Invasion: New York

-7- Stall

John Red Cloud yawned, surprising a nearby squirrel. The furry creature dropped its acorn and scurried up a tree, turning to stare down at him.

Easing out of his sleeping bag, John stretched and scratched himself. He was in a small forest ten kilometers outside of Paris. To his left, a stream hissed past reeds.

After killing the CID agents, John had driven their BMW to a mall. The agents’ wallets had supplied him with credit cards and money. He’d purchased a sleeping bag, clothes, foodstuffs and other items he needed. He’d carried the bags to the car and driven outside the city, parking off the road. He’d left the corpses in the car and hiked many kilometers that night.

For the next several days and nights he camped here beside the stream, waiting. Few people had true patience. As a hormagaunt, he had more than most. As one walking the path of death, he savored his last few days of life.

Deciding that today was the right moment, he donned a new shirt and tie, suit and dress shoes. He left the pistols, knives, agent IDs, everything. He slipped on sunglasses and a hat, hiked to the nearest road and started walking to Paris.

After an hour he took off his jacket and draped it over an arm. After another half hour a Bristol stopped. It was a boxlike, electric-powered British-made car. A young woman drove. She wore a kerchief and sunglasses and had a long, graceful neck.

Leaning across to the passenger side window, she asked in French, “Would you like a ride?”

John said he would.

“You have an accent,” she said.

He touched the door handle. “I’m from Quebec. Is that acceptable?”

She laughed. She seemed a happy-go-lucky girl, twenty-five perhaps. John climbed in and off they buzzed down the road. She chattered merrily and asked him all kinds of questions. He gave simple answers.

“You’re Indian,” she finally said, “a North American Indian.”

“I’m an Algonquin warrior,” he said. Those on the path of death did well to speak the truth. It amplified their inner strength.

She laughed with delight.

“You are very brave,” he told her.

“Please,” she said. “I’m a wonderful judge of people. The way you act so solemn, I wouldn’t be surprised if you’re a comedian.”

That almost made John smile. Instead, he simply shook his head.

“It doesn’t matter,” she said. “The day is nice and you needed a ride.”

This was death luck, John knew. Because his resolve remained steely, it generated power. The power acted differently on different people. It blinded the woman to the truth because she did not wish to see reality for what it was.

She dropped him off in a suburb of Paris, one much older than where he had slain the CID agents.

John thanked her and watched the Bristol scoot away. Then he put on his jacket and strolled down the street. This one had large maple trees so he walked in shade the entire time.

His information was two years old. It might well be stale. People changed with the times, with new ideas and with successes or failures. This was a gamble, he knew. John shrugged, and he turned onto a well-kept path. Rose bushes abounded, each bush cut to an exact height and with large flowers. Was that a good or bad omen?

John decided it was good. He believed it showed a personality that didn’t like change. Did that mean the owner of the house was an ardent French nationalist? Possibly. It might also mean someone who hated Germans, which wasn’t quite the same thing. In any case, it was time to see if the secret service agent could help him or not.

While climbing the three steps, John almost decided to revert to smiling again. No. That would be a mistake. He was the hormagaunt. The more he hewed to his true self, the better and safer he would be. Boldness would give him an advantage. He had already wasted too much time.

He pressed the doorbell and heard chimes inside. Too much time passed. He leaned close to the door and listened. It had a metal safety screen, which indicated a cautious personality. He couldn’t hear anyone or anything inside. Finally, he knocked loudly.

After a few seconds, slow footsteps approached.

“Who is there?” a woman asked, an older lady, he would guess.

“I’m John Red Cloud from Quebec,” he said.

She paused before saying, “The name is not familiar to me.”

“It will be to your son,” he said.

“You are a friend of his?”

He had guessed right, that this was the mother. “I am,” John said, “a long lost friend, a hidden friend.”

She paused again. Then the lock turned and the inside door opened. Because of the sunlight, John couldn’t see through the security door. He smelled baking bread, though, a warm and friendly odor.

“I don’t recognize you,” she said, sounding closer and yet invisible to him.

“Your son is Peter Francis,” John said. “He works for the French secret service. I met him in Quebec two years ago.”

“Oh, my,” she said. “Well…he’s not home.”

“I realize that. I need to give you a package.” He needed to get past the security door.

“Oh.” The woman hesitated. “Very well, leave it on the porch.”

A ghost of a smile tugged at John’s mouth. It wasn’t out of happiness, but the sad realization that his death luck might be departing. It had been a risk waiting so many days. A hormagaunt’s luck only lasted so long and no longer. Yet he had needed to lie low. Every instinct he possessed had told him so.

“My instructions were to put the package into your hands,” he said.

“I’m—”

“This is very important,” John added.

“Oh, dear,” she said, sounding miffed. “If you insist, I suppose.” A lock clicked and she eased open the security door, sticking out a thin old hand with trembling fingers.

John ripped the door open and stepped inside, forcing her back. She wore a red dress with thick stockings, had gray hair and showed shocked surprise and then dismay.

“Everything will be fine,” he said, closing the security door behind him.

“Please,” she said, “you must go outside and—”

He gripped a frail, upper arm and marched her deeper into the house, slamming the inner door shut.

“What are you doing?” she complained.

“You made the right decision,” John told her. “I’m your son’s friend. I’m France’s friend. Now sit down while I explain what you’re going to do.”

She would phone her son and tell him to hurry home. Then John would speak to him. If his death luck held, the son would agree and the assassination plot would go forward. If he had waited too long to strike…

Maybe it was time to the pray to the old gods. No. If they were real, they had already failed him once already. He would stick to the death power and win or lose on its strength alone.

GD Sergeant Hans Kruger woke up with a start. A burly guard with a nightstick dangling from his belt shook him awake.

Hans stared up in fright at the sour-looking individual. The man had a crew cut and a face like dough, with a trickle of fluid oozing from the left eye. Up near the ceiling and behind the guard’s head glared a single light bulb.

“Get up,” the guard said. The man had rank garlic breath.

Trying not to make a face due to the foul odor, Hans sat up in a sterile room. He had a cot with a threadbare blanket, a steel stink and five feet of pacing room. It was worse than a monk’s cell. And all he had for clothes were white jockey shorts. They’d taken everything else.

He’d entered the cramped submarine yesterday morning and traveled to the other shore of Lake Ontario. They hadn’t docked, but about three hundred meters from shore he’d jumped into a speedboat together with his two captors. He still remembered the boat’s bottom scraping up against a muddy beach. Several cars waited for them on a nearby road. His two captors had jogged to a different vehicle, and it had followed his car. He hadn’t seen those two since. Last night, Mr. Nightstick or his twin took his clothes and watched him shower as he’d washed with sandpaper-like soap. He’d spent most of the night staring up at the black ceiling of his cell, wondering what these changes would bring him.

