Invasion: New York (Invasion America) (33 page)

Darius doubted that. The Galahads were fast, though. And likely there were nearby GD aircraft around. He couldn’t fight those. Maybe if he submerged and slunk around, he could do the same thing again later. What a feeling to destroy a large enemy ship. This was why he had joined the Navy: to fight like a warrior.

“Sir, those hovers are coming fast,” Sulu said.

Darius Green ducked in, shut the hatch and slid down the ladder. He hit the bottom landing hard and his feet slid out from under him. He banged his forehead just above his right eye. Ignoring the pain, he shouted for Sulu to take them underwater.

At emergency speeds, Sulu did exactly that.

GDN
GALAHAD 3/C/1

Lieutenant Smith and Holloway remained in the area for twenty-five more minutes, hunting for the mysterious American submarine. They had several depth charges, and they used every one of them. Finally, a different hover approached to take over the hunt.

Smith licked his lips. He was glad Fleck had spotted the laser designator. Otherwise, the commander might still believe that he had been derelict in his duty. He’d turned on the emitter, but he had to admit, he was glad it had failed to attract the Harpoons. He was overjoyed to be alive.

Teddy Smith turned the hover around and kicked the Galahad into high gear, zooming across the waves, speeding to catch up with the convoy. The tip of the sun broke over the horizon, casting long orange beams across the water. It was beautiful. It was the most beautiful sunrise he’d ever seen.

Smith grinned wildly, and he laughed. Right now, he didn’t care if Holloway thought he was strange or not. Lieutenant Teddy Smith out of London laughed with gusto. It was good to be alive. It was glorious to zip across the waters in this fast machine.

After the laughter died away—Holloway had remained silent the entire time—Smith nodded to himself. It was daylight now. It would be harder for the submarine to do that again. Twice the American submarine had bested him. He wanted another crack at it. He wanted to sink the damned thing.

Yes, one way or another, he was going to get the better of the Lake Ontario Loch Ness Monster.

ROCHESTER, NEW YORK

Paul Kavanagh squinted tightly as he scanned Lake Ontario with his binoculars. Dawn broke over the horizon. He’d been awake for three hours already, ever since the first enemy missiles had struck the city.

Behind him parts of Rochester burned. The worst hit had been at the airport, an artillery park and several dummy mobile shore batteries. The real shore batteries were big trucks with Harpoon cruise missiles.

He’d already been on the horn with the local SOCOM colonel. Romo and he were out here with a Marine company. The Marines had Javelins, some older TOWs and with a DIVAD system to take down the next low-level air strike. An Army battalion in the middle of the city was already supposed to be out here with them, but the soldiers were taking their sweet time to get into position.

“It’s too late for Rochester,” Romo said. He also lay on his belly, scanning the lake. “Look at grid 2-A-22.”

Paul swept his binoculars to the left. Oh yeah, he saw them now. Galahad hovercraft and bigger, infantry-carrying hovers headed toward shore. They moved fast and acted like a fleet. The difference would be that this fleet could keep right on coming, up the shore and into the city.

“We have to stop them,” Paul said.

“Of course,” Romo said. “What else would we do?”

They both wore body armor, and today they had some of their old gear on: helmets with HUD visors. Both of theirs were flipped up at the moment.

Paul figured there was one thing on their side today. This wasn’t a blue water Navy amphibious assault. This was something different because these were the Great Lakes, or one of them at least. Instead of destroyers, the GD had Galahads. Instead of light cruisers, the enemy had big hovers. There were no battleships and certainly no aircraft carriers out there. Unfortunately, the enemy didn’t need the carriers today, because the far shore held plenty of GD runways. That meant the enemy had plenty of aircraft. Some of Rochester burned because of enemy air strikes. The battleships, on the other hand—

“Down!” Paul shouted.

Other Marines took up the cry.

There were falling streaks in the sky: more SRBMs—short-range ballistic missiles—coming down fast at Rochester.

For the next few minutes, Paul endured tremendous explosions. His bones shook and his teeth rattled, until he remembered to close his mouth tightly.

