Grudge: Operation Highjump Read online

  He plugged a cable into his helmet that would allow him to speak to the members of his squadron and began the startup procedure. A yellowed, handwritten checklist was affixed beside the display and he smiled. He’d written those notes before he was frozen and used them during his simulator training. Somehow, one of the technicians had found it in his post-thaw folder and placed it inside his cockpit.

  Berndt followed the list down to the radio check and called in, “This is Oberleutnant Fischer, call sign Vengeance Nineteen.”

  “Düsenjäger Command acknowledges your radio check, Vengeance Nineteen. Continue through your startup procedures. Do not activate your düsen’s engines until your squadron commander orders. Understood?”

  “Understood,” he replied and continued following his written instructions.

  He counted seventy check-ins over the radio until the commander came on and told the Vengeance Squadron to initiate engine start. He punched the button and the craft roared to life around him, vibrating slightly against the retaining clasps.

  Then out of his periphery, he saw the other düsenjägers being released one by one, beginning at the fighters nearest the opening. When his turn came, the retaining clasp opened and his craft hovered midair. Using the display screen, he maneuvered away from the düsen behind him and then rotated so he was horizontal.

  The cargo hold opening loomed brightly, growing larger as he eased the fighter toward the open sky. A ripple of excitement tingled his skin. Berndt had never flown outside of the hangars in Argus Base.

  Once he was beyond the opening, the sun shone brightly above him and the wide expanse of the sky beckoned him to explore for the briefest of moments. Then he fell into formation and the shadows of thousands of düsenjägers blotted out the heavens above.

  *****

  04 July 2025

  Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport, Washington, DC

  “Excuse me,” Gloria called to the baggage attendant, who glanced her way and then scurried behind a door as if he hadn’t seen her. “Hmpf,” she grumbled and pulled her suitcase the rest of the way to the counter.

  She’d had a hell of a trip on the Metro to make it to the airport after a nasty fight with James. He was furious that she’d been told the previous evening that she’d be going to Europe today, on Independence Day, traveling over the three-day weekend for a conference with the Belgian government, which had announced their desire to permanently close the Henri-Chapelle American Cemetery on Wednesday. He was so mad that he went into the office today, a federal holiday, refusing to say much more than, “I love you,” and, “See you next week.”

  Gloria didn’t like it any better than he did. She felt like shit, already more than twenty-five pounds heavier than she was at the beginning of her pregnancy, and she had to wear a uniform top that made her look like she was auditioning for a job at the circus—as the tent. It wasn’t ideal for her to travel across the Atlantic, but at the end of the day, she was a soldier, and she was currently the US Government’s most experienced military historian. So, it was off to Europe for a few days.

  She checked herself in at the airline kiosk and gladly handed over her suitcase to the attendant, who weighed it and then threw it onto a conveyor belt behind her. “Oh! Be careful, my uniform…”

  “Ma’am, that bag is gonna go through a whole lot worse down with the baggage handlers,” the attendant sighed. “Do you need me to stop the belt so you can repack your bag?”

  “I—ah, no,” she answered. Her uniform would get wrinkled anywhere she put it inside the suitcase, so she’d just have to do the old shower steam in the bathroom trick once she checked in to her hotel in Brussels. “Thank you, though.”

  “Mmm hmm, sure. Gate thirty-six,” the airline attendant said, handing Gloria her boarding pass. “Security is off to my right, your left.”

  She took the tickets and thanked the attendant once more. She negotiated security quickly until she went through the scanner. The male TSA agent told her that she’d been selected for a random screening. She had to wait until a female screener finished with another passenger, which took much longer than anticipated.

  After a few nervous remarks about the size of her stomach, Gloria got patted down and was allowed to pass through the security area to collect her purse and carryon. Then she made her way through the terminal toward her gate.

  As she walked along, several large shapes darted past the windows on the runway side to her right. What was—

  She didn’t finish her thought because the two planes immediately outside the window exploded. Pieces of shrapnel shattered the glass, literally scaring the piss out of her since the baby pressed against her bladder.

  Miraculously, she was uninjured by the flying debris, but people were already beginning to panic and she needed to get out of the walkway. She glanced around, assessing her options rapidly, making the decision to move to the far side of the railing, away from the windows and hopefully far enough out of the way that she wouldn’t get trampled. Getting crushed under the feet of a thousand panicked travelers wasn’t high on her list of priorities for the day.

  She turned to move and then cried out in pain, clutching at her lower back. She’d twisted it awkwardly when she turned away from the glass. “Dammit,” she cursed and hobbled to the railing to get out of the way.

  Travelers streamed steadily past her location, surprisingly calm as the minutes stretched by. Gloria began to relax, stretching her back as best she could with her growing stomach. Surely her mind had played tricks on her with the objects speeding by before the explosion. It was probably birds. There were perfectly mundane explanations as to why the planes blew up, like a spark during refueling or the catastrophic failure of a part in the engine.

  She even began to chuckle at her own wariness. She and James worked too much, they needed to take a break from planning for the return of whomever had attacked Florida five years ago. Someone else could manage it for a few weeks while they soaked up the sun in the Caribbean and drank piña coladas. Well, virgin piña coladas anyway.

