He sipped the cup of motor oil that passes for coffee in the army and sized up his situation. The soldiers and officers were busy doing their jobs; he’d put people in charge to ensure that. The brigade had only the meager ammunition that Dean had failed to turn in, but with it they could defend themselves. He knew with a certainty that lacked only a smoking gun who his enemies were, he knew what they had done to him, but he didn’t know what to do about it. He had a team; all he needed was a mission.
Stern sat in the brigade commander’s office and methodically dmmmed a pencil on the desk, staring into the infinity of the far wall. They are out there, somewhere, everywhere, he thought. I need a focus, I need to find them and resolve things, I need to do something. He broke the pencil in half in frustration and threw the two useless pieces across the office, an office that still had Hagan’s nameplate on the door.
I need an order, thought Stern. Without orders, nothing happens.
It’s all so easy, so very easy, even with thirty different targets. Hemmler nodded smugly to himself as he checked the names off his list. Years of careful planning were coming to fruition as key members of the German government mysteriously disappeared. The plan called for them to be gradually eliminated in a series of “accidents,” but with the new timetable Hemmler would just have them “go away.” When one owns the security service that protects government officials, Hemmler smiled, one can easily arrange for their capture. Three more to go, he thought, looking out of the sedan window at the house of the target. He wanted to supervise this one personally. Two minutes passed, then four of Hemmler’s agents hustled Germany’s chancellor into the backseat of the sedan behind Hemmler’s car. Gloating, unable to resist, Hemmler opened his door and walked briskly to the trailing sedan to exercise his ego.
“Herr Chancellor.” Hemmler bowed in mock deference as he spoke through the window. “General Ulderthane is waiting for you, as are others.”
“Ulderthane? Is he behind this? I warn you, all of you face the direst of punishments.”
“Herr Chancellor, it appears you are in no position to punish anyone.”
“If my family is harmed in any way, I will find you at the ends of the earth.”
“Come come, Sir, I am so sorry state business has interrupted your family visit. Believe me, we have no interest in your family. None at all.” He signaled the driver to pull out.
Precisely three minutes passed, then Hemmler’s driver and two other men returned to the cars and closed the sedan doors behind them. Once in the car they unscrewed the silencers from their weapons.
“His daughter was a lovely thing,” the driver complained, “beautiful at twenty-five. I am sorry we did not have more time. I would have enjoyed making her husband watch.”
“But we must keep on schedule,” replied one of the others from the backseat. The driver sighed his agreement. Hemmler checked off another name as the sedan pulled out.
In the chancellor’s living room the bound bodies of his wife, his daughter, her husband, and their two children lay lifeless; Hemmler and his men wanted no witnesses.
“It all adds up, Captain.” Stern began to feel comfortable with the discomforting data that Cooper presented. He rocked back in the big leather chair from which Hagan had chewed his butt many times. Griffin sat across the room while Cooper stood, laptop computer nearby, having finished his presentation.
“Yes, Sir, all the indicators point to their need for some way to propel themselves into world-power status and guarantee no one will try to interfere. They will use the tactical weapons to buy time to develop strategic weapons to support any expansionism they might have in mind — which I believe they do have in mind.”
“Reverse deterrence. Some might call it blackmail. Cooper, you know computers, history, intelligence, and political science. Is there anything you’re not smart about?”
“Women, Sir.”
They laughed for the first time in days, then Stern and Griffin exchanged sad, knowing half smiles. They’d shared many things with each other, as men under pressure often do, in the last fourteen or so hours. Their descriptions of Maggie and Veronica were clipped and terse, but enough for the other to understand.
“Welcome to the club, Captain,” Griffin said. “Membership costs a dollar.”
“You’ll be safe here, baby.” Lawson pulled away from Liza, trying to carve the taste of her kiss and the softness of her touch into his brain so he’d never lose it. “These are good people, I’ve served with her husband before.” He pointed to the woman with mouse-brown hair, who stood on the other side of the living room. Liza hugged him hard, then pulled back.
“I’m so sorry to intrude,” she told the woman.
“Actually, I’m happy for the adult company,” the woman said, motioning to the three children trying to sit still on the worn couch.
Liza took Lawson’s hand. “Come back to me, Rosy.”
“I will, babe. You help out here; I’ll be back when it’s over.”
After kissing Liza goodbye, he drove to the barracks. By the time he finished giving the MPs his statement, dropping her off, and getting his alert bag from the barracks room he maintained, he found most of the ammo already loaded in the tanks and the platoon beginning to wind down. As the day wore on, the soldiers’ adrenaline rush receded. The senior tank commander had done well preparing the platoon in his absence, but Lawson spot-checked anyway, climbing in and out of each tank, inspecting different items. Tired soldiers make mistakes, thought Lawson. So do nervous soldiers, and this platoon is both.
He checked Shelley’s tank last. The ammo’s stowed properly, he noted as he sat in the tank commander’s seat. Commo working, everything clean. He fit the CVC to his head, popped out of the hatch, announced “Power,” and slewed the turret until he had something definite in the commander’s sight. Lawson switched to thermal, then back to the daylight sight. He twisted the reticle knob and the blobs in the distance focused into three cars: one polizei vehicle and two sedans. Optics okay. In the crosshairs of the sight he saw someone look first at the gate, then swing his binoculars toward Lawson, then back to the front gate.
Roosevelt Lawson slammed his thumb down on the tank commander’s “fire” button with a vengeful finality that, if there had been a 120mm round in the tank’s cannon, would have sent a foot-long depleted uranium cylinder through the chest of the man holding the binoculars. The optics of the tank weren’t manufactured to discern faces, but Lawson believed the hazy visage in the center of the crosshairs belonged to the man who had approached him outside Liza’s car just a few nights before.
Capt. Dexter Cooper had, by his reckoning, about forty-five minutes before he needed to be back at headquarters. In his room at the