They were stationed almost at the edge of the shore, behind buildings that fronted Ontario Beach Park. Some of the buildings vaporized under the missile barrage. Razor-sharp shards of wood and molten metal flew through the air and slaughtered half the Marine company. It left the others shocked and dazed, not knowing what to do.

Stirring, forcing himself to think, to act now while he had the chance, Paul raised his head. His brain throbbed. His body hurt. So did his right hand from clutching the binoculars so hard. He put the lenses to his eyes.

The GD Galahads and carrier hovers were a lot closer than before. Enemy air swept over the water, flashed over the hovercraft and raced toward shore.

“Wonder if we have any antiair missiles left?” Romo said.

“Not against planes moving that low over the water,” Paul said.

About two hundred yards to the right, an old DIVAD air defense cannon opened up. Out there over the water, in a hail of bullets, a Razorback ground-attack UAV disintegrated.

A few of the Marines cheered.

“They have no idea of what’s about to happen, do they?” Romo asked.

With fiery contrails and lines of smoke, air-to-ground missiles launched from the rest of the ground-attack planes and UAVs. The DIVAD system kept spewing lead into the air. Then the missiles arrived, big explosion and there no more DIVADs to fire back.

Half a minute later, the ground-attackers arrived. Ancient Stingers took down two. A Marine .50 caliber ended the career of another and then the GD air shot up men and materiel.

The big surprise came with three US AH-4 Cherokees. The armored helos had afterburner-equipped tri-jets and a large load of rockets, autocannons and defensive beehive flechettes. Those swerved, jigged up and down and hosed munitions at the GD ground-attack planes.

One, two, three GD planes exploded. It was awesome. It was about time that America showed these invaders a thing or three.

Paul knew there were few US personnel around Rochester, anywhere along the south Lake Ontario shore. If the GD could get a toehold here…it might be more than serious. It might start looking like it had last winter when the Chinese rampaged up the gut between the Rockies and the Mississippi River.

Unfortunately, the Cherokees must have been low on ordnance. After destroying the planes, the helos went away, likely to go back to base to rearm.

It was up to the men on the ground now. Paul crawled for the nearest Marine position. Romo crawled after him. More of Rochester burned around and behind them. More explosions told of GD shells and warheads slamming onto shore.

“They badly outnumber us!” Romo shouted.

Paul paused and ducked low as a concussion swept overhead. Wood chips rained and paper blew. When the blast passed, Paul looked back at Romo and asked, “What else is new?”

“Nothing,” Romo said.

Finally, Paul found dead Marines. There was blood, hunks of human meat…he tried not to look too closely at any of it. He found a Javelin missile launcher, the thing he’d been hunting for. Then he found a good spot behind a blasted-out window from what must have once been a restaurant.

Romo wrestled a heavy machine gun into position. Then they waited for the enemy to near shore.

They heard the high-pitched whine of the Galahads long before the enemy vehicles reached shore. Out there in the farther distance, Paul saw hover transports waiting. They would likely only come in once the others cleared the beach. How many hover carriers did the Expeditionary Force have in North America? Not enough would be the likely answer. Paul wished he could blow up some of those.

“Shoot and scoot?” Romo asked.

Before Paul could answer, American artillery opened up from somewhere in the middle of Rochester. The seconds passed. Then geysers leapt up beside the approaching Galahads. Rockets zoomed from the bigger, following machines, heading inland. Paul watched one flash overhead. It landed somewhere in Rochester and exploded.

Before the hovers reached the beach, the US artillery had fallen silent.

“Might have been a good idea to wait for the hover transports to get here before they opened up,” Paul said.

“Is that what we’re going to do?” Romo asked. The assassin stared at him with a grimy face. The stupid feather dangling from his ear was clean, if you could believe it. He’d never seen Romo clean the feather, but he must do it some time for it to look like that.

Paul didn’t say anything regarding his blood brother’s question. He had his orders from SOCOM. They were to observe, get an idea of what was going on, and get the heck back to report and to survive. From the few words Paul had received, High Command figured this was going to be a running battle for some time, and they needed commandos who knew how to play the game.

