Advance to Contact

CHAPTER ONE

The atmosphere had a taste of staleness about it thought the President, and felt damp against his skin. Whatever timetable the Secret Service had for moving him about for safety’s sake had been pre-empted by the morning’s attacks. At the very next window between Chinese and Russian satellite passes, the President had been moved to another secure site.

The power had been switched on only minutes before his arrival and dustsheets covered everything.

He stood briefly within his new bedchamber and decided that it was identical to the one he had left behind in North Dakota, in all its bleak, functional austerity. The military did not seem able to find the middle ground between minimalism and downright depressing.

So far, today had all the makings of being a real crappy 24hrs.

A knock on the door dismissed his critical thoughts on living conditions as a secret service agent appeared on his answering,

“Come.”

“Mr President, General Shaw is online, you will want to speak to him ASAP, sir.”

Without bothering to remove his topcoat, he followed the agent out of the room and down the corridor. His chief scientific officer was present in the room, speaking to the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs who looked grim as he peered out of the video monitor. The CSO vacated the chair for the boss and stood to one side, but the President stood in front of the chair without sitting and nodded at the general.

“Mr President, Space Command have detected two nuclear events in the PTO, the PTO being the Pacific Theatre of Operations… both events occurred at a height of approximately ten thousand feet above sea level, and within ten seconds of detonation fireballs six kilometres in radius had been produced. From this, we estimate that the weapons were of four to six megatons yield.”

“City killers?” Said the President as he now slowly sat down.

“I have prayed that those bastards would stick to battlefield sized weapons… or just stop using the filthy things altogether.” His face flushed with anger. “They are not afraid of us are they General? Not one bit!”

The general said nothing in reply.

“Where were the bombs?”

“One was above the southern tip of Taiwan where the ground fighting was concentrated. There is a small sized town there called Ch’e-ch’eng, but the target was most likely Taiwanese forces that have been bottled up by the PRC… I am sorry Mr President, but the other was directly above Taipei.”

“Their own people!” Uttered the chief executive.

“Genetically and ethnically, if not politically… yes sir.”

“What damage did they do?” He next asked.

“Sir, these weapons are many times more powerful than the weapons that destroyed Hiroshima and Nagasaki, several hundred times larger than the DC bomb, do you want the details?” Asked the CSO.

The President nodded.

“Go on Joseph.”

“First of all these were airbursts, and so their effects would have magnified the damage.”

“Excuse my ignorance, please Joseph, I used to teach English Lit not physics. How does being, to all effects ‘off target’, by about three kilometres make the effects worse rather than lessening the damage?”

“You are thinking in kinetic energy terms rather than geo-thermal sir, but even so you are getting it wrong because by detonating high above the earth, the planet’s surface acts as a mirror to the thermal output, containing the heat and sustaining it. The heat from the explosion is hottest at the moment of detonation and, in fact, heat dissipation begins to occur at one thousandth of a second later. If the planet had not been there, then the fireball would only have achieved half the size that it did. Also, by exploding above the surface there are no geographic features to interfere with the following blast wave, no hills to provide dead ground to the energetic forces.” The CSO sounded as if he were giving a lecture to an audience of freshman students.

“Take a sledgehammer and swing it golf club style at a domino it may break it, it will certainly knock it across the room, but if you placed that domino on an anvil and struck it from above with the same force, you will shatter it utterly against the anvil’s unyielding surface. The earth is the anvil in this case Mr President.”

“Have we had a satellite pass since the attacks, General?”

“No sir, however I think the CSO will concur that we will see complete devastation extending beyond the city limits… ” Henry Shaw turned from the screen to speak to someone out of view before turning back.

“Mr President… we have just received via the Australian Ministry of Defence, air refuelling requests from Japanese aircraft enroute to Davao in the Philippines that intend to continue on to Australia. They state that Japan has surrendered unconditionally as result of the nuclear attacks on Taiwan.”

“It never rains but it pours… ”

“That’s just the PTO sir; we have problems in Europe too, which will involve you doing your head of state stuff with other heads of state.”

Other screens had gone live while they had been speaking and the President glanced at the wall clock. It was about time for the scheduled videoconference.

“Ok, we will get to that… and to the response to the PRC ICBM threat, we need to take their missiles out in a way that is not guaranteed to start a full blown nuclear exchange between us. Doubtless you have some ideas on that Henry, above and beyond what we have previously explored?”

“Yes sir, we do.” The general’s use of ‘we’ instead of ‘I’ highlighted the difference in the thinking of soldiers and politicians. Had a politician said ‘I’ in the same context, it could be assumed he had every intention of taking full credit for someone else’s idea or effort. Had the same politician said ‘we’ or ‘they’, he was giving himself a degree of separation should whatever the scheme was, go wrong. General Shaw said ‘we’ because it was something that was not of his sole creation, or that he stood by the creator(s) as their commander, and as such was prepared to take the blame if it failed. When an idea was put before him that he saw as flawed he would either say so and send them away to think about it before trying again, or fix the ‘genius’ with a critical look, asking.

“Son, shall I ring the infirmary and tell them you are on the way for an illegal substance test, or are you going to get your head out of your ass and think this thing through properly… ” Whilst tapping the offending material with a finger.

“Because if that’s the case, you’ve managed to get brown matter in your ear and that’s screwing up the grey matter’s logic process!”

Turning to one of the agents the President asked. “John… is there any coffee?”

The agent nodded apologetically.

“Just Grunt Juice sir… at the moment.”

The freeze-dried coffee granules that went into the ration packs were not the ideal choice of the Java connoisseur, but that was all that they had here.

“That’s all right… did you know that the Spartan Generals would only eat what their men ate… that way they knew how much stamina the men had for the campaign?” He removed his topcoat and loosened his tie.

“I guess it has gone full circle… it is the way it should be I suppose… lets drink what the boys and girls doing the fighting and dying are having.” clapping the agent on the back.

The new ‘war room’ had banks of portable monitors and a large foldable plasma screen that had been brought with them from Dakota and technicians were putting the final touches to connecting it all up.

The President had new aides since the Washington bomb, for the first two days in North Dakota his secret service detail had performed a myriad of tasks that they were not trained to do until the new boys and girls had arrived.

The White House staff who had remained with the President after the rest of the battle staff and their personnel had been evacuated, had suffered 100 % casualties with half dying in the nuclear blast and the remainder being injured to varying extents. The President felt badly about not being able to visit the survivors in person, he had to let the Vice President perform that duty.

That lunchtime, just prior to their relocation CNN had televised an interview with a man the President considered to be a buffoon of the first order a man who believed politics was all about damning the other party's policies and actions, no matter what the subject. He had now stated on national television that the troops should be brought home to guard the homeland whilst the war was fought to its conclusion by the rest of the world. Once that had happened, he confidently stated, they could work together with the countries of the world, no matter how much the borders had since changed. It was time for America to take care of America, he had announced in his closing statement and it sounded like a campaign slogan.

When the interview had finished the President turned to those present.

“Somewhere out there is a village that’s shy one idiot!” The next item had riled the Chief Executive far more, news teams in and around Washington DC had already picked up on the scandal they had dubbed ‘Shell shocked and suing.’ Lawyers taking advantage of the situation and the vulnerability of the victims of the bombing to get rich quick. This last had caused the President to summon his chief legal advisor for a brief meeting.

Armed with a mug of granulated coffee, the President took his seat before the bank of screens. Before him on the table were the folders he had brought with him, stuffed with fax copies and emails. His new legal advisor hurried into the room and placed a single sheet of paper before the President before taking a seat at the back of the room. After reading what was before him the President turned and nodded his thanks before facing the screens as the videoconference got underway. Terry Jones was missing and a deputy on screen in his place. Imogen Hill apologised for Mr Jones' absence, informing the President that he would be with them soon, adding that something had just come to light that had caused his delay.

Glancing down briefly once more at the sheet before him, the President began.

“Before we get down to business ladies and gentlemen, there is a matter I want cleared up at home… Dr McManus,” he addressed Justice. “On April 15th 1863, President Lincoln issue General Order 100, the instructions for the Government of Armies in the Field. In effect it placed this country in a state of martial law, correct?”

Dr McManus nodded in agreement before speaking.

“Yes sir, when the Southern States left the Union he no longer had a quorum to conduct the business of government under the constitution.”

“We no longer have enough members of Congress alive at this moment to form such a quorum… and so I have decided to invoke Lincoln’s General Order 100, this country is now under martial law.”

“Sir… ”

“I know doctor, when Lincoln issued that order we were in a civil war, but this country is now in another war… and is under attack.”

He looked at the faces on the video screens.

“The first thing I want to do is accelerate order around the refugee camps and in the DC area. Article 7 states that all property and persons are subject to that law, and I want every single sonofabitch vulture hanging around the victims and relatives, policed up out of the camps and hospitals and put to work burying the dead. They aren’t fulfilling a useful function toward the national good so give them one. Pay them minimum wages if they do work, fine them if they don’t, in addition, anyone who refuses to work is not entitled to rations or clothing other than what they are wearing. No shelter, no heat, no medical aid. I also want the media there when they are rounded up; I want their relatives and neighbours to see their faces. Confiscate all claim forms but give them receipts, it won’t do them any good because I’m freezing all damage claims except those processed through government. What I would really, really like to do is enact Henry VI, part 2… ”

"The first thing we do, let's kill all the lawyers." interrupted Justice with a grin. “Although I did think that was a line from Henry V?”

“If you’re going to steal my lines… you can give the next State of the Union speech, ok?”

“Your lines?… .I think I just heard William Shakespeare turn in his grave Mr President, lucky for you he hated us lawyers or he’d sue your ass for that one!”

The President held up one finger, giving the bird to Justice before continuing.

“I want all available resources that can be of assistance federalised. They aren’t going to get rich on the pay or fat on the rations but I want them put to work on all aspects of disaster relief. Search and rescue remains voluntary of course but I want special payments to be made to all those who take part. We have a hell of a lot of people and equipment out there who are already working for free and more turning up all the time, let’s not freeload. The lawyers here have looked it over and it is legal, so let’s do it.”

Justice was scribbling away as the President spoke, until finally he looked up again and nodded.

“Next item, the enemy cells who carried out the attacks this morning… what can you tell me Ben?”

“Mr President, these would appear to be the work of sleeper cells of Chinese and East European origin. I would like to say that we have early leads, but we don’t. Air Force Captain Leo MacNamarra for instance, the man we believe may be responsible for planting bombs on our specialist anti-satellite squadron’s aircraft, appears to have been born and raised in New York State, and then attended the Air Force Academy. When he flunked pilot training he went into security where he underwent, and passed, an in depth security screening. However, initial DNA tests on samples at his apartment show he is most probably from the Urals, rather than a fifth generation Irish American. We are stretched to the limit and calling on former and retired agents to re-up and assist, as are most government and police agencies at the moment.”

Terry Jones had replaced his deputy on screen and looked bleak.

“Sir, we may have a problem… ”

Henry Shaw interrupted.

“Sir, we sure as shit-fire have a problem, there is no maybe about it!”

“Terry, as you started then please give me your take on whatever else has gone to hell today?” prompted the President.

“We have lost satellite and landline communications with our embassy in Warsaw, the consulate in Krakow and our consular agency in Poznan. I have also been informed that the NATO liaison team working with their High Command has not been in contact, they were working on a counter strike to assist the Belarussians and the last progress report was just before 11am yesterday. A lot of damage was done to the country’s communications net during the coup attempt, so it has been a bit haphazard since then but it was improving. This morning NATO aircraft have been refused entry into Polish airspace… I sent a courier from Berlin to find out what was going on, he was turned back at the border… alleged partisan activity outside the towns and cities attacking road traffic, is what he was told. I have contacted our allies and it is virtually the same story, so I contacted a friend at the new Polish embassy in Chicago, they were just about to contact us at it happens, all the embassies and consulates around the world are cut off from the homeland. At this time we have no intelligence as to what has happened to Poland’s elected President, his government or the high command of the armed forces”

The President closed his eyes for a moment, allowing the consequences of a worst case scenario to formulate in his mind.

When he opened them, General Shaw gave him an apologetic half smile before speaking.

“I had a JSTARS do some snooping sir, there is a lot of armour heading south through Poland by road and rail. There is remarkably little radio communication going on. The police, ambulance and fire service are off the air, so are taxi cabs and all manner of commercial radio traffic. The cellular phone system is down and military radio traffic is minimal… but we have heard Russian call signs and speech, not much and in every case the speaker got a new arsehole torn by a higher authority for breaking radio silence. I’m thinking a second coup here Mr President, successful this time. It means our northern flank in Germany is vulnerable; we no longer have Poland as a buffer and ally. Their forces could even now be repositioning from their jump off point on the Belorussian frontier, to come south with the Russians.” He paused while he tapped away on a keyboard and the large screen in the President’s war room lit up with a map of Europe before zooming in to focus on Poland, Belorussia, northern Germany and the Czech Republic. Icons were displayed that showed unit positions, the enemy units were shown in red.

“You will see that our northern flank is made up of a German Armoured Division, a French Mechanised Division, one Belgian and one Dutch Mechanised Brigade. Two brigades from our own 82nd Airborne in reserve with the British Airborne. Sir, 1st (UK) Armoured Division and their 2nd Mechanised Brigade were slotted for the left flank but are on their way to Leipzig. In twenty-four hours ten enemy divisions, thirteen if they can get the Poles to fight for them, will come crashing into our three division’s worth, north of Berlin.”

“Does SACEUR know this?” asked the President, enquiring if the Canadian General commanding NATO forces in Europe had the same information.

“I sent it all to him before I came online sir” Henry Shaw answered.

“What would you do if you were SACEUR, Henry?”

“You won’t like the answer, but if it is any consolation, the Germans will like it even less. I would stop the units moving up to Leipzig before they could engage, form a defence line south of Leipzig and disengage all units in contact, pull back to the new defence line and make a stand there. It would mean abandoning the north of Germany and the capital but that is as good as gone anyway if the northern flank is overrun… and it will be. Once they have done that the enemy will probably roll up the units facing east and Europe is as good as lost to us. SACEUR, General Allain will probably come to the same conclusion. He is going to need some political clout backing him to convince the German Chancellor to pull his troops back with ours… if that cannot be done, and the Germans refuse to budge, their army will fight alone … and die in place, sir.”

“Where are the convoys Henry, anything to spoil Grease Spot?”

The convoys’ positions came up on the screen, which had altered to depict the Atlantic.

“They should make port in seven days… if all goes well and the river don’t rise… .” He drawled, meaning if nothing else goes wrong. “Admiral Mann has full discretion, if you can’t trust Conrad Mann sir, you can’t trust anyone.”

The President held up his mug and looked over at an aide who hustled over and took it from him.

“Put sugar in it this time!”

The head of his secret service detail opened his mouth to protest but the President shot him a look and a growled. “Stifle it, Mike… and not one word to my wife or the witch doctor, unless of course you want to be humping an M-16 around Germany come this time tomorrow!”

“Don’t listen to him Mike… ” Chuckled General Shaw, “… but if he fires your ass there’s always room in the Marine Corps for a good man.”

“No offence General, but if I get fired I’ll run against him as a Republican.”

The chuckle turned into a full-blown guffaw.

“If anyone knows where the bodies are buried, it has gotta be the secret service detail!”

“Damn straight!” replied the agent with a grin.

“Ok, ok, ok… beat it everyone, reconvene in one hour after I have spoken to SACEUR and the Chancellor.”

CIC aboard the USS Gerald Ford was humming with activity when Admiral Mann entered. A digital map of the Atlantic showed the position of all known merchant shipping, surface combat groups, submarines and air traffic.

To the north, HMS Ark Royal sat in the van of the Canadian convoy; older Mk 6 Sea Kings flying off the decks of container ships augmenting her sub hunting Merlins.

