Advance to Contact

CHAPTER THREE

At precisely 0330hrs the soviet bombardment of the island had ceased and its fires switched to the positions beyond it, but it was lighter than expected. NATO counter battery fire and air strikes had thinned out the Red Army gun lines to an extent. Being posted to a towed artillery unit had become a death sentence, unless the crews were top rate, counter battery radar, MSTARS, JSTARS and communications systems passing the firing positions to the batteries.

JSTARS and 3(UK) Mechanised HQ hadn’t thought they had scored so well, no multiple rocket systems were amongst the enemy batteries firing on them, but they were not inclined to look a gift horse in the mouth. Another element that was missing was airpower, there had been no airstrikes so far, so perhaps the losses up north had hurt them more than they knew, or, it was being preserved for something yet to come.

Major Popham and the Guards RSM, Barry Stone had moved out of the battalion CP taking signallers and an MFC, mortar fire controller with them, and set up shop in a custom built bunker, circa 1940’s, that had been uncovered by the JCBs digging fresh positions. It was damp, stank of mould, but it had five feet of reinforced concrete around it, it made Jim wonder if his Grandfather had been involved in its construction before his slave labour gangs turn had come for the gas chamber. It was ironic that he was in part fighting for the country that had all but ended his family’s history in the death camps sixty years before.

By splitting the battalion command element they hoped to avoid the disaster that had befallen the Guards in their first defensive action, either half could run the fight if the other were taken out.

It was bitterly cold so for once the charcoal lined ‘Noddy suits’ were welcome, keeping out the unseasonable chill, still though they all sat with arms wrapped around chests and knees drawn up while the shells fell around them.

With nothing much to do except wait, the airborne soldier from Orange County, California and the WO1 from Nether Silton on the North Yorkshire Moors exchanged views on life, past experiences and soldiers anecdotes. Both were large men, and their bulky clothing and NBC respirators gave them bug like appearances.

“I was a boy soldier, joined up at fifteen.” Barry told him. “I remember the RSM at the first camp I was at, Park Hall, he was this God like figure that young squaddies like me used to steer well clear of, I thought he was a right bastard until one day I was on barrack snatch… that means guard duty.” Barry paused as a salvo of shells landing particularly close, shook the walls of their bunker, after a few moments he continued. “There was this twelve foot fence, topped with barbed wire around the perimeter and me and my mate were walking around on fire piquet when we saw this guy from C Company trying to go absent. He’d climbed on the roof of one of the ‘spiders’ and was trying to swing over the fence on a rope tied to the branch of a tree, but he kept bottling out, wouldn’t let go the rope once it had swung over the far side. Well we were watching him for a couple of minutes when my mate nudged me and pointed. Stood in the shadows was this RSM, Terrance was his name, Regimental Sergeant Major Terrence, Scots Guards, big bloke. He had a pencil and note pad out, his pace-stick tucked under one arm, and he was counting softly as he kept count in the notebook,

“In barracks… out of barracks… in barracks… out of barracks.” Eventually he nicked the C Company guy and charged him with nine counts of being absent without leave during a ten-minute period. It was the first time I ever saw a sense of humour in a warrant officer.”

The American major and the signallers chuckled, for the Coldstreamers present it was their first view of the man who lay behind the stern exterior of the ferocious ‘Baz the Raz’. “Today,” he announced whilst producing a bottle of scotch. “Is my birthday, and to mark this occasion, you may all have a drink on me… just a swig mind” He said in warning to the junior ranks present, and passed the bottle around once he had checked the detector paper indicted nothing nasty in the atmosphere.

“How old are you Sarn’t Major?” Jim Popham asked him.

RSM Stone smiled back, his eyes screwing up behind the respirator visors, the only part of his face that was visible. “Old enough to remember when sex was safe and flying was dangerous, sir.”

Grinding along towards the battalions rear through the mud were two British FV 432s in the armoured ambulance role, a pair of figures preceded them, using night goggles to pick out the nearest trench. Once they had memorised its position they took off the goggles and stuffed them inside their smocks and put on their respirators.

Secured to their backs were British Army issue SA-80s, an unsatisfactory piece of equipment in their view, but when in Rome… With their approach the enemy fires shifted, concentrating on the battalions forward positions.

Major Venables small battlefield radar screen showed the approaching vehicles, and he peered over at the tank to his right, a Chieftain with the job of covering that arc. He didn’t need to ask if they had seen them, he could see the big gun traversing slowly as it tracked them.

As the newcomers approached the trench PFC Luis Pinterelli eased off the safety catch of his M-16, beside him his partner took careful aim with a SAW, squad automatic weapon. Luis waited until they were clear of cover to duck behind and then challenged them.

When an American voice ordered them to halt it confused both of the approaching figures, their intelligence clearly stated that a British Mechanised Brigade held this area.

“Nine.”

“Twenty,” the figure on the right answered, and took a pace forward, but Luis wasn’t sure about these people, the casevac, casualty evacuation, plan was always for the wounded to be taken to the casualty collection point by the injured men’s own unit. Even in the darkness the red crosses on a white field, on the APCs sides could be made out.

“Hold up there… just you wait there a while, I ain’t finished wid yuze fellas yet. Whadya doin’ here?”

“You got casualties, we were sent down from brigade to fetch them.”

Luis reached for a field telephone, keeping his weapon pointing at the two men stood before the APCs, and then a third figured appeared, emerging from the rear of the nearest APC.

“What’s the delay here?” a female voice commanded as its owner strode forwards. Luis got an answer from his own platoon CP but the newcomer was striding past the two other figures.

“Hold on lieutenant… Hey, stand still there!”

His shout drowned out the metallic ring of a grenades spring-arm flying off.

It takes training and confidence to hang onto an armed grenade for the couple of seconds required for it to explode almost as soon as it lands, robbing the target of reaction time.

Team Five commanders right hand came forward in almost a casual fashion, tossing the grenade underarm into the foxhole and diving to the left as she did so. Luis dropped the phone and fired a wild burst one handed at the figure that had thrown something into their hole, the SAW next to him hammered at the two shapes behind, scoring solidly on the slower of the pair, but then the grenade in their hole went off.

From their positions out of sight behind the second FV432, two more figures stepped into the open, placing a 9M111 system on the ground between the two APCs and dropped down either side of it, firing a second later.

Major Venables had been watching through his Challengers viewing blocks, but was taken completely by surprise by the sudden automatic fire.

“Damn… ” grabbing the commander’s override he began to traverse the main gun to the right whilst keying his radio, and then his flanking Chieftain was struck by a missile, exploding immediately.

“Contact, contact, contact… enemy infantry in the rear, British army uniforms and 432 armoured ambulances!” Men were boiling from the rear of the two APCs and running into the position.

“Gunner, take over… target APCs, two 432s!” Major Venables undogged the hatch and pulled himself up, grasping the pintle mounted GPMG he swung it toward the APCs, cocked it and let loose with three sustained bursts at where he thought the anti-tank weapon had been fired from. In reply, a bright light first robbed him of all his night vision, and then an explosion deafened him as well. The Spetznaz crew had attached a fresh launch tube when the tank officer appeared; the probing fire killed the loader and wounded the gunner who squeezed off the round in reaction to being hit. Streaking across the intervening space it struck the top of the earthen berm, in which the Challenger was sitting and exploded.

When the grenade went off team five commanders jumped over the foxhole and knelt, groping about until she found the telephone cable. On being joined by members of her teams she turned and ran into the NATO position, the cable running through her fingers, it would lead them to a CP of some description, and from there they would find other cables leading to hopefully higher command elements.

The tank bucked as the main gun fired, the Tungsten steel sabot round cutting straight through the vehicle and out the other side.

“Reload HE!” yelled the gunner to the loader. Major Venables ducked back inside the turret and pulled the hatch closed after him as rounds whipped past his head, he couldn’t see a damn thing so he got out of harm’s way. The damaged 432 was apparently still operational, because the driver had put it in gear and it lurched forwards.

“Do may a favour sir… next time you break the seal on the hatch, check the NBC sensors first, you would have killed us all if they’d dropped some of that crap along with the HE!” Venables looked uncomprehending at his Gunner, he could see the lips moving but he couldn’t hear a word. The tank bucked again and the stolen armoured ambulance blew up, but continued moving forwards for several feet.

In the battalion CP they broadcast the warning to stay in their trenches, anyone or anything moving above ground was in play, it came too late for the depth platoon of 4 Company. Grenades flew into the platoons CP but the alerted platoon positions reacted swiftly, driving the attackers into cover and leaving three in the open, one deathly still and two threshing the ground in pain.

Team Fives leader ducked into the freshly blown command trench, ignoring the wrecked bodies of the airborne soldiers who had occupied it. She was angry at having been given this mission, her troops were too valuable to be thrown away in such death squad actions, and not even being able to plan it properly, the time scale meant they’d had to wing it. Joining up with two other teams as instructed, they had cobbled together a rough plan, and ambushed a pair of ambulances before setting off.

Similar attacks were taking place at other locations along the front to weaken the opposition at ideal crossing points; some of those would have the support of airborne assaults, but only the successful ones. The Red Army never reinforces failure.

On the floor of the CP were two field telephones, one was smashed by the explosion, both were splattered with gore but she picked up the one which looked intact, wiped the earpiece against her leg to get rid of the blood, and tried it. She knew that chemical agents had not yet been used tonight so she put away her respirator and pulled the hood down. There was no further need for the subterfuge and the return of un-muffled hearing and 180’ vision was welcome, it gave them an advantage over the defenders. She listened without speaking as the field telephone was answered, and then cut the connection. Removing the wires from the retaining clamps, she replaced them with the ones off the smashed field phone and tried that line in the same fashion. Once it was answered she ripped the wires from the back of the phone, held the wires carefully as she raised her head to look over the parapet, whip-lashing the wires up and down she noted the direction they were running. There was a lot of firing around them, and like an infection it spread as nervous soldiers opened up on shadows, there was little being aimed in the direction of the Spetznaz troops, with any degree of accuracy anyway.

Lt Col Reed had thrust his hands deep into his pockets when the initial contact report had come through from the armoured squadrons commander, the small arms and grenades he could now hear up top was out of proportion to that report.

“Sarn’t Major Moore… kindly tell all units to cease firing unless in direct contact. You… signaller, call up Sunray Tango and ask him for an estimate of the enemy entering our lines.” Arnie Moore got busy on the field phones, and the signaller started typing.

Major Venables ears were still ringing but his eyesight was back when the Bn CP sent their query via Ptarmigan. Both armoured ambulances were now burning, and he typed a quick sitrep, estimating the enemy numbers at 12 to 16.

“Colonel Sir!” Pat Reed turned from reading Venables reply,

“Yes Sarn’t Major?”

“All stations have acknowledged with the exception of our 9 Platoon, their CP is closest to the penetration point.”

With 9 Platoon l CP out of the loop there was but two ways to get messages to the remainder of that platoon, either by radio or by runner, and he was not going to risk anyone’s life to friendly fire by sending a man with a message.

“Break radio silence, tell all stations we believe that the intruders are in the area of 9 Platoon CP, I want a shermouli put up from 7 Platoons lines, then its watch and shoot at anything not in a trench, ok?” He next turned to the battalion MFC.

“Lance Sarn’t Cornish, your tubes have all individual positions registered, yes?” The MFC nodded.

“Yes sir… do you want 9 Platoon’s CP stonked?”

“Perhaps, but not until I say so, I would like visual confirmation that it has been overrun by the enemy first.”

Team Five’s commander did not have to crawl past any of the platoons trenches in order to get close enough to identify where the landline ran to, it was positioned slightly further to the rear than the position they had come from, and over to the left. Once the small arms fire had petered out she’d ordered the rest of the teams to pair up and stalk the NATO fighting positions. There had been twenty Spetznaz troopers on this mission, and they were down to eleven already. She was now lying in a shell crater with two of her own team, with just one defence platoon trench between her and their goal when the handheld para-illum went up. All three hunched in the mud when they heard the ‘whoosh’ made by the small rocket, and each closed their shooting eye to preserve their night vision. The commander squirmed onto her back, laying down her British SA-80 on her stomach and extracting a steel mirror from a breast pocket, and another two grenades’ from an ammunition pouch. She had done this drill for real once before in Chechnya and before that many times with first dummy, and then live grenades.

Poking the small mirror above ground with her left hand, she gripped the first grenade tightly in her right whilst one of her men pulled its pin out. The small parachute flare was now lighting up this area of the battlefield, and her other troops, but she ignored all else but the identifying of the trench. She had to open both eyes to find the trench and judge the distance, then after a moment's pause she lobbed the grenade backwards over her head and immediately grasped the second grenade. Her trooper pulled the pin on that also and she lobbed it after the first, before rolling over and fixing her bayonet to the NATO rifle and pulling another grenade from the pouch. Both grenades landed in the British trench, but the first was scooped up by a young Guardsman and thrown to the rear, he hadn’t seen where it came from, and unfortunately he didn’t see the second one arrive either.

With her eyes squeezed tight to try and restore some of her lost night vision, the team commander waited for the shermouli to fizzle out, and then she was up and running, with her troopers in firing positions to give cover if needed. The old Wehrmacht bunker had been built with observation slits, but these had been left covered with earth after its re-discovery. The sappers had cleared away the earth from the steps leading down to its entrance but removed the rusted steel door, lest it trap its new occupants inside.

With the detonation of the two grenades nearby, RSM Stone picked up his SLR, fixed bayonets and moved quickly over to the entrance, ducking under the inner blackout, a trailers tarpaulin, and then moved aside the blanket hanging down beyond it. There was just enough light getting around the corners of the tarpaulin for him to see a figure rushing down the concrete steps. He was holding his rifle by the pistol grip with his right hand; the butt was tucked under his armpit, muzzle and bayonet pointing down. He paused, taken aback on seeing the pretty face of the girl on the stairs, dressed in British uniform.

Still hampered by the lack of full night vision, the team commander did not see the big British soldier until she was almost on top of him. Bringing up the SA-80 she aimed from the hip one handed and pulled the trigger, but nothing happened.

Barry Stone did not comprehend the danger until she made that threatening move, but then she was thrusting the weapon forwards, stabbing him in the upper body and trying to push him back through the curtain, to make a gap she could throw the grenade through. The RSM was off balance, and she had the advantage of height, but as he went backwards he brought up the SLRs muzzle. It had become so heavy, so suddenly, thought the RSM. There was a fire in his chest and he couldn’t get his breathe, but he gritted his teeth and thrust forward as hard as he could, spearing his attacker in the stomach. She screamed in agony, dropping the jammed rifle and grenade to grasp the blade with both hands, trying to force it out of her body. The grenades spring-arm flew free; allowing the spring-loaded striker to fly down inside the fuse assembly onto the percussion cap and the five-second fuse began to burn.

RSM Stones strength was failing fast, pierced through the heart he no longer had the strength to hold the rifle and his right leg gave way, staggering backwards into the blanket and tarpaulin, which tore away from their securing nails.

Jim Popham spun around when he heard the woman scream, in time to see RSM Stone pull away the blackouts and fall to one knee. The next thing his consciousness registered was a hand grenade bounce down the stairs and into the bunker’s interior. He heard himself shout the warning.

“Grenade!” and launched himself across the room towards it, but the RSM first steadied himself with a hand on the bunkers wall, and then pushed himself forwards, landing on top of the grenade, smothering it with his body.

At 0600, with no coded ‘Success’ message being received by waiting signal's intelligence across the river, the tempo of the artillery barrage increased dramatically. Rocket artillery that had stood down lest its less accurate fire hamper the Special Forces mission now re-joined the effort. Six batteries of tube artillery which had so far played no part in softening up the targets in this sector, opened up on the Guards, 82^nd Airborne, Light Infantry and the Argyll’s with specialised munitions carrying Nerve Agents, Blister Agents and hallucinogenic LSD compounds, began to burst on the western bank.

Less well known than the larger USAF airbase in Germany, Geilenkirchen AFB, thirteen miles north of Aachen was the home of NAEWF, NATO airborne early warning force in Europe. 93^rd Air Control Wing had six of its converted Boeing 707, JSTARS airframes there, flown in from Robins AFB in Georgia when war looked imminent. They and the multi-national E-3 AWAC force, including aircraft and crews from 552^nd Air Control Wing out of Tinker AFB, Oklahoma, were running around the clock missions, controlling strike and air superiority missions. Eavesdropping on enemy radio traffic, snooping on enemy movements in the air and on the ground, plus electronic warfare were their tasks.

Three E-3 Sentry’s were up, two up and one back in reserve, should anything happen to either of the two other valuable AWAC aircraft. An equal number of JSTARS E-8s were aloft, and that meant the ground crews had their work cut out keeping the on-board systems and the aircraft themselves, serviceable.

The technicians working on the aircraft systems at the individual dispersal’s heard a single shot, coming from over on the perimeter. The shot was answered by another, and another. There had been a number of phantom fire fights on the perimeter since the war had started; nervous sentries killing shadows, usually preceded by noises in the undergrowth as the wildlife went about its nocturnal business. The first time it had happened the technicians had rushed to their stand-to positions, swapping circuit testers and spanners for M-16s, but now they merely glanced toward the sound of gunfire and then got back to their tasks. The firing ended, as usual, and silence returned to the pre-dawn setting.

Ten minutes later the outline of the woods from where the firing had been were illuminated from behind by a bright light, a second or two later the sound of the explosion reached the nearest group of ground crew. They stopped what they were doing and stared off toward the woods, wondering what was going on, the base alarms had not sounded so they conjectured that a stray round may have hit something, their breath fogging in the frosty air as they whispered, and hey, wasn’t there a Patriot site over that way?

The reverberations died away and the sound was replaced by that of engines coming from the flight line and further along the perimeter, the first vehicles to race past were armoured Humvees, disappearing into the wood. The second vehicles could be heard but not seen, a pair of Bradley fighting vehicles outside the perimeter, following the fence toward the wood.

Senior NCOs put an end to the idle gossip, hustling the men and women back to work on the airframes, engines and systems. There was more work to be done than there were warm bodies to do it, and another two aircraft had reported problems which had to be fixed before they saw any sack time.

The NCOs did not get their wish, both Bradleys exploded as they ran over bar mines laid only a half hour before, and shoulder launched anti-tank weapons took care of the Humvees. The ground crews hesitated, they did not need audible alarms to tell them something was now seriously amiss, but they weren’t trained infantry either, they were standing in the open and clearly visible in the night sight of the gun group which had just set up on the woods edge, a moment later the gun opened fire.

Wizard Zero Four had been on-station for seven hours, flying a monotonous racetrack pattern over the Upper Harz mountains. They had little to do in regard to interceptions, few aircraft were up apart from their opposite numbers, A-50s and the older Mainstays, brought back into service to make up for the losses in the A-50 fleet. The JSTARS and AWAC had a close co-operation, feeding one another information, but it had been mainly one way, AWAC vectoring in strike aircraft against positions on the ground identified by JSTARS as viable targets. At 0547hrs however, that all changed.

“Wizard Zero Four, this is Bloodhound One Eight.”

Zero Four’s senior controller answered the JSTARS SC. “This is Wiz, go ahead Bloodhound… got some business for us?”

“’Hound, giving you a heads up on something developing down there. Lots of attacks on unit command elements, they scored big against us in the Haldensleben area and at Bernburg on the Saale River; took out a couple of brigade and battalion CPs.”

“Wiz, roger that… you want to qualify ‘a couple’ ‘Hound?”

“’Hound, one brigade CP for sure, maybe two, and three battalion command posts for certain, could be five but they are still trying to re-establish communications and get a handle on things. Lots a’places got hit by throw-away units but most got beat off… standby Wiz… Wiz we got ground traffic heading in from rear areas toward them two places and three more besides. I’m guessing the other three are diversionary attacks.”

Wizard Zero Four’s senior controller’s attention was called to tracks appearing on the eastern edge of his monitor.

“Wiz, check your air defence screen ‘Hound, we got lots of fast movers comin’ west. Wiz out.”

There were indeed ‘lot’s’ coming their way, four Regiments of interceptors had formed up at 30,000 feet, topped off their tanks and climbed to 40,000 feet before going to burner and heading towards Wizard Zero Four, Bloodhound One Eight and their escorts. An equal number were racing toward the other flight of JSTARS and AWAC aircraft.

The airborne control platforms turned west, calling for help whilst their escorts swung east and started looking for targets.

NATO scrambled fighters but the Red Air Force was not hanging around, they overwhelmed the escorts and carried on west, Wizard Zero Four’s operators could see that they were in serious trouble. Both of the big Boeings had been heading west in company, they now split and began emergency descents, looking for ground clutter to hide in until the cavalry arrived.

Wizards operators were gulping furiously, trying to make their ears pop with the radical pressure changes when the automated systems began discharging chaff and flares, they didn’t do that unless the aircraft were already locked up. With 10,000 feet to go before they got into a valley, an Archer missile scored on them, flying into the starboard inner and blowing the whole wing off, and Wizard Zero Four fell onto the town of Holzminden.

Il-76 transports followed in the wake of the next force to go west, this force was tasked with the deadly task of SAM suppression, and without the E-3 Sentry’s to tell them what was coming, or to guide their missiles, the NATO batteries had to fire up their own radars, and the attrition began.

Colonel General Alontov struggled with the weight of his parachutes and equipment as he hooked himself up and checked the parachute of the man in front of him. Behind him another paratrooper did the same for him, as they readied themselves for their second combat jump of the war. His Division’s task was not entirely dissimilar to their last mission, two brigades would cut the NATO supply lines at different points, whilst the third would secure the western bank of the Elbe. After Leipzig he had reorganised the Division for this mission, the green replacements all went into the third brigade, where he left a hardcore of experienced men. The survivors of Leipzig formed the first and second brigades, they had the hardest tasks, seizing Helmstedt and Braunschwieg, the toughest, where four autobahns came together. He of course would be jumping into Braunschweig, along with his Spetznaz company 21 miles from Helmstedt and 37.7 miles as the crow flies, from the bridgehead at Haldersleben.

When he had been told of this plan to cross the Elbe and Saale, he had been offered his choice of the two available divisional tasks that the soviet airborne forces had been given, and as he did not want to sacrifice a third of his men, he had chosen this one. The airborne division of 2nd Guards Shock Army would be dropping to their south, at Bernburg, Eisleben and way west into Belgium, beaters to flush SACUER into the sights of the gun line.

The brigade going to Belgium could be written off, there would be no attempt made to resupply it.

Looking out through the nearest port he saw the first flakes of snow whipping past in the turbulence.

Snow when it should be Spring! The Russian shivered inwardly, what have we brought upon ourselves?

Lt Col Reed accepted the news of his RSMs death without comment, he nodded to the signaller who had brought the sad tidings and went about the business of running the unit.

The resumption of the enemy incoming had been mainly airbursts, no doubt designed to kill any NATO troops above ground engaged in hunting down the Spetznaz troops who had infiltrated the lines. It didn’t bode well for the enemy soldiers; any that had not been in shelter bays would be unlikely to survive. Major Popham had reported that they were doing what they could for an injured enemy soldier, her wound was severe and they had given her morphine for the pain and dressed the wound with dressings from her own pockets, she wouldn’t survive long without surgery, but Pat Reed didn’t really give a damn. His soldiers were taking a battering from the artillery; he didn’t know how many were still fit to fight and wouldn’t do until the bombardment ended. At least with counter-battery fire they were giving some back, and preventing the enemy from using everything he had, all at once.

Five miles from the small town Belgian town of Petergensfeld, SACEUR received the reports of chemical weapons with a mere nod, it was to be expected that if the soviets had any stocks remaining they would use them now. His view of the situation had been severely hampered by the loss of his JSTARS and AWAC cover, and now less capable land based battlefield radars and unmanned reconnaissance vehicles were his only eyes.

He had called in the AWAC and JSTARS aircraft from Norway, Spain and the USA to replace the losses, in the air and no doubt those on the ground too.

Nearby the base a road convoy enroute to the front were diverted. The British Army part-timers of the 1^st and 2^nd Battalions of the Wessex Regiment, TAVR, were still moving into position and organising before attempting to retake the overrun Geilenkirchen AFB. Word of the attack had been sent by the occupants of a farm who’d telephoned the police, reporting automatic fire and large explosions.

General Allain rather suspected the attack had come from within, as much as from outside, the attackers had apparently neutralised the airbase communications totally.

Updrafts buffeted the big Il-76 transports carrying the Helmstedt force, and the snow that had begun as flurries now fell heavily, whipping across the wings and obscuring the pilot’s vision.

Nikoli Bordenko tried to ignore the pain in his arms, legs and back from standing in a half crouch to bear the weight of his equipment. He held onto the cable that ran his side of the hold with his right hand, the knuckles were white with the effort. His nose wrinkled as the man in front vomited onto the cargo deck, he knew what would happen next, the stink of bile would start a chain reaction, and indeed he was right, it became puke city shortly afterwards. One hundred and twenty five men were facing forward, toward the two side doors, hooked up to one of two cables that ran the length of the hold, and now over half were unloading the sausage and pickled cabbage stew they had eaten a couple of hours before.

Their aircraft had let down to 1000 feet five minutes before, after crossing the Elbe. So far they had received little in the way of ground fire, although the odd line of tracer flashed past coming from below, Nikoli had seen that out of the corner of his eye, through one of the few window ports in the cargo bay.

He tried to change his stance slightly to ease the ache in his limbs, but found one corner of his bulky map case, safely tucked inside his smock, dug into his armpit. The additional maps went with his new rank and position, Captain and 2i/c of the company, a job he was not entirely comfortable with because he missed his platoon and being the boss, the one who made the decisions.

The big Ilyushin transport lurched to the side and Nikoli cursed as the cable dug into his hand. Around him men lost their footing, and or, their hold on the cables and slid across the cargo deck. His first thought was that it was turbulence, but the aircraft kept up its hard left bank for a few seconds and then the nose went up and the course was reversed. Bracing himself with a foot against the side of the hold. The view gave him a good view out of the tiny port, and of the tracer flashing past horizontally, it wasn’t turbulence that was the cause of the bumpy ride, somewhere behind a fighter was trying to put rounds into them.

The transport continued to try for the safety of the clouds, as did the rest of the formation when German Tornados and Alfa jets jumped it. The Tornados mixed it with the transports escorts and the Alfas hunted the escorts charges. The Alfas were ground attack aircraft, their hard-points bare of ordnance having dropped it on targets over the Elbe they had only cannon with which to engage the big four engine transports.