“Go that way,” Mr. Nightstick said.

Hans wanted to ask for clothes, but he was too afraid. On naked feet, he padded through empty corridors of white tile. His eyes felt as gritty as last night’s soap and his stomach grumbled. What did they plan to do to him?

“Stop,” the guard said.

The man unlocked a heavy door, opening it and pointing inside a room.

Hans entered, and he heard the door slam shut behind him. There was a table, two chairs and a mirror along a wall. He sat down, put his hands on the table and waited. He didn’t look at the mirror. He suspected others stood behind it, watching him.

Time passed, and Hans shivered at the coolness of the cell. His stomach rumbled several times and he wanted a drink as his mouth was dry and stale.

Abruptly, a key turned and the heavy door swung open. Three people walked in: Mr. Nightstick, a narrow-faced man in his thirties with a brown suit and a goatee and an exceptionally pretty woman in a green uniform with a white blouse. Mr. Goatee took the chair across the table from him. Mr. Nightstick stood near the door, crossing his arms and staring belligerently. The woman walked around the table and stood behind him.

Hans twisted around to watch her. She didn’t wear pants, but a dress, nylons and heels. She had exceptional legs, better than the Turkish prostitutes he’d used.

The man with the goatee cleared his throat.

Hans faced him.

“Don’t worry about Ms. Norton,” the man said. “She’s a psychologist and will assess the truthfulness of your words.”

Hans opened his mouth to speak.

The man with the goatee held up a slender hand. When Hans closed his mouth, the man nodded and leaned back in his chair.

“Call me Karl,” the man said. “Do you understand English?”

Hans nodded.

“You will refrain from gestures and speak your answers,” Karl said.

“I speak reasonable English,” Hans said.

“Good. That will help. What is your name and rank?”

“I am Hans Kruger, a sergeant in the GD Expeditionary Force. I operated a drone vehicle, the Sigrid antipersonnel platform. Under the Geneva Convention…”

Hans trailed off, as Karl raised his hand again.

“Let me explain something, Mr. Kruger,” Karl said. “In your case, we care nothing about the Geneva Convention. We believe you hold vital information toward the American war effort. Now, I have no doubt you’ve heard of waterboarding.”

“I have,” Hans said, as his stomach tightened.

“It’s a process you want to avoid, I assure you.”

Hans nodded, and Karl frowned at him. “Yes!” Hans said. “I agree. I don’t want to be waterboarded.”

“We can proceed down that road if we have to,” Karl said. “We can…”

Hans leaned forward earnestly. “May I tell you something, sir?”

Karl glanced at the woman behind Hans.

Hans had forgotten about her. He glanced back, and it startled him to see she’d let down her long black hair and that she had opened the first three buttons of her blouse. What was going on here?

“My psychologist is pretty, isn’t she, Hans?” Karl asked.

Hans gulped nervously. He was more aware than ever concerning his almost total state of undress. He made a little yelping noise as she stepped nearer and put a hand on his shoulder. She had warm skin, too warm and sexual. He turned to Mr. Goatee.

Karl sat back in his chair, smiling at him.

Hans opened his mouth. The woman stroked his neck with a gentle touch.

“Please,” Hans whispered. “I don’t think you understand. I’m willing to talk. I’ll tell you what you want to know.”

Karl’s face tightened, and he motioned the woman away. She removed her hand and stepped back.

“We know how to deal with liars, Hans.”

“I’m not lying. Tell me what you’d like to know and I’ll tell you.”

Karl stroked his goatee. He seemed to measure Hans. Finally, he said, “Tell me about your Sigrid. I’m curious how you operated the vehicle.”

Once more, Hans glanced back at the woman. Her features had turned frosty. She was beautiful, but he didn’t like the idea of her attempting to arouse him in the presence of these two men. The Americans had odd ideas about breaking a man, but this was better than being strapped down onto a board as they poured water down his mouth. He shuddered at the thought.

“Is something wrong?” Karl asked.

“No… It’s—it’s chilly in here.”

“He’s lying,” the woman said. “That wasn’t what he was thinking.”

Hans’s stomach tightened worse than before. “I-I was just thinking about waterboarding. I…I didn’t like the thought.”

Karl glanced at the woman.

“He could be telling the truth now,” she said.

Hans licked his lips nervously. He didn’t like these two. No. He didn’t like them at all.

“Let’s try this again,” Karl said. “First, I want to know your exact procedures as you operate the Sigrid drone…”

In such an unlikely manner, Hans Kruger began an interrogation marathon that would last for weeks.

Colonel Stan Higgins, the commanding officer of the single US Behemoth Regiment, toured the new Behemoth Manufacturing Plant in Detroit.

He was in his fifties and at five ten he weighed a precise two hundred pounds. The last month had almost been as bad as the endless weeks of combat against the Chinese this winter. He had a hectic schedule and didn’t get enough sleep. To compensate, he ate too much and exercised too little. He was athletic and still enjoyed various competitive sports including basketball and ping-pong…when he could find the time. He hadn’t found it lately and had gained too many pounds that had gone directly to his stomach.

As of this moment, the Behemoth Regiment only had six running machines, and not all of those operated at peak efficiency. The Behemoths were great big tanks at three hundred tons apiece. They boasted the only rail guns in the entire North American theater, Allied or Aggressor. The regiment was stationed in Oklahoma behind the defensive works facing the Chinese and Brazilian invasion armies.

Stan had arrived in Detroit this morning, coming at the request of General McGraw.

Stan stood in a spacious hangar filled with heavy equipment. Some of the equipment had come from Denver. Those parts or machines looked rusted and badly used. Just like Stalingrad in WWII, Denver had gone through the meat grinder of sieges this winter. The rest of the assembly line equipment was new, with workers in coveralls boiling over it from one end to the other. Chains rattled in places. Rollers clacked and steam hissed two hundred feet away at the end.

By turning to his left, Stan spied five battered Behemoth hulks. Big laser burn-holes showed in several of them. Those had faced the Chinese laser tanks, or the Mobile Canopy Anti-Ballistic Missile vehicles, as they were officially called. The Chinese normally used the six-hundred ton, three-trailer vehicles as air and missile defense. But much as the Germans in WWII had used their famous 88mm antiaircraft guns against tanks, the Chinese had done the same with their “laser tanks.” The battle between the two technologically advanced weapon systems had been the Behemoths’ toughest to date.

America was building more Behemoth plants, but at present this was the only one going. It would take three more months before the Behemoth Regiment was back to full strength. At the same time, the US Army had started a second regiment. Now the GD threatened Detroit, or they would in another few weeks unless something decisive happened to halt their advance.

