sergeant’s grin turned nasty. “If you run, you’re dead meat.
“Thank you, Sergeant,” Jake said. “That answers my question.”
Sergeant Dan Franks stared at him. Then he said under his breath, “One of these days, Higgins…”
“Line up!” Franks shouted, as he put away the shock rod. “You’re going to get your RPG and then you’re going to head out into no-man’s land.”
What was left of the Galahad C Troop, along with the other hovers of 8th Squadron, maneuvered through the city streets of Batavia. The town was along Interstate 90 from Rochester to Buffalo, and III Armored Corps HQ wanted it cleared of any active hostiles or partisans.
Lieutenant Teddy Smith didn’t like it. He sat in the pilot’s seat, with his hands sweaty on the controls and his eyes peeled. The town was too quiet, too ghostlike. Fleck’s hover led the way, and he kept passing overturned dinner plates.
Holloway must have been thinking similar thoughts. The sergeant said from his seat, “I thought America was supposed to be filled with guns.”
Smith glanced back at the sergeant. The man tensely watched through the main gun-port like a man looking out of a cave. For once, the sergeant appeared nervous, wiping beads of perspiration from under his nose. That wasn’t a good sign. They weren’t in Canada anymore, but in the good old U.S.A.
“Why doesn’t anyone fire at us?” Holloway asked. “This is as good a chance as any of them is going to get. I don’t know who sent hovers into a built-up area, but it’s daft.”
That was the military for you. But it was no good complaining about it, especially not out here. So Smith answered the first question instead of the second.
“Didn’t you study your history in school?” Smith asked.
“I guess not,” Holloway said.
“In the past, the Americans debated each other on gun control,” Smith said. “I remember my history teacher talking about it. The US Government used to try to take away the regular folks’ guns. The gun owners wouldn’t budge, though, and there were enough of them that they had the votes to stop any congressman foolish enough to try it.”
“Americans love guns,” Holloway said. It was an old proverb.
“I remember my teacher saying the Americans had a good argument concerning their right to have guns, at least as long as the powerful had theirs. The argument went something like this: As soon as the President and the members of Congress and the rich went without their gun-toting bodyguards, the ordinary people would give up their firearms. But as long as the President wanted to protect his family, the regular folk figured they had a right to protect theirs, too.”
“So what happened?” Holloway asked.
“The US Government got wise. Instead of taking people’s guns away, they bought up all the ammo. Let them have empty guns, right?”
Holloway laughed, nodding in appreciation.
“It’s not really that funny,” Smith said, “because in the end, a lot of the American people started making their own ammo.”
“You’re kidding,” Holloway said. “Their government allowed that.”
“I don’t think their government had much of a choice,” Smith said. “If they wanted a civil war against the gun owners, they could try to grab the firearms, but those in power must have realized that then they would have soon been dead. Bloody Hell!” Smith shouted.
Fleck’s Galahad led the way sixty meters ahead of them. Fleck had been pausing at most of the overturned dinner plates, having his gunner shoot several rounds into each, breaking the things. It looked like Fleck must have become lazy. Maybe the Americans had been counting on that. These gun lovers were sly bastards.
Lieutenant Fleck’s Galahad went over something that exploded. A bright flash preceded billowing smoke. The armored skirt likely saved Fleck’s life, but the hover grounded hard, sparking down the street until it came to a halt.
That must have been the signal, though. From nearby buildings—a hardware store, a grocery store and a bicycle repair shop—rifles and something bigger opened up. The gunfire pinged off the grounded Galahad’s armor. Then what looked like a crude rocket roared out of the bicycle repair shop. The rocket wobbled as it flew and it struck the Galahad, igniting with a boom.
Holloway shouted a curse. It showed that he was far too wound up today.
“Smith!” 8th Squadron’s colonel said over the radio. “Take out the bicycle shop.”
“You heard the colonel,” Smith said. He revved the engine and turned sharp left.
Their 76mm thundered. A HE round entered the repair shop and exploded, destroying a section of wall.
“Give it another!” Smith shouted.
Two more Galahads moved up. As they did, a homemade rocket barreled out of the grocery store. This one didn’t wobble, but it had longer to go to reach one of them.
Holloway’s machine gun and Fleck’s burning vehicle took it down so the missile plowed on the street and exploded against a flower shop. It paid to have better targeting computers and better electronics.
The skirmish in outer Batavia went on for another eight minutes, but it quickly turned against the Americans. Artillery rained down from nearby GD mobile vehicles. Smoke shells also landed. Then Smith saw running American partisans trying to flank him. Holloway saw it, too. He brought the 12.7mm machine gun around, and the sergeant knocked down or killed three of the enemy. A woman scrambled behind a building, getting away.
“More are coming,” Holloway said in his clipped voice.
“Fleck!” Smith said. Then he stopped. Fleck staggered out of a cloud of smoke as he half dragged, half carried his gunner. No wonder they had been taking so long. Bright red blood streaked down the gunner’s leg.
“Hang on,” Smith said. He goosed the controls, and the Galahad started for Fleck.
Then both the pilot and wounded gunner went down as two grenades landed at their feet. Fleck saw the rolling metal balls at the last second, and he froze. The grenades blew. Fleck and the gunner tumbled backward in a tangled, gruesome mess.
Before Smith could comment about it, a ground-attack plane showed up. The squat thing released napalm, several canisters of it. Batavia began to burn as oily smoke billowed skyward.
This wasn’t a matter of destroying a town to save it as practiced in Vietnam back in the 1960s. Instead, by the radio chatter, Smith realized that HQ had decided on a new procedure. If the Americans fought too stubbornly in a town along Interstate 90, the Expeditionary Force would burn the place down—or they would drop enough napalm to give it a go. It was time for the gun-lovers to grow up and know when they’d been outmaneuvered, and when the GD soldiers had honestly beaten them.
Smith used a rear-viewing camera to glance back at the burning place. This was a bit like the Lock Ness Submarine. The Americans fought from hiding. That wasn’t like the bloody chaps in the old days, when Americans had owned all the firepower. Smith frowned. Maybe these Americans went back to deeper roots. Hadn’t the Americans in 1776 fought from behind trees, fences and boulders, sniping at British Redcoats?
John Red Cloud was near despair as he lay on a sofa in the safe house that had become his jail. The place had an odor of stale sweat, cigarettes and cheap coffee. He had spent many days here, guarded by three suspicious gunmen of Serbian extraction. None of the three spoke French, English or Algonquin. He could
