiles. These were aimed just like a rifle or a BB gun. Dozens of rockets flew at the Sigrids. Most of the missiles missed their targets, burning past to blow up harmlessly out of range of any enemy.
Charlie’s grenade hit, exploded and tore a tri-barrel into uselessness. Lee’s struck and launched the vehicle airborne enough to flip it so it landed on its rounded head. Jake’s destroyed a port, and the thing died. Three other HEAT grenades blasted the fourth Sigrid and obliterated it. That left one useable vehicle against the rest of the penal platoon.
“All together!” Jake shouted. His voice was loud like a PE coach. “We have to fire at it all together.”
Unfortunately, they were out of RPGs. All they had left were their regular M16s.
“Here we go,” Jake said. “One more time.”
“Yeah,” Charlie said.
Jake popped up. Charlie popped up and so did Lee. The three militiamen fired, hammering the armored hide with bullets. Then more militiamen did likewise: they were the last newbies left. Maybe the Sigrid had taken damage elsewhere. Who knew, who cared? The point today was that with all the bullets pinging off it, enough did enough damage that the drone trundled into a shell hole, tipped over and plunged in headfirst. Maybe they had shot out its camera lenses.
“Stop firing!” Jake roared.
As the sound of rifle fire died away, a feeling of awe worked over Jake, a chill of disbelief on the back of his neck. They’d done it. They had stopped the Sigrids or this small bunch anyway. Five lousy machines: were the Germans running out of them?
“Now what do we do?” Charlie asked.
Jake climbed out of the shell hole. The sound of combat came from farther down the line, but right now, their sector was quiet.
Water dripped from him and water soaked his clothes. It made his underwear ride up too high. Someone had to take over now that the lieutenant and his butt-boys had run off or died. It might as well be him. Lee was a corporal, but Jake had once been a sergeant.
“All right!” he shouted. “Let’s gather round, and follow me to the first trench. We need a plan if we’re going to make it back to our side.”
The others didn’t need any more urging. They hurried to him and he led them back to the overrun trench system.
-12-
The GD Armada
From
Military History: Past to Present
, by Vance Holbrook:
Invasion of Northeastern America, 2040
2040, July 11-16. Breakout
. From Rochester, Zeller sent two corps heading for Buffalo sixty-five miles to the southwest. A weakened Twelfth Army sped east on Interstate 90 for Syracuse seventy-five miles away. New York City was 250 miles away from Rochester.
In Southern Ontario, Holk’s heavy assaults against US Fifth Army in the Niagara Peninsula retarded its disengagement and threatened the army’s entrapment within the peninsula.
To the east in New York State, the lead elements of the coastal US XI Airmobile Corps set up screening battalions in Syracuse as the others rushed for the city. Meanwhile, the first Canadian units in Manitoba entrained for the long, roundabout trip to New York. All along the north of First Front—from the northern edge of Lake Ontario to the Quebec border and then stretching across northern New York, Vermont and New Hampshire—US Army Group New York and US Army Group New England strove to contain the GD Fromm Offensive.
The Americans sought to defend nearly everything of First Front, as they waited for the Canadian reinforcements. It was a matter of time. They had to stop the new GD blitz along New York Interstate 90 long enough for the Canadians to give them overwhelming numbers. Mansfeld, meanwhile, readied his masterstroke from the Atlantic Ocean.
The unsolvable crisis point for America had almost arrived.
INTERSTATE 90, NEW YORK
In the darkness, Paul Kavanagh slid his motorcycle on gravel, taking it down in a controlled crash. He flipped out of the bike at the last second, twisting his ankle—his foot wrenched against the gear-shifter. He tumbled, weapons rolling off him and body armor compressing against his torso. His helmeted head slammed against a rock, and he lay there for a moment, stunned.
Since leaving Ontario Beach Park and Rochester, Paul and Romo had been involved in one long running and losing gun battle against the enemy.
Paul heard a dirt bike engine, and a tire crunching gravel. From seemingly far away a voice asked, “Amigo, what happened to you?”
While groaning and blinking, Paul sat up. The stars shone above. In the distance and lower down, a dark GD tank column used Interstate 90. Littered along the freeway were blasted M1 tanks, overturned Bradley fighting vehicles and holed Strykers. The US 9th Armored Battalion had made a stand a half hour ago. The brave soldiers had slowed the GD advance, but not for long enough. Paul had watched some of the battle from the air in a stealth helo. He’d seen the battalion die a bitter death.
Now he and Romo used dirt bikes. They’d landed several miles back, wrestling their machines out of the helo. They were close enough to the interstate now that they were going to crawl nearer and wash the tank column with a laser designator. It was the best way to defeat GD ECM, guiding US missiles straight onto target.
