Advance to Contact

CHAPTER TWO

However things were going in space, the Pacific or the rest of Europe, it was all of little interest to the Belarus armed forces. Having worked out a rather bold plan with the Poles, they were now in dire straits.

The loyal Belarus numbered seven under-strength motor rifle regiments, and three armoured regiments, shadows of their former selves, plus artillery and engineers. Three divisions worth of men and equipment lay wrecked and mangled, dead and burnt out between their present positions, and the banks of the Dnieper.

Since the battle on the Dnieper at the start of the war, they had fought one other major battle, which had been in defence of Minsk, the capital. That had been a delaying action, allowing as many as possible to flee the city, but it had cost them dearly.

Poland had agreed to come to their aid in a plan devised by the Belorussians, which called for the Belarus forces to make a fighting withdrawal southwest, drawing the enemy on as they did so. It had been a running battle interjected with counter-attacks to cause the most hurt to an enemy superior in number.

The Poles were then meant to punch out due east, outflanking the enemy before curling around to the southwest to strike them in the rear, severing their logistical support train as they did so. It would probably have worked too, had not an enemy covert operation decapitated the Polish government and High Command.

Polish forces had crossed the border, but under the command of men who knew the names, addresses and whereabouts of every member of every Polish soldier’s family. The Polish troops could either fight their former allies or their loved ones would die.

The Poles were to the west and northwest of the Belorussian army, the Ukrainians to the south and the Russians were rolling in from Minsk, to the northeast. The Belorussians who had gone over to the other side at the outbreak of war were also present, but they had been incorporated into the Russian ranks after heavy losses at the hands of their countrymen.

The remains of the Belarus army were now centred on the tiny hamlet of Zditovo, with three lakes in a roughly triangular pattern, providing flank anchors.

Major Johar Kegin, a pilot without an air force, was now a foot soldier in command of an infantry platoon, a post that called for a lieutenant’s rank, but the battalion commander was never going to let him run anything larger. Kegin had a professional to do the real thinking, Sgt Topl, a career infantryman with no apparent sense of humour. All Johar had to do was look confident and encourage the troops, the sergeant at his elbow told him what to say and do.

Johar’s platoon was part of the 11^th Motor Rifle Regiment, and they with the 6^th MRR were dug-in facing slightly north of east. On the northwest side of the triangle the 7^th MRR and 19^th MRR had the narrowest frontage, but the boggiest ground to defend. The widest was held by 4^th, 23^rd and a composite regiment comprising the remnants of 2^nd, 10^th, 12th MRR, 1^st Airfield Defence Regiment and the gunners of several batteries that no longer had ammunition for their pieces. Every unit there also had cooks, drivers, air force personnel and civilian volunteers in their ranks.

Before their positions lay some of the most expensive tank traps in the world, towed artillery pieces with their breech blocks removed, were in clusters designed to channel the enemy into killing fields. They had more guns than they had ammunition for, so the rounds were distributed to the self-propelled batteries and the remainder had disabled their guns before joining the ranks of the infantry. Thin ditches had been dug in front of the positions, too shallow to offer real cover to an enemy. Rain had fallen all night, covering their narrow bottoms and drumming off the barrels beside them.

The army’s soft skinned transport was either submerged or poking above the surface of the lakes, just off the banks where they had been pushed to deter or hinder amphibious flanking attacks by APCs and light tanks. Although their fuel tanks had been drained of diesel for the armour, and petrol for field defences, the oil from the waterlogged engine blocks and sumps polluted the surface of the lakes.

To the rear of the foxhole that Johar shared with Sgt Topl was a T-72, dug-in in the hull down position as a static pillbox. It had just enough fuel to provide power for its turret; the rest had been siphoned off for their best tanks, the least badly damaged. Johar’s armoured neighbour was just one of over thirty tanks and APCs that now provided strongpoints in the defence. Eighteen tanks and twelve APCs constituted the mobile reserve, held ready to plug any gaps that may appear in the defensive lines.

Johar was asleep, wrapped in a filthy blanket and groundsheet at the bottom of the foxhole when Sgt Topl shook him awake.

“Standing patrols coming in Major… the Russians have arrived… infantry attack forming up to the front. I think they are going to try a sneak night attack, anytime now. I have informed the command post and the men.”

Johar rolled out of his ‘bed’; his feet squelched in the mud that was the floor of their foxhole’s shelter bay and took a swig of water from his canteen. All the equipment he wore came off dead men, from the helmet on his head to the boots on his feet. Sgt Topl was staring at him; Johar could feel the man’s eyes, so he put away the water and rolled up the blanket, putting it inside the fertiliser bag he had acquired. Sgt Topl’s pet hate was equipment left out when not in immediate use.

Once the blanket was strapped to the top of his pack next to his folding shovel and his groundsheet rolled up and likewise stowed away, they left their foxhole to crawl over the muddy ground, from hole to hole, checking everyone was now alert and their equipment packed away. For the past week, Sergeant Topl had, in private, treated his new officer as he would a recruit but without the cuffing and occasional kick that recently ex-civilians were awarded in the name of military education. Topl treated all recruits like un-house broken puppies, if they were bad they were scolded and had their noses rubbed in it, if they continued to offend his professional sensibilities, then it got painful.

Everyone was tired, everyone was hungry and many were carrying injuries from earlier combat, Johar now knew them all by name, even in the dark after the close contact of the last few days, he knew these men better than he did his own squadron mates. He gave encouragement where needed and left the advice to Sgt Topl, but he did tell them what he thought would be happening.

“It’s unusual for the Russians not to charge in with their tanks and APCs, I think they are going to try and rush us on foot so we probably will not see their artillery first, it would have happened already if they were going to do that.”

“Are they short of ammunition sir, is that why?” one had asked him.

“If the enemy are short on shells for their big guns then it is your birthday and Christmas come all at once, Rudik.”

It took less than ten minutes to do the rounds and then they headed back to the safety of their own hole, as they arrived they heard the creaking sound of the T-72’s turret being hand cranked around, and Johar used a field telephone to speak to the tank commander. They were short on night viewing aids; or rather they had run out of the batteries that ran them.

The T-72 did not have thermal sights, but its commander had Johar's own night scope, run directly off the tanks power supply in the absence of batteries. At the moment the tank’s engine silent, having been shut down just after last light, to save fuel and deny the enemy any thermal clue as to its location. Whenever the engine was shut down, the crew would carry buckets of water from the lake, and dump the contents over the tank, starting with the engine deck, in order to cool down the metal quicker. It was backbreaking work going back and forth, but it improved their chances of survival.

The T-72s Commander informed Johar that he was watching movement in a treeline 1200m away, through the night scope. The crew would lay-on by hand for the first shot, and then start up the engine, so as to remain hidden for as long as possible.

After a minute or so the tank reported infantry deploying out of the woods and heading towards them slowly. At night, slow equals quiet.

Once this had been reported, men were sent forward to un-stopper the barrels and remove them once empty. The stink of petrochemicals hung in the damp air as the men returned to their lines.

By the time the approaching Russian infantry were 800m out, the last of their number had just cleared the treeline. Three infantry battalions in total, three thousand men, were heading for the ground between the lakes held by two Belorussian Regiments that together numbered only nine hundred and eighty-two.

Johar handed the field telephone over to Sgt Topl, who already had the radio’s telephone handset to one ear.

The Belorussians in the tiny army quietly waited for the Russians to arrive, listening hard for any noise emitting from the darkness. Johar gripped his AK-74 and felt the fear in his gut. He had been in several fire fights over the past week but only used his weapon during the first, though he seriously doubted he had hit anything. It came as something of a relief when Sgt Topl had taken him to task over it.

“You are supposed to be the leader sir; while you are blasting away you are not watching what’s going on and not controlling the fight.”

Johar had watched Topl after that; he’d shout fire control orders to the men, not letting them all fire at the same target, thereby wasting ammunition. The sergeant did use ammunition though; he would fish out his own fresh magazines from ammunition pouches, tossing them over to anyone who was running short, before giving covering fire whilst they reloaded.

Before was different though, before they had had some place to withdraw to. When they received word that the Polish hierarchy had been annihilated it had been too late to disperse and fight on as guerrillas, Poles under new management and the Ukrainians were closing in. They were already dead men, they all knew it and all chose to go down fighting rather than go quietly into the night, with a bullet in the back of the neck.

They had expected the enemy to beat on them from the air, but the enemy had been oddly absent up there which was just as well, because three ZSU-23-4s constituted their entire dedicated air defence.

After what seemed like an age, the dug-in tanks fired almost in unison, white phosphorus rounds ignited the fuel with a roar. Only a few of the Russian infantry came to any direct harm from the flames, but it silhouetted several hundred against the fire. Para-illum was distinctly short on the inventory but for a relatively short time at least the Belorussians had achieved surprise, shock and a target rich environment. The Russian infantry were not green troops, the ‘rabbit-caught-in-the — headlights’ effect lasted only moments before the targets went to ground, even if they were still in view, they made themselves smaller targets whilst they crawled and rolled to better cover. Several dozen however, were caught by the Belorussians small arms fire before they could react or get down. The hull-down tanks and APCs started up their engines to provide power for the turrets and automatic loaders whilst the infantry did their best to kill as many of the Russians on this side of the flames as they could. They ganged up on the figures of those not yet in cover as they hugged the muddy earth; bullets kicked up the ground around them as they crawled desperately, until the rounds struck home. The figures jerked as they were hit, and then the defenders moved on to another, until that too was hit.

Mortar and artillery fire brought an end to the Belorussian monopoly on the killing, screaming in on the defender’s positions and forcing the Belarus to seek the safe climes at the bottom of their holes. The attacking infantry’s commanders on the ground could see nothing beyond the flames; they were however receiving frantic calls for support from their men on the wrong side of the ditches.

The battle in Belarus was a side-line in the Soviet scheme of things, unfinished business but not one of the highest priorities. The Ukrainian, Polish and Russian forces lacked the air and artillery resources that were available to their forces in Germany, but they kept up their heavy barrage until the flames in the ditches were no longer a barrier, before reducing their rate of fire slightly.

Johar and his sergeant huddled in the mud with the best of them, breathing through their mouths as protection against the ruptured lungs that could accompany near misses by large calibre shells, or fuel air munitions.

Counter-battery fire and direct fire support was at present absent from the Belorussian side, more through limited ammunition than any cunning plan.

Sgt Topl was listening for the sound of the incoming to change slightly, as it shifted to their rear. Right now he knew that the infantry were moving up under the cover of the barrage, close enough that they themselves would be starting to take casualties if their discipline were good. As soon as the shellfire moved to the rear areas, isolating the front line from reinforcements the Russian infantry would be hustling forwards as fast as possible to get in amongst the Belorussians before they recovered.

Topl already had an entrenching tool at hand to be used as a weapon, he now tugged his bayonet from its scabbard and kicked the major, who opened his previously clenched eyes and saw what Topl was holding and fixed bayonets himself. The platoon would already have done so, those who had not been killed already by the shelling.

The moment Topl heard the sound of the incoming rounds change, he was on his feet, and bent over so as not to stick his head above ground until the last enemy shell had impacted on their positions. Johar pulled himself up and found he was shaking all over, the terror of the bombardment robbing his limbs of strength. His hands shook as he gripped the assault rifle and he looked guiltily at the sergeant, in shame at showing his fear. Topl was staring at him, his face devoid of expression, and then held his own hand in front of Johar’s face, it shook just as badly as his own and Topl suddenly grinned for the first time since Johar had known him. It was so unexpected that Johar began to laugh and after a moment Topl joined him. The rain fell on them from the heavens, high explosive screamed overhead and they were outnumbered by three to one, but for now they crouched in a muddy hole and laughed.

Inside the treeline of a copse outside the village of Zditovo, in the centre of the Belarus position, a detachment of just four soldiers, all carrying injuries guarded the Belarus command post. Every able bodied man, and many who weren’t, were in the fighting positions. A barn had been taken over to house the command staff of the loyal Belorussian forces; rain drummed off its corrugated tin roof and slicked its rough stone walls.

Within the barn the commander of all loyal Belorussian forces studied the large map on the wall of the barn they had taken over. The Russians had tried to take them by surprise with dismounted infantry and failed, now the question was, what contingency plan did they have for such a failure?

His answer came a few minutes later when a heavy barrage began on the southwest side of the defensive position in addition to that on the northeast.

Either the Russian attack had become a diversion or the Ukrainians were about to launch the real deal, or vice versa. However he was wrong, the Russian commander had tired of the losses inflicted by the Belarus since the start of the war, and was going to end this matter as quickly as possible so they could join the units fighting in Germany. He lacked the artillery to pound on all three sides of the Belarus position at once, so he would shift fire to the northwest defence line once the lead Ukrainian MRR was a minute away from the south western line. Meanwhile he wanted to alternate his fire between the enemy trenches and counter-battery fire.

From out of the woods opposite the Belarus north eastern and south western defence lines, undergrowth and saplings were crushed beneath the wheels and treads of the two MRRs that were moving into the assault.

Small arms fire brought the laughter to a halt and both men brought their AKs up, peering over open sights into the dark but they could see only muzzle flashes by the forward foxholes, not who was firing.

Johar grabbed for the radio handset to call for illumination, but someone beat him to it. A ‘thunk’ to the rear announced a mortar firing a para-illum round and three seconds later a magnesium flare was suspended beneath a small parachute overhead, producing 300,000 candle power of light.

The sight that greeted them was a mass of enemy infantry, stretching back into the night; they were everywhere!

The nearest Russian infantry were almost on top of their foxholes, several were preparing to grenade the men’s holes whilst others put down heavy fire.

The sight angered Johar to the extent that all fear left him, and with a scream of hatred he aimed at the nearest group and began firing long bursts into them. The fire fight between the entrenched Belarus and the more numerous but exposed Russians rapidly grew in crescendo and ferocity. Sgt Topl stopped his own firing long enough to reach across to slap Johar’s helmet hard.

Fire missions major… fire missions!” As soon as Johar dropped down below the parapet to use the radio, Topl resumed firing.

It was the first time Topl had allowed him to call in a fire mission, granted though… it was easy just looking at the range card and quoting the code word for the pre-planned mission, rather than working out grid references from a map.

Mortars fired the closest missions and artillery took those further away, and just before the first rounds landed Johar saw the call-light flashing on the field telephone. Crouching low with free hand covering his ear he listened to the tank commander warn him of enemy T-80s and APCs 1200m away.

It meant that the artillery would in a few seconds abort their present fire missions and shift their fire to the approaching armour.

With friendly fire air-bursting 20’ above the ground, the furthest Russian infantry were taking casualties before they got to within small arms range of the Belorussians. Had this continued then the Belarus infantry could probably have managed to hold their own, but once the artillery shifted a seemingly endless mass closed in on them.

The defenders had cleared the area in front of their positions, dead and wounded Russian infantry lay all about, and then the light faded. There was a delay until the mortars put up another para-illum round after the first one died out, but in the time it took for the next flare to ignite more Russians rushed forward, taking advantage of the darkness.

Three grenades went off in rapid succession, one landing short of the platoon’s left hand trench but two landing inside it. Rudik, an eighteen-year-old from the suburbs of Minsk, the young man who had asked Johar about enemy artillery, lay outside the protection of the trench, blown there by the double grenade blasts. Rudik was screaming in a high pitch, both left limbs blown off and blood fountaining from severed arteries, of the other soldier who had shared the foxhole there was no sign.

Despite the open target, no fire from the Russians came near the maimed soldier but Sgt Topl heard jeers and laughter from the darkness.

The new flare burst to life above them and Topl took careful aim before firing a single shot, the young soldier’s screams immediately ceased and Topl adjusted his aim, going for all those Russians within range to have thrown the grenades.

Johar had been firing in short bursts; his weapon clicked on an empty chamber and he quickly changed mags. The Russians then grenaded another of his men's trenches, reducing opposing fire by another two weapons.

We’re getting ground up here and we need help, thought Johar as he called up the regimental CP on the radio with a sitrep and request for assistance.

The situation seemed about the same in the neighbouring platoons, the Russians had another two waiting in the wings to replace every man the Belarus hit, but for every Belarus killed it was one less weapon with which to stem the tide.

There was a pause in the Russian shellfire landing behind the Belarus front line as the Russians adjusted their fire with co-ordinates now supplied by the counter-battery radar crews who had backtracked the defenders fall of shot, to the artillery gun lines. Bad news for the gunners, but good news for Johar and the rest of the defenders on that side of the triangle as APCs from the reserve approached unhindered over freshly shelled ground and deployed their infantry loads. The fresh infantry added their fire to the line but it was the hellish roar and continuous streams of fire from two of the ZSUs that had accompanied them which was most telling. Employing their quad cannon in an anti-infantry role, the four streams of cannon shells looked like laser beams as they hosed the ground in front of the positions before moving on to targets further out. The effect on the Russian infantry was terrible to behold, men hit by the 23mm cannon shells disintegrated in football sized lumps, pieces of torso and amputated limbs spun off into the night. The Russian infantry tried going to ground, but folds of earth that could stop a bullet had no effect on cannon shells designed to punch through armour plate. The enemy infantry broke.

As the second flare dimmed and then went out, officers and NCOs shouted

“Cease fire!” at enthusiastic but inexperienced men who wasted rounds on the disappearing Russians.

The gunfire faded out everywhere, even from the artillery at the rear as it moved location. All that could be heard were the sounds of engines, from the rear and from the front as Johar and Topl scrambled out of their foxhole to check the men. They took ammunition boxes with them, replenishing depleted stocks as they went about it. Topl also sent one man from each foxhole out into the dark to strip the enemy dead of ammunition, grenades and any rations they may have. All along the line the other units did likewise, the occasional scream could be heard as they came across wounded men, who were treated to the same degree of mercy as the enemy had shown them, a bayonet or a rifle butt.

With a freight train sound in their passing, the Russian artillery rounds ended the temporary lull, impacting where just a short time ago the Belarus guns had stood. Johar and Topl looked over their shoulders at the flashes of impacting rounds before hurrying on. They had just finished handing out ammunition and counting heads when they heard automatic fire from the front. It wasn’t aimed at them and ricocheting tracers span into the air after striking the ground, indicating the intended targets were several hundred metres away.

“KGB troops!” Topl informed the officer. “You get shot for running away in the Red Army!” He laughed at the look on the pilot’s face. “We used to do the same in this army, when it too was part of the Red Army… come on, they won’t shoot them all, just enough to make an example. Let’s get back in our hole before the rest learn the error of their ways!”

The establishment of the platoon was supposed to be one officer and thirty-six men, two hours ago however it had stood at one and twenty-one. When Johar got back to their foxhole he reported to the company CP that it now stood at one and sixteen. There were no wounded, when only a head and shoulders are exposed above ground the majority of injuries are traumatic head wounds.

Near the village at the centre of the Belarus position, the defenders’ three remaining SP batteries completed their relocation and brought their guns around on new bearings and elevations, one fired a counter-battery mission whilst the other two concentrated on the armoured assault closing from two sides.

In their holes in the ground the defenders peered across the open ground into the darkness, officers tasked with watching for amphibious armour approaching from the far side of the lakes didn’t notice the twenty men emerging silently from beneath the surface.

The re-breather sets that the Spetznaz troopers wore did not emit tell-tale bubbles of exhaled air as aqua-lung gear did. The sets and flippers they wore were discarded close to the shore before the troopers even broke the surface and crawled ashore, pulling bundles after themselves and with weapons ready.

The ZSUs that had come to the assistance of Johar’s defence line withdrew to reload; the APCs collected their dismounts and pulled back too, leaving the infantry to prepare themselves for the next attack.

The stationary tanks wanted to start doing their jobs as soon as possible and called up the mortars for more para-illum; it took longer for the flare to illuminate the battlefield, igniting further away behind the enemy so as to silhouette them.

The moment the Belarus T-72s had targets that they could see, they began tracking the lead tanks, 800m away and closing.

The Russian T-80s were superior fighting vehicles in comparison to the Belorussian machines, but they relied on their thermal sights at night and the defending AFVs’ engines were idling, just batteries producing power for the radios, plus, they were hull down with engine decks below ground level.