“Colonel Higgins!” General McGraw shouted.

McGraw had commanded the decisive thrust against the Pan-Asian Alliance this winter. Army Group Washington had contained the best divisions America possessed, and that had made the difference. McGraw now commanded the entire Midwestern Defense facing the PAA and the South American Federation.

Tom McGraw stood six foot five and had to weigh a solid three-fifty. He was a bear of a man, with a thick face and a General Custer beard and mustache. Like Patton, McGraw wore pistols at his side even here at the civilian plant. McGraw’s guns were old issue .45s, and he had used them on more than one occasion.

“Good to see you, Stan.”

“General,” Stan said.

They shook hands, two of the crucial officers of the dream team that had saved the United States this winter. Stan knew that the general was on his way to Washington to meet with the President. No doubt the Commander in Chief wanted McGraw’s advice.

They had both been busy in the Midwest, readying their commands in case the Chinese and Brazilians decided to launch another up-the-gut invasion this summer. So far, the Aggressors had been content to lick their wounds and rebuild their depleted formations.

The plant manager and his aides stepped away from Stan. They must have seen something in McGraw’s face.

Stan watched them go, mildly surprised at their reaction. “Did you scowl at them?” he asked the general.

McGraw grinned for only a moment. Then he became serious. “I only have a few minutes for you, old son. I’m off to Washington to see the king.”

Stan became serious, too. There was something very close to his heart. “Say, before you ask me whatever it is you’re going to, I have something to ask you.”

“What’s that?” McGraw said, lifting a bushy eyebrow. He had a tuft of white hairs there.

“I haven’t heard from my son for several weeks. He hasn’t been answering any emails and his cell just rings when I phone. I finally got through to his friends in the Militia. They say he’s in trouble with the Detention people. I phoned them, but they’re stonewalling me. I finally used a back channel and discovered he’s in a penal battalion.”

“What, your boy?”

“It’s crazy. My boy fought in Denver and survived the siege. This is total bullshit. Tom, what’s with the Militia people? I know the regular members are great men and women. But some of the leaders are…well, they remind me of the Brownshirts or the SS.”

A touch of worry creased McGraw’s face. “I wouldn’t say that too loudly. Who knows what little bird will hear you and pass along your words.”

Stan snorted angrily. “You can bet I’m going to say it even louder if they don’t release my boy from their…their penal battalions. What’s up with that?”

“Up with that?” McGraw asked. “Are you sure you’re a colonel?”

“No, sir,” Stan said. “I’m a pissed-off father ready to rock and roll against the Militia leadership. I’ll take this up with Director Harold if I have to.”

General McGraw’s face grew serious. “You know how the wind is blowing. Director Harold has instituted some rough decrees. He gets things done and the Militia has mobilized millions, and armed them too.”

“The Army could have done the same thing.”

“Twenty years ago, yes, you would be right,” McGraw said. “But this isn’t your father’s army.”

“Tom, I’m dead, dead serious. They can’t—”

“Hold it right there. Don’t tell me about can’t. They took Jake. At least from what you’re saying they did. I’ll see what I can do, but these Militia leaders usually cover their butts pretty well. If your son has crossed the line somewhere, you’re going to have to be smart and tactful to get him out of this mess, not just bull ahead.”

Stan turned away. If Jake died because of this nonsense…he’d be ready to turn the Behemoths on the Militia leadership. But there was no sense telling Tom that. The general had enough problems.

“I appreciate whatever you can do, sir,” Stan said.

“No, no, Colonel,” McGraw said. “Don’t go all formal on me.” The general grabbed Stan by the elbow and steered him away from the waiting plant manager.

“Listen to me. I’ll do what I can for Jake. But you know Army brass doesn’t have a lot of pull with the Militia. They might use your boy as a bargaining chip against us. You know what I mean?”

“I know,” Stan said, and it made his gut ache. What was wrong with those people?

“But I’ll bend some arms,” McGraw said. “You can count on that.”

“I know,” Stan said. And he did. He trusted Tom McGraw.

“You’re good then?”

Stan wasn’t good in the slightest. He hadn’t been good ever since learning about this. But he was Army. He could put his pain in a box and shut the lid so he could concentrate on the matter at hand. He gave the general a sharp nod.

“Good,” McGraw said. “Now how about you help me for a moment.”

“Of course,” Stan said.

“You’ve been keeping abreast of the GD campaign in Southern Ontario?”

“Night and day,” Stan said.

“I knew you would be. Do you have any ideas?”

Stan knew what McGraw meant. Did he have any ideas about how to stop the GD blitzkrieg? Well, the Army and the reformed Canadians had stopped the blitz for a time. It came at the cost of the Toronto Pocket, and too many prized divisions caught in a trap. The Germans would capture those soldiers soon. Nothing American High Command did had been able to break them free. Once the pocket surrendered, the blitz would likely continue. He had an idea how to keep the Germans bottled afterward, but he wasn’t sure the general would like it much.

“I’ve been thinking about it,” Stan admitted. “It’s tight country in Southern Ontario. Especially the area squeezed between Lake Huron, Lake Erie and Lake Ontario. There’s a lot of city there, too, a lot of built-up area. Unfortunately, the GD has better and more armor and better and more mechanized units than we do.”

“They have plenty of ground-based drones, too,” McGraw said. “That gives them an amazing advantage.”

Stan agreed. “From the repots I’ve read, our armor is outclassed. Facing GD tanks head-on is too costly in our machines, and our helos have taken crippling losses whenever they’ve attacked. We need to keep our older tanks away from theirs. There aren’t any Jeffersons up north, as we have them all locked up in the Midwest. Frankly, the only way I can see right now at stopping them for good is through mass, lots of warm bodies in the way.”

“Armed with plenty of anti-tank weapons?” McGraw asked.

“We need more of that, much more,” Stan said. “But our portable anti-tank weapons aren’t as good as theirs. And those Sigrids combined with the Kaisers, Leopards and laser-armed Sabre fighter-jets—it’s a brutal mix, sir. No. I believe the answer is massed bodies backed by thousands of gun tubes.”

“Artillery, huh,” McGraw said.

“Raining down anti-tank rounds by the ton,” Stan said. “If we can, we have to turn the battle from a high-tech contest to something where we can compete at better odds. We need siege lines, Tom, massed SAMs and tactical antiair lasers so they can’t pull any more of their tank drops against us. That was well done on their part. No. I take that back. It was a brilliant maneuver.”

“They’ve been brilliant, I’ll grant you that,” McGraw said. “They have their own Stan Higgins over there.”

“I don’t know about that, sir, but the GD generals know their business. We have more men or soldiers than the GD does. They have more machines. Too bad we couldn’t fire giant EMP weapons over them and stall the GD machines.”

