“He loves his wife and will only sleep with her. As beautiful as you are, as luscious as those tits staring at me are, he will not sleep with you. No, you are not good enough for him.”
The dark-haired woman cast curious eyes at Paul.
He glanced at her. She was beautiful, and it was clear she needed a man tonight. She needed to feel loved.
“Have you ever killed anyone?” the woman asked him.
“He’s used a knife before and shoved it into a man’s stomach,” Romo said. “I’ve seen him shoot Germans one right after the other. He’s even bayoneted them.”
“Gruesome,” the woman said.
Paul’s nostrils flared. He lurched suddenly to his feet.
Romo sat back, staring up at him.
“Did I say something wrong?” the dark-haired woman asked.
“No,” Romo said, as he stared at Paul. “He loves his wife. It has nothing to do with you.”
“See you tomorrow,” Paul said.
“Yes, my friend,” Romo said.
“Nice meeting you ladies,” Paul said, touching his forehead.
The dark-haired woman impulsively grabbed his wrist. She stood, and she pressed her luscious breasts against him.
“Where’s your wife?” she asked. “Is she still alive?”
“She’s in Reno,” Paul said.
“Oh. He wasn’t joking about her?”
“No,” Paul said, and he disengaged from the woman.
“You don’t want to…?” She cocked an eyebrow.
Paul smiled. It was a war-weary thing. He felt a tug to take off her clothes and just take her like an animal tonight. Cheri would never know, but he would know. He’d made an oath before God to her. He would come back alive through all this grim butchery. If he cheated on Cheri…would God continue to protect him? Paul didn’t think so. He had a mission. He saw that more with each passing day. He had a job to do, but he wasn’t going to compromise himself. He would stay faithful to his wife, so God would stay faithful to him, so he would fight faithfully for his beloved land.
Paul put both hands on the table and stared at Romo. Maybe the whiskey did a bit of talking now. Maybe he should just keep his mouth shut. But Paul Kavanagh didn’t think so.
“You’re my blood brother,” Paul said in the loud bar. “I’m saying this because you’re my friend. Find a woman you love—I mean one you would fight through Hell to defend. Find her Romo, and maybe…I don’t know. Just find her and forget about banging every piece of tail you can find.”
“It is too late for me,” Romo said.
“It’s too late for Zelazny,” Paul said. “He’s dead. You’re alive. Do you see what I mean?”
Romo shook his head. “It’s far too late, my friend.”
“Think about it,” Paul said. He straightened, and he turned around, making his way through the bar.
It was another lonely night in America, but he would win through. By all that was holy, he would fight to the bitter end so he could see his wife and son again in a land of freedom.
Anna sat with the President and the rest of the team down here in Underground Bunker Number Five. It was cold, with a hint of antifreeze odors drifting about the room.
“I have some rare good news today,” General Alan said.
It was days after General Zelazny had died and the surrender of the Toronto Pocket. It was also several days after a Militia corps had led the attack of the US Fifth Army against Hamilton. The various divisions and battalions had impaled themselves on the GD spears before the Canadian city. The survivors had dug into the Earth and awaited further reinforcements as they arrived from New England.
The two incidents had depressed the people down here several days ago. Didn’t anything ever change? That had been then and this was today. Zelazny’s bitter struggle in the sewers had prolonged the Toronto fight. Despite their mauling, the Militia corps must have disrupted Holk’s finely tuned calculations. The GD air force had made many runs into the Niagara Peninsula, attacking the long-range artillery, but SAMs and tac-lasers had taken a toll of the enemy. Even better, for once, the GD ground forces hadn’t leapt like greyhounds at the start of a new offensive. The GD attack toward London moved slower, almost lethargically compared to former assaults.
Anna had read before about something called friction. She knew about regular friction. If she rollerbladed, she used muscles to skate forward. The wheels rolled against cement. The friction of those wheels against the cement finally slowed them down enough so she came to a stop. The wheels halted due to friction.
In war, she’d read, everything was simple. But the simple became difficult due to friction. If three families planned a trip to go to the lake in a caravan, things would happen to slow down the well-laid plan. A child might need to use the restroom as soon as one family buckled in. That would take time as they waited for the child to run back into the house and go. Maybe the mother would forget an item, and the family would have to turn around to get it, or the father would stop at a store and buy it. That would all take time. If one of the engines blew a gasket, that family would have to borrow or rent a new car. If the others had to wait for them, the entire caravan took longer to reach its destination.
Now three families in three cars would be easy to move compared to a thousand vehicles in a division with ten thousand men. Add in the enemy firing artillery, rockets, missiles and sending commandos…
Problems added up. Training helped overcome friction. Good leadership also helped. Great morale made a huge difference. Given everything being equal, it was harder to attack a defender than to sit and await an attack.
The point was that normal friction and some hard but flawed American fighting had slowed the GD timetable. Friction and fighting had slowed the GD offensive long enough so the Heidegger jamming company had joined the first reinforcements from Georgia. The fresh army division made it north of London by several miles to face the GD terminator battalion spearheading the assault.
General Alan played images on the screen. Anna had seen such combat scenes before. Smoke billowed in places. Blasts caused fountains of dirt to spew up from the ground. GD drone tanks and Sigrids trundled across the landscape, moving past trees.
A sharp whine emanated from the underground bunker’s speakers.
“It sounds much worse for the jamming teams,” General Alan explained. “Frankly, the equipment wears out personnel at an alarming rate. But look at the images. What do you see?”
Along with others, Anna craned forward. She watched a GD drone tank come to a halt. The turret turned, but it stopped. Behind it, Sigrids stopped, and bullets no longer hosed from the tri-barrel machine guns.
The whine grew worse. Then soldiers sprinted forward. They wore US patches. One team scrambled up a GD tank.
“Who are they?” the President asked.
“We had a recovery team ready,” General Alan said. “We actually managed to capture a few enemy vehicles intact.”
“Why didn’t you capture all of them?” the President asked.
The answer became apparent half a minute later. Sigrids and drone tanks began to explode for inexplicable reasons.
“GD fail-safes,” Alan said. “Our jamming slipped a little and the fail-safes engaged.”
“Did any of the recovery team die?” the President asked.
“Unfortunately, sir, half the team perished,” the general said.
Anna felt the stab of that. Here something went right for once, and half the recovery team died. That was awful, and that was the friction of war in action.
“Then we’ve stopped the London-aimed assault?” the President asked.
“No sir,” Alan said. “The attack is going on even as we speak. But we have blunted it, and I believe we’re going to have time to bring the rest of our reinforcements into play. What’s more, our jamming system works. The Germans are going to have to rethink how they use their drones against us.”