“Are you hurt?” Romo asked.
Paul felt along his helmet as if feeling his head. The skull didn’t throb, but his eyes felt wobbly. Digging into a pocket, he came up with some painkillers, swallowing two capsules. He didn’t have time to hurt, and he certainty hadn’t had time for sleep these past thirty-six hours.
“I’m fine,” Paul said.
“Is that why I hear a frog in your throat?” Romo asked, shutting off his bike and lying it down. “We don’t dare ride any closer.”
There was scrub here on the rolling hill. A dark farmhouse and barn stood lower down in the distance and to the side. There was a long driveway to a dirt road near the freeway.
Romo crouched low beside Paul, and he scratched his left cheek, digging in his fingernails, making scraping noises. “I fear your country doesn’t have enough to win this one. The Germans are slicing through everything command can throw at them. The Germans are going to take Syracuse. If they do…” Romo stopped scratching because he shook his head.
Paul knew what he meant. Syracuse was the key to the campaign. North and south, Interstate 81 went through Syracuse. It was the supply lifeline for Army Group New York to the north. From Lake Ontario to Cornwall near the Quebec border, the Army Group held back mass GD forces. Without the lifeline, Army Group New York would have to fall back. That would open up Army Group New England’s western flank. If Army Group New England collapsed…
America had to hold Syracuse. The US XI Airmobile Corps stationed on the Atlantic coast rushed to the city. Now, though, nothing guarded the Atlantic seaboard. If the German Dominion used its amphibious force in Cuba to rush to New Jersey, New York or the Connecticut cost…it wouldn’t face anything but for a few policemen in their squad cars.
Paul knew it looked bad for their side, awful in fact. But it had been that way in California, too. It had been that way in Texas, in Kansas, in Colorado…
“This can’t go on,” Paul said.
“This is a sad day for your country, my friend,” Romo said. “I know the feeling. It’s too bad there is nowhere for you to run. When Mexico fell to the Chinese, I could come here. We can’t go to Canada, because soon there will not be a Canada.”
“Okay,” Paul said. “I’m ready. Let’s go.”
Romo held him back. “Let us wait a few more minutes. It doesn’t matter, anyway.”
Paul picked up the laser designator. It looked like a bulky, overheavy assault rifle. He shouldered the strap and tested his bad ankle. Pain flared, but he’d had worse. Slipping off the strap, he set down the designator, sat on the gravel and began tightening the laces of his combat boots. He was going to tie this sucker tight. His ankle could worry about swelling later.
“You’re driven,” Romo commented.
“I guess.” Paul stood, tested the ankle and could feel the tendons stretch until pain flared. It hurt, but he figured he could go another five hundred miles if he had to. If he didn’t, his wife would be a widow and maybe even some Chinese soldier’s play toy. He didn’t like the Chinese. He didn’t like the Brazilians, and he sure as hell didn’t like these Germans either.
“Come on,” Paul said.
Romo sighed, following him.
They worked down the hill, climbed through a barbed wire fence and moved through a pasture.
The enemy column moved in the darkness. No moon, just shining stars up there. Had the Germans planned that, too, attacking during the right phase of the moon? The Krauts were good at war. Maybe they always had been. That didn’t make him like them any better.
“This is a good spot,” Romo said.
“We’re close enough?” Paul asked.
“Si.”
Paul lay on the grass. So did Romo. Soon, Paul trained the designator on the distant column. “I got it,” he said.
Romo used a one-time pad, and he spoke with their SOCOM coordinator. In the dark, he told Paul, “They’re on their way.”
There weren’t too many cruise missiles left in stock in this part of the country. Their side had to use them wisely now. It wasn’t like the old days when America could pour hardware at a problem and make it disappear in a haze of countless explosions.
Enemy ECM was damn good, but it couldn’t beat an infrared laser painting the target. No, sir—
“Here they come,” Romo said.
Dark streaks slid through the sky. They homed in on the infrared signal, and the fireworks started. Enemy beehive flechettes, autocannons, antimissile rockets: they blasted munitions that raced to meet the onrushing American cruise missiles.
GD tech was the best. The counter fire took out all but one cruise missile. That one exploded and blasted a Ritter tank, flipped the mother and took out a second one. Paul heard the tremendous clangs as the 40-ton tank smashed back onto the ground. A grass fire started, and then a GD fuel carrier exploded. That made things blaze, and smaller vehicles raced away from the mayhem.
“Not enough cruise missiles to stop the column,” Romo said. “We scratched the enemy is all.”
