Invasion: New York (Invasion America) (51 page)

Jake thought about that. Not for the first time, he wondered how his dad remembered all these arcane military facts.

Stan cleared his throat. “That’s what happened to the Sigrids, by the way. We found a way to jam the signal between the remote-controller and the drone. The small Sigrid became inert, and the cost-effective weapons system thereby because useless in too many instances. That helped us to turn the tide of battle our way.”

“Yeah, I think I see what you mean,” Jake said. He would have liked one of those jammers in the Niagara Peninsula. It had taken many dead Americans to buy their country time to figure out a way to defeat the little bastards.

Theirs boots crunched over gravel as they walked through an old streambed.

“So what happens now?” Jake asked.

“Concerning you?” Stan asked.

“We can start there.”

“Well, you’ve joined the tank corps, the Behemoths. For now anyway, even though the Detention people want you, they don’t have enough authority or firepower to come and get you. I’m still working on taking you officially out of their clutches. Until that happens, you have to lie as low as you can.”

“Okay,” Jake said. He’d been lying low all right. And he always carried a gun. If the MPs came for him…he planned to shoot it out until he was dead or they were dead. He was never going to let the Detention people get hold of him again.

He noticed his dad eyeing him. “So what happens next in the war?” Jake asked.

“Yes,” Stan said. “That is the question. We’ve knocked out the Germans, or will soon finish them in Quebec. That means we won’t be fighting a two-front war next year. It will be a one-front war between us and the Pan-Asian Alliance.”

“They’re getting ready for it big time,” Jake said.

“I know they are, but so are we.”

“You’re saying it’s a showdown then,” Jake said.

Stan mulled that over. He looked at his son. He was so glad to have him back, to have him alive. He wanted to send him far away so no one could harm him. But his boy had become a man, a soldier, a veteran. His heart burst with pride over him.

“It’s going to be a showdown with the PAA and the South American Federation,” Stan said. “We’re going kick the Chinese out of our country and teach them why it was a bad idea to mess with the United States of America.”

“I want in on that one, Dad.”

“Me too,” said Stan. “This time, we’re going to finish it and mop the floor with their corpses.”

BERLIN, PRUSSIA

A door opened in a dank prison chamber. A naked man with many welts on his body lay cinched to a table. Several women with electric cattle prods readied to shock him and make him scream yet again.

A beefy guard glanced at former General Mansfeld on the torture rack. “They’re letting him go,” the guard told the women.

“What?” the chief torturer asked in a smoker’s raspy voice.

“The interim governor says the political captives are being freed.” Without another word, the beefy guard left, shutting the heavy door behind him.

One by one, the women turned off their cattle prods. The ranking torturer studied Mansfeld. They’d had him several weeks now. He looked awful, a shriveled wreck of a man.

Walther Mansfeld turned his head, and his eyes burned with something approaching madness as he stared at her. He even managed a chuckle.

The chief officer wasn’t sure why, but her spine tingled with an emotion similar to fear. Maybe she should finish this mad dog, just kill him.

Instead, she warned him. “Make sure you do nothing to return to us.”

The threat didn’t seem to penetrate. He stared at her with those strangely burning eyes. This man was no longer completely sane.

“Help him dress,” she told the others. “I’m going to the office to fill out the paperwork.”

She went to the door, looked back at him once more. Should she kill him? No. Why risk her career? Thus, she failed to use the world’s best chance to escape a hellish future.

The End

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Invasion: New York
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