Men screamed as eventually the rounds pierced the airframe, 27mm cannon shells entered through the thin aluminium, tore through men and equipment before passing out the other side. Stinging, acrid fumes from an electrical fire began to fill the hold and the red light came on as the aircraft’s nose dropped well below the horizontal, lifted momentarily and then dropped once more, but at a gentler angle. The dispatchers hauled open the side doors, screaming and gesturing at the men to get out. A flickering orange light illuminated the interior of the hold through the starboard ports, flames from the right inner engine streamed out into the aeroplane’s wake.

Nikoli’s left hand supported his equipment bag, which rested on his left foot and he heaved it forwards with each step, coughing and choking with the smoke, that was now diluted by the gale coming through the open jump doors, but still smarted.

Despite the roar of the air he heard the rapid drumming sound of cannon shells striking the aeroplane once more, flinching as something passed by his head and he was blinded by warm blood, jetting into his face from the man in front. Someone behind was pushing at him frantically, but Nikoli could see nothing until he’d released his grip on the bag to wipe his eyes with his sleeve. There had been three men in front of him, now there were just a torn body parts.

The port side dispatcher came toward him, a knife in his hand as he cut through the dead men’s static lines, without his doing that then none of the heavily burdened paratroopers could have hoped to get past. Nikoli nearly fell, slipping in blood and entrails as he reached the door, the dive had steepened so he deliberately looked up as he stepped through the door, if they were only 50 feet up, he’d prefer not knowing.

The slipstream spun him about but he concentrated on counting,

“One thousand, two thousand, three thousand… ” he was hauled roughly into the upright. “… check canopy!” Looking up he could see a nice round shape of canopy, but his lines were wrapped around themselves so he began kicking and twisting until they unravelled. A body fell past him, he caught a glimpse of a horrified face, its mouth open wide in a scream but no sound coming forth, its owner reaching out towards him as he fell past, as if Nikoli could extend his arms the twenty feet that separated them and save him. A moment later the doomed paratroopers canopy fell past, the roar of flames from the burning fabric filled the air momentarily as it trailed behind like a beacon as its owner fell to earth.

All those who made it out of the stricken transports starboard door met similar fates, the static line pulling their parachute canopies out and into the flames from the burning engine.

Nikoli watched the Il-76 hit the ground and explode, the last half dozen paratroopers out of the doors ploughed into the ground before their canopies had deployed, and a line of small fires leading off along the way they had come marked were those who had come out of the starboard jump door had landed.

Unclipping his equipment bag, he let it fall, to be arrested by the webbing strap attached to his harness, to land with it still clipped to him would have meant leg and possibly spinal fractures.

Pulling down on his right riser he spilled some air from the left of the canopy, turning into wind so the breeze was on the right front of his face. There was a mild 10 knot wind blowing so as he drifted backwards he set for his landing, feet together and angled to the left, knees together and bent slightly, head tucked in with his forearms and elbows protecting his head and face.

In the darkness there was no ground-rush, the seemingly rapid acceleration towards terra-firma, Nikoli heard his equipment bag strike the ground and the pressure on his harness lessened, then his feet struck and he rolled, first hips and shoulders, and then his feet came over the top and he was still. Without getting to his feet he immediately struggled from the harness that was dragged away for a short distance by the still partly inflated canopy. No rounds were in-coming, but he was in a field over two hundred yards from cover and he wasn’t inclined to give some farmer with a shotgun a target of opportunity. The snow was settling, snow in April? the world truly had gone crazy, but he crawled over and collected his equipment bag, dragging it with him to cover in a thicket.

Aside from being behind the lines, he had no real idea as to where he was exactly until he took out his GPS and maps. Wuitterlingen, a small hamlet, was to the west of him, so he was nearly seven miles from the planned drop zone. He carried a radio beacon in his bag for the troops to rally on, which he took out and checked before setting it aside. Each trooper could home in on his own platoons beacon, or if there were no signal coming from that they could change the settings and rally on the nearest one. The company commander carried another beacon, but he had been on the starboard side of the aircraft.

Nikoli supposed that it now meant he was the company commander, but as he reckoned that no more than about twenty men had got out through the portside jump door, and all the heavy weapon section had been at the back, he had less than a platoon of riflemen.

Once he had pulled on his pack and radio, Nikoli set the timer on the rally beacon and moved off a hundred metres to a position that gave more than mere cover from view. Should NATO detect the radio beacons emissions, then they would employ anything from a patrol to an airstrike to eliminate it, so he got out his entrenching tool and began deepening a depression he found.

Over the past hour the BTR-80s and TP-76 tanks of the 2^nd, 18^th, 43^rd MRRs and 4^th Tank Regiment which formed the Hungarian Rzeszów Motor Rifle Division, had moved up to the edge of the dead ground a little over half a mile from the river. Behind these units the combat engineering and bridging units positioned themselves, unaware that they and two other divisions were merely tying up NATOs best units, the battle tested ones. They were expected to press home their attack but not expected to succeed, in fact artillery and air assets were already being diverted to assist at the two real efforts.

Once all the units were in place, artillery began dropping smoke, the signal for the tanks and APCs to begin rolling forward, it was also the signal for those left on the ‘island’ to bug-out. Bill wasn’t going to waste time finding out if any of the telephone landlines were still intact, he sent a code word on the radio and then switched it off.

Stef had shut down the NIAD and packed it away once its squawking had been proven to be genuine, the sensitive piece of equipment was prone to false alarms. Both soldiers carried ‘Arctic Whites’ in their Bergen’s, a thin over-jacket and trousers made of white parachute material, though neither man expected to be wearing the items quite so soon in the year. These were donned over their ‘Noddy suits’ now, and spare white cotton ‘inner gloves’, a size too large for normal use were pulled over the black rubber Noddy suits outer pair. The bulky ghillie suits had been removed and placed in heavy duty bin bags, along with a couple of pounds of fullers earth to absorb any chemical agents that may have adhered. They were now inside sandbags, strapped to the tops of the Bergens.

Visibility had been degraded by the snowstorm to the point that only the snipers thermal sight was of any use, and this had its protective lens caps placed on as they moved out. No rockets or shells had landed on the ‘island’ for over an hour, and the snow had settled on the churned earth and shell craters. Had they not been wearing their protective clothing they would have heard the snow crunching crisply underfoot, as they made their way towards the canal. Other figures appeared from shelter bays and hides, one pair of snipers was missing, as were four of the radio operators, the absent men were either sealed in by near misses or dead from direct hits. They didn’t have the time to discover which was which, and pressed on towards the Mitterland Kanal.

There were four boats awaiting them, two others were gone, sunk at their moorings by the shellfire, so they left one boat for anyone who managed to dig themselves out. The soviet artillery began dropping HE on the ‘island’ once more, turning their attentions away from the ground beyond the canal for a while.

Royal Artillery Phoenix drones were keeping tabs on the approaching amphibious Hungarian AFVs, and switched half of their tubes from counter battery missions, to hammer the oncoming armour.

Venables Challengers and Chieftains were moving into their forward fighting positions as the radio operators and snipers were slipping into their new positions, back in the relative safety of the battalion lines.

Big Stef paused at the entrance to their new hide, and looked around at the evidence of shelling. Bill trudged up and stopped, glancing about trying to see what had caught the other man’s attention.

“Bad, but not as bad as the last time.” Bill heard the words and shivered, the artillery had been the scariest thing that had ever happened to him.

Across the river, Colonel Leo Lužar listened with satisfaction on his command net as the OPs on the riverbank reported little movement on the island between the Elbe and the Mitterland Kanal. His orders were to secure both banks with his amphibious force in order that the engineers first put ribbon bridges across to carry heavier armour, and then place bridging sections between the autobahn bridge uprights, that were still standing. The lack of substantial air support was troubling him, as was the withdrawal of artillery and the Russian Division from the available follow-on forces. It stood to reason that the autobahn was a vital route to the English Channel, so why wasn’t this effort getting all available resources?

His biggest fear was the NATO multi launch rocket system, but he had been assured that what air assets they had were across the river hunting artillery and the deadly MLRS launchers.

He had two battalions of PT-76 tanks and BTR-80 APCs in company ranks, one either side of the bridge, four waves to first take the ground between the river and the canal. The next phase was in the hands of the gunners in the rear; the concrete sides of the canal were an effective barrier against vehicles getting into and out of the water. Engineers would use demolition charges to complete the creation of ramps down into the canal, working under the cover of his armour and infantry.

His tank was being rocked by near misses from the enemy artillery, and steel splinters scarred its sides as he looked through the side and rear viewing blocks to see how his force was faring. Here and there he could see black oily smoke and flames from knocked out vehicles, whilst other vehicles were stopped having had tracks knocked off. There was something else that struck him though, the lack of smoke covering them from more accurate artillery spotting. The wind had shifted and the smoke rounds were discharging their cover uselessly, the artillery spotters had not adjusted fire to compensate and he barked some harsh words into the radio on the support net.

One of his lead companies commanders called up that they had reached the riverbank and Lužar ordered the artillery to commence pounding the canals sides with the heavy artillery.

Back in the NATO lines, the NCOs from the 82^nd and Guards were getting their blokes sorted out, adjusting arcs of fire to compensate for trenches that had been obliterated by the artillery. Casualty reports went from sections to platoon, to company and then to the battalion CP. Over in the platoon that had been infiltrated, two foxholes failed to respond satisfactorily to hails and were grenaded, and then stormed. The battalion lines were again secure, areas of responsibility and personnel were moved around to plug or cover the gaps.

Pat Reed was so far pleased, that in pulling back off the ‘island’ he had been proved correct and saved his unit from destruction, an added bonus was that the enemy had wasted the bulk of its artillery missions on empty real estate. His insistence, along with other commanders, that counter battery fire be employed from the very first had also paid off.

The preliminaries were over, they were about to come to grips with the enemy and the battalion was in good shape this time to stand its ground. He had just finished talking to the company; squadron and battery Commanders on field phone conference call when a sheet of message pad was put in front of him. When at full NBC state, everyone looks the same apart from being tall, short, big or slim. Yellow crayon on strips of tape on the chest and the front of the Noddy suit hood identified the individual in the CP, though less garish colours were used up top. The FAC, forward air controller, brought the news that their air support, including helicopters, had been removed due to enemy airborne drops to the north and south.

A telephone call at four forty in the morning had started Janet Probert from her sleep. She had not been instantly alert, no one who has been so rudely awoken ever is. It had taken several moments for understanding to take hold and once it had she’d hesitated, frozen by fear having looked first to the clock. People do not send good tidings at such an hour.

Having steeled herself for the worst she had snatched the receiver from its cradle and found the caller was Annabelle Reed, the COs wife. Annabelle had set up a group to take care of welfare issues amongst the battalions dependants soon after Lt Col Reed’s assuming command. Driving down from their home in the Yorkshire Dales to do the rounds of the married pads with June Stone, the battalion RSMs wife, and call a meeting of the wives.

An elderly, former RSM with 2CG, Captain Deacon, was the married families officer and it fell to him and whichever padre that London District sent over, to break the news.

Mrs Reed had set up a system whereby the wives committee would have someone present too.

The regiment’s losses in the opening battle on the heights above the Wesernitz had staggered the tight knit battalion ‘family’. The previous Commanding Officers wife, Genevieve Hupperd-Lowe, was a gentle and rather frail lady by nature and her husband’s death in the fighting had completely devastated her. June Stone had stepped in to organise the support for the families of the wounded, missing and those confirmed as killed in action. There was a disproportionately high number of MIA from that first battle and some of the crueller tabloids had picked up on the figures, hinting at a panicked rout. The papers had been just as insinuating after the second battle, at Leipzig airport, with regard to the low number of prisoners taken by the battalion as it, along with the rest of 3 (UK) Mechanised Brigade, had hammered through the soviet airborne lines to the objective. It had all added to the distress of the families.

Janet and Sarah Osgood had been at the inaugural meeting and had volunteered for the on-call rota, visiting nearby families and those in married quarters whose husbands had just become casualties. The call that morning had been to warn Janet that the battalion was in action once more and as such she, June and Sarah could be called upon later when casualty notifications began to come through from Germany. Being ‘called on’ really meant comforting some distraught wife who had just been informed she was widowed, or that their husband was wounded. She did not know how Annabelle had come by the information, it was hardly public domain; probably through a friend of Pat’s at the MOD.

Thus Janet’s working day had begun with her tired, pale and again wishing to block out the worst thoughts, but she did that last part everyday anyway.

Breakfast had been served up to a Jimmy who was much quieter these days. His best friend Alistair had been taken out of a lesson the previous week by a usually stern faced head mistress whom at that time had been visibly moist eyed and exuding compassion. Alistair had not rejoined the class and by the time school finished for the day the married quarter his friend had lived at was locked up, awaiting contractors to empty its contents and ship them up north. There were a lot of ‘pad brats’ attending Jimmy’s school and not all from 1CG.

The headmistress had made half a dozen trips from her office to classrooms as result of telephone calls since the war had started.

Karen was also quieter of late but her daughter seemed to be making a conscious effort to make her mother’s life easier, a sure sign of growing up. She was also helping more without first having to be asked, and there was no more sniping at her brother, the catalyst of many squabbles, for which Janet was truly thankful.

With breakfast passed she had steered her car carefully along frozen roads that were not receiving the attention of the gritting lorries as they had in peacetime. The multi storey she always used, and in previous times had trouble finding a space at, was half empty so perhaps the roads out of town were in even worse shape she’d mused. Her carriage on the DLR was less than packed, allowing her to sit in relative comfort and watch the snow squalls beyond the carriage windows as she thought about Karen’s coming birthday. She really needed to apply some thought to that. Pull out all the stops and have a party, or an outing, just something to lift all of their spirits.

At Heron Quays she departed the automatic train with a handful of commuters and dutifully passed through the barrier with a sweep of her oyster card across the yellow face of the reader. Still deep in thought she left the station entrance and grimaced at the bitter cold and myriad flakes assaulting her exposed skin.

The wind was blowing straight along the Thames from the east and into the right side of her face, freezing her ear and depositing snowflakes down her neck.

Once she had muffled herself against the elements as best she could with her scarf Janet pulled her coat hood up, holding its right side extended as a wind break with one knuckled, frozen hand she hunched against the freezing wind and hurried to work.

Turning into South Colonnade, and into the icy wind, she did not see the man in thick padded jacket bearing the logo of a firm of lift engineers. They bumped shoulders and she opened her mouth to apologise, as commuters do in such situations. He mumbled something equally automatic that was lost in the wind, shrugging the strap of a heavy canvas bag higher onto his shoulder before tugging on the peak of his baseball cap, which Janet took to be a rather quaint gesture as she continued on to the entrance of the imposing glass tower where she worked.

The lift engineer gritted his teeth in annoyance at the collision, which had almost caused him to drop the bag with its heavy and irreplaceable instrument. He had tugged the peak of his cap further down across his face and made it appear to be an act of apology, backed up with something suitably trite. The cause of his discomfort had responded in similar fashion and went on her way.

He watched surreptitiously for a long moment for any indication that it had been anything but accidental, and then satisfied he resumed his own journey.

Thirty minutes later the engineer emerged from a small van liveried with the lift company logo inside a lockup garage containing a single saloon car. Securely closing and locking the large double doors behind him he took a laptop from the saloon cars boot and set it up on an oil stained worktop at the back of the garage. His breath fogged in the frigid cold of the garages interior. From the canvas work bag he extracted what appeared to be a large cordless electric drill with an oversized battery pack. A USB cable was plugged into one of the laptop ports at one end whilst the other slotted into an innocuous looking recess above the drills trigger guard. His fingers tapped a few keys before leaving the laptop to carry out the command he’d given it, turning his attention to a rather less high tech item.

Close to one wall of the garage a grimy oil trap, like a giant roasting tray, sat upon the cold concrete floor. Within it rested a large and equally filthy engine block wrapped around with chain and above that a sturdy steel ring was bolted to a roof girder. From the back of the small van he took a set of steps, pulley, hook and chain. The harsh metallic sound of the chain and pulley sounded until he hoisted the engine several feet clear of the ground and moved aside the oil trap to reveal a safe set in the floor. Muscles knotted as he unlocked and then lifted the heavy door before stepping back and stripping off all the lift company’s clothing except the pair of snug leather gloves on his hands. He was shivering hard by the time he had checked the laptop had completed its task and disconnected the drill, wrapping it carefully in the padded jacket before kneeling to place the bundle in the safe. The clothes and canvas bag followed them into the safe, which was then closed, locked and concealed as before. His teeth chattered as he placed the chain and pulley into the saloon cars boot. The steps were returned to the van, which he locked with keys he concealed on a hook behind the worktop. Quickly dressing into a smart business suit and topcoat taken from the back seat of the saloon he fought to stop the shivering and looked about carefully for anything amiss. Apparently satisfied, the garage doors were unlocked to allow the saloon to be backed out into the snow and then closed securely and locked once more.

The ‘engineer’ removed a glove long enough to test the temperature of the air issuing from the cars heating vents. The air was icy so he cancelled the airflow to all but the screen and sat patiently for five minutes, until the snowflakes that had settled on the bottom of the windscreen began to melt.

Turning the fan back on and allowing the warm air to chase away the shivering he put the car into gear and drove the short distance to the Mile End Road, which he followed away from the City.

Forty minutes driving later and he pulled the car into a lay-by, collected the laptop and a holdall off the back seat and carried them through a gap in the hedge bordering the road. There was very little traffic on the road and no one at all in the fields, a fact he was careful to verify before crouching behind a holly bush and assembling a satellite transmitter from the holdall. The same USB lead was plugged into the transmitter that he pointed twenty degrees above the northern horizon. One thousandth of a second was all it took to transmit the results of two hours in the snow traversing and bisecting the banking and business estate, covertly mapping the site by means of concealed ultrasonic ‘radar’.

On returning to the car he looked at his watch, noting that he had completed the hurriedly ordered assignment with eleven minutes to spare. He wondered how the remainder of his team had fared up in Scotland and whether they would return before the arrival of orders for yet another task.

The Nighthawk was only fifty feet above the sea as it approached the coast, the plasma screen covering the cockpit windows was showing only the information the on-board systems already knew of prior to take-off.

Their radar was switched off, rather than merely at standby, and with no external data feeds from other sources, the information they held related only to fixed locations. No air or sea threats were displayed, just land based and at least a week old.

The passive infra-red sensors that peppered the airframe were at the moment adding nothing to that which was already displayed, and the crew both hoped that was good news.

The waters of the Cheshskaya Guba, enclosed by the mainland on two sides and the Kanin Peninsula to the west, was choppy with spray being whipped off the wave tops by the arctic wind.

Major Caroline Nunro’s hand rested next to the side stick, she let the nav system fly the aircraft for now but she was ready to take over instantly. Their course was straightforward for the first 527 miles after making landfall, it only got complicated once they approached the Volga/Baltic Waterway, from there on in the flying was all hands on, as they skimmed the weeds the nearer to the enemy capital they got.

“We’ve got company… infra-red source at our 4 o’clock high position.” Patricia wished that they had even slightly more positive data available other than, ‘there’s something warm over thataways’. If her instruments suddenly indicated a very hot source they would trip the missile launch warnings, but she still would have liked to know what it was, what it was capable of, and the height, course and speed of the ‘warm something’.

Caroline keyed in a new altitude, and the Nighthawk lost another precious fifty feet. She wasn’t happy about it, it would only take one unrecorded radio mast or the Russian equivalent of the Giant Redwood and they’d all be toast, but she waited until five minutes after the IR source had vanished before bringing them back to their original altitude.

One of the features of the ‘At a glance’ system was its ability to show the crew when radar was ‘painting’ them and when they were still undetected. When there was no radar energy pulsing at the airframe, the extremities of the transparent plasma screen that lined the cockpit windows were tinged violet. As radar energy was detected the colour changed, in a reverse of the spectrum according to the level of energy. Yellow was the highest level of energy they encountered on their way in, but their route had been planned to avoid all radar sites and areas that could be expected to have mobile air defence systems.

North of the Nighthawk the B2s continued on toward Alaska, staying clear of the coastline as they tanked one another. KC-135 Extenders would top off their tanks over Alaska, and from there they would turn south. In an epic flight the B2s would stay aloft with tanker support until their circuitous flight brought them to Edwin Andrews Air Base on Mindanao, and they would touch the ground for the first time since leaving RAF Kinloss in Scotland.

The other F-117 turned about and retraced their steps, taking a long drink courtesy of the Danish air force tankers, before crossing the Moray Firth to Kinloss. The aircraft that rode shotgun had not released a single war shot, which was good news for the operation.

Two hours after crossing the coastline, Caroline Nunro taxied off the tarmac of the forest strip and into the shelter of the trees where the waiting Special Forces troops covered the airframe with camouflage nets and set about refuelling. Patricia Dudley supervised the operation whilst Caroline released their passenger from the confines of the bomb bay, and checked their ordnance was okay.

She felt a presence at her side and turned to find the Captain who commanded the special forces troops, and their CIA contact, and shook hands before allowing the Captain to round up Pat and Svetlana, after which they followed him to a small hut where they changed into civilian clothes.

The CIA rep was an elderly man, a local who had been a sleeper for the Americans since the sixties; he briefed them on the current situation inside Russia before leading them to his old truck where all four climbed up into its cab.

The drive to the safe house was not without risk, there was a curfew in place but most of the internal security troops were operating around the centres of population in the hours of darkness.

The elderly contact drove carefully, only using dipped headlights, and not when sky-lined on the tops of rises along the road.

They were negotiating a bend on the side of a steep hill when coming fast around it, on their side of the road, a Gaz jeep appeared. It swerved on seeing them and skidded, striking the stone wall at the roads edge and sending blocks bouncing down the hillside.

The road was blocked and the jeeps front wing was crumpled and bent, one wheel overhung the slope and rusty water was pouring from its rendered radiator.

The elderly contact was ashen faced as he brought the truck to a stop.

Caroline had been flung forward but caught herself.

“Oh Sh..!” was all she managed to voice before Svetlana’s hand clamped over her mouth, stifling the exclamation in English before she was able to voice it.

Two antennae whipped back and forth on the jeep with the suddenness of the vehicles halt. After a second, a section of wall toppled, its stone blocks joining the others careering downhill.

The jeeps driver clambered out of the far side, careful not to join the masonry now beginning to splash into a river at the bottom of the hill. But from the back climbed a Field Police Colonel, reaching across his body to unbutton the flap on his holster and draw the service pistol from it.

The accident was not of their making, but they were out during curfew and their pass would not hold up long should the official whose forged signature authorising the pass be summoned to the telephone from his bed.

Svetlana was wearing a long skirt, buttoned all the way down the front, and a tight fitting seaman’s wool polo neck jumper beneath her heavy coat.

She tore off the coat and hurriedly unbuttoned the skirt. Pushing Pat aside to squeeze passed she stepped down into the road from the truck’s cab giving both men a view of shapely legs and a naked hip. She ran over to the jeep, her boots stiletto heels clicking on the road surface and her face held an expression of mortification; she was gushing rapid fire apologies as she presented the Field Policemen with a vision of beauty in distress.

In the cab the two American’s watched, confidently awaiting the ‘Svetlana Effect’ to work its magic.

The Field Police Colonel cocked the pistol and extended his arm, pointing it directly at Svetlana who was but ten feet away and screamed at her to raise her arms and get on her knees.

To avoid a tumble down the hillside the driver climbed onto the bonnet of the jeep and Svetlana, apparently in shock and therefore not hearing the menacing commands went to help him, not realising her danger or even looking at the officer who was now closing one eye as he took aim at the side of her head. She reached both arms up to assist the driver, to steady him as he jumped down to the safety of the roadway.

Quite unnecessarily her arms went about him as he landed, her body merged with his.

Two gunshots rang out, so close as to almost merge together.

The whirring sound of a ricochet disappeared into the night, a scar in the tarmac next to Svetlana from the Colonels sidearm, and the officer fell backwards.

The driver swung a brutal backhand but she saw it coming and leaned in, grunting as the knuckles caught the side of the back of her head but swinging her right at his face.

He roared as the hot muzzle of Constantine’s zip gun smashed into his nose, breaking it. He caught Svetlana’s wrist in his meaty left hand before she could swing again.

He was a powerfully built man, used to rough house fighting and he squeezed, causing the Russian girl to gasp in pain and drop the weapon. His right fist came up in an uppercut aimed at the girls jaw but she jerked her head back out of the way, and brought her right knee up sharply, driving it towards his groin.

He allowed the momentum of the failed uppercut to help twist his hips and the knee strike missed but Svetlana brought the limb back down, down against his lower leg, running the edge of her boots outstep against his left shin and driving the stiletto heel into the top of his foot.

He gasped in pain as the hard leather edge stripped the skin away from his shin and roared with anger as the heel broke small bones in his foot, but his grip did not lessen, he pulled and the girl seemed to stagger, completely out-matched in strength. He twisted her off balance and turned her back-on to him. The right arm came across with the intention of locking off against her throat and crushing her windpipe but she went right on turning; her head came back hard to smash into his mouth. Once, twice, three times her head pummelled into his face. The lower lip was mashed and pierced by broken teeth and her knee rose and fell again, this time bones in his right foot broke under the impact of the long thin heel. Her free hand helped her left shoulder underneath his left armpit before gripping his arm, and then she bent, twisted her hips and as his bulk left the ground she straightened and twisted more, sending him over her shoulder. He let go her wrist as his body went inverted but Svetlana kept hold of that arm, ensuring that he could not land rolling and come up fighting. He landed hard and on his back, the breath driven from his lungs and eyes staring, lower face smeared in blood from the broken nose and gasping for air through smashed teeth, helpless as a fish out of water.

Svetlana bent, unholstered the pistol on his belt, cocked it and unceremoniously shot him in the chest and head before turning to the fallen officer.

She walked up to the Colonel, a large patch of blood over the area of his solar plexus. He raised an arm weakly, wrist cocked and palm open, and he tried to speak but she fired twice in rapid succession before he could voice whatever it was he meant to say. The sound of the gunshots echoed off the hillsides.

She turned back to the old truck, not looking at the pistol as she made if safe with practiced ease and reached behind, tucking it into her skirt next to her spine.

“Don’t just sit there, help me!”

She retrieved the zip gun and the officers’ pistol, handing that last item to their CIA contact and telling him to move down the road a ways and keep a lookout along the route the jeep had come.

It is not called ‘dead weight’ for nothing, and it took all three women to haul the bodies into the jeep, strap them in to prevent the bodies floating to the surface and then push it off the road onto the steep slope.

With a last straightening of the wheel Svetlana leant in and released the handbrake, jumping back quickly as the jeep began to roll down the hill.

Its impact with the river was unexpectedly loud.

They stood there panting with exertion, staring down hill.

“Good.” said the Russian girl.

Pat and Caroline turned about to face her open mouthed at the seemingly cold remark, in as much shock at the sudden chain of events as of being witness to the violence meted out by someone they had believed to be mere eye candy, intelligent no doubt but ultimately eye candy incapable of such cold blooded and applied violence.

