Invasion: New York ia-4 Page 27

  Mansfeld shot to his feet and strode to the computer screen. He accepted the pointer from Wessel. Ponderously, the Field Marshal went to his chair and sat down.

  He had them, Mansfeld knew. Kleist worried about the coming assault. No doubt, the Field Marshal had his doubts. Before a great assault, fear and doubts always stirred and rose up. He would show them that he had the situation under control. The German Dominion had already achieved greatness this summer. Soon now, they—and he—would enter into the military halls of the gloriously victorious against amazing odds.

  “First,” Mansfeld said, tapping Rochester, New York, “you should realize…” He proceeded to outline his plan and show them that he had everything under control.

  From Military History: Past to Present, by Vance Holbrook:

  Invasion of Northeastern America, 2040

  2040, July 7-10. Beachhead. General Mansfeld carefully readied the assets needed for the daring Lake Ontario amphibious invasion. He lacked the shipping to move the entire GD Twelfth Army at once, and would need to control the lake for extended voyages and for supplies. Despite a large number of hovers, the majority of the men, machines and materiel would cross on impounded Canadian and American freighters, ore haulers, tugs and recreational craft. Some historians believe Mansfeld now operated on the old SAS maxim: Who dares, wins.

  Despite hard weeks and months of war and constant attrition, a large number of Beowulf short-range ballistic missiles heralded the assault, striking targets along the American Lake Ontario shore and farther inland. In the predawn hours, the bulk of the GD XIV and XV air corps lofted, flying constant sorties and providing CAP protection for the ad hoc fleet. GD stealth craft and UAVs challenged several critical US strategic lasers. The UAVs took substantial losses while the stealth craft inflicted surprising damage to the sites.

  Several hours after the barrage and led by daring Galahad hovers, the lead elements of GD Twelfth Army headed for the Ontario Beach Park shore of Rochester.

  LAKE ONTARIO

  Captain Penner of the Canadian Air Force flew low over the lake’s water. At this height, his plane had a horrible tendency to dip. It forced him to concentrate harder than normal. He didn’t want to plow into the water.

  GD ballistic missiles had cratered the runway in Buffalo. Others had destroyed several F-22s and a squadron of V-10s.

  The captain flew an F-35A2, with advanced Harpoon missiles attached. Lieutenant Aachen was his wingman. They stayed low—a mere thirty feet above the choppy waves—and kept their radar off. Far to the rear flew American AWACS. This was suicidal being out here tonight. The sky was full of Germans, and the enemy hunted for aircraft like his.

  An air controller gave Penner the word: finally, he was going to strike back. Penner popped up to one hundred and thirty feet before he flipped a switch. A moment later, a Harpoon Block II cruise missile deployed. It was an upgraded AGM-84. Since this was an air launch, the Harpoon lacked a solid-fuel booster. After leaving the Lightning II, the turbojet engine turned on, and the 12.6-foot missile with its three-foot wingspan shot across the waves. The Harpoon was a sea-skimming missile with active radar. It sped for the Canadian ore hauler forty miles away. The ship carried Sigrid drones and a few GD crewmen.

  “I’m ready to launch another,” Penner told the control officer.

  “Negative,” the air controller said. “We’re waiting to see if your Harpoon’s guidance system can crack GD ECM.”

  “Roger,” Penner said. If the Harpoon failed to pierce enemy ECM, they would have to abort the mission or move closer into the heavily defended sea corridor.

  GDN GALAHAD 3/C/1

  Lieutenant Teddy Smith sat at the controls of his new Galahad hover. His radar and towed sonar array searched the predawn darkness for possible American targets of opportunity but more critically, he searched for American missiles heading toward his charges. Sergeant Holloway waited at weapons controls, his face as bleak as ever.

  The sun would be up soon, and they weren’t even halfway across the lake yet. He still couldn’t believe his bad luck at getting shepherd duty for these wallowing tubs. The mismatch of Canadian ships carried a battalion of Sigrid drones along with a battalion of infantry. Their little flotilla was going to have to make several runs today, and C Troop would have to escort them to each shore.

  Instead of a regular shell in the cannon’s chamber, they had an antiair round.

  “Still all clear,” Smith said.

  Holloway didn’t answer. He never did during combat unless it was absolutely necessary.

  Well, at least he had a Galahad again. Smith had taken a lot of ribbing about losing a hover to a Great Lake’s sub. That was like losing it to the Loss Ness Monster.

  I’d sure like to meet that sub again, Smith thought. It would go differently this time, I tell you the truth.

  Smith twisted his neck and heard something pop. At the same time, his air screen pinged an alert.

  Behind him, Holloway sat up.

  Smith stared at his air screen. “Do you see that?”

  “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.

  LAKE ONTARIO

  “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.

  USS KIOWA

  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 Kiowa was a hundred meters below the surface as Darius cataloged the number and type of enemy surface craft moving above.

  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 Kiowa spoke to an officer in US air control. He was soon put through elsewhere, to a major who had spoken a few minutes ago to Captain Penner of the Canadian Air Force.

