The Third World War

Book One: Armageddon Rising

Christopher Nuttall
http://www.chrishanger.net
http://chrishanger.wordpress.com/
http://www.facebook.com/ChristopherGNuttall

Dear Readers

Armageddon Rising and Trial of Strength were parts one and two of a planned series entitled The Third World War, which was basically an attempt to write about ... the third world war.  (Well, what else?)  <grin>

The series was never completed, for various reasons.  I did have a plan for book three – Last Man Standing – but I never actually finished it.  However, if there is enough interest, I will go back and rewrite the entire series.

Naturally, all of my predictions for the 2010-2018 period have been proven completely wrong.  We should probably be grateful.

Christopher Nuttall

Prologue

The helicopter flew low over the ruined city.

Mohandas Singh, now Prime Minister of India by default, watched as the helicopter flew over what had once been the heart of India.  The greatest men of Indian history, some of them Mughal, some of them British, some of them Indians, had spent time in Delhi; it was an old city in a region of old cities.  Viceroys, Princes, the Nationalists, Hindus, Muslims, Sikhs…all had known that Delhi was the centre of their world.  All of them had been changed by the experience…

And now the city was a blackened ruin.  The helicopter pilot had protested the flight, so close to a known radioactive region, but Singh had overruled him.  He had had to see the devastation with his own eyes, to know the failure of his Ministry…and to know who was, in the end, to blame for the ruins.  The Pakistani nuke had been the cause of the destruction, but there was another, deeper, cause.  Singh knew the cause…and knew that he had failed India.  If he had pushed, would it have been different?

The landmarks, old buildings, towering skyscrapers, had been smashed by the force of the nuclear blast.  Flames had burned through most of the city, a giant firestorm that had ravaged the survivors of the blast wave, and fires were still burning, down below.  The Indian Army had established a cordon around the city, while the fire fighters struggled to prevent the still-burning flames from spreading, but it wasn’t enough.  The destruction of most of Pakistan’s major cities wasn’t enough.  Nothing could ever be enough to make up for the millions who had been slaughtered.

“Prime Minister,” the pilot whispered, “it’s time.”

“I know,” Singh said.  He spent a final moment gazing on the devastation.  “Take us back to the base.”

He had established his provisional seat of government at an air force base, fifty kilometres from Delhi.  The western commenters – and they were in for a shock – had already begun to carp and criticise, as they had about the devastation that had been inflicted on Pakistan…as if ten cities made up for Delhi.  The self-appointed guardians of global morality would be shocked, outraged, to know how the Indian Army was handling Pakistani insurgents…and they would be utterly ruthless to the man who bore the blame for the catastrophe.  Perhaps it would spell the end for them; they would have to come to grips with the fact that they had played their own role in causing the devastation.

Or perhaps he was just dreaming…

Hundreds, perhaps thousands, of refugees were still making their way out of the ruined city.  Women in what had once been brightly coloured saris, men dressed in a strange mixture of traditional and western-style clothes, all of them had suddenly been rendered equal by the attack.  He’d ordered the army to do the best they could for them, but law and order was already starting to break down; he’d ordered looters and rapists to be shot on sight.  So much had been lost; not even partition had cost India so much…and, once again, the blame fell outside India.  Singh closed his eyes and tried to sleep, but there could be no peace, not any longer.

The helicopter landed and a crack NBC team immediately washed it down with cold water, checking for radioactive crumbs of dust on the craft.  He was amused, but unsurprised, to note that the horde of foreign reporters had fallen well back from the craft, before any Indian soldiers could push them back; anyone would think that they thought they were in danger.  Thinning out the herd a bit might have helped the profession, a gruesome display of Darwinian principles in action, but Singh just wanted a moment to compose himself.  There was work to be done.

“Prime Minister?”

He looked up to see General Anjeet Patel, an old friend and older comrade from his army days.  “Yes,” he said, too tired to laugh and joke as they had in the old days.  “What’s happened?”

“We had the toll from Pakistan,” Patel said.  His face betrayed nothing of his emotions.  “We might have killed upwards of thirty million.”

“Good,” Singh said.  The death toll was no surprise to him.  The strikes on Pakistan had been guided as much by a desire for revenge as a desire to ensure – too late – that India could never be threatened again.  “We need not worry about taking care of them.”

Patel bowed.  “The press centre is ready,” he said.  Singh felt his face twisting under the thought.  “They’re waiting for you now.”

The air base had had no real place to hold a press conference, so the officer in charge had finally settled on a parade ground used by the base’s ground defence force.  Singh had been informed that some of the soldiers had seen the rising mushroom cloud and known what it meant; looking down towards the smoking ruins, he could believe it.  The reporters gathered below him, CNN, Fox, the BBC, Al Jazeera…hundreds of press outlets, some of them little more than sheep.  Singh despised them and it showed.

They were looking at him now, wondering what he was going to say, what inanity he was going to use to introduce himself.  Singh allowed the silence to lengthen; there could be no formal ceremony, not now.  Prime Minister Kareed had died in Delhi, along with much of the government; Singh mourned his old friend and sparring partner as much as anything else.  A reporter coughed, another was muttering into a mike; they were growing impatient.  They also knew that they had no choice, but to wait…

“You all know who I am,” Singh said, without preamble.  The reporters seemed to come almost to attention…although a form of ‘attention’ that would have had his old drill sergeant breaking down into tears.  They wouldn’t want to miss a single word.  “You all know what happened here” – he nodded in the direction of the plume of smoke – “and you all know what it means.  For the first time since Hiroshima and Nagasaki, nuclear weapons have been used in anger.  I am forced to inform you that upwards of sixty nuclear warheads have been detonated in the last couple of days.”

There was a hush.  Ten of the warheads, Singh knew, had been Pakistani; three aimed at cities, the others aimed at military bases.  The others had been Indian, a brutal response that had crushed Pakistan back to the Stone Age; Singh himself had given the order to fire.  The death toll that Patel had offered him, he suspected, was an order of magnitude too small.

“What you don’t know is why it happened,” he continued.  “We have all known, ever since we spilt into two countries, that this was going to happen.  We knew, from the nightmare days when terrorists brought down the Twin Towers, that Pakistan was right on the brink of falling to darkness…and we did nothing.  Time and time again, we walked closer and closer to the brink…and we did nothing.”  He leaned forwards.  “This time, we had a plan to destroy the Paki nukes before they were used, a quick mission using the American-designed stealth fighter carrying a small warhead.  We could have ended the war before it had begun!”

That too, he knew, was true.  The Pakistani Army had once been a tough, highly professional force.  The onrush of Islamic fundamentalism had ruined it, turning it into an army of Allah-fearing barbarians who barely knew the right end of a gun to point at the enemy.  As the Islamists moved to secure their control, thousands of refugees had fled to India…and none of their warnings had been heeded.  Absent the nukes, they could have taken on the Pakistani Army and raped it.

“But we did not,” he said, “and now look.  The blood of millions demands to know why we did nothing.  All of you want to know why we did nothing…and I am going to tell you why we did nothing.  We did nothing because President Rupertson of the United States of America told us to do nothing.”

There was a sudden collective intake of breath.  “Yes, we trusted the Americans,” Singh said.  “They told us - President Rupertson told us – that the situation was well in hand.  We knew from their broadcasts” – he glared down at the Al Jazeera reporter – “that they were dangerous; burn half of India, they said…and they have indeed burned half of India, because we trusted the Americans and did nothing!  We will not make that mistake again!”

He stared down into the cameras.  “I have a message for the United States of America,” he said.  There could be no more powerful message than the one he intended to send.  “You have caused this disaster.  You played with fire…but it was not you who got burned.  We will not allow you to use us as pawns again.”  He paused, long enough for another round of photographs.  “You Americans have the Monroe Doctrine, forbidding anyone to act against your interests in the Americas.  We will now implement the Kareed Doctrine, named for the Prime Minister who died because of you.

“We ban you – now – from interfering or manipulating anywhere or anyone within our region,” he said.  “You are not welcome.  You will remove your ships and bases.  You will remove the soldiers who remain in Pakistan’s Northern Territories; that region is our problem now.  You will remove your aid workers and your media.  You will remove all traces of your influence in our sphere of responsibility.  We will no longer have any truck with you.  We will seek to have President Rupertson extradited as a war criminal.  Our alliance, utterly worthless when we needed you help, is over.  We will not interfere in your sphere of influence; you will not interfere in ours.”

He smiled a cold smile.  “And, if you think about defying us on this one,” he concluded, “we will make you hurt as the citizens of Delhi hurt, burned by endless fire.”

He stepped down, ignoring the stunned faces and the handful of nervous questions.  The threat of nuclear war would bring the Americans up short, and there would be time to change everything.  There was too much to do…and too little time to do it in.

“I want you to call the Russian President,” he said, as an aide stepped up to him and saluted smartly.  The Prime Minister could never be alone…and, just for a moment, he appreciated it.  “Tell him…that I think we need to talk.”

Chapter One: Storm Warning

Taipei, Taiwan

“Of course, China has no ambitions upon Taiwan,” Wang Xilai said, as he took his seat.  “It is a complete and total fabrication of the American imperialists.”

The formalities over, he got down to business.  “And who is this young lady you have brought with you?”

“I assume that you are not referring to me,” Kady Jones said, as she sipped her own drink.  The hotel room was private – and discrete – enough for any number of private meetings…such as a meeting between a reporter for the famed Global News Network and one of her most useful sources.  “This is Marya Jadwiga, who’s new to the GNN.”

“Charmed,” Wang said.  He took Marya’s hand and kissed it with every evidence of enjoyment.  He held it a moment longer than strictly necessary and then released her; Kady smiled inwardly at Marya’s reaction.  Wang might act the leech, from time to time, but he was an old-fashioned gentleman at heart.  Marya would meet far more obnoxious gentlemen in her time.  “I could almost believe that you were sisters.”

Kady allowed herself a moment to examine Marya’s blonde looks and smiled.  Both of the reporters were blonde, but there the resemblance ended; Marya was tall and willowy, Kady herself was shorter, but very well built.  Wang’s compliment – and they both knew that there was no real meaning hidden behind the statement – might have been true once, but not now.

“Perhaps older and younger sisters,” Kady allowed, as a waiter entered the room.  Wang took the drink he had ordered and escorted the waiter out, pausing to check that the waiter had not taken the opportunity to drop any number of surveillance devices behind him.  The hotel had hundreds of prominent guests passing through at any time; a blackmailer would have had a field day trying to gather incriminating material.  Not that Wang cared, of course; on the surface, he was merely yet another mainlander from the semi-communist regime, coming to sample the joys of women that could not be enjoyed back in China.  His fellow Chinese would forgive such an indiscretion; they would not forgive the truth.  Or would they?

She narrowed her eyes as Wang chattered about nothing.  Wang’s information had always borne itself out by time; she had yet to catch him in an open lie, or even a half-evasion.  Even so, she knew enough to be careful; Wang’s post as Special Representative to the People of Chinese Taipei – still regarded as an integral part of China, despite nearly seventy years free of the mainland – concealed many sins.  His face, as inscrutable as any stereotype, seemed to mock her; she was still unsure if he was really someone merely out to influence events…or an undercover mouthpiece for Beijing.  The Chinese Government, a founder member of the Pact of Opposition, could have given lessons on being devious to any Machiavellian politician.

“But I confess that the rumbles of more American sales to Australia, to say nothing of the Australian support for East Timor, are starting to worry certain people,” Wang continued, only a slight flicker in his voice betraying an important point.  Pay attention now, kids…this is important.  “The Government thinks that the increased naval patrols are bad enough, but to actually give the Australians much more firepower and the ability to use it to threaten the joint operations in Indonesia…”

“Which is a conquered region, in all, but name,” Kady reminded him dryly.

“No,” Wang said, echoing the party – or Party – line.  It was also the line of the UN, even though the United Nations was little more than a joke these days, and of many governments that would have preferred to have shown more than a little support to the Pact of Opposition.  “It is a region under occupation by Pact forces, under a UN mandate, after the Islamic Government started the mass murder of millions of Chinese present on the islands.  How could we sit back and do nothing?”

He leaned forwards.  “Unlike your government, we actually convinced the UN to allow the police action to go ahead, which unfortunately included a major commitment of ground, sea and air forces from the Pact.  You didn’t bother to ask the UN’s permission to invade Iraq, or to end the Iranian Civil War…and how many of your people feel that our methods are just what the Jihadis need?”

Kady shrugged.  After the Indian Disaster – there really could be no other word for it – the United States had almost staggered out of East Asia.  President Vandergrift had been far ahead of President Rupertson, who had been partly responsible for the disaster, but few in America had wanted to risk a repeat.  When the Indonesians had started to commit mass murder – first on the westerners who had flocked to aid after they had been battered by storms, and then on the ethnic Chinese who had flooded into the region – few had wanted to risk a major commitment of American forces.  The slaughter had seemed unstoppable, until the Pact of Opposition had proved itself a real alliance…by sending in a major ground and sea force.  The Indians and Chinese had a very simple solution to insurgents – kill them all.  Kady knew that Wang was right; there were many in America who would applaud…and who were applauding.

“You have colonised the region, like Tibet,” Marya said.  Kady smiled to herself; Marya was just young enough to maintain a tone of pure horror.  Her generation had grown up in a world where everything was changing…it was good to have something pure to hate, such as the Chinese occupation of Tibet.  There weren’t that many Tibetans left, not in a traditional sense; the Indian switch to pure hatred of America had come with a price.  The Tibetan leadership had been rounded up and delivered to China; no one knew what had happened to them, except perhaps Beijing.  “You’ve moved enough military units into Indonesia to crush the natives.”

Kady lifted an eyebrow, as if she was in perfect ignorance…although she knew perfectly well that Wang knew that she knew everything that had been publicly revealed…and plenty that had been kept behind the scenes.  There were upwards of a million Chinese and Indian soldiers on the various islands of Indonesia, and all of them were supported by a Chinese migrant population and a military establishment that seemed almost large enough to make the jump over to Australia.  It was that, more than the fate of thousands of Jihadis, that kept the Australians awake at night.  China – and the Pact – had moved into one of the most strategic places in the world…and no one had lifted a finger to stop them.  Who knew who would be next?

“Which was the point of the entire exercise,” Wang reminded her dryly.  He exchanged a long look with Kady, who concealed her own private amusement behind a blank face.  “You must admit that we have done wonders for controlling Islamic terror.”

Kady nodded slowly.  “That’s something that is always a seller these days, after everything that happened in Iran,” she said.  “Are you planning to handle Algeria next?”

“You would think that that was more of a European problem than something to do with us,” Wang said mischievously.  “So, pretty one…what is your government going to do about that?”

Marya’s face flushed slightly.  “I have no information on that,” she said, calmly enough.  Kady felt a moment of pride.  Marya had learned her lessons well.  “Warsaw is a very long way from France and the south of the European Union.  We are more worried about the refugees from Belarus, after the Russians got involved; thousands seem unwilling to remain in the Worker’s Paradise.”

“Anyone would think that they weren’t happy,” Wang said dryly.  His face crinkled into a smile that had no real humour behind it.  “Still, I can hardly complain or protest the Russian activities, can I?  It would be hypocritical of me, eh?”

“Perish the thought,” Kady said.  She smiled as charmingly as she could.  “So, what’s China’s interest in all of this?”

Wang pulled himself up.  “Watch carefully,” Kady said quickly, before Wang could say anything.  “He’s about to make a speech.”

Wang deflated, just enough to let her know that he was amused, rather than annoyed.  “China’s official position on Chinese Taipei – Taiwan, to westerners, such as yourselves – has not changed,” he said.  His voice was as pompous as Kady had ever heard it.  That, if nothing else, showed that Wang knew that his argument was not entirely convincing…and, indeed, that it was not intended to convince.  “The recent…issue over electoral fraud worried us as much as it worried you Americans; the rejection of our offer to meditate caused much insult and loss of face in Beijing.”

Kady grinned.  There could events less likely to happen than Taiwan accepting China deciding its next President…but if there were, she had never heard of it.  The Chinese Government, backed up by the Pact of Opposition, had to have known that the Taiwanese would have rejected their offer, so their face should never have been exposed.  Had the Chinese merely been pushing their luck, trying to be good neighbours, or what?

She said as much.  “Taiwan may or may not be…independent of China,” she said, pushing the GNN line that Taiwan’s precise status was a matter for the Taiwanese themselves to settle, “but your military manoeuvres seem designed to worry the Taiwanese, now that…President Kim is firmly installed in Taipei.”

“We worry, too, about some of the people in Kim’s administration,” Wang said.  Subconsciously, Kady sat up; something important was about to be revealed.  “As you may know, there has been a major shift in the global balance of power.”

“Much waffle has been spoken about it, on the air, through the Internet, on entire forests worth of books and magazines,” Kady observed dryly.  “You must have read some of them.”

“I have thousands of books,” Wang said seriously.  “We are all encouraged to read American books, particularly the writings of various Americans who are convinced that American domination over the world ended in 2016, along with Delhi and a dozen other cities.  My…superiors used to speak of a time when America would be so bogged down by its own contradictions that we could complete the grand work that was started by Mao, so long ago.  Of course, he was a peasant, with poor taste in wives, but we know that he started us on this path.”

Kady felt her lips twitch.  The Party Congress might have debunked Mao, at least to the extent of admitting that he was fallible, but the Chinese still found it hard to laugh at him, or treat him as anything other than an elder statesman.  Like many others, he had more adulation in death than he had ever had in life…and that, she knew, was an awesome amount of respect.

Wang noticed her amusement and shrugged, self-mockingly.  “We never really felt that we could actually best the United States, until now,” he continued.  Kady noted the undertone and frowned to herself.  “Now…now…where are the American bases now?  The Philippines threw you out years ago, the Japanese have pushed your bases down to the bare minimum…and only Singapore is a loyal ally, only because of their enemies on the other side of their little island.  They’re also not as helpful as you would like, although not for lack of trying; how did your Admiral Toland put it?”

He paused for thought.  “Ah, yes; a base that can be taken at any moment…just like in the Pacific War, or so Toland said,” he said.  “Do you agree with his sentiment?”

“I have never been embedded into a military unit,” Kady said.  Hundreds of journalists had been embedded…but she had never been one of the journalists who had almost fought beside American soldiers.  She allowed herself a small half-truth.  “The closest I have ever come to being in the military is having an American soldier in me.”

Wang blinked…then got the joke.  “That passes for American humour, these days,” he said.  Kady smiled, remembering a long visit to California…and then at Camp Pendleton.  The Marine had not only been informative, but he had also been a tiger between the sheets.  “You Americans are crazy.”

He shook his head.  “But that’s beside the point.  The point is that – now – America is weaker than it has been in years.  There are men who feel that they have waited long enough…and now is the time to finally bring the Taiwanese back into the fold.”

Kady stared at him.  “And you’re telling me that the People’s Liberation Navy is going to come blazing across the waters and attack Taiwan?”

Wang nodded, very slowly.  “That is what some of the old men in Beijing want,” he said.  He nodded towards the map of Taiwan that hung on one wall.  “The Pact, between the different nations that are involved within the Pact’s military structure, believes that it has enough firepower to get across the waters and land on Taiwan – before any American effort can be organised to save the islands.”

Kady, who was not as ignorant about military matters as she had claimed, frowned.  The Pacific Fleet was still strong, and if the warning got out in time…it was an open secret that GNN occasionally shared information with the CIA.  There was no reason why the USN couldn’t send units to the waters nearby, ready to defend Taiwan, perhaps America's last real ally in East Asia, apart from the Australians.  Even with the vastly expanded and improved People’s Liberation Navy, to say nothing of the Indian Navy and even the Russian ships at their old harbour, China would have real problems mounting a major invasion.  And, of course, there was the Taiwanese Navy and the Taiwanese Air Force…

She scowled.  “And why are you telling me this?”

Wang met her eyes innocently.  “You’re a reporter and I am one of your sources,” he said, trying to play to her sense of importance.  “I thought that my job was telling you things?”

Kady didn’t believe him for a moment.  “You’re an…official with a somewhat ill-determined job,” she said.  “Correct me if I’m wrong, but don’t your people have a particularly gruesome method for dealing with traitors?”

Marya’s voice seemed oddly stunned.  “He’s telling us everything?”

“Everything I want you to hear,” Wang said.  His voice had softened slightly.  “As you may know, there are several factions within the Party…and of course there is still the Pact, and it’s own influence on the Party; the desire to punish America is matched by the desire to build the Pact into something that can genuinely determine the fate of the world.”

“How grandiose,” Kady murmured.  “And the real reason?”

Wang, for the first time, showed a hint of stress.  “I belong to the faction that doesn’t want to rock the boat,” he said.  Kady wondered if he was telling the truth; Wang’s schooling in America hadn’t dulled his patriotism…until now.  “If there was to be a report, perhaps one that referred to the air manoeuvres that have been taking place in China, that was to hint that there was trouble coming…”

“Vaguer than vague,” Kady said, with a sudden flicker of amusement.  “Do you expect Washington to respond to such a warning?”

“It depends on how important they consider Taiwan to be to the global economy,” Wang said.  He suddenly looked very tired.  “Are you intending to stay here for the next few months?”

“I intend to stay here for a month or two, yes,” Kady said.  “There is some concern that I am going native here, despite all the contacts I have built up” – Wang laughed – “and so I may end up going elsewhere.  Marya will be returning to Warsaw in the next week…”

“Ah, Warsaw, a beautiful city,” Wang said.  His voice darkened mischievously.  “I have never been there, of course.”

Marya laughed.  “You’re welcome to come visit, sir,” she said.  Wang looked almost comically hopeful.  “There are plenty of nice hotels there.”

Wang grinned.  It was such a surprising expression that Kady felt alarmed.  “I should have a long holiday one day,” he said.  “I have been stuck here for the last ten years, just because I made the mistake of doing my job well.”  He sighed.  “You know the Vice President here?”  Kady nodded.  “Word in Beijing is that he favours independence for Taiwan…and none of the factions will go along with that.  They want to keep their heads on their shoulders.”

“I understand,” Kady said.  Wang stood up.  “Are you leaving so soon?”

“I have to get back to the…semi-Embassy,” Wang said.  Kady smiled at the reminder that China had no choice, but to deal with Taiwan as an independent state in far too many ways.  “There’s supposed to be a trade deal being concluded this afternoon and even the companionship of two lovely ladies cannot distract me from it.”

Kady laughed.  “Good luck,” she called, as the door closed.  She pulled out her electronic sniffer and checked to see if Wang had left anything behind him.  “It’s clear.”

Marya looked astonished.  “You don’t think that he would bug you, do you?”

“First rule of business,” Kady said, reminding Marya of an unfortunate truth.  “You can’t trust anyone in this business…except me, of course.”

Marya laughed.  “I think I knew that,” she said.  “Was he telling the truth?”

Kady shrugged.  “Second rule; everyone wants something,” she said.  Marya smiled.  “Don’t assume that just because someone is telling you something that they’re telling you anything, but what they want you to know.  Wang Xilai can be trusted to tell us what it benefits him to have us know and…”

Her palmtop started to bleep an alarm.  “Excuse me,” she said, removing the device from her pocket and examining it.  “I think…”

Her voice stopped.  

“Kady?” Marya asked.  Kady heard the alarm in her voice from a far distance.  “What’s happened?

Kady looked up at her.  “Someone’s just assassinated the President of Taiwan,” she said.  “They just…killed him.”

Chapter Two: A Time For War

Near Beijing, China

“This may very well be the best opportunity we will have for some time,” Prime Minister Mohandas Singh of India said, as he looked around the room.  The five other men in the room looked back with a mixture of excitement and trepidation.  “If we let it pass, we may well find ourselves outmatched by the Americans – once their Next Generation Weapons program is completed.  Politically, everything is ready; the only question is simple.  Are we going to take this opportunity…or not?”

There was a long pause.  The six men in the room, two Indians, two Chinese and two Russians, were not fools or idiots.  United by their feelings towards America and the West – ranging from dislike to outright hatred – they were smart enough not to allow their feelings to alter their reactions.  The Pact of Opposition had lasted long enough without a major military challenge – the brutal suppression of insurgents in half a dozen different places around the world was merely butcher’s work – but now they were talking about starting a major war.  They had come as far as they could without a direct clash; now they faced the prospect of a very real war…and one they could lose.

Singh smiled inwardly, wondering who would be the first to speak.  In theory, the inner inner circle of the Pact – the official inner circle consisted of sixty bureaucrats who had the task of talking endlessly about nothing, just to convince any American eavesdroppers that nothing of any real significance would come out of the Pact -  had a rotating chair.  In practice, long-standing distrust between the Russians and the Chinese kept the chair firmly in Singh’s hands…and it was a power he knew to respect.  The Americans had pioneered strength though unity…and that, at bottom, was the reason behind the Pact.  None of them, individually, could challenge the West; the Pact as a whole could…and would.  They had gambled in Indonesia, they had gambled in Belarus…and they had won.  Now, they had the choice between taking their winnings, or rolling the dice again.

“We have no choice,” Kim Sook said.  The Chinese President – who was not actually a relation of the now-dead President Kim of Taiwan, despite Western media speculation – stood up and tapped the map.  It was a fairly basic world map, but it was detailed enough to show countries that were part of the Pact’s formal and information network, countries that were part of the American and European alliances…and countries that were trying to remain out of the growing tension, like Japan.  “Taiwan is Chinese, will always be Chinese, and must be returned to China.”

Having recited his position papers, the official position of the Chinese Government, which had used Taiwan as an excuse to join the Pact, he sat down.  “The Americans have put together a multinational task force, comprised of vessels from over a dozen different countries, which is sailing towards us even as we speak,” he said.  “The Americans may claim that the fleet’s purpose is to prevent a major clash between Chinese Taipei” – the Chinese term for Taiwan – “and the mainland, but we know that secessionists and traitors are working for a full breakaway from us.  The unity of China is threatened by a handful of mongrels!”

The anger was back in his voice.  Singh stroked his beard thoughtfully, knowing that the vast majority of Taiwanese would have preferred the current situation to carry on indefinitely, rather than risk a major struggle with the mainland.  What the Taiwanese didn’t know, or weren’t supposed to know, was that the introduction of Indian and Japanese technology had weakened their position relative to the mainland…and indeed the threat of economic disaster was much weaker than it had been, years ago.  It was a pity that the Japanese could not be induced to join the Pact themselves, but that would have risked giving the game away way too soon; once the Pact had shown its teeth, Japan could cooperate…or else.

The Russian President, Joseph Lapotin, leaned forwards.  “My people do not fear sacrifice,” he said, very softly.  Singh remembered just how many Russians had died fighting Hitler and nodded to himself.  “The question, for us, at least, is different; can we win quickly, should we begin the full Armageddon Option?”

“Is there any other choice?”  Singh asked.  “We have plans for limited war, but all of them play to the collective strength of our enemies.  We cannot assume that the Europeans will stay out of the conflict, not with the Germans actively working to transform EUROFOR into a real army, one that might be a fair match for Pact forces.  If we fight a long conventional war…we could lose.”

“We fought Hitler for five years,” Lapotin said.  He was playing devil’s advocate, Singh saw; Lapotin had been the one who had drawn up the European component of Armageddon.  “If we fight only near Taiwan, we would be able to back off if the conflict went badly…”

“No,” the Chinese President said.  Singh smiled; he had expected as much.  The Chinese knew that if they tried to take Taiwan – and failed – all pretence that Taiwan was somehow still part of the Mainland would be gone.  The Taiwanese would bolt…and give inspiration to the remaining independence-minded Chinese.  “In Taiwan, the Vice President, who will be President soon enough, is a man who favours independence…and has already begun the process of informing the United Nations that he intends to hold a referendum on the subject.  If that referendum goes ahead, rigged as we know it will be” – they shared a look of wry amusement – “we know that the island will declare itself independent…and we will be in a dangerous political position.  The Americans will recognise the new country at once, we will be unable to hide behind the tattered flag of the United Nations, and the multinational fleet will ensure that Taiwan becomes a part of the American-led alliance.

“We cannot surrender, not now,” he concluded.  “The Pact of Opposition exists to oppose the Americans and their plans for the world.  We know what the Americans did through their mishandling of the Pakistani situation, and we know just how much could go wrong in Taiwan.  We have to go to war at a time and place of our choosing, or we will be forced to fight later, under American terms.”

Singh felt his eyes glitter.  The Americans had mishandled the Pakistani situation badly enough to cause a war…one that could have been prevented without their good-natured meddling.  They might have meant well – although Singh had pushed the explanation that they had really intended to wipe out the growing Indian economy that had threatened American jobs and livelihoods – but the result had been devastating.  India had enforced the ‘Americans out’ doctrine…and, with the growing strength of the Pact, had the ability to do something that no one had ever done.  Fight – and win – a war with the United States of America.

“We all knew that we might be faced – no, that we would be faced – with this moment,” Lapotin said.  His voice was very calm, very controlled.  “It’s time to make a decision.”

Russia had been one of the most important nations in the Pact, right from the start; Singh knew that he had done well, in the shifting sands of the post-Cold War world, to keep the Russians close to India.  In the end, however, money had talked; the vast sums of money that Russia had needed had been channelled from India, along with a massive program of assistance, one free of the strings that European and American investors insisted upon.  Human rights?  What were they, when America ruled the world and had to be brought down; who cared what happened in Russia?  The Europeans might have cared…and insisted that their money be used openly, but the Pact hadn’t cared.  It was the same story everywhere; money, without strings, bought friends and allies.  Even votes in the UN and other global organisations were for sale.

“War,” the Chinese President said.  He tapped the map, pointing to Taiwan.  “If this is the only chance we have, then we take it…and force the Americans to choose between accepting the new world order, or abandoning their precious…luxuries and fighting us to the death.  The nuclear shield will protect us from any quick defeat…and we have the strength to fight a long war.”

“We already agreed that if we fight a long war, we lose,” Singh said.  He tried not to think about some of the projections for an all-out nuclear war, now that there was a working BMD defence shield around most of the major nations.  “The Armageddon plan demands speed and secrecy until we launch, and then we don’t let up until we have secured all of the major targets and ensured that the Americans have no chance to counter-attack.  Once that’s done, the Americans can either fight a long war with us from a very bad position, or they can accept the new world order.”

He paused.  “We fight,” he said.  “Joseph?”

Lapotin smiled.  The Russians had a score to settle.  “We fight,” he said.  The agreement had been made.  “Generals?”

Officially, the Pact had a large military command post in India, which spent most of its time bickering.  The Americans, who maintained the most sophisticated communications spy system the world had ever known, picked up evidence of the arguments, ranging from Chinese-Indian arguments over Tibet, to Russian demands for more money and less calls on their services.  It was not for nothing that the most xenophobic officers from the Pact’s main military forces had been ordered to staff the command post, or that they spent time examining the most outrageous ideas, none of which would work in the face of even light opposition.

Unofficially, the real shared military structure rested in the hands of a handful of Generals and Admirals, all trusted by their respective leaders…and given more power and responsibility than any other commanding officers in the world.  They had worked together to design the individual sections of Armageddon…and then they had pulled everything together into a fairly coherent plan.  It would probably not survive contact with the enemy, but Singh knew that every possibility had been taken into account.  If the Americans played their role for just a couple more weeks, the shape of the world would change forever…

General Yang Tao spoke first.  He was young, for a Chinese General; Singh knew that he was a mere forty years old.  He had a scarred face, from an encounter with a Jihadi in Indonesia, and had served in Malaysia and Bangladesh as part of the Pact’s ‘peacekeeping’ force.  Not everyone liked him, but everyone respected him…and, unlike many generals, he had an understanding of sea and air tactics as well.  The People’s Liberation Navy would not have been happy unless an Admiral was commanding the Far East Front, but they respected Tao…and knew that he wouldn’t order them to do something that looked good on a map, but would have been a total disaster if someone had actually tried to carry it out.

“We have been assembling the occupation fleet in our harbours over the last week,” Tao said, without preamble.  His voice was harsh, because of his scarred face, but understandable.  “The Combined Fleet stands ready, with ships from all of the Pact nations, although we have been careful to keep everyone away from the handful of known American SSNs in the region.  We continue to guard our declared borders, but we have publicly made it known that we do not intend to oppose the multinational fleet when it enters our declared waters.  In fact, we intend to be good neighbours, until the time comes for action.”

Singh smiled.  The multinational force had over a hundred modern warships, most of them American or European.  China’s claimed borders at sea were not accepted by any other nation, apart from the Pact; the Americans would not be expecting the Chinese to risk a major encounter so far from land-based air cover.  The handful of carriers built and operated by the Pact were not a match for the American carriers…and only a few people knew that it had been intended that way.  Even fewer people knew that the arrival of the multinational fleet had also been anticipated…and prepared for by the Pact.

“We believe that the American Admiral in command has been ordered to merely stand ready to aid the rebels,” Tao continued.  “The French and Canadian Governments, in particular, would be reluctant to join a unilateral American attack on our shipping, which gives us the advantage of launching the first blow.  The battle plans have been drawn up…and, once the enemy has entered the killing zone, we will strike.”

Lapotin coughed.  “And what happens if the Americans refuse to enter your killing zone?”

“They have no choice,” Tao assured him.  His voice was confident as his hands traced out movements on the map.  “The objective of the imperialists is to protect the rebels from our judgement.  If they remain outside the killing zone, they will be unable to do more than shake their fists at us.  Once they enter the killing zone, we will launch the operation and crush the fleet.”

Singh nodded.  The plan had been worked out and extensively war-gamed.  “Anjeet?”

General Anjeet Patel looked up.  Despite his name, like Singh himself, he was a Sikh; his hand caressed his Kirpan as he spoke.  “The Navy and the Marines are ready for their actions,” Patel said.  “One force will seize Singapore as soon as the war starts; the other will sweep the seas clean of American shipping in our territory.  The armoured units are ready for their dash into Iran; the commanders and men are more than willing to crush the Iranians and extract revenge for the support the Iranians are giving to the terrorists in the Occupied Territories.  The American forces in Iran are weak and have been drawn down significantly following the Disaster; they can be destroyed almost before they know that there is a war on.  At worst, we will accomplish all of our tasks within a month, depending on American reaction.”

The Chinese President frowned.  “Where will the Americans put their forces?”

“I wish I knew,” Patel admitted.  He was, perhaps, the only General who would admit as much.  He had been Singh’s friend for years.  “We know that the Americans have drawn down their deployable forces, leaving only smaller groups forward-deployed since Iraq became stable and Saudi collapsed.  They have their Airborne and Marine forces in a position to be deployed quickly, but we will be presenting them with three major areas of operation…and if everything goes to plan, they will have to make a very hard choice.  The easiest option would be to deploy to Europe – even if we have a remarkable run of luck, we will be operating at the limits of our own range – but we have contingency plans for all possibilities.”

Singh took a breath.  “That leaves one final operation,” he said.  The sheer immensity of what they were planning chilled him, even as he knew that no one in their right mind would expect such a move, not in Europe.  ‘It can’t happen here’ was a favoured European and American refrain…and the Europeans were unwilling to take the steps needed to ensure that it could not happen to them.  “General Shalenko?”

General Aleksandr Shalenko nodded from his seat.  The Russian was perhaps the most experienced at armoured warfare; he had played a major role in the rejuvenation of the Russian Army, when the money had started to flow in and the Pact started to supply Russia with all manner of interesting devices.  The Russians themselves had contributed much to the plan; they had been thinking about worldwide war for much longer than either of the other two Pact powers.

“Everything is ready,” he said, as simply as possible.  Singh heard the confidence in his voice and hoped that it was not misplaced.  Everything depended on surprise…and on sheer crushing power.  A mistake could ruin everything.  “We have deployed a major force into Belarus, under the terms of the agreement with the Belarusian Government, apparently optimised for counter-insurgency warfare.  In reality, it represents the largest and most powerful Russian force to be deployed since Berlin, in 1945; all it requires is tactical air support and it will be almost unstoppable.  The Russian Air Force has kept to its main bases in Russia itself, apart from detachments that have been moved into Belarus; once the war begins, we’ll surge deploy every unit forward and gain air supremacy over Poland, Ukraine and East Germany.  This will be supplemented by a major multidimensional offensive that will…”

His voice rolled on and on and Singh felt himself begin to grow tired.  The European section of the plan had always been the chanciest…and the part that would almost certainly have to be revised, time and time again, as the European Union went backwards and forwards.  Reports were always contradictory; at one time, EUROFOR would dispose of twenty armoured divisions, at another, the twenty divisions would be a mixture of armoured and infantry…and at other times, the different nations refused to cooperate to the point of outright sabotage.  The Russians had a high-level source somewhere within Poland – they had refused to share anything about the source – and knew about many of the European deployments.  Once the attack was launched…

“We know, now, what we intend to do,” he concluded.  They were launching the first aggressive war since the Americans had invaded Iraq, years ago.  “Does anyone have any final points to make?”

Shalenko smiled.  “Can we count on the Algerians to do what we intend them to do?”

Singh smiled back.  The Algerians, Islamic Fundamentalists to a man – or a woman – had been surprised to have been offered all the help they needed in their own plans.  They were also expendable; the more of them that were killed in the war, the better for the Pact; the mere fact that there was a relationship with Algeria was a closely guarded secret.

“They’ll do what we want, just long enough,” Singh said.  He smiled.  “In a month, the face of the world will be changed forever…and American power will be shattered.  This is our century…and we must not lose this chance.  Everything depends upon it.”

Chapter Three: Shadows at Sea

USS Kelly Johnston, South China Sea

“Damned Canadians,” Captain Dave Howery muttered, as the drone made its passage over the major Canadian contribution to the multinational force.  HMCS Lethbridge, a Province-class guided missile destroyer, had no idea at all that she was under observation by the drone.  If she had known, billions of dollars would have been wasted…and Howery would have been looking for a new job.  “They’re just taking the piss, again.”

“Oh, I don’t know,” Commander Bruno Lombardi, his first officer, observed.  He nodded towards a pop-up window in the CIC’s main screen.  “That one is not half bad.”

Howery eyed the picture thoughtfully.  A young woman, clearly of Chinese or Japanese lineage, was sunning herself without a care in the world.  She was wearing a skimpy bikini, with barely enough to cover all of her interesting parts, and seemed completely at ease.  The computer, which had been updated with information on all of TASK FORCE TAIWAN’s personnel, blinked up an identification note; Lieutenant Stephanie Tsuji.

He snorted.  “Are you telling me that you are using this multi-million dollar drone, designed to hunt for hostile aircraft and ships over the entire South China Sea, to…ogle Canadian naval personnel?”

“Not unless you want me to tell you that,” Lombardi said.  He shrugged and hit a command into the main system, which reverted to its endless scanning for possible air-sea threats to TASK FORCE TAIWAN.  Howery took a long moment to ensure that there were no threats developing near the Kelly Johnston, even though the computers would have cancelled Lombardi’s view and sounded the alert if a Chinese target had appeared anywhere near the Kelly Johnston.  “I thought that we were supposed to be friendly and familiar with our allies, sir.”

Howery snorted again.  He belonged to the growing number of American military personnel who had taken Canada’s refusal to assist the United States in serious antiterrorist operations, and their refusal to assist in securing Iran when the civil war had broken out, personally.  Important senators and congressmen had questioned the commitment of a major US effort to defending Canada when Canada seemed totally unwilling to assist American efforts elsewhere, even to the point of shutting down part of the US-Canadian Air Defence System.  That, at least, hadn’t gotten out of committee, but perhaps the Canadians had taken notice; something had to explain the presence of the Lethbridge and the auxiliary ship HMCS Preserver.

“I don’t think that that was quite what Admiral Toland meant,” he said, as he stepped away from the side-screen.  Lombardi was irrepressible, someone who would either be one of the greatest commanders the USN had ever produced, or someone who would be drummed out of the service for insubordination.  There was little question that he was both brilliant and freethinking; what was more under question was his ability to act as part of a team.  It was one of the reasons, Howery privately suspected, why Lombardi had been assigned to the Kelly Johnston in the first place.  “In fact, I think that he expected us to secure the Chinese seas around us without actually betraying our presence to the Chinese.”

He grinned.  The Kelly Johnston, the lead ship of its class, was nothing less than the world’s first stealth warship.  Billions of dollars and nearly a decade of research had been funnelled towards producing what he considered to be the finest ship in the navy…and one of the deadliest threats to any Pact warship operating near her. The Kelly Johnston, through an innovative blend of the most modern technology, was almost impossible to distinguish from the waves of the sea…not that the South China Sea was choppy at the moment.  Some of her predecessors had been so successful that they had literally left what seemed like an empty space on the surface of the sea, but the Kelly Johnston blended perfectly with her surroundings.

Stepping into the Kelly Johnston was like stepping into the Starship Enterprise.  The ship was heavily automated, with computers and blinking screens everywhere; outsiders had been known to become very confused, just looking at the CIC and wondering where all of the traditional equipment had been hidden.  The Kelly Johnston had no standard bridge, only a computer, where the helmsman tapped in commands when Howery commanded the ship to move.  There was no wheel, or even a wheel stand…and there was only a small crew.  The stealth ship might not have been a total secret, despite the best efforts of the modern-day NGW Project, but no one knew anything on the outside about how it functioned.  Now, Howery knew that the Kelly Johnston faced its greatest test; sneaking up close to the Chinese waters.  If the Chinese saw them, they might well risk an attack; if the Kelly Johnston fell into their hands, they might be able to reverse-engineer some of the tech…

He shrugged. “Status?”

Lombardi tapped a command into the main computer as Howery took his command chair.  An image of the entire multinational force appeared in front of them, focused on the USS Gerald R. Ford, lead ship of the Gerald R. Ford-class of aircraft carriers.  There were three more carriers in the Gerald R. Ford-class, but Howery knew that Congress had been partly seduced by the plans to build an Arsenal Ship, rather than the replacement for the Gerald R. Ford-class; the USN had been requesting more carriers as a matter of urgency.  Between the Pact, the European integration and Japan’s private panic over the Pact’s control of her vital sea-lanes, the USN was running short of bases to deploy its craft.

There was no sign of Lieutenant Stephanie Tsuji.

“The fleet is continuing its progress towards the possible conflict zone,” Lombardi said, just for the record.  It would have been surprising if the fleet was not heading towards a possible combat zone.  Only Admiral Toland and the commanding officers of the four American carriers in the Task Force knew that the Kelly Johnston was out there, watching over them; the Kelly Johnston sent a burst transmission to a microsat every hour on the hour…and then remained silent.  Lombardi’s voice was now much more professional.  “So far, there seems to be little trouble, apart from the presence of an unknown SSN that was detected by an ASW bird from the Ronald Reagan.”

Howery leaned forwards.  “There was no identification at all?”

“Not according to the datanet,” Lombardi said.  “It might well have been a Russian or Indian submarine, rather than a Chinese one; Intelligence believes that the Chinese have been withdrawing their submarines to their own waters, perhaps concentrating them for a show of force, or perhaps even an attack on the fleet.”

“Intelligence,” Howery scowled.  The American Military Intelligence, in his view, depended far too much on technical methods, rather than anything that might tell them what their possible opponents were thinking.  He had heard, through the grapevine, that countless sources in India had dried up after Delhi had been destroyed; the Indians were no longer disposed to aid Americans.  “And the Chinese?”

Lombardi smiled.  Normally, a junior officer or crewman would handle the drones, but the Kelly Johnston’s crew was so limited that the first officer, who also happened to have a high security clearance, handled them personally.  The Shadow Drones, almost perfectly stealthy, almost undetectable even by the latest American-designed AWACS aircraft, could remain floating high above their targets for hours…and look down upon them with all the detachment of an indifferent god.  The Chinese People’s Liberation Navy would freak if it knew just how good the cameras and sensors actually were…although no one was quite sure how much technology had been transferred to China – to the Pact – by the Indians and the Japanese.  The Japanese had had major investments in China…and, in a very real sense, they now were dependent upon the Pact for their very lifeblood.

Howery shivered.  The last time Japan had been in such a position, it had started the Pacific War…

“They’re deploying all right,” Lombardi said.  He altered the screen to display the Chinese ports near Taiwan.  “That’s enough of a more specialised landing force to take Taiwan, assuming that they manage to knock out the Taiwanese air force and the navy.  It’s more of a force than anyone expected, with enough transports to soak up losses and…”

His voice broke off as new icons entered the main display.  The screens automatically switched back to the tactical display, the computers already scanning and identifying the new threat, using the feed from the secondary drone.  Howery tensed before realising that the newcomers were not heading towards the Kelly Johnston, but were merely performing a long-range flight out from China.

“Now…there’s a sight you don’t see every day,” Lombardi said, as Howery leaned forwards.  The icons were ones that everyone had expected to vanish long ago, along with the Boeing B-52 Stratofortress; a Tupolev Tu-95, known to the West as the Bear.  A massive multi-purpose bomber, the various Pact Air Forces still used it, mainly as a transport and support aircraft for their forces on the ground.  Reports had placed it being used in both Belarus and Indonesia…and now a force was heading out over the water in formation.  It was…worrying.  “Look at them go.”

Howery’s concerns were more practical.   “And what are they doing?”

The Chinese aircraft – the drone’s cameras could pick up the markings on the aircraft hulls – seemed unaware that they were being watched.  As one, they swooped into a long dive…and then headed back towards China, as if nothing had happened.  A modified Blackjack aircraft, carrying a radar unit and serving as a modified AWACS, floated into view, bringing up dozens of different radar units…

“Impressive,” Lombardi noted, his voice calm.  The Chinese had built a formidable network of SAMs and fighter bases to defend their coastline; NORAD itself seemed to have invested less in the defence of the United States.  “With a little luck, that could pick up a stealth aircraft.”

“Let’s hope that they can’t pick up a stealth ship,” Howery said, as the Chinese aircraft continued their display.  Newer aircraft, some of them the most modern aircraft in the Chinese arsenal, made their appearance, their flying prowess clearly improved over the last few years.  The Chinese had been busy…and a thought struck him.  “Are there no non-Chinese forces in the area?”

“Apart from us, you mean?”  Lombardi asked dryly.  “No; there are units of the Indian and Russian Navies, but no aircraft.”

“Curious,” Howery said, as he settled back in his chair.  “I wonder why…”

Lombardi’s hands were dancing over his console.  “That’s an Indian task group; one carrier, seven smaller ships and perhaps a submarine as well,” he said, pulling up the images from what the drone was sending back to the ship.  “That’s quite a powerful punch in its own right, and the Chinese aircraft are clearly there to support it, or be supported…”

“They must be mad,” Howery said, as the information continued to flow in.  “Half of our population applauds them for their actions in Indonesia” – they shared a nod; what had happened to the American ambassador there had shaken Americans to the core – “and they’re going to throw away everything for one little island that serves them so much better as a semi-independent state.”

Lombardi looked up.  “Do you think they might be bluffing, sir?”

Howery waved a hand towards the main display.  “There are over two thousand fighter aircraft and bombers along that coastline,” he said, watching grimly as a Chinese tanker started the complex task of refuelling a Blackjack bomber.  “They have around four hundred warships of various sizes and age, including quite a powerful hardcore of modern ships.  If they’re bluffing…they’re putting one hell of a lot of firepower behind it.”

He stood up.  “Make sure that all of the information is sent back to Admiral Toland,” he said.  “I want him to know what he could be sailing into.”

He scowled as the chart unfolded in front of him.  China claimed much more of the Pacific Ocean than International Law would have allowed them…and they were almost completely conceding it to Admiral Toland.  Of course, the Multinational Fleet would have much more firepower than the Chinese Navy, or even the entire combined Pact forces…but there was something out of character about it.  They would have been much more likely to sell their daughters into prostitution than lose face in front of the world…and they certainly acted as if they thought they could win.  Would they make a jump for Taiwan and assume that the Multinational Force would stay out of the fighting?  Did they think that they could beat the fleet in an open fight…?

“That’s another convoy on its way to Indonesia,” Lombardi said softly.  Howery studied the image and nodded slowly; the Pact hadn’t been shy about placing as many soldiers as they thought they needed onto Indonesia, something that had taunted and galvanised the US military in equal measure.  If the Army had had such numbers in Iraq, the war there would have been ended a lot sooner…although, to be fair, the Chinese soldiers had ‘benefits’ that were never made available to American troops; looting, raping and pillaging being the least of them.  “They’re moving in thousands more soldiers; that makes upwards of a hundred thousand, perhaps far more…”

“They’re not taking chances,” Howery agreed.  He bent over slightly to study the display.  “I wonder…if we were to…”

He shook his head.  The risk was too great; there might well be a Chinese submarine close enough to engage them before they could escape, if they lit up their active sensors they would burn through all of the Chinese ECM, but the Chinese would get a perfect fix on their position.  They would have to wait for the arrays on Admiral Toland’s ships; they wouldn’t be trying to hide.  All of a sudden, he wasn't so sure that that was a good idea.

A single tap brought up a copy of the orders that he had been sent, from the Pacific Fleet headquarters at Pearl Harbour.  His job – the task of the Kelly Johnston – was merely to observe; if possible, they were to determine just how serious the Chinese were about trying to reclaim Taiwan…and it looked as if the Chinese were very serious indeed.  The presence of the Indian and Russian ships, even in such limited numbers, was alarming; they might have ambitions to assist their Pact ally in occupying Taiwan…

“They’re mad,” he said, again.  There seemed to be nothing, no reason to take such a massive risk, no reason to risk everything.  “What could make such an encounter worthwhile?”

An hour passed, then another; they watched grimly as the Chinese drilled their soldiers.  From time to time, landing craft put out to sea and practiced landing on one of China’s beaches; he wondered if the residents of China’s coasts appreciated the show that was being put on – their tax dollars at work.  The thought made him smile; two decades of careful reform had left the Chinese Government weaker, but still very strong where it counted.  Reform was a buzzword these days in China…but the dominance of the Party remained; Howery would expect a major change when he saw it.

“Signal from Admiral Toland,” the communications officer injected.  She had the toughest job on the ship, everyone agreed; she had to use the microburst system to keep the Kelly Johnston in touch with Admiral Toland, but at the same time she had to ensure that none of her data packets arrived at the wrong place…such as the receptors of a Chinese surveillance aircraft or even a media satellite.  Every commercial satellite in the world – or so it seemed – was trained on the South China Sea and Taiwan; a single mistake could betray their presence to the wrong people.  Howery, who shared the general opinion that the American media was almost as bad as a Chinese spy – who at least could be arrested – knew that such a mistake could end their careers.  “He wants us to pull back slightly; the Chinese radars can be detected even at his range.”

“Coward,” Howery muttered.  The Chinese radars had been sweeping the South China Sea for hours…and hadn’t even come close to picking up the Kelly Johnston.  He understood Toland’s point, however; there was too much at stake to risk a close encounter with the Chinese Navy.  “Inform him that we will pull back to the lurking point and that we recommend that additional assets are ordered to study the new Chinese deployments to Indonesia.”

“Understood,” the communications officer said.

“There’ll be some gaps in our coverage,” Lombardi muttered, worried.  “They might be preparing to hit Taiwan and…hell, I thought a moment ago that the balloon had really gone up.”

Howery nodded.  The Chinese had launched nearly thirty landing craft…and they had headed out much further into the waters, before swinging around for their landing sequence.  It had looked, just for a few minutes, as if the Chinese had decided to start the party without the multinational fleet…which would have really ruined Admiral Toland’s plans…

It hit him, suddenly.  “The Chinese have the ability to land on Taiwan now, don’t they?”

Lombardi nodded.  “Yes, sir,” he said.  “They would have to defeat Taiwan’s own defences, of course, but they could do it.”

Howery looked up at him.  “It’s at least three days before the fleet can reach a position to interfere,” he said.  He understood, now, what he had been missing.  “Why have the Chinese not launched already?”

Lombardi blinked.  “Because they don’t think they can win?”  He suggested.  “They might feel that the arrival of superior force will save them face if they back down.”

“Perhaps,” Howery said.  He scowled.  Something was very wrong; he could feel it.  The Chinese believed firmly enough in ‘face’ that they would be unlikely to allow themselves to be pushed aside so easily.   “I think we need to rethink what we’re doing…and that is not going to be easy.”

Chapter Four: Looming Shadows

Camp Warsaw, Poland

“I demand that you do something about those Russians,” Mr Molobo snapped, his voice thick with outrage and his attempt to speak English.  The Polish Minister of Defence was a heavyset man who would have failed even the most basic Army entrance exam; he made Sir Joseph Porter look competent.  “They are alarming my people!”

General Konrad Trautman, Commanding officer of EUROFOR EAST, or the main deployment of the newly created European Defence force, sat back in his seat and tried to remember that military officers couldn’t punch politicians in the face, no matter how much the politician deserved it.  He was somewhat at a loss to understand how Molobo – whose first name seemed to have escaped almost everyone, which suggested that it was something embarrassing – had ever reached his position in the first place; he knew less about matters military than the most left-wing of the left-wing of European politics.  The Poles might have a proud military tradition, admittedly one that had been largely composed of being hammered by stronger neighbours, but Molobo fitted into no military tradition, not even France's tradition.

He tried to look as contrite as he could.  It wasn’t something that came naturally.  “Those Russians, as you put it, are in Belarus,” he said, as calmly as he could.  “Perhaps you would like me to attack their positions on the other side of the border?”

Molobo glared at him.  “The Russians are raping and looting their way through Belarus in a manner designed to alarm us,” he snapped.  “There are thousands upon thousands of refugees fleeing west, into Poland; they are alarming my people!  The Russians must be shown that they cannot continue to…”

“Do what?”  Trautman asked dryly.  “The fact remains that Brussels, and indeed the individual governments of the European Union, have decided to accept the Russian position on their…deployment into Belarus.  The fact that I find that disgusting and reprehensible does not change the fact that we have no mandate to invade Belarus to remove the Russians, nor do we have the firepower to remove them, even if that mandate was to be granted tomorrow.”

Molobo started to speak.  Trautman spoke over him.  “I am supposed to have ten divisions, a mixture of infantry and armoured units, under my direct command,” he continued.  “As it happens, I have five, one of them a combined division made up of units from four different countries in the European Union.  To be honest, it is something of a miracle that that I got so many units; I was expecting only a pair of divisions at most.”

“That was because I went to Brussels and convinced them to send you reinforcements,” Molobo said.  Trautman shrugged, unsure if he believed the Polish politician.  It didn’t matter anyway.  “You also have the units of my own army…”

“Which has been badly starved of the equipment it needs,” Trautman reminded him.  “The last major purchase of any major size you made was for outdated F-16 fighters and Abrams tanks, which at least will come in handy if someone decides that we cannot take the flood of refuges any more.  At the same time, you have persisted in trying to gain an international role by sending peacekeepers everywhere, even after what happened in India and Pakistan.  Quite frankly…what do you want me to do?”

“I want you to seal the border,” Molobo snapped.  Trautman smiled inwardly, suddenly understanding; Molobo might care little for the people in Belarus, under Russian domination and occupation, but when there were thousands of refugees flooding into Poland and the Baltic states…then it was a different story.  The Poles had their own brand of xenophobia – he knew all too well that some of them had opposed his appointment on the grounds that he was German – and the refugees were straining Polish resources.  “The border with the Ukraine as well.”

Trautman lifted an eyebrow.  “And are you prepared to call up your reserves, to beg Germany and France for additional troops, and expand your air force?”

Molobo scowled.  “On paper, you have enough forces…”

“On paper,” Trautman snapped, cutting him off.  Past a certain point, there was no longer any reason to be polite.  Why bother?  “You know that all the unrest in Ukraine…”

“Which is being fed by the Russians,” Molobo snapped.  “They are shipping arms and men into the region, just to keep the pot boiling.  They can’t get over the fact that the Ukrainian people don’t want them back.”

Molobo might well be right, or at least European Intelligence suspected as much, Trautman knew.  It didn’t matter in the end.  The Ukrainian…civil war was a little too strong to describe it, but everyone knew that, sooner or later, the Ukraine would burst into civil war.  When that happened, the Russians might well intervene on the side of the ethnic Russians, or even on the side of the central government.  And, once the Russians were in, they would become impossible to get out without a major military commitment.

“There are four Swedish units and one Irish unit in the Ukraine at the moment,” Trautman said, as if Molobo hadn’t spoken.  “They are supposed to be a peacekeeping force, but they’re really infantry; nothing else, without any major air component.  If they needed air support, it would have to come from you, or Slovakia or Hungary.  I don’t have any major air support myself, apart from a helicopter unit.”

He looked over wistfully towards the window, where the shape of a Eurocopter could be seen, being prepared for action by a ground team.  “If the situation there boils over, we both know that the only action that can be taken is withdrawing the peacekeepers, which means that I have to keep at least one unit of my own ready for action at a moment’s notice.  If I commit my units to sealing the borders – and those of the Baltic States as well – I will be unable to react to any major problem.”

He leaned forwards, wishing that he were back in one of his beloved tanks.  The Eurotank – the bureaucrats in Brussels had only a limited selection of acceptable names for any wholly European military machine – was a magnificent machine; he had campaigned long and hard for his own 7th Panzer to be assigned to his force in Poland.  The bureaucrats – it was a cruel and partly accurate joke that the EUROFOR had more bureaucrats that soldiers – had refused; the implications of deploying a purely German unit on Polish soil were too much for them to accept.  It had impacted on his set of options as well; he had less understanding of the capabilities of the units that had been assigned to him than he would have liked.

“If you want the problem solved, then get onto Brussels and get them to give me the firepower to do something about the actual cause of the problem,” he snapped.  Molobo didn’t look surprised, or even offended.  “The Russians are launching their cross-border raids from time to time and my job is to prevent that…and I don’t have half the firepower and deployable assets I need to do that!”

Molobo’s eyes glittered.  “Perhaps we should withdraw from the European Defence Treaty, if it means so little,” he snapped.  His voice was growing angry.  “Poland has endured these raids for long enough.”

Trautman – privately – would have admitted that Molobo had a point.  The Russians had raided two refugee camps, brushing aside Polish opposition; in both cases, they had brought overwhelming firepower to bear and forced tiny Polish units to back off or surrender.  The humiliation had been overwhelming as well – EUROFOR had been unable to respond in one incident…and Brussels had ordered Trautman to hold back in the second – and the Poles had been furious.  Trautman found it hard to blame them, even as he was certain that the Russians would have drawn back from challenging the 7th Panzer.  Rommel himself had once commanded that unit.

He allowed something of his own tiredness to show.  “Soldiers obey the orders of their political superiors,” he said, wondering if Molobo would take his words for flattery or insult.  “I would be more than willing to respond to a third major raid” – the images of what had happened in the camps had shocked him to the core – “but I need authority to act!”

Molobo snorted.  The disdain in his voice was obvious.  “And if the Russians decide to bombard Warsaw, what exactly will you do about it?”

“I would have clear authority to respond to a major threat,” Trautman said.  The Commission in Brussels was convinced that there would be no major threat; Trautman wasn’t so sure.  The Russians had been throwing their weight around in Eastern Europe, their old stamping grounds, for the past year and no one had told them to get lost.  He was certain, as certain as anyone could be of anything in war, that if he had the full planned strength of EURUFOR, and total air support, he could throw the Russians out of Belarus…and he knew that Brussels would never work up the nerve to issue the orders.  One EUROFOR soldier had died on deployment, just one…and they had nearly withdrawn the force from Poland.  “If you manage to convince Brussels to give me some additional forces and some clear instructions…”

“I have been discussing the matter with the President and the Prime Minister,” Molobo said, interrupting himself.  “They are determined that Polish forces will be deployed to the borders in strength, to prevent any Russian force from crossing the borders again.  That will be almost all four major divisions of the Polish Army, and we will deploy as many aircraft to the east as we can.  If the Russians come over the border again, we will slap them back, hard.”

Trautman grappled for words.  “With all due respect,” he said, hating himself, “that will provoke the Russians.”

Molobo – astonishingly – laughed.  “I was being…attacked in the Senate over the issue of the first raid, and then the second one turned me into a laughing stock,” he said.  Trautman concealed a smile.  “There was even pressure to call up the reserves and establish a security zone of our own in the region.  It was all I could do to limit it to a major deployment to the border.”

“It might make life a little easier,” Trautman admitted.  Part of him understood what was driving Molobo; part of him found it terrifying.  He disliked Molobo, even as he understood his concerns…and even shared them to some degree.  “I assume that Major Jacob Anastazy will be fully briefed?”

Molobo nodded.  “Young Major Anastazy will know everything he has to know to keep EUROFOR fully informed of the situation as it develops,” he assured him.  He stood up quickly, revealing his basic ill health.  He wasn’t exactly fat, but he looked unhealthy to an alarming degree.  “And now, I shall return to Warsaw and watch as everyone deploys to prevent the Russians from doing anything else stupid.”

Trautman nodded and escorted him outside.  Molobo had come in a massive black car that looked as if it had come directly from Rolls Royce, in England; part of Trautman would have dearly liked to have driven it himself, part of him distrusted the massive show of wealth.  Molobo climbed into his car and the driver drove it away, followed by a small unit of Poland’s armed police, who had the task of escorting Molobo around.

“It could be worse, boss,” Captain Henri Guichy said.  Trautman was not exactly surprised to see the Frenchman appearing behind him.  Guichy was the perfect aide in that respect; he was always there whenever Trautman needed him.  “He could be insisting on using that thing.”

He nodded towards the Eurocopter.  Trautman had to smile; the thought of Molobo being transported back to Warsaw in a stealth helicopter was amusing, in a dark manner.  Stealth technology was being incorporated into everything, these days; a Eurotank could hide from most sensors, as long as it remained still and unwilling to reveal itself by opening fire.  In theory, the Russians were unable to track the Eurocopter craft; in practice…there would be no way to know unless it was tried. 

“I suppose,” Trautman said.  He cleared his throat as he forced himself to concentrate.  There was work to be done, no matter how unnecessary it seemed.  “Anything from Camp Potsdam?”

“Yes, sir,” Guichy said.  “Colonel Florette Rolande” – there was a hint of admiration in his voice – “sends word that the latest shipment of supplies for our forward deployment has finally come through, released by the British Government.  They should be up here within the week.”

“And thank God for that,” Trautman said.  He smiled grimly.  “I was starting to wonder if the events in the Far East were starting to overshadow our presence here.”

“I don’t think that anyone will forget the footage from the border anytime soon,” Guichy said.  “Even that fat fool” – he nodded towards Molobo’s retreating car – “knows that if you give the Russians an inch, they’ll take a mile.”

“That’s Brussels for you,” Trautman said.  He shook his head and checked his watch.  “I have an hour until the next meeting, so…it’s time for a quick inspection.”

Camp Warsaw had been built by the Soviet Union nearly fifty years ago, and had somehow avoided being knocked down in the wake of the end of the Soviet Union, nearly thirty years ago.  It was massive, large enough to hold an entire armoured regiment; Trautman was privately convinced that it was much larger than even the Russians had really needed.  It had an airfield that could take the largest air transports, or even launch fighter jets into battle…and the two thousand men on deployment in the base tended to rattle around like peas in a pod.  The dour Soviet construction had, in the end, proven much more durable than anything else he had ever seen…and it was suitable for his purposes.  In the end, that was all that mattered.

“I have the latest reports from EURONET,” Guichy said, as they passed a SAM launcher, positioned neatly at one end of the runway.  Trautman didn’t expect a major Russian air attack, but experience in the Balkans had led him to be aware that surprises came when they were least welcome.  He had been careful to deploy SAM teams with most of his units, and to ensure that he had a Total Air Exclusion Zone around Camp Warsaw.  “The units are still in position and are ready to move on your command.”

“We’re not going anywhere,” Trautman snapped, which was something of the problem.  Soldiers, the dreams of various politicians and writers to the contrary, were not robots; the long deployment was taking its toll on the men.  The morale was low, despite the shared professionalism of most of the European Armies; deployment to EUROFOR meant sharing dangers, not with a soldier’s fellow countrymen, but with other Europeans.  He hoped that, one day, they would be able to recruit a genuine pan-European force…but he wasn’t holding his breath.  Between Brussels’ inborn desire to avoid a major military entanglement and the reluctance of national governments to give too much power to the European Union, the current unsatisfactory situation was all too likely to continue.

“Yes, sir,” Guichy said, as unflappable as always.  Nothing seemed to bother him at all,  “There were reports of high-level contracts with stealth UAVs over the border, very faint readings indeed…”

Trautman spun around to look at him.  “The Russians are probing us?”

“Perhaps,” Guichy allowed.  “The contacts were very vague; they might have been missed altogether, were it not for the fact that one of the officers in the radar post was involved with one of the Swedish programs into stealth aircraft.  There were also more contacts with Russian aircraft near the border, although there were no attempts by either side to play chicken.”

Trautman nodded slowly.  Both sides had shown restraint when it came to the air; neither one had wanted a major air battle that could get rapidly out of hand.  The Russians were known to have moved several air regiments of their air force into Belarus, but most of them were involved in the Russian attempt to suppress resistance to their rule, which had started out as support to their only major ally in the west.  The Poles, too, had shown a surprising amount of restraint; they patrolled endlessly, but had refrained from pushing the Russians.  Twenty years ago, the European Air Forces would have been a match for the Russians…now?  No one knew…and no one was eager to find out the hard way.

“They were also conducting some kind of operation near the border,” Guichy concluded.  “They had helicopters and other units involved, but very little radio chatter; what little we did pick up suggested that it was an anti-partisan operation, rather than anything else.”

“I see,” Trautman said.  He rubbed his head grimly.  He was tired, tired of the endless waiting for something to happen, knowing that sooner or later, something would happen.  The Russians were not known for being subtle.  “Is there anything else?”

“Nothing,” Guichy assured him.  His eye ran down his own palmtop, the prized possession of every officer in EUROFOR…and designed to work only for their owner.  “Apart from the conference call with the European Defence Commission, there’s nothing else scheduled for this afternoon.”

“Good,” Trautman said.  He checked his palmtop thoughtfully.  The EURONET – the European Military Datanet – was one of the greatest inventions that had come out of America in the recent years, and it was being hardly used on the long deployment.  “I think I’ll conduct an inspection, on the unit…here.”  He tapped the display.  “Once I’ve talked to our lords and masters, perhaps I can get out there and feel like a soldier again.”

“Yes, sir,” Guichy said.

“See to it,” Trautman said.  “I have a nasty feeling that there is trouble coming.”

Chapter Five: There’s Trouble Coming…

Washington, United States of America

“You seem to be who you claim to be,” the guard said, in a bored monotone.  David Simmons wasn’t fooled; the security around official Washington dwarfed any other known security system in the world.  If he had been a terrorist, or even a spy, he would not have been able to enter; the security was that tight.  The guard had checked not only his identifying implants, but his biometric pattern and fingerprints.  Had there been any mistake, an armed response team would have taken him into custody and kept him until they found out the truth, one way or the other.  “You may enter.”

“Thank you,” Simmons said, as the secured door hissed open.  The Pentagon complex had been targeted by terrorists before and would almost certainly be targeted again in the future.  The security was determined to ensure that no one entered the building without permission.  He picked up his briefcase and passed through the door, stepping into what seemed like any normal office block.  The intelligence section of the Pentagon, in common with most intelligence buildings in the world, looked normal.  Simmons walked down a long plush corridor, passing through two more checkpoints, before entering the section of the building dedicated to the Presidential Intelligence Agency.  Only a hundred people, mainly the pick of the intelligence community’s analysts, were ever allowed into this section; it was one of the most secret rooms on the planet.

The Presidential Intelligence Agency had been founded in the wake of catastrophic failures by the CIA and the other American intelligence agencies.  A line of failure – failure to tackle the problems caused by the separate agencies and their reluctance to share information – had led directly to the disaster at Delhi.  It was privately acknowledged that if President Rupertson had known the truth about the new Pakistani Government, something that had been in the files, but never put together, he might have made different decisions.  Years of mismanagement, from Clinton onwards, had weakened America’s intelligence services…and the Presidential Intelligence Agency had been created to fill the gap.

It had no dedicated office, no Langley, no Hoover buildings.  It was small, but cleared for every intelligence source owned or operated by America – or even the remains of the shared NATO intelligence services.  It never numbered more than two hundred personnel at most, and it was funded from the President’s discretionary funds; only a handful of people even knew of its existence.  Its task was simple; it had to pull all of the collected information into one complete picture…and brief the President and his Cabinet on any changes in the world.

“Good Morning, David,” Simmons’ secretary said.  She was an older woman who had worked for the CIA before being invited to work for the PIA.  He trusted her implicitly.  “You have been asked to brief the President and General Armstrong this afternoon, on China and the growing situation with the Pact, so you have a few hours to make yourself an expert on the situation.”

Simmons snorted.  The PIA had been following China’s growing show of force – if it was a show of force – for weeks, ever since the Taiwanese President had been assassinated.  The CIA had blamed the death of the President on the Chinese, but Simmons wasn’t so sure; the Chinese had killed someone who wanted to maintain the status quo…knowing that he would be replaced by a pro-independence President.  Taiwanese politics were never quite as simple as everyone seemed to assume, but it was clear that the new President had little room to avoid a clash.  There were constant, ongoing, demonstrations against China; the assassinated President had been very popular, even in life.

It just didn’t make sense.

He accepted the first cup of coffee gratefully and delved into the computer files and records without qualms.  The PIA quantum computers could hold enough information to fill hundreds of libraries, from the recent updates from the NRO to communications intercepts from NSA.  On a hunch, he skimmed through the volume of Pact communication and frowned; the Chinese had been broadcasting many more messages – all of them implying that everything happening near Taiwan was nothing more than a show of force – in the clear.  That wasn’t just odd, it was strange; the Pact had quantum computers as well…and their codes were just as hard to break as American codes.  Why were they signalling in the clear?

“It doesn’t make sense,” he said, and dug deeper.  The sheer mass of information, ranging from USN assessments of the balance of power to satellite images of China’s airfields, was daunting.  He was used to being deluged with information, used to filtering it to find the important information from the millions of gigabytes of pure junk, but the Chinese seemed to be trying to overwhelm the Americans with more information than the system could process.  They were definitely flooding more aircraft into the region, along with a joint Pact naval force…and that, more than anything else, suggested that they weren’t bluffing.

Quickly, he called up the latest tactical breakdown and frowned; the Chinese had been preparing for war for years.  There were literally hundreds of airfields and airports in range to hit Taiwan, or indeed almost to reach out and touch the Philippines with a long-range bomber.   They could take Taiwan, if they were willing to soak up the losses…and if the American-led multinational force refused to engage.  If the force did engage, on paper, the Chinese were bound to lose.  Pundits had been telling everyone that for years, almost as long as the Taiwan situation had been in existence, which meant…what?  Did China know that they were going to lose?

His eye ran down the map.  Almost all of East Asia was either part of the Pact, willing or unwilling, or trying hard to remain unnoticed.  United Korea was unlikely to support any major American effort in the region, not least because of the major build-up of forces in the region and the ongoing cost of rebuilding the former North Korea.  China had been talking nice to the Koreans for years, reminding them of American arrogance and Japanese atrocities on one hand, and promising major support on the other.  The Japanese…might have nuclear weapons – no one knew for sure – but they were pressing an independent path these days.  With the Pact in firm control of Indonesia, they were dependent upon the Pact’s goodwill, which meant…

Simmons scowled.  The Japanese possessed a technological base equal to America’s, and it was a growing concern that they might have – willingly or unwillingly – transferred some of it to the Pact.  The Japanese Self-Defence forces were powerful, but, as they had been in 1941, they simply lacked the resources for a major war, particularly against the Pact.  The Japanese would have calculated the odds, if there was a war, and worked out that whoever won, Japan was doomed if they became involved.  The Japanese would stick out…which left Singapore as the only major American ally in the region, and Australia as a forward base.

A tap on his shoulder brought him back to reality.  “David, it’s almost time for your appointment,” his secretary said.  “I’ve got your datachip here.”

“Thanks,” Simmons said.  He pulled himself to his feet, feeling sore…and feeling facts and figures running through his head.  He was missing something, he was sure of it, and wondered; what was he missing?  The Chinese would have to be mad to attempt to take Taiwan; they had almost certainly passed up their best chance to take the island after the assassination…when the only intervention that the American Navy could have used would have depended on submarines and a single stealth ship.  “I’ll be on my way.”

It struck him as he was taking the elevator down to the tunnel between the Pentagon and the White House.  He was missing something because it wasn’t there; there seemed to be very little communication between the Pact countries, even though there was a war being threatened.  Even if the Chinese were bluffing, they had to know that America was watching and listening…and they weren’t talking to the other Pact countries.  The Indian and the Russian staff officers were still based in China, but they were known for being xenophobic; the NSA had had a good laugh at some of their transmissions back to their home countries.  The Russians thought that the Indians were idiots, the Indians regarded the Chinese as stupid…and the Chinese thought that the Russians as uncivilised.  It was something of a mystery how they managed to keep the Pact together.

“Welcome to the White House,” a Secret Service officer said.  The security sensors at the Pentagon might have allowed him to enter the tunnel network, but the Secret Service officers took no chances and checked him carefully; they were equally determined not to let an assassin anywhere near the President.  “The President is waiting for you now.”

President Vandergrift wasn’t seated behind his desk as Simmons was shown into the room.  The President of the United States was staring out of the Oval Office window, his face in shadow; the stains of his office were wearing on him.  As Simmons entered, he turned slightly, exposing hair that was prematurely grey and a worn face.  The dignity of the office had faded when President Rupertson had lost America all of its influence in the Far East, almost overnight…and President Vandergrift had the less-than-enviable task of pulling everything back together.

Simmons had briefed President Vandergrift before and knew what to expect.  Pundits had remarked, cruelly, that a monkey could have won the White House in 2016 – if it had been a Republican monkey.  The Democratic Party was in tatters, but it was having an effect on the Republican Party as well; Simmons had read reports that suggested that the Republican Party would split into two or more fragments as it suddenly had an abundance of votes and senators.  President Vandergrift did not have an enviable role.

“Thank you for coming,” President Vandergrift said.  He had personally approved Simmons, along with many of Simmons’ co-workers; they were supposed to report directly to the President.  “What are the Chinese doing?”

Simmons wished that he had a serious answer.  “They seem to be making preparations to invade Taiwan,” he said, as he plugged the datachip into the President’s personal reader.  Security protocols on the chip went to work, confirming that the President was indeed entitled to read the information on the chip, and then displayed the tactical map of the South China Seas.  “At the same time, they seem to have missed the boat.”

General Armstrong snorted.  A distant relation of Neil Armstrong, Armstrong was the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and one of the few outside the White House who knew about the PIA.  There had been clashes, from time to time, over the agency; there had been times when the PIA had known something that could not be shared with the Army, just to preserve security.  It wasn’t for nothing that the army considered ‘security’ to be a dirty word.

“That’s what that fellow in England said, before Hitler invaded France,” he said.  “Why have the Chinese missed the boat?”

Simmons took a breath and started to explain.  “There is little precedence for an operation of the scale necessary to occupy Taiwan,” he said, “but we can make some observations.  Provided that they were willing to take losses, perhaps serious losses, the Chinese could sweep the Taiwanese Navy from the seas and force a landing on the island.  Taiwan is actually quite a big place, even though we think of it as an island; they would be able to establish air superiority and land a powerful force.  If you count in the multinational fleet, their position becomes almost impossible.”

President Vandergrift quirked an eyebrow.  “Almost impossible?”

Simmons nodded.  “In numbers, the units of TASK FORCE TAIWAN are inferior to the Chinese Navy, or even the combined forces of the Pact,” he said.  “That said, we will enjoy technological superiority and the ability to determine part of the action; we will be able to attack the Chinese while they are fighting the Taiwanese – if the force is in position.  We know this, and so do the Chinese, and they are moving ahead with their preparations anyway.”

He tapped the map.  “The Chinese have moved hundreds of newer units and systems into the region,” he said.  “There are ongoing attempts to reinforce their garrisons in Indonesia and the rest of the Pact, along with some of their most advanced aircraft.  If the Chinese know that they can’t win, why are they preparing for war?”

General Armstrong nodded.  “Or, put another way, what do they know that we don’t?”

“Exactly,” President Vandergrift said.  “What do they know that we don’t?”

Simmons flushed.  Admitting failure didn’t come easily to him.  “They may be intent on preventing any incidents that would give Admiral Toland the excuse he needs to open fire,” he said, refusing to use pretty words for an ugly reality.  “The French have put Taiwan on the agenda for the UN summit in two weeks; they might intend to threaten Taiwan enough to return to the status quo, but…there are some oddities.”

His hand ran down the chart.  “The Pact – Chinese, Indian and Russian units – have been deploying hundreds of ASW ships, from smaller vessels to some specialised hunter-killer units,” he said.  “The reports from some of our SSNs are worrying; the Chinese are hunting submarines with increasing aggression and determination.  Admiral Toland has issued orders for all of our submarines to evade contact, but that’s not going to be easy with so many ships around.

“Second, the Pact has not activated its formal notification of military activity,” he continued.  “That’s their equivalent to NATO’s War Warning system; the Pact treaty insists that the senior members – the Big Three – consult before any war develops, and coordinate military operations.  That notification has been practiced several times, so we know what it consists of…and the NSA has not monitored any attempt to issue such a notification.  It’s possible that either India or Russia refused to go along, but then the pact itself would have fractured and it seems to be humming along just right.

“However, what NSA did monitor was the transmission of formal alert notices,” he said.  Something was nagging at the back of his mind.  “It is the rough equivalent to a standard deployment order from our own forces; a unit is ordered to prepare itself for possible deployment.  Every known Pact unit received such a transmission, and orders were included; we don’t know what.  It could be an attempt to swamp our system, but it’s just odd.”

He closed his eyes, wishing that he had more concrete information.  “If it’s a show of force, it’s an odd one,” he concluded.  “The Pact…I think they’re bringing the Pact to full alert, but doing it in a manner calculated to avoid alarming us, until its too late.”

President Vandergrift narrowed his eyes.  “For what purpose?”

“It’s impossible to say,” Simmons admitted, hating himself.  “We know, now, that units of the Russian Atlantic Fleet have been ordered to head to sea and head around to reinforce their Pacific Fleet, which does suggest that they intend to keep the conflict limited to Taiwan.  Egypt received a request for elements of the Black Sea Fleet to make the trip through the Canal, which also supports that thought, and the Indians are placing their own forces on alert.  It could be that they intend to mass overwhelming firepower and engage the Taiwanese, but…”

General Armstrong consulted his palmtop.  “We could have two more carriers sailing to reinforce Admiral Toland within a few days, Mr President,” he said.  “Maybe even a third if we want to pull it out of the Atlantic Fleet.  Would the Pact be crazy enough to challenge such firepower?”

Simmons met his eyes.  “Only if they think that they could win,” he said.  The nagging thought that something had gone very wrong was back in his mind.   They were missing something, but what?  “The truth is, sir; if they take Taiwan, recovering it will be difficult.  The Chinese would be very well dug in and we would be operating on a very long and breakable supply line.”

“And perhaps illegal,” the President said.  He cracked a thin smile.  Congress had been determined to defend Taiwan, but they wouldn’t be so happy about turning the island into a battlezone.  “Recommendations?”

Simmons hesitated.  “Perhaps some reinforcement would be a good idea,” he said.  “The problem, Mr President, is that we are blind where it really counts; we have no idea what the top leadership is thinking, or what they’re planning.”

President Vandergrift blinked.  “I thought that we could listen in on their mobile phones,” he said.  Even the President wasn’t cleared for some of the most secret technical information.  “What are they saying to one another?”

“Nothing important,” Simmons said.  The Chinese never said anything important on unsecured lines; they knew more about what NSA could do than anyone was comfortable with them knowing.  “You see, they know that we can do that as well.”

General Armstrong looked up at the President.  “That leaves us with one problem,” he said.  “In two days, Admiral Toland will enter the operations area; do we permit him to enter engagement range, or order him to remain outside any possible attack?”

President Vandergrift steepled his fingers.  “I don’t think that we have any choice,” he said grimly.  “We have a commitment to defend Taiwan.  The only way we can do that is through sending the multinational fleet into Taiwanese waters.”  He shook his head.  “The Chinese must be mad.”

General Armstrong frowned.  “Either that, or they have a very carefully worked out plan,” he said.  “Many of the battle tactics of history looked mad until they were actually tried…and they worked.”

Simmons said nothing.

Chapter Six: Demand Notice

Waldorf Hotel, Beijing

“Welcome to the Waldorf Hotel,” a young Chinese girl said.  Kady Jones concealed her amusement with an effort; it was clear, as far as the girl herself was concerned, that there was no other Waldorf Hotel in the world.  The franchise might have spread to the new skyline of Beijing, but it was still luxurious beyond belief; Kady almost felt ashamed of stepping into a world where few native Chinese would ever be able to afford to stay.  The Waldorf wasn’t the only hotel in the city that was part-empty; China had built thousands of hotels…and had swamped the market.  “Can I take your bag?”

She looked relieved as she studied Kady’s small overnight bag, containing only a spare change of clothes and her two computers; many guests would come with dozens of bags.  They would also expect services from a pretty young girl – Kady wasn’t sure if she was even legal age – such as herself; Kady wouldn’t be interested, she presumed, in such services.

“No, thank you,” Kady said, unwilling to risk losing her computer.  The Chinese Intelligence Service, the dreaded Ministry of State Security, would be very interested to know what information she carried with her.  “Please can you just show me to my room?”

“Of course,” the girl said.  She smiled up charmingly, reminding Kady of her own age.  “My name is Xiu-xiu; I am here to be your personal maid.”

“Thank you,” Kady snapped, unwilling to pretend to be interested.  It had been a long flight from Taiwan and she didn’t want to waste time chatting.  She had a headache brewing behind her eyes and she wanted a rest, not a discussion with a youngster.  “Please take me to my room.”

“Right this way,” Xiu-xiu said.  She turned, showing off an outfit that would have seen her flogged to death in Iran, and led the way up a long set of stairs, heading into the rear of the hotel.  Kady followed, unimpressed; the designers of the hotel seemed to have followed the ‘more gilt, more class’ philosophy.  Gold and silver paint was almost everywhere, surrounding a collection of artwork that pushed Chinese taste to a new low.  The carpets could have fed an American family for a month, some of them clearly coming from the Middle East, others embroidered with more classical Chinese designs.  Kady, oddly for her, felt out of place.

She turned to the girl.  “Do you know why I’ve been summoned here?”

Xiu-xiu’s eyes went wide.  “Of course not,” she said.  Kady wondered if she was genuinely ignorant, which wouldn’t be surprising, or if she was an agent for China’s security service.  There were thousands of foreigners in China, despite the feelings of the vast majority of Chinese; all of them were considered a possible threat by the regime.  Kady knew that the Chinese would try to have her followed; placing an agent in plain sight would be one easy way to accomplish that.  Westerners often depended upon the services – in more ways than one – of a Chinese aide in a Chinese city; that worthy would be perfectly placed to monitor their activities.  “All I know is that I have been ordered, by your young man, to roll out the red carpet.”

Kady blinked.  “My young man?”

“Of course,” Xiu-xiu said.  Kady was starting to wonder if Xiu-xiu knew any other words.  “He’s waiting for you inside.”

She tapped a combination code into a security pad and ushered Kady into a hotel room.  It was less gaudy than the interior of the hotel, but there was still enough gold and silver to dent even the most supremely self-obsessed man Kady had ever met.  Sitting in the chair, smiling up at her, was a very familiar face.  Kady wondered why she had even been surprised.

“Good afternoon, Kady,” Wang said, in his clipped, precise English.  “How was the flight?”

“Terrible,” Kady said, honestly.  “The pilot kept telling us all about the massive military build-up below us.”

“How charming,” Wang said.  He looked over at Xiu-xiu.  “You are dismissed.”

Xiu-xiu bowed, almost Japanese-style.  “Yes, sir,” she said, in Chinese, and left the room.

“You can’t trust anyone these days,” Wang said softly, as he pulled out a small sensor and swept the room.  “The stupider anyone looks, the more likely that he or she has hidden depths…and that is a really worrying thought in China.”

Kady felt her temper rising.  “Wang…I have been summoned here at short notice,” she said.  “Why did you call me here?”

“You misunderstand,” Wang said.  His voice was placating, rather than responding to her growing fury.  Her headache refused to vanish; she rubbed the side of her head thoughtfully, trying to brush it away.  “I did not call you here; that happened at the behest of the Chairman of the Chinese Communist Party, the President himself.”  He pressed on before Kady could say anything.  “And it wasn’t just you, either; hundreds of reporters have been invited to Beijing.”

Kady unbuckled her coat – something that had drawn admiring glances from Xiu-xiu – and loosened her hair.  “I feel so honoured,” she snapped.  She was too tired to think straight.  “What’s so important about reporters?”

“You ask me that?”  Wang said dryly.  He stood up.  “As much as I would like to spend the night with you” – Kady stuck her tongue out at him – “duty calls me away.  However, you have to know that things are building to a head.”

“Really,” Kady said.  She abandoned one of her own rules and dug up a stimulant injector from her bag, injecting herself with a temporary stimulant.  “Is this connected to our last discussion?”

“Yes,” Wang said.  “What happened to your charming friend?”