“What?”

Svetlana pointed upwards and the two American air women followed the finger and saw snowflakes.

“With luck it will hide the evidence for a while.” Svetlana said and then hurried over to the truck. “Come on, we need to get out of here before they are missed.”

The remainder of the journey was in silence.

On arrival at the safe house nearer the capital Svetlana gave the contact a package and instructions, before he continued on into Moscow, after which a satellite phone was assembled, just long enough to send a single code word.

First contact with the soviet airborne brigade was made by the local police, the fire fight between the crew of the patrol car and half a dozen paratroops was short, but the policemen got a message out by radio that airborne troops had landed in force.

An hour later the advance platoons of the brigade began engaging the security company around the depot, the heaviest weapon the paratroopers had was mortars, but they had weight of numbers and held a 13-1 advantage over the NATO defenders.

SACUER evacuated with his staff down the mile long tunnel that took them through to the next valley, after destroying all the equipment that could not be removed. An infantryman by trade, General Allain insisted that none of his staff get too comfortable being in one place, relocating was a well-practised drill. Despite all that, they had a problem starting the tractor unit for the miniature railway which delayed them by ten minutes, but the blast doors closed behind them as the entourage made good its escape at 20mph down the slight gradient. At the far end the computer base units and other essentials were loaded into elderly but well maintained M113 armoured personnel carriers. The entrance to the escape tunnel was a dummy pumping station, beyond that lay a gravel track that ran along one side of the steeply forested valley. A blast door yawned open on hydraulic rams to reveal the interior of the grey concrete shell that concealed the tunnel existence.

Canadian military policemen swung open the heavy doors of the ‘pumping station’, snow had fallen to a couple of inches deep on the ground and had coated the trees and bushes but the winter wonderland effect was marred by the smell of gun smoke and explosives. A figure clad all in white, stepping out of the tree line had the men taking cover. The lone figure had its arms outstretched and an MP-5, with a long sound suppresser at the business end, held reversed in its left hand.

The challenge was made by the Captain commanding the close protection team, and satisfied with the strangers answer he called him forward into the building.

Removing his helmet and white thermal head-over peered at the persons present until he saw the man he was looking for and recognition showed in his face.

General Allain nodded his assent to a staff officer on the question of the egress route they would take and ordered the security company to begin a withdrawal, and took from him the report from Geilenkirchen AFB. Turning on his heel he strode over to the newcomer.

“Major Thompson, how did it go?” he enquired in English.

The squadron commander of G Squadron, 22 SAS took the hand proffered by SACUER and answered in perfect French. “Pretty good sir, they would have put up a stiff fight if we’d let them, but we had them zeroed in right from the off. They were dressed and equipped as Belgian paras, and I don’t think they were planning on taking any prisoners sir as they also had flame throwers, which are not surgical instruments in anyone’s book.”

“Any casualties, any prisoners?”

“Two of my Toms are walking wounded… we didn’t really give the opposition the chance as it wasn’t exactly a ‘prisoner friendly’ kind of ambush sir.” Major Thompson’s Squadron had spent the last nine days lying in wait for the Spetznaz team, dug into the side of the valley and its approaches. NATO had been fully aware that the enemy had acquired the plans for this bunker, from a KGB traitor they had on the books years before. It had been a reasonable assumption that a ploy of some kind would be used to get the supreme commander away from the safety of the bunker where Special Forces could capture or kill him, and so the SAS had lain in wait in anticipation.

“I have another job for you major… Geilenkirchen AFB was overrun this morning and the facilities extensively damaged. The biggest loss was not the maintenance facilities and airframes, but the aircrews, operators and ground crews. A number escaped, but the enemy forces executed all but two of those who were captured. Those two survivors, a male and a female technician were both raped and had the thumbs of both hands cut off.”

Major Thompson frowned.

“Excuse me… did you say both were raped?”

“That is correct. I am of course not advertising what took place, but no doubt word will spread nonetheless. All of the enemy force had withdrawn before a counter attack could be mounted, but I want you to attach one troop to tracking these animals down. I want to send a message back to Moscow, that if they are going to employ Balkan style terror tactics in complete contravention to the established rules of war, then they are seeding the wind!” He handed across a hand written operation order, which the British officer read before tucking it away inside his smock.

“If you will excuse me now sir, we have to make tracks to our pick up point.” They shook hands once more and the major disappeared back into the trees. SACUER climbed inside a M113 command post vehicle and the convoy moved off, with the sounds of battle drawing nearer.

Pc Pell was dozing in a chair in the kitchen at the back of the house when the motion sensor alarm sounded; he rubbed the sleep from his eyes and looked at the monitors. The milkman had woken him half an hour before as he delivered the daily pintas, but this time he was expecting to see Stokesy, Constantine, and Scott coming down the footpath. They had been at the RAF station all yesterday and all through the night, waiting for word that the Nighthawk had arrived safely in Russia. However, the monitors showed a tanned man in his 30’s struggling with suitcases and carry-on bags, bringing up the rear behind an equally tanned woman of the same age, who was also straining to carry a pair of suitcases, trudging through the snow that accentuated their bronzed complexions. He checked the other monitors and found nothing untoward, so he clipped his MP-5 to its harness, adjusting it so that it hung below his right elbow by its butt clip, and slipped on a jacket. Cocking his Glock he approached the front door, where a key was now being tried in the lock without success.

On taking over the premises, all the original locks had been replaced, and a Kevlar panel bolted to the inside of the door. Beside the door was a tiny monitor, which was receiving live feed from a palm-sized camera tucked into the ivy beside the door.

Pell could see the couple looked tired, unhappy and their clothes were creased. The woman put down her cases, nagging the man at the same time to get the door open; his look of pained exasperation brought a grin to the police officers face.

Holding the Glock in his right hand, Pell undid the locks and pulled the door open a foot, keeping the pistol out of sight. The tanned man looked up with shock on his face, from his position knelt on the doorstep where he had been attempting to look through the letterbox. The woman started also, stepping backwards with a startled “Oh!” and knocking over one of the milk bottles that toppled off the doorstep and broke with a smash.

“Yes?” Pell asked the man. “Can I help you?”

“Oh, do excuse us,” the tanned man replied, struggling to stand. “I didn’t know the place was being let right now… we are the McCardle’s, we own this house… and we have had the most horrendous time getting home from Saudi, what with the war and all.”

Pell frowned.

“I’m afraid the house has been leased by the MOD, to billet aircrews and the like… is there anywhere else you could stay?”

“I really don’t know… darling?” turning to his wife.

For just a moment the man's body masked the woman’s, and then he stepped swiftly to his right. Pell saw the woman was crouched in a gunfighter’s stance, both hands grasping a pistol that was aimed right at his face. The police officer had started to move, had started to shove closed the door when she fired.

NATO artillery and mortars were creating a barrier midway across the river that the Hungarians had to cross. The gunners knew that the chances of scoring a direct hit were not that high, but that the stovepipe shaped air intakes that the enemy vehicles attached when fording rivers were un-armoured. Air bursting shells holed the air intakes, and the waters made stormy by exploding ordnance swamped the engine decks. Water found its way into places where it was not wanted, and if enough of it got in then engines choked, spluttered and stalled. A half dozen from the first companies were already drifting down river, at the mercy of the current. A mechanic could have the machines in running order after just a short time, but right now they were useless, and not a danger to the defenders.

Driving snow reduced unaided visibility for both sides, but the battalions principal tank killers, the Hussars Challengers and Chieftains thermal sights had no trouble see through the storm or the smoke being dropped by artillery or by the armours own smoke generators.

The first two companies reached the ‘island’ and began climbing ashore

“Target tank… range, three one five zero… eleven o’clock… PT-76, get it while it’s still climbing the bank.”

Venables gunner had his eyes pressed against the padded sight and rotated the turret to the left, seeking out the target that had been indicated, and shouting. “On!” as he laid the gun on to the AFV climbing out of the river. “Firing!” The big Charm gun recoiled as it sent a tungsten steel sabot round across the canal, over the length of the island and into the lightly armoured belly of the tank. The effect was immediate, as hatches blew off and the vehicles forward motion came to a halt. “Reload, HE… lets save the Sabot’s for heavier armour… Target BTR, just left of the tank, range same!”

The loader slid the round into position and placed a bag charge behind it, closing the breach he stepped clear and slid the safety gate across firmly, ensuring it clicked home, if it had not been then the in-built safety device would have physically prevented the weapon from firing.

“HE Loaded!”

“Firing… good ‘it!..Load HE!”

Major Venables left the gunner and loader to fight the tank whilst he himself monitored his Squadrons efforts. Aside from the Chieftain destroyed by the Spetznaz assault, a Challenger had been destroyed during the shelling, and another had a drive wheel and track blown off by a near miss, it could still fight but was immobilised and would require REME to remove it later for repair. His remaining tanks were firing and reloading, the turrets moving as the guns picked up the next target to appear in their assigned sector, and then they fired again.

After fifteen minutes of continuous firing the, the riverbank was littered with the burning hulks of tanks and APCs; those crewmen and infantry that had bailed out of the knocked out vehicles were being picked off by the snipers, unless they found cover quickly and stayed there.

Colonel Lužar ordered his remaining companies to remain below the riverbank, out of sight of the NATO defenders. His first two companies had been picked off piecemeal, but if the remainder crossed the bank en-masse, they would deny the defenders the easy pickings of before. Calling up his artillery rep he requested suppressing fire on the ground beyond the canal, the destruction of the canal sides would have to wait.

A Royal Artillery Phoenix, twelve miles to the enemies rear was watching another battalion of armour move up. Its operator’s attention was drawn to the lead tank, obviously the commanders’ vehicles owing to the mass of antennae it sported. He had noted it five minutes before, but the tank had now broken away from the column to approach a small wood. As he watched, the tank pulled up beside the edge of the trees and a man approached from under the sheltering boughs. Impressive shoulder boards declared the rank of the approaching man as being a senior staff officer, the operator called over his supervisor who watched for a moment and then picked up a field telephone.

Only two MLRS launchers remained under brigade control, the remainder had been diverted south to assist in holding the line, the brigade commander agreed with his intelligence rep that they were in a position to remove the Hungarians of two critical factors necessary for a successful assault.

The reply Colonel Lužar received for his request was mixed good news and bad, he was berated for dallying instead of pressing home the assault but promised his artillery fire-mission once it finished firing its present tasks, provided they press on immediately. He gave the order to advance and six companies worth of engines changed from idling to a roar as they clawed their way out of the river.

Confronted with an almost solid wall of armour emerging into view, Lt Col Reed ordered his anti-tank platoon to engage along with the Hussars MBTs, and Milan wire guided missiles sped towards the attackers along with tank rounds.

Colonel Lužar’s PT-76 was one of the last to leave the waters of the Elbe, climbing the bank to the left, and slightly behind a BTR-80. As the neighbouring APC reached the apex of the bank, gravity took over and the front end of the vehicle dropped level, it started to move forward and then stopped dead, as if it had run into a brick wall. The rear doors to the troop compartment flew opened and men tumbled out, one man’s protective outer clothing was burning and he threw himself down into the snow, rolling frantically to put out the flames, unseating his respirator as he did so. His desperate efforts to put out the flames ceased and the soldiers body began to jerk and spasm like an epileptic in the throes of a fit before becoming very still.

Lužar’s own tank completed the risky manoeuvre, and the Colonel braced himself as the amphibious tank came down with a thump onto its forward drive sprockets. A Chieftains gunner had fired a moment too late, and the round that was meant for the command tanks soft underbelly met the angled armour of the forward glacis plate instead. Lužar thought a giant had struck the tank with a sledgehammer, he ducked instinctively and his driver yelled out in fright.

“Shut up!” he shouted at the man. “Get us forward man… drive, drive!”

With a jerk the tank started forward, weaving around to the left to avoid the APC and its ready racks of cannon ammunition, which was now beginning to burn.

To the east of the Elbe, the Hungarian combat engineers and bridging units allowed their ZSU-23-4 air defence vehicles and a company of APCs to begin the advance to the river, and then moved off themselves. Although the sounds of battle could not yet reach them, the rising columns of smoke and the bright flashes of NATO tank cannon’s more than indicated to them that the fight for the western bank was far from won yet.

In the armoured cabs of two vehicles in the rear areas of NATOs lines, Royal Artillery gunners fed in information onto the consoles before them and the launchers rose to the specified elevations, turning as they did so to the required bearings. Smoke from the rocket exhausts filled the small woods the vehicles sat in like a thick fog, rolling out beyond the extremities and settling like a blanket in the cold air. The rockets reached their apogee and descended above the countryside to the east of the river Elbe, discharging the submunitions they carried as they went.

Over the wood the MLRS rockets submunitions were small bomblets, but the rockets targeted on an area closer to the river, released submunitions known as Skeet, small discs that spun about like Frisbees as they flew diagonally across the targeted area, slowly losing height. Whenever a Skeet over-flew a vehicle, small sensors detected the metal surface and the submunition exploded, sending a plug of white hot copper, created by the explosion, downwards into the object.

As with most ideas that look good on paper the Skeets had there drawbacks, some vehicles were missed completely, whereas others were targeted by several Skeet even after the vehicle had been destroyed, wasting their effort because they could not distinguish between the living and the dead. The plugs of molten metal entered armour, and blisters formed the other side, bursting into the interior. Where they met un-armoured metal they burnt through several layers, or in the case of the cab roofs of tractor units, they burnt through the occupants as well. Vehicles carrying 25m sections of prefabricated bridge, enough for three entire ribbon bridges were left burning on the autobahn hard shoulder, whilst in the fields either side, the engineers and infantry BTR-80s and ZSU-23-4s streamed smoke and flame whilst blowing themselves apart as on-board ammunition cooked off.

The loss of highly skilled personnel was almost as serious as the loss of the transport and equipment, but the commander of the engineer company did not give up, he still had some bridging sections and enough engineers left to supervise their assembly into one operational bridge.

75 % of the infantrymen escorting them had died in their vehicles when the Skeet had struck, so he could not call on them for muscle. He called up his own commander at Division, but they were inexplicably off the air, so he tried the nearest infantry unit and they sent over fifty men to act as unskilled labour.

Back on the island, Lužar’s promised artillery support had failed to materialise and his calls to divisional headquarters were met with hash, the sound of white noise. His tanks and APCs were being whittled down by the tanks and anti-tank missiles, this created more cover for the remainder as they took up positions in the lee of burning wrecks. Infantry anti-tank teams dismounted from their vehicles and began engaging the NATO armour with Sagger wire guided missiles, but this only gave the American paratroops and Coldstream Guardsmen something worthwhile to shoot at. The combined small arms and 81mm mortars annihilated the Sagger crews or drove them to find cover in which they sensibly stayed. The TP-76 tanks did not have self-stabilising guns, they had to stop in order to fire accurately and suitable cover for them to do this from behind was in short supply. The Milan crews had merely to leave their trenches and change position in order to engage those Hungarian tanks that were in those rare spots.

With his battalions slowly being killed and being unable to hit back effectively, all Lužar could was to skin his knuckles as he punched the side of the turret in frustration.

The engineers were again on the move, braving the artillery fire but the lead vehicles reached the riverbank without further loss. The commander jumped from his BTR shouting and cajoling his remaining engineers and organising the pressed infantrymen into working parties. A pair of his specialised BTRs reached the ‘island’, unreeling heavy cable as they went, and explosive driven piles were fired into the earth of the sloping banks on both sides, as anchors for the cables that they managed to secure to them before both vehicles were knocked out. The next stage was to get the first boat-like floating pontoons into the river and attached between the cables, once that was achieved then the first section of bridge could be laid between pontoons. Further sections would be attached behind it, and gradually the first section would be fed across the river, 25 metres at a time until it reached the far bank. The engineer was running from group to group, ensuring all was well when the first pontoon was being wrestled into place. Men were straining against ropes as they fought to keep the pontoon from being swept away by the current, until the cables could be slipped into runners on either end of the pontoon. His equipment had been designed and built in the 1940’s, and under the many layers of paint it bore the markings of the US Army Corps of Engineers, its original owners before being sold off as war surplus. Later versions had powered pontoons that not only motored the pontoon into position, but the propellers were directional so as to assist with the creeping progress of the bridge, as it slowly spanned the designated waterway. This bridging unit had none of the modern niceties, and as he was shouting orders to one of the groups he saw the anchor-man of one of his pontoon party’s slip on the snow covered ground and let go of the end of the rope. With one of their number absent, the rest of the men on the rope began to lose the battle against the current and the pontoon left its stationary position and began pulling the men towards the river’s edge. The engineer knew that once the leading man reached the edge he would let go of the rope and a chain reaction would occur, leading to the inevitable loss of the precious pontoon.

With a shout, muffled by his own respirator, he launched himself across the intervening space and fell onto the loose end of rope in the full knowledge that a single tear in his chemical warfare suit would mean an agonising death. More men came to his assistance and the pontoon’s bid to escape was ended, he climbed to his feet drenched in sweat beneath the rubberised material of his protective garments.

When the pontoon was secured and the retaining clamps bolted into place, he personally guided back the first tractor unit carrying bridge sections. His surviving combat engineers had briefed the infantry on how to manhandle the sections off the flatbed, across to the river, and how to lift the leading edge onto the first pontoon. With some pushing and a lot of arm waving the pressed men climbed into position on the flatbed and slid their lifting bars into position under the topmost section. The engineers waited until they were all set and then signalled them all to lift together, fifty men bent their knees and heaved and grunted, muscles straining and backs cracking with the effort, but the section did not move. After a moment or two they tried again in unison but with the same result.

The engineer officer was cursing their collective manhood’s as he clambered up to see what the problem was, pushing one man aside and taking his place. For a third time they took the strain and tried to lift the section, tendons standing out and faces reddening as they heaved but again they failed to make any impression. Withdrawing the lifting bar he had used, the officer stepped up onto the bridging section, utterly at a loss as to why they could not accomplish this simple task, and then his eyes fell upon something on its metal surface, a burned and blistered area of metal decking. He tapped it curiously with the lifting bar, and then noticed many other such blemishes. A sick feeling started to grow in his gut and he rushed to the edge and clambered down the side, peering between the sections before jumping to the ground and running to the next vehicle. After checking the third and final vehicle, the only ones to have escaped destruction in the earlier Skeet attack; he again jumped to the ground and walked slowly to the riverbank. The clamorous thunder of battle was clearly audible from across the river, and he stood on the bank gazing across for a minute before looking at the lifting bar he still held. His combat engineers and the infantry had stopped what they were doing to watch him, and then looked at each other as the officer roared in frustration and flung the tool as far across the water as he could.

The Skeet’s had miraculously missed destroying the tractor units of these transports loaded with bridging sections, but the long, wide expanses of metal that they carried had attracted the attentions of dozens of the devices, and the bridging sections were all firmly and inextricably welded to one another by the strikes.

Colonel Lužar received the information with a heavy heart; it had all been for nothing, all the fear, adrenaline, men and vehicles that had been lost were simply wasted. Calling up his surviving units he organised a hasty withdrawal under contact, and the fighting vehicles collected what survivors of knocked out vehicles that they could, and began the business of fire and manoeuvre as they backed away from the Mitterland Kanal.

Snowploughs were busy keeping the runaways clear of the still heavily falling snow when Scott and Constantine emerged from the stations subterranean operations centre. It had been a very long night for them both, as they followed the progress of the Nighthawks insertion into Russia. The signal that they were down and in the safe hands of the US Special Forces, had come hours before, but Constantine and Scott had stayed until word was received that they were in the safe house, nearer to Moscow, and all was well.

They trudged through the snow; hands thrust deep into pockets, with collars turned up against the snow and the chill wind blowing in off the Moray Firth.

“This is scary, Scott. It is like it is mid-winter in Siberia!” Their breath fogged the air as they hurried on across the snow to their office, obediently following the network of footpaths, even though it would take them twice as long.

“I was talking to the met officer here on the camp; he thinks this is just a freak event, owing to the bombs in the ocean interfering with the weather patterns.” Scott paused to gaze about him, looking for the station Warrant Officer, the individual who was responsible for all things discipline related, and who regarded the straying off the footpaths in order to take short cuts across ‘his’ grass, as being second only to ethnic cleansing in the scale of serious crimes. The coast seemed to be clear so they cut across the snow covered grassy areas, making a beeline to the office. Scott continued with what the meteorological officer had been telling him. “Apparently… I suppose quite obviously really, the earth is getting closer to the sun by the hour, so it’s going to warm up anyway and all this snow will be gone… imagine though, what would it be like if this were October and not April!”

Constantine thought about it for a moment.

“Yes, but will the weather patterns have settled down by the time the next October does get here?”

But Scott’s thinking had drifted to his kids back home in Virginia, back in January there had been heavy snow and they had loved it, as had he and Jean. Watching them play had taken him back to his own childhood, there was a reason why snowball fights and Tobogganing were amongst the clearest and most treasured of childhood memories, the snow lent a magical quality to them.

Through the snow they saw the headlights of the rented Range Rover on the road outside their building, smoke from the exhaust evidenced the coldness of the engine, and Pc Stokes was industriously scraping away at the ice on the windscreen with the edge of an expired credit card. He looked up as they approached.

“Everything okay boss, is Miss Vorsoff alright?”

Neither of the close protection officers were in the know as to the operation that was being run, and neither of the officers had any wish to know the details of their charges mission.

“Yes Nigel, everything is fine, thanks. Is the heater on?”

“For the last quarter of an hour, since you phoned from ops sir.”

Constantine and Scott kicked off the snow that had clung to their shoes before climbing inside, Scott turned the blower up, for a moment and tested the air coming from the vents, but it was still cold so he turned it off and shivered.

“Tiredness thins the blood; I could sleep for a week.” He turned to look at Constantine in the back. “You look like you could do with a solid twelve yourself.”

The major looked haggard, but could not relax right now because his thoughts were not with the here and now, but far off across the Continent in Russia.

Driving out of the camp the police officer turned left and followed the B9089 east until they passed through the small wood that marked the RAF stations eastern boundary, and then turned right onto a minor road. The driver and passenger of a van with a Newcastle builders logo on the side watched them disappear, and the passenger made a call on his mobile before they then headed for Kinloss town, keeping to the roads that had been gritted by the council lorries.

Stokes always varied their routes, never going the same way twice in a row. This wintry morning he took them along a series of minor roads, which meant having to engage four wheel drive because the gritter’s would never spread salt on these narrow roads.

Eventually they drove across a tiny old bridge over the rail line to Inverness and cut through the edge of Alves Wood, pulling up outside the house which lay a quarter of a mile beyond the trees.

The snow had been falling for a few hours and there was nothing to suggest anyone had approached the house since they had left it the day before, all that marred the pristine white blanket was a single set of footprints that came from the front door, up the path and turned right, heading away down the lane. Stokes recognised the shape and tread of his colleague’s trainers, which had yet to be covered over with fresh snow.

“Bloody hell… you’d think he’d have given the run a miss today.” Although both of the police firearm's officers worked hard at keeping up their levels of fitness, Pell was the keener of the two men.

“He’s probably gone to fetch the newspapers.” Scott commented, too tired to get over excited about the antics of a fitness fanatic. If the man wanted to run all the way into the town of Kinloss and back in the snow, then that was his business. Crunching through the crisp snow to the door Stokes put his key in the lock and swore when it wouldn’t turn. He tried jiggling it and then removed the key and putting his mouth in front of the lock he blew, thinking that moisture could have frozen the lock immobile in the sub-zero temperature. When the attempt failed he turned to Scott and Constantine and shrugged.

“Sorry, I’ll hop over the wall and try the kitchen door… gimme a boost up please.”

Constantine linked his fingers and crouched for Stokes to put an icy foot into the stirrup they formed, and then heaved up, boosting the policeman up so he could catch the top of the ten-foot high garden wall. Stokes pulled himself up nimbly and dropped out of sight, leaving the Russian major shake the snow off his hands and blow on them to restore some warmth.

Scott stamped his feet to keep the circulation going, his mind again on what his kids would be doing in all this snow if it were snowing in Virginia too. A slight movement from the door caught his eye, it opened a few inches and then he saw a flash of light.

Constantine heard a grunt followed by a muffled thud from behind him, and turned with a grin, thinking that Scott had slipped and fallen, but the CIA man was lying flat on his back on the footpath and the snow under his head was turning dark.

Constantine rushed over to his friend, and then froze when he saw a small hole just left of centre of Scott’s forehead, a trickle of blood running from it down the side of the Americans face to join the steadily growing stain in the snow.

“Be so good as to remain completely still Major!” a woman’s voice ordered him from the doorway, and Constantine could do nothing except comply.

Stepping through the kitchen door from the garden, the tanned man took out a mobile phone and summoned their back-up crew as he went to join his partner at the front. He was enjoying a feeling of quiet satisfaction in their having managed to trace the traitors from such a small lead as the telephone number of a public call box, miles away in Edinburgh. Hotels, guesthouses and rental addresses such as this one had been visited throughout Scotland, the Borders and Scottish Isles. The girl was missing, but the major would tell exactly where she could be found, as pliers applied to the testicles were a proven method of loosening tongues.

Constantine was hoping desperately that Stokes was still alive, and would be coming through the house at any moment, but the only sound he heard was that of the woman stepping out of the house, her right foot making the snow on the top step crunch, and then with her left foot she stepped down onto the footpath, onto the spot where the milk bottle had broken. Constantine heard her grunt as her foot skidded on the patch of ice created by the milk from the broken bottle. As she fell she put out a hand to save herself, and Constantine turned as she screamed, having put her free hand on broken glass from the bottle.

The instructors who had taken himself and Svetlana through the tedious hours of unarmed combat had stressed that the aim was to inflict the maximum damage to your opponent, because if it got to the point where you had no weapons left to fight with, it was all or nothing. The woman’s eyes were screwed up in pain as he took a pace forward but then they opened, and the handgun with its sound suppresser, which had wavered off target, was now starting to move back toward him. Constantine kicked out, but not at the hand holding the pistol. The human body has points of varying vulnerability the instructors had stressed, eyes can be gauged out, ears can be pulled off and groins can be punched or kicked, but the throat is the most vulnerable of all. His right foot came forward, and he drove the toe of his shoe into the exposed throat with all the force of a striker taking a penalty, crushing her trachea.