Johar and Topl cursed and covered their ears when the T-72 behind them suddenly opened fire. The engines may not have given off clear heat signatures but the hot muzzle blasts told them where to look, and after just two rounds the Belarus tanks barrels glowed in the Russians thermal sights.

Another para-illum was put up to augment the one already up, and the Russian tanks began to return fire. Johar and Topl ducked again as the T-72 fired, the sound of its gun merged with that of a loud ripping sound in the air and the T-72’s turret rang like a bell as a Russian sabot round glanced off its side. A second sabot ploughed a furrow into the muddy ground beside the tank, which fired back at its attackers.

The approaching enemy armour was close enough now that the defenders could see infantry crouched on the engine decks behind the turrets of the tanks and jogging behind, using the vehicles' armoured bulk as cover. These infantry were the ones they had driven off a little while earlier, quadrupling the infantry already carried in the enemy MRR’s APCs.

Artillery began to land near Johar once more and they crawled into their shelter bay and huddled again on the mud floor.

On the south-western line the barrage lifted, shifting fire to the, as yet unaffected north-western positions. The infantry scrambled from their shelter bays and began to engage the armour with their few remaining anti-tank weapons at a range of 200m.

The Belarus commander decided to split his reserve force in two, to bolster the defence on the two sides threatened by the Russians and Ukrainians. Ideally he would have liked to have some reserve to play with, but it was now an all or nothing situation. He turned from the map and snapped his new orders to his staff officer. Outside the barn in the wet night, four shadowy figures sprinted away into the darkness. In the mud lay four bodies, dispatched by head shots from sound suppressed weapons, the eyes of all four were open and mirrored each other’s expressions of surprise as they gazed unseeing at the bleak wet setting they had ended their lives in.

Four shaped charges, one placed against each corner of the barn robbed the structure of its integrity. Shattered stone, propelled by the blasts at 200mph tore into soft tissue inside the structure a second before the walls and roof caved in.

Two batteries of 2S1 "Gvozdika" 122mm self-propelled howitzers and one battery of 2S3 "Akatsiya" 152mm guns were all that the Belarus retained for artillery support. The 122mm were engaged against the advancing MRRs whilst the 152mm battery received range and bearing to the enemy guns from a battlefield radar via the main CP. When the flow of information to the big guns suddenly halted, the battery commander used his initiative and shifted fire to the southwest.

The 9M111 Fagot is an infantry portable anti-tank weapon similar to the Milan and TOW systems, weighing 38kg with missile attached, it has a range of 2,500m and can penetrate 60mm of steel plate. The 2S3 Akatsiya’s armour was only 20mm in depth. The Big SPs were lowering their barrels to the new elevation when the hatches of the vehicle on the extreme left blew off, followed immediately afterwards by a catastrophic explosion that blew the big artillery piece apart. The remaining vehicle commanders ordered the drivers to move, believing that counter battery fire had at last found them.

The Spetznaz troopers operating the Fagot took only twenty-four seconds to detach the empty launcher and attach a fresh one, they worked from left to right, aiming through the thermal sight and keeping the crosshairs on the spot they wanted to hit. The anti-armour missiles followed the data fed to them through the filament of wire that trailed behind, linking them to the weapons sight. Wherever the crosshairs were laid, that is where the missiles struck.

Whilst the battery's guns were being taken out, two five-axle support vehicles with reloads stacked on their flatbeds, and the battery commanders BTR-80 command vehicle came under intense fire from two pairs of troopers armed with stubby OTs-14 Groza assault weapons. The troopers first fired 40mm grenades from the Groza’s underslung grenade launcher through the open rear doors of the BTR and in to the truck’s cabs, before flipping the fire selectors and emptying 5.56mm Teflon coated rounds into the survivors.

In less than four minutes the 152mm guns were wrecked and burning in the night as the troopers picked up their launcher and reloads, heading off toward the sound of the nearest 122mm batteries guns.

As soon as the barrage landing on their positions switched to the rear, Sgt Topl was out of the shelter bay and peering over the foxholes parapet, the lead AFVs were less than 200m away. To the left of the platoon position, a large shell crater occupied the spot where two riflemen had once been, creating a wide gap between themselves and their neighbouring Platoon on that side.

“Major… come on, we’re going forward!” he shouted into the shelter bay. Johar saw the sergeant’s legs disappear as the man left the trench, so he crawled out of the shelter bay and began to pull himself out also before stopping. The ammunition boxes were inside the bay, they would need them very soon so he stopped midway out of the foxhole, ducking back under the low roof to retrieve them.

Behind them in the T-72, the air stank of burnt propellant and the sweat of fear as the commander brought the turret around slightly to bear on a T-80 whose self-stabilised gun was pointing unerringly at them. He lowered the sights, aiming for the junction of turret and body when the T-80 fired, its depleted uranium round struck the Belarus tank squarely and the T-72’s own ammunition exploded.

Johar was dragging the ammunition boxes clear of the shelter when the round struck like a thunderclap. Instinct propelled him headfirst back into the shelter bay, where he curled into a protective ball.

The T-72s turret parted company with the rest of the fighting vehicle, punched upwards by the simultaneous detonation of the tank’s ready loads.

The weight of its gun barrel tipped it over the horizontal plane and the turret performed a semi somersault, slamming down on Johar’s foxhole, eighteen tons of steel sealing it like a tomb.

Sgt Topl was a third of the way to the late Rudik’s trench when the T-72 exploded. Crouching low he peered back at the tank and witnessed the turret slam down onto the foxhole he had just vacated, sinking about a foot into the soft earth. He opened his mouth to shout the major’s name but stopped, with a regretful shake of his head he looked back to the front, crawling the rest of the way to the left flank’s foxhole.

7.62mm rounds from the nearest tank stitched a line across the ground near him and he tumbled headfirst into the empty foxhole, landing amidst the remains of the soldier who had shared it with Rudik. His nose curled in distaste at the smell and the gore that smeared him as he pulled himself upright.

Russian infantry were jumping off the rear of the tanks, some were hit in mid-air by the defender's fire, their bodies losing co-ordination and tumbling to the ground like puppets without strings. Topl fired bursts into the infantry nearest to him; their return fire was heavy but not terribly accurate.

They huddled as close to the tank's armoured sides as they could, firing from the hip as they kept pace with it.

As Topl changed mags the enemy had moved close enough to throw grenades and one exploded on the parapet, shrapnel struck the side of his helmet, knocking him sideways back into the mud and gore. His head span and as he tried to climb to his knees, he could hear nothing but a roaring sound in his ears. Topl vomited and dug his fingers into the earthen walls of the foxhole, seeking some point of stability but the roaring sound increased. What light there was eclipsed by the Russian T-80 driving over the foxhole and stopping, Topl looked up and then screamed as the tank began to turn in place, collapsing the foxholes walls, filling his mouth with damp soil and stilling his voice forever.

General Shaw presented the plan that would involve US Green Berets, Britain’s Special Air Service Regiment’s Mountain Troop and their Royal Marines Mountain & Arctic Warfare Cadre, B2 Spirit Bombers and the Philippines Air Force facilities on Mindanao. Several thousand miles away in Russia, a covert team would already have been inserted by some of the same B2 bombers along with F-117A Nighthawks. At sea, eight SSN’s would be hunting for the PLAN ballistic missile submarine.

“What we are juggling with here sir, are limited resources and critical timing. The B2s giving tanker support to the Russian operation, Guillotine, have to be repositioned in the Philippines to tank the B2s that will be taking in the ground troops for Equaliser, that’s what we are calling the China op. Once the ground forces for Equaliser, have been inserted, the B2s have to reconfigure back to their bombing role.” He fixed the President with a look.

“I don’t like complex ops Mr President, the simpler they are, the less that can go wrong and this is about as complex as they come. It’s a three-piece op, at sea, in China and in Russia. If one falls down, they all fall down… I don’t like it but it is the only option open to us at the moment, sir.”

The President nodded.

“I am familiar with Guillotine Henry, I heard about it before you did,” he smiled smugly, it wasn’t often the chief executive knew of military matters before the chairman of the joint chiefs. “Guillotine is being handled the old fashioned way, on paper. I don’t trust these damn computers since China got into them, so how have you been planning this?”

“Sir, we are using stand-alone's, no network, no Internet.”

“Good, good… tell me about this submarine?”

“Sir, the Xia is a home grown vessel, not a Russian cast-off. She displaces 7,000 tons submerged, has a crew of one hundred and four. Nuclear reactor, two steam turbines and a single screw that is capable of producing 22 knots, flat out. She completed an extensive overhaul two years ago to enable her to carry their new JL-2 SLBM, submarine launched ballistic missile. The JL-2 has a range of 5,200 miles with a payload of four, 3-megaton independent re-entry vehicles each. The Xia carries twelve of these missiles. When at sea, she is always escorted by two Han Class SSNs, which are also PLAN designed and built. The PLAN had four Han Class, one is laid up with reactor problems, and the Royal Navy’s HMS Hood sank another in the North Pacific. And this… ” General Shaw handed an aerial photograph across of a submarine on the surface.

The President took out his spectacles and put them on. “… This was taken by a light aircraft just after dawn, at the start of the invasion of Luzon, in the Philippines.” The General informed him. “Those men on the aft casing are commandos launching rubber boats… something which should be done at night, but maybe they had problems and launched their attack late. The point I am trying to make is this… PLAN was hardly going to have their precious Xia nearby, so the one sunk by Hood had to be part of the Xia’s escort. We know the exact spot she was sunk, the time and day, so it narrows down our search area considerably.”

“Okay Henry, didn’t the Brit boat hear this Xia?”

“Sir, best bet was that the Han was clearing their area of operations of any unwanted shipping. It was attacking a British flagged sailing vessel when Hood bagged it; the Brits didn’t hear anyone else about. The Hood was just about out of ordnance when they sank it, they are enroute to Pearl to reload and offload the sailing boat’s crew, along with a pee-oh-double-u… a Chinese aviator, and two survivors from the John F Kennedy group.”

The President raised his eyes at that.

“How the hell do you survive a nuclear attack?”

“By being out of range, trying to shoot the attackers down at the time. One is a Sea Harrier pilot, the other is… ” he flipped through some pages. “… Lt Nikki Pelham, an F-14 pilot. Her RIO was killed when the Han attacked the sailing boat.”

The name rang a bell somewhere and the President’s forehead furrowed as he tried to recall where he had heard it.

“Pelham… how do you spell that Henry?”

The general told him and the President cursed.

“Oh dear lord… there is nothing fair in this world is there?”

Henry Shaw had a blank look on his face.

“Do you remember the story from Washington, the lawyers killed by the poor guy whose whole family had been killed, and then he turned the gun on himself?”

General Shaw thought for a moment before it came to him. “He was in town to visit the ‘Nam memorial when the bomb went off… then found out his daughter had been aboard John F Kennedy… ” It then dawned on him then that the Pelham in the article was one of the same. “… oh God, poor girl.”

“As soon as we’ve finished here Henry, get a wire off to Pearl, see what you can do for her when she arrives… I take it the press do not know yet that there were survivors?”

“Definitely not Mr President, we do not name any assets, or give the enemy any idea as to what was where and when.”

“Good, keep it that way please… or some sonofabitch is going to be shoving a mike in her face and asking how she feels about her family dying and her dad being a murderer just the second she steps off the boat!”

The President signalled for more coffee and when he and General Shaw were topped up they continued.

“This Russian Major who’s going back into Russia… Bedonavich?” Henry nodded and the President continued with his question. “I understand he wants to try and contact some friends in the Russian military, what do you think his chances are?”

“Well Mr President, pro New Soviet Union types hold all the top echelon of slots on the staffs, plus of course the war is going well for them… I am rather pessimistic as to his having any luck in bringing them over to our camp. I have already spoken to Terry Jones, I think it is unwise to try… at this stage anyway. If one of them denounces him, he will be arrested and tortured as a matter of course. He blew their operation with the bombs, and he is still supposed to be in the West, they are not likely to be using kid gloves if they get their hands on him. It could compromise the whole operation; Terry has already told him that.”

The chief executive approached the plasma screen, which was displaying a large-scale view of the earth from the North Cape to the tip northern tip of Australia. He touched the screen northeast of Moscow, and the view zoomed in on the area.

“What is the state of play with the assets on the ground?”

“Sir, Spec Ops infiltrated a team into Russia once we knew we were going to war with these people. They are fully covert right now; they have taken no action yet except to establish contact with CIA’s people in place and recon the landing site. They have not ventured out into the open, the civil and military police over there are seriously on the lookout for deserters and draft dodgers. The Russian assets that CIA has are only safe if they are in their fifties; the safe houses are all off the beaten track in the forests, as is the airstrip. It is a Second World War site that CIA has been keeping in reasonable shape for years… just in case. There is a tanker of fuel, stolen I believe, and civilian transport.”

The President made a cynical grunting sound.

“What was that movie in the sixties with the phoney secret army in Russia… ’Billion Dollar Brain’, let us hope CIA’s assets really exist, not just on paper!”

The General smiled briefly.

“Sir, Spec Ops troops on the ground verified that everything is as promised.” He brought up the area south of the Gobi Desert on the plasma screen before widening the view considerably. “Anyway, as you already know all about Guillotine sir, can I move onto Equaliser… .For the insertion into Kansu Province, we are positioning B2s for tanking at a military strip west of Rangoon in Burma. They will land at night, tank the insertion aircraft over the Bay of Bengal the same night and be gone by dawn. India, Pakistan and Bangladesh are going to promenade their troops and start shaking fists at one another over the Kashmir Region, starting in two days’ time. Hopefully, should the PRC radars spot anything over the Bay of Bengal; they will put it down to one of those three nations up to something nasty which does not involve China. The B2s have a 3000km journey to the DZ, which is 70 clicks from the target… the troops walk the rest of the way. First priorities are the two ICBM fields and the second is China’s space centre. They get into position to laser mark the targets, set up the equipment and egress the area undetected. The sites may, or indeed may not have laser detection devices so the equipment is switched on remotely either by satellite or by the bombers themselves. We use SRAMs, short range attack missiles with 500kt warheads. Unlike command bunkers, which are essentially solid shells on springs, an ICBM silo has to be more accessible in order to launch the missiles; therefore it is less well protected. Extraction of the teams is another thing entirely, they are going to have to E&E, escape and evade to an old mountain airstrip 160 klicks west where we can lift them out by C-140. Mr President, this plan has 1001 things that can go wrong with it, but we have no other options. Japan threw in the towel rather than have her cities nuked… again. The other countries in the region will not take direct action until the nuclear threat is eliminated. Even with the ICBMs taken out, we are going to have one hell of a fight on our hands, even with our potential allies fighting along too.”

He punched a few more keys.

“Anyway, elsewhere in the PTO, 25^th Armoured Brigade, 6^th Armoured Cavalry Regiment and 51^st Infantry Brigade arrive in Australia tomorrow night from Korea, they are light a good deal of equipment that was destroyed in place. 8^th Fighter Wing, from Kunsan AFB, is now at RAAF Tindall in the Northern Territories, south of Darwin. They are sharing with 75 Squadron, Royal Australian Air Force. The Aussies there are flying F/A-18 Hornets; the 8^th has two squadrons of F-16 Falcons, so ordnance is compatible. We got a lot of their equipment out of Kunsan on RAAF, Indonesian, RNZAF and Singaporean transports, as well as our own so spares and ordnance-wise, the 8^th are okay.” The screen view changed to that of Australia and General Shaw continued.

“The Aussies found evidence of seven planned amphibious landing sites, all along the eastern coast of Queensland and New South Wales. Our 5th Mech will be arriving in Brisbane in seven days; the Australians want them based there, for the time being anyway. 25^th Armoured Brigade, 51^st Infantry Brigade and 6^th Armoured Cav Regiment are outside Melbourne, MAC, the Singaporeans, Indonesians, and the Royal Thai Airforce are busting a gut ferrying ammunition and spares from the States to them. We are also assisting the Royal Singapore Air Force units that escaped being overrun on the first day, only by being in East Timor at the time, it’s a squadron of C-130s, a half dozen Chinooks along with a mixed bag of RF-5S Tiger Eyes, F-16C and Ds. They arrived with only what they could throw aboard or was hanging off the hard points.”

“Every little bit helps Henry… what are the PRC doing now, where are their forces?”

“Japan and Taiwan have been occupied, as has the Island of Leyte in the Philippines. Fighting is very heavy on Luzon, the PRC are about twenty-five miles north of Manila. The Filipinos are making them pay for every yard… .but they are being ground down, the PLA are too big. Good news is that they didn’t get a foothold down south in the islands; the invasion of Cebu was defeated… utterly, with a little help from the Singaporeans who, quite by chance, were in the area at the time. It won’t end there though; the PLAN will try again. The second biggest island, Mindanao, hasn’t been touched… it’s got a big Muslim community and they have been trying for independence for years. I reckon the PRC are trying to strike a deal with the Muslim guerrilla forces, to join forces and attack the Philippine armed forces there from within and without on the promise of independence in return for base rights… at least until they own the Pacific and Asia.”

Taking a gulp of coffee the President shook his head as he listened to that last opinion and then interjected.

“If the Muslim’s have any sense they’ll see that a huge PRC presence will be even harder to kick out than the Fils, and they have no reason to trust China. If I were them, I’d throw in my lot with the Philippine government in return for independence when the war was won.”

“Do you want the bad news, Mr President?” General Shaw asked him.

“It would be pointless my saying no, now wouldn’t it?”

“We have lost contact with the enemy carrier group, since they launched their killer-sats our coverage has gone to hell. The PRC have launched another five of them… and four of ours and NATO’s RORSATs have now been taken out. However, the French have another three ready to go up at Guyana Space Centre, and we are launching three more on Titan boosters from Canaveral tonight. The F-15s are still carrying out launches against the enemy satellites, with about a 70 % success rate. We have taken eight of theirs off-line permanently… so it is not entirely one sided Mr President.”

“Anything else major on that front Henry, if not then let us move on?”

The screen changed again, this time to depict the ETO, the European theatre of operations.

“The fighting in Belorussia has ended, just before dawn this morning radio contact ended with the Belarus armed forces. Radio intercepts would seem to indicate that the Belarus fought and died in place, there was no mention of prisoners either.”

The President shook his head slightly; not able to fully comprehend that human beings could treat life with such contempt. After a moment he spoke.

“It is curious, is it not, that they exchanged prisoners in Leipzig and those men of ours that they had were treated according to the Geneva Convention?”

“I would assume that the Russian airborne division’s commander was allowed to fight the battle as he saw it… kinda hard to enforce policy on a unit behind the lines.” The General brought up the map of Germany

“Anyway, we have noticed something odd in Germany… as you can see we have realigned along our new line, enemy recon units have already caught up, they are now probing, to gain Intel whilst the main forces catch up. Probably by this time tomorrow the assault will again be underway… but if you look to the rear areas sir, you will notice only a third of their available air have moved up in a position to give close support. We don’t know why, could be a problem with aviation fuel, ordnance or spares… I am a pessimist, that way I’m never disappointed, so I am betting it is something sneaky they are hatching.”

The President leant forward, looking hard at the screen and the military symbols upon it, as if trying to divine the secrets the other side held.

Security was tight for a radius of 100 miles around the cluster of airbases, total radio silence was being enforced and police, ambulance and even the taxis that had them installed, were ordered to switch them off. The Russians wanted no loose lips mentioning the aircraft that had flown in that night.

Across the border in Norway, the Norwegian signals intelligence analysts were alerted, not by any unguarded transmissions, but by the total lack of them.

NATO had been informed the day before of the signals blackout and the pieces fell into place; SACUER now had a good idea as to where the missing aircraft had gone. Either Russia was planning an invasion of Scandinavia, or they were intending to put submarines into the Atlantic once more, replacing those sunk by NATO.

The four divisions the present convoys carried were not enough to make a marked change in the balance of firepower in Europe, they were due in port late the following night or sometime in the early hours of the next day, but the four others that had just left on the new convoys could make the difference.

