The President stared at the Director of Homeland Security, and he took his time answering.
Anna knew David didn’t like people interrupting him. But this time it seemed like it was more than that. She’d never told him what Max had said at Frobisher. She had begun to believe it had been a failed ploy on the director’s part…
I should have told David. It was a mistake to keep this to myself.
“Do you mean a massed nuclear strike in Southern Ontario?” David finally asked.
“No, Mr. President,” Max said. “I mean surgical strikes with tactical nuclear weapons. We might even use some of them to create EMP blasts. I believe that would be a good way to shut down the GD drone operations.”
“The enemy antiair, antimissile umbrella is strong,” General Alan said. “It’s what has kept us from resupplying our forces in Toronto other than with token drops. The GD antimissile shield is much better than what even the Chinese had this winter.”
“One big nuclear missile, or several big missiles if that’s what it takes, can silence those with a giant EMP blast,” Max said. He opened up a briefcase and took out a thin folder, showing it to the others. “This is a tactical nuclear war plan and situational study of Southern Ontario. Mr. President, we need to do this and do it now.”
“You mean we should consider the option,” the President said.
Max seemed to gather his resolve as he dragged his tongue across his bottom lip. “I’m sorry, sir. I mean strike now. The Toronto Pocket points to the urgency of the matter. We must stop the GD before they break out of Southern Ontario. As it is, they are containable. If they break into New York State or worse, into Michigan…” Max shook his head. “I think we all know what that would mean.”
“We should turn the Behemoth tanks loose against them,” the President said.
McGraw cleared his throat.
“Are they ready?” the President asked him.
“No, sir, I’m afraid not,” McGraw said. “We only have a handful of Behemoths running. The regiment will be back to strength in three months.”
“No,” Max said. “We’ll have lost Detroit a long time before that, General. We must take the appropriate action now, this instant, today.”
The room fell silent. Anna glanced at the others. McGraw looked down. Max’s eyes gleamed and the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs seemed troubled. David bit his lip as if he mentally argued with himself.
“I’m sorry to say this, sir,” General Alan said into the silence. “But I think the director has a point, a powerful one.”
David Sims stopped rocking. He looked surprised. He glanced from the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs to the Director of Homeland Security. “Are you two working against me?”
“No, sir,” Alan said. “I simply agree that we’re at an impasse here. We’ve moved the strategic reserve into Southern Ontario and trickled troops from the New England Command. The Germans have already devoured much of those forces and encircled others. We could summon the training levies—”
“I do not recommend that,” Max said.
“I don’t either,” Alan said. “I’m just talking about emergency policies. It’s that serious, Mr. President. This is bad, very bad.”
Anna felt her chest constrict.
“I have an idea to propose that doesn’t include using nuclear weapons,” McGraw said.
Anna felt relief flood through her. She was dead set against a nuclear holocaust, and she feared the consequences if the Director and the Chairman joined forces against David.
McGraw outlined Stan Higgins’s plan of using the majority of the soldiers stationed along the southern East and Gulf Coasts, entraining them to Southern Ontario together with a generous outlay of troops from the New England Command.
“But…” General Alan said, interrupting McGraw. Alan spoke about the GD amphibious forces in Cuba. He pointed out the danger of stripping the southern East Coast in case the enemy should land there and grab vital US territory.
McGraw used Stan’s arguments to deflect the Chairman’s objections.
“If I understand you correctly,” Director Harold said, “you’re talking about mass casualties in Southern Ontario. You mean to try to drown the enemy in US blood and to clog their tank treads with our boy’s pulped and crushed flesh.”
Big Tom McGraw’s face became leaden. With eyes like chips of glass, he stared at Max Harold. “I’m a soldier, Director. I fight with the weapons I have.” He shook his head. “I don’t want my men to die, and I resent the idea of you calling me a butcher.”
