Invasion: New York

-13- Annihilation

From Military History: Past to Present, by Vance Holbrook:

2040, July 16-18. Invasion New York. In Southwestern Ontario between Windsor and London, the two forces were locked in bleak, attritional warfare. The Americans used blood, artillery and extensive jamming to whittle down GD Army Group A. Holk staved off the increasingly heavy push in the south as he battered his way east into the Niagara Peninsula. US Fifth Army vainly tried to stave off Holk’s attack as Zeller’s two corps attempted to shut the door at Buffalo. It had become a wrestling match as the Fifth Army paid in blood to extricate itself out of Buffalo and fight its way south toward Pennsylvania.

Meanwhile, US XI Airmobile Corps and the first smattering of Canadian troops fought savagely on the approaches to Syracuse. It proved a losing fight against GD Twelfth Army, but the American soldiers were buying their country time. Zeller asked Mansfeld for Kaisers and Leopard IV tanks in order to spearhead his assaults along the interstate.

On the high seas, General Kaltenbrunner’s GD Army Group D left Cuban ports and headed for the selected Atlantic invasion beaches of New York-New Jersey. The great trap neared completion…

Jake Higgins didn’t know anything about ICBMs or GD armadas. He was dirty, sore, bleeding across his left eye so he had to keep wiping it to clear of blood and he was hungry like a junkyard dog.

The enemy pounding had been going on for some time. He was in a basement with the others, with Charlie, Lee, the lieutenant and MDG Sergeant Dan Franks. There were others of the penal battalion, a pittance compared to their beginning numbers.

After the survival of no-man’s land, he and the others had retreated until they’d found the lieutenant. It had been a nightmare since then. The GD poured everything at Fifth Army, particularly the AI Kaisers and the dreaded Leopard IV tanks, together with air sweeps and missile bombardments.

They had fought their way to St. Catharines along the shore of Lake Ontario. The city burned, with oily fumes churning into the sky. Fifth Army was dying, and the penal battalions along with it.

The lieutenant had said something yesterday about those in Buffalo holding open a corridor long enough so the rest of the Fifth Army could escape the GD trap. It didn’t look as if they would be part of the escapees. This was reminding Jake more and more of Texas last summer.

As dawn rose to another brutal day, the rear guard in St. Catharines was supposed to fight its way free of the enemy and hurry for Buffalo. Yeah, that was a good joke.

Jake wiped blood out of his left eye and peered out of a basement window. A marauding Leopard tank clanked into view past piles of rubble. Behind the tank followed crouched-over GD infantrymen in their high-grade body armor.

“But sir,” Sergeant Franks was saying, “if we attack now, they’ll attack us. If they attack, they’re going to get help from the offshore artillery. They’ll demolish us down here. This will become our grave.”

The lieutenant stubbornly shook his head. “We’re fighting for our country, Sergeant. Maybe it means we’re going to die for our country, but that’s every soldier’s lot in war. Now set up the machine guns. We have to kill those infantry.”

Sergeant Franks bit his lower lip. Clearly, he didn’t like the order, but to disobey a direct command…

There wasn’t much difference now between the penal militiamen and their jailers. Everyone was in this together.

Franks bellowed and he pointed at militiamen, telling them to hurry.

Jake heaved, lifting the .50 caliber into position. Charlie helped him. Lee waited behind the weapon.

“Fire!” the lieutenant said, as he peered out his own window.

Jake glanced at the young man. There was a fanatical fire in the lieutenant’s eyes. These past days hadn’t diminished the man’s resolve, but hardened it. If he had to die fighting, so be it. The lieutenant clearly planned to kill Germans, as many as he could.

Lee pressed the butterfly triggers. The .50 caliber jackhammered its bullets at the enemy. Jake watched. The GD infantrymen had great body armor, but at this range, it meant nothing. They tumbled to the cement, some in a bloody spray.

The Leopard tank’s treads stopped churning far too fast. Its turret swiveled, the huge cannon swinging around toward their building.

“Get down!” Franks shouted.

Jake, Charlie, Lee, the lieutenant, everyone hit the tiled floor of the basement, taking their weapons with them.

A thunderous roar sounded from outside. A shell exploded inside the building on the first floor. That still had an effect down here. Masonry flew everywhere, raining in upside-down geysers. Militiamen fell as cement chunks struck them. A few disappeared, buried under rubble. Dust billowed. Militiamen choked, coughing with hacking sounds.

“Up, up, get up!” the lieutenant shouted.

From on the floor, Charlie and Jake exchanged glances. Their looks said, Is he a madman?

The lieutenant was close by and he might have seen their questioning looks. He drew his sidearm and aimed the pistol at Jake. “Lift the machine gun, Private. We have to attack. We have to hurt the invader while we can.”

