“He wants to start something with me?” Jake slurred belligerently.
“Don’t let it worry you, cowboy,” the girl said. “He’s just doing his job. He’s making sure—oh, never mind.”
“What about you?” Jake asked. “You’re nice. Why are you working at a place like this?”
Instead of scowling, she looked away, almost in a shy manner. “I don’t have a choice,” she finally said. “My mom and dad…they’re gone.”
“Killed?” Jake asked.
“Yeah, I suppose that’s the word for it.”
“It’s a dirty thing, war,” Jake said. “I’m so sick of it.”
“You’d better watch what you say,” she told him, looking worried again. “Some of our customers belong to Homeland Security. You don’t want to let them hear anything seditious.”
“Seditious?” Jake asked. “Are you kidding me? I’ve bled a hundred times more blood than you just wiped away from my nose. I’ve killed invaders by the dozen. I’ll say exactly what I want to say, and nobody is going to tell me differently because I’m an American.”
“Shh,” she said, touching his forearm. “You’re talking too loudly.”
Jake found he liked her touch. He’d just seen her in the nude. Oh man, she had fantastic tits, great legs and an ass—
“You’re pretty,” he said. “I like you.”
“You seem like a sweet boy,” she said.
“Boy?” he said. “I’m—”
She squeezed his forearm. “You’re a man, I know. I saw how you looked at me.”
He nodded, and he wanted to grab her, kiss her and maybe even do more than that. He’d just seen her naked, hadn’t he? He grinned like an idiot until he recalled the square-shaped man.
“Is he mean to you?” Jake asked.
“What?” she asked.
“Mr. Square?”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about. But I’d better go. Maybe I’ll talk to you after work.”
She turned away, but Jake decided that she had touched him, why couldn’t he touch her? Fair was fair, right? So he grabbed her and pulled her back.
“You’re hurting me,” she said.
He let go. “Sorry. Sorry, I don’t mean to hurt you. Are you okay?”
“You can’t touch me. Frank will kick you out of here if you touch me.”
“Mr. Square, you mean?”
“Look,” she said.
Jake slapped his chest, and until this moment, he hadn’t gotten himself into any more trouble than a young man might in such a place. He opened his mouth, and he talked loudly again.
“I killed for our country. I shot and stabbed Chinese invaders so free Americans can speak their mind. I don’t mind saying what I think, do you know that?”
The girl stared at him.
Jake slapped his chest again. He liked her staring at him and he liked talking about something so close to his heart. He had spent time in the detention center because he had what his dad called moral courage. He dared to speak truth to power. America needed more of that. Sure, it was a fight to the death with the invaders, but freedom only came to those willing to pay the heavy cost.
“I’ll speak to who I want to speak to and I’ll say what I think about anything,” he said.
She nodded, with her eyes wide.
“Do you know that the President has made decrees that are against the law?” Jake asked.
She shook her head.
“Oh yeah,” Jake said. “But I figure Sims believes he’s doing right. It’s that other guy.”
“Who’s that?” she asked.
Jake made a face. He was so drunk his features felt numb, as if he moved cardboard. “Max Harold, the Director of Homeland Security, he’s a fascist. He doesn’t like letting Americans say what they want to. You know what…”
“What?” she asked.
“What’s your name?” Jake asked.
“Sheila.”
“Sheila,” Jake said—and suddenly he had to take a piss again. He really needed to go. He’d been drinking beer like a horse for hours upon hours. The need welled up and overpowered him. If he rushed into the restroom, Sheila would go elsewhere. He liked her. She even wanted to meet after work.
His drunken mind spun fast, and it came to him then in totally clarity what would impress a stripper.
“Watch this,” Jake said. He pulled out his wallet, fumbled to open it and fumbled even more to draw out his Militia card. It was like a driver’s license, but had two pictures instead of just one. It had his mug shot, and it showed in the opposite corner Director Max Harold of Homeland Security.
“What are you doing?” she asked. “I thought you said you don’t have any more money.”
“I’m giving you a visual of my feelings,” Jake said. He tossed the ID card onto the floor and zipped down his fly.
“Hey, you can’t do that,” she said.
Jake dug out his shlong and whipped it out. Normally, he couldn’t use a urinal if someone stood beside him using the next one. He needed to piss alone. But the beer poured through his system and his bladder was just plum full. Jake proceeded to urinate onto the Militia ID card, particularly on the director.
It caused a minor outrage in the strip joint. The square-shaped bouncer hurried near. Sheila backed away and looked at Jake in horror, while a large man with red eyes and a redder nose took out a voice recorder. He spoke into it before marching near.
“Hey,” Jake said. “Unhand me.”
The bouncer had a fierce grip, and the man was strong.
“Let me zip up at least,” Jake said.