The tanned man appeared in the hallway; Constantine straightened up, having taken possession of the woman’s handgun. The tanned man’s weapon was in his right hand, pointing down at the floor, but he whipped it up and was turning his body sideways on to present a smaller target to the major who snapped off a shot one handed, hoping for the man’s chest but having a sound suppressor on the muzzle was new to him, it altered the balance and he snatched the shot. There was little more noise than that of the working parts cycling back and forth in the weapon but it bucked in his hand, muzzle heavy and hitting the tanned man’s right knee, causing the leg to collapse. As the man fell to his knees Constantine fired again, this time two handed and aiming as taught, double tapping and both rounds struck the wounded man in the upper body. His targets arms dropped to the sides, and then the gun fell from the hand that had held it. The head lolled forward as though he were a puppet without strings and the body fell face first onto the mat inside the doorway. Constantine kept his weapon pointing at the fallen man, but looked down at the woman, distracted by the gurgling sound she emitted as she rolled over onto her side, her blue face burying itself in the snow and then became deathly still, the body relaxing completely. He aimed at the body inside the door as he stepped indoors. He didn’t know how to feel for a pulse at the side of the neck like they did in the movies, so he did the other thing actors did, and he nudged it with his foot. Satisfied that he was as dead as the woman he knelt and retrieved the man’s fallen pistol. Constantine’s gaze then fell upon the form of Pc Pell, lying like a broken doll at the foot of the stairs with the back of his head missing and his training shoes gone. Sorrow and anger welled up inside him. He had liked both Scott and the policeman but now both were dead, gunned down by these people. The tanned man’s hand moved, the movement catching the majors eye and Constantine shot him three times in quick succession, bulky sound suppressor doing its job, the ejected spent cases ringing like chimes as they struck the old and burnished brass artillery shell casing that acted as umbrella stand before clattering onto the polished oak floorboards and rolling away.

Constantine rolled the body over, taking a hand and using a lifeless arm as a lever and avoiding the expanding pool of blood. Inside the man’s jacket were photographs, a copy of Constantine’s embassy ID picture, along with a photo of a bare breasted Svetlana wearing a G-String and a grin, stood on a windsurfing trainer board on a beach, her instructor smiling smugly at the camera with his arms about her hips.

His fingers left dark smudges on both and he straightened up, examining his fingers before wiping them on the side of his coat to remove the fake tan make-up that smeared them. It then occurred to him that he did not know if these two were alone.

Pell’s MP-5 was visible, still attached to its harness and discarding the pistols he knelt quickly, unclipped the MP-5 and checked the pockets for spare magazines. He found two and stuck them into his own coat pocket before checking the load on the MP-5, and then moving as he had been taught, butt in the shoulder and weapon in the aim as he made his way to the back of the house.

Police Constable Stokes was lying crumpled and motionless in snow stained red at the corner of the house; Constantine rolled him over and sighed sorrowfully at the eyes, which stared unseeing at the snowflakes that floated down to land on the dead face. The tanned man had been waiting for Stokes to appear around the corner of the house, killing him with a single bullet in the side of the head as he’d stepped into view. Constantine went through his clothing, ignoring the Glock but pocketing the mobile telephone he discovered there. The house phone had been disconnected when the house had been taken over, and both his and Svetlana’s mobiles had been taken by the CIA debriefer’s as a precaution.

The sound of a vehicle negotiating the slippery, un-gritted road reached the major, and then the engine note altered; it was stopping outside the house. The voices of several men and the noise of cocking weapons indicated that it was hardly likely to be a passing motorist, or the local constabulary.

Constantine ran back into the house, pausing in the living room to peer out through the hall door. The front door was still wide open, and in the lane he saw a battered van, but hurrying towards the gate were four very serious looking men carrying AKM-74 assault rifles. Constantine did not know any of them, but he was certain the cavalry wouldn’t be arriving in a builders van and totting soviet weaponry. As the first of the newcomers caught sight of the woman’s body he froze in alarm and opened his mouth to shout.

Constantine went up the hallway squeezing off aimed shots from the MP-5; he moved quickly in the crouching, knees-together walk that kept the upper body steady enough to permit more accurate fire than running would have.

His first round hit the left side of his targets chest and the leading newcomer dropped with a grunting cry, whilst the other three dived out of sight, rolling for cover. Constantine reached the doorway and fired through the hedge at where he though the others were taking cover before kicking the door closed and stepping aside as he did so. Return fire hammered through the door's woodwork, and straight through the Kevlar panel which could not stop high velocity, steel cored rounds. The gunmen’s leader screamed at the firer to cease fire, because Bedonavich was no use to them dead, and the firing ended abruptly.

Constantine knew he could not defend the house against these men, he had to get clear and call for help, so turning he sprinted through the house, across the garden and through the rear gate into the snow covered field beyond.

At the front of the house, one of the fallen man’s comrades checked him over rapidly; rolling him onto his left side, the injured side, keeping the un-punctured lung upper most, the wounded man was then left to fend for himself. One man covered the front whilst the other two took a side each, leopard crawling along so as to use the cover of the privet hedge that ran around the front garden. Once they reached the cover of the side wall they got up and ran to the far corner at each end of the garden.

Constantine did not look back as he made for the cover of Alves wood, he just put his head down and ran as fast as he could, determined to get as much distance between himself and the house before the men realised he had gone, or shouted a challenge if they did see him. Pulling his mobile from his pocket he keyed in 999 as he ran, and then held it to his ear but heard no dialling tone, just a single beep as it announced that the battery was flat, and switched itself off. He would have cursed aloud but instead he berated himself silently for not checking it when he’d taken it from the policeman’s pocket.

The edge of the wood was looming close when he heard the cracks of high velocity rounds passing, snow was being kicked up where the rounds landed twelve feet to his right, and bark flew off the trunks of trees well above head height.

Constantine dodged to the left, slipped and fell painfully, his full weight landing on his thigh, with gritted teeth he rolled into a slight depression in the ground, moving awkwardly with his injured limb. His leg throbbed painfully as he raised his head to look back toward the house, the firing had stopped as soon as he had gone down, and then it occurred to him that the shots had been aimed wide, they apparently still wanted him alive.

Two men were coming after him across the field, well-spaced so as to flank him if he went to ground, and the van appeared in the lane, skidding and sliding on the icy surface as it headed along the lane towards the far edge of the wood. Constantine knew far too much to allow himself to be taken, and he glanced towards the wood, seeking the best escape route available. Forty feet away lay the woods, between himself and the trees was strung a four-foot high barbed wire fence and a ditch that ran just beyond that. Turning back toward the two approaching men he took careful aim at the man on the left, the closest at about 200 yards. The MP-5A3 that he carried, is a short barrelled weapon meant for close quarters work, and the round he squeezed off did nothing more than to make both men drop to the frozen surface of the field. During the weapon handling sessions the two policemen had been very critical of the ammunition that the police service were given, the BAE produced, 75 grain rounds wouldn’t penetrate clothing at 100m, let alone stop the target from firing back with something more potent. However the aim on this occasion was to buy time, even if trimming the odds would have been a bonus.

Pushing himself up the moment the pair dropped from sight, he broke into a hobbling run, and there was an immediate shout from behind him followed by a resumption of the firing. Constantine ignored the rounds that cracked past as he forced all thought of pain from his mind, willing his leg to work normally as he approached the barbed wire fence like a steeple chaser, legs pounding; he had Pell’s MP-5 held high in his right hand and leapt.

The two men pursuing him saw the top strand catch their quarry below the knee and the sharp barbs snagged the bottom of the coat he wore. Constantine was tumbled head over heels to hang head down, suspended above the ditch by the coat that was caught in the wire, and the MP-5 fell from his grasp into the icy water of the ditch. He kicked and struggled to free himself, but the coat was firmly entangled on the wire, leaving him no option but to rip open the front of the coat, the buttons springing free as the thread that held them parted. He fell the rest of the way into the stream with a splash, and came up gasping with the shock of the cold water. The water made him aware of a deep gash along his calf, gouged by the barbs, but he had no time to dwell on it. Plunging his hands back into the water he rooted around furiously until his fingers found the carbine, and then he scrambled from the ditch, his heart pounding. He wondered when they would be close enough to feel confident in shooting at his legs, avoiding the danger of causing an immediately fatal wound. The answer came moments later when something tugged at the fabric of his wet trousers, and he dived to the side and rolled, turning to face the way he had come. The nearest man was kneeling; the AKM in the aim, waiting for a safe shot at an exposed limb, his partner was a hundred meters to Constantine’s right, still going for the flanking move.

Constantine aimed and fired at the kneeling man, seeing the round strike wide of the target. In reply the AKM-74 fired, but missing quite deliberately, although not by very much, the shooter seeking to pin Constantine in place, but the firer was still kneeling when he should have dropped prone, and Constantine adjusted his aim. He saw the 9mm round strike, and followed through with another shot, which also scored and the man fell on his side.

As he grinned with savage satisfaction he heard the creaking on the barbed wire and fence posts, the second man had reached the fence and was climbing over somewhere to his right, masked by the undergrowth. Constantine got to his feet, the first man was still down, doubled over and gasping with pain. He ran into the wood; he knew that there was a track at the far end and just behind that was a cutting that the Inverness line ran through. He recalled from their exercises with the paintball guns that there was a second bridge, this one for cattle to move between a local farm and the fields. There was a padlock and chain on the gates at either end of the bridge, so if he could reach it then the van driver would have to turn around on the narrow track to go around if he intended cutting him off, if he hadn’t already achieved that feat. Branches whipped at his face as he ran, fallen branches and thick brambles tried to trip him but he pressed on. After four or five minutes of hard running his breath was coming painfully, then he saw the track through the trees and despite the fire in his chest he put on a burst of speed. Skidding to a halt at the edge of the wood he listened, his own breathing was loud and fogging the cold air but he could hear or see nothing of the van, but the bridge was in sight, a hundred or so paces to the left.

Noises inside the wood alerted him to the steady approached of the second gunman, and he broke cover, running for the bridge, his footfalls muffled but his feet hampered by the virgin snow covering the track. In the distance he heard the sound of the Inverness express trains’ two-tone air horn, and the noise spurred him on. Behind him the gunman crashed through the bushes onto the track, caught sight of the running figure making for the bridge and set off in pursuit. Constantine reached the gate barring the way to stray cattle and unauthorised cars and climbed over, dropping to the other side. The bridge arched over the railway cutting, and Constantine’s legs protested as he ran up the slope, casting a glance over his shoulder at his pursuer; damn he was so close! Constantine stopped, raised the MP-5 and aimed just ahead of the running gunman, squeezing the trigger when he was certain he was aiming off the correct amount. The ‘dead-man’s-click’ is so called for those careless souls who forget to count their rounds, it is the sound that is heard when there is an empty chamber at the moment when you really could have done with another live round sitting in there, it is often the last sound the luckless mathematician hears. He froze for a split second and then cocked the weapon again, aimed and squeezed but received the same metallic click. His spare magazines were in the pockets of the coat hanging from the fence at the other side of the wood, so he turned and ran. His pursuer had clearly heard both clicks and knew what it meant, either a stoppage of some kind or an empty magazine, he ran even faster, denying Constantine the opportunity to stop and reload, should he have other magazines about his person.

On reaching the top of the slope, midway across the bridge, Constantine slid to a halt, feeling despair fill him, for at the far end sat the builders van, and its driver was lying to the side of the track, aiming straight at him.

“Drop the weapon Major… it’s no use to you now except as a club.” The man behind him was hardly breathing heavily at all as he called to Bedonavich.

“It was a good try, but it is over now… time is short Major, and we have much to speak of… and I do assure you that you will speak. So put your hands behind your head and stay perfectly still until I get to you!”

Constantine was panting with the exertion, and looking around desperately for some assistance, or a solution. The van driver was still covering him as the second man climbed over the gate, there was no one else around to help him, nothing he could use… and then a light shining from along the track caught his eye, and he had his solution after all. Leaping for the side of the bridge, he was pulling himself up onto the top of the bridge parapet when the van driver fired, hitting his lower right leg, shattering the bone and throwing him off balance, but it didn’t matter anymore thought Constantine to himself as he rolled his body towards the edge. The second man was shouting desperately as he rushed forward, with arms outstretched, his fingertips making contact with the wet fabric of Bedonavich’s jacket, and then the major was gone, rolling off into space to fall into the path of the Inverness express.

Two hundred and sixty-four miles due east of Christmas Island, the Royal Australian Navy, Collins class attack submarine Hooper was surfaced and hove to. Australia bought the licence to build the very capable, Swedish designed diesel boat but then the politicians did what they are best at, risking their own young men’s lives from the safety of comfortable offices. They built cheap, aiming unerringly for second best and accepting third. The boats propeller was noisy, as was her engine plant, and her systems were all out of date. The first boat, SSG 73, HMAS Collins, was completed in 1996 but outfitted with early 1980’s technology, including her vital sonars. It was political embarrassment rather than bruised national pride that funded the drive to put things right, in international war games it was said the Collins boats could be heard even before they’d cleared port. The government made much of its decision to spend a billion Australian dollars in a program to put things right, but kept silent over the fact that it would be spread over ten years.

As well as being noisy, the diesel plants were unreliable, as were the generators that were meant to charge the batteries on which the boat was totally reliant upon whilst dived below snorkel depth.

HMAS Hooper was sat on the surface because seals had failed in her snorkel, and air wasn’t getting to her diesels in sufficient quantity. Her generator in turn, was not producing enough current to charge the batteries, so here they were, just the other side of the Java Trench from a hot war zone with the engineering officer putting the damn thing back together after replacing the perished seals.

All non-essential machinery was shut down during the repair process and a silent regime enforced while the submarine sat on the surface. The sonar operators used their outdated equipment with skill, listening on passive systems for any hint of a threat, and the lookouts scanned the horizon with night viewing aids.

All credit to the men who crewed her; they persevered with the tool provided to them by penny-pinching bureaucrats, in the defence of their country.

Only marine life was out there, and no radars were detected by the time she was ready to get underway once more, two hours before dawn.

“Are you sure that bluddy dunny is going to hold together Tommo?”

The engineer eased his aching back and looked up at the snorkel.

“It’s not a bad design skipper, but the seals were made for arctic waters not the tropics, so they give out quicker.” He replied as he climbed down from his hazardous perch, back to the safety of the bridge. The powers that be knew of the problems with the seals, but they had bought in bulk at the start of the Oboe class replacement project, and were not inclined to dump the items for tropical ones whilst stocks remained. In peacetime it hardly mattered that they required replacement twice as quickly, but they were at war now and it mattered a hell of a lot.

The skipper clapped him on the back and ushered him below.

“Well done anyway, go and get some kip.”

Once the engineer had disappeared the captain took a look around; checking for any overlooked item that would rattle once they were dived. His mood was bad enough as it was, if they had to come straight back up to retrieve a spanner or the like, it would be absolutely foul.

Turning to his number one he nodded.

“Provided all this work wasn’t a waste of time, we’ll do a static dive with the snorkel raised; let’s not tempt fate, eh?”

“She should be okay sir; Tommo’s a good ‘un.”

“Start main engines and raise the snorkel.”

After the quiet of the past hours the big diesel sounded horrendously loud to ears grown accustomed to the silence, even through the soundproofing. After five minutes they had confirmation that unrestricted airflow was reaching the engine and the generator was feeding charge to the batteries

“Officer of the Watch, dive the boat… clear the bridge, look-outs below.”

“Aye, aye skipper.” The conning tower emptied of the bridge party and the noise of voices and human movement returned to the interior of the vessel.

“Upper hatch shut, both clips on.”

“Open main vents and Kingston’s.”

“Main vents open… Kingston’s open, sir.”

“Forty-five feet, watch that bubble Cox’n, keep the trim.”

“Aye, aye skipper… setting depth at forty five feet.”

“Raise the ESM.”

“Aye sir… ESM raised.”

With no forward motion to play over the diving planes, the Cox’n had to work hard not to let the vessel slide back, as physics dictated that the heavier stern with its fuel bunkers and engine should dominate the vessel with buoyancy diminishing. The main vents remained open long enough to ensure the correct degree of negative buoyancy, and the Indian Ocean covered the casing and then the sail. Skilfully he kept the backward slide above 10 degrees, re-establishing trim at the required depth.

“Forty-five feet, sir.”

“Well done Cox’n.”

After ten minutes with only favourable reports from the engine room, the captain was satisfied and gave the nod to the officer of the watch.

“Group up… slow ahead main engine.”

“Group up sir… telegraph at slow ahead, sir.”

The captain gave his officer a quick smile.

“Nicely done young man… nicely done everyone,” expanding his praise to all concerned, and his mood much restored by the display of good seamanship.

“It’s not the easiest drill in the book by a long shot… I’m going to get my head down for a bit, lieutenant, wake me if anything comes up?”

“Yes, sir.”

His ships ability to perform well in a conflict that well might arrive in Australian waters eventually was of deep concern to him. Only two of his vessels class had so far been upgraded, something that should never had been necessary in the first place.

Japanese, Taiwanese, Singaporean and now US warships were adding to the fighting power of the Australian, and tiny New Zealand fleets. American troops were in Australia preparing to defend it along with their own army and troops that had escaped by boat from overrun countries. There were even a few Brit tanks and infantry; God knows how they got there. What Australia needed now was time, time to prepare for the coming storm that threatened.

He was a good captain with a good crew, but he was relieved that their modified and upgraded sister ships would be more likely to encounter the enemy, north of New Guinea in the Pacific Ocean, than they were, way out here.

When the Spetznaz` attacks on headquarters units had begun the night before, elements of the 155^th Separate Armoured Brigade of the Mississippi National Guard had been in the later throes of relieving the Belgian 2^nd/4^th Lansiers and the Grenadiers of Prins Boudewijn’s Carbinier Regiment. A petrol tanker with its accelerator pedal wedged down had been rammed into a large corrugated metal and brick barn complex a quarter mile from the gun lines of the 114^th Artillery. Explosive charges on the vehicle had initiated the total destruction of all of the buildings, everything inside them and in the immediate surrounds. The Belgian 1^st Brigade headquarters which had been occupying the site until a few hours before had already shifted to a new location on the right. Joint Command headquarters for the Mississippi Guardsmen had been up and running at a derelict factory two miles north before the Belgian move. The attack on the command and control element had been a failure and it also sounded the alarm for the US troops, and the Belgians still in the lines. Less than an hour after the Spetznaz attempt heavy but sporadic artillery barrages began with nerve agent mixed in with the high explosive. It found no ready targets; the defenders were already under cover and preparing. Eighty percent of the Americans had already seen action in Iraq and there were veterans in the ranks from Bosnia and Desert Storm before that. This was not a green and untried outfit. 155^th had shortcomings though as its own vehicles, tanks and guns, plus many of the crews, were aboard ships of the convoys and still several days out. Until they arrived their mechanised infantry were leg infantry and the few tanks and guns were from the storage depots and would have to suffice.

C Company 2/198^th Armoured had a mixed bag of M1 and M1A1s which even with a remaining Belgian squadron of Leopard 1s left them stretched very thin.

The 3 ⁽UK) Mechanised Brigades fight was drawing to a close before 155^th had a ground target. The imminence of the dawn had not altered the ferocity of the ground assault. When it finally went in the National Guardsmen and their Belgian allies were fighting for their very lives.

The 155^th’s battle became a focus for air support as the other assault river crossings tailed off. Exhausted JSTARS and AWACS crews found themselves losing peripheral vision in the battle as tired senses coped by concentrating on no more business than absolutely necessary.

The attack on the 155^th was not a feint but the timing of another facet of the Red Army campaign was deliberate. With tunnel vision effecting NATO battlefield surveillance sixteen modified Maz 543 transporter erector launcher vehicles emerged from cover, rolling out from beneath bridge spans, camouflaged netting and other widely dispersed sites providing cover from prying eyes and photo reconnaissance packs.

A brief glimpse of any of the vehicles from a passing low level aircraft would cause alarm bells to sound in the West for they were the specialist sixteen wheelers for the transportation and launching of Russia’s family of theatre ballistic missiles.

As the vehicles reached pre surveyed launch sites close by the hiding places hydraulic stabilising feet extended, raising the massive vehicles chassis as they levelled the vehicles perfectly.

Thus far nothing differed from the normal launch procedures for a short-range ballistic missile. What was different were the heat reflective plates put in place to protect the road wheels, drivers and crew compartment and vital parts of the Maz 543s… .and that the bulky transport/launch canisters carried along the axis cradles were not raised to the vertical, just to thirty degrees above the horizon.

With local conditions prevailing it took some crews longer than others to signal readiness to launch. It left the first to complete the set up procedures feeling somewhat exposed, sat out in the open and vulnerable.

At 0847hrs 93^rd MRR, supported by the remainder of 61^st Russian Motor Rifle Division, began its assault river crossing with heavy close air support. JSTARS was fully involved with cutting the 93^rd off from their artillery and follow-on forces whilst AWACS dealt with the demands of defeating the Red Airforce regiments efforts.

At 0959hrs all sixteen weapons were launched, rocket boosters and the missiles turbofan powering the KH-55 Granat cruise missiles from the canisters on ‘sledges’ where there stubby wings deployed.

Designed as an air launched weapon the army rocket artillery engineers had devised a system of launching the big missiles from a standing start at ground level. The rockets required to propel them along to flight speed were attached to the ‘sledges’ that fell away as the additional boosters spent themselves.

At an economic 420mph the large missiles, more than 8 feet longer than a US Tomahawk, with their terrain following radars pulsing three times a second they flew westwards at an average 100 feet above the ground.

Some of the missiles flew toward terminus points only programmed into the memories within the last hour. Some had shared targets but none flew identical courses. The courses were designed to give NATO the least possible time to prepare a defence, should they be able to track all or some of the missiles. The long missiles followed meandering tracks that had in cases sometimes almost backtracked on themselves, but on reaching the coast all further subterfuge was pointless and they accelerated to 570mph, 20 feet above the waves, toward the distant English coastline.

Staying awake in a warm office after a bad night was not a problem for Janet because concerns over fuel shortages had brought about energy saving measures nationwide. She had on a thick cardigan, a present from Colin one Christmas, without which she would have felt the chill in the air. She did have several others, some more stylish and expensive, but she felt the need to feel close to him this day. She paused what she was doing, updating her bosses electronic appointments, and picked up a silver framed photograph off of her desk. It had been taken on their last holiday together, camping in the South of France. Colin looked so relaxed, tanned and healthy in shorts and tee shirt. She wondered how he looked now and then swiftly dismissed the thought as an image of a line of combat booted feet, protruding from beneath grey army blankets that covered the rest of their prostrate owners filled her mind.

She started as the telephone rang.

“Stellen, Barrett and McAlexander, Mr Coltaines office?”

“Hello Janet, its Annabelle Reed.”

Although there was little chance that she would not have received a call today, Janet still felt her stomach sink.

“Janet, is it all right for you to finish work early today as discussed?”

Mr Coltaine was a good and understanding man. He had agreed weeks ago to his PAs absences when required by the rota and she had already spoken with him today. By prior arrangement one of the other PAs would cover for her whilst she was out of the office.

“Yes, I can leave in about five minutes.”

“Do you know the coffee shop on the High Road near Junes?”

Janet did know it, one of a well-known American chain. “Yes?”

“I will be there with the Padre and Captain Deacon in one hour; we will have a staff car.”

“Why don’t we just meet at June’s.” she asked. “She is still on the rota for today isn’t she?”

There was a slight pause, not quite long enough for Janet to pick up on.

“I am afraid June’s Quarter will be our first stop… RSM Stone was killed in action this morning.”

She almost dropped the ‘phone.

Barry Stone, a giant of a man with the physique of a 6’ 6” Prop Forward was dead? The RSMs place was to the rear of the rifle companies in battalion headquarters, so if he was not safe there then…

Janet shook herself to dismiss the thought.

“I will meet you there then, bye.”

Replacing the receiver she gathered her things she knocked on her bosses door and opened it. He was on the telephone and on looking up and seeing her with coat over her arm he smiled kindly, placing a hand over the mouthpiece.

“I take it you have had a call, Janet?”

“Celia is covering for me, Mr Coltaine.” She liked this man who was one of the nicest and most genuine people you could hope to meet. “I really am grateful for your indulgence.”

“I imagine it must be quite harrowing dealing with all that grief? You look tired Janet and as we are rather quiet at the moment I will not expect to see you tomorrow.” He waved her away and resumed his conversation. She gave a faint smile of gratitude and closed the door, walking toward the reception desk for the company offices.

Outside the snow still fell, not as heavily, but the wind still whipped the flakes about like speckled dervishes. The glass and steel of the skyscraper had shrugged off the squally assaults of the weather with barely a rattle but as she reached reception a dull boom sounded throughout as the glass panes along the east side recoiled like the skin of a drum from some monster gust. Conversations ceased in mid flow and Janet halted, looking over her shoulder toward that side of the building but there was no recurrence and both work and talk resumed. With words of encouragement and good wishes following her steps from other co-workers, Janet left the office.

The journey down to the ground floor was swift in the high-speed elevators. Leaving the lift she smiled and gave the security guards at the main door a friendly nod as she exited the building. The cold hit her immediately, cutting through the newly donned coat, scarf and gloves.

The fifty floors of glass, concrete and steel at 1 Canada Square towered over seven hundred and seventy feet above her as she hurried away through the snow toward Heron Quay DLR station.

She trembled with the cold as she emerged from the limited protection provided from the wind by the buildings and onto the bridge leading to the Docklands Light Railway. Teeth clamped shut and eyes slitted in reaction to minute icy specks that pebbled dashed her face.

She was alone on the bridge, squinting ahead and hurrying on toward the shelter of the station and aware only of the sound of the wind drowning out all else.

She was midway along when the dull howl was eclipsed by the mournful undulating moan of the wharf air raid siren. It had been put in place weeks ago and sounded only in practice, and during a half dozen false alarms since that time. Janet froze as the memory of the shaken windows of minutes before came back to her, hairs on the back of neck raised as a sixth sense told her this was no false alarm. The sirens wail was joined by others and her mouth went dry as she realised her position, stuck on a bridge and far from cover.

The high pitch shriek of a jet engine designed without heed to noise pollution legislation, passed overhead. It hurt her ears and instinct borne of self-preservation made her drop to her knees, gloved hands pressed to her ears. The jet engine was followed by another, and another, and yet several more. She glanced up fearfully to see not Backfire bombers but what appeared to be small, fast moving mini aircraft streaking past, barely fifty feet above her head.

Sixty-five years before, the German Luftwaffe had used the river Thames as a guide to navigation for its Air Fleets. Today the cruise missiles employed it as a route to approach the British capitol so low as to become one with the radar ground clutter.

The first warning had come from the newly commissioned Type 45 Destroyer, HMS Exeter, in the English Channel enroute to working up exercises. She briefly picked up one of the missiles at extreme range and believing it to be part of an anti-shipping strike put out a ‘Vampire’ alert. The warships air defence system was un-calibrated and therefore she did not launch on the missile. RAF Hawks based at RNAS Yeovilton on air defence picket scrambled, but they went looking for an airborne shooter off the French coast, not cruise missiles approaching the English one.

