Three-quarters of a mile away behind a small dirt mound, Paul arched his neck and looked up at the lines in the sky. “That’s crazy,” he said.
“So many destroyed vehicles,” Romo said.
Paul laughed. Romo laughed. Then the two LRSU commandos slapped and pummeled each other on the back.
“We’re going to win this war,” Paul said. “We’re going to free our country yet.”
“We’re going to kill them, my friend,” Romo said. “We’re going to butcher every one of the invading scum.”
The two men went back to scanning the burning hulks. One vehicle lay on its side, with a huge rent in it like a great dragon, with a glowing orange from the guts where the inner fire was stored. Some Kaisers remained, maybe a tenth that had been there a scant few minutes before.
“Will they keep coming?” Romo asked.
“I’m betting not,” Paul said.
He proved right. The remaining Kaisers retreated. A few moments later, the Sigrids followed. There would be no GD thrust to smash the approaching American-Canadian force. It looked like the siege of Montreal was about to begin.
MONTREAL, QUEBEC
General Mansfeld sat at his deck in his inner sanctum. He had his elbows on the wood and ran his fingers through his hair. How could this have happened?
He had witnessed the destruction of his dreams with missiles from the heavens. Twice now, American technology had snatched victory from his hands.
“No,” he said.
A loaded pistol sat on the desk before him. He knew what he should do. It was obvious. He had lost. The campaign was lost. The Americans drove to Montreal. He had already given the orders to set up the defensive lines starting at Saint-Jean-sur-Richelieu. The Americans couldn’t race in, but that didn’t matter now. Their artillery could sweep the harbors. He had needed to smash them, drive them back out of long-range artillery distances. Then he could have—
“No,” he whispered.
Mansfeld dropped his right hand onto the metal. He picked up the gun and stared at it.
Put the barrel against your head and pull the trigger
. It would be easy. Surely, Kleist would summon him home. The Chancellor would give him to the torturers. That was no way for the greatest general in history to die.
Mansfeld shook his head sadly at his undeserved fate. He put the barrel against his temple. Others had failed him at the critical moments. Yet the history books would say that he lost. It was a gross injustice. Everything had been so plain to him. He had seen how to defeat these contemptible Americans.
“They were lucky,” Mansfeld whispered.
His hand trembled, and he willed himself to pull the trigger.
“No,” he whispered. With a clunk, he set the gun on the desk. He couldn’t do it.
He heard footsteps approaching.
Quickly, Mansfeld picked up the gun and opened a drawer, setting it inside. He closed the drawer and the door opened.
He didn’t even have the courtesy to knock
.
Mansfeld wondered if it would be Holk or Zeller. He knew which general he would pick. How wise would Kleist prove?
The door swung open all the way. Pudgy General Holk looked in with a scowl. Big GD secret service agents stood behind him.
“General Mansfeld,” Holk said.
Kleist had picked the wrong man. Mansfeld almost chuckled. Zeller was the better general, but Holk had spent more time on the defense during this campaign. It didn’t matter. Nothing mattered now.
“You are under arrest,” Holk said.
Mansfeld nodded. He had known this was coming. Maybe it still wasn’t too late. Yet the thought of opening the drawer, grabbing the gun in time and getting the barrel to his temple, and then not shooting himself… No, he could not embarrass himself in front of Holk like that. He would take his chances and hope for nonexistent mercy from Kleist.
He had been wrong too much lately. Maybe Kleist handing him over to the torturers would also prove to be wrong.
“These men will take you back to Berlin,” Holk said.
Mansfeld noticed the general didn’t appear remorseful at all. The man was an ingrate. He should have sacked this pathetic general when he had the chance.
The secret service men strode to him.
Mansfeld stood. He didn’t bother saluting the pig Holk. The man was going to lose badly and possibly be captured. It was time to leave this failed enterprise. He was done with it.
-17-
Victory
BERLIN, PRUSSIA
John Red Cloud did pushups in an empty apartment on the fifth floor of Krupp Tower. He had been here for weeks on end. His food supply had dangerously dwindled and boredom threatened him with madness.
He’d endured as only a hormagaunt on the death path could. His ability to wait bordered on the supernatural. Now a terrible question throbbed in his mind.
On the radio, he had listened to the battle of Montreal and the swift American victory. That meant the rest of the GD Expeditionary Force would quickly lack munitions, food, gas—all the items needed to run a modern military. Ninety percent of the Expeditionary Force was out of supply. It would just be a matter of time now before the Americans starved them into surrender as they’d starved Chinese Third Front into submission this winter.
Clearly, the fight was nearly over. Now it was simply a matter of mopping up various defensive positions. Quebec would not remain in the German Dominion. Therefore, the Algonquian people would not have enjoyed true freedom under the GD no matter what the Germans had decided.
Did that mean he no longer needed to kill Kleist?
Red Cloud scowled as he forced out another rep. He kept fit and nimble in the empty apartment, even though he had not left it for weeks. Foch had given him the equipment he needed—an RPG and a heavy 12.7mm machine gun.