“We need to start thinking about using nukes,” Paul said.
From on the ground, Romo glanced at him. “That wouldn’t be too good for you or me.”
“I guess not,” Paul said.
“Your wife wouldn’t like that either.”
“No…”
“But a nuclear warhead would be more effective,” Romo said. “You are right.”
“Let’s go—”
At that moment, hisses punctured the night, and a German shout alerted Paul and Romo that they were under attack by GD commandos.
Paul slithered around the other way, and he crawled on his hands and knees. He moved faster than a man had a right to move like that. Romo was right behind him. Shots kicked up gravel, bits of dirt around him. Then something slammed against Paul and knocked him face-first onto the ground.
He grunted, and his chin slid through dirt.
Romo cursed in Spanish, surged up and grabbed Paul Kavanagh under the armpits. Paul got his feet, and he ran.
A GD bullet had put him down. American body armor had saved his sorry hide. Now the two LRSU commandos sprinted uphill.
Romo panted, and he was on the horn with a shoulder microphone. They had a helo to pick them up. It was five minutes away.
“We’ll never make it up the hill,” Paul said.
“Si. I’ll take right.”
Romo let go of Paul, and the assassin dove right. Paul dove left, and the two commandos crawled through the grass. They hadn’t made it back to the barbed wire fence yet.
Paul stopped crawling and panted on the ground. Then he slid his sniper rifle from his back. GD Humvee utility vehicles roared this way from the interstate. That was bad. Paul chambered a round, and he used his night vision scope, hunting for the enemy sniper who had put him down.
It might have been nice to use his high-tech visor and computer ballistic hardware. It gave off too much an electronic signature, at least for GD tech to pick up. This old-fashioned night scope could do the trick just fine and without giving him away.
Paul took out a sound suppressor and quickly screwed it into place. Low sound was good. Less flash was better. With his elbows on the ground, Paul searched the darkness and the weeds out there. One bigger weed moved in the wrong direction, at least for the way the breeze blew. Paul studied the weed and the area around it, and he caught a dull color. Was that a GD helmet?
Paul concentrated, aimed and squeezed the trigger as he held his breath. The rifle butt slammed against his shoulder. He watched, and there wasn’t any spume of dirt. The dull patch twitched, though. It had a hole in it, and fluid leaked out.
Backing up, moving to a different position, he heard Romo’s sound suppressor. Then he heard the assassin curse softly.
GD rounds split the air. Three enemy commandos must be firing at them.
“Romo?” Paul said softly.
His blood brother made an owl sound.
That’s all he needed. From prone on the ground, Paul kept hunting, and he grinned, although he didn’t know he did. This was his kind of warfare. He could take these Germans. He could—
“Helo,” Romo said softly. The assassin had crawled near. “It’s going to pop up and give us a barrage. Get ready, my friend.”
Paul scanned the darkness. Then he heard the stealth machine. It would be better if they were on the other side of the hill. Then they could climb aboard and leave. He didn’t like the pilot risking himself and the machine. But everyone was going the extra mile tonight. They couldn’t let Syracuse fall. Everyone had to take a chance.
Paul heard the helo. He heard missiles launch, and he saw missiles and heavy machine gun fire erupt from the GD Humvees.
“Go!” Romo shouted.
Paul got up, and he saw Romo get up from ten feet away. They raced for the helo. Kavanagh was hardly aware of bulling between two strands of barbed wire. Clothes tore, a long, bloody gash spilled blood from his arm, but he was through the fence and sprinting uphill.
That’s when a GD missile slammed into the stealth helo and an explosion tore into the night, causing lines of light to etch across the darkness.
“No!” Paul shouted. He dove, but not fast enough. The concussion shoved him into the dirt. Then metal and other debris rained around him. One piece slashed across his body armor, and Kavanagh was surprised when he took another breath.
The helo crashed into the side of the rolling hill, and another grass fire blazed. This one would outline them for sure.
“Run!” Romo shouted. “Just run! Give it everything!”
Paul knew Romo was right. He got up, but he felt surreal. Blood dripped from his forearm and his back throbbed. His ankle hurt. A bullet whizzed past his ear.
Is this how I die?
He would miss Cheri, and he would miss Mikey growing up to be a man. Damn, he wanted to hold his wife again. He wanted to kiss her and tell her how much he loved her. This sucked. He hated this. Man, he wanted to live. He—
“No,” Paul Kavanagh said. He dropped onto his belly, and he took out his sniper rifle. It took him seconds to set himself and another second to find a GD bastard. The enemy commando must have decided he didn’t need to hide anymore. He had exposed himself for a better firing position, and took a shot.