Britain’s principal fast jet trainer, the BAE T. Mk1 Hawk has a wartime role as a point defence fighter. The eighty-eight aircraft in RAF service were quickly converted to this war role when hostilities with Russia looked imminent. They can carry only two AIM-9L Sidewinder missiles on under-wing hard points, and a 30mm Aden cannon pod on its centreline hard-points, but they are extremely manoeuvrable.

At RAF Scampton in Lincolnshire, the Red Arrows display teams aircraft were no longer wearing their red livery, and they along with No. 100 Squadron from RAF Leeming, near Northallerton in North Yorkshire received orders to fly to Andøya and Banak in Norway within two hours. With all RAF front line units fully engaged with events in Germany, the Hawks would provide local air defence to the Royal Norwegian Air Force’s maritime and anti-submarine bases, their ground crews and logistic support would follow soon after. 100 Squadron found themselves sharing space with Flyvevabnet airframes and crews; the Royal Danish Air force F-16’s of 727 Eskadrille had arrived from Skrydstrup an hour before they had.

The Charles De Gaulle was warned to expect an attack anytime soon and Spain’s VTOL carrier Principe de Asturias steaming off central Norway turned about and put the pedal to the metal, heading north to add her twelve AV-8B Harriers to the Task Force. The deck of the helicopter carrier Jeanne d'Arc was going to be very crowded, HMS Illustrious was too far away to be of any help but her Sea Harriers weren’t. The Fleet Air Arm pilots got to sample the not unpleasant aromatic mix of garlic and Gauloises cigarettes in her wardrooms.

Ordnance was going to be complicated for the Sea Harriers; they were going to be reliant on the Spanish carrier for reloads.

HMS Temeraire had been lurking in the seas northwest of Murmansk to provide early warning for the North Cape Task Force since the day after the war broke out. She had accompanied Britain’s sole remaining diesel powered submarine, HMS Ulysses, standing off to seaward whilst the last of the Upholder class boats carried swimmers to within a mile of the coast, before moving further east, closer to the approaches of the Russian port. She now reported upwards of twenty fast attack craft, ten frigates and eight destroyers grouped off the coast.

Canada’s Victoria class SSK’s, HMCS Chicoutimi and HMCS Windsor along with the USS Twin Towers were released from convoy escort duty and headed north.

The sound of jet engines rolled across the sleeping countryside, six regiments of fighters, seven Regiments of fighter-bombers, four of bombers and the S37 Golden Eagles lined the taxiways of the airfields, weighed down with ordnance. The A-50 tankers and AWACs were already aloft, east of Murmansk but not yet radiating.

Off the coast, twenty-four Tarantula class missile boats in two ranks, five miles apart, had set off at midnight, making low turns in order not to broadcast their presence but they now opened their throttles. The twenty-three destroyers and frigates increased speed to twenty-four knots, their job was to act as a third wave if required and to occupy waters off the North Cape once the NATO ships had been sunk or driven off. Far behind them, emerging from the safety of the port came the submarines; they would not be taking part in the fight if all went according to plan.

The S37s headed east to top off their tanks before turning northeast, as they left the tankers the Backfires and three regiments of Flogger Js moved in to top off their own fuel tanks.

An A-50 had been on station at the Backfire and Golden Eagle holding area since midnight, trying to burn through the task force jamming whilst producing its own. Ideally there would have been more than one aircraft performing this task, but losses in the A-50 fleet meant that until the older Mainstays could be brought out of mothballs, they had to make do.

The remaining regiments that lifted off from the fields headed west with the fighters taking the high ground, and the fighter-bombers hugging the earth.

Back at Pechenga, airbase security had detected a burst transmission whilst the crews were still heading out toward the dispersal area and their aircraft two hours before. It had been only of one hundredth of a second duration but had given them a bearing of 312’, but nothing to indicate how far away. At the very least they needed another cross bearing to narrow down the location of the transmitter, so they drove out of the base to the northwest in a BTR-80 festooned with antennae. Logic dictated that if the transmission were anything to do with the base then it had to be within optical range, so out of sight of the perimeter a company of troops mounted APCs of their own and waited.

Sergeant Ramsey, and three marines from the SBS, Special Boat Squadron, had dug their hide into a steep section of hillside just thirty hours before. They had reached the site two miles from the airbase after a forced march, having been diverted from their task of watching for sign of an overland invasion of Norway.

Whilst submerged, HMS Ulysses had brought them in several days before, creeping slowly past the Russian coastal patrols with the RM commandos on its outer casing. They had then swum for the cliff face a mile off the submarine’s starboard side and scaled it before moving inland.

Digging the hide near the airbase had taken seven hours, carefully removing heather and turf before cutting into the hillside. The spoil was carried down to a nearby stream where the waters carried away the evidence, until they had just enough space for the four of them. A camouflage net was pegged firmly into place, braced with branches sawn off by folding saw, and the turf and heather replaced over it

Sgt Ramsey finished typing into a palmtop and pressed send when the wheels of the first aircraft left the tarmac, they had already sounded the alarm when the base had come to life and it had been obvious something major was afoot. With that out of the way the marines settled back to await the aircraft returning, when they would then send a damage assessment.

To the east of the marines’ OP a BTR-80 turned north, placing itself between the hill and the Norwegian border. They now knew to within a half-mile from where the transmission had originated, it was time to call in the beaters to flush the spy or spies into the open.

Heading west, nine regiments of Su-34s and Mig-31 Foxhounds headed for the northernmost Norwegian airbases at Bodø, Bardufoss, Banak and Andøya, the CAPs comprising of four F-16s turned in to intercept them.

From Banak and Andøya, two squadrons of RAF Hawks rose to meet them, with the Danes F-16s and the Norwegians out of Bodø.

The Russian fighter-bombers, three regiments each of Su-25 Frogfoot and Mig-27 Flogger Js made for Banak, Bodø and Andøya, with the intention of rendering the maritime, ASW and fighter bases un-operational. The mission of the Russian fighters was principally to prevent the NATO fighters from intervening in the attack on the Task Force, protecting their own fighter-bombers was secondary.

One hundred miles south of the Task Force, NATO JSTARS and AWAC had been orbiting for over a day with radars at standby, now they fired up those radars. French AE-6B Prowlers with the task force had begun active jamming two days before over a wider area than normal, denying the enemy a fix on the ships. Norwegian ground stations already had the inbound fighters and with their data link to the AWAC and JSTARS they also had the fighter-bombers winding their way through mountain valleys toward the targets, well inside Norwegian airspace.

The Su-25 Frogfoot fighter-bombers bound for Banak skimmed the Norway/Finland border, turning southwest with the intention of coming in on the RNAF Sea King helicopter base from the south. The Flogger Js on the mission headed northwest, dropping down to wave top level to cross Laksefjorden. On the western side of the fjord they turned southwest, over-flying the town of Veidnes as they flew down the valley that linked the fjords of Laksefjorden and the long Porsangen fjord which led to Banak at its southern end. As they emerged from the valley three of the Royal Norwegian Navy’s surface-to-air missiles, launched from fast missile patrol boats, brought two Flogger-Js down in the frigid waters.

Four shore batteries protecting the ASW helicopter base engaged the northern attackers with the NASAMS, surface-to-air version of the US AIM-120L. The Floggers’ low-level attack plan went out the window as they discharged flares, chaff bundles and went ballistic to escape the mountain edged confines of the fjord.

For the aircraft going after the more southerly targets, they infringed Swedish sovereignty by over-flying that country. The Swedes were not best pleased; their SAM batteries engaged the high flying fighters whilst their CAPs of Jas-39 Gripen’s got stuck-in amongst the fighter-bombers.

Russia had made a habit of violating Swedish territory over the years, and the Swedes had responded with diplomatic notes. The Russians had been betting that in a shooting war, the Swedes would not even put pen to paper.

For the first time since 1814, Sweden was at war.

With a massive air battle developing over Scandinavia, three of Russia’s S37s headed west on a heading of 220’, a course that would intercept the AWAC and JSTARS. The E-3 Sentry could not see them with its radars but it was watching them anyway via the E-8 JSTARS FLIR, forward looking infrared. The E-8 had no enemy vehicles to track, but in the cold northern climate its FLIR, which helped distinguish between dummy targets and the real thing, was watching three warm tracks appear over the horizon at sea level.

The Charles De Gaulle launched her Dassault, Rafale M and Super Etendards. The Rafale M was gradually replacing the ageing Dassault Super Etendard, but the carrier still carried eight and these aircraft hugged the wave tops as they raced east, seeking the Russian surface warfare vessels. Two pairs of Rafales were vectored onto the S37s whilst the remainder sat on deck alert or remained on CAP.

Sgt Ramsey was pulling his sleeping bag from his Bergen, when the marine he had relinquished the telescope to hissed an urgent

“Sarn’t!”

Around the perimeter of the airfield, all trees and brush had been cleared away to a distance of 400m, heading across this security zone now; Eight BTR-80s were making their way toward the hill where the marines lay. Ramsey was not a great believer in coincidence; he had a bad feeling in his gut as he looked east towards the horizon. In the next half hour the first traces of dawn would be appearing, he now planned to be well on the way to the Norwegian border by the time it was light.

“Pack up… leave your maggot Harris, we’ve been pinged!”

In under two minutes the OP was abandoned, Harris had unzipped his sleeping bag, pulled on his fighting order, picked up his M-16 and followed the rest out, leaving his sleeping bag as instructed. The team barely paused as they retrieved the four Claymore mines that had covered the front, flank and rear of their position. The ‘IRIS’ set and sensors, their infrared picket fence, were left behind with the camouflage net and thermal screen, time was of the essence, the equipment wasn’t.

The M-16 was the weapon of preference for the SBS; it was light and easy to handle. Its 5.56 round lacked the stopping power of heavier ammunition but it was ‘soldier proof’, hard to bend. The M-16 is in service worldwide, and a proven piece of equipment.

Once they had cover from view from the approaching APCs they broke into a jog until they had reached the far side of the hill, and once there the sergeant slowed the pace slightly to that of a forced march. The enemy were probably planning on surrounding the hill before combing it with a ring of troops that closed in on the summit like a noose; he wanted to get clear of the area before that happened.

Their boots squelched in the mud as he removed the tactical palmtop from inside his smock and reconnected the lead to the satcom transmitter strapped about his waist. Once the green ‘link established’ light illuminated he pressed two keys, the first being for the pre-programmed ‘Compromised/Bugging out’ message, and the second for the direction they were heading, 0’ magnetic.

Whilst they were still high enough to see beyond the fir trees that started half way up the hill and marched off some two miles northwards, the marine with their thermal scanner had a look for any sources that would indicate a threat.

The thermal scanner did not detect the BTR or the twelve Russian security troops; there were far too many trees in the way for their thermal images to register. The BTR was parked in a hollow, the engine was silent and the crew was making up the numbers in the three snap ambushes that were in place on paths coming off the hill.

When the marines were about two thirds of the way down, the noise of engines reached them, the sound drifting through the pine trees. If they slowed to a tactical pace they would be caught inside the cordon the enemy was obviously intent on putting in, but if they carried on at this pace they stood a real chance of walking into a kill zone. Sergeant Ramsey did not like feeling like being a grouse being driven by beaters, the birds ran into gun line every time.

Ramsey ordered Harris, the point man, off the animal trail they were following, they would keep it about 50m to their left, and although it would mean they travelled more slowly it would also lower the risks of them running into an ambush.

The damp pine needle floor cut the noise that they made but it was more tiring feeling their way between the trees, ducking under low boughs rather than create a racket by pushing through and past them.

Harris was ducking under a low branch when he froze, before snapping his M-16 into his hip and aiming at something that Sgt Ramsey, twenty feet behind, could not see. There was a burst of firing, both from the marine and from somewhere else, and the young marine dropped dead in his tracks.

The method for dealing with an ambush is simple, the situation may not be survivable but the anti-ambush drill is there none the same. At the first burst of firing the remaining marines charged through the trees at where they believed the enemy were, screaming like banshees and firing as they went. Shock value is the purpose of the drill, turning on an enemy who has the advantage, making him get his head down and with luck giving him some brown adrenaline in his pants for good measure whilst stealing the initiative from him.

The four Russian security troops in the ambush had taken up position in the undergrowth some 40m from the trail, and had the foresight to place one of their number facing the rear. It was this man that the marine had found himself eyeball to eyeball with at a range of just ten feet. The rear protection man and the marine killed one another with their first rounds, the sudden firing from behind them taking the remainder by surprise.

Ramsey was firing from the hip as he came through behind the Russian ambushers, his rounds had been fired blind but once past the tree beside his dead marine he saw the remaining Russians awkwardly training their weapons around. Ramsey hit the ground as his two other marines burst into view, and aware that he had only a few rounds left in the existing magazine, he selected single shot before double-tapping the centre man in the centre of his chest as that man squirmed on his back trying to bring his AK to bear. The roar of gunfire was over in a second, two more Russians lay dead whilst a third clutched at the line of holes across his bloodied belly and screamed in agony. Just a glance at the position of the wounds told the tale of irreparable damage to liver and spleen leading to a lingering and agonised death, a single shot stopped the screams a moment later.

Another marine was down; shot through the face, chest and throat his heels drummed on the forest floor momentarily before his body spasmed and suddenly relaxed.

Ramsey cursed himself for not going slower on the bug-out, as he and the last marine dropped their Bergens and emptied their mates’ ammunition pouches of full mags and grenades. Stepping quickly over to the nearest Russian he rolled the body face down before removing the pin from a grenade and wedging it underneath, spring-arm uppermost. The marines then made off to the north, abandoning their Bergens were they’d dropped them.

The route the marines took brought them close to a stream, so Sgt Ramsey swerved towards it when he heard the water, the engine noises were getting louder and if the ambushers had not been alone then they could easily have already been cut off. From what he recalled of the ground beyond the wood there was precious little cover and the banks of the stream might just keep them out of sight.

Their breath fogged the frosty air as they pounded on downhill, and from behind them they heard shouts as more enemy troops found the bodies at the ambush site.

A loud explosion silenced the shouts moments later, as the body of the booby-trapped soldier was rolled over by a comrade seeking to discover if the man were still alive. It minimised the chances of pursuit and instilled fear into an enemy growing confident in the hunt.

They were coming to the edge of the pinewood and could see by the grey pre-dawn light that the six hundred odd metres of scrubland to the next woodland began only seventy or so metres away. Ramsey slowed, lowering himself down the bank into the icy water that came up to his knees, and the marine with him followed suit. The banks showed signs of the heavier flow of water that would have been present earlier in the month, when waters from the spring thaw would have swollen it. Both men crouched forward at the waist in order that only their heads appeared over the edge as they moved more slowly to the edge of the trees, where they halted. Ramsey paused for a moment as he looked around, and satisfied that there were no enemies yet in sight he took a pace forward. In the poor light he failed to see the two grenades, wedged between submerged boulders and linked together by a length of tripwire below the surface. The commander of the BTR had placed similar crude booby traps at another half a dozen likely routes that he did not have the manpower to cover. Sergeant Ramsey looked down when he felt the resistance against his left shin, thinking it was a trapped branch, and then the pressure against his leg disappeared as the pins slipped out. The young marine behind Ramsey was looking to his left when the grenades went off, peppering him with shrapnel, one piece of which entered below his ear, travelling upwards into his brain. He never even heard the sound of the explosion that killed him.

Sgt Ramsey was thrown forward by the double blasts, almost losing his grip of the M-16 as the freezing water closed over him. His ears rang but the right one seemed to be on fire as he pushed himself back up into the air, a thousand red hot needles seemed to be sticking in him. He pulled himself to the bank and rolled onto his back before reaching up to feel his ear, but it was gone, torn off along with a portion of scalp and his hand came away bloody. He had a pain in his right hip but he bent his knees to stand anyway, or at least he thought he had. Flopping unexpectedly onto his left side he saw with surprise that his left leg below the knee was held in place only by a strip of flesh. His camouflaged trousers were shredded below the thigh and also saw that the pebble bank on which he lay was wet with blood, leaking from a dozen wounds. He rolled onto his back again, feeling the onset of shock but focusing his mind to keep it at bay, shock kills and he needed to remain calm whilst he worked out how he was going to give himself first aid. The pain had not come yet but it would, and soon.

He was gripping his rifle in both hands and taking deep breaths, allowing his training to surface through the threatening trauma, when at that moment a figure appeared on the opposite bank. Acrid smoke from the explosions hung in the air, and the enemy soldier was stood on the edge of the bank looking to his left, upstream of Ramsey toward the scene of the blasts. When the soldier looked to his right, downstream, his weapon did not follow his eyes but he started to bring it around when he caught sight of the marine sergeant, aiming a weapon of his own right at him. Ramsey shot the soldier through the midriff; he folded in the middle with an audible “Ooph!” and sat down heavily before flopping face forward off the bank and into the stream with a splash, to struggle feebly for a moment before going still.

Whoever they were, they weren’t trained infantry thought Ramsey as a second soldier showed himself, visible only from the top of his shoulders to his helmeted head, craning his neck to see where the shot had come from. Ramsey took quick careful aim before shooting this second man in the face and a faint red halo appeared behind as it snapped back, dropping out of view as its helmet spun off to land with a thud out of sight.

To his left was a boulder that would offer more cover than he presently had, but before he could crawl towards it six objects flew from beyond the far bank to land in the stream with a splash, or clattering against the rocky bank he lay against.

Ramsey stared at the fragmentation grenade that came to rest just out of arms reach of him; he had time to announce a disgusted oath.

“Oh… shit,” and then it went off.

The seas off the cape are some of the most dangerous on the planet, often stormy and always carrying fragments of the northern ice pack, to a greater or lesser degree depending on the time of year.

In the dark, the Tarantula, fast missile attack craft had their radars on low power as they surged ahead, an estimated fifteen minutes from optimum launch range. The first wave would take out the outlying NATO picket ships; the second wave the inner, leaving the carriers vulnerable to the Backfire bombers, fighter-bombers, destroyers and frigates that would follow.

Aboard the task force the ships went to high NBC state, as the Super Etendards approached their own release points and their Anémone radars painted over the fast attack craft.

To the southwest of the French strike aircraft, the Rafale M advanced interceptors hugged the shoreline just above the waves in line astern, throttles as far back as safety would allow. The Russian airborne controllers aboard the lumbering and aged A-50s had watched them emerge from the NATO jamming and sprint toward the mainland, to all intents to the assistance of the Norwegians. Radar cannot see through mountains and there was too much happening for them to waste time with what became of the tracks that disappeared and did not reappear on the other side of the high terrain. The A-50s had the Super Etendards heading fast and low to the east, out of the electronic haze of jamming produced by the AE-6Bs, so they took over the Tarantulas’ air defence fire control systems and the boats increased speed from thirty knots to forty. The Tarantulas' SA-N-8 Gremlins could accelerate to 1.7 Mach in under four seconds, but had a range of just 7km so the A-50s vectored in a pair of S37s. They would not arrive in time to prevent the French strike from launching, but the eight Frenchmen could not be carrying enough weapons to make an impression anyway.

The RNAF F-16s and RAF Hawks suddenly disengaged from the battle above Banak and beat feet to the west, leaving the battered Russian fighter bombers an open goal.

To the north of Banak, the flight of three S37s noted with satisfaction the departure of the NATO fighters and the unwavering orbits of the AWAC, JSTARS and their escorts. They had moved into trail as they crossed the northern tip of Norway, threading through narrow valleys, and across fjords but now the open ocean was in sight. As they crossed the high cliffs to begin their transit of the Atlantic their threat receivers screeched the warning that they had been locked-up by infrared missiles. The Russians’ Saturn/Lyulka Al-41F engine nozzles altered direction as the fighters broke left, right and upwards, discharging flares as they did so. The French pilots could not match the turns, but they were already in knife fighting range when the Russians cleared the coastline, each S37 had three Magic II high velocity heat seekers chasing them, they ignored the slow moving flares, tearing past at 2.7 Mach.