“Gone back to Warsaw,” Kady snapped.  The feeling of the stimulant washed through her body.  She felt awake, aware…and she knew that she would pay for it in an hour or two.  “What’s going to happen?”

Wang frowned.  “The only thing I can tell you is that it’s for real,” he said.  There was something in his voice that she didn’t like.  “Do not assume that it’s a joke; it’s deadly serious…and you have to convey that to the world.  Understand?”

Kady looked at him.  “Which side are you on?”

Wang looked back.  “Which side are you on?”

He left the room without waiting for her reply.  Kady shook her head and turned her attention to the massive bed, one suitable for a Roman emperor.  China had become famous for cheap luxury tours, not least by people who wanted some pleasures they couldn’t have in America.  She blamed it, personally, on the influx of foreign women into China; the Indians had been known for sending women into China to work, perhaps even to marry Chinamen.  She climbed in and closed her eyes.

It felt like only moments had passed when Xiu-xiu started to shake her awake.  The Chinese girl looked disgustingly awake and healthy, wearing an outfit that left absolutely nothing to the imagination.  Kady was almost tempted to pull her into bed, just to see if she could be shocked, but decided against it; she was too tired for the effort.  A large cup of coffee and a good breakfast restored some of her vigour, enough to have her feeling human again.

“You have been sent an invitation to hear the President speak,” Xiu-xiu informed her.  Kady heard the note of naïve envy in her voice and smiled inwardly.  Xiu-xiu was either a True Believer, which wasn't that impossible, or she was a plant.  “He’s even sent you a car for the trip!”

That wasn’t as commonplace, Kady knew, as it would have been in America.  The Chinese leadership had invested heavily in Beijing’s mass transport system – and human-powered transport systems – and had practically banned cars from the roads…unless you happened to be rich, foreign or well-connected.  It didn’t improve the air much, but Kady had never considered Beijing to be a pleasant city.  It was a strange mixture of towering modern skyscrapers, strange buildings built just for the pleasure of being strange, and more traditional designs.  Over a million people were housed within the city, most of them poor and almost hopeless.  People had been predicting real trouble for years.

The car itself was a Chinese-designed car, a copy of an American design.  Xiu-xiu burbled happily in the back seat, leaving Kady feeling distinctly old and dowdy next to her, while the driver took them through the streets with a skill that New York taxi drivers would have envied.  Kady closed her eyes after the third near-collision and waited patiently for the drive to end.  Thirty minutes of sheer terror later, the driver pulled into a secured car park and allowed them both to leave the car.

“You don’t have to come, you know,” Kady said, as she examined her equipment.  There would be hundreds of cameras and recorders present, but GNN had not become one of the foremost companies in the Information Age by relying on other companies, let alone the footage shot by the Chinese themselves.  That would be more than a little untrustworthy.  “You could always stay in the car.”

“I have to come with you,” Xiu-xiu said.  Her voice remained eager, almost a child’s voice.  “I am to attend to your every need.”

Gotcha, Kady thought, with genuine amusement.  Few young Chinese would be willing to listen to their leaders…unless they had a pressing reason to listen, like spying on the foreign devil they were supposed to be escorting.  Kady would be watching President Kim Sook; Xiu-xiu would be watching her.  It was just like living in Stalin’s Russia, with one important difference; China had enough foreigners to make shadowing them all difficult.  

The Chinese leadership had constructed a building for speaking to the foreign media, one that everyone knew to be bugged and designed to ensure that the reporters had no privacy…and no chance at all of seeing something that they weren’t supposed to see.  The walls were designed to limit communications – although they couldn’t prevent a microburst from reaching one of GNN’s satellites – and it was guarded heavily.  Terrorists were blamed for the increased security, but everyone knew the truth; the Chinese Government trusted the reporters about as far as Kady could pick up and throw an aircraft carrier.  The building was striking from the outside, but it might as well have been one of the prisons the Chinese had used for imprisoning political dissidents or members of the Party who had fallen; tolerable, but clearly a prison.  In China, those prisoners were the lucky ones; it would be better to be dead than to be a female prisoner in China.

Inside, it was very quiet.  The building had been designed in a different style to the hotel, one designed to impress the guests with the power and magnificence of the Chinese President.  Images of his face were placed everywhere, but surprisingly tastefully; Kady, who knew that part of the reason for the President’s existence was to provide a public face for the inner circles of the Party, was amused.  The inner circle was nothing…unless it acted in unison.  Pundits had been predicting China’s collapse for years…and somehow the system remained active.

“Please be silent, please,” an oddly-accented voice proclaimed.  It was a strange voice, almost a whistling voice, rather than a normal voice.  It was chosen to not to overshadow the President.  “Please be silent and stand for the President of China.”

Foreigners were no longer expected to kowtow towards the leader, who was more powerful than any Chinese Emperor had ever dreamed of being, but a low mummer of respect ran through the room.  The Chinese President didn’t have to put up with any of them; unlike an American President, who was fair game, the Chinese President could ban them from China at a whim.   His tall, lanky form was wrapped in a suit and tie, decorated only by a Chinese medal.  He had served in the People’s Liberation Navy at one point, or so the Chinese claimed; the President had been a bold leader of men.  Kady didn’t believe a word of it.

After all, the President had a weak chin.

“I shall be brief in my statement,” the President said.  “There will be questions that you will want to ask, but I will not be answering them, not today.  You have been called here to hear a statement that will determine the future of China – and the world.”  His voice softened slightly.  “History has chosen you to be there when the statement was made – and you will have the reward of being able to inform the world.  A complete transcript will be made available to the world afterwards, but you will be the first to hear it – and the first to learn about the new world.”

He paused.  Kady felt herself tensing; the waffle at the beginning had been mere window-dressing, designed to keep them interested, but not too interested.  “Since time out of mind, the island known as Chinese Taipei – known to ignorant people around the world as Taiwan – has been Chinese.  We settled on the island, we brought the benefits of Chinese civilisation to the island, and we treated it well.  The Japanese might have taken it from us, for a while, but it was finally returned to us…

“And then it was stolen, stolen by a small group of imperialists and warlords, backed by the power of the United States of America,” he continued.  A harder edge had entered his voice.  “The people of Chinese Taipei, who are Chinese in thought and deed, were stolen from China; they were kidnapped from their rightful place and set adrift upon a sea that led only to endless misery.  We have never accepted the permanent loss of Chinese Taipei, like we never accepted the loss of the cities and islands stolen by the western imperialists, and China’s eternal subordination to outside powers.  We have never accepted that…and we know that the People of Chinese Taipei have never accepted their permanent separation from their fellow countrymen.  We have never accepted it…

“But we were patient,” he thundered.  His voice was rising, echoing around the room.  “We could have taken back the island at any moment, but we were reluctant to risk the loss of thousands of lives on Chinese Taipei, or the brave men who would risk their lives to reunite Chinese Taipei with the mainland.  We have been patient…and all we have asked in return is that Chinese Taipei makes no move towards permanent separation, or stand as an active base for American military units.  We have been patient…and it has been thrown back in our face!”

He took a breath, his face seeming to be slightly flushed.  The lights were designed to make him look far more powerful, in body and mind, than he really was, but no one spoke.  The sheer volume of his words…and their stunning content, kept the reporters silent.  All of them knew that the Chinese President was leading up to only one thing.

“We have been accused of assassinating, of murdering, the much believed President of Taiwan,” the Chinese President said.  His voice softened slightly.  “Can anyone, but the Imperialists and their running dogs, really believe that?  Did we assassinate a man who had proven himself willing to maintain the status quo?  Of course not!  Why would we have killed a man who did much for us, almost as much as he did for Chinese Taipei…and for the furtherance of relationships between Chinese Taipei and their brothers and sisters on the mainland?  Why would we have done that?

“We know, now, that the Taiwanese Government met in secret session, last night,” he continued.  The thunder was back in his voice.  “We now know that, once the fleet of the oh-so-judgemental West arrives, the rebels intend to declare themselves a separate nation from China, regardless of the legality of the situation.  China will be sundered!  The Americans intend to base units of their armed forces on Taiwan; they intend to start the long process of disintegration again, they intend to ruin China as they have ruined India and Russia.  We will not let that happen!”

He banged his fist on the podium.  It shook under the impact.  “We will not let that happen!”

Kady felt her blood run cold.  “This is our formal message to the rebels on Chinese Taipei,” the President continued.  “We have finally run out of patience; you have taken the final step towards destroying China as a unified entity.  We will no longer tolerate your pretensions that you are a separate state, nor will we tolerate your delusion that you can challenge the might of the Chinese People and escape punishment.  Your time is over – and we will end it.  We will complete the process of reunifying China…

“To our brothers and sisters on Chinese Taipei, have patience, help is coming,” he said.  “We call upon those who form the armed forces of Chinese Taipei to stand down, to prepare to join the People’s Liberation Army and serve as part of the true Army of China.  If you attempt to serve the rebels, to attempt to prevent reunification, we will crush you; there can no longer be any mercy for those who try to break China.  We will liberate Chinese Taipei from American domination, and unite China forever.  We are coming…”

He stepped neatly off the podium before Kady, or anyone else, could recover from their surprise – and horror.  Questions were shouted, but he ignored them, leaving though a single door that was large enough to take a small tank.  Kady felt her head spin, even as she tapped the ‘transmit’ button on her palmtop, transmitting the recording to a GNN satellite.  She knew, as well as anyone else, what the President’s speech meant.  She knew what it meant for the island of Taiwan, inhabited by people she called friends, and she knew what it meant for the multinational fleet.

War.

Chapter Seven: Disaster, Take One

Combat Zone, East China Sea

“That’s another one,” the operations officer said softly.  From his command chair on the Gerald R. Ford, Admiral Toland nodded thoughtfully, rubbing his eyes.  The Chinese had started out as indifferent submariners – like almost all of America's enemies, though her long history, they were primarily a land power – and had developed into a first-class submarine force.  He blamed it on the Indians; years of tutelage under the British had taught them the importance of maintaining command over the seas.  “That makes five submarines that have attempted to penetrate the ASW net.”

Toland studied the computer display and wished, not for the first time, that an admiral was allowed to pace.  The Chinese hadn’t actually challenged the fleet, not in such a manner that would allow him to fire back, and they had actually pulled back their surface units to avoid a major clash.  At the same time, they had dozens of submarines in the water – American submarines were trying to shadow them and shield the fleet at the same time – and literally thousands of aircraft flying through the air.  The combination of British, French and American carrier-borne aircraft were outnumbered by the Chinese aircraft, although intelligence agreed that the Multinational Fleet should have an advantage over the Chinese aircraft.

His gaze lit on a single icon, shadowing the fleet, and he scowled.  The Chinese had adapted an ex-Soviet Bear for long-range scouting missions…and it was following the fleet, just outside missile range.  A Raptor or a Dassault Rafale from the Charles de Gaulle could drive it off, or even shoot it down, but that would be an act of war.  No matter the near-certainty that the Chinese were planning to launch an invasion of Taiwan very soon, the President had specifically forbidden the Multinational Fleet from firing the first shot, unless the Chinese put the fleet in very real danger.  Tensions were running high; they’d passed though the South China Sea, mainly to remain China of their power, and the Chinese had watched them all the way.

“That’s another set of contacts,” the operations officer said.  Toland nodded grimly, thinking hard; no one had fought a major battle at sea since the Falklands War…and every power in the world had studied that battle with interest.  One field of thought suggested that the Chinese would gamble on the Multinational Fleet being forbidden to engage them unless they shot first, or perhaps that they would use the fleet as an excuse to avoid following their own threats to Taiwan.  Toland didn’t believe it; the Chinese Leadership had used Taiwan to beat the drum for so long that they had enough face invested in the entire matter – perhaps too much face to back down.  “That’s a force of Blackjacks, fully-loaded from their flight pattern.”

“Track them,” Toland ordered, knowing that there was nothing else that he could do.  The fleet was entering the most dangerous set of waters in the world, heading towards Taiwan and China, knowing that their enemies would have an opportunity to get the first shot in.  The Chinese were testing the fleet, but his own orders forbade him to test them back; parts of the Chinese air formations were hidden behind waves of electronic distortion, other parts were using active radars to scan for threats.  So far, no one had deployed targeting systems near the Multinational Fleet, but he knew that that wouldn’t last.  “Let me know if they come near the fleet or Taiwan.”

Despite himself, he tended to agree with Captain Howery; there had to be a reason for all of the Chinese air efforts.  The People’s Liberation Army Air Force – the Chinese Air Force – had thousands of active combat jets, most designed for ground-support and maritime-support roles, but they were using them to make threatening postures at Taiwan.  The Blackjacks were levelling off now, heading towards Taiwan; so far, none had come within Taiwanese weapons range.  For a show of force, it was wasteful; there had to be another reason.

“A sixth contact,” the operations officer said.  He frowned.  “It might be the last one coming back for another sniff; the Trafalgar lost track of Number Five.”

“Probing our defences,” Toland said.  He looked up at the display.  He commanded the greatest force of naval might on the surface of the planet…and he knew that the Chinese had to be trying hard to think of ways to cripple his force.  If the Chinese President had meant every word he said – and it had certainly sounded that way – they would be considering ways to destroy him; he knew that he would be doing that if he was in the place of his opposite number.  His force was well-defended, with both anti-aircraft and anti-submarine ships as well as the heavy ships, but the enemy would have the advantage of striking the first blow.  “Ask the British to try and follow this one more closely; perhaps we can put the fear of God into them.”

“Yes, sir,” the operations officer said.  His voice darkened.  “That’s a major force of Bears, sir; at least thirty aircraft.  They’re falling into formation as well, one of their little demonstration flights.”

Toland shook his head.  “How many of those damn things do they have?”

“The Russians have been selling them to every Tom, Dick and Harry who wants an air force,” the intelligence officer said.  His face was very pale in the dim lights of the CIC; he hadn’t been prepared for carrier operations as completely as Toland would have liked.  “There are literally thousands of them on Earth, the Chinese themselves have at least two hundred of them, perhaps more.  They’re not only bombers, but transports as well.”

Toland scowled.  “Why can’t we do that as well as them?”

“We can,” the intelligence officer said.  “The B-52 is a much better aircraft.  We’re just not allowed to sell them onwards.”

“True,” Toland said, as they watched the lumbering Bears settle into their flight path.  Congress – following several scandals – had banned most American arms sales, except under stringent safeguards.  No one had wanted to see – again – the spectacle of American weapons suppressing pro-democracy marches, or being used to spread chaos across the world.  The Pact, unburdened by such considerations, had sold weapons to everyone who wanted them – with a glorious lack of concern for the long-term effects.  They had armed Algeria, the current home of Islamic terrorism, despite Algeria being an enemy state.  They had armed…

“More submarines,” the operations officer said, breaking into Toland’s thoughts.  “They want permission to launch additional ASW helicopters.”

“Granted,” Toland said.  “I want any contact that comes within torpedo range of the Multinational Fleet to be driven away by sonar, if possible.”

His palmtop buzzed against him; the latest update from the Kelly Johnston.  The stealth ship was trying to monitor Chinese radio traffic between aircraft and there seemed to be suddenly a lot more traffic….and an entire fleet of tankers, refuelling the Chinese aircraft in the air.  The Pact naval forces, on the surface at least, were holding back, but they were chattering away suddenly as well…and then, just as quickly as they had started, they stopped.  It didn’t make sense.

“Admiral, the Bears have altered course,” the operations officer said.  His voice was very soft.  “They’re heading for Taiwan.”

***
High over the Multinational Fleet, a Chinese satellite watched them from the chilly reaches of outer space, its cold unblinking eyes prying away at the fleet’s formation.  A single strand of pinpoint laser light bound it to a second reconnaissance satellite, which in turn relayed the images the satellite was transmitting to the ground, specifically to the headquarters of the Chinese Navy.  Standing in the centre of the vast room, General Yang Tao watched grimly, but with increasing excitement as the American-led fleet advanced into the killing zone.

“The Americans are entering the target box now,” one of the technicians reported.  Tao smiled to himself as the fleet moved onwards, as if it didn’t have a care in the world.  “We have a complete breakdown on the fleet and it’s location.”

“Good,” Tao said.  The Chinese had been shadowing the fleet since it had come near Chinese waters, both through the air and under the water, but they had been careful to avoid a major encounter until they were ready.  In a stand-up fight, the combined Pact navies would be in serious trouble...and Tao assumed that the Americans would know that as well as he did.  He had never planned to fight a conventional battle.  “And our forces?”

“The refuelling effort has been almost completed now,” the officer said.  He passed Tao a palmtop detailing every last aspect of the massive force floating through the air.  It was in itself a masterpiece of coordination, one that had taken months of effort to work out all of the kinks; the Chinese had lost several aircraft in the first attempts at building a major strike package.  There would be no real subtlety in the first steps of Armageddon; the Americans were just too dangerous to play games with.  “The uploaded targeting information is being channelled to the launching aircraft now and the weapons will be ready in five minutes.”

Tao checked the palmtop and passed it back.  “Good,” he said.  “Order the first group to begin its pre-planned manoeuvre.”

The officer tapped a console.  “The orders have been sent,” he confirmed.  “They will begin their operations now.”

Out over the waters, a force of Chinese Sukhoi Su-30M aircraft turned towards Taiwan and kicked in their afterburners.

***
“We have a second major change,” the operations officer said.  His voice was growing tenser by the moment.  Toland felt ice running down the back of his own spine.  “The Chinese have just started to flow their fast-jet fighters towards Taiwan; Sukhoi Su-30M aircraft, armed for air suppression.”

“It looks as if it’s starting,” Toland said.  He closed his eyes for a long moment.  “Launch the ready fighters, prepare to launch the anti-shipping aircraft for when the Chinese start surging forward their transports; inform the fleet to prepare for combat operations.”

“Yes, sir,” the operations officer said.  The carrier’s background noise began to rise, slightly, as Joint Strike Fighters and F-22 Raptors were hurled into the air, followed rapidly by older fighters armed to engage Chinese transports at long range.  The Pentagon had suggested that if the Americans or the Taiwanese took out the Chinese transports, all of which had been locked down by American satellites and drones, the Chinese would be stalemated and the war would come to an end quickly.

A console chimed.  “Admiral, those Blackjack aircraft are sweeping in towards Taiwan, and following up the fighters,” the operations officer said.  “The Chinese have increased their ECM a hundredfold; they’re burning through some of the drone stealth coatings.”

Toland swore.  “They can see the drones?”

“It’s possible,” the operations officer conceded.  Toland muttered a second curse under his breath; if the Chinese were burning though the drone stealth systems, they might be able to pick up the Kelly Johnston as well.  “Sir, the Chinese transports are moving out into the water.”

The entire picture was starting to take on a horrific inevitability.  Nearly two hundred Chinese fighters were bearing down on Taiwan, which was launching its own fighters – F-16s and even a handful of F-22s – to counter the Chinese moves.  Behind the fighters, a solid wall of bombers – Bears, Blackjacks and Backfires, all heavily modified – were advancing, armed with weapons designed to crush Taiwan on the ground.  The Chinese had had plenty of time to plan their campaign; they would have marked every one of Taiwan’s airfields and harbours for lethal attention.  Their navy was surging forwards, out into the open waters…and Toland saw the pattern developing without effort.  The Taiwanese would be crushed by the Chinese hammer, unless his force intervened.

“Order the first flight forward to support the Taiwanese,” he said, hoping that it was merely a Chinese attempt to force the Multinational Force to burn off scarce fuel and resources.  The closest friendly harbour was at Singapore…and if something happened to the island, the fleet wouldn’t have any friends closer than Australia.  “The second flight is to remain to cover the fleet.”

“The Taiwanese force is broadcasting a warning now,” the operations officer said.  “I don’t know if the Chinese will heed the warning…”

Something changed.  “My God,” Toland breathed, as the display shifted, trying to keep up with the rapidly changing situation.  The Chinese armada had altered course, sweeping away from Taiwan, and heading south.  He felt a moment of sheer hope, wondering if the Chinese had finally realised that they were pursuing a course of pure madness, and then understood.  The Chinese were playing chicken…

“The main Chinese force is now heading towards us,” the operations officer said.  It was an awesome sight, thousands of aircraft, heading directly towards the Multinational Fleet, with hundred more circling high over China itself.  “Time to weapons range with our advance elements, two minutes.”

Toland scowled.  There was something about the situation that was very wrong.  The Chinese transports hadn’t stopped their slow advance, and neither had the Pact naval forces.  He knew that there were three Pact carriers nearby, although none of them could match a Nimitz-class carrier, but they were still deadly.  There were hundreds of submarines, and thousands of aircraft, all bearing down on the Multinational Fleet.

“Contact the fleet,” he said.  It was starting to look all too much like a major attack was developing.  The Chinese might fire and hit them before his ships could respond.  “Inform them that I am declaring a Red-Two condition; weapons held, fire if fired upon or in serious danger.”

His link to the Kelly Johnston buzzed again.  A force of low-flying Chinese aircraft, apparently Russian-designed stealth aircraft roughly equal to the F-117, had passed near the stealth ship.  The American ship had only detected them because of the Chinese radars; they might not be so easy for the American ships to detect, unless he brought all of his own sensors to full power, which would provide the Chinese with perfect targeting indicators.  Time was running out…

***
Captain Heng Lin, People’s Liberation Army Air Force, loved his old Bear.  It was an older craft than some of the fighters in the People’s Liberation Army Air Force, but it was still powerful…and very capable.  Heng Lin didn’t think about politics, or even much about how China was governed; all he knew was that he had relatives on Taiwan…and he hadn’t been eager to unleash his Yingji-90 cruise missiles on their home.  He disliked the few Americans he had met, ever since a near-encounter with an American aircraft over the East China Sea had almost resulted in his own death.

The Yingji-90 had been improved over the years since it had entered service as the Yingji-82.  Like comparable American, Russian and European designs, it was capable of serving as a mixed-role missile, although it wasn't easy to change the warhead.  He had half-expected to be tasked with suppressing the Taiwanese Navy, once the fighters had cleared the Taiwanese Air Force from the sky, but the commanding officer of their regiment had made it clear; their task was to add their missiles to the attack on the American ships.  Heng Lin did not intend to lose.

“We have finished imputing the new coordinates,” his weapons officer informed him.  His voice showed none of Heng Lin’s own awareness of how much could go wrong; the powerful radars carried by some of the Bears revealed the presence of oncoming American fighters, including some of the dreaded Raptors.  The Americans, who had a habit of gloating over their new weapons systems, had told Heng Lin more about the Raptor than he had wanted to know; the upgraded systems were far too capable for his old Bear.  He knew his duty…but he also knew that he would be unlikely to survive, unless the Americans saw sense.

“Good,” Heng Lin said.  He took a long breath.  So far, everything had gone the Chinese way.  “Do all of the missiles check out as being ready for launch?”

“Yes, Captain,” the younger officer assured him.  Heng Lin privately envied him his enthusiasm.  Heng Lin was too old to accept the prospect of death and glory; he left that to the younger men in the fighters.  “They have their coordinates set and all of them are ready to launch.”

“Then we wait,” Heng Lin decided, and sat back.  The Yingji-90 wasn’t perfectly guided – after all, American ships didn’t hold the same position forever, or even as long as it took the hypersonic missile to reach its target – and the computers onboard the missile had been programmed to home in on a particular target in the American fleet.  A satellite, floating high overhead, would guide some of the missiles; others would hunt for targets and dive on them according to their internal programming.  Americans had the advantage in ECM; the Chinese had planned their own operations to counter that advantage for as long as possible.  “Once we get the order…”

The American fighters flashed closer.  Heng Lin knew that if they opened fire, they would kill many of the missiles before they could be launched, and held his breath.  If the Americans saw the Chinese launching their weapons, they would be fools not to open fire, which meant that if there were going to be any orders to fire, they would have to come about…

A console, permanently set to watch for a certain signal, bleeped.  The order was very clear.  There was no mistaking it.  FIRE.

The Bear’s crew had inputted the firing command already.  It was a simple matter to push down on the control and release the missiles, one after the others.  Moments later, the sky seemed to light up with missile trails, as thousands of missiles were launched directly towards the American fleet.

Heng Lin smiled.

Chapter Eight: Disaster, Take Two

Low Earth Orbit, Over East China Sea

The satellite floated in orbit around the globe, barely aware that it was about to be activated.  Since it had been placed in orbit by a Pact SSTO, it had continued its silent drift around the planet, only awoken briefly by pulses of laser light from the Pact Space Command Centre in Russia.  Each time, it responded with a short compact burst of information, detailing its readiness for action, and returned to sleep.  Its time had never come…

…Until now.  The satellite’s computers came to life as the activation command entered its systems.  The command was checked and checked again as the computers brought the satellite to full readiness, powering up it’s single offensive weapon, and was confirmed as a direct instruction from it’s masters.  It was time to go to war.

Its target, an American reconnaissance and communications satellite, was floating in a lower orbit to the hunter.  The hunter had no awareness of the strands of communications energy flickering around the American satellite; all it was aware of was the position of the target.  Quickly, it’s programming allowing it to adjust its position for a perfect shot, it brought itself into firing position and fired a single long burst of laser energy towards the American target.  The beam wasn’t powerful enough to destroy the American satellite, but it didn’t have to be; all it had to do was knock the satellite out of action.

The timed burst concluded.  The hunter had drained most of its power reserves in the quick action, hardly worthy of being called a battle.  It shut itself down, using the last of its propellant to adjust its course slightly, and waited for its next command.  It would be a long time in coming.

Combat Zone, East China Sea

“Dear holy shit,” the operations officer snapped, as the wave of Chinese missiles swept away from the lumbering Bears and headed towards the fleet.  Toland himself was almost as stunned; no one had ever dared to imagine that the fleet could actually be threatened.  “Admiral…we have requests to unlock weapons and open fire…”

Toland grabbed the microphone.  “Initiate a fleet-wide point defence link-up,” he snapped.  A counter-measure had been planed, but Toland knew that it had one flaw, one possible weakness.  It had never been seriously tested in combat.  “Weapons free, I repeat, weapons free!”

The swarm of icons, some of them pushing hypersonic speeds, some of them ‘merely’ supersonic, were swarming down on the fleet.  A tidal wave of destructive power, some of them homing in on the sudden profusion of active sensors, some of them clearly being guided by Chinese satellites and targeted on the carriers.  The Chinese would have war-gamed the entire battle from the other side; they would be targeting the carriers to win.  It could get dicey…

“Sir, the Raptors have engaged the Bears and their escorting fighters,” the operations officer said.  A massive dogfight had broken out over the waters as American fighters sought to kill the Chinese aircraft, even as the CAP moved into position to start winnowing down the incoming missiles.  The fighters would have only one chance to intercept; Raptors and JSF fighters were fast, but they couldn’t match the speed of the Chinese missiles.  “They’re reporting heavy kill-rates.”

A Bear, caught by the cameras on one of the drones, exploded.  Toland understood, even as the massive aircraft blew apart, just what the Chinese had planned.  Their raid on the fleet had a sting in the tail; an aircraft without missiles – and the Bears had fired all of their missiles in the first volley – was useless, except in one role.  The Bears and their escorting fighters were soaking up missiles that could be better used defending the fleet.

“Pull them back,” he snapped.  The force of Blackjacks and Backfires, along with a newer aircraft of unknown design, was still sweeping in from the west.  “Order the Raptors to engage the heavy bombers.”

He closed his eyes for a moment.  Taiwan would have to take a back seat to protecting his fleet…and yet, he knew that the Chinese would have all the time to launch a major series of attacks they needed.  The Pact naval force was still moving into combat position, and he understood their tactics, even as the first reports of undersea combat started to flicker into the CIC.  The aircraft would hammer his ships…and the Pact ships would complete the job, assuming that he allowed the plan to continue.

War is a democracy, he thought, grimly.  I have a vote as well…

“New strike orders,” he said, as calmly as he could.  The wave of Chinese missiles had broken through the CAP, missiles killing nearly two hundred missiles as they closed in, some of them breaking down into smaller sections and launching smaller HARM missiles of their own.  “I want the strike aircraft to target the Pact ships, specifically the ships that can hurt us; their carriers and missile ships, understand?”

A report came in; a submarine, no one knew whose side it had been on, had been blown out of the water.  There were more contacts as the Chinese submarines tried to close in, other submarines attempting to target the American craft.  Moments into the battle…and already hundreds of men on both sides had died; everything was happening so quickly!  The Bears were breaking off contact now, perhaps delighted to be alive; the handful of craft that had survived the American fighters.  It had been a masterful move, he had to admit; the Bears were useless in an open combat zone, except as cannon fodder…

“Yes, sir,” the operations officer said.  He took a breath.  “Here come the missiles.”

Toland watched as the close-in defence systems on the fleet’s ships, linked together by shared protocols and a sudden shared sense of extreme danger, went to work.  The computers and sensors were working hard to break down the Chinese force, trying to target the missiles for interception before they could hit the ships…and he knew that there wasn’t enough time.  The math was very simple; the Chinese had fired upwards of two thousand missiles at his fleet.  Many of them would die, but how many more would break through and attack one of his ships?

Alarms rang through the massive carrier.  It wouldn’t be long now.

***
I am in hell, Commander Monique Desjardins thought, as the Chinese missiles closed in on the Lethbridge.  The Canadian vessel, like all of the other ships in NATO, was compatible with the fleet-wide command and control system, linked into the point defence network that was trying to take down as many Chinese missiles as possible.  The Lethbridge, a guided-missile craft, had been positioned for a strike against the pact naval forces; it was dangerously exposed at the edge of the formation.

The close-in defence weapons, the Vulcan Phalanx Mk15 CIWS and the heavy machine guns, were spitting fire into the sky.  She could see explosions flashing out over the fleet, despite the sudden loss of some of the satellites helping to coordinate the fleet, and knew that some of the point defence weapons were finding targets.  Every ship in the fleet seemed to be spitting fire into the sky…and she could only pray that they would all find targets.

The Chinese missiles, pressing hypersonic speeds, were falling out of the sky, even as their carrier aircraft were hacked out of the sky by the American aircraft.  Levelling out, bare meters above sea level, they screamed towards the multinational fleet, remaining low to avoid many of the weapons being fired at them.  Other missiles, some of them decoys, others targeted on specific ships, flew higher, but one of the lower missiles was targeted specifically on the Lethbridge.  The guided-missile ship was a potential threat to the Pact ships and it had to be taken out.

“We have orders from the flag,” Lieutenant Commander Joseph Grissom said.  Monique heard the calm professionalism in his voice, despite the fact that no Canadian ship had been under attack – apart from suicide bombers in speedboats – since the Second World War – and relaxed slightly.  “Our Harpoons are being targeted now on the Pact ships and…”

Monique saw several of the American and British ships launching their own cruise missiles, expending them before the ships themselves were targeted by the Chinese, and barked orders.  The Canadian Government had refused to give the Americans automatic control over the weapons on the Lethbridge - old habits died hard when there was no real thought of war – but Monique knew her duty.  She had to…

“Incoming missile,” Lieutenant Stephanie Tsuji snapped, through the radio link.  The Chinese were using some jamming systems to try to snarl up the fleet’s communications, but the automatic frequency shifts seemed to be countering that nicely.  Stephanie, floating near the destroyer in her helicopter, watching for possible threats, had seen real danger.  The missile’s icon appeared on the display, somehow undetected by the shared warning system, and Monique felt her blood run cold.

”Commander, take that down,” she snapped, as the hypersonic missile closed in.  “Take it down and…”

The Chinese missile smashed into the Lethbridge’s superstructure.  Lieutenant Stephanie Tsuji was the only survivor as the destroyer blew apart in a wave of blinding fire.  The Canadian ship was not the only ship to die, only the first…

***
“Incoming missiles, incoming missiles,” someone was shouting.  Admiral Toland, seated in the centre of the CIC, was watching disaster unfolding right in front of him.  The Chinese had not only picked their targets with extreme care, but they’d also knocked out many of the satellites and drones that were supposed to be supporting the fleet.  It wasn’t surprising – from a military standpoint, information warfare was just as good as any other warfare – but it was chilling.  The Chinese had spent years trying to devise ways of crippling an American force; the American Navy had spent too long thinking about ways to fight the war on terror, not against a peer force.  There hadn’t been a peer force!

Now…seventeen ships had already been hit and there were more missiles closing in.  The British light carrier Impervious had been hit three times and was on fire…and the Chinese had narrowly missed sinking the Charles de Gaulle.  The French carrier had been lucky; the missile had detonated too high above her decks, sweeping the aircraft on the decks off into the waters or destroying them outright, along with the crewmen exposed, but the ship itself had survived.  The American carriers were about to be hit.

He heard the chattering of the point defence system, even through the hull, and knew that time was running out.  Whatever else happened, the multinational fleet had been seriously damaged…and the Chinese were already mounting new attacks.  Land-based missiles, less effective than the ones launched by the sacrificed Bears, were already being launched, despite the sudden launch of missiles from Taiwan, trying to suppress the Chinese launchers.  The Chinese, oddly, had not engaged the Taiwanese ground defences with their own missiles; the Taiwanese part of the battle was limited to the air and undersea warfare…

“That’s a hit on the Indian carrier,” the operations officer said.  “She’s ablaze; they’ll be lucky to save her…”

Toland nodded.  The Pact fleet had been hit badly, but the multinational fleet had been caught out of position.  Several of their missile ships had been knocked out before they could launch, and the Chinese and Indians had spent plenty of time building countermeasures of their own.  They weren’t as good, they certainly weren’t as capable, as the NATO-designed systems, but they had the advantage of being designed to work together…and they had many more weapons to deploy.  They had taken losses, some of them serious, but they wouldn’t be swept off the seas, unless the submarines scored major successes.  It wasn’t impossible, but…

“The Chinese missiles are making their final approach to the carriers now,” the operations officer said.  “Twenty seconds to impact…”

The Chinese missiles boosted as they locked onto their final targets.  Some of them had homed in on the energy emissions from the ships; others had been guided more carefully to their targets.  The smaller ships weren’t a target for the large hypersonic missiles; they only wanted to hurt the American carriers.  Nearly a hundred made the final approach, only twelve survived to hurl themselves onto their targets.

Harry S. Truman was the first carrier to be targeted; four missiles impacted with the ship in quick succession.  Toland thought, just for a long hopeful moment, that the ship would survive, but then a series of explosions swept through the ship and sent it up in a massive explosion.  Five missiles found Ronald Reagan; the carrier was set ablaze by the impacts, and lost its command tower.  Suddenly unable to steer, the Ronald Reagan started to move out of formation, dropping out of the command network completely.  The Abraham Lincoln was lucky; it only took one hit and remained in action.

Two missiles slammed into the Gerald R. Ford.  Toland found himself on the deck as the carrier rocked with the force of the impact.  Alarms were going off everywhere as the ship fought for life; the massive displays in the CIC started to flicker as power started to fail throughout the ship.  Toland reached for his palmtop, trying to find out the scale of the damage to his flagship, and cursed; one of the missiles had crippled the ship.

His radio buzzed.  “Admiral, you have to transfer to a different ship,” Captain Buckley said.  His voice was grim; he was watching the most powerful ship in the USN dying in front of him.  “Admiral…?”

Toland looked down at the feed from the Kelly Johnston.  The stealth ship was reporting a massive wave of Chinese aircraft closing in, some of them supersonic bombers and launching more missiles.  Hundreds of them had been destroyed, either by the anti-aircraft weapons on the fleet, or by the Raptors flying high overhead, but there were hundreds more…and his aircraft could no longer resupply.  Once they ran out of missiles, they would be useless.  He knew, then, that the battle was lost.

“General orders,” he said.  He couldn’t hope to command the battle from the Gerald R. Ford any longer; the computers were failing.  “Operational command of the fleet is to pass to Admiral Rogers, on Lincoln.”

The operations officer was bleeding from a wound to the head.  Toland quickly helped a medical crew bandage his wound, and then picked up his personal radio again.  “All ships…are to retreat, heading due east, away from the mainland,” he ordered.  Admiral Rogers could handle the operational matters of organising the USN’s first retreat from the battlefield since…since before Toland could remember.  The USN had lost small battles before, but even if no other ships were lost, he had just been on the losing side of the most violent sea battle in history.  “The aircraft are to cover the retreat.”

Some of his ships had unloaded land-attack missiles on China, against known Chinese missile batteries.  They would have to stop that now; the priority was to save as many ships as possible from the maelstrom and prepare to return to the East China Seas later.  The palmtop kept valiantly trying to update him; the dogfight was spinning out of control, some Chinese submarines were launching missiles towards the fleet, and American submarines had struck two of China’s largest ships.

His radio buzzed again.  “Admiral, the Lincoln is sending an evac helicopter for you,” Captain Buckley said.  “You are to take it – that’s an order, sir.”

Toland hated himself at that moment, hated running out on the crew of the Gerald R. Ford, even if there truly was no other choice.  He’d just lost a battle and condemned thousands of American servicemen and women – and hundreds of allied servicemen and women – to death.  The carriers alone had had over three thousand men and women onboard…and many of them would have died in the blasts.  Others would drown at sea, or would be picked up by the Pact ships and condemned to become prisoners of war…

Because it was a war.  Toland saw it clearly, now; the entire battle had been intended to ensure that the USN lost its foremost striking power in a single battle.  That couldn’t just result in a peace treaty, or some pushing and shoving on the diplomatic front; the pact had to have a larger aim.  The transports to Indonesia took on a darker tone; from their bases there, they could invade Australia, or even New Zealand.  He was looking at the beginnings of World War Three.

Buckley pressed.  Toland wondered what he had done to deserve such loyalty.  “Sir?”

“Understood,” Toland said, bitterly.  Normally, he could have reached the flight deck in under a minute; in the damaged carrier, it took him almost five minutes, passing a scene from hell.  Dead and wounded were everywhere, flames were burning right across the flight deck; it was a miracle that the blasts hadn’t reached the fuel tanks below the decks.  If that had happened, the Gerald R. Ford would have been disintegrated under the blasts.  A ship, too close for comfort, exploded; he could see the fleet, scattered and taking heavy fire.  A line of missiles launched from an American destroyer; he saw them racing towards the Chinese aircraft.

The stealth helicopter landed quickly.  Toland took one last look at the devastation, seeing the shock in the eyes of some of the crew, and climbed onboard.  The pilot didn’t hesitate; he yanked back on his stick and the helicopter leapt into the sky.

“We have missiles incoming,” he said, after a long moment.  Toland felt his blood run cold, even as the helicopter raced away towards the Lincoln.  The Chinese had thrown their big punch at his fleet, but they weren’t spent yet; they would be analysing their successes and retargeting the next wave of missiles.  “They’re targeted on the carrier…”

Toland looked back, down at the massive shape of the Gerald R. Ford.  Even burning, even crippled, it was still a magnificent sight.  The missiles were so quick that he almost missed seeing them, but there was no mistaking the effects of the strike.  The face of naval warfare had changed, once again, as the missiles struck home.

The carrier exploded in a massive ball of fire.

Chapter Nine: A Stillness upon the Sea, Take One

Washington DC, USA

“Mr President, the Chinese Ambassador is here to see you,” Gary Piece said.  The Presidential Aide’s face was twisted by a moue of distaste.  “Would you like me to show him in?”

Take him outside and shoot him, President Vandergrift thought, feeling cold rage boiling with cold fear.  America had been stunned by the Battle of Taiwan; there could be no hiding the sheer scale of the disaster.  Thousands of anti-Chinese riots had broken out across America and the Washington Police had had to reinforce the Chinese Embassy guard before a charging mob could break into it and slaughter the embassy staff.  Martial law had been declared in a dozen states, just to prevent further riots, even as the first reports were confirmed.  The battle had been America’s first real naval defeat for a long time…and the bad news continued to come flowing in.

The Chinese had damaged many of America’s reconnaissance and communication satellites floating high over China.  The US Space Command had retaliated at once, although both sides had refrained from targeting BMD warning satellites, with the net result that communications and imagery over China and the region was limited.  Drones and communications aircraft had filled some of the gaps, but it was still limited; the Chinese were apparently attempting to rescue as many survivors from the ruins of the multinational fleet as possible.

Over seventy warships had been lost, or battered into rubble, in the hour-long fight.  Four carriers had been destroyed outright; two others had been damaged.  The losses in other surface ships and submarines were worse – many of the smaller ships had been destroyed with one or two hits - but that wasn’t the worst news.  The worst news was that losses in advanced aircraft had been very high.  The Chinese had laid their plan almost perfectly.

President Vandergrift clenched his fist.  The Chinese hadn’t bombarded Taiwan at first…and it was now clear why they had refrained from attacking, although Beijing had been quick to put forward it’s own explanation for the apparent oversight.  Their version of the story, repeated by most of the press corps in Beijing, had been that the Americans had lured their Taiwanese – sorry, Chinese Taipei – brothers into firing on their liberators…and in the ensuring battle, the Imperialists had been driven off by superior Chinese firepower and righteousness.  No one was quite sure how many Pact warships had been destroyed in the brief brutal battle – although the post-battle preliminary analysis placed the total at around two hundred, including all three of their deployed carriers – but Beijing was claiming that losses had been minimal.

The real reason had been worse.  The loss of four carriers had left Taiwan as the only place for the suddenly carrier-less aircraft, many of which had been diverted to Taiwan by Admiral Toland.  The Chinese had waited until most of the craft were on the ground, and then opened fire with long-range cruise missiles, destroying many of the aircraft on the ground.  Others had been forced to eject, crashing the aircraft into the sea; there just hadn’t been room for all of the aircraft on the one remaining large carrier.  In an hour – less than an hour, really – American power in the Far East had been seriously blunted.

“Remove that chair,” the president said, “and then show him into the room.”

Gary Piece nodded.  Like his President, like most of the country, he was furious at the Chinese.  The public wasn’t happy at all; there were protesters out there, already, demanding the use of nuclear missiles against the Chinese.  Panic was sweeping parts of the country; there were even rumours that the Chinese had destroyed every American ship in the Pacific…and that a Chinese landing was about to be made in California.  As Piece left the room, President Vandergrift steeled himself for the coming ordeal.  It wasn’t going to be pleasant.

“The Chinese Ambassador,” Piece said, as he showed the older man into the room.  The Ambassador stepped over to the President’s desk and held out a hand; he seemed almost surprised when the President contemptuously rejected it.  Chin Ru was known for having spent more of his life in America than in China; his rich and well-connected family had sent him to study in America, then he had gone to university in America, and then he had been rapidly appointed to a series of different posts – in America.  The President knew better than to underestimate him; under the gormless smile Chin Ru pasted on his face for the public’s consumption, there was a razor-sharp mind.

“Mr President,” Chin Ru said.  His voice and face was the very picture of righteous indignation.  “I demand that your imperialist forces be withdrawn from the…”

“Shut up,” the President snapped.  If there was a war on, at least he didn’t have to pretend to be nice to a man he personally disliked and distrusted.  “Your forces planned and executed the attack on our ships and you are directly responsible for the deaths of tens of thousands of American soldiers.  Do you think that we are going to let you lie to the world about it?”

“Your forces fired first,” Chin Ru.  “That is incontestable.”

The President snorted.  “We have hundreds of hours of footage from American and neutral satellites and observation platforms that confirm that your Bear bombers, aircraft that should have been retired years ago, launched the first missiles.”

“Warning shots,” Chin Ru said calmly.  “I might remind you that you have followed similar practices in the past.”

The President laughed bitterly.  “Nearly a thousand missiles count as a warning shot?”

Something changed in Chin Ru’s face.  It took the President a moment to realise what it was; he didn’t look mocking anymore.  Instead, he looked calm, very controlled; his face went flat and expressionless.  The President realised that he had decided to abandon the lies…and press on to a new world.

“Mr President,” Chin Ru said.  His voice had become very formal.  “I have a message for you from the Chinese Government, and, I might add, a message from the Pact of Opposition.  It is a message that is intended for you personally, a message that will explain what has happened, and a message that will invite everyone native to the region to sit down as equal partners to discuss the future of the region.

“Since the end of the Cold War, America has – forgive me – acted as the world policeman,” he said.  The President said nothing.  “In the name of what you believe to be right or wrong, you have interfered or not interfered as you have seen fit, altering the world in accordance with your desires.  You have prevented Taiwan from returning to the mainland, among others; you supported the dictatorship and forced it into your mould.  We have been forced to tolerate this, your endless interventions, your endless moralising…and you have brought many benefits to the world.  Your recklessness, however, cost India Delhi, and wrecked vast damage upon the region.  We can no longer tolerate your presence in the region, our backyard.  We do not support independence movements in Puerto Rico; we will not longer accept your support of troublesome elements in our lands.

“We do not want a war with you,” he concluded.  “We will not permit you to return to the Far East.  You have the choice between accepting the new world order or continuing your pressure against us.  What happened yesterday happened because of years of humiliation heaped upon us by America.  What happens tomorrow, Mr President, will happen because of your choice.”

He started to leave the room.  “Ambassador,” the President said.  His voice was very cold.  It was important that the warning was not only heard, but believed.  “You have American prisoners.  If those prisoners are harmed in any way, we will hold the Pact leadership responsible and treat them accordingly.”

“We will treat them as you treat your own prisoners,” Chin Ru said.  “I must communicate with my government.”

He swept out of the room.

***
“I have an emergency session in Congress in two hours,” the President said.  His voice was very calm.  Inside, he was boiling over with rage; he had never anticipated being a war leader, even though he had replaced a Democrat who had been a war leader.  He had wanted to concentrate on repairing the damage to America's position in the world and rebuilding the country after it had nearly been torn apart.  A dark part of his mind whispered that the Chinese War would be the perfect way to pull the country back together, but he refused to think about it.  There was too much else to do.  “What’s happening politically?”

“The Japanese have declared themselves in favour of signing up to the proposed conference on the future of the region,” Joan Davidson said.  The Secretary of State looked pale and wan; she’d had her husband on one of the warships that had been confirmed lost.  “They’re nervous about the Pact’s long-term plans, but they’re dependent upon supplies coming through the shipping lanes the Pact controls.  After all non-Pact shipping was ordered to halt for inspection, the Japanese folded rather quickly.”

The President nodded slowly.  “And Korea?”

“Terrified of the Pact,” Joan said.  “They don’t really believe that the Pact will honour its commitments – at the moment, they’re offering all manner of inducements fairly liberally – but they’re also reluctant to get involved in a war.  Singapore has declared itself to be on our side, but an Indian Army force is massing nearby; they’re also screaming for help.”

She shook her head.  “The Australians and the New Zealanders are also asking for help,” she continued.  “The Indians have hit Diego Garcia with a missile attack and might be planning an invasion, so…General?”

General Armstrong nodded.  “The harbour had been cleared of ships, many of them sent to accompany the task force,” he said.  “There’s a small ground force, but if the Indians are determined to take the island, they can do it.  We have a group of SSN submarines heading to the base to provide some protection, but if the Indians go for an all-out assault, they can take the base.  At which point, they will have shoved us out of the Indian Ocean completely.”

He scowled.  “We’ve been saying for years that the island needed tougher defences,” he said.  “Mr President…”

“It was politically impossible,” the President said.  He closed his eyes, rubbing his forehead in pain.  He felt old, very old; it wouldn’t be long before the jackals started tearing at what remained of his reputation.  “What is the current military situation?”

General Armstrong cleared his throat.  “Well, the majority of the remains of the multinational fleet are heading away from China, towards Midway and Pearl Harbour,” he began.  A computer display altered as he talked.  “That’s a damn good thing too, as most of the fleet is in no condition for another battle.  There have been skirmishes with armed Chinese submarines, but so far they haven’t attempted to take out the remains of the fleet.  Admiral Toland has deployed ASW assets around the fleet and they’re outside the range of land-based aircraft.

“We have sealed Pearl Harbour and the Western Seaboard, as per the contingency plans,” he continued.  “We cannot guarantee that the Chinese can’t smuggle a tactical nuke into Pearl, but we can prevent them attempting to complete their victory by destroying the facilities at the base.  The two carriers that were intended to reinforce the fleet have been ordered to rendezvous with the fleet and escort it back to Pearl Harbour.  Once they’re back there, we will be able to start thinking about going on the offensive on a large scale.”

He tapped a finger against the display.  “Some of our submarines have struck at Pact naval forces,” he concluded.  “I don’t think, however, that we will be able to inflict significant damage on the Pact warships with just our submarines.  The Pact has withdrawn most of their ships from the battleground and they’re safe for the moment.  The Kelly Johnston remains near the coastline and has confirmed that the Chinese are probing Taiwan, but have not yet launched a major invasion.”

The President nodded.  “I see,” he said.  “What about Australia?”

“They have invoked the mutual defence treaty,” Joan said.  “They’re offering to host as many ships and men as we can spare.”

“We may have to send troops to Australia,” Armstrong said.  “Their military liaison has been warning of the dangers of the Chinese and Indian build-up of troops in Indonesia, and their increasingly aggressive posture.  I am not wholly convinced that they could mount a major invasion, but the Australians seem to think that they can, so with your permission I will divert some of our attack submarines from the Chinese coast to support the Australians.”

“I have to address Congress,” the President said.  He met Armstrong’s eyes.  “The nation will want a declaration of war, one that will be almost certainly passed.  If that happens, can we win the war?”

Armstrong frowned.  “It would depend on the political aims,” he said, tossing the question back at the President.  “Would we be fighting to liberate Taiwan from a permanent threat from China, or trying to replace the Chinese Government?  I do not feel that there is any question that we can sweep the Pact navies from the sea, once we move additional assets to the Far East, but past that?”

“Let me worry about the war aims,” the President said.  He tented his fingers.  “Suppose I order you to remain on the defensive; what happens?”

“We hold Diego Garcia with Marines, if we can get them there in time, and move ground combat units to Australia,” Armstrong said.  “The downside of that is that we will be ceding vast amounts of water – and the initiative – to the Pact; they might find another way to attack us.  If they came for Australia, I am confident that we could push them back into the sea, particularly if we manage to get reinforcements there before the Pact actually attacks.  There’s a Marine force at Pearl that can be sent forward quickly.

“I can’t see them actually managing to invade Pearl Harbour, no matter what the press is claiming,” he continued.  “The logistics would defeat them almost before we started sinking their convoys.  We could hold them within their own region; it’s hard to imagine how they intend to break out.  The downside of that, of course, is that they will have all the time in the world to invade Taiwan.”

The President studied the map thoughtfully.  “Can the Taiwanese hold?”

“No,” Armstrong said flatly.  “They took a battering in the battle, and they lost many of their airfields to missile attack.  They’re still flying from other airfields, but they’re going to run short of both planes and weapons.  What survivors there were from the fleet have joined them, but there weren’t many of them in the first place.  Reinforcing Taiwan is going to be a nightmare; we can slip in some supplies through submarines, but any major reinforcement is going to depend on having control of the seas…and we don’t have that control.”

Joan winced.  “Can we retake control of the seas?”

“It will be difficult,” General Armstrong said.  “The Navy is working on options now, but we will have to make a major commitment just to hit them hard enough for them to take notice.  We’ll have to improve our missile defence protocol, and increase the number of defence ships; the Chinese fired enough missiles to simply overwhelm the system.  Most of our serious losses came in the first exchange of fire.

“The submarines might be able to prevent the Chinese from launching a naval invasion of Taiwan, but they would have to be lucky,” he concluded.  “The long and short of it, Mr President, is that we have more tasks than we have ships to handle them.  We could raid their bases in Indonesia, and I think that that might be the best option for a short-term painless gain, but I don’t think that retaking control is possible without a much larger commitment.”

“And, after what just happened, many of our allies are going to be unhappy about committing more ships,” Joan injected.  “The French are already claiming that the French carrier was exposed to save our carriers from attack.”

”They’re mad,” Armstrong said.  “We lose three carriers, each one powerful enough to put the French carrier under the water with ease, and they think we planned it that way!”

The President tapped the table.  “Returning to the subject at hand, Congress is in an evil mode,” he said.  “We might have a declaration of war soon, although it may be a few days before there is a formal vote.  If they authorise a total war…?”

“Nightmarish,” Armstrong said.  “We would have to commit ourselves to fighting for years, at a massive human cost; raiding China and marching to Beijing is a much more expensive task these days.”

“There’s a question that’s bothering me,” the President said.  “What is the rest of the Pact doing?”

“Unknown,” Armstrong said.  “At last report, the Indians and Russians were merely aiding the Chinese in fighting us; Russian aircraft might have taken part in the Battle of Taiwan.  The main action was at sea, and they don’t have that much of a naval tradition, or even a focus on naval matters.”

“Perhaps,” the President said.  “I can’t help, but feel that we’re missing something.”  He looked at the map.  “What are they planning now?  How do they intend to force us out of the war?”

“Perhaps they intend to wait for us to fold,” Joan suggested.  “That was the beginnings of a diplomatic offer from the Ambassador.”

The President shook his head.  “They just killed upwards of ten thousand American servicemen,” he said.  “If I offered peace, I would be impeached on the spot.  No, they know that they have to force us out of the war, so…how?  What are we not seeing?”

Chapter Ten: A Stillness upon the Sea, Take One

Near Hong Kong, China

Lieutenant Stephanie Tsuji found herself struggling back to awareness, finding herself sitting on a cold metal deck, her uniform torn and ripped around her body.  She forced her eyes to open, accustoming them slowly to the semi-darkness of the hold…and realised that she was not alone.  There were hundreds of other captives in the hold, each one handcuffed and firmly attached to metal railings running along the deck.  Memory returned in a flash and she shuddered; she was a prisoner of the Chinese.

She remembered, now, her helicopter falling from the sky.  It had been designed to act as a small airborne early warning platform for her ship…and the ship had been blown away underneath her by Chinese missiles.  She had tried to help the remains of the task force, but a Chinese aircraft had fired a cannon burst at her and sent her helicopter into the water, burning as it fell.  She’d been lucky to survive, and luckier still to be picked up by a small Chinese ship.  She had been terrified, despite herself, when the Chinese had hauled her onboard, but they had merely searched her for weapons, handcuffed her, and put her to one side.  She’d blacked out…

…And awakened in hell.  Her head felt suspiciously clear, which suggested that the Chinese had injected her with a knock-out drop or some other drug, but it didn’t matter.  Her hands were firmly secured, while they were clearly being held in a ship’s hold; escape would almost certainly be impossible.  Her locator implant might lead a SAR team to her if she had been left in the water, but she had seen enough of the battle to know that the multinational fleet had lost; there would be no help for her or for the others present in the hold.

Time passed.  She couldn’t see her wrists, but she was certain that her watch had been taken from her during the period when she had blacked out.  She couldn’t feel it, but she had always been a good judge of time passing; they had been in the hold for nearly an hour when a series of bumps ran through the ship.  It was docking, and not a moment too soon; the smell in the room was starting to get to her.  There were at least a thousand men and women in the room, and many of them were in worse conditions than she was; the smell of urine and worse was growing ever stronger.  Some of her fellows had been sick, and a young girl near her had been coughing up blood.

A final bump echoed through the ship, and she felt it come to a stop.  Wherever the Chinese had intended to bring them, they were finally there…and she could only hope that it was somewhere civilised.  It wouldn’t be long before the West – or at least the Americans, the Canadian Government was known for being timorous when it came to standing up for the rights of its people – retaliated for the attack on the multinational fleet, and they would take Chinese prisoners.  The Americans treated their prisoners, these days, the way that American captives were treated; it had resulted in a lowering of the abuse rates of some American captives.  Would the Chinese care?  She knew that it could be much worse than merely being shoved in a camp…

She’d thought about it, about what had happened to female military personnel captured by the Jihadis, and had thought that she had accepted the possibility.  The enemies of the West – and, they had thought, of the Pact as well – had found the concept of female military personnel to be anthemia, and had used every method they could to degrade and break the women, from rape to far worse.  One American officer had returned home pregnant with her enemy’s child, others had never been returned, or had only been found when they were dead.  Alone and not alone, Stephanie found herself trembling in the semi-darkness of the hold.

Light flared down as hatches were opened, revealing a blue sky high above the ship.  She remembered flying through the sky and almost broke down, only pulling herself together when she remembered that watching satellites were bound to have seen them being exposed, perhaps providing the Americans with the intelligence they would need to rescue them.  As the first Chinese soldiers, wearing dark green uniforms, entered the hold, she closed her eyes and resigned herself to her captivity – for the moment.

“Secure the first batch of prisoners,” a Chinese officer ordered.  Stephanie, who spoke Mandarin fluently, understood him; she wondered how many others understood.  To anyone ignorant of the Chinese official language, they would be very far from any familiarity at all.  The Chinese might as well be speaking gibberish for all the good it would do the captives.  “Then wash down this hold.”

Stephanie concealed a smile, suddenly aware of the stiffness in her arms.  She’d been half-kneeling for a very long time.  The Chinese still weren’t taking any chances, however, one by one, they released each of the captives and hustled them out of the hold.  She tensed, slightly, when they reached her row, pulling the man next to her out of his position, and then two Chinese came for her.

“Pretty little traitor,” one of them remarked.  Stephanie was silently glad that her face couldn’t really flush; the Chinese Government had been going through a long phase of believing that all ethnic Chinese were supposed to serve the Chinese Government and the interests of China, no matter where they were born, or where they lived.  Stephanie herself was a half-breed, between Chinese and Anglo-Saxon, but that wouldn’t matter to the Chinese.  “It seems a shame to waste her.”

His companion ignored him, concentrating on releasing Stephanie from her position and dragging her to her feet.  Her hands were still firmly bound behind her back, despite her relative freedom; escape was still impossible.  It occurred to her that she should try to throw herself overboard, to escape a possible fate worse than death, but they took her firmly by her arms and frog-marched her up the ramp and out into the open.  She would have paused, if she could have, but they pushed her on insistently, down the long ramp into a massive harbour.

It was thronging with activity.  Hundreds of Chinese soldiers, probably Chinese Marines, were standing on guard, watching while the ships were unloaded.  She glanced around, trying to see what was happening, and saw several other ships being unloaded of their prisoners; how many had the Chinese managed to recover?  She wanted to ask, but didn’t dare; she was terrified, now, as they marched her onto land and into a massive building.  It was ringed by APCs and anti-aircraft weapons; rescue would be a difficult task, even for a well-armed and prepared force.  Inside, the building was pure-Communist style; cold, harsh, and utterly unimaginative in construction.  It was an eyesore, mass-produced for whatever it was wanted to do; a single blocky lump of concrete and glass.  The guards marched her into a small room and dumped her onto a stool.  A moment later…and she was firmly handcuffed to the floor, again.

She gigged, despite herself.  Just who did they think she was?  Supergirl?  There was no way that she could pose a threat to any one, and they were treating her as if she was dangerous enough to require a horde of soldiers to keep her under control.  The guards exchanged glances, but said nothing, as a senior office entered.  He took her dog-tags from her neck, and then stood in front of her, studying her.

His voice, when it came, was in Mandarin.  “Name, rank and serial number?”

She maintained enough presence of mind to look blank.  He scowled, and then smiled flatly; she took the moment to study him.  He looked strong and competent, with jet-black hair and a very Northern Chinese face, which meant that he wasn’t Cantonese.  That could be useful, part of her whispered, but she knew that she would never be able to use it to her own advantage.

He repeated himself in English.  “Name, rank and serial number?”

Stephanie closed her eyes.  “Lieutenant Stephanie Tsuji, Canadian Forces Maritime Command,” she said, and recited her serial number.  “I demand to speak to a representative of my government…”

He slapped her.  Bound as she was, she couldn’t really fall over, but she gasped in pain.  Her face seemed to be ablaze; she hadn’t been hurt like that since a nasty fall during basic training.  She tried to kick out at him with her leg and he avoided it with ease; he didn’t even bother to hit her again.

“You are now a prisoner of the Pact of Opposition,” he said.  His voice hadn’t changed tone at all.  “You have no rights at all.  You are being held here as a prisoner captured during an unprovoked attack on Chinese ships, captured in the act of committing an unprovoked act of aggression.  Your continued survival depends on how well you cooperate with us.  If you refuse to cooperate, you will be charged under Pact Military Law and punished for your role in the act of aggression.  Do you understand me?”

That must be the party line, Stephanie thought.  The pain in her face was dying down slightly, but she was sure that he had knocked a tooth out, along with cutting her mouth.  She nodded mutely, unwilling to trust herself to speak properly; she felt as if she was going to break down in a few minutes.  How could she maintain her silence?

“Good,” the officer said.  He hadn’t even introduced himself.  She forced herself to focus on him, trying to understand the hidden meanings under his voice.  “Now…you will be interrogated, and you will share everything with us.  If you fail to provide information on any subject, you will be punished.  If you cooperate, you can live out the war comfortably, if not be repatriated at the earliest opportunity.  Do you understand?”

She nodded again.

“Good,” he said.  He snapped his fingers.  Moments later, the two guards entered and stood to attention.  The officer barked a command in Mandarin.  “Take her to the holding pens.”

They unhooked Stephanie from her stool and helped her out of the room.  Holding her firmly, they escorted her through the long grey corridors, until they stepped into a massive room the size of a football field.  Inside, under the roof, someone had built a cage, large enough to hold hundreds of people.  She could see other female prisoners, some of them American, others French or British.  There were no others apparently from Canada.

One of the guards squeezed her behind, running his hand over her arse, and then shoved her into the pen.  A barked command, in English, had her pressing her rear against a small opening in the cage; her handcuffs were removed and she rubbed her hands gratefully.  The other women looked just as tired, just as broken, as she herself was.  None of them met her eyes…and the cage seemed impossible to escape.  The precautions were overkill on a massive scale.  If they were to be taken out, they would be handcuffed first…and if they rioted, they would have no way out of the cage without being shot down.

She found a place to sit down and sat, rubbing her wrists.  There was nothing to do, but wait…and hope that the guards didn’t regard the women as their personal whores.  The way her rear felt, after it had been grabbed, she held out no hope that they were willing to respect the prisoners at all.

***
The Chinese Minister of Information was a woman, much to Kady’s private surprise; the Chinese and their Japanese cousins had a long-standing bias against women in high office.  They weren’t as bad as the Arabs, or some of the people she had met in Africa, but they were reluctant to accept a woman in power.  Some of the Japanese women she had met had very clearly, as the saying went, fucked and sucked their way to power; others had been accused of being lesbians.  Those that held office for longer than a few weeks were dangerous; they were the best of the best of the best.  The female of the species was far deadlier than the male, because she was held to a higher standard.

Ming – she had introduced herself as Ming Li when they’d first met – was warm and welcoming.  It didn’t disguise the tension in her voice, or the desire to be somewhere else; the war had broken out, even if the Chinese media was only partly aware of the truth.  It was a waste of time; the Chinese had far more satellite receivers, particularly the newer Japanese-made receivers that were almost impossible to detect, than even Americans.  The Chinese public would know the truth; GNN and the other media companies from the West would be pouring information into their receptors.  There might have been a law against it, but enforcing the law was impossible.  Everyone knew that.

“It’s always interesting to meet a reporter on a more personal basis,” Ming said, as she poured tea for them both.  Kady wasn’t sure if the banishment of her personal assistant – and watchdog – had happened because Ming was trusted, or because she was not trusted, but no one dared to show her that yet.  “I so rarely have a chance to meet with one of you on a friendly level.”

She had been a reporter once, working for the official Chinese newspaper and television company.  It had given her the expertise needed to carry out her job of either preventing the news from slipping out, or slanting it in the way that the Chinese Government wanted it to be slanted.  Kady considered her a traitor and it was a struggle to keep it hidden.

“There are thousands of reporters in China now,” she said.  It was true; a day after the Battle of Taiwan, thousands of reporters had indeed flown in, even with the disruption to the airlines caused by the battle.  “You could have called any of them in for a private meeting, you know.”

Ming passed her a cup of tea.  “But you must understand,” she said.  “Sometimes some pieces of information must be passed on…on a more personal level.  Your friend Wang would understand that, I think; you are certainly one of the most…well-recognised reporters in the world.  The growth of GNN in this region has certainly had a lot to do with you, hasn’t it?”

“I like to think so,” Kady said.  Flattery could only mean that whatever was going to happen, whatever Ming intended to tell her, they expected her to put a good slant on it.  She was personally offended, and puzzled; there were plenty of tame reporters, so why her?  She had certainly had a lot to do with GNN’s rise to the top, but much of that had happened because of the Internet, not because of her personally.  “I have spent enough time here to have placed my stamp on the region.”

“Excellent,” Ming said.  She had to be aware that Kady had just talked nonsense…and didn’t show any awareness of it at all.  “I have been ordered to give you a private briefing; as you may be aware, there was a naval battle in the East China Sea, yesterday.  Losses on both sides were high.”

The official Chinese news channels had placed Chinese losses as very low.  Ming’s admittance was curious, to say the least; Beijing understood the value of propaganda.  If they were prepared to admit that the American ships had killed more than a few dozen Chinese, let alone Indians and Russians, something had to have become more important in their eyes.

“In effect, we lost somewhere around five thousand sailors,” Ming said.  “You will understand, of course, that I cannot give you any specifics for ship and aircraft losses, but the death toll is not likely to affect operations.  What is important is that we conducted a major SAR effort in the region after the American ships retreated from the region, recovering around two thousand survivors from the waters.  Many of them are injured, but they have been treated in accordance with international law.”  She held out a small datachip.  “This is a list of everyone we have recovered and identified so far.”

Kady took it.  “I see,” she said.  She still didn’t quite understand.  There were official UN channels for spreading prisoner-related information.  “You want me to tell the world that you have prisoners?”

“Yes,” Ming said.  “More importantly, we need you to inform the world that we will be happy to repatriate the prisoners, as soon as a peace treaty has been signed.  As we understand that America will not be quick to agree to a peace, we are prepared to offer that agreement, and a non-aggression pact, to any other country that is prepared to leave the American-led war against us.”

Kady felt her blood run cold.  “You are holding prisoners hostage against the good behaviour of their governments?”

“That’s such a harsh way to put it,” Ming said.  She smiled, like a snake would smile if it could.  “We would prefer to think of it as a way of reminding governments that unthinking adherence to America’s will comes with a price.”

Kady, very deliberately, placed her cup down before she could smash it into Ming’s face.  “I will pass on the list and your message,” she said.  She rose to her feet, unwilling to spend a moment longer in Ming’s company.  “Is there anything else?”

Ming smiled.  “Only this,” she said.  There was an odd note in her voice; not for the first time, she wondered just what Wang was actually playing at.  “The world is about to change – again – and those who do not change with it will be swept away by the changing tide.”

Chapter Eleven: Surprise Attack, Take One

Camp Warsaw, Poland

“Thank you for agreeing to be interviewed,” Marya Jadwiga said, as she stood up.  General Konrad Trautman rose with her, escorting the pretty young reporter out of his office.  He was impressed, despite an inborn dislike of the media; Marya had what it took to be a decent reporter, even though she was young and naive.   “It’s been quite informative.”

“It’s been a pleasure,” Trautman lied through his teeth.  There were few things worse than being interviewed, even if the reporter was pretty; she’d asked questions he didn’t have an easy answer to.  Yes, the number of reports of Russian incursions had fallen sharply over the past few days, and yes, that might have had something to do with the major Polish deployment along the border, but Trautman’s own authority was limited.  He couldn’t handle the refugee crisis, largely because Brussels hadn’t decided what to do about the crisis, and he could only react to Russian moves.  “Shall I show you out?”

It was nearly nine in the morning, local time.  The sun was high in the sky as they stepped out into the open, near the command post of Camp Warsaw.  He hadn’t been willing to allow any reporter into the heart of the EUROFOR command – that sort of information could be dangerous if it fell into the wrong hands – but he had given her a short tour of the vast camp.  It was still half-empty, despite the arrival of a force of French paratroopers; most of EUROFOR was deployed to the east, watching the border.

“As I said, it was impressive,” Marya said.  She smiled charmingly.  “What about the reports that the Russians sent a major group into the Ukraine?”

Trautman silently rolled his eyes.  It was true, of course; just before the Battle of Taiwan had begun, the Russians had raided the Ukraine borders, hoping to disrupt what they had called a terrorist camp.  It had been a short raid, but the Swedish force nearby hadn’t responded quickly enough to prevent the Russians from carrying off hundreds of refugees.

“Much overrated,” Trautman said, as he helped her into her car.  She waved at him as she started the engine.  “Good luck with the post in Warsaw.”

“Thanks,” Marya called, and drove off.

“Pretty woman,” Captain Paul Montagne said, appearing behind him.  The tall French paratrooper looked very fine in his uniform, one that was considered the most elite uniform in France; Trautman would have preferred a French infantry unit.  Jokes aside, they weren’t planning on dropping parachutes into combat positions along the border.  The French Government had seen the paratroopers as a cheap way of proving that they were committed to EUROFOR; Trautman wasn’t fooled at all.

“Yes, and a very bright one,” Trautman said.  He looked up at the tall paratrooper.  Montagne was young and very tough; Trautman would not have fancied his chances against him in hand to hand combat.  The French senior officers – the higher ranks – could only have been improved by a direct nuclear strike, but the junior officers were the equal of any other army in the world.  “Have your men settled in all right?”

“Of course,” Montagne said.  They started to walk back to the command post.  “They’re quite impressed by the comfort and the food; they just want to know when us ruthless bastards are going to be given a proper mission.”

“Probably when the rest of us are given a proper mission,” Trautman said.  He smiled inwardly, even though he understood the paratroopers’ frustrations.  They were the elite…and, at the moment, all they were pulling was guard duty.  That would change, of course, but for the moment everyone was stuck.  “What’s your readiness?”

“We can deploy as a light infantry unit at your command,” Montagne assured him.  “If we’re mated up with helicopters or aircraft, we can even perform air-dropped or helicopter-inserted missions in Poland.”

Trautman nodded as they reached his office.  “We have a major convoy coming in,” he said.  “Once the helicopters arrive, your men will be designated as the quick reaction group for this region, reinforcing the forces along the border.  Until then, all you can do is train and prepare for the coming deployment.”

Montagne looked irked, but didn’t argue.  Any military officer worthy of his uniform knew the value of endless training; most armies actually gave their men harder training than anything they would expect to face on a modern battlefield, just to keep them ready for action.  The paratroopers, a more versatile outfit than their name suggested, would have plenty to prepare for, if Brussels got its collective head out of its arse and started to take the commitment to defend Poland seriously.

“Yes, sir,” he said, as Trautman entered his office.  His command staff were already waiting for him.  “We’ll get on with the drilling now.”

Trautman took his seat as Montagne slipped back out of the room.  “Now telling the world what we’re going to be doing is over, we have some planning to do,” he said.  “Sameena?”

Captain Sameena Hussian looked up from her palmtop.  She was young, Asian and female, something odd in the British Army.  She’d transferred to EUROFOR’s senior staff as a career move, but Trautman had learned quickly that the logistics and supply officer was very good at her job.  She might have had to cut her hair short, but she was a very pretty young woman…and a very capable one.

“The supplies for the deployment are being massed at Camp Potsdam now,” she assured him.  “I have been in communication with the supply officers there and they assure us that we should have our full complement of weapons and fuel within the week.  The helicopters for the forward deployment have been allocated, now that the horse-trading in the HQ has been concluded to everyone’s satisfaction, and we should see those within the day.”

“Excellent,” Trautman said.  His phone rang.  “Excuse me.”

“General,” the voice of the guard officer said, “the Polish convoy is nearing the gates.  There are more lorries than we expected and…”

The line broke.  A second afterwards, a thunderous explosion shook the camp.  The windows shattered and the sound of automatic fire echoed through as firing broke out, all coming from the direction of the gate.  Moments later, a klaxon began to howl…and then there was a second explosion.  Trautman threw himself to the ground as the ground shook again, one hand unfastening his holster and drawing his pistol.  They had to be under attack, major attack – and there was only one power that could do that.

“Get the rifles out of my cupboard,” he snapped, as his staff joined him on the ground.  Long experience serving in the Balkans had given him the habit of keeping weapons close to hand.  Another explosion shook the building, followed rapidly by the sound of running feet…and a dull thump in the distance.  “Andy, get on to the EUROFOR command network and tell them that we’re under attack and…”

The door opened.  Trautman brought his weapon up quickly, only to realise that it was Captain Montagne.  The French paratrooper looked worried and grim, holding his rifle in one hand and a small radio in the other.  The klaxon suddenly died as the base shook again and the sound of firing grew louder.

Trautman forced himself to think.  “What the hell is going on?”

“Major attack, sir,” Montagne said.  The Frenchman’s voice was very controlled, but Trautman could hear an undercurrent of worry.  “There was a truck bomb against the gatehouse and then two more bombs were driven into the base and more are coming!   We have to get you out of here.”

Trautman nodded.  “Understood,” he said.  A burst of firing, very close to the command post, made him flinch.  “What’s the defence status?”

“I’m trying to organise a counter-attack now,” Montagne said.  “Most of the guard force is either dead or forced back.  The attackers have the entrance to the base and my paratroopers took losses when the second bomb went off.  We have to…”

“Move,” Trautman said.  The attackers had to be intending to kill the command staff, which made their survival a priority.  The command post was heavily guarded, but it was clear that the guards had been forced back; they could be attacked at any moment.  “we’ll take the rear exit and get to the barracks.”

“My paratroopers are guarding that exit,” Montagne said.  They shared a grim smile.  “We can get out there.”

“Andy, bring your terminal,” Trautman said, as Montagne led the way into the corridor.  The Soviet-era corridor had no windows, only lights…and they were flickering and fading.  A man, running along the corridor, saw them and lifted an AK-47; Montagne shot him with one neat shot.  Other attackers swung around, trying to shoot back, and Captain Henri Guichy cut them down with a long burst from his SAW.

“Good shooting,” Montagne said.  He frowned.  “They must have gotten through the main entrance; we have to hurry.”

Another explosion, much larger, shook the building.  Dust and plaster started to drop from the ceiling.  Trautman forced himself to remain calm as they ran down a flight of stairs, heading towards the massive exit from the command post.  For some reason known only to the Soviet designers, there was actually a small tank park in the rear of the building, now used for official vehicles and a small APC.

Trautman pointed to it and nodded.  There were three paratroopers there, trying to get it ready to move, and they looked relieved, just for a moment, to see their commanding officer.  Montagne didn’t wait for orders; he barked his own at his men and the gate started to open, even as the APC moved forwards.  A hail of automatic fire lashed out at it, bouncing off its armour, and the heavy machine guns on the APC returned fire.  Moments later, all of the attackers were dead.

Trautman kept his head down.  There were still other attackers in the camp, fighting it out with the defenders, and they could still lose.  Montagne had held his group together, but many of the other EUROFOR personnel would be scattered, unable to concentrate and fight back; were the enemy even taking prisoners?  They had to be Russians, although the presence of the AK-47 meant nothing; he examined one of the bodies as they slipped past and cursed.  The body wore a black outfit, with body armour, but no real uniform.

“Russians,” Sameena said.  His voice was deadly.  “They have to be Russians.”

Trautman nodded.  “Andy, is there anything on the EURONET?”

Captain Andrew Dean, known as Andy to his friends, was holding the small terminal for the military EURONET.  The American-designed software should have been automatically linked to one of a dozen access nodes, using microburst technology to keep it linked without attracting enemy attention.  In theory, a person with the proper access codes – and Dean and Trautman had all of them between them – could access any information on the network, but now…

“Distress calls, lots of them,” Dean hissed.  For the first time since Trautman had met him, he sounded scared.  “I don’t think that this is the only place it’s happening.”

Trautman scowled, but wasn’t surprised.  Brussels had been weak enough to turn a blind eye to many Russian infringements on European Union member states, but an outright attack right at the heart of EUROFOR EAST would have drawn a response from EUROFOR, which meant that the Russians would have to deal as hard a blow as they could in the first few minutes and hours of war.  He glanced down at the terminal and cursed; the entire system was practically overloaded with distress calls and warning messages…and a flight of missiles flew overhead, heading west.

“Shit,” he breathed.  This was no ordinary cross-border raid, no object lesson, no slap in the face for arrogant bureaucrats; this was a war.  He felt helpless for a long chilling moment, unwilling to face reality, and then forced himself to remember that he had responsibilities.  He had to save something from the disaster.  “Captain?”

Montagne had been muttering into his tactical radio.  They were supposed to be impossible to jam, but Trautman had seen the world turned upside down once already; the Russians would have jammed EUROFOR’s entire communications network if they could.  If the EURONET were to crash completely, and no one had ever found out the limits of the traffic the system could handle, they could be cut off from all reinforcements.

“The attackers are concentrating on the command post,” he muttered.  “They’re moving what my spotters think is another truck bomb into position to hit the command post, and now we can’t stop it.  Half the base is on fire, but we have secured the paratrooper barracks and we have to move there along with this.”  He patted the APC lovingly.  “Come on, sir.”

The APC drove out to face the enemy.  The Russians didn’t waste time shooting at it with their rifles, they brought up an antitank weapon and took aim; Montagne shot the antitank gunner before he could fire.  The APC opened fire and the Russians scattered; Trautman and the remains of his command staff followed it as it drove along the road, past a burning building…and then a massive ball of fire rose into the air.  Seconds later, the thunderclap of the explosion struck them.

“That was the fuel dump,” Sameena said.  She fired a single shot in the direction of a Russian infantryman who had been firing at the group.  A young man from Trautman’s headquarters fell to the ground, dead, as the Russians kept firing; Trautman kept near the APC and fired at each Russian who presented himself as a target.  It was a relief to reach the paratroopers and their impromptu defence line.  Just as they were reaching safety, the command post blew up.

“You’re hit,” Trautman said, as he saw Major Thomas Palter.  The EUROAIR liaison officer was bleeding from a wound to the shoulder.  Blood was staining his uniform and darkening his skin.  “Get some attention now!”

“Medical zone in there,” Montagne said.  “Sir, I think they’re planning to try to storm the barracks now.”

Trautman looked out through the slit in the building.  The Soviets had designed the barracks to serve as a defence point – which said interesting things about how much they had trusted their then Polish allies.  He wondered, in a sudden moment of vagueness, what had happened to Marya.  Had the reporter made it back all right…or was Warsaw under attack as well?

“Get everyone you can into defence positions,” he ordered, just for the sake of seeming to be in control.  He’d been in action before, but nothing like this; EUROFOR had never been attacked on its own ground before.  The Balkans had been nothing like this.  “Andy?”

“Everywhere seems to be under attack,” Dean said.  His breathing was very fast; Trautman could just sense the first hints of panic as the expert worked his portable terminal.  The main computer network systems would have gone up with the command post.  “Half of the primary nodes seem to have gone out.”

It took a moment for Trautman to realise the impact of that statement.  There were over a hundred primary nodes for EURONET within transmission range…and microsats in orbit to relay Dean’s messages to other nodes.  If half of the nodes had gone out, that meant that there had been attacks right across Europe…and the implications of that were staggering.  The Russians couldn’t be thinking of taking on all of Europe, could they?

They could.  “Can you get a link to anyone in the chain of command?”

Dean shrugged.  “I can’t reach Brussels, Berlin, London or Paris,” he said.  “The network is in tatters and is on the verge of automatically resetting itself.  “I have a link through to Camp Potsdam, but they’ve been attacked too; Colonel Florette Rolande is in command.”

Trautman hadn’t thought that his blood could run any colder.  Colonel Florette Rolande was a supply officer, not a combat officer…and fifth in the chain of command at Camp Potsdam.  Just how hard had the base been hit?

“We need to get out of here,” Dean said.  “Most of the air defence network seems to have gone off the line, but the last report was of Russian aircraft moving over the border and the airfields in west Poland being invaded by unknown terrorists and commandos…sir, Captain Rolande is requesting orders!”

She’s a supply officer, ran through Trautman’s mind.  She’s all I’ve got…

He forced himself to think.  “Is there a command post there?”

“She’s trying to have the mobile command post set up,” Dean said.  “That’s standard procedure.”

A flight of aircraft flew overhead.  There could be no mistaking them; Russian Blackjack bombers, heading west.  The anti-air defences at Camp Warsaw were off-line; there seemed to be no effective opposition.  The Russians had launched cruise missiles and now bombers; they intended to destroy all opposition before it could get organised.

A hail of fire echoed across the camp.

“Get her to get reports from all of our units,” he ordered, thinking hard.  The Russians didn’t think small when it came to offensive operations; they might well have planned an attack for each and every army base in Poland.  If they were snatching airfields, as the Americans had done during their intervention in the Iranian Civil War, then they were clearly planning to reinforce as soon as possible.  He had to act, but…the terminal that Dean held was a marvel of designer-drug induced technology dreams, but it couldn’t control an entire war.  “I want…”

The firing grew louder as a force of Polish APCs drove into the camp.  Two exploded when the Russians turned antitank weapons on them, the others cleared the Russians from the camp with brutal efficiency.  The remaining Russians withdrew and melted back into the countryside, leaving EUROFOR in possession of the base.  The paratroopers cheered as the Poles met them in the ruins of the base.

Trautman looked to the east, towards Russia.  He could hear firing in the distance.

It had only just begun.

Chapter Twelve: Surprise Attack, Take Two

Paris, France

“The Arabs are growing restless again,” Captain Lapis observed, as the group of police officer stepped into the office.  Paris was no longer the city that he remembered, back when he had been a young student caught in the middle of riots led by Algerians protesting the rise of anti-Islamic attitudes in France.  In the march, protesting police brutality, hundreds had been injured, many of them Arabs.  The police, who had been fired on from within the crowd, had been forced to apologise by the government.  The French Government, utterly unstable even before seven French ships had been lost in the East China Sea, had lacked the strength to stand up to the growing power of the Arabs.

“Yes,” Commissaire de Police Dupont said.  The older man was a political appointee; he wouldn’t be around for long.  He was fat and unhealthy, with a florid face that suggested that he would suffer a heart attack if he ate one more bagel; he was the laughing stock of Paris.  “They do not, however, pose a threat to the integrity of France.”

That, Captain Lapis knew, was official government dogma, a dogmatic response to any pressing requests put forward by any journalists or policemen who tried to ask hard questions. Officially, there was no Islamic threat and there hadn’t been once since Saudi had reformed and Iran had been semi-occupied by the Americans…assuming, of course, that the threat hadn’t been the drunken visions of a bumbling American cowboy.  There was nothing at all wrong with the world…

Captain Lapis knew better.  The vast estates surrounding Paris were home to thousands upon thousands of radicalised Arabs, all of them dangerous, desperate, and firmly refusing to be integrated into French society.  Was it France’s fault that the unions had finally revoked against the use of Arab labour?  Was it France’s fault that there had been hundreds of Palestinian immigrants from Palestine after the Israelis showed that they had more balls than the French Government and cracked down hard on the Palestinians?  Was it France’s fault that the Americans had bumbled their way across the Middle East, killing thousands of innocents in their wake?

Of course not…but France had to suffer.  Captain Lapis knew that dozens of good policemen, all true Frenchmen, had been pushed out of the service for daring to suggest that there might be a problem with the Arabs.  Entire regions of France were operated, not by elected officials, but by councils of one Islamic brand or another.  If they had all been in perfect agreement with one another, France would have become an Islamic state by now; as it was, only the fact they often had problems with one another kept them from electing themselves to high office.  Even so, they already infested French local government…and wielded that power ruthlessly.  Far too many police officers had been broken for ‘racist;’ activity.

Dupont met his eyes.  “There is to be a major rally today,” he said.  Captain Lapis scowled inwardly.  “We are to prevent it from becoming political.”

It was a euphuism; he meant that the police had to keep it out of the centre of Paris.  There had been several marches through the outskirts of the housing estates that held the Arabs, but the police had forbidden the marches to march through the centre of Paris.  Heaven forefend!  It might have convinced the people of France that it was time to vote into power one of the right-wing parties that had appeared out of the fragmentation of the National Front.

“I understand,” Captain Lapis said.  Perhaps the police would have the chance to break a few skulls in the process.  “I’ll inform my men.”

The streets had an odd feeling in the air as the large group of policemen advanced onto the streets.  There had been marches cheering the defeat of the American fleet, two days ago; those had threatened to get really nasty.  Some reporters, hovering on the edge of the police line, shouted out questions; the policemen ignored them as best as they could.  The reporters were the enemy; every policeman knew that.

“Batons only unless they have weapons,” Captain Lapis snapped, hearing the sergeants passing on the orders.  On the streets, he was feeling much less confident; the feeling of outright violence in the air was growing stronger.  The last time he had felt anything like it was during one of the marches that had become violent and then a gun battle; the Arabs had been stockpiling weapons for a very long time.  That march had left thousands dead or injured…and the police had been ordered to leave the Arab quarters firmly alone.  “If they have weapons, give them hell!”

There would be hundreds of policemen on the streets, most of them armed and trained in using their weapons.  France had some of the strongest anti-terrorism laws in Europe, if not the Free World; they were just rarely enforced in the changing face of France.  That, too, Captain Lapis blamed on the Americans; many police officers had joined the cheers when the American fleet was devastated, even if a French carrier and several smaller ships had been sunk or damaged as well.  The sense of imminent violence was only growing more and more powerful; he wanted to call for more support, but he knew that there was little available.  The briefing had made that clear; there were going to be marches in every southern French city.  All leave had been cancelled, and there were even army units on alert.