“Isn’t your plan butchery?” Max asked. “We have the weapons to stop the enemy: tactical nuclear missiles. I say it’s time to use them and end this conflict with an annihilating victory.”
Color darkened McGraw’s face. “Nuclear warheads… We have to use what we have: and right now, we have more soldiers than they do—if we can mass them in time. I hate the idea of American soldiers dying. I desperately hate it. But if we launch tactical nuclear weapons, they will launch tactical nuclear weapons. Then we’ll have to up our scale of attack, and soon we’re exploding the big boys at each other. Thermonuclear fireballs will devour everything. It will be Armageddon. No, Director. I don’t see how any soldier wins once we start doing that in earnest.”
“I disagree with you,” Max said. “The trick is to hit first and hit hard with everything.”
“Everything?” the President asked.
“A slip of the tongue,” Max said. “I mean to hit with an avalanche of tactical missiles, with nuclear surgical strikes.”
“That’s an oxymoron,” McGraw said.
“It’s also old Cold War theory,” the President said.
Max picked up the thin folder, waving it in the air. “We need to consider what’s at stake here before we get indigent about using nuclear weapons. They’re simply devices causing bigger explosions.”
“Size of explosion together with radioactivity makes a tremendous difference,” McGraw said.
“You’re looking at this from the wrong perspective,” Max told him. “Three powerful military blocs are invading our country. We don’t have the firepower or the manpower to take on all three for long and hope to win. We must end this war as quickly as possible. We cannot win a war of attrition, which is exactly what General McGraw is suggesting we do in Southern Ontario. I disagree with his plan. We need another decisive win. Against all hope, we had such a win against the Chinese. Now we need it against the Germans. We must end the war by destroying our opponents. Think about it. We’ve admitted to ourselves that GD tech is better than ours.”
“In most areas their tech is better,” Alan said. “Not in all areas.”
“In enough areas that it matters,” Max said. “Do any of you suppose I don’t understand numbers? The Militia organization has fielded millions of extra troops and armed them, often with hunting rifles and mortars instead of assault rifles and real artillery tubes. The GD offensive…” He waved the folder and slapped it against his briefcase. “The only way I can see us winning decisively is through the use of nuclear weapons. The idea we can conventionally defeat all three power blocs…it is madness and maybe even military hubris on our part to think so.”
Once more, the room fell into silence.
This is getting ugly, Anna thought. And it’s tearing David apart.
The President rubbed his eyes as he hung his head.
“Sir,” General Alan said. “I’d like to point out something.”
David Sims nodded wearily.
Alan took off his thick black glasses and he removed a checkered cloth from his suit pocket. He blew on a lens and began to rub it clean. He did the same to the second lens as the others waited.
After putting the glasses back on, the gaunt Chairman of the Joint Chiefs glanced at each person in turn. “I’m not going to address Director Harold’s argument. He may have a point. I’m a military man, and it seems to me that once we begin to truly talk about nuclear exchanges that the fighting is over an
d the true butchery starts.”
“Ignoring my argument is conceding that I’m right,” Max said, “because you do not have a cogent counterargument to offer.”
“The end of the world—”
“No,” Max said. “Nuclear weapons aren’t the end of the world. That is a false argument.”
“I disagree,” Alan said. “I have agreed at times to seaborne nuclear strikes. Those are different fish, so to speak. Land-based nuclear strikes in heavily populated regions…I believe that is the beginning of the end.”
“Are you asking for a defeat?” Max asked.
General Alan smiled briefly. “I think we can defeat our enemies conventionally. We threw the Chinese and their allies back, and given time and more Behemoths, we’ll throw the PAA and the SAF out of the rest of the country.”
“And what do you think the GD Expeditionary Force will be doing during all this?” Max asked.
“That’s what I want to explain,” Alan said. “General McGraw proposes a stopgap measure to buy us time. I have…well, I don’t know if we’ve hit the secret jackpot or not, but now seems like a good time to let the rest of you know that we’ve seen a technological ray of light.”
