The Jericho Pact

by Rachel Lee

  Neufel looked back up to his platoon’s positions on the ridge to the east, thinking back to what he had seen and heard through the night. He had slept hardly at all, and never deeply. While he’d had no clear line of sight into the pioneers’ positions, he’d been able to see the area around them. He should have seen muzzle flashes. And even if his eyes had been closed, or he had been looking in another direction, he should have heard the crackle of small arms fire.

  He had seen nothing. He had heard nothing.

  The attackers had used silencers. And they had been inside the pioneers’ bunker before they fired.

  He studied the terrain immediately around him, looking for any shallow fold that might yield dead ground, a place that could not be observed from this position.

  And there it was. Invisible unless one was actively searching for it, looking out from this place—or looking for a way into it.

  It was too shallow to be called a ditch. A trough, barely a twenty-centimeter depression etched over the years as rainwater found its way down the embankment and into the river below. The pioneers had established this position in daylight, when the trough would have seemed insignificant. Anyone approaching through it would have to belly crawl, and even then, the crest of a helmet or pack would have been easily seen in the daytime.

  But at night, under a cloudy sky that shrouded the moonlight, with no light to silhouette the movement, a team could crawl through that trough, their sounds masked by the sounds of the river, undetected by any but the most alert sentry, until they were but a few meters distant. Even had the man on watch not been asleep, the likelihood that he would have seen the enemy approach was minimal.

  After that it would have been fast and deadly. The first silenced shots taking out the man on watch, and then the quiet thudding of boots as the team burst into the small bunker.

  When he looked out toward the ridgeline again, he saw that Bräuburger’s tank had joined his, coming to rest on the other side of the railroad line, maintaining the proper spacing of vehicles that prevented a single enemy round or bomb from taking out two targets. The lieutenant climbed out of his tank and joined Neufel at the bunker entrance. He looked in for only a moment before he turned to Neufel.

  “Gott im Himmel.”

  “Ja,” Neufel said. God in heaven, indeed.

  He explained his theory of how the enemy had approached and how the attack had been carried out. The lieutenant nodded his agreement. “That’s how they did it.”

  Bräuburger relayed the information on the battalion command frequency in terse, carefully chosen words. The French had destroyed the bridges. They likely had thought to destroy only the railway bridge, as a provocation, not knowing that the other two bridges were wired to the same circuit. The smoke and dust had concealed their escape, perhaps across the river, but not likely. More likely they were still in the immediate area, hiding, waiting for an opportunity to exfiltrate.

  “Find them,” the battalion commander ordered. “Find them quickly.”

  “Ja, Herr Oberstleutnant,” Braüburger said. He turned to Neufel. “Leave Sanger on overwatch. Tell your driver and loader to take their personal weapons and join us.”

  Bräuburger looked at Neufel for a moment, and Neufel realized that, in his rush to get down to the bunker, he had not grabbed his MP7 machine pistol. Neufel told his driver to bring it.

  “Wir sind jetzt Infantrie,” Bräuburger said.

  We are now infantry? Untrained infantry, Neufel thought, hunting for what were obviously skilled special operations men. Men who had executed six soldiers without a second thought, and who would not hesitate to kill again. It was not a comforting prospect.

  “Ja, Herr Leutnant.”

  Strasbourg, France

  “Brilliant, Vasquez,” Soult said, watching the news coverage from a mobile command vehicle near the French army command post. Clearly, the media were saying, the Germans had chosen to destroy the bridges to prepare for war. “We will be on the right side of history.”

  “Perhaps,” Vasquez said, his voice troubled. “But my men are on the wrong side of two rivers. It will not seem weak for you to take twenty-four hours to mull over this new provocation before launching our attack. This will let my men escape during the night.”

  “Merde!” Soult said. He slammed a fist into his other palm. “The moment of action is now! How long before it is discovered that the German engineers were killed in their bunker? You see those two tanks and the men moving about? They know already. How long before the bodies of the dead are on television and public opinion shifts to Germany? Can you guarantee this will not happen in the next twenty-four hours?”

