Cauldron
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Huntington nodded. “That’s why this whole affair has to be handled carefully and by me personally. Our embassy staff over there can’t do it. They’re probably tagged by French or German intelligence wherever they go. But I know the right people to contact — people I can trust to keep quiet.”
Galloway looked unconvinced. But then he shrugged. Debating imponderables wasn’t the general’s style. He preferred dealing in facts.
The President glanced at Quinn. “What about you, Walt? Any thoughts on this?”
“Yes, sir. I say it’s worth trying, risks and all.” The rotund CIA director surprised them all with his certainty. He explained. “So far we’ve been playing catch-up to the French and Germans, Mr. President. They shut off Poland’s oil and gas. We ship new supplies. They blow up a tanker. We provide naval escorts. They attack. We defend.”
Quinn leaned forward. “I think it’s high time we made the enemy dance to our tune. What Ross has in mind might just do the trick. If not, we haven’t lost much — just a little time and maybe some diplomatic face.”
The President nodded slowly and rocked back in his own big, leather chair, thinking over what he’d been told. When he looked up, his gaze fastened on his old friend’s face. “How about it, Ross? You’re sure you’re up to this?”
“I feel fine, Mr. President,” Huntington said with as much conviction as he could muster. He was determined not to let ill-health or fear sideline him again. Though he didn’t harbor any illusions about being irreplaceable, he was pretty sure that none of the State Department’s bright-eyed boys had the inside knowledge and official anonymity that would be needed to pull this thing off successfully.
The faint trace of a smile flashed across the President’s weary face. “Could you get a doctor’s note to prove that, Ross?”
Huntington shrugged noncommittally. “Given enough time, I could. But do you really want me to go doc-hunting? Now?”
The President laughed softly. “No, I guess not.” His smile faded, replaced by the firm-jawed, determined look that signaled his mind was made up. “Okay, gentlemen, I’m sold.”
He turned to Galloway. “Issue the necessary orders, General. I want the military side of this operation in gear within thirty-six hours.”
“Yes, sir.”
The President swiveled his chair to one side and punched the intercom button on his black phone. “Maria? I need you to make some arrangements for me. Ready? First, rustle up an air force flight for Mr. Huntington. Where? To London. After you’ve done that, get on the horn to Number 10 Downing Street. Fix up a time this afternoon our time for a secure-channel videoconference with the Prime Minister.” He looked at Huntington over the phone. “Better get packed, Ross. You’ll be on your way just as soon as I hang up.”
Huntington grinned. “Yes, Mr. President.” He stood up, amazed by the sudden surge of energy coursing through his body. In some strange way, the prospect of another important mission made him feel ten years younger. After months of watching Paris and Berlin wreak havoc on America’s friends and allies, he was going to get the chance to wreak a little havoc of his own.
JUNE 29 — EURCON LOGISTICS CENTER, METZ, FRANCE
Metz lies almost two hundred miles east of Paris, close to the border with Germany and Luxembourg. Nestled in the Moselle River valley, the town stands on the northern edge of Lorraine — a countryside of rustic farmland and rusting heavy industry, a land marked by more than a thousand years of war. Down through the centuries, knights in surcoats and chain mail, the Sun King’s proud musketeers, Napoleon’s grumbling foot soldiers and dashing cavalrymen, the Kaiser’s spike-helmeted infantry, Hitler’s grim, merciless panzers, and the GIs of George Patton’s Third Army had fought and bled from one end of the province to the other. Metz had seen its share of those battles.
Now a web of military installations, headquarters, and supply depots sprawled in an untidy arc around the town’s western suburbs. Among others, Metz was the permanent headquarters site for the First French Army and France’s northeast military defense region.
Although most of EurCon’s combat troops were fighting in Poland, Hungary, or the Czech Republic, Metz was still swarming with military activity. Its storehouses and repair facilities bustled as French soldiers and civilian contractors labored overtime — shipping the munitions, spare parts, and other supplies needed by their comrades in the field.