“Now,” he muttered, as they came to one of the big roads.  Normally, it was packed with traffic, smugglers and criminals heading into the estates, or thousands of jobless Arabs looking for jobs in the inner city.  All true Frenchmen had fled the estate years ago; now, it was home to thousands upon thousands of Arabs…and it seemed that every one of them was coming his way.  Men, wearing their strange outfits, women defying the ban on the burka and the veil, all of them chanting in their godless tongue; they were worse than scum to Captain Lapis.  He hated them all.  “Deploy!”

The intersection was already being held, by a small group of French policemen, all of whom had been given the post because they had fallen afoul of someone in higher authority.  Two of them were Arabs, the only Arabs in the police force that Captain Lapis knew about; the others were all men looking as if they were facing an oncoming bull.  Captain Lapis hated positions like that; it would be almost impossible to prevent a slaughter if some idiot started shooting…and that would ruin his career.  Some liberal in Paris would accuse him of shooting first, or some other horrific crime against civilisation, and he would be thrown out of the police.  He knew what had happened to some other so-called racists; they had been visited by Arab men in the dead of night and had never been seen again.

“Get the blockade reinforced,” he snapped.  New men and vehicles were arriving all the time; all they had to do was prevent the marchers from coming up into the inner section of the city.  If everything went to plan, the flood of marchers would be diverted…but he looked down at the crowd, hearing it’s chanting, and knew that nothing would go to plan.  All hell was about to break loose.

The crowd was growing closer and taking on a more aggressive tone.  Taunts and insults, directed at the police and their French Government, echoed through the air.  Someone had started a player, sending the tones of the latest Arab singer howling through the air, a song that had been banned in France for romentising the female suicide bombers who had killed themselves and others in the Algerian War.  There were nearly a thousand policemen, armed with riot gear, Tear Gas and even real machine guns…and he knew with a sick certainty that it wouldn’t be enough.  The entire scene was taking on a terrifying air of inevitability, he almost knew which Arab was going to open fire, which one would carry the grenades, which one would…

He took a tighter grip on his weapon.  It wouldn’t be long now.

***
Osema Rahman, who hadn’t allowed himself to think of himself by his real name for over a year, examined the police line though his sniper rifle scope.  He’d served in Kashmir, where the Indian Police had broken Muslim protests and much worse during the chaos that had followed Delhi, and wasn’t impressed with the French position.  It didn’t have the manpower to prevent the Muslims from breaking through, and it didn’t have the political back-up to crush the growing insurgency as it should be crushed.  The Pact had shown the French the way, but they hadn’t learned…and neither had the British, the Americans, or the Germans.  The demon of Islamic terrorism wasn't dead; it was merely sleeping.

Rahman was privately amused at what he was doing, smiling even as he prepared the antitank weapon and checked the distance to the target.  His position, perched on top of one of the soulless concrete monsters that the French had built for their Algerian wage-slaves, was secure; the French would never see him here.  He had been astonished, when he had first arrived in the city with the assistance of the Algerian Government – which was firmly under the impression that the Pact was going to help them crush France – that the French had tolerated the existence of the separate culture, almost a separate nation, for longer than a few seconds.

Although he’d been careful not to mention it to his Algerian minders, Rahman had been in Paris before, reconnoitring possible targets for the real plan, along with a handful of others.  They’d been taken into the European city and ordered to carry out a number of mock missions, ranging from sabotage to assassination, without attracting the attention of the French police.  It had been almost too easy; they’d managed the missions and escaped without the French even having been aware of their presence.  The French just didn’t care…

Still, the sight of the slums – he could think of no other word for them – was astonishing.  It was composed of miles upon miles of strange buildings, all dirty and grimly, inhabited by thousands of Arabs.  Men with long beards walked the streets; women were veiled behind black robes.  It was like a different country; here and there a man with a t-shirt reading POLICE screamed at and beat a girl without a veil.  The marches below, who were firmly convinced that they would inherit France, were carrying weapons openly.  The Arabs were preparing for war; he had watched from behind his sunglasses as one young man explained the workings of an AK-47 to a class of young men, his informal lesson competent and brisk.  Under other circumstances, the Indian Army would have been happy to have him.

He shook his head, returning to the matter at hand.  The marchers had almost reached the first police line, the interlocking plastic shields that were very hard to break.  The protesters didn’t have to break them; they had the sheer mass needed to press the policemen back.  It wouldn’t be long before some young fool, on either side, started shooting…and that would start the carnage.  Rahman checked the weapon, sighted it on a large police van, and fired.  He’d fired the weapon hundreds of times before; it flew directly to its target, blowing a massive sheet of fire directly into the air.  A moment later, the shooting started.

“Now, for the end,” he muttered, as he lifted his rifle again.  The policemen were scattering as the crown pushed forwards, some of them shooting into the crowd, others attempting to form a new defence line.  Rahman, knowing that any competent enemy would try to reform as quickly as possible, started to pick off police officers.  Leaderless, the police would be easy prey for the rioters…and, by the time the French authorities responded, they would have other problems.  Plenty of other problems.

***
The streak of fire and the explosion sent Captain Lapis falling to the ground, just in time to save his life.  Explosions tore though a handful of police vehicles, but the damage hadn’t been as bad as it could have been; the electricity-powered vehicles outside the blast survived.  The noise was overwhelming…and the mob was forcing its way forward.

A policeman staggered back, blood pouring from a near hole in his head, a second fell as a bullet tore though him.  The mob was drawing weapons and firing madly into the police position; Captain Lapis found his rifle and fired a long burst into the crowd, even as he tried to stumble away.  There would be no controlling the riot now, he was certain; the disaster was already out of control.  The police would have to fall back, just to reform somewhere else, but the mob didn’t look as if they were going to give them the time.

A third policeman fell and Captain Lapis realised, at last, the true danger.  “Sniper,” he shouted, trying to warn his men.  The entire position was disintegrating; only the interlocked vehicles and the debris from the destroyed vehicles was holding them back.  A nervous policeman started to launch tear gas grenades into the crowd…and the crowd produced masks, pulling them over their faces and protecting them from the gas.  Panic rose up within him as he came face to face with the mob.  “Fall back…”

A hand grabbed onto him, yanking him forward; he fired madly just before he was forced to the ground and trampled on by the mob.  He felt a brief moment of searing pain…and then the darkness rose up and took him.  As he died, the mob was already charging madly into the heart of Paris…and bloody anarchy followed in its wake.

***
Captain Lapis’s death wasn't noticed by Rahman, who had run out of sniper ammunition and targets; the mob wouldn’t need any more incitement to rampage onwards into Paris.  There were dozens of explosions and flames billowing up in Paris now, as Arabs took their long-awaited revenge on the French.  A Stinger missile rose up into the air, streaking towards an Air France carrier that was heading towards the international airport.  Rahman sucked in his breath with awe as the jumbo jet fell out of the sky, slamming into a massive skyscraper and sending it crashing down in a wave of fire and death.  The sight was astonishing and fantastic; he laughed aloud as other aircraft in the air started to move away from the sudden new threat.

“They were right,” he said, to himself.  It had been a long time under cover, pretending to be a Muslim, even in the midst of some of the most dangerous Muslims in the world.  In Paris, now, the Palestinians who had been driven out by the Israelis were making yet another claim for a country, although they had no illusions that the Jews would bow down to them.  They were capable and dedicated fighters, if somewhat undisciplined…and they had trained an entire force of young Arabs.  They would be no match for the French Army, if it was deployed to fight them in France.  They didn’t know that – no matter how many defeats they took at the hands of the Jews, they still thought that Allah was on their side – but Rahman knew that they were doomed.  All that mattered was that they kept the French occupied.

He hadn’t expected it to work, even when he had been slipped into the new Jihadi command chain in Algeria, after the Pact and the Americans had cleared Pakistan, Iran and Saudi Arabia, but he knew his duty.  The Algerians had dared to dream that they could take all of France for themselves, trusting in their brothers in France to clear the way…and they were deluding themselves.  No matter how many Russian guns, missiles and aircraft they purchased, they weren’t going to be able to secure France.  It was truly an impossible dream.

He smiled as the mob reached the centre of Paris.  The Palestinians knew how to use terror – their bombers would have hurt the heart of French politics before the mob reached it to destroy it in an orgy of looting, raping and burning – but they didn’t know the truth.  Rahman had crippled their campaign, very carefully; they would be able to cause a lot of trouble for the French and kill thousands, but they would all be destroyed.  They were expendable…

Which was exactly how he had planned it.

***
The single police station stood just outside the slums, the only outpost of law enforcement in the region.  Captain Barouche, the commanding officer, sat inside, working on his paperwork.  Only the worst officers, the dregs of the French police service, were assigned here; the yearly riots made life hazardous.  Barouche, who’d slept with his commandant’s wife, had been dumped in the station for three years.

A distant noise assailed his ears.  He blinked; they were shots!  Barouche wasn’t a weapons expert, but they didn’t sound like the weapons the increasingly armed French police used.  The entire ground shuddered; Barouche fell to his knees as an explosion blasted outside the building.

“What’s happening?”  He shouted, grimly aware that he knew.  He staggered to his feet, drawing his sidearm, and advanced on the door.  He opened it to a scene from hell; the police cars were burning.  Sniper fire was bouncing off the building, working its way through the outgunned police officers.

“Inside,” Barouche shouted, jumping back.  A bullet nicked his leg and he howled in pain, but he held himself together, staggering back firing at random through the door.  He didn’t think he hit anything as a second explosion blasted through the station; the plaster fell off the walls and he dropped his pistol.

“Sir, they’re coming through the rear,” a policeman shouted, just before he was shot through the head.  A number of dark-skinned, dark-clothed men crashed in through the rear, shooting as they came.  Barouche grabbed for his pistol as they shot him…and Paris burned by the light of the fires.

The French, to all intents and purposes, had problems at home.

And they knew nothing about the real threat…

Chapter Thirteen: Surprise Attack, Take Three

Russian Command Post, Belarus

“Advance!”

General Aleksandr Shalenko stood at the edge of the tree line, watching as the might of the Russian Army advanced into Poland.  A line of tanks, seeming to go on for miles, advanced into Poland, while missiles, shellfire and aircraft pounded the Polish and EUROFOR positions across the border.  The Poles had positioned themselves very well – if they had intended to launch an attack – but as a defensive position it was almost useless.  Russian spy satellites had spied out all of their positions, confirming their secret source of intelligence in Poland, and targeted each and every one of the Polish positions.  Shalenko hadn’t quite dared to believe that it would be so easy, despite the weaknesses inherent in the small Polish Army and the politically-fragmented EUROFOR.   He had expected that the opposition would have prepared for a major offensive from Belarus, but as the day wore on, it was starting to seem that they had indeed been successful.

He smiled.  The Pact – at least Russia – had one major weakness; the professional army didn’t have the vast manpower reserves that the Red Army had possessed, or at least vast trained manpower reserves.  They had thousands of conscripts, but a conscript army wasn't that effective on a modern battlefield…and learning how to use a T-100 tank properly took time.  Russia had operated a program intended to develop a vast army, but there were still limits; far too many of his infantry divisions were little more capable than a force that would have fought in the Great Patriotic War.  They had to win quickly…but he knew that they had the firepower to accomplish that, assuming that everything worked perfectly.  A week, perhaps two, and the entire structure of NATO would have fallen apart…and then the Pact would have won the war.

He smiled grimly as a force of Mig-41s flew overhead.  The aircraft weren’t as capable as the latest American designs, but they were a fair match for the Eurofighters flown by almost all of the European Union nations, along with the older designs.  The Pact had provided the funds required to developed Russia’s vast oil reserves, including much of the fuel that had been supplied to Europe, and the money had come rolling in.  Some Presidents would have used the money to line their own pockets, but Joseph Lapotin was a true patriot; he had invested the money right across the Pact…and elsewhere.  The Americans had screamed, of course, but European and Japanese technology had come flowing into the Pact…and had laid the groundwork for a massive development of weapons and supporting technology.  

The air started to rumble as a massive force of transport aircraft flew overhead, lumbering older transports.  The use of the older and literally outdated Bear had surprised many of his people, but it was a good design and there was little point on taking the time to develop a more advanced aircraft when hundreds of Bears could be produced quickly and fairly simply.  The first reports were more than a little vague, much to his private amusement, but reassuring; the strikes in the Polish rear had been successful.  The air transports would move in thousands more soldiers, and even some light armour; they would spread out and knife the Poles in the back.  If one part of the plan failed, another would succeed.

Gunfire could be heard in the distance; the advance echelons had engaged the Poles and the EUROFOR defenders.  If the plan had worked, which was possible, the EURONET command network would be staggering, perhaps even knocked out completely.  Shalenko privately doubted it – the Americans had designed the network and no one had more experience in information warfare and counter-warfare than the Americans – but even if the network was working perfectly, it would take time for the Europeans to recover from the hammerblows that the Spetsnaz forces and the missile strikes had handed out.  How long would it take them to recover?  No one knew; Shalenko had planned on the assumption that the network would recover almost at once, which meant that the Europeans, even now, could be preparing to repel his invasion.

He shook his head in private awe.  The Europeans, particularly the French, had considered the Russians to be barbarians; uncivilised interlopers at the gates of Europe.  They had been more than willing to try to put chains on the growth of Russian power, refusing to provide the funding that Russia had needed to become powerful again.  The Pact had provided, and Russia was powerful again, along with a great deal of economic clout.  Some politicians had even suggested using that clout to pull Eastern Europe back into the fold, but the newer inventions for saving fuel would just be introduced into Europe faster.  No, an invasion was quicker…and, if they won quickly, their victory would be certain.

General Shalenko stood at the gates of Europe and smiled.

“General,” his aide said.  Shalenko turned to see Captain Anna Ossipavo, his aide, secretary and mistress, coming up behind him.  Female soldiers were rare in the Russian Army, although not in the Special Forces; their male comrades tended to view them as their private whores, rather than real soldiers.  Anna was his mistress, which gave her a measure of protection, even in the modern army; no one wanted to trifle with a General who had personally beaten a paedophilic training officer to death.  “We have the first reports.”

“Good,” Shalenko said.  He smiled grimly at her; the Pact had launched a major series of intelligence satellites into the space orbiting Europe, but it was still taking time to get intelligence on the success or failure of the strikes.  The Spetsnaz forces had been ordered to clear as many of the TMD and BMD centres as they could, but he knew that their targets were very well defended, even in peacetime.  It was about the only thing that successive European governments could actually agree upon, although it was less useful than one might suppose.  It was possible that all of the missiles had hit their targets; it was equally possible that half of them had been shot down, but which ones?  The really modern missiles had been sent to the East China Seas; Shalenko’s forces were deploying older missiles, some of them dating back to 2010 and the Final Chechen War.  Shalenko didn’t begrudge the Chinese – they were trying to destroy one of the most modern defence systems in the world, and they had succeeded magnificently – but it was a worry.

The bunker had been built, like so many other military buildings in the region, in the days of the Soviet Union.  It was large, originally intended to serve as a support for forward-deployed Warsaw Pact forces in East Germany and Poland; now it served as a command post for the Invasion of Europe.  Pact technicians had renovated the bunker when the Russians had moved into Belarus, as the President had been nervous that the Europeans would intervene to ‘liberate’ Belarus, before EUROFOR had been exposed as a paper tiger.  There had been times when Shalenko wondered if EUROFOR would do anything if the Russians had launched a land invasion of Brussels…

The massive screen in the centre of the room was new, linked into the Pact’s vast command and control network.  The Pact had used the latest Japanese technology to develop their network, but it wasn’t as capable as the American MILNET, or even EURONET.  Part of that was the fact that the latest American computers were more advanced than the Japanese-designed systems; part of it was a difference in philosophy.  None of the major Pact powers were willing to see their ordinary soldiers gain access to such a vast amount of information; the opinion of the minor powers didn’t matter.  Shalenko could see everything from the bunker; the junior officers would know only what he told them.  It made sense.

The continent of Europe had long been a major intelligence target for the Russians, even before the Pact had been formed; major spy networks had continued to operate within each and every European country.  They had assassinated Alexander Valterovich Litvinenko, coming into the spotlight for a few years, but the real business had remained secret.  Endlessly, carefully, they had built up a picture of Europe’s military, commercial and political centres, a picture that had never been used, until now.  Icons flashed across the screen, revealing the location of air and missile strikes; smaller icons revealed where the Spetsnaz forces had been operating.  A dozen officers, mainly intelligence officers from the GRU, worked quickly to update the overall picture; thousands of tanks and soldiers were pouring over the border and heading west.  They would need information.

“General,” Anna said, as they took their places.  “Most of the Spetsnaz forces were able to complete their missions, including the strikes at the heart of Europe.  Some missions failed and some were only partly successes; the force intended to attack Camp Warsaw was decimated, even though it destroyed much of the base.”

“Those old bases are hard to destroy,” Shalenko mused.  “Anna, did we get the German bastard?”

“General Trautman?”  Anna asked.  “It’s possible, but there is no confirmation of his death; a force of Polish infantry was able to respond to the attack in time to drive off the remains of the force.  Captain Guzman has offered to launch a second attack and he has the camp under observation, but the Europeans seem to be well dug-in.”

Shalenko frowned.  “Waiting for orders that won’t come or planning something?”  He said, knowing that there was no way to know.  “How many combat-effective commandos remain nearby?”

Anna consulted the computer.  “Seventeen,” she said.  “There are also five wounded soldiers who claim they can fight.”

Shalenko shook his head.  He had accepted the prospect of losing all of the Spetsnaz forces – and if they all had completed their mission, the loss would have been worthwhile.  A German without orders was almost as dangerous, perhaps more dangerous, than a German with orders…and Trautman was considered to be the foremost of EUROFOR’s officers.  Some of that would be exaggeration, Shalenko knew, but he would be dangerous.  The strikes would have hurt the European governments, but had they all been killed?  It didn’t seem that they could be that lucky.

“Order them to leave a two-man observation team there,” he ordered.  “The remainder of the team can be picked up tonight by helicopter.  Contact the commander of the air forces and order him to strike Camp Warsaw as soon as possible; if the German is still alive, I want him dead.”

“Yes, sir,” Anna said.  She issued the orders and returned to her briefing without missing a point.  “The operations to secure airports and airfields in Poland have been mostly successful; we only lost a few hundred men in the attacks.  The Polish air force has been hit hard on the ground by the hypersonic cruise missiles and have only managed to get a few aircraft into the air.  The air force is confident that they can deal with them.  The German and British air bases, along with those of the smaller powers, were targeted as well, but reports are scarce; there are definitely some aircraft operating from those bases.  French air bases were spared, under the war plan, but there may be some indications that the French air force is supporting the Germans.”

Shalenko muttered a curse under his breath.  NATO had been caught by surprise and had been hammered, but if they recovered themselves, they could wipe out many of the smaller forces.  One team that had been landed in the Czech Republic had already been wiped out; that group would never be reinforced by the paratroopers and airborne soldiers under his command.  How many aircraft had survived?  Would the French support their allies…?

…Or would they accept the peace offer?  Shalenko was one of ten people who knew what had been planned for France; a major uprising of Islamic forces within every French city.  The French had been spared the first wave of attacks, while the French Government would be assured that the Pact’s attacks weren’t directed against them; they would even be offered help against the insurgents.  If the French stayed out of the main war, they could be dealt with later, but if they stayed true to their allies, they would have other problems in their rear.  It was still too early to know.

He smiled grimly.  Whatever else happened, the French arrogance would never survive the war.

“The attack,” he said.  The French weren’t a problem for the moment; his task was organising the war.  They needed to grab as much as they could while the Europeans were off-balance.  The Americans had taken Iraq in thirty days; how long would it take them to take Europe?  “What is the current status?”

Anna smiled.  Her blue eyes seemed to glow in the light.  “The advance forces have crossed the border and are engaging the Poles and EUROFOR,” she said.  “Most of the EUROFOR soldiers have been stunned by the missile and artillery attacks and are in tatters; our forces are mopping them up now.  Resistance seems to be scattered and disorganised; we are fighting a series of skirmishes, some of them quite violent, rather than an organised defence.  We have been using jamming to prevent them from gaining any orders outside of the EURONET system, which we intended to knock down if we could, but it seems that we were only partly successful.  Several nodes in France were targeted by insurgents, rather than Spetsnaz forces, and they survived the experience.  Others were targeted by cruise missiles…and weren’t destroyed.  Under the circumstances, however, they will find it hard to save anything from the forces engaged along the borders.”

Shalenko nodded.  The smart thing for the Poles and the EUROFOR soldiers to do would be to retreat and find somewhere else to make a stand, but if EURONET had been damaged, they would have real problems trying to coordinate so much quickly enough to make a real difference.  The Russian Air Force enjoyed almost complete control over the air and Spetsnaz forces had secured a whole series of vital targets; Poland should be secured within a week.

He still didn’t understand it.  The European Union had been so proud of EUROFOR, and yet the entire military system had so many weaknesses, from the failure to give it enough forces to actually to it’s job, to the failure to start a standardisation program in time.  The Europeans deserved to lose, although he was savvy enough to know that that was no guarantee that the Russian forces would actually win; there was still the dangerous questions of American intervention and nuclear weapons.  Would they be used?

“No matter,” he muttered.  Anna lifted an eyebrow.  “What about the Baltic States and the Ukraine?”

Anna smiled.  “The Baltic States have fallen,” she said.  Shalenko laughed; it had only been a few hours since the war had actually begun, but pre-positioned soldiers would have made the fight quick and brutal.  The Baltic States might have been members of NATO, and they had trained soldiers, but there weren’t anything like enough of them to stand off a powerful assault from Belarus and Kaliningrad.  The famed Nordic Battle Group, intended for deployment abroad, was out of the country; the reminder would have been knocked out before they even knew that there was a war on.  “There’s still anarchy in the cities, but our men have control over all of the vital locations and we can flow forward reinforcements when necessary.

“We have forces moving through the Ukraine now, but we lost badly in some of the early raids,” she continued, her voice darkening.  “We had our bases already within the country and they were secured quickly, but parts of the Ukrainian military escaped our attempts to destroy them and there’s a civil war going on.  The EUROFOR unit deployed in the Ukraine, mainly from Sweden and Ireland, has been attacked, however, and after a long battle the Swedes surrendered.  The Irish were attacked, but broke contact and vanished.”

“Have the prisoners held for interrogation,” Shalenko ordered.  The planning for the Ukraine had expected to destroy the EUROFOR units quickly.  Murphy, the only real God of War, was clearly taking a role; more had gone wrong than he had wanted, even if the light infantry unit from Ireland wasn't a serious problem.  They couldn’t remain undetected for long…and even if they did somehow manage to remain hidden, what would they do?  Where would they do?  “Get the GRU to find out everything they know about their comrades and where they might have gone.”

“Yes, sir,” Anna said.  She glanced down at the computer as a message popped up.  “That was an aerial engagement between our fighters and a set of Polish fighters; two fighters lost on each side.  The Poles clearly have some ground-based anti-aircraft defences; we’ve lost several bombers intended to bomb Warsaw.”

Shalenko looked at the map, then nodded.  Losses had been lighter, so far, than he had dared hope.  It wouldn’t be long, only a few days, perhaps less, before he was in Warsaw and the city was back in Russian hands, and then…he knew the plans, but now he knew that they were really going to work.  They would take a break, something they would need even as the air war raged on over the central front, and then they would march on towards Berlin.  By the time the Europeans mustered a defence, they would have already lost the war.

He laughed to himself and his officers, seeing the General laugh, smiled.  If all of the vast Muslim population of Europe had risen, and it was possible, although no one had added it into the battle plans, that they would…if that had happened, the Europeans might even welcome the Russians as liberators.  The Pact had shown the correct way to deal with such bastards; mass punishment, exile and ruthless crushing of any resistance.  The Europeans would love them for it…

And wouldn’t that be ironic?

Chapter Fourteen: Surprise Attack, Take Four

Washington DC, United States of America

The President looked tired, David Simmons thought; his white hair seemed to have somehow become whiter in the past few hours.  Two days ago, almost three days now, the United States had suffered the worst naval disaster in its long history.  Now, now the situation had become much graver, made worse by the fact that no one was quite certain what was going on.  Simmons was certain, now; everything made sense in the cold light of hindsight.  The United States and its allies had been plunged into a global war overnight…and they had already taken major losses.

“The world seems to be panicking,” the President said.  He sounded awfully tired.  The Joint Chiefs had wanted him in a bunker somewhere; the Continental United States was supposed to be invulnerable, but old certainties were falling everywhere.  “Congress is arguing about a declaration of war, there’s panic in the streets and the economy has headed downwards…what the hell is going on?”

“We are at war,” Simmons said frankly.  He knew that the President had shied away from that conclusion, but it had to be said.  It was the only possible conclusion.  “We have been challenged on a unprecedented scale.”

The President sighed.  “In Europe,” he said.  “What the hell is going on?”

“One word,” Simmons said.  He felt ridiculous even as he spoke the word.  “Invasion.”

He saw the complex set of emotions playing over the President’s face.  Europe had been peaceful – unless one counted the Balkans – for nearly seventy years; Europe had been peaceful, dull, and stagnant.  America had been heavily committed to Europe’s defence for the duration of the Cold War, but older ties had broken after Iraq, after Iran, after Delhi.  The rise of Germany to prominence, once again, had placed new stresses on the European Union; NATO was much more of a dead letter than it had once been.  Europe might have been willing to support the United States in China, but there had always been a distance, a sense that Europe would look after its own interests first and would leave the conflict if it got too hot.

That wasn’t an option now.

The President looked down at the table, then looked up, the weight of the world on his shoulders.  “I see,” he said finally.  His voice was very steady.  “What happened…and is happening at the moment.”

Simmons took a breath and began.  “Around five hours ago, there were a series of major attacks – classed at the time as terrorist attacks, but we now believe to have been conducted by the Russian special forces operations group – on European and national military bases, government complexes and a handful of other locations.  Some of the attacks were beaten off; others were devastating - we’re still not sure who’s in charge in Germany and Poland.  Moments after the first attacks, which included strikes directed at the TMD missile defence system, the early-warning satellites picked up a major series of cruise missiles launches; from Russia and from submarines.  Upwards of two to three thousand cruise missiles were fired…and relatively few of them were engaged and shot down.”

The President swore.  They’d all had a lesson in the power of the cruise missile – America’s weapon of choice for limited military operations – at Taiwan, but the Russians had raised the stakes again.  The European insistence on independent national control of the TMD and BMD systems, designed and produced by America, had limited the capabilities of the system; the warning would have been flashed to systems and stations that had already been attacked.

“Many of the missiles crashed, or so we think,” Simmons continued.  “We think that one missile malfunctioned and crashed in Prague; it might have been spite, but there seems to be no logical reason for targeting a housing block in the city.  The majority of the strikes were directed against military targets, mainly army barracks and air force bases across the continent.  The British took several hits in London and across their UKADGE; the PJHO at Northwood, London, was destroyed by a sea-launched missile.”

The President nodded.  “The Prime Minister?”

“Alive and in a secret bunker,” Simmons said.  He tapped the display.  “Prime Minister McLachlan was lucky; the Russians tried to hit Downing Street as well.  There weren’t any duplicate strikes using sea-launched missiles, which was lucky for the British; their TMD system had enough warning to take down several missiles that would have crippled their ability to patrol the UKADR.”

He closed his eyes.  “That’s not the worst of it,” he admitted.  The display altered again.  “France was spared from the main Russian attack – NSA intercepted a Russian broadcast offering the French a chance to leave the war before it really began – but all hell has broken loose across France.  The Arabs have risen up in rebellion and the French President and Prime Minister are missing.  There’s a major civil war going on and we don’t know who’s in charge of the French military.  We don’t even know what the hell the French are planning to do.”

“Who ever knows that?”  The President asked dryly.  “Did the Russians plan that?”

“I’m not sure,” Simmons said.  He shook his head slowly.  “The timing can’t really be a coincidence, but trouble has been brewing in France for years and the Pact is not known for being friendly to Islamic maniacs.  Rather the opposite, in fact; there are still unpleasant reports coming out of the former Pakistan.  And…there’s a curious lack of any forward planning so far; if the Russians had planned it, I would have expected more attacks against the French military infrastructure.  EURONET is rather flaky, although we expect that the system will rebuild itself pretty quickly, but most of the French Army seems to be intact and out for blood.”

The President blinked.  “They took down EURONET?”

Simmons understood his concern.  The American MILNET operated on the same principles.  “Not exactly,” he said.  “They took out most of the primary nodes, mainly through their cruise missile attacks, but the nodes in France – of course – weren’t attacked.  One that was in Paris was lost, but the others remained intact, while the secondary and tertiary nodes survived almost completely.  There was an attempt to literally hack the network, from Rotterdam, which we think was done by a Russian soldier, but it failed. At the same time, until the network re-establishes itself completely, the forces on the ground are going to be very disorganised; the Russians are jamming with enthusiasm.”

The President’s lips quirked at the grim joke.  “Invasion,” he repeated.  “What is the situation on the ground?”

“Grim and confused,” Simmons said.  “The Russians hit the Europeans hard.  Two major hits in particular were recorded; a missile hit on a German ammunition storage base and several tankers from Russia in European harbours.  The explosions triggered alarms at NORAD; they thought that they were nukes for a few seconds.  The net result is that there are a lot of people running around like headless chickens and very few centres of command still active.  Meanwhile…”

He took another breath.  “Meanwhile, Russian conventional forces have invaded Poland and the Baltic States,” he said.  “We have good satellite imagery of their movements; upwards of twenty to thirty Russian divisions are moving west, and others are moving into Belarus to reinforce them.  It seems unreal, but it’s happening; the Russians are engaging the Poles and the EUROFOR forces on the ground, which have already been hammered and largely cut off from higher authority.  The Russians have secured air supremacy as far west as Germany and it seems unlikely that they can be stopped quickly.  The Baltic States seem to have been crushed; there’s still a lot of fighting and rioting going on, but the Russians are firmly in control.

“If that wasn’t enough, the Russians have landed a major force in Poland’s western region, behind enemy lines.  They’ve started to resupply them – we have images of Russian aircraft at various commercial airports and other facilities – and they’re going to be expanding their hold pretty soon.  Once that happens, the position of the defenders, already bad, will become fatal.”

“They must be mad,” the President said.  His voice was stunned.  “Can’t they be stopped?”

Simmons coughed.  “As you know, the Poles are pretty weak; their grand modernisation programs had to be slowed when the Russians brought their oil fields and natural gas reserves online and started using it for economic advantage.   Every time the Poles attempted to build up a more powerful military machine, the Russians would remind them of how dependent they were on Russia…and the Poles would go cold until they were forced to back off.

“It was one of the reasons,” he concluded, “why they embraced the Alternate Energy Program with such relief.”

“And that also explains why the Russians have launched their attack,” the President said.  “With that program, and EUROFOR, it was their last chance to secure the states of Eastern Europe.”

Simmons shook his head.  “Mr President, I think it’s worse than that,” he said.  The President lifted an eyebrow.  “I think it’s much worse.”

“Worse than a Russian invasion of Europe and a Chinese move on Taiwan?”  The President asked.  “What do you think is happening?”

Simmons tapped the display.  “The Russians have launched a staggering series of attacks that have hammered all three of the main European states and their defence forces,” he said.  “The attacks took out an awesome amount of equipment and resources, including ships and aircraft.  The Germany Navy, for example, has been crippled; the British got pasted as well, but more of their ships survived.  There have been reports of ships being sunk in the Atlantic Ocean, but the worst probe has been at Iceland.

“The Russians had a ship go to Iceland last week,” he continued.  “We thought nothing of it – ships go there all the time – until now.  The embassy in Iceland is reporting that Russian troops have secured all of the country’s major airports and bases, such as they are.  Thanks to the post-Delhi fallout, the Icelanders ordered us out, and the place was almost completely undefended.  A team of five hundred trained Russian commandos could take the place…and apparently they have.  It was one of the major fears of the Cold War, and the Russians clearly planned to do just that; now they have succeeded.”

The President stared at him.  “They can’t hold it, can they?”

“We’ll have to evict them,” Simmons said.  “The Icelanders can’t do it for themselves; they have very few weapons and no tradition of fighting for their own independence.  That’s not the point, however; the point is that once they get some of those disused bases online, they will be able to dominate parts of the Atlantic until we can throw them back to Russia.  That, more than anything else, confirms what’s going on.

“The agency” – he meant the PIA – “has been studying the Pact’s deployments in the light of what happened at Taiwan,” he continued.  “There seems to be little room for confusion; the Pact defeated us at Taiwan, but has not yet landed on the Taiwanese.  The Russians, however, have launched a brutal invasion of Europe…and have every chance of overwhelming the Europeans before they can recover.  The Indians…are massing their forces along the Iranian border and the Chinese are racing reinforcements into Indonesia.”

He closed his eyes for a long moment.  “I think we’re looking at an attempt to reshape the global balance of power,” he said.  “The three major Pact powers have all had their desires for global power; we were the force blocking their way.  Now, now they have a chance to secure the resources they need…and prevent a counter-offensive.  If we lose Europe, we lose much of our ability to hurt the Russians.  If they don’t invade Taiwan, but continue to blockade it, they make it hard for us to strike back.  They even informed us about the prisoners to make it politically difficult for some of our allies to support us.

“And if the Muslim population throughout Europe is primed to revolt,” he concluded, “there is a very good chance that the Pact forces will be welcomed as liberators.”

The President looked down, and then looked up.  A new light of determination shone in his eyes.  “If they succeed, if they take Europe and the Middle East, what happens?”

“In the long run?”  Simmons asked.  “We lose.  We could lose now; the losses at Taiwan will hurt our ability to mount a counter-offensive against the Chinese, and we will have problems rushing forces into Europe.  By the time we could get III Corps or more units there, the Russians would be drinking wine in Paris.  If the EUROFOR line can hold, we might be able to stop them, but we also have to worry about securing the Middle East.  If they win, they use their control, their leverage, over Japan and Europe to bootstrap themselves forward…and win.  We could lose this.”

He met the President’s eyes.  “We’re not liked in South and Latin America either,” he said grimly.  That was something of an understatement; the new Cuban Government had made anti-Americanism one of the planks of its platform.  “Any one of those countries could be the straw that breaks the camel’s back.”

The President stood up.  “There’s been enough debate,” he said.  “The Russians have attacked countries that we have a treaty obligation to defend and the Indians are moving to invade Iran, where we have a light force and other obligations.  I’m going to go before Congress, explain what’s happening…and ask them for a formal declaration of war.  There’s been too much delay already; Congress can’t resist politicking even in the middle of a war.”

He scowled down at the display.  “I assume that the British are still playing?”

Simmons nodded.  “They’ve asked for our support as a matter of urgency,” he said.  “The RAF took a pounding in the cruise missile attacks and needs support if it is to maintain its ability to control the skies over England.  The Russians can hit Britain – now – with bombers and the British expect them to begin attacks at any moment.  As for the rest of Europe, apart from General Trautman, there’s so much chaos that it’s hard to say who is really in charge.”

The President smiled thinly.  “I want you to ensure that Trautman and EURONET get access to all of the intelligence we are gathering,” he said.  “I’ll get on to General Armstrong and the Joint Chiefs; see what we can forward over to Britain quickly.  If Trautman can hold the line, we might be able to get American forces in there to support him.”

Simmons winced.  He’d had a long military briefing from General Armstrong himself.  “The Russians might well manage to pocket General Trautman’s forces and destroy them,” he warned.  “If that happens, we might as well give up any hopes of holding Europe, short of Britain itself.  The French are in the middle of a civil war, no one knows who’s in charge in Paris, and we don’t know what they’ll do.  They might even take it nuclear.”

“God forbid,” the President said.  The obsession with BMD defences had concealed – from the general public – the fact that low-flying cruise missiles could still deliver nukes with considerable efficiency.  Worse, the BMD defences were not perfect; a saturation attack could still get into the heartland of America.  “I need someone in Britain I can trust; I want you to go to Britain, along with a military team, and find out what the hell’s going on there and where the British Government stands.  If they’re willing to ask for support, they should be willing to allow us to extend it to the rest of Europe, but we need their assistance.”

He lowered his voice.  “We also need to know if the Russians can be stopped,” he said, his voice softer.  “If not, we cannot put more American men and women into the firing line before we’re ready to use them properly.”

Simmons nodded.  “Yes, Mr President,” he said.  He had never expected to leave the country while working for the PIA, but he had to admit that he understood the President’s point.  Everything would depend on how well EUROFOR handled its unexpected challenge…and if it could slow the Russians enough for American supplies and troops to be transported into the battle zone.  If not…if not, then America would have no choice, but to either gear up for a war that would make World War Two look like a tea party, or accept the shift in the global balance of power.

“Good,” the President said.  He tapped the communication panel on his desk.  “Maria, please contact my Cabinet and inform them that I need a meeting, at once,” he said.  “I intend to hit Congress with a request for a declaration of war, as soon as possible; inform the Speaker than I have to address Congress this afternoon.”

He looked up at Simmons.  “Get me that information,” he said.  “Something tells me that we’re running short of time to influence events the way we want them to go.”

“Yes, Mr President,” Simmons said.  Everything would depend on Trautman.  There was no other way to look at it.  “I’ll do the best I can.”

Chapter Fifteen: Blitzkreig, Take One

Forward Edge of the Battle Area, Poland

“The enemy tanks are advancing,” the spotter’s voice murmured.  The tactical combat communications system lent a faint air of unreality to the entire scene.  The distant sound – and sometimes not so distant – of long-range gunfire and rockets could be heard in the background; it was just like an exercise, with one very real difference.  They could get killed out in Poland.  “They’ll be on your position in five minutes at most.”

Captain Guntar Markus was scared, much as he hated to admit it, even to himself.  He had been deployed to Poland as part of a large force of Eurotanks, mainly German-crewed.  The Poles hadn’t been that welcoming, even though they had largely overcome their fear of Germany from the last war; EUROFOR’s failure to deter the Russians from pushing the limits had shamed the Poles.  Markus had never expected to be part of a very real war; he had never fired his Eurotank’s main gun in action before, outside drills.  No one had expected the Russians to launch a major attack.

The German commander of the Eurotank division had been a martinet; it had saved Markus’s life.  The orders from Camp Warsaw had been to spread out the division, even though any natural-born tank crewmen knew that that was inviting disaster, in order to provide some support to the Polish forces along the border.  His commander had seen it as a good chance to engage in some training and sent Markus – and a force of six tanks – out on a training drill.  Two hours after they had started their stealthy manoeuvres designed to practice an advance against an unsuspecting foe – the irony was killing him – the skies had echoed with the sound of thunder…and lit up with the flashes of explosions.  The Eurotank’s systems were among the best in the world; Markus had a ringside seat as Russian shells crashed down on Polish and European positions…including the command post for the 1st Eurotank Armoured Division.  The jamming had made it impossible for Markus to request orders, until they had established a brief link with EURONET, but there had been no orders.  Moments later, they had even lost that link; there was no way to know what was going on.

There had been some intelligence, albeit very limited.  The Russians had launched a major offensive…and they were targeting the mobile forces with air strikes.  The European tanks, designed to be stealthy, had been missed, or at least Markus’s small unit had been missed.  He’d forced down the rising flow of panic and sent out his small Polish escort to act as spotters, knowing that all he could do was delay the enemy.  At least his position was good for that, if nothing else; there was no longer a serious uplink to EUROFOR Command.  His men had tried to contact higher authority…and failed completely; it was almost as if they were the only human beings left in the world.  Only a handful of helicopters, heading west, had passed the tanks…and the tanks had remained unnoticed.  Markus was pleased; they might just have a chance to hit the enemy a major blow.

The Polish road leading into Belarus would be a major angle of attack for the Russians, Markus was sure; it was basic tank tactics to ensure that your forces could move as quickly as possible, and trying to take tanks through the mixture of woodland and marshes was a recipe for disaster.  If he tried to move his own tanks, even though his Poles knew the region much better than any enemy unit could know it, they would be certain to be spotted, but if they kept their heads down, they would be unlikely to attract attention.  They would have a chance…

“Understood,” he muttered back into the tactical microphone.  The entire system used a low frequency that was supposed to be undetectable by any known ELINT system, but Markus knew better than to trust it completely.  A burst of radio or radar energy could strip away their protection within seconds, leaving them exposed to Russian precision bombing, perhaps even missile fire.  The attack on the command post had been ruthless; he didn’t hold out much hope of being able to surrender if the Russians caught them.  “Move.”

He checked his vehicle’s batteries again.  The power cells that were changing the entire face of the world – and might have played a role in precipitating this attack – were supposed to be rechargeable from any power source, from other tanks to a main power grid.  In theory, even without recharging their systems, they could have made it all the way across Poland, but he suspected that that was very much a best-case scenario.  If they had to power the tank’s impressive array of systems, the power drain would become critical much faster…and once they ran out of power, they would be stranded.  One hand caressed the service pistol he wore at his belt; if necessary, his men would try to make their way across country.  Someone, somewhere, had to be organising resistance.  He was sure of it.  The Russians couldn’t have killed everyone in Europe.

“Shift in the background noise,” the gunner muttered.  He was also the EW officer for the Eurotank; the three-man crew had had to have special training to cope with all of the requirements, even with the massive automation that had been installed into the hull.  The passive sensors, thank God, didn’t trigger Russian alarms.  “There’s a Russian drone up there, watching for trouble.”

“Think good thoughts,” Markus murmured.  The tank’s optical sensors were peering down the road now; the audio sensors were reporting the noise of oncoming vehicles.  He wished that he could say that he was surprised that the Russians had a drone overhead, but it was standard practice; the Russians had stolen the plans for the American Dragon Eye micro-drone and improved upon it.  “Prepare to engage the enemy.”

Suddenly, he saw them…and he felt a spurt of cold rage.  Part of him had never quite believed in the threat, even though he had known what was happening; war in the heartlands of Europe seemed a nightmare from the preceding century.  He saw, now, the black shapes of the latest, most modern, Russian tanks, and shuddered.  They were at war.  The Russian T-100 tank was known for being as capable as a late-model Abrams tank, with optional versions for amphibious and anti-insurgency operations, but he was certain that he was facing a tank designed for offensive warfare.  There would be no insurgency in Poland, at least, not yet; the Russians wouldn’t issue the anti-insurgency tanks until much later.  He was facing the cream of the Russian Army.

“Bastards,” he hissed.  Two Russian helicopters, anti-armour and ground support units, he suspected, could be seen floating in the distance and coming towards his people.  The Russians weren’t acting as if they knew that the EUROFOR troops were there, but it could have been a trick; he forced himself to remain calm, waiting for the first chance to hit the Russians a major blow.  The line of Russian tanks seemed endless…and unstoppable.  “Bastards!”

He checked the gunner’s panel quickly.  “Choose your targets,” he muttered.  Little strands of laser light, connecting each of the tanks to one another, flickered out, designating targets.  The Russians would probably detect a laser targeting system, but one wasn’t needed for the Eurotanks, not at this range.  The Russians were still coming along, watching for trouble, but unaware of the presence of his tanks.  “Stand by…”

The image of the lead Russian tank grew in front of him.  “Fire!”

The Eurotank was the result of seventy years of armoured warfare experience, much of it British, American or German.  It barely shuddered as it fired a main antitank shell towards the enemy tank, catching it completely by surprise.  The gunner didn’t hesitate; even before the shell had struck its target, he was swinging the barrel of the main gun around to engage a second target and…

Six Russian tanks exploded.  The high-energy shell had been developed to defeat the latest armour; they punched right through the Russian tanks and exploded.  He saw the turret of one of the Russian tanks exploding into the air, wrapped in a wreath of flame, and come crashing to the ground.  The gunner fired a second shot, then a third…and then the Russians started to turn their own guns at terrifying speed.

“Get us out of here,” Markus snapped.  The driver didn’t need to be told twice; he hit the engine and the tank leapt backwards, heading as quickly as it could down the hill.  The foliage seemed to explode as a hail of Russian fire cut through the woodlands that had hidden the tanks, but only one of Markus’ tanks was hit and destroyed.  There were no survivors.  “Move it!”

A Russian tank crested the hill, its guns already searching for a new target; two of Markus’s tanks fired at it and disintegrated it.  The passive sensors were blinking up alerts; the Russians were sending in their helicopters to cover their tanks, which would be moving around the hill, trying to outflank the Europeans.  The driver kept them moving as fast as they could trying to get out of the firing range, while Russian infantry appeared, holding antitank weapons.

“I think we made them mad,” the gunner remarked, as he fired at them with the tank’s machine guns.  Russians fell under his fire or dived for cover, trying to escape the machine guns, as the Russian helicopters swooped down.  The Eurotank’s sensors were working completely now; it fired an automatic missile at the first Russian helicopter, blowing it apart in a sheet of flame.  The second helicopter fired a stream of rockets at the tanks and killed two of them, roasting their crews inside the flames.  A Russian tank burst out of nowhere, narrowly missing Markus’s tank with a high-explosive shell; they destroyed it with a single shot.  A second tank was hit in the treads and skidded to a halt, but he realised that its main gun was still working.

“You’re telling me,” Markus said, as the tank reached the road.  The driver gunned the engine and the tank drove rapidly away from the encounter, the crew knowing that they had only a limited amount of time before the Russians gave chase or called in a close-air support aircraft to finish the surviving two tanks off.  “Get us to the next firing point!”

He found himself very calm, even as the Russians stopped their pursuit; he’d faced his first major encounter with the enemy, and survived.  Over half his force had died, but he had survived…and he promised himself that he would extract revenge for what the Russians had done to his crewmen.

***
The MIG-41 appeared out of nowhere, almost before Staffelkapitän Mayer realised that it was there, a testament to the Russian Air Force’s improved skill at stealth aircraft.  The MIG-41, known as the Flatpack to its NATO observers, fired a missile at Mayer’s aircraft and then swung into a long evasive pattern itself.  Mayer fired a single ASRAAM missile from his Eurofighter Typhoon back at the enemy and evaded the Russian missile though a series of hair-raising manoeuvres, trying to avoid being shot down.  The Russian pilot was less lucky; Mayer saw him trying to escape the missile, but failing.

The entire encounter had taken less than a minute.

Mayer stared down at his onboard display and silently cursed to himself.  He was one of the lucky pilots who had managed to get off the ground, but he was starting to wonder if it had really been lucky at all.  Jagdgeschwader 74, his fighter wing of the Luftwaffe, had been placed on alert status when someone had reported a terrorist waving a portable SAM missile launcher and threatening commercial traffic.  As the first reports of SAM attacks on civilian aircraft came in, the QAR aircraft, including Mayer, were launched into the sky…and then all hell had broken loose.  The base, in Southern Germany, in Bavaria, had been attacked by cruise missiles.  Moments later, it had seemed that the entire command net had gone down.

Mayer and his three wingmen had consulted and decided that the Vaterland was under attack.  Their onboard systems had reported the sudden spurt of cruise missiles that were flying over Germany, some of them heading towards towns and cities.  The four fighters had engaged the cruise missiles, but then they had finally received orders from a different airbase; they were to attempt to determine what the hell was going on.  Meyer had issued his subordinates with orders, each aircraft to a different region, and separated, heading over Poland.  The Poles should have challenged him before he crossed the border, even at supersonic speed; they were paranoid about German aircraft.  Meyer, who had had a grandfather who had served in the Luffwaffe, rather understood their concern, but something very bad had happened.  The cruise missiles alone added up to only one answer.  They were at war and only one power had the means and the motivation to hit Germany.

Russia.

As he’d flown eastwards, he had attempted to raise the Polish air traffic controllers, only to discover that most of them were off the air.  His radar had picked up a massive flight of transport aircraft, heading out of Russia towards Poland, but he had refrained from engaging them; he still wasn’t exactly sure what had happened.  He saw smoke and flames reaching up from targets right across Poland, which meant that the cruise missiles hadn’t just been aimed at Germany.  The main Polish military airfields, Biała Podlaska, Cewice and Częstochowa-Rudniki, seemed to have been hit; there didn’t seem to be any Polish aircraft in the skies at all.  Commercial traffic had to be panicking; they would be flying through suddenly very hostile skies…without the slightest idea of what was going on.

Meyer himself wasn’t sure that he knew what was going on.

“Jagdgeschwader 74-9, you will listen to the code words,” his radio crackled suddenly.  Meyer’s heart leapt; he wasn’t alone!   Someone knew where he was and what he was doing!  The voice, unfamiliar, recited a long series of code words, verifying command authority over Meyer and his wingmen, wherever they were.  Part of the system was still working!  “You are to investigate Katowice International Airport and report back; do not attempt to engage enemy forces unless fired upon.”

“Acknowledged,” Meyer said, almost terrified as the implications of his unknown controller’s words sunk in.  Katowice International Airport was in the west of Poland, near Germany and the German border.  It was one of the places that had been marked as a possible emergency landing site for the EUROFOR air support squadrons…and should have been outside the realm of targeting possibilities for any attacker.  The faint suggestions of aerial combat, further to the east, suggested that the Russians – if Russians they were, but who else could they be? – were winning.  “I am going stealthy now.”

“Good luck,” the controller said.

The Eurofighter was not a pure stealth fighter, not like the newer fighters that had been produced by the Americans, the Japanese and even the advanced Eurofighter.  It did have a very small radar cross-section and, without any active transponders, should have nothing calling serious attention to itself.  If there were ground forces below that were friendly, in other words not Russians, they might try to shoot him down because he wasn’t broadcasting an IFF signal.  There wasn’t a choice; he didn’t dare draw enemy attention until he knew what the hell was going on.

Air traffic started to pick up as he flew closer to the Polish airport.  It was a massive commercial facility, expanded several times until it could handle more jumbo jets than any other airport in Poland, save only the one near Warsaw.  Normally, the skies would be stacked with commercial airliners, but now there were only military transports…and smoke rising from dozens of different places on the ground.  Meyer had a sudden sense of what had happened to all of the commercial jets and shuddered; the Russians would have just shot them all down and never worried about the loss of life.

His sensors recorded everything as they grew closer.  A Russian Mainstay – a Beriev A-50 AWACS aircraft, one of a hundred the Russians had produced and heavily modified for the Pact – was operating in the air over Poland, protected by a swarm of Russian fighters.  Other heavy Russian transports seemed to be dominating the skies over Poland, while tankers and bombers floated around, picking on targets as they chose.  The sheer scale of the effort was daunting…and the lack of any effective opposition was chilling.  Had the Russians secured so much control that they could fly so close to Germany without fear?

He cursed softly as another flight of Russian transports landed on Katowice International Airport, their escorts peeling off and returning to the tankers for refuelling.  The airport was lit up by hundreds of different air-search radar systems, watching out for possible attackers, and he realised that if he went any closer, he would almost certainly be detected.  A flight of Russian transports left the airport, heading back towards Russia, and he realised that he was looking at the greatest airborne invasion operation in human history.  By the time the Poles rallied, they would be defeated; it was neat, elegant, and almost unstoppable.

His threat-receiver lit up, sounding an alarm.  One of the sweeping bands of Russian radar energy had locked onto his aircraft…and he cursed again, swinging his aircraft around into a dive.  There was no escape, he realised, as a flight of Russian fighters came after him; he hit the emergency transmit button and sent everything his fighter had seen, compressed into a single microburst, back towards the base.  Someone, he hoped, would make use of it.

He swung his aircraft around to fight, and launched his final missile.  Moments later, a Russian missile blew the Eurofighter out of the sky. 

Chapter Sixteen: Blitzkreig, Take Two

Near Camp Warsaw, Poland

They appeared as dots against the sky, with the sound of their passing echoing through the skies as they flashed overhead, heading west.  The wave of sound caught up with General Konrad Trautman and his men as they watched from the ground, moments later, a series of black specks fell from the sky and struck the ruins of Camp Warsaw.  A tearing series of explosions blasted the remains of the camp into burning embers, destroying it utterly.

“We’ll have to move from here,” Montagne said.  The Frenchman looked increasingly grim; he hadn’t been the same since hearing a grim report of a major uprising in Paris.  “It won’t be long before they send in helicopter-borne infantry to secure the camp.”

Trautman stared down at the terminal’s display and felt true despair.  They’d salvaged a much more capable terminal, the size of a small laptop, from the ruins of the camp, but he almost wished that it had been destroyed in the blasts.  The reports were not encouraging, even with the recovery of much of the EURONET; the Russians had made major gains in the first few hours of their offensive.  Polish forces, left imprudently near the borders, had been hammered; the Poles were fighting ferociously, but the Russians were killing them.  EUROFOR forces were under heavy attack as well; no one had been able to raise some of the units that had been deployed near the border.  The red UNKNOWN icon told their story; the Russians had either captured or destroyed them.

He knew, or thought he knew, the Russians.  They weren’t subtle, not in the sense that they would use a scalpel when they had a sledgehammer.  A westerner would not consider a sledgehammer an acceptable method of cracking a nut; the Americans had not nuked their way across Iraq, after all.  Nuking Iraq would have been one way to win, but the Americans hadn’t done anything of the sort…and they had assumed that everyone would think the same way.  To the Russian military mind, cracking nuts was exactly what sledgehammers were designed to do…and he knew that EUROFOR was not a particularly tough nut at the moment.  The Russians would charge forward, pushing against the defences and breaking through weak points.

He smiled bitterly.  The Russians had learnt that from the Nazis, after all.  Push forward, pin the enemy in place, surround them, crush them; the tactics were very well known and understood.  The Russians were coming; the American satellite data confirmed it…and also confirmed that there was very little help coming.

A new screen popped up on the display.  He scowled as a microburst transmission from a German Eurofighter was downloaded into the terminal’s main systems, revealing the presence of a major Russian series of landings behind his lines.  If there had been an active Polish infantry or armoured unit near the landings, there might have been a chance to recover the situation, but as it was the Russians would have plenty of time to dig in and resupply their forces before any European forces could respond.  The Russian doctrine called for expanding paratrooper drop zones as quickly as possible, which meant that the Poles would soon find themselves attacked from two sides at once…

He felt despair welling up again and forced it down.  He hadn’t been able to talk to any senior authority at all; many of the government buildings seemed to be in ruins.  The only senior officer he had been able to hear from had been a British RAF officer, reporting that the British themselves had been hit, but he wasn’t in Trautman’s chain of command.  The German Government seemed to be silent, the French Government seemed to have been killed in the uprising or whatever it really was…and the Russian Special Forces had wrecked havoc behind European lines.  Railways had been severed, often at a high cost in civilian life, and airliners had been shot down all over Europe.  The sheer level of chaos would be overwhelming; Trautman was starting to realise that there weren’t many options left.  If they didn’t find a way to take the initiative, they were doomed to a Russian Europe.

Dean came over, holding the smaller terminal.  “I just got a microburst from an antiaircraft unit twenty kilometres from the border,” he said.  Trautman lifted an eyebrow; each and every unit connected to the EURONET was supposed to be able to transmit a compressed information package reporting their exact status and location.  It wasn’t a system he was very comfortable with, but at the moment, he was all he had to cling to, in order to find out what the hell was going on.  “They were reporting increased flights of Russian MIGs and have shot three of them down before Russian shellfire tried to kill them.”

Despite himself, Trautman felt his lips twitch.  “And what happened?”

“They were already moving,” Dean said.  Trautman allowed himself a moment of relief.  “Point is, sir, they’re reporting ground attack variants coming in as well and…”

“Success,” Captain Sameena Hussian snapped.  She’d been attempting to rig up an ultra-secure satellite communications device, without either training or instructions.  “General, I have a direct link to Camp Potsdam.”

Trautman felt a mixture of relief and worry.  The senior officer at Camp Potsdam remained Colonel Florette Rolande, a French supply officer, not a combat expert.  He would have sold his soul for one of the more senior French officers, or a German, or even a Dutchman, not a supply officer.  She might have her uses, but she would be hopelessly out of her depth.

She was also the only option he had.  “Good,” he said.  “Give it to me.”

He slipped the headphone and microphone over his head.  “Colonel,” he said.  There would be time for pleasantries later.  “I need a situation report, now.”

Florette’s voice was very nervous.  “It’s bad, General,” she said.  “I have been working to re-establish the EURONERT links, but the cruise missiles took out hundreds of pieces of valuable equipment and scattered hundreds of units.  The telephones are breaking down, the Russians did something to the network, but we have officers at each of the barracks, or their ruins, trying to get some order into the chaos.  Hundreds of officers and men are lost, and others are dead, but we might be able to assemble some scratch units.”

Trautman smiled.  Perhaps it wasn’t going to be so bad after all.  “Good work, Florette,” he said, as calmly as he could.  Her voice had been very brittle.  “Now, what about the air situation?”

Florette’s voice weakened.  “The British and French have established an system for refuelling aircraft and launching them into the air, but the EUROAIR command is gone” – Trautman wasn’t surprised; the Russians weren’t going to miss such an obvious target as the building that had cost billions of Euros – “and the national commanders are reluctant to send out their aircraft to provide you with cover.”

Her voice broke.  “General,” she asked, “what about the paratroopers?”

Trautman forced his voice into a comforting, almost a paternal, note.  Florette hadn’t done badly at all; she was already aware of the presence, perhaps even of the location, of the Russian landings.  The only question was how badly damaged the German national command structure actually was…and that wasn’t something that could be easily established by either Florette or himself.

“We’ll deal with them later,” he said.  He could only hope that he was right.  “Now, have you managed to establish contact with anyone in Berlin or Paris?”

Florette’s voice trembled.  “There’s a war going on in Paris and no one knows who’s in charge,” she said.  “The centre of Berlin is in ruins; I was able to speak briefly to a Bundeswehr officer in Berlin and he said that the Chancellor was dead.”

“All right,” Trautman said.  There would be time to mourn later.  “Is there a Bundeswehr officer there?”

“Only Oberst Mulenkampf, an infantry officer,” Florette said.  Trautman felt his blood run cold; the Bundeswehr had been intended to maintain a full staff at each of the EUROFOR bases.  “Do you want to speak to him?”

“No,” Trautman said, suddenly decisive.  The rumble of gunfire was growing louder.  Time was running out.  “I have orders for you and I need you to carry them out, understand?”

“Yes, sir,” Florette said.

“Good,” Trautman said.  “Seeing the governments and EUROFOR Command are unable to communicate” – true, because they’re dead and I am alone, part of his mind gibbered – “I am reassuming my General’s rank in the Bundeswehr as well as EUROFOR.  Inform Oberst Mulenkampf that I am giving him a battlefield promotion and I want him to have a mobilisation message broadcast right across Germany, ordering all reserves and soldiers to their emergency collection points.  It’s not exactly legal, but I’d happily accept the firing squad if it got me a working government.  Once the men have reported, have them issued weapons and vehicles; Oberst Mulenkampf is to arrange for the opening of the surviving Bundeswehr stores and then the deployment of the reserves.”

He studied the map for a long moment.  “I want every armoured unit and antiaircraft unit that you can lay your hands upon deployed along the German-Polish border,” he said.  An icon appeared in front of him as he tapped the terminal; a EUROFOR mobile infantry division that had been delayed on its passage into Poland.  “I want the 3rd European Infantry to advance into Poland to support EUROFOR elements as they retreat, with Bundeswehr and any other units you can scrape up deployed along the border.  Russian air transports are landing in the west of Poland; if we can throw a spanner into their works, it might give them pause.”

“Yes, sir,” Florette said.  Her voice seemed to jump with shock.  “Retreat?”

Trautman sighed.  “Yes, retreat,” he said.  What did they teach people these days?  EUROFOR EAST was doomed if it remained where it was, trying to resist the Russians as a vast group of tiny units, rather than a single coordinated force.  The German armed forces had learned – too late – the value of a retreat; Stalingrad had doomed an army whose commander had refused to leave until it was too late.  “That’s something you’re going to have to handle as well, because we’re going to have to leave this location.

“I want you to ensure that the message gets to each and every EUROFOR and Polish unit,” he continued.  “Units that are not under fire are to pull up sticks and make their way across the German border, reporting to you once they arrive.  Units that are under fire are to break contact, if possible, and retreat across the German border…”

Florette coughed.  “Sir – General – that’s giving up all of Poland,” she protested.  “Can’t we…”

Trautman spoke gently.  “We cannot mount a counter-offensive to force the Russian paratroopers out of the west,” he said.  “By the time we get one organised, we will be up against light tanks and prepared positions.  It would be a waste of firepower and most of EUROFOR would be destroyed by the time we broke though.  No, we are going to have to fall back, save what we can, and establish a defensive line.”

“Understood,” Florette said.  “Sir, what will you do?”

Trautman took a breath.  “I want you to dispatch three stealth helicopters to this location,” he said.  “They will transport me and my staff to Camp Potsdam.”

Florette sounded relieved.  That meant that he could take over from her when he arrived.  “Yes, sir,” she said.  “I’ll see to it at once.”

***
“It’s pretty bad,” the grizzled old Polish sergeant said, in his halting English.  Captain Guntar Markus knew that he’d been lucky; his two surviving tanks had bumped into a Polish infantry unit during their short retreat.  The Poles had a story that was almost identical to the EUROFOR soldiers; they had been jumped by Russian commandos, and then shelled by Russian guns.  They had held the line as long as they could, but their commander had ordered them to fall back after the Russians had brought up tanks and more infantry.

The pain in his voice was growing.  The Poles had thought that they had seen the last of the Russians, at least Russian tanks rolling across their country, years ago.  No one had taken the Russian Bear seriously after Yeltsin had lost the first war in Chechnya.  No one had seen the improvement in the Russian military, painful as it had been; no one had realised that the Russian leadership was willing to go as far as possible to redefine their country.  They had just tipped the balance of power right over…

“I can’t get in touch with anyone,” the Pole continued.  His voice was grim; communications were what kept a modern army together and the Polish communications had failed, almost completely.  “What are you doing?”

Markus looked towards the east.  They had a moment of peace; he knew that it wouldn’t last.  The Russians would keep pressing forward until they hit something hard enough to make them stop, or until they outran their own logistics.  How long would that take them?  Markus had participated in exercises that had suggested that EUROFOR could have pushed halfway into Poland without needing to resupply, although those had assumed that everything had worked perfectly; if something had gone wrong, like the enemy actually resisting, it would have taken much longer.

“Trying to link up with others,” he said.  They had burned up a third of their main gun ammunition in a series of skirmishes…and they had only four anti-aircraft missiles left.  The Russians had grown more cautious about engaging the Eurotanks after they had shot down several helicopters, but they had only to send five helicopters or a precision antitank strike and the tanks would be destroyed.  Their connection to the EURONET was limited, but he knew that there were Russian Special Forces operating in his rear, perhaps enough to prevent EUROFOR from linking up long enough for the Russians to win,  “You?”

The Sergeant grunted and stroked his machine gun.  “I am here to defend my country,” he said.  Markus didn’t laugh; the Sergeant meant it.  He would have horrified and amused Markus’s girlfriend at the same time; he wondered briefly what had happened to her.  Had Bonn been hit by the Russians?  It was possible; Bonn had served as the capital of West Germany long enough to pick up a whole network of strategic targets.  “If they bypass me, I’m going to go out to the farm, and then see what I can do.”

Two jets screamed across the sky.  He tensed, knowing that if the jets had fired, they would be dead in moments.  Instead, a streak of fire reached into the sky and swatted one of the jets from the sky, the other retreating at high speed.  Moments later, Russian guns started to pound the location of the single anti-aircraft gunner; overkill on a massive scale.

“You’ve got mail,” the gunner said, poking his head out of the turret.  He held out a single biometric palmtop, Markus’s secure terminal and direct link to EURONET.  It hadn’t been working earlier and he had ignored it.  “Sir, we also have more Russian search radars operating nearby; I think they’re preparing to move forwards again.”

Markus scowled.  The Poles had helped him hide the tank again, but they hadn’t had enough time to do a proper job of it…and the Russians had to know that they were somewhere in the area.  There might be a Russian UAV floating high overhead, watching for resistance; there might even be a Russian analyst pouring over satellite information.  He took the terminal, allowing it to scan his fingerprints and biometric data; if the terminal didn’t recognise him, it would automatically wipe itself and shut down.  A string of command codes – he vaguely recognised the tag for Camp Potsdam – appeared in front of him, and then the message itself appeared.

Markus swore.

The Gunner blinked.  “Trouble, sir?”

“We have been ordered to retreat,” Markus said.  He deactivated the security precautions and passed the palmtop to the Gunner.  “They want us to get all the way back to Germany.”

He shook his head in awe.  It sounded good on paper…and perhaps it was, but it meant that they would have to travel hundreds of miles to Germany, all of them exposed under unfriendly skies.  They had the power they needed, thanks to the Poles, but he didn’t think that they could get the tank back to Germany, even if they met up with others.  Just how bad had it been in Germany?

The Sergeant scowled when Markus told him.  “You could always leave the tank here,” he said.  The Pole sounded betrayed; Markus didn’t blame him at all.  EUROFOR’s orders had been clear, but there was no way that he would leave his country if it could be avoided.  EUROFOR had failed its first real test…and now innocents would suffer.  “Or you could stay with us; you would be welcome.”

“You could come with us,” Markus said.  “If we run out of main power, I’ll put the tank on automatic defence mode and we’ll continue on foot.  You would be welcome…”

“This is my country,” the Sergeant said.  The sound of Russian guns was growing louder, even as Markus flipped though the information package that they had been sent from EURONET.  The Russians had established themselves in the west of Poland, which meant that the journey would be hazardous, even if EUROFOR was finally getting organised.  “I am staying here.”

On impulse, Markus unlocked the palmtop completely and passed it over to him.  “This might come in handy,” he said.  “It won’t access any of the more important or sensitive regions without proper clearance, but it will give you a way to communicate with us; it might come in handy later.”  He snorted.  “We’ll slip you what information we can.”

They shook hands a final time.

Chapter Seventeen: Blitzkrieg, Take Three

Washington DC, USA

“Ladies and gentlemen, the President of the United States.”

President Vandergrift stood, facing the Senate.  The room was very quiet, waiting to hear what he had to say; the debate had raged uncontrollably for nearly a week.  The attack on the multinational fleet had been brutal, and the public demanded blood, but not everyone in the Senate was keen on going to war.  The elites of Washington were timid, everyone knew, and yet they couldn’t afford to be doves now.  The attempts to gage the public pulse were all returning the same result; war, war, war until the Chinese were crushed.  Military recruiting had skyrocketed, even before the Russians had launched their own invasion of Europe…and that, too, had had an effect.

There was a Polish minority within the United States – and that had spent the time since the news had broken canvassing support and demanding that something be done.  Poland had been a member of NATO for a long time, the United States had obligations to Poland, and that wasn't all.  The Russians had attacked American shipping, they’d attacked Britain, they’d attacked Germany…and it was suspected that they had played a role in France’s current troubles.  There might have been a few people more than willing to say ‘I told you so’ and enjoy the sight of the French getting into trouble, but the more perceptive saw the prospect of a civil war that could tear out the heart of the defences.  It was that that worried President Vandergrift; it was that that had made him determined to fight the war.

The United States had been involved in two world wars; four if the Cold War and the Terror War had been counted as real wars.  The Cold War had been costly, but it had never broken down into brutal fighting between the two superpowers, even though it had shown up the limitations of both powers.  The US hadn’t mobilised for either of the wars; the battles had been fought, largely, with the forces on hand.   That wouldn’t work for the coming war; if it were to be won, it would have to be won with additional forces.  The United States hadn’t declared war since Pearl Harbour; President Vandergrift was about to become the first President since Roosevelt to ask Congress and the Senate for a declaration of war.

David Simmons’ words rang in his head.  “We could lose this…”

“My fellow Americans,” the President said, speaking not just to the representatives, but to the television and Internet cameras that were focused on him.  His words would go all over the country…and the world.  The Pact of Opposition would be listening as well – they were far from stupid; they wouldn’t miss the opportunity – and they would hear the determination in his voice.  “Recently, we lost thousands of American lives, to a sneak attack launched without provocation by the forces of the Pact of Opposition.  We know, now, that the attack was planned and executed perfectly; it was the first stage in a war intended to break our power forever.”

He kept his voice calm, but determined.  “Hours ago, the forces of the Russian Federation, another member of the Pact of Opposition, launched a major attack against Europe, including our own embassies in the continent.  The attacks were completely ruthless and directed in large measure against the civilian population; the death toll is known to number well over ten thousand, perhaps many more.  We have tracked airliners being shot down over civilian regions; we have tracked cruise missiles that have torn out the heart of a dozen European capital cities.  We know – we knew – that the Russians had been crushing Belarus; we now face the prospect of the Pact of Opposition controlling all of Europe.

“Barely an hour ago, we received word that Indian forces were pushing their way across the border into Iran,” he concluded.  He’d been told that bare minutes before making the trip to Congress.  “The timing is not a coincidence; these are the opening shots in the Third World War, an attempt to change the balance of power forever.  In the first week of fighting, the forces of the free world have suffered awesome losses…and it is not over yet.  Australia is being menaced by Chinese forces in Indonesia, France is at war with itself, Japan and Taiwan face the Pact forces and may be invaded at any moment.  None of this is a coincidence.”

He raised his voice slightly.  “We all knew that this was coming,” he said.  “We watched while the Pact grew stronger, fed on Russian and Indonesian raw materials, supplying weapons to every state interested in waging war, and slowly pushing us out of their spheres of influence.  They forced the Poles to disarm” – an exaggeration, but not a great one – “and waged a genocidal war in East Asia.  We knew…and we did nothing.  We told ourselves that we had had our fingers burned at Delhi, that we should not interfere, but the truth was that we allowed the Pact to take a third of the world in a grip of steel.”

It was true, but only partly; an admission that he bore some personal responsibility for the crisis.  President Vandergrift had come to power after President Rupertson had played a major role in the final Indo-Pakistani War; he had been unable to act as openly as he might have liked because of that precedent.  No one had been sure if the Indians were bluffing or not about their willingness to use nukes; no one had wanted to try and call their bluff.

“This is not a minor police action,” he said.  The chamber was very silent.  “We told ourselves that their actions in Indonesia were…what they deserved, and did nothing.  We told ourselves that they were fighting the same war, that they were on our side, and we did nothing.  Now…now, they have invaded a democracy and attacked others; they are trying to export their own system to the rest of the world – by force.  They have started the war by launching a sneak attack; a sneak attack on all fronts.

“At this moment, American submarines and aircraft are duelling with their Chinese and Indian counterparts,” he said.  His voice was rising.  “At this moment, American forces are preparing desperately to meet an Indian offensive against Iran.  At this moment, American ships in the Atlantic Ocean are being attacked by Russian Submarines.  At this moment…Poland, Iceland and other countries are being crushed under the Russian jackboot.  At this moment…

“My fellow Americans, we are at war,” he concluded.  “This is not a minor skirmish; this is an attempt to crush us, an attempt to defeat America and the free world once and for all.  We cannot use half-measures, we cannot assume that we can break off contact at any point…because we cannot.  Russia, China, India; all of them have the power to attack us right here, right in the heart of America!  I ask Congress, I ask America, for a declaration of war, so that the full strength of our might may to used to hold back the darkness that threatens to overwhelm us all.”

In the end, the declaration of war was passed, three to one.

***
“The President of the United States,” the aide said, as President Vandergrift stepped into the Situation Room.  It had been rebuilt several times over the past few decades; it was now a room that seemed to have come right out of a James Bond movie.  Computer displays and images flickered everywhere along one wall; the massive table in the centre of the room was connected to computer systems right across the United States.  From the Situation Room, the President could command the massed might of America…and that wasn't all.  There were four other such rooms, in separate locations; a strategic nuclear strike, or a submarine-launched cruise missile, wouldn’t be able to decapitate America.

“Thank you,” the President said, as the assembled civilian and military leaders rose for him.  Their faces were a strange mixture of anticipation and trepidation; he noted with some private amusement that the military people looked more concerned than eager.  They knew the costs of war, better than any civilian could hope to know; they would be the ones charged with planning, fighting…and if necessary dying for the country.  “Please be seated.”

They settled down around the table.  The President stood at one end of the table, unwilling to sit down.  “Congress has voted,” he said, knowing that all of the men and women would already know about that.  “The United States had declared war on the Pact of Opposition.  The formal declaration will be sent to the Pact by our Ambassadors; it will be their last duty before they are withdrawn from the Pact countries.  We are at war, now; we are fighting to hold several fronts.  Bob?”

Bob Greer, the Secretary of Homeland Security leaned forward.  “We have secured our southern border and instituted limited checks on the northern border,” he said.  “An set of National Guard infantry regiments have been dispatched to assist the Border Patrol in sealing the borders, although we do not expect major trouble from Mexico.  It is not a member of the Pact, after all; Canada is one of our allies.”

He smiled thinly.  “The Coast Guard has been placed on alert and will intercept each and every boat attempting to make landfall,” he continued.  “We have some contingency plans to handle any attempt to insert intelligence operatives or Special Forces troopers into the United States; nothing will be allowed to get in without being inspected.  We have also evacuated harbours where tankers could be detonated, rather than risk major civilian losses, and all inbound flights have been ordered to divert to military airfields, where they will be inspected.

“At the risk of stamping on General Joshua Howard’s toes,” he concluded, “the BMD and TMD system is fully operational, along with a National Guard CAP over the Continental United States.  I don’t say that the Pact cannot launch a conventional strike against us, using long-range bombers or even one of their remaining carriers, but they will get hurt if they try.”

“I might add that we have sealed off Pearl Harbour completely,” Howard added.  The NORAD commander smiled.  “There’s too much chance of a tactical nuke being smuggled into the harbour and detonated, where it would destroy the ships from the fleet when they arrive.  There was some grumbling from the locals, but they were very relieved privately.”

The President nodded.  “Admiral?”

Admiral Robert Jefferson, the Chief of Naval Operations, spoke softly, but grimly.  “The Russians mounted a series of surprise attacks against shipping; more or less everyone’s shipping in the Atlantic and the Mediterranean.  As you know, our own deployments in the Mediterranean were drawn down when the European Union mounted its own standing force there; resources were stretched at the time and we had other problems and plenty of bases around the region.  The Russians hit everyone, but the French, the Turks and the Israelis pretty hard; the standing force was effectively destroyed and the Russian submarines had a happy few hours before the British managed to get everyone into a harbour.”

He nodded towards the massive display as it changed.  “We have some war plans for this contingency, but they have been overwhelmed,” he said.  “We have a lot of cooperation with the British and the Norwegians, but both of them were hammered by the Chinese and the Russians.  We have had every ship we have trying to get into position to run convoys and escort freighters into harbours, but we have more tasks than we really have ships to handle them.  In a few days, Mr President, we will have proper convoys up and running, but for the moment, everything is confused.  It’s going to get worse before it gets better.”

The President blinked.  “You’re not going to try to hunt down the Russian submarines?”

Jefferson shook his head.  “There’s no point in trying,” he said.  “The Russians have to come to our convoys in order to make their kills.  If we send our ships off on wild goose chases, the Russians will just have an easier time of it.”

“I see,” the President said.  He looked around the table.  “You know, all of you, that we took a beating in the Battle of Taiwan and there is a lot of anger and fear running around the country.  We have to go on the offensive, as soon as possible, ideally somewhere that we can be certain of a quick victory.”

“A Dolittle Raid for 2021,” General Armstrong said.  “Mr President, if I may?”

The President nodded.  “We had deployment orders going out to every unit we have before the Russians launched their offensive, so we scored a march on them,” General Armstrong said.  “The rate of enlistment, following Taiwan, has been much higher; in a few years, we could make the Army much stronger, at least in infantry, but for the moment it is still very much a ‘come as you are’ war.  Am I to assume that the official policy is to try to save as much of Europe as possible?”

“That’s another matter,” Terry Westphal, the Attorney General, injected.  His voice was grim.  “We do not yet have any formal war aims; are we fighting to crush the Pact, which could take years, or a more limited set of objectives?”

The President tented his fingers.  “Leave that for the moment,” he said.  Westphal was right, of course, but there were more important matters.  “General?”

“With your permission, then, I will divide our attention between different regions,” Armstrong said.  “Europe represents our most serious problem; the Russians have crippled their ability to respond, and while there are signs that the system is pulling itself back together, we don’t know exactly what way anyone is going to jump.  The French are being bombarded with offers of peace, neutrality; the Russians even offered Russian infantry to help with their Islamic problem.  The German civilian leadership seems to have vanished; the British lost many of their own command posts.  In short, we have to intervene quickly…and we can’t intervene quickly.”

The President scowled.  “Why?”

“The heavy equipment, mainly,” Armstrong admitted.  “We could get several units, including XVIII Airborne Corps, over to Britain and Europe fairly quickly; within a week if we take some risks.  It’s harder, however, to transport their tanks and heavy equipment; for that, we need ships and that means time.  We had V Corps in Europe, but that was disbanded back during President Bush’s term and the stockpiled supplies were either drawn down or sold to the Europeans.  My planners have been talking about sending III Corps to Europe to back up the Airborne officers, but that will take time and time is the one thing we have little of, at the moment.  Blocking us from supplying the Europeans has been a Russian priority since the days of the Cold War; unless the FSB has gone out of business, they’ll know what we are planning.”

He ran his hands through his thinning hair.  “We can move a large supporting unit of the USAF to Britain, to back up the Europeans,” he continued.  “I must register my objection, however, to committing any of our units to Europe unless we can put enough force on the ground to prevent the Russians from overrunning them.  The last thing we need is to give the Russians a quick victory.”

“Begin moving the Airborne units to Britain,” the President ordered.  The British probably weren’t in any real danger of being overrun any time soon.  “Next?”

“We have been putting together a plan to recover Iceland as soon as possible,” Armstrong said.  “The 1st Marine Division has been put on alert, which is overkill, but again, we don’t want to risk giving the Russians an easy victory.  We can move two carriers up to give air support and…”

The President held up a hand.  “Can you guarantee that the carriers would not be destroyed like the ones at Taiwan?”

Jefferson coughed.  “Nothing is certain in war, Mr President, but the conditions would be very different,” he said.  “The Russians would not be able to deploy so many cruise missiles into the teeth of the carriers and we would be shooting first if they came anywhere near the ships.  If we had opened fire at Taiwan, our losses would not have been so bad.”

Armstrong nodded.  “Iran poses a different set of problems,” he said.  “We have an obligation to back-up the Iranian Government after their civil war ended.  Fortunately, this time we have a large stockpile of weapons and equipment in several countries around the Gulf.  We can run forward men and material, mainly through the air; Algeria may or may not choose to try to prevent us.  Their role in all of this is confused…and the Indians might try to prevent us from sending in men.  It’s not a friendly region.”

The President scowled.  “What about the Turks or the Israelis?”

“They’re staying out of the fight for the moment,” Joan Davidson said.  The Secretary of State looked tired.  “The State of Israel has its own problems; I suspect that there are more than a few of them who approve of the Pact’s…solution to the Muslim problem.  There’s also the diplomatic issue; Iran might find it hard to accept help from the Jews, even if the Israelis mean well.  The same goes for the Turks; they’re watching the war and how the Russians have been sending units down into Georgia.  Unless attacked, the Turks will stay out.”

“Finally, we will be sending reinforcements to Australia,” Armstrong concluded.  “Once we have secured all the bases, we can prepare a counter-attack, and hopefully put an end to the war.”

Jefferson nodded.  “My office has been looking for a chance to hurt the Chinese,” he said.  The President nodded.  The USN had been humiliated by the punishment it had taken at Taiwan.  “I would like to discuss a possible concept with you…”

Chapter Eighteen: War of the Worlds

Near Paris, France

“Mr President, welcome to the command bunker,” General Vincent Pelletier said, as Marcel Yacef was escorted into the heart of the bunker.  The sight had never creased to amaze him; the nuclear bunker had been designed and built in total secrecy, not long after France had left NATO for the first time.  It had been intended to provide command and control for France’s worldwide forces and for the nuclear force; Yacef had only been permitted to enter during emergency drills.  He wished, with all his heart, that this was only another drill.  He was still getting used to being President.

His right arm still hurt, even slung in a sling; the terrorist attempt to kill him had come very close to succeeding.  Only sheer luck had saved him; he had been delayed slightly on his visit to a convention centre for the forthcoming elections…and the car bomb had gone off only seconds too early.  His security detail had rushed him out of Marseilles as the city dissolved into chaos; he knew that he had been lucky to survive.  They’d met a group of soldiers and had been escorted back to a military base – where he’d been told that the President, the Prime Minister and most of the government in Paris had been killed in a massive explosion.

He looked down at his lightly tanned hands and shivered.  Yacef had been born in France, to a father whose grandfather had come to France before the Algerian War and had worked hard to establish himself.  The family, at first, had not been political; Yacef had only gone into politics after realising that there was real trouble brewing.  The Yacef Family, including his wife and daughters, had been French through and through, even though they were Arabs; Yacef took some amusement in the shock foreigners felt when they heard that he was a member of the National Front.  An Arab?  They asked.  A member of a political party dedicated to shoving the Arabs back into the sea?  Horror of horrors!

It was, Yacef knew, more complex than that.  France had long had a problem with its Arab minority, but it had been growing worse in recent years.  France had been forced, for political reasons, to accept thousands of political refugees from Palestine, when the Israelis started to force them all away from Israel.  Some of them had been experienced fighters, others continued to harbour dreams of harming, even destroying, Israel.  And then there had been the Algerian War, and the disaster in the Mediterranean, and then there had been the expansion of the birth rate, well beyond what France’s overloaded system could cope with.  No one had wanted to tackle the problem, even though there were hundreds of proposed solutions, from genocide to forced integration.  Yacef had known, from his own family, that something had to be done; his Grandfather would have been rolling in his grave.  The Yacef Family was hard-working, industrious, and it had prospered; the immigrants wanted to suck on what they had earned without doing anything useful for France.

He sensed the surprise in the faces of some of the operators in the bunker as he stepped inside the command post and studied the display of France…and Europe.  Red icons were blinking everywhere, right across Europe; it seemed as if the continent had developed a bad case of measles.  The National Front had been delighted to have him – Yacef was not only a skilled politician, but he was someone who couldn’t really be accused of being racist – and he had risen quickly.  His post in the President’s Government might have been an attempt to keep him quiet, but he had taken it seriously…and he had done well.  He knew that he had done well…and now all of this had happened.  France was under attack, from within and without, and Yacef was the man on the spot.

“Thank you, General,” he said, as Pelletier showed him into a private briefing room.  Two other officers, one Air Force, one Navy, rose to their feet and saluted as Yacef entered; they, at least, showed no surprise at seeing an Arab face.  There were Arabs in the government, but many of them would have been marked for extermination by the rioters, who considered them traitors.  “If you don’t mind, we will proceed directly to business; what the hell is going on?”

The flight across country had revealed chaos on a grand scale, but he hadn’t been able to sit back and try to grasp the overall picture.  Outsiders, mainly British and American, had been predicting a Muslim uprising in France for years, but Yacef had known that an uprising was unlikely to happen.  There might have been trouble, but there were so many different groups that they spent most of their time fighting each other, rather than the French.  Yacef had hoped that his own long-term program of integration would have worked, even with the economic problems, but that was no longer possible.  All of a sudden, he was a war leader…

Pelletier bowed.  He wore parachute wings on his uniform, Yacef noted; it was a testament to his own personal bravery.  The French Government had been hit hard by the rioters; everyone in the Ministry of Defence might well be dead.  Pelletier had real military experience, from some of France’s peacekeeping missions to operations that Yacef had been surprised to even hear whispers about, and Yacef had the feeling that that would come in very handy.  They were at war.

“Certainly, Mr President,” Pelletier said.  He nodded briefly to the other two officers.  “France is under attack.”

He nodded towards the display.  “At roughly ten o’clock, local time, there were a series of explosions throughout France, and a set of marches got badly out of control,” he said.  “Before anyone could react, there were terrorist strikes in dozens of the cities and street fighting breaking out everywhere.  Not just Arabs, I might add; criminal elements have gone out onto the streets and joined in the fighting, not to mention looting, killing and raping.  The Palestinians were very involved, directing mobs and armed insurgents against police stations, government buildings, and the foreign embassies.  Some of them have been held by their own security forces, others have been stormed; the American Embassy came in for special attention.  The last message from the embassy spoke of mobs overrunning the Marines and burning everything.  In short, Mr President, we have lost control of the interior of a dozen cities, including Paris itself.”

He sighed.  “The devastation in Paris activated the strategic war plan automatically,” he continued.  “As you may have been briefed, the strategic war plan calls for the government to be dispersed, with the President coming to this bunker and the Prime Minister going to another bunker near Lyon, and for him to assume control over the military from here.  The President – the former President – has been confirmed dead, along with most of the government, and so we had to find out whoever was next in line.  That’s you.”

Yacef felt cold.  “Just how many have died?”  He asked.  He was tenth in line, depending on exactly how one looked at the line of succession.  The French Government had to have been crippled, perhaps even worse…  “What about the Minister of the Interior?”

“Dead,” Pelletier said grimly.  “That, Mr President, is not all; it is the opinion of the officers here that the uprisings were planned by the Russians to prevent us from helping the Germans.  They have been transmitting several offers of peace to us, from a treaty preventing us from interfering as they take Europe, to an offer of an alliance and help in crushing our…problematic elements.  Some of the people involved in the rioting had proper military training; there were certainly lots of Russian weapons involved, although that proves nothing.  Algeria bought thousands of tons of Russian weapons after the new government took power.”

