A half-dozen Pelican-class aerodyne dropships flew northward in echelon formation. The vehicles wore the grey and red livery of the International Police Organization's Tactical Division. Aboard them, squads of armored soldiers fidgeted, adjusted their equipment, and made private bargains with their gods, as soldiers have done aboard transports since the dawn of war.

In the troop compartment of the lead Pelican, a man sat looking out the open side door at the panorama of the Brooklyn skyline to the dropship's starboard side. Not very tall but barrel-chested, with great broad shoulders, he stood in stark contrast to the blue-armored TacDiv troopers surrounding him. Unlike them, he wore no armor. Instead he was dressed in sturdy, old-fashioned clothes: khaki trousers and brown leather military boots with canvas gaiters, a leather gunbelt like the ones some of the TacDiv troops had seen in cowboy movies, cavalry gauntlets, and - despite the summer heat - a khaki wool shirt and dark necktie. On his head, where the others had the latest in hard-shelled protective headgear, he wore a battered old campaign hat that wouldn't have looked out of place on Smokey Bear. Even his golden pince-nez and the style of his bushy mustache spoke of another age.

The troopers of Company F were in awe of this man. Though he was completely unarmored and armed only with an antique revolver, they all felt safer just knowing he was with them. They still feared the unknown, possibly dangerous situation they were flying into - only a fool would not have - but they had faith in their leader that surpassed any fear of harm or death they might feel. His gun might be old, his mode of dress outlandish, and his claim of identity absurd on its face, but none of that mattered. His sheer presence swept all such practical considerations away.

These men and women were going into potential danger with Theodore Roosevelt on their side.

Well, all right, he wasn't really Theodore Roosevelt. The official story, handed down from Command when he joined their operation, was that he was a clone created by some mad scientist the Experts of Justice had busted a few years back. The basic idea seemed to have been to bring back some of the greatest Earthpeople of the pre-Contact era and use them as the spearhead of an effort to conquer the galaxy, or something like that. The problem there being that most of the people he'd pseudo-resurrected in this fashion were generally heroic types who promptly failed to play along. Result: downfall of mad scientist; several instant recruits with very familiar faces for the Experts.

But that was the point as far as the men and women of Fox Company were concerned. This guy might not be the actual 26th President of the United States, but somehow it seemed he had the spark of that man in him. He believed, and did so in such an all-encompassing, charismatic fashion that a person couldn't help being swept along and believing right along with him. Fox Company's troopers would have followed him into Hell... or New York City after the fall of the Earth Alliance.

Several detachments of TacDiv troops, each with an Expert in the lead, were being inserted into the city now, each tasked with securing a key point or dealing with an unfolding crisis. The Pelicans of the flight ahead of this one were bound for Battery Park at the southern tip of Manhattan, to handle a reported riot in progress. Company F's flight, on the other hand, was making a slight detour, heading not for Manhattan itself, but one of the smaller islands to the south - one on which stood a famous statue,

As the Pelicans touched down, the TacDiv troopers were already dismounting, weapons at the ready. No more than ten seconds later, the Pelicans were dusting off and Fox Company was fanning out in a standard patrol formation. Quickly but cautiously, they moved past the Visitors' Center to the edge of the circular plaza surrounding the flagpole. As they approached, they saw their SA1 commander's jaw set and his blue eyes become flinty at the sight of the flag that flew there. It was not the flag of the Earth Alliance, nor the lately outlawed banner of the United States. Instead, it was a stark and simple red, white, and black flag the mere presence of which, in a place like this, was an obscenity to a man like Roosevelt - almost as great a one as the bullet-riddled body of the Park Police guard who lay sprawled at the flagpole's base.

"Nazis," Roosevelt said, biting the word off like a piece of beef jerky.

"Jeez, those guys get everywhere," one of Fox Company's sergeants muttered.

"Cockroaches always prosper in the corrupting shadows of a monstrous edifice like the Earth Alliance," Roosevelt told her. "When that happens, it's up to people like us to shine light on them... " He drew his revolver and grinned fiercely. "... and start stomping." Then, with a quick gesture of his left hand above his head, he directed the squad forward. "Move out! Safeties off."

