The GD Galahads and carrier hovers were a lot closer than before. Enemy air swept over the water, flashed over the hovercraft and raced toward shore.
“Wonder if we have any antiair missiles left?” Romo said.
“Not against planes moving that low over the water,” Paul said.
About two hundred yards to the right, an old DIVAD air defense cannon opened up. Out there over the water, in a hail of bullets, a Razorback ground-attack UAV disintegrated.
A few of the Marines cheered.
“They have no idea of what’s about to happen, do they?” Romo asked.
With fiery contrails and lines of smoke, air-to-ground missiles launched from the rest of the ground-attack planes and UAVs. The DIVAD system kept spewing lead into the air. Then the missiles arrived, big explosion and there no more DIVADs to fire back.
Half a minute later, the ground-attackers arrived. Ancient Stingers took down two. A Marine .50 caliber ended the career of another and then the GD air shot up men and materiel.
The big surprise came with three US AH-4 Cherokees. The armored helos had afterburner-equipped tri-jets and a large load of rockets, autocannons and defensive beehive flechettes. Those swerved, jigged up and down and hosed munitions at the GD ground-attack planes.
One, two, three GD planes exploded. It was awesome. It was about time that America showed these invaders a thing or three.
Paul knew there were few US personnel around Rochester, anywhere along the south Lake Ontario shore. If the GD could get a toehold here…it might be more than serious. It might start looking like it had last winter when the Chinese rampaged up the gut between the Rockies and the Mississippi River.
Unfortunately, the Cherokees must have been low on ordnance. After destroying the planes, the helos went away, likely to go back to base to rearm.
It was up to the men on the ground now. Paul crawled for the nearest Marine position. Romo crawled after him. More of Rochester burned around and behind them. More explosions told of GD shells and warheads slamming onto shore.
“They badly outnumber us!” Romo shouted.
Paul paused and ducked low as a concussion swept overhead. Wood chips rained and paper blew. When the blast passed, Paul looked back at Romo and asked, “What else is new?”
“Nothing,” Romo said.
Finally, Paul found dead Marines. There was blood, hunks of human meat…he tried not to look too closely at any of it. He found a Javelin missile launcher, the thing he’d been hunting for. Then he found a good spot behind a blasted-out window from what must have once been a restaurant.
Romo wrestled a heavy machine gun into position. Then they waited for the enemy to near shore.
They heard the high-pitched whine of the Galahads long before the enemy vehicles reached shore. Out there in the farther distance, Paul saw hover transports waiting. They would likely only come in once the others cleared the beach. How many hover carriers did the Expeditionary Force have in North America? Not enough would be the likely answer. Paul wished he could blow up some of those.
“Shoot and scoot?” Romo asked.
Before Paul could answer, American artillery opened up from somewhere in the middle of Rochester. The seconds passed. Then geysers leapt up beside the approaching Galahads. Rockets zoomed from the bigger, following machines, heading inland. Paul watched one flash overhead. It landed somewhere in Rochester and exploded.
Before the hovers reached the beach, the US artillery had fallen silent.
“Might have been a good idea to wait for the hover transports to get here before they opened up,” Paul said.
“Is that what we’re going to do?” Romo asked. The assassin stared at him with a grimy face. The stupid feather dangling from his ear was clean, if you could believe it. He’d never seen Romo clean the feather, but he must do it some time for it to look like that.
Paul didn’t say anything regarding his blood brother’s question. He had his orders from SOCOM. They were to observe, get an idea of what was going on, and get the heck back to report and to survive. From the few words Paul had received, High Command figured this was going to be a running battle for some time, and they needed commandos who knew how to play the game.
Readying the Javelin, Paul waited. He judged the distance to the nearest Galahads. Four thousand meters, three thousand five hundred meters, three thousand meters, two thousand five hundred meters—
He pulled the trigger. The missile popped out, and it flashed at the enemy. Romo hadn’t needed to use the heavy machine gun yet, so he watched the interplay.
“Let’s go,” Paul said.
Romo seemed as if he might take a few shots first with the .50 caliber. Then he shrugged and let go of the machine gun, abandoning it. They started crawling away across the floor, heading for the back door. A second before the Javelin took out a Galahad, Paul and Romo climbed to their feet and ran. They barely made it in time. Another set of Razorbacks had arrived, and they hosed the beachfront area with chain-gun fire. It was mayhem, and the few Marines shooting back soon stopped doing so. Some had folded up shop and retreated. The others died at their posts.
“This isn’t good,” Romo said, as they sprinted past a burning scuba rental shop.
“No,” Paul said. “It isn’t.”
They saved their words after that, using their breath for running deeper into the doomed city.
-11-
Breakout
From Military History: Past to Present, by Vance Holbrook:
2040, July 7-10. Beachhead. A scratch US battalion and Marine company in Rochester, with strong concentrations of SOCOM commandos, sniped at the amphibious landers. This was also the first GD amphibious assault in its history and something of a muddle. Together, the two situations sowed confusion on the beach and delayed an immediate capture of the city.
GD General Zeller landed in New York State with the second wave across Lake Ontario. His first action was to act as a traffic control officer, speeding the capture of Rochester.
Loud knocking woke Anna out of a deep sleep. She lifted her head and saw the first dawning of light beside the edges of the curtain. What time was it? Beside her, David stirred uneasily as if he’d had a bad dream.
To Anna’s shock, the bedroom door opened. An abashed secret service agent poked his head in.
“I beg your pardon, madam,” he said, “but it’s something of an emergency. Do you think you could wake the President?”
Anna glanced at David. While half-asleep, he dragged a pillow over his head, jamming it down to keep out the waking world. She turned back to the agent.
“The Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff is here,” the agent said, “together with the Director of Homeland Security. There’s been an invasion.”
“What is that supposed to mean?” Anna asked. The GD Expeditionary Force had invaded Canada, but that had happened weeks ago. The agent looked sober, not as if he’d been hallucinating. So what was he talking about?
“The Germans have crossed Lake Ontario,” the agent said, as if reading her thoughts. “They’ve entered the United States.”
She blinked at him with incomprehension, still not understanding.
“They’re in New York State,” he said. “They’re unloading at Rochester even as we speak.”
Rochester? But that was in New York, not in Ontario. Her eyes widened. It finally registered what he was saying. The GD had used Lake Ontario to surprise them. It sounded as if they’d invaded en masse, not just raided. This was terrible.
“Give me a minute,” she said. “The President will be up soon.”