ARMAGEDDON'S SONG (Volume 3) 'Fight Through' (53 page)

The President looked at the plasma screen and the unit
symbols where Henry had described.

The President raised his mug in salute; his was a high
quality piece of pottery with the crest of the 82
^nd
Airborne upon it.

Henry raised his own mug and
clinked
it against his commander-in-chiefs, but not too hard because his own was
cracked and chipped, a cheap tourist souvenir that someone had probably bought
on holiday in London. Henry drank from it proudly though, and looked again at
the cheesy depiction on the side, of a soldier in a red tunic and wearing a
bearskin complete with red plume.

London.

An energy saving journey, at sometimes painfully slow
speeds, had turned a not unpleasant one hour and ten minute train ride from
Colchester to London’s Liverpool Street into one of purgatory, at three and a
half hours duration.

Ray Tessler alighted carefully as he was far from
‘mended’ and had refused to take any of the offered seats on that overcrowded
carriage his travel warrant permitted him to use.
Being
jostled, albeit it accidentally
, had been
character building in the extreme.

He was wearing new kit
, and it gave off that slightly oniony odour of moth repellent that the
MOD treats its uniforms with.

In addition to his aches and pains, Ray was feeling
not a little pent up anger.

Held in military custody without charge, he had been
questioned on whether or not he had overheard anything that would be of
interest to a prosecution counsel in a war crimes trial.

Ray had answered all the questions truthfully. Sorry,
but he had not help them. He had not heard anything about anti-personnel mines
or prisoners being shot. However, if they would care to ask some questions that
would be of interest to a defence counsel?

Ray was issued with new kit and a travel warrant
before being sent on his way. He would not be returning to 1CG, he was now a
member of 2CG. The 2
^nd
Battalion was at full strength but he had four days
leave before reporting for duty. There was a parting shot though, under no
circumstances was he to contact anyone within 1CG and he was not to say a word
about the questions he had been asked. To do so would tantamount to conspiracy,
and grounds for immediate arrest. Did he understand?

Yes, Ray had assured them, he understood completely.
Ray found a pay phone and made a call
.
“Hello, Mrs Reed? My name is Ray Tessler,
Company Sergeant Major Tessler, and I need to speak to you urgently.”

Gansu Province, China: 

For the third time in an hour Richard Dewar’s force
slowly but carefully sank down into a firing positions as the sounds of other
troops reached them on the wind.

During their infiltration of this most sensitive of
regions of the People’s Republic of China he had been concerned at the lack of
activity on the ground, as if they had known the combined US/UK force was
coming, and had a trap waiting.

What Major Dewar had not known was that the same
inclement weather that had for a time grounded the helicopters the PRC were
using, had also caught the ground troops without arctic clothing and equipment.

With the arrival of arctic standard lubricants for the
aircraft there also came skis, equipment and clothing, bringing a resumption of
foot patrolling.

By sheer good fortune the snowfall had resumed before
the withdrawing M&AWC had reached the top of the avalanche site, heavy
enough for them to be able hear and not see a helicopter land and take off at a
spot further along the gully.

Richard had correctly deduced that something heavier
than the light reconnaissance machines was putting troops on the ground,
reducing the time it would take to resume normal coverage of the security
forces area of responsibility because of the snow.

The problem of enemy troops coming across the tracks
left in the snow by the American and British troops had been covered without
successful resolution in the planning stages. One of the proposals had been for
the combined force to wear boots that copied the tread of those issued to the
People’s Liberation Army, but all of the troops had vetoed that one. With two
possible exceptions the British and US personnel all had feet much larger than
the Asiatic norms, and besides which no one wanted to walk sixty-eight miles
across mountains in brand new boots, the ones they had were broken in and
fitted just fine, but thank you for asking anyway!

Richard lay in the snow now alerted by the sound of
metal on rock, after which had followed fragmentary snippets of Cantonese,
including laughter.

It was something of a relief to Richard, confirming
the drop of troops in the area had nothing to do with them, they had not been
compromised. A hunter force would hardly be talking, let alone joking around,
if they were seeking an insurgent force or saboteurs.

Richard waited for ten minutes after the last sound of
the enemy patrol had faded before resuming their march.

With Sergeant McCormack bringing up rear, Richard
pushed on as quickly as he felt it safe to do
, and hoped that that would be the last such hold up, because if their
current rate of travel did not improve they could be for too close to the silos
when the bomber force attacked.

Near Saratov, Russia:

Having arisen early Elena Torneski was looking for the
first opportunity to leave the underground facility. It should not have been
difficult she’d reasoned, because when she had left the Premier’s side for her
bed, he had been euphoric at the army having crossed the Elbe and establishing
a large bridgehead, but so few hours later the cleaners had been summonsed
again to mop up gore from the floor of the Premier’s office.

Incandescent with rage was a fairly mild description
of the Premier’s mood, and he hadn’t calmed down that much when she had been
summoned to explain why the KGB had not foreseen the NATO airborne moves or
detected the preparatory build-up. Had her agents in the various western
governments been asleep at the switch?

Elena Torneski had left the command chamber with
orders to find out why no warning had been received and she had no choice but
to report back with answers when she had them.

Those politicians that could be contacted had all
given her the same reply that SACEUR had cut them out of the loop so completely
that not the vaguest hint had reached their ears.

