Invasion: New York (Invasion America) (13 page)

“That’s an order,” the President added.

Anna hadn’t heard such firmness in David’s voice for quite some time. It helped her decide about Max Harold. She
wasn’t
going to tell the President about the Frobisher meeting just yet. This new resolve…the President sounded like his old self. He needed time to strengthen his hope and build on this.

“And what if the THOR Project fails, sir?” Alan asked quietly.

“Then God help us,” the President said, as a haunted look entered his eyes. “Because I don’t know of anyone else who will.”

TORONTO, ONTARIO

Sergeant Hans Kruger of the 10th Panzer-Grenadier Drone Battalion flinched as American artillery landed shells near the GD operational facility.

The crumps outside caused detectable vibration to the building and to the equipment in here. That definitely wasn’t supposed to happen now, or at least not happen for as long as it had been going on.

With the flick of his eyes, Hans checked the chronometer in his set. The shells had been inching toward the “shack”—as they referred to the concrete building—for nearly ten minutes. Where was GD counterbattery fire to silence these impertinent dogs? Command said they had the trapped Americans on the ropes, ready to perform the coup de grace and finish it. The battalion’s single Spaniard would have said it differently: “The Americans were ready for the
matador’s
sword.”

The barbaric Spaniards actually went to bullfights these days where they
killed
the animals. It was grotesque. Yet what could one expect from someone from that part of Europe?

Hans sat back in his chair and turned his head sharply. Neck bones popped. He rotated his sore shoulders, attempting to loosen them. It was incredible the number of hours a day Command had been demanding from them, week after week.

He sat with others of the 10th Panzer-Grenadier Drone Battalion. They had set up shop here several days ago, with a set for every operator. Twenty-four personnel hovered over twenty-four blue-glowing sets. Like Hans, each operator wore a headset with microphone, stared into his or her screen and minutely twitched manipulation gloves.

The set was Hans’s station, and he’d divided the screen into four equal quadrants, showing him four different camera angles from his panzer-grenadier Sigrid drone. One showed a flickering streetlight, as if couldn’t decide whether to keep working or not. His vehicle carried a 12.7mm tri-barrel heavy machine gun. The three barrels worked like a Gatling gun, helping to dissipate heat from prolonged fire as they shot in fast rotation. Since the ammunition was 12.7mm, it was slightly larger than a .50 caliber American bullet. That meant in a pinch the Sigrid could use captured US ammunition, but the Americans couldn’t fit a 12.7mm bullet into a .50 caliber machine gun. It was a good idea stolen from the old Soviets of the last century.

The box-shaped, armored vehicle was the size of a two-seat electric car, but had treads instead of wheels and had the one heavy machine gun mount. It was electric powered and therefore of limited endurance. The Sigrid had to come home after every engagement in order to reenergize and so the techs could reload it. Most of the guts held ammo for sustained fire.

Hans ran Sigrid Drone #72. Tonight, his company would join an AI Kaiser HK. They would supply the hunter-killer with backup and take care of any annoying infantrymen who tried to slither near the wonder weapon.

The battalion’s commanding lieutenant colonel stood up, and he blew a whistle. It was an old-fashioned silver whistle of Prussian design. No one else did things like that anymore, but no one cared to tell the lieutenant colonel that.

The commander was short, running to fat and was almost bald, but he wore a crisp uniform and his eyes flashed with authority. Anyone in the 10th who had ever failed in a procedure or brought shame to the battalion knew about his wrath. The lieutenant colonel was intent and he had run enough drills so every operator knew his duty to a nicety. The old man also made sure they switched the encryption codes every three hours. That was the great fear among Drone Command. That somehow the primitive Americans might break the encryptions, gain the right frequencies and take over the automated machinery.

Americans defeat German tech?
Hans asked himself.
I don’t think so
.

“I have just spoken with division,” the lieutenant colonel said. “They have confirmed the rumor. The Americans are mounting a full-scale attack. It seems inconceivable for them to attempt such a thing now, as it is doomed to failure, but…” The lieutenant colonel scanned around the room.