  “No,” Vasquez said. “I cannot guarantee that. But we can shape the story, issue denials.”

  “Denials will mean nothing next to pictures of dead German soldiers with bullet holes in them. Denials will be useless when forensic experts identify the ammunition. Denials are words, Vasquez. We will issue our denial with action!”

  “There are still protestors on the bridge,” Vasquez said. “Priests and nuns and rabbis. What of them?”

  “Fools,” Soult said. “Fools begging to their gods. Fools on a fool’s errand, awaiting a fool’s end. And we will give them that end.”

  Soult picked up the olive green field telephone.

  “No, mon général,” Vasquez said, stepping forward. “Give my men a chance.”

  Soult ignored him and spoke into the phone. “Commencer Forêt Sombre. Je répète, commencer Forêt Sombre.”

  Commence DarkWood. Vasquez shook his head as he walked out of the command vehicle. His men would be killed, if not by the Germans then by the French. Good men. Men who had served well and deserved better.

  But there was no stopping Monsieur Soult now.

  34

  Auenheim, Germany

  H ans Neufel held up two fingers and pointed across the street. They had been at it for an hour now, moving house to house, a slow and dangerous progression where each knock on a door carried with it the possibility of a reply in the form of nine-millimeter bullets cutting through the air.

  The saboteurs’ most logical hiding place would be near the east end of the Europabrücke, so they could slip into the ranks of the French as they crossed the river. After a brief radio conversation, Neufel’s battalion commander had sent a platoon into the village of Neumühl, a collection of shops and homes on the eastern bank of the Kinzig across from Kehl. Bräuburger and Neufel were left the task of clearing Auenheim, a smaller village to the north, at the junction of the Kinzig and the Rhine, in case the saboteurs had gone that way instead.

  This gave Neufel a clear view across the open ground north of Kehl to the Rhine and the Europabrücke itself. As he cleared each building, he found himself glancing back over his shoulder at the bridge, to see whether the French had begun to move. It was not his job to keep watch on the French across the Rhine; Sanger, his gunner, was watching from his tank. Yet Neufel did not want his first warning of danger to be a panicked call over the radio or, worse, the crack of the tank’s twelve-centimeter cannon as Sanger opened fire.

  Later, Neufel would be unable to recall whether he had been looking at the bridge when the radio call came in, or whether the radio call had drawn his attention there. He would only remember the sinking feeling in his stomach as he watched the French infantry form up and march onto the bridge, and his anger that this war could not be stopped.

  Rome, Italy

  Veltroni stared in horror at the scene unfolding along the Rhine. The instant he saw French troops marching onto the bridge, he ran from his Vatican apartment and grabbed a cab to the Trevi Fountain. There, he prayed, God would have Nathan Cohen waiting.

  While he rode in the cab, he dialed the number of the cell phone he had given Steve, a cell phone that only he and Steve knew about. So far he had never used it, but now he needed to talk to the young priest.

  The answer was surprisingly swift. “Steve Lorenzo.”

  “Steve. My son! Hav
e you seen what is happening in Strasbourg?”

  “Yes.”

  “We need to do something. I cannot think what, but this cannot go on. And I cannot reach the Holy Father.”

  “I know what I must do,” said Steve. “Believe me, Giuseppe, I know what must be done. But you must not call me again. I will meet you soon to brief you. What I do now, no one can know.”

  “All right, all right. Just stay out of the line of fire.”

  Veltroni snapped the cell phone shut and closed his eyes tightly. He had sent those people to that bridge. He had called upon the Stewards to go there. He had not truly believed that anyone would move against them.

  But it was happening. Good men and women were about to die, and much of it would be his fault.

  God forgive me.

  The Bridge of Europe

  The French infantry came forward in riot formation, two columns of twelve abreast, assault rifles held at port arms. As they neared the protestors, the command was given to march in riot step, each man lunging forward on his left foot as he pushed out with his rifle, then bringing his right foot up behind the left.