Half of the convoy screen was Canada’s own warships, and the Admiral smiled to himself when he remembered how startled the news services had been at the beginning of the year when HMCS Vancouver had seized a sanctions busting tanker in the Arabian sea. The thought that the other nation occupying the North American landmass would do anything warlike had seemed faintly ridiculous. It had given satirists new material and they had set to with glee. One punster had written a spoof interview.

“You’re kidding, right? Canada has a warship?” asked the United States Defence Secretary. “Like for war?”

“Does Canada know?” he had added.

The Canadian fleet wasn’t a secret it was just characteristically modest, as the Canadian people are, whilst being extremely professional.

Ten of Canada’s Halifax class multi role frigates were now carrying out ASW duties, four of her Iroquois class destroyers were air defence pickets whilst two Victoria class SSK’s, HMCS Chicoutimi and HMCS Windsor ranged ahead, looking for Red Banner boats.

Canada also had ships with the second remaining Royal Navy carrier, HMS Illustrious and her ASW group, ranging the Atlantic independently, as was Spain’s VTOL carrier Principe de Asturias, with her own Harriers and ASW Hughes 500M and Sea King helicopters.

Plugging the gap between Iceland and the North Cape had been taken on by

France, Norway and Denmark, but three Polish warships numbered among the European ships there, receiving replenishment in all things from their neighbours, defying repeated orders to return to home ports.

The 38,000-ton nuclear powered French aircraft carrier Charles De Gaulle was providing air cover for France's own helicopter carrier the Jeanne d'Arc, released from duty as a training ship, and the rest of the ASW ships of the group.

Charles De Gaulle’s Rafale M and Super Etendards provided the big stick, whilst three E-2C Hawkeye airborne early warning aircraft told them where to swing it.

Her AS-565 Panther and Dauphin helicopters joined the effort in stopping further surges or infiltrations of enemy submarines into the Atlantic sea lanes.

Britain’s HMS Invincible had performed the air cover duty for the scratch team guarding the North Cape at the start of the war, but her compliment of Sea Harriers had been too small for the task. Invincible now lay on the seabed, along with half of the original surface combat ships and submarines, the victims of torpedoes; air launched anti-ship missiles and nuclear mines.

The sluggish start in maritime air patrols was improving day by day as reactivated airframes, from the so-called boneyards, were collected by reservists and flown to bases and naval air stations.

USN Orions, Canadian CP-140 Auroras and British Nimrods did what they could in the north, flying out of air stations in Nova Scotia, Keflavik and Aldergrove in Northern Ireland.

The south and east of the shipping lanes got their maritime patrol coverage from off a small island and from European soil. On Pico, one of the nine volcanic islands that form the Azores, eight hundred miles to the west of Portugal, the USN had returned to the naval air station at Lajes that had been disestablished on 30th September 1993, when the Soviets had been deemed a spent force.

The newly arrived Orions from the States eased the pressure on the crews based at NS Rota, in Spain.

Portugal’s Esquadra 601, the ‘Lobos’ (Wolves) were flying around the clock out of Lajes too, as well as Montijo near Lisbon and Ovar, further north on the mainland.

To the south of USS Gerald Ford’s convoy, USS Wasp and USS Iwo Jima carried SH-60B Sea Hawk ASW helicopters amongst its CH-46E Sea Knight, UH-1N Iroquois and MH-53E Sea Dragon troop carriers, adding to the Texas convoy’s ASW cover.

Submarines were the great threat at the moment, and would remain so until they drew closer to Europe. The air threat would be dealt with by the RN’s Fleet Air Arm Sea Harriers, Iwo Jima and Wasp’s AV-8B Harriers and the Gerald Ford’s own air wing.

Canada had been prevailed upon to allow the New York convoy to draw abreast of it by slowing their own, in that way the ultra-secret, Operation Grease Spot, would be more effective.

Most projections of an old Red Army invasion of Europe had included the simultaneous invasion of Norway, Denmark and Sweden. With Scandinavia neutralised, her airfields would then have held a deadly threat to any convoys from North America. The only reason that this had not happened now was simply that the new Red Army did not have the resources that the old one had had.

Apart from their own four attack boats and the Canadian long range patrol SSKs, the Royal Navy had four SSNs employed also. The submarines had been doing their jobs well, without yet firing a shot.

Conrad Mann stood before the big screen, peering at icons a day’s sailing away.

“Have all ‘Pointers’ acknowledged my ‘make for the hills’?” he asked.

“USS Twin Towers acknowledged receipt twenty minutes ago admiral, she’s the last. The position she was at when she transmitted put her still within ‘Bravo’ but on the eastern edge.”

“Rick Pitt’s cutting it fine… I hope he’s running at flank.” He turned from the board to face the room. “Okay, Grease Spot is a go, the TT’s skipper knows the score, and they will have to take their chances CAG, you launch at 1800.”

A silence had fallen over the battlefield west of the airport whilst both sides honoured a two hour cease-fire.

One hundred and seventy-two paratroopers of the 82nd, captured when the airport had been overrun were to be reunited with their comrades. Most of the returning 82nd men were wounded, but all had been taken care of whilst in captivity.

Oz’s Platoon was stood midway between the NATO and Russian lines, and ten feet away stood a like number of Russian paratroopers.

This was the agreed upon site for transport carrying the prisoners from both sides to stop their vehicles and the men would be transferred to their own side’s transport.

There was no attempt by either group to break the hostile atmosphere that existed out there in no-mans-land; the soldiers eyed each other coldly.

4-ton trucks waited just out of sight on NATOs side whilst the first civilian ambulances and buses with blacked out windows appeared at the airport’s perimeter, within view of the NATO troops between the lines and stopped.

Oz looked the vehicles over with binoculars before speaking briefly into the microphone suspended in front of his mouth; a few moments later the first 4-ton truck arrived from NATO lines and the men on board had their plasticuffs and blindfolds removed. A Russian officer checked that the men were indeed Red Army troops and all fit or walking wounded. NATO were keeping the most badly wounded, it defeated the argument to demand their return.

Alontov’s reasons for the exchange took precedence over the humanitarian concerns, in that of buying time and undoing the damage that the killing of NATO prisoners caused by way of bolstering enemy resistance. To highlight the point, there were few prisoners from the recent to and fro battles on the airport’s perimeter where the 82nd troopers and the Brit squaddies had not been inclined to surrender when that opportunity had arisen, and had not been inclined to give quarter either.

The Light Infantrymen, Argyll’s, and Coldstreamers had lost too many friends to the no-prisoners policy carried out by the Red Army units at the river, and they had no reason at the time to believe that the Russian Airborne troops at Leipzig were any different.

In a small cavern created by jumbled rubble, Big Stef was peering through the spotting telescope, whilst ‘Freddie’ Laker set the crosshairs on the chest of a man stood on an aircraft hangar roof, who was watching the proceedings through binoculars.

A full magazine was attached to Freddie's weapon but the bolt was open, as a more certain preventative against ‘enn dees’, negligent discharges, during the cease-fire. A clean piece of cloth covered the open breach, keeping it free of the brick and cement dust that was kicked up at the slightest movement inside the hide. They had used up the contents of one water bottle in damping down the dust, but that left them with just a half bottle between the pair of them and no way of getting a replen without compromising their firing position. The dust had now dried out again and under the present circumstances, that meant that they could fire only once, after which they would have to relocate. Firing the weapon would create a small, yet tell-tale puff of dust that the enemy would be looking for.

“I bet that bastard’s at least a battalion commander; see how those other tosser’s are stood just behind him, all deferential like?”

“That’s a thousand metres Fred, bit far for a boss-eyed bastard like you.” Stef commented.

“Well if he’s still there when the cease-fire ends we’ll see about that… at the very least we’ll get to see a senior officer with brown adrenaline running down the backs of his legs.”

Nine hundred and eighty-nine metres away, Serge Alontov finished his methodical scanning and placed the binoculars back inside his smock.

“Well it would seem that NATO is sticking strictly to the terms of the agreement… .” Stepping away from the edge, he addressed the brigade commander.

“See to it that ours do the same Pyotr. Only foolish poets speak of combatants taking a pause in the middle of a hard fight to regard their adversaries with a new found respect and other such romantic mud'a. Our men will be itching to kick them in the balls while they aren’t expecting it, and so will theirs.” He strode away toward the maintenance ladder at the far side of the hangar and his entourage followed on.

Freddie lowered the weapon and punched the concrete slab beside him in frustration.

“Arse, bollocks and wank… the wankers gone!”

Big Stef sneezed as dust raised by Freddie’s tantrum got up his nose.

“Stroll on, mate… you’ll have this lot down on our swedes if you ain’t careful!”

It was almost ninety minutes before CSM Probert appeared, the last man to emerge from the back of a Leipzig public bus, the last vehicle in the exchange, and could stand squinting at the light. The remaining newly released POWs POW’s were filing towards NATO’s side of no-mans-land, but Colin paused to look about. He had been blindfolded for five hours despite the windows being blacked-out.

“Sergeant Osgood!” he called out when his eyes had adjusted enough for him to see.

Oz grinned broadly as he recognised his friend.

Colin was shoved roughly from behind and turned to confront a Russian Paratrooper.

“Move… English shit!”

As per the agreement, all the troops at the exchange point had their weapons slung and magazines secured in ammunition pouches. However the Russian wore on his hand a wicked pair of brass knuckle-dusters.

“Push me again you tosser and I’ll back-squad yer teeth to zed week!”

The angry remark drew all eyes; both British and Russian as the paratrooper started to say something in return, but Colin stepped in fast and hit him squarely in the mouth with a straight left that snapped his head backwards. After a split second of silence the troops of both sides piled into one another, fists swinging and boots flying. It didn’t last long because officers from either side ran over barking orders at their men.

Fighting next to Colin, Oz heard the shouting but he was having a good time and sent his opponent stumbling backwards, flattening the Russians nose with a ‘Glasgow Handshake’ before backing off and adding his voice to that of the officers.

Out of the corner of his eye he saw something flying towards him and ducked out of the way, the object hit Colin before falling to the earth.

Colin picked up his webbing fighting order and looked at the man who strode through the huddle of Russian paratroops.

“Much obliged sir.”

“Well I’ll be, it’s the Fanny Magnet!” was all Oz could say.

“Hello Sergeant Osgood, nice head-butt by the way.” Nikoli extended his hand to the Geordie squaddie.

All the returned NATO prisoners had been brought back in just the uniforms they had on their backs, their captors knew that there was plenty of equipment from the dead with which to speedily re-equip them. As a matter of principle neither side had reunited the prisoners they had, with their kit. It takes time to get webbing to fit properly and even longer to replace the personalised items they carried in and on it. Nikoli reached into his smock and withdrew Colin’s K-Bar fighting knife and shorter bladed survival knife, which he handed across to the CSM.

“Aren’t you going to get in the shit for this?”

“It is a small matter Colin, and besides which these men are all from my Company.”

Oz was grinning at the Russian lieutenant.

“We heard you had done a runner and were shagging the brains out of some drop-dead-gorgeous RMP captain. You never turned up at the internment centre, and the monkeys were going ape trying to find you?”

“That is a long story Oz, but as you can see I did get back to Russia.” He looked around at his troops and spoke to them in a calm voice. The Russians expressions still looked fierce once he had finished, but they had a touch of respect in them too.

“I told them that I lived and trained with you all for six months, that you were good men and almost as good a unit as we are.” Actually Nikoli had only worked with Colin and Oz, but it served to act as a buffer against any of his own men starting another fight.

Oz fished out a packet of cigarettes and offered one to the Para with the freshly broken nose, slowly the two groups of soldiers did likewise and for fifteen minutes they were no longer quite enemies.

Nikoli at last looked at his watch.

“It is almost time.” He barked an order and his men put out their cigarettes and began walking back to their own lines.

“Colin, Oz… Take care of yourselves, okay?”

“Likewise Nikki, you keep yer head down hinney.” And with that they parted, returning to their own armies to begin the business of killing once more.

With five minutes still to go the landscape was devoid of visible life and Freddie again had the heavy rifle’s butt in his shoulder.

Big Stef slowly moved the telescope across the opposition’s real estate, looking for anything that would indicate a target, be it a shadow, a silhouette, smoke from a cigarette or steam from a hot drink, anything.

At one second past the agreed ending of the cease-fire a single shot rang out. The 7.62mm round made a loud crack in passing, exceeding the speed of sound in its flight and entered a small gap in a rubble pile. The firer edged slowly backwards out of his firing position to crawl through the muck of a drainage ditch to another spot scouted earlier. As he moved he took great care not to get dirt in the muzzle, the working parts or to jog the PKS-07 sight seated atop the SV-98 sniper rifle, the successor to the Dragunov.

Dust that had drifted through the gap in the rubble earlier had caught the sunlight for just a moment or two before it settled. In venting his frustration, Lance Sergeant Laker had sealed his own fate.

The JBD, jet blast deflector for Cats One and Two, prevented damage and injury to equipment and crew as the throttles opened on the big Grumman F-14D Tomcats two General Electric F110-GE-400 engines, and the 54,000lbs of thrust they produced.

On Cat One the aircraft’s nose dipped under the strain and then the catapult hurled it down the deck, quickly followed by the F-14 on Cat Two.

Once the Tomcats reached 20,000’ they topped off their tanks from buddy stores on another Tomcat and set a course of one six one degrees. Apart from there 20mm Mk-61A1 Vulcan cannon’s, the Tomcats carried only one other weapon apiece, long and fat they hung below their centreline hard-points.

Despite the fact that the weapons were on their way to be used against the enemy, the armourers had refrained from chalking banal slogans on the things, they exuded a menace that you just didn’t want to mess with.

Fifteen minutes after the first two had launched, a second pair left the deck of the USS Gerald Ford, and these turned to zero four two degrees after tanking, whilst the third and final two-ship formation involved in the operation flew due east forty minutes later.

The Seawolf class SSN, USS Twin Towers had slid down the slipway at Newport News in June of the previous year. Originally named Sea Leopard, she had left on her proving trials in October renamed in memory of the victims the 11th September terrorist attacks. Her reactor plant and steam turbines were capable of pushing the attack boat through the water at 39 knots, but her single screw was now only producing turns for twelve.

The task assigned to the US, Canadian and British boats had been one of reconnaissance, locating the enemy submarines that had blown through into the Atlantic on the first day. The NATO submarines had established that the wolf packs were each in two staggered lines abreast with twelve miles separating each line. The Russians had correctly assumed that the NATO convoys would be taking the shortest possible route to Europe, and their last satellite pass had pinpointed the position, course and speed for the wolf packs to complete their alignment. The convoys were coming to them so they did little more then hold station whilst edging forwards at five knots.

Bad luck had befallen the Twin Towers by way of an Alpha with an experimental sonar suite, which had twitched enough to have her captain go looking to see if they had actually detected a NATO SSN.

Slipping away from the Alpha had cost them twelve hours, by the time they had come up enough to stream their wire antennae the order to get the hell out of Dodge was ten hours old. Twelve knots was the fastest they could safely go without the world and his brother hearing them, and they had slowly worked their way up to that over two hours. The Twin Towers skipper did not know when H Hour was, that was at Admiral Mann’s discretion.

All watertight doors had been closed immediately after the beat feet message had been decoded, but only the officers and the chief of the boat had been told why. The sonar operators had been instructed to remove their headphones and switch on the speakers. It had caused them all to frown; their ears could not detect the minute sound traces over the speakers that they could with headphones.

The first two pairs of Tomcats had taken station in front of the convoys to the north and south of USS Gerald Ford’s, the furthermost convoy being to the south.

