Paul decided it was a waste of breath arguing with Romo. Operation Saturn—it was too ballsy. The President and General McGraw had bitten off too much. The logistical tail was too long. This was an effective use of hovertanks by the enemy, blowing up the rear areas. How did High Command figure they could guard such a large region with snowmobile patrollers and drones? Why were the infantrymen so slow getting into position?
“Okay,” Paul said. “Our suits are supposed to have camouflage gear. We stop, grab two Javelins each and split up. We crawl through the snow away from each other. Don’t fire until they’re inspecting the snowmobile. Let them think about where we’ve gone, or maybe until one of them pops out of the turret and sees our snow tracks. Then you launch a Javelin, blow up a hovertank.”
“After that we die,” Romo said.
“No one lives forever, brother.”
Romo put a hand on Paul’s armored shoulder. “You are a good brother, my friend. It has been a pleasure knowing you.”
“We’re not dead men yet.”
“Si, but we will be soon.”
Paul didn’t want to think about that. He wanted to hold and kiss Cheri again. He didn’t want his son to be an orphan. This was screwed up. Stupid hovertanks.
“Are you ready?” Paul asked.
“Si.”
Master Sergeant Kavanagh throttled down. In seconds, they stopped. He shut off the machine and hurried to the sled. Paul flipped open the lid and grabbed two Javelins. In the starlight, he stared at Romo.
“Good luck, you stubborn Apache bastard,” Paul said.
“You were right before. We’re not finished yet, my friend.”
Paul ran away in the heavy suit. Then he dove onto the snow and started crawling. He dragged the two Javelin launchers, so he didn’t move fast, that’s for sure. Then he found a small dip in the terrain. He swiveled around and crawled to the lip. He was a football field and a half away from the snowmobile. He couldn’t spy Romo. This was Apache-style warfare, wasn’t it?
Paul breathed heavily, and he hoped this special suit did indeed camouflage him from the hovertanks’ sensors.
In the distance a hovertank cannon roared with a belch of flame. Its shell howled in flight, and it blew up the snowmobile, making it jump and turning it into a mess of flying junk.
Paul readied a Javelin launcher. Through his visor, he watched the hovertanks approach the crumbled snowmobile. Each battle-vehicle rode on a cushion of air. The things floated like science fiction machines. Some of the armored skirts looked shot-up. One of the machine guns on a turret had crumbled. These Chinese hovers had been through a lot of wear and tear. That was something at least.
Paul waited. What a war. The Chinese and Brazilians tried to conquer a continent. That was just too much territory. How many hundreds of thousands of soldiers had died already? Maybe millions had perished, or they would before this was over. This crazy new Ice Age with its mass worldwide starvation…was U.S. land worth this much blood, sweat and tears? His own—yeah, it was worth it. But why did the individual Chinese soldier bother? He’d heard about the need for marriage permits. Did the Chinese want hot American babes for wives?
Once he died, was one of these grasping invaders going to get Cheri?
“I don’t think so,” he muttered.
He could hear the hovertanks now. They were loud. The engines whined like giant snowmobiles.
A flash of light erupted to the west of the first hovertank. Romo—the idiot—he fired too soon.
The flash or sprouting flame kept going, and it wasn’t bright enough to be a Javelin launch. Paul heard hammering bangs—bullets striking hovertank armor. There were pings and a crash of reinforced plate glass.
That’s a heavy machine gun firing. Someone else is out here with us. Is that who the helo had been hunting? Partisans?
Machine guns returned fire from the hovertanks. It took all of ten seconds. The flash of heavy machine gun fire in the snow ended as quickly as it had begun. Hovertanks one, partisans zero.
That’s it then. Paul aimed a Javelin, and then he pulled the trigger. The missile popped out and whooshed away in a rush.
Dropping the empty launcher, Paul rolled and grabbed the other one. Then he crawled like a man possessed. Machine gun fire opened up around him. Bullets whined overhead. Others thudded into the ground uncomfortably near. Fortunately, he’d chosen his location well. None of the slugs hit him because he had this concealing fold of ground. Paul kept crawling until sweat beaded