“Yes, sir,” Penner said. He was angry and he wanted these Krauts. He was tired of them getting all the breaks all the time.
Captain Darius Green squinted tightly at his screen. The tiny carbon fiber submersible surged at top speed. He could hear the hiss of water outside the thin skin. The Kiowa was a hundred meters below the surface as Darius cataloged the number and type of enemy surface craft moving above.
Given the speed of most of the enemy vehicles, they must be the two-man Galahads. He’d also seen a few fast attack boats. Those were the most dangerous to him. And he’d seen a flotilla of big hovercraft carriers. Tonight, Lake Ontario swarmed with enemy vessels.
Near the radio slumped the first mate, Sulu Khan.
“We should slip away,” Sulu said for the fifth time in as many minutes. “What good are we doing out here?”
Darius ignored the first mate. He was cataloging the enemy, getting their precise direction of travel. Yet Sulu had a point. What did any of this matter? In a few hours, the enemy vessels would have offloaded onto the New York coast and likely be heading back for more men and materiel. This had to be an amphibious invasion. Already, five convoys of GD vessels had passed overhead, streaking toward the New York coast.
“We have four Javelins,” Darius rumbled.
Sulu looked up in alarm. “You’re thinking about attacking, are you? That’s crazy talk.”
“We’re a US Navy vessel,” Darius pointed out.
Sulu snorted. “We’re one lone submersible, sir. Whatever we do won’t have any impact on the outcome of the war.”
“What if every sailor thought like that?” Darius asked.
“There would be a lot fewer wars,” Sulu muttered.
It was the wrong answer for Darius Green. In silence, the big man studied the screen. The longer he looked the quieter and more intense he became.
“We should slip away,” Sulu said.
Darius looked up at Sulu Khan. “I am not a coward. I am a warrior.”
Maybe Sulu sensed the difference in the captain. The small man became wary. “Yes, you’re a warrior. You destroyed hovers before. But if we surface, we’re dead.”
“I do not fear death,” Darius said.
“But are you looking for it?”
Darius scowled, and he looked down at the screen. The last of the sixth convoy passed overhead. He moved a big hand and slapped a control.
“What are you doing?” Sulu cried.
“I want to see the stars one more time,” Darius said.
“Then let’s slip away and surface elsewhere, sir.”
“Now,” Darius said. “We see them now.”
“Captain!” Sulu pleaded, and the small man stood as if he was going to do something drastic.
Darius ignored him, and after a moment, Sulu Khan sat back down, glummer than before.
The carbon fiber vessel eased up from the depths, surfacing. Darius used the outer cameras, scanning—
“Look,” he said.
With a leaden step, Sulu moved over to the screen. He must have seen what his captain did: a convoy of Lake Ontario freighters. Maybe they were captured Canadian ships. An escort of Galahads shepherded them across the water. It was like tying down greyhounds to a herd of water buffalos.
“We can’t fight all of them,” Sulu said.
“Not with Javelins perhaps,” Darius said. He moved to the radio.
“The Germans have fantastic detection gear, sir,” Sulu said. “There must be plenty of GD AWACS up this morning.”
Once more, Darius ignored his first mate. In several minutes, the captain of the Kiowa spoke to an officer in US air control. He was soon put through elsewhere, to a major who had spoken a few minutes ago to Captain Penner of the Canadian Air Force.
“Can you give me precise coordinates?” the air control officer asked Darius.
“Yes, sir,” Darius said.
Sulu shook his head in obvious dismay.
“The GD ECM gear is too good for our Harpoon missiles,” the air control officer said. “If you had a laser designator, we could have the Harpoon home in on it and the enemy ECM wouldn’t matter.”
A knot of righteousness hardened in Darius Green. He served Allah. He was a warrior and these Germans invaded his homeland. In fact, he had two such designators in the sub. Both of them were leftover devices from ferried SEAL teams.
“I happen to have such a device,” Darius said.
“You’re in a sub, is that right?” the air controller asked.
“Yes, sir.”
“It will take…several minutes for the missiles to reach where you’re at,” the air controller said.
“It will take me two minutes to paint the target,” Darius said.
Sulu Khan groaned.
“Yes!” the air controller said. “We have to do something. We can’t let them land unopposed.”
Darius had been thinking likewise.
“Captain,” Sulu pleaded. “We can’t stay up here on the surface this near a convoy.”
“You’re correct,” Darius said. He stuck out his big right hand. It had large, scarred knuckles—those had come from his youthful days of brawling. “It has been a pleasure serving with you, First Mate Khan. Let us meet again in Paradise.”
“That’s not what I meant,” Sulu said.
Darius kept his face impassive as he continued to hold out his hand.
Glumly, Sulu shook it, the big black fingers engulfing his smaller palm.
Then the big man from Chicago moved fast. He grabbed a laser designator and headed for the hatch.
Captain Penner of the Canadian Air Force whooped with delight. “Did you hear that?”
“I did,” the wingman said.
“Reroute your Harpoon guidance system,” the air controller said.
Penner’s right-hand fingers moved fast on a touch pad control. “There. It’s done,” he said.
“Are you in launch position?” the air controller asked.
“We both are,” Penner said.
“This could be a small window of opportunity,” the air controller said. “Launch them all. Then return to base.”
As Captain Penner leveled the F-35, he and his wingman launched the remaining cruise missiles. One after another, the Harpoons kick in their turbojets, showing orange contrails. The sleek missiles zoomed for the enemy over forty-three miles away.
“That’s it,” Penner said a minute later.
Then the two F-35 Lightning IIs banked and headed back for Buffalo, New York. Their first sortie tonight was over.
“Fire!” Lieutenant Smith shouted.
Sergeant Holloway and the other gunners put up a sheet of lead from their 12.7mm machine guns. At the same time, the 76mm cannons launched a flock of antiair shells. Tracers burned red-hot, moving like wasps at the low-flying Harpoons streaking toward the ore haulers and freighters.
Everything happened fast. Harpoons launched flares. Antiair shells zoomed at the hot objects, and they ignited against some. One antiair shell struck an actual Harpoon, taking it out.
“Smith and Sheds,” the Troop’s leader ordered. “They’re heading through your sectors. Turn on your emitters.”
Lieutenant Smith hesitated for a fraction of a second. Then he turned on the decoy emitter. It put out a false signal, making his Galahad look like an ore hauler.
“Good luck, Sergeant,” Smith managed to say.
Holloway merely grunted.
Smith shook his head. He hadn’t figured it would end like this. He was going out as a duck decoy. What bloody bad luck was that?
The Harpoons kept boring in. One veered away from an infantry freighter. It lit up Shed’s Galahad in a great fireball, casting huge shadows on the lake. It destroyed the hover but saved hundreds of lives in the freighter.