The Super Etendards on the anti-shipping strike split after four launched a single weapon apiece. The Russian controllers watched half the attackers turn for home on burner whilst their missiles went ballistic. The senior controller ran the missiles' data against known profiles for anti-shipping missiles; he didn’t get a match, which did not surprise him because he personally knew of none that behaved that way. The remaining four launched two minutes later and turned hard, heading for the safety of the task force, their weapons did at least perform, as anti-shipping missiles should. His attention was then called back to the first missiles which had levelled out briefly at 30,000 before beginning steep descents, and then he noticed that the NATO forces had ceased radiating. With the exception of one AE-6B Prowler that was still jamming, all NATO radar and communication equipment was switched off rather than turned to standby, and no one was looking east of the North Cape.

“Dolboy'eb!” the senior controller cursed his own stupidity and stabbed the ‘all freqs’ transmission switch.

“False Dawn… False Dawn!” he was almost screaming the code words. The Soviet units in the attacks came from more countries than just Russia, not everyone spoke Russian but they had all been given code words for a variety of occurrences.

Having put out the warning he unstrapped himself and sprinted up the aircraft for the A-50’s own master shutdown switch, for a man of fifty-five he was negotiating the chicane formed by the operators’ seats quite well, but he wouldn’t make it.

The Russian destroyers and frigates began launching on the incoming missiles although they would also be too late, at 10,000 feet above sea level the four warheads detonated.

Many of the units in range of the effects of the nuclear airbursts were far too busy to initiate the shutdowns, let alone look up the code word.

Aboard the A-50 the datalink to the Tarantulas terminated, radar screens went blank as the EMP, electromagnetic pulse, tripped the built in safeties but still burnt out several circuit boards.

Fortunately for the A-50 pilots, they were on the northbound leg of their orbit at that moment, they knew that all the Russian warheads that were likely to be used today were conventional, but no one believed that NATO would use nuclear weapons off a member state's coastline.

Whilst the Russian controllers frantically replaced burnt out boards the second flight of Storm-Shadows flew on unchallenged half a mile apart, to detonate over the first wave of missile boats.

Radars and communications failed in many Russian airframes within a three hundred-mile radius, and retinas burnt out in those who were looking the wrong way at the wrong time. Airborne command and control for all Russian forces was lost over the north of Norway, and their naval surface combat units were either vaporised, or burning from stem to stern.

The ASW helicopter base and its defences at Banak lay in flames, but no airworthy aircraft had been there when the attackers arrived, they had dispersed the day before, along with essential equipment and personnel. Helicopters do not need runways; they were ready to commence operations once the Russian air attacks had been beaten off.

The Hawks and F-16s returned, although the Hawks arrived later having recovered to Bodø, to the south, to rearm with another pair of AIM-9 Sidewinders each.

One force that was largely intact was the Tu-22ME Backfire anti-shipping strike with its seven remaining S37 Golden Eagle stealth fighters. Two of their number had been intending to ruin the French fighter-bombers whole day, when five miles north of their own destroyer and frigate force they had been swatted from the skies.

The commander of the Task Force strike gave his orders to the regimental commanders; they left their holding orbits and split up into their high, low, left and right attack elements, heading west.

The AWAC and JSTARS turned back toward the east, initiating the powering up sequences for their surveillance, command and control systems. The datalink with the Task Force was re-established and the French aircraft carrier began launching the forty remaining Rafale Ms. The single AE-6B Prowler that had continued to fog the radar screens, denying the enemy an exact fix on the task force, curled down toward the icy waters streaming smoke and flame. Despite its electronic safeguards, several electric fires started by the EMP had been beyond the ability of the crew to put out; a helicopter was heading toward the imminent crash site.

Fleet defence was handed over to the Royal Navy Sea Harriers off the Jeanne d'Arc and the AV-8B Harriers from the Spanish carrier Principe de Asturias whilst the French advanced fighters attempted to break up the enemy attack long before it was in range to launch its missiles.

As the Russian A-50 began the process of re-booting its systems the strike against the NATO blockade went in unassisted, the S37s only had their own systems to work with. The S37s’ commander looked at the electronic mess that was blocking his radar emissions and made a hard decision, his aircraft curved back around to the east to take station behind the leading regiment of fighter-bombers, thirty Flogger Js.

The Russian stealth fighters had been a thorn in NATO’s side since the battle of Leipzig, and as much as the senior NATO controller would have liked to waste them all before sorting out the strike aircraft there was too much at stake here. She watched the stealth fighters’ heat signatures replaced at the forefront and ensured that none of the French pilots got carried away. Each regiment taking part, with the exception of the S37s, had two aircraft assigned to carry a pair of multi-phase jammer pods and only a couple of Aphids for self-defence, these aircraft now powered up their pods.

The Rafale Ms had an un-obscured view of the oncoming Soviet strike, right up until that point; there were a few Gallic grumbles as they switched from Mica, medium range radar guided missiles to their DEFA 791B 30-mm cannons for the first head-on pass. At their current closing speed, they risked damage to their own airframes from flying debris if they fired their Magic IIs at their maximum range of 7km.

Forty French advanced strike fighters were about to engage over one hundred enemy aircraft a mere 157 miles from the maximum launch range of the enemy’s anti-ship missiles.

The Russian S37s were not in the same restricted position as the Rafale Ms they carried the Vympel R-73E, known by its NATO code name as the AA-11 Archer. Its front and rear control fins are augmented with a thrust-vectoring system that deflects hot gases from the rocket motor, greatly enhancing turning performance and if that weren’t enough, it also outranged the AIM-9L Sidewinder and the Magic II by almost 30km.

Rafale Ms found themselves locked-up and broke lock by jinking violently into the vertical and discharging flares, the Russian pilots did not attempt to re-establish lock; they merely locked up another Frenchman.

Capitaine de Aéronavale Allaine Armand, the Charles De Gaulle’s CAG, leading Escadrille 24 immediately behind the leading squadron, Escadrille 15, barked at his pilots to hold their course and go to zone three afterburners even as his own threat receiver screeched in alarm. The increased thermal output in the Rafales' wakes, flares plus acceleration beat some of the AA-11 missiles that were loosed at them. Two of the advanced single seat carrier aircraft disintegrated in balls of fire and wreckage, a third lost its starboard engine but held its course, it failed however to beat the next Archer sent its way moments later.

The seven survivors of Escadrille 24 loosed 30mm cannon fire at the Flogger Js before breaking, Allain Armand thumbed a half second burst into the Flogger heading straight for him, its own cannon firing back at him, before kicking his left rudder and rolling inverted. A mere six feet of air separated the two aircraft as they passed and shards of shattered cockpit canopy bounced off the Rafale’s fuselage. Armand had no opportunity to watch the Flogger nose over with a dead pilot at the controls, he was pulling five Gs in a hard, diving turn to the left in an attempt to engage a regiment of Backfires, their wings fully swept back, streaking west at wave top level.

He got tone at maximum range and pickled off two Magic II missiles before breaking high right, to break another missile lock on his Rafale.

Escadrille 24 and the S37s were now embroiled in a fur ball as the bulk of the Soviet strike raced by, and as advanced as they were, the French aircraft were outclassed in this dog fight.

The as yet un-engaged Rafale squadrons, Escadrilles 17 and 23, dived after the low-level Backfire regiments, leaving the disarrayed Escadrille 15 to get its act together PDQ, and take on the high level Floggers in a tail chase.

Two pairs of Spanish AV-8B Harriers remained on top CAP above the task force whilst the remainder from the Principe de Asturias and the British, Fleet Air Arm Sea Harriers from the French helicopter carrier Jeanne d'Arc, went east.

Aboard the Charles De Gaulle, Contra Admiral Bernard, the rear admiral commanding the task force, was fairly confident that the enemy had no precise fix on his ships. From the reports coming from his aircraft, the enemy had divided into two forces that were flying divergent courses at the time of interception, which he correctly assumed as meaning that they intended to divide up the hunting ground. He surmised that in the enemy game plan whoever came across the task force would send the co-ordinates to the other strike force, however, in reality the other force would know where they were the instant that the Hawkeyes stopped radiating and the ships went active in order to engage. Unfortunately for NATO they had to make things much easier for the Soviets than that, the Harrier force, both AV-8B and Sea Harrier FA2, were not supersonic and relied on their AMRAAMs to take out a faster enemy. The jamming prevented the radar guided AMRAAMs from acquiring the enemy so all Admiral Bernard could do was wait until the last possible moment before ordering the Hawkeyes to cease and desist. The ships would stay on standby and rely on the data-link feed from the AWAC to tell them what was going on and control the ships' air-defence systems, with fingers crossed that the aerial platforms were not downed or driven away.

His Super Etendard strike and the four Rafales that had ambushed the S37s earlier were now entering the pattern and would be turned around and sent off again, refuelled, and rearmed for air to air combat.

The Backfires called for help to get the Rafales off their backs and half of the Flogger Js in each regiment dumped their C-601 anti-ship missiles and went after the Frenchmen. The leading Rafales launched on the Backfires before going defensive, the Rafale M had a maximum speed of 2125kph and the Backfire 2300kph, and it was a race the French would lose. The Floggers were outmatched but they tied up the Rafales and allowed those still carrying anti-ship ordnance to leak through.

Pc Stokes sat outside the office that had been borrowed by Scott Tafler for the day. There was a tension in the air, increased by the last minute hold put on the mission, as the KC-135 tankers that were to be staged out of Andøya had been moved back to Kinloss, because of anticipated enemy activity of some kind over northern Norway, at least which was what Stokes had heard.

The shouting from behind the office door had ceased about three minutes before and although Stokes was not privy to anything concerning the operational detail or objective, he knew from the shouting that Major Bedonavich was no longer going.

Constantine stood at the window, looking out across the airfield but not looking at anything. His hands were thrust into his trouser pockets and he had his back turned to Scott, who sat with a fax message before him.

“If you have quite done with the histrionics Major, I will explain the reason why you are no longer part of this operation… and why you may well have compromised operational security.”

Constantine turned with a glare. “What rubbish are you talking Scott?”

“The military attaché in Switzerland, Pyotr Cezechenko, was a classmate in the academy, was he not?”

“Pyotr and I are good friends, he was the best man at my wedding and he saved my life once, in Chechnya.”

“You telephoned him at his home in Geneva, from a payphone in Edinburgh… please do not deny it, Swiss intelligence sent us a tape to ID a voice, it was yours.”

“Well then, if you heard the tape then you know what the conversation was.” Constantine sat on a grey painted, stackable tubular steel chair with brown plastic seat and backrest.

“Pyotr agreed with me that this war is insanity, which we in the military have to do something to stop.”

“Have you ever seen an encrypted Russian military message text, Con?” Scott enquired. “Of course you have,” he said, and tossed across a sheaf of papers.

“The Swiss passed on the phone intercept and a batch of other stuff, a real flurry of encrypted traffic between the embassy and Moscow that day. It took a while for it to filter along to me.”

Constantine picked them up and looked at the top page.

“The first four biagrams identify the encryption settings,” Scott explained. “And the first triagram is the address group… in this case, LZV.”

“It is the premier's personal address group.” Constantine muttered.

“The second triagram identifies the sender, JHU… I am sure you recognise it too?” But Constantine said nothing; he kept his eyes on the page in front of him.

“On the second line you will see another triagram… it recurs another four more times throughout the message.” Constantine was still silent. “FDW, that’s your identifier isn’t it Con?”

“I told Pyotr that Svetlana was killed by the gunmen in the helicopter… what does the rest of the message say?”

Scott reached across and retrieved the message from Constantine, returning it to the file.

“I have no idea whatsoever, but as it was sent just forty minutes after you put the phone down in Edinburgh, I would say Pyotr made damn good time through the traffic to his office in order to send it. It mentions you five times Major so work it out for yourself. You told him you would be back in Moscow soon… worse still, you confirmed that you were still alive, and that Major, is why I scrubbed you.”

“Svetlana will not be safe over there without me.” Constantine told him.

“Yeah right, a whole militia with your picture and your lousy sense of judgement as regards the human character.”

Constantine’s nostrils flared.

“That is unfair of you Scott… a cheap shot, as you would say!”

“Well forgive-the-shit-out-of-me Major… but you did not just endanger your own and Svetlana’s lives, one hell of a lot of other men and women are in this!”

“I already told you Scott… they think she is dead!”

“Oh, grow up, for Christ’s sake!” Scott shouted. “When they took you, and that’s when, not if… how long would it be before you gave her up to them… and the Nighthawk mission… the ancillary personnel… . one day, two… ”

“I would never betray her… or them!” Both men were on their feet, facing one another across the desk.

“Never Con, never… your people wrote the book on interrogation. As brave and well-meaning as you are, you would tell them… you couldn’t help yourself.”

Constantine rose slowly his chair, all argument having left him and went back to stand before the window.

Sub Lieutenant Hawkins fought back the nausea he felt welling up as his lead, Lt Allenby came up on the air “Contact, contact, five Backfires, ten miles, three o’clock low!” He could feel the sweat break out on his forehead as he twisted around to look at the five dots 10,000’ below, he didn’t know how his leader had spotted them and he definitely wished he had not, but there they were. The contact report was repeated to the ships and he found himself praying that the Hawkeyes would keep on pumping out the interference, so they would not be able to engage.

“Standby to go active Two, the E2s are shutting off the noise… … we’ll engage from port quarter with Sidewinders and then switch to Slammers before they get out of range… snap right and low yo-yo, with me… . Standby, standby… go!”

In the few seconds that had elapsed from when they had first sighted them, the Russian bombers had closed considerably. The Sea Harriers rolled almost inverted at the start of their dive; radars still on standby and dropped toward the faster Russian aircraft.

As the seeker heads on the AIM-9 Sidewinders detected the engine exhausts of the Backfires, their warning growls sounded in Hawkins’ headset and he found to his surprise that his fear was giving way to excitement.

The Fleet Air Arm aircraft bottomed out of the dive and pickled off two Sidewinders apiece on the up-rise, Allenby’s at the aircraft in the centre of the formation, and Hawkins at the bomber at the extreme right.

Fortune favours the brave, the Hawkeyes ceased their interference at that moment, as the Bomber formation broke, their threat receivers already alerting them to the closing IR missiles and they pumped flares out of their wingtip dispensers.

Allenby switched his radar to active and immediately got tone on the centre Backfire, unaware that the crew had temporarily blacked out in performing the vertical jink that defeated both Sidewinders. The Backfire’s automated defence system registered the AMRAAMs lock-on and the launch, dutifully punching out chaff bundles. It is not sufficient to merely distract a smart missile, the trick is not to be there anymore once it has wised up to the ruse, and that involves pilot type stuff. Allenby loosed off one AIM-120L at the lead Backfire before stamping hard on his left rudder pedal to lock up another.

The first Slammer took all of 100^th of a second to analyse the various velocities of the chaff clouds and ignore them, locking on once more to the fast moving target heading up in a 70’ climb with little deviation in course. The Backfires weapons officer, the youngest aboard, started to recover first and his brain recognised the screeching alarm just as the AMRAAM detonated four feet from the juncture of starboard wing and fuselage. The crew would owe their lives to the weapons officer’s youth; he was alert enough to activate the communal ejection system.

Hawkins’ first Sidewinder was decoyed by a flare but the second stayed with his target through its 6 gee turn to starboard, flying up the port engine intake and exploding the bomber.

Cheering aloud to himself he rolled left and was amazed to see the three survivors already diminishing in size, but he locked up two of them with AMRAAMs and sent a 335lb missile after each of them. The air-intercept missiles accelerated to Mach 4 and ate up the distance between shooter and target.

Like a punter at a race track Hawkins urged them on down the final straight, cheering louder as his second kill fell toward the sea in flames, and booing as the other Backfire merely trailed a thick black streamer of smoke behind it. Hawkins revelry was cut short by his lead’s shout of

“Break left Tommy!”

Training took over and Hawkins automatically altered the angle of vectored thrust with his left hand, whilst turning the aircraft hard left with his right. The airframe shuddered as a cannon shell passed through the tail plane without exploding, and shook again with the turbulence of a Flogger overshooting, taken by surprise by the drastic manoeuvre.

The odds against the two Brits was three to one and they were not fighting as a unit, not covering one another, having split up whilst trying to account for as many of the bombers as they could.

Admiral Bernard watched the air threat get closer to the area of ocean his ships occupied, and the digital symbols representing his aircraft diminish in number. A large screen covered the after bulkhead in CIC, aboard the French aircraft carrier. In just over fifteen minutes his own carrier’s inventory of combat aircraft had been reduced by over 30 %, thirteen of his Rafale M advanced strike fighters had fallen, along with three British and Spanish Harriers, but accounting for thirty-three of the enemy thus far.

The two tracks of the S37s that had survived showed that they were heading southeast, presumably back to the barn to refuel and rearm thought Bernard, however neither Golden Eagle would ever take to the air again, they had taken too much damage.

As he continued to watch, oblivious to the activity going on around him in CIC, he noticed two RN Sea Harriers disappear from the screen and the four Floggers that remained after that fight steer directly for his AWAC and JSTARS cover, which in turn moved away.

"Putain de merde!" he shouted at the screen before turning to his English speaking communications officer.

“Get them back on station, we need them!” His own E-2C Hawkeyes were not equipped with the advanced command and control suite that US Hawkeyes were blessed with, and if the E-3 Sentry left then his ships would have to reveal themselves in order to provide air defence.

The Floggers launched anti-radiation missiles at extreme range and both the large aircraft switched their systems to standby, diving toward the sea and leaving their F-16 bodyguards to deal with the Russians. Bernard howled at the now blank wall screen,

"Merde a la puissance treize!" His senior aides rolled their eyes and exchanged looks, whenever their admiral used the term ‘shit to the thirteenth power’ he was seriously pissed off.

“Warn all friendly aircraft not to approach within seventy kilometres of the outside pickets… all ships go active, Now!..weapons free with the exception of ships to the southwest, get the Etendards and Rafales now on deck, back in the air and departing to the southwest, then close that corridor. I want a 360’ free fire zone established for the ships in ten minutes time, so get the flight deck monkeys moving… .Now!”

Smoke rose in a tall column above the coastal town of Bodø and citizens joined with the fire brigade to help rescue patients from the Nordland Central Hospital.

First established in 1796, the oldest hospital in Scandinavia had been struck dead centre by a Flogger J fighter-bomber after its crew ejected from the crippled aircraft. Had it not already dropped its bomb load then the situation would have been even worse. High-octane aviation fuel fed the fire and exploding 23mm cannon ammunition cooking off in the flames made the fire fighters’ job even more hazardous.

RAF Hawks provided top cover whilst the Norwegian and Danish F-16s recovered to the single undamaged runway.

As a serious attempt to put the Norwegians out of the air force business, it had been a failure, as a diversion to prevent their reinforcing the blocking North Cape Task Force it had succeeded.

A quarter of the attackers had been destroyed and only Banak was out of commission, but the defenders now had to reconstitute before continuing combat operations. It would take an hour to turn around the undamaged airframes and get them heading north, but the issue up there would be decided in a third of that time.

Principe de Asturias, Charles De Gaulle and the Jeanne d'Arc occupied the centre of the task force whilst the outer rings comprised the escorts for what were in effect three carrier groups plus three Polish warships.

The air defence destroyers Duquesne from France, and Spain's Almirante Juan de Borbon flanked the carriers. Seventeen frigates and corvettes provided two further layers of defence. Only two of the ships present were pure ASW configurations with no air defence missile capabilities, the ex-Perry class frigates General K. Pulaski and Naczelnik Tadeusz Kosciuszko, both under Polish colours, sat inside the picket lines.

Aboard the remaining picket ships the lessons learnt from the USS John F Kennedy encounters with mass aircraft/missile swamping tactics had been heeded. The air defence capable hulls not only had full magazines; they had storerooms and cabins within easy reach of their weapon mountings, and these spaces were crammed with reloads for the SAM launchers. Contra Admiral Bernard was determined he was not going to lose hulls simply because they ran out of ammunition, as had happened on the other side of the world.

Without the electronic cloak concealing the ships, the Soviet A-50 had the exact position, course and speed of every vessel locked down to within five metres. The Floggers that had ditched all but their air-air ordnance were keeping the Rafales, AV-8Bs and Sea Harriers occupied whilst the A-50 controllers sent in the Backfires followed by the slower Floggers to hammer down the defences on the northern side of the NATO task force. If they succeeded in exposing the heart of the force, the carriers, then they would be free to return and clear away the multi-role and dedicated ASW ships from the doorway to the Atlantic once more.