Once the third flight of Tomcats had tanked they all headed east to their first pre-programmed waypoints, from where they first let down to six thousand feet before turning through 180’ and each pickling off the first weapon. Afterburners kicked in once the ordnance dropped away and the operation was repeated twelve miles to the west.

As with the first weapons, a parachute deployed to prevent damage to the weapon when encountering the surface of the ocean and the weapons began to receive data downlinked from a navy communications satellite.

The weight of the weapons pulled the parachute shrouds below the surface and they trailed down behind the ordnance, which sank at a surprisingly slow rate.

Two thousand feet below the waves, the Alpha class attack submarine Omsk, was on a heading of 270’. Captain Yuri Kelyovich expected to make contact with the outer screen in the dawn and had his least experienced men on watch; his best hands were resting until then. He himself was lying in his bunk, writing up his log before sleeping.

The danger from maritime patrol aircraft had been constant, but with a whole ocean to search they would have to be exceedingly unlucky to be detected. NATO patrol and attack submarines were a different story; they were so damned quiet.

In the early hours of the morning his best sonar operator had been certain that he had heard something other than whales screwing and shoals of fish, and because of his faith in the man they had spent fruitless hours stalking nothing. With her search abandoned, the Omsk now sought to rejoin the forward line before the dawn

Kelyovich finished noting his log before switching off the light, and considering what he was expecting to do the next day he fell asleep quickly.

At precisely 2010hrs, in six separate locations in the north Atlantic, at an average depth of six thousand feet a five-megaton nuclear device detonated.

The big screen aboard the USS Gerald Ford had three areas outlined; squat oblongs with east/west axis named Alpha, Bravo and Charlie, with Alpha the northernmost, depicting the anticipated areas of damage.

On detonation, each device flash evaporated a half-cubic kilometre of seawater and the pressure waves sought to compress the molecules of water at the extremities. The surface of the ocean momentarily dipped toward the ocean bed before being flung skywards.

Where the pressure wave travelled downwards it punched through millennia’s worth of silt, baring the planet’s bedrock on the ocean floor for a five-kilometre radius before it rebounded off it, upwards and outwards.

The real damage was caused by the collision of the pressure waves in each of the areas as water, which refused to compress, encountered titanium and steel constructions that would.

The Alpha attack boat Omsk, which had broken formation to chase the USS Twin Towers shadow, was making ten knots in order to regain her position at the centre of the leading line of 9th Flotilla submarines.

Screams from the duty sonarman woke her captain and he leapt from his bunk to dash to the sonar station just aft of his cabin as a boom like the hammer of hell sounded throughout the hull.

Blood was leaking from between the young man’s fingers that were pressed over his ears and his screams were high pitched with agony. As the captain reached out to pull the sailors hands away the pressure waves reached the Omsk almost simultaneously. Bow and after planes bent or sheared from the hull as the eastern pressure wave struck the stern and whipped the vessel into the vertical plane, bow down.

The majority of the crew were either killed or rendered unconscious as they were propelled into ceilings and bulkheads, and then the western wave struck. The Omsk’s titanium hull collapsed flat. Like stepping on a polystyrene cup the two waves slammed together the walls of her pressure hull.

Those vessels not caught between hammer and anvil either lived or died depending on their positions in relation to ground zero.

USS Twin Towers was at 600ft and making 18knots on a heading of 045’ when the speakers in the sonar compartment screeched and then cut out. Her captain’s face drained even as he bellowed orders.

“Hard left rudder, come around to two seven zero degrees… crash surface, blow all tanks!” He gripped the periscope mounting and set his feet “Sound collision… all hands brace for impact!”

The deck heeled hard over and all those in the know prayed that they would make the turn and not be hit beam-on by what was coming, and as it was they were when the acoustic wave arrived like a vanguard, causing more than one man to unconsciously wet himself.

Twin Towers completed the turn and reached the surface, bursting out of the depths.

“Sail camera on!” and the monitor flicked to life, to show just darkness ahead. “Switch to lo-lite… I can’t see shit!” The picture changed and he could see the submarines casing up to the bow, but the picture looked wrong, it was as if the vessel were down at the bow. He could see the horizon but it was too high… and then his mouth went dry as the horizon got ever higher.

“Oh my God… ” was all he was able to whisper before the bow started to rise, higher and higher.

Sixty-two miles from ground-zero of the eastern device in area Bravo, an eighty foot high wave was travelling outwards at seventy miles an hour, whilst to the west, rising up into the stratosphere, it appeared as if six white columns were holding back the vacuum of space, as the tops of the plumes spread wide to eventually join fingers.

Eleven minutes before the mines had detonated; Captain C.D Steinways, Commander Air Group for USS Gerald Ford watched his wingman trap successfully and called the GF’s controller with his fuel state and range.

“Tower, this is Tomcat zero one… ten miles out, showing eleven thousand pounds… do I have a clear deck?”

“Zero three one, Tower… we don’t have you visual as yet… continue approach… the deck is clear, be advised that all vessels are battened down and we are at high NBC state ”

“Zero three one, rog.”

“Tomcat zero three one, Tower… we have you visual now… you are slightly high.”

“Zero three one, roger that.”

“How’d it go zero three one?”

“Six buckets of instant sunshine right on the nose Tower.”

“Roger that… we have you at one mile, call the ball zero three one.”

The Tomcat caught the three-wire on an almost empty flight deck; every other airframe that couldn’t be crammed into the hanger deck had been flown off. Being the last back the aircraft would be secured for heavy weather and hopefully would survive the coming event. The CAG and his RIO were hustled below as the wranglers raced to secure the twenty-two ton Tomcat. All that was aloft now were helicopters, maintaining the ASW screen.

Computer modelling in the States had given them some idea of what the outlying effects would be, but it was all theory when it came down to it, no one really knew. The CAG had joined Admiral Conrad Mann and the rest of the staff in CIC, arriving after the scheduled detonation of the weapons, and there they drank coffee, spoke in low tones and waited.

Twelve miles ahead of each convoy, three frigates cruising in line abreast and five miles apart had their radars radiating. Forty-six Knox class frigates were built between 1969 and 1974, with the coming of the larger Perry class they were paid off, with the majority being sold to other nations. A number joined the reserve fleet of which five had been reactivated for this convoy. On the bridge of the small, elderly Knox class frigate, USS Peel, her captain had the deck, peering out ahead into the darkness. The majority of the crew, like her captain, were reservists and had been together as a ships company less than two weeks. The captain ran a car dealership in Seattle since leaving the regular navy in the mid-nineties, his Executive Officer was a journalist and the helmsman an actor in a soap opera, eager for the war to end so he could get back to playing the ‘evil twin brother’ in ‘The Wealthy &The Beautiful, three days a week, before the scriptwriters had his character abducted by aliens, or similar.

The ship was rigged for a hurricane and all the crew in life vests when the radar painted over something forty miles ahead, moving fast and wider than the display on the bridge radar repeater.

“Start the upload… let’s get this data out.” He avoided adding ‘in case we don’t make it’ as the radar picture was beamed to a communication satellite and from there distributed to a hundred different stations where they could see the speed and dimensions.

His voice was a lot calmer than he felt inside.

“Mr Corben,” he addressed the Exec. “Sound the collision alarm, if you please… all hands brace… this could be a rough one.” He stood up from his chair, crossing to the helmsman. “Son, it’s been awhile since I drove, why don’t you get off below until this blow passes?” looking around the bridge at the remainder of the watch he nodded aft. “Same with you people, you can come back up once its past… dog the hatch behind you.” Once they had cleared the bridge he spared a thought for his wife,

“Honey, don’t go getting all mad at me now,” and removed the cellophane from a pack of cigarettes before lighting up for the first time in three years.

The top of the wave was higher than the Peel’s superstructure and the captain gripped the wheel firmly in both hands. The bow rose to a full 20’ above the horizon before the foredeck disappeared into the wall of water and the superstructure was engulfed. USS Peel became a submarine as the moving mountain smashed over her, swallowing the 5”/54 turret but tearing away her ASROC launcher that sat aft of it on the foredeck. The Peel was a surface combat ship, below the waves was not her element and she rolled to port with her single screw seeking to drive them to the surface once more.

She was almost lying on her port side when she emerged out of the reverse side of the wave and it looked as if she would succumb for a moment until at last she began to roll upright once more. Her mast had been stripped from the superstructure and water poured from her upper decks as the bridge watch strained to un-dog the hatch and regain their posts. They could feel the ship starting to turn beam-on to the seas as they at last released it. A signalman had an arm crushed as the hatch slammed wide but he was too shocked to cry out as they were all washed off their feet by the torrent they released in so doing. The Exec gained his feet first and pulled himself past the injured signalman.

When the ocean had stove in the bridge screen the captain had been decapitated by a shard of toughened glass, his waterlogged body partially blocked the hatchway. The Exec stumbled as he stepped over the body, cutting his hand deeply on a spear of glass but ignoring it and grabbing the wheel, he put it over so they again met the waves bow first. Communications were out, so was radar and they had seven crewmen who would require hospitalisation, but they had survived. Had the radar mast not gone over the side, the Exec would have seen that USS Wilbur Hume, the Perry class frigate five miles to the north had also survived, however their sister ship USS Paragon, had entered the wave much as they themselves had done, but had not emerged out the other side.

Aboard the USS Gerald Ford, Admiral Mann ordered the radars up when the picture from their forward pickets disappeared. The Gerald Ford’s radar masts sat high above the top of the approaching wave and the admiral saw with relief that they could see two of the frigates on screen. The absence of the USS Paragon from the radar picture was not lost on him, but it meant that the fast approaching wave was not going to swamp the carrier.

Of all the ships in the convoy, the Knox class frigates were the smallest, but the merchantmen were all heavily laden and he had to hope they all rode the wave without foundering.

“Signal to all ships, here it comes.”

Ahead of the carrier the screen ships encountered the wave and it rolled unstoppably past, its top higher than the flight deck.

The bow of the 104,000-ton warship began to rise, and then staggered as the full weight of the wave crashed into it, causing it to break over the flight deck. A green mass, three feet deep washed over the flight deck and then the USS Gerald Ford was past

On her flight deck the two parked Tomcats were gone, swept overboard. Admiral Mann followed the progress of the wave, another of the small Knox frigates was gone from the warship screen and he watched as the wave continued to the west. Two merchants and a fleet replenishment ship were gone, two others had lost way and rescue operations began immediately as the admiral ordered ships to render assistance. It would take time to get the helicopters up from the hangar deck, but meanwhile those already aloft had ceased dipping or monitoring sonar buoys before the wave arrived, and they now switched on search lights and began looking for survivors.

Classified by Russia as an Atomnie Podvodnie Kreysery 1 Ranga, 1st Class Nuclear Powered Submarine Cruiser, the Oscar II class guided missile submarine Svedlursk had been the extreme northernmost vessel of the 9th Submarine Flotilla. Svedlursk also had the dubious honour of being the last Red Banner fleet submarine in the Atlantic capable of anything near offensive operations.

Oscar IIs have two nuclear reactors and twin screws to propel them along at a maximum speed of 32 knots. For armament they have 24 SS-N-19 Granit anti-shipping missiles, four 21 inch torpedo tubes and four 25.6 inch torpedo tubes, 16 acoustic torpedoes and 8 Stallion ASROCs. Svedlursk was no longer capable of 32 knots, her port propeller shaft had buckled and there were cracked bearings on the starboard shaft so she wasn’t going anywhere faster than 14 knots and only then for short sprints. Svedlursk was unable to dive deeper than three hundred feet without risk of springing a leak due to the hammer blow she had suffered by the nuclear depth mine's pressure wave that had caught her at 60’ as she collected downlinked updated targeting data. All she really had going for her was her full inventory of weapons and the stock of morphine that kept her injured crew members quiet. A mere eighteen of the crew had survived without skull, spinal or multiple limb fractures but another sixty-four were too injured to man stations whilst nineteen more had died. The on-board systems were a mess and the computerised fire control system had crashed, all firing was going to have to be performed manually.

The captain was a determined individual; he was going to launch an attack to spite the West for what it had done to his vessel.

Provided the USS Gerald Ford battle group and her convoy had kept to the last reported course and speed then he had thirty-two chances of paying them back. The twenty-four SS-N-19 Granit missiles carried 500Kt warheads, and six of his eight SS-N-16 Stallion ASROCs were tipped with 1Kt warheads.

Despite a dislocated left elbow and two broken fingers, he and the weapons officer, himself with a broken arm would manually program each Granit for an airburst. As far as communications and sensors went they were blind, the towed array had been torn off; as had the floating antennae and they could not raise any masts. What they needed was assurance that this not going to be a vain effort, unless of course, they surfaced to see if their radar array could be repaired.

9th Flotilla had numbered twelve at the start of the war, two Alphas, three Sierra II and three Victor III attack boats with one Oscar I and three Oscar II guided missile submarines, but only one other flotilla vessel had survived the American nuclear mines. A Victor III sat wallowing on the surface with her crew awaiting capture or a torpedo. One of Pidonirk’s bow doors had been unseated and just to prove that what can go wrong, will go wrong, it was the tube that was at that moment being loaded. The Victor had made the surface; only her forward torpedo room’s hatch had saved the vessel by its being dogged as a safety procedure during loading. The vessel was bow down in the midst of some of the stormiest seas many had ever seen. All of the Pidonirk’s officers with the exception of the political officer had been killed or incapacitated and he assumed command, posting a man in the sail with a SA-7a Strella 2, shoulder launched SAM. Self-defence was one thing, but when the political officer stated that his intention was to fly a white flag and then launch on the ship that came to claim them, the crew had other ideas. The political officer was in the sail peering into the distance through his binoculars when two pairs of hands gripped his legs firmly, hoisted him up and tossed him over the side. The Strella was locked in the armoury but the white flag remained.

Fifteen miles ahead of the Victor III, the damaged Oscar II Svedlursk broke the surface and immediately set about repairs to her radar and ESM masts. Like the Pidonirk, she also flew a flag of surrender but her intentions were quite the opposite. Strella’s sat in her sail ready for use.

Three hours later an E-2C Hawkeye picked up the surfaced Svedlursk and Pidonirk, shortly after which USS Gerald Ford launched a pair of F/A-18F Super Hornet’s armed with two Harpoon’s apiece to investigate.

The Hawkeye fed data to the strike fighters as they came in just above the stormy seas with their own radars on standby, passing either side of the big guided missile boat before pulling back into the clouds.

They reported that the vessel was flying a white flag but they appeared to be working on the radar and ESM, which were of no use to a vessel that had thrown the towel in.

Aboard the Svedlursk the first warning they had that they had been discovered was the aircraft tearing past. Her skipper was aware that the aircraft would have seen the repairs underway and cursed loudly, ordering the technicians to speed up. He kicked and punched the lookouts, ordered the Strella’s made ready along with preparations to dive.

Because of the white flag the Hornet’s returned to double check, one sat up in a cover position whilst the other repeated the low pass.

The Hornet was only 60’ above the waves when the Strella blew its tail section off and it immediately nosed into the ocean at 500mph, neither pilot nor RIO had a chance to eject.

“Sonofabitch!” swore the E-2C’s operator when the F/A-18F’s track disappeared from his screen two seconds after the covering Super Hornets’ pilot had shouted

“Missile launch!” over the air to his buddies.

Hampered by his dislocated elbow and broken fingers, the Svedlursk’s captain fell the last six feet down the ladder. Air was expelled from her ballast tanks in plumes as she began to dive. Her casing was below the surface when a Harpoon slammed into her forward of her sail, penetrating her outer hull before exploding.

A few minutes later to the east of where the missile boat died, the lookouts of the crippled Pidonirk were keeping a sharp watch for NATO ships, white sheets had been hung over the side of the sail so that there could be no mistaking their intention to surrender. They caught a brief glimpse of exhaust fumes before the surviving Super Hornet’s second Harpoon killed them too, without the aircraft getting a visual, not that it would have made a difference even if it had.