“You should have already told us,” the President said.
“Yes, sir,” Alan said. “Well, almost a week ago, Len Zelazny attacked the GD head-on. He took severe losses in men and materiel. We know that. He did so because of a theory of his. That was to get elite soldiers behind enemy lines. Gentlemen, Ms. Chen, a few of our boys got into the GD secondary areas. One team in particular wreaked mayhem on a drone battalion. They shot up all the personnel but one. That one man, and much of his equipment, they took to Lake Ontario. They boarded a submersible in the lake and returned to our side.”
“We have submarines in Lake Ontario?” the President asked in amazement.
“Small ones for special operations, sir,” Alan said. “The point is that we’ve been studying the drone equipment and interrogating the GD operator for several days now. We’ve found something called the Heidegger Principle. It’s technical, so I won’t go into it here. But we’ve discovered that’s how the GD drone operators communicate with their vehicles. We’ve finally found out why our jamming equipment, or electronic warfare, has had so little effect on them to date.”
“The Heidegger Principle?” the President asked. “I’ve never heard of it.”
“Mr. President,” Alan said. “Here’s the crux of the matter. We’ve already begun building a Heidegger Principle jammer. With it, we believe we can jam GD drone signals.”
“Meaning what?” the President asked.
“Meaning we can possibly interrupt their Sigrids and some of their drone tanks,” McGraw said loudly.
“We hope,” Alan told him.
“Maybe we could even take over some of their drones,” McGraw said.
“We’re looking into that, of course,” Alan said. “The main event is stopping them from functioning.”
The President blinked several times. “That’s amazing,” he said. “It’s a miracle weapon.”
“No,” General Alan said. “It isn’t that. Otherwise, I would have said something before this. The jammers are going to take time to build. There are some concepts here I don’t admit to fully understanding. The GD tech teams are way ahead of us on this. But I do think it means we can soon—in a week or two—get a special EW jamming company together. We’ll set up more companies as fast as we can. But we may have an antidote to GD ‘Terminator’ battalions and divisions running amok among us. It will force them to put more of their flesh and blood troops on the line. Then we can fight them on near-equal terms.”
“I’m giving the jamming company crash priority,” the President said.
“Consider it already done, sir,” Alan said.
“And unless you men have any more objections,” the President said, “I’m going to implement General McGraw’s idea.”
“Mr. President,” Max said. “Gentlemen, Ms. Chen, I’m surprised at your…your callous disregard of soldiers’ lives. These are stopgap measures. Our military men already admit that. I’ve outlined a plan that will give us decisive victory.”
“Can’t you see that you’re talking about unleashing annihilation against humanity?” the President asked.
“I respectfully disagree, sir,” Max said. “We use the tactical—”
“No,” the President said. “I will not order mass tactical nuclear weapons, not unless there is no other way.”
“Sir,” Max said. “We should use them before we’ve bled our country dry of its best troops.”
The President scowled, and Max continued talking. It took another hour of hard discussions before Max Harold finally lapsed into a sullen silence.
Thus, the orders would go out. There would be a mass entraining of southern East Coast soldiers and others from coastal Mississippi and Alabama heading for Southern Ontario. The New England Command would have to give up soldiers too. Others in New York would immediately attack toward Hamilton to buy time. All the while, artillery from the Midwest, from the Pacific and from the southern East Coast would head for the GD Front.
Like the others, Anna understood the critical nature of the next few days and weeks. If General Zelazny could buy them enough time…they might be able to halt the resumption of the enemy offensive before the Germans broke out of Southern Ontario.
NIAGARA, NEW YORK
Jake Higgins had lost weight since Topeka, Kansas, making him leaner than ever and giving his face a gaunt look. There was something new in his eyes: a cloaked fierceness some of the meanest junkyard dogs achieved.
