crazy side of me had wanted to teach her a lesson she would never forget. It was I who never forgot.”
As the lake’s waves bobbed the dinghy, Romo glanced at Paul.
Kavanagh had half-expected tears in his friend’s eyes. Instead, the assassin’s eyes were bone dry, although there was a far-off look to them.
“I quit the Army,” Romo said. “How could I go back? I had killed the woman I loved. It stained me. It changed me. In the years to come, I became a contract killer. Then the civil war grew hot and the Chinese filled up Mexico. I know one thing, my friend. I have one trade, one single ability over any other. I can kill because I have a black heart. Sometimes I think about it, but I can never go back to being the man I was and to being a man who can love again.”
Paul had no idea what to say, so he remained silent.
“You have a rare gift in your wife and son,” Romo said quietly.
Paul nodded. He agreed with that. He’d fought for them and struggled hard, and he would die for them if he had to.
“Now out here on the lake I wonder if my sins have finally caught up with me,” Romo said. “I am floating above miles of seawater and—”
Paul turned because he heard a noise. Likely, Romo heard it too, because the assassin fell silent. The sound was unmistakable: the heavy fans of distant GD hovercraft.
“There,” Romo said, pointing back toward the smudge of Toronto. “They’ve found us. I was right. My sins have finally caught up with me. I am sorry you had to be here when it happened.”
Paul ground his teeth together, and he picked up his oar. “Start paddling.”
“Why?” Romo asked, almost in a listless voice. “We have no chance.”
“Because we don’t know if they’ve spotted us or not yet, you idiot,” Paul said. “We don’t have any electronic signatures for them to home in on. They just have their eyes and we’re extremely low on the water. Now start paddling.”
“I understand your words,” Romo said. “But where are we paddling to? I don’t see any submarine coming to our rescue.”
Paul glanced at his open compass. “We’re paddling for a rendezvous point. If we quit now, it’s a certainly that we’ll never reach it. But if we do paddle, there is always a chance we’ll make it.”
Romo sighed, and almost as an afterthought, he picked up his paddle. “I killed my woman, and through it I made a bargain with the Devil. He lets me be as I bring him more sacrifices. You, my friend, cherish your life because you have your woman and your son, and it gives your heart such fierce strength that the Devil doesn’t yet have the power to destroy you. Which of us made the better bargain?” Romo shrugged. “Yes, let us row and see if we can cheat the hangman one more time.”
“Good idea,” Paul said.
The two LRSU men dug their paddles into the choppy water, and once more, the dinghy surged toward the New York shore. The race was on, and the hovercraft had all the advantages.
Lieutenant Teddy Smith out of London piloted the Galahad 3C1 hover. The five machines of C Troop had spread out in a fan formation. Their number one machine—his—was on the farthest left of the formation.
The Galahad hovers were unique to the German Dominion military. They were fast, two-man craft, used as gadflies on any level terrain: plains, sea or ice. The commander piloted the craft, and most in the GD referred to him as a hover jockey. The other crew member was the gunner.
Sergeant Holloway had left his station and opened the outer hatch. His torso stuck out as he used high- powered binoculars to search for a boat full of enemy commandos.
Giant fans supplied the Galahad with lifting power. The machine boasted an armored skirt, an autoloading 76mm cannon firing rocket-assisted shells. It also had a 12.7mm machine gun for anti-infantry use. That made it similar to the Chinese hovers. The difference was in the smaller size, the advanced electronic gear and high-speed computers assisting in maneuver and mobile firing. The Galahads boasted greater speed than similar Chinese models, but much less armor.
Speed was the Galahad’s virtue, and aggressive tactics performed by bold young men.
Lieutenant Smith had the famous English courage. It had once allowed the tiny country to rule an inordinate amount of the world just a little over a century and a half ago. Smith knew that Holloway had eyes like a seagull hunting for scraps. If the Americans were near, the sergeant would spot them.
At that moment, a
“Hello,” Smith said. He studied the sonar. He wasn’t seeing a metal object. Lieutenant Smith snapped his fingers. He’d read a GDN report three weeks ago. The Americans used carbon fiber submersibles. Could the Americans have stationed such a submersible in Lake Ontario? By the sonar-pings he was picking up, the answer must be yes.
“Think you can hide from a Jack Tar, do you? I’m thinking not.” Smith leaned toward the hatch and the pair of legs standing in plain sight.
“Sergeant!” he shouted.
Holloway ducked down. The man’s brown hair was blown back on his head.
“See that?” Smith asked, pointing at the sonar screen.
Holloway’s gaze took in the images, and he nodded.
Smith gave him the object’s coordinates. “Search in that direction and I’ll think you’ll find a small boat nearby.”
“Do you actually think we can take out a submarine?” Holloway asked.
Smith shook his head. “We won’t have to.” He picked up a microphone. “Our sauerkraut commander gave us air cover, remember? I’ll let the planes destroy the submarine while I call Johnny to bring in the rest of the troop.”
“Good thinking, Lieutenant.”
“Find those commandos,” Smith said. “We don’t want to lose them.” He chuckled dryly. “Now that we know where this sneaky bastard of a submersible is hiding, we’ll play the game to our tune.”
“Roger that,” Holloway said, giving a salute in the tight confines of the hover compartment before poking his torso back outside.
“General,” a captain said.
Walther Mansfeld sat outside on a fourth-story veranda, with his legs crossed as he smoked a cigarette. It was pretty out here in his immediate vicinity, with red, yellow and purple tulips. A cool breeze blew over devastated Ottawa, the captured capital of Canada. The tallest buildings were shells now, many with only one side. The Canadians had fought stubbornly here a few weeks ago, but had finally run out of ammunition and food. Those soldiers now languished in a prisoner of war camp in Newfoundland.
Several other officers sat at glass tables, with uniformed young women acting as waitresses. The soft murmuring from the tables continued even as the captain waited before his commanding general.
Mansfeld drew a deep breath of cigarette smoke into his lungs. Normally, he didn’t indulge. It was a vulgar habit and the nicotine overstimulated his mind. The commando attack behind the lines in Toronto troubled him. Right now he had a decisive edge over the Americans, but if they ever learned to jam enough drones well enough—he needed to begin reconfiguring the operational strategy, given better American electronic warfare. He had a feeling the Americans would win this little commando game this round. The optimum reconfiguration would include even greater speed of attack. The longer the campaign lasted, the more likely became the possibility of the Americans gleaning the information or components they needed to begin serious drone jamming.
The captain cleared his throat, and he moved nervously up and down on his feet.
First mashing out the half-smoked cigarette, Mansfeld looked up and said, “Yes?”
“The hover troop has spotted a submersible, General,” the captain said.
“Interesting,” Mansfeld said. He hadn’t expected that.
“We have three UAVs on task,” the captain said.
