The Fall of Night

Chapter Sixteen: I Told You So!

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.”

They rounded a corner and came face to face with a scene from hell. Cars, dozens of cars, were smashed and broken by the force of a blast, used as barricades by desperate European soldiers, fighting against hordes of young teenage men, screaming insults and obscenities in Arabic. Fanaroff hadn’t seen anything like it since Iran; there was a savage glory surrounding the entire desperate fight. The young men seemed completely heedless of their own personal safety; they charged at the Europeans, spraying bullets from AK-47s and launching RPG shells from insanely close range.

“No,” Fanaroff said. His lips twitched as he ducked back. “Perhaps we should go the other way.”

The entire area had been designed to be a celebration of Belgium’s culture, or so he had been told; privately, he wondered if that meant that the natives had no culture, or had stolen it from everyone else. It had been strange and very tasteless, in its way; one artwork that had hardly deserved the name had been a model constructed out of frozen human shit. The commentary from nationalists in Belgium had been bitter; not a single ‘real’ native had had an artwork accepted. There was a moral in that, somewhere…

“Stop,” a voice snapped. Fanaroff glanced ahead; two youths were bearing down on them, lifting AK-47s. He would never forget what the AK-47 looked like; the entire Middle East was awash with them, manufactured everywhere from Saddam’s palaces to caves in the darkest reaches of Afghanistan. The Europeans would use the German-designed Eurorifle; the youths had to be unfriendly. “Stop and…”

Fanaroff shot the leader through the head; the young man collapsed to the ground, with half of his head blown clean off. Saundra dispatched the second one, sending him screaming into the next world. His insane giggle suggested that he was hyped up on something, perhaps one of the drugs that some Islamic fighters had been known to take before going into battle. Neither of them had been wearing body armour, nor had they shown tactical sense; something didn’t quite add up.

“Guard us,” he muttered. If the youths had friends, the shots would bring them running. He checked through the bodies quickly, removing wallets and two ethnic entitlement cards, both written in Arabic, rather than English or any other European language. That meant something, but he had forgotten what; the European Parliament had passed a ruling about native languages two years ago when it came to ID cards. There was nothing to suggest that they were soldiers, just some additional bullets for their weapons and one mobile phone, broken.

“Take the rifle,” he said. It had been a long time since he had used an AK-47, but his body had refused to forget; it had once been a survival skill in Iran. He had been holed up in a flat and had had to use enemy weapons to last the night. He hoisted the other weapon onto his shoulder and waited for her to finish before starting the long walk back towards the embassy. “I think that we’re in the middle of a riot.”

“No shit,” Saundra said. “I would never have noticed.”

“Just don’t let them take you alive,” Fanaroff warned. “There is a fate worse than death.”

The side-streets of Brussels were deserted. Fanaroff hoped that that meant that the population was inside, hiding behind locked doors; he suspected that it actually meant that most of the population was joining in the rioting. If rioting it was… there was something organised about the attack, rather like insurgencies had been organised in the Middle East. The Mullahs and other clerics had used young men as cannon-fodder; they had run their groups like criminal gangs and taken a cut from the loot. The young men had often proven impossible to control, but… so what? It wasn't the Mullahs who suffered — or, at least, it hadn’t been until the last President had signed the Sanction Protocols into effect.

He could hear it, though; the endless drumming of the guns. Some guns were constant, well-known; AK-47s and the handful of knock-off versions that had come out of China and a dozen other countries. Others were larger and more regular, more professional; he wondered just who was firing those weapons… and what they were firing at. A light in the air caught his attention and he saw the trail of a SAM rising up to strike a target he couldn’t see; moments later, there were two explosions in quick succession.

“Shit,” Saundra hissed. She had tripped over a body; it was a policeman, one with light dark skin. He had been garrotted; something rare in Belgium… and his trousers had been torn down. Fanaroff felt sick; someone had taken a knife to his penis and severed it from his groin. Fanaroff could almost read the story; the young policeman had defied his culture and people to try to make a difference on the streets as a policeman… and had paid the ultimate price. “Sir… how do we reason with these people?”

“You don’t,” Fanaroff said. It was impossible to reason with barbarians; you could only defend yourself and hope that they would grow out of it. He held up a hand. “Quiet!”

He’d sensed them before he saw them, a line of people, dressed in civilian clothes, but wearing body armour under their clothes. They didn’t look Muslim, he realised; many of them were paler than he himself was, and they moved as if they knew what they were doing. Arabs made bad soldiers, in his opinion; the only decent ones he’d met had been Kurdish warriors before the Turks had set out to kill them all. The insurgents might have had a certain honesty, unlike so many Arab civilians he had met, but they were hardly professional soldiers. None of them would have gotten through Hell Week without being kicked out in disgrace.

The newcomers were professionals… and it struck him, suddenly, just what was going on. The coordination, the weapons, the perfectly targeted attacks… and now commandos. Only one power could do that and have motivation… the Russians. They had been angry at the Europeans, they could be fairly certain that the United States would not interfere… and they had been making vast military moves. He had thought, CIA had thought, DIA had thought, that the Russians had only been planning to snatch the Ukraine, but then, the Russians were masters at counter-espionage. They had even made Iran far more dangerous by teaching them how to fool spy satellites and probing sensors from the west.

