still believe that he had been derelict in his duty. He’d turned on the emitter, but he had to admit, he was glad it had failed to attract the Harpoons. He was overjoyed to be alive.
Teddy Smith turned the hover around and kicked the Galahad into high gear, zooming across the waves, speeding to catch up with the convoy. The tip of the sun broke over the horizon, casting long orange beams across the water. It was beautiful. It was the most beautiful sunrise he’d ever seen.
Smith grinned wildly, and he laughed. Right now, he didn’t care if Holloway thought he was strange or not. Lieutenant Teddy Smith out of London laughed with gusto. It was good to be alive. It was glorious to zip across the waters in this fast machine.
After the laughter died away—Holloway had remained silent the entire time—Smith nodded to himself. It was daylight now. It would be harder for the submarine to do that again. Twice the American submarine had bested him. He wanted another crack at it. He wanted to sink the damned thing.
Yes, one way or another, he was going to get the better of the Lake Ontario Loch Ness Monster.
Paul Kavanagh squinted tightly as he scanned Lake Ontario with his binoculars. Dawn broke over the horizon. He’d been awake for three hours already, ever since the first enemy missiles had struck the city.
Behind him parts of Rochester burned. The worst hit had been at the airport, an artillery park and several dummy mobile shore batteries. The real shore batteries were big trucks with Harpoon cruise missiles.
He’d already been on the horn with the local SOCOM colonel. Romo and he were out here with a Marine company. The Marines had Javelins, some older TOWs and with a DIVAD system to take down the next low-level air strike. An Army battalion in the middle of the city was already supposed to be out here with them, but the soldiers were taking their sweet time to get into position.
“It’s too late for Rochester,” Romo said. He also lay on his belly, scanning the lake. “Look at grid 2-A- 22.”
Paul swept his binoculars to the left. Oh yeah, he saw them now. Galahad hovercraft and bigger, infantry- carrying hovers headed toward shore. They moved fast and acted like a fleet. The difference would be that this fleet could keep right on coming, up the shore and into the city.
“We have to stop them,” Paul said.
“Of course,” Romo said. “What else would we do?”
They both wore body armor, and today they had some of their old gear on: helmets with HUD visors. Both of theirs were flipped up at the moment.
Paul figured there was one thing on their side today. This wasn’t a blue water Navy amphibious assault. This was something different because these were the Great Lakes, or one of them at least. Instead of destroyers, the GD had Galahads. Instead of light cruisers, the enemy had big hovers. There were no battleships and certainly no aircraft carriers out there. Unfortunately, the enemy didn’t need the carriers today, because the far shore held plenty of GD runways. That meant the enemy had plenty of aircraft. Some of Rochester burned because of enemy air strikes. The battleships, on the other hand—
“Down!” Paul shouted.
Other Marines took up the cry.
There were falling streaks in the sky: more SRBMs—short-range ballistic missiles—coming down fast at Rochester.
For the next few minutes, Paul endured tremendous explosions. His bones shook and his teeth rattled, until he remembered to close his mouth tightly.
They were stationed almost at the edge of the shore, behind buildings that fronted Ontario Beach Park. Some of the buildings vaporized under the missile barrage. Razor-sharp shards of wood and molten metal flew through the air and slaughtered half the Marine company. It left the others shocked and dazed, not knowing what to do.
Stirring, forcing himself to think, to act now while he had the chance, Paul raised his head. His brain throbbed. His body hurt. So did his right hand from clutching the binoculars so hard. He put the lenses to his eyes.
The GD Galahads and carrier hovers were a lot closer than before. Enemy air swept over the water, flashed over the hovercraft and raced toward shore.
“Wonder if we have any antiair missiles left?” Romo said.
“Not against planes moving that low over the water,” Paul said.
About two hundred yards to the right, an old DIVAD air defense cannon opened up. Out there over the water, in a hail of bullets, a Razorback ground-attack UAV disintegrated.
A few of the Marines cheered.
“They have no idea of what’s about to happen, do they?” Romo asked.
With fiery contrails and lines of smoke, air-to-ground missiles launched from the rest of the ground-attack planes and UAVs. The DIVAD system kept spewing lead into the air. Then the missiles arrived, big explosion and there no more DIVADs to fire back.
Half a minute later, the ground-attackers arrived. Ancient Stingers took down two. A Marine .50 caliber ended the career of another and then the GD air shot up men and materiel.
The big surprise came with three US AH-4 Cherokees. The armored helos had afterburner-equipped tri-jets and a large load of rockets, autocannons and defensive beehive flechettes. Those swerved, jigged up and down and hosed munitions at the GD ground-attack planes.
One, two, three GD planes exploded. It was awesome. It was about time that America showed these invaders a thing or three.
Paul knew there were few US personnel around Rochester, anywhere along the south Lake Ontario shore. If the GD could get a toehold here…it might be more than serious. It might start looking like it had last winter when the Chinese rampaged up the gut between the Rockies and the Mississippi River.
Unfortunately, the Cherokees must have been low on ordnance. After destroying the planes, the helos went away, likely to go back to base to rearm.
It was up to the men on the ground now. Paul crawled for the nearest Marine position. Romo crawled after him. More of Rochester burned around and behind them. More explosions told of GD shells and warheads slamming onto shore.
“They badly outnumber us!” Romo shouted.
Paul paused and ducked low as a concussion swept overhead. Wood chips rained and paper blew. When the blast passed, Paul looked back at Romo and asked, “What else is new?”
“Nothing,” Romo said.
Finally, Paul found dead Marines. There was blood, hunks of human meat…he tried not to look too closely at any of it. He found a Javelin missile launcher, the thing he’d been hunting for. Then he found a good spot behind a blasted-out window from what must have once been a restaurant.
Romo wrestled a heavy machine gun into position. Then they waited for the enemy to near shore.
They heard the high-pitched whine of the Galahads long before the enemy vehicles reached shore. Out there in the farther distance, Paul saw hover transports waiting. They would likely only come in once the others cleared the beach. How many hover carriers did the Expeditionary Force have in North America? Not enough would be the likely answer. Paul wished he could blow up some of those.
“Shoot and scoot?” Romo asked.
Before Paul could answer, American artillery opened up from somewhere in the middle of Rochester. The seconds passed. Then geysers leapt up beside the approaching Galahads. Rockets zoomed from the bigger, following machines, heading inland. Paul watched one flash overhead. It landed somewhere in Rochester and exploded.
Before the hovers reached the beach, the US artillery had fallen silent.
“Might have been a good idea to wait for the hover transports to get here before they opened up,” Paul said.
“Is that what we’re going to do?” Romo asked. The assassin stared at him with a grimy face. The stupid feather dangling from his ear was clean, if you could believe it. He’d never seen Romo clean the feather, but he must do it some time for it to look like that.
Paul didn’t say anything regarding his blood brother’s question. He had his orders from SOCOM. They were