“Yes, sir,” Jake said. The pistol aimed at his head didn’t bother him. Such things had happened too many times in the penal battalion. “We’ll do that exactly as you say, sir, but wouldn’t it be a whole lot better if I climbed the stairs and shot an RPG down on the tank turret? That will do more damage than bullets against the tank’s front armor.”

The lieutenant stared at him, with his eyes shining strangely. “Go!” he said. “Do it, and then get back down here.”

First wiping blood out of his left eye, Jake scrambled away from the window. Another thunderous roar from the tank heralded another HE shell. One of the reasons they fought from basements was because a tank’s cannon couldn’t depress far enough to directly fire at them. This 175mm shell blasted the floor above them. The concussion of it hurled Jake down as if someone had used a mallet. He lay on the floor panting.

How much longer can I keep doing this? He didn’t know. Part of him just wanted to lie down and quit. Yet if he did that, he would be dead or captured by the Germans. He shook his head. He was a Higgins. A Higgins never quit; he kept on fighting. Why not fight until you’re dead? Which ought to be pretty soon now.

With a groan, Jake climbed to his feet. He helped Charlie up and staggered to several RPGs. He grabbed one. Charlie grabbed another and Lee a third. Then they started for the ruin of the stairs.

“They’re going to run away on us, sir,” Sergeant Franks said.

The lieutenant didn’t even glance their way. He peered out the window. He now spoke in a loud whisper. “Put the machine gun back up,” he said. “The tank crew is thinking about it now. Let’s nail any Germans slinking behind the monster.”

Jake didn’t hear any more. He climbed over debris and made it to the first floor. If the Leopard crew decided to fire yet again, he was dead. He coughed because some of the drifting dust found its way into his throat. Then he dashed through the rubble-strewn area, heading for stairs leading higher. As he did, he wondered about running away. What did he owe those bastards down in the basement anyway? Not a whole heck of a lot, that’s for sure. But he didn’t run away. He wasn’t sure where he could run to. St. Catharines swarmed with enemy soldiers. As far as he could see, this was the end of the line.

Jake climbed broken stairs, having to climb over debris and smashed wood. He smelled smoke. He listened to bombardments, chattering machine guns and the clack of tracked vehicles coming up. This war was never going to end. The world would fight it out in North America until they were all down to the level of savages. It was a new Ice Age. Maybe this would bring about the death of the Industrial World. Maybe this war was mass suicide of the human race.

The building shook. Bricks fell, striking the floor and bouncing crazily. The crackle of flames from somewhere near threatened to turn the place into an inferno. From below, heavy machine guns rattled endlessly, and the clang and clack of .50 caliber bullets bouncing off heavier armor told its own tale.

The three of them raced to a window. Enemy gunfire drove them back as the walls around the window sprayed cement and chalky dust.

“Now what are we going to do?” Charlie shouted.

Jake wondered about that. As he did, a salvo of HE shells hit the base of the building. Everything shook more than ever. Jake expected the floor to open up and swallow him.

“We’re going to die,” Lee said in a calm voice.

Jake looked at him. Corporal Lee gazed back.

“What the heck,” Jake said. He readied his RPG and raced back to a window. Lee took the other window. Jake aimed the RPG down, aimed at the top of the nearest Leopard turret. There were two tanks there now. He fired, and the shaped-charge grenade flew down. Jake stumbled back as a bullet slammed against his chest. That caused him to fall backward, hitting his helmet against furniture. An explosion came from below, bewildering him.

Jake might have passed out. The next thing he knew Charlie was dragging him. The potato-grower was weeping.

“Is there something wrong?” Jake asked.

“Lee’s dead,” Charlie said.

Jake wiped blood out of his eye. He climbed to his feet and his head throbbed. His chest hurt too. He felt the front of his body armor over his heart and the size of the depression there. He was lucky to be alive.

“Let’s go,” he said.

Amid the bombardments, amid the crash of shells and bullets and the sway of the rooms, they made it back into the smoky basement. The other tank had gone away, and so had the rest of the GD teams. Only one militiaman lived down here. He was propped in a corner as he bled to death.

Jake and Charlie hurried across the rubble to him to see if they can help the man.

It turned out to be one of the MDG Sergeants. The sergeant grabbed Jake’s arm and held on with a fierce grip. “You bastards killed one of the tanks, but Franks killed the lieutenant.”

“What?” Jake asked.

“The lieutenant wanted Franks to keep firing but Franks chickened out. So he drew his gun and blew out the lieutenant’s brains. He took off, Higgins. You listen to me. You kill that filthy traitor, Dan Franks. You punish him for running away in the face of the enemy. You…”

The sergeant’s grip failed. His hand dropped away and his head slumped to the side. The MDG was dead, his eyes glazed.