The first pair of Granat missiles entered the Thames Estuary and hugged the banks of the Essex side of the river until reaching a point two miles from their targets. Popping up to a thousand feet they released submunitions before looping and diving into the largest metallic object in the target area that they detected.

The Thames Haven fuel refinery was seriously damaged with major fires in a dozen areas, but that was dwarfed by the results of the second missiles attack two miles away at Canvey Island.

Quite by chance the 80,000 tonne tanker, Scandinavia, had docked during the night at the jetty near Dead Man’s Point. Fully laden, she was low in the water, discharging refined Avgas, diesel and petrol to the Canvey Island tank farm. After releasing its submunitions the Granat dived into the Scandinavia, rupturing several tanks and releasing a highly inflammable cloud of vapour that the inshore breeze carried landward. The absence of oxygen in the tanks prevented an explosion despite the Granats still running engine in its bowels, and starved of oxygen the engine cut out after seconds.

The second missiles submunitions exploded two fuel storage tanks on land, scattering burning fuel onto surrounding tanks. The tank farms pumping system was also breached in three places by submunitions holing pipes and releasing their contents.

The Essex Fire and Rescue Service were alerted by automatic alarms and the call was passed to the Canvey Island Fire Station in Long Road, where Blue Watch were already running for the appliances having heard the explosions at the tank farm two miles distant.

The first appliance, with sirens sounding, was pulling out onto the icy main road when the escaping vapour from the Scandinavia reached the conflagration in the tank farm. The fire flashed back to the damaged tanker and the resulting explosion increased as it swept across the tank farm, adding each of the swollen tanks contents as it reached, and overwhelmed them. The Essex Fire and Rescue vehicles were swatted from the roadway by a blast wave that levelled half of the town of Canvey Island, including the Fire Station.

As mixed blessings go the colossal detonation of the Scandinavia’s cargo and the tank farm was classic. The Granats intended for the tank farm and refinery twelve miles upstream at Purfleet were passing just a half mile distant from the Scandinavia when she blew, sending one into the muddy water of the Thames and the second crashing into fields on the Kent side of the river.

The sound of the explosion outran the remaining Granats, being heard as far away as Birmingham in the Midlands. The shockwave reached London before the missiles did.

The Thames takes on a twisting and turning course upriver from Greenwich and as the Granats reached the Royal Victoria Docks they ceased to hug the rivers surface, cutting across the Millennium Dome, Isle of Dogs and the Rotherhithe loop at rooftop height.

The targets in the city of London were for the most part iconic, and the purpose was to demoralise the British and serve as an unspoken threat to all other European members of NATO.

The weapons that struck The Tower of London, Downing Street and St Paul’s Cathedral carried 410kgs of high explosive whereas napalm set a blaze that destroyed the West Gallery, Ballroom and the principle staterooms of Buckingham Palace.

The Houses of Parliament were spared by the same quirk of fate that caused the second highest death toll in London.

The blueprint for the missile attack had been drawn up in the early 1980’s; Cold War years, and on recent revision had used city plans purchased legitimately from the Greater London Authority before the war. The plans did not include ‘Temporary Structures’ such as the London Eye.

The Granat targeting Britain’s symbol of democracy struck the wheel two hundred feet above the ground. The left wing was sheared from the missiles body and the Granat tumbled from the sky to strike and detonate on a large building on the opposite bank to Parliament, St Thomas’s Hospital.

Janet gawped in horror as the missiles passed overhead and first crawled, then ran back toward the imagined safety of the tall buildings.

The next missile however did not pass overhead, it popped up and she saw it dive down in front of her, out of the low cloud and into the cluster of towering office blocks.

The bridge beneath her feet bucked, sending her tumbling, grazing knees and the palms of her hands. Smoke and debris blossomed from behind the lower buildings between herself and the one she had left such a short time before. The smoke continued to bellow out but the debris began to fall earthwards, much of it catching the light as it did so, twinkling as they tumbled down and Janet realised it was glass, shattered glass.

Regaining her feet she ran as fast as she could in the opposite direction, heedless of the dangers of slipping on the icy surface.

A lump of concrete struck the side of the bridge in front of her, carrying ten feet of guardrail into the water with a huge splash that drenched her, but she ran on regardless, ran as the glass landed like hail, shattering into smaller pieces that tore at her clothes or landed in the water with a plunking sound.

Another missile dived from the clouds into Canary Wharf as Janet reached the DLR station, which hardly qualified as an air raid sheltered but did have a roof to protect her from the rain of glass.

She was panting, partly from exertion and partly from shock. She turned back to look at Canary Wharf, her hand flying to her mouth as she could now see people moving around on almost all of the floors of the buildings. So much of the splendid glass was gone now that the buildings were open to the elements. Office workers, some obviously in panic, ran to and fro between the lift shafts and stairwells, all of which were choked with others trying to get out.

A third and fourth missile dived down to penetrate the lower floors of 1 Canada Square, the building most people associated with Canary Wharf, and exploded. A fifth missed, striking the flat roof of the HSBC building, travelling down five floors before detonating with a flash of orange light and black palls of smoke, propelling debris out into the void.

Janet could hear screams, snatches of cries on the wind. A body fell from the upper floors of her building, man or woman she could not tell.

Flames, fuelled by the wind, quickly took hold of the upper reaches of the HSBC building, the smoke rose up to curl around its taller neighbour.

She had been amongst the millions who had watched with a feeling of disbelief when the World Trade Centre towers had collapsed on live TV, and she now felt the onset on deja vu. Without realising it Janet began praying, a repetitive chant, a mantra for the safety of her friends and colleagues in the stricken building.

She heard a shriek; a tortured rending of steel and concrete, and her building began to shrink in height, slowly at first and then with increasing speed. Like a collapsing pack of cards the once proud building disappeared from view to be replaced by dust and smoke.

The younger Probert’s rushed to their Mother at the school gates. She had telephoned the school to tell them she was safe but there was something about her that made them stop, stilled the relief in their voices. She was as a waxwork, her face and eyes lacking expression and a coldness seemed to emanate. The journey home was made in absolute silence, Karen and Tommy looking at one another worriedly, not daring to speak.

There was a car outside the married quarter as they pulled onto the drive; the occupants alighted on seeing them. Relief written upon the faces of Annabelle Reed and Sarah Osgood but they too hesitated, and then hailed their friend.

Janet gestured the kids out of the car but there was no hint that she heard or was even aware of the other women but the firm manner in which she closed the door on the world said, “Stay away.”

Inside the house Karen and Tommy sat in silence, listening to their mother moving around in the kitchen. The sound of pots and cutlery continued for twenty minutes and for the entire they remained sat together on the sofa, still in coats and hats with their schoolbags at their feet.

It took a few moments before either child noticed it had gone quiet. The silence was palpable. By unspoken agreement they got up and went together, tiptoeing to the kitchen door before peering in.

Janet was sat upon the floor, arms hugging herself and rocking back and forth. Tears streamed unchecked down cheeks as pale as a shades whilst her mouth was open in a silent, unending scream. They ran to her then, knelt and hugged her without any clear idea how to make their mothers pain go away.

‘India Nine Nine’, a Squirrel helicopter bearing the livery of the Metropolitan Police, touched down on the tarmac of the air force station. The Commissioner and Arnie Petrucci, the CIAs London head of station alighted from it, and shook hands with the Chief Constable. The Commissioner had no authority and no special legal powers here in Scotland, where the legal system owed more to the French than the British systems of justice.

“Good morning Jamie, thank you for calling me so promptly. Do you know what has happened yet?”

“I would have called you sooner, but I was off duty. As you requested I kept the presence of this operation strictly to myself. I was off duty when this came in, as I said. Angus MacDonald… my Assistant Chief, was informed of the multiple murders and of the location, but of course the address meant nothing to him.”

They climbed inside an unmarked Range Rover, which immediately pulled away.

“Run me through the sequence of events, if you would please Jamie.”

“You will appreciate that I knew only that you told me there were some special people living in a safe house on my turf and there was an on-going intelligence connection with the RAF station here?” He looked at Arnie Petrucci, who remained poker faced and offered nothing by way of insight into what was an American run operation of the greatest secrecy.

The Commissioner nodded in agreement. Even he did not know what was happening with the Russian officer and young woman who had alerted the west to the enemy’s intention to nuke the capital cities and defence establishments in various countries.

“At 0935hrs this morning, the driver of an express train to Inverness reported a body falling from a bridge in front of his train; he also stated that he saw another man on the bridge, who he believes was carrying an assault rifle of some description. Had he not seen the weapon… or what he took to be a weapon, then he would have stopped, but as it was he continued on into Forres and alerted the British Transport Police, BTP called us and we sent in a tactical firearm's team. They confirmed the body side of it, and found a Met issue MP-5 beside the line before backtracking footprints in the snow. A topcoat containing two full MP-5 magazines in the pockets was found, a number of spent cases, both 9mm and 7.62mm, a blood trail and three separate sets of prints leading back to the house, the one you informed me of.”

The Range Rover reached the Guardroom at the entrance, and they all had to identify themselves to a steely-eyed air force policeman, who was being covered by a ‘Rock Ape’, a member of the Royal Air Force Regiment.

When he was satisfied that they were not well-disguised enemy deep cover operatives fleeing the area, the Range Rover was allowed to continue.

“In the rear garden they found the body of your Constable Stokes, dead of a single gunshot to the head… he was identified by his warrant card that was beside his body, he appears to have been hurriedly searched. The front of the house contained more bodies, Police Constable Pell and an as yet unidentified male in the hallway, plus an unidentified female on the doorstep… and Mr Tafler on the garden path. With the exception of the woman, all had died from gunshots. The woman had died as result of her throat having been crushed… there was another blood trail in the lane at the front, but so far we have not found whose blood it was, nor that of the other one along the route back to the house.”

No mention had been made of Major Bedonavich nor Svetlana Vorsoff’ as having been identified and the Commissioner was about to ask for the description of the woman whose body had been found, but Arnie Petrucci nudged him, shaking his head almost imperceptibly, because he alone amongst them knew whose body it wasn’t.

It was the CIA man who asked the next question though. “The body on the tracks, was there any identification and can you describe the body?”

The men and women of the Central Intelligence Agency, despite what Hollywood would have us believe, do not have regular contact with scenes of violence or tragedy. In his entire career the most active ‘spook’ will only see a tiny fraction of the blood and gore that a street copper may see whilst going about his daily business. He or she would not know, or have seen what becomes of a body once a train has run it over.

“Mr Petrucci, the underside of an express train houses a great number of metal protrusions, all spinning at high revolutions. At this time we do not even know what the sex of the dead person was.”

Arnie Petrucci did not comprehend what the Chief Constable was trying to tell him though. “Well can you at least give me an approximate height and age?”

“Sir… the largest piece of that body on the line would fit into your hip pocket… no sir, I cannot approximate an age or height.”

Petrucci was silent whilst he took that in, and decided that if the offer were made to go down on the track to see for himself then he would politely decline. However, it was vitally important to establish the identity of the body, for if it was not that of Major Bedonavich then it would mean that he could be in enemy hands, and the details of the Russian operation compromised.

“The identity must be discovered as soon as possible Jamie, how long will your laboratories take to do a DNA test?”

“Do you have someone in mind… and a DNA sample to compare against?”

They did indeed have DNA samples from both the Russian’s, and he nodded emphatically.

“Twelve hours then, sir.”

The Range Rover passed through Kinloss and crossed over the rail line at the level crossing outside town and continued to the A96(T), which they followed for several miles before turning onto a minor road, and eventually arriving at the bottom of the lane that led to the house. A police car was blocking access to all vehicles and the curious.

“From here we walk gentlemen,” the Chief Constable informed them, and then adding for the American’s benefit. “Sticking strictly to the marked channel, this is a crime scene.”

A chilled constable with a crime scene log in his hands checked the two policemen through, and then it was the CIA officers turn.

“Special Agent Hoover… ” he informed the young man with a straight face, and produced FBI ID. “… initials, J, E.” he added with a warm smile, enjoying the joke but having no intention of the Scottish justice system ever knowing who had really been at the scene. The young constable was dutifully writing down the details without question, when an older constable stepped up and looked over the young officers shoulder to read what was being recorded, and then looked the American sharply in the eye with a glare that said “Piss taker!” but he did not correct his colleague.

If his boss was bringing a spook to a murder scene, it was no business of his to make waves.

Little was achieved by their visit to the scene except to anger all three men. It was too early to establish who amongst the participants had done what at the scene, that would take some time and had no bearing on the important issue, was the operation safe or had it been blown in its entirety, and what should be done now? Those were questions for Petrucci’s boss and the President to address.

That the countryside beyond the river was clear of enemy for a distance of twelve miles was the report from the RA Phoenix operators, and indeed the battalions clearance patrol that had gone back to the ‘island’, had not received a single round of fire from snipers or artillery.

After the enemy armour had withdrawn to the far bank of the Elbe, the fighting had tailed off to nothingness, and the enemy kept right on pulling back, abandoning its useless bridging equipment as it went.

A silence had fallen on the battlefield, and the defenders had slowly allowed themselves to relax, had dared to consider survival as a possibility once more.

The chemical weapons that the Hungarian Division had employed had dissipated, being of the non-persistent variety, so the American paratroopers and British Guardsmen had unmasked as they went about clearing up, repairing field defences and shepherding the wounded to the rear.

The 82^nd’s RSM, Arnie Moore, had taken over the full duties of that role for the unit following the death of Barry Stone. Pat Reed and Jim Popham were stood on the shattered autobahn’s on-ramp, gazing about the battlefield when the RSM approached and handed them the butchers’ bill.

The stench of high explosives, burnt out vehicles and their human occupants, almost exclusively the enemies, was heavy in the air. The two officers read the tally of the dead, wounded and missing in action before handing it back with orders to send it with the sitrep up to brigade headquarters.

The losses had been far less than they had been at the Guards first defensive action, but the list bore the names of friends they would never see again.

“Nothing except a battle lost can be half as melancholy as a battle won,” muttered Jim Popham and Pat Reed raised an eyebrow. “Don’t look so surprised Colonel, even at the Virginia Military Academy we got force fed that stuff, don’t think that only Sandhurst cadet’s had to suffer the quotes of dead generals.”

“Actually I always thought Wellington was an insufferable snob and a cold fish.” Pat replied. “If I had to guess, I would say he only said it for effect because the ‘Gentlemen of The Times’ were in earshot.”

The double blasts of the demolition charges destroying the anchor posts of the incomplete ribbon bridge, did not even cause either soldier to blink, they were minute compared to what they had endured during the night.

Pat Reed gripped his webbing yoke and shrugged his equipment up higher onto his shoulders, to ease the strain before turning and heading back to the CP, wondering how long this lull would last before they again got into a fight with the Red Army forces.

Lt Col Reed was giving serious consideration to getting his head down for a couple of hours when he was summoned to the secure radio link with brigade HQ. He was on for ten minutes before removing the headset and handing it back to the signaller.

“Sarn’t Major Moore!”

The paratrooper came over from the far side of the CP. “Sir?”

Pat handed him the warning order he had just received; a Territorial Army unit, 1st Battalion, Wessex Regiment was enroute to take over the battalions current area of responsibility. The enemy had broken through and crossed the river in two sectors and the MSR had been cut. All company, battery and squadron commanders were required to attend an O Group in twenty minutes time. There was to be no move before 1 Wessex arrived, but then the battalion was to face west and perform an advance-to-contact with Russian airborne forces in the rear.

The Presidents’ latest location was virtually identical to the previous ones in décor and layout. Above them lay some of the wildest and most spectacular countryside on the continent, but the CEO of the United States had seen none of it. It had been night went the relocation had taken place, so he had grumbled

“Same bat time… same bat cave!” on arrival in his new ‘home’.

The President was ensconced with the heads of the nation’s intelligence community, the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs was aware of the topic, and had a long session with the President before the meeting had taken place.

Whilst the future of Guillotine was being debated, Henry Shaw was now busy with his own staff in an office on the next level above the intelligence meeting. Aside from preparing his own briefing for the CEO, Henry had made another issue a matter of personal interest, and the atmosphere in the generals’ office was so cold that frost should have been forming on all the walls in the facility.

When the Military were eventually summoned, the CIA Director Terry Jones was the only spook still present in the room; the rest were the Presidents’ civilian war council. Waiting in the ante room were a few members of congress and the senate, flown in that morning, Henry saw them as he passed through and nodded to them curtly, because knowing someone and respecting them are not the same thing. All of that could wait for now though, there was going to be a showdown but in the meantime there was a war going badly for them, and that was going to take all of his attention.

“Henry, take a seat please, first of all let me get you up to speed with the problem in Scotland we discussed earlier.” The President gestured to the chair beside him.

“Unless the Brit lab identifies the remains on the tracks as being from someone other than that of Major Bedonavich, Guillotine goes ahead as planned,” the President informed him.

Terry Jones, sat opposite Henry was far from happy. The time scale of the incident near Kinloss made it very unlikely that the major could have been forced to reveal all he knew, if it was the Russians body on the line. If it wasn’t the major, then the team that had attacked the house could be well on the way to breaking him now.

Henry’s concern was equally for the mission’s outcome and for the personnel involved.

“Are we going to inform the boys and girls in Russia, of what went down today?”

The President shook his head.

“No General, they are on a high state of alert anyway, news like this will just serve to key them up unnecessarily… if Major Bedonavich died under that train, then we can presume the secret is safe.”

“And if he didn’t?”

“We say nothing… it is not as if we have a back-up plan Henry, we just have to hope that Miss Vorsoff gets the information, and they nuke the son of a bitch before the security forces over there can close in.”

Henry let out a long breath.

“Hell of a way to run a war.”

“Ain’t that the truth!” the Director agreed.

The President nodded to the Marine sentry and he opened the door to the anteroom, allowing the congressmen and senators to enter and seat themselves.

“On a personal note,” the President began. “I am very sad at the death of Scott Tafler. It is possible that two of the three people who are responsible for warning us in time of the Communist attack have now been murdered.” None of the newly arrived politicians had any idea as to who was being spoken of, and to be fair most would have cared a hell of a lot had they known, but others now showed well practised expressions, that they felt suited a sorrowful moment.

Henry Shaw wanted to puke but he himself did not show any of the distaste on his face as he gave his summary of the latest events in the war, but at the finish of the brief, one of those same professional politicians succeeded in stripping away that expression.

“General, I have to say… and I know I speak for all of my distinguished colleagues here with me today,” looking around at the other senators and congressmen.

“The Europeans have once again allowed the soviets to get subs into the Atlantic, they dropped the ball on day one and we had to pick it up, we warned them that the Sov’s were coming again… and still they fumbled and let them waltz right on through. We are getting pretty God damned sick of having to pull the fat from the fire because those guys aren’t pulling their weight!”

Henry leant forward and fixed the man with a look that was icy, completely at odds with the easy smile on his face. “Senator, first of all… what’s with all this WE shit?” but without waiting for a response he continued. “I hear that you are pretty handy with a rifle… did a lot of hunting in the late sixties and early seventies… am I right or am I wrong, but the deer up in Canada don’t shoot back, any more than ours do?” The senator had been in college during the early part of the Vietnam war, where he had been active in the anti-war movement, and even had a framed photograph on the wall of his den, a clipping from ‘Time’ of him pelting wounded American servicemen with animal faeces, at an airport when they arrived home from southeast Asia. He’d skipped north of the border after his finals, and failed to answer his call up papers. Contrary to the ‘self-made-man-and-man-of-the-ordinary-guy’ image that he tried to promote, Walt Rickham was born into money and privilege, and had never had to use his hands to earn a living. Right now he looked like a man going to seed, and trying hard to cover it by the wearing of expensive tailor made suits.

“The fighting men and women of this country are doing their duty, just as the service people across the pond are doing theirs… whilst you mister, are not qualified, either professionally, personally or morally to use the collective term WE… in the context of any of the fighting and dying that is going on!” The senator was used to dealing with persons of a politically like mind, and those who wanted something from him. He was quite unaccustomed to being spoken to harshly by anyone, let alone someone in uniform, and therefore a menial.

“The forces deployed off the North Cape on that first day did not drop the ball, they were vaporised, burnt, blown up, shot down or sunk. We did not warn the Europeans that they could be coming again, the Europeans discovered that for themselves and told us, and it was European troops and intelligence sources infiltrating some of the most tightly defended real estate on the planet, who told us all that the aircraft and warships were heading west. That warning may not come again, because damn few of those men and women who went behind the lines are answering their radios anymore, the lucky ones are dead, the unlucky ones are having their fingernails pulled out about now. As for fumbling the ball, they sank nineteen missile and attack submarines, twenty-nine surface combat ships and shot down sixty-eight combat aircraft. They achieved all that without any help from us, or may I say from you either.” Henry Shaw picked up a thick sheaf of paper from before him and tossed it at the politician. “… that is the latest NATO casualty list. Ships, aircraft, ground personnel, aircrew and seamen, involved in that particular battle. Had it been US Navy ships on the line then the only difference would have been the addresses on the next-of-kin telegrams.”

The President had invited these people here, because he needed their support to quell the murmurs of dissent over the course of the war, high casualties and little successes. He had warned the senator about his tone and choice of words, around the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs, that warning had not been able to pierce the armour of arrogance the politician cloaked about himself. He shot both the general and the politician a warning look, but the senator was on his feet, pulling his well-fed girth from out of the chair.

“You God damned glorified throw-back from the Middle Ages, just who the hell do you think you’re talking to?” He left his place at the table and came around to stand behind Henry, who remained seated and steadfastly looking to the front.

“I’m Walter S Rickham, I’m not some punk, white trash private… I could have your stars just by snapping my fingers, and The President would give them to me because he needs my lobby for re-election. This is the real world General, this is my world, and nothing about your world influences the big picture. I don’t give a crap about how many Frenchies, Limeys or pig-thick Poll-ack’s die, because they don’t pay American taxes or vote in our elections. For every inch of ground those yellow bastards give up that’s an inch less of influence we will have once this things over. You get your ass over there and make those Europeans fight, because when Americans die then it makes us look bad to the people who do count, the people who fund and back elections. You and your kind are a ten-a-penny… the trailer parks and ghettos of full of your kind, good for nothing but going where we tell you and fighting for American interests… but you can’t see that can you, you don’t have the intellect or the genes to see who the real Generals are!”

Henry Shaw did not respond, and Rickham realised the general was totally ignoring him. Walter S Rickham wasn’t used to being ignored by those he considered to be members of the ‘ruled classes’. He grabbed Henry by the collar, dragging him around to face him.

“Walter!” The President had risen from his chair and was looking daggers at his fellow politician. “That’s enough!”

Rickham let go of the general with a contemptuous flourish, and only then did Henry look at him. “You got that one for free.”

Rickham strode to the door of the conference room, stopping for the marine sentry to open it for him, which he did, after a very deliberate pause.

The briefing continued for another half an hour before breaking up and the President sent an aide off to find Rickham, whilst General Shaw returned to his own staff, and the matter that he had been dealing with before the briefing.

If the President had to choose between the general and the senator to be stranded on a life raft with, without hesitation he would have picked Henry Shaw, but he had goals he wanted to achieve whilst being the President, and for that he needed Rickham. Before he left the White House, he wanted decent education, literacy for all and one hell of a lot more people living above the poverty line. He wasn’t aiming for an instant zero unemployment Utopia, but full education for all would be the first step on that road. The bottom line was, he needed a second term in office if he hoped to achieve that, and for that he needed the Rickham’s and grubby money that the man represented. Henry Shaw had ruffled Rickham’s feathers, and the President needed to smooth them over, the best way he could think of doing that was to massage the man’s ego.

“Walt, I haven’t been able to have a face to face with the other allied leaders since the war started, and video conferencing lacks the personal touch.”

“You can’t smell the other guys fear.” Rickham nodded.

It wasn’t actually what the President had meant, but he gave a half smile that flicked on and then off.

“Walt I am sending one of the Presidential seven forty seven’s to Europe, and the other over to Australia and New Zealand to collect heads of state or their representatives, and bring them back here for a face to face summit. I’m shorthanded, we lost a lot of good people in Washington, and so I would take it as a big favour if you would accompany the flight to Europe as my personal representative?”

The President hid a smile as he saw Rickham’s reaction; it was subtle body language clues that gave him away, a glint in the eye and the subconscious squaring of the shoulders. The man was both flattered and calculating how this could be turned to its best advantage, what ‘spin’ to apply. The capital could be great, ‘At a time of global conflict, the President turned to me personally for assistance.’

“Mr President, in the crisis such we find ourselves in, it would be very small minded of me to refuse such a request.”

“Thank you Walter.” He replied with a gracious smile, and made a mental note to inform the leaders who would be on Air Force One, that absolutely nothing of any sensitivity was to be discussed or disclosed in this man’s presence.

Call-up papers had been sent out to one million American men and women, ordering them to report at varied Army, Navy, Air Force and Marine boot camps for basic training. It was something that the President had not consulted with General Shaw, ostensibly because the plans for this eventuality had been drawn up decades before, but the Commander-in-Chiefs reticence had made him suspicious. The general ordered a random selection of the personal details of those who had been called up, and he hadn’t liked what he had seen so he had made his next request more specific. He knew a number of individuals who qualified for this call to arms, and right now he was seriously pissed that most did not appear on the current list.

Not a single name associated with any of the President’s chief contributors, or in fact any of the top two hundred richest peoples sons or daughters appeared on the list. The great bulk of those expected to put their lives in harm’s way were working class. Any person at college, or expected to enter college in the next twelve months, had been given deferments, it was a clause that had been added in the last week, without the military’s knowledge. Despite the offered deferments, many young people at college had put away their books for the duration and gone of their own free will to the recruiting centres.

Henry Shaw had two of his own children in the service of the country, a son flying AV-8Bs off the Inchon, and a daughter who was the TAO aboard the USS Orange County. His youngest son qualified for this call-up but his name did not appear, as if that little detail was supposed to appease the general, and ward off the eruption that was looming.

He had allowed himself to think that in this adversity, this president would do the right thing, but he had learnt that despite all that had happened, the President was planning for the future, currying future favours; business as usual.

Well General Shaw was having none of it, he cancelled fifteen thousand notices to those who came from the lower wage brackets, or whose families would suffer undue hardship without them. Most, though not all were family men and women, and they were substituted with the names of sons and daughters of politicians, billionaires, millionaires, oil company executives and captains of commerce. His own youngest son’s name was included, as was that of the Presidents eldest. The first to receive the notices were a couple of hundred individuals who were already in Federal service, their once smart business suits were not smart anymore, and pedicured digits were encrusted with the grime of digging bodies out of building in the Capitol, and burying them in mass graves. The armed forces did not have any use for lawyers right now, so they would all find themselves assigned as recruits, earmarked for the infantry and Marine Corps as riflemen, once the boot camps had finished with them.

