Among the artillery explosions in the background, a slower, deeper rumble ended in a boom. Tad looked back to see a ball of thick black smoke billow upward from his shattered aircraft.
He sighed, remembering the burning trucks and supply vehicles he’d left behind him at the Cicha Woda bridge. “Good. Just not good enough.”
CHAPTER 21
Corridors
Ross Huntington watched White House gardeners slowly working their way from flower bed to flower bed — weeding, trimming, and watering to restore and maintain beauty and order. The sight of so much peaceful labor seemed strange to him after spending so many hours following the war burning through Northern and Central Europe.
Especially a war that America and her allies seemed to be losing.
Poland’s armies were retreating again, driven out of Wroclaw by superior French and German numbers and firepower. The little Czech and Slovak republics, hard-pressed themselves, had not been able to provide more than token assistance to their northern ally. And Hungary’s soldiers had their hands full just fending off the relentless EurCon drive toward Budapest.
They all needed help, and soon.
Unfortunately neither the United States nor Great Britain could do much yet to meet those needs.
Ever since the first French stealth missiles slammed into Polish soil, the President and Britain’s Prime Minister had been waging a campaign both in public and behind the scenes to broaden the coalition against EurCon and to win clear passage to the war zone. With decidedly mixed results, Huntington knew.
The Netherlands, torn between its free trade principles and the looming Franco-German military presence on its borders, had reluctantly opted for a wary neutrality. That wasn’t likely to change — not with EurCon moving from victory to victory. Spain and Italy also seemed determined to stay on the sidelines, and he couldn’t blame them very much for that. Neither had much to gain and both had much to lose in any wider European war.
To the north, the Danes had proved powerless to enforce neutrality in the skies over their own country. EurCon and allied jets had repeatedly clashed in Danish airspace without any challenge from Denmark’s tiny air force. Sweden seemed content to patrol its own borders and issue stern warnings that all belligerents should leave its shipping unmolested. So far those warnings had been heeded.
Only Norway had sided with its traditional allies. And its decision came only after several days spent in futile efforts to mediate a peaceful settlement. Finally convinced that France and Germany could not be brought to their senses, the Norwegians had at last opened their airfields to U.S. and British warplanes. The first squadrons, F-15s and F-16s from the United States, were due to touch down in a matter of hours.
“Of course I understand your position, Madam Prime Minister.” The faintest hint of carefully concealed exasperation tinged the President’s voice. “But surely you can understand our need to mount a fully coordinated air and sea campaign as soon as possible.”
Huntington turned away from the Oval Office windows.
Right now the President was on a secure channel with Norway’s Prime Minister, sorting out last-minute glitches over command authority. A State Department translator stood by on a separate extension, ready to interpret technical language. So far the young man’s services hadn’t been necessary. Brigitte Petersen spoke perfect English.
Apparently her reply was satisfactory, because the tension in the President’s jaw eased slightly. His voice was considerably more cordial when he spoke again. “Yes, I see… that just might work. Very well, I’ll have my military people get in touch with your service chiefs and Defense Ministry to fill in the details. Thank you, Madam Prime Minister. Yes, good luck to us all.”
When America’s chief executive hung up, he glanced at Huntington, shook his head, and showed his teeth in a brief, wry grin. “Jumping Jesus, Ross. Sometimes I think waging coalition warfare is a hell of a lot harder than going it alone would have been. At least then I’d only have to wrestle with the Joint Chiefs, the Congress, the press, and my own staff.”
“True. Churchill or Roosevelt would probably have said the same…” Something sparked in Huntington’s brain — the faint flickering of an idea. He fell silent, willing it to life.
“Yeah?” The President looked up at his longtime friend and advisor. “C’mon, Ross, I’ve seen that look before. The last time I watched you draw four aces, as far as I remember.”
Huntington shrugged. “Nothing so dramatic, I’m afraid. Just a sudden grasp of the obvious.”
“Like what?”
“That EurCon’s just as much a coalition effort as we are — maybe more so. But we’ve all been talking and thinking like it was a giant French- and German-controlled monolith.”
The President stroked his jaw. “Sure seems to be.”
“That’s the operative phrase, ’seems to be,’” Huntington argued. “But what do we really know about the decision-making process over there? Were the other, smaller member states consulted about going to war? Are they willing to commit their own troops to it? There’s still a lot we don’t know about how EurCon works — or doesn’t work.”
“What’s your point, Ross?”
“That there may be openings out there to exploit — political or military. Fracture lines we could find and pry open.”
The President sat back in his big leather chair, absorbing that. Then he rocked forward and stabbed a finger at Huntington. “Okay, you’ve sold me.”
“Then you’ll have the State Department — ”
“Nope.” The President shook his head and smiled again — the trademark grin that made him look years younger than he really was. It had been a long time since Huntington had seen it. “We both know the Foggy Bottom boys have a real bad case of NIH syndrome, Ross.”
Huntington nodded. “Not Invented Here” was a classic Washington problem. Sections of the federal government’s bloated bureaucracy routinely dismissed ideas, proposals, and solutions that came from outsiders — no matter how sensible, practical, or cost-effective they were. “Then who do you want to pull the answers together? The CIA? DOD?”
“I want you to handle this, Ross. You had the right hunch about how the Frogs blew up our LNG tanker when Quinn and his cloak-and-dagger pals were still scratching their heads. Hell, you were even right about my campaign themes and TV ads,” he joked. The President turned serious. “It’s your ball now. Run with it.”
The National Security Agency was one of the largest and most powerful of all U.S. intelligence organizations. Nearly forty thousand employees crowded its Fort Meade headquarters buildings, with others deployed at facilities around the globe. Charged with managing America’s signals intercepts and code-breaking efforts, and with protecting the security of America’s own classified communications and information, the NSA was also one of the most secretive.
So secretive, in fact, that Ross Huntington wasn’t quite sure if the bland little man sitting across from him ever used his own name. The director of the NSA’s National SIGINT Operations Center seemed the personification of anonymous officialdom. He had a sudden, whimsical vision of the man’s own wife referring to him as “my husband, the director.”
Certainly the fellow had a chilly, forbidding exterior — one that was on full display as he glanced back and forth between the White House letter with Huntington’s credentials and the typed list of what he wanted. When he finished perusing them, he frowned. “I don’t see how I can help you, Mr. Huntington.”
The SIGINT Operations director picked up the list. He pursed his lips and read the key sentence aloud. “‘NSOC should immediately initiate a high-priority effort to collect and analyze diplomatic and other internal communications between the Confederation’s smaller member states.’” He shook his head. “My people are already extremely busy, as I’m sure you can imagine, Mr. Huntington. This project of yours would only absorb staff