Their jobs had little to do with direct combat, but they knew how important their work was. Without supplies and maintenance, any but the most primitive army would grind to a halt in days. So the men who manned the Metz logistics centers thanked their lucky stars that they had an important job to do — especially one that did not routinely involve getting shot at.
Of course, there were air raids. Since the air war over France escalated, Metz had been hit twice by American bombers. But the damage and casualties inflicted by both raids had been relatively light — certainly nothing compared to the carnage at the front. No, most of the French soldiers were happy with their assignment, even if it meant toiling in round-the-clock shifts. Few of them were glad to hear they were about to be freed for combat duty by units of the Belgian Army. Camp rumors said the Belgians would arrive within the next twenty-four hours, and for once the camp rumors were right.
But America’s airmen got there first.
It was just before dawn when air raid sirens sounded across the city. Even as crews ran to man their missile and gun batteries, explosions split the darkness, silhouetting weapons and men. A few defenders caught angular outlines against the sky, and recognized F-117 stealth fighters.
Almost before the sirens finished wailing, the black jets were gone. Only the air defenses had been attacked, but they had been thoroughly and systematically pulverized. The Americans had used laser-guided bombs and cluster weapons to smash each battery’s weapons, early warning radars, control bunkers, and ammunition storage sites.
American bombs had also flattened the fire department, leaving nothing but piles of broken concrete and shredded metal. Understanding the implications, the French general commanding the base tried desperately to rebuild his shattered defenses. He wasn’t given enough time.
Moments after the F-117s disappeared, forty B-1B Lancers roared overhead, hugging the earth. With the air defenses destroyed, there could be no warning. Anyone caught out in the open could only throw himself flat and hope to be spared.
The huge, swept-wing bombers laid patterns of death across the military compounds outside Metz. Each plane carried fifty-six 500-pound bombs, and from two hundred feet, they might as well have been placed by hand. Deadly accurate, devastating in their numbers, the Lancers disappeared as suddenly as they came. Behind them, warehouses, freight yards, and repair facilities lay in ruins.
Even as the smoke still boiled out of the bombs’ explosions, the stunned French troops turned in horror to see more bombers flying toward them. These were not the sculpted shapes of B-1s, but thin-winged, slab-sided B-52s. More explosions rippled across the military compounds — leveling almost any building larger than a guardhouse. Even the water and sewage treatment plants were shambles.
Those few surviving SAM and antiaircraft batteries that did try to attack the bombers were quickly smothered by Wild Weasels and other escorting planes. Two squadrons of F-15s kept close watch on the operation, while further out, U.S. Navy Tomcats made free-ranging sweeps — hunting down the few EurCon interceptors that tried to interfere.
When the B-52s turned for home, the sun was still not completely over the horizon. Battered survivors pulled themselves from the wreckage. Some turned back to help those who were still trapped. Others, driven mad by the noise and confusion, wandered at random through a sea of smoke and fire.
About an hour later, with most of the explosion-churned dust blown away and some of the fires burned out, the sirens wailed again. Too exhausted to run, the survivors were spared an attack this time. Instead, a lone American reconnaissance aircraft, heavily escorted, swep
t overhead, photographing the devastated logistics complex. Those on the ground breathed a small sigh of relief, even as they cursed the enemy plane. This poststrike reconnaissance flight should be the final note in a deadly song.
Four squadrons of U.S. Navy attack aircraft, escorted by another four fighter squadrons, hit Metz again just around noon. Soldiers, already battered and stressed by a morning of terror, collapsed or cried or fled. Their comrades dragged them to shelters if they had the strength.
With measured aggression, the Navy Intruders and Hornets carefully blasted every remaining structure with a shred of value. Only the hospital and civilian housing tracts were again spared. By the time the strike was over, half an hour later, they stood alone in a Hiroshima landscape.
The skies were barely clear when another formation appeared. The exhausted defenders could only cower, as straight and level, and completely unmolested, U.S. Air Force F-15E Strike Eagles streaked overhead and released their own payloads. As if sowing a freshly plowed field, they scattered mines and delayed-action bomblets everywhere. The lethal devices would drastically slow down any attempt to rebuild, or even clear the wreckage.