The President wanted him visiting the battlefronts so he packed his bag and handed over to Admiral Gee, who would hold the fort until Henry’s return.

With that done he contacted personal friends and acquaintances on both sides of the Atlantic, and arranged a meeting.

From the southeast of Iceland, stretching away toward the Hebrides is a wide, deep-water basin. After rounding the North Cape it was an area that the soviet submarines could traverse with the added protection of its depths before running the gauntlet of the line of hydrophones in the GIUK Gap.

Almost without exception, the diesel-powered vessels had run long and hard on their batteries the previous night, and now needed to snorkel in order to charge them again. They had left Norway’s area of responsibility but were now in the hunting grounds of the British, American and Portuguese Maritime patrols in the sky, British ASW surface units and Canadian and US hunter killer submarines. Although all the aircraft would land on the Faeroes, Danish sovereign territory, to refuel and rearm at some point, the Danes would not take part in the operation as her small, Gulfstream maritime patrol aircraft were for shipping and fisheries protection, not submarine hunting.

In order that NATO aircraft did not end up dropping on NATO submarines, the aircraft were deployed far out across the basin, leaving the western edge of the basin, and the twenty miles either side to the silent service.

HMS Illustrious, with her helicopters and her frigates were west of that point, and representing the last line of ASW ships that the soviets had to get past before they reached the shipping lanes. Of course the ships would not pack up and go home if any leaked through, but this was their best chance at stopping the threat against the convoys.

‘Trident Eight Four’, a RAF Nimrod MR2P out of Kinloss, via refuelling in the Faeroes, had expended its load of sonar buoys and been relieved by a Portuguese P-3 Orion in order to return to the tiny islands and reload. They were now five minutes out, with a full load once more when one of the operators got a contact.

“Pilot, faint surface contact, bearing three two seven… range eleven thousand.”

The news that the submarines, or at some of them could shoot back, had come as an unwelcome surprise for the crews, and until such time as a defence could be devised, the crews were trying all manner of things to fox the submarines. The pilot of Trident Eight Four put the nose down, at the same time as throttling back to reduce the aircraft’s heat signature, and in the back a crewmember got ready some magnesium flares, in preparation to eject them should anything nasty be awaiting the aircraft.

The Portuguese P-3 had also detected what was in fact a snorkel, and the Orion was much closer.

They watched the Orion on radar as it began its run, and then the P-3s track vanished, without any warning whatsoever. The only thing the Nimrods pilot could be reasonably sure of was that if it had been a missile it had not come from the radar target, it was too far away. He noted the position that the Orion had disappeared, and swept in on the same line, but dropping a torpedo a mile short of that position. The Nimrod was dropping flares every few seconds, and the big aircraft banked hard after releasing, which probably saved all their lives.

They had inadvertently turned toward the undetected Whiskey class boat, and the aircraft’s bulk masked the heat signature of the four BMW/Rolls-Royce BR 710 turbofan engines, and the launched-at-depth air defence missile curved down to follow the last flare ejected by the Nimrod crewman. At only 100 feet altitude when it ignited, the flares life was very limited, but the heat-seeking missile followed it down and impacted with the sea.

Aboard the Whiskey, the LAD mast was retracted when the Nimrods Stingray torpedo was detected and following Russian Naval doctrine the diesel boat went to flank speed, turning towards the threat. The theory was that if they closed the distance quickly, the torpedo may not have had sufficient time to arm itself, but the Stingray was armed the moment its drogue chute detached from its anchor point at the weapons stern. The warheads and fuel in the Whiskeys torpedoes, sitting on racks in the forward torpedo room blew when the Stingray detonated on the submarines bow. Trident Eight Four had circled around, still ejecting flares manually and they saw the sea heave upward in a tall pillar of angry water. As the column of water subsided, the Whiskeys stern broke the surface with its propellers still turning as it rose vertically from below the surface for a moment, before disappearing back into the depths.

The sound of the concussion warned the snorkelling Kilo, which now sought to get below the thermal layer where the sonar returns from any buoys dropped by the hunters would be distorted. However, the Nimrods pilot was confident that they had a good enough fix without dropping buoys, and the aircraft’s bomb-bay opened as the aircraft swept in, another Mk-50 dropped clear and splashed into the cold sea. The Nimrod was on a roll, three minutes later the Kilo surfaced; wallowing in the waves as the crew took to inflatable life rafts.

Over the next four hours the Orion P-3s and Nimrods would kill another five submarines before the soviets crossed over into the preserve of the USS Twin Towers and the Canadian diesel submarines.

Major Richard Dewar, Royal Marine Commandos, commanding the M&AWC, supervised the loading of the last items of equipment aboard the

B2 Spirit bombers. The complex rotary systems that held the ordnance had been removed and now sat aboard the giant C-5 transports that had brought them in from the 509^th Bomb Wings home at Whiteman AFB, Missouri, in readiness for the bombers proper job.

Dewar couldn’t take his whole cadre on the insertion, just eight men, and the SAS G Squadron, Mountain Troop and the American Green Berets were providing another eight each.

It wasn’t a set-up that Dewar was happy with, the guys from Mountain Troop had done major climbs, the Green Berets thought clambering up the Rockies a big deal, but those mountains were hardly high altitude. His men lived nine months of the year at altitude and most of that in arctic conditions, they had all been up Everest at least once and half had had a crack at K2, conditions very similar to what would be found in China. It would take stealth to enter the region, and the Americans had those means but they wanted in on the action on the ground. Major Dewar could live with that, but he could see no reason whatsoever for the ‘glory boys’ of the SAS to be included. In his opinion they were a bunch of cowboys and media darlings whose inclusion was merely political. Dewar had been told that they were going with them, like it or not, but he had won a small concession. In his specialisation, mountain and arctic warfare, he was the acknowledged top man in NATO forces, and to his great surprise the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs had approved the command position without question.

“If we were going in on surfboards I’d want a surfer dude from California leading, but its high ice, so I want that mad jock, Dewar. He’s the best, and the Green Berets will do as he says, when he says and as often as he says.”

Captain Garfield Woods of the Green Berets and Lt Shippey-Romhead of Mountain Troop were several hundred yards away in a dispersal occupied by an RAF C-130 Hercules of 47 Squadron. They were both trying very hard to impress their way into the panties of the aircraft’s co-pilot, Michelle Braithwaite, but the pretty Flt Lt had worked far too hard to earn her place on the Squadron strength to blow it by succumbing to the testosterone driven lusts of two squaddies.

She humoured them whilst laughing inwardly at their machismo, for all their strutting, she had actually been into more hot war zones than either man. Iraq, Afghanistan, Somalia, across the border with Afghanistan into Pakistan for a hot extraction, and some sneaky insertions into Columbia on anti-drugs work, and of course more recently onto the northern ice pack, and back again to extract the M&AWC.

47 Squadron would be doing the extraction and not the insertion on this job, landing on an old mountain strip that had been built to serve copper mines, 69 miles from the ICBM silos.

The B1-Bs and B2s would be stealthy on their return into the target area, and noisy as hell on the route out, Wild Weaselling the hell out of the Chinese air defences on the way. Two Hercules would fly in along the route cleared by the bombers, put down on the strip and await the troops arrival; one C-130 would be for the Marines, Green Berets and SAS troops. The second would be more M&AWC marines for local protection, because they could be sat on the strip a couple of days waiting for the troops to yomp their way across the mountains to reach them.

The one sided mating ritual was interrupted by the bark of Major Dewar, who at a range of 400 yards called the two officers to heel in a parade ground voice more used by Sergeants than by officers, but then Dewar had been a Troop sergeant before being commissioned eight years previously.

A pair of German Army Marder APCs, and a cluster of bodies marked the furthest point that local counter-attacks had progressed against the Russian airborne troops. The closest vehicle was still giving off wisps of oily smoke, but the furthest was completely gutted by fire, everything flammable had been consumed.

Oz crawled slowly past the APCs, keeping low and as close as possible to the hedgerow that ran up to within 100 metres of the enemy positions.

He gritted his teeth, forcing his body to behave normally, and not move in a jerky fashion in the freezing temperatures. The last two hours had been spent gathering information, and now he was on his way back with it.

After another half an hour he was back with his recce patrol in the FRV and pulling on his webbing. He had a night fighters tediously slow conversation with the L/Cpl he had left in charge of the patrol, consisting of him putting his mouth right next to the others ear to ask the slowly put questions before receiving the answer in the same fashion. Satisfied that the answers tallied with what he had deduced by himself, he led the patrol back to their own lines.

At 0330hrs Pat Reed held his O’ Group, his company and squadron commanders, the artillery, engineer and air support reps were all gathered together in the wine cellar of a large house commandeered by the battalion as a CP.

He had been able to speak briefly with his wife by telephone with regard to Families matters, ‘Families’ being the battalions married men’s families rather than his own. His own family was bearing up. His daughter Nancy at Edinburgh University was of course too far away from the cruise missile attacks on London and the oil refineries and depots to have been in danger, as was his son Julian, but Julian was here with 3 Mechanised Brigade as an AFC, Artillery Fire Controller, attached to the Light Infantry.

His wife sounded tired; she had been with the Padre and Captain Deacon, the Families Officer, at every visit to families in the London District Area to break the news that a husband, a father, wasn’t coming home again.

Talk, and rumours within the battalion had been about the attacks. No one here saw the TV footage of Canary Wharf falling, or St Thomas’s Hospital and Buckingham Palace on fire.

Downing Street had been empty of all Cabinet members of course, but the Diplomatic Protection Group officers and cleaning staff were not in a fallout shelter in the north of England when the missile landed.

There were no newspapers and the internet was out of course, so rumour control was holding sway.

After Arnie Moore barked out.

“Sit Up!”, bringing all talk to an end and a respectfully straightening up in the seats as the Commanding Officer entered the room, Pat sat them at ease and spent several minutes dispelling rumours and giving them a picture of what had transpired. None of the families had been casualties and what they were going to do now was to focus on their jobs and the next job at hand in particular.

“Ladies and Gents, Dutch, French and Belgian Brigades are at present containing the enemy airborne bridgehead at Haldensleben, and the NATO air forces and artillery are knocking down the ribbon bridges as fast as they are appearing. They haven’t stopped the enemy Divisions from closing on the opposite side of the river, but they are thinning them out… a bit.”

As Pat used a laser pen to indicate locations on the map, his audience located the place on their own maps.

“It appears that the airborne landings have been made in such a way as to act as stepping stones for a breakout in two places, and towards the English Channel, but our aircraft did get in amongst the transport streams and cause an element of havoc. As result of this there are a lot of enemy between us and the furthest DZ of the northern operation… and this is both good and bad news. It is good because they are without replen and have only what they carried in with them… and it is bad because they are going to slow us down. Our friends in the Light Infantry and Argyll’s are ready to jump off on a northern axis of advance on Helmstedt; we will join them after clearing away the enemy in between here and there. From then on we will fight as a brigade. I am well aware that this operation should be conducted by a full division, but the only free ones are still afloat somewhere between Antwerp and continental America.”

He took a long look at the faces in the room.

“These people we are about to take on are good, but we’ve fought ‘em before and had the situation not altered in Poland we’d have taken them at Leipzig.”

A twelve-foot square area of the cellar floor between the commanding officer of 1CG and the seated sub unit commanders contained a model of Wuitterlingen and the surrounds, courtesy of Sgt Osgood. Wine bottles representing individual buildings made it seem that the place was wall to wall churches, but it was the location and position that was important, not the aesthetic effect. The positions of the buildings, roads and paths was known from aerial photos and maps, but Oz had discovered many of the enemy fighting positions and estimated enemy numbers at roughly forty strong. The lack of patrolling by the enemy bore out the fact that they were loath to spend men and ammunition in patrol actions.

Small country lanes to the west that served outlying farm’s converged together on a small road that ran into the village as its single street, meeting a larger road and forming a T-junction at the villages eastern end. The village contained a bar, a small shop and a Lutheran church; the other twenty buildings were all houses. To the best of their knowledge NATO believed that all the lawful occupants had been forced out by the Russians and had walked to the town to the north, which was still in NATO hands.

“In our first objective, Wuitterlingen, I expect a short hard fight, but once we have taken it we go straight into the advance… and we do not know how many or where the enemy are between Wuitterlingen and Helmstedt, so we could have a hard time of it. We do know the enemy came in with shed loads of anti-tank weapons, so after taking the village the advance will be on foot, one up, two back and only calling on the tanks and APCs for direct fire support.” There were groans from the infantrymen and one company commander held up his hand.

“Captain Llewellyn… I am several pay grades above you and I have made the decision, so unless you are merely asking permission to go to the loo, put your hand down. This battalion defends democracy… it does not necessarily practice it.” Captain Llewellyn’s hand disappeared.

“I fully appreciate how the thought of a leg advance must seem, especially as we have so many armoured fighting vehicles at hand… and as I sit in my vehicle far behind you… with the heater on of course… my thoughts will be with you and your blisters.” He grinned evilly at the Coldstream Guardsmen and the 82^nd’s Paratroopers for a second, letting the words settle before getting to the real meat of the orders group, how they were going to do it.

After such ‘luxuries’ as central heating and double-glazing, the house the three awoke in seemed like an icebox by comparison. There were four bedrooms with low ceilings but each held a bed almost large enough to qualify as a double. Patricia and Caroline had found the weight of blankets necessary to ensure a night of sleep untroubled by frozen extremities, was almost suffocating.

The previous day had been spent sleeping for the large part, whilst the wife of the old man bustled about the house, doing her chores and keeping watch.

Once they had slept there were hours to kill and little to occupy them. There was no TV and only an ancient radio set, which required five minutes for the valves to warm up before anything could be heard. Svetlana kept the radio on one station, listening carefully for a combination of folk songs that she alone knew. Patricia helped the old woman with the cooking and cleaning, which left Caroline at a loose end so she wandered the house until she came upon the old man in a back room, cleaning an old, but serviceable rifle. He seemed happy to have the company of a pretty young woman with whom to practice rusty English on as she helped him. He was proud of the weapon, and taking out a wooden box he opened it and removed a brass telescopic sight, explaining how he had been a sniper on the border with China during his service. Once the weapon had been cleaned and reassembled he showed the pilot how to handle it, and its weight came as a surprise to her, but he explained how a light weapon was unsuitable for accuracy at long range.

The day dragged on and Svetlana stayed close to the radio set, even at mealtimes.

The assault upon the village had begun two hours before dawn, and the outlying enemy fighting positions were taken out one by one, the last one being overrun before the first rays of daylight had appeared, by soldiers who had trained to fight at night as a matter of course.

The buildings posed a different tactical problem for the battalion, because FIBUA, or fighting-in-built-up-areas as it is known, is an art all of its own. To the uneducated it would seem to be a small matter to merely shell the place flat, but as had been shown at places such as Monte Casino, a surprising number not only survive, but find themselves with all the material to cobble together defensive positions, lying there ready to use.

Good command and control of ones men went without saying, as was communications and a good stock of small arms ammunition and grenades, but the essential ingredient without which house clearing could not hope to work, was momentum. Get the enemy back peddling, and keep them like that and you have wrested the initiative from them. According to the book, the correct way to clear a house is from the top down, and no doubt the author had a stack of grappling irons lying around when he put pen to paper. In the real world detached buildings were taken from the ground upwards, and only in the case of terraced streets could ‘the book’ be adhered to, once the first building had been taken the hard way of course. One reason why it is easier to go from the roof to the ground may seem obvious, it is gravity. Isaac Newton wasn’t thinking about house clearing and FIBUA when he discovered the existence of gravity, or he may possibly have made mention of the problems inherent with tossing hand grenades up stairs.

The technique for countering the possibility of your grenade being kicked back or rebounding off objects, to bounce back down the stairs to you, is to release the spring arm and count off two seconds, which is half the fuse time, before tossing it. It makes for just another of those character-defining moments that make life in the infantry so rich and interesting.

The crack of random rounds as they passed overhead punctuated the industrious chiselling away of bayonets behind a field wall. CSM Probert had been preparing ‘mouse hole charges’, each constructed of two, roughly three foot lengths of wood strapped together to form an ‘x’. A quarter pound of PE-4 was attached to each of the two arms that would be upper most, and into these had been pushed detonators, after equal lengths of fuse had been crimped into the detonators open ends. Colin had four riflemen, all with grenade launchers, two gun groups, and the platoons air defence section, now in the rifle role but missiles close to hand, preparing a point of fire behind the old stone wall at one end of Weferlingen’s single street. The men were working up a sweat, using bayonets to remove the cement from between the bricks to make firing loops in the thick, ten foot high wall; well at least ten of them were, anyway.

Guardsman Troper and L/Cpl Veneer were sat in a ditch, apparently keeping a diligent watch upon the skies; they were however looking in every possible direction except the CSMs. The outlying Royal Artillery Stormer air defence vehicles had the job well in hand as regards local air defence, and the two men were hoping that the CSM wouldn’t realise that their Stinger missiles were, for the moment anyway surplus to requirement, meaning that an extra two pairs of hands were available for some manual labour on the wall.

“Is e’ lookin’ at us?” Troper whispered, and started to turn his head so he could glance at the warrant officer out of the corner of his eye.

Veneer dug him in the ribs. “Don’t look at ‘im… I read a book see, it says that if you avoid eye contact you becomes invisible like.”

A snowball narrowly missed the junior NCO, causing him to flinch but his mate hissed at him, and they both acted as if it had never happened.

Colin selected another missile from nearby and sent it after the first.

The half brick made contact with the big soldiers’ helmet, bringing forth a startled yelp.

“Oye… what do you pair of idle Mary’s think yer on!”

“We’s the air defence sir!” L/Cpl Veneer shouted back.

“Yes sir… ” Guardsman Troper enjoined, and tried to sound convincing by adding something he had heard once, but it didn’t come across quite as eloquently when he repeated it. “… we are a essential element in the air defence mesh that guards the skies above the battalions ‘ed, sir.”

Colin glared at him; his eyes full of menace and roared. “Get your scaly arses into gear or as soon as this lot’s over I’ll bang you up where the sun never shines and the birds don’t shit!” The pair scrambled from the ditch, crawling rapidly over the snow to the base of the wall and began furiously hacking away at the wall with their own bayonets.

Oz joined Colin behind the wall as the last of the loops was completed, breathing hard and the cold air condensing his breath into ragged smoke signals. “The boys are in place, 1 Section is covering the rear of the houses on the left of the street… the rest are reorganised for street fighting.” He had the platoons small 51mm light mortar on a sling across his shoulders, which he now got ready for firing. Colin nodded and depressed his ‘send’ switch. “Hello One, this is One One over.” There was a moment’s pause before the company commanders radio operator acknowledged him. “One… send over?”

“One One… all set, over.” This time there was a longer delay as the company commander was informed that the point of fire was in place and the remainder of 1 Platoon were ready to jump off.

“One, roger your last… One Three is in position but One Two will be a further figures five, over.”

Colin could see 3 Platoon a hundred meters away, lying at the base of the wall, ready to go over it and begin the assault on the first house on their side of the street. The remainder of Colin’s own platoon were to his left, similarly waiting patiently for the off. The delay was due to 2 Platoons inexperienced young 2Lt, Sergeant Osgood’s successor.

1 Company’s Commander was not ready to let loose the young officer on a task such as his more seasoned platoons were to undertake, so 2 Platoon had the more straightforward task of flanking the village so as to be in a position to cut off any enemy withdrawal or reinforcement. The young officer had taken too long sorting out his men after the first positions had been taken, so 1 and 3 Platoon had to wait in the snow, shivering behind the wall.

After a delay of rather more than five minutes, the company commander gave the word to go and from eight hundred metres to the rear the anti-tank section started the ball rolling by putting Milan missiles into the upper floors of the first buildings.

CSM Probert gave the nod to the first assault team, Oz was directing heavy fire into the buildings, and dropping smoke into the street with the 51mm mortar, to hamper the fire from enemy in other buildings, as they went up and over the wall, boosted over by members of the second assault team. Crossing obstacles such as the wall was a team effort; the first men over stood facing the wall, arms above their heads with their palms against the brickwork to steady themselves and to grasp the top. They raise the heels of their feet and two men crouched behind them cup their hands under the raised heels and lift together, boosting the men up to where they can pull themselves up and over. The procedure goes on until there are four men left, and instead of dropping to the other side of the wall the next pair stop on top of the wall, swivel around and lie draped over top where they can reach a hand down for their mates, and use their legs as cantilevers. One at a time the last men run at the wall and jump up to catch the outstretched arms, whereupon they are pulled up.

Despite the best efforts of Oz and the Milan crews the enemy was not entirely silenced. Colin followed the first assault team over, dropping into the snow beside one of his section commanders, the Lance Sergeants eyes were staring blankly up at the Company Sergeant Major. The rest of the platoon was adding the weight of their fire as the first mouse-hole charge was placed against the side wall of a pleasant 19^th century house and the fuses lit. Colin paused to take cover behind the section commanders body until the charge blew, creating a five foot hole for grenades to be thrown through, these were followed by the entrymen once they had gone off. The entrymen fired indiscriminately into anything that could conceal an enemy as they went through the entry hole and ducked to one side out of the silhouetting light. A face appeared briefly at the hole and Colin heard the soldier shout “Room clear!” and the remainder of the first assault team sprinted across the road, disappearing through the entry point. Colin resumed the task of stripping the body of its ammunition and grenades, stuffing them unceremoniously inside his smock, before removing the magazine from the dead man’s weapon and adding it to the rest. 3 Platoon had quickly taken their first house across the road and were knocking a hole in its roof. Slates slid down the steeply slanting roof to shatter on the pavement below, but Colin was watching the action on his side of the street, the other side of the road was somebody else’s business.

There was a flurry of firing from the upper floors, interjected by grenade blasts as the Russian paratroopers contested the hallway and stairs. Had they had more time they would have dismantled the stairs, using a rope to pass between the floors and using the materials for barricades, but NATO had reacted too quickly for such advanced preparations.

The soldiers did not clear every room by first throwing in a grenade, some had collected rocks of roughly the same size as a fragmentation grenade, and to conserve their grenades they would occasionally toss in a rock, accompanied by the shouted warning, “Grenade!” It had the effect of causing any waiting paratroopers to duck, allowing the guardsmen to enter the room, firing into the corners of the room, furniture and any enemy in view. The cries of, “Room clear!” could be heard until the eventual “House clear!”

With one man acting as his runner, CSM Probert entered the house where he received a sitrep from the first team, he had one man walking wounded but there were three enemy dead, one wounded seriously and a prisoner. He listened as the report was made, merely nodding and clapping the NCO on the shoulder when he had finished, before taking the stairs two at a time.

Despite being two men down, Colin decided to up the pressure on the enemy and ordered a mousehole charge placed against the wall to the neighbouring house in the upper front and back rooms. In the confines of the house the blast of the first one was almost stunning to the attackers, but devastating to the defenders in the room beyond. Flying debris killed both Russians who had their backs against that wall, looking upwards and awaiting the sound of their attackers on the roof. As soon as the room was taken, the second charge was fired, and half the upper storey of the second house was taken in less than two minutes.

3 Platoon did not have it so straightforward with their second house, there was a narrow alley running between the two and they had decided on a roof to roof assault using a ladder they had found, to span the gap. They asked the Milan crews for help with an entry point, and a 6.7kg missile blew out a ten-foot section.

After an hours fighting Pat Reed decided that 1 Company was winded, half the village had been taken but the church, a probable strongpoint with its thick walls and the open ground provided by its graveyard required fresh troops so he passed 4 Company through them and into the assault.

Unlike the houses previously encountered, which had received minimal defensive works, the three hundred year old church had been prepared for defence. Wire mesh from garden fences and chicken coops had been secured over the empty windows, the beautiful, ornate stained glass windows having been removed by the Russians, to guard against glass shrapnel. The wire mesh prevented grenades from being thrown through into the building interior. Gravestones had been removed to clear the killing zone of the churchyard so not an inch was uncovered by fire, and the stones stacked 9’ high and 6’ deep in front of the single door, as a barricade it would take time to clear. CSM Probert had no doubt that dead-drops had been prepared below the windows inside, ready to ensnare or impale anyone coming through those possible entrances. The fact that the church steeple, which housed at least two snipers, grenadiers and a couple of machine guns, would need to be dealt with first, went without saying. A troop from the Dragoons was ready to begin dealing with the steeple, after which they would start on the tower it sat upon.

Colin had some ideas, or rather someone else’s, for dealing with the church, and sought out the 82^nd’s Captain who commanded 4 Company. Neither man was in the business of ancient building preservation, if it came to a case of either the church, or their own men’s lives. The American was in full agreement and he sent his runner to scrounge for the necessary items along with the British CSMs.

The business of taking out the steeple and tower began, and the Russian’s were unable to do anything about it, half an hour later and the Challengers ceased fire, the top fifteen feet of tower and the steeple had fallen into rubble.

Rather than attempting a costly fire and manoeuvre action across the open ground, a withering hail of small arms fire was levelled at each possible firing point in the church. Under cover of this fire, three small groups of men from the 82^nd Airborne crossed the churchyard to gain the base of the church wall. Despite the covering fire they left two of their number lying on the exposed ground. The lengths of wood they carried were used to lift, and hook plastic containers onto the wire mesh, wire coat hangers taped to the sides of the containers snared the mesh and the paratroopers withdrew, losing another man as they went.

The three explosions that followed were not produced by particularly large amounts of explosives, but the results were catastrophic for the defenders in the church.

“It’s a trick the PIRA used to employ against us in Ulster.” Colin had explained. “A three gallon can of petrol hooked on to the mesh, the explosives taped to the street side of the can vaporises the petrol as it is blasted into the building, and a coupla thou's of a second later the vapour ignites.” The home-made fuel/air weapons had turned the interior of the church into a furnace, which was now starting to cook off munitions either stored or in the pouches of the defending Russian airborne troops.

The fight for the opposite side of the street had halted whilst the church was dealt with, but now the fight there renewed, although with less resistance from the defenders, as the majority of their troops had been inside the strongpoint, and who were now very visibly and audibly lost.

The defenders started to withdraw, they were on a loser and they knew it, so they planned to bug out and find another spot to defend, but none made it out of the net the battalion had thrown around the village. A dozen eventually threw down their weapons and surrendered, they were all wounded and the ammunition was gone. Once they had been rounded up the advance to contact was resumed.

1 Platoon led the way out of the village but it did not take the road, that was too obvious and likely to be mined or DF'd, registered for pre-planned Defensive Fire, if the enemy had the munitions or mortars. They took to the fields to the south of the road, forming the point of the spearhead as the battalion continued west.

