Finally, at half the normal distance, he spotted the long, friendly ribbon of runway. He dropped his landing gear, and was pleasantly surprised to see three green lights on the panel. Gear down. He started to ease down the flaps, but the Eagle almost fell out of control to the left again. Something was jammed or damaged on the port side.
There was no need to throttle back. With one engine and a port yaw, he was already at minimum flying speed.
Although his attention was on the runway, Tad could see the rest of the base. Bustling, if battered, when he’d left just over an hour ago, it was now deserted, with no sign of human life or other aircraft. Standard procedure when an air base came under ground attack was to evacuate immediately. He’d even participated in drills where they’d moved the entire regiment. But this wasn’t a drill. The 11th Fighter Regiment was gone. He felt suddenly adrift.
As he watched, two shells landed near the hangars. Earth fountained up, spilling away from bright orange balls of flame. The explosions were audible even over the noise of his jet engine.
His lineup was good, and Tad nursed the damaged F-15 down gently. He had twice the runway he needed, so he took his time. He had a good descent rate. There was only a little crosswind. Nothing fancy, Tad thought, just plant this thing and taxi quickly under cover.
The runway’s rough, gray surface appeared under his wheels, and he smoothly brought the Eagle down. He felt the first touch of the wheels as they kissed the concrete, then pulled up gently to flare and slow the airplane.
A loud bang threw the Eagle off course, and Tad tried desperately to stop the sudden turn as his fighter spun to port. For an instant, he thought an artillery shell had landed nearby, but then he realized that his left tire had blown. Damaged by missile fragments, it had shredded itself under stress, and the port landing gear was now nothing more than a steel pipe, dragging on the ground in a shower of sparks.
Wojcik instinctively chopped the throttle and rode the right brake hard. In the half-second it had taken for him to understand what had happened, the crippled Eagle had already completed a full circle and was starting on another, with no perceptible loss in speed. A horrible scraping, grating sound fed his fear.
The F-15’s main gear strut, abused and maybe damaged itself, gave way, tearing out of the wheel well and taking part of the mechanism with it. His port wing tip dropped to the ground, tipping the plane over. Praying hard, Tad reached for the ejection handle and then stopped. With the wing dragging on the ground, the aircraft was slowing more rapidly. He decided to ride it out.
After another very bumpy half-circle, the Eagle finally stopped moving, surrounded in a cloud of what Tad hoped was dust and not smoke. He hit the canopy release, but it didn’t work. The backup release, driven by a battery, did.
As the dust-streaked canopy bubble whined upward, he hurriedly disconnected his harness, g-suit, and microphone leads. He remembered to grab the maps and other papers in the cockpit, then squeezed out through the opening as it widened and dropped to the ground.
Tad’s only thought was to get away from the still very flammable airplane, with its jet fuel and oxygen systems and missile warheads. He scrambled upright and started to run for the nearest shelter. Then he saw a GAZ jeep hurtling across the airfield, straight toward him.
It braked just a few meters short of him, and a technical sergeant he recognized, one of the regiment’s maintenance staff, jumped out — grabbing a gasoline-filled jerrycan on the way. “You all right, sir?”
When he nodded, still a little dizzy, the sergeant pointed him toward the jeep. “Hop in, quick.”
Leaving Tad still standing in a daze, the maintenance tech ran toward the wrecked F-15. Pulling down the Eagle’s built-in access ladder, he used it to climb up to the cockpit, and opened the jerrycan. He sloshed gasoline over the seat and instrument panels, then splashed more onto the upper fuselage — as far as he could reach. Then he jumped down, still holding the open can.
More shells hammered the far side of the field, setting several buildings ablaze. Tad watched the sergeant’s bizarre actions for about two seconds, uncomprehending. Then, as he realized what was happening, and where he was, he scrambled into the jeep, the pain in his head completely forgotten.
The maintenance sergeant took one step under the F-15’s tilted wings, set the can down and deliberately tipped it over. Gasoline poured out, spreading across the runway beneath the plane.
Satisfied, the sergeant trotted back to the jeep, slid behind the wheel, and backed up a little further, angling upwind.
He drew and loaded a flare pistol.
Tad looked at the broken Eagle, sitting just off the runway. It had probably been almost a loss anyway, but the only reason to burn a plane was to prevent it from falling into enemy hands. German and French tanks must be close.
The sergeant’s flare drew a straight, bright line from the pistol’s muzzle to the fighter’s forward fuselage. As it burst, the gasoline, already partially in vapor form, ignited in an orange-red cloud with an explosive whooph.
The maintenance tech already had the jeep turning and speeding away. “We’re evacuating, sir. All the flyable aircraft have already left. The rest of the regiment will be gone in a few hours. You’re 1st Squadron, right?”
Tad nodded, then winced as his injured neck sent what felt like a red-hot nail stabbing into his skull.
“They’re still here, over at the ops building.” Once away from the burning aircraft, the sergeant slowed the jeep from flat out to a merely breakneck pace. “So how did your mission go?”
Among the artillery explosions in the background, a slower, deeper rumble ended in a boom. Tad looked back to see a ball of thick black smoke billow upward from his shattered aircraft.
He sighed, remembering the burning trucks and supply vehicles he’d left behind him at the Cicha Woda bridge. “Good. Just not good enough.”
CHAPTER 21
Corridors
Ross Huntington watched White House gardeners slowly working their way from flower bed to flower bed — weeding, trimming, and watering to restore and maintain beauty and order. The sight of so much peaceful labor seemed strange to him after spending so many hours following the war burning through Northern and Central Europe.
Especially a war that America and her allies seemed to be losing.
Poland’s armies were retreating again, driven out of Wroclaw by superior French and German numbers and firepower. The little Czech and Slovak republics, hard-pressed themselves, had not been able to provide more than token assistance to their northern ally. And Hungary’s soldiers had their hands full just fending off the relentless EurCon drive toward Budapest.
They all needed help, and soon.
Unfortunately neither the United States nor Great Britain could do much yet to meet those needs.
Ever since the first French stealth missiles slammed into Polish soil, the President and Britain’s Prime Minister had been waging a campaign both in public and behind the scenes to broaden the coalition against EurCon and to win clear passage to the war zone. With decidedly mixed results, Huntington knew.
The Netherlands, torn between its free trade principles and the looming Franco-German military presence on its borders, had reluctantly opted for a wary neutrality. That wasn’t likely to change — not with EurCon moving from victory to victory. Spain and Italy also seemed determined to stay on the sidelines, and he couldn’t blame them very much for that. Neither had much to gain and both had much to lose in any wider European war.
To the north, the Danes had proved powerless to enforce neutrality in the skies over their own country. EurCon and allied jets had repeatedly clashed in Danish airspace without any challenge from Denmark’s tiny air force. Sweden seemed content to patrol its own borders and issue stern warnings that all belligerents should leave its shipping unmolested. So far those warnings had been heeded.