Readying the Javelin, Paul waited. He judged the distance to the nearest Galahads. Four thousand meters, three thousand five hundred meters, three thousand meters, two thousand five hundred meters—

He pulled the trigger. The missile popped out, and it flashed at the enemy. Romo hadn’t needed to use the heavy machine gun yet, so he watched the interplay.

“Let’s go,” Paul said.

Romo seemed as if he might take a few shots first with the .50 caliber. Then he shrugged and let go of the machine gun, abandoning it. They started crawling away across the floor, heading for the back door. A second before the Javelin took out a Galahad, Paul and Romo climbed to their feet and ran. They barely made it in time. Another set of Razorbacks had arrived, and they hosed the beachfront area with chain-gun fire. It was mayhem, and the few Marines shooting back soon stopped doing so. Some had folded up shop and retreated. The others died at their posts.

“This isn’t good,” Romo said, as they sprinted past a burning scuba rental shop.

“No,” Paul said. “It isn’t.”

They saved their words after that, using their breath for running deeper into the doomed city.

-11-

Breakout

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

Invasion of Northeastern America, 2040

2040, July 7-10. Beachhead
. A scratch US battalion and Marine company in Rochester, with strong concentrations of SOCOM commandos, sniped at the amphibious landers. This was also the first GD amphibious assault in its history and something of a muddle. Together, the two situations sowed confusion on the beach and delayed an immediate capture of the city.

GD General Zeller landed in New York State with the second wave across Lake Ontario. His first action was to act as a traffic control officer, speeding the capture of Rochester.

WASHINGTON, DC

Loud knocking woke Anna out of a deep sleep. She lifted her head and saw the first dawning of light beside the edges of the curtain. What time was it? Beside her, David stirred uneasily as if he’d had a bad dream.

To Anna’s shock, the bedroom door opened. An abashed secret service agent poked his head in.

“I beg your pardon, madam,” he said, “but it’s something of an emergency. Do you think you could wake the President?”

Anna glanced at David. While half-asleep, he dragged a pillow over his head, jamming it down to keep out the waking world. She turned back to the agent.

“The Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff is here,” the agent said, “together with the Director of Homeland Security. There’s been an invasion.”

“What is that supposed to mean?” Anna asked. The GD Expeditionary Force had invaded Canada, but that had happened weeks ago. The agent looked sober, not as if he’d been hallucinating. So what was he talking about?

“The Germans have crossed Lake Ontario,” the agent said, as if reading her thoughts. “They’ve entered the United States.”

She blinked at him with incomprehension, still not understanding.

“They’re in New York State,” he said. “They’re unloading at Rochester even as we speak.”

Rochester? But that was in New York, not in Ontario. Her eyes widened. It finally registered what he was saying. The GD had used Lake Ontario to surprise them. It sounded as if they’d invaded en masse, not just raided. This was terrible.

“Give me a minute,” she said. “The President will be up soon.”

***

Fifteen minutes later, General Alan finished explaining the situation. He used a large map spread over the coffee table in the living room. Tracing with his finger, he’d showed where the Germans had landed and their likely destinations the next day, the next three days and the next week.

The President wore a blue bathrobe as he sipped coffee. The robe had a Presidential seal on the right breast. His hair was still messy from sleep. Director Harold sat on the sofa with him. He had been quiet throughout the general’s talk, leaving his coffee untouched.

Anna reentered the room and set a plate of sandwiches on the table beside the pot of coffee. Quietly, she sat down and covertly studied David.

He stared too much, as if his thoughts drifted. The burdens kept piling onto his shoulders, didn’t they? The generals had finally sealed the GD blitzkrieg in Southwestern Ontario before it could hit Detroit, and now this happened.

“They suckered us,” the President said.

General Alan nodded. “I believe you’re right, Mr. President.”

David leaned over the map, tracing places with his index finger. “They’ll want to open up the Niagara Peninsula so they can transport supplies more easily into New York.”

“I agree,” Alan said.

“Why come in at Rochester?” the President asked.

“Maybe because it’s the midpoint between Buffalo and Syracuse,” Alan said. “If they take Syracuse, they’ll cut off Army Group New York holding the north. The supplies will dry up for them up there.”

