“Cruise missile,” Holloway said in his clipped way. “It must be a Harpoon. It’s heading straight for the ore hauler.”
Lieutenant Smith of C Troop shouted into the comm-unit and alerted the rest of the Galahads. Where was the air cover? The Americans shouldn’t have been able to get a Harpoon-launching platform this close to the transports. And they certainly shouldn’t have been able to do this so soon in the lake crossing. Was the mysterious sub out there, sniping at the fleet?
“Put up a curtain of steel!” Smith shouted. The cruise missile flashed toward the flotilla at 537 miles per hour.
Holloway moved methodically and with deceptive calm. He directed the targeting computer and put the hover’s machine gun on interlocking fire with the other Galahads. Then he fired the first antiair round from the cannon.
The other Galahads did likewise.
This was an advanced Harpoon and not one of the ancient ones. The thing jinked and popped off a flare, and then a second one. The flares generated intense heat. The hovers’ antiair rounds fixed on those hot signals and headed for them instead of the Harpoon.
“It’s moving straight for the ore hauler,” the Troop’s commander said. “Fugal, it’s in your sector.”
“Destroy it,” Smith said under his breath.
Their Galahad shook as the 76mm gun fired another antiair shell.
The enemy cruise missile was good. Worse, it seemed to have locked on target. At the last minute, Smith saw that he was wrong. The Harpoon readjusted, no doubt making the course change because of something its internal guidance system saw. The missile veered away from the ore hauler that sat low in the water. Instead, the Harpoon smashed against a Galahad of C Troop.
Each of the hovers had been fitted with an emergency emitter, to give off decoy signals. Command said it would help to save the more important troop transports. Command also believed it would make the hover crews more intent on destroying the incoming missiles if the hovers themselves became the targets.
This time the target was Lieutenant Fugal’s hover. The cruise missile’s 488-pound warhead exploded, killing the pilot and his gunner. It also destroyed the Galahad in a flash of light and burst metal and plastics, the pieces raining onto the lake, plopping into it like hail. The sacrifice had saved an ore hauler and half a battalion of Sigrid drones.
“Well?” Captain Penner asked in his F-35, now forty-two miles away from the action. “Did we get lucky?”
“Negative,” the air control officer said. “Incoming data suggests we splashed a decoy instead of the target.”
“Damnit,” Penner said. He hated the German Dominion. He’d lost his brother and an uncle to them earlier this year. They had both been officers in the Canadian Air Force. His family lived in Manitoba, and he knew they would be next if the Germans captured a large chunk of northeastern America.
“Let me go in and get them,” Penner said. “I’ll skim right up their back end and put the Harpoons where the sun doesn’t shine.”
The air controller took his time answering. “We’re still assessing the situation.”
“Yes, sir,” Penner said. He was angry and he wanted these Krauts. He was tired of them getting all the breaks all the time.
Captain Darius Green squinted tightly at his screen. The tiny carbon fiber submersible surged at top speed. He could hear the hiss of water outside the thin skin. The
Given the speed of most of the enemy vehicles, they must be the two-man Galahads. He’d also seen a few fast attack boats. Those were the most dangerous to him. And he’d seen a flotilla of big hovercraft carriers. Tonight, Lake Ontario swarmed with enemy vessels.
Near the radio slumped the first mate, Sulu Khan.
“We should slip away,” Sulu said for the fifth time in as many minutes. “What good are we doing out here?”
Darius ignored the first mate. He was cataloging the enemy, getting their precise direction of travel. Yet Sulu had a point. What did any of this matter? In a few hours, the enemy vessels would have offloaded onto the New York coast and likely be heading back for more men and materiel. This had to be an amphibious invasion. Already, five convoys of GD vessels had passed overhead, streaking toward the New York coast.
“We have four Javelins,” Darius rumbled.
Sulu looked up in alarm. “You’re thinking about attacking, are you? That’s crazy talk.”
“We’re a US Navy vessel,” Darius pointed out.
Sulu snorted. “We’re one lone submersible, sir. Whatever we do won’t have any impact on the outcome of the war.”
“What if every sailor thought like that?” Darius asked.
“There would be a lot fewer wars,” Sulu muttered.
It was the wrong answer for Darius Green. In silence, the big man studied the screen. The longer he looked the quieter and more intense he became.
“We should slip away,” Sulu said.
Darius looked up at Sulu Khan. “I am not a coward. I am a warrior.”
Maybe Sulu sensed the difference in the captain. The small man became wary. “Yes, you’re a warrior. You destroyed hovers before. But if we surface, we’re dead.”
“I do not fear death,” Darius said.
“But are you looking for it?”
Darius scowled, and he looked down at the screen. The last of the sixth convoy passed overhead. He moved a big hand and slapped a control.
“What are you doing?” Sulu cried.
“I want to see the stars one more time,” Darius said.
“Then let’s slip away and surface elsewhere, sir.”
“Now,” Darius said. “We see them now.”
“Captain!” Sulu pleaded, and the small man stood as if he was going to do something drastic.
Darius ignored him, and after a moment, Sulu Khan sat back down, glummer than before.
The carbon fiber vessel eased up from the depths, surfacing. Darius used the outer cameras, scanning—
“Look,” he said.
With a leaden step, Sulu moved over to the screen. He must have seen what his captain did: a convoy of Lake Ontario freighters. Maybe they were captured Canadian ships. An escort of Galahads shepherded them across the water. It was like tying down greyhounds to a herd of water buffalos.
“We can’t fight all of them,” Sulu said.
“Not with Javelins perhaps,” Darius said. He moved to the radio.
“The Germans have fantastic detection gear, sir,” Sulu said. “There must be plenty of GD AWACS up this morning.”
Once more, Darius ignored his first mate. In several minutes, the captain of the
“Can you give me precise coordinates?” the air control officer asked Darius.
“Yes, sir,” Darius said.
Sulu shook his head in obvious dismay.
“The GD ECM gear is too good for our Harpoon missiles,” the air control officer said. “If you had a laser designator, we could have the Harpoon home in on it and the enemy ECM wouldn’t matter.”
A knot of righteousness hardened in Darius Green. He served Allah. He was a warrior and these Germans invaded his homeland. In fact, he had two such designators in the sub. Both of them were leftover devices from