“Just a moment,” the large man with red eyes said. “You’re a Militiaman?” he asked Jake.
“That’s right. What’s it to you?”
“I heard some of what you’ve been saying. What did you just think you were doing?”
“Pissing on the director,” Jake said proudly.
The man’s red eyes squinted. “The director of what?” he asked.
The girl stepped near, and maybe she was thinking about warning Jake.
Jake missed it, and he therefore missed his last chance to stay out of bad trouble. “Are you kidding me, mister?” Jake asked. “I’m an American and I tell it like it is. The director is the dictator’s puppet, and he’s taking away too many of our liberties.”
“Do you mean Max Harold?” the red-eyed man asked.
“Yeah, I mean him,” Jake said.
“Shut up!” Sheila said. “Don’t say anything more.”
The big red-eyed man glanced at Sheila and then back at Jake. “Would you care to repeat that?” he asked Jake.
Jake saw the voice recorder. In his blurry mind, it seemed like a TV reporter’s microphone. He leaned near, figuring that finally someone would go on record and say it like it was.
“Jake,” Sheila said.
“The Director of Homeland Security is the dictator’s puppet,” Jake said slowly in his slurry voice. “He’s taking away too many of our precious American liberties, and I for one am not going to stand for it any longer.”
Sheila groaned and shook her head.
Jake grinned at the red-eyed man.
The big man used his thumb to turn off the recorder. He stuffed it in his pocket before turning to the bouncer. “Put him in the other room,” he said.
“Beat him up?” the bouncer asked.
“No,” the big man said. “I’m calling my MPs. I know exactly what to do with a dissenter like this.”
“What’s that?” Sheila asked.
The big man looked at her in surprise. “Is he your boyfriend?”
“No. I just met him tonight.”
“Well, say goodbye to him,” the big man said. “Unless I miss my guess, he’s headed for New England for one of the new penal battalions.”
“Who are you?” Jake asked, with the first touch of worry in his voice.
“Take him,” the big man told the bouncer. “And keep him there until my MPs arrive.”
The bouncer twisted Jake’s arm behind his back.
“Hey, let go of me,” Jake said. No one paid any attention as Mr. Square marched him against his will into a holding room. He struggled, but then it hit him hard: the amount of alcohol he’d poured into his system.
“Just a minute,” he mumbled. Then Jake vomited for the second time tonight. He would pay for this later, he knew, but he didn’t really realize just how much.
-3-
Choices
OTTAWA, ONTARIO
General Walther Mansfeld, the commanding general of the GD Expeditionary Force in North America, rubbed the bridge of his nose.
He was an athletic man, a former gymnast who had won a bronze medal on the parallel bars in the 2016 Olympics. At fifty, he was short, trim and in excellent condition. He ran three kilometers every day and stretched to keep himself limber. More importantly, he had a razor-sharp intellect and he knew himself to be the best battlefield commander in the German Dominion, which meant he was the best in the world.
Excellence in all things
, it was Mansfeld’s motto. The only one who had ever approached him in ability was the Chancellor. Normally, Kleist held all the cards. The one thing Chancellor Kleist couldn’t do was win a battle brilliantly. It’s why the man had let him live four months ago when Kleist had summoned him with the thought to execute him.
Mansfeld tapped the computer battle map. A hot cup of coffee steamed beside it, his fifth this morning. He drank far too much, but he needed the caffeine, as it helped to stimulate his thoughts.
Mansfeld picked up the cup and sipped delicately as his steely eyes studied the military situation. So far, the battles had gone to form just as he had predicted in Berlin that day. The Canadians fought well given their inferior weaponry. The Americans showed stubbornness, and they steadily added reinforcements as they lost engagement after engagement. He had tested his opposite number and found the commanding American general wanting. The man would continue to add driblets. The American General Staff and perhaps the President hadn’t yet realized their danger. How could they? They were not geniuses of battle like him.
All his life Mansfeld had seen further and more deeply than those around him could. The only man whose mind he respected was Chancellor Kleist. Maybe the American who had come up with the battle plan this winter to maul the Chinese had a superior intellect. Otherwise, the world was a barren desert, a wasteland in terms of thinkers.
He sipped more coffee, holding the liquid on his tongue as he attempted to extract the greatest amount of enjoyment from it he could. He wished he could find a way to make this drink taste as good as the first one in the morning. Every day, he looked forward to his first sip of coffee. Nothing tasted quite as good. He wondered why that was, and smiled indulgently. He knew the answer, of course, but he asked himself the question almost every morning around now.
Mansfeld clicked the cup onto its saucer and tapped the battle map. He enlarged the area around the Toronto Pocket.
The fierce defensive fighting hadn’t surprise him. These were first-rate American units in Toronto. Their commander had used them to plug the gap to try to halt the relentless GD advance toward Detroit.
