About then, a hundred window-rattling sonic booms rocked the house. Roger had witnessed countless air battles these last few days. All part of the new weather forecast. Sunny, with a chance of smart bombs. The sheer magnitude of this fight took his breath away. He stopped counting at 50 planes or so. Maybe only half the total. Thankfully, they were content just swatting each other out of the skies and dropping flares. The only explosions on the ground came from unlucky jets. Not nearly as many parachutes floated down as burning wreckage though.
A wounded Washington National Guard fighter pilot wheezed up behind Roger. Leaning his one shoulder without a cast against the doorframe, he whistled. “Neither side has ever pushed hard to grab complete air superiority before. I can only imagine one reason they’d roll all the dice at once.”
“Why? What’s up?” Roger tried to hide the fear in his voice.
The aviator didn’t. He took a ragged breath and raised a trembling hand towards the horizon. “Do you have a cellar?”
Roger followed his gaze, but didn’t see what caused all the terror in his eyes. Just a flock of birds out there. A flock of fifty or so big birds… in formation. Must be giant planes, to be seen so far away with the naked eye. Roger had no military experience, but his grandfather fought in World War II as a B-17 tail gunner. Was it the old man’s prideful tales of bombing Berlin back to the Stone Age or the movies he’d seen that made Roger nearly piss his pants?
“Get everyone downstairs!” He turned back to the pilot, who was already trying to get everyone away from the windows and under cover.
Roger took one last, disbelieving glance at the incoming B-1 and B-52 strategic bombers about to carpet-bomb his hometown. Every inch of his soul cried out to drive to the hospital and drag his wife to safety, even if she would kick and scream. He chickened out with the car keys in hand and started rationalizing. No way to make it there in time. He’d be caught out in the open and, besides, they wouldn’t bomb a hospital, right? That must be against some law.
Only partially convinced, Roger shoved the keys back in his pocket and dashed inside. Pretty much everyone had already limped, crawled or somehow wedged themselves into his tiny basement. One soldier with a missing leg refused to take part though. He stayed on the sofa and stared enraptured at the dead TV. Power had been out for hours, but you could practically see the Saturday morning cartoons reflecting off this kid’s eyes. He pulled out a pack of cigarettes. “Do you mind if I smoke, Doc?”
“Come on! Get your ass downstairs!” Roger tried to haul the boy up. Was he USA or URA? They often wore the same uniforms. Whatever. Didn’t matter.
“I’ll stay right here, hoss. I heard the Air Force officer talking. Those bombers can haul 50,000 lbs. of explosives each. If they’re coming anywhere around here, do you really think a little hole in the ground is going to make a difference? It’s all just luck at this point, so why not at least be comfortable?”
The first epic boom crashed in the distance. A few seconds later the shock wave threw photos and over-priced knickknacks off his shelf. Roger mindlessly slid the soldier an ashtray and cursed his own cowardice.
“Goddamn it!”
He dashed out to his car. At least he could spend his final moments with his wife. The damn government couldn’t take that away from him.
Roger never got to the hospital. Less than a mile away, some Humvee full of military police forced him and a few other fleeing refugees to wait on the side of the road. An endless stream of military vehicles poured east along both directions of travel. The largest concentration of troops he’d seen yet in this war. His resolve shaking as the booms grew louder and steadily closer, Roger leapt out of his car. He joined a few other civilians frantically trying to pry up a sewer manhole cover on the side of the highway.
Some blast wave nearly knocked him off his feet. Little chunks of concrete and God knows what else rained down around him. Just then, the manhole cover shifted under the leverage of six men. His bent tire iron flew from his hand as Roger whooped with excitement. Getting the cover open didn’t immediately grant safety though. Only two women and a kid managed to clamor down before a group of men started wrestling over whose family went next.
“Fuck this!” Roger tore off running away from the road. He scooped up two small children, crying at their daddies to quit fighting, en passant. Shoving them under a small road culvert, he just barely slithered in himself before the world ended. Had one of those massive, thousand pound bombs struck on the street above them, their makeshift bunker wouldn’t have done much good. Lucky for them, though particularly terrible for all those people still on the road, they were hit by one of the federal cluster bombs.
With only a pop, the giant bomb cracked open and released hundreds of tiny death canisters. From a distance, the “devil’s popcorn” explosions seemed like a surgical strike. Almost every one plastering the packed highway. On the ground, among the hundreds of soldiers and dozens of civilians shredded by tens of thousands of fragmentation shards, the survivors were not so thankful for the strike’s precision.
Chapter 7
General Stewart jumped up from the map table when his executive officer rushed into the bunker. “How bad was it?”
The junior general yanked off his helmet, first time it was dirty in years, and rubbed his graying temples. “Compared to what? Not quite as terrible as Armageddon, but just about the worst timing. The division preparing to spearhead the counterattack took a large chunk of the bombing. Without a doubt, they’re now combat ineffective. At least 20 % losses. Maybe double that. The situation on the ground is still, ah, fluid. Chaotic, frankly. Sir, what’s clear is that your sledgehammer is busted.” The XO pointed at the blue dots on the big map, representing the airborne drop, so lonely and deep behind enemy lines. “And I don’t know how much longer the anvil can hold out.”
The corps sergeant major, the only person in the room without a master’s degree, slammed his fist against a wall locker. “I knew the president was an unscrupulous son of a bitch, but I never guessed how bloodthirsty that tyrant could be. This is the most un-American thing the military has ever done!”
All the West Point graduates avoided pointing out how America had perfected the concept of carpet-bombing. General Stewart swallowed a brief pang of fear. “How bad are the civilian losses?”
“Your guess is as good as mine, sir. Hundreds for sure, maybe thousands. We evacuated as much of Denver as possible before the Feds got here, but we’ve also had an unknown number of refugees streaming in from farther east. We might never know the exact count. I guess it could have been worse though. The Air Force didn’t drop willy-nilly. Most of their bombs landed on our fortifications, or the highways and staging areas. I guess we should be grateful they spared purely civilian targets, but I can’t be. Shit. A whole division ripped to shreds in minutes! Our entire counterattack smashed before it could really get started.”
Another officer put down his satellite phone. “Well, the bastards paid a high price. Our air liaison officer is confident at least 15 of the bombers were brought down. Should keep them from trying the same stunt for a while. Sir, that was the president’s office, ours I mean. Salazar wants any captured enemy crewmembers to be summarily tried for war crimes in the field and executed by firing squad. I think she’s serious; doesn’t sound like rhetoric.”