Luong nodded in relief; the thought of an extraction under fire terrified him. He wouldn’t have been surprised to know that it terrified Lommerde, or even McDonald, as well; no one would forget the botched operation that had failed to save the lives of the Ambassador to Pakistan, back in the Pakistani Intervention. Perhaps that had been when the rot had finally set into America’s geopolitical strategy; who had reasonably expected other countries to play ball when the cost of playing ball could be even higher than not playing ball?
“The President has sounded a military alert and units of the Atlantic Fleet have been placed on alert to launch a covering mission for an extraction flight, if necessary,” McDonald continued. “At present, I do not believe that there is any real threat to the embassy, and you are safer inside here than you would be trying to escape in the middle of a shooting war.”
“I can’t fault the logic,” Luong said. USAF pilots had accidentally shot down civilian aircraft during the War on Terror before and he couldn’t see British pilots avoiding the same mistakes, particularly if several airliners had indeed gone down. Had they been hijacked, or was it merely a case of a terrorist with a portable SAM launcher? “Did the President have a message for me?”
“The National Security Council is meeting in emergency session fairly soon,” McDonald said. “The President has so far not commented, apart from approving you remaining within the embassy and attempting to open communications with the British Government, or what remains of the British Government. Brussels and every other European city appear to have been attacked as well; we can only conclude that these are the opening moves in a full-scale invasion.”
Luong found himself grasping for words. “But…”
“It is standard military tactics,” McDonald said. “We launched decapitation strikes during the Iraq War, and to some extent during the Iran War. If our intelligence had been better” — he paused to give Lommerde a scowl — “and the legal situation back then what it is now, we would have left the ragheads gasping for breath and utterly unaware of what was going on around them. There is no point in launching such a… brutal series of attacks, sir, unless you intend to go all the way.”
Luong felt his legs grow weaker and silently thanked God that he was sitting down. Europe… hell, if all of Europe had been hit as badly, then Europe no longer existed except in name. Somehow, he would have to pick up the pieces and find out who was in charge, before the Europeans lost the unexpected war. What the hell was going on?
“I see,” he said finally. “We need to get in touch with the local authorities, somehow; how do we do that?”
Chapter Sixteen: I Told You So!
I don’t want to say that I told you so… but I told you so. So there.
Brussels, Belgium
“Jesus fucking Christ!”
The explosion seemed to destroy the entire city. As he drove along one of the roads set aside for government ministers and workers in the centre of Brussels, Colonel Seth Fanaroff yanked the car aside as other cars screeched to a halt or came to a stop, the drivers panicking as the centre of Brussels vanished in fire. Captain Saundra Keshena screamed as the side window shattered, scattering broken glass over her arm; Fanaroff ignored it as he fought to control the car. They skidded to a halt and he shouted at her to jump out, seconds before a massive lorry charged into the road and came to a halt, caught on a crashed car.
“Get down,” Fanaroff shouted. He’d seen it before, in Iran; it was almost textbook perfect. He hurled himself at her and knocked her to the ground, covering her with his body, just as the lorry exploded with an almighty blast. A wave of heat passed over him and he realised, that by a miracle, they had escaped serious harm. “Stay down!”
He could hear nothing, not even screams from the wounded… and there had to be wounded. He’d seen truck bombs before; they carried plenty of explosives, but they were hardly nuclear devices, and the blast hadn’t been that large. Saundra was moving under him, trying to move; her mouth was opening and closing soundlessly. He realised that he had been deafened and rubbed his ears, hoping that they would recover; the strange feeling grew worse and then noises started to penetrate his mind again. He could hear!
Saundra’s voice was strange. It took him a second to realise that his ears weren’t working right at all. He rolled off her and looked around, seeing burning buildings and landscapes, right in the centre of Brussels. It had been designed as a multi-billion euro project to create the perfect home for the governing class; slowly, Brussels was becoming a black hole sucking the rest of Europe towards it. Some of the European Defence Commission…
Memory returned and he looked north. Flames and smoke were rising up from the EUROFOR headquarters; the building not only wasn't very secure, but it had not been designed to take an impact, or a bomb. Terrorists had left the European building alone for years, until now; it had failed its first major test. The Pentagon had done much better… and they had had the excuse of not knowing that there was a major threat out there.
“Colonel,” Saundra snapped. Her voice sounded much more normal now. “What the hell do we do?”
Gunfire crackled out, not too far away; both of them had their service pistols in their hands before a moment had passed. Both of them preferred the latest version of the Combat Commander pistol, but Fanaroff knew that they had only a few magazines each. The Europeans had been reluctant to let them carry weapons at all and it was only with the understanding that they would only be used in utmost need that they had been issued European licenses. Finding more ammunition would be… problematic; Brussels, like all European cities, was not keen on gun stores.
“We keep our heads down,” Fanaroff snapped back. He forced himself to think through the ringing pain in his head; the attack, whatever it was, didn’t seem to have an infantry component… at least, not one nearby. American Special Forces would have launched a ground attack to finish off the defenders if they had been fighting a war; the odds were that the terrorists had either decided not to, or lacked the ability to mount an attack. “We have to call in…”
His hand reached down to his terminal and pulled it out of his belt. It was broken; he swore aloud as he realised he had landed on it. Saundra didn’t carry one; their secure access to the American Military Datanet had been lost along with the terminal’s functionality. Perhaps it could be repaired, in an American lab, but if the destruct system had been triggered, all that would remain of the interior would be powder. He checked his mobile phone and switched through the possible networks; they all seemed to be down.
Saundra was doing the same with her phone. “How the hell can terrorists do something like this?”
“They can’t,” Fanaroff said. He felt the weight of the pistol in his hand and felt oddly reassured. The Combat Commander was a man-killer, one of the latest versions could even punch through body armour; even the most rabid pro-gun supporter had qualms about allowing them on the streets. The military hated them as well, once some had been reverse-engineered by someone and duplicated in the Middle East; they killed soldiers who had previously had body armour to protect them. “I think that we have a worse problem.”
The sound of gunfire was coming closer. “This way,” Fanaroff said. He knew the streets of Brussels much better than he had ever let on to Guichy and his cronies; it would only have upset them, or had them wondering if he was a spy for an American invasion. The highest-grossing European film of 2023 had been about an American invasion of Europe and had led to questions in the European Parliament about EUROFOR’s plans to face an American invasion; in many ways, it had been as shamelessly patriotic as Independence Day. “I think we have to get back to the embassy.”