For a moment, Hans felt the man’s stare. He quickly looked down. He’d never had a father, uncle or even a grandfather growing up. There had been no father figure of any type for him. Is that why the battalion commander unnerved him?

“The Americans have animal courage,” the officer was saying. “Luckily for us, they do not have the weapons or the GD mentality to properly employ what they do have. Still, we will take the attack seriously, and we will use it to kill as many enemy soldiers as we can.”

Finally, the lieutenant colonel quit staring at him. Hans took the opportunity to slide long hands out of his manipulation gloves. He put his fingers together and cracked them sharply.

Hans was twenty-five, born and raised in Munich and tall at six-three. He was also as thin as a pole. Hans had aptitude as a drone controller, as he’d spent most of his youth playing video games. For a little while, he’d had one girlfriend. The other times he had spent hard-earned euros at the government brothels. His favorite girls had been Turkish, and that for good reason. In his youth, Turkish gangbangers had caught him several times and given him a good thrashing. He hated Turks because of it. So every time Hans used a Turkish prostitute, he imagined it was one of those boys’ sisters. Later, at night while lying in bed, he’d liked to think about what he’d tell the thugs of his neighborhood. “I used your sister, Kemal. She was good, sucking me off like a pro. She must have done you at home a lot, huh?”

The Turkish bullies would have gone crazy at his words and pulled out their knives. They were into that, and Hans hated knives. A thug had held a blade under his nose once. He’d been sixteen at the time and three other Turks had watched the interplay, laughing at him. It had taken all of his bodily control that night to keep from urinating in fear.

He’d never forgotten the incident or the smell of knife oil. Sometimes, when his Sigrid’s heavy machine gun obliterated Americans, he imagined they were the knife-wielding Turks of his youth.

Bavaria was so much nicer, cleaner and civilized without all those Turks and other foreigners living there. Hans approved of Chancellor Kleist and he wholeheartedly agreed with the slogan and motto of Bavaria for Bavarians and Normandy for Normans. Let the Turks stay in Turkey. It was big enough. If they quit having so many children all the time, maybe the Turks could feed everyone in their country.

Shoving his hands back into the manipulation gloves, Hans knew that he would never have kids. Women used children as a money trap. The courts backed up the women, too. No, no, he’d seen to it that he’d never fall for the money trap. He’d had a vasectomy long ago and he firmly believed in paying for sex instead of trying to build a so-called relationship. It wasn’t that he
needed
to pay to get the release with a woman, but by paying for sexual services, he could leave the woman afterward and not have to worry about offending her.

Offended women…Hans shook his head ruefully. Freda had almost trapped him four years ago. She’d gotten pregnant, but he had used all his cunning and sweet talk, promising her the world if she would just get an abortion. They could have children later. She could see that, right.

Hans was still a little ashamed of his behavior that day… But what was a man who loved his free time supposed to do? He’d brought Freda to the clinic, helped her fill out the forms and watched her go through the door to the operating room. He well remembered the door closing behind her. He’d exhaled all the air left in his lungs. Before he could think about it too much, and knowing he would miss Freda—no one could give backrubs like her—he’d turned around and walked out of the clinic.

She’d phoned him afterward, but he’d never answered. Later, Freda had tried to take him to court for abandonment. His lawyer had talked to her lawyer and they had agreed on a one-time lump sum payment. He’d taken a loan because of that lump sum. It was bigger than he would have liked, but the alternative—marriage—he’d paid the money to finish the drama. That was the main reason he’d joined the military. He was still in debt, but working toward paying it off. The other reason for joining was to get enough to eat. Most of the world was hungry these days. He might be as thin as a pole, but he ate more than anyone else in the battalion.

The silver whistle blasted again. The noise startled Hans with its high pitch. It hurt his ears. He hated the thing. The noise climbed higher before abruptly quitting, and the lieutenant colonel shouted, “Keep focused! They are poorly armed and their tactics are antiquated, but these Americans don’t know when to quit.”