Charlie swept his hands over the eyelids. Jake got up and went to the lieutenant. The young man was very dead, with the front of his head blown away. Jake checked the back. He’d seen enough death to know now. Someone had put a pistol there and fired. He could see powder burns.

“What do we do?” Charlie asked. “Everyone is dead.”

Jake stood. He turned to Charlie. Then he picked up his M16 and headed for the way out. They had to escape this deathtrap and reach Buffalo before the GD closed the door on what was left of Fifth Army.

He knew what he was going to do. “Franks,” Jake whispered, and then he didn’t say anything more.

When General Norton hurled his hat across the room and swore fierce profanities, Anna understood that the combined ICBM-ASBM attack had failed to stop the invasion.

Director Harold scowled, staring at Norton. Finally, the director lifted both of his fists and slammed them against the table.

The President slumped deeper into his chair. His eyes became staring and hollow. It was a ghastly transformation. Anna would have preferred him to swear like Norton and show anger like Max.

“We need to use more ICBMs,” Max said. “One thermonuclear warhead got through. If we saturate bomb them this time—”

“Look!” Norton said in a grim voice. “The enemy fleet is beginning to spread out. They’re preparing for us to strike again.”

“Then we must strike again now, immediately,” Max said. “We must hit them before they disperse.”

“With all due respect, Director, I don’t think so,” Norton said. “They have space mirrors in place, operational mirrors. ICBMs are much easier to destroy during boost phase when they are full of fuel. With the mirrors, they’ll be able to reach down into the central US to do that. No. I don’t think we can—”

“Destroy the mirrors!” Max shouted. “Let’s use our strategic lasers against them.”

“Have you studied the angle?” Norton asked. “The GD mirrors aren’t close enough.”

“Then how can lasers bounce off the mirrors and hit our ICBMs during boost phase?”

“It should be obvious,” Norton said. “As the ICBMs lift upward, they pass the angle of the Earth and come into the mirrors’ line-of-sight.”

Max shook his head. “That can’t be it. We can’t have failed in this.”

“I agree with you there,” Norton told him. “The fight is far from over. We will entrain troops to New Jersey—”

“No!” Max said. “We must stop the fleet. We cannot let the enemy soldiers land and complete the encirclement of the First Front.”

Anna was frowning. There was something in the back of her mind. There was something else…

“Mr. President,” Max said. “I suggest another nuclear strike.”

David slowly looked up.

Anna shuddered. She hated the hopelessness she saw on his face. Then she saw something else appear. It began in the President’s eyes. The hollowness remained. He was very tired. But something other than despair shined out of him. It began as a light. She couldn’t think of any other way to express it. The light shined from his eyes. That melted the hopelessness. Then it etched lines in his face so he became like a grinning skull, one vitally alive with unholy power.

The President made a dry sound like one of the undead laughing. His lips peeled back, and like the Homeland Security Director a moment ago, he curled the fingers of his right hand into a fist. He slammed that fist against the table. He hit the surface hard.

Anna wondered if he’d broken bones. She had watched a nature show once that showed a polar bear sneaking up on a seal. The huge beast had used infinite patience. As it reached the nearest piece of ice to the seal, the bear rose up to charge. As the polar bear first charged, however, one of its hind paws slipped. That gave the seal just enough of a margin to slither to its ice hole and dive away into safety. The polar bear went berserk, and it hammered its forepaws against the ice in rage. Then the bear charged the cameramen and they shot the beast in self-defense. The interesting moment came later. The nature people discovered that every bone in the bear’s right forepaw had been broken by smashing it against the ice.

Would David now break bones in his fist? He’d hit the table hard enough.

“I have it!” the President exclaimed.

“Sir?” Max asked.

“The ICBMs failed,” the President said. “Now it’s time to see if the THOR missiles can achieve a miracle.”

Max and Norton exchanged glances. The general shrugged.

“THOR missiles?” Max asked the President. “Ah, are you sure they’re… ah…?”

“Get General Alan on the line,” the President said. “It’s time to put those experimental weapons to the test.”

Colonel Foxx of the Experimental C and C Station of the X-THOR missiles sat at his terminal. He used a touch screen. Along with others of the team, he hurriedly designed an attack sequence against the approaching GD armada.

They had communications problems to overcome. Several of the THOR bundles or satellites presently orbited on the other side of the world. They could use a submarine, several of them, actually, as relay stations to send the attack commands. Hmm…yes. That could work, especially if they launched several high-flying drones to extend line-of-sight reach.

Others in the control room worked on the timing of the various attacks. They figured out the angle of the attacks and the distance of the THOR package at the instant of release so they would all come in at once while converging from different areas over the Earth.

