The captain seemed grateful.
“I will speak to you after the battle,” Mansfeld said. “I want to get to the bottom of possible AI insubordination.”
The captain licked his lips before saying, “Yes, sir.”
Mansfeld nodded in a reflective manner. What he’d just witnessed is what he had been talking about in Berlin. Not Hindenburg’s insubordination, but that GD equipment was one or sometimes two generations ahead of the American field equipment. The enemy could not compete with them. Oh, there were the Behemoth tanks. But as of now, those three hundred ton monsters remained in Oklahoma, facing the Chinese.
The enemy had courage. It was impossible to deny, nor did he want to. Yet Mansfeld suspected the courage was partly born out of ignorance. Once the Americans realized how inferior they were, their courage would wilt. This was going to be a hard lesson for the Americans to learn. The Chinese had mass and they had some good technology. The GD had vastly superior equipment and training. And the GD had him. He was the one general who knew how to take these superiorities and turn them into a devastating advantage.
Frankly, if he were the Americans, he would be doing everything in his power to kill him. He was the focal node in this campaign. With him, the GD would be grossly invincible and crush all opposition in the fastest time possible. Without him, the conquest would take longer. But the facts where the facts. The Americans and their Canadian allies simply didn’t have the weapons to compete with the GD.
After witnessing this, Mansfeld realized that nothing could save the Americans, nothing other than a supernatural event. But since supernatural events did not occur…
Mansfeld signaled the major, waving him near with a single finger. He wanted a fresh cup of coffee. The ease of the Kaiser victory gave him an idea. Yes… he needed to exploit the Kaisers better than he was doing.
-5-
Tenth Battalion HQ
John Red Cloud’s face hurt because he had been smiling, it seemed to him, for endless weeks now. He hadn’t realized how difficult it would be to move around the various European enclaves.
In old Canada, races mingled easily. In Quebec, there had been a large native culture. In Normandy and the Ile de France—the two French enclaves he’d traveled through—he had seen a ninety-five percent majority of white people. Twenty-five years ago, it had been different. Much of France had been immigrant Muslim then, with people from all over the Middle East, Turkey and Africa. That had radically changed fifteen years ago with the riots, near civil wars and finally with the vast deportations of the non-natives. It had been an ugly time, and from it had arisen the German Dominion.
John noticed several oddities here, at least compared to how people did things in Quebec. First, there was much greater automation. Second, he hardly spied any children. He recalled reading somewhere that Europe had a shrinking population. Instead of cheaply hired immigrants, the Europeans used robots. That included a million cameras. John felt an itch along his back wherever he went. What made it worse were the people. The French as a whole cast him dark, suspicious glances. He felt like a pariah, an outsider. It was only a matter of time until the police picked him up and discovered that he wasn’t Jacques Pickard as his ID proclaimed.
He strode down a Paris suburb with his hands in his jacket pockets. Cars passed, and the drivers cast him dirty looks. In an attempt to offset their hostility, John did something difficult, something foreign to his nature. He smiled, trying to project a friendly attitude. He was certain it fooled no one. But like a hunter wearing a buffalo hide to sneak near a herd, he did it anyway.
As John saw it, he had three options. One, he could return to Quebec and kill GD authorities there or perhaps gather a group of likeminded Algonquians and create a death squad. Two, he could continue his lone way through Europe until he reached the capital of Berlin. There, he would seek a shot at Kleist. Three, he could throw himself on the mercy of the French secret service and ask for help—actually, he would throw himself on the mercy of the one agent he knew to be hostile to the Germans.
John’s nostrils flared, and he started to scowl, when a green BMW slowly moved down the street toward him. The car had darkly tinted windows, hiding whoever sat inside. That caused uneasiness between John’s shoulders. Despite the ache to his facial muscles, he forced himself to grin stupidly like some McDonald’s worker.
Unfortunately, he lacked a gun, knife or even brass knuckles. Too many places had automated detectors. He had barely escaped twice already and had decided to no longer chance fate. He felt naked and exposed without weapons, and forced himself to keep his hands open and relaxed.
The BMW slowed the closer it came. John refused to glance at it, but he knew this was bad. He had to decide here and now how he planned to proceed. If he went home, he admitted defeat. It would be the safer course, but he hadn’t stepped onto this path to play it safe. He would gladly trade his life to take down the treacherous leader who had betrayed the Algonquians. His wife was dead. His children were dead. All he had left was his people and his pride. The GD automated armies sliced through the Canadians and Americans. The North Americans could not win.
I must remain on my chosen path. I killed men to reach this place. I cannot stain their deaths by quitting. I must persevere to the end. If I die…I die.
Red Cloud knew a moment of great calm. He had chosen the path of death in order to serve justice. He was a walking dead man, a hormagaunt. That gave him power, and the power would help him overcome those in the BMW…if he acted boldly, like a sleepwalker, and continued straight at his enemy on the path of death.
The smile on his face no longer hurt his muscles. For a brief moment, the smile became genuine, if ghastly and chilling. He stopped on the sidewalk and faced the BMW pacing him. Then he indicated that the driver should lower the tinted window.
The large car continued moving a moment longer, although it slowed to less than John’s former pace. It seemed as if the driver hesitated. Then a motor whirred and the window slid down smoothly.
A square-faced, blond-haired man regarded him.
Still smiling with his acceptance of death, John approached the driver. The man frowned, and he reached into his suit jacket.
John bent down as if to talk, and nodded to the other man in the passenger seat. He waited for the right moment, and he could tell both of these were deadly men. The driver removed his hand from underneath the jacket. John had a glimpse of a leather holster. The man held a compact pistol, and he began reversing the barrel so he could no doubt point it out the window.
Your time has come, John Red Cloud. Step through the Death Gate and accept your fate.
John moved with that deceptive speed of his. The driver brought up his gun, the barrel almost aligned for a shot. John stepped to the window and reached in with a rattlesnake’s swiftness. Surprise flooded the driver’s face, a flush of red. Then anger followed with a heavy frown. By then it was too late for the driver. One of John’s scarred hands gripped the driver’s wrist, twisting hard. His other hand plucked the compact pistol out of the man’s grip. It was neatly done and successful because he had become a hormagaunt. Death or the threat of it no longer fazed him.
“Damnit,” the driver said. “You can’t do that.”
The passenger recognized the danger first. John could see it in the man’s eyes, the dilation of his pupils. The man reached into his suit jacket. Therefore, John shot the passenger first, two bullets in the chest and one in the neck. The passenger flopped, and crashed against the passenger-side door.