He thought, briefly, about surrendering. If the Russians had really decided to go medieval on Europe’s collective arse, they wouldn’t want to piss off the United States by shooting two military officers out of hand. He dismissed the thought within seconds; the Russians were much more likely to shoot them and swear blind that it was an accident, or disarm them and leave them handcuffed until they returned. Either way, it was not going to be a pleasant trip back to the States.

The Russians slipped out of sight. He shook his head as Saundra lifted her rifle, instead leading her down the alley back towards the embassy. The noise of the guns was getting louder and he realised, suddenly, that the embassy was under attack. The new building had been designed with security in mind, but if the entire city had fallen into chaos, then what would happen to the defenders when they ran out of weapons? He nodded towards a fire escape and scrambled up the side of the building, meeting only a pair of frightened eyes at a window, as he reached the roof.

He froze. There were two men there, firing down towards the Embassy square. He pulled his pistol out and shot them both quickly, in the back, watching dispassionately as their bodies fell down towards the ground. A third body lay on the roof, quite dead; he showed every sign of committing suicide by sniper. The insurgents had never grasped just how good American snipers actually were; it was amazing what could be done with modern technology and deadly intent. He kept low, knowing that the Marine sniper — if he was still alive — would have no way to know that he was friendly, and peered carefully over the edge.

“Oh, shit,” he breathed.

The entire row of embassies was under attack. Terrorists, fighters, insurgents, whatever they were… they had all taken over some of the nearby buildings and were using them to fire down into the diplomatic establishments. The American flag was burning; he could see fires flickering in and out of the building as the terrorists concentrated their fire on the Americans. The marines were returning fire with enthusiasm, but Fanaroff could see that the situation was hopeless; the insurgents had mortars and were preparing to start blasting the Americans out of their embassy. The Mexican and Japanese embassies were burning completely; a Japanese girl, half-naked, was being chased around in circles by a group of laughing young men. The Turks…

Fanaroff felt sick, again. There was a large Palestinian population in Brussels, one that campaigned relentlessly for a return to Palestine and the extermination of Israel and America… and Turkey. No Arab would forget that the Turks represented a threat on more grounds than one; not only were they the most loyal allies that Israel had, but they were also an ideological threat. As Muslims, the Turks represented a different call on young Muslim men, one that offered an alternative to that preached by fundamentalists. There could be no mercy… and none had been shown; the male Turkish embassy staff had been crucified. The women…

He looked around, to try to avoid the sight, and saw flames rising up from the harbour. There had been a strike, he remembered; the Russian Gazprom Corporation had had some of its people demanding extra pay before they unloaded the vast quantities of LNG they carried. He cursed under his breath; it seemed hopeless. The chaos couldn’t go on forever, but while it did, escaping the city would prove difficult.

Fanaroff pulled himself back and scrambled down the ladder, holding his pistol in one hand. Saundra glanced up in relief; he explained in a few quick words what had happened and what they were going to do. She didn’t argue, although she was obviously ashamed at leaving their friends behind; Fanaroff knew that there was nothing they could do for the people in the embassy now.

“They won’t have done all of this in isolation,” Fanaroff muttered, as they ran. “They’ll have done something to the bases in Belgium and perhaps France and Germany as well… shit, if they have half the radicals up in arms, they’ll have the entire continent ablaze.”

A distant explosion underlined his words. “We need to find safety and report in,” he said. “Have you ever been to the red light district?”

Saundra gaped at him. “Sir?”

There was another brief rattle of gunpowder, and then a large explosion; Fanaroff wondered if the Marines had blown up the embassy rather than let the American staff be torn apart by… well, whatever the hell they were. He knew more about the military situation than Saundra; she could hope that Uncle Sam would save them, but Fanaroff knew better. The United States was fully committed to Korea and the Middle East… and was no longer in the habit of helping Europe to dig itself out of a hole.

“They brought this on themselves anyway,” he muttered. “I went with a guy called Lombardi; God knows what’s happened to him. There are plenty of whorehouses that will give a fellow board and lodgings for the night if he has a girl with him; I think it actually has something to do with Arabic boys, girls, and the reaction of their families if they were caught together.”

He smiled. “Don’t worry, you’re perfectly safe with me,” he said. Insanely, he felt better than he had in years. “All you have to do is pretend to be my lover.”

Saundra laughed. “I draw the line at faking orgasms,” she said. Somewhere along the line, the differences in rank had vanished; shared experiences did that in the best of units. “I’ll just simper and say ‘honey’ a lot.”

“As long as it’s convincing,” Fanaroff said. They passed a set of hastily boarded-up shops; the owners were hiding from the people who had once been their customers. Fanaroff didn’t give much for their chances; as soon as the embassies fell, the mob would have lost its focus and would come looking for another one. “I think we’re going to have to hide until we get back in touch with home.”