He rode in the back of a noisy old Army truck. Gears ground and the engine knocked twice before resuming its regular roar. This was a Militia truck these days, as close to a piece of running junk as he’d ever seen. The rest of the penal squad rode in the covered bed of the truck with him. They belonged to the Second Platoon of C Company of the Third Penal Battalion. Each of them wore Militia green with a big rucksack at their feet. Each of the militiamen wore old worn boots and worn coats, castoff clothing given to the worst scoundrels in the US military. At least, so the training sergeants had told them for the last few days now.
Their training had been extremely short and brutal, with several sluggards shot on the spot to make an example for the others. In Jake’s opinion, sending them into battle now was a crime. Half the men here knew nothing about combat. The other half hardly knew each other’s names.
According to the Militia manifests, most of the men in the truck bed were politically unreliable. Because of that, these dregs had lost their right to American citizenship. There was only one way to regain the rights, and that was through a year’s clean record and through sustained fighting.
None of the other militiamen in here had seen as much fighting as Jake. No three of them combined had seen as much action. It should have made him the squad sergeant. It should have, but the black marks against him were much darker than the marks against any of the others. Besides, he’d knocked down Dan Franks, and the MDG Sergeants had found plenty of things to write up concerning him. Therefore, Jake Higgins was a lowly private.
As a dreg of a private, he sat nearest the tailgate. It rained hard outside, the drops plinking against the outer tarp. Far too many drops slashed within, hitting his slicker, the rim of his helmet and his face if he looked up. The big tires churned through mud, the engine working overtime and the nearly bald tires sliding far too much. On either side of the switchback road towered huge evergreen trees. If the truck served too much, it could easily crash against one of the forest giants.
In truth, Jake didn’t mind this spot on the truck. If the old vehicle did crash, he at least had a chance of making it outside alive. The trouble came from another penal battalion truck that followed on their tail. Dan Franks drove the other vehicle. The sergeant scowled every time his eyes met Jake’s gaze.
The situation reminded Jake too much of the early days in Denver with hi
s friend the lieutenant. Just like then, the Militia MDGs were heavily muscled soldiers trained to regard the penal offenders as scum. The MDGs carried submachine guns and wore body armor. During the few days of so-called training, the sergeants had let the penal offenders know that cowardice would be met with a bullet in the back of the head.
Jake’s truck swerved sharply, and the chain on the tailgate slammed against the wood, clinking repeatedly. Jake swayed back and forth. He clutched his M16 between his legs. It was an ancient model. None of them in here wore body armor and none of them had modern equipment. Instead, they had old helmets, old M16s and even older grenades the MDGs must have found in a history museum.
“Is that thunder outside?” Charlie asked.
“Huh?” Jake said. He looked up, and rain struck against his cheeks. He raised his hand to shield himself from the drops.
“Listen,” Charlie said.
In the rail yard a few days ago, Jake had stuck up for him. Charlie had been caught several weeks ago painting anti-Sims slogans in Boise. Charlie’s dad used to hoard silver and gold, and his dad’s grandfather had belonged to the Tea Party long ago. Charlie was from Idaho and used to ride range for scrawny cattle and grow potatoes. Now he took care of his mom in Boise. He was tougher than he looked and could get by on hardly any food. That’s what he’d been doing for a long time. He hated Sergeant Franks and he was sick with embarrassment for being frightened in the Chicago rail yard. His dad had told him stories about Homeland Security and their Gestapo tactics. Back in Chicago, he’d figured that had been the end. Seeing Jake attack Franks had filled Charlie with admiration for him. Since then, Charlie had become Jake’s shadow.
“Do you hear that?” Charlie asked.
“I hear it,” Jake said, after a minute. “That’s not thunder, if that’s what you’re thinking. It’s artillery.”
Charlie nodded thoughtfully, and he became quiet.
So did Jake. They were headed for Hamilton, or for somewhere nearby there. The word had come down. They were going to help the Americans in the Toronto Pocket.
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