“Nuclear explosions cause electromagnetic pulses,” McGraw said thoughtfully.

Stan’s shoulders twitched. It made him feel an old injury in his shoulder, pulling at the ancient wound. Is he serious? “Do you really want a nuclear war in Southern Ontario, sir? I was thinking along the line of the Chinese EMP Blue Swan missiles. We could use several dozen of those. They could change the equation for us, and in a hurry.”

“Better to have a nuclear war there than to let the Germans into our country,” McGraw said.

“It can’t be as bad as that,” Stan said.

“It’s worse,” McGraw said. “Do you know there’s talk of moving your Behemoths north to Detroit?”

Stan laughed bleakly. “That’s a bad joke. We only have a handful of running vehicles. You know that.”

“That’s all we’ve ever had with them, old son. Do you think your Behemoths would do more good in—?”

“No!” Stan said.

McGraw scowled. “You didn’t even hear the question.”

“The Behemoths do best at long ranges, sir, very long ranges. Southern Ontario is the wrong place to use them. Besides, the Chinese would learn we pulled out of Oklahoma. Right now, I suspect, the Behemoth reputation is doing more to scare the Chinese than our paltry handful of actual machines. If we pull out of the Midwest Defense…” Stan shook his head. “We would lose the benefit of our reputation. We’re not going to impress the GD with our rep, but only through hard fighting.”

“And if the Germans take Detroit and this plant?” McGraw asked.

Stan blinked slowly. Was it really going to come to that? Were the Germans that good? If they were that good…the entire war could turn around against America.

“The GD making it to Detroit turns it into a different ball game, doesn’t it?” McGraw asked.

“It does,” Stan said.

“No suggestions, Colonel?”

“We can’t afford to lose Detroit,” Stan said. “Well…let me rephrase that. We can’t afford to lose the Behemoth Plant. Before that happens…I’d use those nukes you were talking about.”

“I can quote you on that?” McGraw asked.

“Yes, sir,” Stan said.

McGraw turned away. He sighed after a time. “This is a hell of a war, Stan. We won ourselves a big victory, a spectacular thing that put us in the driver’s seat for a change. Now another wolf comes sniffing at our door. Only it isn’t just any wolf, but the big old Fenris wolf of Norse mythology. Are you familiar with the story?”

“I am, sir.”

“I thought you might be,” McGraw said, facing Stan again.

“During the last battle of the Viking gods—it’s called Ragnarok,” Stan said. “The Fenris wolf eats Odin All-father. If I remember correctly, the wolf swallows the Norse king of the gods whole.”

“It might be time to nuke the wolf,” McGraw said.

“Or use mass against him,” Stan said.

“And where do you expect the US to get this mass? In case you haven’t noticed, we’re stretched everywhere.”

“You can’t guard everywhere,” Stan said. “That’s a truism of battle and of war. Sometimes you have to gamble and weaken yourself at a spot so you can be strong at the critical sector. That’s what we did this winter. If it was me—and it isn’t, I know—I’d strip the southern East Coast for soldiers.”

Thoughtfully, McGraw pursed his lips. “The GD has some potent amphibious forces in Cuba waiting. We’ve learned about them. They’ve been quietly building up their numbers, ships and landing craft.”

“I’ve read those reports too,” Stan said. “I know about them.”

“Then you realize that by stripping the southern East Coast of soldiers we’d be leaving ourselves open. That’s just a short hop from Cuba to there.”

“We would be open there, yes sir. What do we have, something like seven hundred thousand soldiers from southern Mississippi to Florida and to North Carolina. I’m talking about winnowing out four hundred thousand from that. I would think the bulk of the remaining troops would particularly guard Mississippi to Florida.”

“That wouldn’t be enough,” McGraw said. “The coastline is long, especially the Florida coasts.”

“I understand, sir. Mississippi and Florida would have to keep the bulk of the staying three hundred thousand. The other areas— Sir, the way I see it, in a pinch or in a crisis we could ship troops back to the depleted areas fast enough to make the GD rue the day they landed in the wrong place. I mean, they could land in Georgia or South Carolina, but then where would they do?”

“Are you serious?” McGraw asked. “They would capture the state. They would create a third front against us. That would be a disaster.”

Stan shook his head. “The GD amphibious force wouldn’t be like D-Day in Normandy. It would be more like Dieppe in 1942. The Allies landed there in WWII and the Germans annihilated them. Yes, the Cuba-based GD forces could capture a few cities, possibly even more than a few. But that in itself isn’t going to win them much. We could pour troops around them and crush the amphibious force out of existence. They simply don’t have a large enough amphibious force to grab enough territory. It would create a temporary third front for us, but one heavily in our favor. We’re talking millions of troops to face them and they could put down what: two hundred thousand at the most?”

“Now you’re conjuring more millions of American troops out of thin air?” McGraw asked.

“That’s not what I mean,” Stan said. “If you’re playing a war game, such an invasion might make sense. But if they invade such a lonely spot—lonely in the sense that the invasion force would be far from other Aggressor forces and help—it would only be a matter of time before America encircled them with mass. That mass would be too much for such a tiny GD force, and they would end up dying to a man. I don’t think even Chancellor Kleist can throw away that many soldiers on a suicide mission. It would have the potential of shattering GD morale.”

“Hmm, I think I see what you’re driving at.”

“The GD has to be careful where they invade,” Stan said. “I suspect that if they do invade this summer, it would be in support of the present Expeditionary Force. At least, that’s how I would do it, a one-two punch.”

“Interesting…” McGraw said.

“Therefore,” Stan said. “I’d strip the present forces from Georgia, South and North Carolina and take some maybe from coastal Alabama and the strip of Florida south of Alabama. We’d leave token forces there and build fake troop emplacements to try to fool the GD as Patton did to the Germans across the English Channel. With the extra soldiers—four hundred thousand perhaps—and with more levies from the New England command—say another two hundred thousand—we could begin to really mass in Southern Ontario. I’d also be gathering as many artillery tubes as I could. No matter what the tech is, it’s hard to defend against tons of metal raining down on you. Maybe as good, the artillery will use up all those smart anti-munitions, leaving the Kaisers vulnerable to direct fire. Then you dig trenches, big, nasty systems better than WWI, more like the Iraqis built against the Iranians back in the 1980s. I’d make it impossible for the GD to race anywhere in Southern Ontario.”

“Nothing fancy,” McGraw said, as if to himself, “just mass. That would mean a lot of blood—of death—on our part, wouldn’t it?”

“Most likely,” Stan admitted. He brushed a fly away that had landed on his right cheek. “I wouldn’t suggest such a thing, but—”

“I understand, old son. We’re not talking niceties here, but national survival.”