To the northwest of the ships, four F-16s regrouped and climbed back to their previous stations, signalling the AWAC and JSTARS the all clear. One of their number was limping south, making for Andøya. The last fragments of the sixth F-16 in the escort were just splashing down into the unforgiving seas far below.

The mixed formation of Etendards and Rafales had been turned around and re-launched in a way that would have impressed Grand Prix pit crews, and now loaded with air-air weapons the controllers vectored them towards Bodø.

Twenty-three Backfires went to zone three afterburner and headed for the outer picket ships, the weapons officers selecting Zvedzda KH-31 anti-radar missiles first. Designated by NATO as the AS-17 KRYPTON, it was one of the fastest low level missiles in the world. Designed as a counter to America’s AEGIS and Patriot systems, its kerosene driven ramjet would propel the missile and its 220lb warhead along at 3,120 feet per second at an altitude of thirty feet. At 30,000’ it was capable of twice that speed.

Bernard studied the screen, now receiving information from the ships radars. Ninety-two of the anti-radiation missiles in three waves appeared on the screen to the north of his ships, out of range of his defences, as yet. To the northeast the AWAC was exceeding its designers’ specifications with its throttles firewalled as it powered its way back on-station. He barked an order and figures appeared on the screen, which he took in at a glance.

“All ships… hold fire, hold fire!” Turning to his communications officer he said earnestly. “Tell the AWAC they have exactly thirty seconds to resume fire control of my ships… not a second more.”

Twenty-seven seconds later the AWAC was back on the job and it was the A-50 controllers turn to curse as the NATO ships' radars ceased generating. The KH-31 missiles flew directly at the last co-ordinates their processors had for the sources of radar energy, but warships in combat do not sit still, they were no longer there.

SS-N-26 Yahont-M anti-shipping missiles came off the Backfires' racks next, they were a different story all together and the AWAC launched air defence missiles from the ship's launchers. Old Soviet inventory SA-N-1 Goas, French Crotales and Mistrals, American ship launched Sidewinders, Standard 1s and 2s along with British designed Sea Sparrow missiles sped away from the ships.

On the NATO ships, as reloads from the magazines were either automatically loaded into the launchers, or sent up by elevator for manual loading, chains of seamen manhandling fresh missiles from makeshift storerooms replaced them. Unfortunately for the Kashin class Polish frigate Warszawa, on the outer picket, her magazines were only two thirds full when she had left port ten days before and she quickly ran dry. Without a flank defence system along the lines of the Phalanx, the Polish frigate could only crack on all speed, zigzag and fire chaff bundles from her mortars to try and throw off the four big missiles that were locked on to her.

On the inner picket line, none of the crew on the decks of the French air defence frigate Cassard heard any part of anyone else’s fight; such was the almost continual roar of missiles from their own launchers. However, in the Cassard CIC they received a report from their lookouts of a large, fireball rising into the sky to the north and on checking their tactical displays, the Warszawa was no longer there.

The missing vessel created a slight dead zone in the overlapping fields of fire, not much, just two miles at its narrowest point, like a finger pointing toward the French frigate on the inner picket line. The A-50 saw it and vectored in fifteen Floggers that still had SS-N-26s unexpended and which also carried a pair of FAB-500 iron bombs each.

Although only the elderly Polish warship had thus far succumbed, her neighbours to the west and east had not escaped totally unscathed, the Danish corvette Olfert Fischer suffered a malfunction in her six-cell vertical launch system. The flow of Sea Sparrow missiles from the magazine was halted for a critical thirty seconds whilst the system rebooted, and only her small size saved her as the chaff clouds produced by the stern dispenser produced a radar target far larger than the vessel. Two SS-N-26 Yahont-M anti-ship missiles flew into the chaff clouds, the first 440lb warhead shredded the afterworks as it detonated in the cloud and caused a small fire, the second killed the damage control party two minutes later, as they fought the fire, and holed her at the waterline.

Warszawa’s other neighbour suffered damage in the Backfires' attack, the French frigate Latouch-Treville’s Phalanx gun hit one of the missiles close inboard. A kilometre out the missile’s sensors had detected the frigate's FLIR targeting system, locking on to it and accelerated the missile from 1.3 mach to 2.7. The Phalanx took 2000^th of a second to register the new speed but a full second to adjust the weapons point of aim, by which time it was moving like a blur toward the thin aluminium skin of the warship. A single depleted uranium round struck the missile, shredding the warhead and fusing circuit, so the big charge failed to explode. The missile's solid rocket booster and ramjet assembly however, still struck the frigate whilst travelling at over twice the speed of sound. It smashed into the side of the bridge, travelling completely through and on into the sea 200m beyond, leaving a huge gaping hole edged with jagged metal at the forward end of the superstructure where moments before eight human beings had been.

With all weapons expended the Backfires headed on back to their fields to refuel and rearm, skirting the North Cape at low level. The lead regiment had just ten seconds warning from the A-50 of a new threat bursting out of the cover of the fjords into Soviet radar coverage just two miles ahead of the supersonic bombers.

None of the Backfires had any chaff or flares left after evading the fighters on their way in, and their attacks against the task force. Only two survived the ambush by the recently turned around and re-launched Super Etendards and Rafales, fleeing north and shouting a warning to the other regiments that followed behind.

Cassard had become ‘The thin red line’ on that part of the task force's northern flank, as the Danish corvette Olfert Fischer was down at the stern and had lost all electrical power due to flooding in the engine room. Auxiliary generators on deck were powering the pumps that kept her afloat, but they could not power her fighting systems.

Ignoring the French admiral’s orders, the Pole's dedicated anti-submarine warfare frigates Naczelnik Tadeusz Kosciuszko and General K. Pulaski had left the centre of the formation and steamed north at flank speed.

Below decks aboard the Cassard, naval ratings sweated and grunted as they manhandled missiles from makeshift stores to the magazine to keep it filled, without the additional stores the ship would have been down to its last ten reloads at this point.

The sudden lull in fire from the Danish corvette was duly noted aboard the orbiting A-50, which ordered a pair of Floggers to egress across her position after releasing Yahont-Ms at the French air defence frigate.

Only smoke from the fire on the afterworks rose from the corvette as the Floggers rolled in hot for a run at her bow. The Floggers flew in close-trail the length of the crippled war ship at a height of 300ft, releasing their iron bomb loads in a text book perfect attack. The pair of FAB-500 bombs that straddled her, stove in her thin sides but it was the second pair, penetrating the into the ships bowels and detonating in her fuel bunkers and forward magazine that blew her into a thousand fragments.

Cassard’s point defence Phalanx gun exploded an SS-N-26 a kilometre out before switching its aim to the Flogger that had released it. The Ukrainian fighter-bomber was jinking to left and right as it made its bomb run, but the gun's software had over two hundred attack profiles in its memory, it tracked the aircraft for a heartbeat before firing a twenty-one round burst… and fell silent.

Armourers scrambled to reload the weapon even as fragments of aircraft fell on the ship, the Flogger clipped the vessel's radar mast as it passed over the ship, its port wing sawn off by the single burst and crashed into the sea a hundred metres to the south.

Two more Floggers began their runs whilst the armourers strained to reload the weapon and aboard the AWAC an ‘offline’ icon appeared over the point defence system of the ships schematic.

Provided that the Mistrals took out the incoming missiles and fighter-bombers in this wave then it should not be a problem, but the defence evasion program in the SS-N-26 missiles was proving to be more advanced than NATO had allowed for.

The armourers winced as their ship released missiles at the new threat, they had loaded only a hundred rounds into the Phalanx magazine, a two second bursts worth, and shaking fingers had mis-fed one round that they were struggling to extract before they could resume loading. The senior rating had to steady himself as the ship rolled unexpectedly, if he hadn’t known better he would have said it was caused by the wash of another ship passing close by.

Naczelnik Tadeusz Kosciuszko and General K. Pulaski surged past the French frigates stern heading north, and once clear they commenced producing chaff clouds from their mortars, their only form of missile defence.

At 6,700lbs, the air-launched version of the SS-N-26 Yahont was 1,898lbs lighter than its ship launched cousin, but still so heavy that the Floggers could only carry one apiece. Both incoming Floggers released the weapons at 29 kilometres, before setting up for conventional bomb runs as the big ship killers accelerated to 1.3 Mach initially. The weapons would react to radar and IR lock-on by the defenders, varying speed between 2.7 and 1.3 Mach whilst making both dummy and radical 4g turns along with changes in altitude. Minimum engagement range for the defenders was four kilometres down-range, and this pair of missiles defeated ten Mistrals to close the range to within five kilometres of that point.

Above and to the west of the battle the AWAC’s senior controller, Lt Col Ann-Marie Chan, breathed a barely audible “Oh shit,” on seeing the ‘offline’ icon on the Cassard’s point defence system joined by another from her chaff dispensers. Just forty kilometres south of the air defence frigate lay the carriers and there was still a regiment and a half of Floggers with unexpended SS-N-26s.

Half a kilometre to the northeast of the Frenchman, the ex-Perry class frigate Naczelnik Tadeusz Kosciuszko altered course due west and her single screw whipped the sea to foam as she sought to place herself between the Cassard and the fast approaching threat. Even as Admiral Bernard ordered the air defence destroyer Duquesne north to bolster the defence lines the AWAC senior controller tried to avert disaster striking the almost defenceless Polish warship. Her captain had not made an error; he was buying the French time by offering his own vessel as an alternative.

“Jesus H… !” exclaimed Lt Col Chan. “We need to warn this guy off… hey, Kolanski… you speak Polish?”

“No offence ma’am but I’m from Sonora, Spanish is my second language, not Polack. My great granddaddy was the last in our family to speak Polish.”

Passing the magical 4000m mark, the Yahont-Ms found the target originally designated for them was being eclipsed by another, half a kilometre closer but their processors analysed it as being worthy of their attention nonetheless. The leading missile was dummied by chaff and exploded harmlessly astern of the warship, but the second popped up and dived in at an angle of forty degrees, its short stubby wings tearing off as it pierced the decking.

Aboard the French frigate they saw the Polish ship stagger, and the sound of the missile’s impact rolled across the gulf separating the two ships. Thick black smoke soon obscured the after half of the Naczelnik Tadeusz Kosciuszko. The warhead of the missile had not detonated but its rocket motor was still firing, igniting the Polish ship's fittings and even aluminium in her structure.

Turning his ship beam-on to the wind, the Polish captain attempted to lessen the spread of fire to the rest of the vessel, ringing down for a dead stop. Burning electrical insulation produced thick black sooty smoke, which quickly clogged the filters of the respirators that all but the dedicated firemen of the damage control party wore. Internal lighting failed almost immediately following the missile strike, making the task of fighting the fire doubly difficult. In the crew quarters where the missile had come to rest, the after bulkhead melted through and collapsed, allowing the superheated jet to play on what lay behind and above it, the large water main that fed the hoses.

When the mains failed the damage control parties struggled back toward the sunlight, abandoning the lower decks to the fire.

The stricken frigate's sister ship, General K. Pulaski and the French frigate Cassard closed with her to render assistance, but the seas were too high to come alongside and feed hoses over. Playing hoses on the ship’s upper works merely delayed the inevitable; the water was needed below decks.

The Naczelnik Tadeusz Kosciuszko’s captain ordered the crew to abandon ship, leaving the ship to the fire in her bowels that could not be fought.

One hour later the flames would eat through her upper hull as well as engulfing the aft part of her superstructure, a short time after that they would reach the magazine. Sixty-two souls would go to the bottom with her when she blew up, victims of asphyxia from the smoke that filled the ship within minutes of her being struck.

East of the task force the last Flogger flying interference for the bomb and missile carrying aircraft fell into the sea, freeing up the Rafales, Etendards, AV-8Bs and Sea Harriers to set to with the formations attacking their ships, few had missiles left but they all had cannon.

The Spanish and British Harriers went south, to form a gauntlet that those enemy aircraft that were running for home would have to pass through. The French headed west, closing with the Floggers threatening their ships and causing most to ditch their anti-shipping ordnance and evade at wave top height.

Ten minutes later, F-16s out of Bodø hunted down the last Floggers to egress the area and headed for the A-50 far to the north.

The huge airborne control platform shut down its radars and ran east with its escort, marking the end of one phase of the second battle of the North Cape. It was only 7.08am local time.

Henry Shaw had remained in the situation room since being alerted to movement in the Murmansk area, many hours before. He overruled the Chief of Staff and cancelled two briefings that the President was supposed to attend, ordering that the man should remain undisturbed.

The war of attrition in Earth orbit was thinning out satellite assets on both sides, and it had been decided that future reliance on them for command and control in the battle would be imprudent. However, communications satellites had conveyed the datalink from the AWAC, and in rather less detail from the Charles De Gaulle during the E-3’s enforced absence.

“Why wasn’t I woken Henry?”

General Shaw turned at the accusing tone in the President's voice. He was pulling on a jacket as he entered the room, and everyone present stopped what they were doing. The general cast a meaningful glance around the room and they all left, with the exception of course of the Secret Service agent, who managed to do a fair to middling job of merging unobtrusively with the water cooler.

“With all due respect Mr President, if you have access to some means of influencing the outcome of conflicts far away, I hope you’ll share it. Otherwise you would have been sat here watching and just as powerless as I was.” The chief executive's indignant posture relaxed and he put out a hand to guide himself as he eased himself down into a chair.

Henry Shaw took in the pale face and shadows below the eyes.

“You look like shit… did you get much decent sleep?”

Fire returned to the older man’s eyes.

“Do not forget who it is you are talking to general.”

Henry nodded in a conciliatory manner.

“Sorry… Mr President, you look like shit, did you get any good sleep?”

It brought a chuckle.

“I had a hard paper round as a boy… and you General, are a son of a bitch. I don’t know why I keep you on. A few weeks ago I didn’t even like you.”

“Now… you like me?” said General Shaw turning back to the console before him. “Wow… you politicians sure know how to mask your feelings!”

“So how did we do up north, Henry?”

“Sir, we won… so far anyway.” The plasma screen came alive, showing the North Cape, Scandinavia and northern Russia from one hundred miles west of Andøya, to a hundred miles beyond Murmansk in the east. The time on the screen showed 04:01:23 GMT.

“The first thing you will see sir, is surface combat units west of the Kola Inlet and the location of a sizeable submarine force, submerged. Also, airborne command and control aircraft, tankers, plus all their escorts lifting off from fields east of Murmansk.”

The President interrupted him.

“Where did this information come from, I don’t see any satellite IDs up there, and the only AWAC is way west and not radiating, according to the screen anyway?”

“It’s all humint, real time assets on the ground, that is intelligence people or troops, long range recon types, and a submarine sat on the bottom somewhere nearby. Once the aircraft take off, they will disappear along the last known heading. An hour later, the world and his brother lift off from fields west of Murmansk… and by the way, Sweden entered the war on our side.”

On screen the icons for the fighter escorts, A-50 AWAC and Il-76 tankers did indeed briefly appear before vanishing off the screen to the north.

General Shaw advanced the time by an hour before setting the speed of the action at twice normal time. The General sat impassively throughout, speaking only to qualify various events on-screen. The President tried hard to emulate him, but inside his stomach churned. Every icon that disappeared in combat represented unknowable grief and heartache for families and loved ones, and death to those the icon represented. He felt tears threatening to well up as he watched the old Polish warship sacrifice itself in order that the air defence integrity of the task force remain unbreached.

When it was over the resident had to clear his throat before speaking, but his voice still cracked with emotion when he spoke, asking the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs what the butcher’s bill had been.

General Shaw did not answer him directly.

“Sir, it is early days yet in this war, a lot of people have died so far… and a whole bunch more are going to die before this thing is done. You cannot afford to go dwelling on it… any more than I can.” He could see that the strain, lack of a proper sleep and burden of responsibility was taking its toll.

“If it helps sir, try putting it into perspective. Our side lost three ships, thirty-nine combat aircraft, and a hell of a lot less in manpower than we did on Omaha Beach in the first hour of the D-Day landings, and a little more than died in homicides in this country last year. Thanks to the National Rifle Association lobby… on the other hand, the other guy lost a shit load of everything… and that Mr President is what matters, right here, right now.”

“Sir, we have defeated their air and surface efforts to open the way into the Atlantic, used nuclear weapons along the way, but they still have their boats intact for an attempt on their own… the question now is, will those same submarines use nukes earmarked for the next convoy, in breaking out? Or will they even try?”

“How badly did we hurt their air force yesterday, enough to affect the land battle in Germany?”

“Unfortunately not… oh, we hurt the hell out of them; all those regiments that came from Germany are going to have to be reconstituted. Two thirds of them are either at the bottom of the sea or decorating the Scandinavian countryside. They have forces in reserve, probably being held in readiness for their next phase… the Middle East if I had to guess. Anyway, those reserve air assets are already on the way to Germany.”

“So we are no better off, is that it General?”

“Oh, we are far better off than we were. The first convoy is unloading and supplies are on the way up to the front. We were getting low on everything. There has been some fighting on the front but our troops have had time to prepare better defence works, get more sleep than they were getting, to reinforce and re-equip.”

“So there we have it, we are now able to reinforce the line in Germany and Guillotine has a green light, the Russian insertion operation begins in one hour.”

“And the other aspects, is everything in place for them to move?”

“Our Special Forces and the Brits are ready to move and just require the transport to get there. Two Los Angeles class SSNs are in the area of the Pacific where we believe the Chinese boomer is hiding. A Sea Wolf, two more Los Angeles and the Brit boat will also be in the area in the next two days. Whilst we are on the subject of the Pacific, 5th Mechanised Division and the Nimitz group arrived at Brisbane this morning.”

The President nodded thoughtfully and then looked back at the screen.

“General, to get back to the North Cape, will they try to break out unsupported and will they use nukes?”

“Mr President, I just don’t know.”

Svetlana removed all her clothes, including underwear and padded barefoot across the tile floor unabashed and oblivious to the stares of two males present. At rear the tattoos on the rolling buttock and in the fore the gold stud piercing an intimate item ‘down south’, catching the light from the bright strip lighting.

She took the ‘Suit, underwear, flame retardant, thermal’ from the blushing storeman and pulled it on. It was supposed to be a snug fit and indeed it was. Major Caroline Nunro was stood with folded arms, leaning against the wall and watching, deciding the girl looked even more naked once garbed in the thing. The storeman and a specialist flight suit technician grinned at one another like schoolboys as she bent over to adjust the feet, appreciating the view of a rather superb example of buttocks clad in elasticated Nomex.

“I’ll take it from here.” she stated, with the steel of authority in her voice. “Wait outside.” The men left the heated G-Suit and departed, wondering how their wives would react to suggestions they join a gym.

Caroline plugged in the G-Suit to a test set and connected the valves at the end of the suits air bladders, inflating it to check for leaks and ensure that the heating matrix was operating. It wasn’t, and the technician was summoned. In extreme circumstances the non-function of the bladders could result in brain damage; however a non-functioning or malfunctioning heating matrix spelt certain death from hypothermia.

The fault was quickly found and a tiny coupling replaced; the suit heated up immediately.

“Replace them all.” Caroline ordered, just to be on the safe side and thirty two couplings were indeed swapped out for new ones and the circuit tested again.

Her skin was flushed as she helped Svetlana struggle into the heated G-suit, having to get up close and personal to heave the thing on. It was far bulkier than their own G-suits because she would be cocooned in the unheated belly of the aircraft.

“What’s the matter Caroline?”

“Oh nothing.” She replied. “All my payloads have bodies born for porn, haven’t you noticed?” Svetlana howled with laughter.

The Nighthawk pilot had been busy until noon with last minute preparations, followed by crew rest because of their 0430 start. This was the first time since arriving at the RAF station that day that she had seen Svetlana, and until she had hooted in laughter she had been uncharacteristically quiet, her normal effervescence subdued.

