Final impact

“Of course, not everyone I killed was armed. Not everyone had evil intentions. Some were innocents. And I can only imagine the ocean of blood on my hands. How many thousands have I killed by directing bombers onto their cities and towns? I have no idea. None at all. But the dead are many. And tonight, in a few hours, I will add to that toll. I regret that. When I allow myself to think about it, about babies burned in their mothers’ arms, about children irradiated and dying over the course of days and weeks, I feel physically ill. Tonight I will help to kill hundreds of thousands of people, old and young, innocent and guilty. I will not sort them, I will just kill them one and all. And I will regret that through all of my days. But it is my duty. War is an unmitigated evil, and so tonight I will do great evil. But I will do it hoping that something even worse is brought to an end because of it.”

Julia looked up from her notepad and expected to find a tear tracking down Halabi’s cheek. But there was none. Her eyes were hard and clear and utterly devoid of sorrow.

D-DAY + 41. 13 JUNE 1944. 2310 HOURS (LOCAL TIME).

OVER BERLIN.

They came in on a heading determined by the quantum arrays of HMS Trident, their progress tracked by two of the stealth destroyer’s Big Eye drones.

“One minute to release, Colonel Llewellyn.”

Well, that was a surprise.

The voice of the air controller on the British trimaran was American. A Texan to be sure. Llewellyn could only wonder how he’d ended up there.

“Warheads armed.”

“The Sabers have reached a safe distance, Colonel.”

She grunted. The fighters had to put a lot of space between themselves and the blast, lest they get swatted from the sky like bugs.

“Looks like we’re on our own, boys. Let’s light ’em up.”

She tried to keep her tone light, but the enormity of what they were about to do could not be denied. The German capital was blacked out, but was everywhere lit by fire. Pathfinders had ringed the center of the metropolis with incendiaries. Not that she needed it, with the Trident guiding her in. But if that link failed for whatever reason, it was good to know that they could still find the target with their own eyes.

“Twenty seconds to release.”

Llewellyn held the giant bomber steady at it operational ceiling of fifteen thousand meters. It took a surprising amount of physical strength to control a B-52, and she’d had to put a lot of extra time in at the gym. Her arms looked much bigger than they had been a year ago. German flak arced up out of the conflagration below, long golden lines of fire seeming to leap away from the open furnace over which they flew. Shells burst harmlessly far below her. The decoy planes had not been needed. There were no German fighters aloft.

The bomb bay door whirred open.

“Trident has us dead on course,” her navigator reported.

“Ten seconds.”

“All systems check out green.”

“Eight, seven, six…”

How many people slept beneath her wings tonight? How many were good? And how many evil? Would God protect the virtuous and the meek?

“Three, two, one. Release.”

No. God would not.

D-DAY + 41. 13 JUNE 1944. 2310 HOURS (LOCAL TIME).

BERLIN.

It was a quiet night, as far as these things went nowadays. The RAF and their American cousins seemed to be giving the citizens of Berlin a brief rest from the terrors of all night bombing. A medium-sized raid had dropped incendiaries a short time ago but the Allies had not followed up like they had at Dresden.

Riding in the back of his Mercedes, feverish with lack of sleep, Himmler had no doubt they were already thinking of the next war, against Stalin. By way of contrast he could only contemplate the end of this war, which was surely days away. Or weeks at best. The briefing had not gone well. His instructions to speak the truth had liberated the high command to be completely frank about the utter impossibility of effecting any kind of reverse to the Reich’s military situation. One by one, his generals explained why defeat was inevitable. He had not screamed at them. He had not accused them of defeatism or threatened anyone with execution for bearing unwanted news. He had ordered all the nonexistent units in Western Europe removed from the map table, a task that could have been accomplished with one dramatic sweep of his hand. Instead General Zeitzler had plucked the little wooden blocks off one by one. There was nothing left between them and the Allies in the west.

Why had they not listened to his offer? Why had they been so stupid in the face of the obvious? Now they would have to face the Bolsheviks alone, having done their utmost to cripple the best defense Western civilization had against the subhuman armies massing at the gates of Europe.