CSM Probert and his small platoon headquarters element emerged from the village behind the three infantry sections. He had with him his runner, the platoon sergeant, Oz, and an air defence team consisting of the big man from Lancashire, Gdsm Troper and his sidekick L/Cpl Veneer. So as not to draw special attention from an enemy, a platoon headquarters will try to look like any ordinary rifle section, staying well spread out and covering their arcs.

Troper wasn’t watching his arcs of fire when Oz kicked him in the backside; he was grouching to himself and examining the blisters on his hands. Oz walked beside him, telling him his fortune if he didn’t switch on, before doubling back to his place in the formation.

“I thought they were told to hold until the afternoon, at the very soonest?” said a sergeant lying to one side of Captain Bordenko. Nikoli reached across and retrieved his binoculars from him. “No plan survives first contact, sergeant… ” he brought the binoculars up to his own eyes, “… we just have to keep chipping away at them.”

The first troops were starting to emerge out of the western end of the village, and shaking out into section sized arrowheads. Nikoli watched the men running across the snow to take up their positions; they were not burdened down with the bulky Bergen’s, they carried only their fighting order of webbing and the Bergens side pouches as ‘patrol packs’. They were all clad in arctic whites, and as they drew away from the darker background of the village, he had trouble picking them up against the snowfields backdrop that had coated the countryside. He started to lower the binoculars when one of the soldiers emerging from village caught his attention. There was something about the way he carried himself as he walked him behind one soldier and delivered a kick to the man’s backside, before walking beside him with his head canted over, no doubt dispensing some choice criticism. Nikoli had seen instructors at Brecon perform ‘corrective surgery’ in the same manner, and he smiled to himself as it came to him who this man was. He watched Oz run back to where he had come from, and turn his head to speak as he passed one particular soldier. Nikoli focussed on that man and recognised him straight away. So, the enemy coming at them was the Coldstream Guards again, and he began looking for the distinctive American helmets, which would indicate some of the 82^nd Airborne was still temporarily fighting alongside the survivors of the guards battalion. The next company to exit the village was American; Nikoli watched that company angle across the fields to take up position, rear right of the company his friends were in. Truly, they had sent the ‘First Eleven’, as Colin would say.

It was time to get back to their first positions, and after crawling backwards off the small rise Nikoli dropped down into the ditch they would use for their circuitous route. By walking in the ditches that bordered the fields they avoided leaving clearly visible tracks in the snow, a signpost stating ‘Bad Guys — This Way’.

Nikoli had collected the survivors from five aircraft that had been shot down before reaching their DZ’s, sixty-seven men, correction, thirty-five men now that the village had fallen, with which to delay the enemy.

All he could hope to do now was make a fighting withdrawal until they reached the first airborne brigade at its blocking point.

The large Boeing in its blue and white livery was virtually empty; its five passengers were the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs, Senator Rickham and their aides. The parties occupied opposite ends of the aircraft and General Shaw had no wish for the seating arrangements to alter, so it was with some exasperation he reacted to Rickham’s appearance at his end. The aircraft had intended landing in the UK and collecting the politicians, doing a quick turn around and returning. Henry had waved off suggestions that they should have an escort across the Atlantic and back.

“From Europe to the US certainly, but that’s it. A no fly zone around the aircraft will suffice for the route in.” Mid way across the ocean they received news that their intended passengers were in Germany, not England, so the flight plan changed.

“Shaw, there are fighters on our wings; they appeared about ten minutes ago… are you attempting to intimidate me?”

Henry glanced out of the window, seeing not US aircraft but German Tornados, and managed to refrain from grinning in anticipation.

Rickham’s two aides had trailed dutifully after him, to Henry they looked more like whipping boys and girls than PAs, and the general suspected it was Rickham’s ability to bully then that had been the deciding factor in the senator s selection of them.

“Why would you think that I would want to intimidate you senator?”

“Because it’s the only thing that motivates Neanderthal’s, and so you think that it must be the same for everyone else.” he snapped back.

Henry kept his tone light.

“These would be the same Neanderthal’s that are the only thing keeping you from being forced to speak Russian… or Chinese, depending on who occupies the United States first, if we lose?”

“Don’t get smart with me Shaw… and you can address me as Sir!”

“Actually senator, I can’t… but to get back to the fighter escort, what makes you think that they would obey orders from me?”

Rickham turned puce.

“You’re the goddamned chairman Shaw; send them away… right now!”

“I’m afraid senator that the German air force does not take orders from American generals.”

Rickham opened his mouth to speak and then stopped, ducking down to peer out at the Tornados.

“What the hell are they doing out here!”

“It is not out here to them, we are entering German airspace.”

It took a second for that to factor in with the senator. “Shaw, we’re supposed to collection the Europeans from some place called Northolt, what’s going on?”

“At this critical time the British PM and the German Chancellor are seeing for themselves how their men are holding up, so we are landing at RAF Gütersloh and meeting them there.” A full two hours ago an airman had informed him of the change of destination, and General Shaw had told him to save his shoe leather and return to the communications centre. Henry had lied to the young man about informing the senator because he wanted to see his eyes when he realised he was in a war zone.

“Don’t worry its all of ten minutes away from the front… as the Flanker flies.” Henry smiled cheerily at the politician who had turned a worrying shade of grey, and now turned and pushed his aides unceremoniously out of the way as he hurried back to his seat.

The news that the aircraft was coming was kept as a closely guarded secret by the military, the ‘Air Force One’ call sign was only used when the President was aboard so the next available military flight number was used. Civilians have radar screens too, and the establishing of a safe corridor to Germany, along with a fighter escort gave the game away. One air traffic controller at Reims ATC took a break, and made a call on his mobile phone from the car park of the air traffic control centre.

As ballsey as the US president had revealed himself to be, no one in the KGB really thought for one moment that the President would come so close to the front, in so visible a manner.

Nevertheless, they scramble activated a sleeper cell once the destination became obvious.

There was almost absolute silence aboard the USS Twin Towers; men spoke in whispers as they went about their business. Captain Pitt was in sonar with a headset on, staring unseeingly at a mug of coffee before him on the commandeered workstation. He had been sat there with his shoulders hunched in concentration for over an hour, he hadn’t acknowledged the sailor who had placed the mug there, and he hadn’t touched it. A film had formed on its surface and it had grown cold. They had been in company with a Canadian vessel, the diesel submarine HMCS Victoria, until the Canadian went ahead to increase the chances of interception. That had been four hours before, and then seventy minutes ago there had been the sound of a torpedo in the water, followed by a submerged explosion and breaking up noises. Since then there had been nothing but the normal sounds of the sea, no clue as to what had occurred.

His head rose an inch as he heard something, and he looked sharply at the operator next to him.

“I don’t think it’s the Canadian, sir.” He consulted the digital read-outs before him but pulled a face. “Too far off to get a range or bearing Captain. Roughly east northeast is the best I can do.”

The faint sound, carried across ten miles of ocean by freak thermal eddies faded out.

“Jeez, those Canadians build quiet boats.”

“They didn’t build them.” Rick Pitt murmured. “HMCS Victoria used to be HMS Unseen, they were the Upholder class, built by the Brits and then sold almost as soon as they had been launched.”

The young sonar operator frowned.

“Why the hell did they want to go and pull a dumb stunt like that… those boats are ghosts?”

“Asshole's with more braid than brains or integrity, toadying to bigger assholes in government… ” his voice tailed off as something again sounded from across the horizon.

Pitt wasn’t the expert here, and he was looking at the expert but saying nothing and waiting to be told what it was he was hearing.

“That’s a short sprint and a knuckle… nuclear plant, not the Canadian diesel… bearing zero eight zero degrees, maybe fifteen thousand yards, give or take.” The young man eventually told him. A ‘knuckle’ is a noisy area of turbulence caused by a fast moving submarine making a radical turn, and the Captain didn’t think it likely that the enemy had done it out of boredom.

“Transients Captain” the operator murmured. “A torpedo in the water… there’s another one… and yet another.” He glanced at his panel. “Different bearings, zero seven seven degrees, zero eight zero and zero eight five degrees… differing high pitch screw sounds, two are Russian… we got us a gunfight out there, sir!”

It got quite noisy in the headsets and the sonarman kept him informed as best he could as to who was doing what. “Someone’s runnin’… it’s the Nuke, an Alpha I reckon… noise makers… more noise makers… that’s the Canadian… can’t hear the third sucker, but there’s definitely three boats out there… that’s a knuckle… hull poppin’, someone’s going up… now they’ve stopped… transient, Victoria got another one off ”

Captain Pitt closed his eyes, trying to picture what was going on out there. There were now four torpedoes in the water, all acoustic and re-attacking if they got dummied. As much as he would have liked to have been in a position to assist the Canadians, submarine warfare doesn’t work like that. There is no IFF, identification friend or foe devices underwater, no easy way of telling who was who, and torpedoes are not exactly discriminating in whom they sink. A furball below the waves between multiple antagonists would undoubtedly result in friendly fire deaths, what the Brits called ‘blue on blues’.

After what seemed much longer, but was in reality just over four minutes, there was a hollow boom in his headset and his eyes flew open, someone had died. It was followed two seconds later by another almost identical sound, and he looked at the sonar operator.

“Different bearings sir… I got breaking up sounds, same bearings as the impacts… two guys jus’ died, I guess.” It was just a figure of speech, but the breaking up sounds represented far more than just two men whose lives had been lost. Two ships companies had died, one undoubtedly soviet, because the remaining NATO vessels were either up north covering the Denmark Strait, or southeast between the Faeroes and Scotland. The big question was, Pitt asked himself, was HMCS Victoria the other?

General Shaw walked down the airstair and held up five fingers to the waiting Royal Air Force staff cars as he joined a pair of ground technicians examining the starboard landing gear. Rickham was already inside the car and shouted angrily at the general to ‘move his ass’, and when he was ignored he snapped at the young woman in uniform behind the wheel to pick the general up later. He had himself ignored the Group Captain who commanded the RAF Station, walking quickly past him at the bottom of the airstair without a glance or a nod to acknowledge the salute he had been given, heading straight for the car.

The driver did not like her boss being treated like a lackey, or a general officer being sworn at by a bloody overweight civilian, and she certainly wasn’t taking orders from the arrogant sod, so she ignored him.

There was nothing left of the front outer tyre on the gear, it had shredded and now lay in fragments along the length of the runway where airmen were already collecting them, lest they get sucked into an engine intake.

“That looks nasty?”

Henry had changed into attire more fitting to a war zone before they had landed and both airmen looked up at the speaker and saw the black woven stars on his collar. The camouflage material of the generals’ jacket and trousers wasn’t what they expected from someone with five stars, the boots too showed signs of wear, this wasn’t a man expecting to take any salutes from troops passing in revue. The faded webbing holster had sat on the same hip in Vietnam when Shaw had been a young lieutenant and other clothing and equipment had seen Grenada, Panama, Haiti, Bosnia, Kosovo, Somalia and Afghanistan when muck and bullets had been in the air. There had been a few other places in between, unpublicised and ‘deniable’ actions where politics by other means, had been extended.

They started to rise but he gestured them to stay where they were.

“Sir, it happens now and again, but then again the Reds paid us a visit yesterday and it could have been caused by a piece of sharp shrapnel lying on the runway that we missed.”

There was nothing there to indicate in any way that a sniper a quarter mile from the end of the runway had shot out the tyre.

Henry looked around the field, the snow had left a white blanket across everything, including bomb craters and as he squinted, he could now make out indentations in the otherwise flat surface of the aerodrome. The station’s control tower was a pile of fire charred rubble, and a hangar was in ruins, no doubt there was other damage he could not see but the place was open for business anyway. The loss of AWAC cover had given the enemy a number of opportunities to sortie raids behind the lines, but now that the AWACs that had covered North Cape were overhead, albeit with exhausted crews, the hole was plugged.

“Have you got any tyres like these on the base?”

“No sir, my flight sergeant is givin’ Lufthansa a bell, they probably won’t fly one in but it’ll only take a couple of hours by road. We’ll get the jacks under your bus straightaway so we can stick it straight on.”

Henry was about to tell them he wouldn’t be going back on that aircraft, but a flight of RAF Jaguars taking off would have meant him shouting, so he didn’t bother. Giving the men a nod and a smile he headed toward the waiting staff cars that drove them into the camp to the station command centre.

To Rickham’s annoyance the female RAF corporal walked around the car to open the generals’ door first, it was left to one of the senators aides to scurry across from the second car to open it for his boss, not that he received any thanks.

Henry’s aide put away his cell phone.

“Transports just being cleared through at the guardroom sir.”

“Thanks Manuel… there’s an old friend I have to see first, it’ll only take a minute.”

Inside the hardened shelter Senator Rickham’s public face asserted itself upon his face as he entered the room where the British Prime Minister, German Chancellor and the foreign ministers of the Spanish, French, Dutch, Belgian, Danish, Swedish, Norwegian and Portuguese governments were gathered. The British PM looked towards the doorway and beamed, striding across the room; Rickham’s smile almost mirrored it as he stepped forward and reached out his hand.

“Henry Shaw!” The Prime Minister of Great Britain walked past the politician and pumped the generals’ hand. “Are you still hung over from that party in Madam Woo’s whorehouse?”

“How kind of you to remember Mr Prime Minister… and to announce it so publicly too.” Henry replied in an ironic tone but with a big grin, and then replied just as loudly. “The last time I saw you, you were in a swamp with your trousers around your ankles, and someone was using a cigarette butt to get the leeches off your ass.”

“You always had a steady hand General.”

Rickham’s smile was looking distinctly plastic when Henry made the introductions, and then made his apologies, as he had to hit the road and would arrange his own transport back stateside.

It had begun to snow again outside as he climbed into the Canadian army M113 for the journey to SACEURs new sanctum, General Allain was but one of a number of people he had to see over the next few days.

The point section had been moving steadily on for the first hour, crossing fields, scrubland and moving through copses of trees. Had it not been snowing then they would have changed their camouflage as they moved, stuffing handfuls of whatever was growing in the field they were entering, into elastic sown to their clothing and equipment, and changing it for whatever was prolific in the next. The snow and the Arctic Whites they were clad in made that unnecessary, so they concentrated on watching their arcs and waiting to be shot at.

The section commanders were busy all the time, trying to read the ground ahead as an enemy might see it. The sections moved with ‘One foot on the ground’ at all times, either a pair of riflemen or the gun group would be lying in cover and up in the aim, covering the rest as they advanced, whether anyone was shooting or not. As soon as someone else ducked into cover to take over the duty, they’d get up and double away to take up their positions until the next time it was their turn. The section commanders were also busy. L/Cpl Orden, the section commander of the lead section, was pointing out landmarks, and potential cover if they came under fire, it came across commentary like.

“Section, five hundred, one o’clock… bushy top tree… to be known as, bushy top tree… section, three hundred, ten o’clock… stone wall, right hand corner of wall to be known as, wall… see this stream bank on our right? If we come under fire in the next fifty metres we’ll take cover there.” Objects that would assist in indicating targets were adopted as they came into view, and discarded once they had been passed, and cover was pointed out as the section moved. Every other section commander was carrying out the same task for their own men, as well as trying to second-guess the enemy by trying to put themselves in the enemy’s shoes.

Taking cover when a single round passes you does not, in the eyes of the British Army, constitute as reacting to effective enemy fire. Rounds, plural, have to be coming in amongst you and your mates or, you start taking casualties, for it to count.

As the leading platoon approached a thick stand of conifers on a section of rolling heath land, a Guardsman spun around and fell on his face with a strangled cry. The crack of the high velocity round was followed a second later by the thump of the rifle that had fired it, and the men of 1 Section went to ground. 2 and 3 Sections, along with platoon headquarters were out of sight of the lead section when contact was made, but a second after the shot was fired L/Cpl Orden was on the air to CSM Probert.

“Hello One One this is One One Alpha… contact, wait out!”

Colin moved forward parallel with 2 and 3 Sections, impatient for a full contact report but having to allow the man time. He sent his own to the company commander, who in turn would send one to Lt Col Reed.

The theory behind the arrowhead formation is that the enemy ‘bumps’ the lead section, but cannot necessarily see the entire unit. With the battalion spread out and angled away on both flanks from the point of contact, it is theoretically able to manoeuvre in order to flank the enemy at that point.

A real live enemy is seldom as obliging as the ones provided for exercise purposes, and Nikoli was determined to bloody the battalions nose.

Colin had just got into a position where he could see his lead section when its section commander sent a full contact report.

“Hello One One this is One One Alpha, over.”

“One One send over.”

“One One Alpha, contact one minute ago, single round fired from copse at grid 4720, 7331, I have one Indian down… enemy not seen, over!”

“One One, roger… out.”

He didn’t give any orders, L/Cpl Orden knew what had to be done now, so he left him to it and passed on the report quickly and began a combat appreciation.

Less than two minutes had passed since the shot had been fired, and the casualty was lying in the open, unmoving. The British Army does not waste ammunition by shooting up all available cover, they had to locate the enemy first, and use the ammunition to win the fire fight. No further shots had been fired, which meant the firer had either bugged out or was waiting for someone else to show themselves. Under the circumstances they had no option but to offer him a target to shoot at, and one of the Guardsmen half rose from cover and then dropped out of sight again before crawling sideways, as his position was now compromised.

Colin kept the two remaining sections gun groups and a rifleman from each, which also carried M203 grenade launchers. Oz, who had the light mortar ready, had ten rounds each of smoke and HE laid out ready to use. In addition to their own ammunition, each member of the platoon carried four rounds for the mortar, one para illum, one smoke and two HE rounds. Colin sent the remainder of the platoon back twenty-five metres in readiness for a flanking move should it prove necessary, and they dropped off some of their mortar rounds as they passed Oz.

Lying behind a slight rise in the ground Colin watched a second Guardsman try to draw fire, but there was neither sound nor movement from the copse. Behind him the rest of the battalion had gone to ground, and if there was no reaction from the wood then they would have to assume the firer had left, so getting on the radio he ordered the section commander to send two men skirmishing forwards whilst the remainder covered them.

The lead section was two hundred metres away from the copse, and Nikoli watched the pair of riflemen come on, allowing them to get to with seventy-five metres before he tapped his machine gunner and a rifleman on the shoulders.

By agreement the paratrooper with the AKM fired first, aiming at the covering man’s face, which was all that was visible behind the SLR he was aiming at the copse. The young Guardsman’s head snapped viciously back, and the machine gunner fired a short five round burst at the moving man as he started to drop into cover. All five rounds scored, dropping the soldier.. The moment they fired, the Russian paratroopers all put their heads down and scrambled backwards on their bellies six feet to the shallow trenches they had hacked into the frozen earth. The Guards reply was almost instantaneous; the muzzle flashes had been seen against the dark background in the trees. Before Nikoli or his men had gained the trenches, 7.62mm rounds were chewing up the bank behind which they had fired, and cracking overhead, spilling snow from burdened boughs, gouging bark from the trees and amputating small branches. These rounds were no danger to Nikoli, they were protected by the bank from direct fire, but the grenades and mortar rounds were a different matter.

Oz had four HE rounds in the air before the first reach the ground, the mortar rounds and grenades straddled the area, one 51mm mortar round landing in the machine gunners trench.

An infantry section can take on up to three enemy riflemen, but they won’t handle a machine alone, not if there is support about.

Colin originally had a potential section assault to deal with, now it had developed into a platoon attack, and from what he could see of the ground it had the potential to become at least a company job, inasmuch as there was good concealment for at least an enemy platoon. The enemy in the copse had not revealed themselves all at once, so they weren’t beginners at this stuff. To the left of the copse was dead ground that ran to the rear of the trees, and to the right it was flat with little cover, until it sloped gradually upwards to meet dense scrub three hundred metres beyond.

CSM Probert thought about going left flanking, then dismissed it as too obvious, and the same went for the open ground on the right. True, he could drop smoke and dummy left whilst using the screen to go right, but he didn’t like the thick scrub behind it. He thought about it but alarm bells were ringing in his head.

“Stuff this, for a game of soldiers!” he muttered to himself and rolled onto his back, rapping the magazine on his rifle with his knuckles to get the attention of the men within earshot. Holding up three splayed fingers he then tapped them three times on his left bicep, then opened his hand crab-like and sat it on his head. He repeated the signal, except using two fingers instead of three, summonsing Oz and the section commanders behind him for a quick orders group.

“Okay, gee your guys up, we’re going through the front door… I don’t think these people are on their own, I think the rest are in depth, waiting on us going left or right flanking. Sarn’t Osgood… send a gun group further left to where they can shoot us right into the treeline without us blocking their fields of fire, but warn them to be ready for a reaction from the left once the smoke clears and they see we haven’t played their game… I want the other gun group on the right… same story, but they are to switch fire and hammer the thick scrub at the top of the slope five hundred metres from what will be their front, the moment we reach the trees. Sarn’t Osgood, collect more smoke and HE, because I want smoke masking our right from that scrub, I want it in the trees and in the dead ground on the left, then once we gain the treeline I want a couple of HE rounds dropped on the scrub on the right, where the guns are switching too, okay?” He looked from face to face before continuing. “Two Section left… Three right, leave a hole for One Section in the centre… L/Sgt Tilly, I’ll go as far as One Section as your left hand man, then I’ll join One Section and we’ll all skirmish up to the trees from there as a platoon, then fight-through as sections… important, there is to be no, I repeat no exit out the far side of the copse by any of our boys… understood?” He got nods all round. “I’m going to give the company commander a bell and let him know what we are doing, and to ask for the Mortar Platoon to set up ready to drop 81 mil’ on that thick scrub. They won’t do it just on a whim from me, but if I’m right then that is where their main strength is, and they will show themselves once the right hand gunners and Sarn’t Osgood rattle their cage… you’ve got five minutes to get them briefed and organised, so get yer skates on!” The three NCOs hurried away and Colin quickly briefed L/Cpl Orden by radio before switching to the company net.

“Hello One this is One One, long message over.”

“One, send over.”

“One One, estimate that there is now a gun group at location previously given. My sub unit is going frontal in figs five… I suspect that there are enemy in the scrub area to the right rear of our present contact, in expectation of a flanking move by ourselves. I would suggest consideration be given to hooking callsign One Three around to approach that scrub from its own right rear. Mortar fire mission follows… roger so far, over?”

“One roger, over.”

Colin paused for three seconds to allow any other station with a message for the company commander to interrupt, but there was silence so he continued.

“One One, should we encounter enemy in the suspect location my Sunray Minor will call upon the mortars for the following fire mission… grid 4721, 7329… range five hundred… bearing, four three, three zero magnetic, low ridge with scrub… HE… eliminate. My Sunray Minor will give the word if enemy become evident… over?”

The company commander repeated the fire mission details back to Colin before warning him that he was indeed sending 3 Platoon wide right before signing off. 3 Platoons Warriors were summoned from the rear to carry the troops part way, as it would take too long for the platoon to hoof it that distance and still catch any enemy on the wrong foot. Pat Reed was informed and two of the 81mm mortars were set up.

During this time L/Cpl Orden had been controlling his men’s rate of fire, as had the gun group commanders.

Inside the copse, Nikoli and his remaining man waited for the grenades and mortar to cease before shifting left at a low crawl. He didn’t bother to check for signs of life from the gunner, there was not much left of him, and the irreplaceable weapon was bent in the middle.

Their new position was a similar trench in the middle of the copse with a depression in the ground nearby that would offer some protection for them on their way out.

Colin tagged onto the end of L/Sgt Tilly’s section and took a quick look around. His platoon were set, and he could see 3 Platoons Warriors moving slowly forwards to pick up their ‘Indians’. They would wait until gunfire from the assault masked their engine noises and then put their foot down, pick up the platoon and then turn 90’, going wide before curving around so as not to alert the enemy.

The desultory fire of the past few minutes leapt forwards in tempo. Sgt Osgood shot off smoke rounds as fast as he could. There was little in the way of a breeze, so he couldn’t just drop it upwind and let it drift across the desired area. Once the screen was in place Colin pressed his ‘send’ switch.

“Go, go, go!” and 2 and 3 Sections went into the assault.

The choking smoke, rounds whipping through the copse and M203 grenades dropping amongst the trees announced to the pair of Russian paratroopers that the NATO troops were coming. Using his radio he called up the Sergeant who was his second in command.

“Kambra Two, this is One.”

“Go ahead One.”

“Which way are they going, left or right?”

“I can’t tell, they dropped smoke all over.”

“Even to your front?”

“That’s a roger.”

Nikoli knew that the rounds for the light mortar had to be carried by the men and that made their supply limited, until they received a replen. They were used sparingly, so what he was being told made no sense.

“Kambra Two, it was a stray round, yes?”

“Negative… there goes another… they are thickening it up!”

It told Nikoli that they hadn’t taken the bait, he released the radio handset and spat in frustration.

“Mud’a!”

The Paratrooper by his side glanced at him in surprise, before resuming his efforts to see through the smoke.

“Kambra Two, this is One… leave an MG team to cover us, and pull out now. No buts or argument Sergeant, they are wise to us… see you at the RV.”

After a moment or twos pause, Nikoli received a peeved reply.

“Roger… withdrawing.” With a jerk of his head he indicated to his companion it was time to go and they left the trench, scrambling across the snowy carpet.

Oz stopped dropping smoke in the copse when the platoon was a hundred metres from the wood; it would hinder the business of fighting through the objective once they got there. At twenty-five metres out the copse was masking the men from the suspected danger points at the left and right rear, so he allowed the smoke screen to dissipate. As it became too dangerous for the gun groups to continue shooting the men in, the left hand group ceased fire and watched their front, whilst the right switched fire to the scrub to their own front.

Once clear of the copse Nikoli broke into a dead run, half afraid that high explosive rounds would be dropped behind the copse to stop such a move as this. However, the strip of trees was too narrow and therefore the danger to their own troops too great in mortaring this area.

He could tell that the Guards were in amongst the trees now by the shouting of the British NCOs, exercising control to ensure there were no blue on blues and no enemy was missed.

The flash of tracer caught the corner of his eye; it was red and therefore NATO. A GPMG gunner was walking bursts steadily across the low scrubby ridge where his Sergeant had left a gun group to cover himself and his surviving man from the copse. To his great anger his own gunner decided to take on the GPMG, and green soviet tracer arced back in reply, instead of staying quiet until they were needed.

The Russian PK was similar in virtually every manner to the GPMG, which is not surprising as all successful creations have their imitators. Having goaded a reaction from the enemy the Guards gunners put their heads down, and Oz initiated the fire mission.

