The pilot of the lead Mirage, Captain Charles Bertaud, put his thumb over the camera button on his stick. He and Lieutenant Simonin, his wingman, were only seconds away from their mission objective. Amazing. Even though headquarters had promised heavy air raids on other targets to lure the defending Polish and American interceptors away, it still seemed impossible that they could get this close to Gdansk without being jumped.
It was.
“Missile! Missile! At my six…” Simonin’s sudden panicked radio warning ended abruptly in a muffled bang and then crackling static. The trailing Mirage vanished in a ball of fire.
Bertaud reacted instantly, throwing his aircraft into a series of wild evasive maneuvers that took him out over the sea. A tiny arrowhead shape trailing smoke and flame raced across the sky in front of him and exploded. He jinked again, desperately trying to catch sight of the enemy fighter that had fired at him.
Nothing. Nothing. There. The French pilot caught a brief glimpse of a large, twin-tailed jet behind him. An F- 15! Suddenly the pursuing fighter’s silhouette began changing rapidly — showing more wing and fuselage. It was turning away!
For a split second Bertaud’s aggressive instincts took over. Although it was configured for reconnaissance, his Mirage mounted heat-seeking air-to-air missiles for self-defense. Why not turn after the apparently fleeing Eagle and take revenge for poor Simonin? Common sense pushed the thought away.
The F-15 pilot would never have abandoned his chase without good reason. He must be right on the edge of the SAM envelope surrounding Gdansk harbor — inside the zone where all incoming aircraft were automatically treated as hostile and fair game for the Hawk and Patriot batteries ringing the city. Bertaud pulled hard on the stick, bringing the Mirage around to the south again. Gdansk’s waterfront cranes were closer now — only kilometers away.
His threat receiver went off and he dove for the deck, seeking cover from the enemy fire control radar hunting for him.
Flying just meters above the waves now, the Mirage shuddered, bucked, and rolled as it punched through layers of choppy air. Grimly determined now, Bertaud gripped the stick tighter, guiding his aircraft through the turbulence and toward the Polish port.
A SAM rose from the coast right ahead of him, climbing on a pillar of smoke and fire. He tensed, knowing he didn’t have the time or altitude to try evading the incoming missile. All he could do was hold his course and pray. With luck, the American-made radar wouldn’t be able to hold its lock on him this low.
His luck was in. The SAM streaked overhead and exploded far above and behind him. Before the enemy battery could fire again, he was over the city itself.
Bertaud eased back on his stick, climbing to clear the warehouses, shops, and homes lining the waterfront. His thumb settled back over the camera button on his stick. Any second now…
Still moving at high speed, the Mirage thundered over one last row of buildings and came out over the ship- crowded harbor. Now! He stabbed the camera button and leveled off.
Spewing flares to decoy away any hand-held SAMs fired from the merchant vessels below, Bertaud made one lightning-quick pass over the harbor area — racing above at least a dozen large transports and freighters tied up along the docks, uniformed men scattering for cover, and hundreds of camouflaged armored vehicles parked nose- to-tail on the quay. My God.
He keyed his radio. “Scout Control, this is Scout Leader! The Americans are landing their heavy equipment. Repeat, the Americans are already landing their heavy equipment.”
With his mission completed, Bertaud turned away, heading for safety at full military power.
He never saw the radar-guided surface-to-air missile speeding after him. The Hawk’s powerful warhead went off right behind the recon jet’s starboard wing and ripped it off. Cloaked in flame, the Mirage III cartwheeled into the water and exploded.
The first reports of Captain Bertaud’s radioed warning reached Paris well after dark.
In private conference with the head of the DGSE and the Minister of Defense, Nicolas Desaix sat staring down at his desk with his shoulders hunched as he absorbed this latest piece of horribly bad news. All the exhilaration of the morning generated by Ambassador Sauret’s report that the Russians would join the war had turned to ashes in his mouth.
He grimaced. The news from Moscow was still very sketchy, but it was clear that Marshal Kaminov and his followers were dead — and with them any hope of a Franco-Russian treaty. Even worse, it appeared that Russia’s civilian President had regained power. The man was notoriously pro-American. How had this happened? Who had betrayed them? He looked up at Morin. “You still haven’t been able to make contact with Duroc?”
The intelligence director shook his head, looking very worried. “No, Minister. And no one at our embassy has seen the major or his surveillance team for more than twenty-four hours.”
“Impossible!”
Michel Guichy stirred in his chair. “Impossible or not, Nicolas, they are missing.” The Defense Minister shrugged. “Perhaps they are dead. Or held prisoner. What difference does it really make in the greater scheme of things? We face far more pressing problems.”
The big Norman leaned forward. “Without the Russians on our side, we have just one chance left for victory. We
“Tell me something I don’t already know, Guichy!” Growing despair stripped away Desaix’s thin veneer of politeness. Then, with an effort, he regained a measure of self-control. “You’ve spoken with our field commanders?”
Guichy nodded. “They say it is still possible.”
“How?” For the first time in hours, Desaix felt a measure of hope. Perhaps the war was not lost, after all.
“These armored units our reconnaissance pilot spotted were still unloading. Meanwhile the American and Polish divisions deployed near Bydgoszcz are still very weak and spread too thinly over too wide an area,” the Defense Minister said. “General Montagne and the other commanders are convinced that once our tanks and troops punch a hole in those defenses and pour through, the enemy won’t be able to stop us short of the port.”
“When do we attack again?” Desaix asked eagerly.
“Tomorrow, at first light.”
CHAPTER 35
Cataclysm
Willi von Seelow was still refining his plans, trying to find some combination of moves that would give his brigade an extra edge when it went into battle. He could not change geography or the clock. Unless they broke through soon, today, and kept moving, they would never make it to Gdansk in time.
He knew what the Americans were capable of. Back when he’d reluctantly served East Germany’s dying regime, he had trained against the “NATO threat.” After the reunification, he’d trained with the Americans as new allies. He cursed them now. If not for the infantry division dug in to his front, his brigade would be halfway to Gdansk by now. Worse, the stubborn resistance his brigade had encountered in its first attack against Swiecie was only the barest taste of what lay ahead.
Right now, ships loaded with Abrams tanks and Bradley fighting vehicles, trucks, and supplies crowded the docks at the Polish port. Commercial passenger jets were shuttling soldiers in around the clock. It would take some time to restore the collection of machines and men into fighting units. That interval measured how long he had to get there.
Tasked by II Corps with conducting the breakthrough, General Leibnitz, the 7th Panzer Division’s commander, had left von Seelow and his “Bloody 19th” in the lead. Willi was grateful for the general’s show of confidence in his abilities, but putting the 19th Panzergrenadier first also made good military sense. As the division’s sole infantry- heavy formation, the brigade was the best suited to fighting through the difficult terrain in front of them, opening a