Yacef felt cold rage bubbling through him.  “Why?”  He asked.  The very concept was astonishing.  “The Pact exists to fight Islamic Terrorism!  They crushed uprisings in Pakistan with astonishing brutality.  Why would they assist an uprising?”

Pelletier tapped the map.  “If they planned it, they would have – they have – placed us in a grim position,” he said.  “If we honour our obligations…and we have a very strong reason not to honour them now we have problems at home…we will not have many deployable forces that can be spared to aid EUROFOR.  If we betray the Germans, the Russians suddenly have a much easier task; we believe that their objectives are nothing less than the conquest of all of Europe.”  He grinned.  “And if we do the task of crushing the uprising for them, they’ll have an easier time when they invade France itself.”

Yacef fought to grapple with the prospect.  “How do we know that?”

“Basic military strategy,” Pelletier said.  He sounded almost as if he were giving a lecture.  “The one fact that everyone took home from Desert Storm” – Pelletier might have been old enough to serve in the French units that had taken part in the battle – “was that waiting for your enemies to build up and counterattack is a losing strategy.  The Russians have to know that the Germans – and us, and the British, and the Yanks – are not going to accept a Russian occupation of Poland; they have little choice, but to try to push as far as the Channel, if not try to invade Britain itself.”

Pelletier scowled.  “It was a masterful trick,” he admitted.  The bitterness in his voice mixed with reluctant admiration.  His hands traced out patterns on the map.  “If we fight one foe, committing everything to defeating it, we lose to the other one…and if we try to find a balance, we might lose in both places.”

Yacef privately doubted it.  Not even the Palestinians, who had a reputation for unmatched desperate fighting, could organise the different elements into a real threat to France’s integrity.  They could win the Russians time, and they had already decapitated the French Government, but they weren’t a strategic threat…unless the Algerians intended to land elements of their own army to support the Pact.  Could they do that?  If they wanted to do that, they would have to cross the Mediterranean and…

He looked up at the Admiral.  “What’s the naval situation?”

Admiral Bellemare Vadenboncoeur – they’d met before, in what seemed like a different world – looked grim.  “There have been dozens of ships being sunk in the Atlantic, but that’s a minor issue at the moment; the real problem is in the south.  We held – hold - operational command of the Standing Force in the Mediterranean,” he said.  “Ever since the Americans drew their Sixth Fleet down, we were tasked – along with the other non-American NATO powers – with providing security in the region, not least to keep a check on immigration.”

Yacef nodded.  He fully approved of that.  “I see,” he said.  “What happened to the Standing Force?”

“The Italian, Spanish and Greek units were hammered by Russian submarine-launched missiles,” Vadenboncoeur admitted.  “We were spared much of that experience, mainly because they were trying to offer us peace, but there have been a handful of clashes with Algerian Naval Units.  The Algerians bought a lot of old rustbucket ships from the Russians and some of them launched missiles at our ships, but only managed one hit.  Mr President, I would like authority to launch a strike against the Algerians before the Russians attack our ships as well.”

“Granted,” Yacef said.  He forced himself to act Presidential.  It wasn’t the time for politics.  “The first priority is securing our own borders; once the Algerians have been hit, I want the Southern Coast sealed off, and support offered to the other NATO powers.  If the Italians need help, give it; I want us to be in control of the Mediterranean as soon as possible.  If we have units in the Atlantic, keep them operating under NATO command; we have to secure the sea-lanes as quickly as possible.  General?”

Pelletier nodded towards the display.  “Am I to assume that you intend us to honour our commitments to NATO?”

Yacef nodded.  France was not going to abandon its allies.  “Can we honour them?”

“The Russians did not subject our forces and command bases to the same bombardment they inflicted upon the Germans and British,” Pelletier said.  “We have lost thousands of men and most of the command bases in the attacked cities, but the emergency command networks continued to function and many of the bases outside the cities were left completely alone.  There was a raid on an Army arsenal, near Paris, but that was beaten off with heavy losses.”  He snorted.  “Idiots should have attacked there first.

“In short, the air force and much of the army remains intact,” he concluded.  “We have had heavy losses in men who were in the cities at the time, but many of them have made their way out of the cities and reported to military bases, so we are assembling our units now.  Units that were on peacekeeping duty have been notified that they might be recalled to France, although the unit that was serving in Iran has been engaged by the Indians, along with the American forces there.  Our units that were committed to EUROFOR have been engaged and there have been heavy losses; I was able to talk briefly to my former subordinate, Captain Paul Montagne, who reported that EUROFOR is falling back to Germany and needs help.

“It’s going to be tricky,” he said.  “We can spare our heavy units to support EUROFOR, but the lighter units will have to be held back for duty in France, just to crush the insurgents…”

“No,” Yacef said.  The decision would look bad, particularly given his heritage, but there was no real choice.  “We don’t want street fighting in a dozen cities.”

Pelletier blinked.  “With all due respect, Mr President, the insurgents are a problem that need to be handled,” he said.  “We already have a massive refugee crisis; thousands of people have fled out of the cities and it’s only going to get worse.  There are reports that there are groups of insurgents already fighting with each other, and that will devastate even more of the cities.”

Yacef kept his voice calm.  “The…insurgents, terrorists, whatever you want to call them, are a problem,” he said.  “The Russian invasion of Europe is lethal.  We can seal the cities, prevent the…uprising from spreading further, but it’s not a major problem, not with them cut off from each other and their source of supplies.  We have to deal with the Russians first, or else everything is lost.”

He looked at General Pirie Mauroy, the air force representative.  “I assume that the air force is ready to assist our German allies?”

Mauroy nodded once.  He was a tough looking man; Yacef had heard that he had once flown bombers, rather than fighter jets.  It had left him with something of a chip on his shoulder.  The French Air Force, like most other air forces around the world, looked up to its pilots and looked down on everyone else, even though bombers had been vital in winning wars since the Terror War had begun.

“The bases remain intact and we are re-establishing our links to EUROAIR,” he said shortly.  “There is still the question of ensuring that we don’t have any avoidable friendly fire incidents, but we can certainly make fairly sure that that won’t happen.  The German Air Force has taken a pounding, and with your permission, I would like to open our airbases to the Germans and British, just to add to their defences.  However…”

He paused for effect.  “However, the Russians will almost certainly engage our airbases as soon as we start deploying,” he continued.  “Once that happens, our ability to engage the Russians will be degraded, even though we will be prepared for the attacks.  We can also expect Russian strikes in support of the insurgents; it’s an obvious way to weaken us.”

Yacef blinked.  “Are you saying that we will lose?”

“No, Mr President,” Mauroy said.  “I am merely cautioning you that we will take heavy losses and they will not be easy to replace.  This is not the time when a fighter aircraft could be produced in a week, but a time when any lost fighter is lost permanently, along with its pilot.  We have to make everything count.”

Yacef stood up.  “I have to talk to the Americans and our other allies,” he said.  They had to be wondering what had been happening in France…and many of them distrusted the French Government, for all manner of reasons.  They might well already be considering writing France off…and that could not be allowed.  “Has there been any word from the Germans?”

Pelletier shook his head.  “We have communications with General Trautman, who is commanding EUROFOR and masterminding a withdrawal,” he said.  “Under the circumstances, he doesn’t have a choice; the Poles have been almost beaten in the first day of real fighting.  The German Government…?  We assume that they’re looking for the successor, same as we did, but so far they haven’t found him or her.  We have staff officers working with General Trautman, so we should hear about it as soon as the Germans do get a new leader.  The Americans have asked for our help; they have to rush troops to the Middle East and they need to use some of our airports.”

“See to it,” Yacef ordered.  He stared up at the map.  France had been hurt, but France would survive.  If they could hold the line against the Russians, if they could prevent the insurgents from tearing out the heart of France, they would survive.  “We are fighting here, not just for France, but for the entire world.  We have no choice, but to win; defeat is unthinkable.”

Chapter Nineteen: Advance and Retreat

Germany/Poland, Europe

The Eurocopter flew low across the darkening landscape.

General Trautman sat in one of the rear seats, dividing his attention between the terminal on his lap and the view of Poland, far below.  From time to time, there was a flash of light in the distance, revealing a bombing raid or a missile attack on a Polish position.  The Russian aircraft had the skies almost to themselves; the Polish air force had been crushed and the German air force had been badly hammered.  The Russian assault had succeeded brilliantly; Trautman couldn’t remember any assault that had been so successful on its first day.  In less than twenty hours, EOROFOR had faced and lost it’s first major challenge; the remains of EUROFOR EAST were making their way west, through a countryside infested with Russian Special Forces and air-landed units, some of them setting up to command the skies as far west as possible.  The nightmare had refused to fade; he knew now that Germany was in for a long war.

“We have a minor problem,” the pilot announced.  Jonathon Dark was American; under normal circumstances, he would not have been pressed into service, even though he was a trained pilot and America had declared war.  The pilots who should have served at Camp Potsdam had been killed in the Russian commando attack; even now, Trautman still shook when he realised just how carefully the Russians had drawn up their plans.  They’d seized Iceland, they'd knocked Poland practically out of the fight…and they had scattered EUROFOR.  He was lucky, flying onboard an aircraft; many of his soldiers would have to make their way through hostile country to escape to Germany.

He scowled.  “A minor problem?”

“Yes,” the pilot said.  “We have an air-search radar, military-issue, operating from the nearby airport.  I think we’re going to have to divert.”

Trautman nodded.  The Poles weren’t in the habit of using military-spec radar at their commercial airports; hardly any nation was in that dangerous habit.  The Russians had been flying in thousands of soldiers; one of their outdated Bears could transport an entire mobile radar system and SAM missiles to match.  He had to hand it to the Russians; rather than spending billions on building a newer transport and bomber, they’d just built hundreds of the older design, which was understood perfectly.  The higher technology was reserved for other aircraft, such as the Flatpacks operating over Poland.

The helicopter skimmed lower, heading directly over a small Polish village.  Trautman saw no lights, no signs of life, and wondered what that meant.  Had the Poles lost all power, or had they fled west along with thousands of others?  The report from Camp Potsdam had not been encouraging; there were thousands of refugees on their way and the logistic transport net had taken a beating.  The Russian attacks had been brutally efficient; if one had no moral objection to causing thousands of civilian causalities, it was an effective way to hurt the defenders.  If the German Army were broken up, like EUROFOR had been broken up, defeat would be almost certain.  They wouldn’t be able to stop the Russians before they reached Alsace-Lorraine…and wasn't that ironic.

“I think we lost them,” Dark said, after a moment.  Trautman relaxed slightly; the Eurocopter was a stealthy design, but the Russians had been deploying radars recently that were supposed to be more effective against stealth aircraft.  No one knew for sure just how effective they actually were; no one had tested them in combat conditions…until now.  “They’re just running a basic tracking protocol; they didn’t lock on to us.”

“Good,” Trautman said.  The Eurocopter carried a transmitter with much more bandwidth than the terminal he’d used in Poland; he’d been trying to catch up with the military overview, now that he was fairly safe.  Several units had been forced to abandon their vehicles in Poland, leaving them on automatic defence mode; others were falling back with their units and might well need help to punch through the Russian landing zones.  The power requirements would prevent them from going around the landing zones; the Russians might have not intended to cut EUROFOR’s units off from power supplies, but they had succeeded.  “We don’t want to be noticed out here.”

The entire scale of the Russian operation scared him; it was an awesome effort, one that he had believed impossible, even with the revamped Russian Army.  There were still hundreds of Russian transports operating in the air, at a tempo that chilled him; Europe had never mounted such an operation in all of its existence.  The Americans had never mounted an operation on such a scale; D-Day and Iraqi Freedom were hopelessly outmatched.  The Russians had lost transports to opposition, and several more to accidents, and they were still going on.  He didn’t want to think about how many Russians might have died, just through an accident; the Russians had the political will to soak up the death toll and just keep coming.

Despair, once again, washed at his mind.  Was that all this history ever was?  The endless march of tanks from west to east, from east to west, endless fighting, endless jackboots crashing down the streets, endless war?  The poor against the rich, religions at each other’s throats, crusades, jihads, rape, murder, pillage…was that all humanity was, at bottom?  Was anything worth fighting for?  Was there no hope?

He looked up at his people, each one lost in their own thoughts, and felt grim.  They had all held up well, but there could be no missing the point that they had lost, lost almost before they had known they were at war.  A day ago – had it really been so short a time? – he had been handling complaints from Molobo about how limited EUROFOR actually was…and now he was a refugee, fleeing from the fighting.  Down below, hundreds of his men were trying to straggle their way to Germany…and he had left them.  There had been no choice, but he felt as if he had abandoned them; they were his men.  Was there even a government left?  Brussels was in ruins; the Russians had destroyed the heart of the European Union.  Who was in charge now?

“That’s the border,” Dark said, breaking into his thoughts.  “We’re going across now.”

Trautman relaxed.  The remains of the air force had offered him an escort, a pair of the scarce Eurofighters Typhoons, but he knew that he couldn’t justify the effort.  The stealth systems on the Eurofighters were much more limited than the systems on the Eurocopter; they would be bound to attract attention, unfriendly attention.  According to the last reports, the Russians had been freely raiding, right at the very edge of their range, across Germany; that would get worse as the Russians brought Polish airports and airbases into action.  Germany looked as dark as Poland – he could see some fires in the distance, across the lands – but it felt much safer than Poland had, once the Russians had started their attacks.

It was another half-hour in the air before they reached Camp Potsdam.  Trautman could see signs of military effort – and military confusion - long before the Eurocopter approached the camp.  Vehicles, from the older Leopold tanks and the newer IFVs and APCs, were clogging the roads, with military policemen trying to arrange them into units.  The thousands of deaths would have had a dangerous impact on the European forces; some units would have to be completely rebuilt…and they didn’t have the time.  The Russians were bound to be watching the chaos from orbit; they would have plenty of motives to try to attack the German positions from the air, just to prevent the Germans from massing their forces.

“Shit,” Captain Henri Guichy breathed.  The Frenchman sounded alarmed; Trautman shared his alarm.  Parts of Camp Potsdam were in ruins; the impact of the missile attacks and the Russian commandos had clearly been bad.  Other parts looked almost intact, but had been hit by the enemy; he saw a radar unit, smashed to pieces, being carried away by a group of soldiers.  As the helicopter came in to land, he saw two officers waiting for him; a female soldier, wearing EUROFOR uniform, and a German officer.  “Sir…?”

The helicopter landed.  Trautman climbed out, taking a quick moment to stretch his legs, and accepted the salutes of the two officers.  He hadn’t met Colonel Florette Rolande in person before and he was relieved when he saw her; she might have been nervous at first, but she had clearly risen to the moment.  Her pale face looked utterly tired, just as Trautman himself felt, but she managed to smile in welcoming.

“Welcome to Camp Potsdam,” she said, as she escorted him towards a mobile command post.  Camp Potsdam’s own command post had been the prime Russian target; a cruise missile had hit it and slaughtered everyone inside it.  Trautman was silently relieved that the base was so large; it had been designed to soak up hits and keep operating, whatever happened.  “We had to recover a command post and deploy it; most of the command posts have been knocked out.”

And no one expected to fight a war inside Germany, Trautman silently added.  “You have done well,” he said, knowing that he was dangerously tired.  Florette looked pleased at his praise.  “I need a situation report, and then we can decide on our next step.”

Florette shrugged.  “We have managed to re-establish communication with most of the garrisons and military bases within Germany,” she said.  “The civilian telephone network has gone down, but fortunately there were enough officers with military-issue phones to allow us to get some orders out.  The devastation has been massive, but we have managed to get mobilisation underway; the main problem is in shortage of vehicles and aircraft.  Both of them were priority targets for the Russian teams and there are still commando groups out there, hitting targets.  Their losses tended to get a lot higher when we actually managed to get the warning out, but they’re still a threat; they will have to be dealt with.”

Trautman nodded.  “Keep the guard forces high,” he said.  “What else?”

For the first time, he saw real despair on Florette’s face.  “The Russians have seriously damaged the logistics network,” she said.  “We have been trying to take over the railways from Germany to Poland and France, using the military police, but the lines have been cut in dozens of places.  The Russians used antitank weapons on several trains; the death toll has been…high.   The civilian air traffic network has shut down completely; dozens of aircraft went down when the Russians turned hand-held SAMs on them.  In short, sir, we are trying to gather a powerful force along the border, but our logistics…are not good.

“The good news is that we have established formal communications with France and Britain,” she continued.  Trautman allowed himself a moment of pure relief.  They weren’t alone.  “They’re both committing themselves to reinforce us as soon as possible, but both of them have their own problems; the French” – he heard a gasp in her voice and remembered that she was from Paris – “are having to allocate forces carefully.  We should get most of their air forces in support, however, and the temporary Luftwaffe command has been routing its aircraft to French airfields for rearming and refuelling.  The Russians don’t seem to have noticed, yet, but that will change.”

She closed her eyes.  “I have deployed several units into western Poland to oppose the Russians there and open the gates for our people,” she concluded.  “They needed the support and…”

Trautman understood.  “Good work,” he said.  “Now, one final question and then you can take a rest.  What about the civilians?”

“It’s confused,” Florette said.  “There’s a lot of confusion and a lot of people fleeing west from Poland.  It could get much worse; the Russians caused a lot of damage and there are confused and garbled reports from Paris.  We had a race riot in Berlin; a bunch of skinheads decided that it would be a good idea to hit the Turks first.  Incidentally, as far as we can tell, the Turks have decided to stay out of the war.”

“Probably took a good look at the balance of power and decided that it would be better to keep their heads down,” Trautman said.  “Anything else?”

“Just a major missile attack on the force in the Balkans,” Florette said.  “There are reports that the Serbs are planning something, but…”

“It’s not a problem at the moment,” Trautman said.  He smiled grimly.  “You’ve done very well; now go get some rest.  That’s an order; go!”

Florette saluted and left the room.  Trautman watched her go and then looked at the small display.  It was going to get a lot worse before it got better…if it ever did get better.  Time was not on their side.

***
General Aleksandr Shalenko took the slip of paper and read it quickly.  Moments later, he cursed and tossed it to the ground; the news hadn’t been exactly unexpected, in that he had prepared for it, but it was irritating.  Life would have been a lot easier if they had managed to decapitate EUROFOR; instead, General Trautman and much of his staff had clearly survived and made their way to Germany.

Captain Anna Ossipavo looked up nervously at him  “General?”

“A report from one of our agents in EUROFOR,” Shalenko said, keeping his voice mild.  Biting Anna’s head off would be a waste of time; it would be cruel for no sound tactical reason.  Shalenko liked to consider himself a civilised soldier; atrocities committed for the sake of committing them made him sick.  “The EUROFOR command staff have escaped our grasp.”

Anna nodded slowly.  Blonde curls peeked out from under her cap as they stood together in the forward operations base, a Polish village that had fallen after ten minutes of hard and brutal fighting.  The villagers, stunned by the sudden shift in their fortunes, were staying out of the way of the Russians – for the moment.  Shalenko had shot a rapist personally, but the villagers were nervous; Russian troops had a nasty reputation for atrocities.  There were villagers still alive who remembered the last time Russian soldiers had marched west through their country; the memory of years of occupation still rankled.

“We have secured all of the main objectives,” she said, changing the subject.  Shalenko had stunned many of his subordinates by shooting the rapist; the first waves of assault forces could not afford indiscipline.  There would be whorehouses later; there was no need to alienate the people unnecessarily.  “The Polish forces have been crushed and our flying comrades report that they have been harassing the EUROFOR troops as they withdraw.  A captured officer told us that the EUROFOR forces have been ordered to withdraw, but his terminal was accidentally deactivated by the FSB interrogation unit.”

“Idiots,” Shalenko commented.  If he hadn’t been a personal friend of the President, the FSB Commanders would have tried to walk all over him; they had all the arrogance of the KGB, with some additional unpleasant surprises.  As it was, he had no intention of allowing the FSB to ruin his victory.  “In their place, I would have rigged it to blow up if the wrong person used it.”

Anna laughed.  “The first waves have all secured their objectives and have captured thousands of Poles,” she said.  “They’re being sent back now to their holding camps.  The assault waves have been rearmed and have secured many of their roads they will need to press onwards towards Germany.  So far, there have been only a few bridges blown and combat engineers are ready to start work on rebuilding them at your command.  As you ordered, there has been no attempt to prevent people from fleeing for the west; it will only make life harder for the enemy.”

Shalenko smiled.  He had expected worse, not least because of the success of the commando teams in suppressing the European Governments; EUROFOR troops would have had no orders at all.  They might have held their positions and died there.  

He shrugged.  Luck had been on their side.  “And Warsaw?”

“The advance teams have the targets there under observation,” she said.  “We hit the city pretty hard in the first wave of attacks, but then left it alone; our agents secured the vital targets and our ally is in position.  The 3rd Shock Army can roll forward on your command and secure the city.”

“Good,” Shalenko said.  He stroked his beard thoughtfully; between the armoured advance and the airborne soldiers, they had secured a large portion of the eastern countryside, but so far they hadn’t attempted to take on a major city.  If he could take Warsaw quickly, well and good, but if not his forces would be chewed apart; a city was an easy place to defend if there were capable and disciplined troops present.  The city of Fallujah in Iraq had been a nightmare for the Americans, who, to be fair, had cared about civilian casualties.  The FSB Battalions wouldn’t care how many Poles died when they took the city – if they tried to take it by storm.  If it could be taken quickly, Shalenko knew that he had to try; he held the fate of the invasion in his hands.

And there were historical reasons as well.  His father and grandfather had both served in Warsaw, along with thousands of other Russians…and the Poles had rejected them.  They had taken their NATO membership with indecent haste…and then thumbed their nose at Russia.  They had been in an energy stranglehold, slowly falling into Russia’s arms, but they had still tried to annoy Moscow.  They had to be taught a lesson about provoking powerful neighbours…

“Inform the command staff of the attached forces,” he ordered, knowing that Anna would translate his vague orders into operations orders for the junior commanders.  At first light, his armoured units would be on the move again.  “We move on Warsaw.”

Chapter Twenty: The Battle of Warsaw

Warsaw, Poland

“Citizens of Poland, this is an emergency announcement,” the voice said, over the radio.  “There is a military emergency in progress.  Remain in your homes.  Do not attempt to interfere.  Do not use the telephones, radio transmitters or the internet.  If you require medical assistance, stay calm; help will come to you.  Do not disobey this warning.  Listen only on this channel for further instructions.  There is a military emergency in progress.”

Marya Jadwiga hit the button hard enough to almost break her finger.  The radio had been one of a set intended for transport to some third world hellhole or another; her sister had worked for Polish International Aid before the local government had evicted all western aid workers.  Her sister had been upset, even before Marya herself had gone to work for GNN; she had always wanted to assist people who had needed help.  Melania Kazimiera hadn’t been put off by what had happened to some aid workers, but Marya herself had been privately relieved when the workers had been sent home.

Melania herself was older than Marya, mother of two children.  Marya had, on impulse, gone to stay the night with her sister…and then the ‘military emergency’ had begun.  The Polish television stations had gone off the air, along with most of the power lines to the city, but Marya’s GNN terminal contained its own inbuilt power source.  GNN sounded as stunned as anyone else, but there was no mistaking what had happened; the Russians had invaded Poland.  The news had spread quickly; Melania’s husband had gone off to join off with the rest of his army unit, wherever it was.  Everyone, Marya included, had been terrified when Russian aircraft had bombed the city; their precision weapons had taken out most of the government buildings.  They hadn’t heard anything from her brother-in-law yet.

Melania’s voice was very tired…and terrified.  If it hadn’t been for her children, Marya suspected her sister would be a nervous wreck, but she was trying to put on a brave front.  There had been some riots in the streets – no one seemed to know whose voice it was on the radio – and the police had tried to contain them, but most people were trying to stay at home.  Marya herself had used her terminal, offering to try to find somewhere outside to report from, but her GNN operator had made it clear that she was to remain inside.  War reporting was one thing, but Marya didn’t have the training and the Russians were not known for being kind to western reporters.  The Pact considered them worse than spies; the old ‘useful idiot’ phase had passed onto outright hatred.

“Marya,” Melania asked, “when is this going to end?”

Marya glanced down at her terminal.  It was supposed to be undetectable and permanently linked into the global information systems; GNN depended upon them to function.  GNN wasn’t a television company, no matter what its detractors said; it relied completely on the Internet and the developments in compressing and transmitting streams of data right across the world.  Critics might have sneered that left or right-wingers could have their information adjusted to their personal bias, but anyone who subscribed could access a massive store of information.  The global network was overloaded; GNN’s information packet to her had warned that the commercial networks were suffering disruptions as some satellites had been blown out of the sky by one side or the other.  So far, there didn’t seem to be any unrestricted anti-satellite warfare, but everyone was certain that it was coming; the eyes-in-the-sky were too important to leave alone.

“I don’t know,” she said.  GNN had reported that the Russians had invaded and sacked Tallinn, in Estonia, only to report moments later that it had been a peaceful entry into the city.  The reporter in the city had been filming Russian vehicles moving into the city, the troops clad in green uniforms and looking around curiously.  If there had been resistance, it seemed to be uncoordinated; they'd spent a very uncomfortable night wondering what the hell they should do.  There was just too much information and she didn’t know which bits were true; GNN’s weakness was that it was dependent upon reports sent in and some of them had to be classed as ‘uncertain.’

A distant rumble of gunfire echoed across the city.  There had been noises in the distance all though the night, some of them carried by the wind, from explosions to heavier weapons.  The power failure meant that most of the city’s support services had failed; after the first riots, most people remained indoors, out of sight.  Marya knew that that wouldn’t last either; she’d followed the advice of her operator and checked their food supplies.  They had, if they were lucky, enough for a week; once that time had passed, they would have to venture out into the streets to find food.

And hope that we can pay for it with money, she thought.  Most citizens of Poland used credit or debit cards for larger sums of money, except the banking computers would have gone down along with the power supplies.  She had a GNN debit card, one that would be useable right across the world, but if there was no power, she might not be able to use it.  If not…the thought of trading her body for food was disgusting, but she had her two nieces to support; if she had to do that, she wondered if she would.  I think that…

A scream echoed across the sky, followed by a series of explosions.  They sounded far too close for comfort; the Russians seemed intent on scaring them to death.  Someone was moving outside, running down the deserted streets; she’d heard some of the men in the apartment block talking about taking weapons and going to join the defenders.  Few of them had placed any faith in NATO – or at least the Germans – and they had wanted to aid the defenders.  She could only hope that they were only trying to appear tough; they might have been assholes who had kept eyeing her, but they didn’t deserve to die.  More explosions followed, nasty sounds; Melania whimpered as the sun rose.

“I’m going to the top,” she said, suddenly.  The GNN operator had advised them to find a bomb shelter if they could, or to remain inside, but there hadn’t been any shelters or basements anywhere nearby.  She had been told to stay off the roof – it wasn’t safe at all – but she couldn’t stay in the apartment any longer.  “Stay here.”

She left the room before Melania could stop her, stepping into the apartment corridor and heading for the stairs.  The elevator had been out ever since the power had failed; she could only hope that no one had been caught inside when it died.  There were no lights, not even emergency lights; the only illumination came from the windows.  One of them was broken, leaving glass scattered all over the floor; a faint smell of urine rose up from one corner.  Wrinkling her nose, she walked quietly up the stairs; there could be any number of human animals around.  She hadn’t seen a police officer in hours…and she hadn’t felt in so much danger since a nasty incident when she had been younger.  The sense of threat was almost overwhelming; she almost stopped before pushing her way forwards up the final flight of stairs and bumping into the final door.  It was locked.

She almost broke down into giggles, then saw the opened padlock and removed it, before opening the door properly and stepping out into the open.  The smell of smoke hit her first, almost before she saw anything; the smell was drifting right across the city.  Smoke…and something else, something she was almost reluctant to place a name to; she sensed the body almost before she saw it.  The landlady had kept a small garden on the roof of the apartment…and someone had shot her.  Her body lay in the middle of the garden, stone dead.  Marya checked it, closing the eyes automatically, and stood up completely.

“My God,” she breathed.  The sight was overwhelming.  Words threatened to fail her as she turned, trying to grasp the entire scene.  “What is happening?”

It was like a war zone – no, she corrected herself, it was a war zone.  She couldn’t see any actual soldiers, but she could see smoke rising from the east, with aircraft flying high overhead.  The aircraft were large, they seemed to be like jumbo jets, but very different in purpose; they were unloading weapons down onto the ground below.  Marya had very good eyesight; she could see one of the bombs, a massive black speck, falling towards the ground…and exploding in a thunderous explosion.

Moments later, the noise of the explosion passed over her…as a force of Russian jets thundered by, at very low level.  A missile reached up to touch one…and it fell out of the sky, slamming into a building and exploding, the others retreated, launching their weapons down towards the source of the missile.  Explosions flared up within the city; the force of their impact shattering buildings and killing hundreds underneath.  The noise of an alarm echoed across the city, and then it died; she could hear shots from the battle outside.

She stared, suddenly heedless of her own safety.  The shooting seemed to be coming from right outside the city, far too close to her; she saw a force of helicopters diving down and firing at what she hoped was a defence line.  Explosions flared up, time and time again; she hoped that it was better than it looked.  It looked as if there would be no one left when the Russians had finished; flames were already spreading through some of the newer parts of the city.  Sections built after Poland had become independent again were on fire; she wondered if the Russians had targeted them deliberately, just out of spite.

The building shook.  She fell to her knees as an explosion detonated, far too close to her for comfort; a massive Russian aircraft had just blasted a building.  She’d seen, very briefly, Polish soldiers on the roof; the Russians had flattened the entire block.  She forced herself back to her feet, only to see that things had become much worse; Russian helicopters were moving over the city…and a massive cloud of smoke and fire was advancing into the city.  The Russians were directly assaulting the city, she realised; the defenders had been forced back into the city, some of them breaking and running.  Civilians were running as well; she could see them fleeing the fighting that had suddenly enveloped their lives, hundreds, thousands…perhaps more of them cut down in the streets in a haze of blood and gore.  The Russian military machine had come to stay; she saw a helicopter flying low…and firing a spread of rockets into a building.  She couldn’t hear as much fighting any longer; the shooting seemed to be dying down as the Russians brought up their heavy weapons and pounded the defenders…

Silence fell.

It was as if someone had turned off a switch.  She could still hear Russian aircraft in the sky, see Russian helicopters hovering high overhead, but the shooting seemed to have stopped.  She felt relieved, wondering if the war had suddenly come to an end, then felt cold.  The shooting had stopped because there were no longer Polish soldiers to shoot at.  Even Russians wouldn’t shoot bullets around at random; she knew enough about military logistics to know that Russian commanders would consider that a bad idea.  GNN had been certain, even before the American President had made his speech, that the Russians intended to take all of Europe, at least as far west as France.  They wouldn’t want to waste ammunition…

…And perhaps they wouldn’t want to trigger off a rebellion in their rear.  She clung to that hope with all the enthusiasm she could muster; the thought about how bad a Russian occupation could be was terrifying.  She’d heard what some of the older people had said, talking about their childhoods when Stalin’s hordes had pushed one bad master out of Poland and replaced the Nazis with the Communists.  The Russians had been fellow sufferers under the Nazi yoke, but they had shown no mercy to Poles.  Polish women had been raped; Polish men had disappeared in the night or had been pressed into service, fighting for Stalin.  She shuddered; there was no reason to expect the Russians to be good masters, not after the way they had acted last time.

A new sound echoed through the streets.  It was dull, a long engine rumble, mixed with metal and clinking notes.  She wondered what it was, even as a long burst of gunfire echoed out and faded almost as quickly; had the fighting started again?

“Tanks,” a voice said from behind her.  She jumped and tried to pretend that she hadn’t jumped; she turned to see an older man standing behind her, looking into the distance.  She felt a spurt of fear; he was older, larger and probably stronger than her and Polish society seemed to have broken down completely.  If he had evil intentions, she knew that she wouldn’t be able to stop him from doing whatever he wanted to do, but he seemed intent on watching the scene as it unfolded.  “They’re tanks, coming our way…”

She saw them, now; massive black machines, moving along in a single line, escorted by green-clad men holding assault rifles.  The blocky tanks bristled with weapons, some of them armed with machine guns, others with the more familiar heavy weapons she knew; they advanced carefully, prepared for trouble.  She tried to imagine that they were Polish tanks, but she couldn’t cling to the belief; there could be no mistaking the marking on the front of the lead tanks.

They were Russians.

“My God,” she said, as the next sight came into view.  “What’s going to happen to them?”

A line of men – and a handful of women - were marching behind the tanks; no, not marching, they were almost slouching.  They looked beaten, defeated; they had their hands firmly cuffed behind their backs and were escorted by Russian soldiers.  Some of them were injured, blood pouring from their wounds; others just kept their heads down and tried not to be noticed.  Some wore Polish uniforms; others wore civilian dress.  The civilians seemed to be the most brutally wounded, but there was no mercy; they all had to march.  The women looked traumatised; had they been punished in the oldest way?  Some of them had had their uniforms ripped and torn; they shuffled along, their eyes lowered.  They looked terrible.

“They’re prisoners,” her new friend said.  His voice was bitter.  “The Russians don’t like people who dare to resist them, particularly people out of uniform; that entire show is meant to humiliate us and remind us that we have been beaten.  It’s also a warning; that could happen to you as well.”

Marya looked up at him.  “Who are you?”

“Names would be a bad idea at the moment,” the man said.  He winked at her; she noticed that his hair was shading towards white.  “I was here the last time the Russians were here, back when Jaruzelski was in power and we were starving.  The Russians…well, some of them blame what happened to the Soviet Union on us Poles and think that if they crack down on us, they won’t fall again.  Names would really be a bad idea, Marya.”

Marya started.  “You know my name,” she pointed out.  “It would be fairer…”

“Fairness is a foolish concept,” the man said dryly.  The line of Russian infantrymen seemed never-ending.  “The world is full of people who would like the world to be fair, and it would be a nice thing if the world was fair, but the truth is they want the world to be fair in their favour.  ‘Fairness’ is only a concept if you think that ‘fair’ will give you what you want.”

He smiled grimly.  “And, on a different note, what you don’t know, you can’t be made to tell,” he said.  “I wonder if the Russians will remember me from last time.”

Marya blinked.  “Last time?”

“Never mind,” the man said.  “Call me Jacob, if it helps.”  He leaned closer.  “Marya, you have a GNN terminal, don’t you?”

“You seem to know a lot about me,” Marya said, puzzled and a bit alarmed.  “Next you’ll be telling me what my bra size is.”

Jacob gave her a dry look.  “That terminal,” he said, ignoring her sally.  “I want you to keep it well hidden; if the Russians find it, you’ll join those poor bitches down there.”  He nodded down towards the retreating backs of the Polish prisoners.  “Don’t forget that, understand?”

Marya nodded.  “Yes, sir,” she said.

“Good girl,” Jacob said.  “Now, go back to your sister and stay calm; we’ll talk again in due course.”

Marya nodded again and stepped back to the stairs.  They were covered in dust and pieces of plaster from the explosions, almost ruined.  She picked her way down carefully, until she reached her floor; the smell had, if anything, grown worse.  She held her nose and stepped into her sister’s apartment; Melania looked up at her, her face very pale.  Marya stopped dead as she took in the sight; a set of bullets had smashed through the window and broken objects.  She knew that they had been very lucky.

“There’s something new on the radio,” Melania said.  Her voice was shaking.  “You have to hear it.”

Marya looked at the radio.  The message was repeating constantly.  It wasn’t long before she heard the beginning of the message.  “Citizens of Poland, this is Minister Molobo, the senior surviving government elected official,” it said.  The voice sounded cracked and broken.  “Our position is grim; the Russian response to the unprovoked German offensive launched into Belarus, using our bases, has resulted in the occupation of our capital city and most of our country.  The Germans, having sabotaged the military systems they themselves gave to us, have fled, leaving us alone.”

Marya and Melania exchanged glances.  Unprovoked German offensive?

“The Russians have assured us that their occupation of a number of vital positions within the country is only temporary,” Molobo’s voice continued.  It gave no sense that the speaker knew that he was speaking nonsense.  “The Russians, at the request of the elected Polish Government, have taken over the defence of Poland from the German hordes.  All military units are ordered to report at once to the nearest Russian military outpost, where they will be issued new orders for the offensive against Germany…”

Molobo spoke on, but Marya wasn’t listening.  “He’s mad,” she said.  “No one is going to buy that line of…shit.”

Melania looked back.  “That’s not the problem,” she said.  Suddenly, she started to break down; Marya placed a hand on her shoulder.  “What’s going to happen to the children?”

Chapter Twenty-One: Preparing to Make a Stand

Hack Green Nuclear Bunker, United Kingdom

“We’re coming up on the base now,” the USAF pilot said.  “Please have your seatbelts fashioned and thank you for flying Nuclear Airlines.”

David Simmons snorted as the supersonic transport broke though the clouds and headed down towards Britain.  They’d spent most of the trip higher than he had ever been before, looking down at the world as they flew over the Atlantic, but now the transport was falling out of the sky.  He could see the shape of Britain rising up in front of him; a glint of light in the sky revealed the presence of a RAF Eurofighter, escorting them into land.

“Don’t worry about it, you all,” the pilot drawled.  “The British want us to land safely almost as much as I want us to land safely.”

“Don’t worry,” Major General Marco Lineman assured him.  “The Russians are unlikely to have SAM teams running around near the British military base.  The British are in an evil mode after those airliners went down and have armed police and soldiers watching for trouble.  We’ll land safely.”

“Thanks,” Simmons said.  He had flown before, of course, but the supersonic transport was a craft designed for Presidents and military officers, or corporate tycoons; not someone who was merely working for the President.  He’d flown, once, on the Concorde-B, the replacement for the first Concorde aircraft, but even that had been very different from the transport.  “I’m not used to flying.”

The British airfield looked very much like an American airfield; the only difference that Simmons’ eyes noticed was the British flag, flying in the wind.  Armed soldiers were everywhere, some of them manning a ground-based SAM station or a SAM vehicle, others swaggering around with hand-held Stingers or other portable missile launchers.  There was no sign of any actual damage, but according to the military brief he had received, the British airfield was not considered a priority target.  The fast-jet bases had received the brunt of Russian anger.

“Welcome to RAF Coltishall,” a young man, wearing a British military uniform, said.  Simmons shook his hand and allowed Lineman to do much of the talking.  Lineman was a qualified military expert who had served in London as military attaché to the American Embassy; he would be doing much of the heavy lifting.  Simmons merely had the latest intelligence from America…and instructions to find out what was happening on the ground.  “I’m Captain Farleigh, PJHQ.  We have a car for you now to take you to Hack Green.”

The drive through the countryside was uneventful, although Lineman commented that there was much less traffic than he remembered.  Their escort confirmed that the war, which was now four days old, had brought much of Britain’s normal traffic to a halt, mainly because of the airliners that had gotten shot down by the Russian Special Forces.  People were scared; Simmons didn’t blame them.  How long had it been since there had been a major attack on British soil?

“Four airliners went down in cities,” Farleigh said.  His voice held a comforting hint of the English countryside.  “They were all shot down by Russian Stingers, and as we haven’t managed to catch any of the terrorists, we’re fairly certain that they’re Special Forces, perhaps with FSB support.  We’ve suspected for some time that the Russians have had active intelligence and subversion networks in Europe; that, and what’s happened in France, rather proves it.”

Simmons heard his voice shake and cursed inwardly.  “Where are they now?”

“They might have had a submarine sneak in to pick them up,” Farleigh said.  “Failing that, they’re probably lurking in a safe house somewhere.  We’ll track them down eventually; there are a lot of people who are really pissed at them.  The crashes killed thousands of people…and then there were the cruise missile attacks.”

The car turned though a gate, guarded by armed soldiers, and headed towards a simple country cottage.  It was typically English, so much so that Simmons wasn't surprised when a small group of soldiers, dressed in muddy-green uniforms, appeared out of nowhere with weapons raised.  Lineman seemed to take it in stride; Farleigh simply passed the soldiers his documents and waited for them to check them.  After what felt like hours, they drove into a barn and into a long tunnel.

Farleigh saw his surprise.  “Everyone knows about this place because it was used as a museum for a while,” he said, as the car drove down a ramp and into an underground garage.  Simmons could see a small tank being worked on by two men as the car came to a halt.  “When it was reactivated during the Terror War and the threat of a nuclear attack, we upgraded it a bit and built a couple of new ones at massive expense.  There was a big fuss about it in the papers at the time; some people were saying that the Conservatives were merely playing politics, others said that they could have built a third advanced carrier for the cost involved in making more bunkers.”

He grinned.  “I guess that sort of comment has been stilled for a while,” he said.  “If we hadn’t upgraded here and built the others, we would have lost more of the EURONET, perhaps all of it.  Even so, things got a bit dicey for a while.”

They didn’t know the half of it, Simmons reflected, as they stepped out of the car.  He was one of fifteen people, including the President, who knew that a Russian nuke, stolen from the Russians, had almost made its way to America.  It would have killed millions if it had been detonated in the United States…and it might have triggered off World War Three.

His lips quirked.  They’d got World War Three anyway…

Lineman was talking to Farleigh.  “You say that the Russians know that this base exists?”

“Unless the FSB has gone out of business, they know about it,” Farleigh admitted.  “Of course, back in 2010, all they had to do was pick up a brochure and they would have known about it.  Officially, of course, this bunker is decommissioned, but we suspect that they know the truth.  That said, unless they use nukes, we’re safe down here.”

They passed though a series of airlocks and took an elevator further down into the bunker.  Farleigh told them more about the base’s history as they reached the lower level, then walked along the corridor towards the briefing room.  The air seemed to grow colder the further they walked; the dormitories reminded him of a boarding school.

“We have prepared two rooms for you,” Farleigh said.  “We assumed, however, that you would want to hear a full briefing as quickly as possible.  The Deputy Prime Minister has just arrived as well and asked for your presence at his briefing.”

Simmons nodded.  Strangely, being back on the ground had made him more alert.  “That would be fine, thank you,” he said.  His terminal had downloaded all of the information that had been gathered since they had landed in the UK.  “Can we just have a moment to freshen up?”

The briefing room was the same as any he’d seen in America; one large display, a table for the important visitors and a wall for the wallflowers, the officers and civilians too senior to be excluded from the meeting and too junior to rate seats of their own.  The Deputy Prime Minister, Andrew Hastings, was black; Simmons saw the glint of wry amusement in his eyes and liked him at first sight.  The military briefer, General Peter Templeton, reminded him of General Horner from the Posleen movies; he felt reassured as soon as he saw him.  He had a round, genial face, almost like an indulgent Grandfather, rather than a military officer.

“Welcome to Hack Green,” Templeton said, as soon as the room had been sealed.  “I will make this blunt and as brief as possible; four days ago, the European Union came under massive military attack, operating on a multidimensional plane.  In addition to the commando strikes and cruise missile attacks, there was an uprising in France and riots in other places, including Denmark.  We have consulted with the new French Government – more on that later – and we believe that the uprisings were all coordinated in order to make resistance impossible; fortunately, the uprisings and attacks, although very unpleasant, have not been sufficient to cripple us.

“The first wave of cruise missiles crippled all of the European Air Forces, although we have been able to regroup, although not in time to prevent the Russians from rushing reinforcements into Iceland, Poland and the Baltic States,” he continued.  “At last report, the Russians have secured Iceland and are trying to reactivate the NATO facilities there for raiding the United States and the ships in transit.  The Baltic States have fallen – thousands of refugees took to the boats and are becoming spread out all over Europe – and the Russians have moved in several occupation battalions.  Our intelligence on the ground is limited, but the Russians have reacted harshly to any challenge and so far there has been no major resistance.”

The display altered slightly.  “Three days ago, the Russians occupied Warsaw after a prolonged and brutal battle; again, they have raced in reinforcements and taken over,” he said.  “The Polish Minister of Defence, Mr Molobo, has apparently accepted a complete load of tosh from the Russians; it has been suggested that Molobo was either a Russian agent from the start or a traitor.  Either way, eastern Poland has fallen and western Poland is under serious attack; many Polish units have disobeyed the Russian order and are in transit, along with EUROFOR units, to Germany.  They’re going to be needed.”

He took a breath.  “We have intermittent contact with an Irish infantry unit in the Ukraine,” he said.  “So far, we have ordered them to keep their heads down and stay out of contact; we cannot support them yet, although we are looking at options for either extracting them or reinforcing them.  At the moment, however, they are the least of our worries.”

Lineman nodded.  “Understood,” he said.  “What is the current status of the defence effort?”

Templeton altered the display.  “The Germans have managed to mobilise most of their remaining forces and are deploying along their own border,” he said.  “We and the French have called up our own reserves, but the French have their internal problems; they’re going to be supporting us with armour and their air force, but infantry is going to be in short supply for a few weeks.  The Nordic countries – Finland, Sweden and Norway – have been hit with cruise missiles, but so far there has been no Russian offensive into Finland.  They don’t expect that to last.”

He met Simmons’s eyes.  “In short, gentlemen, it is the opinion of the joint Anglo-French staff that the Russians intend to attempt to take on the Germans and our own forces as soon as they can,” he concluded.  “There is currently a lot of fighting going on in western Poland as EUROFOR attempts to retreat, but the Russian steamroller will reach Germany eventually.  When that happens…they might well break through; we have a powerful force on paper, but we are critically short of equipment and the Russians have far more men than we have.  The Russians will be hurt, yes; but they might break through fairly quickly and when that happens, we will lose.”

“What the General means,” Hastings said, taking a puff on a cigar, “is are you Yanks going to intervene or not?”

Simmons looked up at Lineman.  “The President and Congress has declared war on the Pact,” Lineman said.  The former Marine didn’t mince his words.  “There will be reinforcements coming in as soon as possible to England, and an attempt to liberate Iceland from Russian control, but it will take weeks to put heavy forces into position.  Their gear has to come through ship and shipping, at the moment, is rather limited.”

Templeton nodded.  “We have managed to go medieval on some Russian shipping in the Mediterranean, largely because they seem to have expected the French to stay out of the fighting,” he said.  “We don’t think that we have killed all of the Russian subs that launched their cruise missiles, but we have made life a little easier for the French.  The French intend to prevent the Algerian Navy – Algeria has declared war on France – from launching any major attacks; we’re giving them limited support from our base on Gibraltar.

“The Atlantic…”

Simmons held up a hand.  “Ah, sorry to interrupt,” he said.  The table looked at him and he almost cringed.  “What exactly is happening in France?”

“The French have appointed Marcel Yacef, who was Minister of the Economy under the pre-war government, their President,” Hastings said.  He puffed again on his cigar.  “Yes, he’s an Arab, but apparently he is also a member of the National Front.  My resident expert on France assures me that that is actually quite reasonable; MI6 had a file on him.  He’s third-generation, as integrated as we could wish for, and known for trying to set up programs to get the Arabs and everyone else back to work.  He was actually tipped as a possible President for their coming elections; he’s committed France to supporting us so we should count our blessings.”

Templeton scowled.  “The French got their fair share of cruise missiles yesterday,” he said.  “The Russians, I think, must have worked out that the French weren’t going to play ball and opened fire.  The Algerians launched a lot of outdated Scuds as well, but the French TMD took all of them down without breaking a sweat.  The Russian missiles were mainly aimed at air bases, a handful fired at military ports, and most of them were knocked down as well.  The French have three air bases down for the moment, but overall, their air force is in much better condition than either ours or the German Air Force.  The numbers still aren’t on our side, however.”

Lineman nodded.  “As I said, the first priority is clearing the Atlantic,” he said.  “We hope that we will have proper convoys within the week, perhaps sooner than that, but there are still too many unescorted ships out there running for harbours all over the world.  The Marines have been placed on alert for the invasion of Iceland, although as you will understand, I don’t have any operational details.  We will be airlifting soldiers over here as soon as we have enough escorts for them; we should be flying in military aircraft within the week, perhaps sooner, to reinforce you.”

“We need stealth bombers,” Templeton said.  “General Trautman needs to knock down Polish bridges, hit Russian supplies; anything to slow them down and win us time.  Molobo asked that the Poles did nothing to interfere with the Russians and while we have asked them to knock down bridges, I don’t think that we can rely upon them.  Knocking down one’s own bridges doesn’t come easily for anyone.”

“I’ll ensure that the President is aware of that,” Lineman said.  Simmons winced; no one had expected a Pole to betray his own people, but it explained a lot about the flawed Polish dispositions at the start of the war.  Molobo had placed his people into servitude…for what?  What had the Russians offered him?  

Lineman was still speaking.  “I have been ordered to ask you; are you going to support us in Iran and the Far East?”  He asked.  “That’s a request directly from the President himself; he wants to know where you stand on the issue.  I know you’ve had your issues with Iran – and God knows we have had them too – but we have a commitment to defend them.”

Hastings and Templeton exchanged a long glance.  “We cannot spare additional forces,” Hastings said, after a moment.  Simmons deduced that the issue had been discussed beforehand.  “We won’t pull units out of the Far East, but we need every ship and man here for the main fight.  Whatever other help we can give, we will arrange.”

“Mainly access to your airports for the air transport effort,” Lineman said.  “We don’t want to risk flying soldiers over Algeria until that situation is resolved, one way or the other.  We may need access to your support structures as well, although Europe is important.  Frankly…we need to concentrate on Europe and Iran, because losing in either one could be fatal.  There will be a sea war waged against the Chinese, but I think for the moment that both of us are licking our wounds from the last battle.”

Hastings scowled.  The British had lost a small carrier and several other ships in that battle.  “That’s important, but it’s not the priority that Europe is,” he agreed.  He nodded towards the vast display, which was now showing a list of British military units.  “We have been activating divisions and intend to ship a major force over to Germany within the week, once we have our logistics and air cover sorted out.  As you can see…”

He nodded towards the display.  A massive red circle covered Poland and part of Germany.  “The Russians have air superiority within that region,” he said.  “They have raided as far north as Britain, although we kicked their butts in one major air engagement two days ago.  They gave us a kick in the nuts four days ago, however, and we are this close” – he held up his thumb and forefinger – “to losing any ability to contest control of the air.  If we lose that…”

He met Lineman’s eyes.  “If we lose that, we lose the ability to resupply, and if we lose that, we lose the war,” he said.  Simmons nodded to himself; he had worked that out days before.  General Armstrong had been working on plans to even the score a little.  “We cannot let that happen.”

Chapter Twenty-Two: Trapped in Darkness

Near Hong Kong, China

“Lieutenant Stephanie Tsuji, I presume,” the Chinese officer said, in flawless English.  “A girl, born of Japanese and Chinese stock.  Please, take a seat.”

Stephanie eyed him with barely concealed distaste.  The Chinese had pulled her out of the cage, given her a shower and prison clothes, and then escorted her into the small interview room.  They’d unlocked her cuffs, with a droll warning that there was no way that she could escape the complex; she felt almost human again for the first time in weeks.  Canada had provided its personnel with training in resisting interrogation – everyone knew that the Genera Convention was honoured more in the breach than the observance – and she was fairly sure that she was about to be interrogated.

“Lieutenant Stephanie Tsuji, Lieutenant, HMCS Lethbridge,” she said, and recited her serial number.  “I do not believe that I am obliged to tell you anything else.”

“The curious thing is that the Pact as a whole is not a party to that convention,” the Chinese officer said.  He paused to allow that to sink in.  “I am Shui, by the way.”

“Pleased to meet you,” Stephanie lied.  “I am not going to tell you anything.”

Shui lifted a single perfect eyebrow.  “Did I ask you to tell me anything?” 

“You are going to ask me to tell you things,” Stephanie said.  “If you know anything about the military, you must know that a mere officer of my rank knows very little beyond her responsibilities.  I don’t know the first thing that you couldn’t get from a quick Internet search.”

“You’re right, of course,” Shui said.  “We have sorted though the thousands of prisoners that we have taken, looking for people who might be…useful as more than bargaining chips.  After all, the war might well go on for longer than we expect and we might need intelligence and people to exchange for our own prisoners.  You intrigue me, Stephanie.”

He leaned forward and brushed at her hair.  “Why are you, a girl who is clearly partly-Chinese, fighting beside those who have held the Chinese down for years?”

Stephanie wanted to laugh.  There was no such thing as ‘pure’ Chinese; China had its own ethnic groups, some of them descendents of invaders who had ended up being assimilated into Chinese society.  Even in 2021, there was a growing population of half-breeds; children produced by Chinese men and mail order brides from the Third World.  Experts – many of them being people Stephanie considered to know nothing – had even claimed that the demographics of China were about to change sharply.  Stephanie didn’t believe a word of it.  The numbers were tiny compared to the billion Chinese…

She snorted.  “I am an officer of the Canadian Armed Forces,” she said.  Her father might have been Japanese, her mother Chinese, but that didn’t matter.  Half-breeds were common in Canada.  “You fired first.”

Shui smiled.  “The official version is that your forces fired first,” he said.  “I had that directly from the People's Liberation Army Navy.  Who could dispute their version of events?”

Stephanie eyed him suspiciously.  “I was there,” she said.  Cold fury, the thought of all who had died in the battle, flowed through her, overriding her determination to say as little as possible.  “Your people fired first.”

Shui smiled at her.  “But that hardly matters,” he said.  “Do you know anything about what’s been happening outside in the world?”

“I have been in your cage for…what feels like weeks,” Stephanie snapped.  “How could I have found out anything?”

“A fortnight,” Shui informed her.  “The Americans have declared war on the Pact, for the record; there is already a low-level naval war going on, but the real action is in Europe.  The Russians have invaded Poland and are marching towards the English Channel.  Your government has not committed itself either way.”

“Don’t blame me,” Stephanie said.  “I voted for the Conservatives.”

“That means nothing to me,” Shui said.  Stephanie felt her insides clench; there had been something in the way Shui had spoken that had sent chills down her spine.  “The important matter is to keep Canada out of the war.  You wouldn’t want thousands of your countrymen dying in futile battles, would you?”

“You started the fight,” Stephanie reminded him.  “What do you want with me?”

“Allow me to run through the situation,” Shui said, ignoring her question.  “We have secured our eastern borders and Singapore will fall fairly quickly.  Once that happens, the Americans will have no base east of Guam, which has been targeted for a nuclear strike if the war goes on.  We imagine that the Americans will feel compelled to retaliate – and this base might be one of their targets, if the Committee makes the decision to blow up Guam – so I ask again; do you want your countrymen – and women – dying in futile battles?”

Stephanie said nothing.  “The Russians will take or ruin most of Europe before the war ends,” Shui said.  “You know as well as I do that Canada has depended for too long on the Americans for defence and has only a small army of its own.  The Canadian Navy, which has a ridiculous title, is small; you lost one ship to us already and two more to Russian submarines in the Atlantic.  We have laid our plans perfectly…and once we have secured the west, we will be almost unbeatable.”

“Hitler thought that as well,” Stephanie said.  She had read enough history to know that.  “The Allies beat him.”

“You’ll have a much longer and harder fight,” Shui said.  He smiled darkly; his handsome face seemed to twist unpleasantly.  “You’re talking about taking on almost a third of the world, one that has no aggressive designs against Canada or even America.  We would be quite prepared to respect Canada’s territorial integrity; we have no quarrel with the Canadian leadership or even their people.  We are even prepared to overlook their harbouring of Tibetan refugees who are already using this war to press for the sundering of China and Tibet’s establishment as an independent state.”

He brought his mouth closer to Stephanie’s ears.  “Do you really want your countrymen to die in a war that will bring them no benefits at all?”

Stephanie forced herself not to recoil.  “You attacked my ship and killed my comrades,” she said.  The memory was an open sore.  She still remembered the exploding ship far below her.  “The war has to be fought – if you are telling the truth.”

“I have told you no lies,” Shui assured her.  She didn’t believe him.  “Your countrymen have to be told not to join the war against us.”

Stephanie snorted.  “They are not going to listen to you,” she said.  “You can say that you want peace all you want, but no one is going to forget that you fired first.”

“The West has an amazing ability to miss or forget inconvenient facts,” Shui said mildly.  “You get Third World Countries into debt…and then you wonder why their people are starving.  You supply weapons to one side or the other and then you wonder why thousands of people are dying.  You rant and wail about oppression…while you give the oppressors a wink and a nod, or do nothing to prevent genocide.”

He grinned, almost boyishly.  “At least our own policy of helping the Third World is honest,” he concluded.  “We supply people who agree to help us – as they have agreed already.  There are Canadians caught in the middle of that, too…and you are going to help us put a stop to it.”

Stephanie blinked.  “Put a stop to it?  Your surrender would be a way of doing that!”

“Very funny,” Shui said.  “You, my dear, are going to go in front of the press and tell them that America started the war and that Canada should not be involved in the fighting.  You are going to tell them how grateful you are that we saved you from a death caused by an American missile and you are going to ask your people to remain outside the fighting.  If you do that, we will not…abuse you; you will even be offered a place among us.”

Stephanie glared at him.  “And if I refuse?”

Shui shrugged.  “If you refuse, you will be subjected to a rigorous interrogation to discover everything you know about your own systems, from technical information to whatever titbits you know about the Canadian High Command,” he said.  “Once that interrogation is finished, you will be begging us to let you go in front of the cameras and tell them whatever we want you to tell them.  And after that…

“And after that, we’ll throw you to the soldiers and let them use you, while thousands of Canadians die to maintain an American system,” he concluded.  “You know as well as I do that no one is going to win this war outright; we have been attempting to discuss peace, but so far there has been no real progress.  Perhaps after your tear-dripping confession, there will be peace.”

Stephanie felt sick.  “Confession?”

“By the time we are finished with you, you will quite happily admit to being the reincarnation of Osema Bin Laden,” Shui said.  “You will admit to rape, looting, child abuse; we shoot people in China who commit such crimes.  Your people could learn a lot from us; no one we shoot comes back to haunt us.  Oh yes…and you will confess to shooting first.”

Stephanie felt her mind spinning.  “Do I have time to think about it?”

Shui shook his head.  Stephanie tried to think, tried to focus, but it was hard.  She was alone, as alone as anyone had ever been, and a long way from any help.  Her determination to be brave, to stand up and hold her head high, was weakening; she knew that she could die in China, after betraying everything she had ever loved.  It would be disaster, even if no one believed her, or thought that she was speaking under duress.  Canadian protocols for such situations said to cooperate as much as possible without compromising herself, but she knew that she had passed that stage already.  She wanted to cry, but didn’t dare show such weakness as her thoughts span through her mind, refusing to allow her a moment of peace.

Shui’s hand was on her chin, pulling her head up so that she faced him, his handsome face twisted into a face of evil.  She would have been happy to date him, had he been Canadian; the knowledge that something evil lurked behind his face was chilling.  She tried to keep her mind from thinking about torture, but it kept returning to the subject; pain, pain, pain, pain…and inevitable submission.

Shui’s voice seemed to come from a very far distance.  “Well?”

Stephanie felt something inside her break.  “Very well,” she said.  An idea had occurred to her, but she wasn’t sure that she dared go through with it; she was deep in the heart of enemy power.  “I’ll do it…”

Shui pressed.  “Do what?”

“Tell the world what you want,” Stephanie said.  Tears were trickling down her cheeks.  “I’ll do it.”

Shui smiled.  Stephanie saw him clearly in that moment; he was not a decent man, but something far, far worse.  He was a man who clearly got his pleasure from hurting people, both men and women; her submission excited him in ways that no normal activity could excite him.  He was sick…and the Chinese had picked a perfect officer for their purposes.  No wonder Shui had been assigned to his role; he was perfect.

“You always break,” Shui said.  There was a gloating note in his voice.  “The students who want us to abandon the controls over the state.  The terrorists who can’t face real terror.  The westerners who fight through technology.  You all break.”

Two guards appeared and escorted Stephanie out of the room.  They held her gently, but firmly, leading her to a different room and shoving her inside it.  A female officer, whose eyes were cold and dead, gave her a sheet of paper; it was a short statement, with only twenty lines.  Her lips twitched, despite herself, as she read it through.

“I, insert my own name here, have a confession…”

She gasped in pain as the female officer hit her with a long stick, across the back.  The pain was astonishing; she hadn’t even seen the cane, before it had been applied to her body.  The officer tapped the statement with one long finger – she said nothing and Stephanie couldn’t even hear any breathing – and picked up a small box of make-up.  Stephanie had spent time with her girlfriends, before joining the navy, practicing with her own make-up, but she had never had a makeover from a prison guard before.  The guard worked with quick brutal efficiency; when she had finished, she held up a mirror.

“I look bad,” Stephanie said.  The officer showed a flicker of a smile; it twisted her face into something that would have been quite pretty, under other circumstances.  Stephanie’s skin looked paler than it was normally; she looked…she looked like someone who was in prison, but not someone who had been abused.  Her scar, the result of a fencing accident years ago, had been covered up; the Chinese probably wanted a desperate character in front of the cameras, not someone who looked like a rape victim.  “I think…”

“Don’t think,” the officer said, in heavily accented English.  “Just do.”

Her guards came in and marched her out of the room again, escorting her down a long series of corridors, which grew more ornate the further they walked.  She saw no one else until they reached a smaller room, where Shui was waiting.  He had discarded his own uniform for a simple business suit and smiled at her when he saw her, inspecting the makeover with a professional eye.

“Beautiful,” he said, after checking it twice.  “You look perfect for your role.”

Stephanie was still holding the sheet of paper.  “That is your speech,” Shui said.  He seemed perfectly at ease.  “We took the liberty of writing one for you to save you the effort of writing something that sounded convincing.  When you go though those doors” – he nodded towards a large door facing them – “you will walk to the podium, stand there and recite your speech for the reporters.  You will give the speech, then walk back here; do not attempt to do anything stupid or it will be very hard on you.”

A buzzer rang.  “You’re on,” Shui said.  “Break a leg.”

Stephanie wanted to object, wanted to refuse, but it was too late.  Shui opened the doors for her and she walked into the room, trying to look beaten and broken.  There was an immediate burst of flashlights as the reporters started to take pictures of her; she realised with a shock that most of the reporters were Chinese or Indian.  The handful of obvious westerners just looked…stunned.  She wanted to run, her legs almost failed her; she walked towards the podium, noticing the presence of a Chinese Admiral there, and took the stand.  She placed the paper on the stand, hoping that it was obvious that she had been given a speech to read, and began.

“My name is Lieutenant Stephanie Tsuji and I have a confession to make,” she said.  It was a tiny rebellion, but she could only hope that it would be understood by all of her viewers.  “I was one of the sailors onboard the American-led fleet that sailed into the East China Sea and interfered with a Chinese internal matter concerning Chinese Taipei.  I was flying over the fleet when my sensors tracked the launch of missiles, American missiles; American submarines had fired towards Chinese aircraft, killing thousands.  Moments later, my own ship was forced to open fire as part of a general offensive against the People’s Liberation Army Navy; the American-controlled systems ordered a launch against the express wishes of my Captain, a victim of American ambition, and my Government, a pawn in the hands of the Americans.

“I was lucky enough to be picked up by a Chinese ship that risked life and limb to save me,” she continued.  “I have been well-treated along with the other prisoners, some of whom have chosen to remain in China, and have chosen to inform my Government about how the war started.”  Her voice broke.  “They fired first,” she said, trying to sound as if she was lying.  “They fired first.”

She broke down completely.  The Chinese Admiral put a hand around her; she shook him off as the flashbulbs began to flash again, capturing her picture and transmitting it around the world.  She wanted to run, but there was nowhere to go; she abandoned the remainder of her speech and fled towards the door, bursting through it into Shui’s arms.  He held her tightly until the doors had closed again, and then the two guards grabbed her, cuffing her hands with quick harsh motions.  She hurt…

“Not too shabby,” Shui remarked.  He was grinning, she saw; her humiliation was his delight.  “Of course, not all of that speech will be transmitted, but your people will see enough of it to ensure that they make the right decision.  Thank you.”

Stephanie thought cold thoughts.  Perhaps Canada would make the right decision, perhaps the Government would take its political future in its hands and declare war, but she doubted it.  The Canadian Government would be hurt by what she had done; it would look very bad indeed, even if only half of the Chinese speech were believed.  Would the Canadian people demand war to free her?  Half of them would consider her a traitor!

“Go to hell,” she said, trying to summon up one last effort.  Perhaps the Chinese would kill her just to put her out of their misery.  “Go fuck yourself.”

Shui leered.  “Take her to her cell,” he ordered, in Mandarin.  “She can wait until we are ready for her.”

The two guards dragged her away.

Chapter Twenty-Three: Recap

Near Moscow, Russia

“Well, that didn’t work very well, did it?”

Prime Minister Mohandas Singh shrugged as Joseph Lapotin held forth.  The Russian President didn’t sound happy and it was hard to blame him; Canada’s decision to honour its treaty obligations meant that Russia’s part of the war had just become harder.  The Canadians might not have had a big naval force, but it was first-rate…and they held many of the American early-warning bases on their soil.  Lapotin had hoped that the Canadian Government would refuse to allow the Americans to use their own bases, but Canada had decided to not only allow the Americans to use them, but to commit themselves to the war.

It wasn't a total disaster, Singh admitted; the Canadians only had a small army and it would take them time to get the force to Europe, or perhaps to one of the other war fronts.  Their intelligence sources in Canada suggested that while the Canadian people were ‘pissed’ at what had happened to one of their people – even though some pundits had suggested that the helicopter pilot was actually a Chinese plant – they weren’t sure how to prosecute the war.  They would have to send ships to help clear the Atlantic, but past that?  Join the fight against Russia?  India?  There weren’t many places to face China itself, were there?

“I said at the time, and I meant it, that the prisoners should be interrogated and then either put in camps or offered for trade,” Lapotin continued.  “Instead, we have a public relations disaster on our hands.  The mere fact that we started the war – whatever nonsense we are spinning to the useful idiots in the west – has already worked against us; peaceniks everywhere are coming off worst across the world.”

Singh shrugged.  The United States had taken disastrous naval losses; there was no real hope that the Far Left could prevent the war from continuing, or even that there would be anti-war protests.  There had been a handful of protests, but they had all been poorly attended and in one case broken up by a counter-march.  The other western nations, France, Germany and Britain, had all come under attack; most of the Frenchmen who would have protested at being involved in an American war were fighting themselves.

He smiled to himself.  The Algerians had played their role well…and they hadn’t quite realised that they were expendable.  The French Navy was holding the line well against them; once the French got over their understandable desire to sink every Russian submarine they could find, they would go on the offensive and cut Algeria off from France permanently.  The more French weapons that were expended on the Algerians; the less weapons to be used against the real Pact.  It was…irritating that the French hadn’t decided to eat cheese and surrender, but it didn’t matter; all contingencies had been prepared for by the Pact.

The Chinese President scowled.  “You know as well as I do that we cannot invade America, even if we had the whole-hearted support of Latin America,” he said.  “By that simple fact alone, we must attempt to limit the fighting; if we can convince the Americans and the Canadians to limit their involvement, so much the better.”

Lapotin glared at him.  “But they have not limited their involvement,” he snapped.  “They have both declared war on us, on the entire Pact!  We are fighting on several fronts…”

“And we have more power, more force, than our enemies in all of them,” Singh said, as comfortingly as he could.  “By the time the Americans can bring their ponderous mass to bear, we will have completed the task of securing our main objectives and then we can wear down the Americans.”  He looked around the table.  “Come; in a fortnight, we have smashed an American-led fleet, occupied a country and are pushing back an American army; those are all victories!”

The Chinese President smiled.  “Just think what they must be feeling,” he said.  “I still think that we should go for Taiwan as soon as possible.”

“We will have to remove the American submarines from Chinese waters first,” Singh said.  He looked across at General Yang Tao.  “How is that little struggle going?”

Tao, who was already being called the victor of Taiwan, smiled grimly.  “We are duelling with American and rebel submarines,” he said.  “So far, there have been few victories, as hunting for submarines is something of a waste of time.  There have been a handful of skirmishes, but as we are careful to move only in large groups, we have been able to deny their submarines any easy victories.  When the time comes to move on Taiwan, we will put everything we have to sea and surround them in enough ASW firepower and aircraft to beat out the American submarines.”

He grinned briefly.  “They’re a minor nuisance at the moment,” he said.  “Several of them launched land-attack missiles at the coastal harbours and bases during the fighting, hopefully shooting themselves dry.  We can’t rely on that, of course, but we expect that they have been recalled for rearming at Guam or Pearl Harbour.  Once we have rearmed ourselves, we can move on Chinese Taipei while the Americans are still nervous about challenging our missiles again.”

They exchanged a long glance.  What the Americans didn’t know – but Singh was certain they would guess – was that the Pact had almost shot itself completely dry of the newer missiles.  The entire Pact had been building and improving cruise missiles almost since it had been formed, preparing for the inevitable struggle…and almost all of the newer missiles had been fired at the American fleet.  American point defence had been better than predicted, as well; the strategists have expected a total annihilation of the enemy fleet. Instead, two carriers – the priority targets – had escaped, along with dozens of smaller ships.

“Chinese Taipei is not an issue at the moment,” Singh reminded him.  “The important thing is not to give the Americans an easy victory.  If they attempt to liberate Taiwan…”

“They have already recognised Taiwan as an independent state,” the Chinese President reminded him.  “It is something else that the UN has been trying to discuss.”

Singh laughed.  The United Nations was meeting in emergency session…and, apart from a great deal of outraged shouting, very little had been done.  The Americans had charged the Pact delegates as spies, ordering them to leave New York; other countries had been shifting their own positions as one side or the other tried to outbid each other for their votes.  If the United Nations had any real power, Singh was confident that the Pact would have won a popularity contest, but as it was, it didn’t matter.  It was just a sideshow.

“It doesn’t matter,” Singh said.  “What matters is what’s happening in Europe and our plans to meet the Americans when they come in to engage us.”

Lapotin nodded at General Damitri Socrov, one of the Russian Commanding officers.  It should have been General Shalenko, but Shalenko was commanding the forces in Poland as they prepared as quickly as they could for the push into Germany.  He didn’t know Socrov – an FSB officer rather than a regular army officer – as well as he knew Shalenko, but no one questioned either his competence or his loyalty.  He would be a good replacement for the time being.

“There are currently two different sections of the war,” Socrov said.  His voice showed hints of true ambition; Singh could only hope that Shalenko was watching his back.  The FSB had too much of the old KGB in it for comfort.  “The first section is Iceland, which has been occupied, and the second is Poland; both of them require a major commitment.”

He coughed as his hands traced out lines on the map.  “A five hundred-man Special Forces team captured Iceland on Day One of the war,” he said.  “We had the team inside a large freighter – the Icelanders buy some of their supplies from us, after all, and suspected nothing – and the team came out under cover of darkness.  Before the Icelanders realised what had happened, the team had secured all of the major targets, arrested the government and seized the foreign embassies.  Reinforcements were rapidly flown in and the decommissioned bases were secured; teams went to work on preparing them for use in the second stage of the war.  So far, there has been no resistance on Iceland; we do not expect real trouble.  Just in case, a hundred hostages have been taken.

“Poland represents a different matter,” Socrov continued.  There was a growing gleeful note in his voice.  “We have established control as far west as Poznan, with control contested over the remainder and eastern Germany.  EUROFOR was able to pull out many of its surviving units, along with some renegade Polish units, but many other Polish units were either destroyed in the fighting or surrendered upon orders from their new government.  They were promptly disarmed and secured in holding camps; many of them will be moved to camps in Siberia as soon as possible.  There has been some resistance, but it has been limited to infantry units and one encounter with a rogue tank.

“Warsaw itself has been occupied and is currently being held by a very large force,” he said.  Singh nodded; one lesson that everyone had drawn from the American experience in Baghdad was that occupation needed a massive force of armed infantry to succeed.  “There was some resistance from criminal elements and other rogues, but they have all been handled roughly.  The round-up of police, government workers and the remains of the soldiers in Warsaw is underway; they will all spend the rest of their lives in the camps.”

Singh nodded.  People who were natural leaders of resistance could not be allowed to run around causing trouble.  The death toll didn’t bother him at all; far too many had died at Delhi for him to feel any sympathy for the Poles, or the Germans, or the rest of the West.  They had their crimes to pay for, whatever it took to ensure that they faced the rage of his people and the entire Pact.  How many Russians had frozen to death while the European Union demanded major concessions?  How many Chinese had died in American-inspired revolutionary struggles across China?  How many of the Pact’s soldiers had died in Indonesia?

“It will take roughly a month to ensure that we have the entire country under control,” Socrov continued.  His voice softened slightly.  “The tactic of landing in the rear of Poland worked almost perfectly; we were able to prevent any organised resistance from forming and at the same time make it harder for the retreating EUROFOR units to escape.”  He paused.  “I must report that attacks from Germany allowed more units than we predicted to break through and escape.”

“We all knew that the Germans were good at reacting to fleeting opportunities,” Lapotin reminded him.  Singh nodded; the German Army was known for being tough, if somewhat limited in the style of missions that it could take on.  He suspected that that would change, assuming that the lines held…and he could only hope that they wouldn’t hold.  “And for the next stage?”

Socrov saluted.  “We expect the Americans to launch an assault against Iceland as soon as possible,” he said.  “Although there is a confusing torrent of information coming out of America, we know that they are assembling a fleet composed of several Marine ships, including the amphibious assault ships USS Bonhomme Richard, USS Iwo Jima and USS Makin Island and the littoral combat ships USS Freedom and USS Independence.  Two carriers will be escorting this force – we believe the USS William Jefferson Clinton and the USS George Washington – and Marine units have been placed on alert.  Iceland, sirs, is the only possible target.

“We have moved a major convoy there as soon as the war started,” he continued.  “That cannot happen again now that the NATO navies are on alert; we expect that their submarines will be out in force.   We lost a cruiser when the convoy ships returned to our own waters and they’ll be trying to cut us off from the forces on Iceland.  That armada they’re assembling will come to Iceland…and we will be waiting.  The remaining stocks of cruise missiles have been prepared for a major attack on the fleet as it approaches and destroy their transports.  If the transports are destroyed, that force will be unable to land and evict us from Iceland.”

Singh frowned.  “Correct me if I’m wrong,” he said, “but that’s what we did to the Americans at Taiwan.  Won’t they be ready for it this time?”

“They will be expecting an attack on the carriers and we are in fact chatting away about how important it is to hit their carriers,” Socrov said.  “The blunt problem is that both of us war-gamed the entire situation out over the duration of the Cold War; taking Iceland was obviously going to be required to actually close the Atlantic.  There are few moves that either side can play; we have to knock out that force and that means either submarines or aircraft.  They will be expecting us to hit the carriers and by the time they realise that the carriers are not the priority targets, they will have lost vital seconds to react.

“In the meantime, we are building up as fast as possible in Poland,” he continued.  “The Poles have largely refrained from sabotaging the rail lines and the roads, although several German and French aircraft launched raids against vital bridges.  We estimate that in a fortnight, we will be ready to launch a major offensive against EUROFOR and NATO lines in Germany and break through; the Czech Army can be dismissed for the moment.  Although some war plans did call for outflanking the Germans by hammering through the Czechs, they have dug in and knocking them out would be costly; hitting the Germans directly seems the important matter.  The Germans have deployed along the borders, now they have finally found a new leader; they don’t have much defence in depth as they want to preserve Berlin.”

He spoke on, listing units that had been assigned to the war, and other units that had been ordered to provide security for the rear area of the invasion.  Singh felt himself growing tired as he droned on, even though it was important; everything they’d unleashed had a horrific inevitability about it now.

“We intend to hold on the offensive until the main French units arrive to back up the Germans and the remains of EUROFOR,” Socrov continued.  “This will give us some additional time, but it will allow us to chew up the French units as well as the German and British units, although we expect that some of their leaders will insist that they be used for manoeuvre warfare rather than position warfare.  Berlin is not that important to the others.

“We have command of the air over Poland and parts of Germany,” he concluded.  “Once we have secured and pressed into service Polish airbases, we will be able to force the European air forces out and deploy our own in the attack.  We have been preparing to press the attack against European air bases, but we have lost several heavy bombers to ground-based defences and we don’t have many cruise missiles left.  We still have a vast superiority in numbers, however; we can wear them down over the period before the major offensive.”

Singh nodded.  “The probes into Iran are going well,” he said.  They’d all been briefed on that earlier.  “The Americans are holding back, refusing to commit themselves to a major battle, so we cannot say that we will win, but we will force them to fight sooner or later.  The main problem comes from the refugees from Pakistan; some of them are trying to fight us.”

“Anyone would think that they didn’t like you,” Lapotin said dryly.  The Chinese President laughed.  There was little reason for either part of what had once been British India to love each other.  Pakistan had destroyed an Indian city…and India had divested Pakistan and occupied the remainder.  “Do you want the force in Georgia to advance to support your people?”

“That would be useful,” Singh admitted.  He hadn’t wanted the Russians involved – India had to prove that it could stand on its own feet in the Pact – but the American refusal to give battle was making that harder.  The Iranians, by themselves, weren’t that much of a problem; it was the American force that had to be destroyed before it could be reinforced.  “The main priority remains, however, defeating the enemy in Europe…and then the Americans will have no choice, but to accept our control over half of the world.”

Chapter Twenty-Four: Under the Jackboot

Warsaw, Poland

“Welcome to Warsaw, General,” Major Pavel Kaminov said.  “Perhaps you would like me to escort you to your quarters.”

“That will not be necessary,” General Aleksandr Shalenko said.  Warsaw looked as if a war had hit it – which of course it had.  He’d seen too many ruined cities in his time; it was impossible to pretend to enjoy war when you saw too much of its effects.  “I require a situation brief, at once.”

“I have been ordered to take command of the occupation force in Warsaw,” Kaminov said.  His voice was a strange mixture of defiance and respect; he knew that he couldn’t use his position in the FSB to push his superior around, but at the same time he wanted to impress Shalenko.  A favourable report from Shalenko could ensure that Kaminov rose to the top of the FSB.  “The occupation has proceeded according to plan.”

“Really,” Shalenko said.  A set of APCs were in position in the city; he knew that more than a few older T-90 tanks had been assigned to the FSB occupation force.  That was overkill on a massive scale, as far as he was concerned; it said volumes about the possible effects of Polish resistance.  “How much resistance has there been?”

Kaminov smiled.  “The Poles put up a brutal fight in the east of the city,” he said, as if Shalenko hadn’t been there commanding the struggle.  “Most of the soldiers in the city were killed or captured then; a handful remained on the loose and didn’t obey the surrender order from the traitor.  We caught a few of them trying to escape the city; as per orders, all of the soldiers have been herded into camps.”  He nodded towards a body, swinging from a lamppost.  “Anyone without a uniform who attempts to resist has been hung or otherwise killed.”

“Good,” Shalenko said.  “Show me what you’ve done.”

“Right this way,” Kaminov said, leading Shalenko down a long stretch of road.  “We’ve taken over this entire complex for use as a command post, as we smashed up the Polish Government buildings during the fighting.  It used to be a sports centre, apparently; it had a massive set of football fields.  It was a fairly simple matter to turn it into a prison camp.”

They came around a large hall and looked down towards the football fields.  Shalenko examined the arrangements and nodded in approval; the original fencing had been improved and armed guards paced around the field, which held hundreds of men and a few women.  They sat there, handcuffed; the handful of Russian guards kept machine guns trained on them anyway.  Shalenko allowed himself a moment to feel relief; the Poles were known to be tough and if they managed to escape, they would be trouble for his people.

“It’s not the most sanitary of arrangements, but it will have to do,” Kaminov informed him.  “Once we have them moving towards the Gulags, they can be sorted out into different sections.  The political prisoners, the people who worked for the government, are being kept separately; they will be interrogated at length before being sent east.  The handful of senior politicians we have captured are being held separately, along with the single Polish General we took alive.  The FSB has a claim on them.”

Shalenko shrugged.  “I want you to see to it that they have medical care and standard rations,” he ordered.  Kaminov looked astonished.  “The war’s not over yet and we cannot afford to be too brutal.  What about the civilians?”

Kaminov’s mouth worked for a moment.  Doubtless, he had been thinking – or at least some of his men had been thinking – about using the Polish prisoners for their own purposes.  Some of the women were quite attractive; Kaminov’s men considered themselves entitled to some pleasure out of their job.  They also knew that Shalenko could order them shot and his men would leap to obey.

“They’re trying to stay off the streets,” he said, as they climbed into a Polish jeep.  It had been requisitioned, like all Polish vehicles, for their new overlords.  The driver started to take them down a long route, passing rubble and dead bodies in the streets, some of them clearly civilians.  The weapons had been scooped up by advance parties of Russian soldiers, but the bodies had been left there; there was little point in clearing them up when there was a battle going on.  “There was some looting and unrest, but a security force took care of that and we have guards on the main buildings and food stores.  The occupation plan has gone ahead.”

“I want you to get those bodies cleared away,” Shalenko ordered.  “They’re a risk to my soldiers.  Have the prisoners listed, compared against the computer lists we recovered, and then put them to work clearing the streets.  If you can get civilian volunteers to help, ensure that they’re kept apart from the soldiers, who have to be shackled while they work.  Dig mass graves, put the bodies there after taking a DNA reading, understand?”

“Yes, General,” Kaminov said.  They passed a patrol of Russian soldiers, some of them clearly carrying Polish weapons as well as their standard-issue AN-94 assault rifles.  Aircraft and helicopters passed overhead, their weapons watching for trouble; no civilians could be seen on the streets.  “The men were requesting permission to visit the whorehouses for some relaxation.”

Shalenko concealed a smile.  Soldiers had impulses, after all; his blanket ban on rape had clearly had an effect.  Of course, Kaminov could mean that he wanted to go; the FSB officer was probably into all manner of kinky methods.  The regular army often had late night bull sessions when FSB sexual habits were discussed; he’d heard that the FSB soldiers considered the regulars to be all haste and much waste.

“Ensure that the brothels are secure and that the whores are happy there,” he ordered.  The Russian Army had plenty of experience in running brothels for its soldiers; they had been a frequent requirement during the final Chechen War.  “Apart from that, that’s fine.”

The Provisional Polish Government had taken over an American bank for its proceedings.  It was guarded by three Polish soldiers, who wore uniforms, but were unarmed, and a small squad of FSB soldiers.  Shalenko examined it quickly; it looked a sturdy building, rather than the glass and steel monsters he’d seen in America, but a single shell would destroy it.  The Russians saluted when their commanders arrived; the Poles looked away.  Shalenko could almost read their thoughts; they had pledged loyalty to Molobo…and that had cost them.

“Right this way, General,” Kaminov said.  “The President is waiting for you.”

Shalenko’s lips twitched into a cold smile.  Molobo couldn’t pass wind without Russian permission.  The interior of the bank was cool and neat, rather than overdone; there were Russians everywhere, rather than any Poles.  The tellers and the bank manager had either fled or had been killed in the fighting; there were signs of a brief struggle everywhere.

“Mr Molobo, General,” Kaminov said, as they entered a room without knocking.  A dead computer sat on one table, facing away from the man sitting behind the table, who looked down as the Russians approached.  “Molobo; this is General Shalenko, commanding officer of the western front.”

Molobo slowly rose to his feet.  He was short and fat, reminding Shalenko irresistibly of a beached whale; his greed had played a vast role in the subjection of his country.  Shalenko had never believed that the contacts with Molobo, who like many Poles had clearly believed that NATO would always be able to protect them from their Russian neighbours.  That delusion had come to a shattering halt the day that Shalenko had led his tanks over the border into Poland…and laid the first stones of the Polish defeat.

“General,” he said, trying to shake Shalenko’s hand.  Shalenko contemptuously rejected it.  “A pleasure to see you.”

“You have committed yourself to our side,” Shalenko said.  Some of the things the FSB had done to lure Molobo into their clutches disgusted him.  “We want your full and complete cooperation, or it will be a bullet in the back of the neck, understand?”

Molobo’s piggy eyes stared at him.  “But I did what you asked…”

“And we are grateful, which is why you have this chance, rather than being shipped off to Siberia with the other politicians,” Shalenko informed him.  “Of course, Siberia is lovely this time of year, so if you want to go there it can be arranged…”

Molobo wilted.  “I’ll do as you ask…”

“Order, Molobo, not ask,” Shalenko said.  He would have preferred to deal with a soldier, or a honest politician, assuming that there was more than one of them.  Lapotin, who was the closest Russia had to a honest politician, had once commented that politics was deceitful by necessity.  A candidate for democratic election had no choice, but to lie; a honest candidate would be a loser.  “We are at war with the Germans, Poland’s old enemies, and we expect your full support for the effort.  Do you understand?”

Molobo nodded.  “Good,” Shalenko said.  He sighed; he wanted to be back at his command post, mopping up the remains of the Polish Army and linking up with the airdropped formations.  “Now, here is what I want you to do…”

An hour later, both officers left the building.  “My father was forced out of Warsaw in 1980,” Kaminov commented.  “It’s good to be back.”

Shalenko smiled.  “We haven’t won yet,” he said.  “I intend to return to my post and prepare for the next offensive.  It’s up to you to remain here and keep this city calm.  Be firm, but don’t be harsh; we want the Poles to accept us.  They’ll never love us, but as long as they tolerate us for a few months, our position will be unbeatable.”