The leader of the Nazi team which had silently secured Liberty Island in the wee hours of that morning knew immediately that some effort was now being made to retake the facility. He was up on what had been the roof of Fort Wood, in front of the Statue of Liberty's base, and he could plainly hear the gunfire from below as the IPO engaged his perimeter guard. He didn't know for a fact that the attackers were IPO, but it was a reasonable conclusion. He'd just watched a formation of TacDiv dropships pass by en route to the diversionary riot in Battery Park. It stood to reason that more of them would have come here to investigate the silence of the Park Police.

He had been hoping the chaos gripping the governmental structures of the planet in the wake of the Earth Alliance's collapse would have enabled that silence to go unnoticed until the operation was entirely concluded, but no matter. It was too late now to stop the plan. He needed only a few seconds more to make the Nazi squad's success inevitable, and there was no way the attackers, even if they were completely routing his troops - and it didn't sound like they were - could get up here in time to stop him. This building was called a fort for a reason.

The Nazi squadleader was thus quite surprised to see an archaically-dressed man vault the parapet a few dozen feet in front of him as if hopping over a traffic barrier, level an ancient firearm at him and his tech specialist, and announce, "That's enough of that, gentlemen."

The tech reached for the control board, intending to complete their mission - or at least make it certain of competion - by turning the key that would irrevocably arm the explosive. Before his hand could reach that key, however, the man who'd just jumped the parapet fired his Colt M1917 twice from the hip. The first .45-caliber slug struck the key, neatly snapping its head off and leaving the shank stuck uselessly in the lock. The second took Scharführer Ensbeck square in the chest, punching clean through the plastron of his armored battle dress. He went down without a word, kicking and scrambling, then lay still.

"'Not like the brazen giant of Greek fame,'" said Ensbeck's killer in a fiercely enunciated, slightly gravelly tenor, "'With conquering limbs astride from land to land; / Here at our sea-washed, sunset gates shall stand A mighty woman with a torch, whose flame / Is the imprisoned lightning, and her name / Mother of Exiles.' Not that you would view that as anything other than weakness, would you, Herr Skorzeny?"

SS-Obergruppenführer Otto Skorzeny regarded Roosevelt with pure hatred in his eyes. "Theodore," he said through his teeth. "How delightful to see you again."

Still covering Skorzeny with his revolver, Roosevelt walked slowly, casually, but cautiously toward the Nazi officer. "This surprises me, Otto," he remarked. "I mean, a Nazi plot to blow up the Statue of Liberty? It's so unpractical. You were always a man for the useful coup, not grand but hollow theatrics."

"I follow orders, Theodore," Skorzeny replied. "I'm a soldier."

So saying, he moved - faster than a normal man could ever have moved - to his left, getting the damaged bomb console out of the line of fire, and opened fire with an E-11 blaster carbine. Holstering his revolver, Roosevelt sprang into the air, impossibly high, the spray of blasterfire passing beneath him, then came down on top of Skorzeny like a ton of bricks. The Nazi barely avoided the blow, hurling himself backward. He lost his grip on the blaster in the process; it clattered away.

Rising to his feet, Skorzeny spotted the softly glowing device attached to Roosevelt's belt and smirked. "One of Tesla's gravity inverters? You're actually adopting this era's technologies now? Though I see you're still too proud to use a modern weapon."

"It did well enough for your friend," Roosevelt replied, unperturbed. Skorzeny noticed then that his old foe hadn't come through the firefight below entirely unscathed; there was a bloody wound in his left shoulder where a bullet, presumably from one of Skorzeny's men's MP97 submachineguns, had struck him.

"Yes, poor Ensbeck. He had to have his deflectors offline this close to the bomb." Skorzeny sighed. "Ah, well. He knew the risks. His name will be added to the roll of the New Reich's martyrs."

Roosevelt scowled and balled his fists. "You're a mad dog, Otto, and it's long past time someone put you down."

Skorzeny emitted one bitter laugh. "And who will that be? You? You already have a bullet in you, you old fool."

Roosevelt glanced at his shoulder wound as if it were of no consequence, then replied, "So I do - but you will find, sir, that it takes more than that to stop a bull moose."