“Despite the number of troops,” Stan said, “this is a stopgap measure until we figure something else out.” He stared at his boots for a moment, before meeting the general’s gaze. “In the long run, we can’t win a war of attrition against the world. We couldn’t even win one against the Pan-Asian Alliance, never mind adding in the South American Federation and the German Dominion. But this is a tight spot, both in the actual land mass—the peninsula of Southern Ontario—and that we find ourselves in. The key to our defense would be manpower and hordes of defending artillery tubes. The Germans will have to try for the tubes. That would be a given. When they try, that’s when we throw a surprise at them.”

“What kind of surprise?” McGraw asked.

“I don’t know at the moment, sir, but you’re likely going to need something. I’m guessing the GD still has some tech surprises for us.”

McGraw nodded, before shaking Stan’s hand. “You’ve given me food for thought, Colonel. I like it. It isn’t fancy this time like we did against the Chinese.”

“You’d better move fast on this one,” Stan said. “I mean emergency fast. From the reports I’ve read, the Toronto Pocket isn’t going to last much longer. If the GD reaches Detroit and breaks out… then it could get very ugly for us.”

McGraw checked his watch. When he looked up, he waved to the plant manager and began to button his coat.

The manager hurried near. “You aren’t staying, General?”

McGraw grabbed Stan by the shoulder. “This is the officer you need to impress. If he gives you advice, you listen to what he says.”

The plant manager studied Stan, soon nodding.

With that, Tom McGraw took his leave, and Stan started the plant inspection on his own.

First, the Chinese and Brazilians had attacked America, now the German Dominion did. America needed more allies than just the Canadians. Stan was grateful for their help, especially last winter, but America had to find heavier partners if they were going to throw these massed military coalitions out of the country.

US Marine General Len Zelazny looked up at the bunker ceiling. The entire edifice shook as debris rained down. On impulse, he grabbed his helmet and shoved it onto his head. It likely saved his life.

For the last several days the GD had pounded the shrinking pocket with artillery and sent in hunter-killer teams to dig them out. The Canadian and American soldiers would have surrendered or died at least two days ago, but Lady Luck had smiled on them. They had found a deep and forgotten warehouse full of weaponry and dried goods. Given their small numbers, it proved critical. Generously resupplied, they fought and died, but some of them still survived, although in ever-dwindling numbers.

Now a chunk of masonry fell from the ceiling and dashed itself against the general’s head. His eyes rolled up and he slammed against the floor. He might have died, but his aide, a corporal, grabbed him under the armpits and dragged Zelazny out of the bunker just in time. The place collapsed, killing some of the command team.

Zelazny woke up with a splitting headache several hours later. Men argued behind him and the sound of tanks grew louder. Rousing himself, Zelazny sat up. The headache worsened and he vomited onto his lap.

“General,” the corporal said, squatting before him. The boy had a grimy, dusty face, with his eyes peering out like a raccoon. “You should take it easy.”

With his forearm, Zelazny wiped vomit from his mouth, and he grunted as he struggled to his feet. Vertigo threatened and the half-sunken chamber seemed to spin around. He vomited again. He felt awful. He lost track of what the men said. With his hands against an old wooden table, he braced himself so he wouldn’t go crashing to his side.

“It’s coming here!” a soldier shouted. The man stood by a basement window, looking out at ground level. He turned to the others and shouted, “Run!”

The men forgot Zelazny this time, including the corporal, as they bolted out of the chamber. Something had them terrified. From his spot at the table, Zelazny blinked and his head pounded with pain. Then the loud and immediate sound of squealing tank treads brought the general around to reality. He looked around and spied weapons scattered about the room. Taking several wobbling lurches, he bent and picked up a Javelin missile. This was the wrong place to fire one, but he was going to die anyway, so he might as well hurt the enemy.

Gritting his teeth—that made his head worse—wrestling the thing upright, Zelazny staggered to the nearest window. This one was just a little higher than his head but showed the ground outside. He was in a Canadian basement.

Thirty feet to the side of his position, he saw a vast shape heading straight toward the building. A second later, the war machine crashed into the wall and explosively blew bricks into the basement. Then the tank stopped, with several feet of its treads and body hanging over open basement space. Zelazny staggered away from the window. Like a dinosaur the tank shoved a little more into the room. Zelazny tried to will the machine to clank forward even more and tumble into the basement. Instead of obeying his will, he saw something detach from the tank and fall. It clanged heavily onto the cement floor. The mine or bomb was metal and shaped like a barrel.

Zelazny dropped to his stomach, covering the Javelin launcher with his body. The barrel exploded, producing a violent concussion followed by roaring, crackling flames. Zelazny lifted and slammed against a basement wall. He grunted painfully. Then fire engulfed him. He shouted in panic, and he rolled and rolled. He put out the flames and he shoved up to his knees. Fires raged around him and an oily smell along with billowing black smoke nearly gagged him. The tank—it was a Leopard IV—began pulling away, and bricks rained down and clanged against its metal hide.

Zelazny worked on automatic, a lost soul in a basement inferno. Maybe he was no longer altogether sane. His face was black and his eyebrows were singed away. He set the Javelin launcher on his shoulder. Missiles such as this normally had a minimum aiming distance in order to protect the operator. These had been modified. He pulled the trigger. The missile hardly had time to pop out of the launcher and fly. It struck the side of the tank and exploded. The concussion blew the general backward, and he grunted as he struck a desk and saw flames sprouting between his legs.

He crawled away and slapped his legs. He had burn holes on his pants. Time spun around, soared and dived down into pain. The oily, billowing smoke filled the top of the basement and poured out of the tank-made hole. He crawled along the bottom and it hurt his chest to suck down air to breathe.

I’m a Marine, and this is my last battle.

Silently, Zelazny repeated the saying to himself. He had begun his service long ago in Iraq and had fought in the Second Battle of Fallujah. He had dished it out there harder than he’d taken it. Why should he turn pansy now in Toronto?

Just because I’m on old man doesn’t mean I should quit.

Finding a gas mask, putting it on, finding the glasses were smudgy and making it harder to see, Zelazny tried to ignore the smoke and fire. He picked up a grenade launcher and staggered to the dead enemy tank. It had been a lucky strike, but he needed some more luck about now. He crawled over rubble as if it were stairs and slid to a position where he could look across the street. The smoke would hide him; he was sure.

Ah, look at that. A rare GD infantryman peered around a building.

Zelazny didn’t know it, but inside the gas mask, he grinned like Death. He readied the grenade launcher and waited. Suddenly, the GD infantryman sprinted for a new position. For these seconds, the soldier exposed himself. Several others followed the man. Zelazny fired two grenades—pop, pop—and he had the extreme gratification of watching an enemy soldier go down and shout in German for a medic.

