Invasion: New York

The man’s red eyes squinted. “The director of what?” he asked.

The girl stepped near, and maybe she was thinking about warning Jake.

Jake missed it, and he therefore missed his last chance to stay out of bad trouble. “Are you kidding me, mister?” Jake asked. “I’m an American and I tell it like it is. The director is the dictator’s puppet, and he’s taking away too many of our liberties.”

“Do you mean Max Harold?” the red-eyed man asked.

“Yeah, I mean him,” Jake said.

“Shut up!” Sheila said. “Don’t say anything more.”

The big red-eyed man glanced at Sheila and then back at Jake. “Would you care to repeat that?” he asked Jake.

Jake saw the voice recorder. In his blurry mind, it seemed like a TV reporter’s microphone. He leaned near, figuring that finally someone would go on record and say it like it was.

“Jake,” Sheila said.

“The Director of Homeland Security is the dictator’s puppet,” Jake said slowly in his slurry voice. “He’s taking away too many of our precious American liberties, and I for one am not going to stand for it any longer.”

Sheila groaned and shook her head.

Jake grinned at the red-eyed man.

The big man used his thumb to turn off the recorder. He stuffed it in his pocket before turning to the bouncer. “Put him in the other room,” he said.

“Beat him up?” the bouncer asked.

“No,” the big man said. “I’m calling my MPs. I know exactly what to do with a dissenter like this.”

“What’s that?” Sheila asked.

The big man looked at her in surprise. “Is he your boyfriend?”

“No. I just met him tonight.”

“Well, say goodbye to him,” the big man said. “Unless I miss my guess, he’s headed for New England for one of the new penal battalions.”

“Who are you?” Jake asked, with the first touch of worry in his voice.

“Take him,” the big man told the bouncer. “And keep him there until my MPs arrive.”

The bouncer twisted Jake’s arm behind his back.

“Hey, let go of me,” Jake said. No one paid any attention as Mr. Square marched him against his will into a holding room. He struggled, but then it hit him hard: the amount of alcohol he’d poured into his system.

“Just a minute,” he mumbled. Then Jake vomited for the second time tonight. He would pay for this later, he knew, but he didn’t really realize just how much.

-3- Choices

OTTAWA, ONTARIO

General Walther Mansfeld, the commanding general of the GD Expeditionary Force in North America, rubbed the bridge of his nose.

He was an athletic man, a former gymnast who had won a bronze medal on the parallel bars in the 2016 Olympics. At fifty, he was short, trim and in excellent condition. He ran three kilometers every day and stretched to keep himself limber. More importantly, he had a razor-sharp intellect and he knew himself to be the best battlefield commander in the German Dominion, which meant he was the best in the world.

Excellence in all things, it was Mansfeld’s motto. The only one who had ever approached him in ability was the Chancellor. Normally, Kleist held all the cards. The one thing Chancellor Kleist couldn’t do was win a battle brilliantly. It’s why the man had let him live four months ago when Kleist had summoned him with the thought to execute him.

Mansfeld tapped the computer battle map. A hot cup of coffee steamed beside it, his fifth this morning. He drank far too much, but he needed the caffeine, as it helped to stimulate his thoughts.

Mansfeld picked up the cup and sipped delicately as his steely eyes studied the military situation. So far, the battles had gone to form just as he had predicted in Berlin that day. The Canadians fought well given their inferior weaponry. The Americans showed stubbornness, and they steadily added reinforcements as they lost engagement after engagement. He had tested his opposite number and found the commanding American general wanting. The man would continue to add driblets. The American General Staff and perhaps the President hadn’t yet realized their danger. How could they? They were not geniuses of battle like him.

All his life Mansfeld had seen further and more deeply than those around him could. The only man whose mind he respected was Chancellor Kleist. Maybe the American who had come up with the battle plan this winter to maul the Chinese had a superior intellect. Otherwise, the world was a barren desert, a wasteland in terms of thinkers.

He sipped more coffee, holding the liquid on his tongue as he attempted to extract the greatest amount of enjoyment from it he could. He wished he could find a way to make this drink taste as good as the first one in the morning. Every day, he looked forward to his first sip of coffee. Nothing tasted quite as good. He wondered why that was, and smiled indulgently. He knew the answer, of course, but he asked himself the question almost every morning around now.

Mansfeld clicked the cup onto its saucer and tapped the battle map. He enlarged the area around the Toronto Pocket.

The fierce defensive fighting hadn’t surprise him. These were first-rate American units in Toronto. Their commander had used them to plug the gap to try to halt the relentless GD advance toward Detroit.

Mansfeld smiled. He knew it made him seem like an eagle surveying the countryside for prey. He fought at too swift a pace for the Americans. The Canadians had melted like butter those first few days. Later, the Canadians had stiffened for a time. He kept producing surprises, though, keeping the enemy off balance.

Yes, the enemy commander had thought to stem the relentless tide of GD victory before the largest city of Canada, Toronto. It had been the obvious thing to do, and in many ways, the correct move. Cities, especially big cities, could often become defender fortresses.

The allied Canadians and Americans finally had the numbers they needed. They had first-rate soldiers and for their side, modern equipment. Yes, the enemy commander had made the correct choice—or so it had seemed. Stop the relentless GD torrent at Toronto.

Thinking about it, Mansfeld smirked.

He had saved one of his trump cards for just such a moment. Actually, he had saved two trumps. Until that moment, he had kept the laser-armed Sabre fighter-jets out of battle. With them providing air cover, he had mass-airlifted light tanks. Then he had dropped the Ritter tanks as if they were paratroopers behind the main enemy concentrations. In conjunction with that, he had used mass Galahad hovers to swing around the city on Lake Ontario.

Oh yes, the American general had attempted to seal Southern Ontario between Lake Huron and Lake Erie. He had thought to turn Toronto and the Golden Horseshoe into a fortress so the dreaded GD couldn’t practice anymore blitzkrieg tactics. The so-called horseshoe area contained over nine million people, twenty-six percent of Canada’s former population. The enemy commander had not realized the GD ability to use the air as a flank.

Some of Mansfeld’s staff had shown surprise at this. The Americans often employed helicopter-borne troops in mass. The enemy had also faced Chinese jetpack commandos before. Surely, the Americans should understand better than anyone that air was another flank in modern war.

As he studied the computer map, Mansfeld had known the Americans wouldn’t understand. Who could airdrop tanks? No one had ever done it before. Therefore, no one thought of it, no one that is except for General Walther Mansfeld of the GD Expeditionary Force. Because of the brilliant maneuver, he had trapped the first-rate Americans and Canadians in Toronto. Now he began the annihilation of those soldiers—soldiers the Americans would badly need in the coming weeks.

“In six more days,” Mansfeld said aloud—he was quite alone. “In six more days I will kill or capture the last