hour to get there on foot. They might be gone by then.”
“Radio it in.”
Paul shrugged. He had been about to do that, but he wondered why he bothered. Their side was always running out of smart bombs. Why would it be any different now?
“Say again,” the air-controller said.
Paul told him the info, giving the man the coordinates.
“Do you have a target designator?” the air-controller asked.
“Of course,” Paul said.
“Get closer and put it on them.”
“Let’s go,” Paul told Romo. They left the snowmobile and jogged through the snow. Paul carried a Blowdart launcher and the laser designator. Romo had taken a Javelin.
At 8:17, the air-controller came back online. “Are they still there?”
“Yes and no,” Paul said. “The former supply vehicles have moved on, but we’re near another group.”
“Can you reach them with your laser from where you are?”
“Yes,” Paul said. “You’re telling me you have smart bombs this time?”
“Negative,” the air-controller said. “But somebody upstairs must like you. Once you pinpoint them, ballistic missiles will be on their way.”
Paul knelt and fired the laser at the big trucks moving slowly in the distance. Soon, the ballistic missiles hit the convoy. They started big fires, with belching oil-flames billowing into the starry sky. It was spectacular.
It took an hour and a quarter of trudging through the snow for Paul and Romo to reach the destruction, which took place on an old dirt road. The ballistic missiles had cut a wide swath of destruction. The two men counted fifty-three vehicles. Some still burned. There were countless dead and wounded. Some soldiers carried QBZ-95 assault rifles.
Romo pointed out a truck tilted at a crazy angle. Brazilian soldiers in heavy snow coats manhandled huge crates out of the back of it. The soldiers moved the heavy crates to waiting jeeps. There were seven of them in a line. One jeep already held several of the crates. A soldier climbed into the driver’s side and started the engine.
Paul and Romo glanced at each other. Without a word, both lay down. Paul readied his M-16, wrapping the carrying strap around one of his hands. He nodded to Romo.
Romo prepared the Javelin for firing. “Bad odds for us, my friend,” he said.
“Let’s just get it over with,” Paul said.
“Si,” Romo whispered. He sighted and fired.
The Javelin whooshed and sped fast, hitting the piled-high jeep, causing a fantastic explosion. The blast flattened everyone around it, and the explosion started other fantastic blasts—the biggest and worst in the truck.
Paul barely had time to shove his visor down against the ground. The blast lifted him, tumbling him backward through the air. He struck ground, rolled and rolled like a rag doll. Finally, he came to a stop. He just lay there face down, breathing, glad to be alive.
What had been in those crates?
Finally, Paul stirred. He moved his fingers first, his wrists next and then his elbows. Nothing appeared broken. He stood up and checked his suit for breaches, for holes. It was whole. He was okay, if badly bruised.
“Romo,” he radioed.
“What was that?” Romo radioed back.
Paul found his blood brother twenty feet away. After checking him, Paul discovered that Romo had come through all right as well. The assassin was harder to kill than a bad tax.
From a distance, they examined the former truck with the jeeps. All the vehicles were flipped over or on their sides. None of the Brazilians stirred.
“I wonder if there’s another one around here that still works,” Romo said.
They searched and found one ten minutes later. The engine had a bad knock. Taking a final look around, finding nothing left to destroy, the two men climbed into the Brazilian jeep. They headed west for the American lines, hoping that their part in the Brazilian offensive was over.
PUEBLO, COLORADO
Marshal Liang paced back and forth in a captured Wells Fargo bank building. As he marched, his bad eye flickered due to the constant tic. He couldn’t help either the pacing or the eye. Disaster stared him in the face.
The Americans had tricked him, tricked Chairman Hong and—
No, no, no, it was the perfidious Germans. Chancellor Kleist made a deal with the enemy, freeing too many American soldiers.
By remaining in Cuba before, the GD had tied down nearly a million American GIs from the East Coast to the Gulf of Mexico. Now those soldiers poured to the Midwest and south along the penetration to Colorado Springs.
They’ve trapped over two thirds of my Third Front. I can’t believe this is happening.
Marshal Liang massaged his forehead. He’d been busy while