Mansfeld smiled. He knew it made him seem like an eagle surveying the countryside for prey. He fought at too swift a pace for the Americans. The Canadians had melted like butter those first few days. Later, the Canadians had stiffened for a time. He kept producing surprises, though, keeping the enemy off balance.
Yes, the enemy commander had thought to stem the relentless tide of GD victory before the largest city of Canada, Toronto. It had been the obvious thing to do, and in many ways, the correct move. Cities, especially big cities, could often become defender fortresses.
The allied Canadians and Americans finally had the numbers they needed. They had first-rate soldiers and for their side, modern equipment. Yes, the enemy commander had made the correct choice—or so it had seemed. Stop the relentless GD torrent at Toronto.
Thinking about it, Mansfeld smirked.
He had saved one of his trump cards for just such a moment. Actually, he had saved two trumps. Until that moment, he had kept the laser-armed Sabre fighter-jets out of battle. With them providing air cover, he had mass-airlifted light tanks. Then he had dropped the Ritter tanks as if they were paratroopers behind the main enemy concentrations. In conjunction with that, he had used mass Galahad hovers to swing around the city on Lake Ontario.
Oh yes, the American general had attempted to seal Southern Ontario between Lake Huron and Lake Erie. He had thought to turn Toronto and the Golden Horseshoe into a fortress so the dreaded GD couldn’t practice anymore blitzkrieg tactics. The so-called horseshoe area contained over nine million people, twenty-six percent of Canada’s former population. The enemy commander had not realized the GD ability to use the air as a flank.
Some of Mansfeld’s staff had shown surprise at this. The Americans often employed helicopter-borne troops in mass. The enemy had also faced Chinese jetpack commandos before. Surely, the Americans should understand better than anyone that air was another flank in modern war.
As he studied the computer map, Mansfeld had known the Americans wouldn’t understand. Who could airdrop tanks? No one had ever done it before. Therefore, no one thought of it, no one that is except for General Walther Mansfeld of the GD Expeditionary Force. Because of the brilliant maneuver, he had trapped the first-rate Americans and Canadians in Toronto. Now he began the annihilation of those soldiers—soldiers the Americans would badly need in the coming weeks.
“In six more days,” Mansfeld said aloud—he was quite alone. “In six more days I will kill or capture the last of you trapped men.”
The blitzkrieg would resume and the American command would panic. They would rush reinforcements before him, putting them in exactly the wrong places. Why were commanding officers of armies and the leaders of countries and power blocs so obvious?
Mansfeld picked up the coffee cup and sipped. He took a deep breath afterward. He would win the war. He knew that. His true opponent wasn’t the Americans or the broken Canadians. No. Chancellor Kleist was his real foe. So far, Kleist had kept his nose out of his affairs in running the day-to-day operations. There would come a moment, however, when Kleist would interfere. The Americans were stubborn, and they would fight hard. They would produce one seeming crisis moment, and that crisis would break Kleist’s so-called steely nerves.
Clicking the half-full cup back onto its saucer, Mansfeld sat down and put his hands behind his head. He closed his eyes, and he visualized what had happened four months ago. His recall was incredibly sharp, better than anyone else’s that he knew about. His near-photographic retention was one of his secrets.
Kleist was his enemy. The reason was clear. Chancellor Kleist feared a man with such abilities as his. History supplied the reasons. No one else could outthink and outmaneuver the Chancellor except for him. Therefore, to keep himself secure as the ruler of United Europe, Kleist would believe he needed to eliminate the threat of the only other superior thinker in his midst.
With his eyes closed, Mansfeld smiled. This was a game of wits, of titans among pygmies. It would seem that Kleist held all the cards. Clearly, the Chancellor had the superior position of power.
“So it would seem,” Mansfeld whispered.
Yet it had also been that way four months ago. Kleist had summoned him back from Quebec to order him before a firing squad or lock him in with torturers. No one else had quite known that, although Mansfeld had known it with certainty. He’d faced Kleist and the GD General Staff alone in the den of lions. The Chancellor had planned to pin on him the fruits of his own—Kleist’s—mistake. The Chancellor had planned to shovel the blame and rid himself of his only true opponent. But the move had been so obvious that it had surprised Mansfeld that the Chancellor hadn’t recognized what the countermove would be.
With his hands behind his head, and with his eyes closed, General Mansfeld frowned. Kleist possessed a superior mind. Therefore—
Mansfeld opened his eyes and sat up.
Did I miscalculate four months ago?
The idea galled him at first. Then he shook his head. Another of his powers was the ability to admit a mistake. It was conceivable that he had made an error at the meeting four months ago.