USS GEORGE WASHINGTON, IN THE NORTH SEA
Admiral Jack Ward stood above the flight deck in an open gallery on George Washington’s island, watching the last of the second wave land. Standing at the railing, enduring noise so loud he could feel it in his teeth, it was satisfying to see a jet slam into the deck on landing. Each one was a little piece of good news, a happy ending for some pilot’s mission. He’d counted the planes as they landed, and felt some of his anxiety lift with each successful recovery.
They’d been lucky. His strike force had only lost two planes, both to ground fire. A Hornet pilot had been hit while suppressing an antiaircraft gun, and, according to his wingman, had simply continued his dive and smashed into the ground. French gunners had also nicked an A-6 Intruder, but her two crewmen had nursed the stricken attack jet back out over the North Sea before ejecting. And both men were already on their way home to the carrier after being scooped up by a waiting search-and-rescue helicopter.
Just as the last plane, an S-3 Viking serving as an in-flight tanker, caught the wire, Ward felt the wind shift.
Washington and Roosevelt were turning north, bending on as much speed as their massive engines could produce.
Metz lay well inland, almost two hundred miles south of the coast, almost at the limit of a carrier plane’s effective range. To give his pilots more time over the target, Ward had ordered the carriers to move in, close to the coast. The fast nighttime run, followed by a dawn launch, had cost him a sleepless night, but it was worth the risk. Several of his pilots had made it back low on fuel. If he hadn’t ordered his ships in, his aircraft losses might have been far higher.
Ward gripped the railing tighter. But why had he been forced to run the risk at all? So far inland, Metz was in air force territory, and Ward would have been perfectly happy to let them have it. Land-based B-1s or B-2s could reach it easily. In fact, a strike by just the heavy bombers would have disrupted the base for a week.
So why had Washington specifically ordered him to use the combined strengths of two aircraft carriers against Metz, as part of the most destructive raid he had ever seen? From a strictly military point of view, the orders didn’t make much sense.
Metz was an important French Army base, and obliterating it certainly hurt the EurCon cause. The forces that had been concentrated on it, though, could have smashed a dozen targets. Normally planes operating off his carriers in the North Sea hit three, four, or even five targets each, every single day, systematically working their way down a carefully planned list. Organizing this grand air extravaganza had thrown a day-long monkey wrench into his bombing campaign.
What was happening along the rest of the North Sea and Baltic coasts while they pounded this one army base? True, they’d already neutralized the entire network of EurCon bases and ports, but without constant pressure, EurCon’s naval and air forces would start to recover.
Ward shook his head impatiently. EurCon was getting a twenty-four-hour respite, thanks to direct orders from Washington. He just hoped that the annihilation of Metz was worth that price.
OVER THE NORTH SEA
Backlit by the late afternoon sun, two Puma helicopters in civilian markings clattered low over the rolling, gray-green waters of the North Sea. Only one of the two helicopters carried passengers. The second was a backup transport equipped with a diver and rescue hoist in case the first had to ditch.
Inside the lead helicopter, Ross Huntington finished studying the poststrike recon photos he’d been handed just before takeoff and slid them back into his briefcase. He glanced up and saw a look of horrified fascination on the face of one of the two Secret Service agents assigned to escort him on this mission.
“Christ” — the agent leaned closer, shouting over the Puma’s engine noise — ”I’ve heard of bombing places back to the Stone Age… I didn’t know you could go back any further!”
Huntington nodded somberly. He’d never before been directly responsible for instigating so much death and destruction, and he didn’t like the feeling. His whole life had been spent building things up, not tearing them down.
A new voice crackled over his earphones. “Puma Lead, this is Guardian. Four bogies bearing zero nine five, forty miles and closing.”