Colonel Foxx believed in his missiles and he and his team worked feverishly. It just might work, but to coordinate the THORs in a mass attack on so short a notice—

He sat up, swiveled around and picked up a secure phone. In seconds, he spoke to General Alan in Syracuse, New York.

Anna watched as the President had a phone against his ear. They were still in the underground bunker.

David spoke with General Alan. “I see,” the President said. “Yes, thank you. I’ll let you know my decision about— Yes, I understand the need for haste. Give me five minutes, General, and I’ll let you know for certain.”

The President set down the phone and faced those assembled. “General Alan says it will be a close-run attack. The THORs won’t be ready to strike en mass until the enemy armada is a mere one hundred miles from the coast.”

“Sir,” Norton said. “If these THOR missiles work, or work even half as good as we expect, we should hit the enemy fleet with all the air we can summon. We must be ready to exploit any victory we achieve by swarming the enemy with cruise missiles.”

“Yes, yes,” the President said, nodding. “That’s wise advice. Make it happen, General.”

Norton picked up a phone.

“I have a question, sir,” Max said.

The President nodded.

“Won’t the enemy lasers be able to destroy the THOR platforms?” Max asked.

“Yes, possibly,” the President said. “But we must try.”

“I totally agree, sir,” Max said. “But to give the THORs a greater chance of getting through, I suggest you give the GD more targets to shoot at. Preferably, give the GD decoys, plenty of them to fire at first.”

“What decoys?” the President asked. “I’m not aware we have space-based decoys.”

“I’m referring to more ICBMs,” Max said. “Launch another assault.”

“Just a minute,” Norton said into the phone. He lowered it and covered the speaker with his hand. Then he told Max, “The Germans will shoot down the ICBMs during boost phase. That won’t help the THORs, but it will cost us many nuclear missiles.”

“I’m talking about keeping the GD Strategic Defense occupied,” Max said. “If they can beam the missiles during boost phase…” The director grinned mirthlessly. “Launch one ICBM at a time. That will confuse them as to what we’re doing, and it should keep them watching the wrong place.”

“That’s crafty,” the President said. “Yes, I like it. We’ll use deception on them as they’ve been using it on us.” He scanned those around the table. “Are there any other suggestions?”

He’s getting his confidence back, Anna realized. He’s putting his faith in the THOR missiles. I hope for all our sakes they work.

“Very well,” the President said. He picked up the phone. “General Alan…”

Warrant Officer Gunther Weise stood outside the air tower. Every time he raised his right hand to take the cigarette, it shook the slightest bit. The nicotine in the cigarette wasn’t soothing him as it usually did.

He didn’t see as many ships now. They sailed farther apart, but they would converge soon as they hit the enemy coast. Before, that had seemed like an adventure. Now, he was worried about what the Americans would try next. Clearly, they would do whatever they could to try to stop the amphibious invasion.

The big ship moved through a rougher sea. Dark clouds gathered in the east. Would it rain? He hoped it would rain. Yet he wanted to see the sun shine.

Gunther inhaled cigarette smoke into his lungs, and he shuddered. The Americans had launched ICBMs at the fleet. He couldn’t believe—

The bottom door in the air control tower opened. The same officer as before stuck out his bald head. “Warrant Officer Weise! You’d better hurry in here. The Americans are launching more ICBMs.”

The cigarette dropped out of Gunther’s mouth. His stomach twisted. They’re doing it again? No. That isn’t right. We already survived one nuclear attack. They can’t do it again.

Then he broke into a sprint. The great danger wasn’t over yet.

In the cloudy sky, Lieutenant Penner of the Canadian Air Force leveled his F-35 into position. A US fuel tanker maneuvered its winged boom toward the intake near his cockpit. He could see the boom operator through the two-inch-thick window in the tail.

Penner had more than just his wingman with him today. American Command gathered its last air assets to strike the invasion fleet heading for New Jersey. Penner and the others of this squadron carried antiship cruise missiles. They gathered because soon the remains of the Allied air forces in this region would fly out into the Atlantic Ocean.

According to intelligence, the Germans steamed this way with five supercarriers and their accompanying UAVs, not to mention far too many missile-equipped escorts.

We’re going to be badly outnumbered today. Thinking about it, Penner gripped his controls more tightly. I wonder how many of us will make it through to strike the enemy? I wonder how many of us will return home?

There had been talk about a coordinated strike. America had used ICBMs on the enemy, but High Command still needed the Air Force to finish the German fleet. That meant the ICBMs hadn’t worked well enough, and that troubled Penner. Just how good was the GD Fleet air?

