The manly part of him battled the fear in a nearly unconscious war of seconds. The terror of that tank, of the clanking treads, nearing, hammering machine guns and swiveling main turret, attempted to overwhelm him and turn him into a quivering mass.
Paul Kavanagh took a deep breath. The air tasted of gasoline, of burnt cinderblock, blood, burning human flesh that smelled like cooked pork, and gunpowder, waves of gunpowder stench. He drank down that air so it reached the deepest portions of his lungs and expanded his chest. Then he held it, held it, held it and exhaled in a long, slow process.
Why it helped, he didn’t know. Many years ago, a preacher had spoken about it concerning a man under torture. The martyr had said that when the fear bubbled and he debated denying his faith to save himself from further pain, then he would take a long deep breath. Doing that had settled his fear and let him endure another hour. Paul had never forgotten the story, and he realized now it was true.
After his long breath, he felt in charge of himself again. “Let’s get out of here,” he said to Romo. He didn’t speak in panic, but in a cold voice that he’d used many times this past year.
“Si!” Romo shouted.
As the Kaiser clattered toward them, Paul crawled away. Romo crawled. They fled the dead zone, slithering over dust, twisted girders, blood, chunks of flesh, concrete and spent casings.
A cold drop of rain plunked onto Paul’s nose. Then he crawled through a large hole in a wall, the structure once a former Bank of Canada. He climbed to his feet, and while clutching his weapon, he sprinted through the eerie shadows. Following him, Romo crunched over wooden debris.
From where they’d been, a fantastic roar sounded and the scream of a 175mm shell smashed through the bank’s wall and exited another. Dust and pebble-sized chunks rained on their helmets and body armor.
“Now the tank’s shooting blind!” Romo shouted.
“Quiet,” Paul hissed. “For all we know, the thing can trail us by voice.” He wondered if it used infrared tracking and could follow their warm footsteps.
Paul ducked into another room. They needed to get back to HQ. A Marine general had sent Romo and him out to scout their neighboring Canadian battalion. Well, that battalion was gone or dead now. The perimeter had closed tighter again and the general needed to know that, if he didn’t already.
Another war had started against America, and this one might not last long enough for Paul to learn its outcome. What was with these invading vultures anyway? Had the entire world ganged up on the US?
Paul squinted with anger. Someday, and the sooner the better, America would pay back these sons of bitches. First, though, his country was going to have to survive the GD miracle weapons from the future. Yeah, first he was going to have to survive Toronto.
It was 1:32 PM and far from the roar of war. Anna Chen ate alone at Frobisher, an elegant restaurant specializing in seafood and catering to those in the political establishment.
Prices here had risen sharply since the German Dominion occupation of Quebec this winter. Fewer fishermen dared the open ocean these days. GD submarines prowled the Atlantic, and since the coup this April of the Canadian Maritime Provinces, long-range GD bombers flew endless patrols. Sometimes the bombers came to within twenty miles of the American coast. Anna had read five NNS reports of destroyed fishing boats. She’d also read a secret CIA report. It told of the GD intention to annihilate the American fishing industry.
Are they trying to starve us?
Anna kept her head down as she picked at her salad, spearing a piece of tomato with her fork. She brought it to her mouth and chewed the seemingly tasteless morsel. She was particularly worried about David: that being David Sims, the President of the United Sates.
With delicate fingers, Anna picked up a goblet and sipped white wine. She watched her weight and diligently practiced yoga in the evenings. She was slender and some said beautiful, although she had a hard time admitting it to herself. Her greatest problem—in her opinion—was that she was half-Chinese in a country undergoing its worst crisis because of China. Many people hated her because of her ethnicity, including the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, General Alan.
Since the GD invasion several weeks ago, the bigotry directed at her bothered her more than ever. Nobody hated German-Americans because of what the GD had done. But people certainly hated her because of what the Chinese had done. That was a double standard.
With a sigh, Anna shrugged, making her jacket rustle. Double standards were unpleasant facts but they were often the way of the world. It was seldom that anything turned out to be fair. One didn’t become the best analyst in the CIA by wearing blinders, but by seeing reality for what it was. Many years ago, she’d written the tome on Socialist-Nationalist China. It was still one of the best books on the subject. She understood the Chinese and she had been studying the topic overtime lately, especially concerning Chairman Hong’s situation.
Hong’s assassination of his Police Minister several months ago had surprised her. This last week, she had been reading up about Shun Li, China’s new Minister of Police and Hong’s most faithful ally. Because of her latest research, Anna had reason to believe that the terrorist attack on Tunisia’s largest desalination plant five weeks ago had been the work of East Lightning: China’s secret police. The mission had been a complicated piece of skullduggery.
The German Dominion attempted to transform the North African deserts into productive wheat fields. The changing weather patterns there had given the hungry Europeans the incentive to try. These days, North Africa received more rain than ever before, or at least since people had been keeping records. To aid in the scheme, Kleist had demanded larger desalination plants, turning Mediterranean salt water into fresh for the crops. The largest plant stood on the coast of Cape Bon, where Gaiseric of old—a ruthless German barbarian—had once tormented the late Roman Empire. Before that, the cape had protected the ancient city of Carthage, scourge of the Romans. A massive nuclear power plant supplied the giant desalination processor with the energy it needed.
Several radical engineers within the nuclear facility had sabotaged it, creating a Chernobyl-like disaster. That had brought about a forced shutdown and an evacuation of the important desalination plant. That would hurt the hundreds of thousands of acres depending on its water and that would severely cut into the harvest—if there even would be a harvest in that region this year.
The first GD outcries had been against the Muslim Brotherhood, a splinter Sunni group secretly funded by Shia Greater Iran. The radical engineers had published a manifesto online, showing them to belong to the Brotherhood and demanding that the atheist Europeans leave Africa. Later, new evidence had emerged that implicated the CIA as the paymaster.
That was nonsense of course. Anna had begun to dig at the evidence and study each piece, searching for its origin. Finally, she had concluded that the terrorist plot had been the secret work of East Lightning, some of its most devious and delicate. East Lightning had left “clues” to implicate the CIA, to blame-shift.
The reasoning is obvious, Anna thought, as she deposited a piece of avocado onto her tongue. The Chinese wished to punish the Germans for declaring neutrality last year. Hong believed the neutrality had been the final piece that had helped bring about Greater China’s worst military disaster to date. There was another reason, too. Hong wanted to prod the Germans into war against America. Well, the Chairman had certainly gotten his wish in that at least.