The helicopter’s pilot, a uniformed Royal Army Air Corps warrant officer, acknowledged the orbiting E-3 Sentry’s transmission, then glanced over his shoulder at Huntington. “Here we go, sir. If the Belgians are playing it straight, that’s our escort through the no-fire corridor for their SAMs. If not…”He shrugged. “It’s a long swim back to England.”
Three minutes later, four F-16 Falcons in Belgian Air Force markings streaked toward them from over the horizon, flashed overhead, and circled back — visibly slowing as they slid in beside the helicopters to make a visual identification.
Huntington stared out the side window at the nearest fighter, noting the pilot’s head turned toward him, faceless behind a visored helmet. The Puma’s copilot flashed the helicopter’s navigation lights on and off in Morse code. This close to French airspace, nobody wanted to make any radio transmissions that weren’t strictly necessary.
Apparently satisfied, the F-16s accelerated back to their normal cruising speed and took station above and behind them, weaving back and forth to keep pace with the slower British helicopters. They flew east toward the distant Belgian coast, gray and featureless beneath a growing cloudbank.
DE HAAN, BELGIUM
The Pumas crossed the coast at high speed, skimmed low over a wide, firm, sandy beach, and climbed to clear the rows of brightly painted villas that made De Haan a favorite holiday resort during peacetime. For a minute, they flew inland, still escorted by the F-16s — flying above a flat, open countryside crisscrossed by narrow, tree-lined canals. A gray stone chateau loomed ahead, surrounded by a vast expanse of open, green lawns.
Huntington craned his neck, trying to get a better view of their destination. He and his family had once spent a very pleasant two weeks at that chateau as the guests of a Belgian industrialist. Isolated and easily guarded, the estate should make a perfect covert meeting place.
Flying slower now, the British helicopters lost altitude again, flared out, and touched down next to the main building. Soldiers wearing the camouflage battle dress and maroon berets of Belgium’s elite Para-Commando Regiment surrounded both Pumas, wary but not openly hostile.
Huntington took a deep breath to calm himself, slid the helicopter’s side door open, and stepped down onto Belgian soil. A small band of civilians stood waiting for him. With a small flutter of relief, he recognized an old friend, Emile Demblon, an official in the Belgian Ministry of Trade, among them.
Demblon hurried forward. “Ross! I am glad to see you safe and well!”
“Thanks, Emile.” Huntington shook the smaller man’s outstretched hand. “We’re set?”
Heart pounding, Huntington followed his friend across the lawn and into the chateau. The U.S. Secret Service agents, Belgian soldiers, and other civilians trailed them at a discreet distance.
Demblon came to a sturdy oak door and opened it with a flourish, revealing a small, elegantly appointed study. “In here, my friend.”
With a sudden surge of excitement, Huntington recognized the trim, dapper man waiting inside. Belgium’s Prime Minister had come to the rendezvous himself. The first cracks in EurCon were starting to widen.
CHAPTER 30
Alarms
JUNE 29 — FRANCO-RUSSIAN CONFERENCE DACHA, OUTSIDE MOSCOW
The sprawling, timbered dacha serving as the conference site lay deep in the heart of a pine forest fifteen kilometers outside the city. Once reserved for top-level Communist Party officials, it now belonged to Marshal Yuri Kaminov. To ensure privacy, the estate could only be reached by an unmarked access road leading off the Moscow-Yalta highway. All vehicles heading for the dacha were stopped and searched at a military checkpoint several hundred meters down the twisting, narrow road. Army and FIS troops patrolled the rest of the wooded enclave.
Inside the dacha’s main hall, two sets of high-ranking soldiers and civilians sat facing each other across a large rectangular table. Each man had a blotter, notepad, and a pitcher of ice water set out in front of him. Translators were seated behind the negotiators, providing a whispered, running commentary on what was being said.
Major Paul Duroc stood against a wall with the other junior members of the French negotiating team. After several hours on his feel listening to the same trivial issues being debated by the same droning voices, he was bored out of his skull, tired, and increasingly irritated. He shifted awkwardly, feeling the sweat trickling down his back beneath his jacket. Even with the drapes closed against the summer afternoon sun, the room was uncomfortably warm.