Penner did more than fly planes; he studied them. He knew the history of air warfare. He hoped they weren’t doing what had happened to the Japanese in 1944. In the Central Pacific, the Japanese had hoped to destroy the American Pacific Fleet. To that end, they began Operation A-Go. They had hoped to lure the Americans into an air trap. On June 15 off the Marianas Islands, the Japanese airmen got their chance. Admiral Ozawa kept his carriers far from the American flattops. He then sent his air fleet at the enemy on a long distance flight. He sent 200 airplanes altogether. The American radar spotted them coming, and the US commander sent the heavy Hellcats to meet the Japanese. The Zeros, the Kates and the Vals fell prey to the Hellcats. In the end, the Americans fighters knocked out all but thirty Japanese planes. Afterward, the American airmen had dubbed the battle, “The Great Marianas Turkey Shoot.” It was a rude comment, but accurate enough.

I hope we’re not flying to an Atlantic Turkey Shoot.

The trick would be in coordinating the various strikes. Lieutenant Penner didn’t realize it, but he was far more right than he knew.

Warrant Officer Gunther Weise was seeing it on the big screen, but he could hardly believe it.

Maybe General Kaltenbrunner felt the same way. “Are you sure we’re receiving accurate information?” he asked the admiral.

“Yes, General,” the admiral said.

“Why are the Americans launching their ICBMs one at a time?” Kaltenbrunner asked.

“It is odd, isn’t it?” the admiral said.

After first checking his station controls, Gunther looked up at the big screen. Nothing would ever be the same for him now. He had survived a nuclear attack. That was amazing on several fronts. It had cleared away the cobwebs of his thoughts. Once his enlistment was up, he would leave the Navy and never reenlist. Adventures were best read in books or watched on the movie screen. Living them was much too harrowing.

Gunther watched another red dot lift from the middle of North America. It blinked, and he could almost feel the tremendous flames pouring from the missile, pushing it into space. Before a minute passed, a blue line reached up from Iceland or near Brest, Brittany, bounced off a space mirror and destroyed the lofting missile. Several minutes later and almost as if on cue, the Americans launched another ICBM. It didn’t make any kind of sense for them to do that. Didn’t they know how useless it was? They were throwing away their nuclear missiles.

“Surely they realize the uselessness of what they’re doing,” Kaltenbrunner said.

Gunther raised his eyebrows. He and the general thought alike. It made him wonder if he could have been the general. It didn’t seem that hard, standing there and observing the same things a warrant officer did.

The admiral tapped a finger against his goatee. “Their actions do give one pause. In fact, I’m beginning to wonder if they’re actually trying to focus our attention there. If so: why? That’s the question.”

“Look there,” Kaltenbrunner said, pointing. “Are they trying to disguise the fact of their gathering air fleet?”

The admiral studied the screen in silence. He had dark eyes, and they seemed penetrating with intelligence.

“The Americans must destroy us,” the admiral said shortly. “We know that, yes?”

“It’s obvious,” Kaltenbrunner said.

“The fleet has deployed against submarines,” the admiral said. “The Americans don’t have many left, and my understanding is that most are in the Pacific. They attempt to halt the flow of Chinese weapons and reinforcements. We’re lofting the UAVs to annihilate this paltry force of US air. The American ICBMs are more pathetic than dangerous, at least at this point. Is it possible or even reasonable that the Americans have another trick up their sleeve?”

“What kind of trick?” Kaltenbrunner asked.

“Yes, that is an interesting question to ask,” the admiral said. “My first supposition is they’re trying to work a submarine or two near us with nuclear torpedoes. We’re hunting for subs and have found nothing. Hmm, what do the facts tell us?”

“I’m not sure I understand your question,” Kaltenbrunner said.

“Maybe the ICBMs should give us greater pause,” the admiral said.

“How so?” asked Kaltenbrunner.

“Why would the Americans launch them one at a time? Why not launch them all at once?”

“Couldn’t they saturate our space lasers if they went all at once?” Kaltenbrunner asked. “I mean make it impossible for our lasers to destroy them all in time?”

“That seems doubtful. Boost phase is the best time to destroy enemy missiles. They almost seem to be sacrificing the missiles to us.”

“Why would they do that?” Kaltenbrunner asked.

“There is only one possibility,” the admiral said. “They’re sacrificing ICBMs in order to keep the mirrors and the strategic lasers busy.”

“That would indicate the Americans possess another space weapon,” Kaltenbrunner said.

Gunther turned around in time to see the admiral stare in wonder at the general. The small man clapped his hands, and he strode to a communications officer.

“Put me through to Space Defense Command,” the admiral said crisply. This is an emergency priority message…”

Fifteen minutes ago, THOR Launch Vehicle #3 used cold gas propulsion to deorbit into attack position. A regular rocket exhaust would have created a bright plume—a beacon—for the enemy to see. Instead, the stealth satellite maneuvered with a minimum signature.