Kaminov nodded.  “Then we bring them fully under our control,” he said.  “No more need for puppets.”

***
“Citizens of Warsaw, this is an emergency announcement,” the voice said again.  It was the same voice as the one that had warned the citizens that there was a ‘military emergency’ going on, a strange voice speaking perfect Polish.  It had made two other broadcasts, first ordering everyone with a medical problem to signal for help, and then warning of looters and how they were going to be punished.  They’d heard gunfire that night; they’d heard lots of gunfire.

Marya wanted to cry.  They’d remained cooped up in their apartment for a week and the food supplies were nearly gone.  Her sister had withdrawn more and more into herself, at one point demanding that Marya throw away her terminal, rather than risk it being found.  The news from GNN had been grim; the Russians had pushed up against Germany and there was a low-level war going on.  No one expected it to remain low-level for long; GNN had tracked Russian tanks and aircraft moving west to take up position for the forthcoming offensive.  Her own report back had been blunt; she had seen some of the devastation from the roof, but hadn’t gone out of her building.  She didn’t feel brave at all.

“This is your government speaking,” the voice continued.  “For your security from attack, this city has been garrisoned by Russian troops, at the request of the elected government of Poland.  In order to ensure that subversive elements, in the pay of the Germans, are rooted out, it is important to have all loyal citizens registered.  All citizens are ordered to report within the next week to a local council office, where you will register with the government.  Failure to report within the week will result in you being arrested and possibly detained.  Criminal elements are being used to clear the streets; do not attempt to approach them or communicate with them.  Once you have registered, you will be given other instructions.

“If you cannot reach a registration centre, send a family member, a friend, or a neighbour,” the voice said.  “Failure to register will have the most serious consequences.  Those who register will be fed; those who do not register will be unable to collect rations.  Obey all orders given to you.”

The radio returned to its silent broadcast.  “You can’t go,” Melania protested.  “I can’t go; what would I do with the girls?”

Marya thought hard.  “We don’t have the food for them,” she said.  That was true; they had no food for another week.  “I’ll go first; you can come later if I come back.”

Melania paled still further.  Marya had been warned that the Russians were rounding up reporters, a type of humanity loathed by the Russian Government, and had thought about hiding.  Jacob’s visit had been informative…and he’d given her an identification card that belonged to a girl who had been killed in the bombing.  Her body, he had assured her, had been destroyed – along with everyone else in her apartment.  The papers said that she was no longer Melania’s sister, but a close friend who was living with her.  Jacob had warned her to be careful; she knew nothing about the imaginary Marya’s life…and the Russians would be watching for people trying to slip through their noose.

The streets weren’t deserted any longer.  Civilians, most of them sharing the same stunned look, were advancing onto the streets.  There were more men than women coming out, she noted; the menfolk were taking most of the risks of contact with the Russians.  Everyone knew what Russian soldiers were like…and a small platoon of them were marching down the centre of the road, as if they ruled the world.  She realised, as she slunk aside with the rest of the population, that they ruled Warsaw, if nowhere else.

She had expected monsters.  They were just men, holding their weapons as if they knew what to do with them, their eyes scanning for threats.  Their leader, a man wearing green shoulder boards, met her eyes for a moment; she quickly looked away as the Russians marched onwards.  Their retreating backs missed the quick motions of defiance from a few of the younger men; she just kept her head down and walked onwards, towards the local government centre.  The building was half in ruins; the Russians had set up a series of tables and had them staffed by their own people.  Queues were already forming; she noticed with envy that the Russians had power for their computers.  Armed soldiers motioned her towards a queue; she watched as most people talked to the Russians, and then were moved on; a handful of people were escorted out by Russian soldiers.

A noise caught her eyes and she turned, to see a group of men clearing debris; they had been shackled and were watched, too, by Russians.  They wore Polish uniforms, some of them tattered and bloody, and they had the same expression of grim despair.  Marya wanted to cry, again, but refused to show weakness; she had the feeling that showing weakness in front of the Russians was a bad idea.

The Russian functionary was bored when she finally appeared in front of him.  He recited a list of demands in a bored tone.  “Name, formal address, place of residence, job, special requirements?”

“Ah, Marya Wiśniewski,” she said.  She recited her address, and then explained that she was staying with her friend; her job - Marya Wiśniewski’s job – had been a secretary in a company that had folded, a year ago.  There was no mention at all of her real profession.  “I have no special requirements.”

“Good,” the Russian said.  There was no enthusiasm in his tone; his eyes didn’t even flicker over her breasts.  His computer produced a plastic card and he passed it over to her.  “We are in charge here now, girl; failure to follow any of our orders will result in you being assigned to a general work pool and worked hard.”  He nodded towards the shackled prisoners.  “We have rations for you here; take them and return in one week for additional food supplies.  If you meet anyone who has not registered, inform us; failure to report anti-Russian activity will be considered a crime and severally punished.  Do you understand?”

“Yes,” Marya whispered.  Inside, she was relieved; they had believed her!  She was safe!  “What do I do now, sir?”

“That table there,” the Russian said.  His voice hadn’t changed once.  “Collect your rations and depart.  You are staying with your friend?”

Marya felt a cold shiver running down her spine.  “Yes,” she whispered.  “I am staying with Melania Kazimiera, my old school friend…”

“You must inform us if she fails to register or commits anti-Russian activities,” the functionary said.  “People who bring us useful information will be rewarded.  If you want additional…supplies from us, bring us information.”

Marya left, her blood running cold.  She hadn’t expected that, she hadn’t expected to be told to inform on anyone breaking the Russian rules, but she knew that she should have expected it.  The Russians might claim that they were only visiting, but if they were trying to set up information networks, they clearly intended to stay longer than a few months, perhaps even forever.  If they turned Pole against Pole, their task would be a lot easier.  She took the rations without thought; her mind was racing everywhere.

A Russian soldier whistled at her as she entered her street.  She felt scared, fear tricking down her body, but the Russian didn’t follow her.  She fled anyway, into her building, laugher following her as she ran.  He could have gone after her and raped her and no one would have stopped him.  He could have taken her back to their barracks and given her to his fellows and no one could have stopped him.  The Russians could do what they liked…

…And she, a reporter on the wanted list, was trapped behind enemy lines.

Chapter Twenty-Five: Counterattack

United States Naval Base, Guam

The pistol sat neatly in its drawer.

It had been a gift, from a British Captain who had served with Admiral Toland once, years ago.  Toland still remembered that time fondly, when they had both been younger men, taking part in the naval patrols surrounding Iran.  It had been a simpler time, when the United States Navy had been mistress of the seas and no one could challenge a single aircraft carrier.  The end of the Soviet Union had made America the world power…and there hadn’t been any peer power.  That power, the power that had been amassed over the years, was controlled more though internal pressures than outside opposition.

“You have to be careful,” the long-dead Captain had said.  He had been blown up, along with his ship, in a suicide attack.  Toland remembered that day every time he heard about a terrorist attack.  “You’re the one on top, which means that everyone else will be looking for ways to bring you down, crashing down to the ground.”

The pistol glinted under the light on his desk.  The United States had turned Guam into an even larger base, when Japan had slipped away from the alliance with America, and it was intended to support a forward deployment.  Bombers and fighters had been arriving over the past week as units were mobilised and deployed outwards around the world; everyone knew that it was only a matter of time before the Pact attempted to occupy Guam.  Toland didn’t believe that it was possible, although the Pact could certainly destroy the base if they were prepared to use nukes; their logistics would be unable to handle the task.  

He reached down and stroked the pistol, almost like a lover.  Thousands of Americans had died under his watch, on the ships that had gone down at Taiwan.  Others were prisoners; several had been forced to make broadcasts to the American public, faithfully placed on the Internet or transmitted to America by the reporters present in Beijing.  He hadn’t been relived of command, not yet, but he was sure that when Congress finally managed to get a subcommittee running an investigation, he would be charged with gross negligence…and, deep inside, he blamed himself.  It would be easy, so easy, to pull out the pistol and shoot himself.  He had only survived through luck; he didn’t deserve to live.

But he had his duty.  He looked up at the image on the office wall; the original aircraft carrier Enterprise.  It had fought in most of the major battles of the Pacific War…and had survived, being replaced by a nuclear-powered aircraft carrier, and then a second carrier when the first one was placed into mothballs.  That Enterprise would be reactivated within a few months, he had been told; that would bring the United States back up to twelve active carriers.  The losses in aircraft and pilots were more severe, but there were spare pilots from the Air National Guard and the USAF; they might be used to serving on land, but they would have to get used to flying from carriers.  They might have been given orders for a limited counterattack, but they would need more to prevent the Chinese from invading Australia…

He closed the drawer firmly and locked it.  “Lieutenant, you may send in the Captains now,” he ordered.  “I’m ready to see them now.”

Better than shooting myself in front of them, he thought vaguely, as the door opened.  Four men stepped inside, their faces grim; they had all known what had happened at Taiwan…and they had all lost friends there.  Saving the situation and preserving what they could came first, but the American Navy was out for blood…and Toland knew that he too wanted blood.  It was time to settle the score a little.

“Gentlemen,” Toland said, as they saluted.  They had to have doubts about him, after the battle, but they showed none of it on their grim faces.  “Take a seat, please; we have a lot to discuss.”

He waited until they were seated, and then tapped the display.  Normally, a junior officer would have briefed them on the concept for Operation Vengeance, but security was paramount.  For the first time in seventy years, the United States didn’t control the Pacific Ocean; Toland knew, suddenly, how the naval planners must have felt as they tried to grapple with the overwhelming might of the United States.  They had all failed, until now; the USN was weaker than it had been in years.  Toland knew that that was his fault…and blamed himself.  If he had fired earlier…

“As you know, we took heavy losses two weeks ago,” he said.  The Captains’ developed grimmer expressions.  That was the understatement of the decade.  No one had taken losses like that since…well, since the Russo-Japanese War, over a hundred years ago.  “Since then, we have been running around trying to secure merchant shipping and get ships out of danger until we could coordinate a response to the Pact’s actions, something that has cost both sides dearly.  It’s time to extract a little revenge and prevent the Chinese from doing anything hasty.”

He tapped the display, revealing a set of images of the East Chinese Coast.  The images had been taken by the Kelly Johnston; the Captains didn’t need to know much about the stealth ship to appreciate the pictures.  The stealth drones might have been less stealthy than the USN had believed – the Chinese sensors, copied from Japanese designs, had shot down several drones – but a skilled operator could keep one hovering overhead for hours without being noticed.  It helped that the Chinese were reluctant to light off their radars; they would be targeted for later attention by the American spy satellites.  So far, the Chinese had limited their attacks on American satellites; both sides knew that if the war in space became total, the devastation would be immense, not least to the global communications network.

“For reasons unknown, the Chinese have merely enforced a blockade around Taiwan, rather than attempting a quick invasion,” Toland said.  The Captains nodded again; they had expected to be deployed out to engage the Chinese when they finally made their move.  “They’ve sunk several dozen Taiwanese ships and generally trapped everyone on that island, along with killing several hundred of our pilots.  For the moment, however, the Taiwanese have been generally raided, but not actually invaded.  We don’t expect this to last, but for the moment, we have an opportunity to put a spanner in the works.”

The display focused in on a military port.  The Chinese had never given it a name; they just called it by a number.  “This is a major port for the invasion,” Toland said.  It was crude and unsophisticated, with little of the beauty he would have seen in a true port, but it would serve its purpose.  “It has no other purpose; it’s hardly in a position to do anything useful.  The Chinese have been moving troops around near it ever since the battle, but so far their transports have not moved out from under their protective cover; those ships are the latest amphibious assault ships in the Chinese People’s Liberation Army Navy and they don’t want to lose them.”

He grinned.  “You gentlemen are going to ensure that something unfortunate happens to them,” he said.  His grin became wolfish.  “Your task is to destroy those ships, along with the soldiers they have embarked and the harbour if that can be accomplished.”

One of the Captains, Captain Herzog, frowned.  His dark face betrayed nothing of his thoughts, but his voice was a different matter.  “Admiral, how many missiles are we authorised to fire?”

Toland felt his grin grow into something darker.  “As many as you like,” he said.  “In fact, you all have permission to shoot your submarines dry, as long as those ships are sunk.  Each one of them is just as good as the Tarawa, or the Wasp; they’re a danger, not just to Taiwan, but also to our ships when we head in for Round Two.  They have to be destroyed and that’s your job.”

He leaned forwards.  “I won’t bullshit you,” he said.  “We took a beating and morale went downwards, civilian as well as military.  The broadcasts from China stuck a lot of nerves; those…people who were forced to transmit those statements from China have had a nasty effect, and then there is the danger of the Chinese lobbing nuclear missiles in our general direction.  We need a victory, one that comes at low cost and hurts the enemy; ideally, a perfect raid.”

“A Dolittle Raid,” Herzog said.  His face seemed to freeze for a moment; Toland had known him long enough to know that he would have preferred a honest fight.  “That’s what you want, not a serious hit, or even something that might risk us.”

“Precisely,” Toland agreed.  It wasn't an exact comparison, but it would do.  The Dolittle Raid had been launched to do more than just thumb American noses at the Japanese, but to convince both sides that America had both the will and the ability to win.  “As you may know from the general briefings, we have been skirmishing with the Chinese; our SSNs poking away at their shipping and their ASW units hunting for us.  We lost a boat in Indonesia to a minefield; the Chinese got clever and fooled the skipper into coming in too close.”

“So much for the international agreements against minefields,” Captain Barkley muttered.

“Weapons of the weak are the ones that they can use; they don’t have the choice between being nice or being nasty,” Toland reminded him.  “The strong get to think up silly rules banning the use of certain kinds of weapons.  Incidentally, the Chinese have warned against using biological or chemical weapons; I believe that the President intends that we should both share that reluctance.”

He tapped the display.  “You are ordered to proceed at once to this location,” he said.  The Captains leaned forwards.  The location seemed utterly nondescript.  “You will be given a communications code for communicating with your spotter craft; need to know only, just take my word for it.”  He held up his hand to prevent questions.  “Once you have linked up, you will proceed to a firing position, work out a firing pattern, and start shooting.  Once you have launched all of your missiles, you are to retreat at once; your spotter will also change position, but will wait around to observe the results.  Your six ships - Alabama, Alaska, Nevada, Tennessee, Pennsylvania, and West Virginia – are to return here for rearming; we expect that the Pact will feel the need to slap us back if the attack succeeds.  They’re riding high at the moment, but they have their weaknesses…and we have to take advantage of them.”

The Captains looked concerned.  They each commanded an SSGN; a former ballistic missile submarine that had been converted to fire off cruise missiles in support of forces on the ground.  Now…now, they were talking about launching a delaying action, something that had never been needed since Airborne soldiers had been raced into Iraq…and everyone on the ground had known that there would have been nothing to stop Saddam if he had headed south.  The United States had dodged a bullet.

He stood up.  “We’re going to be deploying B-1 and B-2 bombers from here and raiding their outer air defence network,” he concluded.  “You don’t need to know many details about that, but if the attack succeeds, we will have a chance to land a second punch into their defences.  We’re ready for them now, gentlemen; we have not yet begun to fight.

“Good luck, all of you,” he said.  “Now, before you leave, are there any questions?”

“This…Chinese woman they’ve had on television, there’s some talk that she’s a Chinese spy,” Captain Herzog said.  “Sir – Admiral – is there any truth in that?”

“I don’t think so,” Toland said.  “For what it’s worth, the intelligence brief I got was that the woman, Lieutenant Stephanie Tsuji, is actually a half-breed; Japanese and Chinese.  Of course, few westerners can tell the difference between them, but she’s not a recent immigrant from China.  Her family – both sides of her family – have been in Canada for nearly seventy years.  As for the others, we know them to be Americans, very far from home.”

He closed his eyes for a long moment.  It was human nature to have funny ideas about people on the other side of the world.  Iranians, during the first hostage crisis, had expected black Americans to side with them; the lone black American had done nothing of the sort.  Some Americans had done the same thing; there had been any number of strange myths circulating about China, and Japan, before the Pacific War.  Even now, few Americans could have found one of the new African countries on the map; the Pact had triggered off hundreds of small wars in the Dark Continent, merely to give Americans something else to worry about.

“We do know that the Pact has intelligence sources within America,” he said, after a moment.  “That’s why you have the sealed orders…and official orders to sail to back up American forces in Iran.  Publicly, everyone apart from your crew and myself will think you’ve gone west and joined up with the forces in the Gulf.  Strict radio silence; communicate with me though microburst transmissions and then only if there’s an emergency.  Your spotter will handle the other details.  Any more questions?”

“None, sir,” Harzog said.  “Just looking forward to the chance to get some payback.”

Toland eyed him.  “Just remember, your ship is important to us as well,” he said.  “I expect you to be careful; we need as many ships as we can deploy and we’re short on units.  There’s a war on in the Atlantic as well, so you’re going to be needed.  If it looks dangerous, break contact; only shoot your way out if there’s no other choice, understand?”

“Yes, sir,” they said.

“Good luck, all of you,” Toland said.  The sound of a bomber echoed through the room for a long moment.  “I’ll see you when you get back here.”

He watched as they filed out of the room, wishing that he could join them.  The surviving carrier was limping its long way back towards Pearl Harbour; the two intact carriers would be joining it, well outside the range of an effective Chinese attack.  The Chinese might try to attack with their submarines, but there was enough firepower surrounding the three carriers to make that fatal.  Perhaps the Chinese would try anyway, or perhaps they would wait; they were still moving in transports to the Indonesian bases.  His analysts believed that the Chinese were intent on hitting Australia; the Australians insisted that the Chinese had the capability to do just that.  Toland wasn't so sure; the Royal Australian Navy was hardly a pushover and they had back-up from American and British ships.  The Chinese and Indians would have to take out that fleet to land their troops…and how could they do that?

And even if they landed, the Australian Army was hardly a pushover either.  There might have been problems with refugees fleeing the Chinese occupation, but that wasn’t a dangerous problem; the Australians could handle a Chinese landing, unless the Chinese had something very clever up their sleeves.  All of Toland’s instincts told him that a Chinese landing was impossible…and yet there was the quiet nagging doubt that he was missing something important.

“We need to deal with Indonesia as soon as possible,” Toland muttered to himself, and started to go through the vast amount of information that had been gathered on the subject.  The Chinese and Indians had used a technique known as spamming; they’d pushed so much information out into the open that it was overloading the system and making it impossible to work out which bits were real and which bits were intended to distract the analysts.  After Taiwan, every last piece of information would be examined; much valuable time would be wasted.  “How can we do that?”

The CIA had been working hard, but if there was one thing the CIA had a bad reputation for, it was keeping a secret.  Toland knew that it wasn’t as bad as some of the reports suggested, but it was known for losing control of bits of information that should have remained firmly under control.  Agents and sources had been lost; no one would forget in a hurry the call from Iraq to Langley; “we caught all your agents.  Please send more.”  

If there were insurgents on the ground, they would be unlikely to be willing to talk to the Americans without clear proof that the Americans could win…and there would be political problems with using Jihadis, not least because no one would forget the last war in a hurry. Toland could lose his job over recommending contact, and the CIA had no contacts anyway, but there was a nation that had a very real interest in monitoring what was happening in Indonesia.

Toland smiled.  He wouldn’t discuss it officially.  Just an official little chat about the situation…and a very unofficial probe to see what could be done, if it was necessary.  If the Australians knew ways to contact the insurgents, assuming that the insurgents were willing to help, perhaps the Chinese could be held down long enough for the United States to mass its power…and grind the Chinese into dust.

“Jayne, I want you to call Graeme Johnston,” he said.  The Australian was officially the liaison from the Royal Australian Navy to TASK FORCE TAIWAN, but Toland knew that he was also an intelligence officer.  “I want to have a few words with him.”  He grinned.  His career was doomed anyway and by the time anyone else grasped the nettle, it might be too late.  “I’ve had an idea…”

Chapter Twenty-Six: Standing on the Defensive

Camp Potsdam, Germany

“What was it like in Poland?”

Captain Guntar Markus looked up from his tank to see a young officer, wearing a British uniform.  The EUROFOR deployment plan – which had taken years to get everyone to agree on it and had proven completely useless when it had been tested – called for every soldier who served in EUROFOR to wear a European uniform; that plan had probably been swept away by the press of events.  Even now, miles from the front, they could hear the sound of gunfire; the Russian infantry was skirmishing with its European counterparts.

“What was it like?”  He asked.  He hadn’t realized that he was an expert, suddenly, in the arts of war.  “It was a nightmare.”

The long drive out of Poland had been terrifying.  They’d managed to link up with several other units and make their slow way across the country, but the Russian aircraft had attacked them, several times.  Only support from the German and French air forces had enabled them to get out of the Russian trap; other EUROFOR armoured units hadn’t been so lucky.  The land of Poland was littered by the debris of a hundred tiny desperate encounters; a thousand deaths in the war.

“The Russians are tough,” he said, after a moment.  He tried to explain and failed.  “Did you serve in Iran?  I knew British units served there?”

“No,” the British officer said.  He held out a hand.  “Captain Anderson.”

“Captain Guntar Markus,” Markus said.  “The Russians use their tanks to punch through and they can destroy our tanks; it’s not like Iran, where only a few older tanks were lost in the fighting.  They flow against our lines, looking for weak spots, and then they punch through…and they use massive waves of shellfire to clear the way.  If they score a direct hit on your tank, you’re fucked.”

He stood up and peered around the camp.  It was organised chaos; he’d almost despaired when he’d first seen it, but it was starting to come under control.  British, French and German tanks were being prepared to move out to their battle positions; a massive collection of anti-aircraft weaponry had been assembled to beat off any Russian attacks.  Everyone knew that Camp Potsdam would be the first target of a Russian offensive; it was heavily guarded and surrounded by armed soldiers.

“We can kill them too, of course, and the stealth systems seem to work,” he continued.  He wanted – needed – a drink.  “They have overwhelming numbers and they’re not scared to use them; they also have the desire to destroy as many of the opposition soldiers as possible.  They could have taken Warsaw sooner, except they had to crush all of the Poles first; resistance is going to be a bugger to organise.”

“I think I see,” Anderson said.  He looked down at the ground, and then up at a scorch mark on the side of Markus’s tank.  “Sir…what was it like?”

Markus lifted an eyebrow.  “I have never been in combat before,” Anderson admitted.  Markus smiled; he had never been in combat, real combat, until the Russian tanks had come rolling into Poland.  Anderson was virgin, just like he had been; he wouldn’t remain inexperienced for long.  “What happens if I fuck up?”

“Then you die,” Markus said.  He tapped the side of his tank.  The Eurotank had been through too much to just abandon it in Poland, even though he had been urged to do just that.  A handful of Russians had been killed by Eurotanks that had been abandoned and left in automated defence mode; the tanks had engaged any Russian targets they had come across.  “You just have to keep your nerve and remember…”

Anderson blinked.  “Remember what?”

“Remember that you’re not alone out there,” Markus said.  “There are your fellow tankers, and then the infantry and then even the Marines.”  A group of German Marines had arrived at the camp as well; no one had expected them and no one had known they were coming.  The military communications network was still not back to normal.  “Don’t let them down and they won’t let you down.”

He grinned suddenly.  “You people have all the luck; we were stuck out there, utterly cut off from any senior authority or even some of the people who were meant to be out there beside us.  It wasn’t like that in my day.”

Anderson stared at him, and then realised that Markus was pulling his leg.  “I see, sir,” he said.  He sounded very thoughtful…and eager to get stuck into the Russians.  Markus remembered that Britain had been bombed as well and wondered if Anderson had lost anything in the bombing raids.  “We’re going to be fighting on even terms.”

“Not that even,” Markus warned.  The Russians had been pressing hard against the European forces in the air.  “They’re going to hit us soon, with the largest sledgehammer they can muster…and when it comes, we’re going to have to wear them down as much as possible while giving up as little ground as possible.  If we fail to hold the line, I don’t know when we can make our next stand and…”

He shook his head.  “This war…this is going to take place in Germany,” he said.  He felt cold.  “We expected to fight wars in places on the other side of the world.  We’re going to be fighting in Germany…and if we can’t stop them, Russian forces are going to be marching through Berlin and drinking wine in Paris.”

“Paris is a war zone at the moment,” Anderson said.  “I was talking to a French Major; he wanted to go back there and clear out the enemy.  The French Government went out on a limb to help us.”

“I don’t care,” Markus said.  “If we don’t stop the Russians, what happens then?”

He stood up.  “I think that I’ve done all I can for this tank,” he concluded.  “I need a drink.  Coming?”

“Only if there’s tea,” Anderson said.  “It’s the liquid that most inspires the British soldier while on active duty.”

“The locals have done what they can,” Markus assured him.  “We might even be able to find some tea.”

***
“We have the 1st -11th Cuirassier Regiment moving into position now,” Colonel Florette Rolande said, as they waited for the Eurocopter to land.  Trautman nodded; like every other officer in the know, he had been horrified at the risk the new German Chancellor was taking.  “That brings most of the French 3rd Mechanized Brigade into position to support the defence, which gives us an additional punch when the Russians attack.”

“Good,” Trautman said.  The main body of the Russian force was remaining back from the border, but they could be on the border within hours, perhaps less.  The analysts had gone over all of the information and had concluded that the Russians were re-supplying their forces before pressing the offensive; Trautman hadn’t been surprised at all.  The Russians had to know that the balance of power was in their favour for the moment…but that would change quickly.  The first American units might have been ‘only’ light infantry, but heavier vehicles would be on their way…and the American USAF was already moving into bases in Britain.  “Is there any word from our scouts?”

“Only a set of light Russian divisions near the border,” Florette said.  “They’re just a tripwire for us if we go on the offensive.”

Trautman scowled.  He had long been a devotee of Field Marshall Erwin Rommel's tactics for fighting, particularly the suggestion about what to do when cut off from orders.  “In the absence of orders, go find something and kill it,” Rommel had said, but Trautman knew that he didn’t have the firepower to evict the Russians from their positions.  It would have cost him men and equipment for nothing.  Rommel had also been clear on that point.

“Courage which goes against military expediency is stupidity, or, if it is insisted upon by a commander, irresponsibility,” he muttered to himself.  “Don't fight a battle if you don't gain anything by winning.”

Florette blinked.  “Sir?”

“Never mind,” Trautman said.  He was personally brave and had high faith in the units that had been assigned to EUROFOR.  No one had questioned the bravery or professionalism of the British force and the French were well-known to be brave and capable.  They had drilled with the 7th Panzer, back before EUROFOR had been created, and won three times out of five.  He smiled, remembering the year after; the 7th Panzer had spent months preparing for the rematch.  “He’s mad.”

The Eurocopter settled to the ground.  It was almost completely unescorted, although a small force of Eurofighters remained nearby, officially running CAP over the borders.  The Russians weren’t likely to engage a single helicopter, particularly with more tempting targets around, but if they knew who the helicopter was carrying, they might risk a MIG-41 or a cruise missile in an attempt to destroy it.  It had taken nearly two weeks to find the person with the strongest claim to the leadership of Germany…and no one wanted to go through that again.

The hatch opened and Chancellor Hans Konigsberg stepped out.  He was young, a junior minister who had served the previous Chancellor as a Ministry of Consumer Protection, Food and Agriculture; a Cabinet-level post.  He had been lucky; rather than being in Berlin and killed by the missile strikes, he had been in Latin America.  Venezuela might have been flirting with the Pact – Venezuela’s government had a long history of opposition to America, even before the Pact had been created – but there had been no attempt to prevent Konigsberg from returning to Germany.  Trautman couldn’t decide if that was a good or a bad sign; it could be either.

Konigsberg reminded Trautman, more than a little, of Brad Pitt.  His wife had been a huge fan of the American, although personally the younger Trautman had been fonder of any of Pitt’s wives.  There had been newer stars, but he had stopped going to movies since his wife had died; his daughter, who stayed with his grandparents, had never become interested in movies.  She was more interested in boys.

“General,” Konigsberg said.  Trautman pegged him at once; under the suit, tie, and firm handshake, Konigsberg was scared.  Trautman didn’t blame him; from what he’d been able to find out ever since being informed that Germany had a new Chancellor, Konigsberg had never been expected to rise much higher than he had.  The ruling coalition of Germany might have accepted him as a junior minister, but no one had expected him to become Chancellor.

And yet…what choice had there been?  The Chancellor was dead.  The President was dead.  Many of the Cabinet and Parliament were dead.  Others had been on the run, some had been scattered; the survivors had been almost broken by the sheer crushing weight of the problem.  Konigsberg held what was threatening to become the most difficult Chancellorship since Adolph Hitler…and Trautman didn’t envy him at all.

He introduced Konigsberg to his senior officers, and then showed him around the camp.  It looked the hub of a powerful military force to an untrained eye…and Trautman could sense that Konigsberg found it reassuring.  The tanks alone possessed more firepower than most civilians in Europe would ever see in their lives; the blunt truth, that the Russians had more tanks, wouldn’t make such a large impression.  Konigsberg watched with interest as Trautman took him through the camp, and then into the command post, which had been partly repaired since the first attacks.

“I can’t say how glad I am to see that you have everything under control,” Konigsberg said, as they sat down in Trautman’s office.  It still bore the imprint of the previous commanding officer, who had died before he knew that Germany was under attack.  “Berlin is a panicking mess at the moment and there’s chaos everywhere.”

Trautman nodded.  The soldiers had been separated from the main population through the desperate need to establish a defence line…and he hadn’t had time to go to Berlin or another city.  He’d heard that there had been food riots, hording, looting, hate crimes, skinheads trying to take out their fears on Turks, Turks trying to take out their fears on skinheads, rape…German society was staggering under the weight of the Russian threat.  It would only get worse once the Russians began their attack.

“The Russians killed much of the elected government,” Konigsberg continued.  Trautman felt a moment of pure impatience; he knew that already.  “We have assembled a rump Bundestag, but there are only seventy members left; many of the ones who were present in the chamber at the time of the attack are either dead or seriously wounded.  It’s not going to last long, but for the moment we have a state of emergency and the authority to act.

“What I need to know is simple; can we win?”

Trautman looked up at the map.  There were no symbols on it; he knew where every unit was in his head.  A military officer had to master that skill, the skill of knowing everything about the forces under his command; it was something that he had always found effortless.  There were others who had real problems with it; they could never be trusted to rise to high positions, even if they were competent at lower levels.

“The Russians have something around thirty of their best divisions either facing us or moving into position through Poland,” he said, after a long moment.  He knew what EUROFOR knew about Russian positions as well.  “They’re also moving in FSB units, although those seem to have a lower priority; they have a reputation for brutality, but not for actually military competence.  I should warn you that we can’t count on that; they’re armed and often quite experienced in their own areas.  Most of them serve as occupation forces; so far, they have been able to hold the Poles down.”

He shuddered inwardly.  Some of the reports were horrifying; looting, raping and murder on a massive scale.  Others were harder to believe; police and army personnel, from the lowliest Private to the surviving Generals, were being rounded up and shipped out east.  The reports from the Baltic States were similar; the Russians seemed not to care about their public relations any more.  There had been one report of Russian Generals shooting their own men to keep order, but Trautman didn’t believe it.

“That force is going to come across the border as soon as they feel they have enough power to win,” he continued.  “Facing it, we have ten divisions of NATO troops and several other divisions that have been assembled from units that were chewed to bits by the Russians.  The Russians have superiority in airpower, but we have deployed hundreds of ground-based SAM units and have massed our own airpower for harassing the Russians when they come for us.”

His hand traced a line on the map.  “Our main weakness is that we have very little in the way of reserves,” he admitted.  “For the moment, the British 1st Armoured Division is serving as our main reserve force, along with a French and one of our own units, but we’re critically weak.  If I were the Russian commander, I would be looking to punch through my lines at two points and then try to pocket and destroy my forces.  That would be bad; we would have to withdraw at once and losses would be terrifying.

“At the moment, we have plans to wear the Russians down,” he concluded.  “We cannot fight a battle that involves the Russians trapping us in position; we may have to fall back while weakening them.  The old plan of trying to hold Berlin may be unworkable.”

“The Bundestag is determined that Berlin is to be held,” Konigsberg said softly.  “Is that possible?”

Trautman had expected that, but it was still a shock.  “Berlin is around seventy kilometres from the Russian lines,” he said.  “The Russians have prepared a massive hammer to beat us with; the last thing we need is to stand there and wait for them to clobber us to death.  Given half a chance, that is what they will do.”

Konigsberg leaned forwards.  “The Bundestag is split,” he said.  “Some want us to fight to the finish, no matter the cost; others want to seek a peace agreement with the Russians, even if that means selling out the Poles.  None of them want to leave Berlin and…my god, the reports from the refugees.  They’re scared of that happening in Germany.”

Trautman took a long breath.  “The Russians have no choice, but to knock us and the French out of the war,” he said.  He nodded towards the map.  “Look; they have to take us out – they can’t go anywhere else.  If they stay where they are, we will build up and eventually crush them; they know that as well as we do.  They have given us, I suspect, more time than they would like…and that must grate on whoever is commanding the enemy force.  As soon as they’re ready, they’ll come for us.”

“I know,” Konigsberg said.  “I need to know, General; can we win?”

“I believe that we can win,” Trautman said.  It was true; the Russians had missed their best chance through shortcomings in their logistics.  If they had just marched on, he knew that there would have been no hope of stopping them short of France.  “I fear, however, that we will lose Berlin.”

Konigsberg frowned.  “And if I order you to hold Berlin?”

Trautman met his eyes.  “Our allies wouldn’t go along with it,” he said.  “We would be spending their lives freely – for nothing.  The military committee is in agreement; we cannot hope to stop the Russians in a position war.  They’ll fall back – and, frankly, they’re right.  If you order us to try to hold Berlin, we will try, but we will almost certainly fail.”

Chapter Twenty-Seven: The Battle of Iceland, Take One

Atlantic Ocean/ Norwegian Sea

“We have reached our patrol position,” the aircraft commander reported.  “Admiral, we are ready to begin passive observation.”

Admiral Daniel Sulkin watched over the shoulder of one of the operators as the massive Blackstar moved into a search pattern.  The Blackstar was a rare aircraft, an attempt to create a long-range stealth bomber that had failed, although not until several prototypes had been built.  They had a low profile, but they were not perfectly undetectable; they couldn’t make it through the massive chain of warning systems in North America without being noticed.  Russian Naval Aviation, however, had found a use for the handful of Blackstars, one that they were perfectly suited to handle.

“Ensure that all of our communications are limited to laser links to the satellites,” Sulkin said, unwilling to admit how nervous he was.  The Russian submarines had wrecked havoc across the Atlantic Ocean, but now NATO was on the alert.  The USN had been bloodied, but it wasn’t beaten, not yet.  It was still a very dangerous enemy…and it had a score to settle.  “We don’t want to be noticed.”

Somewhere in the trackless wastes of the Atlantic Ocean, there was an American force.  The Pact satellites that should have provided information on the course and speed of the Americans had been disabled, shot down just before the American force changed course, heading away from the convoys to head north.  Neither side was really willing to indulge in unrestricted anti-satellite warfare, but Sulkin was pretty sure that the Americans were convinced that they were undetectable.  A submarine might see them, might even escape their ASW ships long enough to transmit a sighting report, but otherwise…

They didn’t know about him, of course; they couldn’t know that his aircraft was out, waiting for them.  The Blackstar was well outside their detection range, even assuming that the Americans had managed to develop something truly new in the field of radar technology; stealthy, the aircraft could slip much closer when they found the American ships.  Sulkin had no intention of going any closer than he actually had to ensure that the mission was completed.  They could pick up the American transmissions from well outside their reception range.

He smiled thinly.  Both sides had played out the war over the past seventy years, ever since Russia and America had become aware that the other would be an implacable enemy.  Sulkin was old enough to remember the dark times when the Soviet Union collapsed, when Russia had slunk off into the shadows to lick its wounds while the West moralised; he was determined to ensure that next time, it would be the Russians doing the moralisation.  They knew the moves of the war; everyone knew that the Russians had to win in Europe and close the sea-lanes.  Taking Iceland was an obvious step, so obvious that he was genuinely surprised that the Americans had decommissioned their bases at Iceland’s request.  The gentle people hadn’t even bothered to prepare for war!

“I intercepted a transmission,” a female operator said.  “It was French, I think; it was warning of a submarine nearby.”

Sulkin shrugged.  Hunting down and destroying as much shipping as possible was also a predicable – and necessary – move.  It was amusing; the Americans had pushed his nation as hard as they could, without bothering to take basic precautions against his nation just lashing back with all its might.  The Russian Navy had convoyed a massive set of transports to Iceland the day after the war began…and the Americans had not been able to interfere.  The only interference had come from the Norwegians, who had already been crippled by the Air Force and the Army.

The game was very simple.  The Russians had to take Iceland.  The Americans had to take it back.  The Russians had to smash the American force that would attempt to take Iceland back.  The Americans had to fend off the Russian force that was intent on preventing them taking Iceland back…

Both sides knew the steps of the dance…

“Got them,” the operator said.  Sulkin realised dimly that over an hour had passed.  The display lit up with an automatic analysis of the contact; a mil-grade American-produced radar, one capable of scanning for contacts at a considerable distance.  Other radars appeared near the main contact, some of them smaller and meant for aircraft tracking, others watching the seas for possible surfaced submarines.  “There are at least nine American warships there, and one warship of unknown origin.”

“Probably one of their lapdogs,” Sulkin said.  The declaration of war from several of the smaller NATO nations had not caused sleepless nights in Moscow.  Some of them didn’t even have an army!  Panama’s declaration of war had caused considerable amusement, not least because there had been massive anti-American demonstrations in the streets.  There had been hopes that there would be a rebellion, but so far one had failed to materialise.  “Is there any chance of singling out the transports?”

The operator looked nervous.  Men and women had been sent to the punishment battalions for failing to do the impossible before; the ranks were filled with soldiers and officers who had annoyed their superiors, or failed to carry out impossible tasks.  Sulkin felt a twinge of guilt, but was also too worried about the American ships to care; they had to be destroyed first.

“Not unless we move closer and get lucky,” she said, after a moment.  “They’re keeping some of their radars at low-power and others have probably been left deactivated for fear of drawing too much attention.  We could paint them ourselves if we were closer, but…”

“I know,” Sulkin said, unwilling to take the risk.  An active scan would reveal their presence.  The Americans would launch their JSF fighters after him and his plane; his forces would be blinded.  “Compress all the information into a microburst, and then transmit to the aircraft staging posts.

“We have a war to win…”

***
“Admiral, we just got a FLASH transmission from the Crystal Palace,” Commander Sanchez said.  “They picked up a microburst from somewhere north of us, within range to pick up our radars.”

Admiral Barbara Kinninson examined the report with interest.  “I thought that microburst transmissions were impossible to pick up unless you knew what you were looking for,” she said.  “Are we sure that it was real?”

Sanchez, who served as her EW officer, nodded.  “They can’t really be picked up against a background full of electronic noise,” he said.  “The ocean might as well be naked for that purpose; the burst was noted and logged by a listening satellite.  We can’t localise the source – the Japanese sold the Russians plenty of EW devices – but there has to be an aircraft or small boat out there.”

Barbara smiled.  She had come from a naval family; her father, grandfather and great-grandfather had all served in the United States Navy.  Her family counted two war heroes and several officers who had served with distinction.  Barbara had no intention of being the last; she had been groomed for a naval career ever since she had taken her first dependents cruise at three years old.

“Good,” she said.  “Transmit the warning to the Batmen and then prepare to launch our aircraft.  It’s time to make the first strike on Iceland.”

No one was quite sure – and Barbara blamed the Icelanders – what the Russians had been able to land on Iceland.  There had been claims that the Russians had hidden equipment on Iceland before they landed, which wasn’t too likely to be accurate, but it had led to the various intelligence groups trying to go through everything they had picked up to see what might have been shipped to Iceland.  With different analysts coming up with different ideas, Barbara suspected that the Russians had managed to pack more in their transports than seemed possible to a layman.  She’d participated in a Marine exercise – hell, some of the ships in her fleet had been intended for a Marine exercise – where the ship had seemed to be larger on the inside than the outside.

“A second FLASH warning,” Sanchez said.  “We just had an alert burst from Norway; the Russians are launching a major force of bombers, coming out to hunt for us.”

Barbara ran her hand through her short hair.  The Russians hadn’t been able – or willing – to build newer designs of carriers; they had merely built five of the Admiral Kuznetsov-class.  They might be good ships, or at least good ships if handled by good crewmen, but against the might of the combined NATO navies, their operational life would be very brief indeed.  The Russians had five carriers; three of them were in harbours, widely scattered, and one was in the Mediterranean.  One, the first Russian carrier to fight in a war, had been sunk at Taiwan.   Instead, they had built bombers, and missiles, and the lethal combination had worked at Taiwan.

Barbara was determined that it would never happen again.

“Good,” she said again.  The Russians had behaved exactly as she had predicted; exactly as they had no choice, but to behave if they wanted to keep Iceland.  “Launch the AWACS, and then have the strike group launched towards Iceland.  We have a battle to win.”

She had only two carriers, the USS William Jefferson Clinton and the USS George Washington, but she had an ace up her sleeve.

Two of them, actually.

***
“That is definitely the American carrier group,” the operator said.  “I have fighters launching now, being pinged by the American radars, heading north.”

Sulkin glanced at the map, but he didn’t have to do that to know where the Americans were going; there was only one real target.  “Iceland,” he said.  “What is their estimated time of arrival?”

The American carriers had launched over eighty aircraft, presumably targeting the forces that had been rushed into the small nation.  Sulkin wished them luck at that; they’d taken the sensible precaution of creating a number of false targets to soak up American bombs.  He would have been more worried about an air-superiority configured B-52; they might actually have done more damage and supported American forces on the ground.  It wouldn’t be long before the Naval Infantry had to fight to hold Iceland.

“Around fifty minutes,” the operator said.  “They’re launching air support and EW aircraft as well, backing up their fighters.  I think some of the other aircraft are tankers; they’ll be needed for the fighters to refuel once they have attacked the bases.  The MIG-35s on Iceland might be able to take a few of them down and strand the Americans…”

“Concentrate on the task at hand,” Sulkin said, not unkindly.  Enthusiasm was all very well, but it had to be focused on the coming battle.  Iceland had a fully deployed anti-aircraft regiment with some of the most modern antiaircraft systems that the Pact could deploy.  The Americans would be walking into a hail of fire when they attempted to take down the air defences through one of their SEAD missions.  Russia had studied American tactics at length.  “Position of the American fleet now?”

“Moving towards Iceland and closing the range,” the operator said.  “Request permission to transmit an update to the raiding force.”

“See to it,” Sulkin said.  He watched grimly.  “Has Iceland launched its drone?”

“Yes, sir,” the operator said.  “The drone is on its way.”

Sulkin nodded.  “Time for the raiding force to reach its targets?”

“Thirty minutes from my mark…mark,” the operator said.  “Orders?”

Sulkin didn’t hear her.  “Just keep looking in the wrong direction, Americans,” he said.  “I have your surprise right here.”

***
The Backfire bomber had been in service for over fifty years, but its pilots loved it.  The bomber was – in theory – capable of reaching the United States; its successor, the Blackjack bomber, was definitely capable of reaching America.  Its pilots considered themselves to be the best of the best Russian fliers; they knew that they had spent literally years preparing for the moment they were facing.  Russia would depend on them to land the single greatest punch they could in the opening salvo.

Some of them hated the hit-and-run tactics; others loved them.  They’d all seen what had happened at Taiwan, where American point defence had taken down over two-thirds of the attacking missiles.  Stocks had been run down to danger levels just to ensure that they could pack the largest punch they could; get in, hit, and get out at supersonic speed.  A long battle worked in the favour of the Americans; they had only one chance to make their weight count.

Flickers of laser light linked the bombers together as the countdown ran down.  They would be detected by now, they were sure; they knew exactly what the Americans could do and had planned on the worst-case possibility.  If the Americans launched their fighters to beat them off, they would fire and run; if not, they would fire when they were close enough to get in one hard punch.

It wouldn’t be long now.

***
“Come on, you bastards,” Barbara breathed, as the Backfires grew closer.  She had prohibited a formal weapons lock, although they hardly needed one; the Russians were close enough to get a lock without focusing the sensors, even though they were still out of range.  The Russians knew what was in the public domain, she assumed; they could launch against the task force and know that they would be safe.  There was no way to know what type of missiles had been loaded onto the Backfires, but she assumed that the Russians would have sought to load the most powerful antiship missiles in their arsenal, which meant they fire at any moment.

Sanchez looked up at her.  “Admiral, any orders?”

Barbara shook her head.  She’d given all the orders she could give; everything else would have to wait.  Combat was one long period of boredom, punctured by bursts of activity and sheer terror.  Barbara had been in danger before, back when she’d been a junior officer on a destroyer at Iran, but she’d never faced such a threat before.  The Iranian Backfires had all been spent on their Civil War; none of the fanatics had tried to use them against the Americans.

“Come on,” she breathed.  “I’ve got you a big fat juicy target, right here…”

The Russians might know that they had been seen; they would be foolish to assume anything else.  They really had timed everything perfectly, even though Barbara had given them a hand; if something went wrong, she would be very likely to be charged with either gross incompetence or treachery.  Admiral Toland’s career was under threat; Barbara had no intention of losing a second battle exactly the same way.  To the Russians, she had sent much of her defence forces away from the carriers, leaving them almost defenceless.

“Launch the ready fighters at M-30,” she ordered.  At that point, the Russians would either start smelling a rat, or conclude that the American electronics were grossly overrated.  “Move the CAP into a covering position, don’t send them out in pursuit; I want them here.”  She grinned.  “Some grumbling on the communication channels would be acceptable, I think.”

“There is such a thing as being too clever,” Sanchez reminded her.  A group of fighter jocks making rude remarks about female admirals might give the Russians a laugh…or they might conclude that it was a show put on for their benefit.  “Admiral?”

Barbara nodded slowly.  The display showed the Russian aircraft almost perfectly; their present location, and all of their possible course changes.  If the Russians continued on their current course for another ten minutes, escape would be impossible…

“Admiral, we just had a radar sweep,” Sanchez snapped.  “It was a drone; it’s sweep the fleet and provided targeting information for the bastards!”

“Lob a missile at it,” Barbara said, keeping her face composed.  The drone hadn’t been unexpected; the Russians would need more precise targeting information if they were to avoid falling prey to various countermeasures.  “I don’t want it sending any information home…at least, not yet.”

She composed herself.  It wouldn’t be long now…

***
The raid commander was a Russian nationalist of the highest order.  He had been one of the first to embrace the new order of President Lapotin, the first to accept his role in the new state, and the first to have a picture of Stalin hanging over his desk in the air base.  He had taken part in the grand purges that had crushed much of the looters, wreckers and criminals who had plagued Russia; he had served well and faithfully, receiving the Backfire squadron as a reward for good service.

He was also competent and careful by nature…and he was puzzled.  The Americans were not stupid; that point had been hammered into him by his old trainers.  They could be fools, people who could allow themselves the delusion that the world was a nice place, but they weren’t stupid.  The commander had served under a female commander, one of the handful in the Russian Air Force; he knew better than to think that a woman was automatically bad at military matters.  And yet…the American Admiral was practically inviting him to fly down and stick his missiles up her cunt.  It didn’t make sense; he was seeing exactly what he wanted to see…and that worried him.

He tapped his microphone.  “Is there any sign of enemy fighters?”

“Just the CAP,” Admiral Sulkin said.  He sounded as puzzled as the commander himself.  “I think that you should engage now.”

“Understood,” the raid commander said.  It meant firing earlier than he would have liked, and hard questions would be asked by the ground crews, none of whom could fly an aircraft to save their lives.  He brought up the targeting information quickly and efficiently.   The Americans had placed their carriers in the centre of their formation, clearly thinking that the carriers were the real targets, and that would cost them.  “I am locking on and firing now…”

He looked up as something flared.  “Bozhe moi!”

Chapter Twenty-Eight: The Battle of Iceland, Take Two

Atlantic Ocean/ Norwegian Sea

“Fire,” Captain Jose Aviles snapped.  “All Batmen; fire!”

They called themselves the Batmen, a joke that had grown out of the vast secrecy surrounding the Next Generation Weapons program; some of the weapons and craft that had been developed in the heart of America were so secret that only the President was briefed on them, and then only in the most general terms.  The Batmen had accepted their isolation from the remainder of the USAF; they had a more than ample compensation.  They got to fly the hottest aircraft in the world, quite literally; the Batman aircraft was the most deadly aircraft ever created.

It had been, Aviles had been told, developed as a practical exercise; designers had been given an open budget, access to the most powerful computers in the world, and told to go nuts.  A few years later, they had produced the plans for the first Batman, which was also the most expensive aircraft ever designed.  Each Batman cost the USAF three times as much as any Raptor or JSF: the Pentagon had refused to buy more than a handful of the aircraft, and insisted on using them for only the most secret and delicate missions.  It had taken a direct Presidential order to have the twelve aircraft in existence assigned to Admiral Barbara Kinninson for her mission, but it hadn’t taken long for her to think of a use for them, even if some of the Batmen considered it below their dignity.

Aviles didn’t care.  The Batman – the name would probably not last once the aircraft entered general production – was the world’s first supersonic stealth fighter.  It had a cruising speed of over Mach Three, was armed to the teeth, and had an awesome range.  Each Batman carried two crewmembers; Aviles and his crew had a range of prototype implants to keep them awake and aware.  Normally, an irony that was not lost on them, they would have flown from a base in Iceland, at least until the Icelanders had thrown the NATO base off their soil.  It had given the Batmen a laugh; their work, which kept them on the edge, proved that there was no room for neutrality in the world.  Instead, they had flown from a British base; that too had required a direct order from the President.

The shape of the Russian bomber grew on his display as he took the Batman closer to the Russians.  Admiral Kinninson’s plan had been quite simple; the Batmen, of whom only a handful of people knew that someone was out there, had flown to the north of the fleet, keeping radio silence.  When the Russians had appeared, the Batmen had merely closed with them, preparing to fire.  The Russians had been caught completely by surprise.  The Batmen had their missiles off before the Russians could react.

“Shit, they got some missiles off,” Batman Six snapped.  Her voice was cold and hard; the hypersonic missiles would be heading towards the fleet, faster than even the Batmen could move.  “Should we engage?”

“Negative,” Aviles said.  He knew that there was nothing the Batmen could do about the hypersonic missiles, not now; the important thing was to prevent them from launching more.  The Batmen carried their missiles inside a recessed compartment; he had already launched half of his missiles, firing from very close range.  Seconds later, the first Backfire exploded in a ball of fire, a second taking a hit on its wings and plummeting down towards the water, far below.  Aviles didn’t think that any of the crew would survive; he made a note to ensure that a SAR helicopter was dispatched from the carriers, assuming that they survived.  “Bring down all of the bombers!”

He yanked his Batman around as a Backfire tail-gun started to fire, pouring fire towards his aircraft.  He cursed silently for forgetting that the Russians could still see them; the Batmen had never faced a real test before.  They had been invisible threats, ghosting their way over battlefields fought over by shadow warriors; no one outside the community and the people on the battlefield knew that anything had happened.  They had never expected to fight a stand-up battle and he cursed his oversight, even as he launched a missile towards the Backfire and saw it explode into a ball of fire.

The bombers were scattering now; he could only hope that they had lost their commander.  Some of them were still trying to fire missiles; he saw a Backfire roll over and fire a hypersonic before one of his subordinates blew it apart with a burst of cannon fire.  Others were trying to flee, but even the Backfire couldn’t outrun their missiles, or even the Batmen themselves.  One by one, they were hunted down and destroyed.

***
The raid commander was too experienced to panic.  “What the fuck are those?”

A second of pure horror swept through him.  He saw the enemy aircraft – American, it had to be American – as it fired a missile towards one of his aircraft.  It was a black vehicle, one that looked oddly familiar, and he thought for a moment that he was under attack by an F-117 Nighthawk, but the aircraft was shaped more like a Raptor.  He glanced down at the radar screen, seeing nothing; they had kept their own radars at low-level to avoid being detected…and they had clearly missed the ambush.

“Launch missiles now,” he snapped.  There was no longer any time to be precise; the impossible shapes meant that his aircraft and himself had come to the end of the line.  The important thing was to get his weapons off before he was killed, and to warn General Sulkin of the threat.  “Evasive action…”

The pilot threw the Backfire into a turn all the manuals warned them never to do.  Under other circumstances, it would be a court-martial offence; it placed the aircraft’s frame under very heavy stresses, just to escape a terminal threat.  The commander heard metal creaking as the Backfire flipped over, spinning through the air and plummeting towards the water.  Through some miracle, the pilot managed to regain control, pulling them out of their dive and trying to steady them.

“Keep us moving,” the commander snapped.  He knew that their enemies would know where they were; he brought up the full-powered radars and looked for a target.  There should have been burn-through at this range, the Americans were right on top of them, but there were only vague hints of their presence, hints that might as well have been caused by his aircraft being blown out of the sky.  “Get us a link to…”

“Commander,” the pilot snapped.  “Ahead of us!”

The commander looked up, in time to see one of the impossible aircraft, dead ahead of them and closing fast.  He hit the emergency transmit button, opened his mouth to command the weapons officer to open fire, and saw flames as the Batman blew his aircraft apart around him.  The fire reached for him…and sucked him down into darkness…

***
“What the hell is going on?”  Sulkin demanded.  The scene in front of him was impossible; missiles were appearing out of nowhere…and blowing his aircraft to pieces.  The Backfires had gotten off some of their missiles, which were heading down towards the American force at rapidly increasing speeds, but they were falling, they were being wiped out of the sky…and he couldn’t even see what was killing them!  His men were dying and he couldn’t even issue orders; what orders could he have issued?  What the hell were they fighting?

“I don’t know,” the operator said.  Somehow, the panic in her voice kept him focused; he placed a firm hand on her shoulder and pushed her down gently.  “Sir, the missiles are appearing out of nowhere.”

Sulkin looked up…and understood.  The Americans had somehow sneaked a stealth fighter or a stealth bomber, perhaps more than one, near the Backfires, which meant that he had been tricked.  Worse, thirty irreplaceable Backfires had been destroyed, or would be destroyed before they could retreat; they couldn’t be replaced until after the war ended.  He had expected losses, but not…

“Order the remaining aircraft to hit their afterburners and run,” he snapped.  He was likely to be stripped of his rank and sent to a penal battalion for the failure, but he had to save as much as possible, whatever the personal cost.  “I want them to head back to base and meet up with the tankers and the fighters…”

His mind raced.   Would their unknown enemies, the unknown American fighters – and he made a note to have sharp words with the GRU over that little intelligence failure – give chase?  He had MIG-41s near the bases; would they be able to bring one of the unknowns down for study?  There were plenty of radars near the airbases; they might be able to track the Americans with more power, or…perhaps the American craft had other weaknesses.  They had to launch missiles, which meant that…Sulkin had worked in the Russian stealth program and knew more about the technology than most; the Americans would have to keep their missiles inside the aircraft, which meant when they opened their hatches, they might be visible.

“And take us back too,” he said.  The drone from Iceland had been picked off by a single missile hit from an American destroyer, which wasn't a surprise, but it meant that there would be very little useful intelligence on how much damage the Americans had suffered.  “I want to go quiet and remain undetected; we don’t want them finding us until we are ready to be found.”

“Yes, sir,” the pilot said.  The aircraft heeled over and headed east, towards Norway; the Norwegian Air Force had been hammered enough over the last couple of weeks to weaken it and prevent it from carrying out all of its responsibilities.  They would be unable to detect the Blackstar…and if they did, they would be unable to do anything about it.  It would only be a few hours before he was back on the ground…and then it would be time to face the music.

“Take over command,” he ordered the operator.  She blanched, although she was smart enough to know that there was little to do under radio silence.  The war in the air had just changed again.  “I have to do some thinking.”

***
“Admiral,” Captain Shepherd said, “have you been holding out on us?”

Barbara had to grin.  “Something like that,” she said.  The Batmen had worked better than she had dared to hope, even if the Russians had managed to launch some of their missiles towards the carrier group.  There was no hiding a hypersonic missile; they were closing in on the carriers at very high speed.  “Captain, fight your ship; we’ll talk about the rest of the plan later.”

The Russian missiles closed in…and, for the first time, met a defence network that was ready and waiting for them.  Joint Strike Fighters orbiting over the fleet fired missiles towards the Russian missiles, attempting to kill them as far from the fleet as possible.  Tacticians had been predicting the use of nuclear warheads at sea ever since they had been invented; the Russians could have decided that the risk of a limited American retaliation made it worthwhile.  Two missiles fell, then two more…and the others surged closer, their drives pushing them well past the sound barrier.

Ship-launched weapons met them next, as counter-missiles launched from the decks of the escorting ships, their trajectories perfectly calculated to intersect with the Russian missiles.  Some missiles were perfectly on targets; others were just slightly out of their paths and missed their targets, but there was a final line of defence.  Close-in weapons, heavy guns and even some Metalstorm units, threw up a wave of fire…and the Russian missiles, one by one, fell to the defenders’ fire.

“You’ll notice,” she commented, “that the Russians are targeting the transports, rather than anything larger, such as the carriers.  Interesting.”

“They must want to go for a massive body count,” Sanchez said.  Barbara wasn’t so sure; the Russians had ample opportunities to run up the body count if they wanted to go after civilian units.  If they killed the Marines, they would weaken any defensive or offensive force, which would weaken America.  It took time to train a Marine, even with the volunteers and the new quick-train programs.  “Admiral…”

The final three Russian missiles were engaged.  They were too dumb to be distracted; decoys and electronic phantoms didn’t work as well as they should have done.  Two missiles fell to counterforce fire; the third struck an American destroyer and exploded.  Seconds later, the destroyer vanished in a rolling ball of fire, destroying it utterly.

“Launch a search and rescue team,” Barbara ordered.  Only one Backfire had escaped the Batmen, which might cause problems later.  She thought about ordering it destroyed, but it was already heading well out of range.  One of the Batmen might have been able to catch it, but satellites were reporting that the Russians were bringing hundreds of previously unknown radar sites online and launching more fighters, perhaps in an attempt to catch one of the Batmen.  There was going to be enough outraged shouting from the Batmen Team over the escape of one of their targets; the thought of what they would say if one was lost was amusing.  “Damage report?”

“Apart from the Farragut, we lost no ships and no casualties,” Sanchez said.  He consulted his display thoughtfully.  “The strikes are now inbound on Iceland.”

Barbara nodded.  They would hit the Russians first; soften them up a little, before landing.  It was basic tactics, particularly with the reports from Europe; NATO had insisted that the Marines wait, rather than being committed directly to Iceland.  Her force could interdict the Russians from rearming, true, but all that mattered was the danger of the Russians getting lucky.  If they actually hit one of the transports, next time, the invasion of Iceland would become much harder.

We should just land now and do it, she thought.  She knew what her orders were; she also knew that they were the wrong orders.  There was no choice, however; until the situation in Europe was resolved, there would be worries about committing her force anywhere, but Europe.  She could remember when liberating Iceland had been the first priority and, despite herself, she wondered when that had changed.  What were they thinking?

***
“This is a military airfield?”  General Nikolay Dzasokhov asked, as he looked over Keflavik.  His GRU officer had tried to explain that it was also called Leif Erickson IAP - Iceland's International Airport – but Dzasokhov knew military bases.  The Icelandic base might have started life as a military airport – and when he mentally blocked out the terminals from his view, he could see how it had begun – but now it was almost silly.  “What were they thinking?”

He had already decided that he didn’t like Iceland; he was confident that it was the fault of none other than General Aleksandr Shalenko that he was on Keflavik, rather than fighting on the western front.  The war there was a real war; Iceland didn’t even have the guts to resist.  Even taking hostages had been a half-hearted procedure; the entire Icelandic Crisis Response Unit had fired a few shots for the sake of honour, and had then surrendered.  President Lapotin – but he saw Shalenko’s hand behind it – had ordered that the two hundred Icelandic soldiers be kept under decent conditions.

Soldiers!  Dzasokhov spat on the tarmac.  They weren’t soldiers; they were glorified policemen.  He had expected a group of men like the FSB Security Battalions, who were detested by the regular military, but at least the FSB men were tough.  They were bastards, but they were tough bastards; the Spetsnaz were, at least.  The Icelanders hadn’t even tried to escape!  Pathetic poor stupid bastards…

The shape of a MIG-35 moved across the airport, aided by Air Force engineering teams, who had been working constantly to get the airport back into a military-grade airfield.  A determined defence could have cost the Russians the chance to use the airfield, but the Icelanders hadn’t even put up a serious defence, nor had they engaged in a sabotage campaign.  The FSB might mutter about resistance brewing underground, but Dzasokhov knew better; the Icelanders were sheep.  They had thought that the world would pass them by…

His pager bussed.  Moments later, the air raid warning started to howl; Dzasokhov was already halfway towards the temporary command post.  He had expected an air raid ever since the invasion, on the first day of the war; he had been careful to set his command post well away from anything the Americans might think that they had a reason to hit.  The Americans were fond of smart bombs, but smart bombs and dumb planners didn’t always make a happy world.  Almost as bad as dumb civilians who thought that they didn’t have to fight for anything…

He heard missies being launched into the sky and threw himself to the ground, crawling as fast as he could towards the command post.  He saw them, missiles streaking off into the sky, even as the first American missile lanced down towards one of his radars and destroyed it in a thunderous explosion.  An American aircraft, large, black and terrifying, seemed to race over the airfield, it’s pilot visible for a long chilling moment as the aircraft flashed by.  A missile followed it as it fled, hitting it; seconds later, it fell towards the ground and impacted with a thunderous boom.  The ground shook…

And then it was over.  He pulled himself to his feet and looked at the airport.  It was in ruins, with flames burning up from several hangers; the Icelandic civilian airliners had all been flown out on the second day of the invasion, just in case of just such an event.  The MIG was burning; it’s pilot a burned mass under his aircraft…

“Shit,” Dzasokhov said.

He looked towards the horizon and knew the truth.

The Americans were coming.

Chapter Twenty-Nine: The Calm Before the Storm

Hack Green, United Kingdom

“The classified operation was a success,” David Simmons said.  Only the Deputy Prime Minister, Major Lineman and General Peter Templeton were in the room; they were the only ones aware of the existence of the Batmen.  Simmons had heard, through the black operations grapevine, that there were people at Groom Lake demanding that all information regarding the Batmen be destroyed; the reports to the press had credited the kills to the USN fliers.  “Only one ship was lost during the battle.”

“Good,” Andrew Hastings said.  The Deputy Prime Minister looked tired; Britain had not come under sustained air attack since 1940, when Hitler’s air force had attempted to batter Britain into submission.  Operation Sea Lion might have been a delusion, but everyone knew that if the Russians did manage to punch their way into France, Britain would be next.  Might the Russians attempt an invasion?  “What about Iceland?”

“We hammered the place,” Simmons informed him.  “The Russians have dug themselves in, but we gave the place a pasting and flattened much of their anti-aircraft defences.  They were trying to move fighters into the bases we vacated, but hopefully the fleet can prevent them from landing more to threaten our shipping.”

Major Lineman scowled.  “We should move now,” he snapped.  The burly ex-Marine glared at the winking icon on the map.  “Iceland can be liberated as soon as we want, we’re just delaying things until the chips fall in Europe.  The sooner we end the war in Iceland, the sooner we can start pushing major reinforcements into Europe and stop the Russians dead in their tracks.”

Hastings matched him, glare for glare.  The Deputy Prime Minister had been forced to remain in the bunker, even while King Harry and the Prime Minister remained in London.  It was important, of course, to ensure that the British Government remained functional – although Simmons privately suspected that some British people would have different opinions – but being so far from London bothered Hastings.  He had admitted as much.

“If we keep the Russians keeping their heads down on Iceland, then it’s not a major problem,” Hastings said.  Lineman snorted.  “If we commit your Marines to recovering Iceland, the Russians might move now in Europe, before we are ready to meet them.”

Simmons had to admit that he had a point.  War stocks, some of them from the regular army, some from the different National Guards, had been opened.  Thousands of smaller weapons, including antitank and antiaircraft missiles, were being flown into Britain and then dispatched to Germany.  Only a small number of American soldiers had arrived, as yet, but there were more on the way.  The USAF had already moved fighter units into the remaining British airfields; they were working hard to recover control over the UKADR.

“We are hesitating,” Lineman insisted.  He pushed ahead in a bullish manner that wouldn’t win him any friends at all.  “We have to move now, because the longer we wait, the more chance that the Russians will find a way to surprise us – again.  The Battle of the Atlantic has not yet been won.”

“Or lost,” Hastings said.  “Mr Simmons?”

Simmons studied the display.  It was the latest information collected by the formidable intelligence-gathering resources of NATO, from the NSA to the top-secret French program that they were barely willing to admit existed.  It was very detailed, but only in the details; no one knew what the Russians were thinking.  The CIA had wound down its human intelligence gathering capabilities in Russia – from pitiful to very limited – and, he had learned from the Europeans, they had more or less done the same.  The Chinese and Russians were masters at outwitting the clumsy western intelligence programs; information on exactly what they were thinking didn’t come easily.  It was also something that no amount of computers and information technology could solve.

Privately, Simmons blamed the CIA.  The organisation had been tasked to find out ‘everything’ and it was formidable at finding out ‘almost everything,’ but it had an impossible task.  It had to follow up each and every possible lead, along with the FBI, and there were more leads than the number of terrorists in every neocon’s worst nightmare.  The Russians weren’t observing radio silence, they were chatting away…but far too much of it was nonsense.  One report had been of a force of Russian carriers approaching New York; another had been of a commando team operating in America.  Some reports were real intercepts, some reports were clearly disinformation…and some reports were just blowhards pretending to be important.  The situation in France was impossible to monitor; no one was sure just what was going on.

“The Russians have to be considering an offensive,” he murmured.  He had said as much to the President, upon seeing the latest information; the Russians were moving their own units forward towards jump-off positions.  Some of them had been raided by European air forces, but others had been shielded by what was rapidly becoming the most powerful SAM belt in the history of the world.  The Russians had to have gotten a sniff of the Batmen, or at least worked out what had happened; there were more radars than were needed to track an F-22.  “There’s enough firepower there to punch a hole through to Berlin.”

Lineman nodded.  There had been a long and brutal debate over tactics; the Germans had wanted a forward defence, to protect Berlin, and the other nations involved had wanted a more flexible defence.  The example of what had happened to Poland, with entire units wiped out before they had even had the slightest idea that something was wrong, worried them; they were not going to pin their forces to the defence of Berlin.  Trautman’s counter-plan hadn’t pleased the remains of the German Government, but there was little choice; they were critically weak in reserves and couldn’t afford serious losses.

“When they attack, they are going to be occupied totally on the western front,” Lineman said.  “That might be the best time to attack Iceland and liberate it.”

Simmons shrugged.  He understood Lineman’s point, not least because it was in accordance with the war plans that had been hastily drawn up and placed into operation.  The other issues were worse; the United States could not afford to ignore the wishes of its allies, unless it wanted to wind up with no allies.  The French, Germans and Spanish had all been offered peace terms from the Russians; would those terms be accepted if the situation changed?

“Then we would know what we needed to hit Iceland and what we would need here,” Simmons said, trying to calm the tempers down before there was a shouting match.  He’d heard that there had been several such shouting matches between liaison officers as everyone struggled to grapple with the fact of the Russian invasion.  “On a different note, the Russians – or perhaps the Chinese – launched missiles at Guantanamo Bay detention camp and destroyed half of the barracks?”

Hastings blinked.  “Spite?  An attempt to rub your nose in the war?  An attempt to kill the people there?”

Simmons shrugged.  It had seemed like a waste of missiles, except the Pact governments had been demanding the return of some of the captives for trial and interrogation in their own countries.  All three of the major powers had produced terror suspects and known terrorists; there had been a major diplomatic row over it years ago and it still flared up from time to time.

“Perhaps they wanted to encourage the Cubans to join them,” Simmons said.  Analysts had not been able to agree, but there were voices in the Pentagon calling for an immediate pre-emptive invasion and occupation of Cuba.  If the United States hadn’t needed to worry about Iceland, the force might have been sent to Cuba…except no one wanted a running sore in the Caribbean.  The region had been remarkably peaceful since Castro had died.  The camp had been the only problem; the Cubans had wanted it off their soil and the United States had wanted to keep the prisoners a long way from the United States.

Lineman tapped the map.  “None of that changes the basic facts,” he said.  “We have far too many problems and far too few resources to handle each of them, let alone all of them.  It will take at least two years to bring a much larger army into the battle, and that’s only if the economy doesn’t collapse or the war goes nuclear.”

Hastings nodded.  “If we don’t stop the Russians along the border, we won’t be able to stop them until France, perhaps not even then,” he said.  “You know that…”

“If you had built your armed forces up to match your pretensions, you wouldn’t be in this mess,” Lineman said.  “The power of the European Union lasted until someone called your bluff.”

“Diplomacy, please,” Simmons muttered sharply.  There wasn’t time for an argument.  “What is the position of His Majesty’s Government?”

Hastings frowned.  “The position of the government is that we cannot leave just because someone has lost an eye,” he said.  Simmons blinked in puzzlement before understanding.  “At the same time, there is a strong sense that if we lose the army that we have committed to Europe, we will lose the war and lose our independence.  You’ve seen the reports from Poland; that is not a far-off country of which we know nothing, but right next door.  The nightmare has come to touch us.”

“It was always lurking at the door,” Simmons said.  “Answer me a question; have the Russians offered you any peace terms?”

Hastings shook his head. “It was the Indians,” he said.  “They offered us several things in exchange for withdrawing from the war.”  He paused.  “We said no, of course…are you going to talking to the President?”

Simmons nodded.  “I have to brief him later today,” he said.  The display blinked up warnings; a Russian air raid was underway, Russian aircraft were challenging the UKADR.  “Why?”

“Warn him,” Hastings said.  “There’s a lot of anger in Europe at the moment, and a great deal of fear.  If we lose the armies, then there will be a lot of temptation to sell out for the best we can get.”

“It won’t come to that,” Lineman said.  “There’s enough firepower gathered along the border to make any Russian attack awesomely expensive.”

“I wish I believed you,” Hastings replied.  “They can afford more than we can; they even have stockpiled weapons from the Second World War.  They’re not scraping the barrel, not yet, but we are.  Call it whatever you like, but understand; if the Russians beat the army, there is going to be a panic…and scared people do stupid things.”

Simmons said nothing.

Forward Command Post, Poland

“It was worse, Alex, than you might have thought,” President Lapotin said.  His voice was even, but General Aleksandr Shalenko could hear something deep underneath.  Lapotin was concerned – and perhaps very worried about the future.  “We lost thirty bombers, one of them to our own weapons, and the Americans hit Iceland.”

Shalenko glanced around the command post.  It was like something out of one of the movies about the Great Patriotic War, rather than a post for a modern battle; only the computer and the conference system were modern.  The Polish Army hadn’t had a real command post in the west and even if they had, Shalenko would not have trusted it.  The Poles might have had a long history of being crushed by their neighbours, but they also had a long and gallant history of resistance.  It wouldn’t be long before a resistance movement sprang up…

He scowled.  His task was to get to the English Channel…and the only way to do that was to march through Germany. The Germans were now fully on the alert, even if they did have an inexperienced Chancellor; they wouldn’t give up without a savage fight, and even though Shalenko had the numbers, he knew that the Germans would have the fury that came from defending one’s home.  His supply lines could not be cut…and if they were cut, he would be in serious trouble.  A Polish resistance could make his army much weaker, just by taking out a few convoys, while the Germans would be falling back on their own sources of supply.

“Iceland,” he said.  It had been a long time since he had been on a ship, but all general officers were expected to know something of warfare outside their own specialities.  The Iceland attack had always been a gamble, the more so because the Americans would have anticipated it; the force there was operating on a single string of supplies.  It was fortunate, indeed, that they could collect food from the natives, but ammunition?  Iceland’s tiny semi-military force had barely had enough bullets and guns for their own needs.  “What happened there?”

“They hit the airfields,” Lapotin said.  “That cur Kirpichov” - Sergei Kirpichov, the Director of the FSB – “had the temerity to suggest that it was the fault of the commanding officer, who he wanted shot.  I told him no, of course; we can’t go around shooting officers for falling into traps without any intelligence to suggest that the trap was there.  The GRU has egg on its face and the FSB is insisting on a harsh crackdown in Iceland…”

Shalenko scowled.  The FSB was showing the typical manner of Russian secret policemen; tsarist, communists, democratic and dictatorship.  There was little question that Lapotin was the unquestioned lord and master of Russia – outside Russia.  A British author whose works had been a hit with Shalenko’s daughter had once observed that being an absolute ruler wasn’t easy – particularly if your ambitions included being an absolute ruler tomorrow.  Lapotin had to balance the different requirements of his post; he had to balance Army, FSB, Government and Industry.  The four pillars of Russian Society…and losing the support of any one of them could be fatal.

“Are they?”  He asked.  The FSB was playing games for power at the worst possible time.  “What would be the point?”

“He’s also saying that you’re too soft,” Lapotin said, ducking the question.  They had been friends since before Lapotin had gone into politics; they both needed someone to keep them level and determined.  “He wants a much harsher policy in Poland as well.”

“Madness,” Shalenko snapped.  “You do know about the logistics?  The Poles might have surrendered, but they sure went ahead and destroyed everything they could before they surrendered; we don’t have any of their tanks, and only a handful of guns.  We’re bloody lucky that we only lost a couple of bridges to them; if they had tried, they could have made a further advance…tricky.”

“I know,” Lapotin said.  “Politics, however…there is a lot of enthusiasm over the victories, of course, but the people are also nervous.  They remember just how many losses there were in the last war, and they remember the endless struggles in Chechnya and Afghanistan.  Life has improved a great deal since we started to improve our energy supplying techniques; not many people want to risk the improvements.”

Shalenko nodded.  He had been at the forefront of improving the army, cutting it down to a more manageable size, then building it up carefully into a world-class professional army.  An army career had proved to be one of the most jump-starting careers in Russia; an army engineer could earn much more as a civilian, once he had finished his stint.  For the first time in far too long, there was an abundance of skilled manpower…and a shared determination to wipe away all of their failures.

“But we cannot afford to lose Iceland,” Lapotin continued.  Shalenko frowned at the comment; there was no time to start playing political games.  “If we do, morale will fall and that will alter the political balance of the country, which would put the wrong people into positions of influence.”

“It is not something we can do much about,” Shalenko reminded him.  The iron laws of logistics saw to that.  “The forces on Iceland are all that we can send unless we somehow invent a magical superweapon that will sweep the Americans from the seas.  Can the fleet punch through the American submarines and aircraft?”

“No,” Lapotin said shortly.  His voice darkened sharply.  “How soon can you launch the attack on Germany?”

Shalenko had considered that.  He already had most of his forces in position…and there was already a low-level war going on between infantry patrols from both sides.  Skirmishes broke out every day, some of them becoming heavy enough to convince him that the Germans were trying for a spoiling attack, but so far there had been no major reduction of his capabilities.  The Germans could only get stronger, however; he would have preferred to attack as soon as possible.

“A day, two at most,” he said.  The West had missed the attack preparations in Belarus; they wouldn’t miss his preparations in Poland.  They would be watching with each and every sensor at their command.  “There are some preparations to be made…and then we will be able to launch the attack at your command.”

“The command has been given,” Lapotin said.  “I am giving you overall command of the attack, as we agreed; I want you to crush the Germans and move into Berlin and then onwards towards France.  Either the West will surrender, or we will crush them; you have more than enough firepower to accomplish that.”

“Yes, Mr President,” Shalenko said.  Truthfully, he understood…and didn’t disagree.  The Germans had to be beaten as quickly as possible.  The Russians might have raised the spectre of a Nazi revival to scare the Poles and the other East Europeans, despite the fact that it was nonsense, but the Germans were tough and determined soldiers.  They had crippled their own army for years, but now they had been building up EUROFOR, a German army in all, but name.  “I will not fail you.”

Chapter Thirty: War in the Desert

Near Kerman, Iran

“This city is likely to fall,” the American said.  “Governor, you cannot remain here.”

Ziba Táhirih, Governor of Kermān Province, closed her eyes.  She wanted to cry; they had accomplished so much in the years since the Civil War, when they had finally deposed the Mullahs who had held Iran in their grasp since the Revolution.  Ziba had been a young student when Iraq had fallen to the Americans; she had dared to hope that the Americans – or someone – would do something to the Mullahs.  She had some freedom, but very little; she couldn’t study overseas without a male relative, and as for being someone important…she couldn’t hope to be anyone important.  She had been a football player in Iran, one of thousands of players, male and female…and she had had no hope of being an international player.  An angry woman had gone into politics, only to discover that the Mullahs were dedicated to keeping their control; Ziba had been a natural recruit for the underground.

In the end, the dam had broken in the wake of a disastrous election.  The Mullahs had, as was their right under the laws they themselves had written, banned a candidate who was publicly determined to end the Mullahs’ stranglehold on Iran.  His charges had hit home; new technology threatened to end the West’s dependence on oil, and Iran’s greatest resource was about to become worthless.  It was hysteria, of course, and Iran still exported oil, but the results had snowballed out of control.  Years of frustration had exploded…and a botched assassination attempt had started the civil war.  The Mullahs shouldn’t have stood a chance, but some of them were still competent…and commanded armies of fanatics.  A year into the resulting civil war, America had intervened…and thousands of Iranians had almost been grateful.  Since then, Ziba, elected to Parliament and then to a Governorship in her own right, had been on the stage…and grappling with the problems of Iran.

“I don’t have a choice,” she said.  There were thousands upon thousands of refugees heading west, towards a safety she knew didn’t exist.  Pakistan’s bloody end had sent thousands of refugees heading across the border, and many of them had been poisoned by radioactivity from the Indian weapons, while others had had good reason to want to escape the Indians.  Many of them had brought nothing, others had brought weapons and expected trouble; others were just trouble.  The Government had made a commitment to help its fellow Muslims, but there were limits; they’d requested that the Americans deploy a force to help control the border.  “The people down there elected me to this office and I can’t leave them.”

That, too, was true.  They had been the fairest elections in Iranian history…and the religious parties had been crushed.  Islam would always have a special place in Iran – it was the majority religion, after all – but there would be an end to religious mania.  The people had had enough…as the few surviving Mullahs had been forced to recognise from their refugees in Algeria, which had taken them in.  There had been vast improvements, but the Indians had decided to wreck them all.

Major General Warren leaned forwards.  He was tall and scrawny, seemingly young enough to be Ziba’s son; she’d never married and never intended to have children.  Like all the American soldiers she had met, he wore sunglasses most of the time, hiding his eyes from the burning light of the sun.  It was a shame; his eyes were quite nice, in an American kind of way.  American culture had always been popular in Iran, even if some elements puzzled them, but then, Ziba was old enough to remember the failure of a western ballet show in Tehran.  That had been a reminder that Iran and America were two very different places…

“The Indians have superiority over the region,” he said.  His military terms meant more to her than she had ever wanted them to mean; she had played an important role in the civil war.  The Mullahs had had only a few thousand soldiers, but they’d fought like demons, aware of their fates if they were captured.  “If we engage them directly, we will lose, so we play for them and wait for reinforcements.  They are going to take this city.”

Ziba shuddered.  Thousands of young men, and not a few young women, had already proclaimed their desire to stand and fight; Warren had warned her that it would only lead to disaster.  Iran’s military had been brutally handled during the civil war; even now, the most that Tehran could muster was a few infantry divisions and an armoured unit.  Few had been keen on rearming Iran…and some advanced weapons purchased from the Russians had mysteriously developed faults when the war had begun.

The Indians were not the Mongols, she knew; the refugees had told a different story.  The Indians had been mad with rage when their capital had been destroyed; they had hit Pakistan with all the force that they could muster, and then annexed Pakistan back into India.  How would they behave when they came into her city…and how would the Russians behave when they invaded themselves?  The Americans were convinced that the Russians were preparing to invade from the north…and that would rip Iran in half.  Iranians had long memories of what happened when Russians got into commanding positions; they had been lucky to avoid a permanent Russian occupation in 1946.  She had her duty…

“I’m staying,” she said.  Whatever the Indians wanted, she couldn’t help her people by fleeing from their forces; she was too old to run.  One hand tugged lightly at her headscarf; she found religion more comforting as she grew older.  “Good luck when you lead your men into battle.”

Warren’s eyes were sad.  “We don’t lead them into battle any more,” he said.  There was a bitter note in his voice; she’d heard that he had been an officer in a Civil Affairs battalion before being seconded to Iran.  “Now…now we old officers just sit back and watch the scores coming in, even as young men die on our behalf…and by God, we miss it.”

***
The irony was killing First Sergeant Alfred Thompson.  His tank, a heavily modified Abrams, was not intended to do battle with other tanks.  It had been lucky to be allowed to keep the main gun; only the sheer intimidation value of the long black barrel and the firepower of high explosive shells had convinced the designers to allow it to remain there.  The vehicle had been designed to fight what everyone had thought would be the wars of the 21st century; street-battles with insurgents and lightly-armed, but fanatical defenders.  Naturally, when an old-style war came along, his force was placed in the van…and was almost certainly outgunned.

He hadn’t expected to be deployed to Iran at all.  The American commitment to defend Iran, with a quiet, but firm quid pro quo that Iran would not rearm in a major way after its civil war, had sent them into Iran…and into peace.  The Iranian Government wasn’t like the various rickshaw Iraqi governments from the period following Saddam’s overthrow; once the final remains of the civil war had been cleared away, the nation was at peace.  The Americans, by and large, had stayed out of the way; there hadn’t been any real trouble at all.  There had been a handful of protests, a handful of street clashes as different groups that had been united for the revolution suddenly remembered all of the things they hated about each other, but the Iranians themselves had been able to handle them.  They’d even made some Iranian friends…and three of the men had Iranian lovers.  One had even converted to Islam.

Now…now the mass of the Punjab Regiment was coming towards Kermān, and knew better than to think that he could stop it, not with his own force.  The Indians had plenty of experienced soldiers, and they had clearly learned from the American invasion of Iraq, years ago.  They had generally left the cities alone, but they wouldn’t leave Kerman alone; the refugees had fled towards the city and some of them would be on the wanted lists.  The Iranian Army had put up a fight, along with some American Infantry near the border, but the Indians had broken through.  How could they not?  American aircraft were flying into Iran, but Iran had only a handful of fighters to cover it’s forces…and until the USAF took back command of the skies, Thompson knew that the Iranians were going to be dreadfully exposed.

“I have the enemy coming towards you,” a voice hissed in his ear.  It was one of the controllers, way back at the base camp in Qatar, the first truly democratic state in the Middle East, unless one counted Israel.  Qatar had become a constitutional monarchy years ago, much to the private amusement of Americans who knew Qatar only as the home of Al Jazeera.  “There are at least twenty-five tanks and a number of support vehicles, probing ahead of the main force.”

“Good,” Thompson said.  Against the main force, the only thing the Americans might be able to achieve would be dying gallantly; against a scouting force, the small detachment might be able to actually accomplish something.  He altered his frequency.  “Bob; deploy now and stay out of sight.”

“Understood,” Bob’s voice echoed back.  The infantryman had never liked the heat of the desert; Thompson, who was from Texas, loved it.  The Iranians might not have – officially – drunk, but in every other respect, it was almost like home.  The bans on alcohol had vanished within the first year of the new government; surprisingly, booze had never become a major problem.  “Anything on what we’re facing?”

Thompson examined the download from the drones.  The Indians had deployed a major force of Karan main battle tanks; tough vehicles that had been a vast improvement over their predecessors, the Arjun main battle tanks.  The older vehicles were still in service, but they were big brutes; they possessed firepower, but they were also logistic-heavy units.  There was a variant, not unlike Thompson’s own tank, for counter-insurgency work; the tanks they were facing were definitely heavy tanks.

“Bad news,” Thompson said.  Bob could collect the rest of the information off TACNET if he wanted to know what was coming.  Thompson couldn’t tell if the Indians knew where his unit was, but he was fairly sure that the scouts would be careful, rather than charging into the city without regard for how many civilians died in the crossfire.  It gave him a chance to launch an ambush…and he switched frequencies again.  “Air support?”

“Coming your way,” the controller said.  “Their ETA; seven minutes and counting.”

Time seemed to slow down as the Indians came forward.  Their tanks were moving along a long road, almost large enough to qualify for an interstate; the Iranians had been busy attempting to bring improvements to their country even before the revolution.  In some places, it had even contributed to the revolution; Sunni groups had viewed the ‘improvement’ efforts as an attempt to bring them firmly under the control of the Mullahs, who were Shia Muslims to a man.  The plan had counted upon the Indians using the roads…and they had played their part in the drama.  All Thompson had to do was make it work.

“That’s a minesweeper tank in the lead,” the controller whispered.  There was a long rivalry between the grunts on the ground, who lived in the dirt and mud of the fighting, and the men who controlled the increasing array of automated weapons from the base.  The controller was in America, running a war on the other side of the world; Thompson wasn’t sure if he envied him or hated him.  “The drone can read its magnetic waves.”