She knew about Constantine’s removal from the mission, it meant that Svetlana now only had the nuclear weapon for company on the flight, and that their fuel consumption was improved fractionally. Constantine had collared her half an hour before, distressed that he was not going, angry with himself and also worried for Svetlana.

“Keep an eye on her please Caroline; make sure she doesn’t try winging it solo when she makes contact with her old boss. She might trust this woman but I don’t.”

She now reached out to stroke the Russian girl’s hair.

“What are you brooding about, him or yourself?”

Svetlana smiled in a sad way.

“I’ve been avoiding him all day… Scott told me last night that he was pulling Con off the mission. The trouble is that Con feels so useless right now, he knew that he was only going along because I wanted him there, even though he would be stuck in the safe house at the landing strip. Now that I’m going in alone… I’m scared Caroline.” The American gave her a brief hug and stood back.

“You are not alone in this ‘lana, there are twenty tough American boys already in place, they know their stuff.”

“I don’t doubt that, but they look like fighting men… even if they are fluent, but their youth and all the muscles will give them away, they’ll get picked up, and maybe even screw up my mission at the same time.”

Caroline frowned; she was not on the need-to-know-list of the ground mission specifics.

“I thought your part was a done deal… this person you are contacting, she got you your job, and you’re solid, right?”

“It’s not quite as cut and dried as that,” Svetlana began; the American pilot knew nothing of the type of work she had originally been recruited for. She was a spook, as simple as that.

“I didn’t have any real choice in the matter, either I joined one of their departments or I got blacklisted from any kind of decent work. They would have prevented me leaving the country to make a living abroad, too.” She turned to the American pilot. “I had a certain reputation at university and I was given an offer I could have refused but as I just said, not without ruining my life. After they spent nine months training me, there isn’t a man, or woman for that matter, who I wouldn’t stand a far better than average chance of getting into bed, and once there who wouldn’t blab secrets just so I would carry on doing to them whatever it was I was doing to them.” She looked Caroline in the eye and the pilot read in those eyes that it hadn’t exactly been all fun.

Caroline said the name of a rather gorgeous Sparrow who had hit the headlines worldwide, in an effort to lighten the sudden dark mood of the Russian girl.

“Pah!” Svetlana said her grin and twinkle returning. “She got a B as her final grade and you guys caught her.”

“And you?”

“You never caught me.” She said simply in reply as she frowned in the mirror at the G-suit she wore.

“Hardly a Viv Westwood.” She mused to herself, and then paused to look back over her shoulder. “And I passed with honours.” She said, winking wickedly.

“Anyway, I love the Motherland but being pressed into service to be her whore was not on my to-do list when I was growing up… I mean the sex was fun, I liked that a lot, but I could do that in my own time. I wanted a real life, a career and a couple of million in the bank, and then I’d find Mr Right and become a fat happy Mummy churning out beautiful babies.”

“You still could.” Caroline said. “When this is all over, and we have peace again.”

Involuntarily Svetlana shivered.

“I am going back there, back to people who see me as nothing but bait on a hook.” The Russian shook her head as she recalled. “There was a girl I sometimes worked with, a real looker, when they felt the sapphic touch was appropriate for whichever man or woman they wanted to turn.” She paused. “They sent her off with a foreign diplomat without telling her he got his jollies hurting pretty things… the video footage they got of him doing that was the leverage to turn him.” again the involuntary shudder. “When I saw her again she wasn’t pretty anymore.” She shrugged and smiled weakly.

“That’s when I knew I had to get out, and if I couldn’t get out of the spying game then at least out of the Aviary… that is what they call the Sparrow’s department.”

Caroline thought she was listening to some film plot, but she realised she was being naïve; this sort of thing went on for real.

“So I took steps when I found out my recruiter had been moved to a different department, and was in a position to get me in there too.” It was all Svetlana was prepared to elaborate to the pilot. Not who the recruiter was nor how she had achieved the move from Mata Hari baiting honey pots in Russia to low profile Jemima Bond in the west.

“Well… I’ll be in Russia too, so will Patty so it is not as if you will be amongst strangers.”

Svetlana smiled in thanks.

“Ok, it is just me being girlie and realising… ..” her voice tailed off to leave an awkward silence.

Caroline looked at her watch, as much to change the mood as anything.

“Whoops, we have to hustle now!” picking up velcro backed straps she stepped behind the Russian girl. “Okay then, let us get the rest of this rig on and get you strapped in and connected up.”

One hour later, and sealed in a life support capsule in the bowels of the stealth aircraft Svetlana’s heartbeat rose as the aircraft lined up on the runway of the airbase in Scotland, and the engine pitch rose to a howl. The machine lunged forward as brakes were released and she found herself breathing rapidly as the vibration ceased and they banked steeply. Alone in her capsule she had a nuclear weapon and various other ground attack, air-air missiles and the like as neighbours. If the aircraft got into trouble she was trapped there, the crew could eject but Svetlana did not even have a parachute. With only an iPhone for company she settled herself and let the strains of Elton John’s ‘Goodbye Yellow Brick Road’ album distract her, after quickly skipping the first track, Funeral for a friend.

Admiral Petorim, Marshal Ortan and General of Aviation Sudukov received their summons to the premiers’ chamber hours after the disaster at the North Cape was known. There was no chance that the premier was not already aware of the full facts, but the hours ticked by without his demanding an explanation.

Of the three, Ortan felt the most confident, because after all he had taken no part in the planning of this attempted breakout, and none of his ground forces were involved. For the other two, it must have been something akin to waiting outside the headmaster’s office, knowing a painful punishment awaited them within, except of course that they may not survive the visit.

They had been made to wait a further twenty minutes in the anteroom, under the gaze of the premier’s guards before the double doors opened and an aide stood to one side to permit them to pass, following them in and closing the doors behind them.

The premier of the new Soviet Union sat at his desk, his face not only calm but with an amiable expression upon it. Beside his desk stood Elena Torneski, his KGB chief, a good enough looking woman in her late thirties who no one really knew much about, owing to being raised from obscurity by the premier to replace the ‘disappeared’ Peridenko.

The senior officers of the three services came to a halt and stood rigidly at attention, and the aide reached into his jacket, stepped quickly up behind them and fired once, allowing the body to fall before firing once more, shifting aim from its head to slightly left of the centre of its back. Torneski jumped each time the small calibre silenced pistol fired.

“I have decided, gentlemen, that where we went wrong was the lack of the proper motivation,” said the premier pleasantly. “You answered to him… and now you answer to me, in all things military.” He pressed a button on the desk and the doors opened for a squad, which rolled the dead Marshal into a body bag and carried it out. Marshal Ortan’s deputy was hurrying into the anteroom, summoned by the premier's aide and almost collided with his former boss. “General Tomokovsky… come join us!” called out the premier, and the soldier marched quickly in.

“Petorim, our submarines are not yet in the Atlantic, what are you going to do to make that happen?” The admiral stammered and kept looking down at the spot where the marshal had fallen.

“You have no reply for me Admiral, no contingency plan?” He studied the naval officer’s face for a few moments before turning to the airman. “General, you will focus the air forces efforts on Germany; it may be that the only way to win this war is to have the Channel ports in our hands by the time the next convoy arrives.” He then turned back to the admiral. “Our submarines are performing no useful function where they are. You therefore have two choices, scuttle them, give your sailors rifles and send them to Germany, or… blast your way through the North Cape… AND SINK THOSE DAMN CONVOYS!”

All semblance of calm had vanished; the premier’s face was purple with rage as he leant forward to scream the last words at Admiral Petorim.

He sat back in his chair, breathing heavily and it was a full minute before he could speak again.

“General Tomokovsky, Miss Torneski. You command our covert forces in the West and I want you to plan a mission targeting what is on this list.” The new commander of land forces reached over and took the proffered sheet of paper, glancing down the list he answered.

“Sir, we already have plans, updated daily should it be necessary to eliminate some of these, as I am sure the KGB has also. It is simply that the missions are not survivable.”

“General, do I look like a ‘people person’ to you?”

“Miss Torneski, General… you will action those missions tonight. I care nothing for the lives of your men and women, but unless you want to witness your loved ones sharing the late marshal’s fate, in this very room, you will ensure success before this time next week. I am sure the air force and navy will extend you every assistance that you may require, as that threat includes their families also.”

He looked them both over before opening a file on his desk and commencing to read the contents.

“One week, not a day more and not a single excuse,” he said without looking up, and they filed from the room.

Lt Col Reed watched the last rifle company section cross the bridge, leaving only radio operators in abandoned company headquarter positions, a half dozen gun groups, Milan crews and snipers of course.

Smoke and HE were concealing the movement of the troops to prepared positions behind the canal, leaving the ‘island’ between the Mitterland Kanal and the river Elbe. Reed had spent several days arguing first with brigade and then with division to make this happen, he had been refused on both occasions. His argument was simple, if the bridge across the canal were dropped his troops would have to abandon their equipment and swim for it. If a landing, airborne or amphibious, got behind them then the battalion and its attached units were lost. Eventually he had gone to SACEUR, and put his case before General Allain who not only agreed entirely, but also sent strongly worded memos to both commanders of the subordinate headquarters. Reed got his way but got himself crossed off a couple of Christmas card lists in so doing.

There was nothing to suggest to the enemy that the trenches to the rear of the canal were anything but in-depth positions. However, with a little luck they would waste a lot of firepower on the old positions.

The E-3 Sentries had reported movement forty miles to the enemies rear and predicted it was the OMUs moving up, Operational Manoeuvre Units that would dash in to take advantage of any break-through in NATOs lines.

There was no counter-battery fire coming from the east either, so they were preserving their stocks for an imminent softening up thought Reed as he turned and made his way back to the battalion CP. His two companies of Coldstreamers were back up to full strength, as was the 82^nd. The Hussars had a full complement of tanks but one troop of the state of the art Challenger IIs had been withdrawn, and replaced with a troop of Mk 11 Chieftains, mothballed equipment now brought back into service.

On a more positive note, his Blowpipe crews had re-equipped with Stinger RMP, re-programmable microprocessor, Block 1 missiles, courtesy of Major Popham and the United States Army. All his replacements for the Guards battalion had arrived but equipped with SLRs as the SA-80 stock had run out. The weapons had seen prior service but had been re-parkerised and refurbished before going into storage. The younger guardsmen rushed through training had little experience with the weapon but the called up reservists and the volunteering reservists with a few years behind them certainly had.

The quartermasters would grumble about keeping to different calibres of ‘ball’ ammunition but the SA-80 ammunition stocks they held were depleting so it would not be a problem for long.

His battalion had proved itself in the offence, but now the more trying role of defence was about to be visited upon it once more. He believed the earlier criticisms following its trial by fire on the river Wesernitz were unwarranted, and unjust, but now the battalion would now have to excel itself holding this line on the river Elbe.

WO2 Probert was still an acting platoon commander but Oz had been replaced by a young 2^nd Lieutenant who had passed out early from Sandhurst, the Royal Military Academy, and without much in the way of ceremony. Sgt Osgood had a brew on after Colin had led the last rifle section across the bridge to their new trenches. It was pitch dark, as most nights had been since the soviet submarine wolf packs had been dealt with. Despite a moon, the overcast eliminated all light from that direction and it took some time for him to make his way to the platoon HQ trench, squelching through the mud. Not a day had gone past without rain, and Colin couldn’t remember the last time he had seen the sun and blue skies. Lowering himself down into the firing bay he ducked under the soggy old green duvet cover that hung over the entrance to the shelter bay, and then under an old grey army blanket into the dim light within, preserving the all-important blackout. The hiss of a petrol stove greeted him; the fumes from the issue hexamine blocks, known as ‘Hexi’, were too dangerous to be used in poorly ventilated areas.

“Hello dear I’m home, what’s for dinner?”

Oz poured some water into a mug, and the aroma of coffee laced with scotch filled the cramped space. He handed the steel mug over and held up a tin.

“We’ve got compo chicken curry, mate… with tinned fruit cake and bacon grill mixed in.” The bulky Composite Rations had been replaced by boil-in-the-bag fare for the armed forces years ago, however a stockpile for times such as these had been retained.

“Compo rations… I thought they had been given away to drought stricken countries to feed their big shots' families, and for the big shots to get richer selling what’s left to the starving masses?”

“Well apparently there’s still a shit-load left… and this chicken probably died before your granny was born.” Oz screwed up his nose, as he tasted some on the racing spoon he was stirring it with, and reaching into his Bergen he withdrew an old camm stick tube and shook some curry powder in.

“Any idea when the war here starts again Col?”

“We had one dead and three wounded today, I don’t think it’s stopped!”

“Apart from the odd shell and sniper, I mean.”

“According to the CO most of the Red air went north… big ruck up that way, but it’s over now so it is about to get serious down here again.”

A JCB had been used to prepare most of the new fighting positions, and as this one was meant to accommodate four, they had more room for the little perks that soldiers of experience acquire… given half a chance and an inattentive storeman. As it was, two stretchers were unfolded at the far end of the shelter bay to provide a comfy bed each, and clearance from the damp earth. Colin removed his fighting order and hung it by the yoke on a modified tripflare picket driven diagonally into the wall of the trench, next to Oz’s where it could dry out, not take up space, and be easily accessible when required. A certain Scandinavian furniture and interiors chain could learn a lot from a soldiers space saving/time saving inventiveness.

There was a click from one of the field telephones and Oz picked up the receiver.

“Cringeworthy & Snodgrass, purveyors of fine wines and ugly but grateful women.” There were three field phones in the shelter bay, and Oz was not worried about using incorrect VP on this particular one. He listened for a moment before replacing the receiver. “Arnie’s on his way over.”

Colin shook his head.

“One day you’ll forget which phones which and piss off someone who takes this army stuff seriously.”

“I already did, the new adjutant called, and then he demanded to know who I was.”

“And… ”

“So I said ‘Don’t you know?’ and when he said he didn’t, I replied ‘Well thank God for that, then!’, and hung up on him.”

Colin wasn’t impressed.

“Sarn’t Osgood… that story was old back when Monck was a corporal!” referring to the general who had founded their R regiment in 1650.

They heard movement outside and continued talking, but removed Russian Yarygin 9mm pistols from concealment about their persons, and levelling them at the entrance, just in case.

Someone rapped on the log over the entrance of the shelter bay.

“Entrée!” said Colin.

Arne Moore pushed his way through the blackout, and gawped at the two handguns pointing at his head. He was unfazed by the menacing muzzles; in fact his eyes showed envy rather than alarm.

“Hey, where’d you guys get those things, they is like gold dust?”

Oz smiled brightly.

“Sir, we are highly skilled professionals and elite infantry of Her Majesty’s very own Division… we have training and resources beyond the means and understanding of you mere colonials.”

“You mean you looted them off dead Reds.”

“Absolutely… anyway, pull up a pew and excuse the mess, it’s the butlers day off.” Colin handed over the communal mug and Arne sniffed the contents appreciatively before taking a mouthful.

“Argh… great!” From inside his smock he withdrew a tin of something or other and tossed it to the sergeant. Oz shrugged on reading the label and fished out a large mess tin, transferring in the contents of the mug and adding the tins once he’d got the lid off.

“It’s only going to taste of curry anyway.”

Fifteen minutes later and they huddled together, wolfing the food down from the single mess tin. Arne regarded the piece of sliced peach sat in curry sauce on his spoon for a second, he had intended the tin of fruit cocktail to be dessert, something to wash away the ever present curry flavour the Toms always seemed to add. He decided to go along with the British squaddies philosophy that it all goes down the same hole anyway, so why increase the chores by doubling the washing up, and he so he shrugged and carried on eating.

Bill and Big Stef had recce’d and prepared five firing points, all muddily accessible by crawling along ditches and dead ground. There were three pairs of snipers covering the river, two gun groups and two Milan crews in addition to a handful of radio operators occupying the ground the battalion once held. Working a stag roster of three on, three off, they kept an eye on the opposite bank but rarely fired. The marksmen of both sides had developed, or rather they had re-learnt, the counter sniping skills of earlier conflicts. Enticingly obvious dummies offering targets of opportunity to the other sides’ snipers had given way to more realistic and ingenious lures. If one reacted to the lures there were at least three equally skilled marksmen across the water watching intently for a flicker of muzzle flash, or a puff of smoke. Even if the man survived the counter fire, the position he had used was compromised for all time and could only be used again as a last resort.

An ingenious sniper in the 82^nd had put together a sort of exoskeleton affair that he wore on his back, he would crawl along suitable stretches of dead ground with the dummy sat a foot above his back, mimicking his every movement, and just visible to the enemy. It drew sniper fire on three occasions and the NATO snipers got to either shoot one of their opposite numbers, or scare the crap out of them, they never knew which. On the fourth occasion it was used the enemy open up with a mortar instead of a sniper rifle. All in all the young inventor had a lucky escape, he was back on the line but he couldn’t yet sit down on butt cheeks that had been peppered with half a dozen shards of red hot shrapnel.

While the battalion had occupied the ground, a story had circulated amongst the riflemen of a beautiful blonde soviet sniper, whom it was alleged could sometimes be seen walking naked through the pre-dawn mist on the opposite bank. A popular explanation for this went along the lines of her returning to her own position after a night of passion in the soviet generals bunker, despite its fanciful nature it fired the imagination of many a young guardsman and paratrooper. The older and more cynical troops scoffed at the notion. “Poor girl will catch her death of cold, it must be forty miles from the bunker to the river… if their generals are anything like ours!” was Bill’s opinion of the story.

Bill was peering through his night scope at one a.m., it was raining hard outside their position and it was their ‘semi-downtime’ so he did not intend shooting at anything from here. He was on watch and it was another pair’s job to be in a firing position, he and Big Stef were in O.P mode.

Stef was curled up fast asleep in his maggot and Bill would not wake him for another ninety minutes, all he needed to do was stay alert and stay awake. Of all the different times zones (with seasonal daylight saving variants) in the world, BST, GMT, EST to name but a few, SST, Squaddie Sangar Time was a phenomena in that you could check your watch, resume observing for another half hour before checking it again, and find that only five minutes has actually elapsed. Bill was gazing out at the wet depressing vista and consciously avoiding checking his watch when the barely audible clicking of the field telephone caused him to block the aperture he had been looking through, in case the call should involve him looking at the map, which required light. He lifted the phone, gave their call sign and listened for a few moments. Big Stef grumbled as he came to wakefulness. “Ok, ok… stop squeezing my sodding earlobe; I’m in the land of the living!”

“It’s a general stand-to… something soviet this way comes, mate.”

Stef climbed from his sleeping bag and started to cram it into its compression bag, shivering with the transition from warm and snug to cold and damp, muttering to himself as he did so.

“Ugly and grumpy… ” Bill said with satisfaction. “… my work here is done!”

“Shut yer hole… bleedin’ Monkey.”

Everything not in immediate use was already packed away of course, so it took less than five minutes before they were leaving on their bellies, crawling forward to one of the firing points.

Colin put down the receiver from the company CP and reached for the communications cords connecting them to the section commanders trenches, and began tugging away on them. When he received answering tugs he knew the two lance sergeants and one lance corporal commanding each section was alerted.

CSM Probert had packed all their kit away and folded the stretchers in readiness for normal use, before swapping the filter on his respirator for a new one.

“Do you know something I don’t Col?”

“No Oz, it’s just a feeling. The Reds are running out of time and I think they’ll be tempted to use that shit on us again, if they have any left.”

“Cheerful sod, ain’t yer!” Oz replied, but swapped his over too.

Although chemical weapons hadn’t been used again since the first major clash of the land armies, they still wore their NBC clothing as a matter of course, despite the discomfort.

Major Venables, the Hussar squadrons’ new commander keyed the alert into his Ptarmigan system and flashed the stand-to to all his vehicles, including the troop of Chieftains that had arrived with the system hurriedly installed. His own command tank had a direct patch to the MSTARS feed, the mobile battlefield radar which had sounded the alarm when it detected armour approaching from twenty miles distant.

The airborne JSTARS platform had watched them come on, of course, but they were busy up there. In the last twenty-four hours the soviets had created dozens of dummy radar and thermal targets, whilst moving their real units around.