Maximum penetration of hardened targets such as missile silos or underground bunkers would have demanded a nearly vertical attack from space. Ships were another matter, something much more easily penetrated than the other two types of targets. The THOR missiles could therefore attack at a much shallower angle. It meant the different stealth satellites could converge more easily from a variety of places around the globe. Major Foxx had calculated—or the targeting computers and his team had—the various THOR satellite locations and their estimated launch positions relative to each other.

THOR Launch Vehicle #3 had now reached its location. At the same time around the globe, other launch vehicles reached their places.

Data flowed into the launch vehicle from high-flying drones and over the horizon radar. The satellite’s computer relayed the targeting intelligence to the individual missiles, giving them their priority objectives.

Miniaturized onboard computers went about their tasks with high speed. The #3 Launch Vehicle burst apart. Sleek tungsten rods—fifty of them—separated from each other like sluggish wasps. Gravity tugged at the missiles and they sped Earthward, on their way.

The remains of THOR Launch Vehicle #3 didn’t know that nine other vehicles did likewise. Nor did the computer-run machine have any idea that a GD sensor finally found it. Seconds later, a laser generated in Iceland speared the empty launch vehicle, destroying it.

Meanwhile, the fifty tungsten rods of the destroyed satellite began their race into Earth’s atmosphere. They sped at the fleet heading for New Jersey.

Lieutenant Penner flew in the second wave of the great air assault upon the approaching GD armada. The first wave of fighters and V-10 drones engaged GD carrier UAVs, swarms of them.

“This is going to be tough,” Penner’s wingman said.

Penner silently agreed. Look at the number of enemy UAVs, a flock of them or a swarm of bees on the hunt. Missiles fired, four of them.

He released chaff.

US Command didn’t have many options now. To win, they had to destroy the armada. If they burned up the Air Force to kill the ships, it would be worth it. Penner didn’t want to sacrifice his life, but they had to kill the GD armada.

He had thoughts about aborting the mission. He didn’t want to ide. But he was a Canadian officer. He would go down fighting if that’s what it took.

Lieutenant Penner, in his helmet with its dark visor, looked around at the clouds. This was a beautiful day. Maybe, likely, it would be his last day. Under his dark visor, he smiled. It was beautiful today, and it hurt to think that in less than an hour he would be dead, fish food in the great Atlantic Ocean.

Trying to fortify his resolve, Lieutenant Penner and the airmen of the squadron continued to bore in toward the approaching armada and its swarms of UAVs.

“It’s truly working,” the admiral said, with awe in his voice. “We’re killing their air force just as General Mansfeld predicted we would do.” He turned to Kaltenbrunner. “Mansfeld predicted the Americans would become panicked at the sight of my fleet. He said the Americans would hurl the last of their air against us, thereby aiding our conquest. I tell you, sir, for a landlubber, the man is a genius.”

General Kaltenbrunner grunted a noncommittal response.

At his station near the big screen, Gunther Weise’s hands had finally stopped shaking. He had settled down from the nuclear attack. It had taken long enough.

The Americans no longer launched ICBMs from North Dakota. Whatever their reason had been for launching, it was gone. Maybe it was as the admiral said. The enemy had panicked. The armada’s CAP chewed apart the American air heading out here to fight. Even now, the main amphibious landing craft and helo-carriers gathered to make their initial approach to the New Jersey shore. The Americans would have been wiser to hold their air back for later.

Gunther looked up at the big screen. He frowned. What is that? Does anyone else see this? For a moment, a red enemy appeared in space as if out of nowhere. Then a laser from Iceland destroyed the object.

“Strange,” the admiral said.

With a twist of his head, Gunther saw that the admiral watched the same thing he had.

“What is that?” the admiral asked.

“Sir,” a major asked.

“That,” the admiral said, pointing. “What is that? Where did it come from?”

Gunther’s head swayed back. He noticed something new: a streak on the big screen. It was purple, not red. Purple meant the computer hadn’t registered the thing as dangerous, but as an unknown object, as possibly threating.

“Look,” the admiral said. “There’s another one.”

General Kaltenbrunner swore in a harsh voice.

Gunther sat back in his seat, startled and suddenly uneasy. A blizzard of purple objects appeared on the big screen. His mouth dried out, and he glanced around. Didn’t anyone have any idea what those streaks represented?

A twenty-pound tungsten THOR missile—one of fifty just like it—began its descent into the atmosphere. At the start of its rapid fall, the missile had an ablative nose tip.

As the rod plunged down through the atmosphere at meteor speeds, heating up by friction, the ablative nose tip wore away until finally it was gone. It had done its job as a mini-heat shield. Instead of a blunt nose or even a rounded one showing, the THOR missile had a sharp point and an arrow-like design. It sliced through the increasingly dense atmosphere, losing only a fraction of its terrific velocity.

