river.
To the south, the land rose gradually, decked with vineyards and bright yellow sunflowers. His farm, now run by his sons, and those of his neighbors were to the north. Cows grazed placidly in small pastures, cropping the grass beneath fruit trees.
The Liboge farm wasn’t a large place, just a few dozen acres. The farmhouse was two hundred years old, built by his ancestors. He resembled the house, square and gray and a little weather-beaten, but strong and solid. There were thousands of farms like Liboge’s in France, and thousands of farmers as well.
He fished, enjoying the soft, muted light as it crept into the Loire valley. First there were shapes where there had been only darkness, then the shapes had shadows, and finally color blossomed, spilling east with the rising sun.
Liboge sat quietly content. He’d already caught several fine fish. Now all he had to do was decide between staying out on the river while they were biting and rowing back to start his chores. Church bells pealed in the distance. The village priest was summoning his congregation to early morning mass. The old fisherman cocked his head to listen and smiled lazily, knowing his wife would be furious if he missed the service. Then he shrugged. God would understand. After all, had not Saint Peter himself been a fisherman? And had not God made this perfect day and the fish who seemed so eager to strike at his lures?
A sound, something between a roar and a whine, shattered the morning’s peace. He looked up from his rod just in time to see a dark shape race past him, only a few dozen meters above his head. Surprised, he dropped his rod, fumbled for it, and gripped it tightly just as another went by. A third followed the first two only seconds later.
This time his eyes tracked the slender, finned shape as it flew down the length of the valley, neatly turning to follow the winding river as it passed over an old abandoned windmill.
A fourth made the same turn in exactly the same place, and another after that. In all, Liboge counted twelve of the missiles — because that was what they must be. He had seen enough aircraft during the war, and these were simply too small to hold a pilot.
They were flying east, up the river. France was at war again. Were these enemy weapons? If so, at least his own village was safe.
After the last missile disappeared to the east, Liboge put down his tackle and grabbed his small boat’s oars. Rowing quickly, he headed for the dock. He would tell the mayor. Yes, the mayor would surely know what to do.
The Tomahawk cruise missiles flew in single file, hugging the river valley. Landmarks like the ruined windmill were useful checkpoints for each missile’s guidance systems as it matched stored images of the landscape with what it actually saw.
All twelve of these missiles, fired from a single U.S. submarine a hundred miles off the Atlantic coast, followed the same route. Normally they would have been split into smaller groups — flying two or three separate paths to reduce the risk of interception. But the men who had planned this mission in London were swamped. They had only had time to lay out one track for each target.
In this case, it didn’t matter. EurCon radars, even the American-built E-3s in French service, couldn’t pick out the twelve tiny, RAM-coated missiles hugging the river valley. Most of France’s eyes were turned east or north anyway.
When they were seen by farmer Liboge, the first Tomahawk was just four minutes from its target. It continued to use the Loire as a highway, flying just high enough to clear the occasional bridge or other structure on its banks.-
Ten miles from Tours, the cruise missile banked sharply right, then climbed for a moment to fix its position one last time against the landscape. This time, the scene included its target, a Thompson-CSF factory complex. Part of a massive French defense conglomerate, this site was responsible for the manufacture and repair of fighter radars.
Each Tomahawk’s specific aiming point had been picked by an American industrial expert — a man who had years of experience in building and running similar facilities. Asked to select twelve vital locations from satellite photos, he’d marked the production line, parts storage, critical machine-tools sheds, and other areas.
Carrying a thousand-pound warhead, the first missile slammed into the plant’s executive offices. The explosion and fire that followed did not destroy radar components themselves. They wrecked something even more important — the computers containing the factory’s design data and manufacturing records. Their loss would cripple any attempt to resume production.
One after the other, the eleven Tomahawks trailing behind it popped up and then dove into the factory complex. Successive blasts gutted the plant and shattered windows all over Tours.
By the time the twelfth warhead detonated, three of the factory’s five vast buildings were reduced to piles of mangled steel and shattered concrete. The other two were burning. Dozens of highly skilled workers lay dead or badly injured in the rubble. Although it was early morning and a Sunday to boot, three shifts had been working night and day to supply EurCon’s military needs.
Led by Desaix and his cronies, France had already bloodied half of Europe trying to bring it under EurCon control. The United States wanted the French people to know they would pay the price for their government’s aggression.
An American reconnaissance satellite passed overhead later that morning. The images it data-linked down allowed intelligence analysts to report that Thompson-CSF’s Tours facility had been eighty percent destroyed. Reconstruction time was estimated at six months for the first production line alone. Bringing the full plant back into operation would take the French at least three years and cost tens of millions of dollars.
Liboge’s report of the missiles he had sighted reached the French Air Force about the same time that damage assessment photos were laid on the President’s desk in Washington, D.C.
In addition to being a major commercial port and shipyard, Wilhelmshaven was Germany’s largest naval base on the North Sea coast. While Germany’s small missile boats functioned well in the Baltic, the wilder, rougher weather of the North Sea demanded bigger, more capable ships. For that reason most of the German Navy’s frigates and destroyers were based there.
It also made the Germans very protective of this valuable port. Constant fighter and helicopter sweeps above the water were matched by patrolling submarines and minefields below the water.
Germany’s naval staff was confident of Wilhelmshaven’s defenses. A combination of interceptors, SAMs, and antiaircraft guns had already driven off one abortive American air raid against the base, inflicting what were reported as heavy losses on the enemy.
Now ships sheltering inside the protected port would be used to strengthen other areas along the coast. The minelayer
While the shoreline hinted at easy access to the river, the actual shipping channel was long and narrow. Silt filled the rest of the bay, forming shallows barely covered with water. That narrow entrance made it easy to “lock the front door” with a mine barrier.
With an entrance and exit route known only to Germany’s own harbor pilots, a defensive minefield would make any naval attack on Hamburg or the Kiel Canal, by stealth or strength, a risky undertaking.
Defensive minefields are an important, if low-profile, part of naval warfare. Mines, even sophisticated modern ones, are cheap, never sleep, and are very hard to remove. They have been used for over a hundred years. When Farragut damned the torpedoes and ordered full speed at Mobile Bay during the American Civil War, he was actually referring to Confederate-laid mines. Farragut’s Union ships had broken past those primitive mines and captured the port. Germany’s naval commanders doubted the American admiral’s successors would find it easy to duplicate his feat.
With the sun gleaming on their gray camouflaged superstructures, the five German warships sortied out of the Jadebusen, through the wide mouth of the bay. They were careful to stay not just in the buoyed channel, but in a special passage marked on their charts. Wilhelmshaven had its own large defensive minefield.
The minesweepers led the way. Using ultrahigh-frequency sonars, they swept the channel for enemy mines