Nikoli and his man had reached dead ground by the time 1 Platoon had satisfied themselves that the enemy had bugged out, and began to hurriedly dig in. An army generally knows the location of its own positions, and when one is overrun they will call in a fire mission as a matter of course, always providing they have the wherewithal to do it. Even so, the best time to retake a position is immediately after it has fallen, before the enemy can get organised. So the Guardsmen dug in, in preparation for a counter attack.

The mortars of 1CG and their mates in the 82^nd had had a lot of practice of late, and their first rounds were 'on', and the next dozen plastered the low ridge.

By the time they arrived at the RV the sound of Warrior engines could be heard, it was small comfort to the young Captain that they had avoided the greater losses that would have resulted from being hit on the flank and possibly being rolled up. They had lost three men and delayed the enemy for less than half an hour, not an outstanding performance in anyone’s book, and that it would have worked against less experienced troops was no comfort. Since dawn he had lost half of his men, they had no targets for the anti-tank weapons because of the infantry on foot, and he couldn’t see the situation changing. Once it got dark the enemy would laager up, like the wagon train circling its wagons, except the cowboys wouldn’t be hiding behind them, they would be outside and dug in where they could protect the armour, and patrolling aggressively trying to find the Indians.

“Perhaps we should get the cars and join the rest of the brigade?” the sergeant suggested. They had the commandeered vans and family cars from the village for transportation, and as he thought about it Nikoli had to agree that it was an option, but he wasn’t ready to give up quite yet. Removing his map he gestured for the sergeant to sit beside him. He pointed out their present location and then tapped his finger to the northwest.

“There is the forest, it is to one side of the NATO line of advance. Behind their infantry are their APCs and tanks, behind them their artillery and behind those are the logistical support.” He said, becoming more decisive as he thought about it. “We’ve tried sitting in front to delay them, and we nearly got run over, so… we hide up until they are passing and then take out their supply train.”

“It’s certainly a better idea than what we’ve done so far, Captain.”

“Okay then, let us get to where we hid the cars and get going.”

The tarpaulin was pulled back to reveal the single item being carried on the civilian lorry's flatbed. RAF Policemen had the driver and his mate out of the cab and stood in the open as they searched the vehicle just outside the entrance to the RAF Station. The two civilian’s apprehension at the way a police dog handler’s German Shepherd was eyeing them hungrily, was entirely genuine. In addition to the canine threat, an RAF Regiment soldier was pointing an LSW very deliberately at them from a concrete sangar.

Eventually a corporal approached them having telephoned the Lufthansa Head Office to verify their credentials.

“That’s a big tyre you have there, Herr Koenig.” He said in passable German. He handed over their invoice and identity cards but retained the vehicle keys.

“Our maintenance troops will take it from here. If you will follow me into the Guardroom, its warmer and you can have a coffee whilst we unload.”

The driver looked as if he was going to object to a serviceman driving his rig, but a string of saliva was hanging from the corner of the German Shepherds mouth and its ears were erect in anticipation, so the objection died before it had even been uttered. Having checked that the invoice bore a signature of receipt he shrugged and the pair allowed themselves to be steered through the gate.

One hour later the vehicle pulled back up to the gate and an airman jumped down from the cab, leaving the engine running and waved. The snow had stopped and there were gaps in the clouds, a rarity of late, but it threatened a cold and icy night, so the Corporal advised them not to rush on their way home and brief goodbyes were exchanged.

As they had been carrying what were technically war stores, the driver had a pass permitting them to use the autobahn, but they didn’t use it on the way back, sticking to side roads instead. Ten miles outside of Bielefeld they pulled into a field and drove the truck out of sight of the road, stopping beside a civilian car. They weren’t to know that at the same time they were pulling out of the field in the car, a man walking his dog twenty miles away was peering down to see what the dog was trying to unearth from beneath a mound of shovelled snow. The real Albert Koenig and his drivers mate would take some time to identify, both bodies were naked and the exit wounds had removed most of their facial features.

Captain Pitt was giving very serious consideration to going to his bunk and closing his eyes, instead of sitting here in sonar pretending to just rest them. There was a red mark on his forehead, he had slipped into that state of half sleep and weird dreams, that end as the head drops forward suddenly, leaving one looking around quickly to see if anyone has noticed. On the last occasion his forehead had met the rim of the coffee mug and there was now a wet patch on his right thigh from the cold contents that had sloshed out with the impact.

He glanced at the sonarman beside him and realised that at some point the watch had changed, because there was a different man in that seat now.

It slowly dawned on him that the new occupant of the seat next to his was sitting as still as a statue, and it brought to his mind a gun dog pointing, which wasn’t far from the truth. The sophisticated towed array was picking up out of place noises and feeding it up the cable to the sonar suite where her computer sifted out the ordinary and highlighted the unusual.

“I’m getting faint pump sounds, far off. But I think there’s someone else out there too, a lot closer… coming on real slow like.”

The weariness dropped away from the Captain, and he re-seated the headphones that had become skewed at some point. Pump sounds meant nuclear power plants, and the soviets hadn’t cracked the problem of quietening high-pressure pumps yet to the point of near silence. It wouldn’t be a nuke that the man heard; it would be a diesel boat. “What am I listening for?”

“It’s like someone far off, panning for gold, sir.”

Eventually his untrained ears caught the sound, it actually did sound like wet sand on tin, but he frowned as he tried to make out what was causing it, he couldn’t but his sonarman could.

“I heard this before, last year in the Gulf. I was in the Boise and we followed an Iranian Kilo for a week. She’d been tied up for the previous six months and they hadn’t cleaned the barnacles off of the blades. You gotta have a clean boat or it don’t matter none how slow you go, or how good your systems are, you’ll get heard.”

“Is it the Victoria?”

He got an emphatic shake of the head from that.

“I’ve heard the Victoria, and that boat out there is a diesel, but it ain’t her sir.”

“Range, bearing and speed?”

“Just an estimation sir… 7000 yards, zero five zero, three knots, designate as Sierra Two Four. The only thing I’m certain of is the speed sir and that fact that she’s down here below the layer with us, or we wouldn’t have heard her… I’d allow some error in the rest.”

Pitt clapped him on the shoulder and left the sonar suite, he had a nagging doubt, a worry about the closer contact. What if it was Victoria, and she had sustained battle damage to her propeller, which was what they were hearing? But if that was the case then why hadn’t one of the other enemy vessels, which he knew were out there, attacked her!

He put himself in the shoes of the senior soviet captain; he knew that NATO would have submarines in blocking positions, and more than just one. His best chance of achieving his ultimate goal of stopping the convoys was his guided missile submarines, so he’d use his SSKs, his quiet diesels to feel the way ahead, keeping the missile boats safely at the back.

“Okay people let’s set this up, we’ll go up slowly above the layer and send two Mk-48s out at intervals, bearing zero six zero, a thousand yards between them and on low speed settings. Keep them above the layer and go back under ourselves. When number one is at seven thousand yards we turn them in and drop them under the layer, keep them on passive and see what happens.”

USS Twin Towers rose slowly from six hundred feet to ninety-seven and launched two torpedoes along the bearing the captain had decided on, and then descended to four hundred feet to listen once more. Captain Pitt used the time to put his head under a cold tap and wolf down some sandwiches and coffee brought from the galley. He was feeling more human by the time his weapons officer informed him the first torpedo was approaching the required range. Both weapons turned to port and descended below the layer, and then things happened fast.

“Captain… two has acquired… one has acquired also, both have the same contact!”

“Con, sonar… designate new target as Sierra Two Five, classify as improved Kilo class… range 5900 yards, bearing zero five nine, speed three knots!”

He looked at the plot, it wasn’t right, not at all what he had expected unless the sonar had the barnacled diesel all wrong as regards position.

“Override on number one… keep it heading the way it was before acquisition.” Number two was still being held under control at low speed, its sensors on passive mode but two minutes later its quarry began to accelerate.

“Con, sonar… Sierra Two Five has heard number two… noisemakers in the water… transient, transient… Sierra Two Five has launched two weapons along the bearing to number two!”

Pitt called to his weapons officer.

“Weps!”

“Sir?”

“Go active on both weapons, cut the wire on two but keep number one under our control, remain at low speed and reload tube two with Mk-48.”

“Aye, aye sir… active mode on both weapons… cutting loose number two but retaining control of number one at low speed, reloading tube two with Mk-48!”

“Captain, number one has acquired Sierra Two Four!”

“Con, sonar… classify Sierra Two Four as Whiskey class, range 6700, bearing zero five two, speed three knots!”

“Weps, accelerate number one and cut the wire.”

“Aye sir, cutting the wire on number one!”

“Weps… reload tube one with Mk-48.”

“Aye, aye sir… reloading tube number one with Mk-48.”

To the northeast the improved Kilo, the Kilo (I), had defeated the Mk-48s first attack after it went for a noisemaker. The torpedo came through the cloud of bubbles being generated by the deception device and started to turn to starboard, the way the Kilo (I) had gone but corrected its turn and came to port instead.

“Con, sonar… number two has acquired a fresh target… range… range 3000, Captain there’s a third boat out there, bearing zero three three, speed three knots, heading… its coming right at us, designate as Sierra Two Six, classify as improved Kilo class… her outer doors are opening!”

How the hell did they get so close, thought Pitt?

“Flood three and four… open outer doors… match bearings with Sierra Two Six and shoot, then cut the wires and reload with Mk-48!”

“Con, sonar… transients, transients… torpedoes in the water, range 3000, bearing zero three three… time to impact two minutes forty!”

“Three fired electrically sir… weapon running normally… Four fired electrically… weapon running normally… wires cut, closing outer doors!”

The time had come to run, until the torpedoes heading their way were defeated, after which they would re-engage.

“Hard a-starboard, bring us around to… two one three… all ahead flank… make your depth fifty feet.”

The best way to defeat a torpedo was to run from it as fast as you could, and head for the noisy surface above, where every bit of distraction could be used to throw the weapons off target.

The Captain had forgotten one item, and it was trailing behind them on the end of a six hundred-yard cable.

“Con, sonar, towed array is still deployed!”

Pitt kicked himself mentally for not hauling it in as soon as the first torpedo had acquired, adrenaline may be coursing through him, but tiredness has a way of making you forget things. The array would slow them by several knots, and although he could order the cable cut they may very well need it again before they saw Newport News and its replacement. He nodded to the O.O.W and the cable began to wind in.

“Con, sonar… time to impact one minute five!”

USS Twin Towers had completed her turn and was making 18knots with the speed increasing with every turn as the reactor opened up. Captain Pitt gripped the back of one of the planesmen’s seats and altered his stance as the bow rose.

“Con, sonar… lost contact with number one… sound of explosion at zero five one!”

A glance at the digital plot showed the track of the old Whiskey boat and the Mk-48 converge and then the returns faded. The contacts were no longer as solid as they had been when the Seawolf class hunter/killer had been poodling along at three knots, as their speed increased so their sonar reception degraded accordingly. Sierra Two Five, the first Kilo (I) had disappeared from the plot, but they had the second still only due to the sonar from weapons three and four deflecting off its hull. Her captain was apparently of the old school, accelerating towards the threat to close the gap before the weapons had enough time to arm, and ejecting noisemakers to try and throw off number two, which was approaching from the stern. It was a gutsy move and Pitt wondered what the man was like, did he agree with this war, or was he just doing his duty despite his personal feelings? Thirty seconds later both three and four struck within seconds of each other, and five seconds after that number twos track converged with theirs, all three Mk-48s had armed.

“Con, sonar… fifty seconds to impact!”

“Depth?” Pitt commanded.

“Two hundred twenty feet, sir!”

“Full rise on the planes… give me 110 % on the reactor, and none of that Dylithium crystals shit!” Despite the tension there were one or two smiles, but not from the captain who was doing the math in his head. He had to shift his feet, leaning for’ard as the deck canted higher.

“Close all watertight doors… Chief of the Boat!”

“Captain?”

“Ensure all hatches and bulkheads door lights show dogged!”

“Aye, sir… all hatches show sealed, Captain!”

“Weps… at one hundred feet launch the five and a half inch counter-measures… and as soon as we enter the layer, come right to three two zero!”

He looked at the depth gauge, it seemed to crawl upwards, and then he, and everyone else aboard heard the sonar pings upon the hull over all the machinery noise. Bingbing… bingbing… bingbing. Both torpedoes were locked on and their combined sonars sounded a double beat upon the American. The countermeasures launched either side of the hull and immediately began producing gas bubbles as they gyrated in the USS Twin Towers wake.

No matter what task the crew was performing, they were all conscious of the fact that death could be seconds away.

Bingbing… bingbing… bing… bing.

“Con, sonar… nearest weapon has gone for the starboard countermeasure.”

The Captain nodded but kept his eyes in the depth gauge, they were entering the thermal layer, and above them were the noisy waves and suddenly there was silence from the hull.

“Coming right to three two zero, Captain.”

“Cox’n… ease off on the dive planes, we don’t want to broach.”

Almost a minute past and Pitt allowed himself to relax a tad. I think we’ve seen the last of those particular torpedoes, he told himself, time to slow down and re-engage before… He didn’t get to finish that particular train of thought.

Bing… … … bing… … .bing… bing..bing.bing.bingbingbingbing

“Hard left rudder… .brace for impact!”

The Russian USET-80, 533mm torpedoes had both gone for the noisy counter measures as the submarines sonar returns became distorted by the layer, giving confusingly contradictory range and bearing data. However, the second weapon, travelling a little behind the first, had curved upwards, almost vertically into the cloud of bubbles and out the other side, straight into the thermal layer where it turned hard to port with the intention of reacquiring. Travelling at 50knots it had emerged above the layer before the USS Twin Towers, but pointing in the opposite direction. It acquired the submarine as it completed its turn and swept toward it, still travelling at twice the speed of the vessel. Captain Pitt had just ordered the hard turn to port when the torpedoes short-range side scan sonar received a solid return, it was designed for events such as near misses and it performed its function, triggering the proximity fuse. 661 pounds of TNT detonated just fifty feet from the Twin Towers stern, fracturing her single propeller shaft as the unleashed energies were transferred to the vessel’s hull. No one aboard remained on their feet as the whole vessel bucked with the force of the detonation, steam lines ruptured, electrical fires started in three compartments and the vessel was plunged into darkness as circuit breakers overloaded.

Normal lighting had been restored by the time Captain Pitt came to, with an unpleasant taste of blood and shattered teeth in his mouth. His face felt odd but when he tried to bring his right hand up to it he gagged with the pain and vomited onto the deck plates. His wrist hadn’t just broken; he had a compression fracture from automatically putting his hands out to save himself from the up rushing deck. White bone, jagged at the end was protruding through the flesh of his forearm, and on the deck plates before him was a pool of congealing blood, smeared by his own face. He felt hands turning him over and almost screamed aloud as feeling returned to his left arm, it was broken also but not as dramatically as the compound fracture of the right wrist.

“Steady Captain, you face butted the deck and you ain’t likely to be voted best looking anything for a bit. Stay still while we check you over, sir.”

His vision was blurred and he realised he probably had a concussion, but he thought he recognised the Bosuns mate.

“I need a damage and situation report first.”

“Sir, we’re sat on the surface, the Chief of the Boat got us here, everyone one else was out of it, mainly everyone that is. We had some fire but it’s out now… flooding in the engine room but the pumps are handling it. We’re dead in the water as far as propulsion goes, but we got electrical power back. There’s lots of injured like yourself and five dead, sorry sir.”

“Where is the Chief, I need to speak to him.”

“Sir… he was one of the dead, his back was broke but he could still shout orders, he lay on his back giving encouragement and directions when yelling was inappropriate. All the officers was injured too, but the Chief, well… he was a good man sir. A little while after we got up top, well he just stopped talking and we realised he was dead too.”

“How can we still be afloat… what the hell happened?”

The bosuns mate finished examining him and sat back on his haunches.

“The way I figure it, we was still reeling in the array when that thing went off, so I reckon the torpedo struck it, instead of us.”

A sick bay orderly came up and the mate stood to give him room to work. “Who has the boat?”

“Mr Hannigan sir, he had a dislocated shoulder but he’s got things under control, with a little help from us older hands… .hell of a first cruise for him.”

Pitt could only nod in reply, and then the orderly produced a syringe.

“Sorry sir but I need to reset those breaks before I can move you, I’m putting you under for a while.”

The Captain open his mouth to protest but he felt a sharp jab and seconds later darkness closed in.

The Commissioner did not enter the embassy through the front doors in Grosvenor Square, but via Blackburne Mews at the rear of the building, and into the indoor garage. His driver remained with the car as he was met by a junior staff member and escorted upstairs to Arnie Petrucci’s office. The CIA Head of Station rose from his desk and crossed the room. “Commissioner, thank you for coming.”

They shook hands briefly and waited for the escort to withdraw from the room, closing the door after him before seating themselves and getting down to business. The policeman opened his briefcase and handed over notes, and a small bottle containing a tissue sample.

“The Grampian Police are a little put out that you wouldn’t take them at their word.”

“Their Chief Constable seems like a good guy to have around, I’ll call him tomorrow morning and square things… it’s not that we doubt their ability, we just need to get a second opinion to be entirely certain that the remains are of Major Bedonavich. It would be a hell of a thing to carry on running what it is we are running if he was in fact in their hands and being worked on.”

The Commissioner made no attempt to draw Arnie on what the operation was; he just sat there quietly.

“Have you had any success with tracking down the killers?”

“Yes, and no. A Ford Transit van was found burnt out on the outskirts of Aberdeen, not an unusual occurrence for the area in which it happened, but this one had a body inside it, death was from gunshot wounds.”

“Score one for Constantine then.”

The policeman nodded.

“Possibly.” It would be a few days yet before the scene had been examined to everyone’s satisfaction, and a firm picture of who had done what, was established.

“In the meantime we are checking CCTV footage in shops, chemists and petrol filling stations between the scene and Aberdeen. DNA examination of the male and female found at the scene show them to be east European, but immigration have no trace of their dabs on file.”

“So they were illegals?”

“Not necessarily, their fingerprints would only be taken if they had applied for residency, not tourism or business.” The Commissioner rose to his feet. “If there is nothing more Mr Petrucci, then I will be on my way?”

Arnie led him to the door and with a shake of hands the policeman left with his escort, leaving the American to summons a courier who would take the tissue sample to Langley for a second comparison against one they already held.

Vice Admiral Putchev smiled and nodded his thanks to the crewman as he took the proffered mug from the tray. Captain Hong himself smiled as he watched the simple act of politeness, and found he was also saying thank you when the tray was next offered. The Russian’s command style, so in contrast to that of the authoritarian Chinese system, was definitely rubbing off on him.

After sipping at the beverage appreciatively, he turned to the Russian.

“What did you say goes into this?”

“Cocoa and sherry… but you can use any sweet wine really.”

“It is… unusual, but agreeable for all that.”

“I spent three months as an observer with NATO, aboard the British destroyer HMS Devonshire. A strange peoples the British, but I got quite fond of this on cold nights in the Atlantic. A far more pleasant product of those islands than their skinny women and cricket.”

Hong took up his night glasses and swept the horizon. All radars with the exception of a merchantman forty miles ahead of the fleet were powered down. Despite her looks, the merchanter out ahead was crewed by naval ratings and ‘walking point’. What appeared to be standard steel shipping containers on her decks, were in fact made of plywood, camouflage for the surface to surface and Crotale launchers concealed beneath them.

Aside from the two carriers, there were thirty-nine other surface combat ships, nineteen amphibious assault ships and twenty other transports, tankers and cargo vessels making their way south flanked by submarines. Had not the intelligence gathering satellites in low orbit been attacked so comprehensively, they could not have moved an inch without the enemy knowing of it. The west had actually aided the PRC, by exploding their bombs in the Atlantic they had rendered their own Photo/Reconnaissance satellites impotent. Only RORSAT’s would be of any use for months to come, it made him worry about how his father and mother would cope on their farm, with low sunlight and too much rain.

The PRCs Special Forces and intelligence services had been at work all over the region, not just along the route they were taking, disabling shore based radars to ensure an undetected passage for the fleet. Those few ships that had endangered the fleet by their presence, risking the open seas in a time of war, had been boarded after the communications equipment had been jammed. Hong did not know what became of the vessels, crews and passengers; those were questions that would get him shot.

Thus far all was going to plan, except that they were now limited to one landing zone when they reached Australia, as the others had been discovered. It had however had one unplanned yet positive effect; the Australians were now looking the wrong way, toward the Coral Sea. Not that it mattered that greatly, the invasion forces they carried outnumbered the combined forces of Australia and the American troops from Korea by four to one. An air-mobile brigade’s helicopters sat upon the makeshift landing pads on ten container ships, and two motor rifle divisions plus a Regiment of engineers would land on ground secured by an airborne Regiment. Hong was not privy to all the operational details, but all personnel taking part were practising chemical warfare drills every day, even he was required to attend training sessions. Australia had always publicly denied ownership of weapons of mass destruction, and banned visiting warships from entering her waters if they carried them. Perhaps his government knew something, knew of some secret stockpile that the Australians had?

The latest intelligence briefing mentioned nothing of this, in fact the Australians had been very efficient in closing down the PRCs networks or just making life difficult for the spies. A large convoy had arrived from America along with the USS Nimitz aircraft carrier and a larger than normal surface combat group. It did not say what the convoy contained, but it was probably war stores and new equipment to replace what the Americans had abandoned in Korea. The main source of this latest intelligence originated from a pair of Project 636 boats, Russian built Improved Kilo class diesel submarines, monitoring sea traffic to and from the ports.

The presence of the carrier group was a complication that concerned both Hong and Putchev, as it had been assumed the Americans would have staged their efforts out of Pearl Harbour. If those damned submariners hadn’t got caught at the start of the war, the invasion of Australia wouldn’t have had to be advanced by months, before the west and the Anzacs could mobilise and organise a defence of their islands. Putchev, who was privy to more than the Chinese captain had told him that the US withdrawal from Korea to Australia had been un-catered for in the plans, they had expected them to reinforce Hawaii or the Philippines with those units.

Mao had received replacements for her earlier losses in aircraft the day after the John F Kennedy was destroyed, but Admiral Kuznetsov had not, hers arrived whilst the carriers were transiting the Mindoro Strait, between the island of that name and the tiny Nanga Islands. There had been more ships in the fleet at that point, and the newly arrived Russian aircraft flew on, refuelled, bombed up and joined the strike missions against Cebu and Mactan. The invasion force for those islands had parted company with the fleet that night, cutting east, then south around Panay with four frigates for gunfire support. Two days later Chinese marines were walking through the wreckage and ruins of what had been a city, virtually levelled as punishment for their earlier resistance and the sinking of another warship.

The force bound for Cebu was still in the Sibuyan Sea, 127 miles from their landing site when the small Singaporean Riken class, coastal patrol submarine Conqueror, had got inside the ASW ring. Conqueror put a torpedo into the side of a troopship before being pounced on, and the game little vessel put another 533mm torpedo into one of the frigates from her forward tubes before ducking under her victim and adding the even smaller 400mm torpedoes from both stern tubes.

A volley of 75mm ASROCs killed the diesel boat but her main target; the troopship was too big to succumb to the lightweight munitions, and was able to limp on. The frigate was taken in tow with the intention of getting her to shallow water and beaching her enroute to Cebu for later salvage and repair, but her tow parted during the night in the Jintotolo Channel and she went on the rocks off the northern tip of Negros, with the smoking volcano of Mt Kanla-on in the background.

The carriers hadn’t paused in their journey south, whilst still providing air support for the second and successful attempt to take the islands. Once the strike missions were done with, Putchev had paid a visit to Admiral Kuznetsov and returned in good spirits, the work on the Varyag was almost complete. The ship had been all but complete when the funds dried up and she had been mothballed awaiting a buyer. Poorly maintained during those years, the completion of the work could not begin until that same neglect was first put right. That had been the next task of the shipyard once Mao had been commissioned, but now the reactor was being installed and the ship would soon come to life, Putchev’s next command.

At the time in the war when Leipzig had been taken by parachute assault, the German government would never have sanctioned the wholesale destruction of a German town or city. The pressure is definitely on; thought the commander of Serge Alontov’s 2^nd Brigade, as he peered through the aperture of the rubble and sandbag bunker he presently occupied. If he had hoped for a fight like their last one, the air launched cruise missiles that had destroyed the power station two hours after they landed, had knocked that firmly on the head.

Unlike the last mission, they were not here solely to stop the NATO units being re-supplied at the front, but to hold the road for their own army to use when they broke out over the Elbe and drove to the sea.

The scream of incoming shells forced him to duck, and the earth heaved up to meet him and the dust of another building on Kalsergarten billowed outwards from the collapsing structure.

The NATO forces of the British 3rd Mechanised Brigade were gradually reducing the picturesque Lower Saxony town to rubble. Buildings hundreds of years old lay in ruins. It really was a tragedy, thought the Colonel who had been stationed in the eastern side of the town in his younger days, when the border between east and west ran through the town. There had been people living here for over three thousand years, the stone graves of the nearby Lübbensteine were proof of that.

His headquarters were sited on the junction of Kalsergarten and Magdeburger Tor, not far from the railway and south of the positions that cut Autobahn 2, a location he was beginning to suspect NATO was well aware of. Somewhere out there, probably watching right now was a team of artillery spotters, but the only way to clear them out would be to search every house, and his men were fully committed right now. Three Infantry battalions were applying the pressure to his foothold in the west, and they weren’t hanging about. His intelligence had identified them as the 7^th/8^th Argyll & Sutherland Highlanders, an allegedly inferior unit of part-time soldiers, who were proving to be every bit as good as their regular sister battalion, the 1^st Battalion Argyll & Sutherland Highlanders, who were also opposing him. The other unit was the 2^nd Battalion Light Infantry, and between the three of them they had overrun his outlying positions, south of the former university town. Technically he should have the advantage, a dug-in man is worth three in the open, but over six hundred of his men had not made it to the DZs, victims of shoot-downs by NATO fighters or mis-drops. He had reorganised his battalion so they each had three companies instead of four, due to his third battalion losing three quarters of its number on the way in. Lost with them were radios, heavy weapons and leaders that he was sorely missing now, and he couldn’t improvise in the way they had at Leipzig, the cellular network was down. He had no artillery, the plan made them unnecessary as by this time tomorrow the breakout across the Elbe would have been achieved. He thought it ironic that none of the planners had chosen to jump in with either airborne division, and he didn’t expect T-80s to come rolling down the road anytime soon either. He was now reliant on the mortars that had made it in, and the pallets of ammunition for them that the Il-76 transports carried in on resupply drops.

NATO had no such problems, and was using artillery of all calibres upon the town along with airstrikes. He was losing men with every artillery and air strike, but it was creating a landscape that favoured a defender more than it did an attacker. So long as he had his landing grounds in the north, astride the autobahn, to keep his men supplied with ammunition then he would hold.