Despite the intense heat, the internal guts of the tungsten rod began to work. At two miles above the Atlantic Ocean, the nose cap popped off. That exposed the sensors. They were high-grade and rugged, and this particular missile spotted the GDN Otto von Bismarck supercarrier, its priority-one target. Small flanges at the rear of the rod steered the projectile, adjusting as the supercarrier churned through the sea.

At twenty pounds, the tungsten rod was less than an inch in diameter and four feet long. A luminous trail appeared behind it, as straight as a line.

Traveling at the incredible velocity, the THOR missile neared its target.

Warrant Officer Gunther Weise’s hands had begun shaking again. Fear boiled in his stomach, and the approaching disaster angered him as terribly unfair.

Gunther had no idea how this wretched turn of events had occurred. By the startled and grim looks on their faces, the admiral and general didn’t know how or why this terrible thing was happening, either.

In some diabolical fashion, the Americans attacked them from space. It was a science fiction assault. The enemy shouldn’t have been able to deploy or use such a weapons system. The German Dominion was superior in every way to the has-been Americans. Once, the US had stridden across the globe, the strongest power on Earth. But that day had long passed. This was a new era. German might had been reborn through the Dominion.

“How…?” General Kaltenbrunner asked in a hoarse voice. “How was this even possible?”

The admiral shook his head.

Gunther Wiese sat at his station. His stomach knotted horribly with pain. He couldn’t take his eyes off the big screen.

Then the THOR missile struck the supercarrier, a molten, glowing-orange meteor that punched through metal as if it was paper. Incredibly, it smashed through the air control tower first, burning antennae. It sliced down through deck after deck of the great ocean-going vessel. Lastly, the missile tore a hole out of the bottom of the carrier. Meanwhile, fuel storage tanks blew. Friction caused munitions to explode with tremendous force, causing the entire vessel to shudder horribly.

Gunther was already dead, with a piece of hot shrapnel sticking out of his skull. The admiral no longer possessed a head as blood jetted out of his neck. His uniform was no longer white. General Kaltenbrunner bellowed in agony before blood loss rendered him unconscious, and his big frame slumped onto the burning floor.

As the great pride and joy of the German Dominion Armada began to sink below the surface, the rest of the THOR missiles likewise smashed through other carriers, into battleships, cruisers, infantry transports, hovers, against every major ship in the fleet.

Ships blew up. Ships sank. A few limped along with brutal damage. It happened so fast, too, as if Heaven had rained vengeance upon them. Then the attack from space ended, with nothing but hundreds of luminous trails in the sky.

“Are you seeing this?” Lieutenant Penner shouted.

On his screen, beamed from an American AWACS, Penner watched the greatest air reversal in history. He didn’t know yet that it was part of the greatest sea reversal in history, a bigger upset than the Battle of Midway.

One moment, US fighters died to swarming GD drones. The F-35s and V-10s battled gamely, but there were outmatched by numbers and by better technology.

Now, the GD drones simply stopped firing. The drones ceased launching missiles, shooting shells; they stopped doing anything as they flew straight. Some went down into the rough swells. Others traveled east. More flew to the west. If Penner didn’t know better, he would say that the drone operators had all at once ceased to exist. Yet how could that happen? It did not make any sense.

“What’s going on?” Penner asked his wingman.

“I don’t have any idea, sir,”

Then an air controller began to explain it to them. The THOR missiles had just taken out the majority of the GD invasion fleet.

“Say again,” Penner said.

He listened as the air control officer explained it. THOR missiles, what in the world were those.

As Penner wondered, he noticed that the US fighters amongst all those GD air began to shoot down the enemy planes.

This is turning into a turkey shoot, he realized.

Penner laughed. It felt wonderful to be alive. Then he sobered up. He still had a task to do, and maybe now he would be able to accomplish it.

It was time for the air force to destroy whatever was left of the enemy ships out there.

The air traffic controller told them to concentrate on GD infantry and ground-vehicle transports.

Penner nodded. That’s exactly what he planned to do.

General Mansfeld stood in a hushed operational chamber. Screens lined the walls, with technicians seated below them. His staff officers stood as a group, silent and staring. They had been doing both for the past few minutes.

Mansfeld stared at a screen in disbelief. He found it hard to comprehend what he saw. His eyes were fine. His brain worked to full capacity, but the switch from conquering brilliance to catastrophic defeat left a bitter taste in his mouth and a cold black hole in his thinking.

The luminous trails from space had already dissipated. The Americans had found a way to harness meteors. It was amazingly brilliant and cleverly done, and it had just annihilated his chances of ending the campaign in a crushing German victory.

On the screen Mansfeld watched yet another enemy cruise missile. The sleek thing skimmed over the waves.

It’s going to hit a troop transport. I can’t afford that.