A silent alarm had alerted Pc Stokes to the approach of others, and the small TV screen showed two men and women walking up the path to the front door of the rented house in Scotland.

Stokes knew both men but not the women; however Scott had telephoned earlier to inform them that they were bringing over the crew of the aircraft that would be involved in an operation with the Russians whom they were guarding.

He called out over his shoulder toward the kitchen before striding to the front door and opening it for the guests. Stokes and his partner Pc Pell both wore hand knitted Aran sweaters that Svetlana and Constantine had bought them during a shopping trip to Edinburgh to buy food for tonight’s meal and augment their tiny wardrobes.

Since landing in the forest clearing with Scott Tafler they had been assigned the job of CP, close protection on the couple.

Once the CIA had debriefed the couple at a safe house in Kent, they had written statements on the events before and after the suitcase bomb crisis that were intended for the prosecution of Britain’s former Prime Minister, the former head of SIS and several former cabinet ministers. With the legal and intelligence issues dealt with they were moved up to Scotland to a large house owned by the family of an engineer, currently residing in Dubai.

Due to the involvement of SIS in the plot to murder them, the British Secret Intelligence Service had been kept out of the loop, with the CIA and Metropolitan Police handling all matters relating to the two Russians.

When the SCO19 officers had been informed that they were stuck with the couple for the foreseeable future they were not broken hearted. Both had carried out CP for politicians, royalty and alleged VIPs, many of whom had been so stuffed with their own self-importance that they had treated the officers appallingly. Pc Stokes had been on the CP team for a minister at the time of the Gulf War. That individual had owned a farm and had lain off workers, ordering his protection team officers to carry out tasks about the property in the sacked workers’ stead. The minister was far from being poor either; he was just exceedingly arrogant and greedy. When it had been made crystal clear to the minister that the officers were there to protect him and not make him wealthier, they had to hire a portable toilet, and find their own tea and coffee in addition to going everywhere in pairs. The minister banned them from all facilities on his farm and fabricated stories intended to have individual officers sacked, so having another officer to refute his claims made doubling up a necessity. Never had Cabinet reshuffles been more dearly wished for.

In stark contrast to the minister, the Russians were charming, witty and good company. Plus Svetlana’s daily swims in the indoor pool, workouts and habit of walking around in as little as possible made their days enjoyable.

In the officers’ rooms were presents for their wives and children, all pressed on them by the Russians.

The past week had been one of preparing the Russians for their mission, although neither officer knew the details they had done their part in taking the couple on gruelling cross-country runs, circuit training in the grounds and skill-at-arms. Hand-to-hand combat, communications and other skills had been taught by MOD personnel but both officers were firearms instructors and ex-army, no-one objected to their doing their part so long as the Russians’ safety was not compromised. Surprisingly, it had been Svetlana who had been the more able of the two at handling weapons and when he had asked the Russian major what his preferred weapon of choice was, the pilot had replied.

“Anything that is fire and forget… can you help me out?”

“Certainly sir,” the officer had said and slapped a 9mm Beretta into the Russian's outstretched palm. “Once you’ve fired all the rounds in the magazine, don’t forget to reload.”

Dry handling had taken place at the house, using eastern European weaponry and live firing was carried out at the RAF station ten miles away.

To get them in the correct frame of mind the police officers took the pair into nearby woods and a derelict house with paintball guns. On average, the major had been the first one ‘killed’ far more often than Svetlana, and then on their final exercise she had dispatched both of the highly skilled firearms officers with her last two ‘rounds’. After thirty minutes of stalking, fire and manoeuvre and field craft wearing the protective visors and one piece camouflaged coveralls, Constantine was out of it and Svetlana had been pinned behind the trunk of an old oak tree. The officers were skirmishing forward, one always being in the aim and a finger on the trigger as the other man moved.

Suddenly the girl had stepped out into plain view with her weapon in the aiming position.

“Fuck sake, Stokesy… you were supposed to be covering me!” had been Pc Pell’s reaction to being hit squarely on the visor.

“How do you expect me to shoot that?” Pc Stokes replied, wiping away paint from a pellet that had hit him in the middle of his chest.

Pell removed the paint-covered visor and gawped.

“Oh my giddy aunt!” Beside the tree and armed with her now empty paintball gun, Svetlana was standing boldly and unabashed beside her discarded camouflage coveralls and boots, and wearing nothing but a smile.

“Use any and all tools to gain the advantage boys!” she had said whilst laughing at their expressions.

This night however the policeman wore an MP5 on a harness so it hung down his right side and he had his hand on the pistol grip as he stepped clear of the doorway, allowing the guests to enter.

Captain Patricia Dudley took a deep intake of breath, drawing in the aroma of roast venison. Rationing had not yet been implemented but the plans had no doubt been laid.

Scott led the way into the living room.

“Your cargo is busy doing chef type things, so allow me to do the honours.” Pouring generous measures of twenty-five year old single malt into crystal glasses and carrying the glasses across.

Caroline Nunro and Patricia had settled into the leather sofa whilst Max Reynolds sank with a sigh of pleasure into a deep leather armchair.

A few minutes later Constantine popped his head around the door and informed them that dinner would not be served for another fifteen minutes because the kitchen staff was revolting. He ushered Svetlana through into the living room with a slap on the rump before disappearing.

Both CIA men beamed at her appearance in the room, she had that effect on men. The two USAF officers had not met her before and appraising eyes sat atop their smiles.

“Wow… foxy!” thought Caroline whilst Patricia’s was a single mental syllable.

“Shit.”

It was bad enough being crewed with a pin-up, but this girl was built for sex and had the looks to match. Patricia wasn’t plain but it got to be a pain in the ass having guys salivating over someone else all the time.

With her long legs, midnight blue ruffled silk shirt and tartan skirt, Svetlana crossed the room with the elegance of a catwalk model and planted kisses on the cheeks of her guests in customary Russian fashion before sitting unselfconsciously, cross legged on the floor and chatting away happily. She gave the American aircrew the majority of her attention but flirted outrageously with the men in good humour, so by the time Constantine returned the ice was thoroughly broken. Pretentiousness was not one of Svetlana’s vices.

During the meal Patricia probed Svetlana, seeking to see how deep the girl went intellectually. Patricia had an engineering masters in fibre optic avionics and specialised in fly by wire technology, she began talking about it and found the Russian girl was genuinely interested; ten minutes later they were into some fairly deep technical talk.

Caroline sat back and watched the scene around the table, the food had been excellent, the wine perfect, the company superb and the smoky flavour of the old cognac she was twirling around the bowl of her brandy snifter was delicious. She was taking another sip when she felt a foot slide up the inside of her calf and she looked down quickly but the foot disappeared. Max was sat opposite and she stared at him, quite taken aback but he was leaning across the table sharing an anecdote with Constantine, on her right at the head of her table. As the next possible culprit she looked hard at the Russian, but when he felt her gaze he looked over his shoulder at her and smiled before automatically including her in the story, he was guileless and she could not believe it was he who had attempted to play footsie with her. Scott was at the far end of the table and too far away so she shrugged to herself and dismissed it as an accident rather than a calculated act.

Svetlana espied Pc Pell going into the kitchen for his food and she left the table, dragging him into the dining room and making a space for him before bringing him a plate piled high with meat and roast vegetables. He reluctantly left to relieve his colleague roaming the grounds once he had cleared his plate.

As evenings went, it was a thundering success but at 1am Constantine showed them to their bedrooms, the new working day was only seven hours away, a concession allowed by Pc Stokes who normally banged on the bedroom door at 5.45am.

The following morning Patricia, Caroline, Scott and Max made their way separately to the kitchen for coffee. The two CIA men had elected to come along the previous evening for the PT and run, whilst alcohol was clouding their better judgement. Daggers were looked at Svetlana when she breezed in and out cheerily, having collected her morning coffee.

“She drank exactly what we had, it is not fair,” grumbled Scott.

“They had less sleep than we did too,” put in Patricia.

Scott looked over the rim of his mug at her.

“How so?”

“Didn’t you hear them… bloody noisy?”

Max was almost the last one to reach the realm of Java heaven. “Who the hell was making love until 3am?” he asked, eyeing them all accusingly. “Jesus H… someone’s a screamer.” As he filled a mug to the brim.

“That wasn’t love making Max.” Caroline informed him. “It was Olympic standard rutting… but no one in this room was involved!” She managed to grin as she continued.

“I think it was doctor and patient night, I saw Svetlana walking to the bathroom in a surgical gown… open back.”

“Really?” Both CIA men had jumped four levels in the wake-up stakes.

“Uh huh… she has a butt like two hardboiled eggs with suntans, and a dogs paw tattoo on the right.”

“Slut tags.” Pat scoffed.

“Meowwww.” Caroline responded to her navigator with censure in her tone.

‘Tramp stamps.” Pat offered again with no hint of apology and sipped her coffee before adding. “Well I think she must be a vampire or something, you know… drawing life energy from stolen bodily fluids.”

“Fellatio” interjected the other woman.

“What’s fellatio?” enquired Max.

Caroline deadpanned.

“It’s a Latin term for a form of birth control… us girls practised it a lot in college.”

Max’s blank look reduced both aviators to fits of giggles.

Scott had been trying to keep a straight face.

“Max wouldn’t know about that, Mrs Reynolds is a devout Catholic.” And the giggles turned to full-blown laughter.

Constantine entered the kitchen, looking just as fragile as the Americans did.

“Thank Christ… there is a God.” Scott muttered as he appeared.

The Russian looked at him as he reached for an empty mug. “Pardon?”

“We were just discussing the possible existence of bionic wangs in the vicinity; Major… it seems they do not exist.” Caroline informed him.

Patricia winked at him.

“More’s the pity,” as she and Caroline left for the garden and warming up exercises.

“Scott… what’s a bionic wang?”

“It’s a 24/7, self-sustaining piston drive unit, never happen, Major.”

“Ah.” He replied and ingested caffeine gratefully.

After breakfast, Caroline took Svetlana off to the RAF station for a briefing, equipment fitting and then a one hour flight in the F-117X Nighthawk; the last half hour was a ground hugging flight across the Highlands.

The cockpit ‘windows’, as Svetlana thought of them, were lined with transparent plasma screen material. She was amazed at the information the screen held for the pilot. Whatever information was programmed into the system could be displayed there. Whatever the satellites, AWAC, JSTARS or its own sensors saw was projected on the screen as a symbol with range and speed below.

Too far away to see with the naked eye, an RAF Nimrod was heading in to Kinloss and the range to it counted down. Using the side stick Caroline banked to the left and the Nimrod’s symbol crabbed sideways until it reached the trailing edge of the right hand screen where an arrow icon appeared, pointing aft.

The Nighthawk’s own data was also projected but there was nothing new in that. The whole set-up gave the pilots ‘at a glance’ information without having to lose situational awareness by looking down at instruments.

If Svetlana thought this was standard for all Nighthawks, Caroline did not disabuse her of that impression; the system still had some bugs in it that needed to be ironed out before the rest of the F-117A fleet could be upgraded.

This was the R&D unit's testbed airframe, pressed into operational service for the upcoming mission, losses in the F-117A wing were mounting and by using this Nighthawk it spared the loss of another of its Nighthawks, however temporarily.

They crossed the Moray Firth at wavetop height heading northwest and then lifted to clear Kinnairds Head and drop down the other side to skim across Dornoch Firth.

Caroline’s voice sounded in her ears.

“Look… no hands!”

Her eyes smiled at Svetlana above the oxygen mask as the Nighthawk’s navigation computer flew it towards the first pre-programmed waypoint.

The Nighthawk banked steeply to the left and the land closed in on either side as they entered the mouth of the River Shin. The river curved between high ground until they were heading almost due north and the river widened out into the lake of the same name.

They turned back onto a northwesterly course to fly the length of the lake.

Ben More Assynt loomed over their port wing as they reached the head of the lake and their next waypoint.

This far north into the North West Highlands the weather had changed, cloud hid the top of Ben Hope which was dead ahead as they cleared the mountains to the north of the Shin.

Turning east they wound their way along valleys between the mountains before re-emerging over open water where the River Helmsdale emptied into the sea.

Back on the ground at RAF Kinloss, blonde and auburn hair bounced across shoulders as the girls walked laughing and talking animatedly with their arms around each other’s waist. An RAF Group Captain stared at them as they walked past him towards operations; their demeanour was hardly compliant with Queens Regulations or becoming that of anyone in uniform.

Svetlana read his look and returned his gaze with one that smouldered seductively before winking and blowing him a kiss.

Whatever the senior officer was going to say was lost as he blushed deeply and tripped over a kerb stone.

Max and Scott returned to London after breakfast leaving Patricia in the care of Constantine and the police firearms officers.

Pat was put through her paces with the collection of weaponry at the house. Neither American was expected to take any other role except protecting the aircraft on the ground, whilst the Russians obtained the location of their target. They had both qualified with handguns annually but that test did not include stripping and assembling the weapons in the dark or stoppage drills whilst both officers with stopwatches screamed into their ears that the boogieman was coming.

The following day, when Constantine and Caroline returned to the house after the major’s jaunt in the stealth fighter, he had chatted away all evening, having missed the experience of flying combat aircraft whilst performing attaché duties

The bunker where the leadership of the new Soviet Union had cosseted itself was built into the side of a mountain, expanding on the network of old mine shafts that had existed since before the late ‘50’s.

Unlike the bunkers in the West, this one contained all the elements of government under one roof, where the leader could keep an eye on them. Only the KGB chief was allowed to come and go, such was the premier’s conviction that she harboured no high personal ambition.

The Russian Premier's Praetorian Guard were the only armed personnel below ground, the army had a perimeter five miles from the entrance and the Guard had one 500m inside that, their guns pointed at the army.

Below ground they were posted in pairs, they were there to guard and intimidate. Outside the premier's office right now the two guards on his door were wincing inwardly, it wasn’t often the boss let his temper get away from him, but when it did blood got spilt.

A messenger from the communications centre had drawn the short straw in delivering the bad news to the premier. He had been drinking iced tea when she delivered the message form and now a cleaner was mopping up the trail of blood from the damage left by the glass smashed in her face.

Hurriedly doing up buttons, the army, navy and air force chiefs appeared from the direction of their sleeping quarters and entered the chamber; the premier was sat calmly at his desk as they did so.

“Premier?” queried Marshal Ortan, the army commander.

The Russian premier held out the message form in reply, the marshal took it and noted the blood smears before reading.

“NATO has used nuclear weapons, atomic mines, in the Atlantic and we no longer have contact with the submarine flotillas, gentlemen!” the premier told them. “I want to know what you products of Russia’s finest military academies are going to do about stopping the convoys from reaching Europe… and if you cannot, then how is this going to affect the land battle?” He could see he did not have the undivided attention of the Admiral of the Navy of the Soviet Union.

“Admiral Flota Sovetskogo Soyuza, Petorim… please do not stare off vacantly into the distance when I am talking to you!” Admiral Petorim was thinking of the two thousand plus sailors, and thirty irreplaceable hulls this failed operation had cost his country.

“Please excuse me premier… we have no further units that could fight through the blockade NATO has in place at the North Cape, not without a massive air effort in support of it. I have three first class reserve flotillas’ that is all; the remaining hulls are committed to essential coastal defence or on loan to the Chinese. If I reduce the coastal cover of first class hulls, I can use older vessels to replace them, it will give us between forty and fifty vessels.” He paused whilst he worked out details in his head.