“Understood,” Thompson said.  There was one reason why robots would never replace the grunts; if the communications line was cut, the controller would be unable to control his weapons.  “Get ready to engage…”

The Indians had a moment’s warning; he saw antiaircraft units springing to life, two late.  The American-designed Hammer Drone swept down on their formation, a long missile-like craft, flying through the air at impossible speeds.  The Indians were luckier than they knew; the drone launched its cluster munitions before sweeping over and charging away into the sunlight.  The hail of sub-missiles, each one guided by its own inboard computers, fell…and struck seven tanks.  They exploded, one after the other, as the missiles punched through their turrets.

“Fire,” Thompson snapped.

He’d hidden his tanks carefully; the Indians hadn’t had the slightest idea that they were there.  They all fired, as one, and more Indian tanks died, even as the others swung around to return fire.  Tankers knew that they had to get their shots off as quickly as possible; the American tanks were already moving back, avoiding the Indian fire.  Tanks on both sides died as the Indians returned fire…and then suddenly all the Indians were gone.

“Keep moving,” the controller snapped.  “I have Indian assault helicopters and more tanks changing course and heading towards your position.”

“Understood,” Thompson said.  Although the Indians didn’t know it, they were heading into a trap.  He’d lost three tanks in the brief exchange of fire; the Indians would be bringing more to the party next time…and there would be no more bomber drones.  The important thing was to buy time, whatever the cost; time for the forces assembling in Iraq and Saudi to move in and evict the Indians.  The sensors were already reporting the noise of Indian helicopters, heading towards them, even as they fell back upon the pre-prepared positions.  “Don’t they have any sense of caution?”

“Pardon, Sergeant?”  The controller asked.

“Never mind,” Thompson said.  They drove past some suspiciously innocent-looking sand dunes.  The Indians hopefully wouldn’t see them until it was too late.  “Never mind at all.”

He could see the Indian aircraft now; four large helicopters, painted in desert camouflage.  They reminded him of buzzing wasps, coming in to sting; their antitank rockets would be devastating to his force if they had a chance to fire.  Bob fired first, launching a spread of antiaircraft missiles towards the helicopters, blowing two of them apart and forcing a third to crash.  The fourth opened fire on Bob’s position, blowing him and his antique vehicle into a massive ball of fire, then retreated.

“They’ll send over more tanks and bombers,” he snapped.  The Americans retreated at high speed; the Indians, if they turned to follow them, would have to abandon the city for the chase.  They would be wiser to bypass the city, but they would be wary of Iranian infantry retreating into the city and using it as a fortress.  A disciplined army could clear them out, as the American Marines had done in Fallujah, but would they want to attempt that without having defeated the American forces fighting in Iran?  “Keep us moving back; tell them at base we need some additional air support!”

The Indians had committed many of their aircraft to the war, but there hadn’t been enough aircraft for their purposes; their air cover wasn’t perfect.  That would change as they brought more of the captured airfields online, but for the moment, air supremacy was contested.  Thompson relaxed slightly as they sped away from the brief encounter; they would keep slowing the Indians…until they were ready to throw them out, once and for all.

***
Major General Warren could hear the sound of Indian guns in the distance as the American stealth helicopter settled down on top of the building.  The Indians were coming, and it bothered him to be running, even though he knew that there was no choice.  The Iranians couldn’t hold the city…and he knew that he could not be captured.  He knew too much about the American forces, he knew how weak they were…and he knew that if the Indians learned that, they would push American forces much further back than Warren would have liked.

“You should come with me,” he said.  He admired Ziba Táhirih; before coming to Iran, he had held a stereotyped view of Iranian women, but Ziba was something very different from the public impression.  She would have gone far in America; she had more native ability in her little finger than he had in his entire body.  “If they capture you, they’ll use you as a hostage.”

“I won’t leave my people,” Ziba said.  She leaned forwards; she reminded him of his own mother, except Ziba had a burning drive that his mother had lacked.  She had corrected his belief that Iranians were Arabs with a mixture of droll humour and annoyance.  “They’re the ones who put me here.”

Warren understood.  “We will come back,” he said.  Another rattle of gunfire sprang up in the distance; he could see smoke rising from one of innumerable little encounters between American and Indian forces.  The Indians were growing more careful as resistance was organised; they had to win time.  “I promise; tell those young fools not to try to fight.”

“I intend to try,” Ziba said.  They both knew that that would be very difficult.  She winked at him.  “Why did you never marry?”

Warren gaped at her.  “You’re asking me that now, when we’re about to leave?”

“Indulge me,” Ziba said.  Her voice was almost smiling.  “Why did you never marry?”

“I never found anyone I could spend my life with,” Warren said.  On impulse, he gave her a hug, heedless of the possible consequences.  There was no one around to see, but the pilot of the aircraft.  “You’d better be here when we come back.”

“I will be here,” Ziba promised.  Her voice became grimmer.  “Tell them back in Tehran that I did my best.”

“I will,” Warren said, and stepped into the aircraft.

Ziba waved until the helicopter vanished into the sky.

Chapter Thirty-One: Sudden Strike, Take One

Polish-German Border, Germany

It was coming.

General Trautman could almost feel it, a sense of imminent danger, a sense of overwhelming threat that reached into his soul and chilled it.  The EUROFOR force had been watching the Russians with care…and every night before, there had been skirmishes between Russian and German infantry.  There had been no clashes tonight; Trautman was grimly certain that that meant something…and it wasn't that the Russians had decided to pick up sticks and go home.  He'd read the classified brief on Iceland…and knew the Russian mind; the Russians would need to do something, as quickly as possible, just to balance their losses near Iceland.

His radio buzzed.  “General, we just got a flash microburst from the SAS patrols,” Captain Henri Guichy said.  The French soldier sounded grim.  “The Russians are revving their engines.”

“An hour to dawn,” Trautman said.  He glanced down at his watch.  Dawn came quickly in spring; under other circumstances, he would have loved to bring a girl to the field they were using.  A picnic lunch, a rug…who knew what could happen?  The field – much of Germany – was about to be fought over in the greatest battle since Kursk; there would be nothing left of it when the fighting was concluded.  “Sound the quiet alert.”

“Yes, General,” Guichy said.  The quiet alert would bring every soldier to alert, without something unfortunate like klaxons or gunshots warning the Russians that the Europeans were jumping into positions; if they were lucky, the Russians would expect to meet an unprepared foe.  “The alert has been sent.”

No, Trautman thought, we won’t meet a stupid enemy.  The Russians had played it smart right from the start, combining intelligence with a brutality that seemed almost otherworldly; the savage attacks on the heart of Europe had shown little concerns for casualties.  They would expect a dug-in enemy, prepared to fight them for every inch of ground…and they would plan for it.  If Berlin was to be held, they would have to fight…and if Trautman was to preserve his army as a bargaining chip, it had to survive the fight.

He lifted his radio.  It was just before dawn.  “Has the evacuation plan been completed?”

“The first tier of refugees have been moved to camps in the rear of Germany and France,” General Florette Rolande said.  Her promotion had been less than she deserved; Trautman intended to recommend her for Germany’s highest military honour.  She might well have saved Central Europe.  “The dependents at the military camps are ready to move now.”

“See to it,” Trautman said.  He took a last look at the peaceful scene. “Andy?”

“We have sent flash alerts up the chain to every base and unit,” Captain Andrew Dean assured him.  “We won’t be cut out of the chain again.”

“Good,” Trautman said.  For the first time, the Russians would be slamming into a prepared and ready army, one eager to settle the score and extract a little revenge.  “I’m on my way to the command post now.”

***
“It almost seems like a pity to ruin the countryside,” General Aleksandr Shalenko said.  He’d taken a day, with Anna, to go on a wander through the countryside, alone except for two cars full of bodyguards.  It had been very different from Russia.  “Are all of our units in position?”

“Yes, General,” Captain Anna Ossipavo assured him.  She was all business when there were others around, including the commanders of the Shock Armies; they all respected Shalenko enough to give him their unquestioned obedience.  Nothing could be allowed to ruin that.  “They’re all in place and reporting that they’re ready to move at your command.”

Shalenko glanced down at his watch.  The attack was planned to be launched exactly at dawn, rather than in darkness, which would be dangerous to both sides.  He had confidence that the Shock Armies could handle an attack in darkness, but he knew better than to take unnecessary risks.  The follow-up forces lacked the competence of his main striking arm.  There were only minutes to go.

“Gentlemen, you may return to your units,” Shalenko ordered.  “The bombardment will commence in ten minutes, then we will advance; good luck to you all.”

The minutes ticked by.  Shalenko watched coldly as units reported in one final time, using their microburst transmissions to update his computers about their location and positions.  He could almost control the entire battle from his computers, but it would be too dangerous; an army without the ability to react quickly was an army that would be big and clumsy.  He would issue orders; his commanders would carry them out.

“General?”

Despite himself, Shalenko knew that he was nervous; it was the first time since the Great Patriotic War that Russian forces would be assaulting a prepared enemy, in prepared positions.  He’d massed the largest and most powerful conventional force on the surface of the planet, but NATO – EUROFOR – had a major advantage in some items of technology, items that could change the face of the battle.  He had much more firepower than they could possess – if they had possessed more, Russia might not have gone along with the Armageddon plan – but they had their own advantages.  Too much could go wrong…

But he knew his duty.  “Gentlemen, this is the moment,” he said.  He wasn't one for long speeches and his staff wasn’t composed of the type of people who would be impressed by a speech anyway.  “Order the gunners to open fire.”

Moments later, the sound of long-range guns echoed through the command post as thousands of guns fired almost as one, hurling shells forward onto the European positions.  Years ago, shelling a trench would have been as much a matter of luck as anything else; now…now, they had almost perfect firing patterns.  The drones had picked out the locations of many of the European positions; now, they received the greatest display of artillery fire since the First World War.

Shalenko almost smiled.  “General, we have counter-battery fire,” an officer reported.  “There are far fewer guns than predicted.”

“Curious,” Shalenko said.  His mind raced; they had sent in commando teams, but he hadn’t expected them to have had any major successes, not against a warned opponent.  Might the Spetsnaz have lived up to their reputation – again?  It didn’t matter; he had more important problems.  “Designate their positions for immediate attack,” he ordered.  “I want them all suppressed as fast as possible.”

There was an air of unreality around the entire proceedings.  The command post was distant from the fighting, but they were controlling units engaged in hurling death and destruction upon the enemy.  The EUROFOR units had a different priority; they were using their weapons to attempt to knock out his guns, using radar to track them back to their positions…and his counter-counter-battery fire was attempting to knock them out.  Russian shells and missiles were exploding on the EUROFOR positions, hammering their crews; the Europeans were attempting to perform the same action to his people.  They were…

“We hit something big,” one of his officers muttered.  “Something went off with one hell of a bang.”

“They hit one of our guns and the spare shells started to cook off,” a female officer said  “Several other guns were destroyed in the blasts.”

“Have that officer put under arrest,” Shalenko snapped.  That sort of incompetence cost lives…and they had an enemy to take their lives.  “I want him to be held until I have a chance to deal with him personally.”

“Yes, sir,” Anna said.  The staff redoubled their efforts; they knew how their general reacted to people failing in their duties.  “There has been a general suppression of their artillery.”

“They’ll be moving their guns,” Shalenko said.  It would be too lucky if they had knocked out all of the European guns and he suspected that luck would be on both sides.  “Order the advance elements to begin the offensive.”

***
Oberstabsfeldwebel Gotthard Evert clung to the ground as it rolled and shook below him, the impact of thousands of Russian shells crashing into the European lines shaking him; he had heard that soldiers back in the First World War had gone mad after prolonged shellfire and he believed it.  The ground was rolling and shaking; he held onto his assault rifle and waited for the world to stop spinning.

A voice broke though the haze.  “Herr Oberstabsfeldwebel, tanks!”

Evert cursed as he pulled himself into a sitting position.  They were staring right across the border into Poland, half-hidden in their trenches they had built to give them some shelter from the expected bombardment.  Clearly, Evert realised with a moment of dull amusement, the panic the higher ranks had engaged in had not been misplaced.  The soldier, a young man just out of high school and serving his community service in the military, was right on the edge of panic.

“Get up,” Evert snapped.  He meant to sit up, not to stand up; the Russian tanks were looming at them out of the darkness.  The entire skyline seemed to be on fire, flickering lights and horrendous sounds flickered around, half-deafening him.  “We know what we have to do!”

The young soldier picked up his rifle.  “Not that, you fool,” Evert snapped.  He wanted to hit the young man; they were in combat, no one would complain, but he needed him.  “The antitank weapon.”

The soldier nodded and recovered the Knife launcher from its hiding place.  The weapon had narrowly escaped being designated the ‘Euroantitankweapon’ – EUROFOR had rejected the name, citing combat conditions – and it had been called the Knife, after other suggestions had been put forward, mainly by pulling the name out of a hat.  It was a basic weapon, at least in function; point and shoot.  Evert would have rather have had a weapon that could be reloaded, but the Knife would be too difficult to take with them; there was no sign of any other European units nearby.

“We launch the missile at the command tank, when we see it,” Evert said, talking as calmly as he could to the youngster.  It suddenly occurred to him that he didn’t know the youngster’s name; the hasty mobilisation had shoved dozens of units together, without any of the glue that had held them together.  “Then we get through the escape line and run, understand?”

The youngster nodded.  “Good boy,” Evert said.  The Russian tanks were getting closer and closer.  “Get ready…”

The noise of the Russian bombardment seemed to grow even louder.  Evert could almost see the weapons, see the tongues of flame reaching towards the sky, and sense the shells as they whistled through the air, heading for European positions.  He muttered a curse under his breath; Russian infantry, wearing their trademark green uniforms and carrying the latest AK weapon, were advancing behind their tanks.

“Bastards,” he muttered.  He was rated expert with his assault rifle; he didn’t know how good the youngster was with his weapon.  “What’s your name, son?”

“Erwin,” the youngster said.  “Sir…I have never done this before.”

“The Knife?”  Evert asked.  He wasn’t surprised; Knife weapons were only issued to EUROFOR units and Erwin hadn’t been a volunteer for the European Army.  “What about your rifle?”

“I can shoot,” Erwin said.  Evert permitted himself a moment of amusement at the wounded note in the child’s voice…and a moment of relief.  “Sir…what are we to do?”

Evert sighed and hefted the Knife.  If they were seen, both of them would be killed by a burst of machine gun fire, but he wasn’t going to think about that.  Not when he had a job to do.  The presence of the younger man made it somehow easier to keep himself under control; he had to show the younger man how to handle the stresses of battle.

“When I fire this, mow down as many Russians as you can,” he said.  He could only hope that the kid had the killer instincts he would need for the future.  “When I run, take your weapon and run through the escape line, understand?”

Erwin nodded.  “Yes, sir,” he said.  Sergeants were not commonly addressed as ‘sir’ and Evert opened his mouth to reprimand Erwin before deciding that it didn’t matter.  There was a war on, after all; if they survived, there would be time to educate him later.  “I am ready.”

The lead Russian tank had started to reach the outskirts of the small wood that was providing limited concealment.  They could drive over the wood and the tiny hills, really just small mounds in the ground, or they could try to go around it, through the tiny village.  Everything depended on what they did next…and he peered through the sights, trying to locate the command tank.  In Soviet days, they were the tanks with the radios, but now…now, that proved nothing.  The command tank was impossible to identify; he chose a target and sighted carefully.  There would only be one shot.

“Fire,” he snapped, and pulled the trigger.  The Knife missile raced towards its target; like many missiles, it was too stupid to be decoyed, even assuming that the Russians mounted such weapons on their tanks.  He discarded the launcher, grabbing his rifle, and joined Erwin in pouring fire into the Russian infantry, then ducked as the Russians started to return fire.  His target exploded…and then he stared at the Russians.  The sheer weight of fire was terrifying; they saw a tree literally turned into sawdust by the machine guns.

“Move,” Evert snapped.  They'd dug their trenches into the hilly ground, using one of them to escape through the thicket and escape the Russians.  The Russians gave chase as they crawled down the long escape trench; Evert wondered what had happened to the other men – they had been supposed to receive back-up, rather than being left alone to face the Russians.  The answer came as they rounded the corner and came face to face with a scene from Hell; a Russian shell had struck the men there…and left nothing there, but blood and gore.  “Erwin, I want you to fucking…”

“Herr Oberstabsfeldwebel!”

Something struck him in the back.  He felt a white-hit burst of stabbing pain passing through his body and he fell to the ground.  He was dead before his mind even realised that he had been hit.  He heard Erwin calling out something…and then he was gone.

***
“Fucking stupid politicians,” Captain Guntar Markus swore, as the information flowed in through EURONET.  He would have almost preferred to have remained ignorant, even through he knew that he wouldn’t have felt that back in Poland.  “We should have built the mines and fuck them if they didn’t let us build the fucking things!”

Through his scope, he could see Russian infantry advancing, hopefully unaware of the presence of the EUROFOR infantry within the deserted village.  The situation was tailor-made for landmines, both antitank and antipersonnel mines, but Germany was a signatory to the treaty that banned both of them.  The combat engineers had worked overtime to rig the village – and hundreds more like it – with traps for unwary Russians, but there hadn’t been time to build some real mines.  The Americans had stockpiles, but they were needed in Iran; they hadn’t been able to send more than a handful to Germany.

“Fucking idiots,” he cursed again.  The drones orbiting high overhead, sending back information to both sides, were watching for tanks; the Russian drones might have seen his tank…and if they had, the ten Russian tanks they could see nosing their way into the village would turn on the Eurotanks and destroy them.  “Why the hell do we get hamstrung?”

“Captain, they’re engaging the infantry,” the driver said.  Markus nodded; the Russians had started the long process of discovering which houses had been booby-trapped, which houses had been manned by snipers and infantry, and which houses were actually safe.  Two of the rigged houses had already exploded…and then a third exploded…as the Russian tanks turned their guns on the houses.  The Russians were levelling the village, just in case!

“Get the infantry out of there,” he said.  The drones had been too near; he was certain that they had been seen as the final houses were blown apart.  The families that had lived there had been sent well away from Germany, but when they returned, they would discover that their homes had all been destroyed.  “It’s our fight now.”

The Eurotank nosed its way slowly into firing position.  The Russians were advancing through the village…and one of their tanks appeared; the gunner put a shell into it at once.  The automated machine guns didn’t hesitate; they poured a withering hail of fire into the Russian infantry, who fell to the ground.  Some would have escaped the attack; some would have been ripped apart as the other Eurotanks appeared, firing their own main guns.  Markus’s tank got off a second shot, blowing a Russian tank apart, before the Russians seemed to fall back.

“They’re leaving,” the gunner said.  His voice was red with pure anger; he had been brought up nearby and had three brothers in the infantry.  “Cowardly bastards!”

“Fuck that,” Markus snapped.  There was another reason, one based in sound tactics, for the sudden Russian change of plan.  They wouldn’t be keen on playing fair, any more than he himself was concerned about fairness.  They would have something else up their sleeves…and he knew what it was.  “Move us; now!”

Moments later, the first hail of Russian fire came in; Markus guessed that it was a MLRS system, pouring rockets onto their position.  Four of his tanks exploded, the others made it out of the doomed village, leaving it open for the Russians.  They had to fall back, absorb the weight of the Russian blows, then counter-attack.  That was the plan…and Markus hated it.  They were giving up German soil, just to buy time…and he hated it.

He also knew what it meant.

They were losing.

Chapter Thirty-Two: Sudden Strike, Take Two

Polish-German Border, Germany

“Alpha-Three, this is EYESKY,” the voice said.  “You have enemy contacts coming in towards you; intercept and destroy!”

Capitaine Jacques Luca glanced down briefly at the Dassault Rafale’s display.  The air battle over Germany had become a nightmare from the Second World War; no one had ever expected to fight on such a massive scale.  Hundreds of European and Russian aircraft were clashing over the battle, both sides trying to gain an air superiority that would serve as a decisive advantage.  American and Russian super-bombers were launching precision weapons from what should be outside the battlefield, but Luca saw handheld SAM missiles being turned on the American aircraft.  The Russians had teams on the ground; everyone knew that.

It was hard, almost impossible, to draw out any pattern from the battle.  American, French and British AWACS aircraft were hovering high overhead, their radars and sensors probing for trouble, each one escorted by a swarm of fighters.  Russian AWACS stayed further back, guiding the Russian fighters towards their targets, while trying to jam the NATO aircraft, which were trying to return the favour.  The battlefield was breaking down into sheets of electronic haze as the two sides struggled; neither one could gain a permanent advantage.

The Russian aircraft flared towards the French group.  Their afterburners were already propelling them well past the speed of sound, their missiles prepared and ready to fire.  Luca didn’t hesitate, he snapped off a missile of his own and rolled his fighter through a long evasive pattern as the Russians fired, avoiding a missile by seconds.  His target wasn’t so lucky; his missile slammed into the MIGs rear and destroyed it.  A second Russian aircraft fired at him as the two sides entered knife-range; he avoided it and fired back, cursing as his missile fell prey to a Russian decoy.

“Two aircraft down,” someone said.  Luca blinked; the fighting was worse than he had expected.  NATO aircraft just didn’t take those sort of losses…except they did, now.  The French Air Force had known that it was one of the best…and it was taking a pounding, along with the other NATO aircraft.  “Three enemy aircraft hit.”

“Understood,” he said.  Few people understood just how quickly things could change at supersonic speeds; the French pilots, fighting the Russians one moment, found themselves alone in the skies the second.  The Russians had moved off, their aircraft hunting for other targets, and he silently cursed them as they retreated.  His aircraft carried more missiles…and he was hungry to use them.  “Find me a target.”

“Four Bears,” the controller snapped, and gave him a bearing.  The Russians used the Bears for support of their troops on the ground, borrowing an idea from the Americans; they had to be stopped.  The sheer weight of the Russian offensive, and the impact of commando teams on the ground, was having an effect on NATO’s ability to counter their moves.  NATO fighter-bombers would be attacking Russian positions, but they would be – like the Russians – fighting in a SAM belt.  “Intercept and destroy!”

The huge lumbering Bears could be seen as the French aircraft hurtled towards them, their bombs already falling down towards a EUROFOR position.  As he watched, one of them was skewered by a SAM missile from the ground, but the others were continuing their bombing, launching the standard Russian dumb bomb towards the ground.  His radar pinged up a warning; the Russians had noticed their interest…and were sending fighters of their own to intercept him.  The Bears must have either been unescorted or had been swept away from their escorts; either was possible.

“All right, choose your partners and dance,” he snapped.  He would have preferred to have engaged the fighters, which were closing in on them rapidly, but the Bears were the important target.  Years of post-Cold War fighting had convinced everyone that command of the air was important, but it was boots on the ground that really made the difference – and determined who won.  “Engage the bombers; ignore the fighters until afterwards.”

Little flickers of data passed between the fighters; targets were designated for each fighter.  The Bears were continuing their attack; they would know, of course, that they couldn’t outrun the fighters.  They would either bomb the crap out of the soldiers on the ground until they were killed, or they would be saved by their own fighters.  He selected a missile, cursed briefly as someone lit him up for a second with a targeting radar, and fired.  The missile lanced away towards the Bear, which attempted to deploy flares to distract it, but the missile was firmly locked on.  Its sensors guided it right to the Bear…and it impacted with a thunderous explosion.  He saw the Bear begin to break up and fall from the sky.

A threat warning screamed from his sensors.  He had barely a moment to realise that one of the Russian fighters had fired at him, before the missile flashed right up the tailpipe of the Rafale and blew him and his fighter into a ball of fire.  There was a long moment of pain…and then nothing.

***
“We have major losses on the heavy guns,” Captain Andrew Dean reported.  He hadn’t left his terminal in the hours since the fight had begun.  “They’re hunting them down with their own radars and ignoring the decoys.”

General Trautman nodded.  He had expected as much; both sides were shelling the other’s guns, as well as trying to kill off as many soldiers as possible.  The Russians had thrown in three major offensives against his lines, and so far they had all been held, not least because of the staggering amount of firepower that he had been able to call down on the Russian units as they advanced.

The display kept updating itself automatically.  The Russians were following their standard procedure; hammering the lines and probing for a weak spot.  When they found one, they threw everything at it, trying to punch a hole through.  The death rate was already past any battle Europe had fought, since the Second World War, and it was only growing worse.  Aircraft from both sides had risked lives, limbs and aircraft, launching low-level attacks on the tanks and guns that were being used to fight.  Many of them had been shot down…and many had crashed onto vital targets.

“Incoming fire,” Sameena snapped suddenly.  Her dark face was suddenly flushed.  “They’re firing on us, here…”

The ground shook almost before she had finished speaking.  The noise of shells echoed as they slammed down, smashing parts of Camp Potsdam and damaging his ability to coordinate his forces.  He snapped out orders; he had expected that Camp Potsdam would be targeted and had taken the precaution of having other command posts set up, but the sudden attack was a surprise.

“Everyone out,” he snapped.  “Andy; inform General Bashford that he might have to take over command, move!”

The Camp was burning – again – as they emerged into the sunlight.  Trautman could hear the battle now, an endless savage roll of thunder that sent smoke and clouds into the air, he could hear aircraft and shells flying through the sky and sometimes coming down to crash onto their targets.  The paratroopers fanned out around him as they ran towards the vehicles, as the Russians opened fire again…and struck the camp hard.  Trautman felt himself hit the ground as shockwaves went through the air; he crawled as fast as he could towards the set of vehicles that they had prepared.

“Bastards must have a laser designator up there somewhere,” Captain Paul Montagne said.  The French paratrooper hadn’t been happy at serving as Trautman’s bodyguard, even though the French Government had been keen to keep him alive; he had wanted to be in the thick of the action.  “I’m sending a squad up to wipe them out.”

Trautman scowled.  The Russians had had commando teams in Germany, dozens of them; now that open war had broken out, they could send them in without worrying about the effects of discovery.  The Spetsnaz teams had proven their value; some of them, even now, were hitting his people behind the lines.  They were often beaten off, but they caused delays and panic and…some of them even wore German uniforms.  The chaos was appalling.

“See to it,” he ordered, as they boarded the hummer.  “Andy?”

Dean passed him the terminal without comment.  Trautman skimmed down the information and muttered a curse under his breath; the Russians had managed to force the air forces out of parts of the battlefield, gaining control over the air.  He had plenty of men armed with SAM missiles, but the Russians were prepared to spend their men and equipment like water to gain a victory.  Far too much of EUROFOR and the European armies were under threat; if the Russians managed to pocket a large section of his force, he had a nasty feeling that his lords and masters would try to sue for peace.

“I think we might have to commit the reserves to here,” he said, tapping a location near a town.  The Russians were pushing hard at it and they were threatening a breakthrough.  If they broke through there, they would have a chance to trap a bunch of his forces…and if they did that, he would have no choice, but to retreat, which risked leaving Berlin open to attack.  “Ensure that the orders are issued.”

“Yes, sir,” Dean said.  Gone were the days – mostly – when a commander could find himself out of touch with his own army.  The trade-off was a capability to micro-manage that could sap the force’s ability to react to sudden problems.  Trautman, in theory, could have looked over everyone’s shoulder and given orders; the temptation was almost overwhelming.  “I’ll see to it at once.”

A distant rumble of gunfire was audible, suddenly, from above the din of the battle.  Trautman looked towards the east and saw the signs of battle, towering plumes of smoke, fires, explosions and aircraft racing through the skies up above.  It was very different from the last war…and yet, it was almost the same.

“God help us all,” he whispered.

***
“Advance!”

Captain Simon Yarrow peered cautiously ahead as his Challenger III tank moved slowly forwards, hunting for Russians who had penetrated the German defence lines.  A German division, backed up by Italian and Spanish infantry, had been charged with holding a defence line that ran through a town; the Russians had brought up heavy artillery and shelled them before making a brutal armoured charge.  The Germans had fought like mad bastards…but the Russians had possessed superior firepower and punched through the defence lines.  All they had to do now was exploit their breakthrough.

A force of low-flying jets flashed overhead, heading east.  Yarrow assumed that they were European, on the grounds that they weren’t trying to bomb his people, and cheered as they attacked the new Russian position with bombs and rockets.  Russian missiles lanced up, smashing one of the jets out of the sky, but the others made their escape; Yarrow hoped that they would be coming back soon.  A quick glance at the display made him swear; the aircraft had been driven back from the battlefield.  He had hoped for helicopter support, but the Russians were getting much better at killing them.  If the helicopters had been in support, he wouldn’t have felt so exposed…

The 1st Armoured Division had been intended to outfit with Eurotanks, replacing the Challenger III design, but there hadn’t been time in the general struggle to improve the army following the official discovery of serious flaws.  Afghanistan, Iraq and Iran, struggles in places that would have surprised much of the British public…all of them had shown that the British Army was dangerously short on items it needed…and much work had been done on improving it and correcting the oversights.  That had had a cost of its own; Yarrow had hoped for the newer Eurotanks, but the pre-war budget hadn’t been able to afford everything.

“Stand by,” he muttered.  The leading elements were moving closer to the town, with MLRS units moving up in support; the Russians had a surprise in store.  The feed from the drone showed that they were levelling the town, either though sadism or a desire to ensure that no one was able to resist them.  Yarrow, who had served in several African countries where the rules of engagement had prevented such actions, almost envied them; it was fine and right to be the good guys, but not when it put his men in danger.  “I want…”

The drone feed terminated abruptly.  A Russian tracking radar had gotten lucky and snapped off a missile, armed directly at the drone, which was almost defenceless.  Its stealth had been its only real protection, and hundreds of Russian supercomputers had been tracking and analysing each and every radar signal that had spun across the battlefield.  They’d seen the drone, just long enough to kill it; he searched for a second drone and found none.  All of them were tied up.

“This is Lion-One, requesting drone support,” he snapped.  They’d been blinded; perhaps by accident, perhaps by design.  The Russians were certainly smart enough to do it purposely.  “Am advancing and need drone support!”

He watched grimly as the Challengers advanced.  They were exposed, more exposed than he was comfortable with; the Russians would, if they knew what they had done, be changing their own positions as quickly as possible.  They might even be preparing a counterattack on the counterattack; a counter-counterattack.  The town was burning…and then the first Russian tank appeared…and all hell broke loose.

“Rockets,” a warning snapped, just as the first rockets came down on the British force.  The Russians had been moving up their own MLRS units; they had clearly expected the counterattack and prepared to block it.  The units looked like large trucks; the drones might well have missed them altogether.  “They’re firing…”

The contact cut off as four Challengers died.  “Return fire,” Yarrow snapped.  He had been in fighting before and refused to panic.  The Russians were tough, but they were just men; they could be beaten.  His tank jumped as it fired its first round, right into the centre of the Russian tank…and he saw it explode in a burst of fire.  His own MLRS was returning fire, hitting at the Russian MLRS…and then a flight of aircraft whistled overhead.  Bombs fell…and a wave of flame flared across the British tanks as napalm bombs exploded.  Yarrow clenched his heart, expecting to die, but he survived; the Challenger was a tough tank.

“We can’t move,” the driver said.  His voice was very calm; Yarrow was proud of him.  “They’ve wiped our paint and our treads.”

Yarrow checked the main gun.  That, at least, still worked.  “Time to sell our lives dearly,” he said.  He had no intention of surrendering; he liked Germany enough to fight for it.  “I wonder how long it will be…?”

A Russian tank appeared and he snapped off a shot at it.  By sheer bad luck, the Russian was moving fast enough to throw off his aim…and the shell exploded harmlessly in the ground.  Moments later, the Russian returned fire…and blew the Challenger tank away.  Dying in a tank was every tankers worst nightmare, but Yarrow died too quickly to notice.

**
“Breakthrough,” Colonel Vladimir Ivanov reported.  His voice held an unholy glee.  “We have broken through their lines.”

“Show me,” General Aleksandr Shalenko snapped.  It was too premature to gloat, not yet.  The display updated itself automatically; the 2nd Shock Army’s commander had taken advantage of a fleeting opportunity and punched a hole right through the place where several NATO divisions met.   The army was already exploiting its victory, but it would require support to successfully trap a larger percentage of the enemy forces.  The EUROFOR commander would have a set of difficult choices to make; it was Shalenko’s job to make those choices harder.  “Good work.”

Well done that man, ran inanely through his head.  “Move the supporting elements, including the armoured units and the infantry – prioritise the infantry units – and move them into position,” he ordered.  Everyone knew, now, that it was a race; whoever got there first with the most would win.  He had to make the breach in the allied lines wider; they had to seal it and ideally destroy 2nd Shock in the process. He held two advantages; he had more mobile firepower and more infantry units than they could spare.  “Inform the air commander; I want every effort put on interdicting the enemy movements.”

The display altered even as he spoke.  The Americans had hit the Russian spy satellites hard – the Russians had done the same to the American systems – but they still had enough coverage to ensure that the display was updated quickly.  The Europeans would have similar capabilities, but they would be weakened by their own politics; would they fight for Berlin and get ground to power, or would they fall back?  Despite himself, Shalenko hoped that they would fight outside the city; they could be destroyed and then the war would be over.  If they retreated into Berlin, they would be a major problem…and he would have to bleed his people white to get them out.

And flattening most of Berlin in the process, he reminded himself.  Russian aircraft were screaming into the attack, while European fighters were trying to prevent them from carrying out their missiles.  The older bombers had proven their main weakness, he saw; the air commander was holding them back for later use, rather than sending them up against modern fighters.  Shalenko understood; there was no point in wasting the aircraft, no matter how many of them Russia had in the fight.

Anna’s face paled.  “General, you have to see this,” she said suddenly.  “We just got a flashed microburst report.”

Shalenko stared at her.  “What?”  He took the palmtop and scanned it quickly. “Shit!”

Chapter Thirty-Three: The People’s War

Warsaw, Poland

“This is Truck Lead Seven,” Sergeant (Temporary) Aleksandrina Natalya said, as she lifted her radio.  The Warsaw loading bay was packed with Russians, from drivers such as herself to armed FSB guards and a handful of Russian soldiers arrested for breach of military regulations.  Those changed depending upon who was in command; some generals cracked down hard on activities like rape, looting and drunkenness, others actively encouraged it.  “We are ready to depart.”

“Just in time,” the FSB dispatcher said.  His voice held a mixture of condescending sneer and cold amusement.  “You have permission, sweetheart, to leave the loading bay and come into my arms.”

Aleksandrina ground her teeth.  Women might not be in any regular battalion, but they were present in the support troops, such as the drivers who moved the material of war across the battlefield.  Much of Poland’s rail network had been taken intact, but the Poles had managed to destroy chunks of it before they surrendered; Aleksandrina and her division had to fill the gap with their trucks.  The women might have been popular with the regulars, who appreciated the supplies; the FSB men tended to treat them as whores.  Aleksandrina herself had been almost pressured into sex by an FSB officer; others in her group had experienced the harassment that came from being near men who had an urge to prove their manliness.

“I have orders to proceed to the forward base,” she snapped, unwilling to bend.  She was not, technically, allowed to give orders to soldiers; her rank as Sergeant applied only to the transport regiment, a humiliation that would never be offered to an FSB officer, but she had her orders.  “Are we clear to move?”

“Keep your panties on,” the FSB officer said.  Like most of the FSB officers and soldiers, although not the formidable commandos, he was clearly desperate to prove himself a man.  The FSB security troops were looked down upon by the regulars, who saw them as brutal fools who were only good for serving as rear-area garrisons, and tended to try to take their frustration out on anyone who got in their way.  “Your escort is ready for you now, lover; be seeing you.”

Aleksandrina said nothing, but put the truck into gear and drove slowly out of the loading bay, into the streets of Warsaw.  The Russians had sealed off the loading bay and the railway station, using it to load their trucks, but outside much of the life of Warsaw still thronged.  Aleksandrina hated the Poles – her brother had been killed in the first attacks and her cousin had died in a fire fight in Belarus that the Poles had started – and wanted them to hurt; even now, they had so much more than the Russians.  They had become a prosperous country…and they had done it on the sweat and blood of Russians.  The Ministry of Public Information said so.

Their escort was composed of three APCs and motorcycle infantry.  Warsaw was rated as being a fairly easy to handle place, not least because of the Russian FSB units within the city; Aleksandrina was confident that there would be no problems.  The Poles eyed her in different ways, some fearful, some scornful, some hunching down and trying not to be seen, but they all hated her – or, rather, they hated her army.  As they passed Polish prisoners, clearing rubble under Russian supervision, her fists clenched; had one of them hurt her brother?  She’d been told, on the grapevine, that the Poles would be transported east soon; she hoped that that would happen soon.  Warsaw felt…wrong to her; the sooner it was perfectly under control, the better.

They turned down a long street, long enough to worry her; she checked her rifle with one practiced hand.  The AK-47 had been issued to the truck drivers; there was little point in giving them the latest and most powerful Russian weapons, not when there were so many AK-47s out there in the world.  It had once been rated a Weapon of Mass Destruction; to Aleksandrina, it was merely another way of showing how little respect female soldiers were shown by the Russian authorities.  She was rated expert with the weapon – she was the best shot in her entire group – but she would never be able to serve as an infantry officer…

The radio buzzed.  “I don’t like it,” the Captain said.  She liked him; he wasn’t quite as much of a pig as some of the others, only having made one half-hearted pass at her.  He was also someone who had seen genuine infantry combat, which made him automatically more experienced than most of the FSB; they tended to think that their guns made them supermen.  “I think that…”

The buildings were closing in.  It had once been a shopping arcade, but it had been closed in the absence of any supplies coming into the city, past the rations that the Russians fed the population.  She’d heard a rumour that the rations would be limited in future; trust the Poles to take advantage of Russia’s generosity.  The streets had seen better days; now, they were all closed and shuttered.  The clean-up teams had been through the streets once, clearing away broken glass and the bodies, but nothing else; compared to Chechnya, where she had once been forced to serve, it was paradise…

Something moved ahead of her.  She had only a second to slam on the brakes as a lorry hurtled out of a garage and blocked her path; one of the APCs slammed into it and came to a halt in a screech of brakes.  She cursed as one of the other lorries ran into her, even as shooting broke out; she had to get out of the lorry!  She grabbed her rifle and hit the door hard enough to force it open, ignoring the bullets flying through the air.  She threw herself down as an explosion billowed up at the rear of the convoy; they were throwing Molotov Cocktails at her!  At her people!

A second truck exploded.  She fired a long burst towards the window where the bottle had come from and was rewarded with a scream.  The soldiers were firing as well, but they were pinned down and trapped; the enemy had them right where they wanted them.  She heard the crump-crump-crump of a light mortar and saw the shell flying down and striking one of the APCs.  It exploded; the flames roasting the soldiers alive.  A bullet cracked right past her head and she fell to the ground, trying to bring up her weapon; a stone struck her on the side of her head and she dropped her weapon.  She was dimly aware of a form standing over her…and then there was a flash…and then nothing.

***
“The General is going to kill me,” Major Pavel Kaminov muttered, as shooting broke out on the Warsaw streets.  The entire crisis had appeared out of nowhere and it was already starting to look very bad, much worse than it actually was…but it was quite bad enough.  Kaminov had the sense that his career was about to hit rock bottom.  “What the hell is going on?”

He’d had heavy patrols walking through the streets and had taken the simple precaution of banning all public assembles and public attractions.  His soldiers might have used the swimming pool for a while – it had mysteriously developed problems with the water supply five days after Warsaw had fallen – but he had banned Polish citizens from using it, along with every other place that might have served as a base for the mixtures that always led to rebellion.  Kaminov had no illusions; the Poles were anti-Russian, always had been, and always would be.  The General might have believed in a policy of sweetness and light; or firmness mixed with respect. Kaminov knew better than to expect anything like that to work for long.

The FSB briefings had been quite clear; the supply lines that ran through Warsaw could not be broken – or, rather, they must not be broken.  Until the fighting had broken out, Kaminov would have sworn blind that there were no heavy weapons in Warsaw; he realised now that he had been wrong.  The mortars might have been of Soviet vintage, perhaps they dated from even before that, but there was no question that they worked.  The Polish soldiers – and he assumed that they were soldiers – had to have been going stir crazy; they had been cooped up in their flats, hiding from the Russians.  Now…now, they had taken their battle onto the streets…and they risked the offensive against the Germans.  Did they know that?  Did it matter?

“I want this building sealed,” he snapped.  “Seal the whole complex; summon up helicopters from the airport, get them armed with anti-personal weapons and get them overhead for support fire, now!”

“Major,” one of his staff officers said, “there have been attacks throughout Poland.”

“Gallant brave stupid idiots,” Kaminov swore.  He neither liked nor disliked the Poles, but he enjoyed the perks that came with being an FSB Major…and knew that he was on the verge of losing rank, liberty and perhaps even his life.  That answered the question of how much planning there had on the part of the Poles; they had probably timed it to play merry hell with the supply lines to Germany.  “Is this complex secure?”

They’d picked a location for the headquarters that was easy to defend; that, at least, had been done properly.  Every Polish native within the compound, prisoner or collaborator, was rounded up, searched rapidly, and then placed into a cell until later.  Some of them, Kaminov was sure, would end up being strangled by their more patriotic fellow countrymen; others would wonder what was going on.  It didn’t matter; he was on the verge of losing all control…and that would be bad.

“Yes, Major,” his aide said.  “We have secured all of the entrances and have started a full security protocol.”

“Good,” Kaminov said.  “Now, where is under attack?”

The aide rattled off a list of Russian patrols, some of which had been wiped out, their attackers fading into the woodwork, some of them still holding out, trying to keep themselves alive until help could arrive.  Kaminov knew his countrymen; they could be good attackers, but great defenders; the FSB men might not have been perfect soldiers, but they possessed enough firepower to hold their ground.  He would have preferred men who had served in combat, but there were only a few veterans in his force; training could only go so far.

Almost on cue, the sound of the mortar began to thump again.  “Have a patrol disable that weapon,” Kaminov ordered, feeling calm for the first time in what felt like hours.  He checked his watch; had it really been ten minutes since the entire situation had started to go to hell?  “Where are my helicopters?”

“They’re on their way,” his aide said.  His face was more confident than Kaminov would have preferred.  “They’re moving in now towards the worst-hit patrol.”

“Good,” Kaminov said.  “Have the armoured vehicles ready to move; any resistance, smash it flat.  If anyone is dumb enough to be out on the streets and looks suspicious, fire first and ask questions later.”

A hail of gunfire ended with an explosion.  “The mortar has been disabled,” his aide said.  “The patrol that handled it is warning of several fires burning over the city.”

Kaminov snorted.  The noise of helicopters could be heard now, closing in on the city.  He closed his eyes in a silent prayer, something that would have surprised many regular soldiers, who assumed that the FSB officers had no religion.  If the Poles had anti-aircraft weapons, it would be much harder to crush the revolt without causing major damage; the General would not thank him for a brutal slaughter.  

“Good,” he said.  “Order the helicopters to support the patrols and the armoured units when they move in.”

***
“And I am telling you that you are not going out there,” Melania Kazimiera snapped.  Marya’s sister was distraught…and terrified; the sound of explosions and gunfire could be heard everywhere.  “You’ll just get yourself killed, or worse; stay here and stay down!”

Marya took a long breath.  “I just don’t want to miss this,” she said.  “I have to file a report…”

“And you can do that from safety,” Melania insisted.  Her voice was on the verge of breaking; caring for her two children in the middle of a war zone was terrifying.  The shooting seemed to be growing louder, then louder; Marya had half-wondered if the fighters were going to take the fighting right through their apartment.  There was no safety in the flat; they’d all seen the family downstairs, even the children, taken away for ‘anti-Russian activities.’  The children had been young, but even they had been handcuffed; the Russians had been paranoid to the point of absurdity.  “Don’t you fucking leave this flat!”

Marya hugged her sister.  The building shook again, plaster and pieces of debris falling from the roof.  The windows had been taped up to prevent them from shattering; the power had vanished moments after the first shooting had broken out.  She was nervous, terrified; the Russians would find it easy to take out their frustrations on the Polish civilians.  All they had to do was stop feeding them and waiting for them to starve.

She held her sister tighter.  All they could do was survive; day by day.

***
“Keep their fucking heads down,” the leader snapped.  Lukasz tried to nod, even as he blazed away at a Russian soldier who hadn’t kept his head out of sight; despite his bravado, he was utterly and completely terrified.  He’d heard about teenage boys who had kept the best and brightest of the world’s armies at bay for hours, but it hadn’t occurred to him, until the shooting started, that most of those armies had won in the end.  “Don’t fucking give them a chance to recover!”

The Russians had dug into Warsaw’s Grand Park; a newly created landscaped region that had been a wonderful place to go for a day out, with a girl or even with your mates.  Lukasz had taken both of his girlfriends to the park, in happier times; one of his girlfriends had been taken by a Russian soldier and he had never seen her again.  Some people said that she had taken up with the Russian officer and was living with him; some others whispered that she had been raped, murdered, and then dumped in one of the mass graves.  Lukasz had sworn revenge; the chance meeting with one of the few soldiers who had escaped the Russian round-up had given him the chance to actually gain some revenge.  His AK-47 was a Russian-designed weapon; he had had only a few lessons in how to fire it before the fighting had started.

“Bombs, now,” the leader shouted.  Two of the students, one a girl who had survived an encounter with the Russians and now flinched from men, threw Molotov Cocktails towards the Russian position.  The Russians had been surprised when the insurgents had begun their attack; Lukasz had been told that the plan had been to hit the Russians all over the city and force them out, but the Russians were proving tougher in the defence than they had imagined.  The bodies of three boys he had known from school lay in front of him, proving that Rambo had no place on a modern battlefield.  “Hit them!”

Lukasz took aim and waited while flames spread through the Russian trenches.  The Russians had used some of the sporting grounds within the parks as prisons; there were thousands of Poles there, awaiting…what?  Some whispered that they were simply machine-gunned, as the Russians had done to Polish prisoners once before, others said that they were going to be slaves.  The leader had hoped to free some of them, but that could only happen once they had burned the Russians out of their defences.  Lukasz was starting to understand that that wasn’t going to be happening anytime soon.

A rumble behind him drew their attention; all of their attention.  The leader shouted curses at them, even as Lukasz saw a van driving up, driven by one of his friends.  The boy driving winked at him and drove directly at the Russian positions, keeping his head low and trying to avoid Russian bullets that punched through the metal of the van and damaged it, but…

A streak of light flashed down and destroyed the truck.

Lukasz looked up and, just for a moment too long, stared.  Russian helicopters were swooping out of the sky, their machine guns and rockets flaring away.  The noise was overpowering; he couldn’t understand how he had missed them coming, even over the noise of the gunfight.  He stood up to flee…and in that moment, a bullet cut through his leg, sending him screaming to the ground.  He had never felt such pain in his life, not even when his father had taken a rattan cane to him for stealing his wine; he felt as if his leg was burning in fire.  He tried to fight the pain, but wave after wave of pain flared through his body; the arrival of the Russians was almost a relief.

The entire attack had failed, part of him realised, even though the pain.  The Russians were reacting with overwhelming firepower, simply crushing any building that held resistance snipers or gunners.  The Poles didn’t stand a chance as Russian tanks returned to the streets; he saw the Russians looking down at him and knew that it was over.  He had failed everyone; his family, his girlfriend, his leader, his nation…

He tried to speak, to plead for mercy, but it was too late.  The lead Russian examined him quickly, then drew a knife and slit Lukasz’s throat wide open, leaving him to die.

Chapter Thirty-Four: Sudden Strike, Take Three

Polish-German Border, Germany

“Disaster,” Trautman muttered.  No other word seemed to fit.  It wasn’t a complete disaster, not in the sense that it would destroy EUROFOR and the allied armies, but it would mean that they would have to withdraw.  The Russians had overrun Frankfurt, surrounding the city rather than trying to force their way into the metropolis, and they had stormed several other important towns.  The results had been bad.

Trautman had expected as much, but it was still awe-inspiring; he hadn’t seen anything like it outside of a wargame designed by amateurs more interested in massive battles than anything reassembling reality.  The Russians had gathered three major prongs to thrust forward, into Germany; Trautman was watching the rape of his country developing before his eyes.  The first Russian thrust had been warded, but the second had broken through…and the third was on the verge of duplicating the feat.  That was unsurprising; the southern lines had always been the weakest of EUROFOR, but the Russians had needed to take Berlin, if only to have something concrete to show for their efforts.  Their middle prong would turn north and attempt to pocket his strongest forces…and if they managed to break the southern prong through into undefended ground, they could march all the way to Leipzig.

“If they break through, the middle prong becomes the hammer, and the first prong becomes the anvil,” he said, studying the display.  Both sides had taken heavy losses in the air and most of the air forces had retreated to lick their wounds.  Trautman knew that it was worse than it seemed; the Russians had hit several air bases in Britain and France.  Through sheer luck, they had also managed to sink a French carrier.  “If we break one prong, the other takes us up the bum…”

He scowled down at the terminal.  The battle had lasted too long already; the reserve command post was too far from the main theatre for comfort.  He'd ordered several infantry units, Brandenburg natives all, to prepare to defend Berlin, but politically he wasn't sure if the Chancellor would allow him to take such an action.  He had been under pressure to have Berlin declared an open city, but the Russians would be fools to agree when the capital of Germany was theirs for the taking.  Russian lighter forces had hit the rear of the German lines, forcing him to waste vital resources on hunting down the commandos instead of facing the main threat; the Russians seemed to be using them very aggressively.  There were thousands of refugees, people who had refused to heed the warnings from EUROFOR, fleeing their homes; God alone knew what was happening to the citizens in Frankfurt.

Captain Henri Guichy looked up at him.  “General, there are the reports that Warsaw has risen against the Russians,” he said.  “That could…”

“Lightly armed insurgents against the might of the Russian Army?”  Trautman asked, dismissing the thought with a wave of his hand.  “No, even if they have awesome successes, they won’t be able to prevent the Russians from crushing us…if we stay where we are.”

He stared down at the map of Germany.  The display constantly updated itself with every known enemy unit, but that was unreliable; the electronic haze that was blasting out over the battlefield was having an effect on both sides.  Radio reports and microburst transmissions provided a stronger hint of what was happening, but Trautman was finding it harder to grapple with, now that he knew more about what was going on.  Each of the icons on his display represented a unit, one that had a real crew and a real mission; they had lives of their own.  His decisions would take some of their lives, even if they won the war.

“Send out the orders,” he said.  “I want every air assert that we can scrape up and every gun working to slow down the second Russian angle of attack…and I want the scorched earth policy put into effect.  Make very sure that all of the bridges go down; if not, we will have to expend cruise missiles or bombers on them.  Units in this region” – he tapped a location on the map – “that are under attack are to disengage; units in blocking positions are to block the Russians for as long as possible.  Get in, land a solid punch, and get out again.”

He closed his eyes.  “I want a withdrawal from this sector here,” he said.  He saw the shock in Guichy’s eyes and understood; a Frenchman would have probably have found it just as hard to give up Paris.  “Every unit that is not engaged is to head out for the secondary defence line” – they shared a glance, both of them knew that the secondary defence line was a joke – “and prepare to take orders to hold the line.  The new objective is to bleed the Russians, understand?”

His hand traced a line on the map.  “Every unit here is to withdraw into Berlin,” He concluded.  His subordinates could see to the task of actually turning his orders into reality; the European forces would probably end up making a stand on the Elbe.  He hoped that they would have time, time to prepare and time for help from America to arrive.  His forces were capable…but he couldn’t afford the massive loss rates.  “See to it at once.”

Guichy nodded.  “Yes, sir,” he said.  His hands danced over his terminal.  “Anything else?”

Trautman shook his head.  “No,” he said.  There was one other unpleasant duty that had to be performed, before they lost communications completely, or before the Russians managed to pull another surprise out of their sleeves.  “Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have to speak to the Chancellor.”

***
General Aleksandr Shalenko glared down at the report.  “Get me Major Pavel Kaminov, right bloody now,” he snapped.  The European line had been crumbling…and then the reports from Poland had arrived.  Anna took one look at his face and hastened to set up the secure communicator.  “General, see to it that 2nd Shock has everything it needs for the final push.”

He scowled around him until everyone had gone back to work.  The plan had worked – almost – perfectly.  It would have been nice if the Italians or French had broken when he hammered them, but so far everything had worked fairly well; they had expected a major fight, but he had known that EUROFOR could only hope to stop one of his thrusts.  The other two would crush EUROFOR between them, warfare on a scale that had never even been attempted since the Great Patriotic War.  Instead, he now had to worry about his supply lines, which meant that…

“Anna, order 1st Shock to slow the pace of their advance,” he snapped.  Anna didn’t argue; 1st Shock was leading the southern prong, an offensive that was suddenly much less important.  It would still break the European lines, but the use rates for ammunition had been massive, much higher than anyone – even himself – had expected.  “Tell the officer commanding that we might need to switch his supplies to 2nd and 3rd as they close in on Berlin.”

He closed his eyes.  “Major Pavel Kaminov,” Anna said.  “The link is not perfect.”

“This is Shalenko,” Shalenko snapped.  He was growing tenser by the moment.  “What is going on?”

“There was a planned uprising in several locations across Poland,” Kaminov said.  “We have it under control, but several supply lines were disrupted; we lost nearly seventy lorries and their crewwomen.  They took out the subway and the road above; units are already on their way to make basic repairs.  The insurgents have been suppressed.”

“Good,” Shalenko said.  There was no time to be gentle, not any more.  Poland was far too easy a place for an underground army to make serious trouble.  “I want you to place Warsaw into lockdown; same for the other cities that are near our supply lines.  The lines must be held, or we are in serious trouble.”

The connection broke.  “Inform the commanders of the shock armies that they have to push forward now,” he ordered.  The Germans would be doing everything in their power to slow them down, whatever it took, from the merely irritating fake mine to the really irritating trick of having a single antitank team hitting one tank, then vanishing before they could be shot.  “We must trap and destroy the enemy forces now!”

***
Johan Schriever was nervous, even though the three-man team had worked, lived and trained together for over four years; they knew that the only combat they had seen was against insurgents and irregular soldiers, not a real thunderous army.  The German Special Forces had served in places as part of a UN peacekeeping force, and trained in places that gave them experience of every kind of terrain, but no one had expected to meet a real invasion of Germany.  That sort of warfare was relegated to the history books, where everyone had hoped that it would stay; no one had expected to face a major invasion.

Schriever had faced terrorists, insurgents, and Those Officially Designated as Threats to Global Peace, but he had never faced a real army before…and he was nervous.  For the first time, his entire family was on the firing line; he thanked God that his sister had gone to college in America long before the war had started.  The Americans were taking in a few refugees, but for most people in the firing line, it was either try to escape to France, or stay where they were and hope.  He held his weapon grimly as the Russians advanced, their forces probing through Germany’s terrain, heading to trap a large part of the European defenders.

“Wait,” the Sergeant ordered.  Schriever looked up at him…and then understood.  There was little point in engaging the Russian scouts, who were probably there to see what fire they drew from the enemy.  They’d heard that the Russians sometimes used their penal battalions to test out possible ambush locations; they tended to have a short life and low morale, although some of them had been more than willing to defect, given half the opportunity.  The penal troopers weren’t showing much enthusiasm for their role; anyone would think that they didn’t want to be there.

“Only AK-47s,” he noted, and understood.  He knew the weapon well from his own undercover work and it was one of the most well-known weapons in the world; it was also much cheaper than the more standard weapons the Russians used.  They considered the penal troopers and their weapons expendable.  He wondered if there was another infantry unit nearby with its weapons pointed at the penal troopers’ backs, just in case.  “Sir…?”

He could hear, now, the rumble of a Russian tank.  Unlike the Eurotanks, most of the Russian tanks had a deeper engine noise and used fuel, rather than batteries.  He couldn’t decide which one was better, but it didn’t matter; all that mattered was slowing the Russians down.  They had to be slowed before they reached his house and killed his father and…

He refused to think about it as the Russian tank came into view.  It was advancing slowly, with infantry spread out all around it, which presented a different sort of danger.  There was no way that the Russian tank could see them, not hidden as they were, but the infantry were a different matter.  They might sense the presence of the small team; they might even do something clever like flushing them out, or forcing the tank to change its route.  There were other tanks coming…

Schriever smiled.  Perfect.

“Get ready,” the Sergeant muttered.  It only took one of them to handle the Knife launcher; the others had to cover the shooter.  Schriever gripped his rifle tightly; the Russians would get a surprise when they tried to flush the team out.  “Fire!”

The Knife missile raced away and Schriever fired a long burst down towards the Russians.  The tank exploded – it would take the Russians some time to push the wreckage out of the road – and a handful of Russian soldiers fell to the ground, hit.  Schriever didn’t wait around to find out how many Russians were left; he turned and ran, running through tracks they had had plenty of time to discover.  A hail of fire lashed through the trees, shattering his hopes of a peaceful escape, but the Russians didn’t seem inclined to give chase. 

“Good work,” the Sergeant said, as they reached safety.  “Now…we have to get to another place, and do it all over again.”

Schriever laughed.  “Any time, Sergeant,” he said.  Oddly, he wasn’t nervous any more.  “Any time.”
***
“Now they fucking tell us,” Captain Guntar Markus swore, as the Eurotank fired a shell towards the Russian tank that had killed a German tank next to them.  The battering had shattered far too many units; tankers found themselves allied with units from a dozen different nations, trying to stem the Russian tide.  Markus and his tank had been living on borrowed time; they all knew that they were likely to die soon.  “They want us to do what?”

“Retreat,” the gunner said.  For a long moment, they were at peace; the Russians were keeping their distance.  Markus glanced down at the display, called up the overall situation display, and swore again.  The Russians weren’t advancing on the northern front because their central front had broken through and was looking to pocket nearly a hundred thousand soldiers…including Markus and his tank.  The most powerful army ever assembled in Europe was on the verge of destruction…and Markus knew that they had no choice, but to try to break their way out of the trap.

“Take us back, slowly,” he said.  The Eurotank was almost silent; it was possible that the Russians wouldn’t notice that the force was starting to pull back.  It was also possible that pigs could fly, although he didn’t believe it; the Russians would throw everything at them as soon as they realised that their prey was trying to escape.  “Gunner, stand ready to retreat down the main autobahn; we want to get to the defence line before we have to shoot our way through the defence line.”

The tank inched backwards, Markus and the rest of his crew scanning constantly for threats, and they almost made it.  Two Russian helicopters appeared out of the smoke, their weapons already searching for possible targets, and Markus barked an order.  Two missiles spat from the tank, blasting both helicopters, but he knew that doing that would definitely reveal that there was an active EUROFOR force present.  It wouldn’t be long before the Russians started shelling them…

“Keep us moving,” he snapped.  European infantry had appeared; he muttered orders for the tank to cover them.  They could outrace the infantry with ease, but Markus wasn't about to abandon anyone if it could be avoided.  Three of the older tanks took some of the wounded infantry onboard, although that was a mixed blessing.  Too many tankers had died in their own tanks that way.  “I don’t want us to slow down…”

The scene rapidly became chaotic, despite the best efforts of the military policemen.  The infantry were picked up by buses ‘liberated’ from the nearest town, carrying them down the road…and straight into hell.  A Russian aircraft swooped down and released a hail of cluster bombs, shredding infantrymen like they were made of confetti.  Three tanks fired SAM missiles at the aircraft, but it evaded them all and fled the scene, leaving dead bodies and burning vehicles behind.  Russian shellfire appeared from time to time; he watched the display grimly, knowing that if the Russians did attempt to trap them, they would have to fight their way out of the trap, or die.  What other choice did they have?

“Move over to cover the retreat,” the controller ordered.  Markus normally hated the controllers, arseholes who thought they knew everything, but now he understood some of their problems.  A Russian spearhead had penetrated the defence lines and was racing to block their retreat; the defence line was coming apart as he watched.  “Do you copy?”

“Yes,” Markus snapped.  He muttered the right orders.  “We copy; we could do with a rearming missiles as well.”

“Sorry, none are available,” the controller said.  “Good luck.”

“Bastard,” Markus swore.  The shape of Russian light tanks loomed up near them.  The Russians would have kept the heavier stuff in reserve.  “Open fire!”

***
“General, that is most of the units out of the trap,” Captain Henri Guichy said.  “General?”

Trautman didn’t look up.  “The city of Berlin is in the trap,” he said.  The Russian spearheads had not tried to enter the city, but the Russian infantry had moved up and tried to pocket both the city and several EUROFOR units.  Some had been destroyed by their intended victims, others had managed to hold the European forces back long enough for heavier forces to crush them.  “We’re falling back, back to defence lines that won’t be as strong as the ones we had here…and that’s a victory?”

Guichy hesitated.  “Sir, if they go into Berlin, they’ll be chewed to ribbons,” he said.  His voice became more serious; they had discussed the problem several times.  None of the conclusions had been good.  “They must know that as well as we do.”

“They don’t have to go into Berlin,” Trautman snapped.  The last time a capital city had fallen to a direct attack was Baghdad, years ago; the American could have waited outside for the population to starve, had they been so inclined.  “They can seal the city and come after us and tell me, Henri, where are we going to make our stand?  Perhaps we’ll all go down singing Die Wacht am Rhein; perhaps the Russians will battle their way through Paris.  When are we going to stop the bastards?”

Chapter Thirty-Five: Vengeance is Mine!

East China Seas, Near Taiwan

“It’s a war zone out there,” Commander Bruno Lombardi said, as the drones closed in on their targets.  The Chinese had been busy with their shipping; they might not be as dependent upon sea transport as the NATO powers, but they would need it for reinforcing their bases in Indonesia and preparing to land on Taiwan.  They were also playing it cautious; after the first outbreak of submarine warfare, they were escorting convoys with massive ASW escorts and watching for trouble.

Not that Captain Howery cared.  The Kelly Johnston was almost completely invisible to the Chinese escorts…and wasn’t coming to attack them in any case.  He could have sneaked up and unleashed his missiles from very close range, or he could have shadowed the Chinese escorts to learn how they operated; the shared information between India and China had led to all manner of new tactics, some of them alarmingly capable.  An American submarine had vanished, not too far from their present location; others had had very close encounters with the Chinese ships.

He scowled.  The Chinese had been riding high on their victory; they had smashed an entire American-led carrier battle group, along with dozens of other ships.  They had been hurt, too; who cared about that when they had knocked the USN off its high horse?  They had lost more ships, but who cared?  They had won!  Howery was determined that they would not win again.

The display was filling up with information.  Taiwanese forces were watching the Chinese with care; their active sensors were probing for trouble.  That worried Howery more than he cared to admit; the Taiwanese were on edge and in serious economic trouble.  If they caught a sniff of the drone, they were likely to launch a missile at it, just on the suspicion that it was a Chinese spy drone.  The Japanese, miles to the north, were also on the alert, although Howery knew that they had nothing to fear from the Pact.  The Pact already had Japan’s economic nuts in a vice; they didn’t need to engage in military intimidation to get what they wanted.  The Japanese had supplied the Pact with technology; Howery knew that some analysts in the US suspected that it wouldn’t be long before Japan was nothing more than a supply depot for the Pact.

“Keep monitoring the Chinese positions,” he ordered.  They had probed the Chinese positions before…and each time, the Chinese had deployed more firepower more radars…and quite possibly much more in the way of passive sensors.  The paranoia had been extreme, or so they had thought before the war started; the Chinese had had the distinct advantage of knowing that there was going to be a war.  They also had the advantage of being mainly a land power; wiping all of China’s shipping off the seas would hurt, but it wouldn’t kill them.  “I want a full breakdown of their locations and their deployments.”

It was impossible for anyone, even the most advanced NGW project, to cover a coastline the length of China’s coast, but they had tried.  Antiaircraft and antimissile defences covered most of the possible targets, although that wasn’t a surprise; the Chinese had been paranoid about a sudden pre-emptive strike from one of their enemies ever since the USSR had plotted to wipe out China’s nuclear capability in a single blow.  The Chinese watched everyone; their new system could track ships and aircraft right out into the trackless wastes of the Pacific.  They couldn’t see the Kelly Johnston, however, and that would be used against them.

Howery looked down as the drone feed grew more detailed.  The Chinese had been busy; they had not only been producing transports for a landing on Taiwan, even an opposed landing, but they had been moving in thousands of the finest assault soldiers they had.  No one knew how Chinese Marines stacked up when compared to American Marines or Royal Marines – their only recent actions had been against fanatics in Indonesia and little was known about that – but simple logic suggested that they would be the best that China had.  The sea was not a porous land border; the Chinese could not afford to push a mass of untrained and unprepared infantry across the borders and hope for the best.  They might be able to replace a lost infantryman; they could not replace the transports…

Although it looked as if they were going to try.  Hundreds of ships, some of them military-issue, others clearly civilian ships, had been held in Chinese ports for weeks.  One of them, a British liner, had been the cause of a major row, even though the Chinese had even – and unusually, for them – sent the civilian passengers home via Japan.  That gave them an awesome amount of shipping capability, even though the disorganisation in itself would probably slow down the invasion; they would be able to put thousands of soldiers onto Taiwan fairly quickly.  Taiwan wasn’t a small place, even though it was tiny compared to the mass of China; the Chinese would need every advantage that they could get.

“Ignore the civilian ships for the moment,” he ordered.  The USN didn’t need to be accused of sinking the Queen Elizabeth, even if it was about to serve the Chinese.  There was also no point; the civilian ships would be sitting ducks if the Chinese tried to launch them without the military ships backing them up.  The Taiwanese would have a field day sinking them.  “I want you to target the military ships only…and the defences surrounding the ports.”

Lombardi’s hands danced over the console.  “Done,” he said.  The drone had quickly sent the targeting coordinates back to the Kelly Johnston, which had forwarded them to the other ships, lurking further from the Chinese coast.  “We have targeted the enemy ships and their defences.  I should warn you that…”

“I know the problem,” Howery said.  “Have you informed Captain Herzog?”

“Yep,” Lombardi said.  His brow furrowed.  “All of the submarines are in position.”

“And now we wait,” Howery said, and sat back.  He would have preferred to have fired at once and then fled, but Admiral Toland’s orders had been quite specific; the Air Force was to have a shot at China as well.  It would be half an hour before their aircraft arrived, and launched their own missiles at the Chinese, forcing them to scramble most of their defences.  The submarines had added the Chinese airfields to their targeting lists; if they timed it right, they might just hit the Chinese as they were taking off and vulnerable.  Even if that failed – and he thought that it was too complex to succeed quickly – they would give the Chinese something more to worry about.

“Here they come,” Lieutenant Fisher said.  Her face looked odd in the dim light of her screen; Howery was used to that by now.  His ship was the most formidable in the United States and that was all there was to it.   None of the aircraft heading towards China could do what he could do with his ship.  “They’re heading towards the coast now.”

Guam had played host to bombers before; now, it and the two unblooded carriers were playing host to a major striking force, composed of B-1 and B-2 bombers…and fighters from the carriers to defend them.  Howery watched the situation develop with the dispassionate fury of a video game; the Chinese would probably have seen the bombers coming, ever since the Japanese cracked the mystery of how to defeat first generation stealth systems.  The Chinese had indeed seen them; their aircraft were being launched, too late for any real good at all.  There was something odd about what the Pact was doing; Howery felt it, something odd, something missing…

He put the thought aside.  It would have to wait.

The American aircraft started to launch their missiles as soon as they came into range, launching over a hundred cruise missiles heading towards China, and then they banked away.  The Chinese gave chase, ignoring the missiles as they flew on, but Howery was fairly sure that the American aircraft would escape the battle without taking any major losses.  The Chinese would have to catch them and then defeat the Joint Strike Fighters assigned to covering the bombers; they would be operating right on the very edge of their range and that…that would be bad.  For them.

The missiles were pushing the very limits of speed as they flashed towards China.  Not unlike the missiles that had been used on TASK FORCE TAIWAN, they were hypersonic, and very hard to hit.  They sped up as they arrowed down towards their targets, some of them being targeted by Chinese missile defences, others being ignored as they weren’t heading towards any real target.  That…that was the greatest mistake that the Chinese could have made…and Howery hadn’t allowed himself to hope that they would make it.  Like all sensible defenders, they had prioritised, but they had prioritised based on false information…and that was going to cost them.

The screen flickered into static, and then cleared slowly.  “The pulsars have detonated,” Lombardi said, unnecessarily.  There was no other weapon that could produce such an effect.  “The Chinese defences have been hit; badly.”

There was no time to lose.  “Inform the ships,” Howery said.  “Order them to open fire at once.”

The pulsars had been a brute-force solution to a brute-force problem.  The Chinese had planned to defend themselves against stealth aircraft – and, knowing that their enemy, the United States, was much more likely to develop something before they did, they had constructed an integrated system of radars and sensors that would have picked up even stray radar pulses.  An F-117 might have been capable of scattering the radar pulses from a single radar…but if they fell onto a different radar, it was possible to track the F-117, although not perfectly.  The Chinese had developed the system…

And the United States had looked for a counter.  The pulsars weren’t real weapons, not in the sense that they exploded and destroyed their targets, but in the moment of their detonation, they pulsed out a massive wave of electromagnetic distortion.  The Chinese sensors, already active and searching for contacts, were completely unprepared for the wave of disruption; it would take them minutes, perhaps longer, to reset their systems…and it would be too long.  His sensors had also taken a beating, but they could still track the cruise missiles as they were being launched from the submarines, heading towards their targets in a wave of fury and anger.  The United States Navy was out for blood; Howery was grimly determined to make the Chinese hurt for what they had done to his fleet.

“The missiles have been launched,” a sensor officer said.  His voice was excited; it was his first real taste of combat action.  The Kelly Johnston, by its very nature, had never been intended to take part in a major fleet action.  “That’s nearly a thousand missiles!”

There were six American SSGN submarines nearby.  Each of them could launch one hundred and fifty-four cruise missiles from their main tubes; each of them were now launching as the signal reached them.  It would take time to dispatch all of the missiles, but the wave of sheer firepower was almost unstoppable; the Chinese wouldn’t be able to react in time to prevent the final missiles from being fired.  As he watched, the Alabama, Alaska, Nevada, Tennessee, Pennsylvania, and West Virginia launched their missiles…and all hell broke loose.

“I think they’re sending aircraft to try and get the submarines,” Lombardi said.  He sounded unsurprised; it was the logical countermove.  “I have several aircraft and a lot of chatter on their radio nets; I think we knocked hell out of their communications grid.”

“Understood,” Howery said.  The final missiles were just being launched.  “Order the submarines to split up and run as soon as they have finished firing; we don’t want them caught and sunk by the Chinese.”

He watched on the screen as the missiles flared closer to the Chinese mainland.  Chinese radars would be coming back online now; Chinese weapons would be being targeted and launched against the missiles.  The only question was simple; would the Chinese be able to knock down all the missiles before they reached their targets?

He smiled.  Whatever else happened, whoever won the war that was engulfing half of the world, the Chinese would never be so confident again.  They had been caught with their pants down…and the missiles were about to teach them a lesson they would never forgot.

***
He was called Tu Bao by his family; his father, a soldier, had convinced his son that there were other careers than soldiering for him.  All Chinese youths, male and female alike, could be expected to be conscripted into the People Liberation Army…unless they managed to select themselves a career somewhere else, paid bribes, or managed to get themselves exempted in some other way.  Tu Bao had been an excellent student, even taking part in a few protests against the tension and the semi-Communist Government of France, all of which had earned him a choice between a labour camp or a defence force along the coast.  It hadn’t been a hard choice; the military might have been bad, but the labour and re-education camps were nightmares.  Everyone knew people who had stepped over the line and vanished into one, to emerge much later…if at all.

Despite himself, he loved the vehicle he drove and crewed.  The Russian-designed Tunguska-M7 antiaircraft vehicle was a combined missile launcher and gunnery platform, linked to a radar set that remained firmly off, unless something happened to the main system.  Tu Bao had regretted – he was a patriot, even though students in China had a reputation for being the exact opposite – that the vehicle wasn’t a Chinese design, but really…did that matter, when the Chinese-designed units had gone to places like Indonesia?  Tu Bao had heard rumours from the secret war there; an entire Chinese platoon had vanished there once…and had then been found, with their testicles cut off and stuffed into their mouths.  

He knew that he was lucky; the harbour was one of the safest places in the world.  The four massive transports, crewed by elite soldiers who leered cheerfully at his men whenever they passed, were defended by the very best that China had to offer.  Tu Bao was slightly relieved that there had been no major move against Taiwan – everyone knew that the Taiwanese had nuclear weapons – but he would have been happier without the other soldiers.  They were…pricks.

He saw the Captain, Captain Jiang, and straightened up.  Jiang was a martinet; he insisted on the strictest standards of behaviour from his soldiers, even if they were a lowly group of antiaircraft gunners, rather than real soldiers on a combat front.  He started to attempt to look busy…and then the alarms rang; someone was attacking them!

Tu Bao didn’t hesitate; he slammed his hand down on a button on the vehicle’s console and linked it directly into the main air defence network.  The network wasn’t keen on giving the common soldiers any information on what was actually happening; there was only a warning that enemy aircraft had launched missiles…and then the network fragmented.  Tu Bao stared, helplessly, as the network crashed right in front of his eyes, isolating him from the rest of the network.

“Get the radars up, you fool,” Captain Jiang snapped. Tu Bao concealed his astonishment at being caught…and his private relief that there was someone who knew what to do.  If they were under attack, they knew from briefings – and the gloating about what had happened to the American force – that there was no time to lose.  “Move; get the links back up!”

The smaller radars surrounding the port came on…and Tu Bao felt his heart almost stop.  There were hundreds of missiles coming towards them, some of them clearly targeted on him personally; he hit the automatic firing button and placed control in the hands of the computers.  No human could handle the level of combat that would be required…and, as missiles lanced into the sky, he could only hope that it would be enough.  The skies were being lit up by explosions and the trails of missiles as they clawed for sky; the defenders were throwing a massive amount of firepower into the air.  Missiles, bullets, systems that had only been rumoured; they were being fired and…

He sensed the missile almost before it appeared on the radar screen; a needle running directly at the port.  He threw himself to the ground, out of the vehicle, as the missile plunged down and impacted directly on the transport, blowing up into a massive ball of fire.  The explosions were terrifying; he clung to the ground as a series of missiles struck the port, detonating stored ammunition, fuel and other requirements.  He prayed to a God he had never believed in that he would survive, as the final explosion devastated the port.

Silence fell.

Blood leaking from his ears, he pulled himself to his feet.  The vehicle that he had commanded had been thrown over by the blasts…and the entire port was in ruins.  He saw a few other Chinese soldiers staggering to their feet, others on the ground, screaming for help; help that would never be able to come.  Water was washing around the remains of the troopships, which had been reduced to piles of scrap metal and worse.  The soldiers, who had sneered at them and mocked them and had had first claim on the women, the soldiers were all dead.

Someone was shouting at him.  Tu Bao could hear nothing; he had lost all of his hearing, the noise of the world had been replaced by a low permanent rumble that drowned out everything else.  He stumbled and fell over the body of Captain Jiang; the martinet looked angry even in death.  The cause of death was all too obvious; something had struck him in the back and torn him open.

He fell to the ground and started to cry.

Chapter Thirty-Six: Conflict of Interest

Hong Kong, China

“I think we’re finished here,” Zhi Wei said, as she looked around the room.  “If there are any other matters, take them up with my secretary.”

Although she didn’t know it, Zhi Wei had only minutes to live.  As she discussed matters with her Board of Directors, the thirty-nine-year old businesswoman worried about the war and its effects on her corporation, one of the largest in Hong Kong.  Twenty-one years of control by the Communists had weakened the ability of Hong Kong to act in its more normal style, but resistance to the Communists kept mounting.  The people in Hong Kong had lived under a free state; they knew what life could be like, and while there were generations growing up that had never known life without Communism – or, more accurately, a bizarre mixture of communism, capitalism and state intervention – the sprit of freedom continued to live in Hong Kong.

It was one reason why Hong Kong was one of the hardest places to control in China.  It might have been possible to crush Hong Kong, as the rebels in Tibet and the Muslim regions had been crushed, with fire, sword, and automatic weapons, but that would have killed the goose that laid the golden eggs.  Zhi Wei’s company, like so many others, fed the communist monster at the same time as it posed a possible source of opposition.  Zhi Wei and her fellows had vast freedom to act, as long as it wasn’t too blatant; there were more tongues wagging over her relationship with a Frenchman she had met once, than over her dealings with the democratic underground.  She funded it, supported it as quietly as possible; it was the only hope of someday overthrowing the communists and bringing China into the modern world.

Although she had been hopeful, when facing the Board of Directors, she knew that they had good reason to be worried.  Like many others in Hong Kong – and other places where foreigners had access to Chinese women – she was a half-breed, seemingly more Japanese than Chinese.  Her company did a lot of business with Japan; she had been surprised when the Party had insisted, in their normal style, that she invite the Japanese to invest more in China, although it hadn’t taken her long to understand.  China, for all of the massive advances it had made since joining the Pact of Opposition, hadn’t yet managed to match America; the Japanese, by contrast, had enough technology to match the Americans, although they lacked the economic base to turn themselves into a real superpower.  They had nuclear weapons, they had a powerful and capable navy…and if China stopped supplying them, their economy would grind to a halt within a month at most.  She’d even seen papers that suggested that it would be less than a week.

But that wouldn’t help her, or even the Chinese Government; China’s own economy was on the point of fragmenting.  The war had unleashed a wave of economic shockwaves that were redefining the entire global scene; hardly a nation was unaffected.  Nations that had nothing to do with the war were being hit by the economic fallout…and so was China, and Russia, and India.  The question wasn’t how long they could fight; the question was how long they could keep up the current tempo without the house of cards falling down.  How long?  No one knew; she had even tried to warn the Governor of Hong Kong about the dangers, only to be laughed at.  He might have been excellent from the communist point of view – incorruptible, narrow-minded and generally limited – but he knew nothing about economics.  He was, in short, an ass.

She stared down at her reflection in her wooden desk, enjoying the moment of peace; Hong Kong was as wonderfully chaotic as it ever was.  American, British and other foreigners roamed the streets freely, even through there was a war on; the Governor had wanted to round them all up and had been told by Beijing to leave them alone.  Others had fled, trying to book passage to Japan; Zhi Wei herself had helped a few, in exchange for small favours.  Time was running out for China; Zhi Wei was convinced that it wouldn’t be long before China made the leap for Taiwan…and that would destroy the Chinese economy.  If that happened…she would lose everything, along with millions of other Chinese workers, businessmen…and even communist cadres.

It was time, she had decided, to take a stand.  Singly, any businessman or woman could be dealt with, turned into a horrible example by the Party.  One businessman had been punished for ‘crimes against the state’ – she felt sick when she thought about what had happened to him – but collectively, they had an awesomely powerful position.  She would convince them all to join her; she would get them all to agree.

She would…

The car bomb had been placed in her building an hour ago.  It detonated, unleashing a massive explosion, using military-grade explosives suitable only for demolition work.  The blast billowed out in two directions; it raged upwards, burning through lightly-built floors and slaughtering everyone it encountered, and it raged outwards, weakening the foundations.  Secondary explosions followed, even as the building started to topple; it had been built on a strut that had been right next to the blast.  Zhi Wei and thousands of others had only moments to realise what was happening…and then the massive building toppled, smashing into other buildings and sending some of them crashing to the ground.  Zhi Wei was one of the lucky ones; she never knew what had happened before she died.

***
“A bad business,” Wang Xilai said, as he sat on the chair opposite Kady Jones.  His normally placid face was screwed up with worry and fear.  “Do you know who did that?”

“According to your people, in that stupid press conference, that…entire disaster was caused by American missiles,” Kady snapped.  “Do you happen to know something different?”

Wang leaned back.  “According to most of the people in my…department, you are currently bent over that chest there” – he nodded towards a chest that looked like every pirate’s dream chest – “having your brains fucked out,” he said.  Kady gave him her patented look of death.  “You should know, in your line of work, that the truth is sometimes something that depends upon what people want known.”

Kady eyed him.  “And sometimes what suits their purposes?”

“Of course,” Wang said.  “There is the old joke about the accountant who was interviewed for a job and his employer – prospective employer – asked him what one and one added up to when added together.  The accountant answered that the answer was whatever the boss wanted it to be…and if he wanted one and one to equal three…well, it would equal three.”

“Very amusing,” Kady said.  “What’s the point?”

“The explosion, only an hour ago, killed ten thousand people,” Wang said.  “It coincided with the American attack, to within ten minutes, and it killed several of the West’s strongest supporters in Hong Kong…how much do you know about Chinese politics?”

Kady leaned back in her chair.  “I know very little,” she dissembled.  “I didn’t even know that that Canadian girl was actually half-Chinese, half-Japanese until someone pointed out the name.”

“I don’t believe you,” Wang said.  “I think you know much more about anything than you let on; you’re not like your friend Marya, are you?  Where is she, by the way?”

The correct answer to that was in deadly danger; Kady had learned that Marya was trapped within occupied Warsaw. Warsaw’s attempted at revolting against the Russians had failed, badly; there were reports that the Russians had turned heavy weapons on the Poles, just to crush their insurgency.  It was something she really didn’t want to discuss with Wang; no one, perhaps not even himself, was really sure where his loyalties lay.

“She’s safe,” Kady lied smoothly.  There was no point in discussing something like that.  “What’s your point about Chinese politics?”

Wang leaned forwards until his lips were almost touching her ears.  “Chinese politics are based around a consensus,” he said.  “Of course, only a few people get to…well, vote; anyone who isn’t a member of the Party doesn’t have any overt access to the leavers of power, but someone who has…say, built up a powerful business empire is someone who cannot be roughly handled by the Party, at least not without a very strong case.”

He paused, almost nibbling on her ear.  “You may have heard that a handful of capitalists have met unpleasant fates,” he whispered.  “That only happens, by the way, whatever you may read in the papers, when they really cross the line and start plotting against the Party.  That happens; people who are big men in their own spheres cannot be allowed to start developing…ideas.  You know what I mean; the idea that the tail should wag the dog.

“And, at the same time, the…centre of the system can go quite some way before being brought to heel,” he continued.  “The cause of Taiwan, as we said the last time we met, is something that unites all of China, even businesswomen like the famous Zhi Wei…who died, I might add, an hour ago.  They would have found it difficult to prevent the war because of the vast public interest in recovering Chinese Taipei; it was one of the items that the Party has kept consistent.  It was also something easy to blame upon you Americans; China’s failure to reunite with Taiwan could be explained as something caused by America, which actually allowed China and Taiwan to work together, something I helped with, if I can be allowed a small self-pat on the back.”

Kady snorted.  “You are full of yourself,” she said.  “What is the point of all of this?”

“You’ll be full of me in a minute,” Wang said, and ducked a half-hearted slap.  “You have to understand; China’s economy became powerful because the state allowed free enterprise and worked hard to prevent State Owned Enterprises from becoming drags on the state.  It wasn’t easy, and the price tag was an increasing show of force and control, but it was done, with the net result that China boomed.  Now, however, China’s economics are in serious trouble.”

Kady lifted an eyebrow.  “Why?”

“China was dependent upon world trade,” Wang said dryly.  “Oh, we supplied lots of interesting little devices to nations in the Third World, but they didn’t really provide China with much beyond political influence, did they?  The Pact was a massive attempt to build a self-sustaining economic system, but that has not been an unqualified success, even with the unwilling help of the Japanese.

“And now…do you have any strike reports from the American attack?”

Kady shook her head.  “If they have any in the Pentagon, they would not be showing them to me or anyone else where they might fall into your hands,” she said.  It was basic security, she understood the logic, but it still grated.  “What happened?”

Wang met her eyes.  For once, he was completely serious.  “Your forces either got lucky or had the ports under observation,” he said.  His voice was grim.  “You hit the main transports, two dozen vessels intended to deliver troops to their targets – in this case, Taiwan.”

Kady’s mouth fell open.  “You have to understand; there are two factions within Chinese politics,” Wang said.  “One side wants to bring Taiwan to heel; if they can drag you through the mud at the same time, the better as far as they are concerned.  They’re the people who pushed for the intervention in Indonesia, the people who ensured that there is a major Chinese or Indian force in each of the smaller Pact states, just to ensure that places like Vietnam and Thailand and wherever toe the line.  They’re the ones who wanted the Pact; they’re the ones who ordered the occupation and crushing of Singapore, whatever the cost.

“And they are your enemies.

“And then there are the…call them the rationalists, if you like,” he continued.  “They’re the newer people who have risen to power, most of them at least forty years old, old enough to remember Iraq and how you idiots accidentally bombed an embassy belonging to us, but young enough to accept that the world…is a different place.”  He shrugged.  “Or buy into lies about the world that only an American could accept, depending on which side you’re on.

“What happened today, the death of those soldiers, the sudden termination of the attack on Taiwan, has changed the face of Chinese politics,” Wang concluded.  “Some sides…don’t want the war to continue.”

Kady laughed.  “Are you asking me for a truce?”

Wang shrugged.  “I am informing you of some of the deeper background so that you may inform your people what the rationalists are thinking,” he said.  “Understand; they will not surrender China to you.  Understand; they will fight to prevent an Iraq-style occupation, even if you could make one of China.  Understand; even the arrangement you have with Iran will be too much for them…but there are some grounds for peace.  I want you to tell your people that.”

