Chapter 31

Jake was cussing under his breath as he kept trying to work his phone application with his thumbs. It was going much slower since he was not on a full sized screen. Then he heard Jamie say over the phone in his playful kind of way, “time’s up big brother.”

“No Jamie! Don’t you…” Jake grabbed the scope and put his eye to the viewer. The crosshairs were centered right on Barbara’s head. Jake growled into the phone, “you sorry mutherfu…” The cross hairs began to move. It settled on the American Ambassador next. Then it actually stopped quickly on Amy before moving to the Governor. It drifted across nearly every face on the platform, from right to left. Then it stopped dead on Colonel Horst. The guy looked like he was about to fall asleep in his chair.

Then, suddenly, the image blurred as it swung quickly to another spot that took Jake a minute to even figure out where it was. There was no platform. There was no building. There was only a crowd of people who were quickly stampeding away from a squad of panzer grenadiers. The Germans formed a battle line. Jake was now confused. What were they getting ready to fight? Then Jake heard the sound of breaking glass that was almost instantly overshadowed by the tell tale thumps of a twenty-five millimeter chain gun firing from a nearby building.

Jake was not exactly sure where the weapon was. He had to figure that Jamie had set it up in some unused office space, several floors down from the roof. That would give it enough elevation and still have good cover from spotters and overhead drones. Since it was in the interior of the building, the sound would be bouncing around all over the place, the muzzle flash would be concealed, and that would make it take longer for anyone to zero in and stop it.

As Jake watched the German soldiers get chewed up by a burst of fire from the chain gun, he yelled at his brother, “you lying sack of shit. You’re not the grease man! You’re the support unit.”

Jake turned the magnification up and could now make out enough detail to see that what the Germans were trying to stop was a woman wearing a bomb. Several more German’s tried and every last one of them vanished in a cloud of dust.

When Jamie came back on the phone he was laughing, “you sure you don’t want to have a go at this? It’s way better than those games we had in the Rec room at Lake George.” Jake ignored him and got back to work on his phone.

As Jake typed away with his thumbs he listened to Jamie rattle on, “and I didn’t lie to you. You were the one that assumed I was the grease man.”

“Yeah,” Jake told him, “you let me assume a lot of things Jamie. Like you being dead for one of them.”

“You still bitching about that,” Jamie replied. “Look Jake. Might as well get used to it now man. You got no choice but to come with me.”

He almost had it now. Then Jake stopped when he heard what Jamie said and he asked, “how do you figure that?”

“Duh,” Jamie came back with, “you’re not too bright are you? Your finger prints and DNA are all over that scope. Do you think the Krauts are going to be all that forgiving, or reasonable, after getting so many of their guys getting waxed?”

All Jake could think to say was, “Fuck you Jamie.” He hit the application’s start up button and his phone got a picture image on the screen. “Time to play my game now.”

Jamie became very irate, “what the hell did you just do? Jake! You have no idea what’s at stake here!”

Jake hung up on his brother’s call and then tried to reach Norman with the burner phone that Jamie had provided. Jake grunted when he got a message on the screen that said the caller was out of area. Being from Earth, Jake was not even really sure what that meant. Then he thought about it and mumbled, “ah yeah, jamming.” He went back to his phone and used it to target his knew weapon on the German portable communications dish that was parked next to the palace. One burst from the chain gun and suddenly Jake’s next call was successful.

Norm was, as usual, not very happy, “you really took out that sniper, Jake.”

“He’s out of the picture Norm,” Jake shot back. After thinking about it for a second, Jake continued by pointing out, “literally in this case. Look, I don’t know how long I can keep him that way so do what you got to do and make it fast.”

No sooner had Jake hung up than he suddenly noticed that he too was short on time. A horde of panzer grenadiers were running past the city police and headed right for the building he was in. He watched as best he could, without giving away his position, as the Germans surrounded the office building and began entering from multiple points.

Jake licked his lips as he noticed, on his phone, that Jamie was now trying to get back control of the chain gun. Jake grunted, “I hate family problems!”