It was the shell game but on a grand scale.

The army of the West had enjoyed a couple of days respite to resupply and improve their positions, but the same was true for the other guy too.

The green display from the MSTARS feed changed colour, flashing red twice, a visual alarm indicating shells were in the air and coming their way. The rest they had enjoyed was over; someone had just rung the bell for the next round.

“Sandman this is Pointer!”

The TAO aboard the Charles de Gaulle depressed his send button to reply to the American operator in the E-3 Sentry aircraft.

“Sandman… go ahead Pointer.”

“Tripwire reports multiple submerged traffic inbound your posit… you may want to think about doubling up your helo’s.”

“Thank you Pointer… Sandman out.” He gestured to a junior officer and handed him a message form.

“Wake the Admiral and ASWO.” he ordered “HMS Temeraire has signalled the AWACs that the submarines are coming, and I am scrambling more choppers as well as having the P3s and Nimrods double up on-station. I am also asking Norway to do the same with its shore based helicopters, but they are probably already doing so.” The young officer nodded and hurried from the CIC.

Fifteen minutes later, Bernard was in CIC and taking a seat next to the Tactical Action officer, he beat the Anti-Submarine Warfare Officer by seconds.

“What’s happening… anything more?” asked the breathless ASWO.

“Not so far.”

The big screen showed the current P3 Orion begin a run that would lay a line of sonar buoys across the expected path of the submarine flotillas, and six helicopters head east of that line and slow to a halt to begin dipping their sonars.

“I want a CAP for those helicopters.” Bernard announced, pointing at the exposed ASW, NH-90 NFH and Sea Kings.

“Sir, the only aircraft left on the Pechenga airfields are not airworthy, the rest went back to Germany,” the TAO said.

“Have you been there and examined them yourself Henri?”

The TAO was silent for a second as he considered his superior’s words.

“Sorry sir, I will get one up,” and picked up a telephone.

Five minutes later though, the AWAC raised the alarm.

“Sandman! Sandman! This is Pointer… Air raid warning! air raid warning! we show multiple contacts lifting off in the Pechenga region… classify as Mike India Golf, Three One’s… copy my last Sandman?”

“Send our own CAP to intercept, Henri!”

“Sandman this is Pointer… do you copy?”

“Answer him someone… get the alert five up as replacement for our CAP, and for God’s sake warn the choppers!”

From their orbit southeast of the ships the two pairs of delta wing Rafale Ms on top CAP went to burner and a tanker was ordered aloft as they would need it to get home again afterwards.

The screen was relaying to CIC aboard the carrier what the AWAC was seeing. A dozen enemy aircraft, streaking northwest towards the half dozen helicopters that had received the warning from the AWAC and were running for home. Two of the enemy tracks split away from the rest and while one made a beeline for the maritime patrol Orion, the second headed for the two RAF Nimrods that had launched in answer to the carriers earlier request, but were now heading back to Norway as fast as they could. It was no contest really, the Rafales had too much ground to cover in order to get into missile range of the attackers. One by one the helicopters disappeared from the screen, swiftly followed by the P-3 Orion and a Nimrod. The French admirals fingers were digging into the armrests of his swivel chair as he willed the last RAF Nimrod on. It was almost kissing the wave tops in its efforts to evade the fighter. The pilot of the Mig-31 Foxhound had passed up countless possible missile shots and appeared to be playing with his unarmed prey, leaving an opening for the Nimrod to turn toward the shoreline and its associated radar clutter, before heading it off with cannon fire that flew across the British Nimrods nose. Eventually the approaching Rafales were too close for comfort, and the Mig raked the patrol aircrafts cabin, killing its mainly female operators, before putting a burst into the cockpit on its next pass. With a dead hand on the controls, the Nimrods left wing dropped, it hit the water and the aircraft cartwheeled over the surface, its tail and wings snapping off, before it disappeared below the waves.

“Salaud!” roared Admiral Bernard as he leapt out his chair, the veins in his neck and forehead bulging. He stabbed a finger at the Foxhounds icon on the screen, now running toward safety.

“Somebody kill that son of a bitch!” But the soviet aircraft made it back to land and the Rafales had to break off as shore based SAM sites locked them up.

Bernard was incensed; he strode away from the screen. They had lost helicopters, maritime patrol aircraft and the crews, that was what war was about, but he didn’t have to like watching it happen.

“Do we have contact with the English submarine?”

“Perhaps… maybe the AWAC or JSTARS does, sir.”

“It has land attack missiles, yes?”

“Tomahawk TLAMs… yes sir.” answered the TAO.

“Call them up, call the Anglo’s and tell them to blast those airfields… ” he stalked back to the big screen, and once again stabbed his finger at the Mig-31. “… starting with the one this, Enfoiré… lands at!”

The TAO looked apologetic.

“Sir, we don’t own the Temeraire… CINCLANT does, we only have nominal control.”

Bernard thought about it a moment before saying.

“Well send the order anyway… and if CINCLANT complains, then you tell him the submarine has a French name… ” the senior French naval officer wore an expression of Gallic innocence and with an expansive shrug to match he finished. “… .and so we thought it was ours.”

The captain of Her Britannic Majesties Submarine Temeraire looked at the message form in his hand and showed it to his First Officer.

“Blimey, has the French admiral gone down with a bad case of Tourette’s?”

“The question is… is it lawful?” he looked again at the decoded message. “He does have a point though, if the Migs are rearming and refuelling for another go, then his applying for full authority would be too long.”

“He wants us to use our entire inventory of conventional warhead TLAMs?”

“Indeed he does.” The captain was lost in thought for a minute before he spoke again. “Okay, target the bunker busters on bomb dumps, and the bomblet carriers on runways, tank farms and flight lines. We had better get rid of the surface contacts closest to us, before we put the airfields out of commission too. We already have firing solutions on them, so let’s put them on the bottom, after which we would do well to clear datum PDQ!”

“Sir… you could get in deep shit for this?”

“It is a viable target… besides, what could they do to me, hmm?” he replied, looking at the other officer with one eyebrow raised. “Put me in charge of a boat full of broken down reprobates, and send us to sit on Ivan’s doorstep?”

The First Officer grinned as he went away to set it up.

Twenty minutes later and two Krivak class frigates, one of them five miles southeast and the other seven miles west of the Temeraire were struck by Spearfish wire guided torpedoes. Moments after that the TLAMs, Tomahawk land attack missiles, began breaking the surface and roared away into the night.

Steel railway tracks made up the roof supports of the battalion CP, and four layers of sandbags topped those but Barry Stone still looked up at the roof with a touch of trepidation, recalling the fate of the last CP when subjected to soviet artillery.

“RSM?” Lt Col Reed said quietly. “Whatever it is that you are thinking about, it is a tad too late to do anything about it now.”

“Yes sir, just saying my soldiers prayer sir. ‘Dear lord, I haven’t taken up your time with prayers for the past twenty years… and if you get me out of this in one piece, I promise I won’t bother you for another twenty more!’

The ground shook, as even from across the canal the huge charges landing made their presence felt in the CP.

“Two hundred and forty millimetre mortars by the sound of them, sir… their big bastards.” RSM Stone informed his C.O.

“Well, let’s hope your prayer works for all of us then, sarn’t major.”

The first rounds to land were all aimed at one particular target, a solid structure designed to bear the weight of twenty fully laden, multi-axle goods vehicles at a time. Ten M240 mortars had been tasked with cutting off the ‘island’ from escape or reinforcement, their first belt landed short but whoever was spotting for them walked the successive belts onto the bridge linking the ‘island’ to the NATO held bank.

About the same distance away from the bridge, but on the other side of the canal from the CP, Bill was experiencing his first moments of the receiving end of artillery. He had felt the impacts through the damp earth he was lying on, dust and grit danced in the air inside the hide.

“Bloody hell… !” The respirator, worn since they had arrived in the hide muffled his voice.

“Grit your teeth and try not to think about it,” Stef told him. “We’ve got about two hours more of this.”

The Met firearm instructor in a can’t-see-me-suit took little comfort from the words. Stef hadn’t mentioned to him that this was just the opening act, the ranging in. No point worrying the man unduly, he thought, as he double-checked their NIAD, which would warn them of the presence of chemical agents.

Various calibre rounds were landing on the ‘island’ now, some struck the flood defence barrier they had tunnelled this hide into, whilst others wasted their energies in the river. After about five minutes there was a pause as the Divisional Artillery co-ordinator for the 43^rd Hungarian Motor Rifle Regiment set up all but two batteries of his guns, rocket artillery and mortars for a TOT shoot. Now that they all had the range and he had the times of flight from their scattered positions, all their shells would be landing at once. Intelligence reports had identified the units dug in on the piece of land as having played an effective roll against 6^th Shock Army’s airborne division at Leipzig. He had no idea which idiot had given those troops that piece of ground to defend, but whoever it was had facilitated the removal from the board of a crack battalion. Once the ‘island’ had been made to resemble the surface of the moon, the guns would shift to the newly arrived unit behind them. The Hungarian artilleryman had no information on that units identity, but if they were green troops then they would soon be wishing they had taken up the cloth, rather than arms as a career.

Stef checked that the pieces of rag Bill had secured over the rifles muzzle and working parts with masking tape were still in place. He swept the torch beam around the hide to check all was packed away, and thought briefly of his last partner. Although it was only a few days ago that Freddie had been killed, Stef frowned when he could not picture his mates face. The freight train sound of over eighty shells and rockets of all calibre’s screaming down drove the thought from his mind, as he rolled himself into a ball.

Unlike the previous occasion when the Guards had been subject to this ordeal, the Brigade artillery and mortar platoon did not wait for ground forces to show themselves before getting to work. Shoot ‘n scoot took place as soon as the Hungarian gun lines were identified.

In the battalion CP a signaller answered a field telephone. Lt Col Reed looked over at him expectantly as he spoke. “Sir that was No.1 Company CP reporting that the bridge is down.”

“Thank you… call them back and ask if the boats tied up on the far side are ok.” Six aluminium assault boats had been left for the troops left behind to get off the ‘island’ if, or rather when, the bridge was destroyed.

1 Company’s reply left the C.O none the wiser, there was too much smoke and dust in the air from the barrage for them to be able to see clearly.

Far to the west of the river line, in a wooded valley on the Belgian border, General Allain sat quietly amidst the bustle of his headquarters. He watched the symbols identifying enemy units and types move about on a 12x12, plasma screen before him.

His job at the moment was that of trying to second guess the enemy commander, was he forging forwards everywhere, looking for a weak spot to exploit, or, had he already decided where to concentrate his main effort, and the rest was merely a supporting act?

JSTARS was still trying to sort out the wolves from the sheep across the Elbe. After half an hour of firing they had a fair idea of which suspected gun lines were bogus, but that didn’t mean they wouldn’t be used later on.

The last few days had given both sides time to catch their wind and replace equipment lost earlier in the conflict, and the JSTARS operators had completed their count of the artillery pieces involved so far. According to them, either the enemy was short on artillery, or they had not yet committed all they had at this stage. It was just one of the many variables SACEUR was dealing with tonight.

Above SACEURs head lay a rather non-descript Belgian Army depot for construction materials, and in between was fifty feet of reinforced concrete and a series of titanium lined blast doors.

An infantry heavy mechanised company stood guard above ground, whilst a platoon of Canadian military police provided close protection for the general and his staff below ground.

The bunker was proof against all but a five megaton near miss, of within half a mile distant, or a 2 megaton direct hit, and it would take the best part of a battalion to storm the site, however the prize would be long gone by the time they’d fought and blasted their way to the inner sanctum, via an escape tunnel.

The KGB had acquired the building plans for that site, and others like it, back in the eighties from a traitor within NATO Headquarters. Several plans for destroying the site existed, as did others for taking SACEUR alive or dead.

The Charles de Gaulle took up its new station eight miles west of the Spanish carrier Principe de Asturias, as the task force reconfigured to ASW formation, from what had been a more air defence conscious one. Yesterday they had circled the wagons and beaten off air and surface attacks, but now they had a different threat coming their way.

Bernard was confident, well 90 % confident anyway, that HMS Temeraire had eliminated the air threat from the Pechenga airfields with her TLAMs. A satellite pass would have given them a damage assessment, if it were not for the cloud cover, or alternatively a post-strike recce, but the British observation post had gone off the air and Bernard refused to risk another aircraft. Replacements for the losses in the air battle would not begin to arrive until the following day, but a strong CAP was up covering the helicopters, just in case. The CAP was covering rescue efforts too, attempting to locate downed fliers. One thing this war was good at, he thought, was reducing the numbers of trained men and women who could fly the aircraft or fulfil the myriad other jobs that no raw conscript could do.

The replenishment at sea had been carried out hours earlier, re-stocking the ships magazines and stores that had been almost emptied in defeating the air attacks.

His helicopters were prosecuting half a dozen contacts, the Norwegian shore based ASW squadrons were doing the same with a couple more, and he would have liked to think that they were on top of every submarine out there, but that probably wasn’t the case. Their early warning advantage had gone when the Russians had taken out the choppers and fixed wing units on station, the task force lost 40 % of its rotary wing anti-submarine force and a third of the fixed. Worse still, by the time they had regained air superiority, the threat was almost knocking at the door of the task force.

Seagull One One, the NH-90 NFH medium lift ASW helicopter off the frigate Guépratte was experiencing a problem not considered when the crew had been training, too many contacts. It made the process of singling out one from the pack more time consuming, the overlapping acoustic signatures were proving very frustrating. In the past twenty minutes they had dropped on one contact, and succeeded only in destroying a submarine launched torpedo decoy.

Their neighbour to the south, a Portuguese Sea King, had been more successful, killing an old Victor 1 on their second attempt. The Sea King had departed to reload and the NH-90’s pilot was growing irritable with his operator in the back. “Dordogne has scored, so has St Nazaire, and now that Portuguese!”

“Well good for them pilot… and so will we if you just get off my back. Depending on what weapons these boats are carrying, they could be in range of our ships already, so with respect sir… shut up, lift the dipper and take us a kilometre north.” The operator was working on firming up their best contact so far; he needed a triangulation to be certain. If there had not been so many contacts the helicopters could have worked in pairs, making the work twice as easy.

Muttering under his breath the pilot raised the machine, and the Thales DUAV4-UPG dipping sonar beneath it.

“I may have something but it keeps disappearing below the layer when he hears us.”

“Why would he keep coming above the layer, he’s safer below it isn’t he?”

“Because… sir, below the layer is too deep for him to fire!” He turned the aircraft north, keeping the speed down in order to prevent the dipper oscillating dangerously. Lowering the sonar back below the surface, he resisted the urge to make some sarcastic comment to his operator.

“Okay… 156’, six hundred metres, he’s above the layer again, he must be planning to launch.”

“Right, get the dipper up, we’re going to drop on him… send as such to Sandman!”

Their intention was broadcast to Charles de Gaulle and their neighbours while the dipping sonar was winched up clear of any dropping torpedoes, this allowed the other helicopters to get their delicate equipment out of the water.

“Dropping… drop, drop, drop… weapon away!”

Relieved of its last item of ordnance the aircraft rose a couple of feet before the pilot caught it, and the MU90 torpedo disappeared into the black depths with a splash.

Although the dipping sonar had been raised the operator was listening in on one of the sonar buoys that they had dropped on the contact earlier.

“Merde… the weapon has turned the wrong way… and they have heard it, noisemakers in the water!” He frowned deeply as he listened.

“Pilot, they have only accelerated to twelve knots.” The Victor III was capable of 30knots, and yet they were not using that speed to get well clear before the torpedo heard the commotion and homed on the noise. As it stood, the weapon would probably go for the noisemaker first and then hear the Victor as it emerged out the other side of the cloud of gas bubbles it was producing. After two minutes only, the submarines speed dropped off rapidly. The pilot was cursing the weapon, and the fact he had no more until they reloaded, when the first anti-ship missile broke the surface.

Pressing the transmit button on the side of the cyclic he put out the warning

“Vampires! Vampires! Vampires!..all ships, this is Seagull One One, sub launched vampires are in the air!”

“Seagull One One this is Sandman… can you identify type of missile launched?”

“Fast and big Sandman!” The sarcasm was thick in the young pilot’s voice; he reigned in his frustration though and transmitted again. He could see the first missile climbing at about a 45’ angle; accelerating fast and the glare of the rocket motor left him blinking to clear the after-image etched on his retinas. Two, three, four, a fifth and finally a sixth burst out of the sea, a protective shell falling away as the rocket motor fired.

“Sandman, Seagull One One… it’s too dark and the rockets are blinding me, the first went up at a steep angle but not vertical.”

The E-3 Sentry had them now and began assigning ships air defence missiles, and at the same time trying to identify the missiles. So far, a solid fuel booster had fallen away from each and they were still climbing and accelerating. The ships all switched their radars to standby but the missiles trajectories did not waver a jot, until the first missile came within 40km of the Danish long hulled corvette Karl Jung, well east of the ASW line and searching for downed aviators who were still unaccounted for.

Sea Sparrow missiles roared from the Karl Jung’s vertical launchers and her Phalanx gun began tracking the high altitude, inbound missile.

A great deal of research and thought had gone into the SS-N-27 AFM-L Alfa, it was built initially to take advantage of the Phalanx systems main flaw, and then given the legs, and smarts, to get past the other air defences in order to exploit that weakness. The first Alfa was at 28,000 feet and travelling at 2.8 Mach on a flat trajectory with its stubby wings extended when its downward looking, multi frequency radar swept over the corvette. The missile banked towards the Swedish warship and was already locked on when the same radar detected two pairs of Sea Sparrows climbing to intercept it. Its electronic brain increased the burn rate of the second stage to produce a less fuel economic 3.4 Mach and it began to nose over. Twenty-seven seconds later it separated from the still firing second stage and accelerated to 3.9 Mach, its dive increasing as it did so. The first pair of Sea Sparrows impacted with the tumbling second stage, and as designed, the second stage body fragmented like a grenade, creating a big, hot, radar and IR target for any other missiles.

The second pair of Sea Sparrows tore past the final stage and warhead, plunging into the debris cloud and detonating.

Karl Jung launched another pair but it was too late, the final stage of the Alfa was travelling vertically downwards at four and a half time the speed of sound and they detonated in its wake. One second later the corvette was struck by the titanium cased missile, which actually entered the top of her superstructure and travelled straight through, tearing away her keel before exploding fifty feet under her. The corvettes Phalanx gun had not fired a single round, because it didn’t have the elevation to engage targets coming from directly overhead.

Karl Jung’s back was broken and the pressure produced by the explosion beneath the vessel played on that break, lifting it in the middle. The corvette broke in two, and sank with all hands a little over one minute later.

The Victor launched six SS-N-27 Alfas from its forward 533mm torpedo tubes, and ejected two more noisemakers as it tried to build up speed and avoid the MU90 torpedo, but the weapon had learnt from its previous encounter with a noisemaker, and it was having none of it.

The warhead on the torpedo was small, even for a lightweight/air-droppable weapon. Its small warhead ruled out a proximity fuse so the makers went for maximum impact. They weren’t thinking along the lines of a massive Hollywood-style-spectacular-explosion, but more of a train wreck at depth concept. The MU90 was doing 50knots when it impacted the pressure hull, just aft of the port ballast tank. Had it happened below 300 feet, the hit would have been instantly fatal to the vessel, but they were at 64 feet and the tremendous pressures on the hull were not present. Slamming into the Victors flank, the torpedo first pierced the rubbery, anti-hydro acoustic coating and then the outer pressure hull, the shaped charge warhead went off against the inner hull, sending a jet of white hot metal and super-heated gas into the engineering spaces, igniting anything flammable.

Inside the submarines engine room, those crew members not killed or rendered unconscious by the torpedo strike dragged crewmates towards the pressure door set in the forward bulkhead, but choking smoke and seawater were quickly filling the compartment. The Victors captain initiated a crash-surface and the helicopter crew witnessed the vessel emerging from the deep, already stern heavy. Its externally mounted propellers, set on stern planes were still working the vessel up to its maximum speed as the sea had not yet drowned the steam turbines that powered them. The crewmen appearing out of hatches onto her casing could not launch life rafts or jump over the side, one man who slipped and fell over the edge of the casing disappeared into the maelstrom created by the threshing screws, and he did not re-emerge.