Kady frowned.  “There’s just one question,” she said.  She looked up at Wang; she liked him and disliked him in the same breath.  “Which side are you on?”

Wang just smiled.

“Answer me,” Kady snapped.

“I can’t,” Wang said.  “What you have to understand is simple; what happened to Zhi Wei was no accident and it wasn’t your fault, but believe me, it is the first shots in something that might change the shape of the war.”

***
The truck had no windows and only a pair of air holes; Lieutenant Stephanie Tsuji felt hotter than she had ever been in her life.  She had been placed into a small cell of her own after making the damned broadcast; she was almost disappointed.  None of her cellmates would have the opportunity to strangle her when the guards weren’t looking; the guards had told her that dozens of prisoners had confessed, but deep inside, she was sure that she was the only one to have broken.

Only an hour ago, she’d been taken out of the cell, escorted into a lorry, and firmly secured.  She wasn’t exactly surprised – Canada had run a basic course on prisoners of war and she knew that no country wanted to lose what prisoners they might have taken, but it was still ridiculous.  By now, according to the movies, she would have had half of the guards and all of the prisoners under her thumb; seducing, cajoling and finally betraying them to the handsome Marines that had come to rescue her.  Real life, of course, was never so simple; she didn’t have a scriptwriter working for her.  In the movies, all it took was a wink to get the male guards drooling; the Chinese guards in real life showed no interest in her whatsoever.

She had attempted to time the drive, but rapidly gave up; she wasn’t even sure how long it had been since she had entered captivity.  The Chinese had given her different times; she’d been told at one point that it had been almost a year, and at another point that it had only been a month.  There was no way to know, even as the truck started to rattle and she almost began begging for water; it felt as if it had been forever.  The Chinese were taking no chances with her.

Stupid, she thought, and wished that she was back in Canada.  She knew nothing about how the Canadian Government might have reacted to what had happened, but Canada had only a small army and a limited navy; Canada could hardly take on the might of China.  Would the Government be able to do anything at all to help her?  She doubted it…

The truck stopped suddenly.  Moments later, the doors were flung open and she flinched back from the sunlight.  Rough hands released some of her restraints, enough to allow her to stumble to her feet, but her hands remained firmly bound; the Chinese were not going to risk anything.  The skyline she saw was familiar from one trip to her mother’s land, years ago; Hong Kong.  Her mother had told her that Hong Kong had died when the communists had taken over; for a long moment, looking at the devastation, she wondered if her mother had been right.

PLA soldiers were everywhere, holding back crowds; the bystanders seemed to be upset, some of them were even crying in public.  Stephanie tried to see what had caused the blast, knocking down several skyscrapers, but failed; the damage was simply too large for her to grasp.  Some of the crowd had noticed her and were shouting at her; she flinched back from some of the English taunts.  They knew who she was, all right; it was confirmation that her broadcast had been shown in China, at least.

“This was caused by an American missile,” a man said.  She didn’t recognise him, but the crowd seemed to recoil slightly when he came up to stand beside him.  He wore a simple business suit, but there was a medal under his lapel.  “I am the Governor of Hong Kong and…look what the Americans did to my city!”

Stephanie didn’t believe him; the Americans wouldn’t have blasted a skyscraper just out of spite.  The aid workers were pulling out bodies now, some of them adults, others young children, torn and broken.  She wanted to cry, wishing that she knew what had happened here; she turned out the Governor’s anti-American monologue and tried to think.

“You’re going to be making another broadcast,” he concluded.  Stephanie wanted to flinch, wanted to refuse, but she no longer had the strength.  “You are going to tell the world what the Americans have done…and what it has cost China…and how terrible our revenge is going to be.”

Chapter Thirty-Seven: Examining Options, Take One

Washington DC, USA

“It’s a very simple question,” the President of the United States said, “and it wants a very simple answer.  Did we, or did we not, accidentally strike Hong Kong with a missile that killed thousands of Chinese civilians?”

David Simmons rubbed his head.  He had bad jet lag, having been summoned back from Britain just in time to hear all the latest information from the other parts of the war.  In Europe, it was easy to forget that there were other parts of the world involved in the war, or that America had other priorities.  Europe first made sense, but politics demanded that China be included in the list of targets; China was also the enemy with the fewest points of contact.  Until the Pact navies were destroyed, hurting China enough to make the leadership consider a peace would be tricky; no one wanted to risk a major armoured assault on Beijing.

General Armstrong looked up from his seat.  “I have had the telemetry from the Kelly Johnston and the submarines analysed several times, along with the recordings from the satellites that we had orbiting over China; the results leave no room for doubt.  We launched just under a thousand missiles – one refused to fire and had to be left in the tube – and all of them were reported as striking their targets or being shot down.  The missiles were tracked by the drone from the stealth ship and all of them headed towards their targets.”

He scowled.  “The Chinese managed to knock down nearly half of the missiles,” he continued.  “That is more than we expected and quite a reasonable batting average.  The strikes were…quite destructive; most of the troopships were blown out of the water and the port facilities were severely damaged.  In all ways, Mr President, Operation Vengeance proved to be a total success…and we lost no ships in the encounter.  The Chinese are merely trying to…ruin our good name.”

The President looked over at Simmons.  “I concur with General Armstrong,” Simmons said.  He was surviving on coffee and a few moments of sleep while waiting for the car.  “The Chinese either are taking advantage of something completely unexpected to them, or they planned the…explosion themselves.  The second seems most likely, unless it was some coincidence; in addition, the images of the impact site – the so-called impact site – do not have a damage pattern suggesting an impact with a cruise missile, but an impact with a bomb; one that apparently detonated at a very low level.”

He shrugged.  “And even if it was one of our missiles that went haywire, the timing is wrong,” he concluded.  “If it had been launched, it would have reached Hong Kong nearly ten minutes before the explosion actually happened, which means that we didn’t fire that missile, intentionally or otherwise.  The Chinese…are attempting to place the blame on us for causing a disaster.”

The President looked down at his fingers.  “What are the odds of this being a Chinese underground group?”

“Questionable,” Simmons said.  He had read the intelligence packet from Kady Jones with great interest, but there were always limits to such knowledge; the main question was if Kady was telling the truth, or was she lying?  Was she merely repeating someone else’s lies?  There was no way to know.  “We know that there have been underground groups in China, in the past, but very few of them trust us, after the CIA blundered a contact and got most of a group executed.  If this is a sniff of a Chinese deal, are they talking for the rest of the Pact, or are they offering to betray the others?”

The President scowled.  “Is there no way of finding out?”

Simmons shook his head.  “We don’t really have any war aims,” he said.  “When we went into Iraq, we had three objectives and blundered on one of them; when we went into Iran, we had a much better idea of what we were doing and allies on the ground.  We could attempt to offer the Chinese a peace deal, but they would probably demand either Taiwan or a return to the status quo; after what Russia has taken, they might not agree to peace at any price.”

General Armstrong nodded.  “It’s been a day since they made their attack and invested Berlin,” he said.  “They’re not going to want to go into the city, and they have problems in their rear, but they also have to try to knock out the opposing armies.  If they can do that, we will have real problems in retrieving the situation; it’s still going to be a few weeks until we get any heavy American units into place and, quite frankly, we will have to build up much more power before we can push the Russians back.  Worse…”

The President held up a hand.  “David,” he said, “what exactly is going on there?”

“Three days ago, the Russians launched a major offensive against European lines,” Simmons said.  “The attack was brutal and conducted with every major division – that was almost all of the A-divisions and many of their B-divisions, spearheaded by their dreaded Shock Armies – and was conducted along three prongs.  The middle prong broke through European Lines near one of their Frankfurt cities – the Germans have two cities with that name, one of them on the Oder River – and basically attempting to pocket EUROFOR.  General Trautman ordered a retreat while Allied airpower attacked the second prong; he was able to pull out many units in the teeth of enemy fire.  Some units retreated into Berlin, but the main body of the force is currently trying to dig in along the Elbe…”

“Crappy defensive terrain,” General Armstrong injected.  “They would do better to try to make a stand on the Rhine.”

“And has been badly mauled,” Simmons concluded.  “Losses were serious, particularly among the Germans and Italians, who lost an entire armoured unit to a deadly Russian attack.  The Russians got hurt too, of course; preliminary analysis suggests that losses were on the order of three-to-one, our favour.  The problem is that the Russians could afford such losses…and EUROFOR cannot.  General Trautman was worried that the Russians would merge their prongs together and come after him before he could get any defences into place, but the Polish revolt seems to have given the Russians pause.  The General commanding the Russian armies is apparently spitting bricks, which is bad news for the Poles, I’m afraid…”

The President shook his head slowly.  “Can the Poles drive the Russians out?”

“I doubt it,” General Armstrong said.  “The Russians are just too strong.”

Simmons nodded.  “The General is right,” he said.  “The Russians moved in a fairly large occupation force, once they had actually smashed all resistance; the one lesson that everyone drew from Iraq was that an occupation force had to be massive to crush any opposition.  Of course, the Russians have different objectives than we had in Iraq, and we don’t know what they are, and they operate under less restrictive rules of behaviour.  Some of the actions of the FSB against their own people, back when Putin snuffed it and there were riots, were shocking enough; it seems that they won’t feel any inclination to be gentle with the Poles.”

He sighed.  “We have reports that several FSB units from Russia were ordered to be dispatched west at once,” he said.  “Some of them are the units that broke all resistance in Chechnya; the Poles are a very different kettle of fish.  They burned, raped and pillaged their way through anywhere that dared show resistance, and they might do the same to Poland; even if they don’t, the Poles are going to be short of everything they need to fight a war.”

General Armstrong blinked.  “I thought that the guy commanding the Russian force had forbidden atrocities,” he said.  “Don’t the Russians know how to obey orders?”

“That’s a special case,” Simmons said.  “General Aleksandr Shalenko is not only the best they have, but a close personal friend of the Russian President; he also has an unbroken string of successes to his credit.  Someone with that kind of power can tell the FSB to shove it and make it stick, but now…now his policy of leniency has come to bite the Russians on the behind.”  He ran his hand through his hair.  “I don’t know if the Poles revolting was what stopped him from destroying all of EUROFOR, but his enemies in Russia are certainly going to make it seem that way…and the Poles are likely to pay the price.”

“Russians,” General Armstrong said.  He rolled his eyes.  “The only nation that would stab themselves in the back while fighting a major war – or even under the suspicion that they might have to fight one.”

“Not the only one,” Simmons said.  He looked up at the President.  “Mr President, it is the opinion of the entire EUROFOR Commission that the attack on Iceland should be mounted as soon as possible.”

“Cheeky sods,” General Armstrong muttered.  “Telling us what to do with our people.”

The President held up a single hand.  “Not now,” he said.  “Can Iceland be taken quickly?”

General Armstrong went back to being all business.  “We can land the Marines at once,” he said.  “We have them lurking nearby and have had them there while we waited to see what would happen in Europe.  Admiral Barbara Kinninson has been having a fit and bombarding me with emails demanding that we either get on with it or take her ships somewhere useful, such as Vengeance II.”

“Then we might as well finish Iceland now,” the President said.  “Once we liberate it, can we prevent the Russians from retaking the place?”

“Ideally, we would be stationing several National Guard battalions on Iceland, once we had the place liberated and the Russians cleared out,” General Armstrong said.  “Operation Vengeance II is intended to make it impossible for the Russians to operate in a major way on the seas; they have launched a handful of raids using their surface ships, although they slowed those since we blew a cruiser out of the water using aircraft flying out of Norway.  The Russians should have real problems even spitting in Iceland’s direction once we have accomplished that.”

The President nodded.  “Have Admiral Barbara Kinninson proceed at once with the liberation of Iceland,” he said.  “That still raises one question; how do we end the war?”

General Armstrong leaned forward.  “Mr President, we have an obligation to liberate Poland, the Baltic States and even Iran,” he said.  “We also have to avenge what the Chinese and Indians did to us.”

“I know,” the President snapped.  Simmons saw real stress in the President’s eyes and wondered when the President had slept properly last.  “The point is…General, can we win a quick victory?”

“My office has been looking at that,” the General admitted.  “We can hurt the Russians, Chinese and Indians; we can hurt them, quite badly.  A program of strategic bombing – more accurately, strategic cruise missile targeting – would go quite some way towards forcing their nations to head towards collapse.  If we targeted dams, for example, and non-nuclear power sites, we would have started to limit their ability to power their nations.  Other targets might produce as useful a result; we could start picking off factories that produce vital supplies, but…”

“Cruise missiles didn’t work on the terrorists,” the President snapped.  “What will they do here?”

“It’s a different position,” General Armstrong said.  His eyes glittered with enthusiasm.  “They are one large interconnected nation; they have to be knocked down a few pegs, made to feel the discomfort that they are making the Poles and the others suffer.  So far, only China has felt our wrath directly, and that has only been in a limited scale.”

“And we should prepare for a riposte,” Simmons murmured.  The President looked at him sharply.  “They have been smacked in the face in their own land; they are likely to start looking for a way to hit us as hard as possible.”

The President paled.  “Nukes?”

“It’s possible,” Simmons said.  “They also will want to balance the books before they try to discuss peace, assuming that they actually do have a faction that is willing to discuss peace.  It’s impossible to know.”

General Armstrong coughed.  “Perhaps there is one,” he said.  “The blunt truth, however, is that we will have to rely on our army…unless there really is a group that supports us over there…and that group is not likely to move unless they are sure that we will win.  Mr President, what are the political objectives of this war?”

The President smiled thinly.  “That rather depends on whom you ask,” he said.  “Politically, the Chinese claim that we hit Hong Kong is not hurting us as much as it could have done; many of the people who would have sung the anti-American dirge are in Europe, which is being invaded by the Russians.  There are plenty of people here who want to ensure that, from now on, the Chinese language…”

“Mandarin,” Simmons injected.

“Will only be spoken in Hell,” the President concluded.  He smiled dryly.  “Anyone would think that they had suddenly realised that the world was a pretty nasty place after all.  But…General, can we crush them?”

“There are several possibilities,” General Armstrong said.  “The first possibility – excluding the development of a silver bullet weapon, which we are working on – is to reinforce Europe to the strongest possible extent while holding the line in Iran and wrecking the Chinese Navy – the long-winded People’s Liberation Army Navy – to prevent them from causing more trouble in the long run.  Once we have reinforced, we would attack along a major axis of our own and crush the Russian Army, before heading east to Belarus.  The campaign could be continued all the way to Moscow, or we could launch with the limited aims of liberating Eastern Europe and Germany.”

He took a breath.  “The second possibility offers a possibility of a quick victory, but it could be a complete victory,” he continued.  “Logistically, it would be very bad, and it could go very wrong.  We would be landing Marines and even regular army units directly into Finland – or, if we had to, directly into Russia – and heading directly for Moscow.  If we can take Moscow, the Russian state might come apart; at the very least, they would have to move their troops to counter the new threat.  It would be tricky, and we have war-gamers examining it now, but it might work.

“The third possibility is to reinforce in Iraq and attack into Iran, hopefully hitting the Indians hard enough to knock them out of the war,” he continued.  “If not, we would be doing something that we have not been able to do; we would be heading into a major Pact country, something that they could not ignore.  If we concentrated on destroying much of the Indian Navy, we would be able to force an attack into what was once Pakistan, and then…India itself.”

He closed his eyes.  “The final plan offers the least risks; to some extent, we can operate it along with the other plans,” he concluded.  “We would be conducting a major naval campaign in the Far East anyway; us, the British and their Commonwealth, the French…we could go after Indonesia.  The Chinese have been building up there – we suspect for an invasion of Australia – and the Aussies want us to take care of it.  We already have a large force in Australia; Admiral Toland would have to win control over the seas, which will drain our forces quite badly, but it could be done.  It offers a good chance at a safe victory…and it would have long term implications; we might manage to bring the Japanese into the war if we, not the Pact, control their shipping lanes.  It might also force the Pact to deal with rebellions themselves in their own backyards; states like Vietnam weren’t happy about being forced into the Pact.”

The President closed his eyes.  Simmons knew better than to interrupt; America hadn’t fought a war on such a scale for a very long time, perhaps ever.  Other ways had been just as threatening, but America itself had always been safe…perhaps until now.  In theory, the Pact could reach out and touch America…and that would be politically disastrous.  It made his blood boil; hundreds of jet fighters and units that were desperately needed elsewhere were sitting in America, guarding borders that were not a serious risk…

The President met his eyes.  “Economically, can we support the war that long?”

“It’s hard to say,” Simmons said.  “We actually closed down much of our foreign debt during the previous administration; we may have to give the last President some credit after all.  The economy was taking hits, however, because of the war in Europe; German and French stock is suddenly worthless.  There was a major – and overblown – panic because of the French riots; even though the French have them under control, they’re still quite weak in the stock markets.  And…fighting a war is expensive; the British are already running short of actual supplies, and they think that they will have to start rationing food next week.  The Russian submarines hit several ships and caused a food panic; until we stop all of those subs, we will always have to deal with shaky allies.”

He ran his hand though his hair and wondered what he would do when he no longer had any hair.  “We also will need time to replace our war stocks; we burned up a great deal of stocks at Taiwan, and the Europeans are in even worse condition.  The European Air Forces got battered over the last month; our units in Britain got a beating as well.  Frankly, Mr President, we need something of a break…and we are not going to get one.  An army without weapons is useless…and the Europeans are running very short on ammunition.  Once it’s gone…”

He didn’t bother to finish the sentence.

Chapter Thirty-Eight: Examining Options, Take Two

Near Beijing, China

“I need a honest answer to a honest question,” President Joseph Lapotin said.  “Alex, just how bad was it?”

General Aleksandr Shalenko looked down at him.  The battle was only three days over – and he knew that if there hadn’t been a revolution in Poland, he could have destroyed much more of EUROFOR than he had.  Russian forces had ground their way to Berlin, shattering the European lines in several; places, but they hadn’t attempted to take the city.  It would have been – would be – costly beyond belief.

“We cut off and pocketed several of their units,” he said.  “Apart from a British armoured unit that cut its way out, we were able to destroy or capture several European units, including a French and a Spanish unit.”  He saw Lapotin’s expression; they had known that the French were taking part in the war, but Spain had not been expected to contribute much, not with Algeria far too close to it.  “We took thousands of casualties ourselves, and we burned up tons of ammunition; the net result is that we would have problems fending off a counterattack, let alone continuing the attack.”

He paused.  “The good thing is that the Elbe is…not a good place to try to defend,” he continued.  “We do need a break, however; we took murderous losses in the air, including many fighters that got bounced by our enemies.  It’s going to be a few weeks, at best, before we are ready to take the offensive again, but when we launch the offensive, we will be doing it in much more favourable terrain.”

“That wasn’t what I meant,” Lapotin said.  For a moment, Shalenko could see just how tired his old friend was; he looked utterly worn down.  “What about Poland?”

Shalenko ground his teeth softly.  “The Poles interfered with our supply lines,” he admitted.  “We had pressed the Polish rail network into service for the supply lines – commandos actually had the job of taking most of the rolling stock intact – and the Poles were able to cut it in several places.  Most of the cuts involved derailing a train, in one case killing over a thousand soldiers, and they will have to be repaired.  Worse, they attacked many of our lorries and destroyed them, and targeted our patrols.”

He scowled.  “Our forces in Warsaw and other places took swift action and were able to recover much of the situation, but it cost us the chance for a decisive victory,” he concluded.  “We killed thousands of Polish fighters, but they managed to interfere enough to prevent us from winning.”  He glared.  “Molobo was very apologetic.”

“He’s going to be more apologetic soon,” Lapotin said.  He looked down for a moment; Shalenko had a chill presentiment of disaster.  “There was a long argument about it in STAVKA; some people wanted to crush the Poles without mercy, others wanted to offer them concessions, just long enough for us to force the Europeans to submit.  The argument raged on into the night…and in the end there was a vote.”

Shalenko said nothing.  Russia was a dictatorship, in all, but name, but it was a dictatorship of a group, rather than a single person.  No Russian would ever be allowed supreme power again, not since Stalin; the net result was that power was shared out between the different people and their departments.  Some of the departments were harmless, like the supply ministry, which had managed to feed the country for the first time in…well, forever.  Others were very dangerous – and ambitious; the FSB was the prime example of that.

“It was a secret vote, of course, but it was fairly obvious who voted what,” Lapotin continued.  “The vote was for the crushing of all Polish resistance, whatever the cost; our old friend from the FSB led the debate himself.  The FSB will be taking over responsibility for the securing of Poland and your supply lines.”

Shalenko leaned forwards.  “We have already had one rebellion in our rear,” he protested.  “If we get the Poles thinking that they’re going to be slaughtered anyway, they’ll fight like mad bastards and cost us the chance at a greater victory.”

“It’s not arguable,” Lapotin said, softly.  “Sergei Kirpichov, the ambitious toad, wants to be President.  He won’t get it – too many people distrust the FSB, including some of the factions within the FSB itself – but he can put someone of his own selection into the chair…if he manages to unseat me.”

“We’re at war,” Shalenko protested.  He knew Sergei Kirpichov; there was little doubt that the FSB Director was out for as much power as he could get…and Shalenko knew that he could not be allowed to have it.  He was a very dangerous man.  “We cannot afford to crush the Poles with an influx of the most violent and brutal FSB soldiers; they would revolt…”

“And they will be crushed,” Lapotin snapped.  “You may not be aware that there has been much thought given to how this war is to be won.  You yourself briefed STAVKA that if we failed to won quickly, we were likely to lose.  The war is a month and a half old, if we start counting from Taiwan; have we won the war?”

Shalenko shook his head.  They had bled the Europeans, badly, but they had failed to crush them.  The French Arabs had proven worthless as a long-term problem for the French; that problem was already being slowly reduced to nothing.  A whimper, instead of a bang; he silently cursed the failure to kill the new French President.  A stronger man, a less intelligent man, might have sent the army into the slums to kill, and kill, and kill…and triggered off a real civil war.  Instead…

Instead, the French had stood with the Germans…and they had held the line.  He knew that they had been hurt, but they had held and the Russians had been hurt as well.  They might have been forced to fall back, but he knew that his forces were not ready to move against the new defence lines…and wouldn’t be ready for some time.  If the Americans moved more of their own units into Europe, the war might become unwinnable…and then the massive economic superiority of the European Union and the United States would come into play.

“No,” he said shortly.  “We have not lost it.”

“The Chinese demanded this meeting,” Lapotin said.  He leaned forwards.  “Answer me a question; can we still win conventionally?”

Shalenko felt his blood run cold.  The STAVKA meeting must have gone on for a very long time.  “Our main problem is breaking the European lines,” he said.  “It’s not enough to force them to retreat; we have to force them to surrender, or crush them.  As long as their army remains in being, it’s a threat and we will have to deal with it.  There might be a political solution, but it would be hard to imagine the Americans agreeing to anything that did not include releasing the other states we have invaded; once we have prepared, we will have to march west again.”

Lapotin winced.  “Our friend” – there was a mocking note to his voice – “has been suggesting the use of tactical nuclear weapons against the Europeans,” he said.  “Would you advise as much?”

Shalenko forced himself to consider the issues as coldly as he could.  “I dislike nuclear weapons,” he admitted.  “They are chancy things; analysis of the deployment of nukes in India and Pakistan suggested that they were quite effective at destroying their own targets, but any unit that took some precautions and was far enough from the blast had some chance of escaping intact.  There’s also the danger that both France and Britain have nukes of their own; they would certainly retaliate against us, or the Germans would leave the war and surrender.  If we threatened nukes, they might accept a peace, but again, that would destroy any hope of peace.”

He frowned.  “We might end up with a war of revenge, ten years down the line…

“There’s also the danger of what they could do with their nukes,” he continued.  “The French probably consider Paris equal to Moscow.  If one of our nukes goes off too close to Paris, the French might try to strike back at Moscow, or they might hit our troops while they’re massing for the attack.  That’s what happened in Pakistan; several Pakistani units were destroyed before the Indians engaged them.  We would be dealing with something unpredictable by definition…and that would be very dangerous for us.”

Lapotin scowled.  “I thought that a total nuclear war was impossible these days,” he said.  “Can’t we block their missiles?”

“In theory, we can block ballistic missiles,” Shalenko said.  “In both of the major sea battles, the Americans did very well with the cruise missile attacks, but several got through…and if we had tipped the missiles we used at Iceland with nuclear warheads, we would have won the battle.  As you can see, in practice, missile defence is not a reliable system.”

“I see,” Lapotin said.  “What does that leave us with?  A diplomatic offensive or starting a small nuclear war?”

Shalenko nodded.  “If we beat the European armies, we can dictate terms to them,” he said.  “If we don’t beat them soon, we may be in trouble.”

It was, he knew, a classic understatement.

***
“The Americans hit the transports,” the Chinese President snapped.  Prime Minister Mohandas Singh leaned back as the Chinese President shouted at him.  His face wasn’t given to flushing, but Singh could tell that the Chinese President wasn’t just angry, but furious.  “Do you have any idea at all how hard that makes it to liberate Chinese Taipei?”

Singh took a breath.  “We all knew that an American strike was likely,” he said.  “We even prepared defences for the attack.”

“All of which proved themselves to be useless,” the Chinese President thundered.  There was little dispassion in him now.  “I have been laughed at, by my own people, for the strike against the civilians in Hong Kong!”

Singh shrugged.  “You know as well as I do that your own people, your security staff, intended to scratch an itch and get rid of a few people with…inconvenient views,” he said.  The plan had been diabolical, almost as clever as the American plan to raid China’s coast; at a stroke, someone who had funded anti-communist forces in China had become a martyr to the cause of anti-Americanism.  The only question was how much of it would be believed by the Chinese people; nearly half of the population was supposed to have access to the Internet…and the censors couldn’t catch everything. They could barely prevent people from locking out the censoring software when they went browsing.

He smiled to himself.  There was something odd about a country that accepted the strangest forms of Japanese pornography, but banned free discussion and free access to information.  America published more self-critical material than any other country in the world…and yet much of that, too, was banned.  Authors who were considered nothing less than traitors by American right-wingers were banned in China.  It was odd…

“There must be retaliation,” the Chinese President snapped.  “Did we strike at the United States?  Of course not; we did not send a submarine to bombard Pearl Harbour, or their west coast, or even their military targets!  They may have fired on our missile bases during the big battle, but now they have prevented us from liberating Taiwan!  The Americans must not be permitted to get away with this!”

“This is war,” Singh said.  He kept his voice calm.  “What do you suggest?  Mass nuclear bombardment of Taiwan?”

The Chinese President didn’t laugh.  “We have the right to defend ourselves,” he snapped.  His voice was cold and icy.  “We have no intention of nuking Chinese territory, but we intend to wipe the American base at Guam off the map!  We have the right to hit back as hard as we can and we cannot invade Guam and you have been dragging your feet on invading that island in the middle of the Indian Ocean!”

“If we attempt a landing on Diego Garcia, the American submarines in the Indian Ocean will shred the landing force,” Singh said, as calmly as he could.  The last thing anyone wanted was a major split in the Pact.  “We are also having problems bringing the Americans to battle in Iran; they are refusing to stand and fight…”

“Very wisely,” Lapotin said.  “You do have overwhelming firepower, after all…or are you just dragging your feet?”

Singh felt his blood boil.  “We are in no position to start a nuclear war with the United States,” he snapped.  “We cannot…”

“We cannot afford to allow American notions of morality to prevent us from striking,” the Chinese President said.  “If we destroy their base, then victory becomes much harder for them…”

“And they will nuke a target belonging to us,” Singh said.  “Perhaps only to you, just in the hopes of splitting us up.  Once that happens…then what?  Will you strike again, perhaps at Diego Garcia?  Will you accept the American strike, or will you attempt to hurt the Americans even harder?”

He took a long breath, searching for the words to convince them.  “My country was devastated by a nuclear strike,” he said.  It hadn’t been as bad as he suggested, but it had been unpleasant, even with the Pact to help.  “A handful of nuclear hits almost ruined us.  The balance of conventional firepower is on our side…”

“No,” Lapotin said.  “If the Americans succeed in placing a major army in Germany, we will no longer have superior firepower; they will be able to inflict a defeat upon us and then push us back.  What happens if we don’t win quickly?”

“The fact remains that the Americans are unwilling to fight a land war in Asia,” Singh said.  He felt the meeting spinning away, out of control; he wondered exactly what public opinion would make of a nuclear detonation.  India, the only democracy in the Pact, had been nuked; it knew just how terrible nukes could be in the wrong hands.  Would public opinion allow him to remain in office?  “If we can present the Americans with a settled case…”

“But we can’t,” the Chinese President said.  His voice was grim.  “The Americans have recognised the rebels as an independent state; they will be independent if they are not brought back into the fold by force.”  He glared at Singh.  “We are going in circles; I move – now – that we launch a nuclear strike on Guam and that we issue a joint warning that further attacks against the Pact homelands will not be tolerated.”

Singh lifted one dark eyebrow.  “And when the Americans hit a target with a nuke of their own?”

The Chinese President scowled.  “We would accept the strike,” he snapped.  “perhaps we should add Diego Garcia to the list, something that would make us all involved in the encounter.  This is war, Singh; are you not prepared to fight to the end?”

“This is a war for limited aims,” Singh said, aware that not everyone would consider the aims ‘limited.’  “If we kick the war up to the next level, we risk losing control completely.”

He’d seen some of the simulations; the nuclear bursts burning away at the edges of the Pact nations, slowly burning through the entire Pact.  It was one slow death for the Pact, one that would kill billions over the months as the strikes wore down the BMD systems.  It all depended upon what assumptions were put into the simulations, of course; he knew that such simulations were not always reliable.  It was just as possible that the first wave of American nukes would clear the way for the second wave.

There was a knock at the door.  “Mr President,” a Chinese officer said, “we just got word.  The Americans are invading Iceland!”

Lapotin glared.  “We have to move now,” he snapped.  Singh could hear the raw anger in his voice, mixed with concern; the Americans had been bombing Iceland over the last week without actually bothering to invade.  “Iceland cannot hold out for long.”

“This is war,” the Chinese President agreed.  There was something ugly and unpleasant behind his voice.  “I move that we strike both Guam and Diego Garcia.  Joseph?”

The Russian nodded slowly.  “I feel that we have no option,” he said.  He smiled thinly.  “Singh?”

Singh knew when he was beaten.  “I understand,” he said.  “There seems to be no option.  Very well, then; we will destroy two American bases and hope that the Americans are inclined to be reasonable.  Perhaps they will only blast Cam Ranh Bay.”

He stared down at them for a long moment.  “Or, perhaps, we will unleash something that we cannot control,” he concluded.  “We may be ending the war completely…and ending ourselves at the same time.”

Chapter Thirty-Nine: Liberation Force

Iceland

It was cold, but neither of the two guards noticed the weather; they had other things to worry about.  The Icelanders had been sullen, but not violent hosts; both of the guards had been privately delighted that they weren’t being shot at by insurgents.  Their sergeant had been a soldier in Chechnya; some of the stories he had told them, in between forcing them to remain in something reassembling battle condition, had chilled them both.  Iceland might be short on wine and women – or at least wine and women that could be touched – but it was peaceful.

At least, it was peaceful on the ground.  The two guards, along with several units that were spread out throughout Iceland, had been spared much of the American bombing, but the units near Reykjavik had been hammered from the air by American precision weapons.  A handful of American aircraft had been blown out of the sky, but the others had kept coming, their bombs seeming to always find a target.  General Nikolay Dzasokhov’s forces had started with nearly a hundred tanks; the remainder were now well hidden, waiting for the day of invasion.

Iceland was a larger place, the guards had been surprised to discover, than it was on the map.  It was a confused mixture of hills, mountains and confusing terrain, populated by a people who tried to ignore the Russians as much as possible.  There were too many places to land…and all of them could not be guarded.  The sergeant had been blunt, if unfriendly; the guards were there merely to provide a small reaction force and a tripwire if the Americans tried to land their forces down on the beach below.  The darkness, broken only by the glittering light of the stars, seemed to hold imaginary monsters; the guards shivered as they walked on.  They were spread thin and knew it.

Something moved behind the first guard.  He turned, too late; strong hands caught him and a knife neatly slit his throat.  His comrade opened his mouth to shout a warning and desperately tried to unsling his rifle, too late to do any real good.  The SEAL behind him killed him silently and efficiently, the squad neatly hunting down all of the Russians before a warning could be flashed to Reykjavik.  The SEAL team had watched the Russians for nearly a week; the entire squad was exterminated before they even knew that they were under attack.

One of the SEAL team lifted a transmitter and flashed a microburst transmission to a watching satellite, high overhead.  The message was received.  There was no acknowledgement, but the SEAL team had expected none; their task now was to wait…and prepare to meet the Russians if something happened that they hadn’t prepared to meet.  They allowed themselves no pause for congratulations; they hadn’t won the war yet.

Dark shapes loomed up in the water and started to come slowly ashore.  A second microburst was sent, confirming their locations to the aircraft, lurking in the air just outside Iceland’s detection range.  The aircraft had been waiting for their chance to hit the Russians; they weren’t going to waste it.  In minutes, every Russian radar and armoured vehicle would be dead.

***
Admiral Barbara Kinninson watched the drone feed as the small groups of Marines landed, their smaller landing craft, almost silent when in motion, landing them neatly on the unnamed beach.  The tactic had been prepared years before, back during the Cold War; she had feared that the Russians would have dug in on the beach, but instead the Russians had refrained from spreading out their forces.  It was a pity, in some ways; an enemy that tried to defend everywhere would end up defending nowhere, but the Russians could have made the attack much more costly.

“If you’re not cheating, you’re not trying,” she muttered under her breath, as the first of the tank transports headed towards the shore.  She had no intention of giving the Russians a fair fight merely to allow them a chance; she intended to land a sledgehammer and then crush the Russians with it.  “Are the aircraft in position?”

Sanchez nodded.  “Yes, Admiral,” he said.  In theory, Iceland should not be able to see the aircraft, but Barbara knew better than to completely trust theory.  It had proven itself to be limited too many times before.  “They’re all ready to be deployed at your command.”

Barbara smiled, wondering what her great-grandfather, who had fought in the Pacific War, would have made of her.  A woman in the Admiral’s chair, commanding a massive task force, perhaps – no, there was no perhaps – about to win America’s first victory of the Third World War.  He would have been astonished, and yet she liked to think that there would have been some kinship between them; they had both commanded aircraft carriers in their time.

“Good,” she said.  There was no longer any point in delay.  “Launch the attack.”

***
The Batmen went first, launching a single pass over the Russian airfields and killing all of the Russian radars before they could pick up the impending attack.  As Russian gunners strove to locate their invisible targets, bringing their radars up one by one, the Batmen picked them up with their sensors and knocked them down with HARM missiles.  The Russians tried to hit the aircraft, firing into the lightening sky, but the Batmen were moving out of the combat zone as the skies grew lighter.  The Russians had no time to breathe…

The men of the 509th Bomb Wing were out for revenge.  Many of them had lost friends and comrades in the battles ranging in the East China Sea and over Europe.  They flew their heavy bombers in as close as they dared and unleashed an awesome array of firepower onto every Russian position that was not too close to a civilian dwelling.  The Americans had tried to confirm that the Russians had moved most of the population out of the war zone, but it had proven impossible to make certain before the attack had been launched.

Massive explosions billowed up all over Iceland.  Some were targeted on power plants and radio stations, plunging Iceland into darkness; others were smaller and targeted on Russian radio transmitters.  Jamming drones jammed high overhead – bemused Russians found their radio frequencies swamped with American music – and shattered any hope of keeping the Russian defenders coordinated.

It was dawn.

***
“General, we have major attacks against Iceland and the defences,” his aide said.  “we cannot raise any of the posts along the south-east coast; the telephones are down.”

“I believe that I might have noticed,” General Nikolay Dzasokhov snapped.  He had been expecting the American invasion for nearly a week and so far the Americans had only disappointed him.  Their attacks, a hallmark of a strategy that had been exposed as tactically sound, but strategically weak back in 1991, had been consistent and brutal; any Russian force in the open got hammered.  Now…the Americans had finally moved ahead with strikes intended to bring Iceland to a halt…and he knew that there was no point in deluding himself.

The Americans were on their way.

The Russian Staff Colleges had studied Americans since before the Cold War.  Russians had followed American progress – and American military thought – as it had developed; Dzasokhov himself had contributed several articles to the expanding debate as President Lapotin gave the Russian people back their pride.  The Americans had abandoned the long-term preliminary bombing campaign after the failure to destroy Saddam’s regime in 1991; they tended to combine it with the ground invasion.  The sheer power of the bombing raid meant that the Americans would be attempting to land…and he knew that he couldn’t stop them.

He snapped his fingers.  “Map,” he snapped.  His aide unfurled the large map of Iceland and Dzasokhov peered down at it.  He had the serious problem of needing to defend a long coastline with only a handful of units; Russia had only been able to place three thousand infantrymen on Iceland…and even that had been pushing it.  The Americans had probably studied Iceland with as much interest as the Russians had; where would they land?

The problem was impossible to solve.  Most of his units were based at four locations, but his main base was near Reykjavik; the Americans would come for it first.  Ideally, they would try to hit all of his bases, using paratroops and air-landed forces to move rapidly across Iceland, but most of his communications were down.  By the time he could get a message to the other bases, the Americans might be upon him; he could only concentrate on Reykjavik.

“Have the motorcycle battalion deployed,” he snapped.  The Russian units were close enough to Reykjavik to escape most of the attention of the Americans.  He had been meant to have VTOL aircraft, as well as long-range fighters and bombers, to support him; those had either been bounced as they had made the flight from Russia, or they had been destroyed on the ground.  If there had been any left at the airfield, Dzasokhov was sure that they would have been destroyed; if not, they were likely to be shot down quickly.  “I want them watching all of the possible routes towards our base here…and if the Americans come, I want to be warned.”

He couldn’t rely on his communications, but they had run drills under the assumption that the Americans would cut off their communications, or that they would be operating in a silent zone.  His people were among the best that Russia had; they would not be defeated without a fight.

There wouldn’t be any help coming, he knew; the Naval Aviation had been crippled by the Americans.  He could only hope that they would put up enough of a fight so that the Americans would accept a surrender.  He knew that the Americans would be out for blood.

***
“Hey, Top, did I ever tell you about my…?”

“Shut up, Lee,” Master Sergeant Mathew Track said.  He was known as ‘Matt’ to his friends, one of the three officers in the Conway tank.  “We’re supposed to be watching for Russians.”

He peered down at the tank’s sensors.  The Conway Tank was a new design, a light tank with the firepower of a tank several times its size, designed for rapid shipment right across the world.  It had been parachuted into battle – in one case with the crew inside it – and it had been shipped almost everywhere that the United States Marine Corps had served.  The Marines had been the first to operate the Conway, along with the Airborne forces, and even though the Army still spoke higher of their older Abrams tanks, Matt felt that the Marines had gotten the better vehicle.  The Conway handled like a car…and was almost as invulnerable as an Abrams tank.

A flight of helicopters passed overhead, hunting for Russians.  The Marines had come ashore in one large group, while smaller groups had been inserted onto Iceland by parachute drops or submarines; they had to spread out as far as possible.  The combat network said that only a few Russians had been encountered so far, but there were plenty of places along the road to Reykjavik for the Russians to dig themselves into the landscape and fight.  The Marines were ready to fight; they may have shared a certain contempt for the crewmen on the mighty ships killed by the Pact, but they had been comrades in arms.  The Russians were going to pay.

“Enemy contact, up ahead,” Lee said.  Matt nodded; a helicopter was reporting an encounter with a Russian position, further down the road.  The helicopter, true to the traditions of the USMC, had attacked at once, only to be severely damaged by the Russian gunners.  “We’re ordered to proceed at once and dispatch them.”

“Understood,” Matt said.  The force of tanks sped up, their sensors watching for mines and other surprises.  The Russians had been observed to have confiscated all of the vehicles on Iceland, apart from the medical vehicles; they had been watched moving along the road, which suggested that there were no mines placed there to annoy him.  “We’re rolling…”

A force of AV-12 Harrier Jump Jets flashed past, dropping their bombs on the Russian position before the Russian gunners could strike back, before heading off into the sunlight.  A Russian missile chased one of the harriers long enough to make Matt’s heart almost stop, but it fell victim to a flare and vanished somewhere in the distance.  They could see the Russian position now; a collection of farmhouses, some of them burning, all placed alongside the road.  A lorry – now also burning – served as a blockade; he could see Russians in the trenches nearby.

Something slammed into the Conway and it jumped.  The one downside to the light tank was that it was light; it wasn’t unknown to have the vehicle be turned over during exercises.  Matt swore and hit the machine guns, spraying a deadly burst of fire over the Russian position.  The Icelanders had built their farm well; it stood up to the fire very well.

“One high explosive round, rapid fire,” Matt snapped.  Lee brought the main gun around and the tank leapt again as it fired a shell into the building.  There was a thunderous explosion and the building exploded in a sheet of fire.  Other Russians were spreading out, fighting with antitank weapons and even trying to turn a Stinger missile on the Marines, and they were cut down quickly and brutally.  A handful tried to surrender and – grudgingly – the Marines accepted the surrender.

Matt and his team waited long enough for the prisoners to be secured and then headed further down the road.  The marine force was spreading out as they felt their way through enemy territory, mopping up smaller units of Russians as they passed.  Some Russians surrendered, others insisted on fighting; the only moment of excitement was an encounter with a Russian tank that killed one of the Conway tanks before it was killed.

“One measly Russian tank left on this godforsaken rock after the flyboys have done their work and we just have to run into it,” Lee protested, as the Marines passed the flaming wreck and pressed on.  The Russians seemed to be falling back towards the city, not something that hadn’t been expected, but a worrying development in its own right.  “It’s not fucking fair.”

“It’s going to be harder in Europe,” Matt predicted cheerfully.  They had made an incredible rate of advance in Iceland, but that had been possible because of how few Russians there actually were.  Europe was a harder problem; the Russians contested air superiority with the defenders at every opportunity…and had more firepower on the ground to boot.  “Just you wait until we get there.”

Another flight of aircraft flashed overhead.  He didn’t look up; the combat net would have warned him if any Russian aircraft had gotten into the air…and the preliminary reports suggested that all of the Russian aircraft on the ground were flaming wrecks.  They had control of the air, were landing a much more formidable force on the ground than the Russians could muster, and they were much faster than the Russians.  What could go wrong?

***
“We just had a report,” Sanchez said.  “The flights of Russian aircraft from their northern airbases have turned back.”

“Interesting,” Barbara said.  She had expected a major Russian attempt to interfere with her landing force, but it seemed as if the Russians had had other ideas.  Had they decided to write off Iceland, or had something else happened?  “And on the ground?”

The Marine representative looked up.  “We’re closing in on Reykjavik now,” he said.  “It won’t be long before it falls and we can end this entire sideshow.”

“Good,” Barbara said.  She placed her hands on her lap.  “Keep an eye on the Russian bombers anyway, just in case.”

***
The link to Moscow had been failing, but there had been enough connection for Dzasokhov to hear the news; the planned strike against the American landing had been cancelled.  He had been able to get a download of information from one of the commercial satellites and it had shown him the truth; the Americans had established a powerful foothold on Iceland…and were expanding it.  He had been unable to talk to the other bases, but he knew what was about to happen; the Americans were closing in on Reykjavik.

He closed his eyes.  There were two choices; he and his remaining men could dig in and fight through the city, destroying Reykjavik and most of its population in the carnage, or he could offer a surrender.  The Americans were already in a position to bombard the hell out of the city; they couldn’t be held back from taking it if they wanted to take it.  All he could do was ensure that they paid a price for it.

“Open a communications link on the general frequency,” he ordered finally.  There really was no other choice.  “Inform the American commander…that I would like to offer my surrender.”

Chapter Forty: Allies of Convenience

Near Jawa Timur, Indonesia

“Remind me again,” Captain John Smith said, “exactly why we’re doing this.”

Admiral Toland considered the question.  “Perhaps because we saved your ass – arse - in World War Two?”

Smith – who had only been introduced to him as Smith – shrugged.  “And if this works, we’ll have saved your ass in World War Three,” he deadpanned.  “I’m not happy about this at all.”

Toland leaned back in his chair.  The HMS Inflexible was not exactly a stealth ship, but a stealth submarine; it was the next generation of the Royal Navy.  It had been, he had been told, so expensive that the British Royal Navy had shared the costs with Canada, Australia and New Zealand; it had been operating on a secret mission when he had been able to convince the Royal Australian Navy that it was needed for the mission at hand.  The Inflexible had refused to come to Guam; he had had to fly directly to Australia to board the submarine.

“You’re going into the heart of enemy technology, carrying myself and one of your own people to meet with people who hate everything from the west, particularly Americans,” he said, not really in the mood to joke.  “They are only willing to talk to us because you have kept open contacts – against the CIA’s advice, I might add – with them; they just happen to hate the Chinese more than they hate us.  What’s not to like?”

Smith eyed him.  He was someone from the Royal Navy’s private collection of black projects; his real name, whatever it was, had been classified long ago.  He was almost forgettable in appearance, the perfect stereotypical Englishman; Toland would have not been surprised to have met him in a bowler hat and carrying an umbrella.  His face was very pale, although part of that might be the fact that he lived deep under the sea; Inflexible and her crew rarely surfaced and went on shore leave.

“The Chinese would go through Hell itself to get their greedy hands on this ship,” Smith said.  “Isn’t that right, Captain?”

Captain Atwell shrugged.  “You don’t get anywhere unless you are willing to take risks,” he said.  He had been a member of the Australian SAS before suffering a training ‘accident’ and going to work for a very private group in Australia’s version of MI6.  He had no accent, somewhat to Toland’s surprise, before he realised that Atwell could change his accent depending on who was talking.  “You have to come because for some reason they don’t trust us; they insisted on talking to you personally.”

Toland blinked.  He had been unable to get a clear explanation as to why they had wanted him along; even through it was his idea.  The Australians had said very little about it; they had just repeated what they had been told.  The CIA had been unwilling to commit itself – most of the CIA’s sources in Indonesia had been wiped out by the Chinese during the ‘peacekeeping’ mission – but they had wanted to forbid the entire trip.  The President had overridden them.

Perhaps losing me is not such a bad thing for them, Toland thought.  It was a risk; the Chinese Navy had been issuing threats since the day the Battle of Taiwan had been fought, accusing Toland of everything from starting the battle to deserting his comrades and fleeing for his life.  I’m the expendable Admiral who lost the greatest naval battle in history.

“They want to talk to me,” he said.  His eyes narrowed.  “Why?”

Smith looked uncomfortable.  Atwell was more blunt.  “Admiral, there have been groups before who have…cooperated with the CIA,” he said.  “Some of them were betrayed by the CIA, accidentally or otherwise; others were simply abandoned when they needed the CIA’s support.  This miserable collection of islands has a long memory; some of them still think that you Yanks set up the dictatorship and then the Islamic fanatics for some deep-seated and very cunning purpose of your own.”

Toland stared at him.  “We’re not…that mad,” he protested.  “I know that the CIA has a long history of incompetence…”

“It’s an incompetence that costs lives,” Atwell said.  For the first time, Toland could hear a hint of an accent in his voice.  “I have been talking to them for the last year, since China took over here; it took that long to get any sort of relationship going.  They don’t trust us and we dare not regard them as an expendable assert; they will be watching for any signs of those…because it is not us who will have to pay for any leaks.  They will; the Chinese treat the people here like…well, almost as bad as the Draka.”

Toland winced, remembering the movies, the books, even the comic strip.  “I was against this operation from the beginning,” Atwell said.  “I have spent time learning to understand them…and I am expendable.  If the Chinese do have a spy in the group, which is possible, they will consider you a target.  While you’re on the ground, you do what I tell you and we might just get out of this alive…”

“Captain, we have a junk on the horizon,” Frederick Vendible said.  The tactical officer was tapping away at his starship-like display.  “It looks like our friend.”

Toland watched grimly as the junk came into view.  He’d been briefed on the pirates who had once infested the region…and had generally been slaughtered by the Chinese in a series of uneven battles.  China’s hold on the sea lanes was never strong, but when the Chinese wanted to exert themselves, they could crush any rebels or pirates – the two groups were often interchangeable – with ease.  If it was a trap, the Inflexible would give a good account of itself, but it would be destroyed.

“No sign of anything on the passives, sir,” Vendible said.  “We look to be alone out here.”

“We can’t risk running a sensor sweep,” Atwell explained, as he led the way to the boat bay.  “The Chinese would notice us; perhaps they would come to investigate, perhaps they would take us for smugglers, but we can’t take the risk.  I hope that you can swim.”

Toland nodded.  The Inflexible wasn’t going to surface; Atwell and he both wore wetsuits that would keep them warm and almost invisible in the water.  The newer suits actually pulled oxygen out of the water, allowing them unlimited range in theory; in practice, it would depend on how far they could swim.  Atwell tapped a button as the airlock closed, sealing them in the boat bay; water started to flow in.  Within seconds, they were floating and the hatch opened, expelling them out into the water.  It was surprisingly warm – the suit kept their temperature stable – and Toland followed Atwell as he pulled them both to the surface; their heads broke into semi-darkness.

“This way,” Atwell muttered, though the short-range communicator.  They both paddled over towards the junk, which was lowering a ladder for them; Atwell led the way up and over the side, allowing a man clad in shorts and little else to point them towards a door.  The junk was larger than he had expected, with only three people visible; he assumed that that was to prevent the Chinese from taking an unholy interest in the ship and whatever it was doing.  Inside, there was a warm lamp…and a woman wearing a complete black veil, sitting there in front of a table.  Atwell removed his mask and Toland followed suit.

“Welcome onboard my ship,” the figure said.  Toland blinked; that was no woman, but a man wearing a woman’s outfit.  He had to admit that it was a neat disguise; the man wouldn’t want to be seen by any of his sponsors.  “You must excuse the outfit, but the Chinese would be delighted to have a good look at me and I would prefer not to give them the satisfaction.”

His English was perfect, maybe too perfect; Toland wondered just who he had been before Indonesia entered its long descent into hell.  The voice even had a neat trace of an English upper-class accent, underlain with something else, something…different.  Toland tried to place it and failed; he had the oddest sense that he had heard something like it before, but he had no idea where.

“We understand,” Atwell said.  He nodded to Toland.  “This is Ali; he is one of the leaders of the underground resistance to the Chinese and Indians.  You can trust him to work for himself and his people.”

Ali’s voice showed a hint of amusement.  “You can trust me to put the interests of my people first,” he said.  “We may have to hide in the jungle and shit behind bushes, but we are not ignorant; you want us to help pull your American ass out of the fire.”

Toland had to smile.  “I suppose that you could put it like that,” he said.  “We can help you.”

Ali spat; Toland hoped, for his sake, that he had only made the noise.  “You can help us?  Where were you when the bastard in that city was using your weapons and training to crush those who wanted something different?  Where were you when the” – he used a word in a language that Toland didn’t recognise- “were killing everyone who didn’t follow their version of Islam?  Where were you when the Chinese started to fight and their people came in to save them and crush us all?  Where were you when my home village was rounded up, the men and women forced into slavery; my own sister was forced to become the slave of a Chinese officer!  Where were you?”

Toland kept his voice calm.  “Mistakes have been made in the past,” he said.  “I think that…”

“You backed a man who killed thousands and imprisoned thousands,” Ali said.  “Then there were the” – that unpronounceable word again – “who tried to crush us, while you wrung your hands and did nothing.  And now the Chinese; this place has a long history of being crushed by one set of outsiders after another…and you helped.”

He leaned forward.  “You want to help?”  He asked.  “Use your weapons; destroy China, give us half a chance to actually build something.”

Toland frowned.  “That’s not an option at the moment,” he said.  “But…”

“You don’t know what it’s like out there,” Ali said.  “We read your own media; most of them concentrate on the threat the Chinese present to Australia, or perhaps to your own shipping.  They don’t know what it’s like; there are people who even say that we deserve everything we are getting from the Chinese.”

He stood up and started to pace.  “There are resettlement camps everywhere,” he said.  “There are thousands of Chinese being moved in, supporting the Chinese who lived here until the fanatics started to murder them, there are places where entire villages have just been crushed for daring to harbour a fugitive…what are you going to do to give us a chance?  We are not your toys; we will do nothing that risks the last hopes of our people!”

“I would like to deal,” Toland said, as calmly as he could.  “You want to hurt the Chinese and we want to help you do it.”

“I see,” Ali said.  “Should we be treated like those who went to fight in Afghanistan and were abandoned – twice?  Should we risk betrayal to the Chinese?”

Toland felt his blood simmer.  The charge that the CIA had abandoned the fighters who had made up the core of Al Quida had a nasty element of truth to it.  The Jihadi websites had been full of such details, pointing to truths, half-truths and outright lies about how incompetent and arrogant the Americans could be when dealing with groups that had their own agendas.  Some were lies intended to make it much harder for the Americans to operate; some were just there to confuse intelligence officers.

“Answer me a question,” he said.  “How much are you doing now?”

Ali’s eyes, visible only through a slit, glittered.  “We are attacking the Chinese whenever we get a chance,” he said.  “It’s not easy; the Chinese come down hard anywhere they are attacked.  If a village is nearby, the Chinese will pay it a visit and punish everyone there, just to give them some incentive to betray us.  We have to hide in the jungles and the mountains and on boats like this one…and we are losing.  If they were willing to expend the effort, they could kill us all.”

Toland smiled thinly.  “So what do you have to lose?”

“Our ability to operate as an independent group?”  Ali asked.  “We have no intention of serving as your proxy soldiers in this war.  Can you give us some hope?”

Toland closed his eyes.  What he was about to tell Ali could put him in prison for the rest of his life.  “We intend to launch a major invasion of the islands here,” he said.  Ali’s eyes widened.  “I have something to do with designing those plans, ones that will allow us to remove the menace of the Chinese bases and ships here forever.  We need two things from you, if you will help us; we need intelligence and we need support on the ground.  If you are willing to fight the Chinese, we will send you as many weapons and other supplies as we can; anything you need.”

“Such things tend to attract Chinese attention,” Ali said.  “I have more people than I can arm, even though we were able to take weapons from the Chinese several times.  Can you smuggle the weapons in if we agree?”

Toland looked up at Atwell.  “We can do it,” Atwell said grudgingly.  He didn’t sound entirely happy.  “There are plenty of illegal ships that go through here anyway; getting weapons in won’t be a problem.  What are you going to do with them?”

“Fight the Chinese,” Ali said simply.  “If we have the weapons, we can give the Chinese something new to worry about; attacks on a scale that might actually force them to leave, or give us a break.  There are plenty of people who hate them, but they don’t have the weapons or the coordination to fight.”  He tapped the table thoughtfully.  “Are you willing to start a bombing campaign?”

“We would have to send in support teams, but it could be done,” Toland said.  They had been building up in Australia for the offensive anyway, or to protect Australia, depending on whom someone talked to about it.   “There are heavy bombers that could be used to attack the Chinese, although we would have to fly SEAD missiles first, unless you could help us with that.”

“Not everyone on my side knows what a plane is,” Ali said.  “Many joined out of a desire for revenge, others wanted to spread the faith; do you consider that a problem?”

Toland shrugged.  “I want to hurt the Chinese,” he said.  That was truer than he cared to admit.  “Past that, who cares?”

Ali seemed almost to smile.  “I think that we can do business together,” he said.  “However, we cannot continue here for long; we will make contact again later.”

Atwell stepped forward.  “You have the communicator,” he said.  “We’ll talk again soon about the practicalities.”

He said nothing as the silent crewman led them back to the ladder.  Toland climbed down into the water; Atwell jumped into the water without any fear at all.  Toland remembered reading his record and knew that Atwell had fought in places that few knew that Australia had any interest at all.  They swam back towards the Inflexible and found the hatch with only a little difficulty; the Inflexible was almost unique that it had no conning tower peeking up above the water.  Toland was only glad to be back onboard the ship, even as he felt it taking on speed and heading away from the Chinese-occupied regions.  There were dangers involved in what they were doing.

“He knew you by sight,” Atwell observed.  Toland frowned; he hadn’t noticed that Ali had asked for no proof of identity, no confirmation, no nothing.  It was possible that he trusted Atwell, but equally possible that he had his own sources of information somewhere.  “That was interesting.”

Toland looked up at him.  “You weren’t happy at what happened?”

“I think that the future will tell us what will happen in that…bloody set of overrated islands,” Atwell said.  “Don’t be fooled by the nice guy act; that guy is not General Alcazar or General Tapioca.  He’s a paranoid son of a bitch, and very ruthless; if we help him, we’ll have to watch out for the knife in our backs.”

Toland stared at him.  “He’s that bad?”

“Everyone is greedy; everyone wants something,” Atwell said.  The submarine was moving much faster now; the Inflexible was the fastest thing under the water.  “He wants power for himself, which can only happen with the defeat of the Chinese; he’ll be an ally of ours as long as we are helping him to defeat them.  At the same time, he has to be a big man in that sort of environment; if we let him down, he will have to dump us publicly or someone will put a knife in his ribs.

“And of course there are his rivals,” Atwell concluded.  “Some of them will quite happily betray us and him to the Chinese.  We’re going to have to form a united front and Ali won’t like that at all because it dilutes the power he gets from working with us.  It’s going to be tricky…”

“I see, I think,” Toland said.  They stepped together into the bridge.  “Thank you, Captain; I think that…”

“We just had a data download from Canberra,” Smith said.  His face seemed even paler.  Toland had a sudden presentiment of doom.  “Admiral, I’m afraid that it’s bad news.”

Chapter Forty-One: Weapons of Mass Destruction

Washington DC, USA

“My God,” the President breathed.  The image on the screen was horrifyingly clear.  “How the hell did it come to this?”

The first missile – or rather the first set of missiles – had been launched at Guam by a Chinese submarine at very close range.  Point defences had knocked down some of the missiles, but two of them had detonated almost on top of the base, unleashing the forces of nuclear fire on the Americans below.  The airbursts hadn’t damaged the underground facilities, much, but the base had been practically destroyed, along with the civilians there.  It had been worse at Diego Garcia; there was a civilian population there as well, although a very small one; it had been hit hard.  The President’s heart went out to them; they had fought for years to return to their homeland…and they had been destroyed along with it.

The Joint Chiefs had wanted him to leave Washington, but the President had refused.  The Vice President was secure in a bunker, hidden from Chinese strikes – although there was some suggestion that the Indians had been the ones to fire on Diego Garcia – and the President knew that there was panic sweeping the streets.  Only an hour after the strikes, CNN, GNN, FOX and every other major media company were stirring up panic; CNN, in particular, had run a long piece on just how bad a nuclear war could be in the new environment.  It was no time to leave Washington…

“If we believe the Chinese note, they struck at our bases because we struck at theirs,” Simmons said.  He looked worried; he had urged that the President leave Washington at once, just in case.  A Chinese submarine could launch a spread of missiles at Washington and no one could guarantee that the defences would stop them all in time.  Washington was the main target for rogue states; it was defended heavily, but enough to stop a dozen – or more – missiles?  “They have offered to avoid striking at our homeland if we don’t strike at theirs.”

“Down there,” the President said, waving towards the fence, “there are people gathering now, demanding a nuclear strike on China.  Doing nothing…is not an option.”

“I know,” Simmons said.  He looked down at his hands.  “Conventional thought on nuclear weapons was that they changed the face of warfare; they made it impossible for a state to be defeated if they possessed nukes.  We and the Soviets glared at each other and, after a few miscalculations like the Cuban Crisis, we figured out that a certain degree of…tolerance was required.  That’s why we did nothing when the Soviets crushed various freedom movements in Europe; we had to keep our hand hidden.  There were infringements, but they were rare…

“The end of the Cold War changed all that,” he continued.  “Suddenly, nukes were falling into the hands of states we would have preferred to have remained without them, such as Pakistan and North Korea.  We placed a lot of time and effort into developing a BMD shield – we had already made progress on a TMD shield – and when the Pact stumbled into existence, it was fairly easy to expand the network; the Pact did the same themselves.  The days of MAD were supposed to be over.”

The President looked grim.  “But we have just stumbled into a nuclear confrontation,” he snapped.  “What happened?”

“The BMD shield changed everything,” Simmons said.  “All of a sudden, it looked as if we could have launched a strike on the Pact that would have destroyed it, and the Pact got worried.  They built their own shield….and suddenly it looked as if nukes were a viable weapon of war again.  The Indians and the Pakistanis got lucky - the Indians, at least – because they had one spasm; people here were predicting that we could no longer fight a nuclear war.  The Pact clearly believed them and added nukes to their war-fighting plans.”

The President scowled.  “They didn’t use nukes in the Battle of Germany,” he pointed out.  “They just used them in the Pacific.”

Simmons sighed.  “Perhaps we pushed them to a point where they thought a limited strike was appropriate,” he said.  “In Germany, two European powers have nukes and would have certainly deployed them in retaliation.  It would also destroy Europe if there was a major nuclear exchange and that would cost them the fruits of any victory, but…”

He shook his head.  “I understand Guam as a target,” he said.  “It’s an American base, American territory, and the prospects for civilian damage are very limited.  Diego Garcia is a little different; it’s British territory, not American.  It’s a shot across the bows for the British as well as us.”

“We have to retaliate,” the President said.  He placed his hands neatly on the table.  “What do your models say about that?”

Simmons hesitated.  “It would depend on where was struck,” he said.  “We might have another exchange of nuclear weapons, or we might have a pause in the storm.”

“In other words, you don’t know,” the President said.  “I have to address the nation soon, and tell them what they already know; American territory has been struck by nuclear weapons.  They have to know that we struck back…and where.  So, where do we hit?”

There was a buzz on the President’s speaker.  “Mr President, General Armstrong is here to see you,” his Secretary said.  Her voice was almost terrified; there were people walking through the White House as if they expected to vanish in nuclear fire at any moment.  “He says it’s important.”

“He’s expected,” the President said.  “Send him in, please.”

General Armstrong’s face was black.  “I have the latest reports,” he said, his voice cold with fury.  “We have over twenty thousand people dead, along with over two hundred aircraft and seven ships!  If we hadn’t evacuated many of the civilians, it would be much worse.  We were just lucky that the carriers weren’t anywhere near Guam when they struck the base; the damage is immense.”

“I know,” the President said.  “You shouldn’t be here.”

“Neither should you,” Armstrong pointed out.  “Mr President, are we going to retaliate?”

“We have no choice,” the President said.  “We have to choose a target for the counter-strike.”

“China,” General Armstrong said.  “Somewhere in China, somewhere that we can make them hurt; somewhere that will…”

Simmons coughed.  “We can’t hit somewhere significantly more important than Guam,” he said.  “If we hit somewhere near Beijing, they’ll feel honour-bound to pick somewhere near Washington and blast it.”

“I hate nuclear theories,” General Armstrong snapped.  He rounded on Simmons, real anger in his tone.  “The world is not governed according to your theories of punch, counter-punch, and counter-counter-punch!”

“I know that,” Simmons snapped.  He allowed some of his own anger – and concern – to show.  “I also know that public support for the war is likely to take a serious hit!”

He stood up and started to pace.  “We have to deal with the legacy of seventy years of people being told that a nuclear war meant total devastation,” he said.  “We know, now, that the world can survive a small nuclear exchange, but few people really believe it.  Right this minute, we have people trying to flee the cities and trying to escape the nuclear holocaust they believe is coming…and its happening all over the NATO alliance.  God only knows if the Pact public knows what is happening, but it might happen there as well.

“We have to do two things,” he continued.  “We have to strike back and we have to do it in such a way that it is clearly a tit-for-tat attack, rather than kicking someone in the nuts because they pushed you.  If we don’t strike back, it looks as if we are bluffing, and no one will trust us again.”

“I have to speak to the Prime Minister,” the President said.  “The British might insist on launching the strike themselves.”

General Armstrong blinked.  “One strike?”

“One strike,” the President said, and placed a firm expression on his face.  “General, where should we strike?”

“I reviewed the nuclear targeting plans when the war began,” General Armstrong said.  He tapped the President’s computer and the Oval Office’s massive plasma screen displayed a map of the Pact countries.  “The main problem is that most of the Pact bases are within the Pact countries; they don’t have a world-wide network of bases like we do.  They have some agreements with countries outside coercion range, but by and large those are minor agreements.”

“There have been suspicions that the Chinese have been using ports in Latin America for their submarines,” Simmons said.  “They were never proven, but now there is a war going on, the Russians might be using them.”

The President scowled at the reminder that there were still Russian submarines in the Atlantic, hunting down and sinking allied shipping.  It had been suspected that some of the countries that were trying to stay out of the war were in fact supporting the Pact, but no one had managed to prove it; many nations would be waiting to see who came out on top.

“The best target, from our point of view, would be Cam Ranh Bay in Vietnam,” General Armstrong continued.  “It’s a major supply base for the Pact’s efforts in Indonesia and also supports their warships, both Indian and Chinese, in the attacks against us.  If we get there in time, we might also sink one of their carriers in the attack…”

The President looked up.  “What about civilians?”

“The weapon would be a low-radiation one, targeted on the port,” General Armstrong said.  “The radiation would be minimal; few people not directly caught in the blast would be killed.”

“Vietnam,” the President said, thoughtfully.  There had been a long thaw in relations between the United States and the Vietnamese…until the Pact had become involved.  They had forced the Vietnamese into an alliance, a Pact occupation in all, but name…and, in the wake of the Delhi Disaster, the United States had done nothing.  It wasn’t worth risking a war, senators and congressmen had said…and they had gotten their wish.  “That would be targeting an ally of the Pact.”

“If we are really lucky, that might spark off a revolt in the ranks for the Pact,” Simmons said thoughtfully.  It might work; not every nation in the region had been happy at being strong-armed into the Pact.  “If they decide that they want to get out of the war, we could leave the Pact nations isolated, perhaps even shouting at each other, rather than blaming us.”

The President nodded.  With that, they had sentenced Cam Ranh Bay and it’s population to death.  The nuclear launch procedure was a fairly simple one; Simmons saw tears in the eyes of the Marine Captain who held the nuclear football as the President and General Armstrong went through the procedure, authorising the launch of a single submarine missile towards Cam Ranh Bay.

“Now,” the President said, “what about Iceland?”

General Armstrong looked relieved to be talking about something – anything – else.  “We landed enough Marines to make the fighting a walkover,” he said, “and bombed the shit out of them, just in case.  The fighting was brutal in a handful of places, including at one of their airfields; we landed an assault force directly onto the airfield in the hopes of taking one of their new fighters intact.  There was a brutal battle…which cost us seventeen lives and we lost the fighter.  The Russians surrendered three hours after the landings began and at your orders, the surrender was accepted.  Two thousand Russians marched into captivity.”

The President nodded.  There had been talk of refusing to accept surrenders, but the President had shot that idea down.  There was no point in fighting a desperate last stand against Russians convinced that they would be shot at dawn…and prisoners might come in handy.  They could be bargaining chips, if nothing else; the Pact had plenty of American and European prisoners.

Simmons grinned.  “And the Icelanders?”

“They seem rather shocked,” General Armstrong said dryly.  “We have several civil affairs units talking to the remaining leaders; several people in the Icelandic Government were taken onboard Russian aircraft and were never seen again.  They were all people who had had something to do with the joint defence planning, such as it was; they didn’t know anything that would have helped the Russians.  The remaining men of the Icelandic Division have been freed and are helping us to hunt down the handful of remaining Russian holdouts.”

He shrugged.  “The Russians behaved themselves, more or less; there were only a couple of problems with the locals,” he continued.  “There was one case of assault and one case of rape; the latter had the Russian soldier arrested by a nervous policeman and handed over to the Russians, who shot him in the head.”  The President blinked.  “Yes; the Russians shot one of their own men to maintain order.”

“What decent fellows,” the President said dryly.  “That does give us the problem of what to do with Iceland…”

General Armstrong grinned.  “For some reason, they don’t want us to leave,” he said.  “I think we’ll have the use of the bases for the rest of the war, if nothing else; the Admiral was most pleased.  Now that we have secured Iceland, we can proceed to a more offensive footing, attacking the Russian Navy directly and even launching Vengeance II.”

“Good,” the President said.  He closed his eyes for a long moment, a silent prayer for understanding and the future.  “So, what now…?”

Simmons had been giving the matter some thought.  “There is a possibility,” he said, reluctantly.  It was something that was inherently impossible to prove…except by testing it in combat.  “I have been studying the statistics we have been gathering about the Pact in action, and there have been a number of…odd points.”

The President lifted an eyebrow.  “Odd points?”

“Exactly,” Simmons said.  He tented his fingers for a moment.  “The Pact fired off somewhere around three thousand – the figures are not completely accurate – cruise missiles in the battle around Taiwan,” he said.  “Within a week, they fire another massive wave of cruise missiles into Europe, and deploy what we think is around two hundred in the Battle of the Batmen.  We think; the Batmen got most of the bombers before they launched.  Furthermore, many of the missiles that were launched into Europe were older designs; they would have proven easy prey for the TMD defences, if the commandos hadn’t knocked many of the launchers and trackers out.”

He tapped his fingers for a moment.  “There also have been some other odd points,” he continued.  “The Pact could have continued their push into Germany and didn’t; we think because of the uprising in Poland.  Was it that dangerous to them?  If so…why?”

General Armstrong scowled.  “Is there a point to this?”

“Only one final point,” Simmons said.  “British and French airfields came under heavy attack, but only a handful of cruise missiles – the ideal weapons from their point of view – were used.  Most of the attacks were ordinary dumb and smart bombs…and they paid for them.  Is it possible that the Pact might have burned through much of its stock of weapons?”

“It’s possible,” General Armstrong conceded.  He sounded as if he didn’t want to believe it and it was hard to blame him; it would be too easy to read what they wanted to see into events, or even into the figures.  “What are you suggesting?”

“We are moving Third Corps to Europe now,” Simmons said.  “If the Russians are truly low on supplies, we might be able to launch a counter-attack…and perhaps begun the long process of rolling back the Pact.”

***
The President had always shunned teleprompters, considering them a form of cheating; a politician who couldn’t remember his lines had no business trying to get elected.  A depressing number of them did get elected anyway, a tribute to their speechwriters rather than their own personalities; some of them had proven to be surprisingly good at their jobs.  Others…others were people who should not have been allowed out of kindergarten, let alone High School.

“My Fellow Americans,” he said.  “I come to you with grave news, something that alters, once again, the face of the war.  It is with a heavy heart I must confirm to you the first use of nuclear weapons against American forces and personnel; the bases at Guam and Diego Garcia were destroyed with a very heavy loss of life.”

That was true, and he had implied that the devastation was worse than it actually was, in hopes of confusing the Pact.  If the Americans had a few months to spare, some of the facilities could actually be restored and put back to work, if not at the high levels of efficiency they had shown before the nukes.  Diplomatically, it was more of a problem; there were nations that had been considering supporting NATO that would no longer be interested, because of nuclear fear.

“I must also confirm that the Pact has suffered a similar strike, against one of its basing facilities in the Pacific Ocean,” he continued.  “Cam Ranh Bay in Vietnam, a major Pact naval base, has been destroyed; so far, there are no signs that the Pact intends to take the nuclear exchange any further.  I would like to reassure you that the missile shield remains firmly in place and any attack against the continental United States will be intercepted before it can impact on our country.”

He closed his eyes for a moment.  “I must ask you all not to panic,” he said.  “There are no signs that the Pact intends to launch a major nuclear strike against us and we hope to make agreements to prevent a further nuclear exchange.  Fear is the one enemy we must fear; I ask you all, again, not to panic.  Our great nation has been though the fires before; we will walk through this war and come out victorious, in time.”

Chapter Forty-Two: Persons of Mass Destruction

Warsaw, Poland

“Citizens of Poland, I come to you with grave news,” Molobo’s voice said, as it echoed through the radio.  There was no jamming, no attempt to hide the message; Marya was convinced that the Russians would want them to hear the message.  They might have tried to round up all of the transmitters connecting Poland to the outside world, an almost-impossible task, but they didn’t try to interfere with Molobo.  Everyone knew what he was; a collaborator, some people whispered that he was a spy, or an agent sent to betray Poland.  “There have been a series of attacks on security forces by enemy forces.”

Marya wanted to throw something at the radio.  They had all heard the shooting…and the massive Russian response to the attacks.  Everyone knew that Poles had risen up against the Russians, and that the Russians had crushed them with overwhelming firepower.  Bombers, tanks and assault units had cut apart the Polish resistance, as if the Poles were nothing more than a bump in the road; her update from GNN had warned that the Russians were moving more security units into Poland.  There were more Russians on the streets than ever before…and some of them were really nasty to Poles.  She wondered if it was a coincidence that wounded Russians had been given the task of keeping order.

“This has forced us to take extreme measures,” Molobo’s voice continued.  No one would be called a Quisling after Molobo was finally, somehow, disposed; everyone would have a new name to add to the hall of infamy.  “The presence of traitors, looters and vagabonds has forced us to insist on a major deployment of allied security forces in Warsaw…and an operation to flush out the traitors.  In the next few days, there will be a major search of the entire city, and the traitors will be rooted out and destroyed.  You are all ordered to remain in your homes until the search has been concluded; do not leave your homes or you risk being arrested and deported.”

His voice became pleading.  “This is for the future of Poland,” he said, perhaps more accurately than he had intended.  “I ask all of you to cooperate so that Poland can take its rightful place once again…”

“What?  As Russia’s cock-sucker?”  Marya swore at the radio.  Molobo seemed to be growing more unpleasant every day.  The Russians just seemed to be flooding more and more security troops into Poland and rumours of beatings, rapes and worse were spreading through Warsaw.  She found it easy to believe that the Russians would do such acts; no one had forgotten years of Russian domination.  The only difference between it and the Nazis was that the Russians spread terror and oppression around on an equal opportunity basis.  “Go fuck yourself, you fat tub of lard.”

“Marya, don’t, please,” Melania Kazimiera said.  Marya’s sister sounded as if she was on the verge of panic.  “We have to keep our heads down and stay away from them.”

“That is not likely to be possible any longer,” Marya said.  She thought about it; Warsaw was a vast city, with a massive population, even with the slaughter caused by the war.  Did the Russians seriously intend to search every last building?  “That bastard said that they would be searching the entire city.”

“They can’t do that,” Melania protested.  Marya’s heart went out to her sister; her husband was either dead, missing, or in a Russian POW camp.  The rumours about what happened there were even grimmer than anything Hitler and his Nazis had managed to invent.  “They can’t…”

“I think that they can,” Marya said.  The entire population of the city was steadily going stir-crazy; the young men were taking it particularly hard.  They had to endure not only the taunts and suspicions of the Russians, but they had to watch as the young women were eyed by the Russians, sometimes even pawed…or worse.  Resistance was an automatic sentence, either death or for forced labour; Marya had seen members of some of the teenage gangs chained up and put to work clearing the streets.  “They think they can do anything they like to us…and that’s all that matters.”

She wondered, as they worked through the evening, what had happened to Jacob.  The Polish officer – she was sure, now, that he was an officer – seemed to have vanished, ever since he had given her the false identity papers.  Looking after two children was a chore – the older girl was old enough to be a pain, young enough to be sweet still – but she would have enjoyed it, under other circumstances.  If they weren’t practically prisoners in their own home, she would have been having a good holiday, but…

She missed the GNN headquarters, in America; she missed Kady and her friends in Washington.  She missed her sometimes-boyfriend; she missed them all with a sudden wave of pain and loss that surprised her.  She had once been free to roam the Earth; now, she was trapped in Poland…and unable even to do her job.  The Russians might suspect that there was still at least one reporter in Warsaw; the reporters who had registered honestly had never been seen again.  The Pact hated reporters, hated the way that they pried into places like Chechnya, Indonesia and Pakistan; she knew that the ones who had vanished had probably been sent to Siberia, or…worse, they had simply been executed.  Some of them might even have reported on the encounters that had occurred before the Russians had launched their invasion.

“I want a man,” she said, surprised at herself.  She wanted to be held and reassured that everything was going to be fine, even though she knew all-too-well that it wasn’t going to be anything like fine.  The Russians had claimed, through Molobo, that they had taken Berlin; GNN’s update to her had told her that the Russians had only surrounded the city, rather than trying to fight their way through it.  They could take their time, the report had said; it wasn't as if Berlin could walk away from them.  The thought almost made her smile; an entire city walking hadn’t been seen since the Authority movie, starring a Swedish actress as Jenny Sparks.

“I want my husband,” Melania said.  They shared a moment of perfect understanding.  “I think that we had better put them to bed and then sleep ourselves.”

Melania kept the two girls in her bedroom; Marya had been given the spare room.  It was cold at night, terribly cold for someone who had been in the Far East, only a month ago.  She clung to the additional blankets she had piled onto the bed and tried to sleep; unsurprisingly, sleep came hard after all she’d been through.  She was dreaming of a different world when an awesomely loud voice cut through the wisps of sleep in her head.

“ATTENTION,” the voice bellowed.  She snapped away, suddenly aware of bright lights nearby; the Russians seemed to have set up spotlights nearby.  “YOU ARE ORDERED TO LAVE THE BUILDING AT ONCE; DO NOT ATTEMPT TO REMAIN INSIDE!”

Marya rolled out of bed and cursed her decision to wear a long nightgown.  She grabbed her coat as she headed out the door, to be confronted with a screaming niece; she picked the child up and held her as Melania tried to get into her coat.  The children were terrified; now that the first rush was starting to wear off, Marya was starting to feel terrified as well.  She didn’t want to think about what Melania was going through.  She pulled her shoes on and led the way out of the flat; she had the nasty feeling that she didn’t want to argue with whoever was behind that voice.

The corridors were full of people, some of them dressed as if they were going out for the day, others wearing only underwear, under their coats.  Marya had a suspicion that they were going to regret it; she could hear the Russians bellowing orders as they walked down the stairs and out into the streets, ignoring the frightened faces as the Russians took direct control.  She looked at the grim-faced Russian soldiers, wearing their uniforms with the strange green tabs on their soldiers, and shuddered; none of them looked like they knew the meaning of the word ‘mercy.’

“Identity card,” a Russian snapped.  Marya, who had had the presence of mind to pick up the cards, showed them to the Russian, who eyed them carefully before pointing her in the direction of a team of Russian officers.  The search was quick, brutal, and very intrusive; she heard Melania scream as one of the Russians groped her breast before checking the two girls.  The children were spared the worst of the searches; she noticed that the men and women were being separated…and anyone who didn’t come out with their identity card was handcuffed and led off by a Russian soldier.  She knew, then, that she would never see them again.

She tried to remain calm as a cold wind blew along the streets.  The Russians didn’t look bothered, but they were well-dressed; many of the Poles wore only thin garments.  The Russians made crude comments from time to time, even as they completed searching the people flooding out of the apartment block; they seemed determined to grope every woman in the building.  Part of her mind remembered some discussion about such tactics at GNN; it was designed to make people feel helpless and utterly isolated.

Finally, the last person was processed…and the Russians went into the building.  She heard gasps and protests from some of the Poles as the Russians ransacked the entire apartment block, searching for…what?  Weapons?  Bombs?  She felt a wave of cold fear as she realised suddenly that they might find her terminal, hidden through it was; what would they do then?  She sensed Melania’s fear as her sister looked up at her; she was clearly just as nervous as Marya, although perhaps for different reasons.  The banging and crashing from inside seemed to take forever; the Russians might have intended to wreck the building as well as searching it.

Marya glanced around as a shot rang out.  A Pole fell to the ground, blood spurting from a wound in the chest; a Russian officer stepped back and left the Pole to die on the ground.  She didn’t even know what he had done, but as his female relatives started to scream, the Russians moved in with sticks and silenced them.  Two of the younger women were dragged away, others were pulled back by the other women to avoid them being noticed; the Russians seemed to find this funny.

She closed her eyes and tried to pray.  She could hear noises all over the city, some gunshots, and some sounds that she couldn’t identify, but sent a shudder down her spine anyway.  The Russians were coming back out and she stared; they were carrying other weapons, some of them older than she was, old enough to have been used in the Second World War.  The Russians moved with brutal efficiency, dragging out a number of men and forcing them to kneel.

“All possession of weapons is forbidden,” the Russian officer said.  He had a very cruel face, she realised; his sharp nose and thin lips gave him a sinister air.  “We ordered you all to turn in your weapons” – Marya knew that people who had done that had never returned – “and these people kept the weapons and used them in service of the Germans.”

His voice was cruel too, but he spoke as if he knew that he was speaking nonsense.  Marya knew that there had been no German plot, whatever Molobo said; the Germans had been cured of their desires to grab territory off their neighbours.  The Russians might have considered it a convenient lie – far too many Poles remembered just how bad Hitler had been – but many Poles knew better.  It was Russia that had invaded them…and Russia that was putting them through hell.

“They will now be punished,” the Russian said.  He had already been holding a pistol in one hand; he lifted it now and shot the first Pole through the head, execution-style.  Marya heard screams from the crowd – it took her a moment to realise that her voice had joined the screams – and the Russians lifted their weapons, holding the crowd back.  Marya saw the Russian IFV behind the Russians and wanted to cry; the machine guns on the IFV could mow down the entire crowd if the Russians decided to kill them all.  “Resistance is futile.”

A second Pole died, then a third, than a fourth.  The Russians seemed to take pity at that moment; the Russian guards grabbed the remaining suspects and hauled them off with them for further interrogation, leaving the bodies lying in the dirt. The Russians studied the Poles for a long chilling moment, their eyes seeming to take in everything, and then they stepped back.

“You may return to your homes,” the Russian officer said.  Marya was too stunned to hear him properly; it had only through sheer luck that she had been missed.  “Do not attempt to resist us again.”

On cue, another gunshot echoed out over the city.  Marya allowed Melania to drag her inside, into the apartment block…and they both stopped as they took in the mess.  The Russians had torn the lobby to pieces, going through each and every nook and cranny in their search.  She heard – and forced herself to ignore – the sobbing of the people related to those who had been shot; some of them had been lucky not to be dragged off with their menfolk.  The stairs had been spared the worst of the Russian search, but every flat had had its door left open and valuables scattered everywhere.  Melania started to cry, great wrenching sobs, as they reached the door to her flat; the Russians had gone though it like a tornado…and they had looted.  Marya saw that her laptop, an older machine with nothing incriminating stored in its hard drive, had vanished; Melania called out that the Russians had stolen items from her underwear drawer.

“Perhaps they mean to wear them,” Marya said.  She laughed, despite herself; the thought of Russian soldiers walking around in bras and panties was almost hysterically funny.  She broke down into giggles, even as she realised that the sun was finally coming up; perhaps she could spend more time in bed after all.  “Don’t you think they’d look sexy?”

Melania gave her a reproving look.  “No,” she snapped.  “Now, go to bed; we’ll clean up in the morning.”

Marya walked into her room, noticing that her drawers had been opened as well…and stopped dead.  The place where she had hidden her terminal had been torn open…and the terminal was gone.  She almost screamed, before trying to think, trying to understand; if the Russians had known what it was, they would have arrested her and Melania at once, except they hadn’t…

She decided not to mention it to Melania.

It would only upset her.

***
“We recovered several hundred weapons, most of them old and practically useless,” Major Pavel Kaminov reported.  He was reporting to General Damitri Socrov, a man known for being responsible for crushing resistance in Central Asia; there was no room to be nice, or even kind to the Poles.  “We have also taken seven Polish soldiers into custody…and one deserter from our own ranks.”

“A deserter,” Socrov said.  “What was he thinking?”

“He apparently fell for a Polish girl,” Kaminov said.  Personally, he was more than a little surprised that the Polish family hadn’t simply stuck a knife between the soldier’s ribs, but if he had been allowed to stay there, that suggested that he had been up to something Kaminov would disapprove of.  “He left before his unit could be moved to the front for the invasion of Germany and was recorded as missing.”

“Have him sent to a penal battalion and his whore to a brothel,” Socrov said.  Kaminov bowed; the brothels were being filled by Polish women who had taken up arms against the Russians.  They would serve a purpose in the great steamroller that had been built up to take on the Europeans.  “I dare say that we can use this to upset the President’s pet general.”

Kaminov blinked.  “Sir?”

Socrov eyed him.  “Do you feel that we were too lenient on the Poles before they rose up against us?”  He asked.  He didn’t wait for an answer.  “These are the people who brought down the Russian state before, and they will do it again if we give them a chance.  General Shalenko was the one who ordered such a policy, wasn’t he?”

Kaminov nodded reluctantly.  “Yes, sir,” he said.  Little had changed in Russia; arguing with the official line was a quick ticket to the camps.  “We lost the battle because of the Poles.”

“Kaminov, General Shalenko lost the battle because of the Poles,” Socrov said.  “Our task…is to make sure that that doesn’t happen again.”  He leaned forwards.  “And if that means crushing all Polish resistance, whatever it takes, we are going to do it, understand?”

Kaminov knew the right answer.  “Yes, General,” he said.  He silently made a mental note to try and warn General Shalenko; there was a power struggle going on and as long as the current group of FSB officers remained in power, there would be little room for him. Shalenko might prove to be more accommodating.  “Your orders will be carried out.”

