“So much for making colonel,” he muttered, then passed out.
Chapter 14
Roger had been as good as his word. In less than fourteen hours Gries and Cady had been flown over to France on one of the C-17s that was supporting the Stryker brigade out of Stewart. Only one battalion had been off-loaded and mated up with their vehicles but there was another already queued up to land.
Shane had stopped by the local French “unified defense” headquarters, which was located in a small industrial building on the outskirts of Le Havre. Even in the worst conditions in Iraq, headquarters units had always been pretty button down and operational. When he went to the headquarters to try to get some intel on the situation, he’d found utter chaos. Nobody recognized his priority, or cared. Nobody seemed to have any idea what was happening or what to do about it if they did. He’d seen one three star French general wandering around the operations room asking everyone if they had a pencil sharpener; he seemed to have forgotten why he needed a pencil sharpened and was simply concentrating on a task he could perform.
While there were plenty of people willing to talk, nobody seemed to have picked up any information about the probes. Repeatedly, units had reported contact and then gone off the air. Areas where probes had hit — they sort of had those mapped out through negatives: military and police units that didn’t respond — had lost all communications. Refugees that had made it to units still in contact reported that the probes were “eating” vehicles and even buildings. That was about all the intel they had.
After a fruitless hour in the command center, Shane and Thomas, who had managed to use their priority to secure a Humvee, joined the convoy of Strykers and support vehicles headed to the Calais area. Nobody knew why they were heading to Calais and after seeing the chaos in the headquarters Shane was pretty sure even the French weren’t sure why the Strykers were heading to Calais. But those were the orders.
The drive was unpleasant. Despite cops trying to stop people using the limited access highway, civilians were out in force. Everyone seemed to have some place to be they thought better than their homes in the emergency. The convoy was caught in a traffic jam for an hour outside Calais before the battalion commander ordered the combat companies to head off-road. The support vehicles and logistics could catch up later. They thumped down off the limited-access highway, cut through some fields ripe with winter wheat, hit a few side roads that weren’t quite as crowded and finally reached their assembly area, which was another light industrial park near the town of Coulogne.
Cady drove the Humvee over to where the battalion staff was setting up a forward tactical operations center. Shane had paid his compliments to the battalion commander, Lieutenant Colonel Walter Schon, when he’d first linked up with them in Le Havre and scrounged a vehicle. Schon was a bright officer with the tall, lean, clean-cut look that was de rigeur for modern infantry commanders. Shane had recalled a paper the commander had written in Command and General Staff on operational maneuver in the defense and had mentioned it, which the commander took as the intended compliment. They got along. They knew some of the same people and they both came out of the same school of modern military hard-knocks. Schon had had a company in Iraq as well and saw in Shane a fellow, only slightly junior, up-and-coming officer. He’d spent a few minutes picking Shane’s brain about the anticipated threat and had come away if anything more depressed.
Now they were in position and Shane got out to watch the battalion maneuver into defensive positions. Nobody knew exactly what they were defending, as such. But they spread out with a defense geared on a generally easterly axis, the Strykers and a platoon of Abrams tanks that had been sent in support finding hide positions along the slight slope of a hill.
“How do these things attack?” Major Forrester, the battalion operations officer, asked as Shane and Cady walked up to the huddle by the command Humvee. “Ray guns or what?”
“Major Gries?” the colonel asked, looking over at the attached “expert.”
“That’s what I’m here to try to find out, sir,” Shane admitted. “We’ve never seen any evidence of directed energy weapons, but the views we’ve gotten have all been on dead planets and the Moon. And not many of those, sir.”
“We have gotten no word on their method of attack as well, sir,” Lieutenant Leroie said. The French liaison shrugged. “Every unit has gone off the air shortly after contact. Including the Euro-NATO F-16 squadron.”
“What’s the update on the invader’s position?” the colonel asked Captain Carson, the intel officer.
“The last update I got was when we left, sir,” the captain replied. “They’d apparently wiped out everything around Paris and Tours as well as entering Belgium and Germany. It’s all negative intel, though, just where units weren’t responding. They have picked up some swarms on radar, but they’re mostly staying low and the radar has all gone down, quick. So have radio, land-lines and even cell phones. We had an AWACS up with F-15 escort, but they took that out nearly four hours ago.”
“Where was it?” Shane asked. “Where was it orbiting, that is?”
“I dunno,” the intel officer replied, shrugging. “Why?”
“Well, if they were in and around Paris and it wasn’t, why’d they go for it?” Shane asked.
“Good question,” the colonel replied. “I guess we’ll have to find out, won’t we? How hard are these things to kill, do you think?”
“They’re flying, sir,” Cady interjected. “Hard to hit even if what we have can kill them.”
“We don’t have a clue what they’re made of,” Shane admitted. “It could be super unobtainium for all we know. No data at all, Colonel.”
“I guess we’ll have to gather some,” the colonel said. “Major, I’d like to speak to you for a moment.”
He put his hand on Shane’s shoulder and led him a bit away from the staff.
“Did I put my foot wrong, sir?” Shane asked.
“No,” Colonel Schon said. “Not at all. I wish we knew more, but that’s like wishing this wasn’t happening. No, it’s about your mission. Could you define it for me, again?”
“To observe first contact, evaluate the threat and report,” Shane replied. “Basically, we’re an eyeball recon for the Neighborhood Watch team.”
“Exactly,” the colonel said, his face working as he considered his words. “So, when we first make contact with these things, what are you going to do?”
“Observe the effect of our weapons, sir,” Shane said, confused.
“Major, every single unit that has made contact with these things has dropped out of the net shortly after first report,” the colonel pointed out. “What does that tell you?”
“That they’re pretty damned bad news, sir,” Shane replied.
“What it tells me is that we’re going to get butt-fucked,” Colonel Schon said. “Fast and hard. I don’t know how, but we will. And your job is to… ?”
“Get the word back. Why, sir?” Shane said, his stomach sinking.
“That’s right,” the colonel said. “Concentrate like fire on that mission, Major. Concentrate hard. Nobody, but nobody, has succeeded in it. And the United States has to know what these things are. How they fight. How we can fight them. I’m going to lose this battle, Major, sure as God made little green apples. Sending us here is pissing in the wind. My one and only hope is that while I may fail in my mission, you succeed. If you do, it might make losing my battalion, losing my troops, worthwhile. Do not fail me. Do you fully comprehend what I am saying.”