regulations be damned. He needed to see what was happening.
Smoke billowed up from one side of the base — right where the operations center was located. Just as they tumbled out the shelter door, another low rumble and a shock wave rattling through the pavement carried more bad news.
They turned to see a flaming cloud and debris arcing through the air. A small shape, no more than a black streak, flashed into view and dove into the same area. A second blast shook the ground. Oh, Jesus, Frewer realized, those were the repair shops. The other members of his training team were on duty there. Without pausing for further thought, he started running. Giertych took off after him.
The repair shops were at least a quarter mile away, but they could already see red and orange flames dancing through the rising smoke.
Another streak, identifiable this time as a cruise missile, skimmed over the rooftops at blinding speed. It had to be French or German, he thought. It was coming from the wrong direction to be Russian.
The missile came apart in midair, suddenly dissolving into near-invisible black specks. Bomblets, Frewer thought dully. Sounding like firecrackers popping off in one long, crackling string, they smothered the maintenance sheds in hundreds of individual explosions. Unlike the aircraft shelters, Wroclaw’s repair facilities weren’t armored or protected in any way. Thousands of white-hot fragments sliced through thin aluminum roofs and walls and into the rooms and corridors inside.
Frewer knew what they could do. The U.S. Air Force had its own bomblet dispensers, spewing out softball- sized devices by the hundreds. Each weighed a few pounds, and was equally capable of penetrating armor, scything down exposed personnel, and even starting a good-sized fire. He was sure the EurCon weapons were just as advanced.
Even as he neared the burning buildings, he cursed himself for knowing so much about what those weapons could do to the men trapped inside. Then he cursed the enemy who’d used them, struggling to breathe in with lungs that were laboring under the strain of running so far so fast.
The two men pulled up short of the building, about a hundred meters away. Thick, greasy smoke and the heat coming off the fire made it impossible to get any closer.
Fire crews, some in shiny, asbestos hot suits, were making some headway against the flames, but there was nothing left to save. Frewer looked frantically for survivors. He couldn’t see any — only corpses lying silent on the grass nearby, not yet covered. Some wore Polish uniforms, but many, too many, wore U.S. Air Force blue.
Anger and grief flowed through the sergeant. They’d all speculated on how EurCon might react to the Polish intervention in Hungary, but the idea that the French and Germans would attack Polish bases, especially without some sort of ultimatum, had been dismissed as insane by everybody.
Everybody had been wrong, Frewer realized. The cruise missiles, weapons capable of incredible precision, had to have been deliberately targeted on buildings full of American personnel. EurCon knew that, he thought angrily. They just don’t give a shit. Well, he did, and as far as he was concerned, America was in the war now, all the way.
Almost against his will, his weary feet carried him over to the bodies. He recognized one, Mike Cummings, and thought he knew another, but the rest were too torn or burned to identify. He could hear Giertych muttering and choking back sobs.
His own eyes full of tears, Frewer looked away from the mangled bodies of his friends and coworkers. The EurCon attack had plastered the whole base. Fires raged out of control on all sides. Besides the operations center and repair sheds, cruise missiles had hit fuel and ammo storage areas. More smoke curled from the air traffic control center.
Only the aircraft shelters and flight line looked untouched. The American sergeant nodded somberly. Why waste hits on single aircraft when you could knock out the control, resupply, and maintenance capabilities that kept them flying? For the time being at least, the 11th Fighter Regiment and its American advisors were completely out of action.
The first reports of EurCon missile attacks woke official Washington in the predawn dark. Reporters hastily dispatched to the White House could see lights burning behind closed curtains in both the East and West wings. The lights were also coming on at the Pentagon and at the State Department. By five A.M., black government limousines were pulling up in front of the tall, graceful columns of the White House portico, depositing grim-faced men and women arriving for an emergency meeting of the National Security Council.
Despite the air of tension and grave concern pervading the basement Situation Room, Ross Huntington felt oddly detached, almost light-headed. In a strange sense, he felt as though his body and brain were separated from each other by some vast, uncrossable gulf. He made yet another mental resolution to see his doctor — a resolution that he knew he would not keep. Events were moving too fast to allow poor health to put him on the sidelines.
He pulled his chair closer to the table, listening intently while the chairman of the Joint Chiefs brought the NSC up to date.
So far, there had been three separate cruise missile attacks on three separate airfields — two in Poland and one in the Czech Republic. All had been launched at more or less the same time by planes operating from bases in Germany. All had inflicted heavy casualties and damage. That was bad enough. What was worse was that at least twenty-five American servicemen were among those killed or seriously wounded. The numbers were still climbing as more detailed reports came in.
General Galloway’s ordinarily good-humored face was brick-red with barely suppressed anger. “These attacks were clearly planned to kill as many people as possible, Mr. President. Our people included.”
“You’re sure?”
Galloway nodded abruptly. “Yes, sir. If EurCon’s only goal was to inflict damage on those base facilities, they could just as easily have attacked at night, when fewer people were on duty. In fact, from a strictly military point of view, that would have been a better time. Less risk that anyone might spot those cruise missiles visually.”
Harris Thurman put his own oar in the water. “It’s obviously intended to send a very strong message to the Poles and Czechs, Mr. President. And through them to us.”
“Message, hell! It’s a goddamned declaration of war.” Galloway was outraged. “You don’t fire twenty-plus high-explosive warheads into critical targets as part of some diplomatic game.”
“I remind you, General, that this attack came only
“Gentlemen.” All heads turned toward the President. He sat alone at one end of the table. His eyes were cold and angry. “I don’t particularly care what prompted these attacks. Our policy on Hungary stands: Our allies are fully within their rights in helping the Hungarian people resist this unjust French and German aggression. And we are fully within our rights in providing those allies with technical and military assistance. Clear?”
Thurman’s face fell. “Of course, Mr. President.”
The President looked toward Galloway again. “Are they planning to retaliate?”
“Yes. We’ve had requests from the Polish Air Force HQ for updated satellite photos of German airfields. They’ve also asked for a special AWACS sortie.”
“When?”
“June 4, two days from now.” Galloway frowned. “It’ll take them at least that long to unscramble the mess at Wroclaw and their other airfields.”
“What about their air support missions over Hungary?”
“On hold, sir. Their losses were already pretty high. Close to crippling for the first squadrons committed. And with EurCon showing its teeth over their own territory now?” Galloway shrugged. “The Poles will need every plane they’ve got just to hit back and to ride out any EurCon counterpunch.”
The general’s gloomy assessment cast a pall over the room. Without friendly air cover, Hungary would fall — crushed by superior firepower and brute force. A EurCon victory over Budapest’s fledgling democracy would be an unmitigated disaster for American economic and foreign policy. In the short term, it would solidify the protectionist grip on European trade practices, prolonging the trade war ravaging the world’s economy. With the handwriting on the wall, other small countries like Denmark and the Netherlands were bound to fall into line. In the long term, letting EurCon ride roughshod over one small country would set a terrible precedent. The rule of international law and the rights of self-determination, however tenuous and often impractical, would be supplanted by an older and deadlier precept: might makes right. That could spawn a whole new cycle of war and aggression around the