“I do not believe such an operation could prevent the current convoys from arriving; however the next convoys left the United States and Canada this morning, with four more armoured and mechanised divisions on board, plus fuel and munitions of course. Their escort is far lighter than previously, we predict the warships approaching Europe now will turn about and meet them part way. If we can divert air assets from Germany to break the blockade at the North Cape… ”

“No!” stormed Marshal Ortan. “We need to pin NATO’s Germany based forces in place, so they cannot disengage before we strike them in the north. To do that properly I need aircraft to keep the pressure on!”

“General of Aviation, Sudukov… these are your assets we are talking about, can you perform both tasks?” the premier asked his air force commander.

“We do have several plans for such an event as the re-attacking of enemy warships at the North Cape, all the equipment required is in place should it become necessary. It would take a day to move the units back to Titovka and Pechenga, northwest of Murmansk. However, it will greatly reduce the support we are able to give to the army in Germany, both in the east and the north where the 6th Guards Shock Army will emerge out of Poland. One plan calls for heavy use of our stealth airframes, but the Tu-160 bombers have been reconfigured for rear area Spetznaz operations, it would be quicker to proceed with that mission than to stop and reverse the configuration. This of course means that we would need conventional fighter bombers to achieve the same aim. If we cannot stem the enemy supply lines then what happens on the ground will be academic anyway.” He paused for a moment.

“May I ask if we know how they located our submarines; do they have a satellite that can see below the waves?”

“There is no such technology yet, and if there were it could not work too well now. If they exploded a bomb under the sea then there is going to be a lot of cloud about for a while, only radar satellites will be any good… this would be a good time to start destroying their satellites. Before, it was not practical because of the number involved, that number has been effectively halved now as we need only target the radar satellites.”

“That is already in hand Admiral, please answer General Sudukov’s question.” The premier’s tone indicated his current lack of good humour.

“I would guess that they used their hunter/killer submarines to locate our submarines.”

“Now then, you will put into motion a plan to release our submarines into the Atlantic once more, to reduce the losses to our best submarines in the breakout; you will use older vessels in the first wave. In that way NATO will waste munitions and their submarines will betray their own positions to us. I want this plan put into action before the dawn… start withdrawing what you need from the battle in Germany tonight… do you understand?”

All three officers agreed, they had no choice but to do so.

“I have already spoken with Beijing, what killer satellites we have will begin launching from Baikonur cosmodrome in twelve hours, the People’s Republic has already begun. We will rob the west of their radar and then their communications… they have already blinded their optical surveillance satellites themselves. Now, I believe you have work to do, so… get out!”

The breeze was still as feeble and fitful as it had been for the past few days and the 60’ ketch barely made steerageway. Behind the old sailing vessel were towed a Gemini, three open one man life rafts and a larger inflatable raft with a domed top to keep out the elements.

Fishing was the principle activity onboard; seeking to add to the supplies which would have been adequate for the owners, Muriel and Eric but with four extra mouths to feed rationing was being enforced.

The day before Sandy and the Americans had been taken aboard; Muriel had heard the plaintive cries of the sole occupant of an open life raft. Had there been anything of a wind to speak of they would probably not have noticed it at all, but sound carries well across water and his hails were heard.

The sun had blistered Lt Fu Shen’s skin and his throat so parched that only a determined effort had made any sound come out at all, when he had seen the sail. If he had ever needed a distress flare then that had been the time, but he had used them all signalling the ships of his own combat group, ships that had ignored them and him as they had forged past.

Being fluent in English is a requirement for most pilots but not for lieutenants in the PLAAF who are unlikely to speak to ATC in any country but mainland China; however the young lieutenant had acquired the essentials of his own volition. Learning a foreign language as spoken by one’s own countrymen is rather different to speaking it with a native and the pirated copy of the language tape he had purchased served only to confuse his ear further. Eric’s “Oye, Fu Man Chu… toss that bluddy gun over t’side, or I’ll brain yer!” did not factor in with the syntax contained in ‘Oxford English for Cantonese speakers’. The only clue he had as to what language was being spoken to him by the elderly man had been the Union Flag, called a Union Jack by the misinformed, that hung limp at the stern.

A comic mime act with the elderly Englishman gesturing at the 8mm handgun in Fu Chen’s shoulder holster, and shaking a boathook threateningly had got the message across eventually. Once the aviator had been helped aboard the Englishman’s wife had given him water and plastered a paste made from corn flour and water over his burnt areas of skin, before finally pressing on him fried pieces of potato between slices of bread, a ‘chip butty’ she had called it.

Returning to China or Russia and re-joining the Mao was the aviator’s dearest wish but he had no idea how to sail. A glance at the fuel gauge for the ketch’s small engine ruled out his motoring the small craft there, even if he could bring himself to overpower the elderly pair. They had undoubtedly saved his life and they were in their twilight years, which demanded respect.

The war had interfered with the couple’s plans to sail up the coast to the Bering Straits and then south along the western coast of North America. Their first planned landfall on the Russian continent was to have been at Ust’-Kamchatsk, but the BBC world service had changed their minds for them and they had altered course for Midway.

Coming across the Fleet Air Arm pilot and US Navy aviators had greatly taxed the limited stores of fresh water and food. Chubby had an idea about solving the water crisis, but told them all about it without thinking it through properly.

“What if we fill a sail bag with sand and urinate in it… the sand will filter out the impurities!”

Muriel had looked at Chubby and then back to her husband with a knowing smile.

“And where did that daft idea come from, young ‘un?” Eric asked him.

“I think I read it somewhere.”

“Do you see a beach anywhere you daft bugger… where does the sand come from?”

“Chubby mate, it might have been a good idea for you to select ‘brain’ before engaging ‘mouth’.” Sandy said with a laugh.

“Now just one minute fella… ”

Eric had left the tiny cabin muttering under his breath.

“Soft ha’puth.”

Nikki spent a lot of time sleeping for the first two days but now the headaches that had accompanied wakefulness had faded.

The relationship between the Chinese aviator and the only survivors of the USS John F Kennedy and HMS Prince of Wales had been distinctly chilly at first until Fu Chen had alleviated the water problem for them by using bowls and pans from Muriel’s little galley, along with dustbin bags and seawater.

The westerners had watched curiously on deck as he had filled the pans from the sea, floated empty bowls in them and carefully sealed the lot in the bin bags before arranging depressions in the top of the bags. The seawater evaporated leaving the salt behind in the pans and condensed on the inside of the bags where it ran down the sides to collect in the bottom or drip off the depression into the bowls floating in the pans.

Eric was grudging in his praise toward any foreigner’s ideas, but as he examined the solar stills he actually smiled at the lieutenant and nodded.

“You’ll do.”

Eric did not have a lot of time for officers either, no matter what their nationality.

“Useless buggers the lot of ‘em,” had been his indictment of those he had served under in the Lancashire Fusiliers and later in the Royal Army Service Corps. He had little time for women in uniform either; he related to Nikki how he had got into trouble for swearing at his female pupils as a driving instructor in the RASC.

“Lorries,” as he termed trucks. “Are no place for bluddy women.” However, when Chubby had related how she had shot down at least nine enemy fighters and bombers he had softened considerably.

An aircraft had buzzed them during the night, stooging around for several minutes before departing. They had only been able to hear the sound of its engines but had no doubt that it belonged to the enemy. What they did not know was that the Border Guard An-72 had looked them over through a lo-lite TV and seen the flag of Great Britain on her stern. The only thing that had saved their lives was the ordnance the aircraft carried.

The P-21 Termit R anti-shipping missiles that NATO calls the Styx 2D, would not lock-on to the small wooden vessel and the Antonov had turned for home after reporting the ketch as being a ‘probable spy ship’.

HMS Hood had abandoned her search and was headed for Pearl Harbour when her sonar department picked up the sound of trouble ahead, in the form of a nuclear boat on a sprint. It took just two minutes to get an idea as to what they were up against

“Captain… classify Sierra five one as Han Class, SSN. Bearing now two zero one degrees, course one two eight… speed twenty-six knots.”

Traffic traversing the ocean had dropped to virtually nil since the start of the conflict. What shipping there was hugged the coast, where they could dash for cover if threatened by a surface vessel and where submarines were least likely to venture.

It was the first PLAN submarine they had yet encountered. The People’s Liberation Army Navy had five of the Han nuclear attack boats and one was known to be laid up with reactor plant problems, which left four unaccounted for.

The captain was well aware that the PRC had only one SSBN, or a ‘boomer’ in submariner’s parlance, carrying submarine launched ICBM missiles. Normal practice for the PLAN was to have two Hans escorting the sole Xia class SSBN boat when it was on a cruise, and after their attack on the carriers the captain would have put money on one of the Hans being with the carrier screen now. Was this Han off hunting on its own, or was it part of the Xia escort?

If it remained on its present course it would pass twenty thousand yards to their south, so the question was what was it stalking or was it just a forward scout for the boomer.

“Captain, aspect change on the Han, she’s slowing sir”

They listened whilst the Chinese attack boat crept up to periscope depth where it remained only briefly before returning to its former depth and speed.

“How long was his last sprint?” he asked.

“We had him for thirty-one minutes sir.”

“Okay then… let’s take us up slowly and have a look at what he sees… call out the moment you pick up another aspect change.”

“Aye, aye sir… making our depth sixty feet.”

The Hood’s ESM mast peeped above the waves to check the coast was clear before the periscope followed and the captain performed a 360 with it above the horizon in a visual check for aircraft before lowering the angle, making a complete sweep for surface craft. He did this setting the magnification at its lowest and then increasing it with each rotation, before pointing it down the bearing the Han had gone for a more detailed look. The surface of the ocean was barely moving, giving him a continuous view unobstructed by high waves but the sun was in his eyes. After observing either side of the bearing he was none the wiser as to what had caught the Han’s attention. A camera within the periscope assembly automatically recorded what the captain pointed the scope at, sending the images to videotape so that they could replay it at slow speed later on.

“Down periscope… nothing,” he told the Number One.

The video footage was played over in slow motion; digital effects enhanced the picture by filtering out some of the glare but they still saw nothing but sea and sky.

“Okay, raise the radar mast, one sweep only.”

Both officers watched the screen and saw the tiny blip, which they concluded came from a vessel just over the horizon.

“Could be the radar reflector on the mast head of a small ship?” suggested the captain before ordering the radar and ESM masts retracted.

“If… that radar trace is what they are after, and I was the Han’s captain I might be inclined to have the sun behind me when I took a closer look at it, perhaps that is what he is planning to do?”

The Han passed directly below the ketch, coasting past at eighteen knots as the speed bled off from her last sprint. Being 600’ feet down none of the occupants of the ketch were aware of her presence.

Muriel was using up the last of the bread before it went off by making what Americans called jelly sandwiches, but in the north of England they are ‘Jam Butties’.

Lt Fu Chen and Chubby were sat with legs dangling over the side as they waited for some unsuspecting sea creature to take an interest in the bait on their hooks.

Sandy, Nikki and Eric were sat in the stern chatting. None of them noticed the ESM mast and periscope break the surface 300m away, the sun's glare from that direction provided perfect cover.

“Do we have a firing solution yet?” The Hood’s captain enquired.

“Setting it up now sir… safeguards set, they won’t go active until they’ve cleared the sailing vessel.”

The First Lieutenant looked hard at his captain.

“Are you sure this is wise sir… if we track the Han it might lead us to a boomer?” They now knew that the surface contact was a ketch flying the Union Flag, having taken another look when they closed with it.

“If they do nothing other than look the ketch over then we will indeed track it, but if they open their bow doors… although that would be a criminal waste of a torpedo for them, or if they surface… then we will attack.”

The Han could mount an 18mm automatic cannon on the conning tower, if the vessel surfaced it was odds on that the ketch would be sunk by gunfire.

“Those are British citizens aboard that boat, and the last time I heard, our job was still to protect them from all enemies”.

The Hood’s bow doors had been opened whilst the Han was coming to the end of its last sprint, Spearfish within the tubes were now programmed to run dumb and at 40’ below the surface until past the ketch, after which time they would go active. The control wires would be cut immediately after the launch and the doors shut for the reloading of the tubes whilst the Hood prepared to avoid return fire from the Han.

With the wires cut the Hood would be at risk from her own Spearfish if the Han managed to avoid them first time out, because the torpedoes would manoeuvre and re-attack, anything they detected whilst they sought to reacquire would be in-play.

Two Chinese ratings lugged the 52lb cannon through the narrow confines of the Han whilst two more young ratings dragged a long ammunition box containing a belt of fifty high explosive and armour piercing cannon shells. The sound of the ammunition box being dragged across the steel deck was loud within the hull, especially when it crashed down again having been pulled through a hatchway.

The sonar men aboard the Hood heard the racket and informed the captain.

“Standby everyone… I’m not sure what this means but if she’s going to surface we’ll wait until she blows her tanks, they may not hear us.”

The Han’s periscope disappeared, to be replaced by a radar mast that immediately started radiating.

Lt Fu Chen reeled in his line and hauled aboard a 4lb fish, which he clubbed and dumped into a bucket at his side before baiting the hook and casting out his line again.

Muriel emerged from below decks and began handing out the sandwiches.

Air roared into the Han’s ballast tanks displacing seawater, which was vented back into the ocean.

Chubby and Fu Chen stood up and like everyone else on-board they shielded their eyes and squinted against the sun's glare as the sound reached them.

The sound of air filling the Chinese attack boat’s ballast tanks initiated a flurry of orders from the Hood’s captain. Officers and crewmen repeated his orders aloud as they swiftly carried them out.

“Fire one… fire two!”

“One fired sir… Two fired sir!”

“Cut the wires… flood Q… take us down four hundred feet … close bow doors and reload one and two… twenty knots!”

Great bubbles of air boiled to the surface as the big ballast tank known as the Q filled with seawater, removing neutral buoyancy.

“Q flooded sir… making our depth four hundred feet!”

“Aye, aye sir… making turns for twenty knots, aye sir!”

“Bow doors closed captain!”

“Cox’n?”

“Aye, sir!”

“Bring us round to a heading of two eight five degrees!”

“Aye, aye sir… coming left to two eight five degrees, sir.”

“Close all watertight doors… standby countermeasures!”

Heavy hatch doors were slammed closed and secured as the Royal Navy vessel began to pick up speed and turn to port.

The Han broke the surface, within moments figures appeared on the conning tower and aboard the ketch they could see her large dark shape silhouetted against the morning sun, black and shiny with seawater still streaming off her casing. They clearly heard orders being shouted and the sound of a heavy weapon being cocked.

As the noises caused by the vessel surfacing diminished, the Han’s senior sonar rate heard the sound of high-speed screws, rapidly growing in volume and then the first Spearfish struck, angling up from below to impact just above the keel.

The sound of the explosion and the sea bursting skywards had them all ducking for cover, Muriel screamed and Eric put his arms protectively around her. The Han split in two just aft of her conning tower and both severed ends were raised clear of the water just as the second torpedo struck the bow.

The effects of the second torpedo hitting were even more spectacular than the first as it set off the Han’s own torpedo warheads, tearing the forward section asunder. Jagged metal whipped outwards from the explosion; some splashed into the ocean short of the ketch, some beyond it.

With a splintering sound the top ten feet of the mainmast crashed down, amputated by flying shrapnel and bringing the sail, now peppered with holes, down like a shroud. The Han’s starboard bow plane, torn free of its mounting was sent spinning skywards. Measuring 10’x 6’ it arced across the space between the vessels and slammed into the ketch 5’ from the bow and removed it cleanly, the ocean rushed in and the old vessel immediately began to settle.

Tied to the stern rail where they were being towed along was the collection of life rafts and the ketch’s own Gemini. One of the one-man rafts was rapidly losing its rigid shape, holed by shrapnel from the Chinese attack submarine.

Eric opened a locker and pulled at the Gemini’s outboard motor, Nikki helped him lift it as Sandy hauled on the painter, pulling it up to the stern.

