dictate.
Desaix glanced down the table toward Schraeder. Did the German Chancellor share Lettow’s belated misgivings? He couldn’t tell. The Chancellor just sat there, saying little and showing even less.
Still, Schraeder had studied history. Whether or not he had misgivings, he must know that generals and politicians who led their nations into unsuccessful wars never held power for long afterward. It was too late to back away now.
Desaix leaned forward in his chair, interrupting Lettow. “The Swiss offer may be kindly meant, Herr Lettow. But I really do not see that we have anything to talk about!”
He aimed his words toward the German Chancellor’s end of the table. “We support the legitimate government of Hungary — a fellow member of this Confederation. All our actions to restore that government and good order are in accordance with international law and our own treaty obligations.” Desaix put steel in his voice. “If anyone backs away from this crisis, it must be Poland and its friends — not us!”
Several of the others muttered their agreement with his hawkish stance. Schraeder nodded reluctantly. Lettow merely looked appalled.
“And how do you think we should persuade them of that, Nicolas? With a diplomatic communique?” Michel Guichy asked sharply. His position as head of the Defense Secretariat made him the most vulnerable of all if their attack on Hungary’s rebel government ended in failure or even a bloody, Pyrrhic victory.
Desaix shook his head. “No. Words mean nothing when bombs are falling. I have a somewhat more
He turned toward the short, sallow-faced commander of the French Air Force. “General Vichery is better qualified to brief you on the military aspects. General?”
“Of course, Minister.” Vichery rose and strode to a wall map at one end of the War Room. Symbols showed the location of all known friendly and enemy ground and air units along the Confederation’s eastern border. One after the other, he pointed to three airfields, two in Poland and one in the Czech Republic. “These are the linchpins of the enemy air campaign against us. But all of them are vulnerable to attack. One swift, coordinated strike could cripple these facilities.”
Lettow broke in suddenly. “You cannot be serious, Minister Desaix! There are American air force technicians and advisors stationed at those bases!”
“What of it?” Desaix said coldly. “With or without an official declaration, Poland and the others are making war against us, Herr Lettow! The air bases General Vichery has identified are being used to mount attacks that are killing Confederation pilots and ground troops. By remaining there, by continuing to work with the Poles, these Americans have become combatants. And as combatants, they are at risk.” He scowled. “It is time to make the American people and their Congress aware of the dangerous games their President is playing with American lives!”
Lettow swallowed visibly. “But the risk of war with the United States…”
“Is minimal,” Desaix finished for him. “Except for a few hundred technicians and trainers, the Americans have no significant military presence in Europe. And no easy way to get any more soldiers to Poland in time to matter.” He shrugged. “They would also be fighting a war on our ground and at the far end of a very long line of communications. Given that, I believe Washington will very quickly see reason. They will not fight a war they cannot win.”
He looked expectantly at Schraeder and the rest of the Confederation Defense Committee. “So the question remains, gentlemen. Do we allow the Poles and Czechs to attack us with impunity? Or will we strike back and put an end to this nonsense once and for all?”
One after the other they nodded their approval for the retaliatory air raids he proposed. Only Lettow grimly shook his head.
Nicolas Desaix paid little attention to the rest of General Vichery’s briefing. He found details on ordnance loads, mission parameters, and flight paths utterly uninteresting. Only the effects mattered. Poland and its partners were about to learn that defying the European Confederation could be an extremely expensive proposition.
Six pairs of swept-wing, single-tailed Mirage F1E fighters roared off the main runway of the old Soviet air base at Juterbog, leaving one after the other at precisely timed intervals. None climbed higher than five hundred meters above a gently rolling landscape of forests and farmland.
Originally intended primarily as an interceptor, software and radar system upgrades were supposed to make the F1 a capable all-weather strike aircraft. The pilots flying this mission intended to prove that beyond any doubt. Each Mirage carried two long, angular shapes slung under its wings — Apache cruise missiles. The Apache was one of the newest French weapons, a stealthy, ground-hugging cruise missile specifically designed to evade enemy radars and air defenses.
Formed up in three four-plane flights, the F1s dove even lower and turned toward the rising sun. Their shadows rippled across a patchwork of fields and woodlands as they flew east at five hundred knots.
Staff Sergeant Jim Frewer, USAF, stood near the hardened aircraft shelter’s open doors, watching carefully as a Polish Air Force captain realigned the APG-70 radar antenna on an F-15. Quick, efficient work was critical because this fighter would leave for Brno in a few hours and from there for Hungary and combat. To get at the radar system, they had the Eagle’s pointed nose unlatched and hinged all the way back. Technical manuals stuffed full of Polish- language crib sheets were stacked on a wheeled parts and tool trolley nearby.
Frewer smiled. Captain Aleksander Giertych was good, but he still had trouble with some English technical terms. Even after some months spent as part of the U.S. Military Assistance Advisory Group in Poland, the sergeant found it strange to see officers doing maintenance work that would have been handled by enlisted men back in the States. Different systems, different ways of doing things, he reminded himself. It was a reminder he’d used many times while watching the Polish fliers and their ground crews make the faltering leap from Russian MiGs to American F-15s.
In the Russian system, which the Poles had inherited, officers handled all the technical work, while their conscript enlisted personnel did little more than sweep up. Eventually that would have to change, but it couldn’t possibly happen overnight. To their credit, the Polish maintenance officers hadn’t stood on rank, they’d listened to his lectures like rapt schoolboys.
They had done more than that, of course. Despite the differences in their ranks, his “students” had taken him into their homes and families. They’d made him part of the 11th Fighter Regiment. He thought of them as his “boys” and their planes as his “birds.”
Poland was a long way from Minnesota, where he’d grown up, and Langley Air Force Base, in Virginia, his last duty station, but he could easily relate to the men here and what they were doing.
Right now Frewer’s formal classes were on hold. The entire regiment was on a war footing, working almost around the clock readying a second squadron for service over Hungary. He spent all his time on the line with them, performing systems tests and making final adjustments. Six months of MAAG training just wasn’t enough to teach the 11th’s maintenance crews everything, and he’d be damned if he let men go into battle with planes that weren’t ready.
Like this one. Red 201 couldn’t fly south — not with an out-of-whack radar. The sergeant moved a little closer, ready to offer advice if Giertych asked for it. He stayed near the doors, though. They’d left them open to let in much-needed light and fresh air, and he wanted to take full advantage of both. After a long, cold winter it felt good to stand in the sunlight with a cool morning breeze on his back. The only thing he’d disliked about serving in Poland had been the long spell of wet weather they’d endured. Maybe he’d spent too much time in the hot, bone-dry air at Nellis Air Force Base, deep in the Nevada desert north of Las Vegas…
Warbling, high-pitched sirens went off all around the airfield. An air-raid warning! Frewer and Giertych stared at each other in shock for a single instant and then reacted. The captain shouted something in rapid-fire Polish to one of his men near the door controls. Nodding rapidly, the corporal whirled around and hit a switch on the panel. Smoothly and quickly, with a roar like a volcano rumbling to life, the massive armored doors slid into place, sealing the shelter in dimly lit darkness. The solid slam as they came together was almost loud enough to mask the sound of the first explosion outside.
Frewer followed Giertych toward the personnel exit on the side of the reinforced aircraft shelter. Standing
