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
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.
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.
“At least they’re making it easy on us,” Hans whispered to Luger.
“They’re idiots,” Luger said. “There’s nothing they can do to beat us.”
“Of course not,” Hans said. “They’re too old-fashioned, too stuck in the past to do anything more but scrape a little paint off our Sigrids.”
They both glanced at the company commander. He was busy speaking to the lieutenant colonel.
“How many have you killed tonight?” Luger whispered. “I’ve obliterated seventeen of them so far.”
