nuclear-tipped missiles is thwarted. The failed nuclear attack forces the US to launch Operation Counterweight - a concerted strike on enemy facilities in France and Germany proper. A B-52 raid levels French resupply facilities in Metz while a surgical strike destroys France's S3 IRBM silos in the Plateau d'Albion, Vaucluse. Some EurCon planes in the Polish front are sent home for local defense. Behind the scenes, the French seeks Russian intervention against the anti-EurCon forces, which are fighting delaying actions to buy time for the American troops disembarking in Gdańsk. CIA operatives make contact with loyalist Russian officers and learn that the EurCon-Russia treaty will both lead to a massive Russian invasion of Europe and French support for an ultra-nationalist plan for Russia to forcibly re-create the Eastern Bloc; the CIA agents are shocked when the lead loyalist officer bluntly says that the treaty can be killed off by wiping out the top conspirators before they can send enforcement orders from Moscow. Although the negotiations are complete, the assassination team successfully eliminates emissaries from both sides before the orders are transmitted. The Russian President is also rescued and Russian forces assembling at the Polish frontier waiting for the attack signal are ordered to withdraw instead. The EurCon offensive is finally stopped when elements of the US 101st Airborne Division hold the line in a wooded area near the town of Swiecie in time for other US armored units to reinforce them. Angered at the lack of reconnaissance of the US lines, French commanders consider redirecting part of the other EurCon forces in Hungary to join the push north. A German colonel already angry at the French holding back their troops while German forces are left to die as cannon fodder leads fellow troops in deserting the French. The Germans fight off a French attack on their command post. Word of the attack and the revelations about the Franco-Russian negotiations leads Germany to sever their ties with EurCon; the German chancellor who negotiated the country's membership is forced to resign. With US assistance, Belgium and the Netherlands declare war on France, which finds itself bereft of allies when the other EurCon member-states desert as well. The French Fifth Republic also falls; French President Nicolas Desaix, who engineered the establishment of EurCon, is arrested and petty thugs hired by the DGSE kill him in his cell. The murder prompts the newly established