While drawing a deep breath, Paul eased up to his hands and knees and started crawling again. He looked back. Romo still lay on the ground, with his arms covering his head.
Paul whistled. He had to do it twice. Finally, the Mexican Apache looked up. Romo seemed drugged, but his friend eased up to his hands and knees and crawled after him.
To their left, a tank’s cannon belched. A tongue of flame stabbed outward. The wall of a building exploded. A moment later, the entire edifice collapsed.
Paul must have been imagining it, because it sounded as if he heard yelling and then long loud cries of “Medic! We need a medic here!”
Had the enemy AIs exactly calculated that? Had a Kaiser brought down the building on its hiding American occupants?
“They’re devils,” Romo said.
Paul’s mouth twitched with distaste. He wondered if this is what it had felt like being an Iraqi in the early twenty-first century. America had gone conquering in those days. They had been the ones with the wonder weapons. They had slaughtered any enemy soldiers foolish enough to fight them face to face.
How the mighty have fallen.
Well, America didn’t have time for IEDs and a guerilla war fought against conquerors. They would defend the old-fashioned way, by sending out their soldiers to fight like knights. The trouble was, the Germans hadn’t sent out any knights of their own, but wizard constructs, empty suits of armor that fought harder and longer than a man could, and without the vulnerable spots.
“Wait a minute,” Paul said. He listened. The ground shook, but not from shells this time. Enemy tanks clanked, and antipersonnel robots no doubt followed close behind.
“Get up!” Paul hissed. “Follow me.”
He didn’t wait to hear Romo’s answer. Paul rose to his feet and he ran crouched over, clutching his rifle. He panted, and his heavy body armor slowed him down. His foot came down on an uneven piece of rubble. The stuff shifted, but Paul had tied his boots tightly, and the leather braced his ankle enough so it didn’t twist and cripple him. If he became a gimp out here, it would all be over. There were no rescue helos coming to get them this time. The Germans had better radar than even the Chinese possessed.
The Germans are techno-wizards, Paul thought. His ankle held, but it put extra pressure on his knee. Fortunately, the knee didn’t buckle, but a twinge of pain speared there and sweat popped onto his forehead.
The rubble and broken buildings loomed bigger here than they actually were. The flashes of lightning lit up the cityscape, producing crazy shadows.
Paul strained his eyes. It felt as if they were bugging outward. Should he dare the night vision? With a dry swallow, he went down in a controlled manner so as not to injure himself. Paul crawled and wriggled under a slab of reinforced concrete. It was a dangerous cave to use, as it might shift and crush him at any time.
A second later, Romo shoved in beside him.
The two LRSU men stared out of their tiny cave. Fifty feet away, a Kaiser hunter-killer appeared on an otherwise deserted street. The squat thing clanked, and Paul watched it twist a girder as it creaked, flattening the metal with a tread. Meanwhile, the turret rotated and 25mm autocannons swiveled as if in anticipation of American shots.
A worse horror, at least in an infantryman’s world, followed the HK. These were small vehicles with treads, about the size of an old-fashioned Harley Davidson motorcycle. The US had started the revolution with SWORDS machines. These things—panzer-grenadiers—boasted a tri-barrel 12.7mm heavy machine gun. Paul had seen one several days ago destroy a platoon of US grunts. It had been like watching a meat grinder at work.
As Paul stared out of the low dark cave, he spied the latest GD drone chopper. It hung there in the darkness, illuminated by artillery flashes, looking like a giant wasp with its grotesque shape. In that moment, time seemed to stand still for Paul. It was surreal, eerie and it brought back an old, old memory.
Yeah, he had been in his basement as an eight-year-old, he believed. His dad had been sitting on the sofa with him. They’d watched a cheesy 1980s movie named Terminator. Paul had loved it. He remembered the robotic hunter-killers firing at humans in an old beat-up car. The poor humans had used a .50 caliber against the thing. With a laser, the machine had nailed the humans, exploding the car. Above the battle, there had appeared a flying hunter-killer, stabbing the night with its beam.
The movie had played haunting music. Paul had never forgotten the movie or its grim future. Now, as a grown man of forty-two, thirty-four years later, he was playing out that future in Toronto.
The GD had built hunter-killers, and they were destroying…well, not humanity, just the United States of America.
Paul watched the robots clank past. From time to time, the tri-barrels rotated on the panzer-grenadiers and the tank’s cannon roared.
With his right shoulder, Romo nudged Paul.
Paul swiveled his head. Americans back there fired several Javelins and hammered the robots with machine gun bullets. To Paul’s delight, a Javelin missile struck and exploded one of the Sigrid panzer-grenadiers. In response, the other Sigrids blasted the humans, annihilating them in swift seconds of carnage.
“It’s bad,” Paul said. “But look at that. They nailed one. The GD isn’t invincible.”
Romo seemed to collapse as his chest hit the ground. Troubled, Paul lowered himself beside his friend.
“How long should we wait here?” Romo asked in a quieter voice than normal.
Oh, he’s being cautious. That’s all. “We should go now,” Paul said. “This isn’t going to get any easier later, and if those drones stay on their route, they’ll swing by to check out this area.”
“We’re supposed to be the great secret weapon, huh?” Romo asked.
“I don’t know about that,” Paul said. “But we got to make it harder on them than it’s been so far.”
“Si,” Romo said. “I can agree with that. Did you see what those things did?”
Paul didn’t bother answering. Instead, he slid out of the cave. The robots turned, taking a different route. Paul shook his head in dismay. He wasn’t sure he’d ever been in something so one-sided before. Well, maybe Hawaii had been this bad, and they had lost the islands. Clearly, the GD had weathered the feeble American attack and now counterattacked. No doubt the remote controllers had orders to finish the American soldiers tonight.
As Paul crept through the darkness, listening and watching for enemy robots, booby-traps or sensors, a grinding fury built in him.
This wasn’t war: it was butchery. Paul couldn’t remember the author, but he’d never forgotten a sci-fi short story he’d read once. Generals had fought the battle of Armageddon with robotic troops. The flesh and blood soldiers had saved themselves the horror of battling invincible angels. The robots did that. After the battle, heaven opened and a ray of light shined down on the robotic corpses. One by one, the robot troops came back on line. The human generals watched in the distance as the robot troops rose up and ascended into heaven due to their courage, leaving the humans below.
What glory did the GD remote controllers gain from this? Maybe he wouldn’t ask the question if he were the remote controller. Fighting without having to worry about dying seemed like the way to go.
“What glory am I earning crawling like a rat in the rubble?” Paul muttered to himself.
“Did you say something?” Romo asked from behind.
“Do you see anything?”
“Si,” Romo said. “Look to your three o’clock.”
Paul squinted in the darkness. “I don’t see a thing.”
“Do you have your night vision equipment on?” Romo asked.