Fu Chen ducked into the cabin and was soaked from the waist up as he emerged from below decks with a three-gallon container, ¾ full of fresh water carried in one hand and a box containing a jumbled collection of food stuffs under his other arm, which he handed over the stern to Eric. Muriel and Nikki were in the Gemini where Nikki was attaching the outboard motor, whilst Sandy was kneeling in one of the one-man rafts and holding on to the side of the Gemini and the stern rail.

Eric shouted to the Chinese aviator, gesturing at another locker where the lieutenant retrieved a five-litre petrol can and was in the act of stepping over the stern when he stopped.

“Chubby?”

Nikki looked around frantically and shouted her friend’s name.

Fu Chen suddenly looked back towards where they had been fishing, and passed the can to Eric before dashing into the tangled folds of sailcloth, pulling the material away.

Chubby appeared to be sat down looking out to sea when Fu Chen uncovered him. The Chinese aviator spoke loudly in rapid fire Cantonese and grabbed the RIO’s left forearm but the American did not move. Chubby had a peaceful look on his face and both hands were resting on the jagged end of a 6” wide shard of submarine casing that had pinned him to the side of the cabin through his sternum. Blood soaked the young American’s flight suit from the chest down.

Stepping astride the aviator’s legs Fu Chen crouched and looked into the lifeless eyes, before bracing his legs and pulling hard on Chubby’s arms. Such was the damage to the American; he pulled him free without too great an effort and stooped to lift him onto his shoulder before he carried him to the stern rail. The water was almost level with the deck as he passed him across and untied the painters.

A half-hour later the Hood’s ESM and periscope appeared, to be followed after a few minutes by the conning tower and upper hull as she rose to the surface, less than 50m from the collection of inflatables.

Despite initial protests from a couple of ratings the body of the young aviator followed the survivors below the casing where the contents of Chubby’s pockets were placed in a plastic envelope before his body was sealed into a body bag.

HMS Hood sank below the waves to egress the area, leaving only empty life rafts, oil and the detritus of war at sea, bobbing on the surface.

A long way east of HMS Hood, the USS Nimitz led the centre column of ships that were making a high speed crossing of the South Pacific.

5th (US) Mechanised Division and a small number of British troops, plus equipment, accompanied them aboard the merchant ships that were strung out in three parallel columns.

Sgt Rebecca Hemmings stood at the stern rail of the New Zealand merchantman Rotorua Princess, and although her eyes were open they saw nothing of the view before her. Bloodshot and red-rimmed from three days and nights of tears gave her a haunted look.

She had managed to telephone her parents when the Queen Elizabeth’s Combat Team had arrived in San Francisco only to find that her parents were a lot more up to date with world events than she. Her parents had assumed that she had already been informed that her husband was listed as missing, believed killed, along with everyone else aboard the Royal Navy surface combat ships in the Prince of Wales group.

Lt McMarn of the Royal Green Jackets had been waiting in line to use the telephone; her cry had silenced the chatter of others waiting their turn.

He had led her back to her dormitory in the transit barracks and collared a JNCO to fetch the REME detachment Commander from the BOQ, as the Americans called their Officers Mess.

They had offered to arrange priority air travel back to the UK but the sergeant had refused. She was thousands of miles from home and family so she elected to stay with her friends and alternative family, her unit.

Heck went to the British Consulate at 1 Sansome Street in the city, and informed them of the unit’s location. He requested the MOD be informed of the unit’s current disposition and stated that unless he received orders to the contrary they would begin boarding the ships with the US Division in four hours.

The convoy was two days out of San Francisco when he was summoned to the cabin of Major General Thackery, Commander of the beefed up division that was enroute to Brisbane.

Foot drill in the British Army differs in many ways from that employed by the armed forces of the United States of America. British soldiers describe their cousin’s drill as being akin to the soft-shoe-shuffle and Heck discovered the US Army’s opinion of the Brits’ martial style ten seconds after being admitted to the division commander’s presence.

Captain Hector Sinclair Obediah Wantage-Ferdoux, 1st Royal Tank Regiment stepped into the cabin, took a half pace forward with his left foot, pulled the foot back sharply and bent his right knee until the thigh was parallel with the ground and drove the right foot in beside the left with a resounding crash.

Having thus halted and assumed the position of attention he saluted smartly, it impressed the divisional Commander, but not favourably.

“Jesus H Christ on a muvaluvinbroomstick, boy!” exclaimed the general officer as he frantically grabbed at his cup and coffeepot on a table before him. A spoon danced out of the saucer and hit the cabin’s deck with a clatter. A jug of cream tipped over, and a second cup hit the deck and shattered.

“Does this look like Buckingham Palace boy?” the General enquired in a slightly quieter tone. “Well does it?”

As tempting as it was to have pointed out to the general that ‘Buckingham’ was in fact one word, and not the two ('Bucking' and 'Ham') that the American had used, and he wisely remained silent.

‘Duke’ Thackery regarded the British captain who was stood rigidly at attention and staring fixedly at an invisible point on the bulkhead. He was about to say ‘at ease’ but stopped himself; he didn’t want his table bouncing a foot into the air again.

“So you’re Obi-Wan, huh?”

“It is but a nickname, sir.” Heck replied without looking at the general.

“Okay young Captain… make like a sloppy civilian and shuffle on over here without wrecking the joint again.”

Heck relaxed and walked over to the chair that General Thackery was indicating.

Duke refilled his coffee cup.

“I would offer you coffee,” the General said. “But someone just broke the second cup.”

Heck smiled apologetically but remained silent.

“Do you know, The Honourable Winston Smithers, Captain?”

“No sir, I do not.”

“Well, he sure as shit knows you!”

Withdrawing a fax from a stack of papers on a desk to his left, the General continued.

“The Honourable Smithers is the British Consul in San Francisco; he states that he sent a messenger with a letter for you two hours before we began boarding. He says here that he was unable to get a definitive response from London, so his letter ordered you to remain in San Francisco with your people and equipment. He states that he also advised you in that letter, that he envisioned you would probably remain in San Francisco for some time until low priority transport could be arranged for your return to the U.K. He adds, ‘without your vehicles and equipment due to excessive cost of shipping’.” The General looked up from the page speculatively, but the Englishman said nothing so he continued.

“The letter was apparently resealed in the same envelope, the consulate’s address scrawled on the bottom, and on the back the words ‘Return to sender, address not known, no such number… ”

“No such zone.” Heck finished the sentence for him and added. “Elvis had such a way with lyrics, don’t you think sir?”

“You might at least have put a godammed stamp on the thing when you posted it; he sounds pissed at having to cough up the postage."

“Sir,” Heck began. “Small as it is, my detachment is a combat unit of the British Army… my people are soldiers, not troublesome tourists who lost their passports. Our vehicles go where we go; they don't get left on the dock to rust away.”

The General waved the fax.

“If you had been a candy-ass, young captain, I’d have thrown your ass in the brig for this… .but you’ve got fighting spirit. But I have to be honest with you, if the Australians haven’t got ammunition that your tanks can use, then I’ve little use for your Challengers … you’ve got sixty rounds per tank, two engagements worth if you’re lucky… after that you’re battlefield replacements for my people.” He looked hard at the troop commander. “What do you suggest I say to the Honourable Gentleman in reply, Captain? He wants your nuts on a stick.”

“With all due respect sir, tell him to stuff himself because we are off to play with our mates.”

Duke Thackery laughed and screwed up the fax. “That’s not a very diplomatic way of putting it… get the hell out of here and leave it to me.”

Heck stood and saluted before striding to the cabin door.

“Oh, Captain!”

Heck removed his hand from the door handle and turned back.

“Sir?”

The General stood and returned a quick salute.

“If you get booted out of the army for this, may I suggest that you do not go into politics?”

“Politics sir… good lord, no. One couldn’t possibly stand the strain of being so insufferably right all the time!”

At 45,000’ above Germany this night, eighteen Tu-160 stealth bombers carried eight Spetznaz troopers apiece in their bomb bays rather than explosive ordnance. The troopers’ individual heated cocoons had been jury rigged along with the oxygen supply. Team Five’s leader had her knees drawn up to her chest, in an effort to keep warm.

Far below them, the NATO army’s withdrawal to a line that ran from Wismar on the Baltic coast, along the Elbe and Saale rivers to the Danube, had displaced over a million people who were fleeing west.

The unadvertised and sudden pulling back beyond Berlin had taken most unawares and unprepared, those citizens of Berlin who had been too slow or disbelieving to act, now had new masters.

Autobahns and roads that were banned to all civilian traffic had seen riots at some intersections. In one ugly incident, an American Military Policeman had been shot to death by a handgun wielding investment banker in a Porsche. The banker had been alone in the car, having left his wife asleep and driven in early for work. On seeing the troops pulling out he’d chosen to carry right on driving west. When bribery failed to get him onto the autobahn he’d resorted to murder which got him 10km further westward, driving at 120mph along the hard shoulder as he’d torn past NATO vehicles. At the next intersection was another Military Police TP (Traffic Post) where the colleagues of the murdered policeman had been alerted by radio. The Porsche was travelling too fast to stop if they had waved it down, perhaps the MPs tried, and then again perhaps they didn’t. Crews of the vehicles heading west to the new defence line turned their heads to look at the debris trail and mangled wreckage that had resulted from a single short burst from an M-60 machine gun.

Team Five’s leader acknowledged an intercom message and switched on her own oxygen supply contained in a chest rig, before disconnecting from the Tupelov’s. As the aircraft began to circle she activated her suit's heating system and waited until she felt it take effect, the battery supply for it would only last thirty minutes at these temperatures so she hurried. Struggling from her cocoon into the limited space of the bomb bay she opened the cocoons occupied by her subordinates. The cold was a bitter, bone penetrating thing that sought to switch off the human body from the extremities inwards, despite their thermal clothing.

The fourth and fifth cocoons she opened revealed dead troopers, one male and one female, the oxygen supply to the first had failed, whilst the woman had frozen to death somewhere over the Baltic when her cocoon’s heating system had failed, the cold had sent her into a sleep from which she had never awoken.

The six surviving Spetznaz troopers attached their equipment, parachute harnesses and weapons rolls before securing the cocoons. Explosive and other equipment from the dead trooper’s loads were divided up amongst the living.

There was nowhere to secure the bodies of their comrades and equipment so they were placed on the aft end of the bomb bay doors. At a command from the team leader the Tupelov’s pilot throttled back and pulled back the nose to +10’.

At 60 knots above stall, the bay doors opened briefly before closing again and the pilot lowered the nose to –10’, opening the throttles once more to gain airspeed before turning for home.

As rehearsed, the team immediately diverged when dropped into space, putting distance between themselves and comrades with whom a mid-air collision would likely be fatal in the pitch dark.

Tumbling away toward the earth, the bodies and equipment of their dead colleagues would fall into a wood and open farmland a half kilometre apart.

Solid cloud cover prevented them seeing anything of the ground below them; the blackout meant that there was no glow through the cloud that might indicate the street lighting of urban areas.

In a clearing within the Teutoburg Forest, a radio beacon switched rapidly between frequencies as it transmitted, preventing counter-intelligence efforts from recognising it as such and obtaining a fix on its location, or that of the seventeen others that were transmitting.

The team stayed in free-fall until the first wing shaped canopy opened at 11,000’, the remaining canopies opened at 500’ intervals after that.

Steering in ever decreasing circles, guided by their instruments they entered the cloud one by one.

The only lights visible anywhere were those of a few scattered refugees’ campfires as the leader emerged through the cloud’s base. She aligned her canopy in the direction her receiver told her the beacon was and turned a switch on the receiver’s side. A strobing light appeared far below and slightly to her right but she raised her goggles to check and she could no longer see it with the naked eye. Satisfied, she lowered the goggles back into place and the light reappeared.

She was gathering up the folds of her canopy amidst young ferns at the edge of the clearing, when the next member of the team landed beside the beacon, coming to a halt after a half dozen running steps. The team member immediately vacated the centre of the clearing as she had done, moving inside the trees with the canopy in his arms.

Working in silence the leader stripped off her parachute harness, chest rig, goggles, oxygen mask and outer garments. She withdrew a radio headset and swing mike, a pair of night goggles and associated power pack from her equipment bag and put them on before replacing her helmet, but she did not acknowledge the second team member when he collected her discarded items. Aided by his own goggles he placed her chute and discards with his own, before unfolding an entrenching tool and enlarging the cavity made by the roots of a fallen tree. At roughly thirty second intervals the team members landed in the clearing and added their gear to the growing pile beside the hole. Not a word was spoken by any of them as they went through well-practised drills, making the minimum of noise as they did so.

Fifteen minutes after the last member was down the entrenching tool was put away and the team members lined up behind the leader who finished plugging in her headset and adjusting the harness attached to her weapon. After a quick radio check to ensure all their short-range radios were sending and receiving, she led them off into the depths of the forest.

After twenty minutes they neared the site of an old, disused quarry and stopped. An electronic sweep of the air was made for anything untoward within a two-mile radius. If a radio or mobile phone had even been switched on then they would have known about it. In pairs, four of the team made a physical sweep, circling the area outside the quarry before approaching it, now satisfied that no GSG9 ambush lay in wait. They entered not from the track that led to it, but from the quarry’s lip, one pair abseiling to the ground whilst the other pair took up firing positions.

Working rapidly but with as much care as time allowed, the pair in the quarry searched for bombs and booby-traps before giving the all-clear forty minutes later.

The team leader crossed the quarry floor and entered a solidly constructed concrete building set against the rock wall of an older, worked-out section of the quarry. The heavy steel doors that bore the standard warnings about smoking near high explosives were open and she entered, walking to the rear wall where a false wall of prefabricated steel had been removed, revealing a chamber hewn from the rock. The first pair of troopers had already removed the dust covers from the vehicles within, after ensuring the German security services had not discovered, and then booby-trapped the quarry and its contents.

The pair of vehicles started first time, and they drove from the quarry, stopping briefly to collect their sentries who had recovered the climbing rope and made their way to the track.

One hour’s drive brought them to a slope overlooking the autobahn E73 and the British military police post which controlled that section of it. They were two troopers short of the planned contingent but they adjusted their roster accordingly and once the vehicles were camouflaged their OP regime began and they obtained communications with other teams via mobile phone.

Colonel General Alontov waited for the T-80 battle tank to come to a full stop before approaching it. The tank commander was grinning broadly as he removed his helmet and hoisted himself from the out of the turret’s hatch to clamber down the side of the turret and jump down beside Serge. They clapped each other on the shoulders and hugged.

“It is so good to find you still in one piece comrade colonel general!”

They were stood in the street outside the apartment store that Serge had moved his headquarters to from the hotel, armoured vehicles of the 6^th Guards Shock Army moved past them as other vehicles from 11^th Guards Tank Regiment's command element drew up behind their regimental commanders ‘vehicle.

As much as SACEUR would have liked to have pounded on the Russian’s in the city and its suburbs more thoroughly, his air and artillery assets were fully committed in assisting all his units break contact. The Czech 2^nd Shock Army and Russian 4^th Guards Shock Army to the east, and the Russian parachute brigade around Leipzig airport had been dissuaded and prevented from exploiting his unit’s vulnerability in their tricky disengagement manoeuvres.

6^th Guards Shock Army had thundered through Poland unopposed, occupying Berlin before it slowed, allowing the 2^nd Czech and Russian 4^th Guards Shock who had bypassed Leipzig in pursuit of the NATO units that had opposed them in the east, to also attempt to cut off the NATO forces withdrawing from the north.

NATO’s northern units slipped away before the manoeuvre could be completed, and the 6^th continued its journey south, occupying other towns and cities bypassed by the preceding armies.

