8:31 PM – 22 March, 1979 — Ramstein Air Force Base, Frankfurt, West Germany

  Everything was going as well as they could have hoped. Until they reached the second perimeter. There was no pusible reason an Army two-and-a-half-ton truck would need access to the high security area reserved for the strategic B-52 bombers that arrived in Europe as part of a routine Bomber Task Force-Europe deployment.

  Twin chain link fences. Twelve feet tall, topped with razor wire. Spotlights. Security cameras. Concrete barriers fnked the entrance. A guard shack stood at the center, and a tire puncture spike strip stood at the far end. There was no way around it, and only one way through it.

  Paul stopped the truck at the guard shack and rolled down the window.

  The guard reached up a hand.

  “Authorization paper—”

  His voice was drowned out by the sound of two rounds fired from a semiautomatic pistol. The other man on duty stood stunned by what was happening, and died never having moved a muscle.

  “Make it quick,” Paul said as Jorge jumped out and ran into the guard shack. This was one detail that their briefing hadn’t included—how to lower the spike strip. His visual search quickly identified the manual hand lever to raise and lower the strip, but when he attempted to use it it was locked in pce.

  “It’s stuck!” he shouted out the shack door. “It’s not moving!”

  “Schei?e!” Paul said as he scrambled out of the truck.

  Two miles away, in the base security main complex, an Air Force Staff Sergeant sat in stunned silence at what he was watching for five seconds before pressing the button reserved for Condition 1 base alerts.

  “Condition 1! Condition 1! The base is under attack! Hostiles breaching high security perimeter at the eastern entrance!”

  The man repeated his words, each sylble echoing in the guard shack, and the two men’s ears.

  “Fuck!” Paul said as he tried the lever himself. “We’re in for it now. They’ll be on us any minute!”

  “Why won’t this fucking thing go down?” Jorge asked as he tried it again.

  “There must be a lock or tch somepce,” Paul answered as he scanned the inside of the shack. It would be close, so that one man could still operate it. But there was nothing on the work surface that he could see. Nothing on the walls. He gnced at the floor. No foot pedal. He squatted down and looked underneath.

  The surface had a rounded bullnose front edge. Just below that, on the underside of the surface, slightly recessed from the bullnose front, was a metal bar switch. Three inches wide, one inch deep. Paul pressed it and heard a click. The sound occurred again when he released it.

  “Here!” he shouted, adrenaline making his blood run hot. He pressed the bar and held it down. “Try it now!”

  Jorge grabbed the lever, squeezed the trigger, and rotated the lever down. Outside the shack the sound of the spike strip lowering was just audible above the sound of approaching sirens.

  “We need to MOVE!” one of the men from the back of the truck shouted.

  “He must be the brains of the operation,” Jorge said as they climbed back into the truck. Paul stood on the accelerator and the truck jumped forward.

  The two men were rewarded by an eruption of swearing from the back of the truck.

  They looked at each other, and smiled.

  Aric picked up speed and altitude quickly. He kept below the sound barrier as he executed a textbook Immelmann turn, passing over the barracks again at a height of one thousand feet. he waited to be out of Schweinfurt air space before generating a series of energy pulses that brought his speed up to mach 2. The sonic booms were heard far and wide. But the next day—when news of the joint attacks broke—those sounds were attributed to the terrorists.

  The glow of ionizing air painted the front of the spheroid of energy that surrounded Aric as he flew west like all the demons from Hell were chasing him. It was all visual flight rules. He had no idea how high he was or how fast he was going. He had only a general idea which direction to fly to reach Frankfurt, and he was relying on the bright lights of the air base to mark his destination. Once he spotted it he’d have to descend and slow down so his expanded senses could pinpoint his targets.

  He had no idea that his approach was observed.

  “Fast Mover! Bearing 090! Flight level 050! Speed 1200 knots!” one of the Ramstein long range surveilnce radar operators shouted as her heart rate went from 60 to 200 in a matter of seconds.

  “Jesus, where the hell did that come from?” the officer commanding the evening shift said as he stood up and ran to her station.

  “It popped up fifty miles east of us,” she replied. In the time it took her to call out the arm and for the captain to reach her station the object had traveled almost two miles.

  The base had been on alert for less than five minutes. Everyone was on edge. Things just got a whole lot worse.

  “Sound the take shelter arm!” the captain called. “High speed missile in bound! ETA two minutes!”

  The distinctive wail of the site wide take shelter arm began to py over every speaker on the base. The men and women manning the radar stations, and the men and women who commanded them, could do nothing but watch. There was no time to react. No missile battery close enough. No one had pnned for something this fast to come from their own backyard.

  “How did they get a uncher so close?” someone behind the captain asked.

  He shook his head. One minute out. “Doesn’t matter now.”

  They were all safe this far underground. Unless it was a tactical nuke. Forty-five seconds. They waited for the missile to drop out of radar range, and the dull thud and vibration of impact that would follow.

  Thirty seconds.

  “What’s it doing?” someone asked. There was a crowd around the radar dispy.

  “It is slowing down?” another voice asked.

  The operator could not believe what her instruments were telling her.