  The terminal was buzzing with passengers talking excitedly about the explosions and Gloria decided it was time for her to make her way to the gate. She’d take her directions from the airport personnel there.

  Then the alarm bells began to blare across the terminal and red strobe lights set into the ceiling flashed in warning.

  Gloria instinctively looked to the broken windows. Beyond the immediate wreckage and firefighting crews, a large, fat airliner was on final approach. Two saucer-shaped objects appeared behind it, zipping in from somewhere beyond her line of sight. They hovered perfectly still behind the jet. Small puffs of smoke came from each of the saucers and Gloria realized they were shooting.

  A massive fireball engulfed the back of the plane. For one, awful second, Gloria thought they would continue their approach and land. Then the nose of the airliner pitched forward, causing the fuselage to tear apart midair. They were close enough that she could see individual people flying through the air, their bodies still traveling at the speed the plane had been going before the explosion.

  They were under attack.

  Screams of panic reverberated across the terminal and Gloria pressed against the railing near a small kiosk selling cell phone accessories. The crowd sped by her, crushing slower people and the elderly underfoot. Over the heads of the crowd, she saw four massive, white cargo planes lined up to land on the runway, impossibly close to one another. They hadn’t been there a few seconds ago.

  The cargo planes passed below her line of sight as more of them appeared on the horizon. They were far away, somewhere over the city, but long lines of parachutes appeared behind them as they disgorged their paratroopers for the rapid attack. She’d studied the airborne operations of World War Two; the key to a successful parachute drop, besides accuracy, was overwhelming numbers that could eliminate local resistance piecemeal.

  The enemy certainly had the overwhelming numbers on their side.

&nbs
p; Across the river, a large, fiery cloud rose skyward as the US Capitol building, standing above all at the highest point in the city, was incinerated. Multiple explosions followed closely on the heels of the first.

  Gloria searched for a way out of the airport before the soldiers from the landing cargo planes made their way inside the building to begin their indiscriminate killings. Nothing presented itself immediately, but the stream of people fleeing had slowed down, so she pushed away from the railing painfully, ignoring the hitch in her step from her twisted back.

  She pushed her way through the crowd of people trying to make it to the Metro and went down to baggage claim. It was a madhouse as well; however, most of the passengers seemed content to wait inside the building. She knew better and did her best to slip in between the press of bodies, groaning in pain as she was jostled, bumped, and prodded. At some point, her carryon fell from her shoulder. She left it.

  Finally, she emerged through the doors into the passenger pick up area. There weren’t any taxis waiting, they’d already left. Without thinking, she turned toward the city and started walking. She knew from her years in the city that the Mount Vernon Trail, a wide, paved jogging and bicycling trail, picked up right outside the airport.

  If she was lucky, she could get a cab somewhere along the trail. If not, thank God she wore tennis shoes for traveling; it was six miles to the safety of her home in Dupont Circle.

  *****

  04 July 2025

  Andrews Air Force Base, Maryland

  “Sir, we’re detecting multiple unknown entities at twelve miles out. They’re moving at a sustained rate of Mach 4!”

  Colonel Nguyen turned to the White House Communications liaison officer, who was already making the call to the Secret Service. He looked over to the row of radio operators and shouted, “Airman, alert the air defense batteries in Washington.” He jabbed a finger at a new female airman he hadn’t gotten the opportunity to talk with yet. “You. Yeah, you. Get me General Wilson, now!”

  “He’s at a retirement ceremony, sir,” the radio tech replied.

  “Then get General Beckinsworth,” the colonel growled.

  “Roger, sir.”

  “Sir! The National Guard unit in DC has been alerted,” the first airman called out. “Reports of an attack at Reagan National.”

  “Status?” Nguyen demanded of the radar operator.

  “Fast-movers are now five miles from DC.”

  “Too fast…” the officer muttered. “Too damn fast. Did you get General Beckinsworth?”

  “No one is answering in her office, sir,” the woman replied.

  “Fuck it,” Nguyen said. “Lieutenant Healy, scramble the Raptors.”

  “Yes, sir,” the lieutenant replied and picked up a phone.

  Nguyen leaned heavily against the desktop. He’d just given the order to launch armed fighter jets over the nation’s capital. If he was wrong, then his career was over. If he wasn’t, then maybe he gave people a fighting chance.

  “Fast movers are one mile from the White House,” the radar tech shouted.

  “Satellite, what do you see?”

  “Nothing, sir. They’re moving too fast to register more than a streak on camera. Given the refresh rate—”

  Nguyen stopped listening. He didn’t care about satellite image refresh rates. The giant screens on the walls showed hundreds of illuminated blips streaking across the National Capitol Region at impossibly fast rates. They had to have been missiles; there was no way an aircraft could move that fast at low altitude.

  Phones began ringing on every desk in the command center and his men did their best to answer them, but it was too much. There were too many requests for information coming in at the same time.

  “Sir! Explosions reported in DC,” someone shouted from several rows behind him. Nearly simultaneously, the thumping sound of nearby explosions echoed through the hardened walls of the command center.