As the relieving tank regiment's vehicles passed through their lines, Serge Alontov’s airborne division’s soldiers abandoned their positions and began moving to assembly points. They had two days now in which to reorganise and reconstitute before their next combat drop.

‘Amateurs talk tactics whilst Professionals practice logistics’, is a term used often in military colleges and academies around the world.

The practice of an army needing to forage for its own food didn’t work very well even three thousand years ago, when supply needs were more basic, before a QM (Tech) was necessary. It did little to win the hearts and minds of the citizens being liberated or conquered/incorporated or generally being put upon by transient foreign armies enroute from their own turf to someone else’s. It often meant that starving soldiers fell victim to dysentery and disease, the trail of wasted and diseased bodies beside the road pointing the way that the army had gone.

Rome had the problem sussed out, although they probably stole the idea from the Persians who in turn had copied it from China. A logistics corps to follow the army, and set up the supply depots to keep the bread and arrows coming.

In the area of Germany known as Westphalia, south of the River Weser lies the Teutoburg Forest, where Roman expansion came to a crashing halt forever. Ten thousand veteran legionnaires and twenty thousand Roman citizens were slaughtered, and their bodies nailed to tree trunks in the Teutoburg Wald. However, it was poor leadership rather than supply problems that caused their end in that case.

In more modern times that area became the stamping ground of BAOR, the British Army of the Rhine during the Cold War, and a smaller presence by the British still remains.

Running southwest/northeast through the area is Autobahn E73, which had become the key MSR, the abbreviated way of saying Main Supply Route in military terms. The MSR is the artery that supplies the troops and in the British Army, as with most, the task of reconnoitring possible supply routes, organising harbour areas, detours, POL points (petrol, oil and lubricants), signing the route and controlling the traffic on it, falls to the military police.

Traffic Posts (TP’s) are set along its route at critical points, where progress is reported and ‘pointsmen’ on traffic control wave their arms about an awful lot in all weathers.

Part of the daily routine is ‘route maintenance’, traversing the area of responsibility to replace stolen or missing route signs, ensuring none of the signs are altered by Fifth Columnists, and ‘thickening up’ by adding additional route signs in among the existing ones.

At only section strength in each location, the Redcaps still had to ‘stag on’ along with their other duties, providing local defence from attack on the ground and warning of air attack on the MSR and their own locations.

352 Provost Coy, RMP (V) had travelled from their south London TA centre two weeks before, following route signs placed by another reservist Royal Military Police company. The company had arrived at Harwich where the Royal Navy had transported them aboard the LST, Sir Richard de’ Aquitaine to Zeebrugge where they had driven their long wheel base Landrovers off the tank deck and down the LST’s ramp on to Belgian soil, or rather concrete. Immediately upon arrival they had driven to the German frontier, stopping only to refuel and change drivers.

352 Provost Coy’s war role was that of signing the MSR from the frontier as far as Hanover, where they handed it off to the MPs of the US Army. Until the fall of the Warsaw Pact it had been a role they had practiced every year, as NATO went through the annual motions of reinforcing Europe and resoundingly defeating the Red Army just prior to the scheduled ‘Endex’. Twelve years on from the last time the company had done this there were few soldiers remaining within its ranks with experience in the task.

The military route signs consisted of black boards, and the name of the particular route would either be a three-letter word printed in white, for axial routes travelling between the front and rear area, or a simple symbol — such as a square or circle — for the routes travelling laterally across the theatre of operations White arrows on a black background indicated the direction if travel to the drivers.

Before the first convoys reached the front, thousands of these boards had to be attached to 3’ steel pickets that were hammered into roadside verges or attached to trees and street furniture with wire ties. In the instruction given to young soldiers in how to correctly sign a route they are told to tilt the sign forward a degree or ten, to prevent its being read from the air, which sounds fine in theory and works for those signs on pickets, but just try it on a lamppost, a street sign or a tree.

Back with 352 (V), in the first few days, mistakes had been made and bollockings delivered at all levels before the kinks had been ironed out, but not before one route signing party committed the greatest sin in signing, they screwed up their time appreciation for completing the task by failing to allow for mishaps. Three punctures and still five miles short of the planned release point, one of the signing party sighted the first convoy cresting a hill far behind. Half an hour later it crested another, much closer this time. The junior NCO in charge of the party grew more and more frantic, his people worked like Trojans but it was to no avail, the convoy caught up with them two miles from the release point. The commanding officer of the infantry battalion in the convoy was riding in a Landrover at its head; he stopped beside the RMP vehicle just long enough to obtain the name, regimental number and unit of the junior NCO in charge of the signing task. Then the convoy continued on with, of course, squaddies in the backs of the vehicles leaning out and jeering, derisively making the visual sign for ‘wankers’ as they did so. Fourteen days on and vehicles in the road convoys were running along ‘Nut’ route, ‘NUT (Up)’ with the supplies and reinforcements, then back along ‘NUT (Down)’ to the Belgian port of Zeebrugge to collect fresh loads.

No. 2 Section, 1 Platoon, 352 Provost Coy occupied a TP on ‘NUT’. The MSR at this point ran along Autobahn E73 near the British garrisons at Bielefeld and Gutersloh, where convoys were directed to the Bielefeld turn-off to refuel at the garrison’s POL point before continuing to the front or on to RAF Gutersloh, if that was the destination of their supplies.

On 7th April at 2315hrs, 19 year old Lance Corporal Simon Green was in his fifth straight hour on point duty. A trainee salesperson for a large chain of stores selling electrical goods in his civvy job, he had been in the Territorial Arm for eight months. Glancing at his watch he was gratified to see that he had only a mere forty-five minutes to go until he was relieved. His back ached from wearing his webbing, helmet and the SA-80 across his chest without a rest since 1800hrs. His feet hurt from standing on the hard surface of the autobahn, bearing the weight of all his kit, and his throat hurt from shouting instructions to drivers of stationary vehicles who leant out through their windows, smirking and cupping a hand behind one ear and shouting back

“What… what… can’t hear you mate?” whilst revving their engines. It hadn’t been funny the first time, and by the hundredth he just wanted to shoot the bastards in the face at the first utterance of “What?”

It was cold on the side of the autobahn, and a chilly breeze blew along the road unhindered by buildings or natural undergrowth. Hitler had emulated his ancient Roman heroes when he had ordered them built, they were primarily meant for use by his military to get from A to B as fast as possible, there were therefore few bends to act as windbreaks.

Traffic was fitful; nothing had come past for almost half an hour, which was a sure measure of how low supplies were getting for the NATO forces. The tall posts that carried lighting for the autobahn marched into the distance along the central reservation; it had been ten days since they had last been illuminated.

The location’s CP was a green canvas tent, known to squaddies as a “Nine bee nine” because of its 9’ x 9’ dimensions, sat nearer the junction with a long wheel base Landrover backed up to one open side of it. Grey, thermal masking hessian sheet covered the vehicle and attached ‘nine bee nine’, over the top of which was a large camouflage net pegged out and propped up by poles in such a way as to break up its outline; nature hates a straight line. The whole caboodle occupied a gap in the hawthorn hedgerow that lined the autobahn, and at a glance it appeared as if the hedge was unbroken along its length. The camouflage was for the benefit of enemy aircraft rather than its ground forces, because the effect was spoilt somewhat by the countdown signs beside the autobahn that declared ‘TP 300’, then ‘TP 200’ and ‘TP 100’ until finally a larger sign stated ‘RMP TP’ along with a big arrow that pointed out the section of ‘hedge’ that was liable for income tax payments.

The section’s other two Landrovers were parked hard against the hedgerow, merging with it and similarly ‘cammed up’, as were the section's three trailers and motorbike.

The main reason for going to all the trouble of camming-up the TP’s on the MSR is mainly that it is good practice.

Via their surveillance satellites in low orbit, the enemy will not be craning their necks to see what is written on the signs placed by the signing parties; they can see that it is an MSR just by the weight of military traffic using it. No photo interpreter is going to spend hours looking for the well-camouflaged TP at the intersection either, because the 2000lb warhead on the medium range, vehicle launched missile that they may plan to drop on the intersection will take it out at the same time anyway.

Sgt Dick Bolding, the section commander of 2 Section was in the CP, using the military telephone network, with its cables laid below ground in the 1960s that followed the military route network throughout the country.

A large map against the inside wall of the CP had a fair amount of information over-written on its clear plastic cover, showing unit locations, routes and the like. A blanket was rolled up above it; ready to be dropped down should they have visitors who were not of the ‘need-to-know’ category. A second board followed the progress up and down ‘NUT’ of the ‘packets’ of vehicles in the convoys; this also had a blanket in place over it.

Once Dick had finished scribbling down details of the next expected convoy packets he replaced the telephone, donned helmet and webbing before picking up his weapon.

“I’m off to wake the next lot,” he informed his radio op and ducked through the two flaps that ensured the light from the Tilly lamp within did not show outside. On radio ‘stag’ in the CP was a twenty-one year old lance corporal whose civvy job was working in the control room of the London Ambulance Service at Waterloo. She was decoding a message that had been received from the company CP when the field telephone beside her rang.

“Yes Simon, they’re being woken now… no, no, yes… no I’m not sharing your sleeping bag… no, yes, no… and no I won’t go out with you when we get back to London either.”

At the other end of the phone Simon Green replaced the handset on the field telephone sat on the grass verge.

“Well what did she say then?” An equally young soldier of 352 Provost Coy, performing the role of roving sentry asked him.

“Yeah… she’s gagging for it!”

The distinctive humming sound of cross-country tyres on a road surface reached them and the sentry stepped back into cover whilst Simon stepped a few feet out onto the autobahn, switching on a hand-held lamp and displaying a red light for the oncoming vehicle.

Simon heard the vehicle engine sounds alter, there was more than one vehicle approaching them and they had seen his signal to stop.

The dark outlines of two Landrovers came to a stop beside the autobahn's grass verge, Simon saw both had posts attached to the sides with the old style hessian wrapped around the tops, concealing the blue rotating lamps that sat there.

He had forgotten to inform his CP by field telephone that vehicles were approaching, but he was tired and he was looking forward to climbing into his ‘maggot’ for a few hours. The occupants of the ‘rovers were obviously RMP too, and if it was officers coming to check up on them then Sgt Bolding would be grabbing him by the throat the moment they departed.

The occupants of the vehicles climbed stiffly from them, as if they had driven a long way, so Simon hoped they were nothing to do with them, just another unit passing through but then their drivers switched the engines off.

“Er… seven!” he stammered at the passenger of the lead vehicle, as that person opened the door and stepped out.

“Eight,” replied a female voice. Two hours before she had been laid down just at the other side of the hedge in the potato field beyond, listening to the loudly shouted challenge, and the reply from vehicle drivers, revving their engines to wind up the young military policeman. She had observed the pantomime performed twice, just to be sure that the pass-number of the day was ‘Fifteen’.

Dick stopped before he reached the other ‘rovers and their sleeping occupants when he heard the two new vehicles draw up and switch off their engines.

Dick’s ‘real job’ was that of a specialist firearms officer in the Met, and he was one of a fair number of serving policemen in his unit. He began to walk back to the CP and heard the dull double ‘phutt’ from within as his young radio operator was dispatched with two rounds in the side of her head. It was the tinkle of the spent cases bouncing off items inside the CP that alerted him to the fact that they were under attack.

Keeping low, and as quietly as possible Dick went back the way he had come and arriving at the first ‘rover he ducked under the camouflage netting and lifted the rear flap, reaching in to put his hand over the mouth of the first sleeping soldier, so as to awaken him quietly. A sixth sense told him that someone was behind him, and he began to turn when a hand clamped across his face, pulling his head back for the blade that drove into his throat and upwards into his brain stem.

For three hours Team Five and other groups took over the TP and three others like it, changing signs and diverting traffic along roads that went nowhere. At opportune moments they slapped delay charges under some vehicles on the convoys. It was an hour before dawn before NATO got wise, but by that time the Spetznaz teams had vanished

General Shaw accompanied Scott Tafler along the tunnel from the helipad where Marines challenged them five times before they gained entry to the President’s inner sanctum. It was the Chairman of the Joint Chief’s first journey out of his own hardened shelter since the day before the DC bomb

Sitting in the nearest thing to a comfortable armchair that the facility had, the President waved a hand at them without turning from the screen before him

Seeing that he was talking with the First Lady, Henry Shaw led Scott to another room where members of the secret service detail were watching a video. Sat with them was the President’s chief scientific advisor, who came over to join them as they helped themselves to coffee.

General Shaw shook his hand warmly.

“Hello Joe, have you met Scott Tafler?”

“Ah, the author of operation Guillotine, has Henry here relayed my worries about it?” the CSA asked him.

Scott nodded.

“I knew nothing about Grease Spot, scary as hell… the General only mentioned that the after effects of that, combined with this new operation… and what the reds have been doing, is going to stay with us for a while.”

“I… knew nothing about Grease Spot either, until after the convoys were at sea. Using nuclear weapons in our environment is insanity, using them in the Atlantic… in the Gulf Stream at that… we may be left with a world where our grandchildren will believe that it was better had we surrendered.” The CSA was shaking his head from side to side as he spoke, it was clear to Scott that he was deeply perturbed.

Scott wanted to know more.

“Could it have a lasting impact, do you think?”

“There is no could about it young man, the next winter will arrive early and overstay its welcome. Take a look at a satellite photo of the Atlantic since the weapons detonated that is if the cloud cover clears… which may not be for weeks or months. There will probably be no summer worth speaking of this year. Millions of gallons of water were evaporated and flung into the stratosphere; millions of tons of silt were churned up. If you saw the Atlantic, it would be more brown than blue from space. I have no idea what that will do to the Gulf Stream… if, God forbidden, it has stopped its flow, then we will see a return of the glaciers, a new ice age.” He poured a coffee for himself before continuing. “Harvests all over the world are going to be affected by all these bombs going off, the dust is going to block sunlight and lower temperatures. It could be good news for the disappearing ice caps, but that is all!”

It was very overcast outside, as it had been in Scotland the day after Grease Spot. And as Scott thought about it, he got a sick feeling in his stomach because he was about to add to whatever lasting damage had been done.

His plan to take out the Russian leader had been put on hold until a workable plan came along to either eliminate the Chinese politburo, and their ICBMs.

The door opened and a secret service agent called them through, but the President was no longer in the war room. General Shaw and Scott followed the agent down another corridor and into what had probably once been a dining room for senior air force officers. It was large enough for a dozen people to sit in more comfort than any of the other rooms, and was now occupied by the President and six men with darkly handsome Asian looks; two were obviously from Southeast Asia.

All were in civilian clothes but two had military bearing and the President stood to make the introductions, but he introduced Scott as being an ‘aide’. Henry Shaw had met both of the soldiers at some time in the past, Lt Gen Rajendra Singh of the Indian Army and Lt Gen Jehangir Khan of the Pakistan Army. Henry knew also which branches of the military they represented, rocket artillery, but what surprised him was that they were both in the same room together, both countries were quite bitter enemies.

Neither he nor Scott had met either of the other men from the Indian sub-continent, whom the President introduced merely as “and these gentlemen are from India’s Research and Analysis Wing, and Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence.”

Between the long-time enemies, acting as diplomatic buffers, were two government ministers, George Ramirez, the Philippines Defence minister and his opposite number from Indonesia, Abdurrahman Suharko.

Hands were shaken and seats taken, but Scott was wondering what the hell was going on, two spooks and two soldiers from normally opposing sides, even if they were separated from direct contact with one another?

