He neared the top of the loop, a thousand meters higher than when he started, pointed north. Now where was that Frenchman?
He scanned the landscape below and to the west, forcing himself to ignore the upside-down world and the fact that he was hanging in his seat. There was no sign of motion, no wing flashes below him. He widened his search, looking above the horizon.
There. The bastard was abreast of him now, also inverted and heading north. The other pilot must have waited a second and then followed him into a parallel loop on his side of the border. Good stick, Tad thought.
At least he’d broken the Rafale’s missile lock. Flying side by side like this meant neither of them would be in position to get a shot off when this maneuver ended.
Both planes were now on the downward leg of the loop. Tad was planning his next move, all the while monitoring his own plane’s status and his opponent’s position. Suddenly, out of the corner of his eye, he spotted the Rafale’s nose moving, not changing in pitch, but swinging sharply over in his direction!
It turned a full forty-five degrees off its original heading, pointing straight at his F-15. Was this guy crazy? He’d be over the border in seconds at these speeds. Wojcik braced himself, certain that the Frenchman now intended to enter Polish airspace, which meant what? A personal grudge? A test of the border defenses? War?
He jammed the throttles forward, pulling out of the loop early. G-forces pushed him down in his seat. For an instant the corners of the cockpit grayed out as his HUD’s g-meter showed over five gravities of acceleration.
He glanced to the right, over at the bogey, ready to break into him with a quick Sidewinder or cannon shot, but the Rafale’s position was all wrong. Instead of coming closer, the French fighter was still distant, still moving south, and still on its own side of the border. Even worse, the enemy jet still had its nose pointed at him! Those canard fins really worked!
Tad knew when he was licked. Any plane that could fly in one direction while keeping its nose pointed in another was going to take some careful thought and planning to beat.
Turning south, he ignored the hostile fighter and concentrated on restoring his CAP racetrack position. The Rafale wasn’t out to get him. If the Frenchman had wanted to nail him, he could have done it when he first popped up, or twice since then.
Unsure of how well he could actually protect the An-26, he called the major and recommended a new position well inside Polish airspace. That would significantly reduce the ferret plane’s effectiveness but it was the only sure way to keep it safe.
Wojcik knew the Frenchman was laughing his ass off. He could feel a burning lump in his chest. No fighter pilot likes to lose, even in a mock dogfight. That clown would be bragging for a week about the Eagle driver he foxed, and there wasn’t a damn thing he could do about it.
He tried to concentrate on flying his fighter and watching the radar screen, futile though that might now be. He had a lot to think about, but most of it would have to wait until he landed and debriefed. Two questions wouldn’t leave him alone, though: how did you beat a Rafale, and how many of the damn things did EurCon have?
Reading the newspaper was like hearing about the death of a friend.
“Hungary Joins the European Confederation!” it trumpeted in a bold, banner headline. Sick at heart, Colonel Zoltan Hradetsky read the state-controlled paper thoroughly, forcing himself to learn all he could.
Articles on page after page were filled with glowing praise for the new political, economic, and military union. According to official opinion, the only kind permitted, joining the Confederation would bring abundance, employment, and no loss of Hungarian sovereignty or liberties. It was the best of both worlds, close cooperation between neighbors toward a brighter future…
Hradetsky threw the paper down in disgust. He’d already seen the results of close cooperation with the French and Germans. It was strictly a one-way street. Those idiots in the National Salvation Government had to know what they were doing. But did they have any real choice? In the carefully structured agreements already in force, Hungary’s debt to France and Germany was growing. Like miners in a company store, his country could never seem to get clear.
An office messenger came by, scowling as he dropped off a memo on Hradetsky’s desk. The young police corporal sniffed contemptuously at him and left without a word. Evidently, disgraced colonels were considered fair game by the rank and file. One more sign of my own weakness, he thought wearily. In the not-so-distant past, that self-important young pup wouldn’t have left his office with either his stripes or an unbroken nose.
More out of boredom than interest, he skimmed through the memo.
As part of the integration of Hungary into the European Confederation, Special Commissioner Werner Rehling, formerly of the German Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution (BfV), will be arriving tomorrow, to serve as a liaison between our National Police and the EurCon Interior Secretariat. He will be directly responsible for any matters not strictly national. I am sure you will all welcome him to the force.
It was signed by the National Police commander, Brigadier General Dozsa. An attached sheet showed a new organizational diagram. Rehling and Dozsa occupied identical boxes at the top of the page. Every other line on the chart ran upward toward these two, joined, then split into two lines. One said “local” and led to Dozsa. The second line was labeled “all others” and went to Rehling.
Hradetsky stared down at the memo in shock. This was worse than before! Instead of simply interfering in Hungarian affairs, the French and Germans were installing a duplicate chain of command. More ominous still, this Rehling wasn’t even a real policeman. The BfV was Germany’s state security service.
His country had been conquered, sold for bread and jobs.
Rehling’s arrival had done nothing to soothe Hradetsky’s growing fears. If anything, it brought them closer to the surface.
The Hungarian frowned, remembering his first glimpse of the new EurCon “liaison” at a special ceremony three days earlier. The German was a colorless man, with close-cropped gray hair and a bland, round face. He seemed unimpressed by everything and everyone around him, including Dozsa and the other ministry officials there to welcome him. Their tide of effusive speeches had washed right over the German security service officer and left him unmoved and unsmiling.
Hradetsky’s stomach tightened when he thought back over the scene. Despite Rehling’s cold, contemptuous manner, Dozsa and the rest had still crowded around him. Like all good lackeys, they were ready to lick any master’s boots in the hope that he might toss a few crumbs their way. He grimaced. Their opportunity was his purgatory.
He’d had to spend the rest of that morning down at the police pistol range, squeezing rounds into anonymous targets just to regain a semblance of control.
Today, still torn by what he was seeing, he’d wandered upstairs from his windowless cubbyhole for a short visit with Bela Silvanus, one of his few remaining friends inside the ministry.
An unashamed bureaucrat, Silvanus smoked incessantly and looked older than his years. The two men had gone through the police academy together, but their different temperaments had led one to the streets, the other to a desk.
With their careers running on different, though parallel courses, they had bumped into each other from time to time, but never frequently — at least not until recently. Although they had never been particularly close, at least the bureaucrat wasn’t afraid to talk to him. Hradetsky occasionally tried to get the administrator out from behind his desk and into the gym or the pistol range, but right now he just wanted to blow off some pent-up steam.
Silvanus had an office on the ministry’s top floor — one that was well appointed, especially for austere times like these. It wasn’t luxurious, because luxury bred resentment. The administrator believed in making friends, not enemies. Instead, the room was neat, with freshly painted walls and a good carpet. His office equipment was new, including a very impressive-looking computer. Prints and photos on each wall and rich wood furniture gave the room the look of a private, comfortable den. Visitors invariably came away with an impression of efficiency and quiet, unobtrusive personal power. In fact, the office had only one flaw — the constant, acrid reek of cigarette smoke.
Silvanus was hunched over a computer keyboard, a cigarette dangling from his mouth, swearing, when Hradetsky knocked on the doorjamb. The small, pudgy man turned, his scowl changing to a smile when he saw who
