by Peter Nealen
We were now behind schedule.
I didn’t need to issue final instructions—we all knew what needed to happen. The team spread out from the door, weapons ready but not up on sights. We had to clear the roof first, then we could set in. It was possible—however unlikely—that someone had beaten us up there and was even then set in behind a rifle or an RPG, just waiting to waste the “New European Council.”
It would make for a more sinister explanation for the staff’s reticence to allow us roof access.
But it only took a couple of minutes to confirm that we were alone up there. Across the Avenue Victor Schoelcher, I could see another security team setting up on the roof of the Strasbourg National Library.
I shrugged out of my ruck and pulled the spotting scope and tripod out, then started setting up just inside the carved stone parapet alongside the edge of the roof. Footing was a little tricky, as the copper-sheathed roof was slightly sloped, but not so steeply that we couldn’t sit or stand.
Below, the Place de République was a beehive of activity. Chairs were being set out, a stage was being erected on the steps of the Palais, and audiovisual equipment was everywhere. Blue-and-white police cars and motorcycles were everywhere, along with a few American LAV-25s and M5 Powells, and more than a few French EBRC Jaguars and VBMR Griffons.
All the French armored vehicles were flying French colors, and the troops were all Armee de Terre. There was no sign of the European Defense Corps anywhere, and I was sure that was deliberate.
I wasn’t sure it was a good sign, mind you.
“Deacon, Caveman.” Tucker was up on a roof on the other side of the canal. “Be advised, we’re seeing some crowds already starting to gather. French police are trying to break them up, but they don’t look too happy.”
“Roger.” It wasn’t much of a surprise, but it bore watching. “Do they look like jihadis or the PRA types?”
“Neither. These guys look more like Yellow Vests.” That particular movement had held on tenaciously over the years. While it had largely been subsumed into Nouveau Gallia in the south, NG hadn’t reached quite as far as Strasbourg yet. “I don’t think they’re that thrilled with the idea of business as usual with a different set of elites.”
“Can’t say I blame ‘em.” I scanned the square below us. The police were keeping the great unwashed away for now. Though if they got enough numbers together, I doubted that the cops were going to be much more than a speed bump.
And somehow, I doubted that the Yellow Vests were going to be the only ones on the streets that day.
This could get ugly.
Weapons up, fields of fire checked, and range cards in progress, we set in to wait.
***
While the ceremony started on time, it still felt like we’d waited for an eternity.
Motorcade after motorcade had brought in dignitaries and politicians from across Europe, even several of the countries who had left the auspices of the EDC or rejected it from the outset had showed up. The Italians were the most obvious, though the Czechs, Slovaks, and Greeks were obviously a bit ambivalent about the whole thing as we watched through our optics.
“I can’t help but notice that the Poles said, ‘fuck you.’” Reuben was sitting next to me, scanning the flags drifting in the faint breeze below. The scattered clouds that had been overhead when we’d first gotten up on the roof had gathered into a solid overcast. “No sign of the Hungarians, either.”
“Did they tell State to get stuffed, or were they simply not invited?” I’d noticed the absence of our closest allies in the fight against the EDC too, and wasn’t convinced it was an oversight. Especially after some of the stories I’d heard about State’s attitudes and actions when they’d gotten to Poland.
“That don’t bode well.” Reuben hadn’t looked at me as he said it, but just kept watching the Place below us.
“No, it doesn’t.” I couldn’t escape the vague feeling of dread that had been hanging over me since this whole operation had started.
Not even as the music started and the ceremony began.
***
It was as officious, soulless, and boring as I’d expected. The “cultural” parts were predictably stark, modern, and weird, even while surrounded by classical Prussian architecture. Lots of abstract shapes, weird costumes, and discordant electronic noise in place of music. And I say that as a sometime metalhead.
The speeches were longer and even more soporific. Or they would have been if not for the reports we were getting from the outer perimeter.
The Yellow Vests had just been the first ones on the scene. The predictable black-clad, masked groups had followed, both of the DDSB/PdL and Fourth Reich varieties, though the latter appeared to be vastly outnumbered by the former. What looked very much like jihadi groups were mingling with some of the uniformly black-clad mobs, too. The jihadis and the militant socialists weren’t fighting much, either, which was interesting.
Some violence had already broken out even before the ceremony started. A crowd—it wasn’t clear over the radio which one—had tried to push their way through the barricades up by the Place de Bordeaux. The French police had forced them back, but we could already hear sporadic gunfire across the city.
This was going to get sporty.
One of the Portuguese Councilors was talking, droning on in a tone that made me just as glad that we weren’t getting the realtime translation, when things got noticeably more interesting.
I saw the boiling black cloud race up into the sky off to the northwest before the boom got to us, heavy enough and loud enough that we felt it through the ground. If I was seeing things right, it was barely a thousand yards away, somewhere near the Parc Place d’Haguenau. It was followed by the unmistakable chatter of automatic weapons fire, and another pair of smaller explosions.