Standard 2 missiles and air launched AMRAAMs accounted for three of the remaining Alfas but the fourth and fifth began their terminal dives at the French air defence destroyer Duquesne.

Duquesne was travelling at flank speed when they put the wheel hard over, her port rail was awash as an Alfa, unable to keep itself centred on the vessel due to the speed it was travelling, missed the vessel by twelve feet. The air crackled with the electro-static charge caused by its passing, a plume of water rose sixty feet and the smell of ozone lingered. Duquesne answered the helm gamely as the wheel was next thrown to starboard, seeking to out-manoeuvre the last missile as they had its predecessor. High above the conflict Lt Col Ann-Marie Chan was talking directly to the English-speaking TAO aboard the destroyer when a high pitched shriek in the ear-pieces made her gasp and she whipped her headset off. The E-3 Sentry’s pilots saw the cloud layer below them briefly illuminated from beneath, by the glare resulting from the detonation of a warships magazine. Duquesne had lost the race.

Ann-Marie had to turn toward the bulkhead at her side momentarily, embarrassed that anyone should see the moisture in her eyes. When she turned back to her console she was all business again, entering the information the TAO had given her she quickly got a match.

“Okay people, those missiles were SS-N-27s, bad news kit but the silver lining is that production of them was halted early on through lack of funds. Vector anything with AMRAAMs onto anymore they may have in the first instance, and Standard 2s from the task force after that.” She sent a priority email off requesting an intelligence estimate of how many weapons existed, but no sooner had she pressed send, when more ‘vampires’ were being called in.

Seagull One One was making tracks back to Guépratte to reload when the Charles de Gaulle waved off all returning helicopters, establishing a 100km free fire zone for the CAPs and ships to engage incoming missiles.

“Sandman… Seagull One One requires a steer to the Norwegian replenishment site, our rails are Mk 50 compatible.”

“Roger One One… steer One Eight Seven and Squawk Three Nine decimal Two, their air defence is up.”

The pilot brought the aircraft round to that heading and headed toward the horizon. After thirty minutes his radar told him the rocky shores of Norway were indeed out there in darkness. The sudden appearance of flares ahead and to the left of their track startled him, but gave him a grandstand view of a Norwegian P-3 Orion coming in low across the waves. He saw the feather wake of what he took to be a periscope, directly ahead of the maritime patrol aircraft, and a Mk 50 torpedo dropped away, a small drogue parachute deploying behind it, slowing its entry into the sea. So intent was he on the torpedo, he almost missed the spear of light that rose from the waves, coming from the tip of the tiny wake. Apparently the crew of the Orion saw it too, for they banked hard right, almost digging a wing tip in to the wave tops. The small fiery object swerved to follow the fixed wing aircraft, flying into the starboard engine exhaust where it exploded and the starboard wing parted company with the rest of the airframe. With one wing gone, the Orion rolled inverted and struck the sea on its back. When he looked for the feather wake again, it had gone.

“Sandman, Sandman, Seagull One One… aircraft down, a sub just shot down an Orion with a missile!”

“Sandman, One One, say again last transmission… an Orion mid-aired with a Vampire?”

“One One, negative… Orion dropped a torp on what I thought was a periscope, but a small missile came up out of it, chased the Orion and flew into an engine. It was no mid-air Sandman!” He read off their position as shown on the GPS and brought the helicopter over the crash site, where he switched on the big searchlight mounted below the nose, and brought the aircraft to a hover.

There was a pause of a few seconds before Sandman responded.

“Roger… say status of Orion, One One.”

The aircraft’s tail section was the only part now visible, pointing toward the sky, and he circled it with the searchlight sweeping the vicinity. One crewman was visible in the water a few feet from it, arms and legs extended and floating face down in the waves. Keying the radio once more he reported on what he could see, and received a simple

“Roger,” in response. There wasn’t anything more so say, the enemy had found a way of hitting back at the previously invulnerable ASW aircraft that hunted them, and more men and women had died as a result. Returning to the original heading the French NH-90 headed for the temporary helicopter base on the northern tip of Norway.

For most of the participants of what the press would dub ‘The Third Battle of the North Cape’, it was the longest night of their lives. More missiles flew at the ships, coming from scattered sources and of differing types and abilities. Helicopters prosecuted contacts, dropped torpedoes on them and went back and forth reloading and refuelling, hunting and attacking. Three helicopters fell to the new weapon; both instances were on the landward side of the battle, as had been the downing of the Orion. Eighty-four anti-ship missiles of different varieties were fired from soviet submarines, all with conventional warheads. The exhausted AWAC operators, who had been aloft for over 24hrs, and ASWO staff were so swamped that they were slow in picking up on what the soviets were up to.

The soviets had split their submarine force into two parts, one of which was concerned solely with sinking the ships of the Task Force and keeping them and their air assets occupied, whilst the remainder pushed through between the land and the ships.

Only four submarines had the mast launched DAMs, Depth to Air Missiles, and all were old Whiskey class boats which had been used as test beds for the system which had been proven by the soviets in the eighties, but never adopted. The old Whiskey class boats were all in the southern force, providing air defence for the guided missile submarines and hunter killers intended for the Atlantic.

Bernard’s ASWO was the first one to see it, and Bernard sent the aircraft carrier Jeanne d'Arc and her escort south, to facilitate the helicopter effort. The makeshift helicopter base on the northern tip of Norway was not set up to service the needs of the aircraft recovering there, as Banak had been. Bernard had a half dozen aircraft on the beach, shut down while they awaited the armourers and fuel bowser. His helicopter assets couldn’t recover to their own ships to rearm and refuel because of the danger of becoming own goals to their own sides air defences. With Jeanne d'Arc nearer the coast they would free up the replenishment backlog. Being to the rear of the ASW line, the danger to her was less than it was for the remaining ships so Bernard pulled the Cassard off the escort. Leaving the General K. Pulaski for ASW protection and the multi role frigate Senegal, a thirty-year-old reserve fleet vessel for air defence; the trio headed south.

The first warning that the Task Force had of the enemy were getting through came when eight SS-N-19 ‘Shipwreck’ cruise missiles appeared on the AWACs screens, coming from the southwest, and 80km inside the ASW line. Senegal had her old Crotale II launcher run out over the port side, ready for threats from the east when the E-3 shouted a warning. The Crotale launcher had not been part of her original design, it was an add-on fitted several years later. Squeezed between her foc’sle and mast there was insufficient space for the launcher to simply swing around. The launch tubes rose to the vertical and the launcher pivoted through 180’. Senegal was already tracking the inbounds and she launched on them as soon as the tubes lowered to 20’ above the horizon. The Sentry took control of the Crotale as the launcher cycled the empty tubes back into the vertical, to receive four more missiles from the magazine directly below.

Two Sea Kings and a NH-90 on the carriers deck began to spool up, the carrier and the Polish frigate fired chaff bundles aloft while heeling over, the carrier turning to port, turning away from the threat and the Polish frigate turning to face it, both presenting smaller radar profiles. Senegal had no such option; she had to present a flank, going beam on to unmask her single launcher.

Lt Col Chan’s fingers were drumming out a tattoo of impatience on the sides of her keyboard as she waited for the Senegal’s schematic to indicate to her that the Crotale was ready to fire again. The side image on her monitor showed three Crotale missiles intercepting successfully whilst the fourth was a clean miss.

“Come on, come on… ” the launchers icon changed from red to amber as it lowered again into firing position, and finally glowed green.

“At last!” she growled, assigning each one to an incoming vampire. The Crotale IIs screamed from their launch tubes, three following the guidance from the AWAC, a fourth going rogue and flying into the sea a mile downrange. The noise created by the three ships screws, churning up the waves at high turn rates ruled out any possibility of the sonar operators locking down their attackers position, they could hear nothing but harsh hydro acoustic noise.

As the launchers icon turned back from red to amber, as it lowered itself to its firing position, the last three Crotales met the five incoming Shipwreck cruise missiles, whittling them down to two. Ann-Marie was about to target all four newly loaded Crotales onto the last pair, but eight more appeared on her screen from well south of where the last had come from. She sent two after the last pair of the first salvo, and two at the newcomers.

“Sandman this is Pointer!” She waited for a reply and cursed as another ships icon on the line flared red and disappeared. Inside the Sentry’s long cabin her operators were grim faced as they fed in mid-course corrections to defending missiles in flight, assigned new ones and sent vectors to the sub hunting helicopters, Nimrods, and P-3 Orion’s.

“Sandman, Sandman, this is Pointer… do you copy?”

“This is Sandman, Bernard speaking… go ahead Pointer.” Ann-Marie’s eyebrows rose when she heard the accented voice. Since when did the French Admiral speak English? Her fingers flew over her keyboard as she ran an analysis on the transmissions origin, and it had not come from overhead, from a satellite or from the warship, but from the Murmansk area of Russia.

Shit, shit, shit. Turning to the pad beside her terminal she ran a finger down the list of codewords relating to communications security.

“All stations, all stations Crap Game! Crap Game!” At the height of the fighting and they had to instigate compromised security procedures, altering encryption programs that took up time that they could not spare. She returned control to Senegal and got busy; the enemy was jamming out the Task Force’s voice communications, perhaps even the data link feeds too, so they had no option but to change everything. She was not blind to the distinct possibility that only voice communications had been effected, and the enemy had let her know this to cause disruption in command and control. She got the correct identifiers from Charles de Gaulle with her next try; they had received the communications security message via satellite and switched over to the next prearranged settings.

“Sandman this is Pointer?”

“Go ahead Pointer.”

“Pointer, at least two missile boats have gotten through to the south. Senegal is coping at the moment. Jeanne d'Arc is launching helos as we speak.”

“Sandman… ..we have nothing to send, we are barely holding our own against the attacks. We are beating on those still east of our ASW line, but any that get through will have to be dealt with by someone else, we are fully committed.”

If a pint pot holds a pint, then it’s doing the best it can, thought the American air force officer.

For an old ship crewed mainly by reservists the Senegal was doing outstanding work, although admittedly the attackers were using equally old ordnance. Only three of the second incoming wave had so far avoided destruction as the frigates launcher lowered once more into firing position. Her own CIC still had control and her TAO finished designating targets for the Crotales, the launcher moved fractionally as it tracked the targets, but before it could fire the frigate staggered with the impact of a torpedo blowing off her bow. The forward twelve feet from the waterline was ripped open by the explosion, exposing the ships interior with only flooding proof bulkheads to keep the sea at bay. Senegal was travelling at 24 knots, her gaping wound scooped up the seas which piled against the first bulkhead, and it gave way with a shriek of tortured metal. Like a pack of cards the bulkheads gave way, one after one and the sea began filling her innards. The frigate's bridge disappeared beneath the waves and then the rest of her superstructure, as her engines drove the vessel beneath the surface. In less than a minute, only oil, floating wreckage, bodies and a handful of shocked and floundering crewmen marked where a warship had once been.

From below the cold water layer a Russian Sierra class had fired a spread of four torpedoes at the charging frigates, one malfunctioned, one scored on the French frigate, and the last two passed the Poles stern, unseen by any of her crew.

Unchecked, the remaining cruise missiles locked on to the helicopter carrier and Polish frigate, but neither vessel carried anything more than chaff as counter-measures. The SS-N-19 that acquired the Polish ex-Perry class frigate General K. Pulaski started to analyse the ships electronic emissions and its control surface’s twitched as it adjusted its lines of flight, lining up on the frigates CIC. From an altitude of eight feet it popped up to one thousand, and then dived at a 45’ angle into the ships superstructure, penetrating to below the waterline before exploding.

Jeanne d'Arc sounded collision alarms and her crew braced themselves for the impacts that were inevitable. An SS-N-19 detonated in the chaff cloud above her stern, sending red-hot shrapnel outwards in all directions. An unserviceable Sea Harrier and three troop-carrying NH-90s upon her flight deck exploded as their fuel tanks were ruptured. The last cruise missile dove into the flight deck alongside the carriers offset island and penetrated the steel decking to explode inside the hangar deck. There were only two aircraft below decks, both were being serviced and their fuel tanks had been drained, but there was no shortage of flammable material.

The General K. Pulaski was dead in the water, listing over on her port beam and fires burned in a dozen places throughout the vessel. Struggling to keep from falling over the side, crewmen removed the fuses from her depth charges and threw them over the side, lest they go off when the ship went down, killing survivors in the water above. Her engineer was trying to restore electrical power and the surviving senior ratings and officers were organising damage control parties to fight the fires when the Sierra fired another torpedo at her.

Confident that all the helicopters were to the west of their position, hunting the missile firers, the Sierras captain then brought the hunter/killer up to periscope depth so he could view his handiwork.

Directed west of the line by the Charles de Gaulle’s ASWO, an RAF Nimrod got an indication on its MAD equipment, short for Magnetic Anomaly Detector, it looked for hiccups caused to the planets magnetic field, such as that of a large metal submarine near the surface.

The Nimrod circled back on itself, firming up its contact before dropping two Mk 50s on its contact. Both entered the water 300m off the Sierras starboard quarter and went active immediately. The Sierra had no time at all to react, and was struck in her portside ballast tank and forward torpedo room. The ballast tank absorbed the damage from the shaped charge, the pressure hull remained intact but air boiled from the ruptured ballast tank, and the submarine began to cant over at an ever-increasing angle. The forward torpedo room however was breached, and the white-hot jet and gases ignited combustibles in the compartment. The Sierra broke the surface with a 30’ degree list to port and her hatches opened to crewmen who emerged and slid down the casing into sea, forced out by the press of bodies behind. Only half a dozen had escaped the vessels confines when the first torpedoes warhead exploded, cooked off by the fire. The remaining eighteen followed in rapid succession, shattering the hull forward of the conning tower; what remained slipped back beneath the waves.

The torpedo the Sierra had launched lost guidance from the vessel and switched to its own passive sensors, it could hear the Polish frigate; even dead in the water noise emitted by the warship exceeded the background. However, the sensors detected a more enticing target and accelerating to its maximum cruise speed it tore past the frigate, heading east toward the louder source.

Jeanne d'Arc’s hangars sprinkler system was fed from two different water mains via four networks of pipes, in full appreciation that at least one matrix of pipes would be rendered by an attack in time of war. With the ships pumps forcing the water along the mains, and from there to the two complete and one partially functional network, the sprinklers were fogging the interior of the hangar with a mist of water vapour, which lowered the temperature and robbed the fire of oxygen. Fire-fighting foam had covered the floor of the compartment before the sprinklers engaged, preventing the fire spreading via burning petrochemicals, but with the deck being buckled downwards by the blast, they had pooled and were not a danger at present. The main danger to the vessel lay behind the aft bulkhead, peppered by shrapnel, as had all the bulkheads, the storage tanks of aviation fuel were exposed. Constructed of rubber so as to be self-sealing, the 5000-gallon fuel cells were coated with a fire retardant layer which was a safety measure, rather than a guarantee, eventually the rubber would burn after prolonged exposure to a direct flame.

The Jeanne d'Arc’s captain was fairly confident that although his ship may now be out of the war, he still had hull integrity and power, so it was not lost. Damage control parties set-to in augmenting the automated fire control systems whilst the remainder stayed at the action stations. He called up the Charles de Gaulle and gave them a situation report, requesting a rescue effort begin for survivors of the Senegal and assistance for the General K. Pulaski. Bernard could send none, with the loss of the Jeanne d’Arc’s escort it brought the total number of ships lost to this latest attack at five… so far.

All three of the helicopters had dropped on the missile firing submarines, sinking one and driving off the other, but they needed reloads and the Jeanne d'Arc’s captain nodded his consent to the ASWO when the request was made to land close to the undamaged bow and replenish there.

The Sea Kings paused to lift survivors, NATO survivors; from the water although there was a Russian submariner amongst the rescued, no deliberate effort was made to seek them out. The NH-50s pilots flew directly toward the carrier, determined to make certain that the submarine that had escaped them so far, paid the ultimate price.

Smoke and steam was billowing from the huge rent in the Jeanne d'Arc’s flight deck as they approached, but the vessel was still moving back toward the protection of the air defence capable ships at full speed. The carrier was making 22knots but the phosphorescent finger that NH-90s co-pilot could see pointing at her stern, was travelling at 40knots. He radioed a frantic warning to the carrier, but although she was a fraction of the size of the US super-carriers, she couldn’t turn like a speedboat. Jeanne d'Arc bucked with the impact against her port screw, losing way and beginning a turn to starboard caused by damage to her rudder. In the engine room, the chief engineer had sustained a broken collarbone, having been thrown off his feet by the explosion. Live steam was roaring from a fractured line and a rent in the hull plates was admitting the sea. None of his staff had avoided injury; several had broken ankles caused by the concussion transferring itself through the deck. The starboard engine bearings were cracked and the assembly was tearing itself apart. By the time he had gathered his wits he was already lying in several inches of seawater. Throughout the ship lights flickered and then died, as electrical power was lost, to be replaced by the sparse glow of battery powered back-ups. All that could be heard were the calls for help from the injured, until officers and senior rates got busy. With no power to pump water around the system, the mist of water issuing from the sprinklers in the hangar deck slowed, and then stopped. Flames that had been fighting for survival against the limited oxygen and cooling water vapour gained vigour, taking fresh hold. The damage control party inside the hangar deck held hoses grown limp with the loss of water pressure so they dropped them and took up hand held foam and dry powder extinguishers, using them on the flames until they ran dry, which did not take long. The water level in the engine room had risen above waste level on the port side of the compartment, and above the knees on the starboard side. With only the dim glow of the back-up lighting to guide them they dragged themselves and each other to safety when the chief engineer ordered his men and women out. The ships telephone system went off line when the generators died, so internal communication passed to handheld radios and runners, carrying reports to and from. The captain had a scalp wound and broken wrist from being thrown against a bulkhead when the torpedo had struck. He had called up the Charles de Gaulle again, reporting their new situation, the report was simply acknowledged, no help was offered, and none asked for, the Task Force was fighting for its life.

The fire-fighting in the hangar deck came to an abrupt halt as the list to port continued, aviation fuel and oil, pooled in buckled deck plates flowed down hill out of the puddles. The foam had held their flammable fumes in check until that point, and with a roar the hangar space became an inferno engulfing the damage control party in their silver fire suits. From his position on the bridge, the Jeanne d'Arc’s captain had been previously gratified to see only smoke, occasionally illuminated by flickering flames appearing from the gaping wound on the hangar deck. He was, quite understandably, very busy with the business of saving his ship, and so it was a few minutes before he noticed the light cast against the blacked-out bridges side, that of the orange glow of flames. Leaning over the bridge wing he looked for the source of the light, and his face fell when he saw the evilly glowing pit in the flight deck, as ugly as the gates of hell.

With no water to fight the flames they soon spread to the aft bulkhead, tongues of fire played through the rents against the fuel cells, stripping away the fire retardant layer and igniting the rubber walls behind it. Fifteen minutes after the torpedo had struck, the first fuel cell exploded, triggering a chain reaction as it burst open the remainder. The forty-one year old warship shuddered and rocked as the explosions tore through her, roiling fireballs arose above the gallant French warship and she began to blow herself apart.

With the coming of dawn the attacks ended, one NATO destroyer, two frigates and three corvettes lay on the bottom. The Polish frigate General K. Pulaski had been abandoned to the fire, and the smoke from those fires was visible to all the surviving ships in the Task Force from beyond the horizon.

Jeanne d'Arc’s bow was still visible above the waves, but gradually sinking to join the rest of its 12,000-ton bulk hidden below the surface. Not until he was absolutely certain that the attacks had finished would Admiral Bernard take any helicopters off ASW duties, and allow them to search for survivors. The Task Force had sunk nineteen soviet boats, but twenty-three nuclear powered and diesel electric submarines had broken out and were heading for the GIUK Gap, the last barrier before the Atlantic sea-lanes. It was now down to the P-3s from Iceland, the Royal Navy ASW group and the US and Canadian submarines coming up from the south, to stop them.