True to the prediction, the missile stuck and blasted a surviving troop transport at the waterline. The transport began to list. Mansfeld watched as panicked sailors and infantrymen jumped overboard into the sea.

That’s the wrong thing to do. You must keep your head. That was the only way to survive a disaster.

Another cruise missile skimmed the sea. It destroyed a hover-carrier holding a large number of Sigrid drones.

A disaster, this is a disaster. The Americans have broken the closing jaw. I cannot believe this.

A hard knot of anger washed through General Mansfeld. This technologically advanced blow could ruin his hard-won reputation. Historians would pen down that he had miscalculated. Instead of a great victor—the greatest of modern times with far-seeing vision and—

“No,” Mansfeld said. He turned to stride away into his study, but he realized he needed to rally his command staff.

Clearing his throat, Mansfeld said, “The Americans have done well. It would be petty to say they haven’t. But this will not save them. Nothing came save them from their coming dismemberment.”

“General?” one of the staff members asked. “How…what will we do now?”

Mansfeld forced heartiness into a mocking laugh. “Why, we will close the trap, Colonel.”

“But we needed those ships. We needed those soldiers.”

“Oh,” Mansfeld said. “I admit this will make things more difficult, to be sure. But the Americans have already shown us their panic by using the ICBMs.”

“Maybe we should use some of ours on them, sir,” the staff officer said.

Yes, maybe we should at that. I will have to contemplate the possibility. Who expected space weapons from the Americans? They abandoned space long ago.

“We badly needed those troops, sir,” the staff officer said.

“Yes,” Mansfeld agreed. The man spoke truth. It was always good to see the truth, no matter how harsh it was.

“You will instruct whatever ships survived the disaster to head out to sea,” Mansfeld said. “Get away from the American air. Afterward, we’re going to swing the troop transports around and bring them down the Saint Lawrence into Quebec.”

The staff officers gazed at him like dumb bovines. The nearest had glazed eyes and a slack mouth, looking as if he’d been hypnotized. It was clear they couldn’t perceive just yet. They let a disaster shake them. But disasters happened to everyone, even to geniuses of war. He would recover from this and find his victory that much more gratifying. Enough of that, though. He needed to galvanize these men.

“We must salvage what we can from this,” Mansfeld said. “A single defeat does not a war lose. We have the enemy on the run, gentlemen. This would have been the deathblow, to land Kaltenbrunner’s soldiers in New Jersey and New York. Now we’re going to have to finish this the conventional way. We’ll trap the US Fifth Army in the Niagara Peninsula and, and…”

“Will a reduced Twelfth Army be able to break through Syracuse, sir?” the staff officer asked. “Can the Twelfth Army smash through Albany and race to New York City, all while keeping the line intact and sealing the enemy in our trap?”

“I’m well aware of the odds,” Mansfeld said. “We need reinforcements across Lake Ontario. That’s why we’re swinging the surviving transports wide east and then to the Saint Lawrence. We’ll use those troops in New York yet.”

“Begging your pardon, sir,” the staff officer said. “But maybe we should consider pulling out of New York State. Maybe we should cut our losses before the Americans—”

Mansfeld strode to the defeatist staff officer. Normally, the man was a brilliant colonel of logistics, a real go-getter.

In a cold voice, Mansfeld said, “You are dismissed and relieved of your position.”

“Sir?” the staff officer asked.

“I will not countenance defeatist talk,” Mansfeld told him. “What you gentlemen have witnessed is a single American success. They will not get any more. I will personally see to that. Therefore, I will not tolerate even a hint of a defeatist speculation. We have the enemy on the run. That is the time to ride him down and stick a spear in his side.”

We’re on the tiger, and you cannot stop such a monster and climb off. No, we must stay on until the very end. There is no turning back for any of us, especially not for me.

The staff colonel must have seen something in the general’s eyes. He did not argue. Instead, he saluted crisply, turned and marched out of the operational chamber.

“What about the rest of you?” Mansfeld asked. “Is there anyone else who wishes to spout defeatist talk?”

The staff officers shook their heads.

“Very well,” Mansfeld said. “Carry on and make sure you get the surviving transports headed east first and then north to the mouth of the Saint Lawrence. We’re going to need all the troops we can…gather.”

He almost said, “Scrape together.” That would have sounded wrong. This was a time for confidence. This was not a time to panic and to lose one’s head.

General Mansfeld strode for the door to his inner office. What am I going to do? This is a disaster. What will the Chancellor say?

Mansfeld didn’t bother shaking his head. The Chancellor might panic. Well, he would cross that bridge when the time came. Right now, he had to push the attack on Syracuse and the Niagara Peninsula. The Americans must be congratulating each other right now. He would give them something to worry about, and then he would give them a surprise that would wipe away this bitter sea defeat.