Mansfeld peered up at the ceiling. The tiles there had thousands of indentations that almost looked like holes. He closed his eyes and once more, he put his hands behind his head. He let himself relax.
He needed to use his memory. He needed to replay the meeting and see if Kleist had outfoxed him. The Chancellor could be incredibly subtle.
You must not let yourself become arrogant
, Mansfeld reminded himself.
That is the great trap for a genius like you. Repeat after me: I am not invincible
.
“I am not invincible,” General Mansfeld whispered while in his chair.
He concentrated, and he thought back to the meeting four months ago in Berlin.
BERLIN, PRUSSIA—Four Months Ago
“General Mansfeld,” the Chancellor said in a dangerously silky voice, “tell us about that, won’t you?”
They met in the Defense Ministry, a midmorning meeting. Outside, cold rain pelted against the windows. At times, hail hit, sounding like pebbles as they struck.
Hostile eyes turned toward General Walther Mansfeld. He sat alone at the end of a long conference table. Along the walls, the Chancellor’s security detail watched Mansfeld with reptilian eyes. They were big men in black suits who could draw their weapons with startling speed. They wouldn’t hesitate to shoot him. Neither would they hesitate to drag him to the Chancellor’s “doctors.” There, Mansfeld knew, he would take many months dying as the specialists inflicted ever more ingenious pains. They would turn him into a mewling thing begging for death.
The thought might have weakened another man, but not Mansfeld. He played for the highest stakes in the most deadly occupation possible: political power. He was also the superior of every man he’d ever met in his life.
“Can it be you lack words, General?” Kleist asked, with a hint of his infamous gloating tingeing his speech.
The Chancellor had a strong voice and he was the same height as Mansfeld. They were two short men among physical giants—even if the others were mental pygmies compared to them. But where Mansfeld was trim like a rapier, Kleist was fat like a knotty oaken club. That was a key to understanding the man. Despite the Chancellor’s intellect, to Mansfeld Kleist seemed like a gutter-born thug. Despite his outer gloss of sophistication, Kleist was a brutal man with the instincts of an alpha wolf. All his life, the Chancellor had struck first and struck hard.
Kleist wore a brown suit and expensive Italian shoes. His chin was strong, his hands thick but small and he wore a silver wedding ring with a large diamond that seemed strangely out of place among these military men.
The General Staff members sitting along the sides of the table were large men with stiff, military postures. Each was well fed and each wore a crisp uniform, with the red General Staff stripes running down the legs of their trousers. Mansfeld wanted to sneer at them. To him, they were like Great Danes secretly quivering in fear of their master. They were also afraid of what he—Mansfeld—might say and that Kleist would hold the words against them.
It’s clear that none of them can understand my calm. None of them realizes how valuable I am to Kleist. What is sad is that Kleist doesn’t realize it yet either. Otherwise, he would not have called me back from Quebec to initiate this farce
.
Kleist stared across the conference table at him, and the gloating had reached the Chancellor’s eyes. Yes, Kleist believed himself in control of the situation.
How can he not see that I am his only hope
?
Finally, Mansfeld saw a hint of doubt cross the Chancellor’s face. It was a subtle thing. By now, Kleist had to be wondering why his general refused to let this spectacle cow him.
Because I know my worth
, Mansfeld told himself.
And I know that you will be wise enough to see it…as soon as I explain it to you
.
“Are you tongue-tied?” Kleist asked.
“No, Excellency,” Mansfeld said in a ringing voice.
A few of the General Staff members looked at him with new eyes. It seemed their dull minds finally realized that none of this frightened him. A few frowned in puzzlement. It was clear they couldn’t fathom the source of his courage. Chancellor Kleist needed a scapegoat and the man had chosen the commanding officer of the German Expeditionary Force in Quebec, General Mansfeld.
“Well…?” Kleist asked. “What do you have to say for yourself? Come now, speak while you are able.”
“Excellency,” Mansfeld said, having waited for the moment to ripen. “My prediction concerning the Sino-American War proved incorrect in one particular only. Everything that went wrong afterward hinged upon that one fact.”
Kleist frowned, which meant the gloating had disappeared. When the man was winning at something, he became jovial. When he was losing, his bad temper was legendary. It must finally be dawning on the Chancellor that he had made a miscalculation, and he didn’t realize yet what that mistake was. It obviously troubled Kleist.
In an expert’s hands, the rapier
always
defeats the club
. Despite his knowledge of that truth, Mansfeld did not smile. That would have been an error.
I am not so stupid
.
“You are free to speak, General,” Kleist said. “Please, enlighten us, if you would.”
The exquisite nature of the moment produced a churning feeling in Mansfeld’s gut. Some people referred it to as “the butterflies,” and they hated the sensation. It was otherwise with him. The churning told him he was alive, on the very knife-edge of existence.