“I can see that,” David said, as he stared at the map. “Clearly, we can’t let Syracuse fall.”

Director Harold stirred. “I’m afraid that we lack the troops to hold on there, sir.”

David glanced at Max.

Anna waited for the man to suggest nuclear weapons to destroy the amphibious beachhead. If they annihilated Rochester—made it a nuclear wasteland—might they not nip this in the bud?

Max didn’t meet David’s gaze. Instead, the director studied the map, and he held his tongue, saying nothing further.

That’s unusual
, Anna thought.
Why isn’t he suggesting nuclear weapons? This seems like the obvious moment to use them
.

David turned to the general and then glanced at the map. His thoughts seemed to drift off to another place.

The Chairman of the Joint Chiefs cleared his throat.

David looked up at him again. It seemed to take an effort of will, but the President unglued his lips. “What do you suggest? I’d admit…this one baffles me. I’m not sure what to do.”

Alan took off his glasses, blew on a lens and brushed it against his uniform. He put the glasses back on before speaking:

“I’ve given this some thought, sir. The first thing is that we’re going to have to get creative to solve the dilemma. I believe we’re going to have to accept risks that might otherwise seem…well, seem imprudent perhaps.”

“How many Germans are landing at Rochester?” David asked.

“Yes,” Alan said. “That’s the question. The answer so far is many different corps. I’m beginning to think that all of GD Twelfth Army will come ashore there. That’s far too many enemies at the worst possible place for us. A single GD corps would be too much now. We have nothing in reserve, sir.”

“Then…what do we do?” David asked. “Is it over?”

“I have an idea,” Max said quietly.

Here it comes
, Anna thought.
He’s going to suggest we use nukes. It’s his mantra.

“Mr. President,” Max said. “This is an emergency. I totally agree with General Alan on that. The Germans have outmaneuvered us. We need to get extreme. First, we need our best commander at Syracuse. I suggest you send the Chairman,” Max said, indicating General Alan, “and give him executive authority to do as he sees fit.”

David turned to Alan. “What do you think of that?”

“I’m not sure that I’m the right man for the task, sir,” Alan said.

David clutched the general’s sleeve.

It’s as if he’s grabbing a lifeline
, Anna thought.
David is desperate. We all are
.

“Listen to me closely,” the President said. “This isn’t time for modesty. This is the time for clear thinking and for taking chances.”

Alan nodded.

“Max is one hundred percent correct,” the President said. “I want you in Syracuse to coordinate from ground zero. You have to take charge and stop the Germans from taking the city.”

“What do I use for troops?” Alan asked. “There are a few battalions, I suppose, and some SOCOM commandos. That isn’t enough to stop the Twelfth Army, though.”

The President grimaced, and he went back to studying the map.

“I do have a possible idea,” Alan said. “As I said, I’ve been doing some thinking.”

He’s been waiting to make his suggestion
, Anna thought.
He’s let David see the hopelessness of the situation because…why? There’s a reason why Alan has built this up.

“Tell me,” the President said. “We don’t have time to dither. We have to act now to save the situation before it’s too late.”

“Sir,” Alan said, “I suggest we move all of XI Airmobile Corps from the Atlantic coast and entrain it for Syracuse.”

David bit his lower lip, gnawing on it with his front teeth. Finally, he stammered, “W-What defends the seaboard from an amphibious assault then? What protects New York City and protects Boston, New Jersey—?”

“That’s the rub, sir,” Alan said. “I don’t think we need to defend the coast.”

“But the amphibious troops waiting in Cuba—”

“Mr. President,” Alan said. “I don’t believe there are any GD troops in Cuba, not in any meaningful numbers.”

“How can you say that?” the President asked. “Our experts have shown—”

“Our experts knew nothing about a GD invasion across Lake Ontario,” Alan said. “We didn’t realize the Germans had been collecting freighters and ore haulers. Our enemy has become an expert at misinformation, at the clever ruse. That’s what I’ve been thinking about during my ride here. I finally asked myself a key question. What does the German Dominion lack in their North American invasion?”

“They don’t lack anything,” the President said.