  “Target bearing 135, Flight level 015, speed 200, 150, 100 knots.”

  “What the hell is it?”

  The countdown had already reached zero, but the object hadn’t struck.

  “Captain—” she said.

  “I see it,” he said calmly, which was a total lie.

  “Speed 080. Flight level 010. 009, Return’s getting fuzzy, 006—”

  She took a breath as her screen dispy cleared.

  “Signal’s gone,” she said as sweat dripped from her chin.

  “What did we just see?” someone asked. “Missiles don’t act like that. It made a forty-five degree turn and slowed down from 1200 knots to 200 knots in seconds. No pilot could survive that.”

  “So it wasn’t ballistic, and it wasn’t manned. Any other possibilities?”

  “Wire guided?” someone suggested.

  “Flying at 5000 feet?” another voice asked.

  “It was just a thought.”

  They were all still jumpy. No one knew what to make of what they just witnessed.

  The operator raise her hand.

  “Ask your question Mackenzie, you’re not in school,” the captain snapped. “Sorry. That was out of line. It’s just stress.”

  She hadn’t taken her eyes off her screen. They were still tched there as if she expected whatever it was to suddenly reappear. “Did it nd, or is it hovering out there somewhere?”

  The captain wiped the sweat from his face. He needed to change his shirt. He was lucky he didn’t need to change more than that.

  “I need to report this up the chain,” he said as he turned back towards his desk.

  “We should have raised that lever and then jammed it so they couldn’t lower it again,” Paul said as they raced towards the four B-52 strategic bombers that sat in a long line under bright lights.

  “We lost enough time just getting the thing lowered. But it would have been nice if we’d known,” Jorge answered.

  Paul smiled. “Maybe they’ll have as much trouble as we had.”

  The air was suddenly filled with a rhythmic wailing sound. They could hear it even in the concrete wastend they were racing across.

  “Is that for us?” Paul asked.

  “How many groups do think are attacking this air base right now?” Jorge asked

  “I just wondered why it took them so long to use it.”

  It was nerves talking. Jorge knew that. It meant nothing except an excess of adrenaline looking for an outlet. And a mind trying to distract itself for a few more minutes before bullets began flying.

  “Maybe they couldn’t figure out how to unlock it?”

  The six men in the back of the truck had no idea what was so funny about their situation to elicit so much ughter from up front.

  Aric hovered as he scanned the humongous air base. He’d expanded his senses which had almost immediately proved to be a mistake. The level of psychic noise almost overwhelmed him, and he was certain that when this was all over he’d pay for it with a massive headache that no amount of healing could abate.

  His mind raced as he tried to narrow his search. Why attack an air base rather than another barracks or Army base? What was it that drew them here?

  Aircraft. Bombers. Nukes. The 5th Bomber Wing from Minot taking part in REFORGER.

  Aric gained altitude for a better view of the entire base. He ignored the poputed areas, the ones that would be responsible for his future migraine, focused on the rge area to the north, empty of buildings and devoid of minds broadcasting turbulent emotions.

  Almost empty.

  He was still too far away to discern individual minds. It didn’t matter. By the time he was close enough his eyes and ears would be enough. He dropped like a rock before increasing speed and leveling off. From then on his course was clearly marked by a dozen vehicles—some with fshing lights—heading in the same direction as he was. He would get there first. That wasn’t in question. What wasn’t clear was whether he could mop this up and get away before they showed up.

  He figured he had three minutes to do it.

  Four bombers. Four fuel trucks.

  The Americans didn’t leave anything to chance. All attempts to poison the fuel—hoping the engines would die mid-flight and plunge the bombers and their weapons of mass destruction to fiery deaths—had failed. The fuel was tested before it went into the tanker. It was tested again before it went into the pne. And it was guarded nonstop in between. The bombers were never out of sight of two guards unless they were in the air.

  The math had seemed simple. They were outnumbered two to one. But like some strange quadratic equation, the situation was more complicated.

  They had grenades. But to use them to blow up the tankers, they’d need to be close enough to hit them—yet far enough away to avoid being caught in the explosion. Each tanker was rge enough to damage the bomber and kill or injure the men guarding it. Ft Top and Big Ears had been training relentlessly over the past few weeks for this exact task. It was their job to lob an American M67 grenade thirty meters and hit the side of the tanker. The time it took to traverse that distance meant the grenade would explode just as it struck the metal.

  Jorge doubted they could destroy more than two bombers before reinforcements forced them to retreat.

  “Thirty seconds!” he called to the men in the back. “Hang on!”

  Paul gave him a final gnce. “Here goes nothing,” he said, and braked hard. He turned at the st second so the truck’s engine compartment pointed slightly away from the pne and the fuel tanker—and from the men now prone on the tarmac, aiming their weapons at them.

  They’re still confused, Jorge thought as he crawled out of the driver’s side door. They might still think we’re Americans.

  “They’re still confused by our uniforms and the truck,” Paul said, as the six men climbed over the tailgate and assembled on the sheltered side.

  “They won’t be in a few seconds,” Ft Top said, grabbing a grenade and pulling the pin. “Assuming they’re still alive. Covering fire!”