Hans silently agreed to that. Therefore, he shoved aside his thought of Freda, shoved aside thoughts of Turkish prostitutes and debt. He focused. He knew how to focus on video games: mastering a Sigrid drone had been fun.

Switching to sound, Hans’s mouth twisted with joy and his eyes shined with delight. The noises came from around Sigrid #72 in the battle zone. The reverberations poured through his headphones and into his ears. As he listened to the booms, the tread squeals and ricocheting bullets, he watched the four screens, with his pupils darting from image to image. Beside the screen was a radar display, giving him a larger game picture about what was going on around his vehicle.

By using night vision equipment, Hans watched American soldiers in body armor slithering through rubble toward GD lines. They came like a wave, a tide. They didn’t have a chance.

“Incoming,” the lieutenant colonel said in his loud voice. “No one should attack yet. Operator 63, what do you think you’re doing?”

Hans glanced at his radar set. A fool—it had to be the Spaniard—had already raced his Sigrid into battle. The machine now backed up fast. The superior would have the man’s head if the Spaniard lost the drone before the main fighting.

Over the set and into his ears, Hans heard GD quake shells striking the enemy. The artillery was on time, as usual. The shells exploded and shredded crawling Americans into bits and bloody chunks. The barrage lasted two minutes of hurricane bombardment. Then the GD artillery stopped.

“Advance!” the lieutenant colonel said. “Hunt and destroy.”

Hans twitched his fingers, the manipulation gloves moved and his drone lurched to the attack. What must it be like for an American soldier in the battle zone? His Sigrid’s treads churned. Over the headphones, he heard gravel crunch.

“Ten nineteen!” the company commander shouted.

Hans flipped visual to camera three—the other quadrants vanished. He pressed for zoom and saw them: five crawling Americans dragging a heavy machine gun and a Javelin launcher.

“No,” Hans told them. “You may not approach our HK.”

With skilled manipulation, Hans attacked, using the tri-barrel. He had infrared tracers, and watched through camera three. The heavy rounds tore into body armor and blew the Americans apart.

One of them lived, although the man’s left leg had ceased to exist. The soldier should be bleeding to death. Instead, the brute American tried to set up the .50 caliber.

Hans laughed at the foolishness of the attempt, and he charged the enemy soldier. He’d always wanted to do this. Instead of finishing off the man with a machine gun, he would crush him to death with the treads.

“72!” the company commander, a captain, shouted. “What are you doing?”

Hans flicked his fingers. Tri-barrels chattered in a burst, and the American died in a hail of bullets.

“I’m killing them, sir,” Hans said.

“This isn’t a game, Sergeant.”

“Yes, sir, I understand.”

“I don’t want you killing with treads.”

Hans scowled. Some of the others bragged about tread killing. The captain had gotten wise to that, and no doubt had orders to stick to procedure.

I have to get tread kills. But it will be harder now with the captain watching. Damn, Luger, how does he always think of these things first?

Sergeant Luger sat beside him, running Sigrid #71. He was sandy-haired with freckles and had buck teeth.

“Hey,” Luger said to him.

Hans glanced at his friend.

“Tough luck,” Luger said, grinning. “Maybe next time you can get one.”

Hans lifted a manipulation glove and gave Luger the finger.

“Sergeant Kruger!” the captain shouted.

Hans hunched his shoulders. The captain could be a prick sometimes. Scowling, he decided to take it out on the Americans. Look at them come. They raced to their deaths. Who could figure out the American losers?

The 10th Panzer-Grenadier Battalion proceeded to destroy the American attackers. What did the enemy commander think he was doing anyway? They should have stayed in their foxholes and kept hidden in the rubble. They could have lived another several days or possibly even a week that way. Hans couldn’t understand American thinking. Whatever it took to stay alive, that’s what you did. There were no exceptions.