“A VBIED just hit the barricades at the end of the Rue de Haguenau.” That was coming from the central TOC, located inside one of the government buildings on the north side of the Place de République. They had drones up, patrolling most of the area for about a mile around the Palais. The heavier air support was some distance away.
Couldn’t have it look too much like a new government installed by military force. That would “send the wrong message.”
The TOC was still talking. “What appears to be a coordinated group of well-armed individuals within the crowd have taken down the remnant of the security force at the barricade and are advancing under cover of the crowd down the Rue de Haguenau. Diverting react forces to assist.”
“Here we go.” I was already down behind my scope, my OBR clamped in its own tripod, scanning the side streets for threats.
Of course, we were watching the handpicked crowd in the square for threats, too. They looked a little agitated, but nobody looked like they were about to clack off. Not yet.
The sounds of gunfire from the northwest intensified. Sirens whooped, and several of the bigger quad-rotor drones orbiting overhead started to converge on the firefight.
A couple more heavy thuds announced that the attackers had not exhausted their store of explosives or RPGs. A new column of black smoke began to rise above the roofs, closer than the initial VBIED detonation.
A pair of EBRC Jaguars fired up their engines and raced past the Place de République along the canal road, speeding toward the gunfire and explosions. More sirens joined the cacophony, though I was starting to hear more gunfire elsewhere in the city.
“Deacon, Caveman. We’ve got a fight going on down here. The boys in black are pushing the French, and it looks like the French cops are about to fold. No shots fired yet, but there’s a lot of hand-to-hand happening.” Tucker’s voice was faintly distracted—I could picture him watching through his scope, finger hovering just outside the trigger guard, ready to start shooting as soon as something worth shooting presented itself.
I was about to reply when Greg broke in. “Deacon, Strawberry. You might want to come to the back of the building.”
Reuben wa
s on his Mk 48. “Go. I got it.”
I scrambled to my feet, pulling my OBR out of its saddle on the tripod, and headed over the peak of the north wing’s roof, keeping low as I did so. So far, we hadn’t taken any fire, but that didn’t mean there wasn’t a sniper somewhere in the buildings nearby, watching through a window for some idiot on security to skyline himself.
Granted, we were probably pretty low on the target priority list. Those insufferable drones down there, still trying to make their speeches while the city descended into chaos around them, were a lot bigger prize.
I got over the peak and practically duck walked down to the rear parapet. The building stretched two more wings out in a U-shape from the central structure where we had set up, but there was no parapet there. Greg and Chris were set up on the back of the main wing, watching down the street toward the bridge and the Université Populaire Européenne.
I could see where those two Jaguars had been stationed, mainly because their absence put a noticeable gap in the checkpoint that had been set up on our side of the bridge. The lone VBMR Griffon that remained behind the barriers was still a formidable target, but it couldn’t block the whole street, and its turret couldn’t cover every side street at the same time, either.
And the enemy knew it.
The Javelin that streaked out of the university campus barely had time to arm itself before it popped up and slammed down on the Griffon’s roof. We were close enough that the bang came at the same moment that smoke and frag blasted out from the impact, the explosion knocking the nearest French troops sprawling.
Some of them didn’t move again.
The vehicles that came racing out of the campus weren’t technicals, per se—they didn’t have mounted weapons. But the black-painted Peugeot P4s bristled with weapons from every window.
They pulled up to the barriers, turning hard to either side, exposing their flanks to the battered, dazed troops still manning the barricade. Rifles and submachineguns spat fire, tearing into the French where they hadn’t taken cover.
Greg, Chris, and I didn’t need to wait for an invitation over the radio, though the TOC probably thought we should. I could still hear them demanding updates and telling various security cells to hold while they figured out what was going on.
We opened fire at almost the same instant.
I dumped two rounds into the driver’s side window of the left-hand vehicle, then shifted to the rear. Chris had already hit that one—the shooter was hanging partway out the window, blood leaking down the side of the door, his FAMAS lying on the street beneath him.
While the fire on the checkpoint had ceased for the moment, the attackers weren’t done. The doors on the non-contact side opened, and while we could see movement, the bad guys were careful not to expose themselves before they started shooting around and over the vehicles.
The French were starting to recover though, several of them having scrambled to cover in the entryway of the hotel on the corner, and were returning fire. One of the Peugeots rocked, spraying bits of frag and shattered glass as the French hammered it with bullets, and the shooters there retreated, leaving another of their number lying face down on the pavement.
Then we started taking machinegun fire from across the canal.
They weren’t that sure of where we were, so they just sprayed the side of the theater, though some of the rounds still kicked pulverized stone into our faces. Fortunately, we had the right angle to see them, while the French on the ground probably didn’t.