  Even though the protestors had linked arms, they stood no chance of stopping the onslaught. Neufel imagined that the riot step might look harmless enough on the television cameras, but the impact of a FAMAS G2 assault rifle, driven into the ribs by the full body weight of a trained soldier, was anything but. A nun fell and, as an imam bent to help her up, one of the soldiers crushed him to the ground with a savage butt stroke.

  Oddly, it was those who fell to the ground, more than those who stood in defiance, who did the most to disrupt the attack. The French soldiers were reluctant to step on the bodies, and their ranks broke open as men moved around the human obstacles.

  Now anger surged through piety, and Neufel watched in horror as some of the protesters tried to storm into those gaps. As closed ranks opened, the disciplined riot control maneuvers gave way to individual combat, rifle butts driven into stomachs and backs and faces, officers yelling vainly to regain control, angry words hurled in French, German, Hebrew and Arabic, pained grunts and soft, fluttering sighs as priests and nuns collapsed under the assault.

  Neufel couldn’t bear to watch anymore.

  Nor could he afford to, for he was engaged in a deadly game of cat and mouse that required his full attention. He and his men could not use standard urban assault tactics—throwing a grenade into the room, then following after its explosion with guns blazing—because there were still civilians in the town. Forced to yell “Raus! Raus! Raus!”—Out! Out! Out!—at each door, lest they burst in firing on an innocent family, they sacrificed any hope of tactical surprise.

  They worked in teams, Bräuburger and his two men on one side of the street, Neufel and his men on the other.

  Schulingen had just kicked open the door of a tiny chocolate shop when Neufel heard the ragged clatter of distant rifle fire. For a moment he wondered where it was coming from, for it was too faint to be here in the village. He looked first up the ridge to his platoon’s positions, but there was no visible activity there.

  The Europabrücke.

  It was not an organized volley, not on order. It was, predictably, born of a series of accidents: a safety turned off in the push and pull of the fray, a trigger depressed without intent. But once the sound of the first shot rippled through the melee, the door of carnage swung open.

  He stepped out into the street, looking toward the southwest. There were French troops on the bridge. And they were shooting protestors. His heart sank as he saw that the column of tanks at the far end of the bridge was already advancing, their turrets sweeping back and forth. Between the French tanks rolling onto the west end of the bridge and the infantry nearing the east end lay the crumpled bodies of dead and wounded protestors. Some were crawling. Many were still.

  The tanks would crush their bodies to pulp.

  The thought enraged him. The French soldiers could have avoided that. Common decency called for moving the dead and wounded aside.

  Neufel had wondered if he could hate. He did not wonder now. He pressed the transmit button on his intercom microphone. “Sight on the lead French tank. Fire smoke. If they do not stop, load sabot and engage.”

  “Nein, Herr Stuffz,” Sanger said. “The battalion commander has forbidden it.”

  The battalion commander had forbidden them to engage? Were they to simply sit and watch the French kill civilians on the bridge?

  It was Schulingen’s startled cry that broke through his sense of helplessness. He turned in time to see his loader slump to the ground, his black tanker coveralls wet with blood. His driver had plastered himself to the outside wall beside the doorway, his eyes on Schulingen’s body, his face frozen in shock.

  “In there!” Neufel shouted, pointing as he sprinted toward the doorway.

  He could not avenge the dead priests and nuns on the bridge. But he could avenge Schulingen. He thumbed the MP-7 to full automatic and rammed the short barrel through a window beside the door, squeezing the trigger, watching as flame and lead spurted from the machine pistol, emptying the thirty-round magazine in a single two-second burst, not caring as the kick made the weapon climb in his arms, driving his hands onto the jagged glass above.

  Bräuburger’s team crossed the street just as Neufel pulled back from the window. His driver, jarred from the shock of seeing Schulingen fall, burst through the doorway with Bräuburger’s men, four automatic weapons firing in unison, a crackling cacophony of death.