A US machine gun poured fire from somewhere, and the GD infantryman died in a hail of bullets that shredded his body armor. Good, good, that was very good. Zelazny whooped with savage lust.

A Sigrid clattered around a corner and into view. Zelazny aimed and emptied the grenade launcher at the thing. The explosions were gratifying, but they had little effect. He released the weapon and slid down the rubble back into the basement. There had to be something around here—

“General!” the corporal shouted from a half-buried door. “You’re alive! Follow me. We have to go.”

Zelazny stood dump struck. “Kill the thing,” he finally muttered in his mask.

“You look terrible, sir. Let’s go. Come on!”

“Weapons,” Zelazny slurred. “We need weapons.”

It seemed impossible the corporal could hear him, but the young man answered. “We have plenty, but we don’t have many men left. Are you coming, sir?”

Zelazny vaguely realized that he was in no condition to make decisions. So he crawled under the smoke to the corporal and climbed to his feet. The young aide gave him a shoulder, and they retreated from the fiery basement.

They had survived another GD engagement in the shrinking pocket with its dwindling number of defenders. It was doubtful they would survive much longer.

Anna Chen felt the grimness of the hour and the importance of the meeting. How quickly things had changed from this winter. It had been the witching hour then, too, but these men had made key decisions that had turned the situation around.

Could they achieve such a miracle once again?

The President sat in his rocking chair, easing it back and forth. She sat behind and to his left, keeping notes. General Tom McGraw had taken a recliner on the opposite location as the President. Director Harold sat on one end of a long sofa, while the Chairman of the Joints Chiefs sat on the other end.

David welcomed the men, and they chitchatted for a few minutes. Soon, the President stopped rocking, and he outlined the reason for the meeting.

“General Zelazny’s command has held out longer than we thought he could in Toronto,” David said. “We still have intermittent contact with them. We know they’ve run out of space and have twice as many wounded as healthy soldiers. There isn’t any evacuation for anyone in Toronto.” The President paused. “It looks now as if the enemy has begun to mask the pocket and go around them. They’ve begin the drive again, moving up masses of tanks, drones and assault troops.”

The President glanced at each of them, even turning to glance at Anna. “If the Expeditionary Force blitzes to Detroit or smashes through Niagara Falls and Buffalo… Obviously, the war will have broken out into a wider and more threatening theater. It’s bad enough now, but given—”

“Mr. President,” Director Harold said. “I think we’ve finally come to our great impasse, the one we’ve all secretly been dreading.”

The President stared at the Director of Homeland Security, and he took his time answering.

Anna knew David didn’t like people interrupting him. But this time it seemed like it was more than that. She’d never told him what Max had said at Frobisher. She had begun to believe it had been a failed ploy on the director’s part…

I should have told David. It was a mistake to keep this to myself.

“Do you mean a massed nuclear strike in Southern Ontario?” David finally asked.

“No, Mr. President,” Max said. “I mean surgical strikes with tactical nuclear weapons. We might even use some of them to create EMP blasts. I believe that would be a good way to shut down the GD drone operations.”

“The enemy antiair, antimissile umbrella is strong,” General Alan said. “It’s what has kept us from resupplying our forces in Toronto other than with token drops. The GD antimissile shield is much better than what even the Chinese had this winter.”

“One big nuclear missile, or several big missiles if that’s what it takes, can silence those with a giant EMP blast,” Max said. He opened up a briefcase and took out a thin folder, showing it to the others. “This is a tactical nuclear war plan and situational study of Southern Ontario. Mr. President, we need to do this and do it now.”

“You mean we should consider the option,” the President said.

Max seemed to gather his resolve as he dragged his tongue across his bottom lip. “I’m sorry, sir. I mean strike now. The Toronto Pocket points to the urgency of the matter. We must stop the GD before they break out of Southern Ontario. As it is, they are containable. If they break into New York State or worse, into Michigan…” Max shook his head. “I think we all know what that would mean.”

“We should turn the Behemoth tanks loose against them,” the President said.

McGraw cleared his throat.

“Are they ready?” the President asked him.

“No, sir, I’m afraid not,” McGraw said. “We only have a handful of Behemoths running. The regiment will be back to strength in three months.”

“No,” Max said. “We’ll have lost Detroit a long time before that, General. We must take the appropriate action now, this instant, today.”

The room fell silent. Anna glanced at the others. McGraw looked down. Max’s eyes gleamed and the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs seemed troubled. David bit his lip as if he mentally argued with himself.

“I’m sorry to say this, sir,” General Alan said into the silence. “But I think the director has a point, a powerful one.”

David Sims stopped rocking. He looked surprised. He glanced from the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs to the Director of Homeland Security. “Are you two working against me?”

“No, sir,” Alan said. “I simply agree that we’re at an impasse here. We’ve moved the strategic reserve into Southern Ontario and trickled troops from the New England Command. The Germans have already devoured much of those forces and encircled others. We could summon the training levies—”

“I do not recommend that,” Max said.

“I don’t either,” Alan said. “I’m just talking about emergency policies. It’s that serious, Mr. President. This is bad, very bad.”

Anna felt her chest constrict.

“I have an idea to propose that doesn’t include using nuclear weapons,” McGraw said.

Anna felt relief flood through her. She was dead set against a nuclear holocaust, and she feared the consequences if the Director and the Chairman joined forces against David.

McGraw outlined Stan Higgins’s plan of using the majority of the soldiers stationed along the southern East and Gulf Coasts, entraining them to Southern Ontario together with a generous outlay of troops from the New England Command.

“But…” General Alan said, interrupting McGraw. Alan spoke about the GD amphibious forces in Cuba. He pointed out the danger of stripping the southern East Coast in case the enemy should land there and grab vital US territory.

McGraw used Stan’s arguments to deflect the Chairman’s objections.

“If I understand you correctly,” Director Harold said, “you’re talking about mass casualties in Southern Ontario. You mean to try to drown the enemy in US blood and to clog their tank treads with our boy’s pulped and crushed flesh.”

Big Tom McGraw’s face became leaden. With eyes like chips of glass, he stared at Max Harold. “I’m a soldier, Director. I fight with the weapons I have.” He shook his head. “I don’t want my men to die, and I resent the idea of you calling me a butcher.”

“Isn’t your plan butchery?” Max asked. “We have the weapons to stop the enemy: tactical nuclear missiles. I say it’s time to use them and end this conflict with an annihilating victory.”

