Admiral Jack Ward stood above the flight deck in an open gallery on
They’d been lucky. His strike force had only lost two planes, both to ground fire. A Hornet pilot had been hit while suppressing an antiaircraft gun, and, according to his wingman, had simply continued his dive and smashed into the ground. French gunners had also nicked an A-6 Intruder, but her two crewmen had nursed the stricken attack jet back out over the North Sea before ejecting. And both men were already on their way home to the carrier after being scooped up by a waiting search-and-rescue helicopter.
Just as the last plane, an S-3 Viking serving as an in-flight tanker, caught the wire, Ward felt the wind shift.
Metz lay well inland, almost two hundred miles south of the coast, almost at the limit of a carrier plane’s effective range. To give his pilots more time over the target, Ward had ordered the carriers to move in, close to the coast. The fast nighttime run, followed by a dawn launch, had cost him a sleepless night, but it was worth the risk. Several of his pilots had made it back low on fuel. If he hadn’t ordered his ships in, his aircraft losses might have been far higher.
Ward gripped the railing tighter. But why had he been forced to run the risk at all? So far inland, Metz was in air force territory, and Ward would have been perfectly happy to let them have it. Land-based B-1s or B-2s could reach it easily. In fact, a strike by just the heavy bombers would have disrupted the base for a week.
So why had Washington specifically ordered him to use the combined strengths of two aircraft carriers against Metz, as part of the most destructive raid he had ever seen? From a strictly military point of view, the orders didn’t make much sense.
Metz was an important French Army base, and obliterating it certainly hurt the EurCon cause. The forces that had been concentrated on it, though, could have smashed a dozen targets. Normally planes operating off his carriers in the North Sea hit three, four, or even five targets each, every single day, systematically working their way down a carefully planned list. Organizing this grand air extravaganza had thrown a day-long monkey wrench into his bombing campaign.
What was happening along the rest of the North Sea and Baltic coasts while they pounded this one army base? True, they’d already neutralized the entire network of EurCon bases and ports, but without constant pressure, EurCon’s naval and air forces would start to recover.
Ward shook his head impatiently. EurCon was getting a twenty-four-hour respite, thanks to direct orders from Washington. He just hoped that the annihilation of Metz was worth that price.
Backlit by the late afternoon sun, two Puma helicopters in civilian markings clattered low over the rolling, gray-green waters of the North Sea. Only one of the two helicopters carried passengers. The second was a backup transport equipped with a diver and rescue hoist in case the first had to ditch.
Inside the lead helicopter, Ross Huntington finished studying the poststrike recon photos he’d been handed just before takeoff and slid them back into his briefcase. He glanced up and saw a look of horrified fascination on the face of one of the two Secret Service agents assigned to escort him on this mission.
“Christ” — the agent leaned closer, shouting over the Puma’s engine noise — ”I’ve heard of bombing places back to the Stone Age… I didn’t know you could go back any further!”
Huntington nodded somberly. He’d never before been directly responsible for instigating so much death and destruction, and he didn’t like the feeling. His whole life had been spent building things up, not tearing them down.
A new voice crackled over his earphones. “Puma Lead, this is Guardian. Four bogies bearing zero nine five, forty miles and closing.”
The helicopter’s pilot, a uniformed Royal Army Air Corps warrant officer, acknowledged the orbiting E-3 Sentry’s transmission, then glanced over his shoulder at Huntington. “Here we go, sir. If the Belgians are playing it straight, that’s our escort through the no-fire corridor for their SAMs. If not…”He shrugged. “It’s a long swim back to England.”
Three minutes later, four F-16 Falcons in Belgian Air Force markings streaked toward them from over the horizon, flashed overhead, and circled back — visibly slowing as they slid in beside the helicopters to make a visual identification.
Huntington stared out the side window at the nearest fighter, noting the pilot’s head turned toward him, faceless behind a visored helmet. The Puma’s copilot flashed the helicopter’s navigation lights on and off in Morse code. This close to French airspace, nobody wanted to make any radio transmissions that weren’t strictly necessary.
Apparently satisfied, the F-16s accelerated back to their normal cruising speed and took station above and behind them, weaving back and forth to keep pace with the slower British helicopters. They flew east toward the distant Belgian coast, gray and featureless beneath a growing cloudbank.
The Pumas crossed the coast at high speed, skimmed low over a wide, firm, sandy beach, and climbed to clear the rows of brightly painted villas that made De Haan a favorite holiday resort during peacetime. For a minute, they flew inland, still escorted by the F-16s — flying above a flat, open countryside crisscrossed by narrow, tree- lined canals. A gray stone chateau loomed ahead, surrounded by a vast expanse of open, green lawns.
Huntington craned his neck, trying to get a better view of their destination. He and his family had once spent a very pleasant two weeks at that chateau as the guests of a Belgian industrialist. Isolated and easily guarded, the estate should make a perfect covert meeting place.
Flying slower now, the British helicopters lost altitude again, flared out, and touched down next to the main building. Soldiers wearing the camouflage battle dress and maroon berets of Belgium’s elite Para-Commando Regiment surrounded both Pumas, wary but not openly hostile.
Huntington took a deep breath to calm himself, slid the helicopter’s side door open, and stepped down onto Belgian soil. A small band of civilians stood waiting for him. With a small flutter of relief, he recognized an old friend, Emile Demblon, an official in the Belgian Ministry of Trade, among them.
Demblon hurried forward. “Ross! I am glad to see you safe and well!”
“Thanks, Emile.” Huntington shook the smaller man’s outstretched hand. “We’re set?”
Demblon nodded. “Yes. Everything is in readiness.”
Heart pounding, Huntington followed his friend across the lawn and into the chateau. The U.S. Secret Service agents, Belgian soldiers, and other civilians trailed them at a discreet distance.
Demblon came to a sturdy oak door and opened it with a flourish, revealing a small, elegantly appointed study. “In here, my friend.”
With a sudden surge of excitement, Huntington recognized the trim, dapper man waiting inside. Belgium’s Prime Minister had come to the rendezvous himself. The first cracks in EurCon were starting to widen.
CHAPTER 30
Alarms
The sprawling, timbered dacha serving as the conference site lay deep in the heart of a pine forest fifteen kilometers outside the city. Once reserved for top-level Communist Party officials, it now belonged to Marshal Yuri Kaminov. To ensure privacy, the estate could only be reached by an unmarked access road leading off the Moscow-Yalta highway. All vehicles heading for the dacha were stopped and searched at a military checkpoint several hundred meters down the twisting, narrow road. Army and FIS troops patrolled the rest of the wooded enclave.