For this grave task, a sniper rifle was too chancy. Since John had told Foch he was willing to trade his life for Kleist’s, the French had given him proper killing tools to make certain the first part of the bargain happened.
Red Cloud sat down on the floor. He picked up a towel. It was crusted and stiff from too much use. Despite that, he wiped sweat from his forehead. Why trade a life for a life if killing Kleist no longer mattered to the war, to the GD occupation?
Yet that wasn’t the only question. He had stepped onto the death path. From his understanding, one could not step off such a path. He had committed himself. He had used the power of the death path to reach this place. He had murdered innocent men. To walk away now was blasphemy. The power of the path would recoil upon him and he would die anyway, in dishonor.
Red Cloud became glum. He was a marked man. He had taken the curse of death on himself in order to kill one particular man.
His smart phone beeped.
With a fluid motion, he reached the phone. A text waited for him. It was three words long:
The third car
.
The moment had finally arrived. It caused his head to throb and his eyes to water. He rubbed them until they were clear. Then he read the text again. After he finished, he dropped the phone on the floor. The thing hit and the screen cracked. It didn’t matter. Nothing mattered now. Nothing would ever matter again for him.
A feeling of cold calm swept over Red Cloud. Chancellor Kleist roared through Berlin in a motorcade. This time, Foch had discovered it in time. Kleist feared assassination. Therefore, he took extraordinary precautions to thwart attempts. He had dummy cars and many look-alike targets, and he seldom let anyone know the route he would take.
The Chancellor would be in the third car. Naturally, it was a heavily armored car. It had defenses.
Red Cloud shook his head. Nothing mattered but the execution of the plan. He must concentrate.
He went to the fifth story window and opened it. A cool breeze blew in. He picked up the RPG and readied it. Then he stepped to the window. He did not poke the RPG through the opening. He hung back. He didn’t want security personnel to see him too soon.
John rubbed his eyes as he waited. The backblast from the rocket propellant would likely start a fire in here. That didn’t matter either. No, nothing mattered now but the task. This was it. The German Dominion had insulted the Algonquian people. Retribution was finally at hand.
A helo waited nearby. John could hear the
whomp-whomp-whomp
of its blades. It was an attack craft. Several hovered above in order to protect the Chancellor. Their presence said, “If you attack Kleist you will die.”
A bleak smile twisted onto John’s lips. He would die. Yes. He would—
The smart phone beeped.
John gripped the RPG handles, bent his head and aimed down at the street. The first car of the motorcade appeared. He waited. The second came into view. Finally, the third and fourth came in quick succession. Usually, Kleist traveled with twelve cars.
The third car—John followed the car. As if the RPG was a shotgun and he hunted crows, he started from behind, swept over the vehicle and pulled the trigger.
The shaped-charge grenade leaped out, and the rocket roared to life. The missile flashed down at the street.
In the empty apartment, the backblast licked fire onto the wall. It ignited and began to crackle with fierce life.
Red Cloud threw the empty launching tube from him. He ignored the fire. Instead, he dragged the heavy machine gun into position.
On the street below an explosion blasted the front hood of the third car. It halted as others swerved and brakes screeched. One came to rest on the left side. Doors opened on the third car, but the new car blocked them from opening much. The car on the other side squealed its tires so smoke billowed. It shot away, allowing the right-side doors to open, which they most certainly did, as men and women boiled outside.
John pulled the trigger, and the 12.7mm machine gun began hosing bullets. He smiled widely. The bullets punched holes into the top of the third car. Kleist was tricky. He might be huddling in there, letting the others act as bait. But in case Kleist wasn’t that cagey, John aimed for the people scrambling out of the car. The heavy bullets tore into them so flesh and blood sprayed. The women weren’t Kleist…unless the Chancellor wore a disguise. Red Cloud shot them all. They tumbled onto the cement, and he kept firing into them, riddling their bodies, making them jerk and twist.
He heard the helo again, but Red Cloud never looked up at it. He didn’t care about it in the slightest. He concentrated on his task, working over the car one more time. He had to make sure that the trade, the bargain, succeeded.
Missiles whooshed nearby in the air.
John looked up now. Two missiles streaked straight at his window.
“I am an Algonquin,” he said. “I have avenged my people.”
The missiles entered the window, the empty room, and exploded, killing John Red Cloud and demolishing much of the fifth floor of Krupp Tower.
DODGE CITY, KANSAS
Father and son Higgins walked outside the city limits. This was the present location of the 1st Behemoth Regiment. The 2nd had finally begun to take shape, filled by the factory in Detroit.
“They called for you again,” Stan Higgins told his son.
“I don’t want to get you in trouble,” Jake said. “Maybe I should leave.” They’d talked about this plenty of times already.
Stan laughed the way a wolf might. “I don’t care about trouble if it means defending my son. What good is it fighting for your country if the government steals your children? No. If my government wants my service, it had better have some regard for the things I love. If my government hates the things I cherish, then I will no longer fight for them but actively work against the scoundrels. It’s my country I love, not the people in power.”
“You’d better not let any Homeland Security people hear you say that,” Jake said.