Color darkened McGraw’s face. “Nuclear warheads… We have to use what we have: and right now, we have more soldiers than they do—if we can mass them in time. I hate the idea of American soldiers dying. I desperately hate it. But if we launch tactical nuclear weapons, they will launch tactical nuclear weapons. Then we’ll have to up our scale of attack, and soon we’re exploding the big boys at each other. Thermonuclear fireballs will devour everything. It will be Armageddon. No, Director. I don’t see how any soldier wins once we start doing that in earnest.”

“I disagree with you,” Max said. “The trick is to hit first and hit hard with everything.”

“Everything?” the President asked.

“A slip of the tongue,” Max said. “I mean to hit with an avalanche of tactical missiles, with nuclear surgical strikes.”

“That’s an oxymoron,” McGraw said.

“It’s also old Cold War theory,” the President said.

Max picked up the thin folder, waving it in the air. “We need to consider what’s at stake here before we get indigent about using nuclear weapons. They’re simply devices causing bigger explosions.”

“Size of explosion together with radioactivity makes a tremendous difference,” McGraw said.

“You’re looking at this from the wrong perspective,” Max told him. “Three powerful military blocs are invading our country. We don’t have the firepower or the manpower to take on all three for long and hope to win. We must end this war as quickly as possible. We cannot win a war of attrition, which is exactly what General McGraw is suggesting we do in Southern Ontario. I disagree with his plan. We need another decisive win. Against all hope, we had such a win against the Chinese. Now we need it against the Germans. We must end the war by destroying our opponents. Think about it. We’ve admitted to ourselves that GD tech is better than ours.”

“In most areas their tech is better,” Alan said. “Not in all areas.”

“In enough areas that it matters,” Max said. “Do any of you suppose I don’t understand numbers? The Militia organization has fielded millions of extra troops and armed them, often with hunting rifles and mortars instead of assault rifles and real artillery tubes. The GD offensive…” He waved the folder and slapped it against his briefcase. “The only way I can see us winning decisively is through the use of nuclear weapons. The idea we can conventionally defeat all three power blocs…it is madness and maybe even military hubris on our part to think so.”

Once more, the room fell into silence.

This is getting ugly, Anna thought. And it’s tearing David apart.

The President rubbed his eyes as he hung his head.

“Sir,” General Alan said. “I’d like to point out something.”

David Sims nodded wearily.

Alan took off his thick black glasses and he removed a checkered cloth from his suit pocket. He blew on a lens and began to rub it clean. He did the same to the second lens as the others waited.

After putting the glasses back on, the gaunt Chairman of the Joint Chiefs glanced at each person in turn. “I’m not going to address Director Harold’s argument. He may have a point. I’m a military man, and it seems to me that once we begin to truly talk about nuclear exchanges that the fighting is over and the true butchery starts.”

“Ignoring my argument is conceding that I’m right,” Max said, “because you do not have a cogent counterargument to offer.”

“The end of the world—”

“No,” Max said. “Nuclear weapons aren’t the end of the world. That is a false argument.”

“I disagree,” Alan said. “I have agreed at times to seaborne nuclear strikes. Those are different fish, so to speak. Land-based nuclear strikes in heavily populated regions…I believe that is the beginning of the end.”

“Are you asking for a defeat?” Max asked.

General Alan smiled briefly. “I think we can defeat our enemies conventionally. We threw the Chinese and their allies back, and given time and more Behemoths, we’ll throw the PAA and the SAF out of the rest of the country.”

“And what do you think the GD Expeditionary Force will be doing during all this?” Max asked.

“That’s what I want to explain,” Alan said. “General McGraw proposes a stopgap measure to buy us time. I have…well, I don’t know if we’ve hit the secret jackpot or not, but now seems like a good time to let the rest of you know that we’ve seen a technological ray of light.”

“You should have already told us,” the President said.

“Yes, sir,” Alan said. “Well, almost a week ago, Len Zelazny attacked the GD head-on. He took severe losses in men and materiel. We know that. He did so because of a theory of his. That was to get elite soldiers behind enemy lines. Gentlemen, Ms. Chen, a few of our boys got into the GD secondary areas. One team in particular wreaked mayhem on a drone battalion. They shot up all the personnel but one. That one man, and much of his equipment, they took to Lake Ontario. They boarded a submersible in the lake and returned to our side.”

“We have submarines in Lake Ontario?” the President asked in amazement.

“Small ones for special operations, sir,” Alan said. “The point is that we’ve been studying the drone equipment and interrogating the GD operator for several days now. We’ve found something called the Heidegger Principle. It’s technical, so I won’t go into it here. But we’ve discovered that’s how the GD drone operators communicate with their vehicles. We’ve finally found out why our jamming equipment, or electronic warfare, has had so little effect on them to date.”

“The Heidegger Principle?” the President asked. “I’ve never heard of it.”

“Mr. President,” Alan said. “Here’s the crux of the matter. We’ve already begun building a Heidegger Principle jammer. With it, we believe we can jam GD drone signals.”

“Meaning what?” the President asked.

“Meaning we can possibly interrupt their Sigrids and some of their drone tanks,” McGraw said loudly.

“We hope,” Alan told him.

“Maybe we could even take over some of their drones,” McGraw said.

“We’re looking into that, of course,” Alan said. “The main event is stopping them from functioning.”

The President blinked several times. “That’s amazing,” he said. “It’s a miracle weapon.”

“No,” General Alan said. “It isn’t that. Otherwise, I would have said something before this. The jammers are going to take time to build. There are some concepts here I don’t admit to fully understanding. The GD tech teams are way ahead of us on this. But I do think it means we can soon—in a week or two—get a special EW jamming company together. We’ll set up more companies as fast as we can. But we may have an antidote to GD ‘Terminator’ battalions and divisions running amok among us. It will force them to put more of their flesh and blood troops on the line. Then we can fight them on near-equal terms.”

“I’m giving the jamming company crash priority,” the President said.

“Consider it already done, sir,” Alan said.

“And unless you men have any more objections,” the President said, “I’m going to implement General McGraw’s idea.”

“Mr. President,” Max said. “Gentlemen, Ms. Chen, I’m surprised at your…your callous disregard of soldiers’ lives. These are stopgap measures. Our military men already admit that. I’ve outlined a plan that will give us decisive victory.”

“Can’t you see that you’re talking about unleashing annihilation against humanity?” the President asked.

“I respectfully disagree, sir,” Max said. “We use the tactical—”

“No,” the President said. “I will not order mass tactical nuclear weapons, not unless there is no other way.”

“Sir,” Max said. “We should use them before we’ve bled our country dry of its best troops.”

The President scowled, and Max continued talking. It took another hour of hard discussions before Max Harold finally lapsed into a sullen silence.

