now we need you. So pull yourself together, man.” He released Kiraly’s wrist and turned away to give the big man time to recover his composure.
Thousands of protesters were still flooding into the circle. Some were ministering to the wounded or staring in horror at the carnage. Most were streaming past on their way toward the city center and the government buildings there. They were angry now, ready for revenge against those responsible for the nightmarish scenes all around them.
Members of Kiraly’s security team stood watchfully around small bands of riot police — shielding them from the mob. Others moved among the policemen handing out opposition armbands. What had been planned as a protest was rapidly becoming a full-scale rebellion. Hradetsky stood silent for a few moments, weighing the odds in their favor. Then he shrugged. There were times when you could control events, and there were others where events controlled you. The people were taking matters into their own hands. His job now was to make that as swift and sure and peaceful as possible.
He glanced at the officer still waiting by his side. “I want you to get on your radio, Major. Get in touch with all major police and military commands throughout this city and tell them what’s happened here. Everything that has happened here! Understand?”
The major nodded vigorously, obviously relieved to have orders he could follow with a clear conscience. He hurried away, heading for his command car.
The colonel turned back to Kiraly. Though still somewhat dazed, the man looked calmer and more in control of his emotions. Good. “Oskar, I want you to take command here. Organize a force and surround those bastards in there.” He jerked a thumb toward the office building and ducked involuntarily as gunfire rattled somewhere not far off.
“Should I attack them?”
Hradetsky shook his head. “Not without more weapons. They’re too heavily armed.” As though to emphasize his point, more automatic weapons fire from inside hammered the sidewalk next to the building’s entrance. Several policemen and protesters who had been readying themselves for another charge dropped back into cover.
“And what about you, Colonel? What will you be doing?”
“I’m going on to the Parliament,” Hradetsky growled. “While you keep these swine penned here, I want the cowardly scum behind this butchery brought to justice. Our justice.”
Kiraly nodded grimly. Hungary’s military rulers were about to pay a blood price for selling their nation to foreign powers.
Major Paul Duroc glowered at his closest subordinates. He and his surviving agents had been trapped in this godforsaken building for more than an hour — trapped while Budapest crumbled into riot and ruin.
Shots rang out in the stairwell. Woerner and his men must be dealing with another attempt by the mob to break in.
“Major! We’ve lost contact with the Interior Ministry! And with the Houses of Parliament! All the phone lines are dead.”
Duroc sighed, staring out across the Budapest skyline. He could see smoke rising from near the city center — both the white wisps of tear gas and dense black columns spiraling upward from burning buildings. On the street below, police riot vehicles roared by, crowded with helmeted troops and protesters waving clenched fists. Each armored car now had a Hungarian flag flying from its radio antenna. He had lost — betrayed by his own agents’ cowardice and incompetence, and by the treacherous Hungarian police.
One of the office windows blew inward in a torrent of flying glass, shattered by gunfire from across the street. The rebels were growing bolder. It was time to leave. He turned to his radioman. “Signal the ambassador. Tell him I advise immediate evacuation.”
As the frightened young man keyed his microphone, Duroc added one more order. “Then contact Captain Gille. I want those helicopters now!”
With the bitter taste of defeat in his mouth, Oskar Kiraly watched the second of two overloaded Puma helicopters climb heavily away from the office building and fly southeast — toward the airport and safe passage out of the country. Matching his hastily gathered force against a group of trained commandos had proved futile. Police- issue pistols, shotguns, and a few hunting rifles were no match for high-powered assault rifles in the hands of men who knew how to use them. There were plenty of dead policemen and protesters heaped on the street and inside the building to show that.
Now Duroc and his men were making their escape. And Vladimir Kusin was going with them — taken captive to France.
Hradetsky leaned over a map of the city, marking key positions with one hand while cradling a phone against his ear with the other. “That’s right, Captain. I want you to push patrols out along the M1 Highway. If they spot anything — a convoy of tanks and troop carriers, or even just a single army truck — I want to know about it immediately. Is that clear? It is? Excellent. Good luck, then.”
He hung up and jotted another quick note on the map. The M1 ran west out of Budapest toward Gyor, Sopron, and the Austrian border. It also ran through Tata, a small city just seventy kilometers away. And Tata was the headquarters for the Hungarian Army’s most powerful armored corps. If the army decided to crush this rebellion, its tanks and guns were sure to come trundling down that highway.
He hoped that would not happen. For the last several hours, Hungary’s Budapest-based television networks had been airing footage shot during the French attack — including pictures showing the EurCon security agents killing uniformed policemen without provocation. Surely no one who saw those images could fail to understand why the capital’s citizenry had taken both the law and the reins of government into their own hands.
The colonel finished his map work and looked around the crowded room. Other police officers worked side by side with civilians in business suits and blue jeans, trying hard to restore order. All of them wore armbands in the national colors and all of them were exhausted.
Hradetsky’s eyes watered. He could still smell traces of tear gas and smoke lingering in the air — evidence of the brief battles that had raged earlier in the day. Backed by his hastily organized police and opposition forces, the mobs had overrun the Parliament building and government ministries with relative ease. Most of the very few police and security troops who had stayed loyal to the generals were either dead or in hiding. Most of their masters, panicked by the first reports of the disaster at Kodaly Circle, had fled along with EurCon’s special commissioner, the French and German ambassadors, and a host of lesser functionaries.
Of course, not all of them had escaped the deluge. A few terrified prisoners waited in the hallway under armed guard. They included a middling-tall man whose once immaculate police uniform was now rumpled and torn. To the colonel’s immense, if unspoken, satisfaction, Brigadier General Imre Dozsa was one of those who had been captured while trying to flee.
Hradetsky crossed the room to where Kiraly sat alone, silent and dejected. His reckoning with Dozsa would have to wait. He had far more important and immediate problems to sort out. “Oskar, I must ask you and your men to do one thing more for me tonight.”
Kiraly looked up, wincing as a gash on his forehead tore open again. “Of course, Colonel. But what?”
“Find every leader in our organization who is still alive and still free. Bring them here as quickly as you can.”
“Why?”
“Why?” Hradetsky pointed out the window. Whole sections of Budapest were pitch-black — knocked off the electric grid by the fires or by confusion in the capital’s power plants. Against the darkness the sky glowed red, lit by dozens of fires burning out of control across the city. “Because when Hungary wakes up tomorrow morning, she must have a new government.”
CHAPTER 16
Collision Course