Strangely, this had served in some ways to placate the
Premier who reasoned that if a government no longer fully trusted it’s
military, and then they would keep a tighter grip on their nuclear weapons,
wasting time in unnecessary debate, if and when their Generals asked for them.

The Premier had been toying with the idea of using
battlefield nuclear weapons to stop 4 Corps, or smash any last lines of
resistance west of the Elbe or possibly even both options. The spectre of a
swift NATO reply in kind, which would negate any gains within hours, had of
course always made those options too risky, up until now!

The Premier had sent his KGB Chief to wait in the ante
room while he considered the possibilities and weighed up the odds, which he
would do alone as he held his own General Staff in complete contempt. He did
not hold Torneski in the same contempt but he did not ask her opinion on many
matters either because she was after all, only a woman.

She knew that the Americans would not launch an ICBM
against this facility because the moment a launch was detected the Premier
would order a massive counter strike before even learning of where the enemy
attack was directed. The Americans would use stealth bombers and for all their
high tech wizardry they would still only come during the hours of darkness.

She had memorised when ‘last light’ would be, and for
her own safety she should ideally be at least forty miles upwind of this place
by then.

Sat in anteroom for hours, the wall clocks audible
tick-tock
had grown louder as the day had worn on, or so it seemed to her.

Ironically, where it had been General Allain’s plan
that had thwarted her escape from the Premier’s secure hideaway in the morning,
it was another part of SACEUR’s plan that facilitated her leaving it in the
very late afternoon.

The destruction of the ribbon bridges was the deciding
factor for the Premier. It wasn’t that he was bored of shooting his own
military men, he would just rather kill tens of thousands of NATO’s men and
women instead, and he now believed he could do it with impunity. However,
Torneski had been summonsed when reports of the French and Canadian action
along the river had been received, and she had thought for a moment that it was
her turn for a bullet in the spine.

Although the military held the means to deliver the
nuclear weapons, it was State Security, the KGB, who retained the warheads. It
was to prevent the military using them to overthrow the government, a sensible
precaution really, and the head of that state security left the facility in
order to supervise the hand-over of six 5-kiloton air launch SS-N-26 warheads
for immediate use.

Seven hundred and fifty-nine kilometres north
northwest of the bunker, the last of the camouflage was being cleared from the
runway and secured, lest any should be sucked into the F-117Xs air intakes.

Patricia had run diagnostics on the aeroplanes systems
hours before, and also on their ordnance, getting a red light on an AMRAAM
self-guidance board, meaning that it may fail to guide onto the target without
the Nighthawk illuminating its target for it, but otherwise finding they were
good to go.

With her job done there she had managed to catch a few
hours of sleep, waking in the failing light.

Not finding either Caroline or Svetlana in the command
bunker she had been about to make her way through the dark woods, back to the
Nighthawk, when she had been stopped by one of the Green Berets and given both
the password and a warning to stick to the established paths with an ear open
for a challenge by sentries.  

She had returned to the command post where an update
had been received on the progress of the bomber forces roundabout route. The
attacks, although the targets were over four thousand kilometres apart, had to
be simultaneous. No one involved at the sharp end of the operations had been
told of the mission at sea, but as intelligent, reasoning individuals it would
not have surprised any of them that the mission had a briny side to it.
Take-off time was advanced by twenty minutes due to a tail wind the bombers
were experiencing.

They had time for a leisurely meal of MREs and then a
last check was made of the runways surface by troops wearing PNGs before
Patricia and Caroline climbed aboard the Nighthawk.

The take-off went without technical hitches of any
kind; the aircraft easily cleared the trees at the runways end before turning
onto the heading for their first leg, unaware that they had compromised the
presence of the landing field for all time.

In order to move more quickly from one area of the
cordon to the other the deputy commander of Militia Sub-District 178 had
decided to cut the corners, using the tracks through the forest.

The map he was using had not been updated for thirty
years so he had taken it cautiously; leaving the mass of metal he was
travelling in to frequently check his compass.

He had approached the airstrip from almost the
opposite direction to that of painfully shambolic advance his superior was
leading, and the engine sounds from the Nighthawk prevented the nearest Green
Beret listening post from hearing the fighting vehicle draw close.

The deputy commander was checking his compass when he
recognised the sound of a jet aircraft running its engines up prior to its
take-off run, and then two minutes later the aircraft passed just a hundred
feet above his head, a shadow that briefly eclipsed the backdrop of stars in
its passing.

41” 29’ N, 171” 17’ E.

There was a definite sense of tension growing within the
confines of the pressure hull that had nothing to do with the barometric scale,
thought HMS
Hood
’s captain. Each of the allied hunter-killer’s had in
turn dropped back to a distance where they could safely creep toward the
surface unheard by their prey, and deploy floating antennae’s before returning
to station, fully briefed in what was required.

The captain had briefed the department heads and they
in turn had informed each member of the crew that the long days tiptoeing along
ended today, but only a successful conclusion to the stalk could influence the
direction of the war in their favour.

The captain had done the rounds, looking into the
faces and eyes of teenage ratings that had reached maturity in outlook in the
space of weeks rather than years. It was not that long ago that he would have
witnessed a disgruntled crew had he announced then that despite their hard work
and skill in locating the enemy boomer, another vessel would be carrying out
the attack.