Thus, the orders would go out. There would be a mass entraining of southern East Coast soldiers and others from coastal Mississippi and Alabama heading for Southern Ontario. The New England Command would have to give up soldiers too. Others in New York would immediately attack toward Hamilton to buy time. All the while, artillery from the Midwest, from the Pacific and from the southern East Coast would head for the GD Front.

Like the others, Anna understood the critical nature of the next few days and weeks. If General Zelazny could buy them enough time…they might be able to halt the resumption of the enemy offensive before the Germans broke out of Southern Ontario.

Jake Higgins had lost weight since Topeka, Kansas, making him leaner than ever and giving his face a gaunt look. There was something new in his eyes: a cloaked fierceness some of the meanest junkyard dogs achieved.

He rode in the back of a noisy old Army truck. Gears ground and the engine knocked twice before resuming its regular roar. This was a Militia truck these days, as close to a piece of running junk as he’d ever seen. The rest of the penal squad rode in the covered bed of the truck with him. They belonged to the Second Platoon of C Company of the Third Penal Battalion. Each of them wore Militia green with a big rucksack at their feet. Each of the militiamen wore old worn boots and worn coats, castoff clothing given to the worst scoundrels in the US military. At least, so the training sergeants had told them for the last few days now.

Their training had been extremely short and brutal, with several sluggards shot on the spot to make an example for the others. In Jake’s opinion, sending them into battle now was a crime. Half the men here knew nothing about combat. The other half hardly knew each other’s names.

According to the Militia manifests, most of the men in the truck bed were politically unreliable. Because of that, these dregs had lost their right to American citizenship. There was only one way to regain the rights, and that was through a year’s clean record and through sustained fighting.

None of the other militiamen in here had seen as much fighting as Jake. No three of them combined had seen as much action. It should have made him the squad sergeant. It should have, but the black marks against him were much darker than the marks against any of the others. Besides, he’d knocked down Dan Franks, and the MDG Sergeants had found plenty of things to write up concerning him. Therefore, Jake Higgins was a lowly private.

As a dreg of a private, he sat nearest the tailgate. It rained hard outside, the drops plinking against the outer tarp. Far too many drops slashed within, hitting his slicker, the rim of his helmet and his face if he looked up. The big tires churned through mud, the engine working overtime and the nearly bald tires sliding far too much. On either side of the switchback road towered huge evergreen trees. If the truck served too much, it could easily crash against one of the forest giants.

In truth, Jake didn’t mind this spot on the truck. If the old vehicle did crash, he at least had a chance of making it outside alive. The trouble came from another penal battalion truck that followed on their tail. Dan Franks drove the other vehicle. The sergeant scowled every time his eyes met Jake’s gaze.

The situation reminded Jake too much of the early days in Denver with his friend the lieutenant. Just like then, the Militia MDGs were heavily muscled soldiers trained to regard the penal offenders as scum. The MDGs carried submachine guns and wore body armor. During the few days of so-called training, the sergeants had let the penal offenders know that cowardice would be met with a bullet in the back of the head.

Jake’s truck swerved sharply, and the chain on the tailgate slammed against the wood, clinking repeatedly. Jake swayed back and forth. He clutched his M16 between his legs. It was an ancient model. None of them in here wore body armor and none of them had modern equipment. Instead, they had old helmets, old M16s and even older grenades the MDGs must have found in a history museum.

“Is that thunder outside?” Charlie asked.

“Huh?” Jake said. He looked up, and rain struck against his cheeks. He raised his hand to shield himself from the drops.

“Listen,” Charlie said.

In the rail yard a few days ago, Jake had stuck up for him. Charlie had been caught several weeks ago painting anti-Sims slogans in Boise. Charlie’s dad used to hoard silver and gold, and his dad’s grandfather had belonged to the Tea Party long ago. Charlie was from Idaho and used to ride range for scrawny cattle and grow potatoes. Now he took care of his mom in Boise. He was tougher than he looked and could get by on hardly any food. That’s what he’d been doing for a long time. He hated Sergeant Franks and he was sick with embarrassment for being frightened in the Chicago rail yard. His dad had told him stories about Homeland Security and their Gestapo tactics. Back in Chicago, he’d figured that had been the end. Seeing Jake attack Franks had filled Charlie with admiration for him. Since then, Charlie had become Jake’s shadow.

“Do you hear that?” Charlie asked.

“I hear it,” Jake said, after a minute. “That’s not thunder, if that’s what you’re thinking. It’s artillery.”

Charlie nodded thoughtfully, and he became quiet.

So did Jake. They were headed for Hamilton, or for somewhere nearby there. The word had come down. They were going to help the Americans in the Toronto Pocket.

As if we’ll ever get near Toronto. Jake shrugged. Likely, they were the spearhead. He’d heard that more troops were coming from New England where they had faced the GD up near Quebec. Troops in New York were also heading out to Southern Ontario.

Rain pelted their truck. Tires churned and the old engine coughed, making the bed lurch.

I’m on my way to battle again, part of an untrained crew.

Jake looked up out of the back of the truck. Dan Franks drove the big Militia truck behind him. The sergeant glared across the distance, their eyes meeting. Something welled up in Jake. Maybe it was the sound of GD artillery. Maybe it was remembering the sergeant spitting in face or the promise Franks had made that Jake would never survive battle.

Jake met the sergeant’s glare and grinned at Franks.

The sergeant noticed, and he scowled.

Jake raised his hand and even started lifting his middle finger. Beside him, Charlie grabbed his wrist and yanked it down.

It took a second, but Jake stared at Charlie.

“What do you think you’re doing?” Charlie asked.

“Giving the sergeant the finger,” Jake said.

Charlie shook his head. “I know you know that’s stupid. They hate you bad enough as it is, and out here they can make sure you never come back home alive.”

“We aren’t coming home alive. Haven’t you figured that out yet?”

“Don’t say that,” Charlie said. “It’s bad luck. I have a mom back home I need to get back to.”

The horn in the truck behind them blared. Jake looked up through the rain at Sergeant Franks. The wipers slid back and forth and a circle of fog on the inside glass showed they had a heater in the cab. Through that circle, the MDG flipped him off.

Heated dislike flared in Jake’s chest. But he didn’t raise the bird finger. Instead, he waved, smiled and looked away.

“Why do you do that?” Charlie asked.

“Maybe because I’m pissed off,” Jake said.

Charlie nodded. “You’re a tough guy like my grandfather. I respect that, but right now I think you should piss them off even more by living through this mess.”

“Okay, sure,” Jake said. He fell silent and stared at his rucksack. The rain increased and so did the sound of it pelting against the outer covering. They were headed for the front, for Hamilton. The MDGs had already explained it. The penal battalions were going to be the very tip of the US spear that drove the GD out of Southern Ontario.

What that really meant: we’re heading for the meat grinder, and likely none of us will survive the process.