“Henry, Scott… allow me to bring you up to speed… as you can imagine, mainland China’s neighbours are somewhat concerned that their own national integrity, not to mention security are under threat from communist China. These gentlemen have come here today to assure me that they have not been sat on their hands over the last couple of weeks… the Philippines most certainly haven’t, as you know. With the definite exception of North Korea, all countries in Asia are solidly opposed to both the PRC and the new Soviet Union’s aims in this conflict… and they have formed an alliance, putting aside territorial and religious differences for the time being.

Not all the countries could be here… the PRC intelligence is very active and the sudden disappearance from each country of credible representatives would not have gone unnoticed.” The President gestured at a pile of official letters in front of him.

“These men speak for the countries of the region that are absent… Malaysia, Cambodia, Vietnam, Laos, Thailand, Bangladesh, and Brunei.”

Henry and Scott nodded in acknowledgement to the government men, but both wondered what was coming.

It was almost 4am before the meeting ended; the representatives of the different governments went straight to the helipad, taking advantage of the lack of surveillance satellites overhead at that moment.

Scott was feeling a little frazzled, and more than a little puzzled as to why he had been present.

The President was watching him quietly, letting all that had transpired to settle before enquiring.

“Mr Tafler, what did you make of all of that?”

“Well sir, I rather got the impression that they had already settled on a plan, no matter what we said here.”

Pointing at the letters that still lay on the table, the President nodded his agreement.

“I knew that the moment they produced the letters, no national leader worth his salt is going to let a third party… a foreign third party at that, plan their war for them. I was getting rather worried that the PRC had succeeded in having them looking at one another with distrust. The Chinese are probably one of the most arrogant and xenophobic races on the planet… ever, they would never share power with another rim nation, they are after an empire. I am just relieved that they all knew that.”

“But they will sit on their hands… ” said General Shaw, “… with the exception of the Philippines, until the nukes are taken out. We cannot fight a war in two theatres Mr President, we have to fight a holding action on one front and decisively win on the other, in order to free up those forces to go on the offensive on the other side of the world.”

“That, as they say… is the rub, but at least we have India and Pakistan to act as a back-stop if our operation in China goes wrong, we also have full cooperation from their intelligence services. Plus of course there is the added distraction they are staging, it could wrong foot the little bastards for once, have them looking the wrong way.”

“Sir, with regard to the ICBMs, we believe we will have a workable plan for you by tonight.” Henry Shaw informed him.

The President raised an eye.

“Run it by me now General.”

All the rooms, which the President visited, were wired for sound by the Secret Service, in this way they could monitor their principal’s security without being present, at times when visitors as they had just had, were in conference with him. It is only human nature to be guarded or less than candid in sensitive matters if there is someone hovering about whom the subject matter does not directly concern. So it wasn’t a coincidence that Mike entered as soon as the President asked the chairman of the joint chiefs to go over the plan.

The President sighed as Mike’s large frame filled the doorway.

“I guess its past my bedtime, so it will have to wait until later Henry. Are you guys staying here awhile, it is just like the Ritz… the bits that the paying guests never see!”

“Yes sir, we will be here until we get the green light on a plan.”

“Okay, see you later.”

Henry and Scott made their way to the sleeping quarters, where they found that they were bunking in the same tiny room.

“Why do they always make such a big thing, about who gets the top bunk in the movies?” Scott asked.

“Usually they’ve got it wrong,” Henry Shaw answered. “On the bottom bunk you don’t get the light shining in your eyes, and it is easier to make up in the morning so you get to the mess hall quicker… what rank were you in the National Guard, Scott?”

Scott laughed.

“PFC, eventually.”

The General’s eyes twinkled. “I’ll tell the cooks to keep your eggs warm then,” and claimed the bottom bunk.

Lt Col Reed instinctively ducked lower into his ‘maggot’ when the torch was shone onto his face.

“It’s zero four thirty sir… I got you some tea.” Sgt Major Moore drawled.

Phil Reed bowed to the inevitable and unzipped the bag from the inside, letting in the cold damp night air.

The American warrant officer moved back, allowing the British CO to roll out of the warm comfort of the sleeping bag.

“I’m told this is ‘NATO style’,” he said, handing over the mug.

The CO grunted as he took a sip. “Ah… hot, strong, a ton of sugar and evaporated milk instead of that dreadful powder, thank you Sarn’t Major.”

1CG and the 82^nd Airborne troops had arrived at their present position a little over a day and a half ago, digging in astride Autobahn 2 where it crossed the Elbe.

The river curved to the southeast before running south again, on their right flank, and on their left they had the Mitterland Kanal where it joined the river opposite the town of Hohenwarthe, on the east bank.

Lt Col Reed was not entirely happy with their position, true though that they had the Elbe to their front and right, the canal running east/west on their left, but a branch of the canal also ran behind them into Magdeburg.

The battalion and its attached units were effectively on an island surrounded by water and the bridge carrying the A2 over the canal to their rear was their only means of withdrawal. It was unlikely that the enemy would deliberately drop the bridge to the west, but accidents can happen.

The last NATO units withdrawing from positions around Berlin had passed through their position just before 9pm the previous day, US Army military police had been the very last to cross. Behind the MPs had been a horde of fleeing humanity, desperate to cross the river but the engineers orders were to blow it after the last MP vehicle reached the western bank.

Guardsmen and airborne troopers had tried to persuade the engineers to keep the bridge up until the enemy had appeared; to allow as many civilians to escape as possible, but the bridge had been blown as ordered.

The Autobahn’s bridge, like most post war bridges in Germany, had been built with demolition in mind, for an occasion such as this; cavities for demolition charges were built in to the design.

The first refugee had been 500m from the bridge when it had gone up, and once the rubble and dust cleared refugees stood on the shattered eastern ramp, staring silently at the safety of the western bank, now denied to them.

As the Major in command of the demolition team had pointed out, Spetznaz and fifth columnists were causing havoc with the lines of communication, and they just couldn’t take the chance that some of them were using the refugees as cover, to seize the bridge for their own forces to cross over.

Most of the refugees had moved on, trying to find other ways across but several hundred had camped out on the eastern bank, oblivious to the danger that they were in.

The refugees also posed a hazard to the security of the NATO troops still on the far bank, acting as a tripwire for enemy troops advancing ahead of the main force. The battalion had a listening post out, well dug-in and cammed up but several times refugees foraging for firewood had walked over the hide.

Big Stef was in the hide, just over a mile east of the river. His new partner was a battlefield replacement, a ‘stab’, stupid TA bastard at that, not even a Guardsman. Bill had green Velcro patches on his camouflage smock under his ghillie suit that were missing the ‘RMP’ flash that once sat there. It was bad enough that the man was a copper in civilian life without advertising his ‘weekend monkey’ hobby too, so the flashes were deep inside his bergen. Stef didn’t know how well Bill could shoot yet, he wasn’t entirely happy with the staff sergeant's field craft but to be fair he hadn’t had a lot of practice, and it did seem to be improving as old lessons were remembered. He did know that Bill was an SCO19 firearms instructor so he hoped the man could hit what he aimed at. The last crop of replacements had joined them during the final day at Leipzig airport. Most were ex-regs but there were a few from TA infantry regiments whose establishments rendered them too small to take the field as formed units so they were battlefield replacements. Bill was the only non-infantry wallah, posted in to bolster the under-strength sniper contingent.

Bill seemed pleasant enough, but Stef was no stranger to being on the receiving end of Queens Regulations, he didn’t like ‘monkeys’ much, as squaddies called the Redcaps.

Bill was the first to spot the Russian eight wheeled BTR-80A; it was taking advantage of the slope down toward the river to coast along the autobahn with its engine idling. Big Stef listened as Bill called in a real live fire mission for the first time in his service, and grudgingly accepted that it was faultless. Two and a bit minutes later the BTR-80’s, 280hp KamAZ-7403, engine roared as it propelled it backwards to escape the mortar rounds that had been called in.

“I think it’s time to foxtrot oscar, Bill.” Stef pushed away the turf and wood hatch at the rear of the hide, checking that the coast was clear before pulling himself out and reaching back in for their Bergens, which Bill passed up to him.

The sniper’s ghillie suits were lined with thermal suppressant hessian, this lowered their heat signatures rather than eliminated them completely, and the face and hands would still show up on a thermal imager. The strips of overlaid cloth, designed to break up recognisable shapes hung off them as they crawled toward dead ground that would give them cover from view from the autobahn.

They skirted a hastily erected refugee shantytown as they neared the river; it was spread along the fields bordering the river and had to be bypassed. Both soldiers walked quietly so as not to draw the attention of the refugees in their tents and brushwood and fertiliser bag shelters.

On reaching the bank they took cover whilst Stef called up the far side for a small assault boat to collect them. The mortar fire landing a mile away had roused the refugees who either made preparations to move on before the dawn or whispered in frightened tones to one another.

The sound of twin outboard motors got the attention of the refugees as the assault boat approached the eastern bank; it prompted a stampede toward the spot it was heading for.

“Oh, bugger… this doesn’t look good,” said Bill as he used his night goggles to try and work out which would arrive first, desperate civilians or their transport.

There was little doubt in either soldier’s mind that it could get ugly, pretty bloody quickly and they backed up to the water's edge with their weapons in their shoulders. As the assault boat reversed its engines to prevent its impact with the river bank, the leading knot of refugees got to within 30m of them and Stef fired a round above their heads. It stopped them all in their tracks, except for one woman who paused only momentarily. She had a bundle in her arms and the man next to him held a small boy, the couple were breathing heavily from the exertion of running. There was a rapid exchange of German between the couple and the man obviously didn’t want to relinquish the boy at first, but she spoke sharply at him, before changing to a much softer tone. The pounding of feet was getting louder as the larger group of refugees began to catch up, and the man lowered the boy to the ground. Taking the boy's hand the woman hurried forward towards the snipers, ignoring the levelled weapons. “Bitte, bitte,” was all she said over and over until she reached Bill’s side. At first he thought she wanted to come with them, but she thrust the bundle at him, forcing him to lower the rifle and nestle the bundle in his left arm. Turning to Big Stef she picked up the boy, who couldn’t have been older than three or four and held him out to the soldier. Big Stef kept his rifle levelled at the crowd whilst trying to avoid eye contact with her.

With a slight bump the assault boat nudged the bank behind them.

“Are you people comin’ or not?” a testy voice asked from the boat.

“Jesus wept!” Stef finally said under his breath. “Cover the people on the bank!” he shouted over his shoulder. As he heard a weapon in the boat being cocked he lowered his own and took the child from the German woman.

“Danke… danke shon!” she whispered and she kissed him on the cheek before turning away, a hand to her mouth and shoulders hunched as she walked back toward her partner who came forward, put his arms about her and led her into the crowd, out of sight of the children they had given up.

Stef and Bill got into the boat, which reversed away from the bank as a great tide of refugees arrived, shouting imploringly at them. The boats cox’n opened the throttles and brought them around, heading back to friendly lines. About a thousand people now lined the bank, many were crying as they saw salvation departing.

In the dark neither Stef nor Bill could see the faces of the cox’n or the Royal Engineer sapper who was riding shotgun. “Bollocks… I feel really unclean.” the sapper said at last to no one in particular.

The small boy sat bewildered and frightened between the strange soldier’s knees as the boat bounced along, he winced and looked up fearfully as Stef ruffled his hair. Stef looked over at the shape of Bill.

“What you got there?”

Bill was unwrapping the bundle and uncovered a tiny face, his nose wrinkled at about the same time.

“It’s a shitting machine of indeterminate sex, I think?”

“Well the Razman is just going to love this… not!”

Shuang Cheng-Tzu, the ‘East Wind launch facility’ of the People’s Republic of China’s space program, near Jiuquan in Kansu Province on the southern rim of the Gobi Desert, was constructed in 1963 on the orders of Chairman Mao.

The facility’s two hundred-something buildings along thirty miles of the Etsin River are built from materials brought in along a spur line of the Urumcji-Lanzhou rail line. The railway is virtually the only way to reach the facility and the PRC’s ICBM silos that are also sited in the region.

It is one of the most inaccessible and well-defended regions of mainland China and right now it was the focus of a great deal of activity.

Twelve ‘Long March 4’ boosters were in various stages of assembly, whilst a thirteenth and fourteenth sat on their individual pads. The facility held six launch pads but was using only two, although launches would be separate events, so as not to alarm the West as to exactly what was going up.

The Swiss Embassy in Beijing was notified that over the next 48hrs, the PRC would be launching ‘weather satellites’ in order to monitor the effects of the nuclear weapons detonated in the Atlantic ‘by the warlike western powers’.

The Swiss passed on the word to NATO but at USAF’s hardened space command bunker in South Dakota, they watched closely via a low orbit satellite as the Chinese vehicle broke through the clouds. Everything indicated that it was a normal operation to lift a satellite into low orbit, as did the remaining twelve over the next few hours.

No one seriously believed that the Chinese needed thirteen weather satellites to monitor the exceptional cloud cover that now covered a larger portion of the planet than ever previously recorded. Best guess was that they were increasing their stocks of orbiting communications and surveillance satellites, since the US had started knocking them down. When Russia also put another eight satellites up, without warning but at hourly intervals, the same thoughts applied there too. However, once all twenty-one were aloft they began radical manoeuvres, using up irreplaceable fuel at an extravagant rate.

Although rocket scientists were involved, it did not take the brains of one to work out that the ‘weather satellites’ were far from harmless instrument packages.

The President was in the middle of a videoconference with the European leaders when Joseph, his CSA interrupted him.

“Mr President?” he said from out of camera shot. When the President looked around, the CSA made a zipping motion across pursed lips before making thumbs down gesture.

“Gentlemen… General Shaw is going to sit in for a minute or two whilst I take a call in the next room.”

The ‘next room’ in this case was the bathroom that adjoined the videoconferencing suite. “Joseph, even married guys with kids get talked about if they follow other guys to the john… what’s the problem?”

“Sir, Russia and China today launched twenty-one satellites between them, we assumed they were in response to our anti-sat missions, thickening up their available units, however they are now moving into positions which we predict will allow then to intercept our own.”

“Killer satellites?”

“Yes Mr President, either particle beam or kinetic energy weapons, an attack on our satellites is now in progress… space command has already started altering orbits. It takes up one hell of a lot of computer time to work out new ones where they can still do the job for us.”

“What’s the bottom line Joseph?”

“The bottom line sir is that we are going to lose some assets up there… either to their weapons or simply by running out of fuel through playing kiss-chase in outer space.”

“So which ones are they going for,” asked the President. “Surveillance or communications?”

“Surveillance sir or our RORSATs to be specific. There’s a lot less for the other type to look at since Grease Spot. I think we will see more launches before long, they will come for our COMSATs next.”

“Do our allies know?”

The CSA nodded in affirmation. “Yes Mr President, right now the low orbit above this planet resembles the freeway filled with drunk drivers.”

TSC-16 was an old satellite inasmuch as its fuel tanks were dry; it could no longer stave off the pull of the earth’s gravity by adjusting the height of its orbit. Operated by La Marine Nationale, the French Navy, it was sweeping across the Atlantic when it ran into a wall and died three months earlier than its operators expected.

Stalingrad-05 had launched just three hours before and had the easy task of destroying the French sitting duck. The Russian satellite was little more than a shotgun with a single shot capability, radar, remote control, fuel tanks and manoeuvring jets strapped on. The ‘buckshot’ was in the form of 10,000 tiny cubes of aluminium that were fired into its target's predicted path by the self-destruction of the Russian satellite. The cubes of aluminium did not need to be weighty, as indeed they weren’t.

Stalingrad-05 had matched orbits with TSC-16 and rotated about its axis to point its business end at the French satellite 400 miles behind. 9,997 pieces of buckshot in the gradually expanding cloud of metal missed TSC-16 completely, but the quarter-tonne satellite was travelling at 38,000mph when it impacted with three, one half-ounce cubes, and disintegrated in rather spectacular form.