  “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 ferried SEAL teams.

  “I happen to have such a device,” Darius said.

  “You’re in a sub, is that right?” the air controller asked.

  “Yes, sir.”

  “It will take…several minutes for the missiles to reach where you’re at,” the air controller said.

  “It will take me two minutes to paint the target,” Darius said.

  Sulu Khan groaned.

  “Yes!” the air controller said. “We have to do something. We can’t let them land unopposed.”

  Darius had been thinking likewise.

  “Captain,” Sulu pleaded. “We can’t stay up here on the surface this near a convoy.”

  “You’re correct,” Darius said. He stuck out his big right hand. It had large, scarred knuckles—those had come from his youthful days of brawling. “It has been a pleasure serving with you, First Mate Khan. Let us meet again in Paradise.”

  “That’s not what I meant,” Sulu said.

  Darius kept his face impassive as he continued to hold out his hand.

  Glumly, Sulu shook it, the big black fingers engulfing his smaller palm.

  Then the big man from Chicago moved fast. He grabbed a laser designator and headed for the hatch.

  LAKE ONTARIO

  Captain Penner of the Canadian Air Force whooped with delight. “Did you hear that?”

  “I did,” the wingman said.

  “Reroute your Harpoon guidance system,” the air controller said.

  Penner’s right-hand fingers moved fast on a touch pad control. “There. It’s done,” he said.

  “Are you in launch position?” the air controller asked.

  “We both are,” Penner said.

  “This could be a small window of opportunity,” the air controller said. “Launch them all. Then return to base.”

  As Captain Penner leveled the F-35, he and his wingman launched the remaining cruise missiles. One after another, the Harpoons kick in their turbojets, showing orange contrails. The sleek missiles zoomed for the enemy over forty-three miles away.

  “That’s it,” Penner said a minute later.

  Then the two F-35 Lightning IIs banked and headed back for Buffalo, New York. Their first sortie tonight was over.

  GDN GALAHAD 3/C/1

  “Fire!” Lieutenant Smith shouted.

  Sergeant Holloway and the other gunners put up a sheet of lead from their 12.7mm machine guns. At the same time, the 76mm cannons launched a flock of antiair shells. Tracers burned red-hot, moving like wasps at the low-flying Harpoons streaking toward the ore haulers and freighters.

  Everything happened fast. Harpoons launched flares. Antiair shells zoomed at the hot objects, and they ignited against some. One antiair shell struck an actual Harpoon, taking it out.

  “Smith and Sheds,” the Troop’s leader ordered. “They’re heading through your sectors. Turn on your emitters.”

  Lieutenant Smith hesitated for a fraction of a second. Then he turned on the decoy emitter. It put out a false signal, making his Galahad look like an ore hauler.

  “Good luck, Sergeant,” Smith managed to say.

  Holloway merely grunted.

  Smith shook his head. He hadn’t figured it would end like this. He was going out as a duck decoy. What bloody bad luck was that?

  The Harpoons kept boring in. One veered away from an infantry freighter. It lit up Shed’s Galahad in a great fireball, casting huge shadows on the lake. It destroyed the hover but saved hun
dreds of lives in the freighter.

  “It’s our turn now,” Smith said.

  Two more Harpoons came on fast. The antiair shells missed. The bullets failed to hit and the emitter—

  Smith watched open-mouthed as both cruise missiles flashed past his Galahad.

  “Is the emitter on?” Holloway asked.

  “Look at your screen,” Smith said.

  “What went wrong?” Holloway asked.

  Before Smith could answer, the first Harpoon struck an ore hauler. The warhead exploded. The second cruise missile plowed into the wounded hauler a moment later, but the warhead failed to ignite. The kinetic speed still crumpled metal, and might have been the tipping point for the hauler. The long vessel split in two and both ends began to sink. At the same time, Sigrids slid into Lake Ontario and submerged as huge bubbles rose up. The drones headed for the muddy bottom.

  “Lieutenant Smith!” the troop commander shouted over the radio. “Did you turn on your emitter?”

  “Yes, sir, I did,” Smith said.

  “Are you lying to me, Ted?” the commander asked.

  “Look at your screen, sir. You’ll see that our emitter is still on. Sergeant Holloway can confirm that.”

  “Then what—”

  “Sir,” Lieutenant Fleck said. “I’m picking up a laser signal.”

  “What does that have to do with—?”

  “I’m sorry to interrupt again, sir,” Fleck said. “But the laser’s origin point is near the water four thousand meters away.”

  “The sub!” Smith shouted. “The submarine is back.”

  “What’s that, Lieutenant?” the commander asked. “What are you babbling about?”

  “The American sub, sir,” Smith said. “It must be out there and it’s guiding those missiles into the ships.”

  “We must find it,” the commander said. “We must find it before more Harpoons hit my convoy.”

  USS KIOWA

  Darius Green smiled so hard that his mouth hurt. This was glorious. He had helped destroy a GD troop transport.

  I have four Javelins. Maybe I can destroy even more.

  Could he work in close enough to—?