“Good,” Socrov said.  There was a gloating note in his voice; Kaminov remembered that the FSB General had had a father who had had to leave Poland during the end of the Soviet Union.  That man had clearly brought up his son to remember…and avenge.  “The Poles have forgotten how to obey a strong government.  We…are going to remind them of how it once was…and how it will be in the future.”

Chapter Forty-Three: The European Dream and Nightmare

Edinburgh, Scotland

“Ah, Edinburgh,” the British civil servant said.  “Have you ever been to Edinburgh before, Mr President?”

President Marcel Yacef, who was still becoming used to being addressed as ‘Mr President,’ smiled thinly.  “I have not had that pleasure before,” he said, truthfully.  He had spent time in London as part of a trade delegation, and had visited Manchester for a reason that he still cringed to remember, but Edinburgh had never called to him before.  He would have preferred not to have left France, not during the war, but there seemed to be little choice.  “Was it picked merely to show off the city?”

“It was picked because it was fairly secure,” the civil servant said.  “There is no one in the city who knows that you are here, not the Scottish Parliament, not the Police; only the close-protection detail knows anything about it and they are…remaining out of sight.  They’ll be here if we need them, but so far the Russians have not targeted Edinburgh and we would prefer it to remain that way.”

Yacef nodded slowly.  The British had taken a beating from Russian cruise missiles in the first day of the war, just like the Poles, Germans and the smaller states.  France had been spared for a day – his analysts believed that the Pact had hoped that France would cut and run from the war, given half a chance and problems in their own backyard – but then the Russians had hammered French airfields as well.  The British had lost their Houses of Parliament to the Russians; only sheer luck had saved their senior leader from a second strike aimed at decapitating the government.

“This road is called the Royal Mile,” the civil servant said.  He waved down a long road composed of older buildings, something that reminded Yacef oddly of Paris.  He wasn’t sure why; Scotland and France might have been old allies, but they didn’t think in the same manner.  A looming castle could be seen at one end of the road; he tried to peer down to the other end and only saw the road disappearing amid the buildings.  “Come with me.”

Yacef hadn’t even seen the door in the side of one of the quaint buildings.  His guide opened the door and invited him to enter, into a silent lobby, with no one in sight.  It was neatly decorated, but without any trace of a real personality; grey carpets and simple lights.  The air was very cool; Yacef was almost relieved.  He might have had to ensure racist taunts from France’s far-right, but he had never really liked the heat.

“The tourist industry took a hit, ever since the nukes blew up,” his guide said.  They passed through a glass door that opened into a corridor.  “There are fewer people in the city at the moment; thousands of people went out into the country, some even headed out to emigrate to Canada.  There was a large anti-nuke protest yesterday, but there was a counter-demonstration and it got bloody…”

He paused for a moment, holding his hand up against a scanner.  “One moment,” he said, as the scanner checked his readings.  “Yep; we’re permitted to enter.”

The door hissed open and revealed a table, with two people sitting there, waiting for him.  Yacef removed his hat as he stepped inside, meeting the first man with a handshake, then turning to shake the hands of the other man.  He knew them both, although he had only met the German before; Chancellor Hans Konigsberg of Germany…and Prime Minister John McLachlan of Britain.

He took the seat that he was offered and waited to see who would speak first.  The meeting would normally have been conducted under the auspices of the European Parliament, something that he suspected that all three of them quietly disapproved of, and would not have been a secret.  It had been a long time since there had been secret diplomacy in Europe, at least to his knowledge; he wondered if the fact that two of them were very new in their jobs was a hindrance or a relief.  The British hadn’t lost most of their Government; he wondered, with a hint of private amusement, how many of them privately regretted that fact.

“I believe that we can abstain from the formalities,” McLachlan said finally.  The British Prime Minister had a hint of Scotland in his voice; a hint that Yacef could barely hear.  He wasn’t even sure that he was right.  “Brussels and its bureaucracy is gone and we will have to find some way of replacing it, only better…but for the moment, it’s just us.”

Yacef couldn’t disagree.  Brussels had come in for particularly heavy Russian attack; much of what made up the so-called European Government had been smashed by the Russians.  He suspected that the wag’s comment that the Russians had actually made it easier for the Europeans to organise a defence had a nasty element of truth in it; Brussels had certainly played a major role in making it harder for France to respond to its problems, along with the rest of the European Union.  A display of vigorous strength might have prevented the Russians from getting the idea that they could invade; Brussels had been too determined to prevent any hint of a possible confrontation that they had only made the confrontation inevitable.  The chaos that had gripped the Netherlands and Belgium had only just been prevented from destroying the states; radicals of all stripes were causing problems everywhere.

“We have a problem,” McLachlan continued, with very British understatement.  “Mr President, how serious is the situation in France now?”

Yacef had to smile.  He had moved between the argument of the far-right, who had wanted to send in the army and burn out the Arabs, and the far-left, who had wanted to give the Arabs whatever they wanted.  Neither option had been a sensible option, as far as Yacef was concerned; he had – correctly – seen the revolts as minor problems, as long as no one overreacted.  Two months after they had started, the revolts were dying away as different factions turned on each other and targeted strikes took out the leaders of the different groups.

His smile grew.  Crashing into the Arab regions and shooting everyone would have radicalised every French Arab.  Instead, they had allowed the Arabs some room…and had prevented the riots from spreading out of control.  No matter what the far-right said, Paris was not Lebanon; the lesson would make it easier to integrate the remainder, after the fighting had been terminated.  He had taken the opportunity of near-absolute power to push through much-needed economic reforms; if they had a decade of peace, he was confident that most of France’s problems could be solved.

He said as much.  “I don’t think that the problem is going to last much longer,” he said.  “We have fairly conclusive evidence that the revolts – riots, uprisings, whatever you want to call them – were started by the Pact, although we’re not sure which pact power was behind them.  It was probably the Russians; how could they lose?”

“True,” McLachlan agreed.  He nodded towards the map on the wall; a massive red swath had been cut through Europe.  “That only leaves one question; how do we fight – and win – the war?”

“I do not believe that there is any question that we must win the war,” Chancellor Hans Konigsberg said.  The German looked nervous, a cultured man knowing that his country was at the mercy of the barbarians, but determined.  “At the moment, the Russians are draining the life out of Germany…and other countries to the east.  Poland…you’ve seen some of the reports, a non-stop series of horror!”

“True,” McLachlan agreed, again.  “However, there is the problem that the war has gone nuclear, and that is a serious problem.”

Chancellor Hans Konigsberg looked pale.  Germany was the battlezone; if the tactical nuclear weapons went flying, Germany would be caught in most of the blasts.  A handful of nukes could devastate Germany, if not worse; Yacef knew that there were thousands upon thousands of Germans fleeing into France, straining an already overstrained system.  The riots hadn’t really touched France’s most essential services – the death of most of the taxmen had been greeted with cheers – but food was already having to be rationed.  At some point…

…At some point, the collective European urge to continue the war would be lost.

“So far, nuclear warheads have been restricted to the Far East,” Yacef said.  “Only American bases – and one base in Vietnam – have been hit, incidentally destroying several Pact ships in the process.  Why do you feel that they will come here?”

“I have here” – he picked up a folder and held it out to him – “a classified study,” McLachlan said.  “You’ll note that there is some strong reason to believe that the Russians have run short of advanced weapons, something that has also happened to us.  Our losses in aircraft, cruise missiles, smart bombers, PDS, etc, etc has been ruinous, but we have been able to buy supplies from America, although there are limits to how much the Americans can send us.”

Yacef smiled grimly.  France had had to purchase weapons from Israel, something that had probably given the Israelis a laugh; their media had been full of snide comments about the sort of vipers that France had clasped to its collective bosom.  It didn’t matter that the riots hadn’t been life-threatening; some of the Israelis media had gone so far as to claim that France had only been saved by the incompetence of its enemies, having managed to walk into the mess.  Israel might not have liked the Russians much, but the French had been quite happy to moralise over the endless Arab-Israeli dispute, while selling weapons to the Arabs at a profit.  If America hadn’t twisted Israel’s arm…

“That’s a dangerous thought,” McLachlan continued.  If he was aware of what Yacef was thinking, he showed no sign of it; he seemed completely focused on the document in front of him.  “The Americans have been flooding their Third Corps into Germany, now that we have the Ports cleared; you may remember the argument we had with them over ensuring that our man remained firmly in charge.”

Yacef nodded.  His military staff would have naturally preferred a Frenchman in command, but few of them had anything bad to say about General Trautman, who had saved Europe from complete disaster in the first hours of the war.  An American commander would have known very little about the situation on the ground; the European staffs had been united in their refusal to consider a change in command.  It would have opened a window of opportunity for the Russians to attack.

“The Americans have made a suggestion based on this analysis,” McLachlan said.  “They have proposed a counter-attack – now – to liberate Berlin.  The Russians have quite a large force encamped near the city; the object of the attack would be to destroy or capture that force, incidentally releasing the thousands of European prisoners held in camps near the city.  There’s not much time for that; we know now that the Russians have been moving prisoners of war into Russia, somewhere where they will be held, well away from any chance of rescue.  We need those men.”

Yacef nodded grimly.  One problem that was always underestimated was the fact that it took time to convert a man into a soldier.  A young boy from the Middle East, given an AK-47 and a license to kill for the cause of the week, wasn’t a soldier and was easy to deal with by any group of trained soldiers.  France had started to conscript soldiers again, but it would take time to train them…and perhaps more time to arm them.  No one had planned for a major war…and ammunition stocks were lower than anyone liked.  The Russians had managed to stick a block in that process; they’d taken out a German supply deport, which had destroyed plenty of ammunition without any risk at all.

“I have a duty to them,” Chancellor Hans Konigsberg said.  His voice was very soft.  “Most of them are Germans who were captured in the middle of defending Berlin.  We also want to prevent the Russians from actually taking Berlin; it would free up Russian units for action in the west.  If we can destroy that Russian army…”

“Then the war might go nuclear,” Yacef said.  He had been briefed, in considerable secrecy, on the French tactical nuclear weapons.  A few of them, relics of the Cold War, had been only really useable against Germany; that was something that had been kept as secret as possible.  No one in France wanted the Germans to get nuclear weapons, even if they were friends now; it would only have upset the Germans to know that their allies had built weapons that were only really useful against them.  “If the Russians think that they might lose, will they go nuclear?”

“There is no way to know,” McLachlan said.  His voice was icy.  “As I see it, we have a legal and moral obligation to our people, both our own homeland people and the Europeans in East Europe, to live up to our commitments and liberate them from Russian rule.  Given time, we could break the Russian energy monopoly; we all know that the introduction of some of the newer tech may have played a part in the Russian decision to start the war.  We may even owe a commitment to the Russians themselves; we may be obliged to think in terms of liberating them from their new government.

“There’s only one problem with that,” he continued, “it’s impossible.  Without American support, we cannot guarantee pushing them out of Germany, let alone evicting them from Poland and the Baltic States.  We can – we have – ship weapons to various resistance groups, but the Russians have been reacting strongly in Poland and a lot of people are just…sitting on their butts, waiting to see who wins the main fighting.  If we do manage to weaken the Russians, they might go nuclear, and then…”

“We fought World War One in Europe, we fought World War Two in Europe…and if you bastards let us, we’ll fight World War Three in Europe,” Chancellor Hans Konigsberg quoted.  Yacef nodded.  “I have been asked, by the remains of my government, to place a very simple question in front of you; if the Russians launch a nuclear strike on Germany, will you retaliate?”

Yacef hesitated.  One problem was that there were thousands of French soldiers along the Elbe, digging in with the Germans, British and others.  A Russian strike would be likely to reduce Frenchmen to radioactive dust along with the Germans.  A second problem was worse; the Russians had privately made it known that if any country launched a strike on their forces, wherever they were, they would retaliate against that country.  It could launch a spiralling series of explosions that ended with a draw – a draw in the sense that everyone died.

“I believe that we would,” he said finally.  “We would be better off preventing them from being used at all, but…”

“We have to prevent the Russians from intimidating us,” McLachlan said.  “Do we, therefore, support the planned offensive…?”

“Only if General Trautman believes it to be possible,” Yacef said firmly.  “I understand politics as well as the next man, but I refuse to throw away French soldiers on a political gesture.”

Chancellor Hans Konigsberg smiled weakly.  “I understand your position,” he said.  “At the same time, Mr President, I have an invading army in my country and a lot of politicians suggesting that perhaps it is better to be red than dead, now that the nukes are flying.  If the offensive goes ahead and fails…then I will have no choice, but to sue for peace on whatever terms the Russians are prepared to offer us.”

Yacef looked down at his hands.  His people had been considering the ramifications of a German defeat and they had started some secret contingency planning for defending France alone, or with British help.  The problem was worse than it looked; if the Germans surrendered, the Russians would be able to overrun the Netherlands and Belgium; France’s problems would double at a stroke.  The Swiss were staying out of the fighting for the moment, but Yacef had every confidence that they could defend their borders against the Russians, unless nukes were used.

Privately, he cursed the Russians.  Nukes changed everything.

“I understand,” he said.  He saw the British Prime Minister nodding in grim sympathy.  “We won’t let you down.  The offensive has to be a success…or it will lead to…something unthinkable.”

Chancellor Hans Konigsberg regarded him with a sour look.  “It was refusing to think the unthinkable that got us into this mess in the first place,” he said.  “If we survive this, there will have to be some changes made to the European Union.  A standing EUROFOR at full strength, for one…and perhaps a shared nuclear arsenal for the second.”

“The Russians would have a fit,” Yacef observed.

“We’re at war with them,” Chancellor Hans Konigsberg snapped.  “I think that their opinion hardly matters any longer.”

Chapter Forty-Four: Choices, Choices…

Near Hamburg, Germany

General Trautman stood near the display, watching the slow strangulation of his beloved country.  Germans spoke of the ‘fatherland’ and thought of it as a single state, something that even forty years of communist rule and Russian oppression had failed to stamp out.  Some foreigners didn’t understand, didn’t understand that many Germans believed firmly in the ‘my country, right or wrong;’ many of them went into the military.  It was something that Germany’s history had caused; the Germans faced a possible land invasion on all of its borders, or they had when history had flowed around Germany.  The great men of Germany’s history, the good and the bad, had grappled with the problem; few had found a perfect solution.

Hitler had failed; the Allies had invaded from two sides at once, terminating the Nazi regime.  The Kaiser and his military rulers had failed; they had won in the east, but they had been unable to win in the west, not in time to save themselves.  Frederick the Great had come very close to losing; only the lucky death of their Russian opponent had saved him from permanent defeat.  Now…now, General Trautman and his new Chancellor had to grapple with the same problem, and he knew that he risked losing again.

On paper, he had a strong defensive position, particularly with the arrival of the American forces.  American-designed anti-aircraft units had been deployed around the position, preparing to intercept any Russian aircraft that came in to try and support a possible attack.  Both sides were taking an uneasy break; there had only been a handful of midair clashes and small encounters on the ground.  Trautman was certain, however, that the Russians would come for him soon…and where could he make his next stand?  The Elbe was a lousy place to make a stand, but his Government had insisted; he had been reduced to praying for the Russians to make an attack into Berlin, where they would be chewed up by the defenders.

But Germany was dying.  The German economy had come almost to a standstill.  The conscription program might produce some results, but they couldn’t come fast enough to reinforce him before the Russians brought their forces into play; only the heavy losses that the Russians had taken in air power had prevented them from coming over the lines.  Some estimates had claimed that over a thousand Russian aircraft had been destroyed, but it hardly mattered; Europe alone could no longer muster more than three hundred aircraft, many of them older aircraft that couldn’t stand against the latest Russian aircraft.  How long would it be before people started demanding peace at any price?  There were shortages everywhere; how long would it be before disease and starvation broke out?

They were all looking to him to provide salvation, and Trautman knew that there would be only a long fight, not instant salvation.  He’d seen war plans for strikes to make the Russians go elsewhere, but the truth was that the only plan he held any confidence in was the plan to resupply the Polish underground.  Even that might not work; the Russians were using some of the most horrific methods to crush the Polish underground.  There were reports of torture, rape, mass murder…the Russians had taken the savagery of a Central Asian battle and placed it right in the heart of Europe.  There was no attempt to hide the war crimes, none at all; they gloried in what they were doing to the helpless Poles.  It had already had one nasty effect; the Czechs had refused to do more than mobilise to defend themselves, even going so far as to send private messages to Moscow, offering a peace deal.  Moscow had accepted…and the Czech Republic was out of the fight, for the moment; the Czechs could see what was happening in Germany…and they had no intention of going the same way.

His country was dying…hardly aware of what he was doing, Trautman brought his fist down hard on the table.  It broke under the impact; he looked down at the ruins, wanting to seek release for his feelings.  There was nothing he could do; he wanted to find something to kill, but what?  His staff were all doing a good job, he couldn’t have been prouder of them, but how could he look them in the eye when it was hopeless?  Was there hope at all?

Captain Henri Guichy tapped once on the door.  He took the destroyed table in stride; he’d seen much worse during the long retreat.  Trautman was impressed with him, he had privately made a note to have Guichy recommended for a combat command as soon as possible, assuming that the war lasted long enough for the newer units to be brought online.  Would the new infantry units being raised actually be able to do anything in time, or would they just be cannon fodder for the Russians?  There was no way to know…

“The Americans are here,” Guichy said.  His voice held a strange mixture of respect and concern.  The subject of the American visit was meant to be a secret, but it didn’t take a genius to guess that it concerned the subject of a possible offensive, a counter-attack against the Russians.  Trautman wanted to believe, very much, that it was possible; the thought of doing the attacking for once was a pleasing thought.  “Shall I show them in?”

“I’ll see them in the secure room,” Trautman said.  He stood up, feeling his body aching; he hadn’t been able to sleep properly since the war had begun.  He felt tired and his eyes ached; he almost wished that the American had come to take over command.  It might not have been a disaster.  “Show them in and bring coffee, lots of coffee.”

Guichy didn’t argue; he could tell that his commander needed it.  The secure room would be familiar territory to both of them; NATO had used the base before EUROFOR had been more than a pipe dream.  Americans, British, French and even a handful of Spaniards had used the base; it was a convenient place to meet.  There were two Americans; one tall, black and bulky, almost a stereotypical grunt, the other taller, thinner, and seemingly more thoughtful.

“I’ve met Major General Marco Lineman before,” Trautman said.  He studied the black American with some interest; the man was a football player, or he would eat his hat.  “Who might you be?”

The black man’s voice was surprisingly soft.  “General Geoffrey Bradford Wilkinson, United States Army,” he said.  Trautman nodded; he had heard of the current commanding officer of the Third Corps, although they had never met.  There was a faint hint of Texas in his voice.  “You must be General Trautman.”

Trautman laughed, despite his tiredness; Guichy entered with a tray of mugs and a large pot of coffee.  “I am and I wish I wasn't,” he said.  He had the strangest feeling that he could trust Wilkinson; the American General extruded warm confidence and understanding, not overconfidence or disdain.  “Welcome to EUROFOR, and can I say that I am very relieved to have you.”

He passed Wilkinson a mug of coffee and poured one for Lineman.  “I am very glad to have your tanks and aircraft,” he continued.  “We took murderous losses in both categories, with the net result that we have only a few hundred tanks here to counter any Russian attack.  They punched through at Berlin and then forced the gap to open wider by pouring their armour into the breach, so your people will come in handy.”

He took a sip of his own coffee.  “Now that we have linked your command systems into the EURONET, we can ensure that we are all singing from the same page,” he said.  He had wondered how they would react to the reminder that he was in command, under the terms of the agreement; Wilkinson showed no reaction as he sipped the coffee.  “I assume that you intend to discuss defensive plans?”

“We have the reports from EURONET,” Wilkinson said.  “What we don’t have are your impressions; what is the current state of your forces?”

“Weaker than I would like,” Trautman admitted, with what he felt was commendable understatement.  “Most of my heavy forces are deployed behind the Elbe, with infantry dug in to protect them and intercept small Russian raids with their own infantry.  As you can see, if you look at the map, that is a vast area to cover, and the Russians have been probing us, on and off, for the last few days.  None of the probes are very big, but we are taking some hits.

“Our losses in artillery and air support elements were quite high,” he continued.  He nodded towards the map.  “As you can see, if they decide to try to flank us in the north, by heading towards Denmark, they can do it and turn our flank.  If that happens, then…if that happens, then they will force us to redeploy, at the very least.”

“He who would be strong everywhere is strong nowhere,” Wilkinson murmured.  Trautman nodded in understanding.  It was a long-standing military principle…and one that had brought down more than one German state.  The Russians could pick the time and place of their attack, hitting his forces wherever they chose, achieving a massive concentration of firepower and armoured mass at the critical spot.  His forces would have to retreat – again – and the line would crumble.  “What if we were to force them to redeploy?”

“You’re talking an offensive into the teeth of the Russian war machine,” Trautman said slowly.  “I confess that the idea gives me no small amount of pleasure.  However, we cannot guarantee a victory.”

“I wasn’t suggesting a mad charge all the way to Moscow,” Wilkinson said.  He produced a small datachip and passed it over to Trautman, who slid it into the computer on the desk; the computer studied the chip for a long moment, and then produced a display of Germany.  “This is all the information that we have been able to gather on the Russian locations,” he said.  “You may know this already.”

Trautman frowned.  There were Russian infantry units deployed near Berlin, watching the city and sealing it off from all contact, and Russian armoured units further back, intent on foiling a spoiling attack if one could be mounted.  Trautman had considered it and dismissed the thought, but if the Americans were right…

He met Wilkinson’s eyes.  “How sure are you that this information is accurate?”

“We’re fairly certain that the information on their armoured deployments is accurate,” Wilkinson said.  “We have a group of microsats orbiting the planet, some of which are watching the Russians and providing us with information.  We can count their tanks…and they’re holding them back, but they have a large force of their B Category of infantry near Berlin itself.  If we were to launch a limited offensive…”

He ran through a long list of observations the Americans had made.  Some of them Trautman had suspected; the Russians would have to be short on ammunition, but their rate of resupply was an unknown.  Others were stranger; the suggestion that the Russians might be running short on aircraft seemed ridiculous, but Trautman had to admit that even the Russians didn’t have unlimited supplies of aircraft.

“They do have very good SAM missiles,” he said, and wondered just when he had changed from disliking the whole idea to being more than a little accepting of it.  “Can you guarantee control of the air?”

“Of course not, but we can guarantee that we can prevent the Russians deploying their heavy bombers,” Wilkinson said.  He explained in short sharp sentences about the Batmen aircraft and how they had been used to attack the Russians in Iceland.  “We could mount the attack as quickly as tomorrow.”

“Next week,” Trautman said.  There was too much to be done first.  “We can move, if we are going to move, next week, when we have the reinforcements from England, Spain and Portugal.  Once we have the reinforcements in place, then we move.”

Wilkinson didn’t argue.

“I’ll have to discuss it with the Chancellor first,” Trautman said, after they had discussed it at length, “but I believe that he will approve a limited offensive.  We are not going to retake Warsaw with this attack, even if it comes off perfectly; our objectives will be to liberate Berlin and crush those Russian divisions.  Is that understood?”

Wilkinson grinned.  “You’ve been planning this yourself,” he said.  Trautman nodded; he had, although only as an exercise because without Third Corps he wasn't able to take the offensive.  “I assume that you will exercise direct command?”

Trautman nodded.  “It’s my job,” he said.  “You’ll be somewhere else; we can’t risk a lucky shell killing us all.”

***
“General, this message just arrived for you,” Captain Anna Ossipavo said.  She wore her standard uniform, but she had cut it just a little tighter than the normally unflattering approved uniforms for female officers.  General Aleksandr Shalenko couldn’t help, but be impressed; Anna had been trying to cheer him up since the FSB had launched its crackdown on the Poles.  “It requires your fingerprint to unlock it.”

Shalenko took the case and examined it thoughtfully.  Like all of its type, it had been created to hold a particular set of papers…and it would have a small explosive device attached to destroy the papers if someone without permission attempted to open it.  They had been sometimes used for assassination, but he knew that the FSB wouldn’t risk starting a civil war; they might not have liked him, but the uneasy balance of power in Russia would not have tolerated it.  The Army would launch a purge of its own and civil war would begin…and the NATO countries would take advantage of the chaos to launch an attack.

He pressed his thumb firmly against the case and there was a beep as it accepted his identity.  He let out a breath he hadn’t realised that he was holding; everyone knew the story of the Colonel who had been permitted to open a case, but had been unlucky enough to have a little oil on his hands while holding the case between his legs.  They had been able to save his life, but not his manhood; few officers were able to repress a wince when they opened a secure case.  Inside, there was a small sheaf of papers, each one marked SECRET.

“Shit,” he swore, as he skimmed through the summery.  The information was damning; the Pact had had several agents in place within EUROFOR, but much of the information had been almost useless.  The Europeans had left themselves wide open to a penetration operation, but so much of the information was useless; sleeper agents were rarely as successful as the movies claimed.  This agent, however, might have struck gold.  “Shit!”

Anna blinked.  Her blonde curls contrasted with her nervous face.  “General?”

Shalenko stared at her for a long moment.  “The Americans are planning an attack on us,” he said.  He smiled thinly at her expression; he had been thinking hard about how to destroy the American Third Corps, which was likely to be his most dangerous opponent in the coming push to the west…except the Americans had clearly pushed the Germans into agreeing to a counter-attack.  It was exactly what he would have expected from an American; they could never wait for a favourable moment to move, they had to move when they wanted to move.  “That gives us an opportunity.”

He hadn’t been looking forward to the struggle against Third Corps; it was at least as powerful as any unit the Europeans had put into the battle, and it was supposed to have more advanced technology.  If the Americans had fought from a dug-in position, they would have been harder to dig out; if they came to him, he would have a chance to inflict serious damage on it.  The trick would be doing it before the Americans realised that they had a leak…

He grinned.  If nothing else, it should ruin the alliance if there was a spy problem.

“Call my senior officers,” he ordered.  Anna hurried to obey as a cold smile spread over the face of her general…and her lover.  “We have a battle to plan.”

***
It was just before dawn.

Trautman stood alone, remembering the last time he had waited, expecting to meet the fury of a Russian offensive with only his thin line.  It had taken a week to get everything ready, striving hard to maintain the secrecy that might make the difference between success and failure.  There were parts of the plan that only he knew; elements that might make all the difference between success and failure…

A German army hadn’t launched itself into battle since 1944.  It wasn’t a German Army, not completely; it was an army of the democratic world, facing a totalitarian threat.  Never mind that India had some vestiges of democracy left; the system that had been created by years of unholy blending had to be destroyed.  Trautman felt excited…and sick with the possibilities.  How much time, he asked himself, had been wasted since it had become obvious that the Pact might be a threat?  When had it been an easy monster to strangle in its cradle?

Had it been when the European Union had demanded major concessions from Russia in exchange for funding?  Had it been when the United States had stood between Taiwan and China?  Had it been when the United States had delayed India just long enough for the Pakistani missiles to be launched?  Had it been when China and India had invaded Indonesia?  Had it been when Japan had slipped out of the alliance with the Americans?  Had it been…?

There was little point in worrying about it now.  Recriminations could wait.  He lifted his communicator and spoke a single world.

“Go.”

Chapter Forty-Five: The Road to Berlin, Take One

Elbe Battlezone, Germany

“Go.”

From high above, Germany looked very dark; there was little power for the thousands of civilians caught behind enemy lines.  Captain Jose Aviles had heard that thousands of refugees had fled west into France, others had remained behind, hoping to avoid being caught up in the war through their distance from the cities, or anything of military significance.  As the Batmen moved further into Germany, their sensors picked up the waves of emissions from the Russian sensors; they were drawing on both German power and their own internal power reserves.

He held his breath as waves of power slid over his aircraft.  A standard stealth aircraft redirected radar energy, something that had the unavoidable risk of the radar energy touching another receptor and providing a rough guide to the location of the stealth aircraft.  Hundreds of Russian radars were working down below; Aviles knew that they would be watching for stealth aircraft crossing the border, linked together to provide a network that would allow them to detect almost anything.

No sensors locked on to his aircraft; no hail of missiles or bullets rose up to meet them.  The Batmen aircraft were coated in something very different; they literally absorbed radar energy, rather than simply preventing it from returning the way it came.  The coating wasn’t perfect – at point-blank range, there would still be some leakage – but at their distance, the Russians had hardly any hope of seeing them before it was too late.  They might suspect, but how could they react in time?

“There,” he muttered, as the first Russian MIG aircraft came into range.  The Russians ran heavy patrols of aircraft, like they had done before the battle, but Aviles had looked at the information with a pilot’s eye and concluded that the intelligence pukes were right, for once.  The same pilots were flying the same aircraft, more often than any reasonable air force would order them to fly…unless they were short of aircraft.  The Europeans – and the American aircraft based in Britain, patriotism reminded him – had torn the guts out of the Russians; unless they had newer aircraft coming, they would be unprepared for the offensive.

Flickers of energy moved between the Batmen, designating targets.  The darkness wouldn’t last long; it was only half an hour, at most, before the rays of sunlight illuminated the Batmen to their opponents, assuming that the Russians had time to look.  If they had deduced the existence of the Batmen from what had happened at Iceland, they would certainly know what they could do…and would be working on countermeasures.  Far too many invincible tricks had come to grief on enemy countermeasures; it wouldn’t be long before the Russians invented something to make the Batmen much less effective.

“Fire,” he snapped.  Each of the Batmen launched two missiles, heading directly towards the Russian aircraft, much faster than the speed of sound.  Their threat receivers screaming warnings in their ears, some of the Russians rolled and dropped flares, uselessly.  The missiles had a lock on their aircraft; Aviles watched as Russians started to die.  The Russians that had escaped being designated in the first attack threw their aircraft around the sky, searching for their attackers; Aviles was certain that they wouldn’t be able to find the Batmen, unless they got very lucky.  Russian radars on the ground were suddenly becoming a lot more powerful…and only Aviles and some of the people near the European lines knew that it had been planned that way.  As the Batmen disengaged, the second angle of attack went into action.

***
“Fire,” Major Thomas Cromwell snapped.  “All guns, fire!”

The European artillery had taken a beating in the Battle of Berlin, but there were still plenty of mobile guns left…and they had been reinforced by the mobile weapons of Third Corps.  The Americans had developed the latest mobile weapons platforms, intending them for quick support of their mobile units as they slashed into the enemy, and they had been worked into the attack plan.  Some of the shells were targeted on Russian positions; others were targeted on Russian radars…and were actually guided by HARM-style systems.  As the Russians lit off their radars, they were targeted by shells that fell precisely on their targets, knocking out most of the Russian radars.  Some of the Russian units were mobile units, they would escape for the moment, but they would run out of luck eventually.

He barked orders and the guns started to move; they couldn’t stay where they were for long.  The Russians had to be targeting their own guns – even as the first mobile unit started to move, the Russians fired back – but many of their shells missed.  Other guns has clearly been pre-targeted on the positions the guns had held – until they were moved, just before the attack began; the Russian spy systems had done their work almost perfectly.

Cromwell smiled.  Just not perfect enough…

“They’ll be trying to retarget,” he snapped.  His force was spread out, rather than being concentrated; the modern communications systems allowed him to command it all from his command post, rather than risking deploying them all in a single location.  Post-battle analysis suggested that the Russians had actually lost several of their own guns to a lucky shot that hit their ammunition supply; he had no intention of losing some of his own weapons to a similar attack.  “Get those guns moving!”

Explosions echoed in the distance; he peered through his binoculars and saw flashes of light and fire in the distance.  The rumbling of some engines, the trucks and lorries that were supporting the attack, could barely be heard over it, but the tanks that EUROFOR and the Americans were deploying were almost silent.  Perhaps the Russians would be expecting the attack, perhaps not, but they might just be surprised by the speed in which it had been mounted.  Yesterday, all of the tanks had been well back from the lines, ready to cut off and destroy a Russian spearhead; now, they were already heading into enemy-held territory.  

His guns fired again, throwing a second wave of shells into the Russian-held territory, targeting the Russian tank positions and some of their infantry locations.  The Russians would be awake and aware by now; some of their guns were shelling EUROFOR positions rather than trying to hit his mobile guns, which meant that they might have realised that more was going on than a simple attempt to ruin their sleep.  Who knew what they would do, if they realised that there was an attack going on; what would they do to counter it?

“Watch out for anything that might be sending out orders,” he said.  Drones had been prying over the Russian positions for days, despite the dangers of losing a drone to Russian fire; they had been trying to ferret out the location of the Russian HQ.  Several HQs had been found, but further investigation had proven that they were decoys; the Russians were masters at hiding things from the most advanced sensors.  “We find that HQ, we destroy it…and the Russians will be headless.”

Another wave of shells were launched, heading into enemy territory.

Cromwell smiled.

***
Sergeant Jack Richardson lay flat on his belly as the Russian soldiers passed nearby, a group of Russian infantry, exploring the lands near the village.  The Russians had moved in a week ago, according to the single man who had been able to avoid being captured and held prisoner inside his own home by the Russians; they had turned the entire region into a strongpoint.  Richardson wasn’t surprised; the village was not only on a road that would be an easy route into the heart of the Russian-held positions, but commanded a bridge that would be suitable for tanks and other assault vehicles.  Tankers would be able to charge across the landscape at leisure, but they could have more problems with the rivers; if they failed to recover some of the bridges, the attack might stall.

He was mildly surprised, as the Russians marched away, that they hadn’t simply destroyed the bridge, but he supposed that they had preferred the thought of the Americans – or the Europeans – attempting to recover it.  There were over a hundred Russian soldiers in the village, and he had ten men in his combat group; the odds, on paper, were vastly against him.  Fortunately, he knew nothing about ‘odds;’ he just knew that his men were vastly more capable than any Russian group.  The Russians garrisoning the village weren’t Spetsnaz, a group he considered vastly overrated, but ordinary soldiers.

He smiled behind his mask.  It was a good thing they weren’t an FSB unit; the stories flooding out of Poland and the Baltic States were appalling enough to ensure that no FSB unit would be allowed to surrender, even assuming it tried to offer surrender.  Richardson had faced fanatics before, in Iran and Iraq and even Saudi Arabia; they rarely surrendered and they rarely showed more than limited imagination.  The Russians had shown a little more; their defences would be quite tricky to break…unless the attackers levelled the entire village.

They continued their long slow crawl around the village, noticing the position of perimeter-warning sensors scattered around, mocking them.  The Russians might have placed a lot of faith in such sensors, ever since they had deployed them in their wars in Central Asia, but the Americans had had several sensors handed over to them…and they were quite easy to fool.  The suits that Richardson and his men wore kept them hidden from the sensors, perfectly; the Russians would have no idea that they were there.

He glanced at once of the houses, noticing the girl who stood there, half-admiring the Russian restraint in not trying to force her into bed, then led the group down towards the bridge.  It was bigger than he had expected, guarded by five of the Russians and, he noticed with a touch of alarm, rigged to blow.  The Russians had taken over a tollbooth, turning it into another strongpoint, and had placed enough explosives around the bridge to severely damage it, at the very least.

“Gary?”

Gary, the team expert on demolition, shrugged.  “That’s a standard pattern, Sarge,” he sub-vocalised.  The normal joking and ribbing had to be discarded when they were deep in enemy territory; they were taking a risk using even the very low-powered communicators.  If the Russians had a single sensor capable of detecting them, all hell would be out for noon.  “We cut the wire, it should be safe.”

Richardson rapidly flicked his hands through the motions, signalling to his team; they moved as one across the span of the bridge to the tollbooth.  A Russian turned, too late; Richardson caught him and cut his throat with one neat slash.  The others had moved just as quickly; four of the Russians died in as much time as it took to draw knives.  The fifth lunged for a large button; Richardson buried his knife in his back and he fell to the ground.

“Get this thing dismantled,” he muttered.  “Move!”

He glared towards the village and cursed under his breath.  It wouldn’t be long before the first line of tanks and infantry appeared…but before then, the Russians might have the common sense to check up on their guards.  If they came to check, or even to reinforce them, they would discover what had happened; they might even be able to get more explosives into position and take down the bridge.

The sound of explosions echoed through the night; the first strands of light could be seen coming over the horizon.  It wouldn’t be long before the Russians issued orders to destroy the bridges, if they weren’t confident that they could stop the attack, and then they would find out what had happened.

“Get into positions to repel an attack,” he ordered.  He would have preferred to avoid a confrontation, but if the bridge went down, the attack would be delayed, badly.  “When they come, open fire.”

***
“Go,” the commander said.  “Give them hell.”

“Yes, sir,” Captain Guntar Markus said.  He was unable to keep the burning desire for a little revenge out of his voice, or the desire to crush Russians under the Eurotank’s heavy treads.  “Driver, move us out!”

The road had been carefully scouted out beforehand, although he had expected to be facing a Russian attack; he knew where everything was and where to expect trouble.  The Israelis had sent over several thousand antitank mines – not without a lot of snide comments about how they would have preferred to have left the Europeans, who had often taken the Arab side, to stew in their own mess – and they had been carefully placed to disrupt any Russian offensive; the Europeans were finally going on the offensive.

He hadn’t been told, until an hour ago, that they were going on the offensive, but everyone in his group had guessed.  The Americans would be launching their own offensive at the same time, the briefer had finally gotten around to telling them; they were going to throw themselves across the nation and destroy the Russian forces besieging Berlin.  They were going to recover Berlin, long enough to chew the Russian forces to pieces; hopefully, they would either be able to hold there, or withdraw in good order.  As the tanks approached, he glanced down at the updates; infantry units had raided the Russian flanks…and the Russians were in disarray.  Their job – his job – was to cut through the Russians before they could assemble a defence.

The sound of aircraft racing overhead made his blood run cold…until he realised that they were American and European aircraft; for the first time, the allies would have almost uncontested air superiority over the battlefield.  The Russians had taken a beating; EURONET’s reports claimed that most of the Russian aircraft had been knocked out of the sky by an American attack, and heavy bombers were flying overhead.  The Russians still had thousands of SAM missiles – even as he watched, a note blinked up about a B-52 downed by a hail of missiles – but they wouldn’t be using their own aircraft to harass his force.  That was fine by him.

The radio crackled.  “Heavy Russian force along your angle of attack,” the commander snapped.  A databurst unzipped itself in front of him; he saw all the information as the German and British infantry retreated from the Russian line.  “Proceed to the location and crush it.”

“Understood,” Markus snapped.  The Russians had dug in and were on full alert; they would have converted the town into a strongpoint, with over a thousand Russians defending it…and civilians caught in the middle.  He hoped that the Russians had sent the civilians out of the town, because he knew that he could not avoid firing into the town, just to prevent the Russians from using their positions against him.  “Support?”

A second databurst appeared, informing him of a unit of MLRS vehicles that had just reloaded and had been made available, along with a second unit of infantry.  Something pinged off the tank, a Russian soldier hiding in a tree; a burst of machine gun fire cut him down with ease.  Markus realised suddenly that they were slicing through the Russian patrols; there would be hundreds of Russians caught behind their lines, as the allies advanced.  He tapped the display, sending out a warning; infantry would be needed to flush them out, later.  

As soon as they came around the bend, he saw the problem; the Russians had created a formidable blockade with vehicles and trenches, backed up by heavy guns.  He snapped out orders, targeting the Russian position with the main gun, half-wishing that the Russians would simply surrender the moment they saw his tanks.  An antitank round exploded, not too far from his vehicle; a British tank exploded in a ball of fire.  The Russians had not only managed to hold back the infantry, but they might be able to hold him back as well, unless he struck quickly.

“Fire,” he snapped.  The main gun fired a single shell into the Russian position and the blockade vanished in a blast of fire.  The Russians had taken the simple precaution of emptying the fuel tanks first – something that countless Jihadis hadn’t been smart enough to do – and there was no secondary explosion, just a blast of metal fragments tearing through the Russians.  “Fire!”

The Russians had placed guns neatly into the houses.  The main gun fired again and again as the tanks moved forwards, avoiding death by a split second; the Russian position disintegrated as the town was torn apart.  Markus summoned the MLRS as the Russian line seemed to firm; the hail of rockets tore the remainder of the position apart.  The Germans advanced slowly, trying to avoid a major clash as the small conflict wore down; they were clearing the town of the remaining Russians.

One building had had a red cross on it.  The infantry discovered that most of the civilians, those who had remained, had been held there; the Russians had treated them fairly well.  Markus allowed himself a moment of pure relief; the building could have easily been destroyed in the crossfire.  There was no time to wait, no time to accept some of the offers that his men were getting from the women; they had to press on before the Russians were able to react.  The Russians weren’t a dumb Third World army; unless they surrendered, they had to be treated as awesomely dangerous.  They were still firing shells at his people…

He glanced down at the display; the European and American forces were making good progress.  Armoured units were across the rivers and heading east, aircraft had cut a number of Russian units to battered shreds of men; progress seemed to be almost as well as could be expected.  They were making good progress.

Too good progress…

Something was wrong.

Chapter Forty-Six: The Road to Berlin, Take Two

Elbe Battlezone, Germany

“The enemy are making process,” a senior officer said.  General Aleksandr Shalenko said nothing, merely watching as the American forces advanced on their axis and European forces advanced on theirs.  They had both adopted the single advance tactic; there were merely two of them, with infantry and their aircraft supporting their advance.  Shalenko wasn’t surprised; the enemy had hit units that had been deliberately kept weaker than they should have been.

He thought, briefly, about General Nikolay Dzasokhov.  The commander at Iceland had been taken into American custody; Shalenko wondered what had happened to him.  The Americans weren’t in the habit of shooting their captives out of hand, with the possible exception of war criminals and terrorists in the years of their war with extremists; the Russian force on Iceland had committed no crimes.  That wasn’t true, now, of the forces in Europe; the FSB had treated the Poles as if they were barbarians from Central Asia.  If the war was won, and whatever happened here would go some way towards determining if the war would be won, it didn’t matter.  If it was lost…

He shrugged.  If it was lost, he was likely to die, so it didn’t matter either.

“Good,” he said.  The enemy were proceeding towards Berlin, hammering their way through a series of small defensive positions that were held, not by the best of his forces, but by the C Category divisions that had been rushed forward in the wake of the battle for Berlin.  1st Shock Army might have taken enough of a beating for him to withdraw its remaining units for redistributing, but the 2nd and 3rd Shock Armies were in position…and the Americans had almost missed them.  It was curious; the Americans built advanced weapons that could alter the world, in some cases over a decade ahead of anything the Pact could build, but they missed simple tricks…

Such as the field telephone network.  The Germans had gifted the Russians with much of their own network, but Shalenko had been quick to set up his own, using systems that he knew he could trust.  He had a direct link to all of his units that was literally undetectable; half of the places the Americans had graced with their weapons had been nothing more than obvious camouflage…and radio transmitters.  The Americans might think that they had smashed him and his headquarters, or perhaps some of his armoured units, but the truth was that they had missed many of them.

“The American air offensive is proceeding,” Captain Anna Ossipavo warned.  Shalenko wasn't surprised at all; if there was one field of war in which the Americans were world expects, it was using their air power to dominate and shape the battlefield.  They weren’t perfect at it – they had failed in 1991, and failed again in 2021 – but they were very good; the American air power would have to be crippled before the counterattack could begin.  “General Ivanov wants permission to unleash his systems…”

“Denied,” Shalenko snapped.  There was no time for a major argument; if they sprang the trap too early, the Americans might manage to either get their cocks out of the grinder before he started to grind, or they might manage to overpower his people before they were ready.  “Tell him that I want his aircraft kept well back from the battlefield; the Americans will hack them down without problems if we send them into the fight before we are ready.”

He scowled; the low-tech solution of building Bears to support the attacks was a good one…as long as there were no advanced fighters in the air.  An old European Tornado, a Eurofighter, a Raptor…each of them could swat Bears out of the sky with ease.  Simply building more than the Americans could destroy was one solution, but it was very wasteful for anything more powerful than a tank; he had plenty of T-100 tanks, despite the losses.  They might not be quite as advanced and capable as the American tanks, but as long as there were more than the Americans could deploy…

“We wait until the Americans have committed themselves,” he said.  “Once they have committed themselves, we spring the trap.”

Absently, he revived his final plan, the emergency option.  If they could pocket and destroy the American force, it would be a victory that would change the face of the war – again.  If Third Corps could be destroyed in an open battle, the Europeans would see American salvation for the chimera it was…and they would sue for peace.  Shalenko himself has urged merciful peace terms; the Russians would be happy with a demilitarised Europe and an end to American interference.  If the counterattack failed, then he had plenty of space to trade for time…and the Americans had bound themselves to a limited offensive.

He smiled.  “General Trautman, I’ve got you by the balls,” he said, enjoying the moment.  “And now I’m going to squeeze…”

***
The German landscape seemed very similar to American landscapes; Jeffery Sheridan didn’t like it at all.  His Shadow-class attack helicopter had mainly served in Iran and Saudi; while he enjoyed the absence of dust storms that forced him to remain on the ground, he distrusted the landscape’s ability to hide things.  Parts of Germany looked to be perfect tank terrain, other parts seemed to be able to hide an entire infantry unit; they had already stumbled over a Russian strongpoint that had almost shot down his aircraft.

The Shadow itself was a marvel.  It was faster than most helicopters could dream of being, and it was stealthy, although he knew that the Russians had experience in tracking Eurocopter craft and using their radars to locate stealth aircraft.  The Shadow could also turn on a dime and perform manoeuvres that only flying saucers had been able to perform, before the invention of newer aircraft from the NGW project.  Sheridan had heard about a plan to create a spacecraft-aircraft with the ability to land behind enemy lines, right from the other side of the world; if the war went on long enough, he hoped to be one of the pilots piloting such craft.

They were flying very low, low enough to avoid the attention of any Russian SAM positions, although they had had one close shave with a Russian infantry unit that had a handheld SAM launcher with it.  The Russian line seemed to have broken completely, but it hadn’t been a strong line; they had clearly learned from what they had done to the Poles.  The Poles – and Sheridan accepted the theory that that had been because of the treachery of their Defence Minister – had placed their forces too close to the border…and the Russians had jumped them all within the first hour of the war.  Sheridan stroked his chin as he adjusted the stick; the aircraft flipped over and swooped down a country road, passing a windmill that seemed to have come from a whole different road.

“Keep an eye out for trouble,” he muttered to his co-pilot.  The Shadow had only a two-man crew; it wasn’t intended for more than reconnaissance and attacking enemy positions; it had about the survivability, if hit, of a Japanese Zero.  The Russians could rip the helicopter apart with bullets; they would have to avoid running into a deployed ZSU or one of the newer antiaircraft weapons.  “The Russians aren’t dead yet.”

It had been a long time since the United States Army had gone to war against a peer power…and Sheridan knew that that worried General Wilkinson.  The war against Iraq had looked like a walkover; too late, it was realised that the war was going to be very different from anything they had expected to fight.  Iran had merely been a hundred tiny skirmishes; the raids into Saudi had been hardly a major effort.  The United States had been on the verge of winning the war against terrorism – at least the Islamic terrorism – when the Third World War had come along and ruined everything; the Shadow had been tossed into a battlefield it had never been expected to fight in.

He glanced briefly at his display.  The Shadow had been positioned on the southern front, covering the American axis of attack as Third Corps headed into Russian-occupied territory.  The information was exact; the American tanks were making good progress against the Russian infantry, although there had been a few nasty clashes between cut-off Russian units and the American forces.  The American advantages in infantry combat, the Future Soldiers, had helped them to win, but the Russians hadn’t been pushovers and…

Something was wrong, a feeling twitching at the back of his neck; he yanked on the stick and the Shadow leapt into the air, as a burst of tracers shot by underneath the hull of the craft.  He saw it then, a Russian antiaircraft unit, half-hidden under very neat camouflage; its guns were already moving to intercept them.  He moved his head, using his helmet interface to designate the Russian unit as a target; a missile launched from the Shadow and struck the Russian unit, destroying it in a ball of fire.

“Calling in the contact,” his co-pilot informed him.  “Sir…?”

The uneasy sense that something was wrong had refused to vanish with the Russians.  There was something very wrong; it dawned on him, very slowly, that he was looking at a camouflaged Russian outpost, one that could have hidden dozens more vehicles.  He hesitated, just a second too long; a Russian soldier launched a missile at the Shadow from point-blank range.  He hit the emergency transmit button, transmitting a warning back to Third Corps HQ, just before the Russian missile struck and blew them both to smithereens.  

***
“General, we have a major contact to the south,” Captain Andrew Dean snapped.  The American sounded worried; surprise wasn't something Americans handled well, in Trautman’s experience.  “The Russians just shot down a helicopter, one that sent back a warning!”

The display updated itself with the evidence from the Shadow’s sensors…in the second before it had been destroyed.  Trautman felt his blood run cold; the Russians had concealed at least a small armoured unit there…and they had done it without alerting anyone, even the Americans.  The area had been inspected by the drones and pronounced clear; only the Shadow had gone close enough to pick up on the automated Russian defences…and the hidden tanks.

“Get a drone over there now,” he snapped.  “I want that entire place examined with a fine-toothed comb; move up helicopters to cover Third Corps, and move the armoured units to block an offensive from the south!”

He thought rapidly; his mind racing.  The Russians had gone to some lengths to hide an entire armoured unit, perhaps even one of their dreaded Shock Armies, somewhere where it would be in striking distance of one of the obvious angles of attack.  He was starting to suspect that it wasn’t a coincidence; EUROFOR had been dogged by bad luck, ever since the war had started.  The Russians had tried to kill him and his entire staff; only the Poles had saved them from death.  The Russians had tried again at the Battle of Berlin…and only pure luck had saved them.  Now…now, the Russians seemed to have expected the attack…and might have succeeded in blocking it.

They concentrate on Third Corps, he thought.  Destroy that, the Americans might not want to continue the war…and my own political lords and masters get the idea that the Americans can’t be trusted to uphold their own commitments.  If that happens…

He saw it all, clearly, and knew that he was right.  The Russians would throw almost everything at Third Corps, which meant that EUROFOR had a chance to win, or at least to pull a draw out of the battle.  Third Corps could hold its own, just long enough for EUROFOR to cut the Russians off and crush them.  If the Russians were serious, they would have to bring forces away from Berlin…and they would be caught and destroyed.

“Move up the reserves, the French and British armoured units,” he ordered.  He hadn’t intended to launch what was in effect a third angle of attack, a third prong into enemy territory, but it would have to be done.  If they were very lucky, they might be able to trap and destroy a Shock Army.  “Order the bombardment forces into position; I want that Russian unit weakened before it even thinks about hurting us.”

He grinned.  “Oh, and order Third Corps to turn to move south,” he concluded.  “An encounter battle will suit us more than it will suit them.”

***
“General,” Anna said, “an American helicopter stumbled across 2nd Shock Army.”

Shalenko used a word his father would have beaten him for even thinking about saying.  It was one of the vilest words he knew; the element of sheer chance had just come back into play.  The Americans might not realise that almost all of 2nd Shock were out there, on their flanks, but they would certainly want to know what their aircraft had stumbled across.  Much of the American force was in a position where it would have no choice, but to fight or die, but some units were still able to withdraw.  Worse, the planed antiaircraft counterattack would almost certainly fail; they just weren’t ready for the move.  He could still win…

“Order 2nd Shock to move to the attack,” he said.  “Hopefully, we can hit the Americans before they can react to the sudden appearance of 2nd Shock…and order 3rd Shock forward to support them.”

“Yes, General,” Anna said.  “The orders are being issued now.”

***
Rashid Ustinov hated Germany.  It was bad enough being one of the few mixed-blood Russians in the Russian Army, but he really disliked the Germans; they had so much…and few Russians had anything like the luxuries his combat group had seen in German towns and cities.  Looting might be officially forbidden, but Ustinov and his men hadn’t hesitated; they had taken whatever they wanted from the Germans and intimidated them into silence.

The position they held had been well-hidden; Ustinov had done well when he had gone through basic training…and, unlike many past Russian armies, they knew what they were doing and why.  The Americans had taken command of the air, they had been told; it was unlikely that the Russian Air Force would be able to crush the Americans and their aircraft that had come out of their own movies.  The Russians were stronger on the ground, but in the air…if the Americans took command of the air, they could expect to crush the Russians with ease.

Ustinov and his group had dug themselves into their position and waited.  They had a direct line to the massive Russian radar network, hiding from the Americans by the simple expedient of keeping their own systems tuned down as low as possible.  The vehicles had been allowed to cool; they had kept their missiles well away from anything that could draw attention.  They hadn’t even allowed themselves to use their electronic games or videos…and they had waited.

The code word CHESS meant nothing to the Americans; they would use their quantum computers, Ustinov was sure, in a wasted attempt to crack a code that wasn’t really there.  The word itself was the message, a warning that they could expect American attention soon…and they were to engage the heavy American aircraft.  They had cowered in a trench, avoiding a small American helicopter; now, they logged into the main Russian radar and passive network, keeping their own sensors down.  They won’t have long to wait…

An American drone passed high overhead; they ignored it.  The 2nd Shock Army had it’s own inbuilt anti-aircraft element; they could shoot down the drone.  Ustinov’s target was something else altogether, the massive lumbering force of American B-52 aircraft, heading towards the Russian force with murder in mind.  Ustinov watched as they came closer, arrogantly secure in their power and glory, unaware of his small force waiting for them.  They would continue along their flight path, not even bothering to hide from his forces, until it was too late…

“Fire,” he snapped.  Seven missiles launched themselves from his vehicle; the driver didn’t wait for orders, but moved them as quickly as he could.  The Americans would have automatically tossed a missile or a bomb at their position, even though other vehicles would have taken his strike as a cue to launch themselves; the Americans were good at suppressing fire.  “Hit them!”

The Americans reacted quickly; only seconds seemed to have passed when a missile impacted with their former location.  Ustinov sighed in relief, knowing that they would find a new position, reload their launchers, and strike again.  The Americans were launching flares, and other decoys; some of his missiles were being decoyed away, but others were streaking directly to his targets.  As he watched, a missile impacted with the wing of a B-52…and the aircraft exploded in a sheet of fire.  Other American aircraft were luckier; a B-52 managed to avoid all the missiles aimed at it, only to fall prey to something that damaged it, sending it limping away towards the west.

Ustinov watched the show, too long.  He could see the signs of the war all around him; hear the noises of the fighting and the incoming shellfire from both sides, attempting to kill the other side first.   He waited…too long.  He sensed the incoming missile, too late; an American aircraft had managed to get a visual lock on his unit…and his vehicle blew apart in a ball of fire.

There was only one survivor.

Chapter Forty-Seven: The Road to Berlin, Take Three

Elbe Battlezone, Germany

“We have Russians trying to bugger us from the south,” the dispatcher snapped.  The tone of urgency in her normally calm voice showed Colonel Hugh Palter just how serious the situation actually was; his brother’s reports from EUROFOR just didn’t do it justice.  “Prepare to meet the offensive.”

Palter winced.  The 3d Armoured Cavalry Regiment had been assigned to cover the flanks of Third Corps as other units forced their way towards Berlin, covering them, as far as he had been able to see, from a handful of sheep that had eyed the vehicles with malicious eyes.  He would have preferred to have been on the spearhead, but instead the dispatchers had placed his unit on the flanks…and now it seemed as if they had had a point, after all.

He barked orders and interrogated the military network at length.  The Russians were masters of camouflage, everyone knew that, but it was still an unpleasant surprise to see an entire army seemingly appearing out of nowhere.  The Russians had placed enough T-100 tanks nearby to threaten Third Corps and apparently intended to cut the unit in half, but they had either sprung the trap too early or they hadn’t expected his force to be on the ball.  If they’d waited…

He pushed the grim thought aside and organised for the coming struggle.  The Russian tanks were advancing along a wide front, while their antiaircraft units had taken down several B-52 aircraft, which meant that there would be less air support than he would have liked.  Palter wanted, very much, to come to grips with them – he had lost family on Guam and the Russians had almost killed his little brother twice – but he would have preferred more air support.  A knife-edged struggle could go either way…and the Russians might be able to pull off a victory.

“Incoming shells,” his driver said.  Palter nodded; attached elements of Third Corps would be trying to suppress the Russian gunners and prevent them from weakening them, even as European and American artillery would be trying to weaken the Russian army that was bearing down on them.  Palter wasn't convinced that it would be really be as successful as the gunners claimed; boots on the ground were the only certain way to actually win a war.  The Russians would be lucky to bring one of their shells down on one of his tanks, even with the targeting software; the same went for American units.  The more advanced a system, in his experience, the more likely that it was to be tricked, defeated…or just proved to be useless in the field.  “They’re trying to kill us.”

“How very rude of them,” Palter said.  His command tank was holding back as the line of advanced Abrams moved to intercept the Russian tanks.  He had thought, hard, of trying to establish a defensive line with his guns, but there was no time; for the first time since Iraq, American tanks were about to go head-to-head with enemy tanks…and there would only be limited air support.  “Move up the helicopters, see if they can weaken the enemy as they close in.”

An explosion, behind him, showed that the Russian shooting was getting more accurate.  The drone feed was coming in much clearer now; the Russians had other vehicles beside their feared T-100 tanks, they had self-propelled guns, some kind of tank destroyer and a set of MLRS launchers.  The hail of fire was stronger than he had feared; it was lucky that the newer versions of the Abrams tank were able to survive much more than any of the older designs.  The linked defences alone were worth the effort as a line of Russian helicopters appeared, firing rockets at the tanks, only to be engaged themselves by missiles on the tanks.  That had been a European idea; the Americans had merely borrowed it and improved upon it.  An Abrams carried more missiles than a Eurotank…and had more capability to locate targets.

“There,” the driver said, as the unit spread out.  Palter cursed as he saw the shape of a Russian tank, it’s main gun already coming around to target an American tank; two American tanks fired as one and blew the Russian away.  Other Russians opened fire, exchanging fire with their American counterparts, and the slaughter began; Palter watched as dozens of tanks, on both sides, died within minutes.  Part of his mind studied the exchange as dispassionately as possible; the Russians were slightly slower to react and they had more armour on their tanks, but the armour was less useful than it seemed.  American antitank rounds had been designed for a quick kill; the Russians had clearly followed the same principle.

“Units, move up to counter the Russians,” he ordered.  Three Shadow helicopters flashed overhead, their rockets ripping apart Russian tanks, one of them falling to a Russian missile.  A hail of machine gun fire bounced off the tank’s armour; a Russian antiaircraft unit, caught in a trap, tried desperately to fight back.  It would have worked in Central Asia, against a suicide truck or car; it was worse than useless against a fully-armed and prepared tank.  The unit was blown apart by a single shell…

An American tank lunged over a ridge and was struck by three Russian tanks, exploding in a burst of fire.  Palter fought to control his units; the entire battle was becoming more savage as Russian infantry joined it, firing at the American units with antitank rockets and heavier weapons.  Palter’s gunner cut down a dozen Russian infantry before they could kill his tank, but there seemed to be always more of them…and they showed no sign of fear.  They combined the almost suicidal desire of the Jihadis with real discipline and training; Palter understood, for the first time, why the Russians called them the Shock Armies.  Against a weaker foe, they would be capable of unleashing a major blitzkrieg; they might almost be as full of themselves as any American unit Palter had known.

They might even have been right…

A flight of armed drones flashed overhead, adding their firepower to the brawl; Palter wasn’t even convinced that it deserved the title of fight.  Russian tanks, struck from above, attempted to take down the drones; some of the drones fell, but there were always more, launching their missiles and then trying to distract the Russian gunners, not unlike the Chinese had done, months ago at Taiwan.  It felt as if the war had gone on forever; it felt as if the battle had gone on for eternity and…

Palter felt the shooting suddenly end and looked down on a field of battle.  Tanks, Russian and American, lay around the battlefield, broken and ruined.  Some of them might be recoverable, given time, others might have to be abandoned and destroyed completely to prevent their systems being examined by the Russians.  He glanced down at his display; he had lost thirty tanks – thirty – and the Russians had lost somewhere around fifty…and there were more Russian tanks moving in to crush his units.  They just kept coming…

“Move to intercept,” he ordered.  The Russians would not pass his force; already, the display was informing him of aircraft moving in to pound the Russians, using a combination of drone-guided missiles and stealth aircraft.  They had a chance to destroy one of the Shock Armies…and he was not going to lose it.  “Tell them that we need as much airpower as we can get.”

He grinned.  “We’re going to take on a Russian army and crush it…”

***
The Russian tanker was completely surprised as the Eurotank came barrelling down the road, hitting the Russian forces on the flanks of Berlin.   Captain Guntar Markus wasn’t surprised; the Russian positions surrounding Berlin had been studied carefully, with a great deal of attention being paid to what they could do if the forces in Berlin decided to try to break out.  The Berlin Garrison had only a few vehicles; the Russians seemed to think that they had more tanks than the entire German Army possessed.  They had created two barriers around Berlin, one on the outskirts and the other much closer in, preventing an escape.

He felt his fists clench, even as the gunner spat a single round towards the Russian tank, which exploded in a ball of fire.  The other European units moved rapidly towards the Russian blockade, forcing the Russians to focus all their attention on the Europeans, as a force of MLRS units opened fire, pouring missiles onto the Russian units.  The Russians were caught by surprise; they tried to divide their attention and failed completely.  The Europeans drove forwards, their weapons firing…and the Russian position crumbled.  A force of helicopters flew overhead, banking as they came in to fire on the Russian position, forcing the Russians to fall back in disarray.

Markus had no intention of allowing them to recover.  European tanks had hit them at three different points, punching through their lines and it had suddenly become a rout; the Russians were falling back as fast as they could.  The Eurotanks drove after them, their weapons firing at targets as they passed blockades, blowing their way through lines of buses and trucks that had been placed in strategic locations to block the road, as they flashed towards a Russian position.  A Russian antitank gunner picked off a European tank with a single shell; three Eurotanks destroyed the position as they scented victory, at least in the battle.  A destroyed bridge balked them for only a moment; Markus called for bridging units and they assembled a new bridge in record time.  

Sensors screamed a warning…moments before a force of Russian helicopters flashed overhead, their weapons lashing down and flailing at the European forces, which returned fire with enthusiasm.  A helicopter crashed right in front of the tanks; the driver just laughed and drove right through the ball of fire.  Markus winced and then joined in the laugh; the entire command band broke down into helpless laughter as the flames didn’t even melt the paint.  The Russians seemed to be completely confused; the drones picked up units leaving their positions around Berlin…and then Markus realised that the garrison in Berlin had launched a major attack against the inner Russian line.

“Forward,” he snapped.  They had never made such a charge in their lives; he felt, now, as if EUROFOR was truly a proper army.  The second Russian line was burning as they charged towards it; a pair of British Harriers swooped overhead and dropped a line of napalm bombs on the Russians, who tried to fire back on the Harriers and missed completely.  Markus saw victory coming towards them and snapped orders; the tanks charged right at the Russian position, their machine guns sweeping Russian infantry, trapped between two fires, down like ninepins.  “We’ve got them on the run!”

There was a major explosion, right ahead of them.  The Russian line came apart…he saw a set of Russian infantry throwing down their weapons and surrendering, to a group of men in German uniforms.  He felt a smile spreading across his face as the German garrison accepted the surrender, ordering the tank to come to a halt as they rounded up the Russians who had surrendered.  A handful of holdouts kept fighting, their positions rapidly being destroyed as the breach in the Russian lines grew wider, ripping the Russians apart.

“Take us forward,” Markus said, as the order came through from General Trautman himself.  “It’s time for a quick drive through Berlin…and out the other side!”

It wasn’t quick at all.  Everyone wanted to cheer the line of tanks, the mixture of German, French and British tanks as they passed through the city, heading east.  He was nervous of a Russian attack, but apart from a handful of shells, Berlin had hardly been touched; the Russians had just sealed it off and hoped to starve it into submission.  He felt a tear in his eye as the people cheered, and cheered, and cheered; he couldn’t remember a time when an army had entered Berlin to such a welcome.  Everyone had feared a repeat of the Russian invasion of 1945; instead, everyone was cheering.

He could hardly bear to think about one crucial fact.

The war wasn't over yet.

***
General Aleksandr Shalenko forced himself to remain calm as Third Corps and 2nd Shock went head-to-head.  The Americans hadn’t been the all-conquering demons he had feared – no one had been sure how effective Russian shells would be against the new American armour – but there was little question that American airpower and their new tricks were turning the tide; 2nd Shock’s attack had been spoiled…and the Americans were pressing them hard.  He felt himself wince; elements of 2nd Shock had been trapped and hammered from the air.  For the first time since…well, since forever, a Russian Army had faced an American Army…and it was losing.

We might be able to stop a quick offensive, if we had the defences, he thought coldly.  The Americans had turned to meet 2nd Shock and intercepted it; they seemed to have a slight advantage in an encounter battle, not including their airpower, which had torn elements of 2nd Shock apart…and would do the same to 3rd Shock, if he let them have the chance.  They needed time to prepare for the Americans properly, time that he had to win them…he remembered some of the weapons under his command and shuddered.  Was the situation really desperate enough to warrant the use of tactical nuclear weapons?

“Order 3rd Shock to fall back on the defence line,” he ordered.  They’d been working on a defence line for weeks, using labour from Poland and Germany; that line had been mocked by the FSB, but now it was going to prove its worth.  If the Americans tried to challenge a dug-in army, behind a second wall of SAM missiles and radars, they were going to have some real problems.  Silently, he cursed the need to protect the fact they had a source in EUROFOR; if he had been able to dig in properly…

“General, 2nd Shock has turned Third Corps,” Major Vladimir Ivanov protested.  Ivanov would never be a General, not if he lived a hundred years; he wasn’t incompetent, but he had a very narrow mind.  “They’re…”

“Going to bring all of that firepower down on 2nd Shock,” Shalenko snapped, unwilling to tolerate dissent in the ranks.  “This war will be won by the side that destroys the other side’s army and at the moment, Third Corps is in a very good position to do just that!  Send the order to 2nd Shock; they are to fall back towards the second defence line, understand?”

He turned without waiting for an acknowledgement.  Defeat hurt…and yet there was a chance to salvage something from the attack.  It was going to be politically painful, not just for him, but if the armies were destroyed, victory would become impossible.  There was no point in trying to bleed Third Corps, not that the Germans had opened the route to Berlin; they would have to fall back and make a stand further to the east.  He had plenty of space to trade for time; he had marched though most of it personally.

The thought was bitter.  “Then send out the signal to the remaining forces around Berlin,” he concluded.  The Germans would have wiped out many of the infantry units there; he wasn’t going to tie up really useful units holding thousands of Germans trapped.  “Tell them all…to fall back.”

He took a last look around the command post.  He was going to miss it.

“We’ll be back soon,” he said, and hoped that he was right.

***
“Sir, the Russians are falling back,” Dean reported.  “They’re actually ordering a major retreat from Berlin and even the force that is engaged with Third Corps.”

Trautman let out a long breath.  The Russians wouldn’t be going far…and his own forces were at the very end of their own tether.  If the Russians had been dug in with more firepower, they might have been able to avoid a major confrontation at Berlin, or even avoided the battle altogether.  He knew better than to think that he had crushed the Russians; they had been hurt, but they were trying to withdraw in good order.

“Inform the different units,” he said.  Every last inch of his body wanted to launch a major attack right into the heart of the retreating Russians, but the costs would be horrific; a retreating enemy would be less dangerous than one forced into a last stand.  “Tell them to secure their targets…and leave the harrying to the air forces.  They can bleed the Russians, but, for the moment, we have won.”

Only then, the command post burst into cheers.

Trautman smiled to himself as the battle slowly wound down; the Russians were breaking contact with surprising skill.  Both sides had been badly hurt, over three hundred allied tanks had been lost and some figures suggested that the Russians had lost twice that, and as for airpower…the NATO aircraft had been badly handled by the Russians.  Fifty-seven aircraft had been lost, many of them heavy bombers.

“There’s going to be a pause in the storm,” Trautman observed, as General Wilkinson entered.  The American had been cheered as he entered; everyone knew that he had come up with most of the plan to hit the Russians a sharp blow.  “How long will it be before we can go back on the offensive?”

Wilkinson shrugged.  “I think it will be a while,” he said.  Trautman couldn’t disagree; both sides had taken a pounding, but neither had been firmly knocked down and trampled into submission.  “The war is not over yet.”

Epilogue

“You know, I was always brought up to imagine that villains played with white cats,” Kady Jones said.  “Not…small dogs.”

Prime Minister Mohandas Singh looked up at her, his hands gently scratching a small black terrier on his lap.  “I have always been fond of dogs,” he said.  She could see intelligence glittering behind his eyes and resolved not to underestimate him; he was showing her exactly what he wanted her to see.  “They’re loyal, capable, often brave and smarter than we give them credit for being.  What do you think?”

Kady leaned back in her chair.  “About the dog, or about this meeting?”

Singh smiled thinly.  It had been a week since the Second Battle of Berlin and the Pact had taken a serious blow.  It hadn’t fallen apart, as some GNN analysts had predicted, but it certainly seemed to have gone onto the defensive.  The Third World War had come to a lull; there hadn’t even been a clash at sea between the naval forces of either side.

“Perhaps both,” he said.  “I expect that you’re wondering why I asked you to come here…?”

“As much as I enjoyed the meal, I think that you had more in mind than merely asking me for a date,” Kady said.  “Why did you ask me here?”

Singh didn’t answer directly.  “Have you ever thought about America?  In a very real sense, your rise to power was almost inevitable; the last chance for you to be strangled in your collective cradle was in 1815, when you were fighting your English cousins.  Since then, you have been expanding over the world; your manifest destiny carrying you into a position of unmatched power…”

His eyes hardened.  “And into a position where, though sheer carelessness, you caused the destruction of large parts of India,” he said.  “You assumed the position of world policeman, and yet…you hardly made the commitment we needed.  Police work doesn’t mean that you get to cut and run when the going gets tough, does it?  You can’t assume the position and then try to prevent disaster, except when you tried to prevent disaster…”

“We made it a lot worse,” Kady snapped.  “We have been hearing that from everyone; it was amazing how quickly President Rupertson was dumped by all those trendy people who wanted to make the world better.  Do you have to spit the same nonsense about everything being our fault all the time?  We’re not the people who planned an aggressive war against everyone else on Earth.”

“I dare say that if you had, you would have done less damage,” Singh said mildly.  He smiled, a genuinely amused smile.  “This plan…has been building ever since Delhi.”

Kady eyed him sceptically.  “You had a plan for this…war brewing for five years?”

“Not exactly,” Singh admitted.  “You have heard, of course, of Psychohistory, the science?  It sounds wonderful, but the moment something utterly unexpected happens, then the entire series of calculations is destroyed.  I knew, long ago, that when I started building a plan, eventually the plan would build me.”

Kady lifted an eyebrow as a serving maid brought in coffee.  “Build you?”

“I created elements, things that might be useful,” Singh said.  “I saw to it that thousands of…Pakistanis were sent out of India; many went into Iran, along with my agents, and several thousand headed further, into Europe.  Some of them were my agents, people who worked for me; others were merely people I would prefer to see elsewhere.  Over time, Israel cracked down hard on Palestine and sent some thousands of Arabs to France; I had hopes that Israel would join us, but they preferred to remain neutral in the war.

“But you understand, don’t you?”  He asked.  “We knew from the start that the only way to handle the problem was to cripple the United States…and something like a direct invasion was impossible.  We could have hit the United States with missiles, we could have destroyed the Panama Canal and others, like we hit Guam, but would we have won the war?  Mutual destruction suited neither side in the war…and the other Pact powers had their own concerns.  Russia might have been funded by us to develop its own resources, but…they wanted power in Europe, and China wanted Taiwan.  The…core set of ideas was taking form; we planned the war intending to create a situation where the United States would have the choice between a long expensive war and accepting the status quo…

“And we all know that the United States has no stomach for a long war, don’t we?”

“I think that you’ll be surprised,” Kady said.  “Keep talking…”

Singh laughed.  “We had planned in Europe that we would put France in a very bad position,” he said.  “We had calculated that we could beat the collective European powers in a stand-up fight, but if we could weaken the French enough to knock them out of the war, it was worth trying.  If it failed, as it did…so what?  What did we lose?”

“You lost now, didn’t you?”  Kady asked.  Singh shrugged.  “Why are you telling me this anyway?”

“Your own intelligence groups will have put it all together themselves,” Singh said.  “There’s no harm in you knowing…and perhaps some good.  You see…the Pact has accomplished all of its war aims, and we have reached the point of decision.  You are here to pass on a message from us directly, and to explain just how…carefully we have used American mistakes to build our empire.  You are to invite President Vandergrift to sit down with us, as an equal partner, to discuss the fate of the world…and to avoid a war that will leave only ruins on this planet.

“What, Miss Jones, do you say to that?”

To Be Continued…

Afterword

Is such a situation even remotely possible?

It seems to be an odd blindspot in the west that we still have Russia to the east.  I was born in 1982, the year that Britain was reminded that not everyone cares for little details like democratic expression, referendums and the very trappings of western civilisation; the year that the Falklands War broke out.  On the face of it, the conflict was absurd; the citizens of the Falklands had voted, repeatedly, to be British – what right had the Junta to force them to live under their flag?  A few years later, the Berlin Wall came down and the USSR collapsed; people were predicting that Russia would never be a threat again…just as they predicted in 1917.  It didn’t happen then and it hasn’t happened now; short of a nuclear war, Russia will always be there.

Least we forget, there have been troubling events in Russia recently, not least the murder of a former Russian officer in London - Alexander Litvinenko – and the death of Anna Politkovskaya, who spent much of her time pointing out that the Russian emperor had no clothes.  The energy crisis between the Ukraine, Belarus and Russia, Russian attempts to influence the outcome of the election in the Ukraine – the ‘Orange Revolution’ – and Russian determination to take a stronger role on the world stage all points to a Russia that is newly assertive…and one that is dismissed by Western Europe.  One estimate (written before 9/11) speculated that it would be as long as five years before there was a major threat to the West…and that threat was considered to be China.

If we look at the world from Russia’s point of view, it is easy to see why the Russians are worried, and perhaps plotting something.  In 1982, Russia was the effective master of a powerful bloc; now, most of the states in that bloc have angled themselves towards the West.  (One possible motive for the energy crisis was to punish the Ukraine for being involved with the west.)  Russia is generally considered to be a null issue; the West is not particularly concerned with Russia, nor does it give Russia’s views much credence.

China makes for a surprisingly similar issue.  It does not matter, to China, what the population of Taiwan actually wants; as far as they are concerned, Taiwan is theirs.  That so far we have avoided a major war over it proves nothing; history is littered with wars that everyone said would never happen.  The PLAN has been building up a powerful force, not with the intention of invading America (as suggested in Eric L. Harry’s book Invasion), but with the intention of controlling the seas around China.  Ideally, from the Chinese point of view, they want to dominate the region and force Taiwan back into the fold.  The USN might be more powerful (it is difficult to see China building a carrier force to match the US within ten years) but if it were overstretched, it would be difficult to respond to a serious Chinese challenge.  China, so far, has not jumped; how long will it be before China decides that their pride can no longer accept Taiwan’s semi-independence?

Finally, India; India seems an unlikely foe for the US…or is it?  India and Pakistan have come to blows several times since Partition…and the US has, on several occasions, talked the Indians out of launching a pre-emptive strike against the Pakistani nuclear weapons.  The main problem is that Pakistan is a tinderbox; if it is mishandled, powerful religious elements might try to take control, placing nuclear weapons in the hands of people who have far too much in common with Bin Ladin.  I asked myself, a while back, what would happen if Pakistan did fall under the control of the loonies and…well, you’ve seen the results.  India is not likely to let the mullahs get the weapons assembled and distributed without doing something…and the US is determined to prevent a nuclear exchange.  Is it possible that the Pakistanis might get off a strike while the Indians and Americans are arguing?

This brings out one of the real limitations of American power.  America is perhaps the most powerful nation in the history of the world.  At the same time, American ability to force a real change in the world depends upon American willingness to use its power – and it is that sort of willingness that has been lacking in the post-Vietnam years.  Removing Saddam through an invasion was the only solution and it was clear, from 1991, that it was the only solution, but he was permitted to remain in power for over a decade since proving himself to be dangerous, untrustworthy and a major menace.  The paradox is striking; America has set itself up, (Rightly?  Wrongly?  Intentionally?  Does it matter?), as the world policeman…and at the same time is attempting to police on the cheap.  Something is going to happen…and the blame will fall on America.

Such as a nuclear Indo-Pak War?

What, you might ask, will cause three countries with a great deal of suspicion to unite, or at least act in partnership?  We have already seen, in the build-up to the Iraq War, nations working together to attempt to prevent the invasion.  Some of them, including France and Russia, had massive interests in Iraq that were threatened by the invasion.  Others, such as Germany or Canada, wanted international law (such as it was) to be given primacy; never mind that international law was toothless (see below) and that a decade of sanctions had managed only to hurt the wrong people.  Many powers would like to see the US suffer a reverse (this is not unprecedented; Britain went through a similar phase during the American War of Independence) and working together is the only way of beating the US.  If the US is challenged on several fronts simultaneously, can it win?

***
The difference between the west, mainly Europe, and everyone else is that the west has the delusion, in large part, that the world is somehow ‘nice.’ Liberals hold up the delusion that the United Nations can prevent war, while failing to grasp that the UN has no real power at all.  If the UN wanted to force a country to comply, the UN would have to ask for its member states to actually do the hard work…which can be politically difficult.  

There is a strong and rather bizarre misconception about the UN.  The United Nations is not a federal human government, rather like the US Government related to the individual states.  At no point in American history has there been a central government as weak as the United Nations…for the very simple reason that the UN has no teeth.  The UN is not a core group, not in the sense that President Bush is the core of America, but a collection of scrabbling nations, which use the UN as an excuse for doing nothing.  Sending an army into Sudan, for example, would be expensive, a very long-term commitment…and it would draw fire from the left.

The blunt truth is that war is not neat and tidy.  It is impossible to win a war without a major commitment; it is also impossible to place peacekeepers in to keep the peace and then expect them to keep the peace without shooting at the enemy.  Worse, a soldier in a combat zone is not a man at peace with himself.  Nor should he be; an instant of distraction and he is very likely to be a dead soldier.  Accidents, such as shooting a civilian or even another friendly soldier, happen in such environments; the soldier cannot afford a long slow evaluation of a possible threat.  A single event like that can destroy home support for the mission; how many times in the last five years have there been headlines like “US kills innocent civilians, shock, horror, get them out…?”  Media companies are not interested, by and large, on anything that is actually constructive, such as Americans helping with the farming in Iraq.  No, they want images of battle, of excitement, of women manhandled by foreign soldiers, of…and all of these lead towards destroying support for the troops at home.

There is an old saying; you can’t make an omelette without breaking a few eggs.  In military terms, you can’t prevent bad things from happening without doing bad things to the people who are/were doing the original Bad Things…and innocents are going to get mashed in the gears.   We in the West have forgotten, by and large, that war is harsh, merciless and unpleasant; when we ban landmines, for example, we cripple ourselves without preventing anyone willing to disregard the ban from using them.  There can be few weapons as horrific as the antipersonnel landmine…and yet, it will be impossible to wipe them out of war.  Try to stop a warlord using them?  The response will be a more diplomatic way of saying ‘oh yes?  Make me.’

It is a matter of some alarm to me that many European governments are slashing their militaries to the bone.  The world is not a peaceful place…and the move between war and peace can be stunningly swift.  An army is an insurance policy; if we don’t need it, then fine, we’ve kept a lot of people gainfully employed anyway.  If we do need it, then we will be very glad we’ve got it…unless we’ve removed all of it before the war begins.  Once an army is gone, how long will it take before the jackals start gathering around what will soon become a corpse?

Christopher G. Nuttall
Edinburgh, 2007

Appendix: The Road to the Third World War

2010	Iraq declared ‘stable.’  Although violence continues for some time, the newly-established central government is in firm control of the country and oil revenue is rising.  American and other Coalition troops draw down to very limited levels; only a small presence remains in the country.
	
2011	Facing massive economic pressure, the Palestinian leadership attempts to defeat the extremists within their own ranks and find a way to compromise with Israel.  It fails; a small-scale civil war breaks out and rapidly spreads into Israel, drawing in the Israeli Army.  Thousands of refugees flee the country, mainly into Iraq and Saudi.  A few thousand go to France.
	
2012	The political debate in Iran becomes explosive in the wake of the Palestinian collapse.  Several army officers attempt to launch a coup and manage to snatch much of the country, but units of the Revolutionary Guard hold out in the east.  The Iranian Civil War has begun.

President Rupertson (Democratic) is elected in the United States.  With the invention of practical fusion power and the launch of the first SSTO, President Rupertson acts to draw down American commitments outside his borders.  Rupertson’s attempts to loosen controls over the border of the US, however, would be defeated, as would his attempts to downplay the Iranian War.

President Putin of Russia is assassinated.  His replacement, a hawkish right-winger, announces that Russia will no longer be subject to the whims of America and NATO.  In particular, he warns that NATO or EU will not be permitted to spread closer to the Russian borders; Ukraine and Belarus are warned that further steps towards the West will not be tolerated.
	
2014	As the Iranian War starts to spread out of the country, with foreign fighters and independent nations becoming involved, various powers push for a UN mandate to end the fighting.  Ironically, President Rupertson finds himself drawn into a major peacekeeping effort, and then an active war against the Mullahs of Iran.
	
2015	Under strong pressure from industrialists and businessmen within Saudi Arabia, the King is forced to establish a ‘consultative council’ with real teeth.  President Rupertson pushes the Saudis towards this decision – keen to make up his democratic credentials in the wake of the Iran War – and supports the council as much as possible.  

The Dictator of Belarus invites Russian forces into Belarus, officially to provide security for the oil pipelines, but unofficially to keep him in power.  Despite global condemnation, the world is divided on what to do and sanctions are worthless.
	
2016	The Second Korean War begins.  A US-led campaign leads to the defeat of North Korea, although a Chinese ‘border-securing’ exercise allows China to gain a secure foothold twenty kilometres into North Korea.  

A fundamentalist coup is launched in Pakistan in the wake of the death of the country’s military leader.  The coup plotters swiftly seize control of the Pakistani nuclear weapons and prepare to use them against India, threatening India with extermination unless India surrenders.  India plots a first-strike, but makes the mistake of informing President Rupertson about the plans; Rupertson convinces India to hang fire long enough to try to talk sense into the new leaders.  The attempt fails…and Pakistani missiles are launched.

US-supplied ABM systems take down three of the missiles, but they are unable to prevent four nuclear warheads from detonating in India, one of them targeted on Delhi.  The devastation kills millions of people, including the Prime Minister and most of his government.  The Minister of Defence takes over and orders a massive strike, followed by an invasion; Pakistan creases to exist as a functioning nation.  Indian forces show no mercy and occupy much of the country.

The Indian Government demands that President Rupertson be impeached and handed over to them for trial, but as the US cannot do that – Rupertson blames himself and chooses not to seek re-election – India tears up the alliance with the US, declares that Pakistan has been forcibly reunited with India and warns that further American involvement would not be tolerated.  Global human rights agencies report major human rights abuses in the remains of Pakistan, but India refuses to even hear the complaints.

The election of 2016 is a foregone conclusion; President Vandergrift, Republican, is elected.  As his first act, he orders the deployment of newer and better weapons systems.
	
2017	Talks between India, China and Russia lead to the ‘Alliance of Opposition’ Pact; a joint alliance to prevent American dominance of the world from growing stronger.  The beginnings of a massive technology-sharing program lead rapidly to bringing all three nations as close together as possible.

Russian cross-border raids into Poland and the Ukraine – hunting for democracy-activists – panic the EU, which finally starts putting money into defence.  The EUROFOR is something of a compromise force, but rapidly becomes a fairly powerful and disciplined unit.  Regardless, national worries and fears keep EUROFOR from becoming too strong…and politics prevent more than a few plans from being drawn up to handle a Russian conflict.
	
2018	The Indonesia situation finally explodes, leading to the mass murder of ethnic Chinese by the Muslim insurgents and a major – under UN Mandate – intervention by Pact Forces; the situation rapidly becomes an invasion.  Despite US protests, the Pact sets up a major base in the region and starts hunting down the insurgents.  Australian and US forces occupy East Timor, refuse to allow the Pact near the region; US starts trying to form a new alliance in the Pacific to counter the pact.
	
2019	New ‘free and independent’ government in Indonesia signs a long-term agreement with the Pact, leading to the expansion of the Pact base.  

Cuba applies for membership in the Pact, along with several other nations.  Ominously, there are hints that Turkey is interested.  US invokes the Monroe Doctrine and refuses to allow membership of the Pact to any country in the Americas.  OAS meetings become much more acuminous; most of the countries are buying weapons from the Pact and deliberately signing contracts with Pact companies, rather than US companies.  
	
2020	President Vandergrift is re-elected, in time to face the rise of the latest pro-independence party in Taiwan.  China draws a line in the sand; Taiwan will not be permitted to declare independence.  China starts military manoeuvres designed to intimidate the Taiwanese Government.

EU makes a major commitment to the PACFLEET being formed by the US as the political situation worsens, but this is not universally popular in the EU.
	
2021	The President of Taiwan is assassinated, bringing the situation to the boil.  China is blamed and war looms closer…