Skorzeny didn't even dignify that remark with a reply; he just threw himself into the fight. Without compunction or concern, he unleashed all the inhuman might with which he'd been endowed by Zola's mad science and all the dark and savage experience he'd accumulated over centuries of insurrection, sabotage, and assassination. Roosevelt was just an American, and what was more, he still clung to ridiculous notions of fair play and honor.

Roosevelt, for instance, would never have stooped to punching an injured man where he was already hurt. It wouldn't even have occurred to him to do that. Skorzeny, on the other hand, concentrated his offense there, landing no fewer than five solid hits to Roosevelt's wounded shoulder as the two of them lunged and dodged and feinted across the stone-paved expanse of Fort Wood's roof.

The fifth time, apparently, Roosevelt had had enough. As Skorzeny's fist struck his wound again, his only response was to grunt - and drive such a punishing underhand left into Skorzeny's thus-offered midsection that the Nazi was lifted off his feet and thrown to the ground, his breath gushing out in a great anguished cough, as two of his ribs fractured.

No one could ever say Skorzeny wasn't game for a fight. He recovered his wits almost immediately, got his feet back under him, and rose, drawing a fighting knife from his boot as he did so.

Roosevelt ducked back from Skorzeny's first lunge, evaded a second, completely ignored a third, and downed the Nazi again with a murderous right cross.

"'"Keep, ancient lands, your storied pomp!" cries she / With silent lips,'" Roosevelt said, waiting at arm's length, his fists raised in a boxing stance, for his opponent to rise. "'"Give me your tired, your poor, / Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free, / The wretched refuse of your teeming shore."'"

Skorzeny hauled himself to his feet with rather less bounce than the first time, rubbing with his free hand at the side of his jaw. "Do you never stop prattling, Roosevelt?" he grated.

"When I was a boy, Herr Skorzeny, I learned many important lessons," Roosevelt replied. "One of them was this: The limitations of the body can never obstruct the diligent man's path to a righteous goal."

"Be silent!" Skorzeny roared, putting all his remaining strength and speed into a single inhumanly fast lunge that sought to direct his blade through Roosevelt's heart.

By the time he got there, Roosevelt was six inches outside the kill zone, driving one of his sledgehammer fists into the hitherto-uninjured side of Skorzeny's face. The knife kept going along its original path, sailing out over the edge of the fort and disappearing. Its erstwhile owner reversed course, sprawling full-length on the stone.

"They only make achieving that goal all the more satisfying," Roosevelt said.

Skorzeny, gasping for breath, heaved himself up on his elbows and gathered his strength to rise once more - until he saw the light gathering in the distance, beyond Roosevelt, and his bloodied lips curled into a cruel smile.

"Ordinarily, at this point, I should say something like, 'You win this round, Roosevelt, but there will be another.'" His hand moved to a device on his own belt, pressing a control, and as he began to glow, Skorzeny added, "But not this time. I'll see you in Hell, Theodore."

Then he was gone, vanishing in a flash of blue-green light.

Roosevelt stood scowling at the place where the Nazi had been lying. "Bother," he said, then turned and saw what had so delighted his fallen foe.

A crackling, scintillating silver nimbus was gathering around the shining stainless-steel crown of the Chrysler Building. Above it, clouds gathered rapidly, darkening the sky above midtown Manhattan. An unseasonably cold wind began tugging at Roosevelt's clothing, nearly snatching his hat from his head.

Roosevelt concentrated on his Lens. Steven! he called.

I see it, Steve Rogers replied. My team's done here. We can be there in four minutes.

I'm still on Liberty Island, but the crisis here is mostly secured, Roosevelt said. I'll join you there as soon as I -

No need to rush, gentlemen, a third voice broke in, sounding perfectly unruffled. I'm already there... and I believe this dance is mine.

Roosevelt glanced at his Lens in surprise, shook his head, and radioed his squad's top sergeant to take over the mopping-up operation.

"And get someone up here to secure this bomb!" he added, then got a running start and leaped from Fort Wood straight into the teeth of the gathering storm.

"Liberty Island" (Part II of the Manhattan Trilogy)
a New Frontier Mini-Story by Benjamin D. Hutchins with Geoff Depew
quotations from "The New Colossus" by Emma Lazarus
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