  Four of the men took positions and opened fire on the American guards as Ft Top stepped out from behind the truck. He reached back, then flung the grenade in a motion he’d practiced a thousand times. The handle popped free as the body arced through the air. It hit the side of the tanker dead center.

  “GRENADE!” one of the Americans shouted.

  The men ducked behind the truck, mouths open, ears covered—ready for a shock wave that could rupture eardrums at this distance.

  Instead, Paul peeked out and saw a puddle of jet fuel forming under the tanker, leaking from at least three holes gouged by fragments.

  “Why didn’t the tanker explode?” he asked. “They always explode in the movies.”

  Jorge shook his head. “I’ll write a strongly worded letter to Hollywood when we get home.”

  The Americans were clearly no longer confused. The truck was being peppered by rifle fire—first from the guards at bomber one, then from the better-positioned marksmen at bomber two. They were pinned behind the truck now, and fshing lights were already visible back along the route they’d taken.

  The puddle of jet fuel continued to spread.

  “Try another grenade!” Jorge shouted to the man beside him.

  “How? We’re pinned down!”

  Jorge calcuted quickly. “Two and two,” he said, pointing. “You two—suppressing fire on bomber two. You two—prone under the truck, engage bomber one.”

  Then to Ft Top: “Be ready.”

  The man nodded. “I will be.”

  “Covering fire!” Jorge shouted.

  The four men opened up with bursts of AK-47 fire. Jorge stood and added his own, exposing himself over the truck’s hood. It took only seconds for the American fire to go silent—just long enough.

  Ft Top didn’t hesitate. He pulled the pin, stepped clear of the truck, and repeated the throw almost exactly.

  The grenade sailed high. The men crouched behind the truck—mouths open, ears covered.

  But nothing happened. The small popping noise of Ft Top’s second grenade detonating high above them was masked by the eruption of American gunfire.

  Paul was about to ask what happened when something hit him like a freight train. He smmed into the side of the truck and crumpled to the ground, unconscious before he finished falling.

  If he’d still been conscious, he might have noticed the same thing had happened to the rest of the team.

  Aric had arrived—with thirty seconds to spare.

  2:00 PM — 23 March, 1979 — Near Mannheim, West Germany

  The ndscape passed by like a slow moving blur. The rattle of the train’s wheels over the rails that guided them added a rocking motion to the scene that she barely noticed.

  The strangest detail about the whole of yesterday was that she felt worse about taking the money and clothes than anything else.

  It wasn’t like Sabine was really friends with any of them, certainly not the doctor’s wife. They were Americans, for Christ’s sake. Members of the U.S. Army. The people she was fighting. The ones she was supposed to hate. OK—the wife was from Puerto Rico, an isnd that had its own grievances with the US government, and a civilian. Maybe not the enemy. Did that make it worse that she’d stolen from her?

  And sure—she’d had a good time, and enjoyed their company, possibly as a reaction to stress. Or the sudden absence of it. She’d been wound like a spring for weeks. And like anything too tightly wrapped she’d snapped. Her fear when the MPs found her—the shakes, the stammering—had been real. She barely remembered how she got over the fence. Most of her memories from the night before were of Rodney.

  Sensing that she was nervous he’d been gentle. But she heated up quickly, and she was sure that the others could hear the two of them. They’d fallen asleep soon afterwards. She woke up a few hours ter to a quiet apartment. People asleep everywhere. She picked some clothes from a undry basket. Took some money from the doctor’s wallet by the front door. Wadded up her uniform and wrapping it in the web belt that had suspended her at the top of the fence for a few seconds when it got caught during her escape. She waited until she was out of the apartment to put on her army boots. She tossed the olive drab bundle in the rge dumpster outside the building.

  It was 6:00 AM. She waved down a taxi.

  “Wo wollen Sie hin?” the man had asked. Where are you headed?

  “Ecke Karl-G?tz-Stra?e und Adolf-Ley-Stra?e. Kennen Sie es?” The corner of Ecke Karl-G?tz-Stra?e and Adolf-Ley-Stra?e. Do you know it?

  The man nodded. “Ich wei? es. Ich dachte, sie sei geschlossen.” I know it. I thought it was closed.

  She made up a story about it being redeveloped but didn’t go into details. The driver sipped his coffee and lost interest. He looked like his night had been as rough as hers.

  She hadn’t bother changing into her own clothes, she just picked up her backpack and began walking down Willi-Kaidel-Stra?e. She stopped briefly at the dead drop where she’d hidden her wallet and passport and then continued walking until she arrived at a pce serving breakfast. When she was half way done she asked the woman behind the counter to call her a taxi. Thirty minutes ter she was at the train station.

  The train rumbled rhythmically—deliberately—south. It would take a while before she reached her destination. She’d been more interested in leaving Schweinfurt quickly than swiftly. As a result she was on the milk run, stopping at almost every station it passed. But she was away. Free. She’d tell her Gro?mutter that her boyfriend had kicked her out. Or maybe that he’d hit her. She had the scratches. She might as well get some use out of them.

  Then she would see where life took her.