“That’s wrong, sir,” Alan said. “They’ve always lacked numbers of actual soldiers. That’s why they have so many drones. They’ve worked overtime to compensate for their lack of numbers, for boots on the ground. Are we to seriously believe that the GD has let two hundred thousand soldiers sit idle all this time in Cuba? No, sir, I believe those are dummy troops. The enemy wants us to believe they’re ready to sweep onto our coastline. That ties down an unbelievable number of our formations defending the seaboard. We’ve already stripped much of the East Coast southern shores. That’s given us the advantage in Southwestern Ontario. We’ve turned the tide there because we quit letting ourselves get faked out by the nonexistent Cuba-based troops.”

The President appeared thoughtful, and he began to nod. Then he leaned forward and tapped the map. “Looking at this, at Rochester, it seems clear that the Germans wanted us to stuff all our extra troops into Southwestern Ontario. Those men are engaged now at the wrong point and can’t rush around easily to plug the new gap.”

“That may have been the German intent, sir,” Alan said. “It’s more than possible. Whatever the case, though, I believe the Cuba-based forces are an illusion. That means we can safely entrain the airmobile corps to Syracuse.
They
will form the heart of my defense.”

“How many soldiers is that?” the President asked.

“Roughly, sir,” Alan said, “twenty-four thousand.”

The President rubbed his chin. “That’s better than the scattering of battalions on the ground now. Still, twenty-four thousand soldiers, no matter how good, will not stop the mass of Twelfth Army for long, if at all.”

“I agree,” Alan said.

David scowled in a way that said—
then what are we talking about anyway?
“We need more troops,” he said. “But we don’t have any more, unless we wish to deplete the Oklahoma defenses and make ourselves vulnerable to the Chinese.”

“That’s not exactly the case, sir,” Alan said. “There is a supply of unused soldiers we can possibly tap.”

“Don’t hold me in suspense,” David shouted. “What’s your answer?”

“Right here, sir,” Alan said, tapping the Canadian province of Manitoba.

The President’s scowl worsened. “Don’t be oblique. Just tell it to me.”

“At the start of the campaign, the Germans smashed the Canadians on the Ontario-Quebec border,” Alan said. “In rough numbers, the GD killed or captured about a third of that force: two hundred thousand soldiers. A different third retreated toward Toronto and has been fighting in Southern Ontario with our soldiers for some time now. The last third retreated west. First, they headed to Sudbury, Ontario. From there—just as the British in WWII retreated from Burma to India—the Canadians moved away to Thunder Bay and toward Manitoba.”

“What does that mean for us?” the President asked.

“If we can get the Canadians to agree,” Alan said, “I suggest we entrain that army to New York State. They’ve been idle, well, recouping from their terrible ordeal against the GD. With those soldiers, we can keep Syracuse—if they get to the city fast enough and if our airmobile corps fights heroically.”

David sat back against the sofa. Finally, he said, “It’s brilliant.”

General Alan couldn’t hide his grin. “First, sir, you’ll have to get the Canadians to agree to the idea.”

“This may be a stupid question,” Anna said. “But if the Canadians all board the trains and leave, why won’t the Germans march into an unprotected Manitoba?”

“Because they lack the numbers to do so,” Alan said, crisply. “The Germans simply don’t have enough boots on the ground to do everything at once. Just like the British in Burma used distance to flee from the victorious Japanese, so the Canadians have used distance to get away from the Germans. At this point, the GD needs every soldier they have to take New York State.”

“Yes,” David said. “Your plan gives us hope.”

“That’s all it is right now, sir,” Alan said, “a hope. We have to move those Canadians as fast as we can, and we have to fight like hell with the airmobile corps to stop the rushing onslaught of the Germans.”

“What if the GD troops in Cuba are real?” Anna asked. “What happens then?”

David cast her a nervous glance.

“If that’s the case,” General Alan said. “We’re going to need those Canadians sooner than ever.” He looked at the map. “If the Germans
are
in Cuba, we have to do everything double time.”

“Maybe the Germans commanders are thinking the same thing,” Anna said.

Max looked as if he wanted to say something, but the director closed his mouth and remained silent.