as they did in the movies. Men smelling worse than a urinal could perform acts of bravery. A mousey guy might end up doing the strangest and bravest things. A big lug of a man sometimes folded under pressure and broke down weeping.
Hans Kruger was a survivor. That was clear to Paul. If it took cowardice, this Kruger would play the coward. Yet if it called for a moment of great courage—and that was the only way to get out alive—then Paul suspected this GD mouse might become a momentary lion.
One should never figure he fully understood a fellow human being. Unlike leopards, people could change their spots, especially when it became a matter of life and death.
“Watch him do what?” Romo asked.
Paul adjusted his web belt. His blood brother couldn’t take the Kraut seriously, not after the man’s sniveling. That could be a mistake. You never knew out here.
“Keep an eye on him,” Paul said. “We don’t want to lose this guy because he gets away or because he does something half-brave and we’re forced to kill him.”
“Watch him,” Romo said, with a shake of his head. He shoved their captive just under his neck, propelling the German out of the slaughterhouse.
Paul followed warily. He’d noticed the Kraut listening to their words. That’s why he’d said what he just had. This Hun seemed to know his stuff, his remote-controlling gear, anyway. Paul bet someone back home would want to pick this Kraut’s brain. General Zelazny had believed so.
Darkness still held over Toronto. The big artillery pieces had stopped firing. Dawn—Paul checked his watch—was only forty-five minutes away. Combat was a funny beast. Time moved strangely during it, both slower and faster. Go figure. Still, forty-five minutes of darkness left. That wasn’t much time to get away and hide.
Paul stared at Lake Ontario. Where could they hide? The rear areas would soon be crawling with the enemy. He needed to get Hans Kruger back to American lines. The soldier had data, and he carried special equipment.
“We have to use the one-time pad,” Paul said.
Romo and the Kraut turned toward him.
“That’s the only way back home that I can see,” Paul said, pointing at the lake.
“You’re crazy, my friend,” Romo said. “The Germans have hovercraft and planes. We’ll never row across in time before they spot us.”
“You see the lake,” Paul said. “You see how big it is and that the far coast is ours?”
“Si,” Romo said.
“I’m guessing we have assets in it or on it,” Paul said. “Assets that can help us.”
Romo squinted. “No! I don’t want anything to do with submarines. I’ve seen K19 and other old war movies. Submarines are deathtraps. If we try to hide in one, the Germans will find and sink us. I know it.”
“We’re sure not going to hoof it home through these city streets,” Paul said.
“Amigo, have you been watching this time around? The Germans can figure out everything fancy. They have us beaten that way. We had to go back to straight infantry fighting to win this round. You stick to what works, si? Submarines—” Romo shuddered.
Paul knelt as he slipped off his rucksack. “We have to get him back right away. We may be the only ones who captured a drone operator.”
“Maybe—” Hans said in his slow English.
“Shut up!” Romo said, shoving the German’s head. “No one is asking you anything.”
The tall German hunched his shoulders, falling silent.
As he pulled out the one-time pad, Paul said, “Better handcuff him just in case.”
Romo pulled out plastic ties and bound the German’s wrists behind his back. He did it hard, so the plastic dug into the flesh.
Paul readied the one-time pad, put earphones over his head and readied the microphone. Then he gave a short-burst transmission, both to burn through any enemy jamming and to make it harder for the GD signals people to pinpoint them.
He waited for HQ to think about his question. Crickets chirped now that the artillery had fallen silent. The second ticked by. Paul knew their covering darkness would lift far too soon.
After several minutes, he received a return message. After ingesting what they’d said, he nodded to himself. Romo wasn’t going to like this. Paul didn’t know if he liked it himself. Time was running out for them, and once the sun rose—
He stowed the one-time pad back into the rucksack, shrugged the pack on and stood. “Are you ready?” he asked Romo.
“What’s the plan?” his blood brother asked.
“What I thought it would be,” Paul said.
Romo scowled. “Are you talking about water and subs?”
“Yeah,” Paul said. The last time he’d entered a sub had been off the waters of Hawaii. The Chinese had chased his team off the beach and nearly sunk the escape dinghy. Those had been ocean waters, much deeper he was sure than Lake Ontario. What kind of submarine could America have in the lake anyway? As far as he knew, the Great Lakes had been demilitarized…maybe until the GD invasion.
Paul motioned at the lakeshore. Romo shoved a handcuffed Hans Kruger in that direction. Then the three of them set out for the lapping waves.
“I just thought of something,” Romo said.
“Yeah?”
“What do we use for a boat?”
“You’re not going to believe it,” Paul said.
“It’s that bad?”
“No,” Paul said. “But it means we’re going to be working hard for the next hour.”
Romo glanced at him. “Paddling? We’re going to paddle our way into the middle of the lake to die?”
“Yes and no.”
Romo raised a questioning eyebrow.
“Yes, we’re going to paddle for the middle of the lake,” Paul said. “No, I hope we’re not heading for our deaths.”
Before Romo could reply, the two LRSU men looked up. A noise in the distance, in the dark sky…helos, enemy gunships were coming.
“Put on your night vision goggles,” Paul said. They both put on their pairs. “You ready?”
For an answer, Romo slung his assault rifle over a shoulder.
Paul did the same with his rifle. Then each man grabbed one of Kruger’s arms, and they hustled their captive toward the shoreline.
In one particular, Captain Darius Green was unfit for the cramped command of the carbon fiber submersible. He was huge, a solid two-sixty in weight and six-nine in height. How anyone had ever seen fit to commission him here boggled the thoughts of anyone who gave it even a moment’s consideration.
The truth was that no man or woman had made such a decision. Navy protocol and computer errors had seen to it. Darius Green was a competent naval officer, but he had been in the wrong place at the wrong time. He’d been to submarine school—that had been another computer error. His size simply made his appointment to the submersible a poor choice. Despite that, he’d worked hard to figure out the limits of his strange vessel.
Darius Green was a black man who had been born into the concrete, bankrupt jungle of Detroit. His father had run with the drug gangs, his grandfathers on both sides had been gangbangers. One died early in a turf war. The other died in prison. Darius Green had never met either of his grandfathers. He’d also never met his father, as the man had disappeared one night, presumed dead. His mother would have raised Darius if she’d been given the chance, but his uncle hadn’t let her. His dad’s brother had joined the Black Muslims of the Mustafa School. The man had known far too much about the ghettoes of Detroit.
So one day—Darius could still remember it—Cyrus Green had put Darius on his shoulder and marched outside to a waiting motorcycle. Darius had held onto his uncle’s back the entire trip to Chicago. The gangs had