I sighted in on the gunner, who was trying to steady his FN Minimi on the hood of a Peugeot van with little success, let out a breath, and squeezed the trigger. The rifle thumped into my shoulder, and when I came down off the recoil, the man had vanished. I couldn’t be sure that I’d killed him. But the fire had stopped.
The shooters at the barricade had started to run, still flinging sporadic rifle fire toward the French. Armored reinforcements had started coming up from the south, and the attackers couldn’t face the four M5 Powells that were just then turning the corner. I came up off my scope as I saw that we didn’t have a shot at any of them anymore.
The radio was a hash of people stepping on each other in at least two languages. More gunfire echoed across the city, along with a couple more sporadic explosions. After making sure that Chris and Greg were good, I hustled back toward the front of the building. I needed a better look at the overall situation.
The installation ceremony had dissolved into pandemonium. It looked like more than a few people in the crowd of spectators had been hit by rifle and machinegun fire during the attack that we’d just repulsed, and the park was a swarm of milling, screaming people, the carnage of wounded and dead bodies, and various governmental security agencies getting in each other’s way. I even saw a few of them pointing guns at each other, rather than outboard at the threats that were closing in on them from multiple directions.
About half of them were ushering their principals toward the Palais itself, while the other half tried to get them through the panicking crowds to the motorcades off on the outer streets. They were not having a good time of it.
I joined Reuben and scanned for targets. “What a shit-show.” He was watching the nightmare down below over his sights, scanning for anything out of place. Which seemed like just about everything, right then.
Then it got worse.
“Oh, shit!” Reuben snapped his Mk 48 to his shoulder and opened fire, even as I spotted what he’d seen. Six dots, coming fast from the north. And they weren’t friendly helos, either.
I didn’t get a shot at them, and even Reuben’s burst was too little, too late. The targets were too small, too far away, and moving too fast. He clipped one, sending it spinning down to detonate a block short, but a second later the five remaining drones dove onto the Place de République, detonating in a string of black puffs and harsh thuds.
The sporadic gunfire seemed muted after that, as I scanned the devastation below. They certainly hadn’t gotten everybody, but a good chunk of the people who’d gathered for this “historic occasion” were now shattered corpses lying amidst the wreckage of the stage as the smoke cleared.
The dream of replacing the EDC with a more moderate group and returning to the status quo lay there among the dead.
The war wasn’t over.
Epilogue
It was raining when I finally managed to visit Scott’s grave.
We hadn’t been able to be there for the funeral, though I’d argued that we should be. But the operational tempo there at the end had been too high, the logistics of getting the team back to Poland with the body and then back to France again prohibitive. So, we’d had to accept—bitterly—that our brother would be buried without us being there to say goodbye.
Klara stood next to me and held my hand. She didn’t say anything, but there were tears on her cheeks. She’d known Scott, of course, but I think she was crying more for me than for him.
I stared down at the grave, the stone dark with the rain, and felt…empty. Maybe it was because we’d had some time, some distance between his death and the present, but it didn’t quite seem real, that I wasn’t going to talk to Scott again, to work out a problem with him, or just commiserate. Wasn’t going to be able to make fun of him about his anime addiction.
But the worst part was the one thought that kept going through my head, over and over.
Why is Scott dead and I’m still here?
The rest of the team was also gathered around the grave. We probably would have had him buried next to Dwight, but we were a long way from Turzovka, and it hadn’t been practical to ship Scott’s body all that way. So, he lay in a cemetery in Gdansk, not far from the other Americans who had fallen in the battle to retake the city.
Phil’s grave lay only a few yards away, though Phil wasn’t in it. Not enough identifiable remains had been retrieved from the hospital after the cruise missile strike that had killed him.
I looked around at the team. It felt like I shoul
d say something, but I didn’t have the words. Tony put his hand on my shoulder, his own eyes red, and just nodded, tight-lipped, as if to let me know that I didn’t really have to.
I looked up at the rain-drenched sky. Lord, if it is in Your mercy, please forgive Scott all his sins, and let us live so that when we die, we can see him again, with You.
I didn’t have anything more than that. Looking down at the grave one more time, I crossed myself as Klara did the same. Somewhat to my surprise, Tony did too.
Then we turned back to the van, leaving Scott to rest under the rain.
***
“What a fucking mess.” Hartrick seemed even more sour than usual as he paced in front of the map board.
The sheer number of red pins on the map provided some explanation for his mood. “I see that things are going as swimmingly as expected.”
He snorted. “You could say that.” He pointed in disgust at the reports on the table in front of him. “It seems that the best that our betters can manage is to point fingers and scream at each other over whose responsibility the attack on the New Council was.”
I stood in front of the map board and put my hands on my hips. “And in the meantime?”
“In the meantime, it turns out that the group that forced that first barricade weren’t DDSB, Fourth Reich, or even EDC.” Hartrick had calmed down and was now all business.
Something about the way he said that made me look at him with a frown. “Who were they, then?”