  The room reeked of cordite as Neufel came in behind them, having loaded a fresh magazine, ready and eager to join in the killing.

  But there was no one left to kill.

  Four men in black sweaters were sprawled behind the counter, their bodies shredded, one still clutching his silenced weapon. They were all dead, as were the man and woman who were bound and gagged in the center of the floor.

  Neufel would need no pathologist to know who had killed the couple. They were squarely in his line of fire from the window.

  As he sucked in air, he found another scent beneath the cordite.

  Chocolate.

  He bent over and vomited.

  35

  Rome, Italy

  M iriam Anson climbed the stairs to the crowded office over the restaurant. She knew exactly what she would find. Since the French had moved onto the Bridge of Europe and killed demonstrators, the streets outside were full of people crying for blood from one side or the other. She had listened to them as she and Reza had returned from depositing the special forces operatives in a safe location nearby. She had seen the television footage before she stepped into a quiet alley to call Grant Lawrence from her satellite phone.

  Reza had stood back, keeping an eye out for trouble as she talked with Grant.

  “The Germans want to move,” Grant had said. “The President is doing his best to get twenty-four hours, Miriam.”

  “That’s all?”

  “I doubt he can get any more. He’ll be doing well to get that, after the slaughter on the bridge. Especially since the German army has confirmed that the bridges were detonated by saboteurs, most likely working for Soult.”

  Miriam bit her lip. “It’s not a lot of time.”

  “It’s all you’ve got.”

  So she was hardly expecting the cacophony of voices from above as she ascended the steep creaky steps. She wasn’t surprised to find at least three conversations going on while televisions displayed the ugliness in three versions: Al Jazeera, CNN International and Deutscheweld. Nor did she need an interpreter to tell her which broadcasts were pushing which agendas.

  Fatigue nearly hit her between the eyes. She wouldn’t have believed that these events could leave her feeling as if she’d run a marathon while fighting off the flu. She dealt with crises every day on her job. But this one…

  The sight of those poor people on the bridge, flashing again and again on the screens, was too much to bear.

  Slowly the room fell silen
t as her return was recognized. Renate was the first to speak. “How bad is it?”

  “Not as bad as it could be. The President is asking the German chancellor to hold off for twenty-four hours.”

  Renate blanched. “That’s all?”

  “That’s all.”

  Needing suddenly to escape for a few minutes, Miriam took the next set of creaky stairs up to the roof. The sky was clouding over, as if readying for the coming storm. She gripped the stuccoed half wall that provided protection against a fall from the flat roof and stared heavenward. She supposed she wasn’t alone in her horror at the turn events had taken. These were not events she had ever thought to see in her lifetime. Elsewhere, yes, but not in Europe.

  “Miriam?”

  She turned at the sound of Renate’s voice. Sometimes she hated the other woman’s icy calm. “Yes?”

  “We need to get things together quickly, yes?”

  Miriam nodded, but she didn’t move. After a moment Renate joined her at the wall, looking out over rooftops, which stretched back so far in time that they reminded Miriam that some things could be nearly permanent. The blackened mess that had once been the Office 119 warehouse was on the other side of the building, mercifully concealed.

  “I hate this job,” Renate said.

  “I can imagine a million reasons why. I’m not too fond of mine at the moment, either.”

  One corner of Renate’s mouth lifted. “You carry a huge burden.”

  Miriam managed a shrug. “Others carry bigger ones.”

  But not many. Renate pulled out a pack of cigarettes and lit one. “I started smoking again in Berlin. Usually I quit when I leave Germany. This time…I cannot.”

  “After this is over, maybe.”

  Renate nodded. “Maybe. If it is ever over. It is so good for Lawton to see you again. Most of us never have the opportunity to see old friends.”

  “That must be hard.”

  Renate blew a stream of smoke and didn’t answer directly. “Lawton is managing this very well. This is a life better suited to men, I think.”