  “Goddammit, Satellite. Show me what you’ve got!” the colonel ordered.

  The radar picture changed to an overhead view of Washington, DC. At the far southeast of the image, several blurred lines indicated the fast movers.

  “Sir! We’ve lost all four of the Raptors on the ground,” Lieutenant Healy stated. “They didn’t even make it into the air.”

  The lieutenant’s words reached Colonel Nguyen’s brain, but he failed to comprehend what was said. Instead, he recoiled in shock at the images displayed on the wall in front of him.

  The satellite’s refresh rate was only ten seconds, but each subsequent refresh showed more columns of fire and plumes of smoke rising into the air above the capitol.

  “The White House… It’s gone,” he mumbled.

  Colonel Nguyen was dimly aware of a whooshing sound before the room around him exploded.

  ELEVEN

  04 July 2025

  Crystal City, Arlington, Virginia

  “Holy shit!” James exclaimed as he shoved his chair backward from the desk.

  “What was that?” Major Leeland demanded, emerging from his office for the first time that James could remember. Since he’d been assigned to the Joint North American Defense Branch in April, the rotund officer sat in his office playing solitaire on the computer all day. The assignment of a major to head the branch, two ranks below the required colonel, had been the final nail in the coffin by the Pentagon leadership.

  “There was an explosion on the other side of the river!” he shouted. “It’s over near where the Independence Day concerts are set up.”

  “An explosion? What kind of—”

  The horizon lit up with more gouts of flame as several explosions occurred simultaneously near Capitol Hill.

  “That was the Capitol,” James muttered. “We’re under attack. We need to initiate the North American Defense action plan.”

  “Now hold on, James. I’m not about to lose my career by activating all of those units and starting a panic. That could have been a gas line explosion or…or anything.”

  The windows in their tenth floor office space rattled as the shockwaves from the blasts across the Potomac hit them. More explosions erupted across James’ field of view through the windows and fat, white cargo planes appeared. They began disgorging hundreds of paratroopers, directly over the city.

  Some type of jet sped along the river, faster than his eyes could make out. A few seconds later massive explosions nearby told him that the Pentagon probably got hit. He said a quick prayer for Gloria and their unborn child at the airport. James had a moment of hope that her plane had already left, but she wasn’t scheduled to leave for another couple of hours.

  He whirled on the piece of shit that the Pentagon assignment officers had stuck him with. “Don’t you get it?” James shouted. “This branch was designed specifically for this reason. We can go around all of that bureaucracy. You won’t lose your job if you’re acting in response to an attack. There are Air Force units twelve minutes away that are on the tarmac, ready to go. They just need to know what’s happening and they’ll get airborne.”

  “This is… I can’t make those decisions,” Tom Leeland wailed. “I lied about my experience. I never left the FOB when I was in Afghanistan. I was supposed to come over here and wait it out until my mandatory retirement date. I’m not—”

  James didn’t wait to hear what the blubbering officer would say. He rushed into the communications room and jammed his common access card into the reader on a laptop. Two years ago, he’d had a full staff of hard-working individuals; they were all gone now. He was the last civilian, ensuring everything transitioned smoothly over to the Pentagon Joint Operations Center, as the branch shut down due to budget constraints.

  He sent a rapid “all hands” message over the network detailing the devastation that he’d seen outside his window. He hadn’t seen who or what attacked them, but he knew. Gloria had told him all those years ago what to expect. The Nazis were back.

  The first response was from the commander of Naval Air Forces, Atla
ntic. It was a simple, one-word response. “Acknowledged.”

  He stared at the computer screen, trying to determine what that meant. Was the Navy going to get their planes in the air or were they dismissing his instructions like every other branch of government had dismissed the Joint North American Defense Branch after it became marginalized by the new administration?

  James’s body lifted into the air as the deafening sound of an explosion and waves of heat passed over him. He was thrown backward over the desk behind him into the wall. He knew instantly that something wasn’t right as pain flooded his system. His back. Something was wrong with his back.

  Above him, the bright white emergency strobe lights flashed wildly, disorienting him. Dark, oily smoke already clawed its way along the ceiling tile looking for an escape. James tried to push himself up, but the pain in his back was beyond excruciating. Am I crippled? he wondered.

  Groggily, he lifted his head off the floor to look at his feet. Beyond his shoes, he saw several small fires, the lacquered wood desks and padded cubicle walls aflame. Broken glass littered the floor like confetti in Times Square on New Year’s Eve. The world was shrouded in a haze and the ringing in his ears was overwhelming.

  He flexed both ankles and wiggled his toes. He wasn’t crippled, but his back was certainly injured. James ran through a quick self-assessment, using his hands to feel underneath his spine and around his head. Miraculously, he wasn’t trapped under a large piece of furniture or bleeding heavily from any injuries. He knew he had to get out of the burning building so he tried to sit up again.

  The pain exploded across his body. He’d wrenched his back horribly when he hit the wall. It was an injury, but not a life-threatening one. Staying inside the tower was life threatening; he had to leave. He tried to push himself up a third time and again, waves of pain passed through his body, threatening to make him pass out. He tried to focus on the need to escape, but his body wouldn’t obey his commands.