Stan’s eyes narrowed. “There may come a time soon when they better start telling me some good things—if they want to keep living.”
Jake took a deep breath. His dad had been angry for some time now. Maybe he shouldn’t have told him the whole story.
“Yeah, I know what you mean,” Jake said. “Sometimes I wonder about the people in power.”
“Just sometimes?” Stan asked. “I wonder about it all the time.” He lightly punched his son on the shoulder. “Let me tell you a truth about people, about men and women.
Power corrupts. Absolute power corrupts absolutely
.”
“Who said that?” Jake asked.
“A British nobleman, Lord Acton,” Stan said.
“Hmm, I think he might be right.”
“History proves that he is.”
Jake grinned at his dad. “History, huh?”
“That’s right. Do you have a problem with that?”
“Does history show anything like happened with us against the GD?”
Stan became thoughtful.
So did Jake. He had been following the war news closely. Unit after unit of the Expeditionary Force had begun surrendering. The conquest of Montreal had kicked the props out from under the resisting armies. Give it a few more weeks, and General Alan could march up the Saint Lawrence River and take the rest of the rebellious Quebecers. America and Canada had done it, or almost done it. They had knocked one of their opponents off the continent. He wondered if Kleist’s assassination would take the GD all the way out of the war, too.
Jake glanced at this dad. “No historical insights?” he asked.
“I’ve been studying the campaign.”
“I bet,” Jake said with a laugh. That was an understatement. His dad lived for this kind of stuff. It was candy to him.
“What I find interesting were the masses of GD drones, particularly the Sigrids.”
“Not the Kaiser tanks?” asked Jake.
Stan Higgins had that distracted look in his eyes. “The European birthrate just couldn’t compete with the Chinese. The GD doesn’t have enough young people to field truly vast armies. Their answer was the remote-controlled drones, and the Kaisers, too. The number of Sigrids, however, was and is truly staggering.”
Jake waited.
Stan glanced at his son. “It does remind me of a historical parallel.”
“Fire away,” Jake said. “Let’s hear it.”
“Sometimes armies try to win the cheap way,” Stan said. “They search for a weapons system of very narrow application. That usually makes it much more inexpensive. Then they mass produce the new weapon and tell themselves it will change the way men fight wars. The Egyptians of 1973 during the October War had a brand-new thing, Sagger anti-tank missiles. They cost pennies compared to expensive tanks. During the first days of battle, small numbers of Israeli tankers attacked the Egyptians who had crossed the Suez Canal. Egyptian infantrymen with Sagger joystick-controlled, wire-guided missiles slaughtered those few tanks. For a time, everyone thought the day of the tank had ended. Cheap missiles would drive them from the field of battle.”
“They didn’t?” Jake asked.
Stan shook his head. “The missiles worked on a very narrow basis, suited for the actions near the Suez Canal. Once the Israelis used their tanks in a proper manner—with infantry support and heavy machine gun suppressing fire—they swept aside the Sagger teams. In fact, soon they crossed the canal themselves and encircled an entire Egyptian army in Egypt.”
“How’s that like what happened here to us?” Jake asked.
“The GD tried to win on the cheap using a narrowly utilized weapons system,” Stan said.
“The Sigrids are cheap?”
“Cheaper than enlisting flesh and blood soldiers,” Stan said. “Maybe as bad, the Sigrids quickly reached their culminating point of success.”
“Come again?” Jake asked.
“Let me explain it like this,” Stan Higgins said in “Professor” mode. “A specialized machine or weapon often costs less than a broad-based weapon. In the 1870s, the newly invented self-propelled torpedoes were married to fast steamboats as launching platforms. The battleships of the time were very expensive and the measure of a nation’s naval power. The battleships had long-barreled guns of large caliber that could not be depressed low enough to destroy the torpedo boats when they moved at night and came in at close range. At that time, the battleships mainly had armored the decks and superstructures. Below the waterline, they were exposed to the new torpedo.
“Many people then reached the ‘obvious’ conclusion. The day of the battleship had ended as the torpedo boats took over. A man named Jeune Ecole heavily influenced French naval policy in that regard. From 1877 to 1903, the French built 370
torpilleurs
.”
Jake must have looked confused.
“That was the French name for the torpedo boats,” Stan said.
“Oh.”
“Now, the torpedo boats were effective against the old-style battleships,” Stan said. “But the very effectiveness caused those boats to reach their culminating point of success quickly.”
“What’s that mean in English?” Jake asked.
Stan grinned. “It means the old school navy people changed the way they built battleships. They put searchlights on the big ships to spot the torpedo boats at night, added smaller caliber, quick-firing guns to kill them and had sealed bilges built below the waterline to lessen the effectiveness of a torpedo’s hit. In harbor, they draped heavy steel nets over the side. They also created a new kind of warship, the ‘torpedo-boat destroyer’ or as it was soon known, a destroyer. In other words, they negated the torpedo boats’ strengths. Because they were such a narrow weapons system, their importance quickly dwindled. That meant those who had built too many torpedo boats at the expense of battleships lost out in the naval competition.”